A Half Life Story - The Seven Hours War

The Sniper

The Sniper

Radio Bob Approved
The Seven Hour War

New York, United States of America

69th Infantry Regiment, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth


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Two minutes after invasion.

-"This is Echo Five-Bravo. Do anyone read me? We are being attacked by unknown entities, they are all over the place! Requesting immediate assistance!"-


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Witness the chaos of the Seven Hour War, two minutes after its start.

Participate in the horrifying tale of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth and witness their plight to defend New York during the day of the invasion.

Die in defence of New York or live long enough to see it being sold off by the arch-traitor Breen.

Many will die, some may survive... only to transform into something else.

By the end of it, was it really worth it all?


Factions and Characters:
Fighting Sixty-Ninth (69th Infantry Regiment)
New Yorkers
Synthetic Invaders
Arch-Traitor Breen at end-game​


A pilot launch of a new project called A Half Life Story.

Episodic in nature, the Seven Hour War and the plight of the 69th will be the first of many Half Life-based events, intermingled with the main server and the lore.

Depending on how much coverage and interest it gains from the community, a more detailed process will be written on how to participate in the event and how it is going to play out.
​


Factions

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Fighting Sixty-Ninth (69th Infantry Regiment)

Part of the National Guard of New York City. The 69th Infantry Regiment has a history dating back to the American Civil War. After the Portal Storms began, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth has been dispatched on several expeditions to combatant the Xenian lifeforms it has significant experience and hardened soldiers.

But will it be enough for what is to come?


Roles:

Major -/null/
Overall commander of the unit fighting against the alien invasion.

Captain - 1 slot

The commissioned officer of the company; carrying out orders, maintaining discipline and the survival of both the men and women of its company. But also the countless amounts of civilians that strive for safety after the invasion.


Sergeant - 0/2 Slots

A non-commissioned officer, commands the squads and carry out orders of their superiors. Fighting to keep both the civilians and the soldiers under their command alive, they fight on the frontline and engage along with their squad to save whatever can be saved.


Corporal - 0/4 slots

Lowest of the non-commissioned officers. The Corporal is integrated into a squad with a sergeant, acting as second-in-command.

Private - Unlimited slots (for now)

The core of the National Guard. The private is the grunt, the soldier and the warrior carrying out orders with diligence.

​



Civilians and others

Caught in distress mere minutes after the invasion. Civilians are a mixed bunch of regular workers, everything from daily desk jobs, clerks, hospital nurses and doctors, as well as police. Applicants are free to choose whatever, but limits will be imposed on the Police

NYPD - 0/4

Civilians - Unlimited

Be whatever you want, within reason. Freedom of choice for your character creation.


APPLICATIONS WILL BE OPEN SOON.

​


Episode I
Two Minutes

Episode II
Penultimate

Episode III
Six Hours and Fifty-Seven Minutes
​

 
Last edited:
Sounds like maybe a decent idea if done right,

Just a quick question
Is this sort of a restrained assault by the combine to preserve the city or is this all out?
If its all out it could end up like a hunt down the freeman-esque story and de-value the magnitude of the seven hour war, however if there is only a small force invading then it might work???
Otherwise if you're military you're just dead, like there is no battle there, you're dead.
 
Light said:
Sounds like maybe a decent idea if done right,

Just a quick question
Is this sort of a restrained assault by the combine to preserve the city or is this all out?
If its all out it could end up like a hunt down the freeman-esque story and de-value the magnitude of the seven hour war, however if there is only a small force invading then it might work???
Otherwise if you're military you're just dead, like there is no battle there, you're dead.
Click to expand...
Entirely depends on how the lore is handled. Event director has to make the call, but both realistic and more allowing for an actual event to take place is that the Combine didn’t just begin destroying large swathes of Earth, but were attacked by Earth governments and essentially made the Combine begin suppressing military forces. The conflict would be chaos, but I’d even say that a good number of military personnel survived. Maybe not over half but at least a third.
 
since black mesa happen 3 years prior to the war, adding some vort players, and xenian npcs to fight would also be good, as the military would be actively fighting them as well. hell, you could even have a few vorts ally with the military during the invasion, if they knew English by then.
 
I will say that SHW stuff tends to go in with a massive disadvantage, with that being that there is no possible way for a Gmod event to even come close to really highlighting what that must have been like. As such, probably best keeping the contents of the event more second-hand, never putting the events into too much direct light. The sheer helplessness and intensity involved in a planetary conquest that took only Seven Hours to achieve is mindboggling. Under such circumstances, there would be no room for 'minor victories' or local success. Survival would be the end goal, and a distant one at that.

I know some people have very weird ideas regarding the SHW, framing it in a way that makes the Combine look weaker or humanity more in control of what happened than they were - but it was without a doubt an absolute slaughter without even a glimmer of hope to be found throughout. Some of the most powerful militaries on Earth would struggle to secure a single city in seven hours, the Combine won the war for a planet in that same time.
 
RedHotGinger said:
I will say that SHW stuff tends to go in with a massive disadvantage, with that being that there is no possible way for a Gmod event to even come close to really highlighting what that must have been like. As such, probably best keeping the contents of the event more second-hand, never putting the events into too much direct light. The sheer helplessness and intensity involved in a planetary conquest that took only Seven Hours to achieve is mindboggling. Under such circumstances, there would be no room for 'minor victories' or local success. Survival would be the end goal, and a distant one at that.

I know some people have very weird ideas regarding the SHW, framing it in a way that makes the Combine look weaker or humanity more in control of what happened than they were - but it was without a doubt an absolute slaughter without even a glimmer of hope to be found throughout. Some of the most powerful militaries on Earth would struggle to secure a single city in seven hours, the Combine won the war for a planet in that same time.
Click to expand...
I agree.

I can't imagine ever pulling off a SHW event in a city as big as new york, the sheer amount of synths that would have been there would crash the server.
 
RedHotGinger said:
I will say that SHW stuff tends to go in with a massive disadvantage, with that being that there is no possible way for a Gmod event to even come close to really highlighting what that must have been like. As such, probably best keeping the contents of the event more second-hand, never putting the events into too much direct light. The sheer helplessness and intensity involved in a planetary conquest that took only Seven Hours to achieve is mindboggling. Under such circumstances, there would be no room for 'minor victories' or local success. Survival would be the end goal, and a distant one at that.
Click to expand...
You have to remember that:
1: By the time of the Seven-Hour war, everyone was struggling to fight random sprouts of Xenian Wildlife for four years, so the military wasn't ready at all to deal with the Combine
2: It ended early because Breen couped the United Nations or something if I remember correctly (correct me if im wrong), the war would have ended far later if not.
 
also, reasonably, earths forces had to have some victories, from all the talk of how the combine are all powerful (this is a bad writing on valves part), it would seem that human forces wouldn't have had any chance at all, even though they managed to last hours, before the UN officially surrendered, and I'm sure the fighting didn't just stop as soon as the decision was made, and announced. Realistically fighting would have continued for a long while, with militaries and government who didn't accept the surrender slowly becoming the first major rebel groups over time.
 
Doing an aftermath scenario is far better than any event you could come up about the big war, anything liek that will always end up being a Hunt Down the Freeman meme I feel.
The uncertainty about a holdout of soldiers/survivors trying to fight off clean-up forces (instead of the armies of unfathomable power from the invasion proper) and escape is way more doable than a Seven Hour War scenario were you know that you're getting nuked by the end of the event, and only having the worst time of your character's life for the rest of it.
 
the combine are all powerful (this is a bad writing on valves part),
Click to expand...

Its not. Its the core of Half Life itself. The entire series is based around the fact the Combine are an eldritch horror beyond any conventional means of resistance. Even Half Life 1 is a direct result of this fact, with a few references to boot towards it.

While fighting would have continued, its tradition for the declaration of peace to mark the official end of the war. This is has happened for most wars. While there will still be pockets of resistance which either don't receive the message, or disregard it, this isn't counted as being a continuation of the war. In this case though, those who continued fighting wouldn't live to become anything, let alone a threat.

You have to remember that:
1: By the time of the Seven-Hour war, everyone was struggling to fight random sprouts of Xenian Wildlife for four years, so the military wasn't ready at all to deal with the Combine
2: It ended early because Breen couped the United Nations or something if I remember correctly (correct me if im wrong), the war would have ended far later if not.
Click to expand...

Im going to be honest with you
This is the most stale and lifeless interpretation of the SHW there is and I have no idea why it has traction around Willard. Yes, its true that the xen shit was happening, but its worth noting, that's only in Willards lore - canon lore we can't really be sure about. But, just focusing on Willard itself, its not like humanity was bent over and dying. By the time the Combine arrived the situation was stabilizing and footing had been found in a changed, but entirely livable world. I do admit that the writing presented does not pain that picture, but thats a fault of said writing. The apocalyptical measure of the xen period is overblown, and makes humanity look far weaker than it ought to.

The war ended because everyone deferred to Breen in a last ditch effort to be spared total annihilations. He was the only one who could commune with the Combine and thus the only one who could possibly lay the groundwork for any surrender. Given that any martial victory was very obviously not even a feasible pipe-dream, it was the only route to take.

The Seven Hour War was not World War Two. I really wish people would stop seeing it as this weird thing where battlelines were drawn and human forces bravely resisted the Combine in epic open warfare. Odds are what you consider a battle would have been little more than a complete and total slaughter. Reminder they took the entire Earth in seven hours with an unconditional surrender - adhered to by all of Earth. Keep in mind, humanity was well aware of what a bad deal an unconditional surrender was. In war, its the single worst deal you can make - in regards to your species fate - there is no other worse choice to make.
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Seven Hours to do this.
Even if we start giving humanity the benefit of the doubt, pointing out small pockets of resistance remained, that still changes nothing on the grand scale of things. To say that Earth got utterly, and completely bent over, would be an understatement. Many things in Half Life point this out. Best example is this line from Half Life Alyx - the more modern Canon game

Eli Vance: "Earth could've used you in the Seven Hour War."
Alyx Vance: "Yeah, maybe we would have lasted Eight."

This quote is a tongue and cheek measure of just how helpless the outcome of that war was, even acknowledged by the very same people carrying the flame of resistance well after it. It wasn't any kind of 'war' that occurred before. It was a brief, horrifying and entirely unrelenting slaughter and assimilation of all things that did not currently serve the Combine. What we see on Earth is little more than a police force, and its more than enough to keep both man, animal and Xenian in check for over twenty years. Only broken by Freeman and the extremely adroit forces of Lambda's resistance. Even then, the victory was only in severing the Combines ability to return. Which Eli mentions, should the Combine have shown back up 'They wouldn't last ten minutes'

Final, quick point...Keep in mind that the mere fact humanity just decided to surrender unconditionally within only the very first moments of the war can only mean those opening moments were so utterly devastating that literally zero recourse possibly remained.
 
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