Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The Fallen Hour

The Steampunk "Fallen Hour" console room after she reformed herself in the image of New Babbage (click on all pics to enlarge)

My memories recovered, it was a small matter for me to pilot the Fallen Hour from the warehouse she was being kept in, and conceal her in Dr. Draegonne's home. She assumed the outward form of a wardrobe in his attic.


This might perhaps need some explanation. My people, the Time Lords of Gallifrey, were an ancient and advanced civilization before their fall. Having mastered matter and energy millions of years ago, they turned their attentions towards time. It is said that Rasilon, using a stellar manipulation device created by the great scientist Omega, collapsed a suitable star into a black hole and harnessed the power of that singularity to create our famous Time Travel Capsules. These devices, on the outside no larger than a small booth, are considerably larger inside. Labyrinthine halls and echoing chambers can be fit into their seemingly small shells. They are living things, these devices, semi-sentient entities composed of pure autron energy that are able to change their outer appearances to blend into surroundings and their inner configuration to suit the needs of their pilots. In other words, each capsule is bigger on the inside than the outside, can disguise itself, and can create and discard internal rooms as needed.


But these are all the least of a TTC's attributes. Their true value, and the power that made my people "Time Lords," is that a Time Travel Capsule can travel virtually anywhere in time and space. This is difficult to explain, but the TTC "dematerializes" at one point in the continuum and "rematerializes" in another. They are capable of actual "flight," but this is not really what they are designed to do. In ancient times, my ancestors used these devices to travel the length and breadth of the time-space continuum, and though they developed a policy of non-intervention, nevertheless appointed themselves the guardians of time travel and the police over those who would attempt to abuse it. It was the growing use of time travel by the Daleks that brought us both to war.


Of course, the Time Lords were long in decline by my birth, and most of the TTCs were left to slowly gather dust. My own Fallen Hour was one of them. She had been used by many of my distant ancestors, but by the arrival of the Time War was in deep, deep slumber. The Time Capsules, you see, are psychically linked to their pilots. They share a powerful bond. Without a pilot, a capsule slowly falls "asleep," and drifts deeper and deeper into this coma as the centuries tick by. Eventually, the animating consciousness fades out and the TTC is "dead." The Fallen Hour was headed to such an end when my father revived her and sent her to me.


Because of the psychic bond we formed, and because we were both badly damaged by our escape from the Time War, the Fallen Hour remodeled herself following our crash landing in New Babbage, taking on--just as I had--characteristics of our environment. Just as I would take my new name and manner of dress from New Babbage, so too did the Fallen Hour initially manifest curious steampunk characteristics. Her rooms and halls began to mirror what one sees in New Babbage. For many years, while New Babbage was my home base, the place I returned too between my journeys throughout the Linden Continuum, she remained this way. Following Flora's death, and my decision to leave New Babbage, the Fallen Hour has begun showing more unearthly, Gallifreyan traits once more.


Her more recent, Gallifreyan console room, in the colors of my family's Chapter House (Arcalian Green and Brown)

The Fallen Hour's New Babbage inspired console

Her latest Gallifreyan console.

New Babbagesque steampunk halls.

Her current halls.

The Cloisters, a massive, multi-storied vault at the center of the machine where the animate autron energy that makes up the Fallen Hour's living matrix is held.

The swimming pool.

A drawing room.

A quiet gallery.

The library.

A meeting room.

The Stardust Ballroom (Flora's request...she so loved to dance).

A cinema.

A dining room.

My suite.

The Infinity Room, from which any point in time and space can be observed.

A guest bedroom.


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