BIONICLE Story Bible (2000.08.07)

Read on BioMedia Project | Watch the DuckBricks Video

You may have heard the buzz recently about DuckBricks meeting up with BIONICLE co-creator Christian Faber, and experiencing firsthand Faber’s multitudinous collection of materials from the creative development of the property (and beyond!).

It’s an exciting time for fans interested in BIONICLE’s development history. Faber is posting archived video materials on his personal channel. Bo Torstensen has shared his early work. We’ve seen the first installment in the excellent Behind Bionicle series. Now, BMP is happy to be able to play its own small role in this documentarian wave, working with DuckBricks to archive more materials Faber has shared for the community.

And I couldn’t be more excited about what we have up first. I don’t remember when I first learned about the BIONICLE story bible – the ephemeral ur-document that defined the story world for others to adapt. Media like MNOG, The Legend of Mata Nui PC game, or the Quest for the Masks story booklet and cards. Everything in 2001 drew on this original document. What’s more, it was filled not only with source material, but secret concepts and ideas that were left on the cutting room floor, and only faintly echoed in officially published material. Since learning about this text so many years ago, it has really and truly been a dearest dream of mine to be able to read it. It’s been a long search – here Templar would post a small excerpt from their copy of the bible, there I would identify a piece of media that likely adapted text from the bible directly. Slowly, through the insights and contributions of many, an image of what to expect came into focus. My friend Shadow has even had the privilege to correspond with the author, Alastair Swinnerton, who lost his copy long ago but was happy to talk about his experiences working on BIONICLE.

Now, courtesy of Christian Faber and DuckBricks, it’s finally here for everyone to read: a draft last revised on August 7 of 2000. We are extremely grateful to these two for making this possible!

You can read the PDF directly here on BMP, and you can head to the DuckBricks YouTube channel for the full story. Enjoy, and stay tuned for more surprises in the coming weeks and months.

1 Comments

Reply