beast wars / Beast machines

[KnightFourteen]

Hmm, well, I thought the subject of Taranchulas' origins have been discussed already, even though I don't recall if we agreed upon anything. I can site this though... -->
Scientist, and covert Predacon police lieutenant in the service of the Tripredacus Council. Always trying to save himself first (and last), his beast form was a giant tarantula. Megatron often relied on Tarantulas because of his technological and strategic brilliance, but was always suspicious of his intentions and aspirations. Well known for his frequent maniacal laughter. Shortly before his demise, Tarantulas made a remark implying that he, as well as the Tripredacus Council, were not descended from the Autobots or Decepticons that crashed landed on Earth, "I, like the Tripedacus Council, have Different origins" (Megatron later refers to Tarantulas as "Unicron's spawn". Although this is never built upon in this series and may have originally been intended as a generic insult, it has been embraced by the later fictions -- Megatron's knowledge of this was never explained, and it may have simply been an insult that ironically turned out to be true). He later died from an accidental shot from his own ray gun while fighting the Vok influence which he had extracted from Tigerhawk. In the BotCon comics, it is revealed that his death was merely a ruse to deter the alien Vok. His spark corrupted the extracted Vok, and he was now capable of utilizing their power to his own ends. Tarantulas soon built Tripredacus Agent (speculated to contain the spark of Ravage) and engineered various leftover protoforms with Transmetal 2 technology. In Transformers: Universe, Tarantulas returned to his true master and creator, Unicron. He also had an intense love interest in Blackarachnia, but was consistently rejected.
I got that info off of the Wikipedia.