#rapticon

 Dear Lovestruck Lunatic,

Dear Technoorganic Thinker,

Unlike the Great Transformation caused by Optimus Primal in other realities you might be familiar with, the evolution of the Cybertronian proto-races was a more gradual process. The physiology of the Commandrons and Maladroids was derived from technology pioneered by the homo sapiens circuitus Ne'll and the Maximal Rapticon in the late 25th century, involving the bonding of Cybertronian spark-data onto Eutychus Project mind-scans; the resulting mind-endgrams are unable to be hosted in a conventional protoform, which led to the development of "proto-cells" made from a combination of living metal and synthoplasmic polymers that could emulate human biology in a technological form.

Following the end of the Fifth Cybertronian War, the Black Convoy—themself the child of the Earth-born Kelly Shiragami and Splendid Major of the League of Autonomous Proto-States—oversaw the implementation of a new evolution of Cybertronian reproduction. Multiple sites were set up to create these new, technoorganic beings; known as "Matrix" facilities after the Energon Matrix that had spawned the proto-races and the long-lost Creation Matrix before it, these facilities would both grow clusters of self-replicating proto-cells and infuse the new beings' positronic brains with the mind-engrams that would give them life, creating them either from a great archive of human and Cybertronian data, or from the bonding of two other hybrid Transformers. While the majority were overseen by the Convoy Council (the Commandrons' judicial body) or the legislatures of independent city-states, the largest of these facilities, located beneath the resting place of the Grand Mal, was managed by the Grand Triumvirate of the Maladroids; with a sense of irony that would come to characterise Maladroid culture, it was quickly nicknamed the "Pit".

While some considered the sparkless, technoorganic Transformers to be "impure" or "unnatural", in the centuries following their introduction Cybertron's science and culture accelerated at a pace faster than in any recorded history, even outstripping the heights reached by the Human Confederacy before the Fall of Man. Though a series of conflicts across the 34th and 35th centuries—costly for Cybertron and devastating for humanity—led to conservative restrictions from Council and Triumvirate alike, the subsequent Energoa Conflict would eventually... well, perhaps that is a story for another time.

And now I am left to ponder where the evolution of the Cybertronian race may take it in the future... for, as I am sure you have heard many times over, it never ends!