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First of all I definitely have to thank @elfdragon12 for selling me on the G1 humans and the potential they have for good storytelling!

So here are Spartacus 'Spike' Witwicki, Carlita 'Carly' Castellano and Charles 'Chip' Chase as they appear in TTB! Spike mainly works off-base with his father Stanislaw 'Sparkplug' Witwicki as mechanics on Autobot missions, while Carly and Chip are mainly on-base working in R&D and tech respectively. Witwicky is a name that exists IRL, and it's specifically an Americanised version of Witwicki, which is Polish, so Spike is a second-generation immigrant to the US with Polish---specifically as a member of the Lipka Tatar minority---ties through Stanislaw, and Turkish ties through his mother. Lipka Tatars are predominantly also Muslims who usually keep to a Polish naming convention/don't usually sport Arabic names, so Spike here also joins the the rising ranks of Muslims on the Autobot side!

Mexican-Italian Carly is a bottle blond who goes back to her original brown tresses near the end of the war. She runs on coffee and Monster Energy, and is what one might call a Type A personality. And for good reason—she’s a scholarship kid from an impoverished barrio, the first to ever get into MIT, and she’s determined to make a name for herself to bring back support and funding for her community so other kids like her have that opportunity too. She was a student in Dr. Harding’s lecture classes, and interned under Harding before graduation—the two still keep in contact with each other across the Atlantic. And Chip. We gotta talk about Chip (and the other two) under the cut.

Chip got the bad end of the deal here and his background is as messed up as his general health is on any given day. Energon hotspots exist in TTB and they’re still being studied and often irradiate local wildlife and extremely unlucky scientists conducting field research; one of them was Chip’s mother, while she was very early into her pregnancy (she believed she was properly kitted out, but this hotspot was more potent than the others).

He grew up sickly, but still relatively active and as Spike’s childhood friend, would still be able to play football with Spike. Spike and Chip’s relationship was extremely tight when they were children (Spike protected Chip from bullies and played with him since other boys avoided involving him in their games as he had problems keeping up due to his health issues, while Chip would help Spike with schoolwork and stood up for him if someone decided it’s pick-on-the-immigrant-kid day). It was to the point that, when Sparkplug was imprisoned for a short stint after being charged with inciting a riot (he was spearheading a workers' protest), Chip's residence was a second home to Spike, while his mother picked up extra shifts to make ends meet. However, when Chip was around 10, the radiation flared up/became aggressive in both him and his mother, and while his mother's condition deteriorated faster than his, it still wreaked havoc on his body and caused paraplegia through spinal metastasis. When his mother died, he had no blood family willing to take him in (as a child born out of wedlock who was piling up medical bills and was not expected to see his 18th birthday). The Witwickis, who saw him as family now, wanted to adopt him but could not pay for the care he needed as lower class blue collar immigrants.... at which point Zeta Prime stepped in as a benefactor who wanted to sponsor the child prodigy. This however, meant Chip had to be moved to New York, ostensibly for better treatment, and he and Spike last saw each other as children when they were 12.

They’d promise to write to each other, but Spike never received anything from Chip no matter how many letters he sent (Zeta had been intercepting them since he wanted Chip to be fully dependent on him/cut all ties to his past, and to focus on his tutelage under Dr Alcazar) The two reunited as adults when Spike and Sparkplug were enlisted as part of the team working on a top secret government project (Metroplex) on which Chip was the lead programmer and Carly was head of the R&D division. Chip however, started having doubts about Zeta Prime's motives for Metroplex's creation, and feeling both helpless and terrified for what he'd gotten himself into, confided his concerns to Spike that what they were building was not a space research titan, but a weapon and the US' largest mobile base capable of levelling small countries--which is exactly what Zeta plans to do with it. Carly eavesdrops, and is drawn into the situation.

All three of them struggled with breaking off their relationship with Zeta Prime, whose project brought the, together:

Chip knows that going against Zeta means he likely loses all access to the medical aid and experimental treatments keeping him alive. (He is lucky that he kept notes and an extensive medical record of himself, and that them fleeing across the Atlantic brought them right to Ratchet and Co.),

Spike knows going against Zeta means burning the olive branch of government acceptance Zeta held out to his father and their diaspora after their lifelong struggle to get the same compensation for their work as native-born workers, and better/safer projects.,

Carly knows going against Zeta means a stain on her record as a ‘model minority’ , and it will destroy Zeta’s promise of a scholarship fund for her community as well as government goodwill for them.

All three decide that they have to take a stand against him regardless, and they managed to sabotage Zeta’s control over Metroplex and allowed Metro to escape into the Pacific. Fleeing Zeta’s wrath across the Atlantic put them on the collision course with the Autobots via an SOS signal from Prowl which Chip decoded and answered, and this set have been stalwart allies since Chip still has a close relationship with Prowl here over many similar aspects of their life, quiet companionship and a love for strategy games. He is also rebuilding the relationship he had with Spike and Sparkplug, and Spike and Chip see each other more as brothers than friends these days.

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First of all I definitely have to thank @elfdragon12 for selling me on the G1 humans and the potential they have for good storytelling!

So here are Spartacus 'Spike' Witwicki, Carlita 'Carly' Castellano and Charles 'Chip' Chase as they appear in TTB! Spike mainly works off-base with his father Stanislaw 'Sparkplug' Witwicki as mechanics on Autobot missions, while Carly and Chip are mainly on-base working in R&D and tech respectively. Witwicky is a name that exists IRL, and it's specifically an Americanised version of Witwicki, which is Polish, so Spike is a second-generation immigrant to the US with Polish---specifically as a member of the Lipka Tatar minority---ties through Stanislaw, and Turkish ties through his mother. Lipka Tatars are predominantly also Muslims who usually keep to a Polish naming convention/don't usually sport Arabic names, so Spike here also joins the the rising ranks of Muslims on the Autobot side!

Mexican-Italian Carly is a bottle blond who goes back to her original brown tresses near the end of the war. She runs on coffee and Monster Energy, and is what one might call a Type A personality. And for good reason—she’s a scholarship kid from an impoverished barrio, the first to ever get into MIT, and she’s determined to make a name for herself to bring back support and funding for her community so other kids like her have that opportunity too. She was a student in Dr. Harding’s lecture classes, and interned under Harding before graduation—the two still keep in contact with each other across the Atlantic. And Chip. We gotta talk about Chip (and the other two) under the cut.

Chip got the bad end of the deal here and his background is as messed up as his general health is on any given day. Energon hotspots exist in TTB and they’re still being studied and often irradiate local wildlife and extremely unlucky scientists conducting field research; one of them was Chip’s mother, while she was very early into her pregnancy (she believed she was properly kitted out, but this hotspot was more potent than the others).

He grew up sickly, but still relatively active and as Spike’s childhood friend, would still be able to play football with Spike. Spike and Chip’s relationship was extremely tight when they were children (Spike protected Chip from bullies and played with him since other boys avoided involving him in their games as he had problems keeping up due to his health issues, while Chip would help Spike with schoolwork and stood up for him if someone decided it’s pick-on-the-immigrant-kid day). It was to the point that, when Sparkplug was imprisoned for a short stint after being charged with inciting a riot (he was spearheading a workers' protest), Chip's residence was a second home to Spike, while his mother picked up extra shifts to make ends meet. However, when Chip was around 10, the radiation flared up/became aggressive in both him and his mother, and while his mother's condition deteriorated faster than his, it still wreaked havoc on his body and caused paraplegia through spinal metastasis. When his mother died, he had no blood family willing to take him in (as a child born out of wedlock who was piling up medical bills and was not expected to see his 18th birthday). The Witwickis, who saw him as family now, wanted to adopt him but could not pay for the care he needed as lower class blue collar immigrants.... at which point Zeta Prime stepped in as a benefactor who wanted to sponsor the child prodigy. This however, meant Chip had to be moved to New York, ostensibly for better treatment, and he and Spike last saw each other as children when they were 12.

They’d promise to write to each other, but Spike never received anything from Chip no matter how many letters he sent (Zeta had been intercepting them since he wanted Chip to be fully dependent on him/cut all ties to his past, and to focus on his tutelage under Dr Alcazar) The two reunited as adults when Spike and Sparkplug were enlisted as part of the team working on a top secret government project (Metroplex) on which Chip was the lead programmer and Carly was head of the R&D division. Chip however, started having doubts about Zeta Prime's motives for Metroplex's creation, and feeling both helpless and terrified for what he'd gotten himself into, confided his concerns to Spike that what they were building was not a space research titan, but a weapon and the US' largest mobile base capable of levelling small countries--which is exactly what Zeta plans to do with it. Carly eavesdrops, and is drawn into the situation.

All three of them struggled with breaking off their relationship with Zeta Prime, whose project brought the, together:

Chip knows that going against Zeta means he likely loses all access to the medical aid and experimental treatments keeping him alive. (He is lucky that he kept notes and an extensive medical record of himself, and that them fleeing across the Atlantic brought them right to Ratchet and Co.),

Spike knows going against Zeta means burning the olive branch of government acceptance Zeta held out to his father and their diaspora after their lifelong struggle to get the same compensation for their work as native-born workers, and better/safer projects.,

Carly knows going against Zeta means a stain on her record as a ‘model minority’ , and it will destroy Zeta’s promise of a scholarship fund for her community as well as government goodwill for them.

All three decide that they have to take a stand against him regardless, and they managed to sabotage Zeta’s control over Metroplex and allowed Metro to escape into the Pacific. Fleeing Zeta’s wrath across the Atlantic put them on the collision course with the Autobots via an SOS signal from Prowl which Chip decoded and answered, and this set have been stalwart allies since Chip still has a close relationship with Prowl here over many similar aspects of their life, quiet companionship and a love for strategy games. He is also rebuilding the relationship he had with Spike and Sparkplug, and Spike and Chip see each other more as brothers than friends these days.

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Prowl had quite the update in backstory and personality a while ago, mind sharing his evolution proccess?

Honestly the biggest thing was that he never had a solid personality in my early draft of him! He started out as a mirror of IDW Prowl but in all frankness, while I find 2005 IDW Prowl EXTREMELY intriguing, I don't care for him as a person, and I especially do not like how the later writers treated him as the communal hate sink, and how this has ALSO caused some fans to justify the awful things done to him by others in narrative (this part of the reason TTB is a also No-Chromedome territory--people get fucking weird about him versus Prowl).

The thing is however that I LOVE Prowl's IDW background, coming from a place like Petrex where rules were so draconian that questioning your lot in life was grounds to throw you in prison (outside of IDW, I love that the terrible things done there in name of assimilation and order was also delved into in the War for Cybertron series, where unlike IDW Prowl, this Prowl was remorseful and genuinely disturbed by it). Prowl is also ofc a Cold Construct, and how that impacts humans as opposed to Cybertronians is something that is heavily explored in Ties That Bind. To note here, Megatron, Blaster and Starscream are Cold Constructs who were either loved and managed to retain a sense of personhood (Megs), had their true background hidden from them until adulthood (Blaster) or were successful in fighting for some semblance of rights over their own destiny (Starscream). In Prowl, given his history in Petrex, I wanted to explore the logical extreme of a Cold Construct who NEVER had that chance, who had everything taken from him and had almost all semblance of rebellion he can't even remember wrung out of him. Almost everything that makes him a person is functionally destroyed by his government in service of turning him into an asset (Not even the DNA that makes him who he is is sacred, as it was used by Mesothulas to create Springer--he doesn't even have rights to what makes him him), almost everything (he would have been killed for his last act of rebellion if Jazz hadn't saved him in time), but an inch, as mentioned in V for Vendetta: "Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having." And I wanted, despite everything done to him, to make him care. Really care. Even if it's clumsy and stilted, and he himself doesn't understand it but goddamn if he ain't trying. To hold on to that inch. Because is his compassion worth any less than his companions if he has to learn it? Is his concern for his companions any less earnest if he ties it to the good of the unit (because that's what he understands best) before the individual? Is his desire for justice less powerful than his friends' if he ties it to how it's 'wrong' in the order of things as he understands it as opposed to 'I empathise with this person being wronged' (because he doesn't KNOW HOW TO DO THAT)? Is who he is, broken and shattered on the inside in places where he isn't outright empty, worth saving? Jazz certainly thought he was! And I suppose that's also tied to parts of my simultaneous dislike and intrigue of his IDW version: What is someone got him? (because he HAS A POINT. A LOT OF THE TIME. 'Good' IDW Autobots mostly run on 'Maverick' mode even if it's stupid or makes no sense) What if someone tried to understand where he was coming from (he is STILL trying to do good albeit in terrible ways because that's what he's taught) instead of seeing him as an aberration (MORE SO than the Cons sometimes which is insane) for something he cannot help as a living state asset, and a constant lost cause for a personality and an outlook molded by one of the worst regimes on Cybertron (because Functionism was awful as it was, but it seemed PARTICULARLY awful in Petrex)? Because I see him as deserving of a satisfying narrative of figuring out who he is away from everything he was molded to become, and a redemption arc way more than say, WarCrimes McGee Megatron, and I happen to LIKE IDW Megatron. So in TTB he gets that! All the AWFUL things that comes with being a flesh tool with barcode imprinted on him, and the messy things that comes with breaking away from that and trying to figure out how to fucking person, and all the love that comes from a community that see the work he's putting in, and see that inch he's holding on to, and are helping him hold on to it when his grip on it loosens.

I just think it's the kind of evolution and story that he deserves!

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Hello! I really, really enjoy your TTB! I have a question, how long did it take for everyone who was involved in the war to settle back into a "normal life"? It can be pretty devastating and life-altering to go through what they did.

Oh a long while. I don't know that it was 'normal' even after everything ended, like having 9-5 jobs and daily commutes. Within a direct 5 years post-war, there was still a lot to do with rebuilding/dismantling parts of the old system. The good thing for the Autobots at least is that they had a wide safety net woven for themselves by themselves (Rung and Hound in particular have experience treating veterans/being part of military, and knows the issues soldiers often have trying to reassimilate into society), and everyone was determined to make sure the other could thrive in the world they had fought to fix. Rung. OP and Hound actually made them all promise to work on this together, because the work doesn't end when the weapons are put down. Ratchet made it very clear that all you idiots have a part of each other coursing through your veins (at some point within that decade they were working together, they have all received blood, skin grafts or plasma transfusions from each other at least once), you are intrinsically linked. You don't stop being comrades just because we aren't wearing badges anymore. Anything from helping out with job-hunting to character reference letters (from former division leaders) for work or college, being a couch to crash on while some of them are saving up for their own place, pitching in financially, shooting regular phone calls or visits, to celebrating the little milestones everyone makes so said steps feel like they matter in the big picture when you're no fighting for a larger cause (because you and your life matter too). Some of them ended up still staying at Alpha Trion's estate after he rebuilt the damaged parts of it for a while longer, especially those with moderate to severe PTSD issues, until they finally felt ready to live on their own again. Mainly because it was 'home' for ten years and Rung is there on a 24/7 hour basis to help them if needed. What also helped in some aspects is that they weren't being run strictly like a military, so reassimilating into society wasn't as much of a daunting ordeal. The ones who had the hardest time were Hound, most of the frontliners, the Wreckers and OP. The Decepticons were much less lucky in this aspect because they were functioning like a strict military, and whatever their safety nets they had fell apart when Shockwave (for whom this was of little importance) came into power. Some of them like Soundwave and Co., Starscream and Barricade who reached out to the Autobots and worked with them against Unicron near the end of the war were offered the same help Autobots received---they had the best chances. Others who went their own way struggled to varying degrees--some did actually manage to make a new life for themselves, some remained outlaws who kept sparking and profiting off spates of conflict or worked underground like Deadlock once did, unable and unwilling to accept the way the world has changed over a decade.

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First, love the little puns in the magazine cover. Very punny. Second, what happened to Brainstorm's face there? Looks like he took drastic measures to eat the world's largest gobstopper.

The puns are half the reason this format has me kicking my feet and giggling everytime I need to work with the text :’3

Also Brainstorm ran his mouth at some Decepticon guards while he was incarcerated prior to the Autobots rescuing him, and said guards wanted to teach him a lesson about loose lips (and jaws).

Did not work well admittedly, he’s verbally spicy as ever! Though it does take a while before he’s comfortable speaking to people without the mask.

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For the Represent Zine on @allsparkzines, I was given the honor of creating one of their stretch goal goodies, and I’m proud to reveal this piece featuring Praveen Satvinder/Perceptor and Sun Byeong-Ho/Brainstorm to that end!

You can pry these magazine covers from my cold, dead hands, and you can get this piece as a 5x7 print if we reach the goal of 75 physical copies ordered, so go go go, don’t let these science lads down! (PERCEPTOR ESPECIALLY they had to bribe him to get him away from his research—Brainstorm JUMPED at the chance).

Featuring also my personal designs for Turbofoxes!

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For the Represent Zine on @allsparkzines, I was given the honor of creating one of their stretch goal goodies, and I’m proud to reveal this piece featuring Praveen Satvinder/Perceptor and Sun Byeong-Ho/Brainstorm to that end!

You can pry these magazine covers from my cold, dead hands, and you can get this piece as a 5x7 print if we reach the goal of 75 physical copies ordered, so go go go, don’t let these science lads down! (PERCEPTOR ESPECIALLY they had to bribe him to get him away from his research—Brainstorm JUMPED at the chance).

Featuring also my personal designs for Turbofoxes!

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So reiterating my last question, Was OP’s terrorism exaggerated or was it real. If it was did he at least try to apologize to the victims

Also can I see Esme the cat. I’m a cat fan 🐱

Let's break it down!

Domestic Terrorism: Sentinel does not like OP or Megs' meddling with The Way Things Are. Sentinel is the Prime. Sentinel can call their nonsense whatever he wants to call it, and they're terrorists in his eyes.

Assault: He hit cops that were hitting protesters.

Treason: He is actively against Sentinel's government.

Dissemination of banned literature: Sentinel banned a list of books and texts during the Clampdown period, including 1984, The Iron Heel, Farenheit 451, Animal Farm, The Hunger Games (Yes it's YA, yes Sentinel is that petty), Goat Days, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed and Megatron's own Towards Peace. OP said "absolutely not" and used what he learned from his mother who worked with an underground printing press in Iran to spread them.

Criminal contempt of court: He's obviously refused to give himself up and appear in court for his charges (he ain't stupid). He's also 'tampered with evidence' and has taken to breaking out and hiding 'peoples of interest'/helping them evade the law (Sentinel's 'black bags' if you've watched V for Vendetta).

Destruction of records in federal investigations: He managed to hack into (with Jazz's help) and take down government surveillance records on 'peoples of interest'. Basically, he ruined Sentinel's version of the Patriot Act.

Rescue of seized properties: The govt takes stuff from common folk. He takes it back for them.

Consesus: Charges are not wrong, they're just set by an extremely crapsack government. The 'victims' are mostly people working under Sentinel and he's not apologizing to them because he messed with them for Following Orders.

Esme usually appears with Prowl, so you can see her here and here!

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So straight to the question this time. Since some of the transformers have done crime , I was wondering how the crime they did lead them to jail in our world. Like does Omar’s banned books really banned in our world therefore he goes to jail?

AHAHA oh bless, that's assuming they went to jail at all. Naw, they were fugitives while Sentinel Prime was in power, hence the wanted posters! Sentinel was just never able to get his hands on them because OP, Megs and Jazz combined have friends underground and aboveground that helped them stay hidden during the Clampdown period. When Sentinel was killed by Megs, obviously those charges couldn't stick, and they were mostly specific to Sentinel's government in the UK (Megatron's charges are clearly more...severe, but Sentinel was never well-liked and Megatron now spearheads almost the entire UK as Decepticon leader and has a cadre of fanatical followers---WHO is going to arrest him really) France has consistently refused to recognise Sentinel Prime's authority, and given that it's where the Autobots are based (Normandy specifically), those charges do not stick to OP there.

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Ai Xia/Arcee has actually appeared in some of my work before this though mostly conceptual, so I’m always happy to introduce her as the Autobots’ terrifying war veteran Bosozoku Baba/Biker Granny who came out of retirement to gorge on bakkwa and kick ass and wouldn’t you know it she done run out of her favorite bakkwa. She’s an honorary Wrecker in that like them, she’s only ever deployed in a code red situation and you understand and accept that by doing so, she sees no issue dropping bodies to see her objective through. The chain, like Sunstreaker’s, is not for show, and she’s armed with an energy guan dao when she goes from nosy Chinese Aunty to War Granny. She sees the Autobots as honorary kids and grandkids, but pays particular attention to Sideswipe, Prowl and Blaster.

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Ai Xia/Arcee has actually appeared in some of my work before this though mostly conceptual, so I’m always happy to introduce her as the Autobots’ terrifying war veteran Bosozoku Baba/Biker Granny who came out of retirement to gorge on bakkwa and kick ass and wouldn’t you know it she done run out of her favorite bakkwa. She’s an honorary Wrecker in that like them, she’s only ever deployed in a code red situation and you understand and accept that by doing so, she sees no issue dropping bodies to see her objective through. The chain, like Sunstreaker’s, is not for show, and she’s armed with an energy guan dao when she goes from nosy Chinese Aunty to War Granny. She sees the Autobots as honorary kids and grandkids, but pays particular attention to Sideswipe, Prowl and Blaster.

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Hey so I

Hey I had already asked questions before but I saw ur FAq and it said 95% of the population got corrupted. What happened to the 15%

Haha not corrupted, genetically modified! Also the figure is 80% on the Worldbuilding page eueb

The 20% ‘unsullied’ are still around but given that the genetic modifications often travel down hereditary lines in this case, that percentage is dwindling.

I imagine most of them are living rather normal and mundane lives, but there’s probably a subset who hold their status as something to be proud of/something that puts them above the others as pure-strain humans untouched by ‘animal filth/alien meddling’.

It’s as silly as it sounds, about as silly as existing Quintesson Death/Doomsday Cults who’re looking forward to the return of their Tentacled Alien Overlords to finish the Rapture earthlier fools interrupted ✨👌🏼

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We’re finally allowed to post up our previews for the Represent Zine hosted by @allsparkzines and I am so, SO excited to to unveil my work for this edition! Aside some lovely stickers (and a stretch goal print to be announced later if you folks can get us to our goal! Hinthint: Simpatico) my main piece for this year is focused on the Duality of Drift! Do book a copy for a good cause! All proceeds for this edition goes to the Lebanese Red Cross!

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We’re finally allowed to post up our previews for the Represent Zine hosted by @allsparkzines and I am so, SO excited to to unveil my work for this edition! Aside some lovely stickers (and a stretch goal print to be announced later if you folks can get us to our goal! Hinthint: Simpatico) my main piece for this year is focused on the Duality of Drift! Do book a copy for a good cause! All proceeds for this edition goes to the Lebanese Red Cross!

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RODDDYYYYY MY BOY! God. I’m loving how much attention the backstories for each of the cast gets every time I come here. Abt Roddy’s street gang, what were some of their modis operandi while they were trying to undermine sentinel?

THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES THEY HAVE TO TELL and so little time to get to them all jgfsjdgff Roddy in particular is like Prowl in that he has enough narrative weight for like, five people, he's just more YOLO and less serious about it (because if he is, he's not going to be in a good headspace at all). The Hounds of Ulster mainly functioned as lookouts and scouts for the larger rebel cells (who affectionately refer to them as their 'hunting hounds') since most of them were 18-23, BUT as their names suggest they were pretty handy in a scuffle (throwing hands is a bit of a learned skill when you're roaming the streets as often as they do) and would often play the part of stupid, hotheaded street urchin biting off more than they could chew to lure Sentinel's men hoping for an easy catch into dead-end alley traps (this is where HotRod's Obfuscating Stupidity comes from. Even if his ADHD often puts him in "it seemed like a good idea at the time" territory, he's actually sharp as a tack and a lot of his ditzier behavior is intentional). They'd relieve these officers of their weapons, uniforms, and methods of identification to be used to break into guarded establishments and/or breach data banks. They'd also red herring Sentinel's men by planting fake evidence and looking and acting like the MUCH bigger and louder problem so that all eyes were on them and not the teams working to secretly sabotage Sentinel's ships and weapons factories (A tactic Hotrod still utilises till today though it sometimes gets misconstrued as "attention-seeking idiot". As far as he's concerned though, you want distractions? I got distractions) Fun facts: The nun from Solas Bhride (We'll call her Sister Eirinn O'Conlaed) who offered Roddy shelter as a runaway (even though she was told she shouldn't have because only women were allowed in the compound then, but she made the argument that he was still a boy and not a man yet) does reappear later in his story at the beginning of the uprising against Sentinel Prime in Belfast. She travelled all the way from Kildare to Belfast with a flame ignited from the larger St Brigid's perpetual flame which she and her sisters had been tending to for years, and as Sentinel landed on their shores and began his campaign of oppression against the populace, those sisters decided it was time Ireland's fire of rebellion was stoked again, and they set out to each major settlement along the east coast (facing the UK) to bring 'Brigid's Blessings' with them. And by blessing I mean Sister Eiriin offered them the flame that lit the first torches and firebombs of the rebels and told them to give these tosspots hell from Ireland's Patroness Saint. ("MARY OF THE GAEL/BRIGID OF FAUGHART SENDS HER REGARDS!" being a common thing Sentinel's men would hear before absolute chaos)

After Sentinel's operations were destroyed in Belfast, what remained of the flame brought to them by Sister Eirinn (who continued to stoke it during the whole period of the conflict so they always had St Brigid lighting the way on their missions) was encased in beacons along the ENTIRE eastern coastline (joining forces with the other coastal settlements doing the same) and to this day, St Brigid's fire continues to burn in Kildare and wreath the coast as a warning for future would-be colonisers and a reminder of Ireland's indomitable will. All this to say; There's a reason, a deep reason Hotrod loves the element of fire the way he does.

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Heads up!

The Non-Aligned and civilians finally have a page of their own!

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A call to arms by the Autobots’ face of fiery rebellion! Like Sideswipe, Hanley Riordan—codename ‘HotRod’ — was a blue-collar rabble-rouser who showed leadership capabilities before he was an Autobot, in which he ran his own gang (The Hounds of Ulster) and made life hell for Sentinel Prime in Belfast. (His affinity for fire was borne from the kindness of a nun tasked with guarding St. Brigid’s Perpetual Flame in Kildare who offered him shelter when he ran away from his sixth and final foster home).

Closeup on a pair of Enemies of the State and their many, many crimes against Sentinel Prime’s government under the cut!