The twelfth and final Beast Wars: Uprising prose story, “The Inexorable March” was published a day after “Derailment” on December 28th, 2016, its existence coming as a surprise. Serving as an epilogue to the series, it gazes to the future, showing events that follow on from the end of the Grand Uprising, in the coming days all the way to 1000 years later. It was written by Jim Sorenson and David Bishop, with a cover by Christopher Colgin, and interior art by Guido Guidi.
Unlike the other stories, the title for “The Inexorable March” does not refer to some sort of sociological idea. Instead, it simply refers to the inexorable march of time. This story continues the location framing device based on the novel World War Z by Max Brooks, which “Derailment” used. It is also heavily inspired by “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars”, fourth season finale of the 1993-98 American space opera television series Babylon 5, in which the effects of the actions taken by the characters are explored in the millions of years to come; series creator and writer J. Michael Straczynski is thanked alongside Brooks in the acknowledgements at the end of this story.
Christopher Colgin’s cover is a direct homage to the cover of the first issue of Marvel’s The Transformers comic, as illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. Various characters and other things from this story replace those on the original Marvel cover: Lio Convoy takes the place of Optimus Prime, the Vok Golden Disk takes the place of the sun, Devastator takes the place of Starscream, the Terrastar takes the place of Laserbeak, Tankor (drawn more like his cartoon appearance than the body he has in story) takes the place of Gears, and Rampage and Rapticon take the place of Sparkplug and Buster Witwicky (perhaps as a slight homage to Rampage’s relationship with the Transmetal II Dinobot in the Beast Wars cartoon, who Rapticon was redecoed from). The landscape is mostly just a Cybertron-ified version of the highway type landscape seen on the original cover, but with some specific references: the suspension bridge has been replaced with the Marvel-style “suspension bridge” version of the space bridge, while the lampposts have been replaced with the ones seen in the first episode of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, one of which was Soundwave’s Cybertronian alt-mode. I’m not sure if the tower or the two domes are meant to be anything specific.
Section 1: This starts right on Unity Day, 25 days after the defeat of Lord Imperious Delirious and his Vehicon army, as seen in “Derailment”, where Cybertron’s new Parliament was formed. Initially, I figured I wouldn’t really recap much here since it is largely things that were already in “Derailment”, but I figured I’ll go over some of the more minor things. Hyperious first appeared in the Wings Universe prose story “Flames of Yesterday”, and showed up a few times in previous stories, noted to be the location where Predacon warlord Shokaract established his domain. The Dragon’s Bane Cathedral, first mentioned in “Derailment”, is derived from the events of “Flames of Yesterday”; in Cybertron’s distant past, Hyperious was menaced by the dragon Brimstone until he was eventually defeated and imprisoned. The ICS (Iacon Communication Service) fell in “Derailment” during the Vehicon incursion into Iacon; Riker was noted to have controls of the hardlines. Radio Free Cybertron has been mentioned on and off since “Broken Windshields”, while Voice of Maximals and Optimal were introduced in “Derailment”. Predacus Today, the hypothetical Independent Predacus States news service, is named for Russia Today (now known as RT), an international news network controlled by the Russian government, a propaganda network comparable to the western ones that the Resistance and Maximal news networks are based on. Slugline is an all-new character created here by Sorenson and Bishop; turning into a slug, he’s named for a concept in journalism that is used to refer to a descriptive phrase, identifying to editors what an article is about.
The section breaks in this story are on some sort of computer console, in a language we haven’t seen in Beast Wars: Uprising before; Cyberglyphics, an ancient written language seen in the live-action movies, particularly on the AllSpark. It translates into an academic paper from the far future, which we will get to at the end.
Section 2: One day later. Bisk, a Predacon version of the Decepticon lobster-like gamer from the 2015 Robots in Disguise series, was introduced back in “Not All Megatrons” as a criminal for hire who believed the world was a massive multiplayer game, and his jobs as “quests” and “missions.” We’ve gone over most of his gamer lingo before, see previous annotations for that. He showed back up in “Derailment” with a rock-lob beast mode, having fought several hordes Vehicons before taking advantage of the Tower of Pion crashing into the Chamber of the Ancients to explore its interior, believing it to be a new questline, spending the last few weeks down there. The Chamber of the Ancients itself was introduced in the Dreamwave Productions mini-series The War Within; this story is connecting it to the tunnels below Cybertron that lead to the life-giving supercomputer Vector Sigma, as seen in the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon two-parter, “The Key to Vector Sigma”. We know from previous stories (starting with “Head Games”) that Vector Sigma was destroyed…but something else seems to have taken up residence in these tunnels.
The Vehicons’ changed behavior is the result of Lord Imperious Delirious and Galva Convoy’s destruction; still hostile, but no longer able to co-ordinate as a massive whole. The various mechanimals Bisk encounters are based on those seen in the Vector Sigma Chamber in The Headmasters episodes “Birth of the Fantastic Double Prime” and “Cybertron Is in Grave Danger, Part 2”; energy leeches were also seen on the Decepticon-held planet of Chaar in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2”, while the rat and bat like creatures are identified as mechanimals mentioned in other episodes of the cartoon. Specifically, retrorats were mentioned in “Changing Gears” and “Microbots”, while bolt-bats were mentioned in “S.O.S. Dinobots”. Both have been mentioned a few times in stories up to now; Labrat turns into a retrorat, while one of Leatherhide’s forms is an oversized bolt-bat. The olive-green droids that Bisk encounters are the Centurion droids that protect Vector Sigma seen back in “The Key to Vector Sigma”; he uses the Vehicons to distract them, much like the Autobots used reprogrammed worker droids to slip past them in the original episode. The massive spiderbot is new and doesn’t appear to correlate to any previous appearances of Vector Sigma. Spiderbots were first mentioned in “Burning Bridges” (taking the Japanese name of Tarantulas’ Arachnoid drones from the Beast Wars cartoon), and are the beast mode forms taken by Blackarachnia and Tarantulas post-beast upgrade. Spiderbots are noted to be a type of arachnotron, the Cybertronian equivalent to arachnids; first mentioned in “Trigger Warnings” and later established as the beast mode form of Scorponok in “Not All Megatrons”, they’re named for an enemy type from the 1994 first-person shooter video game Doom II. Cyber venom comes from the Beast Wars cartoon, being used by several characters like the aforementioned Tarantulas and Blackarachnia, along with Quickstrike. The chamber’s description is very similar to what we saw in the “Key to Vector Sigma”, but in its place, a mysterious golden disk with alien cyberglyphic runes. This is the Golden Disk of the Vok, a mysterious object with constantly shifting features that first appeared in the Beast Wars episode “Before the Storm”. Containing information on the alien Vok, both Megatron and the Maximals tried to make sense of it before it was eventually destroyed after the Predacon leader had used it to take control of a Vok artifact in the two-parter “Other Visits”; Tarantulas, however, had managed to decode its information, using it to try and destroy the aliens, until he eventually destroyed himself after being possessed by them in “Other Victories”.
Section 3: A decacyle later; as established in the guidebook The AllSpark Almanac (co-written by Sorenson), this is around 10 days. Following up on Galvatron’s appearance in “Derailment”, we see what he’s done with the Vehicon drone bodies he and his Cyberdroid minions recovered. The Rad Zone was an extremely inhospitable area of Cybertron first mentioned in issue #78 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. Galvatron, as established in “Micro-Aggressions”, is a clone of the original Galvatron with his memory, reformatted from the Autobot Micromaster Cop-Tur by the G-Virus. As such, he’s not a proper Predacon like his main Beast Wars II counterpart, meaning that the Beast Upgrade was not something his body was meant to undergo, and we saw in “Derailment” that it had led to his classic state of insanity. Nucleon’s engineering skills were established in “Not All Megatrons”, with him having been the inventor of the Powermaster technology in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe. The Vehicons they recovered have been rebuilt into “command-and-control” units; they are obviously this universe’s versions of the Vehicon Generals from Beast Machines: Tankor, Thrust, and Jetstorm. In the Beast Machines cartoon, they were created by Megatron and powered by the sparks of Rhinox, Waspinator, and Silverbolt, with shell programming that concealed their personalities under false ones and used to more effectively lead the Vehicons against Optimus Primal’s Maximals.; here, the implication is that Galvatron has used the sparks of Nucleon, Doomshot, and Krunix to power them, inspired by the Waspinator’s ability to control them due to Leatherhide’s experiment on him in “Derailment”. This little strand was a request from Fun Publications, who had wanted to create new toys of the Vehicons before the Collectors’ Club’s license with Hasbro expired; more on that when we get to the art at the bottom of the page by Guido Guidi. Tankor’s name has been unmodified, indicating that the Micromaster version of the Cybertron Mini-Con Tankor seen in “Head Games” has a different name. Thrust, however, has had to have his name change, with the name probably belonging to the original 1985 Decepticon jet. His new name, Thurstor, is the name of the upgraded Predacon Thrust (a redeco of Machine Wars Megatron and Megaplex) from Beast Wars II; turned into a Cyborg Beast form by the power of Angolmois Energy into Thrustor (a heavy retool of Beast Wars Dinobot with a new cyborg Velociraptor form). The art at the bottom of the page, by Guido Guidi, depicts Galvatron brining to life his new minions. From left to right: Jetstorm is a heavily retooled version of the Generations Thrilling 30 Armada Starscream, originally intended as an exclusive for BotCon 2016, with a new head, removed wings, and heavily modified legs that resemble Jetstorm’s vestigial ones. Thrustor is a retool of Unite Warriors Groove, with a new head and his legs mistransformed intentionally to give him the singular wheel that Thrust has in his robot mode in place of legs. Finally, Tankor is a retool of Titans Return Hardhead, with a new face; it’s hard to tell from the art, but it does seem like the intention for the toy was to remold Hardhead’s partner, Furos, into being a Titan Master partner for Tankor, rather than giving him a new normal head. Also accompanying them is a version of the Diagnostic Drone from Beast Machines; he’s a redeco of the drone included with Titans Return Crashbash, turned into its bird form but with its head tucked away in blaster form, with that area recolored to be a single “eye.” Below Galvatron, we can see the inert bodies of Nucleon, Doomshot, and Krunix. The little spark holders are labelled with Predacon Cybertronix, a written language seen in Beast Wars and Beast Machines. From left to right, they appear to be a lowercase a, an uppercase R, and the number 1, referring back to the mantra from 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie (“till all are one”).
Section 4: One month later; this strand focuses on the Constructicons, who we last saw in “Derailment” being blasted by Lord Imperious Delirious and taken offline while in Devastator form. Buckethead, Skavenger, and Quickmix have survived, but Bone Crusher, Long Haul, and Hightower died, leading to the training of new Constructicons. Rubbish’s Scrapyard is presumably owned by Rubbish the Junkion. One of the generic Junkion designs seen in The Transformers: The Movie, he remained unnamed until the publication of the model sheet artbook The Complete Ark by IDW Publishing in 2009, with authors Sorenson and Bill Forster working with an unnamed character designer to give the various Junkions aside from Wreck-Gar names. They also had also written some minor character traits for the Junkions that went unpublished (in Rubbish’s case, liking British television), but he lucked out when that factoid was noted in The AllSpark Almanac II. Hexima (originally known as Hexima State) was first seen in the version of the RISK boardgame that tied into the 2007 live-action Transformers movie; it was noted to be part of Builder territory in “Safe Spaces”. Eurythma’s Got Talent is named for both Eurythma (a planet of alien musicians, seen in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “Carnage in C-Minor”) and the reality television competition show America’s Got Talent and its various international spin-offs. Cybertron’s Got Talent, a previous parody of America’s Got Talent, was first mentioned in the pack-in booklet for the San Diego Comic-Con 2014 exclusive box set, the Knights of Unicron Reunion Tour Set, before going on to appear in the Facebook pages for Andromeda – Axion Nexus New Report and Ask Vector Prime. Engex has been mentioned in many stories up to this point, but just to go over it again, it’s a intoxicant beverage introduced in the prose story “Bullets”, published in the trade paperback of the IDW Publishing mini-series Last Stand of the Wreckers.
Most of the Constructicon recruits get more detail in the next section, so we’ll just go over the two who don’t get as much. The first of these, Skipjack, has a bit of a roundabout origin. The name Skipjack was an early placeholder name for Revenge of the Fallen Rampage, though it managed to make its way in the end credits for the film, despite Rampage’s actual name being mentioned by Starscream in subtitles. In the year’s since, Hasbro has slightly retconned things so that Rampage was no longer the bulldozer who formed Devastator’s left leg, but instead a separate yellow bulldozer that matches the one seen in the film, named Skipjack. In any event, the name would be applied to an Animated Constructicon in 2015’s The Complete AllSpark Almanac, a clone created by Dirt Boss using the CNA of Autobot foreman Erector. A recolor of Erector’s character design in green in purple, this hearkened back to the 2011 gag video for Erector for the Hall of Fame, which claimed that in the unproduced season four of Animated that Ejector would be used by Dirt Boss to turn into the crotch area of Devastator (Devastator himself was intended for season four, but Erector’s involvement was not originally part of it). Presumably, then, this Skipjack is a virtual redeco of the original 1988 Micromaster Ejector. Drill-Bit, meanwhile, is a Micromaster version of the Mini-Con Drill Bit, included with the Decepticon Heavy Load in the 2008 Universe toyline. Heavy Load was a redeco of Autobot cement mixer Quickmix from the Cybertron toyline, and Drill Bit in turn was a redeco of his Mini-Con Stripmine, who turned into a Cybertronian drilling machine, in vaguely Constructicon-like lime green colors. Drill-Bit’s had a hyphen added to his name, as the Beast Wars Predacon boll weevil Drill Bit showed up in “Safe Spaces” with the proper name. Drill-Bit’s presence here also likely owes something to the Kre-O Drill Bit, the only Constructicon to bear that name, able to be rebuilt into a drill machine or built with Scavenger, Scrapper, and Hightower into Devastator, released in the Destruction Site Devastator set in 2012. That Drill Bit had some design cues from the Beast Wars character as well, primarily the head, tying it all back together.
B’Boom talked about setting up a league of autonomous states in “Derailment”; since then, he’s helped the Resistance set up the League of Autonomous Proto-States. Transform-ups are the Transformer equivalent to push-ups, first seen in the Animated episode “Autoboot Camp”.
Section 5: Wideload is a combination of both the original 1987 Autobot Throttlebot orange and blue dump truck and the Classics Decepticon Mini-Con green and purple dump truck. Identifiable by his vain neat freak personality, it’s noted that the failures of Rodimus Prime’s tenure as Autobot leader (hinted at before in previous stories) led Wideload to defect to the Decepticons and downsize into a Micromaster. Macromasters, as I’ve gone over before, is the term used to refer to normal-sized Transformers in Beast Wars: Uprising. The Mini-Con Wideload was a member of the Classics Demolition Team, and was sold in a three-pack with Sledge the backhoe loader (who we’ll get to in a second) and Broadside the tank, the team leader, whose version in this universe seems to have perished (and given that the original Autobot Triple Changer Broadside showed up with her name spelled normally in “Derailment”, he probably had a different spelling of it). Sledge, as I mentioned, turned into a backhoe loader; he’s noted to have gone from his usual yellow, black, and red color scheme into “Constructicon green.” The translucent blue weaponry Sledge has picked up refers to another Sledge, in this case the Energon character by that name, a front-end loader and member of the Construction Team who combined with his fellows to form Constructicon Maximus. That Sledge carried around a blue Energon claw weapon, which formed into a hand for Sledge’s place as Constructicon Maximus’ right arm. Notably, another member of the Construction Team was also named Wideload, a crane who formed Constructicon Maximus' right leg, bringing another connection between him and Sledge.
Road Hauler, too, has a complicated story. In the first episode of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “More than Meets the Eye, Part 1”, an orange Autobot crane named Hauler showed up for one scene, helping to lift Hound out of a ravine. Never seen or referred to again, the crane was obviously based on the Diaclone toy that would go on to be used by Hasbro for the 1985 Autobot Car Grapple, and fans have assumed that perhaps that toy was intended to be part of the first year of figures, only to be dropped late enough that the one scene with him remained in the episode. In 2003, a redeco of Grapple in green under the name Roadhauler was released by online retailer e-HOBBY, with a profile by Hirofumi Ichikawa that explained that Hauler had once been part of the Constructicons, managing to escape their reprogramming by Megatron (as seen in the cartoon’s second season in the episode “The Secret of Omega Supreme”), who had come to Earth with the other Autobots, only to shortly leave after helping out Hound and exploring the globe for energy resources. Steam Hammer, meanwhile, is a version of Energon Steamhammer, another member of the Construction Team who formed the torso of Constructicon Maximus and who turned into a massive mining excavator. One of the few members of the team to receive any character information via an online bio, his brutish exterior hid a passion for code breaking and the like. His name is presumably altered because a Micromaster version of the Cybertron Mini-Con appeared in “Head Games”. Finally, both Wideload and Road Hauler replace the team members who shared alternate modes with him; Steam Hammer is replacing Bone Crusher, suggesting a connection to Power Core Combiners Steamhammer, who turned into a bulldozer and also formed the torso of a combiner form, albeit with drones, rather than teammates.
Goldbug, the other surviving member of the Throttlebots, appeared in “Derailment”, where he was made a separate character from Bumblebee and was given the live-action movie Bumblebee’s trait of being only able to speak in clips from music. When we saw him, he had been knocked out by Lio Convoy, but it seems he was lucky enough to be one of the few larger sized Builders to escape the Vehicons. The lyrics he uses to communicate with Wideload come from the 1977 Fleetwood Mac song “Go Your Own Way”, with lead singer Lindsay Buckingham being mentioned by name. It’s noted that only one part of Devastator’s original consciousness remains, Skavenger. It was hinted in “Cultural Appropriation” that Scrapper, Hook, and Mixmaster had died at some point during the Great War.
Section 6: One year later. Shockwave’s secret bunker doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything, although Gamma IV is just specific enough that it makes me wonder. Ultrix was a city first seen in issue #9 of IDW Publishing’s Autocracy maxi-series. Rampage and Trans-Mutate’s backstories have been hinted at in both “Alone Together” and “Intersectionality”, which established that they were attempts to create Point One Percenter protoforms; here, Deluge is established to be their “father.” Deluge was one of the Decepticon Color Changers released in 1993 as part of the Generation 2 toyline, Transformers who had water-shooting cannons and temperature sensitive paint that would change color when blasted with cold or warm water. A redeco of the Autobot Aquaspeeder Speedstream (released in Europe the same year as part of the final year of the original toyline in the continent), he transformed into a Formula 1-style race car (mostly based on the Williams FW14), and was characterized by his tech specs as a twisted scientific advisor. He didn’t appear in any fiction until 2009, when he showed up as a Decepticon mad scientist in IDW Publishing’s All Hail Megatron ongoing. He was responsible for turning three of Cybertron’s natural Insecticon swarms into the Decepticon Insecticons (Bombshell, Shrapnel, and Kickback), but in the process created about 3,000 feral, malformed Insecticon clones, much like his experiments with the protoforms here. Energon candles are new, and are obviously Transformer version of candles. Visco is another Cybertronian beverage, first mentioned in the 2010 novel Exodus. Rampage’s new name was given to him by Lord Imperious Delirious in “Alone Together”; “Cultural Appropriation” noted it was unusual, since most Transformers don’t share names in Beast Wars: Uprising, as the original Decepticon Predacon tiger Rampage still had that name.
Unicron’s attack on Cybertron has been mentioned a few times up to now; the skepticism around his existence was first seen in “Derailment”, a parallel to real-life 9/11 truthers. The Covenant is the Covenant of Primus, the Cybertronian version of the Christian Bible, first seen in the two-part finale of the Beast Wars cartoon, “Nemesis”. The battle in Nova Cronum (a city first seen in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages mini-series) refers to the unified attack on the Grand Mal in “Derailment”. Point one percenters I’ve gone over before, but just to go over them again: they are a concept introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing, Transformers with rare sparks (only 10% of the population had them) who have greater strength and power; they were linked to many of the most famous Transformers in that series, such as Optimus Prime, Megatron, Grimlock, and Shockwave, and Deluge is making the case here that its only those few were able to truly turn the tide against Unicron. Vivisector the Loudpedal is an interesting case. Vivisector was a Decepticon science officer created by Nick Roche; he mentioned in one line in a profile for Overlord, published in the trade paperback for IDW Publishing’s Last Stand of the Wreckers mini-series in 2010. In 2016, the Of Masters and Mayhem prose story “The Toxic Transformer” was published by the Collectors Club, in which Vivisector was the name given to a Decepticon mad scientist who created Toxitron with fellow scientist Oil Slick. The story based his appearance on a black version of the Diaclone Corvette Stingray toy that would be used for 1985 Autobot Car Tracks, which was only released in Finland. However, only a day after release, a redeco and retool of Masterpiece Tracks based on this toy was announced as Loudpedal, having coincidentally been developed without any knowledge of the author for “The Toxic Transformer”. This led to the story being re-edited, with Vivisector’s name being replaced with Loudpedal’s. Now, as it wound up, Loudpedal’s bio characterized him completely differently, making him a Decepticon musician. This story splits the difference, making Loudpedal a sort of title for Vivisector. Of the Autobot scientists mentioned, we’ve already gone over Leatherhide in previous stories. Proxima was created by James Roberts and Alex Milne for the IDW Publishing ongoing More than Meets the Eye, a Transformer from Caminus, with 5 eyes and many lenses that allow her to record things around her, whether that be for science or creative purposes, and was described as the equal to Autobot scientist Perceptor. Mech fluid is the Transformer version of blood, mentioned a few times throughout the Beast Wars cartoon. Forging is a term introduced in IDW Publishing’s stories for the creation of Transformers, where it referred to them emerging out of the living metal of Cybertron. Peace was imposed by the Human Confederacy, as established in “Head Games” and “Micro-Aggressions”. Recharge slabs are Transformer beds, first seen in More than Meets the Eye as well.
Hydradread was one of the Decepticon Stormtroopers, the counterparts to the Aquaspeeders also released in Europe in 1993. With the same color changing gimmick as them and the color changers, he transformed into a modified 1990 Pontiac Sunfire Concept Car. His tech specs were basically rewritten to become Generation 2 Deluge’s, hence their connection here. Loneedo was a planet mentioned in the 2007 Collectors’ Club prose story “The Razor’s Edge”, invaded by a Predacon insurgency group in the aftermath of the Great War. Gadolinium is a real world silvery metal, atomic number 64 on the Periodic Table of Elements. The Swarm was an entity seen in Marvel’s Generation 2 comic, the byproduct of the misuse of the budding form of Transformer reproduction (in which a Transformer grows a new one out of their form), an amorphous mass that searched for a purpose throughout the galaxy by encountering mechanical lifeforms and tearing them down into their molecular components. Created by Simon Furman and Derek Yaniger, it was alluded to in the “Book of Logos” cipher text in “Derailment”, indicating that Optimus Prime had sacrificed himself to bring the Swarm enlightenment and prevent it from destroying Earth. The Underbase was Cybertron’s greatest repository of knowledge seen in a story arc in the Marvel The Transformers comic from issue #48 to #50, a massive database made of solid light that could destroy worlds and give Transformers great power, at the cost of their sanity. “Not All Megatrons” revealed that Thunderwing had absorbed its power into his spark, giving him monstrous power; he was only defeated when the combined Autobots and Decepticons sent his spark into the core, where the Underbase evolved into the Oracle. The Star Harvester was seen in Revenge of the Fallen, built by the Fallen on Earth pre-human civilization, a machine designed to destroy suns and absorb energon in the process; a “harvester” was also mentioned in the “Book of Logos”. The Rending is an event mentioned passingly before in the cipher text for “Not All Megatrons” and in story in “Derailment”; it was some sort of horrible event that came after Overlord’s rise to power, early in the Pax Cybertronia. All we know about it is that Goldbug lost his vocoder during it. Finally, the Hate Plague wasn’t mentioned before now in Beast Wars: Uprising. First seen in the season three two-part finale for the original Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, “The Return of Optimus Prime”, it was a spore based disease that affected both Transformers and organic life, amplifying the hatred that existed within them to turn them into raving mad disease spreaders.
Information creep was a concept introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise/The Transformers ongoings, a process that results in the memories of Transformers to blur together, resulting in memory loss or entirely different understandings of events, particularly those events that happened millions of years ago. It takes its name from a term used on Wikipedia to refer to how the slow process of information being added to an article can cause it to shift perspective or change in its readability over time. Exo-frame is a term that’s been used in many of Sorenson’s works to describe a Transformer’s body; first mentioned in The AllSpark Almanac II, it might be a reference to the 1993-1994 animated science fiction series Exosquad. Holo-cards have also been mentioned on and off. Functionism is a form of Transformer prejudice that believes that Transformers should stick to a place in society based on their alternate modes, given that name in More than Meets the Eye but being introduced in the Aligned continuity backstory. Deluge’s history as an Autobot is connecting to the Autobot Deluge, one of Speedstream’s fellow Aquaspeeders, A Mazda 787B LeMans race car, the Autobot Deluge would be slightly redecoed into the Generation 2 Color Changer Autobot Drench, whose profile mentioned that he was an inventor of defensive measures.
Section 7: The recon mission here was alluded to in “Derailment”, where Rampage had been off searching when the Vehicon attacks started. Dinosaur City we’ll see more of next section, but it was the name given to Trypticon’s mode locked city form in “Intersectionality”, located on Metascan Omega; Trans-Mutate stayed behind on while Rampage joined Magmatron and his Predacons in returning to Cybertron. The mangled exo-frames bring to mind the aforementioned Insecticon swarm.
Section 8: Dinosaur City and Metascan Omega, I just went over; Longrack’s position as the colony’s leader was established in “Intersectionality”, though he’s gone from just a mere mayor to a governor. Dnavi is a version of DNAVI from the Beast Wars Neo cartoon; she was the artificial intelligence of the Predacon ship Dinosaur, who acted like an arrogant, spoiled princess, and looked like a super-deformed dragonfly. This Dnavi seems much more chipper, and it’s unclear if she’s still a computer. The Kolar were a species of synthetic musicians mentioned in the prose story “Paradox”, published at BotCon 1999 as part of the Reaching the Omega Point storyline. Randy was a Maximal from Beast Wars Neo, an eager Maximal whose aggressive and impulsive nature tended to cause more problems than help. He was a redeco of 1996 Maximal Razorbeast from the American Beast Wars toyline, turning into a boar. An error sees Longrack refer to him as Bump, suggesting that Bump was originally written to be here, but which contradicted him being a Resistance science officer in “Derailment”. The Vok were the enigmatic aliens who were seen treating prehistoric Earth as an experiment throughout the Beast Wars cartoon; when they discovered the Maximals and Predacons’ presence on Earth, they planned to sterilize the planet due to their experiments being messed with. They only appeared physically in their final episode, “Other Victories”, and the golderod and Tyrian purple ones match the description of those two Vok. The blue one might refer to one of the Vok seen in the “Primeval Dawn” storyline published as back-up stories in 3H Productions’ The Wreckers comic, which had blue eyes. The Logicons were the creators of Metascan Omega, as established in “Intersectionality”, and originate from #3 of Blackthorne Publishing’s The Transformers in 3-D comic.
Many of the names listed off by Longrack previously appeared in “Intersectionality”, but a few are new. Glyph is an Autobot archaeometrist, the Transformer equivalent to an archeologist, an expert in alien languages and cultures. She was one of the exclusives at BotCon 2002 and was a redeco of the keychain version of the original Mini-Vehicle Bumblebee toy, released by Fun4All in 2001. Fractyl was a timid Predacon geochemist who felt more at home studying minerals than in the battle. He was a redeco of Beast Wars Terrorsaur, released in a two-pack with Packrat at BotCon 1997; he was previously mentioned indirectly in the cipher text for “Identity Politics”, an online friend of Scorponok. Rossum was a Decepticon scientist created by James Roberts and Alex Milne for More than Meets the Eye; he was mentioned as having established the link between the spark, the brain module, and the transformation cog in issue #3 of that series, and was seen helping to upgrade Overlord into a superwarrior in flashback in issue #14, only to have his head crushed by Overlord. Gigastorm was the upgraded form of Megastorm, Galvatron’s younger brother from Beast Wars II, who is terrified of his older brother, and schemes to take command. Starting life as a tank (his toy was a redeco of the 1993 Generation 2 Megatron toy), he was mutated by Angolmois Energy into Gigastorm, now having a saurian robot form, and transforming into a base mode and a fortress mode; his toy was a retool of the 1986 Decepticon city Transformer, Trypticon. Finally, Hydrax was an unreleased Predacon of the Prime variety from the Bot Shots toyline; a redeco of that line's Twinstrike, he turned into a two-headed dragon. He was previously seen as a supervisor at the Dynamic Energon Distilleries plant some 20 or so years before the Grand Uprising in “Identity Politics”. Lio Convoy left Cybertron at the end of “Derailment”; he’s healed up a lot since them, as he is now walking on his own. Art of Lio Convoy in silhouette accompanies this page, drawn by Guido Guidi.
Section 9: The Shi-Lai were an imperialist species mentioned in the 2007 Collectors’ Club special comic, “Cheap Shots”; lead by a “Blood Tyrant” with “Suicide Legions”, they used organic humanoid pilots that they binary-bonded with artificially intelligent warships in a process that enslaved them both. The Shi-Lai were not seen themselves, but this story seems to indicate they are some sort of alien whales, with the mention of “migratory channels” and the fact that T-Wrecks refers to them by the slur “blowholes.” Una was last seen as one of the crew members of the Spooky Action at a Distance, serving alongside Chak under Blix in “Intersectionality” and “Cultural Appropriation”. In the century since, she’s become a commander of her own ship, although its noted that there is a growing rift in humanity between Celestials (presumably those who wish to explore and live in space) and Traditionalists (presumably those who want to stay on Earth), compounding the already existent tensions between humans who are circuitry enhance, fully biological humans, and the psychic branch known as psychals, as established in “Micro-Aggressions”. Like the Spooky Action at a Distance, The Problem of Infinities takes its name from a real-world scientific term, related to quantum physics. The Magog-class missiles take their name from the Bible; Magog was originally the name of a land where the individual Gog came from in the Hebrew Bible, which shifted over time, eventually referring to a pair of individuals. Some Christian views paint them as allies of Satan, who will fight against God at the end of the millennium as seen in the Book of Revelation. Pox, the ship’s AI, manifests using holomatter avatars that are constantly chaning (a technology introduced in IDW Publishing’s Infiltration mini-series), much like Screwball, the AI of the Spooky Action at a Distance did. “Intersectionality” rendered Chak and Una’s names as references to the 1985 fantasy film Legend, and this story continues with that. Pox, for their part, is named for the villainous pig man played by Peter O’Farrell. 24th century humans were shown to speak in this mix of Star Trek-esque technobabble (like with Una’s orders, which make heavy use of Star Trek terminology) and cultural terms, so we’ll explain some of the more specific ones as we go along. Ne’ll is named for Nell, a woodland dweller played by Tina Martin in Legend, while B-Tom is named for the dwarf Brown Tom, played by Cork Hubbert. Amory, the Shi-Lai ship that appeared in “Cheap Shots”, was a broadsword-class interceptor/destroyer, and the other ships here follow suit with the naming conventions. The gladius was a sword used by Roman foot soldiers, while a falchion was a sword used in France from the 1200s to the 1500s. The Treaty of Prysmos is presumably related to the planet Prysmos, the setting of Hasbro’s Visionaries toyline, which revolved around two factions of magic users fighting each other after the three suns released energy that rendered all technology useless.
T-Wrecks was the commander of the Dinobots in Beast Machines, an attack specialist who was a redeco of the first Beast Wars Megatron toy, turning into a Tyrannosaurus rex. The Rusty Mace, meanwhile, was the ship procured by the Dinobots in “The Wreckers: Finale Part 1”, a comic story that continued the 3H Productions The Wreckers comic published by Fun Publications. The ship is noted to be a Preditron-class cruiser; Preditron, the founder of the Predacons, died in “Derailment” at the hands of Tripredacus, and this ship type is named in his honor. The rondache-field is named for the rondache, a shield carried by medieval-era swordsmen. Giri is a Japanese value that roughly translates to “duty” or “obligation.” Vaudeville was a form of theatrical variety entertainment popular in the United States from the late 1800s to the 1930s, composed of both singers and more circus-like performers, along with more unsavory aspects like minstrel shows.
Section 10: Una’s nickname amongst her crew members, the Old Woman, parallels the nickname she and Chak gave to Blix, the Old Man, in “Intersectionality”. Blackguard is an older, primarily British term, used to refer to untrustworthy people and generally equivalent to “scoundrel.” Femto is short for “femtosecond,” which is one quadrillionth of a second. The glomerulus refers to several places in the body where there are large globular structures of entwined vessels and neurons; in this case, its referring to the one in the olfactory system. Transwarp cells are one of the components of a Transwarp Drive, which allows a ship to bend space and time; they were seen a few times throughout the Beast Wars cartoon. Tachyon gates have been mentioned a few times, primarily in “Intersectionality”, an alternative to transwarp used primarily for communications, hence the touchiness mentioned here. The Inferno is the Cybertronian equivalent to Hell first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon; later, when the Predacon Inferno was introduced, it started being referred to as the Pit instead, which is the name it’s more commonly known by now.
Rapticon was another of the Beast Machines Dinobots, a redeco of the 1999 Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Dinobot, who turned into a bio-mechanical Velociraptor. Characterized as an arrogant guerilla combat specialist with a keen intellect, that personality is extrapolated here to make him something of a jack of all trades. Akkad and its moon Sargon are named for Sargon of Akkad, ruler of the Akkadian Empire in its capital of Akkad in the 24th century BCE. He is one of the first know rulers of an empire in recorded history, and has become a figure of legend since. Cobra, of course, are the villains of G.I. Joe, Hasbro’s sister franchise to Transformers. Operation Staple Gun is a reference to Operation Paperclip, a top-secret American intelligence program that saw scientists and engineers who were former members of the Nazi Party granted clemency in return for working for the United States. The fact that 731 members were granted clemency refers to Unit 731, a secret research facility operated by the Imperial Japanese Army that worked on lethal human experiments, along with biological and chemical warfare. Like with Operation Paperclip, many of the scientists who worked here were granted immunity by the United States in exchange for their research data. The CIA and NSA are, of course, both real-world American intelligence agencies. The others mentioned include Sector Seven, an American agency introduced in the first live-action Transformers movie in 2007, which had discovered Megatron and the AllSpark over a century before the film and were responsible for handling secret alien threats; III, the Intelligence and Information Institute, a top-secret government program from the Marvel The Transformers comic, charged with dealing with the Transformers on Earth; Skywatch, another very similar agency, introduced in IDW Publishing’s early comics starting with the mini-series Escalation; and finally Unit:E, the federal agency to which Autobot liaison Agent Fowler belong to in the Prime cartoon. Unit:E was named for a team responsible for monitoring spacetime, from an abandoned project by HasLab (a Hasbro department run by Rik Alvarez) that would have brought together several of Hasbro’s franchise, including Transformers, G.I. Joe, Rom, Micronauts, M.A.S.K., Jem and the Holograms, and others. The two Cobra doctors mentioned here, Archibald Monev and Brian Bender, are Doctor Venom (an amoral but cowardly Cobra scientist who created the Brainwave Scanner; he appeared early on in the Marvel G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comic from issues #10 to #19, and was created by Larry Hama and Mike Vosburg, rather than being from the toyline) and Doctor Mindbender (a later Cobra character who did actually have a toy who came to take Venom’s place after his death, a former dentist who accidentally drove himself insane when working with brainwave stimulation, turning him into a scientist specializing in mind control). Wernher von Braun was one of the Nazi scientists granted clemency by the United States; an aerospace engineer, he went on to be the architect for the Saturn V rocket that led to the moon landing and Apollo 11. Apollo was one of the Greek gods, the deity of healing, music and the arts, prophecy, and the sun. This is the first human/Transformer romance in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, after the last few centuries of animosity between the two.
Section 11: A thousand years later. The Triangulum Galaxy is real, one of our closer neighbors alongside the Andromeda Galaxy relatively speaking. I’m going to go over Commandrons and Maladroids as a whole here, slightly out of order. Commandrons was a small toyline of four Transforming figures with wind-up motors and rubber wheels, created by Tomy and sold at McDonalds in 1985, packed with mini-comics from DC Comics. They included Commander Magna the jet, Motron the race car, Solardyn the hovercraft, and Velocitor the Shuttlecraft. The Maladroids, meanwhile, were the main villainous faction from the Select Convertors toyline, robots from the Malacon Galaxy sent to enslave Earth who fought the heroi Defenders. Converters was largely made up of licensed molds from the company MARK, and in the case of the Maladroids, they were copies of toys that MARK had licensed from Takutoku, largely from the Super Dimenssion Fortress Macross (known at the time in America as Robotech, and where the toy for Jetfire was licensed from) and Super Dimension Century Orguss. Their ranks included Nofka the battleship (based on the Macross SDF-1), Sunyak the space fighter (based on the Orguss Gerwalk Nikick), brothers Zark and Zardak the space jets (based on the Macross VF-1 Valkyrie and the SDS-1S respectively, the latter being the toy that Jetfire was based on), as well as the confusing released of the Orguss Orgoid-1 space fighter, who was sold as both Nofka and Zardak. There were also the Mini Motorized Maladroids, motorized toys based on a super deformed release of the VF-1 Valkyrie in four different decos, including Meeshak, Mooriah, Turak, and Volcan. Zardak, for his part, was made into a Decepticon warlord in the 2010 Wings Universe prose story “A Team Effort”, with Zark being mentioned off-handedly as an unnamed relative. Also in 2010, The AllSpark Alamanc II mentioned Commandrons and Maladroids as two groups of factions on Cybertron off-handedly. In Beast Wars: Uprising, they are the far future descendants of the Maximals and Predacons, and while it’s only mentioned passingly, they are meant to be technorganic in nature, turning into vehicles a la the cancelled Beast Machines sequel, Transtech. This whole sections is a homage to the opening minutes of the first episode of the Beast Wars cartoon, with the crash-landing on a planet after emerging from Transwarp and paraphrased dialog from the episode.
The Terrastar was the swan-like starship of the Terrakors, seen in the 1985 Robotix cartoon, a mini-series by Sunbow Productions based on the short-lived Milton Bradley toyline of modular motorized robotic toys. The cartoon depicted the characters as originally being the reptilian inhabitants of the planet Skalorr, split between the peaceful Protectons and the evil Terrakors, who were forced to go into stasis tubes when their sun went nova. When radiation leaked into the chamber holding their bodies, the supercomputer Compu-Core was forced to transfer their essences into the Robotix, robotic vehicles that could change shape when interacting with organics originally designed for rebuilding the planet. When they awoke, the two factions sided with humans who had crashlanded on Skalorr, and continued the fight. In 2010, The AllSpark Almanac II, picking up on some of the similarities between Robotix and fellow Hasbro property Transformers (Milton Bradley being a subsidiary of Hasbro), revealed that the world of Robotix was a distant part of the Transformers multiverse, with Compu-Core being a node of Vector Sigma, and the Protectons and Terrakors being versions of the Autobots and Decepticons. They would go on to appear in the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime and meet a Transformer in Spacewarp’s Log. The Convoy Council are from the Beast Wars Neo manga and have been conflated here with the Great Convoys (more on them in a second) from the cartoon; they were high ranking Maximals who were patterned after Optimus Prime (Convoy being his Japanese name). It’s implied here that Lio Convoy is their inspiration in this universe. The Ammonites were hinted at in the “Book of Logos” cipher text in “Derailment”, where humanity had been attacked by them after they entered the Andromeda Galaxy, leading to Cybertron coming to their defense. Repeating my annotations from there: in the Generations Thrilling 30 line, a new team of Mini-Cons were introduced: the Mini-Con Assault Team. Made up of Heavytread the tank, Runway the jet, and Windshear the helicopter, who could combine into Centuriton. The Thrilling 30 line was promoted by a crossover between IDW Publishing’s Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye ongoings, entitled “Dark Cybertron”. To promote the toys, writers James Roberts and John Barber came up with a new origin for them. Rather than Mini-Con Transformers, they were part of the Ammonites, an evil faction of the Stentarian species who fought their enemies, the heroic Terradores. The Stentarians resembled Transformers and could transform into their own alternate modes; however, they had been fighting for 16 million years, far longer than the Cybertronians, were smaller in size, and were “omnicombinational,” able to combine with any other member of their species in any number of ways, with the largest combiners being made of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Stentarians.
The Maladroids here (Lockjaw, Ragtop, Hammerhead, Vapor Lock, Malware, and Torison) are all new characters, created by Sorenson and Bishop. The individual genders of the characters are not specified, but given that Lockjaw uses the phrase “mechs and femmes,” it would seem there are at least two men and two women onboard. They’re vague counterparts to the original six Predacons in the Beast Wars cartoon (Megatron, Dinobot, Tarantulas, Waspinator, Terrorsaur, and Scorponok), although not outright villainous like them. Lockjaw is the equivalent of Megatron, Malware of Tarantulas, and Torison of Terrorsaur; it’s unclear where the others line up. Omega Trion was a mysterious mentor figure to Spacewarp in Spacewarp’s Log, a Decepticon counterpart to Alpha Trion; the “Book of Logos” mentioned him and Alpha Trion in a paraphrase of the biblical quote, “the alpha and omega.” “Razo-distortion” just appears to be a fancy way of saying wormhole, rather than any specific reference. “We’re all gonna die” was Rattrap’s catchphrase in the Beast Wars cartoon.
Section 12: The Commandrons here are all based on Autobots from the quickly shuttered Chinese MMO Transformers Online by NetDragon in 2012, which tied into the Prime franchise at the time. They all originally had Mandarin names, but in 2015, Ask Vector Prime gave all the new characters English names, which we’ll go through here. Astral Knight was originally named Xīng Mén Shǒuwèi, which means “Star Gate Guard.” Psychic Shortstop’s name was originally Chāonéng Yóujīshǒu, while Wrath Thunder’s was originally Nùhuǒ Shǎndiàn. Finally, Deep Blue’s original name was Shēnlán Lüèyǐng, which translates to “Deep Blue Glimpse;” presumably, it was shortened to Deep Blue after the IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer that played chess. Like the Maladroids, they are stand-ins for the Maximals aboard the Axalon from Beast Wars: Astral Knight is Optimus Primal, Wrath Thunder is Rhinox, Psychic Shortstop is Cheetor, and Deep Blue is Rattrap. The Hyperborea was one of the colony ships from Cybertron, which eventually settled on what became the Jungle Planet; it’s named for a race of mythical people from Greek mythology. Crystalline containment units were seen in issue #14 of the Marvel The Transformers comic, used to hold the mind engrams of several Autobots onboard the Ark to serve as backup if needed; this replaces the Axalon having a cargo of several dozen protoforms. The Great Convoys, as I mentioned, were a group of high ranking Maximals from the Beast Wars Neo cartoon; fan misunderstanding due to the lack of translated materials saw the primary member of this group thought to be a single individual named “Great Convoy.” Rhetoric Convoy was a character mentioned in the late stages of the Facebook Ask Vector Prime feature; he was created by Sorenson. “Lions and tigers and bears” is a quote from the 1939 fantasy film The Wizard of Oz. Megalo Convoy is the Japanese Galaxy Force name of Cybertron Metroplex, Gigantion’s leader; in Japan, the leader of the various Cybertron colonies were Convoys. Fire Convoy is the Japanese Car Robots name of Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime. Armada Convoy is a version of Armada Optimus Prime (his Japanese name in Micron Legend was simply “Convoy”). Nitro Convoy is the Japanese name of the Velocitron leader Cybertron Override; a version of Override previously showed up as an Autobot in “Broken Windshields”, so presumably this is meant to be a male version of the character, as Override was made female due to Cartoon Network requests’ for more female characters on the show. Live Convoy is the Japanese name of Cybertron Evac, the leader of the Transformer colony on Earth (Cybertron Scourge, the leader of the Jungle Planet, is the only one not mentioned here; his name was Flame Convoy). Galaxy Convoy is the Japanese name of Cybertron Optimus; Ask Vector Prime introduced a Maximal Galaxy Convoy, who turned into a Transmetal 2 klud (a kind of alien whale from the Marvel The Transformers comic). Finally, Vector Convoy is a version of Vector Prime, the ancient Transformer from Cybertron who was a member of the Thirteen, though this one is obviously much younger; in Japan, Vector Prime was simply know as Vector Prime, though Ask Vector Prime noted he was known as Vector Convoy in some universes. Like prehistoric Earth in Beast Wars, this planet (which will be named in a bit) has two moons, the more “normal” one of which is presumably artificial, like the one left by the Vok. Replacing the raw energon are angolmois capsules; Angolmois energy was the lifeblood of Unicron from Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, showing up in capsule form in the latter. This section has several paraphrases of dialog from the opening minutes from “Beast Wars (Part 1)”.
The Skriix were the enemies in the Playstation Beast Wars game, an insectoid alien race who came to prehistoric Earth via an inter-dimensional porthole bent on destroying Maximal and Predacon alike. Energoa was the Japanese name for prehistoric Earth in the dub of the first season of Beast Wars; Sorenson used the name for a planet in The AllSpark Almanac II, intending it to be where Blackarachnia and Waspinator were transwarped to at the end of the Animated episode “Predacons Rising”, though he was asked not to make it explicit just in case future writers explored it. The Mother Computer, meanwhile, a monolith left behind by humanity on Gaia, the far future Earth, in Beast Wars II. A sofad seems to be roughly a minute; it’s not a reference, as far as I can tell. The Skriix ship sounds like the crude enemy models used by the Playstation game to represent them. Like the protoforms, the crystals are launched into orbit around Energoa. The Hyperborea’s crash zone sounds like where the Axalon landed in Beast Wars. Viewtrax might be a misspelling of viewtrex, a piece of scanning technology mentioned in “More than Meets the Eye, Part 1”, the first episode of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon. “Well, that’s just prime” was Optimus Primal’s catchphrase in Beast Wars. The large tower Astral Knight sees is the Mother Computer. The Cog and the Quill are two of the Artifacts of the Primes, established in Aligned continuity media; the Cog is Amalgamous Prime’s Transformation Cog that allowed him to infinitely change his form, the one that future Transformes would have a weaker version of, while the Quill was the artifact of Alpha Trion, able to change the future when writing in the Covenant of Primus. And so Beast Wars: Uprising ends, circling back to an echo of the status quo of the original Beast Wars cartoon.
Before we go, however, there is one final bit of the story, the Cyberglyphic cipher text, reproduced below:
In this paper it is my intention to examine a few of the more puzzling aspects of the protoformer rebellion of 13th Cycle 071 and the subsequent First Vehicon Apocalypse. The received wisdom has always been that Lio Convoy, leader of the Resistance, was a hero and a visionary, who led Cybertron through a catastrophe and wisely departed before allowing himself to be made a dictator. This simplistic reading of events leaves out entirely the fact that his first action as a Resistance fighter was to execute an innocent bot on a live media tron, hacking into the signal on an auto race to display his savage butchery. In addition, there is strong evidence that a member of his most elite group of fighters attempted to activate a biological weapon and infect a crowd watching an innocuous sports match of some kind. Further, records from the Maximal Commando Separatist Faction contain reference to an attempt to pervert Titanmaster technology into a weapon of mass destruction. These act strictly contravene the terms of the Pax Cybertronia developed jointly by the Autobots, Decepticons, and the peoples of Earth as represented by the Solstar Order. Note: this would logically have occurred during the height of Terran Ascendancy, long before the Fall of Man and subsequent period of brutal civil wars known as the Saeculum Obscurum.
Could it not easily be argued that the creation of the Vehicons would seem like a reasonable response to this warmongering? Indeed, Lio Convoy’s answer to the emergence of the Vehicons was to deploy weapons mass destruction against dense Builder population centers, hoping in vain to force the so called Assembly of Builders to surrender. There is no doubt that the Vehicon experiment was a tragic miscalculation, but there seems little doubt that the Assembly was pushed to such extreme measures by Lio Convoy and his band of upstart rogues. One only needs to look at the composition of Lio Convoy’s army. The records of the First Vehicon Uprising pulled from the Cybertropolis database show that he had aggressively pursued Beast Mode technology with little regard for the safety and wishes of his followers. His army contained no less than four combiners, one of which may have been an alien cyberbiologic organism. Perhaps most egregious was the use of bots rigged with core bombs attuned to their very sparks, presumably against their will. All of these things would be considered war crimes today.
This is not even to address the rumors that Lio Convoy himself was part Vehicon, a triple changer with a beast and a jet mode, or that he eventually partnered with a Titanmaster known either as Mecha Usagi or Moon. If Lio Convoy was indeed a triple changer or a Titanmaster, it must surely have occurred after the Unification War, else some documentation would have survived. It also seems unlikely that Lio Convoy would voluntarily become part Vehicon. For all that he would subject his troops to experimental upgrades, his well documented disdain for Vehicons during the Second Vehicon Apocalypse makes that seem remarkably unlikely. Perhaps it was Galvatron II, Lio Convoy's clone, that inspired such rumors.
The final blow against the First Vehicons was struck by a bot identified as Protoform Ex, at some point in the three orbital cycles after their introduction. There is some indication that this was an unfortunate individual illegally and immorally modified from his very forging to have a very strong regenerative capability and an almost inexhaustible capacity for violence. This would be bad enough. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that X has been a polarizing figure in studies of this period because it has usually been assumed that, given no known technology can survive the energies of a K strength blast at ground zero, there had to have been at least two Protoform Ex’s operating around this time, although reportedly with very similar capabilities. Perhaps this is further evidence of Lio Convoy’s modification on his followers to pursue his own ends. Perhaps these multiple Protoform Ex’s were his version of the Vehicons.
We will likely never be able to know for sure, although Pontiff General Rampage has made extensive study of the period and when interviewed, told he is reasonably sure no one true Protoform Ex ever really existed. His theory is that the designation was fabricated to cover for the Resistance’s use of suicide tactics. The Resistance would graft a few easily recognizable features onto a hapless zealot, give him a suicide mission and tell him to call himself Protoform Ex. Naturally a legend began to form. Certainly this is more plausible than the immortal regenerator theory, which has no basis in the science of the day, and is something that even we, some ten thousand stellar cycles hence, are unable to replicate.
In addition, the people Lio Convoy surrounded himself with certainly had dubious records. Black Arachnia, a Maximal who seemingly appeared from nowhere, has been linked to numerous terrorist actions before and during the period designated the Unification War, including the slaying of Assemblybot Supersonic, and the attempted capture of Titanmaster Oversurge. Let us not forget Ciphershark, similarly well known for carrying out black ops missions with a callous disregard for the lives of his enemies or those under his command, and Tarantulas, Lio Convoy’s famously amoral chief scientist and Predacus Secret Police liaison. And then, of course there is Grimlock, a name that echoes through the darkest annals of Cybertron. Grimlock, who was purported to be an Autobot under the command of the most probably mythical figure Optimus Convoy, proved himself a deadly and intensely immoral combatant during Lio Convoy’s campaign, culminating in the aforementioned attempted release of the Genesis Virus. Historians have tried to distance Lio Convoy from the actions of those under his command, but there is no evidence beyond wishful thinking that they did anything without his approval and, most likely, instruction.
These are but a few of the points that will be expanded upon in the paper, which will be published in these very pages and given in full as a lecture at the Heinrad Institute For Historiographical Science on the anniversary of U Day.
Extract from the introduction of “Lio Convoy: Unity Through Tyranny” by Second Professor Hatchet, Sistex University, 37th Cycle 2074, Primax 215.19 Epsilon
This takes the form of an academic paper introduction, even further in the future, around 10,000 years after the first section, which noted that the recording of Stiletto on Unity Day would last for that amount of time. We’ll go over the title and the author first, even though those are some of the last things that come up, just cause it’s easier that way. “Unity Through Tyranny” is a take on the motto of the original Megatron, “peace through tyranny.” Hatchet, the professor responsible for writing this paper, has his name derive from “hatchet job,” a term for written works designed to attack someone’s character, as he does here with his highly revisionist history of Lio Convoy. Hatchet was previously used for one of the names of the Dreads from 2011’s Dark of the Moon movie and tie-in media, a trio of Decepticon assassins who turned into Chevrolet Suburban police vehicles, with Hatchet being the team’s counterattack specialist, an animalistic bot who walked on all fours. While he might be unrelated, we know from the last part of this story that Transformers are now like the cancelled Transtech toyline; animalistic robots with technorganic vehicle modes, which means that Hatchet might very well be like that as well.
The dating system used here was seen in two of the prose stories in the Marvel UK annuals: “In the Beginning…” in the Transformers Annual 1986, and “The Quest!” in Transformers Annual 1990. Author James Roberts would bring this dating system back in his work on IDW Publishing’s comics, starting in the Last Stand of the Wreckers mini-series and continuing into other works like the More than Meets the Eye ongoing. The Grand Uprising has become known by a few different names by this point, including the “protoformer rebellion.” Note that the Vehicon Apocalypse from “Derailment” has become known as the “First”; more on that in a bit… The common understanding of Lio Convoy amongst most historians is a generally charitable reading of his actions during the previous stories, and his departure from Cybertron to prevent influencing politics did indeed happen at the end of “Derailment”. While this ignores some of the more immoral actions that Lio Convoy took part in or allowed to happen, Hatchet’s paper butchers the details of many of these things, either assigning blame to Convoy for things other individuals did or getting details about what he did completely wrong. The first of these is that Lio Convoy did not start the war by murdering an “innocent bot” at an auto race. As we saw in “Broken Windshields”, Lio Convoy assassinated Supersonic, the commentator of the Games who fully took part in the savagery of them by presenting them as entertainment, during the last proper one that would occur before the Grand Uprising. The auto races mentioned probably are the result of Hatchet using files from Eject, who was also overlooking other sporting events on Cybertron at the time, including the Iacon 5000. The next bit, about an elite soldier attempting to use a bioweapon on a crowd at another event, is partially true; in “Micro-Aggressions”, Builder-turned-Maximal Grimlock went rogue and attempted to use the G-Virus to turn a crowd of Builders and loyalist Maximals and Predacons into copies of Galvatron. However, the “innocuous sports match” was an attempted new Game, using Resistance prisoner of wars to fight one another. Finally, the bit about “Titanmaster” technology is an inaccurate understanding of what happened in “Trigger Warnings”, where Blackarachnia attempted to convinced secret Targetmaster Twirl to help the Resistance or steal the technology in case she refused, only for fellow Targetmaster in hiding Overrun to kill her out of fear, while Tarantulas attempted to use her corpse to recreate the technology, presumably relying on the reports of Wolfang and Aura. A few things to point out there: the Maximal Commando Separatist Faction is a corrupted understanding of the Maximal Command Security Force, the Maximal police force in Iacon that eventually abandoned the Builders when the Maximal Nation was established. “Titanmaster” technology is a misunderstanding of Headmasters, Tagetmasters, and Powermasters; Titan Masters were the main gimmick of the Titans Return toyline, which the toyline fiction indicated were responsible for maintaining the bodies of the massive Titans as they explored the universe, and had unique sparks that allowed them to give special powers to those they bonded with. In the actual toyline, they functioned the same way Headmasters do, with many of them being re-imagined versions of the old Headmaster partners; some were former Targetmaster and Powermaster partners, as well. “Trigger Warnings” established that Targetmasters had the capacity to become weapons of mass destruction due to their unique interactions with other Transformers’ sparks. The Pax Cybertronia (the peace treaty first established in the Beast Wars cartoon that ended the Great War) was developed by the Builders, seemingly without humanity’s involvement, and was preceded by the Targetmaster Extirpation, which saw almost all surviving Targetmasters rounded up and killed. Hatchet’s claimed representatives for humanity, the Solstar Order, comes from the original Rom the Space Knight toy commercial. Rom was a 1979 toy created by Parker Brothers, a slightly articulated action figure with light up red LED eyes, whose commercial indicated he was a heroic member of the Solstar Order fighting against the evil, shapeshifting Dire Wraiths. Rom was adapted into the Marvel universe with the Marvel Comics ongoing, Rom: Spaceknight, a popular title written by Bill Mantlo with art by Sal Buscema, Steve Ditko, Bill Sienkiewicz, and others, which ran from 1979 to 1986 for 75 issues. However, the Solstar Order was dropped from Marvel’s versions of things, with Rom being a cyborg from the planet of Galador, and leader of the Spaceknights. The character remained in limbo for years until IDW Publishing licensed the rights from Hasbro (who owns Parker Brothers), and reintroduced him in their Rom ongoing, bringing back the Solstar Order and seeing him cross over with IDW Publishing’s Transformers, G.I. Joe, Micronauts, and other Hasbro Universe titles. The Terran Ascendancy is how future historians have remembered the Human Confederacy, which we’ve gone over a bit in the main annotations. This also indicates that after what we saw in the main story, and presumably overlapping with the Ammonite attacks, humanity’s brief time as one of the most powerful political entities in the galaxy quickly fell, with the tensions between Celestials and Traditionalists resulting in civil wars. Saeculum Obscurum is a Latin phrase, meaning the “dark age.” In the real world, the term was used to describe a period in the Catholic Church commonly seen as one of their lowest points, after the death of Pope Formosus in 896 and the quick succession of popes following him in the next 20 years. Lasting from 904 with the installation of Pope Sergius III until the death of Pope John XII in 964, this period saw the papacy heavily influenced by an allegedly corrupt aristocratic family, the Theophylacti from Latium.
Hatchet’s far more sympathetic view of the Builders is completely backwards to what we actually saw in-story, with “Derailment” establishing that they had willingly infected some of their Micromaster troops with the Vehicon virus as a biological weapon. Lio Convoy did not deploy the K-Class troops against Builder population centers as mentioned here, but instead in largely Resistance held territories that had been overrun with Vehicons, with most of the populace converted by that point. The Builder Assembly has been misremembered as the Assembly of Builders. Cybertropolis was the capital of Cybertron under the Maximals, seen in Beast Machines. It was built over the ruins of Iacon, indicating something similar happened here after the last of the Vehicons were wiped out. It was not Lio Convoy who pursued the Beast Upgrade, but instead Megatron; as seen in “Not All Megatrons”, he performed experiments on some of his low-ranking criminal underlings before perfecting the process, turning them into monstrous hybrids that he put out of their misery. The four combiners here had no affiliation to the Resistance. Magnaboss was the combined form of the Maximal High Council, leaders of the Maximal Nation, while Tripredacus was the combined form of the Tripredacus Council, leaders of the Independent Predacus States. Devastator was originally aligned with the Builders, until becoming part of the neutral Ex-Bots. And the alien cyberbiologic organism is Monsterous, the combined form of Odd Ball’s team of Monster GoBots, coming from the GoBots universe seen in “Withered Hope” as part of the Diaspora from their dying universe, who appeared in “Micro-Aggressions” and “Cultural Appropriation” helping the main team of Monster GoBots attempt to take over Cybertron. The K-Class troopers did have core bombs installed in them, but the Commandos all did so willingly, as seen in “Derailment”.
The idea that Lio Convoy was part Vehicon, a triple changer, comes from the Legends toy his Beast Upgrade from is based on. A redeco of Titans Return Alpha Trion, he turned into both a lion and a spaceship. In addition, Lio Convoy was a Headmaster in Legends, with his actual body being the Headmaster unit (redecoed from Titans Return Sentinel Prime’s partner Infinitus), controlling a larger body that was the transformed form of his Legends World counterpart. Lio Convoy’s supposed “Titanmaster” partner is Moon, the Gaian android who turned into a yellow cartoon rabbit from Beast Wars II, who observed the fight between Lio Convoy’s Maximals and Galvatron’s Predacons from Gaia’s moon alongside his partner, the gynoid Artemis. The alternative name for him, Mecha Usagi, comes from the Lucky Draw Mecha Usagi Moon prize toy, a white version of Moon limited to 2,000 pieces gifted via Comic BomBom magazine in 1998. Moon and Artemis are based on the Chinese legend of the goddess Chang’e and her pet rabbit Yu Tu, who lived on the moon; “usagi” is Japanese for rabbit. Lio Convoy’s partnership with Moon probably comes from the Japanese Prime toyline’s Leo Prime toy, which represented Lio Convoy after the events of Beast Wars Neo where he had traveled to the world of the Prime cartoon. There, he had partner with the Arms Micron (or Mini-Con) L.P., a Mini-Con who turned into a sword with a robot mode based on Moon’s design. Obviously, we did not see Lio Convoy as a triple changer in “Derailment”, nor was he a Headmaster; its besides the point, but Headmasters are about the same size as the average Maximal or Predacon, meaning that Moon would have to be very small to become Lio Convoy’s head, about the size of a human toddler give or take. The idea of a triple changer with a vehicle mode meaning he’s a Vehicon seems to be just Hatchet’s understanding; we know that triple changer Beast Upgrade Transformers exist, with Megatron and Optimal being quadformers with two vehicle modes in addition to their beast modes, and Labrat and Rampage having third transport modes. Still, if these upgrades did happen, they probably happened later on, as described here. The Grand Uprising has also become known as the “Unification War”; a series of wars by these names were mentioned in issue #31 of the 2009-2011 IDW Publishing The Transformers ongoing, set in a possible far future of that universe. The Second Vehicon Apocalypse is a new event mentioned here, and it seems to indicate that Galvatron’s plan to control Vehicons with his Vehicon general did go into motion. “Galvatron II,” as he’s become known (this is the name given to the Galvatron from an alternate future timeline who showed up in the final quarter of the Marvel The Transformers comic), has been conflated with Galva Convoy as being a clone of Lio Convoy.
Rampage has become known as Protoform Ex, with his regenerative abilities having come to be thought of as fiction, and most thinking that Protoform Ex was an identity held by multiple Resistance members; it seems that, much as Deluge anticipated, things would be mushed over and forgotten by future Transformers. Rampage himself has survived as a “Pontiff General”, perhaps referencing his original toy’s function of “Warlord,” with no one realizing his identity. We know that he has a very dim view of Lio Convoy, hence his willingness to keep the Protoform Ex theory afloat. Rampage’s backstory has been gone over plenty by this point including in the paragraphs above. Rampage detonated the core bomb in his chest around four and half days after the beginning of the Vehicon apocalypse; the timeline has become screwy in the 10,000 years since, with the Apocalypse being dragged out to three months.
Lio Convoy’s generals have been also misremembered, although there is some truth to the amoral nature of their actions. Blackarachnia has become known as Black Arachnia; she showed back up to Cybertron from another dimension in “Broken Windshields”, with her having rebelled in a previous attempt at an Uprising under Cheetor (more on that in a bit). Supersonic’s death has been attributed to her, with him being misremembered as a member of the Builder Assembly, while her mission with Twirl has been refocused onto Overrun, who has become known as Oversurge, combining his alias with his true name, Surge. Cybershark has been misremembered as Ciphershark, and his deeds have been remembered pretty accurately; we saw his disregard for Buzzclaw’s life in “Head Games”. Tarantulas was never part of the Resistance, first serving as a member of the Predacon Secret Police (misremembered as the Predacus Secret Police), before going out on his own and eventually being recruited by Megatron, as seen in “Trigger Warnings” and “Derailment”. Grimlock’s history has been brought into question in the millennia since, with many skeptical of his origin as an Autobot; Optimus Prime has become a mythical figure since then known as Optimus Convoy, the result of Lio Convoy’s outsized influence. The G-Virus has become known as the Genesis Virus, stripped of its relationship with Galvatron; it might be named for the doomsday weapon known as the Genesis Device from 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. While Hatchet is wrong about many of the details, one thing that his paper is at least somewhat right about is that Lio Convoy was willing to look the other way when his general did these things.
The Heinrad Institute For Historigraphical Science is named after Heinrad, one of the Maximals from Beast Wars Neo. Turning into a tanuki (also known as a Japanese racoon dog) with an alarm clock in his chest, he was a young carefree Maximal with the extraordinary ability to manipulate time, though he didn’t always use them in the most responsible manner, often pulling pranks with them. Sistex University is in Sistex, a city mentioned in issue #36 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye ongoing as the home of Zeta Prime; it wasn’t mentioned in previous stories as a city on Cybertron, so presumably it was built after the events of Derailment. The universal stream bit is interesting. Originally, the stream designation given for Beast Wars: Uprising was Primax 209.0 Gamma, deriving from the publication of TransTech Blackarachnia’s profile in issue #25 of the Collectors Club magazine, which established that she was really from a parallel Beast Wars universe that never saw the war end, with her spark placed in her TransTech counterpart by Shattered Glass Alpha Trion’s servant, Topspin. This early profile and other material didn’t really match up with what the prose stories established the Beast Wars: Uprising universe as being, so they have been given a new designate here as Primax 215.19 Epsilon (using the proper Greek letter for fan club stories), which consists of the prose stories as well as the events of “Alone Together”. This caused some consternation with Fun Publications editor Pete Sinclar behind the scenes; see the annotations for “Derailment” and the parts about Fever Dream for more on that. And so, we’ve reached the end. Thank you for reading, it took me over five years to annotate all these stories (from December 2025), when I’m writing this. Stay tuned, hopefully in the next few years I’ll be able to annotate the sourcebooks for the Transformers RPG that Sorenson worked on for Renegade Games Studios. Hopefully it doesn’t take another five years.