Mop Doctor Who Episode 7: The King in Yellow

Game can be downloaded here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233361/doctor-who-solitaire-story-game-second-edition/files

 Ok so between adventures I have increased Lewis’ intelligence from a 4 to a 5, woah (guess Lewis is a Himbo)! Anyway, onto a world of pirates, cue the theme song!

The Tardis whirred and whined as it entered, we were in a small little town in England, a sort of green aura surrounded this place. I said “Well. 1692. Let’s find a pub.” “I’d rather find Shakespeare!” Lewis replied, causing Flora to retort “Shakespeare died waaaaaay before this time.” We found a tavern by the name of The Blue Whale and entered. Luckily we could talk our way into some drinks and a decent meal, it was really good actually! The ale wasn’t but I can’t really complain. Sera saw it as good enough to order another round while telling us what she knew about this time, mainly social taboos, things that are good to keep in mind if we wanted to have a chance of not being murdered by pirates.

Coming around with our 2nd round of drinks came a woman named Ripley Balthier, and she sat down with us. 

She said “You keep thinking Doctor that no one can hear that thing, well I’ve heard it enough to recognise it, yet I don’t recognise you, yet you’re clearly the Doctor.”

Now I couldn’t recognise her either. She continued:

“So, there has been weird things happening in this town, couple of weeks ago, a loud noise was heard coming from the sea, no one knew what it was so they just assumed it was a battle or something. I spent a couple of weeks investigating by the coast and found nothing because some dolt found it before I could, but I… uh… bought it off him, let’s say.”

She handed me a bizarre looking amulet, I recognised it as Gallifreyan in origin. It was jagged yet mechanical with a button on the side and bronze colouring. I turned it around and pressed the button, causing a rather long needle to pop out, longer than say the average human arm length, more needle than can fit in that rock assuming it isn’t a telescope deal. Very carefully inspecting the needle, dissecting it almost, it seemed to be a contraption to absorb a type of memory, or implant a type of memory, hard to tell.  What type of memory was impossible to find unless there’s some outcome of this. She continued. Yet again.

“The person I to- purchased it from was part of a ship that came back shortly after the loud noise. I dismissed them at first, but they seemed to have all been part of… I dunno, a cult or something? They all wore these and worshipped this thing they just called The King in Yellow. And now we’re here, talking about this in the Blue Whale. Nice to see you again Doc! You are the Doc right?” 

“Yeah, I’m the Doctor. I don’t know you, sorry…” I replied. Meanwhile my companions sat around unable to really say anything. Luckily, that changed quickly. Well not quickly. We actually just sat down rather stunned by it all, none of us said anything for 10’s of seconds… then we noticed a tapping against the glass of the tavern…. 6 humanoid figures stood outside of the tavern, nearly groping the wood of the exterior, eyes glowing bright apple green, banging their fists against the glass until eventually it shattered and they crawled in. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be humans, skin made blue by rot!

Me, Lewis, Sara, Flora and Ripley ran upstairs, quickly and safely jumping out of the window… what can I say, there was a hay cart beneath us. Now, once we landed, we laid low, discussing what on Earth was going on, clearly it’s connected to the amulet, never seen a coincidence in my life. People in the streets were chanting “Praiseth be the King in Yellow” around a lime green mist attempting to coagulate into a humanoid shape… I remembered this. I remembered it all, the amulet most of all. I sat them down to tell them what I knew. It went something like this:

“Long ago, a young particularly handsome scholar on Gallifrey wanted to do what all Time Lords love to do; prove that they’re superior to God. Not any particular God, just the vague concept. What way to show dominance over one than to create one yourself, so he got to work in his laboratory deep beneath the University creating the pendant. Now, their pendant looked way different to this one, more clean but consequently more dull looking, looked more like a closed pocket watch if I had to compare it to something. The technology would implant a false memory of a God of his creation and then absorb that memory to make it a vaguely corporeal entity. Now, he got to create a God and who else would an egotistical Time Lord make but himself, a figure adorned in a yellow robe, with sharp, jagged features. He did this by using some of his own regeneration energy, an entire life placed into that object. The work was complete, now he needed to test it.

On a lone, nameless planet, he started it by having the amulet effect a small group of basically space cavemen and left them alone, observing their growth occasionally, not really interested in day-to-day goings on. However, when a group like this grows, people start to make assumptions about what they’re worshipping. It has been said to inhabit many bodies of those who are now deceased, therefore it raises the dead. Every time belief grows, it is happy to become more corporeal, therefore it’s goal must be to do just that. Why would it only make 1 amulet? Maybe it wants us to make more. How do we make them? He knows. He knows the technology and what memories are used (those memories being an amalgamation of this real Time Lord and speculation accidentally made reality). Who is he? A Looming Yellow God. The King was born. 1 year later (5 years on your calendar) the young Time Lord showed an audience of Gallifreyans this, they marvelled at his work, the amulet would be stored in their museums, his name would go down in history! But they decided that this belief based entity should not leave this planet, so they did what they were best at; blew up the entire planet. This was probably not related to the explosion, that planet isn’t even close enough to Earth to hear it’s destruction. I don’t know how close that is, but I know I’m right.”

“How do you know this Doctor?” Sera asked.

“Oh, it was all over the news, couldn’t avoid it for a solid year, your years, my friends wouldn’t stop talking about it, I chose to memorise the story cover to cover in case it came up in conversation.”

After this, a horse came by, weirdly unattended, I could only hope it’s owner just ran off. I got on it along with Lewis since, no offence to him, he’s not as good a runner as the others, it’s fine, I’m not either. We wandered around the town, slowly, trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly we came across a Militia set up to investigate the sudden goings on here, led by a General William Bolton. After interrogating us, he decided we best stick with him in order to stay safe, but after a while it was really more he who was sticking with us. We walked along the beach when we saw it, a rip in the air revealing a writhing glowing green vortex in the middle of the air (I recognised it as how the time vortex is looking these days), roughly where a ship would be if one were there. Guess that answers how it got there, must’ve seen memories about it knowing time travel so now it just does that.

As we walked along, we felt the presence of the King as he tried to take control of the minds of one of the militia and then Flora. They both had the bravery not to surrender their minds to it’s cruel will, luckily. We still had yet to be able to confront him however. Luckily, we found a church where they had been set up. People were gathered around a rising Yellow figure, his face barely visible, now, I had managed to give the militia a summary of what had happened, he scarcely believed it, but did more so after seeing the time rip and this sight. The general said to me, “You know how you kill a belief Doctor? You kill who believes in it.” and then he had his militia set fire on those around the green mist. Every time they died, the less faith they had in the figure, eventually they dropped dead and the mists went away… he then led his troops out of the town as others came to take away the bodies.

Another group who had faith in this creation killed before anything could be fixed.

The 4 others looked on in Horror as I guided them back to the Tardis. I said “Who are you Ripley?”, and she replied “A friend.”. “YEAH NO SHIT I WANT MORE DETAILS” is what I wanted to say, but instead I just gathered my companions inside of the Tardis to talk.

Another downer ending, haven’t had that since Episode 1 of this blog which I’ve referenced now yet hope no one reads, life is confusing. Also for those who have checked out the RPG and noticed a lack of “the king in yellow”, that’s because I just reskinned it from the book’s “Ogbunabali”, it’s the same concept except it’s not also in-universe  appropriating a traditional Igbo Death Deity that I don’t know anything about and don’t wanna do wrong for my dumb blog that 10 people see on average. I also made up the whole backstory, it was fun, now you know who to blame. Anyway, join me next time where we escape this downer ending with… America, in the middle of the Great Depression… 

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