Exercise 01: Establishing the Status Quo

[GnaReffotsirk]

Let's start considering where our story starts from. Then later we can start considering what the end is. This is a discussion of static story points that will be included in the community project.

Terran Sector

History:

The major factions have taken their places during the confederacy. The Dominion has replaced the Confederacy, and has since turned the sector into a military machine. In a sense, the Dominion represents the rise of the Military industrial complex.

The arrival of the UED and the subsequent defeat of the Dominion, led to:
1. the confiscation of the majority of Dominion held infrastructure, weapons, ships, armaments, and personnel.
2. manufacturing, mining, research, farming, and most industries have been conscripted (in a way) into the UED. To avoid economic problems, the business minded factions agreed to supply the UED whatever they needed. It was a totalitarian rule, but short lived.
3. increase in piracy, smuggling, and crime in general. And also mercenary recruitment. Gangs, brotherhoods, mafias have become indispensable to citizens and big corporations. Sometimes they even pay mercs to steal their own cargo supply ships. Ships designated to supply the UED.

All this build up caused by the arrival of the UED has set things in motion in the Terran sector. When the Zerg destroys the UED fleet this occured:

1. Dominion military assets that were employed by the UED during the war has been destroyed.
2. While infrastructure remained intact, the UED has broken the economy. Factions now demand compensations, transfer of ownership. The state of the sector is in depression. Some who were smart enough were able to protect themselves from this. Loses where great as the UED bled everyone dry.
3. Dominion supporters, who lent Mengsk his little force, made up of criminals, mercs, and the sorts, during the joint assault against Kerrigan's zerg remained loyal to Mengsk.

Overall, the Terran sector is now in a depression. While the Dominion still claim to be the ruling party, things are absolutely not under their control. The sector has been divided, think Alexander and his death, and ruled by different factions, each one laying claim to territories as far as they are able to exert their influence.

Some would use force, some supply, to bend worlds to accommodate them and help to supplye what they need to meet their own goals.

Some worlds have their magistrates removed by their own populace. One world that was infested with criminal factions, has been overtaken by these criminal groups that have consolidated themselves, and built up enough support and infrastructure empowering themselves during the war, and with the loss of Dominion policing them, the UED mainly focused on the Zerg, they have claimed a planet of their own.

You get the picture.

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[Zerg]

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[Protoss]

[ragnarok]

Is this taking place during the BW still?

[Visions of Khas]

Wait, what is this?

[GnaReffotsirk]

yup. it assumes there was no sc2 yet. Nisa wanted to do a collab with everyone, so I made this thread to give it a try.

Please, don't hesistate..

[Nissa]

Oh, well, I meant that when you're ready, I'll would help nail out the dialogue. However, now that I know it is this....I am not displeased. I think a good way to start would be to consider the characters and decide where each one might be after BW.

Hm...let me take a bit to muse over the first post...

[Turalyon]

So we are to assume that Sc2 is going to happen within the context of this?

It will definitely be interesting to see how you can rationalise how the Dominion gets to be so powerful and stable in 4 years when you're actually recognising how deep a whole the Terrans are at the end of BW.

[GnaReffotsirk]

My thoughts lean toward not having the Dominion become the dominant faction, rather show how Arcturus forces everyone to believe in him again as the only guy who can drag everyone along.

I think this is more dramatic, the effort he must take, and what steps he must do given how he failed to live up to his promise, which is the very thing that made people allow him to direct the sector.

Consider how Mao Zedong rose into power, then imagine if New World Order police state from the future arrives during his time and slams its foot down.

[Visions of Khas]

My only input right now is for atmosphere and background world building. The Koprulu Sector was Space Australia - a distant penal colony for the religious, the genetically diverse, the radically progressive. I originally saw it as Chiba in Neuromancer: a semi-controlled petri dish of technological, biological, and cultural evolution on crack; the most useful advancements were exploited by corporate powers, and human life was rarely a priority. This would stand in stolid contrast to the "purity" of the human form and essence of the UED.

I always enjoyed the thought of ragtag bands pooling together resources to stand against the harsh, unforgiving climates of the Koprulu worlds. Being on the outer rim of the galaxy, these are old worlds with harsh, ancient wisdom to teach.


Instead, StarCraft II gave us paradise worlds seemingly hand-crafted for human habitation, and there is no cultural, technological or bio-technological diversity whatsoever. Blizzard developed a stale, upright, unified terran society that I hardly think is appropriate for the original Starcraft setting. And rather than than the militias composed of and trained by hardened criminals in the original StarCraft, we got cookie-cutter toy soldiers.

[Nissa]

I respect your angle, Khas. I'll keep it in mind.

Okay, let's talk. First of all, I really love Gna's basis, and it's a great analysis. Very good place to start. I would like to add some things to it.

First of all, Umoja and Moria. Both of these factions are going to have become stronger post-BW, because Kerrigan's anti-Mengsk bias means that the Dominion (and for that matter, the UED) took the most damage during BW. Moria especially should become the most powerful faction, but likewise not terribly interested in fighting. It wants to preserve itself more than anything else, and is taking the opportunity to strengthen its holdings and spread out its resource gathering now that Kerrigan is, by all appearances, on a break. Given that the Combine is composed of guilds rather than being fully centralized, it should be filled with people who naturally resist any form of a Mengsk-like or UED-like government. If they suffer any large attack during our version of SCII, they should be able to form splinter groups very easily.

As for Umoja, I have less inspiration, but while it is strengthened, it is not as large as the Kel-Morian Combine. It is centralized, but tries simply to hold onto the few worlds it has, hoping that by bunkering down it will survive other wars. Umojans should have very strong patrotic ties, and possibly a close relationship with Raynor, if we like that angle.

As for what remains of the Dominion, Khas' general idea is the best. It is now a politically diverse cluster of varying groups with no real unity besides assorted relationships between factions that might have worked together before, or all remain on a single planet. Some of these groups would be interested in rebuilding the Dominion, and Mengskie-poo should be involved, but not the only person trying to lead again. I would like to see a return of Mengsk being more personally involved in bad stuff, rather than just being conqured or tagging along on someone else's adventure. It is my suggestion to do the Terran missions primarily from the perspective of Mengsk and his followers. We would see involvement of Mengsk's political competitors (maybe missions to kill them), Protoss Mengsk is negotiating with, and if we like, a Raynor appearance. Mengsk should also be violently angry if the Zerg are mentioned, like he's got this personal grudge against Kerrigan, and the slightest move of Zerg beyond certain borders causes him to immediately go into action. Revenge against Kerri is now a primary motivator for him.

As for other factions in the former Dominion (groups maybe Mengsk could try to recruit), they are either independent or trying to form alliances of their own. Maybe some of them could be thinking about heading towards Earth, or even going into unexplored space to get away from it all.

Likewise, there should be a number of outworld planets that were never involved with Umoja/Moria/Korhal and are just doin' their own thing. I'd imagine some of them have close ties to the Protoss, such as uneasy alliances or silent non-aggression agreements. The Protoss allow them to live simply to create buffer pockets of defense, and will continue to do so as long as these planets remain uninterested in the major Terran factions.

[Nissa]

Okay, sorry for double post, but I'm going to continue to think out loud.

The Protoss are probably in the most complicated position. Their explicit and implicit storylines in BW clearly show that they are suffering. We may want to consider the passage of years in their regard. In any case, there should be none of that stupid Daelaam crap. They're factions, because factions are more interesting than everyone magically getting along, with a cliche-ridden message. Also, no robots, no Fenix, no secret Conclave-hidden technology buried underground, and no freaking preservers. I'd very much like to get rid of the Tal'darim, but I'll accept votes on that one. But just so you know, you're gonna have to sell me really, really hard for me to go along with that bullcrap. I'd really much rather stick with the factions we know and develop them more.

Alright, so when we left off from BW, Artie-fo-farty was in charge. As we all know, he was a young lad upon promotion, so he doesn't have a lot of respect compared to others. He, however, was chosen partially because of his situation: he was trained as a Templar, but lost his nerve cords on Aiur, and so became one of the first Aiur-born to actually dabble in Dark Templar stuff.

Note that this is a reference to his unit portrait in BW.

Okay, so there should immediately be a host of older characters, some possibly annoyed that this baby-baby is the big boss bass. There should be Dark Templar leaders, Khalai leaders, and maybe a civilian advisor or two who's really just there to make sure everyone on Shakuras has somewhere to live. Oh, and Templar too.

The situation on Aiur should be taken more seriously. For example, there should be people who have lived there since the exile, people who either really hate Dark Templar, or who can't bear to leave Aiur. Both, more'n likely. Artanis should know that these people are there, and make smaller runs to rescue regular survivors and/or supply those that absolutely refuse to leave. There should be a Templar advisor who has knowledge of what survivor groups they have come into contact with, also.

But we're gonna need to figure out what Kerrigan wants, if anything, to do with the Aiur Zerg. Everything kinda hinges on that.

I would like to have a discussion on other planets the Protoss hold. There's Shakuras and Aiur, but the manual claimed that the Protoss held one eighth of the Xel'Naga's original spread, so there should be more planets in there, somewhere.

I'd like to keep Zeratul on the sidelines as far as the plot goes. After BW I'd imagine his hunting for anything to do with hybrids takes up most of hi time, and he may or may not send back information, hinging on his ability to do so.

I'd go on, but I have to go to work soon. Yak at you later.