Cybertronian Civil Wars

Cartoon History (US):

It is unknown if there were any planetary civil wars among the Quintessons while they controlled Cybertron (although there was certainly crime and punishment). The first known war was the robot slave revolt around 11 million years BC. The Quintessons had built Cybertron as a factory to produce two types of slave robots: military hardware and consumer goods. For a million years, the Quintesssons maintained control, but when the robots began to develop emotions, they turned on their cruel Quintesson masters.

The first revolt was carried out by, interestingly enough, a band of non-warrior robots (workers, scientists, and technicians). They were led by a slave called A-3, who somehow possessed a secret weapon called a Coda Remote (spelling uncertain). However, Quintessons from the year 2006 used a time machine to kidnap A-3 the night before the final assault. Just as that occurred, though, the future Quintesssons were attacked by a team of Autobots (Perceptor, Blurr, Wreck-Gar, Blaster, Rewind, and Ramhorn). The Autobots found themselves outnumbered and outclassed, so, in desperation, all of them except Perceptor jumped through the "time window" and into the past. They were rescued from the attacks of a Quintesson Dark Guardian robot by Beta, the acting leader of the revolutionaries, and accepted into the fold because they too wore the "slave brand" (the Autobot symbol). Beta decided to lead the attack on Hive City (a city that the Quintesssons had built with slave labor) with or without A-3, and the Autobots simply followed along. The attack went well at first, but the motley band of freedom fighters soon proved to be no match for the Quintesssons' many Dark Guardians. Suddenly, however, A-3 returned from the future and used his Coda Remote, which was activated when he removed his slave brand and turned its reverse side to the Dark Guardians. It emitted a wide beam of light that caused the giant robots to stop in their tracks and fall down. A-3 urged the Autobots to return to the future, which they did, and the Quintessson time machine was destroyed upon their arrival.

After the slaves drove the Quintessons away from Cybertron, peace reigned. However, the division between consumer-goods and military-hardware was becoming acute, as the two groups had even named themselves differently: the consumer-goods robots called themselves Autobots, and the military-hardware robots were known as Decepticons. While the Autobots preferred a peaceful existence, the Decepticons wanted conquest. For a time, the Decepticons got their way.

It should be noted that the Matrix was already in existence at this point, apparently being passed from one Autobot leader to the next, as is the practice today.

The Autobots could not match the brute strength of the Decepticons, so they turned to stealth, learning the art of transformation. Using this new technology, they defeated the Decepticons and ruled for many centuries in a "Golden Age." Peace was kept with the use of Guardian robots (presumably based upon the Quintesssons' Dark Guardians), sentinels that protected cities, quelled uprisings, and generally did the dirty work of war. However, the Decepticons eventually learned to transform and also developed some form of anti-gravity that allowed them to fly without the use of jets. They also built a powerful leader for themselves: Megatron.

Thus, circa 9 million years BC, the war began anew. Megatron led his army from victory to victory, targeting mainly power centers to fuel his troops and build his forces. While the Guardian robots were powerful enough to strike fear in the Decepticons, even those giant robots were suffering at Megatron's hands. Even the safety of the Matrix was in question, so Alpha Trion (formerly known as A-3) kept it in hiding for many years. It was to this time of violent flux that the newly- created Aerialbots were sent from the year 1985. The future Megatron had lured the Aerialbots into a time machine, which he planned to use to send the young team back before the beginning of time, where they would be eternally trapped outside the timestream. However, the Autobots attacked Megatron and damaged the machine before the time-travel process had completed; thus, the Aerialbots were only sent nine million years into the past.

They soon met a young, energetic worker at an energy-shipment facility. This robot, Orion Pax, was in awe of the Decepticons, but his feelings changed when Megatron attacked his workplace and gravely wounded him, his girlfriend Ariel, and his friend Dion. The Aerialbots took Orion to Alpha Trion, who was devising new ways to combat the Decepticons. Alpha Trion rebuilt Orion into Optimus Prime, the first of a "new breed" capable of fighting Megatron. He also rebuilt Ariel into Elita-1, but it is unknown if Dion got similar treatment.

Prime inflicted serious damage on the Decepticon forces, but they were still powerful. Raiders were starting to loot a fuel transfer center that would supply Megatron with enough energon to win the war just as it was starting. The Aerialbots got inside the building and set explosives to stop them, but they found themselves trapped. Despite the danger to themselves, they set off the explosives; just as the building erupted, they were transported back to 1985, where they found that their comrades had repaired the time machine.

At some point, Prime was named leader of the Autobots, and Alpha Trion gave him the Matrix. (This may have been when he was first created; the timeline is uncertain. There's even confusion about when Alpha Trion acquired the Matrix in the first place; when he is shown taking it, he looks older than he did when he built Prime.) For the next five million years, the war raged on, draining Cybertron of its resources. Even the buildings and landscapes, which used to glow with radiant energy, had become dull and barren. In search of new energy sources, Optimus Prime led a team of Autobots on an interplanetary expedition that ended when Megatron attacked and boarded their ship. As the Autobots and Decepticons fought, the ship strayed too close to the nearby planet Earth, and it crashed.

For the next four million years, Shockwave commanded the Decepticons, who maintained the upper hand. When the Earth-bound TF's were revived in 1984, Megatron schemed to harness Earth's resources and send the energy to Cybertron. With the invention of the space bridge, interplanetary travel became very easy, and Megatron's plans came closer to fruition. He may have succeeded, at least in part, for by the year 2005 the Decepticons had driven the Autobots off of Cybertron and were poised to attack Autobot City on Earth. When they did attack, the Autobots were able to fend them off, but not without losing the great Optimus Prime. Megatron had also been mortally wounded, but he was revived by the planet-eating Unicron, who re- created him into the ultra-powerful Galvatron. Under Galvatron's command, the Decepticons hunted down the Earth-based Autobots while Unicron devoured the two Autobot-controlled Cybertronian moons. Unicron then began to attack Cybertron and the Decepticons, doing severe damage, until the young Autobot Hot Rod activated the Matrix of Leadership and, turning into Rodimus Prime, destroyed Unicron.

Having been decimated at Unicron's hands, the Decepticons retreated to the burned-out world called Chaar. Rodimus Prime announced this to be the end of the Cybertronian wars, but he was clearly overconfident. When Galvatron returned and reunited the tattered Decepticon army, the war began raging again. This time, a new wrinkle was added in the form of the Quintessons, who formed tenuous alliances with the Decepticons in an attempt to reclaim Cybertron. Also, the humanoid Nebulans later joined the battle, "binary-bonding" to TF's (converting to the heads or weaponry of TF hosts). The latest development in the war was the institution of a new Golden Age on Cybertron: by turning one of Megatron's schemes around, the Autobots were able to suck energy out of the sun and into the material of Cybertron itself. Thus, the planet once again glowed with golden energy, still under exclusively Autobot rule, while the Decepticons remained elsewhere.

One note about the Cybertronian wars: The current conflict (i.e., the one that's been going on for nine million years) has been called the Third Cybertronian War (or also the Great War). The Second Cybertronian War, then, was probably the original Autobot-Decepticon battle that began after the Quintessons were driven away, and the First Cybertronian War would be that slave revolt. It should also be noted that Sandstorm claimed that his ancestors left Cybertron after "the Fourth Great War," which suggests that there are (or were) different numbering systems in existence.

Bibliography

Comic History (US):

The demigod Primus created the TF's with the intention that they would all be righteous and obedient. However, his creations quickly became divided between the generally good (Autobots) and evil (Decepticons), apparently because of some kind of natural yin-yang balance. According to the current supreme Decepticon leader, the Liege Maximo, "When the first named Prime was created, so was the Liege Maximo. And from the Liege Maximo came the Decepticons and all their subsequent generations. Evil...is infinite!"

According to Optimus Prime, as the original TF's reproduced (through a process similar to cell division), Primus's goodness became more and more diffuse in succeeding generations, and TF's were arising who had none of "the essential purity of our creator's vision." Thus, as civil war broke out, a sort of genetic fail-safe mechanism kicked in, wiping out every TF's memory of how to reproduce. The only other way to create more TF's was to use the Creation Matrix, a device which contained the life essence of Primus.

Megatron led the Decepticons in battle, and the cataclysmic forces his war unleashed pushed Cybertron out of its orbit around Alpha Centauri. As the planet careened through space, it was pulled toward Sol. In Cybertron's path was the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars; if the asteroids weren't cleared out of the way, the global damage would be enormous. Thus, around 4 million years BC, Autobot leader Optimus Prime led a team to do just that in a spacecraft called the Ark. After clearing the way for their planet, they were attacked by Megatron, who boarded their ship with an attack force. The Decepticons would have won, had Prime not plunged the Ark into the Earth's surface.

On Cybertron, Prime and Megatron were mourned, but the war continued. The Decepticons eventually discovered how to reproduce, and the new TF's they created were very powerful and completely devoid of morality. With each new-generation TF that was created, there also appeared a strange by-product, a dark, cloudy mass that coalesced other such masses and floated off into space, apparently harmless for the moment.

Meanwhile, the second-generation Decepticons laid waste to the Autobot forces, but they were dissatisfied with the wasteland that Cybertron had become, so they left in search of new challenges. Many of the older Decepticons (perhaps all of them) remained on Cybertron and maintained control for millions of years.

On Earth, the damaged Ark lay untouched beneath a volcano for four million years, but in 1984 a small eruption jogged its systems and caused its computer to reactivate. The ship repaired its passengers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, and thus the war spread on Earth. Megatron established contact with Cybertron, and Lord Straxus, governor of the province of Polyhex, organized the construction of the first space bridge, an interplanetary transportation device. Megatron planned to use it to ship energy from the resource-laden Earth to the barren Cybertron, but his plans never fully succeeded.

At this time, the Cybertronian Autobots were mainly fighting in underground resistance movements. Their command centers were secret Autobases hidden in Decepticon territory. Optimus Prime and his companions were regarded as heroes (perhaps legends) by the present- day freedom fighters, and news of their survival was welcomed joyously. However, global communication must have been inefficient, for that encouraging news never reached some 'Bots, such as Fortress Maximus and his small army. If Fort Max had heard about it, perhaps he never would have reached the despair that led him to leave Cybertron. Perhaps he and his companions never would have journeyed to the peaceful planet Nebulos, where they hoped to avoid the TF war. Then Scorponok and his minions wouldn't have followed them, and the disease of war would have passed over that world.

But that's not what happened. The TF civil war did spread to Nebulos, and some of the humanoid residents joined the conflict by binary-bonding to TF hosts, becoming the Headmasters and Targetmasters. When an Autobot distress call to Cybertron from Earth was intercepted by the Nebulos-based TF's, Fort Max and his troops decided to travel to Earth. They were hoping that Scorponok and his Decepticons would follow, thus sparing Nebulos of further carnage. The plan worked, and the Nebulans were able to repair their shattered world. In order to prevent TF's from inhabiting Nebulos again, they contaminated the planet's fuel supply.

When Fort Max and Scorponok arrived on Earth, they soon encountered their Terran-based counterparts, and there were leadership troubles on both sides. While Autobot Commander Grimlock settled the problem by challenging Fort Max to a duel, all of the Decepticons engaged in a full-scale battle amongst themselves. Starscream used the confusion to sneak off in search of the powerful Underbase. When he absorbed a bit of its energy, he became ultra-powerful, and he set off to conquer Earth. He had become a menace to all TF's, so the quibbling factions put aside their differences to stop him. This was a rare moment of Autobot-Decepticon cooperation that ended with Starscream's destruction. When the war resumed, each side now had a clear leader.

On Cybertron, the energy crisis was becoming critical, and some TF's downsized their bodies, becoming roughly the size of humans in order to conserve fuel. These tiny robots were known as Micromasters (even though they were not "Masters" in the same sense as the humanoid Nebulans).

The next major development in the war occurred when TF's battling in the heart of Cybertron accidentally woke their creator, Primus. His awakening alerted his archnemesis, the demigod Unicron, as to his location. Prime knew that the chaos-bringer could be defeated by the Matrix, but it had fallen into the hands of the Decepticon Lord Thunderwing. By merging with it as the Primes had, Thunderwing turned the Matrix to evil, and he used its power to attack the Autobots on board the spaceborne Ark. That battle ended in Thunderwing's defeat, but he and the Matrix were not destroyed--they were merely left tumbling aimlessly through space. Apparently, Prime either didn't know that the Matrix wasn't destroyed, or he didn't consider it worth the bother to recover.

Without the Matrix to rely on, the Autobots searched for other ways to fight the coming menace. Optimus sought to unite all TF's, going so far as to surrender to Scorponok on Earth in an effort to begin peace talks. Scorp eventually put his ego aside and agreed to help, but at that moment Shockwave, Starscream, and a small band of discontented Decepticons attacked the Decep base in an attempt to assassinate Scorponok. A battle ensued, but it soon came to a close with Scorponok clearly in power. Then, suddenly, all of the TF's on Earth were transported by Primus to Cybertron, where they fought Unicron in a battle that destroyed Primus himself (along with Scorponok and many other TF's). Thunderwing and the tainted Matrix reappeared, but even it couldn't defeat Unicron. However, when Optimus touched the Matrix, its evil was purged, and the full force of Primus's life essence was unleashed. The result was the destruction of both Unicron and the Matrix (and Optimus, in the explosion).

For a short time, all TF's were united, but Cybertron began to show signs of massive global deterioration. In the absence of Primus, it was theorized, the planet was falling apart. Their true natures showing through, the Decepticons sabotaged the Autobots' spacecraft and, under Bludgeon's command, sought out to conquer other worlds. Grimlock found replacement ships and led the Autobots in pursuit. Meanwhile, on Cybertron, HiQ (Optimus's Powermaster partner), G.B. Blackrock, and his superhero team (the NeoKnights) found the Last Autobot, a guardian whom Primus had created to control the changes that Cybertron would undergo in his absence. Not only did the Last Autobot successfully guide Cybertron's re-creation, but he also re-made HiQ into a new version of Optimus Prime. Then they all went to the planet Klo, where the Bludgeon's forces were slaughtering Grimlock's troops. The Last Autobot began resurrecting the dead Autobots, and the renewed armada was able to defeat the Decepticons. Bludgeon swore to exile his army in shame.

The Autobots returned to the re-created Cybertron (although it's not known how the planet was changed), and peace existed for few years. However, Bludgeon was building his forces by attacking far-off civilizations and stealing their technology. He also constructed an army of new Decepticons, but he needed the Matrix to bring them to life. For some reason, Prime still had the Matrix (there are many theories about this), so Bludgeon used his giant starship, the WarWorld, to decimate Earth. He knew that Prime would return and defend the planet, so all he had to do was wait. During that waiting period, though, Megatron returned and destroyed Bludgeon, reassuming command.

Prime, meanwhile, was occupied with other concerns. The second-generation Decepticons had returned from deep space, where they had been re-making planets in Cybertron's image. They considered the older TF's to be inferior and small-minded, insects who could either join them or suffer the same fate as any other life forms. Jhiaxus, their Liege Centuro (sort of a field commander), became obsessed with hunting Prime down. Thus, when Prime learned about Bludgeon's attacks on Earth, he saw it as an opportunity to warn the Decepticons about the threat Jhiaxus posed to all TF's.

However, Megatron easily beat Prime in battle, and he took the Matrix while ignoring Prime's pleas and warnings. Megs gave life to Bludgeon's army, but even they were unable to beat Jhiaxus's forces. After a battle that nearly killed him, Megatron returned to Earth and allied himself with Prime. Jhiaxus also came to Earth and attacked them. In the midst of the battle, suddenly there appeared the Swarm--that nebulous by-product of the second-generation Decepticons' creation. It had been wandering the galaxy, searching for the TF's, and destroying metal as it went along. When it got to Earth, it began feasting on all TF's, new and old, and the entire race nearly fell. Even Jhiaxus was destroyed. However, Prime was able to reclaim the Matrix, and when the Swarm devoured him, the power of the Matrix flowed through it. It was transformed into a force of life, with a new purpose (although it's not known what that purpose was). Prime was re-created, and he remained the leader of the Autobot-Decepticon alliance. Meanwhile, in a sector of space known as the "outer fringes," in a strange complex called the Hub, the Liege Maximo, supreme leader of the Decepticons, showed little grief over Jhiaxus's defeat. He also expressed his confidence in his forces, claiming that the day of reckoning would yet come for Prime and his "ridiculous" alliance.

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