ROBOT WARS NEBULOS

On the planet Cybertron near the Manganese Mountains, 1986, yet another battle raged between the Autobot rebels under Fortress Maximus and a Decepticon commando unit under warlord Scorponok. However, the battle was costly for both sides, and Fortress Maximus decided he'd had enough. He was going to leave Cybertron and the war behind and go to the planet Nebulos, a world where there had been utopian peace for ten thousand years, and he would take with him any Autobot who also wanted out. 

On July 16th, they were ready to leave in a ship designated the Steelhaven. Coming with Maximus were the his fellow rebels Hardhead, Brainstorm, Highbrow, Blurr, Crosshairs, Hot Rod, Kup, Pointblank, Sureshot, Chromedome, Cloudburst, Groundbreaker, Landmine, Sky High, Splashdown, Joyride, Getaway, Waverider and Slapdash. Joining with them on this were the Technobot gestalt team- Afterburner, Nosecone, Scattershot, the original Lightspeed and Strafe -and the Monsterbot commando squad- Doublecross, Grotesque, Repugnus.

The Nebulan populace turned out to be of human form and appearance; however, the first meeting between the two races ended with accidental injury of the Nebulan Gort. The ruling Council of Peers faced an internal struggle over what to do about the newcomers, with the elderly Lord Zarak advocating they take an offensive and Lord Galen (who was the lover of Zarak's daughter Llyra) advocating they take the robot at face value. However, when Blurr arrived in the capital city as an envoy, Zarak and his bodyguard Krunk plotted to make it look like the robot was attacking! The Nebulans retaliated by activating all their old weaponry and launching an assault. Fortress Maximus was forced to take a hard stand and so he, Brainstorm, Highbrow, Chromedome and Hardhead removed their heads from their bodies, making themselves defenceless, to validate their claims of peace, while six others surrendered their weapons. War was averted.

On the 21st, the Nebulan populace staged a protest against the Autobot presence. Zarak used this to continue crying for a removal of the Autobots- when this failed, he contacted Scorponok's Decepticons on Cybertron and asked them to come deal with them. However, the Decepticons decided to ignore any pretence of peace & cooperation and launched a direct assault on the capital city. In order to stop them in time and obey the peace treaty, five Nebulans would have to control the five incapacitated Autobot bodies that lay in the city. Bio-engineering master Arcana, with assistance from Brainstorm, engineered the Headmaster process- the Nebulans would be vastly upgraded so they could transform into new heads for the Autobots. The process was a success, and the Nebulans Galen (Fort Max), Arcana (Brainstorm), Gort (Highbrow), Duros (Hardhead) and Stylor (Chromedome) defeated Scorponok and his cronies, though in doing so Galen gained the animosity of Llyra, who felt he was dedicating himself to war. Annoyed, the Decepticons captured the Nebulans who had summoned them.

Battles raged until March 1988. The Nebulan populace soon became worried that the Headmasters were becoming tyrannical and using the Autobot as a means of domination. After noticing the advantages in reaction time, thought speed and accuracy in shooting gained by the Headmaster process, Scorponok agreed to work with Zarak and his cronies by undergoing the process- Zarak became the Decepticon's Headmaster. They quickly took down and captured the Headmaster Autobots, and due to a slight misinterpretation of events, the Council of Peers believed the Autobots had attacked them and that Zarak and his cronies were protectors. Thanks to this, the Decepticons were able to subtly take control of the planet.

A few Nebulan rebels underwent the Targetmaster process, allowing them to transform into powerful guns to support the Autobots. This was still not enough to save the agricultural centre known as the Nursery from destruction. It was this that allowed Zarak to see that he was being influenced by Scorponok- fearing for the damage he could cause, he freed the Autobot prisoners so they could stop him before his conscious was forever lost. On the 12th of March, totally overwhelmed by Scorponok, he captured the Autobot Targetmasters so he could reverse-engineer the technology to create Decepticon Targetmasters; the prisoners were freed by Hardhead, Highbrow, Duros and Gort. Finally, on 15th of March after a battle between the two faction leaders, the Autobots left the planet replying to an Autobot SOS from Earth and the Decepticons followed.

Nebulos' capital was left ruined by the final days of the war. The Council of Peers ordered all weapons to be destroyed, and the scientists Hi-Q and Hi-Test created a bacterial weapon that would attack any Transformer and ultimately corrode it to death- all fuel was tainted by it. On the 20th of July, the Decepticon combiner duo Darkwing and Dreadwind arrived, looking for Scorponok, and were quickly defeated. However, Hi-Test became driven by an urge to outdo Hi-Q, which he felt he could do by undermining the anti-Transformer solution he'd invented. In order to do this, he and his ally Throttle stole information that led to the creation of the Powermaster process- Nebulans that transformed into engines to power Transformers. The Decepticons could now operate again, and ran amok. On the 30th, an Autobot team- Joyride, Slapdash, Getaway and Joyride -arrived to use Nebulan technology to create a new body for Optimus Prime. They agreed to help stop the Decepticons, and in order to assist them in this, Hi-Q and his colleagues became the Powermasters for all but Goldbug- because of this, once the Decepticons were gone, they had to leave their homeworld with the Autobots in order to keep them functioning. 

The Autobot vessel Thunder Raider eventually made contact with the planet, and the Nebulans seemed willing to put up with Transformers this time (possibly because they'd realised by now the Autobots weren't a threat...). When the Autobots yet again departed, Llyra was inspired to investigate Nebulos' past. In 1992, she discovered that the population were human descendants seeded there millennia ago, and that the war that occurred ten thousand years ago had actually been fought by two super-powerful alien races, the Nightstalkers and the Guardians- that was discovered when the aliens came back and had a supernova-inducing scrap. 

Nebulos then, after an attack by the Decepticon death machine named Droidhunter, continued peacefully. However, said attack resulted in two parallel universes- one where Llyra died, another where Droidhunter was quickly taken out by the Autobot Pulsar. It suited the purposes of Unicron that both realities remained the same apart from the differences on Nebulos, so when the Cybertronian Empire launched an attack, Unicron had to stop them by sending in Quintesson troops to finish off the Imperial attackers before the Nebulans realised they were there. It seems the potentially most devastating Transformer encounter in Nebulos' history would never be realised by the Nebulans themselves. All in all, they got off pretty lucky.