From The Game of Rassilon by Daniel J. Bishop
copyright (c) 2007
Material herein owned by the BBC or the estate of Terry Nation is not intended to challenge their ownership of copyright or trademark.
TARDISes and Other Time Machines
In
The Game of Rassilon, your TARDIS is a combination of home, travel device, and tool. The TARDIS usually brings you into a situation at the beginning of a game adventure, and takes you onto the next adventure at the end. The TARDIS also contains specialized equipment that can perform useful functions during an adventure.
What is a TARDIS?
The acronym TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension(s) In Space. In
An Unearthly Child, Susan “Foreman” claims to have invented the acronym – perhaps as an inversion of SIDRAT. On Gallifrey, the usual term is “TT Capsule” but TARDIS has certainly caught on and is used by most Time Lords in the field (which, after the Time War, means most Time Lords).
The Doctor has claimed to have both stolen and built his TARDIS – a venerable Type 40. He has also claimed that TARDISes are grown, not built. In
The Game of Rassilon, it is assumed that TARDISes are both grown and built, and have elements which exist as purely mathematical abstractions.
The TARDIS creature itself grows and appears something like coral, and requires approximately 500 years to be mature enough to be turned into a TARDIS. It is very likely that the TARDIS creatures were originally native to the Space-Time Vortex, and then engineered through genetic manipulation and nanotechnology to provide exactly what the Time Lords desired. When the creature is mature, it must be carved into to allow space for the first bits of circuitry to be intruded into it. Thereafter, it is capable of changing its shape and absorbing additional components directly.
TARDISes and Time Lords share a symbiotic link, and a TARDIS has a limited degree of self-determinism. Through the Central Console, Secondary Console, and similar access points, a Time Lord can give a TARDIS precise instructions that it must obey. The circuitry that allows a Time Lord this level of control is partly due to the Rassilon Imprimatur in his own DNA, and partly due to the components of the TARDIS itself. In the case of systems malfunction, a TARDIS can grow eccentric, or even wilful.
A TARDIS has several ways to indicate its own needs and desires to the Time Lord it is bonded to. In some cases, a TARDIS can predict the needs of its Time Lord, and has the capability of acting to meet those needs itself, without being asked.
Dimensional Transcendentalism & Architectural Configuration
A TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental, which means both that it is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and that the interior can be arranged to follow a non-Euclidian geometry. Although the outside of a TARDIS appears to be quite small, the interior maze of rooms and corridors might rival the surface of a planet in area. For this reason, few TARDISes are fully explored by their occupants. Even after centuries of occupation, a Time Lord can be surprised by the twists and turns within his machine – sometimes even to the extent of becoming lost therein!
The non-Euclidian nature of TARDIS interior geometry causes several other strange effects (from the point of view of creatures living in normal space-time). First off, any room can exist in a space that would seem too small for it from outside – not only is the TARDIS itself bigger on the inside than on the outside, but parts of the TARDIS itself exhibit this same trait.
Secondly, doorways and passages don’t automatically lead to, or from, the same place. Two doors might exit the same doorway, for example, and that doorway might lead to either location – or somewhere completely different – depending upon the direction of travel (or who the traveller is!).
Moreover, the TARDIS interior doesn’t need to remain constant. The locations of rooms and corridors can shift. Rooms can change size and dimensions. The appearances of walls can change – roundels give way to brick or tile, brick and tile to metal, metal to wood. Features that are part of the TARDIS can be reconfigured, so that new controls can appear on the central console to meet a particular need (either of the machine or its controller), and the machine can actually absorb items that are left in a TARDIS if it deems it either necessary or desirable.
Finally, a TARDIS can clean itself if it so desires. If a shaky landing causes items to fall over, the TARDIS can set them aright by the time that the crew returns to the ship. The TARDIS usually performs this function only when there is no one to witness it, as its telepathic circuitry allows it to know that most beings would find witnessing this effect somewhat disturbing.
This ability of a TARDIS to alter itself can be controlled by the user, using a system called “architectural configuration”. Architectural configuration allows the user to make specific changes to the appearance and components of the TARDIS interior, including general room layout and location, which the TARDIS cannot change so long as the system is functioning. It can limit the TARDIS’s ability to absorb or extrude items in selected areas of the TARDIS as well.
Most users, for obvious reasons, prefer to limit their TARDIS’s ability to make changes to the TARDIS Control Rooms, the outer access doors (by which the TARDIS crew can move from the interior of the TARDIS to the exterior world, and vice versa), and access to these locations. A TARDIS capable of hiding its own Control Rooms would be a dangerous thing to travel in! Similarly, if you enter a TARDIS that can hide its outer access doors, you may never leave it again. These types of problems, however, are seldom encountered even in very old and very eccentric TARDISes.
Outer Plasmic Shell and Chameleon Circuit
The exterior of a TARDIS is a mathematical abstraction that creates a “plasmic shell” around it upon materialization. The plasmic shell is formed of ectoplasm and fictional energy, and is impervious to most types of damage. In its natural shape, the plasmic shell appears as a grey box, about three meters tall, two meters wide, and one meter deep, with a door.
Every TARDIS has a Chameleon Circuit, a form of disguise that allows the TARDIS to scan the area in which it is to materialize and choose a suitable appearance to avoid attracting attention. Normally, the TARDIS should take its new appearance prior to materialization, having conducted a preliminary scan from the Space-Time Vortex, but sometimes a TARDIS will wait until it has materialized to change. This is an indication that the TARDIS is getting eccentric, and that its plasmic shell may soon be stuck in a single shape (sometimes with some minor variations). Chameleon Circuitry is notoriously difficult to repair, and may require the services of a mathematician versed in Block Transfer Computation – it is recommended that users attempt repairs at the first sign of trouble!
Although the plasmic shell can take any appearance, it is generally limited to appearing as a single object of size Medium to Large (that object can, of course, be composed of several parts). A successful TARDIS Systems skill check (DC 30) can increase the size allowed to Huge or decrease it to Small. If the object mimicked by the TARDIS operates mechanically, the TARDIS may be able to operate as though it were the real object – a TARDIS appearing as a pipe organ can be played, for example – but the TARDIS’s plasmic shell cannot mimic most electronic functions, or functions that rely upon nonexistent connections.
As an example of this, a TARDIS that materializes with the appearance of a Police Public Call Box has a telephone. As this phone isn’t actually connected to anything, it doesn’t actually work. However, as this phone has all of the apparent parts of a real phone, a being that can transmit to a phone without being connected to it can still make the call box phone ring, and can speak over the receiver if it is picked up.
In some cases, a TARDIS can mimic an object through special extrusion. For instance, if a TARDIS took the appearance of a soft drink vending machine, it might be able to accept coins and vend soft drinks either by creating “drinks” from fictional energy and ectoplasm, or by shunting drinks from the TARDIS interior into its plasmic shell.
If the Chameleon Circuit is working, the user may set the appearance of the TARDIS from the Central Console, using a DC 15 TARDIS Systems check to do so.
A TARDIS can appear a doorway, so that one would enter the TARDIS interior instead of the room that the doorway normally leads to. In fact, with an expert user, a TARDIS is able to extrude its plasmic shell in such a way as to appear to be a room, that can be looked into and entered by windows and doors. Because the TARDIS interior can be modified by architectural configuration, the interior can be disguised in much the same manner as the exterior. In this way, Salyavin (in his guise as Professor Chronotis) was able to disguise his TARDIS as his rooms at St. Cedd’s College.
Regardless of what the TARDIS looks like, there is always a door that allows entry into the interior, and there is always a place where the TARDIS key can be used. In some cases, the doorway and keyhole are invisible to observers unless they are aware that the TARDIS is something unusual. If there is an obvious doorway and/or keyhole, the TARDIS will incorporate these into its design.
The TARDIS also radiates a telepathic perceptual induction field, reducing the chance that anyone will notice it is unusual, even when it materialises and dematerialises. A suspicious creature touching a TARDIS exterior may notice a faint hum, however, indicating that a tree or column actually has a power source within it. In effect, the TARDIS makes a Bluff check with a +15 bonus when it lands. Beings in the vicinity must make a Willpower save, with the DC set by the TARDIS’s Bluff check, to even notice its arrival or departure. In general, only important characters (such as PCs) are even allowed to roll this save.
Important things about the outer plasmic shell include:
• Removal of the Chameleon Circuit causes the TARDIS to become invisible. This allows you to seek help in repairing the circuit, but it makes it very hard to relocate the TARDIS!
• Under normal circumstances, the TARDIS will adjust its weight to that of the object mimicked by its plasmic shell. This has no effect on the actual mass of the TARDIS.
• A TARDIS can materialize around an object, so that the object appears inside the TARDIS. Doing so while taking that object’s form requires a DC 20 TARDIS Systems check – doing so without taking its form is DC 25.
• An expert user can create a plasmic shell capable of movement, as the Master did in The Keeper of Traken. This requires a DC 30 TARDIS Systems skill check.
• If the TARDIS interior is separated from its plasmic shell, the plasmic shell becomes an apparently real – but hollow – object. The TARDIS interior automatically reasserts itself into its plasmic shell if it is able to.
• In the event that the plasmic shell is actually breached – which requires considerable force, such as by a meteor strike – the interior of the TARDIS fractures, appearing in representational form across an extremely large area. If the TARDIS interior can be somehow brought back together, it automatically fuses, and reforms the plasmic shell, creating a distinct dimensionally transcendental interior once more.
• Known disguises of TARDISes include a boulder, a cabinet, a Concorde jet, a Corinthian column, a fireplace, a grandfather clock, a horse box, an igloo, an Ionic column, an iron maiden, an organ, an ornate column, a Police Public Call Box, a pyramid, a rocket, a sarcophagus, a sedan chair, a Sopwith Camel, a stage coach, a statue of the Melkur, a stone block, and a tree. This is, obviously, not an exhaustive list.
• The Chameleon Circuit itself is an extremely advanced circuit that comes in two circuit boards. It uses a metal alloy that has plastic-like properties.
• Only the exterior of the TARDIS exists as a real space-time event.
