Directorate for Societal Integrity

### Formed from

Pre-war Intelligence agency remnants, former Civil Protection, civilian recruits

> <:: Are these guys even on our side? I'm not reading any digits on my HUD. ::>
>
> ―S17-RANGER.i2-96703

The **Directorate for Societal Integrity**, or **The Directorate**, serves as the de facto intelligence service of the Combine on Earth. As far as official records show, this organization exists as one of a multitude of similarly named 'Directorates' under the direct authority of the central government, acting as a statistics gathering organ with a focus on measuring the political reliability of the civilian population under Combine control. In reality, the activities of this organization extend far beyond merely gathering information.

The Directorate acts as a deep state, pervading all aspects of the Combine presence on Earth owing to their strategy of gathering, secretly altering and feeding information to the Combine Civil Authority and Overwatch in service of aims that no one outside of the organization has been able to conclusively determine. This advantageous position has allowed the Directorate to accrue a vast quantity of resources and nigh-immeasurable influence, putting them at the forefront of a number of special projects ― the most impressive of which has arguably been their ability to 'fool' Dispatch. It is this predominance that all but betrays their role as the true linchpin keeping the wider Combine effort put together by staving off the worst of the Uprising through ruthless coordination and a flexible outlook on allegiances.

## History

### The Seven Hour War

Repeated mishandlings of the consequences of the Black Mesa Incident by civilian governments encouraged many within the so-called 'Intelligence community' to begin setting up respective contingency plans in the event that the global situation deteriorated further. These plans would not be plans for continuity of government, but represented an effort at self-preservation. While some agencies would go on to activate their contingency plans as some governments collapsed into anarchy as the consequences of the Red Three entrenched themselves globally, the bulk of these clandestine organizations would only activate their plans as warnings of oncoming Superportals began to enter the briefings of world leaders.

These contingency plans were defined by the systematic concealment of valuable assets and personnel in secretive facilities around the world owned by these respective agencies, many of which cooperated and began to pool assets and expertise together in the hopes of weathering the cataclysm to come. Some groupings, however, preferred isolation ― intending on seeing what kind of opportunity the arrival of this Combine would herald as what remained of world governments were brought to their knees and forced to sign away humanity's freedom. As the dust settled, these organizations began to make contact with figures within the Human Affairs Bureau with the hope of securing themselves in this new world as early as possible.

While this subset of opportunists formed a minority in terms of manpower and resources, they made up for this with valuable insight on the activities of what were often former colleagues, a fact not lost on the newly-appointed representatives of Combine rule on Earth who were desperate to identify and crush sources of potential dissent that could take advantage of the fragility evident in their nascent regime. Thus, with their unwitting assistance, and after a series of lengthy backroom negotiations amongst each other, these organizations would amalgamate themselves into a single, key advisory body which would serve as a vehicle for their collective ambition to take the world's direction into their own hands. This would be done without the burdensome oversight of civilian bureaucrats and the elected officials that had, in the eyes of the Directorate's initial membership, often neglected to take the brutal yet necessary measures needed to secure the world from the initial Xenian onslaught of the Red Three.

### The Occupation

It seems all but impossible to pin down a specific date for when the Directorate for Societal Integrity was formed in its most recognizable state, as these records are assuredly buried under a sea of black ink and the corpses of anyone who asked too many questions. Even so, the dependence on the services of this clandestine collective is all but verified to have begun as soon as the occupation began in earnest and as the first major dissident movements mobilized in response. The collective patronage of pre-war intelligence agencies would often prove integral to the formation of so-called Resistance movements worldwide, doing so through obliquely supplying arms, the locations of bases, and intelligence to any group large enough to earn their notice. Even technologically-advanced organizations such as Lambda unwittingly owed many of their early successes in part to assistance from this network, which would go on to be known as Entropy.

While this vast complex of clandestine assistance would take time to fully manifest, the Directorate would not remain idle, keenly aware of the threat looming over the horizon. This would provide the initial motivation for efforts to centralize the authority of the Combine Civil Authority, the leaders of which had already invested a great deal of trust in the insight provided by this newly-formed Directorate. This centralization would enable the latter to build an ever-greater powerbase through building a network of political patronage consisting of figures who would directly benefit from favors facilitated by the Directorate's ability to affect change in the upper echelons of government in return for their secret allegiance. This enabled them to acquire a growing mountain of assets that would allow them to covertly embark on increasingly extravagant special projects.

The zenith of the Directorate's accomplishments in consolidating power would come in the form of a successful project that discovered how to modify the datastreams of information that Dispatch relies upon in order to deliver commands to the constituent forces of the Combine Overwatch. It would be the leaders of this project, members of the now-defunct Civil Science Union, who would go on to form the Fifth Division of the Directorate. This move so early on in the occupation cemented the Directorate as the primary éminence grise of the Combine presence on Earth ― to the consternation of certain otherworldly forces.

The Advisors assigned to oversee Earth were originally unaware of the Directorate's developing prominence as a result of their limited intervention in the affairs of a Combine Civil Authority that originally seemed compliant and functional enough to require minimal oversight. This period of calm would be brought to an end by the discovery of the Directorate's tampering with Dispatch by the Advisors, the latter of which would only tolerate the continued operations of the former through recognizing their pervasive control over the functions of the Combine Civil Authority, ongoing ability to tamper with the decision-making abilities of Dispatch, and their undeniable expertise on the matter of Entropy. This final factor made itself evident through the Directorate's uncovering of a plot by then-Global Administrator Wallace Breen and a number of his confidants to collaborate with representatives of Entropy to accelerate the overthrow of the regime through leaking vital intelligence on the unfinished Citadel's inner workings.

In spite of this vindication, heightened tensions defined the relationship between the Advisors and the Directorate for the remainder of the period leading up to the Uprising. Nowhere was this more apparent following the discovery of Wallace Breen's treachery and downfall amidst sweeping purges as the two parties differed on the direction of the Combine Civil Authority following his death. The Directorate advocated for maintaining the status quo, hoping to leverage their network of human functionaries to fill the seats of power left vacant across various Sectors, whereas the Advisors demanded a systemic solution that both hinged less on the fickle loyalties of humans bought with political favoritism and reduced the bureaucratic excesses of Breen's administration. It would be in this conflict that the artificially-devised ideology of Humanism would find its genesis alongside Father, forming the keystones of a wider societal overhaul that led to the creation of the Civil Humanist Congress.

The fifth year of the occupation began with the commencement of Operation: LONG WALK, which entailed the activation of dozens of Entropy-aligned sleeper cells across the Elite Protection Unit cadres of several Eastern European Sectors. The sheer chaos caused by the successful activation of these cells resulted in the catastrophic failure of a then-ongoing operation that attempted to coordinate Overwatch forces from across multiple Sectors against elements of the Underground Railroad. This incident, by the accounts of many veterans of the rampant clandestine violence to come, would signify the 'true' beginning of the conflict between Entropy and the Directorate, as up to this point no operation by either side would amount to consequences as explosive as the commencement of LONG WALK. This incident served as vindication for the fears that the Directorate had stoked in their intermediaries among the leadership of the Combine Civil Authority, leading to the expedited formation of what would later be designated as the Ninth Division of the Directorate, a clandestine paramilitary formation made up of augmented individuals outside of the typical Overwatch command structure. This formation would fight on the frontlines of sprawling clandestine war fought between two global networks.

### The Uprising

The fall of City Seventeen amidst the rampant insurrectionary violence that defined Black September seemingly represented the nadir of the Directorate's strength, having lost many of their personnel in direct altercations with Entropy operatives, sleeper cell activations, timed defections and the loss of entire cities and the assets therein. Worse still, the loss of the Citadel proper signaled the loss of any formalized central authority, as Dispatch would be partitioned into a number of 'shards' sent to various Sectors in order to avoid total destruction, coinciding with the deaths of many key figures in the Combine Civil Authority and Overwatch. Even amidst this cascading collapse of Combine rule, the Directorate would still manage to activate a number of contingency plans that were arguably key in preventing the remaining Sectors from fully succumbing to anarchic violence and warlordism. The most well-known of which is the creation of the Interim Ruling Council, a provisional body made up of surviving members of the Council of the Domain intended to rule as a supreme authority over remaining Combine assets. This would have been protested vigorously by the Advisors had it not been for perhaps the least known of the Directorate's contingency plans, which entailed the systematic elimination of the Advisor cadres that the element of surprise could be utilized against.

The destruction of the Citadel saw to the end of the Advisors' biggest source of leverage against the Directorate and their human cronies, that being the prospect of a retaliation on an apocalyptic scale courtesy of off-world reinforcements should the latter overstep their bounds or attempt to incite a coup ― which they were now free to do. This was done successfully owing to insight gleamed from captured Vortigaunts and the cover provided by the sprawling chaos of the ongoing Uprising, enabling them to bring the majority of the remaining Combine Civil Authority and its Overwatch compliment under the control of their intermediaries on the Interim Ruling Council. Having totally secured their hold on the remnants of the Combine, a coordinated response against the Uprising totally under the aegis of the Directorate without regard to compromise with the Advisors could now be orchestrated, additionally enabling the Directorate to affect more direct control over the affairs of state than ever before.

It is at this stage, some six months into the Uprising, where the progress of that planetary insurrection has been largely halted and a substantial number of Dispatch shards have been retrieved. While their resources have been stretched to their absolute limits, and the threat of Secessionists, infiltrators and sleeper agents is more pervasive than ever, the Directorate and their intermediaries hold tightly onto the reins of power. Ironically, the vast majority of those who consider themselves Resistance fighters still fight under the impression that they're throwing off the shackles of otherworldly oppressors rather than fighting the very earthly evil that conducts this side of the war.

## Operations and Responsibilities

While originally only an advisory body given particular deference by the upper echelons of the Combine Civil Authority, the operations of the Directorate have grown to include responsibilities more befitting of a traditional intelligence agency. These include the gathering of Human intelligence, Signals intelligence, facilitating counter-espionage, the production of misinformation and cutting-edge research and development programs. The Directorate, while de jure a body currently operating under the authority of the Interim Ruling Council, functions with no oversight over its own operations, which has come to define its incredibly flexible approach towards allegiances.

As such, they have also proven that they are not above granting aid to non-Combine organizations should they deem it advantageous to their goals. This has often manifested in covertly funneling arms and intelligence to select Resistance groups while simultaneously stoking ideological conflicts in the name of ensuring that either the least harmful actor wins out or that the warring groups destroy themselves. Arguably, it is this approach which has allowed the Directorate to so handily halt the Uprising, as the lack of a Combine presence in newly-liberated portions of the world has proven fertile grounds for the rise of divisions to exploit, as many groups now lack a common enemy to unite around.

This unscrupulous attitude has allowed the Directorate to become an effective deep state within the remnants of the Combine, spearheading the creation of the Interim Ruling Council as a rallying point for remaining Combine assets to gather around. Their control over the functions of various Dispatch shards has allowed them to build a conception of the Interim Ruling Council as the sole authority left on the planet, although this couldn't be farther from the truth. The Council, being made up of a number of prominent Combine Civil Authority figures and sapient Overwatch commanders, are cursed with the awareness of their continued status as middle management in spite of their supposed newfound prominence.

Despite these institutional advantages, the Directorate as of late now finds itself increasingly burdened by a newfound trend of sapient military and civilian leaders across more far-flung Sectors dragging their feet on fulfilling their obligations to the new central government. For example, it is not unheard of for a request for reinforcements to go unanswered long after they would have made any difference. While instances of outright secession remain rare, the taxing effects of the strain this puts on the Council's, and by extension, the Directorate's efforts to stave off the Uprising cannot be overstated.

A staple of the Directorate's operations come in the form of Task Forces, agglomerations of personnel from across various sub-divisions assembled at the behest of the Seventh Division. These formations are often entrusted with especially dangerous and delicate procedures, necessitating a wider array of talents than usual. These Task Forces are considered to be the most potent manifestation of the Directorate's ability to undertake covert missions, although their methods of organization tend to be ad-hoc and very specific to the context of a given operation. These missions often involve directly interdicting Entropy operations, leading to spectacularly volatile confrontations between the exceptionally-talented individuals from either side.

## Recruitment

The Directorate's unscrupulous nature has allowed it to recruit from a wide variety of backgrounds, as the organization's success can seemingly be owed to the versatility inherent to their structure and approach towards operations. While many personnel are ideologically sympathetic towards the programme laid out in the Blueprint, there remain those who view their affiliation with and control over the Combine Civil Authority as nothing more than a means to an end intended to ensure the Directorate's survival amidst an increasingly dangerous world. It is this state of the world that has recently driven a more compromising variety of individual straight into the arms of the Directorate's recruiters, as either side of the ongoing clandestine conflict has found itself increasingly reliant on the services rendered by paid muscle. While local mercenaries normally only ever communicate with their secretive patrons through a series of cut-outs that keep the organization's nature and identity obscured, some few cadres of exceptionally talented individuals have been granted an opportunity to be integrated into the structure of the Directorate proper.

Despite these increasingly common measures, the Directorate as a whole still relies on a number of staples to fill its ranks. The VICE Metropolice Division is itself utilized as a means of secretly grooming individuals for more clandestine work in the future, honing their investigative abilities and the talents required to collect Human intelligence. GRID, HELIX and UNIFORM personnel are also not exempt from these efforts, although the need for inquisitive personalities, particularly among the Second Division, has disproportionately shifted recruitment in the direction of VICE. Civil Protection as a whole constitutes the greatest source of new operatives owing to the membership of that organization's predisposition towards the Directorate's authoritarian aims and practices.

The Civil Humanist Congress has also unwittingly provided the Directorate with new operatives, although these tend to be isolated cases owing to the much smaller incidence of sufficiently talented individuals found among their number. Some members of the Social Bureau have managed to be recruited by the Directorate owing to their proclivities for social infiltration, but poaching from the former is often discouraged owing to its vital role in monitoring the sizable membership of the Congress for political reliability. Other Bureaus have been known to offer members as well, as scientists and medical professionals from the Materials and Welfare Bureaus respectively have joined the ranks of the Directorate, but the largely civilian nature of their work has made this very rare.

## Organization

> D2 thinks that they're fooling D3, D1 throws a fit whenever their recommendations aren't followed to the letter, D5 would probably lobotomize all of D9 if D7 let them ― and D8? They do the things that we can barely talk about, because if we did talk about them, they'll force some unlucky fuckwit from D5 to brainstorm a fantastically gruesome way of killing everyone in this room. So, yes. In a sense, we are a kind of family.
>
> ―D9.CROSSGUARD-11555

A multitude of sub-divisions are known to comprise the Directorate, each of which is entrusted with a set role meant to advance the goals of the wider organization in some way. The scale of this organization is said to be nigh-incomprehensible owing to nearly a decade of power accumulation and the exertions of influence required to sustain it. While anyone on the outside is guaranteed to never have a full picture of the inner-workings of the Directorate, the aforementioned sub-divisions are known to exist alongside a multitude of smaller independent organizations with geographically-localized or very specific responsibilities. Alas, the very cutthroat nature of the Directorate's clandestine line of work has led to a similarly conniving and self-cannibalizing culture within it, as rivalries and conflicts over asset allocation are rife between the major sub-divisions.

The numbers assigned to the major sub-divisions are widely thought to *not* correspond to any chronology of their formation, and the significance of their numbering remains unknown to even many within the Directorate.

### First Division

This sub-division functions the closest to an actual intelligence analysis apparatus, providing services that many of Overwatch's sapient ground forces have utilized without ever knowing. Thus, First Division is often thought of as the 'eyes and ears' of the wider Directorate, working closely with almost every other major sub-division to analyze and deliver recommendations on information acquired by Second Division and their own SIGINT department. It is these recommendations that largely inform the decision-making of the wider Directorate, although this intelligence can also end up in the hands of conventional Overwatch personnel and local actors should it be deemed advantageous.

### Second Division

Second Division is often joked about as the least trustworthy segment of the Directorate, as the responsibilities of this sub-division are largely accomplished through field operatives entrusted with creating informant networks, infiltrating Resistance groups, or otherwise gathering information in the field. This process often requires fraternization and substantial familiarity with the practices of various Outlander and Resistance collectives. Thus, suspicions of potential defections weigh especially on the Second Division, in spite of having perhaps the lowest incidence of defections throughout the entire Directorate due to the incredibly strict requirements of political reliability for prospective members. Even so, operatives of Second Division are still reputed for their strong capacity for secrecy and their role as an especially vital part of field operations.

### Third Division

Hardly considered a part of the Directorate 'proper', Third Division is thought of as the 'public affairs department' of the organization, as the vast majority of the personnel within are entirely unaware of the gargantuan apparatus that they are a mere extension of. This sub-division largely functions as the 'face' of the organization, as the Directorate on paper is still meant to seem like a kind of moderately-sized government agency composed of analysts and statisticians.

### Fourth Division

Thought of as the 'voice' of the Directorate, this sub-division is responsible for the manipulation of the flow of information as a kind of propaganda and psychological warfare department. Obscuring the deaths of important figures, the fall of cities and development of disinformation campaigns against Entropy or anyone else deemed a valid target are some of the most noteworthy of the responsibilities held by Fourth Division. It is also charged with monitoring and altering the immense datastreams of information that now reach the scattered Dispatch shards worldwide, making it an invaluable keystone of the Directorate's continued dominion over Overwatch. Given that its role is juxtaposed with the one held by First Division, as the latter is charged with disseminating *accurate* information, the two groups hold something of a friendly rivalry ― a rarity in the Directorate.

### Fifth Division

Made up of the brightest minds within the confines of Combine rule, the Fifth Division functions as the R&D component of the Directorate. It is also comprised of some of the most augmented individuals on the planet. These bodily modifications are often geared around enabling the savants of this sub-division to perform the complex calculations and split-second decision making needed to give the Directorate its technological edge over its opponents. This edge has manifested in everything from the proprietary augmentations utilized by personnel throughout the Directorate to experiments with artificial intelligence and combat automatons. The latter of which has proven a sore point in their relationship with Ninth Division, who remain wary of Fifth Division's insistent petitions to employ their automated creations on operations where a Ninth Division force would suffice.

### Sixth Division

Considered by many to be at best little more than a redundant off-shoot of the Fifth Division, Sixth Division serves as a research body with regards to otherworldly phenomenon. Key among their concerns has been the exploration of the so-called Vortessence and the nature of Transition Zones, seeking to exploit phenomenon such as these in order to further the Directorate's goals. It is rumored that they are also attempting to 'unlock' the abilities of the former in humans, but such an outrageously fantastical notion is largely thought to be a waste of time in pursuing, with many even calling for the disbandment of this formation and the partition of its assets for the sake of more prosaic endeavors.

### Seventh Division

Considered to be the 'brain' of the entire Directorate, the Seventh Division has remained the subject of a great deal of speculation throughout the organization. Save for communiques, arrival of allocated assets and the occasional shifting of administrative structures, the presence of this sub-division's personnel is hardly, if ever felt. Some suspect Seventh Division to be a creation of Eighth Division as a means of obscuring their all-encompassing control over the day-to-day functions of the wider Directorate. Of course, Seventh Division has done nothing to disprove or even acknowledge these rumors, lending to further consternation.

### Eighth Division

Perhaps the most shrouded in black ink, Eighth Division's functions are almost entirely obscured to the rest of the Directorate. It is said to function as the organization's equivalent of an internal affairs department, monitoring the political reliability of every other sub-division with a fanaticism thought to be unmatched by anywhere else in the Directorate. Given the cutthroat nature of the organization even outside of the Eighth Division, many of their personnel have been known to adopt false identities in order to better facilitate the surveillance of their colleagues.

### Ninth Division

As the most physical means for the Directorate to project influence, the Ninth Directorate is made up of some of the most dangerous sapient individuals on the planet. This sub-division largely draws from the UNIFORM and RANGER divisions of Civil Protection, functioning as a paramilitary force independent of the structure of Overwatch. Anything from assassinations to the destruction of their Entropy equivalents falls under their purview, making use of potent augmentations, Combine weaponry and intense training regimens. Although they carry a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later, this formation can be more accurately thought of as a scalpel compared to the sledgehammer represented by the formations of Overwatch.

## Identifiers

Ascertaining a set rank structure for the whole Directorate is a fool's errand, as each sub-division operates its own specialized hierarchy independent of its sister organizations. The nature of these hierarchies is considered to be a closely-guarded secret among each Division, even from their own colleagues. However, what *is* known is that most sub-divisions maintain a number of internal organizational units and a roughly similar system of nomenclature revolving around vocabulary thematically tied to the functions of the unit. The names of these sub-organizational units feature in names of their respective operatives in a manner akin to the Combine Overwatch. The following is a series of examples, although each list is by no means exhaustive, nor indicates size/purpose.

**First Division Nomenclature**

1. HARPY
2. APOLLO
3. HAWK
4. ALKONOST
5. ALBATROSS

**Second Division Nomenclature**

1. CASSANOVA
2. SIREN
3. VENUS
4. SCYLLA
5. VAMPIRE

**Third Division Nomenclature**

Third Division personnel do not participate in Directorate operations, and are thus excluded.

**Fourth Division Nomenclature**

1. LOKI
2. ANANSI
3. ERIS
4. JACK
5. KITSUNE

**Fifth Division Nomenclature**

1. NOVA
2. SPHINX
3. NUCLEUS
4. GEAR
5. PROTON

**Sixth Division Nomenclature**

1. DIVINER
2. MAGUS
3. VIRTUOSO
4. PRODIGY
5. WARLOCK

**Seventh Division Nomenclature**

1. DUKE
2. COUNTESS
3. BARON
4. CONSUL
5. KOENIG

**Eighth Division Nomenclature**

1. BATON
2. CONSTABLE
3. BADGE
4. PATROLMAN
5. JUDGE

**Ninth Division Nomenclature**

1. CROSSGUARD
2. MACE
3. SWORD
4. DAMASCUS
5. SCIMITAR