Braxis

Braxis was an ice world in the Koprulu sector, counted among the most inhospitable planets in the region. Over sixty percent of its rocky surface lay beneath ice sheets, some more than two miles thick, and glacial erosion had carved jagged mountain ranges and valleys broken by gravity-driven katabatic winds that could reach a hundred and fifty miles per hour. First settled by the protoss and later seized by the Terran Confederacy and then the Terran Dominion, Braxis became a focal point of the Brood War before the protoss purified it from orbit.

Khyrador and the protoss settlement#

During the Golden Age of Expansion the protoss claimed the planet as one of their first colonies and named it Khyrador. Because it stood as a marker of the species' spacefaring achievements, Khyrador was chosen to house the Uraj crystal. The settlers were later driven away when a series of violent psionic storms rocked the world, and it remained deserted for centuries.

In time Khyrador fell into the hands of the Terran Confederacy, which renamed it Braxis. The permafrost permitted little plant life, and winter storms swept the plains, but before its later purification the planet was home to a creature known as the ursadon. When the Confederacy collapsed in 2500, the Terran Dominion seized control of Braxis.

The Brood War#

During the Brood War a protoss army assisted by Sarah Kerrigan overcame the Dominion defenses and retrieved the Uraj crystal from the world. Viewing Braxis as a vital step toward dominating the sector, the United Earth Directorate surrounded it with an orbital blockade of space platforms and missile turrets. Praetor Artanis scouted ahead and found a way through, and the protoss disabled the power generators that ran the platform defenses, slipping through the blockade unscathed.

The UED assaulted the capital, Boralis, to secure Braxis as a staging point. Their landing site lacked vespene gas and Boralis was well defended, so progress was slow until UED forces made contact with the Confederate Resistance Forces. Lieutenant Samir Duran, who had sworn the resistance to the overthrow of Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, brought them over to the UED and revealed an alternate route to the rear of Boralis. The attackers destroyed the command center, crippling Braxis' primary defenses, and transformed the world into a heavily fortified stronghold.

The Psi Disrupter#

During the UED occupation, Schezar's Scavengers took shelter on Braxis, among them Alan Schezar and a body of powerful anti-protoss technology, along with zerg enslaved by the Dark Templar terrorist Ulrezaj. Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov had the Psi Disrupter reconstructed on the planet and traveled there to activate it, but he was killed by Duran, who set the disrupter's power core to overload. UED troops fought through the zerg to reach the manual override terminal and shut the reactor down, and Admiral Gerard DuGalle left a garrison to protect the device.

Raynor's Raiders later disabled the disrupter's primary power generator, allowing Sarah Kerrigan to gather nearby zerg with the aid of a psi emitter loaned by Arcturus Mengsk, and they tore the disrupter down. After its destruction, one of the UED's slave broods turned on its former masters, and a group of soldiers was forced to fight its way to an extraction point.

Purification and reconstruction#

The cerebrate Kaloth resurrected and infested Alexei Stukov, who established a base on Braxis after the Brood War with a combined terran and zerg force. Artanis assembled a force to stop the zerg and rescue Stukov. The protoss and Raynor's Raiders, led by the dragoon Praetor Taldarin and Jim Raynor, assaulted Braxis and captured Stukov, using protoss-devised nanotechnology to temporarily reverse his infestation. The terran and protoss forces evacuated, and purification from Artanis's fleet destroyed all life on the surface along with the existing terran and protoss structures.

The purification evaporated every drop of water on Braxis. As the planet cooled, the vapor in its atmosphere precipitated en masse as snow and hail, dumping entire oceans' worth of water in solid form onto the surface and scouring the ground below. Gigantic crystalline structures formed through the weathering, and the planet froze over and returned to its original state. The Terran Dominion returned and rebuilt its fortifications, and Braxis became a hub for training members of the Dominion Armed Forces.

The Second Great War#

During the Second Great War the zerg attempted to take control of Braxis in order to secure its ores. The Terran Dominion arranged an evacuation and sent vikings to distract the Swarm, allowing for a counterattack and retreat. The action succeeded, and Braxis remained in Dominion hands.