Faction Paradox
- You may be looking for the eponymous book and audio series.
Faction Paradox, often simply shortened to "the Faction" and once known as House Paradox, was a time-active cult and criminal syndicate devoted to opposing the Time Lords' traditional philosophy of rationality and stability over time travel. Originally founded by Grandfather Paradox as a renegade Great House, they were based in the Eleven-Day Empire and notably inducted members of the lesser species into their ranks. They played a neutral role in the War in Heaven between the Time Lords and the enemy. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Book of the War, et al.)
Most Time Lords - including the Doctor - dreaded the Faction. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Iris Wildthyme described the Faction as "paradox-inducing psychopaths from the far future", a sentiment that was attributed to the book Doctor Who and Interference, (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) and "insolent children playing at being cultists, messing about with their shadows, and tying their timelines into impractical knots". (PROSE: Panda and the Airship) Timon, the Vice President of Gallifrey, merely said the Faction had no interest in the arts. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
History
Origins
Grandfather Paradox, a member of the House of Lungbarrow, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) seceded and created House Paradox about four hundred years before the War in Heaven. The House was unpopular for their penchant for death fetishism (which mocked the Great Houses' pretension of immortality) and due to members' use of familial terms like "Grandfather" (disdainful, since the Great Houses had been made sterile by the anchoring of the thread). Most offensive, though, was the House's open interest in perverting the Web of Time. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Doctor was in his fourth incarnation when he first started hearing rumours from Gallifrey about House Paradox. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
After the Grandfather founded the Eleven-Day Empire with the Gregorian Compact, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) he was arrested and imprisoned on the Time Lords' prison planet. However, he was released during the crisis surrounding the Carnival Queen (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) and seceded House Paradox from the rest of Great House society, abandoning the Homeworld and adopting the mantle of "Faction". They began recruiting members from the lesser species, becoming a cult on many planets. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Shortly after the Gregorian Compact, leaders of the Faction hid a collection of race banks, remembrance tanks, and biodata codices in a shrine in the ruins of Civita. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust)
After President Romana reconciled Gallifrey with the Sisterhood of Karn, lifting the Curse of Pythia, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) the Book of Lies said that, from within his tomb, the disgusted "Great Grey Eminence" made a deal with Faction Paradox to fold the Doctor's timeline back on itself and return Gallifreyan history to passionless sterility. The Faction agreed to do this in order to teach the Eminence the ways of paradox. (PROSE: Unnatural History)
The Seventh Doctor encountered Faction Paradox near the end of his life. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) In his time, he thought of the Faction as a nuisance, obsessed with symbols, ritual, and breaking the rules. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Before the War
Around fifty years before the War in Heaven, the Faction began acting as a criminal organisation on Dronid and around the universe. By twelve years before the War, they were freely peddling time travel technology to the lesser species. They also chose a homeworld for themselves, (PROSE: The Book of the War) which they thought their blood rites would protect from the Time Lords.
However, the High Council wiped out most of the homeworld, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) as well as the Faction colonies on Dronid and elsewhere, ten years before the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Cousin Shuncucker was one of the few survivors, and she carried Grandfather Paradox's shadow. (AUDIO: A Labyrinth of Histories)
The leaders of Faction Paradox escaped to the Eleven-Day Empire, which became a community for the first time. The Faction began infiltrating cultures to create the Remote. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Ice Lord agents of the Faction on New Mars notified the elders of the Eleven-Day Empire of I.M. Foreman's Travelling Show. The Faction analysed I.M. Foreman's biodata and learned that he would eventually become an ecosystem. The Remote were programmed to keep watch for I.M. Foreman and inform the Faction if they found the planet which Foreman would eventually overtake, something which wouldn't happen until many years later. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
Early in the War
Needs more info from Unnatural History, Interference, Newtons Sleep
At an early point in the War, 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. (PROSE: Holding Pattern)
From the Eleven-Day Empire, the leaders of the Faction decided to adjust their tactics and become more subtle in their interference with the lesser species, in the hopes of avoiding notice of the Great Houses. (PROSE: The Book of the War) They began to set up voodoo cults and secret societies throughout the universe, including the Order of the Rectangle, the Cult of the Black Sun and the Luminus.
During this process, they encountered an Earth colony on the edge of human space in the 26th century where the inhabitants were all heavily connected to a medianet. The Faction, noticing that the celebrities of this world were not unlike the loa, infiltrated this medianet and primed it with their ideology, creating the first Remote. The High Council noticed and destroyed the colony, but the Faction rescued some followers from the planet, sending some off by themselves but bringing most to Anathema.
The Faction hoped the Remote would be their front-line shock troops and would help them destroy the High Council, (PROSE: Interference - Book One) but after a military failure on Simia KK98 in the second year of the War, the Faction implemented the Viewers and Listeners Protocols and set the Remote free. They also began Remote experiments in the Native American warrior tribes.
After Devonire failed to reconcile the Great Houses with Faction Paradox in the sixth year of the War, the Second Wave of the House Military began a campaign of sterilisation against Faction project-worlds and permanently severing the Faction's contact with the Remote. Only the Eleven-Day Empire stayed secure, but even there discontent began to rise; building off of this, Cousin Anastasia founded the Thirteen-Day Republic in the War's eighth year. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
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
As such, 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)
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)
Father Self subverted all of House Dvora's efforts to alter Earth's history by inspiring 16th century philosopher Giordano Bruno to become Pope, instead inspiring Bruno to rebel from Dvora's guidance. Self later integrated Bruno into the Remote of Anathema. (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)
Rebuilding
Needs more info from The Book of the War, This Town Will Never Let Us Go, Warring States, A Story of the Peace
In year 14, the Star Chamber attacked the Empire with their analytical engine. As a result, much of the Eleven-Day Empire had to be rebuilt, and with it, Faction Paradox began its own slow rebuilding, focusing more on weapons research than defiance against the Houses. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Encountering Bernice Summerfield while stranded on 19th century Earth with some Cwejen, Straxus wondered if she was a member of the Faction. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel)
Faction Hollywood attained some notoriety in the years of the War where the Faction kept quiet, eventually leading the Great Houses to send Chris Cwej to put a stop to their activity. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Around the War's 40th year, Faction Paradox returned to being a major power, 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)
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)
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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)
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)
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. Triphis used iconography reminiscent of standard Faction practises. (PROSE: Playing for Time)
The Faction had minor involvement in the war between the Empire of Empires and the Greater German Reich. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)
In the ruins of the 22nd century Dalek invasion, Homogeny and Hegemony sought to regain their permanence and join the "Empire". They tried convincing Izzy Ring to kill "Caroline" and create a paradox that would please their superiors. However, this did not go to plan. (PROSE: A Star's View of Caroline)
Involvement with the Doctor
Needs more info from Unnatural History, Interference - Book One, and Interference - Book Two
Fifty years after the start of the War during the Cataclysm on Dronid, while the Corporation occupied the capitol, Faction Paradox tried to rebuild its powerbase in the smaller towns surrounding it, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) though the Mission there was far more concerned with ritual observance and collecting leftover time technology. It took the Faction's culture to religious extremes, often converting the desperate of Dronid. The Eleven-Day Empire sometimes sent new Faction recruits to serve their apprenticeship at the Mission. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Sanjira led the Mission when the Relic was discovered there; however, he didn't realise its importance and had seventeen-year-old Little Sister Justine dematerialise it into the Vortex. For sacrificing this important biodata, a spirit punished Sanjira by forcing him to kill his younger self. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Little Sister Justine was returned from the Dronid mission-house to the Eleven-Day Empire to become a protege of the Godfathers. (PROSE: The Book of the War) In her initiation ceremony to become Cousin, she chose a sword as her shadow-weapon and broke Faction tradition by choosing to not change her name. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) Subsequently, she was sent with Little Brother Manjuele to the mid-21st century to reacquire the Relic at Mr Qixotl's auction. The Eighth Doctor was able to hi-jack the Faction's Shrine, which was essentially a proto-TARDIS, and use it to destroy the Krotons before tricking the attendees at the auction into believing that the Relic had become a temporal paradox, setting up a scenario where it appeared that the Doctor had become an agent for the Celestis in his eighth incarnation when the Relic only became an agent just before his death. After failing to retrieve the Relic, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Cousin Justine returned to the Eleven-Day Empire. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
Destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire
Fifty-two years into the War, the Sontarans invaded the Eleven-Day Empire, planted a fusion bomb in the Stacks, and stole the Faction's biodata codices. Godfather Morlock guided Justine to pick up the fusion bomb with her shadow; when it exploded, her shadow was destroyed, and Morlock granted her a replacement by helping her pick up the knife of the Act of Severance, which gave her Grandfather Paradox's shadow. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
Subsequently, Lolita consumed the Eleven-Day Empire, killing all members of Faction Paradox who resided there, with the exceptions of Justine and Eliza, who escaped in a timeship. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) Cousins Shuncucker (AUDIO: Movers) and Belle also lived after the destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire. (PROSE: Panda and the Airship)
Cousin Isabella said there were several different versions of how the Faction was wiped out, but she was the only survivor. (PROSE: Spinning Jenny) Likewise, Justine and Eliza believed themselves to be the "last of their kind". (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) However, the film Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom apparently foretold Lolita's consumption of the Empire and predicted that Godfather Sabbath would also survive. (PROSE: The Book of the War) In addition, a handful of low-ranking members of the Faction made their way to the Shadow Spire, where the rebel Godfather Auteur had been exiled. Under the joint leadership of Auteur and the Spirekeepers, they formed a splinter of the Faction called the Family of the Shadow Spire. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice)
Justine and Eliza turned to 1762 Europe for new blood, (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei, COMIC: Political Animals) hoping to be recognised as diplomats due to the relative recency of the Gregorian Compact. There, they took sanctuary with the Order of Saint Francis at Medmenham and became uneasy allies with Mary Culver against Lolita. (AUDIO: Sabbath Dei)
Justine and Eliza eventually forged an alliance with the Osirian Court to neutralise the threats of both the demented Sutekh and of House Lolita. Sutekh's and Lolita's fates were to be bound for eternity within an Osiran pyramid, never to be released. (AUDIO: The Judgment of Sutekh) During this process, the War King attempted to reintroduce the Faction to the High Council as House Paradox, (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities) and Cousin Eliza became Horus. (AUDIO: Body Politic)
The Family of the Shadow Spire had their own plan to restore the Faction to power, which intersected with the fallout from the fight between Sutekh and Horus: having learned that the sarcophagus imprisoning Apep had been mislaid during the conflict, they sent their surviving Skulltroopers to Cratosi to recover it, hoping to resurrect Apep and bind him to the Family. Auteur had his own agenda, intending to backstab the Spirekeepers at the last moment and merge with Apep to become a godlike entity. However, Apep refused to comply with anybody's schemes whatsoever and instead wreaked havoc on Kratoam before being erased from existence by Intrepid, Gustav and Kifah, three surviving members of the Family, who subsequently broke off from the Faction altogether and escaped in Cortalian's timeship. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice)
Ultimately, Faction Paradox was reborn in earnest. 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)
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)
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)
Faction invasion of Gallifrey
Coming from the destruction of the Eleven-Day Empire in the War's past and bringing with them a piece of the Eleven-Day Empire and a "false" Grandfather Paradox, (PROSE: The Story So Far...) a version of the Faction, of which Mathara was a prominent figure, existed in the far future near the end of the War as an army to fight the Time Lords. They were led by a manifestation of Grandfather Paradox created due to the Third Doctor's infection with the biodata virus. (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. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The Faction attacked Gallifrey with their skulltroopers and Uncles. Since they had come from the future, they already knew how they would win this battle, and they were nearly impossible to fight. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) The Faction successfully took the Capitol by force. They resurrected Greyjan the Sane using a remembrance tank and had him take Romana III'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)
The Faction Paradox warfleet crumbled out of the Spiral Politic, but survived as clockwork temporal viruses. (PROSE: The Story So Far..., Anachrophobia)
After the War
A few members of the Faction, led by Mother Francesca, survived the end of the War and attempted to rebuild the Faction in London, 1774. (COMIC: Political Animals) Other survivors, the Clock-People, embedded themselves on Gallifraxion Four under the leadership of Carvil. (PROSE: Out of the Box)
Before his wedding to Juliette, the Eighth Doctor sent invitations to thirteen groups who he believed possessed pieces of an ancient knowledge scattered throughout humanity. The handwriting on one of the letters was illegible. Nonetheless, representatives from the organisation attended the wedding, arriving on horseback. One group was dressed as skeletons. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
At some point, a group of Faction members organised a huge ritual in 2021 London to steal the hours lost by all Londoners to daylight savings. Cousin Perdix was a member of this mission. Maxie Masters of P.R.O.B.E. came close to uncovering the Faction's plans, having detected the anomalies caused by their presence using her time detector, but the Faction simply altered history to remove the device from Maxie's possession before she'd used it to pick up their traces, and the Faction's plans thus proceeded without the knowledge or interference of P.R.O.B.E. (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings)
Return of the forgotten faction
He's Behind You (short story), Visiting Hours (TWP short story), A Perfect Christmas (short story), The Paradox Moon (short story)
The Thirteenth Doctor thought that most of Faction Paradox had left the universe far behind before the Last Great Time War began. (PROSE: The Paradox Moon)
After declaring himself the Time Lord Victorious on Bowie Base One, (TV: The Waters of Mars) the Tenth Doctor travelled through the Time Fracture to the Dark Times, where he decided to change history by stopping the Kotturuh from introducing death to the universe. (PROSE: The Knight, The Fool and The Dead) As a result of this change, fragments of dead timelines began to fall into the universe; in 2044, Anke Von Grisel opened the Verbier Museum of the Impossible to display some of these artifacts, in spite of repeated warnings from different incarnations of the Doctor, including the Curator, that keeping them close together might cause a tear in reality and let something through.
One exhibit was two masks which arrived with the description, "Worn by a long-forgotten cult who worshipped impossibility and contradiction." On Christmas Day, the Curator called Anke and apologised for "open[ing] a door" and "let[ting] something in," and the wearers of the masks appeared. (PROSE: Canaries) These figures, Siblings Different and Same, set out to kill the Doctor in revenge for ending the Time War. (PROSE: The Paradox Moon)
In the City of the Saved
Needs more info from The Book of the War, Of the City of the Saved..., A Hundred Words from a Civil War, Unification Theory
- Main article: Rump Parliament (Of the City of the Saved...)
In the City of the Saved, the main Faction Paradox body was the Rump Parliament. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Of the City of the Saved...)
Undated events
Faction Paradox travelled back in time to participate in the Millennium War. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
Iris Wildthyme and the Shopkeeper encountered the Faction during their travels. (PROSE: Wildthyme and the Wolf)
Technology
The Faction used a brand of technology which openly mocked the laws of reality, being apparently powered by a form of voodoo rather than any actual form of physics. They used a variety of travel technology, from time-travelling shrines mocking the basic structure of a TARDIS to massive warships converted from the skeletal remains of Dæmons.
Incapable of reproducing themselves, the Faction tried to use a form of loom to create new members. While they did use the technology, it was eventually eschewed in favour of remembrance tanks and new converts rather than outright creating new acolytes. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
Godfather Morlock, one of the Faction's scientist thaumaturges, created devices such as the Tracking Knife, used to read the future in the entrails of animals, and the biodata virus, a repugnant creation designed to alter the timeline of the infectee so their biodata interpreted them as having been a Faction operative since before the infection. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Society
Philosophy
Faction Paradox heavily emphasised the worship of Death and Family, both of which the Great Houses had discarded to more closely resemble gods. Paradoxes were created indiscriminately and only served to exacerbate the conflict between the Homeworld and the Faction. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Maxie Masters viewed the Faction as an "evil cult", (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings) while the "Jane Fonda" Iris believed the Faction acted like misbehaving children who played at being a cult. (PROSE: Panda and the Airship)
Members were sometimes known as "Factionals". (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) One of their most blatant abuses of their time technology was a part of their induction rites, in which the inductee was sent in time to kill an ancestor before they had the chance to sire the descendant they came from. This created a living paradox out of the convert, making him or her harder to kill by time-based attacks. (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Thirteenth Doctor also noted they chased after paradoxes, (PROSE: The Paradox Moon) and Iris believed their willingess to twist their own timelines "into knots" was another reason the Faction acted like children. (PROSE: Panda and the Airship)
As part of their "familial" structure, the titles in the Faction were related to family titles, such as Little Brother, Little Sister, Cousin, Mother, Father, Godfather, and Godmother. The elder titles, naturally, were reserved for the senior or most experienced members. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Inductees into the Faction from the lesser species renounced their former species for the sake of the family. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) The War King said that most members did not belong to the Homeworld by blood right, but they'd been adopted by House Paradox and given the inherent advantages of all members of the Great Houses, so they were equal to even the members of the War Council. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities)
Mantra
Cousin Justine would occasionally repeat this mantra or prayer as a concentration aid to help her achieve manual tasks like opening locks.
Bloodline to bloodline, in constant transition.
Our pattern, our flesh, and our one restoration.
Conception, completion, the will of the city.
Grandfather watch me. Spirits maintain me.
After the downfall of the Eleven-Day Empire, those Faction-members who fled to the Shadow Spire, becoming the splinter group known as the Family of the Shadow Spire, replaced the words "the city" with "the Family". (PROSE: The Story So Far...)
In the City of the Saved, the Rump Parliament adapted the mantra to better suit their environment. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...)
Bloodline from bloodline we smuggle our cargo.
His pattern, his flesh, in a human imago.
Defying stagnation, the will of the City.
Grandfather watch me. Spirits have pity.
Behind the scenes
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- Creator Lawrence Miles said, about the Faction: "I think maybe the name can be a bit distracting. The point of Faction Paradox is that it's a criminal-terrorist organisation, it uses all the death-and-biomass imagery in the same way that voodoo cults and pirate cells used the skull and crossbones, it's a way of making a point rather than being the point in itself. ... The name Paradox was chosen just because it was so obviously going to be offensive to the Time Lord hierarchy, it wasn't meant to suggest that the Faction's particularly interested in time paradoxes, as such."[1]
- The Faction made its live-action debut in the form of a brief short contained within the home video short Ex-President, which was released on P.R.O.B.E. Case Files - Volume 2 (after being involved in the plot of another short, Daylight Savings, without appearing in live-action footage themselves). However, members of the Faction were originally meant to have a larger live action role within the planned short Faction Paradox, which would have revealed the members of the Faction featured throughout P.R.O.B.E. Case Files - Volume 2 were post-War stragglers. This video was never produced after James Hornby cut ties with BBV Productions.[2]
Footnotes
- ↑ Outpost Gallifrey Interview
- ↑ Aristide Twain (9 March 2022). Eight "Lost" BBV Projects. Aristide Twain on Tumblr.
External links
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