I love that! It's a really good and original idea!

 

Yeah, the layered planet idea is what I was going for. As for the Vok, I already addressed them in one of my other posts:

So I wouldn't make them the Techno-organic precursors of Prehistoric Cybertron - but maybe they're the reason for the hybrid mechanical and organic lifeforms...?

 

Cybertron's Ocean's 11:




Still active combatants as the need arises, but in recent times they've drifted into extracurricular activities such as targeting 'Con-controlled territories for operations much more stealthy than simple aerial assault - like stealing outright from the 'Cons' favorite entertainment and gaming venues when they're not trying to swindle the house from the floor. This kind of thing going on is partially what's gotten Skywarp in hot water with his brothers, as his predilection for wining and dining at these places trying to get in good with various high-rollers not yet affiliated with the war effort makes him come off as a tad ignorant. Of course, the team is only willing to part with so much of their ill-gotten gains, which puts THEM in the crosshairs of Ultra Magnus' ire on a number of occasions (you get the feeling that maybe he doesn't like flyers?), especially when said funds could be more useful dedicated to the war effort.

 

Another thing I thought of - rethinking the approach to the Spark.

The subject of sparks and how they're important to the Transformers is a bit divisive. Are they the center of Cybertronian consciousness, or just their power core? Is the spark basically the brain module folded into the laser core, or is it literally their soul? I decided I wanted to approach it from a different angle, and make the "spark" a philosophical concept to the Transformers rather than a physical, tangible thing. They believe in the so-called "spark of life" that separates them from ordinary machines, the "spark" that grants them a sense of self, self-awareness, the ability to be more than just programming. The power source of a Cybertronian body, the Laser Core, is sometimes erroneously referred to be some as a "Spark", and would kind of resemble the franchise's usual visual depiction of a spark, but it is not. A Laser Core is replaceable, but it's very difficult because of how integrated it is into the body's inner mechanisms.

Naturally, the bots can still die, it's just very difficult to put them down and their relationship with the concept of death is a strange one. As beings of information and data contained in the Brain Module, they could hypothetically live forever, but the Brain Module is a very sensitive piece of technology that's just as sophisticated and fragile as the human brain. Sudden loss of power to the Brain Module, much like the heart stopping in the human body, can cause something resembling brain death and leave bots comatose and difficult to reactivate. And even if they do, there's no guarantee they'll be the same bot they were before, due to data-corruption. This is also why memory uploads from one brain module to another or from stored backups aren't guaranteed to be a good idea in the long term - the information that makes up a bot and their personality is so complicated that such processes ultimately cause some data to be lost or corrupted, and the old bot in a new brain may be very different from the one they used to be. It's sort of like cloning, as presented by TFA Starscream: you might get some of the basic elements of the bot, but you won't get the whole thing - the new bot will, at best, be a pale imitation of the original, if not completely deviate from the original source code.

 

almost everything TF exists in a world/reality based on the current real life state of the human world. though im sure its a concept that has been pitched before and mocked as weird or flawed, i want to see a steampunk TF universe. we saw this somewhat explored in "hearts of steel" but that was still just a developmental stage of normal history. i want an actual world of steampunk technology and culture that the advanced TFs are forced to acclimate and adjust to.

and we would see some, lets say B or C list TF players in these circumstances

 

My take on the Quintessons would be bit...different.

Essentially, imagine if the original 1986 Judge design were re-interpreted by a collaboration of H.R. Giger and Rob Bottin: a darker, slimier, more organic-looking take on the classic design, with the other considerable difference being the way the multiple faces manifest themselves. This time they don't spin into position from another side of the body - they emerge from the various orifaces in whatever face is dominant. The jaws of one face will open and keep widening as the tongue swells and oozes out to form the second face; a snot bubble growing from one of the second face's nostrils will cause the nose to swell and rupture to reveal the third face from inside the bubble as it bursts; the eyes of the third face bulge and bug out until one of them literally pops out on bio-mechanical ganglia, snaking back up as the eyeball morphs into the fourth face; and finally one of the tentacles will just up and rip off the fourth face to reveal the Death face underneath - literally the Quint's own skull - before the bodily fluids drip back down over the face and completely coat it to form the first face anew. Each preceding face simply shrivels and crumbles to the floor in foul-smelling, oozy, rapidly-disintegrating pieces.

As for their relationship with the TFs...I prefer to keep that vague, just because I happen to think that there are SOME things in this world that should be allowed to remain mysterious. But there would be significant hints as to a definite origin, hints that tie into the origin of Cybertron itself. They didn't create the Transformers in my take, but they're certainly as old as the Cybertronian race, and they certainly don't like Cybertronians any.

 

In order to re-invent transformers one must first examine the context that the original was created in. The g1 cartoon and comics were made in the West during the cold war, a time of stark political division between nations. To the average american, you were either an a capitalist Democratic good guy or an authoritarian communist. This is reflected in the stark division between the two factions of autobot and deception, with the autobits standing for American values like freedom, and the deceptions representing tyranny.
However, history has shown us this dichototemy does not exist, with the United States doing things that range from morally gray to outright unjustifiable, and with certain capitalist nations being undemocratic. Modern IDW writers have used elements of this analysis to create their world, with the deceptions starting off well intentioned and devolving into authoritarian regimes, like the Soviet union. Similarly, the autobots are shown to resort to less than saintly means of winning the war, notably prowl, impactor, and whirl.
To answer the question, I would re-invent the transformers faction system by graying the morality. Initially, it would appear to be a clean cut, autobots good decepticons bad, but several developments would undermine this narrative. These include
-independent contactors who work for bothssides being written more sympathetically. These would include doubledealer, lockdown, fracture, ECT..
-The unscrupulous autobot black ops unit, the wreckers
-the autobot war criminals known as the monsterbots
-Good/altruistic/sympathetic decepticons who don't know about the war crimes happening elsewhere
-deception commanders being loyal to their men
-the matrix of leadership choosing thunderwing

 

Oh, here's one: the Matrix of Leadership.

As I've said before, Optimus Prime doesn't carry the Matrix; nor does Rodimus Prime. As the last survivor of the first cycle of Primes, Alpha Trion was entrusted as Keeper of the Matrix by Vector Sigma, which here is a sentient conduit to the Allspark (which has no tangible form). On the surface of it, the Matrix seems to resemble the classic version, functionally as well as aesthetically - it contains the collected life experience of all the now-deceased Primes who were endowed with that title in the Matrix's presence. It doesn't allow for communication with their spirits or anything like that - that aspect of it is simply an archival one, albeit one that is psionically keyed into the memory of all so anointed as Primes. Beyond that, though, the Matrix itself has no seemingly pseudo-mystical properties...except one.

It can destroy the **** out of any interstellar body it's aimed at and re-format the debris into a new one.

Basically, it's a hand-held combo of the Death Star and the Genesis Device. THAT is why the Dynasty of Primes continues to exist - to serve as a responsible body that can govern how best to handle this power. Granted, one can't just decide to cut loose with it as they wish - it will only work in the company of the other living Primes at the time, and they have to consciously and unanimously agree to use it at any given moment...and this power can only be used once, what's left of the Matrix to crumble to dust in the wind once the deed is done. Which, of course, means that things are presently a bit complicated when one appointed Prime has fallen to the Dark Side and another has spent much of the War in an inebriated state in order to cope. And needless to say, with Cybertron already almost totally under Decepticon occupation (sufficiently dwindling the planet's resources) there are more than a few Cybertronians - mostly Decepticons, but also a few Autobots here and there - who are starting to think that this little blue-green rock third from its sun would make a fairly decent substitute.

It's worth pointing out, though, that as I've also said before, my ideal take on Unicron is strictly as a religious concept rather than a corporeal entity; ditto Primus. And again, my aforementioned take on the Sweeps would have nothing to do with Unicron, either. So Giant Space Robot Satan would be in the clear this time.

 

Windblade

As it stands she's not really that great, but I feel like there's something there. Since Caminus is also kinda bland I had a (in my opinion) better idea for the colony.

Caminus is essentially a large community of pretentious, holier-than-thou Cybertronians that view war and conflict as beneath them. They view both Autobots and Decepticons as mostly the same, irrelevant of how the Autobots have indirectly protected them. They're lead by a council, headed by the Mistress of Flame. She's probably the worst of them, holds contempt for Autobots and Decepticons and considers them to be opposite sides of the same coin.

Windblade is essentially the Cybe equivalent of a princess or priestess. She's been raised in a beautiful but very ideological environment. Her older sister is an elder named Nijika who is a part of the ruling council, but is a controversial figure due to her beliefs. She's very sympathetic to the Autobot cause and can understand elements of the Decepticon ideology, yet ultimately she views the Autobots, at worst, as a necessary evil and at best... defenders and protectors who are doing all they can to prevent the subjugation of the universe.

The Torchbearers are essentially the bodyguards and followers of the Mistress, true believers more or less.

Through plot and interactions Windblade eventually joins up with the Autobots. She starts out sometimes needing to be rescued, and needs to learn to use weapons, but becomes quite an adept swordsman thanks to training. She's not telepathic and her "Cityspeaker" thing is more of a spiritual belief rather than a literal thing.

 

The quintessons would be a combination of the "transformers vs G.i.Joe" version, Cyberverse incarnation, and Mass Effect Reapers. They are a technorganic race who, when other alien races reach a certain level of technological advancement, judge them as either worthy of assimilation or annihilation.

Cybertron would be created as a result of these Quintessons interfering with the Milky Way, but by the mysterious "Makers" who would be the Protheans to their Reapers. They discovered the Quintessons and set to build a planet sized early warning system/weapon to protect themselves with. In order to construct it, they launched a von neumann machine now known as Vector Sigma which landed on a terrestrial planet that would eventually come to be called Cybertron then released self replicating terraforming robots to turn the planet into the megastructure.

Sadly, the quintessons arrived and defeated the Makers before Cybertron was completed. Bereft of purpose, the simple maintenance drones continued replicating and mutating as self replicating systems are prone to do without anyone to issue quality control until the dominant life forms became the transformers we are familiar with.

When the quintessons return, they will recognize the transformers as products of their most successful foes while the cybertronians may half remember the quintessons from myths pulled from Vector Sigma's memory banks.

 

Another re-working of mine: the Nebulons.

Going back to my initial post regarding the dying alien refugee who warns Earth's government of the oncoming Transformers, the Nebulons in this take of mine would have their roots in the likes of "Alien Nation" and "District 9", with a dash of the original "Battlestar Galactica" tossed in: a bunch of war-ragged interstellar refugees whose battered carrier ultimately lands on Earth basically because it runs out of fuel to go any further. The refugee who died was one of theirs, scouting ahead in one of the ship's fighter craft. They were driven from their homeworld years ago, and they've been scrambling ever since, looking for another world to settle on while also organizing whatever retaliatory measures they can muster. Given a choice, they definitely wouldn't have landed on Earth, but that's the way things turned out. Complicating matters further is that the nature of their technology makes it a pain in the ^$$ to attempt to reverse-engineer for Terran use, and they're capable enough in their war-weariness to fend off any attempt by us lowly hairless simians to attempt to use any sort of force to elicit their cooperation. They've established a remote settlement on a tropical island, both to protect their civilians and to be able to observe the actions of the Cybertronians who are showing up on Earth in increasing numbers, and given the U.S. government's apparent willingness to work with the Autobots, Uncle Sam is already on thin ice with the Nebulon refugees, so they're only willing to allow a handful of human liaisons in their territory at any time.

As for the biological and technological nature of the Nebulons, again, this is where I'd do some more re-purposing of an old idea...

For clarity's sake, the whole solar power thing has more to do with their own biochemistries than anything else, which the Transtech would easily tie into - but as far as independent, external hardware like their ships, I imagine solar energy probably wouldn't quite cut it; true, the crew could probably 'key' themselves into the ship itself, but that'd be draining on their own internal biological resources, given what the ship requires just to get to Earth.

 

Putting a more sci-fi twist on the Primus/Unicron origin story, Primus was an AI programmed by the Quintessons, whose life force was stored within Vector Sigma to design and give life to the Transformers, who eventually, like Unicron to Primacron, gained sentience and assisted the Cybertronians in rebelling against the Quintessons, who became the giver of life for generations to come, and as time passed, his story was changed into a legend. Also the 13 Primes were the 13 leaders of the Transformers who rebelled against the Quintessons who got cool weapons to signify their rank.

 

Not so much a reinvention but I would change that Ultra Magnus becomes the leader following Optimus rather than Hot Rod. Work in the body armor around the white cab as his Matrix-given "leader body".

For an actual reinvention. I'd change the 13 Primes to be more like the Seven Kings of Rome rather than the Apostles. Meaning they were more a succession of the first leaders of Cybetron (who have probably been heavily exaggerated) rather than a group who all existed at the same time.

 

Sort reinvention, sort of my take on the Age of Expansion (as detailed by Cyberverse), and Titans.

The first Titans were, of course, the ancient giants who brought the Antillan Robots to prehistoric Cybertron and integrated with the planet. Of these Titans, Primus and Metroplex are the only familiar ones, and only Metroplex survives to the modern day. Future Titans wouldn't be constructed until the Age of Expansion, beginning with three War Titans: Trypticon, Vigilem, and Iaconus. Of the three, only Iaconus returns to Cybertron. His story is pretty much the same as Cyberverse, he rampages across Cybertron and is subsequently forced into stasis in his city-mode. How this happened is that a large number of Cityspeakers infiltrated his Brain Module and interfaced with it all at once, using their collective power to overwhelm Iaconus' systems and put him into stasis, costing them their own lives in the process. So then, what are Cityspeakers?

My take on Cityspeakers is that it's sort of a fancy way of saying "administrator". Most Cybertronian cities operate like a massive computer, and need constant maintenance. That's where the Cityspeakers come in, acting as administrators over designated sectors and being able to directly interface with the citywide systems in order to control and regulate them when those systems experience malfunction and need repair.

This is the role they take within Titans. Because of the massive size of a Titan, they need constant maintenance in order to continue operating at full capacity. Their minds are so vast that it can be difficult for them to interact directly with regular Transformers, so Cityspeakers act as the intermediary that allows them to communicate their thoughts and needs. Cityspeaking is a rare ability, however, as most bots don't have the mental capacity to be able to project and spread out their minds without suffering severe damage to their brain module.

And this brings me to Solus Prime, Caminus, and Windblade.

Solus is the founder and leader of the city-state of Caminus, and lived alongside fellow "Primes" Nexus and Cadam. Initially she was a staunch supporter of the plans to expand beyond Cybertron and it's local system, but as war raged beyond their borders, she became disillusioned and withdrew into her forge in Caminus. After the rampage of Iaconus, Solus decided that she could no longer stay on Cybertron. She oversaw the conversion of Caminus into a Titan, and with his citizens and anyone else who wished to leave, sought out a new world of their own. The planet they landed on would be named for the Titan, far removed from Cybertronian space where Solus hoped they could live in peace from Cybertron's imperialism. In time she grew to regret her decision, and eventually she passed on. Her hammer passed into the care of the Torchbearers and the first Mistress of Flame, and her body was, per her final wishes, dismantled and recycled.

Come the modern Caminus, and they're basically Wakanda. Highly isolationist and egotistical, and are in no hurry to involve themselves in the war or the rest of the galaxy at large if it isn't to their own benefit.

Windblade would be one of the few who believes in the Autobots and would want to throw her support behind them. My version of Windblade would be a young and naive, diplomatic sort rather than a fighter, who believes there can be a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons.

 

I retcon-ciled nebulons, power masters, mini.cons etc this way:

There are tiny cybertronians that are all minicons. Some left to find other places to live. They built transtectors to fight at the same scale as other Cybertronians.

Transtectors are no different to other drone type robots - the sentries in the key to vector sigma, roller etc.

Humans and nebulons got a hold of transtector technology and in order to more easily level the playing field, use them as weapons of war. Non Cybertronian transtectors aren't as advanced or interconnected, but they're far more powerful than conventional military vehicles.

The controling entity can choose to be a head, or engine of their transtector. Engine based transtectors are different as they require a more advanced transtector drone mind, but they are far more physically powerful due to the engine supercharger.


Larger Cybertronians can bond with minicons as transchargers. The minicons connect to the body of the Cybertronian in different locations and like a mini Gestalt they merge their powers.

 

Cybertron's own Bishop Gang. If we were to take a cue from the Depression era of the late 1920s as I mentioned before, I'd say that whereas the Aerialbots are more like a confidence outfit, the Combaticons are old-school armed robbers. The war has only served to cramp their style as a team - no longer able to operate with the relative freedom of better times...y'know, before EVERYBODY started shooting at them, Cybertronian or otherwise, not just The Law. While some of the Combaticons find this new level of pressure engaging, others - in particular, non-Combiners Strika and Demolishor - aren't so terribly sure that's a ship they want to go down with if or when the time comes. I mean, it's perfectly easy to be willing to take on an army when you and four other guys can literally join together to form a giant. Thus, those two would probably end up splitting off from the main team and end up becoming my equivalent to Bonnie & Clyde.

 

Titans cannot speak on their own, not even in robot mode, and thus, cityspeakers are assigned to them. The cityspeakers are given a specific titan to be partnered with. Metroplex has Scamper, Trypticon has Full Tilt, Metrotitan has Metroshot, etc.

 

I remember you posting something similar a while back, about how your take on the Mistress of Flame would consider the Autobots no better than the Decepticons. I was thinking of something similar with Paradron, but I think that Caminus really works better for that sort of sanctimonious ingratitude and pacifism.

I've got something similar in mind for Caminus, but in my version, they used to have world of warriors, but the sheer destruction of the Great War and the deaths of entire generations horrified the populace into electing a bunch of pacifists to their parliament. The leaders of the pacifist movement wanted to do away with Caminus’s old warrior traditions and rebuild their war-torn world as a nation of peace. They got their wish. Caminus became a world of self-righteous, holier-than-thou absolute pacifists that repaid the Autobots’ victory over the Decepticons on Caminus by withdrawing from the war and basically saying "thanks for freeing our home, but we don't need you anymore. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Caminus would remain neutral for the rest of the war, though they didn’t stay off the galactic stage. They had two main political factions, the isolationists and the internationalists, the latter of which would eventually found the Federation of Worlds. The latter would meet secretly with other pacifists, hivists, and other groups who had a problem with the war. They helped engineer the rise of anti-war factions on various worlds, which would lead to the Tyrest Accord that abandoned Cybertron, the Autobots, and the Iacon Resistance to the Decepticons (which would result in the Fall of Iacon and the Destruction of Cybertron).

Thanks to their lack of involvement after their liberation, they had a head start in rebuilding, making them the lone “superpower” in the Federation.

Caminus would go on to be one of the founders of the Federation of Worlds, establishing the corrupt, distant, overbearing, unresponsive government that would allow the setting’s problems to fester.

***

Many of Caminus's old warrior clans actually joined the Decepticons, because Megatron offered them a way to hold onto their traditions. Instead, they ended up bastardizing their ways, emphasizing the parts of their code that focused on loyalty and putting aside one’s own independence in favor of becoming an instrument of their master’s will. Now the warriors that joined the Decepticons are just cogs in the Decepticon war machine, only with delusions of nobility. Bludgeon’s from Caminus, and he was one of the leaders of the defecting warriors. Now he’s a general in the Decepticon horde, with a list of atrocities and a handful of hollow justifications to his name.

Now that's a neat take on the Quints. I like how you incorporated Cyberverse's assimilation bit into their overall motive and method of operation. In a way, they're a horrifying ascension cult.

The idea of the Makers being opponents of the Quints and the Transformers being their legacy is a good one, providing an alternate explanation for their origin that does away with the incongruity of a bunch of five-faced cephalopods making robots that are mono-faced bipeds.

 

My concept of Vector Sigma: Located in the heart of Cybertron's equivalent of the Holy Land, an outland territory ceaselessly inundated with some of the most brutal combat the war has yielded, is Mount Boltax, a towering butte of silicates whose resemblance to Devil's Tower would not be accidental. The Autobots and Decepticons have had no issue with killing each other at the foot of the mountain, but those who have dared to try to take the fight up any higher, onto the mountain itself, have never been seen again...leastwise in a functional state. Clearly, Mount Boltax would be my own Mount Sinai, and deep within the mountain's many cracks and crevasses, high above the planet's surface (as opposed to below it, as is usually the case), rests Vector Sigma. As I pointed out before, Vector Sigma is the Voyager Golden Record made sentient; its spherical form comes from the disk itself being in a perpetual spin. Vector Sigma is the closest realization there is to a nigh-omniscient intelligence on Cybertron - but is more a messenger of Primus than a direct manifestation of an all-powerful Creator (even though V.S. himself is powerful enough an entity thanks to the Allspark, which IS at the core of the planet because, well, it's the core itself...ain't gonna be no handy-dandy push-the-eject-button-into-space gambit here). Still, you don't just waltz on in to V.S.'s private chamber and expect him to juice up whatever empty robot shells you got with you...if he doesn't let you in himself, chances are you won't even be getting out, so he does have the smiting thing down.

Vector Sigma's so picky about who it grants audience, in fact, that it doesn't always let in Primes, either, unless it's a 'bot he knows is worthy to enter. Alpha Trion, of course, is one; Rodimus Prime is another. Unfortunately, again, Optimus Prime does half his battling with the bottle, and Longarm Prime's all Shocked up. You don't even have to be a Prime to be allowed in, so long as V.S. sees something sufficiently worthwhile in you; Ultra Magnus doesn't have access, but Jetfire does (which p/$$es Magnus off even more). Hell, there are probably Decepticons who can gain entry, too, based on what redeemable qualities they have, if any - Lockdown not so much, Soundwave maybe.

 

So did the Voyager disk go back in time and become part of Cybertron?