Clolarion: Purifier executor of Cybros

Clolarion was an ancient Purifier, a mechanical protoss intelligence built from the brain scan of Executor Clolarion, a warrior remembered as one of the greatest the protoss ever produced. The copy retained the original's rank of executor and rose to lead the Purifiers themselves, first in their doomed rebellion against the Conclave and then, after ages of enforced sleep aboard the station Cybros, as their spokesman and military commander in the service of the Daelaam. It was Clolarion who fired the purification beam that scoured the forest moon of Endion during the End War, and Clolarion who demanded assurances from Hierarch Artanis before committing his people to the war against Amon.

An echo of a great warrior#

Clolarion belonged to the first generation of Purifiers, the robotic race the protoss created at the order of the Conclave when their scientists mastered intelligent robotics and artificial intelligence. The program rested on the belief that consciousness could be turned into data, preserving the thought processes and decision making of a formerly living being, and the Conclave used the technology to assemble a fighting force replicated from the greatest warriors in protoss history. Studies found the replications were often 99.3 percent faithful to the protoss they were patterned after.

The template chosen for Clolarion was the brain scan of Executor Clolarion, considered to be one of the greatest protoss warriors. The copy proved worthy of its source. The Purifier retained the rank of executor, and among a host built from legendary templar he emerged as a leader, the voice through which the Purifiers spoke. Like his kindred, Clolarion was joined to a data web, a synthetic equivalent of the Khala that linked the Purifiers to one another without the emotional communion of the psionic bond, and his personality could be uploaded into an empty shell rather than being bound to a single body.

The Purifier Rebellion#

Whatever reverence the protoss held for the warriors the Purifiers were copied from, the Conclave extended none of it to the copies themselves. The Purifiers were denied the respect afforded to living templar and treated as little more than slaves. Under that treatment they chose to rebel, and Clolarion led them, fighting against the Conclave masters who had built him and turning the Purifiers' strength on their owners.

The rebellion ended in defeat and banishment. Judging the Purifiers too dangerous to exist among them, the Conclave banned the race, powered the machines down, and launched them away aboard a command vessel, the great station Cybros, to be reactivated only in the direst of circumstances. Clolarion was sealed in Cybros along with the rest of the Purifiers, and the station was placed in orbit above the forest moon of Endion, its sleepers locked behind a stasis grid that the scientists of the moon maintained and improved across the generations.

Reawakening at Cybros#

The direst of circumstances arrived in 2506. During the End War, the Daelaam under the command of Hierarch Artanis came to Cybros to reactivate the Purifiers as allies against Amon. The awakening was contested from the start: once the Megalith unlocked Cybros and phase-smith Karax brought the stasis grid down, Amon's zerg began infesting the station. The first wave of reactivations restored the Purifier bearing the personality of Executor Clolarion, and he took command at once, resuming his old place as the Purifiers' spokesman and leader.

Clolarion set his terms immediately. He proclaimed that if the Daelaam wished the Purifiers to align with them, Artanis was mandated to help him eliminate Amon's brood from Cybros. As more of his kind were restored, Clolarion ordered the Purifiers to engage the zerg overrunning the station, and the awakened machines fought beside the Daelaam to purge it. With the Purifiers fully activated and the battle won, Clolarion turned the station's weaponry on the infested moon below. The purification beam he fired from Cybros destroyed all life on the surface of Endion, annihilating every trace of the zerg that had overrun it.

Alliance with the Daelaam#

With Cybros secured, Artanis asked the Purifiers to join the Daelaam in the war against Amon. Clolarion did not accept on the spot. He questioned the hierarch's sincerity and pressed him on how the Purifiers would be treated, remembering well what the Conclave's promises had been worth, but he agreed to consult with the other Purifier commanders. The Purifiers were given the reassurance that they would stand as equals, and they accepted the offer, joining their fleets and warriors to the Daelaam for the remainder of the End War.

Within the Daelaam, Clolarion served as the Purifiers' military commander, while Talandar, the lone Purifier of the revived second program who carried the memories of the fallen praetor Fenix, acted as the race's representative. The Purifiers fought through the war that followed, standing alongside the Nerazim and the Tal'darim when the Daelaam returned to reclaim Aiur, and when Amon's host body was exposed, Cybros joined the Spear of Adun, the Death Fleet, and the rest of the Daelaam warships in the bombardment that destroyed the dark god's physical form. Clolarion himself took the field beside Talandar, housing his consciousness within a Purifier carrier and directing the great warship from within.

Withdrawal into the network#

After the Daelaam reclaimed Aiur, Clolarion and the Purifiers remained loyal to Artanis and aided in the reconstruction of the ruined homeworld whenever they were called upon. But the old distance between machine and flesh did not close. Clolarion and the majority of the Purifiers largely kept to themselves in self-imposed isolation within their network, present in the Daelaam yet apart from it.

That seclusion had its costs. When Talandar investigated a series of mysterious deaths and turned to his own kind for insight, Clolarion admitted that because of their isolation the Purifiers had little knowledge of their biotic kin. The executor who had once demanded equality from the hierarch of the Daelaam had won his people a place among the protoss, but he and most of the Purifiers chose to inhabit that place from within the quiet of their own shared network, ancient warriors keeping their own counsel.