Seems we've got an extra week or so, so anybody else wanna unravel the secret mysteries of the IDWverse before they're unraveled for us? Just me..? ok then Primus/Rung: If you'll recall I've already pointed out that we've had Rung's divinity spelled out for us pretty explicitly for some time now (even if I was a little off), but now what we don't know is how exactly he got from point A to point B... Supposedly Primus fused with Cybertron to become Vector Sigma after being mortally wounded in the God War 12 million years ago, but evidently this isn't the whole truth. There is one connection between them though; Vector Sigma created sparks, and Rung creates spark crystals. It's almost like they're meant to function in tandem, almost like they used to be the same entity. For whatever reason Primus must've split in two after the God War, all his life-giving powers going into Vector Sigma, and everything else going into Rung. Maybe he's some sort of byproduct from Primus becoming Vector Sigma, or maybe Rung is Primus' diminished form after pouring his energies into Vector Sigma... Time will tell. Mortilus/Necrobot/Censere: He's not dead?? only died last year instead of 12 million years ago??? Censere recalled his history all the way back to the Prime War, but 8-12 million BCE is a gaping mystery... especially since he was supposed to be dead. Like famously dead. Lets just say information creep is a real b*tch, yes? Solomus/Tyrest: The earliest we see of Tyrest he's experimenting on the Matrix with Nova Prime... but Solomus is supposed to be the Matrix. Erm. It has to be that Nova Prime (or perhaps even Solus) freed him from his "prison"... but being a glorified hilt-turned-bauble for 4 or 5 million years had already erased his mind, hence instead of being made leader of all Cybertron he was given the title Chief Engineer and later Chief Justice. Or maybe Nova hit him on the head with a shovel so he could stay in power. Sounds like something that prick would do. What's tasty about this, is that if Tyrest was (re)born from the Matrix, then technically he was the original constructed-cold Transformer. I could make a full-course meal out of that much irony. Epistimus/Magnificence/Resus Cradle: It seems the legends were 100% honest with this guy. Lil' ball o' pure brain for the entire last dozen-million years... Adaptus/Grand Architect/Pharma: ...Yeah, all that. "Millions of years ago" presumably refers all the way back to the God War, since the Cybertron-mold/Necroworld had been unused since at least Tusk's time (see Censere image)... Although the Warren complicates things chronology-wise. Unravelling what "into my mind" is supposed to mean could involve defining the relationship between consciousness, the brain module, and the spark, and the possibility of there being a physical manifestation of it between the two... or I could say Skids was momentarily transformed into an astral being when he entered "Cyberutopia." or Adaptus wasn't being literal. Either way wherever Pharma's body was dragged off to was "real," and seeing as Adaptus "reached out" with tendrils instead of regular hands, it seems he really was in some way stripped of his robot mode as in legend. So during the God War Adaptus was flung into Warren momentarily, where he ended up witnessing Functionist Primus fighting the God Gun, and after his defeat and mutilation he immediately began work on his Grand Architecture. Then at some point (again, Warren), he gained Pharma's spark and body. What I really want to know is if Pharma's hands had any connection to Adaptus before this --I don't think the framing in the last panel above is insignificant, and they're said to be able to turn into anything, an infinity of shapes-- but if this timeline is right there's no place for that to factor in. As for why he put Pharma's body back on--form fidelity? Shock value? Just to mess with Ratchet, probably. Yeah probably just to mess with Ratchet. Also incredibly ironic: Dr. T-Cog being possessed by a sentient t-cog. heh heh. The God War: In all likelihood, may or may not have even happened as we knew it. Part of the story Cyclonus gave in the 2012 Annual is completely true (Epistemus), most if it is at least partly true (Vector Sigma, the Matrix, Adaptus), but part of it is also an outright lie (Censere). In Censere's case especially, he made a point of saying he didn't have divine powers, and it follows then that he wouldn't've been able to magick the rest of the Hand into their respective artifacts. So who could? Quite likely it wasn't just information creep that melted their memories either, rather (counter to my above hypotheses) Unicron. In the Marvel UK storylines Target: 2006 and Legacy of Unicron, Unicron had a repeated habit of enthralling and manipulating minds, and it's my understanding that he erased his second coming from Cybertronian memory entirely in James Roberts' early fanfics (see bottom of page 6), so that's gotta be it; Mortilus wasn't the main antagonist in the God War, Unicron was, and that could very possibly be how Lost Light ties into Unicron event. Going a bit further, the line "Concieved as a reaction to his opposite--" almost implies that Unicron may have been created by the same mechanism as pre-Guiding-Hand-Primus, which would make Unicron his predecessor --and the very first Cybertronian. This gives an alternate reason for the God War: Unicron, as is his character, abhorred the way Primus drew power from Cybertron to create life, and would've sought to return it to its "natural state"... by killing and eating everyone. Possibly the rest of the universe too. Ultimately the war still ends in a tie; the Guiding Hand mutilated and mind-wiped, and Unicron sealed away, or... something. Again, time will tell.... [Tl;DR: Everything we know is wrong.]
Very interesting analysis, and I'm dying to see how any of this will tie into the Unicron event, if at all. Unicron, from what it seems so far, was created by the people of Antilla as a type of doomsday device in response to Nova Prime's expansion work. Something seems to be missing here, particularly with the line of "Primus' opposite." Going back to Shockwave, he was only flung back to the era of the 13 Primes, so the Guiding Hand was in the past even from his perspective....
Yeah this is not going to have anything to do with Unicron. Unicron was created Millions of years after the start of Cybertronian civilization. Also, the guiding hand is probably a Quintesson
A couple of things immediately spring out to me, looking at that double-page for the first time in a while- and the first time since the last few issues' revelations. 1) It's unclear, in the description of Epistemus and Adaptus' fates, which circular component is meant to be which- except that the normal principles of narrative/artistic flow would assume that the illustrations were in the same order as the names in the text... which would make the remaining body of Adaptus (the prototype Transformation Cog) the smaller, spikier object on the right. The one which looks remarkably like Luna I. Which potentially makes sense of the whole Tyrest 'space bridge into my mind' thing? 2) "And because Mortilus had been killed- because Death itself had died -- the sparks of future Cybertronians would burn forever." Except that that's a lie. Not "Mortilus had been killed"- that *was* a lie, and we found that out in LL#22- but we found out much earlier than that that the sparks of future Cybertronians do not burn forever- that, as Ratchet explained to Tailgate, it's only now that they're beginning to realise that sparks do indeed eventually burn out from one cause or another. So the conclusion is based on a false premise; Mortilus did not die. "Destroyed" is one thing, "dead" another. 3) Call me of a nasty suspicious mind if you will, but looking again at Censere's little chat with Nightbeat, I can't help suspecting that after Tusk told Censere about the planet which would become Necroworld, Censere answered with the deadly "... Have you told anyone else?" - and that what Censere was referring to, when it came to "I didn't find out until years afterward" was the fact that the death had gone unreported, not the death itself.
Great read! Regardless of how it pans out that's some solid thinking. Cheers for sharing it! 'Tusk' has to be Adaptus, right? I'm imagining the 'war' between Mortilus and the rest of the Guiding Hand will turn out to be something really quite bland. Like a disagreement in an office with Mortilus storming out in a sulk. Only two weeks to go until we get the answers.
Never occurred to me until you wrote it, but now that you have it seems like the most likely outcome!
It may be unclear in the text, but based on all of the art assets from the IDW verse going back to when they started talking brain modules and t-cogs, it's pretty evident that the smaller spiky one is the brain and the larger one the t-cog. (as can be seen in the scene where Kaon crushes Trailcutter's brain File:BirthsDeathsAndInterventions-kaonkillstrailcutter.jpg - Transformers Wiki)
Hey. As im reading the thread. Has any1 discussed the relation befween the matrix storing all tf memories (like a sort of nirvana) and rung being the psychiatrist of the ll and many cybertronians?i
For those interested that first image featuring Rung and Skids is part of a comic drawn by the hyper talented Herzspalter! She has a twitter is anyone fancies seeing more of her stuff and the comic in full! her G1 recaps are hilarious and painfully accurate XD Always remember to credit the artist.
actually the whole guiding hand thing could actually work in continuity because in the original transformers origins in the comics it said that primus was the lord of the light gods and that unicron destroyed the light gods. so what if the guiding hand were those light god that furman mentioned, and that unicron destroyed them by convincing mortilus to turn against them. It would even make sense that solomus was stuck in the matrix of leadership as there is a being in there called IT who is a being that even older than the first matrix beaer bearing plus he looks like a transfomer without covering, so what IT was actually solomus and that could explain who or what IT actually is
