Simfur

Simfur is the odd one out in a list of G1 city-states, because it is defined by a temple rather than by industry, politics or a battle. The Simfur Temple was built by the Thetacons to enshrine the AllSpark, and the area around it was, in the accounts that describe it, the centre of Cybertronian society for as long as the AllSpark remained there. Protecting it was the job of the Knights of Cybertron, an elite order assembled by the antiquarian Alpha Trion.

The complication a fan encyclopedia has to state honestly is that most published Simfur material comes from the live-action movie expanded universe rather than from G1 itself. Simfur appears in G1-era listings of Cybertron's city-states alongside Iacon, Kaon, Polyhex, Praxus, Tarn and Vos, and the later fiction filled in the temple, the Thetacons and the Knights. The G1 cartoon never mentions it; the Marvel comic gives it a name and little else.

What makes Simfur worth including anyway is that it is the only Cybertronian location in the G1 city list that is explicitly sacred. Every other named polity is a factory, a fortress, a capital or a casualty. Simfur is a shrine, and it is the thread that connects Cybertron's geography to the religious material, the AllSpark, Alpha Trion's antiquarianism, the Knights, that the cartoon otherwise leaves almost entirely to Vector Sigma and the Matrix.

• Simfur is the only city on the standard G1 city-state list defined by a religious site rather than a military or industrial function.
• Almost all substantive Simfur material comes from the live-action film continuity, not from G1, which is a common source of confusion.
• Some reference material places Simfur in the frozen wastes of Cybertron's south pole, which would make it the only polar city-state named.
• Its name is one of the few Cybertronian place names with no obvious scientific or Greek root.