My Transformers Universe> How I’d Start Cybertronian Civilization

It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these. It’s been in my head. I just didn’t have time to put it to text. I finally found the time.

As our chronicler is about to point out, Cybertron didn’t start out like other civilizations. The starter details…food, housing, protection, healing, building social groups and religion…were pretty much handed to them. They didn’t have to learn the basics of living. They just started. They still have to form laws, culture, a stronger society, and become a civilization.

I couldn’t tell that story until I finished going over the basics of how Cybertronian life operates. These are mechanical lifeforms, and one thing that has disappointed me is when writers make them too human. So how do I go about this artificial life without going too far the other way? Is it a balancing act? They’re robots, but they’re robots with emotions and everything that goes with that. They can transform into things and in my version have always been able to alter what that form is, something we’ve seen in TV and comics from literally the first story. Working early toy gimmicks, tech specs that used to give them “powers” (these were the Marvel Comics folks), and even explaining toy engineering and mold reuse all factored into how I approached Cybertronian life.

Now they have to take that and what they know about the universe, which is far more than the caveman, and become a proper civilization; mechanical people but still people. And so we turn things over to the chronicler, to tell us how the 13 Primes got the ball rolling before they went off to who knows were.

Whether you believe in creation by an all-powerful deity or set of deities, or in live evolving, think about how early lifeforms began. First they had to find food, water, and shelter. Then they had to find ways to interact with each other, eventually forming a singular language between groups around each other. They developed clothing to protect them from the elements, learned to use tools, discovered how to create fire on their own, and how to protect themselves from enemies and predators. From these basic needs came civilization and a community, becoming a people.

Cybertronians had none of that. Food and water? They already knew where to get energon, how to extract it, and there was info left behind on creating artificial energon for customers on worlds without a natural supply. Shelter? The Quintessons didn’t go “scorched earth” when they were chased off, so at most the buildings left behind in lab cities could be renovated, and that gave them info on building more when the time came. Language? They already had the standard language shared by the intergalactic community and data on other languages from the Quintessons’ former clients. Choose one and go. Clothing? They’re robots. The closest thing they have or need was the shell that formed the external parts of their alternate modes. Weapons and tools? The ones that weren’t already those things had access to their own. Even fire was available to them if they needed it. They even knew their origins and could talk to their god if they knew how. Certain Transformers practically had Primus on speed dial.

Enemies and predators? Now we had something to start. Rules to function? Useless if nobody enforces those rules. The robotic version of health care? Someone has to do it. Making a place for them to function in and keeping it safe? Also important.

These “autonomous robots”, or “Autobots” for short (until we get to the war I’ll go with that distinction, since later posts as well as this overview of the next group of reports will mention other Cybertronian mechanical lifeforms), did have to worry about the Quintessons’ scorned clients either wanting their money or their products. The Quintessons ran off with the money and the products were no longer willing to go off with them. Other Quintesson experiments were running loose on the planet. Plus they had to form their own laws and society, shared and personal values that as a robotic race were important to form society.

Before their disappearance, the 13 Primes, the first 13 robots given life by Primus directly rather than through the All-Spark, set up a series of groups to function as the building blocks and maintainers of life on Cybertron. This report will be an overview of those groups, with more detailed pre-war discussions to follow in later reports. They went as follows:

Military

The Cybertronian Defense Force was the first group created, with concerns of the aforementioned wronged Quintesson clients coming for what they believe they were owed. Upon first meeting with Cybertronians and other mechanical lifeforms, it’s hard for organic races to believe that, at best, they’re more than AI machines with programmed histories and personality types. They might not take no for an answer, and even if they did accept Autobots as fellow lifeforms, how many races have been know to enslave their own kind due to cultural differences or any answer they could come up with. So anyone who had been designed as military hardware was encouraged to become the planet’s military. In time some robots would choose an alt mode for that service or change their alt mode away from combat-ready forms to pursue other avenues.

There were also internal threats. In a later report or report group we’ll look at technorganics, predacons, scraplets (not to be confused with the “disease”, similar to how Earthlings have both an illness and a lifeform called “crabs”), and scrapmetals. Some were other Quintesson experiments who by accident also received sparks, or just regular droneish machines that still posed a threat. That’s ignoring what the Quintessons created just to strike back at their rebelling creations. The Defense Force had to tackle those threats as well.

law enforcement

Once the outside threats had a response, internal threats had to be dealt with. Like with organic races, not every robot choose a peaceful path. Some were thugs, bullies, or would just “throw their weight around”, to quote an Earth expression. They needed a version of the police, though one would assume you’d need laws first. A universal set of laws were formed, but first a peacekeeping force was required so there’d be bots left to follow and accept those laws.

Peacekeepers originally did just as it says–they kept the peace between individual Autobots until the laws were finalized. They evolved into the (insert provence here) Security Force. Like the police, they had other nicknames like the old “Peacekeeper” or the new term “Enforcers”, depending on who you asked. They just went by “Security Force Officer” officially, sometimes shortened to SFO or Security Officer. They still kept the peace but also enforced the laws, depending on the situation. If no law was violated they tried to maintain peace and order among the various parties or, depending on the officer, would try to find a peaceful solution without filling up containment cells with minor infractions. They would investigate crimes and bring in criminals. We’ll go more into them in their own section.

Medic/Mechanical

The medical mechanical group are a combination of medics, who maintains Transformer life functions, and mechanics, who maintain alt mode functions, as well as the “tool-and-die” robots that were a jack of both trades. I already went over the differences in a previous report and we’ll get more into them in their solo report. Once the planet was considered protected, the robots who were proficient in both fields were combined into the Medic and Mechanical functions and subfunctions. They kept the Autobots running beyond the need for energon. They were the doctors and mechanics, since living robots need both.

Engineers

Not much to really summarize and I suspect it will be a short report if they get a solo one. From living spaces to headquarters for the Defense and Security forces, and then later buildings for different businesses, the engineers were charged first with converting Quintesson built structures for use by the new landlords, plus other infrastructure like energon collecting plants, dams, and whatever else they needed to do. I mention them here because they factor into our final grouping.

(pictured: not actually Rescue Bots, but the Micromaster branch of the Protectobots)

Rescue Bots

This last group wasn’t actually formed by the 13, but by a rescue worker. Rescue workers were not an official group in the early years, just being robots that had been designed for rescue work. The Quintessons would start a war and sell weapons to both sides, but even they knew a war couldn’t last forever. So they also sold the equipment to rebuild and resume normal life until they saw an opening to create another war. This means at both war and peace they were ready and robbing clients blind.

An Autobot firefighter took these various rescue types, worked with the Security Force, engineers, medics, and mechanics to form the Rescue Bots. (The military Defense Force would offer aid but didn’t offer official Rescue Bot contributions of mechpower, as they had other duties.) Some of their technologies would be utilized during the war for weapons and transformation technology and as we’ll get into in their section mostly vanished during the war. The Protectobots kept their spirit alive until a lost band of Rescue Bots came out of stasis in deep space decades after the Great War to create a new generation of Rescue Bots. I’ll go over the differences in that section, as Rescue Bots are important to discuss early Cybertronian and Autobot society pre-war.

In time you’d have various businesses, forms of entertainment, and the like but those are cultural aspects formed out of civilization. These individual groups are the ones responsible for forming and maintaining Autobot infrastructure, society, and living until the war with the Decepticons. As each conflict has erupted past the Great War, attempts to restore these groups with the hope of restoring the lost Cybertronian culture and civilization have had mixed results. To better understand what was lost, we should look at these groups specifically before exploring other aspects of Autobot society. In my next report we’ll discuss the Cybertron Defense Force and explore the level of threat…and why so many Decepticons came from this particular grouping.