I can't answer all of those questions for you - heck, I don't want to answer a good many of them. One that I can answer, though, is this:

Q. What were the circumstances surrounding Don Griffin's first regeneration?

We've seen his second, which followed an argument his face had with his TARDIS console in Eyrie Productions Destroys the Marvel Universe. But though the general place and time of his first have been alluded to, no details have ever been presented.

This wasn't a case of me being cagey so much as me having noplace useful to put it. The basic way in which it went down has been in my head for many years, but I've never had a good spot to lay it out. I've no real interest in going back at this point and doing the whole story of the incident in which it occurred, nor do I want to spend that much time faffing about with flashbacks in any of his planned UF appearances. Plus, the background for the sequence requires some fairly detailed knowledge both of the Marvel setting of some years ago and of the inner workings of being a Time Lord, so it would pass quite a few people by anyway.

So I figured, the heck with it - I'll just toss it up here. The people who are interested will look; the ones who aren't won't; and if anyone who does read it doesn't get what's going on because of all the fiddly backstory it's dependent on, at least that failure hasn't impacted their enjoyment of an entire story.

Et voilà! A small chunk of homeless pre-EPDTMU Marvel text. Relative to Don's career, it takes place not long after he returned to Marvel-Earth (in his native timestream, GCC 616/M), having completed his training on Gallifrey and stolen his Frankly Magnificent Timeship from the Prydon Academy Museum's non-displayed collection annex. This was several years before his disappearance into the Vortex (from which he returns at the beginning of EPDTMU); for those of you interested in pseudo-Marvel chronology, the adventure containing this incident happened not long before the Morlock Massacre.

Enjoy, or not, as the spirit moves you.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
TIMESTREAM GCC 811/M
	In the tiny patch of wilderness that was once called Battery
Park, the silence of Sentinel-occupied New York was broken by the
sudden clang of a manhole being thrust open from below.  Up from the
depths and onto the cracked pavement clambered a young man with an air
of something not far from panic about him.
	Don Griffin had known from the start that coming to this time
and place was unwise - courting disaster, in fact.  But with the easy
confidence, or arrogance, of one who has faced many dangers, overcome
many foes, and mastered the secrets of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, he
had assumed that he and his companions would be up to the challenges
the era would present.
	Besides, they wouldn't be staying long.  They'd only come to
collect a few small things, and then they would be off again - like
thieves in the night, they would vanish into the ether and no one
would be the wiser.
	That was the plan, anyway.  Now, as he reeled in anguish
through the overgrown remnants of Battery Park toward the ruins of
Castle Clinton, Griffin reflected ruefully that he should have known
better.  He should have realized that for a Time Lord or for an X-Man,
both of which he was, things were -never- that simple.  In an
environment as hostile as this one, something was bound to go wrong,
and when things went wrong in places like this, they tended to go very
wrong indeed.
	They certainly had in this case.
	Wracked with pain, he clawed his way into the run-down fort,
past the crumbling visitors' center, and spied on the far side of the
central courtyard his destination.  It stood, magnificently
unconcerned with its incongruity, next to a faded, tattered wall map
of the Battery: a Pepsi vending machine, lit up and humming softly,
apparently in perfect working order.
	Griffin made for it as fast as his tortured body would go,
stumbling and staggering over the debris that littered the courtyard
floor.  Reaching it, he fumbled in the pocket of his trench coat for
the key, shoved it home with uncooperative fingers, swung the door
open, and lurched through, slamming the door behind him.
	Once inside, he slumped back against the inner surface of the
door and slid to the floor, exhausted by the struggle just to get this
far.
	"I made it," he whispered, looking with slightly unfocused
eyes at the gleaming key in the palm of his hand.  Then he looked up
and confirmed to himself that he was, indeed, in the Console Room of
his one and only TARDIS.
	"I made it," he repeated, then sagged, trying to gather his
energy for the next phase.  He was still there, eyes closed, breathing
hard, when one of the monitors suspended from the gleaming
brushed-steel superstructure of the Console Room's domed ceiling
flickered to life, its screen filled with the mocking face of a hated
foe.
	"So you've made it back to your wondrous machine," said the
face with a sneer.  "Well done.  You've got steel in you, boy, I'll
give you that.  Only one before has ever found the strength to defy me
so.  But it hardly matters.  I still own you.  I always will."
	Griffin pulled himself to his feet and made himself walk
toward the center of the room.  The TARDIS console waited for him
there, all gleaming chrome and sturdy black Bakelite, its dials and
levers and black-faced analog gauges ready to follow any orders he
gave.
	"You haven't won yet, Ahab," he said.
	"I won the moment I threw that switch!" Ahab replied.  "Don't
delude yourself.  The scars on your face show you a Hound for all to
see."
	Griffin paused and felt at his face.  He knew it was true,
that he was marked - the scars were there, ugly black slashes on
forehead, cheeks, and chin.  What he wore under his coat drove the
point home as well.  Black leather, studded with spikes, carefully
designed to be intimidating and humiliating at the same time; the
uniform of one simultaneously oppressed and part of the apparatus of
oppression.
	Reaching the console, Griffin reached up and pulled the
monitor down, swiveling it on its hydraulic arm so that it faced him.
	"And you are the Master of Hounds," he replied, his voice
dull.  Then his scarred face contorted as another wave of pain washed
over him, making him grab at the console for support.  Life returned
to his eyes as he turned his head to glare at the monitor.  "Emperor
of nothing," he spat.
	Ahab scowled.  "All right," he said, "enough's enough.  You've
had your little revolt, and well done it was.  Now obey your master
and bring that machine to me.  With it, and your ability to operate
it, I'll finally have what I've always needed - the power to pursue my
quarry -anywhere in time and space-."  He smiled cruelly.  "You'll be
the greatest Hound in history, boy.  Greater even than your little
girlfriend.  With you to guide me, I'll be -invincible-."
	Don adjusted a couple of controls, then moved to another
panel, dragging the monitor around with him on its ceiling track.  He
didn't reply for a few moments; all his concentration was going into
what he was doing to the controls.
	"That's never going to happen, you know," he said.
	Ahab snorted.  "What, do you think you can escape me?"
	Don ignored him for a few seconds more, instead punching a
long and complicated code into a keypad on the console.  With the code
entered, he twisted a large knob to a particular setting, then reached
up and pulled a lever near the apex of the console.
	When he did, an unusual thing happened.  The crystal cylinder
that surrounded the Time Rotor in the center of the console clicked,
hissed, and then retracted, disengaging from the housing at the top
and sliding down into the console.  This left the rotor itself
exposed.  In the Type 66 TARDIS, this was a set of four metal spheres
on posts, two at the bottom, two at the top.  When the TARDIS was
idle, an arc of blue-white energy fizzed and flickered constantly
between the two lower spheres, and another at the top.  Under power,
the arcs became much more intense and flowed in a complex web between
the upper and lower spheres, which pulsed toward and away from each
other.
	Now the machine was idle, so the energy flow was very low -
but it was still enough, with the crystal sleeve retracted, to fill
the room with a hackles-raising buzz.
	Ahab seemed unimpressed.
	"I would've thought Rachel would've told you," he said.  "It
doesn't matter where you run.  It's in your -genes- now.  Wherever you
go in space or time, you'll still belong to me.  You're a Hound now,
and a Hound you'll be until the day you die."
	Griffin turned and regarded the face of his self-proclaimed
master for a moment, his own countenance unreadable.
	Then he smiled slightly and said, "That day is today."
	With that he gritted his teeth, reached up, and seized hold of
the Time Rotor's lower spheres, one in each hand.
	"NO!" Ahab roared.  "STOP - "
	But it was far too late for that.  The reaction was
instantaneous and violent.  Griffin's body arched, his every muscle
locking up, as the energies of the Time Rotor ripped through him.
Lightning danced over his form and the Console as he bridged the
TARDIS's master circuit.  Gauges went wild.  The lights flickered
wildly.  The monitors blanked to static and then went black.
	Ten seconds later, automatic systems deep within the TARDIS
cut off the power.  Emergency lights glowed under the rim of the
Console Room dome's casement as breakers in the heart of the TARDIS
slammed main power offline.  The console went dark, all gauges falling
to zero.  Griffin sagged backward, his smoking hands coming away from
the poles of the Time Rotor, and collapsed on his back beside the
console.
	For a full minute, there was only silence and darkness.
	Dimly at first, then more brightly, the Console Room began to
fill with an unearthly orange light.
	An unknowable time later, Don Griffin sucked in a harsh,
ragged breath, sat up, then grabbed at the edge of the console and
dragged himself to his feet.
	"Better," he said, his voice hoarse.  He felt at his face; he
couldn't tell if it had changed, but he could feel that the scars were
gone, which only confirmed what he already felt inside.
	"Free," he whispered, then giggled, his eyes reflecting the
dull glow of the emergency lights overhead.  "It worked!  I did it!
Ha ha haaa!"
	With a frenetic energy completely at odds with his leaden
struggles of a few minutes before, he started ranging around the
console flipping switches and turning dials, muttering urgently,
gleefully to himself.
	"System reset - yes - close the rotor casing - get everything
working again - must have outraged the poor beast terribly... "  He
patted the console soothingly.  "Sorry, old thing.  Didn't have much
choice."  The emergency controls responded to his touch.  The crystal
cylinder sealed itself around the time rotor.  His hands now sure and
decisive, Don closed a couple of knife switches, set a few more dials,
then ran around to another panel, grabbed the biggest lever on the
console, and jacked it down hard.
	With a seismic CLUNK that shook the floor, the TARDIS came
back to life.  The Console Room flooded with white light as main power
came back online, the idle arcs sputtering back into existence within
the rotor.  Gauges and indicators flashed and twittered all over the
console as all the timeship's systems ran through their startup
diagnostics.  The monitors flickered, fizzed, and then started
displaying the results of those tests in the interlocking circles and
arcs of Gallifreyan script.
	"Ha ha!" Don cried, slapping the console affectionately.
"Good!  Full power!  Now.  Time for - "  He blinked, then felt at his
chest, looking down as if surprised to find himself wearing a Hound
uniform.  "Whaaat?!  No, no, this won't do at all!  Clothes.  I must
have clothes.  Have to be -presentable-.  Yes.  Can't do what I need
to do in a -gimp suit-, no no no."  He looked at one of the console's
many indicators.  "Time!  Time -passing-.  That won't do either.  No."
	Rounding to another face of the console, Don worked the
dematerialization controls.  The rotor energized and pulsed; from
below the floor came the heavy grinding sound of the main space-time
engines as they withdrew the vessel from Battery Park.  Smiling, he
threw a couple more switches, then carefully set one of the largest
Bakelite dials.
	"Temporal orbit.  Good.  Goes nowhere, does nothing.  Just
what I need.  Time for me and no one else."  That thought seemed to
please him especially; he grinned, raising his hands triumphantly, and
cried, "HAH!  Lord of Time!"
	It occurred to some part of Don that he was a bit off-center,
mentally, but it didn't occur to him to be at all concerned about
that.  One had to make allowances when one's entire neural structure
had just been power-cycled like the TARDIS, after all.
	Instead, he went to the wardrobe room, tearing off the
miserable Hound outfit and scattering its pieces in the corridor as he
went.  Technically, he had all the time in the universe now, with the
TARDIS in temporal orbit, but still he hurried.
	"Have to keep the momentum going, you know, when you're on a
roll," he observed to himself as he selected suitable clothing.  "Lots
to do!  Best served cold?  Ohhh no.  Not this time."
	The Master of Hounds was not having a good day.
	Not only had the greatest prize in the history of his office
managed to slip between his fingers with a boldness and decision that
had shocked him to the core; not only had his agents just reported
that the dead man's infinitely valuable timeship -disappeared- from
Battery Park after its master's suicide, denying Ahab even the chance
to have it brought in for analysis; not -only- had all this rigmarole
kept him too busy to attend as he'd have liked to his other
captives...
	... but now Aerospace Defense Command was reporting some kind
of strange goings-on in outer space, of all places.  Dozens of
anomalous objects were appearing in high orbit, taking up
geosynchronous positions over major Sentinel control centers.  The
pattern was much too regular to be a coincidence.  Initial efforts to
deal with, or even get eyes on, the intruders had all proven
ineffective.  The plain fact of the matter was that no one seemed to
know what was going on up there - except that unknown objects were
arriving, and defense and surveillance satellites were going offline.
	Ahab would have moved on to the next phase of his crisis
response plan - probably slamming a fist down on his master console
and demanding that someone tell him what the hell was happening - when
the question was more or less answered for him.  An image appeared,
unbidden, on the giant screen before him.
	At first glance, Ahab took it for some kind of robot, a
human-shaped mechanoid with dully gleaming silver-grey armor,
reclining on a throne of steel.  Its face was a sleek, expressionless
Art Deco mask with a horizontal slot for a mouth, blank circular
eyeholes covered in a fine metal mesh, and a pair of right-angled
antennae framing the sides of its head like handles.  Through what
looked like cooling vents along the top and sides of the sleekly
sculpted headpiece shone an eerie blue glow that reminded Ahab of
Cerenkov radiation.
	"Attention, Project Wideawake," it announced, its voice a flat
metallic monotone.  "This planet is now under Cyber control.  Order
will be restored.  All Sentinels will be exterminated.  Resistance is
useless."
	"Who the hell d'you think you're talking to?" Ahab demanded.
	The silver figure regarded him emotionlessly for a moment, then
chilled his blood by replying coldly,
	"Rory Campbell, codename Ahab.  Master of Hounds.  Chief of
enforcement and security for Project Wideawake emergency government."
A pause, during which Ahab felt uncannily as if the creature's empty
eyes were looking right through him.
	"Your cybernetics are inferior," it continued.  "You will be
upgraded."
	Before Ahab could reply, his attention was seized by a strange
sound.  Rising out of nowhere, swelling in volume, it was unlike
anything he'd heard before - a mechanical grinding, groaning, wheezing
noise, the sound of some vast engine laboring mightily at some
unspeakably arduous task, overlaid with a harsh snap and buzz and
crackle as of huge quantities of electricity in motion.  Ahab whirled
- it seemed to be coming from behind him - but for a moment he saw
nothing there but empty space and the vacant chambers of his Hound
processor.
	Then, fading in from thin air, its outline pulsing with the
rise and fall of the striving sound, there appeared...
	... a vending machine?!
	The bunker shook as the Cyber fleet began bombarding the
project headquarters complex above, and suddenly Ahab understood
everything.  His eye narrowing and jaw clenching with fury, he watched
as the front of the machine swung open and a dead man stepped
smilingly out.
	Griffin had changed a bit since Ahab last saw him.  Gone was
the black and spiked costume of a Hound; in its place he wore a
razor-creased three-piece suit in deep scarlet with a white shirt,
vivid orange vest, and tie of alternating scarlet and orange stripes.
Gone, too, were the scars of a Hound upon his face.  His once-sandy
hair had turned a dark, rich brown, which stood up a bit on top in a
carelessly parted, casual mess.  He had on little octagonal glasses,
and behind them his blue eyes sparkled with something not too far from
madness.
	He pulled a hunter-cased silver watch from his vest pocket,
thumbed it open, then grinned.
	"Right on time," he said, closing the watch and tucking it
away.  "Hello, Rory!  I see you've already made the acquaintance of my
friend the Cyber Controller."

--
Mr. Fnord, who looks good in chrome plating.

So, Ahab will be given the "ultimate upgrade." Figured he'd be classified as a "rogue element" and subject to maximum deletion.

Sorta ironic that I read this on the same day I managed to finish downloading and watching "Age of Steel."

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject