Tribal skin tones?

[Mislagnissa]

One of the initial aspects of protoss tribes, and the protoss species in general, which was discarded in later portrayals was that every tribe had a unique skin tone as stated in the original manual. The tribe descriptions mention tribal colors but it is unclear if this is their skin tone or their game colors; either or both could be true and this seems to be the case in the game. (Only eight tribes were available in the game, and only six mentioned in the manual, but many more could easily have existed.)

This can be seen in the protoss unit portraits: zealots and carrier pilots have green skin, arbiter pilots have white skin, scout pilots have orange skin, etc. The skin tones for particular professions seem to support that tribal colors double as skin colors: zealots and carriers may be akilae (green Templar command), the arbiter pilot may be shelak (white judicator librarians), and the scout pilot may be Auriga (orange Templar airforce). This leads to the result where a given force may wear the colors of a particular tribe but be composed of members from many tribes. It is not unbelievable that tribes may adopt members from other backgrounds or multiple tribes might work together under a single military banner.

Where things break down is that this fairly predictable pattern is forgotten or broken in future games and fiction. In SC2 the protoss are generally portrayed as having a single ethnic appearance with few exceptions: khalai have pale blue skin and blue eyes, nerazim have dark blue or violet skin and green eyes, taldarim have bone white skin and red eyes. In the fiction and comics the protoss are generally depicted with multiple skin tones (absent in the games), but these do not seem to correlate with tribe (comparable to all humans being portrayed as Brazilian) and in some cases a character’s skin color may change between stories as seen in the cases of Artanis and Urun (comparable to a human character initially portrayed as black later being changed to white without explanation).

Artanis in particular has undergone more changes in appearance than any other character: one depiction gives him pale beige skin (BW and SCR race selection screen), another dark indigo or violet (SCR portrait art), another light brown (WoL), another translucent pale blue (LotV).

In general the tribal cultures have remained largely irrelevant in the lore, to the point where most protoss characters do not have a stated tribal background at all. By SC2 the khalai, nerazim and taldarim are portrayed the same way tribes were expected to be. Protoss tribes are comparable to human ethnic groups, even including being pigeonholed into particular professions (which is actually dystopic, if you think about it). If this same logic was applied to human beings, there would a large outcry.

In SC:R new art, the diverse skin colors of SC1 protoss portraits were generally replaced by more generic colors that made them feel vastly more homogenous and more like SC2. While SC2 protoss portraits do have technically more varieties in skull shape and skin hue, the actual contrast of their skin colors is vastly more homogenous than in SC1. This is particularly strange given how easy it should be to apply a filter to the textures.

Anyway, what do you think of how the tribes were treated? Do you think they should have been more important in the story? Do you think the protoss characters should have been consistently portrayed as having specific skin colors indicating their tribal background?

[Turalyon]

Protoss tribes are indeed analagous to "race" and it's hinted that this aspect is partly why the Aeon of Strife occurred. In the manual, the formation of the disciplines by Khas meant that tribal differences were lessened by creation of the caste system (and as a means to prevent something like the Aeon of Strife from occurring again). Though certain tribal and cultural old habits may have died slowly or remained in certain aspects, maybe this intermingling of the tribes within the caste system led to more homogenous skin tones over time.

[Mislagnissa]

Protoss tribes are indeed analagous to "race" and it's hinted that this aspect is partly why the Aeon of Strife occurred.The dark templar trilogy explicitly mentions that skin color played a role.


In the manual, the formation of the disciplines by Khas meant that tribal differences were lessened by creation of the caste system (and as a means to prevent something like the Aeon of Strife from occurring again).A number of tribes, such as Sargas and Venatir, resisted the homogenizing influence of the Khala while still being part of it. Most of the tribes seem to have had their cultural heritage repurposed and exaggerated to serve the khala, not lessened. For example, the Shelak tribe were all made librarians. Can you imagine an entire human ethnicity being forced to become librarians due to an overhaul of the social order?


Though certain tribal and cultural old habits may have died slowly or remained in certain aspects, maybe this intermingling of the tribes within the caste system led to more homogenous skin tones over time.I think that may have more to do with the writers not being consistent or changing their minds. In SC1 the portraits were all diverse and seemingly matched up with the tribal colors, the later fiction occasionally mentions skin colors (although this was never consistent), and the LotV prequel comic depicted the twilight council as all having distinct skin colors, but in SC2 all khala protoss magically became pale blue in complete contradiction of the first game and the comics. This occurred in just a few years and thus cannot be explained by "mingling."

[Turalyon]

A number of tribes, such as Sargas and Venatir, resisted the homogenizing influence of the Khala while still being part of it. Most of the tribes seem to have had their cultural heritage repurposed and exaggerated to serve the khala, not lessened. For example, the Shelak tribe were all made librarians. Can you imagine an entire human ethnicity being forced to become librarians due to an overhaul of the social order?

That's a small price to pay considering the alternative was the Aeon of Strife. Nothing's perfect...


I think that may have more to do with the writers not being consistent or changing their minds.

Oh, don't forget about just plain laziness and lack of rigour! :p

[Mislagnissa]

Oh, don't forget about just plain laziness and lack of rigour! :p
That is not entirely fair. The Artanis: Sacrifice comic tried to portray the twilight council as ethnically diverse, even if this was ignored in LotV.

[Nissa]

Maybe an outworld perspective is inappropriate, but as someone who has dabbled in 3D art, it is waaaay easier to create unique Protoss in 2D than in 3D. Making 3D models of someone with ridiculous chins or cheekbones takes a lot of work. I'd imagine that colors...actually no, there's really no reason why the skin color should be all grey, aside from laziness.

You think Blizzard would have done the work, considering how much detailed work they put into the hideous SC2 armor.

[Mislagnissa]

I was doing some research, and it turns out that there is a fair amount of detail on the tribes. There are a number of inconsistencies never explained, since the Blizzard seemingly gave up on exploring the tribes halfway through development.

The Auriga tribe was given command over the Protoss Empire's air and space forces according to its entry in the SC1 manual. This explicitly includes the carrier and arbiter, but oddly enough the scout is not mentioned. The arbiter is incongruous, since it is crewed by judicators and the Auriga is officially a templar tribe. (Although judicators are stated to include all elder protoss, implying they come from many tribes.) Skin tones differ by tribe, so we get the green-skinned carrier pilot and the white-skinned arbiter pilot. This suggests that the Auriga tribe is actually an umbrella for multiple ethnic groups, and opens the possibility that the other tribes mentioned may be umbrella groups as well.

Scouts are mentioned in conjunction with the "venetir scouts," which seems to be a misspelling of the Venatir tribe. The Venatir tribe does not have a writeup in the SC1 manual, but they are mentioned in the Sargas tribe entry as one of the tribes that resisted the homogenizing influence of the Khala. The scout pilot has orange skin in SC1.

In the Templar Census from the 1998 Blizzard website, we see mention of "Master Khalai Menbiller" who builds the robotic units and used the same portrait as the protoss buildings (and Aldaris). His tribe is never suggested, through Furinax is the only Khalai (working class) tribe mentioned in the manual. The portrait used has grey(?) skin in SC1 and rosy skin in SCR. The strike against Menbiller being Furinax is that Tabrenus had pale lime green skin.

The Shelak tribe members, depending on source, have either violet or grey/white skin. Zekrath in the comic appears white or brown in different panels(?!).

[Mislagnissa]

Doing some more worldbuilding. The wiki says that the SC2 nerazim are a "tribe" divided into "clans". This is easy enough to apply to the khalai tribes.

For example, the Auriga tribe would be divided into clans representing subsumed tribes. A pale green templar clan who crews most of the air force, a rosy orange templar clan who crews scouts, and a snow white judicator clan who crews arbiters.

A number of tribe names, like auriga ("charioteer") and venetir (venator, "hunter"), are derived from Latin. So I could name the arbiter clan to something like adbeto ("to go") or albeto ("I command s/he will whiten"(?)).

[Sheliek]

Interestingly, the Tal'darim, arguably the most devout followers of the Xel'naga, have white skin-tones, just like the presumably-Shelak Tribe judicators piloting the Arbiter. I'm probably giving Blizzard too much credit in noticing that though.

[Mislagnissa]

Interestingly, the Tal'darim, arguably the most devout followers of the Xel'naga, have white skin-tones, just like the presumably-Shelak Tribe judicators piloting the Arbiter. I'm probably giving Blizzard too much credit in noticing that though.

I was mistaken. The arbiter pilots are actually Auriga, not Shelak. Says so in the original manual (http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Auriga_Tribe#Early_History).

The blizzard twitter actually referenced this (https://twitter.com/BlizzHeroes/status/980866698189332480) as "tribal bloodlines." So now we have confirmation that the canon is a clusterfuck since this contradicts LotV's homogeneous depiction.

Of the units in starcraft 1, their appearances break down as follows (sometimes eyes change color):

Zealot: dark green skin, dark blue eyes; Tribe: presumably Akilae, since the Templar Census depicts this portrait making an "Akilae war chant"
Dragoon: the lighting makes appearance impossible to accurately determine
High Templar: grey skin with brown stripes, red eyes; skin tone shared with the first zealot action figure (although that has yellow eyes); Tribe: presumably Akilae, since they make up the "high templar command" role
Zealot Hero (Fenix): rosy skin, orange eyes; Tribe: presumably Akilae, since they make up the majority of ground forces
High Templar Hero/Tassadar: silvery(?) skin, blue eyes, brown eyebrows; this seemed to form the basis of the SC2 protoss; Tribe: presumably Akilae, since like the Akilae in the manual he advocates on the Terran's behalf
Protoss building/Judicator Aldaris/Master Khalai Menbiller: grey skin, orange eyes; Tribe: presumably Ara, since he advocates exterminating the Terrans as collateral damage like the Ara in the manual
Carrier: pale green skin, yellow/orange eyes; Tribe: presumably Auriga, since Auriga are stated in the manual to crew carriers
Scout: rosy/orange skin, yellow/orange eyes; Tribe: presumably Venatir, as in the Templar Census it quotes the Venetir scouts
Arbiter: white skin, yellow eyes; Tribe: presumably Auriga, since Auriga are stated in the manual to crew arbiters


So this gives us no less than eight tribal bloodlines in the portraits alone, and multiple bloodlines may be associated with a single tribe.

The Akilae include the green skinned blue eyed bloodline, the brown striped grey skinned red or yellow eyed bloodline, the rosy skinned orange eyed bloodline, and the silver skinned blue eyed brown haired bloodline. The Auriga tribe includes the pale green skinned yellow eyed bloodline and the white skinned yellow eyed bloodline.

Specific units are taken from specific tribes. Even if in game terms a protoss force had a specific tribal color, all forces seen in SC1/BW were composed of members of multiple tribes.

[Sheliek]

I love your analyses. It gives me all sorts of fluff ideas. I've even been skimming the Enumerate docs for inspiration (I like the classification of worlds it uses - blue/orange desert are very evocative terms, for instance).

[Nolanstar]

One thing I like that SC2 did for unit portraits was provide some diversity in facial structure and eyes. Sadly this did not carry over to the cinematic 'Toss.

[Mislagnissa]

I need to add some revisions to the bloodlines I identified. Trying to classify every combination of colors would lead to a dozen distinct bloodlines, so I condensed similar skin tones into one bloodline. A general note is that some protoss portraits change eye color (between light blue, vivid yellow and red/orange) depending on emotion, so their natural eye color is impossible to determine. I included references so that you can check these out for yourself. I don't pretend that this list is exhaustive.

Note that canon doesn't treat protoss skin tones the least bit consistently. Characters change skin color between sources, sometimes within the same source such as the Sacrifice comic (and the differences are too extreme to be explained by lighting most of the time). Without a consistent basis, it is impossible to make any analysis about the heritage of a particular character's skin color.

Bloodline #1
Skin: generally grey or white, with brown or red markings (stripes, spots, etc)
Eyes: laser red, dark vivid yellow, or dark blue
Examples: SC1 high templar portrait, high templar Oong, zealot action figure, various zealots in SC1 concept art

Bloodline #2
Skin: generally reddish, ranging from rosy to ruddy
Eyes: light blue, yellow or red/orange
Examples: SCR protoss building portrait (Judicator Aldaris), SC1 zealot/dragoon hero portrait (Praetor Fenix)

Bloodline #3
Skin: pale green, lime green or dark green
Eyes: yellow, lime green, or dark blue
Examples: SC1 carrier pilot, Tabrenus (Sacrifice comic), SC1 zealot

Bloodline #4
Skin: stark white, grey off-white
Eyes: yellow or red
Examples: SC1/SCR arbiter pilot, Zekrath (Sacrifice comic), some Shelak characters in Dark Templar Trilogy, typical tal'darim/forged designs in SC2

Bloodline #5
Skin: dark blue, violet, cobalt blue, may be washed out in brighter lighting
Eyes: yellow, red/orange, sickly green
Examples: SCR Artanis portrait and splash screen art (same source), SC1/SCR protoss face cover art, Tassadar's model in cinematic "The Death of the Overmind", Shelak tribe in some parts of Dark Templar Trilogy, typical nerazim designs in SC2 and SCR, Nahaan (Sacrifice comic)

Bloodline #6
Skin: silvery color, pale blue, grey blue, grey with violet tinge, dark grey; may have brown eyebrows or beards
Eyes: light blue, red, orange, yellow, white
Examples: Tassadar action figure, typical khalai designs in SC2 and SCR, Urun in Shadow Wars #4-6, SC1 protoss building portrait (Judicator Aldaris, Master Khalai Menbellir) (The SC1 protoss building portrait is difficult to make out and I cannot determine whether the skin is grey or brown)

Bloodline #7
Skin: yellowish, light brown, medium brown
Eyes: light blue, white
Examples: Artanis' model in WoL, Urun in Sacrifice and Shadow Wars #1-3, Aldaris in Sacrifice,

Bloodline #8 (may be same as bloodline #2 or #7)
Skin: vivid orange
Eyes: yellow, red/orange
Examples: SC1 scout portrait

To sum up protoss diversity: they have much greater range in color than humans do, like a crayon box's worth of colors. Eye colors are generally some variation of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue or white. Skin colors are generally some variation of grey, white, pink, green, cyan, blue, indigo, violet, brown or orange. Sometimes they have contrasting markings like stripes, freckles and so forth.

[Mislagnissa]

According to the SC2 Q&A #13, Artanis was definitely Akilae and Aldaris was likely Ara. Since they lack consistent skin colors between sources we don't know what the common phenotypes are.

[Visions of Khas]

I was mistaken. The arbiter pilots are actually Auriga, not Shelak. Says so in the original manual.


Not quite.


Arbiter
Role: Judicator Sanctum [...]
Psychic Judicators crew the Arbiter ships, and they use the Arbiter as a focal point to project a reality-warping field


Auriga [...]
Charged with servicing and operating the massive Carrier ships and Arbiters that protect the space-ways of Aiur...

We do not know the exact crew complement and crew roles of Arbiters. It could be that a small group of Judicators serve aboard it to focus its powers, is piloted exclusively by Judicators, or Templar may pilot it. The wiki claims that Judicators exclusively crew the Arbiters, but I cannot find the original source for that claim.

[Mislagnissa]

Not quite.




We do not know the exact crew complement and crew roles of Arbiters. It could be that a small group of Judicators serve aboard it to focus its powers, is piloted exclusively by Judicators, or Templar may pilot it. The wiki claims that Judicators exclusively crew the Arbiters, but I cannot find the original source for that claim.

The battle.net site says so, which was copied from the 1998 Starcraft site. Here's the description in its entirety:


The only warship to be crewed exclusively by non-Templar, the mighty Arbiter is used to provide special support for assault groups. Psychic Judicators crew the Arbiter ships, and they use the Arbiter as a focal point to project a reality-warping field that serves to conceal all friendly units within close proximity. Since the Arbiter must be anchored firmly in space-time to safely generate such a large field, it is immune to the effects and remains visible, even when surrounded by the field of another Arbiter.

The Judicator crew can also use the Arbiter to quickly move troops from one location to another, by opening up a rift in the fabric of space-time. Troops entering the warp rift are Recalled back to the Arbiter that formed the field. These teleported troops, of course, also benefit from the Arbiter's distortion field.

In addition to destabilizing local reality to generate its distortion field, some Arbiters are capable of strengthening discrete pockets of space-time. Anything caught within these absolute pockets is beyond the reach of any normal interaction, friendly or otherwise. Units trapped in a stasis field can neither move nor attack, and are completely immune to the effects of damage and special abilities. This ability is equally effective at protecting Protoss troops until reinforcements can arrive, and pacifying foolish attackers.

Furthermore, it doesn't make much sense for librarians and crystal scientists to crew warships.

In order for the statements about the Auriga and arbiter crew to be mutually true, then those judicators must be members of the Auriga tribe. There's no reason why that cannot be the case.

While the tribe bios suggest they fit neatly into one caste or another, the manual states that the judicator caste was drawn from protoss elders as well. That is a function of age and experience, not ethnicity. This suggests that judicators may come from any tribe, and that khalai and templar may change their caste to judicator upon meeting the prerequisites (which contradicts the definition of a caste, but whatever).

As I thought about it I came to realize that protoss society is a complex web of tribes, clans, bloodlines, castes and so forth.