On stepping through the portal, the party of time travelers experienced the same disorientation, and then a jolt as they rematerialised in an entirely different place. A place that, if it were not hell itself, was certainly hell adjacent.

Everywhere they looked was dirt. Clearly, these were fields that had been churned up to mud, all grass destroyed. And then in the heat of the day - and it was hot, a midsummer heat - the mud had baked hard, with mis-shapen clods of earth lying atop the uneven ground. All around were holes. Some were clearly man-made, with perhaps a few sandbags atop them, and were large enough to accommodate a couple of people. The majority, though, were strewn with debris and shrapnel, formed by large explosions. There was barbed wire crawling across the landscape in an unpleasant way, with scraps of cloth attached where someone had ventured too close to the horrible spines.

The sky was almost entirely cloudless, and there was no breeze. It was a heavy, hot, summer afternoon. The heat made the smell worse. There was a strange stink. A combination of sulphur, garlic, and mustard, that caught in the throat and nose unpleasantly. There was something else, though. A strangely sweet and repellent odour that came from everywhere at once. The smell of decay. Rotting meat and vegetation.

True to their promise, the Time Lords had arranged for them to arrive where nobody else could see them. But they were not entirely alone. A few feet away was a body. He wore a drab greenish uniform, and had on a simple round metal helmet. Sturdy brown boots, and a harness of many pouches formed the rest of the outfit. He was lying on his front, sprawled in an ungainly and apparently lifeless manner. Beside him was a single shot, bolt action rifle. It was not intact. Something had hit it with enough force to shatter it into two halves.

In the distance there was a constant sound of explosions. Given the look of the place, it could only be an artillery barrage, but by whom, and upon what target, was not clear.

Where were they? With the exception of Leela, who had never experienced the event, nor been at school where the history might be taught, everybody else would know something of their plight. Even Victoria had been at school in the 1960s, and both of the major wars of that century were so deeply ingrained in culture that she could not help but know a little of the events.

They had arrived during the Great War, the War to End All Wars - the First World War. But where, exactly? And when? This blasted wasteland could have been in Flanders, or in Turkey, or who knew where else. Without any frame of reference, all they could do was speculate.

This was a very bad start to their mission. Nobody in their right mind would want to live through this brutal war. And yet, Mortimus was supposedly close by. What could he possibly be up to here?

At her appearance, Victoria suppressed a scream.  A dead warrior, and she had no doubt which war this was.  In her time, war was a distant thing, not the ugliness she saw here.  How could mankind have evolved into this?  Of course, she was too young for the Crimean War, or the Boar War, or any other war.  But this desolate, awfulness... how could men create this?

"Oh, Lord above... how could we come here?" she exclaimed, looking up as if to wonder if some horror would fall on her from this.

Then, she saw the dead man, and then she screamed.

As they appeared, Leela drew her knife and looked around for any threats. The enviorment looked very hostile, but there were no immediate threats. She moved towards the fallen soldier to see if he was alive. "Where is here?" she asked Victoria. "It is very loud... is that natural?" she added, referencing the explosions.
She looked towards the rifle for a moment. The sevateem did not know how to make gunpowder weapons, but she was a quick study and had been using laser rifles before she even left home. A quick glance discarded the weapon as unusable.

Amy stumbled as she appeared on the uneven ground. And as she took stock, she paled - although that was quite an achievement for one of her complexion. "No... no no no. Is this what I think it is? Is it...? Are we in the War? We are. We're in the war. Why are we here? Why would they send us here...?"

Of course, the one person who had all the answers was the one person who was absolutely not here. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Victoria's scream snapped her to her senses. She quickly stepped over to join her, and laid a hand on her arm. "Easy now! It's all right. It's a shock, I know, but I don't think he can hurt us, and whatever killed him isn't here now. You can do this. You've been through worse."

She had no idea what Victoria had endured in her time in the TARDIS, but she was absolutely certain: she had been through worse. They all had. A blasted wasteland with a single corpse was just a dull Wednesday afternoon compared to most of their adventures.

She added for Leela, "This is the First World War. Probably the worst war humans ever fought against each other. Some wars killed more people, but this was the cruellest. Millions died through pride and incompetence and if we're here, Mortimus is interfering. He'll just make it worse." She looked towards the sound of explosions. "Bombs. Both sides just sat in holes and spent days throwing bombs at each other, as if it would make things better. It just made the hating worse."
This message was last edited by the player at 10:02, Wed 26 Oct 2022.

Harry Sullivan had come crashing to the ground with a hat in his hand, and looked out to see that he had nearly fallen across barbed wire. The panic was clear on his face, and it only increased when he turned to regard the dead body from a level with it. At the same time, though, all of this was a little bit old hat to him--or, well, he had just been somewhere that was rather similar to the battlefields of the Great War on Skaro. So without further fuss he stood himself up, being careful of the wire and delicate with regard to the body.

Turning to Leela briefly, he brushed dirt off of himself and responded to her question, saying, "It is quite natural. But I think after we've all been here, when we get back home we all ought to have a physician check on our hearing. It will likely get much louder!"

Harry knelt back down all over again and turned the fellow over, checking the body to see if he could determine what might have killed him. Before he did so, however, he looked over to the others with a hand over the shoulder, as if to say, You don't have to look.

"You have got to be kidding me!" The others heard from Susan as she stepped out into the blasted lands of humanity's First World War. "Of all the awful times and places..."

She stopped and looked around to see if she could get a sense of where they were but also, on whose lines. There were awful places in time and space but this was one of the worse.

"We need to find some cover," she told Leela, knowing her for a warrior. "If someone sees us they will open fire before they think to ask who we are. We're behind lines that belong to someone who might not be very pleasant when they see a group of people who look like us. And we need to find out exactly where we are."

Not that there were many places in Europe that were desirable at the moment. This time was fraught with deadly complications so the sooner they found where they were, got what they needed, and got out, the better.

When Leela and Harry moved closer to the body, it did something surprising. It moved. Just a twitch of the hand. It was entirely possible that the poor fellow was not yet dead. He did smell particularly unpleasant, however. And nearby were some footprints, different to the vast number of sun-baked human sized prints that were all over the churned earth. These prints were a whole order of magnitude larger, and sported what appeared to be three very sharp claws instead of toes.

Victoria doesn't see the hand move.  She doesn't want to see it move.  She is too mesmerized by the the battlefield.  All the dead, all the sound.  She puts her hands to her ears, dropping her bag.  She is frightened and the help of her companion does nothing to make her feel frightened out of her wits.

"Oh God, help me?  Why am I here?"

The hand movement hit Harry like a jolt, and he tripped briefly over his own feet, before scrambling to grab the man's hand. He tried to pull him off the ground, looping the arm over his shoulder. He didn't know if the man could be saved, but he certainly intended to try. He had left a friend behind on Skaro not knowing then whether she was fine or not, and friend or not, this didn't agree with his principles. As he lifted, he tried to discern what sort of uniform the fellow was wearing, in case he might recognize it.

"Well, whatever cover we find, we'll find it with this man! Someone help me with him, and someone help Victoria, we very much need to get moving as Leela just said."

The urge to help the man was laudable, but he was probably beyond any help available to medicine of the age. His uniform was that of a British Tommy, a lance-corporal in the infantry. And once he was turned over, the extent of his injury was revealed.

He had a truly horrendous gash across his torso, which looked like it had been applied by three enormous claws. His blood had dried black on the cloth, and he had lost a lot onto the ground as well. Worse yet, to a trained doctor, it was clear that he had advanced gangrene. He had probably been lying there for a couple of days or more, and was barely coherent. His eyes rolled in his head, and he gurgled out, barely legibly, "D... dis... dispatches..."

And his head lolled grotesquely. Unconscious, maybe. Dead, quite possibly. There were no weapons on Earth that were used in this war that could inflict injuries of this kind. Something with large claws had obviously attacked him. And it had not eaten him. That was probably worse. A ravening predator was bad, but something killing people for less understandable reasons was an order of magnitude more terrifying.

Amy hugged Victoria gently. "We're here so we can save the Doctor. He'd go through hell to save us, and he did on a pretty regular basis with me. It won't be easy, but you can do this. Do it... for him?"

She felt the same way, if she was being honest. She would do everything she could to help the situation, but it was not going to be fun. She expected it would be so frantic that she would not really be able to take stock until later. Still, this was not a prospitious start.

When Harry moved the injured man, she went to assist, opening her satchel of medical supplies (and pie) but stepped back at the sight of the wound. "Oh... what... what DID that?"

Great. The only thing worse than being trapped in the hell hole of the First World War trenches was doing it with big clawed monsters. Still, Susan was right. Lingering here would be a sure way to end up being shot at, or worse. Which was, admittedly, normal when out doing time travel adventures. But she did not have to like it.

Victoria took a deep breath.  "I... I am sorry.  I just was... startled."  She stood, her bag clasped to her chest with both hands as she turned to look at the destroyed landscape.  Some of the giant holes had liquid in them, and she shivered as she wondered what might lie hidden in them.  Fortunately, she didn't look to see the 'body' moving and speaking.

"Yes please, let us get away from here.  But which way?  What I read, and the maps I saw, perhaps south?  Friendly forces should be there, I would think.  And they would not shoot a girl, would they?"

She turned again, looking for any sign that might show where the 'friendly' troops might be.

"I am glad your ancestors won it" Leela said sincerely. Her own people had fought a senseless, hopeless war, but there was no shame in winning. Amy should be proud.

She examines the creature's claw marks and tries to use her skills as a huntress to identify where the creature might have gone. It would be easier if she knew what creature, though. She looked over at Harry. "Messages, I believe. We must deliver them." It was a matter of honor. It should be easier to tell where the soldier had come from.

"Some kind of war beast. In such a large war, I would think your people would find the most fearsome Scottish war beasts" she answered Amy. Not being familiar with Earth history, she had no reason to think the animal wasn't a local.

"They absolutely would shoot a girl, Victoria. Anyone behind the lines who isn't known or doesn't look local is suspect. Given the horrors of trench warfare, those things that are suspect are greeted...poorly."

She stopped to look at the tracks. "Hmmm...that's not right for this time and place. Definitely not Scottish, Leela. Not from Earth at all, I would wager. Let's not meet it if we can avoid it, yes? Beasts or bullets will ruin our day rather quickly."

She patted the pocket she had put the Sonic Screwdriver in then looked around for someplace to go that wouldn't get them shot.

She was so intent on the tracks that she had failed to notice the not-as-dead-as they-thought soldier.

Victoria shivered, then looked around.  "South, I think.  Are not the forces south?  More or less, I know, with the trenches as they are.  If we go south, we find the English and French.  That is what the school books say."

She looked around, still shivering.  "And soon, I suspect.  I should not wish the... bombs... to fall on us here."