User:Locoman/Sandbox/Protoform

Conceptual history

The concept of protoforms has enjoyed a complicated history over the years, as different Transformers stories have chiefly drawn upon two very different implementations of the same core idea. Protoforms first appeared in the first episode of the Beast Wars cartoon, when Optimus Primal made the decision to eject the Axalon's cargo of stasis pods into orbit. As the show was set on a distant, prehistoric planet far away from Cybertron, protoforms became the primary mechanism to introduce new characters, and, by extension, new toys; a stasis pod could simply fall from the heavens, scan a suitable alternate mode, and join the cast within the space of a single episode. Beast Wars treated protoforms as a prenatal stage akin to an embryo or a fetus: helpless, extremely fragile, and apparently non-sentient beings that, while not "alive" in the same way as other Transformers, nevertheless carried both a living spark and the potential to grow into a full-fledged Cybertronian lifeform.

Neither the original Marvel comic nor the Sunbow cartoon had ever shown any kind of equivalent to the protoform process, and the Beast Wars show itself never elaborated on where the technology came from. As a result, various stories and some quasi-official texts have attempted to bridge the gap between the end of the Great War and the subsequent post-war transition to Maximals and Predacons by explaining the origins of protoform technology and its role in the Great Upgrade. Some stories have tied the technology back to pre-existing Transformers concepts such as the Swarm, but the most notable of these pseudocanonical stories is Beast Wars story editor Larry DiTillio's explanation, as published in the Japanese Beast Wars Universe guidebook: in his mind, protoform technology was created by the alien Vok and deliberately introduced to Cybertron so that the descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons could take more active role in galactic affairs, although this explanation has not been canonized in any official sources and remains firmly within the realm of authorial intent. Other comments by both Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward alluded to mysterious “Matrix” and “Pit” facilities responsible for constructing Maximal and Predacon protoforms; in 2007, these were canonized through Ben Yee, who wrote them into the short story "The Razor's Edge" and IDW Publishing's Beast Wars Sourcebook.

Fiction

Generation 1 continuity family

Beast Wars cartoon continuity

2006 IDW Beast Wars continuity

"I'm melting! Oh, what a world, what a world!"

Protoform technology has its roots in the transmatter experiments conducted by Cicadacon and the other members of the Tripredacus Council in the twilight of the Great War between the Autobots, Decepticons, and their successors. This volatile mixture combined Cybertronian matter with Swarm energy and Unicron's ability to instantly reformat Cybertronians into new bodies; when applied to their test subjects, the Tripredacus Council discovered that it dissolved them into a "quantum state" and reshaped them into a "purer" form fashioned after the first generation of Cybertronian life. From their secret base inside Unicron's head, the Tripredacus Council detonated a transmatter bomb that would rain the substance across the planet and wipe the slate clean by instantly transmuting everyone on the planet into a primordial shape. However, the passing Axalon wound up deflecting the brunt of the blast, and the bomb only wound up affecting a small handful of Cybertronians. To cover for their embarrassing failure, the Tripredacus Council explained the incident away as a dead man's switch released by the recently deceased Galvatron, and the victorious Maximal government wound up taking custody of the afflicted Cybertronians. A negotiated amnesty let the true masterminds behind the attack walk free, and the Tripredacus Council began experimenting with transmatter-based weaponry, confident that they'd taken the first step towards the prophesied day when "all would become one". Dawn of the Predacus

In the years that followed the end of the Great War and the ratification of the Pax Cybertronia, resource shortages prompted both sides to adopt protoform technology, a cheap and convenient method of creating new Cybertronians in a post-war world. Beast Wars Sourcebook Sophisticated nanotechnology allowed protoforms to directly integrate organic material into their physical construction through a process known as "nano-regeneration". The Gathering #1 Both "sparked" and "blank" protoforms were mass-produced in "Matrix" and "Pit" facilities, which respectively manufactured Maximals and Predacons; some surviving Autobots and Decepticons, most prominently Ravage, Prowl, Silverbolt, and Ironhide downsized into protoform-based bodies to better guide the developing post-war civilization. Beast Wars Sourcebook

Tasked by the Tripredacus Council with apprehending Megatron in where Ravage had failed, Magmatron made a secret plan to gather an army by reprogramming the remaining protoforms from the Axalon into Predacons via a shell code in an activation signal sent to each pod by a transmitter array. After the protoforms had each scanned a compatible lifeform template, their protomatter began to coalesce, their sparks integrated, and their reanimator plugs fired. However, this plan was only partially successful as undercover Maximal Razorbeast sabotaged the shell signal to allow some of the protoforms to retain their Maximal allegiance. The Gathering #1 Later, Magmatron's team recovered Ravage's intact spark and implanted it into a blank protoform, which had already been affected by the Transmetal driver. The Gathering #2

After the Beast Wars ended, the Vok revived Airazor by giving her spark a new, Transmetal body by utilizing a blank protoform. Beast Wars Sourcebook #1

2005 IDW continuity

The ignition of new spark in a hot spot transmutes a small portion of the surrounding planetary strata into a warm mass of liquid "sentio metallico", which is harvested from the planetary surface in a specific quantity determined by an equation. The Fecund Moon This newborn protoform begins as a simple three-dimensional shape, but within a matter of hours it begins growing into a robot mode by following the deep-coded genetic instructions encoded in their spark; it takes only a few hours for a protoform to develop a head, limbs, facial features, and components relating to their natural alternate modes. Silent Light On average, it takes roughly two to five days for a protoform to "cool" into a solid form capable of independent movement, This Machine Kills Fascists although some Cybertronians are known to have undergone a comparatively rapid development process, to the point where some emerged from their hot spots as fully-formed Transformers. Post

Protoforms are generally formed in groups, or "batches", and an entity known as a "batch proto-initiator" may be responsible for either beginning the maturation process or nurturing the developing protoforms.Infiltration #3 A specialized medical professional known as a "blacksmith" might be called in to deal with specific abnormalities in the birthing process: on occasion, an unusually large spark might become stuck in its hot spot, Post, or a protoform might fail to read its natural instructions, whereupon the blacksmith would help the newborn along by sculpting its liquid metal into its natural, "god-given" shape. A World Misplaced If a protoform dies before its body can assume a shape, its remains occasionally crystallize into a unique snowflake-shaped mass of "widowed metal". A World Misplaced Widowed metal can accept a fresh spark, whereupon a blacksmith can reshape it into a fresh protoform--in this way did Anode resurrect the deceased Lug by implanting her residual spark into one such deposit of widowed metal. This Machine Kills Fascists

After a protoform cools, the young Cybertronian develops the necessary synaptic connections to walk, talk, interact with others, and transform by imprinting on its surroundings. Shining Armor #1 Cybertronians formed in this way are said to have been "forged". The Fecund Moon In ancient times, all Cybertronians were forged, and the Titans who left Cybertron to settle other planets carried hot spots within them to assist in the colonization of distant worlds. A 'Bot and Her City However, after the First Cybertronian Civil War, Cybertron's hot spots began going dark, and Nova Prime staved off a population crisis by introducing "constructed cold" Transformers, a generation of mass-produced Cybertronians created using the Matrix of Leadership and photonic crystals. The Fecund Moon However, at least some protoforms were brought online during the subsequent Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons, and were sometimes referred to as "warborn". Interiors

In the mid-19th century, the colony of Caminus loaded a collection of protoforms onto a ship for reasons unknown. Ignorant of the hatred that their Cybertronian ancestors had incurred, the ship unknowingly entered the Gray Area where a Galactic Council warship shot it down. The Space Knight Rom investigated the wreckage and successfully rescued the last surviving protoform from the ship, which grew into the Space Knight Stardrive. Shining Armor #1

In his role as the "Grand Architect", Adaptus and his subordinates experimented on protoforms, and a crashed P-6 Worldsweeper on Clemency held a number of congealed protoforms. Rules of Disengagement Several years later, a mass of Scraplets attempted to sneak onto the Lost Light by disguising themselves as a newborn protoform, although Nautica was able to deal with the infestation before anyone was injured. Silent Light

Even after the end of the Great War and the restoration of Cybertron, it would take several years before planetary hot spots began re-igniting. The Dinobots, Sandstorm, and Trypticon successfully rescued a cargo of newborn sparks from Bludgeon, who had harvested them from the Alyon hot spot; to protect these new lives, Trypticon submerged himself in Cybertron's crust and allowed the sparks to draw upon his own metal for sustenance. From this newly-created sea of sentio metallico came the first post-war generation of Cybertronian protoforms. Salvation Over the coming weeks, the new Cybertronians began developing into their adult proportions; The Dead Come Home, Part 1 to protect these new lives from Starscream's political machinations, Trypticon became Earth's Cybertronian embassy on the Council of Worlds, which placed them under the de facto protection of Optimus Prime. The Dead Come Home, Part 2

During "Onyx Prime's" invasion of Cybertron and his subsequent unmasking as a time-traveling Shockwave, Trypticon generated a spacebridge to Earth to protect his protoforms, exactly as Shockwave had predicted. The Hallowing Not long after arriving on Earth, Trypticon joined the battle against Unicron, after first unloading his complement of protoforms and as-yet undeveloped sparks to protect them. Ceremony While Trypticon perished in the battle, the protoforms he had nursed survived in Little Cybertron, where they grew up alongside human children and Elonian refugees. Post

Classics

Scylla, Autolauncher, and Autojetter were stored as protoforms in stasis pods aboard the Graviton but were ejected when the ship crashed on Earth of an alternate universe. The Autobots tried to retrieve the stasis pods, but Megatron beat the Autobots and converted the trio into Decepticons. Shattered Expectations

Beast Wars: Uprising

At some point during the Great War, the Vector Sigma supercomputer responsible for creating new Cybertronians was destroyed. When the war ended, Cerebros turned to the triumphant Human Confederacy in the hopes that their advanced civilization could grant his dying race some kind of future; in returned, he obtained an energon matrix, which the Builder Assembly used to manufacture millions of protoforms. Head Games Their creations, the Maximals and Predacons, became known as "proto-formers" or the "proto-races" as a way of distinguishing them from the archaic "Builders", who did not use protoforms to reproduce. Broken Windshields By the time of the Grand Uprising, the Builders kept the remaining protoforms under heavy guard inside the Grand Mal. Four years into the war, there were but one hundred and seventeen protoforms left, two-thirds of which were blanks.

During Megatron's attempts to graft mechanimal physiology onto Cybertronian anatomy, his collaborator Leatherhide reasoned that testing the process on a new protoform would be easier than attempting to reconfigure a fully-developed Cybertronian. Megatron hired the eccentric Bisk to break into the Grand Mal and grab one; Leatherhide's prediction proved correct, and the creation of Formikon allowed the pair to refine the process and learn how to safely convert other Cybertronians into mechanimal-based beast modes. Not All Megatrons

Wings Universe

Protoform technology remained in use many centuries after the Great Transformation and the reformatting of Cybertron into a technorganic utopia; when Apelinq was a protoform, he was told stories about Alpha Trizer’s previous adventures. Land Powered's King Atlas for Protoforms was a prominent 30th-century reference text. Apelinq's personal logs

Aligned continuity family

The Covenant of Primus

In the years that followed the Great Cataclysm, new protoforms arose from the Well of All Sparks, where they gradually scanned the world around them, developed a name, identity, and potential alternate mode for themselves, and finally emerged as a fully-formed robot. In this delicate prenatal phase, however, their minds could be corrupted and even stunted by outside forces, as was the case during the Age of Wrath, when the static, orderly society imposed by Quintesson occupiers caused young Cybertronians to emerge from the Well as dull, mindless robots without names, only numbers.

The end of Cybertron's Golden Age marked a second period of regression--the stultifying caste system imposed by the Cybertronian government meant that young protoforms would scan a dull, impoverished world and simply find nothing to aspire to. Senators like Soundwave found the trend concerning, and wondered if their own austerity measures had instigated a species-wide devolution into a race of mindless automatons. The Covenant of Primus

Aligned novels

Protoforms were created by the AllSpark in the Well of All Sparks. In the past, newborn protoforms engaged in a rite of passage where they would pass through the dangerous Underworld on their way to the Cybertronian surface, but by the era of the caste system, the custom had fallen out of favor. Instead, protoforms were harvested directly from the Well of All Sparks, where they would be taught to transform into their alternate mode and put straight to work. "Protoform" remained the standard name for one's robot mode. Transformers: Exodus