This section outlines the broad strokes of Combine history, from its nascent roots to the present day. Dates are given according to the now-prevalent Earth system.

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The Four Expansions (Late 14th To Early 22nd Centuries)

Until the late 14th century, the four peoples who will eventually found the Combine dwell in isolation. These peoples, the humans, balla, kch-thk, and tavak, dwell on planets light-years apart on the spiral arm of the galaxy known to humans as the local spur. In most cases they are disunited, owing allegiances to widely disparate, sometimes competing empires, nation-states, and cultural belief systems. Only one of the peoples, the balla, have achieved a world government. Only the kch-thk have undergone and sustained an industrial revolution.

In 1486, kch-thk space exploration has reached only the first three moons of the seven surrounding its homeworld, Th-ppd (or Primal Mass, as it is known in to English‐speakers). The engineer and philosopher Krdzt-Ktchh discovers a physics theorem postulating the existence of translight corridors. Pursued by members of a rival sect for his supposed religious heresies, Krdzt-Ktchh constructs an escape vessel, powered by what he refers to as a Singularity Engine. The engine works better than anticipated, catapulting Krdzt-Ktchh and clan into orbit, and then thousands of light-years away. They die of starvation in space, but not before Krdzt-Ktchh designs a method of bouncing radio waves through translight corridors, sending schematics and an account of his travels back home. A wave of shame, guilt and hysteria, powered by the thought of an end to hunger through space colonization, convulses the Primal Mass. Secular kch‐thk rise up and devour not only the sect that persecuted their now‐beloved Krdzt-Ktchh, but all religious faithful. Within a generation, the kch-thk are exploring space, impelled forward by their habit of devouring all life on the inhabited planets they encounter. They face resistance from other spacefaring species, including the modest interstellar empires of the spucura and hayan peoples. These races and others are defeated and entirely devoured.

In 1617, the balla homeworld undergoes a revolution when ancient stone carvings discovered under its northern ice cap reveal the secrets of industrial production. Such technologies have been known and discarded over several cycles of balla history. These plans permit mass‐scale technologies that feed delicate ecosystems rather than degrading them, as all previous ones have done. Rapid adoption of its principles transforms balla culture in a generation, allowing them to eliminate starvation and disease — including the epidemic that destroyed the ancient ice cap technologists. Most are content with this new pastoral/technological utopia, but a restless few agitate for new challenges to conquer. They are allowed to experiment with translight engines — a technology the ice cap culture theoretically envisioned but was unable to implement. While the majority stays at home, a sub-culture of footloose explorers heads to the stars in search of new environments to catalog and protect.

In 2068, about five centuries after the start of its industrial revolution, the tavak homeworld is locked in a global cold war between two hegemonic powers, the mercantile Hards and the mystical Softs. An errant kch‐thk probe lands in an arid wasteland. Of two competing survey teams, the Softs are the first to reach it. After two decades of study, they unveil the secret they’ve wrenched from the wreckage: interstellar flight. The Soft leadership council gives the Hards two choices: they can bow down and subscribe to their stoic warrior code, and gain access to space flight. Or they can continue their materialistic ways and never reach the stars. The Hards accede, though traces of their acquisitive philosophy will leach into what is now the predominant tavak culture.

In 2138, the Earth finds itself deep in a resource crisis, unable to mine enough of the trace metals needed to construct its wondrous technological gadgets. Its nation states, still technically independent but united in a worldwide commercial polity, fall back into warfare. Genetic bombs ravage four continents. With the species on the brink of extinction, eccentric trillionaire Keely Felix announces that her scientific foundation has designed what she too refers to as a Singularity Engine. Now seeing a way out of its trace metal starvation, the world unites under a tripartite government designed by Felix’s social scientists. The exploratory age begins. Motivated at first by cost-benefit analysis, humans range less freely than their other spacefaring counterparts. When they find a world with extractable commodities, they mine it for all it’s worth before moving on. Almost as an afterthought they find themselves colonizing new worlds and building a commercial and industrial empire.

The Collision (2192 To Mid 23rd Century)

None of the founding peoples meet one another until 2192. In the meantime, the kch-thk find and wipe out several sentient species, including one interstellar empire, the ene. The balla encounter and study nine sentient races from a distance, all of them at a stone-age or lower level of technology. In that fateful year, a tavak fleet drops from translight to orbit around the human mining colony of Pyrac-11. Unable to communicate and each assuming the other to be hostile, human and tavak ships engage one another with their primitive but effective attack arrays. The deadly incident kindles long-buried atavistic impulses within the hearts of soft-skins and hardshells alike. Militaristic factions seize power on both sides, touching off a sporadic war that flares hot and cold over a period of decades. The tavak warrior code allows them to wage war with only minimal social degradation. Humans, on the other hand, descend into a quasi-totalitarian dark time. It is known as the McMillen Interregnum, after its most notoriously ruthless leader.



In 2207, kch-thk ships land on Bira, one of the worlds whose pre-Bronze cultures the balla are lovingly monitoring. The kch-thk descend, eating everything in sight. The balla fight back, touching off a long war mirroring that between the humans and tavak. Cadres of ruthless ecowarriors violently thrust aside the balla self-image as a peace-loving people capable of suppressing their primal instincts. New interstellar empires, attracted by the increasing sublight communications generated by these wars, appear from the galactic depths. The warlike, feline chanovar and an ene offshoot, the orma, form a third front, determined to destroy all of these new empires before they reach their territories. They clash with humans, tavak, and kch-thk. After allying with one another, they reach out to the balla, who rebuff them as being just as aggressive as the closer empires.

In 2223, the kch-thk present themselves to the species they feel the greatest affinity with — the rapacious, resource-hungry humans. The two species join forces against the chanovar-orma Alliance, and soon find themselves fighting the tavak and balla as well. Feeling outnumbered, these two species enter a mutual defense pact, ratified in 2230. The kch-thk/human bloc, now calling itself the Syndicate, strikes a decisive blow against the chanovar and orma in 2232. The Alliance retreats, fracturing on the way. The chanovar fall on and enslave the orma.

Overreaching by the kch-thk drives a wedge between the two peoples and leads to a revolt on the human worlds, starting with the Greenhurdle Incident of 2241. McMillen has died of old age, leaving the less charismatic successor Helen Winebrenner to figurehead his militaristic regime. The end of McMillenism comes from an unlikely source. Near the Greenhurdle living asteroid belt, triumphant kch-thk eat their way through a troop ship of captured balla warriors. Humans, revolted by this display of savagery, turn on their government after Winebrenner defends her arthropod allies in the infamous Alpha Tauri speech. Anti-government partisans launch a coordinated attack on McMillenite strongholds. Rank and file naval officers join the revolt. A newly installed democratic government withdraws from the kch-thk alliance. Humankind retreats to its defensible borders, now enduring sporadic attacks from kch-thk as well as balla and tavak.

As the fifties dawn, the enraged kch-thk are concentrating their forces on their ex-allies, the humans. The tavak and balla pull back, riven by their own internal conflicts. Decades of war have eroded the former’s mystic serenity and the latter’s devotion to preserving planetary environments. New generations of activists arise in both empires to challenge weary militarists. In 2259, surprised human leaders receive a message from the kch-thk Primal Mass, suing for peace. The reason soon becomes apparent: the kch-thk’s primal enemy, the mynatids, have returned from space after centuries of inactivity. Locked in a struggle for survival, they can’t afford to continue their fight against foreign foes.

The groundwork has been laid for the Founding.

The Founding (Late 23rd Century)

Human Practitioner-General Hera Ferrer, inspired by the newly unearthed journals of Keely Felix, essays a bold diplomatic move. She agrees to peace talks with the kch-thk, but only if the balla and tavak, with whom the humans are still technically at war, are permitted to participate. Ferrer has chosen her moment well, having already established covert ties with pro-peace elements of these two empires. She presses not only for a treaty of universal non-aggression, but for the establishment of a single stellar government. Ferrer’s proposed regime will base itself on the principles of co-existence, prosperity, exploration and self-realization.

Overcoming suspicion and resistance, she convinces the balla and tavak to assist in a terrifying battle against the mynatid threat. The kch-thk agree to modulate their DNA baths so that they will no longer hunger for recognizably sentient entities. Humans and balla hammer out the details of the idealistic order to come while tavak and kch-thk strategize against the mynatids. The giant space wasps are conclusively defeated on the auspicious date of Dec 31, 2261. Although many details remain to be worked out, the ceremony declaring the advent of the Combine takes place the next day. For four decades, the four peoples struggle to harmonize their societies, rebuild their war-ravaged economies, and fulfill the lofty aims of the Combine Compact. Growing pains include revolts, natural disasters, and confrontations with new enemies, most notably the double-brained illud and the newly resurgent dermoids.

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The Flowering (Early 24th Century)

Tensions subside at the turn of the 24th century as the founding peoples begin to see the fruits of their rebuilding efforts. Unparalleled prosperity results as the four cultures combine technologies and engage in cross-cultural fertilization. The Flowering era becomes insular as the peoples of the Combine enjoy their good fortune at home. Growing populations fill the core worlds of the amalgamated empires, or settle planets within the new joint boundaries. Exploration ceases to be a race to lock in new resources before competitors get to them.

With few major threats in sight, the Combine navy shrinks. Its ships encounter the jaggar and isolated outbreaks of phyllax but no major new imperial foes. What new spacefaring species they encounter are either peaceful by nature, or eager to ally with the only great power of the Local Spur. For the first time, the Combine brings non-founding peoples into the fold. Early additions to the membership rolls include the song-speaking quilo, libidinous tlarëe, and shimmering esct-p’ah.

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The Annexation (Mid To Late 24th Century)

After half a century of uninterrupted economic boom, the settled worlds begin to outstrip their resources. Fearing a repeat of the internal conflicts that Earth faced before its ascent into space, the Combine announces a major exploration, colonization and commodities extraction effort. Ramping up ship production, it ushers in the golden age of the Combine navy. Its exploratory ships fan out in all directions, vastly expanding the Combine’s galactic territory. The last but most productive of these colonized sectors is the Bleed. Boasting a statistically unusual concentration of inhabitable worlds, the newly discovered sector seems too good to be true. In a sense, it is: though lightly exploited, it has already been claimed by a rival.

Combine personnel meet their first durugh in 2358, and by the next year have already exchanged ship-to-ship fire with them. The standoff between the open, inquisitive Combine and closed, paranoid durugh societies solidifies into permanent hostility. Mutually bruising military engagements occur in 2364, 2367, 2375 and 2384. The durugh counter the Combine advantage in head-on fleet combat with superior intelligence, unconventional warfare, and ground combat. By 2386 the durugh cede control of the Bleed without an official armistice. They switch to low-intensity warfare against the
Combine, a posture that continues long into the subsequent Utopian Era.

The freshly expansive Combine encounters other new enemies, too. It records its first skirmishes with phyllax seed ships, learning that these already feared beings operate on a previously unguessed-at scale. And, in a series of incidents now obscured by the Bogey Conundrum, its naval vessels survive their first brushes with the mysterious entities known as the Mohilar. Friendly species of the Bleed, some entering the early space age, others less developed, are contacted and join the Combine. Prominent examples include the nomadic jalen, the (literally) fire-breathing raconids, and the brilliant, agoraphobic threevix. During the Annexation, Combine fleets encounter, for the first time, a series of discarnate entities whose power seems more god-like than mortal. At the time, they seem to be disparate in origin.

The Utopian Era (Early 25th century To 2451)

Anyone over the age of 25 or so remembers at least the last shining days of the Utopian Era. Lasting for half a century, it is a time of unparalleled social harmony, physical prosperity, and scholarly advancement. The riches hewn from the worlds of the Annexation fuel and sustain an unprecedented economic boom. No Combine citizen has toworry about money, or perform labor he, she or it finds less than self-actualizing. The boom becomes so transformative that people forget that money even exists. A few devoted specialists run the nuts and bolts of resource exchange, so that it becomes invisible to everyone else.

With the Combine’s material wants taken care of, it turns its naval resources to pure exploration. Despite its history of conflict, its chain of command and obvious rank structure, it begins to deny that it is or ever was a military organization. The few fights it enters are brief and always in self-defense. Among the hallmark discoveries of the Utopian Era is the realization that the various god-like entities are all manifestations of a single yet divided consciousness, the vas kra. One branch of this cosmic awareness goes mad and calls itself D’jellar. It toys with several Combine captains, most particularly the wily Duto Swain, before being permanently exiled to another dimension by the rest of the
vas kra.

Old enemies such as the durugh, dermoids and phyllax remain in evidence, but are quickly vanquished whenever they rear their heads. New threats arise in the form of the sh’ard and nanogons. Other longtime foes become friends. Through the diplomatic efforts of famed Admiral Brian Hudd, the Combine makes peace with the chanovar and illud. The latter become Combine signatories. The former erect automated orbiting defenses around their home system and retreat into isolationism. New sentient species flock to join the Combine. Prominent among them are the photosynthetic madaraka, the hivebuilding clen, and the mildly radioactive ndoaites. These obscure cultures are numerically swamped by the burgeoning numbers of tavak, balla and especially humanity. Kch-thk populations remain constrained by the terms of the Combine constitution.

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The Mohilar War (2451 To 2463)

Seventeen years ago, it began — a period of unprecedented destruction, courage and suffering. The characters remember some of its terrifying moments with the adrenalinized clarity. Others — those involving direct contact with the enemy — remain maddeningly hazy and elusive. The Mohilar War, which shattered the Utopian era and left the core worlds of the Combine in ruins, comes to mind less as a narrative than a series of fragmented bullet points.

The Mohilar, a serious but isolated threat since the Annexation, appear in great numbers, operating ships of unprecedented size and firepower. They plow through rival empires while cutting their swath toward Combine space. They completely annihilate the chanovar and drive the illud to the brink of extinction. They ally with the durugh and employed several of the Combine’s quasi-sentient nemeses as living weapons, including the dermoids, jaggar, and possibly mynatids. The Combine stands on the very brink of destruction.

Then something happens. Something nobody can remember. The durugh are the first to see that the winds had shifted. Or maybe they’re the cause of the shift. At any rate, their king sacrifices himself to decisively betray the Mohilar, perhaps after discovering Mohilar plans to a betray the durugh. Before he dies, he throws in his people’s lot with the Combine. Then whatever the thing was that happened, finishes happening. The Mohilar are not only gone, they’re erased from everyone’s memories, and from everyone’s ability to process information about them. We think.



The vas kra have been reduced from a multi-partite cosmic consciousness into flesh and blood parodies of their former selves, the vas mal. This may or may not be a consequence of whatever it was that removed the Mohilar from existence. The war is over. The Combine survives — but in drastically weakened form. Revanchist elements within the durugh ruling class stage a coup, trying to put down the empowered lower castes and undo the Combine alliance. Egalitarian forces fiercely resist, sealing their victory with a murky covert war of sabotage and assassination. Though their methods give their new allies pause, the new durugh government earns a hesitant welcome into the Combine fold.

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Aftermath: The Combine In Retreat (2463 To Present)

The past several years have been ones of stuttering recovery. People now know there’s an economy, and most of them are being ground under its wheels. Old unities have frayed. The Combine core worlds have pulled ships, personnel and funding from the Bleed and other interstellar annexes. Services once taken for granted are now improvised and/or privatized. The Combine’s central systems suffered the worst damage of the war. The Mohilar used translight corridors to bypass the Combine’s lightly-populated frontiers to strike straight at its richest targets. Faced with resource constraints for the first time in generations, the Combine Assembly now chooses to concentrate on restoring its most influential surviving worlds. The skeletal operation left to govern the Bleed must find creative solutions to its problems, ones imposing the lightest possible toll in materials, money, and manpower.

The growth of the effectuator as primary law enforcer stands as just one example of the Combine’s overall pullback. Residents of the Bleed now perceive the Combine proper as a distant organization whose activities they follow out of habit and loyalty. The characters are likely to know how the Combine is organized and what it’s up to, but see little connection between it and their everyday lives. This division is reflected in Bleed slang. The heartland worlds, where the old governmental institutions still fully operate, are here known as the Proper. People used to say 'Combine proper', but now drop the 'Combine' part. "That may be how they still do things in the Combine proper..." has become "That may be how they still do things in the Proper...", and in either case, the rest of the sentence always goes something like, "But that’s not how we do things here."