User:Locoman/Sandbox/Protoform

Fiction

Generation 1 continuity family

Beast Wars cartoon continuity

2006 IDW Beast Wars continuity

"I'm melting! Oh, what a world, what a world!"

Protoform technology has its roots in the transmatter experiments conducted by Cicadacon and the other members of the Tripredacus Council in the twilight of the Great War between the Autobots, Decepticons, and their successors. They discovered that the substance could reduce their Cybertronian test subjects into a "quantum state" and shape them into a "purer" form, and decided to weaponize the substance, in the hopes that they could transmute the many warring factions on Cybertron into single, unified race. From their secret base inside Unicron's head, the Tripredacus Council detonated a transmatter bomb that would rain the substance across the planet; however, the passing Axalon wound up deflecting the brunt of the blast, and the bomb only wound up affecting a small handful of Cybertronians. To cover for their embarrassing failure, the Tripredacus Council explained the incident away as a dead man's switch released by the recently deceased Galvatron, and the victorious Maximal government wound up taking custody of the afflicted Cybertronians. A negotiated amnesty let the true masterminds behind the attack walk free, and the Tripredacus Council began experimenting with transmatter-based weaponry, confident that they'd taken the first step towards the prophesied day when "all would become one". Dawn of the Predacus

In the years that followed the end of the Great War and the ratification of the Pax Cybertronia, resource shortages prompted both sides to adopt protoform technology, a cheap and convenient method of creating new Cybertronians in a post-war world. Beast Wars Sourcebook Sophisticated nanotechnology allowed protoforms to directly integrate organic material into their physical construction through a process known as "nano-regeneration". The Gathering #1 Both "sparked" and "blank" protoforms were mass-produced in "Matrix" and "Pit" facilities, which respectively manufactured Maximals and Predacons; some surviving Autobots and Decepticons, most prominently Ravage, Prowl, Silverbolt, and Ironhide downsized into protoform-based bodies to better guide the developing post-war civilization. Beast Wars Sourcebook

Tasked by the Tripredacus Council with apprehending Megatron in where Ravage had failed, Magmatron made a secret plan to gather an army by reprogramming the remaining protoforms from the Axalon into Predacons via a shell code in an activation signal sent to each pod by a transmitter array. After the protoforms had each scanned a compatible lifeform template, their protomatter began to coalesce, their sparks integrated, and their reanimator plugs fired. However, this plan was only partially successful as undercover Maximal Razorbeast sabotaged the shell signal to allow some of the protoforms to retain their Maximal allegiance. The Gathering #1 Later, Magmatron's team recovered Ravage's intact spark and implanted it into a blank protoform, which had already been affected by the Transmetal driver. The Gathering #2

After the Beast Wars ended, the Vok revived Airazor by giving her spark a new, Transmetal body by utilizing a blank protoform. Beast Wars Sourcebook #1

Classics

Scylla, Autolauncher, and Autojetter were stored as protoforms in stasis pods aboard the Graviton but were ejected when the ship crashed on Earth of an alternate universe. The Autobots tried to retrieve the stasis pods, but Megatron beat the Autobots and converted the trio into Decepticons. Shattered Expectations