Gathered friends, welcome to yet another post by the Le-Koro Band!

This week, we will be interviewing the man behind the very creation of 810NICLE Day, collaboration with affiliates of Mask of Destiny, and one person responsible for much of the present-day BIONICLE^® community that we know and love. I am of course referring to the noble Liam “Vahkiti” Scott. Last year was his debut with the Le-Koro Band when he sang in the chorus of the song “The Three Virtues of Atero Nui” from “Ide’s Journey: Act 2, Disc 2.”

Through his involvement in so many different corners of the fandom, he’s assembled a union of groups that engage together in play, but in the words of David Byrne, “How did I get here?” How did the modern state of the community, with coordination between so many groups come about? We’ll talk about the history of this fandom, the creation of 810NICLE Day, Vahkiti’s involvement with the Le-Koro Band, and much more.

So, gathered friends, and honored guest…

When were you first introduced to the world of BIONICLE^®? What was your first set?

My first set was Turaga Vakama, followed shortly thereafter by Onua. My introduction to the series as a whole goes back to around 2000 when Throwbots were still circulating around these parts.

Around that time, my Nana and I would make regular trips down to the toy department in Walmart, Zellers, etc. On one such occasion like many before it, I was allowed to choose one toy that day, and I had my choices down to two: Granite, which would be my introduction into constraction, or a Demiveemon beanbag plush, which would perpetuate my obsession with Digimon at the time. Under protest I left that plushie behind and never saw it again. At least until I spent $80 on eBay back in… I want to say 2020? Had I made the other choice, we would not be having this conversation right now!

Not too long after this event, I was reading through the Jan/Feb issue of the LEGO^® Mania Magazine when I came across an uncharacteristically low profile and out of place ad in one of the back pages of the magazine with nothing but a render of Onua, the infected Hau, the title, and a web address. Intrigued already, one can imagine how quickly I was properly hooked when at that time the BIONICLE.com web address loaded directly into MNOG rather than there being any proper BIONICLE website at that time. We take multimedia IPs and what would nowadays probably be classified as an ARG for granted, but back then this was mind-blowing for little 10-year-old Liam.

And it’s been a wild ride ever since! How did you engage with the line when you were that young? Did you have friends that you’d make stories with, stop-motion animation, works of art you made, or anything else? And did you engage with all forms of BIONICLE media equally, or were there a few favorites?

One of my best core memories of engaging with the series with friends was when I would spend my Sundays at my grandparents’ house, cut up my grandpa’s discarded blank Pepsi boxes, draw/colour them in, and turn them into Kanohi Masks. I’d take those to school the following day, hand them out to my friends, and we’d pretend to be the Toa while Naruto-running around the playground. Yes, we were THOSE kids. :p

Outside of the sets, my primary engagement with BIONICLE media at that particular time was mostly limited to web content, and the comics included with the magazine subscription. Funnily enough, it seems like even back then I had the archival bug. A few years back when we were going through the storage closet in my grandparents’ office, we found a handful of old floppy disks, one of which contained a bunch of web assets from the 2001 BIONICLE website including some that were previously lost! They have since been added to Emily’s reconstruction of the site on the BioMedia Project.
https://biomediaproject.com/bmp/data/sites/bionicle/2001/pressframe-together.html

Continuing in that line of conversation, I have an archival question! We have the BioMediaProject spearheading the efforts (https://biomediaproject.com/bmp/, soon to be https://www.maskofdestiny.com/biomediaproject), BioSector01 (https://biosector01.com), Wall of History (https://wallofhistory.com), Cross-Wired Geeks’s Biological Chronicle (https://crosswiredgeeks.com/biologicalchronicle/), The Great Archives (https://thegreatarchives.com)-! It seems like the list is endless! I’m not looking a gift rahi in the mouth, but why do we need so many different archives?

While many of these projects may have an overlap in what they handle, their approaches are often quite different, and each have their own specialty. BioMedia Project is one of a kind, (at present) for handling all of BIONICLE’s disparate media, such as images, commercials, games, etc. There’s overlap with Wall of History and Biological Chronicle for sure in that we also host things like the comic books, but our approach is more for just having everything in one place rather than trying to piece the story back together with it. Likewise, Wall of History and Biological Chronicle perform a similar service, but Wall of History is more focused on being an authentic retelling of the BIONICLE legend in as close to the way it was originally presented as possible, while Biological Chronicle attempts to streamline everything in to something that’s a bit easier to digest, while also lightly attempting to correct continuity errors or issues caused by the order of media distribution. BioSector01 and The Great Archives also serve a similar purpose, but where BioSector01 is meant to serve as an all-encompassing compendium of BIONICLE knowledge, The Great Archives has a higher focus on lore, including its primary claims to fame, the Tiers of Canonicity (https://thegreatarchives.com/blog/2021/12/05/tiers-of-canonicity-version-2), and the Official Greg Discussion Archive (https://greg.thegreatarchives.com), in which nearly everything Greg has ever said in public Q&As is available for perusal to BIONICLE lore enthusiasts.

Ultimately, it’s the willingness and drive of people with very diverse ideas to put them into action in our community that makes us as unique as we are, and that is no different here, even if there is some overlap between projects. Autism also probably helps, lol.

Speaking of this community’s diversity, how many different Bionicle-related organizations are you in right now, and what are your main few that you’ve spearheaded? 

Well, 810NICLE Day is my primary focus at this time since on average it takes almost half a year to produce from start to finish, a task that I could not possibly accomplish without Swert, James, and Kyber at my side. I helped to found Litestone when Legend of Mata Nui was discovered, and while operations there may be on indefinite hiatus for the time being, I still hold that organization close to heart as it was my introduction into a community leadership role. It’s not hyperbole to say that none of this would be possible without that game, and it will never not be surreal to me knowing how long it was sought after and that its eventual discovery by JMMB and Liam Robertson would be the catalyst for much of the community’s present state of being, including my own position within it.

Outside of those, I’m a lead administrator of Mask of Destiny, former lead administrator for BioMedia Project, (now run by the lovely Emily since I retired from that role) project organizer for Myths & Legacy, founder of The Beaverhouse which is admittedly now more of a tight-knit Discord community than the let’s play/streaming channel it once was, moderator in several other community subgroups including Wall of History, Project Rustbound, (formerly Team Kanohi) BIONICLE Maskposting, and of course a member of your wonderful Le-Koro Band!

Ah yes, “Legend of Mata Nui” was the cancelled console game that LEGO had planned to release, but it was cancelled due to rushed development (SEGA-style), leaving the “Mata Nui Online Game” to carry the weight of 2001’s lore, right?

Actually, there were a multitude of reasons the game was cancelled, but the primary one was management changes at The LEGO Group at the time, along with the dissolving of LEGO Media and any incomplete or struggling projects under that umbrella. You can get more information about all of that from Liam Robertson’s inaugural Game History Secrets video on the subject.

Was Litestone your first introduction to BIONICLE’s fan community as a whole, or did you participate in other groups, forums, and/or yearly events before taking a leadership position in finishing the development of “Legend of Mata Nui?”

My introduction to the community happened in 2004 when I first joined BZPower. I largely stayed within the bounds of that space until about 2006 when I first met fellow Beaverhouse founder Josie, and began branching out into other fan forums, which were quite numerous at the time. I even made a handful of my own at one point! Otherwise, my involvement with the community remained relatively low-key until I joined the staff of BioMedia Project in… I want to say 2013? It might have been a bit earlier or later, my memory of that part of my life can be fuzzy at times. It wouldn’t be until Auron retired and nobody else permanently adopted the mantle of lead admin that I came into my first proper administrative role in the community. I did not feel myself ready for such a responsibility, but as things stood at the time, the site was at a crossroads. It was either that, or the entire site be dissolved, and the archives be uploaded to Google Drive for permanent storage, seeing little to no further updates. In my mind, it was a decision that made itself. Even if I steered the ship wrong, it was guaranteed to sink without my help anyways. At least this way we had a chance at further longevity and growth, and in the end, it seemingly paid off. BMP’s merger with MOD was also on the table as early as 2014, but it took a number of years to actually finalize the process. By the time we actually announced it in 2020, many things had changed, and multiple new groups including Litestone and Wall of History had since decided to join us.

The efforts you’ve made in this community are honestly incredible. Where did your game development skills, artistic acumen, and inclination for leadership come from? From your family, your education, something you’ve learned just from engagement with this hobby, or are they talents you’ve always seemed to have?
 
In the earlier half of my 20s, I used to watch a lot of the YouTube series Extra Credits, and that’s where I learned a lot of the basic principles of game design. Back when ConBravo was still around, I even met James Portnow in person! I’ll never forget how he walked up to the table for his signing session, slid everything off the table, jumped up on top of it, and then declared that everybody should just get out of the line, sit down, and chat about game design, then we’d do photos and signings. I had him sign my 3DS at the time, though sadly the signature eventually faded off, even with a plastic case on the system. Outside of that, it was mostly learning by doing, and then having LOMN drop into my lap. I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit the rest of the Litestone team for that of course. We all learned from each other quite a bit during that project. I also took about half a year of game design and animation at Toronto Film School prior to the pandemic, but I eventually came to realize that, at least in regard to the AAA industry, it was not for me. Too much corruption running rampant and job security is at an all-time low. It probably also helped that was around the time I also started watching a lot of Stephanie Sterling’s videos, lol.

Artistically speaking, I used to draw quite a bit when I was younger and make plenty of MOCs, but both eventually fell out of favour in my life, the former because I lacked time and space to do so all that often after I moved away from home, and the latter due to both the aforementioned time and space, and the development of chronic back pain that made it difficult to build things in the same ways that I was used to. (A pile of parts scattered about the floor. :v) The largest MOCs I ever created and some of my last great creations were called Karzahk and Zygon. I still have bits of them lying around in my bins somewhere. I wish I’d had the foresight to save higher-resolution photos of them. Even by 2008 standards these are tiny! The last thing I would end up doing with them prior to disassembly was building a combiner named Zivaka and using the spare parts to make him a little drone friend. 🙂

Leadership is another story entirely, and a bit of a touchy subject. Josie would actually tell you that in my younger years I was a bit of a power freak, lmao. Some of those aforementioned fan forums really didn’t like me after a time for that reason, and while not entirely related, I was even banned from BZP once for uploading a Rickroll to my profile. In retrospect I may have been a little belligerent in my response about the matter, but it’s water under the bridge these days. By the time I actually found myself in an important role, I had largely simmered down and was able to take the rudimentary skills that I had nonetheless developed from that time along with the knowledge of what not to do, and further grow my abilities from there. Most recently I’ve had to adapt to leading not just parts of this community, but my own family as well since my grandfather passed away just before 810 last year. That has been a learning curve that all of my community work, (and my grandfather’s coaching in the years prior to his passing) only just barely prepared me for.

We are sorry for your loss. Maintaining a real-life family is something entirely different from managing a fan community, even if they may feel like an extended family.

You’ve been here for many iterations of the community. A lot of different fan groups have sprouted and faded into obscurity, with the modern coalition of Mask of Destiny doing its best to council its affiliates, all while facing that Sword of Damocles. What do you think is the greatest challenge to maintaining fan organizations for some time? Can you give any examples?

Trying to remain humble and keeping a finger on the pulse of your community. At least in my eyes, the reason organizations like BZPower eventually fell unto relative obscurity wasn’t just due to technical issues, but additionally being slow to accept change. I mentioned earlier about being banned from the site for a period due to what was even then considered a fairly benign offence in most circles, but that was only a symptom of a larger problem with BZP’s management choices at the time. Their community was growing up and they were not growing with them. Eventually people found other outlets for their passions in a less restrictive environment, and by the time BZP changed their policies, the damage was already done. I have seen many organizations come and go, and they often share that same stubborn resistance to change. But above all, we have to remember that we are not immune from this either, and that’s part of staying humble. Listen to your community. Take their wants and needs seriously, or else they will migrate to somebody who will. Even now I would argue that a change is in order to rejuvenate our primary organization. I suppose only time will tell if we’re fast enough to stay relevant.

This is also why every 810NICLE Day we’re so thorough in taking in feedback via our post-event surveys. Every year we gather responses and statistics from our audience, streamline what worked, cut what didn’t, and address direct suggestions for change in the following year. This is how elements such as the up next ticker came to be, and it will continue to be the way we operate until such time as we are no longer wanted or needed. Projects like 810 especially live and die on community participation. From 2022 onwards, (as I’m sure you’re aware as that was the year of your debut!) we’ve opened 810 to public applications, so if the community does not want to partake in the event, then the event simply cannot exist.

True enough! So, now that the 810 bottle’s been popped, can you tell us a bit about the history of 810NICLE Day and fan meetups?

I’ve heard tell that MakutaFest (run by The Three Virtues/TTV channel) was a thing right after Bionicle’s first generation ended, but do you know if it was the first? And after MakutaFest eventually faded, 810NICLE Day took up that mantle of yearly community event. How did you begin this huge endeavor in the first place?

It definitely wasn’t the first fan meetup if you can call it that, but to my knowledge it would likely have been the first of its kind since live streaming as a whole for the average person was a relatively new concept in 2010 when MakutaFest first began as a collaboration between The TTV Channel and BioSector01. After they had their final showing in 2017, Swert was not yet ready to call it quits. With TTV declining to pursue the event further as they simply wanted to move on after an 8-year run, SPIRIT and Dorek came up with the name for a new event, titled simply “810NICLE Day,” which is a play on Nintendo’s “MAR10 Day.” Swert would eventually approach me about facilitating this not long after Litestone’s founding and my enrolment into the inner circle of community leaders, and the gears began to turn.

2019’s event was very simple, merely using lightly reskinned Beaverhouse stream assets, and only hosting a single live episode of Gathered Friends, a live Quest for the Masks game, (which from then on became annual tradition) trivia with various community figures, a Legend of Mata Nui REBUILT showcase (which at that time had only just released), and an art commission reveal from Leigh Gallagher and Ulises Arreola. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzJtkj3nxiaHnTLLppdCypNoV8OtBN0WQ)

2020 marked a notable increase in scope and ambition, but still suffered from a number of growing pains. It wouldn’t be until 2021 on BIONICLE’s 20th anniversary that 810 would take on a form much closer to how it is seen in present day.

When we first started this journey, I never would have fathomed how large the event would become, or how long we would keep doing it. (And how much we still have planned!) 2026 is not only going to mark the 20th anniversary of the Ignition arc and the 10th of G2’s second year, but also BIONICLE’s own 25th anniversary, and the year at which 810NICLE Day reaches the same age as MakutaFest was when TTV called it quits. Following that year, 810 will become the longest running single event of its kind in our community’s history.

Wow! How long do you think 810NICLE Day will continue afterwards? Do you think we can make it to a decade??

2027 will be a struggle as I will have a mandatory 400-hour internship between years 3 and 4 of my photography degree program. I am currently in the process seeking assistance in advance for that year. If we can make it past that, 2029 will act as something of a soft checkpoint for me as an out if I feel it’s necessary. Assuming, however, that our team still has the drive, and the community will still have us, I have loose plans all the way up to and including BIONICLE’s 30th anniversary in 2031! Beyond that I have nothing planned or any inspired ideas to continue the event further. Our current design philosophy of theming each event after its respective anniversary year will only really work up to that point, before we’re forced to retread old ground, so if we did go beyond 2031, it would require a major shift in our overall graphic design. That having been said, since 2020’s intermissions used a number of assets from the BIONICLE Heroes website, (a general layout we continue to use to this day!) I’m looking forward to 2026 where I can revisit and re-imagine those assets, seeing how much I can improve on what was, while also making it unique to that year’s dual theming. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGe2zecuDoE)

That makes sense. We’re looking forward to it too!
Over the course of working on 810 over the years, what has been the most rewarding part of this experience?

Would it be cliché to say “the (gathered?) friends we made along the way?” :p No but genuinely, I could go on about how it’s helped me further develop various professional skills, or the guests we’ve managed to pull. (Bob Thompson was a surprise even to me at the time!) But the greatest gifts to come out of this project are all the wonderful people I’ve met through the event, and the incredible talent that I’ve had the honour to not only just showcase to the world, but sometimes even contribute to.

…Speaking of such talent, I believe a certain band has their own 5th anniversary coming up soon! Maybe next time I should be the one asking the questions hmm? ;D

Maybe! 😉

We in the band are ever-grateful to you and Swert for giving us the chance with our original concept-album/audio-drama/rock-opera series “Ide’s Journey,” and for mentoring me on leading throughout this whole process. Can you tell us the story of how that album arrived with the advent of public submissions to 810NICLE Day? It must’ve been risky putting so much time in the hands of a brand-new project, right?

Well, it might not have happened if we hadn’t gotten our heads out of the stars fast enough! Or at least not in the way it did. For as close in form and function as 810 2021 was to the present-day event, it was still entirely comprised of manually curated content, and in doing that, we very quickly realized the impossible standard we’d now set for ourselves. This is why 2022 would end up opening to public submissions which as previously mentioned, was the first time we’d done so. Unfortunately, as with many things learned on the fly, there were some growing pains in that process. In previous years, since all the content was manually curated, Swert and I tended to take a hands-off approach to anything we weren’t directly involved in, and we made the mistake of carrying that attitude forward into 2022. In our complacency, we failed to realize that doing things this way required a lot more oversight and attention to the details of participants’ projects. So, when Marcus approached me with an album to showcase, Swert and I both just assumed it would be similar in nature to the music events that we’d previously shown such as Rahisaurus’ Avonai Kui’o, just with a larger scope.

As such, we thought it would make good content to fill the intermissions or breaks throughout the two days. (Two days themselves being an idea that was supposed to just be a one-off for the 20th anniversary, but it ended up becoming mandatory just due to the sheer volume of quality submissions!) But when Marcus eventually raised concerns with me about this issue and reiterated further information about the album that I had previously not kept myself informed about… let’s just say Swert and I had a very long conversation after I insisted that he listen through it. 😂 That was a humbling learning experience for the both of us that we won’t soon forget.

Haha! And it eventually culminated in you voicing “Turaga Takanuva” in that audio-drama, and even singing in the choir on today’s single “The Three Virtues of Atero Nui!” Do you think you’d collaborate with the Le-Koro Band again? Bring them into one of your own projects?

I have considered bringing the band on at some point to do musical adaptations of some Myths & Legacy stories, and LostHead brought up an idea that’s kind of the inverse of that recent, but regardless of what form it may take, I certainly plan to keep working with the band as long as they’ll have me. 🙂

Even before your collaboration with the Le-Koro Band, you were busy making 8-bit remixes of a plethora of influences, from “ANIMUSIC” to “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure,” Sonic, Mario, and Bon Jovi! Where did your love of music come from, who were your greatest influences, and how did you develop your skills?

That was… quite a long time ago at this point! I started working on those around 2011, I think? It was something I taught myself how to do for much the same reason I do a lot of what I do today: Nobody else was doing it, (at least those specific songs) and I wanted to hear them for myself in that format! Eventually however, I slowed down and stopped altogether for a multitude of reasons. The main one being while I still gave credit where credit was due, I was still working with midi files that were put together by other people. It was a limitation of my work that I eventually began to feel self-conscious about and ultimately ended the project as a result. The only one I made from the ground up was the Mines of Onu-Koro remix, which I’m still pretty happy with!

I’m not sure I could really pin down a specific source of inspiration or influence as much as it was an assortment of influences growing up. I always enjoyed listening to video game music, and my mum introduced me to a lot of artists as well. Yanni in particular was likely responsible for inspiring me to branch out into listening to more diverse genres even at a younger age. I’ve seen him live twice now, though sadly he doesn’t seem to be touring anymore.

You started another group of Gathered Friends with the “Gathered Friends” podcast in 2019, right around the time work for the first 810NICLE Day began. What was the impetus for the podcast, and do you have any plans to continue it now that you’ve read your way through the whole BIONICLE story and even into the fan works on “Myths and Legacy” (https://mythsandlegacy.com)?

That was an initiative largely put forward by Chip/Charlotte. She pitched the concept to ther est of the core Beaverhouse team at the time of a BIONICLE book club podcast, and everyone including myself jumped at the chance to create more BIONICLE content that wasn’t just let’s plays, plus it gave us an excuse to re-read all the books. Gathered Friends was also one of my first introductions to interacting with the folks behind BIONICLE itself. When I initially reached out to Greg for the finale, I never imagined he would actually respond, let alone agree to join in on the final episode of the show. I remember the day quite clearly actually; I was walking down Yonge St. on my way to class at TFS when I saw the notification of his response pop up on my phone. I was so surprised I nearly tripped and dropped it and my coffee! It was around that time that I really began to realize that if you’re just genuine and treat people like people, regardless of their fame or status, they’ll be far more likely to respond than if you talk to them like celebrities.

As for the podcast itself, I’d still like to continue it for a 4th season, though most of the original cast has moved on at this point, and the last season was admittedly a bit of a production nightmare behind the scenes for many reasons. Not least of which being the editing workload on top of the end of my final semester in my Media Fundamentals program, and the start of 810 production for that year. If/whenever we do get around to another season, it may very well be a rather different show than our current audience may be used to.

We haven’t had much chance to talk as much about things outside of BIONICLE. (Maybe topics for another interview in the future!) You mentioned you were pursuing a photography degree. What influenced that decision? What do you hope to do with it afterwards?

Well, I mentioned before that I took video game design for a while, but aside from the reasons I already went over, part of the reason I stopped was simply because I realized I only have a passion for the job if it’s a project I’m personally invested in. Simply put: if I don’t care about the project, I can’t force myself to work on it. Photography has always been something of a side hobby in my life, and thus is something that isn’t necessarily going to be a major loss if it starting to feel like work ruins the passion. It’s something I enjoy doing for sure, but by and large it’s more of a strategic decision than anything. Assuming I make it through this program without changing my mind or burning out, I’ll likely be pursuing that full-time after my program is done, or after 810 is done. Whichever comes first I suppose!

Lastly, thank you again so much for sharing your creativity and with us! What’s next for you, individually?

The pleasure was mine! 🙂 Next for me is finishing up production on this upcoming 810, catching up on some other real-life errands I’ve neglected, and then back to school for what I’m told is the busiest and most soul-crushing year of the three I have left. Hopefully, when we speak again on that matter, I’ll still have my sanity intact. :p

We’ll all be there beside you, my friend!
If you’d like to follow Liam “Vahkiti” Scott’s many adventures, check out his linktree: https://linktr.ee/vahkiti
Until next time: Unity! Duty! Destiny! 

If you’d like to join the band, follow the linktree below (https://linktr.ee/lekoroband), and feel free to reach out to chat in the comments, or wherever you find us!
Tune in next time for another single release and the next episode of “Tree Talks!”

–Sanso