Is there an Exarchon in the Malgus cluster?
Dear Threefold Threat,
According to popular history, Exarchon was a Malignus warlord during the Second Cybertronian War. Claiming to be blessed by the tripartite god Vion-Lenja-Igern, contemporary records claim that Exarchon had a mutant mitotic spark, which allowed him to split his consciousness between three separate bodies—and, indeed, to take over the bodies of others that he had subjugated in battle. This made him functionally immortal, as even if one of his bodies was destroyed, he had two more to continue to spread his will.
These days, the understanding among academics is different. Lancer—a professor of archaeometallurgy at Drouhard University—argues that there is little direct evidence for Exarchon's supposed powers, which do not line up well with the modern scientific understanding of mitotic sparks; instead, she posits that it is more likely that the idea of Exarchon's "threefold spark" was a shared fiction created by the Malignus leadership through the use of public performance, puppetry and sleight of servo. The idea of an "immortal warlord" would, of course, be extremely useful as propaganda for a faction that rarely, if ever, found themselves with the edge in their war against the Guardians.
