Talisman (G1)
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| This article is about the IDW object. For the Last Knight object, see Talisman (TLK). |
The ancient artifact code-designated "Talisman" is a maddeningly mysterious object. A fusion of several different alien technologies—incorporating Cybertronian science, control hardware scaled to Microspacial standards, and Dire Wraith biomatter—the Talisman also possesses ties to Onyx Prime.
Befitting its amalgamated origins, the Talisman has displayed a gigantic range of capabilities, the limits of which are not known to human science or otherwise. With the right operators, it can fly with the assistance of a Microspace pilot, interact with the minds and physiologies of Cybertronian life-forms, and spontaneously upgrade technology on contact. It even possesses a degree of control over time itself; under the correct circumstances, it is able to send people and objects "outside" the chronological flow of the universe. Some have compared the artifact's extraordinarily advanced technology to magic, and for good reason.
The Talisman seems to have a degree of sentience and agency over its abilities; if threatened, it has been known to construct drones from scrap metal, which are instinctively drawn to defend the artifact responsible for their creation. With the right knowledge, the Talisman and the energies it commands can be weaponized against Transformers—which is probably why a globe-spanning cabal of supervillains desire it for their own ends.
Fiction
2005 IDW continuity
The Talisman was originally created by a scientist on the planet Antilla circa eight million years ago, in response to the invasion of the planet by Cybertronian forces led by Megatronus and Onyx Prime. Bereaved by the loss of his family, Ceremony the scientist sought to create a weapon of ultimate retribution against the aliens and incorporated his creation into the heart of a doomsday device designed to end the devastating Antillan/Cybertronian war by ending all life on Antilla. Our Finest Stranger Eons The energies unleashed by the device did their job, and more; cascading across space and time, they collapsed Antilla's star into a black hole, destroyed the planet Prysmos, and corrupted its natural magicks, from which were born the twisted lifeforms known as the Dire Wraiths. Antilla itself was left a dead world of rust deserts, a dormant harbinger of death that would come to be known as "Unicron." Stranger Eons Thanks to the Talisman, a spectre of the device's creator persisted in the incorporeal realm of infraspace, his overwhelming desire for vengeance against Cybertron and its colonies allowing this phantasm to persist for many millions of years. Ceremony
Several million years later, after the conclusion of the First Cybertronian Civil War and the departure of the Primes from Cybertron, Onyx Prime—in reality, an alter-ego assumed by a time-travelling Shockwave—returned to Antilla, bringing his innermost retinue of Maximals with him. "Onyx Prime" would come to unearth the core of the device, and dubbed it the "Talisman." Aware that the Talisman's properties rendered it anathema to mechanical life-forms, Shockwave sought to exploit this fact; by awakening Unicron at the right time, he believed that he could trick the monster into devouring Cybertron, and the Talisman would then kill the planet-eater from the inside out, affording the Cybertronian race the freedom to begin anew on another world and build a permanent Cybertronian empire. To ensure the safety of the artifact, "Onyx" eventually decided that the Talisman should be taken to Earth for safe keeping, ensuring that the planet would become the seat of his new Cybertronian hegemony. Our Finest
Some twenty thousand years ago, "Onyx" entrusted the Talisman to his follower Domitius Major, describing it as the "inoculation" against "that which came", Ghost in the Machine and sent Domitius and his crew away aboard the starship Axalon. Shockwave had not told Domitius the specifics of their mission, however: the Axalon would find its way to Earth, drawn there by its supplies of Ore-13, and its arrival would attract the unwanted attention of Shockwave's younger self, who had come to investigate the progress of his Regenesis project. Shockwave shot down the ship, which crashed in prehistoric Brasnya; though the Axalon and its crew survived the crash, the Talisman was somehow activated in the impact and wiped the memories of all aboard, leaving them with no recollection of their identities or why they had come to Earth.
Shockwave briefly studied the object during his experiments on the amnesiac Transformers, noting with interest how it created a set of drones from the ship's wreckage, but other matters soon demanded Shockwave's attention, and both the Talisman and its drones were left unattended. Strange Visitors
Despite the efforts of several of the marooned Maximals to locate it, Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #1 the Talisman disappeared from Brasnya into history. But traces of its presence remained, like the robot drones it created, which were encountered by Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles during World War II. The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb Soon after, Savage and one of his Eagles, Garrison Kreiger, crossed paths with the last survivor of the Axalon, Centurion, and agreed to help him find the resting place of his ship. Together, they located the wreck of the Axalon in Brasnya, within which Kreiger observed the empty recess in which the Talisman had once resided, correctly deducing it to be a magical artifact. The group was then attacked by the corpse of Domitius Major, puppeteered by a phalanx of the Talisman's drones. Kreiger stepped out of the ship to watch as Centurion battled his former commander—which meant that he was spared when, suddenly, the energy of the Talisman enveloped the Axalon, and it and Sgt. Savage vanished into thin air. Strange Visitors As "Garrison Kreiger" was, in reality, the Prysmosian refugee Merklynn, he quickly became obsessed with the potential of using the Talisman's magic to recreate his lost homeworld. First Strike #6 Kreiger made hunting down the relic his life's work, and forged an alliance with Centurion to accomplish this goal. Strange Visitors
Kreiger spent decades hunting for the Talisman, even using whatever scraps of tech he could find to attempt recreating it, leading to the construction of multiple lesser duplicates of the device. The Iron Klaw Power and Glory In the 1980s, however, Kreiger finally discovered that the true Talisman had somehow come to be buried in the pyramid of the Tomb of Amtoltec in Dahshur, Egypt. Venturing deep into the tomb, Kreiger finally laid his hands upon the mysterious device and immediately began experimenting with its power, creating more of the "IRON Trooper" drones he had encountered in the past. His activities drew the attention of both Joe Colton's Adventure Team and the Decepticon Soundwave, and during the ensuing confrontation, Adventure Team member Mike Power made contact with the Talisman. Power's artificial limbs had been reverse-engineered from a piece of an IRON Trooper years beforehand, and direct contact with the Talisman mutated them, increasing their power, which brought the fighting to an end. Soundwave departed, and the Talisman was taken into British government custody. The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb
Kreiger was sanctioned by the government to study the Talisman, which he began doing in the "Project: Ice Man" facility constructed in the Brasnyan crater where the Axalon had once rested. When Eagles Scream There, he was approached by Mike Power, whose experience with the Talisman led him to hope it could help him in his constant drive to improve himself. Kreiger used the Talisman to rebuild Power's body, bonding him to it, so that he became it "made flesh," Power and Glory and even progressively replaced parts of his own body with Talisman-tech prostheses, extending his lifespan. Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #2 In 1994, Kreiger had Power and the Talisman brought into contact once again, which had the unexpected result of pulling Sgt. Savage and the Axalon through time from their disappearance during the war to the present day. A moment later, Colton's "Adventure Force" burst into the lab, having been sent in to shut Kreiger's operation down. When Eagles Scream
Requisitioned by the government, the Talisman was relocated once more, and by the mid-2000s, had been transferred to the "Project: Hot House" facility housed within Mount St. Helens near Oregon. There, Kreiger—now working under Colton himself—increased the range of his experiments with the Talisman using Ore-13, seeking to find a way to employ it as a weapon against the Cybertronians who were appearing on Earth at an increasing rate. To reactivate the Talisman, Kreiger and Colton lured Sgt. Savage to the base and forced him into contact with it. His body saturated with its power thanks to his trip through time, Savage's touch brought the Talisman back to life; its energies hurled Savage further into the future once more, and killed Kreiger and Colton's Decepticon guinea pig Bugly outright, proving that it was the weapon they needed to fight the Cybertronian threat. When Eagles Scream
Over the following years, Cybertronian activity on Earth increased to the point that Autobot leader Optimus Prime wound up annexing the planet into the Cybertronian empire for its own safety. Colton did not see it that way; cognizant of the danger the mere presence of Cybertronians on Earth posed, he ruled that it was time to employ the Talisman to kill them all. Attempting to go through official channels, however, he discovered the Earth's governments had been insurmountably infiltrated by a different alien threat: the shape-changing Dire Wraiths. First Strike #2 Realizing he would now have to act outside the law, he went to Garrison Kreiger for aid. Kreiger was one step ahead of him, having already been working with Miles Mayhem to continue testing the Talisman's effects on Mayhem's Decepticon prisoner Blitzwing. Colton took on the new identity of "Baron Ironblood" and set about gathering a crack squad of supervillains to help him in his plan to use the Talisman to destroy Cybertron itself. First Strike #0
One of Colton's first recruits was European super-criminal Doctor X and her Red Shadows ninja, who Colton enticed to his side by using the Talisman to enhance their bodies, granting them bio-morphic, cybernetic abilities not unlike Dire Wraiths. Redcliffe Club Enter the Shadow Additionally, Doctor X used her contacts within the British intelligence apparatus to have the Talisman relocated to safety of a subterranean SIS bunker beneath Verenya, capital city of the small Eastern European nation of Schleteva. Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook #2 There, it was discovered by Garrison Blackrock while he was searching for clues about his Cybertronian heritage. His carelessness in tampering with the device resulted in it releasing a series of energy pulses that mutated the city's population into Dire Wraith hybrids, attracting the attention of G.I. Joe, Rom, and Action Man. This group of heroes wound up in battle with the mercenary Oktober Guard, who had been sent in by Colton's villainous cabal to recover the Talisman. The Guard succeeded, teleporting the Talisman to the villains' moonbase, Crisis Intervention but the heroes followed, now joined by the Micronauts of Microspace, whose connection to the Talisman Blackrock hoped could turn the situation in their favor. One of the Micronauts, Larissa, managed to find a small cockpit on the Talisman and "enerchanged" with it, reconfiguring it into a flying form that she used to get it to safety before the villains' base blew up. Enter the Shadow
The Talisman was taken to Blackrock's Onyx facility in Buenos Aires, where it was studied in the hope a cure for the Wraith mutation could be found. When Eagles Scream This did not stop the villains in their plans; Kreiger still had his facsimile Talismans The Iron Klaw and Mike Power, whom he used to reanimate the bodies of Domitius Major and "Shockwave" just as the Talisman had done in the past. Action Man however managed to convince Atomic Man to stand down which deactivated the corpses, and allowed the Revolutionaries to capture Kreiger. Power and Glory
The team returned to the Buenos Aires Onyx tower and called in G.I. Joe to take custody of both Kreiger and the Talisman, but in concert with the Joes' arrival at the Onyx facility, Baron Ironblood launched an all-out assault to rescue Kreiger and recover the Talisman. When Eagles Scream In the chaos, Blackrock was stabbed by Storm Shadow, and in this near-death state, his consciousness was transported through the Talisman into the limbo of infraspace. There, he encountered Onyx Prime, who explained that the Talisman was an "inoculation" against a coming threat. Onyx was interrupted by the spectre of Mike Power, who had spent so long integrated into the device that his mind had continued to exist within its systems even after his passing. Using his connections to the Talisman and Metrotitan's spacebridge, Blackrock was able to quickly reverse-engineer a cure to the Dire Wraith mutation from Storm Shadow's own human-Wraith hybrid DNA, but was unable to stop Doctor X and Storm Shadow from teleporting out with the Talisman itself via the M.A.S.S. Device. The M.A.S.S. energy caused the device to activate and send out another mutagenic energy wave. Fortunately, Mike Power's spirit had been released from the Talisman and found a new home in Centurion's body, and the new merged Centurion/Power entity shielded the humans from the pulsewave. Ghost in the Machine As a result of all the Talisman energy that Power and Centurion had been exposed to over their lifetimes, the new entity considered himself the embodiment of the Talisman, being able to channel its energies and feel its movements. Unification Day: Dusk
With the Talisman back in his hands at last, Colton put his plan into motion, taking the fight to Cybertron itself. Ghost in the Machine Before departing for the metallic planet however, he questioned Kreiger on his lifelong obsession with the Talisman, who revealed he saw it as a stepping stone to galactic conquest. One Unholy Machine
On the day of Earth's induction into the Cybertronian Council of Worlds, his alliance of villains invaded Cybertron. With the aid of their newest member, Microspacian Shazraella, they intended to enerchange the Talisman with the core of Cybertron, thereby poisoning all energon on the planet. After Shazraella had enerchanged with and taken over Antagony's body, she strapped the Talisman to her back and led the trek underground to Cybertron's core. First Strike #2 Concurrently, Kreiger set the bounty hunter Colditz to lure Centurion away from Iacon, Unification Day: Dawn to prevent him from using his connection to the Talisman to thwart Kreiger's scheme by forcing the Revolutionaries to kill their friend. Once in the wilderness of Cybertron, Kreiger remotely triggered the Talisman energy within Centurion. The heroes managed to talk Centurion into controlling the energies, but at the cost of leaving him in stasis lock. Unification Day: Dusk
Upon reaching the core's chamber however, the Iron Ring found their path barred by Optimus Prime and Scarlett's team. First Strike #5 As reaching the core of Cybertron was now an impossibility, Kreiger decided to play his hand early; dropping his human disguise, he used his magic to activate the Talisman and tap into Cybertron's energon, harnessing it to reshape a small portion of Cybertron into the city of "New Prysmos." First Strike #6 Kreiger was unaware that his plan to recreate his homeworld had tied directly into "Onyx Prime's" long-term goals; by bringing the Talisman to Cybertron, he had turned the planet into a poisoned trap for Unicron. Our Finest
After creating the city, the Talisman embedded itself six meters into a stratum of igneous rock in a neighboring cavern. The Prysmosians who came to inhabit the city soon realized that the Talisman was still trying to complete its mission, by gradually burrowing deeper underground with the end goal of reaching Vector Sigma. As it did so, it steadily emanated raw magical energy, which infected the soil beneath New Prysmos. When Windblade sent Wheeljack and Breakdown to the city to examine the device, Breakdown lost an arm to a surge of Talisman energy, and Wheeljack quickly realized that the Talisman's unchecked progress posed an existential threat to the citizens of Cybertron. Schismatic Cybertron No More
Joined by Leoric's faction of Spectral Knights, Wheeljack and Breakdown were able to analyze the magic of the Talisman and develop a counter-frequency capable of neutralizing the Talisman's magic; at the same time, however, the Darkling Lord Virulina began using a magic spell of her own devising, draining the life-forces of Witterquick and Mortdred to accelerate the Talisman's progress to the core to complete what Merklynn had started. Desperate Measures
Wheeljack was able to turn his theoretical counter-frequency into a "bomb," and Ironhide joined the Spectral Knights aboard Quickswitch to permanently impede the Talisman's progress; despite Quickswitch sacrificing himself to reach the core, Ironhide and the Knights were stymied by Arzon and the Darkling Lords, who damaged their weapon. Ironhide leapt towards the Talisman to activate the bomb, intending to sacrifice his life to save Cybertron. Galadria cast a healing spell at the last moment, and her magic interacted with the counter-frequency and the Talisman's energy in an unexpected way, simultaneously curing Ironhide, restoring Waspinator to his old self, raising the entirety of New Prysmos to the surface of Cybertron, and even restoring a fraction of Prysmos's vanished biosphere around the city. The Curtain
Unbeknownst to the Transformers or Prysmosians, the Talisman had also used the energy surge to beam a single-word message into space: "Unicron." The Curtain Unstopped and Unstoppable
Unicron arrived over Cybertron shortly thereafter, seeking to consume the planet, and so the Transformers sought out the assistance of Leoric and the Visionaries to safely evacuate the planet. Remembering how the Talisman had brought New Prysmos to the surface of Cybertron, the Visionaries were able to activate the Talisman as Unicron began tearing the planet apart; creating a beam of light that teleported everything it touched to Earth. Cybertron perished, but the Talisman was not there to kill Unicron — it, too, had been teleported to Earth, and wound up in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park with what remained of the Cybertronian race. Road's End
Recognizing that the Talisman was on Earth, Shockwave established a remote connection to the remains of Nemesis, now serving as Unicron's eye, to locate the artifact, ordering Bludgeon to have the Maximals retrieve it so it could be used to slay Unicron once he'd found it. Bludgeon chose that moment to announce that he and the Maximals were loyal only to Unicron, sending in his forces to retrieve the device only so it would pose no threat to their new master. As the Maximals neared Metroplex, the Titan simply space bridged away, taking the Talisman with him. The Talisman was then entrusted to Thundercracker as the Seekers shuttled Optimus Prime and Arcee to Unicron so they could destroy the Chaos Bringer. Assembly As the combined heroes distracted the planet-eater from noticing the incursion, Skywarp was wounded, and without his natural teleportation powers Starscream was forced to sacrifice himself to activate the Talisman on Unicron's surface, so that its corrosive energies could simply burn a path into Unicron's core. The gambit worked; the Talisman burrowed directly into Unicron's heart.
Upon reaching the black hole inside Unicron's chest, the Talisman was swallowed up, compressed to "pure information" as it entered infraspace, its energies beginning to destroy Unicron from within. It was followed by Optimus Prime, who leapt into the black hole after it. In infraspace, the Autobot leader confronted Unicron's creator; after convincing the ancient scientist of his good intentions the ancient Antillan allowed the Talisman to destroy Unicron's physical form, collapsing into a new black hole and presumably taking the Talisman with it. Ceremony
Notes
- Optimus Prime #10 includes the Talisman as a cameo, having been in the possession of "Onyx Prime" during a distant flashback; this is an error, as it doesn't match up with what we would later learn about the artifact's origins.