"Amaranthine"

"She was Amaranthine. Whatever that meant. And she made her own way."
--Last line of Eve of the Eternal

In The Perennials, Rose is a very different person from Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, no surprising consequence of being ten thousand years old. As part of this change, from here on out, Rose will frequently call herself Rose Amaranthine rather than Rose Tyler.

I first thought of the name "Amaranthine" when I was writing Cypnov, the second part of the saga. I don't remember exactly where I came across the term, but I learned about the amaranth flower as a symbol of immortality. Of particular significance is the story from Aesop's fables, "The Rose and the Amaranth," which I thought fit post-Void Rose so well that I couldn't resist the reference:

"A Rose and an Amaranth blossomed side by side in a garden, and the Amaranth said to her neighbor, 'How I envy you your beauty and your sweet scent! No wonder you are such a universal favorite.' But the Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice, 'Ah, my dear friend, I bloom but for a time: my petals soon wither and fall, and then I die. But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut: for they are everlasting."

I thought this was very interesting, especially since the amaranth flower isn't actually a particularly attractive flower (as the story suggests), but amaranth blossoms do have a longer lifespan than most other flowers. As such, the amaranth has always been a symbol of longevity. The word comes from Greek, a combination of the words amarantos ("unfading") and anthos ("flower").

I also decided that it would be of particular irony if the Helials gave Rose that name, instead of Rose choosing it. While it was Helial technology that made Rose ageless, the Helials themselves weren't directly involved in Eve's actions, so I decided that when they first brought Rose on board the Eternal, they attempted to extract as much information from her damaged mind as was possible. They only thing they could extract was the image of a blue rose, which strongly resembled a flower from their home world. The Helials, correctly guessing that the flower signified Rose's name, thus called her by the name they associated with that image. The flower was called a "denekh," which means "without age," because like the Helials, the denekh is biologically immortal. Thus, though the Denekh resembles Earth roses, the word is linguistically closer to "amaranth" than it is to "rose." Therefore Rose's Taledrevan name, in English, is Amaranthine.

I picked a blue rose because it is a symbol of enigma and complexity, such as is Rose's character throughout The Perennials.

She's ageless now, right?

When I published the first version of Eve of the Eternal on fanfiction.net, once I revealed that Rose has been made ageless, I got a lot of comments like, "Oh, now she can give the Doctor his forever now?" Well, yes, she could, but here's something important to know about me and my writing style. I don't just hand over happy endings to the characters in my stories. Happy endings are boring. I have to put them through hell first.

In this case, concerning the relationship between Rose and the Doctor, I think Rose's biological immortality would build more obstacles than it would eliminate, especially since this wasn't a sudden, "Oh, you're ageless now" moment for Rose. She's been like this for a really, really long time. For the Doctor, it's sudden. The Rose he remembers is the one from before Canary Wharf. Neither he nor Rose know who she is now, only who she used to be. That in of itself is a problem. Rose has a long road ahead of her, a long way to go before she's ready for a relationship.

Also, I believe that suddenly having an indefinite lifespan would be emotionally traumatic for a human. A lot of decisions we make, we make when we do because we don't live forever. Also, Rose now has the same curse as the Doctor and Jack. She can't allow herself to get close to anyone else from Earth without suffering a great deal of pain, because she will outlive them. Rose is cut off from her own world.

Those are only two reasons that Rose is not, in fact, going to have an immediate, unrestrained romance with the Doctor. However, note the words "immediate" and "unrestrained." I never said she isn't going to have an intimate relationship with the Doctor. Just don't expect graphic sex. I don't show that in my stories.

Rose's agelessness was something that I put a great deal of thought into, and part of the reason I set up Eve of the Eternal the way I did was to avoid making Rose ageless according to the usual clichés. I didn't want Bad Wolf to have anything to do with it, for starters; and I really wanted to avoid turning Rose into a Time Lord. With no intended offense to my fellow fanfiction writers, the Bad Wolf thing has been done so many times that to me it's become virtually meaningless; and I really hate turning Rose, or any of the Doctor's companions, into a Time Lord. I did that once in an early story that I never published (and probably never will), and I hated it in that story. I've only seen this done well in a couple of other fanfictions, out of hundreds.

Just avoid it. Please.

Concept art: A Few Rough Sketches

 Rose under Eve's influence: 
This is a rough sketch used for the colored cover image on fanfiction.net and in the last post. Here you see basically what Rose looks like after Eve seizes control of her brain and her body, and the cybernetic implants. The original purpose for the implants, again, was life support, but Eve hijacked that to control Rose. The large one on her left temple is an adaptor between Rose's brain and the Void Ship's mainframe; it's where Eve is mostly located. The tubes and wires attached to Rose's face and scalp perform nanosurgery on her damaged brain, and by the time the Doctor finds her, her neurons are completely repaired. The collar on her neck is directly connected to Rose's brain stem. It performs involuntary reflexes, like breathing and her heartbeat, keeping her alive until her central nervous system is functional enough to perform those functions independently.

Void Ship exterior:
The ship's shape is a truncated icosahedron, which I picked to convey the connection between this ship and the Daleks' Void Ship, but to also convey that the Helial Void Ship is much more sophisticated than the Daleks' crude imitation.

When two hexagonal sides (the hexagon being an important shape in Helial culture) line up with a gravitational center, they open a portal into the ship.

Void Ship interior: 
A schematic diagram of the interior structure of the Eternal. 

A. Mainframe core
B. Central control room
C. Main corridor
D. Entry point
E. Computer systems matrix
F. Helial living quarters
G. Liquid energy generator (one of twelve)
H. Internal heating
I. Primary reactor
J. Gravity funnel
K. Pulsar reflector
L. Upper pole
M. Mainframe engineering
N. Water manufacturing
O. Cooling
P. Secondary reactor
Q. Lower pole

Rose's bionic left hand:
The story for how Rose lost her left hand isn't completely clear, even to her, but lose it she did, and the Helials replaced it with a prosthetic that is directly connected to her nervous system, so she can control it just as easily as she would a normal hand. The fingertips and the palm of her hand contain rubbery touch receptors that are in fact more sensitive and advanced than the touch receptors in normal skin. The hand is also detachable, connecting to a cybernetic stump that, like the implant on Rose's left temple, is an adaptor between nerves and electrical wiring. The hand's grip is also significantly stronger than that of a natural hand.

Eve can also open direct connections with the Eternal's software through this hand. 

Security cubes:
The ship's security robots, which also function as repair droids when needed, though only about a foot in length, width, and height, can fire a powerful incinerator beam from its corners, one which can reduce an organic life form to ash in a split second. The incinerator also contains enough energy to break through most force fields, and is even hot enough to burn through a Dalek's casing. The cubes also contain adaptive capabilities, enabling them to learn from their targets and adapt their shielding to advanced weaponry. Thus, every time a cube is destroyed, the other cubes become stronger. The cubes can also generate an energy beam that can lift solid objects, as well as tap into machinery and computer software using the same mechanics as a sonic screwdriver.

The cubes are only dangerous when the mainframe of the Eternal feels threatened. At all other times, though they survey the activity within the ship, they ignore all life forms within the ship until something triggers the defense protocols.