Primus (Primax)



Before the dawn of time, Order and Chaos existed within an extra dimensional entity known as The One. To explore the fledgling universe, he created the astral being known as Unicron, and then subdivided him, creating his twin, Primus. Both brothers were multiverse singularities, unique in all realities, but whereas Unicron could only exist in one dimension at a time, moving between them at will, Primus existed simultaneously in all realities at once. It is suggested, in fact, that the two brothers embody the basic concepts of reality - good and evil, order and chaos - and that their continued existence is necessary for the stability of the multiverse.



As Unicron and Primus went about their appointed task, venturing through the cosmos, it became apparent to Primus that Unicron was a corrupt being, and he took it upon himself to stop the threat posed to all of existence by his sibling. In combat, Primus was no match for Unicron. In cunning, however, he proved himself to his brother's superior when he shifted their battle to the astral plane, and then back to the physical world once more, only to have both their essences manifest within metallic planetoids, leaving them both trapped. It was with this act of sacrifice that Primus hoped to contain Unicron's evil forever. Unfortunately for him, over time, Unicron learned to sonically shape his prison into a giant metallic planet, and Primus followed suit, becoming the mechanical world of Cybertron. When Unicron then learned to transform his planetary form even further, into a gigantic robot form, Primus adapted the idea to suit his own ends - rather than transforming his own body, he would create small beings that would be able to change their shape, like Unicron. After performing a "test run" on the moon of Protos, where he successfully created twelve transforming robotic beings, he birthed from his own body a group of thirteen robots that possessed the ability to change shape, like Unicron. These were the 13 original Transformers, each one infused with a fragment of Primus' life essence known as a spark.

The Thirteen were Primus' soldiers in his war with Unicron, which came to its seeming end during a climactic battle in which one of the Thirteen, who would forever be known as The Fallen, betrayed Primus and became an acolyte of Unicron. The battle ended when the Fallen and Unicron were sucked into a black hole and disappeared from reality. With Unicron gone for now, Primus entered an eons-long slumber, his self-imposed sleep preventing Unicron from detecting him through the mental link the brothers shared. The Transformer race grew, and Primus fell into the realm of legend, with a portion of his power, the Matrix of Leadership, handed down through the generations, serving as the Transformers' ever-present link to their creator.

''The first time we ever heard the Primus/Unicron backstory was in the UK comic continuity, from Unicron himself, in the story Legacy of Unicron, when he recounted it to Death's Head. Per Unicron's telling of events, he was a primal force of evil at the dawn of the universe, who led a legion of Dark Armies against his mortal foe, Primus, Lord of the Light Gods (note the plural). Events proceeded to play out basically as described above, though the role of the Light Gods and Dark Armies would diminish with each subsequent retelling of the story, until the current version, in which Primus and Unicron are alone, and have a unique origin. (Only one of the other gods was ever named - the Chronarchitect. How exactly he factors into the current iteration of the myth is unknown.)''

''The second time the story was told was in the US book by the Keeper, an ancient mechanoid who guarded Primus' head at the center of Cybertron. This telling is effectively the same as the previous UK story, but mentions that their battle was towards the end of the era of gods, that Primus and Unicron were the last of their respective pantheons, and Primus had to defeat Unicron before he could take his place with the other gods in the "Omniversal Matrix".''

''The third time the story was told was also in the US Marvel series, this time by Primus, when he gathered all his children together to prepare for Unicron's coming. It was with this telling that we learned that Unicron predated the current universe, and had destroyed the previous universe which existed before the current one. He had slept peacefully, alone in the void of uncreation that remained, until fragments of the old universe that he had overlooked reacted, causing the Big Bang and birthing the current universe. The "sentient core" of this new universe recognized the threat that Unicron posed, and so created Primus to counter his evil and be guardian of the new creation.''

The first modern retelling of the origins of Primus and Unicron did not come from G1-oriented media, but from a set of Armada'' trading cards released by Fleer. It was the back story printed on Unicron's card which introduced the concept of the two being brothers created to explore the new universe by an extra dimensional entity, here named the "Allspark."''

''This was subsequently expanded on and combined with aspects of the various Marvel Comics stories in Transformers: The Ultimate Guide, published by Dorling Kindersley and written by Simon Furman, who had written all three prior telling in the first place. Here, the entity Fleer had called the "Allspark" was redubbed "The One," and the modern iteration of the myth detailed above was firmly established, and went on to form the backbone of subsequent fiction such as Universe and Fun Publications' Cybertron comics.''

It was also at this point that it was established that Primus could transform from Cybertron into a robot mode like Unicron, but preferred not to, choosing to remain connected to the universe on a planetary level.

The movie continuity seemingly does not follow this origin, instead having Cybertron and Transformer life be created by the All Spark cube.



Eventually, millions of years later, in one version of Generation One continuity, Grimlock, Jazz, and Bumblebee found themselves transported to the center of Cybertron, where they discovered the sleeping form of Primus and were told the tale of his and the Transformers' origins by the Keeper. Subsequently, Bludgeon's Pretenders attacked, and during the battle, a laser blast ricocheted off Grimlock and struck the essence of the sleeping Primus, causing a multiverse-shaking "Primal Scream" that woke Unicron and alerted him to Primus' location. Primus himself immediately slipped back into his sleep, but it was too late.



Unicron dispatched a group of heralds to attack Cybertron and pave the way for his coming, including a Galvatron plucked from an alternate future. Galvatron, however, was not content to serve under Unicron, and instead captured Autobot leader Emirate Xaaron, forcing him to fully awaken Primus, who possessed Xaaron's body and summoned Transformers from all across the universe back to Cybertron. Primus intended for all his children to battle Unicron together, but when the planet-eater arrived, sheer terror prevented them from carrying out his desire. Primus instead made a stand himself, attempting to dupe Unicron into believing he still retained his full power, but Unicron saw through the deception, and destroyed Xaaron's body. Optimus Prime subsequently used the Matrix, the full measure of Primus' power, to destroy Unicron. His body in this universe obliterated, Unicron moved on to another dimension, to ravage other worlds, and make further attempts on Cybertrons throughout the multiverse.

(Note: As originally written, it is quite clear that the story intends for Primus to have died after his battle with Unicron. As the current retcon makes it clear that this cannot possibly be, one must assume that Prime was wrong in his analysis that Primus had died. Notably, even in the original comics themselves, the Matrix - the life-force of Primus - is shown to still exist and is functioning fine in the G2 Marvel Comics series that follows his supposed death.)

Primus did not exist in the Generation One cartoon as it was originally written. There, Cybertron's oldest revealed status was as a factory world of the Quintessons who invented the Transformers, and Unicron was created by the ancient genius Primacron.

In addition to its occasional invocation in prayer or in righteous anger by the Beast Warriors, Primus' name was also lent to a set of prophetical datatrax, known as the Covenant of Primus. From this document, the Megatron of this era took his name (as did, presumably, the original Megatron), and the scriptures foretold the events which completed the Beast Wars.

After the Beast Wars, Megatron intended to incorporate Primus' essence, the Allspark, into his own being and become godlike by stealing every Spark of every Transformer on Cybertron. Ultimately, this was merely one step of the Oracle's plan to reformat Cybertron into a technorganic paradise. After Megatron and Optimus Primal were plunged into the planet's core, the planet was reborn and the abducted Sparks were returned to new technorganic bodies.



Following the recreation of Cybertron as a technorganic world, Unicron began gathering Transformers from across the multiverse, forcing them to fight and harvesting the Sparks of the losers to restore his power. With each spark devoured, Primus was weakened, and so, communing with Autobot elder Alpha Trion, called back from the Allspark the now-legendary Maximal commander and Cybertron's savior, Optimus Primal, to rescue the possessed, battling captives from the Pit of Unicron -- and to lead a team of multiverse warriors to put a stop to his soul-stealing scheme before it could cause the Allspark to collapse.

Primus allowed Optimus Primal to choose any Transformer who ever existed -- living or dead -- for his army. This required considerable amounts of Primus' power, so Primal was told to choose sparingly. Primal chose his departed former troops Rhinox and Depth Charge. Ultimately, however, Unicron's defeat came not as a result of their efforts, but as a consequence of another battle, happening in another corner of the Transformers multiverse.

While on an adventure through space and time, the singing group known as the Kiss Players - natives of the Generation One universe - were accidentally scattered across the multiverse, and found themselves in the Unicron Trilogy universe. Shaoshao Li and Zangetsu found themselves stranded on the surface of Cybertron, where they were menaced by Scrapmetal. Shao was rescued by Safeguard, who told her that she stood upon Primus himself. Shortly thereafter, with help from Vector Prime, the giant golden hand of the Primus from her native universe took her back home.

As of this writing, neither Unicron nor Primus has appeared in the new IDW comics universe. Writer Simon Furman has outright said that this universe will have "no Primus. No Unicron", while hinting IDW may be "poking and prodding around the pre-history of the Transformers... the very beginning". IDW publisher Chris Ryall has also stated "we're also going to do the TF origins this year [2008], too. That one will be called The Thirteen". 

While author intent on its own could still leave room for an IDW Primus, if the upcoming story has a contradictory origin for the Transformers, that would retcon out the previous retcon, rendering Primus as being once again a feature of only some Transformer continuities. (And then some poor sod would have to heavily edit this article.)

It is confirmed that there was a Primus in some shape or form, as Cybertronians were shown taking his name in vain while under attack in Megatron Origin, part 4. Furman's explanation for this in his blog is that this is not the G1 Primus, but it is possible there was "something or someone" called Primus at some point. 

In the absence of Primus, there were some other interesting things to mention in Cybertronian religion. In the Stormbringer miniseries, Jetfire and Scoop make mention of Primacron in an almost religious manner ("Primacron help us" and "Primacron only knows"). Bludgeon claims that there is a spirit of Cybertron which needs to be appeased to restore Cybertron, which one could easily interpret as Primus. However, Bludgeon's idea of appeasing Cybertron was to allow Thunderwing to destroy a bunch of planets in a mass sacrifice, so his sources (and his sanity) are a matter of debate.

While Primus has been a staple in Western Transformers fiction since 1988, the character has only recently made the leap across the Pacific to take part in the world of Japanese Transformers storylines.

Primus did not exist in Japanese Transformers fiction until he was introduced in Superlink (Energon). Although his nature is not fully divulged in the course of either this series or Galaxy Force (Cybertron), some early Superlink pre-production notes go into the specifics of Primus' creation. Not particularly in-line with the Western multiverse origin of the character, they present Primus as an entity consisting purely of energon. Energon, the notes state, is the product of the "genetic material" of the sun interacting with planetary bodies - this, then, appears to be a very literal interpretation of Primus' role as a "light god," presenting him as an actual product of the light of the sun.



The Japanese decided at last to introduce a "G1" equivalent of the character in the Kiss Players fiction of 2007, wholly distinct from the version seen in Energon and Cybertron, since the character is not a multiverse singularity in Japan. Here, the character was envisioned as part of a complicated retcon that merged various animated concepts - Primacron's assistant, Vector Sigma and the Oracle - into one singular entity, who was also Primus.

Formerly the assistant to the Primacron, the ancient genius who created the giant mechanoid Unicron, the robotic being known as the Oracle was badly damaged when Unicron rebelled against his creator. His essence fled to a dead world at the center of the galaxy, which he used his powers to transform into a verdant, green planet. This world was eventually discovered by the alien Quintessons, and the Oracle was captured and transformed into the mega-computer, Vector Sigma. The Oracle's world was transformed into the metallic planet of Cybertron, his powers were harnessed by the Quintessons to create the races of robots that would eventually become the Transformers, and the shell that had held his essence became the Matrix of Leadership.



Eons later, in the year 2007, three of Unicron's servants, the Sparkbots, co-opted the human singing group, the Kiss Players, into helping them gather up the scattered essence of their master following his destruction in 2005. The three girls - Marissa Faireborn, Atari Hitotonari and Shaoshao Li - were taken on a journey through space and time, and were tricked into believing that they were recovering fragments of the so-called "Allspark" from Autobot or Maximal leaders throughout history. The Oracle - by this stage calling himself Primus - was forced to intervene, appearing as a giant golden hand which began to steal away the fragments before the Kiss Players could gather them. Pursuing him across the multiverse, the Kiss Players collided with the Wall of Time and were scattered across dimensions.

Primus rescued the girls from the Unicron Trilogy universe and revealed the Sparkbots' deception, before transforming into his "golden ark" mode (which Shaoshao thought looked more like a camper truck) to pursue the three villains back in time to prehistoric Earth. They arrived just in time to witness the Sparkbots' successful restoration of Unicron to life, but Primus transformed once more and unleashed the power of his mobile cannon platform, destroying Unicron's energy and sealing it and the Sparkbots deep within the planet. To ensure that Unicron would never be freed again, he created a mighty guardian, Fortress Maximus, who would watch over it and the Earth. With the battle over, Shaoshao asked about the Kiss Players' future, but Primus did not reply. His work complete, the god transformed into a golden sphere and went to sleep.