THE TREES OF NUMBAKULLA

The temple rite is simple

An open heart is first

Water for the living

To quench the living thirst

-"The Temple Rite" (A Numbakulla Poem)

The Withered Trees

I do not, as the Doctor was often wont to do, take up Companions in my travels.  Few species are as long-lived as mine, and any meaningful association with a member of another race is doomed to be fleeting.  For them, life passes so quickly, and as they age and weaken, I go on year after year regenerating.  It is not fair, I think, to make them watch this, to have them realize how limited their own time is while mine seems to run on and on.  And for my part...I have already lost everything; my race, my home.  I do not want to add new Companions to the long catalogue of what time has taken from me.

Nor do I find members of what my people patronizingly called "the Lesser Species" to be half as interesting as the Doctor did.  Perhaps because they are so short-lived, their lives seem to be spent in willful ignorance, grasping at all they can get and consume "now" with little thought towards the consequences.  Most seem to me predictable and dull.  Most, but not all.

While tangling with the Order of Malkuth in the streets of New Babbage, I found myself allied with a remarkable Terran woman named Dinah Greymoon.  A young adventuress with a knack for racing and consequently destroying vehicles, when I first came across her she was recovering from a crash that had tipped her into one of New Babbage's wintery canals.  Together we encountered a street urchin who had valuable information, and after warm cups of chocolate in a cafe, the hunt was on.  I found her to be spirited and full of what the Earth people call "pluck."  It surprised even myself then when I invited her aboard The Fallen Hour for a few short voyages.  After a Black Hole and a missing moon, I showed her a reflection of lost, time-locked Gallifrey.  Though slightly overwhelmed, she took all in stride.

When we parted in New Babbage, I did not think to see her again.  But I had given her a means to contact me and she did so...finding herself shipwrecked on an abandoned isle while sailing for Tahiti.  The sole survivor, she had come across the ruins of a strange civilization, and sent for me.  I came almost immediately.

**ALERT: RIVER SONG SAYS "SPOLIERS!!!"  IF YOU INTENDED TO PLAY THE "POT HEALER ADVENTURE" LOOK UP NUMBAKULLA AND GO START.  READ NO FURTHER UNTIL YOU DO!!!** 

On this island, Numbakulla, a tragic tale played out of over-reaching human ambition.  As the mystery unfolded, it appeared that what had once been a unified and peaceful society split into two factions, and ended up destroying itself in the process.  Concerned with guardianship of the two sacred trees housed in  a massive temple atop the island's highest mountain, the people of Numbakulla became divided into the "Gardeners" and the "Pot Makers."  In time their differences separated them, and they built very different civilizations on opposite ends of the isle.  As the Pot Makers delved deeper and deeper into new technologies, they lost sight of their sacred duties and caused the great trees to wither.  Life on Numbakulla languished and died.  But led by ancient clues and the notes of another, earlier shipwreck victim, new seeds were discovered hidden, and a chance for Numbakulla to be reborn.

The Great Temple

In the wake of the mystery, Miss Greymoon and I parted company again.  But I have come to understand, a little, what the Doctor saw in his Companions.  If they possessed any of the wit, perception, and strong will of Miss Greymoon, it is easy to see why he so often enlisted their aid.

The Gardener Civilization was Organic in its Technology

The Pot Makers Evolved Along More Conventional--and Ambitious--Lines