Yes, you read that right.
The One is an extradimensional entity from before time, in whom Order and Chaos exist in perfect harmony. It created Unicron, then cut him in half to make Primus.
Fiction[]
DK Ultimate Guide[]
The One existed before time itself, witness to the birth of the universe. The One was curious about this new realm and created a new being, Unicron, to explore it. For some reason, The One then split its creation in two, one half still being Unicron while the other became Primus. In keeping with their creator's nature as a perfect balance of Order and Chaos, the twin "exploratory heralds" became the embodiments of those two principles, but separated. Transformers: The Ultimate Guide
Notes[]
- The Armada cartoon, which came out between the 3H comics and the Ultimate Guide, provided an interesting parallel in its creation story. Narration in the series premiere declared, "Light years ago, deep in the cosmos, a unique, digital entity came into being. In search of other life forms, it sent explorers out to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. These digital, mechanical beings became known as Transformers." This was expanded upon in the novelization, which said that the Transformers' pre-war goal was to explore the universe, downloading their discoveries into Cybertron so the planet could grow in knowledge. Assuming the "digital entity" was Primus, he seems to be imitating his creator's own method of vicarious exploration.
- The One's method of creating Primus from the substance of Unicron mirrors Primus's creation of the Transformers, whose sparks are fragments of his own being, as stated in "Abduction". This process was explored in slightly more detail in Simon Furman's apocryphal text story "Alignment".
- The One's (and Primus's, and the Liege Maximo's in "Alignment", and to a lesser extent budding) method of splitting off portions of its lifeforce all have a strong correspondence with Emanationism, specifically the Gnostic flavor, wherein an all-powerful God known as "The One" responds to the unresolvable conflicts in the world by "emanating" polarized aspects of itself to fight them out until they achieve resolution and then return to enlighten The One with their findings. (William Blake wrote a tiresome cycle of epic poetry about one such conflict.)