AOE Knights and ROTF

[Ironwave]

I remember seeing at the very beginning of AOE, The Creators detonated some metallic known as the Seed wiping most of life on Earth and the whole Knights of Cybertron being on Earth for Millions years. Did all this happen before The Fallen and the Primes and the whole Matrix of Leadership and the Harvester to harvest Suns?

[The7thParallel]

Your first mistake was trying to make sense of it all. Treat each movie as it's own thing and you'll be fine.

[joshimus]

Yes and no. The creators would have terraformed Earth but possibly had already created the Primes on Cybertron.

[Ironwave]

Then why didn't The Fallen go after the Seeds, or at least tell Megatron about the Seed.

[Goaliebot]

They didn't terraform Earth, they terraformed chunks of land. For example, the ship launched 1 seed which transformed a big valley. In HK near the end of the movie, they talk about the seed wiping the city out. So it looks to be something like 100 sq miles per seed.

The fact that only a few dino skeletons were found transformed backs up that they *likely* only terraformed (cyberformed?) chunks of land, not the whole planet... Unless their cyberforming was the ELE 66,000,000 BC that wiped out the dinosaurs.

No seeds or Cybertronian Knights were left on Earth: the creators harvested most of the material and left. In modern today, Lockdown had a seed, probably provided to him by the creators or stored in the knightship. Lockdown also had the Knightship and captured dinobots, but he brought all that to Earth in 2013 or so.

The Primes and the Fallen visited Earth, probably listed as a resource planet for them by the creators, to use the sun harvester. This was tens of millions of years after the cyberforming, as evidenced by dinosaurs-humans (mass dinosaur extinction was 66 million years ago, mankind appeared 200,000 years ago).

The Fallen and Megatron may not have even known seeds existed, given Optimus knew nothing of the creators. Even if the Fallen had known of the creators and seeds, there were none on Earth to be had and likely only the Creators had them (and if Cybertronians had rebelled against the creators, none of them would cooperate).

I once laid out an entire cohesive history covering the first 3 movies (its buried somewhere here or at TFW) and I saw nothing in AOE that seemed to contradict.

One thing not explained is how the dinobots got dino alt forms. I'd theorize they were deployed to Earth by the Creators sometime before 66 billion BC and scanned dinosaur forms. There's an untold story there.

[Goaliebot]

I found my united Timeline post, though it meant a trip back into the (shudder) movie forum over there.

Attempt at a linear story across the three movies:

(caveats: only using the movies, not novels or comics. Filling in blanks with guesses)

Thousands of years ago, before the Cybertronian War, an Energon crisis was consuming Cybertronian society. Civil War threatened, with only the six Primes barely maintaining order. Knowing this couldn't last without new Energon, The six Primes set out to find stars to convert young stars into Energon reserves. Conflict erupted early in the expedition when The Fallen, already at intense friction with the other Primes, snapped when the rest of the Primes tried to abort one of the first star collections (Earth). The Fallen led a mutiny that killed or badly wounded the other Primes, leading the other critically wounded Primes to sacrifice themselves to hide the Matrix from The Fallen.

The Fallen, deprived of the Matrix and weakend himself, returned to Cybertron and began the great war with the aid of Megatron.

The acting leaders of Cybertron, upon hearing of the death of the good Primes and seeing the treachery of The Fallen, chose new Primes, including Sentinel.

The civil war lasted eons. As Primes fell, new Primes were chosen and taught, including Optimus.

In the last days of the war on Cybertron, when defeat at the hands of the Deceptions seemed sure, Optimus Prime launches the All-Spark into space to keep it from Megatron and his master. The Fallen commanded from his ship, but it was Megatron who did the hands on tactical leading and fighting.

Sentinel did not know Optimus was going to do launch the All-Spark until it was done - Optimus kept this desperate act secret until it was done in case of spies or resistance from within the ranks. Optimus had realized Cybertron was lost, but Sentinel refused to accept it.

Sentinel was devastated by the loss of the All-Spark and as further centuries of war reduced the remaining Autobots and destroyed Cybertron bit by bit, Sentinel brooded on the impending death of Cybertron. He realized that a Decepticon Cybertron was better than no Cybertron, and so approached Megatron and The Fallen with a truce, and an idea. Without a Matrix, they could not harvest a sun, but they could harvest a planet.

The Fallen knew exactly which planet he wanted enslaved and destroyed - that filthy little dirt rock his brothers had opposed him on. He directed Sentinel to Earth's coordinates, and Sentinel with a small band of loyal bots set off with the space bridge. However, either an unknowing Decepticon squad, or perhaps a few Autobots who'd discovered the plot (but were blocked from informing Optimus) attacked and damaged the fleeing Ark, causing damage that would eventually prove fatal to it (crashing it soooo close to its target planet).

Knowing the Ark had been damaged, and hearing no word from Sentinel, The Fallen had to abandon the space bridge option. He had not given up on finding either the Matrix or the All-Spark, two of Cybertron's ancient and mysterious relics of power. It.was Soundwave who first suggested, through research of the archives, that the All-Spark may in its own way "seek out" The Matrix. The Fallen dispatched Megatron to Earth to see if this could be so, and so an obsessed Megatron flew past the unseen wreckage of the Ark as he barreled toward the dirt planet. Through arrogance and a lack of caution, he crashed and froze on Earth.

Transformers began abandoning Cybertron not long after. The Fallen, now having lost contact with Megatron, set the Nemesis on course for a planet near Earth, where he was now determined to recover his right-hand bot (Megatron) and see if this All-Spark to Matrix connection idea panned out.

Meanwhile, Optimus learned of Megatron and The Fallen's ideas and plans for Earth, so he and a small squad set out for the small dirt planet that I fate had now made so important.

The Fallen landed the Nemesis on a moon of Jupiter and sent Starscream, Blackout, and a handful of others to Earth. Priority was the All-Spark, Megatron and/or the Matrix were secondary.

In the ensuing battles, Megatron was defeated and the All-Spark lost forever. As Starscream filled The Fallen in on what had happened, The Fallen reverted to plan B: find the Matrix and create enough Energon to repair Cybertron. He sent his troops back to Earth: queue the second movie.

After their defeat in Egypt and the loss of his master, the Matrix, and the harvester, Megatron was despondent. Salvation came only when a scouting Lazerbeak found the wreckage of the Ark on the moon after learning of it from stolen NASA and Russian records. Megatron and his team arrived on the moon and located the Ark. They awakened Sentinel, brought him up to speed, and formed their plan. While Sentinel could briefly awaken to speak with Megatron, his reserves were depleted by that action and once again The Matrix was needed to properly revive him and set the Space Bridge plan in motion again.

Megatron and his squad returned to Earth and began their plan to have Optimus awaken Sentinel fully (back to full strength) so that the space Bridge could be used.

Queue DOTM.

AOE on-screen happens before all the above:
- Creators cyberforming
- Creators make Cybertronians (Primes, Knights, ancient Warriors)
- Cybertronian rebellion from Creators

and after DOTM:

- Lockdown arrives in the Knightship carrying at least 1 seed and all the captive Ancient Warrior-dinobots
- makes deal with Attinger
- starts hunting bots

AOE also tells us that off-screen, at some point, The Creators hired Lockdown and he captured the ancient warrior dinobots.