Where & When
The story is set in 1289, earlier than most modern series historical settings, although not remarkably so. It involves an epic journey, taking the protagonists from the Pamir Mountains, through the Gobi Desert, and across China to eventually reach Beijing. It refers to China by the name that Marco Polo used for it historically and that was standard in Europe at the time – Cathay.
Setting
The TARDIS materialises in the Pamir Mountains at an altitude of 7000 ft. (2,100 metres). The Pamirs are an exceptionally high range of mountains, a convergence point that joins the western ends of the Himalayas and the Kunlun Mountains to the Tien Shan and Hindu Kush ranges – all part of the “Roof of the World” referred to in the episode title. The altitude stated corresponds with a significant pass at the northern edge of the Pamirs through which the Silk Road trade route runs from Samarkand into China. The local flora consists of treeless “Alpine” meadows below the snowline, while the local animal life includes ibex, wild mountain sheep, and snow leopards, among others.
The most likely location for the start of the story lies inside what is now Kyrgyzstan, although it would be close to the modern border with China. Regardless, in 1289, it belonged to the Chagatai Khanate. This was founded in 1227 when the Mongol domains fractured into four following the death of Genghis Khan. By the time of the story, it was still a significant local power and a rival to Yuan Dynasty China – one of the other three successor states to the former Mongol Empire.
China had recently been at war with the Chagatai Mongols, and the story accurately depicts that relations between the two were anything but peaceful. The Chagatai were a multilingual society, with the majority speaking a local language that is the ancestor of modern Uyghur, but both Persian and (unsurprisingly) Mongolian also saw significant use. The people were predominantly Muslim, with small Christian and Buddhist minorities, but the rulers still followed the traditional Mongol religion.
The first stop along Polo’s route that we see is the trading town of Lop. This is approximately 650 km (400 miles) away and it’s evident even from the televised story that the journey has taken a long time, for instance giving Susan and Ping-Cho the chance to become good friends. Significantly, since we know that Polo picked up Ping-Cho in Samarkand, we can reasonably assume that he’s following the Silk Road, which also aligns with the graphic of the map in the fan reconstruction.
If so, there are two key stops on the Silk Road between the pass over the Pamirs and Lop. The first is the small city of Kashgar, where the Silk Road divides into northern and southern routes. The second, following the southern route, is Yarkand, which lies in a 3,000 km² (1,000 square mile) “oasis” formed by the upper stretches of the Tarim River. This is a shallow, if wide, river host to numerous waterbirds, with plentiful woodland around it as well as irrigated farmland and fields of cotton. Wildlife includes swans, wild camels, and (in the 13th century, though no longer) the occasional tiger. The real Marco Polo stated that it took him five days to cross just this part of the region.
Then we reach Lop, a way station still within the territory of the Chagatai Khanate, but, at least in the story, controlled by the Chinese to support their trade caravans. In the modern day, it’s relatively small, lying in an oasis where a tributary of the Tarim crosses what is now the Karakorum Highway but was then the approximate path of the Silk Road. Beyond it, the southern route continues along the northern flank of the Kunlun Mountains, eventually meeting up with the northern path again on the far side of the worst stretch of the desert.
In the story, however, Polo takes the much more difficult route of turning north and striking out through what he calls the Gobi Desert. While that was still the common term in the 1960s when the serial was made, more modern maps use it only for the vast stretch of semi-desert further east and instead call the region the caravan is crossing the Taklamakan Desert. This is much harsher than what we would now call the Gobi proper, fitting the popular image of a desert by consisting primarily of barren dune fields and having few animals larger than desert mice. Although it’s a “cold” desert because of its latitude, temperatures are extreme, regularly reaching over 35°C (100°F) in the height of summer but with even daytime temperatures struggling to get above zero (30°F) in January.
In reality, almost all of the oases in this desert are on the outer margins, where the Silk Road runs (not coincidentally). The few within it are either along the Tarim River and its tributaries at the western end or the narrower Keriya River that runs north from the mountains to dry away to nothing and vanish before ever reaching the Tarim. Even these were occupied by small villages for at least some points in their history, although it’s easy enough to imagine one so remote being abandoned for less desperate pastures, especially with bandits around.
At the far side of the desert, the party reaches Dunhuang, 1,200 km (750 miles) as the crow flies from Lop. This is where the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road rejoin, for the benefit of more sensible people who have gone around the Taklamakan along the oasis routes rather than trying to take a shortcut through the middle. By this point, we have passed the southern end of the Altai Mountains, and have thus left Chagatai territory and entered China.
By 1289, Dunhuang had been part of China for nearly 70 years and had been influenced by Chinese culture for longer than that. However, it was also influenced by the Mongols, and would have had a significant Muslim population at the time. As the story mentions, it was also the site of numerous Buddhist temples, and the most famous of these are the Thousand Buddha Caves.
While those do get name-checked, more significant to the story are the fictional Five Hundred Eyes Caves said to be about a mile out of town – still well within the irrigated oasis land around Dunhuang. Although said to have been used by the Hashisheen, they are too far east for that in real-world history, and in every other respect resemble the genuine Buddhist caves, the main complex of which lies about 25km (16 miles) from the city. These are not natural caves, but chambers carved directly from the rock, the walls painted with murals and filled with statues, carved stupas, and other religious paraphernalia. Most would already have been hundreds of years old in 1289, although the youngest would have been just a few decades. With Buddhism in decline in the area, it’s entirely plausible that some of the more outlying caves – there are hundreds, over a wide area – would have been abandoned.
From Dunhuang, Polo rejoins the Silk Road, heading deeper into China. The party must pass through Anxi (now Guazhou), which was a significant trading centre at the time, since another northern branch of the Silk Road joined the main one here. However, the next place to be mentioned is Su-Chow (now Jiuquan) which is described as being the location of the western end of the Great Wall of China. During the Ming Dynasty, this would indeed be the location of a major fort near the end of the Wall, and the one through which the vast bulk of trade from Central Asia reached the country – but this wasn’t built until 1372.
In fact, the structure that we now think of as the Great Wall of China is a Ming-era construction, and so didn’t exist in 1289. There certainly was a wall, and partly along the same route, but it was a thick rampart of rammed earth, not the magnificent structure of brick and stone we see along the most famous surviving sections now. It likely wasn’t in a great state of repair in 1289 either, since there hadn’t been significant construction work conducted on it for centuries (and when there had been, the western end of the Wall was, in fact, at Dunhuang).
The Silk Road then passes through the city of Kanchow (now Zhangye) often regarded as marking the northwest frontier of Chinese China rather than the bits of it the Empire had captured from their neighbours. Marco Polo had previously spent a year living there, and it’s also where Kublai Khan is thought to have been born. This whole region is referred to as the Hexi Corridor and is essentially a narrow strip of fertile arable lowland between two high semi-desert plateaus, with the Silk Road running down the middle of it.
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| The Silk Road |
The bamboo forest is stated to be about 500 km (300 miles) from Shang-Tu, which puts it 1,000 km (620 miles) from Lanzhou as the crow files – and they’re not going directly. The city of Cheng-Ting (now Shijiazhuang) is said to be on this final part of the planned journey, although this would require a significant detour out of the party’s way to the south. Even if we take a more direct route, however, it would still be through a moderately well-populated area, with numerous villages and towns and at least two cities – Datong and Kalagan (now Zhangjiakou) – on the route, so one of those is a viable alternative.
After crossing the Great Wall they arrive at Polo’s originally intended destination, Shangdu. This is referred to using the 1960s spelling of Shang-Tu but is perhaps better known to Western audiences as Xanadu. It is, of course, in Xanadu that Kublai Khan did a stately pleasure dome decree (or ‘erect’, depending on your pop culture reference). Only ruins remain today, on the edge of Inner Mongolia, but at the time it was a sizable city, albeit one recently built, with no structures less than forty years old. Within it lay the summer palace, used by the Emperor between June and August. It perhaps wasn’t literally a ‘pleasure dome’, but, by all accounts, it was a magnificent marble structure decorated with gilt and fabulous artwork and surrounded by a huge park filled with wild animals for hunting as well as picturesque retreats with brooks, fountains, and the like. The park also included a smaller temporary ‘palace’ of lacquered cane and silk cord which could be taken down and reassembled as required.
However, this part of the story may well be set in late August, because the Emperor leaves shortly thereafter for the winter palace in Beijing, where the final section plays out. The story refers to the city by its ‘60s name of Peking, but in 1289, it was called by its Mongol name Khanbaliq (spelled as ‘Cambaluc’ by the real Marco Polo) or, alternatively, by the Chinese term for ‘grand capitol’, Dadu. This is not today’s Forbidden City, as that had not been built yet. Instead, the main palace was in what is now Jingshan Park, on the northern side of the modern Forbidden City. In 1289 it was even more recently built than Xanadu, having been started in 1272, and parts of the city were still under construction. It was built around the Drum Tower, which beat out the time but, again, this isn’t the modern building of that name, which dates only to 1420.
We should also briefly mention the two main historical characters in the story, although plenty is available about them elsewhere. Marco Polo was, as the story states, from Venice. Aged 35 when the story is set, he had been living in China for about 15 years and had served as Imperial emissary for much of that time. Kublai Khan is 73 and as infirm as the story indicates, although historical accounts say that he was also very overweight, at least partly due to a combination of rich living and gout-induced immobility. The Empress, present but not named in the story, would be his third wife Nambui, but we know very little of her beyond her name.
Although, geographically speaking, the story begins, and spends a significant time within, the territory of the Chagatai Khanate, which includes Ping-Cho’s home of Samarkand, it’s apparently not Tegana’s place of origin. His master is stated to be Nogai Khan, a powerful figure within the Golden Horde, another of the four khanates into which the Mongol Empire had fractured earlier in the century. While the then ruler of the Chagatai, Kaidu, was Kublai Khan’s nephew, Nogai was unrelated and, in the real world, was far more concerned with trying to conquer Poland and other parts of eastern Europe than he was with China. He was, or at least claimed to be, a Muslim although this may have been largely for political convenience. Tegana, so far as we can tell, is a Tengrist, or follower of the traditional Mongol shamanic religion, which is certainly plausible for the era.
Scenario
As the above shows, the setting is epic in scope, covering multiple different locations, even if for many of them we don’t see more than a market courtyard outside a merchants’ waystation. There are some sections that would adapt well to an RPG scenario – bandit attacks, attempted sabotage, struggling to cross a hostile desert, the subplot about saving Ping-Cho from her arranged marriage, and so on. The problem it has, on the other hand, is that the setting isn’t one that fits with a typical sci-fi campaign, or indeed, with what fans of most other Who eras would expect for their show.
Running the story as written, the risk is that the PCs will either eliminate or successfully expose Tegana before the intended climax of the story, cutting out some of the later encounters. Or they could manage to get around the guards and escape in the TARDIS before they’re supposed to. A way around this without heavy railroading is to have them need to reach either Xanadu or Beijing for some other reason. Perhaps Kublai Khan has something that can be used to repair the TARDIS or, in some other time travel game, the PCs are time agents who need to prevent the assassination attempt or ensure Polo reaches the court to keep history on track. Another possibility for using the plot is as a one-off historical adventure where the PCs are 13th-century Europeans travelling to China for reasons of their own.
In a more typical game, however, one could use the plot as the basis not for a sci-fi adventure but a fantasy one, throwing in monsters and evil sorcerers – the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes could well be a mini-dungeon, for instance. This is partly the basis of the fantasy supplement Empires of the Silk Road, although that doesn’t cover the relevant half of the route, only getting as far east as Samarkand. But the principle is there, and could be adapted to a constructed fantasy world, assuming it has some Chinese-analogue civilisation, as most do, and a decent chunk of wilderness in between that and the regular ‘European’ bits.
Dark Ages Call of Cthulhu is another option, throwing in Serpent People or Sand Dwellers and having Tegana, or some other stand-in, be a mad cultist.
Rules
As a historical setting, we don’t need any rules specifically relevant to science fiction. There are, however, three points at which the environment presents a hazard. Most systems, other than the most rules-lite, where it doesn’t really matter, will have something to cover the heat and lack of water in the Taklamakan section, but altitude and sandstorms are less commonly addressed. In the case of the former, altitude sickness isn’t typically a problem until you reach 2,500 metres (8,000 feet) and the pass through the Pamirs is lower than that, so, realistically, there’s unlikely to be an issue unless one of the characters is supposed to be infirm anyway.
Sandstorms are less likely to be covered specifically, although some systems, such as 5E, do mention them. The threat here is that the character would have their vision severely limited and would require Survival rolls (or equivalent) to avoid becoming rapidly disoriented and to find enough shelter to avoid becoming buried.
We are in medieval times, so the tech level is 3 in GURPS, 2 in Doctors & Daleks, and 1 in Traveller. Typical Chinese soldiers and Mongol horsemen did not wear armour in the 13th century, usually not even a helmet. Soldiers were typically carrying spears or halberds, while Mongol horsemen were armed with a composite bow and a sword for close-up fighting. These, however, are the regular troops – mooks rather than serious threats to experienced PCs. Palace guards may have been slightly better off, but still only with padded armour and carrying swords.
The same was not true of the elite cavalry, who had fewer concerns about mobility. They were armed with swords, perhaps with a hand axe as a backup weapon. Their armour was lamellar, consisting of multiple small plates of steel sewn together and sometimes covered with fabric. Depending on the weight, this would qualify as either scale mail or splint in 5E and as medium armour or chainmail in systems with less detailed armour types like Savage Worlds.
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