Surveillance Patio

"Welcome, to the Surveillance Patio, Young Mummy."

The Surveillance Patio was an incorrigibly corrupted ancient warshipping cathedral located on the black-hole orbiting superworld, Yx Alpha. The Surveillance patio was an ancient, pre-Combine worshipping temple dedicated to warshipping the long-vanished Omniversal god of Peace, Paxii. From the temple's cracks spilled blood of all creatures and beings across the Omniverse, with this dark, metallic blood twisting and churning in veins until it formed the mouth of the Arterial River, a stream of blood running across the plasmatic oceans of Yx in a hardened, burned-blood tube, travelling all the way down to the core of the planet, where it mixed with the molten iron of the core, pumping, thumping, throbbing, pulsating, screaming.

Histories

But it was not always this way. Long ago, the Surveillance Patio had been a life-giving, light-beaming beacon of hope and tranquility. It welcomed visitors from across the Andromeda galaxy, and beings of every type warshipped together their god of peace, Paxii. However, in 1980 BB, Paxii suddenly dissapeared; and so, too, did the life and bounties of the Temple of Peace. Then, from Paxii's throne, began spurting blood, at first, in occassional squirts, until it eventually formed the leaking fountain that mouths the Arterial river that became known to the Omniverse.

Ritual

By the time of the Waifurian Empire, the Surveillance Patio had become possessed by hatred and despair; embroiled in the deaths of trillions, from bacteria to cosmic 'so-called-horrors'. The patio became a place where leaders of every imperial force in the Local Supercluster would visit; in the name of 'peace' and 'Intergalactic Stability', bringing members of their own families - often the ones they loved the most - to sacrifice at the alter. At the alter, in 51 AB, G-4323 and Joe Biden met and exchanged pleasantries. During this trip, Mummy sacrificed his ailing niece Josephine, to the Surveillance Patio. G-4323, for his part, sacrificed his eldest son.

After their sacrifices, the leaders would engage in prayer; in addition to Combine and Waifurian leadership, also present were Vaure Magellan, Despot of the Magellanic Cloud, Er'sa Mi, Queen-Governess of the Draco Dwarf Galaxy, and 48 other intergalactic politicians, who swayed about in deep purple robes, muttering incantations about the 'glory of peace' while dancing around the alter where the pile of their loved ones lay. The Summit was hosted, always, by a pale, mysterious figure known only as 'XX'.

Hypotheses

The true reasons for this top-secret once-per-millenia ritual remained unknown, as each of these leaders never spoke so much as a word to the summit. What little knowledge was known about the Surveillance patio was gathered from historical Combine texts and CCTV video footage.

Additionally, the reanimated corpses of Legume-wielding Warshippers were stationed upon great obsidian towers all around the Surveillance Patio, and, with the Altarious blood coursing through their veins via eternal IV drip, they wielded yellowed, corrupted Legumish beams against any non-elite who attempted to enter the airspace of the Patio.

Researchers developed several hypotheses;

1. Paxii's Corruption. The leaders had been brainwashed into collective obedience to some manner of wicked spirit on the altar. For brief seconds on the CCTV footage, a pair of wide, crystal-blue eyes could be spotted observing the rituals of the Galactic leaders. These eyes matched the description of Paxii's, and it was hypothesized that Paxii had somehow been corrupted by an evil force and become obsessed with peace through bloodshed.
2. Fealty or Death. The leaders were not brainwashed, but were in fact forced to 'bend the knee' to the Altar, or else risk losing power, for some reason or another. Some supporting evidence to this hypothesis is that after Biden missed the 43,000 AB Ritual Summit (due to forgetting it). The following millenia, he was deposed by Marvin Fluxton. Marvin Fluxton never attended the 44,000 AB Summit, and was deposed not seventy years later by a mysterious assassination in Bidenheim. However, critics of this theory argue that these deaths are mere coincidence, and that Biden's deposition was a symptom of far greater instability than his missing the Ritual Summit.
3. Auberginish Intent. Another popular theory speculates that the summit had been orchestrated by the Aubergine, in some covert attempt to gain control. However, no evidence, aside from the Mummy's eventual capitulation and abuse of the accursed fruit, supports this theory.
4. The secret of XX. One other hypothesis is that XX, the custodian of the accursed patio, and hypothesized lover of Paxii, orchestrated the summits as a means to an end; a way to organize leaders in one place and to examine and correct their courses of action in the best possible manner to, in her interpretation, 'keep the peace'. The leaders all warshipped XX, and she led each of the rituals and organized the summits; however, XX claimed to only host the summits of neccesity, for she had sworn an oath to 'keep the peace' to Paxii before the late God's dissapearance.