On Rahkshi

The Rahkshi were the six main bad guys in the 2003 Bionicle storyline, branded as the ‘Sons of Makuta’ and made out to be incredibly evil and hard to beat. They were considered genuinely scary beings and were the first sets to have simple bendy knees. Luckily, like the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal and the Rahi before them, all you have to do to defeat them is to remove the squidgy, organic part and the Rahkshi just fall down.

Problem is, while originally the Rahkshi were scary enemies that even the newly powered up Toa Nuva struggled to defeat, we later find out that Rahkshi aren’t that strong at all. Turns out Nokama defeated a bunch of Rahkshi on her own, and as the whole story goes on, Rahkshi become less and less of a threat. Still awful to face if you’re a Matoran, but the whole thing gets silly. In fact, once Makuta Teridax takes over the universe, he actually turns any remaining Makuta into Kraata-breeding facilities so he can make more and more Rahkshi, making them seem no better than Bohrok, and Tahu (wearing some dumb golden armour) goes and vaporizes a whole swarm of Rahkshi with ease.

Speaking of Bohrok, the Rahkshi aren’t even as strong as Bohrok. While Rahkshi do have a vast array of individual powers, from the original six Rahkshi powers (red fear, green poison, blue disintegration, white anger, black hunger and brown shattering), other coloured Rahkshi have their own powers. Yellow Rahkshi had heat vision and orange/black Rahkshi apparently had vacuum powers, but no one ever met them. Still, that’s nothing compared to the pure elemental powers that even the Bohrok had.

Heck, Krakua, a Toa of Sonics, actually woke up a mini-swarm of Bohrok during the war against Teridax, and those Bohrok kicked the asses of the Rahkshi. Not because they wanted to, it just so happened to be that the Rahkshi were in the Bohrok’s way and they just wanted to go to work.

At the end of the day, they’re actually rather generic bad guys. Nothing more than mindless minions.

Which is a shame, really, because Rahkshi were genuinely kinda scary. Tall, hissing monsters that don’t give two shits if you’re in their way. They also seemed much more intelligent and powerful than previous enemies. Okay, they weren’t, as the Bohrok-Kal were smarter up until the point they were force-fed too much power and exploded, but still, the Bohrok-Kal were just about taller than Matoran. And theoretically, Bohrok were always harder to beat because even if you can see their brains, good luck getting through those head shields. All you have to do to defeat a Rahkshi is break its neck. But the Rahkshi, even as sets got bigger and taller, were always somewhat threatening.

Where am I going with all this?

I’m going towards Left 4 Dead 2, with the Rahkshi Player Models mod. The original mod was actually just two of each of the main characters, but I modified mine to replace all 8 characters. The weird thing is, they actually fit human skeletons pretty nicely. You wouldn’t expect that from such skinny characters. In a shooter as well. There are Bionicle mods for Garry’s Mod and Source Film Maker, but those are meant for posing and stuff. It seems weird that, of all places, there are Rahkshi in a zombie apocalypse.

It’s awesome.

And combined with the Bohrok Swarms mod (as well as the Malum Tank, Vorox Hunter, Zesk Jockey and Kina Witch), the Rahkshi, four of them at least, can finally get the revenge they so desperately crave.