The Phalanx Universe: How One Fictional Organisation Connects Five Alton Towers Attractions

More about the Phalanx

Most theme park backstories exist purely to justify a ride's theming and then stop. Alton Towers has done something considerably more ambitious with the Phalanx — building a single fictional organisation that now spans four rides, at least two Scarefest mazes, an online video campaign, named characters who have actually died, and a storyline running continuously from 1994 to today. It's arguably the most sustained piece of connected world-building at any UK theme park, and most visitors experience only fragments of it. Here's the whole thing, in order.

Who the Phalanx Actually Are

Officially, the Phalanx are a private military organisation specialising in tactical security and biohazard containment at sensitive research locations worldwide. In the Alton Towers universe, they exist for one central purpose: keeping the Nemesis creature contained.

The organisation's public-facing posture is one of reassurance — their work is for the greater good of humankind and the security of civilisation, as their own in-universe messaging insists. Whether that's actually true is precisely the tension the entire storyline runs on.

1994: The Origin

The story begins with a routine excavation in what was then called Thunder Valley, which unearthed something that should have stayed buried: Nemesis, described in official lore as an alien predator from another dimension, dormant for centuries until disturbed.

Once awake, the creature began to feed and wreak havoc, and the battle to contain it resulted in the near-destruction of Thunder Valley itself — leaving behind the post-apocalyptic landscape now known as Forbidden Valley. In 1994, with the situation critical, the Phalanx were mobilised. Their extreme security division pinned the beast down with 250 tonnes of steel.

That steel is the Nemesis track. Every rider since 1994 has been travelling along the restraints holding a creature down, which remains one of the most elegant pieces of ride theming ever devised — the attraction and the story are physically the same object.

2012: The Eggs

Nemesis Sub-Terra opened in 2012, and expanded the universe in a genuinely significant direction. The Phalanx had discovered a cavern containing multiple eggs, apparently laid by the Nemesis creature, and put one on display at their research facility within the park.

The ride itself casts guests as visitors receiving a top-level security briefing before descending deep underground toward the egg's containment chamber. Predictably, the containment field fails, and riders find themselves trapped face-to-face with a living predator — with only one way out.

This is where the Phalanx shifted from "heroic containment force" to something more ambiguous. An organisation that contains a dangerous creature is protective. An organisation that excavates its eggs and puts one on public display for research is doing something considerably less defensible.

2018–2019: Project 42 and the Virus

The story took its darkest turn during Scarefest, in a maze most visitors never connected to the wider mythology. Project 42, running in 2018 and 2019, was built inside the then-dormant Nemesis Sub-Terra building, and invited guests into an underground Phalanx compound where a research project had catastrophically failed — leaving human test subjects infected with a mutating virus, lurking in darkened passageways.

Guests were sent in as volunteers to locate a technician working on a vaccine. The question posed was blunt: would they make it out without becoming infected themselves?

This is a genuinely important chapter, because it establishes something the ride-based storyline had only implied — the Phalanx were experimenting on humans, and it had gone catastrophically wrong.

2022–2023: The Shutdown and the Seek The Truth Campaign

In late 2022, the Phalanx announced they were closing Nemesis, citing the creature's "abnormal behaviour." In-universe, this framed the ride's real-world closure for retracking as a containment crisis. The final day of operation, 6th November 2022, was marked by the Phalanx commencing their investigation.

What followed was genuinely unusual for a UK theme park: an extended online video campaign, released across 2023 and 2024, that functioned as something close to an alternate reality game.

One video showed an unknown person sneaking into a Phalanx facility, discovering a new Nemesis tentacle, before being caught by Phalanx security. Another showed samples including DNA being taken from Nemesis for research — a procedure that went badly wrong, agitating the creature and forcing a site evacuation. That incident reportedly killed John Dalton, the man running the Phalanx organisation.

A further video followed an Alton Towers security guard named Percy, identifiable by his name badge and later by missing-person posters that appeared around the park, walking the site before entering Nemesis and, apparently, being killed. His death — or at minimum his disappearance — was seemingly swept under the rug by the Phalanx.

Alongside this emerged the Seek The Truth campaign: an in-universe protest movement opposing the Phalanx, arguing that caging Nemesis is cruel, and demanding the full truth rather than the sanitised version the organisation publishes. It's a genuinely sophisticated addition, giving the universe an internal opposition rather than a single unopposed authority.

2023: Sub-Terra Returns

On 27th May 2023, Nemesis Sub-Terra reopened after eight years closed, with the Phalanx Research Facility reopening alongside it — publicly justified by the discovery of a new Nemesis egg, now on display.

The real-world explanation, covered in detail elsewhere on this site, was that Sub-Terra's return filled the gap left by Nemesis being closed for its rebuild. But in-universe, the Phalanx were reopening a facility to display an egg from a creature they'd just admitted was behaving abnormally, months after their leader had been killed by it. Read that way, it's a genuinely damning piece of characterisation.

2024: Nemesis Reborn and COMPOUND

Nemesis Reborn's 2024 relaunch delivered the storyline's payoff. The official framing is explicit: ever since Sub-Terra was introduced, the Phalanx have been studying and containing Nemesis, and their experiments have caused the creature to mutate into the predator riders now encounter. Sedation has worn off, her fury has heightened, and the Phalanx have lost meaningful authority over the situation entirely.

Riders, in this telling, are minor disturbances — irritants to a creature the organisation can no longer control.

The same year brought COMPOUND to Scarefest, a maze set in a new Phalanx facility just outside Forbidden Valley, where guests discover the organisation's scientists have weaponised human DNA. Throughout, visitors are shadowed by Phalanx Operatives who are, in the maze's own pointedly ironic phrasing, there to relentlessly protect you and for no other reason.

2025: Toxicator

Toxicator extended the universe again in 2025 — an elevated top spin positioned in-universe as a Phalanx containment and extraction device, applying intense centrifugal force to toxic saliva harvested from the Nemesis creature.

Harvesting a contained alien's bodily fluids to power a machine is, on any reasonable reading, the least defensible thing the organisation has done yet.

The Arc, Read as a Whole

Traced in order, the Phalanx's story is a genuine narrative arc rather than disconnected theming. They begin in 1994 as necessary responders to a genuine crisis. By 2012 they're excavating eggs and displaying them publicly. By 2018 they're experimenting on human test subjects and losing control of a virus. By 2023 they've lost their leader, covered up a guard's disappearance, and attracted an organised protest movement. By 2024 their own experiments have mutated the creature into something worse than what they originally contained. By 2025 they're harvesting it for parts.

That's a coherent institutional decline — an organisation that started as a solution and became the problem. It's genuinely well-constructed, and it's been delivered across three decades of physical attractions.

Why Most Visitors Miss It

The reason so few guests experience this as a connected story is structural. The chapters are spread across ride queue lines, two temporary Halloween mazes (one long since demolished), an online video campaign, and physical props scattered around Forbidden Valley — the Stag vehicle, the landed helicopter, tentacles bursting through rock, the damaged Containment Zone sign.

Nobody is handed the story in order. You assemble it by paying attention across multiple visits and multiple years, which is precisely what makes it rewarding for enthusiasts and invisible to everyone else.

Quick Reference: The Phalanx Timeline

• 1994: Nemesis unearthed in Thunder Valley; Phalanx mobilised, pin the creature with 250 tonnes of steel, leaving Forbidden Valley behind
• 2012: Nemesis Sub-Terra opens; Phalanx display a Nemesis egg at their research facility
• 2018–2019: Project 42 Scarefest maze reveals failed human experiments and a mutating virus inside a Phalanx compound
• Nov 2022: Phalanx announce Nemesis's closure citing "abnormal behaviour"
• 2023–2024: Online video campaign; John Dalton killed by Nemesis; security guard Percy disappears; Seek The Truth protest movement emerges
• May 2023: Sub-Terra and the Research Facility reopen around a newly discovered egg
• 2024: Nemesis Reborn confirms Phalanx experiments mutated the creature; COMPOUND reveals weaponised human DNA
• 2025: Toxicator positioned as a device powered by harvested Nemesis saliva