Decades ago, scientists at the Black Mesa Research Facility opened an inter-dimensional
rift to a “border world” known as Xen.
Expeditions sent to this strange and dangerous plane of existence recovered bizarre creatures
and exotic matter of tremendous potential.
At the height of what would come to be known as the Black Mesa Incident, this rift began
to expand out of control following a disastrous resonance cascade.
Every attempt to close it failed, until it was eventually realized that it was being
held open from the other side.
An impossibly powerful being had also arrived on Xen and it was consumed by an incalculable
will to escape from the border world and arrive on Earth.
Only after its death would it be realized that this creature, the Nihilanth, was not
driven by desires for conquest or subjugation, but simple desperation.
It was the last of its species, hunted to extinction by a far more terrifying enemy
its kind had encountered in whatever realm in which they once existed.
Xen was a merely a place the Nihilanth had found to hide from the overwhelming power
of the Combine.
There is no word in any human vocabulary that might adequately define the breadth of the
Combine.
It exists and dominates multiple parallel universes and has aligned or enslaved countless
alien races to its vision.
If it possesses what might be considered a government, economy or even society, they
exist in forms beyond the limits of human understanding.
Instead, the Combine is best characterized by the methods it employs in the acquisition
of other worlds.
The Combine were able to arrive on Earth through the manipulation of portal storms that occurred
across the planet in the wake of the Black Mesa Incident.
Already overwhelmed by these storms, Earth’s military forces and all other local resistance
were soundly defeated in a relatively minor conflict known as the Seven Hour War.
Upon the global surrender of humanity negotiated by the former administrator of Black Mesa,
Dr. Wallace Breen, Combine forces spread across the planet to facilitate their rule.
Dr. Breen was publicly appointed as the Combine’s representative on Earth, but he served only
as a puppet ruler, fulfilling directives issued to him by so called Combine “advisors”.
Large, pale, grub like creatures, these Advisors seem to possess immense telepathic and telekinetic
abilities.
They are extremely intelligent and adept at leading lesser forms of Combine life in all
manner of tasks.
While their psychic and mental abilities are exceptionally formidable, their physical prowess
is almost non-existent.
Most seemed unable to survive in Earth’s natural environment and instead relied on
devices that appear to function similarly to a gas mask.
Combine Advisors have slowly adapted to life on Earth however and their manner of life
support systems have been gradually abandoned.
It is the Combine’s adaptability that is perhaps the core element of their superiority.
Standard Combine strategy is based on genetically manipulating a target planet’s own dominant
species to form a new arm of their military.
This ensures that the Combine garrisons are always at their most effective regardless
of the local environment they find themselves operating in, using a target race’s own
strengths against them.
Species manipulated by the Combine that prove resourceful or particularly effective will
often be redeployed across the whole of their empire, given assignments or objectives for
which they are uniquely suited.
Combine technology is also based on this type of versatility.
On Earth, military forces known as the “Transhuman Arm of the Combine Overwatch” utilize small
arms, armoured vehicles, trains, and helicopters all based on human models but redesigned for
greater efficiency.
These serve alongside other vehicles and machines of clearly non-human origin, likely derived
from other enslaved civilizations.
Many of these are biomechanical in origin, the result of both local and alien technology
and biomatter re-engineered by the Combine.
Combine technology is also heavily utilized in their occupation of Earth and likely every
other world on which they have arrived.
Their most prominent element is a type of suppression field which serves to inhibit
human reproduction.
By preventing certain protein chains from forming that are vital to human embryonic
development, the global birth rate has been reduced to zero, ensuring that there will
be no further generations of humanity.
Mind control is also predominant through the use of various psycho-engineering terminals
and perhaps drugs disseminated in local water supplies.
This ensures the complete loyalty of the Combine Overwatch, but also helps prevent local unrest
or rebellion by removing the original memories of the Combine’s invasion.
Through this type of forced re-education, the local populace is more willing to accede
to the Combine’s demands.
This was supplemented by propaganda, which relied heavily on positive imagery and broadcasts
to misdirect the local populace to the Combine’s intentions.
They were frequently referred to as “our benefactors”, a compassionate race that
promised to elevate humanity to a position of equality within a great “Universal Union”.
Whether their primary goal is to deplete the Earth of its resources or if this is only
a side effect of their occupation, the planet has been fundamentally transformed by the
presence of the Combine.
The Earth’s ocean levels have dropped dramatically with water transported off-world by an immense
interdimensional portal.
Toxic waste, the result of unrelenting Combine activity, has left major portions of the planet
uninhabitable to human life and is perhaps the first stage in a global terraforming process.
What remains of human civilization is concentrated in a few remaining urban centers, renamed
with numerical designations.
These are heavily modified by the Combine with buildings and neighborhoods altered with
the intention of restricting citizen movement and facilitating widespread surveillance.
Conditions here are poor with few, if any, luxuries.
Only those who have volunteered to join the Combine willingly can escape this level of
squalor and are granted additional food, better housing, an increase in authority, and access
to “reproductive simulations” in exchange for their service.
Such volunteers are organized into auxiliary units in the Combine Overwatch known as “Civil
Protection” and conduct periodic raids on their fellow citizens.
City 17 was the center of Combine activity on Earth, home to an enormous skyscraper known
as the Citadel.
The site of both local Combine leadership and various munitions factories, the Citadel
had been the primary target of human resistance forces since the end of the Seven Hour War.
The emergence of a Black Mesa scientist, a man believed to have died in the Black Mesa
Incident, proved critical in the fulfillment of this mission.
Through his actions, the Citadel was destroyed, the suppression field deactivated, and the
Earth given a brief respite from the dominion of the Combine.
It remains only a matter of time before the overwhelming power of the Combine returns
to Earth, but the key to their defeat may have already been uncovered.
Despite their highly advanced technological capabilities, they possess only a limited
grasp of teleportation.
While capable of transitioning from one universe to another, they cannot teleport within the
same dimension.
Discoveries in Black Mesa before its destruction would be invaluable to the Combine and the
survival of humanity might depend on the resistance finding these secrets first.
That the remnants of a defeated people might possibly challenge a force as all-encompassing
as the Combine seems outright impossible, but twice before events have transpired that
fundamentally altered the course of existence.
Hope is fading that such an event might happen for a third time, but the right man in the
wrong place can make all the difference in the world.
The Templin Institute investigates alternate worlds and realities.
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