StarCraft Story Explained: StarCraft and Brood War

StarCraft came out in March 1998 and its expansion, Brood War, followed that November. Together they tell one war, fought in 2499 and 2500 across the Koprulu Sector by three races: the human terrans, the insectoid zerg and the psionic protoss. The original game has three campaigns, one per race, and Brood War adds three more. This page covers all six in order and explains how it ends, so it contains full spoilers. (StarCraft; StarCraft: Brood War)

Before the story begins#

The terrans of the Koprulu Sector were descended from exiles shipped out from Earth centuries earlier. The strongest of their governments was the Terran Confederacy, run from Tarsonis by a handful of old families. When the colony of Korhal rebelled, the Confederacy destroyed it with nuclear missiles, and Arcturus Mengsk survived to lead what was left of the rebels as the Sons of Korhal. Nobody in the sector knew the protoss had been watching humanity for years, or that the zerg were on their way. (StarCraft (manual))

The war began when the zerg reached the Confederate colony of Chau Sara and a protoss fleet under Executor Tassadar burned the whole planet to stop the infestation spreading. The neighbouring world of Mar Sara was next. (StarCraft (manual); StarCraft)

Episode I: the terran rebellion#

On Mar Sara the zerg overran Backwater Station, and the colonial marshal Jim Raynor blew up an infested Confederate command centre to stop it spreading. General Edmund Duke of the Confederate Alpha Squadron arrested him for destroying government property. The Sons of Korhal broke Raynor out, and he and his men left Mar Sara with Mengsk just before the protoss incinerated it. (StarCraft)

Raynor met Mengsk's best agent, the telepathic ghost Sarah Kerrigan, when they raided a Confederate base on Antiga Prime together. Duke, rescued by Raynor after his flagship came down, changed sides and brought Alpha Squadron with him. Mengsk then showed off a new weapon: a psi emitter that drew the zerg to wherever it was planted. Kerrigan led the team that planted one at a Confederate base on Antiga Prime, and the Swarm tore through the Confederate forces there in the Battle of Antiga Prime. (StarCraft)

The rebels then planted psi emitters on Tarsonis itself, and the zerg fell on the Confederate capital in the Battle of Tarsonis. Kerrigan hated the idea of turning the zerg on millions of civilians. Mengsk sent her down to hold off the protoss, who had come to stop the zerg, then pulled out and left her behind. Raynor was disgusted and deserted with his men. The Confederacy fell, and Mengsk crowned himself emperor of a new Terran Dominion. (StarCraft)

Episode II: the Overmind and the Queen of Blades#

The second campaign follows the zerg from the inside. The Overmind, the vast mind that ruled the Swarm, created a new cerebrate and ordered it to guard a chrysalis on Char. Inside was Kerrigan, taken alive from Tarsonis. Raynor heard her psychic calls and came to Char looking for her. (StarCraft)

She emerged infested and far stronger than before, as the Queen of Blades. She let Raynor go, then turned on the protoss on Char, where Tassadar was now working with the dark templar Zeratul. Zeratul killed the cerebrate Zasz, and his dark energies killed it for good instead of letting the Overmind rebuild it. But in that moment the Overmind's mind touched Zeratul's, and it learned where Aiur, the protoss homeworld, lay. (StarCraft)

The campaign ended with the Swarm invading Aiur and the Overmind itself coming down to take root on the planet. The Great War had reached the protoss heartland. (StarCraft)

Episode III: Tassadar and the fall of Aiur#

The protoss campaign opens on a burning Aiur with a new executor, the templar Fenix and the Judicator Aldaris. Fenix fell early in the fighting and was sealed inside a dragoon walker to keep him alive. Tassadar sent word that the cerebrates were the zerg's weak point, and the executor went to Char to find him, meeting Raynor there. The Conclave, the council that ruled the templar, saw Tassadar's alliance with the dark templar as heresy. The dark templar, or Nerazim, had been exiled long before for refusing to join the Khala, the psionic link the other protoss share. (StarCraft)

When Tassadar came home to Aiur, the Conclave ordered his arrest and the Protoss Civil War broke out. Tassadar surrendered rather than see protoss kill protoss. Fenix and Raynor freed him, and the Conclave's forces were beaten. Zeratul's warriors then killed the cerebrates guarding the Overmind, leaving it exposed. (StarCraft)

Tassadar led the last assault himself. He channelled both the Khala and the Void energies Zeratul had taught him through the hull of his carrier, the Gantrithor, and flew it into the Overmind. The explosion destroyed the ship, Tassadar and the Overmind. The Fall of Aiur had left most of the planet in ruins, but the zerg on it were now leaderless. (StarCraft)

Brood War, Episode IV: exile on Shakuras#

The protoss survivors fled Aiur through a warp gate to Shakuras, the Nerazim homeworld, while Fenix and Raynor stayed behind to shut it. The zerg followed them anyway. On Char, the cerebrate Daggoth began growing a second Overmind. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Kerrigan, free of the old Overmind and wanting the new one dead, offered the protoss an alliance. The Nerazim Matriarch Raszagal accepted. The young templar Artanis and Zeratul went with Kerrigan to fetch two crystals: the Uraj from Braxis and the Khalis from Char in the Raid on Char. They came back to find Aldaris in open revolt. He warned that the alliance would make the protoss Kerrigan's slaves and said he had learned a dark secret about Raszagal, but Kerrigan killed him before he could say what it was. Zeratul threw her off Shakuras for it. The crystals then powered an ancient xel'naga temple, and its blast cleared every zerg from the planet. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Brood War, Episode V: the UED#

Then a fleet arrived from Earth. The United Earth Directorate had sent its Expeditionary Fleet under Admiral Gerard DuGalle and Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov to take control of the sector and tame the zerg. On Braxis they picked up a guide, the former Confederate officer Samir Duran. (StarCraft: Brood War)

The UED took Korhal from Mengsk at Emperor's Fall, though Raynor and the protoss snatched Mengsk away before he could be captured. Duran then turned DuGalle against Stukov, and Duran shot Stukov on the admiral's orders. As he died, Stukov told DuGalle that Duran had been the traitor all along, and Duran vanished. The Directorate went on to seize the new Overmind on Char and control it with a psi disrupter. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Brood War, Episode VI: Kerrigan's war#

The last campaign belongs to Kerrigan, with Duran now serving her. She formed an alliance with Mengsk, Raynor and Fenix against the UED, and together they destroyed the psi disrupter and took Korhal back. Then she turned on them. Her forces killed Fenix and Duke, and Raynor swore he would be the one to kill her. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Kerrigan kidnapped Raszagal to force Zeratul to kill the captive Overmind on Char, and he did it. Raszagal refused to come home, because Kerrigan had been bending her mind all along. Zeratul later snatched her back anyway, and when he found she was still bound to Kerrigan he killed her himself. Zeratul also found a hidden lab where Duran was breeding hybrids of protoss and zerg. Duran told him he served a power far greater than Kerrigan, and vanished. (StarCraft: Brood War)

Finally the Dominion, the protoss and the UED all came for Kerrigan at Char. She beat all three. The surviving UED ships fled for Earth and were hunted down on the way. DuGalle wrote a last letter to his wife and took his own life. (StarCraft: Brood War)

The ending explained#

Brood War ends with the villain on top. Kerrigan held the whole Swarm, with no Overmind above her and no army left in the sector that could stop her. Mengsk kept his throne, but Earth's invasion and Kerrigan's betrayal had cost him dearly. Raynor had watched Kerrigan become a monster and then kill his friend Fenix, and he had made a promise. The protoss had lost Aiur and Raszagal. Zeratul went off alone to look for answers about the xel'naga. (StarCraft: Brood War; StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Two big questions were left hanging. One was Duran and his hybrids: who he served, and why anyone would want protoss and zerg spliced together. The other was why the Overmind took Kerrigan in the first place. StarCraft II answers both. Wings of Liberty reveals that a dark power had enslaved the Overmind, and that the Overmind made Kerrigan because it hoped she could one day free the zerg. Heart of the Swarm names that power as Amon, a fallen xel'naga, and shows Duran was one of his servants. (StarCraft: Brood War; StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty; StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm)

The Brood War page covers the conflict in more depth, and the StarCraft timeline puts it alongside everything that came before and after. Everyone named above, from Duke to DuGalle, has an entry among the StarCraft characters.

What happens next#

The story picks up four years later. In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Raynor is a drunk rebel on Mar Sara, Mengsk still rules the Dominion and Kerrigan is about to invade again. The whole trilogy is covered in StarCraft II story explained, and the finale has its own page: Legacy of the Void ending explained. Every release from 1998 to Nova Covert Ops is listed in the StarCraft games in order. (StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)