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Imperial Moon
(Christopher Bulis) |
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 Name: Vrall
Format:
Book.
Time of Origin: The Moon,
1878.
Appearances: "Imperial
Moon".
Doctors: Fifth
Doctor.
Companions: Turlough and Kamelion.
History: The Vrall were utterly ruthless, highly
effective at disguise, and nearly unstoppable. They appeared to be
just a very dangerous alien animal that was used for sport on an
abandoned hunting ground on the Moon, but they were actually sentient,
although incredibly cruel. They were shaped like men, but were about
half that height, and could bend and flex themselves to only a hand’s
thickness and change colour to blend into their surroundings. The
most significant thing about their physiology was their powerful
digestive enzymes, allowing them to break down their food and easily
consume it; when they consumed the brains of sentient beings, these
enzymes allowed them to extract memory engrams from their victims
and assimilate their knowledge. On a more superficial level, they
could also link together to form an even more powerful entity, didn’t
bleed, and any small cuts or punctures quickly healed over. The only
way to stop one without advanced weaponry was to either completely
dismember one (Difficult since they moved so fast) or set off an
all-consuming fire. (Also difficult, given that you’d to blow
up something pretty big to stop them running out of it).
The
park the Vrall lived in had been used as a hunting ground for an
apparently long-gone empire, populated by deadly beasts and controlled
by something called the warden. The atmosphere was controlled by
a force field around a large crater, keeping air in but letting solid
objects leave. The Vrall used as hosts - being somehow able to physically
enter the body while leaving it physically intact - a species called
the Phiadorans, who resembled beautiful, fit human women apart from
slightly elfin ears. Originally, the Phiadorans were rulers of a
ruthless matriarchal dictatorship who had maintained control of their
subjects through genetically modified pheromonal glands that subverted
the will of humanoid males. They were eventually overthrown and exiled
to what may have been their own park, but their empire collapsed
shortly after. They were quickly taken over as hosts for the Vrall,
the Vrall destroying their free will while leaving their minds and
personalities intact enough to convincingly blend in with other species,
and remained that way for some time until the year of 1878.
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| The Fifth
Doctor |
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At around that point the Vrall took one desperate
chance for escape; they had seen Earth when the Moon was just right,
but knew that humanity would take too long to develop space travel
by themselves to be of any use (It was never specified if the Vrall
were in danger of dying out or were simply impatient). With little
chance of success, they created miniature RNA spores encoded with
the construction information to a space engine, which they fired
out of the dome around the park via a vacuum gun. Some of the spores
didn’t do anything, but one spore struck the mind of a Professor
Boyes-Dennison, who managed to develop the engine with the aid of
his twenty-two year old daughter Emily. The engines were used on
three ships - the Cygnus, the Draco, and the Lynx, which were commanded
by Captains Haliwell, Sinclair, and Green, with Haliwell in charge
overall.
After
arriving on the Moon in the park where the Vrall were hiding, the
original expedition lost one of their men - Sub-Lieutenant Granby
- and encountered the Fifth Doctor and Turlough. The Doctor had discovered
a diary of Haliwell’s in the TARDIS time safe (In other words,
in his future he would be given the diary and put it in the safe
for his past self to find), and had discovered that he and Turlough
would be involved in this adventure (Kamelion would have come, but
a side effect of the shield prevented his systems from fully functioning
in it). Posing as a scientist and his assistant, The Doctor and Turlough
helped the expedition find Granby - who had, quite literally, had
his brains sucked out, having been attacked by the Vrall to allow
them to absorb his knowledge about Earth and its languages. After
a narrow escape from some giant spiders, The Doctor and Turlough
accompanied the team back to their ships, where Emily and Haliwell
were captured by what looked like a traditional flying saucer, and
the Professor died of a heart attack. Even more problematic, the
Draco had been shot down while trying to get Haliwell and Emily back,
and the energy field around the crater had immobilised the TARDIS
so The Doctor couldn’t pick them up himself. However, while
The Doctor was distracted, Turlough stole their copy of Haliwell’s
diary so that he could be pre-informed about any problems.
While trying to get to the main citadel accompanied by
The Doctor and Turlough, the British party encountered one Vrall
in Phiadoran form, apparently in danger of falling off a cliff. Turlough
saved the woman - who introduced herself as Lytalia -, and she claimed
that she took knowledge of his language from his mind to explain
her having previous spoken in some kind of odd wailing noise which
was really just her adapting to English. Calling herself Lytalia,
she took the team to the home of the Phiadorans, where they decided
to help the British team stop the warden. The warden had a large
force field around its citadel that prevented creatures with a certain
DNA pattern entering, but since human DNA hadn’t been entered
into the force field, they did have a chance to get at the warden.
With one Phiadoran per member of the team (Baring The Doctor), they
eventually managed to get to the warden’s base, and The Doctor
was able to reprogram two of the warden’s flying sentries to
allow him and Turlough to pilot them.
At
the same time, Haliwell and Emily were being put through various
tests by the warden, to determine whether or not they would be good
sport for the hunters. They managed to pass the first few tests of
physical endurance - such as running or climbing for a prolonged
distance with electrified wires behind and beneath them, or swimming
for a prolonged time - without any real harm, but when pitted against
some wild animals Emily received a near-fatal back wound. It was
treated, but they then had to go up against some robotic hunters,
and would have died if The Doctor and Turlough hadn’t found
them in time. The team then went straight to the warden, where The
Doctor and Turlough managed to persuade it to tell them how to shut
off the citadel’s defences, the creature apparently worn out
from its long time alone and seeking some kind of release (It was
unspecified if the warden had been conditioned to follow orders or
was simply stuck in a routine).
The
British soldiers were then forced to race against time back to their
ships, as the force field that kept the air in the crater was shutting
down with the death of the warden. However, The Doctor, Turlough,
and Lytalia became separated from the rest when their craft was shot
down by the citadel’s cannon now stuck on automatic, and only
just managed to find their way to the Draco. However, once there
they discovered that the helmsman, Stanton, had mutinied after most
of the crew had been killed during a failed expedition to the citadel,
and only a few crewmen were left. The Doctor managed to get the ship
up, but he was then kicked out by Stanton’s crew, leaving Turlough
alone on the ship - with the Vrall/Lytalia picking them all off.
Fortunately, The Doctor was found by Kamelion, and they managed to
rescue Turlough before Stanton drained the air out of the Draco to
stop the Vrall. Now reunited with Turlough, The Doctor revealed that
he had deduced the Vrall’s true nature while he was recuperating
in the TARDIS - his conscious mind being focused on healing and allowing
his subconscious suspicions to take dominance -, noting the Phiadorians’ use
of Victorian terms such as ‘mechanical servants’ to describe
the warden’s robots - since the Phiadorians claimed they took
knowledge of the language from Turlough’s mind, they should
have referred to them as ‘robots’ - and their initial
inability to understand Lytalia despite the TARDIS’s automatic
translation ability.
Unfortunately,
The Doctor, Turlough and Kamelion were unable to stop the remaining
ships from landing on Earth. With no hope of negotiating with the
Vrall, The Doctor and Turlough returned to the now-collapsing citadel
and recovered weapons from the armoury that could hurt the Vrall,
subsequently destroying them all. Recognising from Stanton’s
reaction to the freedom of space travel that a class-based society
like the Victorian era wasn’t ready for space travel, The Doctor
had Kamelion impersonate the long-dead Prince Albert to persuade
Queen Victoria to abandon the space project. Before leaving, however,
The Doctor was given Haliwell’s diary - he knew The Doctor
would be discrete, and he wanted some record of this incredible adventure
to remain. The Doctor, Turlough and Kamelion departed, leaving Haliwell
and Emily to enjoy their upcoming marriage, them having fallen in
love over the course of their time together. |
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