Eleven-Day Empire
- You may be looking for the audio story of the same name.
The Eleven-Day Empire was the heartland of Faction Paradox and a non-world. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Empire was established by Grandfather Paradox with the signing of the Gregorian Compact. Consequent to the British changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian one, eleven days — 2 September through 14 September 1752 — were "lost". These days that became non-existent, as experienced in London, were then symbolically purchased by the Faction Paradox under the compact to become their base of operations. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, PROSE: The Book of the War)
Locations
The Eleven-Day Empire existed as an extradimensional space with no physical location in the Spiral Politic. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The landscape had a red sky and a reality-warping presence, with the Empire being able to be accessed with specialized portals or Faction timeships. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
The "shadow" London of the Empire was a mishmash of time-zones, with streets, buildings and landmarks taken from periods earlier or later than its eighteenth century foundations, and should not have been mistaken for the real London of 1752. The authenticity of the Empire's version was irrelevant: what mattered was its symbolic weight. As London had a certain geographical continuity (which is to say, the street layout rarely changed over two millennia), it was possible to walk along a lane which switched from the Enlightenment era to Victorian to Roman and back again within the stretch of a few yards. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Shadow Parliament is located in the equivalent of Westminster, with the equivalent of Tower Hill being the home of the Unkindnesses, creatures that feed on flesh and predict the future. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Unkindnesses were noted to reside in the Empire before the Faction moved in. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
Six hundred and thirty Mothers and Fathers of the Faction Paradox sat in the House of Commons found in the Empire's version of London. The speaker's chair was empty, waiting for the return of Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: Interference - Book One) Godfather Morlock sat in the chair on occasion to speak to the members of the Faction. (PROSE: A Story of the Peace)
Members of the Faction could buy their own private seconds and minutes within the Empire to reside in. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play)
The Terry-Thomas Quarter resembled 1950s London and the Billy Bragg Quarter resembled 1980s London. (PROSE: All the Fun of the Fear)
The Army and Navy Club in St. James' Square was used as a billet for Little Brothers and Sisters of the Faction in training. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...)
Defenses
The Empire was protected from the outside by spirits of Time known as the Loa, summoned by Faction Paradox members. Their agents further used unnamed flying machines and shadow weapons to defend themselves in the event of an invasion. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
History
Creation
Three hundred and fifty years before the War, the Grandfather of House Paradox decided to push his experiments with alter-time technologies to the breaking point by proving that he could make time follow other perspectives than the Great Houses' using the same principles at work in the anchoring of the thread. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Technologies used for the purpose included the Memecore. (PROSE: Against Nature)
For his grand experiment, he chose the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 London, which involved skipping from 2 September to 14 September. Many superstitious Britons believed that eleven days were genuinely being cut out of their lifetimes, and the Grandfather asserted these days' reality before ceremonially purchasing them from King George II via the Gregorian Compact. Although he made no secret of what he had done on the Homeworld, he did not reveal anything to the Ruling Houses about how he had achieved it, or how to access the shadow-Britain: he predicted that his House would soon become criminals in need of a safe-house, and hoped the Empire would serve this purpose. Indeed, the Grandfather was soon called to an Audience of the Ruling Houses to answer for his transgressions agains the Protocols, although he wriggled out of any legal repercussions through sheer audacity, showing up to the courtroom in full skeletal Faction Paradox armour and stunning his close-minded judges into silence.
In order for the Empire to be viable on a long-term basis, House Paradox decided to focus on the shadow-London alone as their new "Empire", and started "burning" space-time from the rest of the shadow-Britain to sustain the existence of the shadow-London beyond eleven days by looping them over and over. A legend eventually grew that this process created a "Beast of the Hours" which grew larger every time the days were looped, although The Book of the War did not necessarily hold it to be true. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
During the War in Heaven
After the Second Wave of the House Military destroyed the now-independent Faction Paradox's attempt to found colony worlds, more of the Faction's elite took up residence in the Empire than ever before. Fifty years into the War, it was the Faction's main stronghold, and was even guarded permanently by flyers from the Military Wing, although this was often said to be a useless precaution given that the means to access the Empire had remained a well-kept secret, the ill-fated 1834 Clockwork Ouroboros affair being the only known attempted invasion. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
However, a short time after the Book's timeframe, (PROSE: The Book of the War) Lolita hired the Seventy-Ninth Sontaran Assault Corps to attack the Empire. She later destroyed the Empire and consumed it into her internal dimensions, allegedly at the behest of the War King. The few survivors included Cousin Eliza, Cousin Justine, (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, AUDIO: The Shadow Play) and, judging by the allegorical prophecy of these events in Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom, Godfather Sabbath. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Later references
Some time after the Empire's destruction, Iris Wildthyme remarked that "the ashes [of the Faction] were scattered across the universe, the scant surviving members crawling into untraceable holes, biding their intangible blades until the pointless War [had] concluded." (PROSE: Panda and the Airship)
Whilst on a backwater overlooking the destruction wrought by the Last Great Time War, "a satire of Old London Town" was one of the Earth locations, stolen from its proper place in time and left to rot on the backwater, the Eighth Doctor spotted as he stood next to the Moment. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War)
Behind the scenes
- The Eleven-Day Empire: A Tour of the Capital, a short piece written by Mags L. Halliday for the Faction Paradox website,[1] explored the Empire in the context of the annual "Feast of Fools" pageant.
- The Eleven Day Empire is mentioned several times in the popular SCP-3999 of the collaborative SCP Foundation universe. This story features its own author (classified as "SCP-3999") as a reality-bending being which the fictional Foundation tries to contain as a metaphor for the author's addiction to the SCP community; the references to the Empire have to do with the author's sense of lost time.[2]
