Ulrezaj

Ulrezaj was a protoss dark archon, a being formed from the fusion of seven Dark Templar and named for the most powerful of those seven personalities. He led a group of Dark Templar who still resented their ancestors' exile from Aiur and demanded that the Khalai refugees be driven from Shakuras or exterminated. Cunning, learned, and consumed by hatred, he waged a long campaign of vengeance against the protoss of Aiur, served a hidden master, founded the cavern Tal'darim, and hunted the preservers across the Koprulu sector before he was at last sealed away.

The Alys'aril#

Ulrezaj was raised at the Alys'aril, a vast library on the moon of Ehlna, the first site the ancestors of the Nerazim visited after their exile from Aiur. Ehlna bore traces of the xel'naga and a combination of energies that altered the properties of khaydarin crystals, making them better suited to storing memories as data but less useful for other purposes. The alysaar, the "Keepers of Wisdom," were scholars whose duty was to tend the memories held in those crystals, the Nerazim having no preservers of their own.

Ulrezaj spent forty years as an alysaar and rose quickly in the brotherhood, though his duties never moved beyond transferring memories from time-worn crystals to newer ones. The wounds of the exile remained raw in him, and he wished to make his people better than the protoss of Aiur, regarding many of the preserved memories as useless. He hungered for new knowledge, especially the forbidden knowledge held at the Wall of Knowledge, which custom barred most alysaar from touching and which even the highest among them refused to access. By night Ulrezaj began slipping to the Wall and learning from it. When his mentor Krythkal finally caught him and asked why he had betrayed the alysaar, Ulrezaj answered that he would do anything to advance the cause of the Dark Templar and to take vengeance on the protoss who had exiled them. He refused to reveal what he had learned, which included how to become a more powerful dark archon, a thing greatly feared among the Dark Templar, and refused to have the knowledge erased. He left that night.

Dark vengeance#

After the defeat of the zerg on Shakuras, Zeratul led a force to ravaged Aiur to recover heroes who might have survived, and found three Templar heroes lying in stasis cells surrounded by a zerg hive cluster. When his forces cleared the zerg, four Dark Templar led by Ulrezaj attacked the high-born Templar in their cells; only one hero, Eredas, survived. Ulrezaj and his followers were arrested and taken to Shakuras for trial.

Ulrezaj had previously made connections with Alan Schezar and his smugglers, Schezar's Scavengers, and summoned them to Shakuras. During their attack, the stasis cells were destroyed and Ulrezaj escaped, stealing a sacred khaydarin crystal in the confusion. His forces traveled to Korhal IV, then contested by the United Earth Directorate, and left the crystal in the care of a zerg base. When Zeratul and Praetor Mojo arrived and found the crystal held by zerg defending terrans, Mojo believed he faced his old enemy Alan Schezar; the protoss recovered the crystal, which proved to be a fake forged from a fusion of Dark Templar and zerg energy. The clue led them to several more false crystals stationed on Char by the Fist of Ulrezaj, each guarded by mind-controlled zerg, and all five were shattered by the psionic fury of a dark archon, freeing the zerg they controlled.

By this time Ulrezaj had used his forbidden knowledge to fuse with three of his Dark Templar cohorts, becoming a very powerful but insane dark archon with Ulrezaj as the dominant personality. Where once he had been calculating, he was now a being of pure rage, which began to unsettle even the terran forces he commanded. His plan against the Aiur protoss settling on Shakuras was twofold. He intended to use the warped khaydarin crystals to mutate captured zerg, rendering them stronger and immune to the effects of the xel'naga temple, and to bring them through a warp gate to a platform above Shakuras, expecting the Dark Templar to hide in their secret places while the Aiur protoss were caught in the open and destroyed; this plan was foiled by Zeratul's forces. His second plan went forward: Alan Schezar and his Scavengers had built a powerful EMP Generator on Braxis, and Ulrezaj placed an orbiting station over Shakuras from which to launch his assault, the generator draining the psionic energies of the protoss. Ulrezaj and Zeratul each tried and failed to persuade the other, and in the battle over Shakuras the Fist of Ulrezaj and Schezar's Scavengers were defeated; Alan Schezar did not survive. Ulrezaj endured, and it was said his hatred still burned hotter than the brightest star.

Hunting the preservers#

Following his defeat at Shakuras, Ulrezaj called three more Dark Templar to him and added them to himself, growing more powerful still, and sustained his energies by secretly visiting an underwater nexus on Ehlna. He sent assassins after the preservers, the protoss who hold the memories of the dead Khalai, believing they knew too much and could threaten him, and seeking to silence their knowledge of the xel'naga. One such force attacked a carrier bearing the preserver Zamara; she fled in a lifepod, was pursued, and read her pursuer's mind, learning he had been sent by Ulrezaj before crashing on the airless world of Nemaka. There, bleeding to death in a xel'naga temple, she preserved her life energy until she was discovered by the terran archaeologist Jake Ramsey. Ulrezaj's forces continued to kill the preservers one by one until Zamara was thought to be among the last.

Ulrezaj then returned to Aiur, still home to a band of stranded survivors called the Shel'na Kryhas. He corrupted one of them, Felanis, who gathered his own followers and founded a cult that splintered off into the Aiur cavern system and became known as the Tal'darim, the Forged. They called Ulrezaj the Xava'tor, or Benefactor, though only Felanis knew his true nature and most Tal'darim had never seen him, knowing him only as a voice. He bound them with a drug called Sundrop, which made them dependent and loyal and mentally transformed them into Dark Templar, granting them abilities such as cloaking. In this work Ulrezaj served his own hidden master, who had set him a task. He taught the Tal'darim to capture zerg for him and occasionally took one of them, the Xava'kai or Hands of the Benefactor, to aid him in unspecified tasks. In a central chamber the Tal'darim were forbidden to enter on pain of death, he used a xel'naga khaydarin artifact to drain the bodies of the Xava'kai and stored vats holding strange, unseen psionic creatures, possibly hybrids, tied to the return or perversion of the xel'naga.

Shadow hunting on Aiur#

In 2503 the preserver Zamara herself came to fallen Aiur, intending to reach the central cavern chamber and take a piece of the giant crystal. She traveled trapped within the brain of the fugitive archaeologist Jake Ramsey, accompanied by the mercenary Rosemary Dahl. They allied with the Shel'na Kryhas, who had lost many members to zerg attacks and to defection to the Tal'darim. When Dahl was sent to scout the caverns, she was captured by a Tal'darim team under the former Templar Alzadar, who subjected her to Sundrop to force her to lure Ramsey and Zamara into a trap. Dahl, a former addict, submitted, but eventually broke down and confessed; Ramsey and Zamara broke her addiction and read her mind, and from what the Tal'darim had spoken freely around her, Zamara identified their hidden leader as the dark archon Ulrezaj, a truth the Tal'darim themselves did not know.

Dahl, the Shel'na Kryhas leader Ladranix, and others lured Alzadar into an ambush, broke his addiction, and convinced him of the truth behind Ulrezaj. With his cooperation they reached the crystal's chamber, finding the vats of strange creatures and the desiccated bodies of several drained Xava'kai. As the escape devolved into a vast brawl among the fugitive terrans, the Shel'na Kryhas, Terran Dominion forces sent by Valerian Mengsk, and zerg led by the infested terran Ethan Stewart, Ulrezaj made a personal appearance, intent on capturing Zamara and punishing the renegade Tal'darim. Every other force on the field opposed him, yet he destroyed numerous opponents and craft with ease. Ramsey proposed a desperate solution, a fusion of the Dark Templar-like powers of the renegade Tal'darim and the Khala-based powers of the Shel'na Kryhas, which wrapped Ulrezaj in a cocoon of power that fed on his essence and let the others escape.

Twilight and imprisonment#

Ulrezaj survived the warp gate but was forced to flee. Sarah Kerrigan and Ethan Stewart's zerg pursued him into the caverns, where he restored some of his strength, before he withdrew to Ehlna in a xel'naga ship, followed by the zerg and the Dominion. There he absorbed the moon's unique underwater energies to recover further, but could not remain long, for Jake Ramsey and Zamara had come to use the expertise of the alysaar to separate the preserver from the dying terran, and the zerg sought her as well. Ulrezaj assaulted the Alys'aril while it was besieged by zerg, devastating them though they wounded him, and was slowed by the library's shields and the arrival of the Dominion. Zamara knew he would force his way in eventually, and so, at great cost to herself, she used the nexus of energies beneath the Alys'aril, akin to those Ulrezaj himself drew upon, to trap him within the crystal into which she had transferred herself. The crystal holding both the dark archon and the preserver was taken to Shakuras to be guarded, and even years later dark archons could feel Ulrezaj's presence, and his rage.

Powers#

Ulrezaj was a dark archon made from seven of the most powerful Dark Templar, their personalities working in unison. He appeared as a huge swirl of glowing darkness, his outer nimbus stirring up wind and electricity, and despite his size he could move at the speed of thought. He hurled blasts of dark psionic energy that destroyed whatever lay in their path, sent tendrils of shadow snaking across the ground to strike at nearby creatures, and could teleport over short distances; he could even teleport and fly a xel'naga ship, and his very presence damaged the soil he passed over. Most dark archons do not last long, but Ulrezaj sustained himself through the knowledge gained at the Alys'aril, drawing power by feeding on his followers in the caverns beneath Aiur and from the unique energies of Ehlna. As an energy being he could be harmed only by energy attacks, such as the plasma metamorphosis of scourges.