Dronid

Dronid
Also called:	Drornid
Type:	Planet
Natives:	Drornidian
First mentioned in:	Shada
First appearance:	Alien Bodies
Appearances:	PROSE: The Book of the War

Dronid was a nexus world that most notably was the site of the renegade Presidency and, four centuries later, the first battle of the War in Heaven. Its natives called it Drornid, but the rest of the universe called it "Dronid" due to a typo in a first edition of Bartholomew's Planetary Gazetteer.

History

The renegade Presidency

When a schism developed in the Time Lords' College of Cardinals, Cardinal Thorac declared himself Lord President and established his own High Council on the planet Drornid. He put together an army with the hopes of overthrowing the Gallifreyan High Council. Thorac ruled Drornid from a massive statue of himself; his court was within the statue, and from the statue he transmitted a pacification beam which kept the local population happy and quiet. (PROSE: Shada, Alien Bodies)

The Time Lords on Gallifrey dealt with this rival President by ignoring him. (PROSE: Shada, The Book of the War) Eventually Thorac was dragged back to Gallifrey, leaving a lot of Gallifreyan time technology still on the planet. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) When the pacification beam was turned off, the inhabitants of Drornid suffered massive psychic shock, and the planet was thrown into chaos. (PROSE: Shada)

One of Rassilon's titles was "Overpriest of Drornid". (AUDIO: Neverland)

Recovery

Thousands of years later, Drornid recovered from the trauma of Thorac's reign and its aftermath, and became the "top holiday destination of Galactic Quadrant 5". Its primary export was beachwear, and its primary import was ice cream; the past had been largely forgotten. Skagra was a native of Drornid, but disdained its sybaritic ethos.

After the Fourth Doctor defeated Skagra's plan to develop the Universal Mind, he brought Skagra's sphere to Drornid and had the locals, who were experts in genetic engineering, create new bodies for the minds Skagra had stolen. (PROSE: Shada)

Dronid was well known for its warp-poets. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows)

Faction Paradox had a wide powerbase on Dronid, but after InCorporate arrived on the planet, the Faction's influence began a steady decline. When Qixotl visited Shockley's Den of Almost Limitless Iniquity, the television showed massive Gabrielidean warships heading toward Dronid. A Gabrielidean watching the television said to Qixotl, "The Time Lords. They're coming for us, aren't they?" (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

The Cataclysm

Main article: The Cataclysm

The first battle of the War in Heaven took place on Dronid (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War) in 15414. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) It lasted for only one night. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

The enemy attempted to set up their own Web of Time opposing the one created by the Time Lords. The Time Lords attacked the planet, destroying the surface with a virus. A future version of the Doctor died there shortly before the fighting began. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Alien Bodies)

The Time Lords introduced the clockwork bacteria disease to Dronid. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

Aftermath

Dronid never fully recovered from the Cataclysm. The planet's surface was left bleached and corrosive, so huge areas of the world were suddenly uninhabitable; despite this, the majority of Drornidians survived the Cataclysm, and after the off-worlder residents evacuated, the planet found itself without any tactical advantage.

Desperate to rebuild itself, Dronid became run by criminal groups who were the only reliable source of survival equipment and food in many regions. One organisation, the Corporation, notably still wore the name of the enemy front from before the Cataclysm, but in reality, the only off-worlder group on the planet was a Faction Paradox mission-house, which was far more interested in ritual observance than power-building. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Little Sister Justine was serving as an apprentice at the mission-house on Dronid when the Corporation found the Relic under Smithmanstown. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

Behind the scenes

• Drornid was first mentioned in the script for the uncompleted serial Shada, as part of the skeleton of a story about a schism in the College of Cardinals and the rival Presidency. In the 1992 reference work The Universal Databank, the planet's name was listed as Dronid; this name was used in subsequent works, including Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies, where a character acknowledges the "Drornid" spelling in an offhand remark about a misspelling in Bartholomew's Planetary Gazetteer. Lance Parkin later explained that "the joke that Lawrence is making is that so many people read the 'guidebook' without checking the facts that the name 'Dronid' stuck in the end!"
• The reference book The Discontinuity Guide speculates, based on his knowledge of Gallifrey, that Dastari hailed from Dronid or Minyos.

External links

• Dronid at the Faction Paradox wiki