Rock Raiders Bionicle.

I kind of hate what Greg to this character. An oddball little guy who is an engineer and inventor in 2006? Fun. The twist reveal he was a god descendant to mortal form and started going on a murder streak in 2010? Felt less like an "oh my gosh!!" reveal and more like watching the character of an old friend changed to serve the plot. I hate that.

@MCLegoboy said:
"One of the six "left over pieces" Matoran. Would have been kind of neat to see some recolors instead of just mini Toa Metru."

Yeah, the 2004 Matoran all had recolored masks, would have been nice for the 2006 Matoran to follow suit. The only recolored Metru mask we got was a dark blue Great Ruru in 8940.

@TheOtherMike said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"One of the six "left over pieces" Matoran. Would have been kind of neat to see some recolors instead of just mini Toa Metru."

Yeah, the 2004 Matoran all had recolored masks, would have been nice for the 2006 Matoran to follow suit. The only recolored Metru mask we got was a dark blue Great Ruru in 8940."

I really wanted the green one to be recovered in either red or gold.

The lore on this guy’s going to be insane

No lore tonight, maybe in the morning. This one is wild

@Alia_of_AGL said:
"Honestly most/all Greg-lore post-2010 may as well be taken as semi-canon, it's honestly weird that the fandom treats Greg-canon as the highest authority when he was only a piece of the Bionicle storytelling and lore puzzle, especially the post-2010 supplemental material with minimal Lego oversight.

That said, the fact that this guy's a god-turned-mortal-turned-major-slasher-villain in Greg-lore is too ridiculous and iconic (especially since it effectively makes him the final G1 villain since the serials were cancelled in the middle of his murder mystery plot) that it's effectively welded directly to any image of the character. That guy, yes, that $4 guy using recycled parts, not even one of the three plot-important ones of Balta, Dalu, and Garan, got an *insane* post-mortem significance boost by being chosen to be the Great Being in disguise slaying demigods and framing 8939 Lesovikk for the death of 8940 Karzahni. It's such a buck-wild writing choice that can't really be undone."

See here's the thing about Greg, he's a good writer but not a great one; and to much of his tropes are sourced in comic book and TTRPG lore. He lacks the sort of irreverent tongue-in-cheek tone of say Jim Butcher to be fun to read as an adult, and kind of reminds me of a watered down Brandon Sanderson (and I struggle to read Sanderson). He's certainly not Frank Herbert or J.R.R. Tolkien in terms of storytelling or world building either. At best Greg might pass as a Larry Niven, which worked in Bionicle's favor in awe over Big Dumb Objects, but at his worst Greg reads like a c-tier DC or Marvel author.

I think what worked for Greg is his audience was children, and he was one of the first authors to engage his audience in meaningful Q&A's. I always have some regret voicing my criticism of his writing because of his genuinely great fan interactions (and for all of my criticism on his writing, he was an editor on the Star Wars book that inspired Pulitzer Prize winning Andor's Ghorman Massacre, which is wild to me that Greg indirectly had some influence on that). But, the 2010 serials are all of Greg's worst writing traits boiled down to the core, especially lacking the Bionicle story team oversight that made his comics and early books fun. Velika might as well be the poster boy for that, throw in Vezon becoming "Deadpool, but LEGO" and Lariska the "cool O.C. don't steal" and everything cool in 2001 Bionicle was dead in late-2010 for the most generic comic book and dime novel sci-fi/fantasy tropes you can imagine.

Bionicle lore: This guy's a little bitch and we hate him

Not a minifig?

@xboxtravis7992 said:"See here's the thing about Greg, he's a good writer but not a great one; and to much of his tropes are sourced in comic book and TTRPG lore."

Well, he wrote for TTRPGs some time before he ever worked on Bionicle. I have a copy of the West End Games Star Wars RPG (Revised and Expanded) from the Nineties, and he's one of the writers.

As someone who never read any of the books, had only passing familiarity with the comics and whose main knowledge of the lore came filtered down through BZPower, was there any actual foreshadowing that this guy would turn out to be a Great Being? Like, I know roughly that he was a bit quirky even for the Voyatoran, basically the closest thing they had to a Turaga, but did anything ever leap out as “secretly a god”?

@Brickalili said:
"As someone who never read any of the books, had only passing familiarity with the comics and whose main knowledge of the lore came filtered down through BZPower, was there any actual foreshadowing that this guy would turn out to be a Great Being? Like, I know roughly that he was a bit quirky even for the Voyatoran, basically the closest thing they had to a Turaga, but did anything ever leap out as “secretly a god”?"

No. Absolutely not!

Speaking to the set, in a year awash with new parts and colors that would set the design language for BIONICLE until the end of its run, trying to muster any enthusiasm for Velika or any of the Voya Nui Matoran was a struggle. On the plus side, yay! No clone builds (this was a big deal after years with all the small boxed sets the same set, just recolored and given a different weapon or mask). But on the downside, you could tell that after all the budget at LEGO went to the new Piraka molds, the light-up eye parts, and the canister packaging, there was literally nothing but scraps left for the Matoran builds. They might as well have been alternate models from another set! I mean, Velika here has no eyes (the skull part is left hollow), but the rest of the Matoran are even worse. Kazi doesn't even have a proper head!

Story-wise, it was cooked up that these Matoran were misshapen refugees of Karzahni or something, but it was a piss-poor excuse in an otherwise extraordinary year for BIONICLE sets.

And coming full circle to Velika's role in the story, I hold up his "reveal" as a Great Being as a prime example of why I reject fandom's call for BIONICLE to be "finished". Those serials left hanging in 2011 were rife with unnecessary plotlines that, while entertaining, really didn't have any real bearing on the original plot, the original "Biological Chronicle". For me, BIONICLE ended with that lovely scene in the final comic of Mata Nui saying farewell to the assembled Toa, Turaga, Matoran, Glatorian, and Agori, leaving them a new paradise to live and build in peace.

A cousin give this one to me, but I was missing the weapons. The set is really drab without them. I eventually got them when I was able to use Bricklink, but you might remember what happened for me with most of my old bionicle collection from my other posts. I now have it again, and last christmas I actually even completed the set of 6 for the first time :D

Btw, the lore on this guy is nuts. And as someone who didn't have access to the comics or books but who did read the online serials, I fully agree with the above post of @xboxtravis7992. Greg has done wonderful things for the story for sure, but some of the serials were just baffling and in hindsight are probably the case of one man being left to his own devices with no other writers to work with.
I appreciate everything he made, but at the same time he opened far too many plotlines only to leave them hanging, which was inevitable with the rate he was writing different serials with many long plotlines each. Stuff like the Golden Skinned Being, Velika, the new toa of psionics and the red star were some of my least favourite plot threads, even if they had been finished.

When I first glanced at the small image I thought it was an early Mixel.
How I miss those.

Come to think of it, there has never been a Mixel as RSOTD yet, has there? Even though they have been eligible for over two years.