A/ n. I DON'T OWN BABYLON 5 OR ITS CHARACTERS.
The Lords of Time.
Prologue. The History of the Time Lords.
The Time lords began in the time of the First ones.
In the early universe, there were forces prowling around the galaxies. Forces greater and more mysterious than those seen in the future.
The First Ones. Ancient, all powerful super beings. They solved the greater mysteries of the universe, developed incredible, unique, powerful ships and technologies.
They were true pioneers, travelling through space and explored the many galaxies in the universe. They were the supreme beings of the universe. Old, powerful and very dangerous. They did not like to be disturbed by the younger races, they could swat planets as if they were insects and not even realise they were doing it.
Each race had empires, which later fell into decay and became a memory, even to the ones who forged them.
They were also childish. Two races had problems with one another and caused problems with the others. One race went to war with the others, believing that strength, true strength, was only possible if it came from conflict.
The philosophy is simple enough to understand; bring 2 sides together and they fight. A lot die on both sides and the survivors are stronger, smarter and better than the ones who died. As generations came and went, both sides became stronger with new tech coming into place. The Shadows themselves had gone to war with the other ancient races, they had become more advanced as time passed in many fields, surpassing the others by a wide margin.
The race was known as the Shadows, since their real name is one thousand letters long and VERY hard to pronounce were proof of that. They were the oldest of the First Ones, except for Lorien, the original first one to achieve sentience, and had incredibly advanced tech.
Their ships were tough, powerful and very hard to destroy and they could phase in and out of hyperspace, something not discovered by any of the older races. But they had several issues; they were vulnerable to telepaths as it damaged or disabled their tech.
The second and far serious issue was the need to use a living being for their central operating core, a being from one of the developing younger races.
This was one of the many reasons why the other First ones fought the Shadows, in order to protect the younger races.
The second race was known as the Vorlons.
The Vorlons were ethereal beings of light, hidden behind a psychic cloak when they encountered beings and kept themselves hidden at all times in bulky encounter suits, a trait most First Ones had abandoned as they grew more used to their new forms.
In their natural forms, they appeared as an evolved from of cephalopod, a vestigial hint of their aquatic ancestry.
The Vorlons were explorers, charting new and wonderful territories. They helped races discover jump gate technology, the science to enter and leave hyperspace. But, they kept the basic science to themselves.
They didn't need to. There are many ways of entering or exiting hyperspace.
They were known as Lords of Order, to the Shadows Lords of Chaos.
Two sides of the same coin.
The Vorlons can be described as parents or school teachers, both want the best for their charges, they want their charges to dress neatly, eat properly and play by the rules. A philosophy which was limited because the Vorlons were held back because of the simple and undeniable fact that they didn't like growth.
Unfortunately, the Shadows and Vorlons didn't realise that their similarities, which were to help guide the younger races into becoming better than the First ones, blinded them to their differences as well.
War.
Endless war between the two races. A war which drove many of the ancient races to leave the galaxy and pass beyond the rim and explore the waste in between the many galaxies.
Lorien at the time was travelling the galaxy, trying to avoid the issue of an argument he'd been trying hard to solve for aeons.
One his travels, he came across a planet in a remote solar system.
There was a diversity of life, including a race of ape organisms. They were highly intelligent and social and friendly towards Lorien.
The ancient one decided that these creatures, already walking upright and possessing superior intelligence to other life forms on the planet, would one day come out into the stars and change destiny.
Deciding to help wasn't difficult for Lorien. He hated war. It was pointless. Wasteful. Deciding to get back to breathing wisdom again was not a decision he had any hesitation in performing.
He decided to transfer his own knowledge and created a unique pathogen to spread throughout the atmosphere. As he transferred his knowledge, all of it, every piece of tech knowledge, every bit of different variety of sciences, he created the pathogen.
The idea was the pathogen would increase the evolution of the apes and accelerate it. The pathogen would introduce telepathy, higher brain functions and increased longevity, not enough for immortality but a comfortable lifetime.
Hundreds of years after Lorien left the planet, his hopes became a reality.
And more.
The apes, renamed Humans, became proficient in their new found knowledge. They started evolving, becoming more upright, their features becoming more like those of common alien life forms. Their brains were now able to separate instinct from rationality. They became more powerful in terms of intelligence. They were good with their hands and came up with many early tools and weapons fashioned on nature.
They no longer feared predators because they were now able to outthink them.
They no longer lived in caves or in trees, they built huts made of wood, later clay. Then bricks and mortar. Their early buildings were connected to a small aqueduct.
They created fire and the wheel to start them on the road of technology. Then they started forging metals, basic ones - bronze, iron and tin. 300 years later they possessed steel and titanium and strong alloys and composites.
10,000 years after that, steam powered airships explored the planet. They were beautifully made, with strong hulls and mapmaking materials.
120 years later, the humans built their first hyperspace cruiser, complete with crystal technology. They later created hyper drive tech, simply folding 2 separate points of hyperspace together and creating an opening to travel through it. This banished the time and shortened distances between the stars.
A space folding drive, using the concept of the wormhole, was invented - which made the need for an alternate space travel system obsolete.
A similar technology was the hyperspace teleportation system, simply using the hyper drive tech and improving it tenfold. It enabled travellers to cross light years without the need for starships. The Humans were able to pass beyond their own solar system in waves, something they did with incredible subtlety, the Vorlons and their allies were still in the galaxy and the Humans remembered a great deal of what Lorien had passed over to them, the fact the Vorlons seemed to enjoy pitting races to fight against their ancient adversary.
The humans were not ready for a confrontation with either race. But, if both older races interfered, they would regret it. The humans now possessed weapons capable of turning a sun into a super nova, or worse. The Vorlons and the Shadows were so caught up in their private little war that they missed the emergence of a more powerful and dangerous race.
As the saying goes, do not wake the dragon.
The Humans were a peace loving race, but even so, the instinct of their ancestors was hard to throw aside. They would never hesitate to go to war.
If the Vorlons or Shadows decided to attack or manipulate the Humans, they would reduce Vorlon and Z'ha dum to burned out cinders, circling a dead star.
Those that died would by the lucky ones.
The humans had a gift for taking the basic principles of a simple science and going through all the passages of the maze to create even more advantages to the technique. The crystal computers were later laced with bio neural fibres for greater processing power for instance.
The hyperspace travel systems they'd devised were another great example of the ingenuity of the Humans.
With their new vessels and space travel tech, they travelled far and wide, made contact with many races and civilisations, soaking up their numerous knowledge like a sponge in water. They travelled beyond the rim, travelling to other galaxies and set up colonies and outposts all connected to their space fold network. As they charted the universe, they studied the nature of the universe.
After encountered various races, who were oblivious to who they were at the time, the humans were introduced to the concept of time travel. Something even the first ones barely touched because of the inherent risks involved with such a concept.
Time.
A great mystery to other races seemed so simple to humanity.
This was because something in the pathogen which accelerated their evolutionary development also gave them a remarkable relationship with time.
The Humans were lucky, unlike other races, they didn't need war to promote evolution; they were united by a high degree of natural telepathy, something the first ones didn't possess.
What one human knew, the others knew.
They started a great project.
The greatest project ever.
The conquest of time
The Age of the Time Lords was about to begin.