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Excelis Dawns
(Paul Magrs) |
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 Name:
Warlord Grayvorn, AKA Reeve Maupassant, AKA Lord Vaughan Sutton
Format:
Audio.
Time
of Origin: Distant planet of Excelis, although where and when
it is in relation to Earth in terms of both Time and Space is unknown.
Appearances:
"Excelis
Dawns", "Excelis
Rising" and "Excelis
Decays".
Doctors:
Fifth
Doctor, Sixth
Doctor and Seventh
Doctor.
Companions:
None, although Fifth Doctor did leave Tegan
Jovanka in the TARDIS during
"Excelis Dawns"
History: Grayvorn
was originally just a simple warlord in the city of Excelis on the
distant plant of Artaris, either a human colony that had lost all
knowledge of its origins and had to begin from scratch or an entirely
new species that simply bore a physical resemblance to humans. As
a child, Grayvorn was lured away from his native village by a charismatic
stranger who promised him adventure but instead sold him into slavery.
Grayvorn grew to see life as a great cycle of enslavement and retribution,
but he sometime dreamed of more than that; when first meeting them,
he allowed the Fifth Doctor and Iris Wildthyme to live because he
sensed that they will play important roles in the destiny of Artaris,
knowing from the moment he saw The Doctor that The Doctor had a power
which Grayvorn could use to change the future.
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Excelis Rising
(David A. McIntee) |
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Everything
in Grayvorn's life changed when he took on a quest to find the Relic,
a mysterious artefact that was said to be the key to bringing Artaris
to a bright, prosperous future if one who was worthy found it. Believing
himself to be worthy, Grayvorn set out on the quest, but found himself
saddled with three curious companions; Sister Jolene of the convent
of Excelis, Sister Iris Wildthyme, a renegade Time Lady with a drinking
problem who had the map to the Relic, and the Fifth Doctor, who had
stopped on Excelis to give the TARDIS a rest after transporting the
Gravis to another planet ("Frontios")... Having Iris along
on the trip meant that, much to Grayvorn's displeasure, the quest
would be undertaken in Iris's TARDIS, a Type 39 that was smaller
inside that outside, currently had a broken dematerialisation circuit,
and was stuck looking like the number 22 double-decker bus to Putney
Common.
During
the quest, Jolene revealed to The Doctor that, although Grayvorn
was the only person who could find the Relic, he mustn't be allowed
to tap its powers for himself. The Doctor also learned from Iris
that the Relic permitted the flesh-eating zombies that guarded it
to live beyond death, but what none of them knew was that the mysterious
Zombie King, who owned the Relic, knew that they were on their way,
and feared them taking the Relic. When they reached the edges of
the Zombie King's home, Sister Jolene ran away from the others while
The Doctor was occupied with repairing Iris' dematerialisation circuit
to try and gain the secrets of the Relic, but, to make things even
more complicated, a mistake in the coordinates entered into Iriis's
TARDIS resulted in Grayvorn learning that, two thousand years in
the future, Artaris would have become a barren, radioactive wasteland
- a future that Grayvorn vowed to prevent.
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Excelis Decays
(Craig Hinton) |
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Returning
to the present, The Doctor, Iris and Grayvorn were captured by the
Zombie King's followers, Iris revealing during their captivity that
the Relic apparently controlled the gates to Heaven and Hell... but,
in physical appearance, was merely a gold lame handbag that Iris
had once owned. Grayvorn grabbed the Relic and fled with Iris and
The Doctor, intending to use it to force them to operate their TARDISes
on his behalf, but upon their return to the convent, Grayvorn and
the Mother Superior fought over the Relic and fell off the convent
bell tower to their apparent deaths, the Relic lost again. The Doctor
and Iris departed, unaware that Grayvorn had not died; in fact, the
Relic merged Grayvorn and the Mother Superior's minds into one, making
Grayvorn immortal... at the cost of being unable to ever sleep again,
as the Mother Superior drove him on to shape Excelis' destiny...
Over
the course of the next thousand years, Grayvorn rose to a position
of power in Excelis, changing his name and identity as time went
on to avoid suspicion, but he was forever tormented by his inability
to sleep; The humanoid brain wasn't designed to function without
dreams, which it needs to process the events of the day, and so Grayvorn
'dreamed' while awake, experiencing waking hallucinations, intermittent
periods of madness where he was delirious and referred to himself
as 'we' as the spirits of the Relic spoke to him. Despite the curse
it had forced upon him, Grayvorn was still determined to find the
Relic, and, eventually, under the name of Reeve Maupassant, he tracked
it to a museum in Excelis, arriving shortly after an attempted burglary
on the Relic... and meeting a man in a multi-coloured coat with curly
blond hair and a blue box referred to as a TARDIS, who called himself
'The Doctor'.
Unable
to reveal Maupassant's true identity without being exposed as a fraud
himself, The Doctor was forced to play along with the investigation
into the Relic's attempted theft, and answer Maupassant's questions
about his change of appearance. However, since The Doctor believed
that regeneration was too difficult a concept for Maupassant to understand,
all that Maupassant discovered from questioning him was that The
Doctor's body was different from their previous encounter but the
mind was the same... which led to him making a seriously erroneous
conclusion. Learning that the thief who'd tried to steal the Relic
had been hired by a third party, The Doctor realised that Maupassant
was behind the raid, intending to trigger a failed theft of the Relic
and then claim it for himself under the guise of 'protecting evidence'.
After
a séance (The spirits of the dead being able to communicate
with the living on Artaris), The Doctor was able to confirm Maupassant's
identity... and realised what he was trying to do. Maupassant believed
that The Doctor had transferred his mind into another body, and now,
to rid himself of the Mother Superior's mind, he was going to use
the Relic to transfer one of them into another body (Which spirit
- his or the Mother Superior's - he wanted to transfer is unknown
even now). However, just as Maupassant tried to open the Relic to
transfer the second soul into a new host, he was distracted by Danby,
an Inquisitor who had been helping The Doctor's enquiries, giving
The Doctor the chance to open the Relic on Maupassant and apparently
absorb both Maupassant and the Mother Superior into it.
However,
this was not the case for Grayvorn. The museum was a very old building,
and Grayvorn had great strength of spirit, and even though he’d
now been reduced to a shadow of himself, trapped in this ancient
stone structure, both the Mother Superior and The Doctor had shown
him that it was possible to transfer his mind into another body.
Surviving as a psychic matrix embedded within the building itself,
Grayvorn gradually grew in strength until one day he had the power
to possess an unfortunate visitor, reshape the body into his own
image and grant it immortality - Grayvorn reborn. Using this new
body, Grayvorn established himself as a totalitarian dictator on
Excelis, taking the name of Lord Vaughan Sutton, and rewriting history
to portray his past identities of Grayvorn and Maupassant as a great
hero and the architect of reason respectively. Learning a great deal
about genetics, Sutton created 'Meat Puppets' animated by the souls
and flesh of abducted citizens, and ensured that Excelis would remain
in a state of perpetual warfare so that he would remain in power.
However,
for his plans to spread further, he required a key factor for his
success, and this factor eventually came when the Seventh
Doctor returned to Excelis and was separated from the TARDIS during a riot.
Sutton stole the TARDIS, knowing that The Doctor would come to look
for it, and waited in the Imperial Museum until The Doctor finally
arrived. This confrontation revealed the reason The Doctor was constantly
drawn back to Excelis; on his first visit, he made contact with the
still-intact Relic, and his soul became a part of it, thus meaning
that a part of him always remained on Excelis. Sutton was determined
to use The Doctor's knowledge to spread his evil among the galaxy,
but The Doctor refused to help, instead finding and opening the Relic
- which Sutton had been using to animate his golems - allowing the
rest of his soul to join with it.
While
linked with the Relic, The Doctor made contact with the many spirits
in the Relic - including Grayvorn's old foe, the Mother Superior,
who revealed that The Doctor alone had the power to offer the souls
in the Relic true peace. With the souls freed from the Relic, Sutton
could no longer use it, but rather than accept defeat, Sutton activated
the orbital defences, vowing that if he couldn't have Excelis, nobody
could. Forced to leave his allies behind, The Doctor managed to retreat
to the TARDIS, but, as soon as he'd entered the ship, Sutton appeared
outside, threatening to kill an innocent man if The Doctor wouldn't
let him in. Knowing that Sutton's link to the Relic meant that he
would be able to operate the TARDIS, The Doctor was forced to lock
him out, and wait out the nuclear holocaust triggered by Sutton.
The Relic might survive (Being the product of advanced technology),
and some of the planet's population could wait out the devastation
in the shelters, but Grayvorn was gone forever. Despite this, The
Doctor departed Excelis hating himself for what he'd been forced
to do, ending that chapter of his life and leaving Excelis a barren,
radioactive wasteland - the future that Grayvorn saw from Iris's
bus so long ago. |
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