


The player assumes the role of three nameless characters over the course of the game. In the first act, the player acts as the Confederate magistrate of an outlying colony world of Mar Sara, threatened by both the Zerg and the Protoss, and is forced through events to join the rebel Sons of Korhal under its leader Arcturus Mengsk. Mengsk’s campaign is accompanied by Jim Raynor, a morally conscious law enforcement officer from Mar Sara, and Sarah Kerrigan, a psychic assassin and Mengsk’s second-in-command. The second episode of the game sees the player as a cerebrate, a commander within the Zerg Swarm. The player is ruled over by the Zerg Overmind, the manifestation of the collective consciousness of the Swarm and the game’s primary antagonist, and is given advice from other cerebrates of higher rank and status while accomplishing the objectives of the Swarm. In the final part of StarCraft, the player is a newly appointed officer (called Executor) within the Protoss military, reporting to Aldaris, a representative of the Protoss government. Aldaris is at odds with the former occupant of the player’s position, Tassadar, over his association with Zeratul, a member of the dark templar, a group considered heretical by the Protoss government.



The second campaign reveals that Kerrigan was not killed by the Zerg, but rather is captured and infested in an effort to incorporate her psionic traits into the Zerg gene pool. She emerges with far more psionic powers and physical strength, her DNA completely altered. Meanwhile, the Protoss commander Tassadar discovers that the Zerg’s cerebrates cannot be killed by conventional means, but that they can be harmed by the powers wielded by the heretical dark templar. Tassadar allies himself with the dark templar prelate Zeratul, who assassinates Zasz, one of the Zerg’s cerebrates in their hive clusters on Char. The cerebrate’s death results in its forces running amok through the Zerg hives, but briefly links the minds of Zeratul and the Zerg Overmind, allowing the Overmind to finally learn the location of the Protoss homeworld Aiur, which the Overmind has been seeking for millennia. The main Zerg swarm promptly invades Aiur while Kerrigan is dispatched to deal with Tassadar and despite heavy Protoss resistance, the Overmind is able to embed itself into the crust of the planet.

The final episode of the game sees Aldaris and the Protoss government branding Tassadar a traitor and a heretic for conspiring with the dark templar. The player initially serves Aldaris in defending Aiur from the Zerg invasion, but while on a mission to arrest Tassadar, the player joins him instead. A Protoss civil war erupts, pitting Tassadar, Zeratul, and their allies against the Protoss establishment. The dark templar prove their worth when they use their energies to slay two more of the Zerg cerebrates on Aiur, and the Conclave reconciles with them. Aided by Raynor’s forces—who sided with Tassadar back on Char—the Protoss break through the Overmind’s weakened defenses and destroy the Overmind’s outer shell, but take heavy casualties in the process. Tassadar channels his own psionic energies in combination with those of the dark templar through the hull of his command ship and crashes it into the Overmind, sacrificing himself in order to destroy it.

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