Vektan-Noverians

Category:Species
The Vektan-Noverians, also known by many other names like "the Sun Builders", "the Watchmakers", the Superiors, the "Shadow People", "the House-Dwellers", "the Lords of Jewel", and the "Race of Dimensional Supremacy", are inhabitants of the planet Vektan Noveria, who were most famous for the creation and attempted monopolisation of dimensional travel technology.
Vektan-Noverians are sensitive to timelines, being able to see "all that is, all that was, all that ever could be," but also "what must not [be]". They had an instinctive urge to stay away from events that would always happen. They were seen as immortal, or nearly so, partially due to their ability to regenerate. They had a great place in the mythologies and cultures of other civilisations, being outright called "the Gods" by several species, including the Arkians.
The ancient Vektan-Noverians were known to take part in battles and conflicts, often helping to hunt species known to be dangerous. One of the last of these was a war against the Great Vampires, which was so long and bloody that they turned against violence in general. One account of this war called them the angels. For at least part of their history, the Vektan-Noverians adhered to a strict policy of non-interference. Despite their attempts to keep up an appearance of being uninterested in the affairs of others, they still sent discreet missions where others would act on their behalf. By the time of the Ark, the Vektan-Noverians had reigned in "absolute power" for ten million years.
== Life cycle ==
: Main article: Vektan-Noverian physiology
Vektan-Noverians are born from individual Family Looms, machines that operated on genetic banks that would weave random patterns until forming a new person. According to some accounts, the commonness of Looms rendered traditional family units redundant for Vektan-Noverians, In many cases, their life cycle seemed to include a phase similar to human childhood. Many Vektan-Noverians were once physically children and at least some lived in homes with others of their own gender before going off to join the Academy or the army. 
According to Atriox Vektelarian, a Vektan-Noverian was supposed to face death by meditation: repentance, acceptance and contemplation of the absolute. Vektan-Noverians have some control over their own deaths, some would elect a specific "Death-Day," which would allow them time to read their will to their family in their ancestral home, to die after a time of contemplation and acceptance, and then to have their mind copied. When they eventually died with their regenerations exhausted, they could release one last burst of regeneration energy which would see their last body vanish, leaving only the clothing they had been wearing. However, one had to will this to happen prior to death, and if a Vektan-Noverian's death did leave behind a body, it was considered necessary to destroy their corpse soon afterwards. This was because, by harvesting the body, one could gain the ability to regenerate and cheat death. 
Once they had died, a Vektan-Noverians's mind and experiences were usually uploaded to a virtual storage on Vektan-Noveria. Though usually confined to this virtual world, some of the deceased would again walk the material plane in mechanical forms.
== Culture ==
=== Art ===
Time Lords appreciated music, as indicated by such artefacts as the Harp of Rassilon. (TV: The Five Doctors) They also appreciated art, although painting on Gallifrey was done by computer. (TV: City of Death) Time Lord art, known as stasis cubes, were unique in that they were in 3D, as they acted as snapshots of a single moment in time. This meant that they could be used as rudimentary time travel, by freezing a person inside a painting and then letting them out at the required point in time. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
By the time of the Doctor the Patrexes Chapter specialised in art and aesthetics. (PROSE: Damaged Goods)
=== Education ===
One of the major institutions of the Time Lords was the Time Lord Academy. It was split up into Chapters, each of which was identified by its distinctive colours. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) The subjects at the academy ranged from the study of cosmic science (TV: Terror of the Autons) to Veteran and Vintage Vehicles (TV: The Pirate Planet) to Gallifreyan flutterwings. (TV: The Pirate Planet)
Children began instruction at the Time Lord Academy, at the age of 8, in a special ceremony. The Gallifreyans would be forced to look into the Untempered Schism, which showed the entirety of the Time Vortex and the power that the Time Lords had. The Gallifreyans subjected to its terrifying effects would react differently: "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." (TV: The Sound of Drums) They would then spend "centuries" studying at the Academy. (COMIC: Mortal Beloved)
Time Lords took a variety of classes at the Time Lord Academy of which one was recreational mathematics, which included the study of Happy prime numbers. (TV: 42)
For reasons unknown to Time Lords, a mammoth that fell on and killed a Cro-Magnon became a fixed point. Videos of the event were played for young Time Lords "as a sort of learning experience." (PROSE: Keeping up with the Joneses)
Immediately after being doused with roentgen radiation, the Tenth Doctor told Martha Jones that he used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery. (TV: Smith and Jones)
=== Food and sustenance ===
Gallifreyan physiology provided for a diet similar to the human one (TV: The Keys of Marinus, Boom Town, The Eleventh Hour), including fruit and flesh, but the Time Lords had long lost the habit of feeding with raw or complex food by the time of the presidency of the Fourth Doctor. Freeze-dried pills were employed instead. (TV: The Invasion of Time) Fruit and meat would be eaten on formal occasions, such as holidays, Name Days of Family and Death Days. Such food included fish, Trumpberries, Magenta Fruits and Pig Rats. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) A Time Lord's tastes - similar to their appearance and mannerisms - were greatly influenced by their regeneration, altering which food and drink they preferred and even which ones they could no longer tolerate. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Impossible Astronaut) With an enhanced sense of one's internal state and advanced knowledge of chemistry, a Time Lord could - via smell and taste - identify chemical substances and even what chemicals were needed in the body to alter a physical condition. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Unicorn and the Wasp)
=== Dress ===
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At events like the resignation of a Lord President, Time Lords who attended wore long robes in bright colours. The different colours signified the Chapter that each Time Lord belonged to: Prydonians wore robes of scarlet and orange; Arcalians wore green; Patrexes wore heliotrope; Scendeles robes changed from light pink to a darker shade of red; Dromeians wore grey, black and silver; and Ceruleans wore subdued blue colours. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, PROSE: Lungbarrow, The Ancestor Cell) In addition, most high-ranking Time Lords donned a decorative headdress and crest, complete with a scarlet cap. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) The Tenth Doctor claimed his people had once worn these robes when going into battle, but by his era they were purely ceremonial. (PROSE: The Knight, The Fool and The Dead) A Time Lord historian speculated that, while the elaborate robes had originally been meant for grand occasions, Rassilon's obfuscated legacy had caused their meaning to be lost and they had become everyday dress. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
During the time when the Time Lords acted as the interventionist Gods of Minyos, early in their history, (TV: Underworld) they wore golden robes with fine crystalline, organic-looking ornaments, most strikingly on their headdressess. (COMIC: Omega)
In the Time War, Gallifreyan residents of the Capitol and Arcadia, including children and the military, wore red clothes. This was mimicked in the scarlet dress of military and government officers. (TV: The Day of the Doctor, The End of Time)
The Doctor repeatedly stated that he disliked Time Lords' hats, calling them "funny" (TV: Time Crash) and "dreadful". He also said that Time Lords had "no dress sense" (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS) and considered them a "stiff-necked lot" (AUDIO: Living Legend)
Of those Time Lords seen repeatedly visiting other worlds, such as the Doctor and Romana, they tended to adopt the local dress of their preferred destination - in the Doctor's case, that of Earth - that mixed well with the locals, though Romana adopted the same largely to mimic him. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
During and after the War in Heaven, Time Lord dress appeared to hold significant ritualistic value. Agents of the Enemy, or possibly even the Enemy themselves, wore Time Lord regalia in parody of their adversaries. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) In the Post-War universe, the Onihr treated the collars, skullcaps, and robes as relics necessary to achieve mastery of time. (PROSE: Trading Futures) Mysterious alien creatures in Mestizer's manor dressed in the collars and robes when she planned to use the Doctor's Cabinet of Light. (PROSE: The Cabinet of Light)
=== Romance ===
Due to the fact that a Time Lord could unwillingly swap genders with regeneration, the Time Lords were less concerned about gender roles, despite still calling themselves Lords. (TV: World Enough and Time) Missy once explained that Time Lords were not like animals which were obsessed with sex and mating. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) The Twelfth Doctor admitted he had a "man crush" on the Master back during their academy days because of how wonderful he was. (TV: World Enough and Time)
== Politics ==
=== Domain ===
The Time Lords ruled from the planet Gallifrey, where they would watch the workings of the universe. (TV: The Sound of Drums) Though they once had a mighty empire during the Dark Times, the empire collapsed after the fall of the Pythia. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) During the Last Great Time War however, their domain was still referred to as an empire. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
Time Lords were originally flexible about manipulating the outcome of certain moments in history. However, they eventually came to fear the consequences of their meddling, noticing how dangerously a change to time could backfire. It became clear that the race had been too reckless when the Time Lords helped the Minyans evolve faster, but found the results disastrous; this led to their non-interference policy. (TV: Underworld)
During Romana’s presidency Gryben, a planet used by the Temporal Powers as an enclave for unauthorised time travellers, was Gallifreyan territory. (AUDIO: Weapon of Choice)
The Time Lords were said to have control over much of the structure of the universe. They had set up the Web of Time (AUDIO: Neverland) and controlled the entire Spiral Politic, up until the edge of their noosphere at the frontier in time. (PROSE: The Book of the War) They fixed paradoxes (TV: Father's Day) and allowed travel between parallel universes. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) After the near-extinction of the Time Lords during the Last Great Time War, these processes were in flux. (TV: Father's Day, Rise of the Cybermen)
=== Government ===
The Time Lords were led by the High Council. The Council consisted of the Lord or Lady President, the Lord or Lady Chancellor, the Castellan and Lords Cardinal. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) Collectively, the Lord President and his or her closest associates from the ruling Houses were called "the Presidency". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Inner Council consisted of the three most powerful members of the High Council. The Lord President was the most powerful member of the Council and had near absolute authority, and used a link to the Matrix, a vast computer network containing the knowledge and experiences of all past generations of Time Lords, to set Time Lord policy and remain alert to potential threats from lesser civilisations. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) The Lord or Lady Chancellor was next in power and handled many of the government functions. The Castellan controlled the Chancellery Guard and therefore the safety of Gallifrey. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
The rest of the High Council was made up of the Lords Cardinal, which represented the various Gallifreyan Chapters. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) There was at least one Cardinal Prime. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
During the Last Great Time War, the Visionary was also a member of the council. She acted as a prophet, recording the future, but only with vague predictions written on paper. (TV: The End of Time)
During the War in Heaven, the War Council seemingly replaced the High Council, debating plans for House Military advances under the supervision of the War King. (AUDIO: Body Politic) In the Last Great Time War, the War Council, also known as Gallifrey High Command, were a separate entity from the High Council; the General ignored the High Council's plans to save Gallifrey. They also possessed the ability to give "all thirteen" Doctors the go-ahead to freeze Gallifrey in a pocket universe. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
During the War in Heaven, Gallifreyan civil servants were all equipped with a psychic tripwire to prevent them from revealing confidential information. Should any of this information be revealed, the tripwire was triggered leading to the civil servant suffering psychic seizure leading to eventual death. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
The Saxon Master claimed that if the Tenth Doctor killed Rassilon, the Lord President at the time, he would become Lord President himself. (TV: The End of Time) When the Twelfth Doctor later overthrew Rassilon with the help of Gallifrey's military, he did indeed become Lord President. As Lord President, he had the power to banish both Rassilon and the High Council despite the High Council's status on Gallifrey. (TV: Hell Bent)
=== Justice ===
The protection of the Time Lords was carried out by the Chancellery Guard. They protected the Capitol, investigated crimes and captured criminals. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) More secretive or questionable matters were handled by the Celestial Intervention Agency, which was created to be a covert arm of the High Council to safeguard the Time Lords' interests. (TV: Shada) Much of what they did went against the official non-interference policy, leading them to use agents such as the Doctor, an unofficial practitioner of the unofficial Gallifreyan policy, whose connection to Gallifrey's rulers could be reasonably doubted. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
Tens of thousands of years before the Doctor's time, criminals were trapped in Shada, with the intent being that they would be kept there until a suitable punishment could be decided. By the Doctor's time, this method had been phased out and replaced with disintegration. (PROSE: Shada) Morbius was executed this way, but managed to survive as just a brain. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)
There were two forms of illegal intervention, both punishable by vaporisation. A Class One was affecting the material properties of a planet, such as axial rotation. A Class Two was when a Time Lord claimed themselves to be a god on a planet. (AUDIO: False Gods)
The punishments used for crimes varied in severity.
* For his breaking of the non-interference policy, the Second Doctor was forced to regenerate and was exiled to Earth with a non-functioning TARDIS. (TV: The War Games)
* Committing genocide would lead to the removal of any remaining regenerations a Time Lord had; artificial species were not considered alive, thus genocide was impossible. (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord)
* After the Imperator led his army of followers and mercenaries on a crusade against hundreds of cultures around the Spiral Politic, he was tried and publicly executed. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
* For the countless crimes the Master committed, his punishment would have been the reversal of his time stream, such that he had never existed. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) A similar punishment was carried out on the War Lord for his interference in human history which led to the deaths of thousands; he (and several of his guards) were dematerialised out of existence. The War Lord homeworld had a force field placed around it. (TV: The War Games) Similarly the Imperiatrix Pandora was executed in such a way she’d never existed. (AUDIO: Lies) The Oubliette of Eternity was used to erase criminals from time, though unbeknownst to the Time Lords its victims actually became Neverpeople. (AUDIO: Neverland)
* When the Doctor was framed for assassinating the Time Lord President, he would have been vaporised if found guilty. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
== Leisure ==
Young Time Tots were known to keep rovies as pets. (AUDIO: No Place Like Home) Stories of the Shakri were told to the young ones to keep them fearful of doing anything that might get their species eliminated. (TV: The Power of Three) They were also told fairy tales involving a mythical race known as the Toclafane. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
Academy students sometimes played a dangerous game called "Eighth Man Bound". The multidimensional game of Perigosto, played with a ball and a specialised Perigosto stick, was also a favourite, as was a complicated board game called Sepulchasm. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
During a darker, more barbarous time in the planet's past, Time Lords enjoyed watching time-displaced individuals fight to the death in a dedicated area called the Death Zone, but that practice had been entirely abandoned by the Doctor's day. (TV: The Five Doctors)
== Science and technology ==
The Time Lords were superlatively advanced in many fields of science, including mathematics, (TV: 42) biology, (TV: Evolution of the Daleks) xenobiology, (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) chemistry, (TV: The Crimson Horror) and physics to such an extent that, when at Poseidon, Director Jessop regarded any species that had a grasp on science as profound as the Tenth Doctor's to be on par with the gods. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension) Even Susan Foreman, still considered a youth by Gallifreyan standards, was able to, using scrap metal, engineer a machine whose basic science was beyond the knowledge of 22nd century Earth. (AUDIO: After the Daleks)
Even the Daleks, the rival race of the Time Lords, respected their foes' scientific genius, eager to exploit the genius of a Time Lord, (TV: Evolution of the Daleks) and acknowledging that Time Lord technology could perform feats beyond Dalek science. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy, PROSE: All Flesh is Grass) The Time Lords themselves however noted that some aspects of Dalek technology, such as the New Dalek Empire's magnetron, were superior to their Time Lord counterparts. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
=== Transport ===
The most characteristic technology used by the Time Lords was their time travel technology of the TARDISes. The TARDIS was derived from the early Gallifreyan technology of the Time Scaphe. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) The TARDISes were one of the few types of technology that was updated, from the obsolete Type 40 (TV: The Ribos Operation) to the more advanced Type 57 (TV: Warriors of the Deep) along with the Type 70 and the humanoid Type 103. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Battle TARDISes and War TARDISes also existed. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, AUDIO: Neverland) The Celestial Intervention Agency used time stations, large high-powered TARDISes, as mobile bases of command. A Class 7C station was used during the investigation of anti-time. (AUDIO: Neverland)
During the Eternal War, the Time Lords developed the bowship to use against the Great Vampires. (TV: State of Decay, PROSE: The Multi-Faceted War) They were later used in the Last Great Time War (PROSE: A Brief History of the Time Lords) including at the Fall of Arcadia. (PROSE: A Prologue) After being overthrown, Rassilon was exiled in a bowship. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
The Celestial Intervention Agency operated a space station, Zenobia. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) The station was capable of being relocated (AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard) and of creating time corridors and was equipped with a Seventh Door to the Matrix. (TV: The Ultimate Foe) The station was later decommissioned and dismantled, (AUDIO: The Brink of Death) though a second one, Zenobia II, was in use during the Time War. (COMIC: The Bidding War)
One of the newer technology developed within the Doctor's lifetime was the Time Rings. (PROSE: Legacy) These Time Rings were small devices attached around the wrist, allowing a person to travel through time without being in a time machine. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) They could also be made as small as finger rings that could be touched together to enable time travel. (PROSE: Happy Endings, AUDIO: The Grel Escape)
The Time Lords also possessed a form of portal technology that could be used for rapid troop deployment. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
=== Stellar manipulation ===
The Time Lords had the capability to control and use the power of stars. The Tenth Doctor went so far as to claim that the Time Lords "invented" black holes. (TV: The Satan Pit) When he threatened Ra and the Ship of a Billion Years with the 59th Time Fleet, the War King said that solar engineering was one of the Great Houses' first great achievements. (AUDIO: Body Politic) Faction Paradox's propaganda alleged that it was Gallifreyan experiments with black holes that had first unleashed the Great Vampires. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
Using the Hand of Omega, the Time Lords could speed up the development of stars. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) One such star had been exploded but its development into a black hole had been frozen, trapped in a permanent state of decay and was kept either under the Panopticon as the Eye of Harmony to power the civilisation of the Time Lords, or in TARDISes to use as their power source.[disputed statement] (TV: The Deadly Assassin, Journey of the Centre of the TARDIS)
=== Weaponry and defences ===
In ancient times, the Time Lords created powerful weapons and defences such as the De-mat Gun, which could erase its target from history, (TV: The Invasion of Time) and validium, a living metal considered the ultimate defence. (TV: Silver Nemesis) The disciples of Omega spent four generations installing the transduction barriers around Gallifrey, which kept the planet slightly out of phase with the rest of the universe (AUDIO: Renaissance) and contained four barriers designed to stop outsiders. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen) The "last work of the ancients of Gallifrey" was the Moment, known as the "galaxy eater"; a superweapon so advanced it’s operating system became sentient, developing a conscience. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Rassilon used it against the Nestenes. (PROSE: Pandoric’s Box)
By the Doctor's era, despite being one of the most powerful species in the universe the Time Lords had little in the way of defences and their conventional warfare technology was lagging behind many other civilisations. (TV: The Invasion of Time) Few Time Lords, even Chancellery Guards, had any real combat experience. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element) This may be due in part to the transduction barrier, which was almost completely impenetrable by outside forces, or their general policy of non-interference. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
The most common sidearm used by Time Lords were stasers, which were carried by the Chancellery Guards (TV: The Deadly Assassin) and Time Lord soldiers during the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: The Conscript, Day of the Vashta Nerada) Stasers fired a type of directed energy, which was relatively harmless to inorganic matter but caused massive tissue disruption to living creatures. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) However when Gallifrey was invaded by the Sontarans, stasers proved ineffective on Sontaran armour, forcing the Fourth Doctor to recover the De-mat Gun. (TV: The Invasion of Time) Another sidearm used by the Time Lords was the Lord President's personal security sidearm. This gun had no stun setting and a single shot from it would immediately force a regeneration in any Time Lord shot with it. (TV: Hell Bent)
However, as war approached, the shortcomings were remedied. During the War in Heaven, the weapons of the Time Lords were considered "legendary"; they had built defensive arrays the size of star systems and created armaments that took apart entire galaxies. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) The Time Lords created the Cold, a validium based weapon that could break through the space/time continuum. When activated it would suck its target and everything in its vicinity into another universe where it would be destroyed. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)
During the Last Great Time War, the Capitol was protected by a set of dual turrets set around it. They were used to destroy attacking ships. (TV: The End of Time) The Capitol and Arcadia were also defended by sky trenches, multi-layered armoured shields in the atmosphere. Arcadia was believed to be the "safest place on Gallifrey" due to its four hundred sky trenches, however on the last day of the War the Daleks managed to breach them. (TV: The Last Day) The Capitol's sky trenches continued to hold even as the Daleks bombarded the planet. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
During and after the Last Great Time War, Lord President Rassilon wielded a Gauntlet which was capable of destroying a person by shooting out electricity and also reverted the Master Race to its human form. (TV: The End of Time) It was also able to remove a person from history. (PROSE: Engines of War)
=== Miscellaneous technology ===
Some other Time Lord technology included the Matrix (TV: The Deadly Assassin), the Genesis Ark (TV: Doomsday) and the Chameleon Arch. (TV: Human Nature)
The Time Lords developed a chemical that could turn vertebrate blood into acid, but the Doctor successfully campaigned it to be banned. (PROSE: The Age of Ambition)
Rassilon also invented Gallifrey's genetic looms, the devices used to birth new Gallifreyans after the Pythia's curse. Looms were no longer used after the Curse was lifted following President Romana's negotiations with the Sisterhood of Karn.