Mass Effect x Transformers
So, you didn't know/care, but I'll sketch out their brief history and hit the twist.
In the mythology of the Transformers, it starts in the beginning. Aeons ago before even their recorded history, there were two machine-gods: Primus, who was good and order, and Unicron the evil Chaos Bringer. They fought an endless battle, until Primus created his Children, the first Primes (and the original Transformers) who went on to lead the armies of transformers into subduing Unicron. Unicron was wounded, sent into a deep slumber, and vanished.
The Transformers had a golden age of unity living on Primus, who became their homeworld of Cybertron after he, too, went into a deep slumber. The Transformers lived in unity and peace, though corruption gradually crept in over untold millenia and sparked a Civil War between the oppressed (who would become the warlike, power-mad Decepticons) and their established state (the civilians, builders, and engineers who became the Autobots). The War destroyed nearly all life on Cybertron, almost destroying the planet itself, sending the two sides fighting to escape and fleeing their crippled home world.
To which the Reapers say... Just As Planned.
(More on that in a bit.)
So in the various Transformers Universes, the Autobots (the good guys) have various artifacts of great power and influence. There's the Matrix of Leadership, aka the Key to Vector Sigma. Part 'sufficiently advanced technology', partly a quasi-spiritual means to higher knowledge and seeking out guidance. Very important, and the Autobots took these with them when they escaped Cybertron.
So the Robots crashland on Earth, pass out for a few millenia, and generally wake up in the current future and hide amongst us by taking vehicle forms with some liberal hologram usage. They find some kids, have crazy adventures, with the Autobots often making some sort of pact with the government(s) and the Decepticons scheming to conquer the planet in their evil goals.
This all still happens. Where it changes is the discovery of the Prothean Ruins on Mars, and the discovery of Mass Effect technology- a technology the otherwise hyper-advanced robots had no clue of, but which none the less fills them with dread and revulsion in the depths of their sparks (hearts).
First Contact War happens differently, with GIANT ROBOTS helping General Williams hold out and giving the Council, which is notoriously anti-AI, a good scare... especially since the Transformers have exceptionally advanced technology including space-bridge point-to-point FTL that doesn't need a relay. With the alliance/friendship with dangerous robots being one of those 'Humans are too reckless' arguments Humanity, and with the Decepticons putting a bad taste on everything and some valid fears that certain Council Races and Terminus Groups would like to capture and dissect a Transformer, the Robots go back into hiding under the general protection of the Alliance and the very grudging acceptance of the Council. Optimus Prime hopes that one day they can prove themselves to the Council like they did the Humans, and make friends and peace and all that good stuff.
So ME1 comes. As part of the Humans growing in power/robots trying to prove themselves, Shepherd's Mako is actually a hiding alien robot (cue jokes with Garrus before he learns), and with Space Bridge a call away the 1st Human Spectre has Back Up like no one else. Mass Effect happens, the exposure of the Transformers is tolerated because of the Spectre Card, the Transformers make headlines in helping in the fight against the Geth Synthetic Menace...
And whenever the the Transformers see Reaper tech or Reapers, even the kindest of them goes into a terrifying, and terrified, blood rage of berserk or cold-blooded variety. A inbuilt reaction that scares even then?
Well, it goes back awhile, to the true history of the universe.
Primus and Unicron were not the first- the Reapers were to them what the transformers are to us. And the dueling gods of Creation and Destruction did not fight each other in the endless battle- they fought the Reapers. And there was never a Good/Evil division because the Transformers were never good... they were all very, very bad.
The Cybertronian machine-gods were the creations of a species that has long since been wiped from history by the Reapers for, well, showing why the Reapers and Catalyst fear the Synthetic threat in the first place. The planet-sized synthetics weren't personally antagonistic... they were just built with different design philosophies.
Unicron, the Planet Eater, was the idea of a single, unstoppable force that is also the immovable object. Consuming ever greater amounts of raw materials to grow in size and power, Unicron grew to proportions that could swat Reaper armies with a single blow. Countless campaigns and invasions were attempted, with Reaper forces breaking into the death-world's interior and ultimately dying... for whenever the Planet Eater was truly threatened, it could flee to FTL and recover itself.
Primus, the Creator, was the idea of a home base for a decentralized, unbeatable army. Rather than consume planets itself, it built workers to go out and bring it the raw materials it needed to produce more. And to protect those workers and fight its battles, it built the fighter models to establish its Empire and fight its wars. It was a host not even the Reapers could outmatch, as while the Reapers could beat individual warrior groups the engineers were always building more and better. Reaper armies outnumbered the Transformers... but Transformers outnumbered the Reapers.
These were the first Autobots and Decepticons, and They Were Not Nice. The Cybertronian Empire, lost to modern history, was an ever-expanding machine of conquest, enslavement, and exploitation for the glory and power of Primus. The early Autobots did not defend organics- they enslaved them, built over them, or used them to draw ever more resources from a planet until it was a ruined husk.
The machine gods Unicron and Primus, as well as their forgotten counterparts, waged a never-ending war against the Reapers in the one cycle that almost broke the Cycle. The Reaper Host, magnitudes greater than what it was in ME3, was devastated. Entire organic civilizations rose, were conquered and enslaved by one side or the other, and fell within the aeons-long war. Conventional Victory was impossible.
So the Catalyst turned to unconventional means, and had its host build the Crucible and Citadel to end the war.
The Destroy Beam was devastatingly effective. Entire machine-gods were destroyed in minutes in what had been aeons of fighting.The Cybertronian Empire was quickly destroyed in flashes of red and ruined machinery. Even Unicron the World Eater, a planet in and of itself, was almost fatally wounded by the spear of red synthetic death... though it barely made an escape to FTL before shutting itself down for hibernation as it tried to repair its damage.
But Primus, Cybertron... the Creator God was clever and cautious, all previous invasions having failed by fleeing elsewhere. It would never let itself be caught in such a trap, and would instead exert itself to flee no matter the immense cost in energy.
So the Reapers set a trick and trap for future aeons to come.
They chased it- wore it down, tired it, drained it of so much energy that by the time the rest of the empire was destroyed but Primus itself felt it had run far enough it needed to go into a hibernation of aeons. It's armies stood upon it, ready for if the Ultimate Enemy ever found them.
The Reapers never did. They never needed to. They dismantled the ruins of the old war, prepared the cycle anew, and began to increase their numbers once again as the Cybertronians hid in Dark Space. They had already played their card.
Because you see, the Reapers had let a special artifact fall into the hands of the Cybertronians- a powerful Reaper artifact in AI cyberwarfare that the engineers had studied and re-purposed, turning it into a shield for their own... never discovering the hidden coding, deep within. Was it a kill switch? An AI backdoor? Some crippling weapons virus?
No, it was worse than that. It was... Conscience.
The Autobot-Decepticon divide, the catalyst for a civil war to end the caste system and that tore Cybertron apart, was instigated by the Reapers. When the war began and the Autobots held onto this artifact, this Matrix of Leadership, it only increased the corruption within- the Decepticons, returning to the original ways, unwittingly fighting for the true history of Cybertron with ever-increasing ruthlessness. The Autobots, unaware that they were the deviants, fighting back on the grounds of morality and seeking to protect other species.
The unbeaten army and its machine god, torn apart and crippled, and soon exposing themselves to the sight of the galaxy and the Reapers.
Just As Planned.
---
ME1 involves Autobots, an ally of Humanity while feared by the Council as dangerous synthetics, chase Saren. Saren has Decepticon partners, naturally, though both he and the Decepticons are trying to out-gambit eachother- the Decepticons want to capture/study Sovereign, while Saren needs the Transformers to assist the Geth against the Autobots.
Sovereign's speach on Virmire establishes inclinations that the Reapers are the greater evil and choas predating Unicron.
ME2 involves, well, more of the same. Autobots help. Decepticons are helping Collectors in exchange for technology. Megatron wants superweapons and superior understanding of the Reapers. TIM and Cerberus are self-described as trying to protect Humanity from all other species, including Cybertronians.
The big reveal from the Collector Base is that the Human Reaper is effectively being made with a Reaper-created Matrix of Leadership. This shocking twists casts doubt on the Cybertronian understanding as history, with DLC helping reveal that the ancient Autobots were just as bad as the Decepticons.
ME3 brings the war, in which giant robots fight even bigger squid-ships. The Reapers invade Cybertron and threaten to destroy it (and the Cybertronians) once and for all, prompting a team-up of Autobots and Decepticons to save the homeland. (Megatron's inevitable betrayal is, well, inevitable. And maybe Starscream can actually succede, with Shepard's help?). Unicron likewise shows up to gobble Earth, which is being turned into a Reaper production facility to make lots of new Reapers.
The end probably twists into the Crucible being integrated with Cybertron/the Matrix of Leadership so that it can
-Destroy all Synthetics, Reapers and Cybertronians and the rest. Megatron's ultimate weapon to defeat the Reapers and conquer the galaxy.
-Control both Reapers and Cybertronians, putting the greatest synthetic threats under the control of a human (read: TIM).
-Empathize- which infects all Reapers and Cybertronians with the Autobot 'conscience' as exemplified with Optimus Prime), and gives everyone else Reaper/Cybertronian implants. Synthesis, in effect. 'Until all are one.'
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