2505: the year the Second Great War ended

2505 was one of the most consequential years in the recorded history of the Koprulu sector. The second phase of the Second Great War was fought during this year, beginning with Sarah Kerrigan hunted and alone after her de-infestation and ending with her resurgent Zerg Swarm tearing down the Terran Dominion capital on Korhal. Emperor Arcturus Mengsk died in his own palace, his son Valerian Mengsk took the throne, and Artanis declared that the protoss would reclaim Aiur. In the same months, far from the front lines, the conscripted scientists of Project Blackstone lived through their own small war when a vengeful colleague loosed captive zerglings into their isolated research station.

The flight from the Umojan lab#

The year opened with the survivors of the Battle of Char scattered and vulnerable. Sarah Kerrigan, restored to human form by the xel'naga artifact, had taken refuge in a laboratory of the Umojan Protectorate late in the previous year. Three weeks after the battle, Dominion forces tracked down Raynor's Raiders and Kerrigan. Jim Raynor was captured, and Kerrigan was cut off from the Raiders in the confusion of the raid. With nothing left to her except vengeance, she turned back toward the creatures she had once commanded and began reforming the Swarm to destroy Arcturus Mengsk.

Her path led beyond Dominion space. Among the primal zerg of Zerus, the pack of Brakk became the first primals her Swarm encountered, and the pack itself was destroyed early in the year. The Swarm's flesh changed alongside its leadership. During 2505 the evolution master Abathur used the baneling strain as the base for a mutation he applied to the mutalisk, giving the flyer's glaive wurms the ability to explode on impact.

The fall of Arcturus Mengsk#

In early April the Second Great War ended where the Dominion had begun, on Korhal. Kerrigan's resurgent Swarm invaded the capital world, and in accordance with Valerian Mengsk's request that the zerg make planetfall outside Augustgrad rather than atop its civilians, her forces destroyed the fortified Augustgrad gates and pushed into the heart of the city. Dominion war machines, among them the Blackhammer siege walkers, fought in the failed defense of the Metis facility, the psi destroyer, and Korhal Palace. The Swarm, aided by Raynor's Raiders, triumphed over every line of resistance, and the war ended with the death of Arcturus Mengsk.

Kerrigan did not stay to rule the world she had conquered. She withdrew from Korhal and took the Swarm with her to confront Amon, the fallen xel'naga whose shadow already lay over the sector. Behind her, Mengsk's regime collapsed. Raynor and his rebels dedicated themselves to rebuilding terran civilization in the Koprulu sector rather than seizing power for themselves.

Project Blackstone comes online#

While the war moved toward Korhal, the Dominion's most secret research program was only just beginning. On January 24 the Blackstone facility became operational, and Adjutant 33-27 ran the hidden installation through its system checks and startups. The transport Daisy 8 arrived on January 29 with personnel and specimens, and the Sparrowhawk followed a day later carrying Dr. Helek Branamoor and Major Lee Treicher, who together oversaw Project Blackstone. Through February the research staff settled in and set to work. Relations between Branamoor and the xenobiologist Dr. Talen Ayers were strained from the first day, doctors Leah Martine and Warren Held carried out experiments on live protoss test subjects, and Ayers and Dr. Talise Cogan analyzed zerglings and later the overlord genome. On February 28 Professor Jake Ramsey arrived at the facility and soon joined the lab work.

March brought both progress and fracture. Branamoor forwarded a cell regeneration proposal from Cogan to the Dominion, research on a mutalisk specimen recovered from the moon Choss neared completion, and the supply frigate Palomino delivered a warhound war machine whose efficiency the engineers Red Quinton and Pamela set about improving. By the end of the month Axiom Ordnance had integrated modifications into its warhounds on Blackstone's recommendations, though two of three transports carrying the walkers were lost in transit at the start of April, one to the zerg at Mistaff IV and the other through a mis-jump into the protoss controlled Gyras system. Inside the station, Treicher spent much of the month investigating a suspected distillery run by Quinton and found nothing. Far more serious was the unraveling of Warren Held, who destroyed protoss research samples and then attacked Martine on March 28. Her former ghost training let her incapacitate him. Officially Held was removed from the project; in truth he was moved to one of the facility's lower levels to continue his research out of sight.

Isolation and outbreak#

When the Swarm attacked Korhal in April, communications with the Blackstone facility ceased and the base entered radio silence. Supplies began to run short. Requisitions were cut, the mess hall served the same meals day after day, and on April 27 Treicher and other marines came to blows as tempers frayed. Cogan, told by Dr. Daniel Rothfuss that her daughter Ariel Hanson had served with Raynor's Raiders, concluded that she was dead and requested a transfer. Like Held, she officially departed and was in fact moved to the lower levels.

The station's slow decay turned lethal in May. On the ninth, with supplies dwindling, Held released captive zerglings into the facility to reduce the number of mouths to feed and consumers of oxygen. The researchers barricaded themselves in the mess hall while the base was overrun. An escape attempt on May 15 collapsed when Martine took the only shuttle for herself, stranding the rest. The next day Quinton killed the remaining zerglings with a combination of ethanol, a hellion's flamethrower, and the ventilation system, at the cost of his own life. Descending into the depths, the survivors found Cogan, Held, and a single protoss survivor of Held's experiments, a captive named Kaeon. Held was killed, but the survivors remained trapped without communications or a means of escape.

A new order in the sector#

With the war over, Valerian Mengsk was crowned emperor and worked alongside Raynor to reform the Dominion. One of the new emperor's acts reached the forgotten corner of his father's secret war: Valerian arrived at the Blackstone facility and rescued its survivors, offering them recompense and places aboard the science vessel Brin, which was being prepared for long term exploration of the Koprulu sector and the xel'naga artifacts scattered throughout it.

The other races moved as well. With the zerg and terrans no longer threats to the protoss, Artanis declared that Aiur would be reclaimed, and although some dissension existed, the majority of the protoss welcomed the move toward the reclamation. Far more quietly, the Moebius Foundation came under Amon's control, an event whose consequences would define the End War to come.

Other recorded events#

Several smaller episodes marked the year. Before March, the moon Choss was plagued by a mutalisk outbreak, and a specimen recovered from the fighting there was delivered to Project Blackstone for study. At some point before the invasion of Korhal, the Dominion's Meatbag Squadron was dispatched to Tarsonis for a training exercise and was wiped out by feral zerg. On Bel'Shir, the stranded Dominion scientist Egon Stetmann was exposed to terrazine, beginning more than a year that he spent, in his own words, "sciencing." Among the protoss, the adept was a recent addition to the Daelaam's arsenal by 2505, and Dominion intelligence had only just learned of the new warrior's existence.