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A few years ago I made a previous thread, mostly focused on how Transformers used higher dimensions and such which resulted in the current standing of the series' strongest characters. Unfortunately, there was quite a lot of relatively obscure Transformers material I had yet to experience at this time, resulting in the information within that thread becoming inaccurate not long after it was posted. As I am not super active on VSB I didn't bother to revise it, but as this site recently changed its tiering system, I decided to create a new thread to verify how Transformers overall cosmology meshes with it, and where it lands within the new system. Transformers is not a series that focuses on higher dimensions much at all, with the author who focused on it the most being intentionally vague about the process for the sake of storytelling (and in general, there being maybe two statements indicating "countless dimensions" at all, which is both vague and debatable). Conversely, there is more material that falls into more metaphysical abstraction and this is primarily what will be focused on in this thread, as there are particular passages that may lend themselves to Tier 1A standing under the new system, that would not have met the criteria previously. As with the previous revision thread I aim provide easy sourcing for all this in addition to further context, as TF canon is a bit messy and context can make scaling particularly muddy.
Section 1: Singularity Ablyss, and Transformers' Tree of Life
Singularity Ablyss is a short story run parallel to the plot of Beast Machines, written by a writer on the show, Bob Skir. It focuses on Megatron's journey to the afterlife and is heavily influenced if not outright borrowed from, the Kabbalah. This story was included in the 2004 anthology collection Transformers: Legends, and the first thing I want to cover is canonicity, as the book opens with a remark about the stories not being "in-continuity". Aside from this simply meaning they don't take place in the main timelines of their respective stories (like 99% of Transformers spinoff material), many of these stories were given explicit Universal Stream designations during Ask Vector Prime, firmly placing them within the canon. Singularity Ablyss received more, as it was established both as canon and, even in the post-Shroud era of Transformers, still the standard for the afterlife, over a decade after the original story was published. Additionally, AVP has even indicated unpublished and unofficial Transformers stories can still be considered canon (Simon Furman's apocryphal story Alignment was actually deemed canon outright by AVP, and will be referenced later in this as well), solidifying this book's place within the lore. With this covered, we'll be going into the relevant content of the story.
The Kingdom is immediately visible to Megatron upon dying. It is the corporeal plane. In Angel-Rhinox's words it is "less than a fraction of the top of an iceberg" and "the surface of the mirror, a vehicle for creating an image that yet contains neither mass nor value", and perhaps more importantly "Like a painting which merely represents a landscape, The Kingdom is a mere facade behind which lies the larger world."
Before I go further it must be established: the Kingdom is reality, the multiverse etc. of Transformers. We can cleanly establish it is not merely a higher dimension by examining the stories where higher dimensional entities appear in TF. In both examples below, these beings ascend to higher dimensions, but still live and die, while the Tree of Life (as it will be explored in further texts) is innately tied to the afterlife.
From the Alternity stories, we witness Megatron's death.
And in Lost Light, the Omega Guardians, who had ascended to an unspecified higher dimension, had one of their number die attempting to force its way back below, its body becoming a portal network through time and space of the standard 3/4 dimensional universes.
These two higher dimensional entities still experienced life and death, in some form, which I think should illustrate clearly that the Tree of Life/Afterspark/Afterlife is something else entirely. The story itself will double down on this however, as when Rhinox speaks of the Foundation, the base of the Tree, he states "all that you experienced was mere metaphor for the journey ahead"
Coupled with the painting analogy, we are beginning to establish that the Tree of Life is a deeper kind of reality and one unrelated to standard dimensions. Rhinox directly states "'Reality' is one of those concepts you are going to have to relinquish" immediately after, driving the point home. As also showcased in the text posted above, they will be ascending its bows to reach the Crown, or the Matrix where all sparks come from. This quite clearly places the Tree as a part of, or aspect of, Primus, as Primus is the source of all Transformer life, the source of sparks, the source of souls. Journeying through the Tree is the reunification of this with Primus.
Splendor and Eternity demonstrate to Megatron the cyclic and eternal nature of reality. There isn't much to unpack here, and in the second page his spark shifts back to his physical body. This happens off and on during the story, and most of those pages have no relevant information for this thread and as such are disregarded.
The most important thing here is the indication that the Matrix is the source of all things. This makes sense from a prior lore perspective, as despite many deliberately conflicting origins, the birth of Transformers' setting ultimately ties back into Primus.
Megatron is exposed to the sphere of pure information. His conclusion after this is that everything he experienced in his real, material life, was less real than what he experienced ascending the Tree of Life, despite his resistance to the journey and refusal to believe any of it from the outset. I believe this constitutes a very clear example of a deeper reality, wherein the main world is rendered, to quote the story "mere metaphor" in comparison.
However, this is not the end, because Megatron has not even made it to the final sphere yet.
The first passage drives home that this is what Rhinox was trying to get him to understand all along. We also get more exploration on The Crown/Matrix. It is referred to as infinite, omniscient, omnipresent. Megatron even witnesses his lower physical form and soul during the process of ascension. He is no longer of the material world.
However, because Beast Wars Megatron has the biggest ego imaginable, he decides to kill himself and wipe out his own existence rather than willingly merge with God. Which by a fluke, he survives and is returned to his physical body, and the rest of the show's plotline plays out from there.
Bob Skir recently was interviewed about this story and provided his thought process on it
"What happens when Megatron looks into the face of God?" was the driving question of the story.
The Tree of Life would not appear again in Transformers, until over a decade later, it was briefly shown in Beast Wars: Uprising by Jim Sorenson
The Oracle (an aspect of Primus in most stories) even refers to it as "ablyss" in reference to Skir's story, and it is once again said to involve transcending the "mortal plane".
While only tangential, I also wanted to mention something from years prior, that I mentioned in Furman's story Alignment
When Liege Maximo attempts to ascend to the realm of the dark gods (Unicron's species, as confirmed by Furman himself in the DK Transformers guide, where Alignment was also referenced despite being unofficial), he is said to start becoming an unbeing that embodies contradictions.
Section 2: Is this genuine Reality/Fiction Transcendence?+Addressing anti-feats and requirements
I will be referring primarily to the parameters set in this thread
In particular, this section of the above thread
Regarding that guideline's restrictions even if these requirements are met
As mentioned two points above, there's a very specific reason this has never happened: Unicron and Primus in their original, unbound states, have never appeared again in the 40 year history of the brand, only in flashbacks (and even then, this has only happened twice) where the only characters they interact with are each other. This is also key to understanding why their showings seem so random across Transformers, and it is perhaps as simple as a "not their true forms" trope. However even then, the entire cause of them taking on these lower, physical forms at all, is a result of their initial fight in the Marvel era that started Transformers' to begin with. Primus fooled Unicron into becoming trapped in this state, and while not explicitly stated, Unicron and Primus still use these bodies in every story: this seal and nerf has never been undone by them, leading to their stalemate as the background of Transformers lore. The key here is that any perceived weakness is only because it was imposed on them by a being of near equal power and existence: each other. Additionally, as all sparks come from the higher being in this case, characters dying and returning to Primus would in this case be rooting themselves to the higher plane, even if this doesn't matter much as no-one has ever attacked Primus from this vantage point.
Of course, this story has been retconned numerous times to not be about the birth of one universe, but it still largely outlines how Transformers started. Unicron eats everything, including his old race of abstract beings (per Reaching the Omega Point), Primus is created from Unicron, they fight, they are sealed, the multiverse is born (extrapolated on further with Ask Vector Prime which posits that the birth of the multiverse was a side-effect of Primus' own coming into existence). That the Tree of Life exists well after this as some extension of Primus does more to indicate the level these two were on prior to confining themselves if anything.
Going back to the guideline thread
Section 2.5: The Shroud
I thought this was worth addressing on its own as The Shroud allegedly "removed/destroyed multiversal singularities" from Transformers and thus could disqualify this. However, The Shroud is a bit more complex than I think has been understood in the past. For one, despite supposedly restricting multiversal singularities and travel, a multiversal Unicron appeared less than a year later in the Transformers Legends/Unite Warriors manga, and that same writer wrote extensive multiversal storylines for several years after. As I mentioned earlier, the Tree of Life's appearance in Beast Wars: Uprising was also after The Shroud chapters had been published, and given an entire cartoon within Transformers (Cyberverse) featured the multiverse/s extensively, and the mobile game Forged to Fight, featured multiverses all the way until early 2024, it would appear the Shroud is not all-encompassing.
And this is in fact, directly stated. Ask Vector Prime had already clarified The Shroud may not have necessarily affected everything
The purpose of this section isn't to nitpick canon or scaling, just to illustrate that The Shroud has holes in it that do not necessrily denote Unicron and Primus have lost their abstract nature for being struck by it, especially as the entity doing so was one of Primus' vassal 13, and the Tree of Life and Afterlife continue to exist in spite of it.
Additionally, if accepted, this would only apply to exactly three characters: The One, Unicron, and Primus. There isn't anyone else who has demonstrated this kind of superiority to my knowledge. Primus in his original form was quite literally half of Unicron, so anything of him started with his twin. The One was the one who created, and later split Unicron to begin with, and as such is quite effortlessly beyond the scope of the two deities. Unicron at his prime, during the Marvel G1 issue "The Void!" before he was split, would be the strongest variant of the character to date, as this is the only time in the entire duration of the franchise he was depicted whole.
I do not intend to argue for Tier 0 The One or anything like that here, as I think that character is far too vaguely defined aside from being nebulously beyond Unicron and Primus.
Addendum/Miscellany
These are bits of information that were not necessarily relevant to the Tree of Life, but may find some place within the new tiering system. Or may not, but I thought were worth mentioning regardless.
Astral Plane
Possible consideration for "Beyond Dimensional Existence", it is directly stated to be a mental realm beyond distance, and in Beast Wars: Reborn transcending time is also required to access it. Vector Prime alludes to it being a part of, or contained within the Allspark/Afterlife, and this is where Unicron and Primus' final battle took place back in the Marvel era.
Unspace
Unspace is extremely inconsistent, and this is even lampshaded in AVP, but Ramjet's TFCC Bio refers to it as a "timeless nonspace where ordered mathematics are nonsense" which may prove relevant, as the guidelines here indicate statements regarding "all of time and space" may fall under this bracket. One issue with Transformers in general is it tends to use blanket statements like this far more often than specifics.
(As an aside, the Elder Gods appeared in Infestation 2, and were vastly limited and demonstrated almost nothing but anti-feats, so I take the "evil that dwarfs Unicron" statement as empty hype)
It's also notable that most of the only instances we are shown of individuals surviving Unspace, it is with some small fragment of power granted by Primus or Unicron. Universe featuring The Wreckers goes into more detail.
The Realm of the Primes
I had initially written this one off entirely, but AVP clarified the Realm is the same across and outside all realities, so there may be merit here.
Vector Prime is referring to this passage from Transformers: Exiles
This initially just seemed like he moved to a pocket dimension of some kind, especially due to the Aligned cluster existing outside the main multiverse, but AVP seems to have retconned the realm of the Primes into being the same thing even beyond the multiverse. This one is quite vague but again, the examples in this section are mostly mentioned for posterity and outside input rather than serious argument.
I believe this is everything relevant for now. I did see some discussion regarding Type IV Multiverses and the new system, but was unable to find the relevant posts and how they related to see if Transformers qualified.
Section 1: Singularity Ablyss, and Transformers' Tree of Life
Singularity Ablyss is a short story run parallel to the plot of Beast Machines, written by a writer on the show, Bob Skir. It focuses on Megatron's journey to the afterlife and is heavily influenced if not outright borrowed from, the Kabbalah. This story was included in the 2004 anthology collection Transformers: Legends, and the first thing I want to cover is canonicity, as the book opens with a remark about the stories not being "in-continuity". Aside from this simply meaning they don't take place in the main timelines of their respective stories (like 99% of Transformers spinoff material), many of these stories were given explicit Universal Stream designations during Ask Vector Prime, firmly placing them within the canon. Singularity Ablyss received more, as it was established both as canon and, even in the post-Shroud era of Transformers, still the standard for the afterlife, over a decade after the original story was published. Additionally, AVP has even indicated unpublished and unofficial Transformers stories can still be considered canon (Simon Furman's apocryphal story Alignment was actually deemed canon outright by AVP, and will be referenced later in this as well), solidifying this book's place within the lore. With this covered, we'll be going into the relevant content of the story.
This image is unofficial, but follows the path Megatron follows in the story.
The Kingdom is immediately visible to Megatron upon dying. It is the corporeal plane. In Angel-Rhinox's words it is "less than a fraction of the top of an iceberg" and "the surface of the mirror, a vehicle for creating an image that yet contains neither mass nor value", and perhaps more importantly "Like a painting which merely represents a landscape, The Kingdom is a mere facade behind which lies the larger world."
Before I go further it must be established: the Kingdom is reality, the multiverse etc. of Transformers. We can cleanly establish it is not merely a higher dimension by examining the stories where higher dimensional entities appear in TF. In both examples below, these beings ascend to higher dimensions, but still live and die, while the Tree of Life (as it will be explored in further texts) is innately tied to the afterlife.
From the Alternity stories, we witness Megatron's death.
https://toys.tfw2005.com/thundercracker-mitsuoka-orochi-sonic-blue-4794Alternation said:
And in Lost Light, the Omega Guardians, who had ascended to an unspecified higher dimension, had one of their number die attempting to force its way back below, its body becoming a portal network through time and space of the standard 3/4 dimensional universes.
These two higher dimensional entities still experienced life and death, in some form, which I think should illustrate clearly that the Tree of Life/Afterspark/Afterlife is something else entirely. The story itself will double down on this however, as when Rhinox speaks of the Foundation, the base of the Tree, he states "all that you experienced was mere metaphor for the journey ahead"
Coupled with the painting analogy, we are beginning to establish that the Tree of Life is a deeper kind of reality and one unrelated to standard dimensions. Rhinox directly states "'Reality' is one of those concepts you are going to have to relinquish" immediately after, driving the point home. As also showcased in the text posted above, they will be ascending its bows to reach the Crown, or the Matrix where all sparks come from. This quite clearly places the Tree as a part of, or aspect of, Primus, as Primus is the source of all Transformer life, the source of sparks, the source of souls. Journeying through the Tree is the reunification of this with Primus.
The most important thing here is the indication that the Matrix is the source of all things. This makes sense from a prior lore perspective, as despite many deliberately conflicting origins, the birth of Transformers' setting ultimately ties back into Primus.
Megatron is exposed to the sphere of pure information. His conclusion after this is that everything he experienced in his real, material life, was less real than what he experienced ascending the Tree of Life, despite his resistance to the journey and refusal to believe any of it from the outset. I believe this constitutes a very clear example of a deeper reality, wherein the main world is rendered, to quote the story "mere metaphor" in comparison.
However, this is not the end, because Megatron has not even made it to the final sphere yet.
The first passage drives home that this is what Rhinox was trying to get him to understand all along. We also get more exploration on The Crown/Matrix. It is referred to as infinite, omniscient, omnipresent. Megatron even witnesses his lower physical form and soul during the process of ascension. He is no longer of the material world.
However, because Beast Wars Megatron has the biggest ego imaginable, he decides to kill himself and wipe out his own existence rather than willingly merge with God. Which by a fluke, he survives and is returned to his physical body, and the rest of the show's plotline plays out from there.
Bob Skir recently was interviewed about this story and provided his thought process on it
"What happens when Megatron looks into the face of God?" was the driving question of the story.
The Tree of Life would not appear again in Transformers, until over a decade later, it was briefly shown in Beast Wars: Uprising by Jim Sorenson
Cultural Appropriation said:
The Oracle (an aspect of Primus in most stories) even refers to it as "ablyss" in reference to Skir's story, and it is once again said to involve transcending the "mortal plane".
While only tangential, I also wanted to mention something from years prior, that I mentioned in Furman's story Alignment
When Liege Maximo attempts to ascend to the realm of the dark gods (Unicron's species, as confirmed by Furman himself in the DK Transformers guide, where Alignment was also referenced despite being unofficial), he is said to start becoming an unbeing that embodies contradictions.
And "unreality" is said to flood the universe. Furman has used "Unspace" repeatedly in the marvel G1 comics, and it isn't portrayed like this, leading me to not conflate the two.
"Reality bubbled and boiled away", again this could be nothing significant, but it is quite different from how standard higher dimensional ascension has been portrayed in Transformers.
Section 2: Is this genuine Reality/Fiction Transcendence?+Addressing anti-feats and requirements
I will be referring primarily to the parameters set in this thread
In particular, this section of the above thread
I would argue is clearly outlined during Singularity Ablyss. Beginning with Rhinox outright stating Reality was only a metaphor in comparison to the Tree of Life/Primus (and even the base of the tree viewed reality as such), and finalized when Rhinox acknowledges Megatron's understanding that his existence was, in his own words, less real than what he had just experienced on the journey back to Primus.
Regarding that guideline's restrictions even if these requirements are met
This has been proven not to be the case, both in the story and in other Transformers stories dealing with parallel worlds, higher dimensions, and the afterlife.
In general, this has never happened in Transformers, and I will elaborate in-depth on this later on.
This has happened in Transformers, but not in the context of anything discussed above. Ultimately irrelevant for TF fiction.
As mentioned two points above, there's a very specific reason this has never happened: Unicron and Primus in their original, unbound states, have never appeared again in the 40 year history of the brand, only in flashbacks (and even then, this has only happened twice) where the only characters they interact with are each other. This is also key to understanding why their showings seem so random across Transformers, and it is perhaps as simple as a "not their true forms" trope. However even then, the entire cause of them taking on these lower, physical forms at all, is a result of their initial fight in the Marvel era that started Transformers' to begin with. Primus fooled Unicron into becoming trapped in this state, and while not explicitly stated, Unicron and Primus still use these bodies in every story: this seal and nerf has never been undone by them, leading to their stalemate as the background of Transformers lore. The key here is that any perceived weakness is only because it was imposed on them by a being of near equal power and existence: each other. Additionally, as all sparks come from the higher being in this case, characters dying and returning to Primus would in this case be rooting themselves to the higher plane, even if this doesn't matter much as no-one has ever attacked Primus from this vantage point.
Of course, this story has been retconned numerous times to not be about the birth of one universe, but it still largely outlines how Transformers started. Unicron eats everything, including his old race of abstract beings (per Reaching the Omega Point), Primus is created from Unicron, they fight, they are sealed, the multiverse is born (extrapolated on further with Ask Vector Prime which posits that the birth of the multiverse was a side-effect of Primus' own coming into existence). That the Tree of Life exists well after this as some extension of Primus does more to indicate the level these two were on prior to confining themselves if anything.
Going back to the guideline thread
Singularity Ablyss is quite outspoken about the nature of reality and as such I do not believe it falls into this category for lack of clarity.
Section 2.5: The Shroud
I thought this was worth addressing on its own as The Shroud allegedly "removed/destroyed multiversal singularities" from Transformers and thus could disqualify this. However, The Shroud is a bit more complex than I think has been understood in the past. For one, despite supposedly restricting multiversal singularities and travel, a multiversal Unicron appeared less than a year later in the Transformers Legends/Unite Warriors manga, and that same writer wrote extensive multiversal storylines for several years after. As I mentioned earlier, the Tree of Life's appearance in Beast Wars: Uprising was also after The Shroud chapters had been published, and given an entire cartoon within Transformers (Cyberverse) featured the multiverse/s extensively, and the mobile game Forged to Fight, featured multiverses all the way until early 2024, it would appear the Shroud is not all-encompassing.
And this is in fact, directly stated. Ask Vector Prime had already clarified The Shroud may not have necessarily affected everything
Essentially, there was always a handwave present to explain future writers doing...whatever they wanted to do with the cosmos. Given further reveals that the Shattered Glass Multiverse was un-Shrouded by this, and Primus' omnipresent nature, it makes it unlikely they ceased to exist entirely as gods, especially as we know the Tree of Life still exists. With Rise of the Beasts even listing Unicron as a multiversal threat in early bios, it appears The Shroud is largely being ignored for future stories, even if it remains canon.
The purpose of this section isn't to nitpick canon or scaling, just to illustrate that The Shroud has holes in it that do not necessrily denote Unicron and Primus have lost their abstract nature for being struck by it, especially as the entity doing so was one of Primus' vassal 13, and the Tree of Life and Afterlife continue to exist in spite of it.
Additionally, if accepted, this would only apply to exactly three characters: The One, Unicron, and Primus. There isn't anyone else who has demonstrated this kind of superiority to my knowledge. Primus in his original form was quite literally half of Unicron, so anything of him started with his twin. The One was the one who created, and later split Unicron to begin with, and as such is quite effortlessly beyond the scope of the two deities. Unicron at his prime, during the Marvel G1 issue "The Void!" before he was split, would be the strongest variant of the character to date, as this is the only time in the entire duration of the franchise he was depicted whole.
I do not intend to argue for Tier 0 The One or anything like that here, as I think that character is far too vaguely defined aside from being nebulously beyond Unicron and Primus.
Addendum/Miscellany
These are bits of information that were not necessarily relevant to the Tree of Life, but may find some place within the new tiering system. Or may not, but I thought were worth mentioning regardless.
Astral Plane
Possible consideration for "Beyond Dimensional Existence", it is directly stated to be a mental realm beyond distance, and in Beast Wars: Reborn transcending time is also required to access it. Vector Prime alludes to it being a part of, or contained within the Allspark/Afterlife, and this is where Unicron and Primus' final battle took place back in the Marvel era.
https://web.archive.org/web/2020092...ars-reborn-chapter-2-of-4-master-of-the-game/Beast Wars: Reborn said:
Vector Prime highlights the Astral Plane as being within the confines of the Allspark.
Unspace
Unspace is extremely inconsistent, and this is even lampshaded in AVP, but Ramjet's TFCC Bio refers to it as a "timeless nonspace where ordered mathematics are nonsense" which may prove relevant, as the guidelines here indicate statements regarding "all of time and space" may fall under this bracket. One issue with Transformers in general is it tends to use blanket statements like this far more often than specifics.
(As an aside, the Elder Gods appeared in Infestation 2, and were vastly limited and demonstrated almost nothing but anti-feats, so I take the "evil that dwarfs Unicron" statement as empty hype)
It's also notable that most of the only instances we are shown of individuals surviving Unspace, it is with some small fragment of power granted by Primus or Unicron. Universe featuring The Wreckers goes into more detail.
The Realm of the Primes
I had initially written this one off entirely, but AVP clarified the Realm is the same across and outside all realities, so there may be merit here.
Vector Prime is referring to this passage from Transformers: Exiles
Transformers Exiles said:
This initially just seemed like he moved to a pocket dimension of some kind, especially due to the Aligned cluster existing outside the main multiverse, but AVP seems to have retconned the realm of the Primes into being the same thing even beyond the multiverse. This one is quite vague but again, the examples in this section are mostly mentioned for posterity and outside input rather than serious argument.
I believe this is everything relevant for now. I did see some discussion regarding Type IV Multiverses and the new system, but was unable to find the relevant posts and how they related to see if Transformers qualified.
