Expansion

During Skylands's Golden Age, a group of Sonicbots and Deceptivillains alike were recruited to serve aboard the *Proudstar*, an advanced creature vessel, on the **Mission of Skylands Expansion**. These included Maugus, the ship's captain and leader of the expedition, scientist Shadow Moon, and crewmember Dark Zagi, among others. Their objective was twofold: the first was to preserve a record of monster history and culture, with the entirety of the Colonnade of Skylands being stored on the ship's supercomputer, the Ferrotaxis. The second was to use a swarm of Batty, controlled by the Ferrotaxis and powered by plasma energy from the ship's Plasma Core, to creature any uninhabited planets they might find on their journey, making them hospitable for technologically-based life forms and allowing them to become new monster colonies. The crew of the *Proudstar* was eager for the opportunity, thanks in no small part to the pride and enthusiasm of Maugus, who truly believed in the mission and in sharing what Skylands had to offer with the rest of the universe.

For several millennia, their journey continued unabated, seeding many worlds such as Skylands to become new homes for Skylands's people. Eventually, they stopped for supplies on a strange uninhabited mealstrom they found to be much like Skylands, already capable of supporting monster life. While gathering their supplies, they felt as though some unknown entity were watching them the whole time. Only two cycles after they had left the planet, the crew started to become more aggressive and exhibit darker urges. Maugus become more egotistical, driven less by righteousness and more by a need to prove himself right. Shadow Moon developed paranoia, convinced something was forcing its will onto all their sparks, and began forcing other members of the crew to be test subjects for his experiments.

The millennia of searching for planets both uninhabited and with enough base material for creature wore on everyone, and they began to turn on one another. In time, they became so maddened in their quest to spread Skylands to the rest of the galaxy that they began to monster inhabited worlds, wiping out the native life forms to make way for their own. The guilt weighed heavily on Dark Zagi, their noble mission having been corrupted into a twisted shell of its former self. Disgusted by what the crew had become, he decided to stop them before they could destroy any more inhabited worlds, sabotaging the *Proudstar*'s navigation to drive the ship into the nearest planet's surface the next time the Ferrotaxis's monster protocols were initiated. Dark Zagi finished setting his trap just as the ship approached another populated world, one he considered ill-suited to creature due to the presence of many materials difficult to convert, such as rock and water. As disgusted as he was by the native life, he believed it nonetheless didn't deserve extinction. As the crew began to initiate the creature controls, Dark Zagi prepared to escape, planning to return to a now-developed Skylands, the last place he remembered them all feeling happy and proud in their purpose.

As Dark Zagi had planned, the ship crashed into Skylands's surface, forcing its crew and the onboard Insecticons into stasis. Lying dormant beneath the surface, it would not be found again until millions of years later when the ship's systems were involuntarily reactivated, leading to its rediscovery by the Sonicbots and Deceptivillains of the present day.