(no subject)
Millenia ago (so long that even the legends forget the date), a boy was born into the oldest civilisation in the universe. This civilisation was Gallifrey, and the boy was known as Peylix.
Gallifrey was, at this time, a vast and highly superstitious empire, where ‘magic’ and prophecy ruled and technology and science were discouraged. The Gallifreyan Empire was theocracy, ruled by an order of priest(esse)s and seers known as the Sisterhood -- their leader, the Pythia, controlled Gallifrey with an iron fist, and continually sought to expand her bloody empire by the sword.
Peylix, however, was a rationalist at heart. Despite the warnings of his professors, he continued to study science, and quickly gained a reputation for being dangerously intelligent. His time at the Academy was unpleasant -- the one bright spot in the whole dreary experience was his best friend, Rassilon.
Rassilon was a politician, but he also possessed a scientific knowledge that rivalled Peylix’s own. Together, they were far more formidable than they would ever have been apart. When Peylix was awarded the lowest failing grade in the history of the Academy (which subsequently became his mockery of a nickname), is was Rassilon who encouraged him to embrace it. Reluctantly, Peylix abandoned his name, and became Omega.
Though the professors of the Academy had made certain that Omega would never be able to gain a higher degree, he refused to stop his research into temporal and solar engineering. Upon graduation, he took the a job as a temporal technician (rather scornfully known as a ‘time plumber’), while Rassilon worked his up through the political ranks of Gallifrey’s elite.
Together, they secretly began to plot a rebellion. Rassilon’s political influence and sheer charisma kept too much suspicion from being thrown on them, and while they both played their parts, they began to gather like-minded Gallifreyans. Many of the younger generation of scientists favoured Omega, and Rassilon was seen as a rising star of Gallifreyan politics.
It wasn’t long after that the Revolution was sparked. After Rassion’s appointment to Cardinal, Omega declared his rejection of both the Pythia and Gallifrey’s ruling government before the High Council in a blatant act of rebellion. Rassilon followed suit, and after a fortuitous meeting with the Pythia (in which her powers of foresight mysteriously vanished), the Revolution began.
While Omega had hoped for a bloodless revolution, the Pythia and her followers weren’t about to let go of Gallifrey without a fight. Many died in the ensuing riots and skirmishes, and much of the Capitol was lost in a blazing fire, the Academy included. But when the smoke cleared and the fighting died off, it was easy to see who the victor was. The remaining members of the Sisterhood fled -- some to the stars, and some into the wilds of Gallifrey, to become the first Outsiders.
Rassilon was quickly elected President of this knew Gallifrey, and he immediately appointed Omega his Chief Scientist and Engineer. He effectively became Gallifrey’s second-in-command, and later, the second member of what would be known as the Triumvirate. (The third member would only be remembered as The Other, and served as Rassilon’s advisor.)
Rebuilding Gallifrey was their first priority, but Rassilon’s talent as an architect helped a great deal. It was at this time that Omega entered politics, mostly out of necessity. Together, Rassilon, Omega, and the Other composed the ruling body of Gallifrey, each held in check by the other.
But no sooner had Gallifrey been rebuilt than a new disaster struck -- Vampires.
Legends about the Vampires differ on their origin. While it is well-known that they came from another dimension, there are rumours that it was Rassilon and Omega’s experiments that accidentally set them free. Regardless of the differing stories, one thing was certain -- they were the enemy of all life in this universe. These were not the Vampires of Earth legend -- far from it. They were true monsters, hundreds of feet tall, who voraciously preyed upon entire worlds, sucking them dry of life and leaving them barren and dead. They could create minions much like themselves, most of whom lost their intelligence and became nothing but blood-hungry beasts.
The Vampire Lords had their own legends, and immediately identified the Gallifreyans as the ancient enemy of their people, suggesting that it was the Gallifreyan who locked them away in the first place. They began a vicious assault on both Gallifreyans and any other forms of life they discovered in the universe. In turn, Rassilon declared war. Omega’s temporal experiments were put on hold as he devoted himself to finding a way to effectively combat this new enemy. Energy weapons were useless against them, as were most projectiles. Between himself and Rassilon, the two developed many, many weapons to use against them. Foremost among these weapons were the bowships, designed to fire an immense metal stake through the Vampire Lords’ hearts, destroying them.
Other methods were also created in secret, deep in the heart of Rassilon’s Foundry. The metal Validium, which became sentient in sufficient quantities, was intended as Gallifrey’s last line of defence. There are still many things that Omega created that he would not (and will not) speak of, things that made him turn aside his morals for the sake of Gallifrey’s survival. And it is possible that those weapons, whatever they are, still remain, locked deep in the Foundry and awaiting the day that the Vampires return.
This war was long and bloody -- countless Gallifreyans died, and even far into the future, the Time Lords still held a deep fear of Vampires. Both Omega and Rassilon fought on the front lines of the battles, although Omega far less often -- he was busy developing new tools of war, after all. When the final, titanic battle drew to a close, however, something was wrong -- a Vampire, the King Vampire himself, had vanished into a pocket dimension, severely weakened. Victory was declared, but the Triumvirate, aware of the possibility of the Vampire’s return, quietly put measures into place to prepare for such an eventuality. As Rassilon returned to experiments in regeneration, he would, eventually, program an instinctive hatred of Vampire-kind into the future Time Lords.
Once again, Gallifrey was left to pick up the pieces following a war. Omega resumed his work, but kept the temporal experiments, including the beginnings of his stellar manipulator, on hold until he could create sufficient defences for Gallifrey. To this end, the transduction barriers were created, intending to prevent any invasion of Gallifrey by other species. Once these were in place, Omega returned to his projects, and his greatest achievement began to take shape.
The stellar manipulator that would later be called the Hand of Omega was the most sophisticated machine of it’s kind in the universe, ever. It was the first to use many of the technologies that would later become standard in Time Travel Capsules, especially its dimensional transcendence. It also gave Omega quite a bit of trouble in the beginning of it’s development. However, it didn’t take long for him to hit upon a solution and, in reckless fashion, he created the telepathic circuits and established a mind link with the machine. Luckily, the mental link was a success, and would become the precursor to the bond a TARDIS would share with its pilot.
The future was looking bright, both for Omega and for Gallifrey. It took many years, but once his stellar manipulator was complete and a suitable star had been located, Omega launched the Qqaba mission. It was intended to be his greatest achievement, something that would alter the course of Gallifrey for the rest of Time -- and it did. Omega’s intention was to detonate a star in an area of space called the ‘Sector of Forgotten Souls’ -- accelerating the collapse and harnessing the resulting black hole as a near-infinite power source for Gallifrey.
It worked, but with tragic consequences.
What made the Sector of Forgotten Souls the ideal place for the detonation was its natural dimensional instability -- and that was what caused the mission to fail. Omega’s most trusted assistant, Vandekyrian, couldn’t hold up against the instability, and, in his resulting madness, he sabotaged the Eurydice by plunging a hand into the engine’s fusion reactor mix. By the time the damage was discovered, it was too late. The Eurydice was incapable of escaping the gravitational pull of the black hole, and was pulled in, with all aboard presumed dead.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Omega survived his plunge into the black hole through sheer willpower (or bloody-minded stubbornness, depending on who you ask), and was forced into a universe opposite the normal one -- the universe of antimatter. It was a stark, barren place, a void in which nothing existed, save for Omega himself. It was easily one of the worst fates a powerful telepath could be forced to endure -- utter isolation, disconnected from the ever-present background noise of Gallifreyan minds.
With time, Omega learned to control the power of the singularity, and could create anything his mind willed, save for true life. So he created a paradise, and his hopes were high for a rescue -- surely Rassilon or the Other would realise what had happened to him, right? Or perhaps he would be able to engineer his own way out, and return to Gallifrey again.
But no help ever came. There was no indication that they even knew Omega survived, and with each successive failure of his own, the thought of eternity alone began to weigh heavily on him. This was compounded by his discovery that, without outside interference, he would never be able to leave -- the antimatter universe was reliant on his mind to give it form. He could not escape without letting go, but letting go prevented any escape -- he was thoroughly trapped.
Slowly, his paradise greyed and withered to dust, turning into and endless grey desert that mirrored Omega’s descent into depression. He occasionally toyed with creating life, but no matter how he tried, the creatures he created could never achieve sentience -- they remained as merely an extension of his own will.
Ten thousand years of isolation and nothingness tends to give one quite a long time to think, especially when you are unable to sleep for fear of losing your grip on the universe’s stability. So Omega thought. He replayed the events of the detonation over and over again, trying to puzzle out where things went wrong, how one of the most loyal Gallifreyans he knew could so easily betray him. And, slowly, he became obsessed, paranoid. The only explanation that made sense was that he’d been sold out, had been meant to die. His mind didn’t want to accept the idea of being merely a victim of history, of a friend’s temporary madness. No, clearly he had been set up to die.
It took ten thousand years before Omega was able to make any sort of contact with the proper universe. During that time, he’d (understandably) gone a bit mad, to put it quite bluntly. He swore vengeance on the Time Lords, who he believed had abandoned him to his fate while they enjoyed the freedoms he’d given to them. Once he’d managed to use the singularity to create a light stream in the proper universe, he immediately began to drain Gallifrey’s power. The Time Lords contacted the Doctor, desperate to stop the energy drain, and sent him his second and first incarnations to assist him. Omega then kidnapped Two and Three and brought them (as well as Jo, the Brig, a professor, a bird-watcher, and a sizeable chunk of UNIT HQ) to his universe, intending to have them help him escape his prison.
Unfortunately for Omega, there was no escape. The singularity’s destructive radiation had taken its toll, and Omega’s body no longer existed -- only his willpower kept him alive. Despairing, Omega retreated, and the Doctor’s devised a plan to escape. When Omega summoned the Doctors again, he planned to keep them in his universe, so that at least he wouldn’t be alone for the rest of eternity. However, they brought Omega a recorder disguised as a ‘gift’ that would help Omega escape the antimatter universe. The Second Doctor provoked Omega’s temper, and he lashed out, striking the recorder -- the recorder that hadn’t been converted into antimatter.
The subsequent explosion led the Time Lords to believe that Omega had finally been killed, and the Doctor was rewarded for his part in saving Gallifrey.
But Omega, like the Master, doesn’t die easily.
He survived the matter/antimatter explosion, and waited, alone once more. A few hundred years later, he got a second chance. A member of the High Council and a friend of the Doctor’s named Hedin discovered a way to contact Omega in his universe. Together, they devised a way for him to enter the proper universe, using the Matrix, a stolen Time Lord bioprint, and a collapsed Q-star called the Arc of Infinity. Hedin chose the Doctor, now on his fifth incarnation, as the bioprint to be stolen.
This time, the plan worked. Omega was able to enter the proper universe in a copy of the Doctor’s body. Hedin, however, was killed while protecting the Doctor, something that angered Omega deeply.
But things didn’t work out quite that easily. Omega’s transfer was unstable, and he would soon revert to antimatter, causing a colossal explosion that would wipe out both Earth and a sizeable chunk of the surrounding galaxy. Intent on preventing this, the High Council sent the Doctor to hunt Omega down in Amsterdam. Unbeknownst to them, Omega was actually recovering mentally -- being alive again, being able to experience things again was easing his mental instability, his paranoia, and his rage.
But he was growing weaker, and after a chase through Amsterdam, the Doctor cornered Omega, exhausted and helpless, and offered him a choice: a return to his solitary existence, or death. Omega, unable to cope with tasting freedom and having it ripped away once more, snapped. The progress he’d made in the few hours he’d had was wiped away, and he began to will his own destruction, an act that would result in massive amounts of devastation. At that point, the Doctor had little choice left to him -- he shot Omega, who died and dissipated.
...but he got better!
In truth, he only appeared to have died. Instead, he woke up in Amsterdam, dazed and with a nasty case of amnesia. He also gained something completely unexpected from copying the Doctor’s bioprint -- it worked a bit too well, and he received a duplicate of the Doctor’s mind as well.
It was fortunate, then, that he managed to instinctively find the one place that would allow his fractured mind to heal -- a TARDIS. To be specific, the TARDIS of one professor Vidor Ertikus, a Time Lord historian who happened to be researching Omega. The professor’s TARDIS knew immediately what -- and who -- Omega truly was and, being a rather motherly old girl, didn’t alert her pilot when the amnesiac Time Lord stumbled inside and collapsed in an empty room.
Instead, she helped him, much like a TARDIS would do for a Time Lord during a regeneration crisis. Her experience enabled her to help calm Omega’s raging mind, to gently remind him who he was. It took quite a while, but when his mind finally settled, he was Omega again -- and now with the addition of the Doctor.
Apologies in advance for the length!