Raynor's Raiders

Raynor's Raiders were a terran military formation once led by Commander Jim Raynor. They had a long history of cooperation with the protoss, owed in part to Raynor's personal connections, and operated for most of their existence as an anti-Dominion rebel group flying the captured battlecruiser Hyperion. Formed in the fire of the Great War after Arcturus Mengsk abandoned Sarah Kerrigan to the zerg, the Raiders went on to fight the zerg, the United Earth Directorate and the Terran Dominion before helping to bring Mengsk's reign to an end.

Formation#

The Raiders were formed from Raynor's Rangers and scattered troops drawn from other factions during the Great War. When the Confederacy abandoned Mar Sara at the start of the war, the Mar Sara Colonial Militia joined the Sons of Korhal in order to survive, and the militia formed the nucleus of the elite Raynor's Rangers. Arcturus Mengsk's ruthless conduct during the Fall of Tarsonis, in which he abandoned Sarah Kerrigan to the zerg at the Battle of New Gettysburg, alienated Captain James Raynor and many of the Rangers, and they left the Sons of Korhal. Once they ceased being Raynor's Rangers, the primary color in their paint scheme changed from red to blue.

The Raiders' flagship and base of operations was the Hyperion, a Behemoth-class battlecruiser. The Sons of Korhal had captured it from the Confederacy and used it as their base before the Great War, and the Raiders hijacked it following the Fall of Tarsonis.

Rebellion against the Sons of Korhal#

The Raiders fought an immediate action against the Sons of Korhal over Tarsonis. The Sons of Korhal attempted to use an ion cannon to prevent the Raiders from escaping the orbital platforms, but although heavily outnumbered the Raiders struck and destroyed the cannon and made good their escape. Upon escaping they numbered some 300, more than Raynor had expected. Not all were original members of the unit; some were Confederate and Sons of Korhal soldiers evacuated from Tarsonis, and at least one came from Alpha Squadron.

To sustain even this small force the Raiders raided the Dylarian shipyards to obtain the ships there. Mengsk foresaw this and sent General Edmund Duke to stop them, but the Raiders gained the upper hand in the cramped confines of the yard and made off with the Hyperion and several other vessels.

Conflict with the zerg and alliance with the protoss#

The small armada found its way to Char after Raynor was psychically called to the burnt world. He had been lured there by emissions produced by Sarah Kerrigan, who had been encased in a chrysalis and was undergoing metamorphosis into a special infested terran. Raynor's ground forces landed and quickly came into conflict with the zerg; when Kerrigan emerged from the chrysalis she easily defeated his troops, but allowed Raynor to leave her presence alive.

Stranded on Char, Raynor encountered the protoss Executor Tassadar and the Dark Templar prelate Zeratul, and befriended both. The allied forces clashed repeatedly with the zerg until the remnants of the Raiders, by then numbering only around forty, were rescued by a protoss fleet sent from Aiur to arrest Tassadar. The Raiders accompanied the protoss back to Aiur, where Raynor provided assistance during the rebellion of the Templar Caste against the Conclave and the rescue of Tassadar, befriending Praetor Fenix in the process. In the final battle against the first Overmind, Raynor's forces held the northwest flank while Tassadar, Fenix and Zeratul struck from the southeast, and Tassadar destroyed the Overmind by channeling the energies of the protoss through his flagship.

The Brood War#

From Aiur the Raiders continued to serve alongside protoss warriors under Captain Raynor, helping defend the Khalai refugees as they used a warp gate to abandon their homeworld for the Dark Templar world of Shakuras. After the evacuation Fenix refused to leave Aiur, and Raynor remained with him; the two closed the warp gate on their side to prevent the zerg from flooding into Shakuras.

Though stranded, the protoss and terran forces were contacted by a freed Kerrigan, who offered her assistance against the United Earth Directorate, an invading force from Earth that had conquered the Terran Dominion and deposed Arcturus Mengsk. The Raiders, flying the Hyperion and aided by protoss, rescued Mengsk and placed him in cryogenic stasis. When the UED Expeditionary Fleet arrived on Aiur seeking Mengsk for execution and destroyed Raynor's command center, a zerg wave allowed Raynor, Fenix and Mengsk to escape and detonate the warp gate behind them.

In exchange for the Raiders and protoss destroying the UED's anti-zerg psi disrupter, Kerrigan promised to topple the UED fleet in the sector, though Raynor and Fenix believed she would betray them. The fragile alliance held only until the UED was broken, after which Kerrigan turned on her allies as feared.

The Second Great War and after#

After the Brood War the Raiders were marginalized by Dominion propaganda and enjoyed little success. They were revitalized by the Second Great War. Through Tychus Findlay, the Moebius Foundation hired the Raiders to recover the components of an ancient xel'naga Keystone, a contract that funded Raynor's continued rebellion against Mengsk. The Raiders retrieved the Mar Saran component just ahead of a Swarm attack on the Dominion dig site and went on to gather the remaining pieces, repeatedly clashing with the Tal'darim who guarded them. The assembled device was used at the Battle of Char, where the Raiders fought alongside Crown Prince Valerian Mengsk's fleet to partially de-infest Kerrigan.

In the war's later stages the Raiders aided the Zerg Swarm under Kerrigan to depose Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Following Mengsk's fall, the Raiders directed their efforts toward reconstruction.