HL2RP²: A Timeline Of Events

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

THE STORY SO FAR...


This thread outlines the general story beats that have taken place in HL2RP² since launch.


It will be regularly updated as the iteration continues to unfold.


Note that this is for MAJOR events. Minor plotlines, mini-events and personal character arcs are not to be included in this.


With that being said, contact me personally if you feel that there is anything omitted in this thread along the aforementioned lines.


With that out of the way:

POST-UPRISING
​

A period of great uncertainty for mankind; some cities crumbling, others remaining standing as CMB strongholds. A world up in flames, with Freeman nowhere to be seen, off chasing some northern star while the rest of us are left to deal with the consequences of his actions.


Some of those notable consequences have been:

THE SEA OF AZOV
(rp_depot_updated)

Azov Depot served as the 'Alcatraz' of those who were suspected to harbor rebellious sentiments in the wake of the uprising; the result of a massive 'kill list' gathered on individuals residing in Sector 17's Combine cities, be they real criminals, loyalists who irked the wrong people, or simply people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fearing their own cities would crumble like City 17, a desperate ruling class made the hasty call to relocate everyone ever marked by the government into various depots much like this one, which only inflamed the existing tensions further.

Azov Depot was managed by a mysterious figure known as The Warden, who was in fact not a person, but a rudimentary voice-announcement system operated by an Advisor.

The purpose of this 'prison' was to quickly accelerate its inmates' induction into Civil Protection ranks or otherwise be turned into stalkers, depending on the judgement rendered on them.

This place also hid a more sinister purpose; a repurposed lighthouse that ran on Vortigaunt energy, which was here to 'ping' the region for anomalous particle activity so as to begin the efforts to reconstruct the Overworld Superportal. A clandestine organization known as 'Blackwatch' oversaw its operations on behalf of the Advisors.

Amid riots, unrest, food shortages, mishandling of the prison both logistically and authority wise, as well as rebel infiltrations from outside, the Azov Depot crumbled entirely.

A posse of vortigaunts managed to infiltrate the lighthouse and sabotage it from the inside, bringing its operations to a halt, but they were just barely too late; Combine had gotten the information they needed from it, and pulled their forces out, rather than fight the emerging ember of a new rebellion.


THE WASTELANDS OF ODESSA
(rp_apocalypse)

Once a countryside ripe with farmlands; now an unrecognizable patch of land akin to an island of the Borderworld.


A Combine foothold was established in the area in an attempt to preemptively secure the city of Odessa against the increasing resistance activity at the borders. Several abandoned facilities laid dormant, awaiting for this alien garrison to reactivate it.

The Resistance, at this time little more than loosely organized bands of undersupplied fighters, still getting their bearings, were reduced to hiding in caverns and loosely built towns to have even a chance of disrupting Combine operations.

An instance of a Gonarch made itself evident; the mother of headcrabs herself, hassling both sides. Later, a Vortigaunt expedition discovered that it was under the control of a sinister entity, yet to be named.

In light of repeated Combine victories in the area, the structure known as 'The Spire' had been built via advisorial assistance. This was to provide a locational index for Synthetic forces to navigate region, in absence of Citadel activity to guide them.

The operations of 'The Spire' awakened the attention of Sector 17 Overwatch A.I; a previously-discarded intelligence that once ran all Overwatch operations remotely as well as acting as the 'Dispatch' of Civil Protection during the occupation. Due to improper deactivation procedures, it persisted on and continued its directives in an attempt to re-seize control of the Combine garrison in its own, corrupted manner, against the wishes of its own masters.

At this time, Lambda began to rear their head as an active supplier of local forces. They used a system of 'contracted cells' to funnel resources to those they deemed trustworthy.

A newly armed resistance attempted to raid a Transhuman Conversion Facility, hoping to cut off the emerging supply of trained troopers from Civil Protection ranks. This ended in catastrophic defeat; around 30 fighters were gruesomely slaughtered in a close quarters skirmish against merely 5 Elite Overwatch Soldiers.

The loss of their cave to Synthetic interference forced the Resistance to take a desperate forward position in a shanty town. This proved to be an effective location through which they were able to maintain a combat stance & train their growing supply of armed fighters.

Blackwatch caught onto the 'corruption' inherent in the surviving AI system. They attempted to incite Civil Protection to destroy its core, but were branded as a rogue organization by Overwatch Elite Arm and all of its operatives were subsequently executed in short order; the Advisors had been aware of the malfunctioning AI for a while, and sought to integrate it into their own operations for the moment instead.

Amid all this, a micro-singularity event triggered by 'The Spire' put the pressure on all combatants to withdraw from the area. Given the Xen encirclement that occupied the lands further into the wastes, the city of Odessa, where an active uprising raged, proved to be the ironically safest option.

Meanwhile, The Vortigaunt felt something calling them inland; the same presence behind the Gonarch, its origin laying at the heart of the city.


ODESSA
(rp_asheville)

This strange multi-faceted zone was never granted the status of a proper Combine city. A Citadel was never erected in it. It was used as a hotbed of blacksites and secret research facilities, as well as a transit zone for captured refugees.


The city of Odessa saw a gruesome month of trench warfare at the borders; The Resistance pressuring it via several bridge access points at once, while the Combine held onto its inland for dear life.

Meanwhile, further to the center, an all-consuming, strange new patch of Xen-festation was making its presence terrifyingly abundant. A fast-spreading, almost-alive biomass that spawned many hulking, destructive creatures attuned for an almost military purpose. The Synthetic Arm of Overwatch found itself constantly occupied with this distraction, diminishing their presence at the borders.

Lambda escalated their aid in the region, frequent supply drops & handout stations ensuring everyone was combat-ready and able to take on the Combine in equal terms.

This lead to the formation of multiple resistance cells and frequent patrols into the city that kept the Combine on their toes for much of their tour of duty in the region.

The being that called the Vortigaunt into the city had finally made itself known; An Alien Controller. A stray overseer from the Nihilanth's era, surviving this new age by building an army of Xenians in secret, as well as perpetuating the infestation it personally controlled. It made several attempts to send envoys and make peace offerings to the Vortigaunt and to ask them not to disrupt the growth of its 'natural war resources'.

While initially rejected due to the callousness of its methods, on the advisement of certain key Lambda figures and the Combine's recent successes in quelling its 'infestation', in addition to most of the city's refugees being driven out by shellings & anthrax bombings of unaffiliated mercenaries, The Vortigaunt reconsidered the Controller's offer and made a reluctant, begrudging pact with the creature; performing antlion husbandry on its behalf to grow its forces so that when the time came, it would engulf the city in flames.

Meanwhile, the Controller selectively established contact with the Combine forces. In exchange for providing them a 'data shard' to repair their corrupted AI, the Controller solicited Combine to capture & send enslaved vortigaunts to its own army. These slaves, back under their old master, were being made to perform the ancient duty of artificially constructing more Xen Warriors for the cause.

In the end, the creature's promised armageddon is exactly what came to pass; in addition to overrunning all Combine encampments with swarms of various aliens, the resulting cascade of consumption led to the appearance of Xenian rifts which began to consume the city whole, hurling entire buildilngs and roads into the vast stretches of the Borderworld itself, half of the city disappearing into some void in the blink of an eye, while in its place poured further reinforcements from the dimension over yonder. Odessa was now a den of gargantuan, otherworldly war-beasts, mobilized and standing at the ready for further expansion at a future time.

Each side made a hasty extraction; each played by the Controller for its own gain. Although the loss of Odessa was a defeat to the Combine in the strictest and clearest of terms, one would be hard pressed to consider it a victory for the Resistance in the same vein.

This lengthy journey of abandonment saw a scenic route through the outskirts of former Sofia, or as it is known today; the now-destroyed City 17. Portal storms continued to rage in the region, resulting in radioactive particle disruptions that lead to the emergence of 'cessation zones' - entire square miles where the laws of physics began to dismantle themselves, making the surface frequently uninhabitable. Anyone who wandered these accursed parts had to take shelter in the underground metro. This miserable transit point had to be endured by both sides, holding out for the simple hope that a light may yet be at the end of the tunnel, as they awaited word from their respective benefactors.


To be continued.

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

POST-UPRISING, PART 2

The world had begun to learn how to get by without its heroes. The resistance had started making a difference without Freeman, and coming into its own without Eli. Meanwhile, in absence of the Superportal, Combine remnants learned to pitch for smaller, more unstable Citadel networks; advancing alternatives in dimensional tunneling. If they couldn’t punch through Magnusson’s satellite, they’d go around it instead.


Nova Prospekt may have lit the match, but the blazes had moved westward. All eyes turned toward Sector 6, where the most functional Combine infrastructure remained for their immediate projects. Active fighters from all bearings were called to a critical rendezvous point in Europe, which grew in scale as each side escalated and counter-escalated its efforts; until the continent’s fate hinged on a single battle.

Where better to draw reinforcements from, then, than those who had seen the horrors of…


THE OUTSKIRTS OF CITY 17
(rp_metro_sf2)

Some arriving via razor train, others trekking through the coastal lines of Varna; all of them finding Sofia to be a suitable shelter point from the Controller’s exclusion zone expanding directly behind them. Now that its turbulence had descended into radioactive calm, there was nothing left for anyone here. Precisely the kind of refuge for those who exhibited desperation.

Particle storms, now a part of C17’s ecosystem, acted as a repellent to the rift created in Odessa, severely limiting the influence of that alien mastermind. This however, proved a multi-edged sword; getting in was as difficult as getting out, and those who attracted too much attention on the surface seemed to be swallowed up in one way or another; some would be overwhelmed by hostile forces of a new nature, others would simply disappear without explanation. Save for a select few resilient beasts and Combine Guards posted to contain their influence, every humanoid and post-humanoid soul would be trapped in the tunnels beneath.

This made supply lines a perpetual issue, and scarcity was felt on all ends. Each Lambda convoy that attempted to reach its allies would simply not make it to their destination, or would be found crashed asunder in the nearby perimeter and would have to be scavenged. A logistical decision was made to funnel only the essentials, and rarely at that, as one could lose so many smugglers before the expenditure became pointless; in the meantime, recent successes of these fighters in their ability to put up an appropriate challenge to the enemy had merited a mysterious reward - a replica of the infamous Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator, or the ‘Gravity Gun’, graciously gifted by the Resistance Science Team. This lesser imitation of an epochal weapon was inferior to the one wielded by Freeman, relying on a steady supply of Zero Point Crystals to maintain its function.

For Combine, who had come over-prepared with munitions and fabricators, waging war was hardly an issue. But they found themselves continuously short-staffed on the one resource that marked their classical neglect for humanity; food. In addition, they would rely on the activation and maintenance of several external outposts to have access to their specialized gear. And given their exposed nature, the labyrinthine layout of the environment was swiftly exploited by the resistance to conduct several successful raids.

The only means of survival that carried any consistency whatsoever were the independent traders who would make their occasional visit - experienced loners who had eked out a living by unconsciously understanding (or merely surviving via fortune and superstition) their post-uprising habitat. There also persisted a reclusive cluster of Vortigaunts who had begun natural experimentation with the surroundings, learning to produce reality-bending xenoherbal solutions that provided healing of most battlefield injuries at outlandish speed, but these were a rarer sight still, and their artifacts’ properties could only be unlocked by their own kin.

One such vortal mind arrived with distress to the nearby settlement, warning their allies of a kin suffering from indescribable agony (yet remaining perpetually alive) somewhere in the depths below. Being a connected species, the pain of one often transmitted to those nearby, and the unique condition of this ‘ill’ vortigaunt seemed to afflict their brethren over time, producing cracks of what might be called insanity in a wide area of effect. An expedition was urgently mounted to its source; an abandoned post-Soviet nuclear holdout by the name of Bunker 6.

Arrival to the location in question revealed an ugly history of recent use; Combine Infestation Control had taken shelter here in the wake of the initial Citadel disaster. Fearful of being persecuted as collaborators by unaffiliated survivors, they sought contact with their absentee overlords in a bid for some sort of help, if not reinforcements entirely.

The other end of the line was picked up by an organization known only as ‘External Development’. This cadre of contracted scientists were the foremost CMB specialists in string theory, and had come to the limelight for their ability to grapple with questions of quantum tunneling and teleportation, gleaned from decades-long spying efforts on the resistance. Taking advantage of the despondent workers, they forced an ‘agreement’ to a grotesque arrangement; pursue bioweapon projects and receive extraction upon success.


This had ended in a predictable manner.

Yet in spite of the total loss of the crew, there seemed to be a silver lining of success; and this very success proved to be the direct source of that incorporeal torment which kickstarted the expedition. Vortigaunts were some of the least compatible creatures for ‘zombification’, but inject them with a specific set of genetic sequences transmitted directly from a particular dimension, and suddenly, one gave way to a weakened immune system that allowed for semi-successful coupling with certain headcrab types. Overworld Science was a thing unto itself.

There was no time to study its constitution, nor its parasitic interface, nor its limited ability to tactically utilize nearby host bodies; a Vortigaunt Zombie could not be permitted any consciousness whatsoever. It was silenced upon discovery. And with that, the anguish of kin too had quieted. One merely had to hope never to experience it again.



Not long after, EX-DEV would make their first entry into the area. Alerted by the brief raid of their bunker, and wary of future scavengers stumbling on their ‘projects’, they would assemble the largest detachment Civil Protection could offer, pointing them in the direction of Bunker 6 to recover the final remaining specimen - the one note of success from their dark endeavor that, given recent events, they could no longer display patience in pursuing.




Operation KINGPIN turned out to be one of the most disastrous efforts undertaken by the garrison, second only to the suicidal charges made to rebel stations earlier that week. More than half of the dozen-or-more strong Protection Team had perished in the effort to capture the specimen in question; who was revealed to exhibit a kind of primitive intelligence that let it interface with and summon a large variety of Xen lifeforms from parts nearby. The creature, however, lived on limited endurance, and after exhausting itself in a potent effort to wipe out its pursuers, would finally relent to a set of shackles designed specifically to bring it to heel.


‘Kingpin’ was a fusion of several vortal minds, entangled in tandem to an artificially generated host body, consolidated and driven by parasitic instincts. All the hunger of an animal with the psychic potency of hyperconsciousness. A complex impression of intelligence in an otherwise primal creation. The few Vortigaunts who had direct encounters with it would collapse in immediate shock, whereas the human soldiers tasked with guarding it would merely experience a slow descent into insanity. Baby-sitting it was a hard job; it would not hesitate to search and trigger traumatic memories of those who antagonized it, nearly reversing several memory replacement procedures on the spot. Some had even considered killing it in captivity out of spite for the callousness of their EX-DEV peers, out of respect for the lives that were lost in the effort; but the implication of consequences provided an adequate enough deterrent in the moment.



The one recompense was the ability to summon its attacks on resistance holdouts, an action that would dwindle the guerillas’ scarce supplies day by day. Even so, by the time the specimen’s ‘owners’ had come to retrieve it; it was clear that a larger purpose was intended for the creature. Mere displacement of Xen fauna was an afterthought in the grand scheme of things, a toy-like ability for the small minded soldiers to play with at best. A mind connected to the fabric of reality itself had so much more to offer to the Combine; but such secrets remained on a need-to-know basis, and the silence on the project persisted as it was whisked away quietly, mere days later.


It was just then, that the treacherous ‘weather’ surrounding the area had begun to part. The waves of particle disruptions were carried elsewhere for a brief time. Unable to predict how long such respite would last, rescue teams flooded in with haste for all who remained in the increasingly uninhabitable zone, trains, razor and recycled alike, taking on board hordes of survivors, ready to see the light again.

Their destination..

What it had all been for.​

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

CITY 24
(rp_c24_v1)​

The Siege of Geneva had already been raging for a month. Lambda fighters from all over had answered the call to converge on one of the brightest jewels of Combine rule, for reasons romanticized and practical alike.

It was a simple encirclement; infantry and vehicular assets covered all roads and entrances in and out of the city, as well as monopolizing their knowledge of hidden entrances to smuggle people in and out as they saw fit. Air superiority within the city was conceded to CMB forces, but great care was taken to ensure that each supply convoy was rendered unable to aid the remnants.

The intent was to minimize engagements; to force a surrender once resources had dwindled beyond a certain point. It was a bold gambit that had its roots in the outcome that befell City 17; those who had survived the ordeal were dead-set on never repeating its mistakes again. Bringing down another Citadel was out of the question, no matter how beneficial, and equally, collateral destruction of the city was far from ideal.

But the ideal itself revealed its limitations in short order. There was a caveat to running a siege; without any supplies coming in or out, what remained of the population would find themselves dealing with starvation. The faltering civil authority had their advisorial mandate revoked, and were brutally replaced by the C24 Overwatch Security Council, a smaller entity who were more than happy to allow the coming famine to disgrace the city, and to ensure the world held Lambda responsible for its consequences. The ploy was easy to see, but nonetheless necessary to avoid.

The counter-response then, was to send in unaffiliated fighters from outside of the sector; in part to provide covert humanitarian measures to the population, in part as a way to undermine Combine operations from within.

One of the many consequences of the destruction of 17’s Citadel was the scrambling of the Anti-Citizen Registry, rendering each sector unable to communicate with one another about the criminal elements presiding on their side of the world; the independents who’d come in from Eastern Europe would have ample opportunity to re-register themselves in the system under a new name, their deeds against the regime unable to be traced, for now. They would blend into the latest influx of refugees running from destroyed parts of the city, headed straight for District 1, the center of operations and the last bastion of hope for Combine’s foothold in the area.

The Security Council, while vaguely aware of the threat, deliberately allowed this infiltration as a means to keep track of these suspected insurgents, as well as to forcefully employ them for infrastructural projects in the time that they posed as civilians. Without their supply lines, resources were limited, and the only victory attainable at present was to buy time; a veneer of civility worked to that end.

But it did not last. Fear; fear was the killer of schemes. Civil Protection, who feared the evident presence of disruptors in their midst, aggressively cracked down on their own populace. Resistance infiltrators, fearful of being apprehended, took to compromising themselves by firing the first shots. Within days, the feeble illusion of calm had evaporated into all-out war, as Combine forces’ desperate bid to maintain total control lead to intense counter-offensives which, while successful in curbing dissidents in the short term, nearly ran their dwindling stockpiles dry, and would cost them the battle within the week, had it proceeded at that pace.

Civility would have to be re-earned.

On March 27th, something most unexpected transpired; the oppressor called for a truce. This never-before seen display from the Combine, spearheaded by the Security Council, gave their enemies a mere 24 hours to assemble a diplomatic delegation with which an accord would be reached on ‘neutral’ grounds.

The negotiations were tense, brutal, and long. Nobody had ever considered that dialogue was possible with the alien colonizers. Nobody had thought they would ever listen; but the situation was clear. Without the Overworld, they had fallen from grace, placed in a position that necessitated speaking to their enemies on ‘equal’ grounds, much as it wounded their pride to do so.

Emphasis was placed on the rapidly growing problem of Xenfestation that remained neglected amid the war effort. Those who had fought and saw what became of Odessa had reason to sympathize. Those more idealistic still had reason to believe this may be the prelude to City 24’s unconditional surrender. Each sentiment played right into the Council’s hands, who had devised this careful gambit at the expense of their own ability to scorch the earth they were about to lose.

The terms agreed on were simple; a week-long respite from the fighting, along with mutual efforts to curb the sudden outbreak of their common pests.

On each side of the conflict, peace was accompanied by two great sources of disharmony; doubt, and scheming.

Tensions amid the resistance struck first, accusations of collaboration thrown at the feet of those who had negotiated and agreed to ceasefire; in time, this label became the go-to slander for those who appeared to wish a good rapport with their enemies’ leaders, and a reasonable end to the war. But such back-and-forths never escalated to violence; at the end of it all, the resistance knew its priorities, and its loose and lateral structure had allowed those with contrary ideas to independently undermine the treaty on their own accord, mostly by deliberately provoking their opposition to ceding territory under the threat of escalation.


The Combine did not have the luxury of resolving their differences in a natural manner. Their hierarchical nature denied the opportunity for dialogue between their various branches; The men and women of Civil Protection, in particular those who had been plucked from Sector 17, were far too disturbed by their experiences in the wastelands, far too bent on total war, far too personally invested in the defeat of their enemy, to peacefully bow to the realpolitik approach of their superiors; whom they had only started answering to for the past week. This was the moment in which their bond to their immediate field leaders would be tested against their links to their ultimate overlords. Accusations of betrayal were flung similarly at those who sought pragmatic, if not peaceful alternatives; ‘anti-citizen’ was their go-to. Eventually, these accusations justified a spontaneous coup attempt on the Council, which ended with catastrophic results for the instigators in Civil Protection, who had been wiped out effortlessly by the Elite Arm.

From there on, each side undermined the good faith of the other. Overwatch would kill and dispose of armed individuals in secret, covertly thinning the numbers of their opposition while pretending to abide strictly by the ceasefire. The resistance would hide lone instigators in their ranks, refusing to hand them over to Civil Protection by claiming ignorance of their whereabouts. Some rebels took advantage of the opportunity to peacefully scout the city for weaknesses. Others of Combine orientation held onto the barrels of Xen infestation in secret to gradually dispose of it in rebel territories.

There were two tangible, absolute positives of this great political experiment: Firstly, Xen intrusions were successfully curbed with patience and effort. Whatever happened to the city now, its victor would not be denied their spoils by the blight of infectious flora, and any who might take advantage of it. Secondly, and perhaps the most important - it provided the sole precedent from which future efforts at reconciliation and diplomacy would be deemed plausible. Those who sought alternatives to the war, on both sides, would look to what was attempted in City 24 as a proof of concept for years to come, embedding itself as part of the global mythos of a post-Combine world as the demand for peace grew with each passing month of bloodshed.

But for now, the attempt was a failure; the trickery and skepticism at play had subverted any chance at a continuation of talks. Some considered the endeavor to be a foolhardy diversion, others merely thought it was ahead of its time. In either case, its time was now past, and hostilities quietly resumed.

Lambda itself had used this interim to covertly evacuate all remaining civilians from the city, marking it as a soon-to-be danger zone and urging its abandonment. Most complied without struggle. Others, usually the die-hard conformists unable to let go of the end to their luxurious past, were often displaced by force, in the interest of their own safety. Very few had stubbornly remained despite it all, directly aiding the Combine as a specialized workforce of engineers; by then, the conscience of the siege leaders had cleared enough to permit final escalation under reasonable grounds.

This was the time for everything to be thrown into the fray. It was a time of naval bombardments, mass-armament and untold infrastructural damage. Geneva, no longer infested, was instead battered with collateral damage of intense conflicts, as residential blocks became the favored shootout locations, where the gamble of corridors and basest instincts decided the outcome of unpredictable clashes. The legend of ‘Restricted Block Six’ would persist into the future, its nearby housing block dubbed by descendants as the 'Casualty Complex', based on the description of an Ordinal in a mission report later recovered by resistance members.


The underground railroad established various stations on a fixed network within the nearby sewers, funneling supplies to parts unknown, as well as providing a means to continue the assault for local fighters. Their exposed position would make it easy for the Combine to conduct raids with the intent to destroy them; many of which were successful. Between reclaiming their track record of operational success, and the emergence of covert supply lines with which they were able to modestly resume fighting efforts, it seemed that Overwatch had not only achieved just retaliation for recent losses, but also appeared to have a real fighting chance at last.

But the bigger picture prevailed in the end, as the strategically questionable stations unveiled their purpose - almost overnight, Lambda undertook a surgical, multi-pronged invasion of the inner city, establishing forward posts from which their contracted allies would be able to take over the fighting and carry it to the final outcome. The vanguard of this daredevil exercise was Outpost Knapp, or colloquially known as ‘The Big Knapp’, named after one of the siege leaders from Lambda’s hastily assembled war rooms, inspired as a tasteless parody of the well known ‘New Little Odessa’.


In the meantime, as conflict drew to a close, local cell leaders were notified of a string of intercepted transmissions between the Security Council and the Advisors who presided in the dormant tower beside. A terrible purpose was unveiled; the reactivation of the Citadel was at stake, as well as a steady transfer of data from the palace, and a promise of ‘reinforcements’, although no external battalion was in sight.

This prompted the beginning of a conclusive assault, as the rebels raced against what little time they had left to disrupt a maneuver of which many weren’t privy to the details of. It took hundreds of bodies to be mercilessly thrown into slaughter, for any headway to be made into the palace.

Once the courtyard was breached, the writing seemed to be on the wall.




Until an old man’s voice reclaimed the loudspeakers it had become so synonymous with.



It could’ve been an apparition. It could’ve been an imitation. It could’ve been a body double. It could’ve been him in the flesh, surviving despite rumors. It could’ve been a hallucination at this point, exhaustion ever-present. Dr. Wallace Breen’s voice enveloped the urban center with a presence that almost seemed to bring all fighting to a mutual standstill, as those who hadn’t heard him speak in months and thought him a thing of the past, now had to look upward and reckon with him in the present.

His message struck some with grief, others with jubilation, none were left unscathed as he went about delivering the missive entrusted to him by His Benefactors with a characteristic roundabout-ness and familiarity. And the memorandum was as such: The Citadel had awoken at last.

Immediately, their grand project made its introduction, the culmination of months of planning, external developments and specialized clandestine networks. The Second Overworld Portal event transpired, producing a crack with which airborne reinforcements could pour from the CMB homeworld itself.

And then, cracks within cracks showed. The untenable gateway collapsed on itself. More than a half of incoming reinforcements were crushed between the dimensions, atomized in the rearrangement of space and time back to its standard parameters. Many of the rest weren’t able to enter at all. Less than 2% of the mobilized force had truly made it through.

Even such a miniscule number proved to be a considerable detachment of reinforcements. There were not only enough gunships in the air to cover the Combine forces’ extraction into the Citadel, but plenty enough to expand out into the continent and harass installations spanning the entire sector before finding their home at one Citadel or another. To say nothing of dropships which contained mysterious specimens, OVERWORLD-CLASS synthetics not seen since the Seven Hour War.

This was the persuasive debut of a terrifying future to come; these smaller scale, less stable ‘portals’ may not have been able to bring the full might of the alien enterprise to bear - their seven minute victory was no longer within reach. But given leeway, the unsteady flow of assistance could mean the extension of the conflict to seventy miserable years, if not longer. There was no doubting the ability of the Combine to prolong this struggle ad infinitum.

There remained only one question then, shared equally by those striving for liberation, as well as those wishing to insulate themselves from the ingenuity of these liberators.


“How does one take down a Citadel - safely?”

The answer lied in the Swiss Alps.


HL2RP² - SEASON 1​