B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

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B00DPX9ST8 EBOK Page 203

by Parkin, Lance


  Gallifrey: Square One

  The coalition of temporal powers held a summit on a synthetic planetoid in neutral space, and considered legislation to limit time travel in the Vortex. Romana and Leela thwarted a third party’s attempts to cause various deaths, including that of the Unvoss representative, as a means of discrediting Gallifrey. The gathering was actually a decoy to draw Free Time into the open - the real summit proceeded in secret, with Braxiatel representing Gallifrey’s interests.

  Gallifrey: The Inquiry

  Inquisitor Darkel [545] and Cardinal Braxiatel led an inquiry into Romana’s conduct during the Gryben affair. She was cleared after it emerged she had helped to prevent the timonic fusion device from being stolen in the first place. Romana learned that Braxiatel, trading under the name “Irving Braxiatel”, had been purchasing unique works of art, furniture, sculpture (including one by the artist Serafina) and even entire buildings for his private collection. She realised that Braxiatel was behind the Braxiatel Collection, but judged that he’d broken the laws of time to an inconsequential degree...

  Though it was against the rules of time, Irving Braxiatel contacted his younger self on Gallifrey and asked him to send a Gallifreyan relic to the Braxiatel Collection. [546]

  Gallifrey: A Blind Eye

  Romana, Leela and Narvin went back to Earth, the 3rd of September, 1939, and identified the culprit behind the timonic device theft. Leela learned that Andred had regenerated after a failed attempt to infiltrate the CIA, and had been passing himself as a new incarnation of the CIA agent Torvald.

  Lucie Miller [547]

  Blood of the Daleks / Human Resources

  Interference in the year 2006 resulted in the Time Lords placing Lucie Miller with the eighth Doctor, and telling him that she was part of a witness relocation programme. They also placed a temporal barrier around Lucie’s native era, preventing the Doctor from returning there. The Doctor and Lucie resolved events pertaining to Karen Coltraine and the Cybermen on Lonsis, and the Time Lords lifted the barrier.

  Sisters of the Flame / The Vengeance of Morbius

  The Time Lords received word that the new leader of the Cult of Morbius - Kristof Zarodnix - was trying to capture a Gallifreyan. Fearing the consequences of this, they recalled all TARDISes, and used the Timescoop to capture any Time Lord who refused to return home. [548] Time rings became the only viable means of travel.

  A restored Morbius deprived Gallifrey of energy using a stellar manipulator, then created a new empire. The eighth Doctor restored power to Gallifrey, and the Time Lords retroactively undid Morbius’ triumphs.

  Nevermore

  The Time Lords sent the eighth Doctor and his companion, Tamsin Drew, to procure the release of General Morella Wendigo on the planet Nevermore.

  Gallifrey Series 2 [549]

  Gallifrey: Lies

  At Romana’s urging, the High Council altered some of Gallifrey’s oldest laws to open up the Academy to non-Gallifreyan students. Romana realised that the Imperiatrix Imprimature within her might allow Pandora - the warmongering former president of Gallifrey - to take control of her body, and that Pandora’s spirit still existed within a Matrix partition.

  Gallifrey: Spirit / Pandora

  Romana promoted Braxiatel to the rank of Chancellor. She took a brief leave of absence, and went with Leela to the planet Davidia - a retreat used by presidents of various species for summits, conferences and holidays.

  Andred stopped Gillestes - a Free Time agent from Yevnon - from contaminating the Time Lords’ water supply with a “dogma virus” that had been engineered by Free Time. Pandora nestled herself in Castellan Wynter’s mind, but was then confronted by Braxiatel and Darkel. Braxiatel devoted a portion of his thoughts to the Matrix equations that kept Pandora imprisoned, trapping Pandora in his own mind. Wynter died soon after. Braxiatel volunteered to go into exile, removing all possibility of Pandora escaping on Gallifrey - but the public disclosure that he’d broken the lines of time by communicating with his past and future selves meant that he did so in disgrace. Before leaving, Braxiatel warned Romana that he’d only bottled Pandora’s past and present aspects; her future aspect remained in the Matrix.

  Gallifrey: Insurgency / Imperatrix

  Non-Gallifreyans at the Academy included humans, the Warpsmiths of Phaidon, Monans and at least one Sunari. Cardinal Valyes became Chancellor of the Academy.

  The Time Lords didn’t know how many of their number had been infected by Gillestes’ “dogma virus” - but learned that it would make any tainted Time Lord, upon their regeneration, accept Free Time’s beliefs and political agenda. Racial tensions at the Academy increased, and a human student, Taylor Addison, died while attempting to sabotage the Eye of Harmony. A terrorist bombing at the Academy killed twenty; the High Monan and the Nekkistani emperor withdrew their citizens and students from Gallifrey. K9 Mark 1 detected another bomb at Gallifrey’s spaceport - his early warning saved many lives, but blast doors were lowered. He died in the subsequent explosion, along with everyone else trapped within.

  Darkel decried Romana’s policies as having compromised Gallifrey’s security, and forced a new election. The future aspect of Pandora, communing with Romana through K9 Mark 2, insisted that Gallifrey would fall into civil war unless Romana stepped down. Romana worried about Pandora’s secret agenda, but also feared the consequences of Darkel becoming president. In accordance with the law - and in full possession of the Great Key, the Sash, the Rod and the Coronet of Rassilon - Romana ended the stalemate by declaring herself Imperiatrix, i.e. dictator of Gallifrey. She ordered the dissolution of the Chapters.

  Romana donned the Coronet of Rassilon to prevent another Free Time agent from blowing up the Panopticon and force-regenerating the assembled Time Lords therein, but this act triggered the Imperiatrix Imprimature within her, enabling Pandora to draw biological matter from the Matrix and manifest in the form of Romana’s first incarnation. Pandora usurped the mantle of Imperiatrix. Romana realised that Pandora, as part of her schemes, had mentally influenced her into killing Andred.

  Gallifrey Series 3 [550]

  Gallifrey: Fractures / Warfare / Appropriation / Mindbomb / Panacea

  Civil war erupted on Gallifrey. Darkel and Chancellor Valyes sided with Pandora; Leela, Narvin, Councillor Matthias and others joined Romana’s resistance effort. Romana used her presidential access codes to ground all TARDISes, denying Pandora access to time travel. The other temporal powers parked war fleets near Gallifrey. Romana’s group sabotaged various resources - the Gallifreyan archive banks were razed, destroying millions of years of recorded history. Narvin and Leela attempted to ruin the Artron microform - a locale where excess Artron energy from Time Lord minds was absorbed and sent to the TARDIS berthing bays - but their charges went off prematurely, causing a discharge of Artron energy that permanently blinded Leela. Leela nonetheless stabbed Pandora through both hearts, slaying her physical form. Pandora’s essence was once more contained within the Matrix - which was made to self-destruct, killing her and the preserved minds of former Time Lords within.

  Political jockeying led to Chancellor Valyes, then Darkel, becoming acting president. The High Council took a vote of no confidence in Romana - an act that legitimised her term as president, and invalidated Valyes’ tenure. Matthias claimed the powers of a vice-president, and called for the first presidential election Gallifrey had experienced in millennia. Darkel, Matthias and Romana stood as presidential candidates. Romana was impeached, and her candidacy declared void.

  Gallifrey’s transduction barriers temporarily fell, and timeships carrying Sunari soldiers - who said they wanted to retrieve any surviving Sunari students - arrived in the Capitol. The Nekkistani warfleet allied with the Sunari vessels. Matthias ordered Gallifrey’s transduction barriers raised without giving the warfleets time to withdraw, killing hundreds and causing a diplomatic fiasco.

  Braxiatel returned to Gallifrey, having learned that Gallifrey would soon face a threat that it was too we
ak to defeat without the Imperiatrix. He allied with Matthias, who tricked Darkel into annulling the effects of Romana’s presidency from the moment Pandora escaped from the Matrix - which restored Braxiatel to his former position of Chancellor. He automatically became President.

  The remaining Pandora component - little more than raw hatred - longed for freedom, even though this would kill both the component and its host. Darkel tried to murder Braxiatel by freeing the Pandora component, only to find that it had been restrained all along in her mind, and that Braxiatel’s mind - while containing a small portion of Pandora - was merely the key to its prison. Darkel and the Pandora piece perished upon its release. Braxiatel declared that, for Gallifrey’s safety, he would resume his exile. Knowing that the next president would fall with Gallifrey, Braxiatel named Matthias as his successor.

  Matthias’ tenure began with a great calamity: the pig-rats used to incubate Gillestes’ dogma virus had escaped from the Academy labs during the civil war, and widely tainted the Gallifreyan population. K9 estimated that at least 35% of the Time Lords was already infected; any infected Time Lord who regenerated would became a mindless Free Time thrall. Before long, thousands of Time Lords were in such a state.

  Braxiatel offered to trade the Braxiatel Collection’s holdings to Mephistopheles Arkadian, in exchange for his help in securing and disposing of the treaty-violating temporal weapons that Pandora had amassed while Imperiatrix. Arkadian offered to give Gallifrey a cure for the dogma virus in exchange for Pandora’s weapons - which the Time Lords loaded into a battle-TARDIS rigged to explode, in the hope that they would obtain the cure and prevent the weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

  Romana and K9 piloted the battle-TARDIS to the now-disused Braxiatel Collection, which was outside space-time. Braxiatel Timescooped the Time Lords’ entire biodata archive - and snared Leela and Narvin while doing so - so that it would survive Gallifrey’s upcoming downfall. He told those assembled that the virus “cure” worked, but only by stripping a Time Lord of their ability to regenerate - this had been Free Time’s goal all along, to curtail the Time Lords’ near-immortality. Free Time itself was no longer a threat, perhaps owing to Braxiatel’s adventures in exile.

  Romana had to choose between using the cure and consigning the Time Lords to a single life each, or letting Gallifrey fall and reconstructing the Time Lords with the biodata archive. Before she could decide, the battle-TARDIS - with Arkadian inside - was recalled to Gallifrey. Romana, Leela, K9, Narvin and Braxiatel were horrified to realise that the battle-TARDIS was headed toward a zombie-filled Gallifrey with a stockpile of booby-trapped temporal weapons, and a cure that would rob the Time Lords of their regeneration prowess. Romana told her allies: “Right. What we’re going to do is...”

  Gallifrey Series 4 [551]

  = Gallifrey: Reborn / Disassembled / Annihilation / Forever

  Romana and her friends used the Axis to visit different versions of Gallifrey, hoping that one of them had the means of curtailing the dogma virus and halting the impending war. On one such alt-Gallifrey, the Time Lords boosted their economy through the sale of time rings, TARDISes, battle-TARDISes and more. Regenerations could be extracted and sold for currency.

  A second alt-Gallifrey was highly interventionist, and used surgical changes to history - including assassination and erasure from history by D-Mat gun - to achieve an optimal timeline. Romana’s group prevented the President Romana of that Gallifrey from using the Axis to collapse all realities into a single continuum that she ruled, but Braxiatel and President Romana’s assassin - Lord Burner, an alternate version of the sixth Doctor - were lost to the Vortex. The timelines shifted around Braxiatel, and he again encountered Bernice Summerfield in 2593. [552]

  Romana obliterated Lord Prydon’s vampires on a third alt-Gallifrey, but it was expected that Majestrix Borusa’s diminished “True Lords” would die out soon after. Leela regained her sight by imbibing blood from one of Prydon’s vampires. Yet another Gallifrey was found to have simian Time Lords.

  Finally, Romana’s group visited a militant Gallifrey that had never developed time travel. The President Romana of that reality was killed, and Chancellor Narvin died to prevent the insatiable Krillic from escaping the Eye of Harmony. Romana’s access to the Axis was terminated to prevent the same, stranding her, Narvin and Leela while K9 Mark 2 remained behind in the Axis. Leela left, tired of Romana’s broken promises. Romana and Narvin took their counterparts’ place, making this Gallifrey their new home so that they could teach its inhabitants the ethics needed for them to one day become Time Lords.

  The Last Great Time War

  The Doctor’s home planet was destroyed in the Last Great Time War, “a war between the Daleks and the Time Lords with the whole of creation at stake”. [553]

  The Daleks removed themselves from history to go off and fight the Time War. [554] They became experts at fighting TARDISes. [555] The Doctor led the battle in the Last Great Time War. [556] He was on the frontline during the war, and did “terrible things” just to survive. [557] He “butchered millions” during the Time War. [558] He fought on the front line, and saw the fall of Arcadia. [559]

  “I saw Arcadia destroyed. I laughed in the face of the Nightmare Child.” [560]

  In the very first year of the Time War, at the Gates of Elysium, the Doctor saw Davros’ command ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. The Doctor tried, and failed, to save Davros as his ship was timelocked. Dalek Caan came back in time and attempted made a thousand attempts to rescue Davros - he gained vast insight into the nature of time in the process, but drove himself insane. He finally succeeded where the Doctor failed, and broke Davros from the timelock. [561]

  The Daleks were led by the Dalek Emperor. [562]

  The Time War was invisible to “smaller” species, but was devastating to “the higher forms”. [563] Many planets, such as those of the Gelth, were affected. The food planets of the Nestene were wiped out. [564] The Forest of Cheem knew of the War, and thought it was impossible that any Time Lords could exist afterwards. [565] The Gelth were forced to become incorporate spirits when their bodies were destroyed. [566] The Sontarans consider this the finest war in history, but “weren’t allowed to be part of it”. [567]

  The Time War devastated the Hajor dimension. [568] Hotel Historia was a popular attraction that allowed holiday-goers to time travel to other eras, but its business plummeted when the Last Great Time War triggered a lapse in demand for time travel. [569]

  It’s possible that the civilisations of Perganon and Assinder fell during the Time War. [570] It’s possible that the city of Arcopolis was depopulated during the Time War, and it’s possible the Doctor activated the weapon that did so. [571] The Graxnix were one of the grubbier races involved in the Time War, and had very unreliable time technology. [572]

  The Time Lords used the Genesis Ark, a dimensionally transcendental prison, to confine many thousands of Daleks. The Doctor was not involved with this. [573]

  The Time Lords resurrected the Master as the perfect warrior to fight in the Time War - he was present when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform, and fled. He turned himself into a human, and hid at the end of the universe. [574] The four Daleks that made up the Cult of Skaro stole the Genesis Ark and used a Voidship to leave the universe before the end of the War. [575]

  “The Forgotten” [576]

  The eighth Doctor was jailed by robots as a War raged around him, turning the skies turn to blood. On Day 21 of his captivity, he gained a Malmooth cellmate, Chantir. On Day 37, he escaped and freed the other prisoners, which included a Sea Devil. Then he proceeded to his objective: the Great Key of Rassilon, which was stored in the same castle. He hoped he never needed to use it, but knew he might need something that removed millions from space and time at once. The Key would lock the Medusa Cascade forever, should it ever be required.

  The Doctor eventually used the Key, and it erased his memory of Chantir.

  The Time War go
t desperate towards the end - at this time, the Doctor was the only version of himself anywhere in the multiverse. [577]

  “You weren’t there in the final days of the War, you never saw what was born. Not just the Daleks but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been-King with his armies of Meanwhiles and Never-weres, the War turning to Hell.” [578]

  The Final Day of the Time War

  “There was a bad day, bad stuff happened.” [579]

  The End of Time (TV)

  By the last day of the War, Dalek saucers had crashed on Gallifrey and the dome of the Capitol been cracked open. Gallifrey was at the furthest edge of the War. At the heart of the conflict, millions died every second, lost in bloodlust and insanity, time itself resurrecting them to find new ways of dying over and over again in a travesty of life. A Time Lord seer, the Visionary, confirmed that this was the last day of the Time War.

  The Doctor had learned that Rassilon planned the Final Sanction, the end of time - a rupture that would continue until it ripped the Time Vortex apart. The Time Lords would ascend, become creatures of consciousness alone - free of their bodies, time and cause and effect - while creation itself ceased to be. The Doctor had to stop them, and the High Council, led by Rassilon, knew that the Doctor possessed the Moment and would use it to destroy the Daleks and Time Lords alike.

  The Master believed that if the Doctor killed Rassilon, “Gallifrey could be yours”. [580]

  The Visionary had a prophecy that there would be two survivors beyond the final day: the Doctor and the Master. Learning this, the High Council approved Rassilon’s plan to retroactively implant the sound of drums in the mind of the Master while he was a child, as an escape route for his people. There were two votes against this strategy, including one cast by the Woman in White. Rassilon sent the Master a white-star point on Earth, Christmas Day 2009. Gallifrey and Rassilon briefly rose from the Time War, but the tenth Doctor and the Master fought back, banishing the Time Lords - including the Woman in White - back to the hell of the Time War. The Master learned that Rassilon had been responsible for the sound of drums in his mind, and fell back into the Time War, fighting him.

 

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