War in Heaven
- You may wish to consult
War in Heaven (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
The War was a temporal conflict between the Great Houses of the Time Lords and their Enemy. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, et al.) It did not have enough activity in one specific region or era to be given a more specific title than "the War", (PROSE: The Book of the War) but it was known as the War in Heaven by the lesser species caught in the conflict. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Newtons Sleep, AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, COMIC: Political Animals, et al.) The Superiors also referred to it as W-Time, using the letter's shape to illustrate its cosmic symmetry, and called the subsequent, Enemy-free reality V-Time. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
Several other major parties became involved in the War in a shifting configuration of alliances, notably including Faction Paradox, the Celestis, (PROSE: Alien Bodies, et al.) the Remote, (PROSE: Interference - Book One, et al.) the Osirians, (AUDIO: Coming to Dust, et al.) the Mal'akh, and posthumanity. (PROSE: The Book of the War, et al.)
As the War progressed, the Protocols of Linearity began wearing down and elements of the conflict seeped into the pre-War era of Gallifreyan history. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Shadows of Avalon) The Eighth Doctor had numerous encounters with the "future War", (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Unnatural History, Toy Story, The Taking of Planet 5, et al.) even taking on companions originating from the War era. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) The War also affected some of the Doctor's earlier incarnations, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, Verdigris, AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh, TV: Pyramids of Mars) most drastically the Third Doctor. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) The Doctor's involvement in the War culminated in his eighth incarnation choosing to destroy Romana III's Gallifrey on the eve of the War's outbreak, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) leading to him losing all his memories and being deposited on 19th century Earth by Compassion to spend a century recovering. (PROSE: The Burning, Escape Velocity, Wolfsbane, et al.)
Some events occurred temporally concurrent with the War while still staying mostly separated from the conflict: the final 56 years of the City of the Saved's existence, (PROSE: The Book of the War, Of the City of the Saved..., A Hundred Words from a Civil War, God Encompasses) Bernice Summerfield's life in the late 26th and early 27th centuries, (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, PROSE: Dead Romance, A Gallery of Pigeons, Predating the Predators) and some periods of Iris Wildthyme's transtemporal adventures. (PROSE: The Blue Angel, Library Pictures, The Shape of Things, Michael Drake, Panda and the Airship, Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
History
Lead-up to the War
- Main article: War prediction
The Matrix predicted that Gallifrey would survive many attacks before falling in a war against an implacable Enemy, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Infinity Doctors) but due to the Enemy's time-active nature, it couldn't make any concrete predictions. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Last Contact was known by Larna to be the event in which the identity of the Enemy would become known. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) The Enemy's identity was actually constantly shifting. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
1152 years before the War, irregularities in the Great Houses' breeding-engines caused four "mutations": the Imperator; Grandfather Paradox; a renegade who would later become the War King; and one other. These mutations brought about the first changes on the Homeworld since its start. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Around the beginning of this generation's era, Avus discovered a remnant of reality from before the anchoring of the thread and encountered the enemy in the form of Cernunnos. (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory)
The cat people, oracles to the Houses, began going into hiding in fear of the future. The cultural void left by their absence came to be filled by insane and renegade members of the Great Houses. (PROSE: The Return of the King)
About 880 years before the War, the Imperator attempted to prepare the Homeworld for conflict by starting the Catherion Imprimiture and founding the Order of the Weal (PROSE: The Book of the War) to be led by his cousin Thessalia. (PROSE: The Return of the King) The Imprimature produced eight babels, but it was ended when one babel slaughtered House Catherion. It was imprisoned under the Order's headquarters in House Ixion, (PROSE: The Book of the War) where Thessalia consulted with it about the upcoming War. (PROSE: The Return of the King, Newtons Sleep)
About 400 years before the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) Greyjan the Sane served as Lord President of Gallifrey for three years. In that time, he foresaw the War and made plans for the Nine Gallifreys to be created through crypto-forming. After predicting that the Enemy would be ancestor cells, he committed suicide. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
396 years before the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) during Greyjan the Sane's Presidency, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) the newly-formed House Paradox negotiated with the British government in 1752 to obtain the 11 days lost when the British converted to the Gregorian calendar. These days formed the Eleven-Day Empire. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War, et al.) The Gazetteer considered the negotiations to be humanity's first official involvement in the War in Heaven. (COMIC: Political Animals) At the time of the calendar changeover, the Eleven-Day Empire was witnessed by many Londoners, including Sabbath Dei, (COMIC: Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses) a future War-time participant. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei)
392 years before the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) Cardinal Thorac attempted to establish a powerbase on Dronid to overthrow the High Council. The Council responded with an attack of ignorance and Thorac was dragged back to Gallifrey, leaving behind Time Lord technology on Dronid. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War, Shada) In the aftermath of the Dronid event, other potentially dangerous renegades were imprisoned, including Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Enemy initially blocked off chunks of history to prevent War-era Gallifrey from contacting pre-War era Gallifrey to prepare them for the War, but as the War progressed the walls between the pre-War era and the War era thinned. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
380 years before the War, agents of the Order of the Weal encountered War-time members of Faction Paradox through a breach in the Protocols of Linearity caused by a Violent Unknown Event on Zo la Domini. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Frightened that the babel's previously-unconfirmed predictions appeared accurate, (PROSE: Newtons Sleep) Thessalia travelled to a planet on the frontier in time (PROSE: The Book of the War) and released the babel, theoretically under her control. However, it overpowered her and escaped to 17th century Earth, where it planned to convert humanity's history into a weapon against the Adversary. (PROSE: Newtons Sleep)
About 155 years before the War, the idea of hybridisation began to emerge on the Homeworld. The Great Houses' timeships began changing in a manner similar to evolution. (PROSE: The Book of the War) One timeship, Lolita, had her owner modify her so that she could become humanoid. At a time closer to the War's beginning, Lolita met with her sister on a forest world and tried to convince the sister to join her in preparing for the War. (PROSE: Toy Story)
The war's coming, and nothing's going to stop it. Us against them, our pilots against their pilots. Even Mother isn't going to come out of this without a few bruises. This isn't a historical war. You do realise that, don't you? This isn't about territory, or power, or anything like that. It's a war of fundamentals. The enemy's going to change everything, if it can. Even if the Homeworld wins, there'll be... oh, huge amounts of disruption. Disruption at every level.
Around 150 years before the War, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, The Book of the War) the rationality of the universe was briefly threatened by the Carnival Queen, a pre-Anchoring being (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) with a goal identical to the Enemy's: (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory) to return reality to as it was before the Time Lords imposed their Web of Time onto it. The Carnival Queen was stopped by the Seventh Doctor, Chris Cwej, and Roz Forrester, but not before Gallifrey was momentarily plunged into chaos. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) In that time, the recently-elected (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) Lady President Romana had an epileptic fit and released 300 prisoners from Shada; one of these prisoners was Grandfather Paradox, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) who went on to make Faction Paradox a major power in time for the War (PROSE: The Book of the War) before erasing himself from time. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War)
Kellen cited the Etra Prime incident as the event which first foreshadowed the War, signalling that the Time Lords would need to abandon non-interference and fight to keep control of the cosmos. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Romana's presidency brought many changes to Gallifrey and stirred the stagnant culture. (PROSE: Happy Endings, Lungbarrow) David Foreman, a "Watchmaker" from this era, was one of the many notably influenced by this liberalism. (PROSE: Ghost Devices) According to the Book of Lies, (PROSE: Unnatural History) after President Romana's reconciliation with the Sisterhood of Karn, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) the Great Grey Eminence made a deal with Faction Paradox to undo the changes and restore his preferred order to Gallifrey (PROSE: Unnatural History) by manipulating the timeline of the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors, Unnatural History) Subsequently, the Eighth Doctor was uncertain if Romana or Flavia was President. (PROSE: Unnatural History) When the Closed Session occurred roughly seventy-five years before the War, the Homeworld was led by a nondescript and stagnant Presidency. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
36 years before the War, the future War King returned to the Homeworld with knowledge of the Enemy. This time he was listened to, largely because the President's attempt to prove that the enemy didn't exist resulted in the First Message from the Enemy. Umbaste then became the Lord President. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Around 20 years before the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the Celestial Intervention Agency removed themselves from history and became the Celestis to avoid the coming conflict. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Taking of Planet 5) In the first explicit encounter between humanity and one of the major War-time powers, the Celestis realm of Mictlan was accidentally summoned to the town of Gragov by Vlad III's creation of the Forest of the Impaled in 1461. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
When all possible timelines began being destroyed by Randolph Bane's abuse of the Doctor's amaranth, the universe's higher powers refused to do anything because they were focused on preparing for "some imminent Big War", leaving it to be fixed by Chris Cwej, Bernice Summerfield, Jason Kane, and the Schirron Dream crew. (PROSE: Oblivion)
When it became clear that War was inevitable, Greyjan the Sane's plan for the Nine Gallifreys was implemented. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Ancestor Cell, The Book of the War) Each of these duplicates thought that it was the original, and all of them had the ability to make even more copies of themselves. (PROSE: The Book of the War, The Taking of Planet 5) Each Homeworld was a "sheath echo" of one "core probability", (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) with similar attributes but often with different histories and rulers. One Homeworld was led by Umbaste and the future War King. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Romana's Presidency continued on a cloneworld Gallifrey located in Kasterborous that believed it was the original, creating eight cloneworlds of its own. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Ancestor Cell, The Story So Far...)
Around ten years before the War, Faction Paradox was freely peddling time travel technology to the lesser species. They had also chosen a homeworld for themselves, (PROSE: The Book of the War) which they thought their blood rites were protecting from the Time Lords. However, the High Council (PROSE: Interference - Book One) wiped out most of the homeworld, (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War) as well as the Faction colonies on Dronid and elsewhere. The leaders of the Faction escaped to the Eleven-Day Empire, which became a community for the first time; (PROSE: The Book of the War) Cousin Shuncucker, carrier of Grandfather Paradox's shadow, believed herself to be the last scion of the Faction homeworld. (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories)
After the destruction of their homeworld, the Faction began infiltrating cultures throughout the universe, setting up cults and secret societies like the Order of the Rectangle, the Cult of the Black Sun, and the Luminus so they could secretly give time technology to the lesser species. (PROSE: Interference - Book One) Order of the Rectangle member Robert Hay would later orchestrate the Gunpowder Plot in the hopes of putting the brotherhood in charge of Britain; (PROSE: The Plotters) the Luminus ruled multiple planets for centuries, including Olleril and Argos; (PROSE: Tragedy Day) and the Order of the Black Sun would go on to wage a time war against Rassilon and the early Gallifreyans. (COMIC: Star Death, 4-D War) The Faction also started creating the Remote in various posthuman colonies including Ordifica. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War)
6 years before the War, Umbaste died and the War King became the official head of his Homeworld. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
About 2 years before the start of the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the Eighth Doctor, already aware of the coming War from being involved with it a couple times in his past, (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Unnatural History) took on Compassion, a Remote from Anathema, as a companion. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) While travelling with the Doctor, Compassion absorbed signals from the Doctor's TARDIS and was transformed into the only Type 102 TARDIS. The Time Lords sought to capture Compassion so that she could be the mother of a new generation of Type 103 TARDISes for the War; (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War) the War King's Homeworld was unsuccessful in doing so, (PROSE: The Book of the War) but a Gallifrey ruled by Romana III and already heavily affected by future events of the War was. Before this Gallifrey could be devastated by the Enemy at the start of the War, it was erased from history in an incident involving forces from near the end of the War. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Outbreak of the War
- Main article: The Event
- Main article: The Cataclysm
Missing information from The Book of the War about build-up to Dronid and the First Wave.
In the decade before the War, tensions gradually escalated between the Great Houses and enemy agents on Dronid, disguised as the criminal organisation (PROSE: The Book of the War) InCorporate. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Days before the fighting began, a particularly interventionist member of the Great Houses, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the Doctor, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) went to the planet to try to find an agreement with an enemy contact. The Book of the War recorded that this diplomat was killed as the first battle of the War began, (PROSE: The Book of the War) although Qixotl thought there was more to the story of his death. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
The Krotons managed to intercept a Time Lord relaying information from Dronid to the High Council. In their interrogation of him, they learned of the War and decided to try to gain technology from it to aid in their own war against the Metatraxi. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Riots occurred on one Homeworld at the start of the War. (PROSE: The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale)
Shortly after the fighting began on Dronid, the world processor engines activated and destroyed the surface of the planet. The fighting moved on to the Thousand-Year Battles, fought on Utterlost, Kaiwar and Mohandassa. Then the enemy attempted a direct attack against the Homeworld itself, (PROSE: The Book of the War) which caught the Time Lords by surprise (PROSE: Alien Bodies) and destroyed many Homeworld technologies, (PROSE: The Book of the War) including the Sash of Rassilon, the De-mat Gun, and the Hand of Omega. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) However, thanks to the War King's preparations, the prophecies of Gallifrey's destruction were avoided. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The War quickly became a four-dimensional series of strikes and counterstrikes which Mr Qixotl described as a "temporal stalemate". (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Early conflicts & downfall of Faction Paradox
In the 2nd year of the War, the Faction took advantage of the confusion caused by the War and sent its Remote shock-troops to attack planets significant to the Great Houses, including Simia KK98. The Faction hoped that the Houses wouldn't see any connection between them and the Remote, but the Houses very easily deduced that the Faction were behind the attacks. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
In the initial phase of the conflict, planets such as Nibo were used as staging posts for Superior forces. Time Engines were embedded into these planets to creates pockets of reality outside of normal spacetime. (PROSE: The Mushroom at the End of the Universe)
The armies of the Great Houses, the Enemy, and Faction Paradox fought great battles across the surface of Mercy, killing the 150 human colonists already living there. This came to an end when one of the powers changed history so that, twenty generations before the fighting on Mercy, the Arbiturm bombed the planet with blacklight warheads, rendering it an inhospitable wasteland. (PROSE: Holding Pattern)
Goralschai of the First Wave was involved in many early battles of the War: the Ganda Mnemma campaigns, in which Godfather Shuck was captured; the rout of the Raithaduine cultists; the Llammas IV campaign; and the Spike, a conflict against the Enemy over the Vault of Heaven. Soldiers of the Great Houses also fought a campaign on Aloophoa. (PROSE: Against Nature)
In the 4th year of the War, the Houses began experiments in biological technologies, creating regen-inf. The Houses also became aware of the Remonstration Bureau. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Enabled with Celestis technology, the enemy began using anarchitects as weapons early in the War. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
In the 5th year of the War, the major powers attempted to negotiate peace with the Venue Accords. The Accords lasted one picosecond and concluded that peace was an impossibility. The Book of the War summarised them as "an agreement to disagree". In response to the failure of the Accords, the Second Wave was created. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
On the Infernal Sphere, Baphomet obtained information on Thaumoctopus memeticus' origins, leading to him being murdered by a T.memeticus in the form of Thelema. (PROSE: T.memeticus: A Morphology) The Dæmons faced a "private Götterdämmerung", with many of them dying in gigantic battle mode. The Faction unearthed a Dæmon skeleton from Dæmos and converted it into a warship. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
In the 6th year of the War, Devonire attempted to make peace between the Great Houses and Faction Paradox by finding Grandfather Paradox's missing arm. After a deal with the Immaculata Formosii on Kaiwar resulted in Devonire acquiring his own severed arm from the future, he was stricken with a severe case of paradox anxiety and imprisoned. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Later in the 6th year of the War, the Second Wave underwent a successful campaign of sterilisation against all of the planets where the Faction had begun propagating the Remote. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The first planet to be sterilised was Ordifica in 2596. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, The Book of the War) Mathara led an evacuation of Ordifica in the Justinian; Fitz Kreiner and Laura Tobin were among those onboard. Mathara deposited the evacuees on the Time Lord super-weapon Anathema in 1799, which was on route to destroy Earth in 1997. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two)
As the Faction was busy retreating from the Second Wave, a pre-War-Era babel hid within Isaac Newton's timeline and attempted to rewrite human history into a weapon against the Adversary. Detecting that posthuman civilisation could be replaced with a "constant sacrifice of fresh bodies and fresh blood" in service of the Great Houses, the Pilots' Coterie used praxis to send three pilots — including Erasmus — to the 17th century to recruit Nate Silver as an instrument to prevent the babel's interference. A small Faction mission led by Mother Sphinx became involved to ensure that the Gregorian Compact wasn't written out of history; they recruited Greenaway to spy on Silver. Larissa followed the babel and, after an encounter with the Faction, hid within Aphra Behn's timeline. The involved parties all gathered at Saloman's House in 1671, where the babel escaped unharmed due to Larissa mistaking Silver to be the babel's host. A second confrontation occurred in 1683, when the babel attempted to install Silver as an immortal puppet leading the Service: Larissa stabbed Newton with her continuity needle, forcing out the babel so it could be defeated by Erasmus. Silver stopped the needle from erasing Newton from history and the Faction conducted rituals to heal time. (PROSE: Newtons Sleep)
Circa the 6th year of the War, (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) 46 years before the major breakout at the Great Houses prison-planet, the Blood Coteries illegally manipulated the biodata of Demetra Kine and four shadow-weapon-proof warriors, resulting in all five being imprisoned by the Great Houses. This was so they could get revenge against Shuncucker when the prison inevitably had a breakout. (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories)
Sometime in the early War Era, House Arpexia conducted the "jungle children" experiment to see how Homeworlder biodata would be changed by being raised by humans. Kaspar Hauser was placed in Nuremberg in 1828, but though German's timeline began to reshape around him, he was relatively unchanged. Shortly after Entarodora was brought into the project, the experiment was ended and Hauser was killed. His name was later used for the unrelated phenomenon of temporally-displaced Hauserkinder, who became increasingly common during the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
In the 8th year of the War, the breakaway Thirteen-Day Republic was founded by Anastasia Romanov, but then quickly lost in the Battle of Valentine's Day. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Warring States) On Anathema, Mathara took Fitz Kreiner back with her to the Eleven-Day Empire, though he left behind a remembranced version of himself. Kreiner quickly rose to the rank of Father before being put in charge of one of the last Remote colonies, shortly before it was cut off from the Empire. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
House Dvora attempted to alter Earth's history by inspiring 16th century philosopher Giordano Bruno to become Pope and and lead Europe into an early age of rationalism and science. Father Self subverted all of Dvora's efforts and integrated Bruno into the Remote of Anathema. (PROSE: De Umbris Idearum)
After several generations had passed on Anathema, it arrived near Earth in 1997. The Eighth Doctor, Sam Jones, and Sarah Jane Smith became involved with it and and stopped it from fulfilling its purpose. The Doctor then took on Kode and Compassion — remembrances of Fitz and Tobin — as companions. While most of the Remote stayed on Anathema, (PROSE: Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two) some migrated to Earth, forming a small cult in 21st century California. (PROSE: De Umbris Idearum)
A War veteran found asylum in the Eleven-Day Empire for a while, but they were eventually evicted as part of a Faction initiation competition led by Starch. Ceol won said competition and became a Cousin. (PROSE: Now or Thereabouts) Despite being involved in a "cultural exchange" with Theo Possible, (PROSE: Party Kill Accelerator!) Ceol quickly tired of the Faction and smuggled her biodata and consciousness into a new body, leaving her original to sign up for a Faction mission to Mohandassa and be wiped from history. Ceol managed to evade the Faction in her new body for a considerable period of time. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
In the 10th year of the War, Compassion met with the War King to form an alliance that entailed opening a "second front" against the enemy. Carmen Yeh was present for this meeting, which she novelised in Fantastical Travels in an Infinite Universe. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
In the 11th year of the War, the Third Wave was created. The last campaign of the Second Wave saw the usage of the three remaining babels against enemy forces on the planet Lethe. The campaign ended when an unknown assassin euthanised the babels' lobotomised operators and the babels were torn apart on the battlefield. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Time Lords left the planet ravaged by time fractures. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa visited Lethe and found a powerful validium staff there. (PROSE: The Parliament of Rats)
In the 14th year of the War, the Faction's Eleven-Day Empire was breached by the Clockwork Ouroboros of the Star Chamber and severely damaged, driving the Faction underground while it rebuilt the Empire and re-evaluated itself. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Great Houses embrace bio-diversity
We of the Great Houses used to think of ourselves as virtually celestial, things of pure intellect and reason. But this War has made us rather more ... carnal.
As the War progressed, the Time Lords began severely altering their biology to combat the Enemy, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, The Book of the War) some becoming what both Justine McManus (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) and the Eighth Doctor described as "monsters". (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) While they had been experimenting with non-humanoid soldiers with the Third Wave, it was only in the 17th year of the War that the Great Houses began splicing their people with biodata from "lesser species", creating the Fourth Wave. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Time Lords accepted many renegades back into their society to further War efforts. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, The Brakespeare Voyage) The Rani and Borusa became tutors to newly loomed soldiers. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) As part of their hatchling projects, the High Council created clones of several renegades, including the Master and the Rani. In a period spanning between the 22nd and 38th centuries, Father Kreiner roamed the universe hunting for renegade Time Lords and collecting their severed heads. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
Influenced by the Celestis and weary of the changes going through Homeworld society, Goralschai put into a motion a complicated plan to destroy the universe. He assembled a Quincunx out of Primo de la Vega, Todd Calavero, Gedarra, Emiousha, and Momacani, all made from the loom of House Meddhoran but scattered apart in history so as to not alert the Great Houses. He used Faction technology to place House Meddhoran in the Netherweald, its connection to the Caldera temporarily rewriting the laws of the universe along Mexica beliefs. The Immaculata tried to disrupt Goralschai's plans but was killed. By Goralschai's design, the Quincunx gathered at Huixachtepetl in 1506 to be forced into the New Fire Ceremony. Goralschai was at the centre of the Ceremony, pulling out Momacani's heart to become a living embodiment of Xiuhtecuhtli. Goralschai was unable to use his newfound godhood to destroy reality; confined by the purpose of the Ceremony, all he could do was sacrifice himself to cause the cyclical renewal of the universe. (PROSE: Against Nature)
In the 18th year of the War, Mantissa led the Timebeast Assault, a failed invasion of the City of the Saved involving the assistance of the City's mayor. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Robert Scarratt quickly became a notable member of the Fourth Wave. His earliest victory was preventing an uprising at a posthuman world which provided House Xianthellipse with Praxis. At another early point in Scarratt's military career, (PROSE: The Book of the War) he met the Enemy in open parley on Utterlost. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
In the 20th year of the War, the Eighth Retro War occurred. Scarratt was sent to Delphi in 279 BC to make a sacrifice that strengthened the Eighth Earth Front. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) The timeline of the Eighth Retro War was later manipulated by One. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
Sergeant-instructor Littlejohn once gave a speech to a young batch of Fourth Wave soldiers, telling them that Tardigrades were connected to the Enemy. (PROSE: The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale)
In the 24th year of the War, Jendrickenses gave a speech on the Grandfather's Maw. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
In the 25th year of the War, the Fifth Wave was created. The Gauntlet was also founded around this time. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Chris Cwej in the War
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Hiding from the gods of Dellah, (PROSE: Dead Romance) one of the Great Houses (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) led an invasion of the version of 1970 Earth in the Sphinxes' bottle universe. Chris Cwej, a brainwashed former companion of the "Evil Renegade", helped in securing the Earth and dealing with the Horror. Christine Summerfield was the only native of the Earth to escape; she journeyed to the empty ruins of the Homeworld abandoned by the House who invaded her world (PROSE: Dead Romance) and was later found and recruited by Faction Paradox. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
Cwej was exposed to fatal levels of radiation in the final stage of the bottle universe invasion. (PROSE: Dead Romance) His masters were initially fine with leaving him to die, but Irving Braxiatel heard about the situation and requested they save Cwej. With the help of a Great Houses monk, Cwej regenerated into a new body (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) which was remotely shaped by House Military strategists to be resistant to the Fat. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The first thing Cwej did in his new body was going on a mission to Paracletes in 2596 to recover data from Edward Watkinson's expedition to the planet. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle)
In the 29th year of the War, while Cwej was recovering from his regeneration during his stay at the Gauntlet, the Great Houses decided to use him in their Army of One project without his knowledge. The Cwejen were created from Chris' timeline. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
In his new body, Cwej returned to 2596 to help defeat a Dellan God which merged with Absolam Sleed. (PROSE: Return to the Fractured Planet)
On the 30th anniversary of the War, Entarodora gave the "Monsters" Coda to the Fifth Wave. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Fearing reality would be re-formed by the Ferutu who escaped their dying universe and became All-High Gods, Cwej's masters in the bottle universe allied with the People of the Worldsphere. Cwej partnered with Clarence, then met with with Irving Braxiatel, Bernice Summerfield, and Jason Kane at KS-159 in 2596. On Dellah, fighting broke out among the Gods and Tehke (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods) — a god favoured by the Lord Celestial Smoked Mirror (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) — rose to dominance. Tehke betrayed the other Ferutu by either killing them or keeping them trapped in the dying universe. Cwej, Clarence, Summerfield, and Kane went to Dellah, banished Tehke back to the Ferutu's universe, and prevented the rest of the Ferutu from evacuating; in the process, Cwej was physically regressed back to his original body, albeit at age 13. Even after the Ferutu danger was over, Cwej's masters remained in the bottle universe and the People stayed locked in their Worldsphere. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods)
In the 31st year of the War, Cwej — now in a mature version of his original body — went on a mission to 1999 Los Angeles to intervene with the activities of Faction Hollywood. Cwej faced off against Michael Brookhaven at the shooting of Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom, which was filmed with a Celestis meme-mine. After Cwej dueled with Brookhaven at the climax of the film, the Enemy manifested as an Ainu God and caused Brookhaven's apparent demise. Before leaving, the God said, "All the six need re-costuming, and then the story can begin and end as scripted." (PROSE: The Book of the War) The plot of Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom greatly resembled the future destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire (which occurred about 20 War Era years later), with its six main characters being very similar to six key individuals involved in the Empire's fall. (PROSE: The Book of the War, AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, The Shadow Play)
Nearing the entrenchment phase
As the War progressed through its fourth decade, direct combat began being dropped by the Great Houses for more psychological tactics based upon principles of subversion and "cultural impregnation". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
By the 32nd year of the War, the Eight Day Week had occurred and battles had been fought at Pentralaxia and Cuchailan's Rift. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) In this year, the Fourth Wave fought an ideological crusade against the Remote of Fallahal using the Jallama Reed and New Young Gods transmissions, creating the Broken Remote. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Also in the 32nd year, three House Arpexia timeships were destroyed while investigating the Grandfather's Maw. Jendrickenses, Minkosa, and Philetes were sent to investigate the disastrous investigation. In one iteration of history, the severed head of Robert Scarratt from a future point in the War was discovered at the Maw. To prevent the timeline seen in the memories of the future Scarratt, the Great Houses imprisoned Scarratt until after the time when he would have lost his head. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
Having acquired KS-159 during the All-High God crisis, (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) Irving Braxiatel founded the Braxiatel Collection. (PROSE: The Doomsday Manuscript, et al.) Based in the 2600s, Braxiatel began severely manipulating local history with the end goal of building a new Homeworld for his people, (AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past) a Great House (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) who had retreated into a bottle universe to escape the Ferutu. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) The War-time Great Houses were aware of Braxiatel's actions; when Bernice Summerfield asked Straxus if his people had any plans to stop Braxiatel, he said, "I'm afraid I can't comment. If something needs to be done, it will be done." (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel)
X-12 was assigned to a posting in 1880s Germany, a crucial War nexus. He was captured by an Enemy representative and exposed to a short children's story (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings) by Wilhelm Liebnecht about an ambitious king becoming a puppet to a legion of spiders, a metaphor for the Great Houses being overthrown from within by the Enemy. X-12 was rescued by a regen-inf. (PROSE: The Map and the Spiders)
In the 35th year of the War, Robert Scarratt gave a speech to Fifth Wave trainees at the Gauntlet. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) Around this time, Scarratt conducted a series of apportation exercises on pre-time-aware Earth, including one with Elisabeth Canning in 1753. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Predicting that Tagonique would become the hub of an advanced galactic empire allied with the Enemy, House Arpexia sent three artificial agents, Dephresis, Anhedra, and Jarks, to interfere with the technological development of the Tagoniqui. The agents manipulated Mesquividas into building a device which killed the planet's Prime Minister and brought genuine magic to Tagonique. Mired in superstition and magic, the Tagoniqui never allied with the Enemy and were erased from existence several decades later due to the universe imposing rationality onto them. (PROSE: Alchemy)
In the 38th year of the War, the Seventh Wave was created. After the Seventh Retro War, the War entered a period of entrenchment. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Sherlock Holmes in the War
A number of events involving Sherlock Holmes occurred in the War, all at least before the conflict's 48th year. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy, Of the City of the Saved...)
Not too long before the War's 41st year, (PROSE: Warring States, Erasing Sherlock) the Celestis provided 21st century scientific genius Jimmy Moriarty with a method of ritualistic time travel, which he tested by sending Gillian Petra and Thomas Corkle to 1882. Both participants were interested in Sherlock Holmes: Petra became a maid at 221B Baker Street to discretely study the detective for her criminology thesis while Corkle — on instructions from Moriarty — tried to experiment with history by preventing Holmes from becoming successful. Petra entered a romantic relationship with Holmes, accidentally changing history herself. After learning of Corkle's plan, Petra prevented him from severely damaging Holmes' timeline. She then returned to her home era by harnessing the power of Krakatoa's eruption. (PROSE: Erasing Sherlock)
Gillian Petra was recruited by the Celestis to be an Investigator. She briefly returned to Sherlock Holmes in 1890 to return a pair of his shoes she had taken during her previous visit. (PROSE: Erasing Sherlock Prologue)
Due to a Time Ring malfunction, Straxus became stranded in 1888 Ceylon with a Cwej named Septimus. They became involved with Ludwig Cooray, manipulating him to create the God Machine partially using one of Straxus' combat chips. After completing the God Machine, Cooray vanished and his conciousness was stored in the chip; Sherlock Holmes and John Watson thought he was murdered by Straxus, but were unable to find sufficent evidence. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, PROSE: A Gallery of Pigeons)
Straxus and Septimus continued to live on Victorian Earth. In an effort to catch the attention of the Great Houses, they founded Straxus Imperial, an auction company which they used to circulate artefacts not supposed to have been discovered until later points in history.
In 1893, while Sherlock was pretending to be dead, an emergency setting of Straxus' Time Ring overrode Bernice Summerfield's Time Ring and brought her to London, where she found refuge with Mycroft Holmes. With Mycroft exposed to a time traveller, Septimus committed a series of murders all relating to the number seven in the hopes that it would cause Mycroft to think so intensely about the concept of "seven" as to summon the Seventh Doctor through quantum mnemonics. When Bernice and Mycroft confronted Straxus and Septimus, the ripples in time caught the attention of Straxus at an earlier point in his timeline. The older Straxus was imprisoned for changing history and Septimus was taken for dissection. The younger Straxus then briefly met with Bernice in the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel)
Circa the mid-1910s, Sherlock Holmes investigated The Book of the Enemy and was erased from history by it, his entire life becoming fiction written by Arthur Conan Doyle. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy) War-time individuals would go on to think of Holmes as a purely fictional character, (PROSE: The Book of the War, This Town Will Never Let Us Go, Of the City of the Saved...) but scant evidence of his original existence survived. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy, The Taking of Planet 5) Also around this time, the Enemy fictionalised Ruritania, a gentlemen's club, and the Martians and their invasion of Earth. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy)
Return of Faction Paradox
Missing info from Warring States and A Story of the Peace
Around its 40th year, the War entered a phase of entrenchment. Faction Paradox returned to being a major power in the War, albeit a far subtler one than they were before. The Remote were completely independent by this time. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Faction was recruiting new members from planets as varied as Salostopus and Lurma. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
A member of the Faction named Jamie became stranded in 1990 Stevenage and attempted to get back to the Eleven-Day Empire by creating and sacrificing a Matryoska Gestalt. (PROSE: Office Politics) Another member of Faction Paradox known as the "Blood Witch" was stuck in England at an earlier point in Earth's history; she erased from time thirteen people — including Drostan — to make a portal back to the Empire. (PROSE: Storyteller)
Piloting her ship to Earth in the mid-third millennium BCE, Triphis used the chronomasticon with Tefen to play with the planet's history and make dozens of alternate timelines where Earth was ruled by different types of aliens, including mermaids, mutant pigeons, intelligent cosmic rays, gods from parallel dimensions, (PROSE: Playing for Time) Gorgons, (PROSE: Dreamer in the Dark) shades, (PROSE: Annie's Arms) Kyalites, (PROSE: The Mountains are Higher at Home) Jalaxians, (PROSE: Judy's War) Medusae, Krykkani, (PROSE: Red Rover Red Rover) Víkingrs, (PROSE: The Víkingr Mystique) and the Nova. (PROSE: Life of Julia) The final timeline to be created was one where the War-time manipulation of Native American tribes resulted in Yellow Bird using Faction techniques to summon an army of ghost warriors at Wounded Knee in 1890, beginning a new era of North America being taken back by its indigenous peoples. (PROSE: Project Thunderbird) The changes in history were noticed by the War King and Enigma Tree, (PROSE: Judy's War) along with some time sensitives (PROSE: Red Rover Red Rover) and many former companions of the "Evil Renegade". (PROSE: Judy's War) An angelic being unwound time so that Triphis never obtained her ship and none of the history-warping events surrounding the chronomasticon happened. (PROSE: Playing for Time)
Cousins Bertold and Ernest joined the nautical expedition of Sir George Dimchurch in 1810 in order to pervert it to delay the formulation of the theory of evolution by decades, negatively affecting the Great Houses. They created living pterodactyls for Dimchurch to discover on New Guinea and bring back to Europe, but Dimchurch overheard them discussing their plans on the return voyage and destroyed all evidence of the pterodactyls on the ship. (PROSE: Wing Finger)
In the 44th year of the War, the Eighth Wave was created. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
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At the edges of the War, the Hussar — a renegade of the Great Houses — was permitted to travel through inconsequential areas of history. The Hussar got caught in the schemes of Father Christèmas and was killed at Serendipity Keep in order to create a loa. His timeship, the Kraken, joined Christèmas' Bankside division of the Faction, which, with the newborn loa, went independent from the rest of the Eleven-Day Empire. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
At the behest of Godfather Stendec, Cousins Mace and Braquemard came to The Presidency's Head to psychometrically examine eight artefacts: the thermal projector used by Kotdel during an Enemy encounter on Cretaceous Earth, George Stillsome's hat, Philemon Smallcoate's glasses, the DVD case of the Collection of Necessary Secrets' copy of Monsters of the Deep, the wooden bell used by Thelema during the Enemy incursion at the Infernal Sphere, a burnt mangrove twig from the Enemy's attack on the Greenworld, Bobby's cell phone, and the Venusian translator used by Héloïse d'Argenteuil. Through this, they learned of Thaumoctopus memeticus, an aspect of the Enemy. Their understanding allowed a memeticus to manifest, taking over Mace's body and killing Braquemard. Thus, the Enemy had full access to the Stacks and the Faction technically had their first Enemy specimen. (PROSE: T.memeticus: A Morphology)
Trna, Martayne, and Zeller of Faction Paradox worked together to put Hitchbot in 2010s Philadelphia as a lure for the Compound, an aspect of the Enemy. Six of the Compound went on a mission to decapitate Hitchbot to "allow the disorderly incorrect timeline to proceed". All but one were captured by Trna and Martayne. The survivor, alone and confused, returned to the Compound lair in a hidden sector of space-time at One Liberty Place, revealing the lair's location to the Faction. Some of the data gained by the Faction was given to the Great Houses and the captured Compound creatures were given to Godfather Stendec. (PROSE: Houses of Cards)
The Faction were involved in "an incident" with Iris Wildthyme and the Shopkeeper. (PROSE: Wildthyme and the Wolf)
When the War-time powers began using weapons which put the spirits of history in danger, the Faction sent Cousin Andraiz to Tonton Macoute's prison in Cyclone Tracy to find a solution, a "cure-all to time". After gathering the necessary ingredients (two timeships, Demi and Medea; the reflection of an Enemy agent; the ground bones of House Military soldiers; and the shadow of a Faction soldier), Macoute made a "cure-all" which attracted loa. However, the "cure-all" was nothing but bait, and Macoute consumed the loa to attain their god-like aspects. Before leaving Andraiz, Macoute explained that, in a way, he would be fixing the Faction's problem: "There's only one way to significantly change an ecosystem: introduce a predator." (PROSE: Tonton Macoute) However, despite having the powers of a god, Macoute somehow died. (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War)
Cousins Jezebella, Darius, and Fen visited the post-apocalyptic ruins of Kent after it was ravaged by a battle of the War involving the army of the Seventh Son of the Seventh Sun. They encountered Vermis Superior collecting bodies for young Vermis Superior to feed on. Jezebella and Darius were killed and added to the food pile. Fen then witnessed the Were-Crows feeding on the adult Vermis Superior and becoming the final aspect of the Enemy. (PROSE: Life-Cycle)
Other conflicts in the War
As the War is a war throughout all history, then the War never 'ends'. As such, all smaller scale conflicts are, in a sense, merely an extension of this 'True' War. On one level, local conflicts can be seen as echoes of the hostilities, latent throughout the structure of history itself. But, there is also some hard evidence of smaller scale conflicts, and in some cases, even individual combatants, being co-opted by the various War Powers for their own ends.
Missing info from Predating the Predators, De Umbris Idearum, Of the City of the Saved..., A Hundred Words from a Civil War, and the City of the Saved series
On 14 April 1643, two armies of Hornheads and Chanticleers declared the Hain Valley to be a battlefield of the War in Heaven, and they began to clear the newly-formed town of Samhain. Despite the imposition of a time lock on the area, the Shopkeeper and the "Wor Iris" were able to help the newly-elected mayor Michael Drake defeat the armies by swallowing them whole. (PROSE: Michael Drake) After letting the war pour into him, Drake became quite a difficult man. (PROSE: Self Possessed) After his death, he was commemorated with a monument at the Samhain elder church which read, "In memory of Michael Drake who kept the war from Samhain". (PROSE: Death of the Author, The Opera of Samhain, Michael Drake, Self Possessed)
In the 46th year of the War, a group of thirteen Great Houses renegades tried to escape the War by using Time Rings to journey into a cluster of parallel universes where the Roman Empire never fell. The renegades created links between the universes, allowing them to unite into the Empire of Empires. House Mirraflex sent a Cwej to contain the situation; he united all the universes where the Nazis won World War II into the Greater German Reich, (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) created by the Great Houses years earlier as the Second Time Front, (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) and convinced them to go to war with the Romans. After several decades of warfare, the Romans, led by Marcus Americanius Scriptor, were victorious over the Germans. In the end, a member of House Mirraflex came in and reinstated the boundaries between worlds. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) House Lineacrux would later claim credit for the Roman victory. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
World War II was the last stand of the Star Chamber, but the Churchill Index discussing their involvement was lost. The Book of the War mentioned an entry about the Index in its discussion of the enemy, but it was apparently retro-erased from the book by a Violent Unknown Event, alongside entries about "Miss Hiroshima" and the Gods of the Ainu. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Uvodni waged the Ghost Wars against the Malakh Empire in the Horsehead Nebula. One Uvodni general used the game Combat 3000 to select human children to be abducted and sent to fight on the front lines. The wars ended in an armistice. (TV: Warriors of Kudlak)
After an encounter in her youth with the Mal'akh Olena, (PROSE: Predating the Predators) Imogen Tantry became interested in spreading the Catholic faith to groups like the Mal'akh and the Remote. (PROSE: De Umbris Idearum) However, after becoming Pope, she began the Beatrician Crusade against the Mal'akh, and in the encyclical De umbris idearum she advocated the brainwashing of Remote into Catholic shock troopers. (PROSE: De Umbris Idearum)
In the War's 48th year, a Civil War began in the City of the Saved. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...) It lasted for ten years (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War) until the City's destruction. (PROSE: God Encompasses)
While planning to restore his people to the planet Maximediras, Irving Braxiatel became aware of the Deindum, a future species who would learn the secret of time travel and could rival his own people. He tried to prevent their creation by severely manipulating the timeline of Bernice Summerfield, who seemed to be accidentally instrumental in the creation of the Deindum. (AUDIO: Resurrecting the Past) However, these efforts only made the Deindum more aggressive and paranoid, and they travelled back and began an invasion of the galaxy to protect their own history and ensure their creation. Braxiatel led a galaxy-wide resistance against the Deindum, but they nonetheless conquered the universe and wiped out the human race. (PROSE: Present Danger) However, Bernice and Braxiatel engineered a war between the future and past Deindum, causing them to destroy themselves before they developed time travel. Though in the process, Braxiatel was shot dead by a Deindum soldier, (AUDIO: Escaping the Future) the scheme reduced the Deindum to a small group of skirmishers without much will to fight; after the Battle of the Pakhar Shipyards, the war was considered won. Some destroyed planets came back without any knowledge of their destruction, and the Braxiatel Collection vanished without a trace. (PROSE: Adorable Illusion)
In 2157, an alien race began their invasion of Earth. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising) The first invaders attacked London, herding the local politicians into Parliament Square to be exterminated. As the invaders wiped out scattered cities as a demonstration of their superiority, Earth society collapsed overnight. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Izzy Ring and her brother P.J. lived in a work camp run by the Invaders in California. The invasion ended nearly ten years after it began when a timeship exploded in London in an event later called "the Source". Though the explosion destroyed the Invaders, it also fragmented the timeship's inhabitants throughout time, and temporal shrapnel created saints throughout the world. Time-sensitive Revelators named these saints and gave them stories, which were spread by the Humanist Church through films; each viewing imbued audience belief into a new interpretation of the saint. Homogeny and Hegemony, seeking to regain their permanence and join the Empire, recruited these "possibilities", but none of them could manage time in the way that was needed, so Hegemony and Homogeny tried convincing Izzy Ring to kill "Caroline" and create a paradox that would please their superiors. However, P.J. stopped Izzy by sacrificing himself to become a saint. Their plan defeated, Homogeny and Hegemony themselves became saints in Trafalgar Square. (PROSE: A Star's View of Caroline)
The War in Heaven began severely intersecting with Earth's timeline in 1999, when nightly "rocket attacks" began erasing things from history. By 2001, "Faction Paradox" had become a fashionable household name. On a day when a controversial Tiffany Korta interview caused outrage across the world, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go) the Universal Machine (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...) nearly manifested as a timeship which crashed in a field near a British town and rooted itself to human culture. Manipulated by the War-time powers including an agent of the Celestis, Valentine Bregman constructed a Red Uranium atomic bomb. Bregman journeyed into the crashed timeship with Inangela Marrero and Horror and planted the bomb. The bomb detonated, preventing the manifestation and creating the Ghost Point by damaging human culture. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go) The Universal Machine didn't get another chance to manifest for over 300 billion years. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...)
Perversion of history
Over the War's fifth decade, the conflict reached full entrenchment. In her lecture "The Cultural Impact of War-Time", Entarodora noted that more Homeworlds had been lost "than might be thought prudent". (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) After one was lost in the battle of Mutter's Cluster, the remaining Gallifreys (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) — previously self-segregated (PROSE: The Book of the War) — banded together and became numbered. Gallifrey Eight was covered in loomstacks and chronoforges which provided fodder for the War, Gallifrey Nine was used to store weapons such as D-Mat guns, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) and Gallifrey XII was used to train soldiers, including Homunculette. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Around the 50th year of the War, House Lineacrux secretly organised a voyage into the Grandfather's Maw to retrieve Leviathan biodata for research. Entarodora was chosen to captain The San Grael; she betrayed Lineacrux after going into the Maw by abandoning the mission and trying to instead found a new universe free of the War. Lineacrux recruited Robert Scarratt to captain The Brakespeare into the Maw, punish Entarodora, and finish her mission. Compassion witnessed a potential future where Scarratt's voyage was successful and the biodata research led to the Great Houses harnessing the power of the Maw to obliterate Earth from history, so she contacted Scarratt before he got on The Brakespeare and showed him the consequences of success.
The Brakespeare was infiltrated by agents of the Celestis, the Enemy, Faction Paradox, and Entarodora. The Brakespeare's voyage ended in a disastrous meeting with The San Grael. A timeship containing the severed head of Scarratt escaped The Brakespeare and gravitated back towards the edges of the Maw, where it was found by the Great Houses in the 32nd year of the War, who learned of the entire debacle through the head's memories and prevented it from ever happening. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) Despite being definitely and definitively dead, with his corpse located in 27th century Vienna, Scarratt joined Faction Paradox as Little Brother Ratas de la Cicatriz. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)
Around the same time, Sabbath was appointed Godfather of Faction Paradox's Military Wing. He and Godfather Morlock went to 1899 England to kill Fiora Venn as part of a ritual and encountered Justine McManus. Morlock decided to let Justine join the Faction (AUDIO: Movers, A Labyrinth of Histories) and she was sent to Dronid to learn under Sanjira.
During Justine's stay, Celestis agents in the Corporation manipulated Sanjira into discovering the Relic — the Doctor's corpse — and he decided to respectfully send it into the Time Vortex, unaware of its significance. It travelled to Earth, where the United States of America put it in the Toy Store; following the 22nd century Dalek invasion, it was moved to the Black Man's store in 2169 London. He sold it to Qixotl, who set up an auction for it in the Unthinkable City on Earth in 2069. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
In the 50th year of the War, Justine was summoned from Dronid back to the Eleven-Day Empire (PROSE: The Book of the War) and sent with Manjuele to represent the Faction at Qixotl's auction. Also invited were UNISYC, who sent Kathleen Bregman and Joseph Armitage Kortez; the enemy, who sent the Shift; the Celestis, who sent Trask; and the Time Lords, who sent Homunculette and Marie from several centuries in the future of the War. Qixotl also invited the Daleks, but the Krotons overpowered the Dalek representatives and took their place.
The final, uninvited participants at the auction were the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones, who were severely breaking the Laws of Time by attending. Though the Celestis almost gained the Relic, the Doctor tricked them into trading it to him in return for the Shift. The Doctor took the Relic to Quiescia and destroyed it with a thermosystron bomb. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Having failed her mission, Cousin Justine returned to the Eleven-Day Empire. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
In the Houses of Parliament of the Eleven-Day Empire, the Faction elders decided to try to create a new sentient homeworld for the Faction by sending a warship to the moment when I.M. Foreman became the biosphere of the planet Dust in the 38th century and infecting him with the biodata virus (PROSE: Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two) developed by Godfather Morlock a few years prior. (PROSE: The Book of the War) However, the Faction didn't account for the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith coming to Dust; instead of infecting Foreman, the virus was attracted to the Doctor after he was shot by a local. The Doctor regenerated and the virus took hold in his body. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
As a result, the Doctor never stopped the Eight Legs from conquering the universe. (PROSE: The Blue Angel, The Ancestor Cell)
With history changing because the Third Doctor regenerated on Dust rather than in the UNIT HQ laboratory, the timelines became much more uncertain and malleable. Some regions of space-time degenerated into a series of realities which formed the Obverse. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The Celestis later constructed the Enclave, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) a pocket galaxy of different races and cultures that separated the Obverse from the universe. A cataclysmic war began between the inhabitants of the main universe and the inhabitants of the Enclave. The Eighth Doctor, Compassion, and Fitz Kreiner briefly became involved with the beginning of this conflict, but they were pushed away by Iris Wildthyme. Participants in ensuing war included the Galactic Federation, Daleks, the Glass Men of Valcea, Cybermen, Steigertrudes, Draconians, Ghillighasts, Sontarans, Sahmbekarts, Ice Warriors, and, according to many sources, several incarnations of the Doctor from the Eighth Doctor's future. (PROSE: The Blue Angel) Meercock refugees from the Enclave conflict attempted to settle on Earth in 1973, where they encountered the Third Doctor before his altered death, along with Iris Wildthyme, Jo Grant, and Tom. (PROSE: Verdigris) Iris would claim to be from the Obverse itself (PROSE: The Blue Angel) when not claiming to be a Gallifreyan. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress, Verdigris) Outside of the War, the Obverse interacted with the outside universe during many of Iris' adventures. (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap, Future Legend, Wildthyme Beyond!)
The pre-War-era Time Lords of a cloneworld Gallifrey (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, The Story So Far...) led by Romana II became aware of the War through monitoring of the Obverse and the conflict in the Enclave. Romana regenerated into a body more suitable for war (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) and made herself War Queen and mistress of the Nine Gallifreys. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) In preparation for Gallifrey's "darkest hour", (AUDIO: Luna Romana) she began stockpiling weapons in the Slaughterhouse, a secret arsenal protected by a time eddy, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) and she cleared whole sections of the planet to start building Battle TARDISes. (AUDIO: Luna Romana) She planned to use Bull-TARDISes to mate with Compassion to create a new Type 103 TARDIS.
Romana dispatched two of her most trusted agents, Gandar and Cavis, to capture Compassion while she transformed into a Type 102 TARDIS in Avalon. While the agents managed to almost start a nuclear war between humans and avalonians, they did not capture Compassion, who escaped with the Eighth Doctor and Fitz Kreiner. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
After the Doctor installed a randomiser inside her, Compassion managed to elude the Time Lords for a considerable time, (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine, Coldheart, The Space Age) but she was eventually found by an operative in the 19th century. (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy) Compassion and her two companions were forced to go to Romana's Gallifrey, where they came into contact with forces from a later point in the War. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Rise of House Lolita
With only one member it seems unlikely that House Lolita will be making a great impact on Homeworld politics in the immediate future.
In the 50th year of the War, The Book of the War, a guide to the first half century of the War, was published. It contained a small entry on House Lolita: an "obscure" Newblood House which had then recently allied with House Tracolix. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Godfather Morlock, head of the Eleven-Day Empire's Bio-Research Wing, used a tracking-knife to examine the corpse of Vlad III. Among several potential timelines, he saw one where, with the assistance of a woman named Lilith, Dracula survived his trip to London and infiltrated the British Empire with a fashionable new breed of vampirism. This potential timeline was blocked off at the Ghost Point by a brigade of enemy timeships. Gideon stole the phonograph where Morlock described his findings, and, with the help of the loa, Auteur used it as inspiration for his writings. (PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine)
Around the 52nd year of the War, (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) Lolita came to the Eleven-Day Empire with Ruthventracolixabaxil claiming to want to reinstate Faction Paradox as a proper Great House. Before arriving, she hired the Seventy-Ninth Sontaran Assault Corps to attack the Empire and steal material she needed to reach an agreement with the loa protecting the Empire. After communing with the loa, Lolita turned on her allies and swallowed Ruthven, the Sontarans, and the Empire itself; the only survivors were Cousin Eliza and Cousin Justine, who escaped in Ruthven's timeship. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, The Shadow Play)
Its main powerbase lost, Faction Paradox was left fractured. As Iris Wildthyme put it, "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) Surviving groups included the inhabitants of the Shadow Spire, Mother Mathara's army, (PROSE: The Story So Far...) and the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities. (PROSE: Library Pictures) Three separate Faction Paradox groups — all unaware of each other — survived in 21st century America. (PROSE: Head of State) Multiple individuals wrongly believed themselves to be the last vestiges of the Faction. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei, Movers, PROSE: Spinning Jenny)
With the Faction out of the picture, the Great Houses began threatening the Osirian Court. In response, Sutekh brought his armies of Mal'akh to the area around the Mediterranean Sea in the 15th century, a crucial point in history. The Great Houses sent Merytra Ellainya to influence the humans into destroying the Mal'akh, but she was captured. The Houses were forced to agree to a peace treaty to keep history intact. In the treaty, the Houses rededicated the Faction Paradox shrine in Civita to Sutekh. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust) After Sutekh killed his brother Osiris, he smashed the shrine's remembrance tanks and buried his corpse underneath. Osiris' biodata spread into the infant inhabitants of the tanks, (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) upwards into the Tree of Filth, and out into the bugs of the hours (AUDIO: Coming to Dust) and throughout the Italian countryside. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years, Body Politic) Corwyn Marne and his wife Astarte took a baby from one of the tanks and adopted it as his daughter. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years)
After Lolita ended the Eleven-Day Empire, most of the other Great Houses wanted to ally with her. With the Homeworld practically under her control, she began trying to expand her influence throughout the Spiral Politic. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei) She planned to occupy millions of bodies in powerful positions on every important planet in every time-zone, controlling the history "like one great big nervous system". (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat)
Lolita began with Earth in 1762, overlaying her identity over Queen Charlotte's mind, putting George III in a natural-time envelope so that he wouldn't notice the changes in his wife, and importing from the 51st century an army of Peking Homunculi keyed to her central processor. Cousins Justine and Eliza came to 1762 and encountered Mary Culver, who was used by Compassion to inform them of Lolita's presence. With the help of Lord Sandwich and the Sieur d'Eon, Eliza destroyed the homunculus army, loosening Lolita's hold on the era. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei, In the Year of the Cat)
Lolita also tried to take control of history in 21st century America, where, as libertarian Arizona Congresswoman Lola Denison, she orchestrated Matt Nelson's Presidential campaign. While he still lost the Democratic Party nomination, as the patterns of the Spiral Politic would suggest, instead of his campaign dwindling, he founded the Radical Party and chose Lola as his Vice Presidential candidate. Lolita also gave Richard Francis Burton The Thousand and Second Night while he travelled in Arabia (PROSE: Head of State) in the 1840s; (PROSE: The Book of the War) the story contained a prophecy that would inspire Dave Larsen to assassinate Nelson at his inauguration.
At the time, several of the minor Wartime powers had influences on 21st century Earth: there were at least three Faction Paradox groups, all unaware of each other, and the Celestis had control of one of the major governments. When the slope of Earth's history, which had been flat (PROSE: Head of State) since the Ghost Point at the start of the century, (PROSE: The Book of the War, This Town Will Never Let Us Go) started to bend upwards, one of the major Wartime powers sent an agent to investigate. The agent tracked the disruption to Nelson's campaign, but when Lolita discovered them, she turned them into a Shift. The Shift tried persuading Larsen to kill Lola instead by telling him about Lolita's murders of young women along the campaign trail, but Larsen only became more determined. After he killed Nelson, Lola Denison became President and announced the Caldera Project, through which she intended to reshape history by drilling into the caldera (PROSE: Head of State) hidden under Earth's crust. (PROSE: Head of State, Interference - Book One)
In 1762, Sabbath Dei was inspired by Cousin Justine's actions to perform a supplication ritual which transformed him into an agent of the Great Houses. Sabbath put Justine on trial for the crimes of Grandfather Paradox, sentencing her to finish the Grandfather's sentence at the Great Houses' prison planet, (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) Shada. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) Six months after Justine was imprisoned, Compassion possessed a guard and released Demetra Kine of the Blood Coteries to cause chaos through which Justine could escape. Kine took control of the prison and attempted to take revenge on Shuncucker, another surviving member of Faction Paradox. After teaming up with Shuncucker to kill Kine, Justine escaped in a timeship just before House Military arrived to disband the riot. (AUDIO: Movers, A Labyrinth of Histories)
In the time that Justine was in prison, "a lot" happened back on Earth in the 1760s. (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories) Before Justine left, Compassion had been convinced that a great fight would be needed to stop Lolita from taking over Earth. (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) Justine returned in 1763; (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories) by the end of that year she and Eliza were no longer in contact with Compassion and no longer worried about Lolita taking over 18th century Earth. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust, Body Politic) However, Compassion remained an active force in the War, in the 58th year bringing an end to the City of the Saved Civil War. (PROSE: God Encompasses)
The Fifth Planet Gambit
- Main article: Fifth Planet Gambit
At a time that the Shift described as "years in the future" of the period covered by The Book of the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) a team of twelve Time Lords — including Xenaria, Holsred, and Allopta — were sent to Antarctica in 12,000,000 BC to prepare an assault Planet 5 and capture the Fendahl so that it could be re-engineered into a "final assault weapon" for the War. Because the Celestis had used a fictional generator to bring to life the Elder Things from H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, the Time Lords regenerated into bodies which resembled Elder Things to blend in. The Eighth Doctor, Compassion, and Fitz Kreiner came to the Time Lord base to investigate the Elder Things. The Time Lords were about to break through the temporal barrier around Planet 5 by barraging it with kamikaze War TARDISes, but Compassion's presence inspired the TARDISes to try to break free of their servitude. Tachon tried to restrain the TARDISes with a D-Mat Gun and was forced to shoot the lead TARDIS, rupturing it.
The damaged TARDIS spread into a time fissure stretching from 12,000,000 BC to 1999. In the 1970s, Professor Fendelman used the energy of this time fissure to reanimate the final fragment of the Fendahl. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrived at Fendelman's lab and prevented the Fendahl from fully manifesting. They dumped the Fendahl fragment in Canthares, (TV: Image of the Fendahl) where, by some accounts, it was found by Daleks and re-encountered by the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller. (AUDIO: The Dalek Trap, Island of the Fendahl) Another account indicated it drifted to Kaldor and caused the destruction of Kaldor City; (AUDIO: Checkmate) although, the Eighth Doctor suspected that Liv Chenka's return to Kaldor changed history, (AUDIO: Escape from Kaldor) and another account of that period of Kaldor history suggested that it was not destroyed by the Fendahl. (AUDIO: The Robots of Life, et al.)
Freshly returned from a disastrous mission on Delphon, where he desperately used his eyebrows to try to get the locals to attack the Enemy, Homunculette was sent by the Lord President to station himself in 1999 under the alias "Nathaniel Hume" to investigate the fissure and other remnants of what was going on in 12,000,000 BC. Compassion and Holsred followed the TARDIS to 1999, where they encountered "Hume" and fought Two.
Back in the past, the Eighth Doctor convinced all the TARDISes to not break the shield around Planet 5, but one TARDIS accidentally did, unleashing the Fendahl Predator. Just as the hermit planned, the Predator was attracted to Mictlan, home of the Celestis. The Predator feasted on the Celestis, utterly destroying them. The Doctor coordinated the TARDISes into working together to push Mictlan away from the main universe so that the Predator wouldn't be able to return. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) The Shift managed to escape the dying Mictlan with several other Celestis servants by hijacking one of the timeships. They landed on a world at the beginning of the Spiral Politic. The Shift eventually found its way into a copy of The Book of the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Following the failed Gambit, Xenaria was regarded as a war hero and given the honorary title "Xenaria Who Survived". (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)
Fall of Sutekh
Missing information from The Ship of a Billion Years, Words from Nine Divinities & Ozymandias.
In 1763, a group of Mal'akh left-over from Sutekh's activity in the 15th century were led by Merytra Ellainya to Italy to use an Osirian lodestone to open a time tunnel (AUDIO: Coming to Dust) to Upuat. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) Members of the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini summoned Justine and Eliza to help them deal with the Mal'akh, and they successfully stopped Ellainya; however, after Corwyn Marne took Justine and Eliza to the defiled Faction shrine in Civita, Justine allowed Merytra to open the corridor, and she herself travelled through it to the Ship of a Billion Years. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust)
Eliza collected fragments of Osiris' scattered biodata while, as a diplomat in the Osirian Court, Justine recruited Anubis to build a new body for Osiris with a remembrance tank. Lolita told Sutekh about Justine's plan, and he sent the Ship of a Billion Years to destroy them at Anubis' laboratory; realising that she had run out of time to collect the final pieces of biodata, Eliza sacrificed herself to become the host for Osiris' resurrection. However, since the Homeworlder diplomat Mortega was also being threatened, the War King rescued them with the 59th Time Fleet. During this confrontation, Lolita snuck into the laboratory and contributed some of her own biodata to the resurrecting Osiris. (AUDIO: Body Politic)
Osiris' resurrection within Eliza's body was completed and he was accepted by the Osirian Court as "Horus". Horus overpowered Sutekh using his power derived from Lolita's biodata. Lolita planned to rule the Osirian Court through Horus.
The War King brought Justine back to the Homeworld and tried to give her House Paradox's old seat on the War Council, but Lolita challenged the War King's judgment, rallying public support behind her. As Justine fled the Homeworld, Lolita devoured the King and became War Queen. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities) The King would later attempt to escape Lolita's interior using Sabbath Dei, but did not succeed. (AUDIO: Sabbath and the King)
After Sutekh and Horus both agreed that the Osirian throne would go to the victor of a time war, (AUDIO: Ozymandias) Justine and Horus worked together to capture Sutekh and Lolita in a temporal trap that ended with Sutekh's imprisonment in a pyramid and Horus' death after using his army of 700 Osirians to "deal with" Lolita. After this, he told Justine that she would no longer be a problem for them. Indeed, this time war was partially fought on 18th century Earth, (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh) where Compassion previously predicted the last stand against House Lolita would be made. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei)
Faction resurgences & the Nambiro threat
- Main article: The Armistice
Justine found a new home for Faction Paradox in the aftermath of Elizabeth Howkins and James Braddock's experience in Strines. (PROSE: Spinning Jenny) When inducting his earlier self into the Faction, Richard Francis Burton made himself swear by "Horus, the reborn child from whose sacrifice our Faction owes its own rebirth". (PROSE: Head of State)
The Nambiro developed a taste for paradox energy after their homeplanet was drenched in the fallout of a ruptured timeship, leading them to begin hunting down members of the Faction. After capturing some Nambiro to learn of their motives and capabilities, the Faction decided to fight the Nambiro traps with a larger trap of their own, the Armistice.
Faction agents disguised as acting troupes were sent across the galaxy to spread news of the Peace. (PROSE: The End of the Beginning) One such troupe consisting of Mullion, Amara, Axastyakis, Hole, and Cá Bảy Màu were tasked by their Elders with reconstituting three individuals by speaking their words. The words were actually from the troupe's personal future, when they were torn apart by internal conflict and the survivors were killed by Nambiro. (PROSE: What Keeps Their Lines Alive) The Faction also experimented with technology to alter the perceptions of millions at once (PROSE: The End of the Beginning) using a Remote colony world. This secret project was overseen by Satyavan, who had ulterior motives in resurrecting his civilisation of origin which was erased from time. Satyavan refused to report of the technology's success to the Faction, and many Faction agents were sent to the planet and killed by Remote. Mirze investigated, learned that Satyavan was the pawn of "lost souls" resembling shadows who had been erased from time and wished to return, and took his place as overseer. (PROSE: Jukebox)
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Mars was left in temporal turmoil by the battle between Sutekh and Horus, as well as experiments by the Great Houses and the influence of The Book of the Enemy. As a result, the Ice Warriors found themselves fighting for historical existence. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice) Several were recruited by Faction Paradox (PROSE: Interference) including Gustav, who fled from the chaos of Mars. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice)
Thousands of Life's angels began spreading news of the War's end to "mortals and immortals alike", at one point appearing before Intrepid, Kifah, and Gustav at the Shadow Spire. (PROSE: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) Sometime after this, the Battle of Cratosi Fields was fought. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice) Cortalian held the First Auction in Heaven on Kratoam, which ended in chaos when Kifah and Gustav unleashed the Frozen Battle of Cratosi Fields and Auteur tried to become beyond time by merging with Apep. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice) Sponsored by the Nambiro, (PROSE: A Shift in Focus) Huxley sent Wade, Nezf, Tabrenilsodvoravitas, and a shift to a Great Houses base on RMS in the Amazolian system to steal the "Greater Key", where they all died in an encounter with an Enemy conceptual predator. (PROSE: A Farewell to Arms)
A Nambiro the Faction had trapped in a dead-time containment field on Dust was released and tricked by Cousin Persephone into seeking The Book of the Peace. (PROSE: And To Dust We Shall Return) The Nambiro arrived in a Faction-made simulation based on The Yagé Letters and encountered a faux William Burroughs. Prevented from extensively examining The Book of the Peace by Burroughs, the Nambiro was left convinced the armistice was real even though it knew no details. (PROSE: The Ugly Spirit, A Man Lays Dying) It reported back to its people, who then believed that with the War over Faction Paradox were the last remained source of paradox energy. (PROSE: The End of the Beginning) The Faction proceeded to hold a ritual to get all its members to gather on Dust (PROSE: War During Peacetime) so that the Nambiro would swarm there. While the Nambiro were distracted, Z'akbo Eji harnessed the Paradox Eater to change the Nambiro's history so that they never came to hunger for paradox energy. The Nambiro on Dust all became paradoxes themselves and destroyed each other in a storm of cannibalism. Thus, the purpose of the Armistice was fulfilled. (PROSE: The End of the Beginning)
The Faction invasion of Gallifrey
At a time "towards the end of the War", when the War had been going on for about 292 years (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) and the Celestis were "long dead", (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) there arrived a militaristic Faction Paradox warfleet led by Mathara (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) coming from the destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire in the War's past, bringing with them a piece of the Empire and a "false" Grandfather Paradox (PROSE: The Story So Far...) — to be precise, a version of the Eighth Doctor completely changed by the biodata virus, who took on the title of Grandfather Paradox. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
The Time Lords of this era were losing the War. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) On one Gallifrey, misinformation camps and carefully detonated reality bombs were used to obscure certain truths from the majority of Gallifreyans. Biological defences created in ancient Gallifreyan history to combat the Great Vampires and the Charon were augmented to have devastating capabilities against the enemy. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Faction Paradox's warfleet (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) travelled to Romana III's Gallifrey just before the start of the War, at the same time that Compassion was forcibly taken to the planet with the Eighth Doctor and Fitz Kreiner inside of her. The pre-War-era Eighth Doctor was on the verge of being overtaken by the Faction biodata virus at that time. The Faction successfully took the Capitol by force. They resurrected Greyjan the Sane using a remembrance tank and had him take Romana's place as Lord President; the nature of Greyjan's previous Presidency meant that Gallifrey began merging with the Eleven-Day Empire. Using their newfound control over the Web of Time, the Faction began altering the history of Romana's Gallifrey, erasing five of the six founders of Time Lord society and undoing the creation of the eight copies of Romana's Gallifrey.
But there was one variable that the Faction did not account for. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The Doctor's original TARDIS — previously devastated (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) by Lolita (PROSE: The Book of the War) in the events that led to the Doctor starting to travel in Compassion — contained within it the potentiality of the timeline where the Third Doctor regenerated due to radiation from Metebelis III and was never infected with a biodata virus. The stress of containing this timeline warped the TARDIS, turning it into the vast Edifice which loomed in the sky above Gallifrey. The Eighth Doctor journeyed into the heart of the Edifice, where he had a confrontation with Grandfather Paradox. The Doctor chose to use the unstable power of the Edifice to restore the Metebelis timeline and erase Romana's Gallifrey from history to spare its inhabitants from the rule of Faction Paradox and the horrors of the War. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The ensuing explosion eradicated the entire sector of space containing Kasterborous, and with it the Faction Paradox warfleet. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
All the surviving natives of the destroyed planet either fled to other cloneworlds or fell from the War to be among the lesser species, their timelines rotting and their second hearts decaying (PROSE: The Story So Far...) due to their connection to a dead world. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) Compassion rescued the Eighth Doctor, Fitz, and Nivet from the destruction of Gallifrey. She believed that the destruction of Romana's Gallifrey meant that the War was over, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) but would have significant further involvement in the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Of the City of the Saved..., The Brakespeare Voyage, et al.) The Eighth Doctor then lived through a century on Earth, after which he and Fitz found themselves in a post-War universe. (PROSE: Father Time, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Sometime Never..., et al.) Multiple later incarnations of the Doctor would go on to have further involvement in the War. (PROSE: The Blue Angel, The Infinity Doctors, Alien Bodies)
The Faction Paradox warfleet crumbled out of the Spiral Politic, but survived as clockwork temporal viruses. (PROSE: The Story So Far..., Anachrophobia)
At an earlier point in his timeline, the Eighth Doctor found himself in the War-era and tried to send a hypercube to his Gallifrey for help with a member of Faction Paradox in 2002 San Francisco. While the Doctor believed that hypercubes were impossible to intercept, the Faction Paradox member did just that. When asked how he did it, the Faction Paradox member replied, "Maybe there's no one home on Gallifrey... Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment." (PROSE: Unnatural History)
Mutually assured destruction of history
At a time when the Time Lords had been fighting the War for "half a millennium", the House Military was on its Last Wave. By this time, the original Gallifrey was known to have been wiped from existence, along with most of its population.
In this era, the High Council sent Homunculette and Marie on a mission to obtain the Relic so that its biodata could be examined to further the War effort. Homunculette saw the Relic as the final chance to win the War. After first encountering an agent of the Celestis in 2169 London, they went to Qixotl's auction. They failed to secure the Relic, and it was destroyed. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
With no other options, the Time Lords adopted a strategy of mutually assured destruction. They created Anathema, a planetary warship with the Cold at its centre designed to destroy Earth — the Enemy's planet of origin — in the late 20th century and therefore destabilise the causal nexus of the universe. In order to get past Enemy defences, Ananthema was sent to Earth not with time travel, but with sub-light speed space travel along a three-billion-year route from a Time Lord base.
The Time Lords then evacuated the universe; Compassion heard rumours involving "something about a universe in a bottle". In fact, the Time Lords stole I.M. Foreman's bottle universe while the Eighth Doctor was visiting her. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) There were already Time Lords in Foreman's bottle universe, (PROSE: Interference - Book One, Dead Romance) who evacuated into their own bottle universe when the Gods of Dellah began taking over their universe. Christine Summerfield theorised that the Gods were actually the Time Lords from the universe outside Foreman's bottle universe. (PROSE: Dead Romance) However, other sources indicated that the Gods were actually the Ferutu (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods) and that the universe invaded by the Gods was the same one in which the War occurred. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War, AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, The Eleven Day Empire, et al.)
As the warship began nearing the end of its three-billion year journey, Faction Paradox of an earlier period of the War established a Remote colony on the warship. When Anathema did finally reach Earth, it was disarmed by the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
The end of the War
Missing info from A Story of the Peace
- Main article: The Peace
Entarodora believed that the War would be ended by either the entire War's retroactive annulment, or a victory for one side so complete that it would become history. (PROSE: The Book of the War) By one account, the War was retroactively annulled by the Eighth Doctor erasing Romana III's Gallifrey from history. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) However, in the post-War universe there was still evidence that the conflict had lasted many generations. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
Some members of the Great Houses believed that the War would end after the Seven Prophesied Heads of Severance spoke. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage) In a deleted scene of Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom, Baron Amatsumara said, "When the Seventh Head speaks, the War will end, and the true War will begin." (PROSE: Head of State)
In The Book of the Truce, Godfather Morlock wrote that the War could be ended by placing all its participants in oxbow realities. Some optimistic thinkers thought that the War would resolve itself if only a few key figures were trapped in oxbow realities. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
On 18 March 2005, Madame Blavoddy warned Panda, "The war is ending. It will be happening soon, or recently, or always has." (PROSE: Self Possessed)
Aftermath
- Main article: Post-War universe
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While several Time Lords survived the War, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, Timeless) the universe at large was only aware of four surviving elementals. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Trading Futures) These were blamed for causing the mysterious disaster that drained the universe of energy, (COMIC: Miranda) led to whole galaxies being evacuated, and erased whole sections of the timeline. (PROSE: Father Time) They reigned over all of time and space as the Imperial Family. (PROSE: Father Time)
Gallifrey was believed to be entirely destroyed, but the Capitol survived in the Kingdom of Beasts, where it had been taken by the Mal'akh. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
Cernunnos, an identity of the Enemy, was left in a weakened, powerless state (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory) and stranded in 18th century Europe. After being given as a gift to George III in 1774, (COMIC: Political Animals, PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) he was rumoured to have been killed by pit-dogs. In 1805, Lucia Cailloux tracked and killed a whole herd of mammoths in Montana. (PROSE: Grass) "Caillou" was a term used by the Shadow Directory for Time Lords. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
The Mayakai, a culture created in the War, survived into the post-War universe. (COMIC: Political Animals, PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) In their legends, they remembered a generations-long battle between the Moak and Na Koporaya in which many of the greatest Moak were killed. The greatest of the Moak entrusted the Mayakai to guard ancient wisdom until when the Moak would "walk again in this world to reclaim what had been lost in the battle." (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
Sabbath Dei, an 18th century man who had briefly became a servant of the Great Houses (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat) and later apprentice to the War King during the War, (AUDIO: Sabbath and the King) worked to fill the void left by the absence of Time Lords in the post-War universe. Sabbath stole the Eighth Doctor's second heart and gained some Time Lord abilities. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
A few members of Faction Paradox survived the end of the War. They fought American Freemasons for control of history at King George III's mammoth hunt. (COMIC: Political Animals, Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses) An unidentified party wearing skull masks attended the Eighth Doctor's wedding to Scarlette. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) Scarlette herself was a child of one of the Faction's remembrance tanks in Pompeii. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years)
While exposed to anti-time, the Eighth Doctor who travelled with Charley Pollard saw several other realities, including one where the Time Lords had "ceased to exist, time wound backwards to eliminate their every trace" and one where one of his hearts was plucked out, (AUDIO: Zagreus) as had occurred to the Eighth Doctor during his association with Scarlette. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) However, other sources indicate these two Eighth Doctors were the same individual. (AUDIO: Mary's Story, The Zygon Who Fell to Earth, COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)
The Time Lords were eventually restored to existence, (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) but before the end of the Eighth Doctor's life they began fighting the Last Great Time War against the Daleks, (COMIC: The Forgotten, PROSE: We Can't Stop What's Coming, et al.) who had grown in prominence while the Time Lords were away. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) Straxus, a veteran of the War in Heaven, (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) was involved in rising tensions between the Time Lords and the Daleks before this Time War. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks) Mirraflex remained a notable Great House into the Time War. (AUDIO: The Conscript) The Thirteenth Doctor believed most of Faction Paradox had left the universe sometime before the Time War began. (PROSE: The Paradox Moon)
While dealing with the weapon, the Tenth Doctor remembered (PROSE: The Eyeless) the Eighth Doctor's destruction of Romana III's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Eyeless)
When the Time Lord Victorious caused a Time Fracture, artefacts of dead timelines began to fall into the universe, including two Faction Paradox masks. The owners of these masks were brought to life by paradox energy (PROSE: Canaries) and later encountered the Thirteenth Doctor. (PROSE: The Paradox Moon)
Parallel universe
Close to the end of the Sixth Doctor's life, the Quantum Archangel created a parallel universe wherein the Doctor was never exiled to Earth by the Time Lords. Here the War began when the Sixth Doctor convinced his people to abandon the non-interference policy to launch a jihad against the Enemy. In this reality, the Enemy were an old foe of the Doctor who used flying saucers, had metallic voices and "tin minds", and knew the Doctor by the name "Ka Faraq Gatri".
The Time Lords created a series of time dreadnoughts armed with Time Destructors: Sacred Might of Gallifrey, Righteous Fist of Rassilon, Glorious Aspect of Omega, Arcane Mystery of the Other, and Blind Visage of Pythia. Thousands of War TARDISes were put into use. Many renegade Time Lords returned to aid in the War; the Tremas Master and Morbius were put in charge of military units and Mortimus became an elite executive of the CIA.
The War quickly spread across the universe, with the Time Lords becoming greatly allied with the Cyberlords. The Time Lords' superior temporal technology initially allowed them a string of victories against the Enemy. Success seemingly assured, the Doctor left the frontline to hold the rank of Lord President on Gallifrey. The Master then defected to the Enemy's side, turning the tides of the War by providing them with Gallifreyan technology.
Now technologically equal, the Enemy's vastly superior numbers allowed them to quickly become the winning side of the War. After Andred was killed in battle with Enemy forces, Lord President Admiral Doctor decided to destroy the universe using the Armageddon Sapphire before the Enemy could win the War. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
Participants
The Great Houses of the Time Lords were one of the primary powers in the War. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War, et al.) It was suggested that the War was allowed to escalate out of all proportion and the real threat to the Homeworld came from within. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) Indeed, the ruling Houses of Mirraflex, Xianthellipse, Arpexia, Dvora, Tracolix, and Lineacrux were not above infighting. (PROSE: The Book of the War) It was House Lolita, though, which most ruthlessly pursued its own interests. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play, In the Year of the Cat, PROSE: Head of State, et al.)
The Great Houses kept diplomatic relations with civilisations almost as powerful as their own, including the Osirian Court. (AUDIO: Body Politic, et al.) the inhabitants of the Infernal Sphere, (PROSE: T.memeticus: A Morphology) and the People. (PROSE: Dead Romance, et al.) The Houses also allied with the Gabrielideans at the start of the War. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
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The Enemy of the Great Houses was a constantly shifting force with a myriad of identites and aspects, (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, et al.) many of which came from Earth. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two, Cobweb and Ivory, T.memeticus: A Morphology, et al.)
Although the conflict was primarily between the Time Lords and the Enemy, other powers became heavily involved as they sought to either evade or exploit the War. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War)
Faction Paradox's stance proved the most opportunistic and changeable. At times they over-ambitiously launched direct attacks on the Great Houses (PROSE: The Book of the War), at times attempted more subtle subversion of their activities (PROSE: Interference - Book One) and eventually found themselves negotiating to be reinstated as a House on the Homeworld. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play, Body Politic)
The Remote were perhaps even more unpredictable; their anarchistic nature utterly committed them to the overthrow of whichever the dominant power was at any given time. They were also unbound from linearity, resulting in Remote members like Compassion interacting with people from before the start of the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Interference - Book One, et al.)
From what they assumed was the safe vantage point of non-existence, the god-like Celestis treated the War as a game, sometimes interfering on the Homeworld's behalf and sometimes supplying the Enemy with weaponry. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War)
The posthuman Blood Coteries played an active role in the War, sometimes stealthily working against the Great Houses. (AUDIO: Movers, A Labyrinth of Histories, PROSE: Newtons Sleep) Being the only known producer of praxis, the Pilots' Coterie allied with House Xianthellipse. (PROSE: The Book of the War) However, various other posthuman groups allied themselves with the Enemy (PROSE: The Book of the War, Cobweb and Ivory) — the Silversmiths' Coterie's Ashla shock-troops resembled Enemy soldiers described in the Rivera Manuscript. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Meanwhile, the Chance Coteries made a deal with Faction Paradox to establish temporal defences that kept them safe from the War. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)
A Yssgaroth-infected relic of the previous War in Heaven, the Mal'akh experienced a rise in power as a reflection of the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Some Mal'akh worshipped Sutekh of the Osirian Court. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities)
Following her transformation into a TARDIS, (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) Compassion acted as an independant force in the War (PROSE: The Book of the War, The Brakespeare Voyage, AUDIO: Sabbath Dei, et al.) and eventually became the City of the Saved. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved..., Salutation) Grandfather Halfling often left the City of the Saved to participate in the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Daleks participated in the War; while Homunculette saw them as "mindless biomechanoids with speech impediments", (PROSE: Alien Bodies) some thought they were a potential identity of the Enemy. (PROSE: The Book of the Enemy)
Other species in the War included Sontarans, (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, PROSE: Alien Bodies, et al.) Krotons, Metatraxi, Cybermen, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Voord, (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Interference - Book Two) Ogrons, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) Delphon, (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) Krittikiki, giant arachnids, (PROSE: Life-Cycle) Earth Reptiles, Venusians, the sentient trees of the Greenworld, (PROSE: T.memeticus: A Morphology) and Symbiotes. (PROSE: A Story of the Peace)
Other groups in the War included the Seventh Son of the Seventh Sun, the Ladies of the Blue Dawn, (PROSE: Life-Cycle) and the herdsmen of Klasterhaus. (PROSE: Now or Thereabouts)
Technology and development
Time Lords from a later stage of the war did not have humanoid form. Only the 'Generals' had totally humanoid forms.
Type 102 TARDISes and War TARDISes were in full use by the War. 102s were used by Time Lord agents whilst War TARDISes were utilised by Time Lords on missions. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Taking of Planet 5)
The Book of the War purported to be an encyclopedia of the War's first fifty years, which stated most of the weapons used during the conflict were conceptually-based, such as the conceptual entities, (PROSE: The Book of the War) but others held that history books were anachronisms, since the forces that shaped the universe were inconceivable. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)
Behind the scenes
- Lawrence Miles originally intended for the War to remain indeterminably far in the Doctor's future, like Merlin or the Valeyard.[1][2]
- Two different unproduced Eighth Doctor novels would have explored the Daleks' role in the War in Heaven. In Lance Parkin's Enemy of the Daleks, the Daleks would have been (fallaciously) convinced that they would become the Enemy, and their descendants the Klade would have been shown to be part of an Enemy-fighting alliance led by the Doctor's father.[3] In Lawrence Miles' Valentine's Day, the Eighth Doctor would have retired due to the biodata virus he received in Interference - Book Two, and in his absence the Daleks would have grown into a massive power threatening even the Time Lords.[4]
- In Lawrence Burton's The Time Wrestlers, published in Obverse Books' charity anthology A Target for Tommy, the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Señor 105 faced agents of the Great Houses. This story referenced the paradox virus in the Doctor's biodata.
Naming
While we have deemed "War in Heaven" the most accurate and straightforward, there exist multiple competing names for the conflict.
- The War: In Alien Bodies, the conflict between the Time Lords and their enemy was introduced as just "the war", without any capitalisation. This lowercase improper title was used until The Ancestor Cell, which first called it "the War". "The War" is by far the most common title for the conflict in the Faction Paradox series, as most of the stories are set during it.
- Great Time Lord War: While advertising the then-upcoming Interference on the Internet, Lawrence Miles referred to the war he had introduced in Alien Bodies, and which he (correctly) teased might reappear in Interference, as the Great Time Lord War. However, this name did not appear in the finished draft, and unsurprisingly has not appeared in any later works due to most late War-in-Heaven-related stories being told without the license to the term "Time Lord".
- War in Heaven: Alien Bodies introduced this alternative title for the War, saying, "The off-worlders liked to think of it as a War in Heaven, all hellfire and thunder." This title would later be used in This Town Will Never Let Us Go, Of the City of the Saved..., Warlords of Utopia, Warring States, and Newtons Sleep, as well as the publisher's summary for The Eleven Day Empire, a note in the comic Political Animals, and the standard preface in every Mad Norwegian Press Faction Paradox novel before Erasing Sherlock. It was also used in the AHistory guidebooks published by Mad Norwegian. Though the title has been used less frequently in Obverse Books' Faction Paradox stories, it did appear in several stories: The Brakespeare Voyage; T.memeticus: A Morphology and Life-Cycle from The Book of the Enemy; A Farewell to Arms, War During Peacetime, The Story So Far..., and A Prelude to a Prelude in The Book of the Peace; and Michael Drake from Obverse's Iris Wildthyme series.
- Second War in Heaven: The Book of the War used the phrase "War in Heaven" to describe the War, but it also suggested that the Yssgaroth wars could be seen as a "first great War in Heaven", and it mentioned Homeworlder speculations that "only some kind of outside corruption could result in a Second War in Heaven." However, the title "Second War in Heaven" specifically was never applied to the Houses' current war, and the next sentences immediately discredited the Homeworlders' theory (and, with it, the "Second War in Heaven" appellate).
Connections with other Doctor Who stories
- Several stories about the War recontextualised Doctor Who stories as anachronistic encounters with the conflict.
- Classic televised stories Pyramids of Mars, Image of the Fendahl, and The Brain of Morbius became direct aftermaths of major War- or War-preparation-related events, while The Talons of Weng-Chiang became a tangential accident related to War affairs.
- Interference - Book One stated that the Order of the Black Sun, the Order of the Rectangle, and the Luminus were created by Faction Paradox, rooting the stories 4-D War, The Plotters, and Tragedy Day in the events of the War in Heaven.
- Warlords of Utopia referenced Doctor Who and the Iron Legion several times, implying the Fourth Doctor comic story was actually an aftermath of the War events of that novel.
- Most dramatically, The Book of the War hinted that the Doctor's renegade nature was caused by "retroshocks" of the War, casting the conflict's shadow over the narrative of the entire Doctor Who franchise.
- In his notes for The Quantum Archangel (later published in the charity publication Shelf Life), Craig Hinton asserted that chaos was spread through the Six-Fold-Realm of the Guardians and Eternals during the Sixth Doctor's lifetime by an upcoming "shift in reality" caused by the future "Time Lord/Faction Paradox/Enemy War." While this detail was not directly stated in the published novel, The Quantum Archangel did feature the War when the Doctor briefly became trapped in an alternate timeline where the Enemy was the Daleks. Hinton's original notes became the backbone plot points of the charity novel Time's Champion, which also asserted that the Sixth Doctor's regeneration and his successor's role as Time's Champion occurred in response to this future "shift", once again retroactively casting the War's shadow over an entire corner of the franchise.
- In series 1 of Doctor Who, the statements about the Doctor's destruction of Gallifrey in a time war lined up with the War in Heaven arc of the Eighth Doctor novels. However, Russell T Davies clarified in DWM 356 that, though fans were free to invent their own interpretations, the BBC's merchandise regulations meant that there could be no official connection between the Time War of the novels and the Time War of the television show, which was later named the Last Great Time War.
- A few days later, the episode Dalek established that the Time Lords' enemy in this Time War was in fact the Daleks. While the War in Heaven's ambiguous enemy was shown to be the Daleks in an alternate timeline in The Quantum Archangel, the possibility was implicitly precluded in the War's first appearance in Alien Bodies, and the Faction Paradox stories We Are the Enemy and Pre-narrative Briefings would later rebuke the potential identification.
- On the other hand, within the reference book AHistory, Lance Parkin would presuppose the War in Heaven was either the same as, or was another facet of, the Last Great Time War, with the events of The Daleks being dubbed Last Contact. Later, Russell T. Davies' short story Doctor Who and the Time War featured a mention of "Gallifrey Original", calling back to the War in Heaven concept of the Nine Gallifreys.
- In the 2020 anthology The Wintertime Paradox, the War in Heaven and Faction Paradox were referenced in licensed Doctor Who for the first time since the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures. When author Dave Rudden was asked if the War in Heaven was "a never-was timeline, another version of the Last Great Time War, [or] still way off in the Doctor's future", he answered that it was "all of these and none of these", explaining that in his opinion the War should always "defy explanation".[5]
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Lawrence Miles (28 May 2000). The "Last Ever" Interview. Menace The Miles. Archived from the original on 4 February 2003.
- ↑ Philip Purser-Hallard (20 August 2012). Re: Rate 36. The Ancestor Cell. Gallifrey Base. Retrieved on 10 December 2018. “The Time Lord War was never meant to be something which actually happened in the EDA range -- it was part of the Doctor's distant future, like Merlin or the Valeyard, and could have been kept there indefinitely if the editors had shown wiling.”
- ↑ Lance Parkin. The Day of the Daleks conference proceedings.
- ↑ Lawrence Miles (11 March 2001). 64 Thousand-Dollar Questions. The Complete Lawrence Miles. Archived from the original on 1 March 2005.
- ↑ Dave Rudden (17 October 2020). Hi, I'm Dave Rudden, AMA!. r/DoctorWho. “I like the idea of the War in Heaven always existing, like a sunrise on the horizon, sometimes closer, sometimes further, but I think it should always defy explanation.”
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