The Master (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ruleorserve) wrote2014-06-16 02:23 pm
ruleorserve) wrote2014-06-16 02:23 pm
(no subject)
Name: Sceadu
Are you over 15? Yep!
Contact: AIM (sceadugesceaft), plurk (draconic)
Current characters in the game: N/A
IC Information:
Name: The Master / Archimedes “Emil” Keller (reincarnation)
Canon and Medium: Doctor Who; TV series
Age: Unknown; probably between 500 and 750/ 45 (reincarnation)
Preincarnation Species: Time Lord
Preincarnation Appearance: like so!
Any Differences: Nothing save for a willingness to not always wear suits, and significantly less of a habit of wearing gloves all the time
Starting Location: Locke City, NJ, USA
Preincarnated History: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Master
As a note, the wiki covers all the various versions of canon (TV, audio, comics, and novels). However as I’m mostly only familiar with the first of these, I will largely be sticking to the stuff in his TV appearances. If there’s anything you want to have clarified, feel free to ask.
Life on Gallifrey
Born into a family of decent standing, the Master’s early life was one that was predominantly a life of duty, as one of his later selves admitted to the Tenth Doctor. Despite this, he did still manage find some time to himself, if not precisely as often as he might have like. Like most other Time Lords, he entered the Academy of Time Lords at the age of eight. First, however, came the initiation ceremony which involved being made to look into the Untempered Schism - a sort of gap in the fabric of time and space itself - and it was here that the Master first heard the unending drumbeat that would remain with him for the lives. For much of his early life, the drumbeat was telepathically hidden by sources outside the Master’s control, making it easier for him to deal with them but also making it so that what few people he managed to tell about them never heard so much as the slightest hint of the drums.
It was at the Academy that he first met Theta Sigma - or to give him the name he would later have, the Doctor - and in time they came to be the best of friends. As the Third Doctor would later recollect, they even had a habit of making each other’s experiments explode, a fact that got them into trouble at least once, when they accidentally blew up part of the Academy itself. It was also during his stay at the Academy that the Master first managed to hack his way into the Matrix (the repository of the entirety of Time Lord knowledge).
However, all good things must come to an end and in time the friendship the Doctor and the Master shared ended up going sour. The Doctor’s eventual flight from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS didn’t help either; in a fit of pique, the Master regenerated, in the hopes that it would change things.
It didn’t, and between irritation at the whole of Gallifreyan society being entirely too resistant to change as well as the fact that it was starting to feel fairly distinctly like he didn’t belong, he followed in the Doctor’s footsteps and left Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS. As a convenient bonus, his new TARDIS was also able to help both counterbalance the drumming to some degree as well as make the resultant headaches less awful when they happened.
Travelling the Universe
However even then, it took time - and practice - for him to grow into all that he would later be. His earliest explorations were not entirely dissimilar to the Doctor’s although he tended to make minor changes for the sake of change even then. As time passed, however, this gradually became a decided fixation on either ruling things or destroying them, with the majority of his remaining regenerations lost in the process of learning how to both be an effective despot as well as how to avoid getting killed for same too frequently. At the same time, he was also perfecting his hypnotism technique, building on what little he’d managed to learn during his time at the Academy.
And then he ran into the Doctor again, exiled on Earth in his third regeneration. What followed was nothing so much as the Master making the Doctor’s life exceedingly difficult by simply turning up at every possible turn. Given his tendencies, his first go of it was a simple attempt at taking over Earth itself. To aid in the process, he enlisted the help of the Nestenes and their ability to to animate plastic in order to make what were essentially plastic daffodils capable of killing a man. When this failed, and the Doctor’s interference left him temporarily stuck on Earth, he proceeded to move on to longer term plans, setting himself up as a harmless scientist before using an alien mind parasite to get the inmates of a local to stealing an outlawed missile for him, with the intent of aiming it at a peace conference going on and thus starting World War Three.
From there, and after regaining his stolen dematerialization circuit from the Doctor, it was a plan to let a third party destroy the Earth in return for his own life, an attempt to steal a doomsday weapon and attempt to obtain powers far in advance of humanity in comparatively short order before he was finally caught and imprisoned by UNIT, a branch of the military designed to deal with various alien incursions. Not that he stayed imprisoned for long. Instead, his incarceration lasted just long enough for him to help a race of reptile-people from the dawn of time to invade Earth; when this too failed, he managed to escape once again. Needless to say, he was back to his old habits before too long, as well as back to focusing on Earth, since that was still where the Doctor was stationed.
Only the last of these attempts met with any sort of success. Although the Master’s attempts to start a war between humans and another race were averted it was only narrowly so. Additionally, the war had only been a sort of distraction to allow his allies - the Daleks - to step in and start a greater war. This too was eventually stopped by the Doctor, but the Master himself took no part in the Daleks’ plans after sparking off the conflict.
Reincarnated History: Archimedes was born in Cardiff, to parents who thought it would be an excellent idea to name their son Archimedes Alexander Keller. Still, this probably would have been fine if the name Archimedes had any sort of decent diminutive form. As it doesn’t, most of the rest of his relatives took one look at the mouthful presented by his given name, and decided that “Alex” was a suitable enough name (fortunately it was also one that his parents didn’t much mind). However, this was only the very beginning of his problems in regards to names - school itself brought with a new set of people less than inclined to tolerate a mouthful of a name and so Archimedes became Archie, a name that he never really grew to like.
However, despite the inconveniences presented by his parents’ choices of name, school was also where Archimedes first met John Smith. However, while they had certainly shared classes prior, they never actually spoke much until they were both cast in the school play. Over the rehearsals and shows that followed they found that they were significantly more alike then they had first thought, and they were fast friends from then on. The experience also left John with a brand new nickname (Theta), born of what can only be called a very strange and rambling conversation backstage. However, Archimedes was never quite at ease with the idea of school as a whole. He was a bright student, no doubt about that, but he never quite seemed to find anything that actually managed to capture his interest. Instead, he mostly seemed to have a general sort of passive apathy about most of his school subjects at best, even despite his good grades, and at worst seemed to genuinely dislike the idea as whole. He continued to take part in the school plays however, and perhaps no surprise, since they seemed to be the only thing he took any real interest in - and one of the few places he enjoyed himself.
This state of affairs lasted just about until the both of them finished school. Or rather, until one day John told Archie that his father had gotten a job in the US and that they would be moving out of the country accordingly. Without anything calling his own family in that direction in kind, Archie remained behind. It was not, however, a comfortable shift for Archimedes. He’d never been terribly good at making friends and had generally assumed that John would be remaining in roughly the same location as they moved on into university. Instead, they were left with letters, something that Archimedes never really found to be the same.
By this point, he was also beginning to get tired of being called Archie, and as he set about taking the first steps to a higher education, he also set to work getting people to call him by a name he had chosen himself: Emil. While he never actually went through the process of a legal name change (Archimedes being a perfectly suitable name in his mind), by the time he finished school he’d managed to become “Emil” just about anywhere save for official documents and the like. The time he spent at university was also where he began to find himself. While he did still continue to take the opportunity to audition for plays when it arose, a course in electronics that he’d taken simply because it had sounded interest had him finding his true passion. He’d always been interested in taking things apart to see how they worked, and this offered what seemed to him like an excellent opportunity: a career in not only taking things apart but also putting them together to make new sorts of things. By the time that year was out he had well and truly decided that engineering was his passion - in particular, electronic engineering. However the growing demands of schoolwork soon took up the vast majority of his time, and the letters he and John had been sending back and forth slowly tapered off and then petered out altogether as he threw himself ever more into the demands of the field he’d chosen for himself. Which certainly didn’t do much for his habit of not making friends easily, but he managed a few between sharing classes with people and his continued interest in theater. The fact that he continued to take things apart also earned him something of a reputation as “that guy who can probably fix your radio,” much to his eternal dismay.
His life was no less busy after graduation. The price of knowing how things work in ever-changing field was needing to keep up with the same. And yet, he never really minded much. He’d found something that he could be passionate about, and thus it was no great hardship. Being at the forefront of technology also made it comparatively easy to find employment - especially as the age of the computer took off - and before too long he was doing fairly well for himself. He never stopped being interested in his chosen field either, even if it did eventually become somewhat less of all-consuming interest than it had been during his years at university. Neither did his interest in theater fade, although he traded actually being in plays for merely making a habit of going to see them on a semi-regular basis.
His opportunity to move to Locke City came much later, although he’d been keeping an eye on the news of Wise Snake’s mayhem partly because he vaguely remembered that John had moved to somewhere in that general vicinity, but also because it was strange enough to catch even his attention. Additionally, he couldn’t help but wonder what direction technology might take if the various rumors about the city - and the people living there - were any indication, and starting at the source of the matter seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision,. As such, when he heard about a job offering in Locke City within his field (making and designing embedded systems for a company that specialized in designing the more technical sort of medical equipment, in this case), he wasted no time in sending his resume - by that point there was nothing much keeping him where he was, save for a family who were more than understanding about his need to have his life be his own. Needless to say, he managed to get the job in question and arranged for an over-seas move without too much inconvenience; as things currently stand he’s beginning to settle in as he gets used to life in both Locke City and the US in general.
First Echo: Shortly after arriving in Locke City, Archimedes managed to catch a rerun of an old and relatively low-budget sci-fi show due largely to jetlag-induced insomnia. In particular, the show was one that dealt (in part) with space travel, and the methods thereof. Methods that Archimedes almost immediately pegged as being profoundly wrong. However, instead of being something that could be written off as a simple fact of science moving ever on, the realization brought with it not so much a yearning to travel beyond the stars but the very certain fact that he had and that it had never been in doubt that he would one day do so.
Preincarnation Personality: When you get right down to it, the simplest way to describe the Master is that he’s very much the antagonist - and he’s well aware of the fact. However, this is not to say that it’s always the easiest to tell. True, he is generally inclined to to treat begin called either evil or twisted as a complement of the highest caliber, but apart from that he’s surprisingly polite, for a man who has attempted to destroy entire worlds and is also possessed of a sort of hypnotic charm. Quite literally hypnotic, even, when he either wants to or needs to be.
This, in turn, lends itself to having a sort of arrogant calm about him. And between the fact that the people who can resist his mental abilities tend to be few and far between, and the sort of natural arrogance that Time Lords so often display, it should come as no surprise that he tends to believe that most most other people aren’t really worth his time. To him they are very nearly less than dust at the best of time, even when they’re of use in his plans of conquest. While some of this tendency is most likely due to a combination of narcissism and the aforementioned arrogance - both of which he has in spades - he also honestly believes that one of the basic laws of life is that one must rule or serve, and he’s not inclined in the least to bow his head to anyone. Nor is he much inclined to tolerate stupidity, especially when it has the possibility to jeopardize his plans.
That said, he’s not entirely heartless or without scruples. There’s certainly no denying that the only person whose skin he truly cares about is his own, but even with that, there have been times when he has (somewhat grudgingly) helped saved the world. However, it should be noted that in most of these cases either he was doing so to save his own skin, or had something to gain from it, be that his freedom or something else of particular value to him - and he has very few qualms about how he gets his hands on something of interest to him.
This alone would be enough to make him something of a thorn in anyone’s side, but add the fact that he’s also absolutely brilliant and you have a recipe for trouble. However, it’s here that the same arrogance that makes him who he is becomes one of greatest weaknesses. He might be brilliant, but on more than one occasion he has either refused to believe that something he’s made (or is controlling) would possibly turn against him or simply managed to over-estimate how easily even the most carefully laid of plans can be unraveled, if the right pressures are applied.
And then there’s the matter of his interactions with the Doctor. While it has been implied any number of times over the course of the series that the two of them used to be childhood friends, that is very much not the way of things by the time that we first meet this version of the Master. Instead, what has once been friendship has turned into something much closer to to an arch-rivalry, to the point that it would not at all be inaccurate to say the Master is more or less the Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes. Or, in the words of Doctor himself: “my best enemy.”
However, even so there are certain deviances in the Master’s usual patterns of behavior when it comes to the Doctor. First and foremost among these is the fact that for a man who has ever been inclined to narcissism and arrogance, the Master considers the Doctor not only to be a worthy opponent, but one very nearly his intellectual equal. But even this is only the tip of the iceberg. True, there is certainly no denying that on more occasion the Master has attempted to destroy either Earth or humanity itself - sometimes for no more reason than because these are things the Doctor cares about. However, for all that his plans are brilliantly conceived, they also tend to be a little more convoluted then they need to be, almost as if he’s partially doing it because he knows the Doctor can’t fail to notice.
In addition, while he can’t really be said to care about the Doctor’s physical well-being, he seems far more interested in defeating the Doctor then anything else. This doesn’t keep him from planning for the Doctor’s death - or threatening to kill him - but on the rare occasion where it’s looked like the Doctor might actually die, he’s been quite willing to pull him away from death’s door. In fact, the Master isn’t actual an unkind enemy to the Doctor, most of the time. He might have his hearts set on making the Doctor’s life difficult at the best of times, but when needs must, he is more than willing to team up with the Doctor. They work together surprisingly well, too, when united for a common purpose, even if they’ve been at odds for too long for it to last forever.
Any Differences: Without having been saddled with the endless drumming at young age or being made to deal with the pressures of a society that may not have exactly had room for him, Archimedes is not only better adjusted overall than the Master but also significantly nicer. Similarly, between friends and family, Archimedes is better at actually caring for his fellow people as a whole. In short, if the Master is Chaotic Evil, Archimedes would be Chaotic Neutral with a strong tendency to lean Good. Accordingly, his relationship with John is not so much a thing of broken and fallen friendships but rather the odd sort of friendly rivalry that comes from having been old school friends.
Taking away the centuries of experience and certainty in himself has also left him significantly more human. He is content with a single world, has very little interest in ruling anything at all (although he might idly consider himself a decent candidate if it were to come up), and most certainly wouldn’t be inclined to destroy a world much less a significant part of the universe.
Abilities:
=>Non-human biology: For all that the Master may look human, the fact of the matter is that he is really, really not. Accordingly, there are more than a few biological differences that mark him as being a Time Lord. The most familiar and most of these is the fact that he has two hearts instead of just the one, and is capable of surviving - if neither comfortably nor necessarily for long - with only one of them active. Additionally, the skeletal structure of a Time Lord is more flexible than that of humans in order to allow them to compress both hearts on their own. This same flexibility also allows them to better survive falls from great heights. They also have an advanced pulmonary system in order to support their dual hearts - this also allows them to hold their breath much longer than humans would; a respiratory bypass system allows them to either further extend the effect or help avoid strangulation.
The senses of a Time Lord are are also distinctly better than human average. This includes proprioception, which makes them generally harder to disorient in general. Alongside this they also have a rather nebulously defined set of senses related to time, which allow them to notice - and to some extent, resist - distortions and jumps in time.
Rounding out the set is the fact that a Time Lord’s biochemistry is significantly different to that of humans - enough so that they can counteract at least certain types of poisoning (such as cyanide poisoning, for example), while others simply take longer to affect them. They’re also less susceptible to extremes of heat and cold, possibly as a side effect of having a distinctly lower core body temperature (around 60 degrees Fahrenheit). Aspirin, however, is fatal to Time Lords.
=>Telepathy/Hypnosis: Like all Time Lords, the Master is also telepathic. For the most part, this manifests as a telepathic link to other Time Lords. However, the Master takes it a step further to the point that he can impose a sort of mental domination on others, leaving them subject to his will. He can also use this hypnotism to make alter people’s memories. However, it is not infallible. People with a strong enough will - or some amount of psychic training - can either resist the hypnotic effects or shake it off entirely. Filling one’s mind with nonsense can also have a similar effect, provided one can maintain focus.
=>Regeneration: In the case of either mortal injury or a body simply getting too old to continue on, a Time Lord is capable of undergoing a complete cellular regeneration. While the process is by no means the most comfortable - and tends to be fairly painful, for the most part - it does offer an escape from death. However as all the cells of the body are rewritten, even down to the brain cells, the newly-regenerated Time Lord often walks away from the experience not only with a new appearance but also a new personality.
=>Vocal Imitation: Should he need to, the Master is capable of pitch-perfect vocal imitations of other people’s voices, provided he’s heard the individual that he’s imitating speak before. However, while he can imitate the pitch and accent of the voice in question, he is not necessarily accurate at matching phrasing or any other quirk of speech.
=>Laser Gun: The Master’s weapon of choice when he wants to at least have the opportunity of leaving an opponent injured but alive, and pretty much what it sounds like.
=>Tissue Compression Eliminator (TCE): The Master’s trademark weapon. Shaped roughly like a cigar, it kills by drastically compressing the body of its target until all life ceases to the point that the corpses of its victims are no bigger than dolls. Given that the clothes of its victims also end up shrunken, it most likely works on any living or formerly-living tissue.
=>TARDIS: The time travel ship common to all Time Lords outside of Gallifrey. Like the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Master’s is also stolen. Unlike the Doctor’s, the Master’s TARDIS is a more recent model, as evidenced by the fact that his dematerialization circuit isn’t compatible with the Doctor’s TARDIS. More relevantly, his TARDIS also possesses a fully functional chameleon circuit and is thus fully capable of taking on a variety of different appearances. The most common of these are a grandfather clock and a Doric column, but other forms have also made an appearance.
Unlike most TARDISes, the Master’s is also equipped with anti-intruder booby traps although they aren’t always set.
=>The Drumming: Not so much an item as something that has been a part of the Master ever since he first looked into the Time Vortex at the age of eight, the drumming is simple and never-ending drumbeat in the same rhythm of a Time Lord’s hearts. Apart from being both a nuisance and irritant to the Master by turns, and one that has caused him no few headaches, the drumming is also part of a signal set back in time by the founder of Time Lord society himself and implanted in the Master’s head in the hopes that the signal might someday prove to help them escape the Last Great Time War.
=>Signet Ring: Although it can be hard to tell with the Master’s tendency to wear gloves, he does appear to be wearing some kind of ring - most likely the same ring - on the few occasions when he isn’t wearing gloves. Given that no attention is ever drawn to it, and the Master is unlikely to try and make it a weapon, the ring is most likely something that has personal significance to him.
Roleplay Sample - Third Person: There was always a certain enjoyment to be found in arriving on a new world. True enough, his idea of enjoyment didn’t always align with that of anyone else, but that was of no consequence. If he had needed to have someone at his side at the moment of such discoveries than he would have already been traveling with them. And in any case, the world itself was much more important. An unassuming sort of planet, really. Small, insignificant, and very much generally unnoticed.
Which made it all the easier, really. Especially since there was no guarantee that he’d be able to extract what he meant to have out of this planet without leaving it in dire straits indeed. But with it having gone unnoticed by so very many people prior... well, surely no one would miss it if he had to almost literally dismantle it (in as much as a planet could be said to be dismantled) to get at the ore hidden within. It would, of course, then need to be refined - especially given the psychic forces he would need it to handle - but that was point of starting with raw materials that could already carry a psychic charge, so to speak.
As for the rest of what he needed... well, he could deal with that when he had enough of the raw materials for his purposes. And he most certainly couldn’t manage that by simply standing around in his TARDIS, and so with one last check to make sure that the coordinates had held properly and that he knew what his TARDIS had chosen to disguise itself as, he stepped out onto the surface of the planet itself. It was time to get down to work, and as he had no interest in actually doing any of the necessary mining himself, that meant finding people who were either willing to work for him or be made to do so with relatively effort.
(But that had always been easy enough to manage and a few comparatively primitive people could hardly pose much of a problem. Even if they did turn out have a minor amount of psychic ability on account of the planet’s composition. There was more than one way to ensure cooperation after all.)
Roleplay Sample - Network: [By all logic, a simple string of numbers shouldn’t mean anything. Not without some manner of formula or any other indicator as to just what they might be. A series of numbers that one can’t get out of one’s head, on the other hand... well, that’s something else entirely. Enough to foster a certain amount of curiosity, and that’s a good enough place to start.
So it is that Archimedes carefully writes the number in a spare notebook, and if he’s surprised by what he finds at least the fact that it’s currently text-based (or seems to be thus far) spares him the potential embarrassment of having been caught out in it.]
Ah. I see. A sort of numerical password. That would explain why it’s so hard to forget. Still, I’ll spare anyone who might be out there what I imagine are the usual set of questions, although I must admit to some surprise that it works this well.
[Especially given that notebooks aren’t really supposed to hold entire networks within them. Unfortunately, he’s never been terribly good at this sort of thing, especially when he can hardly have expected what he’d found in the first place and so for a while it looks as if that’s all he has.]
Then again, who am I to argue with it? There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in one man’s philosophy.
Any Questions? The shared history between Archimedes and John Smith has been cleared with John’s player, as have the more headcanon-y bits of the Master’s past with the Doctor. Additionally, given when they last saw each other, Archimedes won’t recognize John on sight (or by voice) as a result of his recent regeneration.
Are you over 15? Yep!
Contact: AIM (sceadugesceaft), plurk (draconic)
Current characters in the game: N/A
IC Information:
Name: The Master / Archimedes “Emil” Keller (reincarnation)
Canon and Medium: Doctor Who; TV series
Age: Unknown; probably between 500 and 750/ 45 (reincarnation)
Preincarnation Species: Time Lord
Preincarnation Appearance: like so!
Any Differences: Nothing save for a willingness to not always wear suits, and significantly less of a habit of wearing gloves all the time
Starting Location: Locke City, NJ, USA
Preincarnated History: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Master
As a note, the wiki covers all the various versions of canon (TV, audio, comics, and novels). However as I’m mostly only familiar with the first of these, I will largely be sticking to the stuff in his TV appearances. If there’s anything you want to have clarified, feel free to ask.
Life on Gallifrey
Born into a family of decent standing, the Master’s early life was one that was predominantly a life of duty, as one of his later selves admitted to the Tenth Doctor. Despite this, he did still manage find some time to himself, if not precisely as often as he might have like. Like most other Time Lords, he entered the Academy of Time Lords at the age of eight. First, however, came the initiation ceremony which involved being made to look into the Untempered Schism - a sort of gap in the fabric of time and space itself - and it was here that the Master first heard the unending drumbeat that would remain with him for the lives. For much of his early life, the drumbeat was telepathically hidden by sources outside the Master’s control, making it easier for him to deal with them but also making it so that what few people he managed to tell about them never heard so much as the slightest hint of the drums.
It was at the Academy that he first met Theta Sigma - or to give him the name he would later have, the Doctor - and in time they came to be the best of friends. As the Third Doctor would later recollect, they even had a habit of making each other’s experiments explode, a fact that got them into trouble at least once, when they accidentally blew up part of the Academy itself. It was also during his stay at the Academy that the Master first managed to hack his way into the Matrix (the repository of the entirety of Time Lord knowledge).
However, all good things must come to an end and in time the friendship the Doctor and the Master shared ended up going sour. The Doctor’s eventual flight from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS didn’t help either; in a fit of pique, the Master regenerated, in the hopes that it would change things.
It didn’t, and between irritation at the whole of Gallifreyan society being entirely too resistant to change as well as the fact that it was starting to feel fairly distinctly like he didn’t belong, he followed in the Doctor’s footsteps and left Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS. As a convenient bonus, his new TARDIS was also able to help both counterbalance the drumming to some degree as well as make the resultant headaches less awful when they happened.
Travelling the Universe
However even then, it took time - and practice - for him to grow into all that he would later be. His earliest explorations were not entirely dissimilar to the Doctor’s although he tended to make minor changes for the sake of change even then. As time passed, however, this gradually became a decided fixation on either ruling things or destroying them, with the majority of his remaining regenerations lost in the process of learning how to both be an effective despot as well as how to avoid getting killed for same too frequently. At the same time, he was also perfecting his hypnotism technique, building on what little he’d managed to learn during his time at the Academy.
And then he ran into the Doctor again, exiled on Earth in his third regeneration. What followed was nothing so much as the Master making the Doctor’s life exceedingly difficult by simply turning up at every possible turn. Given his tendencies, his first go of it was a simple attempt at taking over Earth itself. To aid in the process, he enlisted the help of the Nestenes and their ability to to animate plastic in order to make what were essentially plastic daffodils capable of killing a man. When this failed, and the Doctor’s interference left him temporarily stuck on Earth, he proceeded to move on to longer term plans, setting himself up as a harmless scientist before using an alien mind parasite to get the inmates of a local to stealing an outlawed missile for him, with the intent of aiming it at a peace conference going on and thus starting World War Three.
From there, and after regaining his stolen dematerialization circuit from the Doctor, it was a plan to let a third party destroy the Earth in return for his own life, an attempt to steal a doomsday weapon and attempt to obtain powers far in advance of humanity in comparatively short order before he was finally caught and imprisoned by UNIT, a branch of the military designed to deal with various alien incursions. Not that he stayed imprisoned for long. Instead, his incarceration lasted just long enough for him to help a race of reptile-people from the dawn of time to invade Earth; when this too failed, he managed to escape once again. Needless to say, he was back to his old habits before too long, as well as back to focusing on Earth, since that was still where the Doctor was stationed.
Only the last of these attempts met with any sort of success. Although the Master’s attempts to start a war between humans and another race were averted it was only narrowly so. Additionally, the war had only been a sort of distraction to allow his allies - the Daleks - to step in and start a greater war. This too was eventually stopped by the Doctor, but the Master himself took no part in the Daleks’ plans after sparking off the conflict.
Reincarnated History: Archimedes was born in Cardiff, to parents who thought it would be an excellent idea to name their son Archimedes Alexander Keller. Still, this probably would have been fine if the name Archimedes had any sort of decent diminutive form. As it doesn’t, most of the rest of his relatives took one look at the mouthful presented by his given name, and decided that “Alex” was a suitable enough name (fortunately it was also one that his parents didn’t much mind). However, this was only the very beginning of his problems in regards to names - school itself brought with a new set of people less than inclined to tolerate a mouthful of a name and so Archimedes became Archie, a name that he never really grew to like.
However, despite the inconveniences presented by his parents’ choices of name, school was also where Archimedes first met John Smith. However, while they had certainly shared classes prior, they never actually spoke much until they were both cast in the school play. Over the rehearsals and shows that followed they found that they were significantly more alike then they had first thought, and they were fast friends from then on. The experience also left John with a brand new nickname (Theta), born of what can only be called a very strange and rambling conversation backstage. However, Archimedes was never quite at ease with the idea of school as a whole. He was a bright student, no doubt about that, but he never quite seemed to find anything that actually managed to capture his interest. Instead, he mostly seemed to have a general sort of passive apathy about most of his school subjects at best, even despite his good grades, and at worst seemed to genuinely dislike the idea as whole. He continued to take part in the school plays however, and perhaps no surprise, since they seemed to be the only thing he took any real interest in - and one of the few places he enjoyed himself.
This state of affairs lasted just about until the both of them finished school. Or rather, until one day John told Archie that his father had gotten a job in the US and that they would be moving out of the country accordingly. Without anything calling his own family in that direction in kind, Archie remained behind. It was not, however, a comfortable shift for Archimedes. He’d never been terribly good at making friends and had generally assumed that John would be remaining in roughly the same location as they moved on into university. Instead, they were left with letters, something that Archimedes never really found to be the same.
By this point, he was also beginning to get tired of being called Archie, and as he set about taking the first steps to a higher education, he also set to work getting people to call him by a name he had chosen himself: Emil. While he never actually went through the process of a legal name change (Archimedes being a perfectly suitable name in his mind), by the time he finished school he’d managed to become “Emil” just about anywhere save for official documents and the like. The time he spent at university was also where he began to find himself. While he did still continue to take the opportunity to audition for plays when it arose, a course in electronics that he’d taken simply because it had sounded interest had him finding his true passion. He’d always been interested in taking things apart to see how they worked, and this offered what seemed to him like an excellent opportunity: a career in not only taking things apart but also putting them together to make new sorts of things. By the time that year was out he had well and truly decided that engineering was his passion - in particular, electronic engineering. However the growing demands of schoolwork soon took up the vast majority of his time, and the letters he and John had been sending back and forth slowly tapered off and then petered out altogether as he threw himself ever more into the demands of the field he’d chosen for himself. Which certainly didn’t do much for his habit of not making friends easily, but he managed a few between sharing classes with people and his continued interest in theater. The fact that he continued to take things apart also earned him something of a reputation as “that guy who can probably fix your radio,” much to his eternal dismay.
His life was no less busy after graduation. The price of knowing how things work in ever-changing field was needing to keep up with the same. And yet, he never really minded much. He’d found something that he could be passionate about, and thus it was no great hardship. Being at the forefront of technology also made it comparatively easy to find employment - especially as the age of the computer took off - and before too long he was doing fairly well for himself. He never stopped being interested in his chosen field either, even if it did eventually become somewhat less of all-consuming interest than it had been during his years at university. Neither did his interest in theater fade, although he traded actually being in plays for merely making a habit of going to see them on a semi-regular basis.
His opportunity to move to Locke City came much later, although he’d been keeping an eye on the news of Wise Snake’s mayhem partly because he vaguely remembered that John had moved to somewhere in that general vicinity, but also because it was strange enough to catch even his attention. Additionally, he couldn’t help but wonder what direction technology might take if the various rumors about the city - and the people living there - were any indication, and starting at the source of the matter seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision,. As such, when he heard about a job offering in Locke City within his field (making and designing embedded systems for a company that specialized in designing the more technical sort of medical equipment, in this case), he wasted no time in sending his resume - by that point there was nothing much keeping him where he was, save for a family who were more than understanding about his need to have his life be his own. Needless to say, he managed to get the job in question and arranged for an over-seas move without too much inconvenience; as things currently stand he’s beginning to settle in as he gets used to life in both Locke City and the US in general.
First Echo: Shortly after arriving in Locke City, Archimedes managed to catch a rerun of an old and relatively low-budget sci-fi show due largely to jetlag-induced insomnia. In particular, the show was one that dealt (in part) with space travel, and the methods thereof. Methods that Archimedes almost immediately pegged as being profoundly wrong. However, instead of being something that could be written off as a simple fact of science moving ever on, the realization brought with it not so much a yearning to travel beyond the stars but the very certain fact that he had and that it had never been in doubt that he would one day do so.
Preincarnation Personality: When you get right down to it, the simplest way to describe the Master is that he’s very much the antagonist - and he’s well aware of the fact. However, this is not to say that it’s always the easiest to tell. True, he is generally inclined to to treat begin called either evil or twisted as a complement of the highest caliber, but apart from that he’s surprisingly polite, for a man who has attempted to destroy entire worlds and is also possessed of a sort of hypnotic charm. Quite literally hypnotic, even, when he either wants to or needs to be.
This, in turn, lends itself to having a sort of arrogant calm about him. And between the fact that the people who can resist his mental abilities tend to be few and far between, and the sort of natural arrogance that Time Lords so often display, it should come as no surprise that he tends to believe that most most other people aren’t really worth his time. To him they are very nearly less than dust at the best of time, even when they’re of use in his plans of conquest. While some of this tendency is most likely due to a combination of narcissism and the aforementioned arrogance - both of which he has in spades - he also honestly believes that one of the basic laws of life is that one must rule or serve, and he’s not inclined in the least to bow his head to anyone. Nor is he much inclined to tolerate stupidity, especially when it has the possibility to jeopardize his plans.
That said, he’s not entirely heartless or without scruples. There’s certainly no denying that the only person whose skin he truly cares about is his own, but even with that, there have been times when he has (somewhat grudgingly) helped saved the world. However, it should be noted that in most of these cases either he was doing so to save his own skin, or had something to gain from it, be that his freedom or something else of particular value to him - and he has very few qualms about how he gets his hands on something of interest to him.
This alone would be enough to make him something of a thorn in anyone’s side, but add the fact that he’s also absolutely brilliant and you have a recipe for trouble. However, it’s here that the same arrogance that makes him who he is becomes one of greatest weaknesses. He might be brilliant, but on more than one occasion he has either refused to believe that something he’s made (or is controlling) would possibly turn against him or simply managed to over-estimate how easily even the most carefully laid of plans can be unraveled, if the right pressures are applied.
And then there’s the matter of his interactions with the Doctor. While it has been implied any number of times over the course of the series that the two of them used to be childhood friends, that is very much not the way of things by the time that we first meet this version of the Master. Instead, what has once been friendship has turned into something much closer to to an arch-rivalry, to the point that it would not at all be inaccurate to say the Master is more or less the Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes. Or, in the words of Doctor himself: “my best enemy.”
However, even so there are certain deviances in the Master’s usual patterns of behavior when it comes to the Doctor. First and foremost among these is the fact that for a man who has ever been inclined to narcissism and arrogance, the Master considers the Doctor not only to be a worthy opponent, but one very nearly his intellectual equal. But even this is only the tip of the iceberg. True, there is certainly no denying that on more occasion the Master has attempted to destroy either Earth or humanity itself - sometimes for no more reason than because these are things the Doctor cares about. However, for all that his plans are brilliantly conceived, they also tend to be a little more convoluted then they need to be, almost as if he’s partially doing it because he knows the Doctor can’t fail to notice.
In addition, while he can’t really be said to care about the Doctor’s physical well-being, he seems far more interested in defeating the Doctor then anything else. This doesn’t keep him from planning for the Doctor’s death - or threatening to kill him - but on the rare occasion where it’s looked like the Doctor might actually die, he’s been quite willing to pull him away from death’s door. In fact, the Master isn’t actual an unkind enemy to the Doctor, most of the time. He might have his hearts set on making the Doctor’s life difficult at the best of times, but when needs must, he is more than willing to team up with the Doctor. They work together surprisingly well, too, when united for a common purpose, even if they’ve been at odds for too long for it to last forever.
Any Differences: Without having been saddled with the endless drumming at young age or being made to deal with the pressures of a society that may not have exactly had room for him, Archimedes is not only better adjusted overall than the Master but also significantly nicer. Similarly, between friends and family, Archimedes is better at actually caring for his fellow people as a whole. In short, if the Master is Chaotic Evil, Archimedes would be Chaotic Neutral with a strong tendency to lean Good. Accordingly, his relationship with John is not so much a thing of broken and fallen friendships but rather the odd sort of friendly rivalry that comes from having been old school friends.
Taking away the centuries of experience and certainty in himself has also left him significantly more human. He is content with a single world, has very little interest in ruling anything at all (although he might idly consider himself a decent candidate if it were to come up), and most certainly wouldn’t be inclined to destroy a world much less a significant part of the universe.
Abilities:
=>Non-human biology: For all that the Master may look human, the fact of the matter is that he is really, really not. Accordingly, there are more than a few biological differences that mark him as being a Time Lord. The most familiar and most of these is the fact that he has two hearts instead of just the one, and is capable of surviving - if neither comfortably nor necessarily for long - with only one of them active. Additionally, the skeletal structure of a Time Lord is more flexible than that of humans in order to allow them to compress both hearts on their own. This same flexibility also allows them to better survive falls from great heights. They also have an advanced pulmonary system in order to support their dual hearts - this also allows them to hold their breath much longer than humans would; a respiratory bypass system allows them to either further extend the effect or help avoid strangulation.
The senses of a Time Lord are are also distinctly better than human average. This includes proprioception, which makes them generally harder to disorient in general. Alongside this they also have a rather nebulously defined set of senses related to time, which allow them to notice - and to some extent, resist - distortions and jumps in time.
Rounding out the set is the fact that a Time Lord’s biochemistry is significantly different to that of humans - enough so that they can counteract at least certain types of poisoning (such as cyanide poisoning, for example), while others simply take longer to affect them. They’re also less susceptible to extremes of heat and cold, possibly as a side effect of having a distinctly lower core body temperature (around 60 degrees Fahrenheit). Aspirin, however, is fatal to Time Lords.
=>Telepathy/Hypnosis: Like all Time Lords, the Master is also telepathic. For the most part, this manifests as a telepathic link to other Time Lords. However, the Master takes it a step further to the point that he can impose a sort of mental domination on others, leaving them subject to his will. He can also use this hypnotism to make alter people’s memories. However, it is not infallible. People with a strong enough will - or some amount of psychic training - can either resist the hypnotic effects or shake it off entirely. Filling one’s mind with nonsense can also have a similar effect, provided one can maintain focus.
=>Regeneration: In the case of either mortal injury or a body simply getting too old to continue on, a Time Lord is capable of undergoing a complete cellular regeneration. While the process is by no means the most comfortable - and tends to be fairly painful, for the most part - it does offer an escape from death. However as all the cells of the body are rewritten, even down to the brain cells, the newly-regenerated Time Lord often walks away from the experience not only with a new appearance but also a new personality.
=>Vocal Imitation: Should he need to, the Master is capable of pitch-perfect vocal imitations of other people’s voices, provided he’s heard the individual that he’s imitating speak before. However, while he can imitate the pitch and accent of the voice in question, he is not necessarily accurate at matching phrasing or any other quirk of speech.
=>Laser Gun: The Master’s weapon of choice when he wants to at least have the opportunity of leaving an opponent injured but alive, and pretty much what it sounds like.
=>Tissue Compression Eliminator (TCE): The Master’s trademark weapon. Shaped roughly like a cigar, it kills by drastically compressing the body of its target until all life ceases to the point that the corpses of its victims are no bigger than dolls. Given that the clothes of its victims also end up shrunken, it most likely works on any living or formerly-living tissue.
=>TARDIS: The time travel ship common to all Time Lords outside of Gallifrey. Like the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Master’s is also stolen. Unlike the Doctor’s, the Master’s TARDIS is a more recent model, as evidenced by the fact that his dematerialization circuit isn’t compatible with the Doctor’s TARDIS. More relevantly, his TARDIS also possesses a fully functional chameleon circuit and is thus fully capable of taking on a variety of different appearances. The most common of these are a grandfather clock and a Doric column, but other forms have also made an appearance.
Unlike most TARDISes, the Master’s is also equipped with anti-intruder booby traps although they aren’t always set.
=>The Drumming: Not so much an item as something that has been a part of the Master ever since he first looked into the Time Vortex at the age of eight, the drumming is simple and never-ending drumbeat in the same rhythm of a Time Lord’s hearts. Apart from being both a nuisance and irritant to the Master by turns, and one that has caused him no few headaches, the drumming is also part of a signal set back in time by the founder of Time Lord society himself and implanted in the Master’s head in the hopes that the signal might someday prove to help them escape the Last Great Time War.
=>Signet Ring: Although it can be hard to tell with the Master’s tendency to wear gloves, he does appear to be wearing some kind of ring - most likely the same ring - on the few occasions when he isn’t wearing gloves. Given that no attention is ever drawn to it, and the Master is unlikely to try and make it a weapon, the ring is most likely something that has personal significance to him.
Roleplay Sample - Third Person: There was always a certain enjoyment to be found in arriving on a new world. True enough, his idea of enjoyment didn’t always align with that of anyone else, but that was of no consequence. If he had needed to have someone at his side at the moment of such discoveries than he would have already been traveling with them. And in any case, the world itself was much more important. An unassuming sort of planet, really. Small, insignificant, and very much generally unnoticed.
Which made it all the easier, really. Especially since there was no guarantee that he’d be able to extract what he meant to have out of this planet without leaving it in dire straits indeed. But with it having gone unnoticed by so very many people prior... well, surely no one would miss it if he had to almost literally dismantle it (in as much as a planet could be said to be dismantled) to get at the ore hidden within. It would, of course, then need to be refined - especially given the psychic forces he would need it to handle - but that was point of starting with raw materials that could already carry a psychic charge, so to speak.
As for the rest of what he needed... well, he could deal with that when he had enough of the raw materials for his purposes. And he most certainly couldn’t manage that by simply standing around in his TARDIS, and so with one last check to make sure that the coordinates had held properly and that he knew what his TARDIS had chosen to disguise itself as, he stepped out onto the surface of the planet itself. It was time to get down to work, and as he had no interest in actually doing any of the necessary mining himself, that meant finding people who were either willing to work for him or be made to do so with relatively effort.
(But that had always been easy enough to manage and a few comparatively primitive people could hardly pose much of a problem. Even if they did turn out have a minor amount of psychic ability on account of the planet’s composition. There was more than one way to ensure cooperation after all.)
Roleplay Sample - Network: [By all logic, a simple string of numbers shouldn’t mean anything. Not without some manner of formula or any other indicator as to just what they might be. A series of numbers that one can’t get out of one’s head, on the other hand... well, that’s something else entirely. Enough to foster a certain amount of curiosity, and that’s a good enough place to start.
So it is that Archimedes carefully writes the number in a spare notebook, and if he’s surprised by what he finds at least the fact that it’s currently text-based (or seems to be thus far) spares him the potential embarrassment of having been caught out in it.]
Ah. I see. A sort of numerical password. That would explain why it’s so hard to forget. Still, I’ll spare anyone who might be out there what I imagine are the usual set of questions, although I must admit to some surprise that it works this well.
[Especially given that notebooks aren’t really supposed to hold entire networks within them. Unfortunately, he’s never been terribly good at this sort of thing, especially when he can hardly have expected what he’d found in the first place and so for a while it looks as if that’s all he has.]
Then again, who am I to argue with it? There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in one man’s philosophy.
Any Questions? The shared history between Archimedes and John Smith has been cleared with John’s player, as have the more headcanon-y bits of the Master’s past with the Doctor. Additionally, given when they last saw each other, Archimedes won’t recognize John on sight (or by voice) as a result of his recent regeneration.