Herald, Covenant, Schism, Paradox
| The name or term "Herald" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Herald (disambiguation). |
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 A graphic designer's worst nightmare. | |||||||||||||
| "Herald", "Covenant", "Schism", "Paradox" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | 3H Productions | ||||||||||||
| First published | July 28, 2000 (BotCon 2000) | ||||||||||||
| Cover date | July 28-30, 2000 | ||||||||||||
| Script | Simon Furman | ||||||||||||
| Illustrations | Lee Sullivan | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 (via Universe) | ||||||||||||
Many players draw closer as Point Omega, the end of everything, comes.
Synopsis
Covenant
On Protos, Leonicus enjoys the sunrise. He is eventually forced to return to the Sanctuary, where he sees his fellow members of the Covenant go on with their daily lives, sealed away from the Universe for millennia in preparation for Point Omega, or Shokaract. He is soon met with the Chronarchitect, who struggles to create a physical presence and warns Leonicus of an upcoming disaster. In a booming voice, The Chronarchitect tells Leonicus to "return to the beginning".
The Convenant convene in a zemstvo to discuss the Chronarchitect's foreboding words. They recall that the last time the Chronarchtiect appeared was in 2005, when Optimus Prime died and the ownership of the Creation Matrix was in flux. For that event, they had readied for war, but the Matrix passed to Hot Rod, who used it to destroy Unicron and the Covenant went unneeded. Now, they again worry of the Grand Plan of their creator, Primus, and the impeding Point Omega.
Leonicus reviews the Covenant's origins. In the beginning, a new universe was reborn from the ashes of the old. In this old universe, gods existed. One of them, Unicron, became a devourer, consuming the entire universe, other gods included. His task done, he slept in the void. Life still clinged on, spontaneously creating a new universe and a positive counterpart to Unicron—Primus. The two mighty titans' battles devastated the universe, and so Primus concocted a plan: he would distract Unicron on the mental plane and trap their physical essences in metal asteroids. To test his tactic, he imprinted part of his lifeforce into Protos, creating life out of the dead moon. Twelve were born with sparks of Primus's essence—the Covenant. Satisfied that he could reshape his future metal prison to create life, Primus tasked the Covenant with observation and maintaining the Grand Plan, especially for Point Omega. The Covenant observed the evolution of the Transformer race and waited for the time when they would be called upon.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Covenant | Gods | Others |
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Notes
- There are two mildly differing versions of the story "Herald", one published in the 1999 four-parter, the other published as illustrated prequel to the 2000 comic. Some details found in one of the versions are absent from the other, and vice versa, such as information Megatron "borrowed" the mind-drill from Tarantulas, a description of Cataclysm's Ko-tu and the extent of Antagony's revenge on him.
- Botcon.com presents "Herald" as chapter 4 of Reaching the Omega Point. The Botcon 2000 comic's presentation places it (more sensibly) as a prequel.
