Post by blaster219 on Apr 8, 2010 13:31:52 GMT
A while ago, a friend of mine ran a Dr Who campaign using the Wushu system. The premise of the campaign was that all the PCs were character's that had appeared in an episode of a hypothetical second season of NewWho (the game was ran shortly after the first season). Just before filming started for the third season, Tennet broke his leg and was unavailable (or something like that, it was a few years ago now), and the writers decided to rewrite the third season to centre around our characters being plucked from the timestream by the Tardis in an attempt to rescue the Doctor from something (again, my memory is fuzzy).
The GM asked each of us to come up with a character, write a background and summarise the episode they had appeared in during the second season.
Recently, I've been thinking about running my own game and I stumbled across the stuff I wrote for my friends game back then. The background behind the background (so to speak) could make for an interesting game in and of itself. This what I had written back then. Most of this is a straight copy/paste from the word file so forgive the typos and formatting, and I know little about Who Canon prior to the new series.
Character Stats (Wushu):
Name: Sgt Tyler “Maniac” Matthews
Marine Training 5
Random Space Time Trivia 3
Technical Background 4
Quirk: Touched by the Vortex
Weakness Reckless
Weight 78kgs / Height 177cms / Apparent Age 25 yrs, Actual Age 63 yrs
First Appearance
Episode 2.6 - Fractured Infinity – The TARDIS suffers damage when it collides with an unusual energy signature within the vortex. The energy signature turns out to be a ship, the USS Infinity. As the Doctor and his companion inspect the massive cargo bay the TARDIS landed in, they are surrounded by a squad of soldiers who the Doctor notes are wearing the uniforms of the Martian Federal Republic from the 35th century. Known to later ages as the Second Human Empire. As they are being escorted through the ship, they pass a window and the Doctor is astonished to see that the ship is inside the Time Vortex, something which should be impossible for a ship of the Second Human Empire.
Closer inspection indicates that this ship appears to be a jumble of technologies from different era's. One of the soldiers (Tyler, then a private) left to guard them explained that the ship left port over 200 years ago on the maiden test flight of a revolutionary new FTL system called a Quantum Drive. Unfortunately, the system was faulty and instead of teleporting the ship to the Proxima system, the system sent them to a random point in the universe millions of light years away. It also teleported them through time as well and every time they use it, they are transported to a random point in space and time. Inconvenient, as the Doctor put it, but it didn't explain why the soldier's were acting so tense.
Their last jump had placed them right in the middle of an area of space controlled by a hostile alien race called the Gao and the Infinity came under attack while waiting for their drive to recharge. Just before they jumped, the Gao got a lucky shot through their defences which caused a hull breach and damaged several critical systems. Since then the unit has been out of contact with the bridge or anyone else after the bulkheads sealed. That was nearly a week ago now. They should've exited the Vortex long ago but they seem stuck for some reason.
The conversation was cut short when the group came under attack by another alien race which cuts its way through the bulkhead door. After defeating the aliens, they venture through the bulkhead into the next section where they make a disturbing discovery. The damage to the drive has caused time aboard the Infinity to fracture and different sections of the ship now exist in different realities and time frames. As they explore the ship, they discover that the ship's damaged drive is building up a deadly chronometric charge which, apart from causing periodic “time quakes” aboard the ship, will explode when it reaches critical mass. The resulting explosion will shatter space and time. Time will cease to exist in any meaningful form and the universe will evaporate into nothingness. As the universe is something the Doctor is particularly fond off, he decides to save it.
Fighting their way across the length of the massive ship, Tyler and the surviving soldiers display unusually rapid reflexes and physical stamina. They pass it off as a result of training and luck but the Doctor is not entirely convinced but has more important things to worry about. Eventually they find themselves blocked by a section that has been destroyed in an alternate time line and they are forced to go EVA and be exposed to the full effects of the Time Vortex. The Doctor is forced to allow Private Tyler to accompany him despite his objections that the radiation in the Vortex could prove fatal to humans. But without Tyler's voice print, retinal scan and bioelectric signature, he'd never get in through the airlock.
After breeching the airlock of the engineering section, the Doctor repaired the drive system, which was easier than he thought it would be as the drive was similar to one the Time Lords had used eons ago. Although the various sections of the ship were reintegrated, the deadly chronometric charge was still present. Using the TARDIS, the doctor took the Infinity to the one place it could be dissipated safely, 15 billion years ago just before the Big Bang.
Before he left, the Doctor offered to take the Infinity back to Earth but the crew politely refused, saying they preferred wandering time and space.
Background (Martian Federal Republic)
In the 29th century, history on Earth came to a crashing halt. After centuries of construction the human race had completed the largest engineering project in human history, a Dyson Swarm. A massive network of satellites in close orbit around the sun. The network consisted of millions of satellites designed to collect solar power from the sun and distribute via wireless power transfer to 12 massive stations in a shared orbit around the sun parallel to Mercury. Each of these stations was equipped over a dozen microwave emitters which they used to beam energy to all the planets and moons of the solar system. Powered by a source of nearly unlimited free energy, the United Earth Alliance spread out amongst the stars bringing thousands of star systems under human control.
However all golden ages come to an end and this one was no different. A fatal flaw in the Swarm caused an instability in the sun which culminated in a series of massive flares which destroyed the Swarm. Earth, unfortunately was in the firing line and was struck repeatedly by the gouts of radioactive fire and its surface was scoured of life, rendering the planet uninhabitable. The other planets fared no better under the onslaught. Massive electromagnetic pulses fried equipment and blocked communications. Without power or life support, the millions of inhabitants of the colonies across the solar system quickly perished. Only on the newly terraformed planet of Mars were there any survivors. Although their technology failed like everyone else's, the presence of a stable human-compatible environment meant that much of the population survived.
With the Earth gone, its empire began to fall apart and neighbouring races took advantage of the chaos to invade. The human race retreated on all fronts and finally consolidated on Mars. It took centuries for humanity to recover but eventually, under the banner of the Martian Federal Republic, the human race once again began to venture outside of their solar system.
The same process which had been used to terraform Mars in the 27th and 28th centuries was used to restore life to the barren planet Earth and by the 35th century, it was once again home to billions of humans.
Background (Project Infinity)
Twenty years before the Starship Infinity was launched, a team of scientists working for the Torchwood Archives uncovered information regarding experiments performed in the early 21st century into quantum teleportation. Scientists had managed to teleport a single photon of light across a lab. Like many of the technological developments of the time, it failed to bring about the promised revolution in science and engineering. Subsequently the technology was abandoned and forgotten.
By the time quantum teleportation was rediscovered by the Martian Republic, scientific understanding of quantum mechanics had advanced considerably. Using the ancient research data, they were able to replicate the early experiments and even extend them to teleporting physical objects. Their efforts laid the groundwork for what would one day evolve into transmat technology. The scientists however had grander plans. They had the idea to reverse the field generated by their equipment and make it large enough to encompass an entire ship. Small scale experiments on an unmanned shuttlecraft proved that the concept was possible so they petitioned the government for a larger vessel. Sceptical, and influenced by the big hyperdrive manufacturers, the government eventually gave them an obsolete and ancient colony ship. Project Infinity was born.
The project spent years upgrading and overhauling every system aboard the 2 mile long starship and by the time they were finished, only the superstructure remained. Every other system had been replaced making the ship one of the most advanced vessels of its time. The first few test flights were short and stayed entirely within the solar system. In one of its maiden test flights, the Infinity broke the Earth-Moon speed record with a flight time of zero (since it teleported across the intervening space its journey was practically instantaneous). The new Quantum Drive promised instantaneous travel over practically infinite distance and would revolutionise galactic travel. However there was a fatal and undetected flaw in the system. Over ranges of less than a light year, the system worked perfectly but longer distances caused random fluctuations in the system that resulted in a random exit point. Furthermore, the instabilities caused by a long jump also punched a hole in the fabric of space throwing the ship randomly through time as well. This remained undiscovered until the Infinity's first interstellar flight which took place in the full glare of the media spotlight.
On board the flight were the project scientists, several hundred crew members, celebrities, politicians and a detachment of Republic Marines to act as guard for the dignitaries. The flight called for a 4.5 light year jump to the Proxima system, Sol's closest neighbour. If all went well, a second jump was scheduled to the colonies in Tau Ceti over 90 light years away.
With the news crews of a thousand networks watching, the Infinity left Mars orbit, activated its quantum drive and vanished. Needless to say it never arrived at its destination and a thorough search found no trace of the Infinity. Discredited, and with the loss of the entire research team, the project was shut down and the technology abandoned.
Meanwhile the Infinity found itself millions of light years from its intended destination and hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Each time they jumped they ended up at a random point in space and time.
The closest they ever got home was 50 ship years after their departure. They emerged from the vortex less than 20 light years from Earth but had the date was 1969. Using conventional hyperdrive, the made way to the Sol system just in time to observe the Apollo 11 moon landings.
Over the years, successive generations of the ship's crew grew less and less attached to the planet of their birth. By the time the Doctor paid his visit to the Infinity, the ship was on its fourth generation of ship born and they no longer searched for a way home. Instead wondering time and space to explore the universe, constantly upgrading their ship with alien technologies and gathering knowledge and expertise from all over history.
Background (Tyler Matthews as played by James McAvoy):
Born in the 189th year of the Infinity's journey, Tyler's parents were part of the ship's engineering crew and had hoped that their son would want to work alongside them. However Tyler had other plans. Growing up he showed an aptitude in the ship's shooting range, although he was smart enough to understand the engineering talk at the dinner table, he would rather spend his spare time at the gym than the workshop.
When he finished schooling, he applied to join the ship's marine force. The marines provided shipboard security and law enforcement as military services should the Infinity ever come under attack. Even though they had left Mars two centuries earlier, they still patterned themselves after the original marine detachment in terms of training and equipment. Tyler was accepted on the basis of the scores at the shooting range and trained as a riflemen. Later he would take extra training for to qualify for sniper detail.
He was still just a private assigned to security in one of the cargo sections when the Gao attacked and the Doctor made his appearance. The cargo section was one of the few sections of the Infinity to remain unchanged with time fractured aboard her. Following an attack by a hostile alien race trapped in another section, Tyler led the few remaining marines in support of the Doctor in an attempt to repair the damaged quantum drive. He became irradiated by the vortex during the EVA but survived due to a unique quirk in evolution.
Although the Infinity had shielding to protect it from solar radiation and hyperspace, it did not protect it entirely from the energies of the Vortex. Each time the ship used its quantum drive, the crew absorbed a little bit of energy from the time vortex. It was not enough to actually harm the crew and at first it went undetected. As each generation was born, they became more and more affected by the energy. The results were a longer lifespan, improved healing, a perfect sense of the passage of time and the ability to act outside the regular flow of time allowing them to react at lightning speed.
Tyler has a tendency to be a little reckless when it comes to his own safety often taking unreasonable risks in the pursuit of a mission. He would never put the lives of his men at risk unless it was absolutely necessary however. His willingness to be creative in his interpretation of orders or mission objectives has cost him more than one promotion.
The GM asked each of us to come up with a character, write a background and summarise the episode they had appeared in during the second season.
Recently, I've been thinking about running my own game and I stumbled across the stuff I wrote for my friends game back then. The background behind the background (so to speak) could make for an interesting game in and of itself. This what I had written back then. Most of this is a straight copy/paste from the word file so forgive the typos and formatting, and I know little about Who Canon prior to the new series.
Character Stats (Wushu):
Name: Sgt Tyler “Maniac” Matthews
Marine Training 5
Random Space Time Trivia 3
Technical Background 4
Quirk: Touched by the Vortex
Weakness Reckless
Weight 78kgs / Height 177cms / Apparent Age 25 yrs, Actual Age 63 yrs
First Appearance
Episode 2.6 - Fractured Infinity – The TARDIS suffers damage when it collides with an unusual energy signature within the vortex. The energy signature turns out to be a ship, the USS Infinity. As the Doctor and his companion inspect the massive cargo bay the TARDIS landed in, they are surrounded by a squad of soldiers who the Doctor notes are wearing the uniforms of the Martian Federal Republic from the 35th century. Known to later ages as the Second Human Empire. As they are being escorted through the ship, they pass a window and the Doctor is astonished to see that the ship is inside the Time Vortex, something which should be impossible for a ship of the Second Human Empire.
Closer inspection indicates that this ship appears to be a jumble of technologies from different era's. One of the soldiers (Tyler, then a private) left to guard them explained that the ship left port over 200 years ago on the maiden test flight of a revolutionary new FTL system called a Quantum Drive. Unfortunately, the system was faulty and instead of teleporting the ship to the Proxima system, the system sent them to a random point in the universe millions of light years away. It also teleported them through time as well and every time they use it, they are transported to a random point in space and time. Inconvenient, as the Doctor put it, but it didn't explain why the soldier's were acting so tense.
Their last jump had placed them right in the middle of an area of space controlled by a hostile alien race called the Gao and the Infinity came under attack while waiting for their drive to recharge. Just before they jumped, the Gao got a lucky shot through their defences which caused a hull breach and damaged several critical systems. Since then the unit has been out of contact with the bridge or anyone else after the bulkheads sealed. That was nearly a week ago now. They should've exited the Vortex long ago but they seem stuck for some reason.
The conversation was cut short when the group came under attack by another alien race which cuts its way through the bulkhead door. After defeating the aliens, they venture through the bulkhead into the next section where they make a disturbing discovery. The damage to the drive has caused time aboard the Infinity to fracture and different sections of the ship now exist in different realities and time frames. As they explore the ship, they discover that the ship's damaged drive is building up a deadly chronometric charge which, apart from causing periodic “time quakes” aboard the ship, will explode when it reaches critical mass. The resulting explosion will shatter space and time. Time will cease to exist in any meaningful form and the universe will evaporate into nothingness. As the universe is something the Doctor is particularly fond off, he decides to save it.
Fighting their way across the length of the massive ship, Tyler and the surviving soldiers display unusually rapid reflexes and physical stamina. They pass it off as a result of training and luck but the Doctor is not entirely convinced but has more important things to worry about. Eventually they find themselves blocked by a section that has been destroyed in an alternate time line and they are forced to go EVA and be exposed to the full effects of the Time Vortex. The Doctor is forced to allow Private Tyler to accompany him despite his objections that the radiation in the Vortex could prove fatal to humans. But without Tyler's voice print, retinal scan and bioelectric signature, he'd never get in through the airlock.
After breeching the airlock of the engineering section, the Doctor repaired the drive system, which was easier than he thought it would be as the drive was similar to one the Time Lords had used eons ago. Although the various sections of the ship were reintegrated, the deadly chronometric charge was still present. Using the TARDIS, the doctor took the Infinity to the one place it could be dissipated safely, 15 billion years ago just before the Big Bang.
Before he left, the Doctor offered to take the Infinity back to Earth but the crew politely refused, saying they preferred wandering time and space.
Background (Martian Federal Republic)
In the 29th century, history on Earth came to a crashing halt. After centuries of construction the human race had completed the largest engineering project in human history, a Dyson Swarm. A massive network of satellites in close orbit around the sun. The network consisted of millions of satellites designed to collect solar power from the sun and distribute via wireless power transfer to 12 massive stations in a shared orbit around the sun parallel to Mercury. Each of these stations was equipped over a dozen microwave emitters which they used to beam energy to all the planets and moons of the solar system. Powered by a source of nearly unlimited free energy, the United Earth Alliance spread out amongst the stars bringing thousands of star systems under human control.
However all golden ages come to an end and this one was no different. A fatal flaw in the Swarm caused an instability in the sun which culminated in a series of massive flares which destroyed the Swarm. Earth, unfortunately was in the firing line and was struck repeatedly by the gouts of radioactive fire and its surface was scoured of life, rendering the planet uninhabitable. The other planets fared no better under the onslaught. Massive electromagnetic pulses fried equipment and blocked communications. Without power or life support, the millions of inhabitants of the colonies across the solar system quickly perished. Only on the newly terraformed planet of Mars were there any survivors. Although their technology failed like everyone else's, the presence of a stable human-compatible environment meant that much of the population survived.
With the Earth gone, its empire began to fall apart and neighbouring races took advantage of the chaos to invade. The human race retreated on all fronts and finally consolidated on Mars. It took centuries for humanity to recover but eventually, under the banner of the Martian Federal Republic, the human race once again began to venture outside of their solar system.
The same process which had been used to terraform Mars in the 27th and 28th centuries was used to restore life to the barren planet Earth and by the 35th century, it was once again home to billions of humans.
Background (Project Infinity)
Twenty years before the Starship Infinity was launched, a team of scientists working for the Torchwood Archives uncovered information regarding experiments performed in the early 21st century into quantum teleportation. Scientists had managed to teleport a single photon of light across a lab. Like many of the technological developments of the time, it failed to bring about the promised revolution in science and engineering. Subsequently the technology was abandoned and forgotten.
By the time quantum teleportation was rediscovered by the Martian Republic, scientific understanding of quantum mechanics had advanced considerably. Using the ancient research data, they were able to replicate the early experiments and even extend them to teleporting physical objects. Their efforts laid the groundwork for what would one day evolve into transmat technology. The scientists however had grander plans. They had the idea to reverse the field generated by their equipment and make it large enough to encompass an entire ship. Small scale experiments on an unmanned shuttlecraft proved that the concept was possible so they petitioned the government for a larger vessel. Sceptical, and influenced by the big hyperdrive manufacturers, the government eventually gave them an obsolete and ancient colony ship. Project Infinity was born.
The project spent years upgrading and overhauling every system aboard the 2 mile long starship and by the time they were finished, only the superstructure remained. Every other system had been replaced making the ship one of the most advanced vessels of its time. The first few test flights were short and stayed entirely within the solar system. In one of its maiden test flights, the Infinity broke the Earth-Moon speed record with a flight time of zero (since it teleported across the intervening space its journey was practically instantaneous). The new Quantum Drive promised instantaneous travel over practically infinite distance and would revolutionise galactic travel. However there was a fatal and undetected flaw in the system. Over ranges of less than a light year, the system worked perfectly but longer distances caused random fluctuations in the system that resulted in a random exit point. Furthermore, the instabilities caused by a long jump also punched a hole in the fabric of space throwing the ship randomly through time as well. This remained undiscovered until the Infinity's first interstellar flight which took place in the full glare of the media spotlight.
On board the flight were the project scientists, several hundred crew members, celebrities, politicians and a detachment of Republic Marines to act as guard for the dignitaries. The flight called for a 4.5 light year jump to the Proxima system, Sol's closest neighbour. If all went well, a second jump was scheduled to the colonies in Tau Ceti over 90 light years away.
With the news crews of a thousand networks watching, the Infinity left Mars orbit, activated its quantum drive and vanished. Needless to say it never arrived at its destination and a thorough search found no trace of the Infinity. Discredited, and with the loss of the entire research team, the project was shut down and the technology abandoned.
Meanwhile the Infinity found itself millions of light years from its intended destination and hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Each time they jumped they ended up at a random point in space and time.
The closest they ever got home was 50 ship years after their departure. They emerged from the vortex less than 20 light years from Earth but had the date was 1969. Using conventional hyperdrive, the made way to the Sol system just in time to observe the Apollo 11 moon landings.
Over the years, successive generations of the ship's crew grew less and less attached to the planet of their birth. By the time the Doctor paid his visit to the Infinity, the ship was on its fourth generation of ship born and they no longer searched for a way home. Instead wondering time and space to explore the universe, constantly upgrading their ship with alien technologies and gathering knowledge and expertise from all over history.
Background (Tyler Matthews as played by James McAvoy):
Born in the 189th year of the Infinity's journey, Tyler's parents were part of the ship's engineering crew and had hoped that their son would want to work alongside them. However Tyler had other plans. Growing up he showed an aptitude in the ship's shooting range, although he was smart enough to understand the engineering talk at the dinner table, he would rather spend his spare time at the gym than the workshop.
When he finished schooling, he applied to join the ship's marine force. The marines provided shipboard security and law enforcement as military services should the Infinity ever come under attack. Even though they had left Mars two centuries earlier, they still patterned themselves after the original marine detachment in terms of training and equipment. Tyler was accepted on the basis of the scores at the shooting range and trained as a riflemen. Later he would take extra training for to qualify for sniper detail.
He was still just a private assigned to security in one of the cargo sections when the Gao attacked and the Doctor made his appearance. The cargo section was one of the few sections of the Infinity to remain unchanged with time fractured aboard her. Following an attack by a hostile alien race trapped in another section, Tyler led the few remaining marines in support of the Doctor in an attempt to repair the damaged quantum drive. He became irradiated by the vortex during the EVA but survived due to a unique quirk in evolution.
Although the Infinity had shielding to protect it from solar radiation and hyperspace, it did not protect it entirely from the energies of the Vortex. Each time the ship used its quantum drive, the crew absorbed a little bit of energy from the time vortex. It was not enough to actually harm the crew and at first it went undetected. As each generation was born, they became more and more affected by the energy. The results were a longer lifespan, improved healing, a perfect sense of the passage of time and the ability to act outside the regular flow of time allowing them to react at lightning speed.
Tyler has a tendency to be a little reckless when it comes to his own safety often taking unreasonable risks in the pursuit of a mission. He would never put the lives of his men at risk unless it was absolutely necessary however. His willingness to be creative in his interpretation of orders or mission objectives has cost him more than one promotion.
