Cower, brief mortals, for you stand in the presence of the Apostate, the Unnamed, the Thirteenth of the Firstforged! HEED the voice of the First Herald of Chaos! LEARN the story of his origin! BOGGLE that nobody seems worried by the fact that he's on fire!

Toy Tech Specs

The Fallen forgot his real name long ago. It didn't matter. It was a name given to him by his creator - the one he betrayed. It was a relic of a time before he had come to see the truth. The truth of Unicron.

Created as one of the original Thirteen Transformers to serve as a protector of Cybertron, the Fallen has always been a creature of chaos and degradation. His original purpose was to oversee the stately running down of the universal clock, the ordered tick of universal balance from energy to entropy, the slow and total collapse that heralds a new creation - for what are creation and life without dissolution and death? He knew his purpose only too well, and became obsessed with the end of all things. Intrigued by the dark sciences, he came into contact with Unicron, and fell under the evil planet's thrall.

He exists now for one purpose alone: the destruction of the seal of Primus and the release of Unicron into the universe. He lives only so that one day he might witness the last star in the unvierse wink out, and eternal ending fall.

STR:?? INT:?? SPD:9 END:?? RNK:10 CRG:10 FPR:10 SKL:10

Unique feature: Invulnerable to almost any damage.

The Fallen: Robot-mode
The Fallen: Tank-mode

Transformers: The Ultimate Guide ( updated edition )

The many battles against Primus culminated in shocking betrayal. Primus had created a crew of thirteen Transformers to optimise his defensive and tactical options in planet mode. But one of the Thirteen had been turned, and attempted to sabotage Primus' planet mode. "The Fallen", as this Transformer became known, was thwarted, and joined his new master ... only to be sucked along with him into a black hole.

Scans from War Within: Dark Ages

The Fallen's first appearance.
Telling Bludgeon and friends that they suck.
Smashing magic bugs. Yes, really.
Recruiting the Chaos Trinity.
On fire!
Spooky optics! Woogy!
Showing Grimlock just who Big Cat is.
Preparing to lay the stomp down on some Autobots.
The Fallen goes all Talk To The Hand on Jazz.
Looming spookily.
Explaining the Unbinding.
Oopsie.
The end of the Fallen. Maybe.
The cover of issue #6.

The interview from the back of the Dark Ages trade

( We left any spelling mistakes and whatnot in for posterity. The interviewer is Matt Hansen. )

Transformers: War Within: The Dark Ages featured a character that had many fans saying "who's that?" He appears as a mystical, dark robot that has powers and a look unlike other Transformers. The Fallen was part of Simon Furman's reconstructing of life on Cybertron before the fateful voyage to Earth. To help understand The Fallen, Dreamwave spoke with the two men behind him: writer Furman and penciller Pat Lee.

Dreamwave: Let's begin with Simon. Did you conceptualize the idea of The Fallen before you actually finished the storyline? How crucial was he to the original idea of the second Volume?

Simon Furman: The Fallen was there right from the start. He was really the crux of the entire series, and the concept that he was one of the original thirteen Transformers, the "Judas" of the bunch, was something that had been percolating in my mind for a while. The idea of Cybertron as a spacecraft, roaming the galaxy at some distant point in TF pre-history, had been introduced in the first War Within and my intention was always to expand on that. Featuring at least one of the original "crew" seemed a good bet, especially as he had been "turned to the dark side" and, we assumed, betrayed the others. The Fallen was the perfect agitator for my Dark Ages brew of fear and suspicion. I wanted a real "cauldron" feel to a post-Optimus/Megatron Cybertron, a world on the brink of total anarchy and chaos, and thematically, the Fallen played right into that.

DW: What did you think of the idea when you first saw it, Pat?

Pat Lee: I thought it was great from the start. The concept, the appearance that Simon wanted, everything, it sounded really exciting for both of us. I was pretty hyped up to do this too as it was my first original Transformer design, and I knew it had to be different from any other Transformer.

DW: How much information did you provide Pat with initially, Simon?

SF: Pat and I exchanged a number of emails on the look and the feel of the Fallen and I turned that into a full description. One of the things I wanted most of the Fallen, visually, was that he looked the part. He had to somehow look "older" than other Transformers, and again, playing into that Dark Ages feel, I went all out in my original description of the character to make him almost medieval.

PL: Yeah, since we knew this was something involving the history of The Transformers, we needed to create a sort of "ancient" look. That's where the feeling of his armor, his visor, the distinct "knight-like" look comes from. We really had to make The Fallen stand out from the rest, as he is an obscure character, and the visual was key.

DW: How many revision and versions were there to the initial sketches?

SF: Pat's first sketches (for the incentive cover) were a little too clean for my liking and he was happy to dirty and darken him up. I loved the internal furnace effect that Pat worked in and the colorists picked up on. The perpetual flame effect came later, once Andrew Wildman got to draw the character in the actual first issue.

DW: It must have been challenging to come up with a new "old" character, and to figure out the transformation, all that sort of thing.

PL: I was actually really interesting to come up with the transformation. Like I said, I really wanted to make him a standout villain, and this meant putting a lot of thought into his robot form, and making sure the transformation into a Tank worked well.

DW: What was the initial reaction of the other people at Dreamwave?

PL: It was a great one. Everyone really thought the idea and the opportunity to create a new character was incredible. There was a lot of positive energy about it.

SF: Agreed. Everyone at Dreamwave was very receptive to creating a new character for The Dark Ages, excited even. It felt like we were making a real mark on the TF backstory. I'm sure James McDonough had a few nervous flutters, in case I introduced some vast twist that was going to compromise his G1 plans, but we were also working with Hasbro on a whole larger framework, into which everything had to fit.

DW: Is this the last we have seen of the Fallen?

SF: The Fallen has become a part of this larger outline I've created, and everything flowed onwards and upwards throughout the saga. One of these days, maybe, I'll get to go back further into TF pre-history and show the original crew and chart the Fallen's, well, fall from grace.

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