The Council of Worlds from the IDW comics is one of my favourite bits of world building from that era. So when I realised that with a couple of PotP customs, I could represent the various delegates of the council – plus some wider bits of TF mythology like TF: Cybertron – I started work. The story goes that in ancient times, the Thirteen original Transformers led a huge expansion project, piloting massive Titans to distant worlds, where the hot spots within each Titan would ignite, providing the sparks for a new TF colony. But through civil wars and plagues, contact with the colonies was lost and they passed into legend. That is, until contact was re-established in modern times with seven of them. This led to the formation of a Council of Worlds, with a delegate from each planet: Moonracer of Velocitron, aka the Speed Planet, and her assistant Ransack; Airazor of Eukaris, aka the Jungle Planet, and her mentor Snarl; The Mistress of Flame from Caminus, aka the Forge Planet, and her City-Speaker, Hot Shot; Elita-1 of Carcer, aka Planet X (since Carcer links to the Liege Maximo, whose G2 Empire links to Planet X) with her comms officer Soundblaster (renamed to differentiate him from G1 Soundwave – and someday I’d love to track down the Galaxy Force Soundblaster for a reasonable price!); Vanquish & Fireshot of Devisiun aka the Giant Planet (repainted from Siege Storm Cloud & Visper) and their engineers, Menasor and Heavy Tread. I'm conflating these worlds as every Gigantion toy powerlinked with a Mini-con partner, mirroring the Devisiun combinations; Rum-Maj of Arduria, aka the Junk Planet, and her consort, Wreck-Gar. In IDW, the Junkions are not explicitly one of the 13 colonies, but Junk and Arudria are both shattered worlds, and Wreck-Gar name drops the Arudrian Rocs – so I've merged them. The Junkions didn't officially join the council, but their alliance is in that spirit; Marissa Faireborn of earth (from Legends Spike) and her friend Thundercracker (with a re-headed Gen Leader TC rather than the Cyb deluxe, for scale reasons!) Technically, earth has no active colony or hot spot like the other worlds listed here, and Marissa is obviously not Cybertronian, but she is a proper political delegate in the fiction, and she transforms into an Earth Cyber-Key – providing an Ore-13 power up! All together: The seven delegates can then combine to form the elected representative for Cybertron – and figurehead of the Council of Worlds herself: Windblade! The combiner head is a Shapeways model with a custom neck joint, and it can fold away inside Elita's torso just like the original combiner head. Additionally, since the Council meet inside Metroplex, I've got Siege Sixgun providing security for the delegates, as well as an upgrade to their combined form - giving Windblade a (comically small) set of her VTOL wings, a kneepad of doom, and, for any other Nick Cave, Hellboy and Peaky Blinders fans out there, a Red Right Hand:
Great backstory with headcannon added to make this just...work! Any plans to add any paint to it? (Such as, somehow, have "Windblade's" gestalt mode torso mirror her actually self without compromising Elita-1.)
Man, you put a LOT of thought and work into this. Love every aspect of it, having been a fan of IDWs previous series of transformers. Great job, love that Airrazor the most though.
Thanks everyone for the likes and kind words. I did consider this, but I tend to limit myself to painting faces, details, and areas that won't get worn. Plus, as you say, I wouldn't want to compromise Elita-1, who I like as is. The white nose cone on her chest might not be very Windblade-y, but it ties together the white on Moonracer, Sixshot and Windblade's face, and helps show off Marissa. Thanks so much!
