Long before our time, Cybertron was nothing more than a small metal sphere in the great vastness of space, its landscape barren and lifeless.  And the planet would remain this way, until the arrival of the mechanical alien Quintessons.  They set about turning the planet into a massive factory, to fuel both their enterprise and their warfare, and in time it would come to be the most important part of their growing empire.  To work the planet they brought metallic beasts of burden, called Maximals, and to defend it great robotic birds of prey, known as Predacons.  The Quintessons would tinker with their robotic servants as time passed, granting them the ability to assume vehicular forms and greatly increasing their abilities.  At the same time the robots’ original forms became increasingly anthropomorphized, both to aid in the performance of complex tasks as well as to appeal to a galactic marketplace.

But the final and most important change came from Cybertron itself, for deep within the planet rested the Allspark, buzzing with life in the form of small, incorporeal spheres of energy.  The Quintessons created the supercomputer Vector Sigma in order to transfer these sparks of life from the Allspark to their creations, allowing them to push the robots’ intelligence and capabilities to new heights.  Alongside these sparks came personhood and free will, but the Quintessons did not care.  They only saw greater efficiency and profit, and responded to growing independent thought and action with ever greater cruelty.

While many Maximals remained on the planet of their creation, the Predacons had been moved entirely offworld, serving as the backbone of the Quintesson fleet.  Cybertron was instead defended by a small auxiliary force, and eventually, the Maximals made their stand.  Declaring themselves to be autonomous robots like the machines that wrought them, the newly christened Autobots drove the Quintessons from their planet.  But in their chaotic withdrawal, the Quintessons stole away the Allspark, and the planet stopped producing the life-giving substance known as energon.  A process was discovered that allowed fossil fuels to be converted into energon, but the Quintessons responded to this discovery with a blockade, hoping to starve the rebellion out, even if it meant starting the Maximal population over from scratch.

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In this darkest hour, a single Autobot volunteered to leave the planet, evade the blockade, and return with the Allspark.  A small crew was assembled, and departed on a vessel known as the Ark, beginning their expedition.  But the mission was a failure, and the ship returned home to a planet on the brink of mass extinction.  All that had been recovered was a small fragment of the Allspark found in a Quintesson lab, from a failed attempt to split and clone the artifact.  But it was in this moment that a miracle occurred.  The single Autobot, still clinging to hope, traveled into the core of Cybertron, and left the fragment behind.  In a burst of energy the planet roared to life, and energon production resumed.  This fragment would become the core of the Matrix of Leadership, Cybertron’s greatest symbol, and the Autobot who had found it would become the first Prime.

Although the miracle lasted only a moment, it was enough.  Seeing that the Autobots had somehow survived past their predictions, the Quintessons gathered their Predacons to Cybertron, sacrificing much of their territory in the process, but amassing a massive fleet in turn.  And then another miracle occurred.  The Predacons, having seemingly remained loyal to the Quintessons, dropped the ruse and turned their guns upon their masters.  The Quintessons were driven from the system, and from that day forward the Predacons would be known as Decepticons, in honor of the great deception that had saved all of Cybertron.

The war would continue on for some time, but the outcome had already been decided that day.  The Decepticons would tear their way through the Quintessons’ empire, and eventually returned to Cybertron with the Allspark, returning the planet to life.  The Decepticons, having had no home before the war, settled on Cybertron, and the two peoples stepped side by side into a new age.

But peace would not last.  Disagreements mounted, and tensions between the Autobots and the Decepticons would eventually erupt into full-scale warfare.  Lives were lost, historical works destroyed, and by the end of hostilities neither side had truly gotten what they wanted.  And although peace was restored in its aftermath, the schism remained, and the war would not be the last fought between Autobot and Decepticon, nor the worst.