Protoss-Zerg Hybrid

The protoss-zerg hybrid was a fusion of the protoss and zerg species, a perverse merging of two races bred as the ultimate weapon of the fallen xel'naga Amon. Described as false xel'naga, the hybrids were central to Amon's plan to remake creation in his own image. Their creation was a corruption of the xel'naga Infinite Cycle, for unlike the natural union of two races it would not lead to the rebirth of the true xel'naga but to the loosing of a monstrous power upon the universe. Knowledge of the hybrids spread among terrans, protoss, and zerg only gradually, and most who came to understand them grasped the dire threat they posed.

The grand experiment#

The xel'naga reproduced by seeding the universe with life. Over many generations two species would emerge, one pure of form and the other pure of essence, and in time they would come together through peaceful means so that their xel'naga progenitors could pass their essence to them, giving rise to the next generation of xel'naga. The xel'naga watched over the younger races but never interfered with their evolution. One of their number, Amon, came to view this Infinite Cycle as corrupt and saw it as the source of all suffering in the universe. After gathering a group of like-minded followers, Amon set out to find two races he could uplift and groom into a perfect life form that would end the cycle. He uplifted the protoss of Aiur to be pure of form, then traveled to the world of Zerus and uplifted the zerg to be pure of essence, creating the Overmind as a collection of zerg sentience to enforce that purity.

The Overmind was burdened with an overriding directive to destroy the protoss, part of Amon's design to remold creation. When the other xel'naga discovered Amon's experiments and tried to stop them, Amon loosed the Overmind and the Swarm against the xel'naga worldships over Zerus, wiping out the majority of the xel'naga and throwing the Infinite Cycle into turmoil. The Swarm then went into space to complete the experiment by absorbing the protoss, but the Khala and the Void protected the protoss from infestation, and Tassadar destroyed the Overmind before it could run rampant through the stars.

Duran's experiments#

Fulfilling Amon's machinations, Samir Duran worked to produce a perfected hybrid as a stepping stone toward a far more powerful host body capable of sustaining his master. By the end of the Brood War he had established development bases on multiple worlds and successfully created numerous specimens, the work accelerated by Sarah Kerrigan's assimilation by the zerg. One base on a dark moon was discovered by accident by the Dark Prelate Zeratul, who had come from Char and mistook the protoss energy signatures on the moon for stragglers or allied forces. He found instead a hybrid development base, with protoss, zerg, and infested terran specimens held in stasis cells, and was horrified when his party reached the hybrid specimen itself. Duran contacted him to reveal that the experiments were sponsored by a greater power and that specimens were secreted on many worlds. Zeratul destroyed the hybrid before departing and kept his discovery secret, embarking on a solitary fact-finding journey.

Beneath Aiur, the dark archon Ulrezaj kept strange creatures in vats, creatures of unknown nature but possessed of psionic power, which the preserver Zamara, embedded in the mind of the terran archaeologist Jake Ramsey, suspected to be a kind of hybrid. When Zamara and Zeratul exchanged what each knew, she warned that Duran's work was a perversion of the cycle and that if his efforts to unify the species succeeded, a monstrous and powerful perversion of both protoss and zerg would be loosed upon the universe.

Breeding programs of the Second Great War#

By a few years before the Second Great War the Terran Dominion had begun a hybrid breeding program based out of Skygeirr and conducted further experiments at a secret facility orbiting Castanar, the gene-splicing technology employed there far beyond anything the terrans should have possessed. Raynor's Raiders discovered the Castanar facility and found numerous hybrids being cloned within; in destroying its fusion core they weakened a containment field, releasing a particularly powerful hybrid reaver that rampaged against protoss, zerg, and terran alike. Prior to 2504, Dr. Emil Narud of the Moebius Foundation created at least three hybrids aboard Space Station Prometheus, concealing from his benefactor Valerian Mengsk how far his work had progressed. When Narud later turned these creatures against Valerian and Raynor, an uninfested, recovering Sarah Kerrigan destroyed two with her psionic power before the last was killed.

Kerrigan and her forces later encountered hybrid dominators aboard Skygeirr Station under Narud's command. Narud made his final stand at a series of xel'naga shrines, his loyal Tal'darim and many hybrid reavers fighting alongside him, but Alexei Stukov led the zerg to victory. Kerrigan faced Narud in single combat and stabbed him, and as the shapeshifter lay dying he revealed that Amon had already been revived.

The End War#

In the aftermath of the Second Great War the hybrids began to awaken and seize control of the Moebius Foundation and Moebius Corps personnel who had created them, turning them into thralls; the Revanscar facility, where the majority of hybrids were made, was one such site. Zeratul and Kerrigan found and destroyed many of them, though Zeratul judged that slaying hybrids was meaningless while Amon yet lived. When the Daelaam launched their attempt to reclaim Aiur, Amon's hybrid forces coordinated zerg attacks against the protoss, and the appearance of the hybrids convinced Artanis to act against the dark god. Thereafter Amon deployed hybrids across the Koprulu sector, supplementing corrupted protoss and Amon Brood zerg in his campaigns against Shakuras, Korhal, Ulnar, and beyond.

When Matriarch Vorazun tracked the hybrids' breeding facility to Revanscar, hybrid forces boarded the arkship Spear of Adun even as Phase-smith Karax led the assault on the facility, whose destruction ended Moebius Corps as a threat and its breeding operations with it. On Aiur at last, Amon created a hybrid host body from protoss flesh fused with that of the dead Overmind, and the Daelaam broke through the hybrids defending it to call down an orbital bombardment that destroyed the host, leaving only the Khala for Amon to inhabit. The apocalyptic vision the Overmind had once foreseen, in which the hybrids and an enslaved Swarm annihilated the terrans and protoss before the hybrids turned upon and eliminated the zerg as well, was thus averted.

Types of hybrid#

The hybrids took many forms across the various breeding programs. Recorded types included the destroyer and its dominator variant, the Moebius hybrid, the nemesis, the Prometheus, the voidshade, and the reaver with its larger behemoth form. Individual specimens of note included Maar, a hybrid destroyer; the Castanar hybrid; the numbered hybrid experiments such as 523I, 9E57, and A626; and the temporary host form taken by Amon himself. Though similar in concept to infested protoss, the hybrids were a distinct creation, the deliberate genetic fusion of two species rather than the corruption of one.