Mar Sara

Mar Sara was a planet in the Sara system, a dusty mining backwater that nonetheless ranked among the thirteen core worlds of the Terran Confederacy. It was one of the first worlds overrun when the zerg appeared in the Koprulu sector, and it was glassed from orbit by the protoss shortly afterward. Years later, after the planet was recolonized, Mar Sara became the place where Jim Raynor raised an open revolt against Arcturus Mengsk and the Terran Dominion.

Settlement#

The Xel'Naga set foot on Mar Sara in ancient times, and some of their relics still remained. Long after the terrans arrived in the Koprulu sector, the world was catalogued by freelance prospectors and later colonized by an expedition from Tarsonis, becoming the eighth of the thirteen core worlds of the Terran Confederacy. Mar Sara was always a backwater compared to its more prosperous sister planet Chau Sara, but its mining industry was seen as a key strategic asset. Its populace consisted of former prospectors and soldiers, along with religious settlers who disagreed with the Confederacy's limits of tolerance for other faiths.

The planet was mainly covered by hard-baked mud and scrub under a dusty orange sky, with two moons and frequent night sandstorms. Irrigation techniques such as waterfarms enabled agriculture, and there was significant potential for mineral exploitation. Mar Sara was also home to infamous wave-band anomalies, centered on a region called Perdition's Crossing, that could disrupt equipment and communicators and make aircraft transport risky to nearly impossible.

The zerg invasion#

In 2499 Mar Sara was one of the first planets infested by the zerg when they appeared in the Koprulu sector. Arcturus Mengsk later claimed the Confederacy deliberately sacrificed the planet to test the psi emitter, though a Sons of Korhal agent claimed she had stolen and activated an emitter herself. After the protoss incinerated Chau Sara, the Koprulu Expeditionary Force approached Mar Sara, and the Confederacy launched a clumsy counterattack while Executor Tassadar pulled his ships away, unable to bring himself to destroy the world or the fleet protecting it.

The Confederacy quarantined the planet. Forty-eight hours before a planned lockdown, General Edmund Duke sent the core colonists to the Wasteland, escorted by Marshal Jim Raynor. When Backwater Station was attacked and a distress beacon activated, Raynor saved the station with local militia rather than wait for Confederate reinforcements, and Duke arrested him for destroying Confederate property. As outland stations fell, the Sons of Korhal evacuated thousands of colonists. A Confederate marine platoon hunting the activated psi emitter ultimately used it to lure the airborne zerg away from Mar Sara City, sacrificing themselves to buy the evacuation time. Three hours after the colonial evacuation Mar Sara was almost completely overrun, and both the Confederacy and the Sons of Korhal abandoned it. Thirteen hours later the protoss fleet arrived, and once Tassadar was convinced no more terrans could escape, his fleet glassed the planet from orbit, killing all life on the surface.

Recolonization and the Dominion#

Prospectors from the Kel-Morian Combine found that the protoss bombardment had given Mar Sara's minerals unique properties, and the Combine staked a claim to mining and salvage rights. In 2502 independent and indentured contractors terraformed the world and began strip-mining it, and numerous lawless shanty towns sprang up amid the influx of miners. Burrowed dens of zerg continued to be found in the wastelands years after the incineration, and the world may have been reinfested.

The Terran Dominion showed renewed interest in Mar Sara, establishing restricted outposts and, in 2504, annexing the planet. For months Dominion engineers excavated a piece of the Keystone at White Rock Base, forcibly shipping citizens from Backwater Station to dig it up, while heavy-handed military tactics bred fear of an uprising.

Raynor's rebellion#

The Dominion set up a logistics headquarters in Backwater Station as the hub of all operations on Mar Sara, but the people there were strongly anti-Dominion despite lacking weapons and organization. After the Dominion pulled its troops out, Jim Raynor and his marines destroyed the headquarters with the help of the locals, then seized weapons and distributed them to the populace, inciting an open revolt against Arcturus Mengsk. At Joeyray's Bar, Tychus Findlay informed Raynor of the Keystone artifact that the Dominion was preparing to move off-world. With the rebels' help Raynor destroyed White Rock Base and seized the artifact, and news of the unrest began reaching the Dominion public. When the zerg landed at the abandoned dig site, Raynor's marines held two bridges at Backwater Station long enough to be extracted by the Hyperion, the attack being part of a larger zerg invasion of terran space led by Sarah Kerrigan. By 2508 Mar Sara had apparently been recolonized once more.