StarCraft Chronicles Episode 29 · Those Who Blow Up Their Homeland

This is a new fan narrative based on the events of the original game. The characters' emotions, dialogue, and the atmosphere of the scenes have been reconstructed, and it includes major spoilers.

Wounded Survivors Gathering on the Spear of Adun

The interior of the Spear of Adun was filled with the footsteps of refugees pouring in, breaking thousands of years of silence. Along the metallic corridors of the massive vessel, despairing Protoss sat huddled in groups. The Khalai, who had been one in the light of the Khala until just moments ago, now trembled in terrible isolation, their nerve cords severed.

Among them, the Dark Templar, the Nerazim, patrolled with wary eyes. For those who had long rejected the Khala, this situation was not unfamiliar, but the look in their eyes as they watched their suffering brethren was a mix of compassion and tension. Though sharing the same space, the two factions did not mingle, as if separated by an invisible wall.

Artanis quietly looked down at the chaotic scene from the high dais of the bridge. The heavy sensation of the moment Zeratul sacrificed his life while severing his own nerve cords still seemed to linger at his fingertips. On the young Hierarch's shoulders lay not only the grief of losing Aiur, but also the heavy responsibility of leading this broken race as a whole.

A Khalai Zealot clutched the severed end of his nerve cords and lay prostrate on the floor, weeping bitterly. A Nerazim Stalker passing by him gently reached out a hand, but the Zealot slapped it away with eyes full of fear. The void left by the disappearance of the Khala was not merely a loss, but a terror as if a part of his very self had been torn away.

Artanis slowly descended the steps and walked among them. His shortened nerve cords were the most definitive symbol proving the new reality to everyone gathered on this ship. As the Hierarch approached, both the weeping Zealot and the wary Nerazim held their breath and turned their gaze toward him.

“My brethren, we have lost much today,” Artanis's voice echoed through the vast hall. “The light of the Khala has been corrupted by Amon's darkness, and we had to sever that connection ourselves to survive. This solitude is terrible, but at the same time, it is the most noble proof that we have not become Amon's slaves.”

At his words, several Khalai raised their heads, and the Nerazim quietly lowered their weapons in respect. Although the massive physical fortress of the Spear of Adun protected their bodies, what truly had to sustain them was a new bond that would unite their broken hearts.

Artanis placed his hand on the wounded Zealot's shoulder, offering a steadfast gaze. To forge those with different philosophies and wounds into a single, true Templar order within this colossal ship—he realized with painful clarity that this was his first test as Hierarch to ensure Zeratul's sacrifice was not in vain.

The Awakening Ship and the Conflicting Views of Leaders

In the Solar Core, the heart of the ship, Phase Smith Karax was tirelessly moving his robotic arms. The ancient technology that had slept for thousands of years was slowly beginning to pulse under his touch. The brilliant golden energy radiating from the massive artificial star warmly filled the entire Solar Core.

“Hierarch, the Spear of Adun has finally fully awakened,” Karax reported in an excited voice as he entered the bridge. “This ship's power source is no mere machine. It is the pinnacle of technology achieved by our ancestors in the past, and it produces resources more than enough to accommodate all surviving Protoss.”

Before his enthusiastic explanation could even finish, Matriarch Vorazun stepped out from the deep shadows. Her expression was cold and sharp, and the distinct dark energy symbolizing the Nerazim hovered around her. Vorazun scanned the ancient relic Karax was praising with an unappreciative eye.

“I admit that the legacy of the Khalai is magnificent,” Vorazun said, crossing her arms. “But my people have learned to survive on their own for centuries without the control of the Khala. I do not wish for the Nerazim to be integrated into this ship's massive system as mere cogs, Hierarch.”

Karax flinched his robotic arms as if flustered. “Matriarch, you misunderstand. This ship's systems are for the survival of us all. We must integrate our weapon systems and power grids to establish an efficient defensive line against Amon's legions. This is cooperation for survival, not control.”

“If you seek to erase our traditions and ways in the name of efficiency, how is that any different from Amon's way?” A cold edge sharpened Vorazun's voice. “The Nerazim walk in the shadows. We require our own space and rules. If that is not guaranteed, this ship is but another prison.”

Artanis quietly raised his hand, sensing the tense friction between the two. “The Matriarch is correct. We cannot return to the past when we were bound by a single thought in the Khala. Karax, readjust the ship's internal structure to guarantee independent sectors and tactical autonomy for the Nerazim.”

Karax hesitated for a moment but soon bowed his head and accepted the command. Vorazun also nodded slightly, withdrawing her hostility. An invisible wall of distrust still existed on the bridge, but under the absolute mandate of survival, they were taking the first precarious yet essential step of their alliance.

The Preserver Trapped in the Shadow of the Khala

Deep within the stasis block, in a room bathed in a cold blue light, Preserver Rohana opened her eyes. Behind her, her long, intact nerve cords draped beautifully. Awakening from a slumber of thousands of years, she instinctively reached out her consciousness to connect to the Khala, searching for the warm thoughts of her people.

However, what welcomed her was not the harmonious song of billions of Protoss. A horrific, sticky darkness surged through the network of the Khala and assaulted her mind. It was the will of Amon, the fallen Xel'Naga filled with rage and hatred. Rohana shrieked, collapsing to the floor and clutching her head.

“Your era is at an end... everything shall perish according to my design.” Amon's whisper echoed as if scraping through her mind. Rohana resisted the encroachment with the strong mental fortitude she had forged as a Preserver, but Amon's overwhelming power, flooding through her intact nerve cords, relentlessly pressed upon her mind.

Artanis rushed into the stasis block. Seeing Rohana writhing in agony, he immediately activated his psi-blades and approached. “Preserver! You must sever your nerve cords at once. The Khala is no longer our sanctuary. Amon has enslaved our brethren through that connection!”

“No!” Rohana pushed Artanis's hand away, trembling all over in pain. “The Khala is... our race's history and soul. Thousands of years of memories and wisdom are contained within it. Severing this is tantamount to giving up being Protoss. As a Preserver, I must protect these memories.”

“In the face of death and enslavement, no great history has any meaning!” Artanis shouted in frustrated anger. “Your stubbornness could put the entire ship in danger. If Amon completely takes over your mind, I may have to strike you down with my own hands.”

Though trembling like an aspen leaf, Rohana looked up at the Hierarch with resolute eyes. “I will endure. Even within Amon's darkness, I will find and preserve the light of our ancestors. My will is not so weak. Please... do not cut my nerve cords.”

The unstable psionic currents flowing through her body and her trembling gaze showed how precarious her claim was. Artanis extinguished his blades and fell into a heavy silence. Instead of subduing Rohana by force, he chose to seal her back in stasis, but the nerve cords draping behind her looked like a time bomb that could detonate at any moment.

Amon's Legions Overrunning Shakuras

The red warning lights on the bridge spun frantically, blaring an ear-piercing siren. Onto the tactical display screen, the sight of countless biological signatures raining down upon the orbit of the Nerazim's homeworld, Shakuras, was projected. It was a massive swarm of the Zerg Swarm and hybrids under Amon's control.

The sky of Shakuras, which had been bathed in eternal twilight, began to turn black with Zerg drop pods. The sanctuary that had sheltered the Dark Templar for centuries had now turned into a horrific hunting ground for predators. The urgent distress signals sent from the ground were on the verge of paralyzing the bridge's communication network.

Vorazun stood frozen, unable to take her eyes off the display. The red dots on the screen were already breaching the outer defensive lines of the capital, Talematros. Her eyes wavered slightly, and Artanis, standing beside her, could not even begin to fathom the depth of the despair she was feeling.

“The Zerg have entered the streets of Talematros! The civilian residential sectors are under attack!” the observer's urgent report echoed through the bridge. Although the Nerazim warriors on the ground sprang from the shadows to slice through the Zerg, a desperate battle ensued where ten times as many monsters endlessly surged to replace those that fell.

“Activate the large-scale warp network immediately! Anchor the Spear of Adun in orbit and guide all evacuation ships to the vessel!” Artanis commanded in a resolute voice. The ship's massive warp gates opened in unison, forming blue pathways of light to pull up the survivors from the ground.

However, the Zerg offensive was far faster than the speed of the evacuation. Spore crawlers spat acidic spores at the evacuation ships, and swarms of Mutalisks covering the sky launched kamikaze attacks to disrupt the warp network connections. The surface of Shakuras quickly transformed into a living hell covered in blood and creep.

Vorazun gripped her signature warp scythe so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The merciful homeworld that had welcomed the Khalai fleeing from Aiur was now being helplessly ravaged along with those very refugees. Hearing the screams of her people as Matriarch was an agonizing pain that cut to the bone.

It became clear that conventional defensive lines could never stop this massive tide. Amon did not merely intend to occupy the planet; he planned to eradicate every last seed of the Protoss on Shakuras. The sorrow that had dwelt in Vorazun's eyes slowly began to harden into a cold, resolute fury.

The Matriarch's Decision to Burn Her Homeworld

The air in the strategic briefing room was suffocatingly heavy. On the hologram table floated a map of Shakuras, turning red with Zerg creep. It was Vorazun who broke the silence. “Hierarch, we must abandon Shakuras. And we cannot hand our homeworld over intact to those monsters.”

Artanis looked at her with startled eyes. “Matriarch, what did you just say? Not only abandoning our home, but you mean to destroy the planet? We have already lost Aiur. We cannot destroy the only remaining sanctuary for the Protoss with our own hands!”

“Amon will use Shakuras as a massive breeding nest for his host,” Vorazun's voice was firm and unwavering. “If we overload the energy of the Xel'Naga Temple to strike the planet's core, we can turn Shakuras, along with billions of those horrific monsters, into cosmic dust.”

“But that is tearing out the very heart of the Nerazim! It is the land that has sheltered you for centuries.” Despite Artanis's attempt to dissuade her, Vorazun did not waver. She spoke of the Nerazim way—a philosophy that did not shrink from the painful decision of giving up one's own flesh and hiding in the shadows for the sake of survival.

Artanis fell into deep agony. He recalled the faces of the countless Templar brethren who had fallen on the day Aiur fell, insisting on defending their homeland to the end. To him, who had believed that losing territory was equivalent to losing the race's identity, destroying a planet of one's own accord was an unimaginable taboo.

Yet, he saw an unshakeable steadfastness in Vorazun's eyes. The Matriarch was prepared to carry the guilt of burning her own homeworld for the rest of her life. It was a painful spirit of sacrifice—preferring to save her people and secure a future even if it meant abandoning the land, rather than letting the race perish while defending it.

After a long silence, Artanis nodded heavily. “If that is indeed the Matriarch's wish... I shall follow. We will use the Xel'Naga Temple not as an instrument of salvation, but as a weapon of destruction. Whatever judgment this terrible decision may bring upon us in the future, I will share the burden with you.”

Once the decision was made, Karax and the engineers immediately began precise calculations to overload the temple's energy. To collapse the planet's crust and trigger a chain explosion of the core, they had to activate the overload device directly from inside the temple and maintain the defensive line until the very last moment.

The Final Evacuation and the Overloading Temple

The entrance to the ancient Xel'Naga Temple, towering on the surface of Shakuras, became the final defensive line. Artanis and Vorazun took up their weapons and stood at the very front of the battle line. Under the ash-colored sky, an endless tidal wave of Zerg surged toward the temple, and the two leaders' psionic blades crossed, creating a storm of blood.

“Brethren, do not fall back! Do not let a single beast enter the temple until all evacuation ships have launched!” Artanis's shout pierced the battlefield. Nerazim Dark Templar and Khalai Zealots fought gloriously side by side against the wave of death, regardless of their factions.

At the landing pad behind the temple, the last evacuation ships were rising into the sky with roaring engines. Silent tears streamed from the eyes of the Nerazim looking at their burning homeworld through the windows. Their hearts wrenched as they watched the warriors fighting in the jaws of death to save their lives.

At that moment, in the heart of the temple, energy began to flow backward under Karax's remote guidance. The Xel'Naga crystals, which had slept for thousands of years, vibrated while emitting an ominous red light. The energy flowing along the floor spiraled out of control, driving like a wedge toward the planet's core.

As a massive Ultralisk breached the defensive line and charged, Vorazun instantly leaped onto the beast's back using Shadow Stride. The moment her scythe pierced the beast's thick armor and severed its neural pathways, the entire temple shook with a deafening roar. The overload had reached its critical point.

“Hierarch! The energy has exceeded the threshold! If you do not return right now, you will be caught in the explosion!” Karax's desperate voice echoed through the communicator. Artanis ordered the surviving warriors around him to retreat immediately. The warriors' bodies were enveloped in the blue light of the warp network, vanishing from the battlefield one by one.

Before stepping onto the recall beam for the last time, Vorazun took one more look at the creep-covered land of Shakuras. Beyond the mind-shattering screeches of the Zerg, the sound of the night wind that had sheltered the Nerazim for centuries drifted in like an illusion. With a brief moment of silence, she vanished into the light.

Immediately after returning to the Spear of Adun, looking down from orbit, the Xel'Naga Temple was already spewing a massive pillar of light into space. The light spread like a spiderweb across the entire planet through the cracks in the crust, and an irreversible chain collapse was beginning deep within the heart of Shakuras.

The Shattered Sanctuary of Twilight

Beyond the massive main observation window of the Spear of Adun's bridge, a silent destruction was unfolding. The light spewed from the Xel'Naga Temple formed a circular band along the planet's equator, and soon, a flash of light so intense that one could not open their eyes swallowed the space. The crust of Shakuras began to split into colossal chunks.

Along with billions of Zerg, the land containing the brilliant history and memories of the Nerazim was shattered to pieces. The massive shockwave created by the exploding planetary core violently struck the shields of the Spear of Adun. The entire ship jolted, and it felt like the final death rattle of their dying homeworld.

The Nerazim survivors gathered on the observation deck knelt as if by agreement. Some covered their faces with both hands and wept bitterly, while others stared blankly at the red debris drifting through space. The mother-like planet that had hidden them in eternal twilight had now turned into a burning field of meteorites.

Vorazun stood rigidly right in front of the main observation window. Her expression was set like stone, making it impossible to read any emotion, but her two hands hanging by her sides were trembling slightly, beyond her control. Faced with the horrific consequences brought about by the orders she had issued with her own mouth, she was silently enduring her punishment.

Artanis approached without a word and stood by her side. He knew that clumsy consolation or sympathy would be an insult in the face of this immense loss. It was a silent solidarity, simply looking at the same place in the same space, trying to share even a fraction of the weight of the terrible guilt and sorrow she carried.

The look in the eyes of the Khalai survivors watching the scene had also changed. Remembering the hand the Nerazim had extended to them when Aiur was taken, they now deeply empathized with the sorrow of the Nerazim who had lost everything. Even without the connection of the Khala, their hearts were united in deep mourning.

The two factions, who had once pushed each other away and distrusted one another, now stood before a common destiny as complete orphans of the universe with nowhere to return. For the Protoss, who had lost Shakuras after Aiur, only this ancient ship remained. Yet, paradoxically, this immense loss was binding them together into a single, true Templar order.

“Farewell, our dark sanctuary,” Vorazun whispered very softly in a cracked voice. She closed her eyes one last time, engraving the remnants of her homeworld in her heart, and then resolutely turned around and walked to the center of the bridge. The place she had to look now was not the destroyed past, but the future of the survivors.

Rohana, Who Cut Off the Past and Chose the Future

The massive psionic shockwave generated at the moment Shakuras was destroyed traveled through the void of space and reached Rohana, who was asleep in the stasis block. As the horrific despair and grief of her people flowed in through the remnants of the Khala, her mental barrier shook violently.

Amon did not miss that minute crack. The malevolent will of the fallen Xel'Naga poured down like a waterfall through Rohana's nerve cords. It was a fierce assault, distorting her grief over losing her homeworld into rage and seeking to completely consume her ego. Rohana shrieked and writhed within the stasis field.

Her eyes lost the blue light of the Protoss and began to burn with the ominous red light symbolizing Amon. “All shall die... your futile struggles are at an end.” The psionic thoughts echoing directly from Rohana's mind were no longer her own. It was Amon's mockery, sounding like thousands of metallic voices mixed together.

Hearing the alarm, Artanis rushed in, drew his psi-blades, and deactivated the stasis device. “Rohana! Pull yourself together! You must not yield to Amon!” He raised his blades, but hesitated, unable to bring himself to strike down the Preserver who held ancient wisdom. His fingertips trembled slightly.

However, a fierce struggle was taking place within Rohana. Within Amon's darkness, she saw the decision of her people who had chosen survival even at the cost of sacrificing Shakuras. The sight of the new Templar order sharing sorrow and uniting as one even without the Khala cracked her long-held, steadfast beliefs.

She finally realized. The glorious past of the Khala that she had cherished more than life itself was already nothing but a dead shell, and these nerve cords binding her now were not the history of her race, but a slave's chain placed by Amon. As long as they clung to the past, there was no future for the Protoss.

“I am... not... your puppet!” Rohana squeezed out all her mental strength, raising her hand with eyes glowing red. Sharp psionic energy concentrated at her fingertips. Without a moment's hesitation, she struck down toward the proud, long nerve cords draping behind her.

With a flash, the thick nerve cords fell to the floor with a thud. At that moment, the red light covering Rohana's eyes vanished as if washed away, and she collapsed into Artanis's arms in a state of deep exhaustion. Rather than the sense of loss from losing thousands of years of memories, a gentle sense of relief that she had finally escaped Amon's control and chosen a free future lingered in her eyes.

Verified Sources

Blizzard Official StarCraft Chronicles

StarCraft II Official Campaign Introduction

Developer Q&A: Connecting Characters and War

StarCraft II Official Download and Campaign/Nova Purchase List