A to Z Challenge: Robotech Masters

This 4/20 let's talk about some guys who like getting high on plants.  Not Cheech and Chong but the Robotech Masters.

Robotech Masters

The Robotech Masters were basically ordinary politicians on Tirol, a world distant from Earth.  There was sort of a quasi-Roman society there when the rebel scientist Zor first discovered Protoculture.  With that, the Robotech Masters saw the chance to elevate themselves.  They used the power to make themselves more powerful by enslaving the Zentraedi of neighboring Fantoma.  They wiped the memories of the Zentraedi and programmed them into giant killing machines.  With Zor's help they armed them with a bunch of ships and mecha and set them loose to conquer the galaxy.

But eventually Zor turned against them and sent the Protoculture matrix to Earth on the SDF-1.  Before he himself died.  Thus the secrets of Protoculture were lost and the Masters faced a crisis:  without Zor or the matrix, eventually they'd run out of the Protoculture.  And meanwhile they still had the Invid nipping at their heels.

Zentraedi full size and micronized (not to scale)

So they dispatched a huge armada to Earth to get the matrix back.  The hope was the Zentraedi would bring the ship back right away and things could get back to normal for the Masters.  When that doesn't happen, the shit really hit the fan.

With supplies of Protoculture short, the Masters decide to go to Earth themselves, but conveniently they don't have enough fuel to fold there, so they have to go into suspended animation and go by conventional means, which takes over 10 years.

By then Earth is ruled by the Southern Cross.  The Robotech Masters destroy Earth's pitiful space defenses and then begin sending down their army of clones.  The Robotech Masters' army uses human-shaped robots called Bioroids that have a few different styles and fly around on little armed platforms.

Robotech Master clone trooper

All the work done on the ships of the Robotech Masters is done by clones who work in groups of three.  Because the Flower of Life has three leaves and grows in threes the number 3 is very important to the Masters, so every group is a triumvirate.

Ultimately the Robotech Masters are too late and the Flowers of Life bloom, bringing the Invid.  The Masters' ship is destroyed and they are forever erased.

In a way the Masters kind of remind me of the Guardians in the Green Lantern comics.  Their skin isn't blue (it's more of a mauve I think it is) but they're bald-ish and they wear robes and they pretend to be wise and shit while dispatching minions to do their dirty work.

While most of the Robotech Masters are killed in the second war, the oldest of them--the Elders--barely survive.  They join with the entity Haydon, leading him to the Flowers of Life on New Praxis (Optera) and then to the new Protoculture matrix on Tirol.  Their hope is Haydon will give them the power to reconquer the universe, but instead he imprisons them in a bubble of time where they're stranded for all eternity.  Sucks for them.