Zeratul

Zeratul was a revered mystic of the Nerazim and a dark prelate of the protoss dark templar. During the Great War he allied with the Khalai Tassadar against the zerg despite his hatred of the Conclave that had banished his forebears, personally slew the cerebrate Zasz, and through that act inadvertently revealed the location of Aiur to the Overmind. His decades of pursuing the xel'naga prophecy shaped the destiny of the protoss, and he gave his life to free Artanis from Amon.

The Nerazim mystic#

In his early years, Zeratul held a hatred of the Khalai for banishing the Nerazim from Aiur. By the Great War he had spent many decades away from Shakuras on missions. When he reached the rank of prelate he was presented, as tradition demanded, with a custom set of armor called the Shadow-walker's Embrace, though he rarely donned it, preferring less formal attire.

Char and the alliance with Tassadar#

During the Great War, Zeratul reacted to Sarah Kerrigan's psionic call from Char and brought his small force there to end the zerg's expansion. On Char he met the former protoss executor Tassadar and the terran Jim Raynor. Tassadar, reacting badly to a leader of the forbidden caste, attacked, but Zeratul refused to take offense and even attempted to teach him the art of combat while avoiding his blows. He overcame Tassadar's prejudice and began to heal the rift between the Khalai and the dark templar, and the two leaders and Raynor joined forces.

When Kerrigan was reborn as the Queen of Blades, Tassadar distracted her long enough for Zeratul to slay Zasz, cerebrate of the Garm Brood. The killing created a connection between Zeratul and the Overmind, letting him discern its motives but also letting it discern the secret location of Aiur. As their friendship grew, Zeratul taught Tassadar to use the dark templar's Void-based energies, a task Aldaris considered blasphemous, and Tassadar underwent the Shadow Walk. Zeratul also gave Kerrigan a prophecy, telling her that her coming had been foretold, that she was part of the culmination but not its end, and that her very existence provided necessary instruction. When Kerrigan's attack on Char scattered the allies, Zeratul and a handful of dark templar were captured and herded into a terran installation.

Rescue, rebellion, and the fall of the Overmind#

Tassadar launched an attack on the zerg guarding the installation, found Zeratul, and convinced him to return to Aiur. There they gained the support of Fenix, and when the Conclave branded Tassadar a traitor and sought to execute Zeratul, the three assaulted Kor-shakal. After Tassadar surrendered to Aldaris, Zeratul and his dark templar vanished, only to reappear and ambush Aldaris's forces to free Tassadar from his stasis cell.

Zeratul revealed to the allies the true danger of the Overmind: it had attacked the xel'naga, and if it defeated the protoss it would consume all sentient life. While Fenix thinned the zerg hive clusters, Zeratul infiltrated and assassinated a pair of cerebrates, weakening the Overmind's defenses. In the final assault, Tassadar sacrificed himself, using the dark templar techniques Zeratul had taught him to destroy the Overmind.

The Brood War and the death of Raszagal#

The leaderless zerg ran rampant over Aiur, killing nearly seventy percent of its population. Zeratul, allying with Aldaris and the new praetor Artanis, concluded that the protoss must retreat to the dark templar homeworld of Shakuras through the last warp gate, abandoning Aiur. He personally led the refugees to the gate, where Fenix and Raynor stayed behind to protect them. On Shakuras, Zeratul met Matriarch Raszagal, who proposed activating the world's xel'naga temple to scour the zerg using the twin crystals, the Uraj and the Khalis.

When Kerrigan appeared offering help, Zeratul distrusted her, but Raszagal insisted the former enemies work together to recover the crystals from Braxis and Char. On their return, they found Shakuras in uproar as Aldaris led the Judicator and Templar refugees in revolt against Raszagal. Zeratul sensed something was wrong, for Raszagal had always been a gentle soul, but followed her order to terminate Aldaris. As Aldaris tried to reveal that someone was manipulating the Matriarch, Kerrigan killed him, then boasted that she had played the protoss into slaying her enemies before departing. With the temple activated by Zeratul carrying the Khalis and Artanis the Uraj, the zerg on Shakuras were destroyed.

Kerrigan was not finished. Her forces kidnapped Raszagal and took her to Char, using her as leverage to make Zeratul's dark templar slay a new Overmind. Zeratul reluctantly cooperated and slew the Overmind, then whisked Raszagal away, infuriating Kerrigan. Trapped and unable to escape before dimensional recall, and with Raszagal under Kerrigan's lingering influence, Zeratul broke the stasis cell and killed the Matriarch at her own request. With her dying thoughts, Raszagal made him the leader of her people, but the act left Zeratul with immense guilt and lasting psychological wounds, and Kerrigan took sadistic pleasure in letting him live with the burden.

Exile and the pursuit of prophecy#

On a dark moon, Zeratul discovered Samir Duran's experiments to create a zerg/protoss hybrid, which Duran called the completion of a cycle preordained when the stars were young. Horrified, Zeratul destroyed the hybrid and the facility, then entered a self-imposed exile with a handful of followers to search for the truth of the xel'naga's apparent return, suspecting that the zerg had fallen under the control of dark forces. In his travels he was found soul-sick on a pink-skied world by the terran archaeologist Jake Ramsey, who carried within him the mind of the preserver Zamara. From Zamara he learned that the xel'naga were long-lived but mortal and could no longer breed, and intended to preserve themselves by uplifting two species embodying purity of form and purity of essence, then peacefully merging them to create the xel'naga reborn.

As the Second Great War approached, Zeratul resumed his search aboard the Void Seeker, tracking the prophecy to Ulaan, then to the archive world of Zhakul, where he defeated the hybrid destroyer Maar and freed three preservers who deciphered more of the prophecy's meaning. He departed for Aiur to extract the memories of the dead Overmind. When he communed with its cortex he was met by the xel'naga Ouros, who took the guise of Tassadar, and learned that the Overmind had been an unwilling pawn of Amon, driven to destroy the protoss by an implanted directive, and that it had created the Queen of Blades to prevent a future in which Amon and the hybrids annihilated all life.

Warnings of the dark voice#

Zeratul recorded what he had learned into an Ihan crystal and clandestinely delivered it to Raynor aboard the Hyperion, warning him to ensure Kerrigan's survival. He then boarded Kerrigan's leviathan and, after enduring a beating, showed her Zerus, the birthplace of the zerg, telling her to go there to gain the power to challenge Amon, and that the xel'naga wished her restored as leader of the Swarm even if his actions earned the hatred of his people.

He continued to hunt the last part of the prophecy. Contacted by Praetor Talis after Templar were abducted to a Moebius Foundation base, Zeratul freed his brethren and traced the abductions to the Tal'darim and the world of Atrias, where Amon was reborn. At the Temple of Erris he observed Highlord Ma'lash communing with Amon, destroyed the Void conduit to cripple the Tal'darim command structure, and received a vision through the guise of Tassadar telling him that the Keystone would usher him unto hope, with its location revealed on Korhal. Resolving that only Artanis could unite the protoss before Amon's wrath, he set off to warn him.

Return to Aiur and death#

As the Golden Armada stood ready to reclaim Aiur, Zeratul appeared on the bridge of Artanis's ship. Executor Selendis called him a traitor, recalling that his actions in the Great War had revealed Aiur to the zerg, but Artanis held his warriors back to listen. Zeratul warned of Amon's return and begged that the invasion be stopped, but Artanis judged that too many had given their lives to turn back. On the surface, Zeratul told him of the Keystone and the prophecy that the xel'naga would stand with the protoss in the end, and was sent to obtain the artifact from Raynor on Korhal.

His warnings proved accurate as Amon corrupted the Khala, turning Zeratul's own Khalai allies against him. Fighting his way to Artanis, Zeratul urged him to sever his nerve cords, but the possessed Hierarch parried his blow and rose with red eyes and a red psi-blade as Amon spoke through him. As Amon gained the upper hand, Zeratul landed a final blow that severed Artanis's nerve cords, freeing him at the cost of his own life. Artanis cradled his body as it collapsed to dust, leaving only the warp blade gauntlet, which he took and wielded on his right hand until the end of the war.

Legacy#

Artanis carried the burden of Zeratul's death throughout the End War and swore to carry out what he had begun, retrieving the Keystone and following it to Ulnar in the hope of the xel'naga's aid. Though Vorazun had long blamed Zeratul for the death of her mother Raszagal, as the war revealed the truth of his warnings she came to concede that he had been closer to the truth than anyone, and by the conflict's end Zeratul was honored with the en taro salutation alongside Tassadar, Adun, and Khas. After Amon's defeat, Artanis credited the victory to Zeratul and placed his warp blade gauntlet on a grave overlooking one of the first cities to be rebuilt on Aiur.