Title: Decadence
Category: Cartoons » Transformers/Beast Wars
Author: Ayngel
Language: English, Rating: Rated: M
Genre: Drama/Family
Published: 06-11-09, Updated: 06-14-09
Chapters: 3, Words: 18,739
== DECADENCE ==
By Ayngel
Disclaimer: Whilst this concept of the nature of Cybertron is my creation, I do not own the name, or any of the original ideas associated with it. Nor do I own any characters from Transformers, or any places or scenes. All these belongs to Hasbro and I make no money from this work.
Warnings: none in this chapter. Later story contains adult themes, domestic violence and drug use.
Forward:
I first wrote this story quite a while back now, as part of a larger work called "Awakenings" which it is still intended to make an appearance on here at some stage and is one of the prequels to Forbidden Fantasies. This section of it sort of ran away a bit at the time, and somehow Moonracer found her way in. But I've left her in it. She's really very important to the continuity.
I am conscious of the fact that the Mirage/history/Towers etc theme has been tackled a few times now, and done well, so I felt a need to make sure that any of my forays into early Cybertron from the Mirage angle were extremely different. I think you'll find this portrayal of the Towers as a corrupt and declining anachronism amidst a failing Cybertron democracy before the war is just that. I like to think of it as the Towers- as- never- seen- before.
One little warnings – for those who like Transformers to be absolute robot, and nothing but robot then this does definitely veer towards the humanizing end of the spectrum. If you like political intrigue and Earth analogies combined with a twinge of cynicism and a little fantasy, you will probably enjoy it.
Thanks for reading, anyway :-)
Prologue
From "Data retrieval and recall: my early life and times" by Mirage D'Ligier; an excerpt from "on the nature of Iacon Towers, and other places"
..... I should start with dispelling some misunderstandings about Cybertron.
It is often depicted by humans as such a tiny world whereas, in fact, it, is, by Earth standards, enormous. It orbits the bright sun of Toliman and its smaller companion sun, Hadar – or the Alpha Centauri suns - as you call them. Once a rugged orb composed of naturally occurring rocks with a high metallic content, of mountains and lakes and rivers and covered in entirety by thick swirling clouds of gas, it never had any life of its own. Yet, over millennia, it was settled and colonised by our race who were from elsewhere among the stars, and they tamed it and reduced the great gas clouds to a thin, pinkish atmosphere, and built great structures on the surface and within the core and above in the skies.
Eventually, over millenia, much of the surface was transformed into a succession of cities and suburbs, spaceports and transport depots, mines, factories and manufacturing plants, so that by the time of the war, with the population at some three hundred billion, many parts of the land bore no resemblance to their original state. But in the less tameable regions - the mountain ranges and the great rock plains of the equatorial provinces and the polar chasms – locations too remote and weak in resources to develop to any intensity – the natural bronze coloured rock still made up a landscape free of Cybertronian added adornments; as did the vast oceans to the North and South, apart from some of their more hospitable islands.
For millions of years, Cybertron had a social system known as the Utopian Order. It's Cybernetic beings were divided into castes and subcastes, all with a designated place and purpose and all with a unique role. It was a stable, ordered regime, at the top of which were the Alpha castes, superior in construction and programming and rewarded with much of the planet's wealth for the important role they performed in making the rules and ensuring the planet ran smoothly, and that all mechanisms operated according to their rightful designation. The Alpha caste lived in separate, insular communities and had their own culture and ways, the presence of lesser castes coexisting there only to serve their unique interests and idiosyncratic tastes. These communities were scattered across Cybertron, near the great cities and provinces over which they presided. But the Towers – where I came from - close to the great city of Iacon on the shores of the Southern ocean, was by far the most important.
It is hard to describe Iacon in Earth terms. It was vast! With all its suburbs, it must have been a tenth the size of Earth! Colossal old structures - great domes and orbs of bronze and gold -made up the central part, but there were newer buildings too, graceful square and cylindrical towers of white stone and silver metal and glass, some several Earth miles high. Everything was connected by layers of walkways and rollways and flyways. East, the buildings sprawled into the distance, subtly transforming into residential suburbs whilst to the West, the Iron Mountains rose up, curving away in an arc to the North.
Just behind the city was a sheer scarp of golden coloured rock, about a mile high, damming the river as it flowed out of the mountains, and turning what had once had been a great valley into a vast lake, dotted with interlocking islands. Water flowed always through the lake and cascaded in gushing waterfalls over the scarp, into ornate ponds below and so into the canals which ran beneath Iacon and out to the southern ocean. Throughout the Lake rose tall, arched buildings topped by majestic spires which glowed different colours in the varied lights of day from the precious metals and stones from which they were made. Connecting the islands were ornate bridges under which many vessels passed through the soft lilac waters.
Close to the where the waters of the Lake cascaded over the scarp edger rose three spires, at equal distance from each other, upon which were inscribed a sun, a moon and a star. They gave the Towers district its name, by day, a beautiful place: civilised, tranquil and tasteful. By night – a magical realm of glittering colours as the light sparkled from billions of crystals embedded in the buildings, grown in the gardens and beneath the surface of the lake.
A fitting place indeed for those who made rules for all of Cybertron, and especially for the Mechans des Luminieres, the clan which ruled the Alphas and from which the Ultra Uno himself was ordained to ultimately reign supreme over every living mechanism on Cybertron.
Beautiful and majestic it was. But times changed - as they do always in the Universe - and old ways gave way to new. By the time I was a sparkling, the caste system had been abolished, and the Utopian Order was long dismantled. The Government ruled so called Democratic Equilibrium had existed for about a million sun circuits and the founders of the new world of supposed equality, shared resources and free trade - those heroes from Kaon, the brothers Prime and Megatron – were in the seat of Government in Iacon where they headed a supposedly representative ruling forum.
Alphas no longer were the pinnacle of Cybertronian existence. They did not make decisions for the planet any more - and yet, their communities remained. The Luminiere Uno's descendant still lived in the Towers, even though he had been reduced to a figurehead, a quaint anachronism and reminder of what had been. The prominent Families still lived in their ancestral homes and to an extent the hierachy which had always been among them continued to prevail. But a state of some confusion reigned. Alphas were torn between clinging to the past or, in many instances, redefining power bases through a new medium of corporate wealth and highly paid professions. It meant competition, and a jostling for supremacy. And so it was that the harmonious coexistence once reigning among Alphas was replaced with corruption and social decay.
The Alpha communities were not alone. In fact, the whole of Cybertron struggled to cope with an order steeped in idealism but beset by impracticalities. The world which I entered as a sparkling was to be not without turmoil; for as the Equilibrium gradually failed to achieve it's aim, crippled by scarce resources and the demands of a surge of immigrants from the outer worlds, the government floundered, together with the system it stood for; and, as it did so, there was misery and outrage, and the disenfranchised took desperate measures, and anger flared in dark and dangerous places.
But I did not know all this as my sister and I made our way happily and innocently around the halls of our ancestral home of Celestine Heights, or played in the crystal gardens, or looked across the waters of Lake Iyili to the glittering lights of Iacon.
I did not know that the great divide which would lead to war had already appeared and the fate of Cybertron had already been ordained.
