Airachnid (G1)
| The name or term "Airachnid" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Airachnid (disambiguation). |
- Airachnid is a Eukarian from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Mnemosurgery is a difficult talent to master, and like most rare specialists there's always someone willing to turn their skills towards darker and more pragmatic ends. Airachnid is one such individual, the kind of unscrupulous 'bot you'd want on your side if you need some dirty mental business done quickly and discreetly.
Haughty and driven by her own ego, Airachnid has ambitions of her own—since her exile from Eukaris' order of Fate Spinners, the spider-bot dreams of showing them what she can really do, using her scientific talents to expand her old tribe's traditions of prophecy and mind-reading. And if Airachnid's subjects die in pursuit of that goal... well, there's always more brain modules where they came from.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Born from Chela on the colony world of Eukaris, Airachnid was a member of the oracular Fate Spinners, who used their talents to divine the future from the thoughts of other 'bots. This wasn't enough for Airachnid; hoping to discover a more scientific way to advance her tribe's prophetic powers, she used her mnemosurgical abilities to fatally experiment on other Transformers, dissecting their brain modules in the hopes of calculating all the potential variables in the Cybertronian mind and applying it to the art of prophesying. For her crimes, she was exiled from the Fate Spinners and banished from Eukaris. The Price of You
On Cybertron, Airachnid came into the employ of Cybertron's High Chancellor Starscream, who was searching for more information regarding the whereabouts of Swindle's brain-damaged body. On Starscream's orders, Airachnid began attacking Decepticons in Iacon and aggressively probing their memories—a process that proved unfortunately fatal, but turned up no concrete evidence. 07:00:00
Following the reunited Combaticons' disastrous outing as Bruticus, Starscream took all five of the comatose Decepticons into his custody, and turned them over to Airachnid's care. Hoping to turn the powerful Decepticons over to his side—and cover up his involvement in the disastrous "Combiner Wars" that had precipitated Swindle's death—he told Airachnid to alter their memories so that they would believe that they had always been working for Starscream, and that their recent misadventure as Bruticus was under Starscream's own supervision. Airachnid noted that it was usually impractical to attempt such a procedure on more than one individual, but, since the Combaticons had combined with one another, their minds would be synchronized and thus easier to manipulate... as long as one of their number was aware of the procedure and able to explain away any discrepancies to the other four.
Airachnid thus patched Starscream into Blast Off's mind, tempting him with a vision of an idyllic life with Onslaught where the team worked for Starscream as his bodyguards. The Chancellor promised Blast Off that, in exchange for maintaining his cover, Airachnid would alter Onslaught's mind so that he would be develop an infatuation with Blast Off, who had always secretly admired his commander. When Blast Off grudgingly accepted the deal, Airachnid rewrote their memories to comply with the terms of the bargain. She also falsified psychiatric evidence to Ironhide, claiming that the Combaticons were not culpable for their actions as Bruticus and thus would not face trial. The Price of You
Notes
- Appearance-wise, Airachnid is a straight import of the Prime character of the same name. In keeping with Eukaris' theme, however, this version of Airachnid transforms into a giant spider rather than simply possessing a spidery robot mode, eschewing her namesake's helicopter alternate mode.
