The Ancient One was the name used by Fenric and his Wolves of Fenric for the Haemovore he had transported back in time from a possible future, and manipulated into siring an entire race of vampires loyal to Fenric, who worked to bring about his liberation. (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).) One account claimed that the Ancient One was female and originally called Ingiger, (PROSE: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, adapted from The Curse of Fenric (Ian Briggs), Target novelisations (Target Books, 1990).) while another showed that the name was rendered by Ingiga by the ULTIMA machine when it decoded the ancient Norse runes foretelling Fenric's liberation, (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).) and indeed, another account did not treat the Viking Ingiga and the Ancient One as the same individual at all. (COMIC: The Wolves of Winter [+]Richard Dinnick, Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2017).)
Biography[]
The Ancient One was the last survivor of humanity's vampirised, mutated descendants the Haemovores, on a polluted Earth in the year 500,000. They were then brought back in time to 9th century Transylvania in a time storm, secretly sent by Fenric himself — which made the Ancient One one of his "Wolves" whose destiny he had manipulated. Though still trapped inside the flask where the Doctor had trapped him, Fenric communicated with the Ancient One, (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).) promising them a way back to the future. (PROSE: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, adapted from The Curse of Fenric (Ian Briggs), Target novelisations (Target Books, 1990).)
Like "a loyal servant", the Ancient One then followed the flask across the Western world as it was transported to Constantinople, then sold to a European merchant and transported across Europe as it passed from hand to hand, eventually being stolen by Vikings. All the while the Ancient One transformed a number of humans into Haemovores, whom the Ancient One could psychically command with great effort, using them as further pawns to try and recover the flask and free Fenric. (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).)
The vampires pursued the Vikings them to an island in the North Atlantic where the Twelfth Doctor, Vikings and Ice Warriors battled the Flood. The Doctor and Bill Potts encountered the Ancient One, whom the Doctor recognised from their encounter in the Doctor's personal past. The Doctor realised that Fenric intended to replace the Haemovores with the Flood and convinced the Haemovore Prime, who had been acting as leader instead of the Ancient One until that point, to detonate a volcano to stop the Flood. The Ancient One and Haemovores then fled the island and continued their hunt for the Vikings. (COMIC: The Wolves of Winter [+]Richard Dinnick, Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor (Titan Comics, 2017).)
Eventually, the chase ended when the Viking ship carrying the cursed treasure made its way to Maiden's Point in Northumberland, where a member of the crew buried the treasure beneath the fortified St Jude's Church the Haemovores could get their hands on it. They waited in the water for centuries for a chance to free Fenric. (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).) Dracula, a vampire originating in Transylvania, would later make his way to England in the late 19th century (PROSE: A Bloody (And Public) Domaine [+]Jayce Black, The Book of the Enemy (Faction Paradox, Obverse Books, 2018)., etc.) to join its brethren at Maiden's Point, though he was long gone by 1943.
Eventually, in 1943, the Ancient One was awakened again by Fenric, and ordered to control the Haemovores, which were used to attack the soldiers in the base; Fenric intended to have the Hameovores create death on a massive scale by dumping the poisons developed in the military base into the sea. After Fenric gloated to the Seventh Doctor about ensnaring all his "Wolves" into bootstrap paradoxes for his own amusement, the Doctor made the Ancient One realise that this release of poisonous chemical would create the polluted world in which the Haemovores had evolved and then dwindled away to nothing; refusing to complete this loop, the Ancient One sacrificed their own life to kill Fenric by going into the isolation chamber with Fenric and releasing the poison. (TV: The Curse of Fenric [+]Ian Briggs, Doctor Who season 26 (BBC1, 1989).)
