u/theindepantmage

Note before we start: Reddit's stupid background refresh wiped everything 2,5 hours into writing. I hate everything.

I recently learned of this project, and even though it's far from my cup of tea, it reminded me of one of my favorite niche horror movies, Phantasm. There, a nigh omnipotent force from outer space enslaves all of humanity for their own benefit. Sound familiar? Anyway, I expect everyone here to already know all about HDG (probably better than I do, so if I get terminology or story facts wrong, don't get mad please.), so I'll get into explaining the tall man. He is an inter-dimensional war lord who seeks to enslave all of humanity, to increase his power, to enslave another version of humanity in the next dimension. He himself is supernatural, having infinite self-cloning capabilities, necromancy, Psionic powers, super speed, strength and intellect and most importantly, teleportation. However, he does his conquering via an army of metallic balls called sentinel spheres, which range from the normal silver spheres which are fairly weak, can only kill humans due to their specialised weaponry and yet still plough through thick metal doors like they're nothing, up to the giant spheres which can disintegrate entire skyscrapers within seconds. Very important are also the golden sentinels, which emerge whenever one of the tall man's clones dies, and can cause unprecedented destruction compared to their size. Now, to the slavery part. The tall man resurrects dead humans, turning their bodies into the undead dwarf lurkers or gravers, and their brains into new sentinels. These minions are either sent to help him take more humans, or to toil in his home dimension. Now, with that character profile condensed more than a corpse-turned-dwarf, here's how I'd fit this into an HDG story. So, first off, to establish a few things, I know in the phantasm movies the tall man is portrayed as a bit on an incompetent edgy dumbass, almost getting bested by his own spheres, but in my opinion, he just really loves playing with his food. He revels in human despair and dying hopes, which is the reason why he often "spares" or even assists his opponents in beating him temporarily. If he saw that his opponents were strong enough, he would go all out, since it would be a much more gratifying victory. Secondly, for the sake of the matchup, let's say he isn't just allowed to travel back in time (as that often happens in the movies) to harvest all humans before the affinis took control or just outright destroy them before they gained any power as a species, in order to prevent them from interfering with his goal later in the timeline. This is a crossover, not Phantasm VI.
Thirdly, the tall man wouldn't target a world with affinis in the first place, as he could use his dimension hopping powers to find a humanity far less well protected than by a race of nigh omnipotent plant beings. Aside from spite and looking for a challenge, he has no reason to target a dimension that would cost him more in man... err... spherepower than it would ever bring.
Lastly, we are limiting timeline and dimension hopping to the tall man only. Even the the affinis managed use their sci-Plot magic to get to the red planet dimension to destroy the his Base of operations, that would leave the possibility of infinite parallel multiverse red dimensions with their OWN parallel tall men that could jump the gap just the same. You can't drain an infinitely deep lake. To keep this from becoming an infinity squared thing, let's assume that our HDG world is one dimension, and the red planet is another, and only the tall man controls what goes in or out via the dimensional forks. Now, ladies and gents, this is a conundrum I'd call "omnipotent vs inevitable". Here's how it might play out: the tall man attacks. Due to being unprepared and never facing an attack of such a scale, many humans die and have their corpses stolen by the tall man and his army (he only seems to target humans specifically, as all of his dwarf lurkers are identical, which would most likely not be the case if he just targeted any sapient species). Aside from this, many affini, and other xenosophonts die as collateral in the attack. However, the tall man and his army is destroyed. The compact builds defences, preparing for the next attack. The next attack comes, with a much bigger army. Despite the lower casualties, the tall man's army cannot be faltered. He has infinite worlds to grow it from. The better the Defense, the bigger his spiteful motivation. Skip forward a few cycles. A reality manifests itself. A fact of life. You cannot beat infinity. You can merely match it; for as long as you dare try. The tall man cannot be beaten. He has infinite lives, a functionally infinite army, and if all else fails can just appear next to his next target out of the blue, send a suicide sentinel, or even just snap their neck, and be one victim down before any defence could kick in. He is a lich you can only seal YOURSELF away from. Even if you managed to prepare a defence at every place, he could summon his next attack from the places you cannot adequately defend, or invent a new type of sentinel that can bypass your current defences, or use his essentially endless arsenal to Zerg rush you to the point that it becomes a situation akin to trying to try to use an extra large umbrella to try to stop a river. Billions will be lost trying to repel him, with him not worse off than when he started this campaign. And so the compact faces a conundrum. They have two choices: a. Continue this war of attrition. forever. A war that will lose them all of humanity, person by person, over a very long time, as well as countless affini and others that never would have died. Or, b. Give in. Accept the tall man as an inevitable tolling bell of extinction for humanity when he appears to reap, to protect everyone else under their rule. And with our sci-fi craziness quota fulfilled, a much interesting story unfolds: the social story. Would the affini try to care for their slaves until the bitter end or would they cast them out since they're doomed to death anyway? How would humanity react? Would they feel betrayed? Would they view the tall man as a force of nature, come to the restore balance, and free them? Would the nonhuman species lose trust in the compact, seeing the formerly omnipotent force throwing an entire species to the slaughter due to them coming up against the wall? I fucking love this matchup because it is a dying ant vs hypernova vs multiversal hypernova. The compact can match the tall man's power, but even if they do, there's no bell to end the fight. All they can do is drag the battle forever or concede and give him all of humanity to spare everyone else. The story still explores themes of helplessness, and most importantly doesn't have the compact "lose" since they could defend forever; though at too great personal cost to justify not sacrificing humanity. I don't feel it cheapens either franchise for the sake of a desired conclusion, but creates a logical and yet interesting encounter. I have been stuck in this neurotic speculation for over 8 hours now, just because I thought a story was kinda similar to a different one I liked. If anyone better at writing than me got inspired, go ahead. However I recommend you name it "domestication, with balls", to continue the franchise joke and try to include the "no, it's not!" Scene as the ending. Tell me what you think, just be civil if I get something wrong or made an error while writing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I wrote this entire thing during a presumably-OLD induced panic attack which has lasted 13 hours now, so I will now seek medical attention lest a heart attack renders me unable to read your opinions on the most fucked up crossover I've thought of to date