#kojol

[stoovano]

Kicking off 2024 right with my first real moc of the year, makuta Kojol!

Credit to @karyot for the wings and render !!!

[that1cactus]

Makuta Kojol

Bonus nostalgic sketch from me way back in 2013. Oh how the times have changed.

[Ko-Fi]

[sepublic]

What if we reimagined all of the other non-Teridax Makuta as eldritch horrors, just as Teridax was initially presented in the early years of Bionicle? What if we used each Makuta as a prompt of sorts; What if THEY were the big villain terrorizing an island, their individual name unknown so they’re just THE Makuta to the local Toa and Matoran? Make each one feel worthy of the title of Makuta, with their depictions in Karda Nui being akin to physical, humanoid avatars meant to interact with others, just as the scheming Teridax is like for the vortex from MNOG?

Like for example, Chirox! You have this swarm of spiders known as the Visorak, led by one massive spider, known as Makuta. The Visorak mutate their victims, before dragging them back to their master.

Makuta is a spider-like entity that emerges from a cave, using his spindly limbs to grapple with and analyze his victims... Potentially drawing upon them for inspiration, before tearing and prying them apart into their base pieces, adding them to his massive collection. From these recycled parts, Makuta creates more Visorak, or dreaded Rahi creatures that wreak havoc on the ecosystem. Like Makuta, they are poison, destruction incarnate; They always inherit his twisted spirit that destroys.

That’s all Makuta does, even when he does create; He inevitably just destroys. Instead of coming up with new things on his own, he relies on Fate to mutate the living into something random, hoping chance will eventually grant him a working design for Makuta to copy. You could say Makuta has no real ideas of his own, and is a gambler, a parasite, betting something will come along for him to take. 

But isn’t destruction the same as creation, isn’t destroying his victims necessary to make things? That’s where the imagery of the spider comes into play; Its long, spindly limbs? They’re fingers. Makuta is not just a spider, he is a hand; The same hand that reaches into the parts bin to make new creations, plays with MoCs before tearing them apart to make something new. Just as Teridax represents the parts bin, Chirox is the builder’s hand, like in the Lego Movie, or Super Smash Bros. 

Each Visorak is like a hand of its own, grabbing victims, reassembling them randomly with mutation. Dragging them back to Chirox, whose hand motif is also inspired from the fact that he is the only Makuta who can fully control his Shadow Hand. And Makuta’s spider-like form? It’s attached to something much, MUCH bigger... It is not just a hand metaphorically, it is a literal hand and when Makuta’s lair collapses around him, it reveals the massive figure he is attached to; His whole, true self, a titan more resembling the Chirox we are familiar with.

The others are different angles and facets to approach the myth, the legend of the Makuta; Different re-imaginings, just as people came up with their own G3 and their own take on Makuta. Just like the Makuta contest we had for G2. Vamprah can represent the animalistic side of Makuta; The raging, kicking, screaming beast he was once described as by Vakama. The apex predator, for if his minions are the Rahi beasts, he is the greatest of them all.

Or Bitil! A temporal entity, haunted by his past selves, constantly summoned by his future self. Always going through different iterations, just as a MoC is frequently edited, redone, rebuilt; You can track his transformation, his evolution across his many selves; Makuta represents the existential horror of the timeline, of the way things change. A ghost of the past, and also a vision of the future. If the Vahi is central to the tale of Bionicle as the Mask of Time, what about Makuta as someone who constantly exploits and distorts this force?

Those are some of my initial ideas. Makuta needn’t always be this faceless force of nature, they can be a humanized figure, like Krika, who can be a sympathetic, tragic villain doomed by the narrative, consigned to his role and aware of it as part of a meta discussion; Miserix is the mighty dragon our knights must slay; The Makuta of Stelt, a land of merchants and commerce, the all-consuming force of corporatism that stifles creativity, or a bargaining devil. Gorast is a fanatical priestess hoping to bring in a new age, Mutran the quintessential mad scientist who played god and flew too close to the sun in his obsession.

Spiriah is a corrupt lord seething over his failures, who transformed and resents his people the Skakdi and must be rebelled against; Tridax is a multiversal collector providing commentary on adaptations; The Vortixx hope to harness the ultimate weapon that is Antroz; Kojol is the arcane keeper of knowledge like Lucifer, who stole the Light of enlightenment from the land of thinkers and is burned for it; And Icarax? A completely straightforward dark lord to conquer, as he always intended to be. Each plays the role of Makuta, as the final villain, the ultimate evil who started this conflict, whom our protagonists must rise to eventually vanquish.

[bionic-baby]

I like how everyone has agreed that Kojol is yellow despite us never even seeing him.

[ghost-mantis]

For the Manas and Mana-Ko, which Makuta do you think created them? Being an absolute brute force machine sounds very Icarax, but their obedience to their masters also reminds me of Antroz...

This is a great question! I haven't gotten one for quite some time, so thank you for such a fun puzzler to think over!

I'm actually going to have to credit their creation either to Kojol or to an unknown Makuta based on what little we know about them.

Manas

>Amphibious

>Powered up by heat

>Super Strong

>Love violence, even against each other

>Worked for the Makuta and Karzahni

Mana Ko

>Incredibly intelligent for a rahi, able to create mental shields

>Powerful, destructive, hair-trigger for anything that moves

>Secretly trained by The Order to work for them

While you're right that some of their traits point to Icarax or Antrox, its three traits that really get me thinking that these guys were made by an unknown Makuta very early in the Mata Nui universe's timeline.

>Amphibious (able to live on water or land) is the trait that has me thinking Makuto Kojol had a hand in this. Kojol was the marine rahi expert after all.

>Worked for the Makuta and Karzahni. This is the biggie for me. Karzahni closed his kingdom off pretty early on in the timeline and cannonically had no freaking clue what had gone one outside his land while he was away. If he had Manas as guards in his realm, he got them pretty much at the start of the universe.

This argument works really well for Kojol since he was the Makuta of Artakha. If he knew where that island was, he probably knew where Karzahni was too.

However, there were a lot more Makuta before Teridax's purge. And before everyone who knew where Artakha was located, were murdered. So we really can't rule out any of the early unknown Brotherhood members.

>The Order being able to train these things into being loyal spies. This is honestly the most glaring thing to me. In no way can you tell me these guys magically rounded these things up, trained them to be loyal, and to mentally shield themselves, all without the Makuta noticing. No freaking way.

Unless one of the Makuta wanted them to be able to do that. Perhaps one of the 5 Makuta that ultimately sided with Miserix, or another unnamed good-aligned Makuta knew what the others could become and wanted them watched. This whole thing screams of a backdoor deal with The Order to make sure there was a means to watch and strike at the Brotherhood from the inside.

That's my take on it, but I'd love to see what everyone else thinks. Thanks again @cantankerouscanuck for the cool ask!

[agils-01]

Kojol, the Deceiver of Artakha (ver. Mirai)

“I have deceived them…” Kojol said with pride.

Kojol with the Avohkii.

This is intentionally based on the drawing of Makuta Kojol by BionicleChicken.

I hope you all enjoy this interpretation of Makuta Kojol.

[kanohivolitakk]

Drew my favorite bastard Bird man once many months ago.

[teelguy]

it's been a while

was busy making all of the (named) brotherhood of makuta members into anime ladies