Empurata

This article is about the ritualized punishment involving the removal of a Cybertronian's face. For the casual hobby of removing a Cybertronian's face, see Optimus Prime (Movie).

Empurata is a horrible thing from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Empurata is an old tradition on pre-war Cybertron. A tradition of removing the damn heads and hands of Cybertronians and replacing them with faceless, fingerless replacements.

The operation was allegedly only performed on unrepentant criminals, so that everybody knew to shun them. However the Senate, controlled by the Functionists, also used it as a way to keep the general population in line. While it was most frequently performed on those who were constructed cold, it was also used to humiliate and ostracise anybody who spoke up against or acted contrary to the Senate.

Fiction

IDW Generation 1 continuity

"The one with the claws"

When Whirl's combat prowess caught the attention of the Senate, he was pushed into joining the Rodion police force. When the 'bot tried to resist his orders, they used empurata to... persuade him otherwise. Interiors This is part of the reason why he's such a bitter mess: when he sold out the Senate to Orion Pax, the reason he gave was "I want my hands back". Patternism

The outlier Damus (left) was a victim of Empurata.

During the Clampdown, amputee support groups called on the Senate to ban the practice but the Senate responded that it was only used on criminals who deserve it. At the same time they were saying that, the Institute was 'working' on the crusading Senator Shockwave and performed empurata on him solely out of spite. An Intimate Beheading

The Functionist Universe

When Brainstorm altered the timeline, he created a Cybertron where the Functionist Council had slowly but surely conquered the planet. By the present day, empurata had become so common it lost its ability to offend so it was upgraded: the new "flatheads" had their heads replaced with computer screens and could only display text instead of speak. Officially they were Council property now and pop-up propaganda would appear on their faces without warning. By removing your ability to fully express yourself, you were made easier to ignore. The Custom-Made Now

Notes

• "Empurata" is an anagram of the Latin word "amputare", meaning "to cut away". Rather than be used in a surgical context, as the descended word "amputation" is today, "amputare" was a punishment inflicted upon criminals to mark them as such, as it is in the world of More than Meets the Eye.
• Theoretically, a victim of empurata could be given new hands (and possibly a new head). For example, Megatron offered Shockwave a pair of hands shortly before launching the initial Decepticon uprising, but when Shockwave realised a war was beginning he opted to keep one hand and replace the other with a blaster. It should be observed that Shockwave had his hands replaced by an underground organisation and so it can be surmised that victims of empurata are unable to legally replace their lost body parts.