Queen

The queen was a support strain of the Zerg Swarm, derived from the Arachnis brood-keeper and bred to administrate hive clusters rather than to fight on the front line. Queens oversaw maturing Zerg and drone activity around the hives, coordinated lesser strains, and served the Swarm as infestation specialists. Two distinct forms carried the name across the history of the Swarm. The first flew and acted under the direction of the cerebrates during the Great War and Brood War. The second, engineered after the Brood War at the behest of the Queen of Blades, abandoned flight in favor of nurturing colony sites from the ground.

Origin and lineage#

The queen strain was derived from the Arachnis brood-keeper, a creature capable of laying clutches of eggs. According to the StarCraft manual, queens were already in use by the Zerg before the Swarm departed Zerus, though the record is ambiguous as to whether those early creatures were the same strain or a related one. In the queen's adaptation, the brood-keeper's egg-laying ability was originally judged unnecessary, since the queen's purpose within the Swarm was tied to administration and infestation rather than to reproduction. Later, when the strain was reworked, that same egg-laying capacity was revived and turned to new functions in the hive.

The Great War queen#

During the Great War and the Brood War, queens were subordinated to the cerebrates in the same manner as overlords, helping to administer the Swarm. They possessed numerous tentacles, a sinuous head, and a stretched skin membrane, and were able to operate both in the air and on the ground. Most stayed near the hives, where they oversaw maturing Zerg and the activity of drones.

Their primary battlefield function was infestation. A queen could launch a small remora-like parasite from a distance that attached to a target and bonded with it if the target was organic, allowing higher Zerg strains to see whatever the host saw. At the time of its first use in the Koprulu sector, the parasite could not be removed without killing the host, and it could also serve as a channel for the Zerg to communicate with the host or as a vector for the hyperevolutionary virus. The arrival of the United Earth Directorate, with its nano-conveyed anesthetic and attenuated laser technology, made it possible to remove detected parasites safely, though by 2503 at least some parasites could no longer be detected by terran instruments.

Queens could also infest other creatures, causing them to expire so that broodlings emerged from the remains, and could coat victims in a thick mucus that slowed them drastically before dissolving them. Most feared was the queen's production of parasitic bio-toxins, which could be released onto a structure that had fallen into disrepair to swiftly infest the facility and bring it and those inside under Zerg control.

The reworked hive-master#

Following the Brood War, the role and biology of the queen were re-purposed into a new form, more physically resilient and focused on nurturing colony sites. The creation of this breed was carried out at the behest of the Queen of Blades to safeguard the future of the Swarm and to act as its hive-masters, and the strain was in use as early as 2501. Abathur altered the essence of the older queen, working back to the Arachnis brood-keeper, and suppressed the strain's ability to fly in order to sharpen its capacity to tend the hive. The result no longer flew. When terrans first encountered it, the common reaction was that someone had taken a centaur, replaced the upper body with a section of centipede, and replaced the lower body with a giant crab.

These queens are tougher than their predecessors, with an armored skull encasing the brain and a set of nerve cords resembling those of the protoss. The altered morphology hinted at the incorporation of terran or protoss material, or even the Zerg-altered genes of the Queen of Blades herself, which implied a broad redistribution of power within the Zerg hierarchy. They stand roughly one and a half times the height of a terran in CMC armor.

Sapience and instinct#

The reworked queens are sapient beings whose armored brains grant great mental capability, but they have severe limits to their mental flexibility, unlike the broodmothers, and possess only limited independent thought and analysis. They play a limited command role in nurturing nest sites, overseeing hives and coordinating lesser strains, and can analyze and relay tactical data fed to them by overlords. Queens generally cannot speak verbally, but have been observed to converse psionically with other species and are able to hear, process, and understand terran speech. Above all, they carry an ingrained matronly instinct toward the brood that even deep neurological restructuring cannot eliminate.

Hive functions#

The brood-keeper's egg-laying ability was revised to let these queens produce living globs of tissue that adhere to and accelerate the growth of creep, deposited through a mutated ovipositor. They also secrete a thick, protein-based fluid driven by mitotic enzymes that, when spread over the wounds of a Zerg organism, regenerates the damaged tissue within seconds. Combined with a catalyst from a gland on the queen's neck and injected into a hatchery, that same fluid causes larvae to incubate more rapidly.

Like all ground Zerg, queens move faster over creep than over open ground, but their legs are built so that crossing terrain without creep impairs them severely, which Dominion scientists have speculated is meant to keep the more intelligent queens near a hive rather than wandering off. They are capable of manipulating their offspring directly, having by 2503 engineered the zergling into the baneling and being tasked with the spawning of numerous cocoons. For defense, they are equipped with acid spines and claws and can hurl spores, though this weaponry is used chiefly to protect hive clusters rather than to press an attack.

Variants and notable queens#

A number of specialist queen strains exist within the Swarm, including the Empress Queen seen in the later wars, the Matriarch, the swarm queen, and the broodmothers that act as sapient brood leaders. Individual queens such as Mukav and the unique Char queen are recorded, and the queens of the Leviathan Brood are noted as especially vicious, ready to impale on many spines any creature that approaches their clutch with hostile intent. The primal Zerg have also adopted queens, though the brutal nature of primal packs gives those queens a very different role from their counterparts in the Swarm.