- You may be looking for one of Compassion's other iterations.
| Iterations of Compassion | ||
|---|---|---|
| I • II • III • IV • V • City of the Saved | ||
Compassion was the fifth in the sequence of Remote operatives sequentially remembered from Laura Tobin. She travelled with the Doctor in the TARDIS, which rewrote her biodata to make her the first and only 102-form timeship. She eventually established herself as the City of the Saved, where she was designated Compassion V to differentiate her from her predecessors.
Origin[]
Compassion was originally Laura Tobin, a native of Ordifica. She was one of the few to survive its destruction, transported by Faction Paradox to the colony Anathema in 1799. Like all the colony residents — the Remote — she was made sterile by Faction Paradox, and reproduced using remembrance tanks instead of sexually. Over the millennia it took for the ship which Anathema was based on to get to Earth, all the colonists were remembered using biomass inside the remembrance tanks. Compassion was the result of this process.
In 1996, Compassion attended COPEX with two other Remote, Guest and Kode, where she met the Doctor on Earth. She and Kode began travelling in an antiquated timeship, the TARDIS, with the Doctor. Because Kode's ancestor Fitz Kreiner had travelled in said timeship before, he was "re-remembered" back into Fitz. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two, The Book of the War)
Compassion wore one of the Remote's standard receivers, which absorbed any nearby transmissions. To protect her from any "harmful" signals she might encounter during their travels, the Doctor interfaced her receiver with the timeship. (PROSE: The Blue Angel) This had results which she and the Doctor did not foresee: the receiver was directly connected to her biodata, and the transmissions from the ship (which through her wanted to have humaniform children and influence the coming War) caused her to be "reborn" as the first sentient timeship: the only 102-form. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War, Toy Story)
Life as a timeship[]
With the War approaching fast, the Great Houses were eager for potential technological advances and wished to induct Compassion into a force-breeding program. Compassion had to go on the run, and with her "mother" the TARDIS apparently killed, she took the Doctor and Fitz with her. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War) The same independence that kept her from submitting to the Homeworld applied to the Doctor: where he had considered himself the pilot of the TARDIS, Compassion insisted that for her he was only a tenant. (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine, The Book of the War)
In an effort to keep their flight patterns from being predicted, the Doctor purchased a randomiser on the planet Yquatine and installed it in Compassion without her permission. The installation and operation of the randomiser caused her a great deal of pain, but her systems quickly integrated it and she was unable to remove it. Although she did not kill him, Compassion's relationship with her passengers naturally became more strained. (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine) She did eventually come to be less concerned with her inability to control her destinations, finding the actual travel so exhilarating that the destination was unimportant. (PROSE: Coldheart)
In England in 1898, Cuthbert Simpson used an artron inhibitor to disable Compassion and force her to merge with one of the locals, Susan Seymour. Although Compassion managed to escape him, he was able to extract the randomiser's seed code from Seymour and notify his Homeworld, Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy) When agents of the War Queen intercepted her, Compassion was able to kill them and escape — only to rematerialise in the Edifice (the remains of the TARDIS) above Gallifrey. The War Queen was nearly able to capture Compassion, but the Doctor collapsed the Edifice and destroyed Gallifrey. She rescued four people as the world was destroyed: the Doctor, the TARDIS, Fitz, and a technician named Nivet. She left Fitz in 2001, then left the amnesiac Doctor and drained TARDIS in the 19th century so that the TARDIS would have time to recuperate before they caught up with Fitz. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, Escape Velocity)
Most (i.e. Homeworld-affiliated) timeships were powered through a link directly to the Homeworld, (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark, Warring States) but the Homeworld deemed Compassion a "subversive influence." (PROSE: The Book of the War) Instead, she fed off time-active biodata inside her. Initially she used travelling companions, (PROSE: Warring States) the first of which was Nivet. His technical skills also made him valuable to her. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Involvement in the War[]
Needs more information on Yeh, Octavia, and Liu.
At some point, an accommodation was reached between Compassion and the Houses, and the 103-form timeships were created, the details of which were shrouded in mystery. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Her first child was Antipathy, a dangerous and psychotic failure whom the Houses (on Compassion's advice) attempted to kill immediately after his birth. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...)
Compassion encountered Carmen Yeh in Alaska, 1758, where she had been accidentally left by her previous travelling companion from the Homeworld, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the Doctor. (PROSE: Schrödinger's Botanist) Although initially she only planned to "give [Carmen] a lift" until she found her friend, they stayed together for three years. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
In an attempt to provide a safe haven for humanity during the War, Compassion lodged herself between her universe and the next. By doing this she was able to change her interior dimensions to create the City of the Saved. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...). Fearing being compromised by any one of the hostile War powers, Compassion established a number of additional safe havens for humanity, contingencies or bolt holes, beyond the end of the universe within the bodies of her timeship children and accessible via the Downtime Gate. (PROSE: God Encompasses)
Appearance[]
Compassion's original and typically standard appearance had pale skin, coppery-red hair, freckles (which were described as being "far too symmetrical to be natural"), a somewhat chubby face, and whatever clothes were associated with combat in a given location. (PROSE: Interference - Book One, Warring States) Once she became a timeship her appearance was malleable, though she was initially reluctant to explore the ability. She disguised herself as an Anthaurk while in the Yquatine system, (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine) and orientalised her features in China. (PROSE: Warring States)
A fictionalised version of Compassion evidently resembled the actress Nicole Kidman. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
Abilities[]
Should talk about the Protocols of the City.
Once she became a timeship, Compassion's senses extended into other dimensions. She could generate a force field around her and deliver painful electric shocks if attacked. She once accidentally overloaded the brains of four humans trying to contact them via her telepathic circuits, temporarily disorienting them. (PROSE: The Space Age)
Interior[]
When she first became a timeship, Compassion's internal dimensions were mapped to her psychology, full of twisted forests (representing the state of emotion existing beyond the civilized self and Compassion's new awareness of her humanity) and dark, echoing spaces she forced the Doctor and Fitz to inhabit (the Doctor attributed this decision to her subconscious terror at what she had become "punishing" him and Fitz like a woman will scream abuse at the father of her child while giving birth).
When the Doctor and Fitz first entered Compassion, they found themselves in an ornate corridor decorated with portraits of the Doctor's friends, family and past selves in varying artistic styles, progressing to another corridor with doors leading off to Compassion's subconscious — with such contents as "Awful Truths," "Hopes for the Future" and "That Dream About Fitz," the last featuring Fitz's voice screaming about something — along with a narrow bridge over the dark chasm of her unconscious leading to the console.
Her console hovered over her subconscious blackness on a stone platform, the console itself being completely black and possessing harsher angles than the TARDIS, with a large crystal as its centre. The controls moved constantly, subject to how helpful Compassion felt towards the Doctor at the moment and her own uncertainty about what she had become. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) Compassion used her newfound psychic abilities to influence Fitz's dreams; he admitted to suffering from nightmares when they travelled together, until they reached an understanding. (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine)
In China Compassion modelled her interior based on the expectations of others, such as Ci Xi and Prester John. She had embroidery of phoenixes and dragons draped on her walls, a tiled red and black floor, and a night sky instead of a ceiling. In place of a console she had a carved rosewood table with chairs and a white and blue porcelain set. A circular archway led deeper in, and faint music could be heard from inside. (PROSE: Warring States)
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