Talisman (G1)

The Talisman is an object from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

BEHOLD, AN ORDINARY OBELISK!

The artifact designated "the Talisman" is a maddeningly mysterious object. Not only does it have the ability to alter the physiologies of sentient organisms, living or dead, at will, the Talisman also has unexplained ties to ancient Cybertron and Microspace. And to top it all off, a globe-spanning cabal of supercriminals desires it for their plans.

Fiction

IDW Generation 1 continuity

Several thousand years ago, the Talisman belonged to Onyx Prime, The Iron Klaw though it also had connections to the parallel dimension of Microspace. Enter The Shadow Onyx placed the artifact into the care of Domitius Major of Eukaris; it was subsequently loaded aboard the starship Axalon when Domitius and his crew left Eukaris.

The Talisman inadvertently found its way to Earth during the Ice Age when Shockwave shot down their vessel. Though the Axalon and its crew survived the crash, the Talisman was somehow activated in the impact and wiped the memories of the Axalon's crew. Shockwave briefly studied the object during his experiments on the amnesiac Eukarians, noting with interest how it created a set of drones from the ship's wreckage, but it and its drones were abandoned and frozen over after Shockwave disappeared. Strange Visitors

Several thousand years later, the Talisman had somehow been buried inside the Tomb of Altomec in Dashur, Egypt. The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb Several of the marooned Eukarians had tried to search for it over the years, though by all accounts none of them succeeded. Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #1

During World War II, Sgt. Savage and Garrison Kreiger encountered Centurion, the last survivor of the Axalon, from whom they learned about the Talisman. On discovering the Axalon's frozen ruins in Brasnya, the trio were confronted by legions of Talisman drones and the corpse of Domitius Major, which was being controlled by the Talisman itself. In the ensuing battle, the Axalon and Sgt. Savage were both teleported away. Kreiger – his intrigue spurred by encountering the Talisman's drones before and hoping to sieze the Talisman for himself – forged an alliance with Centurion to retrieve the ancient artifact. Strange Visitors

Kreiger began searching for the Talisman across the world, eventually finding it in the Tomb of Altomec during the 1980s. He was followed shortly after by his associates in the Adventure Team, and Soundwave, who had been tracking the control signal for the drones. During the confrontation, Mike Power reached out to the Talisman, which transformed his artificial limbs and granted them the power to generate forcefields. Soundwave departed, since the Talisman was not his target, allowing Kreiger to finally take the artifact for himself. The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb Using his technological connections, Krieger was able to build a replica of the device. The Iron Klaw

The Sentient Time Chamber regarded the Talisman as one of the many paths to Microspace. Micronauts #9

One way or another, the real Talisman was eventually stored and forgotten in a bunker underneath Verenya in the small Eastern European nation of Schleteva. In 2017, G.B. Blackrock discovered the artifact's existence while searching for clues about his Cybertronian heritage. His carelessness created a series of energy pulses that mutated nearby humans into Dire Wraith hybrids, attracting the attention of G.I. Joe, Rom, Action Man, and the Oktober Guard, the latter having been sent by a cabal of villains intending to take the artifact for themselves. They succeeded, and sent the Talisman to an abandoned Cobra moonbase. Crisis Intervention