#transformers titans

I’m still practicing drawing mecha

Specifically regarding Navitas, like, how did he get a human for neural(?) treatment, what's the story behind that, and the events leading up to him speaking his human caretaker's name of all things? It's such a small line to focus on, but I'm really curious on how he and his caretaker interacted, and I really want to know everyone's reactions when his caretaker apparently did the impossible.

I've waited for this moment for so long! Thanks for the ask!

Masterlist

In the whole lore of Terraformers Au there is a critical moment in culture I wanted to integrate, in the IDW comics we see cybertronian miners that are supposed to work in the Ore mines of Earth under Optimus’ promise of a future where cybertronians and humans can co-exist, while ironically paying more to the humans and having a cybertronian literally asking: “wait, how much are they paying you?!” because yes, humans get way more money and Optimus has to shut up to try and resolve this one problem too (apart from the other thousand problems of xenophobia layered in the comic).

In the post-war situation, I wanted to address both sides of the problem: humans who wanted to work in Cybertron and the same layers of resistance to acceptance.

Humans work, principally, with the remaining Titans, since they are small enough to get to the deepest, tiny problems that not even Minibots can operate on, whole groups of repair workers go daily to the innards of the Titan to stop energon leaking so tiny that a cybertronian would believe there is no problem there, all with basic medicinal knowledge, with exosuits for the lack of oxygen (specially before the Titan started to create an atmosphere), and special protection to prevent energon poisoning.

Some humans, with time, started to work with the Titans differently, most Titans are either dormant or in a working state not different from a mental crisis, which is Navitas’ case, hardly having the power to talk to Windblade, a literal cityspeaker with the telephatic connection ability, with his mind or EMF, which as Windblade said that his state of mind was horrible, so she instaured a new role for humans: Main management team, consisting in the human in charge of taking care of the Titans’ spark chamber, the processor chamber and the T-cog chamber, all important to the physical well-being of the gigantic cybertronians since Windblade and other cityspeakers were supposed to handle their psychological problems with time, which they had none since there was only Windblade and Lightbright, but happened the most bizarre yet helpful thing for the two: Human bonding.

Some humans bonded with the Titans in the same way they bond with a bug, or a thing, or any living or nonexistent creature. Some started to talk to them, living experiences, jokes, a tender touch, light stimulus here and there, dragging elonians and such to do the same, dormant Titans started to answer without their teams' knowledge: “I thought the lights only activated because they can?”

The cityspeakers were thrilled, Lightbright fell to her knees covering her intake, as Emissary’s sensor net lit up when one of his human caretakers put a hand over one of his spark’s module, the humans didn't know, but the Titan was talking in the only way he could in his vegetative state, Emissary was saying their names, the names of every human and elonian in his care team, the shock and happiness was such that Sparkstalker had to hold his conjunx endura from collapsing.

Now, Navitas is in constant crisis, as he should be, given the terrible environment his whole settlement landed in, but for the love of god, you can see other planets nearby, and it is more than clear that the velocitronians don't have the same energy shortage as they did when they landed on a planet that burns down every damn day.

Took time, discussions, a lot of bickering and Sparkstalker almost attacked Knockout when he called Lightbrigth an “idealist”.

They had to call Elita One, and she, with her imposing presence, made a direct question, “Do you really need to stay there?”

Velocitron’s leader, Knockout and Breakdown felt strangely little, Moonracer had dragged the first two to the council and the third came to back up his conjunx, “our people need the high amounts of solar energy to exist-”

She didn't let the red mech finish, maybe because her patience was already thin, “You can make it through with fewer races, less consumption of energon in your ludicrous victory parties, less waste in your continuous frame modifications just to be faster”, her expression was one of deep hatred, optics bright clue, and cold beyond comprehension, a femme that came from the worst shortages of energy happening along her life, you have a helpful Titan protecting you, giving you living quarters, sustaining your perilous ways while running for his life, for all of yours when all you had to do was to change planets, right you would get less solar energy, but your Titan wouldn't be so close to collapsing every single cycle”, she got near, dangerously so, “you want to know what will happen when he finally breaks? Well, you will never know, because you all will be burned to scrap metal to notice”.

Needless to say, the preparation to move them was done, they would have to use drones to extract the most intense energy out of the original planet, but they could make it work.

“No more?”, the Titan asked, looking at the flare still coming, but now it was distant, so far away, only to stop in a mountain formation, flares no longer coming at him, took him a moment, finally connecting with Windblade on his own, “No more?”

Navitas was given his own management team soon after the danger was away, sooner than later he was showing progress, less stress, less pressure, and changing his enormous tires to settling down in the soil, It takes time when Windblade goes to see the Titan again to see his progress, his chamber is clean, well-equipped, getting humans into Navitas has proven to be a challenge, velocitronians aren't exactly organic friendly, since they never saw one, so most humans stayed with the Titan, it was a surprise when one day the now settled cybertronian answered to an idle conversation of his only human inhabitant.

Navitas said the name of his human caretaker, his voice with the same feeling as an earthquake, heard by everyone, the first words said in eons since the last time he lost Amalgamous Prime, his therapy showed the best results among the Titans, he talked constantly, not physically, since his voice was no different from tectonic movement, the cityspeakers gave a datapad to the human caretaker to understand the Titan and talk, took time, but he could finally have it to teach the human to talk between them.

Ultimately, Navitas chose to return to Velocitron, and Windblade asked if that was what he really wanted, to which he said yes, he missed the pressure, the excitement, and he talked with his human caretaker, who could come and go when it got too much for him, because his human made him realize, he missed the thrill of running against death.

So far, Emissary and Navitas are the ones with the best progress, the first one can already move a few digits after the first reconstruction of his brain module, Nemesis is reluctant, as Lightbright would say, but wasn't violent to the organics repairing him, Caminus’ dispersed thoughts sometimes come back, “what curious and beautiful creatures” he would say about the humans trying to repair his dismantled frame, Windblade noted that he sounded happy before drifting away once more, Metrobase stays quiet yet his parts are being retrieved and assembled back to his frame every day by the Ardurians while humans try to start a conversation with him.

Vigilem was long gone, but Carcer stayed from the remnants of his mind, who feared Windblade and liked the humans, much to Elita One’s doubts.

Nickel watched the humans repairing Metroplex and got the chance to see the humans still mourning Metrotitan, building their houses where he once was in a display of memory, sad if anything, doubtful, asking herself that if Prion was still alive, he would have liked the organics too.

With how the Primes were created in my continuity it doesn’t exactly leave a lot of wiggle room to fit in how the Matrix of Leadership functions in this universe. The Primes were subconsciously created by the warring Titans in the early years of Cybertron as means to communicate with each other, as Titans are so large that the energy produced from their spark only powers so many of their functions. They TECHNICALLY have voice boxes in a sense but they can’t exactly use them if that makes sense? (It doesn’t). But the Primes were made by the Titans as vocal representatives of themselves to try to solve their war. Thirteen separate “alliances” between the Titans, one Prime representative from each, created by the “leader” of said alliance.

The Primes are the second generation of Cybertronians, creations that drew upon the Titans as baseline models so to speak. They became among the most powerful Cybertronians to ever exist in multiple aspects (physical abilities, intelligence, etc.), and keep in mind that there’s only the Primes and the Titans at this time. But anyway they came to a compromise within time, and the leaders of each alliance forfeited arms and settled down to become the initial structures of what would then become the Thirteen Primal States, the oldest and most politically influential city-states/regions on Cybertron (as well as the oldest). The Titan’s sparks became the first hotspots, with the planet itself soon following suit and more hotspots developing around the planet in a variety of areas (but centralized around the Primal states). Population began to grow beyond just the Titans and the Primes, with a large variety of frame types being produced by the hotspots. Beastformers, flight frames, ground frames, whatever you can think of.

The Primes were each the “leader” of their state, but many developed a somewhat representative democracy sort of government. Same goes for the non-Titan settlements that began developing around independent hotspots away from the Primal States, the main example being Vos, who developed a very military-centric city-state with the “monarch” of the state being the highest in hierarchy and the top military general being second. Not a lot of religious influence in Vos, but freedom of religion was a major part of how this flower in hierarchy conducted themselves. I can elaborate on Vos if anyone’s curious because I think it’s super interesting.

My point is that All the Primes had leadership positions without an object dictating a more “absolute” role. Which brings me to Optimus Prime—Orion Pax. What made him become a Prime if there was no Matrix of Leadership? Is there a mythological object that resembles it? Does it actually exist and the first Primes just hide that from the expanding public? Because by the time the civil war starts, all the Primes are dead, most by old age/natural causes. Pax doesn’t have any guidance here, no Alpha Trion, nothing really. But he’s still a Prime. How does he gain that title? Why? What makes him fitting of an EXTREMELY historically significant title? (Can’t emphasize that enough btw. The role of a Prime is ANCIENT. Why, after all this time after the death of the last Prime, is there a new one?)

This brings me to think about science and technology. The main social structure of Cybertron is a pretty even balance between the focus on empirical observation (evidence, tangible explanations for occurrences) and theological implication (the Big Hand guiding them all along so to speak). Pax himself in the beginning really never was religious, mostly remained that way for a long time. Taking from G1 here, he was a dock worker, working class laborers, which makes it strange since a large population of the working class was for the majority quite religious. There’s a weird relationship between science and religion I won’t get into, but don’t be fooled that when I say that the lower class peoples were pretty religious, that by no means that scientists and middle-upper class citizens weren’t. Religion often went hand in hand with science in Cybertron’s case. Technology was always shaping and developing since the BEGINNING. Alchemist Prime, Vector, Quintus, Solus, a lot of the originals held a very large focus on knowledge and education which fostered such a substantial growth in science and research alongside theological studies.

Pax emerged in a non-Primal State city as well as non-Titan as well, just a settlement started by the common mech who settled down in the area however many years ago. A lot of religious influence comes from the Primal States, with a lot of religious interpretation perceiving the Primes as vessels for Primus, or however the specific sect believes them to be. In a place like Tyger Pax (yes Orion Pax is from here yes it’s intentional) which was pretty far away from the Primal States, there wasn’t too much of a presence there, instead a greater focus on what technology they used. Pax’s life was day in and day out of watching hulking non-sentient vessels haul goods in and out of the city. Not a lot of time for theological discussions there for the most part.

So maybe. The Matrix was a piece of technology developed in modern days to advance one’s frame, make you stronger, faster, brings out other qualities of yourself in some way. An experimental piece of work developed pre-war.

My beloved