#chaar

How did Gnaw and Cindersaur become members of the Predacons and Terrorcons, respectively?

Dear Legends Leftover,

In the case of the former, it was more by accident than anything. Gnaw had been the leader of a team of Sharkticons sent into the depths of Cybertron to pull the large switch controlling the Exponential Null Generator. When that plan went awry, he ended up following Galvatron to the surface, and from there to Chaar, without being noticed.

When Galvatron finally stumbled across Gnaw (chewing on the base of his makeshift throne), the Decepticon leader threw him to the Predacons—declaring that since they were both spawn of the Quintessons, they should get along fine.

Razorclaw knew better than to argue with Galvatron when he was in one of his moods, and reluctantly accepted the Sharkticon. When the Predacons went on their hunts, they would toss the scraps to Gnaw, keeping him around as a living waste disposal machine.

Cindersaur, by contrast, was deliberately headhunted. Hun-Gurr had been keeping his watchful eyes on the Combiner Wars, and had seen the other combiner teams picking up new members to replace fallen ones or to increase their number. The Terrorcons' rivals, the Technobots, had acquired two new members even, which stirred envy in the Terrorcon leader. Still, Hun-Gurr was not about to recruit just anyone to join his squad; he wanted an outcast—someone whose loyalty would lie with him over any other Decepticon. He found the perfect bot with Cindersaur. The Firecons had recently broken up, and Cindersaur had found themself lost without their teammates... literally. They had gone on a rampage, ending up completely disoriented in Chaar’s wilderness. Their usual means of retracing their steps, by blazing a trail behind them, had completely failed them in a landscape where everything was already burned and blackened, and they'd been wandering in circles for months.

Dear Dino Delver,

By the end of the Great War, the Decepticons were in disarray. The liberation of Chaar was the decisive hammer blow that shattered the Decepticon war machine beyond repair and forced them to the outer rim of the galaxy to start anew. While some stubborn Decepticons did their best to rebuild—forming squabbling rump states, roaming pirate fleets, and bizarre cults—Trypticon simply retreated to a distant, unnamed moon to recuperate.

Perhaps, once, Trypticon would have sought bloody retribution against the Autobots—but his once-legendary hatred had developed into something else: exhaustion. Trypticon was tired of war, tired of killing, tired of being used and abused and thrown away by his fellow Cybertronians. He knew that he would never have a place among the Autobots, but could not bring himself to turn on the Decepticons he had fought alongside for so long; instead, he simply transformed to starship mode and set out to forge his own destiny.

Centuries later, a team of Maximal explorers stumbled across the remains of a massive obsidian-black warship of Cybertronian design buried among the sand dunes of Praum. Wandering junk traders and scavengers had long since stripped the vessel clean for parts, leaving nothing but an eerie superstructure that whistled in the desert wind. For years, historians wondered and debated and argued—was Trypticon attacked by something? Did he encounter some kind of structural failure or run out of energon? Did he take his own life by deliberately crashing himself into the planet?

Dear Rising Refugee,

Although Shockwave gladly lent his considerable scientific acumen to Megatron’s regime during the last days of the war for Cybertron, his first priority was always to himself and the sanctity of his experiments—once Megatron had surrendered and sequestered himself on Chaar, Shockwave simply went his own way and never looked back. Civilizations on the galactic rim would occasionally report strange break-ins into decommissioned research facilities and file reports of missing gene samples; periodically, alien traders would claim to have encountered monstrous techno-organic creatures lurking on distant worlds, but even I am unsure of the veracity of these tales.

A few decades after Shockwave vanished from history, an archaeological dig on the far-off world of Darhos accidentally stumbled across an old military bunker that some unknown party had repurposed into a makeshift genetic laboratory—a laboratory that included significant caches of pilfered Cybertronian technology. The lab was in disarray; the researchers noted signs of a scuffle, a severed purple hand, and a set of three-toed, oil-stained footprints leading out of the building and into the wilderness beyond.

Dear Exile Excavator,

The Megatron you speak of did indeed favour a tank alternate mode during the war for Cybertron, an adaptation of his original mining vehicle form. However, once the war took to the stars, he eventually began to favour the advantages conferred by flight, originally using a back-mounted rocket pack before undergoing a full rebuild into a Decepticon starfighter form. Along with being able to bombard his hated foe Optimus Prime from afar, this form was capable of long-distance space flight under his own power through the use of Dark Energon. 

As for his ultimate fate, I’m afraid it is not an exciting tale. Megatron exiled himself to the long-abandoned fortress world of Chaar, cutting himself off entirely from the outside world. His spirit utterly broken by the realisation that he had become the domineering tyrant he had once fought against, he spent the rest of his days wiping all traces of Decepticon habitation from the planet. It is my understanding that a number of his former lieutenants made failed attempts to summon him back on to the Cybertronian stage; I believe if they’d succeeded he would have quietly ignored the message. 

Dear Decepticon Desperado,

Unfortunately, even from my current vantage point in the Realm of the Primes, I can see no future timeline that spins out from such an event. Perhaps, though, this is to be expected; the Decepticons are a prideful and arrogant group, and a movement based on hatred and violence is not one that generally considers the long-term consequences of their wasteful ways—particularly not one emboldened by complete victory over the Autobots. 

Today morning, I was requesting my mom to prepare some ‘Kheer’ for me. And I wanted something to be added in the Kheer, so I started vaguely hinting towards this word for that ingredient; at last my mom understood that what I meant was ‘Charoli’. Yes, I wanted Charoli in my Kheer.

But, wait. I now remember something else from ‘Charoli’. Is it ‘Chaar’? I have come across this, I mean not just the word, but those Chaar seeds, and fruits, and the entire tree, and trees of it.

Couple of years ago when I used to work with Maharogi Sewa Samiti (MSS), in Chandrapur, I came across Chaar trees - Buchanania cochinchinensis.

I had tasted the fruits of Chaar back then. They always felt inadequate, making me want more of them to savour.

These memories of Flora and Trees of Central India made me think about how food and ingredients that we consume, which are on our tables, may come from elsewhere. But the connection between man and nature, and the dependence of humans on nature is never lost.

From wandering below the trees of Chaar to sitting at home and having Kheer with Charoli in it, two different kinds of experiences I had.

(‘Charoli’ are the seeds that are added in Kheer and other food, as an ingredient. Seeds of the fruit ‘Chaar’.)