B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (332 page)

Events on Dust in the thirty-eighth century mortally wounded Foreman’s incarnations, forcing them to regenerate and causing amnesia. They were flung through time to early Gallifrey for the original Foreman to paradoxically find.
 [38]

It took the finest minds on Gallifrey a millennium to develop time technology.
 [39]
The Doctor’s people needed “millennia” to solve the equations, and harness the necessary power, required for time travel.
 [40]

The Mastery of Time

Two Gallifreyans ensured that their people became the Lords of Time: Rassilon and Omega. Rassilon was the “greatest single figure in Time Lord history”, yet “no one really knows how extensive his powers were” and he “had powers and secrets that even we don’t understand”. To this day, the Time Lords revere Omega as their “greatest hero”, “one of the greatest of all our race”.
 [41]
Omega and Rassilon developed Validium, a “living metal” designed to be the last line of defence for Gallifrey.
 [42]
They were part of a Triumvirate, the third member of which was known as the Other to modern Time Lords.
 [43]

“Today we tend to think of Rassilon as the founder of our modern civilisation, but in his own time he was regarded mainly as an engineer and an architect. And, of course, it was long before we turned away from the barren road of technology.”
 [44]

The Time Lord Capitol and Citadel dated from the time of Rassilon and Omega, but in those days they weren’t enclosed in a dome. The Citadel was built to withstand a siege, but against which enemy had been lost to history.
 [45]
The Zero Room beneath the Capitol on Gallifrey was built by the Other.
 [46]
The Citadel of the Time Lords resided on the continent of Wild Endeavour, in the mountains of Solace and Solitude.
 [47]

Omega was a member of the High Council, the solar engineer who found and created the power source needed for time travel: the energy released by a supernova. He was lost in the explosion, and the Time Lords believed that he had been killed.
 [48]

“A long time ago, on my home planet of Gallifrey, there lived a stellar engineer called Omega. It was Omega who created the supernova that was the initial power source for Gallifreyan time-travel experiments. He left behind him the basis on which Rassilon founded Time Lord society... and he left behind the Hand of Omega. The Hand of Omega is the mythical name for Omega’s remote stellar manipulator - the device used to customise stars with. And didn’t we have trouble with the prototype...”
 [49]

One version of Omega’s history suggested that he was originally an Academy student named Peylix. He theorised that his people could gain mastery of time by exploding a star within the Sector of Lost Souls, but Peylix’s tutor, Luvis, deemed this nonsense and awarded him an “omega” grade - the lowest score attainable. The nickname “Omega” plagued Peylix, but Rassilon’s rise to power allowed him to properly implement his theories.

Peylix set out aboard the
Eurydice
to detonate a star, but his colleague Vandekirian warned that the targeted system contained sentient life. Omega proceeded anyway, and Vandekirian - trying to prevent Omega from gaining his handprint for security clearance - destroyed one of his hands in the ship’s fusion reactors. Omega cut off Vandekirian’s other hand, and used it to launch his stellar manipulator. The star exploded, killing the system’s inhabitants. Vandekirian’s hand caused an impurity in the fusion reactor and the ship exploded, consigning Omega to a universe of anti-matter.
 [50]

The Infinity Doctors

The Ice Age had led to the collapse of Gallifreyan civilisation, in the time known as the Darkness. Libraries and temples burned. Many Gallifreyans perished. The Loom-born were smaller than the Womb-born and were mortal, but they preserved the Gallifreyan genetic codes.

Nine years after the Pythia’s curse, the Elders still treated the Loom-born with disdain, viewing them a temporary solution to a problem. Rassilon and his Consortium gave everyone hope by finding the Fragment: the last surviving prophecy that spoke of Rassilon’s personal rise and how the Gallifreyans would become the Lords of Time. The Other knew that Rassilon had faked the Fragment.

Rassilon and Omega set out for Qqaba, the only surviving Population III star in the galaxy. There were two Hands of Omega. They would detonate the star, releasing time energy that would be syphoned into fuel cells. However, the stasis halo protecting Omega’s ship failed as Qqaba went supernova and Omega fell into the black hole that was forming. The crews of the surviving ships were infused with the energies. At the heart of this, Rassilon used the power of the singularity to rewrite the laws of physics across the entire universe. One effect of this, whether Rassilon knew it or not, was that Omega still lived, trapped inside the black hole.

Omega left behind a widow, a Womb-born Gallifreyan who would become known as Patience.

“Star Death”

Four Gallifreyan starbreakers moved to the star Qqaba. From the flagship
Aeon
, Jodelex and Griffen waited, safe behind Stasis Haloes that protected their ships from the primal forces. They knew that Rassilon had yet to work out how to navigate through time. Fenris, a mercenary from the future, arrived to prevent the creation of the Time Lords. He sabotaged the lead ship, condemning Omega to what seemed like certain death, but Rassilon used the power of his mind to contain the black hole, then severed Fenris’ time belt as he tried to escape. Fenris was scattered throughout eternity, and Rassilon picked up the belt containing the directional control he needed to navigate time.

The star Omega detonated was in the Constellation of Ao.
 [51]
Omega used the sunskipper
Eurydice
to reach the star he detonated, Jartus. Some scholars at the Omega Heritage Centre (a popular tour destination) think Rassilon deliberately got rid of Omega, who was more popular.
 [52]

Two members of a Council of Three - Provost Tepesh (the Prime of the Arcalian chapterhouses) and Lady Ouida, both of them vampires - allied with the Great Mother of a Sisterhood against Rassilon. The Great Mother’s assistant was Cassandra, a member of the House of Jade Dreamers. They sought to discover the secrets of Rassilon’s Foundry, but the Divergents again threatened to break through at this juncture. The Foundry was firestormed to prevent this, which wiped out the conspirators.
 [53]

“And Rassilon journeyed into the black void with a great fleet. Within the void no light would shine. And nothing of that outer nature continued in being except that which existed within the Sash of Rassilon. Now Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony which balances all things that they may neither flux, whither nor change their state in any measure, and he caused the Eye to be brought to the world of Gallifrey wherein he sealed this munificence with the Great Key. Then the people rejoiced.”
 [54]

The Doctor’s people invented black holes.
 [55]
The Gallifreyans successfully concluded the experiments, becoming the Time Lords. Mastery of Time required an unimaginably vast energy supply, which Rassilon set about acquiring
.
 [56]

Modern Time Lords believed the Eye of Harmony to be a myth, and that the Sash of Rassilon had merely symbolic importance. In reality, the Sash prevented the wearer from being sucked into a parallel universe. The Eye of Harmony was the nucleus of a black hole, from which all the power of the Time Lords devolved. “Rassilon stabilised all the elements of the black hole and set them in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of the planet.”
 [57]

Year Zero Rassilon Era is marked from the moment Rassilon activated the Eye of Harmony.
 [58]
The earliest time-travel legends say Rassilon decapitated a Great Beast, took the branching golden tree of its metathalmus and found the First Secret of Chrononambulatory Egress.
 [59]
Rassilon anchored the timeline of the universe, creating one unified history. The Antiverse was created as an equal and opposite reaction to this.
 [60]

Lungbarrow

Nine point six years after Omega was lost, Rassilon was purging anyone opposed to his regime. The Other was disgusted, and tried to get his granddaughter Susan and her nanny Mamlaurea to safety on the planet Tersurus. Susan had coined the term “TARDIS” to describe the new time ships. The Other then threw himself into the Prime Distributor that fed all the Looms. He knew he would be reborn at some point in Gallifrey’s history.

A year later, the Doctor - unknown even to him, the reincarnation of the Other - arrived from the distant future. He found Susan wandering the streets, unable to escape. She recognised him as her grandfather and they left Gallifrey together to explore the universe...

“4-D War”

“We are fighting a timewar, comrades. A war in four dimensions. A war that on our timeline hasn’t even started yet! Our enemy is in the future. We must know his identity. His reason for hating us... we must know his weaknesses!”

Twenty years after Fenris was scattered into the time vortex, Rema-Du - daughter of Jodelex and Griffen - had been training for a decade to retrieve him. At this time, the Time Lords employed the Special Executive, parahumans with unusual talents. One of them, Wardog (whose mind could withstand stresses that would reduce anyone else to insanity) partnered Rema-Du.

They entered the Vortex via a warp gate and located Fenris. He was connected to a Brainfeeler to identify the enemy. The Time Lords discovered that their enemy was from thirty thousand years in the future, a cadre of supermen called the Order of the Black Sun. A Black Sun squad - including members called Llorex, Faru-Faro and Drin - killed Fenris and the Brainfeeler, severed Wardog’s arm and vanished. The Time Lords were left unsure what they would do, if anything, to provoke such an attack.

“Black Sun Rising”

Ten years later, Rema-Du and Wardog attended talks with the Sontarans. A member of the Order of the Black Sun disrupted the gathering.

The Great Days of Rassilon

“Rassilon was the first of the Time Lords. Discovered time travel. Had a fondness for onions. Met him a couple of times. Bit of a dodgy beard, though.”
 [61]

Rassilon lived “millennia” ago.
 [62]
As President of the Time Lords, Rassilon ushered in an age of technological and political progress. The phrase “the Great Days of Rassilon” appears in the Gallifreyan book
Our Planet’s Story
, which was read by every Time Tot.
 [63]
Even races such as the Urbankans, who knew nothing of the Time Lords, had legends of Rassilon.
 [64]
Rassilon’s exploits were remembered on many planets, whose legends speak of Azaron, Razlon and Ra.
 [65]

Rassilon was credited with many scientific achievements: He created the transduction barriers surrounding Gallifrey. These prevented the unauthorised landing of a TARDIS or similar vehicle. A quantum force field also existed as a barrier against more conventional threats.
 [66]
Rassilon introduced the symbiotic nuclei - the Rassilon Imprimature - into the genetic make-up of Time Lords, allowing them to fully travel through Time.
 [67]
Rassilon also discovered the secret of temporal fission.
 [68]

Rassilon invented the Demat Gun, a weapon that required the Great Key to function. This weapon was so powerful that the Great Key was hidden from all future Presidents by successive Chancellors.
 [69]
A Time Lord Tribunal could impose the penalty of dematerialisation on other races or individuals, such as the War Lord.
 [70]

Rassilon created a servant, but she gained free will and rebelled, killing a few thousand Time Lords. Rassilon thought he’d killed Pariah - as she was now known - but she escaped to Earth in 1879. Subsequently, Rassilon created Shayde, a more loyal servant.
 [71]
A legend said that Rassilon banished the Mimic - a mindless creature that could copy concepts, but had no imagination of its own. It would reappear in sixteenth century London.
 [72]

... of Rassilon