The Energon Pub

I don't have my comics with me here. I checked out the TF Wiki. It says that the people of Caminus are very familiar with Titans and presumably their hyperdrives. However, they are running low on resources. That is a really big contradiction. If the people of Caminus can hyperjump quite easily, why can't they travel the galaxy and bring back resources for their world? Maybe something is stopping them. There might be a tremendous shortage of some critical materials in the galaxy. There might be a powerful force preventing the Transformers from acquiring resources. The Galactic Council springs to mind here. A new alien enemy could be introduced. If Caminus is near a destructive natural force, such as a black hole or neutron star, that could be a major barrier to hyperjumping. Whatever the situation, this could be a major driver for the story.

Then we have the question of gender. Clearly, the people of Caminus like the humanoid female form. I imagine that they met some very admirable females in the past and sought to emulate them. The male form is more suited to conflict, with larger muscles, greater upper body strength, a more robust shape, etc. In real life research, the male jaw was recently shown to be very good at resisting impacts, as compared to animal snouts and female jaws. The female form is better in other ways especially in non-combat activities. Examples are doing delicate work and sensing environmental problems (temperatures, gases, humidity, various dangers, etc.).

If you read 'Drift: Empire of Stone', Hellbat was talking about how Transformers were built mainly as war machines or engines of death, being incredibly strong and durable. The female forms of Caminus may be trying to break away from that lethal role. However, have they left themselves too vulnerable now or do they have other powers that we have not seen? If they have behaved themselves very well, they may have acquired many allies amongst the stars.

Familiar with the technology does not mean access to it, though.

When we first meet Chromia, Windblade and Nautica, they are travelling with Thunderclash to find help for the Titan Caminus - the only Titan they have contact with. All Windblade knows about Cybertron are stories, Camiens are a colony detached from Cybertron for many many years.


As for the second part of your post, I disagree almost entirely with everything you said.

Chromia and Windblade have both demonstrated great combat skills, as has Arcee. There are several allegedly masculine Cybertronians across the rest of the fiction that are much worse off in terms of conflict, e.g. Tailgate - and some that are much better, with completely nondescript bodyforms, e.g. Whirl.


In case it wasn't clear, my interest is piqued with this series, and am very much looking forward to how it'll tie in with Combiner Wars, and what the wider repercussions of Caminus-Cybertron contact might be.

I think seeds are being planted for the rise of a third faction (and I would love for animal based transformers to rise up at one point). We see an early version but as someone said above me, Cybertron at the moment is just one city.

Looking forward to the aftermath of CW just to see the state of play

mirageandjazz1197 wrote:

ThatOneMoose wrote:Pleeease please please give us a figure of that!!!

It would be extremely inaccurate though.



Not that it's a bad thing just something to point out.

I'm not sure she was designed with an alt-mode in mind in the first place. She looks cool, but I'm not sure how well it'd translate to a transforming toy, and they don't do non-transforming toys for comic characters.

Nemesis Primal wrote:

mirageandjazz1197 wrote:

ThatOneMoose wrote:Pleeease please please give us a figure of that!!!

It would be extremely inaccurate though.



Not that it's a bad thing just something to point out.

I'm not sure she was designed with an alt-mode in mind in the first place. She looks cool, but I'm not sure how well it'd translate to a transforming toy, and they don't do non-transforming toys for comic characters.

Altmode or not, I want her; I want her now; in my collection and in my heart .

snavej wrote:I don't have my comics with me here. I checked out the TF Wiki. It says that the people of Caminus are very familiar with Titans and presumably their hyperdrives. However, they are running low on resources. That is a really big contradiction. If the people of Caminus can hyperjump quite easily, why can't they travel the galaxy and bring back resources for their world? Maybe something is stopping them. There might be a tremendous shortage of some critical materials in the galaxy. There might be a powerful force preventing the Transformers from acquiring resources. The Galactic Council springs to mind here. A new alien enemy could be introduced. If Caminus is near a destructive natural force, such as a black hole or neutron star, that could be a major barrier to hyperjumping. Whatever the situation, this could be a major driver for the story.

So maybe it's like Stargate but from the aliens perspective. A world of industrious builders, the Camians may have consumed their resources and now be on the verge of starvation, but Caminus himself no longer spaceworthy, they'd be relying on spacebridges and smaller ships. The spacebridge from their Metrotitan would only connect them to spacebridges of other Metrotitans, though, so they'd have a limited number of addresses they could go to, and maybe they can't connect with them for some reason?

One thing that occurs to me is that, although I really like Windblade, she promised Starscream access to Metroplex's space-bridge rather readily, which makes me wonder if that doesn't actually suit Windblade's higher ups just fine.

Presuming for a moment you need resources, but the only places you can get resources are hostile towards your attempts to access those resources, you're pressed into a fight or starve situation.

Clearly, Caminans can fight - Nautica doesn't appear to be combat savvy, but the other two do. However, Windblade's combat training seems to be defensive, primarily focused on 'stay alive until Chromia gets here' and Chromia's approach to 'problem solving' is unorthodox - although quite willing to defend Windblade with violence, rather than confront and kill the source of the threat, she's willing to kill apparently unrelated, easier targets if it will steer Windblade away from the threat more safely than a direct confrontation.

If they're representative of their planet, Windblade's nature suggests that the society values peace with a willingness to fight for survival, while Chromia's nature suggests that some of them, at least, have a Caminan's-first mentality, that doesn't shy away from an ends-justify-the-means approach. It's a dichotomy that makes sense in the context of a theocracy which holds moral values like a religion, but is still dedicated primarily to the welfare of its people like a government.

Anyway, given a society like that, how might you resolve your resource problem?

Attacking other planets straight-out might be contrary to your more defensive nature - not just culturally but also infrastructurally, as you'd likely lack the resources and experience to win an open war. BUT, if you knew your cousins, godless heathens who have been fighting a war for millions of years, had just resolved their differences and now have thousands of combat veterans, advanced weapons, and war machines trying to make a go of post-war renewal, you might consider negotiating an exchange of services, or, if you were completely desperate, you might be willing to sacrifice a measure of your sovereignty for a privileged seat in an alliance.

Starscream wants an Empire, and I have a feeling the Mistress of Flame may offer it to him. I can imagine her playing him like Stannis Baratheon, at least at first - in the long run, Starscream's not trusting enough to be manipulated that easily.

I quite like your star gate analogy and I would love to read a miniseries based on that concept.

I may of missed this along the way but how many issues are there going to be in this new windblade series?

All of those thoughts were indeed running trough my mind too, but you wrote them out beautifully and coherently, Caelus. Very well done.

What is currently standing out for me, though, is the link to the wider Combiner Wars event - how do Camien-Cybertronian relations end us up with Superion/Defensor? We know Prowl and Devastator, plus the Enigma of Combination, have a lot to do with it, and Menasor has been in the comics previously, but how do they tie in to a profitable deal on behalf of Starscream with Windblade's colony?

Right now, that doesn't click.

So, reading through the solicits; I want to make sure I've got something; more or less right; and my warped sense of transformers hasn't gotten to me. So Starscream; the chosen one by way of the special to unit all cybertronians' including those terrestrial and lost; is going to go about it the ol' fashioned way. By that I mean the ancient Goguryeo way of "we'll conquer you or enslave you" (I've been whatching allot of Korean Dramas). If that's the case I have a feeling starscream's probably going to die soon; and windblade maaaay(?) have something to with it. Either way she's probably comrades of necessity with starscream for the time being; as well as some other associates. Though, let's put it this way; I doubt all the men who reddened Caesar's toga would still be seen breaking bread together in peacetime.

I don't think star scream will die just yet, I bet he will fall from grace, however. Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle. It could be possible that Camien is an ally of Starscream (aat first, not wanting to disbelieve the words of a titan) hence why Superion is there, in fact this new combiner may be part of the forces attacking force.

Or ironhide could of pinched Superion to aid his new friends without starscream knowing about it.

Last we saw about Superion though, in xRID #33, was that Wheeljack is working to make it Starscream/Cybertron's 'official' defense against its enemies (shown as Prowl/Devastator, Menasor and Monstructor).


Updated the first post with all the synopses, in order, so far!

Monstructor 2016!

Also I see on other sites people are complaining about the soft works on the Lady of pain mistress of flame. I can only hope if she transformers, she turns it the cybertronian equivalent of a biplane, failing that a blimp

Maybe she turns into the forge of solus prime

Va'al wrote:All of those thoughts were indeed running trough my mind too, but you wrote them out beautifully and coherently, Caelus. Very well done.

Thank you again

What is currently standing out for me, though, is the link to the wider Combiner Wars event - how do Camien-Cybertronian relations end us up with Superion/Defensor? We know Prowl and Devastator, plus the Enigma of Combination, have a lot to do with it, and Menasor has been in the comics previously, but how do they tie in to a profitable deal on behalf of Starscream with Windblade's colony?

Right now, that doesn't click.

Talking out my exhaust port - when Windblade showed Starscream the spacebridge from Metroplex, she showed him a lot of different worlds that were supposed to be lost colonies of Cybertron, and we also know that when Galvatron 'killed' Nexus Prime the other Primes - I think all except Alpha Trion - ditched the planet. It may be that each of the colonies has some patron Prime associated with it. While Cybertron favors the worship of the Guiding Hand (or Primus himself), perhaps each colony is devoted to a different one of the 13. Now, I'm not sold on the idea, because I think Onyx Prime and Nexus Prime are tangled up in Earth, but I could be wrong. It could be that the old alliances and conflicts that tore the Primes apart on ancient Cybertron are now 'primed' to erupt on an interstellar scale once Starscream starts putting everyone back in touch with one another, and that may be the case even if the Primes themselves are long departed.

For example, let's say that Solus Prime is the Patron Deity of Caminus, and that her worshipers know/believe she was killed/betrayed by Megatronus. Even if Solus and Megatronus are no longer in the picture, the Caminans wouldn't necessarily take too well to anyone they see as a descendent of Megatronus' legacy. That definitely makes his former errand boy Galvatron persona non grata for Caminans, and because of Megatron taking his name, any Decepticons may also be guilty by association.

Now, just as Caminans might be hostile to the successors of Megatronus, they may be favorable to anyone they perceive as carrying the mantle of Nexus Prime, patron of Combiners and Solus Prime's bestie. And since renouncing his allegiance to the Decepticons, what has Starscream been doing? He hasn't been blasphemously playing God by trying to create a combiner. Starscream's been trying to repair a combiner that emerged naturally from the wilderness of Cybertron to defend its people from the nightmarish monstrosity that was the Decepticon's abomination Devastator. Right now, Superion's the closest thing on Cybertron to a holy miracle, and Starscream has been heroically protecting him and nursing him back to health (from a certain point of view).

Having 'dibbs' on Superion might give Starscream the credibility to deal with the Mistress of Flame and the rest of Caminus politically, but that raises a couple of problems. First, Superion's never been the very cooperative type, so this could just backfire catastrophically for Starscream (with a mindless rampage all over Caminus). Second, the gestalts may become powerful forces not as physical weapons, but as symbols of sovereignty and ordained legitimacy. I always felt like a giant robot, no matter how big, could not be that big a threat when there are plenty of starships handy to bombard them from orbit, but maybe the Combiner Wars aren't about kaiju scale rock'em sock'em robots - maybe the Combiner Wars will be everyone vying to be seen as legitimately favored by Nexus Prime and, by extension, secure an alliance with the Caminans. Starscream will field Superion to legitimize himself. Menasor will pop up as the Decepticon's challenge to that legitimacy. The Autobots will get Defensor out there to throw their hats in the ring, and Prowl may just crack and decide he is Nexus Prime reincarnated. And at some point, probably at the climax we might see Optimus himself combine - possibly to fight Galvatron.

And all the while there's all of these other planets ticking by while all this goes down. While Cybertron tries to embrace "Til All Are One" in a whole host of different ways and make friendly with Caminus, there are other colonies devoted to other Primes, including, possibly, Megatronus and Liege Maximo. That could lead us (over the next several years) into IDW's take on Unicron and the G2 Cybertronians.



As a big tangent to that, anyone else notice that Jhiaxus seemed to be hell bent on reverse engineering the Thirteen? He alters a bunch of folks into Monstructor, in the first attempt at combination since Nexus Prime vanished. He alters Arcee into a 'female', the first seen on Cybertron (as far as we know), since Solus vanished. He alters the inhabitants of Gorlam Prime into Micromasters, and possibly fiddled with the Ammonites, which may be him trying to dabble in Micronus Prime's domain. At a stretch, the time machine shenanigans might even be him trying to rip off Vector Prime.

(Please excuse any typos, am on my phone!)

The idea of patron deities would definitely work, yes, and fits well with the 'descendants' route of antagonising and pitting characters against each other in a story-logical manner.

What would contradict the Superion miracle theory, though, is the solicit for Windblade, claiming that the Aerialbot combiner is somehow involved in the defense of Caminus, rather than attack (intentional or not). The Galvatron/Optimus consequence, though, could still stand.

The multi-colonies in WB had duobots and beastformers, with the latter giving more fundament to the 13 patrons line of thought. How very fascinating. The point you make about Prowl made me chuckle, too.


I have very little to say because I find myself agreeing with a lot of your theories! Please do go on if you have more.

Wasn't it hinted though that Galvatron may be Megatronus himself?

I do like the theory about Jihaxus, wouldn't suprise me if they have him be the one who created the physical body of Unicron (not saying he would create Unicron himself just the shell the chaos bringer inhabits)

It is true that the feminine Transformers in the IDW universe are excellent warriors and generally very proficient. The inconsistency here is the scarcity of feminine Transformers. If they are so capable, why are there not many more of them? This could be one of the biggest blunders-by-omission in the Transformers storylines. The typical feminine Transformer seems to be slimmer than the masculine and other Transformers. It would take less material to build them. It makes sense to build more feminine Transformers and have a more resource-efficient army or workforce.

With regard to hyperdrive technology, the people of Caminus have free will and should have been able to reinvent the hyperdrive, given their prior knowledge, intelligence, plenty of available time and perhaps some occasional contact with other colonies or other species. They are advanced people.

ZeroWolf wrote:I quite like your star gate analogy and I would love to read a miniseries based on that concept.

I may of missed this along the way but how many issues are there going to be in this new windblade series?

The new Windblade series is an ongoing, rather than a miniseries, like her first title.

Bounti76 wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:I quite like your star gate analogy and I would love to read a miniseries based on that concept.

I may of missed this along the way but how many issues are there going to be in this new windblade series?

The new Windblade series is an ongoing, rather than a miniseries, like her first title.

Yup. The Combiner Wars issues are the first 3 of the ongoing.

Nice massively looking forward to it

snavej wrote:It is true that the feminine Transformers in the IDW universe are excellent warriors and generally very proficient. The inconsistency here is the scarcity of feminine Transformers. If they are so capable, why are there not many more of them? This could be one of the biggest blunders-by-omission in the Transformers storylines. The typical feminine Transformer seems to be slimmer than the masculine and other Transformers. It would take less material to build them. It makes sense to build more feminine Transformers and have a more resource-efficient army or workforce.

Sorry for double posting but I just saw this. In IDW, female bots are only rare on cybertron, actually it took Jihaxus to make a female bot on cybertron. Other worlds though have more females, if they went the same way as Camien.

It is strange that Cybertron didn't make more feminine Transformers. The Cybertronians have been very innovative but this seems to have been a major blind spot for them. I am very surprised. They could have saved an enormous amount of energon and materials by downsizing. Perhaps this could be attributed to the total insanity of their war. I wonder if IDW would bother to retcon this situation?

snavej wrote:It is strange that Cybertron didn't make more feminine Transformers. The Cybertronians have been very innovative but this seems to have been a major blind spot for them. I am very surprised.

It's more of a creator (writers, editors) than in-story issue, to be honest. What is happening right now is trying to explain and make compatible what has been going on in the fiction (since 2005) with the emergence of Camiens. That, and help smoothe out some of the wrinkles with Spotlight: Arcee - which Barber was already nicely addressing with his writing of the character.

Caelus wrote:Plus, Cybertron itself is pretty interesting right now - it was their home for millions of years, but now it's essentially a frontier world, with a single settlement and a lot of unexplored wilderness. Hopefully that doesn't get forgotten, because I think that story - reclaiming Cybertron - could fill volumes.

Let's not forget that the single settlement is Metroplex, and he's not in the best of shape right now. That might add a few extra wrinkles to the situation.

IDW regular artist Livio Ramondelli, the main visualiser for the upcoming Combiner Wars event - seeing the Transformers and Windblade series crossing over - has shared a couple of sneak previews of new and old characters joining the robot cast in the comics! Check out the mirrored images below, featuring Defensor and Superion, the big green himself Devastator, and the newcomer Mistress of Flame.