Battle of Mordeela

The Battle of Mordeela was a battle in the Kotturuh crisis during the Dark Times. It involved three incarnations of the Doctor who were commanding the Victis Fleet, Dalek Time Squad and Free Undead. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)

Prelude
After declaring himself the Time Lord Victorious, (TV: The Waters of Mars) the Tenth Doctor fled to the Dark Times via a time fracture. He became embroiled in the Kotturuh crisis and resolved to stop the Kotturuh spreading mortality with their judgements. He allied with Brian, an Ood assassin who’d found himself in the Dark Times, and was given command over the Victis Fleet, a mercenary force, He devised a necrotic virus by reverse-engineering the Kotturuh’s power and was provoked to unleash it after they killed Estinee, giving them a lifespan of only fifteen minutes. (PROSE: The Knight, the Fool and the Dead)

The Doctor’s actions caused temporal fluctuations, rewriting timelines across the universe. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) The Dalek Emperor of the Restoration became aware that history was under attack by the Doctor (PROSE: The Last Message) and formed the Dalek Time Squad, consisting of a Time Commander, the Prime Strategist, an Executioner, a Scientist and numerous time-sensitive Silver Dalek Drones to investigstr and resolve the situation to the Daleks’ advantage. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) The Squad recruited the Eighth Doctor to help their investigation, with him assisting them in travelling back to the Dark Times to find the source of the alterations. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy) Unknown to him, this travel was assisted by the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS who was seeking to teach her Doctor a lesson. (PROSE: What the TARDIS thought of “Time Lord Victorious”)

Due to the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS pulling them back through the time fracture, (PROSE: What the TARDIS thought of “Time Lord Victorious”) the Ninth Doctor and Rose found themselves in the Dark Times, in the midst of the Eternal War between Gallifrey and the Great Vampires. After Rose was kidnapped by a Vampire, the Doctor followed her to a coffin ship. There he helped the enslaved undead overthrow their masters and escape oncoming Gallifreyan forces. After her brief turn to vampirism, the Doctor realised Rose needed sometime to recover so left on a “nice moon” in the care of a freed undead slave. (COMIC: Monstrous Beauty) He stayed with the Free Undead aboard their coffin ship as they began searching for a planet to settle on. The Free Undead eventually fell under the leadership of Madame Ikalla. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)

All three factions converged on Mordeela, the home planet of the Kotturuh. The Tenth Doctor ordered the Victis Fleet to go there to finish off the Kotturuh, intending to seal off their power source for good, (PROSE: The Knight, the Fool and the Dead) and the Daleks and Eighth Doctor traced the source of alterations there whilst the Free Undead were drawn there after the Ninth Doctor had a feeling something was wrong with the Dark Times. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)

The battle
As the Victis Fleet approached Mordeela, the Tenth Doctor devised a way to use the planet’s crystals to seal the gateway at the heart of the planet. His orders were interrupted by the arrival of the Dalek Time Squad’s saucer. (PROSE: The Knight, the Fool and the Dead) Surprised at his future self’s involvement, the Eighth Doctor was told to improvise by the Daleks and called his future self, pleading with him to stop. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass) The Ninth Doctor’s coffin ship then arrived, with him more directly telling his future self to stop this. The Tenth Doctor dismissed them as a Kotturuh trick and ordered his fleet to fire on Mordeela. (PROSE: The Knight, the Fool and the Dead) The planet exploded, to the Eighth and Ninth Doctors’ horror. Astonished, the Eighth Doctor asked the Prime Strategist what they did now and received the typical Dalek response: “Exterminate.”

The Daleks opened fire on the Victis Fleet, rapidly destroying three ships. The Eighth Doctor tried to rein them in but was swatted away from the controls by the Executioner. The Strategist reminded him he’d threatened his future self, so they were now realising that threat. As the Daleks deployed Drones and scout ships, Brian prepared to retaliate using an assortment of ancient weaponry he’d collected whilst in the Dark Times. The coffin ship stayed on the sidelines, firing ineffectively at the fleet which Ikalla claimed was to make the enemy think that was all they could do. Brian eventually deployed Uxaerian doomsday particlss against the Daleks, which ripped through them as they had no defence to them. The Eighth Doctor enhanced the saucer’s defences using his TARDIS whilst Brian similarly protected the Victis Fleet with a Daemon heatshield.

At this point, the Ninth Doctor asked Ikalla if the undead could “pitch in” more, so she ordered the awakening of the Bloodsmen. The Bloodsmen apparated aboard three Victis ships and picked off their crew, causing the vessels to fall into the ruins of Mordeela where they were torn apart. To the Ninth Doctor’s fury, the Bloodsmen brought back some of the crew to feed on.

Brian deployed an ancient weapon which froze the Dalek and Vampire forces, which the Doctors used an opportunity to make telepathic contact. They agreed a truce, not wanting anymore deaths. However upon waking up, the Tenth Doctor saw Brian deploying another ancient weapon.

Though Brian’s onslaught had briefly put them on the defensive, the Daleks and Vampires rapidly regained the advantage and pushed ahead, with the Doctors unable to rein them in. Eventually all of the Victis Fleet save the flagship had been destroyed or fled and a shot from the Dalek saucer damaged its engines. The Time Commander and Ikalla issued rival demands for the Tenth Doctor’s surrender.

Unwilling to give up, the Tenth Doctor discovered his ship’s generators still worked and devised a plan. He deployed his device to seal the gateway using Mordeela’s ruins and used it as distraction for his ship to escape, wishing his other selves good luck with keeping the peace between their factions. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)

Aftermath
The Tenth Doctor and Brian went on the run in the flagship, which the Doctor connected to his TARDIS to make up for the damage sustained to the engines. (AUDIO: The Minds of Magnox)

After the Battle, the Dalek Time Squad believed they’d failed to correct history. (PROSE: Mission to the Known) Having been inspired by the Vampires’ abilities during the Battle, they began extracting and weaponising the unique life forms of the Dark Times on the basis that the Emperor would approve of such a strategy. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass) The Time Commander and Executioner eventually received pre-recorded orders from the Emperor for the event of their failure, instructing them to destroy Gallifrey in the Dark Times to prevent the rise of the Time Lords. (PROSE: Mission to the Known)

The Free Undead resumed their search for planet to settle on. Their coffin ship was eventually attacked by the Daleks who were seeking a Vampire for their experiments. The Eighth Doctor, who had been sidelined by the Daleks and was seeking to escape, forewarned the Undead so they could evacuate and absosconced with the Ninth Doctor in his TARDIS. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass) Together they went in search of their future self. (COMIC: Tales of the Dark Times)

With the destruction of Mordeela, the Kotturuh had lost their source of power. The few survivors dedicated what little power they had remaining to issuing judgements before they succumbed to the Tenth Doctor’s judgement. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)