Faction Profile: Quintessons
Quintessons are mechanical life that evolved, much like that of Cybertron, on the distant world of Quintessa. However, rather than being energon-based lifeforms, their planet was covered in dark energon, a substance akin to energon but with an incompatible wavelength. It may be due to the unique properties of dark energon, but the evolutionary path on Quintessa took a much different turn.
Rather than adaptive transformations, to allow for versatility from the individual, hyper-specialization arose. Dozens of different subtypes, each designed to excel at a given task, all working together to act as one. On Quintessa, the hive mind rules.
A Quintesson hive is called a vespiary, headed by a singular Magistrate. The Magistrate is an immobile brain, or more accurately several brains in one body. It interprets data, makes decisions, and speaks for the vespiary when required, its polybrain perfectly adept for multitasking.
Below the Magistrate are the Notaries, which are like smaller Magistrates, possessing imagination and intelligence, though lacking in free will as they are only capable of doing as instructed by the Magistrate. Their responsibility is any task that requires creative thought, such as scientific research, or overseeing a remote operation. Like Magistrates, they are immobile.
Serving the Magistrate and the Notaries are the Bailiffs, their numerous attendants. They are the appendages of the immobile castes, carrying them around, feeding them, whatever they require. A Magistrate or Notary can also speak through them, allowing it to communicate without risk to itself. Like the rest of the Quintesson drone castes, Bailiffs have no free will, nor any real mind to speak of.
Outside of the Court, comprised of the Magistrates and Notaries (along with their Bailiffs), Quintessons are divided up into not just workers and soldiers, but also vehicles and ships, even laboratory equipment. There are no machines in a vespiary that are not part of it. Everything must be loyal, and accounted for, for the sake of security.
Because the Quintessons are not a singular empire. A singular Quintesson empire would have to rely upon there being a singular Quintesson vespiary, and the problem is that while every vespiary wants to be that vespiary, none are in a position to risk it.
Millions of years before, the vespiaries drove all other life on Quintesson to extinction, and have existed in an uneasy peace ever since. If a vespiary openly attacked another, then they would lose soldiers in the battle, weakening themselves for all to see, and then they'd be in the perfect position to be attacked themselves. So it is only out of paranoia that they tolerate each other's existences.
Not that they don't try and destroy each other at every available opportunity, of course. But each move must be subtle, calculated, and done in secret. Sabotage, secret raids, and most commonly of all: mercenaries.
Quintessons hate other life as much as they hate each other. Everyone else is just competition for resources, since the Quintesson definition of "resources" is broad enough to include the whole universe. So Quintessons find malicious glee in hiring or tricking other races into attempting to destroy other vespiaries, as it is a win-win scenario. Regardless of what happens, someone is bound to be eliminated.
Cybertron first made contact with the Quintessons during the Silver Age, resulting in wars that lasted through into the Golden Age, after which point Cybertron's newfound unity provided the strength of arms required to deter any vespiary. Those Magistrates smart enough to realise a lost cause retreated back into the uncharted regions, and nothing more was heard of the Quintessons... until after the Great War.
With Cybertron in ruins and its inhabitants scattered to the solar winds, the Quintessons have begun to return.