Autobot Headquarters
- Autobot Headquarters is an Autobot base of operations on Earth in the Generation 1 continuity family.
Fiction
Animated continuity
Four million years ago, the Autobots' ill-fated unnamed space craft crash-landed into the base of a dormnant volcano on Earth, taking all its passengers offline. In 1984, a volcanic eruption reactivated the ship's systems, which in turn repaired the Autobots and Decepticons aboard the vessel. The Decepticons immediately departed, but the Autobots made the crashed ship into their base of operations: Autobot Headquarters.
The ship was severely damaged by the crash and its subsequent entombment; massive rocks were visible inside the ship (whether they pentrated the hull on impact or were formed there later is unclear), and broken and damaged consoles are frequently seen in the background. The ship never flew again. The Autobots seemed to be preparing to re-launch it after the crash of the Decepticon space cruiser, but months later both the Autobots and the ship remained on Earth.
The base's geographic location proved a liability on at least two occasions, when Decepticon-induced calamities caused the volcano to become active again. During the first of these eruptions, several Autobots were blasted out of the cone and into the troposphere, requiring Skyfire to come to their rescue. Ironhide managed to bring the eruption to a halt by shooting down some rocks. No, really.
Over time, the Autobots modified and expanded their base. An elevator provided passage to upper levels within the volcano, and a retractable door sealed off the volcano's crater. Early on, a small module serving as Ratchet's medical center sat near the main entrance, but was later removed. Explorations by Sideswipe and Brawn revealed a system of caves beyond the ship's walls; the caves revealed a treasure trove of dinosaur bones. The base's nerve center was the supercomputer Teletraan I.
By 2006, Autobot Headquarters had been equipped with a large number of retractable cannons built into the mountainside. They were not enough to save it from destruction at the hands of the giant Decepticon Trypticon, however. A squad of Autobots led by Warpath made a stand against the oncoming citybot, but were brushed aside. Warpath ordered Teletraan I to activate the automated defenses, but the barrage of cannonfire gave Trypticon only momentary pause: he smashed the guns, then blasted the entire mountain to rubble.
The division between the ship and the headquarters is somewhat unclear. It is never directly addressed, but the ship is consistently shown crashed at an angle. The inside of Autobot Headquarters, however, is shown as though everything was upright and normal. Furthermore, the Autobots are consistently shown driving out of their headquarters through a ground-level passage below the ship's engines. This would seem to imply that Autobot Headquarters is actually a series of remodeled spaces in the volcano's system of caves, but the presence of the damaged equipment in the base would seem to imply that the ship and Autobot Headquarters are one and the same.
