Talk:Umbra

From BIONICLEsector01

Is Umbra an Order servant?

After digging through some Greg quotes, I'm no longer certain Umbra is an Order of Mata Nui servant.

For context, here is the first quote that (I believe) led people to conclude Umbra was an Order servant:

A few posts further down, there's a link to a BZP topic about Umbra. Fortunately the first page of that topic was saved on archive.org:

The top post says Umbra is a servant, and it was last updated in June 2006. So, by mid-2006 people believed that Umbra was a "servant," and not a member, of the Order. The timeline is important, and I'll get back to that. Here are a few other quotes predating June 2006. They make it clear that Umbra was not a full-fledged member of the Order, but he was involved with them in some capacity.

So, by mid-April we knew Umbra was not a full-on Order member. Now look at these this quote from the same time period:

This quote is interesting because it got retconned. Greg said the Great Beings founded the Order and placed Umbra on Voya Nui. It was fair back then to call Umbra a servant of the Order, because the Order gave him his mission.

Summary so far: As of mid-2006, Umbra was placed on Voya Nui by the Order, but he was not a full-on Order member. So, it was fair to call Umbra an Order servant. Near as I can tell, fans coined the term "servant," not Greg. (I could have missed something though!)

Umbra's backstory changed when Greg decided the Order was founded later.

After the retcon, it was still true that the Great Beings placed Umbra on Voya Nui. (We know that from Umbra's BEU and MGttU entries.) Since the Order didn't exist until after the GBs did their thing, the Order couldn't have placed Umbra on Voya Nui. Then Greg said pretty conclusively that Umbra was not part of the Order or its predecessor, the Hand of Artakha:

That said, after the retcon, people kept referring to Umbra as an Order servant, and Greg didn't correct them. For example, see these posts (thanks Dorek):

To wrap up, here's what I suspect happened. Originally, Umbra was an Order servant because the Order placed him on Voya Nui. After Greg changed the Order's founding date and introduced the Hand, people still called Umbra an Order servant, even though the original reasoning behind that title didn't hold anymore. Greg didn't correct people, so the title stuck.

Back in 2008, a BZPer noticed this situation and asked Greg about it. Greg suggested asking again later.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone followed up, and neither BEU nor MGttU clarify the situation.

Lastly, note our Umbra article calls Umbra an Order servant not because the Order put him on Voya Nui, but "because he does the same work the Order wants done." I haven't found any Greg quotes confirming this. They could very well be out there, in which case there is no issue!

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this. (If you can find relevant Greg quotes that would be great!) Obviously this is super trivial and largely a matter of semantics. The post-retcon quotes make it clear that Umbra wasn't active in the Order or Hand. The only question is whether the Hand/Order considered him a servant regardless. As trivial as this whole thing is, I'm bringing it up because if Umbra isn't an Order servant, it would affect which infoboxes/navboxes we use in the article. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 23:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I just did ~30 minutes of research, only to find out it was already done, but I found these and came to the same conclusion as you, which is that he is not a servant. He was placed there by the Great Beings, and since they were not involved in the Matoran Universe by the time the OoMN came around, the Order couldn't be involved or connected. Sharing a common goal also is no reason to consider someone a 'servant'. Finally, Greg rarely corrected things when fans just state them as fact in their questions, so that really doesn't mean anything. He probably just assumed that it had been stated in BEU or some other official place and tried to justify the name with that one post. I will give a bit of time for others to respond, but then I will make the change, as the idea that he was connected was never in any official media, and Greg only ever said he was under incorrect information. Firespitter Lhii (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Inner light

The quote reads:
11. If umbra was hit by a shadow leech, could he turn into shadow?
11) No, since he is all light, he would cease to exist

Way I read this, it's not saying draining him will simply kill him, but that there won't even be a body, because the body itself has been absorbed. Additionally, from other quotes, having no inner light or shadow does not kill you. Rahi don't have either, and another quote says that without light or shadow, you would be like a Rahi.

Other quotes say Umbra can turn into light, but not that he always is made of light. In this state, he can be absorbed by Takanuva.

From what I understand, he doesn't die from being drained due to having no shadow, but due to light being his essence in some way. ~ Wolk (talk) 14:15, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I think you're right about the "cease to exist" reading. It seems like the differences between inner light and literal elemental light are not very well defined (although maybe they're clarified elsewhere). In my opinion, saying he's "made of light" makes the situation seem more cut and dry than the quotes suggest, because we don't know for sure whether or not he's made of literal elemental light or just inner light. (Even if he isn't made of literal elemental light, I think the "cease to exist" thing could still hold... since he was engineered to have no inner shadow from the get go, maybe his moral content is somehow more fundamental to his existence than it is for other beings, so he'd die without moral light.)
Maybe it's nitpicky, but something like "Umbra is a being of light" might work better than "Umbra is a being made of light" because the first option is vaguer and so better matches the quotes' vagueness. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 19:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, that sounds fair. I agree that it's not clear-cut enough to be able to say he is always made of light, given also the many allusions to him changing form into a beam of light. As for inner light and elemental light, as substances, they appear to be one and the same based on Takanuva in 2008; when using his elemental powers, he drained his inner light. ~ Wolk (talk) 22:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Oh yeah good point about Takanuva. Interesting, I guess inner and elemental light are the same, or at least pretty tied together. Similar to how Roodaka gained Shadow powers after purging her inner light. Anyway, I'll explicitly add "being of light" to the page now, and maybe we can reword later on if more info comes up. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 04:10, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
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