My last transformers AU, and my oldest.
The Decepticons as they are now were born from the Mine Workers’ Union, a loose coalition of miners, low level overseers, and laborers united under a shared cause. Initially, they were not a militant force but a peaceful organization, advocating for gradual reform through protests, negotiations, and grassroots efforts. They organized fundraisers, community aid programs, and public demonstrations, believing change could be achieved within the system.
For four years, the Mine Workers’ Union operated under the leadership of the Bot known then as D-16, a miner with a mind for strategy and a voice that stirred the sparks of thousands. But the Functionalist Council, viewing the movement as a threat, moved to suppress it. Crackdowns followed, peaceful protests were dispersed with violence. Strikes were met with mass arrests, and Union leaders were executed or vanished without a trace. Some were even cut down in the streets before they could even speak.
It was in the fires of this brutality that the movement radicalized. The Mine Workers’ Union died, and in its place, a new force emerged. The Decepticons. Their name was taken from a Quote by Megatronus Prime, whose rebellion had been crushed by the very system they now sought to destroy. D-16 cast aside his old designation and took up the name Megatron, a leader not of laborers, but of warriors. No longer would they beg, no longer would they kneel.
In the early years of the war, the Decepticons moved with terrifying speed. Military sites, cities, fortresses, and weapons depots fell into their hands, stripped clean and repurposed for their growing regime. The Cybertronian Guard Corps, the Council’s military apparatus, was shattered in the opening campaigns, their remnants either absorbed or wiped out.
The Decepticons became a highly disciplined, militarized autocracy, their hierarchy built on competence, ambition, and ruthless efficiency. At the top sat Emperor Megatron, supreme in authority, his rule enforced by a brutal chain of command. Beneath him, the Decepticon war machine took shape.
The Decepticons were no longer a rebellion. They were a regime.
The Autobots emerged from the ruins of the Cybertronian Guard Corps and the shattered remnants of the Functionalist Council’s scattered populations across their remaining territories, though they were never a true continuation of either. In the war’s earliest days, before the movement had even taken a name, its ranks were filled with former officers, city enforcers, and defenders of the old order, those who had once fought to uphold a system now reduced to dust, and now led a new one.
Figures like Ultra Magnus, Kup, Hound, and Ironhide led the first resistance efforts, rallying those unwilling to bow to Decepticon rule. What began as desperate skirmishes against a superior force soon hardened into a war of survival. Their stronghold became Iacon, the largest city on Cybertron and the heart of its pre-war governance. From there, they fortified, reinforced, and held the Decepticons at bay, dragging the war into an endless attritional struggle, where neither side could gain a true decisive advantage.
But the Autobots were never a unified army in the way the Decepticons were. At their head stood Optimus Prime, the last Prime, carrying a name that still held power in the sparks of many. But leadership was never simple. Many within the Autobot ranks disagreed with his ideals, seeing his belief in peace and unity as naĂŻve, an outdated dream in a war that demanded nothing less than total victory.
Gradually, splinter groups formed. Some saw Optimus as the only true path forward and followed his command without question. Others, hardened by loss and betrayal, chose their own leaders, operating in semi-independent warbands, engaging in partisan warfare, sabotaging Decepticon infrastructure, and striking supply lines without mercy.
This fragmented structure made the Autobots adaptable, able to strike from the shadows, vanish into the ruins, and resurface elsewhere. But it also left them vulnerable. While the Decepticons expanded, consolidating territory and crushing dissent, the Autobots were forced into retreat, their domain shrinking with every passing cycle. Iacon remained their stronghold, but beyond its walls, countless outposts, hidden bases, and underground enclaves served as staging grounds for hit-and-run strikes, deep infiltrations, and last stands.
They could not match the Decepticons in numbers or sheer firepower, but their survival depended on resilience, ingenuity, and sheer stubbornness. Even in their weakest moments, when all seemed lost, the Autobots refused to fall, for them, the war was not just about conquest or revenge, it was about endurance. About outlasting the storm. About ensuring that, no matter how dark the future seemed, Cybertron would not belong to the Decepticons.
The Wreckers are less a unit and more a legend, a death squadron, a band of killers too unruly for the Autobots but too useful to cast aside. They are composed of ex-Guard soldiers, former Autobot loyalists, court-martialed prisoners, arsonists, saboteurs, insubordinate commandos, and war-hardened volunteers, the ones who have seen the worst of the war and come out the other side with nothing left to lose. Their purpose is singular and brutal: kill as many Decepticons as possible.
Led by Springer, the Wreckers officially operate outside the Autobot chain of command. They are an independent force, separate from Optimus Prime’s leadership, often working on the fringes of the war, taking on the missions no sane soldier would accept and no Autobot leader would approve. They strike where the Decepticons least expect, hit supply lines, fortresses, shipyards, and high-value targets deep behind enemy lines. To them, victory isn’t about honor, glory, or ideals, it’s about attrition, annihilation, and the cold, simple math of warfare.
Though the Wreckers claim independence, in reality, they have gradually become the Autobots’ unofficial special forces, called upon when the war demands a decisive, brutal solution. When the Autobots need a general executed, a fortress toppled, or a Decepticon battalion wiped from existence, the Wreckers are sent in.
The Autobots, particularly Optimus Prime, tolerate them but do not condone them. The Wreckers don’t fight for a better Cybertron, they fight because it’s the only thing left they know how to do. They aren’t here to restore a golden age, to rebuild, to dream of peace. They are here to break Decepticons, to drown the enemy in a tide of fire, shrapnel, and bodies. They believe in no surrender, and no retreat.
Unlike conventional Autobot units, the Wreckers don’t retreat. They don’t regroup, they don’t surrender, and they don’t take prisoners. When a Wrecker is deployed, they fight until the job is done or until they are dead.
And more often than not, they die.
The Wreckers have an abysmal survival rate, with entire generations of their ranks being wiped out over the course of the war, only to be replaced by new blood, fresh warriors burned out, broken, or simply too violent to fit anywhere else. Their name carries infamy, even among the Autobots. Some call them heroes, others monsters, but one thing is certain: If a Wrecker comes knocking, someone is going to die.
The Insecticons are an enigma, an ancient and insular strain of Cybertronian life that predates the war, predates the Decepticons, and, according to some, predates recorded history itself. Their origins are uncertain, some believe they emerged from Cybertron’s deepest catacombs, evolving separately from the rest of most Cybertronian flora and fauna, while others suspect they were a subspecies of Predacon, remnants that managed to endure and thrive underground. Whatever the truth, the Insecticons lived apart from society, brooding in their underground nests, largely uninterested in the affairs of the greater world.
That changed when Shockwave took an interest.
During the pre-war period, Shockwave sought to study and manipulate the Insecticons, conducting a series of genetic and neurological experiments to establish direct communication with their hive minds. His efforts bore fruit when he successfully reached the Insecticon Queens, unlocking their ability to engage in higher reasoning and complex strategy. What began as a scientific breakthrough was quickly corrupted by the war, as Megatron seized the opportunity to bend this new force to his will.
In exchange for their continued existence, the Insecticon hives were ordered to tithe 50% of their hatchlings to the Decepticon war machine. These offspring were press-ganged into military service, either as Auxiliary troops, shocktroopers, or relegated to more menial roles as labor drones, corpse scavengers, and waste processors. The remaining Insecticons were allowed to exist in relative peace, their nests undisturbed so long as they continued to provide bodies for the war effort.
But peace was an illusion.
The Insecticons were never truly considered Decepticons—they were seen as useful but expendable, a resource rather than equals. They were even branded with an official insignia, a mark of ownership rather than allegiance. In the eyes of the Decepticon hierarchy, the hives were little more than livestock, their breeding cycles strictly monitored, their numbers culled when necessary to prevent rebellion.
Not a faction in any traditional sense, Mercenaries are a fractured, ever-shifting collection of roving warbands, private military contractors, bounty hunters, assassins, and outright pirates. They operate on one universal principle: payment in full. They owe allegiance to no cause, no ideology, no leader, only to profit.
To the Autobots, they are opportunists, selling their firepower to the highest bidder without care for the consequences. To the Decepticons, they are a necessary evil, used when victory demands discretion, deniability, or brutality that even they hesitate to unleash. Some mercenaries fight out of pragmatism, others out of bloodlust, but most simply because war pays well.
The galaxy at large often lumps all mercenaries under a singular name: the Blackjaws. This infamous mercenary syndicate, one of the largest and most organized, acts as a loose coalition of smaller warbands, free agents, and pirate crews, forming a tangled web of shifting alliances, betrayals, and contracts. Though not a singular force, the Blackjaws serve as a hub, a middleman that connects buyers to killers, suppliers to soldiers, and war to those willing to profit from it.
Beyond them, mercenaries are as diverse as Cybertron itself. Some operate as professional, disciplined soldiers of fortune; others are little more than lawless raiders, willing to torch cities and slaughter civilians for the right price. Some demand strict contracts and honor-bound agreements, while others take payment in advance and leave the job half-finished.
Despite their differences in philosophy, tactics, and morality, all mercenaries share one unifying truth: war is business. It doesn't matter who wins or loses, who’s right or wrong, who fights or who falls, so long as there is conflict, there is profit, in a war that seems to have no end, the mercenaries thrive.
It is the Age of Turmoil. The Great War has raged for eight million years. Cybertron is in ruin. The once mighty Functionalist Council is all but abolished, destroyed, forgotten.
Before all things were made, the great Primus, the creator, waged an endless war against his natural predator, his hunter, Unicron. Their battles set the cosmos alight and shattered worlds.
All at once, Unicron struck true. With a single, ruinous blow, he wounded Primus, sending him spiraling into a wormhole, an uncharted abyss, and a blessing in disguise that tore him away from his enemy. For the first time, Unicron was absent, and in that brief moment of reprieve, Primus acted. He folded in on himself, reshaping his form, becoming a lifeless shell, a planet, a fortress, a place to rebuild, prepare, and wait. Then he slept.
From the void came the “Architects”, the Quintessons. Their black ships swallowed the skies, blotting out the light of Cybertron’s newborn suns. They landed upon the barren, primordial Cybertron, and, with cold efficiency, carved civilization into its surface. Monolithic cities rose from barren land. Towering structures, labyrinthine monoliths, sprawling cities. Wonders were erected that would last forever, weathering even entropy itself.
For eighteen thousand years, the Quintessons ruled Cybertron. Then, without warning, they fled. Their ships fled, Their orbital defenses fell silent. Their machines were left to rust. No war, no rebellion, only absence.
The void of life on cybertron did not stay empty for long.
The first intelligence to emerge from Cybertron’s depths was not Cybertronian. They were the Predaconians. Primitive, but aware, a Tribal people in all respects. They hunted in packs, warred over territory, lived, and died under the blue sky.
Yet, in their bloodied struggle, there rose one, a warrior-king, whose name is now lost to history, a conqueror who, for a time, united the warring Tribes beneath his clawed hand. Under his rule, the Predacons flourished, carving a kingdom from the lands, and bringing about an era of tenuous peace.
For a time, there were many living in harmony. Then, they were few. Natural disasters tore through their numbers. The planet swallowed them whole. Now only their bones remain, scattered across the wastelands in vast boneyards and buried gravesites, silent reminders of a species that once ruled but could not endure the test of time.
Fifteen million years passed. Cybertron did not remain barren of life. From its surface, new life emerged, Cybertronians.
They did not crawl, nor stumble, nor wander in ignorance. They were strong. Born warriors. They budded from the planet itself, formed by the metal and the energy that ran through it. And where one rose, many followed. Social by nature, they gathered into clans, and from those clans, leaders arose. Their title was Prime, a word that would come to define honor, authority, and lineage, an eternal word, one that would always come to represent the best and greatest of Cybertronian kind.
The strongest of these clans grew, forming powerful Houses, noble lines of warriors, strategists, and lords. House Kaon, House Vos, House Iacon, House Polyhex, House Quintus, House Pax, House Onyx, House Praxus, House Tarn, and House Damaxus. Each commanded armies. Each fought for dominance. The old Quintesson cities, now abandoned ruins of the ages past, became their battlegrounds and new territories. They learned to read the language of the Quintessons and made it their own, and learned to reverse-engineer the wonders left behind by the Ancients.
For millions of years, the Houses warred. Power shifted, new cities rose. Iacon, Vos, Kaon, monuments to conquest and progress. Then, gradually, the wars ended. The Prime bloodlines, now rulers of the world's most powerful houses, forged an uneasy truce. A new government was formed, a coalition of the Houses, The Functionalist Council.
At first, it was a coalition of rulers. Then it became something else. Feudal power faded, replaced by a machine of bureaucracy and law. The Functionalist Council was not a democracy, nor a monarchy, it was an oligarchy. A system where caste and function determined worth, succor and place.
And in time, it rotted from within.
Corruption took hold. Bureaucrats grew complacent. Progress stagnated. Cities became overcrowded. Mining operations grew unchecked, stripping the planet’s lifeblood to fuel industry. Shortages led to riots, famine, and war.
Megatronus Prime, one of the last original, true Primes, saw the decay for what it was. He rebelled. His insurrection was swift, brutal. He led armies against the council, but he failed. The rebellion was crushed. Prima, the Council’s figurehead and former friend, oversaw his execution personally.
His followers were punished, exiled, or worse. Kaon, once a noble city of high standing and proud tradition, was censured, stripped of status, its people relegated to the lowest class, lower than Dregs.
Ten million years after The Kaonite Rebellion, Cybertron stood at the edge of collapse.
The war never truly ended. It only changed. The council still ruled, but it ruled over stagnation and fetid rot. The Extrasolar Colonies drifted from Cybertron’s grip. The military grew bloated and complacent.
And in the deepest pits of Kaon, a miner was born. Designation D-16. He knew nothing but the mines, the work, the feeling of servitude to a government that did not see him as a person. He learned to write poetry, philosophy, words of anger and revolution. And in time, he found a friend, Orion Pax.
Unlike D-16, Orion Pax was privileged. He had a name, not a designation. A student, a scholar, a believer in the old faith. They met during a religious census, when Orion was tasked with cataloging the lower castes. What should have been a brief exchange became something more. A bond.
D-16 spoke. Orion listened.
At first, the revolutions created by D-16 were peaceful. Protests, strikes. The Mine Workers Union was born, its crest taken from Megatronus Prime’s sigil, an ancient tribal mask of House Kaon, a vestige of what had been lost to time.
But the Council did not listen to reason. When the protests turned into riots, they answered with violence. The Mine Workers’ Union became the Decepticons, a name taken from the words of the fallen Prime Megatronus: "If speaking the truth is deception, then we are gladly guilty.”
D-16 cast off his number and took a name.
Orion followed at first, proudly wearing the sigil of the Decepticons. But when Megatron turned to violence, when revolution became assassination, when the streets ran with the energon of the guilty and the innocent alike, Orion left in horror of what his friend had become.
Megatron did not stop, he vowed to never stop.
The Great War did not begin with a battle. It began with a massacre.
The Cybertronian Guard Corps was unprepared, undertrained, and complacent. When the Decepticons struck, their advance was unstoppable. Major Cities fell in days. Prisons emptied as the oppressed joined their ranks. The council, for all its might, was powerless.
Meanwhile, in the colonies, uprisings of Decepticon sympathizers overthrew and battled the local Guard garrisons. Colonies cut off from Cybertron by the war became embroiled in civil conflict due to the lack of support from Cybertron's supply chain. Total chaos filled even the stars.
Orion Pax, once a student, now a soldier, a Lieutenant, stood against them. For centuries, the war was largely a series of skirmishes, ambushes, brutal engagements fought on the ruins of a sundered world.
Then, the council fell. Their escape shuttle was shot down during the First Siege of Iacon when they attempted to flee the battle. With their death, the Autobots were born, led by former Guard officers like Kup, Ultra Magnus, Hound, among others.
In the fires of battle, Orion Pax was chosen. The Matrix of Leadership passed to him, not by politics, not by ceremony, but by something greater. For his deeds as a leader, and as a hero, he was rewarded with a shard of the spark of primus himself to carry forever.
He became Optimus Prime, the last Prime.
And now, the war rages on.
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