To Kate, who insisted I finish this an embarrassing length of time after I started it. Taken up again in an era in which Angelina Jolie plays Lara Croft, all previous dedications seem as naught. Still, the Gin Blossoms quote seems as relevant as ever…
'As the chaotic, swirling energies subsided, a heavy silence fell over the battlefields of Aiur. Due to Tassadar's noble sacrifice, the Overmind was now dead and the Zerg swarms scattered and broken. But as the heroes surveyed their once glorious homeland they realized that their victory had cost them all but their lives. Aiur was left nothing more than a smouldering ruin. Those few Protoss who survived the final battle could only wonder what the future would hold for their race.
‘Meanwhile, on the distant planet Char, Kerrigan, the self-styled Queen of Blades, knew that the time of her ascension was at hand.'
Starcraft: Epilogue
'The past is gone but something might be found to take its place...’
Hey Jealousy
The Gin Blossoms
PROLOGUE; THE END OF THE ILIAD Throughout time, there have been two opposing forces in the universe, which are set over those values which less enlightened races than the Protoss have named good and evil, yan and ying, law and chaos, or even, and closest to the truth, life and death. These opposing forces transcend any simple way of viewing the world, any philosophical conception or even spirituality. Instead they stem from the most basic science. The most fundamental laws of the universe hold that all energy will eventually tend towards entropy; but in defiance of this tenet, there is that form of energy which, by absorbing negative entropy, can keep its own entropy levels to a minimum and thus sustain itself.
This energy, of course, is Life.
Thus, the two opposing forces can be called Life and Death -- as they frequently are by those less attuned to their being -- but they are more accurately termed Energy and Entropy. From time immemorial, we the Protoss have been sensitive to these two opposing energies and, in the twilight of our race, the opposing tribes used them to wage bitter war. However, the prophet, teacher, warrior and philosopher Khas ended these wars and united all Protoss under the strict confines of the Khala. Though the wars had been ended, it was at a terrible cost; for from that day forth, the unique psionic stimulus of the Protoss would be turned eternally and exclusively to the pale blue energy of Life.
Thus, the seed was sown for the Dark Templar, who wield the chaotic energy of Entropy, to be forever exiled from the fields of Aiur.
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When we returned in this dark time of conflict it brought us pain that those who were forever wrapped within the warm embrace of the Khala, however stifled, could never know. For once again we were here to be persecuted and misunderstood, no matter what our contribution against the Zerg might have been.
Or maybe not.
I write this document in an effort to unite the two forces of the Protoss, separated in bitter conflict since the Great Schism of our race, in the firm belief that to remain divided will result in utter destruction. But in my weary heart I know that this sufficing cause will not in itself be enough. We must face a continual struggle to justify ourselves and banish the preconceptions of our creed.
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First, though we wield the energies of Death and Entropy, we do not serve them, any more than the Terrans serve their mechanical particle-hurling weaponry. Nor do we believe these energies wholly evil -- death and entropy are as necessary a part of the great flux and circle as life and birth. Finally, as all must know by now, our energy is the only thing that can be of any use against the departed Overmind, its Cerebrates of which many still remain, and quite feasibly, that which we can only pray will not become the new avatar of the Zerg... the dread Kerrigan, Queen of Blades, once Sarah Kerrigan, heroine of the Terrans.
And only with a true understanding of our dark energy can it be possible to understand the circumstances which led to this great war which has benighted our race. It was begun by the Terrans, though they knew not what they did. They had reached that point as do all races when their psionic stimulus begins to evolve and awaken.
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However, they were in the grip of an oppressive and draconian government, which took upon itself to test all infants for psionic aptitude and to train them inyo Ghosts -- assassins working in their corrupt service. These Ghosts were exposed to neural conditioning designed to send their psions down precisely channeled paths and to prevent them turning against their masters. Due to these constrains, and the dark nature of their work -- including training to destroy untold numbers of their fellow race with weapons undreamed of by the Protoss, involving reshaping the very atoms themselves -- the Ghosts were naturally attuned to the energy of Entropy.
And the Zerg were attuned to the natural emissions of the Ghosts.
A creation of the ancient Xel'Naga, like ourselves, the Zerg began life as a form of insect, serving an all-powerful cerebella entity known as the Overmind. However, the Zerg's unstable DNA enabled them to absorb other species into themselves entire -- including the Aiur Dunerunner, which became the Zergling, and the Xel'Naga, whose fate is perhaps fortunately unknown. Rapacious, evil beings with the one intention of rampaging across the galaxy -- consuming all sentience, all life -- the Zerg, whose Cerebrates themselves possessed psionic abilities, were naturally attuned to the dark forces of entropy.
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Before long the Zerg appeared in Terran space and began to attack the human worlds. Curious, the Conclave (who had previously dismissed the Terrans and their nascent psionic abilities as beneath their notice) dispatched the current Executor, High Templar Tassadar -- the greatest hero of our history -- to cleanse the Zerg from the galaxy with fire. Tassadar began to do this, but such was his compassion that he also tried to spare the Terrans from the flame. Perhaps if he had not... but it is pointless to dwell on such things.
Viewing we ourselves as hostile invaders, and turning their attention to infighting rather than battling the Zerg, the Terrans found themselves a new tyrannical leader to replace the old, wielded the Zerg as a weapon to ruthlessly slaughter billions of their own kind, and much worse, lost one of their strongest psychics to the Zerg, Sarah Kerrigan. Forming a grotesque human/Zerg hybrid combining the best of both worlds, Kerrigan became the Zerg's most powerful agent, but also gave them the unspeakable idea that they would incorporate the strongest known species into their warped DNA…. ourselves.
Tassadar had realized long before that the light-blue energies of the Templar were useless when wielded directly against the Zerg, and came to our planet to learn to wield our own dark energies. I had the honor of spending months training the High Templar, and admire still his selflessness and courage. However, he found himself branded a traitor by his own narrow minded Conclave, who wasted crucial hours before Tassadar could be released.
In the final battle, aided also by those Terrans who cared little for the isolationism of the rest of their people, Tassadar did what has never been done before and mayhap never will again -- combined both the light and the dark energies to destroy the Overmind, though they took his own body with it. In the months to come, it is essential that we live by his example and make his sacrifice worth while, and learn to unite our opposing forces in harmony. Kerrigan, the new Queen of the Zerg, will not rest until all species are united under her claw-blades, and meanwhile the Terrans continue to hone their nightmarish weapons, tyranny and xenophobia.
My friends, the war is not over.
It is only just beginning.
Prelate Zeratul of the Dark Templar 'On Ending Wars'
