Maximal Elder

You can't see me!

_{This character has no official visual representation in any Transformers product or media... yet, at least.}

The Maximal Elders are the leaders of Cybertron during the Beast Wars era of the Generation 1 continuity family.

The Maximal High Council of Elders, or just Maximal Elders, are the Maximals who lead the political and military fronts from planet Cybertron following the conclusion of the Great War. They allow the Predacons certain individual freedoms as their own faction, though in reality, they must answer to the Maximal Elders. The Maximal Elders aren't all sugar and rainbows, however, as they have greenlit several experiments of questionable ethics.

(How the Council of Elders relates to the Maximal Imperium remain to be seen.)

Fiction

Beast Wars cartoon

Not much is known about the Maximal Elders, including who the members are and how many exist. The Tripredacus Council is accused of kissing their skid-plates. They apparently keep a tight hold on any and all information regarding the Great War and Earth, restricting access to it from the general populace. (The Predacons conversely have no such restrictions.) They have also made the area of space around planet Earth off limits, for unknown reasons. The Elders also authorized the experimental Protoform X, and later its disposal.

Beast Machines cartoon

Sometime after conquering all of Cybertron with his Vehicon army and transformation virus, Megatron moved into the Council Citadel in the planetary capital of Cybertropolis, which had previously served as the capitol of the Maximal Elders.

3H comics

Apelinq noted with disdain that, in the wake of the attacks that signaled the beginning of Megatron's conquest of Cybertron, the Maximal Elders at first attempted to ignore the problem, but as it became clear that the attacks were not simply random, isolated incidents, they became "all but immobilized, with blame and doubt being cast from one end of the command chain to another".

Additional notes

Many fans assumed that Magnaboss might've filled the same role for the Maximals that the Tripredacus Council performed for the Predacons. Its three components' Generation 1-inspired names implies to some that these are the original Autobots in advisory roles. Indeed, in the Universe comics, Magnaboss was depicted as a member of the Maximal High Council, among others, after the reformatting of Cybertron. The IDW Beast Wars comic establish that the Magnaboss trio compose the Maximal Imperium, but its relation to the elders is unclear.