Izsha

Izsha was a unique zerg advisor in service to Sarah Kerrigan, one of a kind among the Swarm. Physically grafted to Kerrigan's leviathan, she filtered the ceaseless flood of sensory data that washed through the Swarm and served much as a terran adjutant might, handling navigation, logistical analysis, and record-keeping. Izsha stood as a midpoint between Kerrigan's cold rationality and the feral nature of the zerg, harkening back to the ideology of the Overmind while remaining a rational individual in her own right.

Origins#

After the Brood War, the Queen of Blades turned to experimentation to advance the Swarm, and just as she herself had been transformed by the Overmind's ministrations, so her early attempts at crafting new strains mirrored her own rebirth. The being that would be called Izsha was one of her truly unique creations, marrying traits such as episodic memory to the collective consciousness of the Swarm. Because her functions suited hive organization rather than warfare, she remained largely unknown to the zerg's enemies. Sarah Kerrigan used her to store her thoughts and plans, and as she sensed a looming threat to the zerg, she entrusted Izsha with her memories for the Swarm's future, including on at least one occasion a plan to infest a world through its water supply with the hyper-evolutionary virus.

Advisor to the Queen Returned#

After her de-infestation at Char, Kerrigan returned to her leviathan to turn the Swarm against Arcturus Mengsk and reunited with Izsha aboard it. On the frozen moon of Kaldir, Izsha reported that most of the local zerg answered to Broodmother Nafash, who sought to build her own Swarm, and advised Kerrigan through the battle against the protoss present there, warning of the sub-zero conditions and noting her discomfort at the captive protoss whose psychic presence she found disturbing. As Kerrigan grew troubled by the bloodshed, Izsha reminded her that the protoss were the enemy by definition, and pressed, after a hard victory, whether her queen would find any joy in killing Mengsk if she took none in killing her other foes.

On Char, Izsha counseled that Kerrigan would have to bring Broodmother Zagara back into the fold to defeat the Dominion, and after that victory she told Kerrigan the story of her own past as the Queen of Blades, of how she had dispersed the Swarm to seek the Keystone and so left most of her broods in deep space when the Dominion struck. On Zerus she reported the gathering of the primal zerg and warned that the awakened Zurvan's power outstripped Kerrigan's own, a risk Kerrigan accepted to unlock the power of the homeworld.

The road to Korhal#

At Skygeirr, Izsha relayed the message from the zerg individual who proved to be Alexei Stukov, arranged the alliance to destroy the hybrid-breeding station, and alerted Kerrigan to the Tal'darim defending its depths and their commander Emil Narud. When Kerrigan was gravely wounded slaying Narud, Izsha and Zagara watched over her recovery, and afterward Izsha reminded her queen of the threat of Amon, which Kerrigan had not forgotten but meant to face only after Mengsk. She was confused by Kerrigan's insistence on rescuing Jim Raynor from the Dominion and on sparing the terrans, but relayed the broodmothers' objections and the progress of the operation all the same.

In the assault on Korhal, Izsha reported the converging Dominion fleets, advised on the orbital descent that would cost countless pods, and kept Kerrigan appraised as the Psi Destroyer tore at the Swarm and as Dehaka's counterattack destroyed it. She confided that she had feared the zerg would never reach the surface, and feared too that Kerrigan would abandon the Swarm once her revenge was done; Kerrigan assured her they would face the war ahead together. Izsha tracked the arrival of Jim Raynor's Hyperion in the final battle, through to the defeat of Arcturus Mengsk.

Nature#

Izsha occupied a deliberate middle ground in the Swarm, more reasoned than the feral broods yet still wholly zerg, recalling the ideology of the Overmind while thinking as an individual. She found the psychic presence of the protoss disturbing, took satisfaction in the Swarm's victories, and was loyal to Kerrigan even as she questioned her queen's stranger mercies. Where Abathur was conceived as a creature wholly evil, Izsha was made to strike a balance between human and monster, a face the Queen of Blades could speak to and an emotional anchor amid the cold reason and feral hunger she stood between.