Rassilon

Rassilon was, alongside Omega, Tecteun and the Other, one of the founders of Time Lord civilisation. In their own time, Rassilon was chiefly an engineer, a politician, and an architect, but later Time Lord society would hail them as the first Time Lord and the single greatest figure of Gallifreyan history. However, some Time Lords contended that Rassilon was a corrupt megalomaniac who tried to murder their friend Omega and stole their invention.
Among the titles they acquired during their life were the "Conquerer of Yssgaroth", the "Overpriest of Dronid", the "First Earl of Prydon", the "Patris of the Vortex", and the "Ravager of the Void".
After his physical death, Rassilon stayed active in the Matrix, ruling Gallifey from the shadows as the leader of the Matrix Lords, and manipulated the Doctor into performing many missions for him. During the Last Great Time War, he was resurrected from the Matrix to lead the Time Lords, becoming "Rassilon the Resurrected", and he ultimately tried to find ways to break the time lock and escape the War. After the Doctor saved Gallifrey, and the Time Lords returned Gallifrey to N-Space from its pocket universe, Rassilon was overthrown and banished in a coup led by the Twelfth Doctor, whom Rassilon had kept trapped inside the Doctor's confession dial for four and a half billion years. Desiring revenge, Rassilon allied with a colony of Cybermen at the end of the universe, being converted into the Cyber-President, and created an alternate timeline where the Cybermen conquered all of history. However, Rassilon and the Twelfth Doctor ultimately erased this timeline from existence after the Cybermen betrayed the former, once again leaving Rassilon alone at the end of the universe.
==Biography==
===Early Beginnings===
Rassilon was born the child of a suet shredder. A mere Gallifreyan, they had two hearts and other such organs which guaranteed them a lifetime of "300 years or so", but did not yet possess regeneration. Their original body had dark hair. According to one account, Rassilon was initially a boy, but another account claimed that Rassilon's first incarnation was a dark-skinned female. Rassilon befriended a fellow aspiring scientist named Peylix who became more widely known as "Omega". At some point Rassilon had a wife with whom he had a daughter that was stillborn due to the Pythia's Curse.
Omega later claimed that a timeline where Rassilon was both a woman and in love with him was one of several possible timelines all culminating in Omega's unwilling sacrifice. Indeed, the female Rassilon was active in the Dark Times during the Kotturuh crisis, a moment that saw the Tenth Doctor's interference in the Dark Times create changes to the overall timeline. One Data Worm also once pondered whether the Rassilon who founded Time Lord society and the Rassilon who fought in the Eternal War were different individuals with the same name, although many accounts held they were indeed the same person. Omega also once used the term "cousin" to refer to Rassilon, implying they were of the same Great House. 
According to Coordinator Engin, Rassilon was initially chiefly regarded as an engineer and architect. The Scrolls of Gallifrey named them and Omega as solar engineers, one of a small number of Gallifreyans who continued to think of the future of their planet, rather than entirely surrender to the beguiling prospect of interstellar travel and of making themselves into gods for the later species. Rassilon lusted to see more than a mortal man could in a lifetime, with their first goal being the creation of immortality, until Omega convinced them that this was unachievable and that the both of them should instead turn their minds to the creation of time travel. A secret account buried deep in the Matrix revealed immortality, which came in the form of regeneration, was extracted from the Timeless Child. 
===Foundation of Time Lord society===
As the Time Lords banished the last fragment of impossibility from the universe, Rassilon said: "Now, see what we have created, we have built a world of reason triumphant. And it is good." With his Five Principles, Rassilon led Gallifrey into a more enlightened age, bringing about a new social order. Among these changes, slavery was abolished. According to the histories that Rassilon himself wrote, the Pythia retaliated by cursing Gallifreyans to be sterile. However, the sterility may have, in reality, been a result of the anchoring of the thread. Rassilon solved the problem by creating the Great Houses and building the Looms that artificially birthed new Time Lords.
After fleeing the Homeworld during the First Diaspora following the anchoring of the thread, the Eremites instead remembered the first President of the Time Lords, responsible for the sterility of Time Lord civilisation, as being Urizen the Architect, whom they would later caricature as a blind old man measuring his own dung with a set of dividers.
As he ordered the new political system of Gallifrey, with himself as Lord President of a High Council, Rassilon decided to create a new, immortal aristocracy: a hundred men and women of each chapter were permitted to stand in front of the Eye of Harmony, granting them the gift of regeneration and properly making them into Time Lords. The cat who had helped authorise Rassilon's experiments betrayed Tussan and joined his side. 
According to other accounts, Rassilon worked with a biologist named Thremix, who had created a virus that he speculated would grant the Gallifreyans immortality. Rassilon ordered the release of the virus, which wiped out a large proportion of the Gallifreyan population, and gave the remainder the ability of full-bodily regeneration. The Valeyard claimed that Rassilon intentionally implemented a flaw in regeneration, meaning that Time Lords could only do so twelve times, so he alone could have true immortality, whereas the account which showed regeneration flowing from the Eye of Harmony also stated that Rassilon's original regeneration cycle was also limited to twelve renewals.
A secret account buried deep in the Matrix was found by the Spy Master however, which stated that these commonly-cited origins of regeneration were mere propaganda to conceal the fact that the secret had actually been extracted before the discovery of time travel and the foundation of Time Lord society, taken from an innocent child found on an off-world expedition by the Shobogan explorer Tecteun. It was in fact Tecteun who had proposed the idea of regeneration cycles, gene splicing the ability to regenerate into future generations of Shobogans, who would later become synonymous with Gallifreyans and rename themselves Time Lords. The truth was hidden under a visual filter, telling the story of an immortal Irish policeman called Brendan. 
===Temporal progress===
Rassilon invented TARDISes after a war with the Archons. In developing the TARDISes, Rassilon had ordered all time sensitives brought to him. To enable Time Lords to travel through time without ill effects, Rassilon created a genetic link called the Rassilon Imprimatur. Just as the immortality he had given his people through regeneration was not unlimited, Rassilon also made sure the time travel he offered them through TARDISes was limited through the Rassilon Limitation; whilst the public reason Time Lords were not able to travel back to the time before he established time travel was a string theory argument about the traveller not being able to arrive at a point "before" time travel, the truth was that Rassilon did not want any of his own people to investigate his past and find its darker elements. Another reason was that, because he intended to live forever, he feared future enemies would try to travel back to reverse his birth to prevent his rise to power.
Rassilon created a living weapon known as the Pariah, which he used for missions throughout time and space. Rassilon gave the Pariah independent thought, but this proved to be a mistake, as the Pariah developed a mind of its own and rebelled against him. Rassilon banished the Pariah from Gallifrey, then created Shayde, a more evolved version of the Pariah incapable of independent thought. The Pariah would cause the creation of the Threshold.
Using temporal technology, Rassilon studied the future. He learned of the Divergence, a race which would eclipse his within ten thousand millennia. Fearing this future, he created a self-replicating, biogenic molecule which he sent back in time to seed all habitable planets in Gallifrey's galaxy. This ensured all intelligent life evolved in the form of the Gallifreyans. He trapped the Divergence in their own timeline, which Rassilon sealed into a time loop. 
==== Abdication ====
According to Postar, Rassilon, confident in his power, created the Death Zone, a region of Gallifrey devoted to "the Game of Rassilon" which had previously been the site of bloody games involving mere Gallifreyans. The Dark Tower he had built in its centre had a link to the Eye of Harmony through which it could Time Scoop individuals from all over time and space, who would be made to fight to the death for the privilege of being returned home. Many tried to get him to stop the games, but only after a group of Cybermen nearly destroyed the Dark Tower did Cardinal Pandad succeed in persuading him of the foolishness of his actions, as, had the Cybermen succeeded in destroying the Tower, they might have released the power of the Eye of Harmony, and, through exposure to it, gained the same immortality and temporal abilities as the Time Lords.
After decreeing the three fundamental Laws of Time to prevent any of his successors failing as he had, Rassilon, now in his thirteenth incarnation, abdicated from the Presidency in favour of Pandad, further shaping the political system of Gallifrey by creating the positions of Chancellor and Castellan. The former individual would be told of the location of the Great Key to the Eye of Harmony, but on the condition that they never become Lord President.
However, all of this contradicted the research of another Time Lord historian, who claimed that the Game and Death Zone predated Rassilon's Presidency — and, indeed, that he had made his name, and earned his seat on the High Council, by campaigning for its abolition. 
==== Supposed death and survival ====
Rassilon died whilst in his thirteenth incarnation, discovering to his dismay that the regeneration cycles granted by the Eye of Harmony only allowed for twelve renewals. Gaining the trust of Chancellor Azmeal, Rassilon, once more desperate to extend his life and power, created the Matrix, in which the minds and memories of dying Time Lords would be recorded. Though Azmeal presented the project to the High Council as a "psychic history book", the truth was that the disembodied Time Lords would remain conscious within the Matrix, with Rassilon first among them as the leader of the Matrix Lords. Before his death, Rassilon prepared his tomb to test those who sought the gift of immortality, and copied his mind into the Matrix.
Many rumours surrounded Rassilon's death (or lack thereof). One stated that the Time Lords had revolted and imprisoned him in the Dark Tower in the Death Zone. Over the millions of years after the end of Rassilon's Presidency, he came to be revered on Gallifrey. Time Lord history credited Rassilon with creating the traditions of their society; for instance, after Rassilon had a nightmarish vision of a dictatorial, imperialistic Gallifrey, he was said to have created the principles of non-intervention. Secret societies on Gallifrey worshipped Rassilon as a god.
=== The Last Great Time War ===
During the early days of Last Great Time War, Rassilon was the first Time Lord to be resurrected by Project Revenant, in order to lead the his people against the Daleks. After being injured by the Sicari, Rassilon had his regeneration broadcast across Gallifrey, increasing his influence over the Time Lords and continuing his reign in Rassilon. By the end of the Time War, one of Rassilon's proposed last resorts to win the war was the implementation of the Ultimate Sanction. This incarnation resembled one of his earlier lives, specifically the incarnation who had led the Alliance of Races.
=== After the Time War ===
Rassilon was forced to regenerate after he was attacked by the Saxon Master. When the Twelfth Doctor returned to Gallifrey after Time War, he deposed Rassilon and banished him from the planet.
===Undated adventures===
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==Other realities==
===Alternate timelines===
In one such alternate timeline
===Parallel universes===
==Psychological profile==
===Personality===
Rassilon was a charismatic leader who was capable of inspiring their people. The General himself stated that, while Rassilon eventually became corrupt, he was once "a good man". Indeed, Rassilon was initially a man who hated corruption and was good at detecting it. While one author claimed Rassilon only became corrupt following his resurrection for the Last Great Time War, many accounts and legends suggested Rassilon had been vile, cruel, and corrupt during his original life-cycle as well. According to one of Omega's memories, Rassilon was very dismissive towards him, despite calling Omega a friend and letting him call him "Rass". The memory also revealed he believed anyone who opposed his and Omega's ideas was a fool who did not deserve political power.
During the early history of the Time Lords, Rassilon led the revolution against the last Pythia, overthrew President Pandak, and instituted changes to deal with the problems of the Empire, such as ordering the creation of genetic looms to permit the Gallifreyan race to reproduce, creating the transduction barrier, and completely ended "the Games" in the Death Zone after a period of using alien warriors instead of Gallifreyans.
During the development of the Type 1 TARDISes, Rassilon projected an air of affability, asking to be called "Rass" by his closest friends, despite appearing to not have any true friends at the time. Controversially, Rassilon ordered the release of a virus that wiped out a large proportion of the Gallifreyan population, while allowing the survivors to regenerate. He also discovered how to become immortal without having to use regenerations to survive, but believed that the secret was too dangerous to share, and thus kept it to himself, and instituted the non-interference policy after dreaming of a future Time Lord empire that used its power to suppress the weak of the universe.
Rassilon was intimidating and unforgiving, but was also a hero to many Gallifreyans, with the Second Doctor calling him "the greatest single figure in Time Lord history", though the Twelfth Doctor recalled how the Gallifreyans began to fear Rassilon after he beat Count D'if at Rassilon's roulette. However, Rassilon's wisdom in recognising the curse of immortality and their opposition to the corrupting influence of power did not prevent them from becoming corrupted by power themselves, such as with their prejudice against Vampires, and becoming increasingly obsessed with avoiding death during the Last Great Time War against the Daleks, a desire they'd harboured in one way or another their childhood.
After the loss of Omega, Rassilon wept for him, with the Other musing that Rassilon's later actions were born out of love. However, some believed Rassilon to actually be behind the plot to murder Omega, despite the evidence against the assassin Fenris, whom Rassilon banished into the Zone of No Return to avenge Omega, while another account had it that Rassilon had been directly responsible for Omega's protective forcefield failing. After punishing Borusa for attempting to claim immortality, Rassilon offered immortality to the First, Second, Third and Fifth Doctors, and admitted that they had "chosen wisely" after they declined, and sent them back to where they belonged afterwards, even giving the First Doctor complete control of his TARDIS to allow him to attend to unfinished business before his regeneration as a show of gratitude.
Rassilon was also manipulative, trying to trick the Eighth Doctor into destroying the Divergence in the belief that they were too different to live, and using the Saxon Master as a link between Gallifrey and the rest of the Universe which allowed him to temporarily free Gallifrey from the time lock. By the end of the Time War, Rassilon had become ruthless, power-hungry and insane, being willing to destroy the whole of creation rather than accept the end of the Time Lords. He planned to change himself and the Time Lords into beings of pure consciousness, free of physical bodies and the ravages of time, in his Ultimate Sanction. Rassilon had also grown in his pettiness, vaporising the Partisan for speaking against his desire to continue the Time War, and taunting the Tenth Doctor with how "the final act of [his] life [would be] murder" after a failed attempt to fool the Doctor into an alliance with him. Even as he was dragged back into the war, Rassilon made one last hateful attempt to kill the Doctor.
Following the end of the Time War, Rassilon retained his arrogance, believing himself superior to others simply for being Lord President, and showed no remorse for locking the Twelfth Doctor in his confession dial to get the information he wanted. He also showed his sadistic side by gloating how he could remove the Doctor's regenerations one at a time. After his banishment, Rassilon was driven to teaming up with the Cybermen to survive and reclaim Gallifrey, unhinged to the point of casting off the "Time Lord purity" he'd championed throughout his reign. His ego grew ever more, so much so that he redecorated the Panopticon with statues of his former incarnations, openly proclaiming that the Time Lords "[belonged] to [him]". After being betrayed by his allies however, Rassilon gained a sense of shame and humility, horrified at how he'd given the Cybermen so much power and finally making peace with the Doctor. Once these events were undone, the Doctor hoped that Rassilon would retain this development.
===Habits and quirks===
===Skills===
==Appearance==
===Clothing===
====Main attires====
====Other costumes====
==Other matters==
==Behind the scenes==
===Casting===
Actors considered for the role