Battle of Korhal

The Battle of Korhal was the final battle of the Second Great War, in which Sarah Kerrigan's Zerg Swarm and Jim Raynor's Raiders launched a joint assault on Korhal with the shared goal of overthrowing Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. It ended with Mengsk dead, the city of Augustgrad heavily damaged, and his son Valerian Mengsk raised to the throne of the Terran Dominion.

Background#

By the time of the battle the zerg had already dealt the Terran Dominion a string of crippling defeats: the loss of its forces on Char, the destruction of Skygeirr Platform and its Hybrid Breeding Program base, and the rescue of Jim Raynor from the prison ship Moros, whom Arcturus Mengsk had hoped to use as a bargaining chip against Sarah Kerrigan.

Before setting out for the Korhal system, Kerrigan contacted the Raiders Matt Horner and Valerian Mengsk to tell them of her intentions. She knew the invasion would bring heavy loss of life, and that the terrans would need Valerian as a leader afterward. Valerian asked her to land outside Augustgrad so that the civilians could be evacuated, and though Kerrigan noted that this would make her task harder, she agreed.

Opening moves#

The Swarm arrived in the Korhal system and took up positions around the planet, holding for the time being beyond the range of its defenses. From Korhal Palace, Mengsk issued a recall order for every Dominion Fleet unit to return, and ships began converging on the system from across the Koprulu Sector. In answer, Kerrigan set Broodmother Kilysa to form a blockade and destroy anything entering the system.

The problem of actually landing remained. Kerrigan knew Korhal's orbital defenses would kill millions of zerg before any reached the ground, but as Zagara observed, the Swarm was numberless, and even a fraction breaking through would suffice to take the defenses from below. To that end Kerrigan ordered Abathur to develop a weapon capable of destroying the planetary defenses, and he set to work on the bile launcher. With preparations made, the Swarm engaged Korhal's orbital defenses and the battle began.

Planetfall#

Kerrigan had underestimated the strength of Korhal's planetary defenses. Millions of zerg were destroyed in orbit before they made contact, and those that reached the surface were finished off by Dominion forces soon after. To break the deadlock, Kerrigan landed in person to secure a foothold for the bile launchers. After establishing a base and building up her forces, she held off Dominion counterattacks long enough for the bile launchers to destroy the planetary cannons, opening the way for the Swarm to land its troops freely. She destroyed the gates of Augustgrad so that Zagara could lead her brood into the city, then followed with her own forces into one of the most savage fights of the war.

The battle of Augustgrad#

Heavy fighting raged through Augustgrad as Dominion forces tried to hold back the endless waves of zerg streaming down from the leviathans. The Dominion set a siege tank line against the ground assault while Vikings and battlecruisers tried to intercept the airborne zerg, but ultralisks and nydus worms tore through the defenses, in the process toppling the great statue of Mengsk that symbolized his reign. The Swarm's fliers shot down scores of Dominion craft, whose wreckage crashed across the city and caused enormous damage. Aided by Abathur, Kerrigan destroyed two key facilities on the outskirts of the city, the Metis xeno-research facility and an experimental nuclear weapons plant, further crippling Korhal's defenses and allowing Abathur to develop two new evolution strains for the ultralisks.

Secret weapons unleashed#

Realizing he could not defeat the Swarm by conventional means, Mengsk activated his secret weapon, the Psi Destroyer, whose field annihilated any zerg that entered it. The device began destroying the outlying broods and forced the Swarm to pull back, while a Dominion counterattack struck as a distraction to keep the zerg from dealing with it. Kerrigan, however, had anticipated that Mengsk would turn the zerg's hive mind against them, and unleashed her own secret weapon: the primal zerg of Zerus. Lacking a psionic connection, the primals were immune to the Psi Destroyer's field. Dehaka and his pack infiltrated the orbital platform housing the device and destroyed its power couplings, disabling the field from within, and Kerrigan then led her forces through the Dominion defenders and destroyed its central hub. Meanwhile Zagara and Alexei Stukov defeated the Dominion counterattack and drove the enemy back into the Imperial sector of the city.

Attack on Korhal Palace#

With the Psi Destroyer gone, only Mengsk's palace remained. Kerrigan led her forces into the Imperial Sector, where the way was held by Mengsk's elite troops. Shortly after the assault began, Jim Raynor and his Raiders arrived aboard the Hyperion to fight beside Kerrigan while Matt Horner and Valerian Mengsk continued the civilian evacuation. As the other zerg forces under Zagara, Alexei Stukov, and Dehaka struggled against entrenched Dominion positions, Kerrigan broke those positions one by one so that the combined Swarm could pour into the sector.

Mengsk made several attempts to stop the Raiders, sending in Sky Fury Squadron and then Alpha Squadron against the Hyperion, and as a last resort unleashing the Odin; all were defeated by the combined might of the Raiders and the Swarm. With the sector cleared, Kerrigan and Raynor assaulted the palace itself, annihilating a final stand of elite troops dropped before its gate. Leaving Zagara in command of the Swarm, Kerrigan entered the palace alone.

The Queen against the Emperor#

As Kerrigan fought her way up through the palace, Mengsk watched her from his surveillance cameras. When she reached him at last, the two traded words before Mengsk revealed a final trick: the Xel'Naga Artifact, which he triggered with a remote disguised as a cigar lighter, unleashing torrents of energy that incapacitated her. As Mengsk prepared to finish her, Jim Raynor appeared and knocked him to the ground, smashing the artifact's controller. Seeing Kerrigan rise, Raynor lowered his pistol and let her take the kill. Kerrigan impaled Mengsk with her wings, smashed him into the wall, and infused him with psionic energy until he exploded, destroying his office and wrecking much of the palace.

Aftermath#

With Mengsk dead, Kerrigan had her revenge. She thanked Jim Raynor and departed Korhal with the Swarm, setting out to find her true enemy, the fallen xel'naga Amon, and his hybrid army. The city was left heavily damaged by the battle.

Following his father's death and the departure of the zerg, Valerian Mengsk assumed the throne as the new Emperor of the Terran Dominion. He set at once to rebuilding, enacting laws to end the corruption and abuse of his father's reign, abolishing forced military conscription and slave labor, and reorganizing a number of his father's secret programs. On the third anniversary of Mengsk's death, celebrations were held on Korhal to mark the fall of his regime.