Shokaract

Toy History

Shokaract was originally released as one of two exclusive figures for the Botcon convention of 2000, both limited to 1200 figures made. The toy was a repaint of the 1998 Predacon Rampage, and as such came with all the same accessories as him. His packaging is a homage to the boxes of Japanese Transformers figures released in the late 1980's. Originally, the toy's paint deco was to be black with a big red X, but was then dropped in favor of the brown, metallic blue, and teal color scheme.

Shokaract's only other toy was Pirate Hunter, part of a souvenir two-pack sold at Botcon 2014. Like the original figure, it was a repaint of Rampage, that year's free incentive figure from the Transformers Collectors Club, which was a repaint of the deluxe class Transformers: Prime 'First Edition' Megatron with a new head. It was repackaged as "Shokaract" with fellow BotCon 2014 toys Flareup, Ape-Linq, and Flamewar in the "BotCon Legacy Collection", which also had the pack-in comic "Legacy".

Comic Book History

3H Productions/Botcon

Tales from the Beast Wars (2000)

Shokaract first appears in several prose stories establishing his rise to power, leading to the start of his clash with the cast of the Beast Wars animated series, along with a few convention-exclusive characters.

In the story, it is revealed that at the dawn of time, Primus foresaw the eventual rise of Shokaract to power, and created the twelve Transformers of the Covenant (based on the twelve signs of the Western Zodiac) to lay in wait on a distant planet called Protos, where they would hone their skills and abilities for the day they would eventually face the tyrant.

Shokaract's reign was to some extent made possible by actions taken by the Predacon Megatron when he took over and ruled Cybertron. By the 32nd century C.E., Shokaract had completely enslaved Cybertron and most of the known galaxy. From his citadel at Corumkan, he tasked two of his heralds, Antagony and Cataclysm, with punishing uncooperative alien races, and breaking and demoralizing the few scattered Cybertronian resistance fighters across the universe.

One of the few beings who could truly offer a decent challenge to Shokaract's reign was Horus, ruler of the Argos Cluster. After losing two heralds, sixteen divisions of Reavers, and five million drones to the sun-channeling warlord, Shokaract sent Antagony and Cataclysm to deal with Horus. He was not disappointed with the results; Cataclysm destroyed the star from which Horus drew his power, allowing Antagony to kill the warlord. Upon the duo's return, Shokaract commended them both for their joint attack, possibly unaware that the Heralds had actually worked independently, each hoping to gain an advantage over the other by bringing down Horus, and advancing to a higher position in Shokaract's rule.

The Cybertronian resistance ended up spawning the Predacon/Autobot hybrid warrior Windrazor, and with his newfound time-travelling abilities, went back to the ancient past to destroy the dark essence that powered Shokaract in the form of what he called the 'Decepticon Matrix of Conquest'. Shokaract himself followed his would-be assassin back in time, handily routing Windrazor and the Maximals. As the battle progressed, dozens of Maximals and Predacons from various timelines and realities would materialize on prehistoric Earth and join the fray, only to be more or less instantly and effortlessly disintegrated by Shokaract, eventually being backed up by Antagony and Cataclysm.

Roused from their seclusion in J'nwan, legendary Transformers Optimus Prime, Megatron (G1), Grimlock (Dinobot leader), and Soundwave would also arrive to fight the dark lord, and they had somewhat better luck hurting him. The battle was finally decided when the Covenant warriors converted themselves into the raw essence of Primus and entered the Matrix of Conquest. In that alternate plane they were able to sever the link between Earth's ancient past and Unicron's future deposition of the dark essence there, erasing Shokaract's origin and causing him to be wiped from history. The surviving Transformers who had fought him managed to teleport back to their dimensions of origin just before that entire reality reset itself, free of Shokaract's reign of terror.

The lowly Predacon grunt who otherwise would have found the dark essence and turned into Shokaract was last seen continuing to be a lowly grunt, of no importance whatsoever. He still fell into a cave where the evil energy once resided, but all he found in it was an empty pit and the vaguest whisper of a voice in the wind, which caused him to flee, terrified.

Later, on Cybertron (during the events of Beast Machines), Apelinq would retell the story of their battle against Shokaract to Optimus Primal, who had lost all memory of it in the aftermath of the paradox. The ancient supercomputer known as the Oracle then wiped Primal's mind of this incident, leaving Shokaract to be nothing more than a footnote.

Wings Universe (2014)

Hunter was an always-snarling, mostly unintelligible, and entirely unremarkable Cybertronian. It is true that he spent his formative years fighting in the gladitorial pits buried within Cybertron, where he let his more bestial nature take over, but there he was still largely forgettable. In search for his destiny, Hunter became the "pet" of a scoundrel, who took Hunter to different worlds like Tetra Gar. Hunter's fortune changed when he became the wager for a card game against Cannonball, who won by both cheating and killing his opponent. Hunter was unfazed by this turn of events and joined Cannonball's Star Seekers for the opportunity to "hunt". Cannonball recruited him for his muscle and bloodlust, two qualities Hunter was pleased to demonstrate, but Hunter really joined because he had an unshakable feeling he was missing something unknowable that he must be searching for to make himself whole.

Meanwhile, Apelinq was having visions of a shadowy entity named "Hunter" and a crisis to come, though eventually that entity shed that name for another...

One of Cannonball's daring plans involved stealing a space bridge and jumping through transwarp to a Cybertron at peacetime to plunder their energon resources. But these things were irrelevant to Hunter, and he tended to mostly try to eat his crewmate Squirm. While the crew was commandeering Unicron's discarded and forgotten head, Hunter stumbled across a spy in their midst—the former Wrecker and current Knight Devcon, who was reporting to his team about Cannonball's plan. Devcon would have been devoured if Hunter hadn't suddenly been distracted by their stolen space bridge portal and drawn to it. On the other side of the portal was a canyon on prehistoric Earth, and a powerful voice offered him the Matrix of Conquest. "Take it, Hunter. Become power. Become strength. Become Shokaract!" Suddenly, he had a voice and knew his destiny: Omega Point.

His true identity now realized, Shokaract reminisced on the path that had led to his ascension, and planned to go forth and strike upon Cybertron, knowing the world could never properly prepare for his return.

IDW Publishing

Beast Wars: The Ascending (2007)

Once a lowly Predacon soldier, Shokaract found capsules of a strange energy source while on a routine scouting mission. Attempting to analyze them, he had little time to react as the energy invaded his body. He laid dormant and non-functioning for many stellar cycles while inside his body the energy raged on and tried to make him its puppet. His willpower proved superior, and he was able to direct the energy towards reformatting his damaged body. His final mastery of the substance, now called Angolmois, came with the forging of a container for it, an object he called his "Matrix of Conquest" or the Anti-Matrix. Thus empowered, he exhibited many new abilities, including interplanetary teleportation and weather control, which he used to his advantage.

Upon returning to Cybertron, he gathered various malcontents to his cause, including Antagony (a female Transformer whose toy was a repaint of Beast Wars Inferno), three of the Cyborg Beasts (characters exclusive to the Beast Wars II series in Japan), and the Unicron cultists known as the Blendtrons (villain characters who were repainted Fuzors for the Beast Wars Neo series in Japan). Shokaract sent these new followers out to gather more Angolmois and use it to facilitate his ascension to demigod-hood. Within the temporal limbo he was consigned to (as a result of the events of Beast Wars: The Gathering #4), Magmatron's astral self witnessed the end of this terrible chain of events: Shokaract's unwilling facilitation of Unicron's return and the drawing of the Chaos-Bringer to Cybertron, where he would finally devour it and defeat his longtime enemy, Primus. Having been trapped in a loop of endlessly watching Cybertron die, the Predacon general resolved to find a way to prevent this--even if it meant recruiting his foe, the Maximal known as Razorbeast.

As Massimus Prime (Big Convoy in Japan) began to investigate a series of Angolmois-related incidents on Cybertron, it was revealed that these events were already unfolding, with Shokaract's power growing due to each application of the energy source. However, Shokaract was being manipulated by Unicron and the Blendtrons to act as a "vessel" of some sort. Unicron stressed that Shokaract was to be in the dark at all times of the part he would play in the dark god's plans.

Shokaract raised a monolithic structure from the substrata of Cybertron to serve as his tower fortress. Massimus Prime followed the trail of the Angolmois incidents to this fortress, and Shokaract decided to show the Maximal leader's task force the true intensity of his newfound power, despite warnings by the Blendtrons that his ascension was not yet complete nor stable. He ignored this and engaged the Maximals, and though Shokaract easily dispatched even Massimus Prime, Magmatron reversed his victory by manipulating the timestream so that Leomus Prime (Lio Convoy in Japan) would return to Cybertron in time to prevent Massimus's death and the deaths of the rest of his task force. Shokaract, however, had allies of his own, as his heralds returned with more Angolmois for a specific reason: the time of his ascension was at hand.

His minions continued to distribute Angolmois to the public and provoke widespread violence, creating negative feelings that fed Shokaract's Anti-Matrix. He was able to fight off a Maximal strike team but was defeated by the machinations of Magmatron, who, thanks to careful placing of chronal armbands on the tyrant, brought him out of the timestream to see that he was merely a pawn of Unicron. Aghast by this, and at first denying it, until realizing it was the truth, Shokaract tore the Anti-Matrix from his chest, killing himself in the process, and somehow bringing Magmatron back into the main reality.