God War
From Transformers Wiki
Fought between the members of the Guiding Hand, the mythological sequence of events known as the God War would mark the very first war fought in Cybertron's history, and a defining event that would shape the theology of the Cybertronian species.
Fiction
2005 IDW continuity
Most Cybertronian religions agree that the life began with the five members of the Guiding Hand: Primus, Mortilus, Solomus, Epistemus, and Adaptus. These five deities brought life to Cybertron, blessing the first generation of Transformers with the ability to change shape to suit their needs, and giving rise to the revered group of Cybertronians known as the Knights of Cybertron. You, Me, and Other Revelations
According to conventional religion, this utopian era would come to an end when Mortilus, god of death, betrayed his comrades and sparked the cataclysmic war itself. The texts of the religious sect known as the Clavis Aurea stated that Mortilus sought to turn Cybertron's power outward, so that the Hand and its children could strike out at the rest of the universe, while the other members of the Guiding Hand were against unnecessary war. Mortilus's ambitions caused Cybertron to "shudder", ripping asunder its first moon from orbit. Mortilus battled the other members of the pantheon, tricking them one by one so that they would be reduced to mere objects: Solomus entrapped in a crystal container, Epistemus as a brain module, Adaptus as a transformation cog, until only Primus remained.
Primus struck down Mortilus, but was gravely wounded in the battle, and retreated to the center of Cybertron to become the life-giving supercomputer Vector Sigma. In doing so, however, he killed Death, and the passing of Mortilus allowed Cybertronian sparks to burn for eternity as immortals. You, Me, and Other Revelations
A different interpretation put forth in the Keening Texts instead held that Mortilus sought to bring his "gift" to the cosmos, and used Luna 1 as a staging ground to attack Cybertron with a thousand horrors of his own devising. The remaining members of the Guiding Hand returned to the physical world to defeat him, but Mortilus had prepared for this, and laid clever traps for Epistemus, Solomus, and Adaptus, tricking them into surrendering their robotic bodies and ultimately killing them. Each of their defeats weakened Primus, who fashioned Vector Sigma in preparation for his own death before using the last of his strength to send Mortilus's base of Luna 1 hurtling through the cosmos.
In this interpretation of the myth, all five perished, but persisted into the next life as metaphysical ideas; Mortilus—having realized the error of his ways—received forgiveness for his transgression. The group joined forces to create the Afterspark, so that future Cybertronians could peacefully transition into the next life. The God War
The true sequence of events, however, was quite different from any known religious account. In reality, the Guiding Hand were not immortal gods, but robots as mortal as any other Transformer (if long-lived and mildly superpowered). Furthermore, it was not Mortilus who rebelled against Primus, but Adaptus, who did so in the hopes that introducing conflict to Cybertronian civilization would avert the stagnation that he feared would soon grip the species.
The other four members of the Guiding Hand took up arms against Adaptus, but did not kill him; instead, Adaptus escaped to his base on Luna 1, whereupon he deployed a massive electromagnetic pulse across Cybertron that would leave the population of the planet confused and amnesiac while he made his escape. This act would introduce the planet to the neurological degradation known as "information creep", and ultimately leave the other four members of the Guiding Hand without any memory of their names or the role they had played in the foundation of Cybertronian civilization. The Unremembering
Early into the Great War, Megatron tapped into Trypticon's memories, and glimpsed jumbled images of an ancient Cybertron left barren after a "war of gods." Primacy #1