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I firmly believe that Fortress Maximus is either Pious Maximus shadowplayed beyond all recognition, and modified for war, or that he is just a new spark/brain in Pious' corpse. Like, that's the only explanation. It pisses me off that it's not really addressed in canon
THEY'RE THE SAME
Is there a universe where some of the most famous Earth structure, like the Coliseum and the Pyramids and the Great Wall and Stonehenge and Big Ben etc are actually Cybertronians, perhaps Titans?
Dear Wonderful Wonderer,
Long ago on another Cybertron, Project "Other Visits" was launched, sending Titans and other Cybertronians towards alien worlds in a search for intelligent life. Many voyagers journeyed to Earth, due to the large diversity of varied shapes detected. These voyaging sparks, whether war-weary or infinitely curious, infiltrated various societies over the course of your history and went into deep cover to learn about you:
Crucible became the Mausoleum at Helicarnassus
Metalhawk, in his full-sized Pretender form, became the Colossus at Rhodes
Lightbright and Lodestar Powerlinxed together to become the Lighthouse of Alexandria
Nautica Maxima became the first stages of the Great Coral Reef approximately 10,000 years ago
Spanner, attracted by large amounts of silicon, formed segments of the Golden Gate Bridge
Pious Maximus formed the Ely Cathedral
These bots all realized they may never transform again, and may even lose their sparks in their extended disguise periods. I salute their bravery, as well as that of the various "cleaner crews" (such as Ravage and Hound) who remove Cybertronian technology from their fallen bodies, lest it become abused by some unsavory humans.
The project extended to other planets in your solar system as well. Tigerhawk, I believe, is still out there on Jupiter, where he has created the Great Red Spot.
Fortress Maximus: “Sentinel Prime -- as the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, I’m placing you under arrest.”
Sentinel Prime: “The fact I just fired on you suggest I’m unlikely to comply, Pious Maximus.”
Fortress Maximus: “Pious Maximus? You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
Sentinel Prime: “No matter. I don’t recognize his authority, either.”
Prowl: “Likewise. I don’t know where you’ve been for the last four million years, Sentinel, but things have changed.”
The first hybrid.
This is what Rodimus says when he realizes the underlying paradoxes of Megatron that has become accepted background noise in the common culture of the Cybertron Civil War. How can someone rumored to have a green mottled spark, a rumored point one percenter, be a common mining vehicle, something that was mass produced five million years ago?
And Megatron deflects any questions about his origin as well, showing that in the society that he wants, the question itself should not exist to begin with, be it in law, spoken, or even in thought.
But this is not about him. This is about a different origin of Cybertronians. We have the Forged, we have the Constructed Cold, we have the MTOs. And then we have a breed rarely spoken of.
The Warborns are rarely spoken about. With Whirl’s comment we know that Fortress Maximus never experienced Cybertron before the war, never experienced the senate or even the reign of Zeta Prime. And we know that he’s also Forged, as his spark did not seize when the Kill Switch was activated.
Fulcrum is also Forged. He did not suffer the effects of the Killswitch either.
But notice his wording. It seems to be even more suspect. Sure, Forged has been used to describe the so-called “birth” of a Cybertronian, to the point where it is basically the word for it.
But where do the Warborn come from?
Bumblebee was of the last generation of Cybertronians, yet at the start of his life the war hadn’t really begun. Sure there were Decepticon terrorists, but nothing outright. The Warborn label wouldn’t apply to him or those from his hot spot. The war hadn’t truly become what it was later.
So let’s look at Fortress Maximus again.
Pious Maximus was a figure from before the war. Outspoken against the caste system to the point where he ended up being one of many who conveniently “disappeared”.
And one would have to admit that there is a resemblance. Enough for Sentinel to confuse Fortress Maximus with him.
He disappeared to the Institute, and was never seen again. And there his body was gutted, the brain module taken, probed, peeled.
We never learn what happened to the sparks. While Rossum’s Trinity is a medical term in the Cybertronian medicine, we know that through the Triple-M that you don’t need the transformation cog, and we know that with spark isolation, a common way to house dangerous criminals, the spark can survive on it’s own.
Iced, inside a flower, in a cockpit, the spark can survive a lot. Maybe it need helps, but it can survive.
Rodimus called Megatron the First Hybrid. Which seems to indicate that there are more than one. That there are other forged sparks within constructed cold bodies.
And we do seem to have some sort of indicator that dysphoria in some form might exist, with Starscream continually changing his body, either never feeling that his body was “right”, or he never grew attached to his looks because they weren’t “his”.
So the Warborn, where do they fit to make this a complete image? We don’t know if the Institute kept the sparks, but what if they did? Kept them with the other mass produced bled sparks from the Matrix, but probably catalogued and written down from whom they came from as well. And if dysphoria was documented, hell, it could be used to “explain” Decepticons, then what if Constructed Cold bodies were made to “fit” the sparks.
Pious Maximus might be one of those that couldn’t recall their past lives. After all, if data from the brain can leak into the spark, then it might not do it in the first place.
Is Grand the son of Fortress? Who's the other parent? My money is on Cerebros.
Nephew, actually. Fortress isn't married.
Cerebros certainly would like to change that at some point.
What is Peritus's relation to Fortress? Same question for Pious and Megazarak
He's Pious's and Fortress's uncle, and Grand's... um, GRANDfather.
Megazarak is Pious's clone so genetically that still applies but he doesn't care much for that.
[twitter convo between @axlcossack and James Roberts @jroberts332 on 23 October 2018.
A: One popular theory I've seen is that Fortress Maximus is a Shadowplay'd Pious Maximus. Can you confirm/deny this, and if not, can you at least explain how they're related?
JR: Tbh I’m always surprised by how often I’m asked questions about Pious Maximus...! I can confirm that he was shadowplayed (as the story implies) but he’s not Fort Max. Maybe they’re brothers, or members of the same social group (‘House of Maximus’). ]
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