HL2RP²: An Alternate Timeline of Events

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

​

THE STORY AS IT ENDS…


This thread is a narrative outline of my original plans for the HL2RP² iteration that ran throughout last year. It will be told in the style of my original story thread (https://nebulous.cloud/threads/hl2rp²-a-timeline-of-events.59516/) and should be considered as a final sequel to it. It will also contain descriptions of how the concepts written would have been plausibly implemented in gameplay.

I started this back in February as a hobby project for the people who had been asking me how the iteration would’ve proceeded and concluded under my vision. Much of it had been discussed with server leadership and there was a very real chance that we would’ve had an opportunity to see many of the scenarios I’ll be describing.

In truth the outline I had (existing as far back as March 2023) was pretty basic, so I decided to expand on it to make it an entertaining read. Then it became an incredibly huge writeup, I lost my desktop for three months, I got a job, my motivation has been inconsistent etc. - so here we are at the start of July.

I want this to be seen and read as a love letter to the iteration I poured an absurd amount of my personal time to at one point. I want it to be closure for myself & for the people who were invested in what had been going on at the time when we first started laying out a comprehensive story for our post-Episode 2 timeline. I also want it to be seen as a vision of how the uprising could have gone (and ended) in absence of Gordon Freeman in a way that you will hopefully consider faithful to the base games.

What I don’t want this to be seen as is an attack on the efforts of the staff team after me, who gave it their best with what they had and showed respect to the playerbase by giving the server a graceful ending when they felt it was the right thing to do. I hope those of you who stuck around enjoy this read as much as the ones who left it along the way.

LEGEND

Here’s a ‘map’ of the chapters as I’ve split them - I recommend reading one map at a time or coming back to it over multiple days if it’s too exhaustive to read it all at once (trust me it will be).

SEASON 2
FALL OF BUCHAREST, SCHEMES OF LAMBDA, THE XEN LOOPHOLE

MAP 3 - BUCHAREST FINALE
MAP 4 - RETURN TO PRAHOVA
MAP 5 - LOOPHOLES BUILT ON DARK BARGAINS


SEASON 3
ARMISTICE, PROXY WARS, WEAPONS OF MASS TELEPORTATION & THE XEN CRYSTAL ECONOMY

MAP 1 - CITY 8
MAP 2 - THE XEN CRYSTAL GOLDRUSH
MAP 3 - FAST TIMES AT RACE X CONTAINMENT ZONE
MAP 4 - QUANTUM ARMAGEDDON
MAP 5 - INTERPLAY OF WORLDS

SEASON 4
THE WORLD AFTER


MAP ???​

The story will begin from ‘Bucharest’ onward, also known as Season 2 Map 3. If you haven’t played on nebulous’ HL2RP iteration for the first half of 2023 or have just forgotten most of what went down, it may be worth catching up on the documents still available on the forums, as well as some I've archived in google docs below.

Spoiler: ITERATION STORY ARCHIVE

https://nebulous.cloud/threads/hl2rp%C2%B2-a-timeline-of-events.59516/

Includes a full outline of “Season 1”, consisting of five maps.

https://nebulous.cloud/threads/geneva-epilogue.59939/

Includes the finale of Season 1, the future of a liberated city under ‘Lambda’ rule, and some story elements that will be referenced at certain points during this document.

https://nebulous.cloud/threads/the-bunker-in-the-alps-season-2-opening-map.60005/

A short summary of Season 2 Map 1.

https://nebulous.cloud/threads/the-romanian-situation.60206/

A summary of the Romanian storyline, describing the story elements that took place in Season 2 Map 2.

HL2RP2 Bucharest Archive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2TMazKWSAg STATUL REORGANIZAT BUCUREȘTI MUNICIPIUL BUCUREȘTI ______________________________________ The city-state grows tense. Even her denizens, adjusted to power-grabs and political machinations spilling into the streets, look over their shoulders when t...

docs.google.com

A google document containing the Bucharest storyline itself, with the original summary & events told through speeches - effectively summarizing the first half of Season 2 Map 3.

If you’re not interested in reading an alternative take on maps that have already played out in the iteration, I recommend skipping to Season 2 Map 5 or straight to Season 3 altogether (just CTRL+F and write one of the chapter names above), though keep in mind you may miss a few crucial details this way.

With that out of the way;



MAP 3
BUCHAREST FINALE
DURATION: 1 WEEK

The death of Marshal Mladić is rejoiced both domestically and abroad. For the citizens of the Free State, it is a strong statement that no tyrant shall be tolerated by its armed and empowered people; neither of the Combine nor the National Guard. For Lambda, it is a relief in having been rid of a political opponent without dirtying themselves with inter-resistance feuds; their monopoly over teleportation once again unchallenged, their future status as a superpower secured.


The new Prime Minister vows to undo the excesses of military government; but in that pursuit, he indulges in the excesses of civilian government instead. He pushes a series of staunchly anti-National Guard reforms; cutting their budget in half, limiting their supply chain, stripping them of a majority of their tanks and artillery in an effort to revert them to their role of a basic peacekeeping force.

Remnants of NG leadership are outraged. Discontent grows in their ranks; talks of a counter-coup against the Prime Minister quickly circulate in their headquarters. Word of this reaches the Prime Minister; who becomes afraid for his life and starts contracting armed civilians to guard him in his day-to-day affairs, signalling a complete loss of confidence by the government in their armed forces. The military-civilian tensions rage on. The death of a despot merely shifts the power dynamic.


And in all of this, the enemy that lurks beneath the city consolidates its power. Having successfully requisitioned a trade deal with the breakaway Combine city of Braşov, Garrison 314 is sent a battalion of reinforcement synthetics to make the final assault on this so-called Free State.


A beachhead is established in Lacul Morii, providing supply lines to stabilization teams. Striders cross the lake with ease. A blitzkrieg assault is mounted on the Police Department and the Government Hall. The Exotic Transports Clan have already vacated the city; having defected to the Combine to protect their business interests. The National Guard, neutered from its former glory, lacks the sufficient resources to hold off an attack of this scale and consults armed civilians for support. Urban chaos ensues as Soviet tanks clash with Combine APCs, gunships are shot out of the sky by artillery, and concrete brutalist architecture folds in on itself all around in this reversal of an uprising.

The Prime Minister desperately signs an agreement to hand Bucharest over to the Lambda United Front; surrendering the sovereignty of his liberated territories to the growing technological superpower. Reinforcements are promised; two battalions of LUF fighters are to be teleported directly on site - but strange quantum readings interfere with their travel.

In that very moment, CITADEL-24 returns. Battered and bruised, colossal tentacles wrapped around, the head of a gene worm crawling out of its shattered top. It’s a Lovecraftian picture that unleashes armies of its own parasitic spawns within hours. There is no time to stop the tide; evacuation orders are issued to all sides with immediacy.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

The fall of Bucharest remains mostly the same as the original timeline, with a few key differences.

I wanted to explore the political consequences of the Marshal’s death much more than it had been in the original timeline. I felt that a government oppressing its own military (rather than the other way around) would be a fun subversion of a common trope. I wanted to wrap up the presence of the ETC corporation by showing that profit-driven treacherousness can transcend basic morality even in these times. I also wanted to give a nod to @Lewis! ‘ mini-lore piece about a nearby Combine city that broke off from the rest of the empire but still upheld its own twisted version of ‘loyalism’.

The biggest departure from the original timeline is the manner of Race X’s arrival; I wanted to make sure their reveal did not give players any illusion that it could be stopped at any point whatsoever. Having played the Bucharest finale in August as a player rebel, I remember being annoyed at the faux-objectives given to the faction. Instead, Race X’s arrival would be sudden, far too catastrophic far too quickly to be dealt with, and evacuation would be pretty much immediate, catapulting the server into the next map without delay.


NG players would have had the choice to try a coup on the Prime Minister, while the PM would try to rely on ordinary rebels for protection. If tensions ever escalated to that point, staff would accommodate a showdown. Ultimately the map would have ended the same way, but it is very possible that PM’s death could have changed a few details in future maps.



MAP 4
RETURN TO PRAHOVA
DURATION: 3 WEEKS

The rebels are forced to ditch their vehicles at a collapsed tunnel, barely making their way out through a passageway that puts them directly outside Paltinu Dam, the border they had once guarded as free contractors. This time, they have to hoof it up the cliff, as a mass of worms dot the landscape around, and the alien armies of “RX” remain hot on their tail. They are subsequently rescued by a trio of vortigaunts; who take them into an active antlion hive for protection.


Garrison 314 experiences a much more comfortable exit, hauled away by dropship. They are made to embark on a prefabricated Combine outpost, constructed on top of the remains of what used to be the Emergent City; currently under attack by a vicious horde of antlions, which they must hold off in order to secure their own arrival.


Meanwhile in the caves; those very antlion hordes give the resistance remnants a wide berth. The vortigaunts explain that they are antlion tamers, returning to the roots of their species amid the general disintegration of the Vortessence. With the unity of their kind entering a stage of turmoil, they have instead decided to strengthen their mental bonds with each other; often speaking in unison, finishing each other’s sentences, seeing through one another’s eyes.


They explain that they have foreseen visions of disaster in the region, and pre-emptively migrated here to stop it. They seemed to have found that the antlions are the only remedy to what they call the “Race X” infestation; both these invaders and the antlions grow their hives at unstoppable rates, but when set off against each other, they become locked in an endless struggle for domination which neuters both species and protects the rest of the world from their scourge.


They are hesitant to share their limited pile of bugbaits; their cultivation having taken years of effort as it were, but are willing to hand out individual pods to volunteering rebels to throw at Race X hives in a desperate effort to slow the prospect of a continental infestation - as each day these primordial parasites appear to multiply outward to the countryside at a terrifying rate, only outmatched by the Combine’s means of multiversal expansion.


In the CMB outpost, Garrison 314 receives its final set of instructions from the External Development science crew; who are scheduled to be mind-melded into an advisor host body as ‘promotion’ for the success of their project; having manipulated the resistance science team into sending CITADEL-24 into one of the many ‘X Dimensions’ - worlds cordoned off by the Combine for one quarantine-requiring reason or another - the current species that boarded the structure on their way back to Earth being one of them.


They congratulate 314 on a job well done, and reveal the truth behind the Race X Infestation; far from being a scorched earth effort; it was more of a pressure tactic levied at the territories of the Odessan Alien Controller, with whom the Combine leadership had been in lengthy negotiations with; some time ago, The Controller had achieved a stage of maturation that allowed it to open rifts to Xen. By utilizing a roundabout route from the Overworld, to Xen, then finally to Earth, the Combine could bypass Magnusson’s orbital satellite in order to summon their final victory. But the megalomaniacal alien needed to be coerced into a lower bargaining position before it agreed to cooperate on the Combine’s terms.

And that is why all of Southeast Europe would be made uninhabitable for the next few centuries.

The Combine are instructed to keep the RX infestation going by any means, and to deal with any interlopers along the way. Meanwhile, their future contract partners would be watching; the occasional alien grunt or enslaved envoys would stop by to observe the seriousness of the situation, and determine whether it was in the Controller’s best interests to cave in on the negotiations.


The Emergents had vanished into a rumor. The subterranean razor train network beneath their town may have made for good shelter, but the entrance had collapsed in the wake of the disaster. The perfect, genetically CMB tech-compatible society they had been building would have to be done in exceedingly sterile underground environments - if there was any trace of them left at all. Some people claimed to have sighted lone hazmat suited figures crawling the infested forests with their signature monotone black-and-green markings, but such speculation would remain just that.


The battle of the hives continued to rage on; antlion against RX, arachnoid against primordial shapes, the former led by the resistance, the latter pushed back by the Combine. Supplies ran scarce in this game of creature-brinkmanship as CITADEL-24 loomed above, with the gene worm sat atop its throne.

Some weeks later, at their lowest point, the vortal trio summoned the resistance back to the caves for what they referred to as a premonition of salvation.

On that day, the gene-producing worm that had sat atop the skyscraper in its endless act of birth, vanished into thin air, along with the top half of the Citadel - leaving only a decrepit wreck of little value. The unease in the air was recognizable to those who had fought in the siege of Geneva - a faint feeling of deja vu, or perhaps a hint of radiation.

A small portal opened inside of the hive shortly after, a number of human forces pouring from within - all bearing the Lambda United Front insignia.

By utilizing a variation of the same technology that initially banished the Genevan Citadel in the Swiss Alps, L.U.F were able to send it off into oblivion once more - this time employing a duplicitous secrecy regarding their operations in order to avoid the internal sabotage that lead to this situation in the first place. The survivors are thanked for holding the infestation marginally at bay and distracting the Combine forces.


But they were just barely too late - the Odessan Controller had already chosen to aid the Combine - and now it had to be stopped before their enemy opened a roundabout shortcut to the Overworld.

The direness of the situation required a drastic change in previous dynamics. Lambda could no longer afford to be a mere supplier to these independent fighters; rather, all of them were offered to become an official battalion of L.U.F themselves, with all of the heightened resources and support that came with it. A few of them were not given a choice; several Lambda spies in Bucharest had been feeding information about their crimes against humanity to Geneva, and with the ruins of Bucharest now under L.U.F control, the right to adopt prisoners within their territories into penal service was freely exercised. Saving the world would have been redemption enough, after all.

GAMEPLAY NOTES

Once again, Ineu Apocalypse would start off mostly as it did in the original timeline. But this is where drastic changes begin; a gameplay experiment with Antlion vs Race X dynamics, giving players on each side a ‘creature’ to back. An exploration of the vortigaunt species’ side-plot through the three tamers. The return of the Odessa controller in a meaningful capacity, and the setup for a fifth map as we established in Season 1.



In bringing Lambda back, I wanted to make sure they weren’t constantly teased as some out-of-reach protagonist organization. I felt that after a prolonged absence, it would be appropriate to finally give players a chance to feel like they are actually part of it themselves.

The particular dynamics of how that would work will be outlined in the fifth map, but it’s worth noting right away that any ‘penal’ status given to the characters would have been mostly symbolic in practice, and would have just been there for character development purposes.

It’s also worth noting that the presence of Lambda spies in Bucharest were very real; there were at least two of them roaming around during rp_southside, played by myself and another person, actively documenting the situation & the deeds of the rebellion. Several players’ characters were directly or indirectly recruited to gather information on rebel activities, the most prominent being @Blitz0012 ‘ group, Red Cross, who were secretly tasked at some point by Geneva to document humanitarian violations in Bucharest themselves, including those committed by NG and rebel players. All ‘penalized’ characters would have been put in that position through actual, properly obtained IC information. Obviously those that resisted their fate would have to be subdued/sent away for trial/killed in the worst case, and PKs would definitely follow from that, but generally there would have been minimal loss to cooperation with LU.F, as the ‘penal’ status came with little punishment beyond being plot flair and would have worn off after MAP 5.



MAP 5
LOOPHOLES BUILT ON DARK BARGAINS
DURATION: 2-4 WEEKS

The outskirts of Braşov already had several facilities ready to accommodate what was now referred to as the Counter-Resonance Bypass procedure. The infamous Xen Controller was hauled into the main compound; ready to greet the arriving Combine forces and demand their protection for its begrudging cooperation.


Nearby, the 7th Battalion of the L.U.F Military Department established a forward operating base to ready themselves for assault. Already, the skies tore open with faint cracks from the Borderworld; streaks of green would dance along the countryside, abruptly spawning gunships and ground synthetics in their wake; occasionally accompanied by other ‘xenian’ hitchhikers. They could be anywhere, anytime - the terror of the Resonance Cascade, crossed with a dash of Combine.


The main compound was a fortress. Their only hope was to take enough ground to take out several dark energy power stations in the area, forcing the Controller to relocate to a backup facility; and intercept the psychic creature during transport. The Combine had brought their best to the table; but this time, so had Lambda. Armed vehicles, aerial gunships, specialized squads of gene-coded fighters and gravity gun specialists; all under the collective leadership of those once contracted as disparate cells and representatives from Geneva itself.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

The finale of Season 2 would have been one big gameplay experiment. One of the founding pillars of HL2RP2 was asymmetric PvP warfare; the scrappy armed guerillas taking on against the remnants of a crumbling empire. But in reality as time went on, every single dynamic difference between the factions generated complaints and made the game feel rigged/unfair to players the more they were invested in the fighting.

So I thought; why not make them symmetrical for a map and see what happens? Give in to the WW3RP spirit as it were. This seemed especially appropriate for a finale with multiple outcomes.


Both sides would have had access to infinite vendors of roughly equal equipment. The resistance would have been able to summon Lambda helicopters, buggies and maybe other stuff if we could implement it; in turn, this would let Combine vehicles/synths be seen more, given that now the rebels had an answer of their own to almost everything.

The price paid for all these assets would be organization; for the duration of the finale only, the resistance would be united in a ‘single’ faction.

The hierarchy would be simple; At the top sat Lambda-appointed commanders - generally hands-off and only there to uphold the peace, give authorization to roll out the big assets, and lay out the overarching goals within the map.


The general leadership beneath them would be composed of all contracted cell leaders - who now held equal IC sway over all of the resistance, and would be tasked with coordinating assault plans and ways to tackle the general objectives given to them by the Lambda commanders.


All of this being said, the main focus would have been on the bulk of the resistance - the “footsoldiers” of the LU.F battalion; those now being the players. To facilitate their enjoyment we would have several “specialized squads” for them to commit to. Medics, Gravgun teams, gene-coded commandos, anti-APC/explosive specialists, etc.


The main gameplay would most likely have been some kind of symmetrical territory capture dynamic, with the ‘power stations’ relating to the Controller being of main interest and both sides racing to expand out and take them over. This would have been the ‘main course’ of the map, whilst in between there would be filler mini-events about abrupt Xenian rifts spawning a mix of Combine and Xenian forces in an uncoordinated fashion, portraying the small collisions between the worlds as a result of CMB-Controller interference.

We hadn’t settled on a map for the finale, but every time I thought about it I personally pictured a version of rp_outercanals, so I guess that’s where we would have eventually ended up. Not a particularly unique choice, but it would’ve had the layout to accommodate the sort of combat we were going for.

With both sides being relatively equal, there would no longer be a reason for staff to artificially restrict the Combine’s arsenal, so Rank Leaders & other leadership elements may have been given greater agency over the deployment of synths and other assets.

Occasionally there would have been closed server events where a small squadron from each side face off in an extremely consequential location and deaths could have very well carried PKs. This being the finale of the season, I wanted an opportunity for people to sacrifice their characters for the ‘greater good’ if they felt their time had come.


As far as the ending of the season goes, we considered several outcomes, and I tried to keep it flexible so that even in the event of a Combine victory the world wouldn’t immediately end and the story would wrap back around in an interesting fashion.

That being said, the most straightforward outcome (and the easiest to plan for) is that the Controller simply dies, or goes insane from the strain on itself and prolonged sabotage by the resistance, so that is the ‘timeline’ from which I’ll be writing the rest of the story.

With that context in mind, have fun reading what would’ve been Season 3:


SEASON 3

It has been two years since a global peace treaty was signed between the Lambda United Front and the Provisional States of Combine.

Each side having exhausted its forces, failed to attain their respective winning scenarios, and having developed Weapons of Mass Teleportation capable of displacing entire cities into other dimensions, a period of détente was mutually desired and enacted, utilizing the short-lived Armistice of C24 as a legal foundation.

A bipolar world order emerged; in the West, Geneva gleamed boisterously for all to see, expanding its territories by offering quantum transportation solutions to independent areas of Europe, staunchly pushing its anti-Combine rhetoric to persuade those unwilling.

In the East, Tokyo loomed as the capital of the Combine rump state. The alien order survived by embracing its identity crisis; offering a place for newly emerging corporations to conduct business free of L.U.F interference, while simultaneously ‘democratizing’ (at least on the surface) so as to retain its workforce and minimize defections, reconciling these strange new methods with the interests of their absent Benefactors.

The Race X Containment Zone, an expansive swath of infested land stretching between Eastern Europe to the Transcaucausus, was the only dividing line stopping these world powers from unleashing ground troops into each other. Its growth had reached a halt long ago - but neither side had an interest in getting rid of the no-mans-land which had established their territorial stability.

Though the uprising was declared to be over, the hostilities never stopped. They simply took on a different language; proxy conflicts, subterfuge, espionage, political grandstanding, threats of quantum annihilation.


A cold war was the order of the day.


MAP 1
CITY 8
DURATION: 4-6 WEEKS

While the flames of uprising were successfully fanned in Central Europe, the cities of East Asia weren’t so fortunate. The Blue Street Riots of last year had taught Tokyo a valuable lesson; and this time the administration took swift and decisive action as soon as revolt reared its head. A week of preemptive mass-stalkerization was all it took to kill rebellion in the womb. China followed in their example, and before long, Sector One became the final bastion of CMB stability - even as the streets turned into ghost towns in the process.

As such, the Combine state’s brutality left them with a severe labor shortage. Having lost their monopoly over the planet, the Provisional States had to resort to increasingly desperate measures to outcompete the Lambda government. Creating business-friendly environments, advertising relocation to stable cities, and finally - citizen exchange programs with their rival superpower as an eerie gesture of faux-diplomacy.

Most, if not all men and women who fought in the Siege of Geneva were pardoned by the P.S.C as part of the terms of the global armistice - meaning they could freely travel to and from City 8 with the proper authorization. Several Civil Protection war criminals standing trial in Geneva had to be let go to secure this privilege; but Lambda Intelligence Department saw it as a worthwhile measure for the schemes ahead.

On the surface, some Genevan fighters would be joining a train of refugees to C8 as a show of solidarity between the two superpowers. Underneath that however, several of these veterans would have been handpicked to serve as spies during their visit.


Their mission was to influence the upcoming general election for the role of ‘Adjutant’ - a right-hand position to the city’s Consul who was allowed to whisper in his ear at regular intervals. One of the candidates was an ally of the L.U.F; these spies were encouraged to sway public opinion his way at all costs, all the while avoiding detection from the authorities who batted them with the paranoid eyes of a garrison of wasteland survivors.



In the meanwhile, Tokyo marched on in a state of constant identity crisis. There were those who favored ‘democratization’, but mostly they were corporate agents of the Exotic Transports Clan who vied for greater organizational freedoms. Chinese academics from the mainland dominated the administration, headed by their presiding Consul Xi Jinping, a long time political ally of Wallace Breen who had come to be his East Asian spokesperson in recent years. There was a gray and a black market for practically everything; and yet this liberalization was contrasted with constant military presence, unceasing synth patrols, posthuman soldiers with autonomous reign, and signs of urban collapse that were yet to be swept away. This was a land of impossible distinctions and coexisting hypocrisies.


One thing was for certain; the time of uprising was long past. A regime such as this would have to be stagnated, degenerated, subverted from within.

GAMEPLAY NOTES



City 8 would have been the third experiment across the iteration with alternative cityRP formats. Having done a traditional uprising in C24, and the instability/destruction of a rebel city in C45/Bucharest, we wanted a take on a city that, first of all, /didn’t/ implode into pieces, because that had gotten old by now, and secondly, was a show of Combine power and stability, an answer to why and how the regime remained standing despite being cut off from the Overworld.

I felt it would’ve been both unprecedented and appropriate to set it it in a backdrop of an obvious cold war allegory; referencing Lambda’s ability to teleport entire citadels away, and Combine’s ability to bring entire citadels to themselves (using the same technology in reverse) as the main deterrents for why neither side wanted to pursue open warfare, with City 8’s weird relationship with authoritarianism/open markets/quasi-democratization being very obviously modeled after perestroika in late stage USSR.


An item reset would have been inevitable, but in exchange almost every ‘rebel’ would have gotten a clean slate on their civil status as part of the geopolitical situation. This wouldn’t stop them from being PKed under old cityRP laws if they broke any during the map - though those laws in the first place would have probably gotten a revision to better fit with the intended gameplay dynamic.

The Adjutant candidates would have been event characters, and the ‘voting’ for them would not be done by the players, but by a background population who inhabited the city on their own. Their ‘opinions’ would be swayed one way or the other depending on the events of the city and the success of the Lambda-backed operatives. Lambda would give various objectives to their agents (of which any player could be a part of) involving destabilization in the city. If they succeeded, the ‘public’ would favor the candidate that L.U.F was secretly backing. If they didn’t, his opponent would win. We would have outlined clear consequences of what each candidate’s victory would have meant.



Combine players would have had the opportunity to interfere with Lambda’s schemes, either by foiling them directly, or running investigations on common agitators. If a character was caught and detained on clear grounds of espionage, they would have been ‘traded’ back to Geneva, and would be PKed for the duration of the map - this would also be used as propaganda by the administration and would have tipped the election in the P.S.C-backed candidate’s favor.

What would have began as everyday subversion, sabotage, rhetoric spreading, labor unionization, unrest and strikes etc. would have eventually started to escalate into proxy conflicts in the outlands, assassinations, kidnappings, crackdowns etc. over a 3-4 week period, all the while the city’s propaganda machine raged on, a mixture of Chinese bureaucrats overlayed by the revered images of the once-Global Administrator.


The map’s finale would have been the night of the Adjutant elections. The ‘votes’ would have been counted in accordance with the cumulative rebel and Combine victories throughout the map, though individual player votes could’ve been accounted to a small margin as well (maybe 10% of the final result).

Whichever way the election went would frame the events that followed;

If the Lambda-backed candidate won, Dr. Breen would come on public screens to give a hollow, subtly displeased ‘congratulation’ speech. Mid-broadcast, his face would dissipate to reveal an Advisor speaking in a modulated voice - the year-long charade would have finally dropped - the Adjutant had hacked the broadcast network to reveal the truth to the world. In response, the Advisor would double down, speaking out to the city (still in an uncanny emulation of Breen’s voice), effectively condemning them for choosing a candidate they knew to be a resistance plant all along, having the new Adjutant executed on broadcast, and sparking immediate riots at which point L.U.F agents would have extracted everyone they could to avoid the mass-stalkerization reprisals.


If the Combine-backed candidate won, Dr. Breen would come on public screens to give a joyous, immensely gratified congratulation speech, though there would have been a subtle undertone of ominousness to accompany it. This time, the mask would deliberately drop, the Advisor behind Breen’s emulation consciously revealing itself to the world - declaring the people’s renewed faith in the Combine, and the democratic defeat of Lambda. Around the streets, mass-crackdowns and apartment raids would be undertaken by Overwatch, suspected sympathizers and L.U.F-aligned voters being dragged into the Nexus, one by one. L.U.F agents would give rebels an early alert to get out before they fell victim to it themselves.



While the ‘big reveal’ is essentially the same, the manner and context of that reveal would have affected the future political situation in the Provisional States of Combine.

The rebel victory would see private businesses lose confidence in East Asia and they would mass-withdraw their assets to reestablish themselves in Europe, driving the P.S.C into an economic corner.

The Combine victory on the other hand would have those companies’ confidence renewed in the P.S.C - L.U.F would condemn them as collaborators and ‘nationalize’ their assets within Geneva’s territories, further driving a wedge between the two hemispheres of the world.



Either way, the next map would see combat dynamics resume, this time taking place over a resource race.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

MAP 2
THE XEN CRYSTAL GOLD RUSH
DURATION: 3 WEEKS

The brittle ceasefire began showing its cracks, following the diplomatic crisis in City 8. Renewed tensions between the United Front and the Provisional States made it a mutual priority for each side to pursue their weaponized teleportation programs.

Equatorial Africa had not just become a lush habitat of Borderworld forestry; it was also home to ever-growing hives of enormous Xen Crystals - their growth sustained by the consistently high temperatures and tectonic activity which had eroded most pre-existing soil to make room for these glamorous formations.

At first, inhabitants had avoided the building-sized crystal terrain patches and classified them as a xenohazard; but recent advancements in quantum teleportation had quickly rendered them an essential resource for transportation & peacetime deterrence between the superpowers. By the first six months of the ceasefire, there had already been stable territorial agreements on the lands that each side was entitled to construct refineries in.

For the past two years, the Lambda state had used this bountiful land’s resources to revolutionize its transportation industry, sending cargo and aid to countless towns at almost instantaneous rates.

Now they were the currency of war preparations.

Fights over resources were not uncommon, but often done through proxy conflicts. Breakaway ‘transhumanist republics’ - led by local despots abiding the CMB rhetoric, would take over Xen mines and send ore shipments back to Tokyo, in exchange for essential goods & trained posthuman soldiers to add to their army. Lambda would respond by teleporting supply caches to smaller settlements to fight back, all the while, the common man’s labor was exploited in fluorescent caverns where in the midst of crystal mining duties they were often ambushed by alien soldiers of the former Nihilanth’s army, including a few vortigaunts who hadn’t left their original shackles all this time, and had deluded themselves into thinking they were still part of an invasion force after all these years.


But now the curtains of denialism were swept away; each side increasingly committed their bonafide forces to the endeavor while thinly proclaiming it as little more than a ‘Xen cleanup campaign’ on Lambda’s side and a ‘special excursion’ on the Combine’s. But those who witnessed it firsthand, as well as the informed citizens of their respective capital cities knew it for what it was; preparations for a great war. One that could end the world as it was known, and shatter the brittle peace that people on both sides had worked so hard for.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

This is where the gameplay outline gets hazy, because frankly, we hadn’t planned this far ahead. I laid down a basic story structure that extends into Season 4, but generally it isn’t until we approach a month away from map swap that we actually start dealing with the realities of how to make these ideas work in gameplay - expect there to be a little less discussion of actual script/balance mechanics in these segments as it goes on and more discussion on bigger concepts/general outlines.


Map 2 is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a goldrush/resource race over Xen crystals somewhere in Africa. We hadn’t decided on exactly where in the continent it would be, let alone the map we would use, but that was the basic idea. I don’t remember whether I came up with this before @Merlinsclaw ‘s community or was influenced by it while he was pitching me his server personally last year, but I do remember wanting to pay them a spiritual homage while they were still in development, and it’s not impossible that some of these ideas would make it into their server as well.

We’d probably have several mining stations/caverns around the map that could be individually occupied by each side. We’d put them on as even terms as possible to avoid the combat becoming too lopsided, but mostly it would be a conflict of foot soldiers with common sightings of Xenians mixed in. We’d encourage each side to roleplay actually extracting the resources at low pop hours while encouraging some combat at peaks. It’s all pretty standard stuff as far as what this iteration has done, but I felt that circling back around to its roots was something the players would welcome after a high-stakes season finale followed by a cityRP experiment.

The plotline with the alien grunt warlords & their time-capsuled slaves is something that would be left to staff to creatively direct, as it would’ve been self-contained enough to allow for any number of outcomes. In contrast to Odessa however, there would’ve been no Alien Controller to rule these regiments - the grunts here had killed their own masters and then further fragmented into their own tribal conflicts in the wake of primal distaste for one another. I wanted a feudal atmosphere for the grunts and for each sighting of them to be extremely formidable - and any attempt at cooperation with them to quickly plunge their allies into an intricate web of skirmishes with other alien enclaves, often too costly to maintain.


There was no predetermined ending for this map, but the degree to which each side had collected their share of the crystals would influence a conflict later in the season, which will be elaborated on MAP 4.

MAP 3
FAST TIMES AT RACE X CONTAINMENT ZONE
DURATION: 5 WEEKS

New Tiflis was the name of a small town situated deep within the Transcaucasian end of the Race X Containment Zone, surrounded by the biological ruins of Georgia and Southeastern Anatolia.

Human habitation was an alien concept in and around New Tiflis. In this quasi-alien bioluminescent swamp, criminal exiles found no settlements to rob, farmers found no soil to farm, and ground troops found their supply lines interrupted by the constantly shifting terrain of the RXCZ - landslides, avalanches, large swathes of soil spontaneously changing their chemical makeup overnight, as if shuffling to let fresh air into a dying substructure. Only three types of people took an interest in establishing themselves here: The curious, the insane, and the insanely curious. To group them in one word: Researchers.

They were far from the first to venture into RXCZ. Dozens of disgruntled, independent scientists established survey sites in the region every few months. But all efforts proved unsustainable for one reason or another - that is, until the Tiflisians discovered a stable rift to the Borderworld.


It was found to be a relic from the Race X invasion - its closure neglected by the primordial army following their gene-leader’s disappearance. It was this rift that the town was built around, and it was this rift that plied the main trade of New Tiflis; the sale of strange Xenian artifacts to the outside world, the study of interdimensional physics with an unprecedented consistency, and even a small sector of Borderworld tourism quickly drove the settlement into prominence. It was a self-fueling economy of discovery whose heartbeat was dependent on continued exploration, always a moment’s stagnation away from coming to a dead stop, or being overwhelmed by stray squadrons of X origin, if there was ever a crack in the defenses.

Misfortune only knocked on the door of New Tiflis when it fell prey to its own success; when it attracted the attention of an oppressive colonial power obsessed with consolidation of all technological and supernatural wonders in its sight - The Cooperation Department of Lambda United Front.


Ever-determined in their resolve to protect quantum teleportation technology and phenomena from falling into the wrong hands, L.U.F sent several rounds of representatives in an attempt to assimilate the town into Lambda support. When these attempts went ignored, they teleported in a fringe battalion of Geneva-aligned troops, the same gray-area agents who had infiltrated Tokyo and secured crystals in the ecuador; their ambiguous status as an external-but-not-quite-internal entity meant that any deadly incidents could be swept under the rug and plausibly denied.

On the other side of the world, the Provisional Combine States began making their set of territorial claims - asserting that the Transcaucasus belonged to ‘their side’ of the RXCZ, establishing a forward outpost in nearby marshlands for ‘diplomatic purposes’. Having ‘liberalized’ in the past two years, the Combine remnant states made for an increasingly more enticing place to be allies of, particularly as their technology has provided the infrastructure necessary for advanced living on a wider scale & protection from antlion migrations across the globe - whereas outside of Geneva, Lambda territories, often underdeveloped villages in comparison, tended to hold onto ever-dwindling supplies of bugbaits.


It is through Combine’s own counter-diplomacy efforts that the Tiflisians’ secrets are brought to the fore; many, as it turns out, were former Lambda scientists who had defected out of a personal belief that the technology of teleportation & interdimensional travel as a whole should belong to everyone, and not simply remain under the strict control of Genevan bureaucrats under the excuse of protection.

Tensions escalate in short order; Lambda wants its scientists back, whereas the Combine play a not-so-subtle but nonetheless insidious game of providing safety from the so-called injustice and tyranny of its rival. Subterfuge, sabotage, kidnappings - each side plays an indirect tug of war with researchers who hold the secrets of dimensions at their fingertips, all the while observing orders to keep the town free of jeopardy, for the stability of that fragile rift was too valuable to all involved.

Meanwhile, New Tiflis learns to exploit the warring factions, assigning them errands that need fulfilling for the survival of the town, dangling the unspoken promise of an alliance to each of them - a dangerous game that they would eventually have to begin delivering on by granting selective, guided Borderworld expeditions to whomever proved more beneficial.


It is during one such alien expedition that a fatal discovery is made. Not all things are worth knowing. The real fate of Eli Vance, the secrets of the Borealis, the apex species behind The Combine - certain revelations can break entire worlds. What was witnessed in Xen that day was the revelation that broke this particular world.

Aircrafts, synthetics, gunships, carriers - numbering in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions - stretching into the infinite horizon of a borderworld where the farther out one looked, the more one’s eyes began playing tricks. But the Lost Fleet was no trick, nor a joke - it was the legend of the CMB-OVERWORLD reinforcements that were purportedly stuck in Xen after the disappearance (or death) of the Odessa Controller. It was the foundational myth that kept the Provisional States of Combine together in the past few years - that one day, their Benefactors would return and finish what they started with Earth, and that it was their duty to keep themselves together and survive to greet them.

Their judgment day had finally come, and those who exercised patience were rewarded, not necessarily with the attention of the Overworld, but with the support that was promised to them years ago - and though the synthetic super-army was weathered and bruised from years of desolation, they remained in good enough condition to occupy the planet anew.

It didn’t take long for the secret to be spilled. By the time Lambda found out, Combine had already locked onto the coordinates of the fleet with their Resonance Anchors; ready to pull them into this reality and set them out toward the Western Lambda Sphere.

Geneva threatened quantum annihilation - promised resolutely to loose their mass teleportation devices on their rival’s East Asian territories; but what was a planet-wide nuclear threat compared to the favor of a multiversal enterprise? The fanatics of The Combine had waited long enough, and were finally emboldened to reinforce their old ideals upon their rightful colony.


What followed was a worldwide cataclysm.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

At its core, New Tiflis was my attempt to revisit Agora, having learned from the mistakes of Ineu Pass. No more raids, no more fighting around a passiveRP hub in general; the Xen portal made it too undesirable for both sides. The town itself would’ve stayed an unshakable neutral zone the whole time to encourage interaction & dialogue between the factions without sudden interruptions.

Instead, the focus would’ve been on the gradually progressing story of diplomacy/subterfuge around the Tiflis researchers, tasks given to both sides to either build relations with the town or undermine their enemies’ efforts to do the same, RX creature sightings, other supernatural events, etc. - generally, I wanted to reference the Race X plot point and let people know it still existed and had an impact, without making the entire rest of the server’s story revolve around it.

The name ‘Tiflis’ is a reference to the pre-USSR name of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Given the map took place in the Transcaucasus I thought it was fitting; particularly so since Georgia itself has been the site of countless occupations and independence struggles, not too unlike what the researchers were facing from Lambda (and later the Combine). ‘New Tiflis’ likely wasn’t built directly on Tbilisi’s soil, but was more so named in memory of the lost capital of the country, likely by geographic enthusiasts more than “locals” (assuming any survived).

The biggest gameplay experiment in this map was the portrayal of “rapidly shifting terrain” - we would regularly put down giant rocks, mounds of dirt, other natural-seeming formations in and around the outskirts of the town, and then regularly swap them out after a few days - ICly this was to be attributed to high portal activity in the region (and might’ve been influenced by the constant Xen rift trips). OOCly it was a way to consistently keep the ‘combat arena’ fresh, given both sides were free to fight each other in the outskirts. If sniper fire dominated a particular sightline too much, that particular lane might’ve turned into a close quarters maze in a few days, and vice versa, etc.


The Xen rift would have obviously necessitated a few small scale events inside the borderworld; we would have kept these few and far between so as not to ruin the effect. Mainly, players could ‘buy’ themselves a guided tour via a researcher with the appropriate resources. The side that racked up the most favor with New Tiflis over time would be the one to go on a more ‘extended’ tour, wherein the “Lost Fleet” (the CMB OVERWORLD reinforcements stuck in Xen after Season 2 Map 5) would be found.


Whether Lambda or Combine found them first would’ve had some kind of bearing on the order of events, but in general, each government’s responses would’ve been roughly similar - at least, insofar as they led to an escalation of global conflict.

Finally, New Tiflis was the culmination of my attempts to not so subtly “deconstruct” the good-guy-mystique of Lambda (which I’d been doing slowly since Season 2), showing the de-evolution of their government into morally ambiguous decisions, savior complex leading to colonialism, centralization leading to technological tyranny, etc. Lots of allegories to medieval France, the birth of bureaucracy, Paris’ historic oppression of an underdeveloped countryside, etc. if any rebels were having second thoughts about the side they worked for, this might’ve been the time to voice or take action on them.

That being said, the story would be re-centered back to the spirit of Half-Life 2 once The Combine escalated the ‘cold war’ into a total one.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

MAP 4
QUANTUM ARMAGEDDON
DURATION - 2-3 WEEKS

Nobody knows for certain who fired the first shot.

Combine propagandists say the L.U.F attacked their Airwatch guidance spires, vanishing them into a pocket dimension with their artillery-class displacer cannons. Lambda apologists claim that gunships of the Lost Fleet tore into the atmosphere from xenian rifts and violated the Genevan airspace directly.

The Quantum Wars were on; plunging the earth into reality-bending chaos, wiping the firmament of habitable human territories with a deluge of displacement activity, shrinking this world evermore to the whine of alien thunders and portal storms, natural and artificial.

Entire Combine cities disappeared at the hands of the L.U.F, vanishing into thin air without a trace, the Genevan council turning a blind eye to civilian casualties in pursuit of military targets. In reprisal, dozens of Lambda towns were ‘pulled’ into the other side of the world by resonance anchor devices, surrounded by Combine forces holding them as hostage; stalkerizing them en-masse when their government ignored their cries for help, recycling their populations into living maintenance drones for further mass-teleportation attacks.

Weathered gunships continued to be pulled from the borderworld at unpredictable positions, flying in carpet bombing vectors toward European installations with their mounted dark energy cannons; often ambushed by Genevan attack helicopters materializing in their flanks - a flash of disparate atoms in one second, a machine gun targeting their thrusters the next.

There were accidents, of course. War led to recklessness, and reckless use of teleporters on both sides had grave consequences. A Combine dropship might manifest in the air in multiple pieces, nonfunctional - falling directly into the transhuman squadron it was brought to reinforce. A Lambda infantry squad might arrive at its destination intact, but with their limbs fused into each other at unnatural angles, doomed to a short life as abominations as they helplessly watch Combine forces tear into the territories they were sent to protect. Sometimes both sides’ forces collided in their slingshot-travels through Xen, arriving at a single destination together, culminating in deadly skirmishes rife with friendly fire.


The final escalation transpired when Combine spies acquired the resonance signature data for Lambda’s governing headquarters; overnight, the entirety of central Geneva was teleported into Tokyo, the cities fusing together in a disastrous event, but nonetheless giving the Combine a chance to capture most of L.U.F leadership and coerce them for declarations of unconditional surrender.

The Cooperation Department had different plans, of course; having sufficient location data for CITADEL-8 to teleport small teams inside for a desperate rescue attempt. Mankind’s political future hung on the thinnest of threads.


And in the meanwhile, far off in another universe - an unknown species took an interest in this noisy struggle, and extended a dubious helping hand to humanity against their common enemy between the worlds.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

Depending on who came out ahead in Map 2’s Xen Crystal resource race, Map 4 would have started in one of two ways:

If rebels acquired more crystals, this chapter would begin with Combine players being escorted to Geneva in captivity. Seemingly abandoned by their superiors, they would be brought before the governing council of the very city they once fought to protect, receiving grave verdicts for their actions during the Combine occupation of Earth as well as their participation in the uprising. However, on their way to the gallows, they would have been intercepted by Combine’s reverse-teleporters (resonance anchors) and pulled into the city’s outskirts - it’s quickly revealed that their superiors allowed them access to Geneva so the highest ranking units in the garrison could acquire teleport coordinates to the Palace of Nations for later use. Gunships circle the Genevan airspace from xenian rifts. The rebels are sent to chase after the escapees through conventional teleporters. The Combine start the Quantum Wars.

If Combine acquired more crystals, this chapter would begin with the resistance players being summoned back to Geneva for a tribunal; either for their failure to acquire New Tiflis or any questionable actions committed in the pursuit of its acquisition. On their way back, they fall into a teleportation snare laid by the Combine; they are instantly relocated to an Airwatch guidance outpost and suffer imprisonment/interrogation. Occasionally, they see fleets of gunships advancing through the airspace of the Race X Containment Zone. Shortly after, they’re rescued by a squad of Lambda infiltrators teleporting into critical positions in the cell block, and are made to evacuate the outpost before it vanishes into a pocket dimension through the IED equivalent of a teleportation device. Lambda starts the Quantum Wars.




Despite it taking place in an active warzone, the rest of this chapter would have been less of an S2K competition and more of a spectacle to be witnessed. Fighting would never be prevented per se, but there would be greater focus on event plotlines and the creative portrayal of both sides’ use of their unique strands of teleportation tech. Given that a lot of this would have been very taxing to do, and the past two maps were already demanding in their own respects, there would have been at least a two week break between MAP 3 and MAP 4.

Most of the Combine’s objectives in this map would have focused on taking out Lambda teleportation facilities, manned and powered by vortigaunts - with the additional objective to capture a few of them.

Rebel objectives would have involved hitting similar targets; Combine facilities would house dozens of Kingpins connected to central mainframes, whose psychic abilities were known to be essential in achieving their own, biological facsimile of reverse-teleportation. Capturing Kingpins would not be mandatory, though if attempted it might yield interesting (albeit risky) results.

As a reprieve from direct PvP combat of the past chapters, these ‘main objectives’ would have been portrayed via events, with staff characters/volunteer player actors making up the opposition. The “wins and losses” of both sides in these events would not have been tallied so as to let players experience the events without outside pressure.


The finale of this chapter would have brought players to city8_district 24, now a smoldering pile of meta-fused ruins and portal anomalies in the Tokyo government’s attempt to capture their opposition’s capital with their most powerful reverse-teleporter. The Citadel would have still been intact, however, which is where the remnants of the Geneva council awaited their rescue.

This would have been the one time we broke the no-PvP-events rule in this part. However, there would have been an unconventional start: The resistance would have been able to teleport directly into the Citadel, but would have to extract their targets by foot, whereas the Combine would have started in the city on ground floor and intercept the rebels conventionally, but could essentially teleport out whenever they took the council back/killed them.

Whether the political leaders of ‘humanity’ survived would have some bearing on the ending of the iteration, though the next map would have proceeded as normal.


MAP 5
INTERPLAY OF WORLDS
DURATION: 3 WEEKS

Tokyo was teleported into Xen.

The remnants of Lambda had used the final charge of their functional equipment into this last ditch effort, at once a retaliation for the strike on Geneva as well as a desperate attempt to slow humanity’s inevitable defeat.

Those sent to the city to rescue the Lambda Council (whether they had succeeded) had made it out just in time to see the metropolis vanish alongside the remnants of their own capital - but now had to escape the heartland of Combine power on foot. L.U.F surveillance outposts along the Trans-Siberian Railway offered them a way to avoid confronting the bulk of CMB forces stationed in mainland Asia - who were now crossing to the western end of Race X Containment Zone as if it were their modern rubicon.

The remaining resistance outposts - which were often destroyed by Combine forces soon after providing aid - eventually lead the escapees to Kraken Base, a clandestine center of Lambda research once used as a staging ground to study The Borealis Project, now refitted with one of the most powerful Mass Teleporters in the L.U.F’s disposal, the very same one that was used offensively against an entire city of people, by the very researchers who left the Tokyo rescue team for dead.




What little they heard from Europe was all bad - though the Combine had lost their most powerful Resonance Anchor, they remained steadfast in enacting a conventional invasion. The Lost Fleet continued to be peeled out from between the dimensions, albeit at a slower rate - the ones that had arrived before were already too much for airborne squadrons to deal with.


The research team stationed in Kraken had no time to reflect on their cruel pragmatism - harsher decisions awaited them. There was a sharp split in the face of inevitable defeat - some wanted to use their teleporter to conduct a full retreat into Europe. Others wanted to use it in a hopeless offensive against the Combine, and fewer still had the radical notion of using it to escape into Xen, where decommissioned Black Mesa survey outposts supported enough life to sustain them, writing their planet off as a total loss.


The one thing they all agreed on was a need for Xenium; they had used up all of their current charge in the recent attacks. The armed guerillas at their doorstep, whether they resented the scientists or agreed with them, were the only available force capable of sustained scavenging runs.

Just then, at the height of desperation, the main antenna of the Kraken Base picked up on a subdimensional transmission - a message, seemingly, from another universe. Vortigaunts stationed at the facility soon deciphered it as an ancient imitation of their own language, and the information encoded was the location of a nearby deposit of crystals.

The Combine’s inability to mimic Vortigese was well known, hence the popular use of ‘Shu’ulathoi’ to refer to Advisors without attracting their telepathic attention. This was not a trick by the enemy. It was, however, too good to be true - subterranean sensors revealed no pile of the sort. Nevertheless, the survivors were out of options, setting out on a frantic trip to the outlined coordinates, weaving by enemy pursuers along the way.

The information had led them to a small underground cavern beneath the icy tundra. Empty as suspected - save for a strange device, neither from this universe nor the Combine’s, which had been able to mimic the signature of a crystal. From it, a tiny, peculiar crack in reality emerged - a crack which grew into a gaping maw, one that covered the room in an instant, and gave those present an illusory view of another world, far, far away from Earth.

What they saw would change everything.

An unrecognizable obelisk stood before them, almost Citadel-sized, coated in unintelligible markings. A monument inviting entry, it seemed at first. The thought was quickly shattered when the structure moved, as if woken from hibernation - and before long, it spoke to their minds, in a human language it had deciphered in the time it took them to arrive. An impossible shape exhibiting implausible intelligence.

Revelations were made to establish trust; ‘He’ represented one of the several species locked in an eternal war with what they called The Combine. ‘He’ (and others like ‘He’) were only able to triangulate Earth’s position thanks to the teleportation activity generated by the Quantum Wars, providing a constant beacon to the planet’s position and orbit. ‘He’ only had an opportunity to reach out because a certain cross-dimensional cabal pulling the strings in the background were too busy chasing a ‘Freeman’ across various points in space and time to worry about concealing Earth’s location.

Between The Combine, The Vortigaunt, The Humans and those Shady Unspeakables, ‘He’ and others like ‘He’ considered themselves a fifth column - harboring rare, escaped Shu’ulathoi in their ranks, keeping them in hibernation to conceal their location, planting their hatched offspring into The Combine’s gene pool to gradually induce defects into advisor reproduction over eons.

What they required from humanity was a simple exchange; they had at their disposal several Atmospheric Reconditioners; devices capable of reshaping a planet’s meteorological makeup, formerly used by the Combine to tame intelligent lifeforms inhabiting gas giants. The Reconditioners in their possession were reverse-engineered for acquiring dark energy deposits from their enemy at a planetary scale, but could also be modified to emit particles fatal to Shu’ulathoi. In effect, crippling not just the leadership of Combine forces on Earth, but also stealing their main power supply - diverting it for this fifth column’s use for their own forever-war. A shot at total liberation, at the expense of permanent changes to the climate.

There was no telling what the side effects would be to mankind nor the level of collateral fatalities, but protesting the decision was futile. ‘He’ and others like him needed CMB energy deposits from Earth, and there was no way for them to know how long the planet would be within their reach before competing alien interests returned to conceal its location.

The declared deadline for the Atmospheric Reconditioners’ arrival was twenty-three planetary rotations.

Until then, catastrophe could be dampened by sending data back to this fifth column. Coordinates for specific items of interest were outlined according to their intelligence, and could be tunneled to their world for study, both to maximize the lethality of the Reconditioners and to minimize unnecessary harm to humanity. These were: An infantile advisor in transit to the former site of Borealis project, the still-beating core of an abandoned Citadel, and the fragment of a defunct facility once responsible for the upkeep of the Suppression Field. Each would play a part in fine-tuning these anti-climate weapons. But the absence of any would make no difference to ‘He’ and others like ‘He’; the safety of humanity was of secondary importance in the face of their own war. Twenty three days was all the leeway they could afford for their acquisition.


The price of salvation was at an all-time high.


GAMEPLAY NOTES

The final ‘chapter’ of Season 3 would have had to break the tradition of taking place on a single map, and would instead swap around as needed through several, though we would always come back to a single hub as needed, likely in one of the highly modified versions of gm_vyten.

The arctic setting would have returned one last time and would’ve been the predominant theme of the map, but unlike boreas we would have shifted focus away from defensive rebel gameplay, and would have followed the dynamic of Season 3 Map 4, with the main server being a spectacle/S2K and passiveRP sandbox (as well as mini-events for both sides centering around uncovering blacksites/secrets of Borealis) while the three main objectives would’ve been portrayed through closed events.


For this map, those events would have been direct PvP encounters, emphasizing S2RP (and/or roll-based combat) as a way to resolve these extremely meaningful combat scenarios. Given that the fate of the entire planet (and the iteration’s ending) hung on the balance of the results, this seemed to be the best way to move forward, though main server S2K could still have a place as a way for the opposing sides to dwindle each other’s weapon & ammo stockpiles.

The layout would have been pretty simple; the rebels’ objective is to acquire the three items of interest outlined by the ‘fifth column’ race, while The Combine’s objective is to repel the rebels’ attempts. Each weekend would have been dedicated to a single objective, and the rebels would have only gotten one shot at acquiring it. Each objective (or the failure to acquire it) would have had a specific impact on the iteration’s ending, which will be elaborated on in the epilogue below. The tone of the server’s ending could have gone anywhere from ‘strange but relatively happy’ to ‘bleak and mutually self-destructive’ depending on the success of either the resistance or the Combine players; with plenty of outcomes in between.


The ‘fifth column race’ would have been kept as ambiguous as possible (hence my avoidance of any official names for them or their ‘members’). While it is a bit of a fan creation, I was heavily inspired by Laidlaw’s “Mathoms from the Lambda Files” article
( https://www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/ ) which goes into the leftover concepts from all the way back in HL1’s development process, detailing the interdimensional politics of teleportation technology and the many alien colonizer species competing for supremacy. The only available details for them are that they’re impossibly large in physical scale, communicate telepathically, have had some ancient encounters with the vortikind (enough to know a very old form of vortigese) and harbor the last of the near-extinct Advisor species (as referenced in Breengrub tweets) before they were all subjugated by the Combine - choosing instead to exploit them for their own uses. In inserting them into the setting I tried to avoid common tropes as much as possible; they were neither a deus ex machina here to save humanity, nor manipulative parasites here to exploit them in another way. They simply have their own war going on, need the resources from the planet, are willing to avoid collateral damage,but not at the cost of their own “people”.

Other pivotal lore details included with their reveal were the first ever reference to the whereabouts of Freeman, open acknowledgement of G-Man and his “employers”, and the reuse of Kraken Base from the HL2 beta as a story device. Nearing the iteration’s end, this seemed like the appropriate time to do something with some of the characters at the heart of the games’ plot.


At the end of the three weeks (and the three objective events), a finale would take place, where the Atmospheric Conditioners would have been in full effect, and the iteration would enter its twilight phase from there.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

SEASON 3
EPILOGUE
DURATION: 1-3 DAY(S)



23 DAYS LATER

Humanity is on its last legs.

The French and Portuguese coastlines are the last bastion of any sort of holdout against the onslaught of Combine synthetics.

The inhabitants of Kraken Base have managed to use the last of their teleporter charge to send themselves back to Europe in a bid to assist the war effort; only to find it more akin to a massacre. The airspace belongs completely to the Combine, wrecks of Lambda choppers dotting a landscape slowly taken over by ground synthetics.

There are prayers uttered, there are casualties suffered, there are vortigaunts who foretell
the portents of extinction, and there are doubts from those few in-the-know with regard to the aid of humanity’s new patrons.


And then…

The space between two worlds are folded for a grand exchange.


The Atmospheric Reconditioners arrive en-masse; horizontal superstructures, several times the mass of a citadel - big enough to crush entire cities if misplaced, surrounded by hundreds of guidance nodes gliding impossibly in the air, thousands more in orbit around the planet.

Earth experiences the worst portal storms it has seen in decades; collateral damage from Quantum Wars ever-intensified to the hum of these ancient machines. Atmospheres collide from countless other worlds; weathers mix, rain pours through rifts that reveal clouds from several universes away, planets unseen prior shift into distances visible from the sky. The air becomes heavy to breathe, the color bands of the skies shift irreversibly, and as mankind witness their world remade in front of them, the properties of the new atmosphere lay the conditions for their allies’ resource theft operation; billions of spherical particles dance through the firmament, stolen from Combine power sources all around the globe, converging on the reconditioners - reaching critical mass and evolving into Dark Energy flares not too unlike the one that destroyed City 17; though this time, they implode inward, into an energy-filtering gateway for their intended universe.

The invaders are faced with a mass-rout; generators give out, facilities power down, Airwatch units can no longer count on their hovers and thrusters, as thousands of crashes go unreported by ground units who can hardly send transmissions out between ubiquitous electromagnetic disruptions. What little orders they receive; from an Advisor caste collectively asphyxiating to death, seem to change every few minutes: WITHDRAW. BELAY LAST, HOLD POSITION. SACRIFICE CODE ON RECONDITIONERS. ABORT LAST, WITHDRAW. Then, one last order before they’re snuffed out: HOLD FOR EXODIMENSIONAL REINFORCEMENTS.

Unpredictable shifts in planetary mass had disrupted Earth’s gravitational pull; the unreachable Black Mesa Satellite Array which had been shielding the planet from Overworld reinforcements for the past two years had suddenly veered off course, disappearing into deep space. For the first time, Combine were free to send backup from home, without loopholes or interruptions.

The crumbling heavens split open anew for a view into the alien hellscape; The Combine answered with one last stroke of brute force to wreak the havoc they should have brought down long ago.


But this New Earth no longer needed a shield; just as the atmosphere swallowed up the Combine forces on Earth, so too did it swallow the reinforcements orbiting the Dyson Sphere from the moment they crossed over. Unimaginable collateral damage wreaked the surface of major battle sites; entire fleets falling into a crash course the moment they hit atmosphere. And yet, an endless number of backups attempted to take their place - only to meet the same fate.

This insistence furthered itself for several more minutes. Then, the orders changed for one last time:

OVER-WORLD RELOCATION GRANTED.

ALL 314 DESIGNATION UNITS BEGIN TRANSIT.

Those still fighting on behalf of the CMB colonial enterprise had earned themselves a final ticket to Their Benefactors’ base of operations; the penultimate assignment, wherein their bodies would be scanned, their consciousness copied, their originals stored and their backups sent on countless off-world missions in an effort to build the perfect assets out of their human sample size.

It was up to those individuals among the human and posthuman military arms then, to regard this as either a permanent blessing or a timeless curse - and then make the choice, either to take those superportals to the alien homeworld while they were still open, or to stay behind in this dying, worthless world of no future, where capture was preferable to surviving the conditions of the new wasteland.

For one thing was certain; there was nothing for Their Benefactors to come back to. Not anymore.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

FINAL OUTCOMES

If the infantile advisor wasn’t successfully retrieved, its mind would not have been probed in the adjacent dimension for information regarding the locations of major metropolitan centers; resulting in many of the Atmospheric Conditioners landing directly on top of populated cities due to their tendency to emit the most subdimensional signals. If citygoers weren’t crushed by the structures, subsequent Dark Energy flares would have finished the job. Effectively, this would mean that all governments would collapse, urban areas would vanish, and half of the planet’s population would cease to exist. The future of humanity would be confined to rural nomads and small communes.

If the Citadel Core wasn’t successfully retrieved, its Earth-absorbed properties would not have been sufficiently studied to gain information regarding ideal atmospheric circumstances for human habitation. The race responsible for sending the Reconditioners would not have been able to make the necessary modifications to account for their allies’ comfort. As a result, weather conditions would become highly toxic over the next few decades, leading most of mankind to seek shelter in underground pockets, invest in hazmat suits - or give in to the changing biome and allow their bodies to be infected with practical mutations, at the cost of their humanity.

If the Suppression Field fragment wasn’t successfully retrieved, there would have been no opportunity to reverse-engineer the technology for use against the remote possibility of Shu’ulathoi reproduction and adaptation. Some recently hatched advisors would survive in the new atmosphere, establishing their own remote fiefdoms over the decades and developing cult-like followings. To be enslaved into telepathic serfdom by one such society would be an ever-present risk for rural humans.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

SEASON 4
POST-EPILOGUE

“Season 4” would’ve been an optional post-epilogue period for those interested. There would be no more ‘episodes’ or structured main plots of any kind. Mostly, we’d swap around between the maps used in Season 1, with heavy prop/weather edits to reflect the state of the world decades after. This would be a purely passiveRP oriented experiment, a peaceful wind-down after the tumultuous events of the finale.

It would have lasted a few weeks, at most, before a quiet closure to the tone of the final lines below.

MAP ???
DURATION: 2-3 WEEKS



It has been twenty years since The Combine took their leave from this miserable rock.

Since then, much has changed, and the future remains as uncertain as the recent past.

If major metropolitan areas continue to operate to this day, you’re unlikely to be in their narrow radio range to hear about it. If the sky is toxic, perhaps your lungs have simply adapted to the extraterrestrial weather conditions. And if the rumors of feudal advisorials are true, you haven’t met a survivor yet to confirm it.

What you do know, and often hear about, is as follows:


VORTIGAUNTS

Ten years ago, The Vortigaunt began a mass exodus into the island of Madagascar; leaving humanity behind to create a permanent, isolationist residence for themselves, protected by hostile sea life.


Some say they grew disillusioned with their human allies. Others posit that they seek to prepare themselves against some prophesied disaster. Fewer suspect they’re planning some kind of long-term invasion.


Not one soul dares disturb their peace.


The island is known colloquially today as Kin’Ra (‘The Isle of Kin’).

NEW PANGEA

The geography of New Earth has shifted significantly since the Quantum Wars. Some continents have converged together, while others drifted further apart. Inhabitants have observed notable shifts in their own biology, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, in adaptation to the new biosphere.

The portal storms haven’t disappeared, so much so as they have become a harmonious part of the world; the planet is in a state of half-submersion with Xen at all times, entire swathes of land having been consumed by naturally occurring rifts that lead to the borderworld - and within that borderworld, dozens of smaller portals leading right back to Earth.


Those with an intuition for navigating these portals are prized as guides; often, they are the rare vortigaunts who have stayed behind in the human realm, offering their services at a steep price. On occasion however, they turn out to be humans with an acuteness for Vortessence - the result of a recent mutation that is becoming more common as the years go on.


XEN

Xen itself is a habitational wreck, many of its remote regions no longer polluted by exoplanetary islands, but by fragments of Earth terrain and architecture.

There are those who have made permanent residences in this borderworld; having fashioned themselves stable abodes with self-sustaining gardens, they only take the trip back to Earth when the need arises, through time-tested rifts they’ve learned to recognize over the years.

Some believe the ruins of Geneva and Tokyo are still out there, and that there are still survivors who eke out a strange living somewhere in the membranes between dimensions, upon those floating cities. On occasion, scavengers and researchers might come across a familiar neon signage or crimson flag, but thus far no one has found the cities in their whole form yet, and their name is synonymous with a legend which claims the lives of hundreds of daring explorers every year.


TECHNOLOGY, CULTS & TECHNOLOGICAL CULTS

There has been very little emergence (if any) of legitimate ‘Combine cults’ - given that the Atmospheric Reconditioners remain active, they continue to prevent any technology based on Dark Energy from functioning properly, and thus inhibit the primary foundations that most ex-collaborators would have based their cliques on.

Quantum teleportation persists as a means of travel and transportation; but is no longer as widespread as it used to be; most of the larger teleporter units being confined to obscure city-states, operating on limited charges due to the loss of global infrastructure for crystal mining.

Those crystal prospectors who make yearly trips in and out of Afrasia are well-rewarded on each of their visits, but this is a rare profession only reserved for those who are comfortable with a life lived on the road and an early death. Some have found it safer to trade their crystals among nomadic peoples they encounter instead - who often experiment with bootleg replicas of the Calabi-Yau model series - many of them having witnessed relevant designs in some way during the Quantum Wars.

What was once called the ‘Resonance Anchor’ - a Combine-invented recursive teleportation which pulled objects toward the self - has been lost to time alongside the extinction of the ‘Kingpins’. The designs never made it off-world, as the remnants responsible for its invention had been isolated from their homeworld until their emergency retreat. And even if they were to return for it - Earth’s new atmosphere makes Dark Energy-based experimentation strictly impossible.

Still, there is no doubt that humanity’s bygone invaders would find another world to hedge their technological bets on. In a few hundred years, perhaps.

Multiple attempts have been made with regard to researching the true nature of the Reconditioners, as well as ambitions to dial down its effects or even disable it completely, in a bid to rescue humanity from its current technological stagnation and finally give them the opportunity to harness what was left behind by their invaders - but such pursuits (and those engaging in them) are often vilified, as the majority believe the absence of Dark Energy is the only factor keeping The Combine from returning - their memory remains lucid in the older generations, who loathe to give them a reason to reconsider the planet as ripe for any kind of harvest whatsoever.

Many simply prefer to exist in a state of static ignorance, watching their planet change and themselves with it.

COUNTLESS WORLDS INTERMINGLED

There is now a widespread awareness of Earth’s place in the interplay between worlds; of the numerous competing, superintelligent sentiences who have mastered the art of teleportation travel in their own unique ways, who more often than not turn out to be exploiters and subtle colonizers.

There are unconfirmed rumors of visits by such species in the various corners of the new world, but most of these tales end with humanity’s paranoid rejection of their various offers.

Theories that one of these species may have had a hand in the recent affairs of Earth, of the timely appearance as well as disappearance of Gordon Freeman and the invasion of The Combine, are no longer treated as far-fetched ramblings, but as subjects of genuine discussion, though evidence remains sparse as always.

STAR-SICKNESS

Despite all that has occurred, some people continue to dream of taking to the stars one day, in order to join the struggle with other species for control of Xen - the dimensional bottleneck through which all teleportation travel goes through. They posit that a human monopoly over Xen would be a decisive advantage against ‘whatever is out there’ and protect the species from many of the hazards to come, as well as prevent the reoccurrence of disasters that have already befallen them.

Others dismiss these ambitions as “multiversal road banditry”, and prefer not to stir the hornet’s rest of those cosmic conflicts that rage on out there. So long as Earth remains in a place where it can do no possible harm, they figure that no harm is likely to come to them.


POINT RESTORATION

Dr. Gordon Freeman, the man who signaled the beginning of the uprising, is returned to Earth under the vortigaunts’ care, sailing safely to human lands on a boat from the direction of Kin’Ra - formally released from his obligations to his unmentioned puppeteers.

His arrival is greeted with little fanfare. Enough time has passed that few remember him, or what he was saying when he last spoke, or precisely what his following hoped to accomplish. At this point, with the resistance having been a failure or a success, those who once awaited his return at the eve of liberation will have long realized that they never needed him; that the spirit of rebellion is independent of any one man; even those remarkable few that open the way have little sway over the direction of what they unleash.

None of Dr. Freeman’s works have survived into the centuries, besides a final account of his experiences in the intervening years of his disappearance.

His last written words are preserved in the vast consciousness of whatever has become of the once-human species; it remains with them eons ahead, no matter what form they take, and is used a way of saying goodbye in colloquial communications:

“Yours in infinite finality.”​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

if you have any questions on unaddressed plot points from the original iteration feel free post them here, i probably have an answer to them (but if i don't you'll know as well :) )

all images belong to deviantart & half life: a place in the west, if you want to track down any specific one to its source hmu as well

 

[Cindy]

will read in 1 year 8 months 23 days

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

will read in 1 year 8 months 23 days

o7

 

[Provingmedusa]

It's too kino for this world. Maybe in another universe this is actualised...

 

[Flop]

I would've loved this, whilst what we had in the tail of end of HL2RP2 was I'd say was decently alright, I would've love to seen all of this play out, including ties back to the greater series and expansion of its world.

 

[bilack]

why did nebulous hl2rp have to die again

 

[abcdefg]

why did nebulous hl2rp have to die again

because of woke

 

[EXODITE.XXX]

I think you got some Uprising in your Alplands, man.

 

[deathwolf]

@Appetite Ruining Kebab fantastic writing, i clapped when Harland shot the infantile advisor whilst saying “This is how i Joseon your Kobayashi” and then harlaned all over the place

 

[john]

The Blue Street Riots of last year had taught Tokyo a valuable lesson

canon in every universe; the bluesuit stays king

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

@Appetite Ruining Kebab fantastic writing, i clapped when Harland shot the infantile advisor whilst saying “This is how i Joseon your Kobayashi” and then harlaned all over the place

Spoiler: the boys s4 ep4 spoilers

 

[Hunk]

Took me 3 minutes to scroll down

 

[Generally Fruity]

why did nebulous hl2rp have to die again

Suffocated by the party of bloats trying to ride upon its back

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

Took me 3 minutes to scroll down