Fortress (ROTF)

Fortress is a Decepticon Seeker from the Revenge of the Fallen portion of the live-action film series

Does he even NEED that many arms?

One of The Fallen's Seekers charged with scouring Earth for the Tomb of the Primes, Fortress had no desire for humans to become involved in the Transformers' war. Indeed, he seems to have little appetite for it himself, engaging only in contests with his comrades, and feeling great guilt over any unfortunate consequences his actions may bring. He is a self-sacrificing type, willing to give everything of himself to right any wrongs he has done.

Fiction

IDW movie comics

Fortress was among the Seekers left on Earth by The Fallen to seek the Tomb of the Primes. As time and the millennia rolled by, and no traces of the tomb were found, the Seekers grew increasingly bored and frustrated, and Fortress found that their quest was slowly transforming into a twisted competition, as the Seekers battled each other over the smallest of possible leads to the Tomb's location. In 1929, one such "contest" went wrong: Fortress (sporting a bi-plane alternate mode) was strafing a truck-mode Seeker, causing the other Transformer to crash into a car containing the young Carter Newell and his parents. Newell's parents died on impact, but Carter himself survived to lay eyes upon the shocked Fortress, who had never wanted to harm humans. Carter swore a vendetta against the Transformers, and spent the next eighty years building the secret organization known as the Initiative to hunt down the alien robots and their technology. At an indeterminate point in time, Fortress was captured by the Initiative's forces and dissected, reduced to a head that apparently served as the living core of the Initiative's mobile base, allowing it to transform.

In 2010, Carter had descended into utter megalomania, and became obsessed with recreating the destroyed AllSpark, in hopes of using its powers to destroy the Transformers, even at the risk of the destruction of the entire solar system should it run out of control. To stop Carter, his relative and fellow Initiative staffer Ingrid released Fortress, who reassembled his body from components of the Initiative's base and set off in pursuit of the fleeing Carter, who also had Optimus Prime hot on his heels. Carter was subsequently killed by Buzzsaw at Soundwave's command, leaving Prime holding Carter's dangerously unstable faux-AllSpark and trying to feed it with the energy of his own Spark. Fortress appeared before Prime and convinced him to hand the cube over so that he could take it away, and in some measure undo the damage his recklessness had caused decades beforehand. After a moment's hesitation, Prime gave Fortress the cube, and the Seeker took to the skies, making for a distant solar system (presumably via space bridge), where the cube exploded, destroying him. Nefarious #4 Nefarious #6

Notes

• A grey-and-black 'bot who got reduced to a head that was in control of a mobile base, with little appetite for war? We're assuming the reference is a deliberate one.