Transformers Beyond: Legendarium (OLD)

Chapter V: The Age of Origins

The Age of Origins, also known as the Age of the Firstforged, the Age of Heroes, or the Cybertronian Dark Ages, is the earliest recorded epoch in Cybertron's history as before the Great Cataclysm, most of Cybertron's people, especially the second-generation Cybertronians, weren't properly organized and educated.

The leftover radiation from the extinction event caused a lot of memory loss for many Cybertronians, with the fallout giving rise to the neurological condition known as "information creep." Stories about the Guiding Hand, the Covenant, and the Thirteen Primes were reduced to folktales, and very few bots believed that those events actually happened, leading to numerous alternate versions of the Cybertronian creation myth. Some stories say that Mortilus was the traitorous member of the Guiding Hand alongside Unicron instead of Adaptus, while others say that all eight gods were killed in the Theomachy and reunited in the afterlife to create the Afterspark and the Inferno, the Cybertronian equivalents of Heaven and Hell. A few tell the story that the Guiding Hand's original form as Daiakuron never existed, and that Primus created Cybertron and the other members of the pantheon before the Theomachy. One ridiculous notion says that the Guiding Hand weren't gods, but were the very first lifeforms created from the AllSpark, predating the Covenant, the Thirteen Primes, and the Knights of Cybertron.

As for the Maximals and the Predacons that walked the ground of prehistoric Cybertron, there was very little information about them even before they became extinct. All that was left of them were bones and stories passed down from one generation to another. Although several future Cybertronians would have beast-like appearances similar to the Maximals' and Predacons'.

The only things anyone was sure of were that the AllSpark was responsible for creating life and that the Knights of Cybertron served the will of the Prime Lineage and were responsible for guarding the Creation Matrix until the next Prime was chosen. Despite Cybertron being no longer united in this era, all Cybertronians occasionally come together to the call of the Prime against imminent threats. 

Approx. 750 million stellar cycles ago:

The first survivors of the Great Cataclysm emerge from stasis lock within Cybertron's underground, discovering that their planet has been rendered virtually barren by the meteor showers and the solar storms that battered the surface. Freed from the depredations of the ancient Predacons and aided by Laser Prime's Knights of Cybertron, though, the Commandron tribes slowly but surely begin to rise to dominance. Among the first wave of reawakened Commandrons is Azimuth, the future founder of the Patterner Movement.

Several groups of Insecticons and Arachnicons that survived the Great Cataclysm colonized the great northwestern gulf of Cybertron. The gulf becomes known as the Web Lands and becomes a fearful place to the Commandrons during the ages of hostilities between them and the Insecticon Hives.

Feral Insecticon hives rise to dominate the southern Cybertronian hemisphere, most particularly around the Oxide Wastes, a wasteland of oxidized metal that will one day become known as the Sea of Rust. 

Approx. 745 million stellar cycles ago:

Around this time, Cybertron's thirteen major city-states are founded, consisting of Iacon, Nova Cronum, Polyhex, Uraya, Altihex, Ky-Alexia, Stanix, Kaon, Tarn, Styx (also known as "Blaster City"), Kalis, Simfur, and Praxus. Not only ancient cities like Crystal City and Tyger Pax are rebuilt and resettled, but other Commandron cities and settlements begin to rise to power throughout the planet, many of which will become the hubs of the future city-states of the Golden Age. The young civilization thrives, protected behind their cities' high defensive walls from the warlords, raiders, and feral creatures that rule the wilderness.