Zesk

The Zesk were a primitive subspecies of the AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system., members of the Sand TribeSand TribeBara Magna's strangest tribe, Zesk and Vorox degraded by cataclysm into barely-sentient packs. who had regressed into little more than beasts. They survived in the Wastelands of Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna. and 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. alongside the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War., the similarly degenerated remnant of the tribe's GlatorianGlatorianTribal warriors of Spherus Magna who settled disputes through arena combat, until the Skrall conquest enslaved most of them..

Origins and regression#

The Zesk were once ordinary AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. and members of the Sand TribeSand TribeBara Magna's strangest tribe, Zesk and Vorox degraded by cataclysm into barely-sentient packs.. The Great BeingsThe Great BeingsScholar-inventors of Spherus Magna whose creations shaped the Matoran Universe and whose absence defined the conflicts that followed., however, experimented with their genes, giving them stinger tails, four eyes, and bodies that walked on all four legs. After 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., the altered tribe regressed further, falling into little more than a bestial state.

In the Wastelands they lived alongside the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War., the members of the Sand TribeSand TribeBara Magna's strangest tribe, Zesk and Vorox degraded by cataclysm into barely-sentient packs. who had once been GlatorianGlatorianTribal warriors of Spherus Magna who settled disputes through arena combat, until the Skrall conquest enslaved most of them. before their own regression. The two degenerated groups formed a partnership of necessity: the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War. protected the Zesk, who were poor fighters, while the Zesk supplied food through theft, a skill the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War. lacked. By this point the Zesk spoke only a broken, primitive form of the AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. language.

Behavior and abilities#

In their feral state the Zesk had become tribesmen reduced to primitive thought, hiding in the sand and ambushing travelers who crossed their territory. SavageSavageSavage was a Toa of Earth mutated into a Toa Hordika by Hordika Venom, driven feral when his own teammates failed to recognize him, and recruited into the Dark Hunters by the Shadowed One. and dangerous, they were no longer capable of true speech or much reasoning beyond instinct. They did, however, possess enhanced senses, particularly sight and smell, which allowed them to track prey across the desert.

For all their menace as ambushers, the Zesk were small and not especially intelligent, and they posed little threat to a trained GlatorianGlatorianTribal warriors of Spherus Magna who settled disputes through arena combat, until the Skrall conquest enslaved most of them. in open combat. They appeared most often in the company of the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War. and other inhabitants of the Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna. wastes, including under the rule of the exiled Glatorian MalumMalumFire Tribe Glatorian exiled from Vulcanus for arena killings, who became the warlord of a Vorox pack in the wastelands of Bara Magna., who came to dominate a pack of Vorox and Zesk in the Wastelands.