[Campaign Planning] The Exiles of Time

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

WARNING: Players of the 'Doctor Who: The Exiles of Time' campaign at GUGS, please do not read this thread, as it contains spoilers for future sessions. There might be an actual play thread in the 'Our Campaigns' forum which you can read later.

Inspired by Marvel's Exiles, Fringe, a recent Marvel campaign at GUGS and something that was mentioned in the TTC, here's my idea for an upcoming campaign I want to run:

The Doctor is gone. Lost. Perhaps dead. Everything he would have done - the worlds he would have saved, the lives he would have changed, the evils he would have thwarted - may never happen now. The Doctor's disappearance has created a wound in time.

Cast adrift in the timeline, their histories altered by the removal of the Doctor from them, a group of unlikely heroes must fight to preserve the universe and fill the gaps created by the Doctor's absence. And maybe, just maybe, find out what happened to him.

GM Only Knowledge: The Doctor is lost somewhere in the Multiverse, cut off from his home universe, in the aftermath of a war that recently consumed many different realities. Inexperienced in travelling the waylines between worlds, he has become lost in the Cosmic Web, and many of the ways have been sealed to limit the lingering damage from the War.

Also, there's some fallout from the Reality War, objects and creatures which have leaked through from elsewhere through cracks in the dimensional wall created during the War.

Things I need to work out:
- How the exiles will be able to travel through time and space.
- Whether to allow a Time Lord PC (either broken free from the Time War by the shift in the timestream, forced out of hiding by the Doctor's disappearance, or something along those lines) or not.
- I've been considering having the Big Bad (at least for Season One) be a castaway from another universe trying to return to his/her own world, with no thought of the damage they might do in the process. This would give the PCs a clue about the wider events which the Doctor got caught up in.

[da professor]

A great idea.
For travelling, your PCs could have a faulty tardis, a chula spaceship, a time agent's vortex manipulator modified by jiggery-pokery to take multiple passengers - possibly by attaching it to a vehicle of some kind - or a network of microrifts linking places affected by the Doctor's absence.
The Timelord PC is a judgement call - I wouldn't allow one, but ymmv
Your Big Bad idea is perfect for the setting and is just what I would use.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Thanks Prof, I figured having a Timelord PC might be a bit much, given the concept, but wanted a second opinion before denying players the option.

The network of microrifts sounds like it'll do as a starting means of transit, and then maybe they come across one of the others mentioned during their travels.

[da professor]

Glad I could help. I'm sure many people here would want to know how it works out. I'm one of those people.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Quick update, here's what I've brainstormed for the opening session so far:

The PCs are going about their normal business when their surroundings (the whole universe, in fact) seems to shiver. In the blink of an eye, they all find themselves falling, and land in a strange Limbo (I'm thinking of using the Limbo mentioned in this earlier post) and in roughly the same location. They'll have just enough time to introduce themselves and wonder what's going on before a hologram of a woman in an old-fashioned style military uniform appears before them.

She identifies herself as Colonel Smith, Director of TEMPUS: a temporal enforcement agency picking up the reins from the defunct Time Agency. They've been monitoring a major temporal disruption and tracked the PCs' fall through the cracks formed by it. TEMPUS can extract the PCs through a microrift in local space-time, but they'll need to find a way of reaching the extraction point, which means crossing the debris field and facing all of the dangers between them and the rift.

Along the way, they encounter another stranded soul by the name of Anith, who is more than happy to join the PCs and help them reach the rift, if they'll take her with them...

(Anith is, in fact, the cross-dimensional castaway and if she is brought back to TEMPUS will work to insinuate herself into their ranks and use their base's resources to construct a dimensional bridge to return to her home timeline. If the PCs leave her behind she'll eventually find her own way out, but she'll have a personal vendetta against the PCs in particular.)

Things to flesh out/consider:
- Anith: what she is and what her backstory (false and real) is.
- Obstacles and threats for the PCs to encounter along the way to the rift.
- Backup escape method (crashed TARDIS/other TTC, lost vortex manipulator) as it's not unlikely the PCs won't be entirely trusting of Director Smith and her mysterious organisation.

Any comments, suggestions or other thoughts are most welcome.

[Marnal]

I would have them find the Doctor's TARDIS all damaged up and barely functional. [and completely un-steerable]
The TARDIS is trying to help the PCs find the Doctor but the PCs will take a while to figure this out. Also, the TARDIS only has some vague ideas about where he is.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Hmm...I'd need to figure out how to make that fit the metaplot I'm tying this into (Doctor and TARDIS last being seen together before disappearing quite violently), but I like that idea.

And I could subtly hint at Anith's true intentions by having the TARDIS 'dislike' her.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Okay, here's my plan for the first session, which I'm running on Tuesday:

1.01: Liminus
Four people from different times and places plummet through gaps in space-time, through the Void, and land on an island floating along with various pieces of debris in what appears to be the accretion disk of a black hole.
Hounded by Reapers and/or vortisaurs, the group come across a battered and scorched 1960s Police Box, tended by a young woman who calls herself Princess Anith of A'Kraitha. The police box is some kind of Time Travel Capsule in disguise, and Anith has been trying to get it back in working order so she can escape this 'liminal space' or 'liminus' between universes. The TTC is almost out of power though, so they'll need to salvage a power source to refuel it from elsewhere in this strange place.
However, they're not alone here, there are other inhabitants, and some are less friendly than others: there are the reapers and vortisaurs that prey on the lost souls who arrive on the Liminus, Daleks from a forgotten invasion of Earth circa 2150, early model Mondasian Cybermen and other things forgotten by time.

Stuff to Do: Find the police box TTC and meet Anith, find a power source to refuel the TTC with, use the TTC to escape the Liminus and return to their universe.

Action Scenes: Being chased by Reapers/vortisaurs, fighting off Cybermen or Daleks in an attempt to retrieve a power source from their ships, race back to the TTC with the power source, getting the TTC running before various bad guys come knocking...

Problems: Other innocents stranded on the island who need the PCs' help. The TTC is in poor shape, even if they can get it to fly they'll be lucky to steer it where/when they want to go.

Things to be prepared for: Prologues for each PC, showing what they were up to before arriving in the Liminus. PCs distrusting Anith, trying to find their own means of escape.

[zarohk]

Jul 21, 2013 19:21:57 GMT Eternally Lost Zeppo said:

I've been considering having the Big Bad (at least for Season One) be a castaway from another universe trying to return to his/her own world, with no thought of the damage they might do in the process. This would give the PCs a clue about the wider events which the Doctor got caught up in.

So, would you make the Big Bad more egotistical (like Glory from BTVS S5) or more desperate (an anti-villain)?
If you do the second (and make the Big Bad a Time Lord), you could give the players another hint or two along the way that the Doctor might still be around, then reveal the Big Bad and his plan for going home despite the cost, giving them the red herring of the Big Bad possibly BEING the Doctor.

Jul 21, 2013 19:21:57 GMT Eternally Lost Zeppo said:

The Doctor is gone. Lost. Perhaps dead. Everything he would have done - the worlds he would have saved, the lives he would have changed, the evils he would have thwarted - may never happen now. The Doctor's disappearance has created a wound in time.

Cast adrift in the timeline, their histories altered by the removal of the Doctor from them, a group of unlikely heroes must fight to preserve the universe and fill the gaps created by the Doctor's absence. And maybe, just maybe, find out what happened to him.

It would be interesting to put the players in situations originally from canon where they have to save the world because the Doctor isn't there, but then have things different than they seem because of the Doctor's absence. For example, a Silence plot (with PC having to make high resolve checks to remember anything about the Silence) only with the twist that the Silence are not on Earth as invaders (since they don't need to find a certain child to train to kill the Doctor), but instead are on Earth to protect the human race in a symbiotic relationship: the Silence hunt down invading aliens, and living, secretly, among humans. Or other altered canon scenarios: resolving the Sycorax hostage crisis, or repelling the Army of Ghosts from Torchwood. Remember, a big part of Marvel's Exiles was to change the course of worlds, and one of their earliest was intervention in an alternate Dark Phoenix Saga.

Wait, new idea: the PCs are alternately getting helped (when it helps the Doctor or a version of Jack Harkness) or hindered (when they aren't moving toward the Doctor, or are hunting an alternate Jack) by the Bad Wolf from behind the scenes. This could get really interesting in a world where Jack Harkness is an evil overlord (or just a Time Agent working against the PCs), and the Bad Wolf is making things harder for them to stay in that world.

[Marnal]

Why would the Order of the Silence even exist if the Doctor was dead?

[zarohk]

Sorry, good point. I forgot that we don't actually get a species name for the memory-erasing beings. I was referring to the species as the Silence, but you're right, the Silence is not the species name.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Oct 13, 2013 19:21:42 GMT zarohk said:

So, would you make the Big Bad more egotistical (like Glory from BTVS S5) or more desperate (an anti-villain)?
If you do the second (and make the Big Bad a Time Lord), you could give the players another hint or two along the way that the Doctor might still be around, then reveal the Big Bad and his plan for going home despite the cost, giving them the red herring of the Big Bad possibly BEING the Doctor.

I was going to go with her as an anti-villain, yeah. Unfortunately, I might have to condense my overall arc into a single 'season' of 13 adventures, rather than the three seasons of 8 adventures I had planned.

I tried to wrap Tuesday's adventure in one session and it ended up feeling a bit too rushed, so I'm thinking it'd be better to plan for my adventures to run over two sessions, so I'm not stressing so much over getting them each done in one evening. This means that I might need to advance the 'Search for the Doctor' side of the arc, and still manage to wrap up Anith's part in the arc. If things work out the way I'm thinking right now, I'll probably end up with a similar split of episodes to S7. (5 episodes, then a Christmas one-shot, then 8 episodes.)
So, maybe have some sort of mini-arc in the first part with hints at the bigger picture, then move on to the multiversal side of things in part two.

Oct 13, 2013 19:21:42 GMT zarohk said:

It would be interesting to put the players in situations originally from canon where they have to save the world because the Doctor isn't there, but then have things different than they seem because of the Doctor's absence...Remember, a big part of Marvel's Exiles was to change the course of worlds, and one of their earliest was intervention in an alternate Dark Phoenix Saga.

Yeah, I was considering having something along those lines. If I did though, it'd be stuff from post-S5, since that's the point where the Doctor got removed. My only issue with doing that is it offers the temptation for metagaming on the part of the players. It may also be a bit boring for them because they've kind of seen it already.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

One of my players has kindly offered to do actual play write-ups for me, so I'll post that in the Your Campaigns forum once it's done. In the meantime, here's the plan for episode two.

1.02: The Avatars of Madness
Hook: After narrowly escaping the Liminus, the TARDIS is caught in the path of a Time Scoop and ends up onboard the freelance trading vessel Warui Ōkami, where the ship's AI (now calling itself W.A.R.D.E.N.) and its Avatroids - androids with holographic faces - have turned on the crew and passengers, which includes an undercover Time Agent by the name of Thomas Webb.

Elsewhere, in a part of the ship which has been dimensionally shifted to hide it from authorities (and overly curious passengers such as Webb), a young woman named Aru wakes up with no memory of her past along with a couple of other fellow amnesiacs.

What the PCs will discover is that the crew of the Warui Ōkami have been working as temporal slave traders, plucking unsuspecting innocents from throughout time, wiping their memories and selling them off to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, one of their recent acquisitions (Andrew) was a technokinetic and his attempt to use his powers to escape during the mind wipe has caused his darker self to become fused with the ship's AI.

Stuff to Do: Find the time scoop - located in the ship's dimensionally shifted area - and disable it so that the TARDIS can leave safely. Defeat W.A.R.D.E.N. Save the ship's passengers and the time-knapped people being held in cryostasis (and any survivors from its crooked crew, I suppose).

Action Scenes: Running through corridors. Hunted by homocidal robots in tight quarters. W.A.R.D.E.N. turning the ship's systems against them.

Problems: Anith can't join the party in venturing out into the ship, because she is overwhelmed by the extent of the damage she senses has been done to the universe's timeline. The TARDIS is in the cargo hold, and W.A.R.D.E.N can control the airlock doors. How do they access the dimensionally shifted areas of the ship? Should the PCs leave the crew to their (arguably well-deserved) fate? What can they do about the time-knapped prisoners?

Things to be prepared for: Aru has to meet up with the TARDIS gang and join them somehow, so they'll have to know she's around (maybe have her in psychic communication with Pan). Since she's starting the adventure alone, another player should probably take Andrew's sheet and RP as him, so she doesn't feel too isolated.

Continuing the Adventure: Where did the slavers get the time scoop and dimensional shifting tech? Aru's memories were wiped from the data core immediately after removal, at the request of the man who handed her over; somebody really doesn't want her to remember who she is, but who and why? And if they somehow put Andrew's mind back together, what if the deranged W.A.R.D.E.N. persona is actually his true self?

[da professor]

Unsympathetic victims and a nice gut who might become dangerous if he gets his mind back. Cool!

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Oct 19, 2013 7:39:18 GMT da professor said:

Unsympathetic victims and a nice gut who might become dangerous if he gets his mind back. Cool!

Glad you like it. Not all of the crew will have been in on the timenapping business, and a couple of them will have been involved under protest, but yeah...I'm definitely going for the unsympathetic victims approach.

Luke's got a partial write-up of the first session up on his new blog INDEX FILE: The Exiles of Time, I'll start a thread in Your Campaigns once he's finished it off.

In the meantime, I'll be running The Avatars of Madness tonight. May run as a two session game, but we'll see how things go.

I'd appreciate some help brainstorming the next scenario, though. One of my players, Heather, said she'd like an adventure about reflections. I've been thinking about it, and I'd like to come up with an adventure involving Daughter of Mine from the Family of Blood. She's been trapped in every mirror, and the Doctor visited her every year. What happens when he doesn't visit? Maybe her 'Prison of Mirrors' (possible title there) needs regular maintenance and it's starting to fail.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what the hook would be, and how to make Daughter of Mine a big enough threat despite still being trapped in the mirrors. I considered the possibility that something about the mirror dimension - I'm assuming it's another dimension - has changed her, giving her new abilities perhaps? I'm aiming for a creepy Bloody Mary vibe here, in case we move on to this session in time for Halloween.

[zarohk]

Oct 18, 2013 10:03:35 GMT Eternally Lost Zeppo said:

Oct 13, 2013 19:21:42 GMT zarohk said:

It would be interesting to put the players in situations originally from canon where they have to save the world because the Doctor isn't there, but then have things different than they seem because of the Doctor's absence...Remember, a big part of Marvel's Exiles was to change the course of worlds, and one of their earliest was intervention in an alternate Dark Phoenix Saga.

Yeah, I was considering having something along those lines. If I did though, it'd be stuff from post-S5, since that's the point where the Doctor got removed. My only issue with doing that is it offers the temptation for metagaming on the part of the players. It may also be a bit boring for them because they've kind of seen it already.

Oh, no, that's the whole point: it's different enough from canon that good guys may be bad guys and vice versa. The idea is to drop the players into an almost familiar situation, but one that is changed enough by the absence of the Doctor that they can no longer rely on canon knowledge, and may even find it detrimental and/or more confusing. It would also be a good way to get players to act out biases without specifically telling them to do so: they assume this character is the good guy and this one is the bad guy, but who knows who really is. On second thought, this should probably be a later adventure though.

[zarohk]

Suggested Plot

1.0?: The Shadowed Reflections
Hook: After leaving the Warui Ōkami [crew to their fate/and rescuing its crew] the PCs are taking the time to get some rest when an alarm goes off on the TARDIS in the middle of the "night" for them. Rushing to the console room, they find that the main door have been sealed with a mirrored bulkhead, and the screens are warning of an eminent "Reflection Collapse". The TARDIS indicates that they need to enter the mirror dimension, find the Indirector, and stop the Shattering, otherwise the mirror dimension will collapse into their own.

During the briefing, one character gets attacked by Daughter of Mine in the mirrored bulkhead, until something in the mirror fights off the reflection, leaving behind a message: the figure was "the Indirector" the controller of the mirror-world who indicates that he or she is injured and needs their help to fight off "the Shattering". The message directs PCs to the "Reflecting Point" the center of a globe of mirror (think Cerebro from X-Men, lined with mirrors), where they can enter the mirror dimension.

However, entering the mirror dimension lets their reflections run free, and once free, they don't want go back to being trapped. And any sort of reflection in this dimension open to "the Prison" where a malevolent child attacks those "Origins" (people from outside the mirrors) trying to steal their bodies for herself. And when the PCs find the Indirector, he appears to be the Doctor, but they slowly realize that without the real Doctor coming back every year to re-imprint his personality on the Indirector, he has become a tyrant who rules with an iron fist, with Daughter of Mine as his shadowy enforcer. And he has no problem letting her completely free to keep the PCs here forever.

Addendum: Only the emergency lights are on in the TARDIS, so at least one character has grabbed some sort of light source (flashlight). They discover that real-world light acts like [forcefield or weakness beam] in the Mirror Dimension, but their flashlight has only an hour's worth of charge at most.

Stuff to Do: Navigate through the mirror dimension. Befriend, fight off, and sneak around various Reflection. Find the Indirector and save him from certain Reflections, Daughter of Mine and a major foe of the Doctor's (Cybermen, Daleks, etc.). Help the Indirector stop the Shattering using the SIDRAT.

Action Scenes: Running through the mirror dimension. Avoiding or fighting off Reflections of enemies. Stopping the Shattering. Overthrowing or escaping the Indirector. Tricking Daughter of Mine into going back into her prison, or convincing the Indirector to re-imprison her for good.

Problems: The Indirector wants to keep the PCs trapped in the Mirror Dimension. The PCs don't know which Reflections to trust: the Indirector? Reflections of past companions? Twisted-looking mirror-beings? Some of each are trustworthy, and some of each are not. The SIDRAT responds to the will of the Indirector, once the PCs have healed him and he decides to keep them. Why is Daughter of Mine attacking them, and does she really want to hurt them?

Things to be prepared for: The Indirector has to be able to control the SIDRAT's systems, so have some ideas of what he will do to trap the PCs. The NPC Reflections need to have good reasons for acting against their original's character in helping or opposing the PCs: do they think the PCs are intruders on the TARDIS? Do they just want to escape or overthrow the Indirector? Do they feel trapped in the SIDRAT and want out no matter what? Do they want to be more that just a reflection?

Continuing the Adventure: What destabilized the Mirror Dimensions? Since reflections weaken and fade when their original is gone, why is the Indirector still there? And who activated the TARDIS' formerly broken lockdown protocols?

[Marnal]

This is GREAT! Will be using a few ideas from it in my game!

[zarohk]

Feel free. I personally enjoy making plots especially deceptive, so that players can't initially tell who's the good guys or bad guys (or if there are particularly any).

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Hmm...what if the Shattering were some kind of entity from the Void or another universe? That could tie in with the Reality War arc, maybe have it be something that's bled through the cracks created by the War.

Also, now I'm thinking of it, I kind of like the idea that Sister of Mine wasn't trying to grab one of the characters - either to steal their body or drag them into the mirror dimension - purely out of malice, but because she's trapped in there with someone/something that's got HER scared and desperate.

[zarohk]

Great idea. I wasn't really sure about what the Shattering would be. And, connected to the idea that "Sister of Mine is scared of someone/something out to get her" perhaps the Doctor didn't trap her in the mirror out of malice, but, just like he made Brother of Mine guard the fields of England forever, he set up Sister of Mine as a guardian of the mirror dimensions, and his yearly visit to her was not to re-enforce her prison so that that she couldn't get out, but to help her reenforce whatever barriers there were to keep the Shattering from getting into where she is.

My original idea for this plot was to have the character discover that Sister of Mine was the Indirector, but I wasn't sure if it would be too twisty a plot, and what's there makes for a bigger and better story.

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Oct 26, 2013 15:03:41 GMT zarohk said:

Great idea. I wasn't really sure about what the Shattering would be. And, connected to the idea that "Sister of Mine is scared of someone/something out to get her" perhaps the Doctor didn't trap her in the mirror out of malice, but, just like he made Brother of Mine guard the fields of England forever, he set up Sister of Mine as a guardian of the mirror dimensions, and his yearly visit to her was not to re-enforce her prison so that that she couldn't get out, but to help her reenforce whatever barriers there were to keep the Shattering from getting into where she is.

My original idea for this plot was to have the character discover that Sister of Mine was the Indirector, but I wasn't sure if it would be too twisty a plot, and what's there makes for a bigger and better story.

That sounds like a good idea, and it makes sense - given that they imply the Doctor has a little bit of pity for Daughter of Mine - that he would make her punishment an opportunity for atonement and perhaps redemption. I'm thinking the mirror dimension is a weak point in the universe, something that could be exploited by Outsiders looking to get in, so he put Daughter of Mine there and told her to guard it, and call for him through a mirror if something occurred that she couldn't handle herself. Except, now something has, and the Doctor's not around...

[zebaroth]

I love this idea

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

The finale for last 'season' of Exiles ended more like a Stargate SG-1 finale than a Doctor Who finale, with several threats unresolved:

- A huge warship emerging from a black hole to begin an overt invasion of our universe.
- The old Time Agency - as represented by a nanite-clone of Captain Jack - working in collaboration with these invaders (there's a thread I haven't explored yet which involves them kidnapping various historical figures and replacing them with nanite duplicates).
- The Doctor is still missing, and the universe is still swiss-cheesed as a result.
- The Staff of C'Toni - one of eight keys which combine to create the Key to Infinity - has been sent away to an unknown location, where it can only be recovered by 'one who is worthy'.
- On a more personal level, one of the PCs is currently a 'carrier' for the Shattering, a sentient crack which has absorbed the darker aspects of his personality and has already briefly taken possession of him once before.

With all these plot arcs going on, I have plenty of material to work with...maybe too much. As it is, I can't decide which to use for the season two opener. The Big Bad warship seems the obvious choice, since it's the major threat at present, but I'm not sure how to make an adventure about that without making it combat-oriented, which isn't very Whovian. Help?

[Craig Oxbrow]

Call in possible allies to slow it down, so there's a big space battle that the PCs aren't really involved in, while they infiltrate the ship and try to sabotage it, or free a slave army and start a revolt, or talk the leaders down, or set off a deus ex machina, or something similarly clever-and-not-based-on-shooting?

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Jan 19, 2014 16:12:09 GMT Craig Oxbrow said:

Call in possible allies to slow it down, so there's a big space battle that the PCs aren't really involved in, while they infiltrate the ship and try to sabotage it, or free a slave army and start a revolt, or talk the leaders down, or set off a deus ex machina, or something similarly clever-and-not-based-on-shooting?

Thanks, based on that suggestion I wound up having them travel back in time at the behest of the Temporal Security Agency (who were on the verge of destruction by the ship) to stop the ship escaping the black hole in the first place as that was the only point it was vulnerable at. They managed to do so, although the effort caused further damage to the timestream (though this was still considered preferable to allowing a Time War-level warship to conquer the universe).

Session after that had them investigating the disappearance of Archimedes shortly prior to the Siege of Syracuse. (I'm still working on the write-ups for these, and will post them as soon as I can manage)

My latest problem: as part of his character arc, the Silurian member of the party has used a stolen vortex manipulator in an attempt to travel back to when his people still ruled Earth. Initially, my plan was to have the Exiles track him to the Renaissance era, where he got to before the manipulator fizzled out and wound up befriending Leonardo DaVinci, after finding a version of the Mona Lisa with his face on it (this was a plot element requested during a PTA-style 'coming soon' exercise I did at the end of our first session of the new season).

However, the players are pretty keen to see Madame Vastra and Jenny, and now I think of it, this makes more sense given the character arc. I still want to figure out a way to work in the 'Mal Lisa' though.

My current thought is a rehash of an older idea: a painting whose artist is inspired by contact with an extra-dimensional entity, trying to use his work as a vector for mass mind control in our reality. For some reason, it didn't succeed with Leonardo (maybe the Doctor interfered somehow?). But in 18XX, a counterfeit artist is about to succeed where DaVinci failed. Luckily, Madam Vastra, Jenny and their new partner Mal are on the case! But this one might be too much even for them. Luckily, it seems Mal has - or will have - commissioned a 'Mal Lisa', to be delivered where the rest of the Exiles will find it in their present, as a clue to lead them back here.

(Kinda convoluted, but it's what I've got right now.)

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

Okay, after a bit more brainstorming I came up with a different idea:

2.05: The Mal Lisa
Hook: A forgery of the Mona Lisa with Mal's face on it leads the Exiles to February 1891, where Malik has joined Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint on a missing person investigation.
Problem: The missing person is the former lover of an artist who has become partly possessed by an Isolus spore. He painted a portrait of her as a Valentine's gesture, unwittingly trapping her in the painting.
Complications: When his lover didn't show up for the rendezvous (because she is now trapped in a painting), the artist assumed she had stood him up and rejected him once more. As a result, his mood has begun to spiral into darker and darker territory, influencing his artwork, which subsequently starts coming to life.
Subplots: Malik learning of the Silurians' survival through hibernation from Vastra. Vastra teaching him to tolerate humanity and their faults, as well as teaching him to appreciate the good in them...
Resolution: Reason with the artist. Get the Isolus out of his body. Help it to get home somehow. And make sure the 'Mal Lisa' is painted to lead the Exiles to Mal in the first place (otherwise, paradox and, as a time agent, Howard hates those).
Fun Stuff: Art coming to life! Madame Vastra and Jenny!

[Eternally Lost Zeppo]

My next session idea will be a significantly altered version of the 'Operation: Underwell' adventure seed offered in the UNIT sourcebook.

The Underwell Quarantine
The TARDIS materialises in an underground cavern, where they are soon met by UNIT soldiers escorting a group of scientists, who demand to know who they are and what their intentions are. Once they have established a rapport, the UNIT team commander tells them that they are investigating indications of an underground city they believe to be of Silurian origin, detected by an automated drone at the end of a super-deep drill. They're not sure how the city has survived without maintenance for all these millenia, and have come to investigate the city. The soldiers are there as an escort, in case whoever or whatever is maintaining the city proves to be hostile.

What's Going On: The Silurians of this city fell victim to some form of sentient infection. They were able to slow the progress of the infection, but not halt it altogether. For the good of the rest of the planet, they placed themselves in hibernation as a quarantine measure. The Rhyax, an immortal creature they created to watch over them during this hibernation, is tasked with keeping the quarantine in effect and keeping intruders out, until such time as their Silurian brethren arrive and find a solution to the plague.
The problem is, others have arrived with the intention of releasing the infected Silurians so that they might spread the infestation to the surface, they have bypassed the Rhyax and are currently attempting to awaken the sleeping Silurians.

Antagonists: The Archivists, led by Captain Jack, who are behind the infection. This is a slow invasion, designed to catch humanity off-guard; the Silurians would appear to humanity seeking truce with them and then slowly infest the human leadership during the peace talks. The Rhyax will initially assume the Exiles and UNIT to be further intruders seeking to breech the quarantine.

Stuff to Do: Thwart Captain Jack and his colleagues. Halt the Silurian awakening, or at least delay it until a cure can be found to the Archivist infection.

Action Scenes: Encounters with the Rhyax. UNIT and the Exiles versus Captain Jack and his team of Archivist-infested time agents.

Problems: Can all of the UNIT scientists and soldiers be trusted? What if some have already been infected before the mission, or at some point while they were separated? And UNIT command may deem it best to nuke the city and its inhabitants to neutralize the Archivist threat. The PCs will have to talk them out of that.

Things to Be Prepared For: If it comes to light that UNIT have had previous encounters with the Silurians, Malik may not be pleased to hear how those encounters turned out. This may also bring him into conflict with Robyn, given her affiliation with UNIT.

Continuing the Adventure: His team may be wiped out or otherwise dealt with, but Captain Jack will escape after being recalled to the Archivists' homebase.