Quintessons

The Quintessons are a bizarre and ancient race, whose dark history and shadowy machinations are bound up with the history of the Transformers, with connections to both Primus and Unicron. They are known galaxy-wide as traders, entrepreneurs and businessmen, but their dealings are very rarely on the level, often laced with intrigue and betrayals. They prefer subtle manipulation, scheming, and advanced technology over brute force, but if those don't work, they can fall back on the legion of deadly Sharkticons and Allicons at their command and a fleet of battle-ready spaceships as well. However, the Quintessons themselves have zero fighting abilities and are absolute cowards if they have nothing to hide behind. For example, they are seen to be powerless against a Sharkticon revolt.

Quintessons are also known by the adorable racial slur 'squids'.

"We Transformers have looked into the face of our creators... and seen the face of an enemy." "Deceivers! Betrayers! Five-faced slime of the nebula! That's what they are and always has been!"
 * —Rodimus Prime and Galvatron, Five Faces of Darkness.

Types of Quintessons
The Quintessons appear to be mostly (if not entirely) mechanical beings. They come in several distinct forms, some of which are identified by their place in the Quintessons' bizarre court system.

Judges
The most prominent and famous type of Quintesson, as well as the apparent "leaders" of the race, are the Judges, also referred to as the Imperial Magistrates. Judges have inverted, egg-shaped bodies which float on a beam of energy and possess wiry tentacles for physical manipulation, but their most distinctive physical characteristics are their five rotating faces. Each face represents a different aspect of the Quintesson, though for four of the five faces, there are conflicting accounts as to what each represents.

In the original animated series, the Judges were all of the same size and were rarely named. (Then again, it was rare for any Quintesson to get an individual name.) Conversely, in the Marvel Comics continuity, Judges vary in size, including the massive Kledji and the smaller Sevax. The order of the faces in the ring varies from Judge to Judge (if not from shot to shot, ahem).

Named Judges include:
 * Brinn
 * Deliberata
 * Derodomontatus
 * Heirodyus
 * Kledji
 * Pentius
 * Sevax

Bailiffs
These snout-nosed creatures were seen serving as guards in the Quintessons' court.

Executioners
This breed of Quintesson was first seen throwing the switch that dropped the unfortunate Arblus into the Sharkticon pit. They have also been called "Gatekeepers".

Named executioners include:
 * Ghyrik
 * In-Saba Nur
 * Jolup
 * Rexian

Prosecutor
This variety of Quintesson is the second-most common type, often seen in positions of authority. They have also been called "Inquisitors". In court, they are the ones who ask for the Judges' verdicts and occasionally let the defendants say something in their defense, for all it matters.

Named prosecutors include:
 * Krahulik
 * Vashik

Scientist
Scientists are somewhat similar to the Prosecutors in construction, though they feature more bulbous heads and bearded, somewhat-more-human faces.

Named scientists include:
 * Al-Badur
 * Extempaxia
 * Inquirata
 * Mara-Al-Utha

Other types
The Judges are not the only Quintessons to have multiple faces, though the only known exception is the three-faced scientist who was the primary creator of the Trans-Organics. One of his faces was grievously damaged, a scar left by the Dweller, which he covered with a mask.

This scientist instigated a plan to get the Decepticons to unwittingly release the trans-organics from their prisons deep within Cybertron so they would wipe out all Transformer life. The plan ultimately backfired; the Dweller killed the other trans-organics, and was launched into space by the Autobots... where it smashed into the scientist's ship, which was en-route to Cybertron. Presumably, the scientist finally met his end as the Dweller drained the energy from the ship and everyone within it.

Security officers appear to have been an ancient model of Quintesson, and possibly the only kind with built-in offensive capabilities, some having one set of arm-tentacles replaced with over-sized blasters. These blasters availed them naught, however, against the Trans-Organic beasts. It is unknown if any of this model of Quintesson exist in "modern" times.

Non-bailiff, non-executioner Humanoid Quintessons are exceedingly rare. One accompanied Inquirata on his mission to use a Time Window to change Cybertron's history, stopping the slave revolt that drove the Quintessons off-planet.

And then there's Mirdane. A rarity among Quintessons, in that he has a name, and that's it. He has only ever been mentioned by others, never seen, so what body type he has/had is unknown.

Physiology
.

Known Quintessons

 * Alpha Quintesson

History
300 million years ago, give or take, the Autobots, engaged in a major colonisation push, had border skirmishes with the Quintesson Pan Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere. This conflict ended the Age of Expansion. The Autobot Commonwealth and the Co-Prosperity Sphere still border each other, as well as the Nebulon Republic.

Synopsis
Swindle received his Sonic Jammer 3000 from the Quintessons. According to him, they are nice folks that give you a good deal and all the oil you can drink.

Aligned
The Quintessons were small, organic, squid-like creatures. Physically frail, easily injured, and extremely cowardly, the Quintessons themselves were rarely seen, and did most of their dirty work through various proxies, willing or unwilling. When the Quintessons did need to expose themselves to further their own ends, they frequently encased themselves in mechanical suits styled after their various slave races, often claiming to be representatives of other races.

At some point after the creation of the first Transformers, Quintus Prime left Cybertron to seed other worlds in the universe with life with the Emberstone, in the hopes that other peaceful, space-faring civilizations would one day contact Cybertron to form friendly alliances. Among his earliest creations were the Quintessons. So that didn't work out too well.

After creating the Quintessons, Quintus Prime was never heard from again; Alpha Trion idly speculated that the Quintessons may have killed their creator.

History
The Quintessons developed interstellar travel before the Transformers. At some point in the past, the Quintessons stole and reverse-engineered Space Bridge technology from an unknown source. They eventually discovered Cybertron toward the end of that planet's Age of Origins. As the first alien beings ever to make contact with the planet, the arrival of their ships awed the young Cybertronian race. The Quintessons claimed to be benevolent entities sent to "uplift" the Cybertronians from their primitive existence, so that they could join the galactic community. By giving Cybertronians the "gift" of transformation and the power to assume alternate modes, the Quintessons won Cybertron's public support. In reality, though, the Quintessons had simply learned to manipulate the dormant transformation cogs present in every Transformer. The dispersal of Quintesson technology and tutelage turned the feudal, tribe-based planet into a sophisticated spacefaring civilization almost overnight. The Quintessons established rule of law and eventually a global order overseen by the Elite Guard member Zeta Prime and the High Council.

Secretly, the Quintessons aimed to slowly rob the Cybertronians of their individuality, then sell them into slavery as mindless drones. To further this goal, they began implanting various Cybertronians, such as the Seekers, with cockpits intended to house Quintesson pilots. The Quintessons organized other Cybertronians into working collectives and attempted to tamper with the Well of All Sparks itself; newborn Transformers began emerging without names or identities, and instead received alphanumeric designations. The Quintesson's twisted, bizarre sense of justice led to the construction of the Supreme Court on Cybertron, a kangaroo court where innocents could be sentenced to life imprisonment or death.

Eventually, a resistance movement formed, and the Quintessons were defeated in a rebellion led by Sentinel Prime, who led Cybertron into a subsequent Golden Age. Traces of their rule, such as the cockpits implanted in many Cybertronians, would remain even as Cybertron slowly rid itself of their influence. Some of the Cybertronians who had lived through this disturbing period- including a young librarian named Orion Pax- suppressed their traumatic memories of Cybertron's occupation, and eventually forgot about the Quintessons almost entirely. Generations later, Orion Pax claimed Sentinel and the High Council had enslaved Cybertron with the caste system instead of having it forced on them by the Quintessons.

The Quintessons never forgot about their humiliating rout at the hands of their former servants, and for many centuries the embittered race enviously regarded the planet and its inhabitants as rightfully theirs. At some point after Cybertron's Golden Age, the Quintessons discovered and colonized the Transformers's ex-colony world of Aquatron, modifying the bodies of its inhabitants to produce techno-organic monstrosities such as the Gamekeeper and the Hydratron. Aquatron was eventually subsumed into the Quintesson Imperium, and the Quintessons used their new Sharkticon slaves as aquatic shock troopers.

Synopsis
When the Ark entered the Aquatron system during Optimus Prime's search for the Allspark, the Quintessons awakened Inquirata and his associate Xeros to carry out their deception that would eventually lead to the second invasion of Cybertron. Manipulating both Optimus and Megatron to the planet's surface under the guise of a peace treaty, the Quintessons were eventually able to place both Autobots and Decepticons under arrest and take them to court. During the trial, the Quintessons claimed that they had colonized Cybertron and literally built the first Transformers; Optimus quickly saw through their deception and maintained that all Cybertronians were creations of Primus alone. The Quintesson judges found Optimus innocent, and forced him to duel to the death with Megatron; siphoning energy from the two leaders, they powered a Space Bridge to Cybertron and launched a second invasion force to re-colonize and enslave Cybertron. Their genetically engineered leader Tyrannicon spearheaded the Sharkticon invasion and was able to swiftly overwhelm the weakened planet. The invasion was only defeated after Megatron, forced into a temporary truce with his archenemy, discovered the Sharkticon Matrix of Leadership and used it to override Tyrannicon's hold on his troops. In the ensuing fight, Xeros, Tyrannicon, and Inquirata were all killed, and Aquatron itself was freed of Quintesson control.