Viper

The viper was a strain of zerg flier incorporated into Kerrigan's Swarm around the time of the Second Great War, bred to manipulate the battlefield rather than to fight directly. It was a specialized offensive-support strain, evolved to weaken and reposition enemy forces, taking over a role once held by the defiler, whose genetic material the viper carried. The evolution master Abathur wove its gene sequences into the Swarm himself.

Physiology and biological weapons#

The viper carried no form of direct attack, yet it was among the most dangerous strains in the Swarm in its support role. Its tail was largely unchanged from the original defiler template, but had been adapted to let the viper keep its balance and steer in flight. Ingrown crystalline spikes on the tail's tip emitted a powerful pulse the viper used to locate targets with pinpoint accuracy. Its limbs, formidable in appearance, had been deliberately crippled for offense and relegated to the role of simple vice-grips. The porous, bony spikes it bore could pierce flesh and immobilize prey without killing it, and were linked directly to the creature's lymphatic system. When hunting, those spikes exuded a pheromone that made the viper seem harmless to its victims.

Within its abdomen the viper stored a thick microbial soup that it could spray into the air as ranged foes approached, fouling both projectile and energy weaponry and forcing enemies to fight in close quarters until they could escape the cloying mist. Most striking of all was its prehensile proboscis, an elongated digestive organ that ran the entire length of its body. Much as a frog uses its tongue, the viper could regurgitate this flexible organ with great force to seize a target and haul it toward itself, a pull powerful enough to drag even a terran battlecruiser out of position. Enemies who sought safety on high ground could be plucked from it in moments, denying them any terrain advantage.

When fatigued, the viper could siphon bioelectrical energy and nutrients from friendly zerg structures, separating the ionic chains in their hardened tissue to produce a nourishing fluid. That fluid fed the microorganisms in its bloodstream, which in turn regenerated the viper's energy and let it return quickly to the fight. The vipers of the Leviathan Brood, as one of the original zerg broods, exhibited more defiler tendencies than the rest of the Swarm, which surfaced many abnormalities but yielded potent toxins.

Origin and history#

The viper began as a type of primal zerg, whose uniquely vicious defenses drew the attention of the evolution master Abathur. He brought their essence into the Swarm at a time when the need for a support strain had become apparent. The defiler template was revisited and perfected with genetic material from an unknown species, preserving the defiler's core functions while excising its lethality, which had proven nearly as deadly to the zerg as to their enemies. Abathur incorporated the finished viper's gene sequences into the Swarm himself.

Later, Sarah Kerrigan was able to evolve her own vipers directly from the mutalisk strain. During the End War, a number of vipers were incorporated into the brood of the fallen xel'naga Amon. Vipers enslaved by the Cerberus Program were fitted with a hammerhead cranial implant that improved the accuracy of their proboscis.