Rebellion of Korhal

The Rebellion of Korhal was an independence movement based on the Terran Confederacy colony world of Korhal IV, once known as the jewel of the Confederacy. Founded by Senator Angus Mengsk and supported in secret by the Umojan Protectorate, it began as a hidden network of cells and grew into a mass movement of millions before the Confederacy annihilated Korhal. The survivors, reduced to a handful, reorganized under Angus's son Arcturus Mengsk as the Sons of Korhal, the rebel organization that would in time become the Terran Dominion.

The political movement#

The roots of the Rebellion were laid by Angus Mengsk, scion of the Mengsk Old Family. He attacked the Terran Confederacy and the Old Families politically and could not be controlled by Lennox Craven, consul of the Korhal Senate. Mengsk sought help from Umoja through ambassador Ailin Pasteur. When a "corporate death squad" tried to murder them during a visit, the attackers were defeated by the Mengsk family and their security team under Achton Feld, and proved to be Confederate neurally resocialized marines dispatched by Craven.

Umoja supported the hidden rebellion with arms and technology, allowing the rebels to kill hundreds of Confederate troops in explosions and ambushes. The Mengsk Dynasty kept its corporations self-sufficient and imported the rebellion's "spare parts" daily. Watertight isolation among the cells meant that the loss of one would not endanger the others, even as the Confederacy launched dawn raids against suspected terrorist cells. Given the honor of the Close of Session speech at the Korhal Senate, Angus Mengsk tore down a Confederate flag, further antagonizing his enemies.

By the end of the Guild Wars in 2489 the Rebellion had millions of troops, and Angus Mengsk declared Korhal independent from the Confederacy. Martial law followed, the populace chased the Confederates from the planet, and the Confederacy withdrew. In answer, it sent three ghost assassins to kill Angus Mengsk in the capital, Styrling. His head was never found.

The new leader#

Arcturus Mengsk, Angus's son and a former Confederate marine colonel and prospector, was meeting Umojan ambassador Ailin Pasteur for personal reasons when Achton Feld brought him news of his father's murder. Outraged, he swore revenge on the Terran Confederacy. Pasteur offered support and joined the rebellion's Ruling Council, and Arcturus was placed in charge of the movement.

Arcturus rallied the militant groups that had followed his father into an army that struck Confederate bases and installations. His tactics included destroying Old Family factories for maximum economic damage, blowing supply-route bridges on key planets, hacking Confederate mainframes, and staging mine-worker revolts, until the rebellion's "underground" network became loud enough to make the term a misnomer. When a Confederate battlecruiser crashed near Umojan territory, out of Confederate hailing range, Mengsk pressed it into service with Umojan help; its captain, Pollock Rimes, and crew joined the cause. By 2491 the Rebellion had built a huge army on Korhal.

The destruction of Korhal#

Arcturus Mengsk went to Umoja in 2491 to gain new recruits when the Confederacy fired a thousand Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles at Korhal, killing millions. The movement was reduced to roughly thirty soldiers. Mengsk quickly recruited more from Umoja and renamed the survivors the Sons of Korhal.

The attack hardened the remaining men and women of Korhal into some of the fiercest warriors in the Koprulu Sector. Having seen their homeworld destroyed by nuclear fire, they demonstrated a complete willingness to turn their own nuclear arsenal against any enemy, a trait that would define the Sons of Korhal in the war against the Confederacy that followed.