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intuitive-revelations · 4 months

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FLUXES [Celestis: Engineered Participants / Technologies] Example: "DOCTOR, The"

[Image description, courtesy of @quailfence: a series of pictures of text, alternated with screencaps and gifs from Doctor Who.

1: Text: Fluxes: [Celestis: Engineered Participants/Technology] Individuals transposed backwards in time but not too far in space, using a very high chaotic limiter setting and tied to their home period by a thread of biodata

2: The Eleventh Doctor stands in the future corpse of his TARDIS, looking and a pulsing stream of light that has replaced the console. He says, "That is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe. My path through time and space."

3: Text: He raised a finger. 'Look. There.

Now she could just make out the thread in the moonlight. It was just a faint reflection, maybe a foot or two long, about a metre off the ground. A taut strand of spiderweb hanging in the air, not attached to anything.

'What is it?' Fitz asked.

'It's only partially rotated into three dimensions,' he said. He pushed his finger right through the glimmering line, without affecting it. 'That's why it looks one- or two-dimensional. The rest is still perpendicular to what we can see - woven into higher space, or the time vortex…'

'Yes,' said Fitz, 'but what is it?' 'It's what your friend mistook for a ley line.' The Doctor was scuttling around the silver thread, peering at it from every angle, getting more and more agitated. 'It's part of the fabric of space-time itself. What DNA is to your genetic code, this stuff is to biodata. And it's all just exposed here now. Personality, history, memory, perception, all vulnerable…'

'I'm going to have to ask you again, aren't I?' said Fitz.

The Doctor said, 'It's me.'

4: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth doctors in the TARDIS. 14: "But you're fine?" 15: "I'm fine, because you fixed yourself. We're Time Lords, we're doing rehab out of order."

5: Text: The subject is turned loose in his or her own history, and the limiter setting allows tiny actions taken by the future version to have considerable effects on the past version. The biodata link then transfers these changes to the future version, which alters it, and thus alters the changes made to the past version. Therefore, the individual's history is kept constantly in flux.

6: The Fugitive Doctor says, "Let me take it from the top: Hello, I'm the Doctor."

7: Text: Let me finish. Think back to that time when you went to see your previous selves.

8: Ten, Eleven, and War talk to each other. Ten: "You're not actually suggesting that we change our own personal history?" Eleven: "We change history all the time. I'm suggesting far worse."

9: Text: 'Maybe there's no one home on Gallifrey,' said the boy softly. There was just the one of him.

The Doctor looked at him, cupping the small white cube in his hands. The boy said, Maybe they all left. Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment.

10: The TARDIS by the ruins of Gallifrey

11: Text: 'It's impossible,' said the Doctor. 'It's impossible for my people. Our past is unreachable. What's written can't be unwritten.'

'Who said your history can't change?'

Another boy answered, 'Someone from his history.'

And another: 'Maybe it's the second-biggest lie in Time Lord history.'

12: Dhawan!Master tells Thirteen, "You are the Timeless Child."

13: Thitreen stares at a ruined house. Swarm whispers in her ear and tells her, "All the memories you've lost, all the people you've been. It's all in there, contained within that house."

14: Text: And it was like the Doctor's home. As if his ship understood the loss of the House and had compensated to fill the emptiness. Shadowy corridors, alcoves and stairways, a secret at every turn. Like being in the Doctor's head. Like his life, for that matter, the details of which were strewn like flotsam across the floor.

15: Text: 'Sweet,' said the little boy. 'That's my favourite of your origin stories, too.'

The Doctor opened his eyes. He had been laughing, he realised, he felt that lightness in himself. The boys had all moved away, behind him, leaving him facing the empty dark of the warehouse.

'What do you mean?' he asked. His voice sounded very small.

'Is this the version where they banned all mention of his name, and yours, for consorting with aliens? Or the one where he got every record of himself deleted from the files?'

'Feel free to believe either of them,' snapped the Doctor, 'or both of them, or neither of them. If you're curious about my past, I want there to be as many wrong answers as possible.'

16: The Eighth Doctor tells someone, "I'm half human. On my mother's side."

17: Text: 'Well he's a hybrid, you know that. A Gallifreyan not born of Gallifreyan, the one who unites the two races and brings good old human niceness into their alien society. Aliens need that, y'know.'

'A human hybrid? She saw the contempt in his curling lip. 'Pseudoscientific nonsense. There's no evidence,' he repeated.

'He's allowed to be different. He's got a prophecy and everything.'

18: Lady Me says, "By your own reasoning, why couldn't the Hybrid be half Time Lord, half human?"

19: Text: Someone giggled. 'Let's play pin the tale on the donkey.'

'Maybe you didn't use to have a father.'

'Maybe you're living in the middle of a time war. Maybe there's an Enemy out there -'

The Doctor shouted, 'I'm not listening!'

'- who's rewriting you when you're not looking!'

'Maybe you weren't always half human.'

'But now you've become always half human.' 'Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord.'

But now you've always been a Time Lord.'

'Maybe you originally came from some planet in the forty-ninth century. Fleeing from the Enemy who'd overrun your home -'

'I said I'm not listening! Laa laa laa laa laa -'

'- and you've just been written and rewritten and overwritten, ever since.'

'Pin the tale!'

'How d'you know it's not true?'

'How could you know it's not true?'

The voices crowded in. 'How would you know, huh?'

'How would you know?'

'How would 'How would you 'How 'How would you know? you know? you know? know?'

'Why would I care?' shouted the Doctor.

The boy fell silent.

20: Lady Me asks, "Am I right? Is it true?" Twelve replies, "Does it matter?"

21: Text: However, the one group from the Homeworld which has excelled at flux-engineering is the Celestis.

22: Two asks the Time Lords, "Now then… what about me?"

23: Tecteun tells Thirteen, "Which is ehy we engineered the Fluyx: Shut the universe down and you within it."

24: Text: Even Mictlan itself can be considered a kind of enormous flux, an endlessly-shifting realm so cortosive to the rest of history that its heartland has to be kept on the outer skin of the universe

24: The Fourteenth Doctor tells Donna, "I invoked a supersition, at the edge of the universe, where the walls are thin and everything is possible."

25: The space station from Wild Blue Yonder

26: Text: There are suggestions of a stable middle-ground between the two fates, in which the physical matter of the flux is lost but the meaning of the subject/ victim is retained, a series of memetic connections with no flesh to support it. Yet this entity exists only on a purely theoretical level, relying on the perceptions of others to survive at all.

27: The Twelfth Doctor walks up to the TARDIS console. He says, "Can't wait to hear what I say." Glancing at the viewer, he adds, "I'm noting without an audience."

28: Text: You know what Sam represents. If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? Stop me if I'm getting too abstract here, but if a Time Lord saves the world and nobody witnesses him doing it, does history care? She's your witness. The thing you need to make you whole.

29: The First Doctor looks at the viewer and says, "Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!" End description.]

[Plain text: Fluxes [Celestis: Engineered Participants / Technologies] Example: "Doctor, The". End plain text.]

@dw-described

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bracketsoffear · 1 month

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The Book of the War (Lawrence Miles et. al.) Synopsis: "The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past."

Propaganda: A text which purports to be a constantly shifting and updating guide to The War, a conflict so overarching and complete that every other conflict is but a pale shadow thereof; the Time War. Of course, since it would shift retroactively with the changing timelines, there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. Notable entries include cities built from days stolen from shifting calendars, the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere, Grandfather Paradox, the location of the exact center of history, how to weaponize banality, and Parablox.

Oh, and there's something else in there. Something that seems to be talking to you.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there (Lewis Caroll) "Both books have a similar structure and are spiral for the same reasons: little Victorian child Alice founds herself in a strange world with rules vastly different from hers (for example, there's no real geography and the scenery changes suddenly from one place to another very much like in a dream). The characters she crosses constantly defy her understanding of the world and applies logics she struggles to understand. Even though she ends up going with the flow most of the time she never ceases to question whether shes experiencing real life or a dream; sanity is brought up a few times, and there's also the popular quote "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad", delivered by the grinning cat that appears and disappears like a slippery distortion. Lastly I may add that the TMA episode whose title references the book (Mag 177, Wonderland) is a spiral episode."

#spiral poll #the spiral #poll #the magnus archives #leitner tournament #The Book of the War #faction paradox #doctor who #Lawrence Miles #alice in wonderland #through the looking glass #Lewis Caroll

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haissitall · 5 months

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considering my previous thoughts on the matter, the question "Is the Homeworld save-able?" becomes quite important. I think to many the answer is no. It is so for me as well. It just makes sense. The Enemy is a process which once launched cannot be easily stopped by either "soft" or "hard" power (which in The Book of the War were smartly merged together). Even if you crush one "aspect" of the Enemy, surely another will arise. The clock is ticking for the Homeworld, the tides of history are rising to wash it away no matter how hard it fights.

so that's why essentially the same type of solution appeared in new who, the concept getting through even all the "time war" stuff. both in The End of Time and the Day of the Doctor RTD and Moffat talk about conceptually similar ways out for Gallifrey: you gotta freeze it. If the clock ticking kills you, you must stop the clock from ticking. Moffat is of course very nice about it, saving Gallifrey in "the moment", putting it into a neat frozen bubble, hidden away from the nasty history coming to get it. RTD is more realistic. "the end of time" (or maybe you can call it "the end of history"? 😉), the only thing which can save Gallifrey from losing, also means the apocalypse. to stop time you must destroy it. Rassilon seeks the ultimate freeze button, which is, of course, death. (Death of everything, not just Gallifrey, because otherwise it would just mean surrender instead of victory.)

Basically, the only way for Homeworld/Gallifrey to not lose is to stop/end time/history, because that's their real enemy. And the only way to do that is to kill everyone because getting into the bubble just wouldn't work

#faction paradox #the book of the war

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pl9090 · 9 days

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Humanity's Irrelevance I bypassed the posting processing error with a screenshot version. It'll be replaced with a proper text post when possible.

#faction paradox #doctor who #book of the war #timelords #great houses #bbc doctor who #whoniverse #the enemy #the book of the war #gallifrey #the city of saved #posthumanity

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thienvaldram · 3 months

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Gallifreyan House Lore – Forgotten Lives

The Doctor is from ‘The House on the Mountain’ (The House of Lungbarrow)

The Holmes Doctor is housed in a place called the Sequester. He works for some kind of Time Lord interventionist group, the name is never specified.

The Houses mentioned are Gloaming, Cockrow, Brightening, Noon, Decline and Aurora. These seem to be the houses directly involved in whatever organisation Holmes is a part of.

Cockrow, Brightening and Noon are ‘The Daylight Houses’ and are poorly acquainted with the organisation, only rarely showing up, meanwhile Gloaming, Decline and Aurora are the ‘Night Houses’.

The Daylight Houses held no sway in Holmes’s trial and were merely there for court protocol.

House Gloaming are science oriented and prefer not to show up despite their dominance in favour of research.

House Decline is said to be ‘The Doctor’s House’, indicating the names used at the Sequester are probably codenames. With Decline being Lungbarrow.

Decline is said to have produced their ‘fair share of renegades’.

House Aurora is ‘Morbius’s House’, (Dvora?). They are one of the less influential houses in this era. A decent amount of them are said to have defected when Morbius did.

The Sequester seems to be a CIA predecessor. So I’m guessing Time Lord agencies go.

Founding of The Mathematical Bureau

Division disappear off the map to do whatever their own thing is

The Unity forks from new more radical members of the Addition (The start of the Broken Generation) like the Magus.

Morbius rises to power as Imperator and becomes President

The Unity defects to Morbius when the Civil War kicks off

The Sequester is set up to help fight the Civil War, the Holmes Doctor is drafted into it after returning to the Homeworld freshly regenerated (as per Harper’s final story in FL3)

The Civil War ends

The Doctor regenerates and escapes the Sequester.

The War Chief Incident, the Sequester is retooled into the Celestial Intervention Agency.

#forgotten lives #morbius doctors #doctor who eu #faction paradox #obverse books #dweu #doctor who #the book of the war #morbius (doctor who)#the imperator #House Dvora #the brain of morbius #Great Houses #lungbarrow

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dougielombax · 7 months

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DON’T make me anchor your thread I swear to GOD!

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walks-the-ages · 11 months

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Look what i found on the archive!!!!!!!

Someone uploaded it only a day or two ago 👀👀👀👀👀👀

Faction Paradox fans and those who want to get into it-- check this out!

#faction paradox #fp #the book of the war #out of print books #accessible books #out of print #dw #doctor who #doctor who apocrypha #TBOTW #book of the war #the time war #war in heaven

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aristidetwain · 1 year

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Hmmm.

#Doctor Who #Faction Paradox #The Book of the War #Utopia #Canon-Welding #Tenth Doctor #Rose Tyler #Time Lords #TARDISes

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doctornolonger · 1 year

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Where are the Eremites now? *down the back of the sofa*

Well, besides their recent Hulu appearance…

In 2016's Doctor Who Christmas special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio, the Superman stand-in Grant Gordon receives his superpowers when, as a child, he swallows a gift from the Twelfth Doctor which he thought was a cough drop. As the Doctor later explained, it was much more than a cough drop:

DOCTOR: [It's] like a kind of on-board computer. Come here. Can you see, can you see that little yellow star at the end of that curve? It comes from near there. Formed in the heart of a red hole and stabilised in pure dwarf star crystal. The gemstone is intuitive. It knows what you want and draws energy from the nearest star to make it happen. There's only four of them left in the universe. The Apocalypse Monks of the Andurax called this one the Hazandra, the Ghost of Love and Wishes. Okay, then, pop it in.

Beginning the day after Christmas, Titan Comics released an eight-part comic series called Ghost Stories featuring the Twelfth Doctor's later adventures with Grant and his family, and in the final issue we actually got to meet these "Apocalypse Monnks of the Andurax". But when we do, the Doctor calls them something slightly different:

In its entry on "Faction Precursors", The Book of the War says of the Eremites,

Some commentators have drawn tenuous comparisons between Faction Paradox and the Eremites [… But] members of the Faction decorate themselves in ceremonial armour, and only draw their own blood when absolutely necessary, whereas Eremites were more likely to find expression through severe self-mutilation and the abnegation of pain.

And indeed, what do we see in Ghost Stories when some Vigilant Eremites pull back their hoods to operate a bit of machinery? Distinctly Faction-like visages:

The Book of the War concludes,

There’s a maxim that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as comedy, then as farce. If any parallels can reasonably be drawn between the Eremites and Faction Paradox, then perhaps it could be said that the Eremites are the tragedy and the Faction the comedy.

When comparing Doctor Mysterio to The Book of the War, that comparison may be flipped around – but the point remains.

(My friend Ryan Fogarty, writer and canonwelder extraordinaire, has noted further, even more remarkable connections between Ghost Stories' Vigilant Eremites and some other figures from ancient Time Lord myth. I hope we'll all get to see his vision of the Eremites some day!)

#eremites #cenobites #the book of the war #faction paradox #the return of doctor mysterio #doctor who #twelfth doctor #ryan fogarty #titan comics #ama #effortpost

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a-wartime-paradox · 10 months

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The Spiral Yssgaroth was fashioned similarly to the Spiral Politic (it is not a parallel continuum)

When I was initially reading The Book of the War, I fell victim to it's (an extension of the House's) propoganda idea that parallel universes do not exist. However, I needed to reconcile this idea with the fact that the metahistory of the FP universe is founded upon the fact that the Great Houses fought against the Yssgaroth from an entirely separate continuum. So I concluded that, as it is called a "spiral" like the Spiral Politic, it must have been built in a similar manor. I've since learnt that parallel universes do exist, but am holding on to this.

I just find it so neat. Before Urizen pulls together the forces of Gallifrey to bind time to his domain, the Mother-King of the Yssgaroth had already built up another metastructure of history, forming am existential noosphere around it, later called by outsiders the Spiral Yssgaroth. It just adds to the idea, started by the Osirians, that the Great Houses really aren't that Great and Singularly Almighty as the Book may claim.

The Mother-King of the Yssgaroth had a child, and as it was born outside the Spiral Politic, those without it called it Timeless, as they (or at least the Houses) did not understand alien time. This Child fell through a portal, only to be found, much later, by an explorer, who experimented on them to help Urizen find the way of regeneration.

And yes, if our Spiral has a version of Earth, the Yssgaroth's does also. But you wouldn't possibly recognise it...

#faction paradox #doctor who #Yssgaroth #spiral politic #the book of the war

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renegade-time-lord · 2 years

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#the war in heaven #familiars!!!#personality reboots!#dr who #doctor who #faction paradox #the book of the war

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familyparadox · 10 months

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I think it is final time for me to be cliche and announce my Spidervers OC.

Mother Spider. The Spider person of Earth 5556 (also know as the Doctor Who Universe) (I would like to stress Loves are definitely Marvel Canon not Just Doctor Who Canon as they have been mentioned in a source as recently as 2019)

I wrote a Spiderverse introduction to them

My name was PetradvoraParkerrallonder I was Bitten by a Radioactive Enemy Rep and for the past 50 years I have been the Eleven-Day-Empires one and only Mother Spider. In my time I have seen the destruction on the Plant Leth and watch the fall of Utterlost, I have done battle against the agents of the Great Houses and gazed into the eyes of the Celestis. My past is so messed up due to my own temporal alterations to it.

As well as a Book of the War entry for him

Spider, Mother | Faction Paradox Participant

Loomed in the Homeworld exactly 200 years before the war in Heaven as a full grown adult under the name of PetradvoraParkerrallonder, they claim to have gone out Drinking with the Grandfather Paradox this is almost definitely a lie to make a very dull boring life as a member of the House ceremonial Guard seem more Interesting. They claim to have been present during the First Battle on Dronid at the day the war started and whilst fighting they where bitten by a radioactive Enemy Rep. this is also probably a lie however it does explain their strange relationship to causality and their ability to subtly shift elements of their simply by believing it to be true. However they gained this ability they also gained more vulgar abilities such as the ability to climb up war and enhanced strength neither particularly impressive powers. Soon after they where recruited by the infamous Faction Paradox member Godfather Auteur and soon after completing their stint as a Little Sibling they gained the rank of Mother due to being of Homeworld Stock and took the name Spider in reference to their abilities and their choice a Shadow Weapon (a kind of pro tactical weapon which creates a web like strand allowing them to swing from wall to wall). Whilst in the Faction they have claimed to be present at both Leth and Utterlost this are probably also lies, as are their claims to have defended the Eleven Day Empire from costumed agents of the Great Houses. They are a consummate lie and despite calming knowledge of a Multiverse which can effect the universe of the Houses they have shown no evidence of it, any and everything they say should be treated with suspicion.

#doctor who #faction paradox #dweu #doctor who eu #across the spiderverse #spiderverse oc #the book of the war

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bracketsoffear · 1 month

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The Word Eater (Mary Amato) "The titular Word Eater is a worm born with eyes and the magical ability to eat words instead of dirt, named Fip. Whenever Fip eats a word, the object or subject that word was referring to vanishes, at one point accidentally erasing a recently discovered star. When used on a subject, erasure removes any ontological effects, as when used on a torturous dog training method the dogs it was used on all suddenly become docile instead of vicious. The conflict of the story comes in the fact that words are the only thing Fip can eat, so keeping anything else from being erased becomes a matter of starving him. There's also some disgruntled students who almost use him to erase their school, with the protagonist worrying that the effect could abstractly extend to the staff and students, necessitating their thwarting."

The Book of the War (Lawrence Miles et. al.) Synopsis: "The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past."

Propaganda: A text which purports to be a constantly shifting and updating guide to The War, a conflict so overarching and complete that every other conflict is but a pale shadow thereof; the Time War. Of course, since it would shift retroactively with the changing timelines, there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. Notable entries include cities built from days stolen from shifting calendars, the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere, Grandfather Paradox, the location of the exact center of history, how to weaponize banality, and Parablox.

Oh, and there's something else in there. Something that seems to be talking to you.

#spiral poll #the spiral #poll #the magnus archives #leitner tournament #The Word Eater #Mary Amato #The Book of the War #faction paradox #doctor who #Lawrence Miles

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osfinexe · 2 years

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My favorite death cultists

#faction paradox #faction paradox fanart #Cousin Anastasia #Cousin Octavia #Octavia Sutherland #Anastasia Romanov #art #digital art #the book of the war #doctor who #dweu #doctor who fanart #dweu fanart

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pl9090 · 2 months

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The Order of the Weal symbol deduction

The Order of the Weal's two main aspects, (1.It's nature and function as a security organisation, (specifically counter intelligence. 2.It's nihilist realpolitik core philosophy and dismissal of Timelord history/culture) point towards it's symbol being a stripped down/simplified version of the Chancellory Guards's. Following the precedent of the .C.I.A. symbol being on the Time Ring they gave to the Fourth Doctor I posited that the guard helmet's ornate speaker covers would be a suitable equivalent, so the stripped down/simplified version would be a set of five geocentric circles.

As for the colours gold and black are the colours of the Order's soldier uniforms and is the default Timelord colour scheme inkeeping with it's stripped down/simplified aesthetic.

#faction paradox #doctor who #timelords #great houses #bbc doctor who #whoniverse #gallifrey #the book of the war #order of the weal #chatelaine thessalia #doctor who eu #dweu #book of the war #chancellory guard

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timeagainreviews · 2 years

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#doctor who #Lungbarrow #Faction Paradox #Character Options #The Book of the War #Lawrence Miles #Marc Platt #lottery #meme #funny

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