Analyzing "Starcraft: Queen of Blades"

l33telboi · Jun 8, 2008

During a few recent threads involving the Starcraft ‘verse, I found myself having to flip through "Queen of Blades" by Aaron Rosenberg on more then one occasion just to find one miniscule quote or the like. Needless to say, it's quite tiring in the long run. It's far easier to do the same with the novels I have stored in eBook format.

So, I decided to re-read the novel, and quote everything that might be of importance. And since I'm already in the process of doing that, why not transcribe it all here while I'm at it? Along with comments on this and that and perhaps even some analysis.

The novel itself is... mediocre at parts, below that in others. The author doesn't seem to have much of a sense of scale and the whole military aspect is poorly written. Not to mention that the author also seems to have a questionable knowledge about Starcraft as a whole. That latter part will be elaborated upon during the course of this novel.

A few notes before I start. For the most part I will be quoting entire paragraphs even if the interesting bit is just a sentence long, in the hopes of giving the important bit of text a little context and to help people looking for it find it easier.

I will also be keeping track of dates, timeframes and the like, even if at first it might seem as if they’re pointless. Basically I want to peg a hard timeframe to episode two from the game (which this novel covers). I’ve also found that sometimes when you don’t keep track of time, you regret it later on, because it could’ve been used to measure faster then light travel and a number of other things.

And yes, I know, my thread regarding “Firstborn” is still somewhat uncompleted, but I’m sure I’ll get to that at somepoint.

Prologue

”Carefully,” warned the brood’s cerebrate, observing their progress through the overlord floating just above the sphere. Because the cerebrate itself could not move, the airborne overlords served as its eyes, ears, and mouth. “The Chrysalis must not be harmed!”

Obedient to its will, the ultralisks shifted slightly closer and slowed their pace, allowing more time for the brood before them to open the way.

“We have it, Master,” the cerebrate announced in the depths of its own mind. “We have your prize.”

“Good.” The reply echoed from within, rising from the deep well of the zerg hive-mind. “You must watch over the Chrysalis, and ensure that no harm comes to the creature within it. Go now and keep safe my prize.”

Alright, here’s a little something that might give us a better idea on how zerg communication works and what their command structure looks like. The basics are pretty much the same as were already elaborated upon in the game and the manual. The overmind controls everything, he’s at the top of the proverbial pyramid, issuing orders via a form of telepathy. Beneath him are the cerebrates and those in turn control a number of overlords. A quite simplistic system.

What’s worth noting is the efficiency and speed of the communication. There seems to be literally no lag time between orders given and orders carried out, both in the case of cerebrate to overlord communication, overmind to cerebrate communication as well as overmind to minion communication. Yet the overmind was situated on Char during the fall of Tarsonis. Basically, their telepathic communication reaches across interstellar distances with very little lag time. Though so far I haven’t been able to peg down any hard figures for this, suffice to say that they seem to be so small that you could very well peg them as ‘instant’.

On the Zerg marched, the city burning around them. At last the Swarm had gathered itself within a vast crater where once the city’s vaunted lake had stretched. Now the surface was glass-smooth, seared by the force of the protoss’s landing ships and unmarred by the heavy feet that had trekked across toward the city under siege.

A mentioned of a vaporized lake. It’s not really important but I thought it very strange, and that’s also why I’m bringing it up.

It’s a little unclear of exactly how and why it was vaporized. The Protoss were clearly responsible for it and it’s more specifically said their landing ships caused it. Giving how that is termed, my first impression was that this might’ve been caused by their thrusters. But then again, that’s a lot of energy to be coming from the thrusters of landing ships, they’d literally level anything directly beneath them. Which is stranger still when you consider that shuttles in-game, and in descriptions regarding their other vessels – there usually is no downward thrust from their engines at all. But then neither would it make sense to assume it was weaponry that did it. Why would the Protoss fire into a lake for no reason? What’s the goal behind vaporizing a lake and glassing the ground beneath that? Creating a safe LZ perhaps? Where you can guarantee no Zerg are burrowed and lying in wait? It would make some sense since turning that much water into vapor would cause a serious case of bad visibility as a side effect.

All in all, that’s a lot of energy injected into a lake for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

As the cerebrate swelled with pride, a great darkness descended upon the crater, a shadow of the mass that drifted into view high above them. Beyond the upper reaches of the planet’s dying atmosphere hung a massive storm, a swirl of orange and violet gases that spun around strange flickering lights. They moved faster and faster, the colors merging in their fury, until the center of the storm collapsed in upon itself, light and color giving way to a shadowy circle far darker then even the space hovering beyond.

“Now you have grown strong enough to bear the rigors of warp travel with the Swarm,” the Overmind stated, its words sending a thrum of power through the Swarm. “Thus we shall make our exit from this blasted world and secure the Chrysalis within the Hive Cluster upon the planet char.”

A description of what zerg warp travel looks like. The description is pretty much the same as the visuals in the game cinematics. It also appears to be quite different from what the Terrans use, visually at least, as there’s never been a mention of a giant swirl or anything like that when they warp.

Chapter 1

“…but of course Mengsk – pardon me, Emperor Arcturus the First – claims this was all necessary. According to his spokesperson, the new Terran Dominion is doing everything necessary to remove the alien threat and make the colonies safe once more. It has been almost two months, however. In this reporter’s opinion…”

A timeframe given. Though it’s not certain what it refers to. Almost two months since what? The fall of the Confederacy and the establishment of the Terran Dominion? More to come later in this same chapter.

Still laughing, Raynor stood up and crossed the room, Duke’s short fuse had cost him the Hyperion, and Mengsk had received the first public defeat of his new Terran Dominion before he’d even declared its formation. Raynor had left with the Hyperion and a dozen other ships, his own private fleet, leaving Duke bound and gagged behind him.

So Raynor steals 13 vessels from the Dylarian shipyards, the same shipyards that are featured in Brood Wars. Not sure exactly what type of vessels these are. But they’re almost certainly all military vessels, since the Dylarian shipyards is a military installation. In Brood War you steal 25 battlecruisers from the place, for instance.

The question, however, was what to do after he deserted. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, since he’d planned to go off alone. But having others with him changed that. They looked up to him, depended upon him, sat patiently waiting for his orders. And he didn’t have any. Oh, they’d stolen the ships, of course. And they’d hit a few outposts, singed a few patrols. But he didn’t know what to do next. He didn’t know where he was going. It had been six weeks he still had no idea.

Alright, so Raynor has been cruising around for six weeks since he left Mengsk. This gives a good starting point for mapping out how long a timeframe episode 2 occupies. Because leaving Mengsk was the last thing you did in episode 1.

Stepping up beside Horner, he began inputting details into the navigational system. “Warm,” he muttered to himself as he typed, “though not unbearably so. Air a bit sticky and filled with ash. One visible sun. Two small moons. Red ringed planet nearby. Covered in ash, pale gray, at least an inch thick. Some hills and small mountains, black rock rather then dirt. Fire and smoke all around. Probably volcanoes everywhere. No vegetation or animal life.” The terms came back to him easily, a holdover from his days as a marshal on Chau Sara describing plots for potential colony use. He finished typing in the description and stepped back as he let the computer search its files for a match, staring off into space through the wide portholes that lined the front of the room.

The first description of the planet, which I initially forgot to include.

Tarsonis has been overrun. The zerg had taken the entire planet. It had been six weeks.

Confirmation on the fact that the Confederacy fell six weeks ago.

He recalled the feel of his feet on the ground, of the ash swirling around him. “Normal. Full Terran gravity.” Then he remembered something else. “High sulfur content in the air. High oxygen count, too.” He had felt almost light-headed when breathing, despite the ash’s almost choking him.

More descriptions on Char. But wait, didn’t he just say that there were no animals and plant life on the planet? Curious, since it does have a semi-breathable atmosphere. I’m no expert on ecospheres of planets though, could the constant volcanic activity explain this somehow?

Edited in Char instead of Chau Sara. Honestly, how do you get those two planets mixed up?

His first impulse was to grab a scoutship and head out alone, at maximum burn. But that wouldn’t have been smart. Tarsonis had fallen to the Swarm, and Kerrigan with it. She couldn’t have escaped them. That meant they had her. It would explain the nightmarish figures in his dreams—zerg, but more so, somehow more powerful and more terrifying then the creatures ha had already faced.

So, a mention of a scoutship with faster then light travel capability. Nothing especially interesting there. But I thought it might be prudent to bring up all new ship-classes and the like. One question though, is this ship part of his fleet or is it part of the fighter/dropship compliment on his BC?

Two hours later the Hyperion prepared to jump, the rest of Raynor’s rebellious little fleet trailing behind it. Ten people had left before the ships could depart, out of over four hundred. The rest had signed on for the mission and whatever came out of it. Most had been excited jittery, and he knew only part of that was the thought of rescuing fallen comrades. They were all just pleased he had taken decisive action. He was leading, and they were ready to follow. He just hoped they weren’t following to their dooms.

Sitting in the captain’s chair on the Hyperion, Raynor watched as space folded around them, letting the massive ship glide from normal reality and accelerate rapidly toward the ash-covered world of his dreams.

Two things to note here. First off, a little over 400 people occupying and piloting the 13 vessels. That’s quite a low figure. Not only out-of-universe speaking, but in Liberty’s Crusade it was said that each Battlecruiser housed 500 or more people.

Also, a little info on Terran warp-travel. Apparently it doesn’t take place in normal reality.

That’s enough for now. In the next few chapters the action is going to be picking up rather dramatically, so expect more interesting stuff in those. All in all this novel has quite a lot worth quoting compared to titles like "Nova", "Firstborn" and "Shadow Hunters".

Malaskor · Jun 8, 2008

More descriptions on Chau Sara. But wait, didn’t he just say that there were no animals and plant life on the planet? Curious, since it does have a semi-breathable atmosphere. I’m no expert on ecospheres of planets though, could the constant volcanic activity explain this somehow?

It could be that there are large amounts of extremophile bacteria/plankton that generate the oxygen - that would be the easiest explanation that comes to my mind.

++++

As for the 400 people flying the 13 ships, they may just be enough as minimum crew needed to keep the ships going to where they want - but not for more complex things like combat, (more than basic) maintainance/repair etc.

OrkKaptin · Jun 8, 2008

An excellent read. I await the next analysis.

l33telboi · Jun 8, 2008

Right-o, I thought I'd do a few more chapters before sleep.

Chapter 2

Two weeks later Raynor stood on the bridge and looked down upon the world he had dubbed Char. Even before Horner jockeyed the Hyperion into orbit he could see the smoke rising from several spots around the dull gray world, and the flares of orange and gold that often preceded them. Judging from their preliminary scans the entire planet was caught n the throes of constant volcanic activity and in places it looked as if the ground itself might be unstable, still fluid from the repeated superheating beneath it. They had maneuvered past a larger red planet on their way in, dodging its wide golden rings, and spied two small moons as they braked just beyond Char’s atmosphere.

A few interesting things here. The first one being a direct mention of faster then light travel time. Two weeks from where Raynor was to Char. At the moment, that doesn’t tell us a whole lot of course, since we don’t know how far Char is from where Raynor was. But perhaps we’ll get something more substantial on that later on in the novel. Still, Char is said to be on the edges of the Koprulu sector, and I doubt Raynor had left that sector since the exiled Terrans seem to be focused there.

And Char itself seems to have quite a lot of volcanic activity, if you can see the eruptions all the way to orbit and patches of molten ground. I still find it rather odd that such a place could have a temperature that’s manageable to humans. Perhaps the sun is more distant or weaker then our own?

Yes, they had gotten worse. He was having them more frequently now. Warp travel was exhausting -- something about the body not being designed for moving at that speed and the mind not being able to process the information around it. Because of that he, like the rest of his people, had found himself dozing off several times a day, anywhere for a few minutes to an hour. And each time the dreams had returned when he closed his eyes.

A little more information on how Terran faster then light travel works. It’s apparently quite hard on the human brain.

If the dreams were right, the zerg were there too. Raynor didn’t see any sign of them but he knew that meant nothing. The deadly Swarm was capable of hiding all traces from even the strongest scans. Hell, he’d walked, slept, and rode right above them on Mar Sara, maybe for months, without even realizing it.

So the Zerg are apparently quite stealthy. The sensors on a Battlecruiser can’t find them even if they know they’re hiding out on a planet. Though in this case it’s not particularly surprising, the Zerg on Char were focused deep underground. And by the “above them” blurb regarding Mar Sara, it seems as if they did the same there. Perhaps this is a common tactic when it comes to infesting planets? Start out underground until you’ve built up enough forces to swarm the enemy? “Shadow of the Xel’Naga” have them building structures just like in the game though, so that means it’s not an exclusive tactic used by the Zerg.

The Norad III. General Duke’s ship. “Great.” Keeping his eyes on the ship, Raynor backed across the room until he was next to the control chair. “Any signs of support?”

“Two carrier ships and a science vessel, plus one cargo hauler,” Horner confirmed. Now Raynor could see the smaller smudges beside the first one.

“No other battleships?”

Horner frowned at his screen and tapped it again, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “No sir,” he finally replied. “The Norad III’s by herself.”

“Hunh.” Raynor rubbed his chin, thinking. The Norad III wasn’t really by itself, of course – it had four other ships with it, making up a small fleet. But Matt was thinking in terms of a space battle, where the only important ships were the battleships and their fighter complements. If this were war Duke would be here with a half-dozen warships behind him. That meant this wasn’t an all-out attack, on either Char or his little rebellion. Not that Duke could have predicted his arrival here – even if Mengsk had a spy onboard, as Raynor knew was possible, he hadn’t given anyone but Horner the coordinates for this place. And he knew Horner was too idealistic to betray him. So if Duke wasn’t here for him, why was he here? And without backup? Though then again, the Norad III was a heavy warship, one of the Behemoth class, and could carry more then a thousand soldiers and two dozen star fighters, so he wasn’t exactly defenseless. Plus he had those carriers, which meant he had ample ground forces on hand. But you only used ground forces when you didn’t want to damage the area. What was there on Char to damage?

A mention of carriers, they have been mentioned in other novels as well, “Uprising” for instance. And they’re apparently troop carriers rather then modern carriers that carry fighters/bombers.

Then there’s the Norad III, a Behemoth-class Battlecruiser, also dubbed a ‘heavy warship’. It’s a bit sad that we haven’t really gotten any information on the other types of capital ships the Terrans employ except for a few blurbs here and there. It would be interesting to know just what exactly they are and what they’re capable of.

Oh well, on to the details of the Behemoth-class.

They can apparently carry over 1000 soldiers, which is higher then the 500 I mentioned earlier (from LC) and naturally a lot higher then the 400 for Raynor’s entire fleet, especially considering the Hyperion (the flagship of his fleet) is a Behemoth-class as well. The vessels seem to be able to carry a lot of people, but it’s not a necessity. I also wonder if the terming here, soldiers to be specific, implies that this is just the marines on-board, or if it’s the crew.

The Behemoth-class can also carry two dozen starfighters (24, in other words). Which probably means Wraith, but it’s possible they also have other types of fighters.

And also some insights into how the Terran Dominion conducts warfare, ground forces are apparently only used when you don’t want to damage the area.

Horner understood him. It was one of the reasons he like his second -- the young man was able to make sense of his verbal shorthand. “Weapons ports open, sir, and shields up. She’s definitely in combat mode.” He frowned. “I did get two strange things, sir.” Raynor waited for him to continue. “Those carriers are reading as more then half-empty. And I got a signal off Char’s surface. From the Norad III.”

There was one thing that didn’t really make sense when I started reading the novels. In “Uprising” a lot of things had shields, both the Hyperion and the Norad II had them, and there was even a Wraith that was equipped with them. At first I chalked it up to some kind of error or whatnot, but as I kept reading the novels, it became somewhat clear that the Terrans do have shields, though they aren’t employed often. This is reinforced even in this novel, as it’s once again said that the Norad III has shields. So far, shields seem to be very scarce though, and the times we do see shields they protect high-value targets. Take the Hyperion and the Norad III here for instance. They’re both flagships for their respective owners and carry shields. But normal Battlecruisers are not mentioned to have them. In addition to these examples, we’ve seen personal shields, shields that protect individual structures, shields that protect rooms and shields that protect individual units.

My guess is that this is all something similar to the defense matrix thing the Science Vessels have. A new and perhaps somewhat experimental technology that’s only given to people with either a lot of money or a lot of connections. In fact, there’s not a single incident so far that doesn’t fit with that guess. But it is still just a guess.

Chapter 3

His boots crunched into the surface, sending small puffs of ash swirling up around his ankles, and he was glad for the rebreather covering his nose and mouth and the attached goggles covering his eyes. He’d considered wearing his combat armor but had decided against it – though the suit would have given him strength and protected him against minor damage, it wasn’t good in tight spaces and had only a limited power supply. Besides, he’d seen zerg cut right through armor. He was better off relying on agility, especially since he didn’t have his bike handy.

I’ll take this here moment to elaborate a little on what’s going to happen and the equipment carried by the troops. Here’s the situation:

Raynor has just set down on Char in the hopes of finding Kerrigan that’s been sending him telepathic messages indicating that she’s in trouble. And as you can see from the quote, he’s not wearing power armor, in fact he seems to be armed and clad like this and this. Also, it’s not directly said, but it seems as if the men he’s with are clad in the same way. No powered armor. Whether they are wearing any body-armor at all, is unknown though. As for the weaponry carried. They are said to carry ‘gauss rifles’, but it’s never elaborated upon exactly what kind of rifles these are. It is however said that they are well armed. So…

As for the armor itself, it doesn’t seem to be good in tight spaces, which I suppose is only logical considering it’s rather bulky. It protects against minor damage, which is sort of a funny terming considering they’re said to be effective against most small-arms (with LC saying they are immune to pretty much everything except needle-guns, probably another term for gauss weaponry). I don’t consider that ‘minor damage’, but hey. And it’s also said to have a limited power supply. I can’t recall the specifics, but I actually think you could work out a pretty detailed timeframe we’re dealing with based on how long they operate in “Speed of Darkness”. There was an instance there where one of the marines check on remain power and say how much is left, and we’d been following that platoon for the entire novel so it should be possible. I’ll have to look into that some time. Perhaps I’ll do another thread for that novel once this is done. The armor however doesn't seem to provide good defense against the Zerg and their attacks though. Something that's already indicated in many other sources.

“Hm.” Raynor squatted as well, still staring at the hole. “Could lead to caverns, though,” he suggested. They all knew what that meant. The zerg had shown a clear affinity for the underground. If this hole did lead to tunnels beneath the surface, It probably also led straight to the Swarm.

Another indication that the Zerg run around underground a lot, and that they sometimes construct ‘bases’ there.

“Drop a sensor,” he told Ayers, moving away from the crater. “We’ll keep an ear on it. Good catch, though.” The solider saluted, already reaching for the pack at his side. Each of the troopers had at least one sensor, and they were all keyed into everyone’s else’s comm unit. If the zerg crept past this crater they’d all hear it.

A little more info on the equipment carried by this group. They all have sensors that are described as if they are little more then microphones. And they all have comm units that allow them to communicate with each other. More on the comm unit later.

“We’ve got readings, sir,” Horner continued. “Incoming ships.”

“Duke’s reinforcements?”

“No sir,” Horner replied, and the fact that he didn’t sound pleased made Raynor uneasy. Whatever was coming, his second would have preferred Terran Dominion warships. This couldn’t be good. “It’s protoss, sir,” Horner explained, and Raynor resisted the urge to shoot something, anything.

This tells us that vessels traveling at warp (or in warp?) can be detected by sensors.

But what if the protoss had come here for another reason? What if, this time, it wasn’t the zerg they had tracked? The zerg were telepathic, Raynor knew – the entire Swarm was linked together and members could communicate instantly across entire planets.

Another insight into zerg communications. They can communicate instantly across entire planets. I wonder if this includes smaller critters such as zerglings and hydralisks as well, or if it’s overlord to overlord communications.

He repaid the favor by opening up with his gauss rifle, firing a row of metal spikes deep into the snake-like zerg’s head. It toppled to one side, the impact driving it to the ground, the glow already fading from its eyes. It hadn’t seen Raynor yet and he hoped it had died before revealing their location to the rest of the Swarm.

Ah, apparently even the smaller critters are capable of this communication, though it’s possible to take them out fast enough to avoid detection.

Also a note on durability on the hydralisk. Previously, in novels like “Liberty’s Crusade”, it’s been made somewhat clear that hydralisks are tough suckers to bring down with just rifles. In that novel for instance, they ended up igniting the fuel on a vehicle, making it explode to take out a hydralisk, because their rifles seemed ineffective. But this shows us that it is possible to kill them with normal rifles, even if it means firing a ‘row’ of spikes into the head at point-blank range. No overpenetration though, which sometimes happen with zerglings.

Of course, the fact that in both these instances the soldiers were said to use ‘gauss rifles’ without elaborating on exactly what type of rifle is a bit sad. The latter novels have been incorporating the AGR-14 more and more, and it’s usage indicates that it might be somewhat standard for non-armored soldiers, such as guards and whatnot, and both these cases had unarmored people firing on the critters. The C-14 is indicated to be stronger then the AGR-14, which is why it would be nice to know how a hydralisk would fair against each of those weapons.

A quick break here because I think I'm close to hitting the word limit.

l33telboi · Jun 8, 2008

Chapter 4

He had to do something fast to even the odds, and he did it. Grasping a heavy sphere from his belt, he primed it and lobbed it overhand. The grenade flew past him, over Mannix and Cavez and Squire, and disappeared into that darkness where Patel had ventured after Ayers.

“Grenade!” Raynor shouted, dropping to a crouch, and Messner behind him and Mannix before him did the same. He hoped Patel had heard.

Then the grenade went off, sending a shockwave back through the passage. The walls shook and slivers of rock fell, slicing flesh and canvas and leather, bouncing off metal. But the ceiling held, the floor didn’t crack open, and an instant later Patel called out, “All clear!”

Ayers hadn’t been so lucky. The veteran trooper lay on the ground just beyond the fissure’s exit, blood pooling beneath him from the gaping hole in his chest and from the places where his arms had been. The hydralisk had stopped him from shooting by shearing both arms off at the elbow, then it had gutted him. They hadn’t even heard the first blow. Fortunately the hydralisk hadn’t been expecting a grenade. Judging from the body it had taken the impact full force in the chest and head, and had been squashed like a bug against the far wall. Raynor hoped it had been painful but knew it probably hadn’t.

Alright, the group has now entered the zerg tunnels and is starting to meet some resistance.

First off, the group seems to be armed with grenades. The strength of these grenades is not exactly known, but based on the shockwaves and the fact that they are apparently capable of throwing a hydra into a nearby wall from the force of the explosion suggests they’re stronger then what we consider grenades. A hydra is after all quite a large critter, weighing quite a lot judging by the strength it has and thus the muscles involved, not to mention volume. Sources on the volume vary somewhat, but all seem to depict them as far larger then even power-armored terrans (this is most notably shown in the Amerigo cinematic). And some even have them towering over zealots. Grenades, as far as I know don’t really throw people around from the sheer force.

Also, the hydra demonstrated some cunning when taking down the terran by first shearing off the arms so he couldn’t shoot it and then gutting him before he had time to call out for help. Also, for those that don’t know a lot about the hydra except the game, yes they do use their blades in melee, quite a lot even.

“Get hold of the other crews,” he told Mannix. “Relay it back if you can’t get a signal to them from down here. Get everyone down here. We’re gonna need ‘em.” Mannix nodded and called Messner to her, presumably to coordinate the process of reaching the other teams. Raynor knew he could trust her to take care of it. Soon they’d have everyone down here with them, roughly three hundred troopers. He hoped it would be enough.

So, about 300 of the 400 total are capable soldiers? It’s not that strange I suppose, given that when Raynor defected, he was surrounded by nothing but military men.

They encountered several more zerg. Each time it was only a small group of the aliens and each time Raynor’s troopers made short work of them, though not without cost. Patel had survived that first attack with a wound to one arm and made it trough another unscathed, only to have his face bitten off by a zergling that leaped from a small hole in the ceiling and tore into him on the way down. Gina Elani, the petite trooper who had bandaged Patel’s first wound, was sliced in half by a hydralisk when she stopped to give one of her fallen teammates a hand up. That teammate died as well, his chest ripped open even as Messner fired a full clip into the zerg’s back.

Some elaboration on how dangerous the zerg can be in close quarters. It seems as if they get within striking range, you’re as good as dead. At least without powerarmor. I’m also wondering if there would be any cause to get some figures on the slicing a human in half incident. I know it’s not something commonly calculated, and indeed it might be better to just define it as is and not with numbers, given that something like that could turn out rather complex given the variables both the sharpness of the blade and the power behind the swipe would represent. Still, any ideas?

Also, another indication as to hydralisk durability. I’m not sure exactly how many rounds there are in these clips, pretty impossible to know given that we don’t even know what type of rifle this is I suppose.

“Sir!” Cavez pointed, and Raynor followed his gesture, catching his breath as he saw the shape suspended near the center of the arch. It was an eye, a human eye, or at least it would have been if humans grew twenty feet tall. A cluster of thick tendrils trailed behind it and were wrapped around what looked like massive web strands crisscrossing the arch. The eye hung from them like a horribly altered spider, wriggling as they approached its web.

“Somebody blind that ugly sucker!” Raynor shouted, and Squire took aim and fired. A single spike plunged deep into the eye, dead-enter on its massive pupil, and with a grating squawk the eye burst, showering them with bits of jellied goo. The tendrils still clung to the web, twitching slightly.

“Guess there’s no sense knocking,” Raynor muttered to Mannix beside him, and she mustered a weak smile in return. The eye had obviously been a sentry, and it had seen them approaching this whole time. The swarm knew they were here.

Alright, a new type of critter, apparently some form of sentry. I’m actually curious if this is where the dev team for Starcraft 2 got the idea for the creep tumor, since they seem pretty similar.

Getting through was going to be a problem, though. He shot a hydralisk through the head with his rifle and then drew his pistol and shot another that had been about to gut Mannix from behind. Steadying his pistol barrel atop and across his rifle, he fired one and then the other blasting anything in his way. Zerglings were everywhere, leaping at men’s heads or chewing through their arms or clamping those massive jaws around their ankles, tangling limbs and guns and leaving the vulnerable. The hydralisks were right behind them, as were the mutalisks, both using their spikes and blades to carve through the human forces. Raynor saw Squire go down, scythes from two different hydralisks meeting in her chest, her rifle shoved down by the blows and discharging at her feet, kicking up rock shards as the spikes struck the ground. Messner fell beneath a pack of zerglings and was literally ripped apart -- Mannix saw it as well and was kind enough to put a bullet through the young trooper’s head before he could register the pain. Raynor’s troops were good, well-armed and well-trained and well-motivated, but they were drastically outnumbered. The tight quarters – wide enough for them to be surrounded but not wide enough for them to back away – didn’t help. The zerg were all linked together, speaking to each other’s minds, and that let them move as a single body. Raynor’s people weren’t so lucky. They stumbled against one another, blocked one another’s shots, and sometimes even shot each other. That didn’t help.

Again, some indications on how effective humans are against zerg. What’s more interesting is the blurb at the end, indicating that the zerg can coordinate vastly better then humans on the tactical scale because of their mind-linking.

What I found really strange though is that there were Mutalisks down there. Why would you have aerial units inside cramped tunnels? More interesting is the fact that they still seem to do okay despite this handicap.

Raynor and his team braced themselves for the moment of contact. Just before the zerg reached them, however, Mannix pulled a grenade from her vest, primed it, and lobbed it at the approaching creatures. It struck just before a hydralisk and blew the creature apart as it detonated, the blast taking several others with it and battering a dozen more aside. Raynor quickly fired into those dazed zerg, killing them before they could recover. Then the rest were upon them and he was back to firing pistol over rifle and rifle under pistol, swiveling the barrels left and right to keep his front covered.

Again, some indication to the strength of these grenades. It blew a hydralisk to bits, normal grenades, again from my limited knowledge, don’t do this to even normal people, they might blow limbs into bits (legs, arms) and even crater the torso heavily (remember the ‘throw yourself on a grenade’ move?). But nothing as serious as blowing an entire person to pieces. But again, this is based on stuff I’ve read on spacebattles and whatever blurbs some of the people in the army blabbed about. So I might very well be wrong. Correct me, or elaborate on this, if you know more.

Still rather hard to get specific numbers since a hydralisk isn’t a human. It’s a lot bigger and more massive, not to mention much better armored.

“Stay frosty!” he hollered, then fired both guns on full auto in a semi-circle before him.

Nothing extra here, except that the pistol Raynor has apparently fires on full auto instead of semi-auto.

Chapter 5

“As you command, o Queen,” the cerebrate acknowledged. It did not move but somehow it seemed to dim, the pulsing along its sides fading slightly, and Raynor knew it had focused its attention elsewhere. The lesser zerg passed through the arch and vanished from view. Even the giant maggots had disappeared, Raynor realized as he glanced around. The chamber was completely empty save for the two of them and the inactive cerebrate – and the remains of his soldiers here and beyond, mingled with those zerg they had slain.

Ok, so now Kerrigan has transformed and Raynor’s team has been reduced to pulp. Much of this next chapter concentrates on his and her first interaction with each other.

The interesting bit about this is the part about the Cerebrate and how apparently it has left the room and its body there having become inactive. Makes one wonder, are the cerebrate bodies really just shells that they can travel between? It would explain and work well with the parts about a Cerebrate not dying even though you physically kill its body.

That last statement was issued like a command, and he felt the force of her words and her personality bearing down on him, compelling him to submit.

So Kerrigan apparently has some form of telepathic persuasion ability.

For a second he considered raising the rifle after all, shooting her from behind. At this range he couldn’t miss, and for all her powers and organic armor and mottled skin and scary hair, a clipfull of iron spikes would still finish her. He was sure of it. Well, almost sure.

But he never got the chance to test that theory. As Kerrigan turned away her skin paled, then became transparent. In an eyeblink she had vanished completely, fading from the edges in until finally nothing remained. Raynor was alone.

Kerrigan was still nearby, he knew. She had gone invisible, just as she had done when she’d been a Ghost. He’d thought the process require a specialized suit of combat armor. Apparently he’d been wrong. Or perhaps the Queen of Blades simply no longer required such props.

Some information on Kerrigan’s ability to cloak herself. Also, Raynor should be glad he didn’t put her to the test on his assumption on the clipful of iron spikes deal, as we’ll see later on.

Also, note that this is the first place I ever saw any indication as to what the standard spikes are made out of. Iron – it turns out. More then logical of course, considering it’s quite abundant, easy to make and still suitable to be used as projectiles. More on this later in the novel.

And that's enough for today, I'm afraid. The rest will come whenever I have time.

Imperial Glory · Jun 8, 2008

Good stuff, good stuff. A thread for SoD in the future would be very awesome-it's easily my favorite of the books.

More descriptions on Chau Sara. But wait, didn’t he just say that there were no animals and plant life on the planet? Curious, since it does have a semi-breathable atmosphere. I’m no expert on ecospheres of planets though, could the constant volcanic activity explain this somehow?

I think I recall seeing a few critters skittering around during the precursor campaign, which would suggest it wasn't completely lifeless.

This ought to shed some light on the snip, though.

SCC Map Compendium said:
Chau Sara has been a flash point for unparalleled hostilities during the Wars. Seeding the atmosphere with toxic spores, the Zerg enslaved the Terran population that founded the colony and changed the surface of the world to better support their Hive clusters. Then, out of the cold endlessness of space, a great Protoss fleet arrived and, seeking to prevent further infestation, incinerated the planet. Since that time, Chau Sara has been a lifeless world hanging in the void.

So, Chau Sara has seen a lot of climate change recently.

A few interesting things here. The first one being a direct mention of faster then light travel time. Two weeks from where Raynor was to Char. At the moment, that doesn’t tell us a whole lot of course, since we don’t know how far Char is from where Raynor was. But perhaps we’ll get something more substantial on that later on in the novel. Still, Char is said to be on the edges of the Koprulu sector, and I doubt Raynor had left that sector since the exiled Terrans seem to be focused there.

I'd say this is just more evidence leaning toward the notion that the TD is still using Generation 1 warp drives.

And Char itself seems to have quite a lot of volcanic activity, if you can see the eruptions all the way to orbit and patches of molten ground. I still find it rather odd that such a place could have a temperature that’s manageable to humans. Perhaps the sun is more distant or weaker then our own?

Indeed, it really bugged me that they mentioned him walking out with no suit. I think Char has 2 suns going by ingame artwork, which makes it even odder.

A little more information on how Terran faster then light travel works. It’s apparently quite hard on the human brain.

Worth adding that this is the reason passengers go into cold sleep for long trips.

So the Zerg are apparently quite stealthy. The sensors on a Battlecruiser can’t find them even if they know they’re hiding out on a planet. Though in this case it’s not particularly surprising, the Zerg on Char were focused deep underground.

Supported by the SCC:

The Zerg chose Char as a launching point not only for its remote location and rich resources, but because the rough terrain provided many hiding places for various Brood hatcheries. While this undoubtedly helped the Zerg conceal their numbers from Terran and Protoss scouts, it worked against them when Kerrigan was forced to hunt down the Dark Templar.

They can apparently carry over 1000 soldiers, which is higher then the 500 I mentioned earlier (from LC) and naturally a lot higher then the 400 for Raynor’s entire fleet, especially considering the Hyperion (the flagship of his fleet) is a Behemoth-class as well. The vessels seem to be able to carry a lot of people, but it’s not a necessity. I also wonder if the terming here, soldiers to be specific, implies that this is just the marines on-board, or if it’s the crew.

Like Malaskor said, we're probably looking at skeleton crews. The Raiders have never had particularly good manpower.

I believe it's mentioned (was it in SoD?) that troops are often shipped around in stasis before being deployed. Thus there's probably a large difference between how many men a BC can carry and how many it needs to carry, considering you don't need to worry as much about the minor details of those extra passengers, like housing, feeding and sanitation. They're basically canned meat.

And also some insights into how the Terran Dominion conducts warfare, ground forces are apparently only used when you don’t want to damage the area.

I find this extremely interesting considering the large amounts of ground combat both seen and mentioned in the series. Certainly volumes more than the fleet battles.

My guess is that this is all something similar to the defense matrix thing the Science Vessels have. A new and perhaps somewhat experimental technology that’s only given to people with either a lot of money or a lot of connections. In fact, there’s not a single incident so far that doesn’t fit with that guess. But it is still just a guess.

Agreed, especially considering the Norad has a SV supporting it and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to count one in the 13. It's pretty well shown that the TD has shields, but they seem to be much clumsier, expensive and less effective than Protoss plasma shields. A good summary here, I think.

It protects against minor damage, which is sort of a funny terming considering they’re said to be effective against most small-arms (with LC saying they are immune to pretty much everything except needle-guns, probably another term for gauss weaponry). I don’t consider that ‘minor damage’, but hey.

I get the feeling that there's a large gap between "minor damage" in your average rebellion or peacekeeping operation, where the insurgents are probably serfs carrying AGR-14s and slugthrowers, and "minor damage" in a war situation, where you're facing zerglings that rip through the armor rather easily.

In other words, the armor is marvelously protective until you get in on a real war, where all it really can withstand is "minor damage".

l33telboi · Jun 8, 2008

Imperial Glory said:
This ought to shed some light on the snip, though.

Wait, what? Did I really type Chau Sara? *Checks*

Oh my, oh my. I meant Char, not Chau. Damn keyboard. :mad:

I'll have to change that asap. And now that I am checking on it, not only did I type the planet's name wrong, but I even forgot to include the preceding quote I planned to write down.

Damn. Oh well, fixed it now.

I'd say this is just more evidence leaning toward the notion that the TD is still using Generation 1 warp drives.

There's a lot of info on warp still to come. The differences between sub-warp and warp for instance. As well as distance and time travel and how those two are related. Don't make any decisions on it just yet.

Worth adding that this is the reason passengers go into cold sleep for long trips.

Very possible.

I find this extremely interesting considering the large amounts of ground combat both seen and mentioned in the series. Certainly volumes more than the fleet battles.

Well they seem to have developed some stigma towards orbital bombardment ever since the Korhal incident, and since then you're only allowed to bombard planets without major populations. Which makes it rather apparent why they always fight on the ground, I mean they are fighting on their own planets, after all.

Agreed, especially considering the Norad has a SV supporting it and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to count one in the 13. It's pretty well shown that the TD has shields, but they seem to be much clumsier, expensive and less effective than Protoss plasma shields. A good summary here, I think.

The only bit about that which doesn't fit is the part about personnel shields only being able to deflect bullets. It was outright stated that it could take anything but a nuke in the novel.

As for the Hyperion and Norad III, "Uprising" makes it pretty clear that these shields are not specifically defensive matrixes deployed from Science Vessels. They are projected from within the ships themselves. Similar technology perhaps, but it's not the 'defensive matrix' ability we see in the game.

I get the feeling that there's a large gap between "minor damage" in your average rebellion or peacekeeping operation, where the insurgents are probably serfs carrying AGR-14s and slugthrowers, and "minor damage" in a war situation, where you're facing zerglings that rip through the armor rather easily.

In other words, the armor is marvelously protective until you get in on a real war, where all it really can withstand is "minor damage".

Indeed.

Imperial Glory · Jun 8, 2008

l33telboi said:
Wait, what? Did I really type Chau Sara? *Checks*

Oh my, oh my. I meant Char, not Chau. Damn keyboard.

Happens to the best of us, good sir.

In retrospect I probably should have caught the typo after wondering where all the volcanic activity on Chau Sara was.

Well they seem to have developed some stigma towards orbital bombardment ever since the Korhal incident, and since then you're only allowed to bombard planets without major populations. Which makes it rather apparent why they always fight on the ground, I mean they are fighting on their own planets, after all.

Yeah, come to think of it pretty much every time you're fighting on the ground there's a good explanation why the job couldn't be done from orbit, be it lack of resources, population centers or being too close to a delicate target. I'm kind of amazed that a detail like that has remained so consistent.

Looking only in the context of the quote, there is some implication that fleet action is more frequent than ground action, which says something about both the TD's fleet and the amount of punishment BCs are able to deal out.

As for the Hyperion and Norad III, "Uprising" makes it pretty clear that these shields are not specifically defensive matrixes deployed from Science Vessels. They are projected from within the ships themselves. Similar technology perhaps, but it's not the 'defensive matrix' ability we see in the game.

Right.

Again, some indications on how effective humans are against zerg. What’s more interesting is the blurb at the end, indicating that the zerg can coordinate vastly better then humans on the tactical scale because of their mind-linking.

I think Commander Jackson said it best.

"I used to think that defeating the Zerg would take precise military maneuvers, clever tactics and strong leadership. I was wrong. You can't out-think the swarm, you can't out-maneuver the swarm, and you certainly can't break the morale of the swarm. I hate to admit this, but I could do my job just as well if I ordered all my men to simply shoot anything that moves."

-Colonel Ronald "Hardcore" Jackson

l33telboi · Jun 9, 2008

Chapter 6

Ok, I think I have time for quickie here.

Lot’s of interesting stuff in this chapter. Raynor is still down on Char taking stock of the situation after they’re exit from the zerg tunnels. And Kerrigan assaults the Amerigo, Duke’s science vessel, to find info on her Ghost training and unlock her full psionic potential.

Too late to do anything about it now, however. Brushing the more stubborn bits of ash from his goggle lenses, he glanced around and took stock of their situation. Twenty-three soldiers. That was all he had left of the three hundred or so who had followed him down. And many of the survivors were wounded, some badly.

Raynor seems to have taken quite a beating in those caves, and his crew of 400 has now shrunk to around 123, total. With 23 of those down on the ground and the rest still on the ships. Around 277 were killed by the zerg during their brief skirmish in the tunnels, the rest was allowed to go by Kerrigan.

How? Was his first thought. Zerg couldn’t operate vessels – they traveled through some sort of organic space tunnel; one of Mengsk’s men had tried to explain it to him once, but all he’d gotten was that they could open warps between worlds without using any tech.

A little more info on zerg faster then light travel. So definitely different then what the terrans use, and completely organic and psionic in nature. But then that was sort of clear from earlier. Also seems to indicate their form of travel is point-to-point jumping, rather then continuous linear travel.

Another woman had backed away, clawing at the door she had just exited, so panicked she forgot how to use the door panel. A zerg speared her from behind, his claw passing through her chest and denting the door. Then it shook its arm and her body was tossed aside, blood spraying the halls and everyone present.

The man’s heroism cost him his life, a zerg tearing his head from his shoulders, and the woman followed, her chest split in half and her organs torn free before the scream had died on her lips.

A little more info on what the zerg do to unarmored people up-close. At this point it’s mostly redundant though. However, I’ve noticed that redundancy can sometimes be a good thing when quantifying stuff. The hydralisk also seems fairly strong, if it can toss a person around with just one arm.

“You’ll never make it out of here alive, bitch!” one of the troopers shouted, firing his gauss rifle on full auto into the approaching brood. Several zerg were hit and two fell with steel spikes through their throat and eyes.

Now this is somewhat interesting. See, most novels don’t go into a lot of detail regarding just what exactly happens when a marine attacks a zergling, or any zerg at all for that matter. It’s basically just “a marine fires at a zergling and it dies.” No mentions of where he hit it and no mention of how many rounds he emptied into it. Generally though, it seems as if it takes a few rounds to kill even a zergling, even if there are a few instances indicating they can take more punishment.

This passage gives a bit of a clearer picture though. Again, there’s a repeat of the ‘at least a few spikes per zerg to kill them’ I already mentioned, though it’s not clear which type of critter he was dealing with here. It also seems to indicate that hitting weak spots like eyes and throat make a real difference, which in turn would indicate that yes, their carapace do afford them limited protection against the gauss rifles.

Also, notice how now we’re talking about steel spikes, rather then iron ones that were mentioned earlier. In mass it makes no real difference, assuming they are of equal volume, as steel and iron are pretty much the same density, so it wouldn’t affect any kinetic energy figures. However, it does indicate that the ‘normal’ spikes are made up of different mundane metals, rather then having a single standardized round. This is, I suppose, rather logical. Since a coilgun wouldn’t need much of the slug it fires, except that it’s made of metal and at least somewhat aerodynamically shaped.

And lastly, I’d like to take this opportunity to address another issue. The one regarding broods. In this novel it’s heavily implied that most broods are quite small, with a total critter amount of mere thousands, sometimes even hundreds. Now this actually fits rather well with the pre-existing information of the size of broods. Most of you probably know the manual where it’s mentioned that the bigger broods carry millions, and you also know that in the game, there’s a mention of billions of zerg being lured to Tarsonis. This is then further cemented in “Shadow of the Xel’Naga” where both these figures are mentioned, bigger broods carrying millions, yet Kerrigan controlling billions upon billions. So it makes for a pretty neat picture. Broods are usually small, perhaps one could even assume so much that a single brood represents a single hatchery or base? And the discrepancy between the million and billion deal comes from the fact that there are a lot of broods, which is again implied in this novel, since the zerg seem to be coming up with new broods left and right.

One of the troopers aimed at her and fired, a cluster of iron spikes racing towards her. She raised one hand and the spikes simply stopped midair, slamming to a quivering halt as if they’d run into a wall. A second gesture and the spikes spun about and leaped toward the trooper, pierced not only the man but the wall behind him, and his body was left hanging there as the rifle slipped from his hands.

A display of Kerrigan’s telekinesis. Her response time isn’t all that bad if she can actually react fast enough to focus on slugs fired from rifles. And she seems to be able to propel them back at the person who fired with at least as much force as he initially fired them. Also, this is her before she had removed her Ghost conditioning.

And another mention of iron spikes.

He started to back away, and his eyes bulged as he stopped, frozen in place. Kerrigan held him there, paralyzed, as she stepped up behind him and rammed her finger-blades through his back, slicing his spine to ribbons. Before his body had toppled she was gone again, moving to the next man, her wings writhing with impatience, every barb angling towards her next target. A single glance fried that trooper’s mind, and she was already looking for a third as he swayed and fell, blood leaking from his eyes and ears.

A few other tricks Kerrigan has, among them paralyzing people and killing them with her mind.

“Here,” she said finally, stopping at the heavy blastdoor at the far end.

She didn’t bother trying the lock. Instead she grasped the handle with one hand, plunged the fingers of her other into the thin seam between the door and the wall, braced herself with her feet wide apart, and twisted from the waist. The door groaned, shuddered, and tore loose, and she tossed it aside.

Her strength isn’t too shabby either, if she can rip open ‘heavy blastdoors’ and throw them aside all by herself.

Glancing behind him, he saw everyone looking at their wrists, shaking them, pushing buttons. Everyone’s displays were the same, all equally blank. A quick check confirmed that the comm unit had just refreshed its information, as it did periodically. The beacons had shown clearly before, but when it scanned for them this time they were gone. Something had happened in between. Something to the shuttles.

So, the comm units they’re all equipped with are wrist-mounted and features not only the obvious communications equipment, but also a form of tracking system that can locate and monitor known vessels and places, as well as help with orientation in the field.

l33telboi · Jun 10, 2008

Chapter 7

Alright, time for a few more chapters. In this chapter, Raynor is still down on Char, but as it turns out the Zerg are infiltrating both his and Duke’s ships, and to add to that, the protoss arrive, destroying everything that’s infested.

As a fourth caller, Ragay from Duke’s carrier ship Trillium, called to report the same conditions, Raynor finally realized what had happened. The zerg had taken his shuttles, and probably any Duke had sent down as well, but not because they needed them for travel. Travel wasn’t the point. The shuttles gave them access to ships, which meant the zerg could get inside easily and then kill everyone onboard.

It was the perfect way to bypass all defenses, especially since Kerrigan could steal the access codes from the shuttle pilots’ minds before killing them.

In all honesty, this is not something I wouldn’t have pegged the zerg doing before reading this. Thematically, they seem more like the typical mindlessly swarm the enemy. And this is far more subtle then that. Stealing human ships so they could easily infiltrate terran vessels? It’s a rather handy ploy and displays some cunning on the behalf of the zerg.

And Kerrigan is also able to read minds well enough to retrieve secret access codes.

“I could perform an emergency warp-jump,” Horner explained.

Raynor understood at once. Pilots and navigators planned warp-jumps very carefully, often for hours beforehand. That was because a single mistake could send a ship millions of light-years off course, turn it inside out, or worse. Plus the warp engines usually needed a few hours to warm up. Jumping without preparation or planning was sheer madness.

The Hyperion was the only one that had powerful enough engines to tear open a warp that quickly.

More information on how Terran warp-drives work. The jumps have to be planned beforehand and it takes quite a lot of time to do so. Remember the part where Raynor jumped within two hours in the beginning of the novel, for instance?

And a miss-calculated jump could throw you millions of lightyears off? That’s quite a lot. So much even that you’d end up outside our galaxy if you made such a jump. This means that warp-travel can’t be linear, it’s not a ship traveling in a straight line from point A to point B at a given velocity. If that was the case then Raynor wouldn’t have needed two weeks to get to Char. It’s a very interesting revelation indeed and creates a bunch of questions on faster then light travel.

Oh, but those of you who have read earlier novels might be going “what?” at this point, seeing as we have seen ships jump both quickly and accurately before. Well so did I until “Shadow Hunters” and “Firstborn” came out. While the problem isn’t explained, it is shown that both types of travel exist and that it’s intentional. One is called warp travel, the other sub-warp travel. The sub-warp travel part was also mentioned in “Uprising”. I’m not going to go into more detail on this at the moment, because it’s not really a central topic for this novel, and so far there’s not a whole lot of concrete information on the differences between the two. Just keep in mind that what just happened was warp travel and that something called sub-warp travel exists in addition to this.

Suddenly a blinding light lanced across the sky, forcing him to shield his eyes. The light struck one of his ships and enveloped it, creating a glow that was visible even amid the sun’s rays. The ship was clearly lit, a nimbus playing about it, and then that aura collapsed inward and the ship crumpled like a paper ball. When the light faded the ship was gone, not even a trace left behind.

“What?” Raynor gaped at the empty space. One of his ships had just been destroyed, completely obliterated. What could do something like that?

But he knew the answer immediately: the protoss. Scanning the sky, he saw one of their lovely, delicate-looking ships hovering not far from his little fleet. Now he remembered Matt’s telling him, just before he came planetside, that a protoss ship was about to exit warp in their immediate vicinity. Obviously this was that ship.

The beam burst forth a second time, illuminating, enveloping, and then obliterating another of his ships. Then it struck once more. Raynor’s comm unit pinged again just as the third ship ceased to exist, and he glanced down hurriedly.

Alright, the protoss arrive. It’s just the one single ship, of course, but it seems to make pretty short work of the terran vessels in range. One shotting the smaller vessels with ease. Nothing concrete enough to calculate here though.

What I wonder though is what ship this is. It's not the Ganthrithor, as it gets destroyed earlier on, and it seems far smaller then a Carrier. It also lands on the planet to let troops disembark. Could this be one of those landing ships that were mentioned earlier? An unknown for now.

His hopes were dashed, however, as the protoss fired again, this time on the escape vessel. All Raynor saw with his eyes was the beam itself -- as the new dot vanished from his comm unit.

The ship seems rather accurate too, seeing as how it’s able to target and hit smaller escape vessels that are heading for the planet below.

A minute later, the protoss beam sliced into the Harrison. The ship was too large to be enveloped completely but the beam struck section after section, disintegrating whatever it touched. Raynor couldn’t tell which areas had already been hit and which were being hit now. He did notice, however, when the Harrison went off-line. And he watched through the clouds of ash and smoke as, bit by bit, the ship was carved into nothingness. Finally the beam vanished, leaving nothing but a gap in the sky where his ship had been.

The Harrison had been the last one. All of his ships were gone now.

The bigger vessels seem to take a bit more time to bring down though. And I think it’s rather safe to say at this point that the damage done here is quite extreme. There seems to be no tangible debris left afterwards and ships are said to simply disappear. This most likely means vaporization mixed with pulverization. Which would require quite a lot of energy, even if this was simply a normal piece of floating metal. But since there isn’t anything solid, making any calculations would be unwarranted. Still, on the relative scale, the protoss seem to be able to exterminate terrans with ridiculous ease.

And this might be where the blurb about the protoss being able to atomize enemy vessels comes from on the SC2 website.

The protoss had caught it a glancing blow, incinerating one wing and ruining most of the engines, but the pilot had managed to coast the damaged craft down in one piece.

Here’s something interesting. Using the term incinerating would suggest thermal damage, something that would mesh well with the fact that the beams were described as very bright and enveloping the areas they hit with bright light.

He did a quick head count. She had twenty-three people with her, roughly half the shuttle’s capacity. Four of them were civilians but the rest were soldiers, and fully armed.

Right, so a few more survived the incident and Raynor should now have 46 people with him.

The second craft was also a shuttle, though more badly damaged -- the protoss beam had sheared through its middle and the ship had broken in two upon entering the atmosphere. The beacon was in the front half and from a nearby hill they spotted the back half a valley away. Four soldiers, including the pilot, had survived in the front half. No one was alive in the rear section, though the pilot said he’d had almost the full forty packed inside it.

Interesting, a ship that breaks in half during re-entry is still able to ferry down the people in the front half alive. Too bad about those in the back half. Also, here we learn that a shuttle can hold 40 people total. Wonder if this is just another name for the dropships we see in the game?

Oh, and Raynor now has 50 people left of his initial crew. With the people on the Hyperion still out and about.

Kerrigan had been a Ghost, a telepathic assassin for the Confederacy. She and the others had been heavily conditioned, with strong psychological and chemical blocks to keep them from misusing their abilities. She’d told him once that Mengsk had rescued her from all that and helped remove many of those blocks. That’s why she’d been so loyal to him.

But some of those blocks had remained. Despite what he’d seen her do, Kerrigan had not had access to her full potential.

Some info on the Ghosts and their neural inhibitors and psionic dampeners. There’s more on this topic in “Liberty’s Crusade” where Kerrigan explains in detail why the Confederacy thought it prudent to nerf the Ghosts innate telepathic abilities. “Nova” also has some detailed info on Ghosts.

Chapter 8

“We total fifty-two, sir,” Cavez reported as Raynor dropped onto the shuttle’s surviving wing, using it as a makeshift seat. “We have enough rations to last us two weeks, more if we can find something to supplement them.” He tactfully didn’t mention that they’d seen nothing living on Char but zerg, and Raynor didn’t think they’d get hungry enough to try eating the disgusting aliens. “Plenty of weapons,” Cavez continued, “and a decent supply of ammo.” He grinned. “We’ve even got powered armor, twenty-four suits in all – A few took damage from the shuttle crashes but we can probably cobble them back together, or use them for parts.”

This gives us some idea on what kinds of supplies and equipment the people have on them right now. And apparently they found 2 more somewhere since the final tally of survivors is 52.

Of course, someone might pick up the distress call and come rescue them. Even though they were on the far side of the galaxy, and the only people who knew they had come this way were now dead as well, or hated their guts.

”Chapter 6” said:
I dragged us across the galaxy and sacrificed a hundred or more men just to chase down a woman who doesn’t even want me around.

This is why one should always quote everything that could be interesting. The part I quoted as Chapter 6 happened back in that chapter, but I ignored it because it seemed like an embellishment at the time. Of course it can still be that. However, we now also face the very real possibility that Char is a long long way from where Raynor started out.

“And what if we did get the shuttle working again?” Raynor asked them. It’s only good for short hops, you know that. The nearest inhabitable planet is—“ He frowned, trying to remember what he’d seen on the charts coming in.

“—three days’ travel,” Non supplied. He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed when several other troopers glanced at him. I like to know where we are,” he admitted.

So the shuttles are capable of warp-jumps, albeit short ones.

The first dozen to disembark were clearly warriors, wearing something that Raynor guessed was combat armor but which resembled his own armor the same way a classic painting resembled a crude sketch. The protoss were towering figures, easily seven feet tall, and in their armor they resembled great deadly insects, their bodies protected by shiny segmented shells whose pieces overlapped perfectly but slid about easily, allowing both flexibility and protection.

Some description on zealots, though it’s mostly flowery stuff and not something that can be used for quantification. The one thing that was interesting was the blurb about zealots “easily” being 7 feet, or 2.1 meters, in height.

This was the executor Tassadar, the High Templar, one of the protoss high commanders.

I’ve always wondered what Executor meant in relation to the Protoss military structure. Was it a unique rank? Was it even a rank or more like a title? This suggests his not unique though, and executor might simply refer to these ‘high commanders’.

This same alien, the very one who had destroyed his ships and killed his people mere days ago, had called those people allies only a few months before!

Ah, time-frames. It’s already been ‘days’ since the attack in orbit. And it’s been months since he called the protoss allies in Chapter 1 of the game. But hold on, when did that happen? When did Raynor and the protoss even interact before this?

I actually had to check the Starcraft wiki to refresh my memory on what happened during chapter one. Crazy thing is that in the normal version of the game, this never happens, but:

”Starcraft Wiki” said:
Blizzard Entertainment created twelve Terran missions for StarCraft Episode I. However, Blizzard later decided to remove two of the missions. In addition, Blizzard created a different version of First Strike and a demo for the Zerg. These missions are hidden on older StarCraft installation CDs and must be extracted with MPQ viewing software.

”Biting the Bullet” said:
After barely fighting them off, they detect Protoss vessels in the vicinity. Raynor says they "play hardball", but the Protoss Executor, Tassadar, offers an alliance. He has witnessed their struggle against the Zerg. His fleet (his Carrier, the Gantrithor, and many Scouts) will cooperate with these Terrans to fight the Zerg.

Together, they destroy the other Hive Cluster and defeat the Zerg. The Sons of Korhal then abandon the planet, taking as many civilians as possible, before the Zerg overwhelm Antiga Prime and are then sterilized by the Protoss.

This I didn’t know from before and it’s the only mention I can currently find indicating Tassadar and Raynor cooperating before Chapter 2 of the game.

Though I have to say, this timeperiod is covered in “Liberty’s Crusade” too, and going by memory, there was no mention of this in it. Not sure though. I’ll have to look into this a bit more to be sure. Still if this is to be considered true, then it’s been “a few months” since Antiga Prime was bombarded by the protoss.

Raynor felt his right foot lift off the ground and his body shift forward to complete the step. The left followed. He had no control over his limbs, but obeyed the protoss’s command like a sleepwalker, trapped within his own flesh.

Tassadar demonstrates that he has the power of commanding others against their will, seems similar to the power Kerrigan demonstrated earlier.

Imperial Glory · Jun 10, 2008

The unused mission you're talking about can be seen here, if you're interested in the details. Unlike the other unused mission, it fits quite well into the continuity and should probably be considered canon, although this is debatable.

l33telboi · Jul 26, 2008

Hell's bells, I'd nearly forgotten about this thread. I’ll post a quickie now, and possibly more later on today. Just wanted to bump this thing so I don’t forget about it again.

Chapter 9

As the words left his lips Tassadar did the last thing Raynor would have expected--he ran. The Executor turned on his heel and did a graceful sideways leap, spinning down the hill in a smooth cartwheel motion and landing erect a good hundred feet from the base of the hill. The other protoss had apparently responded to some silent command because during their exchange they had crept silently down the hill as well, and now they were all grouped around their High Templar leader. Without another word Tassadar turned and led his Zealots at a full run around the hill and into the higher mountains that loomed beyond. The protoss moved so quickly that Raynor barely had time to register their departure before they had vanished from view.

A few indications on how agile and speedy the Protoss are. First thing here is Tassadar's leap, now it doesn't say exactly how far he leapt, but seeing as how he was on the hill when he jumped and landed at least 30 meters from the base of the hill, we get some idea. That's no insignificant feat. Of course, getting anything concrete on this is going to be impossible, because we don't know how high up he was when he leapt compared to the actual ground level. Still, he quite clearly posesses superhuman abilities.

The second thing that's worthy of note is the speed of the Protoss as they run away. Raynor barely has time to register their departure before they've already disappeared from view. There's no solid indication on distance here either, of course. But ‘higher mountains that loomed beyond’ doesn’t exactly seem to be a stone’s throw away. But again, it's quite safe to conclude this is above normal human standards given Raynor's reaction to the run.

Quite frankly, playing around with the numbers on the above gets crazy results. Assume for a second that ‘the mountains that loomed beyond’ is a mere 100 meters away, that would still mean that the Protoss dashed almost at 100 meters per second, unless Raynor has exceptionally poor reflexes. And what if the mountains were something like 1,000 meters away? I'm sure you see the point.

I’m wondering if this is actually the lightning dash ability the Zealots have in Starcraft 2. Raynor doesn't mention any such effects though, but given he barely registers their departure it is possible. Though it's not impossible that this is some form of mundane psionically assisted sprinting either. Remember that Ghosts were supposed to be able to run at supersonic speeds in the game Ghost, and the Ghost in SotXN basically ran ‘many kilometers’ in a few seconds.

Ah well, perhaps there's more on this later on in the novel.

l33telboi · Jul 26, 2008

Chapter 10

“One of my men got scalded from stepping too close to one of those damn steam vents and Ling almost fell into a small crater—he caught himself just in time but his helmet came off.” Cavez looked grim. “That crater was still hot. Cooked the helmet to slag in an instant. We’ve marked it so we don’t step there by mistake, but any crater could still be live.”

The strange part here is the mention of a helmet. By now the crew's got their hands on powerarmor, but the helmet part here suggests that not everybody is running around in the combat suits. I suppose it's somewhat logical, the suits only have that much juice in them and using them constantly would drain them rather quickly. In any case, the helmet part still got me thinking. There's been no real description on what the men are wearing, only what Raynor is, and even that was rather unclear. Perhaps his men are actually suited similarly as this? It would make sense for them to have some form of protection, even though not wearing combat armor, as they were heading into combat when they made their drop. Well, that or they were just wearing helmets.

Though as always, I dare point out that any information from Ghost is questionable at best.

Raynor thought about it. “Don’t we have infrared goggles? We can use those to check for hot spots.”

His lieutenants looked a little embarrassed. “Yes, sir,” Cavez replied. “We’ve already got men doing that. But it’ll take a while to mark all the spots nearby, let alone all the ones within that ten-mile radius.”

So they were equipped with a few IR-goggles as well. This would suggest that they’re standard equipment on dropships, and not mission specific stuff, as these were found on a dropship that had been jettisoned during space combat and crash landed. Nothing that had been sent on any specific mission and stocked accordingly. And Raynor's Raiders isn't exactly the best equipped organization in the sector.

The mountains were more active then the flatlands in terms of volcanoes, and smoke and ash billowed from several peaks and leaked from smaller vents throughout the region. It made for excellent cover and the protoss were putting it to good use, especially since their glossy armor blended well with the obsidian that littered the area and their eyes apparently saw through smoke and soot without a problem.

The Protoss seem to have rather good eyesight.

Their ship must have held more then he’d thought and the rest must have emerged later, because Tassadar had at least a hundred warriors crouching in a deep cleft between two peaks.

100 Zealots. That's not a whole lot. It would seem Tassadar was thinking a minor infiltration force might stand a better chance at taking out Kerrigan then a larger assault force.

He watched as the zerg continued their progress, climbing over the cone’s lip and down into the crater itself. The surface looked solid, though Raynor remembered what Cavez had said. Certainly if it was just a skin the zerg would have crashed through, particularly the lumbering ultralisks, but they didn’t have any trouble crossing. They probably had ways to detect the hot spots, he realized, much like IR goggles enabled his team to do.

Raynor seems to think Zerg eyesight goes into the IR spectrum.

Raynor saw four warriors close in on an ultralisks, each targeting a leg, and slice the massive zerg to pieces before it could bring its large scythe-tusks to bear.

One of the hydralisks reared up and hissed loudly as it turned and slashed at a protoss warrior, leaving a visible gash across his armored chest. The sound carried across the plains, and to Raynor it had a clear note of desperation. The zerg was calling for help! The protoss stabbed forward with one hand and swept the other in a wide outward arc, severing the hydralisk’s limb and then impaling it through the head, and the hydralisk’s cry faded, but Raynor could still hear the grating voice echoing and knew its warning had gone out.

Some zealot on zerg action. We're talking about a successful ambush on a smallish brood, so things weren't pretty for the zerg. These quotes give some indication on how effective psi-blades are against zerg as well. Even larger critters like Ultralisks don't seem to have enough armor to stop them.

And again the battle plays out rather cartoonishly, the zealots are said to jump over ridges, craters, ravines and whatnot without problem. Nothing near solid enough to run any figures on though.

She leaped down into the crater, her wings flared behind her and beating at the air, and landed atop a protoss warrior, her wing-tips cutting him in two even before her feet had touched the ground.

Kerrigan strong enough to easily cut a zealot in two.

Just as the ship was slightly different, so these figures did not match the warriors he had seen before. They were of a similar height and moved with equal grace, but their armor was heavier, blockier, less streamlined and less elegant.

And so the Dark Templar arrive on Char. What's interesting here is that it’s said that they are more heavily armoured then normal zealots. According to the art panel during last years Blizzcon, the devs never wanted to have all the Dark Templar look the same as Zeratul, but they ran out of time to do anything about it. This is probably also why they've changed what the Dark Templar looks like quite radically in Starcraft 2.

I'm guessing the armor these guys are wearing is similar to the armor used in SC2.

l33telboi · Jul 27, 2008

Chapter 12

He looked around again, and almost jumped when he saw a section of the wall move a short ways below him. The patch of wall had looked normal until it shifted, and then he saw a tall, slender outline. Protoss! They could go invisible like Kerrigan, or at least partially—now that he looked carefully he could see the warrior standing there, and slowly he distinguished several others beside the first. Why hadn’t he noticed them before?

The answer became obvious as he saw the first warrior turn sideways—and vanish. In a second Raynor was able to spot the Protoss again, but the alien’s armor had taken on the color and pattering of the wall behind him. Protective camouflage.

Some description on the Dark Templar and their cloaking. It seems they're not cloaked perfectly, moving at least makes their outlines visible, if you're paying attention. The passage also seems to indicate their cloaking is more like chameleon like camouflage rather then the light bending which is said in the manual and on the SC2 website.

Not quite sure what to make of that.

With these last words a blade appeared above the outstretched hand, jutting from his wrist. It was much like the weapons Raynor had seen on Tassadar’s warriors, an energy spike that glittered and glowed, but those had been a smooth, gleaming blue-white. This was a sparking hissing yellowish green, the same shade as his eyes, wisps of vapor rising from its edges.

A description of their warp blades. They seem very much like the zealots' psi-blades, except for coloration. There's another reason things like this interest geeks like me, and that's because Dark Templar blades were always cyanish in color back in SC1, or grayish during gameplay. But in SC2 they changed to greenyellow.

Alot of the art in SC2 seems to have been based on this novel. Or then it was the devs who told the author how he should describe stuff. In any case, there's a definite connection there.

Mutalisks dove into the crowd, spewing their acid on their fellow zerg, and scourge exploded against overlords and ultralisks alike, their suicidal detonations destroying the larger zerg and spreading ichor and blood and flesh everywhere.

A mention of scourge detonating against ground targets. Not by choise of course, the entire brood was quite mad at the moment, having its Cerebrate killed and then killed again by a Dark Templar.

Imperial Glory · Jul 27, 2008

The strange part here is the mention of a helmet. By now the crew's got their hands on powerarmor, but the helmet part here suggests that not everybody is running around in the combat suits. I suppose it's somewhat logical, the suits only have that much juice in them and using them constantly would drain them rather quickly. In any case, the helmet part still got me thinking. There's been no real description on what the men are wearing, only what Raynor is, and even that was rather unclear. Perhaps his men are actually suited similarly as this? It would make sense for them to have some form of protection, even though not wearing combat armor, as they were heading into combat when they made their drop. Well, that or they were just wearing helmets.

Though as always, I dare point out that any information from Ghost is questionable at best.

Not to worry. As of the day before you posted, light infantry seem to be canonical. 'Course, the game isn't out yet, but it's worth pointing out.

l33telboi · Jul 27, 2008

Imperial Glory said:
Not to worry. As of the day before you posted, light infantry seem to be canonical. 'Course, the game isn't out yet, but it's worth pointing out.

I dunno, those seem more like mine workers or something. Meh, we'll see, I guess.

Bishop Gantry · Jul 27, 2008

l33telboi said:
I dunno, those seem more like mine workers or something. Meh, we'll see, I guess.

They have hardhats on them, but if you look at the guy in grey on the road, looks more like hes wearing light armor...

l33telboi · Jul 28, 2008

Interesting chapter ahead. We get some protoss on zerg action again, including a one on one between Kerrigan and Tassadar. So lots of quoting. The basics behind the battle are as follows: One plateau. On one side we have Tassadar and his 100 zealots. On the other side Kerrigan and an unknown number of zerg.

Chapter 13

“I face you now, little Templar,” Kerrigan replied, baring her teeth at him, “and you face your doom!” She leaped forward, spinning as she did, and her wings spun around her, their blades whistling toward the Executor—

--and finding nothing but empty air. Tassadar was no longer there.

“Where?” Kerrigan wheeled about and spotted the High Templar the same time Raynor did. The protoss leader was now standing behind her, ten paces back, still looking unfazed. Raynor wasn’t sure how the had moved so quickly, and Kerrigan didn’t seem to care. She practically skipped across the distance, bounding up and spinning, then landing on one foot and leaping to spin again. It was beautiful, a ballet of death, her body transformed into a single whirling blade, and in the time it took to blink she had closed the gap and her blades had found flesh.

The flesh of a hydralisk, which collapsed in pieces, its body still twitching as the image of Tassadar faded from it.

“An illusion?” Kerrigan howled, turning back toward the far end of the plateau, her eyes flicking across the assembled protoss warriors as she tried to locate her foe. Her lips pulled back in a sneer. “Are you afraid to face me, Templar?”

So, this is how the duel kicks off, Kerrigan attacks only to find that Tassadar has been using some nifty illusions to mess with her head.

Tassadar can apparently create images of himself that seem perfectly real, even to someone strong in psionics. And he can make others look like himself, causing Kerrigan to accidentally kill one of her own hydralisks.

She turned away as if to speak to her zerg, who waited impatiently where she had left them, and her left wing swept around as she turned, that sheen touching the warrior’s neck. He did not make a sound as his eyes suddenly dimmed and his head toppled to the ground, rolling off the edge of the plateau. The body crumpled a second later, fountaining blood from its severed neck.

Again, Kerrigan seems to have no problem at all killing zealots. Even with what seems like just a slight touch she decapitates a zealot.

“Hold!” One of the warriors near the end of the line stepped forward, his armor and clothing changed as he moved, until Tassadar faced her. “Very well, o Queen. I am here. Now face me in battle.”

More illusions from Tassadar, apparently he disguised himself as a regular zealot. And he finally decides to stop irritating her and fight instead.

The Executor spun, raising one arm to block, and sparks flew as iridescence and blue lightning collided. His other arm lashed out and across in a solid backhand, blue flickers arching behind it, and Kerrigan stepped back, her wings floating up to avoid that glow.

Alright, so Tassadar is basically fighting unarmed against Kerrigan who regularly cuts trough pretty much anything in her path. The cause for him holding such attacks seems to be this 'blue lightning' that follows his movements. Most likely a different and more advanced form of the psi-blade power the zealots have (more on this in a later chapter).

Tassadar fell and flipped over, using Kerrigan’s blow as momentum and one hand for support. As he moved, his right foot lashed out toward her head, the glow around that limb intensifying and extending outward like a blade. She jerked to one side, however, and the blow missed her.

Then her wings flexed and snapped forward, as if tossing something, and the iridescence shot forward like strands of a web, catching the Executor in the chest.

Kerrigan leaned back, her wings sweeping behind her, and the strands remained, yanking Tassadar forward. His glow grew weaker, particularly at the point of contact. He tried to lash out with both hands, focusing the glow there until his fists shone like twin beacons, but Kerrigan’s wings blocked the attack. More sparks flew, and iridescence from the wings wrapped around the Executor’s wrists, binding him tightly.

Then Kerrigan raised her wings and Tassadar rose with them like a puppet on taut strings.

In the first paragraph it’s indicated that this blue glow thing can even be projected from feet. The 'blade' description adds some merit to the suspicion that this is similar to psi-blade projections. And at this point a relevant question pops up. Is this a unique ability? Or something most High Templar are capable of?

Then Kerrigan seems to imitate spiderman and first pull Tassadar towards her and then tie him up so he's helpless. It would appear that in a straight up fight, Tassadar is no match for Kerrigan. This web ability isn't something from the game either.

This is when the two 'armies' decide to fight it out.

Raynor saw a mutalisk dive toward a protoss, its mouth open as it flew, and then it was past the warrior and circling back around. The acid it had spit at him as it went past ate through the warrior’s armor, through his flesh, and apparently even through his bones, causing the body to collapse in pieces like a loose jigsaw puzzle.

Mutalisk spit being highly corrosive was already established in "Speed of Darkness", but here we see what these things do to zealots. It melts through armor, bone and flesh alike. And... shields? This is actually something strange in this novel. Shields are very seldom mentioned. I guess it gets repetitive after a while to mention them, but still, most of the time it's like there isn't a shield around protoss at all, which is rather weird.

The small, fast-moving scourge had barely enough energy to go a few hours without sustenance, so they were perched in rows along the backs of the three overlords that floated in a rough line on the other side of the square, eagerly awaiting the command to launch themselves at the enemy.

A throwback to the RPG, where it's mentioned that scourge need to rest to conserve their strength. Or vespene gas, as it is. Basically the scourge has a fixed amount of vespene which it uses to both propel itself and ignite when it finally wants to explode. Naturally this limits how long the critter can fly around before finally exhausting the vespene. And the more it flies around, the less the boom.

The protoss warriors were taller, stronger, and much faster then the average Terran, let alone the zerg, and their armor was proof against at least glancing blows from zerg claws while their energy blades could cut through the tough zerg hide with ease.

Well, I already speculated as much, but here it's proven as fact that zealots are faster and stronger then humans. Armor is apparently only proof against glancing blows from zerg claws. And blades cut through zerg with ease.

All of this has pretty much been shown in the novel already, but it's nice to have a solid statement like this to back it all up.

There had to be some way to even the odds. But that would require heavy equipment, which was back at the camp, or high explosives, which they used sparingly, and—

Raynor feels he wants to help the protoss who are getting their asses kicked at the moment. But realizes that he doesn't have the equipment to do it. And apparently the crashlanded humans have high explosives with them as well.

They're actually pretty decently equipped considering they're nothing more then the crashlanded remnants of a terrorist organization.

But what's this heavy equipment that's mentioned? Powerarmor? But that wouldn't make sense since he wants to hurt the zerg in this context, combat armor is more like protection.

The first shot struck the farthest overlord, causing it to writhe in pain. His second burst missed because of the creature’s motion but the third hit right near the first, widening its already gaping wound. Stunned by the sudden attack from nowhere, the overlord reeled back, unable to control its flight—

--and slammed into the overlord beside it. Crushing the resting scourge between them.

The explosion threw Raynor back, his pistol slamming into his cheek and leaving him with a ringing head and a throbbing face. But the devastation on the plateau was far worse. The scourge were the zerg’s suicide bombers, bred to explode upon impact. They detonated with enough force to destroy a shuttle or a fighter craft, and a handful of them could breach a starship hull. This had been a row of them, the explosion from the first adding to the impact on the others, the hard rock of the plateau reflected the blast back up, causing even more damage to those stuck upon it.

Zerglings were shredded by the explosion, as were the other two overlords. The mutalisks and hydralisks and ultralisks had thicker hides, but still those closest to the blast were torn apart, while those farther away were battered and bruised and broken.

Those closest [zealots] to the blast center were shredded, armor and flesh both, and all of them were tossed about like leaves on a strong wind.

Every starcraft novel has its cringeworthy moment of massive stupidity. This is the one in this novel. A pistol hurting an overlord? Granted it doesn't die or anything, not from the pistol rounds at least. But considering these things shrug off lightning like it wasn't there (SotXN), this is strange indeed. I’d think overlords would be a bit more afraid of actual military units as well, if they’re this easily hurt by kinetic weaponry.

Or then perhaps this is a really powerful pistol? It's not without precedent that powerful pistols outperform rifles. General Duke had a pistol that was apparently strong enough to punch through bulkheads (LC). Fired explosive ammo, if memory serves. There’s also a mention of burst again.

And here's also something I think one can calculate when it comes to the scourge. The RPG says that they need to hover at least 200 meters off the ground or risk explosion. And the shockwave is enough to throw around zealots like leaves on a strong wind and kill them rather easily. Even ultralisks are ‘torn apart’, even though this is an almost purely concussive explosion. Now I did have a discussion with Error on IRC about this, trying to figure out how best to quantify it, but we ran into problems like shockwave density and the like when trying to use the zealots being thrown around as a gauge. I think I will retry that method (or something similar) at some later point though.

So a very simplistic (oversimplistic probably) way to gauge this would be to simply use the nuke calculator to figure out a minimum. If the RPG is to be trusted, then the scourge are at least 200m from the battle below. 20 psi seems to kill most living humans, but these aren't humans, we're talking armored and shielded combatants being ripped apart, some larger then elephants. Using the nuke calculator, the best I could offer is triple-digit gigajoule minimum for the total blast. And that's far from precise. Assuming we’re talking about the most likely death of a non-armored human.

Indeed I think I'll be going back to see if this can be quantified better at some later date. I've also been thinking about going over that vaporized lake bit again as well as grenade yields. I think I'll do a separate calculation section once I've gone through the entire novel.

One more thing before that though. Notice how Raynor isn't killed by the shockwave, even though he's unarmored and merely human. This would indicate he is further from the scourge then the guys on the plateau. Which in turn means that his pistol is fairly accurate at ranges over 200m. Which is quite a lot for a pistol. Compare it to this guy for instance, who has an effective range of 50m.

Rask · Jul 29, 2008

l33telboi said:
This web ability isn't something from the game either.

This sounds to me like the Ensnare ability, which she does have in the game. Sure, it isn't green goo, but there would have been no reason to make a different-looking graphics effect for it just for Kerrigan.

l33telboi · Jul 29, 2008

Rask said:
This sounds to me like the Ensnare ability, which she does have in the game. Sure, it isn't green goo, but there would have been no reason to make a different-looking graphics effect for it just for Kerrigan.

She had ensnare? Damn.

I swear, it's been so long since I've played the game that I've basically forgotten about pretty much everything from it.

l33telboi · Jul 31, 2008

Another big chapter when it comes to number of quotes, because again we get to see another one on one duel between two "Heroes". This time it's Zeratul versus Kerrigan.

And on another note, from this point on the novel becomes increasingly bad with time. The author basically just jumps from action to action and finds the most boring ways to describe them. Raynor somehow always seems to be in the right place at the right time to witness all these great events. It was fine when he found Kerrigan just as she hatched, it was ok when he stumbled upon Tassadar in the middle of nowhere, it become worse when he just happened to see the action between Tassadar and Kerrigan. It became even worse when he just happened to find Zeratul killing the Cerebrate. But now that he just accidentally happens to find Zeratul battling Kerrigan I draw the line. Is he carrying some improbability technology like that from HGTTG?

Chapter 13

Unfortunately, she was also moving very quickly. Far more quickly then an unarmored Terran could manage. Raynor again cursed himself for not wearing powered armor, and assured himself that he wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Two things to note here, Kerrigan is faster then normal humans, though I guess that's pretty self-evident. But it's also implied that combat suits make you faster, not just stronger. This is perhaps not something you'd automatically conclude because of the bulky visuals of the suit.

Raynor saw nothing, but after a moment Kerrigan nodded. “Do not bother to cloak yourself, little protoss,” she warned the empty air. “For I can sense you through I cannot see you. Show yourself to me.”

Zeratul appeared before her, not forty paces away, his Dark Templar behind him.

Kerrigan can apparently sense the Dark Templar, even though they are cloaked.

“You are a part of the culmination,” the protoss replied. “But not the end of it.” His eyes glowed brightly, and Kerrigan seemed almost transfixed by them. Her entire brood was motionless, held in thrall by the Praetor’s gaze and words. “You shall show the way, the path that must be taken, the realigning of the old truths no longer valid,” he intoned, and to Raynor it sounded as if the protoss was reading from a text somewhere, or reciting holy scripture. “Yours is not the hand, but your very existence provides necessary instruction.”

First time I read through this I didn't quote it, because I thought the thrall part was 'flowery prose' and nothing tangible. But there’s more to come in a later quote.

“So be it,” he announced, his words ringing across the rocks and making several zerg crumple to the ground, writhing. “We shall battle.”

Zeratul seems to be able to hurt lesser zerg simply by talking with his telepathic voice. No apparent effect on Kerrigan though.

As with Kerrigan and Tassadar, Raynor saw two separate fights overlaid, the combatants matched in location and position but no in their actions. He was dimly aware that the zerg had been freed from their paralysis when Kerrigan attacked and that they were battling the other Dark Templar, but his eyes stayed locked on the two leaders and their private duel.

Here's the part I was referring to earlier, it's established that the thrall was indeed a tangible form of paralysis.

Zeratul sprang towards her, flipping over her as she approached, his blades stabbing downward. Her wings blocked the strike, however, fanning over her head so their spikes caught his blades and shoved them away.

Kerrigan’s bladed limbs seem to be able to parry warp-blade strikes without damage. And there's also some indication of Zeratul's agility in that passage. He can jump at least 1.60m into the air, probably a lot more when you take Kerrigan's wings into account. Also, I do seem to recall Kerrigan being slightly taller as the queen of blades then she was before, I'll have to look into it. But for now we can assume she's at least 1.60m long.

The sun slipped just below the horizon now, and the shadows lengthened, one of them enveloping the Praetor. The darkness thickened around him, wrapping over him protectively until only his glowing eyes could be seen clearly. Raynor strained to pierce that shroud and could just make out the Praetor’s blades as patches of dim light, a marginally weaker shadow against the whole.

This definitely seems like a different sort of cloaking when compared to the previous one, which was described as being more of a chameleon thing. This form seems to rely on shadows and somehow amplify that effect. I'll call it "Shroud of Darkness", because I like Red Alert and this seems pretty much like that in effect.

Zeratul was not idle, however. He skirted his opponent, edging through the darkness, but the shadows did seem to confuse Kerrigan, who did not react to his changed position.

This form of cloaking seems to work on the poor girl.

Now Kerrigan’s other wing descended as well, piercing the Praetor’s shoulder, and he was pinned between her wings, unable to free his arms enough to raise his blades. Blood dripped from the puncture points as Kerrigan lifted him up, held securely between her wings and stretched sideways before her.

And so it would seem that Zeratul, just like Tassadar, loses the fight. He even ends up in a pretty similar situation as Tassadar.

The floor was littered with zerg bodies, but here and there a protoss lay among them as well. Zeratul had started with perhaps a hundred Dark Templar. Now he had maybe half that number, and they were badly outnumbered.

Zeratul had about 100 dark templar with him (just like Tassadar had 100 zealots, convenient, no?) but is now down to around 50. It's also implied that Dark Templar are vastly better fighters then Zerg, even in hand to hand. But then that doesn't really come as a surprise.

Now Kerrigan’s smile turned to a frown, and she bared her teeth. “Do not lecture me!” she shouted, spittle flying from her mouth—Raynor noticed that several drops struck her protoss captive and burned into his skin.

Acid spit, though she doesn't seem to use it in combat.

Her wings plunged toward one another, intent upon skewering Zeratul between them.

But just as she moved, the darkness, held at bay by her glow and by the last glimmer of the setting sun, descended upon them like a heavy blanket. Zeratul vanished within its embrace, utterly consumed by the night.

And Kerrigan’s wing-blades clattered against one another as they collided, unimpeded by the body they had held not an instant before.

“No!” Kerrigan’s scream was loud enough to echo across the landscape and shrill enough to shatter stone. Raynor clutched at his ears, sure blood was dripping from them, but unable to look away from the scene below. How had Zeratul done that? One second he had been pinned like a fly by a spider; the next he was gone.

Or was he? Raynor thought he saw a faint flicker within the shadows next to Kerrigan, tiny specks that might have been the Praetor’s eyes.

Now this is interesting. Kerrigan has Zeratul impaled between two of her blades and is fully aware the dark templar can cloak and use shadows. But somehow, just as she thrusts forward, they're no longer embedded in him?

The only explanation I can think off is that Zeratul either teleported away, or then became intangible for a moment. The latter seems more likely thematically speaking. I have to wonder if this is what they referred to on the Starcraft2.com page when they said: "The dark templar are most renowned for their ability to bend light around their bodies to become invisible at will, and a true master of the Void can achieve much greater feats than this."

Oh, and Kerrigan also seems to have a nasty scream, if she’s able to make ears bleed a long distance from her.

Enraged, she turned and attacked a nearby rock, her wings slicing into it and then wrenching free, shattering the boulder in a could of dust and rock chips.

Another indication on the strength in Kerrigan's blades.

ScreenXSurfer · Jul 31, 2008

L33telboi, I don't think you can compare all Hydralisk/Zerg Units durability to a single instance. They grow, get stronger, eat different minerals and use those to increase in power. Hunter Killers, for instance, are tough sons of bitches. A hydralisk can have increased mutated skin, making it as tough as tank armor.

So when one Hydra went down to a row of spikes, it could have been newly hatched, while the one that needed a full on explosion may have been a Hunter Killer, or at least, a fully mature Hydra.

And Zeratul's talking that was hurting Zerg apparently doesn't affect Terrans. I guess if you have a latent psionic ability (which all Terrans do, at least all are a 3 on the psi-scale). This could allude to that Zerg units (lings/hydras) don't have a psionic ability(except for ovies, queens, and the higher arch), but are only capable of being controlled by it.

l33telboi · Aug 1, 2008

ScreenXSurfer said:
L33telboi, I don't think you can compare all Hydralisk/Zerg Units durability to a single instance. They grow, get stronger, eat different minerals and use those to increase in power. Hunter Killers, for instance, are tough sons of bitches. A hydralisk can have increased mutated skin, making it as tough as tank armor.

So when one Hydra went down to a row of spikes, it could have been newly hatched, while the one that needed a full on explosion may have been a Hunter Killer, or at least, a fully mature Hydra.

True enough, not all zerg critters are equal. But I'm not making a blanket statement with just one example of durability either. This whole thread is basically dedicated to finding all the examples and posting them. After that an average can be decided.

Though I see nothing wrong with a row of spikes directly to the head taking down a hydralisk. In Liberty's Crusade there is an instance where a chick fires at a hydra, but doesn't manage to kill it, so she detonates a nearby car to take it out instead. And in the "Amerigo" cinematic, a group of marines do kill hydralisks, though they seem to take quite the beating before finally dying.

The durability of the hydra, seems fairly consistent at this point.

And Zeratul's talking that was hurting Zerg apparently doesn't affect Terrans. I guess if you have a latent psionic ability (which all Terrans do, at least all are a 3 on the psi-scale). This could allude to that Zerg units (lings/hydras) don't have a psionic ability(except for ovies, queens, and the higher arch), but are only capable of being controlled by it.

No, Raynor is hurt by it as well. But he doesn't die from it, probably because he's a lot further away from Zeratul then the zerg are. There's an upcoming quote where Tassadar shouts at Zeratul and Raynor feeling pain from it.

Psionics in this case seem very much like sonics. Telepathically ‘talk’ hurts no one, but ‘screaming’ does.

l33telboi · Aug 5, 2008

Right. I better hurry up with this one, Frontine is coming out next week and from what I've seen so far, it's going to have a lot worth examining in it. So I want to have this over with by then.

Again, we're in for a long chapter with lots of quote worthy stuff, most of it pertaining to a (surprise, surprise) hero fight. This time between Tassadar and Zeratul. The author definitely has a hardon for writing about these hero types fighting with each other.

Chapter 15

“We’ve still got one brood to worry about,” he reminded them. “And they’re only interested in one thing—killing every non-zerg on this rock.”

The zerg have begun their attack on Aiur, and so most of them have left Char. In fact, only one brood seems to remain, with Kerrigan leading them. And given what's written in the rest of the book, it seems like a very small brood, thousands in numbers, I'd guess.

This is somewhat interesting, because by the end of the original Starcraft, Kerrigan is supposed to have "billions upon billions" of critters under her command on Char (according to SotXN). This gives us some idea as to how fast these critter reproduce. A single episode in the game can't be more then 2-3 years at the very most. More likely 1 year or less. Though I have to admit I don't remember what happened in Episode 3 of the game, and the Starcraft wiki is down at the moment so I can't check. There was lots of fightning on Aiur, but what was Kerrigan up to during this time? She fought the protoss and dark templar on Char for a while at least, but what then?

It took Raynor almost a week to locate the protoss again.

He kept his men on full alert, four men in combat armor on guard at all times. Raynor had commandeered a suit for himself as well, and found it much easier now to race around the planet hunting the elusive aliens.

Finally, as he was perched atop one of the taller mountains scanning the horizon, a small splash of color caught Raynor’s eye. Focusing on that area, he used the armor’s targeting system to isolate and enhance the image. As he watched, the tiny splash magnified, details appearing until he could see it clearly.

So they've started using combat suits regularly now, for at least a week Raynor's had a constant guard of 4 men using them. That'd give us some indication of how long these suits can run without recharge, but it doesn't mesh well with what's said in Speed of Darkness. But then you realize they have a transport vessel that's still partially working, and that in Speed of Darkness it's also said that combat suits can be recharged from dropships. Most likely this is how they can keep operating their suits for so long without any support.

There's also some info on a combat suit’s targeting systems. There's no mention of what type of suit this is, but given that the most common suits out there are the CMC-300 and 400 variants, this is probably one of them. In any case, the targeting systems have a built in zoom and focus system.

“Gotcha,” Raynor whispered. He leaped down from his peak, the armor’s servos absorbing the shock easily, and bounded toward the Executor, who was now locked into his targeting system. The armor allowed Raynor to race through the mountains as if he were merely jogging easily along a beach, and within minutes he had closed most of the distance.

A little more info on the targeting systems. Apparently you can get a lock on someone and use that lock to track them remotely. I'm thinking you might need a clear line of sight to the target for this to work though. Not sure of course.

And like implied earlier, the armor adds greatly to the normal agility. Something I find strange considering their sheer bulk.

But this time the swordsman faced another swordsman. Or rather, two bands of swordsmen faced each other.

It was an amazing display. Raynor was sure he missed much of it, because the protoss simply moved too quickly for him to follow.

So Raynor finds Zeratul and Tassadar just as these two decide to have a fight. Well, they start by letting the zealots and dark templar fight for a while. They also seem rather agile, considering the 'moved too quickly for him to follow' part.

“No!” Tassadar stepped back again, then straightened. “I will not listen to this! You shall not corrupt me!” And he struck at Zeratul.

The blow was so fast Raynor couldn’t see it fully—he saw the protoss leader’s arm slam forward in a blur, fist leveled at the Dark Templar’s chest, but even his armor’s targeting systems couldn’t clarify the image properly. It was simply too quick, too sudden. He thought he felt a rush of air from the punch, even here on his ridge, and he knew that the impact would crush the Praetor’s chest like an eggshell.

But by the time the punch landed, the Praetor was no longer there.

If Tassadar’s move had been lightning-fast, Zeratul’s response was as quick as thought. There was no blur, no sense of motion—the Praetor was simply two feet to the left of his former position. It had happened in less then a blink, and Raynor’s eyes twitched trying to adjust even as his brain registered the Dark Templar’s change in position. It hadn’t been an illusion, either, like the one Tassadar himself had used against Kerrigan.

So both guys are rather fast. Zeratul punches "lightning-fast", which has to be a bit of an embellishment considering lightning moves above 0.1c. "Less then a blink" might be more truthful, though it only provides an upper limit. And apparently a blink lasts about 100 to 150 milliseconds.

What's more impressive is that Zeratul managed to move completely out of the way during this time. This not only means he has to have great reaction times, but he also has to have the ability to actually act during this time.

He attacked again, his moves even faster this time, his strikes more furious. Not once but three times his fists moved, so fast they seemed to punch all at once, in a neat row to the left, to the right, and dead center on the Praetor’s chest. Raynor understood the logic behind it. The Executor was hoping to box his opponent in, hitting to either side to keep him from ducking out of the way again. He was counting on at least one punch landing.

But none of them did.

Zeratul moved again, sliding to the left before Tassadar’s first blow landed—a move that somehow did not involve his legs or feet, simply his body’s suddenly appearing two feet from its previous position, as the Executor’s other two strikes passed harmlessly alongside him.

So it's a definite that Tassdar has superhuman punching abilities, and that Zeratul is ungodly fast. In fact, remember the bit earlier where he somehow escaped Kerrigan even though she had him physically impaled? Well, if the description given on this incident is anything to go on, then it's more likely a form of blink/teleport movement rather then physically moving. Yeah, I know. I originally thought it was more some form of incorporeal thing, but this suggests otherwise. And this ability could very well have something to do with the Stalkers' ability to blink in SC2. Both are dark templar in origin so it's very possible. Perhaps a more primitive form of said ability?

As Tassadar lowered his arms, the lightning settled around his wrists, sweeping forward to form blades like those his warriors wielded, but longer, brighter, and filled with a crackling hum that made Raynor’s hairs stand on end. These blades were not contained—or created—by bracers, he knew. They were a part of Tassadar himself, an expression of his own power.

Tassadar is able to project psi-blades without the aid of technology.

“Aw, hell,” he whispered as he registered what he was seeing. His helmet automatically tracked and magnified the image, making it impossible to ignore.

It was the zerg. Lots of them, probably the entire brood.

A repeat of the tracking and magnifying function on the combat armor.

“Well, this ain’t gonna be good,” Raynor muttered to himself. He levered himself up from his crouch and leaped forward, the suit’s servos causing him to sail across the gap between the ridge and the plateau. He unslung the canister rifle on his back as he moved, swinging it around and into his hands as he landed, bending his knees to absorb the impact and taking a single step forward to keep his balance.

Jumping is another one of those things you wouldn't guess a combat suit would be capable off. At least not one from a stationary position or this well. I also find it rather odd that Raynor is armed with a canister rifle. More oddity to come on that topic...

firing a barrage to take down a cluster of approaching scourge that exploded just shy of the plateau, the shock waves almost tossing all of them all of their feet.

...Because apparently it's a rapid fire weapon. Two possibilities to explain this: We're either talking about a different type of weapon then the Ghost uses or then you can fire other types of ammo at higher rates of fire (it's later mentioned that spikes are fired from this canister rifle).

I wonder what that would do to the velocity of the slugs though, if this rifle is normally used to fire 20mm shells, what happens when you place 8mm slugs into it? Increased velocity by quite a lot I'd assume. Naturally this would also mean the canister rifle is a gauss weapon (this is however indicated elsewhere already) and I'm not sure how firing sub-caliber ammunition would work.

Then Tassadar’s hand jerked, tearing a long strip from his uniform, and with it he bound the older protoss’s wound. A surge of light welled up from his hands as he worked, and when he removed them the Praetor’s wound was still severe but no longer spurting blood everywhere.

Tassadar is apparently also capable of some minimalistic psionic healing.

“You!” His mental cry was the equivalent of a bellow, and Raynor winced as the telepathic shout struck him between the eyes.

Tassadar actually shouts at Zeratul in this case, though the quote on its own implies he's shouting at Raynor. In any case, if shouting causes people nearby to experience pain, one has to wonder if a zealot could use this to scream his opponents to death, as it were. No such thing has been seen though. Apart from Zeratul's earlier display, of course.

l33telboi · Aug 10, 2008

Chapter 16

“Sir, we’ve got zerg!” It was Cavez, shouting into the comm as soon as Raynor responded to the ping.

“Where are you?” Raynor shouted back. He could hear the retort of gauss rifles and hisses and clacks mixed with screams in the background.

“Dig in,” Raynor ordered, using his suit’s tracking systems to locate the camp from here. “Don’t try to run—they’ll cut you down. Center on the shuttle, put the armored troopers in front, and hold the fort. I’m on my way.”

Even with his suit’s servos and the protoss’s natural speed, it took almost an hour to reach the shuttle.

So Raynor's transport, which he and his men have been using as a base of operations, is under attack by the zerg. So we'll be getting a few quotes describing an engagement between terrans and zerg. Of course this isn't exactly a terran military force, they've got no vehicles and not even enough combat suits for everyone. But they are dug in and did have access to explosives and stuff, so they should be able to put up quite a fight.

In any case, the first thing you notice here is that the fighting has been going on for at least for an hour before Raynor accompanied by the protoss finally reach them. This will be sort of a strange revelation considering upcoming things said in the novel.

There's also a bit more information on the combat armor. Including a mention of the tracking system in it. Though it's mostly redundant at this point. Still, you can use the tracking systems to tag certain locations to better navigate to and from them.

He unlimbered his canister rifle as he ran.

Then he was down there, and put a volley of spikes through and ultralisks that had raised its scythes to carve through the shuttle’s side. The massive zerg fell, crushing several zerglings beneath it, and the rest of the brood turned toward Raynor, giving his troopers a momentary respite. Of course, that didn’t help him much.

This struck me as strange for multiple reasons. First off is of course the fact that Raynor's canister rifle fires volley's of spikes. But this I mentioned earlier already. The stranger thing is that he easily kills an Ultralisk with it. Granted it's been there fighting for the better part of an hour already and is probably heavily wounded, and we don't really know anything about this canister rifle and its spikes, but this still sounds very much like the author subscribes to the infamous "the power of the weapon depends on who's firing it" mentality. It was already demonstrated with the Overlord and now the Ultralisk.

Also, given this and earlier statements it seems apparent I've made a slight boo-boo when it comes to the transport. I've been treating it as if it was a dropship, you know, the ones we see in the game. It's an easy mistake to make, you hear someone say gauss rifle and you automatically assume it's a C-14, you hear someone say terran transport and you think Dropship. Well, it seems far too large to actually be a dropship in this case. There was the previously mentioned troop capacity, of course. And now, given the descriptions of critters crawling across the hull, and Ultralisks trying to break through the armor, it seems as if it is indeed larger then a normal dropship. Because normally Ultralisks are larger then dropships.

It was a short fight. This was only a small portion of Kerrigan’s brood, actually, a handful of ultralisks and guardians with a few dozen mutalisks, hydralisks and devourers and perhaps thirty zerglings. Those were the ones still standing when he’d arrived, anyway—his men had dispatched close to half the attackers already, he was pleased to see.

We get some figures on the attacking force. The zerg strength is apparently somewhere over 100 critters at the start, and down to half that now that the fighting has been going on for an hour. Zerg are meant for swarming, but they seem to be doing very well against even a entrenched force just half their own size. Then again they should, they have mutalisks and ultralisks with them. Still a bit strange that the fighting took so long considering the numbers. Perhaps they attacked in smaller groups over time?

Of course, against around 100 protoss they fall like wheat before a scythe.

“Good man.” Raynor activated his suit’s targeting systems and told it to search for damaged suits. It registered eight—two in the shuttle and five just outside. And one more a little ways beyond.

The combat suits can locate and pinpoint other suits. And if they can do it when they're damaged, then logically they should be able to do it when they're not.

Raynor couldn’t see any other damage to the suit beyond that one gaping hole. And though it had carved through the suit’s armor easily, slicing open metal and plastics and wiring, he didn’t see any blood.

This is the result of a single tear from a zerg. No mention of which critter exactly, but I'm guessing a hydralisk. Terran armor doesn’t seam to offer much protection at all.

They’d lost ten soldiers in the attack, including three of the four who had already been wounded. Considering how many zerg had hit them, and how quickly the attack had occurred, they’d all been damn lucky.

Some info on the losses the defenders took. Basically we're talking something like a 5 to 1 kill rate, though they were dug in and this part says they were lucky as well.

“Easy enough when they’re just sitting still,” somebody called out, and everybody laughed, Raynor included.

“Yeah, they’re really good at sitting,” he agreed, but just then a flurry of motion caught his eye and he stopped to glance over the troopers’ heads. The protoss were all rising from their frozen positions, Zealots and Dark Templar alike, and moving toward the valley entrance.

“We must find another haven,” Tassadar explained. “The swarm approaches.”

So, the terrans have moved on from their transport and are now basically moving from place to place with the protoss, hoping to avoid the enemy and resorting to minor ambushes in order to piss of Kerrigan. Probably hoping to catch her off-guard at some point.

The above quote also indicates that they're using their psionic abilities to tell whenever zerg are approaching. They've been sitting completely still (protoss meditation or somesuch) and then suddenly decide they need to move because the zerg approach.

“Yes,” Zeratul agreed, and Raynor realized that the Praetor had read his thoughts. “He is rare indeed, and valuable beyond measure.” There was no hint of condescension or sarcasm in the statement, only truth, pride, and perhaps a little envy.

Thought reading by the protoss. Though given that they normally communicate via telepathy, this capability shouldn't come as such a big surprise.

“I must warn our people, however. They must be told of the attack—and that the cerebrates are the key.” Then he bowed his head. “I have not the power to reach them alone.”

“I will aid you,” Zeratul offered, rising to sit next to Tassadar. The older protoss had apparently locked his grief away, for it no longer showed on his face or in his thoughts, though Raynor was sure the Praetor still felt it keenly. “Between us we may bridge the distance and let your warning be heard.”

This seems rather fancy. Tassadar and Zeratul are able to actually communicate with people back on Aiur, while they’re still on Char. That's telepathy with a several lightyear range. And faster then light as well.

What's more interesting is that in this instance, in the game, Tassadar says he's been on Char for 'many months', IIRC. This could give us some valuable insight into just what types of timeframes we're talking about. But alas, he doesn't say this in the novel, so I don't know if the 'many months' thing should be considered in conjunction with the novel.

Future chapters will probably shed some light on this.

Analyzing "Starcraft: Queen of Blades"

Local Rocket Surgeon

Knight Querist

Local STALKER Fanboy

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Seek not to bar our way

Local Rocket Surgeon

Seek not to bar our way

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Seek not to bar our way

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Seek not to bar our way

Local Rocket Surgeon

General Edmund Duke

Local Rocket Surgeon

Amused Zergling

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Watchdog

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon

Local Rocket Surgeon