I wonder what the Ihan-rii’s symbol would look like.
It’s made out of a chemically insert substance that’s apparently very good for spaceships, and looks a lot like the xelnaga Stone, so I guess not
Their decal is a Protoss face with the nerve cords positioned to make it look like one of the xelnaga from the lunar hieroglyphics, but the high Templar have a different symbol on their capes that I’ve never seen before
Well, coked-out Stetman is canon now according that comic. They did it. Really did it. 
Stopped reading right there though. There was a time I would have been all over a new comic, but I just can’t take the lore seriously anymore.
As controversial as it is, I’m not surprised they’re going with Terrazine crazed Stetmann from here on out. He didn’t have much of a character in WoL to begin with.
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Someone on the lore team thinks this druged out Stetman bit is a whole lot funnier than it actually is.
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I find his interactions with his Garybot kinda funny, but that’s about it.
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I wonder if these new Factions will be introduced in the new comic.
Edit: If we ever get a new set of Mission Packs could we see a Terran/Protoss Hybrid?
Can you link it please?
Just look up his Bel’Shir Co-op Commander map where Gary is the player while Stetmann’s the announcer.
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I found the Ihan-rii retcon funny because I’d previously come up with similar ideas (and so had others over the decades). I can’t wait until Blizzard introduces more forgotten tribes that existed since forever but only show up now (while leaving the khalai tribes to rot in obscurity). And they never had a khala, even though that’s a basic aspect of protoss biology and not something invented by Khas or Amon unless there was another retcon I didn’t hear about. We still don’t have an explanation for why taldarim never develop khala besides sundrop, which was only mentioned in a side story novel nobody read. But I’m not surprised by this sloppy writing.
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The skin descriptions aren’t canon. Much like stuff originating from Coop or Heroes of the Storm, they might be drawn from when writing future lore, but they aren’t canon by themselves.
They could have thought of a different name. Ihan’rii is supposed to be a name for the Xel’Naga.
Blizzard said that everything they release is canon, unless otherwise specified. I recall them saying co-op wasn’t canon in a Q&A, but there’s nothing like that for the skins that I know of.
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Well if you want an example, the descriptions for the Mecha-Swarm are totally at odds with how they were actually created now, since Terrazine!Stetman is now canon.
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Yeah, well, the games themselves are at odds with each other too. It’s left to fans to decide what’s more accurate.
They’re a retcon in the literal sense, I guess, but I think they fit with established lore enough that they’re not a retcon in the fanon sense. We know the Protoss had off-world colonies through the Xel’naga warpgates prior to the aeon of strife, so it makes sense to me that at least one of the tribes living on them would’ve survived being cut off, especially ones living on a literal paradise world.
The Khala thing you’re mistaken over, the modern khala was invented following the aeon of strife by Khas rediscovering it and re-linking the protoss to it. Their connection was what drew the xel’naga to them in the first place, but the khala as we know it wasn’t the same as that proto-khala connection. The Tal’darim don’t share it because they were taken away from aiur with Amon’s xelnaga, and thus weren’t around to have Khas reignite it within them, and the Ihan-rii seem to have had the same? It’s a little hard to tell, but all of them have their nerve cords intact.
A lot of the lore around them makes sense, too, that they’d grow to be the most advanced of their era through that survival and the lack of taboo around reverse engineering the Xel’naga’s machines. It seems as though they saw how their kin devolved into savagery (both the khalai and the tal’darim) as well as the Xel’naga leaving to the stars because of the actions of their homeworld-bound brothers and sisters, which would lead to their thoughts that they were the only “true” inheritors of the xel’naga.
Honestly i’m a massive fan of the ihan-rii, both their aesthetic and their lore, and i’m hoping we get more on them at some point. Their slim-chested adepts and aztec inspired stone+ripped cloth outfits are really cool, as is their thanos-purple skin colour, which is almost unique amongst the protoss we’ve seen.
@Kelthar
Skins are canon, but we have no idea how the mecha swarm plays into the simulants. I figure the comic will build a link. It’s entierly possible Stetmann was part of the simulant project before being deployed to bel’shir or something, and built a number of bots using that knowledge. Or- it’s even possible this pre-dates the simulant project and ends up being what inspires it. Who knows, we’ve got like two pages of them being a thing.
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Except that’s kind of the opposite of how canon works? Newer generally trumps older, and with a work like StarCraft with so many different contributors, theres generally a hierarchy based on who actually created the work (for example, the 3rd party expansions for BW are lower canon than BW itself, or any of the other games where they contradict).
So. Fun fact that I’m sure Gradius is going to love. The comic does in fact confirm that Stetman is now psionic, so apparently Terrazine exposure can cause people with no prior psionic amplitude to develop psionic powers.
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Well we already knew that. It was actually a plot point in StarCraft: Ghost: Spectres. It doesn’t make them terribly powerful, but enough that they can serve as a poor man’s ghost if you control the process.
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I’m pretty sure almost everybody here reads it. Anyway, it was already ‘retcon’ that the Tal’darim on Aiur is a different ones from what we encounter in the Campaign. It was either confusingly named or sloppy writing, I’m not sure.
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