Zerg Genetics Engineering Retcon?

[Einharjar]

[QUOTE=ragnarok;192431]Maybe to you. To me, I still believe Tychus carried a moral code.

That's one of those things most people don't see: hero or villain, both sides carry a moral code, however twisted that could be. It's almost impossible to find someone without ANY form of a moral code. The developers' explanation was that Tychus was not a person to kill innocent people, though I didn't think that was a very strong explanation.

That'd make no sense. Influence or no influence, Duran had to know that after what happened at the end of Brood War, there's no possible way anyone else in the sector would listen to anything she has to say anymore. She was completely alone with the swarm now, and that's not enough to beat Amon.

How or why would he care? The only reason why he would care was that he would've wanted Kerrigan to be preoccupied in vengful schemes as they'd delude her to the real threat so if anything; he doesn't HAVE to know what happens even in Mission Omega, he just needs to see to it that Kerrigan is distracted and is lead by purely Human desires; IE Hatred, Vengeance, Remorse, Fear ect ect. These things make her lose track of the Overmind's agenda of "providing" for it's children. So this whole scenario falls in line with what I'm saying. He pokes his head in to help Kerrigan achieve her vengeful goals to let her keep turning face to her true self; the fact that she's now Zerg.

In that sense, he didn't have to hurry things up with the hybrids unless the hybrid army is VERY small in number or something. It's hard to say, but from what I could see, a single hybrid is enough to control the WHOLE of the swarm if need be. After all, even with the primal infestation, Kerrigan still had a hard time fighting the hybrid dominators, and that was with the swarm fighting alongside her.

There is no correlation between one being able to wreak Psionic Havoc and one's ability to mentally dominate or create entire Hive Minds. There may be, but that's yet to be see. In the very short story you mentioned below, it reveals a particular "Gene" refered to by the "Cerebrate" as a "subordinate" gene. If the Hybrid is a "Subordinate", than who's to say it's even designed to handle it's own Brood. It may beable to mentally dominate indivduals, but to mimic a Hive Mind? That's different. That's where the Cerebrates and the second Overmind (which was far less mature and weaker) would've come in handy. Kill the Old Overmind, the one secretly rebelling? Use it's agents to create a weaker one for the Hybrids to control; thus controlling the Swarm itself.

For me though, deep in Kerrigan's subconsciousness, infesting Ethan Stewart was actually an experiment because she still wanted Raynor at her side. But she couldn't chance the virus until she knows it won't turn him into a mindless mutant, and this was why we saw the experiments happen on Meinhoff in WoL.

Ethan Stewart's tale explicitly spells it out that Kerrigan is looking for ways to create others like her, but less powerful so she'd still dominate over them as the Queen. Unless she's aware of something we aren't (maybe Jim likes to make it or break it with Dominatrixes) about Jim's preferences in close bonds with women; her attempts to secure Ethan Stewart as a concubine were Queen driven as well as Human.
However, I won't deny that she had some connection still. With Amanda Haley, certain things like Amanda blowing up the Drone's head made Sarah think of the same thing she did to her own mother. Who knows. Perhaps she more or less has pity on Terran's. In her Queen of Blades form, no love from her would ever reach the surface for Raynor; but it would've gone far enough to see him her own slave so that she knew he was there. That's it. What you're proposing actually makes her more vile than good... wtg...

No it wouldn't. If you read SC Hybrid, when Kerrigan infested Amanda Haley, her Cerebrate was still alive by 2501. This means that while Cerebrates cannot live without the Overmind, they don't die INSTANTLY if the Overmind dies.

What?

Where did this come from? Of course Cerebrates don't die, other wise the Series might've ended with SC1 and never would've seen BW. I'm so confused. Kerrigan has an entire Swarm at her disposal and despite "seeding countless worlds", there isn't any evidence that to suggest that Duran had already had enough Hybrids awake to take her head on and remove her from power. Unless you can find me some. I'm not seeing where my quote is being misleading on this to take it to bringing up the Cerebrate and Amanda Haley, who coincidentally was supposed to be Izhsa.

Unless, of course, Duran felt that if Kerrigan died in BW, too little of the swarm could be saved.

And this is what I meant by it ... I don't know... DEVOURING ITSELF.

Let me arrange a time line.

-Overmind arrives, infests Kerrigan. All is well, it wants to use her against the Protoss
-Overmind succeeds in creating the Queen of Blades. Shit goes down on Char and Bitch of the Universe duels Tassadar whilst Zeratul begins thinning Cerebrates.
-Overmind says it's famous line about the QoB's free will being intact and says it's hastily leaving for Auir.
-Overmind arrives on Auir, never taking Sarah with it. Duran notices and steps up to plate soon. This isn't what was planned...
-Overmind dies on Auir, as planned as it seems. It's meant to reduce the Zerg to a point that they are vulnerable to being controlled now. Just need a second Weaker Overmind to manipulate with Hybrids... but what's this?
-The QoB is set up to rule. She spans the entire Brood War destroying almost every last vestige of Amon's corruptions while never realizing it. Only herself and a few "Unknown Cerebrate Names" survive for a time.
-Interbellum Interlude - QoB uses the Cerebrates no longer; replaces them with Brood Mothers with knowledge gained from her Ethan Stewart and Amanda Haley type experiments. (I'd like to note that the Cerebrate involved with those Experiments is an odd fact now concerning that Abathur now exists. It is more probable now that the Cerebrate is to be Abathur in some form of Retcon and that shortly after Omega, even the player Cerebrate is killed off)
-QoB now stands as the only infleunced character by Amon within the Swarm. Her spirit leads her to discover the Prophecy and continue developing her Swarm to include more individualistic traits.
-QoB discovers the Prophecy and the truths that lie within. She is overcome by hopelessness, a Human emotion brought on by Amon's corruption. Her callousness brought on by her Zerg traits has her give in to her hopelessness by acting as a cornered beast. She prepares for the final Battle, convinced that she will die and so will her Swarm.
-WoL happens; QoB is de-infested and although she is still alive? She's now just Kerrigan. She's a wanted fugitive to Mengsk; notably sentanced to death to keep her truths from comming out.
-Mengsk almost catches Raynor and Kerrigan both, but Raynor ensures Kerrigan's safety by sacrificing his own in the name of love [rolls eyes]
-Mengsk panics? I guess? I have no idea why he Tweeted #Just killed Raynor! I'm so baus! Like my page on FB!!!. However it pisses Kerrigan off to the core... that hopelessness is back; that vengeance is back... she chooses a way: Uses the Zerg
-Along her journey; she chooses not only to use the Zerg? But to also become Zerg once more. Also not planned. Stupid Mengsk! Why did you have to go and piss her off?

It's not about what she did or not, Duran just didn't expect Zeratul to act the way he did. He would have expected Zeratul to seek retribution against Kerrigan one way or another, not help her to Zerus.

You know how whack that sounds?
Put yourself in Duran's shoes for a moment please. Before any of us even read the DT saga Duran basically spouted out the same prophecy to Zeratul's face. In front of Hybrids. In light of the Overmind being dead and Kerrigan just a headless horsemen killing because she likes it.
WTF? Why would he never expect Zeratul to try and at least do SOMETHING? The only thing Duran is guilty of at this point is maybe not knowing that Zeratul was even aware of Zerus in the first place which leads us back to this issue of Blizzard making SCs villians look like complete and utter MORONS in the face of Common sense...
Duran CANT KILL Sarah as the QoB because he needs to Swarm to be intact to make up the bulk of his Army with Hyrbid's as their Lords. But he CAN kill Zeratul. So if anything, tell me why the idiot didn't kill Zeratul on that Moon after literally giving him the same Warning the Ulaan Prophecies and Zamamara do a couple of years LATER?

[ragnarok]

You know how whack that sounds?
Put yourself in Duran's shoes for a moment please. Before any of us even read the DT saga Duran basically spouted out the same prophecy to Zeratul's face. In front of Hybrids. In light of the Overmind being dead and Kerrigan just a headless horsemen killing because she likes it.
WTF? Why would he never expect Zeratul to try and at least do SOMETHING? The only thing Duran is guilty of at this point is maybe not knowing that Zeratul was even aware of Zerus in the first place which leads us back to this issue of Blizzard making SCs villians look like complete and utter MORONS in the face of Common sense...
Duran CANT KILL Sarah as the QoB because he needs to Swarm to be intact to make up the bulk of his Army with Hyrbid's as their Lords. But he CAN kill Zeratul. So if anything, tell me why the idiot didn't kill Zeratul on that Moon after literally giving him the same Warning the Ulaan Prophecies and Zamamara do a couple of years LATER?

It's not that Duran wouldn't expect Zeratul to do NOTHING. Yes he knows Zeratul would do SOMETHING, but not in terms of actually HELPING her. You also have to remember that at the time of Raszagal's death, Duran was still with Kerrigan and the swarm. He had seen Zeratul's anguish, and therefore expected him to turn down his matriarch's actions to lead his people. In the end, he was right on that, because we saw where Zeratul was in DT Saga Twilight.

It wasn't until Jake Ramsey and Zamara came that convinced him otherwise. It's likely that Duran expected that Zeratul would impose self exile or something. Even if he didn't expect that, then perhaps on the Dark Moon, Duran expected Zeratul to feel there's nothing that can be done because there's so many hybrids on so many worlds and everything.

What?

Where did this come from? Of course Cerebrates don't die, other wise the Series might've ended with SC1 and never would've seen BW. I'm so confused. Kerrigan has an entire Swarm at her disposal and despite "seeding countless worlds", there isn't any evidence that to suggest that Duran had already had enough Hybrids awake to take her head on and remove her from power. Unless you can find me some. I'm not seeing where my quote is being misleading on this to take it to bringing up the Cerebrate and Amanda Haley, who coincidentally was supposed to be Izsha.

There's not, because right now we still don't know just how big the hybrid army really is. And in any case, they weren't yet ready by the time Izsha was made. But ultimately, Duran would have had to use the hybrids to remove Kerrigan from power because despite the influence from Amon, she's still making plans against him.

Ethan Stewart's tale explicitly spells it out that Kerrigan is looking for ways to create others like her, but less powerful so she'd still dominate over them as the Queen. Unless she's aware of something we aren't (maybe Jim likes to make it or break it with Dominatrixes) about Jim's preferences in close bonds with women; her attempts to secure Ethan Stewart as a concubine were Queen driven as well as Human.
However, I won't deny that she had some connection still. With Amanda Haley, certain things like Amanda blowing up the Drone's head made Sarah think of the same thing she did to her own mother. Who knows. Perhaps she more or less has pity on Terran's. In her Queen of Blades form, no love from her would ever reach the surface for Raynor; but it would've gone far enough to see him her own slave so that she knew he was there. That's it. What you're proposing actually makes her more vile than good... wtg...

Yes, but in her view this is a good thing. Obviously she still remembered that she and Raynor made a great team back in the SoK days, maybe she wanted that again. She always felt if Jim had fought on her side, they would have dominated everything a LONG time ago, and she would have had everything she wanted. However, Raynor was unwilling to join the swarm like that, and therefore infestation was required, so he could see from her POV.

There is no correlation between one being able to wreak Psionic Havoc and one's ability to mentally dominate or create entire Hive Minds. There may be, but that's yet to be see. In the very short story you mentioned below, it reveals a particular "Gene" refered to by the "Cerebrate" as a "subordinate" gene. If the Hybrid is a "Subordinate", than who's to say it's even designed to handle it's own Brood. It may beable to mentally dominate indivduals, but to mimic a Hive Mind? That's different. That's where the Cerebrates and the second Overmind (which was far less mature and weaker) would've come in handy. Kill the Old Overmind, the one secretly rebelling? Use it's agents to create a weaker one for the Hybrids to control; thus controlling the Swarm itself.

Again, this is just my frustration in the lack of info for the hybrids. As of this moment, all we know is that they were meant to revive Amon. I mean ok you can say that the Overmind's vision said they can enslave the swarm, but Amon can do that all by himself. It's just theory and speculation, Blizzard's lack of info makes things annoying.

How or why would he care? The only reason why he would care was that he would've wanted Kerrigan to be preoccupied in vengful schemes as they'd delude her to the real threat so if anything; he doesn't HAVE to know what happens even in Mission Omega, he just needs to see to it that Kerrigan is distracted and is lead by purely Human desires; IE Hatred, Vengeance, Remorse, Fear ect ect. These things make her lose track of the Overmind's agenda of "providing" for it's children. So this whole scenario falls in line with what I'm saying. He pokes his head in to help Kerrigan achieve her vengeful goals to let her keep turning face to her true self; the fact that she's now Zerg.

Too preoccupied with vengeance? But that's not how it worked before WoL. Kerrigan allowed Mengsk to live by the end of BW so that she could humiliate him again another day. It wasn't about vengeance or anything like that. Same with the Protoss and why she didn't finish them off.

Now, on the other hand, if it was just to focus Kerrigan's attention on them and ONLY them, then you have a point, although I'm unsure of Duran knew Kerrigan felt there was another threat looming over the horizon...

[FanaticTemplar]

You know how whack that sounds?
Put yourself in Duran's shoes for a moment please. Before any of us even read the DT saga Duran basically spouted out the same prophecy to Zeratul's face. In front of Hybrids. In light of the Overmind being dead and Kerrigan just a headless horsemen killing because she likes it.
WTF? Why would he never expect Zeratul to try and at least do SOMETHING? The only thing Duran is guilty of at this point is maybe not knowing that Zeratul was even aware of Zerus in the first place which leads us back to this issue of Blizzard making SCs villians look like complete and utter MORONS in the face of Common sense...
Duran CANT KILL Sarah as the QoB because he needs to Swarm to be intact to make up the bulk of his Army with Hyrbid's as their Lords. But he CAN kill Zeratul. So if anything, tell me why the idiot didn't kill Zeratul on that Moon after literally giving him the same Warning the Ulaan Prophecies and Zamamara do a couple of years LATER?

Wait, what makes you think Duran could have killed Zeratul in Dark Origins? The dialogue then - about how Zeratul can destroy his projects there but won't be able to find them all in time - strongly implies that Zeratul is the more powerful force of the two.

[ragnarok]

Wait, what makes you think Duran could have killed Zeratul in Dark Origins? The dialogue then - about how Zeratul can destroy his projects there but won't be able to find them all in time - strongly implies that Zeratul is the more powerful force of the two.

Well are you sure Duran was actually ON the Dark Moon at all?

[FanaticTemplar]

Well are you sure Duran was actually ON the Dark Moon at all?

No. But I don't see how that would help him in killing Zeratul?

[ragnarok]

No. But I don't see how that would help him in killing Zeratul?

To me, I think Duran was still assuming that the Protoss mentality is that they can't embrace change, and that goes for Zeratul as well.

Besides, he saw it as his plan could not be stopped. This was still true by HotS, even after the confrontation with Kerrigan because Amon had been revived.

[Einharjar]

To me, I think Duran was still assuming that the Protoss mentality is that they can't embrace change, and that goes for Zeratul as well.

Besides, he saw it as his plan could not be stopped. This was still true by HotS, even after the confrontation with Kerrigan because Amon had been revived.

I think this would be more likely.

And given the recent events via HotS, Duran was clearly more than Zeratul will ever be unless he becomes some sort of Twighlight Archon via he and Artanis having Bro Love Sex.
So my assumption is based on two things: HotS showed us some of Duran's ability and while Kerrigan beat him; it took awhile.
Zeratul only brought a small force for scouting purposes. Duran obviously has greater access to needed firepower if need be, not including himself.

Despite this, I think Rangarok's assumption would give some reasoning. He technically disses Zeratul and the Protoss as a whole for the way they act;

Duran: "Your violence, young prodigal, is typical. As is your inability to comprehend the greater scheme of things. You can destroy all of the specimens here. It will do you no good. For I have seeded the Hybrid on many, many worlds. You will never find them all before they awaken... And when they do... your universe will be changed... forever."

Still, it's quite idiotic of one who's capable of such schemes to just, never assume Zeratul would find a way. The guy even Killed his own Matriarch to get things done; so trying to find a way to talk to Kerrigan or whatever it may have been at that time to get the ball rolling is of no issue.

[ragnarok]

Duran: "Your violence, young prodigal, is typical. As is your inability to comprehend the greater scheme of things. You can destroy all of the specimens here. It will do you no good. For I have seeded the Hybrid on many, many worlds. You will never find them all before they awaken... And when they do... your universe will be changed... forever."

Still, it's quite idiotic of one who's capable of such schemes to just, never assume Zeratul would find a way. The guy even Killed his own Matriarch to get things done; so trying to find a way to talk to Kerrigan or whatever it may have been at that time to get the ball rolling is of no issue.

This is my whole point. We don't even know how old Duran really is. He may have said throughout the millennia, so that makes him at least thousands of years old, if not older.

In that sense, you can see the sage mentality in him, believing he's all knowing and that the plan he put into motion might have some MINOR setbacks, but nothing more...

[FanaticTemplar]

This is my whole point. We don't even know how old Duran really is. He may have said throughout the millennia, so that makes him at least thousands of years old, if not older.

Take that with a grain of salt. 634 year old Zeratul himself talks about his service to 1045 year old Raszagal in terms of millennia ("Matriarch, I have served you for many millennia. I have always valued your wisdom and strength. " - Countdown, The Stand) and that's not even going into his witnessing the entropy of entire realities.

[Turalyon]

Take that with a grain of salt. 634 year old Zeratul himself talks about his service to 1045 year old Raszagal in terms of millennia ("Matriarch, I have served you for many millennia. I have always valued your wisdom and strength. " - Countdown, The Stand) and that's not even going into his witnessing the entropy of entire realities.

Yeah, that Zeratul likes his hyperbole, doesn't he? What a drama queen.