Tychus Findlay

Tychus J. Findlay was a terran marine with a larcenous attitude and an old friend of Jim Raynor. Born on Mar Sara, he served in the Confederate Marine Corps during the Guild Wars, where he met Raynor and fought alongside him in the unit that became the Heaven's Devils. After the war the two became outlaws together, until Findlay's capture sent him to prison for decades. Released by Arcturus Mengsk on a secret mission to kill Sarah Kerrigan, he was sealed in armor that bound him to the emperor's will, a deal that ended with Raynor shooting him to save her.

Confederate marine#

Tychus Findlay was born on Mar Sara, ran away from home at the age of twelve, and never looked back. According to his criminal record he was convicted and sentenced to death before having that sentence commuted to a life of service in the Confederate Marine Corps with no chance of parole. By 2488, midway through the Guild Wars, he had reached the rank of staff sergeant, though he had little love for the military and regarded the Confederate government as corrupt and its people as weak.

A scheme to profit from captured Kel-Morian materials and a clash with his own captain saw Findlay demoted to private and sent to hard labor, where he engineered the death of a brutal sergeant. Released and sent to Fort Howe on Turaxis II, he first met a young lance corporal, Jim Raynor, whom he tried and failed to intimidate. Placed in charge of Raynor's squad under the corrupt Colonel Javier Vanderspool, Findlay set out to make their lives miserable before circumstance and shared larceny drew the two men together.

The Heaven's Devils#

Findlay adapted easily to the new CMC armor that let marines jump great distances and slow falls from dropships, and he took part in the platoon's defining actions. He fought in the assault on a Kel-Morian internment camp that earned the unit the name Heaven's Devils, rescuing Raynor and another prisoner from public torture. At the third assault on Polk's Pride he displayed his own brand of heroics, and after a sniper killed the platoon's lieutenant he took command.

The platoon's end came at Korsy, where Vanderspool planned to murder the Heaven's Devils after a crystal heist and Findlay and Raynor plotted to steal the prize for themselves. The double-cross collapsed into a disastrous retreat in which most of the squad was killed; only Findlay, Raynor, and Ryk Kydd survived. Findlay and Raynor went AWOL and were charged in absentia with manslaughter.

Outlaw years#

Following the Guild Wars, Findlay and Raynor became outlaws, pulling off thefts across the Koprulu sector and developing in Findlay a habit of exaggerating his exploits. One of their most regular targets was the Shale Express, which they hit at least a dozen times. They robbed trains on New Sydney for years, drawing the ire of marshal Wilkes Butler, and frequently spent their earnings at Wicked Wayne's.

Pursued by the bounty hunter Ezekiel Daun, who had tortured and killed several of their old marine friends, the pair sought the protection of crime lord Scutter O'Banon on Dead Man's Rock. The arrangement wore on Raynor, and the partnership ended on Bacchus Moon, where a bank job intended for a charity's funds turned into a massacre. As the authorities closed in and only a single escape suit was available, Findlay, who both men agreed had never done a noble thing in his life, chose to do one. He held off as many as twenty police officers so Raynor could escape, was wounded and captured by Butler, and was sent away to prison. Raynor never forgot the sacrifice.

The Queen's would-be executioner#

Findlay was incarcerated in New Folsom Prison, held in a cryo-prison until the era of the Terran Dominion. In 2504, Emperor Arcturus Mengsk offered him a deal: freedom in exchange for assassinating Sarah Kerrigan. Findlay agreed and was released, sealed inside his old Confederate CMC armor, set to shut down his major organs if he disobeyed an order. He kept the arrangement secret, telling varying stories of how he had been freed.

Findlay found Raynor again in a bar on Mar Sara and offered to broker a deal between the Moebius Foundation and Raynor's Raiders, who would be paid for recovering alien artifacts that Mengsk had outlawed. Through the campaign that followed he was more concerned with amassing credits than with the besieged sector, pushing Raynor toward cutting corners and acting like a pirate, and drawing the suspicion of Matt Horner, who called him "convict." When Raynor agreed to ally with Valerian Mengsk for the assault on Char, a drunken Findlay accused him of cowardice and the two came to blows, a fight Raynor won.

On Char, Findlay fought beside Raynor, helping save General Horace Warfield and pressing the attack on the zerg hive. When the xel'naga artifact deinfested Kerrigan, Findlay at last revealed his true mission and his debt to Mengsk, whose orders were audible from his helmet to the troops around him. He took aim at the dazed and human Kerrigan, but Raynor shielded her, the bullet only denting his suit, and then shot Findlay in the face with a revolver loaded with a round marked "Justice" that had been meant for Mengsk. His corpse was abandoned in the zerg hive when the Raiders evacuated Char, and his last words stayed with Raynor for years.