User:Sabrblade/sandbox

Great War (BW)

The name or term "Great War" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Great War (disambiguation).

The Great War is an historical event from the Beast Era of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Sharing the same name as the legendary civil war fought between the Autobots and Decepticons, the Great War was a brief conflict fought between the Maximals and Predacons prior to the ratification of the Pax Cybertronia.

Fiction

Timelines

The Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons finally came to an end with former defeating the latter. Many Decepticons were either destroyed or in hiding, BotCon 2009 Razorclaw toy bio while those who were granted amnesty simply retired. BotCon 2006 Laserbeak toy bio In this new era of peace, the Autobots' next-generation successors, the Maximals, rose to power TCC website Max Cops Cryotek profile and formed the Maximal Imperium. BotCon 2005 Darksyde Dinobot toy bio BotCon 2006 Unit 2 (Tigatron) toy bio Timelines #1 Megatron profile TCC Chromia 10 Pilot (Airazor) toy bio The Razor's Edge However, some Decepticons were not content to simply live under the new rule of the Autobots and Maximals. BotCon 2006 Laserbeak toy bio Namely, the leader of the original Predacons, Razorclaw, became the leader of the next generation of the Decepticons, also named the Predacons, and rallied them under a new calling. BotCon 2009 Razorclaw toy bio His immediate subordinate, Divebomb, reached out to other disgruntled Decepticons—like Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ravage—to join their cause, with the promise of new Predacon bodies and a new purpose. BotCon 2006 Laserbeak toy bio

Under Razorclaw's leadership, the Predacons raised an army and declared themselves the "Predacon Empire". BotCon 2009 Razorclaw toy bio They instigated several wars against the Autobots and Maximals, which climaxed in the what was known as the last Great War. The Razor's Edge During this war, a young Maximal named Optimus Primal proves his abilities on the battlefield time and again, Timelines #1 Optimus Primal profile while on the opposite side, one of the Predacon army's field commanders is a 'bot named Megatron. Timelines #1 Megatron profile The Predacons were also supported by a Decepticon army The Razor's Edge in an arrangement known as the Decepticon/Predacon Alliance. One of the generals in this Decepticon army was Deathsaurus, the former Emperor of Destruction BotCon 2005 Deathsaurus toy bio who had previously led the Decepticons during the waning years of the Autobot/Decepticon Great War. TCC website Max Cops Cryotek profile Having been recreated to fight in this war, Deathsaurus led several successful campaigns until the Autobots and Maximals begin to overwhelm the Decepticon/Predacon Alliance. BotCon 2005 Deathsaurus toy bio

A massive blow for the Predacon Empire came when, suddenly, Razorclaw was assassinated by his own kind: Three treacherous generals had eliminated Razorclaw to assumed control of the Predacons for themselves. Together, they formed the Tripredacus Council. BotCon 2009 Razorclaw toy bio Seeing a better opportunity for himself, the Decepticon Ravage quit his position of serving under Divebomb and joined up with the Council to become one of their agents. BotCon 2006 Laserbeak toy bio In the final few years of the war, however, the Decepticons pretty much bowed out of the conflict and abandoned the Predacons to continue the fight on their own. Without the Decepticons' support, the Tripredacus Council launched one last campaign the J'kozian sector of space, raiding several planets—Chakar, Loneedo, Roliak, Nibari, S'elar, and more—one by one for their resources. However, despite these efforts, the Predacons were still defeated in the end by the combined forces of the Maximals and Autobots. The last Great War ended when the Tripredacus Council was left with no choice but to surrender.

In the aftermath of the war, a set of temporary terms were drawn up to maintain peace between the Maximals and Predacons until a formal treaty, the Pax Cybertronia, could be written and signed. Though, a number of field generals refused to lay down arms during this newfound peace, The Razor's Edge such as Deathsaurus Descent into Evil Intimidation Game and Megatron Timelines #1 Megatron profile Still, the once and former Predacon Empire would eventually adapt to peacetime and become the Predacon Alliance. The Razor's Edge

Contentious continuity

To put it bluntly, the very idea that there was ever such a war—let alone a "Great War"—fought between the Maximals and Predacons during the three centuries set between the end of the Autobot/Decepticon civil war and the theft of the Golden Disk is completely, unquestionable, one-hundred-percent antithetical to the backstory lore of the Beast Wars animated series.

In the first episode, Optimus Primal made the first mention of a past conflict known as "the Great War", which he spoke of in an ambiguous context, only noting the feared possibility of the Predacons acquiring enough energon to "start it again." Initially, writer/editor Bob Forward put this reference into the episode simply as a vague explanation for why the Maximals and Predacons were in conflict with each other, as if to suggest that there was this "Great War" previously fought between the two. This idea was immediately dropped, however, when he and fellow series editor Larry DiTillio observed the fans' reaction to the episode, in which the fandom assumed that the "Great War" instead referred to the Cybertronian Civil Wars fought between the Autobots and Decepticons back in the previous two generations of the Transformers brand. Evidently, Forward and DiTillio latched onto the fans' perception, as all later references to the "Great War" made throughout the Beast Wars cartoon (in "Dark Designs", "Law of the Jungle", "The Agenda (Part 1)", and "The Agenda (Part III)) were explicitly clear that, indeed, it referred to the war fought between the Autobots and Decepticons, not one fought between the Maximals and Predacons.

Beast Wars would also refer to a peace treaty called the "Pax Cybertronia". As it was only mentioned once, it was left to the fans to fill in the blanks on its history. Of course, the obvious intent is that it was the treaty that ended the Autobot/Decepticon Great War, meaning it would have been ratified, at the very latest, within a few years after the Great War's conclusion. From here, the referenced lore of the cartoon's post-Great War history would see the Autobots and Decepticons succeeded by their descendants, the Maximals and Predacons, as the new dominate factions of Cybertron, in a planetwide restructuring process that the Beast Wars sequel series Beast Machines would later refer to as "the great upgrade from Autobot to Maximal." The first episode of Beast Wars would also establish that "There has been peace between the Maximals and Predacons for centuries," (as stated by Optimus Primal), while the episode "Dark Designs" would declare the "Great Wars" to have last been fought "three centuries ago" (stated by Blackarachnia). Therefore, the intended post-Great War timeline of the Beast Wars cartoon is supposed to be "Great War --> Pax Cybertronia --> Maximals and Predacons replace Autobots and Decepticons over three centuries of peace and upgrading --> Golden Disk theft".

With all of that said, the existence of a separate "Great War" fought between the Maximals and Predacons at some point during the aforementioned three centuries (in addition to the already-established "Great War" between the Autobots and Decepticons) was brought about in certain pieces of Beast Wars tie-in media written by fan-turned-writer Benson Yee. In the days of the Beast Wars cartoon's production, Yee was one of the fans that Forward and DiTillio had interacted with online, serving as a consultant on Transformers lore for the two of them. As such, Yee was later brought in by Fun Publications to write stories for both the official Transformers convention BotCon and the Transformers Collectors' Club, as well as by IDW Publishing to co-author, with Simon Furman, the Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook series of profile books. In his time of writing for both of these companies, Yee wrote comic book stories, toy bios, and character profiles that tied into the Beast Wars cartoon. In several of these works, Yee fleshed out the lore of the cartoon with various new ideas, some being of his own creation while others were early concepts originally developed for the cartoon but which had been ultimately dropped/unused by Forward and DiTillio.

Specifically, Yee brought back Forward's original idea of a past conflict between the Maximals and Predacons known as the "Great War", and distinguished it from the other "Great War" to enable both to coexist within the same timeline. He also shifted the timeframe of the Pax Cybertronia to not have ended the Autobot/Decepticon Great War, but rather the Maximal/Predacon Great War, repositioning the treaty far later in the timeline. Yee's reasoning for this is the belief that the Maximals and Predacons would have needed time for the details of the treaty to be worked out after the Decepticons surrendered to the Autobots, during which time the Maximals and Predacons would have had their own Great War as hostilities would have yet to fully subside. In the Beast Wars Sourcebook's case, this also enabled Yee to slot in events akin to Beast Wars II prior to the Pax Cybertronia. For the many reasons given above, however, all of this was absolutely unnecessary. While it could be argued that these decsions don't explicitly contradict the letter of the cartoon (as in, Beast Wars never actually said that there wasn't a Great War fought between the Maximals and Predacon after the Autobot/Decepticon war), they do completely go against the spirit of what the cartoon was trying to say about its in-universe history.

Furthermore, character profiles written by Yee for the retail release of the BotCon 2006 comic story "Dawn of Future's Past" declared that both Optimus Primal and Megatron were veterans of this Great War, which, again, is not what they were supposed to be in the cartoon. The first episode established Optimus as young and untested, not an experienced combat soldier, while Megatron would later be revealed to have been viewed as a rogue criminal by his own people, not the respected army commander that his profile makes him out to be. This perception of Optimus Primal and Megatron as war veterans (along with "Dawn of Future's Past" retconning two characters born Earth in Beast Wars as having existed on Cybertron beforehand) would eventually lead to the BotCon 2016 comic story "Dawn of the Predacus", written by John-Paul Bove, taking things to an absurd extreme by depicting nearly every character from Beast Wars as having served in the Great War; specifically the Autobot/Decepticon Great War from three centuries ago, when the cartoon was pretty unambiguous about the Maximals and Predacons being several degrees removed from the Autobots and Decepticons, their "ancient ancestors" (see that story's article for more).

In short, there really isn't supposed to be a "Great War" that was fought between the Maximals and Predacons (and especially not involving Optimus Primal and Megatron) in the past lore of the Beast Wars cartoon, and the fact that there is such a conflict described in any official Transformers media is very very very very wrooooooooong.