Bio

This is something Renna wrote once. Yes, I know other things have happened since, and she is not even in the same regeneration as she was at the time she wrote this, but it served as a good background for her character up to that point, so I am including it here. Other things that need to bring this up to date will be added elsewhere as needed or requested. ~Johnna

My name is Rennatrillianascholara. I am a Time Lord, born on the planet Gallifrey. Like all Time Lords, I was made to look into the Untempered Schism as a child. Since that day, I have walked in eternity. I feel the turn of the universe, whirling and turning as we all cling to whatever bit of ground and time we happen to be occupying at the moment.

Peering into the Untempered Schism is eternal and frightening. It has even driven some mad. I spent my first lifetime seeming to be collected and self important, while rushing around trying to do anything and everything to distract myself from the turn of the universe that whirled around me. I spent that lifetime screaming on the inside, and so calm without. I thought by putting on airs, I could adjust and be like my fellow Time Lords. I even went through the act well enough to become Lord President for a time. The distractions were good, but nothing could block out the turn completely. Still my first lifetime ended peacefully and naturally enough.

During my second lifetime, I still had the need to distract myself. This time, I didn’t put on airs. Instead I became a collector. I collected anything and everything, obsessing over the minute details in each of this or that collection. I was so obsessed with collecting that although it was not an easy thing to do, I was eventually able to obtain a TARDIS and have all of time and space to feed my growing collections. This happenstance also meant my second lifetime became much less lonely. I had a niece who, due to her fascination with 1980’s Earth history, was very interested in my TARDIS. We became fast friends. She began to call me Auntie and to refer to herself by the earth name, Rachael. We had many journeys and adventures to and in 1980’s earth. Back then my biggest obsession was a type of shoe, Converse All Stars,. I collected as many colors and styles of this shoe as I could. We stayed in an Earth city called Chicago, with my TARDIS disguised as a huge sculpture on the street called The Lady, and Rachael went to art school there.

But a war was looming around the corner. A war with an evil race called the Daleks. It was to be a war in time; a war that could end the universe as we know it. Eventually every Time Lord abroad was called home. The thought of my people going to war disturbed me greatly. Rachael wanted to answer the call and fight, but I was afraid. I knew the Time Lords could win this war. I knew the Daleks needed extinction. I simply did not want to be part of the genocide. The summons proved to be too strong to refuse. I took Rachael home, I took her to Gallifrey to fight in the Time War. But I was still afraid and tried to run. I fled in my TARDIS back to earth. I fled to something I knew, Chicago in the 80’s. It was familiar place where I could pretend there were no daleks, no time war.

But on the way to that comfort, something went horribly wrong. As I tried to dematerialize, the TARDIS tried to pull back. I pushed it forward. We ended up crashing down, not in Chicago, 1980’s Earth, but in a different time and a different Earth city. Indianapolis, 1895. I am still not certain what happened or why, but during the crash, there was a burst of energy and my third lifetime began. Death came and went and I was still afraid. The process of regeneration was not yet complete, so I was weakened and not thinking straight when the cloister bell went off. I knew it was the start of war, knew that it was again calling me home and my fear took me.

Rushing from the main controls, I ran in panic down the hall to the room that stored a genesis arc and opened the door. There it was, waiting in its horrible glory. It was waiting to change my race, to take me away from obligation, war, genocide, even the Turn of the Universe. I flipped a switch, it began to hum and I entered the room.

Use of the genesis arc resulted in horrible pain, pain beyond imagining as I was changed and my physiology was altered. My very DNA itself was re-ordered. I screamed and screamed while the machine did its dastardly work. It left in its wake a human and a piece of jewelry. Something I had picked up during my collecting days. A pretty ring with a compartment lid that lifted back to reveal a watch. My essence was sealed away inside and the ring became forgotten. A mere heirloom that a human named Heidi always wore.

But even that didn’t go quite right. Turned human in mid regeneration, Heidi was much more resilient than others of her kind. It appeared as if she hardly aged at all, and she healed from injury and illness much too quickly to be truly human. Being in such a fragile state (fragile for a Time Lord, not so fragile from a human point of view), her TARDIS looked over her. Although it was damaged and mostly sleeping, Heidi was drawn to the Zero room, where she took up residence of sorts, eventually turning it into her office..

By the time the Torchwood Institute discovered the TARDIS and Heidi, the TARDIS was long asleep, and Heidi became part of Torchwood. She became the director of the institute and vowed to protect Earth from alien threats. Aside from the things already mentioned, she was in every way human. The only other exception was memory,. My memories were gone, replaced with Heidi’s life. This in and of itself was a result of becoming human. But Heidi’s memory problems went deeper. Since her life was longer than any typical human’s should have been, her brain simply could not have held all the memories it was obtaining. Over the years, her newest memories replaced the oldest ones which were forgotten, lost in time to never return. By the time the twenty-first century came around, She couldn’t remember before the 1950’s. The rest of her past long gone, she didn’t even know her true birth date or human age anymore.

Heidi may have lived her life in this fashion, healing rapidly, aging slowly until the day she died. Instead her work for Torchwood led her to one of the only Time Lords in existence. He calls himself The Master and his intentions were to destroy all life on earth. The details of this, Heidi’s last torchwood adventure are a whole story in and of itself. Suffice it to say that In the process of stopping The Master’s plan, Heidi’s TARDIS was healed enough to become functional, her watch got opened, and Heidi ceased to be. I finally finished my regeneration, and we were able to use my TARDIS to foil The Master’s plan. It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? “Foil The Master’s plan”? In the end, we were able to stop him, but not capture him or prevent any future havoc he may wreak. mn He was able to escape in his TARDIS, leaving the deaths of myself and KC (one of my Torchwood employees) in his wake. My third lifetime was thus tragically short and I can only hope not wasted or worthless.

I began this, my fourth lifetime, in the main control room of my TARDIS on the floor. The main doors to my TARDIS opened for the first time in over a century. A had reached out to me as a voice said “Renna, I am surprised to see you.” There was something about it that just felt so natural, so much like home that I took the hand offered. Standing up, I looked into the face of the one the Daleks call The Oncoming Storm. It was then that I truly began to comprehend and feel the loss. I was alone and everyone was gone. I hadn’t only lost my niece, Rachel, but everyone. Everyone but The Master and The Doctor who was now standing before me. Moreover, Gallifrey was gone. I didn’t even have a home planet.

“I’m surprised to see YOU.” I countered. I wanted to heap blame on his head. To point out that I had run away from dalek genocide while he had brought about the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. But I couldn’t keep my mind off Rachael. My niece who had loved 1980’s earth as much as I did. Maybe my silence was better that way. The Doctor seemed so sad underneath it all, so helpless to change all the hurt that he could obviously feel. For he knew right away who was on my mind.

“Are you going to ask?” He finally offered, breaching a subject that was too hard for me to mention. No wonder why he felt natural to me. He was the last, we were the Last, all that is left of my kind.

“Do I have to?”

“I was with her at the fall of Prydonia. She fought valiantly in the end. I’m so sorry.” And he meant it. Oh how I know that he meant it, even though I couldn’t take comfort in that fact. Perhaps one day I will. One of my Torchwood workers, Renee had some questions for him too. Questions that he wouldn’t answer then and there.

“I’m sorry.” he said again, “And I’m sorry for what is coming next.”

Then he left. With a snap of his fingers my TARDIS doors obeyed him and shut behind him. And there I was, one of the Last. There are only three of us. One whose insanity drives me to want him destroyed, one who brought about the fall of Gallifrey and the Time Lords, and me. Simple, little me with The Doctor‘s words running through my head. So what is coming next? As I stand here looking in the mirror, trying to adjust to yet another body, I shudder to think.