The Plains of Thok

The Plains of Thok are the most commonly misfiled location in G1, so it is worth being blunt: they are on Nebulos. Not Cybertron. The name sounds Cybertronian enough that it circulates in lists of Cybertron's geography, but every published reference places it among the Nebulan locations alongside Koraja, Splendora, the Arvassian Range and the Folassian Forest.

What is there is the Grax Communications Facility, and what happens there belongs to Marvel's Headmasters continuity. The plains held Lord Zarak's old base of operations, and after Zarak's binary bonding produced Scorponok, the facility became the site of one of the nastier acts in the run: Scorponok completed the restoration of the captured Autobots Hardhead, Highbrow and Brainstorm, then infected them with his Gene Key, rewriting their CNA to activate a so-called Warrior Gene and turning them into berserkers.

As a location it functions the way a lot of Nebulan geography does in the comics, as a specific named place that gives a planet of humanoid aliens a sense of being a real world rather than a backdrop. Nebulos is the only alien world in G1 that gets a gazetteer, and the Plains of Thok are part of it. For a locations section the correct entry is a Nebulan region with a Decepticon-controlled communications installation, cross-referenced to Nebulos rather than to Cybertron.

• The Plains of Thok are on Nebulos, not Cybertron. This is the single most common error in fan-compiled Cybertron location lists.
• Nebulos is the only non-Cybertronian G1 world given a full set of named regions, cities, forests and landmarks.
• The Gene Key and the Warrior Gene are among the very few genuinely biological plot devices in a franchise about machines, and they exist because Nebulans are organic.
• Grax is also the name of a Nebulan Targetmaster partner, which is where the facility's name comes from.