Cybertron (Beast Wars and Beast Machines)

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The position in continuity of the 1990s Transformers series, Beast Wars and Beast Machines is a difficult one to precisely define. They most certainly exist in the same universe as a Generation 1, similar to the original animated series or Marvel Comics series, but although they most frequently show their lineage through references to the cartoon, references to the Marvel series are also featured - the result of the way that past G1 stories were treated as "mythological," in the way that famous legends can have numerous retellings.

The Cybertron of the Beast Wars era is from three hundred years after the end of the Great War (but precisely when this is can be debated). Through the aid of humankind, the Autobots were finally able to succeed in defeating the Decepticons, some of whom were granted amnesty. Subsequently, new energy-conservation methods resulted in what was termed "The Great Upgrade", a planet-wide upgrade of Autobot and Decepticon into new, smaller, more energy-efficient forms, leading the races to rename themselves "Maximals" and "Predacons", respectively. Transformers are now created through the use of "protoform" technology - produced in Maximal and Predacons facilities nicknamed "The Matrix" and "The Pit" respectively (after the respective Transformer afterlifes), protoforms consist of an endoskeleton surrounded by a nanotech gel that reconfigures with the scanning of an alternate mode. By this time, it is apparent that Cybertron has settled into orbit around a star again, and has acquired a new moon.

The peace on Cybertron is maintained through a treaty known as the Pax Cybertronia, which - perhaps unfairly - ranks the Predacons as second-class citizens, with the Maximals in control of the planet. Each side is governed by a council;the Maximals governing body is known as the Maximal Imperium while the Predacons' version, the Tripredacus Council, operate out of a satellite orbiting the planet or star, quietly working to their own agenda... an agenda that was sorely disrupted by the rise to power of the renegade, Megatron, who stole a ship and escaped to prehistoric Earth with the intent of altering time. Optimus Primal and his crew pursued him and waged the "Beast Wars", eventually ending with Megatron's defeat, but on the return trip to Cybertron, Megatron broke free of his bonds and escaped into the timestream, arriving on Cybertron before the Maximals' intended return date.

In the two groups' absence, Cybertronians had undergone another modification called the "Quantum Cycle Upgrade", in which they were individually fitted with alternate mode scanners so they would not have to rely on external mechanisms to do the job for them. Striking fast and hard, Megatron unleashed a transformation-freezing virus on the populous and deployed a small army of "Vehicon" drones, who extracted the sparks of the virus's hapless victims. Their shells were then used to create more Vehicons, and so it continued until the entire population of Cybertron had their sparks removed, and all that remained were the Vehicons, united under the singular, guiding intelligence of Megatron, who, for all intents and purpose, was now Cybertron itself.

Megatron's perfect technosphere was shattered with the return of Optimus Primal's Maximals, arriving in their intended time period to discover Megatron's mastery of the planet. Reformatted into new technorganic bodies by the Oracle - the shell program that now surrounded Vector Sigma that enabled users to commune with the afterlife dimension called the Matrix - the Maximals subsequently discovered that Cybertron had indeed been an organic world before it acquired its current metallic shell. Uncovering the planet's gelatinous, organic-matter core, Primal believed that the Oracle had charged him with restoring the organic to Cybertron, only for a failed gambit involving the Key to Vector Sigma and the Plasma Energy Chamber to show him the error of his ways - the Oracle did not desire one element to dominate the other, but for a techno-organic balance to be achieved. Even as the body-shifting Megatron attempted to absorb the entire planet's sparks into his own, creating a singular consciousness, his and Primal's final battle saw them tumble into the planet's core, where Primal initiated a planet-wide reformatting, transforming the entire world into a techno-organic paradise.