Stalker Lore Question

[Visions of Khas]

Actually, Sandwich, I really like that idea. It would explain why Lasarra died a bloody death, but Templar combust. If there is a physiological component to psionics, it could be a response to accelerated metabolism, aggression, cortisol levels, etc. Moreover, the concept of the "cleansing flame" is often referenced by protoss, so this may be some oblique reference to a warrior's death.

However, as someone noted earlier, a zealot was slain in the Retaking Aiur cinematic, issuing forth blue flame but leaving behind a body.

We also need to come up with a reason why Zeratul got dusted instead of combusted. Did Amon collect all the infinity stones? XD

[Mislagnissa]

The only thing I can think of is a parallel with the God Emperor of 40K. Though his body is dead, his mentality and psychic power are confined to his body by the Golden Throne. Perhaps the Ihan Rii have similar technology. Dark Templar lore also holds that one's psychic potential increases the closer they are to death.

The fact that the ihanrii dragoon skin still has the moving portrait suggests that the corpses are indeed reanimated (which really messes with the already messy protoss lore, but whatever). Considering the fantasy-esque tone of the ihanrii skin lore, I think the author intended them to be literally magical.

I too entertained the idea that protoss wouldn't decompose in the same way as humans. Their corpses could be reanimated to whatever purpose, maybe even resurrection.

Are you familiar with the energy levels from Dragon Ball Z? Basically everything has ki energy and that amount of energy can vary moment to moment based on many factors. Even someone of base low energy level can increase his power level dramatically when he's pissed off. You could use that same kind of logic with psi (and there's many indication lore wise that it works the same way or is equivalent for all intent and purposes). So, going back to your comment, even if a zealot normally would have a lower base psi level, during combat, and especially before death, his psi level could be really high as he's going all out. Similarly, a Protoss with high psi level who was fatally wounded but did not die immediately could have the time to make peace with himself and lower his psi level which would prevent combustion.

I kinda like the idea anyways. You could say that, culturally, bursting into flame is a honorable death for a Protoss because their psi is readily given back to nature while leaving a corpse behind hinder the process. I'm not sure how that latter idea would fit with the dragoon though or with the "making peace with himself" part..

So they explode due to adrenaline rush?

I just thought of something else. Maybe the flame death ensures that their final memories are sent to the khala, using the energy produced to boost the transmission. While connection with the khala means that your memories are always stored somewhere, they aren't necessarily up to date. The flame death ensures that there aren't any pesky existential questions about whether a resurrected soul is the same or a copy. If the body doesn't explode, then it needs to be recovered and reanimated to pilot a dragoon.

Or maybe it takes different lengths of time for a protoss body to disintegrate. A violent adrenaline-fueled death results in a fairly quick combustion, but less violent less hyped deaths take cause a slower reaction. The bodies eventually disintegrate, but if recovered they may be embalmed or reanimated to halt the psychic decomposition process.

Since zealots and high templar have different death animations in SC1 (not sure about SC2), then the death animation may be affected by psychic training. The templar have many different warrior orders, with the zealot and high templar being examples of specific orders. The zealot training focuses on martial power, making them like adeptus astartes, so upon death they burst into flames. The high templar training focuses on military support, so upon death they produce a brief flash and ghostly image.

Having a combination of training, willpower and emotional state play a role would make it fairly easy to explain a diversity of death animations.

The article on the teleport retcon has a few ideas.

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I would prefer something simple and universal though. An intuitive explanation like the exploding indicating the release of the "soul"/psi to the khala/void should be easy to apply. The appearance and duration would be affected by training, willpower and emotional state at death. Protoss who are crippled but not killed may be teleported away to be placed into dragoons to keep fighting until medicine repairs them later, or elect to permanently join the dragoon order.

Protoss who die and return to the khala continue existing as bodiless "souls" or AI accessible via the Templar Archives by Preservers. They may be resurrected in robots or clones as circumstances permit or require. However, there are a whole host of ethical and existential issues involved that I won't mention here, but suffice to say the protoss have many different schools of thought regarding the afterlife and these have differing degrees of political influence.

The in-game animation represents death. The protoss do teleport their crippled warriors back to havens, but this is not represented in-game. The animation for teleportation is the same for all applications, that shimmering wormhole animation IIRC. So regarding the teleport death retcon, we have our cake and eat it too with gameplay and story segregation.

From there, we could make additional postulates:

• Protoss who die peacefully or unexpectedly might release their "soul" (really a shorthand for data bursts) without the corresponding bodily destruction, and these bodies may be interred in tombs.
  
  • Alternately, bodies always decompose unless preserved through some means and the protoss don't have tombs. This therefore ignores the statements in the dark templar trilogy about the protoss having to worrying about burying their dead.
• Protoss may learn to resist physical death through sheer willpower in a manner alien to human biology. This would leave a "corpse" behind (again, not represented in-game) that may be teleported elsewhere and reanimated.
  
  • At this point in time, only the ihanrii are known to practice the techniques that produce living corpses. Their death cult is all sorts of weird.

These two explanations are independent, so we can have ihanrii's animated corpses without positing that all protoss leave corpses behind. Perhaps the ihanrii are unique in maintaining tombs? Would be a way to make them more distinct without complicating the already messy protoss lore (i.e. only the dark templar trilogy mentions protoss corpses, whereas the games always depict them exploding).

Another reason to have protoss corpses might be for plots involving attacks on protoss tombs. I remember a couple of missions in Emperor: Battle for Dune that involved the tleilaxu pilfering sardukar tombs to use the genetic material in ghola clones. For example, terrans and zerg might raid the tombs to acquire protoss tissue for experimentation. Or create horrible protoss zombies with forbidden technology? Sounds like something the ihanrii would do to boost their forces and inspire fear in their enemies.

[Mislagnissa]

Actually, Sandwich, I really like that idea. It would explain why Lasarra died a bloody death, but Templar combust. If there is a physiological component to psionics, it could be a response to accelerated metabolism, aggression, cortisol levels, etc. Moreover, the concept of the "cleansing flame" is often referenced by protoss, so this may be some oblique reference to a warrior's death.

However, as someone noted earlier, a zealot was slain in the Retaking Aiur cinematic, issuing forth blue flame but leaving behind a body.

We also need to come up with a reason why Zeratul got dusted instead of combusted. Did Amon collect all the infinity stones? XD

Sorry, I missed your post when I last replied.

The deaths of Lasarra, Retaking Aiur zealot, and Zeratul need to be reconciled. Does anybody have pictures of the various death animations so we can compare them? My memory seems to be failing me.

What instances is the "cleansing flame" mentioned? Maybe we could world build some simple religious terminology? The wiki mentions "seven winds" as a forgotten bit of lore from the 1998 website.

I will wait until further responses before revising my hypothesis from last post.

[ragnarok]

We also need to come up with a reason why Zeratul got dusted instead of combusted. Did Amon collect all the infinity stones? XD

If that happened don't you think Blizzard would have been able to correct the contradictions via the SC2 lore?

[drakolobo]

Blizzard has long since said that the animation of blue flames was simple teleportation, why are you discussing that?

[ragnarok]

Blizzard has long since said that the animation of blue flames was simple teleportation, why are you discussing that?

You happen to remember exactly which year was that? Was it before we got ANY info on SC2?

[drakolobo]

- - - Updated - - -

You happen to remember exactly which year was that? Was it before we got ANY info on SC2?

StarCraft II Q&A batches/26 Karune. 2007-01-22

Do Protoss warriors actually die? What is the blue flash when they die?[/b]

In the chaos of the battlefield, Protoss warriors fight with tremendous power and grace, but even so, they can be mortally wounded. Then the Protoss' foes often bear witness to a startling sight: the injured Protoss disappears in a bright flash of light. Such a vision has caused primitive races to quail in superstitious fear, and yet it has no supernatural cause. On the contrary, it is merely the result of teleportation, which is one of the chief strengths of Protoss technology. Protoss warriors typically have teleport mechanisms built into their armor. If the warrior is sufficiently injured, a properly functioning mechanism will automatically teleport the body to the nearest safe haven.

A Protoss warrior who is badly injured but still living may be placed in a dragoon--or latterly an immortal--shell to continue to fight. This is the choice of the individual warrior. Some warriors elect to shoulder the burden of remaining among the living instead of joining the sum of Protoss lives embodied in the Khala. It is worthy of note that the lives of individual Protoss that have passed into the Khala are no longer coherent entities, and the Protoss cannot speak with their dead per se. However, there are memories and strands of experience that can be accessed. Only the most skilled Protoss preservers can locate and follow specific desired strands of knowledge. The tremendous value of preservers comes from the fact that they carry within themselves and can access the sum total of Protoss experience at an individual level.

[ragnarok]

I see. Didn't know about that.

[Visions of Khas]

Blizzard has long since said that the animation of blue flames was simple teleportation, why are you discussing that?

We're discussing it because the opening cinematic depicts a zealot's body collapsing to the ground while blue energy erupts from his body. You can see the zealot fall to his knees and slump to the side after the blue fire dissipates.

[Mislagnissa]

Okay, so I checked out the different death animations. I’m typing on my phone so I cannot link video or image.

Zealot (SC1): burst into bright blue flames
High templar (SC1): release blue burst, brief afterimage
Dark templar (SC1): burst into dark grey flames
Link: http://www.sclegacy.com/index.php/editorials/12-speculation/296-the-animation-of-death

Lasarra: release blue burst, explode into purple bloody mess. Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LXax9PSG9A0

Zealot (cinematic): release blue burst, body slumps dead. Link: https://youtu.be/M_XwzBMTJaM?t=83

Zeratul: slowly crumble into dark grey ash, releasing ghost at same time(?)

Okay, so it seems that the “giving up the ghost” bit and the “disintegrating” bit are not the same thing. I think I can work with that.

So new revised explanation:

Protoss who die release their, uh, “souls” or whatever in a burst of flames. This leaves a body behind, which may or may not disintegrate in a separate process.

In the game, all bodies vanish, so that may be chalked up to gameplay and story segregation. No help from that.

So the only bit that needs explaining is what causes the corpse to disintegrate.

If protoss leave corpses naturally, then they would require a psychic/tech means of cremating the bodies. It’s easy to assume suits might be designed with self-destruct or are teleported to mortuaries.

If protoss corpses disintegrate naturally, then they would need a means of preserving the body. It’s easy to assume that chemical, psychic, or technological means may be used to preserve.