StarCraft Storyline

[Wolf]

True, but it makes sense that Duran -- this mysterious individual neither Terran, nor Zerg, nor Protoss -- would be Xel Naga. I doubt Blizzard would just make up some new race at the end of one of its games which centered more on the original 4th race -- the Xel Naga. The entire Protoss campaign was a dabblin' in Xel Naga technology, and it stands to reason that Blizzard would want to get this long-defunct race back into action. Perhaps you are entirely correct, Leto, as I think I agree with that last post -- but Duran may just be one crazy fellow, who doesn't see reason that way. If he is one of the last surviving Xel Naga, I would not be surprised to learn that he is a little angry about the destruction of his race, or most of it, or even a part of it. Hey, everyone has their bad apples. The Protoss had Artanis, the Zerg have Kerrigan, and the Terrans had*... okay, the Terrans are awesome.

[hide]*Admits glumly, probably Mengsk, as he was pretty sneaky.[/hide]

[Terror]

The Titans in Warcraft 3, comparable to the Xel Naga didn't get back into action. They were mentioned in the storyline but they didn't get back into action :P . But we'll see. Perhaps they'll just negate the entire bonus mission story and make up somethign else... Time will tell.... sooner or later.. Time will tell...

[Wolf]

(Cues the Soviet march.)

[Andrew]

Babylon 5, the original species guys that ruled the universe is what I would think the Xel'Naga would be like.

And in the next game there will definitely be at least 4 different sides, as that is the way Warcraft 3 went, even though there were really only 2 sides in Warcraft 1 and 2.

[Wolf]

They could even do 5...

The United Earth Directorate (Advanced Terran)

The Terran Dominion (Colonial Terran)

The Khalai and the Dark Ones (Protoss Survivors)

The Zerg Swarm (Kerrigan)

The Xel Naga (Samir Duran)

Bear in mind that they may just have the same old 3 races, but tell the story through their eyes. There's many ways they could do it, especially consider that the races, with the exception of the Zerg, are fragmented. There's Mengsk and the Dominion, the UED, Raynor's Raiders, the Umojan Protectorate, and the Kel-Morian Combine.

[HasimirFenring]

Here's a question: the Protoss build their buildings on Aiur and then warp them to wherever they may be.  Hence their drones don't have to stick around during construction.  But if thier homeworld was destroyed, then how could the possibly do ANYTHING?

[Wolf]

I would assume that they got them from other colonies. That the build-warps exist throughout Protoss-controlled space, but that Aiur was the main distribution point. A sort of junction, or nexus. Once Aiur was lost, I'd agree, the Protoss seem pretty hosed. I guess we just have to assume that enough functioning Protoss colonies are left to pick up the slack once Aiur goes down.

[Terror]

Aiur wasn't completely destroyed. Part of the planet is still in Protoss hands. And as you can see in the end of the protoss campaign in Brood War, they managed to get rid of the Zerg on Aiur.

[Wolf]

Don't they evacuate it, though, at the beginning of Brood Wars?

[HasimirFenring]

I thought that they'd all evacuated to the Dark Templar's planet.

[MrFlibble]

My personal opinion about Duran's nature is that he's truly connected with Xel'Naga BUT he may be not one of them. he says he's a "servant of a far greater power". We don't know whether all Xel'Nagas were united or had conflicts about their creation plans. Obviously, the idea of creating a Zerg/Protoss hybrid was expressed by the Overmind in the Zerg campaign, but those plans failed, for some reason (You may notice that for some time there's a situation on Aiur when there are no conflicts between the Z's and P's, when Executor leaves for Char to capture Tassadar, and after that, when Tassadar is tried by the Judicators. What happened in this period? How could the Conclave "believe that the Zerg were defeated and return to personal matters" while the sacred land where the Overmind has manifested itself was not reclaimed?)

Did the Xel'Naga create the human race too? Who created the Xel'Naga? And concerning the warcraft III Naga, it's just that nagas are half-serpent, half-human demons in the mythology of India. 'Naga' means serpent in Sanskrit.

[Wolf]

And Blizzard has an affinity for that word. No, as far as we know, the Xel Naga did not create humanity. The Protoss and the Zerg are listed as the first and second creations of the Xel Naga, and since the Zerg killed off almost all of the Xel Naga after they were created, there can't have been any more creations.

[SpiceGuid]

Obviously, the idea of creating a Zerg/Protoss hybrid was expressed by the Overmind in the Zerg campaign, but those plans failed, for some reason

the Overmind plan was to merge the 3 races.

so the plan half succeeded, Kerrigan is zerg/human hybrid.

[Wolf]

I have a question. How come the Zerg weren't able to assimilate the Protoss they captured? It seems that the Zerg had just as much contact with the Protoss as they did with the Terrans. Why, then, do the Zerg only infest Terrans and Terran Command Centers, and not Protoss and Protoss Nexii when they had pretty much equal contact with the two races?

[Avrillian_Sard01]

I have a question. How come the Zerg weren't able to assimilate the Protoss they captured? It seems that the Zerg had just as much contact with the Protoss as they did with the Terrans. Why, then, do the Zerg only infest Terrans and Terran Command Centers, and not Protoss and Protoss Nexii when they had pretty much equal contact with the two races?

Before answering, here's something abt. Infested Terrans:

Zerg Queens have the ability to infest severely damaged Terran Command Centers, saturating them with parasitic bio-toxins. Once the Command Center is fully infested, its previous occupants can be turned into mindless suicide soldiers capable of mass destruction known as the Infested Terrans.

Most likely explanation for that is that Terrans may be more easily mutatable to become Infested Terrans than the Protoss, and also because most Terrans have little to no psionic capabilities (read: can easily be rendered mindless, except those w/ high psionic potential), unlike the Protoss who have a large amount of psi-energy (read: impossible to make them mindless drones, w/c most of the Zerg are...).

This connection w/ infestation and psi-energy still is, at best, a theoretical explanation...

[end pseudo-scientific mode]

As for the WCIII Naga, they were once Night Elves as well, but for some reason, became these seafaring creatures...but I guess its not the right thread to discuss that matter...

I heard some rumors from a friend about the Terrans having 2 types of SCV's, Alpha and Delta. Are they from the 2 different versions of Terrans? (The Colonial Terrans and the United Earth Directorate) Well, it could be possible...but hey, a rumor's a rumor...

[Ninja_Sher]

Hey, everyone has their bad apples. The Protoss had Artanis, the Zerg have Kerrigan, and the Terrans had*... okay, the Terrans are awesome.

[hide]*Admits glumly, probably Mengsk, as he was pretty sneaky.[/hide]

hmm, atranis was not bad, Kerrigan was originally Terran, Terran had a load of bad apples. The proud Protoss conju.. ( forgot the name ) might be mentioned as a bad apple, but he was not evil. Duran was infected so he lost his mind whoever he really is.

If Duran is a Xel'Naga then probably humans are their closest cousins.

[Avrillian_Sard01]

hmm, atranis was not bad, Kerrigan was originally Terran, Terran had a load of bad apples. The proud Protoss conju.. ( forgot the name ) might be mentioned as a bad apple, but he was not evil. Duran was infected so he lost his mind whoever he really is.

If Duran is a Xel'Naga then probably humans are their closest cousins.

Judicator? That be Aldaris, my friend... He was just too...against change...

Maybe Terrans are a lower form of Xel'Naga w/c got separated from them... :-

And I still consider SC II a possibility... There's an 'apparent' clip of SC II in the original WC III...finish all missions on "Hard" (w/ cheats or w/o, don't matter...) -and you'll see a 20-second 'clip' of some Terran Marines attacking Zerglings and Hydralisks (speaking of w/c, you can rescue a Zerg Hydralisk in the 'Daughters Of The Moon' mission), then being attacked by Orcs in Terran armor, rendered w/ the WC III engine-during the credits...

[Dude_Doc]

I pray to God that they will NEVER EVER have orcs in the StarCraft universe. No. Not a chance. It would be too much Warhammer 40k and I don't like that (the idea, WK40k is okay as it is a "universal war"). Orcs just don't fit into the picture.

Anyways, here is something funny I found about the Nagas' - in OUR world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_fireballs

I think Blizzard was quite confident that they would create a StarCraft 2 in the future. SC: Ghost is like an expansion to the original game I would say. By the way, isn't the game out yet?

Anyway, I missed the bonus level, but from what I have heard on this topic I think Duran is a Xel Naga. And, I do think that the Xel Nagas' wanted to be something in between the Zerg and Protoss. I see the Xel Nagas' as the aliens from the miniseries "Taken". They are simply scientists, very much like the Vulcans from the Star Trek series. They have no feelings and live only by their logic. I think that the Xel Nagas' wanted to explore what "feelings" meant, and creating a completely new race could proove them this meaning.

For example, the aliens in Taken were mostly pure energy. I think that this energy was either a very developed race of aliens, that long ago abandoned physical bodies, and thus, gradually lost their "feelings", the boundaries between reality (gravity, wounds, physical feelings as well as kinetic feelings), and "virtuality". Being pure energy is like the universal purity, no boundaries, everyone is truly free. Or that is what they thought. After some time (eons upon eons), these aliens wanted to, once again, know what these feelings meant. So they started to mess with humans, resulting in the Taken series.

Maybe the same thing happened with the Xel Nagas'? Only this time, they didn't find any humans, and so they built their own bodies. Wanting to improve their bodies, they created the Zerg and the Protoss. This resulted in StarCraft. :)

Or, the Xel Nagas' were never energy, and they were just like humans (maybe they even looked like us), and creating the Zerg and Protoss were just another experiment (very much like humans playing around with genes today).

Also, I think the manual spoke about how the XN loved the Zerg more than they did with the Protoss. The manual said that the XN first created the Protoss, but seeing how fast they developed, they were disappointed and abandoned them. When they created the Zerg, they were fixated and impressed by them, so much that they didn't realize until the last minute that the Zergs' had their own motives.

This points out some things (I think):

-the XN like organic stuff more than non-organic (Protoss-like).

-they support evolution/mutation, not invention.

Building upon this, I also believe the XN wasn't totally wiped out. I believe there are a great number of them out there in the darkest corners of the universe, and that they have been experimenting on Zerg's for a time. I think it wasn't until much later their interests with the Protoss was revived (mostly their kinetic abilities), resulting in the interests of reviving a probably long-lost experiment.

About Zergs not being able to infest Protoss: the Protoss has shields, so I think the Zergs has some trouble with infecting them. Plus, the Protoss are based on energy-fields and crystalls and stuff, also within their buildings. Maybe the Zergs can't infest the buildings that way? However, the Protoss seems to have some cards up their sleeves...

[MrFlibble]

Wasn't Matriarch Raszagal infested by Kerrigan? She was kinda 'enslaved', but it is never revealed how. This may be the only example of Protoss infestation. (And the Matriarch herself is by far the only example of a female Protoss ;))

[Wolf]

Raszagal is dead as they come, now. So, whichever way she was infested, I don't think it matters. Even though I do think you're right about that.

[HasimirFenring]

Is starcraft: ghost supposed to take place before, during or after Brood War?  Anyone know?

[Wolf]

After. Out hottie -- "Nova" -- will be fighting with Colonel Jackson Hauler of Nova Squadron and the Terran Dominion, reborn, under Mengsk!

[Big D]

whatever happened to raynor?

[Wolf]

Dunno. The ending says that he and Zeratul went their separate ways.

[Big D]

imho raynor is a way better leader then that rat mengsk.