Let us start with some background.
The Dominion; the biggest Terran faction with lots of colony world.
The Kel-Morian Combine; an inconsequential faction consists of a lot of miner.
The Umoja; for all intend and purpose, a nation of nerd.
After the event in the Evolution, Valerian knows that the Protoss doesn’t want to talk with the Terran much until all their factions unite as one. Plus, at the beginning of the book, he was doing peace-talk with the Umoja, anyway. So as a start of my story, Valerian has summoned the ancient power of economic. More specifically, the Eldritch god, Capitalism. He tells his Congress (or whatever dominion equivalent) that they could send out their own miner to dig up those natural resources, but it would be easier to just outsource it to the Kel-Morian. They have more experienced miners. They require less infrastructure. And they worker pay is cheaper. Just give them a cut from whatever they dig up. It would be cheaper than do it ourselves. The Kel-Morian also think that the Dominion is ripping them off, but they’re running out of resources in their own domain. These material isn’t theirs to mine to begin with. The Dominion will also provide some security who is primarily there to protect the benefits of the empire. Hence, with this calculated bond that is like trust, but better, a lot of mining permits are handed out all over the place.
On one of the Umoja’s world, an Archaeologist names Mr. A is trying to get a right to survey an interesting site. For years, he has been fighting an ink spilled and paper cut. Now with the permit, the site is going to be defiled by the Kel-Morian miner. Aside from other valuable material in the surrounding area, the site sits on a deposit of Khaydarin Crystal (If you are well-verse in Protoss’ lore, this makes perfect sense). It wasn’t much; just a little bigger than a human body, but it’s the Khaydarin Crystal, nonetheless. He tried to get the site preserved, but due to some technicality in the Dominion law, he couldn’t. As such, he has an idea to visit the site himself. Dig up some Xel’naga artifact with intriguing property. Showing it to the evil investors. By proving that the site worths more as is, he might be able to convince them to let him study it. Or failing that, conserve it. The Crystal would be extracted in a more time consuming method that would preserve the site.
-
For the first mission, Mr. A with the help from his hacker friend name Ms. H sneaks into an off-site Dominion official building. He hacked into their server and learned which mining cooperation won the permit to the site. This sounds more dramatic than it is. This information is not public, but it’s not government secret, either. He then booked a ticket and visit the Kel-Morian shipyard. He sneaks into the harbor master’s office and find the blueprint for the ship that will depart to the dig site. Unfortunately, the ship has been heavily ‘modified’ that the blueprint is useless. Ms. H tried to tell him to just go home; it’s over. He doesn’t give up and does all the determination speech after which he magically realizes that he could use the mining scanner lying about in the office; connect it to his cell-phone which has much better processing unit (it’s an Umoja smartphones); with an updated virtualization software from Ms. H, he could just scan the ship and find a place to stowaway upon it. Luckily, with repair after repair, and decade of poorly maintenance the ship is a maze. He quickly find a redundant compartment. With a small hack into the shop’s door at the last minute, he closes off the compartment and makes his own room. The captain noticed that, but due to the ship’s age and all, decides to not bother worry about it. It’s worth emphasizing that all the hackings are done to low level security targets. Ms. H cannot hack into any high level security or even mid level target.
-
A Protoss from the same tribe as Khas (I can’t remember what they’re called; just that they like to study Xel’naga) whose name is Mr. P stumbles upon the site on a lark. (Yes, it’s pure luck, but isn’t it true for all encounter?) He decides to visit it. Since the grand unification, he has dabbled in some void energy. As a result he could cloak himself temporarily. (Unlike born Nerazim who could cloak permanently) He can also use some Khalai energy, but he is not a Templar, so he can only create a small discharge. In the first part of the second mission, he uses his cloaking ability to move around. Using his spark to distract or disrupt the guard; like jolting guard’s suit to make them move away for example. Once in the temple, he tries to find his way into the upper control room (or whatever Xel’naga equivalence). Along the way, he uses gadget that he accumulated from years of exploring Xel’naga temple. One of which is the ability to override the gate making it does strange stuffs such as opening and closing at his command. He also has a small psi-blade, which he use to defend himself from the temple security measure. (Even Rohanna has one, so it’s not strange for Mr. P. Beside, this is not Ulnar. The security is not as tight. That being said he cannot take on more than one construct at a time or they overwhelm him. His cloaked and door remote control are still his best friends.) At the end of the mission, he found the control room in ruined from the mining operations.
-
The third mission starts by Mr. A arrives at the site. He then proceeds to sneak into the site and follows the miner into the ruined control room. Using his scanner, he finds some component that still barely functions. He learns about a point of interest, but nothing else. (The component is ruined after all) While trying to get to that point, he has moved deeper into the temple. Hence, he is attacked by a large group of the Xel’naga construct. At which point the player has two option! He could take out his side arm which is so powerful that he proceed to destroy everything. As a result, he realizes what an OPAF side arm he has. Thus, he murders everyone and lays claim to the temple. Alternatively, he could panic. In which case, Mr. P, who has been curious by Mr. A’s action at the control room and stalked him, will come out and uses his superpower of opening and closing the door to save the day! They, then, team up for the second part of the mission and get to that point of interest.
This is the end of my imagination. What do you think?
I want to point out that at any point if you fail the stealth section in the Terran’s territory, there will be some kind of message or cutscenes. If Mr. A was caught, then the Dominion decided that he might be trespassing, but they couldn’t execute an Umojan citizen. So, he was deported with a fine that barely covers his traveling fee. If it was Mr. P, then they couldn’t doing any to the Protoss without starting a war. And this is so stupid a reason that there is no Terran in his/her right mind would do it. So, he got deported as well. They need each other to explore the temple in timely fashion. And so with one of them ‘gone’, they can’t finish the exploration in time and the site was ruined before the deported could come back.
Everyone ability is quite minimal. Fortunately, the threat that they face is minimal as well. None of them is combat trained and if Mr. A decided to use his side arm, the game ends in a bad ending. They might come across some Xel’naga weaponry, but it won’t be strong like Nova’s.
The game consists of two locales; the Terran’s and the Xel’naga’s. Each character interacts with them differently. With Mr. A better suits for the Terran’s site, whilst Mr. P suits for the Xel’naga’s. They will need to travel back and forth between both territories in order to ‘borrow’ some stuff from the Dominion or to simply walk across the mining site.
The good ending is achieved by Mr. A shows the evil investor that they’re sitting upon gold mine and the temple worth more than its part. Or maybe, he was able to learn enough about the temple before it was gone. And that the temple didn’t contain anything special compared to other archeology sites in the first place. I’m not sure which is better.