Faction Paradox


 * For the book and audio series, see Faction Paradox (series).

Faction Paradox, once known as House Paradox, were a time-active faction devoted to the promulgation of temporal paradoxes and opposed to the Time Lords and their philosophy of rationality and stability. Founded by Grandfather Paradox, their base was located in the Eleven-Day Empire. They delighted in creating time paradoxes and played a neutral role in the War between the Time Lords and the Enemy.

Origins
Grandfather Paradox, a member of the House of Lungbarrow, seceded from Lungbarrow and created House Paradox about four hundred years before the First War in Heaven. (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet) The House was unpopular for their penchant for death fetishism (which mocked the Time Lords' pretension of immortality) and due to Grandfather Paradox's use of the title "Grandfather" (a term offensive to the Time Lords, since they had been made sterile by the curse of the last Pythia). Most offensive, though, was the House's open interest in perverting the Web of Time.

Around two thousand years before the Second War in Heaven, House Paradox had a homeworld to itself, where they became a corrupted society, getting involved in sordid criminal activities including peddling time travel technology to other races. They believed their use of blood rites would protect them from any retaliation by the Time Lords. These protections were inadequate and the Time Lords wiped out the inhabitants of the Paradox homeworld. A few members survived and continued their activity of sharing advanced technology with the natives on colonies. During their recovery, they built up cults and secret societies throughout the universe, including the Order of the Rectangle, the Cult of the Black Sun and Luminus. (EDA: Interference - Book One) The Grandfather also founded the Eleven-Day Empire at this time, but was arrested and imprisoned on Shada before the House had Loomed its first generation. (FP: The Book of the War)

The Grandfather escaped during the crisis surrounding the Carnival Queen, (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet) and surrendered Paradox's status as a House, transforming it into a Faction. The Grandfather left Gallifrey and started to recruit members from other species, completing the Faction's transition from Gallifreyan chapterhouse into a cult. (FP: The Book of the War)

Faction Paradox travelled back in time to participate in the Millennium War. (PDA: The Quantum Archangel)

The Second War in Heaven
Near the start of the Second War in Heaven, the War King hired House Lolita to destroy the Eleven-Day Empire. In doing so, Lolita wiped out all members of Faction Paradox apart from Cousins Justine and Eliza. (BBV: The Eleven Day Empire)

However, instead of directly finishing off the Faction, the two Cousins managed to escape the destroyed Empire, eventually forging an alliance with the Osirians to neutralise the threats of both the demented Sutekh and of House Lolita. Sutekh's and Lolita's fates were to be bound for eternity within an Osiran pyramid, never to be released.

Fifty years into the War, the Faction had managed to gain enough new members and technology to again become a major force in the War. (FP: The Book of the War)

Members of the Faction led by Mother Francesca survived the Second War in Heaven and attempted to rebuild the Faction in London, 1774. (FP: Political Animals)

Erasure from the Timeline
Later events involving the Eighth Doctor and Grandfather Paradox allowed the central paradoxes of the War to be resolved, effectively eliminating the entire War from the Web of Time, and destroying Gallifrey. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell)

One (possibly apocryphal) account claims that some members of the Faction survived the destruction of Gallifrey and hid away in selected areas of the Web of Time. (CP: Grandmother Clause)

Technology
The Faction used a brand of technology which openly mocked the laws of reality, being apparently powered by a form of voodoo rather than any actual form of physics. They used a variety of travel technology, from time-travelling shrines mocking the basic structure of a TARDIS to massive warships converted from the skeletal remains of Daemons.

Incapable of reproducing themselves, the Faction tried to use a form of Loom to create new members. While they did use the technology, it was eventually eschewed in favour of Remembrance tanks and new converts rather than outright creating new acolytes. (EDA: Interference - Book One)

Godfather Morlock, one of the Faction's scientists/thaumaturges, created devices such as the Tracking Knife, used to read the future in the entrails of animals, and the Biodata Virus, a repugnant creation designed to alter the timeline of the infectee so their Biodata interpreted them as having been a Faction operative since before the infection.

The Faction also heavily invested in the Remote, a sterile faction of future humans, intending for them to become their shocktroopers in the War in Heaven, though the idea did not pan out exactly as they intended. (FP: The Book of the War)

Society
Faction Paradox heavily emphasises the worship of Death and Family, two important elements the Time Lords had rejected in order to more closely resemble the gods they presented themselves as. Paradoxes were created indiscriminately and only served to exacerbate the conflict between the Homeworld and the Faction.

One of their most blatant abuses of their time technology was a part of their induction rites, in which the inductee was sent in time to kill an ancestor before they had the chance to sire the descendant they came from. This created a living paradox out of the convert, making him or her harder to kill by time-based attacks.

As part of their "familial" structure, the titles in the Faction were related to family titles, such as Little Cousin, Cousin, Brother, Mother, Father, and Godfather. The elder titles, naturally, were reserved for the senior or most experienced members. (FP: The Book of the War)