Zerg Crusaders

The Zerg Crusaders were a zerg force active during the Great War, led for much of the campaign by a young cerebrate. They fought across the planet Aridas to recover the Argus Stone, and used it to empower a being on Char, defending it from a combined Terran Dominion and protoss assault.

Landfall on Aridas#

The Zerg Crusaders arrived on Aridas with an exploratory force tasked with locating the Argus Stone. The cerebrate in command engaged the Aridas Colonial Militia defending the planet and established itself near the frontlines in an infested cavern. Seeking to weaken the zerg presence, the Protoss Crusaders sent a force of zealots into the cavern, but the Crusaders put up heavy resistance and forced the protoss to ally with stranded members of the Aridas Colonial Militia. Together the two forces pushed through and destroyed the body of the cerebrate.

Fire across Aridas#

After the Protoss Crusaders retrieved the Argus Stone from the ruins of Taledon, the Zerg Crusaders attempted to cut off their exit and set a hive cluster in their path. Judicator Kizrath fought through the zerg lines and linked up with his escort fleet, and the two protoss forces wiped out the zerg in the region, though Kizrath was forced to remain on the planet to contain the continuing threat.

Protoss and zerg fought across Aridas, each trying to annihilate the other. Jenson Archimedes of Jenson's Raiders used the chance to slip past their weakened lines into the xel'naga ruins the protoss were defending. There a cerebrate discovered a technology that let it gain control of a small protoss tribe, and with that tribe and its own brood it created the Fragile Alliance, sending it against the Swarm's enemies. Jenson's Raiders assaulted the cerebrate, and Archimedes guided a science vessel to it and pacified it rather than destroying it. The surrounding zerg and protoss swarmed the Dominion position but were destroyed, and the cerebrate was sent to a Dominion facility for study. The Zerg Crusaders tried to reclaim it but were warded off. When Jenson's Raiders finally destroyed the cerebrate's body, its hold over the protoss tribe shattered, and the freed protoss and the zerg turned on one another, allowing the Dominion to wipe out both. In retaliation the Zerg Crusaders launched a counterattack against the Dominion, overrunning outlying bases and forcing the evacuation of Science Station 12.

The war for the stone#

The Zerg Crusaders pressed into Aridian bases in the Outback on the fringe of the Dominion line. Jenson's Raiders were sent to reinforce the region and destroyed the zerg hives there. When Jenson Archimedes investigated a cavern beneath the surface, zerg forces captured him, but he sent out a distress signal with his location, and his raiders assaulted the cavern and rescued him.

After Archimedes retrieved the Argus Stone from the protoss, a new cerebrate was given command of the Crusaders and the mission of recovering it. Archimedes was defended by an escort of twelve battlecruisers, so the Crusaders assaulted an Aridas Colonial Militia base to draw the ships into the open and destroyed them, though Archimedes escaped. To track him, the Crusaders infested a Terran Dominion science facility and sent it back to their lines so a defiler could extract information from it. Terran and protoss forces pushed against the Crusaders' lines, repeatedly uniting against the zerg only to turn on each other, and each time the Crusaders rallied and wiped both out. A cerebrate that failed in the defense of fringe hive clusters was removed, and the commanding cerebrate took direct control and destroyed the attackers.

On the trail of Archimedes, the Crusaders infested a command center at a Dominion research outpost and learned the location of the Argus Stone. Their first assault on the base failed and cost them the defiler Thakras, but a second attack reclaimed Thakras and broke through the terran and betrayed protoss forces to reach the stone, which was guarded by an elite cadre of ghosts. The ghosts were defeated, and the Argus Stone passed at last into zerg hands.

The Supreme Being#

With the stone secured, the zerg prepared to leave Aridas. They moved to infest a terran barge that would carry them to Char, and when protoss and Dominion forces united to block the exodus, the Crusaders wiped them off the barge. Arriving on Char, they made preparations to channel the Argus Stone into the Supreme Being, which resided in a chrysalis. The Dominion and the Protoss Crusaders each attempted assaults to stop the channeling, and each failed. In desperation the two factions united their forces to strike the Supreme Being directly, but the Zerg Crusaders held them off and destroyed their bases on Char. With the assault broken and the Supreme Being secured, the Zerg Crusaders emerged as the victors of the Aridas campaign.