A Shadow Over Innsmouth

October 31st found The Fallen Hour materializing on Earth circa 1930.  The location was the New England coastal region of a territory known as the United States, an isolated seaside town known as Innsmouth (Innsmouth <14, 245, 12>).  

Arrival At Innsmouth
Note the Figures in the Surf at the Base of the Lighthouse

Drawn there by curious readings--indications of advanced alien life--I set out to explore this gloomy place. What I found was a town abandoned...decaying homes, vacant churches, and empty shops.  It was as if the entire human community had simply vanished, leaving Innsmouth behind to rot.  And yet, from the moment I arrived, I felt certain I was not alone.  There was a distinct presence there...something ancient and sinister.  All my instincts told me Innsmouth had gone very, very wrong.

A Town Abandoned

As I explored, I caught glimpses along the shore of what appeared to be reptilian--or amphibious--humanoids.  At first I thought my eyes played tricks on me--engendered by the weird ambience of the community--for the figures seemed to vanish as quickly as they appeared.  But soon there was no doubt.  They were real, and watching.

Slowly I uncovered dark hints as to the fate of Innsmouth.  Outside of town I found a stone circle, with a central stone smeared in blood.  In the center of town I found a decaying shrine to some hideous sort of fish god.  I had seen depictions of this deity before, thousands of years earlier and on the opposite side of the planet.  But the cult of Dagon in 20th century America?  It was wrong and out of place.

The Shrine of Dagon

The hospital out of town was also deserted, but upstairs hidden away I found signs of human experimentation, and in the scattered notes of a local doctor, I discovered the sickening truth.  The human community of Innsmouth had taken to worshipping, and interbreeding with, the Deep Ones, an aquatic Terran species I had believed to be extinct.  Apparently, the progeny of such unions appeared human but began to evolve, later in life, into its Deep One form.  Then the individual surrendered to the call of the sea.  Apparently as the interbreeding had spread, the entire town slowly succumbed to the lure of the waves.

The Truth in the Attic

But this was not my final shock.  In the marshes outside of town, I caught sight of it.  I had heard tales of such things back on Gallifrey...a prehistoric race of titan beings known as the Old Ones.  This thing was one of their spawn, and had claimed the Deep One community as its subjects.  

The Spawn of the Old Ones

Seeing it was to late to do anything for lost Innsmouth, I returned to The Fallen Hour, both hearts pounding, and fled.

Roma

The Terrans are a remarkable species.  While I do not hold them in the regard that the Doctor apparently did, they nevertheless intrigue me.

One of the periods in their history I find most striking was between 100 BC to 300 AD on their calendar, the height of an empire based around the city of Roma.  I find it typical of the entire human paradox.  A time of advanced feats of engineering, of great strides in art, philosophy, and trade, it was nevertheless brutal, at times debauched, and often cruel.  The empire was at once open and tolerant, embracing dozens of cultures and religions, and at the same time the most tyrannical of dictatorships.  If ever you wanted to view the contrasts and contradictions that characterize the inhabitants of Terra, this is the place to do it.

I visited Roma (Roma <215, 25, 23>) recently and wandered the streets.  From the docks where I landed I made my way into the city, where immediately I discovered an elegant bath house adjacent to an arena where men were made to butcher each other, or fight lions, for the entertainment of the crowd.  Shops of all kinds lined the streets; blacksmiths and potters, clothing and art.  At the edge of the city was a great military encampment, displaying the power of the Roman Legions.

Damien Arrives at Roma

Climbing uphill, I came across the forum.  Here one finds a library, various public institutions, and the theater of Dionysus.  I sat here and watched a production of The Bacchae by a Greek named Euripides.  It is an interesting piece, if again bizarre; a god of intoxication and madness takes offense at the rudeness of a strict and sensible king, whereby the god then whips the king's female relatives into a frenzy and they tear the king apart.  One might almost think the humans are trying to say that irrationality triumphs over reason.  I suppose I shall have to mull this over awhile.

Mulling Over the Play

After the play, I climbed up to view one of the temples of their gods.  A magnificent structure, displaying the Roman and human flair for art in the midst of brutality.  

I will come again to this Roma, for a feel certain it deserves several visits.  But for now it leaves me a bit perplexed concerning these human creatures.  

 

The Zenobia Station

I have learned, recently, that other Time Lords survived...and are here in the Second Metaverse.

Apparently, from the information I have been able to gather, the Doctor himself relocated the Celestial Intervention Agency's Time Station Zenobia to this parallel continuum before the end of the Time War.  Governed by House Cerulean, Zenobia is a vast and formidable installation.  It was the setting, long ago, for one of the Doctor's own trials before being refitted and redesigned.  Now it is here, and they are here, and I cannot begin to guess what their purpose might be.

As I sit in the Library of my Capsule and write these words, I am torn.  Of course, the temptation of reconnecting with my people is powerful, but I am a renegade.  Worse, I am a soldier who abandoned his post.  How might I be regarded by them if they learned this secret?  And even if I were to be pardoned, are these Time Lords ideologically aligned with the Doctor and his schemes?  The only way to know this is to contact them.

It seems safer now to keep away, to learn what I can from a distance and watch.  If I can take their measure, if I know where they and I stand, perhaps then I can present myself to them.

How I Came To Be Here

We studied him at the Academy, of course.  How could we not?  A renegade who fled our society, broke our civilization's sacred vows of non-intervention, only to later force us to re-examine those vows and elect him our leader.  He was a complex figure and my fellow students and I were deeply divided over him.  Some revered him.  After all, for untold millennia we had been content to sit like insects frozen in amber, frozen in our timeless perfection as we looked down with detachment upon the struggles of "lesser species."  But he changed us.  He made us shake off the dust and become involved, to try and make a difference.  For this many of my peers regarded him as a sort of messiah, eager to join the Celestial Intervention Agency his influence had created in our society.  But I was never so sure.  To be frank, he frightened me.  Death and destruction were his constant companions, and as the Matrix showed, he was not above using even those closest to him to achieve his ends.  What did he really care for his people?  He had, after all, run away from us once.  In my heart, I feared where he might be leading us.

Then came the Time War.  His Time War.  The policy of intervention he had introduced to our society compelled us to enter the fray, to take on an alien race that had conquered much of the cosmos and even begun to meddle in Time.  We had a "duty" to lesser species.  We had to "stand up" for them.  We had to "save" them.  And so we fought, and we died, and our cities burned.  My friends rushed to join the Time Legions and so I, reluctantly, followed them.  I was there when the Time Lord fleet engaged the Could-Have-Been-King and the armies of Meanwhiles and Neverwheres, just a lowly foot soldier, but I was there.  I watched Time and Space come burning down around us, my friends and commanding officers annihilated.  I was there and I did the unthinkable.  Just as he had, just as the Doctor had all those centuries ago, I stole a Time Capsule and I ran.

Knowing the universe was crashing down, knowing that even the Eternals had turned their backs in disgust and departed, I decided nowhere in the continuum would be safe.  So I took refuge in a parallel universe, a Second Life.  The walls of reality closed and hardened behind me, and I have been here ever since.

I learned later the fate of my people, and my world.  I learned that the Doctor sacrificed us, burning Gallifrey and the Daleks together at the same time.  He saved his precious lesser species by bleeding his own, my turning the world of his birth into a lost ruin.

On Gallifrey, Before the End in the Uniform of the Blood Onyx Legion

I was right about him all along.