Mortilus

Mortilus is a Transformer from the Generation 1 continuity family.

"You... rang?"

One of the Guiding Hand, Mortilus was one of the first five Transformers born on Cybertron, representing death in later mythologized accounts of the Guiding Hand. When Adaptus rebelled against his brothers, he unleashed his memory-erasing weapon on the others, erasing their memories of themselves. As a result, Mortilus adopted the new persona of Censere and dedicated himself to the recording of every Cybertronian death.

"Censere" himself would be mythologized as a mute Neutral known as the Necrobot, who travels the battlefields of the Great War, administering posthumous rites to fallen Cybertronians. They say that he can determine the cause of death just by letting his shadow fall on the corpse and that he has devoted his life to recording the fate of every last Transformer. Whether there is any truth to these stories is unknown to most, but they persist.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

First appearance: The Transformers vol. 1 #23 (invoked); More than Meets the Eye #8

It’s tough to be a god!

Born at some point after Primus, Mortilus joined him, Epistemus, Solomus, and Adaptus to form the Guiding Hand, the first five Cybertronians, present for the ignition of the hot spots across Cybertron which would propagate future generations of the species. The Unremembering In this era, the Guiding Hand were said to have overseen the development of the Cybertronian species, developing the planet's earliest civilizations and guiding them towards a more enlightened existence. You, Me, and Other Revelations This utopian era would come to an end, however, when the ambitious Adaptus, worried that their peaceful civilization would eventually grow stagnant, encouraged Cybertron to wage war against the galaxy; when the other members of the Guiding Hand refused, Adaptus instead made war against them, and the four allies were forced to put down the rebellion in an event that would be known as the "God War." Adaptus escaped aboard Luna 1 and covered his escape by firing a powerful electromagnetic pulse on the planet to erase the memories of Cybertron's inhabitants, leaving them too confused and disoriented to pursue him. The Unremembering

I was Megatron before Mega was even a prefix!

Eventually, Cybertronian religions were able to reconstruct bits and pieces of the past, giving rise to various interpretations of the Guiding Hand and the God War that had torn them apart. In these imperfect histories, Mortilus was depicted as a death-bringer and the necessary corollary to life; notably, in every known permutation of the legend, it was the innocent Mortilus who was cast as the traitorous god whose ambitions had sparked the God War, with Adaptus remembered as a faithful steward of Primus. The Unremembering You, Me, and Other Revelations Other legends stated that Mortilus's rebellion had spawned monsters to lay waste to Cybertron, birthing beasts such as the Titan Trypticon, The Illusion of Control which Mortilus had supposedly raised and commanded using his Void Scepter, Salvation and that the God War ended when Mortilus had tricked and trapped every member of the Guiding Hand into giving up their physical form before he himself was struck down by Primus; by killing death, the Cybertronian race could live forever. You, Me, and Other Revelations At least one interpretation, put forth in the Keening Texts, held that Mortilus had been forgiven by the Guiding Hand in the next life, and created the Afterspark where the sparks of the departed could live forever. The God War

In modern Cybertronian theology, the legend of Mortilus occupied an unique spot in the Cybertronian pantheon: some individuals chose to worship him, as they would with other gods and deities, Twenty Plus One while other individuals used his name as a curse; "spawn of Mortilus" was a popular term to denigrate others. Mortilus worship was often seen as a form of devil worship by some Cybertronians. Towards Peace

Death has a body like a model, the clothes of a poet and the smile of your best friend.

The real Mortilus, meanwhile, still unaware of his origins, had remained on Cybertron and become Censere of the High-Ceilinged Manifold, making his way into the world as a humble census office worker. The Not Knowing At some point after the God War, presumably during the reign of the Thirteen Primes, he became friends with a co-worker named Tusk; when Tusk died, it went unreported, and Censere did not find out about it until years later. His friend's death moved Censere to begin a lifelong mission: chronicling the deaths of every Cybertronian. With the destruction of his hometown in the First Cybertronian Civil War, Censere relocated to a "scorched and forgotten" planet that Tusk had told him about, where he set up a base of operations filled with complex machinery that allowed him to keep track of spark signatures, and quantum technology that let him teleport all around the universe to record every fatality. He transformed the blasted world on which he dwelled into a beautiful garden, filled with holographic statues of every living Cybertronian, which he would switch off when the Cybertronian died. Around the bases of the statues, he planted flowers crafted from the residual spark energy of whoever the statue's real-life counterpart was responsible for killing. When a Cybertronian went missing and he was unable to confirm their death, he recorded their name in a list of the "Disappeared." The Not Knowing He also kept a dedicated journal filled with all manner of things, including the original, unedited version of the Grand Cybertronian Taxonomy. At Close of Day

Swearing an oath of non-interference, Censere eventually became a figure of myth and legend among Cybertronians, glimpsed on battlefields across the cosmos silently recording deaths. Dubbed the "Necrobot" by the religious and/or superstitious, he was also known as the "Gatekeeper", or the "Mute Neutral", and was believed to be an envoy of Primus, charged with ferrying departed sparks into the afterlife. The Not Knowing Conversely, skeptics like Ratchet dismissed his existence as a fairytale, attributing supposed sightings of him and his "portable apothecary" to visual glitches caused by freshly-constructed Cybertronians' senses "trying to run before [they] can walk", like the Shimmer or seeing Primus's face in a mushroom cloud. Twenty Plus One Trailbreaker shared his lack of belief, comparing stories of the Necrobot to Sparkeaters and the Seething Moon. The Chaos of Warm Things

"Arthur Dent? Arthur Philip Dent? You're a jerk, a complete arsehole."

For a time, Roadbuster thought Mortilus spoke to him, telling him to murder his cadets and sacrifice their remains to a pit for the Death-bringer to consume. This whole affair was in fact part of a larger web of deceit. Sins of the Wreckers #4

While on the planet Clemency, itself littered with the bodies of dead (and occasionally not-so-dead) Transformers, Misfire would periodically catch sight of what he believed was the Necrobot. He would then "chase it" for a few seconds before "losing sight of it" again, as observed by Krok who was not himself a believer. Rules of Disengagement One and a half years later, however, the Necrobot did indeed arrive on Clemency to add Flywheels to his list of dead Cybertronians, which also included several members of the Lost Light crew. Who's Afraid of the DJD?

A selection of the crew of the Lost Light visited his planet of operations, the location of which was revealed by an info bullet from Agent 113. Alarmed to see that multiple Transformers whose deaths he knew he had unambiguously recorded were alive and walking around in his garden, the Necrobot slammed the door to his complex shut, but when one such 'bot, Nightbeat, stood outside the door and refused to leave, Censere gave in to his curiosity and invited Nightbeat inside so he could explain his and the others' continued living (Nightbeat, he soon learned, had been revived by the properties of the Dead Universe, while the others had never died—the deaths he had recorded were those of their quantum duplicates, created through a quantum generator accident). Censere went on to explain his true nature and how he carried out his work; though Nightbeat was dismayed by this revelation, having wanted to believe that the Necrobot was a mystic figure and proof that higher powers existed in the universe, Censere reminded him that his not being 'magic' did not mean the Afterspark did not exist. Nightbeat criticized him for merely observing deaths and not attempting to help the dying. The Not Knowing

Thank you for your cooperation. Good night.

He would take Nightbeat's words to heart when he found one of Brainstorm's time cases buried by Megatron. By linking it up to his teleport chamber, he was able to go back in time, recovering the Transformers on his list of the disappeared—therefore causing them to 'disappear' in the first place. The time traveling took its toll on the passengers, so he put them in artificially induced comas and disguised them as organics to keep them safe from other Cybertronians while they recovered. Occasionally, he would be glimpsed in these endeavors by others, spawning the legends of his portable apothecary. Do Not Go Gentle

Among those 'bots he rescued were Roller, Wavelength, Syphon, Do Not Go Gentle Anode, Fangry, and Rapidfire. Some Other Cybertron He was halfway down the list when the Decepticon Justice Division showed up, and he guessed that several of the 'bots he rescued were on their own list. Do Not Go Gentle

The DJD somehow learned of the Lost Light's previous visit to Necroworld and decided to use a fabricated distress signal to lure the group back in order to maroon them, Tarn reasoning the Necrobot was the perfect bait. The Sun in Flight However, Censere altered the signal minutes after it was sent, turning it into a psychic bombardment of the intended recipients' worst fears in an attempt to warn them off. The DJD then butchered Censere and left his body with flowers stuffed in exit wounds for the Autobots to find. How Bright Their Frail Deeds While the Autobots were distracted with the ongoing siege, Censere, due to his great age, dissolved into sentio metallico.

Left behind was the key to his stasis pod room. After the Autobots discovered it, they were unable to use Censere's teleport chamber to escape for fear of leaving the "organics" to die. The Sun in Flight Several hours later, Rewind, having read through Censere's journal, discovered what he'd done with Brainstorm's time machine. Do Not Go Gentle

After Necroworld was taken over by Decepticons, Rapidfire took to wearing Censere's discarded cape. When the Autobots arrived and after Red Alert killed Rapidfire in the ensuing battle, he couldn't help but try the Necrobot's cape on himself. Sardines

When Team Rodimus finally confronted the Grand Architect, they discovered he was Adaptus and that the Lost Light crew had managed to locate all five members of the Guiding Hand, being told that Censere was an alias adopted by Mortilus. The Return of the King

The Functionist Universe

After the Functionist Council worked out that Rung was designed to produce photonic crystals, An Expert's Guide they first thought him the spawn of Mortilus sent to frustrate Primus's will before they decided realized that Rung was proof of Primus endorsing cold construction. Modes of Production

Ask Vector Prime

Vector Prime speculated that the Dark Spark could have been a fragment of Mortilus, among other explanations. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/05/18 He also noted that Mortilus Zarak sharing a name with a member of the Guiding Hand could be simple coincidence, or something far more sinister. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/04

Following the splintering of the Thirteen original Transformers into infinite alternate selves across the multiverse, Mortilus was known to be a member of the group in some universal streams. During the group's time in ancient Greece, the holomatter avatar he employed inspired the myth of Hades, uncle of Hermes. He stayed in the Thirteen's ship parked underneath Earth's surface with his vassal, a three-headed dog named Bruticus. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/08

Beast Wars: Uprising

Mortilus was a deity in Transformer religion, notable for his spiked carapace. His name was frequently used as a curse word. Derailment

2019 IDW continuity

During a raid on the Senate building to rescue the Senators held prisoner, Groove recited a prayer to Mortilus to help him focus. The lapse in concentration instead allowed Blitzwing to get the drop on his squad. Prime

After Thunderclash had publicly announced the Wreckers' arrival on Velocitron, Aileron wondered if, among theories, Mortilus was punishing her. Tread & Circuits Part 1

King Grimlock

The Dinobots worshipped the Necrobot as their patron deity, hoping to please him by the manner of their deaths and by leaving him a string of enemy soldiers so long that his list ran out of data storage. Grimlock the Defender

Notes

• "Censere" is a Latin word meaning "to assess", also being the root of the English word "census". James Roberts gives the Transformer name's pronunciation to start like "centre" and rhyme with "hair".^[1]

Foreign names

• Japanese: Mortilus (モーティラス Mōtirasu), Necrobot (ネクロボット Nekurobotto)

References