How I’d Write The Transformers’ Origin Story

In the multiverse of the Transformers, there were two origins:

• The Quintessons: First seen as Unicron’s kangaroo court judge in The Transformers: The Movie, the third season opener “Five Faces Of Darkness” would introduce them as the creators of the Transformers and a bunch of other things including the planet itself, who after a few million years+ now desired revenge on their creation for being forced off the planet in a slave revolt. Or…
• Primus: In the first issue of the Marvel US comics, the origins of the Cybertronians were lost to time, but Simon Furman opted to give them a god, because he pretty much treated Transformers as humans who looked like robots…or wore robot costumes based on the art by Andrew Wildman in the UK, both of which Simon brought with him to his Marvel US run. He also remade Unicron, since he considers the movie’s comic adaptation to be canon and not the rest of the cartoon, into a god of destruction, out to destroy the universe so he could get some sleep, the cranky boy. Opposing him was Primus, who forced Unicron into the universe, locking them both into planetoids. Unicron would form his prison into a mechanical body to pull a Galactus, while Primus opted for a machine world inhabited by robots who would do the fighting for him…and then they ended up in a war with each other.

As I said in today’s posting of TJ Omega’s video going over the strengths and weaknesses of both origins, I prefer the Quintessons. Making Unicron, originally a creation of a scientist who doesn’t know when to stop making weapons that don’t turn on him, and Primus into supernatural forces adds too much mysticism to the franchise, AND YES I KNOW THE CARTOONS HAD A TWO EPISODES WHERE MAGIC WAS REAL AND I DON’T CARE! I just prefer the franchise as purely science fiction, unlike Masters Of The Universe which started out mixing magic and science at the outset. I miss the robots having unique powers and weapons, but that should be the extent. The Quintessons allow for a scientific explanation for everything. I could even do that with the sparks introduced in Beast Wars, one of the showrunners preferring the comics and forgetting he was doing the cartoon. The other runner had to stop him from connecting the Vok to the Swarm of the Generation Two comic since nobody who watched the show only would get the reference.

However, Primus somehow became more than a reference in the show thanks to oddly enough Japan, who never got the Marvel comics, US or UK. We’d finally get Primus officially in Transformers Energon, as a being within Cybertron, though he never really fought Unicron. Considering Primus eventually got his own robotic form in the next series, fittingly called Transformers Cybertron, he still mostly sits out the action as much as possible even when he’s acknowledged. I don’t like it, but what can I do?

How about if I try to reconcile the Primus and Quintesson origins, explain why Primus used robots when machines do not occur naturally and I don’t know why he went that route? That’s been one of my biggest issues with Primus, while the Quintessons using robots made perfect sense as a race of cyborgs. How would I do that? Well, sit back because Grandpa Tronix has a story for you young whippersnappers, so if you’re going to keep coming on my lawn, I might as well tell it to you. Now admittedly this is a rough layout, barely a pitch because I won’t be asked to write this. Consider it an early idea, only partly off the top of my head because some of these ideas I’ve actually thought about for years.

In a time before humanity rose from wherever the Creator spawned them from, there was a race of beings known as Quintessons. Obsessed with technology, the “Quints”, as they were sometimes derogatorily referred to, turned themselves cybernetic, their leaders even adopting multiple faces that spun to display their emotions. This, they decided, would benefit them as they focuses on thought, allowing the soldiers and other creations to be their protectors. All the Quintessons wanted was money and to control what they saw as lesser races to themselves. The Quintessons would create amazing machines, some for rescue, some for building, some for war, et cetera. They worked hard for their profit.

They were also scumbags.

They sold weapons to both sides of a war, sometimes continuing and even instigating wars to do so. Then the “customers” would need their rescue machines to save people, and building machines to rebuild what the war destroyed. To subsidize, they created machines for fun as well, the intergalactic equivalent of a sports car or cruise ship, even animal companions that could also fight each other for sport. They didn’t worry about the morality of it all. To them it was just a chance to design and build new things and make lots of money out of it.

However, they also took over planets that didn’t have a dominant sentient lifeform, cyberforming them into their new factories and laboratories. The Quintessons were a short-numbered race thanks to cybernetics leading to near-immortality and no desire to spawn offspring, but demand required supply. These automated factory worlds kept them in robots and vehicles, while the labs allowed them to further experiment with machines, cybernetics, genetic engineering, and even abilities one would call “magic”. Whatever they could create, study, and profit from they were more than willing to do. Their latest world, however, would hold a surprise for them. The planetoid selected was rich in their preferred energy source for these machines, a substance known as energon. Processing the ore into a liquid-like substance stored in energon cubes or formed from a processed liquid state into crystal like forms (though that risked breaking down into colorium, a very not safe form of radiation for machines as a sort of anti-Energon), it was surprisingly clean.

One scientist was excited for his project of creating cybernetic monsters he called Trans-Organics. It…didn’t go well, but it’s not like they cared about the transplanted creatures used, or cared where some of them went. This mechanical world, built on an organic core of the planetoid, was a good spot to experiment new ways to separate lesser beings from their wealth and increase their own power. However, another experiment might prove promising: the protoform. Formed from a metal that could be shaped by computer into whatever form was needed, the protoform could be turned into new robots rather easily, speeding up production and allowing such robots to potentially be available for a wide variety of needs.  Need a construction bot? Easily done. Create a core body type and slap in the right components and kibble, formed like they were clay thanks to the new supercomputer Vector Sigma. That same protoform design could be retooled to form a different robot or vehicle without a lot of extra sculpting and engineering before anything was ever constructed. If not, just make a new design and see how much tooling that virtual mold could take on.

Then came the revelation: why not have robots that could change into vehicles, weapons, even animals for amusement, combat, or exploration? It’s two items in one. They could charge more, and get two or in some designs more machines out of it. It would cost the Quintessons less materials to create, yet still increase their profits. These protoform things were great for business and science.

What’s more, they found this planetoid had a strange energy source deep at its core rather than the usual magma, more powerful than the geothermal generators that powered other robotic factories. This Project: Cybertron was just the greatest factory laboratory they ever made! Heck, make the planet transform just for kicks! Let’s tap that energy and see what it does for these transforming robots…what do we call them? Quints aren’t known for creativity beyond the practical and con-artistry. Just call them Transformers.

Mistake #1. Or two if you count the Trans-Organics.

Had their science gone beyond engineering and business they might have learned that the “energy” was a lifeforce. Not a normal organic lifeforce, but the lifeforce of a multidimensional entity called Primus. At the dawn of creation, Primus had sacrificed himself and his arch nemesis, who wanted to destroy all creation because he hated all these inferior lifeforms and could sense their unworthy life energies whenever he tried to rest. So Primus battled him, eventually forced to shred their life essences through the multiversal veil, shards across the various continuities, weakening both of them and in this reality trapping them both in planetoids. Primus didn’t know the ultimate fate of his enemy, but was convinced he was stopped, and thus enjoyed a long rest.

Then these semi-organic creatures showed up, syphoning his very lifeforce to power their machine planet. Not surprising, Primus was not happy about that. He was even more unhappy when he found out what they were doing with that power…and then he got an idea. There was no guarantee that his enemy wasn’t going to return, and now with his life energies active it wouldn’t be hard to be found again and the battle for creation resuming. However, these Transformers of theirs could serve as a line of defense, especially with some of the other projects they were working on, the existing Guardian Robots that served as their protectors, the city-sized Operation: Titan projects, some of which were already under construction. All of it was automated, and the Quintesson leaders had already left to their next project, leaving a sort of skeleton crew behind, with their robots and Vector Sigma doing all of the work. This was supposed to be an automated factory after all. Their second mistake.

Primus, rather than let his entire lifeforce be absorbed, created the “All-Spark”, an energy formed “copy” of his lifeforce, a sort of “artificial soul” as the closest explanation. The copy is formed from Energon, which powers the robot, and with a regular supply they would be nearly immortal. Vector Sigma would encode a “life” program known as a “creation matrix” into a sort of energon ball, using this All-Spark as a guide, that would give the robots personalities, while the two together gave them emotions. The creation matrix was the mind and the lifeforce copy the heart. These encoded lifeforce copies became known as Sparks, with individual views and goals, save protecting the planet and preparing for the enemy. It, now more of a “he” since Vector Sigma was it/himself altered by the All-Spark, began by bringing life to 13 prototype templates created by the Quintessons. These 13 then ensured all the other protoforms and even machines like Turbofoxes and Scraplets would receive sparks to become super robot lifeforms. The 13 would then lead this new army in a revolt against the Quintessons. The remaining Quintessons were not prepared for this uprising, as they still weren’t aware they had a near-deity under their feet. They were eventually forced to vacate the planet. Once satisfied they weren’t coming back, Primus went back to sleep, using Vector Sigma and an Oracle program (representing his goals) to allow the robots to form their own culture and society and prepare for his enemy should he return. So basically Primus just made the same mistake as the Quintessons: automate everything and assume it would all go as planned.

As for the Quintessons, their final mistake came from their next gambit. A scientist called Primacron acquired their services to build a planet-sized machine that could absorb other planets. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it, but something inspired him to design and seek help in building it. Imagine how delighted they were to find the same core energy in their chosen planetoid for the project. Imagine their shock when they finally learned what this energy was, too late to not be enslaved by it once the task was far enough along. Primacron had been influenced by this entity, and now Alpha Q and his team would serve him, creating more of their robots and eventually turning his new body into a robotic body to finally achieve his dream to destroy all of creation, and to find the one who trapped him in this cursed existence. Someday he would reclaim his lost bits throughout the multiverse and destroy those realities all as well.

Unicron was back! And he would not be denied again. But that’s a story for another cycle.

So…why I did what I did:

• Quintessons created the Transformers, not just Cybertronians: This will make more sense if I ever continue this story, as I have ideas about Cybertronian society and culture that isn’t “forced caste systems in a techno-dystopia” like we get now. Rather than transforming being a creation of war like in G1’s various media, I want to build the Cybertronian civilization around the art of transformation. Other worlds that developed robotic life, and I’m still working that part out (clearly for me the artifacts of Primus will play a role as will Cybertronian colonies) but not transformation are explained by the early Quintesson factories, each probably having their own reasons for no longer being under Quintesson dominance. Lithone from the movie would be one of these former factories while the Transformer colonies we see like Paradon or the worlds of Transformers Cybertron would be explained by other methods saved for future lore. Maybe losing so much of their small population and Alpha Q to Unicron plays a role. So rather than just creating robots, the Quintessons created transforming robots and the protoform.
• Primus’s role in their creation: How do I pull out as much of the…spiritual?…stuff out of the origin as I can while still making Primus relevant. Otherwise I could just pull him out entirely and let the Quintessons do everything, but that wasn’t the goal. I didn’t want Sparks to come directly from Primus, thus diminishing him, hence the All-Spark. Vector Sigma is the container in this version. Yeah, I could say when the Sparks return it actually builds his strength, lost when he shredded himself and Unicron through the multiverse, but how many could he handle being made out of him? Who’s to say that these artificial Sparks don’t do the same thing, giving him more life energy along with the experiences, going from artificial to actual life. I just thought it was the cleaner solution.
• Putting the two together: The Quints are responsible for the bodies, probably formed in the plasma energy chamber from the cartoon, but Primus still plays a role in shaping events and in creation of the souls. Being artificial, formed from energon in a sort of electromagnetic light ball (I’m making science up here to explain the physical nature of a Spark seen in Beast Wars and the Unicron trilogy, using the original Budiansky version of the Creation Matrix in Marvel comics as my muse) encoded with personalities that grow as they experience reality helps explain everything Sparks do in various media without pulling Primus further apart while he uses his lifeforce to take control of his own new body, Cybertron.
• Mistakes and other stuff: Let’s get Primus’s out of the way first. By letting everything go automated I set the stage for the war and for things like turbofox hunts (Mirage’s favorite pastime) or Scraplets becoming a metal-munching, energon-absorbing threat. If Primus micromanaged his creation there might not have been a Great War, and while Primus versus Unicron versus proxies could work, that’s not how the franchise operates. I need Autobots, Decepticons, their various descendants, and a way to work in stuff like the franchises’ favorite artifacts, Mini-Cons, and whatever else is required. I also want to attach the Quintessons to Unicron. In the movie adaptation they were his servants according to Kranix while in Transformers Energon Alpha Q was his prisoner, forced to create Terrorcons after Unicron’s believed destruction in hope of using energon to restore his home planet. Obviously that wouldn’t be his goal here as he’s just a high ranking Quintesson, possibly even a lost leader, but the Quints are often tied to Unicron and I wanted to work that in. I even worked in the All-Spark, a third origin that came up thanks to Michael Bay and been refined by later projects, and the creation matrix.
• How Energon works: The in-universe origins of Energon, the basic fuel for Cybertronians, is odd. Originally, “Energon Cubes” were just a way to store captured energy, but over the course of the series Energon would become the name of the fuel. The Unicron Trilogy would turn Energon into an ore, and a crystalized form of Energon would be introduced in Beast Wars, plus the Dark Energon of the Aligned Continuity. Trying to reconcile all that was interesting. I might explore that in the future. I decided the Sparks would be formed from Energon, and just as Primus could control Cybertron (necessary for his Unicron Trilogy robot mode) the Spark controls the robot. It’s something I’d get more into in a continuation of this fiction.
• The First 13: I’m going to assume the only reason you’re reading this is because you’re Transformers fans curious about the fanfiction, considering how long this post is. So I’m also assuming you know these are the infamous 13 Primes, a concept started in a Beast Wars convention story and evolving into the theme of the next adult-targeted toyline as of this writing, as well as one of the recent lines. Like Primus, I’m not a huge fan of the addition, but they’re multiversal continuity now and are getting toys, so my toybox (as it were) has to accept them and work them in. I can use them to set up my Cybertronian society, though I’ll be avoiding the forced caste system. The protoform idea is part of that goal, since a caste system is dumb when from literally the first episode or comic we see Autobots and Decepticons adopt new forms fairly easily (the show more than the comic since it wasn’t a huge rebuild process like issue #1 of the Marvel comic gives us). I’ll be factoring that into forming Cybertronian society and culture as well.

Any other questions? Would like to see me build on this? There are still other questions to answer, like the culture, what happened to the 13 and the Titans, what are the other artifacts I’m going by and what became of them, and of course the forming of the Decepticons and start of the Great War. If I’m not using the forced caste system/fallen revolutionary origin, how does Megatron come about? These and more I’m willing to answer if you all want another chapter of this, or just want to ask me things in the comments. I would love to continue this headcanon history of Cybertron if you want to read more of it.