Vigilem
- Vigilem is a Titan from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Vigilem was a Titan loyal to Liege Maximo. He is sometimes known as Carcer.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 continuity
 Plot details for Rubicon follow. |
Vigilem was the Titan of Liege Maximo. Due to his evil nature and affiliation to the villainous Prime that he served, the other Titans of Cybertron brought him down and banished Vigilem and his master from Cybertron — permanently transformed into his starship mode, his brain module shut down, and the Liege Maximo entombed within his body, unable to escape. Together, the remaining Titans decided that they would henceforth refer to their exiled brother as "Carcer:" a nomadic, living prison for the Liege Maximo. Several repentant members of Maximo's tribe served as Carcer's crew, pledging to keep Liege Maximo forever imprisoned inside the inert Titan. Rubicon The straitened inhabitants learned to value three things above all else: efficiency, security, and truth. The Will of the Few
In spite of the Titans' efforts to purge Vigilem's name from memory, some evidence of him and his actions remained in the historical records. The colonists of Caminus remembered Vigilem as an example of how not all Titans were pure of Spark. Informed
As Carcer travelled through space over the eons, a core breach threatened the integrity of the ship. The Titan's captain threw his body into the breach to seal it, beginning a tradition where the crew would sacrifice their own bodies to keep their Titan alive as his natural resources diminished. Eventually, Elita One became captain, ruling from a chair composed of the bodies of their colony's greatest heroes — all of whom had given their lives in the service of their ship. By the present day, Carcer's body had become a hodgepodge of mismatched parts. Rubicon The Will of the Few
After returning to Cybertron circa 2014, Metroplex located several of his Titan brethren scattered throughout the stars. First Contact Among them was Vigilem, whose spacebridge read to Metroplex's sensors as his lost brother Tempo. The Will of the Few During their climatic battle, Devastator kicked Optimus Maximus through Metroplex's space bridge and onto Carcer's hull, although Optimus quickly rebounded and dived back through to Cybertron. All That Remains
Hoping to convince the inhabitants of "Tempo" to join the Council of Worlds, Chancellor Starscream and Cityspeaker Windblade used Metroplex's space bridge to reestablish contact with what they thought was a ship of peaceful philosophers. They were surprised to find a crew of militaristic colonists who identified their Titan as "Carcer". Elita One fudged the situation by lying that they had simply renamed their ship along the way. The Will of the Few When a skeptical Windblade, who had never heard of such a Titan, asked Metroplex for more information, Metroplex – furious at himself for being deceived and terrified of what Vigilem might unleash on Cybertron – hid the truth from Windblade by claiming that Carcer was a different Titan from either Tempo or Vigilem. The Will of the Few Rubicon
When Windblade proposed a mental merge with Metrotitan, Pyra Magna brought up Vigilem to remind her that Metrotitan might have ulterior motives. Informed
When a horde of zombie Titans, raised by Sentinel Prime in order to raze Cybertron, began showing up on Carcer's sensors, Lancer and Greenlight reported the news to Elita One. As the Titans began arriving on Cybertron, Strika lead Carcer's crew in a valiant battle to defend Cybertron, admonishing them that they could not let the Titans take their ship for fear of releasing the Liege Maximo. As the battle wore on, Metroplex was overwhelmed by his zombified bretheren, prompting Starscream to contact Elita and ask for her help. Starscream explained that he needed Carcer on the ground to help Metroplex; Elita politely refused, wished Starscream well, and shut off her comm line. Ping
Repeated entreaties to get Carcer to transform didn't go any better. Windblade, Starscream and several Council delegates talked things over, and Windblade came up with a desperate, last ditch plan: the group would invade Carcer, under cover, and Windblade would merge with him and explain the situation in hopes that he'd take it upon himself to transform and defend Cybertron. To cover Windblade's approach, the remaining ships in orbit were directed to attack Carcer directly, and Devastator was deployed to draw the bulk of the Carcerians' troops, giving Windblade and her team a hopefully clearer path to Carcer's brain chamber. Desperate Times A running battle ensued as Windblade and her team struggled to elude Obsidian and Elita One. Windblade managed to establish a cityspeaker link with Carcer's brain module... only to discover that she had awakened Vigilem! Desperate Measures
Vigilem's systems began rebooting, and Windblade realized that he was trying to reawaken. Unable to force the evil Titan back into his slumber, she did the unthinkable by taking physical control of Vigilem's body, shrugging off his whispered persuasions to join him. Windblade succeeded in maneuvering Vigilem's patchwork body onto Cybertron, where she engaged the zombie hordes. The dual strain of trying to fight off the Titan army and hold off Vigilem's mental manipulations proved too much, and Vigilem's consciousness quickly reasserted itself over his body once more, then moving onto Windblade's own mind. Spying Metroplex, Vigilem decided to kill the Titan he blamed for his imprisonment, mockingly declaring that the last thing the First Titan would see would be the return of the Liege Maximo, and began shifting his internal architecture to unlock his ancient prisoner. It was then that Elita One arrived in Vigilem's brain chamber. Announcing that she had sworn an oath to never let Vigilem or Liege Maximo walk free, she emptied her weapon into Vigilem's brain module, blowing it to pieces and ending the Titan's life — unfortunately, she had arrived too late to prevent her ship from disgorging its prisoner. The Liege Maximo emerged, thanking Vigilem for his loyalty. Before he teleported away, he vowed that he would avenge the Titan's death, as well as his own imprisonment. Rubicon
Beast Wars: Uprising
The Book of Logos identified two of seven colonies as those of "Vigilem" and "Carcer". Book of Logos
Notes
- "Vigilem" is derived from the first-person form of the Latin verb "vigilar", meaning "to watch over".
- "Carcer" is Latin for "prison": a fitting name, as he was indeed a prison for the Liege Maximo.
