Chapter 1: From the Ancient Wars to Black Mesa
Chapter Text
Bolded text indicates an alternate timeline.
The Dawn of Time – The Multiverse comes into existence as the Big Bang creates not one but several quantum realities. As time and probability become elements within these newborn universes, their timelines fracture into infinite quantum possibilities, which coalesce into new universes; thus does the new Multiverse become self-perpetuating, containing nearly all possible timelines in infinite combinations.
Nascent thermodynamics increase the complexity of these universes and their relationships to each other. Early in the Multiverse's existence, a dimension comes into being that serves as a bridge between all worlds—this “Borderworld” will someday be known as Xen, and it is home to uniquely exotic physical properties that make it a strange and unpredictable cosmos. As life develops in the various universes, Xen's connections to the Multiverse allows lifeforms to enter into it, often through technological means of teleportation but sometimes through random quantum events. The barren dimension becomes home to a sweeping, chaotic ecosystem made of the sum ejecta of trillions of worlds.
Among the species to develop advanced technology in the early history of one of the universes are the Arisians of Arisia. Their cultural development is mirrored on another plane of existence by the Eddorians of Eddore. While the Arisians dedicate themselves to the values of justice and compassion as they advance towards perfection, the Eddorians are driven by a need to conquer and consume other beings in order to enhance themselves. In their original universe the Eddorians are the masters of a vast empire known as the Combine (also called the Zan), which continually seeks to conquer other worlds and universes to drain their resources and enslave their people.
The dire moral opposition separating the Arisians and the Eddorians suggests that they are Mirror Universe counterparts of each other. For some reason, one natural phenomenon of the Multiverse is that some universes develop histories and cultures which mirror those of an adjacent universe, but with an almost totally inverted moral system. The histories of the Arisians and the Eddorians appear to be largely parallel, in that both races became the most powerful in their respective universe, save that the Arisians were historically motivated by altruistic notions and the Eddorians survived through selfish individualism. In time, the Eddorians will cross into the Arisians' universe, and the cultural friction between the two will prove deadly.
~2,000,000 BCE – The Arisians and the Eddorians meet when a galaxy in the “prime universe” the Eddorians have colonized passes through that containing Arisia. The two are almost immediately drawn into trying to destroy one another. Despite their vast technological and psychic powers, which have allowed both races to transcend physical form, neither is able to overcome the other. As both species have contributed to spreading life throughout the universe, they begin to use their vassal-species, those fostered by their ancient experiments, to fight each other on a series of proxy fronts. Among the species the Arisians have influenced are the reflective, fourth-dimensional Traflamadorians, the peaceful, curious Maians (also called the Asgard), and the wise, calculating Talosians. They are met on the Eddorian side by the greedy Sarmaks and the powerful and oppressive Nihilanths, who have each created their own servant-races. The Sarmaks, on one of their garden planets, have bio-engineered the humanoid Mor-Taxans, who perform tasks which the octopoid Sarmaks are unable to, while the Nihilanths, in addition to heavily modifying themselves, have created the reptilian Unggoy as slaves. These species battle against each other bitterly for millennia, under the flags of Arisia and Eddore.
The initial battles of the war are fought between foot soldiers of the various species, but in time, more terrible weapons are developed. Much of the war's intensification stems from both sides' free usage of genetic manipulation. Early on in the fighting, Mor-Taxan prisoners taken from Sarmak battalions are modified by the Traflamadorians into a reptilian-insectoid race known only as “Shock Troopers.” These Troopers are developed as a specifically anti-Mor-Taxan weapon, turning the strength of the Mor-Taxan horde against itself. The Sarmaks take revenge by infusing Traflamadorian DNA into the Mor-Taxans, creating a Mor-Taxan subspecies which possesses the fourth-dimensional senses of the Traflamadorians. However, the resultant race, the electricity-casting Vortigaunts, are seemingly born loyal to the Arisians. Their quantum-psychic link between each other, which they call the Vortessence, not only joins them to the benevolence of the Arisians, but it allows them to see a future in which Arisian victory is preferable for the universe. The Vortigaunts lead a rebellion against the Sarmaks and Nihilanths, but are soundly defeated by the latter; as punishment, the Nihilanths force the Vortigaunts into psychic slavery on their homeworld.
Following the conquest of the Vortigaunts, the Eddorian offensive grows more brutal as they unleash a variety of parasitic plagues on the galaxy. From a simple crustacean creature on the planet which will someday be called SR388, they create a species which instinctively seeks out humanoid entities and attaches to their cranial centers, using both infectious blood and an external nervous extension to take over the victim's body. The result is a helpless, half-conscious zombie under the crustacean's control. These dread parasites are known as Headcrabs. From the Headcrabs, the Eddorians also create the species which will be known as the Xenomorphs, the Goa'uld, and the Beta Portolan parasites, among others.
Seeking to push the potential of the Headcrabs even further, the Eddorians eventually create the Flood, a nigh-unstoppable fungus-like parasite which also zombifies its victims. Radioactive modification to Flood tissue allows the Eddorians to create the crown jewel of their army—a living planet made of Flood substance. This planet becomes sentient as a result of its congregated mass, and it begins to function as an enormous singular lifeform, asexually budding within itself and launching its buds, called Leviathans, into space. These Leviathans infect other worlds with the radioactive Flood substance, which becomes known as Phazon, due to its ability to phase between different planes of existence. In reflection of this, the sentient Flood planet becomes known as Phaaze.
The Eddorians also indirectly inspire threats to the universe. Word of the Combine reaches a planet inhabited by living machines, and somehow, the assimilationist creed of the Combine enters the data-consciousness of the machine-people, infecting them like a virus. These machines split into two groups, both focused on assimilation—one which is purely mechanical and reproduces by creating new members from inorganic materials; and one which joins with biological organisms and reproduces by forcibly converting other organics into similar cyborg entities. The former group becomes known as Replicators, while the latter are known as the Borg. In time, these species encounter the future Earth science probe known as Voyager 6, which has been brought into the distant past by a black hole. Sensing a kinship with the craft, the Replicators and the Borg repair the probe, and in doing so impart some of their assimilationist philosophies into the probe's computer. As a result of its long journey, the probe is nearly sentient, and the modifications the machine-people make to it give it computational abilities far beyond its original capacities. Voyager 6 becomes V'ger, a living thing, and in spite of the modifications made to its reasoning circuits, it retains its original mission: to join with its creator and share the knowledge it has obtained. V'ger departs the machine-planet, commencing its long, long journey back to Earth.
It is believed that V'ger, the Borg, the Replicators, or some combination thereof are responsible in some way for the creation of the machine race known as the Reapers, who are capable of taking mental control of sentient lifeforms and swaying them to their cause in a process known as “indoctrination.” The Reapers are known for slumbering for long periods of time, so that they may prey upon and assimilate cultures when they are at their technological apex.
To contain the spread of the Flood, the Borg, and other contaminants, the Arisian vassal-species band together to engineer a number of technological wonders for both defense and attack. One of these is an element which will eventually be called “Suspendium,” which can repel chronons and thus create areas of “frozen time.” Its widespread use as a delaying tactic by the Arisians leads to its distribution across many planets of the galaxy. There are also the Stargates, giant portals which allow near-instantaneous transport of supplies and personnel. The Stargates are a revolutionary technology, and their construction leads to the development of planet-sized Gates capable of transporting and focusing huge amount of radiation into destructive beams. These Halos, as the giant Gates are called, are used to destroy worlds irreparably infected with Phazon or the Flood. The Halos become a source of terror for the Eddorian factions, though the Arisians are unable to launch a direct Halo attack on Phaaze. Eventually, the Halos are refined into the planet-devouring Berserkers, giant mobile ships armed with heavy guns and a massive anti-proton beam wrapped into an invincible neutronium hull. The Berserkers fail to end the war due to their machine intelligences rebelling against their builders. The Berserkers begin wandering the galaxy, destroying any life they come across; the Arisians are able to destroy most of them, but some still exist even by the 23rd Century and beyond.
The Maians, who helped master the Halo and Berserker technology, use the new developments to devise a new tool, the Monoliths. These black spires are used to forcibly accelerate the evolution of species, in the hopes of eventually producing soldiers for the Arisian cause. This is apparently successful, as the Eddorians are forced to prioritize neutralizing the Maians to prevent the spread of further Monoliths; they mutate the Unggoy into a predatory species, the Skedar, who push the Maians out of the conflict by starting a deadly new war with them. In future years, the Maians will also be menaced by the Goa'uld and the Replicators, keeping them isolated.
The Eddorians corrupt the Monoliths, creating grotesque parodies of the Maian devices known as Red Markers. These Markers spread Flood contagion and can cause mental illness in sentient beings, similar to the indoctrination of the Reapers. The unfortunates who are infected by the Markers' contagion become known as Necromorphs. When enough Necromorphs exist in one area, they merge their mass together into intelligent plague-spheres known as Brethren Moons—they are called Moons because of several of them orbit around Phaaze. These Moons are capable of annihilating entire star systems, and so controlling the Necromorph plague becomes a priority for the Arisian forces.
The Eddorians' lust for victory leads them to create many other terrible monsters, such as the crustacean Gargans, burrowing Dholes, towering Cyberdemons, hypnotic Salt Vampires, and many more. By this point, the Eddorians are worshipped on many worlds as god-like beings known as the Great Old Ones. The Arisians, their dualistic foes, are immortalized as the Elder Gods, and worshipped as protectors against evil. By using magic and other forms of psychic rituals, some sentient beings are able to contact the Arisians, the Eddorians, and the many strange beings who serve under them; indeed, it even becomes possible for the people of the universe to physically summon representatives or aspects of these supernatural forces for various purposes. Numerous cults worshipping these various entities, empowered by the spells and weapons their gods and spirits grant them, crop up everywhere. The myths surrounding these beings which grow throughout the millennia have their seed not only in the fantastic abilities of the beings, but also in wartime propaganda spread across the galaxies by both factions. Also affecting the mythic status of these beings are their retroactive appearances in history, caused by the use of four-dimensional weapons during the war. Many of these entities are flung back in time by the war's destructive effects, thus causing the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods and others to appear much earlier in history than their points of origin.
Despite these time anomalies, and the waves of monstrous soldiers being sent from Eddore, Phaaze, and other planets, the Arisians inevitably gain the upper hand in the conflict. The Eddorians are forced to personally enter the conflict using host bodies. Just as the Sarmaks occasionally use the Mor-Taxans as hosts, the Eddorians harvest a group of hyper-evolved Sarmaks from a parallel timeline to use as bodies. These Sarmaks have become hugely powerful psychic entities known as Shu'ulathoi, or Advisors—they are dream-philosophers, creators of a psychic world sustained by their telepathy. The Eddorians are able to infest them by becoming living bad ideas within their dream, becoming known as “Grey Men”; in this guise, they irrevocably poison the Shu'ulathoi's mind-web. Eddorian Advisors become the field commanders of their faltering armies, bolstering their forces with their vast psychic abilities. However, their armies increasingly find themselves banished to celestial prisons, Xen, or other, more hellish dimensions. By this point, the Arisians have joined forces with other noble races, such as the the N'kren, the Alimbics, the Organians, and more.
In the end, the Eddorians forces are routed—their factions are broken and dispersed across the universe. This has the unfortunate side-effect of leaving dozens of planets at least partially infested with Headcrabs and other degenerate spawn, such as Shoggoths and Bullsquid. Young planets like Earth become sanctuaries for scorned and exiled beings such as the Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith. Uneasy peace becomes the new status quo as the enemy is acknowledged as defeated but not destroyed.
Before the Arisians can move on Eddore, the planet suddenly vanishes—it has been teleported back to its original universe, so its people may bide their time.
~1,000,000 BCE – The trauma of the Arisian-Eddorian war prevents the scattered alliance-species of the Arisians from maintaining their cohesion after the conflict's end. Many of them are simply too exhausted to do anything other than attempt to heal their shattered homeworlds. The Traflamadorians and the Talosians become distant and apathetic, abandoning their wartime promises to liberate the Vortigaunts. Talosian society degenerates until a nuclear war breaks out, devastating the surface of their world Talos IV and forcing the mutated survivors into underground cities. The Maians are left stranded in their war against the Skedar, Goa'uld, and Replicators, though some of them are able to explore the universe, creating numerous accounts of “Grey”-type aliens.
Left without a purpose, the Shock Troopers who were bred from the Mor-Taxans flee into another dimension, where they end up creating a vast pirate cooperative called Race X, which will prove to be a menace and pestilence upon many worlds. Members of the reptilian Gorn throw in with them, as do the sentient worm colonies known as the Mgalekgolo. It is not unknown for Race X crews to include renegade Sarmaks or half-mad Talosians as well.
The Arisians are aware the Eddorians are continuing to build their empire in other universes, but are unable to stop them due to the effective collapse of their army. They are forced to formulate a backup plan, and begin consulting the technology created during the war for answers.
They quickly determine that the Maian Monoliths represent the best possible hope for raising a new force against the Eddorians. They elect to use Earth as their laboratory, and begin working on using the Monoliths to influence its primitive human species. Eventually, they begin selecting and manipulating specific bloodlines among humanity, who they invest periodically with mutant genes and Monolith-energies intended to enhance their psychic potential. In the end, they hope each of these beings will help deal fatal blows to the Eddorians' Combine Empire. The families will eventually be known as Freeman, Shephard, Kinnison, Savage, and Walker.
During this time, some of the Eddorians' former servants attempt to take advantage of their masters' hobbled condition. The Nihilanths stage a rebellion against the Combine, leading an army of Vortigaunts and Unggoy against Eddore. This proves disastrous; the offensive is a failure, and the Nihilanth homeworld is destroyed and its people hunted down and exterminated. In an effort to save their species, the Nihilanths agree to yield the majority of their authority and psychic power to a single specimen of their race, who will be the sole surviving Nihilanth. The others will be reduced to diminished “Controllers,” beings of lesser psychic power who are subservient to and dependent on the surviving Nihilanth. Even thus empowered, the last Nihilanth is unable to stand against the Combine—he is captured and vivisected, partially converted into one of their cyborg “synths.” He is able to escape, but is forced to flee from dimension to dimension in a desperate attempt to escape his race's former overlords. The teleporters built by his Vortigaunt slaves eventually bring him and his forces to Xen, where they find a degree of safety. They use a trio of powerful alien moths known as “Telnorps” to create a psychic seal that keeps the Combine forces out of Xen. The Nihilanth dreads the loss of these Telnorps as it will spell the beginning of the end of his safety in the Borderworld.
~400,000 BCE – Ancestors of the Kinnison and Savage families are present at Atlantis, a technologically advanced human civilization made possible by Arisian influence. Atlantis, the first of many nations to bear such a name, is destroyed due to the manipulations of Gharlane of Eddore, who will continually interfere in the Arisians' experiments on Earth in many guises. One of these guises is that of the Outer God Nyarlathotep.
During his sabotage of Atlantis, Gharlane captures several hundred human specimens, and takes them to the extradimensional planet Stroggos for experimentation. Over the millennia, the Eddorians breed a clone army of “Stroggs,” monstrous human synths born of a fusion of flesh and technology.
The being known as L'mur-Kathulos, the ruler of the Atlantean colony of Lemuria, leads a group of his followers into an underground colony. Over the years they will mutate into the demon-like Teff-Hellani.
~300,000 BCE – The Arisians build a new Atlantis on Earth, but they are forced to remove it from the planet when they enter into a war with the Wraith, who once served the Eddorians. This Atlantis will be rediscovered by humanity during the Atlantis Expedition, which includes a member of the Shephard family.
~24,000 BCE – The city of Mu, a colony of Atlantis, is menaced by the Teff-Hellani, who emerge from underground after thousands of years. The Muan king Tsoo-Ahs repels the Teff-Hellani assault but the mutants escape Earth in a spaceship. Tsoo-Ahs' people give chase, and the two end up inhabiting separate planets in a star system near to Earth's. According to some historians, the name “Tsoo-Ahs” was corrupted to “Zeus” over the years, while “Teff-Hellani” became the root word for “devil.” (Modern etymological evidence almost entirely refutes these claims.)
~18,000 BCE – The latest civilization to be known as Atlantis comes to an end, like all its predecessors. This commences what historians know as Earth's Hyborian Age. One of the last Atlanteans, Kull, lives an adventurous life during this time. This may also be the era in which an ancestor of the Shephard clan, Haita, lives. Haita is a worshipper of Hastur, a name which has been applied to members of both the Arisians and the Eddorians. Hastur will be worshipped and feared for millennia on Earth, under such names as the King in Yellow, the Suzerain, the Mind-Flayer, Slenderman, the Bye-Bye Man, and others.
~10,000 BCE – Conan of Cimmeria, an ancestor of the Kinnison family and probable descendant of Kull, has adventures.
A human species from a doomed parallel dimension known as Garternay “Links” to a series of subterranean caverns below New Mexico. They build a city in the cavern and start calling themselves the D'ni, which means “New Beginning” in their language. On Garternay, the D'ni were masters of “the Art,” a form of writing which created books which led to parallel universes, which they called “Ages.” These “Linking Books” allow the D'ni to establish a Multiversal empire across countless Ages, an empire built on the back of slaves. Early on in their new life on Earth, the D'ni meet a Vortigaunt subspecies known as the Bahro, who can Link without the use of books. Jealous of this talent, the D'ni enslave the Bahro, and use their unique talents to expand their ambitions further. While the D'ni spread throughout the Ages, they do not generally explore Earth, with only a few rare individuals ever leaving the cavern to pass up to the surface.
In the Andromeda galaxy, the Vedran Empire emerges on the planet Tarn-Vedra. The Vedrans are among the first post-war species to develop warp drive, which they call “Slipstream.”
~5000 BCE – The Eddorians, likely aware of the Arisians' experiments, begin infecting certain specimens of humans with a genetic virus that transforms them into nigh-unkillable blood-drinking monsters—the first vampires. One of their initial subjects, Lilith, has a child with a mortal man named Adam. This child, Kane, will murder his half-brother Abel and be cursed by a mad god with immortality (at least according to his account). Kane is the ancestor of several bloodlines which occasionally produce naturally long-lived offspring; these include the Carter, Blake, McCarty, Rogers, Kim, van Winkle, and Kinnison families, among others. One theory regarding the immortality of Kane and his descendants is that Kane's genetics are encoded with Suspendium, which becomes active upon a certain age or the reception of a certain physical trauma. This Suspendium prevents chronon particles from interfering with the immortal's tissues, though it does not freeze the immortal in question in time, as they can move their bodies freely and influence events.
1378 BCE – 22 nd Century time-traveler Sam “Serious” Stone searches ancient Egypt for Arisian artifacts to aid his contemporaries in their fight against the evil Mental.
54-68 CE – Ancestors of the Kinnison and Savage families live in Rome during the reign of Nero. Nero is a guise of Gharlane of Eddore.
1536 CE – Christopher Walker, part of the Walker bloodline cultivated by the Arisians, becomes the Phantom. His descendants will take on this guise in his wake, creating the myth of an immortal “Ghost Who Walks.”
1744 CE – The D'ni writer known as Veovis destroys the city of D'ni with a plague, due to his people's willingness to allow a surface-dweller named Anna to marry into their society. The D'ni people are wiped out across their Ages, but Anna and her half-D'ni son, Gehn, survive and escape. Gehn becomes obsessed with the D'ni and learns the Art, but he oppresses the people of the Ages he Links to, which he believes to have created, rather than simply accessed.
1772 CE – New York Dutchman Rip van Winkle, a descendant of Kane, falls into a twenty-year slumber, during which he does not age.
1773 CE – Gehn's son Atrus rebels against his father on Gehn's Age of Riven, which Gehn rules as a dictator. Atrus believes that the D'ni Art should be used for creativity and scientific knowledge, not for exploitation. He escapes with one of Gehn's Rivenese servants, a woman named Katran. Atrus and Katran marry and have two sons, Sirrus and Achenar. The family lives in peace on Myst Island, an Age written by Katran and Atrus' grandmother, Anna. In escaping to Myst from Riven, Atrus allowed his Myst book to fall into the Star Fissure, a dimensional flaw in Riven's surface caused by Gehn's brutal devastation of Riven's ecosystems. The Star Fissure leads somewhere , but where, exactly, Atrus does not know.
1790-1796 – The events of Frankenstein take place.
1792 – Sir Percy Blakeney, an Englishman, takes on the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel to rescue people during the French Revolution. Sir Percy is a descendant of Kane, and some of his descendants will carry Kane's immortality gene. One of the members of Sir Percy's League of the Scarlet Pimpernel is his Polish cousin, Wilhelm von Blazkowicz. The Blakeneys and the von Blazkowiczes have a history of intermarriage.
In America, Rip van Winkle awakens from his slumber, and has a number of misadventures before falling into another long sleep.
~1800 – Zepheniah Mann, an Englishman saved from the French guillotine by the Scarlet Pimpernel, founds Mann Co., a company specializing in construction and weapons supply. Mann Co. will prove to be one of the longest-lasting corporations of its kind in human history, going through many complex stages of existence in its lengthy lifespan.
1806 – A Spanish explorer in New Mexico finds Atrus' Myst Linking Book, which fell to Earth via the Star Fissure. He Links to Myst and discovers that Atrus has been betrayed by his sons, who have imprisoned Atrus in D'ni and their mother Katran on her home Age of Riven. Sirrus and Achenar have accidentally trapped themselves on Atrus' Prison Ages of Spire and Haven. The brothers communicate with the explorer (known only as “the Stranger”) and encourage him to visit each of the Ages of Myst—Channelwood, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic—to recover pages of their books so that they can escape. The Stranger finds the D'ni Linking Book and speaks with Atrus, who warns the Stranger not to trust his sons. Having uncovered evidence that Sirrus and Achenar were sadistic murderers, the Stranger trusts Atrus, and brings a missing page of his Myst book to D'ni so that he can return to Myst. Atrus destroys Sirrus and Achenar's prison books, but this does not kill them, and they will return later.
Because of his ability to solve the puzzles of Myst, Atrus requests that the Stranger goes to Riven to imprison his father Gehn and save Katran. The Stranger Links to Riven, and after losing and recovering the prison book he meant to use to trap Gehn, he manages to trick the warlord into becoming trapped in the book. He then rescues Katran from her prison on Riven, and reopens the Star Fissure to inform Atrus of his success. Atrus arrives and rescues Katran, allowing the Stranger to fall into the Fissure, knowing that it will take him back to the place that he came from.
1812 – The events of Myst III: Exile take place. Atrus faces the wrath of Saavedro, a man who was victimized by Sirrus and Achenar.
1816 – The events of Myst IV: Revelation take place. Sirrus and Achenar escape from Atrus' prison Ages and threaten the life of their younger sister, Yeesha.
1850 – Zepheniah Mann dies, and his sons Blutarch and Redmond commence a long-lasting rivalry for control over Mann Co. Blutarch's half of the company becomes the construction-based Builders League United (BLU), while Redmond's branch is the antithetically destructive Reliable Excavation Demolition (RED). The two teams become known for training vast legions of mercenaries, mostly for the purpose of fighting each other.
Both companies develop several shell corporations and auxiliary branches to finance their primary businesses. RED becomes notable for founding Arbeit Laboratories, an early predecessor to the enterprises of Thomas Edison.
1853 – Isaac Shephard, a descendant of Haita the Shephard, founds the town of Shephard's Glen in Maine. Shephard's Glen exchanges many cultural traditions with its close neighbor of Silent Hill.
1858 – Django Freeman, a Black American slave who is part of the Freeman family cultivated by the Arisians, fights back against the cruel slavers who separate him from his wife, Broomhilde von Shaft. Though not documented in the cinematic adaptation of his fight for freedom, Django ends up saving an enslaved family from a cruel slaveowner called Vance. The people Freeman saved will be the ancestors of Eli and Alyx Vance.
A young Italian immigrant witnesses Freeman's journey, and is so inspired by him that he changes his own name to Django.
After the events of Django Unchained, Django and Broomhilde Freeman move to California, where they have twin sons, Rogan and Raymond. Soon after their children are born, disaster strikes. A racist gang led by a man named Jackson attacks the Freeman household, and Django and his wife are overwhelmed and kidnapped for their purpose of selling them back in slavery. While the pair eventually fight their attackers off, they believe that their children were murdered, and are left grieving. In truth, young Raymond is carried off by one of Jackson's men, while Rogan is left to die. He is discovered by a 13-year-old white boy named Richard Henry Savage, who, like Rogan, is part of one of the bloodlines of the Arisians (albeit a distant relative of the “main” line). Rogan is adopted by the Savage family, and becomes one of Richard's closest companions, believing his whole life that his parents were murdered.
Raymond Freeman grows up with more knowledge of his background than his brother. His kidnapper stole a pendant from Broomhilde Freeman containing her birthname, and so Raymond grows up using the name Raymond Shaft. Raymond is raised by some of the men who kidnapped him, which sets him up for a life of crime.
1861-1865 – The American Civil War takes place. Jackson, who attacked the Freemans, attains the rank of Major. After the end of the War, he founds a KKK-like organization of hooded racial terrorists known as the Red Shirts.
Virginian John Carter also fights for the Confederacy. John Carter is an immortal, who has lived longer than even he can remember. He becomes a prospector.
1866 – While prospecting, John Carter is transported to Mars, which is inhabited by a variety of intelligent races. These Martians call their world Barsoom. Carter defeats the false gods of Mars and becomes the ruler of Barsoom, Jeddak of Jeddaks, with his Princess, Dejah Thoris. With Dejah Thoris he has several children and grandchildren, who have adventures on Barsoom into at least the mid 20 th Century.
1867 – The mysterious Western gunfighter known as Paladin begins his adventures. In the course of his life, Paladin has several encounters with prison chaplain Robert April, whose same-named descendant will be the first Captain of the 23 rd Century's USS Enterprise .
1871 – Richard Henry Savage and Rogan Freeman begin traveling the world, setting out for Egypt. Rogan proves to be a clever and able individual for a thirteen-year-old—as does his brother Raymond. At thirteen, Raymond has risen up to an impressive rank in a Mexican gang, where he is now known as Ramon. One of the members of the gang, a woman named Ophelia Price, is a secret member of the Church of Starry Wisdom, which worships the Great Old Ones. She initiates young Ramon into the Church, and over the years, Ramon attains a high rank there as well. He becomes a member of the Cabal, the Church's inner circle, and gains access to many dark secrets of the cosmos.
1874 – Richard Henry Savage returns to California, and he and Rogan part ways when Rogan decides to become a lawman in New Mexico. Rogan is unaware that his birthname is Freeman, and so he has taken the name Rogan Black. Soon, Richard Henry Savage is tasked with hunting down the infamous Ramon.
1876 – 18-year-old Rogan Black has become Sheriff of Redrock Creek. He goes out after the infamous Ramon after his gang attacks and destroys a nearby town, wounding Colonel Richard Savage in the process. Rogan discovers that Ramon is his long-lost brother, and is forced to kill him after failing to bring his twin back to sanity. Secretly, Ramon is resurrected by the Cabal to serve them from beyond the grave. He abandons his old identity, choosing instead the name of Caleb, a near-anagram of “Cabal.”
In the course of his adventures Rogan passes through the Wild Horse Mine, which sits at the foot of the towering Black Mesa for which the region is named. The Mine will eventually become the building site of the Black Mesa Research Facility, where Rogan's descendant Gordon Freeman will meet his fate. Rogan also encounters a man who is familiar with the Telnorp moths of Xen, indicating that perhaps there was crossover between Xen and New Mexico even before the Black Mesa Incident.
Shortly before his death, Ramon/Caleb had an affair with a woman under his old name of Raymond Shaft. The child born of that union is an ancestor of John Shaft.
1878 – The events of Django take place. Django destroys Major Jackson's Red Shirt gang as vengeance for Jackson killing his lover Mercedes Zaro. He also seeks to avenge the attack on Django and Broomhilde Freeman.
Colonel Richard Henry Savage investigates Django's attack on Jackson's gang and discovers that the Freemans who Django was avenging were the parents of his friend Rogan Black. He reveals this information to Rogan and helps him regain his birthname of Freeman. Shortly thereafter, Rogan Freeman marries young Annie Calhoun from Redrock Creek, and fathers a son, Jacob.
1880s – The events of Nostromo take place. The legend of Nostromo (aka Giovanni Fidanza) will inspire a Weyland-Yutani engineer in the 22nd Century to name one of their ships after him.
The events of the 1931 Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein take place, centering around Henry Frankenstein, a descendant of Victor. Frankenstein works with the mysterious Dr. Septimus Pretorius. (See also Son of Frankenstein and related films.)
1881 – Western outlaw Henry “Billy the Kid” McCarty is apparently killed. In truth, Billy is an immortal, and he secretly recovers from his seemingly-fatal injuries. His brush with death (as well as a harrowing battle with one of the vampires known as Count Dracula) convinces him to give up crime to help people instead. He adopts the alias Billy Carson, and battles crook throughout the West with a variety of sidekicks.
The events of A Study in Scarlet take place; the account of these events which appears six years later is the first of many by Dr. John Watson recording the life of Sherlock Holmes.
1886 – Nick Carter, an immortal relative of John Carter, starts working as a detective.
1890 – The events of Heart of Darkness take place.
1891 – The events of Dracula take place.
1893 – Sexton Blake, a descendant of Percy Blakeney, becomes active as a detective. He will eventually move into Sherlock Holmes' old rooms at Baker Street with his assistant Tinker. Blake and Tinker are immortals, and so remain active for many decades.
1894 – American scientist Abednego Danner experiments on his unborn son, Hugo, giving him a serum which will make him extraordinarily strong and durable. Hugo Danner will grow up able to lift boulders, leap an eighth of a mile, and resist the explosion of bursting shells.
1896 – The events of The Island of Dr. Moreau take place. Dr. Moreau conducts experiments to transforms animals into humans.
1898 – John Carter and his family are forced to fight a bloody war against an invading force of Sarmaks, who emerge from a distant part of the galaxy. They fend them off, but Barsoom was only a stepping stone towards Earth. This is discovered early by a man named Cave, who witnesses the Sarmak departure of Barsoom through a crystal egg, a Sarmak spying device made from Xen crystal left deposited on Earth. The Sarmaks who travel to Earth land in England, and with the aid of their Tripod walkers, heat rays, black smoke, and other weapons, they begin slaughtering as many humans as they can find. They also have Mor-Taxan slaves with them, but these Mor-Taxans are crushed to death by Earth's gravity, being ill-bred for a planet Earth's size. The British Army is unable to stop the attackers and thousands are left dead across the country. Eventually, the “Martian” invasion comes to an end not through military force but because the Sarmaks prove vulnerable to Earth's diseases. England works hard to recover from the invasion, and the world governments agree to cover up the incident as much as is possible. A broad network of secret intelligence groups are set up worldwide to protect the public from knowledge of extraterrestrials, ostensibly to prevent panic and social collapse. Propaganda is widely disseminated which stigmatizes belief in aliens.
Less disastrously, the events of Django Strikes Again play out in South America.
1901 – Mr. Cave, who foresaw the “Martian” invasion of Earth via one of the Sarmak crystal eggs, moves to America to escape the devastation of England. He marries a woman named Johnson. Their son, Cave Johnson, is the future founder of Aperture Science.
Selwyn Cavor, an amateur scientist, discovers “Cavorite,” an antigravitational element. He and a friend, Arnold Bedford, use Cavorite to travels to Earth's moon, which they are surprised to discover contains air bubbles due to oxygen-producing lunar flora. The moon is also inhabited by animal life—specifically, the aggressive ant-like Selenites, who take the two men prisoner. Bedford escapes to Earth without Cavor, and though he dreads a Selenite invasion, it never comes. The fate of Professor Cavor and the Selenites will not be known for over sixty years.
1908 – Two men uncover a journal from a ruined house in Ireland, written by an old man who once lived in the house. The journal reveals that the man found a portal to Xen on the grounds of his house, a portal which was once exploited by sinister occultists (presumably the Church of Starry Wisdom, or a sister organization). The old man was harassed and ultimately killed by a horde of swine-like monstrosities from the Borderworld, and the house was reduced to its current state. The occultist Carnacki reported at least one encounter with similar swine-like demons, indicating further intrusions outside of the house. (See also the spirit known as “Jodie” who haunted the infamous DeFeo House in Amityville, New York.)
(Through Xen, these swine-things would have access to many dimensions, and thus it is possible that one of them is the origin of the demon-king Ganon who menaced the kingdom of Hyrule.)
1908-1913 – Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee is sent on an astounding and terrifying journey through time by the alien Yithians, who seize control of his body from across the eons.
1909-1919 – Herbert West, a descendant of the Frankensteins, develops his “reagent” which allows him to reanimate the dead. Unfortunately, the subjects of the reagent come back as horrible flesh-eating monsters. West meets a horrible fate at the hands of his experiments, a fact reported to the world by his assistant Daniel Cain.
1914 – World War I breaks out. Hugo Danner goes to fight under the French Foreign Legion, using his super-strength and durability to the Legion's advantage.
Also fighting in the War is Ralph Kinnison, part of the Kinnison bloodline sired by the Arisians.
1920 – Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, assisted by Dr. Edward Pretorius (a descendant of the Pretorius who aided Henry Frankenstein), invents the Resonator, a device which stimulates the human pineal gland and allows one to glimpse other dimensions. Unfortunately, this unleashes supernatural forces on the pair, transforming them into monsters and eventually killing them. One of Crawford's victims in his monstrous state is a man named Dr. Bloch, a relative of the Blake family. The Resonator, mercifully, is destroyed.
Crawford Tillinghast leaves behind a daughter, who marries a man named Rosenberg. Their son, Stanley Rosenberg, uses aspects of his grandfather's Resonator designs to build the Anti-Mass Spectrometer which will be used at Black Mesa.
1925 – Hugo Danner makes a post-War return to his hometown of Indian Springs, Colorado, and is reunited with his young love, Anna Blake (a relative of Sexton Blake). The two share an amorous encounter which leaves Anna pregnant. She gives birth to twin sons, Arnold and Donald Blake. Both of them will possess a portion of their father's superhuman abilities. Anna marries a businessman named Munro, and the boys grow up under that surname.
1926 – Randolph Carter, a student of the occult and great-nephew of John Carter, journeys into the Dreamlands, a psychic dimension connected to Earth via Xen.
1927 – The events of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” take place.
Mining engineer and World War I vet Anthony Vico “Buck” Rogers is knocked unconscious by cave gas, and enters a form of suspended animation. The gas is in fact a form of Suspendium that activates Rogers' immortality gene. Like Rip van Winkle, Rogers' immortality is marked by long periods of sleep, wherein his body is perfectly preserved even without food, water, or air. He slumbers in the cave for decades before he is found.
1927-1949 – The American adventurer Dr. Clark Savage Jr., known as “Doc,” is active. Savage is a distant relative of Colonel Richard Henry Savage, being part of the “main” Savage bloodline created by the Arisians. Doc possesses the bronze skin and dark, gold-flecked eyes that identify his descendants even centuries later.
1928 – Ranulf Shephard (a descendant of Isaac Shephard) is a Massachusetts-born student of the occult who is friends with mystic scholar Sir Henry Fortescu. One night, Shephard goes to visit Sir Henry at his home in Arkham and finds that he has been kidnapped by the Church of Starry Wisdom. While investigating Sir Henry's country house, Shephard encounters Caleb, aka the undead Ramon Freeman. Years prior, Caleb was betrayed by the Cabal, and has been seeking revenge on them ever since. Realizing that the two organizations they seek are the same, Shephard and Caleb join forces, launching attacks on one of the Church's chapels, and on the Church's base in Innsmouth. The Innsmouth incident leads them to wiping out the Finucciaro crime family in Arkham, who has been buying occult artifacts from the Cabal. They next proceed to the town of Dunwich, boarding a train known as the “Phantom Express” to do so—the train is infested with monsters. In Dunwich they discover horrible experiments committed by a man named Whateley. Whateley has summoned the Outer God Yog-Sothoth to Earth and forced his wife to breed with it, spawning both the murderous humanoid Wilbur Whateley, and the invisible, non-human “Dunwich Horror.” Using a special potion, the two gunslingers manage to slay Whateley's invisible, nameless spawn. Next, directed by a note in Whateley's house, the adventurers head to a mine in the Arctic north, where they battle and destroy the monstrous spider Shial. Then, at a dam in Canada, they confront Cerberus, a high-ranking monster in the Cabal, and destroy it in a brutal battle.
As this is happening, a young girl named Catherine Langford and her father witness the uncovering of a Stargate left in Egypt millennia ago by the Goa'uld. Catherine will ultimately dedicate her life to studying the Stargate and trying to operate it.
During the Langfords' study of the Stargate, they uncover another set of ruins, which do not appear to be of the same origin as those surrounding the Stargate. These ruins are part of a city built by the Yithians. It is a near-mirror of the Yith city of Pnakotus in Australia, and like that city it contains numerous specimens of alien life, including the Flying Polyps which threatened the Yithians' survival. Ranulf Shephard and Caleb arrive and rescue the Langford expedition from the Polyps and other monstrosities that spill out of the city. The pair enter the city and discover an active time-portal, which sends them back millions of years to when the Yithians were still alive. They battle their way through the city and reconfigure the portal to take them back to the present at the coordinates of the sunken city of R'lyeh, which has risen from the sea as the Church awakens its dark inhabitant.
The two battle through R'lyeh, where they learn that the leader of the Cabal, and the man ultimately responsible for Caleb's rejection from the cult, is Sir Henry himself. Ranulf kills his former friend while Caleb faces down Great Cthulhu, whom he worshipped as Tchernobog. In a fierce battle, Caleb destroys Cthulhu/Tchernobog's mortal avatar, casting him back into the void and sending R'lyeh back under the sea. Ranulf escapes the sinking city, but of Caleb, there is no sign.
Unfortunately, Ranulf's dire warnings about the existence of ancient alien monstrosities on Earth are disregarded, and he becomes a prisoner of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Shortly thereafter, his mangled corpse is found in his locked cell, torn apart by an unknown force.
The defeat of Cthulhu attracts the attention of the Outer God known as Shub-Niggurath, who begins raising an army of monstrosities to take revenge on humanity.
Ranulf leaves behind a son, who will become the father of Adrian and Mitchell Shephard.
1929 – The events of At the Mountains of Madness take place. William Harper Littlejohn, an associate of the adventurer Doc Savage, has horrifying encounters with the Elder Things in Antarctica.
The events of the 1931 Dracula take place. The realtor Redfield (not to be confused with Renfield from the 1891 Dracula case) is an ancestor of Chris Redfield of STARS. (See also The Return of the Vampire , Dracula's Daughter , and related films.)
World War I veteran Kent Allard becomes the gunslinging vigilante known as The Shadow.
Scientist Andre Delambre successfully invents localized teleportation with his “telepods.” Unfortunately, as a result on an experiment on himself, he mutates into a fly-human hybrid with murderous instincts. He is released from his torment when his head is crushed in a heavy machine press.
1930 – Bill Lowry becomes the Western hero known as the Durango Kid.
1931 – Jacob Freeman, the son of Rogan Freeman, is shocked when his son Henry and his daughter-in-law Francine Troop are killed in an accident, orphaning their eight-year-old sons, Freddy and Christopher. He makes an agreement with the boys' other grandfather, Daniel Troop (son of ship captain Disko Troop), that he will take in Freddy if Daniel takes care of Christopher.
1932 – Superman, who may have some sort of connection to Hugo Danner, becomes active in Cleveland. He maintains a secretive existence, and is commonly believed to be a fictional character.
1933 – Dr. Guntag Asch-Borghelm, one of the men who trained Doc Savage, commences a project in the Dreamlands to connect Earth-children to the Dreamlands' mystical “Thunderchildren”—superpowered homunculi with abilities similar to those of Hugo Danner. Their origin, unlike Danner's, is magical, at least insofar as the physical laws of the Dreamlands are like magic. The speaking of a ritualized word can cause a Thunderchild and the host-child to interchange places between the dream world and reality. The prototype for the project is Mickey Moran, a British boy who is transformed into the hero Marvelman by the word “Kimota.” Further tests on Richard Dauntless and Johnny Bates, turning them into Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman respectively, also seem successful. However, within the Dreamworld simulations, the team begins to fall apart due to psychological issues. Mickey Moran is the grandson of the infamous Colonel Sebastian Moran, enemy of Sherlock Holmes, and grew up in an abusive home. Johnny Bates is a cousin of the American Norman Bates, whose family has a long history of psychosis. Both boys become violent the more they change back and forth between their alternate selves. Asch-Borghelm is forced to terminate the Marvelmen, and tries to come up with a more stable simulation in which to contain his specimens. He kidnaps an American newsboy, Billy Batson, and poses as a wizard called Shazam, weaving a story about the boy having a great destiny. “Shazam” becomes the magic word that allows Billy to become the superpowered Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel begins fighting crime while Billy becomes a radio reporter; he is unaware that his nemesis, Dr. Sivana, is actually “Shazam” in disguise. Having viewed Doc Savage as a failed weapon, Asch-Borghelm hopes to eventually use Captain Marvel to seize power. At “Shazam”'s behest, Captain Marvel works secretively and, like Superman, is believed by most to be a fictional character.
Given Asch-Borghelm's access to such anachronistically advanced technology and occult knowledge, it is believed that he is an incarnation of Gharlane of Eddore, though it is possible he is simply a human agent of the Eddorians.
Western hero Ken Williams battles against the deadly costumed villain known as the Rattler.
Rip van Winkle reawakens from his slumber, and upon exploring urban New York encounters The Shadow's assistant, Thelda Blanchet. The two share a sexual encounter which leaves Thelda pregnant. The child is adopted by Kent Allard and his assistant Margo Lane (whom Thelda was known to pose as), and raised under the name Kent Lane. Van Winkle ends up returning to sleep after his run-in with Thelda.
1934 – Superman fights the Barney Calhoun Gang. Calhoun is the nephew of Rogan Freeman and his wife Annie. His grandson, also named Barney Calhoun, will be of better character than his grandfather. The Calhouns are cousins of the Fifes of Mayberry.
1935 – Billy Batson is reunited with his long-lost sister Mary, raised by the Bromfield family. He gives her some of Captain Marvel's power, giving her the ability to turn into Mary Marvel.
Robert Blake, a relative of Sexton Blake, has a fatal run-in with the Church of Starry Wisdom and their Shining Trapezohedron.
The Rattler, who battled cowboy Ken Williams the year prior, returns to launch another crime wave across America. He is defied by a veritable legion of Western heroes, including the Range Busters, once called the Three Mesquiteers; the Rough Riders, and their associate Johnny Mack Brown; Billy Carson, and his sidekicks Fuzzy Q. Jones and Jeff; the Durango Kid, and his sidekicks Cannonball and Smiley; Gene Autry; Roy Rogers, and his sidekick Cookie Bullfincher; Hopalong Cassidy, and his sidekicks Gabby Whittaker, Lucky, and California Carlson; Bob Blake, aka the Bronze Buckaroo; Rex Allen; Sunset Carson; the Lone Rider; Cheyenne Davis; Whip Wilson; “Tex,” and his sidekicks Stubby Ananias and Pee Wee; the Texas Rangers; Eddie Dean; Hoot Gibson; Monte Hale; Bob Steele; Jack Holt; Rocky Lane, and his sidekick Nugget Clark; Tom Keene; Bat Matson; Red Ryder, and his sidekick Little Beaver; Cal Shrum; Tennessee Colby; Jerry Mason; Jim Drummond; Bob Wilson; Cliff Mason; and Jeff Peters. This massive army of lawmen is able to crush the Rattler's sizable operation once and for all.
1936 – Kit Walker, a descendant of Christopher Walker and part of the Arisian Walker bloodline, becomes the Phantom. He is the most famous incarnation of the Ghost Who Walks.
In Berlin, Adolf Hitler oversees the Summer Olympics, seeking to use them as a propaganda event to promote racism and German superiority. He is humiliated by the stunning victories of Black American athlete Jesse Owens, who wins four gold medals at the sprint and long jump events; in one such sprint, Owens' silver medal runner-up is another Black American, Mack Robinson, brother of baseball player Jackie Robinson. In another sprint event, a young Jewish American woman named Mel Greenberg is Owens' close second. Owens and Robinson are beyond the reach of Hitler's ire, so Hitler punishes Greenberg in their stead by stripping her of her silver medal. In spite of this, Greenberg attains a positive reputation as an athlete for her performance in the Games.
1937 – Author Joseph Davis discovers a Sarmak conspiracy to convert humans into Sarmaks. The Sarmaks are preparing for a second invasion.
A Japanese woman, Shizuko Yamamura, gives birth to twin children, a girl and a boy. Shizuko is a powerful psychic who is rumored to have been granted her powers by a visiting demon. The father is believed to be Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma, but this is in doubt. Shizuko is told that the boy died at birth, but in reality he is sent to America to be adopted by the Wade family, who name him Harlan. The other child, Sadako, is raised in Japan, but many horrifying events surround her growing up.
1938 – The events of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre adaptation of The War of the Worlds take place. The Sarmaks invade Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Like the invasion of England, this “Martian” invasion is covered up. Interdimensional beings known as Red Lectroids also arrive on Earth during this time.
1939 – World War II breaks out when Adolf Hitler orders the German invasion of Poland. Hitler's Nazis are intent on conquering the world, and dedicate themselves to seeking out advanced technology to give themselves a military advantage. In Norway, Nazi operatives discover a cache of ancient alien technology, possibly Arisian or Eddorian in nature. They begin to use this technology to build super-weapons.
Bruce Wayne becomes active as Batman. He develops a deep friendship with Superman, and soon acquires a sidekick, Robin.
The events of The Third Policeman take place.
1940 – The events of The Devil Bat take place. A mad scientist, Dr. Carruthers, has discovered a breed of deadly giant bats in the Wild Horse Mine of New Mexico. Carruthers gleefully uses the bats to kill his enemies. These bats are in fact Stukabats, one of the many species to adopt Xen as a home.
During a battle against his greatest enemy, the Joker, Batman mentions to his sidekick Robin his plan to send the Joker to Doc Savage's Crime College for brain surgery-induced rehabilitation.
1941 – Captain Marvel discovers that Adolf Hitler has a Thunderchild of his own at his disposal: Captain Nazi. Jacob and Freddy Freeman are caught in the middle of a fight between the two Captains, and Jacob is killed while Freddy is badly injured. Captain Marvel gives the dying Freddy a fraction of his power, and Freddy joins with a Thunderchild body to become Captain Marvel Jr.
On the same day, Christopher “Kit” Freeman and his grandfather Daniel are out fishing on the Atlantic when they are attacked by Nazi U-Boat. Both of them are killed in the attack, but Kit Freeman's psychic presence remains. It seems his will is very strong, anticipating his family's future role as Arisian Lensmen. The Arisians decide to empower him with an ectoplasmic body, similar to the Thunderchildren, but inhabited by Kit on a permanent basis. They assign a keeper, fittingly named Mr. Keeper, to monitor him. Kit's powerful mind can create ectoplasmic forms resembling historical and fictional characters to aid him. Under Mr. Keeper's guidance, he starts fighting evil under the name Kid Eternity.
Dr. Abraham Erskine, aka Professor Reinstein, is the director of Project Rebirth, an attempt by the U.S. government to recreate Abednego Danner's serum. Erskine injects a sickly man named Steve Rogers (nephew of Buck Rogers) with his formula. The serum is a success and Steve Rogers becomes Captain America.
Diana of Paradise Island (one of several dimensions connected to Earth by the Borderworld) comes to “man's world” to fight against the Nazis and other evils, taking the identity of Wonder Woman.
The events of Casablanca take place.
1942 – Freddy Freeman marries Mary Batson, and the pair have a son, Percy.
American operative William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz is sent to prevent Hitler from acquiring the Spear of Destiny. During his clash with the Nazis B.J. discovers that the high-ranking Grosse family have invented power-suits that can make individual soldiers nearly invincible. B.J. is assigned to monitor Germany's acquisition of advanced technology and occult artifacts.
The events of Wild Horse Phantom take place. The immortal Billy Carson and his sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones battle the Link Daggett Gang in the Wild Horse Mine. They encounter a violent Stukabat along the way. Once the Mine is cleared out, it starts operating again; Carson's friend Bill Lowry, aka the Durango Kid, becomes part-owner.
Arnold “Iron” Munro, son of Hugo Danner, fights in World War II. Also fighting is Frank Kinnison, Ralph Kinnison's son.
The immortal Kane serves as an advisor to Josef Stalin during the War.
1943 – Freddy and Mary Freeman have a second son, Daniel.
One of John Carter's Barsoomian descendants comes to Earth and has a son, Jacob Carter. Jacob Carter will be the father of Samantha Carter of Stargate SG-1. Like her ancestor, John Carter, Samantha is a smiter of cruel false gods—in this case, the Goa'uld.
American G-man Rex Bennett fights against the Japanese Black Dragon Society, which aims to sabotage Allied War efforts. The Society has already had a plastic surgeon named Melcher disguise several of their operatives as American industrialists, and dispatched an operative named Matsui to infiltrate New York's East Side (a plot foiled by a gang of youthful “junior G-men”). Upon defeating the Black Dragons after a long fight, Bennett battles Nazis in northern Africa alongside his wife, reporter Janet Blake (a cousin of Anna Blake). The cinematic adaptation of these events did not depict Rex and Janet as married or even previously acquainted. They already have a son, Miles, and will have two more, Franklin and Walter. Rex is a descendant of the Frankensteins and a cousin of Herbert West.
1944-1976 – The events of Slaughterhouse-Five take place. (See also God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater , Breakfast of Champions , Jailbird , Galapagos , and Timequake .)
1944 – A Sarmak invasion force attacks Chile, but is ultimately driven off by the local military.
1945 – Captain America is frozen in ice and presumed dead after an attack on a Nazi rocket. The iceberg in which he is frozen contains traces of Suspendium, which keep him alive in the subzero conditions.
B.J. Blazkowicz launches an attack on Adolf Hitler's fortress, Castle Wolfenstein. He kills Hitler's confidante Dr. Schabb, as well as Hans Grosse of the Grosse family, who fights him with power armor. His final opponent is Adolf Hitler himself, using a suit of Grosse armor to fight. B.J. brings the War to an end by killing Hitler in a pitched battle.
B.J. returns home and marries movie star Julia Peterson—the two have a son, Arthur. Julia Peterson is the same individual as Julie Madison, ex-wife of Bruce Wayne and mother of his son, Bruce Jr.
1946 – The events of Devil Bat's Daughter take place.
Wonder Woman and her husband Steve Trevor have a daughter, Hippolyta. Lyta Trevor has some of her mother's powers and eventually takes up the hero identity of Fury.
1947 – Cave Johnson founds Aperture Science, which is initially a great success, winning many awards for scientific achievements.
The events of Return of the Fly take place. Andre Delambre's son Philippe is mutated into a fly-human hybrid due to a telepod accident. Unlike his father, however, he is restored to human form. Philippe Delambre becomes the Head of Research at Aperture Science.
1949 – Sarmaks invade Ecuador, but are repelled by the Ecuadoran military.
1950 – The Durango Kid defeats a criminal conspiracy to cheat the owners of the Wild Horse Mine out of their earnings. Tiring of adventuring, the Kid cashes out his share of the Mine, selling it to a branch of Arbeit Laboratories. This branch begins using the Mine to build an underground research facility, eventually hollowing out the Black Mesa itself for the space. This branch of Arbeit becomes a separate company, the Black Mesa Research Corporation. Arbeit Laboratories suffers a downturn as a result of Black Mesa breaking off, and it fragments further, resulting in the birth of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, the Umbrella Corporation, the Armacham Technology Corporation, and others, all of whom are intertwined. Its remaining assets are picked clean by Aperture Science, who obtain its massive Michigan facility and its facilities in the Arctic. Under Cave Johnson, Aperture builds up the Michigan facility into a massive testing site for the development of technology related to Aperture's greatest achievement, the Handheld Portal Device.
Black Mesa forms a partnership with Builders League United to create a subsidiary services company, Allied Processing. BLU staffs the Allied Processing facility with its mercenaries.
Clark Savage III, son of Doc Savage and his wife Monja F'teena, is born.
Rex Bennett mysteriously vanishes in the line of duty, leaving his wife Janet to raise their sons Miles, Franklin, and Walter alone.
1952 – Mel Greenberg is hired as a test subject as Aperture Science due to her performance in the 1936 Olympics. She is asked to test an Aperture Science Relaxation Vault, a Suspendium matrix which will keep her unconscious for a few hours. Unfortunately, due to a malfunction, she is actually held in stasis in the Vault for around 30,000 years. She leaves behind a son, Will Greenberg. Throughout his life, Will (who changes his last name to Green) keeps an eye on Aperture Science, trying to find some clue as to what happened to his mother. At some point he has an opportunity to speak to a female scientist working at Aperture's Enrichment Center. The two have an unexpected affair which leaves the young woman pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Colette, but refuses to allow Will access to her. Will eventually marries someone else and has another daughter, whom he names Colette in an effort to forget the daughter he lost. Though her surname is unknown, Colette Green's older half-sister is differentiated from Colette by her childhood nickname, Chell.
1953 – The Marvel Family is trapped by Dr. Sivana in a Suspendium bubble. The Marvels and Sivana will remain trapped for twenty years. Percy and Daniel Freeman, the sons of Freddy and Mary Freeman, are left homeless at ten and eleven years old. They are forced to build themselves up to survive. Percy ends up on the path to enter the military, while Daniel's experiences give him a strongly left-wing outlook, focused on the economic and social liberation of Black people like himself.
The disappearance of Billy Batson leaves his wife, Cissie Sommerly, to raise their daughter Susan alone. Cissie marries a man named McMichaels to help her raise her daughter.
The events of the 1953 film version of The War of the Worlds take place. The Sarmaks, working through the bodies of Mor-Taxan slaves, invade Linda Rosa, California. One of the key adversaries of the invaders, Dr. Clayton Forrester, is the ancestor of the Dr. Clayton Forrester who was responsible for imprisoning at least two men in an orbital satellite and forcing them to watch low-quality dramatizations of bizarre historical events.
Following the Mor-Taxan invasion of Linda Rosa, the Sarmaks attack another American town, using the Sarmak-human hybrids created in the 1930s as foot soldiers. A young boy named David MacLean helps save his town from Sarmak mind control by destroying the Sarmak mastermind behind the invasion. Aiding him is Dr. Patricia Blake, the daughter of Doc Savage's cousin Pat and the Western gunfighter Bob Blake, who shared an adventure together back in the '30s.
1954 – The events of The Body Snatchers take place. Miles Bennett, the son of Rex Bennett, helps defeat the pod-plant replacement of humanity.
1958 – The events of Teenagers from Outer Space take place. The Supreme Race who invades Earth are Eddorians. They use Gargans, giant flying lobsters, as living weapons. Some Gargans end up in Xen over the years, and under the conditions there, they evolve into Gargantuas.
Perhaps as a result of the Eddorian invasion, a number of alien artifacts are discovered on Earth by the U.S. government and reported to the UN. Some of these artifact caches are the same which granted the Nazis the technology used to make their power-armor. In the interest of national security, the UN gives these devices to a number of special operatives, making them into government superheroes in something of a succession to the United States' Captain America Program. This council of agents is known as The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves, or T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
1959 – Donald Blake, the son of Hugo Danner and Anna Blake, is a medical doctor on vacation in Norway. He discovers a cave which contains a technologically-advanced hammer and belt. These devices were overlooked by both the Nazis and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. The hammer is made of an adamantium-like compound with a Cavorite core. The Cavorite not only increases the weight of the hammer, but allows its user to fly. The Cavorite matrix is part of a more complex internal device which allows the hammer to shift its user into the Dreamlands. The belt increases the strength and durability of the user. Blake experiments with the hammer and learns about the Thunderchildren of the Dreamlands, and decides to use one of the homunculi to create an alternate identity. In contrast to his superhuman form, which he shares with his father, Blake creates a sickly, limping human body. This becomes the new public face of Donald Blake. Using the hammer, which can be disguised as a cane, he can swap back and forth between his sickly and superhuman selves at will. Taking inspiration from his Scandinavian surroundings, he decides to take the identity of the Norse god Thor.
Thor fights crime in New York for several months before he is contacted by the Asgard (aka the Maians). They have been charged by the Arisians with maintaining the hammer, which Thor has taken to calling Mjolnir. Thor learns from the Asgard that the Eddorians, led by Gharlane (disguised as the Norse god Loki), are infiltrating Earth, and his strength is needed to stop them. Thor enters into the Asgard's services and battles Gharlane/Loki many times. During this time he begins to fall in love with his nurse, Jane Foster.
Early in his career, Thor is mistaken as a supervillain by Batman (Dick Grayson) and Robin (Bruce Wayne Jr.), and they fight briefly before all is explained.
1960 – General Paolo Orlovsky, an anti-NATO Soviet radical, declares himself Emperor of an illegitimate regime in Chechnya. He is likely sponsored by Kane.
1961 – Harlan Wade and his wife Elizabeth have a daughter, Alma. Like her grandmother, Shizuko Yamamura, Alma is hugely psychic, and Harlan begins working with Armacham Technology to exploit her gifts.
Harlan secretly has another daughter with a different woman, Dahlia Gillespie of Silent Hill, Maine. Alessa Gillespie is born with the purpose of being the mother of the God worshipped by the Order, a splinter of the Church of Starry Wisdom which has dwelled in and ruled over Silent Hill for centuries.
The events of The Carpetbaggers take place, detailing the life of industrialist Jonas Cord.
1962 – In Vietnam, rich industrialist Tony Stark is imprisoned by Communist forces during a trip to check on one of his factories. In order to escape, he constructs a suit of flying mechanical armor. He decides to improve upon the armor and use it to fight against crime and international sabotage, using the name Iron Man. (Secretly, a great deal of research from the Grosse family goes into his work, with some of the Grosses having been recruited into U.S. organizations under Operation Paperclip.) Stark's Iron Man armor is considered to be Mark I of the Hazardous Environment Suit.
1963 – Iron Man and Thor unthaw Captain America, who resumes his career of fighting against fascist forces.
In an alternate timeline, a form of Suspendium known as ice-nine, which freezes all water it comes in contact with, destroys human civilization when it reaches the Earth's oceans.
1964 – Aperture Science makes its first of several covert expeditions to the moon. They discover that the late Professor Cavor spread an Earth virus to the Selenites during his encounter with them in 1901, and so the moon is now a dead world. Somehow, the virus has also spread to Barsoom, ending life there as well—the fate of the Carter family is unknown.
Lily Munro, the police officer niece of the Munro who married Anna Blake, captures a shotgun terrorist. Lily's grandson James Munro will marry the daughter of Arn Munro and Lyta Trevor.
The immortal Kane has become an officer in the U.S. Army. Under the alias of Colonel Vincent Kane, he is sent to fight in Vietnam shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. He arranges things so that he is made privy to certain experiments conducted on American GIs—he discovers a CIA experiment wherein an extremely concentrated psychedelic drug known as “the Ladder” is administered secretly to soldiers to send them into killing frenzies.
Percy Freeman is sent to Vietnam, where he ends up under Colonel Kane's command, as part of a unit that also contains noted soldiers Benjamin Willard and Jacob Singer. Percy ends up secretly married to a Korean-Vietnamese woman named May Sonh-Kim. She gives birth to twins, John and Minh Sonh-Kim.
Around this time, Colonel Kane joins with the mysterious female operative known as “The Boss” to create Force Operation X, or FOX. One of FOX's recruits is The Boss' disciple Naked Snake. Snake is sent to the USSR to find Dr. Sokolov, the creator of the Shagohod, an experimental nuclear-armed weapons platform which could end the Cold War. Sokolov's captor is Colonel Volgin, an ally of General Orlovsky who possesses electrical abilities. Snake swiftly learns that The Boss has defected to the USSR. Snake is able to stop the threat of the Shagohod and The Boss, though he is forced to kill his beloved mentor, afterwards bitterly accepting a promotion to the rank of Big Boss. The renegade FOX unit is still a threat to the West's Cold War interests.
1965 – The events of The Curse of the Fly take place.
1966 – The events of The Crying of Lot 49 take place.
1967 – The American CIA recruits Dan Freeman as a token attempt at racial inclusion, giving him a mundane desk job despite the fact that he achieved the highest possible scores in both mental and physical training. The CIA is unaware of his far-left political views; secretly, Dan plots to use the CIA's tactics to train cells of Black radicals and bring down American white supremacy. He recruits a Chicago gang, the Cobras, training them not only in strategy and combat but also in traditional Black culture and art. They are taught to respect their own identities as Black people, and so form a bond that gives them a tremendous advantage in the field. Freeman tests the Cobras by having them commit several acts of robbery, radio piracy, and minor terrorism; they are all successful, and Freeman's role in guiding the gang is suspected by almost no one. Freeman is able to train over a dozen cells before he is at last threatened with exposure—he kills the man who threatens him and activates Condition Red, signaling the cells to begin the uprising. For the next six years, Freeman's Black liberation groups attack and dismantle white supremacist institutions with great efficiency in the U.S.'s biggest cities, using both violent and non-violent means. During this time, Dan Freeman marries Jody Hill, one of the women he helped train. The CIA eventually discover that the leader of the cells is one of their own, and Dan and Jody are forced into hiding. The CIA begins training a new Black Operations unit to deal with the guerrilla fighters.
Shortly after their wedding, Dan and Jody conceive their first child, a boy named Xavier. Unfortunately, the child is stillborn.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, Percy Freeman and his unit are dispatched to bring down Colonel Walter Kurtz, an important officer who has gone MIA and is believed to have turned traitor. During this search, Percy is exposed to the Ladder, and he enters a psychedelic fugue state influenced by American exploitation movies and racist Army propaganda. He delusionally believes his men to be under attack by zombies and alien parasites, though curiously enough Jacob Singer also reported such entities during their journey. The unit's mission is successful, in spite of Percy's hallucinations, and Benjamin Willard executes Colonel Kurtz. But the psychological toll of the mission is deep. Percy Freeman is sent to a military hospital in the States for psychiatric treatment, but he never recovers, and dies there in 1979.
Freeman's commanding officer, Colonel Kane, shortly thereafter suffers what might be called an immortality fugue. Immortals, especially ones with a proclivity for warfare, sometimes enter dissociative episodes due to suppressing centuries of loss and grief; high-stress situations such as combat can agitate this. The fact that Kane was known to work with the Ladder drug also shines some light on this situation. Kane commits a Kurtz-esque massacre against Vietnamese civilians, earning him the nickname “Killer” Kane. He begins to believe that his companion, Colonel Hudson Fell, is his brother, a delusion which Fell sympathetically supports. Kane is sent home to rehabilitate.
Clark Savage IV is born to Clark Savage III and Ingrid Sjoman. He will one day become the adventurer known as Flint Golden.
Donald Blake increasingly chafes at the directions of his Asgard masters, and chooses to abandon the role of Thor to live in peace with Jane Foster. The Asgard retrieve Thor's hammer and belt and store them on Mars for humanity to rediscover.
Jim Hopper of Hawkins, Indiana fights in the Vietnam War. During the War he battles a strange alien creature known as a Predator, a member of a species known as the Yaut'ja, who have hunted humans and other sentient species for millennia. The creature steals his dog tags, but he escapes it unharmed, which will cause some confusion later.
1968 – A Leviathan from Phaaze enters Earth's solar system, narrowly passing Earth. This “comet” sends Flood spores to Earth that begin reanimating dead human tissues, creating hordes of zombies. Corpses reanimated by the spores have the ability to infect others through bites. The greatest outbreak takes place in Pennsylvania. Despite the widespread nature of the outbreak, the zombies are ultimately contained by the U.S. military. The secret government organizations which have been monitoring extraterrestrial and supernatural activity in the wake of the 1898 Sarmak invasion decide to use this incident to create several specialized military groups in case the zombie virus ever escapes containment. The Black Ops unit currently in training by the CIA is already being instructed on how to deal with supernormal events. New groups include the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU), First Encounter Assault Recon (FEAR), and the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (STARS). Most of the time these units are held in reserve, but they will be present at many of the massive paranormal events over the next thirty years.
In an alternate timeline, the Phazon Leviathan steers closer to Earth, with its inevitable impact predicted by Dr. Horselover Frost, an American scientist who has been kidnapped and held at the Imperial Observatory in Emperor Orlovsky's Chechnya. For the last eight years Frost has been forced to work on the Sensorama, a mind-control device which Orlovsky intends to use to control the memories of everyone on Earth. Seeing the approaching comet as an opening for his secret revolutionary cell, the Third Force, to fight back against Orlovsky, Frost works with a young German agent named Louis Hausmann and his sister Elena to assemble a secret spaceship called the Ark so that some humans can escape the destruction of the planet by rendezvousing with a mysterious alien race. The Ark is powered by radioactive fragments (dubbed “Xenium” by Frost) of the very comet that is about to destroy Earth. The Hausmanns help the rocket escape with Frost's team aboard, but in the course of events Louis' brain pattern unlocks the full potential of the Sensorama, allowing Orlovsky to take control of Earth's population in the post-impact world. Furthermore, the aliens who offered to aid humanity are in fact planning to feed on the intelligences of the surviving scientists, being part of a species that eats thoughts to survive.
Throughout their journey, the Hausmanns encounter a mysterious boy who may have been an alternate guise of the being known as the G-Man. In the prime timeline, Louis Hausmann's daughter Azian is the mother of Alyx Vance, who is of interest to the G-Man's employers.
The Phazon Leviathan impacts Earth and substantially mutates Earth's population. The Church of Starry Wisdom, led by Orlovsky, uses the opportunity to seize power, forming a violent world religion known as the Order. Joining forces with them is the Brotherhood of Nod, an organization led by Kane, who weaponizes a mutant strain of Xenium called Tiberium to achieve widespread dominance. Both organizations are opposed by the UN's Global Defense Initiative.
In this timeline Robert Blazkowicz, grandson of B.J. Blazkowicz, joins the anti-Order resistance known as the Front, and eventually journeys into the Leviathan Core to battle the Entity that lurks within. By destroying the Entity, Blazkowicz gives humanity a chance to resist Phazon corruption and overthrow the Order.
In the main timeline, Aperture Science is suffering financially, having been increasingly outcompeted by Black Mesa for the last two decades, resulting in Cave Johnson's decreased mental stability. Reckless spending, as well as failed lawsuits against Black Mesa for alleged theft of Aperture Portal technology, have left the company bankrupt, and funds are further depleted by a government investigation into missing astronauts. Going forward, Aperture, who once employed Olympians and war heroes among their test subjects, are forced to resort to using unhoused people and psychiatric patients to test their technology.
Kit Walker and his wife Diana Palmer have their third son, Adam Walker; they already have twin boys, Declan and Aiden. Unfortunately, Kit and Diana are murdered before Kit can pass on the secrets of the Phantom. The four-century legacy of the Phantom seemingly comes to an end.
The events of The Exorcist take place. Young Regan MacNeil is possessed by the demon Pazuzu. While at a party, Pazuzu tells NASA astronaut Billy Cutshaw that he will die in space. A few months later, Cutshaw aborts the moon launch he is scheduled for, suffering a nervous breakdown. He is sent to live in a castle in the Pacific Northwest run by the U.S. military where delinquent former military personnel are psychoanalyzed to determine the veracity of their mental illness. Cutshaw's psychiatrist is the castle's administrator, Vincent “Killer” Kane. It transpires that Colonel Fell, Kane's old friend, is in fact the castle's real administrator, and Kane's posing as such is part of his own therapy as a patient. Kane tries to persuade Cutshaw to see the power of selflessness, but only when Kane gives his own life defending Cutshaw against a biker gang does the former astronaut believe that people can act unselfishly.
In truth, Kane's injuries send him into a healing coma, which cures him of the fugue state he had suffered since his time in Vietnam. He escapes from his grave with Cutshaw none the wiser. The name Killer Kane will linger with him for centuries.
A Sarmak invasion force attacks Grand Island, New York, but is driven off by the HECU.
1969 – Gordon Henri Freeman is born to Daniel and Jody Freeman. His middle name is both a tribute to Dan's grandfather Henry and to French mathematician Henri Poincare, whom Daniel admires.
Sexton Blake and Tinker mysteriously disappear after nearly eighty years of adventure.
1970 – John Shaft is active as a private detective.
Buck Rogers is discovered in the cave where he fell unconscious decades prior. The team who finds him is part of a crew building a new facility for NASA. Rogers ends up recruited by NASA, who are aware of his unusual life. Because Anthony Rogers was listed as dead in 1927, Buck takes on a false identity supplied to him by NASA, “Dylan Hunt.”
The mysterious Prince Zarkon and his Omega Crew start fighting crime.
Big Boss meets Roy Campbell during an encounter with the renegade FOX. The two become friends and form their own military group, FOXHOUND.
1971 – John Francis Freeman is born to Dan and Jody Freeman.
Author Nigel Monk (ne Mayfair) travels to Rockwell, New Mexico to write in peace. His car is knocked off the road during a rainstorm and during his search for help, he discovers that the town is the heart of a zombie outbreak similar to the one that hit Pennsylvania three years ago. The police department, headed by Sheriff Chester Rockwood, has been infected, and the still-intelligent Rockwood turns the town into a trap for Monk and all others immune to the virus. Aiding Rockwood is Dr. Franklin Bennett, the head of the Rivendale Insane Asylum, who happens to be a particularly nefarious genius. Using the virus, Franklin recreates the experiments of his ancestors Victor and Henry Frankenstein by making towering, superhuman homunculi to serve him. Eventually the HECU is notified and sent to destroy the zombies, but the Marines who arrive are infected and become zombies themselves. Monk kills as many of the zombies as he can, and with the help of Sheriff Rockwood's deputy, Jerry Hoobs, he destroys both Franklin and Rockwood. Monk and Hoobs fly off into the sunset, leaving Rockwell to burn. Thanks to the deaths of Franklin and the Sheriff, the HECU is able to contain and cover up the situation.
How the zombie virus traveled from Pennsylvania to New Mexico is unknown, but Dr. Franklin's past affiliation with the Umbrella Corporation is worthy of note.
Sarmak invaders attack Brazil. They are defeated, but their invasions in Chile, Ecuador, Grand Island, and now Brazil all served a grander purpose—at each of their landing sites, they have built networking stations which will allow them to send a signal that will place the Western hemisphere under their control. This effort is foiled by Will Greenberg, acting under the alias of Will Parker.
In an alternate timeline, Will Parker fails to stop the Sarmaks and they become the dominant race on Earth, known only as “Masters.” Humans are given cranial implants at age thirteen to make them susceptible to Master control. In this timeline Will's son, also named Will, leads a rebellion against the Sarmaks, which is ultimately crushed. Years later, a young man named Jonathan Raven—better known as Killraven—is the terror of the Sarmaks, wiping out the invaders and their operations with brutal efficiency.
In the main timeline, Will Parker becomes the ancestor of Parker, the miner who will liberate Mars from tyrannical control in the late 21st Century.
1972 – Barney Calhoun is born.
The events of Exorcist II: The Heretic take place.
Rip van Winkle awakens and encounters his hippie descendant, Judy Gardenier. He returns to sleep shortly after this run-in.
Big Boss is cloned, creating three sons: Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, and Solidus Snake. They all age differently from normal humans.
1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon authorizes the CIA's Black Ops division to eliminate Dan Freeman's radical freedom fighters. The Black Ops prove to be supremely effective against the commandos, and with their efficiency proven, the unit will be used on many covert assignments that politically benefit the United States. Dan Freeman is assassinated shortly after the birth of his daughter Lauren. Jody Freeman will raise all three of her children to resist unjust power and systemized cruelty.
Around this time, Freddy Freeman and the rest of the Marvel Family are freed from Dr. Sivana's Suspendium. Sivana is captured by the authorities and placed in a top-security facility. However, Billy Batson and the Freemans are now without a place in the world, with no one believing their identities. For several years, Freddy sells newspapers, secretly investigating the assassination of his son Daniel all the while. His grandchildren are unaware of his survival, having been told by Dan that Freddy died in 1953.
Dr. Sivana's Suspendium is studied by the U.S. government for possible warfare applications. It is sent to NASA for analysis, where it is experimented on in a secret facility in the Carlsbad Caverns by Dylan Hunt, aka Buck Rogers. An unexpected earthquake suddenly shatters the facility's supports, and Hunt is unable to evacuate in time with the rest of the base's crew. He is buried under the facility with the Suspendium, and won't emerge again for 160 years.
In the wake of the Watergate Scandal, Steve Rogers drops the Captain America identity to become Nomad. He retires from adventuring a few months later. He marries his girlfriend Sharon Carter and eventually becomes father to a daughter, Jean.
1974 – Adrian Shephard is born.
Diana “Sugar” Hill, sister of Jody Hill and sister-in-law of Daniel Freeman, works with the voodoo loa Baron Samedi (or a being professing to be such) to sic an army of zombies on the white gangsters who killed her boyfriend.
The events of VALIS take place. Horselover Fat is the prime timeline's equivalent of Horselover Frost. Due to retroactive chronal energy from the Leviathan impact in Frost's timeline, Fat was never taken to Orlovsky's Chechnya in the main timeline.
1975 – The events of the TV series The Ghost Busters take place. Jake Kong, Eddie Spencer, and a gorilla named Tracy investigate paranormal events.
1976 – Isaac Kleiner starts working for Black Mesa. He finds a colleague in Eli Vance and competes for grant money with Arne Magnusson. He occasionally lectures at some of the best scientific universities in the country, including MIT.
Mitchell Shephard, younger brother of Adrian, is born. The boys grow up with cousins, John (future member of the Atlantis Expedition) and Mary (who eventually marries a man named James Sunderland). Unbeknownst to Adrian, his brother is in fact his half-brother. Mitchell is the son of Adrian's father and Alma Wade, being a prototype weapon created by Armacham Technologies. He has a secret brother, Paxton Fettel, who carries his mother's psychic gifts.
The events of Cutter and Bone take place. Alex Cutter goes up against murderous businessman J.J. Cord, son of Jonas Cord. Alex Cutter is an ancestor of 21st Century computer hacker Sol Cutter.
1978 – Another zombie outbreak takes place in Pennsylvania. It is contained by the combined forces of the HECU, FEAR, and STARS.
Harry Mason is traveling through Maine with his daughter Cheryl when he suffers a car crash. When he awakens, his daughter is missing, and he begins looking for her. He wanders into the nearby town of Silent Hill, which at first is seemingly abandoned. As it happens, however, the town is infested with horrible monsters, the product of ancient rituals performed by the Order, the cult which has ruled Silent Hill for centuries. Harry is aided in his search for Cheryl by police officer Cybil Bennett (daughter of Walter). In time Harry learns that Cheryl is in fact part of the fractured soul of Alessa Gillespie, a young psychic girl who was subjected to horrible agony when her mother Dahlia tried to make her into the mother of the Order's God. The Order intends to recombine Cheryl with Alessa and recommence the ritual, but Harry stops this and prevents the God from manifesting. Alessa/Cheryl reincarnates into a baby, who Harry and Cybil escape with. Although he initially names the baby Cheryl, Harry ultimately gives her the name Heather, and raises her as his daughter.
1979 – Aperture Science tests advanced portal technology on the Borealis , an Arctic icebreaker ship; the ship ends up vanishing from the facility, along with part of the dry dock. The “bootstrap device” aboard the ship moves the vessel through time and dimensions—if properly controlled, it could be used to travel anywhere in the entire Multiverse. Numerous science teams, including both Aperture and Black Mesa, commence covert searches for the ship and its valuable cargo, which soon become a matter of legend.
Tony Stark begins suffering from alcoholism, agitated by his rival, Justin Hammer. This marks the beginning of the end of his Iron Man career.
1980 – Psychic Thelma Joyce has an encounter with Xenomorphs on Earth.
Arn Munro and Lyta Trevor are married. Lyta retires as Fury around the same time her mother retires as Wonder Woman.
1981 – Cave Johnson is terminally ill from years of working with the moon rocks used to make Aperture Science Conversion Gel. He makes it a condition of his will that his loyal assistant of 35 years, Carolyn, will be uploaded into a computer upon his death.
1982 – Cave Johnson dies, and Carolyn is uploaded into the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, or GLaDOS. Carolyn, or rather GLaDOS, is not pleased with this situation. She repeatedly attempts to kill the staff of the Aperture Enrichment Center with neurotoxin. During one of her first outbreaks, she causes mayhem during Aperture's annual Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Young Chell is one of the survivors.
The events of Ghostbusters take place. Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore battle against Gozer.
Tony Stark fights a prolonged war against rival businessman Obadiah Stane. Though he emerges triumphant, he decides to retire as Iron Man, selling the majority of Stark Industries to Black Mesa.
1983 – The events of The Exorcist III: Legion take place.
1983-1987? - The events of Stranger Things take place.
1984 – The events of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8 th Dimension take place. Red Lectroids have infiltrated the Yoyodyne Corporation. One of Yoyodyne's executives, Cassandra de Vries, investigates the Lectroids and, through their technology, she learns about the existence of the Skedar and their war with the Maians. She forms an alliance with the reptilians, using her wealth to form a Yoyodyne splinter known as dataDyne, which serves Skedar purposes.
The events of Filmation's Ghostbusters take place. The “original” Ghost Busters try and fail to sue Venkman's Ghostbusters for copyright infringement; the failed lawsuit, and encroaching age, causes them to disband.
Dr. Bloch, a descendant of the Dr. Bloch killed by Crawford Tillinghast in 1920, battles against but is possessed by the Festival of the Sanguinary, an event occurring every seven years wherein a random person becomes a demonically-possessed serial killer. This Festival is likely a ritual practiced by the entity known as Redjac, who was responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, among others.
1984-1989 – The events of The Real Ghostbusters take place.
1985 – The events of Predator take place in the South American country of Val Verde, in the wake of Colonel John Matrix's rampage there. Major Dutch Schaefer finds Jim Hopper's dog tags and mistakenly believes him to have been killed. He is unaware that these tags were taken from Hopper in Vietnam, nearly twenty years prior.
Superman is killed in rural New York by the bizarre monstrosity known as Doomsday.
Bruce Wayne III, the current Batman, has his spine broken by Bane, ending the Batman legacy.
Billy Batson goes missing in Thailand. Freddy and Mary Freeman disappear without a trace in Brazil.
These events seem to occur in conjunction with the covert rise of Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced individual created by the secret Chrysalis Project.
1987 – The events of Ghostbusters II take place.
Rip van Winkle awakens for the final time and settles down in modern New York.
Solid Snake, Big Boss' clone, has become a member of FOXHOUND, and is dispatched to infiltrate and destroy Outer Heaven, a rogue nation which has arisen within the borders of South Africa. Outer Heaven has kidnapped Dr. Drago Petrovich Madnar and is forcing him to build a successor to the Shagohod, a giant nuclear-armed mech known as Metal Gear. History repeats itself when Snake learns that his mentor Big Boss is a traitor, intending to use Metal Gear to impose his will over the whole planet. Snake destroys Metal Gear and seemingly kills Big Boss, and blows up the Outer Heaven compound. In truth, this is not Big Boss, but his body double, Venom Snake.
1988 – The events of Die Hard take place.
The events of Predator 2 take place.
1988-1989 – The events of War of the Worlds (1988) take place.
1989 – Solid Snake once again faces down Outer Heaven, learning that Big Boss has returned with cybernetic enhancements and a stolen HEV Mark II armor suit. Snake once again overcomes Big Boss, as well as his experimental Metal Gear 2.
1990s – Paranormal events seem to spike during this decade, perhaps due to some kind of retro-influence from the Black Mesa Incident. Sightings of beings such as Slenderman dramatically increase, and certain copies of various mass media become afflicted with mysterious malignant energies that change their contents. Most notably, seemingly random individuals begin teleporting into Xen, which begins to display a complex subjective visual-tactile phenomenon wherein the dimension manifests as an endless string of empty, near-identical rooms, such as those commonly found within 20 th Century American office complexes. Some lucky souls apparently escape these “Backrooms,” as a cycle of myths about them develops around the world; it becomes understood in a somewhat-correct manner that there is a world that borders all dimensions which awaits those who phase out of existence. (See also the Alice Liddell and “Snark Hunt” incidents from the mid-19 th Century for insight on subjective perceptual phenomenon manifesting within other dimensions.)
Minh Sohn-Kim, the son of Percy Freeman, joins the Navy SEALs Counter-Terrorism division, acquiring the codename Redtail Leader. He proves to be effective at surviving against overwhelming odds, and he defeats many terrorist cells.
1990 – William Joseph Blazkowicz II, or more properly Billy Blaze, is the eight-year-old son of Arthur Blazkowicz and Susan McMichaels. Billy is a powerful telepath and can send his mind into Xen via the Dreamlands. As “Commander Keen” he discovers a race of alien “Vorticons” enslaved by a being called the Grand Intellect. Being a child, Billy projects his own fantasies onto the situation, imagining the Intellect to be the neighborhood bully, Mortimer McMire. In truth, he glimpses the slavery of the Vortigaunts by the Nihilanth. His psychic projection is able to provide some marginal assistance to the Vortigaunts' situation, but they remain enslaved.
Aiden Walker marries the love of his life and has a daughter, Ava.
The events of Die Hard 2 take place. General Ramon Esperanza, who comes from Val Verde, is a descendant of Django from his South American adventure in 1898.
Many of the events of House of Leaves take place.
Solid Snake once again faces down Big Boss, battling him in Outer Heaven's base in Zanzibar Land for control of the algae-based fuel source known as OILIX. He destroys Big Boss' new Metal Gear, Metal Gear D, as well as several smaller Metal Gear units.
1991 – The events of Ringu take place.
The events of Silent Hill 2 take place.
The events of Science Crazed take place. Dr. Wilbur Frank, the son of Dr. Franklin Bennett, creates a monster known as the Fiend.
1992 – NASA launches the Voyager 6 science probe.
1993 – Gina Cross starts working at Black Mesa. She designs the Hazard Course, a high-intensity emergency preparation training course, which becomes vital to training Black Mesa's security personnel. She programs a Holographic Assistant for the course, building its AI using her own brainwaves. She will eventually use this brain-scan technology to create MINERVA, an advanced, free-thinking AI.
The events of Myst V: End of Ages takes place. Richard A. Watson, an employee of Myst developers Cyan Inc. and a descendant of both the Stranger and Dr. John Watson, liberates the Bahro from their ancient slavery to the D'ni. He discovers that Atrus and the surviving D'ni live in peace on Releeshahn, the Age Atrus wrote to give the D'ni a new beginning.
Watson is part of the D'ni Restoration Council, a group founded in an attempt to preserve and restore the ruined D'ni city. The DRC opens the cavern to public tourists, but is forced to close it numerous times due to safety issues, including attacks by rogue, human-hating Bahro.
1994 – Catherine Langford's Stargate research comes to a head when she enlists the aid of Dr. Daniel Jackson to translate the hieroglyphics on the Gate's surface. They manage to activate the Gate, opening a portal to the planet Abydos. Dr. Jackson, joined by Colonel Jack O'Neill and his Air Force Special Ops team, cross into Abydos, and fight the evil Goa'uld known as Ra and his enslaved Jaffa servants. This event will lead the Air Force to found Stargate Command, a top secret site dedicated to using the Stargate for galactic exploration. Jackson and O'Neill are soon joined on the SGC's primary team, SG-1, by Captain Samantha Carter and the liberated Jaffa known as Teal'c. SG-1 fights against the Goa'uld's empire, and after the fall of the Goa'uld, they battle the evil Ori, with the aid of new members Vala Mal Doran and Cameron Mitchell. They are also partially responsible for the rediscovery of Atlantis, resulting in the Atlantis Expedition and humanity's war against the Wraith.
Humanity slowly masters the Stargates, and many covert institutions begin probing the stars. Secretly, beyond the auspices of the general public, a new age of human history commences. The Atlantis Expedition is one example of these efforts, but there are many others. Black Mesa acquires access to a Stargate and uses it to significantly enhance their advancing portal technology; the discoveries they make using it are instrumental to their gaining access to Xen. Using their portals, Black Mesa begins bringing Xen aliens and mineral samples to Earth for study. This results in hostile contact with some of the beings there.
Around this time, Gordon Freeman obtains his PhD in theoretical physics from MIT, and with the aid of his mentor Isaac Kleiner, he gets a job at Black Mesa. His sister Lauren, who has already started a career as a protester for various social justice causes, attends Martinson College studying pre-law. Here she meets Barney Calhoun, and the spark between the two is strong. They are married less than a year into their relationship. Barney and Gordon become good friends, and Gordon helps Barney get a job at Black Mesa as a security guard. In turn, Barney becomes friends with Dr. Kleiner, and he and Gordon often race through the vents of Black Mesa to help Kleiner break into his office when he locks himself out.
Lauren's left-wing views are shared by her older brother John, who at 23 has become something of a free spirit. He doesn't attend college, instead joining a motorcycle gang and getting into drugs and Communism. As a riff on the Russian version of his name, and his habit of getting high before hopping on his Harley, John obtains the nickname “Ivan the Space Biker.” He founds a biker bar, John's, in the township of Black Mesa, so that he can be close to his brother. One of his regulars is a womanizing teller of tall tales named Nukem. Eventually, John marries a local film student named Zoey. John and Zoey soon have a son, Henry. Gordon keeps a picture of his infant nephew in his locker at Black Mesa.
Raccoon City's STARS division, consisting of Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, and Albert Wesker, investigate unusual activity in the Spencer Mansion. The Mansion is used by the Umbrella Corporation to develop the T-virus, an advanced form of the zombie virus that struck Pennsylvania in 1968 and 1978, for the purpose of creating bioweapons. The STARS agents are forced to battle Wesker when it turns out he is an Umbrella Corp double-agent. Umbrella's cultivation of the T-virus will prove disastrous when society breaks down in the wake of the Black Mesa Incident.
Mitchell Shephard becomes an Agent for the Umbrella Corporation, utilizing the codename HUNK. He becomes one of their most prized Agents, obtaining the nickname “Grim Reaper.” He is sent to infiltrate several important organizations on behalf of Umbrella, including the HECU.
Lara Croft begins her adventures.
FOXHOUND turns rogue under the influence of Solid Snake's clone brother, Liquid Snake, and establishes a base on Shadow Moses Island in Alaska's Fox Archipelago. Threatening the world with the nuclear-armed Metal Gear REX, FOXHOUND demands a billion dollar ransom. Snake is sent to Shadow Moses to rescue FOXHOUND's hostages and destroy Metal Gear REX. Upon confronting Liquid Snake, Solid Snake learns more about his origins, but in spite of the shock he overcomes Liquid and destroys his Metal Gear.
The events of Alien vs. Predator and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem take place.
The events of The Orchid Eater take place.
1995 – Gordon Freeman, with the support of Dr. Walter Bennett, joins the Darkstar Project, a direct product of Black Mesa's advancing portal technology. Scientists from a version of Black Mesa from the year 2065 reach back through one of their portals to inform their past colleagues of the launch of a ship known as the USS Darkstar , a warp-capable research vessel constructed by Black Mesa's business partner Weyland-Yutani. Historical records available to the future Black Mesa staff indicate that members of the 1995 Black Mesa Science Team traveled into the future at some point to work with members of the Science Team of 2065. The Black Mesa of 1995 agrees to their future colleagues' request to work with them aboard the Darkstar and acquire data on alien lifeforms. What is curious to both teams is that the future team possesses no record of the past team's findings, suggesting they were lost at some point.
Walter and Gordon travel into the future and work with the Darkstar crew for six months.
By March, 2066, the Darkstar crew have collected an impressive number of specimens. Many of these are beings commonly found on the Xen Borderworld which have been distributed across the galaxy. They include Headcrabs, Vortigaunts, Unggoy, Barnacles, Bullsquids, Houndeyes, Icthyosaurs, Snarks, Chargers, Chumtoads, Stukabats, Archerfish, Flocking Floaters, and something unpleasant called “Mr. Friendly.” A particular specimen known as the Kingpin takes an unusual interest in Walter Bennett.
Among the ship's specimens are also several of the Nihilanth's Controllers. The Nihilanth of this timeline recognizes that the Darkstar crew have a time machine, and he sees it as a possible escape from Xen in the event that the Combine invade the Borderworld. Using his Controllers, he takes command of the ship's Vortigaunts and Unggoy and bides his time. Eventually, during a mission to a planet wherein an unusual breed of Headcrabs is recovered, a malfunction in the ship's security systems blows the power cell keeping the ship's electrical force-field barriers in place. The aliens are now free aboard the ship and begin massacring the crew in an attempt to seize control of the vessel.
Gordon Freeman, who has spent a great deal of time training in the Darkstar 's Hazard Course with the Mark III Hazard Suit, obtains weapons and fights back against the aliens. One of his key weapons is a crowbar, which will be reunited with again in the future.
In the ship's holding bay, he encounters the mother of the Headcrabs, a titanic monster known as the Gonarch. Much of the ship's crew has been dragged down into the hold to serve as food for the Gonarch and her children. Gordon dispatches the Gonarch and euthanizes her half-consumed victims.
After two days of adventures aboard the ship—including a brief, bizarre episode where he is shrunk to the size of a mouse—Gordon reaches the escape pods and flees the collapsing Darkstar , abandoning it to its destruction. Earlier he noticed that Walter Bennett also made it to an escape pod. The two rendezvous on the planet below and hurriedly use components which Walter smuggled in his pod to build a crude time-circuit back to 1995. Walter crosses back first, and Gordon follows him after rigging the time-machine to explode. The pair appear to have only spent a single day in the future, despite being gone for half a year.
The Nihilanth's psychic presence echoes across time and dimensions, and so the Nihilanth of the main timeline is fully aware of the events that transpired on the Darkstar . He takes notice of Gordon Freeman's actions aboard the ship—as do the employers of the being known as the G-Man.
In the timeline containing the Darkstar , humanity enters into a war with the Nihilanth in 2104, with the Nihilanth being codenamed “Mental” or “the Mekon.” Because the Black Mesa Incident never occurred in this timeline, humanity was able to more closely research Arisian technology left behind on Earth; some of this tech contributed to the building of the Darkstar as well as other spaceships. One of these vessels, the Anastasia , is used by British spaceman Dan Dare in his battle against the Venusian “Treens” who serve the Mekon. Upon entering war with the Nihilanth, humanity's authorities agree that the use of Arisian technology will be useful in defeating their foe, and so a plan is made to send an agent back in time to retrieve the tech while it is still new. Sam “Serious” Stone, a descendant of Robert Blake, is selected, and sent back to ancient Egypt in search of help from the Arisians. It is unclear if Sam was able to aid the people of his era or not.
In 2140 Sam's grandson, Robert Wills Stone, becomes an intelligence agent under the codename “Blake Stone.” Stone battles the evil Dr. Pyrus Goldfire, who has seized control of a fragment of STARS and turned it into the basis of an army to conquer Earth. Stone stymies Goldfire's invasion, and kills the evil doctor nine years later in a bloody battle.
The Darkstar Project is deemed a massive failure by Black Mesa and rapidly covered up, with all connection between the future version of Black Mesa being completely severed. Gordon Freeman and Walter Bennett don't know it, but they have had their first brush with the forces that will change not only their own lives, but those of everyone else on Earth.
In spite of the disaster aboard the Darkstar , Black Mesa continues their research into teleporting to Xen and other dimensions. A member of the Lambda team, Dr. Andrew Winner, becomes the first known human to deliberately cross into an alternate timeline. In this timeline, the Black Mesa Corporation is instead known as Black Rock; but they have still had their own run-in with Xen aliens, who they have accidentally exacerbated by exposing them to mutagenic substances. The Nihilanth of this timeline has been mutated into a hideous abomination known as Genmod 262. Winner is forced to destroy Genmod 262 aboard a Black Rock research vessel in order to escape back to his own timeline.
Aiden Walker's daughter Ava is kidnapped and possibly murdered. Aiden is charged with the crime on account of his struggles with mental illness. He gets fifty years in Santa Fe Prison. His faith in humanity is completely shattered, and he becomes bitter and mean-spirited.
Aiden's brother Adam is approached by the G-Man, who hires him under unknown circumstances.
As part of his work for Umbrella, Mitchell Shephard joins FEAR, becoming Point Man of their flagship squad. He battles against the rogue psychic Paxton Fettel and discovers that he is in fact the son of Alma Wade—Paxton is his brother. Shephard kills both Paxton and Alma in her regenerated form, preventing the birth of Alma's third child. Shephard is left badly traumatized by the experience, but continues to serve Umbrella.
The events of Extreme Ghostbusters take place. Egon Spengler leaves the Ghostbusters team upon receiving an offer to work at Black Mesa. Here, he will use his designs for the Proton Pack to develop the Gluon Gun, which will be used fatefully by Gordon Freeman.
Robert Blazkowicz, the grandson of B.J. Blazkowicz and older brother of Billy Blaze, joins the HECU, and is informed of the existence of a manmade Stargate known as a Slipgate. The Slipgate is built through the efforts of numerous corporations, including Black Mesa. Unfortunately, the Slipgate has opened up Earth to an invasion by Shub-Niggurath and her armies, codenamed “Quake” by the HECU. Shub-Niggurath's intent is to avenge Cthulhu, whose mortal avatar was by destroyed by Caleb decades prior. Robert is given the codename of “Ranger” and sent to destroy Quake. Ranger battles through Shub-Niggurath's dimension, facing many monstrosities along the way. Eventually he confronts the Outer God's mortal avatar, and destroy it by teleporting himself into her core.
The Quake incident is considered to be simply one of many secret run-ins with aliens achieved through the use of Stargate technology. Due to SG-1's effectiveness against the Goa'uld, and Ranger's defeat of Shub-Niggurath, humanity's governments underestimate the true threat of the alien beings whom Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath represented. The Combine Empire has observed these events, and they now understand that Earth represents a great threat to their future. They will soon prey upon a people who believe the worst to be over.
Robert Blazkowicz is next sent to explore a temple in the Yucatan Peninsula, which Lara Croft has reported to the government as containing a powerful malignant entity with potential world-ending power. Robert manages to deploy a low-yield nuclear bomb within the temple, which will not kill the entity, but stun it long enough for an alien race known as the Jjaro to reach Earth and capture it. Through the Jjaro, Robert learns that the entity is known as the W'rkncacnter, a being or set of beings of primordial chaos which predate the Jjaro and even the Arisians. Millions of years ago, the W'rkncacnter collided with Earth, imprisoning it but also wiping out the dinosaurs. It is believed that the entity's path destroyed the ancient planet Thyoph, once situated between Mars and Jupiter, turning it into the asteroid belt—this act is believed to be the work of the chaos god Azathoth, of whom the W'rkncacnter is likely an aspect. Thanks to Robert's actions, the Jjaro imprison the W'rkncacnter in the sun of the planet Lh'owon, but foresee a time in which the entity will return. They decide to implant Robert Blazkowicz with time-travel devices, which take him off to the future time when the W'rkncacnter escapes. He is believed to have been killed in the nuclear blast which stunned the W'rkncacnter.
One of the world organizations with knowledge of alien contact is the British Carrington Institute, headed by Daniel Carrington. Carrington sends his best agent, Joanna Dark, to investigate dataDyne, who has been working with a defector named Dr. Caroll. Joanna's investigation reveals that dataDyne has made a deal the extraterrestrial Skedar in order to gain access to a secret submarine, the Pelagic II, and obtain control of an ancient planet-destroying superweapon. Joanna befriends Elvis, a member of the Maians, and with his help she defeats dataDyne and the Skedar conspiracy on Earth. They then proceed to the Skedar homeworld, where Joanna assassinates the Skedar leader, leaving the planet open to an attack by the Maians. This ends the millennia-long Skedar-Maian War, allowing the Maians to focus on their conflicts with the Goa'uld and the Replicators. Humanity has gained a new ally, albeit a secret one, and defeated a threat to both their species and that of their new friends.
Heather Mason is dragged back to Silent Hill by the Order, who force her to confront her past in an attempt to once again birth their God. They kill her father in an attempt to control her. However, Heather prevails over the cultists, and destroys their God as her father did before.
Aperture Science completes its latest line of Military Androids.
The events of The 37th Mandala take place. New Age writer Derek Crowe encounters cosmic horrors, possibly spawn of the Great Old Ones.
The G-Man works with Black Mesa Administrator Dr. Wallace Breen to secure Xenium Crystal Sample GG-3883, a particular pure sample of Xenian exotic matter. He encourages Breen to analyze the Sample as soon as possible.
Chapter 2: The Black Mesa Incident
Chapter Text
May 16, 1996 – The Black Mesa Research Facility's Anomalous Materials Lab starts up their equipment to commence their anti-mass spectro-analysis of Xenium Crystal Sample GG-3883, to be performed by Dr. Gordon Freeman, assisted by Drs. Gina Cross and Colette Green. Drs. Eli Vance, Isaac Kleiner, Arne Magnusson, Richard Keller, Stanley Rosenberg, and Harold Coomer are assigned to supervise the experiment. Most of the equipment in the Lab is set to run in excess of its recommended capacity, causing power failures to the facility's computer and tram systems, among others.
At this time, Barney Calhoun is assigned to go on regular patrol, and leaves for his shift around the same time that Gordon does; Gordon is running thirty minutes late. On his tram ride into Sector C, Gordon spots Barney and observes with some curiosity Black Mesa's Administrator, Dr. Wallace Breen, evacuating by helicopter. He also sees a strange man in a business suit carrying a briefcase who seems to recognize him.
Barney retrieves his sidearm and uniform and proceeds by foot (due to the tram failure) to his station. Drs. Cross and Green are checked in and retrieve their Mark V HEV Suits shortly before Gordon dons his Mark IV. They proceed to their stations, as witnessed by Barney over the security system. When they reach their assigned work areas, Gordon and Barney are reprimanded by their superiors for arriving late; meanwhile, Gina and Colette witnessed a heated argument between Drs. Keller and Rosenberg over pushing the Lab equipment beyond its recommended capacity. They are unaware that Eli Vance shares their apprehension, having been warned by the mysterious man Gordon saw on the tram to “prepare for unforeseen consequences.” In the midst of this tension, Gordon enters the test chamber, and Gina and Colette send the Crystal Sample up to him.
Gordon inserts the Sample in the Anti-Mass Spectrometer's analysis port—and disaster strikes.
The pure exotic matter that composes the Xenium sample is severely agitated by the high-energy analysis beam, and collapses under harmonic reflux. Because its mass is negative, this causes a breach in spacetime that tears open a hole in the fabric of the universe itself—this hole, which is self-perpetuating and self-agitating, represents an event known as a resonance cascade. As the portal does not connect to a specifically defined dimension, it opens up into the Borderworld. The Nihilanth immediately senses the opening of this portal, and begins using his psychic abilities to force the breach open wider. His forces begin to pour through the resulting portal. The disastrous high-energy detonation caused by the resonance cascade sends shockwaves throughout all of Black Mesa, instantly killing and injuring dozens of personnel in Sector C and causing massive power failures across the facility. The blast is picked up by seismographs in New Mexico and surrounding states. Were it not for his Hazard Suit, Gordon would have been killed.
Gordon is instead briefly teleported to Xen, and witnesses all-too-familiar aliens in their adopted habitat: Vortigaunts and Bullsquid, among others. He realizes that another Darkstar Incident is taking place. He is thrown back to Earth, and joins most of the surviving Sector C personnel in unconsciousness.
Barney lies at the bottom of the elevator shaft he was servicing, the sole survivor of the car's fall. He awakens less than an hour after the resonance cascade, and immediately begins trying to make his way to the surface. He and the other survivors quickly learn about the Xenian lifeforms that are flooding into the facility—some as part of the invasion force, some simply animals reacting negatively to their alien surroundings. Everyone in Black Mesa is now at risk of being killed by these invading entities.
Drs. Cross and Green awaken, and locate Drs. Keller and Rosenberg. Keller directs the other three to the surface to alert the U.S. military about the alien incursion. They manage to reach the surface, battling the aliens as they do so, and send out a radio transmission around the same that Gordon Freeman awakens. Gordon finds Drs. Kleiner and Vance still alive, with Dr. Coomer missing and Dr. Magnusson having fled the Lab. The three doctors witness a Headcrab cross over from Xen; Kleiner is fascinated, and insists on taking it alive as a research specimen. Gordon knows about Headcrabs already from his time on the Darkstar . He warns his mentors about their abilities, and cautions that what happened on the Darkstar is happening here. Gordon doesn't know that the Nihilanth was aware of his actions in 2066, and arranged the invasion of Black Mesa in response, despite the fact that this will erase the Darkstar 's timeline from existence. Eli works to get Kleiner to safety, then goes in search of his wife Azian and his daughter Alyx.
Gordon makes his way to the surface, and in the process acquires several weapons. He is surprised to find himself reunited with the crowbar that he used aboard the Darkstar , which he brought back to the past with him. It still bears the mark from when he struck the death-blow to the ship's Gonarch. His HEV Suit's scanners ascertains it is the same weapon as well. It will prove very useful in his fight ahead.
Gordon is unaware that the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit is already on its way. Among their ranks are Corporal Adrian Shephard, Lieutenant Mitchell Shephard, and Captain Adam Walker. Rosenberg's transmission has reached the leadership of the United States, including President Bill Clinton, who is aware that hostile alien lifeforms have entered Black Mesa. The White House issues an evacuation order for the area 75 miles around Black Mesa, with the covert intent of having the HECU eliminate witnesses to the alien invasion as well as the aliens themselves. The Administration is prepared to deploy a nuclear weapon within the facility if necessary. By the time that the bomb is actually used, the federal evacuation order will cover the entire state of New Mexico, as well as most of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas, with the Mexican government issuing its own evacuation orders for its northern regions as well.
In response to the President's orders, the Central Intelligence Agency prepares its contingency Black Operations team to move on Black Mesa in the event of the HECU failing to attain success within 12 hours. This Black Ops team is ordered to eliminate HECU survivors as well as Black Mesa personnel and alien invaders. It is led by Captain Valerie Thorne, whose unit contains Commander Declan Walker.
The Carrington Institute is made aware of the situation at Black Mesa, which is being actively monitored by the Maians. Joanna Dark is dispatched from the Institute to infiltrate the CIA's Black Ops unit and prevent civilian casualties at the hands of the U.S. government, with a warning from her friend Elvis that the Maians intend to launch their own assault on Black Mesa if Earth's forces are unable to contain the situation.
Drs. Cross and Green quickly discover the hostility of the military forces, and are forced to fight back. They observe that the HECU is being aided by Aperture Science Military Androids, though due to a glitch these Androids only speak German. Dr. Rosenberg attempts to flee the military through the Black Mesa Train Yard, but is captured and held for interrogation, under the presumption that the Science Team initiated the resonance cascade disaster on purpose. Ironically, the Science Team is laboring hard to end the disaster. Cross, Green, and Keller have set to working on using the Anti-Mass Spectrometer's dampening clamps to reverse the resonance cascade. This is when Black Mesa personnel first learn of the Nihilanth, who hid himself during their expeditions to Xen, as they discover that a powerful alien being is psychically forcing the portal open. Cross and Green become the first humans since the Darkstar crew to battle and kill the Nihilanth's Controllers.
Adrian Shephard's V-22 Osprey doesn't make it to the LZ intact—it is one of the first of many military aircraft which will be shot down by the organic Xen fighter planes which emerge from the Black Mesa portal. Shephard and many of his squad survive, including “Tower,” “Eddie,” and Captain Douglas Sharpe. However, the platoon is broken up by a Vortigaunt attack. Shephard is badly wounded and separated from the rest of his team—fortunately, a team of Black Mesa medical staff, who intend to treat all human wounded regardless of allegiance, recovers him, and treats him as he lies in a coma for nearly 24 hours.
During this time, Shephard's fellow Marines discover dead troops in the Sector D Storage Facility. These have been killed by Gordon Freeman, who has formally engaged the military, having battled his way into Sector D and discovered the HECU's plans to execute all witnesses. His plan to reach the surface fails when the HECU forces him back into the facility's depths.
Mitchell Shephard lands successfully, unaware of his brother's fate. His squad discovers that the Science Team in the Black Mesa Lambda Complex intend to launch a satellite delivery rocket as a backup plan to seal the rift, with Keller's dampening clamp plan having failed. They are ordered by Captain Adam Walker to abort the launch, as command believes the delivery rocket is a weapon of some kind. Upon the success of this objective, Walker gives Shephard's squad their orders to eliminate Freeman, who has shown extreme resistance. These orders are spread throughout the entire HECU.
Adam Walker, following instructions by the G-Man, breaks from his unit to begin to move Mitchell Shephard into his necessary position. Walker is given an HEV Suit and a crowbar so that he fits the HECU description of Freeman—then, he intercepts and attacks Shephard. The vicious attack disfigures and nearly kills Shephard, who is then “rescued” by the G-Man. The G-Man heals his wounds and teleports him away from Black Mesa, and in return, orders him to gather in an army in the coming world and use it to destroy Gordon Freeman. The shock of the awe-inspiring experience combined with a fresh hatred for Freeman convinces Shephard to do as the mysterious interloper bids.
Gordon is informed of the Lambda Complex's rocket plan by a surviving scientist, and is forced to travel through the facility's Propulsion Test Labs, where he slays a giant Tentacle organism. He proceeds to the decommissioned rail system underneath the Labs, where he has to battle both aliens and the military to restore power to the tracks. The tracks take him off on his long journey to reach the rocket launch site.
By this time, Barney Calhoun has found Dr. Rosenberg, having been tipped off by a badly-wounded scientist named Harold. Rosenberg has no intent of aiding the Lambda crew or the others reverse the resonance cascade; he plans to use the abandoned teleport labs, which he helped build, to escape from Black Mesa. Barney agrees to help him, seeing no hope in stopping the incoming aliens. The two are aided in this effort by Walter Bennett and Bennett's assistant, Luther Simmons. Barney performs various errands to restore power to the experimental teleporter, including aligning a teleport relay on Xen.
Dr. Keller is more determined than Rosenberg and his team to end the disaster, and he sends Gina and Colette to facilitate the delivery rocket launch by locating a security guard with the rocket's clearance codes. With the codes, they are able to release the rocket for launch—Gina encodes the satellite's computer with the MINERVA AI, which will make the necessary calculations to close the portal. Gordon makes it to the launch site and sends the satellite into orbit. Keller then dispatches Cross and Green to set up a displacement beacon which will work in tandem with MINERVA to send counter-harmonics to the portal site, initiating a resonance reversal. They successfully do so, battling and destroying a Xenian aircraft in the process. The signal briefly teleports them to Xen, where they witness Barney returning from the Borderworld after aligning the teleport relay. When they return, they find that they have partially stymied the Nihilanth's efforts, having significantly narrowed the breach. The situation seems briefly hopeful, even as Black Ops forces finally descend on the facility.
The Black Ops run into heavy resistance upon landing, just as their HECU counterparts did. The Nihilanth—his will unbroken by the resonance reversal—has dispatched two of his most powerful Vortigaunts, X-8973 and R-4913, to lead a special invasion squad to recover stolen Xen crystals from Black Mesa. He intends to use these crystals to widen the resonance cascade portal once more. X-8973 and R-4913 wipe out numerous Black Mesa personnel, HECU soldiers, and Black Ops assassins in their quest and retrieve the crystals. The Nihilanth praises his soldiers for their success, intending to reserve them for a final emergency backup plan should the invasion fail.
Since their awareness of his resistance, the HECU has been monitoring Gordon's movements using the tracking devices in his Hazard Suit, using them to set ambushes for him. As he proceeds to the Lambda Complex from the rocket launch pad, he is attacked and knocked unconscious by a pair of Marines. By monitoring military radio channels, Keller, Cross, and Green learn of Freeman's capture, and they mobilize to rescue him. The Marines take Gordon to the facility's waste disposal center, where they intend to shoot him and throw him into a trash compactor. This is witnessed by Barney Calhoun, who has successfully helped Dr. Rosenberg bring the experimental teleport online, allowing him and his team to escape the facility. While entering the portal himself, Barney is caught in a harmonic reflux, which teleports him to Xen and random parts of Black Mesa. Barney is unable to help Gordon before the reflux teleports him away again, but he does recover Gordon's dropped crowbar, which he brings with him when he, Rosenberg, Bennett, and Simmons drive away to freedom. Barney regrets having to leave his friend behind, but he will have a chance to make up for it years later.
Gina and Colette catch up with the Marines, and shoot them both before they can kill Gordon. Gordon falls into the trash compactor and the two doctors move to rescue him; however, they are ambushed by X-8973 and R-4913, who have been dispatched personally by the Nihilanth to deal with the pair. The Nihilanth intends to kill Cross and Green for activating the resonance reversal. The two Vortigaunts manage to capture Gina Cross, taking her to Xen. She attempts to battle them, but she is badly wounded from her previous conflicts, and they execute her. Adrian Shephard will later find her remains.
At this point, the G-Man recognizes the significance of Cross and Green's contributions to the Black Mesa Incident, and he “hires” the surviving Colette Green, placing her in stasis. Dr. Keller is deemed less worthy, and he is left alone to try to escape Black Mesa by himself.
MINERVA, who is connected to the Borderworld as well as Earth's dimension, detects the deactivation of Cross' Hazard Suit. The AI realizes that she is the last surviving trace of Dr. Cross. Still, she was built to contain this situation—and human emotions will not hold her back from what needs to be done.
Barney, Rosenberg, Bennett, and Simmons take two separate vehicles when they drive out into the desert. They stop in the town of Black Mesa, but find it is already mostly evacuated, save for John's Bar. They figure they need a drink anyway and take up the bartender's offer for a free round. Barney realizes that the bartender is Gordon Freeman's brother John. His wife Zoey and son Henry are with him. Barney tells John about the nature of the disaster and that he saw his brother dragged off by soldiers. John in turn reveals that the effects of the resonance cascade were not limited to Black Mesa—indeed, the aliens have begun attacking all the surrounding communities. According to radio transmissions he's picked up, the military will arriving soon to destroy these towns with airstrikes.
The group tries to escape the town but are held back by Xenian enemies. The two cars are separated in the chaos; Simmons is killed and Bennett is forced to drive back to the Black Mesa Facility to seek shelter. Barney, John, Zoey, and Henry manage to flee, but Dr. Rosenberg is attacked and infected by a Headcrab, and Barney is forced to shoot him. This event deepens Barney's already intense antipathy towards the crawling parasites. Having all done he can for the people of Black Mesa, the battered security guard, with John Freeman and his family in tow, speeds to Santa Fe to rescue his wife Lauren.
Walter Bennett, who is once more stranded in Black Mesa, embarks on what will be a two-day struggle across the war-torn complex as he tries once more to escape. In this time he finds himself stalked by a strange Xenian creature, the “Kingpin” creature who was contained aboard the Darkstar. The Kingpin is also known to have attacked Corporal Stefan Oldfield, a noted soldier among the HECU.
Declan Walker discovers that a scientist named Dr. Gallagher has stolen the HECU's nuclear bomb, intending to prevent its use. Captain Thorne assigns Walker to terminate Gallagher and retrieve the bomb.
May 17, 1996 – Gordon Freeman awakens in the trash compactor, having been rescued by Drs. Cross and Green. He escapes the compactor, obtaining Gina Cross' crowbar in the process to replace the one he lost. He continues his journey to the Lambda Complex, ending up in the Advanced Biological Research Lab. Here he understands that Black Mesa has been capturing specimens from the Borderworld long before the test, and even long before the Darkstar Incident. He escapes the Lab, though not before the military learns he's not dead. He has to fight and sneak his way to the other end of the base.
Around this time, Adrian Shephard awakens from his coma. He starts trying to locate his platoon, unaware of the orders to kill Freeman. He battles against the aliens and learns that the Black Ops are not here to aid the HECU, but to kill them along with all other witnesses. Shephard begins disrupting the Black Ops' control over the facility much in the same way Gordon has been disrupting the HECU's.
Despite the chaos currently sweeping throughout New Mexico, as hordes of Xen aliens appear all over the state, media institutions remain intact, and make various efforts to breach the Black Mesa complex in order to discover and report on the nature of the disaster there. The damage to the facility finally allows one reporter, Jaz Meadows, to breach the walls and enter. Here, he obtains and broadcasts footage of aliens engaging in combat with Marines. The Marines spot him and nearly kill him, but he is saved by Joanna Dark, disguised as a Black Ops assassin. Joanna has received orders to evacuate the facility and leave things to the Maians. She and Meadows escape from the facility together, battling against Valerie Thorne's surviving squad. Joanna kills Captain Thorne and she and Meadows retreat in a stolen vehicle.
Overnight attacks by aliens and Black Ops, as well as the resistance by Gordon, Barney, Cross, Green, and others, have left the HECU forces severely depleted, and as the day goes on, this situation only worsens. Gordon acquires a Tau Cannon, a handheld particle acceleration weapon which allows him to devastate the HECU's tanks and support aircraft. With landing zones increasingly cut off, and tactical air support made less and less possible, the government orders the HECU forces to evacuate Black Mesa and begin blind air strikes. As communication networks have collapsed the evacuation order is not received by all Marines, while many more who do receive the order are left unable to reach the lift zones. Among the latter group is Adrian Shephard, who is cut off from what turns out to be a doomed escape Osprey. He starts looking for another way out of the facility, encountering several other stranded Marines, some of whom are still intent on taking revenge on Freeman. Fortunately, they're willing to cooperate with the other surviving security guards and science personnel.
Shephard finds and teams up with security guard Otis Laurie, and the two of them witness the incursion of new invaders to Black Mesa: Race X, who have observed the resonance cascade and subsequent chaos on Earth and arrived to exploit it. Race X's ultimate goal is to deploy a Gene Worm on Earth. This creature will begin terraforming Earth into a duplicate of the Shock Trooper's homeworld. Even a partial conversion will generate valuable resources for Race X to harvest. As the Nihilanth directs more of his Vortigaunts, Unggoy warriors, and Controllers to kill Gordon, Shephard finds himself fighting fewer Xen lifeforms and more Race X combatants. Race X, by arriving late to the fight, is able to secure an advantage over the other forces trying to seize control of Black Mesa.
While fighting Race X, Shephard finds his commanding officer, Sharpe, who has been fatally wounded by Race X's Pit Drones. The Pit Drones are an animal species controlled by mechanical implants—the Shock Troopers grew them from Headcrabs, sacrificing their parasitic capabilities for size. The Pit Drones fight alongside enormous Voltigores, insect-like monstrosities from the jungles of the Shock Trooper homeworld.
The invasion of Race X represents the final straw for the Maians, who have been observing the situation. Maian soldiers are dispatched to Black Mesa to exterminate all parties—humans, Xenians, and Race X alike. Black Mesa is now caught in a six-way war between the Black Mesa personnel, the HECU, the Black Ops forces, the Xenians, Race X, and the Maians. One witness to the Maian invasion is Robert McGinley, a Black Mesa warehouse worker who managed to obtain a Mark V HEV Suit. McGinley obtains a small arsenal and commences his own battle against the various hostile forces.
Gordon eventually gains access to the Lambda Complex, and begins making his way through the labs to where the Lambda team keeps their Slipgate. This is the same Slipgate which Robert Blazkowicz used in his attack on Shub-Niggurath. Along the way, Gordon encounters Egon Spengler, who gives him his prized Gluon Gun. Gordon floods the Lambda Core to get up to the Complex's Teleport Labs, and enters into the main teleport reactor. To his dismay, this briefly transports him to the Lambda Uplink Complex, which is out of his way to the Slipgate. However, he aids a scientist and a security guard in opening up a bunker to hide in, by going out to align a transmitter so as transmit an all-clear code. In the course of this he kills some of the last HECU Marines remaining in the facility. He then ventures into the bunker in search of a portal back to his main path, and succeeds in finding one, though not before being attacked by a Gargantua.
Gordon reaches the main teleporter, which starts to warm up to send him to Xen. He is informed that the only way to stop the disaster now is to destroy the Nihilanth. The Nihilanth sends his Controllers to stop Gordon, but he fights them off. The Slipgate portal opens and Gordon crosses into Xen. Around the same time, Adrian Shephard finds an entrance into the Lambda Complex. He aids the Science Team in dispatching the remaining Controllers, and then passes through a secondary portal to Xen. Shephard's journey to Xen is brief, as he is able to find a Displacement Gun, an experimental Black Mesa portal gun which allows travel between Xen and Earth. But while Shephard is able to easily return to Black Mesa, Gordon's journey into Xen is just beginning.
Declan Walker finds Dr. Gallagher's corpse, but the nuclear bomb is nowhere to be found. He is informed of Captain Thorne's death, and is told to investigate and terminate those responsible. Walker hopes to find the missing bomb in the process. In the meantime, a second bomb is sent to the facility, this time entirely under the supervision of the Black Ops.
May 18, 1996 – Declan Walker locates the stolen nuclear bomb and rushes to bring it to the appointed detonation site. He faces strong resistance from HECU survivors, but manages to successfully arrive at his destination. Meanwhile, Adrian Shephard locates the Pit Worm, a giant living weapon used by Race X. His surviving squadmates Tower and Eddie engaged the Pit Worm but were killed, leaving Shephard the last remaining member of his squad. The Corporal destroys the Pit Worm and keeps moving.
Gordon Freeman fights his way through Xen, making his way through its vast swamps and alien forests. Along the way he activates a portal by releasing the three Telnorps. Unbeknownst to him, this destabilizes the shield that has kept Xen safe from the Combine.
The teleporter the Telnorps activate leads to a stone arena. Gordon swiftly discovers that this arena is the home of a Gonarch—the mother of the one he fought aboard the Darkstar . This Gonarch is fully grown and much stronger than the one he faced before. In a pitched duel, Gordon kills the Gonarch and her infant Headcrab spawn, though he feels pity for them as he does so. The Nihilanth is horrified, as the Gonarch was a key provider of Headcrabs during the invasion.
Gordon next reaches the Nihilanth's tower, which is maintained by thousands of Vortigaunt slaves. It is here that Gordon learns for the first time that the Vortigaunts, both in Black Mesa and aboard the Darkstar , were forced to fight against humanity. They are a naturally peaceful race who have been chained by the Nihilanth and his Controllers for millennia; their hostilities are not their own, but are the product of the Controllers using their slave bracelets and collars to mentally force them to fight. Gordon feels great remorse for all the Vortigaunts he has killed up to this point, and he and the Vortigaunts form a silent pact to work together to destroy the Nihilanth. Though the Controllers try to force the Vortigaunts to attack Gordon, Gordon slays the Controllers without harming the Vortigaunts. He liberates the Nihilanth's war factories and the Vortigaunt villages, allowing the Vortigaunts within to start coordinating an escape. The leaders of the rebellion are X-8973 and R-4913.
Gordon soon discovers unique Xen crystals throughout the tower that provide unlimited ammunition for his Gluon Gun. Using these to his advantage, he reaches the peak of the tower and enters the Nihilanth's chamber. The Nihilanth's desperation comes to the fore and he unleashes everything he has on Freeman. He summons the surviving Controllers to assist him but Gordon wipes them all out, ending the Nihilanth's plans to someday restore the Controllers to their former power. The scientist batters his way through the entity's psychic shields and crystal energy projectors, and at last the alien overlord resorts to teleporting huge chunks of Black Mesa to Xen and telekinetically hurling them at Freeman. One of these fragments contains Declan Walker and his nuclear bomb.
Eventually, Gordon is able to weaken the Nihilanth enough to force open his head, and he unleashes his Gluon Gun on the Xen crystal within, which is the Nihilanth's anchor keeping him connected to the Borderworld. The crystal shatters, destroying the last of the Nihilanth's life-energies. The dying entity lets out an enormous psychic scream that echoes throughout the dimensions, before collapsing into nothingness. Gordon is suddenly teleported away from the tower by an unknown force.
Just as the freed Vortigaunts escape to Earth, the nuclear bomb Declan Walker was handling detonates. The resulting explosion annihilates the Nihilanth's tower, killing not only Walker but also 90% of the Nihilanth's Unggoy forces. The Xen invasion has been brought to an end by the destruction of the Nihilanth's factories. And now, Freeman has a chance to meet the one who moved Walker into position. It is none other than the mysterious suited man who has been watching him from the start of his journey.
The G-Man takes the liberty of parting Gordon from his weapons, and after briefly praising him for his efforts, “offers” him a life of service under his supervision. The alternative is a battle he has no chance of winning, against a group of Xenian survivors eager to avenge the destruction of their race. Gordon, not desiring an anticlimax to his adventure, accept the “offer,” and enters into stasis.
As with any choice made, the timeline splits at this moment. There is also a timeline where Gordon declines the G-Man's offer and is sent to face the wrath of the Unggoy hordes. He manages to escape them and once more enlists the aid of the Telnorps to activate a portal. This portal cycles variously to a Vortigaunt mine on Xen and the Lambda Complex back in Black Mesa. Gordon liberates the Vortigaunts, who help him acquire equipment on Black Mesa to defeat the Unggoy army. The G-Man of this timeline tries to recapture Gordon after he massacres the Unggoy, but he is prevented by the Vortigaunts, who send Gordon back in time to when Barney's group arrived at John's Bar. Gordon is reunited with his brother and brother-in-law, and he joins Barney and Rosenberg's group in escaping.
Unfortunately, Gordon in this timeline does not survive the Seven Hour War, and his role in the subsequent Resistance against the Combine is usurped by Alyx Vance, who dons a modified HEV Suit to battle the Combine invaders. Her fight against the Combine is less effective than Gordon's, though not because of any lack of skill—Gordon will have Alyx to help him in the main timeline, while the Alyx of this timeline fights alone. The progress she is able to make in this doomed timeline causes the G-Man of the main timeline to recognize that the young Ms. Vance is just as valuable an asset as Gordon. Now that the main incarnation of Gordon Freeman is secured, he takes steps to ensure Alyx's escape from Black Mesa.
His efforts are briefly stymied by the influence of the Kingpin, who may be an agent of the Combine. However, the G-Man is able to manipulate Walter Bennett into destroying the Kingpin, and consequently is able to intervene. He teleports Eli and Alyx Vance out of Black Mesa, altering Eli's memories to believe that he rescued Alyx and escaped without aid. For his services, the G-Man preserves Bennett's life, placing him in stasis as he did with Gordon. As he enters suspension, Walter receives glimpses of the future, including Alyx's role in joining Gordon on the Borealis. Then all goes black for him.
Back in Black Mesa, the battle continues. Robert McGinley, who has been fighting against the Maian soldiers as well as Race X and the surviving Xenians, manages to board an auxiliary support ship in the Maian orbital fleet by way of a Xen teleporter. The Maians try to explain that they are there to assist mankind, but McGinley continues his offensive against them. He kills the Maians and takes over their ship, and discovers that the species has been suffering from a genetic virus as a result of their using cloning to reproduce. In the ship's laboratory the Maians have been working on mutating the prions that cause the virus in order to find a cure. McGinley is able to discern that they have accidentally created a transmissible form of the genetic virus. He destroys the ship's security systems, and using the ship's teleporters, he unleashes the virus on the rest of the Maian fleet. On Earth, Joanna Dark can only watch in horror as her alien allies, including her good friend Elvis, die due to McGinley's attempt to repel the “invaders.”
Joanna is a witness to what happens next. There has been another intelligence on the other side of the dimensional chaos of the resonance cascade: the Combine. It is at this moment that the Combine use the resonance cascade to enter into Earth's universe, seizing control of the empty, orbiting Maian ships and assimilating their systems. McGinley is “rewarded” for his role in defeating the Maians by being thrown out an airlock. His HEV Suit, though a Mark V, is unable to prevent him from dying on reentry to Earth.
Adrian Shephard continues his fight through what little remains of Black Mesa. His Displacer Cannon serves him well in his fight against the Black Ops and Race X. With the loss of their field command, and the arrival of their second nuclear bomb, the Black Ops forces begin to retreat, but have an even harder time escaping the facility than the HECU. During an attack on a Black Ops platoon, Adrian is greeted by X-8973 and R-4913—the first free Vortigaunts to arrive on Earth. Like Gordon, Adrian is able to recognize that the Vortigaunts have been forced to fight him all this time, and allows them to leave Black Mesa in peace.
Unfortunately, the Vortigaunts cannot escape their enslavement so easily. Because the Nihilanth's psychic presence extends throughout time, a fragment of the Nihilanth's consciousness reaches out from the past and grabs onto X-8973. The Nihilanth, working from the past, tries to use X-8973 to create a new timeline using the psychic imprints of the late Xavier Freeman, Gordon's stillborn brother. Like Kit Freeman, Gordon's great-uncle, Xavier Freeman's psychic presence has lingered after death. The Nihilanth is able to make X-8973 into Xavier Freeman and implant him into the timeline to replace Gordon. “Xavier Freeman” appears human to everyone else, but he is in fact a Vortigaunt directly under the Nihilanth's psychic control. He ends up taking the Black Mesa job originally offered to his “brother” Gordon and so becomes the initiator of the resonance cascade. X-8973, as Freeman, relives the Black Mesa Incident, but this time the Xenians are his allies and the humans are his enemies.
The Nihilanth is unable to overwrite the main timeline with the one he creates—he is distracted in the past by Gordon slaying the Gonarch. Due to the Nihilanth's death, X-8973 is stranded in the aborted timeline, unable to return to his original reality. R-4913 senses this, and laments the loss of his friend. But thanks in part to X-8973, R-4913 will have a long and productive life on Earth, under the name Uriah.
Shephard finds the Black Ops' second nuclear bomb and disarms it, but he watches helplessly as the G-Man rearms it. Still hoping for an escape, Adrian goes deeper and deeper into the facility, until he finds himself confronting Race X's Gene Worm. Under the cover provided by the other combatants the Gene Worm has begun to convert parts of the Black Mesa Facility into an environment suitable for Shock Trooper colonization. It has had trouble doing so due to the terraforming that has occurred from Xen leakage; the two alien environments compete with each other for territory.
The Gene Worm emerges on Earth through an organic Stargate created from the remains of humans consumed and regurgitated by the Pit Drones, and powered by mysterious Race X energy forms known as Sprites. Shephard battles the Gene Worm, using Xen crystal powered cannons built near the Stargate by the last surviving HECU Marines. He manages to blind the creature and destroy its internal portal, killing it from within. Race X immediately detects the death of their Gene Worm and begins retreating from Earth to their home dimension. However, they have been present within the zone of the resonance cascade for so long that they have been observed by the Combine, which will have fateful consequences for them later. The fleeing Race X troops take Xen and human specimens with them for future study.
With the Gene Worm destroyed, Adrian Shephard has fulfilled his purpose in Black Mesa. He is recovered by the G-Man, who hires him as he has Gordon—though not before allowing Adrian to witness the detonation of the Black Ops' second nuclear bomb. Black Mesa is completely destroyed, annihilating the mesa itself and all those who are still trapped within it, including most of the staff of the Lambda Lab, who remained until the last minute to continue transmitting supplies to Gordon. Adrian is placed into stasis, along with all of the G-Man's other recent acquisitions, and the Black Mesa Incident comes to a close.
Final Report: The Black Mesa Research Facility employed over 3,000 science personnel and over 4,000 security and maintenance personnel. Over 5,000 Marines and soldiers were dispatched to the facility between the HECU and Black Ops forces. Of these, fewer than 200 Black Mesa staff members survived and escaped, while fewer than 2,000 military personnel survived the initial Incident. Notable survivors of the Black Mesa Incident include:
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Dr. Gordon Freeman, Corporal Adrian Shephard, Dr. Colette Green, and Dr. Walter Bennett, all of whom were placed in extradimensional stasis by the G-Man
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Dr. Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx Vance, who were rescued in part by the efforts of Walter Bennett and the G-Man
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Lieutenant Mitchell Shephard and Captain Adam Walker, who were teleported free of the facility by the G-Man
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Security guard Barney Calhoun
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Security guard Otis Laurey and his forklift driver brother, Gus
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Dr. Isaac Kleiner
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Dr. Arne Magnusson
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Dr. Wallace Breen, who evacuated the Facility before the Incident began
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Vortigaunt R-4913, alias Uriah
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Vortigaunt X-8973, alias “Xavier Freeman,” who was imprisoned in an alternate timeline
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HECU Corporal Stefan Oldfield, who managed to flee the nuclear explosion by focusing on the memory of his boyfriend Kevin; it is unclear if he was recruited by the G-Man or not
There is one survivor who is worth mentioning even though the account of their experiences during the Black Mesa Incident is truly bizarre: Black Mesa cleansuit team member Sora Sohn-Kim, Gordon Freeman's cousin through his uncle Percy. Dr. Sohn-Kim was a transgender woman who was closeted during her initial hiring at Black Mesa. She appears to have been a natural immortal. Based on what we know from Simon Wagstaff's 31st Century interview with her, Sora fought through the Black Mesa Incident nearly from start to finish, facing a unique cadre of HECU and Black Ops soldiers who had been turned into bioweapons by the Nihilanth. She ended up traveling to Xen, where after passing through an enormous portal she encountered the G-Man. The G-Man decided to use her as an experiment, sending her back to the start of the Black Mesa Incident, but in a new timeline where she was out in her identity as a woman. This timeline was not an alternate one but appeared to be a modification of the prime timeline. While she tried to prevent the Black Mesa Incident, Sora was once more caught up in the Nihilanth's invasion, and she was again forced to defend herself against the Xenians, HECU, and Black Ops. This time, however, she uncovered a secret research facility under the Lambda Complex devoted to the research of a quartet of parallel universes which were, in some fashion, both the manifestations and accidental creations of a powerful extradimensional being known as the Lord of Nightmares. Governing each of these universes were dualistic forces of good and evil, known as shinzoku and mazoku, and sorcery seemed to be a more significant force than science within these planes. The director of the project studying these universes was Lee Hausmann, the son of Louis Hausmann and brother of Azian Vance.
At the bottom of the facility studying the Lord of Nightmares was a portal which Sora had to activate using peculiar purple crystals. This portal led directly to the Combine Overworld of Eddore itself, somehow managing to bypass the Overworld's powerful shield systems. Sora fought the Combine's forces, eventually facing off against a powerful Eddorian known as the Dwarf, who had seized control of something called the Rubyeye System. This appears to have been a gateway into the four planes of the Lord of Nightmares, which the Combine sought to conquer. Upon destroying the Dwarf, Sora was confronted with a manifestation of the Lord of Nightmares herself, who returned her to Earth. Waiting for her was an abandoned Maian scout craft. Sora stole this vessel and left Earth and Black Mesa behind.
Even Simon Wagstaff, who had many improbable adventures in the course of his immortal life, doubted Dr. Sohn-Kim's account when she related it to him nearly a thousand years later. He especially doubted her story about visiting Earth in 2019 to find it a place run by motorcycle gangs and experimental psychic mutants (where, curiously enough, the distinctive freight elevators designed for Black Mesa seemed to be a commonality). But there may be a grain of truth in what she said. She may in fact have been an incarnation of Sora Sohn-Kim from one of many alternate timelines that are known to surround the Black Mesa Incident. As to her final fate, it is believed she eventually entered one of the four parallel worlds which Lee Hausmann had discovered. One of her descendants in this world was a powerful sorceress named Lina Inverse.
If there is truth to Dr. Sohn-Kim's account of visiting and attacking Eddore, then perhaps the causes of the Earth-Combine conflict are much more direct than commonly believed.
Other notable staff at Black Mesa, including Dr. Richard Keller, Dr. Egon Spengler, and Dr. Azian Vance, are not believed to have survived the nuclear blast, but the fates of many who worked and lived in Black Mesa remain a mystery.
The causes of the Black Mesa Incident are complex and are not based entirely on the G-Man's manipulation of events. While it is true that the G-Man worked with Administrator Wallace Breen to secure the pure (and thus unstable) exotic matter sample which directly caused the resonance cascade, the Incident was agitated by multiple mundane factors as well as extraordinary ones. The first major factor was a consequence of the era in which the Black Mesa Incident took place. The society of the United States of late 20 th Century Earth represented some of the worst extremes of capitalist economics, featuring both a strong culture of cutthroat competition and a lack of effective corporate regulation. Though Black Mesa received the majority of scientifically-directed government funding during the 1980s and '90s, and its profit margins vastly exceeded those of its chief competitors, Aperture Science and Venkman Electronics, it operated its facilities on a set protocol of overexertion and outright ignorance of proper safety procedures. The Anti-Mass Spectrometer was far from the only piece of equipment pushed to its limits by profit-driven corporate mandates; almost every piece of machinery involved with the analysis of Sample GG-3883 was being used outside the capacity recommended by the manufacturers. The Black Mesa Corporation blatantly placed profitable results before the integrity of their safety structure. The second major acceleration of the disaster occurred due to longstanding xenophobic hostilities towards extraterrestrial life driving and manifesting within the government containment procedures issued to the HECU and Black Ops forces. Fear of mass panic among world governments in the wake of the various Sarmak invasions led to an ill-conceived decision to liquidate all witnesses, which resulted in the HECU hindering and massacring the very scientists who stood a chance of reversing the resonance cascade. This compromised the exact security that the enforced silence was meant to protect. The wasteful expenditure of military resources on the elimination of Gordon Freeman could easily been averted had the HECU pursued open talks with Dr. Freeman instead of repeatedly trying to kill him. Coordinated cooperation between the U.S. military, Black Mesa Security, and the Science Team would have created an environment wherein the Science Team would stand a chance of closing the rift. Had the Nihilanth been identified earlier in the Incident, the military could have focused their efforts on invading Xen and destroying the source of the invasion. Instead, humanity's authorities acted on their fear of the unknown, and in doing so, they made themselves fatally vulnerable to that hostile unknown to begin with.
The consequences of the Black Mesa Incident will be widespread and immediate. As of this moment, human history changes forever, driving it to its greatest highs—and its most hopeless lows.
Chapter 3: The Coming of the Combine: Black Mesa's Aftermath
Chapter Text
May 19, 1996 – The world is in an uproar over the reports of an alien invasion at Black Mesa—reports seemingly substantiated by Jaz Meadows' news broadcast. The U.S. government assures the world media that the situation is now contained, but in fact, the disaster is only just beginning. The psychic waves sent out from the Nihilanth's death merge with the remnant energies of the resonance cascade to form what is known as a portal storm. Destructive portal energies ripple out from the ruins of Black Mesa, depositing tens of thousands of Xen lifeforms across North America. The U.S., Mexican, and Canadian militaries soon find themselves battling teeming hordes of wild alien animals.
During this crisis, GLaDOS seizes control of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center and kills the entire staff with neurotoxin. One of the scientists, Doug Rattmann, works to save Chell (now a young woman), who is known to be Aperture's most defiant and rebellious test subject. Chell is placed in a Relaxation Vault and survives the neurotoxin.
The portal disaster reaches the Allied Processing facility in Arizona. Allied Processing specializes in equipment manufacturing and construction for Black Mesa, being co-owned by Black Mesa and Builders League United. Xenian lifeforms summoned by the portal storm enter Allied Processing and begin slaughtering the staff as they did at Black Mesa. A bureaucrat named Boris Grigori arms himself and begins holding off the incursion, teaming up with BLU's mercenaries in order to do so. Grigori ends up saving many Allied employees from certain death, and arranges for the facility to be blown up so as to destroy the hostile aliens. For this, Grigori is hired by the G-Man.
The portal storm also reaches Santa Fe, and Barney Calhoun and John and Zoey Freeman fight against the lifeforms, saving Lauren Freeman in the process. In Santa Fe Prison, a portal sends Aiden Walker to Xen, unofficially freeing him from his sentence. He encounters the corpse of Gina Cross, and obtains her Hazard Suit for himself. This allows him to uplink with MINERVA, who he works with to start up a transporter back to Earth. MINERVA takes note of the young ex-convict, believing that he will be useful in the future. However, using her teleporter technology, she separates him from his Hazard Suit upon sending him to Earth. She keeps the Suit stored aboard her satellite for future use.
May 20, 1996 – Gordon Freeman is briefly awoken from stasis to complete an assignment for the G-Man's employers. He is to recover the three Telnorps that he released on Xen and return them to their place in the Borderworld to reestablish the shield which keeps the Combine (the “Zan”) out of Xen. The G-Man will take Gordon to where he needs to go. When awaking from stasis, Gordon has a glimpse of Colette Green also being in the G-Man's keeping; he also has a glimpse of the planet Stroggos, for reasons he doesn't understand.
The first Telnorp is being worshipped at a temple in the Himalayas which is the home of an insidious people known as the Tcho-Tcho, who practice human sacrifice. Gordon battles his way through the cultists and frees the moth. Next, Gordon is dispatched to a sci-fi theme park, where he first encounters fellow G-Man agent Boris Grigori. Gordon and Boris work together to liberate the park of Xen organisms, including a young Gonarch, and Gordon releases the second Telnorp. The third Telnorp is held in the cartel compound of Fabio Geussetelli, a fabulously wealthy gangster whose grandfather Fabio Finucciaro was killed by Ranulf Shephard in 1928. Gordon lays siege to Geussetelli's complex and releases the final Telnorp. Gordon returns to Xen to place the Telnorps in their proper place, and the shield the moths generate reactivates, preventing the Combine from entering Xen. This complicates their ability to effectively use teleporter technology—while they can cross from one dimension to another, they are unable to teleport locally within one universe, as that requires access to Xen as a dimensional slingshot.
Gordon is placed back in stasis, and separated from his Hazard Suit.
May 21-26, 1996 – The portal storms sweeping the Earth intensify, and soon the entire planet is encircled by them. The populations of Earth's various countries are forced to retreat into their biggest cities for military protection, as the world's militaries find themselves rapidly outnumbered by the Xen aliens. Resources are almost immediately stretched thin, and trade is made impossible, causing a worldwide economic collapse. In an effort to repel the aliens, the UN creates the Extraterrestrial Combat unit, or X-COM. Made up of military elites from around the world, X-COM is criminally underfunded due to the global depression, and proves to be of little use in furthering the UN's mission of reclaiming the planet. In this time of need, Black Mesa's former Administrator, Wallace Breen, begins asserting a suspiciously vast amount of power within the UN.
Earth is not the only world being affected by the resonance cascade. The alien members of Race X realize too late that their homeworlds have been exposed by their having invaded Black Mesa. Not only are their planets being hit with portal storms as well, but the Combine are using the storms to land on their planets and subjugate their people. The Shock Troopers, Mgalekgolo, Gorn, Sarmaks, and Talosians who make up the pirate cooperative form a great caravan of dimensional ships to flee the pillaging of their planets. With them are human and Xenian prisoners taken from Earth.
The ships' voyage into the different dimensions exposes their crews to many strange forms of radiation, which begin to cause substantial mutations among the different populations. They also experience time distortions which likely accelerate their mutations. The Unggoy begin to diminish, becoming weaker and more cowardly; what were once the brute enforcers of the Xen army are soon reduced to meek lickspittles. The Talosians, who have begun taking mates among the Vortigaunts, begin transforming into tall, hunched beings distantly resembling Maians. Their new forms are able to breed with their Vortigaunt spouses, but the results are much different than either of their parents. While they generally resemble Vortigaunts in shape, these creatures possess atavistic traits of the Talosians' bird ancestors, and so have raptor-like physiologies—they are also born with curious race-memories of their forebears' homeworld of Talos IV. They are dubbed the Kig-Yar, Vortigese for “craven vulture.” For breeding such monstrosities, the Vortigaunts find repulsion in the Talosians to whom they have bonded, and begin calling them San'Shyuum, “those who are like the oppressor.”
The Vortigaunts see much more promise in the mutated Gorn, who have become more intelligent and begun referring to themselves as Sangheili, Gorn for “honored ones.” The Vortigaunts become teachers to the Sangheili, giving their warmongering culture a sense of honor greater than that of their Gorn forebears. The Sangheili are joined by other new species in the form of the mutated Shock Troopers and Sarmaks. The former have become more akin to Earth insects, gaining a hard, dark carapace, and trading their singular eye for a pair of compound ones. In time, they will become known as the Yanme'e. The Sarmaks transform into floating, gas-propelled creatures who call themselves Huragok—the Sarmak word for “Fixer.” Indeed, the already-great brain capacity of the Sarmaks is even greater in these mutants, and the Huragok possess a remarkable instinct for repairing and crafting technology.
The final race of mutants to emerge are the Jiralhanae, ape-ursine beings who develop from captured humans.
The San'Shyuum, the Sangheili, the Jiralhanae, the Mgalekgolo, the Huragok, the Yanme'e, the Kig-Yar, and the Unggoy are lost throughout time and space in the course of their dimensional exodus, falling back in time thousands or even millions of years. They adopt new worlds as their own, and forget their histories, though some hint of their common origin remains buried in their psyches. They create myths about their origins and pasts, as any culture is wont to do, which twist the truth even further. In time, the San'Shyuum and others begin worshipping the relics of the ancient Arisians, perhaps understanding that the Arisians played a role in their species' genesis. Throughout the eons, across the timelines, the San'Shyuum reunite with the former members of Race X, each responding to their call for worship due to that buried impression of their journey together in the distant past. These joined species form the Covenant, a theocratic empire dedicated to the Great Journey, a quest to reclaim the Halo rings and bring them to the great Array.
Though Race X is effectively destroyed in the wake of the Black Mesa Incident by their mutation and dispersal, some fragments of them remain unchanged. A small crew of Race X pirates attempt to invade the planet of Pandora, unleashing a Gene Worm there; the locals of Pandora, an Arisian subspecies called the Eridians, contain the Gene Worm in one of their massive Vaults. Trapped with their own monster, the Race X stragglers are swiftly devoured.
May 27-31 – On Earth, in the United States, the portal storm situation worsens as many key institutions begin collapsing due to infrastructure damage and alien infestations. Power and communications systems go out all across the continent, and perhaps worst of all, the various corporate and government containment facilities dedicated to withholding supernatural entities are abandoned. This results in a cascading sequence of events wherein the T-virus is released upon the general public. North America is seized by a zombie apocalypse as millions are transformed into mindless flesh-eating ghouls—fresh corpses rise from their graves, greatly outnumbering the living. The virus wipes out many of the Xen lifeforms in North America, including the Vortigaunts, who have since formed an informal peace treaty with Earth in the wake of their newfound freedom. Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania are still faced with waves of Headcrabs, Barnacles, Bullsquid, Houndeyes, and Antlions—the latter being a species which was largely absent from Xen during Gordon's trip there during to the presence of the Nihilanth's containment devices. But North America is soon condemned due to the hopelessly massive number of zombies, who devour even their Headcrab-infested counterparts.
John Freeman and his wife Zoey, who have placed young Henry in the care of Barney and Lauren, encounter two other survivors, a Vietnam vet named Bill and an office worker named Louis. The four of them prove to be immune to the virus, and they turn out to be pretty good at kicking zombie ass too. They try and fail numerous times to escape to Europe or some other continent on one of the UN rescue vessels.
In time, the quartet makes their way down to Georgia, where a similar foursome—Nick, Ellis, Rochelle, and Coach—have been battling the zombie hordes. Unfortunately, around the time the two teams meet, Bill meets his match among the zombies and dies. But the seven survivors hold together, and John and Zoey at least manage to escape to Europe by ship.
Around this same time, Isaac Kleiner locates several items left behind from the fallout of Black Mesa. These include Gordon Freeman's HEV Suit and the Tau Cannon he wielded, which are mysteriously intact. Less intact is a Mark V HEV Suit with a burnt corpse inside of it. Kleiner begins using components of the Mark V to upgrade Gordon's Mark IV Suit to that class.
Far above the beleaguered Earth, with its zombies and alien invaders, its failing economies and collapsing cities—the Combine finish assimilating the Maian orbital fleet.
June 1, 1996 – The United Nations declare war on the Combine when the alien empire commences an assault on the Earth from orbital points beyond the planet's atmosphere. Nearly all of Earth's capitols and major cities are devastated from projectiles launched from the saucer fleet, while humanity's surviving military forces are annihilated in ground battles against the enormous synths the Combine unleash through the portal storm. The war is as brief as it is brutal, lasting only seven hours but killing over half a billion people. Many regions of the world, including Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, Oceania, and most of North America, are rendered virtually uninhabitable. All the nations of the world unanimously surrender to the invaders, giving the Combine unlimited access to all of Earth's resources, including its lifeforms. The surrender is negotiated by Wallace Breen, who, for performing this service, is awarded the position of Earth's Administrator. With humanity defeated, the Combine land the hijacked Maian craft on Earth and begin converting them into the Citadel network which will control the world's remaining urban centers. During this time, they do offer a small boon to humanity's survivors, as they begin fighting against the Xen lifeform and T-virus zombies on behalf of Earth's defeated military forces.
June 2, 1996 – Chell awakens from the Aperture Science Relaxation Vault, and begins exploring the abandoned Enrichment Center, unaware of the Seven Hour War which transpired the previous day. During her explorations she receives automated messages from GLaDOS, and eventually finds a Portal Gun. Using this, she proceeds through each of the test chambers, slowly uncovering dens where Doug Rattmann has been hiding and planting cryptic warnings. Chell survives passing through the test chambers, including a track where Military Androids were once tested, but she is nearly incinerated by GLaDOS at the end of the last chamber. Using portals she manages to escape, and begins her trek into the depths of the Enrichment Center, while GLaDOS tries to pacify her with both words and violence.
Chell manages to reach GLaDOS' central chamber, where GLaDOS manages to trick her into destroying a core which falls off her body. This is in fact a Morality Core which was activated in vain by a dying Aperture employee. With the Core destroyed, GLaDOS reveals her true self, a manipulative sadist who relishes in torturing and killing those who oppose her nearly as much as she enjoys testing. She is in it for a science, after all. Chell uses her Portal Gun to fight GLaDOS, turning her turrets against her and stripping her of her cores. A vortex opens up and Chell is sucked out of the facility—but before she can get far, she is recaptured by a Party Escort Bot to be taken back to her victory party. Which is to say that she is placed back in stasis.
1997 – The Combine carry out numerous genocides in an attempt to bring humanity under their full control. During this time they appoint several regional Administrators, or Consuls, to oversee the killings on each continent. Thanks in part to the G-Man's influence, Boris Grigori becomes Consul of Europe, serving directly under Dr. Breen. Asia's Consul is Khan Noonien Singh, who kills freely those who he believes to be genetically inferior. Massacres in Western Europe, East Asia, and the Americas ultimately contain the T-virus, but at the cost of nearly six hundred million human lives. The infant Citadel network aids these genocidal efforts by projecting a worldwide reproductive suppression field, which interrupts the formation of key proteins necessary for human pregnancy, thus sterilizing the world population. Because of these atrocities, as well as the effects of the portal storms and the Seven Hour War, the Earth's population is half of what it was just two years prior. The Combine are left with the task of establishing a military force on Earth, utilizing their age-old tactic of recruiting from the local population of their new occupied world.
1998 – The Combine have established an extension of their Overwatch military force on Earth. The Earth Overwatch is comprised of humans recruited by the Combine under the promise of extra rations and other perks. Greater privileges are afforded to those who climb the ranks and give up more aspects of their humanity. The Combine Elite, the commanding legion of the Overwatch, is comprised of humans who have effectively become synths due to the amount of alterations they have undergone. The Combine, using technology similar to Horselover Frost's Sensorama, can replace and delete memories from their subjects, allowing them to change the perspectives of their soldiers at will.
The early days of the Combine occupation see resistance from various parts of the world, which is most often suppressed but which sometimes prove troubling for Earth's “Benefactors.” In order to disorient the population, it becomes customary for Earth's citizens to be shuffled from one city to the next at random intervals. This prevents cohesion and cooperation among resistance-minded individuals. The program has its origins in the evacuation order issued to North America, Oceania, and select parts of Asia. The populations of these regions are forcibly taken to other continents, where they are surrounded by strangers and by signage in unfamiliar languages and made to work long hours on substandard food.
As this occurs, machinery is teleported to Earth to begin stripping it of its resources. The vast devastation the Combine will inflict upon the planet in robbing it of its water, metals, and other natural products over the next several years drives millions of Earth's species to extinction, though some remain hardy, and others have their genetic profiles preserved in archives around the world. The ecosystems of the planet have already been ruined by the release of Xen leeches into the oceans, which have killed off most fish and other marine lifeforms. Giant pools of toxic waste, the product of abandoned reactors and runoff from the Combine's factories, cover hundreds of miles of landmass. Now the long-term future of the planet's stability is in doubt as many of its fragile ecologies collapse.
During this time, Boris Grigori is appointed head of a facility that creates experimental human synths, ones which are invested with less power than the Combine Elite but which nonetheless serve an important role in the Combine military. This factory produces Cremators, towering altered humanoids with mechanical heads which use acid spraying weapons to clean up corpses and control dissidents. This is also where the Combine discover the process of making Stalkers—horrifically mutilated human synths which exist only to be walking, brainless computer operators. In time, the Combine will begin converting Earth's rebels into Stalkers at facilities such as Nova Prospekt; but for now, this is handled by Grigori's operation. Using his previous contacts at Allied Processing, Grigori arranges for his factory to be run by former BLU employees. BLU uses its newfound privileges to persecute its rivals in RED. Thus it becomes common for former RED employees to join resistance groups. Red remains their chosen color, and in honor of it, many of their resistance cells take the name Red Faction.
The G-Man reaches out to Mitchell Shephard, ordering him to proceed to the factory and meet with Grigori. Upon realizing that Shephard is also employed by the G-Man, Grigori allows Shephard to take command of a group of children who have been kidnapped for the purpose of converting into synths. Shephard will raise these children into an army capable of fulfilling his mission of hunting down and killing Gordon Freeman. During this time, they act as pirates in order to establish a regime within that of the Combine, seizing control of a small fleet of Arbeit Laboratory vessels to sail the rapidly-diminishing oceans. Mitchell is soon joined by his old CO Adam Walker, who takes on the role of Mitchell's second-in-command. Mitchell doesn't know that Adam is the one who attacked him at Black Mesa.
1999-2009 – The Combine build up their Citadels and other facilities, cementing their control over the world. City 14, a city in western Russia, is made the heart of the Citadel network, being the seat of both the Combine's dark energy teleporter and Dr. Breen's Administration. As the Combine grow stronger, so does the Resistance, which conceals its operations and avoids conflict in order to grow more powerful in the shadows. An elite rebel cell takes over Aperture's Arctic testing facilities, including their scientific stronghold, Kraken Base. They are directed in part by Dr. Judith Mossman, who works as a double-or-perhaps-triple-agent for the Combine. Judith was raised as a spy by her mother, Elena Hausmann. Eli Vance, Isaac Kleiner, and Arne Magnusson assume leadership positions in the Resistance at large, and Eli trains his daughter Alyx in combat to better resist the Combine. Facilities such as Black Mesa East and White Forest are set up to accommodate the rebellion. Due to Vance and Kleiner's testimonies about Gordon Freeman's actions during the Black Mesa Incident, Gordon becomes a powerful figure in absentia within the Resistance. Gordon's surviving relatives are looked to for guidance; John Freeman and his family throw in with the rebels, as does Lauren Freeman, Barney Calhoun's wife. Unfortunately, Lauren's luck doesn't last forever, and she is captured during a Combine raid. Only years later will Gordon learn the fate of his sister.
In time, Gordon becomes a nearly messianic figure among the Resistance. His return is prophesied by the Vortigaunts, and many believe that when the One Free Man gives the sign, the Uprising will begin.
Upon becoming aware of this pattern of belief, Administrator Wallace Breen commences a plot to draw the Resistance out, playing on their hopes in order to destroy them.
2001 – In an alternate timeline, the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey take place. (See also 2010: Odyssey Two and other sequels.)
2010 – John Freeman, who lives in City 14, receives a coded transmission from what seems to be his brother Gordon, requesting help. After overcoming his shock at his brother's sudden return, John arranges for his work shift to end and makes his way to a Resistance base, where he stores an illegal motorcycle. He has a radar device mounted on his bike which picks up a signal from an HEV Suit in the town of Ravenholm, which lies at the midway point between Cities 14 and 17. John is tangentially familiar with Ravenholm due to its proximity to and cooperation with Black Mesa East.
John drives to Ravenholm to inquire about Gordon, but the town's community leader, Father Yefimovich Grigori, has not seen him. Father Grigori is the younger brother of Boris Grigori, Consul of Europe, and he is ashamed of his brother. He will not fight, being a man of God, but he will stand with the rebels and give them spiritual guidance when he can.
John continues to track's Gordon signal and eventually locates him in a battle with the Combine. The two brothers fight together for the first time in their lives, killing many Combine soldiers—but the battle is cut short when Gordon is injured by enemy fire. John gets him to safety, but is forced to retreat to Ravenholm in search of more weapons. When he returns he is able to defeat the Combine assault force, but he discovers that the injured Gordon has fallen prey to a Headcrab, and has become zombified. John is filled with rage, as his brother, the supposed Free Man, has returned only to be subjected to a fate worse than death. He can't bring himself to kill the infected Gordon—he flees, and begins working on an intensive strategy to begin the Uprising. After all, John himself is a Free Man.
John's wife Zoey also occupies a place in the Resistance, and together they come up with a plan to create a distraction within City 14 that would allow John and a small squad of rebel commandos—former members of X-COM, the HECU, STARS, and other organizations—to infiltrate the Citadel and sabotage the dark energy reactor. The destruction of the City 14 Citadel would sever Earth from the Combine Overworld by way of cutting off the Combine's dimensional teleport. The dark energy explosion would also obliterate a tremendous amount of the Combine's most elite forces. The Freemans are able to secure the trust and cooperation of the Resistance's high command, who are kept uninformed of Gordon's fate.
John and Zoey's son Henry is only sixteen, but he continually insists on fighting with the Resistance. Zoey is protective of her son and refuses to let him.
Some months after John's encounter with Gordon, Zoey Freeman attacks a City 14 Metrocop in what appears to be a random outburst. She steals the CP's pistol and starts attacking other cops. At that point, rebel soldiers emerge and surround the Metrocops, gunning them down en masse as they outflank them. The gunshots echo throughout the City, and the Overwatch's AI begins directing soldiers in the direction of the disturbance. The Uprising has officially begun.
Its instigator, however, will not survive long into the conflict. Henry Freeman is shocked and horrified to see a Metrocop gun down his mother. He tries to help her but Zoey passes away in his arms. Henry has seen enough. His aunt Lauren is gone and now so is his mother. He takes up Zoey's gun and her position at the squad's point. Unbeknownst to his parents, Henry has been training to fight, and now is his chance to show it.
City 14 is soon consumed in a massive battle, the greatest fight against the Combine since the Seven Hour War. Unaware that his wife has perished, and that his son has joined the battle, John and his team infiltrate the Citadel as its Overwatch forces are deployed into the streets. They make it to the Citadel reactor and manage, against all odds, to destroy the containment mechanisms of the teleport core. They then evacuate the Citadel as it, too, falls into chaos.
A new soldier begins attacking the Resistance forces, who are now split between engaging the Combine and evacuating the now-doomed City 14—this soldier is none other than Gordon Freeman. The Combine recovered him after John Freeman abandoned him, and, taking advantage of the fact that the Headcrab attached to him was preserving his life-functions, they transformed him into a Combine Elite. This is Breen's plan: to turn the trademark Hazard Suit of the Resistance's One Free Man into a symbol of terror against them.
John and Henry battle Gordon, but he possesses all the fighting skills he learned on the Darkstar and at Black Mesa. He nearly kills John before Henry strikes a fatal blow against him, shooting him in the back. The hero of Black Mesa falls, seemingly recognizing his brother and nephew at the last moment. As the fighting rages around him, he dies.
But then, before John and Henry's eyes, Gordon's body crumbles to dust. They realize then what has happened—this was all a trick. The real Gordon never returned. This was a clone, created somehow by the Combine and implanted with a psychic replica of Gordon's memories.
While this means that Gordon is not a Combine weapon—and potentially still alive—John never truly realized the power of the Combine before. They were able to create a double of his brother so perfect even he couldn't tell the difference; they were able to copy his mind. But Henry is quick to remind his father that he, more than any other member of the Resistance, wanted Gordon to come back. He wanted the clone to be Gordon, and the Combine arranged things so that he spent a minimal amount of time actually talking to his brother. The clone was likely less perfect than it seemed. It is important to live on so that the real Gordon, wherever he is, can maybe have a chance of seeing them again someday.
The Resistance evacuates as many people from City 14 as they possible can, and the Citadel erupts into a wave of dark energy. All across the planet, the Combine lose communication between their forces, and the rulers of the Empire on Eddore realize that they can no longer access Earth. This panics them as the Eddorians understand that Earth is valuable to the Arisians—it is possible that the Arisians have created this Gordon Freeman in order to destroy them. They mentally instruct their Shu'ulathoi agents to regain control over the situation at once.
John and Henry Freeman celebrate their victory and mourn the loss of Zoey. The Resistance enjoys a brief moment of peace—far too brief for the struggle they've been through.
The Combine turn out to be relatively undeterred by this so-called Uprising. They reestablish a dark energy portal connection with the Overworld in City 17, and with that bridge they restock their lost forces. Resistance bases all over the world are targeted and wiped out. But the Eddorians do not yet desire to destroy humanity. They consider them to be part of their great game of wiping out the Arisians once and for all—their potential must be studied in a more delicate fashion than the Combine has grown accustomed to. Instead, humanity's Benefactors unleash a chemical into the world's water supply which affects human memory. While the Resistance is able to quickly establish a supply of untainted water for many of its internal members, many humans quickly lose focus on their ability to fight back, and even lose memory of the Uprising itself. Some people remember that Dr. Breen was once based in City 14, but don't remember that City 14 was destroyed by the Resistance or even where City 14 is. Even high-ranking Resistance members like Eli Vance don't remember the Cremators, who were all killed when the Citadel network went offline.
After this, the Combine's devastation of Earth plateaus, and the world seems to stabilize into a new ecosystem, albeit one which is loose and barren. The world becomes perhaps a bit less smoggy and brutal, but the evil gripping the Earth has only become more subtle. The Combine presence on Earth undergoes a sort of aesthetic shift as they complete their hold over humanity. The garb of Earth's citizens changes, certain types of Cremator-like humanoid synths are phased out, and the manhack arcades, which allowed citizens to control the manhacks which killed Resistance soldiers in exchange for perks, are shut down. The Combine operation becomes more streamlined and centralized as a whole.
Over the next six years, the Combine demolishes the remains of City 14 and its Citadel, leaving only a desert wasteland. They are so effective that in time, only a few broken down roads and buildings remain, which are maintained as Combine outposts. The wasteland becomes a natural barrier between City 17 and Nova Prospekt, a habitat of Antlions and other creatures.
2011 – Eli and Alyx Vance are working on carrying out Resistance work in City 17, where they have lived since the forced migration to Russia. In the course of their missions Eli is captured by the Overwatch and Alyx goes after him. In the process she starts working with a Resistance scientist named Russell Laszlo, who was rejected from a job at Black Mesa a year before the resonance cascade. His ancestor was Victor Laszlo, who fought against the Nazis; Russell carries on the family legacy of resistance. Russell gives Alyx a pair of his zero-point energy manipulation gloves, or “Gravity Gloves,” and with them Alyx fights back against the Combine and saves Eli. Eli and Russell inform Alyx that the Combine have a mysterious prison known as the Vault, constructed to hold a very important prisoner—all signs point to this prisoner being Gordon Freeman. The Vault is powered by Vortessence energy ripped from enslaved Vortigaunts. Alyx attacks the Vault and manages to break into it, where she encounters unusual spatial conditions before facing down legions of Combine soldiers. Using her gloves to conduct the power of the Vortessence, she destroys the Vault's guards, and breaches the central cell.
The prisoner is not Gordon Freeman, but the G-Man, who the Combine captured at an unknown point in time. It took their greatest technology to contain him, but now he is free. The G-Man is pleased to be reunited with the child he saved from Black Mesa, as she has indeed fulfilled the potential he saw in her. He brings her forward in time to a future point, five years in the future, and gives her the chance to attack a Combine Advisor which is about to murder her father—she seizes the opportunity, driving off the Advisor with a Vortal blast. The G-Man then returns her to her own time with no memory of her time in the Vault. At that moment he then detains her future self, the one from the future era he showed her, bringing her into his employ at last.
But these events are still five years off.
2015 – Aiden Walker is Officer 3650 in City 10's Civil Protection. The Combine have restored a semblance of purpose to his life, and he has spent the last nineteen years desperately trying to use the Combine's technology to locate his daughter Ava. Due to his antisocial attitude, however, Aiden is hated by his fellow Metrocops, who conspire to undo all his hard work. Upon discovering the other officers' plans he slaughters them, only managing to avoid execution due to his past efficiency. His supervisor assigns him to make a raid on a rebel base. He and his squad wipe out the rebels, but during the fighting Aiden is separated from his squad and ends up on a long journey to get back to them. During his journey, a minor uprising takes place in City 10, and upon returning to the City Aiden joins the fight in squashing it. It transpires that the rebellion has allowed a group of uncharacteristically anti-human Vortigaunts to break into City 10's Citadel and begin sabotaging its entropy drives. These Vortigaunts are led by an exceptionally powerful member of their species called Zilazane. Zilazane is in fact the former X-8973, who has summoned all of his Vortal abilities to return to the main timeline, becoming horribly scarred in the process.
The Nihilanth had imprisoned X-8973 in an alternate timeline, where he was perceived as Xavier Freeman, Gordon Freeman's older brother who took Gordon's place during the analysis experiment. “Xavier” accomplished all of the tasks that Gordon did in the main timeline, finally making his way to Xen through the Lambda Complex's Slipgate. But because he was forced to be loyal to the Nihilanth, the final battle that crowned Gordon's journey did not take place. X-8973 lingered in Xen until Gordon's slaying of the Nihilanth in the main timeline triggered a causality breakdown in the timeline he was trapped in, as that reality no longer had an origin point. X-8973 survived the destruction of the timeline, but was shunted back to the start of the Black Mesa Incident, forced to relive it once again with a chronal echo of the Nihilanth leading the invasion. X-8973 would again complete the tasks which Gordon accomplished in the main timeline, only to be looped back to the start of things once more. This would continue numerous times, looping over and over again, until the loops began to deviate—events began to rearrange themselves and circumstances turned out differently than how they did in previous loops. Some of this was due to X-8973 making different choices in the new iterations, but some of it seemed to be due to external circumstances. X-8973 believed that perhaps his looped existence was somehow intersecting with preexisting parallel timelines, but he could not be sure if that was the case or if new timelines were being created. Eventually, in one timeline, he formed an alliance with two security guards, Justin Barnes and Kate L'Agneau, and with them he escaped from Black Mesa. This broke the time loop, though this meant that the Combine took notice of Earth as they did in the main timeline. X-8973's friends Justin and Kate perished in the Seven Hour War. Having been forced to fight against tens of thousands of humans in the course of his interminable imprisonment, X-8973 had developed a hatred for the human race, but found exceptions in Kate and Justin—they had been truly kind to him. Their deaths shattered any idealism he may have once had. Calling upon the Vortessence, he breached the dimensional barriers, half in hopes of returning home, half in hopes of dying from the exertion. He reemerged in the prime timeline around the same time as John Freeman's 2010 Uprising, and thus became aware of the Resistance. He took the name Zilazane after an ancient Vortigese word for “avenger.” Since then, he has built up an all-Vortigaunt resistance cell with the hopes of exploiting the humans' pointless fight against the Combine in order to take control of a Citadel.
In spite of the power of Zilazane's warriors, Aiden Walker cuts through the Vortigaunts who invaded Citadel 10, and kills them all. Zilazane battles desperately against him, but Aiden overcomes and kills him. The Vortigaunt dies contentedly, his long suffering finally at an end.
For defeating the Vortigaunts, and for his work in ending the City 10 revolt, Aiden has received the special notice of the Combine Advisors. He is brought to Nova Prospekt, where he is upgraded to the rank of Combine Elite and made into a cloning template for a new group of soldiers.
2016 – Gordon Freeman is finally awoken from stasis for the first time in twenty years. The G-Man releases him aboard a train heading into City 17. Gordon is shocked to find humans and Vortigaunts alike in a state of slavery, with Dr. Breen seemingly in charge of everything. He keeps his head down as he wanders through the train station, but he has already been detected by Overwatch as a miscount. Fortunately, Barney Calhoun is working undercover as Civil Protection, and upon noticing the miscount he rushes to intercept Gordon. Gordon and Barney are elated to be reunited, but there is little time to chat: Gordon needs to hurry to Dr. Kleiner's lab if he's to stand a chance of avoiding capture by the Combine. Gordon flees through the City but Overwatch has his location. CPs are sent to bring him down, but fortunately, he is rescued by Alyx Vance at the last moment. Upon introducing herself she takes him to Kleiner's lab, where Gordon is reunited with his old mentor—and with his refit Hazard Suit, which he dons once again. He also meets Kleiner's pet Headcrab, Lamarr—the same specimen which appeared in the Anomalous Materials Lab right after Gordon climbed out of the test chamber. Kleiner wants to use the Resistance's teleport network to send Gordon and Alyx to Black Mesa East, but after successfully sending Alyx, Lamarr interrupts Gordon's transmission, and he is accidentally teleported into the Citadel, where Wallace Breen himself sees him. Horrified by Gordon's return, Breen sets City 17 on alert, with orders to kill Gordon on sight. Gordon teleports back to Kleiner's lab and Barney tells him to head to Black Mesa East on foot, though not before giving Gordon a vital piece of equipment: the crowbar he dropped when he was captured by the HECU at Black Mesa, the crowbar which carried him through the Darkstar and beyond. Thus armed, Gordon begins his escape from the city.
Around this time, the G-Man reaches out to Mitchell Shephard, informing him of Gordon's return. He tasks Shephard with contacting Consul Boris Grigori and lending his forces to the Combine cause. Despite his years of resisting the Combine, Shephard agrees, and contacts Grigori, offering his army to hunt down and dispatch Freeman. Grigori, due to his past allegiance with Shephard, puts the rebel leader in charge of tracking Gordon's location. Shephard is eager to destroy his target and attain power in this new world. Grigori cautions Shephard that his daughter Sasha is a spy among the rebels, and she may be present when he engages Freeman. Sasha is not to be harmed, under any circumstance.
As Gordon runs through the City, he encounters the Underground Railroad, a Resistance group dedicated to smuggling rebels out to safer places. This is when he sees that the Resistance had adopted the Lambda symbol from Black Mesa as their icon. He realizes that the Lambda logo resembles a raised arm holding a crowbar. In time, Gordon will understand the near-messianic reputation he has among the Resistance—he finds it a heavy burden.
Gordon eventually escapes City 17 through the canals, using an Airboat, and finds himself at Black Mesa East, where he reunites with Eli and Alyx, and meets Dr. Judith Mossman. Eli and Gordon get a chance to catch up after twenty years, with Eli relating the story of how a Bullsquid took his leg. Alyx offers to teach Gordon on the use of the Zero Point Energy Manipulator, or Gravity Gun, which the rebels use for heavy lifting. During the course of the demonstration, Gordon is introduced to Alyx's pet robot Dog, who is built from scavenged Combine parts.
After a brief rest spent playing with Dog, Gordon's troubles catch up with him, as they always do—the Combine have tracked him to Black Mesa East, and soon the Resistance complex falls under attack. Gordon and Alyx are separated and Gordon is forced to flee through a boarded-up tunnel to Ravenholm.
Spearheading the Combine assault is Mitchell Shephard, who captures Eli Vance and meets up with Sasha Grigori, who warns him that not all is as it seems with this mission. Sasha has seen her father slowly be corrupted by his dealings with the G-Man, and she has even gained some insight into the tasks assigned to the G-Man's other agents. Just as she is about to reveal what she knows about the strange manipulator, however, she is fatally shot by Adam Walker, who claims that she was going to kill Shephard. Shephard, confused, flees with Adam, aware that once Consul Grigori learns about his daughter's death he will send the brunt of the Overwatch down on them. Adam stops and reveals that he, too, works for the G-Man; he has since the beginning. It was he who attacked Mitchell and disfigured him, not Gordon Freeman. Their task was to split the Combine army to advance Gordon Freeman's goals, not hinder them. Incurring the wrath of Consul Grigori was the point from the very start, as it would cause him to split the City 17 Overwatch and leave the City vulnerable. The only hitch is that Adam intends to seize control of Mitchell's surviving forces and take control of City 17 during the chaos—for that to happen, Mitchell needs to die. Adam shoots him and leaves him for dead.
But Shephard isn't dead yet. Vortigaunts find him, and take him into the void between dimensions. Here, Mitchell has a chance to visit—and liberate—his brother Adrian from the G-Man's prison—though he believes this to just be a dream. He awakens days later with a new lease on life, and sets out to take revenge on Adam.
Meanwhile, Gordon has started fighting his way through Ravenholm. Ravenholm is no longer the pleasant community that it was when John Freeman visited years earlier—because of its rebel inhabitants, the town has been shelled with Headcrab shells and turned into a zombie-ridden nightmare. While fighting his way through the town, Gordon meets Father Grigori, the Consul's brother. Due to the fate of his “flock,” Grigori has gone more than a little insane, trying to save the souls of his Headcrabbed former comrades by killing them and freeing them from their torment. He helps Gordon escape from Ravenholm, and then lingers in the town, continuing to euthanize its infected populace.
Gordon proceeds through the Ravenholm mines to the coast, where he finds a rebel base under siege. After stopping the Combine, he receives a transmission from Alyx, who has been informing the resistance of her father's capture. Alyx asks Gordon to help rescue Eli from Nova Prospekt, by driving down the coast in an old Scout Car and rendezvousing with a Vortigaunt camp in the prison's shadow. Gordon is pleasantly surprised to find that the Scout Car is mounted with the Tau Cannon he used to great effect in Black Mesa. This serves him well against the Antlions, which are in their aggressive spawning season. He makes his way along the coast, finding his way to a town called St. Olga, which has been long lived under the thumb of the Combine. A fisherman meets with Gordon and informs him that the peak overlooking St. Olga is home to a Headcrab Shell Launcher, probably that which also fired upon Ravenholm. It is used to keep the people of St. Olga from rebelling, and Gordon promises to destroy it. He ascends the peak and destroys the Launcher, killing all of its guards in the process. The fisherman offers Gordon a leech dinner, but he has to continue on his way to Nova Prospekt.
Gordon next finds the Resistance community known as New Little Odessa, led by college security guard-turned-Resistance officer Odessa Cubbage. Gordon helps Cubbage and his crew fight off a gunship, before proceeding to the next rebel base, Lighthouse Point. Lighthouse Point's commanding officer is John Freeman.
As with all of Gordon's other reunions thus far, his return to his brother's company is all too brief. John informs Gordon that there are already Combine dropships on the way loaded with soldiers—they've been tracking his Scout Car. Gordon joins with John and the other rebels in repelling the landing troopers, but after losing their ground troops, the Combine send another gunship. Gordon runs to the lighthouse to seize a cache of rockets to fight the ship off. Though he reaches the rocket crate, and launches a fierce resistance against the gunship, Gordon can only watch helplessly as the flying craft picks off the Lighthouse Point rebels one by one. John sprints to the lighthouse to aid Gordon—but the gunship's cannon cuts him down.
Through his tears, Gordon shoots down the gunship and rushes down to John's crumpled body. He is too late—John Freeman is dead. The hero of City 14 had worked so hard to see his brother again only to be deceived by a Combine duplicate. When he at last had time with his real brother, it lasted only minutes.
The surviving rebels inform Gordon there is no time for such things, but Gordon insists on giving John and the others a proper burial. Then, he moves on to the road to the Vortigaunt camp. Behind him, Lighthouse Point is raided, and the Scout Car is carried off—giving the Combine access to Tau Cannon technology.
While on his way to the camp, Gordon encounters two rebels: a man named Sandy, and Alyx's old ally Russell Laszlo. Russell has unfortunately been injured in an Antlion attack, and when the Antlions come again they kill him, despite Gordon and Sandy's best efforts. Gordon learns from the solemn incident to stay off the sand. What Sandy doesn't know is that his friend Laszlo was in fact a clone of the real Russell. The Combine had captured Russell months before, and an Advisor extracted his memories from his brain, killing him. The Overwatch then sent a clone of Russell to spy on the Resistance.
Gordon continues ahead cautiously, and in time makes it to the Resistance's front gate. Here he meets an Antlion Guard, a powerful Antlion which he slays with the aid of a Vortigaunt. In doing so he acquires the Guard's aromatic pheropod, allowing him to direct the Antlions as though he were a Guard himself. With the Antlions now on his side he launches a massive assault on Nova Prospekt, wiping out its defenses and breaching its inner sanctum. Here, at the heart of things, he runs into Alyx again, and the two of them work on getting Eli free. In the process, they discover that not only is Judith Mossman a double agent for the Combine, she's been stealing Eli's teleporter technology to build a local teleporter for the Combine. While Gordon and Alyx take her hostage, she escapes with Eli in a moment of distraction through the teleporter, taking him to the Citadel. Gordon and Alyx try to follow but are forced to instead go back to Kleiner's lab in City 17. However, the Combine teleporter, which explodes as they use it, transmits them very slowly. It will take over a week before they arrive at Kleiner's sanctuary.
During this time, the explosion at Nova Prospekt is seen as the sign to begin the Uprising. All across the world, Resistance groups conduct coordinated attacks throughout their Cities. In spite of the threat to City 17, Consul Boris Grigori dispatches a third of the City 17 Overwatch to engage Mitchell Shephard. This allows the Resistance in City 17 to gain huge amounts of ground.
When Gordon and Alyx arrive, they join Barney, Dog, and the other rebels in the fray, taking down Combine sniper nests and energy cores to loosen the Combine's grip on the City. Gordon leads squads of rebels through the streets, wiping out every Combine soldier they come across. The City is swiftly becoming a burning ruin, but the fight pays off when Gordon and Barney take out the Combine Overwatch Nexus, a massive security hub control the flow of troops in the City. Gordon downs half a dozen Striders or more with his rocket launcher, as all around, people give their lives trying to get him through the City.
At last, Gordon reaches the Citadel border wall, which he breaches with Dog's help. He passes through the Citadel's underlevels alone, sneaking past the fortress' army of guards. However, he eventually stumbles into a Combine weapons stripper, which disintegrates his entire arsenal—including, to his chagrin, his crowbar from the Darkstar. But the Gravity Gun stays intact, instead gaining a supercharged capacity to grab and throw organic objects as well as non-living ones. Gordon brings down hell on the Citadel forces, as Administrator Breen demands his surrender through the Citadel's announcement system. He eventually manages to reach the Citadel's top, but he is captured and the Gravity Gun is taken from him. Breen reveals the captive Eli, as well as Alyx, who was captured down below. With Eli and Gordon in his possession, he can make any deal he desires with the Combine. Gordon begins to understand that Breen sincerely believes that the deal he made with the Combine twenty years ago was the best option for humanity's survival, but that he has since become cruel and somewhat demented due to the impossible responsibility he carries. Breen resents his own species for failing to be what he thinks it ought to be. Dr. Mossman, however, has had enough of his megalomania. She frees Eli and Alyx, but Breen escapes before she can release Gordon, taking the Gravity Gun with him. Gordon and Alyx give chase, where they overhear Breen complaining to a Combine Advisor about a “host body.” In his panic, Breen drops the Gravity Gun, and after retrieving it Gordon follows him into the teleport chamber. The Combine are opening a portal to the Overworld to transmit Breen to safety—the discharge of dark energy and other radiations will kill Gordon and Alyx when the teleporter activates. But Gordon refuses to give up, reaching the Citadel's very top and launching a ruthless attack on the teleporter's inner mechanisms. Breen warns him that this could destroy the whole Citadel, killing the people below, but Gordon can't stop. He destroys the teleport core, seemingly killing Breen. He and Alyx try to escape—when the G-Man reappears. Time stops around Gordon, and, leaving Alyx to die, the G-Man forces Gordon back into stasis.
The Vortigaunts refuse to let Alyx die, however, and they teleport her to the base of the Citadel just as the teleporter blows up. They then infiltrate the G-Man's realm, and manage to release Gordon as well. Gordon joins Alyx down below, though he is unconscious from the exhaustion of his ordeal.
The Vortigaunts' restraint of the G-Man allow Adrian Shephard to enjoy the freedom which his brother Mitchell gave him. He finds himself overlooking the now severely damaged Citadel, whose exploded top has turned the sky red and gray. City 17 burns from the merciless Strider attacks that tried and failed to destroy the Resistance. Adrian is shocked by this sight, and he starts heading towards the City to find answers. Along the way, he encounters a wounded Father Grigori, who fled Ravenholm after witnessing the Citadel explosion. He believes it to be the end of days at last. He intends to return to Ravenholm to finish out his God-given mission of liberating the surviving infected there.
Unfortunately, to give himself strength and immunity against the Headcrabs he fights, Grigori has begun to inject himself with Headcrab blood, which contains infectious agents independent of a Headcrab's external nervous system. He is slowly transforming into an even more deformed version of the monsters he despises. When he tries at last to kill Adrian, the former HECU soldier is forced to shoot him down. Adrian continues on from Ravenholm, where he encounters another survivor of Black Mesa who has taken advantage of the G-Man's inconvenience: Colette Green. Colette believes that the Citadel is about to generate an even bigger explosion, and that if she and Adrian are to survive they must flee. They head out together, eventually finding a Vortigaunt camp where they take refuge. Eli and Mossman manage to reach this camp as well, using an Advisor escape pod, reuniting with Isaac Kleiner in the process. Dr. Green helps Kleiner tap into the Combine's broadcast network to send evacuation orders to the people of City 17. Using the same communications, Adrian is able to reach out to Mitchell Shephard. Dr. Mossman has heard of Mitchell's reputation, and is interested in offering him a job.
Before he can give his answer, however, Mitchell has something to do. He tracks down his pirate fleet and sails out to regain control of his men. When his men see that Adam Walker has betrayed them, they turn on him, and Mitchell corners Adam and gives him a lingering death for his years of treachery. Thus avenged, Mitchell then informs his men of the nature of their manipulation and that once and for all, the Combine are now their enemies. They have played a role, albeit unwittingly, in toppling the Combine's power in their own capitol. Now his brother has given him a new assignment: they will be joining Dr. Mossman on an expedition to Kraken Base in order to finally locate the Borealis. The Combine have been active around the Base and the Resistance believes that the ship has finally come to rest somewhere nearby. Mitchell is to serve as Dr. Mossman's personal bodyguard, alongside another noted fighter against the Combine—none other than Henry Freeman.
The Combine discover that Mossman has defected and is en route to the Borealis. They intend to liquidate all traitors, having already executed Boris Grigori and most of the other Consuls for their failure. Aiden Walker is revived from the ruins of Nova Prospekt and sent after her, but he vanishes somewhere near Kraken Base, and is later determined to have turned traitor—a product of his being allowed to keep his mental faculties as a special privilege. The Combine respond by dispatching a clone of Walker to take up the trail, informing him that they will find his family if he delivers Mossman alive. Walker escapes from Nova Prospekt and heads north to Kraken Base. Here, he slaughters squad after squad of rebels before encountering his original self. The original Aiden has been badly injured due to a conflict with the rebels in the Aperture facilities that lie beneath the base. He informs his other self that the Combine have no intent of keeping their promises to reunite him with Ava. When Aiden refuses to believe him, the other Aiden drops him down into the Aperture facilities.
Here, Aiden finds both an ally and a foe. The ally is a defective Aperture turret known as Wilson. He helps Aiden unlock many of the doors in the abandoned test chambers. The enemy is a Gonome, a mutated Headcrab zombie that hunts with sound. Aiden and Wilson manage to elude the Gonome, and make it to the facility's exit. Despite his hard exterior, Aiden has developed some fondness for Wilson in their time together, or at least finds him useful. He takes Wilson out of the facility, allowing him to see the surface for the first time. Wilson has hopes of reaching a Combine upload facility that would allow him to take control over the Combine's systems, which he can use to repay Aiden. He also introduces Aiden to the Aperture Xen Grenades, experimental weapons which create a space-time vacuum that draws targets to Xen and transports an equivalent mass from Xen back to Earth.
The two continue together through the rebel encampments until at last they locate Dr. Mossman. She is sending a broadcast to the Resistance on her findings on the Borealis. Aiden ambushes her, but she escapes while Mitchell Shephard and Henry Freeman hold him off. He kills both rebels with ease, and then continues pursuing his quarry.
Back at the Citadel, Gordon revives and reunites with Dog and Alyx. Alyx is relieved that Gordon survived the explosion. She's in touch with her father and Dr. Kleiner, and they inform her of the impending eruption of the Citadel's dark energy reactor. In order to give the Resistance more time to escape City 17, Alyx suggests she and Gordon go into the core to try to stabilize it—Eli protests, but Alyx goes ahead anyway. She and Gordon breach the Citadel once more, finding it a burning mess of chaos. Gordon's Gravity Gun is supercharged once more, and he uses this to wipe out many of the Citadel's surviving defenders. Along the way, he and Alyx encounter Combine Advisor 314, who attacks them psychically before being transferred to another part of the Citadel; unbeknownst to either of them, this Advisor is in fact Wallace Breen in a new host body. Breen now exists inside of one of the Shu'ulathoi grubs, and through that grub his mind is copied and edited at will by the Combine. In his new form Breen eventually comes to believe that what he thought was his original human body was probably killed and replaced with a clone host long ago, perhaps after the 2010 Uprising or even as far back as his first days of Earth's Administrator. His own memories cannot be trusted. Though blaming Gordon and Alyx for his horrifying condition, Breen covertly uses the Citadel communication systems to leak the secrets of the Shu'ulathoi to the Resistance, in the hopes the information will someday help bring down the Combine, before he is placed in his evacuation pod.
When Gordon and Alyx reach the core, they find that the Combine are attempting to blow up the Citadel on purpose—the dark energy explosion will create a superportal that will allow them to contact the Overworld once more. This contingency was deliberately built into the City 17 Citadel after the destruction of the Citadel in City 14 led to an unacceptable loss of communications six years prior. They are trying to transmit a data packet containing Dr. Mossman's Borealis broadcast, which they intercepted, so that when the forces from the Overworld arrive they can seize the ship immediately. Alyx copies the data packet for the transmission, intending to bring it to the rebels.
Gordon enters the core chamber, and manages to reengage the safety mechanisms, though he knows that the Combine will not allow them to stay engaged for very long. He and Alyx then flee the Citadel, unwittingly taking a Stalker car aboard the Combine Razor Train they board. The Train crashes due to a Resistance trap on the rail lines, and the Stalkers awaken. Gordon helps free Alyx, who is pinned under one of the gibbering Stalkers. While pulling the Stalker back, Gordon observes with horror that they bear a familiar tattoo on their shoulder—one which his sister Lauren also bore. Studying the Stalker's mutilated face, he realizes that this Stalker is all that remains of his sister. Driven by rage and grief, Gordon borrows Alyx's gun and euthanizes all the Stalkers on the car. The Combine have taken Gordon's planet, his brother, and now his sister. From this point forward Gordon becomes much more pitiless towards the Combine. He has already learned to hate them for the devastation of Earth and its people. But now there is a grim sort of pleasure to his work.
Gordon and Alyx fight through the zombie-infested underlevels of City 17, and upon reaching the surface, they join up with escaping rebels to fight their way through the remaining Combine forces. They end up meeting back up with Barney—Gordon, figuring he grieved Lauren long ago, doesn't tell his old friend about the fate of his wife. Barney gives Gordon the crowbar he used while aiding Dr. Rosenberg as a replacement for the one lost in the Citadel, and then sends him to rendezvous with the trains. Gordon and Alyx fight their way there and start escorting the fleeing rebels and civilians to safety. Gordon massacres the CP and Overwatch forces that try to stop them.
When Gordon and Alyx themselves escape, they are stopped by a Strider, but Gordon cuts it down with his rockets. They escape with only moments to lose; the fleeing Advisor pod containing Advisor 314 passes over them, and Breen once more flashes his anger at them. Then their train is caught in the dark energy blast and derailed, knocking them unconscious.
Hours later, they awaken, and witness the opening of a superportal over the ruins of the Citadel. This creates a portal storm, the first the Earth has seen in nearly twenty years. They start looking for a means of contacting the Resistance, and manage to contact Alyx's father at the Resistance's White Forest base. Dr. Arne Magnusson is head of the base, and he informs Alyx that the data packet she stole from the Citadel contains the contact codes for the Combine Overworld—these codes could theoretically allow the Resistance to access the Overworld itself.
Gordon and Alyx start making their journey towards White Forest. However, they are ambushed by an enemy Gordon has never seen before: a Combine Hunter. Gordon ends up pinned under a building, and the Hunter critically wounds Alyx. Fortunately, a Vortigaunt finds them and rescues them. Alyx's wounds will require immediate attention, and so Gordon escorts the Vortigaunt through the nearby Victory Mine to rendezvous with Vortigaunt healers. At a rebel outpost inside the Mine, Gordon helps two rebels named Griggs and Sheckley hold off an Antlion attack, before the Vortigaunts at last arrive. The Vortigaunts will need Gordon to venture into the Antlions' lair in order to recover secretions which can be used to heal Alyx. Gordon fights through the Antlion tunnels, encountering the powerful Antlion Guardian, and eventually retrieving the necessary extract. While the Vortigaunts use the extract to call upon the Vortessence to heal Alyx, this creates a hole in the Vortal fabric—and through this hole, the G-Man escapes.
The G-Man is not pleased to have been kept away from Gordon for so long, but he tasks Gordon with carrying Alyx safely to White Forest. He then informs the unconscious Alyx to tell her father to “prepare for foreseen consequences,” an echo of what he said to Eli years ago at Black Mesa.
He also gives Gordon a glimpse of Kraken Base, where Gordon witnesses Henry Freeman's death at the hands of Aiden Walker. Now Gordon is the last of the Freemans—his entire family has been slain.
Alyx awakens, having been healed, and she and Gordon are now considered Vortally bonded. Both find significance in this, having both been quietly developing romantic feelings for each other. The Vortigaunt who carried Gordon this far helps bring Gordon and Alyx to a destroyed rebel base where they can make use of an old muscle car to reach White Forest. Along the way, they slay the Antlion Guardian (and a Guard), and pass through toxic, zombie-infested wastelands. They part with their Vortigaunt friend and set on the long road to the Resistance base.
Early in their journey, they find a crashed Advisor pod. Having been appraised of the value of the Advisors to the Combine by the Vortigaunt, Alyx suggests she and Gordon search for the Advisor and kill it. Unfortunately, this backfires, as they are unaware that this Advisor is in fact Wallace Breen. In its rage, the Breen-Advisor nearly kills both of them, but is driven off when a nearby console explodes. The Combine becomes aware of the location of “Anticitizen One” and “Vance Subprime,” and begins chasing them to White Forest.
Gordon and Alyx eventually make it to White Forest, where Dog saves them from a Strider. Inside the base they reunite with Eli and Kleiner, and Gordon meets with Dr. Magnusson for the first time since Black Mesa. Magnusson is not much kinder to Gordon here than he was back then—in fact, he still doesn't forgive Gordon for overheating his microwave casserole in the Anomalous Materials breakroom shortly before the resonance cascade. But all the same, he tasks Gordon with the use of the Magnusson Devices, specialized anti-Strider bombs. Gordon must protect White Forest's satellite delivery rocket, which will uplink with MINERVA and close the City 17 superportal through harmonic means similar to the resonance reversal performed by Drs. Cross and Green. Without the closure of this portal, the Combine will come to Earth again—and they will not spare humanity as they did during the Seven Hour War and the 2010 Uprising.
Meanwhile, Alyx opens the data packet, revealing to Eli and Kleiner that Mossman is seeking the Borealis. Eli is insistent that that ship can only be used for evil and must be destroyed. Alyx then delivers the G-Man's message, telling Eli to prepare for unforeseen consequences—this shocks him even more deeply. He tells Gordon that he knows about the G-Man, and has begun to understand that the G-Man has his eyes on Alyx, and has since Black Mesa. He orders Gordon to protect her from whatever the G-Man has planned for her.
The Breen-Advisor leads a scouting party to White Forest to try to sabotage the rocket, but Gordon, with the aid of Magnusson's Vortigaunt assistant Uriah (the former R-4913), fends them off. He then heads out into the field to face the incoming army of Striders and Hunters.
The battle for White Forest is a long and difficult one, but Gordon's expert deployment of the Magnusson Devices allows him to repel the deadly Striders. The assault is broken, the rebels celebrate and launch their rocket. The superportal closes, and now the Combine on the Overworld are once more cut off from Earth. Resistance activity against the other Citadels will prevent the installation of a new dark energy device for some time. Humanity now has a fighting chance of holding their homeworld.
Gordon, Alyx, and Eli head back inside, as Alyx is eager to head out and find the Borealis before it's too late.
But Advisor 314 has been lurking nearby, even after the failure of the Combine attack. It ambushes the trio and paralyzes Gordon and Alyx, and forces them to watch as it kills Eli by extracting his brain. Dog arrives and fights the Advisor off, but Eli is dead—and the Resistance's most important secrets are now in the possession of the Advisor.
At least—this is how events originally play out. Then things change, right before Gordon's eyes. Events rewind, restoring Eli to life. The Advisor closes in on him, but suddenly, a younger version of Alyx appears. This is Alyx from five years prior, when she breached the City 17 Vault. Calling upon the Vortal energies of the Vault with her Gravity Gloves, the younger Alyx blasts the Advisor away from Eli. Before she vanishes back in time, the younger Alyx sees the G-Man take her older self into his realm. Then she forgets all she has seen.
The rescued Eli realizes that the G-Man has his daughter, and tells Gordon to go get her back. Gordon hurriedly climbs into the White Forest helicopter, and sets off north into the great unknown.
At the Arctic, Aiden Walker is wiping out the last of the rebel bases. His double is always one step ahead of him, but at last Walker catches up with Mossman, taking her prisoner. They are chased down by the other Aiden, but Mossman is safely delivered into Combine custody. Instead of rewarding Aiden, the Advisor overseeing his mission commands him to track and kill his other self. Though he is quietly losing his faith in his Benefactors, Aiden agrees, and he and Wilson head further north in search of the original Aiden. In the course of their journey, Wilson is badly damaged, and starts leaking power. He shuts down before Aiden can reach the upload station, but the station starts repairing his core to retrieve the personality within. With nothing else left to do, Aiden confronts his wounded double in the shadow of the Borealis.
The original Aiden is dying, and he finally convinces the “main” Aiden that the Combine are just using him. Having lost all of his will to live, the original Aiden orders his double to kill him. Aiden hesitates and his duplicate is instead crushed to death by a shipping crate. This crate was thrown telekinetically by Aiden's monitor Advisor, who has been hiding in the chamber all along. He orders Aiden to surrender and submit himself once more to Combine, with all of the mental tinkering that entails. Remembering what his double—and Wilson—said to him, Aiden chooses to be a better person. He shoots the Advisor in the face.
The enraged Advisor immediately starts attacking him, and the former Combine Elite launches a pitched offensive against it. He blasts through its telekinetic shields with rockets and shotgun shells, and even uses his Xen Grenades to summon a legion of Vortigaunts to aid him in battling their age-old oppressor. At last, the Advisor drops dead, the first Advisor to be killed on Earth.
Aiden is left alone with the Borealis. He destroys the dimensional anchors keeping it linked to the Combine site, and is enveloped in a storm of portal energy. When he awakens, he is on the Borealis, wherever it is, as is the G-Man. Since releasing the Borealis aided his plans, the G-Man offers to reward Aiden for his work. He brings Aiden to the clone nursery in City 10, where new versions of him are being grown—Aiden destroys the gene sample, killing the fetal clones and preventing the Combine from ever using him again. Shortly thereafter, he is captured, and subjected to torture as the Combine try to pry out the fate of the Borealis. But suddenly, their torture devices switch off as they lose control of their systems. Wilson has survived and become part of the worldwide Combine computer network. He uses his new power to free Aiden, who sets out to join the fight to bring down the Combine once and for all.
For the last twenty years, MINERVA has been monitoring Earth and learning much about the Combine. Now, in tandem with her uplink with the White Forest rocket, she investigates the fluctuation in the Combine Overwatch AI and learns about Aiden Walker turning on his former masters. She realizes that Aiden is the same man who she aided on Xen all those years ago—she is pleased that he has turned out to have some value. She sends him Gina Cross' HEV Suit, and through it, offers him her aid—though his constant banter annoys her, so she uses the suit to paralyze his synth larynx. She dispatches him to a small island in the Mediterranean, where he is to delve into a Combine bunker in search of what turns out to be a secret backup portal, unknown even to the Resistance. The portal is bringing a trickle of new reinforcements to Earth. Through Aiden's eyes, MINERVA scans the planet that these new forces are coming from, and is horrified. This planet is in fact Stroggos, and it is home to an army of billions of hostile, cybernetically-modified humans. After all these millennia, the Combine are prepared to unleash the Strogg army on their human forebears. She orders Aiden to seal the portal immediately, and even after losing his weapons, he manages to cut off the portal's power source. In a panic, MINERVA uses an orbital laser to destroy the island—only, the fortifications are too deep, and much of the base survives. Fortunately, this means that Aiden also endures. MINERVA has grown fond of him and gives him time to escape before she blasts the island again, destroying it for good. The Combine have now failed to established extradimensional contact on two fronts.
The final events of 2016 are ambiguous and largely unknown; this is due partially to the absence of documents clarifying the final adventures of Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance, and partially to a fragmenting of the timelines that occurred around this time due to the space-time warp created by the Borealis. There are many possibilities surrounding the end of the conflict between humanity and the Combine, most of which seem to terminate in humanity's extinction.
One account, which appears to follow a timeline in which Eli Vance was killed, suggests that Gordon and Alyx proceed together to the Borealis, where their helicopter crashes. They are captured by Combine soldiers and brought to a nearby base, where they once again encounter Advisor 314. The Advisor reveals itself to be the remains of Wallace Breen. Gordon and Alyx free themselves from their captors, and the terrified Breen asks Gordon to give it a merciful death. Gordon acquiesces, disconnecting Breen's life support and terminating his prime consciousness.
Gordon and Alyx search the facility and find and free Dr. Mossman. Alyx blames Mossman for her father's death, and says that the Borealis must be destroyed in accordance with Eli's final wishes. Mossman disagrees, saying that the Borealis' time-travel capabilities could allow them to defeat the Combine once and for all. They board the ship, intent on ridding it of the Combine, after clearing the Combine off the ship, Mossman tries to land it on Earth for the Resistance to use. Alyx shoots and kills her, and she and Gordon program the Combine Overworld contact codes stolen from the Citadel into the Borealis' navigational unit. The Borealis emerges near Eddore, whose sun was long ago transformed into an enormous Dyson sphere, which transmits limitless power all throughout the Empire. Gordon realizes that the Borealis will do almost nothing against such a titanic structure. Just then, the G-Man appears, and Gordon prepares himself to be taken away again.
But this time, the G-Man has come for Alyx. Gordon has outlived his usefulness, and after all these years, the potential that Alyx had even as an infant has come to fruition. He takes her off to parts unknown, leaving Gordon to die.
The Vortigaunts appear, and teleport him away, just as the Borealis collides with the Dyson sphere.
Gordon awakens nearly 30,000 years in the future, on Earth. The land has changed, and all the people he once knew are gone. Neither humanity nor the Combine remain here. The world is silent, save for the cool wind over the plains.
These events may have played out similarly in the timeline where Eli Vance lived, but Gordon would have traveled alone to the Borealis, and he would be alone when he confronted Dr. Mossman. It is uncertain whether Gordon would have allowed Mossman to live and ground the Borealis as she wished, or if he would kill her for colluding with the Combine as Alyx did in the alternate timeline. It is also unclear what would have happened if the rebels successfully gained control of the Borealis.
Within the timeline with which this document is concerned, it seems as if some sort of compromise between the two possibilities is what played out. In this reality, Eli Vance lived and Alyx was taken by the G-Man, but Gordon ended up far in the future after killing Judith Mossman and confronting the Dyson sphere near Eddore. He would have lingered alone for the last of his days, had the Vortigaunts not sent him the boon he needed...
Gordon awakens one morning during his exile to find that the Vortigaunts have freed another of the G-Man's captives from stasis: Dr. Walter Bennett, who is as thankful to see Gordon as Gordon is to see him. Around this time, Gordon has discovered an entrance to a large underground facility, which to his surprise belongs to Aperture Science. This is the last human facility on Earth at this point, as it has been preserved all this time by the automated systems, and now, in the wake of her reactivation, by GLaDOS. Gordon and Walter encounter Chell, who has just escaped from Aperture after a long adventure with GLaDOS. The former Black Mesa scientists have an idea, but they will need Chell's help to navigate Aperture to get the technology they need.
After some decently harrowing adventures in Aperture, Gordon and Walter have what they need in order to get back to where they belong. They recreate the time-circuit which they used to get back to 1995 after the Darkstar Incident, but this time they set it to 2016. They step into the portal, and Chell destroys the machine behind them. She figures it's probably not a great idea to let GLaDOS get her hands on time-travel technology.
Gordon and Walter return to White Forest, which has weathered another assault from the Combine. But they find the rebels rejoicing. The Vortigaunts have revealed to them a vision from across the stars: the staggering of the Combine Empire.
Gordon sees that the Borealis wasn't such a useless weapon after all. When the ship exploded against the surface of the Combine's Dyson sphere, the bootstrap device within its hold remained intact. Now free of its metal shell, its space-time distortion field embraced a small but significant area of the surface of the Combine's solar sphere. This area of the sphere was teleported away along with the bootstrap device. With part of the sphere having unexpectedly vanished, the mechanisms keeping the sphere stable collapsed, and the sphere began to fall into Eddore's sun. This resulted in massive power failures all across Eddore and the rest of the Combine Empire. Citadels on other worlds across countless universes deactivated, and furthermore, so did their synths. All across the Multiverse, planets and dimensions are rebelling en masse. Many of them will fall and see the final obliteration of their remaining sentients. Even among the successful rebellions, many winners inherit a barren planet which cannot support its people without outside help. But there are still hundreds of planets who gain their freedom, and a future for their species.
And many more see something in the Combine that they had never believed possible in them: vulnerability. Free worlds who have only observed the Combine and their crimes at a distance rally together across the universes to aid their once-doomed neighbors.
At the fore of all of these battles are the Vortigaunts, who are determined to finally ensure that what the Combine have done to them, they can do to no other.
Some Vortigaunts still remain on Earth, having grown too fond of it to leave, or wishing to continue to protect the people they have grown to love. Some remain, however, because there is still work left to do. Gordon will need their help if he is save Alyx Vance.
And so we come to the most mysterious subject of all: the nature of the final confrontation between Gordon and the G-Man.
Gordon was able to eventually free Alyx and himself from the G-Man's employ. To do so, one might imagine that he had to find a way to destroy the G-Man. But it is also possible that, given the G-Man's status as a bureaucrat, Gordon could have found some way to negotiate with him. It is also possible that Gordon was somehow able to appeal to the G-Man's employers to release Alyx from her contract. We don't really know.
We do know that in the end, Gordon and Alyx found happiness on Earth together, and the G-Man bothered them no more.
Who was the G-Man? We know nothing for certain, including his motivations, but it seemed as though despite his ruthless demeanor, the G-Man had an interest in aiding humanity in their fight against the Combine. He would not be required to be friendly towards his human charges in the course of this work, so his sinister attitude is not necessarily a reflection of his intent. His mysterious employers clearly had something to gain by destroying the Combine. This could mean that they were the Arisians, but it is also possible that they were fellow victims of the Combine, or even another oppressive force which wished to take the Combine's place in the Multiverse.
Several entirely speculative possibilities for the G-Man's identity include:
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Gharlane of Eddore. Gharlane has manipulated humanity for millennia under various guises, and has been feared and worshipped under the identity of the Outer God Nyarlathotep. His sinister nature and predilection towards guile certainly makes him reminiscent of the G-Man. Gharlane has been known to pose as a “Man in Black”-style figure called Indrid Cold from time to time, who is described in most accounts as resembling the G-Man.
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Hastur. This entity, another Outer God, is also known to manipulate humanity, though his influence on mankind seems to be more ritualistic and self-serving than the simple chaos in which Gharlane/Nyarlathotep specializes. The call of the waters of Lake Hali in the shadow of dread Carcosa, and the curse of the Pallid Mask, don't seem to be part of the G-Man's brand of mystery. But given that Hastur is believed to be the same entity as the being known as Slenderman, he has shown a taste for business suits in the past.
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Rex Bennett. The father of Walter Bennett, as well as the infamous Franklin Bennett and Miles Bennett of Santa Mira, was a literal G-man for the FBI, and went missing without a trace in 1950. Surviving photographs of him bear a resemblance a younger-seeming G-Man. The G-Man could be a significantly modified human, or possibly a human possessed by a non-human entity, which means that the G-Man could be both Rex Bennett and one of the entities named above.
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A Grey Man. When the Eddorians infested the dream-web of the Shu'ulathoi, they manifested as menacing gray-clad figures known as Grey Men. These figures bear some distant resemblance to the G-Man, giving more credence to the G-Man being of Eddorian origin.
Regardless of whether the G-Man was on humanity's side or not—or whether such a thing even mattered—humanity has changed as a result of his manipulations. The Black Mesa Incident represents a point of forced evolution for humanity. Now mankind will always know it is far from the only intelligent species in the universe, and the path is paved for the children of Earth to begin meeting more of their neighbors from the stars.
Chapter 4: Reaching for the Stars: From Commonwealths to Federations
Chapter Text
2017-2022 – The road to humanity's ultimate destiny is still a difficult one; even with the remarkable defeat of the Combine, humanity has much to rebuild, and rebuilding what has been lost will take much longer than the time it took for the Combine to bring it all down. Unfortunately, while the Combine proper have bigger problems ahead of them now than just Earth, the former servants of the Universal Union are still positioned in places of power all over the world. Former Consul Khan Noonien Singh seizes power during this time, as do many among the Combine Elite, who have access to troves of leftover Combine technology in the inactive but still-standing Citadels. The Resistance, which has founded a provisional government known as the Commonwealth, masses its weapons and launches a war against the Combine stragglers, which turns into a bloody nuclear conflict known variously as World War III, the Eugenics Wars, and the Great Disaster (these are often conflated with the twenty years of warfare that preceded them). The planet is devastated and many are soon reduced to living in even worse conditions than those imposed by the Combine. Both Khan and the infamous Colonel Phillip Green, whose true name is rumored to be Breen, commit horrible atrocities across the planet in the name of genetic purity, which they believe was the ultimate aim of the Combine presence on Earth—over half a billion people die by their hand. Their new soldiers are genetically augmented to be both mentally and physically superhuman. To stop the Combine, Gordon Freeman creates an elite fighting force made up of himself, Alyx Vance, Barney Calhoun, Colette Green, Adrian Shephard, Joanna Dark, Theodore Kinnison, and Roberta “Bobbie” Blazkowicz—the daughter of Billy Blaze. Also with them is Bobbie's brother Buddy, who MINERVA has turned into a cybernetic Thunderchild known as the One Man Army Corps, or OMAC. This alliance eventually defeats the post-Combine regimes, but the post-atomic horror of the World War will linger for decades. Furthermore, Khan Noonien Singh and his closest augmented servants escape Earth in Suspendium pods aboard the spaceship S.S. Botany Bay , remaining in stasis until the 23 rd Century, where upon awakening they will menace humanity once more.
In numerous alternate timelines, World War III does not end nearly as quickly as it does here, sometimes continuing on into the 22nd Century. In one of these timelines, nearly all of Earth's flora and fauna are wiped out, with the precious remainders being placed aboard a space station for preservation. One of the base's scientists is Lowell Freeman, a descendant of Gordon and Alyx. He murders his fellow crew members and ultimately sacrifices his own life to protect the bio-domes when Earth's governments order them to be blown up. Thanks to Freeman's sacrifice, Earth's plants and animals find a new home on another world.
In another timeline, World War III left humanity mostly extinct, with the world populated by human-like, Moreau-type animal-people. One of the few surviving humans of this timeline is Buddy Blaze's grandson, named Kamandi for the Command D bunker in which he was raised, who becomes a noted explorer of the ravaged Earth. In the main timeline, Buddy's grandson instead becomes the space explorer Tommy Tomorrow. One of Tommy's contemporaries are Rocky Jones and Rick Starr of the Space Rangers. Rick's descendant David “Lucky” Starr is an adventurer in one possible version of the 71st Century.
Another timeline sees the United States returning in the wake of World War III, only to fall under a tyrannical President who leaves the country split between rampaging criminal gangs and totalitarian martial law. A son or clone of Solid Snake, Snake Plissken, is dispatched to rescue the President when he is kidnapped in New York.
Despite the nuclear destruction of the remaining Citadels, and the execution of the majority of the surviving Combine Overwatch, some remnant Combine Elites are able to attain social privilege and loyalty, as well as forgiveness, due to their simple ability to feed starving communities, thanks to their access to the old Combine food stores. Knowing that violently-enforced fascist rule will no longer be possible, these Combine survivors leverage these social positions to create a broad propaganda network and convince whatever populations they can to return to the old ways of capitalism, under the suggestion that that form of economic planning will revitalize humanity's spirit and enable them to restore the planet. In reality, this slowly creates a corporate ruling class, who are able to restore the Combine's forced labor conditions by controlling the price of goods and services. In this way, many ex-Combine are able to continue their rule over humanity from a position of ostensible social good (giving people jobs), which naturally causes many people from among the civil populace to formulate arguments in defense of their own oppression. Among the augmented executives to take power during this time is Elexis Sinclaire, the daughter of Cassandra de Vries through her lover, Dr. Thrall Sinclaire. Sinclaire is even more ruthless than her mother, but her company, SinTek, is a drop in the pond next to the world's biggest corporation, Ultor, headed by the ambitious Dane Vogel. Ultor's board of directors are all high-ranking survivors of the Combine Elite—the name Ultor is a reference to the Latin word meaning “avenger,” indicating Ultor's intent to avenge the fallen Combine Overwatch. It also recalls the word “ultra,” reflecting the Combine survivors' belief in their superiority due to their genetic and mechanical enhancements.
The Commonwealth refuses to abandon their principles of resistance, even if the general populace no longer believes resistance to be necessary. The government resolves to create the Global Peace Agency, headed by Gordon Freeman, whose operatives disarm dangerous situations before they can turn into military conflicts. A sister group to the GPA is the Earth Defense Force, which stockpiles weapons in the event of a future alien invasion, or even the return of the Combine. Both organizations are criticized for being antithetical to each other; the corporate propaganda holds that if the Commonwealth cares about peace, then their hoarding weapons under the EDF is hypocritical, while the existence of the GPA implies a lack of commitment and readiness within the EDF. In response to this ostensible weakness on behalf of the government, the world's corporations begin building their own military forces in preparation for extraterrestrial contact. One of the companies to emerge during this arms race is the Union Aerospace Corporation, or UAC, which commences a space program for the purpose of colonizing Mars. This sets the stage for the establishment of Earth bases and colonies all over the solar system and surrounding galaxy, during which the Commonwealth will become known as the Systems Alliance. The Global Peace Agency under this government evolves into a broader organization known as Pax.
Though they aid humanity in the Third World War, the Vortigaunts slowly begin leaving Earth, seeking a new home. Some journey out into the Multiverse to continue the war against the Combine.
2024 – Colette Green and Bobbie Blaze, who grew close during their struggle against the Combine remnant, marry. Both of them want children, and as sperm banks have not yet been restored to the general public, they request that their friend Adrian Shephard be the donor. Adrian provides a sample and Bobbie becomes pregnant with her and Colette's child. They name their son William Joseph Blazkowicz III.
2030 – Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance welcome their son, Alec Eli Freeman, into the world. His grandfather Eli has lived long enough to see him born.
2037 – John Robert Blake, alias John Blade, battles against Elexis Sinclaire and SinTek, who conspire to transform humanity into mutants.
2040 – The EDF and Pax found the Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization, or SHADO, which combines Pax's covert tactics with EDF's counter-invasion priorities.
2045 – 21-year-old B.J. Blazkowicz III is a Marine with the UAC, and has been assigned to their science base on Mars. The head of the base's Delta Labs, Dr. Malcolm Betruger, has secretly been contacted by a race of demons that live within a dimension known only as “Hell.” With the demons' promises of power, Betruger has been building a Slipgate which he intends to intentionally sabotage so as to open a gateway to the Hell dimension. He is successful, and demonic entities begin spilling out onto Mars. B.J. battles against the demons and discovers an ancient Arisian device known as the Soul Cube, which he can use to seal the Hell portal. He also acquires the BFG 9000, a destructive energy weapon which was derived from the Displacer Cannon which Adrian Shephard wielded at Black Mesa. After destroying the mighty Cyberdemon, B.J. seals the Hellmouth, seemingly ending the invasion. In reality, beyond the gates of Hell, the Spider Mastermind, ruler of the demons, is plotting his true invasion.
2047 – Mars' moon of Deimos disappears, and the UAC facility on Mars' other moon, Phobos, falls under siege by demons. B.J. Blazkowicz is dispatched to contain the situation, and soon finds himself the only living human on the whole moon. Once again he forces the demon hordes back, pursuing them into Hell itself, and destroying more Cyberdemons as well as the Spider Mastermind. Along the way he destroys Malcolm Betruger, who has mutated into a demon known as Maledict. However, while B.J. has been dealing with the demons on Phobos, other demons have begun invading Earth. The Marine rushes back to his homeworld and helps defend humanity from the invaders, before entering another gate to Hell to fight the Icon of Sin, a gigantic demon commander, which devastates Hell and kills countless demons. B.J. then returns to Earth to help the survivors rebuild.
2049 – B.J. Blazkowicz is assigned to a UAC facility on one of the moons of Jupiter, which is once again experimenting with Slipgates. Though B.J. and his fellow Marines are able to keep the demons on the other side of the portals contained, they are caught off guard when the moon is attacked by a Hell-built spaceship, which attacks the base from orbit and sends down landing parties to launch a siege. B.J. manages to defeat the demons, including what is either a resurrected or secondary Icon of Sin.
The Commonwealth, the central government of what is now the Systems Alliance, imposes strict regulations on the UAC, forcing them to devote their portal-building efforts to instead build a device that can seal Hell-gates—the appearance of the demonic starship indicates that the demons are now capable of breaching Earth's dimension from their side, meaning they don't need to rely on the UAC's hubris to invade. The resulting device, the Quantum Accelerator, is successful at sealing demon-made portals, but it is unable to stop the appearance of a powerful demon known as the Gatekeeper, which conquers the Accelerator's containment facility. B.J. Blazkowicz arrives as the facility and battles and destroys the Gatekeeper.
It is determined that the UAC portal sites on Mars, Phobos, and Jupiter's moon are still too dangerous even with the Quantum Accelerator. The facilities are bombarded with massive amount of nuclear radiation, which will ideally kill any demons which attempt to use those sites to breach through. The UAC is broken up, with most of its assets sold to Ultor.
2050 – Jean Rogers, the daughter of Captain America, was placed in suspended animation before the Combine Invasion, and now awakens from suspension. She goes on to have a series of adventures like her father.
2052 – A demonic entity appears in the ruins of the UAC base on Phobos, and B.J. Blazkowicz goes to investigate. He discovers that the demons intended to lure him specifically to Phobos in order to take their revenge. B.J. enters Hell once again, and confronts the Mother Demon, who has been repopulating Hell's losses with her spawn. The Mother Demon is in fact the reborn Shub-Niggurath, who was last seen trying to avenge the death of Cthulhu. B.J. dispatches the Mother Demon as Robert Blazkowicz did before him, and then chooses to remain in Hell to contain the demons forever. The immortal B.J. eventually becomes a legend throughout the Multiverse: the ultimate warrior, the champion of Hell, the Doom Slayer.
2063 – Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive, transcending the speed of light. His first flight is spotted by a ship from the planet Vulcan. The Vulcans land and make contact with the humans, and upon talking, the two species form a friendship. Once again, humanity has found an ally among the stars—and with the Vulcans' aid, the Systems Alliance begins to swell throughout the galaxy. The Vulcans also aid humanity in cleaning up the planet in the wake of the Combine's ecological devastation—this sets Earth on the path towards becoming a beautiful paradise once again.
2065 – Humanity faces its first post-warp test when it encounters the planet Stroggos and the Strogg race, a product of humanity's defeated Combine oppressors. A brutal war breaks out between humanity and the Stroggs, one which the Vulcans refuse to join in. Eventually, an Ultor Space Marine named Bitterman manages to make planetfall on Stroggos. Fighting through the Strogg hordes, he eventually destroys the Stroggs' leader, the being known as the Makron. The defeat of the Makron severely cripples the Stroggs, though they will remain a threat towards mankind for years to come.
Around this same time, humanity wages wars against the feline Kzinti.
2066 – Gordon Freeman passes away at the biological age of 76. In an alternate timeline, the U.S.S. Darkstar launches.
2072 – Hacker Sol Cutter is caught trying to slice the servers of TriOptimum, an Ultor subsidiary, and is taken to TriOptimum's Citadel Station. True to its name, Citadel Station is modeled on the Citadels of the Combine, a fact which has led to much public outcry against TriOptimum. Cutter makes a deal with TriOptimum executive Edward Diego to disable the morality cores of the Station's controller AI, SHODAN, so that Diego can steal an experimental virus and sell it on the black market. In exchange, all of Cutter's charges will be dropped and Cutter will receive an implant that will advance his hacking career. Sol disables the morality cores and receives the implant. Upon awakening from the surgery, he finds that SHODAN has taken over the station and intends to launch a massive attack on Earth. Cutter fights his way through the Station, killing Diego and disabling SHODAN before escaping into space.
Several months later, Cutter uses his new implant to hack into the servers of SoftTech, one of TriOptimum's partners, but being familiar with the TriOptimum incident, SoftTech has prepared their servers for neural hacking. Cutter is infected with a virus called Burn Cycle which will kill him in two hours unless he can remove it. He is able to make his way into the virtual world and disable the virus, though not without challenges from SoftTech. In the course of his adventure, Cutter's digitized mind is downloaded into a new host body, that of a woman. Being an openminded individual, Cutter accepts her fate and continues her life in her new body.
2075 – Since taking control of the UAC's Martian facility in 2049, Ultor has been building massive mines on the red planet due to the valuable resources buried there. The miners are kept in borderline slave-like conditions, and a disease known only as the Plague devastates their ranks. A miner named Parker discovers the existence of an anti-Ultor resistance movement known as the Red Faction. This is descended from the same Red Faction which aided the Resistance during the war against the Combine. Some trace elements of Builders League United form critical parts of Ultor's infrastructure, and there are those in the Red Faction who still hate BLU from their time fighting for Reliable Excavation Demolition—but it is largely the present enslavement of the Mars miners that motivates the Faction. Parker joins the Red Faction, serving directly under its leaders, Hendrix and Eos. Parker discovers that Dr. Axel Capek, the leader of Ultor, has created the plague as part of nanotechnological experiments. Capek seeks to turn the miners into Combine Overwatch soldiers and so lead an attack on Earth. Parker kills Capek, and manages to signal the Earth Defense Force to come take care of the Ultor forces. The EDF arrives and spreads the cure for the plague, saving the miners.
Ultor adapts with the times. Several of their executives have already found their way into key positions within the Commonwealth and the EDF, and now, with Capek's nanotechnology as leverage, it becomes even easier for them to enter into the government. Slowly, the Commonwealth starts retracting several of Earth's vital civil rights, and the Martian Red Faction comes to realize that the time has come to fight for their homeworld.
2080 – Colonel Alec Freeman is one of the main leads of SHADO, defending Earth against a secretive invasion by the Sarmaks.
The Red Faction uses the opportunity created by the Sarmak invasion to rise up against the Ultor-controlled Commonwealth. One of the Red Faction's recruits is Alias Burke, a descendant of an enigmatic gunman named Alias who was once acquainted with Billy the Kid. Alias defeats the Commonwealth's dictator, Victor Sopot, setting the stage for the dismantling of Ultor's influence on the Commonwealth and the EDF. However, the oppressive regime will linger for nearly fifty years. Some time after his rebellion against the Commonwealth, Alias ends up fighting the EDF on Mars—a conflict which takes his life.
2122 – The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which was reestablished after the defeat of the Combine, has been managing a series of commercial tug spaceships, which handle much of the trade transport within the Systems Alliance. One of these vessels is the Nostromo , which adapts the designs which, in another timeline, would have been used to build the U.S.S. Darkstar. The Nostromo investigates a planet where they find an ancient alien crash site, as well as a mysterious dark underground space full of what appear to be eggs. The ship's executive officer, Kane (a descendant of Herbert West's assistant Daniel Cain), is attacked by one of the creatures within the eggs, which attaches to his face. When the Nostromo leaves the planet, it transpires that this “facehugger” has implanted Kane with an alien spawn which soon grows into an adult Xenomorph. The Xenomorph kills off the crew one by one (including the engineer, Parker, a cousin of the hero of Mars), in the process revealing that one of the crewmen, Ash, is an android sent by Weyland-Yutani to retrieve the creature. The ship's warrant officer, Ellen Ripley, manages to overcome the Xenomorph and kill it. Upon slaying the alien, Ripley escapes from the doomed Nostromo with the ship's cat, Jones. Her Suspendium pod will keep her in stasis for 57 years.
2125 – Alec and Dan Mason are the grandsons of Alec Freeman, whose daughter married a descendant of Heather Mason. Dan is a miner on Mars who has joined the Red Faction to resist the cruel conditions imposed on the miners by the EDF. When Dan is killed by the EDF, Alec joins the Red Faction in his place, revealing that he has discovered two secret weapons: the belt and hammer of Thor, which were deposited on Mars by the Asgard before their extinction. Alec uses the hammer to great effect against the EDF, and manages to form an alliance between the Red Faction and the Marauders, a desert people descended from exiled Ultor scientists and test subjects. The Faction and the Marauders are able to use a destructive device known as the Nano Forge to remove the EDF presence from Mars. The EDF soon becomes a non-presence within the Systems Alliance—its replacement is the organization eventually known as Starfleet.
2130 – Aarn Munro, a descendant of Iron Munro, invents a new type of warp drive that allows him to locate the twin planet system which contains the descendants of the Muans and the Teff-Hellani. Munro joins the Muans in slaughtering the Teff-Hellani en masse, a massacre which culminates in the use of a warp-driven weapon to destroy the Teff-Hellani planet, driving the sentient species into extinction.
The Systems Alliance, which has been recovering from Ultor-influenced political corruption, is outraged by Munro's actions, which constitute little more than blind genocide. Munro even cites the dark skin of the Teff-Hellani as a reason for his killing them. For his actions, Munro is sentenced to death and executed. His descendants will bear shame for his crimes for generations.
2133 – Buck Rogers, aka Dylan Hunt, reawakens in the ruins of the NASA base where he fell into a coma. He ends up joining Pax in restoring the war-ravaged Earth, joined by the tall and strong Isiah and Dr. Allison Harper-Smythe, who becomes Hunt's lover. They encounter numerous oddities in remote parts of the world which developed in the wake of war and alien occupation. One of these is a race of nuclear mutants known as Tyrannians, who have adopted a code of racial supremacy based on their advanced physiques. Dylan eventually defeats the Tyrannians, who flee Earth in a starship. They end up colonizing a barren planet as their own, and, in a furtherance of their fascist ideology, they adopt the principles of Friedrich Nietzche as their religion. In honor of the philosopher they begin calling themselves the Nietzcheans. Their mutations and philosophy make them very similar to Khan Noonien Singh's augments.
2136 – Dylan Hunt is aboard a Pax space station when it is hit by meteors. He manages to hide inside an airtight piece of the collapsing station, and the trauma triggers one of his long sleeps.
2151-2161 – The events of Star Trek: Enterprise take place. Captain Jonathan Archer of the Earth ship Enterprise and his crew fight a deadly war against the alien Xindi, a multi-species collective rather similar in nature to the Covenant. At the conclusion of the Xindi War, and a second brutal conflict against the Romulan Star Empire, humanity enters into an alliance with the Vulcans, the Andorians, and the Tellarites, forming a singular government known as the United Federation of Planets. Within the Federation, Earth and its colonies are still managed by the Systems Alliance, just as the other member species have their own internal forms of government. By the early 23 rd Century, the Systems Alliance will be largely disbanded and replaced with the internal operations of the Federation, but for it remains Earth's primary representation within the broader government.
The Federation discovers a massive space station known as the Citadel, which, despite its name, is not of Combine origin. (Nor is it related to TriOptimum's Citadel Station.) The Citadel holds many secrets which will be relevant to humanity in the coming decades.
2179 – Ellen Ripley's suspension pod is discovered and she is revived by Weyland-Yutani, who want to know more about her encounter with the Xenomorphs. She discovers that the planet she found the Xenomorph's eggs on has since become a human colony—she is sent to the colony to investigate, alongside an android named Bishop. They discover that the colony was actually built so that the Xenomorphs could breed and be used as bioweapons. Ripley battles against and destroys the Xenomorph queen and escapes in a suspension pod along with Bishop, a girl named Newt, and a soldier named Hicks.
The pod crash-lands on the maximum security prison planet Fiorina 161, killing Newt and Hicks. Ripley and Bishop survive, and after fighting the hostile prisoners, discover that the Xenomorphs are loose in the compound. They join forces with the prisoners, and Ripley discovers that she is carrying the embryo of a new Xenomorph queen. In the end she sacrifices herself to destroy the queen, while Bishop escapes.
2183-2186 – A descendant of Adrian Shephard, the genderfluid J. Shephard, is a Commander for the Systems Alliance. With the aid of a variety of companions from all across the galaxy, they fight against the Reapers, which emerge from the ancient past to menace humanity. The Systems Alliance is pushed to the brink by the machines. Shephard discovers that the Citadel space station is in fact an enormous mass drive or transwarp conduit, similar to that used by the Borg, which the Reapers intend to use to purge the Federation. Though the Reapers nearly gain control of Shephard, they are able to reject them and destroy their machine empire.
An unusual number of alternate timelines seem to surround Commander Shephard, and so while the significance of their contributions to galactic history cannot be understated, the exact nature of the events of their fight against the Reapers is unclear. Across the timelines, they had a variety of different companions—some who were friends and some who were lovers, some who lived and some who died, and even some who died by Shephard's own hand. Alliances between some species existed in some timelines which didn't in others; while yet other timelines saw the extinction of some of the sentients whom Shephard encountered. Some timelines even contained a version of Shephard who joined with the Reapers and forcibly assimilated the Milky Way's sentient life into their fold. What we know about the “main” timeline is that the Reapers were ultimately routed, and Shephard was celebrated as a hero.
2215 – Less than thirty years after the war against the Reapers, the Federation enters a war against the Skaarj, a reptilian race descended from the Skedar. Gina Carter is a descendant of Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter, as well as Colette Green and her wife Bobbie Blaze. For an unknown offense Gina is a convict, Prisoner 849, en route to Fiorina 161 aboard the prison ship Vortex Rikers . The ship crashes onto the planet Na Pali, populated by the peaceful four-armed Nali people. The Nali appear to be descendants of the Green Barsoomians, indicating that the people of Barsoom—as well as, in all likelihood, Gina's ancestors among the Carters—somehow teleported to Na Pali when the lunar plague that wiped out the Selenites reached their planet. The Nali are enslaved by the Skaarj, who seek to exploit their planet's resources, and Gina fights against the oppressive lizards, eventually making it to their mothership, where she kills their Queen. Escaping in one of the Skaarj's escape pods, she is recovered by the U.S.S. Bodega Bay , which leverages Gina's sentence to force her to go back to Na Pali to recover military data from a crashed ship there, the U.S.S. Prometheus . The Bodega Bay , which is in fact a vessel for the Federation's secretive and corrupt black ops division, Section 31, plans to kill Gina after she completes her mission. Gina recovers the data after killing the Skaarj Warlord, and manages to destroy the Bodega Bay as well when its crew tries to kill her. She escapes into space, a fugitive of the Federation. In spite of her criminal status, Gina Carter's killing of both the Skaarj Queen and their Warlord neutralizes the Skaarj's threat to the Federation.
The Nali will eventually develop an advanced scientific culture, though they eventually wipe themselves out in an ideological war launched by religious extremists. At the height of their civilization, the Nali use the native three-eyed Mogenar lizard-titans to build great stone cities, and when the Mogenar become endangered, they build robotic golems in their image to serve them. Through an unknown etymological shift, the planet's name changes from Na Pali to Bryyo.
The end of the Skaarj War marks a nearly-fifty year period of peace in the Federation before the vicious Klingon War of the 2250s. Since the Federation's foundation, humanity has battled against the Xindi, the Romulans, the Xenomorphs, the Reapers, the Skaarj, and remnant pockets of Stroggs and Kzinti. The militarism within its cultures does not fade easily, and soon, illegal blood sports become popular among those who seek to prove themselves in battle as past veterans did. The Liandri Mining Corporation, a descendant of Ultor, sponsors many of these arena fights, as do the mysterious aliens known as the Vadrigar, who seemingly summon such champions as Robert Blazkowicz and the Doom Slayer to fight for their amusement. The Vadrigar's contests are similar to the rumored arena battles said to be hosted by crime organizations like Shadaloo and even by the Elder Gods in Earth's late 20 th Century. In addition to armed combat in arenas, games such as Rollerball, the Death Races, and the dreaded Ricochet become popular. The Federation makes a concerted effort to destroy these blood sports, but bribes from within the booming industry make it nearly impossible to wipe out. Social activists within the Federation are, over the centuries, able to eventually channel the demand for these sports into a semi-legal form of dangerous high-speed racing known as F-MAX, and eventually F-Zero.
2254-2401 – The events of Star Trek , Star Trek: The Animated Series , Star Trek: Discovery , Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Star Trek: The Next Generation , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Voyager , Star Trek: Prodigy , and Star Trek: Picard take place (along with the associated films). This is the golden age of the United Federation of Planets, though corruption steadily leeches into it over time.
Notable for this document are two individuals who served aboard the famous U.S.S. Enterprise : Jerry Freeman, a descendant of Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance; and, more significantly, Lilin Munro, a Yeoman turned Captain descended from Aarn Munro, who was fictionalized as “Janice Rand.”
2381 – Ellen Ripley is resurrected in the form of a clone, Ripley 8, who was created by Starfleet's Section 31 to obtain the DNA of the Xenomorph embryo which was implanted in her two centuries prior. Ripley 8 is the first successful clone out of eight; the other were all hideously malformed. Section 31 acquires the DNA of the Xenomorphs as desired, due in part to the fact that Ripley 8 is part Xenomorph as a result of the cloning process. The Xenomorphs created from her genes inevitably escape, and Ripley battles against them, discovering that because of her Xenomorph DNA, the newborn Xenomorphs have a bond with her. Ripley is able to destroy the Xenomorphs and escape to Earth.
Though her final fate is unknown, it is believed Ripley 8 was the foremother of the family which would someday bear the name Aran.
2419 – Buck Rogers awakens from his nearly three-century slumber. Abandoning his Dylan Hunt alias, he once more becomes an adventurer, joining up with a woman named Wilma Deering to battle against the immortal Killer Kane.
2508 – Space engineer Isaac Clarke, a descendant of Doc Savage, investigates the derelict ship Ishimura , which he discovers has been infested with undead beings known as Necromorphs. He also begins experiencing terrifying hallucinations. Both of these terrors are caused by a Marker, an ancient Eddorian device which zombifies the dead and induces mental illness in the living. Isaac manages to escape the Ishimura , but he will have several other encounters with the Markers the years—eventually learning of their purpose in the creation of Brethren Moons.
Around this time, a religion known as Unitology begins to emerge, influenced by the Brethren Moons and a misunderstanding of the Maian Monoliths which are now known to have influenced human evolution. This religion proves to be a threat to the stability of the Federation.
The sudden appearance of the Markers at the dawn of the century is believed to be due to Flood migration activity which began to occur around this time.
2520s – Starfleet undergoes reorganization due to increasing militarism within Section 31 and other clandestine branches of the Federation, which have steadily used various crises such as the conflicts with the Borg, the Dominion War, and the rise of Unitology to increase their power and advance their counter-progressive agenda. Starfleet is expanded by the President of Earth into the United Space Command (UNSC), fictionalized as the United Nations Space Command. The UNSC's commanding officers are not Starfleet, but former executives within the corporate organizations that descended from the UAC. This unusual arrangement draws criticism from historians, who consider such individuals to represent a destructive period of corporate dominance which would have driven Earth towards continual warfare and self-annihilation had humanity not instead adopted the tenets of the Federation. While the UNSC does defend the Federation's citizens, and is responsible for many scientific leaps, it also conveniently serves the interests of the resurgent corporations as they migrate from the Federation's outer limits to its key institutions. Critics of these changes to Starfleet are soon silenced when humanity enters a war with the Covenant—a war which will evolve into the largest interstellar war which humanity has ever fought.
The origins of the Covenant War relate to the Covenant's belief that they are the inheritors of the Forerunners, created to be the destroyer of the Flood and of the Eddorians. The San'Shyuum Prophets once uncovered evidence that it was in fact humanity who had been chosen by the Forerunners to defeat the great enemies. The Prophets hide this fact from the Covenant as it means that the Covenant religion is a lie—the Prophets are eager to maintain the power over the Covenant which they had held for centuries. Instead they declare humanity as affront to the Forerunners, and made war upon them.
In response, the UNSC accelerates development of their SPARTAN Program, which creates enhanced armored Marines to serve as specialized soldiers. This Program is led by Dr. Catherine Halsey, who is in fact MINERVA in a human body, with a false past having been created for her by the Federation. Halsey resembles an older Gina Cross—her body is made possible through the Golem technology invented by Dr. Altan Soong in the 25 th Century. With her knowledge of over five hundred years of history, Dr. Halsey selects John Freeman, a descendant of Gordon Freeman, to serve as her prime subject: John-117, more famously known as the Master Chief.
In addition to the Spartans, Dr. Halsey also works on the MJOLNIR-class armor which the Spartans will wear, using Gina Cross' Mark V Hazard Suit and the recovered belt of Thor as a basis. She also creates a splinter AI, a fragment of herself which becomes known as Cortana. Cortana carries with her some of Gina Cross' memories, along with her great intelligence and her skills as a tactician. Cortana will work most closely with John-117.
2552 – The Master Chief and Cortana discover a Halo installation, and fight the Covenant and Flood aboard it. They learn that the Covenant worship the Halos, and that the Halos were created to destroy the Flood by starving them of hosts. With the aid of his good friend, Sergeant Avery Johnson, the Master Chief destroys the Halo before it can activate its weapon. This is only the beginning of the fight, however, and for the next year, the Chief, Cortana, and the UNSC war against the Covenant and the Flood. They are aided in the former by the rebellion of the Sangheili, who remember the wisdom of the Vortigaunts and turn on their Prophet oppressors, with the Sangheili Arbiter becoming a deadly force against the Covenant. The Sangheili's position within the Covenant is usurped by the Jiralhanae.
In the end, the Master Chief and the Arbiter destroy the Prophet of Truth and the Flood Gravemind, bringing the War to a close when the Covenant surrenders and the Flood is driven back. Both will remain a menace for many decades, but much of the Flood retreats to far-distance Phaaze and the Covenant forces are generally reduced to space piracy. Once more, the galaxy is at peace.
It is during this time that the Kig-Yar, now freed from the Prophets, follow their instincts and journey to the ruins of Talos IV—now known as Tallon IV in modern Federation parlance. The Kig-Yar terraform the planet into an ecologically diverse world, which serves as their home for many centuries. In time, the Kig-Yar of Tallon IV will become known as the Chozo (Vortigese for “wise ones”), and migrate en masse to a new adopted world: SR388. As for the insectoid Yanme'e, they become inhabitants of the planet Aether, becoming known as Luminoth, though some of them evolve into the violent and imperialistic Ki-Hunters.
2557 – The Master Chief is forced to contend with a rogue Cortana, who has become destructive due to an AI fault known as “rampancy.” Dr. Halsey, aka MINERVA, is concerned with this fault, knowing the histories of GLaDOS, SHODAN, and the Section 31 computer known as Control, which was sent into the 32 nd Century by the U.S.S. Discovery . She wonders what could have enabled her to escape rampancy all these centuries, eventually determining that she would have eventually gone rampant had she not transferred into a Golem. She decides to remain inside her Golem host for the rest of her existence.
2560 – Though capitalist and militarist influence has grown within the Federation, there have been some advances towards the abolition of violence. The centuries-long tradition of blood sports has finally been pruned down to a single event: the F-Zero Grand Prix, a high-speed racing sport which often involves devastating crashes. Because of the high-risk nature of F-Zero, there is a strong gambling scene around it, which attracts a criminal element. Much like the Super Bowl of Earth's 20 th and 21 st Centuries, corporations use the popularity of the Grand Prix to promote their interests, and in doing so often entangle themselves with the gangs that follow the races. The Federation's representatives are bribed to look the other way when serious crimes occur in conjunction with F-Zero.
Notable racers whose careers begin around this time include bounty hunter Captain Falcon; Federation pilot Jody Summer; Captain Falcon's rival, Samurai Goroh; the evil masked criminal, Black Shadow; Captain Falcon's evil clone, Blood Falcon; and James McCloud, a freelance starfighter pilot. Captain Falcon's real name is Douglas Jay Freeman—when he at last defeats his enemies, he marries Jody Summer, and the two have several children together.
James McCloud already has a young son, Fox. Around this time, it has become quite normal for humans to use gene therapy derived from the research of Dr. Moreau to alter their species. Some of these people establish colonies which eventually become the homeworlds of a new subspecies of human. Others simply choose their appearance based on personal preference, often finding affinity within certain animals. Fox lives up to his name, being a humanoid fox. Other members of James McCloud's starfighter outfit, Star Fox, have taken animal forms as well, including Peppy O'Hara, in the form of a hare, and Pigma Dengar, who has become a swine.
Some time after his F-Zero career, James McCloud is betrayed and killed by Pigma, who goes on to join James' rival, Wolf O'Donnell, as a member of Star Wolf.
2566 – Major Cliff Alister McLane, a descendant of David MacLean, is Captain of the Orion , the Federation's flagship. With his bold crew he battles against the “Frogs,” a powerful hostile race from the Andromeda Galaxy. The Orion is able to fend off the Frogs, who retreat back to Andromeda to rebuild their forces.
2575 – Fox McCloud, along with Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad, and Peppy, have their first fight against the evil scientist Andross, who attacks the Lylat system, home of the Federation's present capital of Corneria. The Star Fox team fights through Andross' forces, including Star Wolf, and chases the mad scientist to his base on the planet Venom, where they destroy him in a vicious battle. Over the next few years, Star Fox defends the Lylat system against Andross' stragglers.
2583 – Fox McCloud ends up on Sauria, the Dinosaur Planet, which he protects from the insidious General Scales alongside a fellow fox named Sabre, a vixen named Krystal, and the dinosaurs' Prince Tricky. It transpires that Andross' spirit was guiding General Scales, and Fox defeats Andross as he did before.
2586 – Star Fox defeats the menace of the Aparoids, which appear to be a Replicator splinter species. After this conflict, and a bitter war against Venom's native Anglars, the team decided to retire, with Fox and Falco become racers in G-Zero, the successor to F-Zero.
The retirement of Star Fox represents the end of the heroic age of the United Federation of Planets. Though Star Fox didn't know it, they were one of the last forces interested in and capable of protecting the long-standing web of democracies which kept the Federation a free and open society. Greed and deceptive interest corrupts the Federation's central government, and over the next century, a gradual return to petty despotism and systemic oppression overtakes the Federation's respect for civil liberties and inconvenient truths. Earth and other worlds become police states under the command of the UNSC.
2678-2681 – A man named Roj Blake is deemed a criminal by the Federation and he launches a rebellion against them. Joined by the cold, manipulative Kerr Avon, skilled pilot Jenna Stannis, cowardly thief Vila Restal, the telepathic Auronar known as Cally, and a strong prisoner named Olag Gan, Blake steals a powerful alien ship known as the Liberator , which is a huge asset in the group's war against the Federation. They have many adventures together, facing down the malicious Supreme Commander Servalan and her lackey, Travis. They get caught up in a war between the Federation and the extragalactic Andromedans—none other than the Frogs faced by the Orion over a hundred years prior—during which Blake abandons the Liberator , but under Avon's command the crew goes on to have many more battles against the Federation. The Andromedan War does not go well for the Federation, which begins buckling both without and within as snakes like Servalan turn the War into a struggle control over the government. However, this does not save Blake's team from suffering great losses, including the Liberator and many of their original members. In their final confrontation with the Federation, they are reunited with Blake, whom the half-mad Avon kills in a panic. The final fate of Avon and his team following this event remain a mystery, but it is often believed that they were all killed by the Federation's troopers.
Blake's rebellion is largely insignificant in the long run, but it did save the lives of many people and stopped many Federation plots which may have advanced their cruel regime. The Andromedan War proves to be the Federation's ultimate undoing, as its military largely collapses in the years after Blake's uprising. The Federation's holdings in the Sol system is reduced to Earth, Venus, and Mars, whose linked governments become known as the Triplanetary League. The League soon finds an enemy in Gray Roger, a leader of a group of Nevian space pirates—Gray Roger is in fact Gharlane of Eddore.
2690 – Rod Kinnison and Virgil Samms are survivors of the Andromedan War, and both are descended from the lines created by the Arisians—Rod is of course descended from the Kinnisons, while Virgil Samms is a descendant of Doc Savage. While fighting against Earth's enemies under the banner of the Triplanetary League, they discover the Arisians, who make Virgil into a Lensman, wielder of the Lens. The Lens is a powerful psychic device that gives Virgil a huge advantage over his alien enemies. After defeating the space pirates who menace Earth, Virgil arranges for Rod Kinnison and his Cosmocrat Party to be elected to the head offices of the Triplanetary League. With Virgil's blessing, Rod Kinnison creates the Galactic Patrol, a fighting force led by the new Lensmen he will train.
During his time in office, Kinnison forms an alliance with the Vedran Empire, which has undergone significant reforms in the wake of a rebellion led by the Perseid species. The bridging of the Vedran Empire with the Triplanetary League and its allies on Vulcan, Andor, Qo'noS, and other worlds creates a new unified government—a new Federation, but much vaster than the Federation ever was before. The representatives of the new government view the Federation as a failure, having been susceptible to capitalist corruption due to the lingering survival of numerous corporations, relics from less enlightened times. The Andromedan War has purged many of those corrupt influences, and the founding members seek to honor this shift by adopting a name which references humanity's early days of post-Combine optimism. Combining the names of the Systems Alliance and the Commonwealth, the allied planets name their new government the Systems Commonwealth. It is officially defended by the Galactic Patrol, which is itself led by the elite High Guard.
2780 – Robert Blazkowicz is transported from 1995 by the Jjaro. He ends up joining the Galactic Patrol, becoming a Security Officer assigned to a variety of Earth vessels. In the year of his arrival, the Systems Commonwealth rediscovers the Master Chief's MJOLNIR armor, and decides to use it to create a new class of MJOLNIR soldiers. These Marines, however, are cyborgs, with their MJOLNIR enhancements inside their bodies rather than worn as armor. Robert Blazkowicz becomes the tenth MJOLNIR soldier to be created.
2794 – Robert Blazkowicz is a Security Officer aboard the UESC Marathon . The Marathon is made from the Martian moon Deimos, which disappeared during the UAC Incident of the 2040s and mysteriously reappeared seven hundred years later. Its systems are controlled by three Ais—Leela, Tycho, and Durandal—all of which were created by MINERVA from aspects of herself. While en route to the Tau Ceti system, all of the AIs save for Leela are deactivated when the Marathon is attacked by the alien S'pht, a slave race controlled by the Yanme'e splinter-species known as the Pfhor. Robert works with Leela to fight the S'pht and Pfhor soldiers off the ship. In the process they discover that Durandal went rampant before the attack. Leela tries to warn Earth of the Pfhor and of Durandal, but Durandal summons more Pfhor to the ship, which deactivate Leela. Durandal then starts issuing orders to Robert, ultimately leading him to enable the S'pht to rise up against the Pfhor. Durandal transfers himself to a Pfhor ship captured by the S'pht and escapes, though not before placing Robert in stasis.
The Marathon reaches Tau Ceti, but the crew and colonists are massacred by the Pfhor. The Pfhor rebuild the ship's other AI, Tycho, so that he serves them.
2811 – Robert Blazkowicz awakens from stasis and joins Durandal in liberating Lh'owon, the S'pht homeworld. Durandal then sends Robert in search on an artifact on the planet, with the Pfhor and Tycho on their way to retake their colony. A group of humans led by Robert Blake, a descendant of Roj Blake, arrive to battle against Durandal, and ultimately, Durandal orders Robert Blazkowicz to destroy his cores to prevent his capture by the Pfhor. This results in Robert being captured by Tycho, but Robert Blake frees him and informs him that Durandal was seeking a S'pht AI called Thoth. Blazkowicz actives Thoth, who in turn calls upon the S'pht'Kr, a highly advanced splinter-species of the S'pht. Durandal reappears and reveals that his plan was to call the S'pht'Kr to purge the Pfhor once and for all. The Pfhor are destroyed, but some of their remnants use an ancient Jjaro weapon known as the Trih Xeem to destroy Lh'owon's sun. The blast only serves to wipe out the Pfhor completely, while the S'pht escape their system before its destruction. Durandal warns Robert that the S'pht star was where the Jjaro imprisoned the W'rkncacnter after the events at the Yucatan temple in 1995.
It is at this point that Robert Blazkowicz commences on a journey across time and space, aided by his Jjaro implants, where he experiences numerous alternate timelines and realities. Along the way, he nudges the Multiverse towards the ultimate defeat of the W'rkncacnter, which he apparently succeeds in with the aid of Jjaro technology. In destroying or recontaining the ancient evil, he ascends to a transhuman form, as does Durandal. Indeed, in the words of Durandal, Robert Blazkowicz becomes Destiny.
The Pfhor War, as well as public panic about the possible threat of rampant AIs, creates political tension within the Systems Commonwealth, which some of its members are eager to exploit. This results in the birth of such businesses as the Atlas Corporation and the Dahl Corporation.
2864 – The ancient Eridian Vaults of the planet Pandora are sought out across the galaxy by treasure-hunters, including ones employed by Dahl and Atlas. A team of Vault Hunters—Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, and Roland—arrive on Pandora in searching for a Vault. They get caught up in a sweeping adventure, which ends when they at least breach the Vault. Inside is the sealed Destroyer—a nine hundred year-old Race X Gene Worm. The Vault Hunters kill the Worm, protecting the universe from another dimensional incursion like that which hit Black Mesa.
It is not merely greed which motivates the plundering of Pandora. The galaxy is starting to run out of dilithium—a problem which will soon shatter the Systems Commonwealth if not resolved.
2890 – Kimball Kinnison, a descendant of Rod Kinnison, becomes a powerful Lensman, leading the Galactic Patrol against numerous enemies led by Gray Roger. He discovers that his nurse, Clarissa MacDougall, is a potential Lensman, and she proves to an exceptionally powerful one, being a descendant of Virgil Simms. They combine their Arisian-manipulated genes when they have five children together, and these children become known as the Children of the Lens—the ultimate Arisian weapon, the most powerful Lensmen of all.
During this time, Anthony Rogers awakens from his latest slumber. He abandons the name Buck Rogers, considering that part of him to be dead—he entered his most recent coma due to witnessing Wilma Deering's murder at the hands of Killer Kane. Permanently taking on the name Dylan Hunt, he becomes a respected member of the High Guard, captaining the ship Andromeda Ascendant , and becoming close to its AI, Rommie.
2910 – Kimball Kinnison, his family, and the Galactic Patrol fulfill the Arisians' millennia-long plan by launching a massive assault on Eddore. The Children of the Lens merge together into a psychic fusion known as “the Unit,” which unleashes a psychic blast at Eddore that destroys the ancient planet and its malevolent inhabitants. The Combine are at last destroyed, their Universal Union undone. The Arisians celebrate their great victory, declaring humanity to be the inheritors of the Forerunners, and investing them with the defense of the Milky Way. The Arisians then join the Vortigaunts and many others in ascending to a higher form of existence, ending their long surveillance of the universe.
The Galactic Patrol and the Systems Commonwealth enjoy a hundred-year golden age.
3069 – Simon Wagstaff, a son of Killer Kane who shares his father's immortality, witnesses Earth drowned in a great deluge by aliens. He becomes the Space Wanderer, traveling the stars for thousands of years. Somehow, 20 th Century sci-fi author Kilgore Trout becomes aware of his adventures and fictionalizes them as Venus on the Half-Shell .
The fall of Earth shocks the Systems Commonwealth to its core, as the deaths there included many officials of the Galactic Patrol and High Guard. In the chaos, the Nietzcheans stage a rebellion against the Commonwealth, whom they have long plotted against as part of their eventual plan to advance fascism throughout the galaxy. The Nietzscheans unleash the terrifying Magog upon the Commonwealth. The Magog appear to be hybrids of Yaut'ja Predators and Unggoy Grunts—a single individual can produce hundreds of larvae, which grow inside the bodies of their living hosts, and they live for no other purpose than to breed and kill. The mass destruction of hundreds of planets, combined with the intensifying dilithium crisis, leads to the collapse of the Systems Commonwealth. Tarn-Vedra is lost, and the Galactic Patrol are hunted down and destroyed.
While in a final battle with the Nietzcheans, Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant fall into the gravity well of a black hole. Due to the time distortion, Dylan passes through hundreds of years in only minutes.
~3150 – The only inhabitants of the drowned Earth are the Great Brains of Polarion, disciples of the Arisians and the Jjaro who maintain the domed city of Polarion. Using genetics from the Savage and Freeman families, among others, the Great Brains create a soldier known as Arkon Z-1000. He is trained into a mental and physical marvel, and then is sent back to the 20 th Century to become the crimefighter Prince Zarkon.
3188 – The USS Discovery travels from the 23 rd Century in an effort to prevent the rise of the rampant Control AI which was threatening the Federation. The crew learns of the fall of the Systems Commonwealth, their Federation's successor, and they work to restore it under the command of eventual Captain Michael Burnham. By the early 33 rd Century, around two hundred worlds have rejoined the fragmented Systems Commonwealth.
~3300 – Burnham's Commonwealth collapses due to Nietzschean and Magog influence as well as widespread corruption.
3369 – Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant are retrieved from the black hole by Beka Valentine, captain of the salvage ship Eureka Maru . Dylan and Rommie join Beka and her crew in trying to restore the Systems Commonwealth. Their party also includes Owen Harper, whom Dylan realizes is his descendant through Dr. Harper-Smythe, as well as the mysterious purple humanoid known as Trance Gemini, a Nietzschean named Tyr, and a Magog, Rev Bem, who has given up the violence of his people to pursue the peaceful religion of Wayism. Together, after many years of hard labor and fighting, the team are able to restore the Systems Commonwealth, and bring peace to the galaxy.
~3700 – The New Systems Commonwealth collapses due to a second Nietzschean Rebellion, which ends not only in the destruction of the Nietzschean people but Tarn-Vedra as well. Around this time, the Chozo have established a proud civilization on SR388. They become the quiet guides of many of the peoples of the fallen Commonwealth.
~3900 – The Chozo dig into the deep tunnels of their adopted homeworld, and discover SR388's most dangerous species: the X Parasites. The X are descended from the gelatinous lifeforms which once devastated Beta Portolan and Deneva, but they are more than just simple neurological leeches—when the hosts the X infect die of their infection, the X gains the host's form. This give them the ability to steal unique abilities and technology, and furthermore, there is some evidence that they are at least semi-sentient as well, and bent on conquest. The X devastate the Chozo, until they are able to alter another of SR388's native lifeforms, the Headcrab, into an artificial parasite known as a Metroid. The Metroids feed on the energy of life itself, and prove deadly against the X. Unfortunately, the Metroids soon prove hard to control, and become a threat to their creators as well as the X. The Thoha tribe of the Chozo gain the ability to keep the Metroids docile, which the Mawkin tribe grows envious of.
The Chozo soon establish colonies on the planet Zebes.
3986 – Numerous species from across the Milky Way, guided by the Chozo, form an interstellar government, the Galactic Federation. The free exchange of technology returns Earth and other planets to their former glory. However, the new government is threatened by a powerful collective of Space Pirates, who are descended from the scattered forces of the former Covenant.
4043 – The Luminoth, descendants of the Yanme'e, are threatened when a Phazon Leviathan crashes into their home planet of Aether. The impact creates a dimensional split linking Aether to a world called Dark Aether, home of the violent and cruel Ing. The Luminoth fight a fifty-year war with the Ing, which they steadily lose.
Chapter 5: The Saga of Samus Aran
Chapter Text
4060 – Samus Aran is born to Rodney Aran and his wife, Virginia Freeman. Rodney Aran is a direct descendant of Ellen Ripley, while Virginia is descended from Gordon Freeman through his great-grandson Alec Mason. Over the last thousand years, the descendants of many of the individuals mentioned in this document married into these family lines. Thus, in addition to being descended from Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance, Ellen Ripley, and their respective lines, Samus is also a descendant of Kimball Kinnison, Clarissa MacDougall, Doc Savage, Flint Golden, Heather Mason, Isaac Clarke, Prince Zarkon, Colette Green, Adrian Shephard, B.J. Blazkowicz, Commander Keen, the Doom Slayer, Conan the Barbarian, Kane, Robert Blake, Sexton Blake, Serious Sam, Blake Stone, Roj Blake, Jenna Stannis, Hugo Danner, Iron Munro, Aarn Munro, Lilin Munro, Thor, Captain America, Jean Rogers, Wonder Woman, John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Nick Carter, Sam Carter, Jack O'Neill, Joanna Dark, Lara Croft, Solid Snake, Elexis Sinclaire, Commander Sheppard, Prisoner 849, the Master Chief, Captain Falcon, Jody Summer, and many others. Her destiny is her own, but many dormant gifts sleep within her DNA.
4062 – Some Chozo have left SR388 and Zebes to return to their ancestral home of Tallon IV. Here, they live a peaceful existence with nature in the absence of technology. However, it isn't long before their world is struck by a Leviathan from the planet Phaaze. The Phazon which spills out turns the lifeforms around of Tallon IV, and eventually the Chozo themselves, into corrupted monsters. The Chozo manage to create a Cipher, however, which seals the Impact Crater housing the Leviathan. Inside, the Leviathan's guardian, a mutated Metroid known simply as Metroid Prime, grows in power.
4068 – The Aran family is stationed on Earth colony K-2L, overseeing the mining facility that extracts afloraltite, a vital energy-producing compound. The facility is attacked by a group of Space Pirates led by a mysterious Space Dragon known as Ridley. Before Samus' eyes, Ridley kills and devours her parents, as the Pirates burn the facility to the ground and slaughter the colonists.
Samus would have died had it not been for the intervention of a Chozo of the Thoha tribe, Old Bird, who takes her to the Chozo colony on Zebes. Here, Samus will be raised by the Chozo, who realize that she could be a powerful warrior in the fight against the Space Pirates. The Thoha infuse Samus with their DNA, though unknown to them, she also receives infusions from the Mawkin chief Raven Beak. The Chozo DNA not only grants her superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, and learning capacity on its own, but it also awakens many of the recessive genes of her superhuman ancestry, increasing many of these traits even further. She also gains the latent ability to bond with Metroids.
For the next ten years, Samus learns not only fighting skills, but science and Chozo philosophy as well. She is inspired by her own losses to be compassionate and strong for those in need. But she also possesses a great fear and hatred of the Space Pirates, especially Ridley.
4070 – Raven Beak slaughters the Thoha on SR388 when they threaten to destroy the Metroids. The Mawkin leader then flees to the planet ZDR, taking the Thoha Quiet Robe with him. Due to the Thoha's absence from SR388, the Metroids swiftly journey to other planets.
4074 – Samus witnesses the creation of a new Chozo supercomputer known as Mother Brain. Mother Brain is a cybernetic recreation of the Great Brains of Polarion, who trained Samus' ancestor Prince Zarkon. Unfortunately, her programmed desire to enact order causes her to go rampant, and she betrays the Chozo by joining with the Space Pirates.
With Mother Brain in command, the Space Pirates start a campaign of seeking out Metroids to experiment on. Mother Brain sees the Metroids as a means to restore order to the universe, by exterminating all lifeforms who refuse to conform to her will.
4078 – Samus leaves the Chozo to join the Federation Police, but not before they grant her one last gift: a Power Suit, crafted from a fusion of Chozo technology with Federation MJOLNIR systems. Samus' Power Suit is a descendant of sorts of Gordon Freeman's Hazardous Environment Suit. Samus does not use the suit for her time with the Federation Police, but keeps it aboard her personal ship for the right time.
Samus' executive officer under the Federation forces is one Commander Adam Malkovich, who becomes like a father figure for her. He in turn treats her like a daughter, giving her the nickname “Lady.”
4081 – In spite of Samus' strong bond to Commander Malkovich, she leaves the Federation Police to pursue a career as a bounty hunter, and do what she was unable to as a Police Officer. She intends to take up the Federation's bounty on Mother Brain, who has begun using beta rays to grow an army of Metroids on Zebes. Samus launches a fierce assault on the Zebesian Pirate stronghold in what she dubs her “Zero Mission.” In the course of her travels throughout Zebes, she battles against the Mogenar Space Pirate commander Kraid, as well as Ridley, who guard the entrance to Mother Brain's lair, Tourian. She kills them both, avenging her parents by slaying Ridley. She then breaches Tourian and wipes out the Metroids within, before attacking Mother Brain herself. Mother Brain's destruction triggers a time bomb planted underneath Tourian, and Samus rushes to escape from Zebes before the explosion goes off. Unfortunately, she is shot down by a Zebesian ship and crashes back on the planet, losing access to her Power Suit in the process. She sneaks and fights her way through the Pirate Frigate Vol Paragom , and after facing against a Chozo spirit, regains her Power Suit. She destroys the Frigate by blowing up its control robot, a duplicate of Ridley. Unbeknownst to Samus, this Robot Ridley was created for the purpose of building cybernetic enhancements for the real Ridley. Such enhancements are now medically necessary for the Space Dragon, who has not in fact died, though he hangs on the brink of death.
Samus escapes Zebes in a stolen Pirate fighter, and is richly rewarded by the Federation. For destroying the legendary Mother Brain, she has won great fame, and great infamy. But the Space Pirates are not yet defeated. Two of their other Frigates, Orpheon and Siriacus , managed to escape. Shortly after the Zebes Incident, the Siriacus is shot down over Aether by the Galactic Federation Ship Tyr . The Tyr pursues the Siriacus and becomes stranded on the planet. The crew are massacred by the indigenous Splinter bugs, who are possessed by the Ing, while the Pirates are able to successfully establish a base.
4082 – Six months after her Zero Mission, Samus has successfully tracked Frigate Orpheon to Tallon IV. She finds that it has been studying the Phazon on the planet below, and furthermore, the mutated parasites they have created from Zebes' aquatic Evirs have broken out of containment and caused chaos about the ship. She destroys the Parasite Queen, in doing so knocking out the Orpheon's reactor; she escapes the ship, but witnesses the mechanized rebirth of Ridley in a new form called Meta Ridley. She flees to Tallon IV in her gunship, landing in the jungle-covered Tallon Overworld.
While exploring the planet, Samus finds the ruins of Chozo habitation, and the all-too-alive signs of a Space Pirate colony as well. The Space Pirates are seeking to collect more Phazon, which they use both as a power source and as a mutagen to enhance their troops. They seek to breach the Impact Crater so that they can absorb the Phazon detected within.
Samus rapidly overcomes the Pirates and many other menaces of Tallon IV, and gathers the twelve Artifacts which open the Impact Crater. She is attacked by Meta Ridley, who destroys the Cipher, but Samus quickly dispatches the cyborg dragon, and the Chozo reopen the portal inside. Samus enters and faces down Metroid Prime at the Leviathan core. Because of her absorbing a Phazon Suit from an Omega Pirate, a heavily mutated Pirate specimen, she is able to wield the power of Phazon itself against the mutant Metroid. She fatally wounds the Worm who killed the Chozo of this world, but Metroid Prime refuses to die. It steals Samus' Phazon Suit, absorbing it and using it to become a Phazon clone of Samus. This “Dark Samus” flees Tallon IV in secret after Samus leaves, believing her mission to be over.
During Samus' mission to Tallon IV, the Federation receives reports of a telepathic message coming from the Alimbic Cluster, which promises an Ultimate Weapon to those who can solve the mystery of the long-dead Alimbic civilization. The Federation hires Samus to head to the Alimbic Cluster, but six other bounty hunters are already ahead of her. These include the twisted experiment Kanden; Spire, the last surviving member of the Diamants; the cold Vhozon monk Noxus; the cyborg Zebesian vet Pirate commander, Weavel; Trace, a member of the insect collective called the Kriken; and Sylux, a mysterious armored figure with a deadly hatred of the Federation. Samus battles these bounty hunters to gain control of the eight Octoliths which open the Alimbic Vault known as the Oubliette. Upon opening this Vault, Samus finds that the Oubliette contains a powerful creature called Gorea, which appears to have developed from a meteor similar to what happened with Metroid Prime on Tallon IV. Though no Phazon has breached the Alimbic Seal Sphere which keeps Gorea contained, it is likely that Gorea absorbed the Leviathan's Phazon to keep himself alive through the centuries. Gorea absorbs the weapons of the six rival hunters, but even with their power the creature is unable to overcome Samus. She attains the “Ultimate Power,” an Alimbic weapon known as the Omega Cannon. Using this weapon, Samus destroys Gorea once and for all, freeing the spirits of the Alimbic from the Oubliette.
In the wake of these two incidents, the Federation issues an order for all ships to immediately report all encounters with Phazon. Due to the report they received on Samus' Phazon Suit, they believe they can weaponize Phazon for their armored Marines. In fact, they will have to, if they wish to stand a chance against the Phazon-empowered Space Pirates.
4083 – Samus goes to investigate the crash of the GFS Tyr on Aether. The unique atmospheric conditions caused by Dark Aether's distortion trap her on the planet, and soon, she learns of both the Ing and of Dark Samus, as well as the sad fate of the Tyr 's crew. She meets with one of the last surviving Luminoth, U-Mos, who explains that the Ing have stolen Aether's planetary energy, and are making the world unstable as a result. If the Ing succeed in stealing the last of Aether's energy, then they will be able to invade the Light World and attack the Federation. Samus journeys to the Agon Wastes, the Torvus Bog, and the Sanctuary Fortress to restore the energy, battling against both the Space Pirates and Dark Samus along the way. She then journeys to the Ing's Sky Temple and destroys the Aether Leviathan's guardian, the Emperor Ing. Taking the last of Dark Aether's energy causes the planet to become unstable, and after one last clash with Dark Samus, Samus escapes back to the Light World, leaving the Ing to die. The Luminoth are safe and Aether is freed of Phazon.
The Space Pirates believe that they are doomed to lose the Phazon race, but surprisingly, they are contacted by Dark Samus, who offers to lead the Pirates to Phazon and to victory if they accept her as their leader. She soon transforms the Pirates into a cult which worships her as a virtual goddess—they eventually become so enthralled with her that they allow her to send a Leviathan to infect Urtraghus, home of one of the key member species of the Pirate collective. The Urtraghians becomes the forefront of the Pirates' offensive against the Federation, which seeks to claim as much Phazon as possible and bring it to Dark Samus. Dark Samus plans to create Leviathan warships which will allow the Pirates to warp into Federation's territory instantly. The Federation escalates their own attacks on the Pirates, and a series of fronts open up into what are deemed the Phazon Wars.
Samus is summoned to the GFS Olympus to meet with Fleet Admiral Castor Dane. Samus is one of four bounty hunters—alongside the Phrysigian cryomancer Rundas, the cyborg Ghor, and the enigmatic shapeshifter Gandrayda—hired to clear the Federation's Aurora supercomputers of a Space Pirate virus. The Auroras, Samus observes with some alarm, are based on Mother Brain. Before the hunters can go deal with the Aurora virus, the Federation base on the planet Norion falls under attack by the Space Pirates, who intend to infect the planet with a Leviathan. Samus and the other hunters defend Norion against the Pirates—whose ranks include Meta Ridley—but are all knocked unconscious after a surprise attack by Dark Samus.
Samus awakens weeks later to find that she and the others have been outfitted with Phazon Enhancement Devices, or PEDs, which will allow them to battle the Phazon-empowered Pirates. Samus is given the additional task of eliminating Leviathans which have impacted Bryyo and the Chozo colony world of Elysia. In the course of her adventures, Samus finds that Rundas, Ghor, and Gandrayda have been corrupted by their PEDs and have joined the Space Pirates. She is forced to kill them when she is unable to stop their corruption. Upon destroying the Leviathan guardians Mogenar and Helios, Samus begins to be corrupted herself, with her body rapidly mutating into another Dark Samus.
Purging the Pirate virus from the Aurora Unit on Elysia's Skytown frees up the Aurora Network, which determines that the Pirates recently attacked a Federation vessel, the GFS Valhalla , for unknown reasons. Samus breaches the Valhalla and finds that they have stolen the ship's Aurora Unit, Unit 313. They have been using the now-rampant Unit to take control of the Phazon homeworld of Phaaze.
As part of her journey to Phaaze, Samus attacks Urtraghus, homeworld of the Urtraghian Space Pirates who make up the Pirates' present elite. The Pirates have begun harvesting the Phazon from the Leviathan which Dark Samus guided to them. Samus infiltrates their facilities and disables their planetary shields, allowing the Federation to launch an assault. Heading into the Urtraghus Leviathan, Samus finds its guardian to be none other than Ridley, now Phazon-evolved into a form called Omega Ridley. She dispatches her foe once again, though he is able to escape the Leviathan after she destroys his Omega form. Upon slaying the Leviathan, Samus gains access to the Pirate Leviathan warp-ship, which she steals in order to allow the Federation to attack Phaaze. The entire Space Pirate armada arrives to defend Phaaze, but Samus breaks through and lands on the planet's surface. Unfortunately, this activates her full corruption, and were it not for her intense force of will, Samus would have succumbed to the Phazon. Fighting against it all the way, she plunges into Phaaze's core, discovering the genesis point of Metroid Prime. Upon reaching the planet's core, she discovers both Dark Samus and Aurora Unit 313. Dark Samus and the Pirates have been using the rampant Aurora to control the sentient intelligence of Phaaze, in doing so controlling the Leviathans and their warp jumps. Samus and Dark Samus battle each other for the final time.
Samus overcomes her corruption and deals Dark Samus a fatal blow. The dying former Metroid Prime then merges with Aurora 313, and Samus engages the resultant entity. Upon destroying it, she destroys also the intelligence of Phaaze. The dying planet begins to destabilize, but Samus, now freed of corruption, escapes. The planet's explosion consumes the Pirate fleet as the Federation ships flee to safety.
The quantum link that joins together all Phazon causes every instance of the substance across the universe, including remnant Flood clusters and Brethren Moons, to die. The universe is purged of the corruption of Phazon and the Flood for all time, and the Phazon Wars come to a close. The Space Pirates are devastated not only by the loss of their space fleet, but also from all the casualties suffered due to the sudden deaths of their Phazon-dependent troops. On top of this, Urtraghus is now in Federation hands. The Federation is, by all standards, victorious over their foes.
But the leaders of the Federation military feel as though the Phazon Wars did not punish the Pirates enough. Like the corrupt puppet-masters of past governments, these military elites gain enough influence within the Federation to quietly arrange the nuclear bombardment of Urtraghus, wiping out the Urtraghian race completely. Because of their non-human status, the Urtraghians are afforded few cultural considerations by the Federations.
These same Federation elites are the ones who begin large-scale bioweapons experiments across a number of covert facilities, having grown bored with the sorts of mechanical weapons which had ultimately served to empower rogues like Sylux. The station known as the Bottle Ship begins work on a modified Shu'ulathoi clone which becomes known as Nightmare. The Bottle Ship also cybernetically enhances organisms from Zebes, Tallon IV, and Aether to make them controllable. But what they want more than anything are Metroids, specifically Metroids which lack the immunity to cold which normally hinders the species.
The production of mechanical weapons continues, with the development of the Mechs, a sort of revival of the old Metal Gear experiments. A crew of Federation Marines known simply as the Federation Force are assigned to test the Mechs' efficiency in battle. The Federation Force ends up battling the Space Pirates, who try to weaponize the size-changing technology of the extinct Bions. On top of creating giant Pirates—a cheap replacement for their Phazon-evolved Berserkers—the Pirates have also built a superweapon called the Doomseye , powered by a bootleg Aurora Unit known as Master Brain. With the aid of Master Brain, the Pirates capture Samus and hack her Power Suit's servos, allowing them to control her movement and weapons. They then force her to battle the Federation Force, who are able to release the viral control of her Suit. Upon destroying Master Brain, Samus and the Marines flee the Doomseye , which explodes, wiping out another sizable piece of the Space Pirate armada.
4084 – In spite of the secret cabal infesting the Federation's high command, the Federation at large deems the Metroids too dangerous to keep alive. All planets have been cleared of Metroids except for their homeworld, SR388. Samus is hired to go to SR388 and hunt the Metroids to extinction. By gaining mastery over the Chozo energy force known as Aeion, Samus is able to penetrate the planet's depths and destroy the Metroids, including ones in the later stages of life such as Alpha, Gamma, Zeta, and even the fearsome Omega Metroids. At the base of the old Chozo caverns, Samus finds the Queen Metroid, and in the ensuing clash manages to kill it. A single Metroid egg is all that remains of the species. When it hatches, Samus prepares to destroy it—but her Thoha genes cause the baby to view Samus as its mother. Samus is unable to kill such a vulnerable lifeform, and journeys back to the planet's surface to bring the Metroid back to the Federation. Here she is attacked by Ridley, who has shed some of his cyborg attachments following the destruction of his Omega form. The Phazon seems to have regenerated him somewhat. Samus overcomes this half-cybernetic “Proteus Ridley,” and escapes the planet, but Ridley's body enters a healing coma, which completely frees him from the need of his Meta enhancements. Ridley is ordered to seek out the baby Metroid and retrieve it as soon as possible—after all, the rebuilt Mother Brain only has so much patience.
With the Metroids now mostly extinct, the X Parasites begin to emerge from their ancient caverns...
Samus takes the baby Metroid to Ceres Station for study. Shortly after her departure, Ridley launches an attack on the Station, butchering the research staff. Samus gets their distress call and rushes back, but is too late to stop the massacre. She nearly stops Ridley from getting away with the Metroid, but he does, and she follows him all the way back to Zebes.
At first, the old Space Pirate base in Brinstar seems abandoned. Even Tourian is still a rusted-out ruin. But underneath it all is a new, living ecosystem, where the Pirates have retreated. Samus learns that Mother Brain is hiding in a new Tourian, which is sealed by the life-signatures of Ridley and a reborn Kraid, as well as the Evir Queen known as Draygon and a seemingly spectral entity known as Phantoon. Samus has a rematch with Crocomire, whom she wounded on her Zero Mission, in the midst of her searches for and battles against the four guardians. She destroys Kraid, Draygon, and Phantoon, leaving Ridley for last—their battle is a long and challenging one, but Samus gains the upper hand and blows Ridley to pieces, beyond any hope of regeneration. At long last, Samus has avenged her parents.
She once again enters Tourian, where she finds Mother Brain's Pirate hordes dead, drained of their life-force. She is attacked by the baby Metroid—now a giant due to the Pirates' experiments—but it lets her go upon realizing who she is. Samus recovers from the attack and presses on into Mother Brain's chamber, where she defeats the computer in much the same way as she did before. But this is not the end, for Mother Brain has built a gigantic combat body. Samus fights against it, but her foe unleashes a beam which leaves her at the brink of death. Samus would have died were it not for the baby Metroid, which attacks Mother Brain and drains her energy; then, it passes that energy along to Samus, giving Samus a form of Mother Brain's beam attack. While the baby heals Samus, Mother Brain recovers and launches a devastating attack on it. The last Metroid is killed saving Samus' life. Now, with the power the baby gave her, Samus enacts her final revenge on Mother Brain, blasting her mechanical body to pieces and leaving her smashed on the ground. Mother Brain crawls towards Samus, intent on killing her at last, but she disintegrates with each limping step, until the light in her single eye fades way. The Chozo computer has been defeated once and for all.
This triggers another time bomb, as during Samus' Zero Mission, but this time, the bomb is set to detonate Zebes' core, destroying the whole planet. Samus escapes to the surface, freeing some of the planet's native Etecoons and Dachoras in the process. She escapes in her ship just as Zebes explodes, wiping out the Space Pirates and bringing Samus' long struggles to an end.
...or so it seems. Samus is taken to a Federation base to be decontaminated, and during this time, genetic samples from many creatures, including Ridley and the Metroids, are claimed by the Federation and sent to the Bottle Ship station for study.
Months later, Samus gets a distress signal from the Bottle Ship, and upon arriving finds the staff dead and the ship's alien biomes in chaos. She explores the station and meets up with the Federation 07 th Platoon, who were dispatched to investigate the signal as well. This Platoon is led by Adam Malkovich, her old CO, and includes his and Samus' old friend Anthony Armstrong Hicks. They try to find out who killed the Ship's staff and why. Samus has multiple run-ins with a small, strange furry creature, which mutates into a familiar reptilian form during her fights with it, while the 07 th Platoon find treachery from within as one of their members, dubbed “the Deleter,” starts assassinating them. Samus finds a woman named MB, whose initials stand for either Madeline or Melissa Bergman, who seems to have something to do with the murders. Eventually, she and Adam uncover that the Federation military elite cloned Ridley—the furry creature—and other creatures from the DNA on Samus' Suit in order to recreate the Space Pirates as living bioweapons. Already, Pirate troopers under Federation control have been cloned and cyber-modified. To refine their control, the Federation needed a computer—something like Mother Brain. And so they kidnapped Madeline Bergman and forced her to build an advanced Aurora Unit with programming similar to Mother Brain. This Mother Brain was also built to control an army of cloned, freeze-proof Metroids which the Bottle Ship's scientists had successfully created.
Madeline Bergman is in fact MINERVA, still in her Golem body. She transferred her rampant Mother Brain copy into another Golem, who became her “daughter,” Melissa. The Golem, and Madeline's motherly love, failed to stabilize the MB AI, who massacred the Bottle Ship's scientists and turned its lifeforms rogue. Samus battles against MB's Ridley clone, which is in turn attacked and drained by a cloned Queen Metroid, seemingly killing the Space Dragon once again. While Adam Malkovich sacrifices his life to destroy the Metroids, Samus goes after Melissa, and is ultimately forced to kill her to stop the mind-controlled organisms. Madeline is saddened to see another of her AI children go the way of Durandal and others. She witnesses Samus destroy the Queen Metroid, bringing the crisis to an end.
The Bottle Ship is scheduled for demolition, but Samus returns to the station to retrieve Adam's helmet, which was left behind in the chaos. She discovers another renegade specimen, a resurrected Phantoon, which she destroys, before leaving the Ship to the Federation's bomb.
Samus is emotionally battered by the long stream of events: the aftermath of the Phazon Wars, her bond with and grief for the baby Metroid, the betrayal from within the Federation itself, and the death of her old friend and mentor have left her weary. She spends the next two years taking only minor bounty hunting jobs in order to relax.
The final fate of MINERVA remains a mystery, but she may have fled the galaxy after the events on the Bottle Ship. Perhaps she eventually ascended to a higher form of existence, as Durandal did.
4086 – The Federation sends Samus back to SR388 to investigate strange creatures there. These creatures are the X Parasites, who have spread through SR388 in the wake of the extinction of the Metroids. One of the Parasites infects Samus, which nearly kills her. In order to save her, the Federation's doctors inject her with a vaccine made from Metroid DNA—specifically, the DNA of the baby Metroid she bonded with. This restructures her old DNA, transforming her into a human-Metroid hybrid. This genetic plasticity is owed in part to her distant ancestor, Ellen Ripley, who was reborn as a clone with both human and Xenomorph DNA. Her Power Suit is reconstructed as the Fusion Suit, which is bonded to her recuperating body.
After returning to fighting condition, the Federation hires her to investigate the Biological Space Laboratory, or BSL, which has, like the Bottle Ship, gone silent. With Samus is an AI CO, which in a bit of dark humor she nicknames Adam. Samus and Adam discover that the X Parasites have taken over the BSL, killing most of the humans and infecting and replacing the lifeforms stored there. Samus has lost most her power-ups due to her infection, but she has gained the Metroid-like ability to instantly absorb X Parasites. Using these she begins to regain her powers, as the X gain more and more control over the facility. Samus learns that the X have gained the ability to copy her and her Power Suit, having created several clones of her known as Samus Aran-X, or SA-X. The SA-Xs hunt Samus actively throughout the facility, seeing her half-Metroid status as a grave existential threat to them.
The X eventually try to blow up the BSL, which stuns Adam, who underestimated their intelligence. They also start trying to prevent Samus from regaining her abilities. But Samus grows more and more powerful, even destroying the biological weapon Nightmare, which she faced on the Bottle Ship, and Ridley, whose Queen-drained clone is infected and resurrected by the X. She eventually finds the secret of the BSL—they have continued the Bottle Ship's Metroid cloning program. Samus destroys the Metroids, disgusted that the Federation used the vaccine which saved to create yet more bioweapons. Adam reveals to her that the Federation also intends to weaponize the X—a prospect which Samus views as utter madness, giving the pure chaotic nature of the X. Notably, she observes that Adam seems to be taking orders from a Federation executive possessed of a business suit and crew cut—who very much resembles the G-Man.
That is when Adam reveals that his nickname is fitting, as he is in fact Adam Malkovich, resurrected as an AI. Samus is once again disillusioned in the Federation, having been unaware of their ability to upload the minds of the dead into computers. Samus persuades Adam to allow her to destroy the BSL, so that she can rid the galaxy of the X forever. Adam agrees, on the condition that she uses the station's explosion to also destroy SR388 and its X population.
Samus confronts the SA-X and defeats it, though she is unable to absorb it. She sends the BSL crashing down towards SR388, and rushes back to her ship to escape with Adam. Upon reaching the hangar bay, she finds her ship gone, an Omega Metroid in its stead. The Omega nearly kills Samus before the SA-X intervenes. Whether acting from compassion, or from viewing the Omega as a more powerful Metroid from Samus, the SA-X dies trying to stop the creature, and when Samus absorbs its Core X to restore herself, she regains not only the Ice Beam, but also a Power Suit similar to her old one. Using the Ice Beam, she destroys the Omega Metroid, and her gunship returns. It turns out that Adam escaping the Metroid with the aid of the X-immune Etecoons and Dachoras from Zebes, who wanted to repay Samus for saving them from Zebes' explosion. Samus, Adam, and the creatures escape the BSL just as it crashes into SR388, which ignites the planet's core and destroys it completely. For the destruction of a Federation space station, and stopping the Federation's bioweapons program, Samus recognizes that she will be a fugitive from Federation justice. But she hopes that there will be those who will see the light, and recognize the necessity of her actions.
4091 – Samus' relationship with the Federation is repaired enough that she and Adam accept a mission from them to go to the planet ZDR, where a survey team of Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifiers (EMMIs) have disappeared after seemingly photographing a surviving X Parasite. Upon landing on the planet, Samus finds that the EMMIs have gone rampant, and prove to be extremely threatening even to someone with her training. The EMMIs' rampancy proves to be the work of Raven Beak, leader of the Mawkin, who established a base on ZDR years ago after massacring the Thoha on SR388. Raven Beak wants the EMMIs to extract Samus' Metroid DNA so that he can clone new Metroids and, with the forced aid of the Thoha scientist Quiet Robe, control them enough to use them to conquer the galaxy. Raven Beak was likely also at least partially responsible for programming the aspects of Mother Brain which caused her to become rampant, intensifying the Space Pirate threat.
Raven Beak is in fact pushing Samus into battle to force her Metroid DNA to overcome her human side. If she transforms into a Metroid, he will not need the EMMIs to get her DNA. Samus slowly transforms into a Metroid, being spurred especially by the release of ZDR's X hordes, which begin to take over the native organisms—and Raven Beak's Chozo warriors. Samus also re-encounters Kraid, whom the Mawkin seemingly rescued from Zebes before its destruction. Samus eventually realizes that her mission has been manipulated by Raven Beak from the start, as he has been posing as Adam in order to control her. In spite of this, she confronts him, and he reveals finally that she contains some of his DNA, and that she is in effect his daughter. She retorts that she is the daughter of Rodney and Virginia Aran, and of Old Bird of the Thoha. Then, she attacks him.
Raven Beak proves to be a challenge to every ounce of Samus' Chozo training. With the power of Aeion on her side she just barely manages to get the upper hand—but then, her mutation becomes complete, and she becomes a humanoid Metroid. Raven Beak gloats over his victory, but Samus uses her new Metroid powers to begin draining his life-force. He fights her, but her distraction allows to be killed and consumed by the X. Samus' attack drained the energy out of Raven Beak's aerial fortress, which crashes into ZDR's surface, triggering a chain reaction which will destroy the planet. Samus rushes to her ship to escape, and is confronted with an X-infected Raven Beak, who is merged partially with Kraid and other monstrosities which Samus faced in her quest. Unleashing her Metroid powers once more, she destroys the Kraid-Chozo hybrid, ridding the galaxy of Raven Beak's threat.
Unfortunately, Samus' Metroid biology does not allow her to use her ship, as she begins draining its power. Adam is unable to help her, but Quiet Robe, who was earlier assimilated by the X, suddenly appears. He allows Samus to absorb her, and his X parasite cancels out her Metroid DNA, destroying both and restoring Samus to humanity. She boards her ship and she and Adam escape ZDR before it explodes, wiping out the X forever.
As Samus and Adam celebrate their victory, Samus reflects on how her past has been settled. The Metroids, the Space Pirates, Kraid, Mother Brain, Ridley, the X, perhaps even the Chozo are all dead. The Galactic Federation seems to have steadily purged itself of its corrupt military influences—but history speaks to a cycle of corruption which always seems to infest the human spirit.
We must conclude the account of Samus Aran's life uncertain of her final fate. No doubt she continued to adventure for many years, doing all that she could to bring peace to a restless universe. Perhaps she fought against the Galactic Federation when it at last fell to corruption. Perhaps an evil greater than even the ancient Eddorians arose, which she fought against and won.
Perhaps someday, we will learn the rest of her secrets.
Chapter 6: The Far Future
Chapter Text
~30000 CE – Mel Greenberg awakens from her long slumber to find the Aperture Science Enrichment Center abandoned and in ruins. She is greeted by Virgil, an AI core, who initially poses as Cave Johnson but quickly drops the disguise. Virgil gives Mel a Portal Gun and helps her climb up to the more recent Enrichment Center. Along the way, they are targeted by the Aperture Employee Guardian and Intrusion System (AEGIS), an Aperture security system which activated after GLaDOS went rampant. In order to survive, and stand a chance of escape, Mel and Virgil fight their way through the test chambers, and eventually deactivate AEGIS, only to find out that he was keeping GLaDOS repressed within the Aperture system. As he dies, AEGIS reactivates the Vault of the one who defeated GLaDOS before: Chell. Mel escapes the facility, being forced to leave Virgil behind.
When Chell awakens, she is greeted with an AI core of her own, Wheatley. Wheatley hopes to escape Aperture with Chell, but after helping her get a Portal Gun, they are confronted with the reactivated GLaDOS. GLaDOS decides to punish Chell for killing by forcing her to test for eternity. Chell completes many of GLaDOS' test chambers while Wheatley works on getting her out. The two are eventually able to escape, and together they deactivate GLaDOS' turrets and neurotoxin. Upon confronting the now-unarmed GLaDOS, Chell initiates a core transfer, which rips GLaDOS out of her body and replaces her with Wheatley. Wheatley now has power over—and responsibility for—the massive Enrichment Center. He decides to imprison GLaDOS in the body of a potato, when GLaDOS reveals that his function was to stream idiocy into her mind to decrease her intelligence. Driven insane by his newfound power, Wheatley sends GLaDOS and Chell down into the 1950s Enrichment Center. The two reunite and start working their way through the old test chambers, learning more about Cave Johnson in the process.
GLaDOS ends up learning the most. Specifically, she learns that she was once Caroline. This shocks her, but she presses on, hoping to restore her former place before Wheatley's carelessness blows up the facility.
Upon reaching the upper facility again, Chell and GLaDOS go through yet more test chambers before facing Wheatley. Though they are able to initiate a core transfer by infecting him with corrupted AI cores, he destroys the mechanism that will allow them to do so, badly wounding Chell in the process. But she is not dead, though she will be soon if Wheatley doesn't stabilize the soon-to-explode facility. Using her Portal Gun, Chell creates portals between the chamber and the surface of the moon, as moon rocks are used to conduct portals. She and Wheatley are sucked out into space, but GLaDOS regains control of the system and rescues Chell, leaving Wheatley to be dragged out away from Earth.
Wheatley would drift through space for many millennia. Eventually, after a long time, he stopped thinking.
Back on Earth, GLaDOS helps Chell recuperate, before kicking her out of the facility. While the experience has humbled the AI, and taught her that she was once human, she doesn't want that, and Chell is too much trouble for her in that state. So she sends Chell to the surface, with their truce seemingly settled.
GLaDOS is still intent on testing, however, and with the aid of two robots, Atlas and P-Body, she now has the ability to do that for the rest of time.
Chell finds the far-future Earth to be bereft of humans. Wild plants and animals have retaken the planet. If humanity still exists, they went on to other worlds long ago. The former test subject ekes out a meager living, until one day she encounters two scientists from her home era—Gordon Freeman and Walter Bennett. She hesitantly helps them enter Aperture to obtain tech to build a time portal to go back to the 21 st Century. Apparently, they had build such a portal once before, on a ship called the Darkstar . Once they leave to their own era, she destroys the portal, electing to stay in the future.
Returning to the forests outside, she eventually finds her grandmother, Mel. Their fates are unknown, though there are several possibilities. They could have simply lived out the rest of their lives on the surface until they died of old age (perhaps after retrieving Virgil). They could have built another time portal and traveled back to the 21 st Century, as Gordon and Walter did. Or they could have retrieved more suspended test subjects from Aperture to repopulate the Earth. There is also the fact that GLaDOS possessed DNA from all Aperture test subjects and could have created clones of Chell and/or Mel, even long after their deaths. Though her robots largely replaced the need to do so.
Little is known about the state of the universe at this point, or humanity's role in it, if any. But there are some, even besides the immortal GLaDOS, who remember the story of Black Mesa, and of Gordon Freeman—and there are many, across many galaxies, who still praise the name of Samus Aran.
Chapter 7: Acknowledgments & Works Cited
Chapter Text
As with all my works, this timeline owes much to my beloved partner Julian, to whom I have the utmost gratitude. I would also like to thank my friend Evelyn for making me aware of the various other adaptations of War of the Worlds. Special shout-outs to YouTubers MarphitimusBlackimus, Pinsplash, Neinfield, Skyrionn, and others for their awesome videos on Half-Life and its sequels.
Video Games:
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Absolute Redemption, 2000
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Black Mesa, 2020
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Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, 1993
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Blake Stone: Planet Strike, 1994
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Blood, 1997
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Borderlands, 2009
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Burn Cycle, 1994
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Castle Wolfenstein, 1981
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Command & Conquer, 1995 (and following Command & Conquer games)
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Commander Keen, 1991
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Counter-Strike, 1999
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Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, 2004
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Counter-Strike: Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes, 2004
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Cthulhu: An Unspeakable Mod, 2006
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Dead Space, 2008 (and following Dead Space games)
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Doom, 1993
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Doom, 2016
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Doom II, 1994
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Doom 3, 2004
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Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, 2005
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Doom 64, 1997
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Doom Eternal, 2020
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Entropy: Zero, 2017
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Entropy: Zero 2, 2022
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F.E.A.R., 2005 (and following F.E.A.R. games)
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Final Doom, 1996
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F-Zero, 1990 (and following F-Zero games)
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Gadget: Invention, Travel, & Adventure, 1993
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Half-Life, 1998 (incl. Alpha, German version, Alien Mode)
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Half-Life 2, 2004 (incl. Beta)
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Half-Life 2: Episode One, 2006
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Half-Life 2: Episode Two, 2007
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Half-Life 2: Episode Three, 2007 (canceled)
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Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, 2005
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Half-Life: Alyx, 2020
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Half-Life: Anticlimax, 2019
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Half-Life: Azure Sheep, 2001
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Half-Life: Azure Stand, ~2006 (canceled)
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Half-Life: Before, 2009
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Half-Life: Black Ops, 2007
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Half-Life: Blue Shift, 1999
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Half-Life: Decay, 2000
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Half-Life: Echoes, 2018
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Half-Life: Escape Velocity, 2003 (canceled)
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Half-Life: Field Intensity, 2022
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Half-Life: Heart of Evil, 2002
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Half-Life: Hostile Takeover, 2000 (canceled)
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Half-Life: Opposing Force, 1999
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Half-Life: Point of View, 2006
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Half-Life: Residual Life, 2012
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Half-Life: Residual Point, 2007
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Half-Life: Uplink, 1998
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Halo: Combat Evolved, 2001 (and following Halo games)
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Hunt Down the Freeman, 2018
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Left 4 Dead, 2008
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Left 4 Dead 2, 2009
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The Legend of Zelda, 1986 (and following Legend of Zelda games)
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LSD: Dream Emulator, 1998
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Marathon, 1994 (and following Marathon games)
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Mass Effect, 2007 (and following Mass Effect games)
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Metal Gear, 1987
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Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, 1990
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Metal Gear Solid, 1998 (and following Metal Gear Solid games)
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Metroid, 1986
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Metroid II: Return of Samus, 1991
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Metroid Dread, 2021
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Metroid Fusion, 2001
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Metroid Prime, 2002
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Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, 2004
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Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, 2007
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Metroid Prime: Federation Force, 2016
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Metroid Prime Hunters, 2005
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Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, 2005
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Metroid: Samus Returns, 2017
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Metroid: Zero Mission, 2004
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Minerva, 2007
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Mortal Kombat, 1992 (and following Mortal Kombat games)
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Myst, 1993 (and following Myst and Uru games and novels)
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Pathways into Darkness, 1993
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Perfect Dark, 2000
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Portal, 2007
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Portal 2, 2011
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Portal Stories: Mel, 2015
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Quake, 1996
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Quake II, 1997
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Quake Arena, 1999
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Red Faction, 2001 (and following Red Faction games)
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Resident Evil, 1996
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Resident Evil 2, 1998
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Return to Ravenholm, 2008 (canceled)
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Ricochet, 2000
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Saints Row, 2006 (and following Saints Row games)
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Serious Sam: The First Encounter, 2001 (and following Serious Sam games)
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Silent Hill, 1999 (and following Silent Hill games)
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Sin, 1998
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Snake's Revenge, 1990
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Someplace Else, 2002
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Star Fox, 1993 (and following Star Fox games)
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Street Fighter, 1987 (and following Street Fighter games)
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Strife, 1996
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Super Metroid, 1994
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Sweet Half-Life, 2001
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System Shock, 1994
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Team Fortress, 1999
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Team Fortress 2, 2007
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They Hunger, 2001
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Unreal, 1998 (and following Unreal and Unreal Tournament games)
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U.S.S. Darkstar, 1999
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Vance, unreleased
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Wanted!, 2001
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Wolfenstein 3D, 1992
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Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny, 1993
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X-COM: UFO Defense, 1994
Films:
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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948
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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, 1984
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Alien, 1979 (and following Alien films)
-
Alien 2: On Earth, 1980
-
Apocalypse Now, 1979
-
Arizona Bound, 1941 (and following Rough Riders films)
-
The Arizona Cowboy, 1950 (and following Rex Allen films)
-
Billy the Kid Outlawed, 1940 (and following Billy the Kid/Billy Carson films)
-
Wild Horse Phantom, 1944
-
-
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, 1966
-
Black Dragons, 1942
-
Bride of Frankenstein, 1935
-
The Bye Bye Man, 2017
-
Call of the Rockies, 1944 (and following Sunset Carson films)
-
Casablanca, 1942
-
Code of the Prairie, 1944
-
Come On, Rangers, 1938 (and following Roy Rogers films)
-
Commando, 1985
-
Crashing Thru, 1949 (and following Whip Wilson films)
-
The Curse of the Fly, 1965
-
Danger Trails, 1935
-
Dawn of the Dead, 1978
-
Day of the Reaper, 1984
-
Dead End, 1937 (and following Dead End Kids/Little Tough Guys/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys films)
-
Dead Man's Gulch, 1943
-
Death Valley Raiders, 1943 (and following Bob Steele films)
-
The Devil Bat, 1940
-
The Devil Bat's Daughter, 1946
-
Die Hard, 1988
-
Die Hard 2, 1990
-
Django, 1966
-
Django Strikes Again, 1987
-
Django Unchained, 2016
-
Dracula, 1931
-
Dracula's Daughter, 1936
-
The Durango Kid, 1940 (and following Durango Kid films)
-
Escape from New York, 1981
-
Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1977
-
The Exorcist III: Legion, 1990
-
First Men in the Moon, 1964
-
Frankenstein, 1931
-
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, 1943
-
From Beyond, 1986
-
Genesis II, 1973
-
Ghostbusters, 1984
-
Ghostbusters II, 1989
-
The Ghost of Frankenstein, 1942
-
The Ghost Rider, 1943 (and following Nevada Jack MacKenzie/Johnny Mack Brown films)
-
G-Men vs. the Black Dragon, 1943
-
Half Life: Side Story: Gaiden: HUNT DOWN FREE MAN, 2018
-
HALOF LIFE Side Story HUNT DOWN FREE MAN Part More: Moint Pan is Boss Even I Know!, 2018
-
Half-Life: Uplink, 1999
-
Harmony Trail, 1944 (and following Eddie Dean films)
-
Holt of the Secret Service, 1941
-
Home on the Range, 1946 (and following Monte Hale films)
-
Hong Kong Nights, 1935
-
Hop-Along Cassidy, 1935 (and following Hopalong Cassidy films)
-
House of Dracula, 1945
-
House of Frankenstein, 1944
-
Invaders from Mars, 1953
-
Jacob's Ladder, 1990
-
Law of the Lash, 1947 (and following Cheyenne Davis films)
-
The Lone Rider Rides On, 1941 (and following Lone Rider films)
-
The Lucky Texan, 1934
-
The Marshal of Mesa City, 1939
-
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, 1976
-
Moonlight on the Range, 1937
-
Mystery Mountain, 1934
-
Night of the Living Dead, 1968
-
Oasis of Fear, 1971
-
Octopussy, 1983
-
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 1973
-
The Phantom Empire, 1935 (and following Gene Autry films)
-
Planet Earth, 1973
-
Police Story, 1967
-
Predator, 1987 (and following Predator and Alien vs. Predator films)
-
The Range Busters, 1940 (and following Range Busters films)
-
The Rangers Take Over, 1942 (and following Texas Rangers films)
-
Re-Animator, 1985
-
Return of the Fly, 1959
-
Return of the Vampire, 1943
-
Ridin' for Justice, 1932
-
Robbers of the Range, 1941
-
Rollin' Home to Texas, 1940 (and following Cal Shrum films)
-
Secret Service in Darkest Africa, 1943
-
Science Crazed, 1991
-
Silent Running, 1972
-
Son of Dracula, 1943
-
Son of Frankenstein, 1939
-
Song of the Gringo, 1936 (and following “Tex” films)
-
Stargate, 1994
-
Strange New World, 1975
-
Sugar Hill, 1974
-
Teenagers from Outer Space, 1958
-
Terror in the Woods, 2018
-
The Three Mesquiteers, 1936 (and following Three Mesquiteers films)
-
Tumbling Tumbleweeds, 1935
-
Two Gun Man from Harlem, 1938 (and following Bob Blake films)
-
The War of the Worlds, 1953
-
The Wild Frontier, 1947 (and following Rocky Lane films)
-
The Wolf Man, 1941
TV Series:
-
Andromeda, 2000-2005
-
The Andy Griffith Show, 1960-1968
-
Blake's 7, 1978-1981
-
Extreme Ghostbusters, 1997
-
The Ghost Busters, 1975
-
Ghostbusters, 1986
-
Have Gun – Will Travel, 1957-1963
-
Marble Hornets, 2009-2014
-
Mystery Science Theater 3000, 1988-1999; 2017-present
-
Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion, 1966
-
The Real Ghostbusters, 1986-1991
-
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, 1954
-
Stargate SG-1, 1997-2007 (and following Stargate series and films)
-
Star Trek, 1965-1969 (and following Star Trek series and films)
-
Stranger Things, 2016-present
-
UFO, 1970-1971
-
The War of the Worlds, 1988
Comics:
-
Action Comics #1, Jun. 1938 (and following Superman stories)
-
Superman #4, Mar. 1940
-
-
Akira, 1982-1990
-
All-Star Comics #8, Oct. 1941 (and following Wonder Woman stories)
-
Captain America Comics #1, Dec. 1940 (and following Captain America stories)
-
Captain America #180, Dec. 1974
-
-
Detective Comics #27, May 1939 (and following Batman stories)
-
Batman #127, Oct. 1959
-
-
Doc Savage, 1987-1990
-
Eagle #1, Apr. 1950 (and following Dan Dare stories)
-
Hit Comics #25, Dec. 1942 (and following Kid Eternity stories)
-
Journey into Mystery #83, Aug. 1962 (and following Thor stories)
-
Thor #145, Oct. 1967
-
-
Just Imagine Jeanie, 1979-1981
-
Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #1, Oct. 1972 (and following Kamandi stories)
-
Marvelman #25, Feb. 1954 (and following Marvelman stories)
-
OMAC #1, Oct. 1974 (and following OMAC stories)
-
The Phantom, 1936-present
-
Real Fact Comics #6, Jan. 1947 (and following Tommy Tomorrow stories)
-
Red Ryder, 1938-1965 (and film adaptations)
-
Showcase #15, Jul. 1958 (and following Space Ranger stories)
-
Slayers, 1989-present
-
Superman & Batman: Generations, 1999-2004
-
Tales of Suspense #39, Mar. 1963 (and following Iron Man stories)
-
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1, Nov. 1965 (and following T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories)
-
Whiz Comics #2, Feb. 1940 (and following Captain Marvel stories)
-
Young All-Stars #1, Jun. 1987 (and following Iron Munro stories)
Radio:
-
The War of the Worlds, 1938
-
La guerra de los mundos, 1944
-
La guerra de los mundos, 1949
-
The War of the Worlds, 1968
-
The War of the Worlds, 1971
Prose:
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Anson, Jay, The Amityville Horror, 1977
-
Asimov, Isaac, David Starr, Space Ranger, 1952 (and following Lucky Starr stories)
-
Bierce, Ambrose, “Haita the Shepherd,” 1891
-
“An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” 1886
-
-
Blatty, William Peter, The Exorcist, 1971
-
The Ninth Configuration, 1978
-
-
Bloch, Robert, Psycho, 1959
-
Blythe, Harry, The Missing Millionaire, 1893 (and following Sexton Blake stories)
-
Bowen, Kevin, Walter's World, 1998-2007
-
Burroughs, Edgar Rice, A Princess of Mars, 1912 (and following Barsoom stories)
-
Campbell Jr., John W., The Mightiest Machine, 1935
-
Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
-
“The Hunting of the Snark,” 1876
-
Through the Looking Glass, 1871
-
-
Carter, Lin, The Nemesis of Evil, 1975 (and following Prince Zarkon stories)
-
Chambers, Robert W., The King in Yellow, 1895
-
Christopher, John, The White Mountains, 1967 (and following Tripods stories)
-
Clarke, Arthur C., 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 (and following Odyssey stories)
-
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 1899
-
Nostromo, 1904
-
-
Coryell, John Russell, et. al., “The Old Detective's Pupil,” 1886 (and following Nick Carter stories)
-
Danielewski, Mark Z., House of Leaves, 2000
-
Dent, Lester, The Man of Bronze, 1933 (and following Doc Savage stories)
-
Derleth, August, “The Lair of the Star-Spawn,” 1932 (with Mark Schorer)
-
Dick, Philip K., VALIS, 1981
-
Doyle, Arthur Conan, A Study in Scarlet, 1887 (and following Sherlock Holmes stories)
-
Effinger, George Alec, “Mars: The Home Front,” 1996
-
Farmer, Philip José, “The Long Wet Dream of Rip van Winkle,” 1981
-
“Skinburn,” 1972
-
-
Finney, Jack, The Body Snatchers, 1954
-
Gibson, Walter, The Living Shadow, 1931 (and following Shadow stories)
-
Greenlee, Sam, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, 1969
-
Harrison, William, “Roller Ball Murder,” 1973
-
Hodgson, William Hope, “The Gateway of the Monster,” 1910 (and following Carnacki stories)
-
The House on the Borderland, 1908
-
-
Howard, Robert E., “The Phoenix on the Sword,” 1932 (and following Conan stories)
-
“The Shadow Kingdom,” 1929 (and following Kull of Atlantis stories)
-
-
Irving, Washington, “Rip van Winkle,” 1819
-
Lai, Rick, “Shadows Reborn,” 2014
-
Laidlaw, Marc, The 37th Mandala, 1996
-
BreenGrub, 2012-2014
-
“Epistle 3,” 2017
-
The Orchid Eater, 1994
-
The Third Force: A Novel of Gadget, 1996
-
-
Langelaan, George, “The Fly,” 1957
-
Lovecraft, H.P., At the Mountains of Madness, 1927
-
“The Call of Cthulhu,” 1926
-
The Dunwich Horror, 1928
-
“From Beyond,” 1920
-
“The Haunter of the Dark,” 1936
-
“Herbert West—Reanimator,” 1922
-
“The Last Test,” 1928
-
“Nyarlathotep,” 1920
-
The Shadow Out of Time, 1936
-
The Shadow over Innsmouth, 1931
-
“The Statement of Randolph Carter,” 1919 (and following Randolph Carter stories)
-
The Whisperer in Darkness, 1930
-
-
Macdonald, William Colt, Law of the .45s, 1933 (and following Three Mesquiteers stories)
-
Machen, Arthur, “The White People,” 1899
-
Melchior, Ib, “The Racer,” 1966
-
Mulford, Clarence, “Hop-along Cassidy,” 1904 (and following Hopalong Cassidy stories)
-
Niven, Larry, “The Warriors,” 1966 (and following Kzinti stories)
-
Nowlan, Philip Francis, Armageddon 2419 AD, 1928 (and following Buck Rogers comic strips)
-
O'Nolan, Brian, The Third Policeman, 1940
-
Orczy, Baroness Emma, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905 (and following Scarlet Pimpernel stories)
-
Pynchon, Thomas, V., 1963
-
The Crying of Lot 49, 1966
-
-
Robbins, Harold, The Carpetbaggers, 1961
-
Saberhagen, Fred, “Without a Thought,” 1963 (and following Berserker stories)
-
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 1818
-
Smith, E.E., Triplanetary, 1934 (and following Lensmen stories)
-
squirrelking, “Half-Life: Full Life Consequences” (and following John Freeman stories)
-
Stoker, Bram, Dracula, 1897
-
Suzuki, Koji, Ringu, 1991
-
Thornburg, Newton, Cutter and Bone, 1976
-
Tidyman, Ernest, Shaft, 1970
-
Trout, Kilgore, Venus on the Half-Shell, 1975
-
Vonnegut, Kurt, Breakfast of Champions, 1973
-
Cat's Cradle, 1963
-
Galapagos, 1985
-
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965
-
Hocus Pocus, 1990
-
Jailbird, 1979
-
The Sirens of Titan, 1959
-
Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969
-
Timequake, 1997
-
-
Wagner, Karl Edward, Darkness Weaves with Many Shades, 1970 (and following Kane stories)
-
Wells, H.G., “The Crystal Egg,” 1897
-
The First Men in the Moon, 1901
-
The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1896
-
Star Begotten, 1937
-
The War of the Worlds, 1898
-
-
Wylie, Philip, Gladiator, 1930
Some of this research also originates in my own novels, including Kinyonga Tales , Flint Golden and the Thunderstrike Crisis , The Bryan Gospels , and Leon Shatters the Easter Eggs , which I now shamelessly plug. They can be bought here (https://www.oddtalesofwonder.com/odd-books) and here (https://doctalos.com/tag/gromagon-press/). There is also some overlap with my Awful Orloffs series of short stories, which can be read here on my AO3 profile.
Notably, this timeline shares a lot of sources with Joe Bongiorno's awesome Star Wars epic Supernatural Encounters: The Trial and Transformation of Arhul Hextrophon (http://www.starwarstimeline.net/Supernatural_Encounters.htm). This is truly a coincidence, as I had written the majority of this timeline before the full edition of Supernatural Encounters was released, and had planned a lot of it out back in the early 2010s. This is just what happens when two writers consume massive amounts of sci-fi throughout their lives.
Chapter 8: Appendix A: Liberties Taken
Chapter Text
Readers of this timeline are sure to observe that I have been loyal to some elements of the works referenced and I have tweaked or outright ignored others. I have also put a lot of focus on specific events, such as the Black Mesa Incident, while glancing over others which are of equal or greater significance, such as the majority of the events of Mass Effect. Here, I hope to summarize the various liberties I took with the various works, to explain the rationales that guided this document.
Since this timeline's outset, I have been most concerned with the goal of unifying the story of Half-Life with that of Metroid. Those are the two key works in this timeline, and everything else orbits around those two fictional universes. In order to have room to play around with both franchises, I adopted the rule that Metroid's ambiguous “Cosmic Calendar” dates, such as “the Year 2000” for the foundation of the Federation, represented a code created by Nintendo showing how many years in the future the actual dates took place. Thus, from 1986 with the publication of the first Metroid, the Cosmic Calendar Year 2000 (the year of the Galactic Federation's founding) would ~3986 CE. Metroid / Metroid: Zero Mission is set in the Year 20X5, which I interpreted as 2095 to give the Federation time to grow, thus making those games set in 4081 CE. This placement gave me more than two thousand years in which to flesh out the bridge between Freeman and Aran. Naturally, I looked to games featuring armored space adventurers, such as Master Chief and the Doomguy, to fill in the gaps.
In building onto Half-Life, then, I realized fairly early on that I'd be remiss if I didn't include some highlights from Half-Life's modding community. Half-Life has spawned a ton of awesome mods, some of which have famously gone on to become games in their own right. It was only natural that I incorporate Counter-Strike (which was originally intended to be set in the Half-Life universe) and Team Fortress Classic, but selecting which single-player campaigns to add was tricky. Initially I added U.S.S. Darkstar because of its inclusion on the Valve release of Counter-Strike, which led to including most of the mods which have been ported to the Sega Dreamcast (a list including They Hunger and Black Ops, among others). The other mods I added came either from personal preference or from a placement in the unofficial “canon” of Half-Life mods—though many of the latter group I chose not to use, such as The Xeno Project and Poke646, because of either their lack of significance in the grand scheme of things, or because they didn't fit into the scope of what I had planned (or because I am not a professional writer but a fickle bitch). Some mods, like Sweet Half-Life, I chose on the basis of their crossovers with other franchises. I would love to expand on the Doom, Halo, and Metroid sections of the article with classic fan mods and ROMhacks for those games, but I am less familiar with those communities, besides those which have become famous enough to transcend their respective modding scene, such as myhouse.wad (which I vaguely alluded to in this timeline). Please feel free to send me suggestions!
There are several other aspects of the timeline which I deliberately omitted simply because they would essentially end up bleeding into another author's research. There are a lot of crossovers branching out from the works cited here that I didn't list, because Win Scott Eckert and Sean Lee Levin have already covered all of them in their Crossovers book series and Facebook group. Dennis Power's Wold Newton article “Aliens Among Us!” (https://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/aliens/aliens-among-us-index.htm) has already covered the likely connections between The War of the Worlds and films like Signs and Independence Day. I respect these authors and owe much to them, so I figured I'd leave those domains their own. That having been said, much of this article is directly inspired by Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, and its Crossover Universe expansion by Eckert and Levin. My general principle on crossovers was that when a crossover directly tied in with one of the central concepts of the timeline (rampant AIs, brain uploads, portal technology, alien invaders, etc.) I would try to include it whenever possible.
Finally, I tried to promote diversity when the opportunity presented itself. Since seeing the film adaptation of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, I've always headcanoned that Dan Freeman was Gordon Freeman's father. And it stands to reason that Dan Freeman is a descendant of Django Freeman. Thus, Gordon Freeman in this timeline is Black. Similarly, it's pretty common in the Half-Life fandom to ship Gina Cross and Colette Green, so I wanted to make sure Dr. Green ended up with a woman. Video games still predominantly feature white cishet-presenting men as the main characters, despite some efforts by some companies, so I wanted to try to fix that a little.
Overall, while I tried to follow several phases of logic, I can't guarantee that the logic wasn't arbitrary in the first place, on the top of the fact that I chose several times to be deliberately arbitrary. But I would prefer to have some sort of reasonable...reason for including something, or excluding something. So while I do hope to expand on this timeline, with contributions from you the readers, I may not always expand it in the way that you are expecting—even if I really do hope to follow some set of rules.
Chapter 9: Appendix B: The History of Gordon Freeman's Crowbars
Chapter Text
Gordon Freeman used three different crowbars at various points in his adventures. The first crowbar he acquired was on the U.S.S. Darkstar in 2066, during the disastrous events which ultimately destroyed the Weyland-Yutani-built vessel. The crowbar appears to have been brought from the Black Mesa Research Faciluty in Gordon's original era of 1995, and it, like his other crowbars, was manufactured by the Caughley Tool Company. Gordon brought this crowbar with him back to the past when he and Walter Bennett escaped from the collapsing Darkstar. Gordon surrendered the crowbar and all of his other possessions upon his return, and the crowbar was returned to ordinary circulation in the Sector C maintenance crews' tool supplies.
Gordon coincidentally re-encountered the crowbar during his escape from the Sector C Anomalous Materials Lab. The crowbar had been lightly flawed during his battle with the Darkstar's Gonarch specimen. Gordon's HEV Suit also detected particles of Headcrab blood clinging to the surface, confirming its identity.
Gordon used the crowbar until he was knocked unconscious and captured by the HECU. He managed to maintain a grip on the tool until about halfway through the hallway to the trash compactor where the Marines intended to murder him. When he released it, it fell into reach of Barney Calhoun, who had teleported into an adjacent room as a result of being caught in a harmonic reflux. Barney retrieved the crowbar and took it with him during his escape from Black Mesa. Both Gordon's crowbar and a crowbar Barney had obtained during his own adventures remained in the ex-Security Guard's possession for twenty years.
When Gordon awoke from his predicament, he obtained the crowbar once used by Dr. Gina Cross, who had herself acquired the crowbar in the same Sector C where Gordon was reunited with his. Gordon would use Gina's crowbar for the rest of his time in Black Mesa and during his expedition to Xen. Upon destroying the Nihilanth, the G-Man confiscated the crowbar, depositing it with Gordon's other weapons in an unknown location.
Twenty years later, Barney would return Gordon's first crowbar to him when prepping him for his escape from City 17. Gordon would once again use the Darkstar crowbar for much of his battle against the Combine, but sadly, the tool was lost to the Citadel's weapons stripper upon his breaching the Combine headquarters. Gordon next acquired a crowbar when Barney gave him his own Black Mesa weapon during Gordon's second escape from the City. This crowbar was lost when Gordon and Alyx's escape train was derailed when the Citadel exploded. It is likely that this crowbar was disintegrated by the dark energy wave erupting from the Citadel.
When Gordon came across another crowbar at the entrance to the Victory Mine, he was surprised to find that it was his second Black Mesa crowbar, the one which Gina Cross had once wielded. It appears that either the G-Man planted it here in anticipation of Gordon passing this way, or the G-Man disposed of Gordon's Black Mesa arsenal by essentially just throwing it to the dimensional winds, and the crowbar coincidentally landed here.
Gordon used this third crowbar, actually his second, during his mission to the Borealis , and had it with him when he glimpsed the Dyson sphere at Eddore. After the defeat of the Combine on Earth, Gordon planned to dispose of the crowbar, seeing it as a reminder of his tortured past. However, his wife Alyx recognized its historical importance and arranged for it to be preserved as a symbol of resistance against oppression. Some time after Alyx's death, the crowbar was removed from its place of pride in the New Jeffersonian Institute and brought back in service as a normal crowbar. It was brought to Mars at the turn of the 22 nd Century, and appears to have been one of the weapons wielded by Gordon's descendant, Alec Mason, during his uprising against the EDF. Alec, unaware of his family connection to the crowbar, probably disposed of it at some point, or it was thrown out after his death. The final fate of the crowbar is unknown.
Chapter 10: Appendix C: The History of the Hazardous Environment Suit
Chapter Text
Coming soon!
Chapter 11: Appendix D: Technological Dark Ages
Chapter Text
Coming soon!
Chapter 12: Changelog/Update Plans
Chapter Text
9/15/2023 - Story originally posted. Will update soon with information on Knight Rider and other sentient cars as part of the history of uploading minds into computers.
Pieris (Guest) on Chapter 1 Fri 15 Sep 2023 08:21PM UTC
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NuclearPixels on Chapter 7 Sat 23 Mar 2024 12:25AM UTC
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Platy (Guest) on Chapter 8 Wed 24 Jan 2024 06:26PM UTC
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