Malcolm Fraser
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Malcolm (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Colonel Malcolm Fraser was a 19th century British army officer. In his old age, he became fascinated with Atlantis, and amassed a collection of alien energy weapons which he had been told were Atlantean artefacts. He briefly planned to take over the world thanks to this technology, but eventually saw the error of his ways and died a repentant man.
Biography
Early life
Malcolm Fraser was born in 1820, the son of a man who had been a major in the Duke of Wellington's army at the Battle of Waterloo. He followed his father into a military career, moving to India in 1839 to join the British Empire's Indian Army. He "emerged with considerable glory" from his part in such conflicts as the Sepoy Mutiny and the siege of Lucknow. He eventually sired at least one child. (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Retirement
The Colonel retired from the army in 1875 to live in his London townhouse, (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) located in the West End, overlooking Portman Square. (GAME: "The Summons" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Summons","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) At some point, with her parents having apparently passed on, his granddaughter Julia Fraser came to live with him. The Colonel spent his retirement becoming a collector of strange artefacts, having been won over to the theories of the American speculative archeologist Ignatius Donnelly. (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}, "The Colonel's Granddaughter" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Colonel's Granddaughter","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
World domination plot
Eventually, he was introduced by his old friend and fellow collector Sir Reginald Carruthers to Jack Bannister, a shiftly salesman who claimed to have Atlantean artefacts in his possession. (GAME: "Encounter with Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Encounter with Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) These weapons genuinely represented advanced technology, but were actually alien devices dug up by Bannister and his associate Jenkins from a crashed Iytean starship, rather than Atlantean. (GAME: "Introduction Story" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Introduction Story","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
By chance, Fraser eventually discovered how to work one of the guns, a disintegrator which had actually been used as a digging tool by the Iyteans. Now dreaming of grandiose British conquests aided by such weapons, he tried to convince old acquaitnances in the British government of his discovery, and, when he was laughed off as a crackpot, began to consider taking over the world by himself. However, his delirious fantasies were held in check by concerns about whether Bannister might still possess an even greater stock of the weapons. (GAME: "The Meeting" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Meeting","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}, "Dealing With the Unexpected" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Dealing With the Unexpected","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) One possibility was that he had himself been partially possessed by an Iytean symbiont, accidentally brought to him by Bannister and Jenkins within one of the artefacts, which had not succeeded in taking full control of him but was able to influence and promote the darker aspects of his subconscious. However, these actions could also simply have been his own doing. (GAME: "Plot Complications" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Plot Complications","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Unraveling and death
At any rate, in 1885, he became estranged from Sir Reginald after the latter blamed an attempted robbery at his house on Fraser, because its target had been a few other "Atlantean" items purchased from Bannister, which Reginald suspected Fraser of wanting for himself. (GAME: "Encounter with Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Encounter with Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) The actual culprit of was "Ned Hines", the alias taken on by a surviving Iytean after it possessed Carruthers's friend Henry Jellicoe. (GAME: "Solving the Mystery" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Solving the Mystery","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Some time after the theft, Fraser received a visit from Rollo and his companions, time-travellers on the payroll of the Celestial Intervention Agency who had been sent to investigate the origins of one of the alien weapons after it was noticed in the 1980s as a family heirloom in possession of one of the Colonel's descendants. (GAME: "Encounter with Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Encounter with Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) Fraser initially agreed to meet with them, but grew suspicious as soon as he realised they were after his stock of artefacts. His granddaughter, however, having grown concerned about her grandfather's personality shift, agreed to keep helping the time-travellers in their investigation. (GAME: "The Colonel's Granddaughter" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Colonel's Granddaughter","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
A short time later, Hines murdered Carruthers in an unsuccessful, rage-fueled effort to get Bannister and Jenkins's location out of him, so that he could get the location of the buried starship from them. Having been unsuccessful, (GAME: "Murder on Regent Street" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Murder on Regent Street","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) he broke into the Colonel's house in the same way, just as Fraser had been about to negotiate with Bannister and Jenkins to buy their entire stock of "Atlantean" artefacts. After killing Fraser's butler Roberts, he hit him with one of the guns which Fraser had thus far believed to be useless, revealing it to be an Iytean stun-gun which caused a sensory overloard in organic targets, and thus had no visible effects when tested on inanimate matter. (GAME: "The Attack" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Attack","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Though meant to be non-lethal, the shock proved too much for the weakened Colonel, who expired soon after, but not before repenting for his villainous plans and sharing what he knew with the time-travellers. (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Tying Up Loose Ends","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) Because Julia disappeared from the historical record at that same time, (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) either because she had joined Rollo as a companion (GAME: "The Hunters Home From the Hill" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Hunters Home From the Hill","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) or because she had eloped with Thomas Carruthers, (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Tying Up Loose Ends","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) the Colonel's estate passed on to his late brother's young children. (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Physical appearance
Colonel Fraser was tall and thin. In his final years, he looked older than he actually was — frail and stooped, with a drooping, shaggy-looking gray moustache and a slow, deliberate manner. His voice, however, remained "surprisingly hearty" when contrasted with his appearance. He favoured dark, plain clothing in a "slightly old-fashioned style". (GAME: "Non-Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Non-Player Characters","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
