Tonight, while I was over on Reddit, I stumbled across a post on the r/Transformers subreddit asking, “What’s your opinion on the creator of the Transformers: Primus/Unicron or the Quintessons?”
I started typing. Then I realized I had typed too much. I was going way beyond the simple prompt. I was world-building. Just to be clear, this is just all head-canon type stuff. I’ve drawn bits and pieces from cartoons, comics, movies, all of it. Other people have had similar ideas, so I’m not even trying to claim any sort of originality here. I’m just writing out the process, and maybe someone will read this. Because this is how concepts are born: with a person or people in a room and time to think and tell stories (sometimes to themselves, which is pretty awesome).
Primus as creator: Primus and Unicron are planet-sized Transformers, possibly the only two in the local galactic cluster. They fight and fight and fight, doesn’t really matter why right now, and eventually Primus weakens Unicron. In order to slowly regain their strength, Unicron has to devour worlds. More on that later. Primus, now lacking much of anything to do, having been locked in battle with Unicron since the dawn of time, decides to permanently shift into giant-sphere-ship-shape and then disperses their own spark, creating the first Cybertronians of their own metal body and spark. These first seven Cybertronians are the original Primes (I prefer 7 to 12, because 7 is a prime number).
Each Prime is also granted an artifact that is directly tied to their individual spark. Seven Primes / Seven Matrixes. Each successive wielder of the Matrixes will bear the knowledge of the Primes that came before them, and will take on the name of their line. Think kind of like the Trill symbiotes. Similar concept, but not as pronounced. Maybe more like an awakened Bene Gesserit.
Obviously, one of the Primes is Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime’s role is to act as a protector. Not just of Cybertronian life, but all sapient and sentient life. Optimus’s role is to optimize the conditions for life to thrive. Optimus is also optimistic. You get it.
Then there’s Forge Prime. Forge’s role is to create the means of producing new proto-forms. Primus’s spark babies have to go somewhere. Proto-form + spark = new Cybertronian! Huzzah! It’s a truck! Forge Prime makes the proto-form factories, which don’t need them or their Matrix of Forming (working name) to continue production, only a constant flow of Positive Energon (Energon+), which is basically just Primus’s blood, and access to one of the Spark Wells. There are three Spark Wells that lead from Primus’s Heart, aka the All-Spark, at the center of Cybertron to the surface. One of those Spark Wells exits onto an area that would later be known as Iacon, near the “North” pole. Once again, Cybertron is not a planet. It’s a planet-sized mega-transformer that has a spherical alt-mode that moves on its own propulsion like an untethered rogue planet. The same as Unicron. Only no one seems to know where Primus/Cybertron is going. So Iacon really isn’t near the “North” pole, as those designations are meaningless for the Cybertronians. However, it is good for audiences, because it allows them to have some frame of reference. Iacon is on “top” of Cybertron, so Iacon is near the “North Pole” of Cybertron. The Primes setup their homes around the Iacon Well and production facility. That well produces the humanoid bipedal Cybertronians. Another of the Well-Factory sites produces “animal” type cybernetic lifeforms. The third Well-Factory remains dormant. Forge investigates, but finds no reason the factory is not operable. It just appears that the All-Spark isn’t interested in sending up any sparks. Forge declares their task completed, and just vanishes from public site. The other Primes absolutely clueless where they went. It is unlikely that Forge deactivated, because the Matrix of Forming didn’t choose a new bearer. The Primes form the council, which they include a seventh seat for the missing Forge, in case they (or their successor) ever decide to return to Iacon.
Things go okay for a while, new Cybertronians are imbued with Primus’s spark, and the population keeps expanding. Energon+ is plentiful, thanks to Cybertron/Primus collecting stellar radiation while passing close to stars, and converting in into Energon+. This is a mirror to how Unicron needs to destroy to survive. Primus is recharged by proximity to life-giving energy. Primus creates life. Unicron will never create life, because that would require surrender of the self. Unicron may not be able to create life, but Unicron can corrupt life through Negative Energon (Energon-).
Then Cybertron drifts through a system (because Cybertron is really a planet-shaped ship, like Unicron) that is occupied by the civilization that would later become the Quintessons. The Quints invade and “colonize” Cybertron, and outlaw the indigenous Cybertronians from being able to even know their own history, replacing it with the narrative that the Quints “created” the Cybertronians. The remaining Primes lead a valiant, but failed opposition to the Quint occupation. During this period, Micronus Prime ventures out to the dormant Well-Factory. The vast majority of the surface of that region rips off of Cybertron, transforming into a smaller spherical world, and then promptly disappearing through a spontaneously generated wormhole. The third Spark Well appears to never have existed, and that region of Cybertron becomes the Rust Lands, aka the Sea of Rust.
Quint occupation goes on for an extended period of time, with the Quints having developed the Space Bridge technology to keep their home world and Cybertron connected, as Cybertron continued its Primus-only-knows course through the local galactic cluster. The Quints are, by the time the Cybertronians unfortunately encountered them, a technorganic species. They started off fully organic, not unlike humans, and during the Cybertronian Occupation, the Quints were still roughly human-sized bipedal cyborgs.
Eventually the Cybertronians rose up, driving off the Quints and corrupting the bridge linking Cybertron and Quint homeworld. Space bridges to other systems (some of which the Quints also “colonized”) remained active, so long as Energon sources remained available. During occupation, the Quints did so well at eradicating the old history, that instead of their culture going back to pre-occupation, it instead mirrored the Quint occupation government, just with Cybertronians at the top. Things went nasty caste system, then Megatron and Optimus Prime (the only bearer of one of the original seven matrixes) lead the revolt. Clash of ideologies after the council is toppled leads to the formation of the Autobot and Decepticon factions.
During this time, Cybertron/Primus is drifting through one of the expanses between galaxies. Decepticons want to continue using the linked worlds to use Quint methods of draining Energon, but Optimus Prime opposes, as his “ancestor” has shared their knowledge of how all Cybertronians were created by Primus, and how Cybertron replenishes its Energon reserves through solar radiation. Problem is, that crossing from one galaxy to another takes a lot of time. Sure, space is relatively empty in these intergalactic expanses, so Cybertron doesn’t ever need to course correct, but it takes an aggressively long time for Cybertron to make the journey. The options are for the Cybertronians to either keep harvesting Energon via the Space Bridges to worlds in the prior galaxy or go into a long-term hibernation sequence. Option A guarantees a steady supply of Energon during the voyage. Even if a world is depleted, other systems are available. Option B is risky, because no Cybertronian knows if Cybertron’s Energon reserves will be sufficient, even with %99.999999 of the population going into hibernation. After all, even when your computer/game console is in “sleep” mode, it is still using power. No one knows if individual sparks will survive the intergalactic trek without more Energon.
We know that the galaxy that Cybertron is headed to is the Milky Way, but which galaxy is it coming from? This is where I’m going to attempt to use our current understanding of physics1. The closest non-satellite galaxy to the Milky Way is Barnard’s Galaxy. It is only about 7,000 light years in diameter, while the Milky Way is 87,400 light years in diameter2. This doesn’t rule out Barnard’s Galaxy as the home galaxy of the Quintessons and possibly the Cybertronians3, but it may not be our best option. You know how earlier I said those intergalactic expanses are huge and mostly empty? Yeah, there’s actually a whole bunch of smaller satellite galaxies within that expanse, so really Cybertron would redirect to skirt the edges of smaller galaxies to restore Energon levels using solar collectors. Still, that’s a lot of space, and every time Cybertron would have to recharge would mean adjusting its speed through space, because that’s the other issue: speed. For now, let us continue using Barnard’s Galaxy as our reference point. How far away from the Milky Way is Barnard’s Galaxy? 1.859 MILLION LY. That means, any of the light we observe originating from Barnard’s Galaxy took 1.859 million years before being observable from the Milky Way. Arguably, nothing can go faster than light/the speed of light. It is referred to as the universal constant, because it always seems to go the same speed. It is also the universal speed limit, in that you can not go faster than the speed of light without breaking some laws of physics.
Space bridges already break the laws of physics. They are stabilized wormholes (aka singularities) and function the same way basically all “gate” technology in sci-fi works4.
Is Cybertron travelling at faster than light (FTL) or sublight speeds? Even if Cybertron was travelling at 99.999…% of the speed of light5 it would take over 1.859 million years to get from Barnard’s Galaxy to the Milky Way without any slowing down. Relativity then makes everything weirder for the inhabitants of Cybertron, because time would “slow” for anyone on Cybertron, which would make using the Space Bridges to systems in Barnard’s Galaxy a bit of a problem.
Example: Cybertron is travelling the intergalactic expanse between Barnard’s Galaxy and the Milky Way going 99.999….% of the speed of light. Megatron orders Soundwave (who can make those Energon containment cubes from his torso) to go to planet Indus-Triton via Space Bridge, which is located in Barnard’s Galaxy. Soundwave makes trip one, spends about an Earth year on Indus-Triton gathering Energon, and returns to Cybertron, where just under 8 minutes has passed. Soundwave then makes a second trip to Indus-Triton after taking 10 minutes to unload. For every second that passes on Indus-Triton, 19.6 hours pass on Cybertron6. 10 minutes equals 600 seconds. That comes out to 11,760 hours at 10 minutes Cybertron time to relative Indus-Triton time, or 490 days. This is what is known as time dilation, and the closer to the speed of light one can get, the bigger this variance becomes. It also means that those on Cybertron would not observe the same passage of 1.859 million years while travelling at near light speed. Also, I probably got my math wrong on all of this. I believe the time dilation would be even greater than what I figured, but whatever, this is a piece on world building.
That being said, determining how closely you want to hew to actual physics is a choice when world building. I’ll argue till the relative end of time that there is no genuine distinction between “hard” or “soft” sci-fi, and that anyone who does is spouting elitist nonsense. However, when world building you do need to set rules for your world to follow. If you have magic users, for instance, and all the magic users use a consistent set of rules, then those rules should narratively be followed, unless you have a specific plot point that there is some other type of magic that has a different set of rules. That however is usually a narrative plot-point used to change the world. Right now, we are world building, not plot building, although you may see the beginning or narrative plot-points during this stage. Take note of these “origin points”. They are good for spinning whole narratives later.
So, we have a decision now:
A) Cybertron moves through the universe at sublight speeds; or
B) Cybertron travels with some type of FTL, but still slower than the near-instantaneous Space Bridges.
Okay, if travelling at 99.999…% speed of light, it would take 1.859 million years to traverse the intergalactic expanse. We already established that. Because of time dilation, though, the Cybertronians who remained on Cybertron during the trip would only experience 26 years!? My math has to be wrong, right? Let’s say “the War” started right before exiting into intergalactic space. 26 years is a long time for a war to be going on, and unless there had been an Einstein Cybertronian, they may not even realize the time dilation of relativistic speeds. They only start finding this out when they start sending out Energon retrieval teams, but a few years into the war and entire civilizations are disappearing from the other side of the Space Bridges. The Quint colonies, now isolated from other Quint civilizations, start to diverge drastically over the eons that are passing in Barnard’s Galaxy. Some of those worlds also have Cybertronian exodites and exiles, so there’s a lot of weirdness there to explore. This is where we get traditional Quintesson judges with the five faces, the tentacle armed prosecutors with the xenomorph style heads, the big head scientists, etc. By the time that Cybertron reaches the Milky Way, and then when they eventually wind up on Earth, close to 2 million years have passed in Barnard’s Galaxy. The Quintessons have developed FTL engines, so they no longer need access to the Space Bridge network. The judges are in charge of the more aggressive collective of Quintesson offshoots, but they’re locked in war with another faction. This is where the “masters” can be introduced, as an offshoot of the Quintessons that remained humanoid, but largely cybernetic, some of whom forge symbiotic relationships with their ancient Cybertronian guardians. The aggressive Quintessons have tried to replicate the Cybertronians, but the results were the animalistic Sharkticons and Allicons, who only possessed rudimentary higher functions.
Going route A, the sublight route, gives the Quintessons significant time to evolve and change, while allowing the Cybertronians on Cybertron to have remained relatively stagnant during the intergalactic crossing. It would make things even more fragmented if the Autobots managed to control the Space Bridge hub for the better part of the voyage.
Which leads us to…
THE MILKY WAY! FINALLY!
But things aren’t going well for the Autobots. The All-Spark appears to have stopped making new Transformers. The Decepticon scientist Shockwave found a way to use the sparkless proto-forms, producing the Vehicon drones. A few willing “volunteers” are modified to be drone controllers in a rather invasive procedure and become the Vehicon generals serving the Decepticons. Autobots have no way to fill their own ranks, and their numbers are depleting. Someone steals the All-Spark (not Megatron or Optimus) and uses the Space Bridge hub to hurl it at random into the Milky Way. With the All-Spark gone, Cybertron starts going dark, locking into orbit around the nearest star on the edge of the Milky Way. The Energon+ solar engines are dead without the All-Spark. No more Energon means no more Space Bridge.
The War continues, with Optimus sending any remaining civilians back through the Space Bridge with remaining Energon+ reserves to worlds in Barnard’s Galaxy. Perceptor and other Autobot scientists and engineers start building the Ark with info gained from excursions to some of the “friendly” worlds in Barnard’s Galaxy while they held the Space Bridge hub during transit. The Autobots don’t realize one of their own is a spy for the Decepticons, and that Megatron is building his own vessel, the Nemesis. The Ark is completed, and Optimus reveals to the Autobots that he believes his Matrix will guide them to the All-Spark. The Ark launches with all Autobots remaining on board, and Megatron follows in the Nemesis with his Decepticons, leaving Shockwave and the Vehicons to hold Cybertron7.
Both the Ark and Nemesis utilize experimental FTL drives. The Matrix leads the Autobots to chart a course for the Solar System and its third planet. The Ark exits FTL between the asteroid belt and Mars, and the Nemesis soon follows. Space battle. Boom boom. Optimus jettisons in escape pods most of the Autobots. Some wind up heading to Earth, some to Mars8. Upon Earth approach, the Ark and Nemesis both are seriously damaged. The Ark crash lands into the side of a volcano/mountain, and the Nemesis crashes on Earth’s moon. Both crews go into emergency stasis modes while their onboard systems repair the damage to both ships and crew. Megatron orders his ship to reactivate his crew once it detects the Autobot signal again, as the Decepticons do not know where the All-Spark is, and only Optimus Prime will know. Megatron’s spy is still embedded with the Autobots.
Time passes. Humans evolve and create civilizations. In 1984 the Ark’s AI, Teletran-1, begins to activate the Autobots, scanning the area with drones to find suitable alt-modes for the Autobots to blend in without arousing suspicion while searching for the All-Spark. Megatron’s own AI system, also referred to as Nemesis, follows the same course of action. The Ark is equipped with solar Energon+ collectors, but it only produces enough to sustain the Autobot crew, but not enough to recharge the FTL engine. Optimus Prime’s hope is that the All-Spark will be able to recharge the engine for the return trip to Cybertron. Megatron has no plan to restore the Nemesis and its engines. Megatron plans to build a Space Bridge on Earth to get back to Cybertron using stolen Energon- from Earth, and once the Autobots are defeated and the All-Spark is restored on Cybertron, using Earth as another Energon- mine until it is depleted.9
That’s the world building. The audience doesn’t need to know all of this going in. The sadly mangled physics doesn’t need to be covered, until it becomes relevant to a plotline. Probably a good idea to get an actual physicist to crunch those numbers before setting that down in the finalized lore. That “moon” of Cybertron? That’s Gobotron, which doesn’t need to be mentioned until the Minicons/Gobots show up (if they show up). There’s plenty of story seeds. It doesn’t have to be 1984, that’s just a nostalgia thing, because G1 started in 1984. Even once the All-Spark is restored to Cybertron and the Autobots retake Iacon City and the Space Bridge hub, they get new allies and enemies from the systems in Barnard’s Galaxy. Hey, you’ve even got a “lost” Transformer civilization on Mars! Maximals, Predacons, Insecticons, Junkions and others can all be groups of Cybertronian exodites/exiles in Barnard’s Galaxy10. The sky’s the limit. You could include just about any era of Transformers into this setup.
So, that’s my rambling process on how I world build. Writing it down is a must, for my own memory, but I also don’t feel completely bound to any of these ideas until they are used in a storyline.11 This is the type of stuff that rattles around in my head.
Hope you enjoyed!
- Filtered through my educated but still amateur knowledge of cosmic scales and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies. I am totally aware that Wikipedia is not an absolute and correct source of information, but this is good enough for what I’m doing right now, and I’m going to take some massive liberties with scientific info and physics. ↩︎
- A light year (or LY) is the distance that light can travel at over the span of a standard Earth year. Earth is only 8.3 light minutes away from our Sun, or 0.00001581 LY for reference. ↩︎
- When determining the location of the “final” battle between Primus and Unicron, it need not have happened in the same galaxy as the origin point of the Quintessons. It is possible that Cybertronians had made a galactic crossing before, but that wouldn’t explain why Optimus Prime has no “ancestral” memory of how that process would go. ↩︎
- Wormhole gates require the civilization(s) building them to place a gate at location A(origin) and B(destination). Theoretically, you can attach multiple gates to one another, creating a gate network, once a gate has been placed. But in order to get to point B, then C, then D, and on, you first need to get to B and beyond by travelling at sublight speeds. “Stargate Universe” explains this process fairly well, but the Destiny also appears capable of going at faster than light (FTL) speeds, so maybe not the best example. Thinking about it, there were a lot of issues with SGU and the expansion of the Gate Network lore that really does not track well. ↩︎
- 100% speed of light is theoretically impossible for anything other than light itself while travelling in “normal” space. ↩︎
- https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/time/time-machines ↩︎
- Shockwave is an absolute psychopath, and Megatron rightfully fears him and the Vehicon horde he has created. Megatron rightfully doesn’t trust the loyalties of the Vehicon generals to be to the Decepticons. Megatron hopes that by the time he recovers the All-Spark and returns to Cybertron that Shockwave and the Vehicons will have long since burned out due to lack of Energon. Megatron miscalculates Shockwave’s ingenuity, so by the time the Decepticons are harvesting Energon- on Earth and construct the new Space Bridge, Shockwave and the Vehicons are still very much operational. ↩︎
- The so-called “face” on Mars is a Cybertronian monument/beacon, big enough to be visible from space. ↩︎
- Megatron’s plan will not work. Even if he were to succeed in defeating the Autobots and getting the All-Spark back to Cybertron, the All-Spark won’t produce new Sparks for new Cybertronians, because the Energon- is poisoning Cybertron. ↩︎
- Remember how that footnote right above this one mentioned that Energon- is poisoning Cybertron? Make the “bad” factions in Barnard’s Galaxy of Cybertronians to have been sustaining themselves solely on Energon-, while the “good” factions have adapted to different ways of obtaining Energon+ that do not damage the worlds they inhabit. ↩︎
- I world build for my own Table Top Roleplaying (TTRPG) campaigns. Even if a game has an “established” setting, I treat it as a mere suggestion, and may completely rewrite setting history if it suits the stories I want my players to experience and alter with their actions. Nothing is set in stone until it is established in the story. ↩︎
The Blue Dragon Library 