Tales from Turaga Ventax: Volume 1

The Wanderer

Written by Minirigby

For the final entry in this volume of my records, I thought it best to go over the last subject of my research just before the exodus to our new home on Spherus Magna.

Throughout all of Matoran history, even going as far back as the construction of Metru Nui itself, there have been reports and sightings of a mysterious being of unknown origin wandering across the lands of the Great Spirit as a silent witness to some of history’s most important events. This “wanderer”, as I have dubbed it, has been encountered all across our history, in locations of all manner and by beings of all kinds.

Within this record I mean to detail a few of the most eventful accounts I have collected across my travels from those who have encountered this wanderer, presented in chronological order, leading into the first time I myself came in contact with the subject, on one of my many return visits to Metru Nui...

The earliest known sighting of the wanderer was a story told to me by Helryx, the first Toa ever to be built by the Great Beings. More than 100,000 years ago, while the great city of Metru Nui was still under construction, Helryx encountered the wanderer in the city’s foundations, which confirms the wanderer’s age as preceding even the Great Spirit itself.

While traversing the city’s newly built streets, overseeing the Matoran hard at work on its finishing touches, Helryx encountered the strange being as it roamed the city with a look of confusion and bewilderment. After approaching the being and questioning it about where it had come from, Helryx had come to learn that, as of this encounter, the wanderer had only recently awoken for the very first time, in a now sealed chamber beneath Metru Nui. The wanderer possessed no name, and no memory of its purpose or how it came to be.

Toa Helryx, still young and trusting, agreed to guide the wanderer out of the city, assuming it to be another creation of the Great Beings as she herself was. When Helryx told me of this encounter she recalled thinking that the wanderer was a Toa like herself, or perhaps some earlier prototype. With information we have now from the Great Being’s laboratory here on Spherus Magna however, that seems unlikely. Records left by the Great Beings show that Helryx herself was both the prototype for all Toa, as well as the first to be completed...

The next account I have of the wanderer being sighted comes from Gorlock, a Toa of Water and the leader of the famous Toa Valmai, the team who were assembled 90,000 years ago to revive the Great Spirit after a devastating collision with space debris. After Toa Miharo’s sacrifice beneath the team’s namesake, Mount Valmai, the remaining ten Toa escorted the Ignika to Karda Nui, the heart of our universe and the location where Miharo’s life energy would be used to revive Mata Nui.

Passing through the caves in the ceiling of Karda Nui, on their way to the Codrex to revive the Great Spirit, Gorlock recalls encountering a being which matched the description of the wanderer. When I asked about the details of their meeting, Gorlock told me that when they met, the wanderer had been living among the Av-Matoran who called Karda Nui’s caves their home, and that it behaved toward them much like a Toa would to other Matoran. From this we can gather that, although it may still not have known the reason for its creation, the wanderer had begun to find a role for itself within Matoran society.

Gorlock went on to bring up how, when they passed through the Av-Matoran village with the Ignika, and throughout their entire journey, the Mask of Life had an almost hypnotic effect on the Matoran, Rahi, and flora that came in close contact with it, even effecting the Toa Valmai’s Onu-Matoran companion, Rakau, when they first met prior to entering Karda Nui. However when the wanderer approached the body formerly belonging to Toa Miharo out of curiosity, the Mask of Life appeared to have no such effect on it, as though the wanderer wasn’t really alive at all, a mere machine with an artificial mind, but with no soul or spirit to anchor it.

This revelation once again supports the idea that the wanderer was no Toa, however this leads to still more questions. If the wanderer was just a machine, then who built it, and for what purpose? And more importantly, why did even the being itself have no answers to these questions when it was met by Helryx? Was it perhaps activated accidentally, before it’s creator had finished their work?

With these questions burning away at my mind, I continued my search for answers, however it would be some time before I encountered the next pieces of this puzzle...

Many centuries later, after the brave Toa Nuva had returned from their own journey to awaken the Great Spirit at the heart of our universe, I also found myself back in Metru Nui, to celebrate this great accomplishment in the place where I was most at home. I’ll skip the details of what happened next as I’m sure you’re already well aware of what came to pass, and because it weighs little on my research into the mysterious wanderer, but it was during the commotion after the Makuta’s announcement that I caught a glimpse of a being moving through the crowd of panicked Matoran who matched the description of the wanderer I had been researching.

Following the wanderer eventually led me to an entrance underneath the city, where an ancient and once sealed door lay smashed outward on the ground, inviting me further into the chamber it once protected. Inside this chamber the wanderer and I finally met for the first time.

“You are the Turaga who has been asking about me” the wanderer said, keeping its back turned to me as it sat on the cold ground of the chamber, holding something I couldn’t yet make out.

“Yes, I am Turaga Ventax, a researcher and great admirer of stories” I replied to the being, who now turned around to face me as I moved further into the chamber, past screens and panels covered in unfamiliar symbols.

“What is it you have found, then?” the wanderer asked with genuine curiosity.

“Not very much. In truth, I was rather hoping you could help me with that” I replied to the wanderer, as it stood up off the floor.

“I will tell you all I know then, beginning in this chamber where I awoke for the first time more years ago than I care to remember” it said.

The wanderer proceeded to tell me its entire life story, from the moment it first awoke in the pod at the back of the chamber where we now stood...

After leaving Metru Nui for the first time, the wanderer spent centuries traveling across the lands of the Great Spirit before deciding to settle in the Av-Matoran villages above Karda Nui, where it encountered Gorlock and his teammates as I had previously heard. The wanderer told me that it continued living in peace above Karda Nui for many centuries thereafter. Ultimately however, curiosity about where it had come from motivated the wanderer to set out in search of answers.

For years the wanderer continued traveling, even revisiting this chamber to see what information it might hold. I was surprised to learn it once even encountered an old acquaintance of mine, Pomutu, during his time as a humble Po-Matoran craftsman living on the Northern Continent.

Eventually after years of searching and finding no answers, the wanderer elected to give up its hunt and settle down once more. Until, that is, just a few months prior to our meeting, when the wanderer began to hear whispers of a Turaga who had been questioning anyone whom it had encountered. Once the wanderer heard of my investigation, the motivation to uncover its origin had returned.

The wanderer set out from its most recent home in the Southern Islands and began the journey back here, to Metru Nui, in hopes of running into me and comparing notes to perhaps shed new light on its unknown origin.

After arriving back in Metru Nui, to the chamber of its awakening specifically, the wanderer was surprised to find something it had missed on its first search. The object I had noticed it holding when I first entered the chamber, as it turns out, was a detailed design plan for the wanderer’s body, written in the same unfamiliar language that appeared all over the walls of the chamber.

Despite the majority of the plans being unreadable to our eyes, there was one detail we could make out. Toward the bottom of the plans was a signature, likely belonging to the being who designed the wanderer, with the name “Amos” written in something resembling the Matoran alphabet. Although this new information would prove to be invaluable later on, there was little we could actually do with it at the time. Therefore the wanderer and I decided to part ways there, after exchanging what each of us had discovered about its origin thus far, promising to remain in contact should anything else come to light...

Sure enough, only six months after Mata Nui had defeated Makuta Teridax in the battle of Bara Magna and repaired our broken world to how it is now, I would meet the wanderer once more.

Early one morning, as my assistant Kopeke and I sorted away records and artifacts in my newly constructed archive, the wanderer payed us a visit with most exciting news. Some time after exiting the Great Spirit’s body the wanderer sought out the help of a native Agori named Tarduk, who helped it translate the designs found underneath Metru Nui those many months earlier. With this new translation the wanderer was finally near to the answers it sought, as within the signature of Amos, who it turned out was himself a Great Being, was hidden a detailed map leading to Amos’ workshop, a place which seemed unknown even to other Great Beings. The wanderer came to my archive not just to share this news, but to ask if I would be willing to accompany it on this journey. Not willing to pass up an opportunity to witness these one of a kind findings, I agreed to travel with the wanderer to Amos’ secret workshop.

Although the journey was not without its hardships, our path was a rather peaceful one all things considered, due to the wanderer’s imposing stature. A head taller than most Toa or Glatorian, the wanderer had no trouble scaring off any beasts or would-be bandits we encountered along the way.

Eventually as we trudged our way through the snow of the White Quartz Mountains, the Wanderer and I came across a sealed door buried in the mountain side. At first I attempted to force the door open with my Noble Matatu, but my concentration proved insufficient.

As the wanderer approached the door however it began to glow a bright blue, as if it could detect the wanderer’s presence, before opening to reveal the interior of the workshop. Once we made our way inside, the workshop lit up with bright blue lights, much like the door had when it first detected the wanderer.

Immediately upon entering our attention was drawn to a table at the far end of the room, where lay what appeared to be the corpse of a Glatorian, though with armor that more resembled the inhabitants of the former Matoran Universe. The wanderer approached the body, feeling a strange connection to it, while I instead decided to investigate the workshop. Soon enough I discovered holographic recordings of the being which lay dead on the workshop’s table, who turned out to be the Great Being Amos himself. After watching through countless recordings Amos had made documenting his creations, among them the invention of many Kanohi such as the Hau & Kualsi, we found the recording Amos had made about the wanderer...

From this recording we were finally able to learn why the wanderer had been built more than 100,000 years ago and placed aboard the Great Spirit.

Amos, chief engineer of the Great Beings and one of the project leads on the second Great Spirit Robot, had hatched a plan to go against the wishes of the other Great Beings and view the fruits of their labor first hand. Amos had built the wanderer as an entirely mechanical body which he stored inside the brain of the Great Spirit, with the intention of transferring his mind into it after Mata Nui had launched and there was no way for his peers to stop him.

This appeared to explain why the wanderer had been built and placed beneath Metru Nui, and why the original body of Amos now lay lifeless in this workshop, however something must have gone wrong during the mind transfer process. The wanderer was clearly not Amos, but an entirely original and unique being with no memories prior to waking up beneath Metru Nui. Amos had theorized in his records that the mechanical body may not have had enough space to store his entire mind, but seemed confident that enough of him would make the journey to be worth risking it.

What he couldn’t have predicted, it seems, is that after his mind had left his body on Spherus Magna and made the transfer, when the receiving body aboard the Great Spirit Robot deemed it too large, Amos’ entire mind was rejected by the mechanical body, rather than just the excess data. Thus causing the mechanical body to awaken aboard the Great Spirit Robot, as planned, but empty from the start. Without Amos’ mind to control it, the body proceeded to leave its chamber, perhaps animated by some kind prototype AI used to test the body’s functions, and began constructing a real persona for itself based on its experiences over the next many years.

Needless to say, this revelation was beyond anything the wanderer or I had imagined. We left the workshop and returned to my archive after giving the wanderer time to process this information, so stunned we ended up leaving behind all of Amos’ records in the process. After we returned home I would eventually get around sending an expedition of Toa and others to escort the wanderer back to Amos’ workshop, to bring all of the recordings here, to my archive, to be safely displayed for anyone who might wish learn from them in the future.

After our journey had concluded it took some time before the wanderer came to terms with its origin and began visiting again. Eventually though the wanderer became a regular patron of my archive, and someone I would come to call a good friend too.