Half Life
Lore Summary
Following the Black Mesa Incident of 2000, Earth fell to the Combine in the Seven Hour War. The alien empire established fortress cities across the globe to control the dwindling human population, with City 17 becoming their primary industrial and transit hub.
To ensure compliance, the Combine appointed a Proxy as the official head of humanity. This figure acts as the intermediary between mankind and their alien overlords, exploiting the fact that a familiar human face could sway and pacify the population far more effectively than an invading alien authority.
City 17 is divided into numbered "inhabitations" which function as segregated zones where humans are contained and monitored. These areas serve a dual purpose: controlling the populace while maintaining maximum supply-chain efficiency. The Combine's ultimate goal is to exploit human labor to its fullest potential, running humanity to extinction through relentless workforce demands. Humanity struggles for survival within these inhabitations.
Outside the fortress cities, the atmosphere is choked with unbreathable air and hostile life-form. Combine industry has scarred the environment, spreading smog and toxins that poison entire regions. Within the cities, air exchange systems grant residents the illusion of safety, producing only marginally breathable air, rationed and controlled, leaving humanity clinging to life while fighting to carve out fragments of habitable ground.
Loyalty to the Combine means survival, but at the heavy cost of humanity itself. Remnants of the human resistance eke out a living in canals overrun with Xen fauna, desperately clinging for life while trying to expand their liveable territories and recruit additional members for their cause. In this urban hellscape, evaluating workforce competency is just a small piece of the larger puzzle representing the systematic exploitation of what remains of human civilization.