That render has his left hand on backwards. It's as if he broke his wrist.

can confirm, this is green-ish

The only Stars Bionicle I don't own--and the one that always seemed KIND of the oddest to me, since Regular-Gresh was on shelves only the year before. I understand including a Bara Magnan hero for closure reasons, but I can't help but see it a bit as a wasted opportunity to either create or embody one last new character or to revisit something truly far back. If you want to keep it to the "future we didn't get," a Bota Magnan dinosaur-riding Agori/Glatorian would have worked.

@MCLegoboy said:"That render has his left hand on backwards. It's as if he broke his wrist."

This is even worse than minifig pictures where one or both hands are rotated one hundred eighty degrees.

@Robot99 said:
"I have this set, and I'm pretty sure not a single joint still connects. Let's hear it for brittle green!"

I just don't take ball joints from this era apart at all, regardless of what color they're molded in. Peg or axle connections? Sure. Ball joints? No way in Karzahni.

Looking back, I wish BIONICLE went out on a bolder note. One last wave with the original six Toa and Takanuva. Stars was a sad send-off to a phenomenal theme with a great story and thrilling ending.

So since I missed Raanu a few days back I'll try and cover both of 'em.

The world of Spherus Magna was once home to many sapient races, the most prominent being the Agori and the Glatorian species. They lived in elemental tribes named after the environments they lived in.

Eventually the people of Spherus Magna discovered a strange and powerful material known as Energized Protodermis. The planet broke into all out war over the power source, attempting to pump as much of it as they could from the planet's core.

The Great Beings, scientist kings of the planet, had long kept to themselves and their experiments. They soon discovered that if people kept harvesting the Protodermis, it would destabilize the planet's core and destroy their world. The combatants did not listen, and the Core War raged on.

Eventually the Great Beings forged a new plan. They created a gargantuan spaceship/mecha known as the GSR, piloted by an AI known as "Mata Nui." This Mata Nui would carry the "Great Spirit" of Spherus Magna's people into the stars and study other alien civilizations, learning how to both literally and figuratively rebuild their world.

Many "nanobots" (which would be like 7 feet tall to us, but were pretty small compared to the spaceship) were built to operate the GSR's systems. Some pretty important ones for now:
Makuta Teridax, a being of Shadow intended to create animals for the world, who planned to overthrow Mata Nui and rule the universe.
Rahkshi/Kraata, worm-like creatures created from Makuta's essence that piloted lizard/snake mech suits.
Toa Tahu, a fire elemental and leader of the Toa Mata who was the main protagonist of the first three story years.
The Mask of Life, an object intended to return life to Mata Nui if he ever died, but who developed a sentience and will of its own.

The GSR was launched just in time. The Core War had continued to rage and stressed the planet's core. In a tragic event known as The Shattering, Spherus Magna broke apart into three smaller worlds. It's mighty seas split onto the Ocean Moon of Aqua Magna, its largest forests were left on the Jungle Moon of Bota Manga, and the remaining sandy rock became the Desert World of Bara Magna.

The people of Bara Magna struggled to survive, water and food now being scarce. Recognizing the horrors the Core War had caused, the tribes agreed on a new method to settle disputes. Each tribe would train a team of Glatorian, warriors who would fight in (preferably non-lethal) combat to earn resources for their people. Raanu was a survivor of the Core War, and despite growing old and frail would become the leader of the Fire Tribe. Gresh was much younger and cockier, and around 100,000 years after the Core War he was a freshly recruited rookie Glatorian for the Jungle Tribe.

After said 100,00 years, tensions on Bara Magna were boiling over. The Rock Tribe of Skrall and nomadic Bone Hunters had formed a secret pact, and planned to destabilize the other villages. Intel of a secret raid being planned by the Bone Hunters (and, unbeknownst to them, funded by the Skrall) on Volcanus, the Village of Fire, was uncovered. Raanu feared for the safety of his people, but Glatorian from other tribes (including Gresh) agreed to help and successfully fended off the assault. Around the same time, during the yearly Tournament in Atero, the Skrall officially declared war on the other Tribes, attacking and killing many of the visitors to the event. Raanu and Gresh were among the survivors.

Meanwhile, in the GSR, through a complicated series of events Makuta put Mata Nui in a coma, Tahu tried to revive the Great Spirit, and instead he awoke the GSR's body with Makuta's mind. To keep Mata Nui from interfering with his plans, Makuta placed Mata Nui's consciousness inside of the Mask of Life and cast it into space, where it eventually landed on Bara Magna.

There the Mask of Life created a new body for Mata Nui. He was found and brought to Raanu for his potential as a new Fire Glatorian, and there he met the oldest and Prime Glatorian of the village, Ackar. When both

When both Ackar and Water Glatorian Kiina learned that Mata Nui was from the stars, they agreed to help him search for his origin in a Great Being lab Kiina had discovered in her home town of Tajun.

They came upon the Water Village to find it up in smoke, its buildings shattered. Luckily, most of the people had been out of town for a Glatorian match elsewhere, but there was still much destruction. Among the survivors were Water Tribe Agori Berix and Gresh. Gresh had been injured defending the village from its attackers, and Berix agreed to help tend his wounds. While there this team of five (Mata Nui, Ackar, Kiina, Gresh, and Berix) uncovered the secret alliance of Bone Hunters and Skrall and decided to warn the others.

In the Jungle Village Mata Nui tried to convince the other tribes to unite against their common threat in the Skrall. Many elders like Raanu doubted simple Agori could do much against that band of warriors, but when Mata Nui marched off to fight the Skrall alone, and bested their leader Tuma, the others were not far behind him. The four tribes of Jungle, Water, Fire, and Ice united managed to drive the Skrall out of the mountains.

Afterwards, as a show of their unity, the separate tribes of Agori hauled the massive hunks of scrap they built their homes in across the sands to piece them together into one mega village. In doing so, they made a huge discovery. The GSR was not the first giant robot the Great Beings tried to build. There was a Prototype many years before even the Core War, that had exploded within the desert due to an unstable power source. Mata Nui saw this as a path to free his people from Makuta's control.

Mata Nui, Gresh, Kiina, Ackar, and Berix headed north for a maze said to contain a potential power source, and Mata Nui recovered it. Raanu had been elected leader of the mega-village for his age and wisdom, and initially he refused to give Mata Nui their newly built home as a body, but eventually he was convinced. Mata Nui's soul left the Mask of Life as the Agori fled to shelters under the mountains, and the Prototype robot rose once more. Using its power, Mata Nui began the task of reassembling the shattered world.

But Makuta sensed this power. He did not want Mata Nui possessing a body again, and feared the Great Spirit would come to him for revenge. He landed the (much larger) GSR upon the Desert World, and the two giant machines dueled (Mata Nui STILL trying to reform the planet and pulling the moons in closer). Hordes of Rahkshi poured from the GSR's feet, and they set upon the Agori and Glatorian to destroy them. But help soon arrived, heroes from the GSR, lead by Toa Tahu, quickly joined the fray, and using their greater elemental and mask powers defended Bara Magna's people.

As soon as it sensed Tahu's presence, the Mask of Life came to him. In addition to giving the people of GSR and Bara Magna the ability to speak each others languages, it had a gift for Tahu. As a fail safe in case the Makuta ever went evil, the Great Beings had constructed a set of Golden Armor for Toa to wear. This armor was capable of wiping out Antidermis at a huge range, which was what Kraata were made of. Before Tahu could don the armor, Makuta saw the golden glow and fired a blast, hoping to stop whatever it was. The Golden Armor was scattered across the sands.

With the help of Gresh and Takanuva (don't worry about him), Tahu set out into the battlefield to recover the six scattered pieces of the armor. Eventually, they got them all back, and he donned them to become The Golden Toa. With this awesome power, Tahu wiped out the entire Rahkshi armor in one blast of power.

And this couldn't have come a moment too soon. Just as Tahu was donning the armor, Makuta was going to take an extreme to end the conflict. He would use his giant robot's foot to step on the battlefield, wiping out both his own army and Mata Nui's friends in one swoop. But, the Rahkshi were of his essence, and mentally linked to him, and so he felt all of their deaths at once, with great confusion. This momentary distracti

And this couldn't have come a moment too soon. Just as Tahu was donning the armor, Makuta was going to take an extreme to end the conflict. He would use his giant robot's foot to step on the battlefield, wiping out both his own army and Mata Nui's friends in one swoop. But, the Rahkshi were of his essence, and mentally linked to him, and so he felt all of their deaths at once, with great confusion. This momentary distraction was enough for Mata Nui to push Makuta away from the battlefield. He stumbled backward... right into the path of a chunk of the Jungle Moon. It smote Makuta in the back of the head, incinerating his Antidermis essence.

With Makuta dead, Mata Nui used the last of his own life force to finish his task, melding the ocean and plantlife to the planet once more. Spherus Magna was whole again, and with his dying words Mata Nui encouraged the people of the GSR and Magna to work together for a better future.

Oh also, I remember when I was a kid, maybe a year or two after this set came out, I found one of its armor pieces at a gas station. It was crushed an dirty, cleary run over, but the mangled piece has such an ironic desert nomad vibe that I just had to take it.

@Robot99 said:
"I have this set, and I'm pretty sure not a single joint still connects. Let's hear it for brittle green!"

Dark Green/Metru Green wasn't one of the colors that had issues with fragility in 2007. That would be lime green, which while present in this set isn't in any of the joints.

The bleak reality is that the issue you ran into isn't a particular color, but that the 2008-2010 redesigned socket is just that brittle in *every* color. It wasn't until 2011 that Hero Factory 2.0 redesigned the ball joint *again* and fixed the issue.

I can turn my palms outwards, though I guess not while bending my arm ninety degrees.

@Atuin said:
"Visorak"

It's hard for me to imagine a Stars Visorak. The Zesk would be the starting point, I guess, but the head and spinner would be tricky.

@SearchlightRG said:
" @Atuin the Piraka was another character named Nektann. Same species as the other Piraka, but he was a warlord who sided with Makuta."

And technically not a Piraka, I think, despite the name. Just a Skakdi.

Oh dear. The absolutely least interesting of the Stars, at least in my book xD;;

It's not just that Gresh here was a remake of a set from only a year before, and of a character who hadn't had a particularly world-shaking role at that; it's the fact that this set is also a downgrade from his 8980 version in almost every possible way. Size aside, Glatorian Gresh had these neat marbled patterns on his helmet and his blades... gone, in favour of plain lime and the ever-overused plain silver. He also had orange eyes that stood out nicely against the green of his mask... likewise switched out for trans-neon-green, which is too close in colour to the lime mask to have the same effect.

The single point in Star!Gresh's favour is that he does get a cool new armour piece... that was literally never used again outside this set. It almost makes me wonder if someone at Lego knew this wasn't a particularly enticing redesign and gave him an exclusive mould so that Bionicle MoCists especially would buy him just for that piece...

@RogueWhistler said:
" @SearchlightRG said:
" @Atuin the Piraka was another character named Nektann. Same species as the other Piraka, but he was a warlord who sided with Makuta."

And technically not a Piraka, I think, despite the name. Just a Skakdi."

From what I've gathered, the lore "justification" for the set name is that, since 'Piraka' is a vile swear word and the foulest thing you could possibly call someone in the Matoran language, Nektann was branded as such for siding with Makuta; so ***TECHNICALLY*** he's still a Piraka, just not part of the established group who go by the name 'Piraka'.

...the real world reason is, of course, just because Piraka is the most familiar name they could call the set, since the term skakdi had at this point, I believe, only ever been used in the Bionicle World guidebook, maybe the online story serials, and nowhere else...!