Reigel

Reigel was a Terran Dominion scientist and technology specialist who was assigned to aid the ghost Nova Terra against the Defenders of Man insurgency. A weapons expert with two cybernetic arms, a former member of the Moebius Foundation, and a man driven by a deep need to do good for the Koprulu sector, he became one of Nova Terra's closest allies aboard the ship Griffin, though his conviction that he could redeem any tool for good eventually set the two against each other.

Early life and the Moebius Foundation#

As a teenager, Reigel once saved a cat from a storm grate even as it clawed at his hand, an experience that left him needing stitches and antibiotics but shaped a lasting desire to help others in spite of the pain they might cause. He distanced himself from his family and replaced his arms with cybernetics out of a drive to do good for the sector. Reigel became a member of the Moebius Foundation some time before the Second Great War and personally knew Crown Prince Valerian Mengsk. He abandoned the Foundation before its assimilation into Amon's forces, and that eventual defection destroyed his career, leaving him feeling he had nothing left but servitude to Valerian.

Aiding Nova against the Defenders of Man#

After Nova Terra broke out of a Defenders of Man base and regrouped with Valerian, Reigel was assigned to aid her. He used a device to send a pulse through the neural inhibitor in her head and restore memories the Defenders of Man had wiped, partially recovering her recollection of a destroyed and infested Tarsonis City. He adapted her jump-jet technology to her Covert Ops Crew's units and guided her through an infiltration that revealed the Defenders of Man were using psi emitters to lure feral zerg onto civilian worlds, with a planned attack on Tyrador IX meant to discredit Valerian.

On Tyrador IX, Reigel set up a base of operations and noted a strange warp signature that proved to be the Tal'darim Death Fleet under First Ascendant Ji'nara. After Nova destroyed the protoss shield projectors and mothership and let the Defenders of Man rally, Reigel resolved to inform the Emperor of their actions. Aboard the Griffin, when Nova raised her gun against the Tal'darim Highlord Alarak, Reigel stopped her, declaring him a guest. Alarak, seeking vengeance for a Defenders of Man raid on a Tal'darim outpost, bargained to guide Nova to a source of terrazine in exchange for help against the Defenders, and led her to Jarban Minor. There Reigel observed the terrazine extraction devices and suspected Alarak had deployed Ji'nara to cull his own weaker forces.

Memories of Antiga Prime and the fall of Davis#

On the Griffin, Reigel administered microdoses of terrazine to mitigate the gas's side effects as Nova recovered her memories. On Antiga Prime he set up a base and pointed her toward the zerg structures and a stored plasma weapon, and Nova recovered the mission files and the memory of the Defenders of Man leader, General Carolina Davis, which the two took to Valerian. After the Emperor announced his plan to step down, Reigel served as intelligence for Nova's infiltration of Davis's compound on Vardona, moving weapons caches into the base and marking the security rooms that locked Davis's door.

When Nova captured Carolina Davis and the Tal'darim attacked Vardona, Reigel helped coordinate the defense, but Davis escaped aboard the Medusa. Valerian ordered her taken alive, and though Nova disagreed, Reigel insisted they follow their orders, tracing Davis to the Cerros Shipyards, where she activated the prototype war machine Xanthos. Reigel supplied a plan of attack, but the Xanthos revealed a transformation mode even he had not known of. The machine was destroyed, and to Reigel's horror, Nova defied orders and killed Davis. Afterward Reigel found Nova hiding on the Griffin and opened up about his past in the Moebius Foundation, declaring that he and the crew were loyal to her above all. With that, the two became fugitives, activating the Griffin's warp and departing Dominion command.

Aftermath and the road to Tartarus#

In the aftermath of the insurgency, Reigel extracted Nova's former squadmates Stone, Delta, and Pierce aboard the Griffin, offering each the choice of keeping or wiping their false memories. He performed delicate work to free Stone of an older-model neural inhibitor and let him go his own way. Later, after Nova began prioritizing the destruction of jorium stockpiles to prevent the creation of future spectres, Reigel grew concerned that the self-appointed mission was clouding her judgment, though he aided her dealings with mercenaries at Last Junction and a strike against the corrupt Captain Hogarth.

Investigating the planet Tartarus for a jorium stockpile and secrets of Arcturus Mengsk's regime, Reigel and Nova rescued the propagandist Donny Vermillion and the civilians Dr. Evelyn Yoo and her son Jun-Ho. Beneath a supposed refinery they discovered pods of in-stasis spectres, and the two clashed bitterly over what to do with them. Reigel argued the spectres could be turned into a force for good and that he could correct the flaws in their design, while Nova insisted they would only ever be weapons. When Nova moved to shut down the cryo-tubes and kill them, Reigel released six spectres from stasis and trapped Nova and the Yoos away, only to be knocked out by one of the spectres, who affirmed their loyalty to the legacy of Arcturus Mengsk and stole the Griffin.

Hunting spectres and reconciliation#

Reigel's unconscious form was recovered by Nova and the survivors, who were saved from the surrounding zerg by Matriarch Vorazun aboard a Daelaam void ray. Over days of hunting the spectres, Reigel and Nova remained angry with one another but agreed on sparing the infested Jun-Ho, and Reigel labored to cure his infestation. When Nova confronted the spectres, Reigel reminded them that he had woken them on Tartarus and offered them a genuine choice to be their own masters and live their own lives, and after a long pause they laid down their weapons. Nova accepted Vorazun's offer to let the spectres recover among the protoss and admitted that Reigel had been right that she had treated those around her as tools. Reigel apologized for his betrayal in turn, confessing the same fault, and chose to part from Nova to do good in his own way for a time before eventually returning to her and the spectres on Aiur.

Character#

Reigel possessed a genius-level intellect and a patient temperament, a weapons specialist able to turn found technologies into powerful tools and proficient as well in chemistry and virology. He was conceited and somewhat arrogant, given to dreaming of impressing the sector with his inventions, yet capable of genuine remorse and pity. His drive to do good for the world was spurred in part by his past failures and the devastation his work caused when the Moebius Foundation fell, and helping others was the one thing that made those losses bearable. That same single-mindedness blinded him at Tartarus to the humanity of those closest to him, a flaw he came to recognize. His cybernetic limbs could hack electronic systems and display holographic data such as biometrics, and his former Moebius colleagues remembered that he always seemed to know more than he let on.