Continuation of this thread from the old forums: SC2 Forums
So, we’ve got a new warchest and new lore, this time it’s a little different though, so I’m going to be breaking it down differently.
For starters, the new factions, done from least interesting to most interesting:
Knights of Tyrador:
Effectively just a dominion squad that defends the planet Tyrador IX, a paradise world that acts as a luxury resort. We’ve seen it during the NCO mission Trouble in Paradise, where it was double teamed by the defender’s feral zerg and the Tal’darim (which is ironic, given the story here). It’s also the place Emperor Valerian was conceived.
The Knights of Tyrador are mostly just showboats, while they are seemingly a mix of predominantly skilled mercs and dominion forces, all their vehicles and armor are designed to look good for tourists and VIP guests. The cyclones are usually just equipped with fireworks, the medivacs generally just act as search and rescue for people that crash their yachts, and the ghosts wear makeup and are denied their usual visors because it creeps people out. It’s a coushy posting that sees very little action (Or, uh, is supposed to see not much action, despite the NCO invasion and this current storyline).
Fun fact: Their Unicorn decal is a nod to the Team Liquid logo
Cerberus:
Origionally the Cerberus Recon Squad, an elite confederate black-ops group that featured in the sc1 campaign “Precursors” to hide knowledge of the zerg from the public during their invasion of Chau Sara, by the time the confederacy fell they’d slowly begun converting into a group revolving around experimental use of an almost entierly neural resocialized unit. They swapped sides as soon as the confederacy began losing, under the command of Tamsen Cauley, and became part of the Dominion. He, and they, acted as the main villains of the War Pigs comic, which never actually got a conclusive ending, but had them decimated in it’s last issue. The Cerberus armor is actually what the warpigs in sc2 wear, outfits they stole and retrofitted from the new-generation Cerberus troops during their battles.
Sometime after the death of Mengsk, however, what remained of the group went rouge. Taking what they’d learnt from terran resocilaiztion they moved onto the well-trodden ground of creating zerg slave broods, becoming a high end mercenary group. Rather than the normal, and generally fatal, method of controlling a command strain, however, Cerberus took a different route: Completely replacing the central nervous system of each individual zerg, allowing them to be remotely controlled as autonomous drones. That, along with a spate of cybernetic enhancements, allows them complete control of their zerg, with none of the drawbacks. It’s an expensive process, obviously, but their clients are apparently wealthy enough to make it worthwhile.
Ihan-rii
The Khalani word for Xel’naga, these protoss are a long forgotten offshoot- almost certainly survivors from the warp gate closure at the end of the Aeon of Strife, who believe themselves the true inheritors of the Xel’naga legacy, and the ones who’ll be bestowed with godhood when the Xel’naga inevitably return. “Native” to the Tyrador system, with Tyrador IX as their ancient homeworld, they seem to have mastered and repurposed Xel’naga technology, learning how to a create the chemically inert stone building material that seems to functional identically to those of the Xel’naga, and repurposing much of their ancient technology to build new creations, holding their colossi together with xel’naga pylons and constructing their sentries around xel’naga “nebula wells”. Calling much of their arsenal by the protoss unit name seems a little bit of a misnomer though, since much of it appears to be just functionally similar equivalents, rather than actual factional variants of protoss weapons or vehicles. For example, their Immortal is actually just a weaponized sarcophagus, an entierly robotic war machine that they bury their dead heroes inside (unlike other immortal variants, which have living protoss inside on life support, this is just flatout a coffin with guns on it).
Native to Tyrador IX origionally, they seem to have left the planet millenia ago in their fleet of stone spacecraft, and frozen themselves in stasis on the fringes of the Koprulu sector, presumably awaiting the return of the Xel’naga. Zeratul seems to have accidentally (or, purposefully?) sent out the sos signal that awoke them during his crusade in the second great war, but they don’t appear to have fully come out of stasis until whenever the “current” era is, sleeping through the return of their gods and the colonisation of their homeworld. They searched for Zeratul after being awoken and, not finding him (because he’s dead), they simply decided to return home and find themselves embroiled in the conflict of this warchest.
They don’t actually seem to use the pisonic matrix for themselves, probably because their technology predates it, and instead we’re told that devices like their disruptors draw power from the cores of their capitol ships instead, which is kind of cool.
Fun Fact: Their decal is a styilzed image of a protoss face, with the nerve cords spread out to the sides so it resembles the Xel’naga’s depiction of themselves on Ulnar. This is actually a really cool detail, and maybe my favorite minor thing from the whole warchest.