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Matoran Morphology Section 6: Voya Nui

At this point in the study, we must take a moment to acknowledge a special popluation of matoran that lived in the very center of the Southern Continent, under the shadow of Mount Valmai. The matoran of Voya Nui have a long and frequently traumatic history, a large portion of which is recorded very clearly in the state of their bodies.

Form: The exact details of these matoran’s history will be discussed in the appropriate section, but it is important for you to know that at some point in the early history of the universe, every single one of the matoran who came to live in Voya Nui was essentially ripped apart and rebuilt from scratch in an incompetent attempt to “repair” them. This resulted in the the malformed and stunted bodies you see in the images above. Worse still, the botched repairs went so far as to significantly modify the matoran’s core form, causing permanent damage that will be very difficult to fix even in the long term.

Almost every Voya Nui matoran is at least slightly unique in build, with no more than 2 or 3 ever being totally identical. However there are some general traits that most or all of them share. They are significantly smaller than other matoran (beat out only by Metruans for the title of shortest non-diminished matoran build), and appear to be generally made of less total material by mass, making them lighter and also somewhat more fragile. About 90 percent of Voyans also have a significant hunchback, with their neck and sometimes their shoulders located at the midpoint of their torso rather than the top. Finally, Voyans never have functional eyeglow. Ironically, they are known to frequently have glowing nodes or patches adorning other parts of their body, but the eyes are never one of them.

Other slightly less common features of the Voya Nui body include:

Pincer hands: Observable on our vo-matoran model. Very small and elongated hands with an unorthodox form, only having four fingers arranged opposing each other in sets of two. Hands like this are not unheard of in matoran outside of the Voyan population; turaga in particular often have a similar hand structure.

Fused hand tools: Observable on our ce-matoran model, particularly in fig. 6-7. Many Voyans have tools or weapons fused directly onto the ends of their arms that either supplement or completely replace their hands. Our model used to have hooks on both of her arms, but she has since had one arm modified.

Tiny “heads”: Observable on our ce-matoran model, particularly in fig. 5. A very small number of Voyans, rather than having a head, have a sort of small box on top of their neck joints with few of the features associated with a head. It appears that vital organs such as the brain have been moved to the matoran’s chest unit, while the original head has been replaced by a unit which usually contains nothing more than a mask mount, a mechanical voice box, and audio/visual sensors. This rather gruesome (by the Voyan’s own admission) modification occurs more frequently in those matoran without a hunchback.

Functionality: Voya Nui matoran are, as a rule, physically weaker than other matoran types in almost every way. Their greatest functional asset is that, for the more mobile matoran, their small size and light weight allows them to be either very fast or very quiet and stealthy when they need to be. It’s rumored that Voyans are currently in high demand among unlawful organizations for employment as spies for these very reasons. Not all Voyans can take advantage of this though; mobility varies greatly among the population, some matoran having quite strangely constructed limbs that necessitate abnormal or assisted ways of walking. At the very least the Voya Nui body is consistent: Voyans rarely encounter random malfunctions.

It is worth noting that for most of their history, each and every Voyan owned a unique set of twin tools, with various strange abilities designed to help them survive the harsh environment they lived in. Some Voyans have discarded their tools since the Rejoining; others have been unable to because their tools are built directly onto their body. But many still voluntarily hold on to their tools, for various emotional or practical reasons.

History: Some of the following information is unconfirmed and is still in the process of being investigated by scholars. One can never be too cautious when dealing with the relationship between history and myth.

There is a dark figure from matoran legend who’s name even most agori are familiar with by now: Karzahni. It may surprise you to learn that Karzahni has been confirmed to be, in some capacity, real, and he is directly responsible for the history of Voya Nui. The legend goes that Karzahni’s original purpose was to fix malfunctioning matoran who were sent to him, but when those matoran never came back, the turaga of the universe eventually stopped sending matoran to his realm. Unknown to the world at large, Karzahni was not very good at his intended purpose, and his attempts at repair only made the matoran weak and malformed. Using the variety of builds on display in the Voyans, we can actually track the progress of Karzahni’s thoughts and see how his attempts at fixing matoran evolved over time. Eventually, tired of failure, Karzahni granted all of the matoran in his realm special tools and sent them away to live on the Southern Continent, so as not to be reminded of his ineptitude any more. This is what created the original village of Voya Nui.

As mentioned in the previous section, a large region around Voya Nui was completely ejected from Mata Nui’s body during the Great Cataclysm, creating the island of Voya Nui in the sea of Aqua Magna. Many Voyans died in the Cataclysm, and the survivors found themselves stranded on a harsh land with few resources for survival. As if to add insult to injury, another disaster occurred where one of the two cities the Voyans built for themselves sunk into the ocean. Their experience on the island was capped off by getting involved in the battle for the Kanohi Ignika waged by the now famous Toa Mahri, shortly before the beginning of the Reign of Shadows.

Nowadays, the matoran of Voya Nui have found decent success in integrating into modern society, a life that they say is much more comfortable and peaceful than what they had before. Unfortunately, though many of them would like to modify themselves to repair the damage that Karzahni did all those many millennia ago, their build is so strange that even many of the most seasoned biomechanics have had trouble safely rebuilding them. It will likely take a lot of time and many advances in biomechnaical science before the Voyans are able to completely wipe away their physical history.

Acknowledgements: Our volunteer models for this section are Zaren, Vo-Matoran Voya, and Keti, Ce-Craftsman Voya.

Chronicler’s Notes:

Turaga Giiku’s on to me again. This time about not queuing up posts to keep on schedule over the religious festival. For the love of Artakha.

Its really weird that Zaren kept her profession secret. Matoran from before the Rejoining tended to be really proud of their work and attach a lot of their identity to it, partially because of the influence of Metru Nui’s workaholic culture. You’ve probably noticed that in the formal naming conventions of the period that this study uses; a matoran’s profession and the place where they gained that profession were always a part of the name. I wonder if she had a reason for remaining more anonymous.

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