The Protodermis Reclamation Yard was an area of Ta-Metru1 in which damaged masks and tools were kept prior to being melted down. The Matoran caretaker of the facility was reported to talk to the Kanohi masks in his care as if they were alive.2
Notes
Its official name was Protodermis Reclamation Center. It was a fenced-in lot. To every mask maker in Ta-Metru, it was a graveyard. No matter how many hours of work had gone into a mask, a single, tiny flaw could ruin it. Then it would be transported here, to sit on top of a pile of other broken, useless masks until it could be fed to the furnace and melted down. It was the once place no mask maker ever wanted to visit. A single guard stood at the gate. As of early story year 2004, this guard was under orders from Turaga Dume that no one was allowed in. The masks waiting here eventually melted down in the Great Furnace. The yard was quiet.3
A Matoran, the reclamation center caretaker, worked here. He had been doing the job for so long that he could spot a flawed mask easily. He once remarked that everyone was in a hurry except for him and the masks, addressing the masks as if they could hear him.3
This was the place where flawed protodermis creations were kept, waiting to be melted down. Containers here held flawed protodermis creations, ready to be sorted and melted down. Flawed protodermis creations were sent to wait here until they could be melted down and recast.4
Damaged masks, tools, and other items were sent to the protodermis reclamation furnace from the reclamation yard to be melted down.5
Kanohi masks which turned out flawed in some way were sent to the protodermis reclamation yard in Ta-Metru to be melted down.6
Ta-Matoran considered the protodermis reclamation yard a place best avoided. It was here that damaged masks and tools were sent to wait their turn in the furnaces, where they would be melted down. The resulting liquid protodermis would then be used to make other things. Mask makers considered the yard a monument to failure. Some said that its caretaker had been on the job too long and talked to the empty masks as if they were living things.7