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The Lore Explainer: StarCraft, Part 2 - The Story of StarCraft
In the previous entry in this series, we hit the very basics of StarCraft, looking both at the game itself as well as the basic lore of its three main races: The Terrans, the Zerg, and the Protoss. Now that the stage has been set, it’s time to open the curtains and start this galactic space opera by going through the events of the first StarCraft game and, in the next piece, the expansion pack Brood War.
Both the original StarCraft and Brood War were split into three campaigns, each focusing on one of the three factions and the characters that comprised them. Each one of these campaigns told a complete story that was both self-contained and built on the one that came before it, with plenty of narrative consequences for the sequel, giving the full game a pretty easy to follow through-line between the campaigns that told a larger overarching story. We will briefly discuss each campaign, taking particular note to highlight the stuff that is very important for the worldbuilding of StarCraft and its story.
Bernhardt: Both StarCraft and Brood War did allow you to play the campaigns out of order if you wanted; it just complained a little bit. You should just play them in order your first time. Yes, even if you hate Terran. If you've somehow watched enough competitive StarCraft to have opinions on how the races play even though you haven't actually played the first game yourself, the campaign shouldn't be difficult for you no matter who you're controlling.
Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
The Terran Campaign
The Terran campaign takes us to a planet in the Terran Confederacy known as Mar Sara, one of the planets in the backwater Sara system. Shortly before the events of this campaign, the Zerg Swarm reached one of Mar Sara’s sister worlds, Chau Sara, though their arrival was kept secret by Confederate leadership, who had captured and begun experiments on some Zerg species for their own ends. What wasn’t kept under wraps was the arrival of a Protoss fleet to glass the planet from orbit, as Chau Sara had become overwhelmed by the Swarm. As the general Terran populace was previously unaware of either the Zerg or the Protoss, the citizens of Mar Sara were understandably on edge.Bernhardt: Exterminatus being the privilege and protocol of the Protoss might throw players coming to the franchise in reverse, but as a matter of governmental and naval policy, the Toss are a lot less noble at the beginning of our story than they become later on.
Credit: Blizzard EntertainmentOn Mar Sara, Marshall Jim Raynor and the planetary Magistrate (you, the player) start to notice the beginning of Zerg presence in the countryside, as reports of disappearances and good old fashioned cattle mutilation reach their ears. Raynor encounters the Zerg on one of the expeditions into these reports, as well as discovering an infested Terran command center and the twisted Terran-Zerg hybrids created by it. The Confederate military intervenes under the command of Colonel Edmund Duke, but rather than supporting Raynor and the Magistrate to fight off the threat, they are instead both arrested for what they know about the Zerg.
Bernhardt: Duke is pretty great character, and he does a lot of heavy lifting; this one vain, bullheaded shitkicker who substitutes aggression for brains basically stands in for the entire Terran Confederate leadership and political elite, even if technically he "only" leads Alpha Squadron. (Don't be fooled; the army structure of the Terran Confederacy is quite strange, with "Squadron" being a top-level service designation. Alpha Squadron, an elite strike force that prides itself on being the tip of the Confederate spear -- service motto "First in, first out" -- is roughly the United States Marine Corps in space.)
Raynor and his men are eventually contacted by the Sons of Korhal, an extremist anti-Confederate organization led by Arcturus Mengsk, the son and sole survivor of the ruling family of the planet Korhal that had recently been subject to violent suppression for dissenting against the Confederate ruling aristocracy. Mengsk cuts Raynor and the Magistrate a deal: Join forces with the Sons of Korhal, and he’ll save them from the Confederacy as well as the growing Zerg threat on Mar Sara. They take the deal, and their forces are evacuated from the planet just before it is wholly overwhelmed by the Zerg and its surface subsequently bombarded by the Protoss fleet.
Now working with Mengsk, Raynor raids a secret Confederate science station and not only discovers the truth that the Confederacy was aware of the Zerg threat all along, but also learns the Confederacy had created Psi-Emitters to lure Zerg to rebellious worlds to consume the planet’s populace. The rebels then liberate the colony of Antiga Prime, defeating Colonel Duke and convincing him to join with the Sons of Korhal. Escaping the planet before the arrival of the Confederate fleet, the Sons of Korhal decided they had gathered enough strength to strike at the heart of Confederate power, the planet Tarsonis.
Bernhardt: One sign of the times in the original StarCraft is how quickly things happen. The Terran Confederacy falls by the end of the original Terran campaign, and the Sons are laying siege to the Confederate capital world by Mission 8 of a total twelve. That includes a couple intro missions that are glorified advanced tutorials where you just dick around on Mar Sara! Once we get to StarCraft II, Blizzard realizes they can take their time and give each race their own game. That's very smart business, and gives them a lot of creative real estate. What they do with it...we'll get there.
The Sons of Korhal launch their attack on Tarsonis, but underestimate the remaining strength of the Confederate military defending it. Against the wishes of Raynor and his other advisors, Mengsk orders the deployment of a Psi-Emitter to bring the Zerg to Tarsonis and seal its fate. The Protoss fleet is hot on the heels of the rebels, and deploy land forces to locate and destroy the transmitter. Mengsk orders Sarah Kerrigan, one of his most loyal operatives and burgeoning love interest for Raynor--
Bernhardt: Going to jump in midsentence here. It is absolutely true, in 2026, that the Ballad of Sarah and Jimmy was written in the stars and they were well on their way to becoming a couple by the time of the push on Tarsonis, if not as early as the events on Antiga Prime. What's worth noting, however, is that level of overdetermination is not actually present in the original game. Raynor's horny for Kerrigan, sure -- she reads his mind and calls him a pig the first time they meet -- and he calls her darling, but he's a rowdy roguishly charming space cowboy; one imagines he calls a lot of women darling. One of the best parts of the extremely spare writing of the first two games is the two of them never really have that conversation about what might have been, and while by the end of Brood War, Jimmy's feelings towards Kerrigan are quite intense, they run in a very different direction than love. But we'll get there.
--to defend the Psi-Emitter against the Protoss attack. She pushes the Protoss back and the Zerg quickly arrive on Tarsonis en masse, but when Kerrigan requests evac, she is betrayed by Mengsk and left to her fate as the Swarm overwhelms the planet. Raynor, furious, leaves the Sons of Korhal and swears vengeance against Mengsk.
Kerrigan learns she is being left to die by MengskWith the Confederate government in shambles, Mengsk seizes power, creates a new Terran hegemonic government, the Terran Dominion, and declares himself Emperor, trading the tyranny of the Confederacy for a new tyranny under his rule.
The Zerg Campaign
In the Zerg Campaign, the player is put into the, uh, giant slug shoes of a Cerebate, one of the lieutenants of the Overmind's will, on the volcanic planet Char. The Overmind gives the Cerebate a task of highest importance: To protect a mysterious Chrysalis at all costs until whatever is inside can hatch. Both Terran and Protoss forces are drawn to Char try to destroy the Chrysalis, which is emitting immense psychic power. After several waves of assaults, the Chrysalis hatches to reveal Kerrigan, transformed into a Terran-Zerg hybrid of immense power and championed by the Overmind to he the truest extension of his will on the battlefield.
Kerrigan, reborn to the ZergBernhardt: The unified nature of the Zerg Swarm under the Overmind means there isn't all that much drama or conflict or even really true conversation happening between various characters in the Swarm during the first Zerg campaign; it's good that the Overmind's voice actor does such a quality job, because you're gonna hear a lot of him over the course of these missions. Instead, most of the character progress (that isn't Kerrigan's) happens when the Cerebrate overhears Protoss and Terrans, most notably now-Terran Dominion General Edmund Duke, Jim Raynor, and various Protoss luminaries we'll meet more fully in the next campaign, bickering as they try and fail to constrain the Swarm. The Zerg end their campaign where basically every Zerg campaign should narratively end: On the cusp of total victory.
The Terran and Protoss form an alliance and perform a feat once thought impossible: permanently killing a Cerebate, Zasz. Prior to this, the Overmind would simply reincarnate a Cerebate if it was destroyed, since they are all an extension of his gestalt will. Zeratul, an outcast Protoss leader of the Dark Templars, found a way to silence the Cerebate for good, which initially troubles the Overmind until it realizes that Zeratul has unintentionally made a grave mistake. In psychically connecting with Zasz to destroy him, Zeratul also linked to the Overmind, and gave away the hidden location of the Protoss home world of Aiur. Eager to fulfill its mission to assimilate the Protoss into the Swarm, the Overmind launches an assault on Aiur and gains a foothold on the Protoss homeworld.
The Protoss Campaign
The Protoss start off the final campaign of StarCraft in a pretty bad way: The Zerg have located the secret location of their homeworld, launched an assault on it, and are inexorably destroying and corrupting the planet. Which is the perfect time, of course, for the Protoss to devolve into infighting.The player takes on the role of an Executor in the Protoss Templar caste. Unlike the other nameless roles the player has during the campaigns, the Executor is later canonically confirmed to be Artanis, a major character in the series.
Bernhardt: A note here about the player character stand-ins: Blizzard handled all this stuff abominably piecemeal. Artanis being the Executor is 100% canon and also makes little sense when put next to the version of Artanis who shows up in Brood War, because it was one of a large number of bad decisions made by the StarCraft II writing team. Kerrigan's cerebrate makes the most sense because it has the least baggage; it gets summarily executed by Zeratul in the novel Queen of Blades between the Zerg and Protoss campaigns. The Magistrate is canonically his own unnamed character who never appears again, because Blizzard didn't maintain continuity discipline and let their tie-in novel writers introduce two characters, Matt Horner and Michael Liberty (yes, that guy, the same one from StarCraft II; he was introduced in a 2001 novel) who basically fill the same role as Raynor's more organized, strategically-minded buddy. The Magistrate still existed; he just wanders away after the Terran Campaign and is never heard from again.
Artanis and his forces are tasked at the beginning of the campaign by Judicator Aldaris with the defense of Antioch, a Protoss outpost under assault by the Zerg, alongside his sub-commander, Fenix. While defending Antioch, Aldaris and Artanis were contacted by Tassadar through the psychic link shared by the Protoss, the Khala. Tassadar, who was assumed missing by Protoss military command, informs them of both his alliance with the Dark Templar and Raynor's Raiders, Jimmy's renegade troupe of heroic Terran rebels. He also tells them how they’d successfully killed a Cerebate for good. Aldaris is skeptical, but agrees to try Tassadar’s plan and dispatches Fenix on a strike against the Cerebate controlling the nearby Zerg. Fenix does strike the Cerebate down, but it soon resurrects and Fenix is killed while trying to escape. Aldaris, and the rest of the ruling Protoss conclave, are furious and demand that Artanis and his fleet go to Char and arrest Tassadar for consorting with the Dark Templar heretics, believing the Zerg situation is under control.
Bernhardt: Another reason the Artanis retcon to Executor is annoying is because you're stuck with a whole lot of "Artanis" and "Aldaris" in the same paragraph in summaries like this. In the game, all you have to worry about is Aldaris, and Judicator Aldaris is much like Edmund Duke in his own way: A proxy and stand-in for the arrogant, sclerotic Conclave whose hidebound incompetence has doomed themselves and most of their people.
Fenix's body being carried away after the Zerg ambushArtanis arrives on Aiur and rescues Tassadar, Zeratul, and Raynor from an attack led by Kerrigan, and Artanis hears Tassadar out while bringing him back to Aiur for trial. Tassadar is disappointed that the Conclave would waste precious military resources on arresting Tassadar because of his newfound kinship with the Dark Templar. Upon arriving on Aiur, they are greeted by Fenix, whose broken body has been placed inside a mechanized Dragoon to keep him both alive and fighting; Artanis is ordered to hand over Tassadar and his allies immediately.
Bernhardt: People love Artanis, but I've always been a Fenix guy myself. I think it's mainly just that when I think of Artanis I always picture him in that dinky Scout he ends up in during Brood War; quite the step down from Executor, huh? Weird. Anyway, hard to respect a Scout pilot. A Zealot and then a Dragoon? That's a real warrior.
Artanis decides to disobey the Conclave’s orders and the Protoss forces begin infighting with one another, with those supporting the Conclave citing the heresy of Tassadar’s actions and those supporting Tassadar claiming the Conclave would let Aiur fall just to keep with outdated tradition. The erupting civil war disappoints Tassadar, who is saddened to see his kin fight each other rather than unite to save his race, and surrenders to the council to put an end to the fighting, while the Dark Templar disappear and seemingly leave Aiur to its fate.
Artanis, Fenix, and Raynor rescue Tassadar before he can be executed, and shortly after Zeratul and his Dark Templar rejoin the alliance with the grave discovery that the Zerg were also created by the Xel’Naga, and that the Zerg’s ultimate goal is to assimilate the Protoss and create an unstoppable lifeform to devour the galaxy. Tassadar and his allies realize that they must take drastic action, and launch a do-or-die assault on the Zerg Overmind, which is now on Aiur.
Tassadar's sacrificeBernhardt: Hey, it's the original deployment of the Holdo Maneuver. Tassadar is a pretty fantastic character; one of the best things about him is the economy of writing and the pacing of his turn. He is the commander of the Protoss fleet that you're beating up on in the Terran campaign, and starts off the game aligned with Aldaris and believing in the Conclave's adherence to tradition. Being ordered to genocide a couple worlds changes his mind on the Conclave and a lot of other things; by the time you actually start controlling Protoss units, his entire turn has happened during incidental character moments in the previous two campaigns, and you're ready for the final act. It proves that three 12 mission campaigns, one for each race, is more than enough to tell a great story -- if you know what you're doing.
While the attack is initially going well for the Protoss and Terran alliance, their forces begin to falter as the injured Overmind attempts to open a warp portal and escape to safety. Seeing victory slip away, Tassadar decides to sacrifice himself by ramming his Carrier capital ship into the Overmind and his warp portal, causing a massive explosion that kills the Overmind for good.
Bernhardt: Kerrigan survives, of course. The Terran Dominion is bruised, but the death of the Overmind secures its borders and seemingly removes both of its greatest security threats; the Dominion is the new top power in the Korpulu Sector, and Emperor Mengsk's star is rising. And Aiur is left in ruins, with the entire Protoss civilization broken around it. It's not a pyrrhic victory, but for the heroes -- especially Jimmy Raynor, who has lost Kerrigan and now Tassadar, and I guess the Magistrate as well -- it probably feels that way.
If they'd decided that was a decent place to leave the story and then skip forward to a new status quo years later for StarCraft II down the line, that would have made sense. But this was in the days where if you had a hit, you jumped on that immediately with an attempt to sell the game twice using a lot of the same assets and infrastructure -- you put out an expansion. And so less than a year later, Blizzard came back to market with StarCraft: Brood War. We'll cover that next time.
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