As mentioned above, the bulk of the Convocation members had lived on an alternate Earth, and moved to Paragon's Primal Earth only recently. But the history of the group is far longer than even just a few decades as would be evidenced by the youthful appearance of many in the Convocation. They are in no small way the culmination of a very long and very slowly fought war - between the Mystery and Ulathoi. To understand the background behind Keenan Lane and his family The Convocation, there is much to be said.
The first time that Keenan - at that time an unnamed Convocation entity - had encountered the creatures which would become known as Ulathoi, he was 'taking a vacation' as well. Living in a body he'd made to blend in with the natives, and residing in the calm thick and bright atmosphere of a planet and simply enjoying the view. When that view had turned dark, he made note that the semi-sentient creatures living there had a new emotion in their mental world: fear. They were confused as to why they could no longer breathe, where their mates were, and why their bodies no longer floated properly. It was because their atmosphere, rich in gasses and useful substances, was being siphoned off by an alien convoy.
With dismay, and a growing, new sense of anger over the matter, he abandoned his material form and backed away to watch from a distance. What he saw disturbed him to the core: the world, after a few short 'decades' (all mentions of time frames are 'equitable to Earth time') had been reduced to nothing. A thick gas planet, seen as nothing more than resources and a pit-stop for this new alien colony.
This happened again and again - and the entity that would become known as Keenan Lane realized that he had to do something about it. To his senses and sensabilities, these acts of willful, powerful and complete destruction were tantamount to the opening salvo of a war. Unannounced, uncompromising, these alien life forms took over planet after planet. Some were gas giants, some rocky with heavy mineral deposits, some inhabited by sentient life. None of them ever had any form of warning, none were ever probed with the intent to ask first whether their resources could be shared, or if their people wanted to be grafted on to these aliens. He'd noticed changes in them as well - originally within their inelegant and dangerous looking ships, they were upright creatures with somewhat familiar (to Humans anyway) biological functions. But they had many traits that could have been more fully exploited by other means.
The means they chose, however, were far more brutal. Both to their subjugated servants, and to themselves. Over the course of thousands of years, they evolved individually into creatures that could not necessarily sustain themselves alone, but required the presence of more and more machinery, assisted by parts that originally belonged to other species. They had some amount of psychic power, mainly telekinesis and sensing, but that too evolved into something far more monstrous just like their bodies. With curiosity, 'Lane' probed their memories, their desires laid bare: they wanted immortality, at whatever cost. That cost could be paid by others, in return they 'offered' a place among the stars, to be joined forever with this species. Rather than breed themselves to live longer, individually, they'd come to a telepathic concordance, a hive-mind mentality that didn't comprehend any other way of life.
Three times in the course of this long and lonely war, did 'Lane' ask his kind, the Convocation, for assistance against these creatures - assistance or at least permission to do 'what was right'. (What was right? When he first encountered them, and saw the direction they were taking, Lane could have elminated them entirely, or altered their conscious behavior to avoid doing what they had done. This was absolutely forbidden, the Convocation acted only when asked, and never 'for themselves'.) All three times, they snubbed him. After all, they claimed, they were in no danger at all. And 'life' - what did they need from that? Matter? They didn't require it either; if some living things were mucking with other living things and 'stealing' their matter? Who cared? It was nothing to do with them. As for allowing him to erradicate them because he felt it necessary? Madness - the wrongness of Ulathoi's behavior was pale in comparison to any one of them doing something on their own about it. This whole event didn't register on the Convocation's radar, irrelevant, impossibly distant.
Except that to him, it did matter. The Vortal potential the creatures had, along with their insatiable need for new abilities and new locations to exploit and plunder, could lead to only one very dangerous conclusion. They would eventually be able to not only sense and interact with, but devour and use up, the energies of the Convocation themselves.
Lane had always been reasonably good with predictions and outcomes over the grand scheme - a bigger-picture kind of probability curve became apparent to him rather quickly. Within the first ten thousand years, these alien forms had adopted hundreds of different and extremely disparate species and molded them into 'useful' roles. As the original shapes of the aliens changed, their population grew quickly; their ships, once easily recognizable as such (again, to 'Human' eyes) were slowly becoming more and more organic and infused with technology, rather than the other way around. They still required power sources, still needed raw materials. So their pursuit of new worlds continued unabated.
They first became aware of him, some thirteen thousand years after he'd started observing them. This was not an accident, rather it was his attempt to dissuade them from continuing their invasions. But as per their usual attacks on worlds, they quite literally ignored him. But the people that he'd been living among, again having taken a material form and situating himself among them for the duration, knew a bit about this entity. Not much, and not many of them - but as they were absorbed into the artificial memory mass of these aliens, they knew. Over the course of time, he chose to interact with them in order to undermine their efforts. Unfortunately, this led directly to a number of what Lane has since referred to as monumental errors in judgement on his part.
In the attempt to lead them into traps, or face these creatures with what he considered to be 'superior' beings, they wound up adapting and utilizing those enemies, their worlds, and technologies to further their own cause. So in a way, he is 'guilty' of aiding the enemy even inadvertently. Every once in a while, the overwhelming guilt regarding this fact does surface; though with their eventual downfall, Lane is able to put those thoughts aside more easily.
When the creatures (now a lumbering mass, millions of ships filled with biologically armored machines and machine-fitted life forms) encountered the Vortigaunt homeworld, it was a key moment and one which ties directly in to Ulathoi's demise, though it took another 13 thousand years to do so.
Originally a world where a vast savannah surface covered huge caverns and underground systems, the Vort homeworld had given slow rise to not one but three sentient species. All of them somewhat similar in overall appearance, but two more closely related than the third, the Vortigaunts. The Vorts are Humanoid and still exist, however their two companion species diverged evolutionarily from their line long before. Those could fly using telekinetic abilities, were able to perform strong feats of pyrokinetics or teleportation, and bore grossly oversized heads, which were both the site of their unusually-crystaline brains, but also opened as a three-petaled flower (for reasons which aren't quite known, perhaps to facilitate the use of their powers, equally likely that their 'brain crystals' were originally exposed and these flaps grew to cover them). The "Controllers" were equitable in size to the Vortigaunts, with semi-functional legs and a third arm in their chest area which seemed to me functional (whereas the Vort's is mostly vestigial). Their role on the world was subservient to the larger, similarly configured species, and both were able to Vortally manipulate the Vortigaunts themselves.
Originally, the idea was that one of the bigger species members was to be 'given' to the Combine - who as yet had not been named - and used there as a spy. Given their extremely potent Vortal skill and a long history of dominating the other creatures, even intelligent ones, on their world, this seemed to be a reasonably good bet. However, when the being who would become known as Nihilanth was taken by the Combine and altered to their needs, it realized the potential for its own gains in the situation. For several hundred years, a kind of power struggle went on between it and its keepers. In that time, Nach'lih kallah-vahh was named by Noah the Vort, and he began to realize the errors that had been creeping up on him were about to come crashing down on this world. Nihilanth had effectively broken the control that Ulathoi - forced manufactured family - had put on it, and would have begun its own takeover of the world. But it alone, or even with armies assembled of its Controller and Vortigaunt minions, would never have been able to force back Ulathoi should they invade.
As it was, the Vort homeworld has nothing of use - except the Vortal concept of immortality. Something which Ulathoi had continued to attempt to attain via its protracted biomechanical life-extention and psionic development. To the 'brain' of Ulathoi, what these Vortigaunts had was going to be theirs, whether they wanted to share or not. Unfortunately, the conflicts of power (literally, the type of power) between these species was so radically different it could not really be reconciled. It's likely that this is the reason Nihilanth was able to break free from Ulathoi in the first place, they never truly 'had' it under their control.
Ulathoi had weaponized almost every other smaller species they could use: ground troops, scanning equipment, tunneling and excavation, manufacture, defense... all manner of living things had become part of their massive 'body'. Each creature in it somewhat representitive of a 'cell' designed for a specific use in an 'organ'. The invasion forces that were available to Ulathoi were truly staggering. Some were unsuitable for use on land or in certain gravity. Others could be used for precisely that reason - they explode on contact with nitrogen molecules - so it was assured that even if Ulathoi couldn't use Vortikind or its homeworld... It would most certainly be destroyed in the process.
To avoid this, and to avoid the horrors of being captured, tortured and effectively 'hollowed out' by Ulathoi's attempts to use them, Noah made a deal with Kallah-vahh. It was an act of desperation, and both know it. The idea was implanted into Nihilanth's mind - to flee to a world where Ulathoi could not reach, reside there until Ulathoi either were bored and left, or when an effective counterstrike could be made against them. That world was Xen. By the time Nihilanth was able to open a portal to that border dimension, all of its own peers, its entire species, had been brutally wiped out by Ulathoi. (Even Lane considers this to be a blessing.) A large number of Vortigaunts and numerous Controllers also made the journey, and the portal closed. Now considering themselves lost and adrift, many Vortigaunts did not adjust to the new conditions, but some thrived. In that time, thousands of years, they were made to create new subspecies - "grunts" which were heavily armored, but completely stunted mentally and Vortally. The Grunts required Controllers to do almost any function, but were quite well suited to almost any form of defensive and offensive duties. (This may be why Xkah'shuu-vahh is not very welcome among them, his own troops are exactly this sort of creation.)
Eventually, however, Ulathoi moved away from the Vort homeworld and left it almost entirely untouched. What they 'wanted' out of it had vanished off their radar. So, confused but still hungry for more, they went off searching in different directions, with more dimensions as well as planets falling into their control.
This did leave Nihilanth and its 'followers' in an unsual position. Nihilanth was unwilling, or perhaps even unable, to return to their homeworld. Opening the portal to Xen was one thing, getting out was another. Its efforts turned inward for a time, and Kallah-vahh searched for yet another way to defeat his long-time and still-growing enemy. But by that time, he too was in a bit of disarray: how many worlds had fallen because of his influence leading Ulathoi to them? So far it was a tactic that had only gone sour. But there was a glimmer in the form of Earth. Not purely because Humanity was remarkably warlike, but because they were intelligent. The world itself entranced Kallah-vahh with its variety of climates and textures... and the sheer number of species on it was - while not unique by any means, still quite amazing. He chose this Earth with a desperate edge: it was here or the end of the line for his war. He left Xen to the Vorts and Nihilanth, though continued to visit quite often both before and after becoming Human.
Part of his choice for this world was that it was a nearby dimension, Xen tucked comfortably away in the folds of the multiverse. The border world could still remain unseen, undiscovered by Ulathoi, while he got it into his head to lure them to Earth. But luring them there would be the easy part. Destroying them... as always, had eluded his efforts. Tired, bitter, and yet still clinging to the hopes that Ulathoi would finally fall for his tricks, Kallah-vahh also realized this would be his last chance. Every time the creatures had taken over new species, they gained many new abilities. In experimenting on Nihilanth, they learned more and were curious about his kind: after all, Nihilanth had been essentially dropped into their net by Kallah-vahh. He knew that over the millennia, other Convocation had encountered a variety of races that then went into Ulathoi's collection. They would soon develop the right tools, tools which could pick the Convocation apart.
His arrival to Earth was quiet, and for several years he watched; observing nature, Humanity, animals and the physics of the dimension itself. That last would come in handy: Ulathoi wasn't necessarily used to so much gravity, the particle decay rate was strong, the solar radiation very broad-spectrum. There were hundreds of different cell-species that would never be deployed to the planet, and that limited their options. That's not to say that those same hundreds of types weren't already in use on some twelve concurrent worlds in disparate parts of the multiverse. As a shiny distraction, then, Earth would have to do. Kallah-vahh studied several specific types of Earth life before deciding upon Human as the guise he would use there. This decision he's never regretted, though the specific Human guise he wore has certainly played a strong role in how everything finally turned out.
Because of his stern appearance and choice of somewhat formal words, Keenan Lane built a reputation quickly among those Humans he needed to deal with on their Earth. This was necessary to build a firm financial empire which he used to invest in a variety of companies. Technologically advanced corporations sprang from his pointed investments, and changed the course of that world's history. Aperture Science, founded and run by Cave Johnson, was the first - though not the most successful. He had seen early on that both bio-medical and engineering resources would be needed to assemble what he then believed would stop his age-old war. Both of those diverged rapidly into electronics and computer communication technology, as well as bioengineering and research into unusual studies such as "psychic phenomenon". Manipulation of energies such as with Plasmids in the hidden under-sea community of Rapture unfortunately went sour, though it was from that location one of his descendants was born.
Carefully orchestrating events and research had been Keenan's methods for many 'incarnations' - on other planets, in other dimensions, and all the prior attempts to muster something strong enough to destroy Ulathoi had failed. But here on Earth, he felt he had finally reached a turning point. Either he would win against Ulathoi, or would fail again and stop trying. Too many worlds had already fallen, and some of those blatantly due to his interference. But as he will tell anyone he's comfortable around: his plans often fall through, change, or are completely broken due to other influences. As an opportunistic type, he had to adapt to those changes, or fail yet again.
Even though it wasn't his first choice, his investments in the Armacham Technologies company were useful in many ways, not the least of which was to extend his own rapidly-deteriorating body's life. But the most use of which included the discovery of a girl named Alma Wade. She showed up Vortally to his eyes - a Human that had this level of power without alteration?
Though her mother showed a more minor form of it, she died shortly after childbirth; Alma seemed to carry with her an extreme form of pyrokenisis as well as radically intense empathy. Her mother's death and her father Harlan's predisposition for violence unfortunately made Alma's empathy a largely negative factor. She would lash out sometimes violently. Her presense in the Vortal energy range caught Keenan's eye and his plans ... changed. With her strength as a Vortal entity, he felt, he could forge her into a weapon - not necessarily of 'mass' destruction, but a precise edge that could sever Ulathoi's 'brain' from its massive 'body'.
She was young, though, and while she grew up Keenan's other technological investments were paying off. Black Mesa Research and the now-Armacham-owned Aperture Sciences had both begun to explore travel - space, dimension, and even time travel to be precise. Though Keenan claims that he cannot 'travel through' time, it is painfully clear that he orchestrated the events on a time-table that defied a straight-line theory. He knew exactly where - and when - the Aperture facility Borealis (a time-travel research facility) would 're-appear' - just in time for a great number of other dominoes to fall in their own right places. The fact that it vanished the same year (and in fact shortly before) Alma Wade was born, confounds this matter. Given some of his other powers, it is possible that he simply snatched the facility whole himself, and re-deployed it, but he's never once even hinted at that himself.
However, much of Keenan's time aside from plotting and 'being in the right place at the right time' was given to actually administrating a number of companies. Some in small, localized firms, but others such as Black Mesa he had arranged to become, eventually, the Chief Financial Officer - a significant role, one which he claims to have enjoyed. As such a role would allow him all but free access to the sensitive information of funding, he carefully moved funds for certain projects into place. As he had done in other locations, prior to this, Keenan's plans were never overtly noticed by those who played roles in them, until it was almost entirely the end of those plans.
As an indulgence he allowed himself to explore the Armacham cloning facilities potential. Knowing that his body was already technically 'dead' (for quite some years) Keenan would have either utilized a cloned body whole, moving into it Vortally (or as he would then reinvent the memories of those doing the process, by a brain-scan and download into the fresh body), or replacing his ailing lungs, throat and other parts as needed with new, helthy ones. However - as the process was not yet as refined as needed for such a thing, the newly engineered body with its sleeker, more efficient digestive tract, larger lung capacity and no predisposition to growing cancerous, and some other slight changes made, struck Keenan as being more useful as a partner rather than replacement.
With a growth cycle ranging from 4 years eventually streamlined into 18 months or so, the new clone was set up with a slightly different arrangement: when the body appeared to be in its early childhood, chronologically around 4 months into the process, Keenan opted to allow the Icarus process to be done. The process itself is an excruciating and disturbing one, which applies a biologically active carbon-fiber material knitted directly into the bone, joint and connective tissue. This bonding process results in incredibly light, but disproportionately strong, bones. Allowing the muscle tissue to become much stronger naturally. Overtly used in weightless environments to prevent muscle atrophy, the Icarus process was of far more use on the ground by Armacham's covert assassins.
After the process was done, Keenan immediately noticed that his cloned body was Vortally active. Typically a clone would not respond to any outside stimulus until it was embedded with a brain scan - but this body of 'his' had other designs. Keenan carefully imprinted his own selected memories and experiences, personality and lih energy onto the still-growing brain of the clone, and then sat back to watch. By the time the clone was ready to be unveiled, Wilson was already quite present and accounted for within the body. His information on his own page will clarify what went on after that.
With Wilson in place as a cohort, Keenan could concentrate on specific issues. Namely, moving the Lambda project up at Black Mesa. Their teleportation and exploration ventures were, to say the least, 'inspired by' fanciful notions that he himself put into the scientists minds. Though he would never admit to that in person, if asked separately each of the men and women involved share similar 'dreams and hopes' - sometimes so similar as to have been the same dream. It's odd to note that at least one scientist that didn't join the team for many years, Dr. Gordon Freeman, also seemed to have been affected by this influence.
Though the process was quite slow and extremely expensive ("entirely over-budget, looks like we'll have to... cut back on some ... other ventures in the meantime.") the original teleport devices were finally able to break through to a dimension - rather than another spot on Earth, or even in the same galaxy. Xen became the focus of exploration and experimentation for several years; utilizing the glowing 'Xenian crystals' that grow everywhere they also began to harness the properites they discovered. Harmonizing those crystals to other teleportation devices allowed for near-instant travel between places on Earth, via a 'slingshot' through Xen. This would lead to complications with one of his older contacts, Nihilanth, who had been given Vortikind as a sort of pacification. It's presense and purpose on Xen would come into play as all other angles began to converge.
Most of Lane's plans actually did execute properly, over those years. Most, but not all. Whether it was a wrench thrown into his plans, or a blessing in disguise, Wilson Carver's physical needs caused a series of events that, on looking back, could only be described as miraculous - as they led directly to Ulathoi's defeat.
Though Lane was extremely displeased to learn that Wilson had not one but two 'sons' created via Armacham's genetic engineering department - and Alma was their mother - having access to some of the newer technology that they had been working on alleviated some of his anger toward his clone. Their Origin Project was birthing dozens of Vortally-aware children. He continued to observe Alma Wade while she was locked in her Vault, perhaps adding to her anxiety: no one believed her when she complained about a presense that watched her. She took out her frustrations on any living thing nearby. Including her own son Paxton, which - led to the events triggering his spotlight as the Mystery's heir.
With a good number of people in place that owed him their own debts, Lane decided that an early Summer day in 2006 would be fine to start the end of the world as they all knew it. The Lambda team had been agitating Nihilanth enough that the Mystery knew it would respond violently. Though others existed to fill the void, Lane discovered that his first choice for the 'new world leadership', Wallace Breen, the senior administrator at Black Mesa and a former developer of the Anomalous Materials handling area (where Freeman, Kleiner, Vance and others worked) saw fit to take his Armacham-made clones and go into hiding in the wee hours. This left several important roles to fill - but Armacham CEO Genevieve Aristide stepped up. When everything and everyone was in just the right spots to perform their roles - the Mystery deployed the Borealis facility back into the world.
Triggering Alma Wade's immediate reprisal - destroying the already-odd facility into a cloud of vapor, but along with it taking out the power plant and several parking structures at the Enrichment Center. Her Vortal focus impressed the Mystery quite a bit, it jolted the world's Vortessence enough that 1500 miles west of there, the delicate experiment being done at Black Mesa's Anti-Mass Spectrometer went awry. The world was suddenly torn through the barrier, exposing numerous weak spots between it and Xen. Through those points - Nihilanth sent troops and creatures... And the Resonance Cascade / Synchronicity Event changed the world forever.
What should have happened was that Alma Wade would be at ground zero in the Enrichment Center, would be captured by his Vortal net, put aside in stasis for a few years while Earth gathered its collective wits and the shiny beacon of energy caused by the Portal Storms and Nihilanth's eventual demise would lure Ulathoi to that world.
Unfortunately, Cave Johnson - yes, that Cave from the mid-40s and Aperture - who had been in his own stasis tube, dumped into a disused holding area in the Enrichment Center - also was at ground zero. Jolted awake by the arrival of his project Borealis, it turned out that even with Wilson's help the two of them couldn't be held for long. Alma took the errant clone (oh yes - did I mention that Cave had died in the 70s and been cloned? one of their first successes with a new body and Icarus?... Aperture didn't have a corner on bad ideas...) and vanished into the multiverse.
That was the pinnacle of I don't want to talk about it for a good number of years, on Lane's part. But while one snag had been hit, other facets of the plan were still working very smoothly. Individuals would rise to power, change how the world was run. And in the meantime, Paxton Fettel's Vortal projection went to Xen without his body. There, named by the Vortigaunts as the Inheritor of the Mystery, Kallah-vahh realized there was much more opportunity to be had here. He'd lost the mother, but now he had something almost better: his own Heir.
Paxton was still only 10 years old, but already quite powerful. Named by the Vorts and sent home to reunite his lih with his kallah, Lane made a deal with Noah to instruct him. Over the course of the next few years, Pax developed skills and further powers that proved invaluable. By the time Ulathoi arrived to Earth, Paxton and his brother Geoff led the Origin children on many tremendous adventures. And though Alma had yet to be rediscovered out there in the multiverse, her son could find her even if Kallah-vahh could not. That became the plan, then: to allow these young Humans time to develop and grow stronger, learn what they were to him as much as he learned, and eventually... to retrieve Alma.
Paxton lacked the volume of power that would be needed to destroy Ulathoi - but he didn't lack the focus. He would be the Mystery's sword arm. And though time was growing short, Aristide did manage to do her part admirably in holding off the bulk of Ulathoi's invasion and carefully adopting Humans into their fold. Though she did eventually betray Lane, it was all but irrelevant by that point. By the time Paxton's daughter Darly had been born, Lane's life had truly changed - what he was willing to do in order to defeat this old enemy came into sharp focus. Everything. Given something to call a family, suddenly there was a perspective that he'd lacked in all the time he'd existed or lived. With a legacy to watch over, protect, and be proud of, Keenan Lane cemented himself into the thick of things and bagan to participate with more intensity than ever before.
Looking back, there were moments of recklessness that could have been avoided. But in the end, Paxton was sent out to use his formidable powers to lure his mother back to Earth, while preparations in key locations near major Ulathoi Citadels ensured success. The timing of Ulathoi's demise could not have been more narrow - Lane had been painfully aware during the entire era that his people knew he'd been up to something. His occasional almost superstitious bouts of 'glancing over his shoulder' finally came to an end shortly after Ulathoi was rousted.
Paxton brought Alma home - angry, she was positively furious - where she was trapped, held in place by a wide circle of Vorts. Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance, Chell, 'Snakefist', Breen and others scattered around the world short-circuited the Citadels from within. In that moment Alma's energy was ported through them directly to the Ulathoi 'home' world - a monstrous ship which now measured nearly a light-year long - focused and intensified, slicing its 'brain' from its 'body'. No amount of psychic energy (as distinguished from Vortal - serving the same purpose but markedly different in its signature) could possibly protect Ulathoi from Alma's rage.
Spent, she vanished (though it's still unclear whether she might rebuild herself), leaving the remnants of Ulathoi's 'cells' kicking a bit before being done away with entirely. Paxton remained broken for a few years, but eventually found release in the form of a bullet from his brother's gun. Shortly after that, the Convocation converged on Lane.
While they were already set on judging their errant kin, a number of factors contributed to his defense. Rather than be erased from reality, Lane managed to not only survive the encounter but sway a few of his kind to understand his position if not openly agree with him on it. The Convocation as it had been known was a sham, a mockery of its former glory, which was painfully obvious as they drifted away. In the aftermath, a new determination was born in Lane, and rebuilding this world he'd come to treat as his 'second home' filled much of his time. The variety of people that he'd encountered along the way changed, dwindled over time, but some factors remained the same. Ever entranced by Humanity's willpower and Vortal energies, he could say that his legacy was the foundation for their world's best and brightest.
With the reconstruction underway, and his now-reconstructed heir back in the swing of things, Paxton thoroughly approved of the idea of learning to master his power of dimensional travel. He'd had to do so while following his mother, but it was purely instinct there, and not a directed, conscious effort. Thus, Paxton and his ancestor took to moving through the multiverse. Haphazardly at first, but in order to better learn how to control it, Lane suggested that they 'find specifics': a world where Humanity was present but not the one they were used to. Infinite varieties of Earths lay waiting - some easier to deal with than others. As Paxton's control grew, so did his urge to bring along his friends or family, and thus they went on various 'trips' to worlds which might seem familiar, but were in ways markedly different. Where no Armacham company existed, where Black Mesa was a golf course, where magic had developed, where machines ruled.
Now, they've reached Paragon's 'Primal Earth', alongside the Praetorian and other such variations. To hone their abilities or merely goof around for a while, the Convocation group has settled there, and will likely enjoy a long stay.