War of the Threefold Spark

Combatants| * Autobots

Commanders| * Nominus Prime

The **War of the Threefold Spark** was a conflict between the citizens of Cybertron and Exarchon—an existential threat to the Cybertronian race—and his followers, which had seceded from the Republic. It is also referred to as the **Clone War**.

## History

 File:StormHorizonPart1-UltraMagnusThreefoldSpark.jpg
The war had its roots in Cybertron's Age of Expansion. In this prosperous era, the respected explorer Exarchon travelled to a distant region of space, where he encountered an alien "quintessence" that altered him both mentally and physically; eventually, he returned as a mad warmonger intent on conquering Cybertron. In response, Nominus Prime, then-leader of Cybertron's ruling Autobot party, raised an army to stop him.

Four "Great Generals" coordinated the war against Exarchon's forces: the gung-ho Ultra Magnus, who led from the front and counted a young Megatron among his ranks, Strika, whose heavy artillery battalion found renown as an elite team of line-breakers, Pyra Magna, who commanded an honor guard of highly-trained warriors,  and Dai Atlas.

The people of Cybertron found that Exarchon's spark now operated like a virus, capable of remotely extinguishing the sparks of other Transformers and turning them into new "iterations" of himself, extensions of his own tripartite mind.  Exarchon could only control three bodies at a time in this way, but this talent made him extremely difficult to put down for good—so long as one of his "iterations" survived, he could quickly reconstitute himself. Toward the end of the conflict, scientists like Highbrow deduced that an unknown alien race had deliberately corrupted Exarchon and armed him with the weapons and exotic technologies required to effectively wage war against his homeworld.  Many Cybertronians would come to believe that Exarchon had been deliberately unleashed on Cybertron in response to their expansionism.

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Some Cybertronians served Exarchon willingly. Among the most infamous would be Shockwave, who collaborated with Exarchon and built upon his caches of alien technology to develop a revolutionary form of cloning. The capricious Skywarp also threw his lot in with Exarchon's forces—although Exarchon and Shockwave failed to mass-produce his unique teleportation power, they created a swarm of disposable "clone-drone"s who swept across Cybertron with their clone progenitor at the helm. In response, Nominus Prime authorized the creation of a massive Seeker army. Turmoil melted the planet Neutronia as he returned to Cybertron and killed two-thirds of the planet's population before he joined forces with Exarchon and took numerous hostages throughout the war.  The amount of dead bodies the war produced allowed the Insecticons, who'd previously only worked in Cybertron's garbage-processing industry, to gorge themselves;  when the three developed a taste for living matter, they approached Shockwave in the hopes the amoral scientist would create a clone army for them to devour all of Cybertron.

Exarchon's forces operated out of a network of hidden, self-sufficient bunkers scattered across the planet and protected by automatic sentry turrets. Despite the loyalty of these nominal allies, Exarchon kept his best technologies to himself, and stored them in a secret location in the planet's Sonic Canyons.

 File:DarknessOnceGazedUponPart1-Cyclonus.jpg
The war spread across Cybertron—notable battles included the Tagan Heights, the Hydrax Plateau,  and Yuss, which saw the city completely levelled and marked the first time that Exarchon encountered Megatron. At one point, Exarchon attempted to usurp one of the planet's orbiting Titans and successfully took over Croaton. This didn't last long, however, as his fellow Titan Citadel used an imploder to reduce Croaton to space dust.   As a result, Nominus kept the remaining Titans in reserve for the rest of the war for fear that Exarchon could do it again.

It was not until towards the end of the war that Cybertron learned the specific nature of Exarchon's change. By this point, Exarchon's forces had begun to lose ground; most of those who'd followed him willingly had, like Skywarp, abandoned him and left only a handful of fanatics to carry on.  From his hidden base in the Sonic Canyons, Exarchon began drawing up a new, last-ditch plan to win the war by infecting the AllSpark at the core of the planet itself, but the necessities of war forced his hand early before he could put it into play.

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The last offensive of the war took place roughly two kilocycles before the outbreak of the Autobot-Decepticon conflict, on the outskirts of Iacon. Exarchon joined the battle personally, but nearly perished amidst the carnage. Thinking quickly, Exarchon transferred the final third of his spark into Provoke's dying body, then allowed himself to be buried and consumed by Cybertron's crust as a massive explosion wiped out the last of Exarchon's forces and effectively ended the war.

The conflict left Cybertron badly damaged, to the point where major cities like Iacon had been almost entirely razed by years of constant war.  In the immediate aftermath of the war, Nominus Prime implemented a system to deal with those who had served Exarchon: they would be granted amnesty for their crimes in exchange for permanent exile from Cybertron. Some, like the Insecticons, would wind up on remote colonies like Mayalx, where they performed menial labour for colonial workforces; others simply roamed the galaxy at random.  Not all Cybertronians agreed with Nominus's lenient policies, however—when Turmoil fled the planet with a cargo of hostages, Pyra Magna chased him down with the intent of bringing him to justice, but accidentally killed everyone aboard she'd hoped to rescue.  Nominus's governments attempted to sweep the planet and decommission every one of Exarchon's hidden fortresses;  the Iacon crater would host a dedicated memorial to the war, inscribed with the names of everyone who'd died in battle.

Nominus would go on to draft the Nominus Edict, in an attempt to curtail Cybertron's expansionistic tendencies. Megatron's experiences in the war would go on to greatly shape his worldview. Dai Atlas, who'd only taken up arms reluctantly, went immersant to escape the horror he felt at what he had become.
Two megacycles later, Exarchon returned in the midst of the outbreak of the Autobot-Decepticon war.  Gathering some his old followers, he attempted to finish what he had begun by drilling into Cybertron's core and infecting it with his essence. However, a small group of Autobots and Decepticons led by Pyra Magna and Sixshot put their differences aside long enough to finally kill Exarchon and end the War of the Threefold Spark for good.

## Notes and references

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1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *War's End Part Two*
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 *Darkness, Once Gazed Upon: Part One*
3. ↑ *War World: We Are Not Meant To Be Darkness*
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *Constructicons Rising, Part 2*
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 *War's End Part One*
6. ↑ *War World: Titans*
7. ↑ *Light/Star*
8. ↑ *Constructicons Rising, Part 1*
9. ↑ *War World: We Are Not Meant To Be Darkness*
10. ↑ *War World: Hunt*
11. ↑ *War's End Part Four*