KR|Emergence Review #10: Khronodon

Toy prototype details

Name: Khronodon^TM
Subtitle: black-hearted occultist and technomage
Line: KR|Emergence
Item type: action figure (dual figure) - Nº 9 in the line.

Character details
Name: Khronodon
Classification: mutant archosauromorph reptile

Sex: male
Relationships: Elykta's former lover
Home: Tahron
Era: 3 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Rexodon
Rank: chief war strategist and tactician.

Background
First appearance: KR|Emergence #2 - The war of all against all: Part I – Breach
Brief bio: originally a hot-tempered young member of a mutant reptilian race, Khronodon was banished by his family to a monastery, where elder wizard-priests attempted to teach him adultness alongside the ways of the black arts. He fell under the tutelage of the powerful sorcerer Sphenorat^TM, from whom Khronodon learnt to master many forms of witchcraft, including occultism and necromancy. During that time, he also fell in love with another troubled mentee named Elykta and, when Sphenorat broke faith with his compeers and pledged his devotion to Bi-Harr, both decided to follow him and to join the evil Reptonoid army. Quickly assigned to assist Bi-Harr’s most vicious war strategists, Khronodon roamed throughout Tahron terrorising the mammalian populace and causing havoc all over the land. Thanks to the heroics of Ki-Shudan, Khronodon was eventually chained in a magical prison beneath Theriom City, where he remained for years until Bi-Harr's minions freed him. Now seeking to defeat the Theriom troops for good and to aid Bi-Harr in his war of conquest, he began mastering alchemy and technomancy, and served as a spy, a slave trader and, most of all, a time predator. Impressed, Bi-Harr gave Khronodon command of his foot soldiers, until they rebelled against their general and sided with Lor-Drek's Unnamed Clan. Eventually, combining dark magic with occult science to drain the mystical energy from a number of relics that were connected to the legendary SpawnCrystals, Khronodon aimed at extracting their essence and converting it into solid shards to recreate the great ancient power of the lost Antikythron. Although Bi-Harr considered Khronodon's plan overly ambitious, he hoped to take advantage of the chaos created by his wicked eagerness. To Bi-Harr's surprise however, Khronodon finally succeeded in collecting the six SpawnCrystals quintessences, and in unleashing the unstoppable strength and great magic of an Antikythron-like mechanism of his own devising. Striving for destroying any opponents who got in his way, he vanished by using his ability to jump through time after a fight with his rival and former fellow sorcerer Ophidok had almost killed him. After travelling to the future, Khronodon ended up in a frozen, inhospitable world, unable to get back to his original time. There, he survived on his own for decades before dying of exposure during a brutal cold wave.

Associated SpawnCrystal

Name: Time Dice
Shape: cube
Colour: green
Corresponding element: wood
Powers and capabilities: controlling coordination and efficiency
Creator: Multiversal Balancer Elibhurn^TM
History: after the impact of a meteor had devastated the Earth environment, mainly through a lingering impact winter that triggered an ecological collapse and a subsequent mass extinction event, Elibhurn housed the Time Dice in an enchanted seed and sent it to the land which became known as Tahron, aiming at creating a mass transformation process that would restore the original potential of the entire planet's biological evolution. The seed generated a massive tree of a tropical type, several times taller than other trees already existing in Tahron's forests. The sentient tree had the ability to communicate with other plants through its long bioluminescent roots, making them capable of transferring vital faculties to other living beings at risk of extinction. When the tree's mission was completed successfully, its crown died out, while its trunk and roots entered a quiescent state. Millions of years later, the sage warrior-wizard Ki-Shudan found and identified the mystic tree, and learnt how to use its roots to see into the past and the future, and to improve his soldiers fighting skills by enhancing their synergistic interaction. The evil reptilian sorcerer and scientist Khronodon attempted to steal the roots from Ki-Shudan in many occasions, but was always foiled by the Theriom army. After many years of research, before the top of the enchanted tree was used as the load-bearing foundation of the Ucamur^TM Citadel, Khronodon finally tracked down the prodigious plant and stole some precious wood material from its roots, in order to create the toothed wooden gearwheels that would drive a powerful mechanical device embedded in his armour.

Articulation
Standard.

Description

Head: his face is supposed to resemble a Dilophosaurus, but it is flattened in order to acquire a more humanoid look. It has a steel pink (i.e., a strongly purple-toned shade of pink) skin marked with super pink glowing streaks (mainly around, between and below the eyes), three solid red eyes (the third eye is on the left chick bone), a four-nostril nose flanked by two fleshy protuberances (each composed of three tendril-like appendages connected by a seemingly muscular membrane), a jutting lower jaw with two sharp yellowish teeth protruding upward (while a single central tooth projects downward from the upper jaw), and a dark-grey growth of facial hair, which is composed of a beard separated into two strips running parallel to each other at either side of the chin and a long, thin curled chin puff. He wears a peculiar headgear composed of a dinosaur head-shaped dark-purple metal diadem (with a single yellow gemstone-eye that in the comics can change to green or orange, two horizontal tusks forming a brow guard plus a short nasal, and a pair of longitudinal, arched mahiole-like crests) and a multitude of large, branched scaly greenish (some are actually smaller and purplish) horns that kind of resemble lizardy creatures with heads and legs

Body: super pink-veined steel pink skin bearing a few dark-grey calcified outgrowths (some of which are spine-shaped) here and there; the glowing streaks on his chest form a complex pattern similar to a stylised dinosaur head. While his left hand and feet have long dark-grey nails, his right hand resembles a dark-grey chela with a large blade-like fixed finger and a much smaller "movable" finger

Wearables: a cuirass similar to a mirror armour (consisting of a complex clockwork and a large dark-green metal disc in the front and back, respectively, connected by dark-green metal plates sewn on purple leather), a dark-green cross-strap leather fingerless glove accompanied by a large jewelled dark-green wrist guard and a knuckle protector on his left arm, two dark-green cross-strap leather calf protectors equipped with studded dark-green metal instep guards and upper shin/knee guards, a dark-green studded belt with an elaborate dinosaur head-shaped buckle, and a jagged scale armour skirt composed of several leaf-shaped pieces. He also wears an asymmetric, jagged cape that matches the skirt in colour and pattern, and is held in place by a giant dark-grey dinosaur head on his right shoulder. It is worth noting that similarly to the diadem, the dinosaur-themed buckle and shoulder guard look like one-eyed, tusked Dilophosaurus skulls.

Action feature
In the comics, Khronodon is shown to have the ability to manipulate time; the way he does that is through the infamous clockwork embedded in his cuirass, which even allows him de-age his body and mind as well as to travel in time. However, Khronodon is not very experienced in time-travelling yet, and he's extremely careful to avoid potential problems and dangers related to this capability; for example, if he jumped to the wrong point in time, he might get stuck in the void of space where Tahron doesn't exist yet or anymore. Nonetheless, in the story he is shown to slow time down, which also allows him to alter the future, even if it's just a small change by a matter of minutes or seconds. He could potentially use the device in such a way that the flow of time not only slows down, but it stops, reverses or even speeds up (the last is what he accomplishes for saving his life at the end of the story). Additionally, once Khronodon succeeds in collecting the essence of the six SpawnCrystals, he can unleash the full power of his device, which works similarly to an antikythron. In the comics, this power allows him to transform into a giant metal warrior created by combining a large number of weapons. So, included with the black-hearted technomage is an alternate clockwork piece (the front part of his cuirass is actually a shell that can accommodate two interchangeable pieces: one with the coloured shards set in it and one without) as well as his post-transformation alter ego - a massive walking pile of weapons.

This figure is nearly 23 cm (around 9") tall, which is in the same scale as Mor-Rak's and Al-Mih-Tek's enhanced forms. The body is designed to look like being composed of actual weapons from Bi-Harr's relics museum, showing an impressive amount of intricate details, and has as much articulation as the standard figure. The paint is mostly silver, bronze and gold with some metallic dark-purple details.

His torso includes a round spiked/bladed shield on the chest and a complex broad spiked ballista on the back. The lower legs are made of a ball-and-chain flail (left) and a halberd-like weapon in the form of a combined adze, battle-axe and kama (right), while the forearms look like a bazooka (left) and a tech-sword (right). The head is formed of his signature cannon-like weapon (more on this in the next section), which bears several spiky projections (three in the lower part, four in the upper part and two L-shaped handles on the sides), and displays some robotic-face features such as a sort of mouth grill below the single yellow "eye"-muzzle (originally, Khronodon was intended to resemble more a one-eyed Lovecraftian monster, a design that in a way has been transferred to his enhanced form). The cool thing is that all the above-mentioned weapons can be detached from Khronodon's enhanced body and stored on the ballista (which doubles as a rack) or used individually by most KR figures.

Weapons and accessories
Included in the plethora of weapons described in the action feature section is the Quintextractor, a dual-handled, cannon-like metallic dark-purple device, which Khronodon uses to drain mystical energy from any objects that were connected in some way to the SpawnCrystals, and to convert the essence extracted from such objects into solid, coloured shards (he does also come with three green shards symbolising the essence of the Time Dice). He looks great with it and I’m so glad the figure is well articulated to be able to hold it with both hands (yes, even with his pincer-like right hand). The quintextractor can be stored into a loop in Khronodon's back armour (the part not covered by the cape) thanks to a little clip hanging off the bottom-rear part of the barrel. Also, an included translucent orange blast effect can plug snugly into the weapon's muzzle - this is a recast of Spelekos' accessory, which starts off as wild energy, and then turns into a bundle of tendrils at the end, which mimics the action of absorbing the SpawnCrystals' energy.
In addition, there's an alternate head for Khronodon's basic form that has a one-eyed face (the single large central eye is solid red) and a two-eyed diadem, which is closer to his original design. Nice touch!

Finally, the figure comes with a dark-bronze&steel stand for the energy stone. This is beautifully sculpted with cool details that recall some of the architecture of Rokang Tar, especially the curved stairway leading to the top of the main tower. However, I'm just disappointed that they didn't include a new version of the stone, since the only one available was packaged with Colotros.

Final thoughts
Overall: Khronodon is the first completely new figure in the Emergence line, and an excellent add to the KR shelf. Both his forms look great and are extremely well sculpted with beautiful details. Especially his basic form, thanks to the pink-purple plastic that dominates his colour scheme, has a sort of “demon” feel, and I love him leading my army of reptilian warriors. His enhanced form also stands out nicely on the shelf. I think the writers of the first KR stories were going to build Khronodon up to be a big deal, but the character got discarded before they could get there; it's cool that PoliganToys is honouring that in this new toy/story-line, and that we've got yet another great prototype

Rating: ☺☺☺☺☺ / 5

KR|Emergence Review #9: Noctylius (Emergence Edition)

Toy prototype details
Name: Noctylius^TM (Emergence Edition), aka Bionic-Eye Noctylius
Subtitle: bat warrior
Line: KR|Emergence
Item type: action figure - Nº 8 in the line.

Character details
Name: Noctylius
Classification: chiropteran mammal
Sex: male
Home: Tahron
Era: 3 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Unnamed Clan (formerly belonging to the Theriom faction)
Rank: officer candidate (formerly pilot officer).

Background
First appearance: KR|Emergence #1 - The cradle of evil
Brief bio: the descendant of a line of mammals that were capable of flight, Noctylius has not always been an infamous accomplice of the reptilian forces. In the past, he loyally served the Theriom air force as a stealthy pilot officer, until he was expelled for causing an accident, which also permanently blinded him, due to an irresponsible action. Having developed a deep resentment at being discharged, Noctylius joined the Unnamed Clan and served Lor-Drek as his winged intelligence officer for many years. Having been trained by a revengeful Ir-Ash to strengthen his remaining sensory faculties, he became a master hand-to-hand combatant, whose unique moves made full use of his enhanced sense of balance. Noctylius's signature weapon was his specially designed toxic fiery shield, which Ir-Ash created to make it more difficult for enemies to attack him in battle. While he acquired a radar-like sense based on super-sensitive hearing, which granted him an omnidirectional field of "vision" as well as the ability to "see" through walls, Ophidok built a set of bionic implants and technological devices that aided him in his reconnaissance work. Eventually, Noctylius learnt to employ echolocation as a method of navigation during flight and orientation in combat, becoming an even more threatening opponent of all who fought for freedom on Tahron.

Articulation

Standard, plus hinged toes and a pair of swivelling wing pieces attached to the wrists.

Description
Head: similar to a bat, specifically a Carollia perspicillata, characterised by a grey-brown fur, a fairly long snout, large ears with jagged edges, and a lance-shaped nose-leaf. The top of his face (including the eyes, but excluding the ears) is covered by a band of coarse, rough grey fabric worn around the head (with the long ends tied together and tossed over his nape), while the mouth is open and shows a number of sharp white teeth
Body: dense grey-brown fur subtly striped with light taupe. While each hand includes five fingers of a normal size, each wrist has an additional swivelling piece (turning inwards and outwards) composed of three long structures seemingly equivalent to fingers connected by a veined translucent brown membrane. Each forearm (longer than the average length), triceps and thigh is equipped with a number (four, two and two, respectively) of bony extra digits, also connected by a translucent brown membrane. Each foot bears two small outer toes and two large inner hinged toes, while a fifth toe protrudes backward and up from each calf. Each digit, either regular (on hands and feet, although only the dewclaws are visible in the latter) or additional (on arms and legs), displays an orange-ish skin and ends in a black claw. He also carries a rubbery removable neck piece that fits right on top of the body and mimics a woolly collar with a strip of fur that runs down the middle of the upper back
Wearables: a dark-blue armour with silver details, two tech-looking metallic dark-blue wrist guards, two metallic dark-blue armoured boots (ornamented with silver studs as well as knee guards resembling bat heads; the right one displays a sheath with a bat-hilted, flame-bladed silver dagger, which is removable), a metallic dark-blue belt (whose silver buckle looks like it used to show a Theriom emblem that has eventually been scraped away), and a medieval-style silver loincloth (composed of several flame-shaped, irregular armour plates). The armour possesses highly technological components, which I imagine help Noctylius cope with such an energetically demanding activity like sustained flight; it looks almost identical to the Foundation version, but it is actually a newly tooled piece with some differences and added details. The back of the armour looks more like a harness ornamented with four large curved spikes emerging from the back of the spaulders and from the lower cross straps, and leaves the furry mane piece exposed. A bulging detail on the back of the loincloth suggests the presence of a short tail, although there is no evidence of that.

Noctylius's stylised armour.

Action feature

In the comics, thanks to the extra set of digits that form broad leathery bat wings along his arms, Noctylius is able to perform spectacular flying manoeuvres. Although he's blind due to the injury caused by his past accident, his hearing functions with extraordinary accuracy and sensitivity, giving him fighting abilities far beyond the limits of a sighted warrior. In addition, he is aided by a high-tech helmet and a drone that allow him to navigate during flight and orient during combat. So, the figure comes with an alternative helmeted head. The silver helmet has metallic dark-blue circuitry details, three small blade-like top crests, two bat-shaped side crests (which seemingly protect his ears), a laminar nape protector, a throat guard, and a receiver/visor that looks like a virtual reality display characterised by a mean-looking shape, a purple glowing strip and two sharp tooth-like projections pointing downward. I really like the fact that the visor is a separate piece, which can slide into place over his eyes by means of two sidepieces or even be removed entirely, revealing a fully sculpted upper face complete with electronically augmented eyes (these have riveted silver techno-patches as well as metallic blue wiring all sculpted and painted in detail). Of course, there is also the very cool bat-shaped, dark-blue&silver combat/reconnaissance drone, which in the comic book can be activated remotely by Noctylius using a touch screen located on his left bracer. When launched, its miniature size allows it to scout the environment undetected utilising a specialised panoramic, multi-spectral scanner. This way, it provides a visual of what it sees as well as tactical data that is fed directly into Noctylius's combat visor. The drone's rotating scanner is composed of three cameras: a round/cyan-lensed far-seeing high-resolution camera, a triangular/chartreuse-lensed night/thermal vision camera with the ability to see through solid objects such as buildings or vehicles, and a square dark-red Doppler radar that also works as a directed-energy cannon. It also has sculpted twin cannons that seemingly extend from both flapping wings (with built-in rotors), while on its underside it is equipped with a device that can fictionally change from laser cannon to missile launcher to projectile grappling line (the latter can be used to transport a passenger or drag off enemy combatants while in flight). In the comics, the drone is even able to split into three parts while flying.

Weapons and accessories
Apart from the above-mentioned drone and alternate head, Noctylius includes a large shield with a huge bat-shaped vac-metallised silver insignia emblazoned on a metallic dark-blue plate and surrounded by a riveted dull silver rim. This shield looks pretty cool and definitely more useful than its Foundation counterpart, which had a massive gap between the wings, limiting its battle utility. This one easily fits in Noctylius's either hand and is designed to provide some solid defence. I also love that you can alternatively store his dagger in the bat head on the front of the shield! Moreover, in the comics the shield has the ability to flame up along its rim at Noctylius's will; so, the shield comes with an additional translucent greenish fire frame that attaches via some pegs on the back, in order to display it while it gives off flames.

Additionally, the package includes two accessories that help the figure look closer to his pre-Emergence appearance. The first accessory is a third head sculpt that shows an evident strip of hair running centrally from the middle of the forehead to the back of the neck, a golden jewel (shaped like a Theriom emblem, i.e., a seven-pointed star with the two side points elongated) applied in the centre of the forehead, a yellow pupil in the centre of each black eye (to indicate that he can see), and the mouth completely closed. The second accessory is an alternate golden buckle for his belt, which is also shaped like the Theriom emblem.

Finally, we get a clear plastic stand, which is very similar to the one included with the Foundation figure. It has a clip that allows it to be used as a flight stand, but can turn into a kind of perch by replacing the clip with a T-shaped horizontal piece. The latter structure is designed to let Noctylius rest upside down, by making him clasp the bar with the toes sticking out of his calves. As another option, the stand without any extra pieces can plug into the bat-like drone's underside for holding it above the ground.

Final thoughts
Overall: Noctylius is easily one of my favourite figures in the Foundation line and I'm glad he's getting a new incarnation in the Emergence line. While some fans might prefer the more cyborg-looking helmeted head, I like the rougher, masked training look quite a lot. He would have merited a five-smile rating, if he had come with the concept art flaming sword instead of the small dagger... given PoliganToys' avowed efforts to match the concept design, I think it's a disappointing omission. Nevertheless, he’s a great value, as he not only has a number of cool accessories, but, unlike his predecessor, poseable wings

Rating: ☺☺☺☺ / 5