BIONICLE: Dark Hunters

BIONICLE: Dark Hunters is a guidebook from Scholastic's Bionicle series which consists of short biographies of various Dark Hunters, revisiting some old characters while introducing several new ones into the fiction. The book showcases the winning entries of the official Dark Hunter building and essay contest run by LEGO Magazine in 2005, featuring original Lego models and backstory submitted by fans. Set chronologically in the early part of story year 2006, it is framed as a roster of the Dark Hunters being written by the Shadowed One for his own private records, taking account of the current statuses of some of his most notable operatives.

Notes

Greg Farshtey himself judged the contest and picked the winning entries to be shown in the guidebook.¹ Although he rewrote entries to sound better when necessary, he did not substantially rewrite the character backstories that were submitted by contest entrants.²

Lariska was excluded because there was no picture of her.^{3, 4}

Triglax was excluded because no set existed of him.^{5, 6}

The Recorder was excluded because no set form of him existed.⁷

Voporak was excluded because he was likely taken back by the Brotherhood of Makuta during their war with the Dark Hunters.⁸ [Contradicted by Ancient's entry, which takes canon precedence.⁹]

The fanmade Dark Hunters weren't given Matoran language names because it would have been prohibitively expensive to get names legally checked for all of them.¹⁰

Greg Farshtey found it challenging to name the fanmade Dark Hunters. He tended to use their roles or powers as inspiration and he made sure to make it clear that the names he used were codenames given to them by the Shadowed One, not their true names.¹¹

Greg Farshtey liked the idea of writing a bio for Lariska in the Dark Hunter guide style, perhaps as a BZPower exclusive.¹²

None of the Dark Hunters in this book were members of the Order of Mata Nui because Greg tried to stay close to the contest entries the entrants submitted.¹³

The Shadowed One was intended to feature on the book's cover, but an error led to Keetongu being featured instead.¹⁴

Keetongu was put on the cover of the guide because Scholastic made an error.¹⁵ Greg Farshtey would have preferred the Shadowed One to be on the cover.¹⁶

Since there was nothing he could do about the cover mistake, Greg Farshtey didn't worry about it. He knew the people who knew the story would see it as an error and the people who didn't wouldn't care.¹⁷

There were only a few winning Dark Hunter entries that didn't make it into the guide. In January 2007, Greg Farshtey was unsure if LEGO still had the pictures of them on file.¹⁸

Notes

Chapters