Former Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord

OOC
Name: Nara
Contact: mutanthairything
Other characters: N/A

IC
Name: Minimus Ambus
Canon: Transformers (IDW 2005 continuity)
Canon point: Post-Lost Light #25
Age: More than 4 million. I'm assuming 6 million.

History:
Main history page ("The Original Magnus" and "Xetaxxis and back" can be skipped)
Supplemental background for Minimus

Personality:
Upon meeting him, most people see Minimus as a no-nonsense, strict, stick-in-the-mud guy who cares a lot about rules and scolding people for daring to run in the hallways. None of that is a lie. As the Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord and as the second-in-command of a ship, Minimus takes it upon himself to embody the concept of order, which means being as lawful as possible. In a chaotic universe, he must be a figurehead for all that is decent and take responsibility for enforcing that. Even though this black-and-white view is less extreme at the end of the comic, it's still something he struggles with. Minimus always has to follow the rules/laws, even if it benefits the party obviously in the moral wrong. If he makes one compromise, he fears he could start the path down a slippery slope and end up in a dark place.

However, he has a strong moral compass and genuinely wants to help people and do good. His obsession with analyzing the wAutobot Code is his way of guiding himself through the complexities of life. Minimus Ambus truly believes that laws are needed to make sure society remains peaceful and does not devolve into another civil war, and with laws and standards, he has something on his side to protect the exploited. In canon, when a worker drone that gained sentience is bullied by the crew, he pulls out a list of workers' rights that his employer is violating to get him to behave. Not only that, Minimus even accompanies said drone to the bar and becomes his friend. When Tyrest - the judge who gave him his job as a war criminal investigator - turns out to have an evil plan, Minimus immediately denounces him and fights against his plotting even though it means losing his coveted position.

Minimus is incredibly professional and organized. He can be emotionally closed-off, which is helpful in a professional setting but not in a personal one. When the situation calls for it, he can quickly assume play the role he was given: war crime inspector, defense lawyer, ship safety auditor, bureaucrat. He memorized the unabridged Autobot Code and many types of intergalactic and Cybertronian codes, which he puts to good use in court and in overseeing the smooth function of a large group. He has desk tidies in his desk tidies. Every living instant requires proper grammar and behavior down to the letter of the law. His main reason for joining the adventuring party was to network and find new jobs. His focus on doing things the proper way does distract him from the bigger issues at times, but to his credit, this gives him the power to utilize red tape and legal loopholes when he's not policing everyone's fun.

While normally meticulous, when in distress, he doubles down on being a control freak to the point of being unable to function if he doesn't know everything he can prepare for, rearranging the furniture in Rodimus' office and searching for all fire exits before he can properly have this thing called "fun" in a bar. Unsurprisingly, he's not a popular guy and most people try to avoid him out of being reprimanded for some minor offense. He doesn't understand why he's such a target of ridicule.

Outside of work, Minimus is rather socially awkward. If he's invited to a party, Minimus is unsure of what role he's supposed to play. His idea of fun is analyzing and discussing dense texts, much like he enjoys statistics, fonts, and minutiae that others would find boring. Much of his development is centered on loosening up - both in acknowledging the shades of gray in real-life morals and in learning how to socialize. He's not entirely comfortable going out to bars at first, but by the end of the comic run, he's able to sit with a few people and chat, even giving a speech on how he gained friends during the adventure.

Despite how confident and imposing he is as a figurehead, Minimus has low self-esteem. Wearing the Magnus Armor was a way for him to get out of the shadow of his Renaissance Man older brother whom he felt he was always being compared to. When he wore the armor, Ultra Magnus was everything Minimus always wanted to be: respected, admired, and accomplished. Getting out of the Magnus Armor was a process that made Minimus vulnerable, emotionally and physically. When his identity was initially discovered, he worried that the crew would stop taking him seriously - even before that, he was the butt of jokes as the anti-fun authority figure. Despite his growth, he does have moments when he feels self-conscious and judges himself for not doing well enough.

Powers/Abilities:
As a Cybertronian, Minimus is more durable than most other species, and he can survive things like getting his limbs chopped off, getting stabbed in the chest, and getting blown up provided that a robot medic can patch him together in time. He's also had millions of years of training as a soldier that make him indispensable in combat even without his giant robot suit.

To blend in with organic beings, Minimus can create a holoform avatar while his actual body is lying somewhere hidden. His default avatar is that of a human teenage runaway that traveled with him for a few years.

Minimus is also a loadbearer, which is an innate ability to wear large suits of armor. While he's actually a minibot, only standing somewhere between 7 and 9 feet, he usually wears armor that pushes him up to 15 to 17 feet tall. Then there's the Magnus Armor that made him one of the largest characters in canon. Basically, the little man is very, very strong, and while this doesn't directly translate him to throwing deadly punches, he can carry just about anything that fits in his arms like a gun five times his size. It's more of a core body strength, so he'd also be really good at suplexing people if he wanted.

With two forms, Minimus has two transformation modes. The armor he usually wears transforms into a little minesweeper complete with mine detection tech, and his true form turns into a turbofox, a robot animal on his home planet.

Regret: He wants to have one final conversation with his dead brother to find some closure in their tense relationship.

Suitability: Minimus is no stranger to deadly space adventures, and he's both a powerful fighter in the Magnus Armor and a fearsome lawyer no matter which form he takes. While he's usually worked alone, he can also function as a commander in combat situations. Minimus loves rules and standards and he'd be at home going through paperwork and conducting inspections on the ship.

Inventory:
* A personal datapad
* A copy of spaceship safety regulations
* A data storage device of music from Earth, Cybertron, and other planets from his universe

Sample:
https://ximiliugh.dreamwidth.org/14927.html?thread=3337295#cmt3337295
https://ximiliugh.dreamwidth.org/16913.html?thread=4330257#cmt4330257

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Nara
AGE: 29
JOURNAL: mutanthairything
PLURK: mutanthairything
RETURNING: Noo

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Minimus Ambus
CHARACTER AGE: About 5 million years
SERIES: Transformers IDW (2005)
CHRONOLOGY: Post-Lost Light #25 in the ending where they jump to a new universe
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: random roommates

BACKGROUND:
Millions of years ago, the planet of Cybertron was home race of robots that could transform into many different machines and vehicles. It also had a ton of problems, particularly with equality and fair treatment of robots of different forms. Four million years ago, Functionism (the belief that one's alt-mode determined their life role and worth) became prominent in society and was a growing sentiment in the Senate. A miner named Megatron was one Cybertronian who hoped to improve life for all, but after he overthrew the Senate, he decided that being a warlord was the best idea and lead to a civil war between Autobots and Decepticons. The Great War was deadly and spanned planets and four million years. After some comics taking place on Earth, the war ended and Cybertron and its colonies were left to decide what the heck to do.

Ultra Magnus was once a high ranking Autobot who was killed early in the war. Chief Justice Tyrest decided to use his frame as armor for Cybertronians with the innate ability to don heavy suits of armor and put up the act that Magnus survived all of his "near death" experiences. Minimus is the most recent loadbearer with this role.

here is a summary of his involvement in the canon. "Xetaxxis and back" can be skipped since it centers on a different loadbearer.

PERSONALITY:
Cybertronians all across the galaxy respect (and fear, if they are on the wrong side of the law) the legendary Ultra Magnus. For millennia, his reputation as a powerful mech who never strayed from enforcing the Tyrest Accord and hunting down criminals was well-earned. Magnus was known as The Eternal Lawman, a mech deserving of all respect. Intimidated of his terrifying knowledge of rules and his might in battle, one would imagine Magnus to be a serious by-the-rules lawyer with an untouchable reputation. This is entirely true, but like onions, Magnus has layers.

Namely, the OCD-coded Minimus Ambus, who also hides beneath a secondary suit of armor. Even after his existence was revealed to the rest of the crew, he still answered to "Magnus" with few instances of being called "Minimus." Being Ultra Magnus was his life. Previous iterations of Ultra Magnus had their own takes like different writers working on the same character. Minimus Ambus is an uptight, humorless neat freak who looks forward to giving dry 3-hour presentations, memorizing ten thousand page codes and writing up reports no one else reads.

He sees his role as Ultra Magnus to be an important position - in a lawless universe, he has to be a constant. He must be a figurehead for all that is decent and take responsibility in enforcing that. That is not to say that his black-and-white view on morality is an act. Minimus Ambus truly believes that laws are needed to make sure society remains peaceful and does not devolve into another civil war. His obsession with analyzing the wording of the Autobot Code is his way of guiding himself through the complexities of life with "a comprehensive system of morality: a framework for living that addresses all aspects of the Cybertronian condition." He enjoys this analysis and discussion of dense texts, much like he enjoys statistics, fonts, proper grammar, and minutae that others would find boring. This does distract him from the bigger issues at times, but to his credit, this gives him the power to utilize red tape and legal loopholes when he's not policing everyone's fun.

Much of his development is centered on loosening up and acknowledging the shades of gray he despises. After the Great War, his rigid upkeep of the law did not translate well into being second-in-command to a crew of adventuring disasters, and when in distress, he doubles down on being a control freak to the point of being unable to function if he doesn't know everything he can prepare for, rearranging the furniture in Rodimus' office and searching for all fire exits before he can properly have this thing called "fun" in a bar. Unsurprisingly, he's not a popular guy and most people try to avoid him out of being reprimanded for some minor offense. He doesn't understand why he's such a target of ridicule.

Even though this extreme reaction is less frequent at the end of the comic, it's still something he must fight against. Minimus always has to follow the rules/laws, even if it benefits the party obviously in the moral wrong. If he makes one compromise, he could start the path down a slippery slope and end up in a dark place. However, he genuinely wants to help people and do good, and that is why having and following rules is important. With laws and standards, he has something on his side to protect the exploited.

He doesn't consider himself a leader, but he utilizes his other strengths to protect the crew because despite his frustrations, he cares about them. What he wants most is to be liked just and not to lose any respect. He threw himself at Overlord knowing how unkillable he was so that the others would have time to escape. He enforces rules because he believes it will foster a safe environment. He works on "softening his image" - though he needs some work with slang and grasping double meanings - in an effort to navigate the difficulty of socializing outside of work. That's not to say that he never had hobbies apart from bureaucracy. Minimus dabbles in amateur poetry and fiction (even if the latter is about his self-insert) using writing as a method of self-reflection. He loves music, singing and dancing when he thinks he's alone. While still self-conscious of his interests, he's working on sharing his likes...at his own pace, of course.

Wearing the Magnus Armor and working under Tyrest was a way for Minimus Ambus to get out of the shadow of his older brother that he felt he was always being compared to. Both were tiny mechs with beast alt-modes, which they hid to protect themselves from severe discrimination, but where Dominus became a Renaissance Man and historical figure, Minimus was a normal soldier who would never be as good as him. "Why do you think I spent most of my life looking like someone else?" he asks Rewind when the latter comments on their similar appearance. He borrowed someone else's legacy and hid under another mask to make a name for himself, and in the process he was erasing his own. When he wears the armor, Ultra Magnus is special and powerful; he is a somebody. He's everything Minimus always wanted to be. As long as he dedicated himself to the law and didn't get closer to others, he believed he would be satisfied. Getting out of the Magnus Armor made Minimus vulnerable, emotionally and physically. When his identity was initially discovered, he worried that the crew would stop taking him seriously - something that already was a concern. Now, Minimus' level of comfort is usually indicated by whether he spends his off-work hours in or out of the Armor.

The companions he made during the story helped him discover himself, but his friendship with Megatron is worth mentioning. Megatron was a former warlord who caused the death of millions yet when he joined the Autobots after losing the war and had his own character development, Minimus' worldview that kept him going through the Great War was deeply threatened. Here was someone who finally respected him and had similar attitudes, who never joked about his annoying habits and got close to him. He provided the validation that Minimus had always wanted. Despite the cognitive dissonance it created during the comic, Minimus eventually acknowledges that his - and everyone's - friendship is what he really needed. Coming out of his shell is a long process. Magnus/Minimus may be a strict dad who doesn't understand kids these days, but despite his habit of nagging others, he has feelings and the best of intentions.

POWER:
Cybertronian Form - Allows Minimus to transform into a turbofox (an animal native to Cybertron) in his most basic form and a minesweeper in his outer armor. His base form is just over 10 feet tall. This comes with his outer armor that just makes him about 17 feet tall. In this form, he is a loadbearer, which is a form of super strength that lets him carry heavy weights. It doesn't make him throw super powerful punches (compared to other giant robots), but it does allow him to suplex just about anything.
Ultra Magnus Armor- over 30 feet tall and allows the wearer to appear to be a different person, complete with voice modulation. Transforms into a truck hauler and comes in with built-in missile launchers on his shoulders. Minimus is able to pilot this even as a human.
Superhuman Strength - as a human, Minimus retains his incredible weightlifting skills.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[The voice on the other end is deep and careful to keep to clear and formal pronunciations. Children everywhere fear that they just got in trouble with the mean teacher.]

Good evening. This is Minimus Ambus, recent import. I would like to address this community at large that the legal definition of nighttime hours are to being in 15 minutes. Therefore, whoever is throwing a party in the building on Elm and Westwood will commit a noise violation if they do not manage the volume in their apartment.

I know one of you live there. The upper floors are all occupied by imports. Consider this a warning. There are plenty of residents who are less forgiving of this nuisance.

[Click.]

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
TDM thread

FINAL NOTES:
Would the Magnus Armor be stored in a warehouse or should Minimus find a way to keep it safe by himself?

DAY 3
* Cao Pi (Zihuan) alt. kingofwei headed previous intel sharing meetings.
* No meeting minutes from previous sessions.
* Skillsets to inquire: Combat, intelligence gathering, survival, academic, interpersonal and organizational skills, medicine, engineering, trade/craft, other?

From PLUTO, Leader of the Night Market
* Underwater community is named Helix, separate entity from Beacon
* Claims that their business has no reason to be inspected as there are no applicable laws enforced on this planet.
* Pluto has worked with the residents of Helix for about a decade (10 years)
* Location provides protection against spirits, but not World Eaters.
* NOTE: This settlement has survived resets. Is this due to their surviving Robin's ministrations?

From ROBIN, Lighthouse Keeper
* There is a telegraph connecting Robin to the Helix station
* The fire-snatchers are called the Wild Hunt. They were a problem in the past, and Robin assumed that due to a lack of activity, they were wiped out.
* The world outside of Beacon is void of life.

IN REGARD TO DAYLIGHT'S ARC ENERGY
when converted from arc fuel that's been processed by the galateion's frame filtering and energy distribution systems, arc energy can keep a galateion running at top efficiency. galateions can live for a possible infinity, long as they consume enough arc fuel. but an issue galateions all face is that the older they become, the more they must consume arc fuel to keep their systems running.

daylight, on the other hand, does not need to worry about such worries. a unique feature he has it something he calls an 'eternal efficiency system', where he doesn't need to fuel himself with arc fuel. his core generates and consumes arc energy at a perpetually stabilised state, allowing him to function without the need to consume fuel or food. it gets to the point that, under special circumstances, he can produce an excess of it and use it in combat or special circumstances.

the best equivalent that daylight can think of is electricity. though arc energy is much more prone to exploding in a shower of sparks and electrical arcs if not handled carefully when it's outside a galateion's frame. hence why it's considered volatile. more so since arc energy can cause serious harm and injury to those who happen to be in range, especially those who are organic in nature.
From DR. Solis, Former Beacon Scientist
*quote: "It sounds quite similar to this world, though; as far as I can tell, each planet holds roughly the same ecology and geography, and each line of humanity follows roughly the same path. Odd, isn't it? That's the multiverse for you, I suppose. To answer your question more directly: this world was home to just over 4 billion people in its prime. We had many cities, and this town is only what's left."
* All other cities were destroyed by the World Eaters
* The start of the planet's decline began long before the world became dark due to internal influences.
* According to the statement, daylight hours grew shorter until the sun no longer shone.
* Unknown how the World Eaters were able to finalize this process.
* Lives in two different laboratories. Can enter the town via the church trapdoor if necessary.