The Dreaming Plague

The Dreaming Plague was the event that ended the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. of Spherus MagnaSpherus MagnaA desert world of ancient conflict that became the merger point of the Matoran Universe and Bionicle's true endpoint.. It presented as a mental illness that began with the loss of the ability to dream, progressed through weeks of mental deterioration, and concluded in insanity or death. Every AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. succumbed except for a small number of immune survivors, and the neighboring tribes refused them aid for fear of contagion. The plague was treated by the surviving AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. populations as a natural disease specific to the iron miners. It was not. The actual cause was a single ancient entity feeding underground, and her identity remained unknown for more than a hundred thousand years.

Origin in the Bota Magna Mountains#

The plague first appeared in the mining settlements of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins., at the time still living in the mountains of pre-ShatteringThe Core WarThe generations-long war on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis that produced the Shattering, the exodus of Mata Nui, and the long Glatorian peace on Bara Magna. Bota MagnaBota MagnaA verdant jungle moon separated from Spherus Magna for 100,000 years, then restored by Mata Nui himself at the climax of the Core War.. The tribe occupied a region of high ranges and ore-bearing rock that had no other significant population. They mined iron and sent the raw metal south to the Fire TribeFire TribeThe master smiths of Bara Magna who forged tools for all tribes before the Shattering scattered them into conflict., who returned it as finished tools and weapons. The arrangement was old, stable, and central to both tribes' economies. The Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. had no enemies of consequence apart from sporadic friction with the SkrallSkrallA black-armored warrior species from Spherus Magna that dominated northern Bara Magna under Tuma's rule. further into the ranges, and their reputation among the other AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. communities was of a rough, plainspoken people who worked hard and asked nothing more.

The first reports came from miners working the outermost ranges, the locations most distant from the central villages and closest to the surface above what would later be confirmed as AnnonaAnnonaA predatory entity older than the Great Beings, the dream-eater Annona fed on the minds of sentient life and ended the Iron Tribe before its banishment.'s subterranean refuge. The miners reported that the only thing wrong was that they had stopped dreaming. They could still sleep. They could still wake. The space between, which had previously contained dreams, was empty.

This was the entirety of the early symptom set. There was no fever, no rash, no physical degradation that any healer could examine. The affected AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. reported the cessation in the same tones they would have used for any minor disorder, and the tribe's healers had no framework within which to treat it.

Symptoms and Progression#

Within weeks of the first reports, the affected miners began to deteriorate in ways that were no longer minor. Their behavior became erratic. Conversations broke off mid-sentence. Patterns of sleep collapsed into fitful exhaustion that no rest could resolve. The tribe's healers attempted every intervention they knew and watched each of them fail.

The pattern of progression was consistent across all affected AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system.. Loss of dreaming came first, followed by mental fragmentation over a span of days to weeks, followed by either complete madness or simple death. Some victims attacked their families and had to be restrained. Others sat in silence and refused food until their bodies failed them. A few wandered into the mountains and were never recovered. The end state varied. The trajectory did not.

The healers established quickly that the affected miners shared no obvious common factor beyond their assignment to the outer ranges. There was no shared meal, no shared water source, no shared injury, no shared exposure that the survivors could identify. The condition appeared to spread to other miners in adjacent work crews, then to the support villages, then through the broader tribe, and the spread pattern resembled an infectious disease closely enough that it was named and recorded as one. The label was the Dreaming Plague, and it stuck.

Spread Through the Iron Tribe and Tribal Response#

The leader of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. attempted to organize a tribe-wide response and was eventually claimed by the condition himself. The surviving leadership made formal appeal to the neighboring tribes for aid: healers, supplies, quarantine assistance, anything that might break the progression. The appeals were denied. The Fire TribeFire TribeThe master smiths of Bara Magna who forged tools for all tribes before the Shattering scattered them into conflict., the Water TribeWater TribeA trading-focused desert tribe vulnerable to Bone Hunter raids and arena warfare on Bara Magna., the Jungle TribeJungle TribeThe Jungle Tribe of Tesara originated in Bota Magna, weathered the Shattering, and sent Gresh and Vastus into the Bara Magna arena system., and the Earth TribeEarth TribeOne of Spherus Magna's farming communities, the Earth Tribe cultivated Bota Magna before the planet's transformation. all sealed their borders against the iron miners. The SkrallSkrallA black-armored warrior species from Spherus Magna that dominated northern Bara Magna under Tuma's rule. treated the appeal with open mockery. Trade collapsed. The supply chain that had sustained the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. for generations broke entirely within months.

Internal pressure mounted as the population shrank. The immune survivors became a topic of dangerous interest. Their continued health offered the only visible hope of a cure, and discussion within the dying tribe turned toward the possibility of opening the immune ones to examine what made them different. SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. and TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance., the two best-known immunes, retreated into a cave with whatever weapons they could carry and waited the discussion out. The tribe's collapse came faster than the proposal could be acted upon.

A small number of survivors attempted to defect to other tribes by hiding their origins. TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance. developed the mineral-paint technique that would later be used by the post-plague survivors to mask their armor and pass as members of unidentified tribes. The technique deceived the eye but not the suspicion of the receiving communities. One documented defector reached an unspecified tribe and was driven into the forest by his hosts, where he was killed by a RahiRahiThe Rahi were the biomechanical wildlife of the Matoran Universe, built largely by the Brotherhood of Makuta, ranging from background fauna to engineered war beasts.. The lesson was not lost on the remaining immunes. As SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. later observed, being a member of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. carried a death sentence. If the plague did not claim you, the one-time trading partners would.

By the time the ShatteringThe Core WarThe generations-long war on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis that produced the Shattering, the exodus of Mata Nui, and the long Glatorian peace on Bara Magna. divided Spherus MagnaSpherus MagnaA desert world of ancient conflict that became the merger point of the Matoran Universe and Bionicle's true endpoint. into Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna., Bota MagnaBota MagnaA verdant jungle moon separated from Spherus Magna for 100,000 years, then restored by Mata Nui himself at the climax of the Core War., and Aqua MagnaAqua MagnaThe endless ocean where the Matoran Universe found refuge and Mata Nui made his final stand., the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. was effectively extinct. The few immune survivors had scattered. The mining settlements stood empty. The tribe's contribution to the Core WarThe Core WarThe generations-long war on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis that produced the Shattering, the exodus of Mata Nui, and the long Glatorian peace on Bara Magna. economy was absorbed by the Fire TribeFire TribeThe master smiths of Bara Magna who forged tools for all tribes before the Shattering scattered them into conflict. through other suppliers, and the Great BeingsThe Great BeingsScholar-inventors of Spherus Magna whose creations shaped the Matoran Universe and whose absence defined the conflicts that followed. never created an Element Lord of Iron, an omission later attributed directly to the tribe's destruction.

Sahmad's Immunity and the Long Aftermath#

SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. and TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance. survived the plague along with a small handful of other Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. members whose immunity was never explained. No biological or behavioral trait was ever identified that distinguished the immune from the susceptible, and no later study was conducted, since the entity responsible withdrew underground after the feeding and the survivors had no means of investigating a cause they could not see.

SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. drifted south during the final months of the collapse and was already on what would soon be called Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna. when the ShatteringThe Core WarThe generations-long war on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis that produced the Shattering, the exodus of Mata Nui, and the long Glatorian peace on Bara Magna. severed Bota MagnaBota MagnaA verdant jungle moon separated from Spherus Magna for 100,000 years, then restored by Mata Nui himself at the climax of the Core War. from the rest of the planet. He spent the subsequent hundred millennia as a slaver, taking AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. from the post-ShatteringThe Core WarThe generations-long war on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis that produced the Shattering, the exodus of Mata Nui, and the long Glatorian peace on Bara Magna. tribes and selling them to the SkrallSkrallA black-armored warrior species from Spherus Magna that dominated northern Bara Magna under Tuma's rule.. The choice was not a recovery from the plague. It was an answer to it. The tribes that had refused his people aid were now the source of his livelihood, and he took from them in the only currency that registered.

TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance. survived in the wastelands, retreating into the construction and maintenance of a SkopioSkopioSkopio were biomechanical scorpion predators of Spherus Magna, modified ages past with integrated Thornax Launchers and surviving the Shattering as desert ambushers. war machine that he treated as his only durable companion. The two crossed paths intermittently across the hundred-thousand-year interval. Neither attempted to organize a population recovery, since there was no population left to recover. They were the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins., and they understood that the end of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. was simply a question of which of them died last.

The plague itself did not return during the long interval. The original feeding event had been large enough to sustain its cause for many years, and the cause remained beneath Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna. without further surface activity. The surviving AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. populations treated the plague as a closed chapter of Spherus MagnaSpherus MagnaA desert world of ancient conflict that became the merger point of the Matoran Universe and Bionicle's true endpoint. prehistory, and the stigma against Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. survivors persisted long after the risk of contagion, which had never existed, had ceased to matter.

The Annona Revelation#

The plague's return was first noted in the closing weeks of the Mata NuiMata NuiBuilt by the Great Beings to restore Spherus Magna, Mata Nui sustained an entire civilisation inside his body, was deposed by Teridax, and reclaimed his purpose as a mortal on Bara Magna. and TeridaxTeridaxTeridax orchestrated a thousand-year scheme that ended with him occupying the Great Spirit Robot itself before his death on Bara Magna. confrontation over RoxtusRoxtusThe largest Agori village on Bara Magna and the seat of Tuma's Skrall, Roxtus was the centre of the Empire of the Skrall until Mata Nui defeated Tuma in single combat.. The serpent-form MetusMetusMetus was a transformed Agori from Spherus Magna who worked as a Glatorian recruiter. Originally a member of the Ice Tribe, he later joined the Rock Tribe. White and ice blue in coloration, Metus wielded an Ice Axe and an Ice Shield., an Ice TribeIce TribeOne of Bara Magna's six major tribes, the Ice Tribe produced legendary Glatorian like Strakk and survived the Shattering intact. AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. who had been mutated into snake form by Mata NuiMata NuiBuilt by the Great Beings to restore Spherus Magna, Mata Nui sustained an entire civilisation inside his body, was deposed by Teridax, and reclaimed his purpose as a mortal on Bara Magna. at the close of the Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna. campaign, encountered SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. and TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance. in the desert and reported that he had stopped dreaming. SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. recognized the symptom immediately. The plague was beginning again. Several SkakdiSkakdiA brutish warrior species from Zakaz whose pair-dependent elemental powers and moral void made them one of Bionicle's few irredeemable factions. were later reported with similar onset, suggesting that the new outbreak was already spreading beyond a single victim.

SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War. made the decision to track the source. He had spent a hundred thousand years not asking the question of what had actually killed his people, and the prospect of the same agent returning to claim a second population gave him a window in which the question could finally be answered. He, TellurisTellurisAn Iron Tribe scavenger and one of the few immune to the Dreaming Plague, reduced to solitary vengeance., and MetusMetusMetus was a transformed Agori from Spherus Magna who worked as a Glatorian recruiter. Originally a member of the Ice Tribe, he later joined the Rock Tribe. White and ice blue in coloration, Metus wielded an Ice Axe and an Ice Shield. traveled north along the route MetusMetusMetus was a transformed Agori from Spherus Magna who worked as a Glatorian recruiter. Originally a member of the Ice Tribe, he later joined the Rock Tribe. White and ice blue in coloration, Metus wielded an Ice Axe and an Ice Shield. had taken from RoxtusRoxtusThe largest Agori village on Bara Magna and the seat of Tuma's Skrall, Roxtus was the centre of the Empire of the Skrall until Mata Nui defeated Tuma in single combat.. They located a triangular furrow in the earth that matched no known animal, and the ground itself opened to take them.

The chamber beneath the desert contained the truth. The plague was not a disease. It was the feeding pattern of AnnonaAnnonaA predatory entity older than the Great Beings, the dream-eater Annona fed on the minds of sentient life and ended the Iron Tribe before its banishment., an ancient predatory entity that consumed the latent dream energy of sentient beings as her primary form of nourishment. AnnonaAnnonaA predatory entity older than the Great Beings, the dream-eater Annona fed on the minds of sentient life and ended the Iron Tribe before its banishment. had existed before the Great BeingsThe Great BeingsScholar-inventors of Spherus Magna whose creations shaped the Matoran Universe and whose absence defined the conflicts that followed. and had been forced underground after a failed attempt to dominate their minds. The Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. had been her first known surface feeding after centuries of hunger, and the dreams of the entire tribe had sustained her without further feeding for many years. The extinction of the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. was, by her own framing, an incidental consequence of a meal.

The Sisters of the SkrallSisters of the SkrallThe female Skrall faction, exiled from their males and armed with innate psionic powers that made them the true rulers of the Rock Tribe., whom AnnonaAnnonaA predatory entity older than the Great Beings, the dream-eater Annona fed on the minds of sentient life and ended the Iron Tribe before its banishment. used as her voices in the chamber, repeated her answer to SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War.'s question of what the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. had been to her. Not an experiment, the voice said. Lunch.

The exchange ended the historical category of the Dreaming Plague as a disease. It was not. It had no pathogen, no vector, and no possibility of cure through medical means. The condition the survivors described and the neighboring tribes feared was the visible component of a feeding process that ran from below the surface, selected its targets at the entity's discretion, and ended when the entity chose to stop. The Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins. had been killed by a predator too inhuman in form to be recognized as one. SahmadSahmadA slaver, a survivor, and the only living memory of a people the Dreaming Plague erased before the Core War.'s subsequent hunt for AnnonaAnnonaA predatory entity older than the Great Beings, the dream-eater Annona fed on the minds of sentient life and ended the Iron Tribe before its banishment. ended with her banishment, and with the closure of the only file on the Iron TribeThe Iron TribeAn entire civilization consumed by dream-hunger, leaving only scattered survivors who dared not reveal their origins.'s extinction that had ever mattered.