Famine

This article is about the Star Seeker. For the Horseman of Unicron known as Famine, see Terrorsaur (Armada).

Famine is a Star Seeker from the Transformers Online portion of the Aligned continuity family.

Do not steal.

Famine (a.k.a. Starquest) is a Star Seeker spy who can seamlessly blend in among the Autobots and Decepticons. He turns into some manner of winged beastie, and is protected on his missions by a pack of mechanical dogs.

Fiction

Ask Vector Prime

Optimus Prime and the Earth Protection Taskforce unsuccessfully attempted to capture Starquest and Thundertron. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/17

Notes

Name

For a time, this character was known by his Mandarin name, Xún Xīng Zhě, a literal translation of "Star Seeker". He received an English language name thanks to Ask Vector Prime, which idiomatically localised this somewhat generic descriptor into "Starquest", where this wiki article stayed for years... until latter-day internet spelunking discovered that he may already have had an English name on the Transformers Online website, spelled out in the Roman alphabet as "Famine". The same page on the website described the backstory of the game, and called out Famine as being an original character joining the ranks of the Star Seekers alongside new versions of established characters Grotusque and Iguanus.

From a breakdown of the game's levels, we know that Famine was to be encountered by the player during the third level, set in Siberia. A contemporary report describes the character pictured at the top of this page as being a Star Seeker boss in one of the first three levels, implicitly tying the artwork to Famine (since he sure ain't Grotusque or Iguanus), and a banner used on the Transformers Online site placed this boss character alongside Optimus Prime and Megatron – perhaps as he was the closest thing to a main antagonist that had been programmed into the game before it closed...?

Unfortunately, as Transformers Online never made it out of closed beta testing – with all the NDAs and the lack of online gameplay footage that would imply – we don't know for certain that Famine is Starquest is Star Seeker is the artwork above. If the artwork is Famine, the character would prove to be a neat parallel to Scourge, who cuts a similar figure and is named "Plague" in China!

(Incidentally, if the character were ever actually named "Star Seeker", it wouldn't overlap with the Star Seekers faction, which is called the Thunder Fury in Mandarin.)

Other notes

• Another report from a contemporary news source revealed that the enemies of the Siberia level would be monstrous robot dogs, implying them to be Famine's mooks.

Foreign names

• Mandarin: Xún Xīng Zhě (寻星者, "Star Seeker")