Karax

Karax was a Khalai phase-smith, an expert in weapons, armor, and ships, and one of the most precise of protoss engineers. Over the course of the war against Amon he rose above his worker origins to become an indispensable part of the Daelaam war effort, maintaining and arming the arkship Spear of Adun and ultimately preparing the Keystone that would expel Amon from the Khala.

Origins and Shakuras#

As a youngling, Karax worked under a Khalai Caste master and often looked upon their work with pride. Before the End War he served as a phase-smith for Executor Selendis and worked alongside Nerazim phase-smiths on Shakuras, learning that the Nerazim, unlike their Khalai counterparts, were trained in combat. He familiarized himself with khaydarin monolith technology during this period.

Corruption of the Khala and the Spear of Adun#

Karax was among the ranks of the Golden Armada when it assaulted Aiur, and aided Zeratul in constructing a nexus point during the search for Artanis. When Amon corrupted the Khala, a Nerazim severed Karax's nerve cords to protect him, and he was saved from a group of zerg by Artanis and a force of zealots. Told of the plan to retreat aboard the Spear of Adun, Karax was needed to bring its generators online, and went with his superior. At Khor-shakal he brought the ship's generators online while the Daelaam held the line, and the Spear of Adun departed Aiur.

Once the ship was launched, Karax set robotic servitors to severing the nerve cords of the templar held in stasis aboard and explained the vessel's chambers to Artanis. He eventually took up operations in the solar core, attaching robotic tentacles to his severed nerve cords to aid his work, detecting solarite to augment the ship's systems, and improving on existing protoss weapon designs using what he learned from studying the Spear of Adun.

Building toward victory#

Across the End War, Karax supported Artanis's campaigns from the Spear of Adun. At Korhal he advised on stabilizing the Sky Shield platform and then studied the recovered Keystone, judging it billions of years old and capable of manipulating energy, perhaps even storing its own origin point, which fit Zeratul's claim that it would guide the protoss to the xel'naga. At Shakuras he coordinated the evacuation of Talematros and recovered a cache of solarite before the world was destroyed, promising that the Khalai would always remember the planet that had sheltered them alongside the Nerazim. At Glacius he warped a cache of purifier weapon designs aboard the Spear just before the vault was destroyed and discovered, to his surprise, a prototype purifier carrying the replicated personality of Fenix; Artanis ordered him to cease his experiments and have Fenix join the crew.

Karax traced the Keystone's origin point to Ulnar within the Altarian Rift, a place protoss legend held the xel'naga to have come from, and the Spear of Adun entered the rift. When the xel'naga were found dead and Amon opened a portal to the Void inside Ulnar, Karax tracked the Keystone absorbing Void energies at an unprecedented rate, and the Daelaam closed the portal with the aid of Alarak and Sarah Kerrigan. He later proposed using the Keystone to extract Amon from the Khala, reasoning that the same device had once been used to draw the essence of the Queen of Blades out of Kerrigan.

Named a templar#

When the Nerazim located the Moebius Corps hybrid breeding station in the Revanscar asteroid belt, Artanis defended the Spear of Adun from boarders and tasked Karax, though no warrior, with destroying the base. Using the available carriers and what resources he could gather, Karax performed admirably and led the protoss to victory, then was given the honor of finishing off the facility. In recognition of his deeds, Artanis and the others declared him a templar warrior in defiance of the traditional caste system, declaring that the age of caste must come to an end.

Karax went on to help awaken the purifiers from Cybros, after which he examined their bodies and found that they functioned better in close proximity to one another, a synthetic echo of the Khala without its emotional wave. At Slayn he analyzed the Tal'darim fleet and concluded their ships had been pilfered from Khalai designs, holding the Tal'darim in low regard as thieves even as Alarak won the Rak'Shir that brought them into the fold.

The fall of Amon and reconstruction#

When the Daelaam returned to Aiur, Karax informed Artanis that the Keystone was again reacting to Void energies emanating from Amon. He was uneasy, for the Keystone had not been designed to house the psionic power of a xel'naga, but it was their last option. Alongside Fenix he destroyed a node of the psionic matrix to keep the Golden Armada from reinforcing Amon, provided alerts during the assault on Amon's host form, and reported the Keystone ready for deployment, thanking Artanis for the faith placed in him. In the final battle he fought alongside the purifiers in defending the temple, the line held, and Amon was drawn out of the Khala and banished to the Void.

After the war, Karax set up a lab in the city of Aldera, often visited by Talandar. When mysterious protoss deaths were traced to devices attached to severed nerve cords, Karax studied the corpses sent to him by High Executor Selendis and found that the devices channeled Void energy and used purifier technology to replicate the Khala. The investigation led to a rogue phase-smith named Lantharis, who resented Artanis's destruction of the Khala and sought to forge a new one. With the help of Talandar, Selendis, and a Nerazim named Nerath, Lantharis was placed in stasis. In the aftermath Karax took a practical view of a Daelaam without the Khala, admitting there was no single solution but promising to work alongside other phase-smiths toward a new future rather than borrowing from the past.

Character#

Karax was shorter and stockier than most protoss, and the armor he wore was more functional than ceremonial. He treated his craftsmanship as an art form and was immensely pleased with his role, and Artanis observed that once presented with a problem, Karax would not rest until he found a result. He regarded organic beings as machines of a biological nature and marveled at the intricacies of protoss biology, and he came to treat the purifiers as living beings, a belief spurred by his time with Talandar. He believed his skill was not innate but a product of his stubbornness, and held that the universe was part of a grand design, a belief shared by most protoss.