Half Life Combine Face

[Poochie Tenharmsel]

TheCombine, referred to as "Our Benefactors"[2][3] and CMB in propaganda, is the title of an immense and powerful inter-dimensional empire that conquered the Earth during the Seven Hour War, comprised of a variety of both allied and enslaved species.[4]

The Combine is a vast and powerful extra-dimensional empire, spanning several parallel universes. Little is known about the Combine's origins and overall goals, but it can be assumed that its ultimate ambition is to conquer and assimilate the entire Multiverse.

Details of the Combine's leadership and administrative structure remain largely unknown. On Earth, alien beings called Advisors are responsible for overseeing all communication and interaction between the larger Combine and the Earth-based occupation force, acting through Dr. Wallace Breen, a human collaborator and puppet ruler who serves as the appointed 'Administrator' and humanity's representative within the Combine.

On Earth, the Combine notably uses their technology to create armies of cybernetically-enhanced transhuman soldiers forcibly conscripted from the enslaved human population, comprising the bulk of the Earth-based Combine Overwatch - a highly mobile and adaptive military force of co-opted humans turned against their own kind. Overwatch Soldiers have been surgically and psychologically altered to be more obedient, deadlier, and more resilient than normal human beings. They are also highly trained, and can adapt well beyond the confines of Earth, potentially in other universes if needed - in-game dialogue references the deployment of Overwatch units across the Combine Empire as "permanent off-world assignment." Assignment on other worlds is often threatened as a punishment for soldiers who fail in their duties. Equally dire is the threat of "permanent off-world relocation" directed towards the normal Citizens for disobedience to the Combine regime. Dialogue from Wallace Breen suggests many of the extra-dimensional territories under the control of the Combine are uninhabitable to humans without life support systems.[5]

Vocal stress is on the first syllable. The name is pronounced COM-bine, as in Combine harvester, opposed to the verb form com-BINE, as in "to join together or unite." Dr. Breen refers to the Combine Soldiers and Civil Protection as "The Transhuman Arm of the Combine Overwatch" [2] in Nova Prospekt, implying that "The Combine" is an accepted name of the empire, at least among the Earth-based Overwatch.

It has since been revealed that the Combine originally invaded the homeworld of the Nihilanth's species and inflicted a campaign of genocide against them, with only the Nihilanth able to escape the onslaught by seeking refuge in Xen.[6] It brought with it members of several species, both its allies and its slaves, including the Vortigaunts.[6][7] Following the Black Mesa Incident and subsequent Seven Hour War, Earth then became the Combine's most recently known annexation. Earth's dominant species were modified to form a new arm of the Combine military, and the planet's resources were systematically stripped away, the most striking example of which being the dramatically lowered shorelines along the Coast as the Combine drain Earth's oceans.

Mighty as they are, the Combine are not without weaknesses. Despite their enormous size, or perhaps because of it, they are "slow to wake" and mobilizing their vast power requires great effort and time. Their limited teleportation technology, whilst still impressive in its own right, is a field in which even the Resistance is more advanced, as they are unable to translocate in local space the way that the Rebels can with their superior methodology. As such, they are vulnerable to clandestine guerrilla warfare tactics, and ultimately suffered a string of defeats resulting in a general collapse of their regime on Earth following The Uprising.

The Combine is incredibly advanced technologically, being able to teleport to an entirely different plane of reality. Through this technology, the Combine can traverse entire universes and dimensions in their conquests. However, the Combine appears to have a limited grasp of localized teleportation. Dr. Mossman explains that while the Combine can teleport or 'tunnel' from one universe to another, they do not know how to teleport between different locations in the same universe, and are instead reliant on far less powerful means of local transportation.

The teleportation method developed by Black Mesa, on the other hand, enables intra-universal (local) translocation. As a result, the Combine has made it a strategic priority to obtain as much information on human teleportation technology as possible. Under the tutelage of Eli Vance and without his knowledge, Mossman aided the Combine to build a comparatively rudimentary teleporter with such capabilities in Nova Prospekt, but it was destroyed during Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman's escape.

The Combine's teleportation is also far more resource-intensive than Black Mesa's teleportation. Since they possess only an extradimensional way of teleportation (in-between universes), an astronomical amount of power and gargantuan pieces of machinery are required to perform teleportation, as seen at the end of Half-Life 2, where Dr. Breen attempts to escape from the Citadel using a Combine teleporter. This teleporter requires a dark fusion reactor to power it.

In the wake of the Black Mesa Incident, a catastrophic outbreak of violent meteorological events known as 'portal storms' began spreading across Earth, depositing wildlife from Xen across all corners of the globe, wreaking havoc on a stunned population. The spacetime disruption caused by these storms then attracted the attention of the Combine, who subsequently exploited the rift created at Black Mesa to invade. The resulting Seven Hour War, named so for it's infamously short duration, saw the technologically and numerically superior Combine quickly overwhelm the combined armies of Earth and unleash genocidal ruination on humanity, leading to an incalculable loss of life. When the fires died, it became clear that only the intervention of Wallace Breen, supposedly acting on humanity's behalf to negotiate a surrender, was able to halt the destruction. This surrender came at a high price - the total enslavement of mankind.

Though humanity is spared from annihilation by the surrender, the Combine's rule over the surviving population is that of a brutal and dystopian police state, characterized by widespread terror and mass oppression. The aftermath of the invasion saw the traumatised remnants of humanity forcibly relocated to the surviving cities, which are now nameless and numbered, serving as walled off open-air prisons where the Combine keeps a watchful eye over a fearful populace. Based on dialogue given by Isaac Kleiner during Episode One, it can be assumed that most Combine cities are dominated by a Citadel, an immense metallic megastructure resembling a large skyscraper, which serves as a local headquarters for the Combine in that sector - in the case of the City 17 Citadel, it serves as the main headquarters for the entire Earth-based Combine forces as well as the personal residence of the Administrator.

The Combine enforces order on Earth through the Combine Overwatch, the military arm of the Combine. In cities, an auxiliary detachment of the Overwatch called Civil Protection functions as a police force, comprised of unmodified human collaborators. Officers of Civil Protection are responsible for general law enforcement and engage in frequent brutality, including random beatings, summary executions, torture, impromptu raids, and other abuses of power in exchange for better food and living conditions. This is a powerful incentive, as the oppressed Citizens of Combine cities are housed in squalid, dilapidated housing blocks often without basic amenities and are forced to rely on Combine ration terminals for nourishment, which is of poor quality and low nutritional value. The Combine can incentivise loyalty to the regime by offering extra rations as a reward for cooperation or withholding them as punishment. Movement is restricted between city districts, with reinforced checkpoints barricading roads as seen in the City 17 Trainstation Plaza.

The Combine's rule over Earth resembles a military occupation. Combine military units maintain a strong presence in cities, and the downtrodden citizens have little to no human rights and are deprived of any ability to influence the manner in which they are governed. No civic infrastructure or permanent bureaucracy is known to exist. Any visible dissent from the totalitarian regime is punishable by death, forced conscription into the military machine, or worse. Mass surveillance through City Scanners allows the Combine to spot illegal activity, which is then relayed to Civil Protection's dispatcher, the Overwatch Voice. Undesirables and rule-breakers are deemed "anti-citizens" and forcibly re-educated, imprisoned, killed or surgically transformed into nightmarish Stalkers, abominations that have been purged of their humanity and subjected to extreme and brutal surgical mutilation, reduced to a pathetic existence as menial slave drones. Such procedures are carried out in Combine facilities such as the infamous Nova Prospekt, a former high-security prison turned Combine detention centre where human prisoners are forcibly processed. Human processing is also believed to be carried out in the Citadel, alluded to by the large number of Combine holding pods and sounds of distant screaming. These crimes against humanity have been opposed only by the Resistance, a paramilitary force comprised of dissenters, scientists and refugees who use subterfuge and guerrilla warfare to undermine the Combine strategically, in the desperate hope of eventually freeing the Earth from their clutches.

Despite their obvious tyranny, the Combine has maintained extensive propaganda efforts to sway the population of Earth into willing loyalty. Promises of rewards for service and labour, as well as suggestions of immortality through their technology, were frequently made. Through Dr. Breen, they spoke of themselves as Earth's saviours, bringing humanity to "the next step in (its) evolution." Hints of an underlying ideology are found in the Combine's propaganda; according to Breen, the Combine represent a form of technological, pan-universal transcendentalism, though of a decidedly sinister variety. It is unclear if this is Breen's own appraisal of the Combine or a view shared by the Combine itself.

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