Brood War

The Brood War, known in the circles of the United Earth Directorate as the Galactic War for Domination, was a zerg civil war fought between Sarah Kerrigan and the cerebrate Daggoth, each of whom sought to succeed the slain Overmind. Various protoss and terran factions were drawn into the fighting, in part because of a simultaneous invasion of the Koprulu Sector by the United Earth Directorate, a power from distant Earth. The war followed directly on from the Great War and ended with Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, established as the dominant power of the sector.

Background#

The death of the Overmind at the end of the Great War left the cerebrate Daggoth in command of the surviving cerebrates, several of whom merged into a new Overmind on Char. The young Overmind could not yet control the Zerg Swarm, so Daggoth held most of the broods in check while it matured. Seeking to prevent the new Overmind from reaching full strength, Sarah Kerrigan mentally enslaved Matriarch Raszagal of the Nerazim and set about turning the protoss to her own ends.

Meanwhile, the Terran Dominion under Emperor Arcturus Mengsk fortified its worlds and conscripted the remaining soldiers of the defunct Terran Confederacy, facing only scattered dissent from groups such as the Confederate Resistance Forces. Unknown to the colonists, a power from Earth had been watching them. The discovery of the protoss and the zerg threw the United Powers League into a panic, and the league, reorganized and expanded into the United Earth Directorate, resolved to bring its distant kin under control.

The Directorate Invasion#

The UED Expeditionary Fleet, commanded by Admiral Gerard DuGalle with Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov at his side, arrived in the sector undetected. DuGalle was uneasy with the Council's plan to enslave the new Overmind and preferred conventional conquest. The fleet relied largely on captured Dominion weaponry, and one of its first acts was a brutal "weapons test" in which it deliberately allowed a terran colony to be overrun by the zerg in order to study them.

The Directorate found a powerful ally in Lieutenant Samir Duran of the Confederate Resistance Forces, who guided their assault on the city of Boralis and helped them raid the Dylarian Shipyards for battlecruisers. From data seized at Boralis the UED learned of a psi disruptor on Tarsonis, a device capable of scrambling zerg communications, and dispatched Duran to recover it. The fleet then invaded Korhal, overcoming Mengsk's nuclear arsenal and battlecruisers to capture Augustgrad. Mengsk himself was rescued from execution at the last moment by Raynor and a protoss fleet, acting at Kerrigan's request.

Treachery and the Captured Overmind#

When Stukov rebuilt the psi disruptor on Braxis against DuGalle's wishes, Duran convinced the admiral it was an act of treason. DuGalle put Duran in charge of the strike force sent to apprehend Stukov, and Duran shot the vice admiral and vanished. As he lay dying, Stukov named Duran as the true traitor, possibly an infested agent, a warning DuGalle understood too late.

The Directorate then drove for Char. The psi disruptor scattered the zerg into disarray, allowing the fleet to land and destroy the cerebrates guarding the second Overmind. Directorate medics pacified the young Overmind with neurostim injections, bringing it under the control of the secret Project Black Flag. In the moment of victory Duran reappeared and introduced DuGalle to Kerrigan, who taunted him and vowed to claim the zerg for herself.

Kerrigan's War#

The Queen of Blades set out to break every power arrayed against her. She put down a revolt among the zerg of Tarsonis, struck a bargain with Mengsk for a psi emitter in exchange for help retaking Korhal, and raided Moria for minerals. Allied for a time with Mengsk, Raynor, and the protoss hero Fenix, she liberated Korhal from the Directorate, then turned on her allies. In a sudden betrayal her zerg killed both Fenix and General Edmund Duke, earning her the lasting hatred of Mengsk and Raynor.

To destroy the Overmind held by the Directorate, Kerrigan needed the Nerazim, and to compel them she kidnapped Raszagal from Shakuras with Duran's help. When Zeratul arrived leading a protoss revenge force, she used the Matriarch as a hostage to force one last alliance. Zeratul personally slew the captured Overmind, but Kerrigan refused to free Raszagal, whom she had long controlled. In the end Zeratul rescued the Matriarch only to be forced to kill her himself rather than leave her enslaved.

The Battle over Char and Aftermath#

Kerrigan was left exposed at Char Aleph when three fleets, led by Mengsk, DuGalle, and Artanis, converged to destroy her. She broke each in turn. Mengsk withdrew with threats, Artanis vowed vengeance, and DuGalle, his fleet shattered, was refused surrender. Kerrigan allowed the broken Directorate a head start before sending the Swarm to annihilate it. As his ships were hunted down, DuGalle wrote a final letter to his wife and took his own life; none of the Directorate fleet reached Earth.

The Brood War left Kerrigan supreme. She allowed the protoss and the Dominion to survive, sensing a greater threat to come, and then the zerg withdrew into their own territory and fell silent. The Dominion was greatly weakened, losing its hold over the Kel-Morian Combine and the Umojan Protectorate, though it had largely recovered by 2502. The protoss reorganized themselves into the Daelaam under Artanis, and Jim Raynor turned his Raiders to an anti-Dominion struggle that bore little fruit. The arrival of the Directorate, the war's greatest upheaval, had been entirely undone. Four years of uneasy quiet followed before conflict returned to the Koprulu Sector in the Second Great War.