B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  One of the Great Houses - the highly militaristic Mirraflex - assaulted the City of the Saved with timeships reconfigured into behemoths. The City’s state of grace protocols were temporarily suspended; twenty million City-dwellers (and eleven timeships) perished as the whole of Snakefell District was expelled into the Big Crunch. The casualties were re-resurrected and a memorial built to commemorate the attack. [518]

  Christopher Cwej, an agent of the Great Houses, was mass replicated into a standing army called the Cwejen. [519] The Celestis provided Jimmy Moriarty, a corporate guru in the twenty-first century, with time-travel technology. He used it to interfere in the timeline of Sherlock Holmes. [520]

  In Year 41 of the War, Cousin Octavia went in search of an immortality-granting casket in China, 1900. In Year 46, every parallel reality where Nazi Germany conquered the globe came into conflict with every parallel history where Rome dominated Earth. The forty-eighth year of the conflict saw increased political and social tensions within the City of the Saved. [521]

  Faction Paradox Series 1: The Faction Paradox Protocols

  Cousin Justine of Faction Paradox was sent on a mission to the East Indies ReVit Zone in 2069. She returned afterwards to the Eleven-Day Empire, having failed in her duty. One of Justine’s guardians, Sanjira, failed even more badly and as punishment was made to kill his eight-year-old self, paradoxing his timeline.

  One of Justine’s associates in the Faction, Cousin Eliza, told her:

  “I used to live in a city like this. Different world, different time - different universe, come to think of it... One day, the sky just opened, and that was it. That was the end of it all. [The Great Houses] tore up all the cities, turned most of the people into worker drones. That was the way I found out about things, about how the universe really worked... I was pretty much the only person who got away.”

  Godfather Morlock now served as head of Faction Paradox’s Bio-Research Wing, and was the Acting Emergency Speaker of Parliament. Godfather Sabbath commanded Faction Paradox’s Military Wing. The biological catalogue in the Eleven-Day Empire contained eighteen billion species.

  Old bloodlines were waning on the Homeworld, and new ones were in ascendancy. House Lolita emerged as a newblood amongst the Great Houses, and initially wasn’t seen as being politically relevant. It was composed of a single member - the living timeship Lolita, who remarked that “there were only two [beings] like her”.

  By Year 50 of the War, Lolita had birthed a daughter and was again pregnant. She furthered her bloodline by overlaying her personality upon beings on multiple worlds, occupying at least one body on every planet where she had influence. She then began to infiltrate the bloodlines of those planets, planting her children within them. [522]

  Year 50 - The Eleven-Day Empire / The Shadow Play [523]

  Lolita moved to enhance her standing amongst the Great Houses by eliminating Faction Paradox. The Eleven-Day Empire repelled an attack by Lolita’s allies, the Seventy-Ninth Sontaran Assault Corps, but this was just the opening volley of a greater gambit. The Houses offered the Faction a treaty - they would once again recognise House Paradox, and refrain from prosecuting its practices.

  Godfather Morlock arranged events so that Cousin Justine lost her shadow - she was then fitted with the shadow of Grandfather Paradox, which resided within the knife he had used to cut off his arm. The Grandfather’s shadow was a siege engine, capable of generating and discarding an infinite number of shadow weapons.

  The Faction’s Parliament ratified the treaty, whereupon Lolita exploited the laws governing transition of affairs and the treaty’s clause on prestanding crimes - and demanded that the shadow of Grandfather Paradox be turned over for trial. The Faction’s failure to do so put it in breach of protocol. Lolita performed an invocation that linked her to the loa protecting the Eleven-Day Empire... and she then consumed the whole of the Empire, compressing it into her internal dimensions. Justine and Eliza were the sole survivors of the Empire, and escaped in the timeship of a House member slain by Lolita.

  Lolita said that the Empire’s remains resided to the left of her alimentary canal. [524]

  Year 51 - In the Year of the Cat / Movers / A Labyrinth of Histories [525]

  The Great Houses recaptured Justine in 1762 and condemned her to their prison asteroid for all eternity, but she escaped back to the eighteenth century. Before doing so, Justine encountered Kresta Ve Coglana Shuncuker - the previous (and from Shuncuker’s perspective, current) bearer of the shadow of Grandfather Paradox.

  Faction Paradox Series 2: The True History of Faction Paradox

  Year 51 - Coming to Dust / The Ship of a Billion Years / Body Politic / Words from Nine Divinities / Ozymandias / The Judgment of Sutekh [526]

  The past of the Osirian Court interacted with the present of the War in Heaven. The Great Houses officially recognised the Court via a treaty signed after Sutekh made a power play into fifteenth century Earth. Many Osirians took to living on the Ship of a Billion Years after Sutekh destroyed their homeworld, and although Sutekh was no longer acknowledged as a divine shield of Ra, some of their number were agreeable to giving him Osiris’ throne as a matter of security. Cousin Justine - travelling to the Court from 1763, and intent upon killing Sutekh - strengthened the Ship’s defences, stymieing Sutekh’s efforts to claim dominion over it.

  To further keep Sutekh in check, Justine asked Lord Anubis to resurrect Osiris. The War King backed Justine’s gambit by deploying the Fifty-Ninth Fleet of the House military to protect Anubis’ stronghold. Cousin Eliza harvested what remained of Osiris’ biodata, but failed to retrieve 12% of his psychic mass and 7% of his timeline. Osiris’ biodata was already tainted with Faction Paradox biomass, so Anubis used Eliza herself to fill in the gaps, instilling Osiris’ essence within her. She made a bid for the throne as “Horus”, and was acknowledged as being somewhere between Osiris’ firstborn son and a reincarnation of him. Lolita, not wanting a maniac like Sutekh on the throne, secretly endowed Eliza with some of her own biomass, giving “Horus” enough power to temporarily wound Sutekh. The matter of Sutekh’s claim to the throne was settled on Mars, circa 5000 BC.

  The War was currently being fought on nine hundred and twenty fronts, across nearly half a million worlds. The Great Houses had brokered alliances in more than eight thousand cultures, and thought the Osirians could be key allies on seventeen fronts of the War. The War King prematurely triggered an inevitable civil war between his followers and Lolita’s, thinking it better to start the conflict before she became even more powerful. The clash ended with Lolita consuming the War King just as she had the Eleven-Day Empire, and claiming leadership of the High Council. Justine realised that Lolita represented a greater threat than even Sutekh, and sent her a “message”: a cadre of Mal’akh, who tore their way through the Council chambers.

  Justine negotiated a deal wherein the force of Osirians historically destined to defeat Sutekh were instead diverted to the Homeworld. Led by Cousin Eliza/Horus, they “dealt” with the effectively immortal Lolita.

  Alien Bodies

  As some of the Celestis began switching sides, the War began tipping in favour of the Enemy. The Doctor’s dead body - the Relic - was auctioned by Mr Qixotl. The Celestis won by giving Qixotl a new body when his original one was fatally wounded. The eighth Doctor tricked the Celestis and stole the Relic. He took it to Quiescia, then destroyed it with a thermosystron bomb.

  The Time Lords quickly moved to occupy or control millions of planets. They opted to mate Marie, a Type 103 TARDIS, to a male Type 105 as a means of diversifying TARDIS genetics. They also created the Ogron Lords, shock troops with the ability to time travel. [527]

  Interference

  The Time Lords were losing the War. Gallifrey had a last resort - a weapon designed to destroy Earth, which would not only destroy the Enemy’s homeworld but collapse the entire web of time. The ship was dispatched at sub-light speeds, and was due to arrive at Earth in 1996. Fitz became Father Kreiner of Faction Parad
ox and hunted down Time Lords, including the Master and the Rani. One of these was actually a clone. [528]

  One of the duplicate Gallifreys was destroyed in the Battle of Mutter’s Cluster. Gallifrey VIII was an industrial planet with vast Looms pouring out soldiers. [529] There was a Gallifrey XII. [530]

  Time Lords were force-regenerated into physical forms engineered to fight. Fifteen out of a thousand Time Lords survived each combat mission. There were distinct Waves of warfare, with gaps between them allowing the Time Lords to Loom more soldiers. Only those from the First Wave resembled humans. The Time Lords suffered heavy losses in the Third Zone during the Fifth Wave.

  Any gathering of around a dozen TARDISes would attract an Enemy attack. The Time Lords used Parallel Cannons that created holes to other, more hostile, parts of the universe and unleashed the forces there. The Enemy detonated the star of the planet Delphon, causing a significant rout of the Time Lords. [531]

  The Taking of Planet 5

  The Time Lords planned to smash a fleet of War TARDISes against the barriers around the Fifth Planet, hoping to free the Fendahl for use against the Enemy. The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion discovered the plot, and Compassion tried to save the War TARDISes. The barrier was destroyed, which unleashed not the Fendahl but the Fendahl Predator - a Memovore creature that had evolved the ability to destroy concepts. The Fendahl Predator was drawn to Mictlan and destroyed the Celestis before the Doctor banished it.

  The Ancestor Cell / The Gallifrey Chronicles

  Faction Paradox had gone from being a secret society to an army, led by Grandfather Paradox, the future self none of us hope to become. As well as a new rank of initiate - the Uncles, leather-clad assassins - there was now an armoured infantry, known as skulltroopers, and their shadow weapons had evolved so that they resembled guns. Although they were experienced at fighting Time Lords, Faction Paradox was not the Enemy.

  Now they travelled two hundred and ninety-seven years into their own past to launch an invasion of Gallifrey. This would be the event that would lead to both the Faction conquering Gallifrey, and - three minutes seven seconds later - their total destruction and the annihilation of the War timeline.

  Aftermath of the War in Heaven

  Aided by Compassion at the moment of Gallifrey’s destruction, the eighth Doctor had downloaded the entire contents of the Matrix - the memories of almost every Time Lord who had ever lived - into his own mind. They survived in a supercompressed form that left no room for the Doctor’s own memories. Compassion apparently took the Doctor’s memories, although for what purpose remains a mystery. Compassion dropped the amnesiac Doctor off in the late nineteenth century.

  When his travels through time and space resumed, the Doctor met a man in the eighteenth century who resembled the Master and said the following:

  “There are only four of us left now, you know. Four of us in all the universe.” [532]

  Without the Time Lords controlling the proliferation of time travel, many races attempted to gain mastery of time, often by acquiring Gallifreyan artifacts. Without the Time Lords to enforce the laws of time, magic started to seep back into the universe. [533]

  The Gallifrey Chronicles

  Marnal regenerated and automatically regained his memories. He soon discovered the Doctor had destroyed Gallifrey and lured him to Earth to punish him. The eighth Doctor and Marnal came to realise that the Doctor’s mind contained the contents of the Matrix and the memories of all the Time Lords. Marnal died saving the Doctor, convinced that the Doctor should dedicate himself to the task of building a New Gallifrey. The Doctor sent K9 to track down Compassion.

  After the War in Heaven, relics of it - including members of the Mayakai civilisation, who had been primed as weapons - remained. Mother Francesca and her unnamed associate believed they were “the only ones left” of Faction Paradox. [534]

  It would appear that the Doctor succeeded in building a new Gallifrey. His memories certainly returned. Romana was once again in her second incarnation. [535]

  The Temporal Powers

  An unspecified temporal incident caused space-time to warp around the Monan homeworld. Ten different time periods came into contact with one another, enabling some future Monan to conquer their ancestors. By stabilising the errant fields, the Monan unified the different periods into a single system - creating the Monan Host. [536]

  The Apocalpyse Element

  Twenty time-active races met on Archetryx for a summit, but the planetoid Etra Prime reappeared. The Daleks there were working on the Apocalypse Element: a substance capable of shredding the raw fabric of space-time in an unstoppable reaction. The Daleks attacked Archetryx and stole components needed to finish making the Element.

  Romana had been imprisoned on Etra Prime for twenty years. She escaped as the Daleks, using a Monan Host time ship as a Trojan horse, attacked Gallifrey. The sixth Doctor and Evelyn aided Romana against the Daleks; as part of this, Gallifrey’s security systems were temporarily slaved to Evelyn’s retinal pattern. The Daleks detonated the Apocalypse Element in the Seriphia galaxy. As was their plan, the Daleks sacrificed their ranks on Gallifrey to reinforce the Eye of Harmony’s power. The Eye contained the Element’s destruction to Seriphia, which was restructured to create millions of new worlds for the Daleks.

  The Daleks killed the interim President of Gallifrey, and Romana was restored to the Presidency. [537]

  Shada [538]

  The eighth Doctor returned to Gallifrey and told President Romana and K9 that they needed to resolve a time anomaly by travelling to Cambridge in 1979.

  Neverland

  President Romana allied the Time Lords with the Warpsmiths of Phaedon and the Monan Host.

  A warfleet of TARDISes pursued the eighth Doctor and Charley, who decided it was time to resolve the paradox of her existence (as she had been saved from dying in the R-101 crash). The two of them were taken to a Time Station.

  President Romana and CIA coordinator Vansell warned that the structure of space and time was on the verge of collapse. They believed that Charley had attracted Anti-Time particles from the Antiverse, which was disrupting the universal balance. The Time Lords adapted the Station to pass into the Antiverse to investigate. The Doctor discovered Rassilon’s TARDIS, the size of a planetoid, with a surface populated by “Neverpeople”. Rassilon’s casket was there. Vansell fell under the sway of the Neverpeople, who were actually exiled Time Lord criminals.

  The Doctor realised that the Neverpeople had spread rumours throughout time of Zagreus, hoping to tempt the Time Lords here. Instead of Rassilon, the casket contained a mass of Anti-time sufficient to destabilise the universe. Vansell sacrificed his life, but failed to prevent the Station, with the casket onboard, from reaching Gallifrey. The Doctor surrounded the Station with his TARDIS. The Station exploded, but the TARDIS contained the Anti-Time. However, the Doctor was saturated with Anti-Time energy... which split his personality and made him the destroyer Zagreus.

  = In the Matrix, the Doctor saw a possible future where Gallifrey had been attacked and Romana was the Imperiatrix responsible for the genocide of the Daleks. [539]

  This occurred in 6798.3, Rassilon Era. [540]

  Zagreus

  The Anti-Time-infected Doctor became Zagreus, and a revived Rassilon sought to use him as a weapon against the Divergents. Zagreus objected to being manipulated and cast Rassilon through a portal into the Divergents’ timeline. The TARDIS helped the eighth Doctor stabilise his true persona and he left for a Divergent Universe, fearing that by remaining, he would risk the Anti-Time within him allowing Zagreus to again take control. Charley accompanied the Doctor on his journey.

  The Next Life

  Rassilon was caught in a recurring time loop, and his identity began slipping away. The Zagreus persona was separated from the eighth Doctor and took on female form, but learned “she” was destined to remain in the Divergent Universe for at least twenty to thirty millennia. The purged Doctor returned to our universe with Charley
and a new companion, C’rizz. They immediately came into conflict with Davros and the Daleks. [541]

  Time breaks were detected in Victorian times. Romana sent Leela back to aid Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago in ending this threat. [542]

  Gallifrey Series 1 [543]

  Gallifrey had battle-TARDISes at its disposal. Cardinal Braxiatel was a member of the High Council, and Narvin served as CIA coordinator. Andred had disappeared, and Leela - mourning for him - became President Romana’s personal bodyguard. [544]

  Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice

  Under President Romana, Gallifrey continued to withdraw from its monopoly of time travel, and furthered a coalition of temporal powers that included the Monan Host, the Warpsmiths of Phaidon and the Nekkistani. The temporal powers promised to protect the lesser races, in exchange for a moratorium on unauthorised time experiments. The planet Gryben was established as a “reception centre” for rogue time travellers - unauthorised time-vessels in the Vortex would be automatically diverted to Gryben, and their occupants dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

  The Time Lords believed a timonic fusion device recovered by Nepenthe - a member of the subversive group Free Time - in 3655 was now on Gryben, and so Romana sent Leela, K9 Mark 1 and a CIA operative named Torvald there to find it. It was learned that a third party had engineered the situation to bring the Time Lords and the Monan into conflict; the device went unused and was teleported away, and Nepenthe martyred herself. Romana made the acquaintance of Mephistopheles Arkadian, a time-travelling rogue and arms dealer.