Derailment

"Derailment" is the eleventh Beast Wars: Uprising story, serving as the fourth part of the series finale. It was released eight days after the previous story, "Safe Spaces", on December 27th, 2016. At 179 pages, it is the longest of the Beast Wars: Uprising stories, and indeed, the longest piece of prose fiction the Transformers Collector's Club put out, the size of a small novella. It picks up right where the previous story left off, with the new threat of the Vehicons, and describes the final days of the Great Uprising, revisiting various characters from throughout the series. Initially upon publication, it seemed to be the final part of the series overall, but an epilogue would be published one day later, finishing off the story of Beast Wars: Uprising. Being as long as it is, the story is split up into five chapters, so annotations will be formatted slightly differently here than those for the previous stories. "Derailment" is written by Jim Sorenson and David Bishop, with additional writing in chapter 1 by Jesse Wittenrich, edited by Wittenrich, copy-edited by Louis Sun, cover art by Christopher Colgin, and interior art by Guido Guidi, Wittenrich, Colgin, Josh Burcham, Matt Frank, and Gonçalo Lopes. 

In psychiatry, "derailment" (borrowed from the term that describes when a train falls off its tracks), refers to speech or thought that features a sequence of loosely-related ideas that change topic from sentence to sentence; it was originally coined in German by psychiatrist Carl Schneider in 1930, as entgleisen. The term has also been used to refer to the disruption of public discourse with an outside event unrelated to the original topic. The term reflects the nature of the story; it follows up from the events of the past ten stories, checking in with various characters around Cybertron as they experience the Vehicon Apocalypse, as the course of the Great Uprising changes irrevocably due to an unforeseen threat; alliances are made, villains are revealed, and in the end, no one will ever be the same. Almost every living character who has shown up in previous installments makes at least a brief appearance, leaving us with a cast list of 213 characters, plus many more who are mentioned; I’ll try to limit annotations to new characters who show up, but many of the more minor ones do have things to go over, and even some of the major characters have changed quite a bit since we’ve last seen them. There will also likely be some repeats of concepts I’ve already gone over, but in the interest of completeness, I’ll go over those as well.

The cover of the story, by Christopher Colgin, takes the form of a playing card equivalent to the French-suited playing cards used widely in the western world, specifically based on the layout of the King, Queen, Jack, and Joker cards. It depicts Resistance leader Lio Convoy and his dark opposite, Vehicon commander Galva Convoy, flipped like a mirror image of each other, with Lio Convoy’s side of the card illustrated with a capital M and the Beast Wars Maximal symbol, and Galva Convoy’s with a capital V and the Beast Machines Vehicon symbol. Lio Convoy is in his post-Beast Upgrade form, based specifically on his then-recent Legends toy; a redeco of Titans Return Alpha Trion. The toy turned into a mechanical lion, and as remnants of Alpha Trion’s features, it also had a ship mode and a Headmaster/Titan Master gimmick (with Alpha Trion’s Titan Master Sovereign being replaced with Sentinel Prime’s Infinitus, to better match Lio’s appearance); this story excludes those elements, instead depicting him as a standard Transformer with two alternate modes. Galva Convoy is depicted on the cover as a virtual redeco of Legends Lio Convoy in his Beast Wars II Galvatron-inspired colors; in the story itself, he’s still in his vehicular BotCon 2015 body, a redeco of Lio Convoy’s 2015 toy that started off this run, and which was itself a redeco and retool of the Generations Thrilling 30 Orion Pax toy.

The story is split into five sections, as denoted on the contents page. Like “Intersectionality” before it, I’ll treat part as its own little thing, with sections based on the cipher text used as section breaks, starting over at one for each part. Each part has a title incorporating a river from the underworld of Hades in Greek mythology; I believe this might be inspired by Jim Sorenson’s research into Buzz Dixon’s documents, which showed unused titles for 1987’s direct-to-video G.I. Joe: The Movie, intended for a broadcast version of the film that would turn it into a five-episode mini-series, the over-arching film itself being retitled “The Five Rivers of Hades”; these titles were “Swiftly Flows the Acheron”, “Sinking in the Cocytus”, “Swept Down the Lethe”, “Swamped by the Phlegethon”, and “Swimming the Styx”. The rivers used for the parts of “Derailment” are the same ones, but in a different order. Just for completeness’ sake: the Lethe was a river that flowed around the cave of Hypnos, and caused amnesia to anyone who drank from it; the Phlegethon, a stream of raging fire that coils around the earth, leading into Tartarus, the prison of the Titans; the Cocytus, the river of wailing that flows into the Acheron; the Styx, the most famous of the rivers, identified in Roman times as the rive on which the ferryman Charon transports the dead to Hades – it was also the name of a Titan/goddess who sided with Zeus during the war between the gods and Titans; and the Acheron, the entrance to Hades, depicted in  Greek classical sources as where Charon’s ferry was located instead. That leads us to:

Part 1:

Section 1: Sorenson and Bishop note in their Afterword to the finale (published in the next and final story) that the structure of this story (featuring events from all around Cybertron) was inspired by Max Brooks’ 2006 zombie apocalypse epistolary novel, World War Z, which took the form of interviews with various characters around the world 10 years after the events of a catastrophic global outbreak of a zombie virus, which came to an end after the zombies were reduced to a manageable number and kept in remote areas; the main difference is that this story takes place in the present, and we see the events of the Vehicon Apocalypse first hand. As such, each section starts by listing the location on Cybertron where it takes place, and by noting the time until and after the events of the previous story, where the Vehicons first began assimilating Cybertronians during the Resistance’s revived gladiatorial Games in Protihex. Because so many locations show up in this, I’ll be repeating my previous annotations a bit and explaining where they are and how they figured into earlier stories, just to help make it clearer.

With that, we start at Resistance Headquarters in Stanix. A region of Cybertron introduced in the story “The Magnificent Six!” in the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1991, Stanix was shown as part of Resistance territory in the map of Cybertron published “Safe Spaces”, and briefly mentioned as the location of Resistance headquarters by Cheetor. B’Boom has been around since “Broken Windshields” as one of the original members of Lio Convoy’s Resistance; he’s upgraded from his vehicular form into a mechanical version of his original toy, turning into a robotic mandrill. Blackarachnia, too, has upgraded; mentions of her having hands and a “mandible blaster” later in the story make it clear she’s in her Transmetal 2 form. The IPS (Independent Predacon States) and its ruling body, the Tripredacus Alliance, were established to have seceded from the Builders in the previous story and potentially entering into an alliance with the Resistance; we have it confirmed here here that Lio Convoy knew they had demanded the death of Preditron and went along with it. B’Boom refers to the Alliance’s demands as “mondo uncool;” this use of mondo (the Italian word for “world”) is derived from the bizarre 1962 Italian pseudo-documentary Mondo Cane. Petrex was originally mentioned in issue #9 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye, while Uraya originally comes from the Dreamwave Productions mini-series The War Within. Kaon was established to have been partially annexed by both the Resistance and the IPS last story; it debuted in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages as a Decepticon held-city and has generally shown up in modern fiction as such. Petrohex, also seen as Resistance territory last time, is split into two parts: Lower Petrohex was originally mentioned in issue #22 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye, while Upper Petrohex was mentioned in a post on the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime. Proximax originally appeared in the Classics prose story “The New World”; it showed up heavily in “Cultural Appropriations” as where the Ex-Bots (who we’ll see later) fought the Monster GoBots, and “Safe Spaces” established Uraya bordered the city. Burthov first appeared in Defiance, IDW Publishing’s prequel mini-series for the 2009 live-action film Revenge of the Fallen; it was established to be a Predacon town all the way back in “Broken Windshields”. Altihex was another city first seen in The War Within; we saw it back in “Burning Bridges” as contested territory, having since been taken over by the Resistance. Protihex, as mentioned, was where the majority of the last story took place; it’s another The War Within original. Corumkan, meanwhile, was first mentioned as where Shokaract centered his rule on future Cybertron in the BotCon Europe 1999 prose-story “Herald”, part of BotCon’s “Reaching the Omega Point” storyline. The Maximal Nation was established in “Cultural Appropriation”, where it cut ties with the Builders. Preditron was rescued by the Resistance from Fortress Maximus in “Head Games”; Ikard was shown to be in charge of his execution last story.

Cybershark was first seen in “Head Games” as one of Lio Convoy’s inner circle, who led the mission into Fortress Maximus, where it was established that he was willing to ignore ethics if it meant that the mission would be accomplished. It’s not clear if he turns into a mechanical form of his original hammerhead shark toy, or his Transmetal 2 great white shark form. Psycho-Orb was mentioned first last story, as a former aid to the Builder administrator of Protihex who organized a coup and allowed the Resistance to take over the city. Originally from the Robotmasters toyline, Psycho-Orb was a redeco of the Beast Wars Armordillo toy, a Predacon armadillo who was depicted in fiction as a reprogrammed Maximal protoform with psychokinetic abilities; this version ditches the reprogrammed protoform idea but keeps his psychokinetic abilities and gives him a Russian accent.

Most of the contested cities were previously shown as such in the map from “Safe Spaces” and mentioned as such by Blackarachnia in the story proper. Valvolux was originally mentioned in The Transformers Universe profile for 1988 Triggercon Ruckus, published in issue #66 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. Ky-Alexia was mentioned in DK Publishing’s Transformers: The Movie Guide tying in to the 2007 live-action Transformers film. Simfur, named for long-time Transformers writer Simon Furman, was first seen in IDW Publishing’s Movie Prequel miniseries for the 2007 film. Rodion first appeared in issue #22 of the 2009-2011 The Transformers ongoing, and was named for the protagonist of the 1866 Russian novel Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ibex was first seen in issue #77 of the Marvel The Transformers comic; it previously appeared as the location of one of Cybertron’s last remaining spaceports in “Not All Megatrons”. The Mithril Sea was first mentioned in the tech specs for Autobot Mini-Vehicle Rook, sold at BotCon Europe 2002. Ultrix first appeared in issue #9 of IDW Publishing’s Autocracy miniseries. These cities were all established to be around the Mithril Sea in the map from “Safe Spaces”. Kolkular was another city from The War Within, while Kalis first appeared in a storyline from issues #164-#169 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic, and was previously seen as Builder territory in “Burning Bridges”.

Direwolf, created by Simon Furman, was an early Predacon seen in Furman’s semi-canonical novel Alignment, which bridged Marvel’s Generation 2 series into Beast Wars. It was established in that story that the Predacons were initially a splinter faction created during the brief reign of the Decepticon council following Galvatron II’s defeat. Direwolf made the jump to canon in the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime; presumably, he turns into some sort of mechanical wolf. The Maxilla is a new concept introduced here, a group of fortresses which we’ll see later in the story; the maxilla is the name for the upper jawbone in humans and many vertebrate animals. Vos, which showed up as the location of heavy fighting between Builder and Resistance forces in “Trigger Warnings”, was first seen in the prose story “State Games” from the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1986, while Tesarus (previously seen as Builder territory in “Micro-Aggressions”) was first mentioned in issue #4 of IDW’s More than Meets the Eye. Iacon is the most famous of all Transformers cities, being first mentioned in Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter’s initial treatment for The Transformers all the way back in 1984; its generally depicted as the capital of Cybertron whenever it shows up and has been held by Builders since the beginning of this series. As mentioned in “Safe Spaces”, Protihex was delivered into the Resistance by Psycho-Orb.

Queen Rage first appeared in the series as a Predacon gladiatorial combatant all the way back in “Broken Windshields”; “Head Games” established that after Lio Convoy disrupted the game she was participating in, she declared herself the winner and annexed several cities, which were called “Rageland” in “Safe Spaces”. The original Rage (created by        Shōji Imaki) was a jellyfish Transformer from the prose story “To Jellyfish with Love! Cry Out, Stampy Blade” published in the collected Beast Wars Neo manga. The sole inhabitant of the water-covered planet Wednesday, her name was originally Rāge (pronounced “Rah-gey”) from the Japanese word for jellyfish, “kurage”; her name has been changed to the more standard English word “rage” for these stories. We’ll touch on her a bit more later. Praxis (more properly known as Praxus, which we’ll touch on later) was another city introduced in The War Within, and was established to be Bluestreak’s destroyed home in the “Keepers Trilogy” of Dreamwave tie-in novels from ibooks. Shokaract, meanwhile, was one of the exclusive toys at BotCon 2000, a redeco of Beast Wars Rampage; originally a lowly Predacon from the future known simply as “the Hunter,” he came across Unicron’s Dark Essence on Earth, which turned him into the extremely powerful Shokaract, who went on to conquer Cybertron and wage war throughout the galaxy. Here, he’s a normal Transformer, though he still is as imperious as his cosmically-powered counterpart. Hyperious first appeared in the Wings Universe prose story “Flames of Yesterday”, and previously showed up in “Not All Megatrons” as being close to where rogue Autobot scientist Leatherhide had been experimenting. Harmonex previously appeared in issue #10 of IDW Publishing’s Monstrosity miniseries. Carpessa and Damaxus were both noted to have gone dark in “Safe Spaces”, which also mentioned that the Gung-Ho had blown up Cybertron’s satellite communications system. Carpessa was first mentioned in issue #3 of IDW Publishing’s Sins of the Wreckers mini-series, while Damaxus first showed up in one of the earliest Beast Wars: Uprising stories, the prologue for the 2014 Collectors’ Club storyline “Alone Together”, mentioned as being the location where Rattrap supposedly died. We’ll see what the radiation surge is in a bit.

The section-breaking cipher text this time around is the Book of Logos, which will be mentioned later in the story in more detail, where we’ll go over it a bit more. It’s a book from the Covenant of Primus, the Cybertronian version of the Bible first seen in the two-part finale of the Beast Wars cartoon, “Nemesis”. The section break is patterned after the interior of the Covenant seen “Nemesis”, an orange sort of case, with speakers along the side, a screen with red Maximal Cybertronix text, and a cassette tape at the bottom under which lies the standard stop, play, record, and other such buttons; in a cute touch, the cassette tape seen here is patterned after the toy version of classic Decepticon Mini-Cassette, Rumble. Rather than describe it at the bottom of this page, like I’ve done for previous stories, I’m going to give it a separate sub-page due to its length.

Section 2: Two days later. The Rust Sea was originally mentioned in the letter’s page for issue #162 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic, where it was called the “great rust sea.” It was specifically called the Rust Sea first in issue #3 of 3H Productions’ Universe comic and has also been known as the Sea of Rust or the Rust Spot. Cybertron’s three surviving moons were first mentioned in “Not All Megatrons”; we’ll talk about them a bit more later. Buzz Saw was one of the first year Beast Wars toyline releases in 1996; a Predacon sharing a mold with Waspinator, he turned into a bee (although in practice he more resembles a yellowjacket). Often distinguished from Waspinator in his various minor appearances by drawing him with his mold’s normal head (rather than the mutant head the Beast Wars cartoon used), he was originally described as a fairly generic warrior type in his original tech specs. It was IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook that introduced the idea that he was secretly a coward, preferring to stay at high altitudes to avoid conflict. Of note is the fact he was one of the few non-show Beast Wars characters to return for the Beast Machines toyline, in which he was reformatted into a technorganic Maximal wasp. He’s partnered with Stormrazor, a Beast Wars version of the Predacon Skystalker from the Prime Beast Hunters toyline. An intelligent yet emotionally unstable dragon with ice powers and launching disks, he was initially known as Stormrazor in preliminary materials, and a Kre-O building block version of him that was packaged with the Battle Net Bumblebee playset was referred to at Toy Fair 2013 with this name. Since Beast Wars: Uprising tries to keep reused names to a minimum, Stormrazor presumably has his preliminary name to distinguish him from another Skystalker not otherwise seen; presumably, the Decepticon Micromaster Porsche 959 from 1989, previously depicted in Dreamwave Productions’ comics as the Decepticon Micromaster leader. (As an aside, you might think that Buzz Saw is another case of that, to distinguish him from Buzzsaw, Laserbeak’s lesser known mold partner that was sold with the original 1984 Soundwave toy, but Buzz Saw’s name was actually spelt that was on his Beast Wars packaging, though it would be reverted to Buzzsaw on his Beast Machines release).

Narrowcasting is a real-world term, and as its name suggests, it’s the opposite of a broadcast; information sent to a specific audience, rather than anyone who has the equipment to pick up the information. Buzz Saw and Stormrazor are the first Resistance members to see the Vehicons; as seen in “Safe Spaces”, they’re the standard three: heavy artillery Tank Drones, flying jet-mode Aero Drones, and the speedy Cycle Drones. PHOTINT is another real world term, an abbreviation of “photo intelligence.” Buzz Saw’s beast mode is called a pulse wasp, a new Cybertronian animal, which is in turn described as a species of insecatron, a catch-all term for all insect-type Cybertronian animals first mentioned in "Not All Megatrons", later noted to be what the Predacon insignia is modeled after in the cipher-text sections. Buzz Saw’s pre-Beast Upgrade vehicle mode is noted to be a twin-rotor helicopter; this marks his original form as being a repurposing of Cybertron Buzzsaw, a retool of Armada Cyclonus designed to homage the Beast Wars character. Like Prime Skystalker, Stormrazor is armed with cryodisks, which launch from his wings.

Section 3: The Cortex, Eject’s base of operations as Administrator of the Games, was introduced in “Broken Windshields”. That story noted that its proper name was the Cyclonus Memorial Tower, and that it was located in Thetacon, a city first seen in IDW Publishing’s Dark of the Moon prequel comic, Foundation. Eject’s office was full of the tickers mentioned here, which provided the cipher text for “Broken Windshields” in the form of sports updates from around Cybertron. The bio-attack on the last Game was Grimlock’s attempt to use the G-Virus on the Tesarus Arena in “Micro-Aggressions”. The Galva Contingency was first mentioned in “Broken Windshields” teasing BotCon 2015’s Customization Class Galva Convoy figure, and Galva Convoy himself first appeared proper in “Not All Megatrons”, brought online via the process described there. In that story, he was shown to be initially attempting to create a new proto-race called the Terrorcons (based on the Energon sub-group), but was persuaded to change course by a mysterious presence, which we will see later. CNA is one term for Cybertronian genetic material, introduced in IDW Publishing’s Spotlight: Arcee, standing for Cyber/Nano Algorithms. The Beast Wars: Uprising version of the Grand Mal (Megatron’s large floating fortress form from Beast Machines) was first seen in “Not All Megatrons”, having been a creation of Thunderwing in this universe during his attempt to conquer Cybertron, and turned into Builder military command after his defeat. It’s revealed here that this universe’s version of Vehicons are powered by anti-sparks, a term previously used to describe Unicron’s life force in the Prime cartoon.

“Macromaster” is a term from previous Beast Wars: Uprising stories, and describes all normal-sized Transformers, in the same vein as Micromasters, with an additional term, Megamaster, describing the large city-sized “Titan” Transformers. Hexima was a city first mentioned in the Risk board game tying into the 2007 Transformers movie; seen as where the Darksyder crime organization held a decent chunk of power, it was noted to be one of the few non-contested Builder cities outside of the north pole of Cybertron in the map published in “Safe Spaces”. The order to allow the Vehicons to enter Builder territory, Vehicon General Order 66, is obviously named for Order 66 from the 2005 film Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine’s secret orders for the Clone Trooper army to execute the Jedi, hinting at what it would actually mean for the story later. We saw the Micromasters infected with the Vehicon nano-plague under the pretense of it being a combat upgrade and being taken as prisoners of war in “Safe Spaces”. Ky-Alexia was first mentioned in DK Publishing’s Transformers: The Movie Guide, tying into the 2007 Transformers movie. Lio Convoy’s Solipsistic Staff was established to have a dampening field all the way back in “Broken Windshields”; it becomes important later. Zoom Out was previously seen in “Broken Windshields”, a full-sized version of the 2007 Transformers movie toyline’s Real Gear Robot camcorder Zoom Out 25X; he’s not speaking in a German accent here like he did in that story, but admittedly he only had one line there. Easy enough to forget. ER28-0652 was the Allsafe Cybersecurity employee number of Elliot Alderson from the 2015 drama thriller television series Mr. Robot. The final line in this section is an inverted version of the phrase “the revolution will not be televised”; originating from the Black Power movement in 1960’s America, it is most famously remembered as a 1970 song by American jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron.

Section 4: The following two sections were guest written by Jesse Wittenrich, an employee of Fun Publications who had written and drawn several other stories for the company and who had also served as an editor on both Beast Wars: Uprising and the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime. The main characters of these two sections, Magna Stampede and Stockade, are a bit complicated. Magna Stampede was an Autobot unicorn from the Universe toyline (though in practice the term Autobot was used on both Autobot and Maximal characters), redecoed from Beast Machines Battle Unicorn. With an unreleased bio that described him as the latest in a long line of guardians protecting the High Council pavilion states (seemingly termed the “Magna Heritage” here, see later for more on that), he released in a two-pack with his partner Stockade and the Mini-Cons Prowl and Terradive (redecoes of their original Armada toys). Universe Stockade was an Autobot tank, redecoed from the Beast Machines Tank Drone toy, an aggressive bot who was hard to get along with, and one of the few fully-robotic Transformers left on post-reformatting technorganic Cybertron. A male robot in his previous Universe appearance (and in the Wings Universe Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur), this version of the character is female, and is implied to be in a somewhat romantic relationship with Magna Stampede. This version of Stockade actually appeared before in “Identity Politics”, a petty criminal as described here, and is a Maximal version of the “Unicron Trilogy” Autobot-aligned Mini-Con Stockade sold in the 2008 Universe toyline as part of the Mini-Con Class 10 Pack sold at Kmart and Meijer, among other locations. Redecoed from the Classics Mini-Con Knockdown, she transforms into a Triceratops.

The Pit is the Cybertronian version of hell, first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon. The Redox River is a new location and is named after a real-life chemical reaction (redox standing short for “reduction-oxidation,” and is related to the process of rusting.). Soundbite originally appeared as a transcriptionist in the BotCon 2016 script reading, “The Hot Rod”, created by Wittenrich and John-Paul Bove. She didn’t have any lines in the story, nor did she really do much beyond having her name dropped, so she’s established to be a female Predacon with a carnosaur alternate mode (carnosaurs are a type of theropod dinosaur, to which species like Giganotosaurus belong). In the original script reading, her name was spelt as “Soundbyte,” which was one of the preliminary names for Frenzy in the 2007 Transformers live-action movie. Longhorn, the commander of Magna Stampede’s unit, was a Maximal bull from Beast Machines; he was seen back in “Broken Windshields” as one of the earliest recruits for the Resistance. Magna Stampede’s great aunt Pyra is Pyra Magna, the leader of the Rust Renegades from the Combiner Wars toyline. A retool of Combiner Wars Hot Spot, she transformed into a fire truck, and combined with her teammates to form Victorion. Both Victorion’s packaging bio and IDW Publishing’s comics (where the team were depicted as having formerly been part of the Torchbearers from the Cybertronian colony planet Caminus) linked them to the Rust Sea. Magna Stampede and Pyra Magna’s relationship, meanwhile, calls to mind Rattrap and Arcee; in the Beast Wars episode “Transmutate”, Rattrap invoked Arcee’s name and called her his great-aunt. This line was written as a shout out to Susan Blu, the voice of Arcee in The Transformers: The Movie and the following seasons of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, who served as the voice director for Beast Wars and voiced the titular character of that episode; later fiction like the Universe comic and the Legends manga would reintroduce the idea. Triceradon was one of the Dinobots from Beast Machines, a sub-group of Maximals with their own dedicated branding. A redeco of the Beast Wars Neo Predacon Guiledart, Triceradon turned into a Triceratops, and was a male Transformer who served as the team’s second-in-command. This version of the character, however, is female.

Section 5: Stockade’s transformation into a Tank Drone notably includes her Universe toy’s colors, a unique element in all those turned into Vehicons. Magna Stampede’s unpublished bio called his axe weapon a vibro-scythe. Hics are a unit of measurement first mentioned in the prose story “The Magnificent Six!” from the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1991, with microhics being a smaller length ala micrometers. CatSCAN was a BotCon 2002 exclusive, an Autobot tiger redecoed from the Beast Machines Night Slash Cheetor. The original CatSCAN was not a living Transformer, but instead an artificial being that was created by Apelinq giving, an old Autobot medical computer’s artificial intelligence a body via his Transfer Interlink. This version of the character reflects that by being detached and emotionless, despite being a full-blown Cybertronian. He previously showed up in “Broken Windshields” as one of the participants of the final Game before the Grand Uprising, as he mentions. He’s accompanied by two Predacons. The first, recognizable from his description as “burgundy, yellow, and lime green,” is Beetle, one of the 1996 Beast Wars McDonald’s promotion, a simple figure who turned into a stag beetle. The other, as confirmed by Wittenrich, is fellow stag beetle Insecticon, from the first year of the Beast Wars toyline. Like CatSCAN, he was one of the contestants in the final Game from “Broken Windshields”. Notably, Beetle was given the name “Insecticon” in Japan in the guidebook Beast Wars Perfect Book. Spark extraction is generally fatal if not performed properly, as seen in the Beast Wars cartoon.

Section 6: The Hydrax Plateau was an area of Cybertron first mentioned in the DK Publishing guidebook Transformers: The Ultimate Guide; it has appeared a few times before now, most notably in “Not All Megatrons” where it served as storage for Cybertron’s decommissioned space fleet. Polyhex was a Decepticon-held city first seen in issue #17 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. The Gung-Ho, first mentioned in “Intersectionality”, was mentioned as having destroyed Cybertron’s satellite network in “Safe Spaces”; the Gung-Ho itself was the ship of the Maximals from Beast Wars Neo, as lead by the gruff Maxmial wooly mammoth Big Convoy. Notably, Big Convoy isn’t actually named that in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, presumably to distance him from Lio Convoy. Instead, he’s named Slammoth, one of the options for a name from the 2015 Combiner Wars Fan Built Combiner poll, which lost to Victorion. The Iacon Communication Service was introduced in IDW Publishing’s Robots in Disguise ongoing and was previously mentioned in “Not All Megatrons”. Radio Free Cybertron, meanwhile, was first mentioned in “Broken Windshields”, and was named both for Radio Free Europe, a Cold War to modern day American propaganda program, and the real-life podcast Radio Free Cybertron, a Transformers fan podcast and one of the earliest podcasts in the world. Maximal Nation’s propaganda channel, Voice of Maximals, is named for Voice of America, a federally owned news network established by the United States during World War II, which still exists to this day. Optimal, the director of VoM, is seemingly a version of Beast Wars Optimus Primal’s Optimal Optimus form, the large figure that turned from gorilla to jet to armored vehicle, separate from Optimus himself. Optimus Primal was mentioned as having been killed by Blackarachnia and Nightscream in the former’s bio in issue #25 of the Transformers Collector’s Club magazine all the way back in 2009; the mystery surrounding Optimal might suggest that he actually is Optimus Primal, with a new name and Beast Upgrade form.

Section 7: As mentioned, the Ex-Bots (a group of Maximals, Predacons, and Micromasters who banded together to protect civilians during the war, loosely inspired by Marvel’s X-Men), set up their base of operations in Proximax back in “Cultural Appropriation”. Several of the beast modes mentioned here, including chelonoids (Cybertronian turtles, from the Greek work chelonian), DeathEagles (Cybertronian versions of eagles) and Jurassanoids (Cybertronian animals analogous to dinosaurs, derived from the time period known as the Jurassic era) were also first mentioned in that story. Tarantulas last appeared in Beast Wars: Uprising in “Trigger Warnings” as a member of the Predacon Secret Police, a scientist who used their resources for subversive purposes; he’s since gone rogue, adopting a spiderbot beast mode (presumably, his Transmetal body). Spiderbots were the Japanese name for Tarantulas’ small Arachnoid drones in the Beast Wars cartoon, though it was also used in pre-production material to refer to pest animals encountered in the War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video games. The D.E.D. plant mentioned is the Dynamic Energon Distilleries plant that Megatron and Scorponok once worked at, as seen in “Identity Politics”, having been abandoned 25 years ago after the pair engineered a meltdown to cover up their crimes. Hightower was shown to have initially led the Constructicons in “Cultural Appropriation”; “square-chip-in-round-socket” is obviously equivalent to “square-peg-in-round-hole.” Buckethead uses a lot of fairly generic British slang, so I won’t get too bogged down in the details unless it’s something really specific. Lord Imperious Delirious was seen back in “Alone Together” and “Intersectionality”, which is where Bazooka and Crazybolt encountered him; keep a pin on his name… Metascan Omega (or LGC-8803) was the planet on which Delirious had set up operations, obviously named in counter to Metascan Alpha, the home of the Logicons from issue #3 of Blackthorne Publishing’s The Transformers in 3-D (where Delirious also originates from, created by Alfred Williams and Dante Fuget). In “Intersectionality”, Delirious killed Hard Head, Bazooka and Crazybolt’s comrade, and used his body to bring his Destructon minion Bruton back online.

Grimlock, after his attempt to use the G-Virus in Tesarus back in “Micro-Aggressions”, was captured and taken in by the Builders, where Tarantulas has stolen him from; he’s gotten a Beast Upgrade from his triple-changing Maximal body to one that’s described as a mechanical version of his Beast Wars toy, and while he’s seemingly under the control of the Robo-Smasher, he’s using the caveman-esque speech patterns that the character was depicted with in the original The Transformers cartoon. The Robo-Smasher (or robosmasher as spelt in the script) was a device used by Megatron to reprogram Transformers into Decepticons loyal to him, as seen in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “The Secret of Omega Supreme”. Bastion-three, meanwhile, is presumably part of the Bastion penal facility series; Bastion-five lock-up was where Grimlock was imprisoned after returning to Cybertron in issue #87 of IDW Publishing’s Regeneration One series. Snapper’s reaction to Grimlock is because he was originally a member of the Autobot-turn-Maximal’s unit in the Resistance, who had looked up to him until he had attempted to use the G-Virus on civilians, which caused him to abandon the Resistance and turn himself in to the Builders.

Section 8: I figure you probably know what the Oracle is by now, since it’s shown up so much; it gathered the Ex-Bots together back in “Cultural Appropriation”. We’ll find out eventually what Rampage was up to while this was going down. Decacycles are a unit of measurement dating back to the Beast Wars cartoon; it’s been a bit ill-defined how long it is, but it’s roughly around 10 days generally. Equilibrium circuits were first mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1”. “Webhead” is an insult commonly used by the foes of Marvel superhero Spider-Man against him. Since “Cultural Appropriation”, Stiletto has gone from gaining impressions from the ghost of Overshoot (after he was killed by the Monster GoBot Vamp, he decided to not join the Allspark and to help his comrades, which we’ll return to later…) to being able to full-on communicate with him. Tarantulas mentions having recovered the Robo-Smasher from Iacon’s abandoned Maximal Command Security Force station, presumably meaning that it is the same Robo-Smasher used by Overrun back in “Trigger Warnings”. Grimlock simply shrugging off the effects of the Robo-Smasher and quipping about obfuscation seems like a loving homage to the way Simon Furman writes the character (one of his self-admitted favorites), particularly in the era of Dreamwave Productions and The War Within. Mech-fluid is the Transformer equivalent of blood, first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon. Stasis-cuffs are restraining devices first seen in the Animated cartoon. “Mad as a turbo-hatter” is equivalent to the phrase “mad as a hatter” (first recorded in an 1829 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine). Nova Cronum was first seen in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages mini-series; it was shown to be where the Grand Mal was located in “Not All Megatrons”.

Section 9: We’re back right where “Safe Spaces” ends now, with Preditron, Cheetor, and Ser-Ket escaping from Protihex and the Vehicon attack there. The Sonic Canyons were a location first mentioned in the tech specs of 1988 Autobot Headmaster Siren. Star Dasher and Autojetter were introduced in “Safe Spaces”, and so I won’t go into them. Star Dasher’s Resistance transport number, ZN-4720, is one of the very few alphanumerical strings I haven’t been able to find while I’ve been researching for these annotations. If you have any ideas, please let me know!

Section 10: Movor and his comrades (Jeepers, Dangar, Ro-Tor, and Mega-Dolrailer) are the Commandos from the 2001 Robots in Disguise series. There, they were originally a group of Autobots sent to Earth to find Fortress Maximus, but their stasis pods were found by Megatron, and they, along with Scourge, were reprogrammed into Decepticons. Here, they’re depicted as Maximals; in the original Japanese cartoon that Robots in Disguise was adapted from, Car Robots, the Autobots in that series were from the future era seen in the Japanese original series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, on the Maximal-controlled Cybertron, and so, they’re made to be proto-race Transformers here, rather than Builders. The Commandos (known as the Combatrons in Car Robots) were redecos of the original Combaticon toys and combined to form Ruination; while Movor and Ro-Tor both use their English names, Jeepers, Dangar, and Mega-Dolrailer either use their Japanese names or modified versions of them, which I’ll go into. Movor was a redeco of Blast Off, turning into a space shuttle. Jeepers was known as Rollbar in Robots in Disguise and as Greejeeber in Car Robots, and is probably named as such to distinguish him from the Throttlebot jeep of the same name; he’s a redeco of Swindle, and turns into a jeep. Dangar (known in Robots in Disguise as Armorhide; perhaps the Armada Mini-Con or the Cybertron Autobot has that name in this universe) was a redeco of Brawl and turned into a tank. Ro-Tor was an attack helicopter redecoed from Vortex. And finally, Mega-Dolrailer (only mentioned in the story rather than physically appearing, he was known as Mega-Octane in Robots in Disguise and Dolrailer in Car Robots; it seems to serve to distance him a bit more from the Generation 1 Decepticon triple-changer) was a redeco of Onslaught, who turned into a flatbed army truck. The four smaller members of the team (the arms and legs of Ruination) are depicted here as having volunteered to be upgraded into K-bomb forms. As such, the Commandoes are some of the few proto-race Transformers left who do not have a beast mode. The K-Class were Decepticon weapons introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meet the Eye series; they were Decepticons who were modified to transform into extremely powerful bombs, being launched from high in the air. In the comics, many K-Class Decepticons were involuntary ones, taken from penal colonies for crimes like deserting the war effort, and so they were conditioned to turn into bombs the second they jumped from the bomber that carried them, overriding any self-preservation instinct. Movor and the others are depicted as virtual retools of Combiner Wars Shockwave, with his laser gun mode repurposed as a bomb. This also serves as a reference to an early plan for a BotCon 2016 exclusive set, using the alternate Reflector head of the mold to create a multi-pack of generic K-Class troopers, with stickers that could turn them into two of the known K-Class Decepticons, Fulcrum and Torque. That plan didn’t work out, however, and instead the three-pack was simply Reflector himself.

Jeepers love of rainy days was mentioned in his Car Robots tech specs. Dreadrock, the lobotomized Autobot jet carrying Jeepers and Movor, is a Generation 1 version of Cybertron Jetfire, who was known in the Japanese version of the series, Galaxy Force, as Dreadrock; he transformed into a large cargo jet. We saw that the Resistance was using Builders locked in vehicle mode and lobotomized as transport with Star Dasher in “Safe Spaces”. Eagle Killer, the Maximal pilot of Dreadrock, is another Maximal version of a Car Robots/Robots in Disguise Autobot: in his case, he's a version of the Autobot Spychanger Lamborghini Diablo R.E.V. (short for “Race Exertion Vehicle”), a redeco of Generation 2 Go-Bot Firecracker who was known as Eagle Killer in Japan. He appears to have taken a bird beast mode, judging by his description. The Forever Vaults were originally mentioned in the Wings Universe Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur and was previously seen as where the G-Virus was stored in “Micro-Aggressions”. Operation Amputation, the codename for the Resistance’s initial attempt to bomb the Vehicon threat, doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything as far as I can tell. Movor’s belief that he might have become a combiner obviously refers back to Ruination; Pretender technology (the gimmick from the 1988 and 1989 range of the original toyline, Transformers who hid their mechanical bodies inside organic shells) were mentioned as having been developed by Galvatron in an attempt to destroy the rapidly advancing Human Confederacy; having nearly succeeded, it indicated that the technology was extremely dangerous. Wing Saber, the transport that carried Dangar to Carpessa, was another Autobot jet from Cybertron, an A-10 Thunderbolt II anti-tank aircraft.

On page 25, we have an illustration from Guido Guidi, showing Movor launching into Protihex from Dreadrock. I think the grey-green Transformer Movor sees being converted into a Vehicon is just a generic.

Section 11: Cyber-venom originates from Beast Wars, most notably with Tarantulas and Blackarachnia both using it. The tech speaking in hashtags here is Break, the Maximal penguin from Beast Wars Neo, who previously showed up with this odd speech pattern in “Broken Windshields” as one of Lio Convoy’s earliest recruits. His beast-mode is called an arcti-avianoid; avianoids are a term for Cybertronian birds, derived from “avian”, while “arcti” is obviously derived from Antarctica, the continent where the majority of penguin species live. Boron compressors are a part of Cybertronian anatomy mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “War of the Dinobots”; while there it was used in a manner that equated it to the butt (“Brilliant, my boron compressor!”), here it seems more equivalent to the gut. Bump is another Beast Wars Neo character, a Maximal armadillo scientist redecoed from the first year Beast Wars Maximal Armordillo, much like Psycho-Orb. His beast mode (and Psycho-Orb plus several others like Overshoot) is called an armodrillo, a species first mentioned in “Cultural Appropriation” and named after the character Armodrillo, one of cartoon superhero Ben 10’s new alien forms in his third cartoon series, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Nuon (aka Nuon City) was first mentioned in the pilot episode of the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon, having supposedly been eaten by the Decepticon Underbite. Movor’s sarcastic nature comes from the Robots in Disguise episode “Attack from Outer Space”. Rodimus’ Folly was first mentioned in “Safe Spaces”, a massive crater that is implied to be the reason why Beast Wars: Uprising Hot Rod is no longer a Prime. The Xithricite Intrusion is presumably a geological formation; Xithricite is a mineral from the 2004 MMO Vendetta Online. The Floron tributary is named for Floron, one of the Decepticon leaders seen in the Hall of Heroes in The Transformers: The Movie, named for his creator Floro Dery; he’s been mentioned several times before, most notably as a statue in Double Punch’s possession in “Identity Politics”. The Timonium River, meanwhile, is named for a river that comes from the Liaden universe, made up of a series of science-fiction novels by American writers Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Grimwing was another of the Predacons from the Prime: Beast Hunters toyline, a warrior with a highly developed sense of honor and chivalry, who turned into an “ursagryph” (a cross between a bear and a hawk that is supposedly Hasbro designer Lenny Panzica's favorite mythological beast, although records of the creatures existing prior to Grimwing are extremely hard to find).

Section 12: Back to Preditron and the others. Tyrest was a city first seen in issue #164 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic; it noted to be part of the Tagon Heights annexed by the Maximals for the Maximal Nation in “Safe Spaces”. Transformers: The Ultimate Guide established that the Sonic Canyons’ actual purpose was for gathering information across the galaxy, scanning and collected it for Vector Sigma which processed it for Primus, the god of the Transformers (who I’ve gone over plenty by this point, but just one more time I’ll note he was created by Simon Furman and Jeff Anderson, first appearing issue #150 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic). Cybercats are a term referring to various Cybertronian felines, first mentioned in the Cybertron cartoon episode “Challenge”. Nightglider was a Transmetal 2 Maximal flying squirrel, released in 1999 as part of the fourth year of the Beast Wars toyline. His alternate mode is called a sciuridon, taken from Sciuridae, the taxonomic family of animals to which all squirrels belong to. His partner, Wedge Shape, was a Maximal hawk (her tech specs labelled her as a Predacon, which the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime addressed, though it’s ignored here) sold as a promotional figure at BIC Camera stores in Japan in 2007; she’s a redeco of the Decepticon-aligned Mini-Con Dreadwing from the Classics toyline. Her alt-mode is described as a techno-hawk, a species first mentioned in “Burning Bridges”.

Section 13: Back to the Resistance, as they prepare to make a stand at Lower Petrohex. This section’s main character, Twinstrike, was one of the Predacons released in the Prime: Beast Hunters Cyberverse range of smaller figures. He was a new version of the Generation 1 Terrorcon Sinnertwin, renamed for trademark reasons at the time, and turned into a two-headed dragon, and could also combine with the new Predacon versions of his old Terrorcon teammates to form Abominus. Here, he’s a distinct character from the Decepticon Sinnertwin. Legend Marjora is a version of Legend Convoy, a high-ranking Maximal first seen in the aforementioned BotCon 2016 script reading “The Hot Rod”; she was created by Jesse Wittenrich and John-Paul Bove, voiced by Venus Terzo, and implied to turn into a reindeer, as she had antlers. Like Big Convoy/Slammoth before her, she’s been renamed to distance herself from Lio Convoy; however, the antlers are instead interpreted as being those seen on some depictions of European dragons, as Majora is an evil entity inhabiting a mask from the 2000 video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, depicted in some tie-in material as having originally had a dragon-like form. Dragoyell was a promotional Mini-Con dragon tying into the Takara Beast Wars Telemocha Series of reissued Beast Wars toys, sold as a prize in the September 2007 issue of TV Magazine, redecoed from Classics Autobot Mini-Con Nightscream. The term Tri-Torus was first used in issue #4 of Dreamwave Productions The War Within, with the Tri-Torus Loop road in Iacon, Uraya, and an unknown third city; The AllSpark Almanac II later used the term as analogous to “tri-state area”. The one here is made up of Petrohex, Polyhex, and Dodecahex, a city first seen in issue #1 of 3H Productions’ The Wreckers comic series at BotCon 2001 and was previously seen in “Broken Windshields” as the location of the final pre-Grand Uprising game. Twinstrike’s Piston Hammer comes from the original Beast Hunters Twinstrike toy. Spittor was a Predacon poison arrow frog from the second year of the Beast Wars toyline in 1997; the description of him as being “crimson” rather than the classic blue suggests that his Beast Upgrade body is that of the “Transmetal” redeco of his original toy sold exclusively in Europe in 1998, packaged with a Beast Wars episode on VHS. Judora was one of the Predacon Four Oni from the Japanese Go! series, a sequel to Prime that ignored the events of the third season, instead telling a story about a battle between Autobots and Predacons who had secretly hid in Japan for centuries. A Predacon with a gentleman demeanor that hid boiling rage, he was retool of the Beast Hunters Skystalker toy and turned into a dragon. Snow Cat was another Universe 2008 Mini-Con sold in the Mini-Con 10-Pack, a Decepticon-aligned white tiger redecoed from Classics Snarl. Helex was a Decepticon-held city first seen in issue #213 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. Evac, the lobotomized builder transporting Twinstrike and his comrades, is a version of the Autobot from the 2007 Transformers movie toyline, a retool and redeco of Blackout who turned into a rescue helicopter-colored Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low (not the Cybertron version he was loosely inspired by, as that Evac was orangish-yellow and navy blue, rather than orange and white). Coelagon was one of the Seacons from Beast Wars II, an older Predacon with a habit for making up tall tales and falling asleep, he turned into a mechanical coelacanth and was a redeco of the 1988 Seacon Skalor. Tungsten-turkeys were mentioned in the Facebook incarnation of Ask Vector Prime.

The big gimmick with this section is that when Twinstrike turns into his two-headed beast mode, the story splits into two columns running simultaneously, one for the perspective of the left head and one for the right. Rather than trying to do both at the same time, I’m going to go down the left column first, and then the right. Starting with the left column: ro-simians are Cybertronian primates. The name might be a reference to Ro-Man, the bizarre robot with a gorilla body from the infamous 1953 science fiction B-movie Robot Monster. I think the Maximal ro-simian and the teal-grey Predacon with an autocannon are just generics. Cybertanium is a material mentioned in various ancillary media for 2009’s Revenge of the Fallen, such as the Cyber Missions web cartoon. Phlogiston, meanwhile, was originally a real-world term from the seventeenth century that described an element that caused combustion, eventually superseded by later chemists and other scientists with modern understanding of thermodynamics. In the world of the Transformers, however, it’s been used to describe an extremely flammable and explosive substance, starting with the tech specs of BotCon 2011 Animated Wildrider. CCCXIX is the Roman numeral form of 319. Bantor was a Fuzor Maximal from the third year of the Beast Wars toyline in 1998, who transformed into a tiger/mandrill hybrid. Hadean is the sun of Cybertron, first mentioned in the semi-canonical novella Alignment, and later incorporated in The AllSpark Almanac II. Amphiboids were frog-like Transformers introduced in the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon. Mechanometers were a unit of measurement first mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “City of Steel”.

Section 14: Characters have been depicted as storing items in subspace in several stories before now, so I won’t get too deep into it. Engex was a beverage first mentioned in “Bullets”, a prose story included in the trade paperback collection of IDW Publishing’s Last Stand of the Wreckers mini-series. Hellhounds were canine creatures first seen in issue #237 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. And so, we conclude part one.

Part 2:

Section 1: We open in Tesarus, checking in with the Pack, the Resistance’s elite military unit. The Pack was first introduced as Lio Convoy’s black ops Maximal unit in IDW Publishing’s two Beast Wars mini-series: The Gathering and The Ascending. Mentioned in passing in “Safe Spaces”, they’re combined here with the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon’s Pack: a group of Decepticons lead by rouge Decepticon criminal Steeljaw. Robots in Disguise Steeljaw himself is imported here as a Maximal, with his name modified to Steel Jaw to delineate him from the Autobot micro-cassette lion with the same name. In Robots in Disguise, he turned from a werewolf-like robot mode into an off-road truck; here, he’s been upgraded from that body to a form able to turn into a luponoid, a wolf-like mechanimal first mentioned in “Cultural Appropriation” as being the model for the Maximal insignia, later expanded in “Safe Spaces” as having been inspired by the steed of Maxima, the first Maximal; the name is derived from lupus, the Latin word for wolf. Ramulus, his second-in-command, was a Maximal Transmetal 2 ibex, released in the fourth year of the Beast Wars toyline in 1999. Described as a loner with impulsive and rash tendencies, but with a keen sense of survival tactics, he was previously depicted as a member of the Wreckers in 3H Productions The Wreckers comics. He’s noted as having turned into a battering ram initially, before taking on his current beast mode form.

Solomus was one of the Guiding Hand, a Cybertronian pantheon of deities comprised of Primus and four others, first seen in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye series. Though later stories released after “Derailment” would reveal the true nature of the Guiding Hand as being non-divine ancient Cybertronians, in this and in other stories they’ve shown up in they retain their status as gods, or at least as very powerful Transformers. The Cybertronian god of wisdom, Solomus was created by James Roberts and Guido Guidi, and first appeared in the 2012 More than Meets the Eye annual, named for the biblical figure of King Solomon. The Tagon Heights were first seen in Dreamwave Productions The Dark Ages mini-series; notably, the name there was spelt as the “Tagan Heights,” but The Ultimate Guide used the alternate spelling seen here; the Maximal High Council’s takeover, as mentioned, was first seen in “Cultural Appropriation”. Steel Jaw and Ramulus are noted to have been part of the initial Resistance movement first seen in “Alone Together: Prologue”, a pre-Lio Convoy group inspired by Dynobot, who was later freed by them, though he hasn’t shown up since. Obviously, he’s this universe’s version of Beast Wars Dinobot; the alternate spelling of his name comes from the pre-Earth name of the original Autobot team as first seen in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages mini-series. The three scratches across the faction insignia was Steeljaw’s way of inducting Decepticons into his Pack in the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon. Epistemus is another member of the Guiding Hand created by James Roberts and Guido Guidi, first appearing in IDW Publishing’s 2012 More than Meets the Eye annual. He is the Cybertronian god of knowledge, with his name derived from epistḗmē, the Ancient Greek word for knowledge. Adaptus was the member of the Guiding Hand who was the god of transformation. He said to be the origin for the transformation cog, the Cybertronian organ responsible for allowing a Transformer to turn into their alt-modes, as first seen in the opening “Five Faces of Darkness” mini-series of the third season of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon. As with the rest of the Guiding Hand, he was created by Roberts and Guidi and appeared in the 2012 More than Meets the Eye annual, though he was first mentioned in issue #23 of the 2009-2011 IDW Publishing The Transformers ongoing. We get our first mention of the various Micromaster divisions seen throughout the story, the 42nd Division; by all appearances, they don’t seem to be named for any specific division either fictional or in the real-world, so I’m not gonna bother trying to figure out if they are. We’ll get to Erector when he shows up later in the story.

Section 2: The Maximal High Council’s chambers are in Durax, a city first mentioned in the third, Shattered Glass-based Around Cybertron strip, published in issue #25 of the Collectors’ Club magazine. Duraglass has been mentioned in several Beast Wars: Uprising stories, a material originally seen in Star Trek. The Maximal High Council is made up the components of Beast Wars combiner Magnaboss, along with the more well known Tigatron and Airazor. Getting them out of the way first: though originally depicted in the Beast Wars cartoon as having been newly brought to life on Earth, various media starting with the BotCon 2006 “Dawn of Future’s Past” comic have depicted them as having a life on Cybertron before being somehow returned to protoform status onboard the Axalon, eventually ending up on prehistoric Earth as seen in the cartoon. Airazor is later shown to be in her 1998 Transmetal Beast Wars toyline figure, so presumably that means Tigatron is in his Transmetal form as well, the redeco of the Japan-exclusive Beast Wars Metals Ravage toy (itself a heavy retool of Beast Wars Transmetal Cheetor) sold at BotCon 2001.

The rest of the High Council is slightly more involved. In 1997, the Ultra class Maximal combiner Magnaboss was sold, made up of three components: Silverbolt, the bald eagle, who formed the top of Magnaboss’s head and back; Prowl, the lion, who formed the main part of Magnaboss’ upper torso and head; and Ironhide, the elephant, who formed the lower torso and limbs of Magnaboss. The tech specs for Magnaboss described him as an extremely powerful Maximal whose three components provided him with the power and intelligence to take down any foe, but it provided little-to-no information on his individual components. For years, this meant they were thought of as separate characters, unrelated to the Generation 1 Autobots who shared their names (though notably, Beast Wars Grimlock was released the same year, characterized as the Generation 1 Dinobot). When IDW Publishing released the Beast Wars Sourcebook in 2007, the three were retconned into being new forms for the original Autobots, having survived the Great War and upgraded into Maximal forms, leading the new faction on Cybertron, though once again, more recent fiction published after “Derailment” would go back and make them into separate characters once more, such as the Earth Wars mobile game. When the Magnaboss toy was released in Japan as part of Beast Wars II, the three components were slightly recolored and turned into new characters: Skywarp the eagle, a stern but fair combat instructor; Lio Junior the lion, a rash young Maximal born on the planet Gaea due to the interaction between Lio Convoy’s Energon Matrix and the mysterious Angolmois Energy seeded throughout the planet; and Santon the elephant, a gentle pacifist medic who came with Skywarp to help instruct Lio Junior. Their combined form (also named Magnaboss) was basically characterized the same way as the western Magnaboss. What’s complicated about them is how they’ve been imported into Beast Wars: Uprising. Lio Junior (in the black and orange color scheme of his that was exclusively sold with a jigsaw puzzle, rather than his standard yellow and brown) and Santon previously appeared as Maximal High Council members sentencing Trans-Mutate to imprisonment in the “Perception”, part of the “Alone Together” storyline, but Skywarp previously showed up in “Broken Windshields” as a member of the Maximal team in the Game interrupted by Lio Convoy’s declaration of the Grand Uprising. In order to replace him, the American Beast Wars Silverbolt has taken his place, with a similar personality to Beast Wars II Skywarp. Notably, his name is spelt Silver Bolt, since the later, more famous Beast Wars wolf/eagle Fuzor Silverbolt was mentioned as one of Blackarachnia’s deceased comrades in her profile in issue #25 of the Collector’s Club magazine; presumably, then, the original Autobot Aerialbot is named Silver-Bolt or something along those lines in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe. In addition to that name change, Lio Junior’s name has been changed to Lio Minor, presumably to give him a more Transformer-like name.

Silver Bolt is mentioned as being of the first generation of proto-formers, making him a contemporary of Maxima and Preditron. He’s noted to have been a professor at Drouhard University in Crystal City; Drouhard University was mentioned in Animated Glyph’s profile in The AllSpark Almanac II, named for her character designer Brianne Drouhard. Crystal City, meanwhile, first appeared in the season two episode of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “The Secret of Omega Supreme”; it was mentioned as having been destroyed by a Resistance suicide bomber back in “Burning Bridges”. The Maximal Command Security Force, or MCSF, have shown up in several stories before now, originating from “Dawn of Future’s Past”; they are the elite Maximal police force, formerly serving the Builders until “Cultural Appropriation”, where they defected as part of the Maximal Nation. Plurex is a city named for the Plurex Flats, first mentioned in the Wings Universe story “Battle Lines, Part 6”. Tigatron’s time as a member of the MCSF was seen in “Dawn of Future’s Past” as Unit 2, while his serving as an aide to Assemblybot Cross-Cut (who we’ll get to when we go in depth on the Assembly later) seems to be influenced by his depiction in the BotCon 2016 “Dawn of the Predacus” storyline as a political negotiator who was one of the earliest members of the Primal Council. Empties, having appeared several times before now, are the name given to Transformers who have gone so low on energy that they barely function, generally being unable to Transform and often falling apart, equivalent to the homeless; they first appeared in issue #17 of the Marvel The Transformers comics.

Cheetor’s status as the First Resistor, again, comes from Beast Wars: Uprising Blackarachnia’s original profile. Wormozoids are a new mechanimal species, Cybertronian worms whose name is probably inspired by the Chompazoids, vaguely saurian four-legged Transformers as seen with Underbite in the 2015 Robots in Disguise series.

Section 3: The Tripredacus Council had their roots as the Predacon combiner Tripredacus in the Beast Wars toyline, serving as Magnaboss’ rival in 1997. Like his Maximal counterpart, Tripredacus was made up of three Predacons: Cicadacon the cicada, who turned into his torso and head; Ram Horn, the rhinoceros beetle, who formed his arms; and Sea Clamp the lobster, who formed his legs. As with Magnaboss before them, the three didn’t receive individual tech specs, with Tripredacus being characterized simply as a ferocious combiner with surprising agility. As with many characters in the toyline, they didn’t make the jump to the Beast Wars cartoon fighting on prehistoric Earth. However, in the first part of the season two finale, “The Agenda (Part 1)”, the three did make an appearance, heavily reimagined from their original toys. There, they were the Tripredacus Council, the ruling body of the Predacons, who were constantly scheming behind the scenes to take Cybertron back from the Maximals, despite the supposed peace between the two factions. Later episodes would also reveal that the three were not descended from the Decepticons like most Predacons, but had different origins, with many pieces of spin-off fiction indicated they were creations of Unicron, though here, they are just normal Transformers. Due to budget constraints, the three did not receive character models based directly on their toys; instead, they were cobbled with fairly generic appearances and reused assets from other models, based very, very loosely on promotional images of the toys. The models themselves were gray scale, but in their one scene appearance, a dramatic bit of lighting colored them in red hues, something referenced here. The three here are depicted with their toy bodies, albeit mechanical versions of them. IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook would give them personalities which are used somewhat loosely here: Cicadacon as a tactical genius playing the long game, Ram Horn as a belligerent aggressive, and Sea Clamp as a quiet schemer. Ram Horn, in particular, is further influenced by his BotCon 2016 toy’s bio, which noted that he was easily bored and liked to needle on his fellow council members. This interpretation has (in a way that perhaps is dated, though certainly not as much as other similar stories at the time) lead him to be inspired by the then-current rise of right wing so-called populists in 2016, most notably Donald Trump, who had been running for the office of President of the United States of America while this story was running, who constantly belittled and mocked other Republican candidates, cutting them off and grandstanding in debates, though it’s not an exact one to one, as Ram Horn is also depicted as having an innate sense of honor later in the story underneath his arrogance and desire to be on top. The Predacon Secret Police were also introduced in “The Agenda (Part 1)”, and as mentioned, they’ve shown up before in Beast Wars: Uprising, most notably with the characters of Wolfang and the previously-seen Tarantulas.

The Magnalium Mountains are a new location, named for a real-life aluminum alloy; they bring to mind the Manganese Mountains from Marvel’s Headmasters mini-series. Ram Horn’s line about experts is paraphrased from a quote by Conservative Party British MP Michael Gove during the lead up to Brexit, in which he claimed that the majority of the country wanted to secede from the European Union despite what “so-called experts” said.

Section 4: As noted in “Head Games”, Rage had annexed Triax after declaring herself the victor of the Game interrupted by Lio Convoy; Triax first appeared in issue #11 of IDW Publishing’s Autocracy mini-series. As I hinted at earlier, this story introduces a new element to her: her design. In the early production plans for the Beast Wars Telemocha Series (a line of reissues of the original Beast Wars toys with new colors intended to be more show accurate, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Beast Wars in Japan), there were three new designs created as potential new figures by TakaraTomy, though they never got further than concept art designs. Rage’s design is repurposed from one of them, a Transformer who turned into a jellyfish; the other two accompany her in this story, and I’ll get to them in a bit. Rage’s weaponized right arm, the medusozoan cannon, is named for the clade that several species of jellyfish belong, and its ability to turn its target into stone is derived from the clade’s namesake, the Greek monster Medusa, a woman cursed with snakes for hair and the ability to turn anyone who looked at her into stone. In the map included in “Safe Spaces”, Praxus was accidentally misspelt as “Praxis”; rather than treating that as a simple error, this story takes some fun with it, and makes it so that Praxis is the modern spelling of the city, while Praxus is an older spelling. Olliphia was a planet mentioned in the Wings Universe Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur. Shutterbug is a new character created here by Sorenson and Bishop; he turns into a fly. Skurge, on the other hand, is this universe’s version of Beast Wars Scourge, the Transmetal 2 locust sold in 1999 as part of the fourth year of the toyline. He previously appeared as one of the Predacons meant to fight in the final Game alongside Rage in “Broken Windshields”, where he had his usual name. However, since then, the original Scourge has been mentioned in several stories; in order to keep up the naming rule, it’s shown here that his real name is the altered spelling of Scourge, with him using the original Scourge name as an affectation.

Flytrap was the name given by Sorenson to the second of the three Telemocha Series concept art guys in the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime; a Predacon who turned into a triffid, the carnivorous plant monsters seen in the 1951 post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids by English author John Wyndham. Perihex was a city first mentioned in the 2007 Transformers movie-branded edition of the board game Risk; it was noted that Rage had annexed it into her little empire in “Not All Megatrons”. Manticon, the third and final of the Telemocha Series concept art designs, is a new identity created here by Sorenson and Bishop; he turns into a manticore, a creature from Persian myth usually depicted as having the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, though Manticore’s design eschewed the scorpion tail and gave him bat-like wings. Night Viper was another of Rage’s teammates from “Broken Windshields”; he was a Maximal technorganic cobra from the Beast Machines toyline, who was initially planned to have originally been a Predacon before siding with the Maximals, an idea cut from his final bio.

Section 5: The National Maximal Army’s name is generic enough that I don’t think it’s a reference to anything in particular. Tetrahex was first mentioned in issue #1 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing; it was annexed by the Maximal Nation at the end of “Cultural Appropriation”. Cheetor and Tigatron’s nicknames for one another, “big cat” and “little cat,” come from the Beast Wars cartoon. Sky Shadow, the Predacon ambassador to the Maximal Nation, was one of the Fuzors released in the Beast Wars toyline in 1997, turning into a dragonfly/iguana hybrid; he was characterized as a charismatic statesman who, under his veneer of civility, secretly despised everyone and wanted to take control of the Predacons for himself.

Section 6: The First Church of Primus is a generic enough name that I don’t think it’s a reference to anything. Sunstorm is a fairly well-known character, but I’ll dive into his origins here. The character that would become Sunstorm was one of the generic Decepticons who shared the model of the Decepticon Jets (Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker) seen in the three part opening mini-series of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “More than Meets the Eye”. In particular, he was a yellowish orange-colored Decepticon Jet seen in the first episode, attempting to block Wheeljack and Bumblebee from returning to the Autobots’ base in Iacon. In 2003, as part of Japanese retailer site e-HOBBY’s run of Collector’s Edition toys redecoed from toys in the original toyline, the Decepticon Jet mold was released in orange colors with the name Sunstorm, with the explanation that he was that particular generic. Characterized as a Decepticon that usually stayed on the sidelines, due to both his in-built fusion reactor that caused him to be dangerous to his comrades, and because he believed himself to be a supernatural entity, prone to grandiose and bizarre behavior. In Dreamwave Productions Generation One ongoing comic, the writers took this last bit and ran with it, depicting him as a clone of Starscream made by Shockwave, who believed himself to be a holy warrior on a mission from the Oracle. Beast Wars: Uprising Sunstorm takes that particular inspiration a bit further, making the character a priest for Primus, a non-combatant whose immobile frame still contains quite a bit of power. As mentioned before, the bit from the Covenant that Sunstorm reads is from the Book of Logos, and will actually show up in the ciphertext sections later.

Sharp Edge, one of the congregants, was a Maximal saw shark from Beast Wars Neo, retooled from the American Beast Wars hammerhead shark Cybershark. He was characterized as a serene individual off the battlefield, but who would become incredibly violent in a fight, something that’s been mapped on to his characterization here as a devout believer in Primus who can be a bit of a literalist zealot. Nucleon was the power source that was credited in various bits of promotional material and the Marvel The Transformers comic as being responsible for turning various Transformers into non-transforming Action Masters, the big range of figures from the final year of the original toyline in 1990; various stories since like IDW Publishing’s comics have depicted it as an addictive drug, as has Beast Wars: Uprising. Gran Arm and Crush Bull were two of the Build Team from Takara’s 1992 toyline Operation Combination, a team of Micromasters who combined to form Sixbuilder. Gran Arm turned into a payloader which formed Sixbuilder’s chest, while Crush Bull (originally characterized as male in Takara’s 2003 Micromaster reissue series but made female here) turned into a bulldozer and formed Sixbuilders’s back. The rest of the team who formed Sixbuilder’s limbs (Digger the excavator, Iron Lift the crane, Mixing the cement mixer, and Treader the dump truck) are noted to have died, leading to Gran Arm and Crush Bull joining the First Church of Primus as Sunstorm’s attendants. Recharge slabs were first seen in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing, the Cybertronian equivalent of beds. Gas Skunk was one of the Predacon trio seen in the 2001 Robots in Disguise series; a slight redeco of Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Maximal Stinkbomb, he turned into a biomechanical skunk, and was characterized as a decently intelligent but craven and cowardly bully. “Children of Primus” was a term from the 2003 Universe series that referred to those who directly aligned themselves with Primus; here, it’s used as a term for all Transformers. Buzzbomb was a Predacon created by Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop, seen in the animated short film Theft of the Golden Disk. He was a virtual redeco of Cybertron Buzzsaw in the colors of the “Fox Kids” redeco of the original Beast Wars Waspinator toy, turning into a helicopter, while his name came from a robot seen in Hasbro’s other toyline and cartoon, C.O.P.S. He was characterized as a former dock worker turned criminal enforcer, working dispassionately under Cryotek’s command. It’s not directly said, but one gets the feeling that if he had gone through the Beast Upgrade, he’d probably be a direct repurposing of the Fox Kids Waspinator toy. He mentions both Unicron’s attack on Cybertron (mentioned as having happened in the universe in several stories before) and the rise of massive city Transformers who razed other worlds (referring to Fortress Maximus and MegaZarak, as first mentioned in “Head Games”).

Tusks is a bit of a complicated case. In issue #82 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic, a Transformer who turned into a piano who served as an entertainer at Maccadam’s Old Oil House was seen being bullied by the Decepticon Fang. This well-remembered generic (created by Simon Furman and Ron Smith) was later given the name Tusks by the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime (as in the ivory tusks that piano keys were once made out of), who was said to have been upgraded to a Predacon form in some timelines, working with the GoBots Renegade Scales (as in piano scales). This version is just a straight Predacon from the get-go, whose past as a literal piano Transformer is alluded to by him being a hymn player. The Well Sunstorm refers to is the Well of All Sparks. First mentioned in Dreamwave Productions The Dark Ages mini-series as the location of a direct conduit to Primus on Cybertron, the Animated cartoon would re-imagine it as an afterlife for Cybertronians, as Beast Wars originally did with the term Matrix, also mentioned here. “Render unto Carzap” is modified from a phrase attributed to Jesus Christ in the synoptic gospels of the New Testaments, which goes “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” referring to the relationship that would exist between civil responsibility and religious oaths, in Jesus case the duties that the Jews would have to both the Roman Empire and God. Carzap was the Japanese name given to Generation 2 Axelerator Windbreaker, who was known as Zap in Europe; the name was going to be reused for a white and purple redeco of him in Takara’s cancelled Block Town toyline, and that specific cancelled toy has since been made into his own character.

Section 7: Erector was one of the first Micromasters, released as part of the sixth year of the original toyline in 1988. Specifically, he was one of the Micromaster Transports, toys that had trailers that connected to them that could turn into another form. Specifically, Erector turned into a tractor trailer, and his trailer turned into a battle station. His tech specs characterized him as a bot dedicated to preserving Cybertron’s natural beauty who was sometimes reluctant to fight due to collateral damage, but who was willing in the end to do the right thing. Because of his name, he was the long-standing butt of many immature jokes in the Transformers fandom; this story doesn’t engage with that at all, instead making him a grizzled and respected combat veteran. The Inferno was the early name for the Pit from Beast Wars, eventually changed when the character of Inferno appeared. Cyberdroids, I’ve gone over before; in Beast Wars: Uprising, it refers to smaller Transformers, many of whom became Headmaster/Targetmaster/Powermaster partners to larger bots. Strikedown was one of the members of the Autobot Metro Squad, one of the Micromaster Combiners released in 1990, teams of six that turn into three vehicles, with two members forming the front and back half of each vehicle. In Strikedown’s case, he turned into the back half of a hovercraft, with the front half being formed by his partner, Power Run. The Dreamwave Productions profile book, More than Meets the Eye, characterized him as constantly complaining about everything, poking holes in his teammates plans and ideas, but still dedicated in the battlefield. Oiler was another member of the Metro Squad, made into the leader and a dedicated energy conservationist by the profile give in More than Meets the Eye, which also characterized him as a male character, though she’s female here. She and her partner, Slide, turned into a tanker truck, with Oiler turning into the cab portion, and Slide the trailer portion. Interestingly, around the same time as this story was released, Oiler and Slide appeared in IDW Publishing’s Optimus Prime ongoing, where Oiler was characterized as a male character, and Slide was made into a female character by total coincidence. The other members of the Metro Squad who don’t appear here are Roadburner and Wheel Blaze, who combined to form a cherry-picker. Fragmentation foam was a weapon mentioned in the Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur, while the living-metal-destroying-spheres are derived from the Living-Metal-Destroying-Cannon, Victory Deathsaurus’ weapon of choice.

Section 8: All four members of the Dark Skies Patrol are Micromaster version of Mini-Con jets who were partners to Decepticons in Armada. The first three, Ramjet, Wind Sheer, and Thunder Clash, have had a hyphen added to their name to match with the fourth member, Run-Over, and in Ramjet’s case, it distinguishes him from the Generation 1 Seeker, who was mentioned back in “Cultural Appropriation”. Ramjet was the cowardly fighter jet partner of Armada Tidal Wave. Wind Sheer was the stealth fighter partner of Armada Wheeljack. The sycophantic and manipulative Thunder Clash was the gunship partner of Armada Skywarp. And Run-Over, a redeco of Armada Over-Run, was the mindless fighter jet partner of Armada Nemesis Prime. Beast Wars: Uprising Run-Over gains the unique tic of talking entirely in quotes from long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons, attributed to the fact that the show has had several thousand episodes by the time of the Grand Uprising; at the time this story was released, the show was up to its 28th season with 606 episodes, and its continued to have more and more in the years since. Thunder-Clash’s quote, “ours is not to reason why,” is modified from a line in the 1854 poem The Charge of the Light Brigade by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “theirs not to reason why/theirs but to do and die.” The first The Simpsons quote Run-Over uses (“Go out on a Tuesday? Who am I, Charlie Sheen?”) is a Marge Simpson quote from the season 22 episode “Moms I’d Like to Forget”; Charlie Sheen is an American actor. The second quote (“society”)  was said by Moe Szyslak in the season nine episode “Miracle on Evergreen Terrace”. The third (“bitey”) was said by Homer Simpson in the season four episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”. The three Resistance fighters encountered by the Dark Skies Patrol are all vaguely Dinobot themed characters from the Age of Extinction themed wave of Kre-O toys, turned from Autobots and Decepticons into Maximal and Predacons and, thanks to a lack of profile information, made female here for the first time. The first, Skimmer, was a green, vaguely Pterosaur-like Autobot, released in the second wave of Age of Extinction Kre-O Micro-Changers. The second, Liftoff, also turned into a Pterosaur-type beast mode; she was one of the Kre-O Micro-Changer combiners who formed Decepticon Volcanicon. Freefall, meanwhile, was one of the components of Obsidian, and turned into an insect of some sort; here, the three turn into two jurassanoids and an insecatron. The term magno-ax is a new one, just referring to Skimmer’s axe weapon. The fourth The Simpsons quote (“take that, Dick Tracy!”) was shouted by Ned Flanders in the season eight episode “Hurricane Neddy”; Dick Tracy was a detective seen in his titular comic strip, created by Chester Gould in 1931. The fifth quote is from nothing in particular; it instead comes from a number of scenes (generally from earlier in the series run) where Homer would choke Bart Simpson after his son had done something to upset him. The final quote (“I bent my Wookie”) comes from the season six episode “Lisa’s Rival”; Wookies are the species to which the hairy Chewbacca belongs in Star Wars. Hyperway appears to be a generic term, standing in for “highway”.

Section 9: Position 17.3 by 172.9 doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything. Magna Pulse torpedoes are derived from the magna pulse, a disrupter burst seen in the Beast Wars episode “Spider’s Game”. Penetrator missiles were the weapon of choice of Generation 2 Auto Roller Roadblock. Warp cannons were large weapon emplacements seen in the 2012 video game Fall of Cybertron.

Section 10: Back to Proximax now, as the IPS begins their effort towards Builder territory. Dark Scream was another member of the Predacon trio from 2001’s Robots in Disguise; largely an oaf with some minor swordsmanship skills and a freeze ray built into his chest, he was a redeco of Beast Wars Nightglider, and transformed into a biomechnical flying squirrel. As a side note, Slapper, the Robots in Disguise Predacon trio member redecoed from Beast Wars Transmetal II Spittor, is the only one who does not appear or get mentioned in Beast Wars: Uprising. The Micromaster he decapitates doesn’t appear to be anyone in particular. Autolauncher, Dark Scream’s commander, was one of the Autorollers from Beast Wars II, who turned into an armored personal carrier; like his fellow Autoroller Autojetter, his toy was originally designed for the Generation 2 toyline in 1995, but never saw release. His characterization here owes little to the original, where he was an eager fighter, rather than a disciplined commander. Presumably, he received a beast mode from the Beast Upgrade, but it’s not clear what that might be. Magno-clamps were first mentioned in the previously discussed semi-canon novella Alignment. The Predacon Dark Scream encounters is Guiledart, the Predacon Triceratops from Beast Wars Neo; he's previously appeared as one of Magmatron’s soldiers and a member of the Ex-Bots in “Intersectionality” and “Cultural Appropriation”.

Section 11: Back to Cheetor’s storyline. Nothing particular in this little section, but it starts a little run of mini-sections that’ll have a bit to go over. Only thing of note is the portable energy projector, which is just a classic sci-fi concept.

Section 12: The 58th, just to get them out of the way, are another generic enough division name that doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything. Draft, the Micromaster here, is another repurposed Armada Mini-Con. Specifically, Draft was the Japanese name of Armada Firebot, the fire truck from the Emergency Mini-Con Team. Later, Ask Vector Prime would repurpose the limited-edition Exdimensions Mini-Cons (a series of redecoed Mini-Con teams sold exclusively in the Japanese Legend of the Microns toyline) as separate characters using the various Mini-Cons’ Japanese names, with Draft being the repurposed Exdimensions Firebot. His characterization here is all new; interestingly, the toy’s firetruck mode is not depicted as his alt-mode, but instead his weapon mode, reinterpreted here as a missile launcher platform. Eagle Eye was a member of the Micromaster Air Patrol released in the final year of the original toyline in 1990; he turned into a F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet, and was characterized by his profile in Dreamwave Productions More than Meets the Eye guidebooks as a talented aerial tactician who nonetheless proved ineffectual as the leader of the Air Patrol, due to his inability to work well on a personal level with his teammates, often eschewing giving orders entirely. We’ll get to the other Air Patrol members shortly. The term mono-molecular blade (used to describe the disc weapons of Mantis, who we’ll get to shortly) feels very generic, though it was previously used as the name of Shattered Glass Soundwave’s blade weapon in the tech specs for his BotCon 2012 toy.

Section 13: Mantis was one of the Insectrons, a Maximal unit from Beast Wars II. Characterized as a loner with a short temper, Mantis was a redeco of the America Beast Wars Predacon Manterror and turned into a praying mantis. Bigmos, mentioned here as Mantis’ squad commander, was the leader of the Insectrons in Beast Wars II, a honorable old soldier sick of war who turned into a mosquito, and was redecoed from the America Beast Wars Predacon Transquito. He’s previously appeared in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, back in “Alone Together”, where he was seen arresting Trans-Mutate for breaking into the Ferromax Detention Center, with a profile in issue #57 of the Collectors’ Club magazine detailing his backstory. Notably, due to “Alone Together” being one of the earliest Beast Wars: Uprising stories, Bigmos was not depicted as being a virtual redeco of any real toy, but instead had an original Cybertronian mode designed by artist Naoto Tsushima.

Section 14: The armodrillo Maximal we see falling to his death here presumably isn’t anyone, as we’ve already seen all the Maximals with an armadillo mode elsewhere (Armordillo in “Head Games”, and Bump earlier in this story). I’ll note here again it’s difficult to ascertain what Cheetor’s body looks like in this universe, since it mentions his tail gun, a weapon only his original toy had, but it’s assumed to be his Transmetal form based on comments from Sorenson and Bishop.

Section 15: The other members of the Air Patrol who show up here are Blaze Master (an MH-53 Pave Low helicopter, who was characterized in his More than Meets the Eye profile as a cynical and highly militaristic fighter, who enjoyed using his napalm-like spray weapon to take out his enemies while he watched them burn) and Sky High (a Concorde Super Sonic Transport, he was originally depicted as a male character in her More than Meets the Eye profile, which characterized him as an extremely optimistic bot who always saw the bright side in everything; here, as with a number of characters, she’s made female). Tread Bolt is the only member of the Air Patrol to not appear, a stealth bomber with a sense of humor who used his skills to play pranks on his teammates. “Down the waste reclamation port” is another Transformer stand-in for a human phrase, “down the toilet.”

Section 16: Nothing in particular here.

Section 17: I’ve gone over the most of the Assembly members a fair bit in previous annotations, but I think it would be good to do it again here, just for completeness’ sake. However, I shouldn’t have to go too in-depth with Ratbat; the idea of him as a politician begins with IDW Publishing’s Megatron Origin, and presumably is derived from his time as the leader of the Decepticons on Earth in the original Marvel The Transformers comic. Traachon was the High Councilor on the Council of Autobot Elders in the Marvel UK The Transformers comic; created by Simon Furman and John Stokes, he first appeared in the comic story “And There Shall Come…a Leader!” in the Transformers Annual 1985. Riker was the governor of Micro, the planet inhabited by Micromasters, as seen in the Victory cartoon. Riker was the name given to him by Jim Sorenson for the IDW Publishing The Ark books, though his name has proven harder than most to translate over the years, with Reichl and Raikuru being various other suggestions over the years. “Macromaster” is the term that Beast Wars: Uprising introduced to refer to regular size Transformers, derived from artist Don Figueroa’s fan series of the same name. Cross-Cut (originally named Crosscut, who was renamed back in “Broken Windshields” in order to distinguish him from the Decepticon with that name from Marvel’s The Transformers comics) was an Autobot ambassador to various alien civilizations. A redeco of the Generation 1 Skids toy with the original alternate Diaclone head mold, he turned into a Honda City R, and was exclusively sold alongside his bodyguard Road Rage by Japanese online retailer e-HOBBY. The Pavilion was first seen as the “High Council Pavilion” in Dreamwave Productions The War Within. Yuss (which we’ll see more of starting next section) was a town first seen in the Marvel UK prose story “The Magnificent Six!”, published in the Transformers Annual 1991.

Section 18: We see the aforementioned Maxilla here, seven fortresses that protected the Yuss Naval Batteries. Fort Scyk debuted alongside Yuss in “The Magnificent Six!”, a Decepticon base established in Stanix early on in the war, where the Decepticons there would harass the nearby neutral townspeople of Yuss. The other forts (Zreb, Xern, Wenx,, Briv, Myvh, and Qalt) all appear to just be named to seem similar to Scyk, rather than being any specific references. Survive was a high-ranking Resistance member introduced to the world of Beast Wars: Uprising back in “Head Games”; originating from Beast Wars Neo, he was a drill sergeant known for his harsh leadership style. A redeco of Beast Wars Polar Claw, he turned into a black bear. We’ll talk about Scylla in just a moment. The Trannis Fork River is named for Trannis, a Decepticon upstart who took command on Cybertron after Megatron left to capture the Ark, as laid out in the prose piece “Cybertron: The Middle Years!” in issue #83 of the Marvel UK The Transformers. Created by Simon Furman (at least, it’s believed he’s the writer of the prose piece), Trannis was known for his constant victories, but proved unable to capture Iacon, and planned to raze the city to the ground, before being assassinated by the Wreckers, eventually leading to the Decepticon Straxus replacing him. He was mentioned in the cipher text for “Safe Spaces” as being a former Decepticon leader, and it combined some of his aspects with the planned but never produced OTFCC 2004 toy Dominus Trannis, a redeco of Robots in Disguise Rail Racer, describing him as “tactical geniuses.” This whole section about the threat of the Yuss Naval Batteries to the Resistance fleet’s invasion seems inspired by the 1957 book The Guns of Navarone by Scottish author Alistair MacLean and its 1961 film adaptation, which told the story of a team of Allied commandos and their efforts to break into a German fortress to prevent them from taking out Allied naval ships in the Aegean sea during World War II, itself inspired by several real-life battles surrounding Greece.

The naming of the teams here (such as Survive’s Fighting Quasars) just appears to be references to various stellar entities, rather than any specific piece of media. The three Micromasters seen here are versions of the Mini-Cons who form Windcharger, a clear plastic redeco of Energon Perceptor, sold exclusively at three different promotional events for Toys“R”Us for the Japanese version of the Energon toyline, Super Link; they would eventually be given the team name of City Stealth Team by the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime. Screw, who we see first, was the redeco of Grindor, turning into a hovercraft. Throttle (renamed here to be X-Throttle to distinguish him from the Powermaster partner of 1988 Decepticon Darkwing, with a name construction similar to Robots in Disguise X-Brawn) was a redeco of Sureshock and turned into an ATV. Finally, Axel (who wasn’t exactly renamed; the toy was name Accel, but was misinterpreted and romanized as Axle instead by fans back in the day) was the redeco of High Wire and turned into a dirtbike; she’s made female here, the original version’s gender never being specified. Lio Convoy’s Solipsistic Sword’s ability to jam transmissions in its previous form as the Solipsistic Staff was displayed back in “Broken Windshields”; we’ll expand more on this later. His other weapon, the Typhoon Arrow gun, is named for an attack used by Lio Convoy in the Robotmasters cartoon episode “Lio Convoy Storms In”, packed-in with a limited edition of his Robotmasters toy.

Section 19: We switch now to the Builder perspective at Yuss, inside the naval batteries’ command center. Goldbug, the Builder in charge, is generally known as being the upgraded form of Bumblebee, released in 1987 in the fourth year of the original toyline. The leader of the Throttlebots, Goldbug and his companions were equivalent to the Mini-Vehicles of the previous three years, small Autobots with simplified forms, who had a pull-back motor gimmick. However, Bumblebee was previously mentioned as being deceased in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe back in “Broken Windshields”, meaning this Goldbug is a different character. IDW Publishing set the precedent for a separate Goldbug back in 2009, when he showed up as a character completely separate from that universe’s Bumblebee in Spotlight: Metroplex. Further separating him from the Generation 1 Bumblebee, this version of Goldbug has a destroyed voicebox, and communicates vocally using clips from Earth songs and films/television, as the Bumblebee of the live-action movies famously did. It’s mentioned he lost his voicebox in the Rending, an event mentioned in passing in the cipher text section of “Not All Megatrons” as some sort horrifying event that occurred after Galvatron’s execution and Overlord’s rise to Decepticon leader, but before the status quo of the Games was in place; from how its described here, it sounds like it was one of the last events of the Great War. Goldbug’s Throttlebot companions are also mentioned; we’ll see more of them in the epilogue to Beast Wars: Uprising. The Micromasters under his command that we specifically see with him are the Super Car Patrol Team from Zone, Autobot redecoes of the 1989 Decepticon Micromaster team, the Sports Car Patrol. Their members are Gingham, redecoed from Hyperdrive, who transformers into a Mitsubishi X2S concept car; Road Hugger, redecoed from the Decepticon of the same name, who turns into a Ferrari 408 Intergrale concept car; Deadhour, redecoed from Detour, who turns into a Chevrolet Corvette Indy sports car; and Black Heat, redecoed from Blackjack, who transforms into a 1988 Ford Probe GT Turbo sports car.

The first lyric Goldbug plays (“this is what we’ve waited for, this is it, boys, this is war!”) is from “99 Luftballons”, a 1983 song by the Neue Deutsche Welle West German band Nena – or more specifically, the 1984 English-language version, “99 Red Balloons”. LAN stands for “local-area network;” “caught with their gas caps off” is a Cybertronian version of “caught with their pants off.” Vibro-pings appears to just be a generic sci-fi term, kind of like sonar or radar or something along those lines. I can’t figure out if the little sector numbers are references to anything: they’re not showing anything obvious on Google, though writing this in late 2024 that search engine is basically useless now. A few other Micromasters are mentioned; the first, Refute, is a Micromaster version of the Mini-Con from Armada, the partner of the Autobot Hoist, who turned into a weird Cybertronian vehicle with grippers on the front, like a stag beetle. Trip-Up, the second one mentioned, is a member of the Hot Rod Patrol released in 1989; he turns into a 1966 Ford Mustang fastback hot rod. The final Micromaster mentioned, Kingbolt, is another Mini-Con import from the Japanese version of Armada, Legend of the Microns. Specifically, he was part of a series of Mini-Con sold with the Japanese DVD releases of the Legends of the Microns anime, specifically coming with volume 10, who were promoted with the pack-in manga Linkage, a story that further explained the backstory of the Mini-Cons in the cartoon, written and drawn by long-time Japanese Transformers fan Hirofumi Ichikawa, who is friends with and has collaborated on projects by Jim Sorenson. The leader of the Hazard Team, Kingbolt is a redeco of Armada Prowl, who turns into a police car (and a gun as well, though presumably Uprising Kingbolt doesn’t). The next set of lyrics Goldbug uses (“run for the hills”) is from the 1982 song “Run to the Hills” by English heavy metal band Iron Maiden, the favorite band of fellow Jim Sorenson collaborator Bill Forster. Lio Convoy and Break are joined by Quillfire, a Predacon version of the Decepticon anarchist from the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon, who turned from a porcupine-like robot mode into an off-road SUV; presumably, this version of the character turns into the Cybertronian equivalent of a porcupine after receiving the Beast Upgrade. The third song lyric Goldbug uses (“You can’t always get what you want”) comes from the 1969 song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by English rock band The Rolling Stones, sung by lead singer Mick Jagger. Finally, his last song lyric (“Don’t fear the reaper”) comes from the 1976 song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult.

Section 20: Back in Triax, now. Queen Rage’s history and her conquering of Rageland is expanded upon here, giving further detail to events mentioned in passing in “Head Games” and “Safe Spaces”, describing how she used her status as a fighter in the last Game to take over Triax. The description of the portable bulwarks feels familiar, maybe something from the War for Cybertron games? Not sure, though. Springload, the Predacon who Rage consoles as he dies, is a version of the obsessive 2015 Robots in Disguise Decepticon, who transformed from a frog-like robot (with him being described as an Amphiboid) into a pickup truck; like Quillfire, this version probably turns into an amphiboid directly. Springload turns gray when he dies; the idea that Transformers lose the color in their bodies when they die originates from the death of Optimus Prime, as seen in The Transformers: The Movie. The serial number listed on his tags’ QR code is AC5000487105, the serial number of Maeve, one of the Host from the 2016 sci-fi television series Westworld.

Section 21: Here, we check in with the Resistance fleet proper. Scylla is another one of the Seacons from Beast Wars II, an overly affection pirate with bad temper issues who transformed into a squid, redecoed from the original 1988 Seacon Tentakil. She previously appeared as one of Lio Convoy and Blackarachnia’s earliest recruits for the Resistance back in “Broken Windshields”, where she was given the pirate speech patterns she uses here. The fleet is made up of more mode-locked and lobotomized builders. The main ship of the fleet, Broadside, is the Autobot triple changer from 1986, who turned into a fighter jet and an aircraft carrier; this version is noted to be female, which feels like a reference to Jolene Blake, fan of Ask Vector Prime and Beast Wars: Uprising who is also known her screenname “Broadside.” For the builder fleet, they have the mode-locked but fully sentient battleship, Tidal Wave. Originating from Armada, Tidal Wave was a massive and single-minded Decepticon who was somewhat equivalent to the likes of Omega Supreme or a combiner, able to tun the tide of a battle just by entering the field. He transformed a massive battleship, which could split into three separate components: an aircraft carrier, a double-bowed battleship, and a large troop transport. Artwork later in the story shows that this version of Tidal Wave is a virtual redeco of Titans Return Broadside, in the gray, purple, and green colors of used in America for his toy; a Titans Return toy of Tidal Wave (with his head formed by the Titan Master Fathom) was later made in 2017, albeit in the dark purple colors used for the Armada cartoon and the Japanese release of his toy. Chronometers are the Transformer equivalent to watches; the term was originally used in issue #272 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic to refer to a handheld stopwatch-like device, but has since been used over the years to refer to an internal part of a Transformer that can tell time, including in previous Beast Wars: Uprising stories.

Section 22: Back to Lio Convoy and the others. Break gets a bit of his backstory filled in here, and it’s implied that he’s non-neurotypical in some way. The class system mentioned here was originally mentioned all the way back in “Broken Windshields”, although its seen little mention since then, only being mentioned again briefly in “Not All Megatrons”. Functionism refers to a specific time of prejudice, where Transformers are given jobs based on their alternate modes; the idea originated in the Aligned continuity, though the name specifically comes from IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing.

Section 23: Back to the fleet. The Covenant of Primus, we explained at the beginning: the quote from here comes from the Book of Logos, which is based on the Book of Revelation from the Bible, which we’ll describe later. Logos is Logos Prime, an “Ancient” from Cybertron, a contemporary of Vector Prime. He was the true identity of Galaxy Force (the Japanese name of Cybertron) Soundblaster, a redeco of Cybertron Soundwave based on the upgraded form of the original Soundwave from The Headmasters. He featured prominently in a series of prose stories promoting the Beast Wars Reborn reissue of the original Beast Wars Optimus Primal and Megatron toys, bringing them back to life after the events of Beast Machines and bringing them to be tested above the Jungle Planet from Cybertron, before eventually being confronted by his brother, Vector Prime. Due to a lack of information and untranslated chapters, many fans believed that Logos Prime’s creator, Hirofumi Ichikawa, intended for him to be one of the Thirteen, and the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime codified this understanding. We’ll talk more about him in the cipher text section. “Davy Jones’ Locker” is a euphemism for the oceanic abyss, originating from legends told by sailors about the devil Davy Jones.

Section 24: Back to Tesarus and the Pack, now. The Micromaster Combiner construction vehicles that Steel Jaw sees could be the 1990 Decepticon Constructor Squad – made up of crane-truck Stonecruncher and Excavator, backhoe Grit and Knockout, and dump truck Sledge and Hammer – or the redecoes of them included with the 1990 Micromaster Combiner Transports – Autobots Pipeline and Gusher, and Retro and Surge, or Decepticons Terror-Tread and Cement-Head. This story shows off the Micromaster Combiner’s ability to mix and match partners in vehicle mode, something that showed up heavily in commercials promoting their toys, but which rarely shows up in their scant fictional appearances.

Section 25: The next few sections are focused on the battle between the Builder and Resistance fleets, and are much shorter in length, constantly flipping perspectives. As such, not every section will have something to annotate, but I’ll still point out as much as a I can. The commander of Tidal Wave, Banzai-Tron, was one of the Action Masters from 1990, a Decepticon martial artist and entrepreneur. Unlike a lot of Action Masters, his design did not make obvious what he had turned into when he had previously been able to transform; as such, transforming updates of him have varied in what they have him turn into. The first of them, however, was his figure from BotCon 2009, a redeco of Energon Mirage (the upgraded form of Armada Tidal Wave), who turned into a gunboat. His speech patterns here seem vaguely reminiscent of Captain Ahab, a mono-maniacal captain obsessed with hunting down the whale who stole his leg, from the 1851 epic novel Moby-Dick. Razor-Sharp was his Action Master partner, who transformed from a mechanical crab who turned into a rifle for him to use. She’s characterized as female here, although the original toy had no pronouns in the tech specs, something that only came later in Banzai-Tron’s profile in the Dreamwave More than Meets the Eye series. She’s described as being a decapodian, the Cybertronian equivalent to crabs first mentioned in “Cultural Appropriation”, named after the species from Futurama that Dr. Zoidberg belongs to. Now, normally, I tend to explain characters as they’re introduced; however, with the Micromasters that appear here, I need to start with the second; they’re all crane Micromasters, based on Mini-Cons that share the same mold. The first of these Mini-Cons was Longarm from Cybertron, a Decepticon-aligned Mini-Con from Gigantion, who was a member of the Giant Planet Mini-Con Team; his name is formatted as Long Arm here, presumably meaning there’s someone else already named Longarm in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, perhaps a version of the Armada Mini-Con. Cradon, meanwhile, was a redeco of Longarm, an Autobot who was sold as part of a Japanese-exclusive special pack-in with 2-packs of Boss Coffee; one could either get him, another Mini-Con (who we’ll get to later), or a PVC figurine of either Optimus Prime, Megatron, or Starscream. Ask Vector Prime had Cradon (who had no fiction to say where he was from, only sold under the Japanese version of The Transformers branding) as another Mini-Con from Cybertron, but here, he’s an Autobot Micromaster. We’ll talk about the other two crane Micromasters when we get to them later.

Section 26: Scylla’s first mate, Gigascouter, comes from Beast Wars II, and was the partner of Gigastorm, the upgraded form of the Predacon Megastorm. With Gigastorm being a retool of the original 1986 Trypticon toy, Gigascouter is, of course, redecoed (barely) from Trypticon’s mini-partner, Full-Tilt, and turned into a little Cybertronian car. Gigascouter didn’t appear in any classic fiction and was only mentioned in passing in the profile published for Gigastorm in IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook, so this is his first real appearance. He’s a fully sentient Predacon here, and presumably, he turns into some sort of beast form, perhaps a dinosaur of some sort given the Gigastorm connection.

Section 27: The Deep See Micromaster Patrol is made up of the various characters that used the Mini-Con submarine, starting with Deepdive from Cybertron, another member of the Giant Planet Mini-Con team (for reference, the third member of the team with Deepdive and Longarm is Overcast, a bomber plane). The team leader who receives the POV here is Diveplane, a redeco from the 2010 Transformers toyline who was sold in an 8 pack of Mini-Cons, sold exclusively in Europe. She receives a gender for the first time here, previously only being mentioned in Ask Vector Prime, which noted that a version of the character who was a Micromaster existed in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe.

Section 28: Katilla is a Micromaster version of the Mini-Con Catilla, a redeco of Classics Snarl sold in the Dark of the Moon toyline alongside several other Mini-Cons (including Rav, who showed up in “Identity Politics”) as online store exclusives and eventually at the likes of Kmart. Transforming into a tiger, he’s renamed with a K here, presumably to distinguish him from his namesake, the Autobot Pretender Beast who turned into a saber-toothed cat. Drydock, the Autobot destroyer he’s onboard, was a planned redeco of Revenge of the Fallen Depthcharge intended to be sold as part of a two-back with the Decepticon hovercraft Undertow in the 2010 Transformers toyline. Despite being a bigot, Katilla isn’t wrong about top-level Predacons in the Resistance abandoning it, as in the case of Magmatron. Drydock is armed with ripslinger charges; while it sounds like it might be just a generic enough name for weaponry, Ripslinger was the name of the main antagonist of the 2013 Disney film Planes; Jim Sorenson’s son, James, was a huge fan of the Disney/Pixar Cars franchise when Beast Wars: Uprising was being written (around when he was 6 or so years old), and a previous reference to the franchise appeared in “Cultural Appropriation”. The Falcon Spear, meanwhile, was the weapon of the Beast Hunters version of Prime Wheeljack.

Section 29: Nothing here.

Section 30: Diveplane’s team members are named here. Aside from the aforementioned Deepdive, there’s Seawave (who like Cradon was sold as part of the Boss Coffee promotion, and is also given a gender for the first time here) and Astro-Sinker, a member of the Sabotage Team and one of the Mini-Con partners of Cybertron Astrotrain, sold by the Collectors’ Club in 2007. Tachyons are a sci-fi term describing a particle that travels faster than light; it’s generally seen in sci-fi stories for communication technologies.

Section 31: Locustors are the Cybertronian version of locusts; their name doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything, just an attempt to “roboticize” the name.

Section 32: Nothing here.

Section 33: Claw Jaw was a Maximal squid from the second year of the Beast Wars toyline, an underwater attack specialist who had the ability to drain his enemies’ energon by wrapping them in his tentacles; he was previously mentioned in the profile published for Beast Wars: Uprising Jawbreaker in issue #57 of the Collectors’ Club magazine, which established the two were cousins. Oxide sharks were mentioned in the online bio of the Toys “R” Us-exclusive version of Devastator, a redeco of the Revenge of the Fallen Legends-class Constructicons in Generation 1 colors, sold in the 2010 Transformers toyline. The other mechanimals mentioned, m-rays and warwhales, are Cybertronian versions of manta rays and whales; it might be a stretch, but there was a vehicle called the War Whale in the 2002 version of Mattel’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toyline.

Section 34: Nothing here.

Section 35: Flattop was one of the Micromaster Transports sold in 1989, a Micromaster who came packaged with a vehicle or trailer that could convert into a battle station or other vehicle of some sort. A terror-loving Decepticon who fired indiscriminately upon everything he saw in the ocean, he turned into a F4 Phantom Fighter jet, while the transport he came with was an aircraft carrier that could turn into an “interstellar jet.” The transport receives name for the first time here, the Platonix, which was Flattop’s French-Canadian name. The ship’s x-ray lasers were mentioned in Flattop’s original tech specs.

Section 36: Tidal Wave’s tendency to shout his own name comes from the Armada cartoon. The other two crane Micromasters appear here; Reachout was the redeco of Cybertron Longarm sold as part of the Mini-Con 8 pack with Diveplane in the 2010 Transformers toyline. Starhook, meawhile, is a renamed version of Astro-Hook, another of Cybertron Astrotrain’s partners (and for completeness again, the third member of the Sabotage is Astro-Line; the three were named for Unicron’s heralds that appeared in the Marvel The Transformers comic from issue #66 to #73, Hook, Line, and Sinker). “Strike the colors” refers to the signal for surrender that ships would do when they lowered their flags.

Section 37: Several more Resistance ships mentioned here. Undertow was an Autobot with an aquatic vehicle mode seen in issue #13 of IDW Publishing’s All Hail Megatron ongoing and was created by Simon Furman and Don Figueroa. Sea Spray was the live-action movie version of the original Autobot Mini Vehicle, sold in the Hunt for the Decepticons subline of the 2010 Transformers toyline; the Generation 1 Seaspray is mentioned later, making this a separate character from him. And Dephcharge is the aforementioned Autobot destroyer from Revenge of the Fallen. Like with Sea Spray, the normal Beast Wars Maximal Depth Charge exists in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe (or well, kind of; he only ever showed up in the early materials pre-“Alone Together” that promoted his 2013 toy, a redeco of Hunt for the Decepticons Terradive), so this separates him from this Depthcharge.

Section 38: Nothing here.

Section 39: Art of the flaming Tidal Wave accompanies this section, drawn and colored by Jesse Wittenrich.

Section 40: Back to Tesarus. Diablo is Beast Wars Snarl, the Tasmanian devil Maximal sold in 1997, whose tech specs described him as a fearless sneak attach specialist with camouflage abilities. Diablo was his Italian name; the name of Snarl already belongs to the Beast Machines Maximal lion in this universe, who previously appeared in “Broken Windshields”. Steel Jaw’s hope to share a drink with Erector seems inspired by the legend of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee wishing to share a drink after the end of the American Civil War.

Section 41: Nothing new here.

Section 42: “S Brigade” isn’t a reference to anything as far as I can tell. Blackarachnia calls Lio Convoy “Aslan,” the name of the heroic lion king from C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia novels. The High Pavillion, where the Builder Assembly is located, was first seen in Dreamwave Productions’ The War Within (specifically named there as the “High Council Pavillion”).

Section 43: The rest of the Assembly appears here, aside from the ones we’ve already gone over (Ratbat, Traachon, Riker, and Cross-Cut). In the order they’re named, they include: Octus, one of the members of the Decepticon Triumvirate who seized control of the Cybertron-based Decepticons after the death of Straxus, who first appeared in issue #213 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. Created by Simon Furman and Lee Sullivan, he turned into a Dalek, one of the cyborg aliens from the long-running BBC science fiction show, Doctor Who. Kudon was a member of the Council of Ancients from Dreamwave Productions The War Within mini-series, although he wouldn’t be named proper until the sequel series The Age of Wrath; he was created by Simon Furman and Don Figueroa. Avalon was a member of the Autobot High Council from Dreamwave Productions’ Energon ongoing, created by Simon Furman and Guido Guidi. Contrail, Sigil, and Halogen were all members of the High Council seen in Exodus, the novel exploring the early days of the Aligned continuity; they were created by Alex Irvine. Notably, “Identity Politics” established that unlike most depictions, Sigil and Halogen were Decepticons. Tormaandi, like Traachon, was a creation of Simon Furman and John Stokes, a member of the Council of Autobot Elders who first appeared in the Marvel UK prose story “And There Shall Come…a Leader!”, published in the Transformers Annual 1985. Sherma was a member of the Senate, who appeared in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing; he was created by James Roberts and Alex Milne. Mindgame was one of the members of the Decepticon council that took over after Megatron and Galvatron went offline, mentioned in the semi-canonical novella Alignment, which takes place after Marvel’s Generation 2 comic: she was created by Simon Furman, although she’s another Beast Wars: Uprising gender swap. Decimus was another member of the Senate from IDW Publishing’s comics, who first appeared in the Megatron: Origins mini-series; he was created by Eric Holmes and Alex Milne. Xeon was a Kaon-based politician who supported Megatron’s gladiator ring, also from Dreamwave’s The War Within; again, he was a creation of Simon Furman and Don Figueroa. Notably, he had the title of Emirate, something only shared by another of Furman’s creation, the Autobot politician Emirate Xaaron. Finally, Knock Out (spelled “Knock-Out” here, meaning that presumably some other Knock Out exists, whether that be the Armada Mini-Con or the Autobot from Revenge of the Fallen, or someone else entirely) is the prissy Decepticon medic from the Prime series. He wasn’t a politician in the original cartoon, but when IDW Publishing introduced a version of him from Velocitron (the Speed Planet from Cybertron) in the Windblade ongoing, he was selected as one of the representatives from that planet for the Council of Worlds. Back to the start, then.

K’th Kinsere was a location first mentioned in issue #1 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing. Median was a settlement seen in the Wings Universe prose story “Flames of Yesterday”. The Ibex Cup was first mentioned in issue #9 of More than Meets the Eye. Equinoids are Cybertronian horses, who first appeared in issue #45 of More than Meets the Eye. Slog was one of the Pretender Monsters who formed Monstructor, released in 1989. Transforming into a vaguely humanoid monster, he had a Pretender shell of an organic monster with fish/insectoid details, and formed the combiner’s upper torso; he previously appeared in “Broken Windshields” as one of the Builders hooked up to the Cortex. We’ll see Eject’s helicopter later.

Section 44: Notably, Flytrap asks for those who can mass-shift to do so in order to provide more space in the Royal Palace; all previous Beast Wars media hasn’t depicted the Maximals and Predacons as being able to mass shift, mostly because they’re generally in situations where they don’t need to. Not sure if the grey-green rifle is meant to be anything specific. And that concludes part 2…

Chapter 3:

Section 1: Hot Rod and his team of Micromaster advisors all first appeared in “Micro-Aggressions”. Hot Rod, of course, you almost certainly know, but just to remind everyone, he’s in his Micromaster form as sold with Star Convoy in the Return of Convoy line. His fellows include: Blackout and Spaceshot, the Micromaster Combiners included with the Decepticon Anti-Aircraft Base in 1990, which converted from a massive tank into a battle station. The pair combined into a B-1 bomber jet; “Micro-Aggressions” established that in this universe, they were female, a pair of sisters. Drillbuster was the Micromaster partner included with Zone Roadfire, who turned into a tank. Countdown was included with the Rocket Base in 1989: a legendary hero according to his tech specs, often depicted as the leader of the Autobot Micromasters, he transformed into a moon rover, while his massive base transformed from a rocket and shuttle crawler into a massive base mode.

Groundshaker was another Micromaster sold in 1989, an Autobot redeco of Air Strike Patrol member Whisper, who turned into a jet inspired by the rumored F-19 stealth fighter. A rebellious robot who loved action, he came with a massive ATV that turned into a battle station. When the ATV was sold in Japan as part of the Zone toyline, it was given the name Landshaker (used here) and came with different decals, plus a new partner: Pontiac Firebird Trans am sports car Gunrunner. Holo-discs and Holo-maps are just generic terms. The Gyronian River is a new local, presumably in the Gyronia sector, a settlement from the Wings Universe; they are home to the Gyronian Senties, the name given to a generic Autobot seen as a victim of the robosmasher in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “The Secret of Omega Supreme” in issue #41 of the Collectors’ Club magazine. Razor-snakes were mentioned in the tech specs of Beast Wars Spittor. The term “Chosen One” was used to refer to Rodimus Prime as a deferential term in season 3 of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon; with Hot Rod’s hinted troubled leadership in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, it’s used here in an insulting manner.

Section 2: The Micromasters who appear here are all members of the Autobot Monster Trucks Patrol, sold in 1990; again, the personalities they show here are based on their profiles from the Dreamwave Productions More than Meets the Eye guidebooks. Hydraulic, the no-nonsense, blunt leader of the team transformed into a modified Ford Bronco monster truck. Heavy Tread, the team’s jokester, was the odd one out of the tea, turning not into a monster truck but instead a heavily modified “funny car” with two engines and six wheels. The ornery Slow Poke turned into a monster tow truck. Big Hauler, the only member of the team to not appear here, was an Autobot with an extremely negative attitude, who turned into a modified semi truck with monster truck tires. We’ll talk about Sky-Dive and the Tol-Tech in the next section.

Presumably, Hydraulic was ordered to evacuate from Lower Ky-Alexia as part of the Assembly’s plan to infect the Resistance with the Vehicon virus, as seen in “Safe Spaces”. Mortilus was the Cybertronian god of death and a member of the Guiding Hand; introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing, he was created by James Roberts and Guido Guidi. Another instance of a familial relations like Magna Stampede and Pyra Magna earlier with Hydraulic mentioning his great uncle Trailcutter; Trailcutter was the trademark friendly briefly given to original 1984 Autobot Trailbreaker in the 2010s, and notably used the name in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing. He was killed by Decepticon Justice Division member Kaon in #34 of that series.

Section 3: Skydive was one of the technorganic Maximals from Beast Machines; his name is parsed here as “Sky-Dive,” presumably to separate him from the Aerialbot with that name. A stoic and talented aerial combat specialist, he transformed into a Quetzalcoatlus, a species of pterosaur named after the Aztec serpent god, Quetzalcōātl. In keeping with that, his brigade, the Tol-Tech, are named for the Toltec culture, a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture with potential links to the later Aztecs. The Dysprosium Plateau is a new location; dysprosium is atomic number 66 on the periodic table of elements, a rare-earth element with a silver sheen. The Toxic Sludge Swamps were first mentioned in the tech specs of 1988 Seacon leader, Snaptrap. Cyberquakes are the Cybertron equivalent of earthquakes; the term has come up before in previous Jim Sorenson works, such as Ask Vector Prime, but I feel like it must originate from somewhere else, I just can’t quite remember where. The Rad Zone was a dangerous area of Cybertron, first seen in issue #78 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. Megapedes are the Cybertronian version of centipedes; they’re presumably named for the creatures seen in the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, Forgotten Realms.

Section 4: Reckage is an imported version of Wreckage, the Decepticon M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle sold in the toyline for the 2007 Transformers movie. His name is altered here, as another Wreckage (this one based on the Armada Mini-Con) previously appeared in “Head Games”. Sinkor isn’t a reference to anything, obviously enough; “everything but the kitchen sink” is just a real life bit of military jargon.

Section 5: Glibax (or Gilbax, as it’s misspelled here) was a settlement seen in the Wings Universe prose story “Flames of Yesterday”; it previously appeared as the location of Maximal slums in “Broken Windshields”. Longtooth also previously appeared there, monitoring Maximal activity; one of the 1989 Autobot Pretenders, he turned into an amphibious transport truck, and his Pretender shell took the form of a humanoid cyborg walrus. Neither he avianoid Maximal nor the injured Maximal missing his legs appear to be anyone in particular.

Section 6: The Iacon Police Force is a new term, not from anywhere before. We’ll talk about Rook when we see him show up in the next chapter. Knock-Out’s willingness to work with whatever side wins sounds like it’s referencing his final appearance in the Prime cartoon from the Predacons Rising TV movie, where he defected to the Autobots when it became clear the Decepticons were not going to win.

Section 7: Blackbeak came as an accessory with Beast Hunters Grimwing, a small little bird-sharped creature that could fire a missile from its mouth attached to a grappling hook. Tech specs and on-packaging text said that the Beast Hunters version of Blackbeak was male, but like Razor-Sharp, Beast Wars: Uprising Blackbeak is female. She’s said to be a “grep-avianoid”; grep is a command-line utility used to search plaintext databases in Unix and related computer systems. The High Pavillion Arena is new. Brim-Stone was a redeco of the Classics Mini-Con dragon Nightscream, sold as a Decepticon-aligned Mini-Con as part of a K-Mart exclusive 12-pack in the 2008 Universe toyline. His name is parsed here to separate him from the other Brimstone in the Beast Wars: Uprising toyline, a Predacon version of the Wings Universe Decepticon (himself based on the Cybertron Decepticon of the same name).

Section 8: Dante is a Cyberdroid version of Abraham Dante, the human partner of Scorponok in IDW Publishing’s comics, first seen in the Infiltration mini-series. Created by Simon Furman and E.J. Su, he was introduced into this universe back in the cipher text for “Broken Windshields”, where it was noted he was a volleyblast player (the Cybertronian version of volleyball). Caliburn, meanwhile, was a redeco of Armada Leader-1, and came Megazarak (a redeco of Armada Megatron with the Japanese name of the original Scorponok, hence the connection here) at OTFCC 2004, described as his Micromaster partner. He also was mentioned in the cipher text of “Broken Windshields”, having become a wrestler after the war. Their connection (first established in the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime) ties into the Beast Wars: Uprising version of the original Scorponok, which I’ll explain here: the cipher text of “Head Games” Head Games alluded to Scorponok’s existence, and also made mention of Olin Witwicky, the grandson of “Scorponok’s” Headmaster partner, and son of Daniel Witwicky (Spike Witwicky’s son who you almost assuredly know) and Llyra (the daughter of Lord Zarak, Scorponok’s Headmaster partner, from the original Marvel Headmasters mini-series). Olin was an alternate version of the Wings Universe character Olin Zarak, the Headmaster partner of the Scorponok toy sold at BotCon 2014; there, he was the son of Zarak himself, and had succeeded his father after his death, although he was specifically the son of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon version of Zarak. Later, when the Beast Wars: Uprising incarnation of Scorponok was introduced, Sorenson and Bishop wanted to give him an alternate name to distinguish him from the original, but since his appearance was promoting the toy of Scorponok sold as part of the sixth Transformers Figure Subscription Service, he appeared with the name first. Thus, the cipher text in “Not All Megatrons” described how, in this universe, the main Transformer component of “Scorponok” was Zarak, a full-size Cybertronian version of Lord Zarak, similar to Scorponok’s depiction in The Headmasters anime, and equating him to Cerebros, the full-sized Headmaster who became Fortress Maximus’ head. His initial partner, meanwhile, was Borx, a version of the Nebulan scientist introduced in IDW Publishing’s Regeneration One, created by Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman. Eventually, Zarak created MegaZarak, a non-living massive cityformer like Fortress Maximus, to which he became its own Headmaster. Eventually, Borx was replaced (likely because Llyra, his daughter, caused him to balk when she entered the battle between MegaZarak and Fortress Maximus) with Dante, also becoming a Powermaster with Caliburn forming his engine, in order to fight Fortress Maximus once more, this time defeating him as alluded to here. This story sets up that Dante would in turn be replaced with Olin. Art accompanying this section is drawn by Jesse Wittenrich, featuring Dante and Caliburn; Dante is drawn based on Scorponok’s appearance in The Headmasters, most easily seen with his chest details.

Rebirth, as seen in the cipher text of “Not All Megatrons”, was the original name of the Beast Wars: Uprising version of the Cyberdroid’s colonized home planet Master, a planet originally introduced as home of the Headmasters in The Headmasters anime. The name “Rebirth” comes from the three-part episodes that make up season 4 of the original Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “The Rebirth”, which The Headmasters ignored. Dante’s handling of an import/export business feels like it calls to mind Epsilon Holdings, the front organization that Abraham Dante used to hide his conspiracy, the Machination, back in IDW Publishing’s comics. “Trigger Warnings” and “Not All Megatrons” had established that Thunderwing, the massive Mega Pretender jet sold in 1989, had succeeded Overlord as the last Decepticon leader, and had been responsible for both plans to weaponize Targetmasters even further, and the creation of the Micromaster upgrade. Dante’s refrain that he wasn’t supposed to be in work today comes from the 1994 independent comedy film, Clerks, in which the main character, Dante Hicks, repeatedly laments that he was supposed to have the day off after being called in to come to his convenience store job in place of another employee.  C12H22O11 is the molecular formula of sugar.

Section 9: Nothing here.

Section 10: Flak, the commander of the Pavilion Guard, was a member of the Autobot Micromaster Battle Patrol, released in 1989. A meticulous tactical genius, he transformed into a self-propelled rocket launcher, similar to the TOS-1 Buratino. A narthex in real life refers to an architectural element found in early Christian and Byzantine churches, an area generally located on the west end of those buildings. Powerbomb was a redeco of Flak released as part of the Battle Patrol Team in Japan, as part of the Zone toyline. Dropshot, meanwhile, was a Decepticon Micromaster released with the Military Patrol in 1990, transforming into an armored personnel carrier, characterized as someone who would never give up his goals. The two blue Micromasters being brothers is new. Skat-or is a Micromaster version of Energon Scattor, part of the Energon Saber Mini-Con Team who formed the Energon Saber; the Energon Saber team were heavily retooled from the Armada Air Defense Mini-Con Team, with Scattor in particular being a retool of Armada Jetstorm, turning into a supersonic transport jet. His name being changed probably indicates that a version of the Armada Mini-Con Scattor, a member of the Night Attack Mini-Con Team, exists in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, since a version of his teammate, Broadside, showed up in “Head Games” (probably parsed as Broad Side or Broad-side, given that the original Triple Changer appears here with her name unchanged).

Section 11: The Builder whom Psycho-Orb previous served as aide to is revealed here to be Icepick, another of the Pretender Monsters released in 1989. Sometimes depicted as their leader, he transformed into a bipedal clawed monster, and had a crystalline monster Pretender shell, forming the right leg of Monstructor, and was characterized as a big believer of planned obsolescence, getting rid of the technology of today for the more advanced technology coming tomorrow. Snarl-blast is a version of Classics Snarl, a Decepticon-aligned Mini-Con who turned into a tiger and was part of the Predator Attack Team. Originally characterized as male, she’s depicted as female here and has been renamed (as with Beast Wars Snarl earlier) to avoid having the same name as Beast Machines Snarl; adding “blast” to character names was one way Hasbro would get around trademark issues back in the 2000s, most notably when Shockwave was renamed “Shockblast” for a few years. Pulse grenades are a fairly generic sci-fi term; weapons by those names have appeared in both the Halo and Fallout video game franchises. Zirconium gas comes from the 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon episode “Spychangers to the Rescue”; more specifically, it was an invention of a redubbed version of the episode, made after 9/11. The original version of the episode centered around the threat of the Plutonium Energy Generator, a device which, if damaged, would have exploded; after the attacks, however, the episode was redubbed to remove this element, instead saying that if damaged, the device would unleash zirconium gas that would corrode circuitry. The two Micromaster tanks seen here are Sidetrack (another member of the Battle Patrol, a single-minded Autobot who was always focused on his targets, who transformed into a Marder IFV with attached Roland anti-aircraft missile launchers) and Bombshock (the experienced veteran leader of the Military Patrol, who transformed into a Leopard 2 tank).

Section 12: Durasteel’s received a mention in a few previous stories; it’s a material from the Star Wars franchise. Alpha Trion comes from the original The Transformers cartoon, Optimus Prime’s old mentor and sage, one of the oldest Transformers still around in the modern day who helped to push off the Quintessons from Cybertron. The green and yellow tank Micromaster is just Flak again. Galva Convoy’s given himself the Vehicon symbol, hinting at what’s to come. The Drosera procedure is named for Drosera, one of the largest carnivorous plant genera in the world.

Section 13: Little bit out of order here. Big Shot was the leader of the Battle Patrol, a dutiful soldiers who followed orders to the letter and transformed into a Denel G-6 self-propelled gun. The fourth member of the team, the E-2C Hawkeye AEW plane Sunrunner, showed up back in “Broken Windshields”. When the team was redecoed and released in the Zone toyline as the Battle Patrol Team, Big Shot was used for the character Gunlift, like Flak with Powerbomb; the redecoes of Sidetrack and Sunrunner kept those names. Tracer was another member of the Military Patrol, an aerial reconnaissance specialist who turned into an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter; he was characterized as male elsewhere, but this version is female, perhaps in reference to the superhero of the same name from the then popular online first person shooter, Overwatch. The fourth member of the Military Patrol, the sadistic FMC XR311 combat support vehicle Growl, appeared previously as one of the Micromasters stationed on Fortress Maximus in “Head Games”. Cloud Raker is a version of the Mini-Con Cloudraker, another Mini-Con sold in the 12 pack as part of the 2008 Universe toyline; a redeco of Classics Divebomb, he also turned into an Apache, and is renamed here presumably because the original Cloudraker, the Autobot clone jet from 1987. Cannon and Thunder are Micromaster versions of the Armada Mini-Cons Crumplezone and Inferno, using their Japanese names; this pattern was established back in “Micro-Aggressions”, where Search, based on Armada Blackout, appeared, with the Powerlinx version of the character being called Black Out. The Powerlinx version of Crumplezone, then, appeared as another Fortress Maximus-based Micromaster sentry back in “Head Games”. Heavy-Tread is another of the 12 pack of 2008 Universe Mini-Cons (his name as parsed there was Heavytread, again meaning some other Heavy Tread aside from the other Micromaster seen earlier exists in this universe, perhaps the Autobot tank from Power Core Combiners or the Mini-Con Cybertronian tank from Generations); a redeco of Classics Broadside, he turned into an M1 Abrams tank. Steel Wind, meanwhile, is one of the Classics Mini-Cons, the chill but precise leader of the Clear Skies Team who turns into a A-10 Thunderbolt II gunship.

Section 14: I can’t find a good point of origin for “twistvine”; it’s show up on some Dungeons & Dragons adjacent things, but I can’t confirm it 100%. Lio Convoy’s exchange with Steel Wind brings to mind, of course, Megatron’s line to Optimus Prime in The Transformers: The Movie; “Why throw away your life so recklessly, Prime?” The use of “doink” as onomotopeia is a fandom in-joke in response to the then-recently released 2016 Combiner Wars cartoon, in which the Mistress of Flame’s hammer was accompanied by a cartoonish “doink” sound effect. Blackarachnia having a “mandible blaster” does point to her having her Transmetal II form, since her gun in that form is her beast mode head. Among Grimwing’s forces, aside from the more famous mythological creatures, hippogriffs are legendary creatures with the front half of an eagle and the hind half of a horse, first seen in the 16th century in the poem Orlando Furioso, by Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto. Bolt-bats were mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode, “S.O.S. Dinobots”. Galva Convoy’s connection to a mysterious mentor were first hinted at back in “Not All Megatrons”…hrmmm.

Ratbat is reformatted into a copter drone, while the rest of the Assembly are turned into artillery drones, the drones lead by Beast Machines Obsidian and Strika; unlike the previous three Vehicon generals, they were Great War-era Transformers, and as such, they’re used here for the infected Builders. Now technically, artillery drones were never called that in the Beast Machines cartoon or other assorted pieces of media, instead derived from the fan-made name Heavy Artillery Drone that TFWiki originally had them at. Honestly, though, I don’t really think that’s all that important. Mufasa, another of Blackarachnia’s nicknames for Lio Convoy, is the father of the protagonist from the 1994 animated Disney film, The Lion King. And that ends part 3…

Part 4:

Section 1: We start out with the crew of the Iacon Communications Services, who have been mentioned throughout the story before now. The Verity Tower, where their broadcast center resides, has a few points of origin: veritas, the latin word for truth; Verity Carlo, the Autobot ally seen in IDW Publishing’s comics starting with Infiltration, created by Simon Furman and E.J. Su; and finally…me! Jennifer Alexis Carlo, the person annotating this story. Back in the day, I posted on the Allspark Forums with the screenname Verity Carlo, and I helped out on the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime. I was and am very honored to be referenced in this story. Rook is an Autobot journalist, sold exclusively at BotCon Europe 2002. A redeco of the 1984 Mini Vehicle Windcharger (specifically the keychain version retooled from the original, sold by Fun4All in the early 2000s), he was characterized as a dedicated truth-teller. A TransTech version of him appeared on first in the “Around Cybertron” comic strip published in the Collectors’ Club magazine, then on his own Facebook page, Rook - Axiom Nexus News: Investigative Journalist, as part of promotion for BotCon 2015, along with other Axiom Nexus News correspondents and the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime, and as such, he was written several times by Sorenson; that version of the character was depicted as still being dedicated to the truth, but also arrogant and sometimes neurotic, which feeds a bit into this depiction. Fever Dream, meanwhile, is a new character created by Jim Sorenson, David Bishop, and Christopher Colgin. He was repurposed from the red and light brown redeco of the original Blitzwing toy sold in the Platinum Edition with fellow redecoed Triple Changer Astrotrain, who was previously repurposed as Star Dasher in this universe. His personality, a reality-denying editor and producer who prefers to report his version of the facts even in the face of overwhelming evidence, whether that be misleading others or via just straight falsification of details, was inspired somewhat by J. Jonah Jameson, the publisher of the Daily Bugle and long-time thorn in the side of Spider-Man from Marvel Comics, but more overtly, by Fun Publicans and Collectors’ Club editor Pete Sinclair, who Sorenson and Bishop had…a tense relationship with, due to his constant meddling in stories when it was clear he hadn’t actually read them. Instances include when one of the later stories drew objections from him due to him claiming “there were no Micromasters in Beast Wars: Uprising,” along with his attempts to force the stories to conform more to the “origin” of the Beast Wars: Uprising universe as being the result of a divergent timeline in the Beast Wars cartoon, where both Optimus Prime and Megatron were taken offline onboard the Ark, as presented in the dubious “A Change to the Agenda.” This would even go so far as Sinclair inserting dialogue into “Coalescence”, the last Shattered Glass story, in which the Beast Wars: Uprising version of Depth Charge said that Megatron had been taken offline on the Ark. An alternate version of him was mentioned to have taken over Axion Nexus News after the ANN Editor stepped down in a post that was meant to go up as the final post of Axiom Nexus News Editor page, but never saw release. Draw your own conclusions from that. Artwork of him appears on the second page of this section, drawn by Christopher Colgin; it was drawn originally to accompany a profile page for him, like Star Dasher in “Safe Spaces”, but it was never finished.

Gaea was originally a character who appeared on a t-shirt at BotCon 2004, the first time the convention was unofficial due to it being separate from 3H Productions, the license holder for the convention rights at time; she was created by Rob Meyer and Erik Sturdevent, and was a female robot who transformed into the Earth. She was officially introduced in the 2015 Collectors’ Club storyline “Another Light”, where she was depicted the sister of Primus and Unicron, having hid away herself to protect the supply of rarified Energon by turning into the Classics version of Earth. Because she was created for BotCon 2004, she is not owned by Hasbro, and as such, has appeared in fiction published at the new, unofficial BotCons starting with fiction published at BotCon 2022. Rook’s ability to move is somewhat unique; the only non-Micromaster Builders shown to be able to move are former cassettebots, like Eject and Ratbat. His fictional appearances did show he was small enough to be dwarfed even by some of the larger Maximals, which presumably informs his ability to move here. Circuit was one of the European-exclusive Action Masters sold in 1991 a year after the toyline ended in America; a redeco of 1990 Decepticon Action Master Axer, he was one of Exo-Suit Action Masters, sold with a Formula 1 racecar that turned into a suit of armor for him. In IDW Publishing’s Robots in Disguise and Windblade comics, he was depicted as the reporter for Iacon Communications Services and the main reporter on Cybertron. This version of the character is female. Notably, the original tech specs for Circuit depicted him as being something of a conman, something that hasn’t really featured in his fictional appearances, but which probably informs this version of her, given Fever Dream’s interest in her. Andromeda originally appeared as a Transcendent Technomorph back in the TransTech stories published in 2008; created by Greg Sepelak, Trent Troop, and Nick Roche, she turned into a Cybertronian car, and appeared alongside Rook as a reporter for ANN in “Around Cybertron” and the prose story “I, Lowtech”; in 2015, she also received her own Facebook page: Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter. A Generation 1 version of her would later be introduced in the later Wings Universe version of “Around Cybertron”. Aston is a Micromaster version of a TransTech Mini-Con introduced in the Axiom Nexus News Facebook pages, created by Greg Black; a repurposing of the version of Universe 2008 Bodyblock (originally a redeco of Classics Grindor) sold with as part of a 12 pack with candy, an all-new mold based on the original. He transformed into a monster truck, and was depicted as an intern at Axiom Nexus News; the term “aston” refers to the graphics at the bottom of the screen of news broadcasts in the United Kingdom, originally derived from Aston Broadcasting Services, a company responsible for those graphics. The camerabot, Photon, is a version of the Real Gear Robot Photon T-34 from the 2007 Transformers movie toyline as a full-sized Decepticon. A redeco of fellow Real Gear Robot Spy Shot 6, he turned into a digital camera.

Section 2: Returning to Lio Convoy. We never see Cybershark again, so he probably did end up dying in the Rust Sea. Blackarachnia’s third and final nickname for Lio Convoy, “Panja,” is another lion from fiction, specifically the father of the protagonist from the Osamu Tezuka manga and its various anime adaptations, Jungle Emperor. The series is better known in America from the name given to the original series’ English dub Kimba the White Lion, and for that Panja was renamed Caesar.

Section 3: This is our first time seeing Megatron and the other Darksyders since “Not All Megatrons”; about two years have passed since then. The high-rise headquarters seen in that story has been abandoned for a squat heptagonal fortress; I dunno if its meant to be any specific building, but it sounds like the type of architecture that we usually see when Iacon appears in various stories. A magnacondenser appears to be just a generic piece of technology, although…well, to pull back the curtain a bit, since I started working on these annotations about half a decade ago, Google has crapped out on itself and made its search function terrible, so maybe there’s some origin point, but it’s not popping up on there. Just to go over the body types of Megatron and his crew here since it’s been a bit: Megatron is in his BotCon 2016 toy body (the retool and redeco of Robots in Disguise Megatron, based on a concept for the cancelled OTFCC 2005 convention); Terrorsaur and Scorponok are in their Transmetal bodies (both of which were toy only; Terrorsaur was a standard part of the Beast Wars toyline, while Scorponok’s Transmetal form was sold as a Happy Meal toy at McDonald’s), while the versions of Waspinator and Inferno are in mechanical versions of their original bodies (notable for Waspinator, since he has a Transmetal toy, but we’ll see why in a second). Their names are different, notably; Inferno is Formikon, as established in “Not All Megatrons”, using his name from the Italian dub of the Beast Wars cartoon, to distinguish him from the original Autobot fire truck. Waspinator, meanwhile, is named Wasp, also established in “Not All Megatrons”. The Animated version of Waspinator began life as an Autobot named Wasp, and Waspinator’s 2011 Hall of Fame bio established that the Beast Wars character also had that name before coming to prehistoric Earth. More on that in a second.

Leatherhide, as established in “Not All Megatrons”, was a rogue Autobot scientist who Megatron recruited to help create the Beast Upgrade. I haven’t generally been going over characters who have already appeared, but his deal here ties back into some references here, so I’ll make an exception for him. Leatherhide was a cancelled redeco of the Beast Wars Mutant Soundwave, intended for release as one of two Wal-Mart exclusive “Halloween Horrorcon Value Packs” with a redeco of the original Beast Wars Blackarachnia toy; the other was a redeco of the original Beast Wars Cheetor toy as Nightprowler, and a redeco of the Beast Wars Transmetal Waspinator figure. Converting from an alligator to a bat, he had basically no information on him. However, in various Jim Sorenson projects over the years, he showed up, including the AllSpark Almanac II and the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime, established that he and several other cancelled Beast Wars redecoes were the Combatibots, an Autobot combiner team whose extreme and violent tactics led them to going rogue. Then, in a post on the Andromeda – Axiom Nexus News Reporter Facebook page, a TransTech version of Leatherhide was established to be a biologist, which worked its way back into the portrayal of the original Leatherhide in “Not All Megatrons.”

Fuzors, of course, were the range of figures from the third year of the Beast Wars toyline, Transformers who turned into hybrid animals, with the most famous being the Maximal Silverbolt and the Predacon Quickstrike. The name Horrorcon originally came from two Decepticon Headmasters from the 1987 range of the original toyline, Apeface and Snapdragon, triple changers who could turn from robot to vehicle to beast. As mentioned above, the name was going to be reused for the two-packs that Leatherhide was going to be a part of. I wonder if the name is used here to refer to the Beast Wars Mutants (of whose number, the aforementioned Soundwave, was going to be redecod into Leatherhide). The Mutants were late additions to the toyline, using molds originally planned for Hasbro’s tie-in toyline to the young adult book series Animorphs, and transformed from two different animals, their robot heads and parts hidden away inside. The packaging for their toys explained how they were once normal Fuzors, until experiments by Megatron turned them into Mutants. Finally, the “strange red and blue cyborg” that Leatherhide is experimenting on is Klaws, the Monster GoBot. He was the last surviving member of their number after their attempt to ambush the Human Confederacy was foiled by the Ex-Bots in “Cultural Appropriation”; the group had disguised themselves as normal Predacons after travelling from the GoBots universe to the world of Beast Wars: Uprising, but clearly Leatherhide figured out pretty quick what Klaws actually was. Labrat, Leatherhide’s assistant (and possible romantic partner, given Scorponok’s reaction), was introduced in “Not All Megatrons”; he’s repurposed from a special redeco of Transmetal Rattrap as part of a pack-in with a jigsaw puzzle for the Japanese Beast Wars Metals toyline.

Alloygators are the Cybertronian equivalent of alligators; they were first mentioned in the BotCon 2007 convention comic, “Games of Deception”. Esau was the oldest son of Isaac in the Hebrew Bible; pertinent to this, one of the stories told in the Bible was how his brother, Jacob, deceived his blind father to receive the birthright meant for Esau. Sheep in wolves clothing, meanwhile, is an inversion of the idiom “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, warning against duplicitous individuals. Scorponok noting that he is unmoved by Wasp’s pleas because he long stopped caring about those sorts of things probably hearkens back to when he killed Impound, a well-intentioned security guard who tried to save him from the crumbing Iacon Dynamic Energon Distilleries plant back in “Identity Politics”. Wasp is warped into “the Waspinator” by the Esau, part himself and part Vehicon Cycle drone. His name probably owes something to his original bio; far from the comic relief character in the cartoon, his tech specs described him as a terrifying monster, consistently describing him as “the Waspinator” ala his name inspiration, the titular robot from the Terminator movies. His body, meanwhile, is that of Thrustinator, part of the Collector’s Club 2014 Figure Subscription Service range. Representing an alternate version of Waspinator after the events of Beast Machines, Thrustinator was Waspinator fused with his Vehicon General identity, Thrust, into a singular being. Thrustinator was redeco and retool of Beast Wars II Dirgegun (himself a heavy retool of the original Beast Wars Waspinator toy), and turned from a mechanical cyborg wasp into a monstrous fused robot mode. Notably, Waspinator seems to have some level of control over the Vehicon drones; more on that in the next section. We have another bit of art here, this time depicting Waspinator inspecting the smashed up corpse of a cycle drone, drawn and colored by Josh Burcham.

Section 4: Galvatron and his Cyberdroid minions (Nucleon, Doomshot, and Krunix) appear here after reuniting in “Not All Megatrons”; I’ve gone over Galvatron’s history in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe extensively in previous annotations, so I won’t go too in-depth, but to recap: he is a reborn Micromaster Galvatron, reformatted from the Autobot Micromaster Cop-Tur by the G-Virus, and is also this universe’s version of the Beast Wars II Predacon leader Galvatron. This story indicates that he has undergone the Beast Upgrade to his triple changer dragon/drill tank form from that series, despite not actually being a proto-race Cybertronian, which next story will talk a little bit about. Nucleon and Doomshot are Galvatron’s Powermaster and Headmaster partners from his first life, when he became a Triple-Threat Master, an extremely powerful upgrade that combined all three forms of binary bonded partners, giving their partner cosmic levels of power at the expense of their lifespan being shortened (Clench, Galvatron’s Targetmaster, was killed in the Targetmaster Extirpation, the event first described in “Trigger Warnings”, with Clench’s death confirmed in the cipher text for “Not All Megatrons”). Krunix, meanwhile, is the former Headmaster partner of Scourge. Previous annotations for “Trigger Warning”, “Identity Politics”, and “Not All Megatrons” go further into their origins.

Previous stories also indicated that Optimus Prime became a Triple-Threat Master in order to fight Galvatron. Those stories never said his name outright, most likely due to the “A Change to the Agenda” origin comic that claimed that the Beast Wars: Uprising universe was split off from the original Beast Wars cartoon timeline when Megatron successfully killed Optimus Prime during the events of “The Agenda (Part III)”, only for Blackarachnia to poison the original Decepticon Megatron in an attempt to even the score before she blinked out of existence (see “Micro-Aggressions” for more on that nonsense). Instead, they to him obliquely as the “Autobot leader” and “Triple-Threat Prime;” but now, Sorenson and Bishop fully drop any pretense that it could be anyone else. It is noted that Prime’s face was “mangled” before he binary bonded to his partners, which is in line with what happened to Optimus in that “origin”, though it might well be just something similar that happened. Prime’s partners, for reference, were Hi-Q (Powermaster), Apex (Headmaster) and Surge (later Overrun, Targetmaster); again, see the annotations for “Trigger Warnings” and “Not All Megatrons” for more on them. Diac, mentioned here, is the second Titan Master partner of Optimus Prime from the Titans Return toyline, converting to his head for Prime’s Voyager class form. The cipher text for “Not All Megatrons” indicated that he, Apex, and Hi-Q were part of the Optimus triumvirate on Rebirth before Galvatron invaded; while Apex and Hi-Q were accounted for, no mention was made of what happened to Diac, and his gruesome fate is confirmed here. Galvatron’s sanity has clearly started to crack once again, with him not remembering which Cyberdroid he killed, and considering the original Megatron as someone separate; we’ll learn more about his mental state next story. The G-Virus recreated Galvatron back in “Micro-Aggressions”, and it was there that it was first hinted that Eject had taken a sample of it to create Galva Convoy, who in turned used it to make the Vehicons; Galvatron, of course, is immune to his own CNA. Galvatron’s vision of a controlled Vehicon army swarming the planet brings to mind Megatron’s takeover of Cybertron as seen in Beast Machines.

Section 5: Black-Out, Eject’s helicopter, is of course based on the Decepticon Blackout from the 2007 live-action Transformers movie. A Decepticon loyal to Megatron, he turned into an MH-53 Pave Low heavy-lift helicopter. He’s also shown to have the ability to unleash electromagnetic pulse bursts, an ability that originated with the Animated version of Blackout. His name here is split it two with a hyphen, to distinguish him both from the original Micromaster Blackout and the Armada Mini-Con (the earlier mentioned Black Out). The 23 on his door probably comes from his movie counterpart’s Sector Seven designation, N.B.E. 23, from the Sector Seven ARG that promoted the first movie. The electronic warble to his voice might not mean anything (Blackout didn’t actually talk in the film, aside from 2 lines of Cybertronian dialog), but the tie-in video games did give him that sort of modulation. Laser flag appears to just be a generic term, a Cybertronian version of a flag. Eject, of course, used to be Lio Convoy’s mentor and commander, as seen back at the beginning with “Broken Windshields”. Riker’s quote, “we have to destroy the village in order to save it,” is a paraphrase of a quote given by an unnamed US Army Major to journalist Peter Arnett during the Battle of Bến Tre, during the Tet Offensive stage of the Vietnam War. The Solipistic Sword’s dampening abilities come up again, specifically its ability to hide its wielder from non-sparked machinery.

Section 6: The Chamber of the Ancients and the Tower of Pion are more buildings originating from The War Within. Bisk, who previously appeared in “Not All Megatrons”, is a Predacon version of the humanoid lobster Decepticon from the 2015 Robots in Disguise series, a gamer who views the world as just one massive, programmed game. He’s traded in his car alternate mode for a “rock-lob” form, a Cybertronian lobster analog; the species gets its named from the song “Rock Lobster” by American band the B-52’s. Most of Bisk’s video game terminology I covered previously in the annotations for “Not All Megatrons”, so I’ll go over ones that are new here. Bisk is armed with firelance missiles (the Prime Beast Hunters Deluxe-class Prowl toy came with a Firelance Missile Launcher). The Rainbow Shield, meanwhile, was the combined form of four promotional R.A. toys, R.A. being the Arms Micron partner of Ratchet who turned into his swords, from the Japanese Prime toyline. Specifically, it was made up of Shining R.A. GR (green, sold at AEON), Shining R.A. P (purple, sold at Joshin Kids Land and Bic Camera), Shining R.A. Y (yellow, sold at Edion group, Yamada Denki, and Yodobashi Camera), and Shining R.A. R (red, sold at Toys “R” Us). The Decimus Inn is named after Decimus, who we covered earlier when talking about the Assemblybots. Shoot ‘em ups are games in which waves of hostile enemies move towards to attack the solo player character, most famously exemplified with the 1978 game Space Invaders. Trash MOBs refer to non-boss level enemies in MMORPGs. Item drops are various power-ups and tools left behind when an enemy NPC is killed. Bisk’s view of the Tower of Pion as having its destruction telegraphed brings to mind the destructible environment animations made popular by the likes of the Battlefield video game series. “Board” is another term for level. Attunement is a term from the MMORPG World of Warcraft, which players must go on a quest to receive in order to unlock certain areas or storylines.

Section 7: The Predacon army gets a name here: the Legion of the Inferno (again using the earlier name for the Pit); I don’t know that it’s a reference to anything in particular, since it’s a fairly generic style of name; maybe the supervillain team from Marvel Comics, the Legion of the Unliving, but that feels like a stretch. Evidently, the rest of the Ex-Bots have learned about Stiletto’s conversations with the dead Overshoot. Rampage’s side mission will be explored more in the next story.

Section 8: Seaspray I don’t have to explain too much, but this does definitely separate him from the earlier Sea Spray seen as part of the Resistance fleet. The red and green Maximal seen in the recording doesn’t appear to be anyone in particular. The Sweeps, of course, were the original Decepticon Scourge’s legion of minions first seen in The Transformers: The Movie, identical to him in appearance. Notably, Magmatron is uncomfortable with the lobotomization practices used by the Resistance on alternate mode-locked Builders; back in “Intersectionality”, he came up with the plan to stop Trypticon by lobotomizing him. Clearly, this decision has haunted him on some level. Sweeps in general tended to be depicted as largely servile to Scourge; the original Sunbow The Transformers cartoon would occasionally give them some level of personality, but just as often were depicted as non-individualistic troopers. The idea that the Sweeps are the most common Builder transport probably owes something to the army builder idea, a term used by fans to refer to toys that can double as groups of multiple, which the original Scourge toy was among the first to be used in such a way – Sorenson has a large army builder collection, as shown by many of the images taken by him on the TFWiki army builder page.

The Ex-Jet is loosely inspired by the Blackbird or X-Jet, the aircraft used by Marvel’s X-Men superhero team, depicted as a modified Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane, to complement the Ex-Bots’ loose X-Men homage. Later in the story it’s noted to be more triangular in shape now; presumably, this either references the BotCon 2009 Sweep toys (redecoes of Cybertron Sideways) or the Generations Scourge figure, both of which turned into triangular bomber-type aircraft. IFF is real world military concept, standing for “identification, friend or foe.” Bazooka’s little spiel about the weapons is paraphrased from Private Hudson’s boasts to Ripley about the Colonial Marine’s weaponry from the 1986 action film, Aliens. Cityformers are fairly self-explanatory, better known as Titans these days. Bumble-puppies were genetically engineered creatures from the 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World by English author Aldous Huxley; they were introduced into Transformers fiction in Cybertron Thunderblast’s tech specs, specifically referring to a version of them called “Antilian bumble-puppies.”

Section 9: As mentioned before, Snapper and Grimlock’s history together was seen in “Micro-Aggressions”. The MCSF brig seen here is probably part of the same abandoned MCSF facility seen towards the beginning of “Cultural Appropriation”. Nebulos has been gone over plenty already; Animatros is the Japanese name of the Jungle Planet from Cybertron. Sorenson previously gave the planet the English name “Animatron” in the guidebook The AllSpark Almanac II, while shortly before the publishing of “Derailment”, a similar colony planet called Eukaris was appearing in IDW Publishing’s Windblade comics. Later material in the Titans Return toyline would massage the two concepts together, albeit giving the planet another new English language name, Biosfera. Grimlock’s location of imprisonment, the Bastion-five lock-up, was part of the larger Ferromax Detention Center, seen back in “Alone Together: Prologue” as the facility that held early Resistance fighter Dynobot.

Section 10: The Hubcap Interchange is one of several geographical locations/buildings named in memory after Autobots and Decepticons from the Great War, like the aforementioned Cyclonus Memorial Tower and others seen throughout Beast Wars: Uprising; in this case, its named for the affable communications officer Autobot Mini-Vehicle, a retool of Cliffjumper sold in the third who turned into a modified Porsche 924. Notably, Hubcap didn’t appear in any classic fiction aside from a single appearance in issue #8 of the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers manga published in TV Magazine.

Section 11: Lio Convoy’s three elite troopers are new. The first of them, Vertebreak, is a Beast Wars style Predacon version of the Aligned Predacon from the Prime Beast Hunters toyline, a redeco of the line’s earlier figure Lazerback. A mostly silent Predacon who prefers to stay in beast mode, the original Vertebreak’s alt-mode was a dragon-like quadruped reptile, but in a few sections time we’ll see that his alt-mode here has been recontextualized as something else. Apexus was a rage-filled Maximal-aligned Mini-Con tiger who was part of the fifth Micron Booster line in Japan, a redeco of Classics Mini-Con Snarl. Razorbeast was one of the first Maximals sold in the Beast Wars toyline in 1996, turning from robot into an organic boar. Razorbeast was given the spotlight by IDW Publishing in their two Beast Wars mini-series from the 2000s, The Gathering and The Ascending, where he was a member of Lio Convoy’s elite black ops unit the Pack, who infiltrated a Predacon cell led by Magmatron in order to prevent him from using the leftover stasis pods of the Axalon from prehistoric Earth to make a Predacon army. As explained in “Not All Megatrons”, the Grand Mal (originally Beast Machines Megatron’s flying fortress/new body) was a creation of Thunderwing, the Mega Pretender from 1989, who was the last of the Decepticon leaders in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe after deposing Overlord; the Great War ended when Autobots and Decepticons alike teamed up to stop Thunderwing’s attempt to enslave all of Cybertron. The Grand Mal’s odd, quasi-featureless face is recontextualized as being loosely based on Thunderwing’s face (probably his Pretender shell face, to be more specific). Thunderwing is described as the “last Decepticon Emperor;” in Japan, the leader of the Decepticons (and Predacons and Vehicons) was referred to as the “Emperor of Destruction.” 

Section 12: The Maximals introduced here are all former MCSF officers. Aura, their commander, was an original Beast Wars: Uprising character created by Jim Sorenson and David Bishop, who previously appeared in “Burning Bridges” and “Trigger Warnings”. Created as a version of the “Shark” vehicle from the tie-in cartoon for the Kenner toyline M.A.S.K., which converted from a normal Porsche 928 sports car to a submarine-like form. Her name, meanwhile, comes from the Aura mask used by the Shark’s driver, Gloria Baker. Envisioned as a white and yello virtual retool of Reveal the Shield Jazz, with a head based on the Aura mask and Jazz’s speakers retooled to be propellors, her Beast Upgrade form is not specified, but Sorenson and Colgin offered the idea that she would be a virtual retool of Generations Thrilling 30 Sky-Byte, now turning directly into a shark. Stopgap was one of several MCSF officers created by Trent Troop for Theft of the Golden Disk short film, later appearing in a group shot published in the Diamond edition of the BotCon 2006 comic “Dawn of Future’s Past” before receiving a bio online. He was a virtual retool of Cybertron Clocker (as all MCSF officers were), using a modified version of Machine Wars Skywarp/Thundercracker’s head, and a color scheme loosely based on Beast Wars II Diver. If I had to hazard a guess what his beast mode was, it would probably be some kind of mechanical frog, given the Diver connection. He previously appeared back in “Trigger Warnings”. Nitrostreak, created Forest Lee, Pete Sinclair, and Dan Khanna, was seen in “Dawn of Future’s Past” as Tigatron’s partner “Unit 1” on Cybertron, a virtual redeco of Cybertron Clocker in black and red. He previously showed up in Beast Wars: Uprising in the “Alone Together” chapter “Perception” as a virtual redeco of Classics Rodimus. Given his relationship with Tigatron, I imagine he might be some sort of mechanical cat. Shatterpoint was another Trent Troop creation for Theft of the Golden Disk, a virtual retool of Cybertron Clocker with the head of Energon Shockblast (and his arm-cannon modified into a smaller hand-held blaster), with colors loosely based on Generation 2 Color Changer Drench. His profile in #14 of the Collectors’ Club magazine characterized him as specialist in crowd control, able to handle large masses but very poor in a one-on-one fight. His name comes from a type of testing done on toys to ensure they will not hurt children, where samples are tested to see how much pressure it takes to break them and whether or not that breakage will create sharp, dangerous shards. Unlike the others, there’s no real easy animal to point to for his Beast Upgrade form. A “heavy blaster” just sounds like a generic sci-fi weapon; it’s been used in various places throughout the Transformers franchise, and it's also been used in stuff like Star Wars. Allspark should be well known enough by now. Aura’s falling out with Stiletto that lead her from being transferred from Iacon to the Melpomene Bridge in Kalis was seen in “Burning Bridges”. Sweeps are also apparently known as “Scourge drones;” that’s self-explanatory. 9K is, again, another Trent Troop creation for Theft of the Golden Disk, characterized in his profile in issue #13 of the Collectors’ Club magazine as a high-ranking captain who preferred to join his troops on the field, although this version doesn’t seem quite as high-ranked. He was a virtual redeco of Cybertron Clocker in the colors of Beast Wars K-9 (his namesake, who has shown up as a separate MCSF member back in “Micro-Aggressions”), armed with an orange version of Energon Strongarm’s axe. It’s likely he turns into a Cybertronian dog, as K-9 turned into a German Shepherd. The Melpomene Bridge, as I noted back at the time, is named for the Greek muse of tragedy. Wolfang’s backstory was seen in “Trigger Warnings”; for whatever it’s worth, Wolfang’s own narration in that story made it clear Aura had no idea about his status as a double agent. Aura set up an appointment for Stiletto with the Predacon Secret Police mnemosurgeon Vampire after she developed PTSD from killing her partner Betabear while he was in a nucleon-fueled rage, as seen in “Burning Bridges”. “Hulk out” obviously references the Marvel superhero the Hulk, who like Devastator generally has a green and purple color scheme.

Section 13: Back to Dark Scream now. “Turbofoxhole” is obviously derived from the term foxhole, and turbofoxes; the first species of Cybertronian animal life ever mentioned, all the way back in the tech specs of the 1984 Autobot Mirage. Autolauncher’s final line before his death, “you really want to function forever,” feels like an inverse of a common line in Transformers writer Simon Furman’s work, “never did want to live forever.” The Predacon’s battle song here was a section written by Bishop, who intended for it to sound something like the song “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the 1980 musical Les Misérables by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubil, based on the 1862 novel of the same name by French author Victor Hugo, though Bishop notes it might not fully scan due to his being tone-deaf. Sky-Byte is probably the most famous character to come out of the 2001 Robots in Disguise series, a loyal Predacon who had the heart of a poet (often creating his own haikus) who nonetheless was crippled by a desperate need for Megatron’s approval, who ended up developing a soft side for the humans of Earth. Turning into a biomechnical great white shark, he was a redeco of Transmetal 2 Cybershark from Beast Wars. Dark Scream, along with Slapper and Gas Skunk, served as Sky-Byte’s underlings in the Robots in Disguise cartoon. The backstory of Maxima (a character created for the Combiner Wars cartoon) as the “first Maximal” was first revealed in “Safe Spaces”; see the annotations on that story for more information.

Section 14: Not too much here. Cohesion field generators sound like a generic sci-fi term, but it might be a piece of technology seen in the 1992 video game, Gateway, based on the “Heechee universe” by American science fiction author Frederik Pohl.

Section 15: I don’t believe that the Grand Mal had eye lasers in the Beast Machines cartoon. Instead, this reads as a subtle reference to The Transformers: The Movie, which also depicted Unicron as having green eye lasers, and where the Autobots abord the Quintesson cruiser crashed through his left eye. Thulium gas doesn’t appear to be a specific reference; thulium is a real world element, 69 on the periodic table of elements. Innermost energon was introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing, the energon that directly surrounds a Cybertronian’s spark chamber, which only leaks when they begin to die. Room number 91-A doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything, and I doubt any of the others that come up are either. Vertebreak’s alternate mode is recontextualized as a hyenabot, a Cybertronian animal first mentioned in the Cyber Key code text for Cybertron Swindle. His Prime counterpart’s back mounted cannon was called the Hyena Cannon, hence him being a hyenabot. Page 130 has art of Lio Convoy fighting Vehicon drones in his cybercat form, with line art by Matt Frank and colors by Gonçalo Lopes; the Vehicons here have yellow stripes that are technically only supposed to be reserved for the Vehicon generals (Tankor, Thrust, and Jetstorm), but that’s a minor thing, all things considered. I feel like going on from here, the description of the interior of the Grand Mal mostly aligns with what we saw in Beast Machines.

Section 16: Back to the Tripredacus Council for a brief check-in; nothing of note here.

Section 17: Back on board the Grand Mal. Also nothing particular here.

Section 18: Back to the Predacon army. These next few section rapidly change perspective, so annotations might be a bit light for some of them. The hulking shape we see here, as spelt out, is Tripredacus, the council’s combined form.

Section 19: I’m not sure if it’s an intentional usage of the term here, but “bulk” is a term that originates from the Linkage manga packed in with the DVD releases of the Legend of the Microns cartoon (the Japanese version of Armada), used by Mini-Cons to refer to full-sized Transformers. Onyx Primal was previously seen in the story “Trigger Warnings”; check out the annotations for more on his origins there. Of note: the story described his pre-Beast Upgrade form as having a stealth bomber alternate mode, with Christopher Colgin suggesting that he would be a virtual retool of Revenge of the Fallen Mindwipe. Jim Sorenson, meanwhile, suggested that his Beast Upgrade form could be a redeco of Legends Convobat, itself redecoed from the Titans Return Mindwipe toy. Presumably, whatever Primal’s men obtained is the same thing that allows the Maximal High Council to form Magnaboss.

Section 20: Nothing here.

Section 21: And nothing here.

Section 22: I went over the idea of solipsism back in my “Broken Windshields” annotations. Lio Convoy’s title of “Guardian of Order” also comes from “Broken Windshields”. The tentacles definitely remind me of Beast Machines.

Section 23: Back to Ser-Ket and Tripredacus. The mental landscape of a combiner is a long-standing thing, I won’t dwell too much on it.

Section 24: The idea that sparks contain positrons comes from the Beast Machines cartoon.

Section 25: Over to Magnaboss. We’ll learn why the Grand Mal is floating in a second.

Section 26: The voice, of course, belongs to Lord Imperious Delirious, who I’ve gone over plenty by this point. His survival was seen in the epilogue to “Intersectionality”, and his efforts to corrupt Galva Convoy and destroy Cybertron were seen in “Not All Megatrons” and “Cultural Appropriation”. The Matrices he mentions are of course the Energon Matrix, detailed in “Head Games” as being a gift for Cybertron from the Human Confederacy, used to create the proto-races before being hidden away inside Lio Convoy; Galva Convoy has one as well, the result of the Matrix intermingling with his CNA. Lord Imperious Delirious’ face being made up of Cybertronian symbols is also a Beast Machines reference; Megatron would do the same when interacting with those inside his Grand Mal form. It’s noted here that the written Decepticon and Predacon languages are based on the “Devronic” character set. Devron was one of the ancient Decepticon leaders seen in statue form in the Hall of Heroes from The Transformers: The Movie, created and named by Floro Dery in his concept art, vaguely reminiscent of Scourge and his Sweeps. Other works by Sorenson have depicted Devron as being a very early leader of the Decepticons and the factions that predate them, such as an Animated Devron who lead the Destrons (mentioned in The AllSpark Almanac II), and an Armada version mentioned in Ask Vector Prime.

Section 27: Ram Horn’s beast mode is called a beetgadol, derived from the original version of the toy that was used to create Ram Horn’s fellow rhinoceros beetle, the 1985 Deluxe Insecticon Barrage: Armored Insect Corps Beetras Beet-Gadol. Femme (and the term mech) were fan-made terms for female and male Cybertronians, incorporated into The AllSpark Almanac and its second volume. Ram Horn not remembering Ser-Ket’s name feels very much in line with him being a loose Trump expy.

Section 28: Second-born intellects we’ve also gone over plenty by this point. Scrap as a Cybertronian swear took over from the long running use of “slag” with the Prime cartoon, though it would eventually be replaced with the term “scrud” by that show’s sequel, the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon, and slag would eventually find itself being used again anyway.

Section 29: Magnaboss’ megaton sword comes from his original Beast Wars toy, where it was the name given to the combined weapons of Prowl, Silverbolt, and Ironhide by his tech specs, though it was specifically called a “megaton battle sword” there.

Section 30: Dark Scream’s final bit. The Grand Mal’s arsenal isn’t anything specific, just generic types of weapons.

Section 31: As mentioned previously, Lord Imperious Delirious had installed his source code into the shuttle that Magmatron and his crew used to get back to Cybertron in the epilogue of “Intersectionality”; “Cultural Appropriation” revealed that their journey back went awry when they neared the planet, as the ship seemingly malfunctioned and crashed, while Delirious hid away inside Cybertron’s computer systems. Magmatron’s Magmablade is his original Beast Wars Neo toy’s sword (though the packaging there rendered the name as the “Magma Blade”). However, the term “diabattle shield” is new; referring to the shield made up his Elasmosaurus component’s underbelly and fins, it comes from the Diaclone Dia-Battle figure; Magmatron’s pre-Beast Upgrade form was depicted in “Intersectionality” was depicted as being a virtual redeco of the 2016 Dia-Battle V2 figure, which like him separated into three component alternate modes. Point One Percenters are Cybertronians with immensely powerful sparks; see the annotations on “Intersectionality” for more details.

Section 32: Blackarachnia’s original profile back in issue #25 of the Collectors’ Club magazine established that with Cheetor and Nightscream, she was one of the original Resistors to the Builders. Alphabet soup is self-explanatory.

Section 33: Conjunx endurae are the Cybertronian equivalent to married couples. Again, see the “Intersectionality” annotations for more on them. Ant-droids (also known as antroids) were first mentioned in the third episode of the original Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “More than Meets the Eye, Part 3”. The Great War between Optimus Prime’s Autobots and Megatron’s Decepticons was identified as the “Third Cybertronian War” in the Sunbow season 3 episode, “Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4”.

Section 34: The unnamed Predacon Crazybolt falls on is actually someone specific; in this case, another imported Robots in Disguise 2015 Decepticon, Razorgrille. Created by Georgia Ball and Priscilla Tramontano, he was a criminal Croctobot (with a humanoid crocodile-like robot mode and some sort of two-wheeled alternate mode) who appeared in issue #4 of IDW Publishing’s tie-in Robots in Disguise comic. The term croctobot came from the same issue; presumably, this Razorgrille actually turns into a crocodile-like alternate mode.

Section 35: Kilodrelms are a unit of temperature derived from drelms, a measurement unit first mentioned in the Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur Facebook page. Devastator’s rifle is noted to blast thermal energy; his original toy’s tech specs described his rifle as a solar energy beam rifle, which shot bolts up to 10,000 degrees Celsius. Magnaboss’ Thunderclap and Lightning missiles, meanwhile, come from his profile in issue #2 of IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook; the former released waves of concussive sonic energy, while the later generated blasts of high energy lightning. The profile for Beast Wars II Magnaboss, published in the same issue, claimed that his Magnablade sword could fire concentrated plasma blasts, an ability given to this Magnaboss’ megaton sword. Devastator’s components that are blasted are Hightower (left arm), Bone Crusher (back), and Long Haul (right leg); the next story will confirm they were killed, while Buckethead, Skavenger, and Quickmix survived.

Section 36: The name for Razorbeast’s gun (which turns into his alt-mode’s mane), the scut gun, comes from his profile in issue #3 of IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook, which ascribed to it the ability to shoot ultra-shock projectiles. I don’t know if it was intentional, but this does feel like a mirror to Razorbeast’s fate in the final issue of IDW Publishing’s The Ascending comic, where he begged Optimus Minor to kill him after he was infected with Angolmois energy, before he was fully driven insane. Razorbeast’s unwillingness to disobey a direct order comes from a line in his tech specs: “Even fellow Maximals try to stay on his good side, although he would never dare to disobey a direct order from Optimus Primal, who he respects as both a leader and comrade.” His alt-mode is described as a porcineacon, a Cybertronian version of a boar; they were first mentioned in Ask Vector Prime, named and based in the vein of animal-themed Decepticons from the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon.

Section 37: Grimlock’s preference to stay in beast mode feels like a call-back to The Transformers: The Movie and season 3 of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, where he largely spent his time in Tyrannosaurus mode.

Section 38: Like Preditron, Cheetor and Grimlock were imprisoned in Fortress Maximus, as seen back in “Head Games”. Grimlock calls back to a line of his in The Transformers: The Movie; “Me Grimlock want to munch metal!”

Section 39: Durabyllium is a metal that has appeared in multiple stories in the franchise; it was first mentioned in #19 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. “Catbot” was what Waspinator tended to call Cheetor in the Beast Wars cartoon. The energo-sword is Grimlock’s classic weapon, dating all the way back to his original toy; his Beast Wars toy’s sword was white, but this one is the classic red. This is the first time that Grimlock has been depicted as a former Wrecker, the Autobot commando squad first introduced in Marvel UK’s The Transformers comic; the closest he’s ever come to being one before is in IDW Publishing’s Last Stand of the Wreckers, where the Wreckers attempted to find him on Garrus-9 to help stop Overlord, only for him to be “long gone.”

Section 40: Grimlock’s fate is ultimately unknown. “Wily old son-of-a-glitch” feels like a callback to the term “wily old buzzard,” which Wrecker leader Impactor used to describe Emirate Xaaron in the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. “Son-of-a-glitch” is obviously derived from “son of a bitch:” it was used by Springer in issue #5 of Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Section 41: “Gravimetric field displacement modules” don’t appear to be a reference to anything in particular; they’re what are powering the Grand Mal’s flight capabilities. Ro-Tor’s K-Bomb form contains a core bomb; this was a planet-exploding device used by the Quintessons in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “Five Faces of Darkness, Part 2”. “Till all are one” is, of course, the mantra heard throughout The Transformers: The Movie which has become one of the phrases most associated with the franchise, along with “more than meets the eye” and “robots in disguise.” The tank form Rampage takes is his interstitial Transmetal form.

Section 42: Lord Imperious Delirious’ backstory as being the amalgamation of an entire species personality engrams uploaded into a single database was first revealed in his profile published in #59 of the Collectors’ Club magazine. Here, it is expanded upon to reveal that he began life as a mainframe made of the moon of Gorlam Prime, into which the inhabitants of the planet uploaded themselves, before eventually being combined into Delirious’ singular intelligence. Gorlam Prime was a big part of the early run of IDW Publishing’s comics; first introduced in Spotlight: Nightbeat, it was originally a normal organic world, until the evil scientist Jhiaxus experimented on it as part of a plan to bring him and the others trapped within the Dead Universe back to their reality, converting them into biomechanical beings and eventually turning them into fully technological Transformers, the IDW universe’s version of Micromasters. Here, no such experimentation took place, with the Gorlamites evolving on their own terms. It’s not quite a same match, but I wonder if the first sentence of paragraph 2 is a reference to the 1984 film Dune (adapted from the 1965 novel of the same name); “the sleeper must awaken.”

Delirious’ backstory here, again, comes largely from the events of “Alone Together” and “Intersectionality”, along with the smaller events seen in “Not All Megatrons” and “Cultural Appropriation”. Atechnogenesis is a term from Dreamwave Productions More than Meets the Eye guidebook, given to the first origin of the Transformers described in issue #1 of the Marvel The Transformers comic, which had them evolved from “naturally occurring gears, levers and pulleys;” this origin would later be supplanted with the Primus origin by Simon Furman. The Destructons and the Logicons also original from Blackthorne Publishing’s The Transformers in 3-D issue #3. Elba was a prison planet first seen in the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon episode “Escape from Elba”, where the Guardians kept Renegade prisoners; it’s named for the real-world island of Elba, to where French emperor Napoleon was exiled from 1814 to 1815. The AllSpark Almanc II established that it was on this planet where Garrus-9, the prison seen in IDW Publishing’s comics, was located. The laser core was a part of Cybertronian anatomy first mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon episode “Divide and conquer”; later fiction, such as the tech specs of Beast Machines Mechatron and the storyline included in the instructions of the Binaltech toyline, would connect it to the spark, either as where it is held, or something more intimately linked. Astramechs are Delirious’ term for Cybertronians, viewing them as disgusting energy beings inhabiting a mechanical shell, introduced in his aforementioned profile. While Magmatron and some of his crew returned to Cybertron, most of the others remained behind on Metascan Omega, as seen in “Intersectionality”.

Presidium (or more properly, “the Presidium”) was a planet seen in issue #2 of IDW Publishing’s Primacy mini-series. The Intruders were “strongmen from another world”, cavemen-like creatures that were villains in the Adventure Team range of figures of the G.I. Joe toyline from 1970 to 1976 (pre-dating the version of the toyline more closely linked to the Transformers franchise). “Alone Together” revealed they had been responsible for building Delirious’ Destructon underling, Medusa, as expanded upon in her bio in the Collectors’ Club magazine, also published in issue #59. Finally, the Miliarians were introduced in issue #50 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing. Cybertron’s datanet was first mentioned in the Animated episode “A Bridge Too Close, Part I”, the Transformer equivalent to the internet.

Section 43: Parallel quantum processors and hypercubes are real world (if theoretical) concepts. Memory crystals, meanwhile, were first seen in Ask Vector Prime; they’re derived from the Kryptonian technology seen in the 1978 Superman film. Mechamoths were first mentioned in The AllSpark Almanac by Vector Prime, much in the same way as Rampage says here.

Section 44: Magmatron’s component forms’ names (Skysaur, Landsaur, and Seasaur) all come from his original toy’s instructions. And that concludes part 4. One more section to go.

Part 5

Section 1: Back to B’Boom and Hot Rod. Proton bats aren’t a specific reference as far as I can tell. As mentioned earlier, Hot Rod’s time as Rodimus Prime in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe has been indicated to have ended poorly in this story and others.

Section 2: The Prime cartoon introduced the shortened named “t-cog” for the transformation cog. The reason for Stiletto’s survivor’s guilt were explored back in “Burning Bridges”. The Antares Eight’s machinations were seen in “Cultural Appropriation”. “Not All Megatrons” revealed that Thunderwing was defeated by placing his spark within the core of Cybertron; his spark had absorbed the Underbase, the massive Cybertronian database seen in issue #47-#50 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. We’ll learn a bit more about the Underbase’s connection to the mechanimals of Cybertron in the cipher text for this story. Shrike-bats were mentioned by Kup in The Transformers: The Movie; they showed up in the third season of the Sunbow The Transformers in the episode “Chaos”, though there they were depicted as organic animals, as opposed to the mechanimal one seen here. Functionism, I’ve talked about in previous stories, but to recap a bit, it’s an ideology introduced by the Aligned continuity and named by IDW Publishing’s comics that sorted Transformers into class status by their alternate modes. Goodbye, Overshoot.

Section 3: Seven days later. The Lifeline Memorial Hospital’s namesake has a somewhat more involved story than many of the other buildings on Beast Wars: Uprising Cybertron named after famous Transformers. In the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon season 3 episode, “Fight or Flee”, several medics were seen on the peaceful Cybertronian colony world Paradron. These medics were female Transformers who reused Arcee’s character model, removing the car-mode kibble from their shoulders and given a mint green color scheme. Proving somewhat memorable, they appeared in several pieces of fiction over the years, and inspired several toys, most prominently a redeco of Energon Arcee sold in Japan that was characterized as Arcee in a “Paradron-Type” color scheme. Finally, in 2016, the Collectors’ Club created a proper transforming toy of the Paradron Medic for the first time for the fifth and final Figure Subscription Service, a redeco of Generations Thrilling 30 Arcee, and given the name Lifeline (named after the male medic from G.I. Joe). Fiberoptic flora are Cybertronian plants. Hydrax is the city located in the previously mentioned Hydrax Plateau. Peptex was a settlement first seen in IDW Publishing’s Spotlight: Orion Pax; it previously appeared in “Burning Bridges” as a Predacon town where Stiletto was briefly stationed, where she was forced to kill her partner Betabear when he went on a nucleon-fueled rampage after a riot in the early days of the war. Panzer is a Maximal version of a Beastformers character, like Sea Panic, Sledgehammer, and Fennec before him. In his case, he’s a Maximal version of the Autobot-aligned Strong Panda, released in the third series of the toyline; his American name in the Battle Beasts toyline was Panzer Panda, hence the name. An ursanokor is a Cybertronian version of a panda; the first half, “ursa,” obviously derives from ursus, the Latin word for bear, although I’m not sure if the back half is a reference at all. CPK stands for Cyber Planet Key, the main currency on Beast Wars: Uprising Cybertron; they’re named after the mystical objects from the Cybertron series, and are based on the collector coins released with the Hasbro Asia releases of various Masterpiece toys. Cybersedative, obviously a Cybertronian version of a sedative.

Section 4: The Dragon’s Bane Cathedral in Hyperious is a new location. It is derived from the events of “Flames of Yesterday”, the Wings Universe story where the city originates from; in Cybertron’s distant past, Hyperious was menaced by the dragon Brimstone (a version of the Predacon Brim-Stone discussed earlier) until he was eventually defeated and imprisoned.

Section 5: Packrat has been working for Megatron since he took over Cryotek’s criminal empire in “Not All Megatrons”; looks like he managed to survive the Grand Uprising intact. With Tarantulas added to Megatron’s crew, all of the Beast Wars season 1 Predacon cast (minus Blackarachnia, who has always been a Maximal in this universe) are united. Tarantulas, of course, was constantly betraying Megatron in the later parts of the Beast Wars cartoon.

Section 6: The attributes listed here come from Preditron’s book, The Predacon Manifesto, which served as the cipher text for “Safe Spaces”.

Section 7: A “supernational body” is essentially what the European Union is in the real-world. “Under three” is a hint as to the new member of the Maximal High Council.

Section 8: Wind-Sheer and Shatterpoint have both survived the war. Shatterpoint’s description of the conflict with the Grand Mal feels like another point of ribbing on the 2016 Combiner Wars cartoon, which ended with Starscream using the Enigma of Combination to turn into a massive screaming head. I mentioned the parallels with Unicron earlier. The idea of Unicron truthers, of course, owes to the real-life 9/11 truther movement.

Section 9: Razor-Claw is the Beast Wars: Uprising version of Universe Razorclaw. A redeco of Beast Wars Tigerhawk, he was a version of him from a timeline where he grew dark and corrupted, and recruited by Unicron to become one of his most powerful minions. This version of Razor-Claw (renamed because the original Generation 1 Predacon holds that moniker) is a standard Predacon, with no connection to Tigerhawk (or Tigatron and Airazor, for that matter). His speech patterns (with every sentence starting with the word “know”) is derived from his evocative introduction in issue #1 of the Universe comic: “Know that I am Razorclaw…” The moons of Cybertron were first introduced in 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie; that film depicted Cybertron as having two moons, somewhat unimaginatively named Moonbase One and Moonbase Two. Later media would add additional moons; the third moon of Cybertron was first seen in the script reading “Intimidation Game”, performed at BotCon 2005. IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing renamed the moons Luna 1 and Luna 2. “Not All Megatrons” established that one of the moons was named Artemis, and that it was that moon that had the grooves seen on it in Beast Machines. The three classical names for Cybertron’s moons here – Hecate, Artemis, and Selene – all come from Greek mythology. Hecate was the goddess of magic and witchcraft, associated with the moon; Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, sometimes associated with the moon; and Selene was one of the Titans, and the personification of the moon. Corvo, the name that Razor-Claw comes up with while trying to remember Stiletto’s, is derived from Corvus, the genus to which crows belong; Corvo was also the Italian name for the original Skywarp.

Section 10: The name Chalmun’s comes from the bar where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet Han Solo and Chewbacca in 1977’s Star Wars. It didn’t have that name in the film; it was only given that in the 1995 anthology book Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina.

Section 11: The set-up of the Cybertronian Parliament, designed to prevent a supermajority, reflects the way the United States Congress was set up, although as Lio Convoy notes, it might only work for so long, much as the real world Congress has…

Botanica, the Maximal plant from Beast Machines, was first introduced as an early Resistance leader pre-Lio Convoy in “Alone Together”. Lio Minor’s replacement, while not outright named, is Under-3/Lionhead. Under-3 was part of the first McDonald’s Beast Wars Happy Meal promotional toy lineup in 1996; intended for toddlers, he was clam-shell style figure who turned from a robot styled after Optimus Primal into a lion’s head. Named Lionhead by the Japanese Beast Wars Perfect guidebook, the Beast Wars: Uprising version of the character was mentioned being the head of the Maximal Academy in Jawbreaker’s profile (published in issue #57 of the Collectors’ Club magazine), a fact reiterated by Ask Vector Prime. Cheetor and Blackarachnia’s relationship was shown to have soured in “Safe Spaces”. The third Maximal assemblybot is Optimal, who we have already gone over. Shadow Panther is somewhat complicated. An exclusive in the first year of the Japanese Beast Wars toyline in 1997, he was a redeco of Beast Wars Cheetor, characterized as the Predacon’s undercover agent. A year later, the three-part finale of the second season of the Beast Wars cartoon, “The Agenda”, reintroduced classic Decepticon Ravage, rebuilt as a Predacon Secret Policeman by the Tripredacus Council. Then, in 2000, Shadow Panther’s toy was sold by Hasbro via their collectors’ website, under the name “Tripredacus Agent.” Then, another redeco of Cheetor (this time of his Transmetal 2 toy) was sold in 2001, also named Tripredacus Agent, which outright depicted him as Ravage, and mentioned he had gone under several aliases during the Beast Wars, further harmonizing the Shadow Panther connection. The rumors about him being a former Builder are obviously connections to Ravage, while the rumor that he was altered by aliens seems to be a reference to the infamous fanfic “Ravage 3 Bodies Evolution” by Deathy, posted on alt.toys.transformers in 2001, which had Ravage rebuilt by the Vok after his death in the Beast Wars cartoon. Finally, the fact that he shares a body-type with Tigatron owes to the fact that BotCon 2001 Tigatron was a redeco of the Japanese-exclusive Beast Wars Metals Ravage toy (itself a heavy retool of Transmetal Cheetor).

Obsidian is a version of the Beast Machines Vehicon, who turned into a Cybertronian helicopter and lead the copter drones seen in this story; presumably, he has some sort of flight-powered vehicle mode. A version of Obsidian was another Minion of Unicron in the Universe toyline, serving under Razorclaw. Most fiction depicted Obsidian as a former Autobot from the Great War, but The Ultimate Guide described Obsidian as “one of the most feared and deadly Predacon warrior-generals from Cybertron’s past.” Shokaract’s two chiefs come from the original BotCon storyline that introduced him, two of his elite Heralds. Antagony was an exclusive at BotCon 1998, a sadistic Predacon from the future, redecoed from Beast Wars Inferno. Cataclysm, her rival, was created by Simon Furman and either Dan Khanna or Lee Sullivan, and was an ambitious warrior, a purple and dark green “virtual redeco” of Beast Wars Transmetal Cheetor. He previously showed up as one of Cryotek’s criminal underlings in “Not All Megatrons”, where he was the only one to escape the ambush by Megatron; here, he’s repurposed from the Fox Kids version of Transmetal Cheetor, identified by his red and gold color scheme and his midnight-green tail-whip. As discussed, Stiletto and the other Ex-Bots encountered the Oracle in “Cultural Appropriation”. The bottom of the page is accompanied by an illustration of Ram Horn arguing with Airazor as Riker attempts to calm them down, illustrated by Guido Guidi. Megatron and Optimal clashing should be obvious enough. Stellar Cycle 6.4.15 essentially means the Grand Uprising lasted 6 years, four months, and 15 days, ending with the Grand Mal’s destruction.

Section 12: Hydrax Spaceport previously appeared in “Not All Megatrons”. Blackarachnia calls Lio Convoy her “Nemean warrior”; the Nemean lion was a mythical beast from Greek mythology, killed by Heracles as one of his ten labors. The idea of a league of cities on a hill forming a shining beacon derives from the “shining city on a hill” idea from the early days of American politics, itself derived from a phrase from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Bible. Blackarachnia’s return to Cybertron and her attempts to reach the Terrans was seen all the way back in “Broken Windshields”.

Section 13: Rodimus’ Folly is now the second-largest crater on Cybertron; presumably the first is where Protihex used to be, after Movor detonated earlier. The power of the blast inside the Grand Mal was enough to throw the particles that made up Rampage nearly halfway around the planet, and it took nearly three months for Rampage to begin regenerating in that time; it appears that Rodimus’ Folly is also still geologically active, whatever it is. And so that ends the annotations of Derailment, a process that took over three years.

Check out the subpage on Book of Logos for the annotations on it [In Progress] and come back for the annotations on “The Inexorable March” to finish us out [Coming Soon].