How did the Protoss' "primal link" actually work across history?

[Mislagnissa]

The original manual was extremely vague about how the Protoss' "primal link" worked other than to suggest it was a highly efficient application of telepathy (as opposed to something wholly different from telepathy). The Khala referred to the science and religion built around it.

As the retcons piled up, this became increasingly blurry. The link and the Khala became synonymous in the writing, and this led to a number of what I consider plot holes.

According to SC2, the tal'darim don't have the Khala/link because they joined it when Khas founded it. The problem here is that the Protoss always had the link and the tal'darim supposedly left before the Aeon started.

For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the link in all historical eras as the Khala and the religion as the Path of Ascension.

Were the tal'darim part of the first Khala and then breakaway from it? In that case, their backstory claiming they never joined is wrong: they broke away from it just like the nerazim did.

When the tribes broke the first Khala, did they just break the inter-tribal Khala or did they break the intra-tribal khala too? I ask this because, prior to LotV claiming the khala was evil or whatever nonsense it was saying, the lore made it clear that the khala was the only thing preventing the protoss from fighting endless war (not unlike the overly emotional eldar in warhammer 40k, which they were clearly modeled after). So if the tribes broke their tribal khala, then they would attack their own families eventually, which would have prevented them from surviving long enough to fight an interstellar war with other tribes.

The protoss evolved with the khala, so I have to assume the rest of their psychology is adapted for it and doesn't work correctly without it. This is comparable to how humans suffer from mental illness if their brains are not working correctly. Presumably the nerazim have developed a means of maintaining their sanity and emotional control, since the protoss developed new psionic sciences and such that allowed them to break the khala in the first place.

Anyway, the only consistent explanation I can think of is that the tribes always had some form of khala. The first empire formed a super-khala that connected the tribal khalas, which was shattered during the Aeon. The tal'darim and nerazim are oddities, since they reject even the tribal khala.

I can understand the nerazim rejecting the link because of their disdain for the conclave and such (and practical reasons like studying the new field of void psionics), but the tal'darim are much more difficult to explain. They use sundrop to prevent development of the khala, or at least that was the explanation for one tribe of them (for simplicity we can assume it is a widespread practice to explain their intact nerve cords). If they worship the xel'naga, surely they would embrace the khala? I would think that somewhere along the line their religion got the wrong idea and accepted values that their former gods would have rejected (which is actually quite common in real religions, since they don't stay static).

Feel free to share your own thoughts, observations, explanations, etc. This discussion will probably be contradicting the canon, given that the canon isn't really reliable or consistent in this situation.

[ragnarok]

Sundrop was meant to sever the link, it didn't exactly say that it prevents Khala development, though likely that's probably what it'd end up doing anyways. And in any case it wasn't entirely explained as to why Ulrezaj gave the Aiur Tal'darim the sundrop substance anyway, aside from trying to get them loyal to him. The similar to the ancient faction Tal'darim who turned against Amon once Alarak told them the truth, the Aiur Tal'darim turned on Ulrezaj once it was clear their leader wasn't what they thought he was.

It's likely Ulrezaj didn't worship the xel'naga, not in that extent anyways. He was a Nerazim terrorist even before he became a dark archon, so it's possible he didn't act in the same way as the other dark templar did. His hatred for the Khalai got him to do things the other dark templar didn't (even if many of them didn't want to see the Khalai refugees on Shakuras).

[Visions of Khas]

Reading your title made me realize we've encountered the "Primal" form of each race: the Primal Zerg of Zerus; the Tal'Darim are descendants of the Aeon of Strife who never stopped fighting or developed the Khala; and the UED represent primal humans.

Mind blown.

[Turalyon]

the Tal'Darim are descendants of the Aeon of Strife who never stopped fighting or developed the Khala

Eh, the Nerazim/DT were already supposed to be the descendants of those who perpetuated the Aeon of Strife way back when.

[Gradius]

Eh, the Nerazim/DT were already supposed to be the descendants of those who perpetuated the Aeon of Strife way back when.
Not really. The DTs were a newer generation of protoss that wanted to keep their individuality. Before that they were pretty much all under the Khala.

[Turalyon]

^ Like I said, descendents. The Aeon of Strife started due to the rise of Protoss individualism and egoism and the DT/Nerazim still encapsulate/carry on those qualities.

[ragnarok]

Reading your title made me realize we've encountered the "Primal" form of each race: the Primal Zerg of Zerus; the Tal'Darim are descendants of the Aeon of Strife who never stopped fighting or developed the Khala; and the UED represent primal humans.

Mind blown.

The Tal'darim originally had the Khala just like the other protoss did. They just didn't have the new Khala, something Amon probably reprogrammed, just like the Nerazim didn't.

[Visions of Khas]

I made a timeline, since I'm off work today and am just that bored.

https://i.imgur.com/qsdJMll.jpg

The Aeon of Strife lasted for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So the time period between the Tal'Darim's ancestors' departure, and the Dark Templar's ancestors' departure, is vast.


Eh, the Nerazim/DT were already supposed to be the descendants of those who perpetuated the Aeon of Strife way back when.

The Dark Templar retained an appreciation for individuality afforded by the Aeon of Strife, but none of the aggression. The Khalai adherents, however, conflated individuality with mindless aggression, making them see the Dark Templar as adherents to Strife.

The Tal'Darim's ancestors felt the spark of the Aeon of Strife during its beginning. That was coupled with their fanatical devotion to Amon's faction of Xel'Naga.


The Tal'darim originally had the Khala just like the other protoss did. They just didn't have the new Khala, something Amon probably reprogrammed, just like the Nerazim didn't.

Mm, nope. All protoss are born part of the Communal Link, an unconscious empathic connection. It wasn't until Khas' research and development that a means of bringing that link to a conscious awareness took place. That is the Khala. Logic dictates the Tal'Darim are born with the Communal Link, but evidence shows they either remove their nerve cords, or shield them off like Alarak. It's also possible that terrazine lessens their Communal Link. Or perhaps their Communal Link is so full of hatred and vitriol that it continues to fuel their aggression.

[Gradius]

The link was not being used in protoss society when the XelNaga left or was on the decline. But maybe with how effective Amon’s mind control was it should have been.


^ Like I said, descendents. The Aeon of Strife started due to the rise of Protoss individualism and egoism and the DT/Nerazim still encapsulate/carry on those qualities.
Every Khalai is a descendant as well then.

[ragnarok]

Mm, nope. All protoss are born part of the Communal Link, an unconscious empathic connection. It wasn't until Khas' research and development that a means of bringing that link to a conscious awareness took place. That is the Khala. Logic dictates the Tal'Darim are born with the Communal Link, but evidence shows they either remove their nerve cords, or shield them off like Alarak. It's also possible that terrazine lessens their Communal Link. Or perhaps their Communal Link is so full of hatred and vitriol that it continues to fuel their aggression.

From what I got out of the lore, it could imply that terrazine is meant to prevent you from reconnecting to the Khala (assuming any Tal'darim had ever bothered trying that in the past)

[Mislagnissa]

Let's just ignore the SC2 retcons because they're nonsensical and only introduce problems because the writers didn't give a damn about common sense.


Mm, nope. All protoss are born part of the Communal Link, an unconscious empathic connection. It wasn't until Khas' research and development that a means of bringing that link to a conscious awareness took place. That is the Khala. This is incorrect. There's no difference between the "communal link" as you call it and the Khala. Khas didn't create it, he rediscovered it. The original manual is explicit about this.

The original manual, vague as it is, states fairly clearly that the link is just a more efficient form of standard telepathy. The protoss' nerve cords act as antennas which increase their bandwidth compared to, say, humans. Where human telepathy is no more efficient than standard speech, protoss telepathy allows for them to communicate much more efficiently. (According to the "Project Blackstone" ARG fiction collected in the War Stories anthology, Zerg telepathy is mediated by special organelles that are also responsible for their innate gene splicing ability. Essentially, they exchange genetic information through telepathy.)

The manual is vague as to the degree the Khala was broken during the Aeon, but I am inclined to believe it still remained within tribes considering that protoss are happily willing to commit genocide otherwise.

Back in the Templar Census promotional site from 1998, the Terran scientist presenting the report (written from an in-universe POV) stated that the tribes had their own languages which they maintained for things like proverbs even though the empire used a common language. (The tribal languages were translated into Latin to provide the same feel to human readers.)

Based on that, I came up with some headcanon to explain how the breaking of the Khala actually felt to the protoss. Essentially, the Khala relies on a syntactic language just like any other form of communication (e.g. pheromones, computers, speech, bee dancing, etc), in this case the language of "Khalani". However, that isn't the only language among the protoss: every tribe had their own, which nowadays are about as archaic to them as Latin is to us. When the first Khala arose, this was due to the tribes adopting Khalani to share information. When the tribes broke, this was because they stopped speaking Khalani and started speaking in their tribal languages (whether restored from records or made up for nationalism). When Khas experimented with the crystals, he activated a translation program which translated the diverse tribal languages into a form he could understand (which was used to built the first Khala because that's easier than teaching everyone to learn a new language, and the program itself is a super-smart AI because that's the only way translation could work practically). Rebuilding the Khala was a matter of convincing other tribes to accept the translation software or something along those lines.

I don't like technobabble explanations and prefer to rely on actual explanations as much as possible. In this case, I think my language translation explanation makes more sense than anything else I could think of and makes the setting feel more believable since it uses real concepts like linguistics and computer science.


Logic dictates the Tal'Darim are born with the Communal Link, but evidence shows they either remove their nerve cords, or shield them off like Alarak. It's also possible that terrazine lessens their Communal Link. Or perhaps their Communal Link is so full of hatred and vitriol that it continues to fuel their aggression.Supposedly they use sundrop. That's the explanation everyone else generally relies on when this comes up and they know enough about lore to recognize the retcons. The writers made them up as they went along so it's as good an explanation as anything else.

The idea that the link is so full of vitriol that it cancels itself out sounds iffy to me, but that is an original idea I would like to explore at some point. Insofar as the writers even understand how telepathy worked over the series (and they clearly don't), the intention seems to be that the tal'darim (and the protoss in their natural state) don't have any form of empathic communication. The moral of the SC2 story is that empathy is bad or something similarly stupid judging by how the characters treat the Khala's loss as something to be proud of rather than the beginning a new Aeon of Strife.

I'm in complete support of the Khala as a structure, since the protoss are contrived to be vicious warmongers as a species, and I think the Blizzard writers were fools who didn't understand it or care to. I'm in possession of common sense so I wondered how the dark templar were able to avoid falling into another Aeon of Strife without it, so I waived the problem away by claiming they use special meditation techniques like "The Flame & The Void" from Wheel of Time. The protoss refined psionics into a scientific field according to the lore so that sort of thing doesn't surprise me at all.

[Turalyon]

The Dark Templar retained an appreciation for individuality afforded by the Aeon of Strife, but none of the aggression.

Which is kinda BS when you think about it. Where/when did these proto-DT "lose this aggression" if they were never enlightened by the re-discovery and rejoining of their communal link? The "Khala" was the only reason the Aeon of Strife stopped, but that's because those that chose to be part of the Khala chose to stop fighting, not because the non-Khala adherents/proto-DT "lost their aggression". How did the DT become the idealised Randian representation of egoism when their closest ancestors were supposedly still "savages" (those who started and perpetuated the Aeon of Strife) who never saw/realised the "light" (of the Khala)? I can only guess as to why these proto-DT/non-Khala adherent Protoss became less aggressive: they probably cottoned on to the fact that the tide was turning against their way of thinking when the rest of the Protoss were becoming more communal and had to stick together to survive/preserve/maintain their right to individuality.


Every Khalai is a descendant as well then.

Yes, but the Khalai are descendant from a specific way of living that was vastly different from before. The DT are descendants from the Aeon of Strife, non-communal link adherent Protoss, in that they both have always held onto their individuality.

[Visions of Khas]

Hmm... now that we're on the topic, I wouldn't mind seeing how the Dark Templar transitioned from their Aeon of Strife/Khalai roots to the space wayfarers they became. There would be a lot of ideological development and possibly political intrigue. But that sort of diaspora story is too nuanced and complex for a Blizzard writer or any of their chosen authors to explore properly. :(

[Mislagnissa]

I didn't include research links in my last post, but here is an actual college lecture explaining why telepathy/empathy/etc would work on linguistic principles and exploring the applications in more detail.

http://personal.bgsu.edu/~swellsj/xenolinguistics/telepathy.html

Long story short, if you take the concept seriously then telepathy is fraught with its own problems that must be addressed before you can use it practically. (The article doesn't address empathy, but it doesn't need to: empathy is the language of emotions.)