(Warning, there will be discussion of the Time War that mildly spoils bits of the Big Finish War Doctor audio plays.)
Somewhere, on a panel covered with buttons and dials and switches, psychic paper sits open. The surface of it, normally used to project fake identification, just displays alien gibberish over and over again. It's connected to something in the panel by a pair of alligator clips on a wire. A nearby screen displays the progress of a telepathic signal trace. The trace completes, and a location, date, and time appear on the screen: Earth, East Germany, Berlin; 9 November 1989, about 7:30pm, local time.
Cue opening theme.
At 2:51pm, on the western side of the Berlin Wall, a Photomat appears just a couple of blocks from Checkpoint Charlie.
 |
| Sort of like this, but with less graffiti |
Inside the TARDIS, the Magpie gives Galaxion and the others (but mostly Galaxion, who was kind of sheltered on Gallifrey) a quick and dirty primer on the political climate of the era. He'd lived on Earth for about 20-something years, so he's been kind of designated the expert on 20th Century Earth customs and the like. In this case, he's explaining the basic concept and ideological divisions of the Cold War, and the significance of Berlin as a literal dividing line between the two. At one point this becomes a discussion of many Earth conflicts being between those who bathe and those who don't (I was scribbling down some notes so I had trouble following the conceptual link between the prior chunk of the conversation and this one), enough that Eska becomes paranoid about his hygiene and goes to take a bath elsewhere in the TARDIS.
But eventually they head out after grabbing some clothing. Galaxion is going full 80's, the Magpie is in his usual 50's beatnik chic, the Dreamcatcher is in kinda standard modern Earth fashions, and Eska settles on the same. He briefly wants to wear some sort of military or police uniform (partially so he can travel armed) until it's pointed out that until they know which part of Berlin they're in, they can't afford to risk being seen with the wrong uniform. They get an idea of where they are, enjoy some of the local cuisine, and decide to just tourist it up because they know eventually the Doctor will find them there, and then maybe they can get some answers to their questions about Gallifrey, the Time War, and what happened on Earth shortly before they landed.
At one point, as they go over the events that will be transpiring that evening, they decide to go and buy some stuff you can't find in East Germany, as 'welcome presents' for when the border crossings open. Eska dummies up a Eurocard that they can use to buy things, but to make sure the stores won't get screwed over because of their fraud they manage to link it to the Magpie's bank account left over from his earlier visit to Earth.[0] So having acquired gifts for the East Germans, they spend some time soaking up local culture, sampling local cuisine, and the like. The Magpie finds 'the perfect tavern where he can get the perfect pretzel and the perfect schnapps,' the Dreamcatcher is more interested in street food, and Galaxion just looks for beer and schnitzel. Eska spends more time and energy focusing on watching out for any weirdness, given that if anything strange does happen then that basically guarantees the Doctor's appearance.[1]
Things remain relatively normal for a few hours, so they decide to find a spot at Bornholmer Strasse to watch the impending festivities. (After all, something else that basically guarantees the Doctor's appearance is major historical events.)[2] They listen on a radio as word goes out that the border crossings are to be opened, they watch the initial confusion of the guards as crowds begin to slowly gather (at the same time, they keep an eye out for other time travelers as well, more for the novelty of it than anything else). But about fifteen minutes after the announcement goes out, Galaxion hears something in his head: A telepathic distress call from someplace in Berlin. Someone needs help!
They're worried about missing when things really pick up at the border crossing, but somebody's in trouble and maybe if they're quick they can get back in time to see things happen. So they narrow down the telepathic signal to a neighborhood in the Lichtenberg district of East Berlin. They run back to their TARDIS and jump it across town, and on the way out Eska gets a guitar case out of the wardrobe to stash his blaster rifle in.
But also on the way out, they hear another noise, a familiar noise... and follow it around the building they parked next to find a blue Police Box. The Magpie decides to have some fun with the Doctor when he comes out, and tells the others to follow his lead. So the doors open and out comes a man in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, who has "more chin than face." And the Magpie does his best Dalek impression and announces that the Doctor has been spotted, exterminate, exterminate! And the Doctor not quite panics but does immediately menace them with his sonic screwdriver.[3]
He quickly realizes what's going on, though, and Galaxion immediately asks if he remembers them, sort of in the tone of a fan wanting to know if his favorite celebrity remembers meeting him at that convention last year. But the Doctor not only remembers them ("Of course I remember you lot! Magpie, Dreamcatcher, Galaxion, and Rifle Guy!")[4] but is more than eager to see some friendly faces. He starts talking about how long it's been, and finds out to his surprise that it's only been a few days from their perspective since their adventure on Skaro. He comments that it's been a while for him, but he's popped back to Berlin a few times, trying a different part of the city each time in the hopes he'd eventually find them. He tries to gently persuade them to head back to Gallifrey for fear of violating the First Law of Time. He attempts to play it off like their inability to find Gallifrey is a problem with their scanners ("Have you tried rotating the console? You're supposed to do that every 3,000 years or so.") but they start letting on that they know there's more going on.
Galaxion jumps right into asking about the Time War (because he still has echoes of the Valeyard's memories rattling around in his head), and the Doctor sighs and asks if he can have a look at their TARDIS. They go in, the others quietly asking their TARDIS to behave with the Doctor visiting (the statues in the 'cathedral'-style control room immediately begin bleeding from the eyes). But the Doctor takes a look inside their console and spots the damage (and approves of the Magpie's plan to go to Calibris for repairs) and figures out what's happened to them. He explains that the Valeyard trapped them in a little pocket dimension he built that existed outside the universe proper called the Möbius Vault. They were in a storage space trapped in a single moment of time, such that he could even put things in and take them out at an earlier time period, and the shock of Gallifrey being dragged out of the Time War even for a few minutes was probably enough to jostle it loose.
And with the mention of Gallifrey's manifestation above Earth on the table, he begins telling them about the Time War, about the Daleks, about Rassilon and the Master (and Rassilon 'creating' the Master as a way to dodge the consequences of the Time War), and confesses to them that he was forced to sacrifice Gallifrey to stop the Daleks before reality itself was completely destroyed. (This encounter predates the Day of the Doctor from Eleven's perspective, so he doesn't yet know that Gallifrey is still out there somewhere.) At one point, we get into this little monologue I kinda prepared ahead of time[5]:
The Time Lords were mad, and the Daleks were madder, and the Time Lords grew even madder to compensate.
At one point, Daleks enslaved a thousand worlds so they could hollow them out and fly them through space, just so they could aim them all at Gallifrey like battering rams.
The Time Lords weaponized chronon flux and tested it on their own soldiers and Daleks alike. It trapped them in a world where people and technology phased back and forth between evolutionary stages. Laser rifles became machine guns. Mortars became plasma throwers. Daleks reverted to Kaleds and back again. The dead would revert to living forms, unable to die and equally unable to stop fighting because they'd been at it too long.
The Daleks had something called the Annihilator, which could delete an entire species from past, present, and future while preserving the timeline. Not only would you remember them, but every one of its victims would feel themselves being erased as it happened.
The Time Lords made deals with Technomancers to recover the races removed from time... for the purpose of sacrificing them to the Horned Ones and resurrect Time Lord soldiers en masse, tainted by literal demons.
The Daleks enslaved a race of beings from another dimension that had not, before their intrusion, even understood the concept of death, in order to convince them to rewrite our reality so that the Time Lords had never existed and the Daleks took their place.
And the moment -- the moment -- that I saved those creatures from the Daleks, other Time Lords attempted to convince them to do the same to the Daleks.
And so on, and so on, and madder, and madder. In the end, there was only one way to end the war without putting reality itself further at risk. Someone had to stop them. I had to stop them both. Because nobody else could or would.
Everyone's shocked, their minds blown. They're conflicted, torn about what's happened. They believe the Doctor (at least, as far as I know they do), but they don't want to believe it. They don't want to believe what he's done, that it was necessary, and the fact that by some miracle of fate they seem to have avoided it... it's a lot to take in.
But they've only got so much time to process this because they get the reminder that somebody in the area needs their help. The Magpie, the Dreamcatcher, and Galaxion go to track down the source of the telepathic distress call while Eska shows the Doctor the Skaro Degradation containment units they found, because he really wants to figure out what to do with that. Before they go, the Doctor syncs his sonic screwdriver to Galaxion's so they can find each other later.
So Eska takes the Doctor back into what he's labeled the Anathecarcere Vault. The Doctor recognizes the equipment there and suggests that the Valeyard must have stashed it in his Möbius Vault as well, to be shaken loose. He emphasizes that it's not something that is likely to casually fail, but the same perfect storm that deposited them on Earth would have screwed up the system and dumped the Degradations into the Vortex. He explains to Eska how they feed, what they're after, and gives him some parameters to feed into their scanners to find the rest. He then proceeds to make sure Eska knows how to adjust and reconfigure the containment units if the Degradation linked to it mutates. (Admittedly, it doesn't take much instruction, as the Degradation containment units are meant to be simple enough they can be passed to a front-line soldier without a lot of training.)
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the trio find the source of the telepathic distress signal. It appears to be coming from a basement level of a building in the area. One problem, though: That building is East Berlin's Stasi prison.
They decide the most direct course of action is the best one. Galaxion goes up to the guard at the door and mentally dominates them to take them to the warden, convincing everyone that they're VIPs who need full access, even to the point of getting special papers from the warden.[6] So they poke around the prison and find the basement level, where there's a heavy vault door (labeled as KVI Special Research -- or КВИ Special Research, if you prefer) with a guard, a keypad, and one of those two-key locks. They've got the guard convinced they have the authority to go back there, but because they didn't specifically ask for it from the Warden they didn't get the special key they need. They convince the guard to let them use Galaxion's sonic screwdriver to open it up.
They enter a hallway with a series of labs. Galaxion uses his sonic screwdriver to get an idea of what's down here, and picks up on some sort of force field containment unit further down -- which seems to be in the same room that's the source of the telepathic distress signal. On the way down there, they pass by an open door just as man in a uniform and a duffel bag full of stuff comes out and runs into them. The guy (Special Research Officer Becker) tells the "VIPs" that with the confusion down at the Wall, they've already begun getting ready to relocate everything to more secure locations. And they've made arrangements to clear out any organic traces (implied to be a kill-and-sterilize switch on the containment unit). They ask him to show them how it works so it can be shut down, but before he can try anything strange or get too suspicious, Galaxion pulls his screwdriver and switches off the Shimmer he can spot Becker using.
So Becker, a previously nondescript human, is now an alien with hairless blue skin and three fingers on each hand. He pulls a stun blaster on them, freaked, but the Magpie quickly defuses a dangerous situation by offering him a deal. They let him go with whatever trinkets he's squirreled away, and in return he helps them disable the force field without killing the alien prisoner. He accepts that deal and introduces himself as Veris. He goes into the lab with them where they see that the prison's got an Arcateenian star poet as their captive. He deactivates the force field after scanning the Magpie's mind with the Arcateenian's telepathy pendant (one of the aforementioned trinkets) to make sure they're not going to betray him. Galaxion quickly scans the Arcateenian's mind to determine that it's not dangerous, just in case (though the Arcateenian senses his intrusion -- they're one of the more powerful psychic species out there -- and lets him in).
So Veris is like "Well, deal completed, I'll see you guys later, I'll cover you guys with the guards" and starts to leave. Then Galaxion comments "I bet you never thought you'd encounter some Time Lords," much to the Magpie's annoyance. Veris' eyes get wide and he just starts running. Once he's out in the hallway they hear a couple of shots from his blaster, followed by Veris quickly yelling that that was just the stun setting. They follow him out into the hallway to see that he's knocked out the guards.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the building, Eska (having left his rifle behind after a judge-y look from the Doctor) and the Doctor have finally caught up in similar fashion, using the psychic paper in place of horrifying levels of telepathic domination. They're in the basement level, they get to the vault door with the guard just in time for it to open up behind him. Veris, having reactivated his cloaking device, steps out and stuns the guard just before he sees the Doctor and Eska. He freaks, assuming more Time Lords, and aims the gun at them. The Doctor shuts off his Shimmer, leaving him to frustratedly ask "Why do you people keep doing that?"
Eska takes that as a sign that the others have been here and demands to know if his friends are okay. He tucks a hand into his jacket as if he's about to pull a gun holstered underneath. Veris tells them he hasn't hurt anyone, that he's just on his way out, and he had a deal with their friends inside. The Doctor, recognizing Veris as being relatively harmless, lets him go. He and Eska go in to catch up with the others. The Doctor recognizes the Arcateenian and offers to help make sure he gets home, since the others' TARDIS is still pretty screwed up. He also explains that Veris is a Nilbek[7], a relatively harmless race of scavengers and occasional pirates. They were a servant species whose masters were wiped out during the Time War after siding with and being betrayed by the Daleks. They're among the finest mechanics in the universe as long as it comes to repairs and modifications, but their neurology has been carefully crafted so they can't build anything new. So after their masters tried to wipe out the Daleks with a bio-weapon that killed everything but the servant race, the Nilbeks basically swiped the Dalek ships and made a run for it. Veris was probably hiding out among the KVI lab for some time, getting ready to run off with a small arsenal of gadgets that are useful, valuable, or both.
The Doctor and the others go over the rest of the lab before they leave, finding a disassembled Telosian Cyberman, a couple of yeti robots, and a room of just random alien junk deemed not worth stealing. They dump it all in the containment unit and use its self-destruct feature to get rid of all of it so nothing's left in the humans' hands.
Smuggling the Arcateenian out of the prison is pretty easy, given that anyone who'd be in a position to stop them has already been rendered unconscious by Veris' stun blaster. They get outside to see a ship (probably Veris') flying overhead as it leaves. The Doctor points out that they've still got plenty of time to get to the checkpoint for when they start letting people through, so he offers to pop the Arcateenian home and come right back while the others head back and get set up with their gifts.
So they head back, parking their TARDIS near the border crossing, and have their bags of jeans and cigarettes and other assorted goodies ready. And at the last moment, when it looks like he's going to miss it, the Doctor returns with some fresh tubs of popcorn.
As history records, the border crossing starts letting people through (only a few at first, but more and more as time goes on) and the characters step in, giving gifts to the East Germans coming across, watching them reconnect with family and friends on this side of the Wall, and all that. All while the Doctor sits with them, just quietly watching. After all, he's seen this before, a few times, but now he's getting to experience it vicariously through them. Also, it's a rare chance to just be with his own people again even if it's only for a few hours and still under a mild bit of tension.
And we leave it there, for now.
[0]-- This eventually leads into a discussion about maybe acquiring a supply of gold to use as a universal-ish currency on Earth in various periods, since in pretty much any period where currency is a thing at all gold holds considerable value. I just mention this here because it's a bit of a distraction from other stuff but I felt it worth noting. The group makes a decision to, at some point, move to a future time period where the people of Earth are post-scarcity and can probably just crank out all the gold anyone could ever want (like Star Trek) and acquire some that way. There's also some discussion of just using their own Time Lord science to make their own, or go back in time and scavenge gold from shipwrecks that were never recovered.
[1]-- He's not wrong.
[2]-- There are reports of at least one other border crossing fully opening before the famous one at Bornholmer, but Bornholmer is the one everyone knows so they decide to set up at that one.
[3]-- In case anyone has to ask, yes. Yes I do have one of the toy sonic screwdrivers, and I did indeed use it as a prop during this session.
[4]-- Just for the record, John was a good sport about the fact that the Doctor -- especially in this incarnation -- disapproves of Eska's militaristic tendencies. John is aware that his character is a little outside the standard wheelhouse for Doctor Who stories, but he knows that any judgement leveled at him in-game is entirely in-character and plays along.
[5]-- I prepared this ahead of time mostly because I didn't want to just repeat the litany of terrifying names we've heard from the Doctor before. ("The Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres.") This is an incarnation of the Doctor who hasn't been in denial about what happened in the Time War and would be willing to rattle off some of the horrible shit he's seen. So I prepared a monologue wherein the Doctor describes events from the War Doctor Big Finish audio plays which, as you can see, have been appropriately linked.
[6]-- In case it needs to be said and I haven't hammered the point home yet... Yes, Andy is one of those guys who prefers to play Ventrue and Tremere, why do you ask?
[7]-- Nilbeks are an original race I came up with years ago for a story that never went anywhere. I've adapted them for this campaign out of a desire to create some recurring characters who are a little separated from the canon and thus are going to be a little more latched onto my player characters than the Doctor.
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