Decepticons

Decepticons get a bad rap. Yeah, they're nominally evil conquerors who don't respect anyone weaker than them and see many species as inferior - but if you were a ten foot tall robot made of living metal immune to most things that humans see as life threatening, wouldn't you think yourself superior too? Aside from physiology, and the attitude that goes with being a bad-ass alien species, it's partly the name. Maybe mostly the name. Decepticons. But that's mostly bad PR and people not understanding the background.

See, back on Cybertron, our home planet, we were all forced to live, work, and die in a caste system where our Alt-Form decided what we did for a living. And we had no control over what our Alt-Form was when we were first Forged. Primus alone knew why we were how we were, and it took effort to change it. And that was against the laws. It was an unfair system and much of it was perpetrated by liars and con-artists who deceived us bots into believing Functionalism was the only way. We were lied to, enslaved, and beaten down by the very bots we trusted. Then one mining bot led a revolution after raising himself to celebraty status in the Pits, an "illegal" fighting arena. That revolution swept across Cybertron in a massive war that ended in a coup. That gladiator was Megatron. Back then he was D-16, but during the fights he discarded his assigned name and took up the name of the strongest of the long-vanished Primes. Optimus Prime wasn't a Prime yet. The Primes are chosen by Primus and we hadn't been led by a true Prime in ages. That was part of the lie.

Anyhow. It was during the fighting that this energon loader, Orion Pax was grievously injured sacrificing himself to save his friends. Orion fell to his death into Cybertron, where Primus himself rebuilt the little guy and imbued him with the Matrix of Leadership turning him into Optimus Prime, the latest Prime to ever be Forged. Primes were supposed to lead society. But in the time it took for Orion to be reforged, Megatron had won. Functionalism fell, and Megatron declared the Age of Primes ended, swearing to all of creation and Primus himself that he would never serve another leader, that Cybertron was now in an age of freedom ruled solely by him. Optimus rose up, out of the pit that led to the core and declared himself a Prime - and by doing so declared himself ruler...without saying it. He and Megatron went toe to toe and Optimus won, exiling Megatron from Iacon and starting this war.

We are called Decepticons because we were deceived by false leaders, and we are against it ever happening again. Decepti- from Deception and -con meaning negative or against. Meaning we don't buy in to the botscrap that Primes are all-powerful or whatever. We follow the guy who fought his way to the top and is willing to fight a god to stay there. Frankly, because that's the guy you want as an ally not an enemy. We gather and hoard energon because in the bad old days we were a wire's breadth from stasis-lock, you know, what happens when you starve a bot of energon, and ol' Megatron swore his common oath: Never Again. We conquer because Megatron only knows life to be a kill or be killed sort of thing - so it's conquer or be conquered. We aren't the best, maybe. We're just better than you. But we aren't evil either. We're just ready for whatever fight comes next, because believe me, there's always a bigger sharkticon.
— Swindle