Sure, but it was easier to learn dark templar techniques when the Sundrop was literally turning them into dark templar. Twilight Archons could very well be a thing even though we haven’t seen them. However, it’s not a coincidence that protoss always start using the void when cut off from the Khala. The SC1 manual straight up says they’re forced to.
Not really. They can still use khalai energies, they just have to draw it via technology like psi blades or the khaydarin amulet. Besides that, yeah, maybe they should spend some time adjusting. That’s why the high templar were out of commission for a while during LoTV.
It’s all technology based. Look at Sentinels, they have blue psi blades even though they’re robots.
The only exception seems to be when Amon possessed the Daelaam and their $hit all turned red like the Tal’Darim. I have no explanation for that other than it’s a special case, given that Amon is their God and also straight up warped/disfigured the protoss as well according to the skin lore. Or maybe he just knew how to output void energy from the tech instead (which is preferable since a warp blade seems to be more powerful than a psi blade).
The SC1 manual frames it as speculation. Its entirely possible that without the safety net of the Khala, they couldn’t learn or use those powers safely, which would be consistent with the DT saga, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t access the energy at all.
The sentinels, like all zealot models, actually have team colored psi-blades. Centurions also use blue blades on their in-game model even though theyre using warp blades, and use green blades in cinematics. The Tal’darim use “bane blades” which are yet another variant constructed using bloodshard crystals, which is presumably why their stuff is red.
As with everything about Amon, his changing the color of psi-blades is something of an enigma, but it does tentatively support the idea that you can charge different kinds of energy into the blade to get a different output.
The Purifiers… sort of don’t? They seem to be powered by the same psionic energy that all protoss tech runs off, but we’ve seen that they do have a lot of solarite-based systems, so maybe they’re the equivalent of gas guzzlers in protoss tech.
They have been able to emulate the abilities of a high templar using their technology, though, for what that’s worth (much like the sentries did for the haullucination ability).
The Tal’darim use the void, but in a different way to the Nerazim. The nerazim treat the void as a living force, they skim the edges and cloak themselves inbetween it and the material world, and channeling it further is something they consider akin to wrangling a wild beast. The tal’darim seem to use it in a completely different way, with reckless abandon channeling it towards their foes. I’d like to see more about the differences between the two in canon, since we haven’t seen much, but there’s a clear divide in how they use the void.
I would say most of gradius’ sources are pretty old and as far as the interview goes it’s pretty off the cuff (and… also would totally fit with the khala being the focuser that allows templar ready access to their native psionics?).
All protoss are pretty clearly capable of accessing the same energies as the khalai, regardless of their nerve cord status or nerazim-ness, due to their ability to form archons, channel the same energies, etc. Without the khala there’s so much more danger to using their innate energies that it’s generally preferable to switch to something else, like the void, but as we see in lotv you can get around it by careful training and sheer force of will.
Without a driver like the flatout complete loss of the khala there’s never been a reason to continue using khalai energy following the loss of your nerve cords. The rogues saw the danger and had the void anyway, any khalai that lost their nerve cords post-sc1 had no support network or framework for using khalai energies without the khala, and even the Aiur Tal’darim only managed to atomize themselves and their khalai survivor companions to slightly delay Ulrezaj. There was never a large enough number of khalai with cut cords for them to ever need to think about trying until lotv, after which it seems like things have continued on as normal.
Ive given a perfectly reasonable explanation that doesn’t require retconning a bunch of stuff. And nobody’s addressed how Khalai machinery would possibly work if Khala energy can only come from biological protoss.
Being able to still use the Khala after you’ve cut off your access to it (nerve cords) straight up doesn’t make sense. We see how much Rohana and other protoss struggle to use the Khala when Amon corrupted it. But they can still somehow use khalai energies with no drawbacks/conditions and this just never gets mentioned anywhere? Why? How? Wasn’t the whole point of LoTV that you can’t do that anymore?
Why should I have to work all around these plot holes when I have a far simpler explanation? Granted, I can’t explain archons but it’s not like they make sense to begin with.
Because its contradicted by the game? We SEE the daelaam and Tal’darim making uses of Khala energies even when they cant access the Khala. Heck, even during the Aeon of Strife, before it was rediscovered, the protoss were still psionic. The Khala is a safety net and helpful tool to use the energies native to the protoss, but it isn’t the source of the energies.
Yes, I get that that’s what you think is happening, but if you try to adopt the opposing viewpoint for a split second, you’d notice that they can only access the khala via technology after their cords are cut, which doesn’t contradict the game at all.
Your hypothesis is what contradicts the game:
You can’t channel khala energy if you’ve been cut off from it. Therefore they’re not using khala energy.
We see Void Rays channel Khala energy from an external source in amounts that could never come from biological protoss, which by itself blows your hypothesis out of the water.
The manual clearly states that if you cut your appendages, you’re forced to use the void. Your handwaive dismissal that it’s a rumor assumes that protoss wouldn’t know how other protoss work, which is nonsense.
Two separate sources corroborate the manual and show what happens when your appendages are cut off (you’re forced to use the void). Instead of providing your own sources or evidence for a change, you just handwaive away whatever isn’t convenient. This is why I love debating you guys.
If machines can channel it, then no, it doesn’t come from the protoss.
The Khala is also kinda pointless according to you because they can just access their previous abilities without it, like nothing happened. In fact, in the case of the high templar it was apparently only holding them back, with them being able to create even more powerful storms later on anyway without it.
I’m trying to do you a solid and work with you to make sense of the SC2 lore. But if you want to take a crap on all the dark templar lore for no apparent reason, go ahead.
Why not? Are you unfamiliar with the concept of a capacitor? Or a battery?
As far as im aware, this is never explicitly stated. Protoss have trouble accessing and controlling the techniques, but that isn’t the same thing.
No it doesn’t? Again, batteries are a thing, and the protoss have immense amounts of energy available to them regardless. Remember, the proto-Nerazium were capable of devastating the planet with their uncontrolled psionic storms, and even if they were using void energy at the time, that just goes to show how much energy they can access and unleash.
Its not nonsense, its explicit. The Conclave went out of its way to avoid studying the Nerazim, remember? The writers deliberately wanted to make it mysterious and uncertain.
Our source is the game, IE the highest level of source there is. They explicitly, inarguably continue to use Khala energy. You’re the one handwaving it away. And your sources come from comics which were not written by the primary team, have not been referenced in subsequent works (Michael Liberty gets more screen time than Twilight Archons, and he’s basically a fan insert from an author) and have contradicted the lore on other occasions (the Thundergod story from the same series, for example, gets the timeline on Thors horribly wrong, to the point where it even came up in the Q&A Blizz did).
Are you familiar with how a void ray works? It gathers Khala energy by itself. You don’t have biological protoss that charge up every single sentry & Void Ray out there, as that would be ridiculous. You also won’t have these protoss ships run out of batteries. The whole point of protoss tech is that they don’t rely on something that simple, and they can keep going by gathering energy from cosmic energy sources.
Think of how stupid it would be if your void ray or carrier just ran out pre-built Khala juice.
It’s stated in the manual. The only thing that’s not stated anywhere is that they can still use the khala even though they’re cut off from it. The way burden of proof works is that you have to provide some of your own at some point in the debate.
Protoss don’t run on batteries.
They run on cosmic energy sources like the khala or void. There’s not some protoss running on a treadmill powering the ship.
Technically a psionic storm just concentrates the psionic energy in a given area, which is the explanation the manual gave for why you can’t stack them. Plus, we know the void is another external energy pool. So ultimately that’s still not coming from them, at all.
That’s not to say they have no internal energy or can’t hold onto any internal energy but it makes way more sense that psychic abilities take advantage of external energy sources. Saying that the energy all just comes from a biological creature kind of violates the law of conservation of energy. Not that I care since it’s StarCraft we’re talking about, but you still need evidence that it works the way you think it does.
They avoided studying the Xel’Naga, and they tried to hide info on the dark templars’ existence, which isn’t the same as going out of their way to avoid studying them. I’m pretty sure they can deduce something as basic as what happens when your nerve cords are cut off.
Which is something we both agree on. This whole debate is about whether they’re still using khala because they don’t need nerve cords or whether it’s because they’re using technology to access it instead. It’s dishonest circular reasoning to use the game as evidence of your misinterpretation of the game.
You: “I know that they’re not using technology to access the khala because they’re using the khala”.
What?
Where is your evidence that they can use the khala without nerve cords while unaided by technology?
The game manual is the highest source along with the game itself. And the fact that it’s corroborated by two other stories basically makes it a 100% indisputable fact. Plus, Blizzard’s own canon policy is that everything is canon.
You on the other hand have provided no sources and your hypothesis doesn’t even make sense in the context of the game itself, so why should I buy your plothole inducing explanation? All you have is some circular reasoning that your interpretation of the game is corroborated by the game.
Do you have a source for the sentry thing? It’s not on the wiki and subsequent lore like other factions having their own variants make it seem pretty suspect that they’re all secretly siphoning from… uh, wherever you think the energies of the khala come from, I guess? All other Protoss tech you talk about in there, like carriers, is powered by the psionic matrix beyondthe void rays (which I imagine are also powered by the psionic matrix, just with the weapon having its own source).
There’s a billion ways you can reconcile how the voidray works, given we know you can charge things with khalai psionic energy, the idea that Protoss tech is jacked into a new energy source just seems weird.
Also, the two decade old manual is not a higher source than modern lore and it never really has been, it’s a good foundation for what was intended originally and to fill in the blanks of modern lore that doesn’t cover ground from that era, but it’s definitely lower priority than the game’s themselves and like… actual modern things put out by blizzard.
The crux of your argument here seems to be that every time Protoss cut off from the khala seemed to use khalai energies (i.e, the Ulrezaj thing, the literal entirety of lotv) they’d secretly swapped to using void energy to do the exact same things in the exact same ways without the audience ever being told of it, and also that post-lotv archons are all secretly dark archons that just look the same as the old ones.
It requires so many leaps of logic to get to “only tech uses the khala now” and the sneaky secret void use that I find it really difficult to engage with as something plausible? Like, in what world would the writers intentionally obfuscate the massive decision to make everything void-based in lotv and not have it be part of the plot, or even mentioned? What purpose would that serve to absolutely anyone at all
I don’t know, I just got it from Kelthar. I’m assuming he’s talking about the hallucination ability, which I guess is originally a khala ability but really doesn’t have to be.
LoTV shows the protoss using khalai energy only with the aid of technology, which means I’m right. See, I can do circular reasoning too.
Other than the game to support your interpretation of the game, you don’t actually have sources which say it works how you think it does.
That’s not how it works. Read the Lens of the Void short story. It’s drawing from the void and the khala, and it stays that way even during LoTV. Having planet-incerating energies just stored in some batteries/capacitors that was charged by biological protoss beforehand is ridiculous and not how the tech works.
Protoss tech wouldn’t be jacked into a new energy source, so I’m not sure what you mean there.
No, they’re largely still using khala energy because the tech is helping them out.
Besides that, it has never taken long for any protoss to adapt to using the void i.e. Tassadar. Khala usage is supposed to be a subset of void usage according to that queen of blades book. Obviously there’s stuff that might take a while like cloaking, but channeling energy into a psi blade should take what, a couple hours?
In what world would they keep using the khala after they lost the khala, with it being mentioned nowhere? That makes way freaking less sense than them continuing to use some khala energy because their tech is helping them out so much, and then slowly converting to the void for anything else they might need.
On top of retconning a whole bunch of dark templar lore and void ray lore, I can’t fathom why someone would pick this explanation over one that mostly ties everything up.
It’s entirely possible the Archon appearance is based off genetics and not energy usage. Besides that, it makes no sense when two dark templar, or 1 high templar and 1 dark templar combine to create the same khalai archon. If anything, the appearance is based more on what armor they happen to be wearing at the time than anything else. Pretty weak argument here.
I was just spitballing a random protoss robotic unit. I didn’t expect it to become a whole thing. What type of power they run on, or if its different from the regular psionic energy the protoss themselves use, is left unsaid AFAIK, so I assumed they were related. I don’t know why the sentry, as opposed to the Void Ray, was used as the unit for this debate.
[quote=“Gradius-1412, post:111, topic:860”]
LoTV shows the protoss using khalai energy only with the aid of technology, which means I’m right. See, I can do circular reasoning too.
Other than the game to support your interpretation of the game, you don’t actually have sources which say it works how you think it does.
[/quote] Urun’s Templar squad all form into regular non-dark archons in Shadow Wars, so clearly they aren’t using void energy, which would turn them into Dark Archons instead. Its not speculation, its logic and inference. We know if it worked the way you say it does, then we would be seeing other side effects which don’t show up even where they should, so it cant work the way you claim.
In spite of the shared name, there isn’t actually a connection between the psionic link and the energy, that’s just the protoss being religious about it. As has been said, the Khala is a safety net and lens, not the source.
Because yours doesn’t actually wrap things up the way you say it does? Explain archons. Explain Artanis and his zealots on Aiur. Explain the Tal’Darim being able to build void rays.
Youre calling it a weak argument and then literally just going “nuh uh!” in response. Dark Archons are red because they are manifestations of Void energy, which we see especially in LoV is also red. Seriously, which is more likely: that in LoV the protoss completely re-wrote the rules for how their psionics work in literally an afternoon, and then adapted to it flawlessly, and also never spoke about it or had any problems arise from it, or that the Frontline stuff is B-canon that the writers don’t care about, and that the Khala energy pool really is just separate from the link?
It’s a weak argument because archons don’t really make any sense and if literally any combo of archon leads to a khalai archon that makes it hard to prove your point that it’s just due to what energy they use. If it was based on the type of energy they use then twilight archons would be a thing and you wouldn’t be dismissing the twilight archon story out of hand.
They didn’t rewrite the rules for how psionics work. They’re still using the Khala because the tech is there to help them, and then we see how high Templar had to adapt.
My explanation: consistent with LoTV, consistent with SC1 manual and outside sources
Your explanation: consistent with LoTV, inconsistent with SC1 manual and outside sources
Alternatively, Twilight Archons aren’t a thing, but protoss can still access Khala energy without nerve cords, so the Dark Templar/Tal’darim can merge to form Archons or Dark Archons with each other, but any combination involving a High Templar has to be a regular archon.
Youre changing your stance here. First you said they were using void energy. Now youre saying theyre using Khala energy. Which is it? If a new Overmind were made, could any random zealot kill it now?
Because your explanation is not consistent with LoV, no matter how hard you insist that it is.
I’ve been saying literally all thread that they use Khala energy like normal with the caveat that it has to be backed up by technology. It’s consistent with what we see in the game.
Could the Aiur Tal’Darim kill the Overmind? That answers your question.
My guess is that a random LoTV zealot wouldn’t be skilled enough with the void and still rely on its Khala power suit too much.
Why would any combo with a high Templar make it a regular archon? That makes so little sense. If you add a high Templar to Ulrezaj’s 7 dark Templar archon then it won’t be a dark archon anymore just cuz of that? These are things that combine into one warrior DBZ fusion dance style and combine their armor for Christ sake. This is clearly a grey area if there ever was one.
You’ve got it backwards. The Khala is gone so the burden of proof is on you to explain how they’re still using the khala. If you don’t like my technology explanation you have to offer up something that doesn’t contradict how void Rays work and doesn’t contradict the backbone of dark Templar lore.
Right now it’s my hypothesis with evidence/sources vs your hypothesis that’s backed only by your opinion.
With the exception of High Templar abilities and their innate telepathy, that’s always been the case though. And even the High Templar use Khaydarin Amulets to help focus their powers.
Because High Templar can only use Khala energies. You cant make a dark archon with a classically trained High Templar, ever, under any circumstances. They just don’t have what you need to get one.
Rather, you couldn’t add a High Templar to Ulrezaj at all. The personality would die and Ulrezaj would not have his max power increased.
If you don’t count the game as a source, then theres no point arguing with you.
Also, you’ve very explicitly said they aren’t using Khala energy. Make up your mind.
What did I say about circular reasoning? I can just as easily say the game shows protoss channeling the Khala with technology like I’ve said all along. LoTV is my primary source too by your circular reasoning logic.
Jesus dude, I’ve explained it like 8 times in this thread. I can’t be this bad at explaining stuff.
They can’t channel it innately anymore because their nerve cords are cut off, but they can channel it with the aid of technology that does it for them. It’s a minor adjustment at best and not some giant rework like you think.
Theres never been any indication that the protoss can use technology to replace their own brain power.
I don’t care how many times you “explain” it. It continues to be A: wrong and B: contradictory to when you said they weren’t using Khala energy, which I handily quoted for you. There is no evidence that they use technology to channel khala energies. Certainly Artanis didn’t add batteries to his Psi-blades on Aiur, or to those of his Zealots.
How does the void ray work? How does the khaydarin amulet work? A biological brain by itself is not going to generate enough energy to make a lightsaber that cuts through anything. That’s freaking stupid. They get their energy from the khala or void. This is basic lore.
Maybe they internalize the energy at some point and contain it in their bodies, but they still get it from an external energy pool first.
Isn’t the point of a debate to learn about the opposing argument? Understand before being understood and all that? I feel like I’ve grasped your argument 50 posts ago but you still have no clue how my stance works.
I’ll just keep requoting myself: “They can’t channel it innately anymore because their nerve cords are cut off, but they can channel it with the aid of technology that does it for them.”
My argument has been the exact same all thread.
That’s literally how the void ray works and how the psi blade works. Artanis’s mental energy isn’t going to generate a blue psi blade and green warp blade without the technology of the bracer itself.
He…doesn’t need to add batteries. It’s your guys’ theory that requires all protoss to have batteries, since you’re claiming the khala just comes from the individual biological protoss.
The psi blades output the type of energy that they’re programmed for. Either they’re drawing straight from the khala which is what I think is happening, or somehow converting void energy to khala energy.
That is literally exactly how psi-blades work. This isn’t an unknown thing. They call them focusers for a reason; they don’t generate power on their own, they focus the innate power of the wielder. That’s why, for example, a terran cant pick one up and use it. Ditto with the Khaydarin Amulet: its a focus, not a battery.
Its been the same, except for when you said theyre using the void. Seriously, man, if im calling you inconsistent, its not arbitrary, its because you have two mutually exclusive stances.
They FOCUS the energies, they do not generate them. They are incapable of operating without a wielder.
Psi/Warp blades focus the energies summoned by the wielder. The warp blade in particular is being described as powered by the will of the wielder. What part of this makes you think that the technology is tapping into some external energy source independent of the protoss?
This is literally one of my first posts on this topic. They can’t use Khala energy without nerve cords but they can use it with technology. Is this way too nuanced and complicated or something? I don’t get how I can clarify it any further.
A protoss’s will can be directed towards channeling energy they got from the Khala. It’s internal in the sense that it comes through the protoss but it’s entirely plausible and makes way more sense that they get their energy from an external energy pool that we know exists, instead of having the energetic capacity of the freaking sun in their own bodies and somehow never running out. <_<
![:thinking:](https://d212vo0owly06i.cloudfront.net/en/sc2/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
