Char

Char was a volcanic planet in the Koprulu sector, a world of thick ash and acrid atmosphere that became the primary hive world of the zerg. Its hazardous, tectonically restless surface held rich deposits of minerals and vespene gas and made it one of the hardest places in the sector to wage war. Char was where the Overmind brought Sarah Kerrigan to be reborn as the Queen of Blades, and it became the staging ground for some of the most decisive battles of the Great War, the Brood War, and the Second Great War. (StarCraft; StarCraft: Brood War; StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Geography and resources#

Char was an inhospitable volcanic planet, its surface buried under thick ash that tainted an acrid atmosphere. The world was tectonically active, and General Horace Warfield described it as a place of oceans of fire and tectonic storms, with an atmosphere that could burn a man alive. (StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Despite the conditions, an unprotected terran could survive on Char, however uncomfortably, and small pockets of liquid water and even rain existed. For all its hazards Char held rich deposits of minerals and geysers of vespene gas, resources that every faction fighting on the world mined to fuel its war. (StarCraft: Queen of Blades; StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Settlement and the Guild Wars#

Char was a Terran Confederacy world, and during the Guild Wars both the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian Combine fought to secure it. Confederate troops held nuclear fortifications there against Kel-Morian attackers. (StarCraft II: Heaven's Devils)

The zerg make Char their hive world#

By the time of the Great War, Char had been overrun by the zerg, who made it their primary hive planet in the Koprulu sector. (StarCraft)

During the Great War the Overmind brought Sarah Kerrigan to Char in her chrysalis. Her psionic emanations reached out to Jim Raynor and Emperor Arcturus Mengsk and lured Executor Tassadar and Dark Prelate Zeratul to the world. Mengsk sent General Edmund Duke to flush out the zerg, but Duke was defeated and forced to fall back, and Raynor's forces were prevented from reaching the chrysalis as it opened. While Tassadar diverted Kerrigan, Zeratul killed the cerebrate Zasz and became momentarily linked with the Overmind, in which instant the Overmind gleaned the location of Aiur from his mind. Once the Overmind departed for Aiur, Kerrigan remained behind, rebuilding the hive clusters and spreading creep across Char's surface. (StarCraft; StarCraft: Queen of Blades)

The Brood War#

Several cerebrates commanded by Daggoth returned to Char after the Overmind's death and merged into a new Overmind, nesting near the energies of the Khalis crystal. A protoss army under Zeratul, Artanis, and the Executor arrived to retrieve the Khalis, and Kerrigan exerted limited control over some of the zerg to provide them backup. Soon afterward the United Earth Directorate fleet under Admiral Gerard DuGalle penetrated Char's surface after a psi disrupter scattered the swarms in disarray. The UED overcame three cerebrates that formed the core of the Overmind's defenses and, on reaching the new Overmind, administered powerful neurostims to pacify it. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Holding Matriarch Raszagal hostage, Kerrigan later manipulated Zeratul into killing the captured Overmind. When Zeratul demanded Raszagal's release and learned that Kerrigan had corrupted her mind, he dealt the Matriarch a mortal blow rather than let her be recaptured, and in her last moments she named him the new leader of the Dark Templar. After defeating three fleets above Char, Kerrigan relocated her primary hive cluster to the surface and stored millions of eggs in the acid marsh. (StarCraft: Brood War; StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

The Dominion assault and Kerrigan's restoration#

During the Second Great War, Raynor's Raiders and half the Dominion fleet assembled above Char under Crown Prince Valerian Mengsk. The zerg launched a surprise attack that scattered the landing forces, and General Horace Warfield's ship was crippled and crashed before Raynor and Tychus Findlay rescued him. After a diversionary attack crippled part of the zerg defenses, Warfield brought the Keystone to the base of the primary hive cluster, and Raynor and Warfield entrenched their last defenses around it. As the artifact charged, all nearby zerg went into a frenzy trying to reach it, and Kerrigan herself joined the attack, but the device was used to make her human again. Raynor's Raiders smuggled Kerrigan off-world, and Warfield claimed Char for the Terran Dominion. (StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

The Dominion's hold did not last. Broodmother Zagara united the feral broods on Char, and upon Kerrigan's return the two clashed across the acid marsh and the Bone Trench before Kerrigan assaulted Warfield's compound on the Dauntless Plateau. Although Kerrigan killed Warfield, he convinced her to pull her zerg back and let shuttles of wounded men escape. In StarCraft II's co-op missions, set during the End War, the planet's volcanic activity grew worse still, and Sergeant Bama Kowalski held a fortress there against Amon's void thrashers. After the war Zagara gained control of the zerg and forcibly claimed Char and the surrounding planets for the Swarm. (StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm; StarCraft II Co-op Missions; StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void)