Sister Cities
(CONTINUED)

OODLES AND OODLES OF GRATITUDE GO TO JAYD HUNTER FOR HER PATIENCE, RESEARCH AND THOUGHTFUL INPUT-THANX, BUD!

Mount St. Hillary

Located between Central City and Roseburg, Oregon sits a semi-active volcano.  Mt Saint Hillary was an inactive volcano until summer of 1984.  The sudden explosion baffled scientists all around the world who never read any activity, either by quakes or by hot springs.  However, some scientists theorize certain amounts and kinds of radiation leaking from the Ark might have caused decay in the sedimentary rock, seeping down until fissures were large enough to give release to magma flows under enormous pressures.  Mt Saint Hillary ruptured again in 1985 when Megatron brought Cybertron into Earth's orbit,  (Ultimate Doom) disrupting the planet's electromagnetic fields and gravitational flow between Earth and its moon.  The mountain trembled later again in the same year when Megatron tried to drill to the center of the planet.

Mt. Saint Hillary stands approximately 1600 feet at the base and 20,000 feet from the base to the top.

The Ark

Built like a battleship, the Ark was designed for a lot of rough-and tumble handling.   It's not clear where or how the ship came about.  There are rumors among Autobots speculating that the ship was not built under Prime's specifications -since it was built before the energy mission.  The other suspicious fact regarding the Ark was how it was designed to fit so many Autobots in one vessel.  The Ark, even by Autobot standards, is huge, standing a good 5 decks high and complete with living quarters, recreational areas, science labs and stasis pods.   All this for a simple search for energy?  Or was the Ark designed for something closer to a one-way trip?  Optimus Prime remains 'tight-lipped' about it to this day.

The Ark was so well-made, it survived a crash straight into the gut of Mt. Saint Hillary.

Utilizing the thermo-energies produced by Saint Hillary, the Ark has an unlimited power source capable of sustaining the Autobots literally for centuries to come.

The Autobots have adapted to and respect their home under the mountain.  They have taken liberty to replant trees often damaged during their squabbles with the Decepticons.

Hide and Seek: Don't be fooled-this picture only shows a slim 1/8 of the whole Ark.

The destruction of the Ark and Mt. Saint Hillary by Trypticon in 2006 left a lot of hearts broken.   People from all over the world came to pay their respects to the place where their lives and world changed forever.

The hydroelectricty generated by Umpqua river was not used by the Ark in the 80's and 90's.  But by the year 2001, its unrelenting strength was harnessed to power the first of several Autobot cities: Metroplex.

In spite of their sizes compared to Earth's native life forms, the Autobots managed to find ways to blend in with the environment around them.  But often their attempts seem to fail, like the the other sapient beings on the planet.

Nevertheless, the Autobots get few, if any complaints about the way they keep the grounds clean and as natural as a group of mechanical creatures can.

Autobot City: Metroplex

In the year 1992, the Autobots purchased a sizable chunk of land around the Umpqua river from both the state of Oregon and Douglas County for a remarkable undertaking.  Construction crews, architects and scientists from all over the globe were invited to participate in the largest, most self-sustaining city ever built on the planet.   Metroplex was capable of housing a million humans, alien visitors and Autobots.  Although Metroplex is considered small as far as an Autobot city might look on Cybertron, on Earth, it was the largest non-organic living thing. 

The same ground broken and leveled for Metroplex was later used for the new Autobot city: Fortress Maximus.

In spite of the seeming frailties of the organic world in which they lived, the Autobots found the rugged mountains of the Cascade Range perfect for all their needs.

On A Clear Day: Don't let the rocky terrain fool you: in the spring, every inch of ground is covered by tiny yellow flowers that carpet the whole area for about  three weeks.

War of 2005

The Unicronian War changed everything from the Autobot roster, to the way their society looked at the universe in general.  Everything became intensely dangerous.  Autobot relations with nations and other planets seemed to teeter on a delicate edge.  Diplomacy was of central issue.  Even their new leader at the time, Rodimus Prime, found the new and sudden conditions challenging; and not always in a good way.  The Autobots had Cybertron, but no real sense of destiny.  The Decepticons were in confused disarray and their leader suffered from permanent mental dysfunction.

Trypticon rose from the reconstruction of the City of Los Angeles.  But the rapidity of progressing events was so swift and so shocking that news of a Decepticon city, born from a Human city did not dawn on the Autobots until well after the so-called War of Five Faces.

Change of Guard: 2013-Move to New York

The Rebirth of Cybertron brought about unprecedented prosperity the Autobots did not have in millions and millions of years.  But like so many other events, it was a wonderful thing that did not promise happiness or a permanent, trouble-free life.  In late 2012, a religious movement rippled across the planet Nebulon.  This ancient religion, adamantly anti-mechanoid in its doctrine, spread across the globe like a wildfire and a strong ninety-five percent of Nebulos' population did away with everything from toasters to automobiles.   Those who refused to agree were excommunicated, or worse, exiled.  Such was the fate of the Headmasters and Targetmasters. 

The Nebulon crusade forced Fortress Maximus off the planet and the Nebulons closed off all communication to the outside systems and to this day, no news or trade has come or gone to Nebulos.

Before that time, the State of New York repeatedly invited the Autobots to build somewhere along the east coast.  Upon necessity, Optimus commissioned Metroplex to reside in Saratoga County; specifically the Catskill Mountains while Fortress Maximus took Metroplex's place in the Cascades (since Fort Max is so much larger than Metroplex, it seemed the better thing to do.)     

Fortress Maximus, New assignment: Douglas County, Oregon

Is it little wonder that Rusti gets homesick in DSR?

While these photos are neither original nor of the Cafe's (Umpqua River) this offers a more realistic depiction of the general area.