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The Doctor’s Birth (Canon-Weld)
Here’s my theory on the 7 Grannies, Lungbarrow and The Half Human Theory…
- The House of Lungbarrow was one of the senior oldblood houses, by the Middle-Gallifreya period it had fallen somewhat from favour only producing servants and petty clerks to fill the ranks of the upper caste of Gallifreyan society.
The Lungbarrovians were high-born, but the roots of the house went back to a more simple time; the seven founding sisters of Lungbarrow were nuns who worshipped the menti-celesti in a ceremonial church on the slopes of Mount Lung.
When Rassilon came to power he decreed all land formally used for religious purposes would be reformed into the Senior Great Houses of the Rationalised Family order. In a bid to win over the powerful religious figures, Rassilon offered his opponents immortality for control over their sacred land. Faced with illness and painful death, the seven sisters of the Lungside Chapel gave into their President’s demands and repurposed the holy building into a living, growing house; cursed to forever watch it grow with Rassilon’s gift of life; becoming the seven Grannies of House Lungbarrow.
During the middle years of the Mid-Gallifreya period a rouge was born from Lungbarrow’s loom; an explorer who called himself The Doctor. While hated and outcast by his cousins, His Uncle and his Grannies took a shine to him; allowing him to live a life of wealth and privilege. But the Doctor was human by dreams of a life he could only half remember…He dreamt of his father showing him the stars in the Medusa Cascade, he had dreams of his Mother’s illness, but her love for stories. The dreams slowly became nightmares, recollections of an old lady dying in his youth, her body rotting on the plinth of the Loom Shed, swarmed in a veil of flies on a hot summers day.
The dreams almost drove him mad; so he ran away. The Doctor became a myth throughout the cosmos, shooting further than any Gallifreyan could possibly imagine. There lies the secret truth, the Doctor was far more than just another Time Lord… A generation before The Doctor another explorer was born from Lungbarrow’s Loom; a man called Ulysses.
Ulysses was disliked by his brother, Quences, due to having had an illegitimate child with a Shabogan, Priscilla Braxiatel. After being handed the position of Kithriarch by his Grannies, Ulysses fled Gallifrey. On his travels he met and fell in love with a human woman named Penelope Gate, they married and lived together on Earth. Then Penelope fell ill. Ulysses, in fear of his only love dying, took Penelope to Gallifrey, secretly prolonging her life, hiding her in the attic of House Lungbarrow.
One day Penelope was discovered by Grannie Five, who listened to her tales of Earth and found a kinship in her. She helped Penelope hide from the rest of the Household. Grannie Five tended to Penelope in secret. But eventually, she understood the truth of Penelope’s illness… Penelope was pregnant with a Time-Lord-Human hybrid, the energy produced by the child was weakening her, yet she persisted, hoping to the gods for a normal child.
Grannie Five advised to terminate the pregnancy, yet Penelope was insistent on carrying the child full term. On Otherstide weekend, Ulysses returned to the House of Lungbarrow in secret, finding his wife and Grannie in the attic. Grannie Five told Ulysses about Penelope’s complexities with her pregnancy. Knowing his wife was too stubborn to give up their child, Ulysses made his presence known to his brother, Quences.
Ulysses renounced his title as Kithriarch, and removing himself from the House Quota, erasing his names and titles. Quences became the Head of Lungbarrow, and there was a space empty to fill. Grannie Five began hearing a summons from the House Loom, the Loom called for her in her sleep, pleading her to give it the child. So Grannie Five performed the ritual of the crossed computers, the ancient maternity symbol on Gallifrey, the soul of the child would be transferred into data, coded energy, ready to be programmed into the Loom of the house and be given life safely. Penelope agreed begrudgingly and the Ritual was performed in the early hours on Otherstide eve.
On Otherstide morning, Quences took the Loom template schematics to the Bureau of Loomagraphic Records, who predicted the childe would be the most influential Gallifreyan since the Dark Times. By the early evening on Otherstide, the whole Lungbarrow family gathered around the Loom Plinth in Lungbarrow’s Great Hall. As the clock struck quarter past five Grannie Five climbed the Loom-Ladder to the Loomshed on the Balcony of the House, and pulled a screaming childe from the weft of the chords, as the forty-five Cousins jeered in the background. But after being smacked the childe could only speak one word…”Again.”
Watching in the mirror, from the attic, Penelope wept for her newborn son and the life he would lead. In the early years of the Childe’s life, he was mocked by his armada of Cousins, treated kindly by only his Grannies and the occasional night-time visit from his disgraced father. The childe would be raised by his grannies to be secretive, to repress his truth. Otherwise, the other Time Lords would see him for how different he really was. On lonely nights, the Childe would climb up to the attic and be comforted by his mother as she slowly died living as a servant to the House, she would tell him stories about monsters and heroes and dark magic and travel.
The Childe indulged in the fantasies, but all while knowing he was trapped in the plains of reality. In his early youth, his mother succumbed to her illness, after working too hard at the service of the House. As a reward, the Kithriarch allowed for her body to be displayed on Loom Plinth in a traditional death day ritual, however unbeknownst to Quences, Penelope was human, and her body decayed faster than any time lord could expect.
Her son watched in horror as sun-flies swarmed his mother’s bloated corpse, the stench of decay filling the great hall of Lungbarrow. It was the blackest day of that Childe’s life. But after learning mental tricks from a hermit in the wilderness the Childe separated his memories of his mother’s trauma from reality, moving her into his dreams rather than his mind. Only remembering the Loom.
To those who don’t know about Gallifrey’s past, this is The Ancient House of Lungbarrow; ancestral home of the Time Lord, The Doctor. Grown from a seed halfway up the slope of Mount Lung, in southern Gallifrey, over looking the Cadonflood river. One of the first Houses grown during the Intuitive Revelation, a once respected Old Blood house, seat to generations of Time Lords, Lungbarrow fell into obscurity and disgrace and only produced servants and petty clerks before it’s initial death after the Doctor’s long awaited return home.
Playing with weft bundling and color variations. Little cardboard looms are great for working up samples to test your colors before going to the big loom. I use the dent spacing from the loom I'm going to work on to get my sett.
Do you remember when everyone did these (technically some are coloured based on ocs so i’ll be tagging as oc art)
Edit: I figured out they only had 1 end loop in too if anyone notices- this has been fixed!
Theta Sigma my beloved.
I like to imagine the other Gallifreyan kids make fun of him for having parents instead of being loomed like the rest of them