Post by olegrand on Oct 25, 2018 17:58:29 GMT
Hello everybody
Once again, I'm requesting the ideas & input of my fellow DWAITAS GMs to help me develop a scenario idea for a forthcoming Lady Penelope episode.
The story would be set in Rome, in 82 AD, three years after the Pompeii disaster. It would be a sort of sequel to "The Fires of Pompeii" and would focus on Lobus Caecilius and his family - especially on the daughter Evelina. As you might recall, she lost her Precog powers (which were actually a consequence of the time rift caused by the volcanic eruption sending ripples through time etc.) and was cured from her "Pryovilisation / petrification" when the Doctor and Donna unleash the fury of the Vesuvius to thwart the Pyrovile's schemes before saving Lobus and his family. As the ending of the episode shows, six months later, the Caecilius family had moved to Rome and everything was hunky-dory for them.
So here is the starting point of my idea. One of the current ongoing "metaplot" themes of my series is a phenomenon known as the Dissonance or the Multiplicity - simply put, the "main continuum" is getting more and more destabilized by alternate timelines, temporal divergences etc. so that established historical reality is growing less and less stable, with weird anomalies, contradictions and impossibilities (all of them fairly minor, for the time being) cropping up through "history as we know it".
Simply put, this "Multiplicity" is a handy plot device allowing me to justify all types of interferences and strange timey-wimey occurrences. In the case of Evelina, it would cause the (normally impossible) re-awakening of her Precog powers (out of the blue, so to speak) - but Evelina would also be "haunted" by more and more vivid visions of the "Pyrovile empire" that never was (the one prevented by the Doctor's intervention), as if she was remembering two divergent timelines (the one where the Doctor saved her and the "Pyrovile empire" one). This could also trigger a return of her progressive petrification - once again, without rhyme or reason (remember : it's all because of the Dissonance / Multiplicity, which makes the Impossible possible).
This is where I'm currently standing. Ideally, I would like this "empire that never was" to play a central role in the story - perhaps not as a "real" alternate timeline trying to invade real history (with Evelina as the single "entry point") but as a force / antagonist / problem which our heroine (Lady Penelope) would have to stop / circumvent / oppose to save Evelina (ie preventing her from becoming mad, turning to stone etc.)
At first, I was thinking that this "empire which never was" could actually become increasingly real inside Evelina's mindscape and try to invade/burst in our reality using Evelina both as some sort of portal, entry point and incubation matrix... but the idea of having a whole alternate reality shaping itself and then "bursting through" through the mind of a single person DOES seem a bit far-fetched (yes, I know, as if the other stuff wasn't... but I'm sure you get my meaning) and even though I could probably justify it, I'm not that keen on having some kind of "instant reality change switch" occurring as the consequence of some heavy psychic crisis...
So I'd like to find a subtler solution / approach. Keeping the idea of the "empire that never was" slowly destroying Evelina from the inside... but I where could this lead me, in terms of resolution ? In some past scenarios, I did have Penelope's TARDIS take her to the "imaginary world /mindscape" of specific individuals so that might be a possibility here - but if the above demented ramblings give you mad/briliant ideas, I'm all ears!
(Thanks for having the patience of reading this lengthy post)
Once again, I'm requesting the ideas & input of my fellow DWAITAS GMs to help me develop a scenario idea for a forthcoming Lady Penelope episode.
The story would be set in Rome, in 82 AD, three years after the Pompeii disaster. It would be a sort of sequel to "The Fires of Pompeii" and would focus on Lobus Caecilius and his family - especially on the daughter Evelina. As you might recall, she lost her Precog powers (which were actually a consequence of the time rift caused by the volcanic eruption sending ripples through time etc.) and was cured from her "Pryovilisation / petrification" when the Doctor and Donna unleash the fury of the Vesuvius to thwart the Pyrovile's schemes before saving Lobus and his family. As the ending of the episode shows, six months later, the Caecilius family had moved to Rome and everything was hunky-dory for them.
So here is the starting point of my idea. One of the current ongoing "metaplot" themes of my series is a phenomenon known as the Dissonance or the Multiplicity - simply put, the "main continuum" is getting more and more destabilized by alternate timelines, temporal divergences etc. so that established historical reality is growing less and less stable, with weird anomalies, contradictions and impossibilities (all of them fairly minor, for the time being) cropping up through "history as we know it".
Simply put, this "Multiplicity" is a handy plot device allowing me to justify all types of interferences and strange timey-wimey occurrences. In the case of Evelina, it would cause the (normally impossible) re-awakening of her Precog powers (out of the blue, so to speak) - but Evelina would also be "haunted" by more and more vivid visions of the "Pyrovile empire" that never was (the one prevented by the Doctor's intervention), as if she was remembering two divergent timelines (the one where the Doctor saved her and the "Pyrovile empire" one). This could also trigger a return of her progressive petrification - once again, without rhyme or reason (remember : it's all because of the Dissonance / Multiplicity, which makes the Impossible possible).
This is where I'm currently standing. Ideally, I would like this "empire that never was" to play a central role in the story - perhaps not as a "real" alternate timeline trying to invade real history (with Evelina as the single "entry point") but as a force / antagonist / problem which our heroine (Lady Penelope) would have to stop / circumvent / oppose to save Evelina (ie preventing her from becoming mad, turning to stone etc.)
At first, I was thinking that this "empire which never was" could actually become increasingly real inside Evelina's mindscape and try to invade/burst in our reality using Evelina both as some sort of portal, entry point and incubation matrix... but the idea of having a whole alternate reality shaping itself and then "bursting through" through the mind of a single person DOES seem a bit far-fetched (yes, I know, as if the other stuff wasn't... but I'm sure you get my meaning) and even though I could probably justify it, I'm not that keen on having some kind of "instant reality change switch" occurring as the consequence of some heavy psychic crisis...
So I'd like to find a subtler solution / approach. Keeping the idea of the "empire that never was" slowly destroying Evelina from the inside... but I where could this lead me, in terms of resolution ? In some past scenarios, I did have Penelope's TARDIS take her to the "imaginary world /mindscape" of specific individuals so that might be a possibility here - but if the above demented ramblings give you mad/briliant ideas, I'm all ears!
(Thanks for having the patience of reading this lengthy post)