Jenson's Raiders: the Dominion's strongarm on Aridas

Jenson's Raiders were a specialist force of terran soldiers in service to the Terran Dominion, formed and led by Jenson Archimedes, head councilor to Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Assembled in 2500 from requisitioned elements of the Dominion Armed Forces, the Raiders were sent to the contested world of Aridas with a double mandate: to stabilize the planet and to retrieve the artifact known as the Argus Stone. Over the course of the fighting they clashed with the Protoss Crusaders, the Zerg Crusaders, and the strange hybrid army called the Fragile Alliance, and for a time they held the stone itself before the zerg tore it from their grasp.

Formation and command#

Jenson's Raiders were the personal instrument of Jenson Archimedes, the head councilor to Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. When the colony world of Aridas became a battleground over the Argus Stone, Archimedes requisitioned soldiers from the Dominion Armed Forces and forged them into a dedicated force answering to him. Their charter was narrow and ambitious at once: hold Aridas together while Archimedes hunted down the stone.

Day to day operations fell to a field commander who directed the Raiders through every major action of the conflict. Archimedes himself remained close to the front, traveling with his research team and, at critical moments, aboard his own science vessel, a habit that would nearly cost him his life in the caverns beneath the planet.

Early setbacks and the push to the ruins#

The Raiders' first recorded engagement was a defensive one. A terran supply station orbiting Aridas funneled reinforcements and materiel down to the Aridas Colonial Militia, which was fighting both the Protoss Crusaders and the Zerg Crusaders on the surface. When the Judicator Kizrath ordered the platform destroyed, Jenson's Raiders committed their heavily supplied forces to its defense. Despite their efforts, the protoss razed the platform.

After Kizrath's Protoss Crusaders retrieved the Argus Stone, the Raiders shifted from defense to offense. Their first task was an escort operation through one of the most dangerous corridors on the planet. Protoss and zerg forces were battling across Aridas in an effort to annihilate one another, and Archimedes saw in their weakened lines an opening. The Raiders guided him and his team straight through the combat zone and into the xel'naga ruins behind the protoss positions. The breakthrough succeeded.

Breaking the Fragile Alliance#

Inside those ruins the Raiders found something worse than either enemy alone. A zerg cerebrate had discovered xel'naga technology that let it seize control of a small protoss tribe, and with the enslaved protoss and its own brood it had assembled a combined army, the Fragile Alliance, which it sent against the Swarm's enemies. Archimedes put the choice before his commander: destroy the cerebrate outright, which would break its hold on the protoss, or capture it alive so the Dominion could study it.

Dominion records preserved two conflicting accounts of how the operation ended. In one, the Raiders fought through the protoss and the zerg, defeated both forces, and left the cerebrate exposed, and the destruction of its body shattered its hold over the protoss tribe. The freed protoss and the leaderless zerg turned on one another at once, but divided they were no match for the Raiders, who wiped out both armies. The zerg answered by swarming the Dominion lines and pushing into Science Station 12, a research base holding many of the Dominion's top scientists studying the Argus Stone. As the base was overrun, the Raiders' commander guided the scientists out, escaping with their lives and preserving their research.

In the other account, Archimedes brought his science vessel over the cerebrate and pacified it, and the Raiders secured the creature intact. The protoss and zerg it had commanded immediately fell upon the Dominion position to rescue their master, but even united they could not defeat Jenson's Raiders, who destroyed their forces and shipped the cerebrate to a research station for study. The local Aridians were vocally angry that the Dominion was keeping a cerebrate alive, and their unease seemed justified when a zerg force besieged the station to reclaim it. The Raiders held, and the assault failed.

Archimedes' crusade#

With the Fragile Alliance broken, the Raiders went over to a sustained offensive. The Aridas Colonial Militia had launched a nuclear barrage against the staging platform the Protoss Crusaders maintained in orbit, weakening but not destroying their position, and Jenson's Raiders were sent up to finish the work. Though the defenders tried to rebuild, the Raiders cleared them from the platform entirely.

On the surface, the force moved to relieve outlying bases under zerg attack. In a resource depleted stretch of the planet's outback, the Raiders reestablished a base and pushed the zerg offensive back. They then answered a crisis in one of the planet's valleys, where the protoss had secured a massive mineral vein and cut off a Dominion mining team sent to claim it. The Raiders fought through to rescue the miners, planted a base in the valley, and broke the Protoss Crusaders' line, driving them out.

The hunt for the stone then turned personal. While investigating a cavern, Jenson Archimedes was captured by the zerg. From captivity he sent a distress call to his Raiders, speculating that the zerg were debating what to do with him. The force launched an assault into the caverns, reached the place where his ship was held, and guided him back out.

Archimedes' research eventually pointed to a set of ruins occupied by the protoss as the resting place of the Argus Stone. The Raiders stormed the ruins and drove the protoss out, but the stone was not there. Only later did Archimedes trace it to a temple warped from Aiur itself, where the Protoss Crusaders intended to channel the stone's power. Jenson's Raiders attacked and destroyed the temple, and in the chaos of the explosion Archimedes finally retrieved the Argus Stone.

Downfall#

Possession of the stone made Archimedes the most hunted man on Aridas. He consolidated his defenses and surrounded himself with an escort of twelve battlecruisers. The Zerg Crusaders lured the escort into the open and destroyed it, stripping away his shield in a single stroke.

The war soon turned against terran and protoss alike, and the old enemies were forced into an alliance. Jenson's Raiders stood as the final line of defense at the research station housing the Argus Stone, but the Zerg Crusaders overwhelmed the base and stole the artifact. The allied terran and protoss forces tried to block the zerg exodus from Aridas, and when that failed they followed the Swarm to Char in a last attempt to stop the stone from being used there. Both efforts ended in failure, and the force that had fought across an entire world to claim the Argus Stone watched its prize pass into the Swarm's hands.