BZPB: TEN YEARS GONE - A Tenth Anniversary Story

March 30th, 2008. Hundreds of users flocked to BZPower.com, the largest BIONICLE-related forum community on the internet. One member, , logged into his account and opened a topic named “Endless Feud”: a simple forum game where BZPower members fought each other as their online personas in a fictitious environment. M:MoS tried to emulate the other players' behavior by devising ridiculous attacks and scenarios in order to beat his opponents, but found that some of the other players accused him of “god-modding” instead. This frustrated M:MoS and inspired him to create his own version of Endless Feud - but with a story. That night, he excitedly typed up his idea in a private message to , a premium member who could post new topics in the form, and went to sleep. When M:MoS woke up the next day, he found that Charvak had posted his idea on the forum as “Bzpower Battles”. The BZPB Multiverse was born.



As the years progressed and more and more members came to contribute their own worlds, characters, and storylines to BZPB, the BZPB Multiverse grew larger than the young M:MoS could have ever expected. The people who played BZPB became immortalized as “the Users” within its setting and M:MoS became known as “the Architect”, for he was the first of them. On April 22, 2010, BZPower staff member Friar Tuck closed the BZPB topic because it had grown from a simple forum game into a full-blown RPG, thus violating BZPower's rules, but even that could not stall its momentum. Two members, and , created a forum dedicated to BZPB and invited the other players over to continue the game here. The original RPG eventually ended on March 26, 2015, but BZPB continued through other means, and on March 31st, 2018, turned a full 10 years old.

Happy 10th Birthday, BZPB!

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The date was March 31st, 2018 on the planet of BZPower - an exceptional abnormality in a universe that had more than its fair share already. Though most sentient species would describe BZPower as a planet, for it was vaguely spherical and inhabited the same black void that almost every other planet in the universe did, it did not come into being the same way that other planets did and there were no rocks and dust beneath its surface, nor a molten magma core. There was no sun nor cosmic radiation that sustained the life on its surface, no tidal shifts or tectonic plates.

The truth was, BZPower was not a planet: it was merely something that was made to look like one. In its true form, BZPower was hundreds of lines of text and code that an unknown artist had painted onto a two-dimensional canvas to create a “website”, specifically a forum where other text magicians converged and communicated with each other. Originally, BZPower was one of many websites that were located in a realm known as the “Internet Dimension”, a plane of existence that lay above and beyond the boundaries of the BZPB Multiverse and defied its laws of physics entirely. This changed when BZPower was torn from the Internet Dimension and transplanted into BZPB’s Original Universe in an event that is still not properly understood to this day, but in doing so, the appearance of BZPower changed to fit the laws of its new reality and suit the perception of its inhabitants. In short, the website became a planet.

But the biggest and most compelling mystery of all was not BZPower itself or how it had come to be, but the nature of some of its inhabitants: a small group known as “The Users”. These enigmatic beings lived in isolation in a singular building on BZPower’s surface, separated from the rest of its population, both physically and ideologically. The residents of BZPower had once been the Users’ kindred, but time had since eroded all bonds between them. Most of the Users that still inhabited the User HQ no longer recognized the others who walked BZPower’s streets, nor remembered what it was that had held them together in the first place. Old friends had either fallen silent or by the wayside, but the spirit that had brought the Users together still remained. Users old and new alike gathered in the User HQ to mark a red letter day, for it had now been 10 of their vast cosmic years since the Users had first gathered to create the multiverse in which they now reside.

Circumstances outside the Users’ control had since destroyed the earliest records of their history, but the moment of their Genesis still remained fresh in some of their memories. The first and most powerful of the Users, the Architect, had collaborated with a BZPower user named “King Charvak” to lay the foundations for BZPB: if it was the Architect who drew the multiverse on the first drawing board, it was Charvak who provided the paper. Alas, Charvak chose not to stick around to witness the development of the Architect’s magnum opus, instead departing in pursuit of other ventures on BZPower and beyond. Regardless, one User in particular wondered what Charvak would think of what BZPB had grown into in the decade since it began.

In the present, User MK smiled and watched his friends celebrate as he reflected on BZPB’s past and future. User Kon had sent out an announcement to every User he still had contact with to invite them to celebrate the anniversary, and the turnout was almost as User MK had expected, though not as great as it perhaps once would have been. An impressive banner hung over the conference room of the User HQ that read “BZPB: TEN YEARS GONE!”, with User Kon talking animatedly with User Zev about their newest writing projects under it. User Paws furrowed his brow as he worked hard to perfect one of his latest drawings while User LM looked over it and critiqued. User Red animatedly handed out vodkas and other drinks to the guests, including the Architect, who seemed to have been somewhat drunk even before he arrived at the meeting. When User Kon asked the Architect about this, he simply replied “Uni life”. User Shroom seconded that. Enough said.

“Pozdravleniya, comrades!” User Red exclaimed, raising a mug for a toast. The others took a moment to raise their drinks, alcoholic or otherwise, in celebration.

The gathered Users were then joined by User MY and User Ferret, who had come just for a moment to acknowledge the anniversary. Even User Nif, who had since left the Users to embark on a self-imposed exile in search of a greater purpose, joined them via a long-range interdimensional video call to say, among other things, “badass anniversary huh” before he left to attend to other matters in his life.

“Wait, where’s JS and Clay?” User Kon wondered aloud. His question was soon answered by the sound of the musical stylings of Eurobeat producer Niko, which could be heard above the roaring engines of the Night of Fire, a heavily-modified WWII-era naval battlecruiser that belonged to User JS’s latest incarnation: Captain Eurobeat. The Users looked out of the window of the conference room to see the Night of Fire settle on the landing pad adjacent to the HQ and its ramp extend onto the floor. Predictably, Captain Eurobeat appeared from the ship and slid down the ramp in style, accompanied by someone the Users recognized as one of their own: User Clay. Captain Eurobeat was quick to retract his ship’s ramp behind him, for the mortal members of his crew were not invited to the Users’ celebrations.

User MK beamed as he laughed and celebrated with his friends, but he couldn’t help but wonder what the party would be like with the Users who had been lost to time. What would King Charvak say if he was here with them and could see what BZPB had become? What about the fact that a continuity that started with a mere forum game had lasted a whopping ten years in some form or another? Unfortunately, Charvak had vanished not long after BZPB began and left little information behind with which to contact him, so he was beyond the Users’ reach. But what if...

An idea began to form in User MK’s mind.

That’s it! he thought. User MK walked over to User Kon and pulled him aside to share his idea.

“What’s up, MK?” User Kon said. His signature mask was once golden but now faded and grey, for it had aged like the face of the man it belonged to, but he was still recognizable as MK’s friend. Kon noticed that his mask had been knocked slightly during the celebrations and was now lopsided, so he took a moment to adjust it before turning his attention back to MK.

“I’ve just had an idea for a 10th anniversary story...” User MK began.

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Later, but not much later, two men quietly made their way down a staircase that led into a dark room. The first, the Architect, wore a black jacket with a grey scarf knotted around his neck. The second wore a black jacket with red linings, pants of the same color, and a buttoned white shirt with no tie. While the first had a human face, the other seemed to have none; his head was a glowing white orb, with a golden Kanohi Avohkii attached to its front.

The Architect, now completely sober, tapped the wall ahead of him with precision, slowly feeling around until his hands grasped a lever. He pulled it, and the light fixtures came to life, illuminating the room. Cream colored walls were revealed, each side of the room adorned by a set of computers shaped like arcade machines. The computers all had designations on top of them, and most were humming with activity, showing different images.

“So, why am I here, M:MoS?” the Avohkii-wearing man wondered aloud while admiring the machines they passed.

“M:MoS… that’s a name I haven’t heard on a long time,” the Architect commented, taking a moment to shudder. “You’ve been on ice for far too long, Charvak.”

Both of the Users took a moment to reflect on how far everything had come. For the Users, a full 10 of their vast cosmic years had passed since the inception of BZPB, though each of the worlds the Users created experienced time in different increments, most spanning thousands, even millions of years. All of it started when the Architect drew a drawing board on a drawing board, but it was King Charvak that provided the paper.

The men began to walk down the hall, glancing at each of the screens. King Charvak could barely recognize any of the images displayed on the screens, but his companion knew them all too well. The Architect eventually stopped at one of the furthest machines, which was nestled away at the back of the room, covered in a thick layer of dust. With a single blow, the air from the Architect’s lungs tore the dust from the surface of the machine, restoring a shine that had not been seen for so many years. He reached down behind it and plugged a cord into the wall, causing its screen to flare to life with images that Charvak still recognized.

“Is that-” he began, but was cut off.

“This is where it all began,” the Architect said, inviting his companion to look at the screen. Both men felt a wave of nostalgia wash over them as the machine began to play images from a distant past: a sprightly character named “toatony13” slammed a pie into the face of a Makuta named M:MoS while a hyena-like figure, Zev the Wolf, looked on and laughed. Charvak had not been around to see these specific events play out as they originally had, but he remembered a time where BZPower was filled with forum games like this.

“It was a simpler time,” Charvak commented, smiling when he saw the avatars of some of his old friends and acquaintances leap about in battle.

“Some would say a better time,” the Architect replied. “Not me, though. BZPB was nothing then compared to what it would evolve into in time.”

The two men then proceeded to another, much more recently-used arcade machine. Several sticky notes had been stuck to the front of the machine that each bore phrases like ‘Original Universe’, ‘OU108’, ‘BZPB-108’, ‘Charva 083.31’, and more that devolved into scribbles or incoherent messes that neither man could make out. Below these labels, the screen displayed a live video feed of two characters: a humanoid with the characteristics of marine life sat in the passenger seat of a starfighter, with a robed human sat next to him at the ship’s helm. On-screen annotations helpfully identified the passenger as Niflheim and the pilot as Seran Dol-Abi, though Charvak had never heard of either of these beings.

“I imagine Kon will get back to those two,” the Architect quipped as he pressed a large ‘Rewind’ button on the front of the machine. Before their eyes, the video feed rewound until it cut to white, and the only man left in the recording was the Architect himself. In the present, the Architect and Charvak watched the younger Architect on the screen carefully position a large sheet of paper over a canvas and ponder about the multiverse he was about to create.

“I remember that day,” Charvak said fondly. “You sent me a PM telling me about your idea.”

“Now let’s see what sprung from that canvas,” the Architect replied.

With a single push of the ‘Fast Forward’ button on the machine, the video feed accelerated and many more images could be seen. M:MoS had become Makuta Blackout, one of the most feared conquerors of the universe, and toatony13 became Makuta Ynot, an equally powerful titan who opposed him across millennia. Blackout and Zev were pursued by ToaLewa31 and his team of rogue Users in the Quest for the Master Sword, from which Blackout emerged victorious. The fledgling cast of BZPB were joined by BoM_Master, Rakoua, Jale, Golden Flame, and many others who time forgot, their last remnants erased in the Time Slip arc that followed.

Hundreds more characters flashed across the screen, including but not limited to: the Matoran in a Black Suit, the Energized Protodermis Entity, Kakamu, Monarch, Jarr, Malygos, Artrix, and the Gaolers of Impel Down. Some of them stayed and some of them went as time continued to hurtle forward at an incredible speed.

The screen showed them Bara Magna, the Users’ first attempt at a newer, fresher start. After Charvak witnessed the Agori and Glatorian familiar to him clash with Blackout, which concluded with Bara Magna exploding in a ball of fire, the image changed to display the planet of Impel Down, whose skies were suddenly illuminated by the laser fire of thousands of opposing ships. The carnage was brought to an end by the sacrifice of one man, Jesus Burgess, and an unnamed Goa’uld scientist whose technology saved the universe - but history cared not for his name. Because of them, Blackout and his armies were trapped in a nebula that an annotation on the screen revealed to be 50,000 years. Despite Blackout’s entrapment and absence from much of the subsequent events, however, Charvak could still see him trapped in the nebula in the corner of the screen - planning for his eventual escape as the rest of the universe passed him by.

The next 50,000 years were strange and barely comprehensible to Charvak, filled with large gaps that seemed to contain random, disconnected scenes. Charvak was confused until he realized that this area of time was mostly reserved for the backstories of characters who would feature more prominently later on. On the planet Subnixus, a dreadlocked child played with an ethereal girl he affectionately nicknamed ‘Moss’. On Rhadan, a girl with ash-covered blonde hair worked on a wingsuit of her own design that she hoped would one day take flight so that she could soar among the clouds. In a location that the Users’ machine was unable to pinpoint, a Makuta of Light named Klak, the first and last of his kind, opened his eyes for the first time. These events were soon sidelined as the screen cut to display Makuta Ynot landing on a Planet of Beasts and embarking on an adventure that would change his outlook on life forever.

At the end of the period that the machine called the ‘Leap’, events rushed forward at a startling rate. Blackout was freed and went on a rampage that culminated in an attempt to destroy all of reality with the Pandorica - though he was unsuccessful, his efforts brought the Users into the mortal realm for the first time. The Shattered Mirror emerged and opened to reveal Ta’harok and the Kakamu of another world, who went on to fight for control of the universe. When this chaos subsided, a organization named ZFT entered the stage, spearheaded by the charismatic David Robert Jones. Blackout’s reign continued, but someone even worse came to power in the far reaches of the universe: a warlord named Uterio who decided to try to take everything for himself. The Uterio War was long and bitter, but there was no denying that it was epic in every sense of the word and its consequences were felt far and wide.

The war gave rise to organizations that emerged to clean up the mess it left behind: Project Cadmus and HYDRA, to name two who met with varied degrees of success. A madman named Osseron arrived on the scene, followed by the equally mad Ferret and her zombie legions, while Praepositus, a man out of time, struggled to find his place in the new world. Next came Ragnarok, a cataclysm that killed hundreds, but also served as a opportunity to heal wounds that fractured both the fate of the universe and the inner circle of the Users.

In a more lighthearted development, Lord Zrintch from the Dark Mirror Universe arrived to form the Dong Squad, a crack team of joke characters whose presence will never be forgotten - for better or worse. Then came Malygos’s ultimate bid for power and the Ascension crisis that followed, and the rise of Gabriel Ascheron, a controversial dictator who was opposed by a new cast of characters: the antihero Sefer Yetzirah and her loyal Shinsengumi. Elsewhere, mercenaries named Buster Breaker and Raigen prepared for their latest assignments, and a gryphon named Evander met the son of Kakamu while navigating the harsh wastelands of Archon-7. To top it all off, an aquatic wanderer named Niflheim awoke to find that he had exchanged one kind of hell for another.

But of course, the story didn’t end there. A new threat from the Dark Mirror Universe arrived in the form of Mazkertis, a crazed wizard who desired to unravel time itself and rewrite history in his favor. Though the machine in front of the Architect and Charvak flashed a warning that stated that the conclusion of “The Mazkertis Paradox” was yet to be decided, time continued to accelerate past these events and focus on a sleepy city in urban America. In Task City, a man named Rainn Sulrai lifted the brim of his hat to gaze at a woman named Aster, whose true intentions he could not be sure of despite the long history and obvious attraction shared between them both.

Hurtling past the adventures of Mysteries Unlimited, the machine’s video feed paused to display the words “TERMINUS” in a threatening bold case before the picture seemed to unnaturally glitch and change to display another future event that apparently waited for the inhabitants of this universe. Known only as “the Reckoning”, the greatest battle yet was to be fought across the cosmos between the dominion of F-Klak and the forces of the combined Resistance that opposed him. A Toa of Stone that the machine identified as ‘Praxter’ rallied a troupe of soldiers into the belly of a beast on an amazing alien world, the likes of which Charvak had never seen, and could never have imagined until now. He continued to watch in fascination as Praxter was joined by a Skrall with stars in her eyes who was framed for a crime she didn’t commit and forced into hiding on one of her first trips to another world.

Before Charvak could witness the ending to this tale, however, the video feed cut out and the screen faded to black. Shocked, he fumbled with the machine in an attempt to reboot it and even leaned over to inspect the power cord, but to his dismay, nothing responded to his attempts to resume the feed.

“That’s all for this universe, I’m afraid,” the Architect said with a large and uncharacteristic grin. “Well, that’s all there is for this universe so far. What do you think?”

King Charvak stumbled over his words for a moment before arriving on one: “Astonishing”, he said. “Truly astonishing.”

“Wait ‘til you see what our next project was.”

The Architect walked over to another machine that sat closer to the room’s exit as Charvak eagerly followed. This machine was a dark red color and seemed to be a much newer model than most of the other machines, with a touch-screen interface instead of manual push buttons. As the Architect booted it up, a welcome message appeared on the screen that read ‘Welcome to the Reborn Universe’.

“I’d say that JS and Clay contributed the most to this universe out of all of us, but what’s interesting about it is its relation to the others,” the Architect explained to a curious Charvak. “They insisted that, no matter what happened inside this universe, we were never to enter it to interfere with its development directly. Instead, we would leave this machine down here running on its own to see what would happen to the universe it contained. The results were… interesting.”

The Architect activated the machine by simply placing his thumb on its screen. Images of three malignant tyrants each rallying armies on their respective worlds filled the screen. Charvak recognized two of them as alternate versions of both Gabriel Ascheron and Uterio di Armechio, and an annotation labelled the third as ‘Edward Allman’. Through Machiavellian political maneuvering, these men set off a chain of events that would ignite a series of wars that would devastate the galaxy. Secret operations, assassinations, weapons sales, and more were all the sparks that lit the fire of change. Mercenaries and Pirate Lords (and even one Pirate Queen) all profited off of these vile ventures as the universe prepared for hell.

The first war was between this unholy alliance and this universe's versions of the Fall of Cluster, Malchiorian, and Takemikazuchi states. The Amun Collective, a state brought back to this area of the galaxy by Figlio di Armechio, made circumstances even more dire for the forces of good. Meanwhile, the Xaldari, an alliance of megacorporations, played a unique role in the war. But the deaths of Allman and Ascheron, coupled with the imprisonment of Uterio di Armechio, all helped turn the tide.

Unfortunately, peace did not follow this victory. Instead, allies turned on one another as Sefer Yetzirah and her Malchiorian counterpart rallied their blocs to a short but bloody conflict. This was interrupted when Arc Blair, a sinister cultist, declared war on the universe, forcing old enemies to reunite against this dark threat.

But Charvak was reassured that familiar heroes stepped up in the midst of this 10 year chaos. Aster, Dallas Dalton, Malygos (here called Veras), Raigen, Yenot, and others all played their roles in this epic series of conflicts. Kakamu threw off the shackles of oppression and became a hero known throughout the galaxy. Niflheim found his place in a big universe for him. Even this universe’s Klak appeared and fought his nemesis Caiaphus as he did in the other universe, becoming a war hero with an illustrious political career. However, King Charvak felt something quite odd about him, as though he were an imposter of some sort. As the events of this universe accelerated, he realized the true nature and name of this supposed hero, and shook his head in astonishment.

The Architect then led Charvak to the machine next to it, which displayed scenes from the Unending Universe. “This one had more involvement from us,” the Architect explained. Charvak looked into it and saw a young woman, Cassandra Cromwell, escape from an Apolion Industries facility. She joined forces with Jorten Karzdus, Aster, and Kara in order to escape from their pursuers: two wasp-like Apolion agents, and the warm but insane bounty hunter Izzy Kandar. Cassandra and her alliance of outcasts made it their mission to reveal the truth behind a sinister conspiracy furthered by Zavtich Mogoch-tesai, an eldritch abomination who plotted to unleash a dangerous biological weapon to conquer his world. But unbeknownst to him, his enemies were replaced by a universe-crosser named Arc Blair and his apprentice, Arc Kadmon. Together, these two villains planned to use the Glass of Ages, a legendary weapon that could allow them to reshape the multiverse. Meanwhile, an army of Presidential candidates fought for America’s destiny, while a gryphon on a metropolitan world found his own.

But like the others, the future of this universe remained unwritten. At the end of the displayed events, the machine’s video feed cut out. On the right of that machine was one labelled “SORA”, which displayed images of costumed crime fighters not unlike those seen in 1940s pulp fiction. Upon closer inspection, they seemed to be locked in combat with a Germanic man in a metal mask who shouted that he was the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot.

“But that’s not all,” the Architect continued, quickly moving on to other machines. He and Charvak left the SORAverse machine to gander at the others, admiring the universes that each machine contained. Charvak laughed at the appearance of the Pirate Universe, in which its inhabitants behaved like 17th-century sailors, and raised an eyebrow at the Crimson Mirror Universe, a universe whose inhabitants were as red as the blood they liked to spill. Charvak expressed horror but excitement upon witnessing the cursed nature of the Dark Universe and its polar opposite, the Eternal Universe, in which something impossible was achieved: peace… but at what cost?

As Charvak continued to browse the universe machines alongside the Architect, one in particular caught his attention. It seemed like it was originally rainbow-colored, but it had been heavily damaged and beaten, with smashed glass and bullet holes on its sides. In addition, strange phrases were graffitied on its casing, presumably references to memes that Charvak could not understand, having been absent for ten of the Users’ long years.

“What about that one?” he inquired to the Architect, pointing at the damaged machine.

“The Insaniverse,” The Architect gulped. “We must never speak of that one ever, or of HahaJ'UsT-Seying energy.”

“What?”

“Never mind, King Charvak,” The Architect begged. “Anyway, as you can see, a lot has changed since you were last with us.”

“And for the better!” Charvak exclaimed.

The Architect frowned.

“Yes, but at the same time,” he sighed, “I’m moving towards retirement. Everyone is slowly focusing on different projects, or on different parts of their lives. I’m one of them. User Kon, Klak, Eurobeat, and Nif have taken over many of our duties. Some of the other Users are still involved of course, but less than they used to be.”

“So… after all that’s happened… it’s going to die?” Charvak said worriedly.

“No, not die, no,” The Architect declared. “It’s changing. It has always been changing. New stories, new forms of telling them. Maybe it won’t be the same as before, but it won’t die. Not yet.”

The Architect paused. He waved his hands, opening an intangible portal above their heads through which the rest of the Users could be seen. User JS/Captain Eurobeat shared a joke, and they both laughed. User Shroom patted JS and Kon on the back, while MakutaKlak sat next to them and looked out of the window at the sky, smiling. User Nif, who had made a surprise appearance much to the delight of Kon and MK, also turned his gaze out the window towards an eclipse that was forming in the distance. Meanwhile, User Zev turned his attention to his writing once more while User Paws laid the finishing touches on a lexicon of one of his newest languages. User Clay and User Red then walked away from the group and towards a massive, rusted tank that had been parked outside the HQ to polish its armor and chat to each other about what they would do next. Users Ferret, LordMalygos, Sage, San, and MakutaYnot were having their own strange conversations a few tables away, discussing a topic that would probably drive you and me insane if given enough thought.

The sight of his friends’ revelry brought a toothy smile on the Architect’s face. The portal disappeared.

“User MY had some...interesting ideas about what will happen to us in the future,” he continued. “But regardless of what happens to the Users in this world, or where each of our worlds’ stories end, I know that BZPB has been a part of our lives in so many ways. We’ve laughed. We’ve argued. We’ve cried. We’ve helped each other. We’ve forged ideas and conversations across oceans. All of us have grown as writers and as friends. This decade taught us so much, and I hope it will continue to inspire us, not just in fiction, but in our own real battles. Not against robots, or Makuta, or wizards, or aliens, but against our own personal trials and tribulations. Whether we stay with this place, or move to something else, we’ll always remember our experiences, and each other.”

“Yes, we will,” two other voices spoke in unison.

The Architect turned to see Users Kon and MK, who had appeared behind him and Charvak. User MK smiled and stepped forward while User Kon greeted Charvak and shook his hand, welcoming him to the User HQ.

“We wrote a little something to celebrate the anniversary,” User MK said. “It’s not much, but…”

“From what I understand, it never needed to be much,” King Charvak mused. “All these creations, all these universes and characters, grew to heights I could never have imagined, but it’s not the vastness of it all that matters. It’s that you had fun nurturing it and making it grow through your interactions with the characters and each other.”

Users MK and Kon shrugged and smiled.

“From what I can tell, you’ve had all that and then some.” Charvak said. He then turned to MK and added, “I hope that answers the question you had about me, MK.”

“We sure did, King Charvak,” the Architect added, leaning back on a chair that wasn’t there before. “We sure did.”