Eternal War

The Eternal War, (PROSE: The Pit) also known as the Vampire Wars, (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors, The Quantum Archangel, World Game) Great War, (AUDIO: Zagreus) first War in Heaven, war against the yssgaroth, or Yssgaroth campaigns, (PROSE: The Book of the War) was a protracted and bloody conflict fought against the Great Vampires early in Time Lord history, during the Dark Times. (PROSE: The Pit) It was part of a larger series of Eternal Wars, (PROSE: Damaged Goods) the Time Wars. (PROSE: Sky Pirates!, River of Time, et al.)

Beginning
Because the story of the Eternal War was never recorded in the Matrix, there were varying accounts of its start. (PROSE: The Pit) The conflict was, nevertheless, remembered as one of the most important chapters within the history of the Great Houses. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

According to a transmission which Sam Jones received on Anathema, that may have been influenced by Faction Paradox propaganda, the war began when Rassilon first opened a black hole in an attempt to draw power from other planes of existence. The black hole reached through to an inhabited plane, and monsters with great leathery wings and bat-like heads swarmed through the opening. (PROSE: Interference)

According to The Book of the War, the Yssgaroth escaped into Spiral Politic during the anchoring of the thread. They destroyed the machinery responsible for the anchoring, creating the caldera. (PROSE: The Book of the War) However, one account of the war showed that the fighting began before Gallifreyans had mastery over time and still called themselves the "Space Lords". (COMIC: Monstrous Beauty) The Doctor's TARDIS once displayed a "half-true" account of history in which it was Rassilon who started the war, having decided that the Vampires needed to be destroyed even though they were living off mindless creatures that they themselves bred. (AUDIO: Zagreus)

According to The Thousand and Second Night, the vampires, called the djinn in this account, survived the destruction of their world "before the first time"; the "cauldron of creation" also survived from this "world before the world", and Rassilon, dubbed Allah in this telling, filled it with an infinite black emptiness in which he could dissolve the current world and create a new one. Iblis, the leader of the djinn, wanted Allah's power for himself, so he convinced the djinn to help him steal the cauldron and bring it from Jannat to Jahannam. Allah formed his angels into five great tribes and many smaller tribes and sent them to defend the cauldron. (PROSE: Head of State)

The conflict
The ferocity and resilience of the Vampires made their defeat very difficult. (TV: State of Decay) They drank the angels' blood and feasted on their power. (PROSE: Head of State) Led by Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu, Gallifrey’s forces pushed the Yssgaroth back into their own universe over a thousand years, though billions of people were killed and whole star systems were destroyed. (PROSE: The Pit) The Qwerm were allied with Gallifrey and assisted in fighting against the Great Vampires. (PROSE: River of Time)

During the war, arriving during the Kotturuh crisis, the Ninth Doctor and Rose arrived on a shadow planetoid where Commander Rassilon was leading Gallifreyan forces, calling themselves Space Lords by this point. The two escaped Rassilon’s custody during an attack of Cucurbites, with the Doctor intending to leave immediately due to his fear of the war, only for Rose to be kidnapped by a primordial class vampire named Hugo. Forced to return to the Space Lords, the Doctor conspired with Androkan to steal Rassilon's ship and go in pursuit, tracing Rose to a coffin ship. Unknown to them, Rassilon had a tracker on her ship and called for reinforcements to follow them. Aboard the Coffin Ship, the Doctor and Androkan were captured.

The Gallifreyan was killed, however, and the Doctor's biology intrigued Friar Grystok, an acolyte of the Three Mad Sisters. He took the Doctor before them, revealing they'd turned Rose. The Doctor fended off the attacks of the Vampiric Rose, managing to send her to sleep as Gallifreyan forces attacked. The Sisters died in the attack and the Doctor instigated a revolt among the slaves they'd turned, curing their addictions with synth-blood. He ejected Rassilon’s ship to distract the Gallifreyans and helped the Coffin Ship flee, freeing the formerly enslaved Vampires from the war. Rose recovered from the vampire virus on a moon the Doctor found. They then left the Dark Times aboard the Doctor's TARDIS. (COMIC: Monstrous Beauty)

Rassilon rose to power on Gallifrey during the war. (PROSE: The Pit) According to the potentially Faction Paradox-altered account, he fought side by side with "the Engineer". (PROSE: Interference: Shock Tactics) As President, Rassilon once left the safety of the fleet to investigate rumours of a Vampire hive. He was captured by the Ra'ra'vis who forced him to perform time experiments for them. Rassilon was saved by the Vogan Jorus and gifted him his presidential seal. (PROSE: Jorus and the Voganauts)

According to one account, the war began to turn in Gallifrey’s favour after Lord President Rassilon ordered bowships into construction. Based on the findings of General Skellis, the bowships were designed to exploit the Vampires' vulnerability to being impaled through the heart. (PROSE: The Multi-Faceted War) Another account suggested bowships had been created earlier in the war, when Rassilon was still a Commander, by the Mithras Hives. (COMIC: Monstrous Beauty) Bowships were given artificial intelligence, which ultimately played against the Time Lords. Some wanted compensation before attacking a Great Vampire. (AUDIO: The Scent of Blood)

The Time Lords used Stake Drives and the twelve original War TARDISes against the Vampires, (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen) and also created the Were Lords, capable of regenerating between human and wolf forms when exposed to pulses of artron energy, as soldiers. The Were Lords deserted the war. (AUDIO: Brightly Shone The Moon That Night) The Patrexes developed N-Forms to target vampirism. (PROSE: Damaged Goods)

Eventually, all but one of the Great Vampires — the swarm leader — were found and destroyed. (PROSE: Interference) The node points in the metastructure of history that were outlets to the Yssgaroth's universe were blocked and reinforced by forced-matter shells disguised as planets — unless someone attempted to drill to the planet's core. (PROSE: The Book of the War) These planets included the Althosian system (PROSE: The Pit) and Earth. (PROSE: Interference, Head of State) The idea to hide it inside Earth came from someone who was neither a djinn nor an angel. (PROSE: Head of State) According to the possibly Faction-altered account, the Engineer handled designing the artificial planets, while Rassilon led Gallifrey's fleet in the final push against the Vampires, sealing the Vampire's home realm off from their universe. (PROSE: Interference: Shock Tactics)

The djinn could not reach the cauldron hidden within the Earth, so they mixed with human women and created the Mal'akh, who laid in wait until the angels returned to take the cauldron back to Jannat. (PROSE: Head of State) Iphigenia was also located on a universal ley line as protection against the Great Vampires. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin) Lolita would claim to have bought an end to the war "in a way the Pilots would never have noticed" shortly after her birth, and at the direction of her mother. (PROSE: Toy Story) After spending years searching in vain for the King Vampire, Rassilon declared the war over. (PROSE: The Multi-Faceted War)

Historical records
The war became a legend throughout the universe, with few exact details known. (TV: State of Decay) Vampire legends existed in many cultures, including Earth. (PROSE: Goth Opera, Vampire Science)

Rassilon's involvement in the war was detailed in The Record of Rassilon. (PROSE: Still Need a Title!)

Every Type 40 time vessel included a message from Rassilon saying that it was a Time Lord's solemn duty to lay down his life to kill the King Vampire. The war caused such widespread loss of life that the Time Lords rejected the use of violence forever. (TV: State of Decay)

The term "eternal war" was later used to describe a different conflict, being used by the Iron Legion, (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion, AUDIO: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion) who had fought in the Second Time Front of the War in Heaven. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)

Impact on Gallifrey
The Monk believed that the planet Gallifrey itself had originally orbited a single sun, and it was turned into a binary system by He-of-Many-Epithets (including retroactively, through time travel) during the war with the vampires, as a precaution, ensuring that the precise "interference pattern" between the light of the two suns destroyed even vampires with a resistance to ordinary sunlight. Naturally, later generations remained unaware that their planet had ever had less than two suns. (PROSE: The Bloodletters)

When Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu returned to Gallifrey after the war, he discovered that religion had fallen out of favour and Rassilon had risen to power. He then left to guard the final opening. (PROSE: The Pit)

One of Rassilon’s titles was "Conqueror of the Yssgaroth", (AUDIO: Zagreus) and his throne was made of the bones of giant bats. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)

General Mirraflex, the founder of House Mirraflex, achieved notability during the war. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

By the time of the Second Doctor, Vampires were viewed as extremely scary by Gallifreyans. (PROSE: World Game)

Weapons of the War
Bowships remained in use by the Time Lords. They were notably utilised in the Last Great Time War, (PROSE: A Prologue) and to exile Rassilon following his overthrow by the Twelfth Doctor. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) A crashed Bowship was discovered by the Eighth Doctor in 1890s Edinburgh, (AUDIO: The Scent of Blood) and another was found embedded in an asteroid by Jenny. She repaired the vessel and used it to travel in search of her father. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)

Following the war, the N-Forms' central intelligence core was downloaded and they were shut down. A surviving reactivated N-Form was eventually discovered and destroyed by the Seventh Doctor in London in 1987. It claimed to have been reactivated by a signal from the future, teasing the Doctor that the war had started again without him knowing. (PROSE: Damaged Goods, AUDIO: Damaged Goods) The Doctor traced parts of the reactivation signal to the 30th century, where his companion Roz Forrester destroyed another N-Form activated by the Brotherhood of the Immanent Flesh. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin) During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lord War Council sent reactivation signals across time to any surviving N-Forms. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)

The last known surviving Cucurbite plunged into the magma of a newborn Earth until she was expelled from a volcano and used Varney's ancestor to fuel itself. It was destroyed in 1939 by the Eighth Doctor, Izzy Sinclair and Fey Truscott-Sade. (COMIC: Tooth and Claw)

The twelve original War TARDISes influenced their handlers to ensure their continued maintenance after the Vampire Wars. They were eventually used again a millennium later in the Krikkit War. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen)

The Were Lords who had deserted the war eventually settled in Greece in 1500 BC. They lived among humanity for thousands of year, becoming myths, and were worshipped by the early peoples of Earth. (AUDIO: Brightly Shone The Moon That Night)

Survival of the King Vampire
Having fled into E-Space, the King Vampire drew the Hydrax, a human exploration vessel from the 22nd century, through a Charged Vacuum Emboitement. It turned the three crew members into vampires and they became his servants, the Three Who Rule, on the planet where the King lay dormant. For a thousand years the Three ruled over local villages, preparing for the Time of Arising when the King would awake.

At the Time of Arising, the Fourth Doctor, Romana, Adric and K9 arrived on the planet. They helped the inhabitants overthrow their vampire rulers and used a scout ship to impale the King as it finally awoke, completing the instructions left behind by Rassilon and thus finally ending the war. (TV: State of Decay) Agonal later attempted to resurrect the King Vampire and his servants on their planet in E-Space but was foiled by the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: Blood Harvest)

Other realities
Faction Paradox claimed that their iconic ceremonial armour was made from the bones of vampirised Homeworlders from an alternate timeline where the Yssgaroth won the war and corrupted their fallen enemies. However, the Houses denied this claim (in line with their insistence that alternate timelines didn't exist), and even Faction experts on the Yssgaroth thought there may be more to the story. At any rate, the bones were sourced from an "abomination's graveyard" accessed by the Godfather-lieutenants of the Grandfather through the caldera. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

In one of the timelines within the Axis, Rassilon failed to defeat the Great Vampires who eventually gained a foothold on Gallifrey itself and used the transduction barrier to block out sunlight, continuing to wage war on the people of Gallifrey now known as the True Lords. Romana, Leela and Narvin from the prime timeline visited this Gallifrey, by which time the True Lords were led by Magistrex Borusa and fighting the vampires led by Lord Prydon. Romana finally brought an end to the war by lowering the tranduction barrier, fatally exposing the vampires to sunlight. (AUDIO: Annihilation)