Dear Vector, can you describe the Church of Primus in the Malgus cluster despite Primus himself apparently not manifesting in that universe?
Dear Devout Dude,
The Church of Primus has its roots in Zeemon Magnus’s ascent to power some two billion years ago. In those ancient times, the physical vessel that contained the AllSpark was housed in a great acropolis in the center of Tyger Pax and defended at all times by the Knights of Cybertron, a ritual honor guard of elite, highly-trained warrior-monks. Philosophers of the time spent many ages puzzling over the essence of the AllSpark and its ability to create new Cybertronian life from nothing; after millennia of spirited debate, they concluded that it contained “Primus”—an old Cybertronian word that translates to the “prime essence” of Transformer vitality.
Gradually, the AllSpark’s protectors incorporated this spiritualism into their daily rituals. To become a Knight of Cybertron, one had to relinquish all material possessions and sequester themselves from secular life. Only by transforming one’s personal life could one transcend to the next plane of being and bring themselves closer to Primus. Unfortunately, this monasticism made them increasingly detached from the very real affairs playing out on Cybertron; when the Protectons staged their coup and appointed their leader Nova as the next holder of the title, the Knights of Cybertron were taken by surprise and nearly exterminated when their Acropolis was destroyed.
I say “nearly” because their order did survive in some form, thanks to the efforts of a few brave initiates who had not yet completed their training: Axe, Outrigger, Wing, and Gauge escaped the purge with whatever holy writings they could carry and went underground. They evaded Nova Magnus’s brutal crackdowns and attempts to revise history and continued teaching the way of Primus to whoever would listen. This burgeoning Church of Primus survived the Third Cybertronian War and the death of Nova Magnus, and Devron’s Destrons relaxed most of the discriminatory legislation that had been a hallmark of Nova Magnus’s reign and allowed freedom of worship. The Church, although it would never again command the same respect it once had, rebuilt itself from the ashes, and by the Expansion, some 750 million years ago, it had found renown as a pacifist order dedicated to the worship of Primus and the preservation of knowledge—a mission overseen by my alternate self, Vector-Prima-Vectorum.
This is not to say that the new church did not have problems of its own—it never found the same kind of support in Autobot society that the Cyber-Ninja Corps enjoyed, and the church spent a good deal of time simply trying to keep itself together. Vectorum was forced to excommunicate Logos Primon for entropy-worship, a decision that weighed on his spark greatly. In the years before the Fourth Cybertronian War, my alternate was powerless to contain the order’s first major schism between the Reformists and Reversionists—this latter group was led by Heretech, a group of radicals who sought to return to the martial ways of the past, and he and all of his followers wound up excommunicated after one particularly fiery debate. Many of them, including Heretech, went on to join the Decepticons, confident that Megatron would afford them the same kind of religious freedoms that the Destrons had offered.
In the years after the Great War, the Church’s role in society has further dwindled, crowded out between an increasingly secular society and a number of competing religions. The Church has found greater success out in the wider commonwealth, however, and some colonies like Caminus are well-known for their belief in the way of Primus.
