B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  Gallifrey

  The history of the Time Lords and their homeworld of Gallifrey was shrouded in mystery. The Time Lords knew little of their own past, and much of what was known was cloaked in uncertainty and self-contradiction. It is extremely difficult to reconcile the various accounts of the origins of the Time Lords. The authorities suppressed politically inconvenient facts, although few Time Lords were very interested in politics anyway. [1]

  Gallifreyan history can be divided into two periods: “the Old Time”, the semi-legendary foundation of Time Lord society millions of years ago; and “recent history”, that which has happened within living memory. (Time Lords, of course, live a long time.) [2]

  The Old Time

  We have only a few scraps of knowledge about the history of Gallifrey before the discovery of time travel.

  “The Stolen TARDIS”

  In the distant past of Gallifrey, the dinosaur-like Gargantosaurs dominated the planet. The reptilian Sillag arrived here from the future in a stolen TARDIS, but a Gallifreyan technician - Plutar - was along for the ride and had the vital Relativity Differentiator needed to repair the Ship. The two fought and returned to their native time.

  Gallifrey was the home of “the oldest civilisation in the universe”, and had “ten million years of absolute power”. [3] On the last day of Gallifrey, Rassilon spoke of “a billion years of Time Lord history”. [4]

  Gallifreyans mastered the use of transmats when the universe was less than half its present size. [5] Time Lords used to speak and write Old High Gallifreyan, now a dead language. [6] Old High Gallifreyan contained a lot of tenses that aided in speaking about the convoluted nature of time travel. [7] There were days when Old High Gallifreyan could “burn stars, and raise up empires, and topple gods”. [8]

  Gallifrey means, literally, “they that walk in shadows”. [9] Gallifrey was in the constellation Kasterborous. [10] It “circled a little star in Kasterborous”. [11]

  Kasterborous was a mythological figure who was chained to a chariot of silver fire by the gods. [12] The planet Karn was close to Gallifrey. [13] Karn was in conjunction with the gas giant Polarfrey. [14]

  Gallifreyans were naturally telepathic and could build “living” machinery that was also telepathic. [15] They possessed a “reflex link”, superganglions in their brains that allowed the Time Lord intelligentsia to commune. [16] The Time Lords discovered that they had a “dark side” of their minds. [17]

  Gallifrey had twin suns, a burnt orange sky, slopes with deep red grass and plants that displayed silver leaves in the autumn. [18] Masonry from the Old Time survived, deep beneath the Capitol, into the modern era. [19] Gallifrey had a single moon, Pazithi Gallifreya. [20]

  The Celestial Toymaker existed before the start of Time Lord records. Gallifreyan researchers later made some efforts to track his origins, but became bored with all of the Toymaker’s games, realised they couldn’t control him and opted to leave him alone. [21]

  The ancient mythology of the Time Lords spoke of an entity that lived in the wastelands between realities, and subsisted on nightmares. In Old High Gallifreyan, its name, the Mi’en Kalarash, translated to “blue fire”. The Doctor would make the Kalarash “remember what was done to you... what you did” during the Old Times. [22]

  The Dark Days

  At the very dawn of Time Lord history were “the Dark Days”. [23] This was “the time of Chaos”. One of the Doctor’s most closely guarded secrets was that he was somehow involved with this period. [24]

  “In the days before Rassilon, my ancestors had tremendous powers which they misused disgracefully. They set up this place, the Death Zone, and walled it around with an impenetrable force field. Then they kidnapped other beings and set them down here... even in our most corrupt period, our ancestors never allowed the Cybermen to play the game - like the Daleks they played too well... old Rassilon put a stop to it in the end. He sealed off the entire zone and forbade the use of the Timescoop... there are rumours and legends to the contrary. Some say his fellow Time Lords rebelled against his cruelty and locked him in the Tower in eternal sleep.” [25]

  Gallifreyans were naturally “time sensitive”, with a unique understanding of time. [26] The earliest Time Lords discovered dematerialisation theory. [27] Another key discovery was transdimensional engineering. [28] The Time Lords built the Time Vortex, a vast transdimensional spiral encompassing all points in space and time. [29]

  The Gallifreyans became “what they did” through continued exposure to the Time Vortex - the Untempered Schism - over billions of years. [30]

  The Time Lords’ ancestors built the Timescoop. [31] The Gallifreyans mostly resembled tall, athletic humans. [32] They were truly immortal, barring accidents. [33]

  Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible

  The Pythias, a line of prophetesses who, since the 254th Pythia, rejected technology in favour of magic and superstition, ruled Gallifrey. Time travel was achieved by psychic prophecy, not physical means. The Pythias were guided by the prophesies in The Book of Future Legends, and saw their heritage as the Bright Past. The great philosopher Pelatov lived five thousand years before Rassilon.

  At the time of the Intuitive Revelation, the age of Rassilon, the barbaric Gallifreyan Empire spread across the universe and encompassed the Pen-Shoza, Jagdagian, Oshakarm, the Star Grellades, Mirphak 2 and the rebellious Aubert Cluster. For aeons, Gallifreyan Heroes such as Ao had fought campaigns against foes such as the Gryffnae, lacustrine Sattisar and the batworms of the asteroid archipelago. The Winter Star was besieged for a century. The great hero Haclav Agusti Prydonius, commander of the Apollaten, defeated the marauding Sphinx of Thule, and was sent to observe a dispute brewing between Ruta III and the Sontara Warburg.

  Across the cosmos, the ruling seers were dying: the Sphinx of Thule; the Logistomancer of A32K, foreseer of a cold empire of logic; the Core Sybilline of Klanti; the Sosostris in the West Spiral; The-Nameless-That-Sees-All in the North Constellations. The 508th Pythia became the last of her line. After a visit from a Master Trader of the South, she finally recognised that the veil of Time would soon only be traversed physically, not mentally. She instigated the Time Programme. The Time Scaphe, the first time vessel and powered by the mental energy of its crew, was launched but vanished.

  Rassilon and his neo-technologists overthrew the Pythia. As her followers fled to Karn, the Pythia cursed Gallifrey with her dying words: its people became infertile, the colonies began to demand their independence and an Ice Age commenced. The Pythia cast herself into an abyss.

  Rassilon lost a daughter to the Pythia’s curse. The only good omen was the return of the Time Scaphe. Quennesander Olyesti Pekkary, captain of the Time Scaphe and first son of the House of Fordfarding, was Rassilon’s nephew.

  The family Houses of Gallifrey were sentient and the oldest beings on Gallifrey. They were born at the time of the Intuitive Revelation. [34] Mount Caden was home to the Houses of Firebrand and Heartshaven. Other Houses included Goodlight and Warpsmith. [35]

  To get around the Pythia’s curse of sterility, Rassilon and the Other built Looms capable of weaving Gallifreyans from existing genetic material. [36] Time Lords were born from the Loom fully grown and fully conscious, but needed educating. [37]

  A priest on early Gallifrey was driven into the wilderness when Rassilon dissolved the monasteries. While wandering, he happened across all twelve of his future incarnations, who had no memory of how they came to appear together. The priest became known as IM Foreman, and his thirteen incarnations founded a time-travelling carnival. Their caravan was a complex space-time event that would model itself a new shape on each arrival.

  Events on Dust in the thirty-eighth century mortally wounded Foreman’s incarnations, forcing them to regenerate and causing amnesia. They were flung through time to early Gallifrey for the original Foreman to paradoxically find. [38]

  It took the finest minds on Gallifrey a millennium to develop time technology. [39] The Doctor’s people needed “
millennia” to solve the equations, and harness the necessary power, required for time travel. [40]

  The Mastery of Time

  Two Gallifreyans ensured that their people became the Lords of Time: Rassilon and Omega. Rassilon was the “greatest single figure in Time Lord history”, yet “no one really knows how extensive his powers were” and he “had powers and secrets that even we don’t understand”. To this day, the Time Lords revere Omega as their “greatest hero”, “one of the greatest of all our race”. [41] Omega and Rassilon developed Validium, a “living metal” designed to be the last line of defence for Gallifrey. [42] They were part of a Triumvirate, the third member of which was known as the Other to modern Time Lords. [43]

  “Today we tend to think of Rassilon as the founder of our modern civilisation, but in his own time he was regarded mainly as an engineer and an architect. And, of course, it was long before we turned away from the barren road of technology.” [44]

  The Time Lord Capitol and Citadel dated from the time of Rassilon and Omega, but in those days they weren’t enclosed in a dome. The Citadel was built to withstand a siege, but against which enemy had been lost to history. [45] The Zero Room beneath the Capitol on Gallifrey was built by the Other. [46] The Citadel of the Time Lords resided on the continent of Wild Endeavour, in the mountains of Solace and Solitude. [47]

  Omega was a member of the High Council, the solar engineer who found and created the power source needed for time travel: the energy released by a supernova. He was lost in the explosion, and the Time Lords believed that he had been killed. [48]

  “A long time ago, on my home planet of Gallifrey, there lived a stellar engineer called Omega. It was Omega who created the supernova that was the initial power source for Gallifreyan time-travel experiments. He left behind him the basis on which Rassilon founded Time Lord society... and he left behind the Hand of Omega. The Hand of Omega is the mythical name for Omega’s remote stellar manipulator - the device used to customise stars with. And didn’t we have trouble with the prototype...” [49]

  One version of Omega’s history suggested that he was originally an Academy student named Peylix. He theorised that his people could gain mastery of time by exploding a star within the Sector of Lost Souls, but Peylix’s tutor, Luvis, deemed this nonsense and awarded him an “omega” grade - the lowest score attainable. The nickname “Omega” plagued Peylix, but Rassilon’s rise to power allowed him to properly implement his theories.

  Peylix set out aboard the Eurydice to detonate a star, but his colleague Vandekirian warned that the targeted system contained sentient life. Omega proceeded anyway, and Vandekirian - trying to prevent Omega from gaining his handprint for security clearance - destroyed one of his hands in the ship’s fusion reactors. Omega cut off Vandekirian’s other hand, and used it to launch his stellar manipulator. The star exploded, killing the system’s inhabitants. Vandekirian’s hand caused an impurity in the fusion reactor and the ship exploded, consigning Omega to a universe of anti-matter. [50]

  The Infinity Doctors

  The Ice Age had led to the collapse of Gallifreyan civilisation, in the time known as the Darkness. Libraries and temples burned. Many Gallifreyans perished. The Loom-born were smaller than the Womb-born and were mortal, but they preserved the Gallifreyan genetic codes.

  Nine years after the Pythia’s curse, the Elders still treated the Loom-born with disdain, viewing them a temporary solution to a problem. Rassilon and his Consortium gave everyone hope by finding the Fragment: the last surviving prophecy that spoke of Rassilon’s personal rise and how the Gallifreyans would become the Lords of Time. The Other knew that Rassilon had faked the Fragment.

  Rassilon and Omega set out for Qqaba, the only surviving Population III star in the galaxy. There were two Hands of Omega. They would detonate the star, releasing time energy that would be syphoned into fuel cells. However, the stasis halo protecting Omega’s ship failed as Qqaba went supernova and Omega fell into the black hole that was forming. The crews of the surviving ships were infused with the energies. At the heart of this, Rassilon used the power of the singularity to rewrite the laws of physics across the entire universe. One effect of this, whether Rassilon knew it or not, was that Omega still lived, trapped inside the black hole.

  Omega left behind a widow, a Womb-born Gallifreyan who would become known as Patience.

  “Star Death”

  Four Gallifreyan starbreakers moved to the star Qqaba. From the flagship Aeon, Jodelex and Griffen waited, safe behind Stasis Haloes that protected their ships from the primal forces. They knew that Rassilon had yet to work out how to navigate through time. Fenris, a mercenary from the future, arrived to prevent the creation of the Time Lords. He sabotaged the lead ship, condemning Omega to what seemed like certain death, but Rassilon used the power of his mind to contain the black hole, then severed Fenris’ time belt as he tried to escape. Fenris was scattered throughout eternity, and Rassilon picked up the belt containing the directional control he needed to navigate time.

  The star Omega detonated was in the Constellation of Ao. [51] Omega used the sunskipper Eurydice to reach the star he detonated, Jartus. Some scholars at the Omega Heritage Centre (a popular tour destination) think Rassilon deliberately got rid of Omega, who was more popular. [52]

  Two members of a Council of Three - Provost Tepesh (the Prime of the Arcalian chapterhouses) and Lady Ouida, both of them vampires - allied with the Great Mother of a Sisterhood against Rassilon. The Great Mother’s assistant was Cassandra, a member of the House of Jade Dreamers. They sought to discover the secrets of Rassilon’s Foundry, but the Divergents again threatened to break through at this juncture. The Foundry was firestormed to prevent this, which wiped out the conspirators. [53]

  “And Rassilon journeyed into the black void with a great fleet. Within the void no light would shine. And nothing of that outer nature continued in being except that which existed within the Sash of Rassilon. Now Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony which balances all things that they may neither flux, whither nor change their state in any measure, and he caused the Eye to be brought to the world of Gallifrey wherein he sealed this munificence with the Great Key. Then the people rejoiced.” [54]

  The Doctor’s people invented black holes. [55] The Gallifreyans successfully concluded the experiments, becoming the Time Lords. Mastery of Time required an unimaginably vast energy supply, which Rassilon set about acquiring. [56]

  Modern Time Lords believed the Eye of Harmony to be a myth, and that the Sash of Rassilon had merely symbolic importance. In reality, the Sash prevented the wearer from being sucked into a parallel universe. The Eye of Harmony was the nucleus of a black hole, from which all the power of the Time Lords devolved. “Rassilon stabilised all the elements of the black hole and set them in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of the planet.” [57]

  Year Zero Rassilon Era is marked from the moment Rassilon activated the Eye of Harmony. [58] The earliest time-travel legends say Rassilon decapitated a Great Beast, took the branching golden tree of its metathalmus and found the First Secret of Chrononambulatory Egress. [59] Rassilon anchored the timeline of the universe, creating one unified history. The Antiverse was created as an equal and opposite reaction to this. [60]

  Lungbarrow

  Nine point six years after Omega was lost, Rassilon was purging anyone opposed to his regime. The Other was disgusted, and tried to get his granddaughter Susan and her nanny Mamlaurea to safety on the planet Tersurus. Susan had coined the term “TARDIS” to describe the new time ships. The Other then threw himself into the Prime Distributor that fed all the Looms. He knew he would be reborn at some point in Gallifrey’s history.

  A year later, the Doctor - unknown even to him, the reincarnation of the Other - arrived from the distant future. He found Susan wandering the streets, unable to escape. She recognised him as her grandfather and they left Gallifrey together to explore the universe...

  “4-D War”

  “We are fighting a t
imewar, comrades. A war in four dimensions. A war that on our timeline hasn’t even started yet! Our enemy is in the future. We must know his identity. His reason for hating us... we must know his weaknesses!”

  Twenty years after Fenris was scattered into the time vortex, Rema-Du - daughter of Jodelex and Griffen - had been training for a decade to retrieve him. At this time, the Time Lords employed the Special Executive, parahumans with unusual talents. One of them, Wardog (whose mind could withstand stresses that would reduce anyone else to insanity) partnered Rema-Du.

  They entered the Vortex via a warp gate and located Fenris. He was connected to a Brainfeeler to identify the enemy. The Time Lords discovered that their enemy was from thirty thousand years in the future, a cadre of supermen called the Order of the Black Sun. A Black Sun squad - including members called Llorex, Faru-Faro and Drin - killed Fenris and the Brainfeeler, severed Wardog’s arm and vanished. The Time Lords were left unsure what they would do, if anything, to provoke such an attack.

  “Black Sun Rising”

  Ten years later, Rema-Du and Wardog attended talks with the Sontarans. A member of the Order of the Black Sun disrupted the gathering.

  The Great Days of Rassilon

  “Rassilon was the first of the Time Lords. Discovered time travel. Had a fondness for onions. Met him a couple of times. Bit of a dodgy beard, though.” [61]

  Rassilon lived “millennia” ago. [62] As President of the Time Lords, Rassilon ushered in an age of technological and political progress. The phrase “the Great Days of Rassilon” appears in the Gallifreyan book Our Planet’s Story, which was read by every Time Tot. [63] Even races such as the Urbankans, who knew nothing of the Time Lords, had legends of Rassilon. [64] Rassilon’s exploits were remembered on many planets, whose legends speak of Azaron, Razlon and Ra. [65]