Borealis

From Combine OverWiki, the English Half-Life Wikia

[edit] Overview

The Borealis is an Aperture Science shipping vessel that disappeared, along with part of the drydock upon which it was stationed, in mysterious circumstances. It became a legend amongst the scientific community; it was assumed, given Aperture's infamously blase attitude towards safety and accepted scientific principles, that the Borealis contained an immensely powerful and dangerous secret.

Many years after the Combine invasion of Earth, Judith Mossman, a Resistance operative, found the Borealis in an arctic location. She was attacked by Combine forces soon after, and was only able to send an incomplete transmission of her discovery to the White Forest Resistance base. This was intercepted by the Combine, and in turn stolen back by Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance from the Citadel Core during their flight from City 17.

Mossman was cunning enough to encrypt images of the Borealis itself within her message. Once Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner had decoded these and realised the full significance of the transmission, a rift opened between the two Resistance leaders. Kleiner believed the technology the Borealis contained could be used by the Resistance against the Combine; Vance, haunted by memories of the Black Mesa Incident and by the message conveyed to him by his daughter, believed that the Borealis had to be destroyed at all costs.

It is not known whether the Combine know of the Borealis, and consequently if they themselves have some interest in the ship's contents. Given the attack upon Mossman's forces, the interception of her message and the fate of Eli Vance, it seems very likely.

The Borealis is expected to appear in Half Life 2: Episode Three.

[edit] Cut material

The Borealis was originally a research ship stuck in ice. It would have been crewed by a man named Odell (his model was used to create Odessa Cubbage) and would have featured combat with Stalkers. This material, however, was cut from Half-Life 2. A mod named Missing Information features the cut Borealis.