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Starcraft chronicles Vol 1
Most of the starcraft lore is unreliable. It is riddled with contradictions, a lack of any consistent scale (both time and space) and most sources are either highly biased or completely fabricated.
Xel'naga schism
* The xel'naga are supposedly body stealing parasites that survive the repeated births and deaths of the universe.
* They supposedly visit other universes in the multiverse. Such universes are seen in Heroes of the Storm.
* The xel'naga are attributed with god-like powers, but the accounts are inconsistent and live xel'naga have been seen to be killed with laughable ease by conventional weapons.
* None of the xel'naga history can actually be verified, and the observed physiology of live xel'naga contradicts the official accounts.
* Amon joins a schism within the xel'naga. The actual goal of the schismatics is unknown, as are its qualitative differences from the other sects.
* When Amon, Duran and Ouros are questioned about it later, they are clearly insane and self-contradictory.
Protoss origins
* The protoss evolve with purity of form, whatever that means in this context.
* The schismatics manipulate protoss evolution but left it after the protoss broke the khala the first time. The schismatics' reason for this is unknown, as the only explanations make no sense.
* to what degree the khala was broken is unknown, as it would naturally connect all protoss within only a certain number of meters and must be extended with psi-link spires and similar
* The aeon of strife decimates the galaxy, destroying the first protoss empire
* Khas restores the planet-wide khala and founds the second empire
* The second empire expels a series of rogue tribes who nearly destroy their homeworld, and rewrites the history books to conceal their failure
* The empire expands to cover an eighth or so of the galaxy
* The empire collapses due to a poorly explained demographic shift; essentially the last generation was dying of old age while the next was still expanding
* The only part of the empire who are relevant to the story are those in the Koprulu sector. Although their homeworld is named Aiur, it is not the same as the protoss capital located thousands of light years away. For whatever reason it is mistaken as the protoss homeworld despite actually being on the frontier of the empire. The nearby Shakuras and Slayn are the homes of dark protoss.
* Protoss historical records are highly unreliable and prone to both myth and deliberate alteration.
Zerg origins
* After the protoss are mysteriously abandoned, the schismatics travel to Zerus where they study and tweak the original zerg insectoids. The insectoids are naturally telepathic and possess purity of essence (whatever that means). The creatures grow in size and resilience as a result, then spontaneously develop a parasitic life style.
* The schismatics structure the collective consciousness of the zerg into an intelligence they name Overmind. The schismatics monitor and control its actions through a psychic link and post-hypnotic suggestion. They believe that Overmind has no free will as a result.
* The zerg consume the biosphere of Zerus, as well as at least one nearby spacefaring species.
* As a result of the Aeon of Strife going on at the time, another sect of xel'naga intrudes on Zerus and tries to stop the schismatics.
* The schismatics unleash the zerg against their enemies, only to learn too late that the zerg have severed the psychic link and ignored the hypnotic commands.
* The zerg butcher the xel'naga and pilfer their knowledge.
* Accounts of the xel'naga deaths are unreliable. Some accounts claim they were immortal, others contradict this. Some accounts claim they were killed by the zerg, others by the individual named Amon.
* Murals in ulnar depict the xel'naga history from their birth to their destruction. The artist is unknown.
* The Overmind plots to assimilate the protoss to acquire purity of form, enabling the zerg to usurp the xel'naga. The surviving xel'naga claim this is a plot by Amon, but this a delusion.
* Zerus is stripped of its atmosphere and all useable resources, rendering it unable to ever support life again.
* The xel'naga Duran attempts to beat the Overmind to the punch, but he is an incompetent lunatic who accomplishes absolutely nothing for the next several million years.
* The zerg consume countless planets as they blaze a path toward the protoss empire.
* The zerg deduce that they are unable to compete with the protoss empire and require a "determinant" or competitor to purity of form from another source.
Koprulu wars
* Zerg deep space probes determine that some humans have purity of form. While not sufficient to serve as a perfect replacement, it is sufficient to compete with the protoss.
* The protoss and dark protoss intercept a number of probes and investigate Koprulu. This starts the Great War.
* While the protoss fleet initially wins every battle, it is ultimately destroyed by a civil war. This occurs entirely offscreen.
* The zerg experiment with psychics, such as Kerry. She contributes absolutely nothing of strategic value, and serves as little more than the vicious pet of a young cerebrate.
* Zeratul leaks intel that reveals the empire collapsed and thus the determinant is no longer needed. Supposedly he does this by tricking the cerebrate Zasz into letting him walk up and decapitate the creature. Since Zasz is famous for being the cleverest of cerebrates, this appears to be nothing more than propaganda.
* The Garm brood briefly goes feral before a nearby cerebrate immediately reclaims control of it. This is attributed to a new psychic attack devised by the protoss, but it ultimately amounts to nothing.
* The zerg create a super-cerebrate on the planet Aiur for unknown reasons. The protoss claim this creature is a physical manifestation of the zerg Overmind, but that is a contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, the name "Overmind" sticks.
* The dark protoss launch psychic attacks on zerg cerebrates, which seemingly hinders their coordination. This ultimately proves temporary, however.
* Tassadar kills the Overmind by crashing a carrier into it while setting off a psionic storm. This causes the zerg broods to turn on one another to determine who becomes the new Overmind.
The Brood War
* Some Accounts claim that Earth was run by nazis and that Koprulu lost contact but not really. This is all false. Koprulu was colonized by ships sent from Earth. Although the ships crashed and colonization nearly ended in disaster, the colonists were able to re-establish contact with Earth. Earth and Koprulu have continued to maintain trade for centuries, explaining their shared culture and technology.
* After seeing the political turmoil in Koprulu and the threat posed by zerg and protoss, the UED sends an invasion fleet to restore civil order and subjugate the aliens before they invade Earth.
* Despite their sudden lack of coordination, the feral and rogue zerg effortlessly force the protoss to evacuate to Shakuras. The zerg are already waiting for them.
* On Char, a group of cerebrates create a new Overmind. The creature will take some time to mature before it can retake control of the entire swarms.
* Kerry appears on Shakuras claiming to be the leader of her own brood and wanting to help the protoss in exchange for destroying the Overmind before it can enslave her. In truth, Kerry is actually a puppet for a cabal of cerebrates trying to take the swarm for themselves.
* This cabal was previously sent by the Overmind to scout Shakuras after its location was gleaned from Zeratul. They brainwashed the leader figure Raszagal, taking advantage of her senility.
* The protoss plan to use a terraforming device on Shakuras to destroy the zerg. The control crystals were stolen and placed on nearby planets. Kerry helps the protoss retrieve them.
* Aldaris discovers Kerry's true intentions and turns the protoss against her. Her masters send assassins to kill him and foment chaos before he can reveal the full extent of his discovery, while Kerry flees before the protoss can execute her.
* The terraforming device is activated and purges the zerg. However, great collateral damage is caused to the ecosystems and settlements of Shakuras. Due to millennia without maintenance, the terraforming device and its control crystals start to break down and will become unusable within a matter of years. As a relic from the Aeon, the modern protoss do not have the means to repair it.
* Duran somehow frames Stukov for treachery and gets him executed, even though it makes more sense to court martial him.
* The UED enslaves the immature Overmind and numerous cerebrates with psychotropics.
* Kerry's masters manipulate Zeratul, Raynor and Mengsk into assisting them by convincing them the Overmind is the real threat.
* Zeratul, Raynor and Mengsk assassinate Kerry before she can betray them, but her masters simply resurrect her.
* Duran assists Kerry and claims she sped his progress, but this appears to be nothing more than delusional ramblings.
* The new swarm assimilates protoss purity of form to create the brood mothers, which the cerebrates adopt as their new bodies. Although other hybrids are created, they are dismissed as failures due to instability.
* The new brood mothers turn one another rather than reform the Overmind, preventing them from dominating the sector. An uneasy cold war stands for years before a new brood war starts.
* Stukov's cryogenically frozen remains are recovered by Kaloth, a member of a third zerg swarm. The remains are infested and reanimated as part of Kaloth's sadistic experiments in utilizing terran technology. Stukov's memories are preserved due to his extensive cyborg implants.
* Raynor uses nanomachine treatments to reverse the infestation of Stukov. However the treatment later proves only partly effective, turning him into a mutate.
* Stukov is captured and tortured by an insane Duran. Duran has apparently developed a twisted obsession with him for reasons unknown. Go read the slash fiction.
* Mengsk sends Tychus to befriend Raynor and kill Kerry. Mengsk has developed an insane obsession with killing Kerry, probably due to Duran's manipulation.
* After prompting from Tychus, Raynor develops an elaborate plot to subdue Kerry and subject her to nanomachine treatment to reverse her infestation. Tychus tries to kill her before being killed by Raynor, who curses Mengsk for murdering Tychus. Kerry becomes a mutate suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
* Mengsk repeatedly tries to kill Kerry, sending her fleeing to her former zerg masters for help.
* The zerg mentally torment Kerry, causing her to become even crazier.
* The zerg kill billions of people to fuel their war machine.
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A biological history of the zerg
Original zerg insectoids
The original zerg were burrowing worms of some sort with telepathy and natural gene splicing. Through xel'naga manipulation they become parasites. How?
Simple. The intermediate stage were similar to the necrophages from Endless Legend. The original zerg were scavengers, and they started laying their eggs in corpses and other decomposing organic matter. Over generations they incorporated useful genes from their food.
Some zerg became carnivorous and actively hunted live prey. These they killed by burrowing into their bodies and consuming nutrient-rich tissues. Larger zerg burrowed into and devoured the brain. At some point some of them started developing the ability to interface with the prey nervous system while still remaining largely carnivorous.
At this intermediate stage the carnivorous zerg could occasionally take control of their prey's brain and use it to more around more easily. Ultimately successive generations switched from carnivorous behavior to a wholly parasitic life style. This is where the lore begins from.
The primal zerg retcon
The Overmind stripped Zerus of its atmosphere and biosphere. It could never again support life.
How then did Kerry visit the jungle Zerus in SC2? Why did it take her five minutes to get there and back when it should be over fifty thousand light years away?
Simple. That was a different Zerus.
The primal zerg are actually a mutation of the corrupted zerg, not the original zerg.
At some point a brood got lost in Koprulu millennia ago and mutated to the point where their natural telepathy was lost. Unable to coordinate, they reverted to the vicious opportunism of their pre-Overmind ancestors. Because they lacked telepathy, they developed verbal speech.
Although they were no longer connected to the Overmind, they retained vestiges of their ancestral memory. Zurvan was one of the original brain bugs to land on the planet. Over millennia he mutated into a freak and his memories grew distorted. Everything he tells Kerry is mistaken but contains kernels of truth. (This explains why he knows the genesis of the Overmind even though he cannot logically have known the xel'naga were involved.)
The "first spawning pool" is nothing more than the first hive cluster planted by the original brood, which mutated over millennia until it became whatever it is now.
The brood war
Despite what Ouros tells you, Amon did not actually have any control over the Overmind. Amon was a lunatic who did not really think about any he did. The Overmind was a monster just like all the primal zerg. It intended to create the hybrid on its own terms and uplift the zerg into the new xel'naga so that it could go on to consume all the other universes accessible to the xel'naga.
As Starcraft Evolution shows, the xel'naga do not have a limited population. They can replicate their xel'naga essence.
The Overmind actually consumed the essence of the xel'naga above Zerus using its purity of essence. Since it lacked purity of form it could not effectively use this essence, hence its hunt for the protoss to head off Amon.
Amon did not send it to hunt the protoss or implant the dark voice. The Overmind did everything of their own accord. Duran tried to head off the Overmind.
The Overmind sought the determinant, an unrefined form of purity of form, because at the time it thought the protoss empire was invincible.
The zerg did not actually defeat the Koprulu Expedition. It destroyed itself in a civil war that occurred off-screen because Raynor was the main character. You can see this happen in Insurrection, where Syndea cripples her own forces and enables the zerg to crush them.
The zerg had actually started researching and developing assimilation of terrans during the Great War. Among others, they had captured the ghost academy on Tarsonis and had many test subjects. Kerry was nothing more than an experiment with no real future. Even her physical form, a succubus, was actually the creation of Gorn/Baelrog who believed that she could be cloned into a useful terror weapon.
All that changed when Zeratul killed Zasz. Zeratul's memories revealed that the empire had collapsed centuries ago due to some kind of poorly explained demographic shift that was ongoing at the time of the Great War. (The wiki is self-contradictory: it says that the protoss were dying of old age at the same time they started a period of growth.)
The assimilated terran plans were abandoned and Kerry was left to her own devices. Ultimately she proved completely ineffectual and worthless.
The Brood Wars
The plot of brood war is full of holes that cannot be explained. The recap in WoL website/manual just glosses over this because it cannot be explained. Even so the glossing doesn't really explained why the events happen or what motivated the characters to make the choices they did.
As the recap explains it:
* Kerry tricks the protoss into killing her rivals by offering to help them power up their deus ex machina but they break off their alliance when they realize her plot (no mention is made of Aldaris or Raszagal, who seem to have been retconned). This is still largely nonsensical since the protoss would have killed her rivals anyway and her only contribution was acquiring the macguffin.
* Duran somehow masterminds Stukov being framed for treachery and execution. How this happens is not explained.
* Zeratul and Raynor team up with Kerry to stop the Overmind, not the UED. Predictably, Kerry betrays and they are unable to stop her despite previously talking about how they knew she would betray them.
Brood War relies on plot holes and retcons. Among other things, the entire plot is nothing more than an excuse to make Kerry the substitute Overmind even though she is vastly less interesting. SC2 claims the Overmind intended her as a replacement, but that's just another nonsensical retcon that contradicts the actual events of SC1.
A key retcon is the feral zerg. In SC1 feral zerg were unreclaimable. In BW they default to the authority of the nearest brain bug.
Let's be charitable and just assume the latter was always true. This means that the culling of the Garm never happened and that the PC cerebrate's mission consisted of reclaiming control of Garm or something.
Another key retcon is that Kerry produces control. Control is a zerg mechanic limiting their population, blah blah blah. This retcon is not supported by the gameplay or the story. In BW she outright requires cerebrates to act on her behalf and has no control of her own. In SC2 she doesn't produce control either and is reliant on brood mothers for everything. In fact, her resurrection is states by Dustin Browder to requires hatcheries, which produce control, to backup her personality or something. Basically hatcheries have brains of their own. Also, Niadra's quotes when you click her clearly state that there is a voice in her head telling her what to do (the player) and it is not Kerry. Is the zerg player themselves roleplaying as the Overmind in its original bodiless entity form? WoL states the Overmind (the physical structure) genes are present in every single larva, so yes?
So we can assume that the idiotic Q&A sessions calling Kerry a literal demigoddess are full of crap. She's nothing more than a figurehead the zerg follow because the bodiless entity that is the player tells them to because the game does not offer the choice to do otherwise.
So basically the entire plot of brood war is actually a sham. It was never a battle between Kerry and Daggoth, but between at least two factions of cerebrates who plotted in the background. The statements about them spontaneously dying offscreen is a load of crap. They probably just assumed different forms.
Considering that the Overmind was resurrected despite dark templar deus ex machina, we can assume the same holds true for cerebrates and that none of them have ever permanently died. They probably evolved into brood moms or something, IDK.
The faction using Kerry as a smokescreen was trying to kill the Overmind because Ulrezaj and Schezar had successfully taken control of it offscreen (at the behest of Duran) but were struggling for control with Daggoth and his allies. After Ulrezaj was repelled by Zeratul, they had to kill the Overmind because the UED took control of it and would prevent them from acquiring purity of form.
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UED continuity notes
SC1 manual: UPL were nazis. rounded up cyborg mutant criminals. ATLAS was exiled and lost.
BW manual: UPL secretly maintained spy network in Koprulu.
If you played the game w/o reading the manual, then you won't know any of this and assume Koprulu never lost contact w/ Earth and were never exiled by Nazis. You won't know how Earth colonists got to Koprulu, as some commenters complained, but that isn't necessary to understand the plot. Kerry mentions the UED were supposedly evil in the past, but this comes across as academic trivia since the UED were previously depicted as heroes. Even the recap in the WoL manual/website claims that the second Overmind was the real threat.
In Heroes the Storm, Stukov's biography assumes Koprulu never lost contact with Earth. Or at least, in combination with the SC2 site claiming Koprulu was the result of a disastrous colonization attempt, that they re-established contact long ago.
Even then there are still plot holes. The UED has up to date knowledge of events in Koprulu due to their spy network or FTL television or whatever. The wiki claims that the only reason they never sent a followup was because none of the first fleet survived to contact them, but that makes no sense because they watched Koprulu through their pre-existing network. Indeed, a lack of response from the first fleet is itself a huge justification to send a followup. Stukov states in SC2 that they will return either way.
Starcraft pretty much ignores any sense of scales like distance or time, so in future games we might very well have retcons like Earth being a shuttle ride from Aiur. Aiur was originally thousands of light years away from Koprulu, then retconned to being in Koprulu. It took Kerry no more than a few minutes at the most to travel to Zerus in the galactic core, which somehow regenerated its atmosphere and biosphere after the Overmind stripped it to a lifeless rock. (There is no possible way it can be the same Zerus mentioned in SC1. It is clearly located in the Koprulu sector.) I have no doubt that the same could easily happen to Earth.
You can take or leave my ideas. I don't like the lore because it is a convoluted mess.
