Why Protoss hate Zeratul?

Campaign Discussion
142

I tried to catch up before posting, but I just don’t have time right now. Beside, it seem the argument seemed to be all about the Protoss psionic energy.

@Togetic

So you’re saying that the Rogue one consists of introvert Khalai who still connected to the Protoss community? I know the Protoss’ mind set is ridiculous, but this is… I don’t even know the word appropriate for this. I could somewhat buy it that the Khalai would react harshly toward those who completely reject the Khala to the point of cutting their own nerve cord, but if the Protoss is so fanatic that they would kill anyone who prefer to live in solitude and not fully connected to the Khala most of the time… then I’m not sure we have the same mental picture for the Protoss.

Moreover, are you claiming that the Protoss don’t need to cut off their nerve cord in order to be fully disconnected from the Khala? That contradicts many known lore! For one thing, why would any Protoss cut their nerve cord, then? Also, why would any of them leave the city? If your theory is correct, then most of not all Rogue one would live comfortably among the Khalai.

Lastly, isn’t the Khala excel at united Protoss of different opinion and idea? If the rogue ones are close off only temporary and at choice, why would they need to keep it a secret? Why won’t they just let their neighbor know that while they think the Khala is cool and all, they like to shield their mind off of it? They could totally explain that via the Khala, right?

Unless you’re saying that most of the Rogue one are radical who cut off their nerve cord and live in the Jungle. With some small negligible live among the Khalai. In which case, I think you’re right, but then your argument is also kind of moot? Or are you claiming that most of the rogue ones are part of the community with only few ‘bad egg’ that somehow prompted the Judicator to want to eradicate all the rest? (It’s possible, but if we’re going that far I guess everything could be hand waived with the Judicator is an idiot.

@Emperor Probius, the ruler of Probe

I have look through the Dark Templar saga and see that you’re right. My memory really play trick on me. It seem that the Nerazim cut their nerve cord and continued to use the Khala energy without ever stumbling upon the Void energy for 2 millennia. I’m not sure, but this should effect your argument with Gradius somewhat. Anyway, I guess it make sense now why the Conclave discovered the Adun’s ruse so fast. Still, it seemed that the Nerazim was utilizing the Khala energy without problem prior. I feel like there is an issue here, but I’ll hold my objection until I fully read your argument with Gradius.

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I’m not trying to pick a side here because this issue is quite foreign to me, but Gradius as you well know; you and I are also suffered from this very problem. I have trouble understand your argument more often than with any other poster. I guess you might need to be better at explaining your conjecture.

Anyway, I don’t think you guys should give Protoss multiplayer in-game mechanic too much credit. It used to be that two Dark Templar merge into a Dark Archon. How the &@$! can two Dark Templar merge into an Archon? What happened during that four that would cause such a change? For one thing, I don’t get any beneficial effect to the reclamation of Aiur. It’s just the developers being lazy pure and simple.

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Oh boi, I learned a lot about the lore here. Making this topic was my greatest decision.

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145

I could somewhat buy it that the Khalai would react harshly toward those who completely reject the Khala to the point of cutting their own nerve cord, but if the Protoss is so fanatic that they would kill anyone who prefer to live in solitude and not fully connected to the Khala most of the time… then I’m not sure we have the same mental picture for the Protoss.

I mean… uh, that’s what happened though? Immersion in the khala isn’t required to be constant and someone who doesn’t wish to participate in it doing the bare minimum to be part of society makes sense. The conclave despised the rogues both from a fear that any form of disunity may drive their society back into the aeon of strife, as the first cracks did in their xel’naga-era society, and because it inherently weakens their grip on society. The judicators are literal theocratic rulers, a caste of people trained as priests and politicians from birth, the idea of people rejecting their religion is going to inherently be frightening to them. That’s why they secretly gathered information on the rogues and had adun covertly execute them, and only had them known as a public thing once they’d already killed people, stolen stuff, and left the planet like mutilated boogeymen. There was no frame of reference for what a denier of the khala was before the rogues left aiur and the narrative was in the hands of the conclave, it just wasn’t a thing.

Moreover, are you claiming that the Protoss don’t need to cut off their nerve cord in order to be fully disconnected from the Khala? That contradicts many known lore!

No… it doesn’t? We have tons of examples from lore where protoss with their nerve cords are disconnected from the khala. The aiur tal’darim, the whole khala blocking ability that one nerazim from shadows of the xelnaga had, and most of what the DT saga said about the khala as being a thing you can deeply look into. The nerazim cut their cords as a ritualistic act of rebellion, you don’t need to cut your nerve cords to not connect to the khala (i mean, the tal’darim prove that) but cutting your cords is a very visible and final act of rejection, it’s a statement that they’re committed to this life and have no way of going back.

They could totally explain that via the Khala, right?

“Use the khala to explain why you don’t like the khala” is… a little weird of a thing they could do, but the idea that their rejection of the basis of protoss society would go down well with everyone if they just talked about it publicly and told everyone is a little naive? Beyond the judicator power thing, very few people are going to go “yeah i understand your philosophical opposition to our society, that’s cool, see you at the office tomorrow”

Anyway, I don’t think you guys should give Protoss multiplayer in-game mechanic too much credit. It used to be that two Dark Templar merge into a Dark Archon. How the &@$! can two Dark Templar merge into an Archon?

Presumably because becoming an archon just uses the normal psionic energy that all protoss have access to because, as most of this discussion is about, khalai energies are the innate psionics of the protoss that’re difficult to use without the khala, not something only accessible by protoss connected to the khala. With dark archons outlawed following the crisis of the brood war, it makes sense they might rediscover this ability, or learn how to do it.

Either way, we explicitly see Urun’s dark templar and high templar battle squad merge together into identical archons in Shadow Wars despite every possible combo between high/dark templar happening. It’s almost certainly something that began as a gameplay thing, since all archons used to be twilight right up until pretty close to release, but it’s since been canonized and makes sense under this framework we’re all discussing

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Most definitely, just because that’s canon; that doesn’t mean it makes sense. I’m not disputed that your timeline is wrong. I’m arguing that the canon timeline is ridiculous.

Oh my god, I fear you might be correct. This painted a much darker picture for the Judicator. I thought they were innocent in their guilt; their crime stem from ignorance. This is fanatic!

Anyway, I’m not sure what really sparks the Aeon of Strife. It’s Amon who ‘uplift’ the Protoss after all. Messing with their head, sowing discord and then left with the sample also know as Tal’darim. This would really help with Amon’s competency, if he is the cause of the Aeon. This also helps explain the lack of Khala’s accessibility in Tal’darim. They lost the ability and just never gain it ever again due to the lack of Khas.

For one, Zeratul stayed that it was impossible to simply disappear from the Khala. I guess a long distance could do it. As well as some technology. Nevertheless, for the Khalai’s society any unnatural way of shielding yourself from the Khala would draw a lot of suspicion. If the rogue one is going to be the part of the civilization and befriend with average Khalai, then they can’t use any mean unavailable to the rest of society to close off the Khala.

Additionally, I’m not certain, but I don’t think you can keep something this huge a secret for long while connecting to the Khala. At least not for two millennia.

But plausible, right? Anyhoo, I remember somewhere in the lore stated that it’s hard to hate other Protoss with the Khala. Even though you disagree, you can felt why they think that way and understand their point of view completely. I don’t think it’s far fetch claim that normal average Khalai couldn’t understand the ‘rogue one’ who still connected to the Khala. Least, wanting to kill them. If Adun can do it without the Khala, so would others.

That’s exactly what I believe it could happen. That’s what makes the Khala so profound! It might not go down well, but I doubt that it would lead to excommunicado or execution.

As for the Archon’s, I guess you’re right? I’m not sure. I’m still decide which conjecture to believe.

Stick around, this is how most of our debate go!

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Yeah well you suffer with this issue with other people, like retloclive, so you don’t count. I think Kelthar finally understood my argument but there’s no reason he couldn’t inquire about my stance in the first two or three posts when I phrased my stance in almost the same way. Guess I’ll be writing longer posts from now on.

People get too focused on trying to prove the other person wrong instead of trying to understand their stance around here, me included at times.

I’m not gonna pretend I’m the best at explaining everything but there’s posters here and on sclegacy where the debate lasts 5 posts instead of 50, even if we disagree. That’s the most annoying thing about this forum.

Yes we go balls deep on the lore in this forum.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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That’s very bad line of reasoning. It’s not that the Emperor fail to understand you. It’s that the Emperor understand you incorrectly. Why would he inquire anything about your stand; when he already thought he knew what it was, albeit wrongfully.

I know… However, my symptoms are at its worst with you, so I don’t think you should disregard it completely.

I fail to understand how this number means anything. I enjoy intellectual debate with other posters. As much as I like reaching a satisfied conclusion, I’m a bit remorse over the fact that the topic is ended. Take this latest one for example, I was so sure that the Protoss timeline is wrong on so many level, turn out it is wrong only on some level! There is nothing more pleasant than have your argument turn on its head and make you think ‘Whoa, how did I miss that?’.

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If you understand someone’s argument before you respond to it the debate can be productive and actually move forward instead of stagnate for 50 posts in limbo because someone didn’t take the time to make sense of the other poster’s stance or clarify something. That’s way more satisfying than having a “nice conclusion” or the other person agreeing with you.

I’ve posted on a lot of forums and unfortunately debates here end up stagnating most of the time. However I don’t see myself having a 100 page debate with Bifrost or TBO for instance. They usually get what I’m saying right away or at least makes an effort to find out, but you don’t know until you try. Actually, most of my debates with Kelthar are productive too, but this last one was annoying.

What exactly is your feedback for me? Saying “be better at explaining your conjecture“ doesn’t mean anything. Do you want me to improve my English? My English and grammar are already decent; I’ve been a writer for websites/blogs before. You want me to write longer intricate posts? That might work except I’ve already written long posts here with lots of elaboration and it didn’t make a difference. Kelthar got my argument not from me doing any of those things but from me literally just repeating and requoting what I said before. Im not pointing fingers or anything, but maybe come at us with something more helpful than bringing up your issues with me. Im pretty sure you have the most issues with me because I have the least patience.

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Alright, lets be clear here. I understood what you were saying with each individual post. I disagreed with it, but I understood it. However your overall argument was all over the place. You couldn’t seem to decide if the protoss were using void energy, or if they rebuilt all their technology to work differently without their nerve cords, or if their capabilities were actually completely unaffected by it in practice because their technology already did what it needed to do anyway. You’ve mixed and matched explanations, particularly whether or not you think the Daelaam all channel void energies now, which ticked me off given how much you claimed your position was consistent with established lore.

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Long story short, Blizzard has no idea what they’re talking about and can’t write worth a darn. Big surprise there.

Why can’t we just run off and write our own alternate timeline universe setting with consistency and good writing?

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We “can” in the sense that its technically possible. But it turns out that keeping two decades worth of works 100% consistent is hard. Go figure.

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No, in post 120 you tell me that “you have two mutually exclusive stances.” The only problem is that none of these are mutually exclusive:

It’s completely possible they were forced to start using the void, and then the tech they already had helped them to channel khala energy while other tech had to be rebuilt. Isn’t that how adapting to the loss of the Khala would work? The game doesn’t go into detail like that so I didn’t talk about that kind of detail nor did I ask you about it.

For some reason you took this statement super dogmatically:

I assumed that the caveats of “without the aid of technology” or “without their nerve cords” didn’t need to be mentioned because that’s literally been my main argument all thread. You were acting like you just didn’t understand that part so then I repeated myself and you dropped the issue.

However, fine, I accept your explanation that you understood it, but at that point in the debate it’d have been cool if instead of just declaring it “inconsistent” and leaving me to decipher what contradiction you’re possibly talking about like I’m some sort of mind reader you could have:

  1. Gave an actual example of a contradiction that would come up from this scenario.
  2. Asked for more elaboration.
  3. Actually brought up this issue instead of the other things we talked about. Why am I hearing about it just now?

Instead you were just like “I’m telling you man, this is a contradiction” whereas all I saw was you using one of my statements out of context.

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Ok. Lets take this step by step.

You think theyre using technology to access khala energies. Ok, what has changed here, and why do they suddenly need this technology now, when you claim they were using it the entire time anyway? And if none of their stuff actually used their own energy anyway, what does their nerve cords being cut off even matter then? Why are you declaring them unable to wield an energy without help that they weren’t able to wield without help before hand?

And subsequently, where does the Void even come into play here? It doesn’t power their Telepathy, and you claim that even their psi-blades are still just tapping into Khala energies from some external source. So theyre forced to use the Void to power their abilities, except you also are arguing that they weren’t powering their abilities themselves in the first place, but rather technology to access an energy pool.

Furthermore, if the energy pool actually does come from the Khala somehow (side note, its odd to me that you consider a telepath housing that much energy to be silly, but a telepathic connection between those telepaths housing all of it collectively, plus enough to spare is fine) then how is the technology able to access it? Their tech doesn’t have nerve cords, it isn’t connected to the Khala or else Amon would be able to control it (this is even a specific hurdle mentioned for Artanis using dragoons) so where does, say, a Psi-blade get the energy, if not the wielder?

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The protoss’s energy source that powers their own innate psychic powers is what’s changed. Whether they need new technology or not depends on the unit. Psi Blades for example focus the psychic energy of the user into the bracer which then gathers energy from wherever it was designed/programmed to. As long as the protoss is fed by the Khala or Void or some other energy source, the protoss has enough energy to operate the psi blade technology.

That’s why Fenix picked up and used warp blades, which use void energy, when he fought those terrorists, even though he had zero training in the void. Or how Gestalt Zero uses psi blades even though he has no training in and isn’t connected to the Khala. This leads me to believe that the psi blade itself gathers energy from the khala or void or other latent/generic energy source independent of the individual protoss. That’s why the color is always blue no matter who puts it on. The blue psi blade glow probably isn’t even khala energy for all I know/care.

It depends on the unit. For zealots it doesn’t matter very much, which explains the seamless transition after they lost the khala. For high templar, it knocked them out of commission for a while.

Some units might rely on the Khala too much and need a rework (like Dragoons).

Because it makes no sense that they’d be doing it with nerve cords cut off. The protoss used the Khala’s link for battle tactics, which we saw in the LoTV intro, so it’s not like it was worthless.

No, I never argued that every last protoss had to master advanced void abilities, and it’s not my job to prove that. I’m arguing that they can’t channel Khala energy innately without their nerve cords, and that you’re forced to use the void as a substitute when you’re cut off from the Khala. But there’s other types of psionic energy and energy sources that aren’t the khala or void, like whatever the terrans use or whatever the protoss used before the aeon of strife (if it wasn’t just the void again, which would explain why the Conclave hates it).

But here’s what could have happened to an average high templar:

  1. Lost the khala, and lost the ability to gather energy from the khala to fuel a psi storm.
  2. Modified his suit to help gather energy from the Khala and help control psi storms since that’s what the khala used to do. Instead of expending mental energy on the khala, he expends mental energy on the power suit, which then gathers the khala energy for him.
  3. Continues outputting khala energy (from his power suit), but doesn’t have access to the khala link to help control his storm.
  4. In his intermission he learns to use more of the void to help augment his power suit & psi storms.

Or this could have happened:

  1. Lost the khala, and lost the ability to gather energy from the khala to fuel a psi storm.
  2. Modified his suit to work completely with void energy and help control his psi storms.
  3. Creates psi storms out of the void. They end up being the same color, just like how when hybrid use psi storms.

The game doesn’t go into detail which scenario it is, if any. But in both of those cases the power suit before the loss of the khala helped strengthen the high templar’s connection to the khala, which let him gather more energy. In SC2, energy is not his problem because the void is more powerful/chaotic, and the power suit serves the purpose of helping control the storms.

I don’t think they’re housing the energy collectively. I think the khala is an energy source which houses the protoss memories/links, not the other way around.

How do purifiers access the data web? How does a nexus access the psionic matrix on Aiur? How does dark templar tech access the void? This happens all the time in StarCraft.

In the case of technology you’re draining energy from the khala’s energy pool, not participating in its link. Immersing yourself too far into the void is dangerous for dark templar too.

I think it’s accurate to say it’s operated by the wielder’s psychic energy & force of will, but powered by an external energy source. Or it just converts the user’s energy type into whatever it’s set for. It’s the only way to explain how Artanis or Fenix can just pick up and use a warp blade with little to no void training, or how Gestalt Zero can use a Psi Blade despite not having access to the Khala. Either way, with how fast they picked up warp blades of a different type, you should have no gripes with the idea that every other zealot could have done this during LoTV.

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I’m glad you’re still reading our post here. Do you see at what length we are willing to go in over analyzing the lore? All of this wouldn’t be a problem if the writer have given about as much thought into their story.

This is why I told you your story lacks details. Assuming that your fan friction starting to take off, you think it will survive this level of analysis? From what I have read so far, yours would fare even worst.

Don’t be lazy with your world building; your passionate fan could have enough of detail.

If people don’t understand you they will ask, but if they misunderstand you they won’t. I’m not telling you to be better at explaining. I’m trying to help you understand other people point of view. I thought that was pretty clear, but see how you misinterpret my point?

(- -“) How could you ever come to that conclusion? We had a problem long before your patience run out of. If anything you’re way more patient than most.

If you look up in this thread, you will see that I had a long debate with the Emperor, too. In this thread, we see how a debate between you and the Emperor, plus the Emperor and I. So I brought up the nature of our debate for a complete picture. Seeing as you brought up how you interact with Bifrost and how I interacted with Retloclive, I’m sure you appreciate my tactic.

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@Gradius

So I finally finish reading your debate, I hope you don’t mind answer some question.

  • Are you certain that when Fenix pick up the Weap-Blade, it was still in green? Also, the Gestalt Zero suppose to be Protoss-Terran hybrid. Even if he can use the Psi-Blade, it doesn’t help either your case or the Emperor’s

  • What kind of psionic energy the Nerazim used prior to Adun’s teaching? Is there an entirely new type of energy that we have never explore?

  • Lastly, what exactly is the Khala in your opinion? From the definition that you gave, it doesn’t explain why Amon was thrusted back into the Void once all Protoss severed their nerve cord.

@Empror Probius, the ruler of Probe

I also have some question for you as well.

  • Are you claiming that the Psi-Blade and Warp-Blade have ability to transform one type of psionic energy into the other? Because it seemed to me that you agree with Gradius that Artanis didn’t have any training in regard to the Void.

  • How exactly does the Protoss powered their ship and everything anyway? Are you sure that their ship use psionic energy to function exclusively?

  • Why no Twilight Templar ever emerge from the Nerazim? They could theoretically be one from your conjecture, right? Especially since Adun use such power to save them, surly they aren’t opposing such idea.

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It doesn’t say if if it changed color but warp blades have always been green to my knowledge and they only seem to change color when Amon possessed the protoss.

Kelthar/Togetic were saying that it’s lame for Zealots to switch over to a brand new energy type with no explanation. Gestalt using a protoss psi blade proves that it’s pretty doable and that they’re not really switching in the first place.

There’s no other types of energy we know about it. The energy that Kerrigan, Terrans, or Protoss before the aeon of strife used is never mentioned. Before Adun’s teachings the dark templar were just protoss who didn’t want to immerse in the khala, but they probably still used khala energy. Nerve cords let you do two things:

  1. Draw energy from the khala.
  2. Share thoughts/feelings with all protoss linked to the khala.

I believe you can do those things separately.

In addition to being a religion & set of rules, the Khala is a giant source of energy, which either resides in Aiur’s psionic matrix, another dimension like the void, cosmic energy, vacuum energy, doesn’t really matter. It’s like the internet in that the khala is a giant server that the protoss use to share emotions/thoughts/etc. Preservers upload memories to the khala and the memories stay there (since Zamara had knowledge of protoss before the Aeon of Strife). Protoss can also take electricity from that server and it never runs out.

Amon being thrust back into the void once all protoss severed their nerve cords doesn’t make sense anyway, because it’s inconceivable that there isn’t at least one khalai out there in the universe or that Amon had hidden away that was connected to the Khala. They can’t all have been on Aiur next to Artanis when he yells to sever your nerve cords.

If I had to guess how Amon jives with my explanation of the Khala, he’s basically a virus on the server that constantly tries to download. And if you’re an average khalai, you’re addicted to being on the internet so resisting him is really hard. So they downloaded Amon into the artifact, and he couldn’t reupload himself to the server because there were no more ways to get there.

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I gave thought to protoss power sources a while ago. Long story short: Protoss draw their power from psionic matrices that generate power from naturally occurring sources like stars, planets and black holes. This power, in the form of psi, is stored by crystal capacitors. The Khala and the Void are methods of manipulating that power, not power sources.

But if you want to say that my ideas can’t stand up to scrutiny… how did you determine that? How did my ideas fall apart under your scrutiny?

I’m working on more detail to satisfy your critique, aiming for maybe several hundred pages or so, but that’s going to increase the barrier to entry for others to invest interest. Why do you think few were interested in ToxicDefiler’s proposal even though it was painstakingly detailed like you wanted? I was told quite specifically by Gradius and others that few liked it because it was too detailed.

I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here.

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Artanis using Zeratul’s Warp Blade is a little suspect to me, but he was on the Spear of Adun with a bunch of nerazim for however many weeks by the first time we actually see him ignite it. The timeline allows for him to have learned the fundamentals of void usage enough to get it to activate.

Well, the Spear of Adun uses solar energy. I believe regular power functions were provided by the psionic matrix, and they simply had enough power reserves to function without it for a while. Arbiters and other ships with abilities are explicitly focusing the psionic powers of their pilots through various technologies to get their results.

Two reasons. The first is tradition. They use the void because they’ve used it for as long as they’ve been an independent people, and they have no real desire to go changing that.

The second, and probably larger reason, is that its dangerous. Khalai powers require immense discipline and control to manage safely, to the point where many High Templar are unable to learn enough without the use of the Khala. The Nerazim would have to figure all of that out on their own, with no teachers and no Khala to fall back on for support.

Gestalt Zero actually had nerve cords, as I recall, which even functioned to help his psionic powers. Not enough to let him connect to the Khala, but they did affect him.

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I thought I have already pointed out where exactly in your story fell apart under ‘my subjective scrutiny’. However, it’s quite likely that I confused between your work with that of other similar poster back in the forum of old.

Anyway, I like ToxicDefiler’s if I recalled correctly. (Not so sure if it was his work or Undermind.)

Regardless, I think you need to study the masterpiece that are Dark Soul and Hollow Knight. Theirs are very cryptic, vast and yet, very coherent. Basically, they made a very detailed world with a lot of back story, BUT they only show us part of it. Compare that to Amon’s and the Protoss’, the writer just said it was ancient, long ago story. I doubt that they even thought out exactly what went down.

My point is that you need to make those hundred of pages detail back story and pick only a couple of page to show us. Only reveal the rest as necessary.

@Gradius and @Emperor Probius, the ruler of Probe

I’m too busy to properly answer your reply at the moment. Thanks for answering!