Carolina Davis

General Carolina Davis was a Terran Dominion military officer and the leader of the Defenders of Man, a separatist movement that regarded the rule of Emperor Valerian Mengsk as weak. A lifelong supporter of Arcturus Mengsk, she was not known for patience or affection, and her loyalty to the dead Emperor drove her to wage a covert war against his son. She was confronted and killed by the ghost Nova Terra.

Old Families and the Sons of Korhal#

Davis was born on Vardona. During the era of the Terran Confederacy she moved in the social circles of the Old Families and was acquainted with the Terra family. A friend of the Mengsk dynasty, she became a member of the Sons of Korhal and established herself as a lifelong supporter of Arcturus Mengsk. When the Confederacy fell and Mengsk founded the Terran Dominion, she joined the new state and served as a general while he ruled as Emperor. After Arcturus's death the throne passed to his son Valerian.

End War and the seeds of insurgency#

During the End War, Davis personally raided a Moebius Corps base with the aid of two allied commanders. There she stole and piloted a prototype Archangel named the Balius, and together the force cleared the base and destroyed the experimental Moebius hybrids housed within. At some point after Arcturus's death she came into possession of a voice recording of Valerian made before the Battle of Korhal, which made clear that the prince had been complicit in his father's death at the hands of Sarah Kerrigan.

Years after the End War, Davis took the leadership of the Defenders of Man, a separatist group that saw Valerian's rule as feeble and held that the Dominion needed strong leadership. With the help of a Dominion admiral she had the ghosts Nova Terra and Stone assigned to the movement. The two planted psi emitters on Antiga Prime, causing the planet to be overrun by feral zerg. When the ghosts discovered the truth of their mission and resolved to bring the evidence to the Dominion, Davis had them captured and ordered them mind-wiped, though not before Nova caught a clear look at her.

A war of manufactured disasters#

As the zerg attacks escalated, Davis and Magistrate Grayson appeared on Kate Lockwell's Universal News Network program to discuss the Dominion's disaster relief, where Davis defended the relief sent to Antiga Prime and declared that the Dominion stood by its people. After the Defenders of Man engineered a further zerg attack on Tyrador IX, she returned to the broadcast to speak on the tragedies and on the new Tal'darim threat that had entered the conflict.

When Nova Terra recovered her memories through exposure to terrazine, she remembered Davis as the leader of the Defenders of Man and presented this to Valerian. The Emperor refused to sanction an assassination and instead contacted Davis to announce his intention to step down from the throne. On Vardona, Davis reviewed her effects, among them a vidsnap of herself and Arcturus, and confirmed through her datapad that any discovery of the Defenders of Man psi-emitter technology would be traced back to Valerian. She ordered her forces to watch the Emperor closely and to kill him if anything went wrong.

Capture and final stand#

The plan unraveled when Nova Terra infiltrated Davis's compound and broke through its defenses. Nova captured Davis and brought her in handcuffs before the Emperor as he addressed the people of Vardona. Valerian announced her crimes and declared that she would stand trial, but the Tal'darim chose that moment to attack Vardona, seeking vengeance on the Defenders of Man. Davis told Valerian that he could have prevented it all before she was carried away. In the chaos she was moved to the ship Medusa, and there she seized control of the vessel and escaped.

With nowhere else to turn, Davis moved on the Cerros Shipyards, where she and her last loyal Defenders attacked the Gorgon-class battlecruisers in drydock, hoping to cripple Valerian's ability to maintain order. She activated and commandeered a top-secret prototype war machine called the Xanthos, invulnerable to small-arms fire while running but with exposed weapons. Nova Terra and Admiral Matt Horner beat the machine back and struck at it while it was vulnerable. Davis brought a hidden thermal laser online and called in her remaining Defenders, but it was not enough, and the Xanthos was destroyed. She survived inside the wreck, and when Nova infiltrated it, Davis told her that she had known her family in the days of the Confederacy, and that killing her would make Nova no better than herself, since the ghost had been ordered to spare her. Disregarding Valerian's direct command, Nova killed Davis and ended her as a threat to the Dominion.

Character#

Davis was remembered as an officer without patience or warmth, a hard woman whose devotion to Arcturus Mengsk outlasted his life and shaped every move she made against his son. Her belief in the need for strong rule led her to manufacture catastrophe and to spend the lives of Dominion citizens to discredit an Emperor she judged unfit, and she remained convinced of her own righteousness even at the end, facing Nova Terra inside the ruined Xanthos.