Buffalo Dump
Sept 3, 2014 22:27:58 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2014 22:27:58 GMT -5
Name: Buffalo Dump
Age (or human equivalent): Late thirties/early forties
Gender (or human equivalent): Doesn't really think of gender, but notices others refer to him as "he" and "mech", so he goes by male pronouns for ease of communication.
Species: Cybertronian
Faction: Decepticons
Original Occupation: Formerly a waste disposal unit in the Dead End of Polyhex, where he was known as “Waste Unit B-D21M-Pol”. On the side, he did a number of charitable acts (see “History” for details), including chaperoning people under the influence.
Occupation/Specialization: Currently a frontliner/guard for the Decepticon cause. Because of his willing nature, enormous size and natural hardiness, Buffalo Dump has been commonly used as extra muscle for Decepitcon commanders and Cybertronians of importance.
Appearance/Altmode: When in vehicular form, he takes the shape of a Waste Management Mack Front Loader. In bipedal root mode, he is slightly taller than Optimus Prime 2.0 from the third season of Transformers: Prime, and built like a brick powerhouse. B-Dump is a clunky bruiser that is mostly squares and angles, with the roundest part of him being his chest piece — it becomes the hatch that keeps garbage in his hopper. His front grille and the cabin part of his truck become his back armour, with the front wheels forming shoulder pads and the back ones adoring his heels. His feet have two toes on each, split roughly like a hoof. The forks he uses to pick up trash become extra limbs, clamping down to rest against his back unless deployed. Unlike the forks on his Earthen counterpart, his have ball-socket joints at each “bend”, and have some degree of flexibility and mobility. Both end with white "claws" that have sharp tips, similar but more knife-like to the claws on Soundwave's tentacles.
His colouration is expected of a WM truck – green and white, with bits of red-orange and yellow thrown in here and there. His optics are pumpkin-orange, shaped roughly like right triangles; they have a lighter-shaded iris and red pupil in each. His helm has a pair of “horns” on each side, rising up to be as long as a middle-servo. The smaller, non-headlight lights on his truck glow as biolights, and he can flick them on and off at will – something left over from when he worked the waste disposal gig.
History: Buffalo Dump's background is fairly unremarkable. Batch-built in Kaon as a waste disposal unit, he was sold to the Polyhexian Waste Authority as part of the city-wide cleanup crews shortly after onlining. Gentle and quiet by nature and partly coding, his job was to empty the trash units and sweep the streets of Cybertron's tech hub, carrying out heavy double-duty in the infamous Dead End. Used circuit boosters, energon cubes, food containers and even parts of other mechs and femmes — all of it ended up his hopper, day in and day out. He minded not neither work nor his environment, programmed to have a fairly simple mind and way about doing things: wake up. Clean up. Return to one of the Waste Authority's many processing centres to dump his load. Go back out. Return at the end of his day to the simple-but-run-down housing kept for the waste unit workers.
Because of how simply his processor was made, Buffalo Dump — then known as Waste Unit B-D21M-Pol — was slow in developing a stronger awareness for others and their situation. The Dead End was mostly background noise to him, regular scenery for a regular day at work. It wasn't until he was transferred into Iacon to replace another did he experience the culture shock; in Iacon, functioning 'bots walked the streets. The bars and eating places were decent and clean, not seedy, downtrodden and crawling with illegal dealers. Trash went into the right receptacles, and the residents could afford medical care and Energon on a regular basis. He learnt that things there were normal, and that the happy, lively EM fields of the Iaconians were an ideal thing.
When he was transferred back to the Dead End — it didn't take long for things to be replaced in Iacon — Buffalo Dump found the environment stifling. His field was weighed down by the sickly, saddened EMFs of everyone around him, and his coding gnawed at him about the flaw. It recognized and memorized the cleanliness of Iacon, and it told him to reach for the same state in his current domain. How could he clean up the streets, though, when the dying and the ill littered in, and where everything was crumbling and left to be neglected?
His answer came one night when he was loading an overflowing receptacle. His forks were jerking back and forth, trying to get the lid on the receptacle to snap open; the commotion attracted a drunken Empty, the mech shaky and ready to pass out. The Empty half-staggered, half-crawled towards Buffalo Dump, who didn't realize he was there until he knocked on a light with a weak fist.
"Heeey...heeeeeeeeey!"
The waste truck stopped, and focused its optical sensors on the Empty. He couldn't help but flinch back a little; the mech was covered in rust, missing an arm and with wires poking out of an optical socket. He would have only come up to Buffalo Dump's knee, which only made him look more pathetic. Turning down his headlights a little as to not blind the sickly 'bot, Buffalo Dump creaked out an uneasy, "...Yes?"
"Buddy...buddy I need a riiiiiiide..." the Empty slurred, now using the truck as a crutch. “I...I don't think I can get home 'lone...can ya give me a lift?"
"...To where?" asked the waste disposer, and the Empty couldn't help but giggle.
"Home, 'course! Don't wanna...don't wanna be trash in the streets, do I?"
The way the mech worded his sentence made something in Buffalo Dump's head click. If there wasn't a body lying in the streets, then that was less waste for another unit (or him) to clean up. Less waste meant a cleaner Dead End, and a cleaner Dead End meant something that resembled the polished beauty of Iacon. Furthermore, the mech was a minibot – his alt was probably a small hovercar, if Buffalo Dump had to guess – and could easily fit in his hopper. It wasn’t the most pleasant place for a mech to be, but then again, he was technically escorting tomorrow’s trash….
“Get in the back, I’ll take ya home.”
Thus began Buffalo Dump’s “second” job: chauffeuring around the heavily intoxicated and the crippled. He started with one or two ‘bots a night – mostly the same people, constantly getting in over their heads – before word spread throughout the Dead End. Soon people were using him as a taxi service, ferried all over the rundown area for whatever business they had. Some even helped him with the garbage, a couple of minibots volunteering to ride along with him and toss things into the hopper while he handled heavier loads. Buffalo Dump also would pull a makeshift skid for people to sit on and be towed around here and there.
It was during these times that Buffalo Dump received the designation he has now. His garbage truck form had a blunt, protruding hood that reminded people of a minotoron’s head – a minotoron being the Cybertronian version of a bison, and also known colloquially as a “cybuffalo”. Combined with his hoof-like feet, his hook-tentacles that would curl over his head as he grabbed something and his horned helm, the name was combined with the “dump” in his name to form “Buffalo Dump”. He can’t remember who came up with it – probably one of the minibots that would help him clean – but he took it as his name with pride. His superiors didn’t seem to mind, as what he was doing was good PR, and the waste units would occasionally take nicknames for themselves.
How did such a gentle soul, then, get introduced into the Decepticon cause? The answer was simple: they saved his hide.
Buffalo Dump knew of inequality. Though Iacon was beautiful, there were too many people who turned their noses up at him for his caste. Empties were looked down on by everyone, yet even they had a pecking order; a wingless Seeker would still crush a data stick-alt under their heel without a second thought. Things really came to a head when some Empties, too ill and battered to be cared for properly by the medics of the Dead End, came and begged Buffalo Dump to take them into Iacon. The number of high-castes there meant state-of-the-art clinics that could perform major full-body repair, specialized limb replacement, spark transfusion and so on.
But these clinics were meant for the high-caste, and would turn away the lower masses without a second thought. Six separate times did Buffalo Dump bring a seriously ill or dying Empty to Iacon; six separate times was he angrily turned away. On his seventh try, a riot started after some of the low-caste who came with him – the Empties had their cohorts, too – tried to swarm the doors of a clinic, and push back the guards to save a dying cohort-sister.
Buffalo Dump and the others were arrested, and charged with disturbing the peace and assaulting higher-caste individuals. Buffalo Dump would have been sent to one of the Garrus prisons, but one of Megatron’s inspired bailed him and brought him to the fold. The mech that saved him had connections, and had been keeping an eye on Buffalo Dump for some time. His proposition was simple: join Megatron’s cause. Fight for the rights of the Empties he had come to protect. End the inequality in the system, and never again would you have to watch your people suffer and languish. Buffalo Dump, who had developed a strong empathy for others and a desire to see justice done, joined the famous gladiator’s movement.
He did not expect for things to come to war. He was a simple mech, far simpler than most of the other Decepticons, and was genuinely blindsided when Megatron became so ruthless. He thought of deserting, only to witness the rampant genocide the Decepticon leader performed; some of the people he had grown to see as cohort were murdered as a warning. Buffalo Dump stayed mostly out of fear, but also because he had found a cohort in some of the former Empties that were now ‘Cons. He didn’t want anything to happen to them, especially with how Megatron was willing to sacrifice so many of his comrades.
Unfortunately, he was separated during the Exodus from them, and has spent all this time trying to find them. His arrival on Earth is by accident – he was trying to find a different planet, running on a rumour that some of his cohort might be there. Instead, he got lost in space, and Optimus’s message about ‘Cons being on a tiny planet reached him. He thought Earth might be the planet he was looking for.
It isn’t.
Personality: Buffalo Dump is a big mech with a big heart. He is the quintessential “gentle giant”, seeing a world smaller than him as something to cherish and protect. He’s got a soft spot for sparklings and animals whether great or small, and the downtrodden always poke at his sympathies. The war weighs heavily on his conscience, as he is disturbed by what he has seen and done. He joined the ‘Cons to protect the lower caste and the Empties he knew, not murder people senselessly and pillage planets for resources.
With this being said, Buffalo Dump is loyal, and he also is intimidated by authority. Megatron has struck enough fear into him that he obeys the warlord as much as possible, even if it’s not him that B-Dump is loyal to. No, Buffalo Dump’s alliances lie with the Vehicons and the other, more morally-conscious Decepticons, who either joined because of justice or were hurt by the Autobot side. He will shed no tears if Megatron is destroyed, reserving his grief for those who are chained by his whims.
Despite being so sweet-sparked, Buffalo Dump has his limits. When something he sees as his ward is threatened, the mech can fly into an unrelenting, nearly-merciless rage. He is much a papa bear as he is a gentle giant – scrap with those he defends, and he will turn you into scrap. He has lost so much, seen so much pain and sorrow he feels he could have prevented, that he has no patience for those who torment or injure his charges. Friends and kindred spirits fall into the category of “things Buffalo Dump needs to watch over”, so those who have a beef with this better recharge with one eye open.
Finally, Buffalo Dump’s kindness can reach even those he sees as enemies. He doesn’t torture or maim unless he’s gone off the deep end; if he must kill, he tries to make it as quick as possible. If the enemy is retreating, he lets them retreat, and respects the rules and terms of surrender. He does not mess with cassettes or medics unless his life depends on it – medics because “they’re just doin’ their job”, and cassettes because of a traumatic fight in the early days of the war. He crushed a cybercat-cassette into scrap with his bare hands.... The scream of sheer anguish from the carrier, whom the cat-cassette was symbiotically bonded to, still haunts his dreams in his sleep.
Likes: Small animals. Sparklings, and by extension the children of many species. Being appreciated and getting things done. Nice people and manners. Clean spaces. Lobbing. Peace, elusive as it might be. Pretty vistas and wide open spaces. Charity.
Dislikes: Megatron, and what he has turned the Decepticon cause into. War. Unnecessary killing. The loss of the innocent. Being seen as stupid. Not being able to understand a situation. Being taken advantage of. The destruction of things pristine and polished. Filth, disorganization and dirt. High-casters. Not being able to protect others.
Strengths/Weapons:
- A Way with Words: B-Dump is simple-minded, but he has a grasp on how to defuse a bad situation. He has separated and stopped a number of arguments in the past, ranging from using gentle words to outright intimidation. If he has to, he WILL make himself heard and stop everyone from getting into an unnecessary fight – he’s no member of the Diplomatic Corps, but he tries to make nice.
- Fork-Tentacles: Though they have more limited mobility than Soundwave’s tentacles, B-Dump’s forks can still be used to pick things up. The sharp talons on each end can be used as crude daggers, and one tactic he uses is to pin an enemy to the ground with them while he punches the target repeatedly. He also can use them to lift up 2/3rds of the weight he can lift with his arms.
- Heavy-Duty Stamina: B-Dump has an incredible tolerance for pain and punishment. He is ridiculously resilient, able to shrug off minor to weakly-moderate wounds, minor diseases and malware infections with little effort; he’s the guy that, if he was human, would go to work with a bad cold and put in extra overtime. Sleep and hunger do affect him, but not as badly as another might be affected – due to a slow-burning metabolism to save on worker feeding costs, he could last a few days on less than half a tank.
- Size and Strength: B-Dump is a big mech, and was built to drag heavy loads – he can lift up to 50,000 pounds over his head. He is a big fan of using crush damage and his weight to turn the tide in a battle, as he is poor shot with his blaster (see “Weaknesses” below).
Weaknesses:
- Caste-Biased: B-Dump has a bias against moderate- and high-caste Cybertronians. He saw how much better things were for them, and they get on his nerves faster than a lower-caste Decepticon might. He is more likely to have less patience or tolerance for them or their orders than, say, a fellow garbage mech ordering him around; the exception to this would be higher-casted children/children-equivalents.
- Head Damage: During the war on Cybertron, Buffalo Dump took a massive hit to the helm from a raging Autobot frontliner – this was in the same battle he crushed the aforementioned cat-cassette. Due to the chaos of the battlefield and lack of tools, the medics who treated him did not notice a sliver of metal jabbing into the structures behind his right optic. It’s a fairly large sliver that would require invasive surgery to pull out, so it was left there to rest – unfortunately, it likes to shift around and jab painfully into the optical nerve circuits. Certain blows, surprises, jars and hits to the head will send B-Dump into a frantic rage, the mech swinging wildly and attacking everything in sight in a desperate attempt to make the pain stop.
Lesser effects of this are spells of occasional migraines and his right optic fritzing out. This has given him the habit of holding/squinting his right eye shut. He may also have trouble focusing, and can become cranky and intolerant of lit spaces. There’s also the trouble aiming his (very basic) arm blaster, so if he has to use it, it becomes a spray-and-pray type of deal.
- Lacking In Armour: Though he performs duties typical of a frontliner, Buffalo Dump is not built to be one. His armour is fairly standard, with no extra plating, special cushioning or strengthened components beyond what he was originally built to do. He can take a hit, but not to the extent that a character such as Fortress Maximus can, and the damage would certainly aggravate his current health (see “Walking Disease Vector” below). His auto-repair systems are struggling due to the diseases he carries.
- Protective to a Fault: Buffalo Dump can become dangerously protective, to the point of flying into a rage if he is pushed over his emotional limit. On the other hand, he can get suckered easily into hostage situations, as he will try to negotiate to spare the lives of people he cares for. With Buffalo Dump, those can become obvious fairly quickly.
- Simple-Minded: B-Dump’s IQ is not high – it’s an inherent part of his coding. He has a hard time processing anything too scientific and complex, though he is no Wreck-Gar by any means. With Buffalo Dump, short commands, small words and a lack of jingo are the best way to communicate with him.
- Slow: What Buffalo Dump makes up for in strength and stamina, he lacks in speed and dexterity. In vehicular form, his top speed is 70 MPH/112 KMH, and he moves at a lumbering jog when he tries to run in bipedal form.
- Soft: B-Dump can and has frozen in battle before. He shows great reluctance in attacking anything he perceives as too weak to fight back, and cassettes are an absolute no for him to go after. Furthermore, he may turn on his superiors if he feels they are endangering his comrades or the innocent, though this is thankfully rare thanks to the fear Megatron has put in him. Any word of subordination would eventually get to him, after all.
- Unaware of Limits: B-Dump’s resilience is hard-coded. He was meant to take punishment in a punishing job, and was constantly cut, bruised and infected with a manner of things – such is the life of a garbage mech. He is so used to being battered around, he can be unaware of when he needs to see a medic, and has dropped into stasis before because he hit an invisible wall. Unless someone makes him, it’s very easy for him to skip checkups and necessary repairs, waiting too late for the damage to be fixed.
- Walking Disease Vector: Connected to the weakness above, Buffalo Dump is asymptomatic for some malware infections and a few Cybertronian diseases. Some of these diseases will permanently remain in his system, and the best a medic can do is treat them until they are inactive. He is already showing signs of pre-cybercrosis around his inner workings, though it remains to be seen if it will fully develop; this manifests as random fits coughing and of pain in his chest area. His energon is also slightly off-colour, taking on a greenish and cloudy tinge.
It should be noted, however, that he is not highly contagious; his ailments are happily enjoying their slow destruction of his systems. He will not transmit his diseases via things such as coughing or fluids, but care should be taken by medics when they root around his insides. There is a chance some of his deeper, more inner parts may shed actively-hazardous material, such as the parts around his spark beginning to corrode.
Special skills (that are not weapon related): He’s good with kids and animals. If the guy wasn’t sparked to pick up trash, he likely would have taken a job babysitting sparklings for all the rich folk.
Extra Info: Though Buffalo Dump is disillusioned with the Decepticon cause, he is not outright going to turn his back on it. The seeds are there for him to be swayed away, but he feels there are far more people he has to stick around and protect. He’d rather be stabbed in the spark than leave them to the non-existent mercy of Megatron, and it would take something extremely heinous for him to call it quits. Mass slaughter of innocent Vehicons by Megatron, discovering spark-breaching was being used as torture, and slowly murdering a cassette in front of its carrier are all examples of extremes that would push him over the edge.
Age (or human equivalent): Late thirties/early forties
Gender (or human equivalent): Doesn't really think of gender, but notices others refer to him as "he" and "mech", so he goes by male pronouns for ease of communication.
Species: Cybertronian
Faction: Decepticons
Original Occupation: Formerly a waste disposal unit in the Dead End of Polyhex, where he was known as “Waste Unit B-D21M-Pol”. On the side, he did a number of charitable acts (see “History” for details), including chaperoning people under the influence.
Occupation/Specialization: Currently a frontliner/guard for the Decepticon cause. Because of his willing nature, enormous size and natural hardiness, Buffalo Dump has been commonly used as extra muscle for Decepitcon commanders and Cybertronians of importance.
Appearance/Altmode: When in vehicular form, he takes the shape of a Waste Management Mack Front Loader. In bipedal root mode, he is slightly taller than Optimus Prime 2.0 from the third season of Transformers: Prime, and built like a brick powerhouse. B-Dump is a clunky bruiser that is mostly squares and angles, with the roundest part of him being his chest piece — it becomes the hatch that keeps garbage in his hopper. His front grille and the cabin part of his truck become his back armour, with the front wheels forming shoulder pads and the back ones adoring his heels. His feet have two toes on each, split roughly like a hoof. The forks he uses to pick up trash become extra limbs, clamping down to rest against his back unless deployed. Unlike the forks on his Earthen counterpart, his have ball-socket joints at each “bend”, and have some degree of flexibility and mobility. Both end with white "claws" that have sharp tips, similar but more knife-like to the claws on Soundwave's tentacles.
His colouration is expected of a WM truck – green and white, with bits of red-orange and yellow thrown in here and there. His optics are pumpkin-orange, shaped roughly like right triangles; they have a lighter-shaded iris and red pupil in each. His helm has a pair of “horns” on each side, rising up to be as long as a middle-servo. The smaller, non-headlight lights on his truck glow as biolights, and he can flick them on and off at will – something left over from when he worked the waste disposal gig.
History: Buffalo Dump's background is fairly unremarkable. Batch-built in Kaon as a waste disposal unit, he was sold to the Polyhexian Waste Authority as part of the city-wide cleanup crews shortly after onlining. Gentle and quiet by nature and partly coding, his job was to empty the trash units and sweep the streets of Cybertron's tech hub, carrying out heavy double-duty in the infamous Dead End. Used circuit boosters, energon cubes, food containers and even parts of other mechs and femmes — all of it ended up his hopper, day in and day out. He minded not neither work nor his environment, programmed to have a fairly simple mind and way about doing things: wake up. Clean up. Return to one of the Waste Authority's many processing centres to dump his load. Go back out. Return at the end of his day to the simple-but-run-down housing kept for the waste unit workers.
Because of how simply his processor was made, Buffalo Dump — then known as Waste Unit B-D21M-Pol — was slow in developing a stronger awareness for others and their situation. The Dead End was mostly background noise to him, regular scenery for a regular day at work. It wasn't until he was transferred into Iacon to replace another did he experience the culture shock; in Iacon, functioning 'bots walked the streets. The bars and eating places were decent and clean, not seedy, downtrodden and crawling with illegal dealers. Trash went into the right receptacles, and the residents could afford medical care and Energon on a regular basis. He learnt that things there were normal, and that the happy, lively EM fields of the Iaconians were an ideal thing.
When he was transferred back to the Dead End — it didn't take long for things to be replaced in Iacon — Buffalo Dump found the environment stifling. His field was weighed down by the sickly, saddened EMFs of everyone around him, and his coding gnawed at him about the flaw. It recognized and memorized the cleanliness of Iacon, and it told him to reach for the same state in his current domain. How could he clean up the streets, though, when the dying and the ill littered in, and where everything was crumbling and left to be neglected?
His answer came one night when he was loading an overflowing receptacle. His forks were jerking back and forth, trying to get the lid on the receptacle to snap open; the commotion attracted a drunken Empty, the mech shaky and ready to pass out. The Empty half-staggered, half-crawled towards Buffalo Dump, who didn't realize he was there until he knocked on a light with a weak fist.
"Heeey...heeeeeeeeey!"
The waste truck stopped, and focused its optical sensors on the Empty. He couldn't help but flinch back a little; the mech was covered in rust, missing an arm and with wires poking out of an optical socket. He would have only come up to Buffalo Dump's knee, which only made him look more pathetic. Turning down his headlights a little as to not blind the sickly 'bot, Buffalo Dump creaked out an uneasy, "...Yes?"
"Buddy...buddy I need a riiiiiiide..." the Empty slurred, now using the truck as a crutch. “I...I don't think I can get home 'lone...can ya give me a lift?"
"...To where?" asked the waste disposer, and the Empty couldn't help but giggle.
"Home, 'course! Don't wanna...don't wanna be trash in the streets, do I?"
The way the mech worded his sentence made something in Buffalo Dump's head click. If there wasn't a body lying in the streets, then that was less waste for another unit (or him) to clean up. Less waste meant a cleaner Dead End, and a cleaner Dead End meant something that resembled the polished beauty of Iacon. Furthermore, the mech was a minibot – his alt was probably a small hovercar, if Buffalo Dump had to guess – and could easily fit in his hopper. It wasn’t the most pleasant place for a mech to be, but then again, he was technically escorting tomorrow’s trash….
“Get in the back, I’ll take ya home.”
Thus began Buffalo Dump’s “second” job: chauffeuring around the heavily intoxicated and the crippled. He started with one or two ‘bots a night – mostly the same people, constantly getting in over their heads – before word spread throughout the Dead End. Soon people were using him as a taxi service, ferried all over the rundown area for whatever business they had. Some even helped him with the garbage, a couple of minibots volunteering to ride along with him and toss things into the hopper while he handled heavier loads. Buffalo Dump also would pull a makeshift skid for people to sit on and be towed around here and there.
It was during these times that Buffalo Dump received the designation he has now. His garbage truck form had a blunt, protruding hood that reminded people of a minotoron’s head – a minotoron being the Cybertronian version of a bison, and also known colloquially as a “cybuffalo”. Combined with his hoof-like feet, his hook-tentacles that would curl over his head as he grabbed something and his horned helm, the name was combined with the “dump” in his name to form “Buffalo Dump”. He can’t remember who came up with it – probably one of the minibots that would help him clean – but he took it as his name with pride. His superiors didn’t seem to mind, as what he was doing was good PR, and the waste units would occasionally take nicknames for themselves.
How did such a gentle soul, then, get introduced into the Decepticon cause? The answer was simple: they saved his hide.
Buffalo Dump knew of inequality. Though Iacon was beautiful, there were too many people who turned their noses up at him for his caste. Empties were looked down on by everyone, yet even they had a pecking order; a wingless Seeker would still crush a data stick-alt under their heel without a second thought. Things really came to a head when some Empties, too ill and battered to be cared for properly by the medics of the Dead End, came and begged Buffalo Dump to take them into Iacon. The number of high-castes there meant state-of-the-art clinics that could perform major full-body repair, specialized limb replacement, spark transfusion and so on.
But these clinics were meant for the high-caste, and would turn away the lower masses without a second thought. Six separate times did Buffalo Dump bring a seriously ill or dying Empty to Iacon; six separate times was he angrily turned away. On his seventh try, a riot started after some of the low-caste who came with him – the Empties had their cohorts, too – tried to swarm the doors of a clinic, and push back the guards to save a dying cohort-sister.
Buffalo Dump and the others were arrested, and charged with disturbing the peace and assaulting higher-caste individuals. Buffalo Dump would have been sent to one of the Garrus prisons, but one of Megatron’s inspired bailed him and brought him to the fold. The mech that saved him had connections, and had been keeping an eye on Buffalo Dump for some time. His proposition was simple: join Megatron’s cause. Fight for the rights of the Empties he had come to protect. End the inequality in the system, and never again would you have to watch your people suffer and languish. Buffalo Dump, who had developed a strong empathy for others and a desire to see justice done, joined the famous gladiator’s movement.
He did not expect for things to come to war. He was a simple mech, far simpler than most of the other Decepticons, and was genuinely blindsided when Megatron became so ruthless. He thought of deserting, only to witness the rampant genocide the Decepticon leader performed; some of the people he had grown to see as cohort were murdered as a warning. Buffalo Dump stayed mostly out of fear, but also because he had found a cohort in some of the former Empties that were now ‘Cons. He didn’t want anything to happen to them, especially with how Megatron was willing to sacrifice so many of his comrades.
Unfortunately, he was separated during the Exodus from them, and has spent all this time trying to find them. His arrival on Earth is by accident – he was trying to find a different planet, running on a rumour that some of his cohort might be there. Instead, he got lost in space, and Optimus’s message about ‘Cons being on a tiny planet reached him. He thought Earth might be the planet he was looking for.
It isn’t.
Personality: Buffalo Dump is a big mech with a big heart. He is the quintessential “gentle giant”, seeing a world smaller than him as something to cherish and protect. He’s got a soft spot for sparklings and animals whether great or small, and the downtrodden always poke at his sympathies. The war weighs heavily on his conscience, as he is disturbed by what he has seen and done. He joined the ‘Cons to protect the lower caste and the Empties he knew, not murder people senselessly and pillage planets for resources.
With this being said, Buffalo Dump is loyal, and he also is intimidated by authority. Megatron has struck enough fear into him that he obeys the warlord as much as possible, even if it’s not him that B-Dump is loyal to. No, Buffalo Dump’s alliances lie with the Vehicons and the other, more morally-conscious Decepticons, who either joined because of justice or were hurt by the Autobot side. He will shed no tears if Megatron is destroyed, reserving his grief for those who are chained by his whims.
Despite being so sweet-sparked, Buffalo Dump has his limits. When something he sees as his ward is threatened, the mech can fly into an unrelenting, nearly-merciless rage. He is much a papa bear as he is a gentle giant – scrap with those he defends, and he will turn you into scrap. He has lost so much, seen so much pain and sorrow he feels he could have prevented, that he has no patience for those who torment or injure his charges. Friends and kindred spirits fall into the category of “things Buffalo Dump needs to watch over”, so those who have a beef with this better recharge with one eye open.
Finally, Buffalo Dump’s kindness can reach even those he sees as enemies. He doesn’t torture or maim unless he’s gone off the deep end; if he must kill, he tries to make it as quick as possible. If the enemy is retreating, he lets them retreat, and respects the rules and terms of surrender. He does not mess with cassettes or medics unless his life depends on it – medics because “they’re just doin’ their job”, and cassettes because of a traumatic fight in the early days of the war. He crushed a cybercat-cassette into scrap with his bare hands.... The scream of sheer anguish from the carrier, whom the cat-cassette was symbiotically bonded to, still haunts his dreams in his sleep.
Likes: Small animals. Sparklings, and by extension the children of many species. Being appreciated and getting things done. Nice people and manners. Clean spaces. Lobbing. Peace, elusive as it might be. Pretty vistas and wide open spaces. Charity.
Dislikes: Megatron, and what he has turned the Decepticon cause into. War. Unnecessary killing. The loss of the innocent. Being seen as stupid. Not being able to understand a situation. Being taken advantage of. The destruction of things pristine and polished. Filth, disorganization and dirt. High-casters. Not being able to protect others.
Strengths/Weapons:
- A Way with Words: B-Dump is simple-minded, but he has a grasp on how to defuse a bad situation. He has separated and stopped a number of arguments in the past, ranging from using gentle words to outright intimidation. If he has to, he WILL make himself heard and stop everyone from getting into an unnecessary fight – he’s no member of the Diplomatic Corps, but he tries to make nice.
- Fork-Tentacles: Though they have more limited mobility than Soundwave’s tentacles, B-Dump’s forks can still be used to pick things up. The sharp talons on each end can be used as crude daggers, and one tactic he uses is to pin an enemy to the ground with them while he punches the target repeatedly. He also can use them to lift up 2/3rds of the weight he can lift with his arms.
- Heavy-Duty Stamina: B-Dump has an incredible tolerance for pain and punishment. He is ridiculously resilient, able to shrug off minor to weakly-moderate wounds, minor diseases and malware infections with little effort; he’s the guy that, if he was human, would go to work with a bad cold and put in extra overtime. Sleep and hunger do affect him, but not as badly as another might be affected – due to a slow-burning metabolism to save on worker feeding costs, he could last a few days on less than half a tank.
- Size and Strength: B-Dump is a big mech, and was built to drag heavy loads – he can lift up to 50,000 pounds over his head. He is a big fan of using crush damage and his weight to turn the tide in a battle, as he is poor shot with his blaster (see “Weaknesses” below).
Weaknesses:
- Caste-Biased: B-Dump has a bias against moderate- and high-caste Cybertronians. He saw how much better things were for them, and they get on his nerves faster than a lower-caste Decepticon might. He is more likely to have less patience or tolerance for them or their orders than, say, a fellow garbage mech ordering him around; the exception to this would be higher-casted children/children-equivalents.
- Head Damage: During the war on Cybertron, Buffalo Dump took a massive hit to the helm from a raging Autobot frontliner – this was in the same battle he crushed the aforementioned cat-cassette. Due to the chaos of the battlefield and lack of tools, the medics who treated him did not notice a sliver of metal jabbing into the structures behind his right optic. It’s a fairly large sliver that would require invasive surgery to pull out, so it was left there to rest – unfortunately, it likes to shift around and jab painfully into the optical nerve circuits. Certain blows, surprises, jars and hits to the head will send B-Dump into a frantic rage, the mech swinging wildly and attacking everything in sight in a desperate attempt to make the pain stop.
Lesser effects of this are spells of occasional migraines and his right optic fritzing out. This has given him the habit of holding/squinting his right eye shut. He may also have trouble focusing, and can become cranky and intolerant of lit spaces. There’s also the trouble aiming his (very basic) arm blaster, so if he has to use it, it becomes a spray-and-pray type of deal.
- Lacking In Armour: Though he performs duties typical of a frontliner, Buffalo Dump is not built to be one. His armour is fairly standard, with no extra plating, special cushioning or strengthened components beyond what he was originally built to do. He can take a hit, but not to the extent that a character such as Fortress Maximus can, and the damage would certainly aggravate his current health (see “Walking Disease Vector” below). His auto-repair systems are struggling due to the diseases he carries.
- Protective to a Fault: Buffalo Dump can become dangerously protective, to the point of flying into a rage if he is pushed over his emotional limit. On the other hand, he can get suckered easily into hostage situations, as he will try to negotiate to spare the lives of people he cares for. With Buffalo Dump, those can become obvious fairly quickly.
- Simple-Minded: B-Dump’s IQ is not high – it’s an inherent part of his coding. He has a hard time processing anything too scientific and complex, though he is no Wreck-Gar by any means. With Buffalo Dump, short commands, small words and a lack of jingo are the best way to communicate with him.
- Slow: What Buffalo Dump makes up for in strength and stamina, he lacks in speed and dexterity. In vehicular form, his top speed is 70 MPH/112 KMH, and he moves at a lumbering jog when he tries to run in bipedal form.
- Soft: B-Dump can and has frozen in battle before. He shows great reluctance in attacking anything he perceives as too weak to fight back, and cassettes are an absolute no for him to go after. Furthermore, he may turn on his superiors if he feels they are endangering his comrades or the innocent, though this is thankfully rare thanks to the fear Megatron has put in him. Any word of subordination would eventually get to him, after all.
- Unaware of Limits: B-Dump’s resilience is hard-coded. He was meant to take punishment in a punishing job, and was constantly cut, bruised and infected with a manner of things – such is the life of a garbage mech. He is so used to being battered around, he can be unaware of when he needs to see a medic, and has dropped into stasis before because he hit an invisible wall. Unless someone makes him, it’s very easy for him to skip checkups and necessary repairs, waiting too late for the damage to be fixed.
- Walking Disease Vector: Connected to the weakness above, Buffalo Dump is asymptomatic for some malware infections and a few Cybertronian diseases. Some of these diseases will permanently remain in his system, and the best a medic can do is treat them until they are inactive. He is already showing signs of pre-cybercrosis around his inner workings, though it remains to be seen if it will fully develop; this manifests as random fits coughing and of pain in his chest area. His energon is also slightly off-colour, taking on a greenish and cloudy tinge.
It should be noted, however, that he is not highly contagious; his ailments are happily enjoying their slow destruction of his systems. He will not transmit his diseases via things such as coughing or fluids, but care should be taken by medics when they root around his insides. There is a chance some of his deeper, more inner parts may shed actively-hazardous material, such as the parts around his spark beginning to corrode.
Special skills (that are not weapon related): He’s good with kids and animals. If the guy wasn’t sparked to pick up trash, he likely would have taken a job babysitting sparklings for all the rich folk.
Extra Info: Though Buffalo Dump is disillusioned with the Decepticon cause, he is not outright going to turn his back on it. The seeds are there for him to be swayed away, but he feels there are far more people he has to stick around and protect. He’d rather be stabbed in the spark than leave them to the non-existent mercy of Megatron, and it would take something extremely heinous for him to call it quits. Mass slaughter of innocent Vehicons by Megatron, discovering spark-breaching was being used as torture, and slowly murdering a cassette in front of its carrier are all examples of extremes that would push him over the edge.