The Iytean Menace (game)

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The Iytean Menace was the first of the seven standalone fiction modules released as books by FASA as tie-ins to The Doctor Who Role Playing Game. The book included a basic Plot Synopsis, as well as more detailed breakdowns of various stages of the adventure (including a prologue and epilogue written in full narrative prose, and scene breakdowns in "The Adventure" and "Gamemaster's Notes"), and background on the various characters and other worldbuilding elements.

The story was a riff on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with it being suggested that Henry Jellicoe was the inspiration behind Robert Louis Stevenson's fictionalised Henry Jekyll. His villainous alter-ego was here not an alternative personality split off from his own conscience, but actually a malevolent alien symbiont trying to fully take possession of his body — the titular Iytean "Menace", who used the alias of "Ned Hines" instead of "Edward Hyde".

Publisher's summary

Danger stalked the street…

Out in the fog-shrouded night of Victorian London, an evil force was lurking, waiting to strike. A senseless murde,r over a strange artifact, was only the very beginning of the terror of The Iytean Menace. What was the ancient evil, and how had it been awakened? Where would it strike next?

The Time Lord and his Companion had been sent to the capital of Queen Victoria's realm to learn the source of a strange weapon that should never have been on Earth at all. What they found was a web of mystery and deception that led them, step by step, to a confrontation with The Ytean menace.

Plot

Introductory Story

In 1883, a pair of thieves, Jack Bannister and Bert Jenkins, are endeavouring to dig their way up to the Capital and Counties Bank. While digging under Oxford Street, they are baffled when they blunt their tools against a hard metal object, which turns out to be the hull of a buried space-ship. Reasoning that its original crew must be long dead, they soon resolve to start smuggling technological devices from it to the surface and sell them to rich collectors — little suspecting that a living Iytean in a stasis pod is very much alive. Jenkins accidentally opens the pod and allows the Iytean, a symbiont whose own form is a mere "three pounds of protoplasm", to forcibly bond with him. Though it soon realises that this new host is intelligent, a great taboo in Iytean culture, it is undeterred, having in fact been a criminal whose imprisonment in the pod was due to having attempted to break that selfsame taboo centuries ago and use its doubled mental powers to take over the Prime World.

The Summons

The Time Lord Rollo, a part-time agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, receives a psychic summons ordering him to set a course for Gallifrey at once for a briefing. There, he meets with the Agency's veteran expert on Earth, Lady Rowella. She explains that another C.I.A. agent stationed in the 1980s discovered an heirloom in the home of a Royal Navy officer named Fraser which seemed to be an alien energy weapon. Having ascertained that the 1980s Fraser inherited it from his great-great-granduncle, Colonel Malcolm Fraser, who died in 1885. Thus, the adventurers are dispatched to the West End to investigate the apparent alien interference on Earth, and ensure that it is resolved without derailing Earth's established timeline.

Encounter with Fraser

Making their way into Colonel Fraser's house — either through the front door or surreptitiously — they find themselves confronted with the Colonel himself, who, it transpires, believes the four energy weapons he bought from a shifty man named Bannister to be Atlantean in origin. He discloses that Bannister was introduced to him by his old friend and fellow collector of the strange, the politician Sir Reginald Carruthers, with whom he has not spoken in some time; they fell out after a few artefacts went missing from Carruthers's collection and he accused Fraser of having stolen them. Determined to speak with Carruthers to get a hold of Bannister, the time-travellers leave the Fraser household, unaware that they are being followed back to their TARDIS by the Colonel's teenaged granddaughter Julia.

The Colonel's Granddaughter

After seeing the time-travellers entering the TARDIS, she knocks on its door, undeterred by its unlikely circuit. She explains that she fears for her grandfather's sanity; since learning that one of the energy weapons really works, a few months ago, he has been spiraling out into paranoia at the thought of others stealing his discovery, and has even implied that he is considering using the weapon himself to establish a reign of terror over London and bring "order" to the world — with only the thought that Jack Bannister might have a stash of other weapons with which to oppose him staying his hand. The time-travellers agree to try and help the Colonel if they can, and to keep her informed of what they discover; in turn she promises to come back to them if she learns anything more from her grandfather.

Murder on Regent Street

Just as they were about to visit Reginald Carruthers, the time-travellers learn from a newspaper seller that he has just been murdered by a short man with superhuman strength who broke into his study and savagely beat him to death. Carruthers died a few minutes after the intruder fled, repeating the phrase "I don't know where they are" without further elaboration. When they get to the Carruthers house on Regent Street, it is crawling with policemen under the leadership of the unhelpful Inspector James Newcombe, but the adventurers eventually make their way to the dead man's son Thomas Carruthers. Though reluctant to speak at length, he shares his suspicion that the murderer was the same individual who really committed the robbery of which his father had accused Colonel Fraser, and whom Thomas had spied once before, acquiring two ampoules of chemicals Sir Reginald had previously bought from Bannister. Thomas is adamant that this man, whoever he was, was neither Fraser nor Doctor Henry Jellicoe, the only other suspect, to whom Sir Reginald had entrusted a sample of the chemicals for study on a prior occasion.

Further investigations

The time-travellers regroup and decide how to carry on with their investigation, with the main leads being Henry Jellicoe, the Carruthers, or Colonel Fraser. However, whatever course they choose, it becomes increasingly apparent that nothing will be resolved until they find Jack Bannister and Bert Jenkins, who remain "quite out of reach". If they elect to investigate the Carruthers, this puts them further at odds with Inspector Newcombe.

Doctor Jellicoe

One of the primary persons of interest, Henry Jellicoe inevitably becomes central to the time-travellers' investigations. Though enjoying a good reputation as a brilliant and compassionate chemist and psychiatrist, he has become more reclusive of late, and should the adventurers force their way into his home on Wimbole Street, even his incredibly loyal staff, led by butler Reynolds, will have no clue as to his whereabouts. Often seen prowling around Jellicoe's laboratory — a building distinct from the main house, usually kept locked — is a mysterious, short, slightly-hunchbacked man named Ned Hines who has a "bestial" temper and refuses to talk with anyone. Though the Time Lords in the party are unaffected, humans feel a sense of innate revulsion in his presence, akin to a groundless conviction that Hines is utterly evil. He never seems to spend more than seven or eight hours away from the building, and is impossible to tail usefully, seeming to always know when he is being followed and leading would-be pursuers on pointless journeys through the seedier parts of town.

A Visit From Bannister and Jenkins

Eventually, Jack Bannister and Bert Jenkins reemerge and visit Malcolm Fraser, who discusses matters with them in the basement of his house. This becomes known to the time-travellers, either through their own observation of the house or through Julia Fraser, who eavesdropped on the conversation and, after the villains left the house, followed them all the way to their lair (a small dockside warehouse).

The Meeting

One way or the other, the time-travellers thus learn or observe the contents of the conversation between the Colonel and the criminals. It transpires that they are eager to sell more "priceless Atlantean artefacts" to him, but despite Bannister's smooth sales-pitch, the Colonel is unimpressed with the trinkets he presents, and makes them a counter-offer: if they will give him their entire stock of artefacts, he will make them fantastically rich, and also reveal what he has discovered by experimenting on the guns. The crooks are hesitant, and ask for a little time to consider the offer, leaving after giving Fraser a fake address.

The Attack

The following night, the Fraser house is attacked by Ned Hines, who takes one of the Colonel's three "useless" guns (which are actually stunners which work only on living beings, hence his lack of success in training them on inanimate objects) and threatens him with it, demanding to know the whereabouts of Bannister and Jenkins. The time-travellers, who were watching the house either on their own initiative or at Julia Fraser's request, step in and break up the assault, forcing Hines to flee into the fogbound night, though not before shooting the Colonel with the gun; though sturdier humans might have survived, the Colonel is heavily weakened by the experience, and, knowing he is done for, he repents of his world-conquering ambitions and allows the time-travellers to take possession of the remaining guns. Bannister and Jenkins just so happened to be about to visit Fraser; they turn around when hearing the commotion, but are followed back to their base by the time-travellers.

Tracing the Criminals

Tailing the thieves back to their dockside warehouse lair, the time-travellers gain entry and gather what information they can, whether it be from reconnaissance, covert surveillance, or interrogating the crooks themselves.

Solving the Mystery

Eventually, either following Bannister and Jenkins or confronting them at their lair and forcing them to reveal its location, the time-travellers find the buried Iytean starship. Using information on the history and biology of the Iyteans from the computer banks in Rollo's TARDIS, they piece together its history as a police-ship belonging to the Iyteans' peacekeeping force, the Monitors. It becomes clear that after he was possessed by the escaped Iytean, Jenkins, who resisted its control, was seen by Bannister as having developed some kind of spasm or shell-shock, and was taken to the notoriously charitable Henry Jellicoe's practice — where the creature took advantage of the physician's ministrations to leave the inferior host behind and possess him instead, leaving Jenkins with no memory of the incident.

Combining the situation with the TARDIS's information on Iytean history and biology, the truth becomes clear: the criminal Iytean is a scientist who had been experimenting with the unethical possession of intelligent life-forms, and had learned how to make it easier by sapping the will of the humanoid host with a drug, the green chemical in the ampoules. Carrying its experiments further, the criminal also perfect the Iytean Change, a method for temporarily reshaping the host body to better fit the symbiont's needs. Jellicoe, who does not remember originally being possessed any more than Jenkins does, believes he simply invented a drug which allows him to shapeshift into an immoral but more enjoyable persona, "Ned Hines"; he has grown addicted to the feeling, little realising that with every time he transforms, the Iytean comes closer to being able to maintain control permanently. However, it would need complete, unmitigated control before it could afford to "bud", creating a hundred spores capable of growing into lesser duplicates of itself sharing its memories and goals, who would serve as its advance guard for a full takeover of London and, ultimately, the Earth itself. Thus, "Ned Hines" has been frantically trying to get the rest of the chemical stored in the starship so that it can finish overwhelming Jellicoe and move forward with this next stage of its plans.

Finishing their analysis of the situation, the time-travellers also find that although its power-supply holds, the ship's engines are inoperable. As such, in addition to subduing or destroying "Ned Hines" and ensuring that the remaining Iytean prisoners do not escape, they must find a way to destroy the ship to ensure it is not found again by other humans in a way that would disrupt the Time Lord-preferred course of history — something which the disintegrators still onboard the ship itself may facilitate. Other options which would prevent the killing of the defenceless Iytean prisoners still on-board would include going back in time and trying to undo the original crash altogether — although such a massive alteration to history may be beyond the skill of the time-travellers — or engineering a time loop and banishing the ship into it, out of normal-time.

The time-travellers must then decide between several courses of action, such as killing Jellicoe, attempting to trick or compel the Iytean to surrender his body so that it may be captured or killed without worrying about Jellicoe's safety, or synthetising drugs which will temporarily allow Jellicoe to resist the Iytean's will and (presumably) sacrifice himself willingly — though the last method is the most difficult, as it would necessitate feeding the drugs to Jellicoe without his knowledge lest the Iytean within him see what is being done and stop it — or else gambling that Jellicoe's own powers of will would suffice for the first few, crucial moments.

Player Options

Having decided on a plan, the time-travellers put it into action. The two main avenues for forcing a confrontation with Ed Hines include trying to confront Hines/Jellicoe in his own home, or using his desire to find Bannister and Jenkins to lure him into a trap by having an ally — whether it be the suborned crooks themselves, Julia Fraser, Thomas Carruthers, or one of Rollo's own companions — feed him a spurious tip about their location or that of the starship. If they fail to act quickly enough, however, another possible development would be Hines capturing Julia and forcing the time-travellers to reveal the location of the starship, prompting a final confrontation there.

Plot Complications

Other potential complications at the eleventh hour include Ed Hines managing to completely overpower Henry Jellicoe's will before he is confronted, or a second Iytean renegade having managed to free itself from the ship. One particular possibility in this regard might be that a stasis pod was thoughtlessly carried out of the starship by Bannister and Jenkins and sold to Malcolm Fraser, who was then possessed by the creature; not being a scientist like "Hines", this second Iytean would have no power to enact the Iytean Change, but might still have influenced Fraser's thoughts, leading him down his power-hungry path instead of this being simply his own madness. If so, the renegade's presence in his mind would mean Fraser knew the location of the buried starship all along; thus, he might be able to drive Fraser there, to "show up during a showdown and foul up all the adventurers' plans at a moment of crisis" — although the human man might then repent of the evil actions he was driven to, and sacrifice himself to destroy the Iyteans.

Tying Up Loose Ends

At any rate, once the thread of Ned Hines is ended, there remains for the time-travellers to ensure the destruction or banishment of the starship if it has not been done so already. The gun which originally drew the Celestial Intervention Agency's attention in the 1980s must also be left behind; this might be intentional on their part to maintain the causal loop, or an accident, with the gun either being an additional purchase of Fraser's which had been left behind at a summer home, or being stolen at the last moment as a keepsake by Julia Fraser, in memory of her dying, or dead, grandfather's madness and repentance.

As the time-travellers prepare to leave 1885, either or both of Julia Fraser and Thomas Carruthers may stay on as additional companions to Rollo — potentially, in Julia's case, stowing away without his consent. Another possibility, however, is that they simply run away together to get married, and move out of England, which would also account for Fraser family history losing track of Julia.

The Hunters Home From the Hill

Rollo's companions, ready to leave 1885, are waiting in his TARDIS control room for him to return from one last outing in the city. Julia Fraser, who has joined the TARDIS crew at the insistence of Verika, is sitting in "the archaic armchair in one corner of the control room", still grieving for her grandfather, the very reason why Verika thought it would do her good to leave home and find a new life in time and space.

Eventually, Rollo returns, discarding his Victorian garments (a black cape and top hat) onto the suit of armour by the TARDIS door. He explains that he ran into a "very nice fellow", a writer, and was talked into having lunch with him, obliviously discussing the adventure he'd just got done with. When he recalls that his name was Stevenson, and wonders aloud what sorts of thing the man might write, an amused Verika who's realised what just happened pulls out a copy of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, quipping: "Let's just say that truth is still stranger than fiction after all".

Other Adventures

Some time after these events, it is possible for the time-travellers to be compelled to return to Victorian London to follow through on loose ends not tied up by prior events. They might discover that Jack the Ripper, active between 1888 and 1891, is actually an innocent human vessel for another escaped Iytean criminal.

Another possibility is that they might encounter other Iyteans who survived the destruction of the Prime World and the breaking of their federation by the Anar and the Isari, "if only in isolated groups" who might be willing to resort to possession not out of megalomania, but simply as a means to survive. They might even be found in other time-periods on Earth.

Characters

References

Notes

  • Although eight possible companions for Rollo are provided, it is specified that players are not required to account for all of them in a given playthrough, with a TARDIS crew of four or five being considered more advisable. To leave possibilities as open as possible, most of the text of "the Adventure" and the Plot Synopsis refers only to plural "companions" or "adventurers" without specifying. The prose epilogue The Hunters Home from the Hill, however, definitively commits to the presence of Erin Grant and Verika onboard the TARDIS, and is narrated in the first person by an unidentified non-Time-Lord companion distinct from either. It additionally sees Julia Fraser joining the TARDIS crew after the adventure, although she is not intended as a player character in this game itself.
  • This story users the name of "the Mutters Spiral" for the Galaxy, in contrast to the usual rendition of this name as "Mutter's Spiral" (sans "the").

Continuity

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