This auxiliary chapter will provide information that can help understand the story, particularly around The Combine, or "The Union".
First and foremost: Jargon.
The Combine make use of medical terminology to describe various actions, entities, and events. This is due to how the faction is designed and structured: a living and ever-evolving organism. Each individual is part of a greater whole, from the lowliest "scanner", small drones for patrolling urban centres, to the large "striders", tripedal entities of war.
It will be described as it goes, but a lot of it is up to interpretation of the reader for what is being communicated. There are many terms that the Combine use that can have a dual-meaning, or simply multiple meanings based on the circumstances. One of the best examples is 'outbreak'. This is a catch-all term used in communications for any disruption of civil order... Necrotics (zombies), anti-citizens (rebels/revolutionary-fighters), non-citizens (rebels/hostile-citizens), viromes (antlions/insectoid aliens), etc. The only common feature among all of these is their capability to cause civil unrest in a region, and is thereby an 'outbreak'.
[]
Sub-Groups:
Another feature of the Combine, as with any organisation/faction, are sub-groups within them.
The Combine have a number of them, all serving various roles to maintain the greater whole.
- ICT: Infestation Control Teams, mostly used for handling biohazardous situations that do not have notable danger, or for cleanup of corpses and various alien life.
- Civil Protection/Metro-Police-Force: Volunteers who join the Combine to receive benefits, or who truly believe in the mission of the Combine. They wear basic ballistic armour, gas masks, and basic equipment for law-enforcement in occupied territories (stun batons, cuffs/zipties, radio communications, handguns, etc).
- Overwatch Transhuman Arm: The military force of the Combine. They consist of volunteers, conscripts, and 'synths'. Various roles exist depending on what is needed, but can often be broken down as "Grunts, Chargers, Ordinals, Suppressors, Soldiers, Elites"... All of them are augmented in some way, often with mechanical enhancements (or complete replacement) of limbs, organs, and various tissue.
- Engineer Corp/Technicians: They're the engineer group of the Combine. Often in similar uniforms as the ICT, they use various equipment to repair and construct the technology and infrastructure of the Combine.
- "Citizens": Basic population of Combine occupied territory. They are absorbed into the ever-expanding Combine empire to serve as manual labour, conscript resources, or simply exist in their positions to prevent rebellion in uncontrolled locations.
[]
That's the bare minimum! With that, you should have an idea of what's going on.
No set time for when chapters release, as my schedule is... Very bad. Education, work, life in general... Usual author problems.
Updates will probably be once a week, with the chapter average wordcount of 1,000 to 2,000.