Ancient

Anyone got any threes?

Many Cybertronians revere famous historical inhabitants of their homeworld by the generic moniker Ancients.

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon

The insignia "Ancient Robot" bore was identified as belonging to the "Ancients". World of the Transformers

Cybertron cartoon

The Ancients were the Golden Age Transformers who sent colony ships out into space to the worlds of Earth, Velocitron, Jungle Planet and Gigantion. Warp They look a liiiiittle familiar. Balance

Galaxy Force cartoon continuity

Galaxy Force cartoon

Vector Prime was an Ancient.

Beast Wars Reborn

Logos Prime and Vector Prime were Ancients, Master of the Game the first clan of robots created by Primus before he became Cybertron. They were endowed with amazing powers surpassing those of later Transformers and acted as protectors throughout space and time. However, Logos Prime fell to insanity, breaking off from his brethren, Planetfall upon encountering the Beast of Time. The Extraordinary Reformat

Aligned continuity family

Aligned novels

The Ancients' secret to their expansion was the space bridges, a continuation of many successful building projects under Sentinel Prime. They were capable of moving Energon by transmitting it via the Geosynchronous Energon Bridge. Exodus

Prime comic

According to Cliffjumper, only the Ancients knew how to build space bridges but somehow Starscream got hold of the knowledge. Transformers: Prime

Prime cartoon

The Ancients created the Energon Harvesters to remove raw Energon from any source. According to Optimus Prime, the Ancients used the art of a given era to conceal hidden messages. For example, a fresco in Ancient Greece depicted a harvester, likely as a signpost to its location. Deus ex Machina They also were known to have foretold the events detailed within the Covenant of Primus. One Shall Fall

After the Decepticons recovered an empty Cybertronian data cylinder, Megatron became determined to find out the contents of the device. This is because he believed that the knowledge of the Ancients was power. When the knowledge of this data cylinder threatened to consume Bulkhead's mind, Ratchet initially struggled with finding a means of removing the data without the wisdom of the Ancients. T.M.I.

During a planetary alignment, the events detailed within the Covenant of Primus of a time of darkness was coming to pass. Ratchet claimed that he always related such a story to the war that had engulfed Cybertron. However, events came to pass that this chaotic period might have related to the planet Earth instead. Megatron attempted to make the events of the tale come to pass by building a space bridge in order to harvest Dark Energon. During a battle with Optimus Prime, he told his old foe that the Ancients had foreseen his defeat though Optimus told him not to believe everything he had heard. At the climax of the fight, it was finally revealed that Earth was indeed the site of the prophecy as a large deposit of Dark Energon was erupting from beneath the Earth and coming to the surface from a volcano. One Shall Fall

Cyberverse cartoon

When Starscream had seized both the Allspark and Vector Sigma, he used the latter to have the former birth him an army of Scraplets that he believed held the sparks of reborn ancients such as Solus Prime, Zeta Prime, and the noble Megatronus. Dark Birth Parley

Games

Fall of Cybertron

An earlier civilization referred to as the "ancients" predated that of the Transformers on Cybertron. They were noted to had been explorers that charted space who collected their data in a map room. During their reign, they created the technology that allowed them to travel through time and space. An unknown cataclysm later devastated their society and was believed to had created the Sea of Rust where their tomb resided. Cliffjumper and Jazz discovered the ruins of the "ancients" when they were tracking a missing Grimlock to the site that was being used by the Decepticons during the Civil War. By this point, Shockwave had discovered the technology and began experimenting on it in order to unlock its secrets to possibly find a new world whose energy would be used to reboot Cybertron's Core. Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Notes

• The ancient Transformers seen in "Balance" are based on Generation 1 Optimus Prime, Rodimus Prime, Jazz, and Ultra Magnus.
• While never properly identified as one of the Thirteen (a more distinct group of ancient Transformers) in Beast Wars Reborn, Logos Prime was often unofficially included in their number due to Vector Prime being one of the Thirteen in Hasbro Cybertron material while Takara Galaxy Force material strictly referred to him as an Ancient. (This conflation was not intended by Hirofumi Ichikawa, writer of Beast Wars Reborn.) This led to Logos Prime being confirmed (in niche Western material) as part of the "multiversal singularity" Thirteen.
• While the Ancients are mentioned in the Aligned continuity's Exodus novel, the Fall of Cybertron game, and the Prime comic and cartoon, they receive no mention in the Covenant of Primus, which explores in-depth the various ages of Cybertronian history. Yet again, this is an example of the Aligned continuity's "It only works if you squint" rule towards the overall timeline.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Ancient (エンシェント Enshento)

See also

• Covenant
• Thirteen
• Primus Vanguard