Great Transformation

'Til all are... lawn?

Long ago, the planet that would come to be known as Cybertron was home to a lush, organic ecosystem inhabited by plant and animal life. But when the first Transformers came into being, technology overrode this world, transforming it into a metallic planet that drove its organic life to extinction. This created an imbalance between the two natures. However, such was not to be forever, for the ancient Oracle computer prophesized that, one day, a "receptive spark" would usher in a new era, a balance between the organic and the technological, on a global scale. At this point, Cybertron would undergo the Great Transformation, a complete reformatting of the planet into a state of technorganic harmony, as willed by the Matrix itself.

Fiction

Beast Machines cartoon

Megatron's virus attack was the first major escalation of planetary imbalance in the events leading up to the Great Transformation.

In the aftermath of the Beast Wars, the Predacon criminal Megatron escaped his Maximal captors and returned to Cybertron ahead of them, during which time he conquered the planet with a transformation virus and hordes of mindless drones called Vehicons, Forbidden Fruit Revelations Part II: Descent capturing the sparks of every Transformer in the process, and aiming to achieve technological "purity" for the entire planet. Master of the House Unbeknownst to Megatron, the first sign of things to come came in the form of a lone, mysterious flower that had sprouted up and out of the metallic surface of Cybertron, but which was unwittingly run over and crushed by one of the Vehicon Tank Drones. The Reformatting

When Optimus Primal and his Maximal crew arrived on Cybertron, they were immediately set upon and disabled by both the Vehicons and the virus. Revelations Part II: Descent Amnesiac and on the run, Optimus soon found himself in telepathic contact with a mysterious voice that guided him to first reunite with three of his teammates and then travel down to the inner layers of the planet. Reaching their destination, the Maximals were met by the one calling them: an ancient computer of legend, the Oracle. Recognizing Optimus Primal as a 'receptive spark', the Oracle showed him a vision from the Matrix itself. In this vision, Optimus saw the coming of the first sparks to Cybertron, transforming it from an organic world into a metallic one, as well as the dispersal of Megatron's virus across the planet, which had thrown the planet into an even greater state of imbalance.

The Oracle spoke cryptically to Optimus, telling him of the coming Great Transformation, and that "The seeds of the future lie buried in the past." As the Oracle reformatted him into a new technorganic body, the Oracle instructed him further to "seek the balance" and to "transform and transcend" his destiny. At first, Optimus believed these instructions to simply be for transforming from Beast Mode to Robot Mode. The Reformatting Master of the House However, time would reveal that these instructions were in service to an even greater purpose. Fallout

The next clue to the Maximals' mission came in the form a living, organic tree on Cybertron, growing deep within an underground chamber, belonging to a Maximal survivor named Nightscream. Believing that the Matrix had guided them to it, Optimus suspected that the tree and its fruit could be the Maximals' path to understanding their newly organic natures. However, the tree's fruit had ill effects on the technorganic Maximals, bringing out their primal instincts and overriding their higher functions. When the tree was destroyed in a battle with the Vehicon Aero Drones and their general, Jetstorm, the Maximals returned to their normal states of mind. After the battle, as the Maximals departed from the cave, they took no notice as a remaining piece of fruit began to rapidly sprout roots into the ground, Forbidden Fruit which eventually developed into another tree. Fallout

Through further meditation with the Oracle, Optimus received even more haunting visions from the Matrix regarding his and the Maximals' mission. One such vision showed him a lush green forest being turned into the technological Cybertron, with a laughing image of Megatron superimposed over the newly-metallic environment. Descent In another vision, Optimus saw his friends as plants growing in a grassy field before metallic vines turned said plants into technomatter, killing them instantly. Afterward, Optimus interpreted these visions (coupled with the prior existence of Nightscream's tree) to mean that the Beast Wars were a preordained event; that the Matrix had sent the Maximals there for the purpose of bringing back the organic elements they carried within their bodies, in order to restore nature to Cybertron. Apocalypse

The first real traces of Cybertron's original organic nature.

The first step to this goal was to figure out how Nightscream had originally found organic DNA on Cybertron that led to his acquiring a bat Beast Mode, since Nightscream's memories of this event had been lost due to the effects of Megatron's virus. In their efforts to recover his memories, it was revealed that Nightscream had kept a seed from his old tree, which Optimus decided to replant, interpreting the Oracle's "seeds of the future" to refer to this very seed. Their replanting was stalled, however, by another battle with the Vehicon Generals. During this battle, Nightscream and Optimus fell into a deep underground cavern containing the skeletal remains of a prehistoric bat, along with thousands of other bones.

Deducing that this cave must have been where Nightscream scanned his Beast Mode, Optimus also reasoned that Cybertron once supported natural organic life. Survivor This discovery led the Maximals to take up residence inside the fossil chamber, where they planted more seeds recovered from Nightscream's tree and eventually tried to drill for water. Instead of water, though, they unearthed a reservoir of green-blue liquid from Cybertron's organic core, which rapidly sprouted a small orchard of organic trees upon coming in contact with the planted seeds. Optimus took this as sign of the Oracle's vision coming true, The Key and believed that the core would, one day, heal the entire planet. The Catalyst

The planet's organic core starts to bring new life back to Cybertron.

Meanwhile, a third player in the conflict was the Vehicon General Tankor, whose body was inhabited by the awoken and corrupted spark of the former Maximal Rhinox. Apocalypse Working in secret against not only the Maximals but Megatron as well, Tankor/Rhinox had come to discover the Oracle for himself and used it to manipulate both sides of the conflict to make them destroy each other. Survivor He first allowed Megatron to acquire a program of the legendary Key to Vector Sigma, which had the power to turn organic matter into technomatter. The Key The Catalyst Then, he used the Oracle to send a false vision to Optimus Primal, alerting him to the existence of the ancient Plasma Energy Chamber, whose energy could overload any electro-mechanical system.

His machinations in place, Tankor gambled that Optimus would never actually use the plasma energy, hoping that the mere thought of Optimus controlling it would be enough to goad Megatron into firing the Key program on a planetary scale, which would kill all organics on the planet, including Megatron (since he still possessed his organic Beast Mode from the Beast Wars), leaving Tankor the only one left standing. However, Optimus had become far more fanatical in his ambitions to stop Megatron and actually unleashed the plasma energy, creating a storm of the two mixed energies that destroyed Tankor and nearly destroyed all of Cybertron, End of the Line with Optimus content to let it happen per the will of the Matrix.

However, upon entering the Matrix, himself, Optimus soon realized the horrible mistake he had made in his blind fanaticism, and pleaded for Cybertron to be spared from its destructive fate. Given a second chance, Optimus was returned to physical plane and took all of the two energies into himself, dispersing it into the Oracle. Cybertron was saved, but at the cost of Optimus's life. When the other Maximals found Optimus inside the Oracle, they begged for him to come back. At this point, a newly-enlightened Optimus finally realized the true nature of his mission:

The new technorganic orchard, providing a small glimpse of much bigger things to come later on.

The Oracle then permitted Optimus to return to the land of the living so that he could complete his mission the right way. Upon Optimus's return, the Oracle congratulated him on passing his greatest test by asserting his own free will, the very thing that made him more than a mere machine. The Oracle then promptly disappeared, leaving behind a brand new orchard of technorganic trees as an illustration of the Cybertron yet to come. Fallout

Over time, however, the orchard began to wither and die. But, when a Maximal scientist named Botanica arrived on Cybertron from outer space, her plant-based nature made her ideal in healing and tending to the orchard. This made her a key new player in the Oracle's vision for Cybertron's future, Home Soil and she proceeded to conduct experiments to ascertain the exact nature of the planet's organic core. However, the addition of Botanica to the Maximals' ranks prompted Megatron to up his game by not only creating two new Vehicon Generals The Strike but also by seeking out the Oracle for himself. The Search

Back when the Oracle had vanished, Fallout it had actually downloaded itself inside Optimus Primal. The Search At a point prior to Botanica's arrival, Megatron had captured Optimus and downloaded most of the Oracle from the Maximal leader into himself. In Darkest Knight He spent a great deal of time studying the Oracle, but the most important part of it remained beyond his reach. Thus, he used the Oracle to send a false vision to Optimus, in an attempt to lure him out and trick him into accessing the Oracle, so that Megatron could download the rest of it into himself and gain full control over it. The Search This gave Megatron the means he needed to bring about his "grand ascension", absorbing all of the sparks on Cybertron into his own to unite them into one perfect being: Himself.

Megatron's attempts were thwarted by Nightscream, The Siege but the Oracle was actually aware of Megatron's download and had wanted him to possess it. Optimus's didn't know why at first, but was sure that the secret to reformatting all of Cybertron lay within the Oracle. The Downward Spiral Megatron soon acquired a new body based on Optimus's old "Optimal" form from the Beast Wars, and used its might to overwhelm the Maximals, capturing all of their sparks except for Optimus's. When Legends Fall

The final pieces fall into place.

The last two living Transformers on Cybertron, Optimus and Megatron engaged each in a great battle that culminated atop Megatron's Citadel, where he proceeded to once again merge every spark into his very being. He then sought to use the Oracle's Key to Vector Sigma program to reformat the planet's organic core into "the perfect technosphere", with Megatron as its core consciousness. But, Megatron did not realize that he and Optimus still shared the Oracle, with Optimus possessing the part needed to access the planet's core while Megatron possessed the means to reformat Cybertron. To rectify this, Megatron separated Optimus's connection to the Oracle, giving him everything he needed to control the fate of Cybertron.

As Megatron activated the Key program and fired its technomatter beam at the planet's core, the Oracle reached out to Optimus on last time, enabling the Maximal to reformat part of Megatron's massive throne set behind him into technorganic vines that grabbed Megatron's wrists, stopping his use of the Key program. Realizing what must be done, Optimus lunged himself at Megatron, throwing him off balance and blasting him free of the vines, plunging to two of them into the planet's core, to create a balance between eternal enemies who, together, possessed the exact means needed to reformat Cybertron and all of its sparks in one go.

The two leaders melded with the planet's core and triggered a massive reformatting that swept across the planet, releasing the sparks that Megatron had absorbed and engulfing everything in an all-encompassing light. Thus, the Oracle's vision, the Great Transformation, had finally come to pass.

And now, Cybertron has better feng shui!

A silent reminder of Megatron's contribution.

At the dawn of a new day, the Maximals who had served under Optimus Primal during these events awoke to the sound of birds chirping, and were astonished to find themselves in a new environment filled with trees and other foliage. The vast fields of terrain were covered in a mixture of bluish silver metals and green techno-flora, with the city of Cybertropolis now a technorganic metropolis. Even Megatron's flying fortress had become part of the new world, with its crash site having been integrated with the terrain as a large mountain covered in trees.

As Botanica added her own touch of technorganic flowers to the scenery, the liberated sparks of Cybertron found new bodies to call their own, and rejoiced. The Oracle then reached out telepathically to Optimus's second-in-command, Cheetor, showing him one final vision of the late Maximal leader and leaving Cheetor with the same words it had originally relayed to Optimus: "At long last... Transform your destiny. Transform, and transcend..." Seeds of the Future

3H Comics

The newly-reformatted Cybertron, during a Quintesson invasion.

Optimus Primal and his team of Maximals were not the only ones charged by the Oracle to carry out its vision. Indeed, other survivors of Megatron's virus—such as Icebird and his Mutants, T-Wrecks and his Dinobots, and the legendary Wreckers led by Primal Prime and Apelinq—had also made trouble for Megatron on the far side of Cybertron, in service of the Oracle. Departure

Unbeknownst to any of them, however, the Oracle had originally been a Quintesson creation meant to control and suppress Vector Sigma, the physical embodiment of the Transformers' creator-god Primus. Disclosure The Quintessons had used the Oracle to relay messages to each of these teams. They, allegedly, had manipulated Optimus Primal in his mission to reformat Cybertron, Finale Part II and, together with their Predacon ally Cryotek, used the Oracle to send both the Mutants and the Dinobots on fools' errands meant to eliminate them. Departure Betrayal Finale Part II

The technorganic matter itself had been designed and cultivated by the Quintessons and Cryotek in a joint business venture. The reformatting of Cybertron and all of its inhabitants was meant to render them weak and docile, making the planet ripe for conquest. Finale Part II An arboretum of technorganic plant life had even been grown on the Quintessons' new home world of New Quintessa, in anticipation of Cybertron's own re-landscaping. Disclosure

Barely a week after the Great Transformation had reformatted the planet, Finale Part II the Quintessons and Cryotek arrived on Cybertron to begin their invasion. Finale Part 1 The Quintessons observed many of the changes the Great Transformation had wrought upon the planet: The whole place was now covered in shining stretches of greenery that contrasted with mountain ranges of cobalt and vast oceans. Megatron's old fortress was now Mount Megatron. Even the orbital defense grid's planet-side controls had been taken offline, all according to plan. Finale Part II

However, certain curiosities had also manifested within the Quintessons' machinations. The first had arisen back when the Oracle first gave its missions of doom to the Mutants and the Dinobots. Before it could do the same for the Wreckers, the Oracle detected a presence that had just awakened, and a beam of light shot itself out from within the Oracle and into the Wreckers' leader Primal Prime, feeding coordinates directly into his core processor. Departure This presence was later revealed to be Vector Sigma, having broken through the Oracle's control. Disclosure Vector Sigma had also summoned the spirit of Alpha Trion to guide Primal Prime on his and the Wreckers' journey. Departure After learning of the Oracle's true origin, the Wreckers hurried back to Cybertron. During their journey back, Primal Prime communed with Alpha Trion, who encouraged the Wrecker not to worry about Optimus Primal's mission of technorganic balance, reassuring him that "Primus works in mysterious ways." Finale Part II

More anomalies soon came to light as the Quintessons carried out their invasion of Cybertron. The Great Transformation had left at least one city still technological, containing only small traces of technorganic foliage. Likewise, the city's inhabitants were fully mechanical, claiming to have been Decepticons who were in prison back when Megatron stole everyone's Sparks. Elsewhere, the once and former chemical processing center of Ankmor had been reformatted into a park, whose trees now bore energon-rich fruit—The technorganic matter hadn't been designed to bear fruit of any kind! More alarming, the technorganic Cybertronians were not the docile creatures the Quintessons had believed them to be, and some no longer registered on the Quintessons' scanners; their life signs were masked by the very same nature as the plant life. Even the Oracle worked against the invaders, communing with Cheetor just as it had with Optimus Primal. Indeed, something had gone horribly wrong with the Quintessons' plans.

The Memorial Spaceport, on the night of the Great Transformation's one-year anniversary.

The answer soon came to light on New Quintessa, when Judge Heirodyus entered the greenhouse on his people's homeworld. Initially suspecting that Cryotek must have tampered with the designs for the technorganic matter, Heirodyus learned the truth when he was set upon by two surviving Mutants, Icebird and Poison Bite. Possessing a new power, the Mutants took control of the arboretum's technorganic plants and subdued the judge. Then, Primus himself took possession of Icebird and spoke through the Mutant directly to Heirodyus, revealed that he had orchestrated everything. Primus had manipulated the Quintessons into bringing about the Great Transformation, all for the purpose of helping his children to undergo this great evolutionary leap forward. The planet's reformatting had been preordained all along.

Afterward, overseen by Icebird and Poison Bite, New Quintessa itself began to undergo its own Great Transformation, as more technorganic plants gradually spread across the planet's surface. Finale Part II

Exactly one year after the Great Transformation, Cybertron was still a technorganic world with metal cities adorned with trees, vines, and other greenery. Abduction Some places, like the Undercity, even had buildings that looked like trees. Homecoming Optimus Primal had become a legend among the populace, Optimus Primal's OTFCC 2004 profile and a Memorial Spaceport had been built in memory of his sacrifice. The Oracle had come under the full control of Primus and Alpha Trion, and all of Cybertron was finally at peace, united as one. Abduction

Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity

Grand explains Primus's dream of creating technorganic life in the far distant future.

Beast Wars Reborn

When Optimus had plunged himself and Megatron into Cybertron's organic core and triggered the Great Transformation, the two not only became one with the planet but were broken down into particles and had their Sparks melded together and scattered about the planet, becoming the very foundation for the newly-reformatted world. The Extraordinary Reformat

Legends comic

The fusion of the organic and the technological to create a new kind of life had been a goal of Primus's since near the beginning of Cybertron's existence, dating back to when he himself was once an animal-based robot, the Oracle. When the Quintessons confined him inside Vector Sigma, they used the Oracle's power to create the Trans-Organics, Primus's first attempt at creating a union of organic and robotic life. But, the Trans-Organics were failures, having only inherited the coldheartedness of machines and the primal rage of beasts. When the Quintessons then forced the Oracle to only create purely robotic life, he secretly created a separate computer to carry out the mission of pursuing a balance between the organic and the mechanical, which the computer did at a factory in the G Nebula 89.

Over time, great strides were made in such technologies as the Pretenders, the Master-Braces, and the Powermasters, which all combined organic life with mechanical life in some fashion. With this progress, it remained the Oracle's hope that, someday, the Transformer race may evolve far enough to bring about a new type of life that is equal parts organic and technological. Bonus Edition Vol. EX (Grand Maximus)

Three centuries later, when Optimus Primal and Megatron merged with Cybertron's organic core and initiated the Great Transformation, the Oracle itself had also merged with the core. This led to the Great Transformation not only reformatting Cybertron but also rebirthing Vector Sigma in a new form.

Tens of thousands of years later, however, when it was discovered that a mysterious group was searching for Unicron's energy, Vector Sigma decided to at last bring an end to Cybertron's technorganic era and re-mechanize the planet, in preparation for the coming of a new Great War. Bonus Edition Vol. EX (Blue Big Convoy)

Wings Universe

Centuries later and still green, baby!

Time-traveling to the future when Cybertron would theoretically be at peace, unprepared for war, and rich in energy, Captain Cannonball of the Star Seekers led his crew in his greatest heist idea ever: use Unicron's head to drain all the energon out of Cybertron. This attracted the attention of the elite defenders of Cybertron in 2984, the Cybertronian Knights, and a battle ensued aboard Unicron's head. The battle was prematurely ended, however, when the Autobot sage Alpha Trizer revealed to Cannonball that his scheme was doomed to fail because Cybertron in its modern state was technorganic and no longer ran on energon (as a result of the Great Transformation). Hoist the Flag

Ask Vector Prime

When asked about this momentous occasion, Vector Prime stated that his presence was not needed when it happened. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/06/04

Notes

Transformers: Cybertron's visual homage to the Great Transformation (Japanese and English versions for comparison).

• When this article was first created, it was given the title of "Great Reformatting". However, this term was never actually used in Beast Machines or any related fiction. The closest that the name "Great Reformatting" was used in official media was in a question answered in Ask Vector Prime. However, since the question originated from the audience, its use of the term is pseudocanonical at best. While the answer itself is considered official, it didn't use that name.
• In the Transformers: Cybertron episode titled "End", the Planet Cybertron of that series underwent a similar metamorphosis when it was reborn with attributes from all four of that series' colony worlds. Namely, the aspects incorporated from the Jungle Planet yielded new plant life across Cybertron's surface. Though, its appearance differed between versions of the episode. In the original Japanese version, the plants were normal, organic trees and grass, while in the English version, the animation was changed to make the plants look robotic and alien, giving them a sort of technorganic look. This new appearance for that Cybertron continued into the following episodes "Unfinished" and "Beginning", complete with the same animation changes between the Japanese and English versions.
• The Great Transformation being undone in Japanese continuity is due to the fact that Beast Wars Neo, which takes place millennia after Beast Machines but was produced before, portrayed Cybertron as an entirely metallic planet.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Subarashii Henka (素晴らしい変化, "Magnificent Transformation")

See also

Related prophecies:

• "'Til all are one"
• Grand Plan

Similar evolutionary leaps:

• Great Upgrade
• Quantum Cycle Upgrade
• Beast Upgrade