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Middle Earth characters

2023-06-22T00:09:26Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Men of Middle Earth */

Much like [[Star Wars|a certain other popular franchise that is the bread and butter of nerds everywhere]], describing even the cursory information is a massive job. But hey, that's what we're here for. Below you'll find a guide to the many beings who call Middle Earth home. For a guide to the places in Middle-Earth and the location itself, [[Middle Earth|see here]].

==Humans==
The second-born of [[God|Eru Ilúvatar’s]] children. Humans are split across many tribes and nations throughout Middle Earth. Unlike the immortal Elves, who are tied to the world and reincarnate in Aman if they die, the souls of men leave the world altogether to parts unknown by all save Ilúvatar himself. Men are also a mystery to everyone else in Middle Earth and are given "strange gifts," for they alone are able to shape their fates beyond the Music of the Ainur. It's noted that while Men are more corruptible to evil than the Elves and were the most similar to Morgoth in nature, Morgoth still greatly feared Men, including those who served him, since they were such an anomaly in Arda. Nevertheless, most [[Warriors of Chaos|of evil's footsoldiers in the franchise who aren't Orcs/Goblins/Uruk-hai are corrupted humans]]. Their capacity for corruption has, in fact, given the race of Man something of a mixed reputation among Elves, who sometimes regard them as weak. Luckily, there's always an Aragorn or Faramir just waiting to prove them wrong.

=== Edain of the First Age and Outlaws ===
The Edain were the first three tribes to arrive in Beleriand and make contact with the elves. The Edain and their descendants were staunch allies of the elves and the forces of good, despite taking terrible losses during the first age. It should also be noted that, while the elves were always superior to men in beauty, craft and wisdom, the Elves and Edain were equals in strength and endurance, and an Edain could be mistaken for an elf from long distance.
* '''Beren Erchamion''' (the Renowned in Sindarin) - Member of House of Bëor and the protagonist of "Beren and Lúthien" story. Is notable for [[Awesome|stealing a gem from the crown of Evil Satan guy]] and marrying an Elven woman (the first time in the Legendarium). Beren’s ring of Barahir becomes the only relic of the Numenorean Royal family that survives into the Third Age, used to mark Aragorn’s royal lineage. Based off of Tolkien himself, which is a ''bit'' self-indulgent on his part, but most would say the man earned it.
* '''Hurin Thalion:'''(the Steadfast) - One of mankind’s bravest warriors and a close ally of Turgon of Gondolin. He and his men fought to allow Turgon to escape Morgoth, with Hurin being the sole survivor. [[Grimdark|Morgoth tortured Hurin for the location of Gondolin, but Hurin refused to betray them, so Morgoth cursed Hurin’s children and for Hurin to witness their doom from afar]].
* '''Turin Turambar''' (Master of Doom) - Member of House of Hador, son of Hurin, known to be '''THE''' Kullervo expy way before [[Elric]]. Went from great hero to [[meme|An Hero]] thanks to Morgoth placing a curse over his family. It is said that he will finally get his revenge against Morgoth in the Dagor Dagorath (Middle-Earth's Ragnarok), by being the one to finally killing him.
* '''Tuor Eladar''' (the Blessed) - Cousin of Turin and a great human hero during the war with Morgoth, chosen by the vala Ulmo to find Gondolin and warn its inhabitants that the city will fall. In spite of Turgon's reluctance to leave he was able to convince the city's population to listen. Also married an elf princess and is the grandfather of Elrond. His symbol is the Swan, a motif kept by his human descendants.
* '''The Gaurwaith''': The Gaurwaith were a band of outlaws who Turin came to be in control of. They died in the battle at Amon Rûdh after Mîm's betrayal (see Mîm's section for the cause and details). Androg, the one indirectly responsible for the betrayal through an accidental murder, sacrificed himself to save Turin, Beleg and his own son Andvir. After Beleg was accidentally killed by Turin and Turin's suicide, Andvir was the last survivor. He related the portions of Turin's tale relevant to him to the poet Dirhaval, whose account of Turin's life make the primary source of the story of Hurin's family.
===== Followers of Melkor in the First Age =====
*'''Ulfang the Black''': Chief of one of two Easterling tribes that migrated westwards and became friends with Elves. [[Erebus|Unlike his fellow chieftain Bór the Faithful however, he was a traitor serving Morgoth all along.]] [[Horus Heresy|And yeah, his sons and tribesmen basically gave the Dark Lord the second biggest army in his service (after Orcs, of course).]]

=== Númenóreans ===
The Edain were rewarded by the Valar after the first age with their own island nation and extended lifespan; by 25 their aging slows down dramatically and can live for potentially hundreds of years, though they also have the ability to die willingly; some do before senility and infirmity sets in, but later Númenórians held on to their lives as long as possible out of fear of death. The Númenórian empire grew powerful, establishing many settlements across Middle Earth during the Second Age. However, Númenor was destroyed following a split between its people, as explained below.
*'''Pre-Schism Edain''':
** '''Elros''', or '''Tar-Minyatur''' as a King (Kings of Númenor always took an Elven Regnal name, and when that stopped -see below- it meant the end of the human golden age), was the first ruler of Númenor and Elrond's brother who chose a human fate (but still got around 500 years to live). He is also an ancestor of Aragorn.
** '''Tar-Minastir''': the eleventh king who ruled during the War of the Elves and Sauron; Minastir sent an army to aid the elves, but because Numenor had no standing army at the time, it took weeks to prepare an army and they arrived too late to save Eregion. Tar-Minastir's rule marks the beginning of Numenor's shift, as now they had a taste for war and an envy of the elves, and started permanent settlements in the mainland. But things wouldn't fully go south until the rule of his grandson Tar-Atanamir, as seen below.
*'''The King's Men''' - the majority faction in Númenor. With the support of the royal house, they were an Imperialist, faithless (later satanic), human-supremacist faction that opposed the Valar and desired power, wealth, and immortality. They would fall to Sauron's lies, and become the Black Númenóreans after Númenor's destruction.
** '''Tar-Atanamir''' - Founder of the King's Men faction and thirteenth king of Númenor. Atanamir openly opposed the Valar and Elves and coveted their immortality. Because men were forbidden to sail west, he sent his men east to start colonies in Middle Earth and subjugate the people living there, extracting its wealth for his kingdom, though he didn't have the balls to stop using an Elven name, the arrogant egomaniacs that followed him dropped that.
** '''Ar-Pharazôn the Golden''' - Last king of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn usurped the throne from its rightful queen, his cousin Tar-Miriel, by [[Rape|a ''very'' forced marriage]]. Ar-Pharazôn defeated Sauron in open combat and brought him back to Númenor as a hostage to prove his might; this however turned out to be a trap, as [[Erebus|Sauron manipulated Pharazôn and the King's Men into believing that by worshipping Morgoth and making human sacrifices to him, they'd be able to challenge the Valar and take immortality for themselves, leading to Numenor's ruin]]. [[Fail|The moment Ar-Pharazôn and his men set foot on Aman, however, his armies became trapped beneath the Earth, Aman was permanently separated from the rest of the world, and Númenor sank beneath the seas as divine punishment]].
*'''The Faithful''' - the minority faction who still retained their devotion to Eru Ilúvatar and respect for the Valar and Elves. The Faithful became more oppressed over time by the King's Men.
**'''Tar-Palantir''' - The final Faithful king and second-to-last king of Númenor. Tar-Palantir tried his best to reverse the damage brought on by his predecessors, but it was too little too late, and much of Númenor's population opposed his policies. Tar-Palantir prophesied that the line of kings would end if the White Tree was felled; this came partially true, as the kings of Númenor ended with Ar-Pharazôn after he sacrificed the White Tree to Sauron, but a sapling of the tree was saved and the line of kings continued through the line of Elendil.
** '''Tar-Miriel''' - The daughter of King Tar-Palantir, and the last rightful heir of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn was like "fuck that, I want to be in charge" and married her to get the power [[Rape|against her will]]. Sadly dies when Númenor goes under. Actually gets to be in charge in [[Skub|Rings of Power]] as Queen-Regent [[Wat|while her daddy's locked up as a prisoner in his own kingdom.]] Blinded later on, which in conjunction with her foresight gives her an "Oracle of Delphi" feel.
**'''Amandil''' - The last Lord of Andúnië, which is a cadet branch of the Royal line and had been the centre of the Faithful presence in Númenor; though once Amandil had been close friends with Ar-Pharazôn, the lordship had later been revoked, thanks to the cunning of Sauron. When Amandil had learned of Ar-Pharazôn's plans of invading Aman, he with three other servants travelled to the West to warn the Valar and have mercy upon Númenor. Though, just in case that plan didn't work, he also warned his son and grandchildren to flee the island with as many of the Faithful as they could find. Nothing more is known of Amandil's fate. Just as likely he could have died instantly as he stepped into Valinor, as he could have been welcomed by the Valar and become immortal, like Tuor.
**'''Elendil''' - Son of Amandil, Elendil and his family did their best to preserve their ancestor's traditions, including saving a fruit of the White Tree of Kings (Nimloth) before it was destroyed. They organised the evacuation fleet to Middle Earth during the fall of Númenor, where they settled new Kingdoms in Gondor and Arnor. As the new High King, Tar-Elendil lead the Men of the West during the War of the Last Alliance, where he fell in combat against Sauron.

=== Gondorians, Arnorians and Black Númenóreans ===
Gondor and Arnor were kingdoms established by the Faithful after the fall of Númenor. Though Arnor in the North fell to Angmar, Gondor lasted through the entire Third Age and well into the fourth, becoming the ''Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor'' (since the heir to Arnor's throne, Aragorn, inherited Gondor's, what with his original kingdom being gone and all).
* '''Isildur''' - second High King of both Gondor and Arnor. Finally defeated Sauron in the War of Last Alliance, but became a victim of One Ring's power and tragically died in an Orc ambush, leaving the Ring without a host for a while. Body was never found. Becomes a Nazgul in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity, until Talion frees his spirit from Sauron's control...and then later takes his ring and his place as one of the Nine.
* '''Anarion'''- Isildur's brother, died before their father Elendil during the early months of the War of the Last Alliance.
* '''Gondorians''': The Dúnedain of the South. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor.
** '''Denethor II''' - Ruling Steward of Gondor at the beginning of the books. He originally was a great and capable ruler whose sanity was damaged by usage of the Anor-stone Palantir, as instead of helping in espionage against Sauron it showed [[Grimdark|the death of everyone and the triumph of evil]]. By the time of War of the Ring he is majorly depressed, almost insane, and highly incompetent. Finally snapping completely during the siege of Minas Tirith, he tries to immolate himself and his unfavorite son, Faramir, but only succeeds in the first of these.
** '''Boromir''': Elder son of Denthor and a great captain of Gondor (also daddy's favorite). Despite being a great warrior and leader, Boromir ultimately fell to the temptation of the Ring and tried to take it from Frodo. Despite this, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his life to serve as a decoy for Frodo and Sam, and acknowledged Aragorn as his kinsman and king. Somewhat infamous for being one of the only major heroes in the trilogy to die, and the only one of the Fellowship to die (well, him and Gandalf, but the latter got to come back). Remember kids, this ''isn't'' [[A Song of Ice and Fire|that other popular Fantasy series where good guys drop like flies]] (even though Boromir's actor would end up being in and dying in that too!).
** '''Faramir''': Younger son of Denethor and leader of Gondor's Ithilien Rangers. Faramir, while a skilled warrior, he had no love of war and preferred to study and sought council with Gandalf. Denethor disliked Faramir and even told him he would've preferred Faramir to die and Boromir to live. Despite the toxic family environment, Faramir became a worthy steward and passed the rule of Gondor to Aragorn. Like Beren, Tolkien has admitted to basing Faramir off of himself, though also admits that Faramir is more courageous than he.
** '''Prince Imrahil''': Prince of Dol Amroth, who aided in the defense of Minas Tirith and accompanied the Host of the West on the march against the Black Gate. Sadly reduced to a bit role in the movies proper (he isn't even mentioned by name in the films). Fun fact he is also the Uncle to Boromir and Faramir, with his sister Finduilas Marying Denethor.
* '''Arnorians''': The Dúnedain of the North. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor. After the fall of Arnor and its successor kingdoms, the Dúnedain chose to live in hiding rather than rebuild the kingdom, protecting the people from the shadows.
**'''Chieftains of the Dúnedain''':
**''' Aragorn II (Elessar Telcontar)''': Last Chieftain of the northern rangers. He was a member of the Fellowship and contributed to the defeat of Sauron. He later claimed the kingship of Gondor and restored Arnor, as the third High King, and married his Half-Elven kin Arwen. One of the main heroes of the franchise, and all-around badass, especially in the films where he does shit like cleave through Uruk-hai like they're made of twigs, throw torches in Nazgul's faces, and ''parry sword strikes from Olog-hai''. As an aside, while the movie's take on Aragorn is as well regarded as the rest of the films, it is still nevertheless the case that his characterization is different: Book Aragorn is more of a stoic, mythical figure similar to King Arthur, who accepts the call to become King of Gondor without any question and is more of a wise, benevolent fighter-King than Movie Aragorn, who is rejecting his destiny at first due to him having severe feelings of inadequacy and far less of a poetry-reciting philosopher (though still very selfless and noble). This was done in order to make the character more relatable to greater audiences, and is a rare case of a change to the source material that has generally been accepted by the die-hards.
*'''Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar''': Descendants of the King's Men from Númenor. The Black Númenóreans who did not directly serve Sauron in Mordor continued their predecessor's ways and held sway over Umbar and Harad as their own colonial possessions. Over time, the Black Númenóreans intermixed with the native population or died out altogether. Some Black Númenóreans were actually renegades from Gondor, who stole large parts of Gondor's fleet during a civil war and became pirates ever since. That Harad's people suffered under their control makes them throwing in with Sauron to get revenge deeply ironic, [[Just As Planned|but that's Sauron for you]].
**'''Mouth of Sauron''': The "not Nazgul" who serves as Sauron's herald and envoy (and implied to serve as a torturer as well). A Black Númenórean of great rank and magical might within Sauron's cult, who's served Sauron for so long, that he forgot his own name and only goes by the aforementioned title Sauron gave him. Puts the "ass" in "ambassador" and in the movies has one of the most dangerously toothpaste-neglected set of chompers in all of fiction. He has lived for a long time, having entered into Sauron's service when "the Dark Tower first rose again", which depending upon interpretation, either makes him an extremely long-lived Black Númenórean if said rising was post-Downfall of Númenor in Second Age 3320, or makes his servitude a much more reasonable 68 years if said rising was Sauron's return in Third Age 2951. Either way, his life was no doubt extended with foul sorcery and dark arts. Despite being a cowardly wuss in the books and getting beheaded mid-sentence without a fight in the films, he's playable in a few video games where he's actually allowed to kick ass for a change.

=== Men of Middle Earth ===
Men not related to the Númenóreans, but who also play significant roles in the world.
*'''Northmen/Men of the North'''
Men who live north of Gondor and west of the sea of Rhûn. This includes the Rohirrim, the Dalish, and the Woodsmen of Rhovanion. The Northmen are distantly related to the men of Gondor, as their ancestors came from the same group as the Edain.
**'''Rohan'''
***'''Eorl the Young''': Founder of Rohan.
***'''Helm Hammerhand''': The Ninth King of Rohan, during a time of protracted war against the Dunlendings as well as great civil strife within Rohan. Said strife came to a head when a rich noble named ''Freca'' with greatly mixed Rohirric and Dunlending ancestry claimed that his family line had a greater claim to the throne and attempted to coerce Helm to marry his daughter to his own son ''Wulf''. After a great many insults and arguments, Helm punched him so hard in the head that Freca was said to have died instantly from the sheer power of that single blow, which gave Helm his byname of '''Hammerhand'''. Helm declared Freca and his kinsmen to be enemies of Rohan, and they fled into Dunland, only to return four years later with a great host of their own led by Freca's son Wulf. Edoras and the Westfold was overrun by the invaders, and Helm and his sons were made to endure a long siege at the then-named Súthburg. By all counts he was an unstoppable warrior, capable of killing scores of Dunlendings with his bare hands and routing their lines with only a blow of his great war-horn. Such was the carnage he single-handedly inflicted that he was likened to a Snow-Troll. Thus was the fortress of Súthburg renamed into ''Helm's Deep'', with the keep where his war-horn was kept renamed to the ''Hornburg''.
****[[Skub|In the Shadow of Mordor continuity, none of the above happens exactly as it did, and instead he is nearly slain; presumably by Freca and his followers. Sauron and Celebrimbor give him a ring of power as he lies dying]], whereupon he becomes an angry, hammer wielding badass with a horned helmet. The corrupting nature of his Ring of Power however drives him to ever greater madness and rage, during one such moment of anger he strikes down his own daughter, and proceeds to kill his rival for the throne and everyone who tries to stop him, which completes his transformation into a Ring-wraith. [[A Song of Ice and Fire|So basically Robert Baratheon]] but a Nazgûl.
***'''Théoden''': King of Rohan. For a time he was possessed by Saruman the White as part of his ploy to conquer Rohan, but was freed by Gandalf. Théoden led Rohan in the successful defense against Isengard and rode to Gondor's aid in the battle of Pelennor Fields. Died in battle, but by all accounts was one hell of a leader (except in the Rankin Bass animated film, where his death sucks utterly).
***'''Théodred''': Son of Théoden. Théodred was killed by Saruman's forces, but Théoden didn't learn of this until after his mind was restored.
***'''Eomer''': Nephew of Theoden and heir to the throne, after Theodred's death. As such, Eomer became King after Théoden died at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
***'''Eowen / Eowyn''': Niece of Théoden and sister of Eomer. Eowen was a shieldmaiden and long desired to win glory in battle, but was often left behind as Théoden feared Rohan would be left leaderless. Eowen developed a crush on Aragorn, but when he refused her claiming she only loved the idea of him, Eowen went to Pelennor Fields in disguise and fought against the Witch-King of Angmar in one of the most badass duels in the whole book series. After the battle she met Faramir and settled down with him, claiming she no longer wished to fight, but to restore what had been destroyed in the war. Much like Princess Leia from Star Wars, one of ''the'' original badass ladies, nerd-crushes, and feminist role models in fiction all rolled into one. The PJ movies make her even ''more'' badass by having her bring down a Mumakil solo and holding her own against an army of Uruk-hai that get into the glittering caves at Helm's Deep in a deleted-but-mentioned-in-reference books scene.
***'''Grima Wormtongue''': Advisor to the king, but in reality a pawn of Saruman. After his treachery was discovered, Grima ran back to Saruman, where he was regularly abused and mistreated by him until Grima finally stabbed Saruman in the back (literally) during their misadventure in the Shire and was shot with arrows for his troubles; in the movies he instead dies at the Orthanc and it's Legolas who kills him. Widely recognized in-universe and out as a slimy prick and complete coward.
**'''Dale'''
***'''Bard the Bowman''': First king of the restored Kingdom of Dale. Bard was an accomplished bowman who could communicate with birds and had a black arrow that always reached its target. This combination helped him to kill Smaug after finding the weak spot on its chest. After the Master of Lake-Town disappeared, he became the new King.
***'''Master of Lake-Town''': An unnamed character who ruled Lake-Town during the events of the Hobbit. He was a greedy SOB who was only interested in his own power and wealth; he abandoned Lake-Town when Smaug attacked, then later ran off with a good chunk of the loot following the Battle of the Five Armies. Died alone and starving to death in the barren wilderness.
*'''The Wildmen of Dunland''': Primitive men who lived in the hills. Unlike the Northmen, the Dunlendings were much more hostile to outsiders, having been enslaved and abused by the conquering Númenóreans of the past. They allied with Saruman as he promised that their original lands would be taken from the Rohirrim and returned to them.
*'''Beornings and Woodsmen''': Named after their progenitor Beorn, a large wild man who could transform into a bear, an ability some of his descendants would share. They lived primarily in the lands between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood. While not overly friendly to outsiders, they were willing to aid the Free Peoples in the fight against Sauron and his minions. They are likely distant relatives of the Rohirrim. The Woodsmen were minor tribes of Edainic men who lived in Mirkwood and were allies of Thranduil and the Beornings. After the War of the Ring with Dol Guldur destroyed, the Beornings and Woodsmen reclaimed Central and Southern Mirkwood (now Greenwood) for themselves.
*'''Woodwoses/Druedain''': A name borrowed from medieval legend; they are wild men who live deep in the forest and remain isolated from the rest of men. They are short and stocky, so some confuse them for Dwarves, but they are definitively of mannish stock. Despte their reclusiveness, the Druedain had been allies of the Edain and their descendants as far back as the First Age, so they appear periodically among the free peoples. The Druedain helped the Rohirrim reach Minas Tirith by way of secret highway through the forest, so they could reinforce the city and avoid an ambushing army. Somewhat like a smaller version of a Sasquatch, or more size-accurate, the Orang-Pendak of Vietnam.
*'''Men of the East''': Commonly referred to as “Easterlings”, and come from the vast lands East of the Sea of Rhun.
**'''Rhun''': Men from the vast and uncharted lands of the East. Rhun is made up of many kingdoms and tribes, most of which are under Sauron’s dominion. However, it should be noted that one of the missions of the Blue Wizards was to raise a resistance in the lands of the East and South; we don’t see them in the stories because they likely were too busy fighting in their homelands. In the Peter Jackson films (and video games based off of them), they become basically Sauron's Chaos Warriors, being elite, well-armored humans who are fanatically devoted to the Dark Lord.
*'''Men of the South''': collectively referred to as “Southrons” and live south of Gondor and Mordor.
**'''Haradrim of Near Harad/Far Harad''': Tribesmen of the deserts and jungles of Harad. Like the Easterlings they lived under the sway of Sauron, but earlier in their history they also suffered under the dominion of the King’s Men of Numenor (who became the Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar); this would give them a pre-existing hatred for the descendants of Númenor. Also like the Easterlings, some had allied with the Blue Wizards and refused to fight for Sauron. The Southron's usage of heavy cavalry and scimitars at the battle of the Pelennor Fields suggests a Saracen-like aspect; which together with the inclusion of the tribal and African elements suggested by Sigelhearwan; implies that the Haradrim are organized in an empire-like fashion held together with tribal confederacies. Though in the books they initially keep fighting ''even after Sauron is beaten'' (which the men of Gondor and Rohan actually respect), they're implied to eventually live in peace with the other kingdoms of Men after Aragorn lets them have Sauron's now empty lands as their own.
**'''Men of Khand/Variags of Khand''': Of all the Men under Sauron’s rule we know about Khand the least, other than that they were horsemen who attacked Gondor, it is not even clear as to whether the nomadic horsemen natives and Variags are the same or separate peoples, although the etymology of the word ''Variag'' being derived from the Russian word for ''Varangian'' implies that the Variags are viking-like mercenaries in some fashion, and thus are separate (and possibly even foreign) peoples.
*'''The Nazgûl''': The Nazgûl were the nine holders of the Rings of Men and as such, bound to Saurons will. They were his foremost Lieutanants ever since they fell into his grasp and powerful foes. Tolkien left their origins deliberately vague, the only details that were given that they were once Kings of Men who couldn't withstand the temptation of the Rings giving them limitless power and immortality and that they first appeared in the second age, where they already lead Saurons Armies against the Free People. Their appearance and powers are tied to Saurons influence in the world, but also to proximity to the One Ring. Fellowship describes the Nazgûls appearance during the chase to Rivendell as those of imposing riders wearing black robes and riding tortured, wicked horses. Their foremost power was their unnatural incorporealness, which was distinct from those of normal Undead like those that haunted the Barrow-Downs and instilled a strong sense of primal fear and disgust in everyone in their presence. When their powers were at their strongest, during the Siege of Gondor, they could weaken the resolve of even their most stalwart opponents by merely being in their vicinity. They are, however, not invulnerable, the Dúnedain blood of Aragorn gave him a natural immunity against their aura of dread, for example. They could be slain and wounded like most creatures of Middle-Earth, the right weapon provided and held a strong aversion to running water. The books tip-toe around the question if they could be killed permanently as long as Sauron was around; Elrond swept them away by conjuring up a massive tidal flood from the river Bruinen, from which they recovered after some time, but the Witch-King was explicitly stated to have been killed permanently by Eówyn and Merry at the height of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. All but two of them were never named, which is where many apocryphal authors insert their own version of Nazgûl origin stories into their narratives.

==Elves==
Elves are the first of Ilúvatar’s children (meaning they were created by him alone, without any help from the Valar). They are descended from three main tribes of people, listed below; the Teleri tribe was so large that it separated into several different groups, depending on how far they migrated from the Elves original homeland. Elves are immortal, but suffer from weariness if they remain in Middle Earth for too long, hence why nearly all ended up living in Valinor. Elves' spirits are bound to the world as well; when they die, either they reincarnate in Aman in the Halls of Mandos, or if they reject Mandos, they become disembodied spirits that haunt the land and are vulnerable to corruption by necromancers, especially Sauron. The nature of Elven spirits appears to affect marriages as well, as once they marry they never divorce, cheat or engage in polygamy as their very souls would rebel against the idea (except for that one guy but he was a prick). Elves are also immune to illness, but are more vulnerable to extreme distress, in some cases causing rapid aging or even death. Elves have skills and abilities that seem like magic to mortals, but to the elves it is little different than interacting with the natural world.

=== Vanyar ===
The first and smallest Elvish tribe; they never left The Undying lands to return to Middle Earth except during the battle at the end of the First Age where the Valar finally got sick of Melkor's shit, in which Vanyar forces marched to war for the only time in history, so we know the least about them.
* '''Ingwë:''' The Leader of the Vanyar, went to Aman during the great Elven Migration, stayed in Valinor and thusly became utterly irrelevant for the World's Story, even before the great Migration fully ended.
* '''Ingwion''': The only known son of Ingwë, and even then he is only known for commanding Valar ships that landed in the Middle Earth during the War of Wrath which means he got more done than daddy, though that's not saying much.
* '''Indis''': second wife of Noldor king Finwë, and the mother of all of his children barring Fëanor. She had a bad relationship with her step-son.

=== Noldor ===
The second tribe of Elves. They are great craftsmen and seekers of knowledge. Because if this, they were the only tribe that Morgoth was able to manipulate during his time on Aman, causing half of the Noldor to rebel against the Valar and live in Middle Earth in exile.
* '''Finwë Ñoldóran''' ('''Finu'''): The original leader of the Noldor and their first King. Generally a relaxed dude with the questionable fame of being the first being to be killed in the undying Lands, iced by the Big Bad himself, Melkor.
* '''Curufinwë Fëanáro''' ('''Fëanor'''): Finwë's most incredible son and second King. Unparalleled craftsman, he created the Silmaril, possibly the Palantiri and outstanding weapons as well. After Melkor stole the Silmaril, he unfortunately became a massive hothead, swore vengeance, and went on mad teamkilling rampage, effectiely doing an Elven Horus Heresy. Which pissed the Valar enough that they doomed all the Noldor who followed him to Middle Earth. Died in one of the earliest battles the Elves had to fight, though it took seven Balrogs to beat him down. He also renamed Melkor to Morgoth. Infamous in-universe and out as the guy who fucked everything up bad.
* '''Nelyafinwë Maitimo''' ('''Maedhros'''): The (nominal) third King of the Noldor and the eldest son of Fëanor. Sadly, wasn't as badass as his father and was captured by Morgoth before he managed to assume power. He spent several years in captivity before being rescued by his cousin, after which Maedhros did a controversial move and passed the crown to his cousin's father Fingolfin, [[RAGE|which was not approved by his younger brothers]]. After that he was reduced to a minor Elven princedom that hopelessly tried to oppose Morgoth, but at the end he gave into his Oath for the Silmarils, trying to steal one from Beren and Luthien's children; and later stole the other two from the Host of the West. Though he eventually repented and killed himself.
* '''Ñolofinwë Aracáno''' ('''Fingolfin'''): The first High King of the Noldor (in Middle-earth) and one that didn't lose power as fast. Followed his half-brother Fëanor to Middle-earth and founded one of the Noldor kingdoms there. After another battle with Morgoth's forces, he went to the Dark Lords massive Fortress by himself, yelling taunts and pounding on Morgoth's door so hard he had a Fear (3). Morgoth didn't even want to fight Fingolfin but couldn't weasel out of it in front of his underlings, and when he did finally come out the fight took hours and Fingolfin got seven wounds on him (that never healed) before dying. What a Chad.
* '''Arafinwë Ingoldo''' ('''Finarfin'''): The other half-brother of Fëanor, and the one that's less important. He set out with his brothers, but turned around and went back to Valinor, becoming the third King of the Noldor. He later commanded the Noldor that had remained at the War of Wrath, along with Ingwion.
* '''Kanafinwë Makalaurë''' ('''Maglor'''): The second son of Fëanor and a great singer, did the same evil shit as his brother Maedhros to get the Silmarils. While his brother sent himself into a hell, Maglor threw Silmaril that Eonwë gave him after Morgoth's defeat into the ocean. It is said he is still wandering the shores of the World regretting every decision he made.
* '''Telperinquar Kurufinwion''' ('''Celebrimbor'''): He ruled over an Elven kingdom of Eregion, which uncharacteristically was situated in the mountains and was a Dwarven ally. He is to blame for the creation of the Rings of Power and other fuckery in the Third Age (although to be fair Sauron deceived him).
** In the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games, he attempted to use the Ring against Sauron and was corrupted by it, [[Fail|with the predictable end results]]. Afterwards he became a wraith, who's bonding with Talion allows the latter to fight on after his apparent death, as well as keep coming back every time he's killed and just generally being a superhuman badass. Eventually convinces Talion to forge a ''new'' Ring of power that's intended to be a copy of The One Ring. Tolkien himself made clear that doing this would just result in another Sauron, and indeed Celebrimbor and Talion's plan ends in disaster and tragedy for both of them. Widely considered one of the best parts of the Shadow duology, especially thanks to Alistair McDuncan's god-tier voice acting.
* '''Findekáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Fingon'''): The second High King of the Noldor. He rescued Maedhros when he had been imprisoned. After inheriting the kingship, he and Maedhros planned to confront Morgoth with everything they had. Unfortunately it wasn't enough and Fingon ended up loosing his his head to Gothmog.
* '''Turukáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Turgon'''): The third High King of the Noldor and one who got to build Gondolin, where all the cool swords Orcrist, Glamdring and Sting are from. Had very strict views on immigration and even stricter ones on emigration. He died with his wonderful city.
* '''Artafindë Ingoldo''' ('''Finrod'''): Eldest son of Finarfin, king of Nargothrond and one of the big elven cave-dwellers. Helped a Human in his love-quest, which ended up being his demise.
* '''Artaresto Angarátowion''' ('''Orodreth'''): The nephew of Finrod. The resided in Minas Tirith and had become king of Nargothrond, after his uncle's death. He maintained his kingdom in secret from Morgoth and fought him in stealth, until he listened to Túrin. He died in open battle and the realm was destroyed in the process.
* '''Artanis Nerwen''' ('''Galadriel'''): Among the last survivors of the leaders original exiles who didn't leave until after Sauron's death. Never forgave Fëanor for being a creep, and in an insult to him she gave Gimli three strands of her hair after being asked for one, Fëanor having asked for one three times and being rejected each time. Galadriel is arguably the most powerful magic user in Middle Earth by the Third Age (she literally destroys Dol Guldur with a wave of her hand), being one of few elves still alive who came from Valinor and learned magic directly from Melian; however, the two parted ways when Melian learned of the Noldor’s role in the Kinslaying. Despite her image and reputation as the purest of the pure and one of Middle-Earth's "Big Good" characters, Galadriel in her youth was more prideful and fallible, and was unable to return to the Undying Lands until she was finally pardoned after the War of the Ring. Galadriel earned her pardon after resisting the One Ring when Frodo offered it to her; as her original failing was her joining Feanor's rebellion to satisfy her desire to rule her own kingdom, and instead accepting that the Elves’ time in Middle Earth was over. Even before learning magic from Melian, Galadriel had a special talent for knowing the minds and motives of others, which came in handy when Sauron in disguise came to deceive the elves.
* '''Artanáro Artarestowion''' ('''Gil-galad'''): The son of <s>Finrod</s> <s>Fingon</s> Orodreth. Cirdan's best friend, last High King of the Noldor, and the guy who got his face burned by Sauron.
* '''Earendil the Mariner''': The son of Tuor and his wife Idril, father of Elrond and Elros by his wife Elwing. Earendil was a half-elf who lived in the final days of the First Age; after his homeland of Gondolin was destroyed and his people scattered across Beleriand, his own family was nearly destroyed because his wife was in possession of one of the Silmarils and the sons of Feanor wanted it by any means. Earendil and Elwing were forced to flee, eventually sailing to Valinor to beg the Valar to intervene on behalf of elves and men. Earendil and his wife never returned to Middle Earth, but Earendil’s ship was blessed and made to fly, carrying the Silmaril on its prow and became the morning star. Earendil fought in the last battle of the War of Wrath, killing Ancalagon, the greatest of Morgoth’s dragons. As half eleven, Earendil and Elwing were given the choice of the fate of men, or the fate of elves. Earendil would’ve preferred to live as a mortal man, but chose the fate of elves with his wife.
* '''Elrond Half-Elven''': son of Earendil, and head of the House of Elrond. He was born toward the end of the First Age, having been witness to the final atrocities that sank Beleriend beneath the sea. While his brother Elros chose the fate of men and became King of Numenor, Elrond chose the fate of Elves and remained in Middle Earth, serving as herald and loremaster for Gil-Galad. After Gil-Galad's death in the War of the Last Alliance, Elrond took the Noldor elves that remained to Imladris, where they lived in peace and he served as an advisor to the other free peoples. Notably, Elrond did ''not'' take up the title of High King after Gil-Galad's death; while he was of royal lineage, its probable that Elrond didn't see any point since there was hardly a kingdom left to rule, and every single High King had met a grizzly demise beforehand.
* '''Glorfindel''': [[Aenarion|Legendary Elf warrior who died fighting a powerful demonic foe]], only to be resurrected later. Rode against the Nazgul during the Third Age to bring Frodo to Rivendell (Arwen takes over this role in the films, leading to Glorfindel getting cut entirely in one of the bigger changes made in the films).
* '''Arwen Undomiel''': Elrond's daughter and Galadriel's granddaughter (as Elrond's wife was Galadriel's daughter), she is the love of Aragorn's life. As such she decides to stay in Middle-Earth with him even though this ultimately results in her dying alone and unhappy. Barely a character in the books, she's fleshed out heavily in the films (even taking Glorfindel's place rescuing Frodo and sweeping away the Nazgul with water magic).

=== Teleri ===
The third and largest tribe of Elves. After the great migration to Aman, the Teleri mostly refers to the members of the tribe that reached Aman. The Teleri were the ones who had the misfortune of happening to be standing between Fëanor and Morgoth when the former went Sith Lord to get his stolen jewels back.
* '''Olwë'''
* '''Eärwen'''

=== Sindar ===
Members of the Teleri who reached Beleriand but stayed behind to wait for their king Elu Thingol, who had gone missing (he was in fact entranced at his wife to be). Unlike the rest of the Elves who stayed behind, the Sindar were far more advanced and powerful, because Elu had reached Aman before and taught them what he learned. As a result, Sindarin is the primary elvish dialect in Middle Earth.
* '''Elu Thingol''' ('''Elwë Singollo'''): The only Sinda to have ever seen the light of the Two Trees. He is King of Doriath, along with his wife Melian, and (self-entitled) Lord of Beleriand. Famous for having given Beren the quest of retrieving a Silmaril from Morgoth and for fostering Túrin Turambar. He had been capped by Dwarves, who wanted to keep the Nauglamir, which had the retrieved Silmaril in it, due to a payment dispute.
* '''Eöl Moredhel''' ('''the Dark Elf'''): Easily mistaken for an Avarin Elf of Teleri descent, but is in fact described as a Sinda and Thingol’s kinsman. Eöl was a master craftsman but also one mean SOB. His tribute to Thingol was the cursed black sword Anglachel (later reforged as Gurthang), which always brought misfortune to its owner and was a big part of Turin’s fall. Eöl also kidnapped and forcefully married Turgon’s sister Aredhel when she wandered into his woods, who bore him a son named Maeglin. When Maeglin and his mother fled to Gondolin, Eöl followed them there and demanded the king to return his wife and son. After Turgon denied his demand, Eöl tried to kill Maeglin with a poisoned javelin; but instead killed Aredhel, who flung herself in front of Maeglin. For the murder of the king's sister, Eöl was judged and thrown from the city's walls to his death.
* '''Lúthien Tinúviel''': Thingol's daughter and a stand-in for Tolkien's wife. Part of a power couple with Beren (himself a stand-in for Tolkien). As a beautiful Elf woman with light skin and black hair who marries a mortal man and then dies as a result, she's pretty explicitly the Arwen of her time. Fitting, as she is one of Arwen's ancestors.
* '''Elwing the White''': Granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien, wife of Eärendil, and mother of Elrond and Elros. Elwing inherited the Silmaril from her father Dior, but was forced to flee Doriath when it was destroyed. In the Moths of Sirion the dwealt and married Eärendil. She and her husband both fled Middle Earth entirely when the Sons of Fëanor later came looking for the Silmarils; as her husband had already left by ship to beg the Valar for aid, she jumped into the sea and was transformed into a swan, flying across the sea with the Silmaril to join her husband. Upon arrival in Aman, Elwing convinced her kinsmen, the Falmari, to aid the Hosts of Valinor in freeing Middle Earth (though they still didn’t participate in the war as they still hadn’t forgiven the Noldor for their part in the kinslaying). After the war, she and Eärendil were given the choice of the gift of elves or the gift of men; Elwing chose the gift of elves in honour of her grandmother.
* '''Círdan Ciryatan''' (The Shipwright): Master of Grey Havens and one of the three Elven Ringbearers (although he eventually gave his ring to Gandalf). He is insanely old (to the point that he is the only Tolkien Elf to have a ''beard'') and works as the overseer of Elven migration to Aman. Despite all of previously given information, he is not really relevant and barely appears even in Silmarillion. Sailed to Aman along with the very last Elves in Middle Earth.
* '''Mablung'''
* '''Beleg Cúthalion''': Beleg shared in the accursed fate of Turin, unwittingly causing the betrayal of Mîm due to the memories of the Petty-dwarves being hunted like animals. Beleg died at Turin's hand when he tried to wake Turin up and was struck down by the panicked Turin.
* '''Celeborn''': Galadriel's husband.
* '''Thranduil''': Second (and presumably last) king of Elven Mirkwood and the OG Fantasy Wood Elf ruler. Was bitter that his father died in the war with Sauron and due to that really haven't interfered in the Middle Earth politics before the War of the Ring, although he still helped some Dwarves to get to Erebor.
* '''Legolas''': Son of Thranduil and prince of the Woodland Realm. Legolas was sent as a representative for the Council of Elrond, eventually becoming one of the Fellowship of the Ring. Legolas became close friends with Gimli the dwarf - ironic since both their fathers had bitter enmity due to the events of the Hobbit - with both eventually leaving together for the Undying Lands after the death of Aragorn. One of the most iconic "archer heroes" in all of fiction, especially after the movies came out, though he can also hold his own in melee (with a single long knife in the books, with two of them in the movies and video games).

=== Nandor ===
Teleri Elves who diverted at the Misty Mountains during the migration to Aman. The Nandor became the '''Silvan''' Elves, aka Wood Elves, who eventually came under the rule of their Sindar kin.
* '''Haldir''': Marchwarden of Lothlórien, who alongside his brothers stumbled upon the Fellowship as they fled Moria. Unlike his relatives, he actually knew Westron and as such was able to help them reach Galadriel, and a little bit later helped them pack the boats for their journey south.
** In a major departure from the books, the movies had Haldir somehow also lead a troop of Galadhrim Warriors all the way from Lothlórien to Helm's Deep to assist in its defense during the Battle of the Hornburg.
* '''Nimrodel''': An ancient Elf-maid and the tragic lover of the last Lórien King Amroth. She was a bit antisocial and deeply mistrustful of the Noldor and Sindar Elves (with the exception of Amroth, of course), feeling that they brought nothing but war with them; a sentiment that was not factually incorrect, especially in the case of the Noldor. Nimrodel felt the awakening of the Balrog Durin's Bane and tried to flee her homeland, but was found by her boyfriend, who promised her life in Aman. On the road to Edhellond in Belfalas they accidentally separated, with the King boarding the ship and his love getting lost in the White Mountains. After a storm forced the Elves to leave the harbor, Amroth leapt overboard to go back and find her, but drowned. Nimrodel eventually found her way to Edhellond, but the last of the Elves and their ships had already left the ancient city, leaving it abandoned and her alone. Fucking hell.

=== Avari ===
Elves who refused the journey entirely. Mostly irrelevant.

== Dwarves ==
The Dwarves are sometimes referred to as the “Adopted children of Ilúvatar;” their forms were created by Aulë the Smith in his desire to have beings that he could teach his craft to, but because he didn’t possess the Secret Fire, he could not give them true life or free will. Ilúvatar, though disappointed by Aulë acting out of turn, took pity on Aulë’s creation and breathed life into them. However, he also put them to sleep since the elves were preordained to be the first-born children. Because the Dwarves were designed by Aulë and not Illúvatar, they have a few quirks to them compared to the other Children; they're extremely hardy and resistant to corruption, but also very warlike and aggressive, and were prone to pick lots of fights including with other dwarven houses. Also, they tended to suffer from population decline due to a lack of females. It is said that when the Dwarves die, their bodies return to the stone they were made and their souls are gathered to separate chambers within the Halls of Mandos; waiting for the Dagor Dagorath (Last Battle). After the Last Battle, the Dwarves would be hallowed by Eru and ordained to rebuild the world, along with Aulë.
===Dwarves of the First Age===
*'''Durin''' (the Deathless): The eldest of the seven Fathers of the Dwarves. He's founder of the royal House of Durin and is the ruler of the Longbeards. He awoke in Mount Gundabad and travelled southwards, along the Misty Mountains, until he saw a starry crown reflected on a pool upon his head. There he'd founded Khazad-dûm, greatest of the Dwarf mansions, and which would later be known as Moria. He lived for more than two-and-a-half thousand years, hence the title "The Deathless", until the ending years of the 1st Age. Yet even after his death, it's believed that Durin returns from the Halls and incarnates as a new King Durin (presumptively thanks to massive favouritism from Aulë). In later unpublished works, Tolkien may have retconned this instead to where Durin doesn't reincarnate so much as his body regenerates and returns to the world of the living anytime that Durin's Folk is without an heir. Thus Durin restarts the royal line, and that the other Dwarf Fathers have this ability as well.
*'''Telchar''': One of the most famous Dwarf smiths of all, whose craftsmanship could only be matched by Fëanor or equalled by very few on Middle Earth. He's the creator of Narsil, of the knife Angrist which Beren used, and of the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin.
====Petty-Dwarves====
The Petty-Dwarves were a sub-species of Dwarf who were cast out by the other Clans for wicked behavior. They were [[Grimdark|hunted like animals]] during their exile by Elves who weren't aware that other sentient species could exist. When the Elves made contact with other Dwarves, they stopped and left them in peace. By the late 400s of the First Age only three remained, a father and his two sons.
*'''Mîm's Family''': Mîm was the last Petty-Dwarf alongside his sons Ibun and Khîm, who presumably wouldn't be allowed to marry other Dwarves because of their exile, leaving them without potential spouses, and their mother's death sealed their fate. The three lived together in their fathers home in a hill/small mountain, Amon Rûdh and were left alone until, by misfortune, Túrin's gang of anti-Morgoth resistance outlaws happened upon Ibun and Khîm and one of them, Andróg, killed Khîm with a bow during the panic. Túrin repented of his followers mistake and offered their service to Mîm, who accepted and assisted Túrin with resisting Morgoth for a year. Unfortunately, Beleg's arrival pissed Mîm off, understandably so as a genocide victim meeting a warrior of the people who slaughtered all his kin, and arranged to betray the outlaws with an Orc warband, on the condition that they spare Túrin and Ibun and also leave Beleg for Mîm to kill. Andróg, mortally injured, scared Mîm off from the wounded Beleg, then sacrificed himself to repent of his accidental murder and to save Túrin, Beleg and his son Andvír. Ibun either died in the battle, or of some other cause before his father. Mîm then took Nauglamír in the ruins of Nargothrond, and held home and hearth there until 502 of the First Age, whereupon he was killed by Húrin, who saw him as partially responsible for his sons accursed life. Mîm's dying curse on the treasure doomed Doriath and King Thingol and caused the Second Kinslaying. Mîm's death rendered the Petty-Dwarves extinct.

===Dwarves of the Second Age===
*'''Narvi'''
===Dwarves of the Third and Fourth Ages===
Dwarves apparently peacefully went extinct after reclaiming all their lost homes and holds, with the possible exception of Gimli who was allowed into the Undying Lands and may had been given the immortality of an Elf.
*'''Gimli, son of Glóin''': Of the non-royal branch of the house of Durin. Generally recognized as '''''the''''' archetypal Dwarf hero in fiction, bar none. Fact is, if you see any Dwarf hero in a Fantasy work who uses an axe and isn't a magically powered Cleric-type, then that character is probably at least somewhat inspired by Gimli.
*'''Thrór''': Ruler of Erebor before it was taken by Smaug. After the great exodus of the dwarves, Thror attempted to retake Moria. Thror was killed by Azog, but was avenged by his grandson Thorin.
*'''Thrain II''': Son of Thror. Thrain was imprisoned by the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, later revealed to be Sauron, and had his Ring of Power stolen. He was discovered by Gandalf, and Thrain gave Gandalf the map and key to Erebor, dying shortly after.
*'''Dáin II (Ironfoot)''': Ruler of the Iron Hills; after the death of Thorin Oakenshield, he inherited rule of Erebor. He took an active part in the oft-forgotten northern theatre of the War of the Ring, but was killed at the gates of Erebor by a countless number of Easterlings.
*'''Thorin III (Stonehelm)''': Chronologically, the last known King Under the Mountain before Durin the Last. He rebuilt Erebor and Dale, helped Gimli settle the Glittering Caves in Rohan, and started a new campaign of mining Mithril in Khazad-dûm.
*'''Durin VI''': Famously known for having awakened up the Balrog that laid beep in Moria. Said Balrog slew many-a Dwarves and even Durin was killed. And so the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were forced out and went on a great exodus.
*'''Durin VII (The Last)''': The last reincarnation of Durin the Deathless, cleared out Moria and fully rebuilt the Dwarf kingdom. The Dwarves are strongly implied to have quietly died out some time after his death.
=====Thorin Oakenshield & Companions=====
*'''Thorin II (Oakenshield)''': Heir of Erebor and leader of the dwarves in exile. Thorin leads the quest for Erebor, eventually succeeding in retaking the kingdom from Smaug. However, he succumbs to dragon-sickness and very nearly goes to war with the Elves, but recovers from his madness long enough to join the battle against the Orcs outside the city gates. Thorin died in battle.
**'''Balin, son of Fundin''':cousin to Thorin and Dain. Balin served as Thorin's advisor during the Quest for Erebor, and later attempted to retake Moria with a small expeditionary force of Dwarves. Balin's fate was unknown until the Fellowship passed through Moria and discovered his dead body. According to Gloin, he was convinced by "whispers" to retake Moria despite the obvious dangers; its speculated that Sauron or his agents may have been involved as Erebor remained a target of interest after it was retaken."
**'''Glóin, son of Gróin''': Gimli's dad. One of the few real links between Hobbit and LoTR, as he was actually present at the Coucil of Elrond alongside his son.
**'''Óin, son of Gróin''': Glóin's brother. Died in Moria alongside Balin.
**'''Fili and Kili''': Thorin's nephews. Died in the Battle of Five Armies defending their relative. Yes, that's '''LITERALLY''' all of their character (at least in the books). Peter Jackson films flesh them out some, though as this entailed giving one of them a [[Rage|romance with a made-for-the-films character, many fans were not impressed]].
**'''Dori, Nori, and Ori''': Dori is a pessimistic yet strong (literally the strongest one in the team) and reliable one. Ori was killed by Durin's Bane. Nori is uhhh...
**'''Bombur, and cousins Bofur and Bifur''': Bombur is a fat one who is slow and complains a lot, but also gets his character development by being so traumatized from Mirkwood that he becomes a complete wreck of a... well, Dwarf. Latter two are irrelevant.

=====Other Dwarves=====
*'''[[Chaos Dwarves|Nauglath/Nauglir/Nornwaith]]''': The Wicked Dwarves of the East who had fallen under the Shadow, of which little is known about. Briefly encountered in the First Age by the freshly awoken Men, who could tell that they were of "evil mind" and distrusted them. May have existed in the Third Age as well, where they may have possibly made alliances with Orcs.

==Hobbits==
Hobbits appear to be a sub-species of human. Their origins are left deliberately vague since they were always meant to be an unremarkable people who did not take part in the great tales of the world, instead preferring to keep to themselves and living simple, peaceful lives. See [[Hobbits]] for more details.

* '''Bilbo Baggins''': The protagonist of the original Middle-Earth story. Starts out as a standard Hobbit (likes food and smoking pipes, not ambitious, deathly afraid of adventure, etc.) But Gandalf ropes him into the quest to Erebor, and he becomes the group's "burglar", making him the Ur-example of the "Halfling Thief/Rogue member of an adventuring party". Found the One Ring and managed to "win" it from Gollum by outwitting him in a game of riddles. Though not a fighter himself, his actions were still instrumental in helping the Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home from Smaug and stopping the forces of the Necromancer after. By the time of the War of the Ring, he retires to Rivendell and then accompanies the Elves on their journey to the West. The One Ring is thus inherited by...
** '''Frodo Baggins''' ...Bilbo's nephew. Main hero of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and initially a total nice guy. So nice, in fact, that he's able to resist the One Ring's corrupting influence longer and better than most. This makes him "the Ringbearer", and he is tasked with being the one to take the One Ring to Mordor to destroy it. Sadly, while Frodo means well, he's also as useless in a fight as one would expect a guy who's lived a pastoral existence his whole life to be. This not only requires the other good guys to bodyguard him throughout his adventure, but also results in him being (in order) stabbed by the Witch-King, stabbed by a Troll, stabbed by Shelob's stinger (notice a pattern?), captured by Orcs, and finally getting a finger bitten off by Gollum. Suffice to say, after being Middle-Earth's biggest punching bag for so long, Frodo is so shell-shocked that he realizes he can no longer stay in Middle-Earth, and so after helping to kick Sharkey (AKA Saruman) and his gang out of the Shire, joins his uncle Bilbo in sailing to the West with the Elves, bringing his story to a bittersweet close.
* '''Smeagol / Gollum''': Found the One Ring alongside his brother long after Isildur's death. Sadly, where Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam were all able to resist the One Ring to varying degrees, Smeagol...didn't. Instead, [[Fulgrim|he succumbed to corruption and killed his brother]]. From there, the One Ring morphed him into a "not-Goblin" monster who lived a tormented existence for centuries...until Bilbo swiped the Ring from him. By the time Gollum found the One Ring again, it was now in Frodo's possession, and for a time Gollum agreed to serve Frodo and Sam. Gollum swears his loyalty upon the Ring itself, which Frodo warns him repeatedly that the Ring itself would punish him by casting him into the fire if he ever betrayed Frodo- yes this is foreshadowing, and its probably why it was cut from the films, so as not to basically spoil the ending. Unfortunately, whether because his dark side is just too strong or because of a Faramir-caused misunderstanding (depending on the version of the story), Gollum regresses to evil and betrays Frodo and Sam to Shelob. [[Fail|This does not actually let him get the Ring back though]]. Ultimately meets his end, perhaps fittingly, where his "precious" was first forged; he bites the Ring off of Frodo, but then falls into the lava below shortly after (in the books he falls on his own, in the movies, he's falls over while struggling with Frodo). Widely hailed as one of fiction's great tragic villains, and, since the movies, a veritable fountain of memes.
* '''Samwise "Sam" Gamgee''': If there's a candidate for main hero of the Lord of the Rings besides Frodo himself, it would be Sam, his best bro, gardener, bodyguard, and hypercompetent sidekick all rolled into one. As the guy who sticks with Frodo no matter what Middle-Earth throws at them, resists the One Ring's corruption ''even better than Frodo does'', and able to face down threats many Men would balk at (like Shelob), Sam is acknowledged in-universe and out as the greatest Hobbit to ever live. So in summary, [[Grey Knights|incorruptible, loyal, and better than you]].
* '''Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck''' and '''Peregrin "Pippin" Took''': Frodo's cousins and closest friends besides Sam, and basically the "comic relief duo" of the story, though they do both know how to get serious when needed. Among other things they help get the Ents to join the War of the Ring and kick Saruman's teeth in and partake in many of the big battles of the War of the Ring. Merry helps Eowyn kill the Witch-King (albeit by stabbing him in the back while he'd distracted), and Pippin [[Slayers|''kills a Troll'']]. They also each get to don the attire of one of the great kingdoms of Men (Rohan for Merry and Gondor for Pippin).
* '''Fredeger "Fatty" Bolger''': Frodo's other friend, but never makes an appearance in the movies. Fatty gets a bad rap for not wanting to leave with Frodo and go through the Old Forest, but he still had a part to play in staying behind and convince people that Frodo still lived in the Shire. When the Nazgul arrived, he raised the Horn of Buckland to drive them off, and later aided Frodo in the Scouring of the Shire. On a darker note, after being locked away by the ruffians to starve, no one called him Fatty anymore.
* '''Farmer Maggot''': Local farmer...or so he seems. In fact, he is one of the few Hobbits in the Shire who not only knows about what goes on in the greater world, but actively works in conjunction with Gandalf as needed to ferry and receive information. [[Awesome|So basically a Hobbit Secret Agent]].
* '''The Sackville Baggins''': Proof that even Hobbits can be unlikable assholes, the Sackville-Baggins are relatives of Frodo who neither he nor anyone else particularly like. Basically a couple of obnoxious gold-diggers who Frodo sells the Shire to before heading off on his journey (an action he doesn't enjoy more than anyone else). If there's any nice thing that can be said about them, it's that they ''do'' later assist in the ejection of Sharkey and his goons from the Shire, showing they, like all Hobbits, can be courageous when it matters most. Absent in the movies, but unlike Glorfindel and [[Tom Bombadil|a certain someone]], most aren't likely to mind too much.

==Valar, Maiar, and anything in between==
[[Ainur|Have their own page]].

==Orcs==
'''Orcs/Goblins:''' See [[Orc#Tolkien|Orcs]]. Though not what you see with [[Stormtrooper|Imperial Stormtrooper variants]], they still come in a few varieties:
* '''Snaga''': The Black Speech word for Slave or Servant. This contemptuous term is used amongst the Orcs of Mordor and Isengard to refer to the "lesser" AKA regular Orcs, with the implication that they are only fighting for their master because they are being forced to.
* '''[[Black Orc|Uruks]]:''' A superior breed of Orcs created by Sauron in the middle of the Third Age through either eugenic practices or dark sorcery, most likely both. Uruks are resistant to sunlight (or at least far more able to tolerate it), and are taller and stronger than their lesser kin, though possibly only almost as tall or strong as Men. ''Uruk'' is the Black Speech word for ''Orc'', which opens up a whole mess of questions as to why regular Orcs are not called Uruks while these orcs of superior breeding are, although it could simply be a matter of social hierarchy given the existence and roles of ''Snaga'' within Orc society.
**'''Black Uruks:''' Another name for the Uruks of Mordor who served Sauron. May possibly have been a title only granted to the cream of the crop of Uruks, being those were of the strongest breeding and greatest devotion to Sauron, and were possibly further augmented by being "infused" with Sauron's will or dark sorcerous enchantments.
**'''Uruk-Hai:''' Saruman's take on the above project, with these Orcs being the product of either crossbreeding lesser Orcs with Goblin-Men or crossbreeding Goblin-Men with Men, all with his own sorcery added to the mix. This experiment is said to been even more successful than Sauron's own, with the Orcs produced being as tall and strong as Men and very-resistant/tolerant of sunlight. The etymology of their name has some interesting implications, as said above, ''Uruk'' is Black Speech for Orc, while ''Hai'' is the suffix for "''Folk''"/people, with the result being "Orc-Folk". By calling themselves this, the Uruk-Hai are saying that they are the Orc-People, while all the other Orcs are merely just Orcs and not worthy of being called a people, [[Nazi|which sounds very master-race-like doesn't it?]] In-universe, the other Orcs who interacted with them hate and distrust the Uruk-Hai of Isengard for placing themselves above them and looking down on them, which lends credence to this implication.
* '''Goblin-Men/Half-Orcs''': A hybrid of lesser Orcs and Humans. Look mostly human, albeit rather ugly and "sallow-skinned". Often serve as spies for their full-blooded kin, but most seemed to exist as outlaws and bandits, possibly being the descendants of fully Human criminals and outcasts who shacked up with the Orcs who lived in the Misty Mountains and other isolated areas. Half-Orcs may have been a distinctive breed apart from Goblin-Men, but the differences between the two are never made clear. Very, very minor part of the lore, and you hardly ever see them outside of the books proper.
* '''Mountain Orcs/Goblins:''' Orcs that live in the Misty Mountains and other northern mountain ranges. Largely left to do their own thing, they mug random passersby and launch raids against human settlements. Looked down on by Mordor Orcs and Uruk-Hai as being a bunch of feral tribals, who in turn look down on them for being "slaves to the Shadow" even though they are quick to bend the knee when emissaries from Mordor come calling. Sometimes called Goblins due to linguistic shenanigans, but either way they are the same size and "race" as other normal Orcs, although many extra-canonical works (including the movies and the video games based off of them), tend to call Mountain Orcs "Goblins" and portray them as being the smallest of the Orc breeds, distinct from "regular" Orcs.
* '''Snufflers''': A race of small, darkfurred orcs with big nostrils who were used like humanoid hunting hounds by their larger cousins. May have simply been a mutation or breedable trait rather than an actual sub-race. Never seen or mentioned outside of the books, so they're a concept that didn't catch on with most folks.

Similarly, while they get less attention than the Free Peoples, there are still some named Orc/Uruk-hai characters in the franchise:

* '''Azog the Defiler''': An Orc Chieftain of Moria prior to the events of The Hobbit. He murdered the Dwarven King Thrór, and had the gall to say that he executed him for "trespassing" in Moria. He beheaded Thrór, branded his own name on his forehead in Dwarven Runes, and even dismembered his corpse after insulting Thrór's companion Nár and throwing a small bag of gold coins to him. This event started the ''War of the Dwarves and Orcs'', which ended when Dáin II Ironfoot slew Azog at the Battle of Azanulbizar. Azog was succeeded by his son Bolg.
** The Peter Jackson Hobbit movies had him survive his canon death so as to effectively become the main villain of the trilogy. [[Rage|Most fans were not impressed]].
* '''Bolg''': Bolg, son of Azog, was an Orc Chieftain who led a coalition of Orcs during the time of The Hobbit. Vengeful over his father's death at the hands of the Dwarves, he rallied the Orcs of the Misty Mountains along with the Orcs of Goblin Town at Mount Gundabad, and along with a host of Wargs, marched them to battle at Erebor for the Battle of Five Armies. Bolg was killed in battle by Beorn, who had taken the shape of a bear.
**In the Hobbit Trilogy, Bolg is demoted to a second-in-command due to dad still being alive, and Legolas kills him instead after a battle that [[Wat|involves him defying gravity.]]
* '''Uglúk''': An Uruk-Hai of Isengard who led the company which attacked the Fellowship at Amon Hen and captured Merry and Pippin. After being harried and encircled by Riders of Rohan under Éomer's command, Uglúk and his entire company were slain in battle, with Uglúk being personally killed by Éomer in a sword-fight.
* '''Gothmog''': Only mentioned briefly in Return of the King and no other description given than "Castellan of Minas Morgul", he took command over Mordors force that was still besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. The reason he is listed here is because Peter Jackson made him a heavily scarred Orc in the movie adaptation, the books never mention his race. Some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that he was actually one of the Nazgûl.
* '''Grishnákh''': An Orc Captain of Mordor who led his own raiding party of Mordor Orcs in search of the Fellowship. He crossed paths with Uglúk's company in Rohan and tried to intimidate him into turning over Merry and Pippin to his custody, but was unable to do so and lacked the numbers to overtake the individually superior Uruk-Hai. He attempted to depart to the east, but was driven back towards Uglúk's company by the encircling Riders under Éomer, and thus made his last stand together with Uglúk's company near the eaves of the Fangorn Forest.
* '''Gorbag''': A Black Uruk Captain of Mordor who personally served the Nazgûl in Minas Morgul. He; together with Shagrat; found a paralyzed Frodo while on patrol near Cirith Ungol. He was rather observant and wily for an Orc, and was able to deduce that Frodo was not alone in his trespassing and was merely paralyzed by Shelob instead of dead. He attempted to steal Frodo's mithril shirt for himself, but in doing so provokes a fight with Shagrat, which in turn sparks a small insurrection which pitted Gorbag's patrol against Shagrat's garrison. After shanking Shagrat and failing to finish him off with a broken spear, he is killed and trampled by Shagrat. In the movies, it's Shagrat who tries to take the shirt and Gorbag who is loyal to Sauron, and Sam kills him instead.
* '''Shagrat''': A Black Uruk Lieutenant of Mordor who commanded the garrison of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Shagrat disagreed with Gorbag about what to do with Frodo, and tensions between him and Gorbag's troops sparked a small insurrection. After slaying Gorbag and defeating his underlings, Shagrat took Frodo's mithril shirt and journeyed to Barad-dûr. After delivering the mithril shirt and news of the incident at Cirith Ungol, he was executed by Sauron. In the movie, he's the one who tries to take the shirt for himself, but otherwise presumably dies in the same way.

==[[Dragons]]==
The classic, archetypal dragon. Created by Morgoth in the First Age as his most powerful agents. Sub-Types include:
*'''Cold-drakes''': Lesser Dragons who are unable to breath fire, but they are still a couple tons of muscle and scales and are more numerous than the proper Fire-drake Dragons. Those that remain live in the frozen wasteland of Forodwaith in the desolate north of Middle Earth, although even then they still fuck with the Dwarves who lived in the Grey Mountains, even managing to infest the valley of the Withered Heath.
*'''Sea-serpents''': Also known as Fish-dragons, little is known about this particular breed of dragons except what they were called by, and that Morgoth had also created them. It can be devised that they were either intended to fight Cirdan and the Elven ships in Beleriand; to battle the Host of the West, which would have to cross the ocean; to contest with Ulmo, just as the winged-dragons contested with Manwë and his eagles; or some combination of these possibilities.
*'''Spark-dragons''': Sometimes known as Shock-dragons. Nothing is known about them save for this Elven nomenclature.

As for named Dragons of note:

* '''Glaurung''': The Father of all Dragons, and a [[Nagash| thoroughly sadistic prick]] whose main claim to infamy is hypnotizing and cursing Turin into marrying and knocking up his own sister for sick kicks before his death. He is slain by Turin's cursed sword, Gurthang, but gets the last laugh by revealing Turin's marriage is incestuous with his dying words.

* '''The Fire-drake of Gondolin''': An unnamed Dragon that partook in the Sacking of Gondolin. Big enough to carry ''multiple Balrogs'' on its back. Its physiology and its being unleashed on Gondolin alongside the Balrogs suggests it may have been meant to be Glaurung's replacement, but it too was presumably eventually slain (although its death is never outright shown).

* '''Scatha the Wyrm''': So named for his long, serpentine body, he was a treasure-hoarder like Smaug. Got killed by an ancestor of Eorl the Young named Fram after the local men and Dwarves got sick of him stealing from them.

* '''Gostir''': This dragon is only known by name and was one of Morgoth's dragons. Nothing else is written about him, not even what kind of dragon he was! However, considering that ''Gostir'' is Sindarin for "Terrible Sight", he must have been either one extremely ugly or especially scary-looking dragon. Alternatively, if you interept the "thîr" comprisant component of his Sindarin name to refer not to his face, but instead his expression as per one of the alternative definitions of that word; then Gostir might have been a dragon that had an especially potent hypnotic or mesmerizing stare like that of Glaurung.

* '''Ancalagon the Black''': Morgoth's ultimate Dragon, he saw action during the epic War of Wrath and fell during the battle despite initially [[Awesome|beating back the entire host of the Valar]]. Also one of ''the'' biggest fucking Dragons in all of fiction, as multiple "Dragon size comparisons" on the internet have shown. Seriously, this guy was the size of ''mountains'', and his death destroyed some too when he fell from the sky. How in the heck the good guys were ever able to beat Morgoth with this dude on his side is anyone's guess.

* '''Smaug''': The last, and by far the most famous, of all the Middle-Earth Dragons, he lived into the Third Age where he took over Erebor, slaughtered the Dwarves there, and helped himself to their treasure. He lorded over the mountain and its hoard for many years until a company of Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield and aided by Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey finally coaxed him out of his lair, leading to his eventual death when Bard the Bowman shot an arrow that hit him in his one weak-spot. Probably the single most iconic part of The Hobbit, and a highlight of both movie adaptations (yes, even the widely disliked Hobbit trilogy).

==Other Creatures==
'''[[Trolls]]''': Made by Morgoth "in mockery of the Ents", Trolls are giant and stupid creatures often used by the orcs as warbeasts. Like the Orcs themselves, some specially bred Trolls are called "Olog-Hai" and are used as especially dangerous shock troops. Certain breeds, called "stone trolls," will turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.
*'''Olog-Hai''': Sapient trolls who were the troll equivalent of Uruk-Hai.
*'''Half-trolls of Far-Harad''': A possibly mythical race of allegedly half Troll and Men crossbreeds. The confusion is due to them only being referenced a single time within canon at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where the warriors of Far Harad who fought for Sauron were likened to "Half-trolls" and described as being rather large and having "black skin with white eyes and red tongues". May have just been African-type warriors, but the fact that they were described as having "white eyes and red tongues", suggests that they were not actually normal Men, and instead [[Salamanders (Chapter)|Salamander-like]] giants with pitch-black skin and blank, pupil-less white eyes and scarlet red tongues. Alternatively, they COULD have been actually half-man, half-troll, Norwegian myth had that as an explanation for people who were especially ugly hermits or mighty yet ugly warriors. The warrior culture of the Far Harad tribals could view the jungle trolls as virile symbols of barbaric power and Savage Fertility, resulting in zulu-looking men and women boning wild trolls in the jungle, resulting in these bestial half-kin.
*'''Frost Trolls''': A large, shaggy breed of furred trolls native to the far north. Very minor part of the lore, with even more video games and other expanded material not using them.
*'''Ettens''': Another name for Trolls, in the same sense that Goblin is another name for Orcs. Namesake of the Ettenmoors, as Trolls used to infest the region during the time of the Witch-realm of Angmar. "The Etten" was the disguise of an Orc and Troll wearing the same costume to disguise themselves as a massive mutant Troll warlord in the Shadow of War game, so in that version of Middle Earth, Ettens could refer to the more popular pop culture version as two-headed trolls/giants with orcish blood popularized in D&D.

'''[[Treant|Ents]]''': Tree-herders, created by Yavanna to protect the forests. The Ents are extremely old, perhaps the only beings that can rival elves in age. They speak their own unique language that sounds like creaking wood, and are very slow and deliberate in their actions. The Ents are divided into males and females, but by the Third Age, the Entwives have disappeared, leaving the Ent race to eventually vanish.

'''[[Werewolves]]''': Fearsome wolves possessed by evil spirits, created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age, but have lingered on throughout the following ages. Generally associated with Sauron, who is considered the master of all Werewolves and could also shapeshift into Middle-Earth's biggest one.

'''[[Vampires]]''': Either possibly humanoid bats or just really large sapient and malevolent blood-drinking bats created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age. Very little is known about them. Associated mainly with Sauron, who took the form of one on at least one occasion to escape from Huan, and because the only named Vampire (Thuringwethil), was a servant of Sauron.

'''Nameless Things:''' Things without names, of course. Or much description for that matter. Said by Gandalf to be older than Sauron and live deep beneath the Earth, such that even the Dwarves have never encountered them. Gandalf encountered them in passing while he fought Durin's Bane deep in the tunnels of the Earth after he fell from the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, but even then he refuses to "darken the light of day" with a description of them. Tolkien makes the inference that because these Nameless Things are nameless, that makes them especially dreadful and evil, though they're also largely unconnected with the main conflict that plays out in the story, and exist mostly to add to the world's mystery, as not all dangerous and terrible things are under the Dark Lord's control. They seem rather [[Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] in their description. Various types of Nameless Things were featured in the Lord of the Rings MMO, including one that was infecting orcs with a parasitic fungus like the Cordyceps strain from The Last of Us to turn them into its own army

'''Mumakil''': Giant elephant-like creatures from Far Harad, used by the Southrons as warbeasts much in the same way as war elephants of ancient times were used.

'''Great beasts/Great beasts of Gorgoroth''': Large beasts of burden used in Mordor. Not described in any detail at all, except that they were used to pull the battering ram Grond during the Siege of Minas Tirith. Are shown in the game "Gollum" as ornery, rhino-like creatures used as beasts of burden by the Uruks.

'''[[Undead]]''': exist in various forms and are specific in how they come about. The most iconic are the Nazgul, or ring-wraiths. Wraiths are a special class of undead that are apparently created and controlled by Sauron when he enslaves a mortal being to his will, principally through the life-extending rings of power. Magic is used to bind the wraith's invisible flesh to their spirit, and it is only with special magic weapons that they can be killed (or the One Ring is destroyed). Next are ghosts, as seen with the Oathbreakers. Because they have no physical presence, ghosts cannot actually interact with the mortal realm. Normally, human spirits leave Arda altogether upon death, but the Oathbreakers are a special case because of the nature of their curse. Illuvatar doesn't allow their spirits to leave Arda until their oaths are fulfilled. Lastly, you have the Barrow-Wights, which are described as dead bodies inhabited by evil spirits; its suggested that these evil spirits are the souls of dead elves (who didn't go to the Halls of Mandos) that were captured by Sauron and enslaved to his will.

'''Caragors''': Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive, being basically bigger, nastier Wargs. Devs even said they're to a Warg what a lion is to a wolf.

'''Graugs''': Also a Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive. Large, ugly giant monsters big enough to literally eat trolls for breakfast, but can be mounted by Talion, at which point he can basically use them like a [[Awesome|fantasy version of King Kong in New York City]]. Their full name is "Olog-Graug", which would indicate they are actually some sort of enormous, feral troll, which would mean they're cannibals.

'''Creatures of Myth''': These creatures are likely fictional, as they are only referenced in poems, verse, song, or story. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't actually real. Tolkien did like to keep an air of mystery about it.
*'''Were-Wyrms''': Giant Sandworms like something out of Dune or Tremors. Possibly mythical, as they were only referenced offhandedly in The Hobbit, in a line that suggests they are something of a folktale. Showed up in the third Peter Jackson Hobbit movie. Older media portrayed them as a form of wingless, legless dragon.
*'''[[Ogres]]''': In-between Orc and Troll in Size, probably mythical and in the same circumstances as the Giants given that they were only mentioned in The Hobbit as well. May also have just been another name for Trolls. Three of them were among Azog's horde in the Hobbit movies during their assault on Laketown, and Games Workshop included models of them for their game.
*'''Giants''': Huge humanoids of myth. Only referenced in passing through tales of folklore, but did make an appearance in The Hobbit, where "stone-giants" were described as throwing rocks at each while the Thorin's party attempted to passed through the Misty Mountains. That Giants did not appear or were explicitly referenced after The Hobbit suggests that they were an early idea which was dropped from the greater canon when Tolkien consolidated it with the writing of the main series.
*'''Turtle-Fish''': Giant Snapping Turtle sea monsters. Pretended to be islands before sinking when prey got off their boats and explored their shell, before consuming the drowning sailors. Mentioned only in verse within The Hobbit.
*'''Glowworms and Great glow-worms''': Bioluminescent worms of myth said to "creep along the Path of Dreams". Only mentioned in early versions of the legendarium.
*'''Badger-Folk''': Upright walking sapient badgers, skepticism is required due to this being told as part of a story by Tom Bombadil.
*'''Lintips''': Small, mousey-smelling creatures from the Moon which rode down to Middle-Earth on a moonbeam. Another tall tale from Tom Bombadil.
*'''Mewlips''': Evil, amphibious creatures that prey on travelers in the Long Marshes. Possibly fictitious, or misidentified orcs. Some older LOTR RPG materials described them as some form of ghoul-like aquatic undead. Could also be some sort of subspecies of Orc which overcame their dislike of water to become something akin to [[Koalinth|Koalinths]].

==Items of significance==
We're kind of bloating the definition of "character" here, but there are quite a couple of items in Middle-Earth that might as well be characters since Tolkien assigns a great deal of significance to them.

*'''Silmarili''': The 3 Silmarils were made by Fëanor using the lights of the Two Trees of Valinor (Telperion and Laurelin). These jewels were so beautiful and powerful that the Valar believed the fate of the entire world were bound by them. Additionally, they were capable of making the wielder and the land the fairest of all the world. When Melkor first saw them, it was his main desire to seize them; and when he eventually stole them he burned his hand in the process (since the gems tend to burn unhallowed flesh). The theft of the Silmarils would cause a [[The Silmarillion|chain of events which would cause a lot of destruction, betrayal and death]]. Fëanor and the majority of the Noldorin Elves would pursue Melkor(now called Morgoth) into Middle-earth, and for the next solar centuries they would attempt to reclaim the Silmarils. However, by the ending decades of the First Age, only 1 Silmaril would be retrieved and most of the Elf lords that were related to the quest had died. When Morgoth was at last defeated and banished, two of the sons of Fëanor took the two remaining jewels for their own. One of them threw himself into a fiery chasm with the gem, whilst the other threw it to the sea; the last Silmaril was forever worn by Eärendil, as he roamed the sky like a star.
*'''Rings of Power''': The titular magical rings. There are 20 in total: 3 Elven Rings, 7 Dwarven Rings, 9 Human Rings and the Master Ring. The Rings were created as incredibly powerful magical artefacts by the Elven smith Celebrimbor in Eregion, intended to preserve the world and increase the wisdom and abilities of the wearer. However, this intended purpose was corrupted by Sauron who helped Celebrimbor in the creation of the Dwarven and Human Rings. Sauron intended the Rings to be conduits through which he could control the races of Middle-Earth via binding them all to his Master Ring. The Elven Rings stand out because they were created last and without Sauron's help and therefore remain untouched by his corruption (their power still hinges on the One Ring, though). Tolkien kept the description of what the Rings actually ''do'' very vague, from what we could gather from the Elven Rings, they probably all intended to fulfil its wearers deepest desires and guide their people to greater wisdom and understanding of the world. The Elven Rings were not used until Sauron was vanquished for the first time in the battle of the Last Alliance. By the time of the third age, their keepers were Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf. Galadriel used the power of her Ring to preserve a vision of Valinor in Lothlórien and keep evil out of the forests (to the point that Orcs literally and figuratively could not enter it), what Elrond and Gandalf did with theirs is left to interpretation. The Dwarven Rings are implied to be the main source of their legendary riches with the side-effect that it made them really greedy, awakening the Balrog of Moria and attracting Smaug to Mount Erebor; the Dwarven rings were eventually destroyed or claimed by Sauron. Of the Rings of Men, we know next to nothing, except that their wearers are now the Nazgûl. The Master Ring has the power to dominate the other ringbearers and is strongly implied to be a sentient being of some kind. It radiates a strong allure to anyone who sees it, to the point that people find themselves unable to let it go once they have it (also why Bilbo giving it up is such a testament to his willpower; he was literally the only being in Middle-Earth up to his time who had the Ring and gave it up willingly).
** '''The New Ring''': Exclusive to the Shadow of Mordor continuity. Forged by Celebrimbor's wraith with help from Talion for the purpose of beating Sauron at his own game. Tolkien actually said that doing this would just create another Sauron, and sure enough, Talion's use of The New Ring doesn't end well for him at all. Appearance wise, it's basically a palette swap of the One Ring, being silver with glowing blue runes instead of gold with glowing orange ones.
*'''Lesser Rings''': created before the Rings of Power by Celebrimbor and his smiths as practice. As the name implies, their powers are significantly more mundane. Gandalf had originally believed that the ring Bilbo found was one of the lesser rings since it was plain and didn't seem to confer many special abilities. Some of them likely were in Sauron's possession and given to his commanders.
*'''Palantiri''': The seeing stones. There were seven in total that Elendil brought over from Númenor when he landed in Middle-Earth. They were perfect spheres made of black stone and rumoured to have been created by Fëanor himself. The Palantiri were the key to the early dominance of the Dúnedain in Middle-Earth; with them, they could keep a watch over large swaths of the world and communicate with their kin in far away lands. Using a Palantir is a daunting and esoteric task that was not well understood even when knowledge of the existence of the stones was relatively common (emphasis on relative, the existence of the Palantiri was one of the closest held secrets of the Dúnedain) and as a result, the mileage one could get out of them varied wildly, generally speaking, they responded best to people the stones thought were their rightful owners. Sauron and Saruman famously were frustrated with their inability to utilise their respective Palantir's full potential; for example, Saruman wanted to use the Palantir of Orthanc to search for the ring but found Sauron instead. Used correctly, they gave their users the ability to see far into the land, like you would with a camera-equipped drone and communicate with other users over large distances. By the time of the third age, only four of the seven Palantiri were left: The Palantir of Orthanc which was in Sarumans possession and passed onto Gandalf when Grima threw it out of a window. Gandalf took the Palantir with him to Valinor. Sauron held the Palantir of Minas Ithil, stolen when the Nazgûl sieged and destroyed the city and destroyed when Barad-Dûr collapsed as a result of the destruction of the One Ring. Denethor, by the power of his office, held the Palantir of Minas Tirith, where it passed onto Aragorn when he became King. A fourth one sat in a tower on the western edge of Arnor, directed at where Númenor used to be. The other there were over time lost to the passing of time, Gondor lost the Ithil-Stone when the Nazgûl destroyed Minas Ithil. The largest Palantir of them all was located in Osgiliath and was lost when the city burned down during the Kin-Strife. Arnor had three, one in Annúminas and one in Amon Sûl. All three were lost when Arvedui, the last reigning king of Arnor sought refuge from the Witch-King of Angmar in Forodwaith and drowned when a rescue party sent by the elves of Lindon failed to save him; the stones sank together with their owner.

==Apocryphal Characters==
Due to the huge, enduring popularity of Tolkien's writing, many folks over the years have made their own contributions to the lore, effectively giving Tolkien's writings their own "expanded universe". None of these are canon with the books however, and so are listed here instead. Due to how the purists tend to feel about this sort of thing, pretty much all of the characters here are [[Skub]] by default.
===From Movies===
* '''Alfrid''': The Master of Laketown's own personal Wormtongue, and even more obnoxious and hatable. Much as Jar-Jar Binks is often seen as the character who killed the Prequels (or else dragged them down), Alfrid is seen in much the same way regarding the Hobbit movies. Not helped by the fact that he ''gets away with everything'' (unless you watch the extended cut that is).
* '''Lurtz''': Probably one of the most famous "not in the books" characters ever, Lurtz is an Uruk-hai leader made by Saruman in the PJ movies who is in charge of the band sent to Amon Hen. He's the one who personally puts three arrows into Boromir before Aragorn moves in to take him out in a suitably epic one-on-one fight scene. Due to the popularity of the PJ movies, the aforementioned epic fight scene, and the fact that Lurtz isn't ''that'' important of a character, he tends to be a lot more accepted than many other non-canon characters. Lurtz's role in the books likely would have been taken by Uglúk instead, but PJ wanted to have a menacing Orc antagonist in the first film that would be memorable by being the one to kill Boromir and give Aragorn a tough fight, and to represent the unique threat that the Uruk-Hai posed compared to the bog-standard orc.
* '''Sharku''': Leader of Saruman's Warg Riders, which guaranteed him status as a boss battle in a few of the video games. Also used to fake out killing off Aragorn in the second movie before Aragorn returned alive. Looks a lot like Freddy Krueger, and his name is a reference to Saruman's book alias during the Scouring of the Shire, "Sharkey".
* '''Tauriel''': A redheaded Elf waifu played by Evangeline Lily who is crushed on by Legolas and Kili, to [[Rage|the totally chill reactions of most audiences and fans]]. All told she ''is'' reasonably cool, but the general feeling is that making her part of a love triangle that goes nowhere was a dumb idea. Not to mention the "forbidden love" angle had already been done.
* '''Gothmog''': Only apocryphal-ish, since he ''does'' get a mention in Return of the King, being referred by his title "Castellan of Minas Morgul" in two sentences, where he is mentioned taking command of the Orcish warhost that is besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. Other than that, nothing is known about him and he never does get mentioned again, not even in passing. While some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that Tolkien was referring to one of the Nazgûl (since Gothmog was the King of the Balrogs, and it seems weird to not assign a name of such a powerful creature to an equally mighty servant of Sauron), Peter Jacksons interpretation of Gothmog was that of a heavily scarred and crippled Orc general that leads the troops on the ground during the Siege of Gondor and the Battle of Minas Tirith. A bit ironic is the fact that, while he is clearly intended to be Gothmog, he is actually never mentioned by name in the movie. Also fun fact, he was played the same Maori actor who also played the Witch-King and Lurtz.

===From Video Games===
*'''The Third Age Second Fellowship''': A B-Team Fellowship who are the playable characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Sadly, they're all very, very stock as characters, but at least they got to be the protagonists of one of the better Middle-Earth games.
** '''Berethor''': Gondor Citadel Guard sent by Denethor to find his son Boromir, and also secretly a Manchurian Agent for Saruman and carries another secret in his body. Is fear-proof, and this is actually something that factors into the gameplay.
** '''Idrial''': Discount Arwen, being a female Elf who fights with a falchion and water magic and who falls in love with the heroic man of Gondor (Berethor in this case). Gets a bit green-eyed when Morwen shows up as a result.
** '''Elegost''': A Dunedain Ranger who is the party's token archer character. [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Dwarf named Hadhod, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Hadhod''': Party's token Dwarf, but can do shit Gimli can't (fire and earth magic, namely). [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Ranger named Elegost, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Morwen''': Woman of Rohan [[Rule 34|with a bare midriff]] orphaned when Saruman's forces scour the lands, she joins the party as the closest thing they have to a dedicated thief/rogue. [[Slayers|Fights with dual axes and has a need for vengeance against the enemy]].
** '''Eaoden''': Last member of the party to be recruited, which sadly has the effect of making him even ''more'' lacking in personality than the rest. Also from Rohan, he's one of Theoden's Royal Guards and can actually become a serious powerhouse depending on how you allocate his points.
*'''Battle for Middle-Earth OCs''': Since not every faction in these games has a large number of named folks from the books and films to draw on, EA had to get creative, and so invented some playable hero units whole cloth:
** '''Drogoth the Dragon Lord''': Hero unit for the Goblins, and basically going "fuck that" to the idea of Smaug being the last dragon.
** '''Gorkil the Goblin King''': Goblin with delusions of grandeur who hopes to win Sauron's favor by causing trouble in the North. Rides a giant scorpion into battle.
** '''Hwaldar the Brigand''': A Rhudaur hill chief secretly in league with the Witch-King. Hero unit for the Angmar faction.
** '''Karsh the Whisperer''': Former Captain of Arnor named Carthaen who the Witch-King turns into a wraith to serve as one of his minions instead of his enemies. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Morgomir''': Lieutenant of Carn Dûm and a Black Numenorean captain who has become of the Nazgul themselves. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Rogash''': The Witch-King's right-hand Troll, being a lot smarter and more dangerous than the standard Olog. Hero unit for Angmar.
*'''Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War Characters''': The cast of Monolith Production's video game duology:
**'''Talion''': Protagonist and pure Badass by way of being a brutal one-man army who can cleave through scores of Uruks, kill Ologs, bring Fire Drakes to heel, and even ''fight and beat Nazgul and Sauron himself''. Looks a lot like Aragorn, but his story goes down a much darker path. Slain along with his wife and son at the start of the game, he is resurrected (sort of), by the spirit of Celebrimbor, turning him into a wraith ''not'' bound to Sauron. From there, he becomes [[Konrad Curze|a ruthless, brutal figure who lives in a world of darkness and evil surrounded on all sides by evildoers he spends his time brutally killing, maiming, and terrorizing]]. Ultimately becomes a cautionary tale about trying to be a Grimdark Anti-Hero in Tolkien's world though; his bearing a new ring of power made by Celebrimbor and using it to bend Uruks and Ologs to his will to build an army in Mordor, makes him all-too similar to the Dark Lord he's fighting against. It culminates in him losing said Ring, taking a discarded Nazgul ring to save himself, and as a result, becoming one of Sauron's nine Nazgul. A lesson in ''not'' fighting Sauron using his methods learned the hard way. In all, most Tolkien purists would consider him way too [[Grimdark]] for J.R.R.'s fiction, and have argued that Tolkien would be horrified by his game's content. But again, given what happens to Talion, it's clear the writers understood the inherent folly in trying to fight Sauron with his own methods. Talion is best seen then as a cautionary tale (and thus a reaffirming of Tolkien's values), not a bastardization ([[Skub|this does not stop people from seeing him and his games as that though)]].
**'''Ioreth and Dirhael''': Talion's wife and son, who, as the wife and son of a tragic Anti-Hero in a [[Grimdark]] story, suffer exactly the fate you expect them to. In Ioreth's case, [[Critical Role|this is not the only time her VA has played a character in a Fantasy series with a sexy faux-British accent who's in love with a brooding, vengeful Anti-Hero]].
**'''The Black Captains''': A trio of Black Numenoreans who act as the main antagonists of the first game. Each represents a different aspect of Sauron's character, and as the folks who murdered Talion's wife and son, are at the top of his shit-list. They are:
***'''Black Hand of Sauron''': Leader of the bunch. [[Tzeentch|Represents the deceitfulness of Sauron]]. Lets his body become a vessel for Sauron so that the latter can temporarily regain his iconic black-armored, physical form.
***'''Hammer of Sauron''': A former Numenorean from the Battle of the Last Alliance [[Angron|who was angry and resentful enough to turn on his fellows]], picking up Sauron's discarded mace and letting it corrupt him (since it seems all of Sauron's stuff does that). [[Khorne|Represents Sauron's physical might and just a generally very angry guy]].
***'''Tower of Sauron''': A tall, scary guy [[Slaanesh|who looks a bit like something out of Hellraiser and accordingly serves as a torturer for Sauron. He represents the horror and viciousness of Sauron]].
**'''Eltariel''': A black-clad Elf who acts as a personal assassin for Galadriel, specially tasked with fighting the Nazgul. Badass enough to keep pace with Talion (and ironically has the same voice actress as his dead wife). Takes the New Ring after Talion loses it and becomes a Nazgul.
**'''Idril''': Gondorian woman who is the daughter of the man in charge of Minas Ithil (which falls much later in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity). Her daddy betrays the city to the Witch-King on the condition that Idril will be spared, and afterwards Idril leads the surviving Gondorian forces in Mordor. Comments on various collectibles Talion can find scattered throughout Mordor.
** '''Baranor''': A man born in Harad who was given to Gondor as part of a peace exchange and raised by them. Actually did pretty well for himself, becoming a captain in Gondor's army and helping lead the defense of Minas Ithil before it falls. Playable in one of Shadow of War's DLCs, and since he has no Ring of Power, if he dies, its actually Game Over.
**'''Carnan''': An Ent-Wife (or else something like it) and a super-powerful nature spirit who talks weird. Said to be a contemporary of Morgoth, which would make her ''ancient'' if true. Resides in a very forested, scenic part of Mordor that feels more like a part of Lothlorien or Rivendell then anything under Sauron's control, but that is likely owing in part to Carnan's presence. Though mostly a neutral figure unconcerned with the affairs of lesser beings, when a Balrog starts burning her forest down, she joins forces with Talion and Celebrimbor.
**'''Tar-Goroth''': A Balrog awakened by the forging of the New Ring, meaning his rampage is technically Talion and Celebrimbor's fault. There for the sake of having a boss fight with a Balrog.
**'''Zog the Eternal''': An Uruk sorcerer who seeks to summon Tar-Goroth and use him as a living weapon, including against Sauron himself, making him an Uruk with delusions of grandeur. Suffice to say, Talion puts a stop to his plans.
**'''Bruz the Chopper''': An Olog with an Australian accent who is one of Talion's first recruits, but later turns on him when he doesn't get a promotion. Talion responds by mind-raping him, which drives him insane. What happens to him after that is up to the player.
**'''Suladan''': OC Nazgul made for the games, one who funny enough shares a name with one of Games Workshop's original characters from the Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game. Nothing to suggest this is the same character though. His backstory is basically Ar-Pharazon, but a king of the South instead of Numenor, and turned into a Nazgul instead of getting punished by Eru.
**'''Nazgul Sisters (Riya and Yukka)''': Yes, seriously. A pair of twin sisters from an [[Cathay|obscure, rarely seen kingdom of man based off of Asian cultures]] who killed two of Sauron's Nazgul and took their Rings for themselves...which turned them into new Nazgul. Actually try to take power for themselves, but after Eltariel whoops their asses they seem to give up on that idea. Fight with Kusarigama type weapons instead of the usual Morgul Blades.

===From Amazon's Rings of Power===
*'''Arondir''': Black Legolas with a bit of Aragorn / Beren mixed in, or else a male Arwen, since he's doing the whole Elf/Human romance thing, which his fellow Elves point out doesn't end happily for those who do it. Might be Theo's father, but unconfirmed as yet.
*'''Bronwyn''' - Arondir's forbidden human lover (so the Luthien to his Beren, but with the races reversed), who is most notable for [[Derp|somehow commanding humans that escaped Orc invasion despite being a simple farmer (yeah, no signs of any class higher than peasants at all in Southlands)]].
*'''Theo''': Bronwyn's son that currently has super cool dark weapon on his hands, which seems to be a Morgul Blade, leading to fan theories that he'll turn into a Nazgul. Notably, we never get a good look at his ears, suggesting he might be Arondir's kid (which would fit given that he's his mom's boyfriend).
*'''[[Sauron|Halbrand]]''': Mysterious human that joins Galadriel in her quest. Has a lot in common with Aragorn (such as being the successor to a kingdom long vanished), but was ultimately revealed to be a certain ''other'' canon character. Given all of the hints beforehand, namely his silver tongue, talent for manipulation, the fact that he's trying to rule the Southlands (aka Mordor), his asking Adar (who claimed to kill Sauron), if he recognized him, and keen interest and skill in blacksmithing, (to the point that he claimed no one knew the craft better than him and was able to help Celebrimbor make the Rings of Power), this identity reveal didn't come as a shock to anybody when it came...except Galadriel. Speaking of, he got the hots for her during the time they spent together, and attempted to convince her to join him, but it didn't take (obviously). At the end of the season, he does what none should be able to do...[[Meme|he simply walked into Mordor]].
*'''Adar''': Elvish for "father", he's [[Malekith|a corrupted but charismatic black armored Elf]] (according to himself, he's a "first-generation orc", with visible scar on his head where Morgoth poured his evil... corruption juice... thing) who leads a band of Orcs hoping to do...something. Might be Maedhros (since he's got a gauntlet over one hand, and Maedhros burned one of his hands grabbing a Silmaril). Played by Benjen Stark's actor, meaning both of the Stark brother's actors have now been in Middle-Earth adaptations.
*'''Eärien''': Elendil's daughter and an architect-in-training, and that's pretty much it so far. She opposes intervention into the Middle Earth and Pharazôn's son has the hots for her. While the showrunners decided to include her for "female energy," she does very little to actually drive the plot, apart from convince Kemen to burn some ships in order to stop the Numenoreans from leaving because... reasons?
*'''Kemen''': Pharazon's son (presumably from a woman other than Tar-Miriel, since Pharazon hasn't married her yet). Has the hots for Elendil's daughter.
*'''Nori Brandyfoot''' - <s>Hobbit</s>Harfoot girl, since we can't have a Tolkien adaptation without Hobbits. Like Frodo and Bilbo pretty clearly meant to be an audience surrogate, but a lot more eager for adventure at the outset than the latter. Probably won't be carrying anyone's ring around, but you never know. Currently palling around with a mysterious stranger who might actually be Gandalf, furthering the Frodo/Bilbo parallels. No relation to the Dwarf of Thorin's company despite the name.
*'''Poppy Proudfellow''': Sam to Nori's Frodo, basically. Not much else to say.
*'''Sadoc Burrows''': Elder of the Harfoot tribe. There was some initial controversy over his casting, with some people even making the point that [[derp|how did the isolated hobbits change from multi-ethnic to lilY-white after a few centuries?]] (Though Tolkien does describe the Harfoots as darker skinned than other Hobbit types). His character became even more [[skub]] when it was discovered that in spite of the Harfoot's claims that "nobody gets left behind" and "harfoots have hearts as big as their feet," they very regularly abandon other tribe members to death and even outright sabotage their wagons if the tribe gets fed up with them. So yeah, people think of harfoots as sociopaths now. In Sadoc's case though, its suggested that his having to leave behind his own wife and child hardened him into his current state. Dies after getting knifed by the Morgoth cult, even though Meteor Man should be able to heal him.
*'''Disa''': Durin's wife. [[/pol/|Her being black got the predictable reaction]], but she's actually more canon-friendly than many of the other characters in the show due to the fact that her name is listed in the appendices (though many people still complained WHERE'S HER BEARD???). Helps convince her husband to cut Elrond some slack for not seeing him in 20 years. Disa is also some sort of priestess for Khazad-Dum, apparently singing to the mountain to free dwarves trapped in a cave-in. For a moment people joked that maybe ''she'' was Sauron when she suddenly morphed from cheery housewife to political schemer reminiscent of Darth Sidious himself (albeit a much less evil one).
*'''<s>Meteor Man</s> <s>Encino Man</s> The Stranger''': Mysterious old man who crash-landed in Harfoot territory, and was befriended by Nori. He can't speak the common tongue and appears to be very proficient in magic, while also not understanding basic concepts like death. Most figure he's Gandalf or maybe Radagast, but other theories abound (everything from his being Sauron to being a Blue Wizard, [[Wat|to being a Balrog]]). He's confirmed in the Season 1 finale to be an Istari, with ''HEAVY'' implications that he's Gandalf, but he likely will only be referred to by one of his lesser-known names like Olorin. So ultimately, [[Superman|he's a human-looking being of great power who crash-lands from another world and is taken in by kind-hearted rural people. Sound familiar?]]
*'''<s>Feminem</s> <s>Slim Lady</s> The Priestess Trio''': Trio of white-clad ladies, led by a buzzcut woman who gives the most dramatic stink-eye. Names are The Dweller, the Nomad, and the Ascetic. Lots of people thought she was Sauron from the trailer until they realized the character had boobs (and Amazon outright said it wasn't Sauron). Honestly we know basically nothing about her and her two pals since their first appearance in the show is only slightly longer than the trailer, but apparently they're tracking Meteor Man and seem to be part of a leftover Morgoth cult. Despite having magic on par with a wizard and shapeshifting abilities, and also being incredibly pale, they're ultimately revealed to be Easterlings from Rhun, with a strong implication that they will either become Nazgul or are some precursor to it (although it does also seem that the Stranger blows them up at the end, so they might just be dead). The leader has a crown in the spirit world, which brings to mind the Witch-King of Angmar. Bear in mind, the Rings of Power are what turn humans into Nazgul, and they don't get created until the very end of the season, so they probably ''aren't'' Nazgul. Barrow-Wights maybe?

Middle Earth characters

2023-06-21T23:54:13Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Items of significance */

Much like [[Star Wars|a certain other popular franchise that is the bread and butter of nerds everywhere]], describing even the cursory information is a massive job. But hey, that's what we're here for. Below you'll find a guide to the many beings who call Middle Earth home. For a guide to the places in Middle-Earth and the location itself, [[Middle Earth|see here]].

==Humans==
The second-born of [[God|Eru Ilúvatar’s]] children. Humans are split across many tribes and nations throughout Middle Earth. Unlike the immortal Elves, who are tied to the world and reincarnate in Aman if they die, the souls of men leave the world altogether to parts unknown by all save Ilúvatar himself. Men are also a mystery to everyone else in Middle Earth and are given "strange gifts," for they alone are able to shape their fates beyond the Music of the Ainur. It's noted that while Men are more corruptible to evil than the Elves and were the most similar to Morgoth in nature, Morgoth still greatly feared Men, including those who served him, since they were such an anomaly in Arda. Nevertheless, most [[Warriors of Chaos|of evil's footsoldiers in the franchise who aren't Orcs/Goblins/Uruk-hai are corrupted humans]]. Their capacity for corruption has, in fact, given the race of Man something of a mixed reputation among Elves, who sometimes regard them as weak. Luckily, there's always an Aragorn or Faramir just waiting to prove them wrong.

=== Edain of the First Age and Outlaws ===
The Edain were the first three tribes to arrive in Beleriand and make contact with the elves. The Edain and their descendants were staunch allies of the elves and the forces of good, despite taking terrible losses during the first age. It should also be noted that, while the elves were always superior to men in beauty, craft and wisdom, the Elves and Edain were equals in strength and endurance, and an Edain could be mistaken for an elf from long distance.
* '''Beren Erchamion''' (the Renowned in Sindarin) - Member of House of Bëor and the protagonist of "Beren and Lúthien" story. Is notable for [[Awesome|stealing a gem from the crown of Evil Satan guy]] and marrying an Elven woman (the first time in the Legendarium). Beren’s ring of Barahir becomes the only relic of the Numenorean Royal family that survives into the Third Age, used to mark Aragorn’s royal lineage. Based off of Tolkien himself, which is a ''bit'' self-indulgent on his part, but most would say the man earned it.
* '''Hurin Thalion:'''(the Steadfast) - One of mankind’s bravest warriors and a close ally of Turgon of Gondolin. He and his men fought to allow Turgon to escape Morgoth, with Hurin being the sole survivor. [[Grimdark|Morgoth tortured Hurin for the location of Gondolin, but Hurin refused to betray them, so Morgoth cursed Hurin’s children and for Hurin to witness their doom from afar]].
* '''Turin Turambar''' (Master of Doom) - Member of House of Hador, son of Hurin, known to be '''THE''' Kullervo expy way before [[Elric]]. Went from great hero to [[meme|An Hero]] thanks to Morgoth placing a curse over his family. It is said that he will finally get his revenge against Morgoth in the Dagor Dagorath (Middle-Earth's Ragnarok), by being the one to finally killing him.
* '''Tuor Eladar''' (the Blessed) - Cousin of Turin and a great human hero during the war with Morgoth, chosen by the vala Ulmo to find Gondolin and warn its inhabitants that the city will fall. In spite of Turgon's reluctance to leave he was able to convince the city's population to listen. Also married an elf princess and is the grandfather of Elrond. His symbol is the Swan, a motif kept by his human descendants.
* '''The Gaurwaith''': The Gaurwaith were a band of outlaws who Turin came to be in control of. They died in the battle at Amon Rûdh after Mîm's betrayal (see Mîm's section for the cause and details). Androg, the one indirectly responsible for the betrayal through an accidental murder, sacrificed himself to save Turin, Beleg and his own son Andvir. After Beleg was accidentally killed by Turin and Turin's suicide, Andvir was the last survivor. He related the portions of Turin's tale relevant to him to the poet Dirhaval, whose account of Turin's life make the primary source of the story of Hurin's family.
===== Followers of Melkor in the First Age =====
*'''Ulfang the Black''': Chief of one of two Easterling tribes that migrated westwards and became friends with Elves. [[Erebus|Unlike his fellow chieftain Bór the Faithful however, he was a traitor serving Morgoth all along.]] [[Horus Heresy|And yeah, his sons and tribesmen basically gave the Dark Lord the second biggest army in his service (after Orcs, of course).]]

=== Númenóreans ===
The Edain were rewarded by the Valar after the first age with their own island nation and extended lifespan; by 25 their aging slows down dramatically and can live for potentially hundreds of years, though they also have the ability to die willingly; some do before senility and infirmity sets in, but later Númenórians held on to their lives as long as possible out of fear of death. The Númenórian empire grew powerful, establishing many settlements across Middle Earth during the Second Age. However, Númenor was destroyed following a split between its people, as explained below.
*'''Pre-Schism Edain''':
** '''Elros''', or '''Tar-Minyatur''' as a King (Kings of Númenor always took an Elven Regnal name, and when that stopped -see below- it meant the end of the human golden age), was the first ruler of Númenor and Elrond's brother who chose a human fate (but still got around 500 years to live). He is also an ancestor of Aragorn.
** '''Tar-Minastir''': the eleventh king who ruled during the War of the Elves and Sauron; Minastir sent an army to aid the elves, but because Numenor had no standing army at the time, it took weeks to prepare an army and they arrived too late to save Eregion. Tar-Minastir's rule marks the beginning of Numenor's shift, as now they had a taste for war and an envy of the elves, and started permanent settlements in the mainland. But things wouldn't fully go south until the rule of his grandson Tar-Atanamir, as seen below.
*'''The King's Men''' - the majority faction in Númenor. With the support of the royal house, they were an Imperialist, faithless (later satanic), human-supremacist faction that opposed the Valar and desired power, wealth, and immortality. They would fall to Sauron's lies, and become the Black Númenóreans after Númenor's destruction.
** '''Tar-Atanamir''' - Founder of the King's Men faction and thirteenth king of Númenor. Atanamir openly opposed the Valar and Elves and coveted their immortality. Because men were forbidden to sail west, he sent his men east to start colonies in Middle Earth and subjugate the people living there, extracting its wealth for his kingdom, though he didn't have the balls to stop using an Elven name, the arrogant egomaniacs that followed him dropped that.
** '''Ar-Pharazôn the Golden''' - Last king of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn usurped the throne from its rightful queen, his cousin Tar-Miriel, by [[Rape|a ''very'' forced marriage]]. Ar-Pharazôn defeated Sauron in open combat and brought him back to Númenor as a hostage to prove his might; this however turned out to be a trap, as [[Erebus|Sauron manipulated Pharazôn and the King's Men into believing that by worshipping Morgoth and making human sacrifices to him, they'd be able to challenge the Valar and take immortality for themselves, leading to Numenor's ruin]]. [[Fail|The moment Ar-Pharazôn and his men set foot on Aman, however, his armies became trapped beneath the Earth, Aman was permanently separated from the rest of the world, and Númenor sank beneath the seas as divine punishment]].
*'''The Faithful''' - the minority faction who still retained their devotion to Eru Ilúvatar and respect for the Valar and Elves. The Faithful became more oppressed over time by the King's Men.
**'''Tar-Palantir''' - The final Faithful king and second-to-last king of Númenor. Tar-Palantir tried his best to reverse the damage brought on by his predecessors, but it was too little too late, and much of Númenor's population opposed his policies. Tar-Palantir prophesied that the line of kings would end if the White Tree was felled; this came partially true, as the kings of Númenor ended with Ar-Pharazôn after he sacrificed the White Tree to Sauron, but a sapling of the tree was saved and the line of kings continued through the line of Elendil.
** '''Tar-Miriel''' - The daughter of King Tar-Palantir, and the last rightful heir of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn was like "fuck that, I want to be in charge" and married her to get the power [[Rape|against her will]]. Sadly dies when Númenor goes under. Actually gets to be in charge in [[Skub|Rings of Power]] as Queen-Regent [[Wat|while her daddy's locked up as a prisoner in his own kingdom.]] Blinded later on, which in conjunction with her foresight gives her an "Oracle of Delphi" feel.
**'''Amandil''' - The last Lord of Andúnië, which is a cadet branch of the Royal line and had been the centre of the Faithful presence in Númenor; though once Amandil had been close friends with Ar-Pharazôn, the lordship had later been revoked, thanks to the cunning of Sauron. When Amandil had learned of Ar-Pharazôn's plans of invading Aman, he with three other servants travelled to the West to warn the Valar and have mercy upon Númenor. Though, just in case that plan didn't work, he also warned his son and grandchildren to flee the island with as many of the Faithful as they could find. Nothing more is known of Amandil's fate. Just as likely he could have died instantly as he stepped into Valinor, as he could have been welcomed by the Valar and become immortal, like Tuor.
**'''Elendil''' - Son of Amandil, Elendil and his family did their best to preserve their ancestor's traditions, including saving a fruit of the White Tree of Kings (Nimloth) before it was destroyed. They organised the evacuation fleet to Middle Earth during the fall of Númenor, where they settled new Kingdoms in Gondor and Arnor. As the new High King, Tar-Elendil lead the Men of the West during the War of the Last Alliance, where he fell in combat against Sauron.

=== Gondorians, Arnorians and Black Númenóreans ===
Gondor and Arnor were kingdoms established by the Faithful after the fall of Númenor. Though Arnor in the North fell to Angmar, Gondor lasted through the entire Third Age and well into the fourth, becoming the ''Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor'' (since the heir to Arnor's throne, Aragorn, inherited Gondor's, what with his original kingdom being gone and all).
* '''Isildur''' - second High King of both Gondor and Arnor. Finally defeated Sauron in the War of Last Alliance, but became a victim of One Ring's power and tragically died in an Orc ambush, leaving the Ring without a host for a while. Body was never found. Becomes a Nazgul in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity, until Talion frees his spirit from Sauron's control...and then later takes his ring and his place as one of the Nine.
* '''Anarion'''- Isildur's brother, died before their father Elendil during the early months of the War of the Last Alliance.
* '''Gondorians''': The Dúnedain of the South. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor.
** '''Denethor II''' - Ruling Steward of Gondor at the beginning of the books. He originally was a great and capable ruler whose sanity was damaged by usage of the Anor-stone Palantir, as instead of helping in espionage against Sauron it showed [[Grimdark|the death of everyone and the triumph of evil]]. By the time of War of the Ring he is majorly depressed, almost insane, and highly incompetent. Finally snapping completely during the siege of Minas Tirith, he tries to immolate himself and his unfavorite son, Faramir, but only succeeds in the first of these.
** '''Boromir''': Elder son of Denthor and a great captain of Gondor (also daddy's favorite). Despite being a great warrior and leader, Boromir ultimately fell to the temptation of the Ring and tried to take it from Frodo. Despite this, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his life to serve as a decoy for Frodo and Sam, and acknowledged Aragorn as his kinsman and king. Somewhat infamous for being one of the only major heroes in the trilogy to die, and the only one of the Fellowship to die (well, him and Gandalf, but the latter got to come back). Remember kids, this ''isn't'' [[A Song of Ice and Fire|that other popular Fantasy series where good guys drop like flies]] (even though Boromir's actor would end up being in and dying in that too!).
** '''Faramir''': Younger son of Denethor and leader of Gondor's Ithilien Rangers. Faramir, while a skilled warrior, he had no love of war and preferred to study and sought council with Gandalf. Denethor disliked Faramir and even told him he would've preferred Faramir to die and Boromir to live. Despite the toxic family environment, Faramir became a worthy steward and passed the rule of Gondor to Aragorn. Like Beren, Tolkien has admitted to basing Faramir off of himself, though also admits that Faramir is more courageous than he.
** '''Prince Imrahil''': Prince of Dol Amroth, who aided in the defense of Minas Tirith and accompanied the Host of the West on the march against the Black Gate. Sadly reduced to a bit role in the movies proper (he isn't even mentioned by name in the films). Fun fact he is also the Uncle to Boromir and Faramir, with his sister Finduilas Marying Denethor.
* '''Arnorians''': The Dúnedain of the North. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor. After the fall of Arnor and its successor kingdoms, the Dúnedain chose to live in hiding rather than rebuild the kingdom, protecting the people from the shadows.
**'''Chieftains of the Dúnedain''':
**''' Aragorn II (Elessar Telcontar)''': Last Chieftain of the northern rangers. He was a member of the Fellowship and contributed to the defeat of Sauron. He later claimed the kingship of Gondor and restored Arnor, as the third High King, and married his Half-Elven kin Arwen. One of the main heroes of the franchise, and all-around badass, especially in the films where he does shit like cleave through Uruk-hai like they're made of twigs, throw torches in Nazgul's faces, and ''parry sword strikes from Olog-hai''. As an aside, while the movie's take on Aragorn is as well regarded as the rest of the films, it is still nevertheless the case that his characterization is different: Book Aragorn is more of a stoic, mythical figure similar to King Arthur, who accepts the call to become King of Gondor without any question and is more of a wise, benevolent fighter-King than Movie Aragorn, who is rejecting his destiny at first due to him having severe feelings of inadequacy and far less of a poetry-reciting philosopher (though still very selfless and noble). This was done in order to make the character more relatable to greater audiences, and is a rare case of a change to the source material that has generally been accepted by the die-hards.
*'''Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar''': Descendants of the King's Men from Númenor. The Black Númenóreans who did not directly serve Sauron in Mordor continued their predecessor's ways and held sway over Umbar and Harad as their own colonial possessions. Over time, the Black Númenóreans intermixed with the native population or died out altogether. Some Black Númenóreans were actually renegades from Gondor, who stole large parts of Gondor's fleet during a civil war and became pirates ever since. That Harad's people suffered under their control makes them throwing in with Sauron to get revenge deeply ironic, [[Just As Planned|but that's Sauron for you]].
**'''Mouth of Sauron''': The "not Nazgul" who serves as Sauron's herald and envoy (and implied to serve as a torturer as well). A Black Númenórean of great rank and magical might within Sauron's cult, who's served Sauron for so long, that he forgot his own name and only goes by the aforementioned title Sauron gave him. Puts the "ass" in "ambassador" and in the movies has one of the most dangerously toothpaste-neglected set of chompers in all of fiction. He has lived for a long time, having entered into Sauron's service when "the Dark Tower first rose again", which depending upon interpretation, either makes him an extremely long-lived Black Númenórean if said rising was post-Downfall of Númenor in Second Age 3320, or makes his servitude a much more reasonable 68 years if said rising was Sauron's return in Third Age 2951. Either way, his life was no doubt extended with foul sorcery and dark arts. Despite being a cowardly wuss in the books and getting beheaded mid-sentence without a fight in the films, he's playable in a few video games where he's actually allowed to kick ass for a change.

=== Men of Middle Earth ===
Men not related to the Númenóreans, but who also play significant roles in the world.
*'''Northmen/Men of the North'''
Men who live north of Gondor and west of the sea of Rhûn. This includes the Rohirrim, the Dalish, and the Woodsmen of Rhovanion. The Northmen are distantly related to the men of Gondor, as their ancestors came from the same group as the Edain.
**'''Rohan'''
***'''Eorl the Young''': Founder of Rohan.
***'''Helm Hammerhand''': The Ninth King of Rohan, during a time of protracted war against the Dunlendings as well as great civil strife within Rohan. Said strife came to a head when a rich noble named ''Freca'' with greatly mixed Rohirric and Dunlending ancestry claimed that his family line had a greater claim to the throne and attempted to coerce Helm to marry his daughter to his own son ''Wulf''. After a great many insults and arguments, Helm punched him so hard in the head that Freca was said to have died instantly from the sheer power of that single blow, which gave Helm his byname of '''Hammerhand'''. Helm declared Freca and his kinsmen to be enemies of Rohan, and they fled into Dunland, only to return four years later with a great host of their own led by Freca's son Wulf. Edoras and the Westfold was overrun by the invaders, and Helm and his sons were made to endure a long siege at the then-named Súthburg. By all counts he was an unstoppable warrior, capable of killing scores of Dunlendings with his bare hands and routing their lines with only a blow of his great war-horn. Such was the carnage he single-handedly inflicted that he was likened to a Snow-Troll. Thus was the fortress of Súthburg renamed into ''Helm's Deep'', with the keep where his war-horn was kept renamed to the ''Hornburg''.
****[[Skub|In the Shadow of Mordor continuity, none of the above happens exactly as it did, and instead he is nearly slain; presumably by Freca and his followers. Sauron and Celebrimbor give him a ring of power as he lies dying]], whereupon he becomes an angry, hammer wielding badass with a horned helmet. The corrupting nature of his Ring of Power however drives him to ever greater madness and rage, during one such moment of anger he strikes down his own daughter, and proceeds to kill his rival for the throne and everyone who tries to stop him, which completes his transformation into a Ring-wraith. [[A Song of Ice and Fire|So basically Robert Baratheon]] but a Nazgûl.
***'''Théoden''': King of Rohan. For a time he was possessed by Saruman the White as part of his ploy to conquer Rohan, but was freed by Gandalf. Théoden led Rohan in the successful defense against Isengard and rode to Gondor's aid in the battle of Pelennor Fields. Died in battle, but by all accounts was one hell of a leader (except in the Rankin Bass animated film, where his death sucks utterly).
***'''Théodred''': Son of Théoden. Théodred was killed by Saruman's forces, but Théoden didn't learn of this until after his mind was restored.
***'''Eomer''': Nephew of Theoden and heir to the throne, after Theodred's death. As such, Eomer became King after Théoden died at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
***'''Eowen / Eowyn''': Niece of Théoden and sister of Eomer. Eowen was a shieldmaiden and long desired to win glory in battle, but was often left behind as Théoden feared Rohan would be left leaderless. Eowen developed a crush on Aragorn, but when he refused her claiming she only loved the idea of him, Eowen went to Pelennor Fields in disguise and fought against the Witch-King of Angmar in one of the most badass duels in the whole book series. After the battle she met Faramir and settled down with him, claiming she no longer wished to fight, but to restore what had been destroyed in the war. Much like Princess Leia from Star Wars, one of ''the'' original badass ladies, nerd-crushes, and feminist role models in fiction all rolled into one. The PJ movies make her even ''more'' badass by having her bring down a Mumakil solo and holding her own against an army of Uruk-hai that get into the glittering caves at Helm's Deep in a deleted-but-mentioned-in-reference books scene.
***'''Grima Wormtongue''': Advisor to the king, but in reality a pawn of Saruman. After his treachery was discovered, Grima ran back to Saruman, where he was regularly abused and mistreated by him until Grima finally stabbed Saruman in the back (literally) during their misadventure in the Shire and was shot with arrows for his troubles; in the movies he instead dies at the Orthanc and it's Legolas who kills him. Widely recognized in-universe and out as a slimy prick and complete coward.
**'''Dale'''
***'''Bard the Bowman''': First king of the restored Kingdom of Dale. Bard was an accomplished bowman who could communicate with birds and had a black arrow that always reached its target. This combination helped him to kill Smaug after finding the weak spot on its chest. After the Master of Lake-Town disappeared, he became the new King.
***'''Master of Lake-Town''': An unnamed character who ruled Lake-Town during the events of the Hobbit. He was a greedy SOB who was only interested in his own power and wealth; he abandoned Lake-Town when Smaug attacked, then later ran off with a good chunk of the loot following the Battle of the Five Armies. Died alone and starving to death in the barren wilderness.
*'''The Wildmen of Dunland''': Primitive men who lived in the hills. Unlike the Northmen, the Dunlendings were much more hostile to outsiders, having been enslaved and abused by the conquering Númenóreans of the past. They allied with Saruman as he promised that their original lands would be taken from the Rohirrim and returned to them.
*'''Beornings and Woodsmen''': Named after their progenitor Beorn, a large wild man who could transform into a bear, an ability some of his descendants would share. They lived primarily in the lands between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood. While not overly friendly to outsiders, they were willing to aid the Free Peoples in the fight against Sauron and his minions. They are likely distant relatives of the Rohirrim. The Woodsmen were minor tribes of Edainic men who lived in Mirkwood and were allies of Thranduil and the Beornings. After the War of the Ring with Dol Guldur destroyed, the Beornings and Woodsmen reclaimed Central and Southern Mirkwood (now Greenwood) for themselves.
*'''Woodwoses/Druedain''': A name borrowed from medieval legend; they are wild men who live deep in the forest and remain isolated from the rest of men. They are short and stocky, so some confuse them for Dwarves, but they are definitively of mannish stock. Despte their reclusiveness, the Druedain had been allies of the Edain and their descendants as far back as the First Age, so they appear periodically among the free peoples. The Druedain helped the Rohirrim reach Minas Tirith by way of secret highway through the forest, so they could reinforce the city and avoid an ambushing army. Somewhat like a smaller version of a Sasquatch, or more size-accurate, the Orang-Pendak of Vietnam.
*'''Men of the East''': Commonly referred to as “Easterlings”, and come from the vast lands East of the Sea of Rhun.
**'''Rhun''': Men from the vast and uncharted lands of the East. Rhun is made up of many kingdoms and tribes, most of which are under Sauron’s dominion. However, it should be noted that one of the missions of the Blue Wizards was to raise a resistance in the lands of the East and South; we don’t see them in the stories because they likely were too busy fighting in their homelands. In the Peter Jackson films (and video games based off of them), they become basically Sauron's Chaos Warriors, being elite, well-armored humans who are fanatically devoted to the Dark Lord.
*'''Men of the South''': collectively referred to as “Southrons” and live south of Gondor and Mordor.
**'''Haradrim of Near Harad/Far Harad''': Tribesmen of the deserts and jungles of Harad. Like the Easterlings they lived under the sway of Sauron, but earlier in their history they also suffered under the dominion of the King’s Men of Numenor (who became the Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar); this would give them a pre-existing hatred for the descendants of Númenor. Also like the Easterlings, some had allied with the Blue Wizards and refused to fight for Sauron. The Southron's usage of heavy cavalry and scimitars at the battle of the Pelennor Fields suggests a Saracen-like aspect; which together with the inclusion of the tribal and African elements suggested by Sigelhearwan; implies that the Haradrim are organized in an empire-like fashion held together with tribal confederacies. Though in the books they initially keep fighting ''even after Sauron is beaten'' (which the men of Gondor and Rohan actually respect), they're implied to eventually live in peace with the other kingdoms of Men after Aragorn lets them have Sauron's now empty lands as their own.
**'''Men of Khand/Variags of Khand''': Of all the Men under Sauron’s rule we know about Khand the least, other than that they were horsemen who attacked Gondor, it is not even clear as to whether the nomadic horsemen natives and Variags are the same or separate peoples, although the etymology of the word ''Variag'' being derived from the Russian word for ''Varangian'' implies that the Variags are viking-like mercenaries in some fashion, and thus are separate (and possibly even foreign) peoples.

==Elves==
Elves are the first of Ilúvatar’s children (meaning they were created by him alone, without any help from the Valar). They are descended from three main tribes of people, listed below; the Teleri tribe was so large that it separated into several different groups, depending on how far they migrated from the Elves original homeland. Elves are immortal, but suffer from weariness if they remain in Middle Earth for too long, hence why nearly all ended up living in Valinor. Elves' spirits are bound to the world as well; when they die, either they reincarnate in Aman in the Halls of Mandos, or if they reject Mandos, they become disembodied spirits that haunt the land and are vulnerable to corruption by necromancers, especially Sauron. The nature of Elven spirits appears to affect marriages as well, as once they marry they never divorce, cheat or engage in polygamy as their very souls would rebel against the idea (except for that one guy but he was a prick). Elves are also immune to illness, but are more vulnerable to extreme distress, in some cases causing rapid aging or even death. Elves have skills and abilities that seem like magic to mortals, but to the elves it is little different than interacting with the natural world.

=== Vanyar ===
The first and smallest Elvish tribe; they never left The Undying lands to return to Middle Earth except during the battle at the end of the First Age where the Valar finally got sick of Melkor's shit, in which Vanyar forces marched to war for the only time in history, so we know the least about them.
* '''Ingwë:''' The Leader of the Vanyar, went to Aman during the great Elven Migration, stayed in Valinor and thusly became utterly irrelevant for the World's Story, even before the great Migration fully ended.
* '''Ingwion''': The only known son of Ingwë, and even then he is only known for commanding Valar ships that landed in the Middle Earth during the War of Wrath which means he got more done than daddy, though that's not saying much.
* '''Indis''': second wife of Noldor king Finwë, and the mother of all of his children barring Fëanor. She had a bad relationship with her step-son.

=== Noldor ===
The second tribe of Elves. They are great craftsmen and seekers of knowledge. Because if this, they were the only tribe that Morgoth was able to manipulate during his time on Aman, causing half of the Noldor to rebel against the Valar and live in Middle Earth in exile.
* '''Finwë Ñoldóran''' ('''Finu'''): The original leader of the Noldor and their first King. Generally a relaxed dude with the questionable fame of being the first being to be killed in the undying Lands, iced by the Big Bad himself, Melkor.
* '''Curufinwë Fëanáro''' ('''Fëanor'''): Finwë's most incredible son and second King. Unparalleled craftsman, he created the Silmaril, possibly the Palantiri and outstanding weapons as well. After Melkor stole the Silmaril, he unfortunately became a massive hothead, swore vengeance, and went on mad teamkilling rampage, effectiely doing an Elven Horus Heresy. Which pissed the Valar enough that they doomed all the Noldor who followed him to Middle Earth. Died in one of the earliest battles the Elves had to fight, though it took seven Balrogs to beat him down. He also renamed Melkor to Morgoth. Infamous in-universe and out as the guy who fucked everything up bad.
* '''Nelyafinwë Maitimo''' ('''Maedhros'''): The (nominal) third King of the Noldor and the eldest son of Fëanor. Sadly, wasn't as badass as his father and was captured by Morgoth before he managed to assume power. He spent several years in captivity before being rescued by his cousin, after which Maedhros did a controversial move and passed the crown to his cousin's father Fingolfin, [[RAGE|which was not approved by his younger brothers]]. After that he was reduced to a minor Elven princedom that hopelessly tried to oppose Morgoth, but at the end he gave into his Oath for the Silmarils, trying to steal one from Beren and Luthien's children; and later stole the other two from the Host of the West. Though he eventually repented and killed himself.
* '''Ñolofinwë Aracáno''' ('''Fingolfin'''): The first High King of the Noldor (in Middle-earth) and one that didn't lose power as fast. Followed his half-brother Fëanor to Middle-earth and founded one of the Noldor kingdoms there. After another battle with Morgoth's forces, he went to the Dark Lords massive Fortress by himself, yelling taunts and pounding on Morgoth's door so hard he had a Fear (3). Morgoth didn't even want to fight Fingolfin but couldn't weasel out of it in front of his underlings, and when he did finally come out the fight took hours and Fingolfin got seven wounds on him (that never healed) before dying. What a Chad.
* '''Arafinwë Ingoldo''' ('''Finarfin'''): The other half-brother of Fëanor, and the one that's less important. He set out with his brothers, but turned around and went back to Valinor, becoming the third King of the Noldor. He later commanded the Noldor that had remained at the War of Wrath, along with Ingwion.
* '''Kanafinwë Makalaurë''' ('''Maglor'''): The second son of Fëanor and a great singer, did the same evil shit as his brother Maedhros to get the Silmarils. While his brother sent himself into a hell, Maglor threw Silmaril that Eonwë gave him after Morgoth's defeat into the ocean. It is said he is still wandering the shores of the World regretting every decision he made.
* '''Telperinquar Kurufinwion''' ('''Celebrimbor'''): He ruled over an Elven kingdom of Eregion, which uncharacteristically was situated in the mountains and was a Dwarven ally. He is to blame for the creation of the Rings of Power and other fuckery in the Third Age (although to be fair Sauron deceived him).
** In the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games, he attempted to use the Ring against Sauron and was corrupted by it, [[Fail|with the predictable end results]]. Afterwards he became a wraith, who's bonding with Talion allows the latter to fight on after his apparent death, as well as keep coming back every time he's killed and just generally being a superhuman badass. Eventually convinces Talion to forge a ''new'' Ring of power that's intended to be a copy of The One Ring. Tolkien himself made clear that doing this would just result in another Sauron, and indeed Celebrimbor and Talion's plan ends in disaster and tragedy for both of them. Widely considered one of the best parts of the Shadow duology, especially thanks to Alistair McDuncan's god-tier voice acting.
* '''Findekáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Fingon'''): The second High King of the Noldor. He rescued Maedhros when he had been imprisoned. After inheriting the kingship, he and Maedhros planned to confront Morgoth with everything they had. Unfortunately it wasn't enough and Fingon ended up loosing his his head to Gothmog.
* '''Turukáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Turgon'''): The third High King of the Noldor and one who got to build Gondolin, where all the cool swords Orcrist, Glamdring and Sting are from. Had very strict views on immigration and even stricter ones on emigration. He died with his wonderful city.
* '''Artafindë Ingoldo''' ('''Finrod'''): Eldest son of Finarfin, king of Nargothrond and one of the big elven cave-dwellers. Helped a Human in his love-quest, which ended up being his demise.
* '''Artaresto Angarátowion''' ('''Orodreth'''): The nephew of Finrod. The resided in Minas Tirith and had become king of Nargothrond, after his uncle's death. He maintained his kingdom in secret from Morgoth and fought him in stealth, until he listened to Túrin. He died in open battle and the realm was destroyed in the process.
* '''Artanis Nerwen''' ('''Galadriel'''): Among the last survivors of the leaders original exiles who didn't leave until after Sauron's death. Never forgave Fëanor for being a creep, and in an insult to him she gave Gimli three strands of her hair after being asked for one, Fëanor having asked for one three times and being rejected each time. Galadriel is arguably the most powerful magic user in Middle Earth by the Third Age (she literally destroys Dol Guldur with a wave of her hand), being one of few elves still alive who came from Valinor and learned magic directly from Melian; however, the two parted ways when Melian learned of the Noldor’s role in the Kinslaying. Despite her image and reputation as the purest of the pure and one of Middle-Earth's "Big Good" characters, Galadriel in her youth was more prideful and fallible, and was unable to return to the Undying Lands until she was finally pardoned after the War of the Ring. Galadriel earned her pardon after resisting the One Ring when Frodo offered it to her; as her original failing was her joining Feanor's rebellion to satisfy her desire to rule her own kingdom, and instead accepting that the Elves’ time in Middle Earth was over. Even before learning magic from Melian, Galadriel had a special talent for knowing the minds and motives of others, which came in handy when Sauron in disguise came to deceive the elves.
* '''Artanáro Artarestowion''' ('''Gil-galad'''): The son of <s>Finrod</s> <s>Fingon</s> Orodreth. Cirdan's best friend, last High King of the Noldor, and the guy who got his face burned by Sauron.
* '''Earendil the Mariner''': The son of Tuor and his wife Idril, father of Elrond and Elros by his wife Elwing. Earendil was a half-elf who lived in the final days of the First Age; after his homeland of Gondolin was destroyed and his people scattered across Beleriand, his own family was nearly destroyed because his wife was in possession of one of the Silmarils and the sons of Feanor wanted it by any means. Earendil and Elwing were forced to flee, eventually sailing to Valinor to beg the Valar to intervene on behalf of elves and men. Earendil and his wife never returned to Middle Earth, but Earendil’s ship was blessed and made to fly, carrying the Silmaril on its prow and became the morning star. Earendil fought in the last battle of the War of Wrath, killing Ancalagon, the greatest of Morgoth’s dragons. As half eleven, Earendil and Elwing were given the choice of the fate of men, or the fate of elves. Earendil would’ve preferred to live as a mortal man, but chose the fate of elves with his wife.
* '''Elrond Half-Elven''': son of Earendil, and head of the House of Elrond. He was born toward the end of the First Age, having been witness to the final atrocities that sank Beleriend beneath the sea. While his brother Elros chose the fate of men and became King of Numenor, Elrond chose the fate of Elves and remained in Middle Earth, serving as herald and loremaster for Gil-Galad. After Gil-Galad's death in the War of the Last Alliance, Elrond took the Noldor elves that remained to Imladris, where they lived in peace and he served as an advisor to the other free peoples. Notably, Elrond did ''not'' take up the title of High King after Gil-Galad's death; while he was of royal lineage, its probable that Elrond didn't see any point since there was hardly a kingdom left to rule, and every single High King had met a grizzly demise beforehand.
* '''Glorfindel''': [[Aenarion|Legendary Elf warrior who died fighting a powerful demonic foe]], only to be resurrected later. Rode against the Nazgul during the Third Age to bring Frodo to Rivendell (Arwen takes over this role in the films, leading to Glorfindel getting cut entirely in one of the bigger changes made in the films).
* '''Arwen Undomiel''': Elrond's daughter and Galadriel's granddaughter (as Elrond's wife was Galadriel's daughter), she is the love of Aragorn's life. As such she decides to stay in Middle-Earth with him even though this ultimately results in her dying alone and unhappy. Barely a character in the books, she's fleshed out heavily in the films (even taking Glorfindel's place rescuing Frodo and sweeping away the Nazgul with water magic).

=== Teleri ===
The third and largest tribe of Elves. After the great migration to Aman, the Teleri mostly refers to the members of the tribe that reached Aman. The Teleri were the ones who had the misfortune of happening to be standing between Fëanor and Morgoth when the former went Sith Lord to get his stolen jewels back.
* '''Olwë'''
* '''Eärwen'''

=== Sindar ===
Members of the Teleri who reached Beleriand but stayed behind to wait for their king Elu Thingol, who had gone missing (he was in fact entranced at his wife to be). Unlike the rest of the Elves who stayed behind, the Sindar were far more advanced and powerful, because Elu had reached Aman before and taught them what he learned. As a result, Sindarin is the primary elvish dialect in Middle Earth.
* '''Elu Thingol''' ('''Elwë Singollo'''): The only Sinda to have ever seen the light of the Two Trees. He is King of Doriath, along with his wife Melian, and (self-entitled) Lord of Beleriand. Famous for having given Beren the quest of retrieving a Silmaril from Morgoth and for fostering Túrin Turambar. He had been capped by Dwarves, who wanted to keep the Nauglamir, which had the retrieved Silmaril in it, due to a payment dispute.
* '''Eöl Moredhel''' ('''the Dark Elf'''): Easily mistaken for an Avarin Elf of Teleri descent, but is in fact described as a Sinda and Thingol’s kinsman. Eöl was a master craftsman but also one mean SOB. His tribute to Thingol was the cursed black sword Anglachel (later reforged as Gurthang), which always brought misfortune to its owner and was a big part of Turin’s fall. Eöl also kidnapped and forcefully married Turgon’s sister Aredhel when she wandered into his woods, who bore him a son named Maeglin. When Maeglin and his mother fled to Gondolin, Eöl followed them there and demanded the king to return his wife and son. After Turgon denied his demand, Eöl tried to kill Maeglin with a poisoned javelin; but instead killed Aredhel, who flung herself in front of Maeglin. For the murder of the king's sister, Eöl was judged and thrown from the city's walls to his death.
* '''Lúthien Tinúviel''': Thingol's daughter and a stand-in for Tolkien's wife. Part of a power couple with Beren (himself a stand-in for Tolkien). As a beautiful Elf woman with light skin and black hair who marries a mortal man and then dies as a result, she's pretty explicitly the Arwen of her time. Fitting, as she is one of Arwen's ancestors.
* '''Elwing the White''': Granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien, wife of Eärendil, and mother of Elrond and Elros. Elwing inherited the Silmaril from her father Dior, but was forced to flee Doriath when it was destroyed. In the Moths of Sirion the dwealt and married Eärendil. She and her husband both fled Middle Earth entirely when the Sons of Fëanor later came looking for the Silmarils; as her husband had already left by ship to beg the Valar for aid, she jumped into the sea and was transformed into a swan, flying across the sea with the Silmaril to join her husband. Upon arrival in Aman, Elwing convinced her kinsmen, the Falmari, to aid the Hosts of Valinor in freeing Middle Earth (though they still didn’t participate in the war as they still hadn’t forgiven the Noldor for their part in the kinslaying). After the war, she and Eärendil were given the choice of the gift of elves or the gift of men; Elwing chose the gift of elves in honour of her grandmother.
* '''Círdan Ciryatan''' (The Shipwright): Master of Grey Havens and one of the three Elven Ringbearers (although he eventually gave his ring to Gandalf). He is insanely old (to the point that he is the only Tolkien Elf to have a ''beard'') and works as the overseer of Elven migration to Aman. Despite all of previously given information, he is not really relevant and barely appears even in Silmarillion. Sailed to Aman along with the very last Elves in Middle Earth.
* '''Mablung'''
* '''Beleg Cúthalion''': Beleg shared in the accursed fate of Turin, unwittingly causing the betrayal of Mîm due to the memories of the Petty-dwarves being hunted like animals. Beleg died at Turin's hand when he tried to wake Turin up and was struck down by the panicked Turin.
* '''Celeborn''': Galadriel's husband.
* '''Thranduil''': Second (and presumably last) king of Elven Mirkwood and the OG Fantasy Wood Elf ruler. Was bitter that his father died in the war with Sauron and due to that really haven't interfered in the Middle Earth politics before the War of the Ring, although he still helped some Dwarves to get to Erebor.
* '''Legolas''': Son of Thranduil and prince of the Woodland Realm. Legolas was sent as a representative for the Council of Elrond, eventually becoming one of the Fellowship of the Ring. Legolas became close friends with Gimli the dwarf - ironic since both their fathers had bitter enmity due to the events of the Hobbit - with both eventually leaving together for the Undying Lands after the death of Aragorn. One of the most iconic "archer heroes" in all of fiction, especially after the movies came out, though he can also hold his own in melee (with a single long knife in the books, with two of them in the movies and video games).

=== Nandor ===
Teleri Elves who diverted at the Misty Mountains during the migration to Aman. The Nandor became the '''Silvan''' Elves, aka Wood Elves, who eventually came under the rule of their Sindar kin.
* '''Haldir''': Marchwarden of Lothlórien, who alongside his brothers stumbled upon the Fellowship as they fled Moria. Unlike his relatives, he actually knew Westron and as such was able to help them reach Galadriel, and a little bit later helped them pack the boats for their journey south.
** In a major departure from the books, the movies had Haldir somehow also lead a troop of Galadhrim Warriors all the way from Lothlórien to Helm's Deep to assist in its defense during the Battle of the Hornburg.
* '''Nimrodel''': An ancient Elf-maid and the tragic lover of the last Lórien King Amroth. She was a bit antisocial and deeply mistrustful of the Noldor and Sindar Elves (with the exception of Amroth, of course), feeling that they brought nothing but war with them; a sentiment that was not factually incorrect, especially in the case of the Noldor. Nimrodel felt the awakening of the Balrog Durin's Bane and tried to flee her homeland, but was found by her boyfriend, who promised her life in Aman. On the road to Edhellond in Belfalas they accidentally separated, with the King boarding the ship and his love getting lost in the White Mountains. After a storm forced the Elves to leave the harbor, Amroth leapt overboard to go back and find her, but drowned. Nimrodel eventually found her way to Edhellond, but the last of the Elves and their ships had already left the ancient city, leaving it abandoned and her alone. Fucking hell.

=== Avari ===
Elves who refused the journey entirely. Mostly irrelevant.

== Dwarves ==
The Dwarves are sometimes referred to as the “Adopted children of Ilúvatar;” their forms were created by Aulë the Smith in his desire to have beings that he could teach his craft to, but because he didn’t possess the Secret Fire, he could not give them true life or free will. Ilúvatar, though disappointed by Aulë acting out of turn, took pity on Aulë’s creation and breathed life into them. However, he also put them to sleep since the elves were preordained to be the first-born children. Because the Dwarves were designed by Aulë and not Illúvatar, they have a few quirks to them compared to the other Children; they're extremely hardy and resistant to corruption, but also very warlike and aggressive, and were prone to pick lots of fights including with other dwarven houses. Also, they tended to suffer from population decline due to a lack of females. It is said that when the Dwarves die, their bodies return to the stone they were made and their souls are gathered to separate chambers within the Halls of Mandos; waiting for the Dagor Dagorath (Last Battle). After the Last Battle, the Dwarves would be hallowed by Eru and ordained to rebuild the world, along with Aulë.
===Dwarves of the First Age===
*'''Durin''' (the Deathless): The eldest of the seven Fathers of the Dwarves. He's founder of the royal House of Durin and is the ruler of the Longbeards. He awoke in Mount Gundabad and travelled southwards, along the Misty Mountains, until he saw a starry crown reflected on a pool upon his head. There he'd founded Khazad-dûm, greatest of the Dwarf mansions, and which would later be known as Moria. He lived for more than two-and-a-half thousand years, hence the title "The Deathless", until the ending years of the 1st Age. Yet even after his death, it's believed that Durin returns from the Halls and incarnates as a new King Durin (presumptively thanks to massive favouritism from Aulë). In later unpublished works, Tolkien may have retconned this instead to where Durin doesn't reincarnate so much as his body regenerates and returns to the world of the living anytime that Durin's Folk is without an heir. Thus Durin restarts the royal line, and that the other Dwarf Fathers have this ability as well.
*'''Telchar''': One of the most famous Dwarf smiths of all, whose craftsmanship could only be matched by Fëanor or equalled by very few on Middle Earth. He's the creator of Narsil, of the knife Angrist which Beren used, and of the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin.
====Petty-Dwarves====
The Petty-Dwarves were a sub-species of Dwarf who were cast out by the other Clans for wicked behavior. They were [[Grimdark|hunted like animals]] during their exile by Elves who weren't aware that other sentient species could exist. When the Elves made contact with other Dwarves, they stopped and left them in peace. By the late 400s of the First Age only three remained, a father and his two sons.
*'''Mîm's Family''': Mîm was the last Petty-Dwarf alongside his sons Ibun and Khîm, who presumably wouldn't be allowed to marry other Dwarves because of their exile, leaving them without potential spouses, and their mother's death sealed their fate. The three lived together in their fathers home in a hill/small mountain, Amon Rûdh and were left alone until, by misfortune, Túrin's gang of anti-Morgoth resistance outlaws happened upon Ibun and Khîm and one of them, Andróg, killed Khîm with a bow during the panic. Túrin repented of his followers mistake and offered their service to Mîm, who accepted and assisted Túrin with resisting Morgoth for a year. Unfortunately, Beleg's arrival pissed Mîm off, understandably so as a genocide victim meeting a warrior of the people who slaughtered all his kin, and arranged to betray the outlaws with an Orc warband, on the condition that they spare Túrin and Ibun and also leave Beleg for Mîm to kill. Andróg, mortally injured, scared Mîm off from the wounded Beleg, then sacrificed himself to repent of his accidental murder and to save Túrin, Beleg and his son Andvír. Ibun either died in the battle, or of some other cause before his father. Mîm then took Nauglamír in the ruins of Nargothrond, and held home and hearth there until 502 of the First Age, whereupon he was killed by Húrin, who saw him as partially responsible for his sons accursed life. Mîm's dying curse on the treasure doomed Doriath and King Thingol and caused the Second Kinslaying. Mîm's death rendered the Petty-Dwarves extinct.

===Dwarves of the Second Age===
*'''Narvi'''
===Dwarves of the Third and Fourth Ages===
Dwarves apparently peacefully went extinct after reclaiming all their lost homes and holds, with the possible exception of Gimli who was allowed into the Undying Lands and may had been given the immortality of an Elf.
*'''Gimli, son of Glóin''': Of the non-royal branch of the house of Durin. Generally recognized as '''''the''''' archetypal Dwarf hero in fiction, bar none. Fact is, if you see any Dwarf hero in a Fantasy work who uses an axe and isn't a magically powered Cleric-type, then that character is probably at least somewhat inspired by Gimli.
*'''Thrór''': Ruler of Erebor before it was taken by Smaug. After the great exodus of the dwarves, Thror attempted to retake Moria. Thror was killed by Azog, but was avenged by his grandson Thorin.
*'''Thrain II''': Son of Thror. Thrain was imprisoned by the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, later revealed to be Sauron, and had his Ring of Power stolen. He was discovered by Gandalf, and Thrain gave Gandalf the map and key to Erebor, dying shortly after.
*'''Dáin II (Ironfoot)''': Ruler of the Iron Hills; after the death of Thorin Oakenshield, he inherited rule of Erebor. He took an active part in the oft-forgotten northern theatre of the War of the Ring, but was killed at the gates of Erebor by a countless number of Easterlings.
*'''Thorin III (Stonehelm)''': Chronologically, the last known King Under the Mountain before Durin the Last. He rebuilt Erebor and Dale, helped Gimli settle the Glittering Caves in Rohan, and started a new campaign of mining Mithril in Khazad-dûm.
*'''Durin VI''': Famously known for having awakened up the Balrog that laid beep in Moria. Said Balrog slew many-a Dwarves and even Durin was killed. And so the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were forced out and went on a great exodus.
*'''Durin VII (The Last)''': The last reincarnation of Durin the Deathless, cleared out Moria and fully rebuilt the Dwarf kingdom. The Dwarves are strongly implied to have quietly died out some time after his death.
=====Thorin Oakenshield & Companions=====
*'''Thorin II (Oakenshield)''': Heir of Erebor and leader of the dwarves in exile. Thorin leads the quest for Erebor, eventually succeeding in retaking the kingdom from Smaug. However, he succumbs to dragon-sickness and very nearly goes to war with the Elves, but recovers from his madness long enough to join the battle against the Orcs outside the city gates. Thorin died in battle.
**'''Balin, son of Fundin''':cousin to Thorin and Dain. Balin served as Thorin's advisor during the Quest for Erebor, and later attempted to retake Moria with a small expeditionary force of Dwarves. Balin's fate was unknown until the Fellowship passed through Moria and discovered his dead body. According to Gloin, he was convinced by "whispers" to retake Moria despite the obvious dangers; its speculated that Sauron or his agents may have been involved as Erebor remained a target of interest after it was retaken."
**'''Glóin, son of Gróin''': Gimli's dad. One of the few real links between Hobbit and LoTR, as he was actually present at the Coucil of Elrond alongside his son.
**'''Óin, son of Gróin''': Glóin's brother. Died in Moria alongside Balin.
**'''Fili and Kili''': Thorin's nephews. Died in the Battle of Five Armies defending their relative. Yes, that's '''LITERALLY''' all of their character (at least in the books). Peter Jackson films flesh them out some, though as this entailed giving one of them a [[Rage|romance with a made-for-the-films character, many fans were not impressed]].
**'''Dori, Nori, and Ori''': Dori is a pessimistic yet strong (literally the strongest one in the team) and reliable one. Ori was killed by Durin's Bane. Nori is uhhh...
**'''Bombur, and cousins Bofur and Bifur''': Bombur is a fat one who is slow and complains a lot, but also gets his character development by being so traumatized from Mirkwood that he becomes a complete wreck of a... well, Dwarf. Latter two are irrelevant.

=====Other Dwarves=====
*'''[[Chaos Dwarves|Nauglath/Nauglir/Nornwaith]]''': The Wicked Dwarves of the East who had fallen under the Shadow, of which little is known about. Briefly encountered in the First Age by the freshly awoken Men, who could tell that they were of "evil mind" and distrusted them. May have existed in the Third Age as well, where they may have possibly made alliances with Orcs.

==Hobbits==
Hobbits appear to be a sub-species of human. Their origins are left deliberately vague since they were always meant to be an unremarkable people who did not take part in the great tales of the world, instead preferring to keep to themselves and living simple, peaceful lives. See [[Hobbits]] for more details.

* '''Bilbo Baggins''': The protagonist of the original Middle-Earth story. Starts out as a standard Hobbit (likes food and smoking pipes, not ambitious, deathly afraid of adventure, etc.) But Gandalf ropes him into the quest to Erebor, and he becomes the group's "burglar", making him the Ur-example of the "Halfling Thief/Rogue member of an adventuring party". Found the One Ring and managed to "win" it from Gollum by outwitting him in a game of riddles. Though not a fighter himself, his actions were still instrumental in helping the Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home from Smaug and stopping the forces of the Necromancer after. By the time of the War of the Ring, he retires to Rivendell and then accompanies the Elves on their journey to the West. The One Ring is thus inherited by...
** '''Frodo Baggins''' ...Bilbo's nephew. Main hero of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and initially a total nice guy. So nice, in fact, that he's able to resist the One Ring's corrupting influence longer and better than most. This makes him "the Ringbearer", and he is tasked with being the one to take the One Ring to Mordor to destroy it. Sadly, while Frodo means well, he's also as useless in a fight as one would expect a guy who's lived a pastoral existence his whole life to be. This not only requires the other good guys to bodyguard him throughout his adventure, but also results in him being (in order) stabbed by the Witch-King, stabbed by a Troll, stabbed by Shelob's stinger (notice a pattern?), captured by Orcs, and finally getting a finger bitten off by Gollum. Suffice to say, after being Middle-Earth's biggest punching bag for so long, Frodo is so shell-shocked that he realizes he can no longer stay in Middle-Earth, and so after helping to kick Sharkey (AKA Saruman) and his gang out of the Shire, joins his uncle Bilbo in sailing to the West with the Elves, bringing his story to a bittersweet close.
* '''Smeagol / Gollum''': Found the One Ring alongside his brother long after Isildur's death. Sadly, where Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam were all able to resist the One Ring to varying degrees, Smeagol...didn't. Instead, [[Fulgrim|he succumbed to corruption and killed his brother]]. From there, the One Ring morphed him into a "not-Goblin" monster who lived a tormented existence for centuries...until Bilbo swiped the Ring from him. By the time Gollum found the One Ring again, it was now in Frodo's possession, and for a time Gollum agreed to serve Frodo and Sam. Gollum swears his loyalty upon the Ring itself, which Frodo warns him repeatedly that the Ring itself would punish him by casting him into the fire if he ever betrayed Frodo- yes this is foreshadowing, and its probably why it was cut from the films, so as not to basically spoil the ending. Unfortunately, whether because his dark side is just too strong or because of a Faramir-caused misunderstanding (depending on the version of the story), Gollum regresses to evil and betrays Frodo and Sam to Shelob. [[Fail|This does not actually let him get the Ring back though]]. Ultimately meets his end, perhaps fittingly, where his "precious" was first forged; he bites the Ring off of Frodo, but then falls into the lava below shortly after (in the books he falls on his own, in the movies, he's falls over while struggling with Frodo). Widely hailed as one of fiction's great tragic villains, and, since the movies, a veritable fountain of memes.
* '''Samwise "Sam" Gamgee''': If there's a candidate for main hero of the Lord of the Rings besides Frodo himself, it would be Sam, his best bro, gardener, bodyguard, and hypercompetent sidekick all rolled into one. As the guy who sticks with Frodo no matter what Middle-Earth throws at them, resists the One Ring's corruption ''even better than Frodo does'', and able to face down threats many Men would balk at (like Shelob), Sam is acknowledged in-universe and out as the greatest Hobbit to ever live. So in summary, [[Grey Knights|incorruptible, loyal, and better than you]].
* '''Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck''' and '''Peregrin "Pippin" Took''': Frodo's cousins and closest friends besides Sam, and basically the "comic relief duo" of the story, though they do both know how to get serious when needed. Among other things they help get the Ents to join the War of the Ring and kick Saruman's teeth in and partake in many of the big battles of the War of the Ring. Merry helps Eowyn kill the Witch-King (albeit by stabbing him in the back while he'd distracted), and Pippin [[Slayers|''kills a Troll'']]. They also each get to don the attire of one of the great kingdoms of Men (Rohan for Merry and Gondor for Pippin).
* '''Fredeger "Fatty" Bolger''': Frodo's other friend, but never makes an appearance in the movies. Fatty gets a bad rap for not wanting to leave with Frodo and go through the Old Forest, but he still had a part to play in staying behind and convince people that Frodo still lived in the Shire. When the Nazgul arrived, he raised the Horn of Buckland to drive them off, and later aided Frodo in the Scouring of the Shire. On a darker note, after being locked away by the ruffians to starve, no one called him Fatty anymore.
* '''Farmer Maggot''': Local farmer...or so he seems. In fact, he is one of the few Hobbits in the Shire who not only knows about what goes on in the greater world, but actively works in conjunction with Gandalf as needed to ferry and receive information. [[Awesome|So basically a Hobbit Secret Agent]].
* '''The Sackville Baggins''': Proof that even Hobbits can be unlikable assholes, the Sackville-Baggins are relatives of Frodo who neither he nor anyone else particularly like. Basically a couple of obnoxious gold-diggers who Frodo sells the Shire to before heading off on his journey (an action he doesn't enjoy more than anyone else). If there's any nice thing that can be said about them, it's that they ''do'' later assist in the ejection of Sharkey and his goons from the Shire, showing they, like all Hobbits, can be courageous when it matters most. Absent in the movies, but unlike Glorfindel and [[Tom Bombadil|a certain someone]], most aren't likely to mind too much.

==Valar, Maiar, and anything in between==
[[Ainur|Have their own page]].

==Orcs==
'''Orcs/Goblins:''' See [[Orc#Tolkien|Orcs]]. Though not what you see with [[Stormtrooper|Imperial Stormtrooper variants]], they still come in a few varieties:
* '''Snaga''': The Black Speech word for Slave or Servant. This contemptuous term is used amongst the Orcs of Mordor and Isengard to refer to the "lesser" AKA regular Orcs, with the implication that they are only fighting for their master because they are being forced to.
* '''[[Black Orc|Uruks]]:''' A superior breed of Orcs created by Sauron in the middle of the Third Age through either eugenic practices or dark sorcery, most likely both. Uruks are resistant to sunlight (or at least far more able to tolerate it), and are taller and stronger than their lesser kin, though possibly only almost as tall or strong as Men. ''Uruk'' is the Black Speech word for ''Orc'', which opens up a whole mess of questions as to why regular Orcs are not called Uruks while these orcs of superior breeding are, although it could simply be a matter of social hierarchy given the existence and roles of ''Snaga'' within Orc society.
**'''Black Uruks:''' Another name for the Uruks of Mordor who served Sauron. May possibly have been a title only granted to the cream of the crop of Uruks, being those were of the strongest breeding and greatest devotion to Sauron, and were possibly further augmented by being "infused" with Sauron's will or dark sorcerous enchantments.
**'''Uruk-Hai:''' Saruman's take on the above project, with these Orcs being the product of either crossbreeding lesser Orcs with Goblin-Men or crossbreeding Goblin-Men with Men, all with his own sorcery added to the mix. This experiment is said to been even more successful than Sauron's own, with the Orcs produced being as tall and strong as Men and very-resistant/tolerant of sunlight. The etymology of their name has some interesting implications, as said above, ''Uruk'' is Black Speech for Orc, while ''Hai'' is the suffix for "''Folk''"/people, with the result being "Orc-Folk". By calling themselves this, the Uruk-Hai are saying that they are the Orc-People, while all the other Orcs are merely just Orcs and not worthy of being called a people, [[Nazi|which sounds very master-race-like doesn't it?]] In-universe, the other Orcs who interacted with them hate and distrust the Uruk-Hai of Isengard for placing themselves above them and looking down on them, which lends credence to this implication.
* '''Goblin-Men/Half-Orcs''': A hybrid of lesser Orcs and Humans. Look mostly human, albeit rather ugly and "sallow-skinned". Often serve as spies for their full-blooded kin, but most seemed to exist as outlaws and bandits, possibly being the descendants of fully Human criminals and outcasts who shacked up with the Orcs who lived in the Misty Mountains and other isolated areas. Half-Orcs may have been a distinctive breed apart from Goblin-Men, but the differences between the two are never made clear. Very, very minor part of the lore, and you hardly ever see them outside of the books proper.
* '''Mountain Orcs/Goblins:''' Orcs that live in the Misty Mountains and other northern mountain ranges. Largely left to do their own thing, they mug random passersby and launch raids against human settlements. Looked down on by Mordor Orcs and Uruk-Hai as being a bunch of feral tribals, who in turn look down on them for being "slaves to the Shadow" even though they are quick to bend the knee when emissaries from Mordor come calling. Sometimes called Goblins due to linguistic shenanigans, but either way they are the same size and "race" as other normal Orcs, although many extra-canonical works (including the movies and the video games based off of them), tend to call Mountain Orcs "Goblins" and portray them as being the smallest of the Orc breeds, distinct from "regular" Orcs.
* '''Snufflers''': A race of small, darkfurred orcs with big nostrils who were used like humanoid hunting hounds by their larger cousins. May have simply been a mutation or breedable trait rather than an actual sub-race. Never seen or mentioned outside of the books, so they're a concept that didn't catch on with most folks.

Similarly, while they get less attention than the Free Peoples, there are still some named Orc/Uruk-hai characters in the franchise:

* '''Azog the Defiler''': An Orc Chieftain of Moria prior to the events of The Hobbit. He murdered the Dwarven King Thrór, and had the gall to say that he executed him for "trespassing" in Moria. He beheaded Thrór, branded his own name on his forehead in Dwarven Runes, and even dismembered his corpse after insulting Thrór's companion Nár and throwing a small bag of gold coins to him. This event started the ''War of the Dwarves and Orcs'', which ended when Dáin II Ironfoot slew Azog at the Battle of Azanulbizar. Azog was succeeded by his son Bolg.
** The Peter Jackson Hobbit movies had him survive his canon death so as to effectively become the main villain of the trilogy. [[Rage|Most fans were not impressed]].
* '''Bolg''': Bolg, son of Azog, was an Orc Chieftain who led a coalition of Orcs during the time of The Hobbit. Vengeful over his father's death at the hands of the Dwarves, he rallied the Orcs of the Misty Mountains along with the Orcs of Goblin Town at Mount Gundabad, and along with a host of Wargs, marched them to battle at Erebor for the Battle of Five Armies. Bolg was killed in battle by Beorn, who had taken the shape of a bear.
**In the Hobbit Trilogy, Bolg is demoted to a second-in-command due to dad still being alive, and Legolas kills him instead after a battle that [[Wat|involves him defying gravity.]]
* '''Uglúk''': An Uruk-Hai of Isengard who led the company which attacked the Fellowship at Amon Hen and captured Merry and Pippin. After being harried and encircled by Riders of Rohan under Éomer's command, Uglúk and his entire company were slain in battle, with Uglúk being personally killed by Éomer in a sword-fight.
* '''Gothmog''': Only mentioned briefly in Return of the King and no other description given than "Castellan of Minas Morgul", he took command over Mordors force that was still besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. The reason he is listed here is because Peter Jackson made him a heavily scarred Orc in the movie adaptation, the books never mention his race. Some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that he was actually one of the Nazgûl.
* '''Grishnákh''': An Orc Captain of Mordor who led his own raiding party of Mordor Orcs in search of the Fellowship. He crossed paths with Uglúk's company in Rohan and tried to intimidate him into turning over Merry and Pippin to his custody, but was unable to do so and lacked the numbers to overtake the individually superior Uruk-Hai. He attempted to depart to the east, but was driven back towards Uglúk's company by the encircling Riders under Éomer, and thus made his last stand together with Uglúk's company near the eaves of the Fangorn Forest.
* '''Gorbag''': A Black Uruk Captain of Mordor who personally served the Nazgûl in Minas Morgul. He; together with Shagrat; found a paralyzed Frodo while on patrol near Cirith Ungol. He was rather observant and wily for an Orc, and was able to deduce that Frodo was not alone in his trespassing and was merely paralyzed by Shelob instead of dead. He attempted to steal Frodo's mithril shirt for himself, but in doing so provokes a fight with Shagrat, which in turn sparks a small insurrection which pitted Gorbag's patrol against Shagrat's garrison. After shanking Shagrat and failing to finish him off with a broken spear, he is killed and trampled by Shagrat. In the movies, it's Shagrat who tries to take the shirt and Gorbag who is loyal to Sauron, and Sam kills him instead.
* '''Shagrat''': A Black Uruk Lieutenant of Mordor who commanded the garrison of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Shagrat disagreed with Gorbag about what to do with Frodo, and tensions between him and Gorbag's troops sparked a small insurrection. After slaying Gorbag and defeating his underlings, Shagrat took Frodo's mithril shirt and journeyed to Barad-dûr. After delivering the mithril shirt and news of the incident at Cirith Ungol, he was executed by Sauron. In the movie, he's the one who tries to take the shirt for himself, but otherwise presumably dies in the same way.

==[[Dragons]]==
The classic, archetypal dragon. Created by Morgoth in the First Age as his most powerful agents. Sub-Types include:
*'''Cold-drakes''': Lesser Dragons who are unable to breath fire, but they are still a couple tons of muscle and scales and are more numerous than the proper Fire-drake Dragons. Those that remain live in the frozen wasteland of Forodwaith in the desolate north of Middle Earth, although even then they still fuck with the Dwarves who lived in the Grey Mountains, even managing to infest the valley of the Withered Heath.
*'''Sea-serpents''': Also known as Fish-dragons, little is known about this particular breed of dragons except what they were called by, and that Morgoth had also created them. It can be devised that they were either intended to fight Cirdan and the Elven ships in Beleriand; to battle the Host of the West, which would have to cross the ocean; to contest with Ulmo, just as the winged-dragons contested with Manwë and his eagles; or some combination of these possibilities.
*'''Spark-dragons''': Sometimes known as Shock-dragons. Nothing is known about them save for this Elven nomenclature.

As for named Dragons of note:

* '''Glaurung''': The Father of all Dragons, and a [[Nagash| thoroughly sadistic prick]] whose main claim to infamy is hypnotizing and cursing Turin into marrying and knocking up his own sister for sick kicks before his death. He is slain by Turin's cursed sword, Gurthang, but gets the last laugh by revealing Turin's marriage is incestuous with his dying words.

* '''The Fire-drake of Gondolin''': An unnamed Dragon that partook in the Sacking of Gondolin. Big enough to carry ''multiple Balrogs'' on its back. Its physiology and its being unleashed on Gondolin alongside the Balrogs suggests it may have been meant to be Glaurung's replacement, but it too was presumably eventually slain (although its death is never outright shown).

* '''Scatha the Wyrm''': So named for his long, serpentine body, he was a treasure-hoarder like Smaug. Got killed by an ancestor of Eorl the Young named Fram after the local men and Dwarves got sick of him stealing from them.

* '''Gostir''': This dragon is only known by name and was one of Morgoth's dragons. Nothing else is written about him, not even what kind of dragon he was! However, considering that ''Gostir'' is Sindarin for "Terrible Sight", he must have been either one extremely ugly or especially scary-looking dragon. Alternatively, if you interept the "thîr" comprisant component of his Sindarin name to refer not to his face, but instead his expression as per one of the alternative definitions of that word; then Gostir might have been a dragon that had an especially potent hypnotic or mesmerizing stare like that of Glaurung.

* '''Ancalagon the Black''': Morgoth's ultimate Dragon, he saw action during the epic War of Wrath and fell during the battle despite initially [[Awesome|beating back the entire host of the Valar]]. Also one of ''the'' biggest fucking Dragons in all of fiction, as multiple "Dragon size comparisons" on the internet have shown. Seriously, this guy was the size of ''mountains'', and his death destroyed some too when he fell from the sky. How in the heck the good guys were ever able to beat Morgoth with this dude on his side is anyone's guess.

* '''Smaug''': The last, and by far the most famous, of all the Middle-Earth Dragons, he lived into the Third Age where he took over Erebor, slaughtered the Dwarves there, and helped himself to their treasure. He lorded over the mountain and its hoard for many years until a company of Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield and aided by Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey finally coaxed him out of his lair, leading to his eventual death when Bard the Bowman shot an arrow that hit him in his one weak-spot. Probably the single most iconic part of The Hobbit, and a highlight of both movie adaptations (yes, even the widely disliked Hobbit trilogy).

==Other Creatures==
'''[[Trolls]]''': Made by Morgoth "in mockery of the Ents", Trolls are giant and stupid creatures often used by the orcs as warbeasts. Like the Orcs themselves, some specially bred Trolls are called "Olog-Hai" and are used as especially dangerous shock troops. Certain breeds, called "stone trolls," will turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.
*'''Olog-Hai''': Sapient trolls who were the troll equivalent of Uruk-Hai.
*'''Half-trolls of Far-Harad''': A possibly mythical race of allegedly half Troll and Men crossbreeds. The confusion is due to them only being referenced a single time within canon at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where the warriors of Far Harad who fought for Sauron were likened to "Half-trolls" and described as being rather large and having "black skin with white eyes and red tongues". May have just been African-type warriors, but the fact that they were described as having "white eyes and red tongues", suggests that they were not actually normal Men, and instead [[Salamanders (Chapter)|Salamander-like]] giants with pitch-black skin and blank, pupil-less white eyes and scarlet red tongues. Alternatively, they COULD have been actually half-man, half-troll, Norwegian myth had that as an explanation for people who were especially ugly hermits or mighty yet ugly warriors. The warrior culture of the Far Harad tribals could view the jungle trolls as virile symbols of barbaric power and Savage Fertility, resulting in zulu-looking men and women boning wild trolls in the jungle, resulting in these bestial half-kin.
*'''Frost Trolls''': A large, shaggy breed of furred trolls native to the far north. Very minor part of the lore, with even more video games and other expanded material not using them.
*'''Ettens''': Another name for Trolls, in the same sense that Goblin is another name for Orcs. Namesake of the Ettenmoors, as Trolls used to infest the region during the time of the Witch-realm of Angmar. "The Etten" was the disguise of an Orc and Troll wearing the same costume to disguise themselves as a massive mutant Troll warlord in the Shadow of War game, so in that version of Middle Earth, Ettens could refer to the more popular pop culture version as two-headed trolls/giants with orcish blood popularized in D&D.

'''[[Treant|Ents]]''': Tree-herders, created by Yavanna to protect the forests. The Ents are extremely old, perhaps the only beings that can rival elves in age. They speak their own unique language that sounds like creaking wood, and are very slow and deliberate in their actions. The Ents are divided into males and females, but by the Third Age, the Entwives have disappeared, leaving the Ent race to eventually vanish.

'''[[Werewolves]]''': Fearsome wolves possessed by evil spirits, created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age, but have lingered on throughout the following ages. Generally associated with Sauron, who is considered the master of all Werewolves and could also shapeshift into Middle-Earth's biggest one.

'''[[Vampires]]''': Either possibly humanoid bats or just really large sapient and malevolent blood-drinking bats created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age. Very little is known about them. Associated mainly with Sauron, who took the form of one on at least one occasion to escape from Huan, and because the only named Vampire (Thuringwethil), was a servant of Sauron.

'''Nameless Things:''' Things without names, of course. Or much description for that matter. Said by Gandalf to be older than Sauron and live deep beneath the Earth, such that even the Dwarves have never encountered them. Gandalf encountered them in passing while he fought Durin's Bane deep in the tunnels of the Earth after he fell from the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, but even then he refuses to "darken the light of day" with a description of them. Tolkien makes the inference that because these Nameless Things are nameless, that makes them especially dreadful and evil, though they're also largely unconnected with the main conflict that plays out in the story, and exist mostly to add to the world's mystery, as not all dangerous and terrible things are under the Dark Lord's control. They seem rather [[Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] in their description. Various types of Nameless Things were featured in the Lord of the Rings MMO, including one that was infecting orcs with a parasitic fungus like the Cordyceps strain from The Last of Us to turn them into its own army

'''Mumakil''': Giant elephant-like creatures from Far Harad, used by the Southrons as warbeasts much in the same way as war elephants of ancient times were used.

'''Great beasts/Great beasts of Gorgoroth''': Large beasts of burden used in Mordor. Not described in any detail at all, except that they were used to pull the battering ram Grond during the Siege of Minas Tirith. Are shown in the game "Gollum" as ornery, rhino-like creatures used as beasts of burden by the Uruks.

'''[[Undead]]''': exist in various forms and are specific in how they come about. The most iconic are the Nazgul, or ring-wraiths. Wraiths are a special class of undead that are apparently created and controlled by Sauron when he enslaves a mortal being to his will, principally through the life-extending rings of power. Magic is used to bind the wraith's invisible flesh to their spirit, and it is only with special magic weapons that they can be killed (or the One Ring is destroyed). Next are ghosts, as seen with the Oathbreakers. Because they have no physical presence, ghosts cannot actually interact with the mortal realm. Normally, human spirits leave Arda altogether upon death, but the Oathbreakers are a special case because of the nature of their curse. Illuvatar doesn't allow their spirits to leave Arda until their oaths are fulfilled. Lastly, you have the Barrow-Wights, which are described as dead bodies inhabited by evil spirits; its suggested that these evil spirits are the souls of dead elves (who didn't go to the Halls of Mandos) that were captured by Sauron and enslaved to his will.

'''Caragors''': Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive, being basically bigger, nastier Wargs. Devs even said they're to a Warg what a lion is to a wolf.

'''Graugs''': Also a Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive. Large, ugly giant monsters big enough to literally eat trolls for breakfast, but can be mounted by Talion, at which point he can basically use them like a [[Awesome|fantasy version of King Kong in New York City]]. Their full name is "Olog-Graug", which would indicate they are actually some sort of enormous, feral troll, which would mean they're cannibals.

'''Creatures of Myth''': These creatures are likely fictional, as they are only referenced in poems, verse, song, or story. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't actually real. Tolkien did like to keep an air of mystery about it.
*'''Were-Wyrms''': Giant Sandworms like something out of Dune or Tremors. Possibly mythical, as they were only referenced offhandedly in The Hobbit, in a line that suggests they are something of a folktale. Showed up in the third Peter Jackson Hobbit movie. Older media portrayed them as a form of wingless, legless dragon.
*'''[[Ogres]]''': In-between Orc and Troll in Size, probably mythical and in the same circumstances as the Giants given that they were only mentioned in The Hobbit as well. May also have just been another name for Trolls. Three of them were among Azog's horde in the Hobbit movies during their assault on Laketown, and Games Workshop included models of them for their game.
*'''Giants''': Huge humanoids of myth. Only referenced in passing through tales of folklore, but did make an appearance in The Hobbit, where "stone-giants" were described as throwing rocks at each while the Thorin's party attempted to passed through the Misty Mountains. That Giants did not appear or were explicitly referenced after The Hobbit suggests that they were an early idea which was dropped from the greater canon when Tolkien consolidated it with the writing of the main series.
*'''Turtle-Fish''': Giant Snapping Turtle sea monsters. Pretended to be islands before sinking when prey got off their boats and explored their shell, before consuming the drowning sailors. Mentioned only in verse within The Hobbit.
*'''Glowworms and Great glow-worms''': Bioluminescent worms of myth said to "creep along the Path of Dreams". Only mentioned in early versions of the legendarium.
*'''Badger-Folk''': Upright walking sapient badgers, skepticism is required due to this being told as part of a story by Tom Bombadil.
*'''Lintips''': Small, mousey-smelling creatures from the Moon which rode down to Middle-Earth on a moonbeam. Another tall tale from Tom Bombadil.
*'''Mewlips''': Evil, amphibious creatures that prey on travelers in the Long Marshes. Possibly fictitious, or misidentified orcs. Some older LOTR RPG materials described them as some form of ghoul-like aquatic undead. Could also be some sort of subspecies of Orc which overcame their dislike of water to become something akin to [[Koalinth|Koalinths]].

==Items of significance==
We're kind of bloating the definition of "character" here, but there are quite a couple of items in Middle-Earth that might as well be characters since Tolkien assigns a great deal of significance to them.

*'''Silmarili''': The 3 Silmarils were made by Fëanor using the lights of the Two Trees of Valinor (Telperion and Laurelin). These jewels were so beautiful and powerful that the Valar believed the fate of the entire world were bound by them. Additionally, they were capable of making the wielder and the land the fairest of all the world. When Melkor first saw them, it was his main desire to seize them; and when he eventually stole them he burned his hand in the process (since the gems tend to burn unhallowed flesh). The theft of the Silmarils would cause a [[The Silmarillion|chain of events which would cause a lot of destruction, betrayal and death]]. Fëanor and the majority of the Noldorin Elves would pursue Melkor(now called Morgoth) into Middle-earth, and for the next solar centuries they would attempt to reclaim the Silmarils. However, by the ending decades of the First Age, only 1 Silmaril would be retrieved and most of the Elf lords that were related to the quest had died. When Morgoth was at last defeated and banished, two of the sons of Fëanor took the two remaining jewels for their own. One of them threw himself into a fiery chasm with the gem, whilst the other threw it to the sea; the last Silmaril was forever worn by Eärendil, as he roamed the sky like a star.
*'''Rings of Power''': The titular magical rings. There are 20 in total: 3 Elven Rings, 7 Dwarven Rings, 9 Human Rings and the Master Ring. The Rings were created as incredibly powerful magical artefacts by the Elven smith Celebrimbor in Eregion, intended to preserve the world and increase the wisdom and abilities of the wearer. However, this intended purpose was corrupted by Sauron who helped Celebrimbor in the creation of the Dwarven and Human Rings. Sauron intended the Rings to be conduits through which he could control the races of Middle-Earth via binding them all to his Master Ring. The Elven Rings stand out because they were created last and without Sauron's help and therefore remain untouched by his corruption (their power still hinges on the One Ring, though). Tolkien kept the description of what the Rings actually ''do'' very vague, from what we could gather from the Elven Rings, they probably all intended to fulfil its wearers deepest desires and guide their people to greater wisdom and understanding of the world. The Elven Rings were not used until Sauron was vanquished for the first time in the battle of the Last Alliance. By the time of the third age, their keepers were Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf. Galadriel used the power of her Ring to preserve a vision of Valinor in Lothlórien and keep evil out of the forests (to the point that Orcs literally and figuratively could not enter it), what Elrond and Gandalf did with theirs is left to interpretation. The Dwarven Rings are implied to be the main source of their legendary riches with the side-effect that it made them really greedy, awakening the Balrog of Moria and attracting Smaug to Mount Erebor; the Dwarven rings were eventually destroyed or claimed by Sauron. Of the Rings of Men, we know next to nothing, except that their wearers are now the Nazgûl. The Master Ring has the power to dominate the other ringbearers and is strongly implied to be a sentient being of some kind. It radiates a strong allure to anyone who sees it, to the point that people find themselves unable to let it go once they have it (also why Bilbo giving it up is such a testament to his willpower; he was literally the only being in Middle-Earth up to his time who had the Ring and gave it up willingly).
** '''The New Ring''': Exclusive to the Shadow of Mordor continuity. Forged by Celebrimbor's wraith with help from Talion for the purpose of beating Sauron at his own game. Tolkien actually said that doing this would just create another Sauron, and sure enough, Talion's use of The New Ring doesn't end well for him at all. Appearance wise, it's basically a palette swap of the One Ring, being silver with glowing blue runes instead of gold with glowing orange ones.
*'''Lesser Rings''': created before the Rings of Power by Celebrimbor and his smiths as practice. As the name implies, their powers are significantly more mundane. Gandalf had originally believed that the ring Bilbo found was one of the lesser rings since it was plain and didn't seem to confer many special abilities. Some of them likely were in Sauron's possession and given to his commanders.
*'''Palantiri''': The seeing stones. There were seven in total that Elendil brought over from Númenor when he landed in Middle-Earth. They were perfect spheres made of black stone and rumoured to have been created by Fëanor himself. The Palantiri were the key to the early dominance of the Dúnedain in Middle-Earth; with them, they could keep a watch over large swaths of the world and communicate with their kin in far away lands. Using a Palantir is a daunting and esoteric task that was not well understood even when knowledge of the existence of the stones was relatively common (emphasis on relative, the existence of the Palantiri was one of the closest held secrets of the Dúnedain) and as a result, the mileage one could get out of them varied wildly, generally speaking, they responded best to people the stones thought were their rightful owners. Sauron and Saruman famously were frustrated with their inability to utilise their respective Palantir's full potential; for example, Saruman wanted to use the Palantir of Orthanc to search for the ring but found Sauron instead. Used correctly, they gave their users the ability to see far into the land, like you would with a camera-equipped drone and communicate with other users over large distances. By the time of the third age, only four of the seven Palantiri were left: The Palantir of Orthanc which was in Sarumans possession and passed onto Gandalf when Grima threw it out of a window. Gandalf took the Palantir with him to Valinor. Sauron held the Palantir of Minas Ithil, stolen when the Nazgûl sieged and destroyed the city and destroyed when Barad-Dûr collapsed as a result of the destruction of the One Ring. Denethor, by the power of his office, held the Palantir of Minas Tirith, where it passed onto Aragorn when he became King. A fourth one sat in a tower on the western edge of Arnor, directed at where Númenor used to be. The other there were over time lost to the passing of time, Gondor lost the Ithil-Stone when the Nazgûl destroyed Minas Ithil. The largest Palantir of them all was located in Osgiliath and was lost when the city burned down during the Kin-Strife. Arnor had three, one in Annúminas and one in Amon Sûl. All three were lost when Arvedui, the last reigning king of Arnor sought refuge from the Witch-King of Angmar in Forodwaith and drowned when a rescue party sent by the elves of Lindon failed to save him; the stones sank together with their owner.

==Apocryphal Characters==
Due to the huge, enduring popularity of Tolkien's writing, many folks over the years have made their own contributions to the lore, effectively giving Tolkien's writings their own "expanded universe". None of these are canon with the books however, and so are listed here instead. Due to how the purists tend to feel about this sort of thing, pretty much all of the characters here are [[Skub]] by default.
===From Movies===
* '''Alfrid''': The Master of Laketown's own personal Wormtongue, and even more obnoxious and hatable. Much as Jar-Jar Binks is often seen as the character who killed the Prequels (or else dragged them down), Alfrid is seen in much the same way regarding the Hobbit movies. Not helped by the fact that he ''gets away with everything'' (unless you watch the extended cut that is).
* '''Lurtz''': Probably one of the most famous "not in the books" characters ever, Lurtz is an Uruk-hai leader made by Saruman in the PJ movies who is in charge of the band sent to Amon Hen. He's the one who personally puts three arrows into Boromir before Aragorn moves in to take him out in a suitably epic one-on-one fight scene. Due to the popularity of the PJ movies, the aforementioned epic fight scene, and the fact that Lurtz isn't ''that'' important of a character, he tends to be a lot more accepted than many other non-canon characters. Lurtz's role in the books likely would have been taken by Uglúk instead, but PJ wanted to have a menacing Orc antagonist in the first film that would be memorable by being the one to kill Boromir and give Aragorn a tough fight, and to represent the unique threat that the Uruk-Hai posed compared to the bog-standard orc.
* '''Sharku''': Leader of Saruman's Warg Riders, which guaranteed him status as a boss battle in a few of the video games. Also used to fake out killing off Aragorn in the second movie before Aragorn returned alive. Looks a lot like Freddy Krueger, and his name is a reference to Saruman's book alias during the Scouring of the Shire, "Sharkey".
* '''Tauriel''': A redheaded Elf waifu played by Evangeline Lily who is crushed on by Legolas and Kili, to [[Rage|the totally chill reactions of most audiences and fans]]. All told she ''is'' reasonably cool, but the general feeling is that making her part of a love triangle that goes nowhere was a dumb idea. Not to mention the "forbidden love" angle had already been done.
* '''Gothmog''': Only apocryphal-ish, since he ''does'' get a mention in Return of the King, being referred by his title "Castellan of Minas Morgul" in two sentences, where he is mentioned taking command of the Orcish warhost that is besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. Other than that, nothing is known about him and he never does get mentioned again, not even in passing. While some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that Tolkien was referring to one of the Nazgûl (since Gothmog was the King of the Balrogs, and it seems weird to not assign a name of such a powerful creature to an equally mighty servant of Sauron), Peter Jacksons interpretation of Gothmog was that of a heavily scarred and crippled Orc general that leads the troops on the ground during the Siege of Gondor and the Battle of Minas Tirith. A bit ironic is the fact that, while he is clearly intended to be Gothmog, he is actually never mentioned by name in the movie. Also fun fact, he was played the same Maori actor who also played the Witch-King and Lurtz.

===From Video Games===
*'''The Third Age Second Fellowship''': A B-Team Fellowship who are the playable characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Sadly, they're all very, very stock as characters, but at least they got to be the protagonists of one of the better Middle-Earth games.
** '''Berethor''': Gondor Citadel Guard sent by Denethor to find his son Boromir, and also secretly a Manchurian Agent for Saruman and carries another secret in his body. Is fear-proof, and this is actually something that factors into the gameplay.
** '''Idrial''': Discount Arwen, being a female Elf who fights with a falchion and water magic and who falls in love with the heroic man of Gondor (Berethor in this case). Gets a bit green-eyed when Morwen shows up as a result.
** '''Elegost''': A Dunedain Ranger who is the party's token archer character. [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Dwarf named Hadhod, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Hadhod''': Party's token Dwarf, but can do shit Gimli can't (fire and earth magic, namely). [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Ranger named Elegost, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Morwen''': Woman of Rohan [[Rule 34|with a bare midriff]] orphaned when Saruman's forces scour the lands, she joins the party as the closest thing they have to a dedicated thief/rogue. [[Slayers|Fights with dual axes and has a need for vengeance against the enemy]].
** '''Eaoden''': Last member of the party to be recruited, which sadly has the effect of making him even ''more'' lacking in personality than the rest. Also from Rohan, he's one of Theoden's Royal Guards and can actually become a serious powerhouse depending on how you allocate his points.
*'''Battle for Middle-Earth OCs''': Since not every faction in these games has a large number of named folks from the books and films to draw on, EA had to get creative, and so invented some playable hero units whole cloth:
** '''Drogoth the Dragon Lord''': Hero unit for the Goblins, and basically going "fuck that" to the idea of Smaug being the last dragon.
** '''Gorkil the Goblin King''': Goblin with delusions of grandeur who hopes to win Sauron's favor by causing trouble in the North. Rides a giant scorpion into battle.
** '''Hwaldar the Brigand''': A Rhudaur hill chief secretly in league with the Witch-King. Hero unit for the Angmar faction.
** '''Karsh the Whisperer''': Former Captain of Arnor named Carthaen who the Witch-King turns into a wraith to serve as one of his minions instead of his enemies. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Morgomir''': Lieutenant of Carn Dûm and a Black Numenorean captain who has become of the Nazgul themselves. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Rogash''': The Witch-King's right-hand Troll, being a lot smarter and more dangerous than the standard Olog. Hero unit for Angmar.
*'''Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War Characters''': The cast of Monolith Production's video game duology:
**'''Talion''': Protagonist and pure Badass by way of being a brutal one-man army who can cleave through scores of Uruks, kill Ologs, bring Fire Drakes to heel, and even ''fight and beat Nazgul and Sauron himself''. Looks a lot like Aragorn, but his story goes down a much darker path. Slain along with his wife and son at the start of the game, he is resurrected (sort of), by the spirit of Celebrimbor, turning him into a wraith ''not'' bound to Sauron. From there, he becomes [[Konrad Curze|a ruthless, brutal figure who lives in a world of darkness and evil surrounded on all sides by evildoers he spends his time brutally killing, maiming, and terrorizing]]. Ultimately becomes a cautionary tale about trying to be a Grimdark Anti-Hero in Tolkien's world though; his bearing a new ring of power made by Celebrimbor and using it to bend Uruks and Ologs to his will to build an army in Mordor, makes him all-too similar to the Dark Lord he's fighting against. It culminates in him losing said Ring, taking a discarded Nazgul ring to save himself, and as a result, becoming one of Sauron's nine Nazgul. A lesson in ''not'' fighting Sauron using his methods learned the hard way. In all, most Tolkien purists would consider him way too [[Grimdark]] for J.R.R.'s fiction, and have argued that Tolkien would be horrified by his game's content. But again, given what happens to Talion, it's clear the writers understood the inherent folly in trying to fight Sauron with his own methods. Talion is best seen then as a cautionary tale (and thus a reaffirming of Tolkien's values), not a bastardization ([[Skub|this does not stop people from seeing him and his games as that though)]].
**'''Ioreth and Dirhael''': Talion's wife and son, who, as the wife and son of a tragic Anti-Hero in a [[Grimdark]] story, suffer exactly the fate you expect them to. In Ioreth's case, [[Critical Role|this is not the only time her VA has played a character in a Fantasy series with a sexy faux-British accent who's in love with a brooding, vengeful Anti-Hero]].
**'''The Black Captains''': A trio of Black Numenoreans who act as the main antagonists of the first game. Each represents a different aspect of Sauron's character, and as the folks who murdered Talion's wife and son, are at the top of his shit-list. They are:
***'''Black Hand of Sauron''': Leader of the bunch. [[Tzeentch|Represents the deceitfulness of Sauron]]. Lets his body become a vessel for Sauron so that the latter can temporarily regain his iconic black-armored, physical form.
***'''Hammer of Sauron''': A former Numenorean from the Battle of the Last Alliance [[Angron|who was angry and resentful enough to turn on his fellows]], picking up Sauron's discarded mace and letting it corrupt him (since it seems all of Sauron's stuff does that). [[Khorne|Represents Sauron's physical might and just a generally very angry guy]].
***'''Tower of Sauron''': A tall, scary guy [[Slaanesh|who looks a bit like something out of Hellraiser and accordingly serves as a torturer for Sauron. He represents the horror and viciousness of Sauron]].
**'''Eltariel''': A black-clad Elf who acts as a personal assassin for Galadriel, specially tasked with fighting the Nazgul. Badass enough to keep pace with Talion (and ironically has the same voice actress as his dead wife). Takes the New Ring after Talion loses it and becomes a Nazgul.
**'''Idril''': Gondorian woman who is the daughter of the man in charge of Minas Ithil (which falls much later in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity). Her daddy betrays the city to the Witch-King on the condition that Idril will be spared, and afterwards Idril leads the surviving Gondorian forces in Mordor. Comments on various collectibles Talion can find scattered throughout Mordor.
** '''Baranor''': A man born in Harad who was given to Gondor as part of a peace exchange and raised by them. Actually did pretty well for himself, becoming a captain in Gondor's army and helping lead the defense of Minas Ithil before it falls. Playable in one of Shadow of War's DLCs, and since he has no Ring of Power, if he dies, its actually Game Over.
**'''Carnan''': An Ent-Wife (or else something like it) and a super-powerful nature spirit who talks weird. Said to be a contemporary of Morgoth, which would make her ''ancient'' if true. Resides in a very forested, scenic part of Mordor that feels more like a part of Lothlorien or Rivendell then anything under Sauron's control, but that is likely owing in part to Carnan's presence. Though mostly a neutral figure unconcerned with the affairs of lesser beings, when a Balrog starts burning her forest down, she joins forces with Talion and Celebrimbor.
**'''Tar-Goroth''': A Balrog awakened by the forging of the New Ring, meaning his rampage is technically Talion and Celebrimbor's fault. There for the sake of having a boss fight with a Balrog.
**'''Zog the Eternal''': An Uruk sorcerer who seeks to summon Tar-Goroth and use him as a living weapon, including against Sauron himself, making him an Uruk with delusions of grandeur. Suffice to say, Talion puts a stop to his plans.
**'''Bruz the Chopper''': An Olog with an Australian accent who is one of Talion's first recruits, but later turns on him when he doesn't get a promotion. Talion responds by mind-raping him, which drives him insane. What happens to him after that is up to the player.
**'''Suladan''': OC Nazgul made for the games, one who funny enough shares a name with one of Games Workshop's original characters from the Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game. Nothing to suggest this is the same character though. His backstory is basically Ar-Pharazon, but a king of the South instead of Numenor, and turned into a Nazgul instead of getting punished by Eru.
**'''Nazgul Sisters (Riya and Yukka)''': Yes, seriously. A pair of twin sisters from an [[Cathay|obscure, rarely seen kingdom of man based off of Asian cultures]] who killed two of Sauron's Nazgul and took their Rings for themselves...which turned them into new Nazgul. Actually try to take power for themselves, but after Eltariel whoops their asses they seem to give up on that idea. Fight with Kusarigama type weapons instead of the usual Morgul Blades.

===From Amazon's Rings of Power===
*'''Arondir''': Black Legolas with a bit of Aragorn / Beren mixed in, or else a male Arwen, since he's doing the whole Elf/Human romance thing, which his fellow Elves point out doesn't end happily for those who do it. Might be Theo's father, but unconfirmed as yet.
*'''Bronwyn''' - Arondir's forbidden human lover (so the Luthien to his Beren, but with the races reversed), who is most notable for [[Derp|somehow commanding humans that escaped Orc invasion despite being a simple farmer (yeah, no signs of any class higher than peasants at all in Southlands)]].
*'''Theo''': Bronwyn's son that currently has super cool dark weapon on his hands, which seems to be a Morgul Blade, leading to fan theories that he'll turn into a Nazgul. Notably, we never get a good look at his ears, suggesting he might be Arondir's kid (which would fit given that he's his mom's boyfriend).
*'''[[Sauron|Halbrand]]''': Mysterious human that joins Galadriel in her quest. Has a lot in common with Aragorn (such as being the successor to a kingdom long vanished), but was ultimately revealed to be a certain ''other'' canon character. Given all of the hints beforehand, namely his silver tongue, talent for manipulation, the fact that he's trying to rule the Southlands (aka Mordor), his asking Adar (who claimed to kill Sauron), if he recognized him, and keen interest and skill in blacksmithing, (to the point that he claimed no one knew the craft better than him and was able to help Celebrimbor make the Rings of Power), this identity reveal didn't come as a shock to anybody when it came...except Galadriel. Speaking of, he got the hots for her during the time they spent together, and attempted to convince her to join him, but it didn't take (obviously). At the end of the season, he does what none should be able to do...[[Meme|he simply walked into Mordor]].
*'''Adar''': Elvish for "father", he's [[Malekith|a corrupted but charismatic black armored Elf]] (according to himself, he's a "first-generation orc", with visible scar on his head where Morgoth poured his evil... corruption juice... thing) who leads a band of Orcs hoping to do...something. Might be Maedhros (since he's got a gauntlet over one hand, and Maedhros burned one of his hands grabbing a Silmaril). Played by Benjen Stark's actor, meaning both of the Stark brother's actors have now been in Middle-Earth adaptations.
*'''Eärien''': Elendil's daughter and an architect-in-training, and that's pretty much it so far. She opposes intervention into the Middle Earth and Pharazôn's son has the hots for her. While the showrunners decided to include her for "female energy," she does very little to actually drive the plot, apart from convince Kemen to burn some ships in order to stop the Numenoreans from leaving because... reasons?
*'''Kemen''': Pharazon's son (presumably from a woman other than Tar-Miriel, since Pharazon hasn't married her yet). Has the hots for Elendil's daughter.
*'''Nori Brandyfoot''' - <s>Hobbit</s>Harfoot girl, since we can't have a Tolkien adaptation without Hobbits. Like Frodo and Bilbo pretty clearly meant to be an audience surrogate, but a lot more eager for adventure at the outset than the latter. Probably won't be carrying anyone's ring around, but you never know. Currently palling around with a mysterious stranger who might actually be Gandalf, furthering the Frodo/Bilbo parallels. No relation to the Dwarf of Thorin's company despite the name.
*'''Poppy Proudfellow''': Sam to Nori's Frodo, basically. Not much else to say.
*'''Sadoc Burrows''': Elder of the Harfoot tribe. There was some initial controversy over his casting, with some people even making the point that [[derp|how did the isolated hobbits change from multi-ethnic to lilY-white after a few centuries?]] (Though Tolkien does describe the Harfoots as darker skinned than other Hobbit types). His character became even more [[skub]] when it was discovered that in spite of the Harfoot's claims that "nobody gets left behind" and "harfoots have hearts as big as their feet," they very regularly abandon other tribe members to death and even outright sabotage their wagons if the tribe gets fed up with them. So yeah, people think of harfoots as sociopaths now. In Sadoc's case though, its suggested that his having to leave behind his own wife and child hardened him into his current state. Dies after getting knifed by the Morgoth cult, even though Meteor Man should be able to heal him.
*'''Disa''': Durin's wife. [[/pol/|Her being black got the predictable reaction]], but she's actually more canon-friendly than many of the other characters in the show due to the fact that her name is listed in the appendices (though many people still complained WHERE'S HER BEARD???). Helps convince her husband to cut Elrond some slack for not seeing him in 20 years. Disa is also some sort of priestess for Khazad-Dum, apparently singing to the mountain to free dwarves trapped in a cave-in. For a moment people joked that maybe ''she'' was Sauron when she suddenly morphed from cheery housewife to political schemer reminiscent of Darth Sidious himself (albeit a much less evil one).
*'''<s>Meteor Man</s> <s>Encino Man</s> The Stranger''': Mysterious old man who crash-landed in Harfoot territory, and was befriended by Nori. He can't speak the common tongue and appears to be very proficient in magic, while also not understanding basic concepts like death. Most figure he's Gandalf or maybe Radagast, but other theories abound (everything from his being Sauron to being a Blue Wizard, [[Wat|to being a Balrog]]). He's confirmed in the Season 1 finale to be an Istari, with ''HEAVY'' implications that he's Gandalf, but he likely will only be referred to by one of his lesser-known names like Olorin. So ultimately, [[Superman|he's a human-looking being of great power who crash-lands from another world and is taken in by kind-hearted rural people. Sound familiar?]]
*'''<s>Feminem</s> <s>Slim Lady</s> The Priestess Trio''': Trio of white-clad ladies, led by a buzzcut woman who gives the most dramatic stink-eye. Names are The Dweller, the Nomad, and the Ascetic. Lots of people thought she was Sauron from the trailer until they realized the character had boobs (and Amazon outright said it wasn't Sauron). Honestly we know basically nothing about her and her two pals since their first appearance in the show is only slightly longer than the trailer, but apparently they're tracking Meteor Man and seem to be part of a leftover Morgoth cult. Despite having magic on par with a wizard and shapeshifting abilities, and also being incredibly pale, they're ultimately revealed to be Easterlings from Rhun, with a strong implication that they will either become Nazgul or are some precursor to it (although it does also seem that the Stranger blows them up at the end, so they might just be dead). The leader has a crown in the spirit world, which brings to mind the Witch-King of Angmar. Bear in mind, the Rings of Power are what turn humans into Nazgul, and they don't get created until the very end of the season, so they probably ''aren't'' Nazgul. Barrow-Wights maybe?

High Middle Ages

2023-06-21T02:12:29Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Notes */

[[File:Salisbury cathedral.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Salisbury Cathedral, built in the 1200s with a 100 meter tall spire. Not the work of illiterate dung farmers]]
{{Topquote|1=War of the roses, Chaucer's tales. The brutal feudal system. Holy crusades, Bubonic plague. Can't say that we've really missed 'em. So dark and barbaric, so dull and mundane. That was so Middle Ages. That was so... Charlemagne.|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggrk3Z7lqYY Something Rotten!]}}
Around the year 1000, the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the [[Dark Age]]s. The year 1066 and the three-way war involving Norwegian and Norman invasions of Britain ending in Norman victory and the coronation of William the Conqueror is generally held as the point where the Dark Age/Early Medieval Period ended. The economies of the various kingdoms steadily improved and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual [[Monarchy|kingdoms]] had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, the growth of trade networks and major cities such as London, Paris, Venice, and the resurrected Rome. Skills were honed and new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the East such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes, and paper, while others were developed locally, such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged, producing iconic, overly ornamented cathedrals that still stand in many parts of Europe. While slavery was gradually abandoned in much of Europe, the slave trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable, especially to the benefit of Arab traders in the region. The Byzantine–Seljuq wars also happened at this time, which influenced a much more famous later event, the Crusades.

Unfortunately the good times did not last, as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 came the single biggest buttfuck to hit Europe since the fall of Rome: the Black Death. The Death swept across Europe and wiped out about a third of the continents population, with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically, the aforementioned improvements in trade and rise of major cities was what made such a colossal die-off possible. Small, isolated villages hit by the plague were typically wiped out before it could spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. In contrast, cities might have tens of thousands of people living cheek-by-jowl. Sanitation wasn't a thing, so all kinds of rubbish and filth were generally left to accumulate in the streets, including such nice things as human and animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff, and other such grodiness. Add to this the fact that carts, barges, and ships were always coming and going and could propagate the plague far and wide like a [[Nurgle]] Machine. (This period gave us the word for and the modern concept of quarantine. The crews of ships visiting Venice were required to remain isolated on their vessels for 40 days to see whether they would develop symptoms. This period was known as "quarantena", which evolved into "quarantine".) Despite the mass deaths and the horrendous effect the plague had on Europe, there proved to be a silver lining. As peasants were now in short supply, they were therefore more valuable and could ask for and receive higher wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on. Primitive superstition surrounding diseases slowly began to give way out of simple necessity.

In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) [[Wikipedia:Kenmu Restoration|Kenmu Restoration]], the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era when the [[samurai]] class emerged. The [[katana]] would only appear at the very end of this period, with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer ''tachi'' instead.

==High Middle Ages Around Europe==
The toll of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the later fall of the Carolingian Empire, plus the ongoing raids from Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims, had left the European continent in a weakened state. However, by the time the 11th century started, the feudal economic system was in full effect, and the relative (keyword being "relative") moment of peace allowed its cities and kingdoms to begin recovering. Trade and commerce began picking up steam once again, making cities important financial and political points of interests. Likewise, the different monarchies and ruling nobles began the slow process of accumulating power. The idea of the ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals) was fine and good, but it meant that the kings had little more power (and on many occasions, less effective power) than the nobles they supposedly ruled over. This consolidation of power in the hands of national monarchies was a long, loooong process that only started coming into fruition at the very end of the period. In the meantime, though, there were many processes of cultural renovation with the birth of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and even more deep changes with the Gregorian reformation, the start of the mendicant orders and the spread of the first universities.

Different areas of Europe evolved in different ways. In the Iberian Peninsula, this period included most of the second half of the wars of the ''Reconquista''. The fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in favour of the Taifas system (basically a fragmentation of the caliphate into a bunch of little independent Muslim kingdoms) was the signal for the Christian kingdoms of the north to kick the reconquest of the south into overdrive. This doesn't mean this was an unified campaign, though. As was usual for medieval kingdoms, backstabbing and general infighting was abundant on both sides, but the weakened Muslim kingdoms slowly but surely lost ground, despite briefly unifying themselves under the Almoravids and Almohades. The last Muslim kingdom, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic kings. Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms started their unification process, which would culminate in the marriage of Elisabeth of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, setting up the basis for the unification of Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal started a campaign of exploration through the Atlantic, which would later be followed by Castile, birthing a competition for the exploration and discovery for shorter trade routes to India (and later the Americas) between the two.

In the region that was once the Carolingian Empire, the Kingdom of France slowly but surely started gaining territory against the other two members of the Treaty of Verdun, and its ruling dynasties managed to slowly build up the power that had been lost centuries ago. Of particular importance was the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy. William the Bastard (who became the Conqueror after his victory) managed to pull off a successful invasion of England by taking advantage of a dynastic dispute and a Viking invasion of the north. This generated quite a dilemma for the time: though William was still the Duke of Normandy and nominally a vassal of the French king, in practice he had as much (if not more) power and influence than his lord, which put both of them in a difficult position. The French kings tried to reduce the English monarchs' influence in France by limiting the boundaries of their continental possessions, which only increased the tensions between the two kingdoms. This situation finally came to a head with the death of the last Capetian king of France. With no obvious successor to the French throne and English King Edward III having a more or less legitimate dynastic claim, he eventually declared war on Philip of Valois, the other claimant. And thus began the Hundred Years War, which, as it name implies, was [[Long War|fucking long]]. This clusterfuck of a war (both a massive international conflict, a civil war and a bloody family feud) eventually involved pretty much all the active players in Western Europe at one point or another, and, alongside [[Nurgle|the Black Death and the massive famines]], caused a lot of death and destruction. The war kept going on and on until the eventual French victory, managing to drive the English back onto their side of the English Channel and starting a rivalry between the two nations that would last for centuries. After this defeat, England immediately became embroiled in another civil war, the War of the Roses.

Speaking of England, they went through a lot of upheaval while bickering with France. The new Norman rulers had to deal with the nearby kingdoms and a lot of political instability, and then the last heir of the House of Normandy died, which started a civil war which ended with the Plantagenets as the kings of England. During the rule of the famous Richard the Lionheart, the ongoing instability worsened, especially when Richard decided he'd rather go off crusading in the Holy Land instead of actually ruling his kingdom. His brother John took control of the country after Richard was kidnapped, a move which not only pissed many people off (John was seen as an usurper already, though many historians nowadays see this bad image as the result of his political enemies' propaganda), it gave the disgruntled nobles the perfect excuse to rebel against him. John was forced to sign the ''Magna Carta'', a legal document which guaranteed a lot of rights and freedoms to the English nobility at the expense of the crown. This document is often considered one of the most important political reforms in history, since it paved the way for modern parliamentary systems (even though the original document was never put into practice, only a heavily modified version was eventually applied after many political shenanigans).

On the Italian peninsula, the fragmentation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the infighting between different factions was the catalyst for the birth of most of the Italian city-states. With the Norman conquest of the Catepanate of Italy (basically a province of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy), the biggest political power on Italy became the Papacy by far, since the young city-states simply couldn't compete with the Catholic Church in political, spiritual and financial power. The Church's power was not uncontested, though. On the one hand, pushing for the Crusades had given the Pope quite a lot of authority and prestige over all Christendom, but on the other hand, the concentration of power in the hands of nobility and the national monarchies meant that their earthly powers were questioned by secular authorities. In particular, the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire clashed frequently, since both papal and imperial powers claimed to represent the will of God in some form, though the dispute centers around their influence on the "''dominium mundi''", and more specifically, the temporal powers. The Investiture Controversy was but the first of the many clashes between them which would continue all throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Speaking of the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Holy Roman Empire]] ([[meme|which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor technically an empire]]), it was the technical successor of the imperial authority of Rome. Also, it was '''''big'''''. In fact, it was the biggest Christian kingdom by far during the High Middle Ages (the Byzantine Empire had lost quite a lot of ground by this point, and would continue to do so during the period). However, despite its size, population and political influence, it was mostly a loose confederation of Germanic kingdoms and principalities, all with their own rules and customs. The only truly cohesive element was the figure of the Emperor, and there were frequent internecine struggles to claim the seat. Thus, the HRE was unable to consolidate its power into a centralized monarchy like France, England or Spain, though it was still the great Christian power of this period, and would continue to be a powerhouse until Napoleon killed it in the 19th century.

In the northern parts of Europe, the Scandinavian kingdoms were undergoing Christianization. After raiding the southern lands for a couple of centuries, many Norsemen were starting to realize that feudalism was actually more beneficial than piracy in the long run (although the Viking raids took a long while to disappear altogether), so they adopted Christianity. This process was accompanied by the adoption of modern political systems and customs, which would pave the way for the Viking and German chieftains to actually create proper medieval kingdoms. In particular, these new kingdoms focused on sea trade, since they already had a lot of naval know-how and agriculture in Scandinavia was a difficult proposition anyway. In particular, they clashed with the Hanseatic League, a a mercantile confederation of cities, principalities, and other minor states which tried to monopolize the regional trade around the Baltic Sea and northern Europe. To counter this, the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark created the Kalmar Union, with Queen Margaret I of Denmark ruling over all three kingdoms at once. However, this union didn't translate into the creation of an unified state and dissolved at the beginning of the Early Modern Ages.

On the other side of Christendom, the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire) was not in the best shape. It had received a massive mauling during the previous centuries, due to the wars against the Persians and later the sudden appearance of Islam, which took away most of its territories in Northern Africa and the Middle East. It was the fast advance of the Seljuk Turks over Anatolia which forced the Roman Emperor to ask for help from anyone that he could find; considering they had broken with the Roman Church very recently, this was interpreted as a massive sign of weakness everywhere. This appeal for help led directly to the Crusades. While the Crusades helped the Byzantines stabilize their eastern borders by funding the Crusader states in the Holy Land, Byzantine territories like Bulgaria managed to gain independence. And then the Fourth Crusade happened, [[fail|which instead of going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels, ended up besieging and raiding Constantinople itself to pay off some Venetian loan sharks]]. By the time the Byzantine emperors could retake the capital, they'd lost most of their territories elsewhere, which left the Eastern Roman Empire as a vestigial state whose only ace in the hole was Constantinople's geographically advantageous position on the Black Sea. By 1453 the Ottomans finally managed to finally conquer the remains of the empire (which was basically just Constantinople by this point), signaling the end of whatever was left of the Roman Empire of old.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the last big processes of Christianization took place from Bohemia to Lithuania to the Rus Kingdoms, along with the resultant expansion of trade and political stability. And then the [[Mongols]] came knocking. The arrival of the Mongols in Eastern and Central Europe signaled a massive power shift in the area, as the Mongols managed to defeat and conquer many of the European kingdoms in these regions. The Europeans, with their emphasis on heavy armored cavalry, were tactically outmatched by the Mongols' light, fast horse archers, especially in the great open plains of central and eastern Europe. Bohemia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania were crippled by the Mongol onslaught, and the Rus Kingdoms were outright conquered and annexed into the Mongol sphere of influence. The death of the Mongol leaders stopped the invasions from going further, but their influence was only removed after a long war waged by the early Russian czars. After the Mongol khanates were defeated, the main concern of the kingdoms from Eastern Europe became the Ottoman Empire, since the Turks had consolidated their influence in the region that used to be the Byzantine Empire and were now eyeballing the rest of Europe. The Ottomans and the Christian kingdoms would go on to wage war on each other more or less continuously during the Early Modern Age. Also, during all of this, this area was squarely hit by the Black Plague, just as the rest of Europe was. Unlike the western kingdoms, where peasants manage to wrestle some limited concessions out of the nobles due to the fact there were becoming pretty scarce, the exact opposite happened here. Many Russian nobles managed to reinforce their authority over their peasant population. This would become known to some historians as the "second serfdom", which would strengthen the nobility's grasp over the peasants. This system was so ironclad that it would survive for over 500 years and would only finally be abolished for good in the Russian Revolution in 1917... only for the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia to continue it in far less obvious ways to the present day.

==Islamic Golden Age==
The Islamic Golden Age occurred during the Abbasid Caliphate, between 750 and 1258. As you might expect, the Muslim world was doing very well during this period. The Abbasid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had found when they overran the Byzantines and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (they first started developing chemistry based on alchemical traditions), medicine, mathematics <s>(there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals)</s> (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture, windmills), art (a lot of Islamic art relies on geometric patterns given the religion's taboo about images due to fear of idolatry, so having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. Baghdad was a thriving urban center and a nexus of art and culture, with cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba not far behind. Unfortunately, the Crusades and the [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Mongols]] put a stop to it and trashed a lot of the Middle East. Baghdad in particular was sacked so brutally that it still hasn't recovered. However, the spirit of scientific advancement and glorious conquest would live on past the fall of Baghdad in places like Mughal India and the Emirate/Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain.

==Khmer Golden Age==
While Europe wallowed in the grimdark Middle Ages, the city of Angkor was busy becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth in what is now Cambodia. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple/urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are [https://www.google.com/maps/@13.434607,103.8607491,31561m/data=!3m1!1e3 easily visible from space] and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went full Buddhist.

==Notes==
* This is the high point of chivalry as a thing, when the concept of "armored dudes on horseback" had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the heavy cavalry that one side could bring to bear. Infantry largely became a secondary concern, used mostly for garrisons and sieges. Major exceptions include Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, where English longbowmen made a mockery of French knights.
* This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance wanted a stone castle to consolidate his position and provide an invulnerable bastion for his household. Castle design advanced from motte-and-bailey to what most people nowadays think of when they hear the word "castle ". They were also very resilient, not only to bombardment by siege engines or attempts to storm them, but often had granaries and water supplies so that they could weather sieges that could last months or even years.
* Warfare in this age was mostly a matter of fairly small parties of knights (in the ballpark of 100) raiding villages and merchants in the other guy's territory, defensive actions against said raids and armies besieging castles and fortified cities. Battles involving mass armies of thousands of men clashing with each other out in the open did happen, but these were the exception rather than the rule. That said, warfare was fairly constant during this period. There were always some squabbling city states, obstinate lordlings making a fuss, armed trade disputes, succession disputes between rival claimants, religious conflicts, blood feuds or fights between a couple of the bigger kingdoms happening somewhere in Europe, as well as a lot of [[bandit|banditry]].
** Notably the Knights Templar managed to be a key pillar of the Crusader States with at most 2,000 knights. They did so through mobility, retreating to very well supplied castles and being very cautious in picking their battles.
* [[Cannon]]s and [[firearm]]s begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs largely of marginal use compared with more traditional muscle-powered weaponry like longbows.
* While hardly a unique feature to this period, or even Europe, people at this point thought in terms of ''Knowing Their Place''. The role a person had in medieval society was largely determined by birth; if you were the son of a blacksmith or a baker or a fisherman, you were going to inherit that trade from your dad when you grew up. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by and large didn't give much of a shit about what the kings and lords were up to unless it directly and overtly affected them in some way. Wars of succession, trade disputes, and religious arguments weren't their business; there were other people out there who knew better than they did about all of these things, and their judgment had God's backing. This was not an absolute mentality, of course; they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects and if they were pushed or abused too much they would riot. Even so is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.
* The common portrayal of everyone and their mother wearing clothes with dour, muted colors is completely inaccurate. Dyeing was a thriving industry, and while natural dyes had a relatively limited color range (red, blue, yellow, brown, indigo, green, pink, and orange were all common) it was still abundant and middle class or higher non-clothing items were generally decorated (clothes were restricted to, at most, simple patterns as the methods of washing clothes weren't delicates friendly). A large portion of this perception comes from the fact that nearly all surviving art from the period has deteriorated over the centuries. The colors have faded due to age and sun exposure and most of these works have accumulated centuries of grime which can't be removed without harming the work in question. This misunderstanding actually applies to many periods of history, but the Middle Ages get hit with it especially hard.
* The standard of living was generally really low, even for those of higher birth. Being wealthy largely meant being able to have proper nutrition, access to primitive healthcare and little more than that. Many scientific concepts that our modern understanding of engineering is built on were still centuries away or had been lost during the decline of the Roman Empire, and this meant that every winter was bad news for everyone. Disease and exposure were constant dangers everyone, no matter their status, had to deal with in some way or form. For all its big walls and pretty banquet halls, a medieval castle was generally a pretty shitty place to live in, being very cold and difficult to reach. There are nuances to this however; for one, hygienic standards were actually ''higher'' than during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods as the bathing culture of the Romans was one of the few things that survived the turmoil of the Empire's fall. One or even several large public baths were standard inventory in many cities during that period and broadly accessible to the majority of people. The image of the dirty medieval peasant and common city-dweller is therefore something that is to be banished into the realm of myth.
* The low life expectancy of this age was massively exaggerated by pop historians, as the major contributing factor to it was the insanely high child and infant mortality. It wasn't unheard of for many families to give birth to more than ten children, however, only a few often survived into adulthood. If they did survive however, they often had a fairly long life ahead of them. Part of what made the Black Death so feared was exactly because the disease broke the norm of adults surviving most dieases.

==The Appeal of the High Middle Ages==
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights? Or are scholarly sultans and zealous hashashin more your type of deal? Well, this period is for you. Not that it was all lollipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing the [[A Song of Ice and Fire|game of thrones]] via dynastic squabbles, wars of succession, and the occasional assassination. There were also the Crusades, Islamic and Mongol marauders, and endless wars over territory, resources, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy stupid bullshit like where the pope should live]. The fact that its the point where gunpowder was just barely coming into use also helps mark this as the standard point of development where a [[Medieval Stasis]] work will take place. Being a serf or a Jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of [[Bretonnia|medieval splendor and brutality]] makes for a nice contrast. The classical civilizations have fallen, but the dark age of turmoil that resulted is over, and beauty and refinement are on the rise, but the sword is still the rule of the world, if not every day as it used to be.

This period also gave us folk heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.

==Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages==
* Arguably, the first acts of "shitposting" or memes can be found in some illuminated manuscripts which have such things as knights jousting with snails, animals beating up humans with weapons and people showing off their genitals to one another.
* Most educated people believed/knew that the Earth was a sphere and could even broadly estimate it's circumference. You know those Orbs with crosses on top that Kings often hold in paintings and tapestries? Those were designed as globes with (very) rough maps of what medieval people thought the world looked like with a cross on top to represent Jesus as master of the world. It was however still widely believed that the Sun goes around the Earth, the centre of the universe
* Modern football partially originates from the medieval version known as "mob football" which themselves could take a variety of shapes and forms.
* "Cures" for diseases could get truly bizarre such as: wearing a bird's beak around the neck, drilling a hole in the head and ingesting ground-up emeralds. Interestingly, they were occasionally not too far off, even if the practices were one hell of a lot more dangerous than our contemporary medicine of course. Drilling a hole into a skull is still the very basic principle of neurosurgery, after all and the Miasma theory, for example, at least got the "don't enter a room full of sick people" right, even if it was later disproven.
* Filth in the cities really started becoming an issue later in the period when construction picked up as previously there were literal "greenfield" spaces within city walls that would absorb the bulk of organic waste, and the rest would have been eaten by pigs and dogs. This problem would actually continue well into the 19th century due to the abundance of horse poop filling the streets, with major cities like New York worrying that they’d soon be under mountains of literal shit if the population kept increasing. It actually ended up being the invention of the automobile before poop-filled streets would become a thing of the past.

==High Middle Ages-Inspired Games, Factions and Settings==
*[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
*[[Bretonnia]]
*[[Kings of War]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]
*[[Chainmail]]
*[[Dungeons and Dragons]] (more specifically [[Forgotten Realms]], [[Greyhawk]], [[Dragonlance]], and [[Mystara]])

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

High Middle Ages

2023-06-21T02:08:26Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Notes */

[[File:Salisbury cathedral.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Salisbury Cathedral, built in the 1200s with a 100 meter tall spire. Not the work of illiterate dung farmers]]
{{Topquote|1=War of the roses, Chaucer's tales. The brutal feudal system. Holy crusades, Bubonic plague. Can't say that we've really missed 'em. So dark and barbaric, so dull and mundane. That was so Middle Ages. That was so... Charlemagne.|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggrk3Z7lqYY Something Rotten!]}}
Around the year 1000, the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the [[Dark Age]]s. The year 1066 and the three-way war involving Norwegian and Norman invasions of Britain ending in Norman victory and the coronation of William the Conqueror is generally held as the point where the Dark Age/Early Medieval Period ended. The economies of the various kingdoms steadily improved and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual [[Monarchy|kingdoms]] had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, the growth of trade networks and major cities such as London, Paris, Venice, and the resurrected Rome. Skills were honed and new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the East such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes, and paper, while others were developed locally, such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged, producing iconic, overly ornamented cathedrals that still stand in many parts of Europe. While slavery was gradually abandoned in much of Europe, the slave trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable, especially to the benefit of Arab traders in the region. The Byzantine–Seljuq wars also happened at this time, which influenced a much more famous later event, the Crusades.

Unfortunately the good times did not last, as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 came the single biggest buttfuck to hit Europe since the fall of Rome: the Black Death. The Death swept across Europe and wiped out about a third of the continents population, with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically, the aforementioned improvements in trade and rise of major cities was what made such a colossal die-off possible. Small, isolated villages hit by the plague were typically wiped out before it could spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. In contrast, cities might have tens of thousands of people living cheek-by-jowl. Sanitation wasn't a thing, so all kinds of rubbish and filth were generally left to accumulate in the streets, including such nice things as human and animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff, and other such grodiness. Add to this the fact that carts, barges, and ships were always coming and going and could propagate the plague far and wide like a [[Nurgle]] Machine. (This period gave us the word for and the modern concept of quarantine. The crews of ships visiting Venice were required to remain isolated on their vessels for 40 days to see whether they would develop symptoms. This period was known as "quarantena", which evolved into "quarantine".) Despite the mass deaths and the horrendous effect the plague had on Europe, there proved to be a silver lining. As peasants were now in short supply, they were therefore more valuable and could ask for and receive higher wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on. Primitive superstition surrounding diseases slowly began to give way out of simple necessity.

In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) [[Wikipedia:Kenmu Restoration|Kenmu Restoration]], the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era when the [[samurai]] class emerged. The [[katana]] would only appear at the very end of this period, with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer ''tachi'' instead.

==High Middle Ages Around Europe==
The toll of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the later fall of the Carolingian Empire, plus the ongoing raids from Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims, had left the European continent in a weakened state. However, by the time the 11th century started, the feudal economic system was in full effect, and the relative (keyword being "relative") moment of peace allowed its cities and kingdoms to begin recovering. Trade and commerce began picking up steam once again, making cities important financial and political points of interests. Likewise, the different monarchies and ruling nobles began the slow process of accumulating power. The idea of the ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals) was fine and good, but it meant that the kings had little more power (and on many occasions, less effective power) than the nobles they supposedly ruled over. This consolidation of power in the hands of national monarchies was a long, loooong process that only started coming into fruition at the very end of the period. In the meantime, though, there were many processes of cultural renovation with the birth of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and even more deep changes with the Gregorian reformation, the start of the mendicant orders and the spread of the first universities.

Different areas of Europe evolved in different ways. In the Iberian Peninsula, this period included most of the second half of the wars of the ''Reconquista''. The fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in favour of the Taifas system (basically a fragmentation of the caliphate into a bunch of little independent Muslim kingdoms) was the signal for the Christian kingdoms of the north to kick the reconquest of the south into overdrive. This doesn't mean this was an unified campaign, though. As was usual for medieval kingdoms, backstabbing and general infighting was abundant on both sides, but the weakened Muslim kingdoms slowly but surely lost ground, despite briefly unifying themselves under the Almoravids and Almohades. The last Muslim kingdom, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic kings. Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms started their unification process, which would culminate in the marriage of Elisabeth of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, setting up the basis for the unification of Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal started a campaign of exploration through the Atlantic, which would later be followed by Castile, birthing a competition for the exploration and discovery for shorter trade routes to India (and later the Americas) between the two.

In the region that was once the Carolingian Empire, the Kingdom of France slowly but surely started gaining territory against the other two members of the Treaty of Verdun, and its ruling dynasties managed to slowly build up the power that had been lost centuries ago. Of particular importance was the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy. William the Bastard (who became the Conqueror after his victory) managed to pull off a successful invasion of England by taking advantage of a dynastic dispute and a Viking invasion of the north. This generated quite a dilemma for the time: though William was still the Duke of Normandy and nominally a vassal of the French king, in practice he had as much (if not more) power and influence than his lord, which put both of them in a difficult position. The French kings tried to reduce the English monarchs' influence in France by limiting the boundaries of their continental possessions, which only increased the tensions between the two kingdoms. This situation finally came to a head with the death of the last Capetian king of France. With no obvious successor to the French throne and English King Edward III having a more or less legitimate dynastic claim, he eventually declared war on Philip of Valois, the other claimant. And thus began the Hundred Years War, which, as it name implies, was [[Long War|fucking long]]. This clusterfuck of a war (both a massive international conflict, a civil war and a bloody family feud) eventually involved pretty much all the active players in Western Europe at one point or another, and, alongside [[Nurgle|the Black Death and the massive famines]], caused a lot of death and destruction. The war kept going on and on until the eventual French victory, managing to drive the English back onto their side of the English Channel and starting a rivalry between the two nations that would last for centuries. After this defeat, England immediately became embroiled in another civil war, the War of the Roses.

Speaking of England, they went through a lot of upheaval while bickering with France. The new Norman rulers had to deal with the nearby kingdoms and a lot of political instability, and then the last heir of the House of Normandy died, which started a civil war which ended with the Plantagenets as the kings of England. During the rule of the famous Richard the Lionheart, the ongoing instability worsened, especially when Richard decided he'd rather go off crusading in the Holy Land instead of actually ruling his kingdom. His brother John took control of the country after Richard was kidnapped, a move which not only pissed many people off (John was seen as an usurper already, though many historians nowadays see this bad image as the result of his political enemies' propaganda), it gave the disgruntled nobles the perfect excuse to rebel against him. John was forced to sign the ''Magna Carta'', a legal document which guaranteed a lot of rights and freedoms to the English nobility at the expense of the crown. This document is often considered one of the most important political reforms in history, since it paved the way for modern parliamentary systems (even though the original document was never put into practice, only a heavily modified version was eventually applied after many political shenanigans).

On the Italian peninsula, the fragmentation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the infighting between different factions was the catalyst for the birth of most of the Italian city-states. With the Norman conquest of the Catepanate of Italy (basically a province of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy), the biggest political power on Italy became the Papacy by far, since the young city-states simply couldn't compete with the Catholic Church in political, spiritual and financial power. The Church's power was not uncontested, though. On the one hand, pushing for the Crusades had given the Pope quite a lot of authority and prestige over all Christendom, but on the other hand, the concentration of power in the hands of nobility and the national monarchies meant that their earthly powers were questioned by secular authorities. In particular, the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire clashed frequently, since both papal and imperial powers claimed to represent the will of God in some form, though the dispute centers around their influence on the "''dominium mundi''", and more specifically, the temporal powers. The Investiture Controversy was but the first of the many clashes between them which would continue all throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Speaking of the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Holy Roman Empire]] ([[meme|which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor technically an empire]]), it was the technical successor of the imperial authority of Rome. Also, it was '''''big'''''. In fact, it was the biggest Christian kingdom by far during the High Middle Ages (the Byzantine Empire had lost quite a lot of ground by this point, and would continue to do so during the period). However, despite its size, population and political influence, it was mostly a loose confederation of Germanic kingdoms and principalities, all with their own rules and customs. The only truly cohesive element was the figure of the Emperor, and there were frequent internecine struggles to claim the seat. Thus, the HRE was unable to consolidate its power into a centralized monarchy like France, England or Spain, though it was still the great Christian power of this period, and would continue to be a powerhouse until Napoleon killed it in the 19th century.

In the northern parts of Europe, the Scandinavian kingdoms were undergoing Christianization. After raiding the southern lands for a couple of centuries, many Norsemen were starting to realize that feudalism was actually more beneficial than piracy in the long run (although the Viking raids took a long while to disappear altogether), so they adopted Christianity. This process was accompanied by the adoption of modern political systems and customs, which would pave the way for the Viking and German chieftains to actually create proper medieval kingdoms. In particular, these new kingdoms focused on sea trade, since they already had a lot of naval know-how and agriculture in Scandinavia was a difficult proposition anyway. In particular, they clashed with the Hanseatic League, a a mercantile confederation of cities, principalities, and other minor states which tried to monopolize the regional trade around the Baltic Sea and northern Europe. To counter this, the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark created the Kalmar Union, with Queen Margaret I of Denmark ruling over all three kingdoms at once. However, this union didn't translate into the creation of an unified state and dissolved at the beginning of the Early Modern Ages.

On the other side of Christendom, the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire) was not in the best shape. It had received a massive mauling during the previous centuries, due to the wars against the Persians and later the sudden appearance of Islam, which took away most of its territories in Northern Africa and the Middle East. It was the fast advance of the Seljuk Turks over Anatolia which forced the Roman Emperor to ask for help from anyone that he could find; considering they had broken with the Roman Church very recently, this was interpreted as a massive sign of weakness everywhere. This appeal for help led directly to the Crusades. While the Crusades helped the Byzantines stabilize their eastern borders by funding the Crusader states in the Holy Land, Byzantine territories like Bulgaria managed to gain independence. And then the Fourth Crusade happened, [[fail|which instead of going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels, ended up besieging and raiding Constantinople itself to pay off some Venetian loan sharks]]. By the time the Byzantine emperors could retake the capital, they'd lost most of their territories elsewhere, which left the Eastern Roman Empire as a vestigial state whose only ace in the hole was Constantinople's geographically advantageous position on the Black Sea. By 1453 the Ottomans finally managed to finally conquer the remains of the empire (which was basically just Constantinople by this point), signaling the end of whatever was left of the Roman Empire of old.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the last big processes of Christianization took place from Bohemia to Lithuania to the Rus Kingdoms, along with the resultant expansion of trade and political stability. And then the [[Mongols]] came knocking. The arrival of the Mongols in Eastern and Central Europe signaled a massive power shift in the area, as the Mongols managed to defeat and conquer many of the European kingdoms in these regions. The Europeans, with their emphasis on heavy armored cavalry, were tactically outmatched by the Mongols' light, fast horse archers, especially in the great open plains of central and eastern Europe. Bohemia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania were crippled by the Mongol onslaught, and the Rus Kingdoms were outright conquered and annexed into the Mongol sphere of influence. The death of the Mongol leaders stopped the invasions from going further, but their influence was only removed after a long war waged by the early Russian czars. After the Mongol khanates were defeated, the main concern of the kingdoms from Eastern Europe became the Ottoman Empire, since the Turks had consolidated their influence in the region that used to be the Byzantine Empire and were now eyeballing the rest of Europe. The Ottomans and the Christian kingdoms would go on to wage war on each other more or less continuously during the Early Modern Age. Also, during all of this, this area was squarely hit by the Black Plague, just as the rest of Europe was. Unlike the western kingdoms, where peasants manage to wrestle some limited concessions out of the nobles due to the fact there were becoming pretty scarce, the exact opposite happened here. Many Russian nobles managed to reinforce their authority over their peasant population. This would become known to some historians as the "second serfdom", which would strengthen the nobility's grasp over the peasants. This system was so ironclad that it would survive for over 500 years and would only finally be abolished for good in the Russian Revolution in 1917... only for the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia to continue it in far less obvious ways to the present day.

==Islamic Golden Age==
The Islamic Golden Age occurred during the Abbasid Caliphate, between 750 and 1258. As you might expect, the Muslim world was doing very well during this period. The Abbasid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had found when they overran the Byzantines and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (they first started developing chemistry based on alchemical traditions), medicine, mathematics <s>(there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals)</s> (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture, windmills), art (a lot of Islamic art relies on geometric patterns given the religion's taboo about images due to fear of idolatry, so having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. Baghdad was a thriving urban center and a nexus of art and culture, with cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba not far behind. Unfortunately, the Crusades and the [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Mongols]] put a stop to it and trashed a lot of the Middle East. Baghdad in particular was sacked so brutally that it still hasn't recovered. However, the spirit of scientific advancement and glorious conquest would live on past the fall of Baghdad in places like Mughal India and the Emirate/Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain.

==Khmer Golden Age==
While Europe wallowed in the grimdark Middle Ages, the city of Angkor was busy becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth in what is now Cambodia. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple/urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are [https://www.google.com/maps/@13.434607,103.8607491,31561m/data=!3m1!1e3 easily visible from space] and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went full Buddhist.

==Notes==
* This is the high point of chivalry as a thing, when the concept of "armored dudes on horseback" had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the heavy cavalry that one side could bring to bear. Infantry largely became a secondary concern, used mostly for garrisons and sieges. Major exceptions include Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, where English longbowmen made a mockery of French knights.
* This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance wanted a stone castle to consolidate his position and provide an invulnerable bastion for his household. Castle design advanced from motte-and-bailey to what most people nowadays think of when they hear the word "castle ". They were also very resilient, not only to bombardment by siege engines or attempts to storm them, but often had granaries and water supplies so that they could weather sieges that could last months or even years.
* Warfare in this age was mostly a matter of fairly small parties of knights (in the ballpark of 100) raiding villages and merchants in the other guy's territory, defensive actions against said raids and armies besieging castles and fortified cities. Battles involving mass armies of thousands of men clashing with each other out in the open did happen, but these were the exception rather than the rule. That said, warfare was fairly constant during this period. There were always some squabbling city states, obstinate lordlings making a fuss, armed trade disputes, succession disputes between rival claimants, religious conflicts, blood feuds or fights between a couple of the bigger kingdoms happening somewhere in Europe, as well as a lot of [[bandit|banditry]].
** Notably the Knights Templar managed to be a key pillar of the Crusader States with at most 2,000 knights. They did so through mobility, retreating to very well supplied castles and being very cautious in picking their battles.
* [[Cannon]]s and [[firearm]]s begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs largely of marginal use compared with more traditional muscle-powered weaponry like longbows.
* While hardly a unique feature to this period, or even Europe, people at this point thought in terms of ''Knowing Their Place''. The role a person had in medieval society was largely determined by birth; if you were the son of a blacksmith or a baker or a fisherman, you were going to inherit that trade from your dad when you grew up. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by and large didn't give much of a shit about what the kings and lords were up to unless it directly and overtly affected them in some way. Wars of succession, trade disputes, and religious arguments weren't their business; there were other people out there who knew better than they did about all of these things, and their judgment had God's backing. This was not an absolute mentality, of course; they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects and if they were pushed or abused too much they would riot. Even so is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.
* The common portrayal of everyone and their mother wearing clothes with dour, muted colors is completely inaccurate. Dyeing was a thriving industry, and while natural dyes had a relatively limited color range (red, blue, yellow, brown, indigo, green, pink, and orange were all common) it was still abundant and middle class or higher non-clothing items were generally decorated (clothes were restricted to, at most, simple patterns as the methods of washing clothes weren't delicates friendly). A large portion of this perception comes from the fact that nearly all surviving art from the period has deteriorated over the centuries. The colors have faded due to age and sun exposure and most of these works have accumulated centuries of grime which can't be removed without harming the work in question. This misunderstanding actually applies to many periods of history, but the Middle Ages get hit with it especially hard.
* The standard of living was generally really low, even for those of higher birth. Being wealthy largely meant being able to have proper nutrition, access to primitive healthcare and little more than that. Many scientific concepts that our modern understanding of engineering is built on were still centuries away or had been lost during the decline of the Roman Empire, and this meant that every winter was bad news for everyone. Disease and exposure were constant dangers everyone, no matter their status, had to deal with in some way or form. For all its big walls and pretty banquet halls, a medieval castle was generally a pretty shitty place to live in, being very cold and difficult to reach. There are nuances to this however; for one, hygienic standards were actually ''higher'' than during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods as the bathing culture of the Romans was one of the few things that survived the turmoil of the Empire's fall. One or even several large public baths were standard inventory in many cities during that period and broadly accessible to the majority of people. The image of the dirty medieval peasant and common city-dweller is therefore something that is to be banished into the realm of myth.

==The Appeal of the High Middle Ages==
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights? Or are scholarly sultans and zealous hashashin more your type of deal? Well, this period is for you. Not that it was all lollipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing the [[A Song of Ice and Fire|game of thrones]] via dynastic squabbles, wars of succession, and the occasional assassination. There were also the Crusades, Islamic and Mongol marauders, and endless wars over territory, resources, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy stupid bullshit like where the pope should live]. The fact that its the point where gunpowder was just barely coming into use also helps mark this as the standard point of development where a [[Medieval Stasis]] work will take place. Being a serf or a Jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of [[Bretonnia|medieval splendor and brutality]] makes for a nice contrast. The classical civilizations have fallen, but the dark age of turmoil that resulted is over, and beauty and refinement are on the rise, but the sword is still the rule of the world, if not every day as it used to be.

This period also gave us folk heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.

==Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages==
* Arguably, the first acts of "shitposting" or memes can be found in some illuminated manuscripts which have such things as knights jousting with snails, animals beating up humans with weapons and people showing off their genitals to one another.
* Most educated people believed/knew that the Earth was a sphere and could even broadly estimate it's circumference. You know those Orbs with crosses on top that Kings often hold in paintings and tapestries? Those were designed as globes with (very) rough maps of what medieval people thought the world looked like with a cross on top to represent Jesus as master of the world. It was however still widely believed that the Sun goes around the Earth, the centre of the universe
* Modern football partially originates from the medieval version known as "mob football" which themselves could take a variety of shapes and forms.
* "Cures" for diseases could get truly bizarre such as: wearing a bird's beak around the neck, drilling a hole in the head and ingesting ground-up emeralds. Interestingly, they were occasionally not too far off, even if the practices were one hell of a lot more dangerous than our contemporary medicine of course. Drilling a hole into a skull is still the very basic principle of neurosurgery, after all and the Miasma theory, for example, at least got the "don't enter a room full of sick people" right, even if it was later disproven.
* Filth in the cities really started becoming an issue later in the period when construction picked up as previously there were literal "greenfield" spaces within city walls that would absorb the bulk of organic waste, and the rest would have been eaten by pigs and dogs. This problem would actually continue well into the 19th century due to the abundance of horse poop filling the streets, with major cities like New York worrying that they’d soon be under mountains of literal shit if the population kept increasing. It actually ended up being the invention of the automobile before poop-filled streets would become a thing of the past.

==High Middle Ages-Inspired Games, Factions and Settings==
*[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
*[[Bretonnia]]
*[[Kings of War]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]
*[[Chainmail]]
*[[Dungeons and Dragons]] (more specifically [[Forgotten Realms]], [[Greyhawk]], [[Dragonlance]], and [[Mystara]])

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Renaissance

2023-06-21T01:50:14Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Notes */

{{Skub}}
[[File:Pike and Shot.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Men in breastplates with swords, spears and muskets. [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Hey that sounds kinda familiar...]] ]]
{{topquote|1=Welcome to the Renaissance! With poets, painters, and bon vivants. And merry minstrels. Who stroll the streets of London. A strummin' the lutes. In puffy pants and pointy leather boots! Welcome to the Renaissance! Where we ooh and aah you with ambiance. We're so progressive. The latest and the greatest. We bring it to you with much ado. Welcome to the Renaissance! Where everything is new!|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggrk3Z7lqYY Something Rotten!]}}

==Romanboos==
The '''Renaissance''' is a period of time and history which had its origins in the 1300s in Italy and would gradually spread across Christendom and beyond. It started with scholars like Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Dante, who came across some old pre-church Latin writings and thought to themselves that it was really great stuff. They then started writing more things in homage to the ancients, sparking off an entire movement of hipsters who were really into ancient stuff. As more people took an interest in those ancients, they started to uncover lots more forgotten things and make art and other objects in emulation of them. It's also around the time that people began to think about history. This is where we get terms like "Dark Ages", "Middle Ages", and "Antiquity", applied to the nascent concept of periodizing history before what they would regard as the Renaissance.

The word roughly means "rebirth" in English. More specifically it refers to the revitalization of civilization after the medieval period. Various Italian city-states gradually grew in wealth and prominence through maritime trade as well as connections with the Middle East and banking. The merchant princes of Italy would invest that wealth to make more money, but also poured a lot of cash into grand architecture, the arts, literature, engineering and academics, ranging from studies of the [[Classical Period]] to natural philosophy. These things were seen as noble pursuits in their own right, but they were also signs of wealth and prestige and a good way of currying favor with other influential figures ("The Cardinal would be glad to back your bid after your generous assistance with his cathedral"). Eventually, the ideas from Italy would begin to spread out and take root elsewhere in Europe. Cities once again began to grow across Europe.

==Political happenings==
This was fine and dandy in of itself, but in coincided with other big changes. Kings began to consolidate power for themselves with the aim of keeping their squabbling vassals in line. [[Gun]]s were making an increasing impact on the battlefield. The Spanish finally managed to drive the Muslims out of Iberia in the Reconquista and emerged as a new powerful European state. Not too long after that, thanks to improvements in ship design and navigation methods, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to India and later an Italian guy named Cristoforo Columbo set out sailing west across the Atlantic to prove <s>to the ignorant masses that world was round</s> that you could get to India by circumnavigation without starving to death first and ended up finding the Caribbean, thus beginning the colonization of the New World. The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to start setting up shop in the Americas, followed by the French, Dutch and Englis. Add to that some religious upheaval which shook the foundations of Christendom in the form of the likes of Hussites and eventually the start of the Protestant Reformation and you got a period of massive upheaval, to say the least. All this ultimately culminated in the Thirty Years War, which was the first time people not directly victimized started realizing that maybe this war thing isn't all that good (it took a thorough ass-fucking of the continent and even then the lesson didn't stick).

The broad strokes of the Renaissance-era wars were that the Protestants and Catholics hated the shit out of each other, with each side bringing in more and more forces until the entire continent was ablaze. This is also the period where modern day political thought started to take shape, with Machiavelli's ''magnum opus'' "The Prince", bringing concepts such as pragmatism and balance of power to the forefront. An ostensibly religious war would lead to hilarious abominations like Catholic France (''de facto'' run by Cardinal Richelieu at the time, no less) allying with Protestant Swedes (that Exterminatused large portions of Germany) against Catholic Habsburgs as alliances shifted.

Physically and politically at the center of all this, the Holy Roman Empire was an absolute shitshow for most of the era and had mostly themselves to blame. They kept trying to rule the French, but the French had their one really competent king who [[Emprah|refused to die]]. Meanwhile the Pope was having problems with the English, who also had their one really competent [[Monarchy|king]] who didn't like the Pope telling him he couldn't have a divorce, along with his daughter, who was even better at the job and really fucking hated Spain. The Spanish colonized everything, found a literal mountain made of silver and built the biggest overseas empire ever seen, only to lose it all to dynastic struggle, inflation, deindustrialization, and getting their prized armada destroyed by the English and a colossal storm. The Venetians were making shittons of money by dominating the Mediterranean trade, the Swiss were killing people for money and guarding the Pope, and the Italians were killing each other over who was more Catholic. '''And with few exceptions, almost every one of them would be at one point fighting against, and at another point allied with, every other one.''' It was that crazy.

==Protestantism==
Protestantism also emerged during this time. Depending who you ask, Martin Luther was either an [[this guy|enlightened reformer]] or whiny [[rules lawyer]]. [[Nazi|(He definitely was a massive antisemite even by the standards of his time, though)]]. He started out as a Catholic monk, but got fed up with the brazen corruption the Pope was endorsing and the clergy's deviation from the tenets of Christianity. Luther wasn't the first Catholic to call out the church's corruption, but he was the most noticeable and proactive. After nailing a list of 95 criticisms to his local cathedral door, Luther decided to start his own practice of Christianity... [[Meme|without blackjack or hookers]]. This went about as well as you'd expect (he was declared a heretic and hunted as a renegade), but what the Pope and the Hapsburgs (the dynasty that effectively controlled the title of Holy Roman Emperor) hadn't counted on was how incredibly unpopular they'd made themselves over the years.

You may have heard of the Borgia family and how they got away with some pretty crazy shit while they controlled the papacy, including bribery, incest, and murder. The truth is that the papacy had been in severe trouble for many centuries, including a period where the office of pope was so tightly controlled by the French that they relocated his seat from the apostolic Rome to the backwater town of Avignon just to prove a point. When the stranglehold of the French kings started to loosen a little, it devolved to the point where three people claimed to be pope at the same time. Lutheranism and its more radical strains like Calvinism hit the Dutch, German, and Austrian parts of the Holy Roman Empire like a tidal wave, making it essentially ungovernable as a single whole - not that the Holy Roman Empire was ever whole to begin with, even before Spain came into the picture. Protestantism also started making inroads into other countries. Radical Zwinglians and Calvinists set up shop in Geneva and Zurich, establishing theocratic regimes where all forms of fun (dancing, excessive eating, drinking) were strictly verboten. It even swept into France, where it intersected with power struggles among the nobility for the throne to nastily split the majority Catholic kingdom.

Even then, the Reformation might have been crushed had it not been for one nation. England was ruled by Henry VIII, who was a devout Catholic but [[That guy|wanted his marriage annulled]] because his only living children were daughters and his wife was too old to produce more children. However, there was a major roadblock to getting it: he'd gotten the Pope's personal dispensation to marry his sister-in-law after his brother had died and asking for a reversal meant sending a message to the Pope, who was at the time a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor, his wife's nephew. The Pope declined for obvious reasons (read: he didn't want to upset the guy who was holding him prisoner), so Henry got the Archbishop of Canterbury to step in and give him the annulment, which meant breaking with the Roman Catholic Church and forming his own branch of Christianity. This was further reinforced by his daughter Elizabeth I, who essentially made the monarch the head of the new religion and forced all English clergy to pledge loyalty to the Queen above all else. The average English noble and peasant alike were remarkably on-board with this, as the whole "England vs the Continent" mentality was already firmly entrenched from about four centuries of previous wars. However, many Protestants felt that the Church of England was still too much like Catholicism, with its head of state essentially taking the role of the Pope. These Puritans would cause problems for the British Crown later on. But either way, in England the continental Protestants had received a potent ally in opposition to Catholicism as the English sided with the Dutch against the Holy Romans, except when they sided with the Holy Romans against the French. Like we said, this was a weird time.

Things came to a head with the Thirty Years War, the first major conflict between the nations of Europe following the widespread adoption of gunpowder. It began with German princes holding more power than the Holy Roman Emperor and Bohemian (Bohemia now being called the Czech Republic) Protestants not wanting to be ruled by an anti-Protestant Emperor and throwing a group of imperial ambassadors out of a window (yes, really) in protest. Incumbent Emperor Ferdinand II reacted by destroying a Protestant church and his officials started killing Protestant protestors. While nominally the war was over Protestantism vs. Catholicism, politics played an important role in the ever-shifting alliances of the nations involved. For example, despite being devoutly Catholic themselves and having Cardinal Richelieu acting as the power behind the throne, France was more concerned with keeping the Hapsburgs at bay and supplied aid to the Protestants in the North (while harshly suppressing their own Protestants as a threat to the French Crown).

Eventually Louis XIV came to the throne in France (and ruled for '''72 years''', still the longest verifiable reign of any sovereign in recorded history) and quickly proved to be even more brutally cunning than Richelieu. With that the Habsburg ambitions died and everyone agreed to the Peace of Westphalia, which is regarded today as the foundation of national sovereignty as we know it. This also tends to mark the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the "Early Modern" period, or the "Age of Enlightenment."

==Meanwhile in the East==
In the Middle East, we've got the final death of Eastern Rome and the meteoric rise of the Ottoman Empire, undoubtedly the most iconic empire of the period. The Ottomans established the first modern professional army, including the famed Janissary corps, and thoroughly butt-fucked the Balkans for centuries to come. For a time they were the terror of Europe, a bushy-bearded, turban-wearing Muslim foe against whom Christendom would need to unite in order to survive, while on the high seas, their allies on the Barbary Coast terrorized coastal towns from Italy to Iceland. In that era, their only true rivals were the pesky Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire. A major feather in the Ottoman Empire's cap was invading, besieging and taking over the city of Constantinople from the Byzantine Empire, which was later renamed Istanbul. The sultans of Turkey ruled luxuriously from their grand palace in Istanbul, surrounded by their [[Slaanesh|massive harems of concubines]] and armies of viziers. However, by the tail end of this period, the Ottoman era of rapid expansion would come to an end as the Ottoman state transitioned into a more sedentary imperial polity. Just like the Romans, the cracks started appearing when the brilliant golden age ruler (the Five Good Emperors for Rome and Suleiman for the Ottomans) was replaced by his incompetent drunken tyrant son (Commodus and Selim II).

In East Asia, the Ming Dynasty had reached the apogee of its power, having sent massive fleets of treasure ships to the west between 1405 and 1433 in a show of power that ultimately came to nothing as the Ming emperors decided that building a giant overseas empire wasn't for them. It would soon fall into decline as economic problems, troubles at the Mongolian border, the Japanese invasion of Korea, and natural disasters eroded the imperial court's ability to keep things together. The breakdown of order near the end of the sixteenth century led to a growing power vacuum that would be exploited by a confederation of Jurchens under the banner of the Aisin Gioro clan, soon to be known as the Manchu. After spending decades building up their strength, the newly-proclaimed Qing Dynasty got their opportunity when a massive peasant revolt captured Beijing, leading to the suicide of the last Ming Emperor in 1644. With the help of a turncoat Ming general, the Qing swept into power and fully consolidated themselves as the imperial sovereigns of what we now know as China. Not wanting to associate with those they still considered barbarian, the Joseon Dynasty of Korea promptly shut its doors for the next couple hundred of years.

<s>One thing worth noting is that after the Ming (and later Qing) secured their power, they decided that the Middle Kingdom was too good for everyone else and isolated themselves from the rest of the world (apart from demanding tribute from nearby countries, a time-honored Chinese tradition). At the time, they could genuinely claim that they were the most advanced society on the planet, but this closing off to foreign ideas would have major consequences in the following centuries. It also caused a butterfly effect on European trade; the only way to acquire Chinese goods was to pay for it in gold and silver (though eventually trading in European firearms technology). In turn, this fueled European colonial ambitions in the New world, and eventually imploding the Spanish and Chinese economies once the silver supply dried up.</s> Contrary to most popular perceptions of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Chinese were in regular contact with the outside world throughout this period, up until the nineteenth century when the doors were blown wide open by the Opium Wars. The aforementioned fleets of ships testify to both their capacity and willingness to reach new shores. The court let in Jesuits, whose knowledge of astronomy, painting, and other European arts were well appreciated, at least until the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor. In 1689, the Qing concluded the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia, more or less establishing the border between both polities for over a century, and also highlighting the fact that the Middle Kingdom didn't simply lord themselves over other peoples.

At the same time however, the Ming also feared invasion by barbarians. Recall the experience of being ruled by the Mongols, which the mandarins detested because the Mongols were foreigners who employed other foreigners to govern their lands. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Ming were in trouble, because of all of the aforementioned problems which challenged the rule of the court; their response was to start circling the wagons, which included the cessation of all maritime trade, which was infested with piracy anyhow. Having taken advantage of those factors to overthrow the Ming, the Qing were very keen to make sure that the same didn't happen to them, particularly as the Manchu were seen as not entirely native to the Middle Kingdom, whatever that meant for the time. As the court became more and more aware of the Jesuits' intentions to convert the population of the empire to Catholicism (which would have required acknowledging the authority of the Pope as superior to the Emperor) and noticing how Europeans were setting up fortified outposts throughout Asia, they decided that it was not in their interests to allow a bunch of heavily armed foreign proselytizers to roam freely. Thus, by the eighteenth century, the Qing began to lay down rules that restricted European presence on the mainland.

Furthermore, unlike Europeans, the Chinese had no real reason to actually go on those voyages of discovery, in large part because they were at the heart of an existing trade network. They produced many of the things which had compelled Europeans to travel abroad in the first place, namely silk, porcelain, and tea. They also did not have a compulsion to seek out spices because they were practically made in their backyard. Because of the Qing's enormous population, they had an abundant labour force for both agricultural production as well as the manufacture of goods. There were also geographical factors to consider: China had plenty of frontier that could be opened up for siphoning off excess population. There was very little reason to bother braving the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean when pretty much all trade took place in Asia. They continued however, to trade with Europeans because of their need for silver to fuel their economy: having seen how the issuing of paper money by the Ming led to runaway inflation, the Qing insisted on a bimetallic standard using copper for everyday transactions and silver for trade and taxation. This would eventually lead to problems later on as the supply of currency simply could not match population growth and indeed, began to decline as supplies dried up, but we won't go too deeply into those problems here.

A little further east, the Renaissance encompasses the part of Japanese history most people care about: the Sengoku Jidai. This is the part where they cut each other to pieces with swords and shoot holes in each other with guns (as opposed to the other parts where they cut each other to pieces with swords, or the one part where they do both to others). Japan comes into contact with the wider world outside of Asia as the Portuguese landed on their shores, bringing Jesus and guns with them. The late Sengoku would be strongly influenced by the latter, as Japanese warlords seeking an advantage over their rivals adopted firearms into their armies, which contributed to the rise of massed armies of ashigaru conscripts under Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was well on the way to uniting Japan under one leader for the first time in forever until his loyal retainer Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him for unclear reasons. Nobunaga's lieutenant Toyotomi Hideyoshi finished the job and decided to invade Korea, which failed for a number of reasons: the rough geography of the peninsula, strong resistance on land and sea by the Koreans, the legendary Admiral Yi-Sun Shi completely trashing the Japanese navy twice (the second at the cost of his own life, losing no ships and barely anyone in both battles) and Ming reinforcements (the Chinese admiral is said to have gone over to Yi's ship after the last battle at Noryang Point to thank him for saving his life then beat his chest with grief upon realizing he had died) meant that the invasion stalled and was eventually abandoned.

When Toyotomi died in 1598, his son Hideyori's regents fought each other for control. The winner was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was declared shogun in 1603. Ieyasu abdicated in 1605 and passed the role to his son Hidetada, but retained de facto political power. When his army killed Hideyori in the 1615 Siege of Osaka, there were no challengers to Tokugawa rule. To prevent future rebellions among the baronial daimyo, Tokugawa forced them to maintain a second residence in the shogunate capital of Edo, where they would have to spend about half of every year, both to keep an eye on them as well as to siphon away resources that could be used for a revolt; likewise, to tame potentially unruly veterans now that the fighting was over, he made most of the fighting men into samurai, who then gradually transformed into a caste of scholar bureaucrats and enforcers. Ieyasu's 1614 Christian Expulsion Edict forced out all foreign missionaries and traders except for a small Dutch trading post at Nagasaki, likely to ward off European colonial interests in Japan. After Ieyasu's grandson upheld the ban, the Bakumatsu period began.

==Notes==
* For the average peasant in the Renaissance the changes were as a rule not so great and usually weren't even noticeable. As far as they were concerned beautiful paintings, fine statuary and magnificent architecture were all well and good and they'd admire them if they had the opportunity to see them, but for all of that the grain still needed to be harvested and the cows still needed to be milked just like in their grandfather's day and as their grandchildren would do after they passed. They were more likely to be conscripted into a new army if war came, but this was hardly a world-shattering event for most people and not something they would be inclined to see as an improvement.
* Infantry returned to prominence during this period. New weapons such as arbalest crossbows, matchlock arquebuses, and pikes played a role in this, as did cheap munitions plate, but more importantly than that, the process of making war became more centralized and systematic than the old feudal systems and professional standing armies began to take shape. The nobility generally resisted this when they could, since it meant that the crown could boss them around more, but the general trend was well underway because these forces were just better at fighting wars. Cannons also played a role in the process, as did navies, though artillery would take some time to come into its own.
*Cannons destroyed castles (literally and figuratively). Cities stopped extending their walls and started growing around them because there was no longer any point to sinking colossal amounts of time and resources into a wall when some yahoo with a sufficiently big cannon could blow it to pieces and walk right in. The sorts of walls needed to stop cannons meant that static defenses after this era would be purpose-built fortresses guarding key chokepoints.
*This was a golden age for mercenaries. Raising and maintaining a standing army was time-consuming and expensive, so if a king wanted extra soldiers for a war it was usually cheaper for him to hire out some companies of battle hardened troops for a campaign for a standing rate, rations and a cut of the plunder for the conflict. It was not uncommon for a single company to switch sides in a conflict depending on who could pay them more, and some mercenaries such as Francesco Sforza became major power players in their own right.
*The decline of the lower nobility in Europe that had already set in in the later Middle Ages was in full swing by this period. Advances in administration made many petty lords more of a liability than a boon, most prominently evidenced in the Wars of the Roses, but also because many of them spent their fortunes and lives in pointless feuds between houses, greatly diminishing their importance to the social structure of the kingdoms they lived in. This resulted in most European countries becoming much more centralized as a result, with middle and upper-class commoners filling the economic gap left behind by the petty nobles. While they remained a part of the societal elite in most countries, their overall influence on the politics of their homeland was much more limited than before.
*Production guilds and workshops begin using early mass-production techniques not seen since Rome, supporting larger militaries (with larger price tags). The legendary Venetian Arsenale is said to have been able to build new merchant ships in a day using prefabricated parts.
*The beginnings of the financial industry began to take shape here. With the decline of the lower gentry in most of continental Europe, the downfall of the Knights Templar in 1311 and a multitude of trade barriers existing, demand arose for professionals who could accurately exchange the thousands of different currencies across the merchant empires of Venice, Genoa and the German Hansa. As demanding interest for borrowed money was deemed sinful by the church, this became the realm of Jewish merchants and goldsmiths based in countries where the church held less sway. Money became a much more important signifier of economical strength than owned land and the peasants working this land as a result.
*The Dutch began their 500 year war to push back the sea using windmills. This inadvertently led to the invention of modern banking, insurance, and fractional share investing. They may also have invented speculative bubbles with the so-called "tulip mania" of 1634-1637, when people started buying rare tulip bulbs for absolutely stupid prices until the bottom fell out of the market. "Tulip mania" has since become shorthand for any speculative bubble where the price of a given asset outstrips its intrinsic value.
*Feudalism began to decline as the idea of the nation-state started to take root. Nationalism would become more prominent in the early modern period, coinciding with the Enlightenment, but for now, modern countries were starting to take shape, as people began to think of their homelands as distinct cultural-geographic regions instead of the property of ever-changing noble families. At the same time though, this was when the infamous Habsburg family would come to power throughout much of Europe thanks to having Habsburg butts parked on the thrones of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Austria.
*While many classical texts had been lost in the West, many had been preserved in the East, with some advances in the sciences provided by scholars under Muslim rule (particularly math; the world's prevailing numerical system is fundamentally indo-arabic). These texts returned to Europe due to increased trade with the East, which started with the Crusades. If you wanted to be educated, you had to be well versed in Greek, Latin, and even Arabic. With the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, many Byzantine scholars escaped to Italy (including some members of the last imperial dynasty) bringing the knowledge preserved in the Byzantine Empire to the West, which played a key role in the Renaissance.
* The printing press made its debut, ensuring that all those rediscovered classics spread very quickly throughout Europe as the first modern universities took shape.
* Cartography came into its own. Maps before the Renaissance were like subway maps: designed to show rough locations and routes. But as maritime trade improved, the need for accurate charts became increasingly important, and a cottage industry of skilled mapmakers set about creating accurate maps of the known world.
* Our modern forms of Science started around here. Various wisemen like Leonardo Da Vinci, Nikolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei laid the foundations of many scientific theories, based on their observations of the natural world, imported texts from China and Arabia and thoroughly testing the tolerance of the church (although this is often exaggerated by pop history, many scientists of that time were in fact priests and monks). Astronomy and Chemistry were particular favorites, since they didn't infringe on any popular taboos and would, later down the line, invent many new methods of navigation and production.

==The Appeal of the Renaissance==
The Renaissance heralds the end of the Middle Ages. A lot of medieval mechanisms were still in place in various forms, but things were beginning to change. There were still knights in shining armor and they were still formidable battering rams, but they were facing competition from the new and lethal combination of pikemen and arquebusiers. Even as smiths and armorers learned to make bullet-resistant or bulletproof armor, knights found themselves on the way out. All the while there was a lot of shrewd political scheming and intrigues. Why mobilize a few thousand levies and a hundred knights to kill someone when a few drops of poison or a well-placed stiletto could accomplish the job much more cheaply and with far less fuss? The game of dynastic power was still being played, but with a rules update that favored a more subtle style.

At the same time, inventors and engineers were tinkering and contriving a wide variety of new machinery. If one was to ascribe a heroic ideal to the Renaissance it would be the Renaissance Man, an archetype reflected in the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, a brilliant engineer, scientist and artist all rolled into one. On the battlefield, the men of power were beginning to take notice of these new novelties and so active patronage of inventors was encouraged. At the same time, explorers and conquistadors carved their place in history by finding new lands, settling them and conquering the [[Bronze Age]] societies they encountered there. For those who want to see what da Vinci could’ve accomplished if the technology of his time had been equal to his imagination and he'd been a bit more of a mad scientist (i.e. if his tanks and other war machines were actually built), [[Clockpunk]] has you covered.

In general, if you like your medieval fantasy to have a dash of the modern in it, the Renaissance is where you look for ideas. Besides, the stuff associated with this period is frankly pretty. This period is often associated with its art more than anything else and it did provide plenty of classics. William Shakespeare operated at the tail end of the Renaissance, though since he was a big classics nerd many of his plays dealt with earlier time periods.

==Renaissance-inspired Games, Factions, and Settings==
* Some human nations in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] tend to be heavily Renaissance-themed in technologies: the most obvious example is [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|the Empire]] with its da Vinci-flavored [[Steam Tank|Steam Tanks]] and extensive use of firearms. Same can be said about [[Kislev]] in some ways, as it's mostly inspired by Russia under Ivan the Terrible and even has Streltsi (that were historically introduced during Ivan's reign) in [[Mordheim]] and [[Total War: WARHAMMER]]; [[Nippon]] (see the reason below); partially [[Tilea]] and [[Estalia]] (Tilea has Roman influence too, and politically Estalia resembles medieval Spain); and, most likely, [[Marienburg]]. The exceptions are non-human (with probable exception of [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dwarfs]]) and [[Chaos]] factions, painfully medieval [[Bretonnia]], most likely medieval [[Cathay]] and [[Araby]], and lastly inspirationally uncertain [[Border Princes]] and [[Kingdoms of Ind]].
* Virtually any [[Japan]] analog as nobody, not even the Japanese, cares about pre-Sengoku Japan (except maybe the Mongol invasions) as a setting and nobody makes settings modern enough to have a post-sakoku Japan analog. Seriously, when the Meiji Revolution happened it was like one night you go to sleep and its Japan as its always been for forever, and the next morning you wake up and there are soldiers in the streets with bolt action rifles harassing people for not building gunpla and buying KFC for Christmas.
* [[Golarion]] edges closer to renaissance than straight middle ages.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

StarCraft

2023-05-14T19:04:30Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* The Zerg */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan. Depending on who you ask, he's either a scumbag only looking for his own personal benefit or thug with a heart of gold, with the most fiercely debated part of Wings of Liberty being his death - he was either a douchebag who kept his own self-interest above all else and potentially screw the entire universe sideways by killing Kerrigan, or he took one for the team because he just wanted Raynor to be happy and realized that he was screwed either way. There are pointers and hints in the Wings of Liberty Campaign that support both ends of this theory and we best it at that.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

There is also a subsect of Primal Zerg, which are, as implied, the Zergs original form; a collection of carnivorous animals hailing from a Death World at the edge of the known Galaxy. Their ability to directly and quickly absorb genetic traits and incorporate it into their own DNA (i.e. big Zerg with claws eats small Zerg with spikes, what makes the big Zerg grow spikes when it consumed the smaller Zerugs flesh) was what got the Xel'Naga interested in them in the first place. The Primal Zerg, in contrast to their swarm cousins, are highly indivdualistic and put a strong emphasis on evolutional competition (less Darwinistic and more Smithian), to the point that they considered being kept on a psionic leash via the Overmind to be sacriligious.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]]. The Primal Zerg regarded the Overmind as a perversion of their racial ethos, which emphasized biological evolution on an individual level, in contrast to the Overminds version of evolution as a collective swarm and considered the creation of the Overmind as one of the single biggest crimes committed against their species.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. He is a simple-minded, slug-looking thing that is obsessed with creating the perfect organism for the Zerg swarm and best remembered for his robotic way of speaking. He was also the guy... uhm, thing looking over Kerrigans initial transformation into the Queen of Blades which is described in agonizing detail in Heart of the Swarm (which basically involved breaking every single bone in her body, skinning her alive in acid and replacing it all with a Zerg exoskeleton).

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

'''Dehaka''': One of the Primal Zerg of Zerus, a sapient, individual being looking like a half-way cross between a sabretooth tiger and a dinosaur. He comes to respect Kerrigan for her killing of one of the oldest Zerg to have ever existed (a gigantic monstrosity the size of a small mountain) and joins her merry crusade because he feels that she could provide the best essence for his own evolution.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who joins the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

Nazi Equipment

2023-05-13T01:56:37Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Tanks */

[[Nazi|Nazis]]. History's most stylish villains. They're famous as much for their cool equipment as for their total evilness, and because of its distinctive aesthetic and reputation- they did develop some of the most technologically advanced weapons of the 1940s, after all- it gets a lot of use in games, both traditional and otherwise. Here's a hilariously non-brief overview. As a general rule of thumb (with the exception of the Karabiner 98 which predated the Nazis by decades) Nazi equipment was [[plasma|very advanced in concept and potentially quite strong, but overly complicated and unreliable to the point of being dangerous to its user.]]

The vast majority of what you see below fall into four categories, staples of Nazi engineering:
* Decent design, but too little too late,
* Decent design, but too advanced for the technology available to be of any real use on a battlefield where ease of use and reliability are major contributors to success (case in point: the hybrid drive of the [[Elefant|Ferdinand]]),
* High Command squandered the potential because they either weren't using it to full capacity or for purposes it wasn't designed for, Jewish slave-labor doing little sabotages didn't help either (Such as V-2 rockets' rivets sometimes coming off),
* Completely and obviously fucking retarded, but if I don't follow orders I'm getting shot, sorry test pilot (and everyone else involved)!

===Small Arms===
====Rifles and SMGs====
[[File:Karabiner 98k.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Kar 98k: German for "boring, but practical". ]]
* '''''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBrh1euWg0 Karabiner 98 kurz]'':''' ("Carbine 1898 short" in German, also called simply ''Gewehr 98'', "rifle of [18]98") The standard German infantry rifle during WWII, from the old Mauser family. It was becoming outdated by the beginning of WWII, given that it was essentially just a shorter version of the venerable Gewehr 98 which armed most German soldiers in WWI. It used 7.92×57mm Mauser ammunition (often shortened to "8mm Mauser"). Probably the least "Nazi equipment" example on this list while also one of the most manufactured, the rifle's strengths were that it was fairly cheap, very accurate, and reliable. But its drawbacks were that it had a slow rate of fire and only a five-round magazine (typical for early and mid WW2 but struggled against late war Garand and SVT). The easiest weapon to compare it to in WWII would be the Soviet Mosin Nagant, which was cheaper to make, though the 98 was much more accurate. It fell short compared to the British SMLE rifle, which had a ten-round magazine and had a good rate of fire for a bolt action, though it has a substantial advantage due to 8mm Mauser being rimless while .303 British is not. Worse yet, the Karabiner 98k also went up against the semi-automatic American M1 Garand (which General Patton had called "the greatest weapon ever devised") which vastly outperformed it in spitting bullets down range. (All of the above are roughly the same range of calibre—.30 [inches] or 7 to 8mm—one which remains in use today by almost every major military as well as many civilian uses, although today's fashion is for smaller calibre, higher velocity rounds for infantry.) Even then, the gun was generally quite well regarded for what it was and there was plenty of them to go around. It was also the go-to weapon for German snipers who affixed a scope to it. The gun is still in production today (albeit with modern style furniture), it is still the German army's drill rifle, some states still use versions of it as a sniper rifle and it's sometimes found in Iraq and other third world nations where it acts as a cheap marksman's rifle. Of course, it's also an excellent hunting rifle in civilian hands.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUjPeAgvf3U '''''Gewehr 43'']:''' "Rifle 1943". the German army's semi-automatic rifle. This weapon was developed in response to their invasion of the Soviet Union, where the Germans were shocked to find Soviet troops brandishing semi-automatic rifles (primarily the SVT-40), drastically out-gunning their troops in firefights. The result was a fairly decent semi-automatic rifle/carbine chambered for the same rounds as the Kar98k, which derived many of its concepts from, while not being an outright clone of, the SVT-40. The rifle's magazine was detachable (allowing for quick reloads) but still had the option of allowing the shooter to rapidly use stripper clips when reloading (either attaching them directly to the weapon from above, or using them to push several bullets at once into a magazine which attached to the rifle below.) Much like the Kar98k, it worked well as a marksman/sniper's weapon when affixed with a scope. Unfortunately, mechanically it was far from perfect as it was overgassed (not surprising, as the gas pressure that was tapped from the barrel to cycle the semi-automatic action proved to be too strong for the rifle's quite complicated mechanism, especially when made by unskilled workers from lower-quality steel). This resulted in (comparatively) frequent breakdowns and shattered parts, in addition to requiring more maintenance. Copying overmuch from the SVT-40 may have also contributed to this problem, as the 7.62x54mm cartridge in the SVT-40 produces a lower gas pressure than the 7.92x57mm Mauser. For this reason, the G43 wasn't a very popular weapon among German troops, though its firepower was still welcome. The G43 has an interesting legacy that lasts to this day, however. Engineers discovered that, on occasion, the roller lock could fire fully automatic, careful adjustments to the mechanics provided. This discovery lead to the Development of the '''Gerät 06''' or '''StG 45 (M)''' which was the ancestor of the roller-delayed blowback systems used in guns like the MP5 or the G3.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdQhO8FtY7c '''''Maschinenpistole 38/40'']:''' "Machine pistol 1938/1940", the iconic MP 40 is a slightly updated variant more suitable for mass-production. The most common German submachine gun through the war used mainly by squad leaders and troops fighting in urban areas. It was also the go-to weapon of specialist units like paratroopers and the SS. Uses a 32-round magazine chambered for 9x19mm rounds and typically comes with a folding wire stock. In general pretty good for the time, but only a million of them were produced, compared to the 1.5 million Thompsons, 4 million Stens, and 6 millions PPShes produced by the Americans, British, and Soviets. [[Derp|The primary weapon of the Nazis, according to Hollywood at least, where every single German grunt has one.]] Known for its rather simplistic design; the weapon had only one fire setting (automatic), though its cyclical rate was much lower than equivalent Allied SMGs, allowing aimed single shots at the cost of some room-clearing power. Was a major influence that can still be seen in SMG development. There was also an MP 41, combining the core MP 40 with the proper wooden stock and fire selector of the MP 28. While very popular with the SS patent bullshit got in the way and they had to end production after just under 27,000 guns.

[[File:STG 44.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Few guns end up naming a whole class of weapons. The StG 44 is one of them]]
* [https://www.forgottenweapons.com/evolution-of-the-sturmgewehr-mp431-mp43-mp44-and-stg44/ '''''Sturmgewehr 44'']:''' The "Assault rifle 1944" or '''StG 44''' was the first assault rifle adopted on a large scale. Fun fact - the name was suggested by Hitler and was pure propaganda. Chambered for the new 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge, it gave a rifleman the power and accuracy of a rifle with the rate of fire of a submachine gun. As its name suggests, it entered the war very late, even though it is only an updated version of the MKB42, which, as the name suggests, came into the war mid-early 1942. In a rare demonstration of common sense, Hitler vetoed its mass deployment early on due to logistics (replacing over 10 million '98k' rifles with a new model that used different ammo couldn't be done overnight, or cheaply), though he approved of the idea and changed his mind later in the war when it became clear a limited impact would be better than none at all. This, combined with the fact that producing the Stg44 required the industry to adapt their tooling, and recurrent shortages of resources later in the war, heavily limited the scale at which they were produced. It was not that difficult to make though, being to Kar98k what the Panther was to the Panzer IV - roughly 120% of resources for superior result. It also had some mechanical issues, including a fragile feed mechanism which could jam if the rifle was knocked over. Anecdote: one of its optional attachments was the ''Krummlauf'', a curved barrel and periscope for firing around corners or from inside a vehicle hatch. Yes, it worked, but the bullets often shattered as they skittered along the curve of the barrel, causing a shotgun-like spread, and the barrels wore out quickly. In any case, the troops who received the regular StG 44 loved them because it gave the firepower of a submachine gun at about three times the effective range—and it was particularly interesting to the Russians, with contest for new "avtomat" design starting in 1943, even before StG 44 entered official mass production. Since they were already winning the war just fine without it, the Soviet Ministry of Defense decided that, instead of taking what they could in 1944, their avtomat designs should be perfected as neither of the prototypes available suited their demands perfectly (especially the one about the same weight as the StG 44 was deemed to be too heavy) - and we all know what the final result was after some bright young Red Army engineer named Mikhail Kalashnikov got his hands on a few. Some StG 44s remained in service in the East German ''Nationale Volksarmee'' until the 1960s.

* '''''Fallschirmjägergewehr 42'':''' "Paratrooper rifle 1942". If a Kar98k and a MG42 could have a baby together, this battle rifle would be it. Created in limited numbers for the exclusive use of German paratroopers. The high-ups realized that the Kar98k was too long for paratroopers, and the MP40 wasn't suitable outside of urban combat, so they wanted something that handled like a carbine but could fire like a machine gun. Beyond that, Hermann Goering wanted his Luftwaffe airborne troops to have something a cut above what the regular Heer grunts got in order to fortify his personal fiefdom in the Reich. The FG 42 was designed as a shorter, automatic battle rifle to give paratroopers superior firepower, using a side-loading box magazine. Its high recoil made automatic fire inadvisable, as with later automatic high-caliber battle rifles such as the US M14. While it never really took off, it was quite the solid design, and is notable for influencing the design of the American M60 machine gun after the war.

*'''''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knPDsJyCpjI Kriegsmodell]''''': as the war dragged on and as the Germans got their fascist asses kicked across Europe, and their factories and homes were being leveled by Allied bombers, the Germans started to try and make their equipment faster and cheaper. They started at first with small changes here and there, but by the end of the war they were cutting corners like it was crunch time at the Circle factory.
**'''''Volkssturmgewehr''''': Literal garbage guns made from parts of broken or defective weapons, surplus barrels and wood that barely deserves to be called so. Part of the vain efforts to make the Volkssturm units into anything resembling an organized fighting force and to make a quick and extremely cheap produced gun to defend what was left of Germany by 1945 and like the German war effort, utterly failed due to being too complicated. Yeah, the last ditch weapons that look like an Ork Mek would think they are too crude for his taste use in fact a fairly elaborate mechanism that put their price tag slightly above that of an StG 44.

*'''''MP-3008''''': Literally a British Sten gun with the magazine rotated 90 degrees. The Sten was designed early in the war to be as cheap and easy to make as possible so that they could be widely distributed in case of a German invasion of Britain. The Germans captured a few of them over the course of the war, and when they found themselves facing invasion, the Germans decided to copy the damn thing late in the war as a desperation measure. A few thousand of them were made before the Nazi regime died.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zielgerät_1229 '''Zielgerät "Vampir"''']: Night vision rifle. Produced too little and too late. Per the usual Nazi gimmicks, they were quite capable and powerful, but there just weren't enough of them because the industrial base was blown to shit and time wasn't on their side. Briefly caused distress to the Soviets.

====Pistols====

[[File:Lugar Pistol.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The quintessential Bad Guy pistol]]

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIX1EL1hTmE '''''Pistole Parabellum 1908'']:''' "Pistol Parabellum 1908". The Nazis used a bunch of pistols in truth, but none are as iconic of the Third Reich as the P08 Luger with its joint armed breech. It could load an eight-round box magazine or a thirty-two-round drum. The 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge was initially designed for this pistol and is still one of the most common pistol calibers in the world. It was eventually phased out in favor of the P38, as the Luger was too expensive to manufacture for the entire German army, although it was still available for the troops and officers who could afford it. The Luger was also somewhat unique at the time in that it could still double as a pistol carbine by affixing a stock and a 32-round drum-magazine to it, when carbine-convertible pistols had started falling out of fashion years before. The exotic toggle-lock mechanism of the gun meant it had shitty reliability in field conditions, but the gun was made at a time when sidearms were typically issued to specialists, officers, and policemen, who were typically away from conditions that could foul up the gun. WWII-vintage Lugers go for several thousand dollars as collectibles today.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXAMma6mUq8 '''Walther ''Pistole 38'']:''' "Walther Pistol 1938". The Walther P38 replaced the Luger P08 as the Wehrmacht's service pistol just before World War II, due to it being cheaper to produce. It loaded a 9x19mm eight-round detachable box magazine. Nerds will recognize this as G1 Megatron's alt-mode, and attentive [[James Bond]] fans will recall it seeing some use in ''Goldfinger''. MUCH more common than the Luger despite what Hollywood would tell you, and a decent pistol, if a bit annoying due to its hard-to-pull trigger. The Italians cloned its internals in the M1951, meaning the Beretta 92 is the P38's grandchild.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkU3CIPdMk '''Mauser ''Construktion 96'']:''' "Construction 1896". Popularly known as the "Boxcannon" (by the Chinese) and "Broomhandle" (by most everyone else); it loaded ten rounds from a stripper clip into an internal magazine, although there was also an option for a 20-round magazine that had the added bonus of the entire magazine being detachable instead of being built-into the weapon. The C96 was typically chambered for either the newer 9x19mm or the original 7.63x25mm rounds (which were so high velocity for a pistol cartridge of the time that they were only surpassed with the later development of the .357 Magnum). The C96 was not typically issued to the main German army during WWII; only the Luftwaffe were known users of the weapon during the war, as sidearms for their pilots. It was also one of the first and most iconic of the pistol carbine designs, innovating the wooden holster that could double as a detachable stock, making it (and Spanish and Chinese knockoffs) extremely popular in areas like China where proper longarms might be either too expensive or banned from import. However, by the 30s and 40s, this feature had fallen out of fashion in the West and wasn't included in newer production models, with only a few being modified to restore the functionality. Nerds will recognize this as Han Solo's DL-44 blaster pistol from the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, with some gubbins glued to it to make it more sci-fi.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4COZpIw9UMI '''Walther Polizeipistole/Polizeipistole Kurz''']: "Police Pistol/Police Pistol short". You know this one. It's the gun made popular by Ian Fleming and [[James Bond]]. The Walther PP is a compact pistol that was typically issued to German police units (Kripo, Gestapo, Gefepo and Feldgendarmerie), but also as a sidearm to military officers and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rz-jKH_V04 senior party members]. The PPK variant was an even smaller version of the PP, designed for concealed carry in mind (in fact it was so small that it can typically fit into the sleeves of most longcoats, making it useful for infiltrators). It could come chambered for either 7.65mm (.32 ACP to Americans) or 9x17mm (.380 Auto) rounds. The Cold War-era Soviet Makarov pistol would largely be based on the PP pistols, though it was chambered in a slightly more powerful cartridge known as 9x18 or 9mm Makarov (which is actually thicker than the now ubiquitous 9x17/9mm Parabellum, since Soviets measured width from a different part of the cartridge). The PPK and its cheaper clones (such as the Bersa Thunder, in .380 ACP or 9mm Kurz "Short") are readily available today and basically never stopped production. If you're looking to buy one in the states, be aware that there have been several license holders: Interarms (1978-1999, truest to the original design), S&W (2002-on, have had some recalls over serious defects), and Black Creek (1999-2001, very limited numbers).

====Machine Guns====

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJkU4Sah8I '''''Maschinengewehr 42'']:''' "Machine gun 1942". German infantry tactics during WWII were built around the machine gun and, as such, the Germans developed an exceptional machine gun in the MG 42 (basically an improved but functionally identical version of the earlier MG 34). It was lightweight (11.7 kg), belt fed (unlike the magazine fed LMGs it was usually pitted against), and it could nominally fire 1,200 rounds per minute (although, in practice, it was actually even faster) while most other machine guns could barely reach 600. That much [[dakka]] causes a lot of heat, so the gun was designed for easy swapping of barrels; although even with the barrels being regularly changed it was not uncommon for these guns to fire so fast that a cartridge would ignite before being fully loaded, completely breaking the gun and potentially injuring the gun's crew. Its terrifying rate of fire and distinctive report earned it the nickname "Hitler's Buzzsaw". The core idea of the MG42 was the universal machine gun; that is, the German army wouldn't have light, medium, heavy, or antiair, machine guns, but a single weapon that could do it all. That stupidly high rate of fire was designed to let it throw enough lead at enemy aircraft to be sure it hit something, the quick change barrels let it maintain that stupidly high RoF without being water cooled, and it was light enough to be man-portable, so it could be toted around by infantry squads and used as a SAW. The MG 42 was the basis for numerous other weapons throughout the Cold War (and is still in use by NATO forces today as the MG3, the only real changes were switching it to NATO-standard caliber and reducing the firing rate to actually be 1200 rounds per minute, as opposed to the 1500 rpm of the original MG42). The MG3 is still widely exported and its production licensed to NATO and allies. A ''double barrel'' variant of the MG3 was also produced as a ''low cost Minigun alternative''.

* '''''Maschinengewehr 34'':''' The predecessor to the MG 42, it was still in wide use at the start of the war. It had a lower, more controllable rate of fire of around 800-900 RPM, and had a single-shot mode that was removed in the MG 42. Its production went on parallel to the MG 42 because its swing-down barrel-swap method was more compatible with vehicle ball mounts than MG 42's slide-open method, so all MGs seen on German tanks even late in the war were still MG 34's.

*'''''Maschinengewehr 08/15''''': A mid-WWI improvement on the regular MG 08 of the Imperial German army. It was developed as an answer to the problem of assaulting positions without direct support from automatic weapons, since the standard MG 08 was too heavy to carry around. The result saw the mounting of the MG 08 being replaced by a bipod and the coolant jacket being reduced in size and volume, bringing down its weight from almost 40 kilos down to a more comfortable 20, and the addition of a shoulder stock also made it possible to use it like a more modern LMG. By modern standards, still way too heavy to reliably use it in that particular role, but it worked well enough for the Germans that they continued to improve on it, leading to a (and due to the end of WWI ultimately ineffective), fully air-cooled version of the LMG 08/18, which did away with water cooling entirely, reducing its weight to 16 kilos, actually making it comparable to guns like the Lewis gun (Also the reason why drum-fed LMGs never caught on in the German military, as Germany was forbidden from developing new automatic weapons by the Treaty of Versailles). The 08/15 remained the standard MG for the Reichswehr and even the early Wehrmacht. Loads of them remained in stockpiles well into the war, where they were issued to rear and police units for what the Nazis called "anti-partisan action", with reports of the weapons being used tracking all the way into late 1941 and 1942. Fun fact: The gun was so ubiquotous and regular training tasks on it so tedious, that the word "nullachtfünfzehn" (Zero-Eight-Fifteen) entered the German language as a derogatory term for something mediocre, uninspired and boring.

====Anti-Tank Infantry Weapons====

* '''''Hafthohlladung'':''' In English, "Attachable Shaped Charge" (get used to this very literal naming scheme, it continues below). Very soon into the war, the Germans realized they would never have enough tanks and antitank guns to go around, so they developed weapons that would allow an infantryman to (in theory, at least) deal with a tank. The Hafthohlladung was such an early attempt. A big AT grenade with three magnets that allowed it to stick to any metallic surface, it would make a nice hole into any tank it was attached to... Which makes the weapon's main drawback immediately clear: [[Tankbustas|running up to an operational tank to slap a bomb on its side wasn't exactly safe]]. In theory, you could also try to [[Genestealer#Genestealer_Cults|wait and hide in ambush]] for the tank to pass close by since visibility from inside a tank wasn't that great, but that would require being able to anticipate the path of the tank (without accidentally getting run over), and tanks were often supported by infantry anyway. At the very least, they were less suicidal than the Japanese "lunge mine." (A mine on a stick to be used [[Tankbustas]]-style) The Hafthohlladung wasn't really a successful weapon and saw only limited use, but it paved the way for the next item on the list:

* '''''Panzerfaust'':''' "Armor fist", or, more literally, "tank fist". A disposable one-shot anti-armor weapon for use against tanks and entrenched positions. Really cheap to produce, lightweight, and able to do a lot of damage to tanks at close range (maximum range being at most 150 meters for the later models). And it was really easy to use: hold in crook of the arm, flip a switch up that becomes an iron sight (and also arms the weapon), aim, squeeze the firing lever, and enjoy the fireworks. The basic idea of how they were used was to give one guy in every squad (or more) one of them so that if a tank ever did get close, there was a chance they'd be able to take it out or do some damage. This, among other things, made Allied generals wary about sending tanks to clear out German infantry forces, especially among the ambush-friendly hedgerows of Normandy. That said, Panzerfausts were useless for trying to snipe at tanks from a distance (with an effective range of about 60m of the most produced versions) and could not be reloaded with another rocket, preventing most troops from carrying more than one shot on their person. In the last days of the war, the Nazis gave these to grannies and kids on the off-chance that they could destroy an Allied tank when they rolled into town. In fact, it was so cheap to produce that every member of the late-war Volkssturm was generally issued one, while every third person was lucky enough to be issued a rifle. Looked like a fist in a tube, hence the name. Its general design was later copied by the Russians, eventually used in the RPG-2 and RPG-7 rocket launchers. The concept of the Panzerfaust is still very much alive in the form of many light anti-tank weapons (M72, AT4, MATADOR,...) in use today.

* '''''Panzerschreck'':''' "Armor terror", or "tank fright". A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured American bazookas, and you can almost imagine the Nazi scientist getting one and saying "[[Ork|Bigga is Betta!]]"! (Although the actual reaction was probably also: "VHY DIDN'T VE ZHINK OF ZHAT!!!", see next item on the list.) The Panzerschreck was larger than the bazooka, with an 88mm muzzle size (where the first bazooka was only 60mm)—in fact, it is still larger than most rocket launchers and mortars in use today. Like the bazooka, but unlike the Panzerfaust, it could be reloaded, and had a longer range than the 'Faust bar the latest version. The Panzerschreck has a distinctive steel blast shield in front, which has to do with the larger rocket blowing hot exhaust into the users face. Early models without the shield ended up requiring the operator to wear a gasmask and protective poncho (which must have sucked for the first person to test it, before they figured that out). The Panzerschreck was more useful as an offensive weapon than the Panzerfaust, since it was capable of easily penetrating the armor of any tank they faced (and at better ranges) thanks to the bigger rocket. But on the other hand, it was very much a temperamental weapon that required trained operators, so its use was restricted to dedicated tank hunter teams (unlike the Panzerfaust, which was simple enough that a 10-year old kid could handle it).

*'''''Sturmpistole'':''' An early attempt at making a lightweight antitank weapon, the Sturmpistole was little more than a modified flare gun equipped with a stock and sighting system, and fired oversized warheads out of the muzzle like the Panzerfaust. Unlike the Panzerfaust, it didn't see much success due to the small size of the warhead.

*'''''Raketenwerfer 43'':''' By the time Germany [[Blood Ravens|acquired]] the bazooka and refined it into the Panzerschreck, they had their own version of a rocket-firing antitank weapon: the Raketenwerfer 43 a.k.a. the "Puppchen" or "Little Doll". Why such a weird nickname? Because it was, for all intents and purposes, a miniature artillery piece: wheeled and towed and working from a a closed breech exactly like the rest of the German field guns and howitzers (except it fired rockets). Despite its better range and accuracy it was more expensive and harder to make then the Panzerschreck or the bazooka, so not nearly as many of them were made compared to the 'schrecks.

*'''''Panzerwerfmine'':''' "Mine to be thrown at tanks" (don't say we didn't warn you about the names). Another attempt at allowing infantrymen to deal with a tank, this is basically a shaped charge with deployable stabilizing cloth fins that was thrown overhand to land on the top a tank and blow a nice, big hole through it. Cheap to produce and very efficient, but it required lots of practice to use, so it was only given to trained "[[Tankbustas|tank-hunter]]" teams. The Russians captured some of those, were duly impressed, and promptly refined the German concept into their own "RPG-6" antitank hand grenade that was just as cheap and efficient but way easier to use, and so good it was still part of their arsenal when the Soviet Union fell and can still be found all over the world in relatively low-intensity conflicts. Sure, it won't kill a modern tank, but it sure as hell will kill third-world militiamen in up-gunned Toyotas.

*'''Various antitank rifles''': Germany utilized a lot of antitank rifles at the very beginning of the war, just like every other major power at the time did, and just like their counterparts, they became obsolete really, really quickly, with only the USSR really committing to their use throughout the entirety of the war. Here are some of the antitank rifles the Germans used.
**'''''Tankgewehr M1918''''': The daddy of the antitank rifle and, in a sense, most anti-materiel rifles to this day. Developed near the end of WWI by the German Empire in search of an reliable alternative to light or medium field guns in the role of antitank weaponry, it was essentially a Mauser Gewehr 98 on steroids firing a massive 13mm round that could penetrate up 20 millimeters of armour at ranges of 100 meters and below. It needed a lot of training to make it work right; the recoil was reported to be strong enough to dislocate a man's shoulder if used incorrectly and even if done right, the marksman would become nauseous after just 2 or 3 shots at maximum. To put it in perspective, imagine firing a gun whose recoil feels like a seasoned boxer just hit you in the nuts. The Wehrmacht used some of them that were still lying around in arsenals all over Germany and some they took from the Polish army.
**'''''Panzerbüchse 39''''': Or "Tank Rifle Model 39". Whereas other nations like the British and the Soviets tried to improve their antitank rifles by using larger calibers with bigger powder charges (the British used a .55 cartridge, the Soviets 14.5x114mm), the Germans actually made their bullets smaller, using a 7.92mmx94 cartridge. The idea was basically to increase the kinetic force of the bullet through speed instead of mass, and it sorta worked. The PzB 39 was comparable to most other antitank rifles of the time. Its shortcomings mainly came from (as is tradition) overengineering; the PzB 39 was a breech-loading rifle (like an artillery gun) and the action was expensive and labour-intensive to produce. Additionally, unlike most of its contemporaries and even some of the other antitank rifles the Germans used, it was single shot only (the Brits' antitank rifle had a 5 round magazine, as did the Soviet PTRS-41). The rifle proved barely effective already in Poland and France and was subsequently either phased out or converted into grenade launchers.
**'''''Panzerbüchse SS41''''': An insanely complicated, impractical marvel of engineering developed specifically for SS troops. The need for alternative weapons for the Waffen-SS divisions arose when Himmler wanted to use the SS alongside the Heer, the regular German Army; however the Heer's generals were understandably not thrilled about the idea of a paramilitary force loyal only to the Nazi party, so they did some political lobbying that led to the Wehrmacht keeping its monopoly on all weapons produced by the German arms industry. This was a privilege the SS didn't have, so Himmler sourced weapons from all over Europe and took whatever he could get his filthy hands on (In spite of what /pol/lacks and Wehraboos might tell you, most SS units outside the first few panzer divisions were poorly equipped and used a huge variety of surplus or obsolete rifles, submachine guns and looted guns). The SS41 differs in this regard as it was developed in secret specifically for the SS in Czechia from prototypes the Czechs developed on their own before their annexation into the Greater German Reich. Cycling this monstrous contraption requires the soldier operating it to slide the entire forward assembly forwards and backwards, a process that looks as awesome as it was tedious. Speaking of looks, this gun really is a beauty, and a bullpup design on top of that. Gotta hand it to the Czechs. It fired the same 7.92x94mm cartridge the PzB 39 used, so it's fair to say that it didn't take long to become obsolete and surviving examples are exceedingly rare.
**'''''Solothurn S18/1000''''': A ludicrously massive gun more akin to a cannon than anything else. Developed as part of the German schemes to gain access to modern firearms in spite of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. It was in fact so large that the Swiss put wheels on it and called it a cannon. It fired a FUCKHUEG 20mm round and needed 3 men to operate and carry it and built the basis of nearly all automatic cannons the German military developed and used through out the war.

====Misc====

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M30_Luftwaffe_drilling '''''M30 Luftwaffe Drilling'']:''' The Germans had never been too keen on combat shotguns for various reasons (during WWI Kaiser Wilhelm was famously mocked for his protests that the American use of pump-action shotguns constituted a war crime), but the emergent Luftwaffe air force saw the need for equipping their pilots with survival weapons in the event that they were shot down far from friendly forces and needed to hunt or defend themselves. They decided on a drilling combination gun (a double-barreled shotgun with a single-shot rifle barrel) as the ideal solution. However, Hermann Goering was a fucking idiot who had a propensity for being vain and flashy instead of practical, so he chose the fancy high-end hunting rifles that aristocrats would purchase instead of putting out an order for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_Aircrew_Survival_Weapon cheap, mass-produced weapons that would get the job done] at a fraction of the cost. As a result, the few surviving M30 drillings are extremely collectible and valuable.

*'''''[[Looted|Captured Weapons]]''''': Due to necessity and practicality, German troops also commonly used enemy equipment from all sides, predominantly Soviet weapons captured during the first stage of the invasion of Russia, as well as the vast stores of equipment the Brits left behind at Dunkirk. To ease supply concerns, some of these weapons were converted to use standard German ammunition, like the PPSh-41 submachine gun (which was converted from 7.62x25mm to 9x19mm), while others actually had new Soviet-style ammunition made for them in converted factories. Besides equipment captured from the enemy, the Germans also made use of equipment produced by countries under their occupation, including France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.

*Camouflage pattern battledress for infantrymen. Well, okay, the Italians came up with the idea in the 1920s, but it was the Germans who refined it, mass-produced it and issued it on a large scale. They also came up with the idea for reversible camo, with one side tailored for spring/summer and the other for autumn. Hilariously enough, several of these camo patterns, including the iconic dotted pattern, were patented for the Waffen-SS, meaning that the Heer couldn't use them. This is another example of Nazi Germany getting in its own way with inane bureaucratic bullshit.

*'''''Fliegerfaust''''': The very first MANPAD ever developed to be used against airplanes. Originally an offshoot of the Panzerschreck development program, the Fliegerfaust was supposed to offer decent firepower against low-altitude CAS aircraft for the lowly infantryman. In essence, it worked like an 8-barreled Panzerschreck, where the closing of an electric circuit fired a bundle of small, 2-cm charges up to 300 meters into the air like a shotgun, causing a small cloud of explosions and shrapnel to envelop the target for a brief amount of time. It was never used in any capacity whatsoever, as it was very late to arrive to the party (development started in mid-1944, with serial production planned to begin in March 1945). Only about 80 prototypes from field trials were captured by the end of the war by the allies and influenced modern MANPADS like the FIM-92 Stinger to a great degree.

===Artillery Pieces and Antitank Guns===

*'''''Granatwerfer 36''''': Leave it to the Germans to overengineer a simple tube that spits out explosives. This little critter was supposed to serve as light, indirect fire support on the squad level, with a bunch of gizmos tacked onto it that made aiming with it a hell of a lot easier - too bad the small caliber (5 cm) limited its range and effectiveness in its intended role. Production was terminated in 1941, the reason given that the thing was too complex and too heavy. In hindsight it's a real headscratcher as to why the High Command didn't come to this conclusion sooner (especially since the thing offered no significant advantage over rifle grenades), although it remained in use throughout the rest of the war.
*'''''Leichtes Infantriegeschütz 18''''': The LeIG 18 was an evolution of the proven and reliable "Leichter Minenwerfer 18", the German answer to the Stokes Mortar that the British used. It was meant to be a light field artillery piece designed to take out targets that were too insignificant to justify a full artillery barrage or tank assault, but too strongly defended or entrenched for an infantry assault alone. Think isolated pillboxes or MG nests holding a minor strongpoint. The odd naming stems from the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, to give the Reichswehr plausible deniability for any curious Allied noses poking into German arms research.
*'''''8 cm Granatwerfer 34''''': A carbon copy of the Stokes Mortar. Yes, really.
*'''''15 cm Schweres Infanterie Geschütz 33''''': The largest gun that any given infantry battalion had on offer. Fired 38 kilograms of explosives over considerable distances, and also served as the main armament of the Sturmpanzer IV.
*'''''Leichte Feldhaubitze (LeFH) 18''''': Another oddly named design, this 'Light Field Howitzer' was the most common field gun of the German army. Efficient enough early in the war thanks to its 105mm caliber, it was eventually held back by considerable downsides that became apparent too late (too heavy, too difficult to move around and rather short range of around 10 km). When it became clear that the LeFH 18 really couldn't compare with Allied artillery pieces (like the Soviet 152 mm ML-20 and American M114 155mm howitzers which delivered heavier payloads, or the British QF 25-Pounder, which fired much quicker), various improvements over the course of the war were attempted to keep it relevant. But ultimately it was outdated by 1941, and never could close the gap again.
*'''''3,7-cm PaK 36''''': Probably the most advanced antitank gun in the interwar period, but it often gets a bad rep due to the accounts of German soldiers who had to fire the thing at Churchills, T-34s and other more modern tanks, earning it the moniker "Heeresanklopfkanone", or "The Heer's (German armed forces) door knocking cannon". Its advantages were its very light weight and the perfected design of its mounting, making it very easy to transport and move. Seeing how much the German army invested in this gun before the war (over 9000 being built when the war started and an additional 5500 until 1941) they tried their damndest to keep the thing relevant even when it was very clear it could no longer keep up. Still, a remarkable and groundbreaking design for the early thirties, with 6000 being sold abroad and Japan, the USSR and even the United States outright copying the design with few modifications.
*'''''5 cm PaK 38''''': Practically identical to the 50mm gun of the Panzer III. The PaK 38's bigger, beefier brother, intended to fight off bigger tanks the light 3.7 cm couldn't handle, with very mediocre results. That is, until the Germans made APCR for them in 1942, at which point they accounted for most [[T-34]]s and [[KV]]s losses of the time. However, those APCR required tungsten, and Third Reich didn't have much of it, sooo...
*[[PaK-40_Anti-Tank_Gun|'''''7.5-cm PaK 40''''']]: ...this masterpiece was made. The first design that came onto the scene with WWII in mind. Introduced in 1942, it was very effective design that in the latter half of the war ultimately became the Germans' most used antitank gun. It retained its relevance all the way to 1945, with Soviets and Brits making heavy tanks that could comfortably take it out only in 1944, and even then those weren't impervious. With its' high penetration and low profile, the only problem the PaK-40 had was the ungodly kick that literally dug holes in the ground after every shot, making it difficult to reposition if it was outflanked. Modified versions became the main armament of a lot of German tanks and tank destroyers, the most notable of which were the Panther and the Jagdpanzer IV.
*'''''8 cm PAW 600''''': Hilariously obscure as far as this list goes, the ''Panzerabwehrwerfer 600''/8H63 was developed as the war progressed and Germany was finding its anti-tank weapons either too immobile to adapt to battlefield conditions or too short-ranged to properly handle a regiment's antitank defense in full with its Panzerschrecks. Thus, the PAW 600 was designed to be lighter than other antitank guns by the use of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High–low_system the high-low system] leading to a smoothbore gun that fired high explosive anti-tank rounds. The design was even atypically made with consideration for logistics by basing its rounds off of the Granatwerfer 34 to make continued use of existing manufacturing tooling, and it theoretically could have fired any other ammunition that would go into a Granatwerfer 34 (such as high-explosive or smoke rounds) which would have been noteworthy at the time antitankguns firing high-explosive rounds really didn't do much since not much explosive filler fit into the thick walls of high-velocity rounds...but as mentioned, the thing was hilariously obscure and only 260 of them ever got built, so accounts of them actually having been used at all is very sparse - there is only a statement from a major in 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars that they were used against the regiment near the River Aller on April 14th, 1945 to provide some evidence that the weapon had any effect on a battle in the war at all.
*[[PaK-43|'''''8.8-cm PaK 43''''']]: A modified version of the infamous 8.8-cm Flak gun, stripped down to its essentials and with a longer barrel, wheeled carriage and gun shield. Other than that, they're basically identical.
*'''''12,8-cm PaK 44''''': The biggest, baddest antitank either side devised during the war. One could argue that it was probably overkill, as it was so impractical and heavy that any use outside of fortified positions would be pointless. Given that the gun was designed when the war effort started to really go south and Germany found itself in a defensive war, this was probably a negligible downside, but then again, it didn't really seem to make any difference in the end. Some were used as part of the Siegfried Line and the defense of Berlin, but they were very rare and the only examples that remain today are the ones mounted on the surviving Jagdtigers and the lone surviving Maus.

===Vehicles===
====Tanks====
German tanks were in general well designed, but in hindsight were overengineered and prone to breakdowns in the field. For example, take their ''Schachtellaufwerk'' (interleaved wheel system for the tracks). The idea was: more roadwheels = weight distributed more evenly over track = less ground pressure = less bogging down and/or a higher maximum load. It was also supposed to lessen tank shaking and allow the panzers to fire (relatively) accurately on the move. Great idea on paper, and a pretty good one when testing prototypes at home... but an absolute hell on the Eastern front, where the almost supernaturally awful mud (caused by the spring thaw, or ''rasputitsa'') infiltrated between the wheels before freezing and breaking everything. Cue hour after hour of work for the maintenance teams, removing the track and wheels for cleaning before mounting them again [[FAIL|each and every time the goddamn tank sortied]], where a more traditional slack-track system would have required much less cleaning. And those were just added on top of the already quite large list of ''traditional'' mechanical breakdowns that plagued any and all vehicle pool of the epoch...

Another big weak point in the German Panzerwaffe was the lack of standardization between individual tank models. The Allies more or less made all the variations of their tanks (which were standardized for every company and factory making them) from existing models and fitted them with weapons they deemed appropriate for the task at hand([[Leman Russ (tank)|just like the Leman Russ, in fact]]), which eased supply and maintenance, whereas the Germans designed entirely new vehicles for every purpose and spread them across multiple manufacturers, each with their own specifications, tooling and production lines. In practice, this meant that parts between German vehicle types were mostly incompatible with each other; i.e. a gear made for a Panzer IV "A" could not go into a Panzer IV "J", compared to T-34s being basically entirely interchangeable. It quickly became a logistical nightmare to keep all the tank units in the field sufficiently supplied with spare parts or even fuel (the Germans never could make their minds up if they preferred gasoline or diesel). That's not to say that they didn't know or realize this (thoughts in this direction lead into the E-Series of design studies, planned to be a series of tank models that more or less shared all parts with each other except armament and chassis) but by 1944 Germany lacked the industrial capacity and resources to switch to a more economical model of production. Furthermore, the German model of tank production didn't help too; all of the German tanks were hand-crafted, using expensive and elaborate methods with strict tolerances to produce the best results possible, which becomes positively idiotic when you compare the results to the colossal production runs of the T-34 and the Sherman. As an example: the most produced German tank of the period was the Panzer IV, with 8,553 produced from 1937 to 1945. The Soviets, meanwhile, built ''over 57,000'' T-34s from 1940-1945. In 1943, they were cranking out 1,300 of the damn things a month, compared to Germany's puny monthly average of 252 Panzer IVs. The T-34 wasn't perfect, but it was good enough, and "good enough" is really all you need when you have 57,000 to your opponent's 8,550. Moreover, while the Germans kept tinkering with and refining the IV's design, the Soviets ignored any modification that would slow production and focused on finding ways to build T-34s as quickly and cheaply as possible. The "5 to 1 ratio" of Allied vs German tanks is as much the result of the modus operandi of the German war industry as it is of failed planning, overly complicated designs, fascist inefficiency, a whole lot of nepotism and corruption and having the SHIT bombed out of them.

In the end, the true selling point of the ''Panzerwaffe'' was not the tanks themselves, but the way in which they were used, the men manning them, the mechanics supporting them, and the radios installed in every tank that allowed for a level of coordination between armor, infantry, and artillery never before seen (all of which formed the core of ''Blitzkrieg'' tactics). This, along with some powerful late-war designs, occasionally gave German tanks an edge over Allied tanks until production problems, stability issues and most of all fuel shortages became overwhelming.

German tanks are called "''Panzer''", which when directly translated means "''armor''", and more specifically is the shortened version of "''Panzerkampfwagen''" (Armored Fighting Vehicle). The name is often abbreviated to just "PzKpfw" or even "Pz". The habit of naming tanks, airplanes and other pieces of equipment after animals, mostly predators, was introduced after a suggestion by Goebbels in 1944 to increase the propagandistic value of the vehicles. This is why earlier vehicles have none of these names and were named "at face value". At no point in time did these nicknames show up in official records of the Wehrmacht aside from anecdotal mentions in field reports. The official records of the Heereswaffenamt (Army armory office) used the ''Sonderkraftfahrzeug'' ("Special purpose vehicle", Sd.Kfz. in short) system of designations instead.
* '''Panzer I:''' Designed and produced in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the ''Panzerkampfwagen I'' was the first Nazi tank. It was small, weighing only 5.4 tonnes, and was armed only with two MG-13 machine guns. Some 1,493 were made, and were most notable in that they allowed the Heer to start training tank crews, and (after being sent to Spain) allowed tank doctrines be developed that the Nazis would use to steamroll Poland and France. They saw some use at the beginning of WWII, but were pretty soon deemed to be out of date even for scouting missions. Until they were deemed totally obsolete, they were continuously upgraded and specialized, and had several variants including a potential recon paratrooper-tank. Primary Nazi tank of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War. [[File:Panzer I.PNG|thumb|right|300px|Mein Herr! Can't ve get somezing better zan zis Panzer I?]] As with a lot of Nazi tanks that became obsolete, the old PzKpfw I's were sometimes stripped to the chassis and repurposed for things such as artillery and tank destroyer roles, though this was relatively rare. It should also be noted the Panzer I is the textbook example of a tankette rather then a full tank, though since early WWII would define the important strategic difference of tankettes vs tanks it's not surprising it became the primary armoured vehicle before the war.
* [[Panzer_II|'''Panzer II:''']] The ''Panzerkampfwagen II'' was designed using the experience gained in the Spanish Civil War. Heavier than the Panzer I at 8.9 tonnes, it was designed as a stopgap, as the Panzer III and IV were experiencing delays in production. It was armed with a dinky automatic 20mm cannon that was little better than an antitank rifle. Common during the early war, it was made obsolete by the arrival of the Panzer III and IV, and relegated to reconnaissance duties, training, or conversion into open-topped tank destroyers. Much like its younger brother, it too was pushed through several variants; however, instead of trying to upgrade it to keep it frontline-capable, it was turned into a better scout tank so that the Panzer III could take over the role of frontline tank. Primary Nazi tank for the invasions of Poland and France.
** '''Panzer II Ausf. L "Luchs"''': The final version of the Panzer II, with a redesigned turret housing the same 20mm autocannon in a new turret and a modified chassis. Speedy little bugger (it could reach up to 60 kph under optimal conditions) that served as a scouting verhicle for the tank divisions, with 100 being built.
* [[Panzer_III|'''Panzer III:''']] One of the two main German tanks of the war, the ''Panzerkampfwagen III'' was about when Germany really got the hang of this whole tank design thing. Introduced in 1939, it weighed 23 tonnes, carried a 37mm anti tank gun, and notably had a turret big enough for three guys (which is actually more important than you might think, as it allows the crew to share the workload, e.g., the loader's only task is to load the gun with the correct ammo as fast as possible, the gunner focuses on aiming and firing the gun, while the commander can retain situational awareness and, well, give orders). Contemporary tanks, most notably the T-34, often had two or even one-man turrets, forcing the crew to share responsibilities and lowering their combat efficiency; the Germans themselves noted that a good panzer crew could get off three shots in the time it took a T-34 crew to fire one. The Panzer III was designed from the ground up to engage enemy tanks, rather than the infantry and light vehicles of earlier models. In Poland, France, and North Africa it did well, even though some French vehicles still outgunned them. Against Soviet T-34s, however, it was completely insufficient, unless upgraded to a 50mm gun and firing APDS. Thankfully, unlike the French and Russians, the Panzer IIIs were all equipped with radios, allowing them to outmaneuver the better tanks. Production stopped in 1942, but since they had built 5,774 of them, they stayed in service until the end of the war. The chassis was used to produce the StuG assault cannon (although "Geschütz" is hard to translate to English: it's neither a mere gun, nor a cannon, being more of a tank destroyer, i.e., a "sniper"-style tank), which would be the most widely produced German vehicle of the war, clocking in at 10,086 units. Ultimately, the III switched roles with the Panzer IV to become the infantry support tank with a short barrelled howitzer, though this was soon also replaced with a dual-purpose gun. Primary Nazi tank for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
* [[Panzer_IV|'''Panzer IV:''']] Ultimately the most common German tank, with 8,553 units being built over the course of the war (now compare those numbers with the nearly 50,000 Shermans and 57,000 T-34s that the freeaboos and commies built), the ''Panzerkampfwagen IV'' was the Panzer III's big brother. The Panzer IV was originally intended to be used against infantry and was armed with a low-velocity 75mm gun for blowing stuff up with explosive shells. After the invasion of Russia they switched to a 50mm anti-tank gun, and later a 75mm high-velocity cannon while also being up-armored to the absolute weight limit of the chassis. After that upgrade, it was generally on par with the T-34 and M4 Sherman (on average, at least — they had a less powerful engine, but better optics). Unlike early Soviet tanks, every Panzer IV generally had a working radio receiver. Its chassis became the foundation of many German vehicles of all classifications. Primary Nazi tank from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945.
* [[Panther|'''Panzer V Panther:''']] The Panther was introduced in 1943, and [[Skub|to this day history nerds, Wehraboos, Russaboos, and rivetheads are still arguing whether it or the T-34 was the best tank of the war]]. It copied many features of the T-34 and improved on them. It was listed as a "medium tank," despite weighing in at 44.8 tonnes (due to the Germans labeling tank classes with the intended use in mind, not weight). Its 75mm/L70 gun was one of the most powerful tank guns of the war, and could destroy any Allied tank. Quite mobile for its weight, its frontal armor was more effective than that of the Tiger's thanks to sloping. It truly was a swift and hard as nails death machine... when it was in working order, that is. The Panther was rushed into service so that it would be online in time for the Kursk offensive and had even more mechanical problems than the Tiger did due to its rushed design. The transmission, for example, broke down on average after just 250 kilometers (that's 155 miles for you Yanks), leading to a lot of abandoned tanks, and its turret initially came with a rounded front mantlet that acted as a shot trap, deflecting shells down through the thin top armour. On the plus side, the Panther was only about 20% more expensive to produce than the Panzer IV, and the Germans managed to produce 6,000 of them, though switching over did cost them in terms of other production due to the necessary retooling time. Along with the Tiger, the Panther was enough of a threat for the Western Allies to up-gun their Shermans (the 'Firefly' with the British 17-pounder gun and the multiple American (76) variants sporting a more powerful 76 mm gun) and the Soviets to make up-armored and up-gunned T-34-85's (with, you guessed it, a 85 mm gun in the turret). Along with the aforementioned US and Soviet tanks, the Panther eventually became one inspiration for the post-war "Main Battle Tank" concept, the other being the British Centurion. An upgraded Panther II was planned, but never entered production. [[File:Panther_Tank.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Zis vill do nicely! Danke!... Gott im Himmel, zat's a lot of Shermans!]] In recent years the tank has been associated with a phenomenon known as the "Panther Paradox", based on the general consensus that it was one of the war's best tanks. Essentially the tank itself, on paper, vastly outclassed the Sherman and T-34 in combat and wasn't much more expensive to build compared to the Panzer IV, yet when looking at its actual field performance the Panther did horribly. The actual answer comes in the form of "hard" values and "soft" values."Hard" values are the typical stuff people think about when they talk about tanks, like armor, speed, and firepower. "Soft" values are things like price, crew comfort, ease of maintenance, etc. While the Panther got top marks in the former, it was pretty terrible in the latter. The moral of the story, kids, is that what makes an effective weapon can't be narrowed down to a bunch of values you can put on the back of a cereal box.
* [[Tiger_1|'''Panzer VI Tiger:''']] Even before invading Russia and France, the generals of the Wehrmacht were requesting a "breakthrough tank" that could be used as the speartip of an armored assault, crushing any resistance and allowing its smaller brothers to exploit the hole it made in enemy defenses. The work on this concept began in 1937, but the first prototypes were a far cry from the monster the Nazis rolled out in 1942. The "Durchbruchwagen" (breakthrough tank), or DW for short, had many iterations with many problems, such as faulty transmission, overloaded and unreliable chassis, and failed unification with Pz.III (yes, that Pz.III, the medium tank, that was also developed in 1937-1938) lengthening the project significantly. It culminated in Typ 100 Leopard, a tank with 100mm armor and 88mm gun, a prototype of which was completed in March 1941. However, the shock of encountering the previously unknown Soviet KV-1s and T-34s spurred the actual implementation of heavy tanks as perceived German tank superiority was shattered. The Nazi top brass took this as a challenge to refine existing prototypes into the ultimate heavy tanks, and the result of said project were "the Big Cats". The first of these was the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger heavy tank, built around the Typ 100 turret and gun, which entered service in 1942 (yes, the Pz. V actually came out after the VI did). "Heavy" definitely described the Tiger: it weighed 54 tonnes, had a 690 hp engine, had up to 100mm of armor, could reach 40 kph in good conditions to keep up with the little guys, and was armed with a hueg 88mm cannon that could take out a T-34 or Sherman from 2 kilometers with ease. In fact, it could do this to ''any tank the Allies would have at any point of the war'' from one kilometer away, barring IS-2s and Churchill VIIs. Despite this, the Tiger was over-engineered mechanically and somewhat under-designed chassis-wise. It was expensive, a drain on strategic resources, labor intensive to build, chugged gas like an alcoholic at an open bar, had reliability issues, and was [https://youtu.be/CVDDtbiGDxA?t=148 horribly maintenance-intensive once in the field]. Since the groundwork for the Tiger was laid out pre-Barbarossa, it did not implement the sloped armor concept of the T-34, which made the Tiger heavier and slower than it could have been for the same armor effectiveness. In short, it was essentially an upgraded Pz. IV and therefore a [[Metal Boxes|metal box]]. Only 1,347 Tigers were built, but they did have a colossal effect on Allied morale. In one instance a single Tiger destroyed most of the 22nd Armoured Brigade and forced them to retreat at the Battle of Villers-Bocage. The Tiger is without a doubt the most famous tank of WWII, known even to those illiterates who think WWII was only fought between America and Germany, and if most video games are to be believed, every Nazi tank was a Tiger. That is, however, somewhat understandable given just how often Allied tankers yelled 'Tiger' whenever they lost a tank, even to a regular Pz IV (which could be mistaken for a Tiger at a distance). The Tiger and Panther tanks, like a used car, came with an owner's manual (the Tigerfibel and Pantherfibel, respectively), and Heinz Guderian (German general with an ego that would make MacArthur seem modest, who wrote memoirs that are very good as literature and very bad as a primary source because he made himself look good at the expense of everyone else, especially Adolf) wanted every tank crew to read the manual. But even back then, people understood just how few guys actually read the instruction manual for anything. So it was written as a fun book to read, with humor, poetry, and naked girls alongside the information about how to use two of the most famous heavy tanks to be fielded in WWII.
* [[Tiger_II|'''Tiger II:''']] The Tiger II, sometimes known as the King Tiger (from an incorrect translation of ''Königstiger'', meaning "Bengal Tiger", but which literally translates to "Royal Tiger"), was the ultimate German tank, and introduced in 1944 as a successor to the Tiger. It weighed 68.5 tonnes (more than most modern tanks) and had 150mm of frontal armor, which was even sloped (a huge step forward from the boxy Tiger I)! Even so, between limited resources and an increasingly bombed-out industrial base, only 492 of these behemoths rolled off the assembly line before the war ended. These tanks were considered to be just as temperamental as the Tiger I, but for different reasons. The designers learned how to fix some of the problems with the Tiger I, and promptly over-built the Tiger II even more after patching the holes, because they thought they had wiggle room or something. It was damn near unkillable, but a fuel guzzler to the extreme, barely maneuverable, and prone to mechanical failures of almost any kind. Some historians argue that the King Tiger was only effective as a propaganda piece and little else, since the added size and weight often made maintaining the tank a nightmare, leaving aside its preexisting reliability issues. In the best conditions there was often a 50/50 chance they would even show up to fight, and in bad conditions you would be lucky if any made it. Interesting fact: since the Nazis were famous for constantly overcompensating, the first proposal of mounting a monstrous 8.8 cm Flak with a barrel 71 calibre long, that was ultimately made into 8.8 cm KwK 43 (the one Tiger II rocks), on a tank dates back to 21st of June, 1941, even before the invasion of the Soviet Union!
** Of note is the vehicles more recent reputation as a meme in historical groups as many Revisionists (armchair generals who believe war should be fought like WW2 again) often insist [[What|that it was the best tank ever made and could 1v1 the Abrams with ease.]] It could not, what makes modern tanks a lot more deadly than their ancentors are composite armour and advanced ammunition which are far more effective than the AP shells used in the WW2 era and this is not even accounting for other auxiliary systems like reactive armour, laser-guided missiles and reconnaissance via drone. Add to that that composite armour is so damned resilient that its protective value is measured in ''hundereds'' of millimeters of armoured steel and that tanks only a generation after the King Tiger were designed to operate on a nuclear battlefield. Since then it is often brought up in mockery of the group.
*'''Anything they could steal:''' From French [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_B1#Operational_history B1 heavy tanks] to Soviet [http://www.achtungpanzer.com/panzerkampfwagen-t-34r-soviet-t-34-in-german-service.htm T-34's] to American [http://beutepanzer.ru/Beutepanzer/us/M4_sherman/m4-75-sherman-01.htm Shermans], the Nazis used everything they could get their hands on like Orks in spiffy uniforms (not that the Allies were any different: the Soviets, for example, had several companies armed with captured Panthers that they used as tank destroyers). This became so chronic that the British had a rule in place that said any tank which could not be repaired or salvaged was to be destroyed so the Germans wouldn't pinch it. They deployed stolen tanks pretty much everywhere, and of every type; hell, even Renault FT-17s were used in police roles in some areas.
**[['''Panzer 38(t)|Panzer 35(t) and 38(t):''']] the most famous tanks the Nazi <s>stole</s> were supplied with by puppet governments all across Europe were the PZ 35(t) and 38(t). Light tanks, both were Czech designs (hence the (t), for ''Tschechisch'') Germany acquired when they took over first the Sudetenland and then the rest of Czechoslovakia. While very useful early in the war, the designs were rendered obsolete by 1942 (they simply couldn't compete against a T-34), and the chassis was instead used to produce Marder 2 and Hetzer tank destroyers. A version of the 38(t), called the Stridsvagn m/41, was also used by Sweden. [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|The vehicle's Czech steel was lower-quality than German stock.]]

====Tank Destroyers/Assault Guns====
Between the First and Second World Wars, various nations were still trying to figure out what good designs were for armored vehicles and how to use them in general. The Germans were the most successful, creating the famed Panzer divisions, each of which was a small army in and of themselves, but everyone knows about those. However, Nazi military theorists realized that lowly grunts also required some armored support. Enter the brainchild of Erich von Manstein (at least officially), the assault gun. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the top brass about the need of ''Begleitartillerie'', "escort artillery" that could move into battle alongside infantry formations and lob 6 kg shells at any machine or field gun that interrupted the advance. The initial concept was to stick a huge gun (too big to put in a proper turret with then available technology) onto a Pz III chassis with a fixed casemate and open top (this was later changed) to allow the heavy gun to be moved around easily. Think of it like a [[Vindicator]]. The idea was approved, and the work on ''Panzerselbstfahrlafette III'' (quite a mouthful) begun with gusto. While primarily designed to bust fortifications, demands for the Pz.Sfl. III specified the ability to take on all types of existing armor at the distance of 500m. After being officially approved for production, they received the name of [[Stug_III|Sturmgeschütz III]], abbreviated to the StuG III. During the battle they usually engaged the enemy from the second line, where their limited firing arc wasn't such a big problem, and were universally praised both by infantrymen and their own crews. This all changed in 1941 when the Germans first encountered the [[T-34]]. The need to stop well-armoured tanks assaulting in mass shifted from a theoretical into a practical problem. The StuGs had to be upgunned and up-armored, and other, dedicated anti-tank vehicles had to be designed and built. The main difference between assault guns and tank destroyers was their affiliation: the former belonged to the artillery, the latter were part of the Panzer corps, which sometimes led to political disputes like Guderian's temper tantrum about getting Hetzers. Starting with lighter Panzerjäger tank destroyers as a stopgap measure, later in the war, Germany replaced them with big heavy tank destroyers, with thick armor and guns big enough to make an Ork blush with envy, and labeled the class "''Jagdpanzer''" (hunter-tank). Panzerjäger of both types had the advantage of being cheaper and simpler to make than turreted tanks, and having lower silhouettes that allowed for easier ambushes. Plus it was easy to convert an otherwise out of date, under-gunned tank into a destroyer. The disadvantage was, of course, that they had no turrets, so they could be outflanked and had no way to point their guns at any targets that did not drive in front of them short of turning the entire tank around. The StuGs and their descendants were such a huge success the Nazis actually pondered the idea of making them the mainstream of Panzer divisions even in 1943 (however, Panzer IV/70 (A) which was tagged for this role was ultimately labeled "unfit for frontline service"). Nevertheless, the turretless constructions meant that they were sacrificing much needed flexibility in the field, especially during bad weather or in difficult terrain, and the advantage of being able to build more units quickly becomes irrelevant if you're not losing them in the thousands yearly, so every major power in the post-45 world order didn't want to bother with it, especially since the British Centurion MBT showed the world for the first time that a tank could reliably perform all roles that were previously assigned to a variety of models. Only Germany kept some tank destroyers around after the war (the [[Kanonenjagdpanzer]]) and even that was thoroughly outclassed once self-directing ammunition like TOW missiles became available.
*'''Panzerjäger I''': Remember that little note in the Panzer I's description on how it was repurposed? Well, this is the end result. What basically amounts to a Panzer I with its turret taken off and a casemate installed instead, it had a nice 4.7cm anti-tank gun but was relatively weak otherwise. There were no vision slits in the casemate, meaning that in order to aim, the crew had to peek over the top and get themselves shot in the head (a pressing issue in particular for Anti-Tank Battalion 643).
*'''Marder:''' The Marder I, II, and III were all very similar tank destroyers, hence why they share a listing. The Marder I is based on the chassis of the French Lorraine 37L tractor, the Marder II is based off the Panzer II chassis, and the Marder III is based of off the Panzer 38(t) (the "T" means it was Czech in origin, not that it weighed 38 tons). All three were open-topped and armed with either 7.5 cm cannons or converted Soviet 76mm cannons they stole early in their invasion of USSR. At the start of Operation Barbarossa, German tanks were again under-gunned and armed compared to their enemies, especially when compared to the T-34 (which one German field marshal quipped was the best tank in the world in 1941). But, like the battle for France, the Germans alone in the world had an actual understanding of how to use tanks most effectively and were thus able to make massive advances anyway through superior tactical coordination. Still, a better antitank weapon was needed, so the Marders were created and armed with 7.5 cm weapons (although there were never enough of them, so they would revert to using Russian guns).
*'''Wespe''' and '''Hummel''': The Wasp and Bumblebee, respectively, and both with a nasty sting. Both were re-purposed tank chassis, but sporting artillery howitzers instead of antitank guns (Which makes them technically self-propelled artillery instead of assault guns, but in the end it's a huge gun on tracks so fuck that noise!) the Wespe was based off the Panzer II and sported a 105mm 'light' howitzer; the Hummel was based on a modified Panzer III chassis and sported a 150mm howitzer. They're the real-life equivalents of (and probably the inspiration behind) the Imperial Guard's [[Basilisk Artillery Gun]].
*'''Hetzer''': Repurposed Panzer 38(t) with a casemate-mounted 75mm gun. A nice late-war re-design and a dangerous opponent since its small chassis and decent speed made it easy to get in position for a good ambush, and its gun was strong enough to take on any Allied medium tank. Notorious for being an absolutely awful thing to be in, the interior was cramped to the point of farce and ergonomics were very poor. The chassis was overworked too, so mechanical breakdowns were constant. The Hetzer had some armour, but couldn't slug it out with the late-war tanks. Despite all this, it was adored by German grunts, because having an artillery gun at your side is always better than not having it.
*'''Nashorn''': Also called '''Hornisse''', this was a Marder-like tank-destroyer, with a chassis specially designed to mount the fearsome "Acht-acht" 88mm gun. Just like the Marders it was open-topped, but the huge range of its gun made it a dangerous opponent. The Germans later experimented with even bigger guns (105mm and 128mm) mounted like this, but those vehicles proved simply too heavy and impractical to use, so they did not evolve beyond a couple of prototypes.
*'''StuG III & IV''': By far the most widely produced German vehicle of WWII, the StuG was easily one of the most versatile combat platforms fielded in the war (and famous in the Panzer General series for easily knocking out Russian tanks). StuGs, short for "''Sturmgeschütz''" or "''assault artillery''", were built to combat a problem Germany encountered in World War I: that infantry alone lacked the ability to take on fortifications, and the artillery was too slow to keep up to allow direct fire on these targets. The StuG was the solution: by mounting a 7.5 cm <s>howitzer</s> [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgesch%C3%BCtz_III gun] in a fixed casemate on a Panzer III chassis, they allowed the vehicle to roll up with the infantry and blow any fortifications in the way to rubble. Of course during the invasion of the Soviet Union the Germans ran into tanks much better than their existing vehicles, namely KV-1s and T-34. In order to quickly counter these threats, the StuG was "up-gunned" (quote marks are there because the gun's caliber did not change), to mount a high-velocity 7.5 cm anti-tank gun. In 1943, the StuG chassis was changed from a Panzer III's to a Panzer IV's, otherwise no changes were made. StuGs, despite looking like and being compared to tanks, were not considered tanks, and were crewed by artillery personnel. StuGs are estimated to have destroyed 20,000 enemy tanks in the course of the war, impressive when you consider that just over 10,000 were made, and not all of those were armed with actual anti-tank weapons. After the war, the Soviets gave a number of captured tanks to Syria where they were used up to the 1960s. In a funny twist of irony, some of those ended up in Israeli hands during the Six-Day War and remain on display in Tel Aviv today. (There was a self-propelled-gun with an actual howitzer, too: the StuH 42.)
*'''Sturmpanzer:''' Known commonly to the Allies as the ''Brummbär'' (Grouch), this infantry support gun was based on the Panzer IV chassis. It mounted a 15cm mortar-sized direct-fire cannon, which fired a combined shell-charge weighing in at over 100lbs, designed to make infantry and buildings not be there anymore.
*'''Ferdinand/Elefant''': To put the Ferdinand into perspective, this is a tank that even Hitler though was too complex, too unreliable, and too theoretically advanced to use. The Ferdinand is the result of a competition between two of Nazi Germany's top companies, Porsche and Henschel (both of which still exist today), to produce a heavy tank that could use the 8.8 cm gun, what would ultimately become the Tiger I. The initial plan was to produce both tanks simultaneously, with contracts to make a "small" series of 100 tanks for both participants signed with Krupp on the same day of 22th of July, 1941. Both Tigers (P) and (H) had A LOT of problems, but due to unclear reasons even before final tests conducted in November 1942 came the order to stop production of Porsche version. That's why, despite losing the contract, Porsche had 90 Porsche Tiger hulls laying around, though he couldn't make more as he lacked production lines of his own. It was decided to turn those unused Tiger P prototypes into tank destroyers, and so they bolted even more armor on and added a fixed super structure for the gun, and thus the Ferdinand (named humbly after Porsche himself) was born. The Ferdinand was a troubled vehicle: rather than one engine, its immense bulk required two, and thanks to poor ventilation they often overheated. Bizarrely, the two engines did not even connect to the drive train (possibly because of issues keeping the two engines synchronized without modern computer control), and were instead connected to a set of electric generators that in turn powered a pair of electric motors. That's right, in 1942, the Nazi's built a 65 ton gas-electric, hybrid-powered tank destroyer, good for the environment maybe (but not actually, because the primitive technology just made the combo even less efficient), but maintenance for the thing was a nightmare worse than the Tiger. The concept of diesel-electric propulsion is not even as advanced for the time as many people think; the Soviets had developed such an engine for a locomotive in 1924, the German U-boats used the same technology for their underwater propulsion system (diesel engines charging a large set of batteries that drove an electric motor when underwater) and Porsche's own patent for this system dated back as far as 1896. The only innovation was that it was the first time this concept was implemented in an armoured vehicle. And before we forget, it did not have any machine guns for point defense. To be honest, it wouldn't have been that much of a deal (StuG-IIIs didn't have a machine gun until December 1942, for example) if Guderian hadn't used them as heavy tanks (he even calls them "Porsches' Tigers" in his memoirs), and even then out of 39 Ferdinands lost during the Battle of Kursk, only 4 were confirmed to be destroyed by Molotov cocktails, and in 3 cases they were damaged either by mines or artillery shells before that. It had one hell of a gun, however: the 8.8 cm Pak 43 could destroy any Allied tank at distances exceeding 2000 meters. In 1943, all 48 remaining operational tanks were converted to have a machine gun, more armor, anti-magnetic Zimmerit paste coatings, and a commander's cupola. The modified tanks were named Elefants. Overall, more Ferdinands were destroyed by their own crews after their tracks or suspensions were damaged by mines or artillery fire than were lost to enemy fire. Before we forget, the Elefants were also then sent to fight in Italy. [[Derp|Yes, they sent the tank destroyer known for its serious engine issues to a country known for its incredibly rugged and mountainous terrain]]. They did not last long. Maybe it is the inspiration for the Shadowsword Imperial Guard superheavy.
*'''Jagdpanzer IV''': A Panzer IV chassis mounting a long-barrelled 75mm gun in a casemate mount. Worked generally very well, the low silhouette being a great advantage over comparable assault guns, but had some notable downsides too. The inclusion of additional armour and the long 75mm KwK from the Panther strained the Panzer IV chassis to the absolute limit, limiting range and mechanical reliablity. The extra armour and long gun also made it particularly nose heavy, making it a bitch to drive and limiting its maneuverability, never mind being almost unable to make steep descents without bumping the gun on something, a problem tanks with a similar nose-heavy loadout like the Russian T-34 and SU-85 also had.
*'''Jagdpanther''': A Panther chassis mounting a long-barrelled 88mm gun in a casemate mount. Arguably the best "Jagd-" model combining decent mobility, decent protection and a very powerful gun.
*'''Jagdtiger''': Tiger II chassis outfitted with a long-barrelled 128mm (!) naval gun. Pure overkill, and ultimately a poorly-performing design. To put it in perspective, the M1 ''Abrams'' TODAY has a smaller and shorter 120mm cannon, even if most of its armor busting power comes from the fact it fires modern (and far more deadly) sabot rounds. Even back then, two of the most effective AT guns of the war were the German ''Acht-Acht'' 88mm gun and the British 76.2mm ''17 pounder'' gun; both much smaller, lighter and with a better rate of fire than this 128mm monster. No war machine used on the front line called for such a massive gun to be dealt with in World War II (save perhaps for the Soviets's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS_tank_family IS heavy tanks], which were designed to be have armor good enough to stand up to 88mm AT gun fire, but ironically the Jagdtiger only served on the Western Front, making it a moot point) and even the fact it could double up as artillery support in a pinch didn't make up for the fact it was just too big and unwieldy and slow-firing a gun to deal with tanks. Add to that, a tank with a 128mm main gun is especially stupid when your enemies on both sides favored zerg rushes of Shermans and T-34s, much lighter vehicles that could reliably be taken out by much smaller guns. While anticipating future enemy capabilities is important in wartime weapon development, pretty much no one was working on a vehicle sufficiently armored to warrant this firepower (excluding absurd super-heavy design studies like the American T28/T30 and T95 or the British Tortoise), unless it was intended to fire on battleships from the shore—and firing from a stationary coastal-defense position probably would be for the best, because even at its crawling pace, going off-road tended to knock the gun out of alignment and require it to be recalibrated before firing again, so good luck with flanking maneuvers. The nicest thing that could be said about it was that it was great for shooting at enemy tanks hiding behind buildings, because it would shoot straight through building and tank alike. (Seriously, read Otto Carius' memoirs. His opinion on these is as first-hand as it is scathing.)
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On a sidenote:
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One could reasonably point out that the Russians weren't much better in that regard, since they too threw a couple of 'overcompensated' tanks/assault guns into the fray over the course of WWII: The KV-2 sported a 152mm howitzer in a gigantic (and horribly impractical) turret, and the SU-152 and ISU-152 were also equipped casemate-mounted 152mm howitzers (basically, the only difference is that the SU was based on the KV chassis and the ISU on the IS chassis). The difference here is that these vehicles had been designed for infantry support (and demolishing ''festungs''), making the huge gun just mobile enough to keep up with the grunts and chucking high explosive death at the enemy from medium/long range instead of blasting other tanks to smithereens. This doesn't mean they couldn't: indeed the ISU-152 was effective enough in that regard to be nicknamed the ''Zveroboy'' (''Beast Killer'' in Russian, which it inherited from the SU-152), but being able to blast a Tiger on its back was merely a handy bonus. Add to that the low-velocity 152mm howitzer was a good 30% lighter than the massive PaK 80; resulting in lighter, more compact, and more mobile vehicles overall once they realized trying to mount a huge howitzer in a turret wasn't such a good idea after all. All the Russians did was switch the unwieldy 152's for lighter 85's, 100's and 122's to make actual tank destroyers.
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*[[File:Sturmtiger.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Contrary to what it looks like, this is not a mock-up of a 40k [[Vindicator]] but a real combat vehicle.]]'''Sturmtiger''': The Sturmtiger is one of the most striking example of Nazi "mad genius" given form, to the point that this assault gun could almost belong in the "Wunderwaffe" section. As you can see from the picture, it looks like a [[Vindicator]], which is not a coincidence: both vehicles' role is to rumble up to a strongpoint and obliterate it with extreme firepower. Very quickly, the Germans realized that fortifications were a major pain in their Aryan butts to deal with and that static artillery was too slow and vulnerable to keep up with their ''Blitzkrieg'' attacks. So at first they relied on airplanes and Pz.IVs and StuGs, but as their opponents started to contest the skies and howitzers on both tanks and self-propelled artillery had to be replaced with antitank guns to stem the endless tide of T-34s, the problem of bunker-busting raised its head once again. The Sturmtiger is what you get when the point where you should have stopped putting bigger, larger guns on tracks is long passed, yet one still keeps going... and somehow manages to make it work. Starting as a direct response to the Soviet SU-152 (there's even an urban legend about some German general looking at it and going "I want this, but BIGGER") and based off of the Tiger I chassis, it sported a [[bolter|''380mm gun/rocket launcher'']] [[awesome|''adapted from a Kriegsmarine depth-charge launcher'']] as its main gun; [[wat|and only because the 210 mm howitzer they intended to use first wasn't available]]. Although it sported a gun that could obliterate anything in front of it, the Sturmtiger suffered the same problems as the Tiger itself. Overstressed drive train, maintenance-intensive and prone to breakdown, ''Schachtellaufwerk'' tracks to keep ground pressure tolerable, and an underpowered engine. On top of that, the rocket was so powerful that in order to not break the barrel of the gun or kill the crew, the exhaust gasses from launching the depth-charge rocket had to be vented out of a number of tubes that went back up the barrel.
*'''Flakpanzer IV''': Tanks whose main gun had been replaced with one (or more) anti-aircraft guns. With the Luftwaffe having been squandered by inability to adapt to changes (i.e. realize that ''maybe'' it should have switched priorities to defending the Fatherland before the latter half of 1943), the Germans came up with these SPAAGs in other to try to defend themselves from all those nasty American ''Jabos'' (German shorthand for fighter-bomber) making their lives hell. Didn't really work, because towards the end of the war the ground attack aircraft had become too fast to be engaged reliably by guns relying on human eyes to acquire and follow their target. They were, however, [[rape|murder on tracks]] when facing infantry and lightly armored ground targets. Four variants were made, all based on the ever-reliable Panzer IV chassis:
**'''Möbelwagen''': Odd looking thing that more or less was an armoured AA-emplacement on a tank; when deployed, the crew would fold down the "walls" of the open topped fixed turret with a 3.7 cm AA-gun on top of it. Needless to say, it didn't offer any significant improvement over existing and far more simple AA-vehicles which consisted of little more than an armoured truck with the gun in a trailer.
**'''Wirbelwind''': Perhaps the most iconic of the four, it massively improved the design by adding an again open-topped turret that could be turned almost as fast as a regular AA-gun on its mounting. Armed with a quadruple 2 cm FlaK 38 and 105 being built, it was ultimately the most common variant of the Flakpanzer IV.
**'''Ostwind''': The last Flakpanzer IV to be put into serial production. The turret remained pretty much the same from the Wirbelwind, although the introduction of a single 3.7-cm FlaK 43 made one of the two loaders on the Wirbelwind obsolete and a hydraulic turning mechanism pumped its turning speed up to 60 per second. Its prototype partook in the Battle of the Bulge and returned back home undamaged. 47 were completed by the end of the war.
**'''Kugelblitz''': Similar deal to the Type XXI U-boats, the Kugelblitz was the peak of military engineering for its time that remained unsurpassed until computer-guided tracking systems and heat-seeking missiles revolutionized ground-based AA weaponry. The Kugelblitz utilized a fully enclosed, roughly ball-shaped turret with two 3 cm MK 103 borrowed from the ME-262 fighter plane that were fed by belt instead of magazines or clips like the FlaK guns before. The shape of the turret, combined with an improved version of the hydraulic turning mechanism of the Ostwind, made for an incredibly deadly package that could cover the airspace above it completely and inspired many imitators after the war. That being said, the 37mm AA gun was really showing its age and post-war AA guns went for either high-caliber autocannons or rotary guns. Only 5 prototypes were made by the end of the war, one of which actually saw combat in Thuringia, where a direct hit by a bomb blasted its turret off into a forest, where it was recovered in 1999.

===Halftracks and Armoured Cars===
*'''Kfz 13''': One of the first projects of the German armament programs that started after Hitler started to outright ignore the conditions of Versailles. Very much a stopgap solution based on a civilian car, the Adler Standard 6. Some of them partook in the invasions of Poland and France and were relegated to training purposes shortly after.
*'''Einheits-PKW''': A German take on the US army jeep, general purpose cars meant for transporting officers and reconnaissance. Existed in three weight classes. Became redundant after the introduction of the Kübelwagen, who could do everything an Einheits-PKW could do for cheaper and also could be made into an amphibious vehicle with only minor modifications. The heavy Einheits-PKW served as the basis for the wheeled armoured reconnaissance tank Sd.Kfz 221.
*'''Leichter Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz. 221/222/223''': The 221 was the standard reconnaissance vehicle of the Wehrmacht in the early days of the war. Open topped and armed with an MG 34, its weak armor of only 25 millimeters, as well as its armament proved insufficient during the French campaign. The vehicles would be refitted with the 20mm autocannon from the Panzer II and redesignated as the Sd.Kfz. 222. Leading vehicles would be equipped with high-capacity radios instead of any armament and designated as Leichter Funkwagen 223.
*'''Schwerer Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz 231/232/233''': The heavy alternative to the 222. A six (or eight)-wheeled tank whose development already started when the Weimar Republic was still alive and well. It was the primary reconnaissance vehicle for the tank divisions. The different designations refer to the armament. A 231 was armed with two MG 15s in a Panzer I turret, the 232 with a high-capacity radio, and the 233 with the short-barreled 7.5-cm tank gun from the earlier versions of the Panzer IV and the StuG III.
*'''Schwerer Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz 234 "Puma"''': A completely new wheeled tank, where the major improvement over the older 231s and 222s was that they were designed around being tanks instead of armoured cars. The first serially produced version, the 234/2 was armed with the long 5 cm-tank gun from the Panzer III in the turret of the never realized Leopard reconnaissance tank, later versions were open topped due to material shortages. This gave the vehicles firepower unprecedented for such a light vehicle and often lead to crews to take the fight to the enemy instead of scouting, with mixed results.
*'''Mittlerer Schützenpanzerwagen Sd.Kfz. 251''': The standard APC of the Wehrmacht throughout the entire war. A design so flexible that it could easily be used in just about any role any commander wanted it to serve with tons of variants of it existing. In the standard configuration, it could carry 10 men plus equipment in an open topped chassis. An innovation over competing APCs of the time was that soldiers could enter and leave the vehicle quickly through a door in the back. The 251 was originally supposed to form the backbone of the Panzergrenadier divisions, providing infantry support for tanks in a vehicle quick enough and armoured to deliver them directly into the fray, but the lack of industrial capacity as well as the complicated Schachtellaufwerk of its tracks limited their production rates. The later years of the war saw the 251 relegated to an absurd number of combat roles, from light SPAAG with a 2-cm-FlaK 36, AT gun carrier and even Infrared night vision reconnaissance. One of the more prolific and successful vehicles of the German Army in general, with 15.000 of them being built throughout the entirety of the war.

===Airplanes===
After the Great War, Germany was explicitly forbidden from having an air force by the Treaty of Versailles. Once the Nazis came to power, they had to rebuild from scratch. First covertly with layers of deniability by bankrolling glider clubs and similar, then once the components were ready they could easily assemble an air force. A lot of grief and death could have been spared the world if France and England put their feet down in the 1935 or so, alas they chickened out.

* '''Messerschmitt Bf 109:''' The Luftwaffe's mainstay fighter through WWII. Work began on the project shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, the first prototype flew in 1935 and it entered service in 1937, seeing action in the Spanish Civil War. It is also the most produced fighter of all time, with nearly 34,000. The variants of the 109 and the Spitfire competed with each other throughout the war for the title of "World's Best Fighter" as they were both continually upgraded. The 109 was small, very fast, a good turner (early on), a god tier climber, and was inexpensive to produce and maintain. The 109's speed and climb rate made it a top tier fighter in the early stages of the war. That said it was also short ranged and as the war progressed it started showing its age, gradually losing manoeuvrability as its engine power was increased.
[[File:Fw190d9jv 1.jpg|thumb|right|250px|When the Nazis applied their sense of style to aerospace engineering, the result was the Fw 190D-9, the second sexiest son of a bitch in the sky, second only to the SR-71]]
* '''Messerchmitt Bf 110:''' The archetype of the Luftwaffe's "destroyer" concept, and a flying monument to hubris and doubling down on bad decisions. In the late 1930s, German engineers believed that the limitations of engine technology gave multi-engine bombers an unbeatable speed advantage over single-engine fighters. Thus, this beast: a fast, twin-engined air superiority fighter armed with heavy cannons and defensive machine guns. "Destroyers" never worked particularly well in their intended role, being handily outmaneuvered by even early-war Allied fighters. Although the very concept was flawed, Bf 110s and other "destroyers" soldiered on throughout the war, in large part because Hermann Goering had a massive hard-on for them and couldn't be told "no". It also helped that the planes' large airframes were well-suited to other roles besides air superiority; "destroyers" could be converted into effective tactical bombers or night-fighters when equipped with early radar sets.
* '''Junkers Ju 87:''' Probably the airplane used by the Nazis any random person is going to know about due to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzv-8pJSqY the highly-distinctive sound of its ram-air sirens, known as "Jericho trumpets"] as it dived in for an attack run - whether intentionally or not depending on how stringently the media this person watched actually portrays the Ju 87 or if they're just using its cool sound. The Ju 87 or "Stuka" as it was also known as (short for ''Sturzkampfflugzeug'') was a dive bomber that quickly became a symbol of German airpower in the beginning of the war and was a key part of Germany's initial Blitzkrieg victories. A novel design, it was equipped with automatic pull-up dive brakes to ensure the aircraft recovered from its attack dive even if its pilot blacked out and wouldn't have been a feasible concept at all if its cabin wasn't pressurized and without a lot of other pilot protection advancements since only 2 G (Stuka pilots going in and out of a dive went through 8 or 9 G) could have killed a pilot in an unpressurized cabin. The Stuka proved to be so iconic that its nickname was lent to another piece of German military hardware - the Werfrahmen 40 multiple rocket launcher became known as the "Walking Stuka". However, as the war went on and Allied air superiority became the rule of almost every battle, the Stuka wasn't really produced anymore, as it was absolutely helpless against the many Allied fighters filling the air (though there were occasions that the Stuka got to bomb things like it was 1939 again when the Allied ground units outpaced their air support).
** By the way, the Jericho trumpets were attached to the plane for psychological warfare purposes and while it ''was'' pretty certain that ground units hearing the Jericho trumpets did indeed shit themselves and dive for cover, the usefulness of them were debatable considering they produced drag on the aircraft and provided an advance warning sound for ground troops to get down (and the helpfulness of getting down was why [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target Time On Target] artillery coordination was developed) - though if nothing else, the trumpets provided audible feedback on the plane's speed for its pilot.
* '''Focke-Wulf Fw 190''': When first introduced, the Fw 190 was hands-down the best fighter on the planet, due mostly to its very powerful radial engine. The 190A-3 was rocking 1,700 horsepower at a time when the Spitfire V had 1,450. As the war dragged on, BMW failed miserably to improve the engine and the 190 dropped in effectiveness until it was given a completely new engine in the Dora variant. The 190 was horrifically fast at low altitude, had extremely powerful armament, outstanding high speed handling, and had the best roll rate of any plane in the war. However, it was a very poor turner. This set of attributes made the 190 one of the best "boom and zoom" fighters, going toe to toe with Mustangs and Thunderbolts but once again falling victim to shit production, just as the Russians started getting [[Dakka|P-39 Airacobras]] from America that could take on anything the Nazis had as long as the fight was below 12,000'.
* '''Fieseler Fi 156 Storch''': A product of the early, successful parts of the war, the Storch was a dedicated observation plane for forward air control and was a popular choice for generals making visits to the front line. It was unique for its '''EXTREMELY''' low stall speed of 31 mph which even in the 21st century is still impressive for a two seater and almost 25% lower than the American equivalent (the Piper Cub). The design continued in production well into the 1960s in France and the USSR; modern replicas using even lighter, stronger materials are capable of flight with a takeoff run of as little as 30 meters. Its capabilities for close support were illustrated best during the final days of the war, when famed pilot Hanna Reitsch landed one on a building-lined street in Berlin and then successfully got it airborne again.
[[File:HE111Z.JPG|thumb|left|150px|One of Germany's attempts at packing enough dakka in explosive form]]
*'''Heinkel He 111''': The main German bomber from beginning to end, it was developed in the 1930s; the Nazis called it a high speed passenger aircraft to get around the Treaty of Versailles. It was first put to its real use in the Spanish Civil War. The He 111 was a twin engine medium bomber, cheap to make and maintain and able to carry up to 3,600 kilos of bombs. Early on it performed very well and was one of the most effective bombers in the world, but after 1941 the British and Americans began building larger and longer ranged four engine bombers like the Lancaster and the Flying Fortress in large quantities. The German engineers had a plan to counter these with an enhanced version of the HE 111 called the HE 111-Z that consisted of two 111 fuselages fused together on a central wing (which is just as retardedly awesome and awesomely retarded as it sounds) therefore gathering twice the bombs and weaponry of a regular bomber while being powered by 5 engines. They did manage to make it fly but it remained a prototype. Note: Actually it was supposed to be used as a glider tug for the massive Messerschmitt ME-321 Gigant cargo glider and the proposed Junkers JU-322 Mammut.
*'''Heinkel He 177 "Greif"''': The only heavy bomber the Germans were fielding and the perfect counterexample for people who cannot stop blabbering about supposed German technical superiority. It was an attempt to combine the concepts of a heavy long-range bomber like the British Halifax or the American B-17 with the dive-bomb-capabilities of the Stuka. To that end, the plane was made deliberately heavier and had two engines, that were actually four that drove two propellers. Even though it became obvious very quickly that the concept of a heavy dive bomber was impossible, the Germans kept building them, which only revealed much more pressing concerns with the design, the most notable of which was that the engine cooling system never worked right and guzzled coolant at very high rates. When the coolant ran out, the engines spontaneously combusted. German pilots loathed the damn thing so much that they gave it grim nicknames like "Burning coffin" and "Imperial Torch". When it didn't burst into flames, it was an alright plane, but mostly used for short-range reconnaissance flights, supplying the trapped 6th Army in Stalingrad, and naval bombing. It was eventually retired in 1944, when fuel shortages meant that they could no longer take off.
* '''Messerschmitt ME-163 Komet''': Before the Nazis mastered jet engines, they toyed around with rocket-based fighters instead. The Komet was a tiny, zippy little fighter plane, and the first plane to travel faster than 1000 kph. It was also the first and last rocket-powered fighter, as they only succeeded to shoot down about eighteen Allied planes at the cost of ten crashed Komets. This was because despite being far faster than anything the Allies could field, the Komet proved very temperamental: it was difficult to control while building speed, its fuel was dangerous to handle, its landing gear could bounce off and smack the plane, its cannons were too slow to keep up, and it was vulnerable as it glided back to earth. Still, for its time, it was the only fighter capable of threatening the Allies' high-altitude bombers, until the ME-262 came about. The fuel, being hypergolic, had a nasty tendency to melt the test pilots, the plane itself, and pretty much everything it touched. Which, oddly enough, was still less of a OSHA hazard that what follows...
[[File:ME 262.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The ME-262: Nazi Germany's state of the art sky shark]]
* '''Ba 349 Natter''': The meaning of "double down" if Luftwaffe logistics was a poker game. Even crazier than the Komet, Natter was little more than a [[Grot Bomm Launcha]] with unguided rocket batteries up the nose. Adding to the madness was that it was designed to be built with unskilled labor, using wood. Yes, wood. Yes, the British Mosquito was made of wood, but the Mosquito was built by professionals with great care, and was not '''rocket powered!''' What's worse, its fuel was [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-peroxide-peroxides T-Stoff] (a highly caustic solution of hydrogen peroxide and a stabilizing chemical) mixed with C-Stoff (a hydrazine hydrate/methanol/water mixture). This shit spontaneously combusted whenever you looked at it funny, so extreme care was required to handle both chemicals; leave it to Nazis to use fuel made out of the second most dangerous and villainous compounds (See N-Stoff bellow for the stuff even they thought was crazy). The Walter motor generated about 1,700 kg (3,740 lb) of thrust but a loaded Ba 349A weighed more than 1,818 kg (4,000 lb) so liftoff required more power, like a rail launcher or catapult. Simply put, the design was fuck-nut retarded from scratch, killing every test pilot that had the misfortune to set foot in the thing, and it was canceled before it was used, not that a plane nearing the speed of sound made out of shitty wood firing unguided rockets wouldn't hit fuck-all.
* '''[[ME-262 Sturmvogel|Messerschmitt ME-262]]''': The Me 262 was the world's first operational jet fighter and one of the most advanced aircraft of WWII. It was very fast, able to achieve a speed of 900km/h (in comparison, a P51 Mustang had a top speed of about 700km/h) and carried four 30mm cannons. The latter was its most important feature because around that time, a single HE autocannon hit meant "instant death" for any aircraft facing them, forcing them to exploit 262's slow turning speed. Quality suffered due to a lack of high quality steel, which severely limited the shelf life of their engines to twelve hours. Even so, it was incredibly effective against bombers and made Allied fighter pilots shit themselves when they showed up. Much like every other advanced Nazi weapon, it arrived too late (in part due to delays involving the Nazi top brass-thank God for Hitler on not deciding whether it should be a tactical bomber or a fighter-) and in too few numbers to influence the course of the war, though it certainly helped spur development of jet aircraft on both sides of the Iron Curtain postwar. The Japanese built a rather similar jet fighter in the Nakajima Kikka, but that never got beyond prototype.
[[File:Heinkel He 162 CASM 2012 5.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The "Volksjäger" aka. "Spatz" or "Salamander". Tiny. Deadly.]]
*'''He-162''': With a max speed of 900 kph, 2 centerline 20mm cannons, and a 39 lbs/ft^2 wingloading, the He-162 was almost invincible in combat. Where the 262 was an interceptor, the He-162 was designed as a cheap, easy to build and fly air superiority fighter. It was also designed to be piloted by children. Developed as a Volksjäger (”people's fighter”) the He-162 was a last ditch design meant to be piloted by the high school aged Hitler Youth as Nazi Germany had almost completely run out of regular pilots at the time. Amazingly enough despite the incredibly short time between design and full production, it turned out to be a solid design; both cheap and easy to build (most of the frame was made of wood) and a dangerous opponent (Allied testing after the war showed that a large number of them would have been a major pain in the rear to deal with). The only point where the "Spatz" didn't deliver was the 'easy to fly' part; like all early jet airplanes it required an experienced pilot at the stick and being able to bench press to just turn the damn thing (which was a problem to everyone until the lessons of the Korean War).

===Ships===
As a general rule, Hitler dumped most of Germany's money into the ''Heer'' (army) and ''Luftwaffe'' (air force), leaving the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) out in the cold, so to speak, so they were not overly fond of him. (Although Hitler realised he wouldn't be able to build up a navy to rival the English quickly, so he prioritised planes and tanks over ships to seize land and industrial capacity at first, which kind of made sense, at least in his delusional dreams where Great Britain wouldn't have dared to come kick him in the balls if a war was to break out.) Hitler actually liked the idea of a huge navy and authorized Plan Z in 1937, which would have built a truly massive fleet to fight the Royal Navy in about 1945, as the building up to that point was designed to fight France, and predated the Nazis' rise to power.

Like so many of Der Fuhrer's calls, it is a controversial matter and bound to create much [[skub| Skub]]. On one hand, German submarines proved to be a deadly asset in the Atlantic, wreaking absolute goddamn havoc among the convoys directed to Britain and sinking more ships than all the Kriegsmarine's surface units combined, apparently giving credit to Admiral Dönitz's idea of winning the war through the U-Boats alone. On the other, the lack of success from the aforementioned surface fleet was almost exclusively HIS fault and his fault alone as, for starters, Hitler moved too fast with his plans of invasion like an impatient child on Christmas morning and started the war before the Kriegsmarine had enough surface units ready to deploy. Then [[What|he ordered the resources that were being poured into the construction of said ships to be directed towards other projects, including building tanks and airplanes]], ordering the construction to be halted and leaving Admiral Raeder with a severe shortage of materials and not enough ships to fight the British on equal terms or provide escorts to his capital ships (to give you an example of what a stupid idea that was, he ordered to stop working on the aircraft carrier ''Graf Zeppelin'' when it was about 85% complete, [[fail|and that could have saved a certain flagship's ass if it had been put into service]]) and then, for fear of losing the few ships he had, ordered the entire surface fleet to stay in port and not go out on sorties, and to slap the shit icing on the shit cake, he seemingly forgot all of the above and declared the surface fleet a complete failure because they weren't sinking enemy ships...without considering the fact that [[fail|HE and his orders were the reasons why his ships couldn't do anything]].

Overall, Hitler's utter incompetence and lack of knowledge about naval warfare doomed the Kriegsmarine and left nobody happy: Dönitz ended up not having enough submarines to fight the long war and Raeder ended up with not enough ships to meet the Royal Navy head on, although the few ships that saw combat inflicted heavy blows to the enemy and left one hell of a mark in history, fighting against impossible odds and always at a disadvantage, but refusing to surrender or go down without putting up remarkable resistance. Admittedly, it's easier to speak in favor of the Kriegsmarine due to a lack of major atrocities beyond unrestricted submarine warfare (also engaged in by Allied forces) and slave labor at a low rate compared to other forces. Raeder and Dönitz were no saints; indeed, Hitler thought so highly of Dönitz that he put him in charge of Germany before he committed sudoku in Berlin. It is however fair to say that their obedience to Hitler really fucked the navy over, hard. Also Hitler liking Dönitz only made him the first name to pop up to replace Göring who had offered to surrender to the Americans on Hitler's behalf, which Martin Bormann manipulated Hitler into believing that Göring had tried to coup him so Hitler likely just named the first Marshall or Grand Admiral that he thought of. Even then, Dönitz was suppossed to only be Head of Government while Goebbels was made Head of State, though Goebbels and his wife becoming an heroes a day after the drug addicted dictator painted the floor red made that a moot point.

* '''U-Boote''': U-Boote, (short for "''Unterseeboot''" or "underwater boat") are submarines. They were used in devastating effect to cut off Britain from supplies from the outside world by having "wolfpacks" of U-boats patrol around shipping lanes and sink any enemy ship they found. Their other uses involved seeking and destroying enemy battleships, placing automated weather stations all over the world (helpful for Kriegsmarine ships) and dropping off a substantial number of spies in Britain and even America, most of which got caught and subsequently replaced by British spies (some of the ways the British bamboozled the Nazis, like the moment the Germans gave a British agent the Iron Cross are just hilarious). As a consequence of all this, they worked very well in the first years of the war, sinking huge (and I mean HUGE) numbers of ships with very few boats (only about 15 U-boats, at most, were out at sea at any given time in the first year or so). Being such an absolute pain in the arse, the British thus invested a fuckton of money and manpower into hunting and killing said U-boats, and finally got very, very good at it, through a combination of new technology, a [[Wikipedia:Western Approaches Command|massive information network]] for coordinating defenses, and [https://www.google.com/amp/s/paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/the-wargaming-wrens-of-the-western-approaches-tactical-unit/amp/ navy wargamers] [[awesome|developing new strategies to counter the U-boats]]. Right when more and more U-boats were being produced, as German high command realized their potential, the British began sinking ever more of them (Example: in all of 1941, 35 boats were lost, in 1943, 244 boats were sunk, with 41 in May alone). Admiral Karl Dönitz, a former U-boat man himself, loved the U-boats and built one of the largest structures on earth at the time to house them: the German U-boat pens in captured France. U-boats had been used in the First World War, and their campaign of sinking any ship, even those with US citizens on them (even after the German government made a very public warning to the US that boarding a ship to England was a very bad idea), that approached England led to the neutral America to join the Entente and for them to be the last straw on the German back to end it.
**'''''Type VII''''': The most common type and with 703 ships in total also the most-produced submarine model in history. Generally well regarded as a very good design, it was rather nimble for its tonnage, was able to dive extremely quickly, and could go deeper than even the designers anticipated (U-95, the famous submarine from ''Das Boot'', reportedly went as deep as 290 meters after being hit by depth charges, and even though it was quite taxing on the ship itself, the crew survived in full and made it back to port). Its major downfall (as seems to be the norm with most Nazi equipment) was that it wasn't used in its intended role; the Type VIIC submarines in particular weren't designed for long-range operations and their firepower against anything larger than a merchant vessel was negligible. They were, at best, torpedo boats that could also dive, and only the Fall of France even made it even possible for them in the first place to operate in the mid-Atlantic as they did, even though their main theater was supposed to be the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Channel. Incompetent leadership as well as the aforementioned efforts of the British in fighting them led to the Type VII becoming obsolete by 1942 and a major bleed of trained Seamen and Naval officiers.
**'''''Type IX''''': The Type VII's bigger sister, and the actual ocean-going submarine of the Kriegsmarine. Much more spacious than the Type VII, and designed to operate as far away as the ''fucking Indian Ocean''. Quite a few of them remained a considerable threat due to their elusiveness and extreme range; multiple Type IXs made it as far as New York City and sank convoys there. As is tradition, incompetent leadership fucked this type and their crews; Dönitz was notoriously iron-fisted about keeping the Type VII wolfpacks in use and very narrow-minded as far as new technology goes. The Type IX was for the task at hand superior to its smaller cousin in every way, but materiel shortages and limited dockyards meant it was damned to take a step back behind the Type VII.
**'''''Type XXI''''': A technological marvel that came at the very end of the war, and too late to be used by the Nazis themselves, but these babies were by far the most advanced type of submarine devised at the time. Primarily designed to operate almost entirely under water and as trials with the finished ships by the Allies after the war showed, more than capable of that. The Type XXI ''Elektroboot'' marks a significant shift in submarine doctrine across the globe, as it proved that submarines were more than capable of operating far away from a port without needing any assistance while staying almost completely invisible. The modern nuclear submarines of the US and USSR are direct decendants of the Type XXI for that very reason. Unfortunately for the Nazis and fortunately for everyone else they had serious problems in their construction as Albert Speer decided [[wat|to farm out hull construction to a steel bridge company to speed up production]] and they never scored a kill.
* '''''Gorch Fock''''': The first of a series of five ships built very early in Germany's rearmament program, when the Nazis were still uncertain what might provoke the allies. Not in any way a warship, these were sail tallships, the last, largest, and finest ever made (although their engine systems were designed to train sailors for operating U-Boats). After the war all the ships of the class were seized as war trophies, notably the ''Horst Wessel'' which was taken by the United States becoming the ''USCGC Eagle''. The modern day ''Gorch Fock'' of the Bundesmarine is a new ship built from the same plans in 1958 and remains a training vessel to this day.
* '''''Deutschland Class Cruiser''''': The archetypal battlecruiser, the ''Deutschlands'' were the first new large ships designed by Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, and were carefully designed to get the most out of a very liberal interpretation of what the treaty permitted. Fast and heavily armed, they were ideal for commerce raiding and all three were used in this role. Of the class, the ''Admiral Scheer'' had the most successful career, sinking the most shipping tonnage of any surface ship in WWII, while the ''Graf Spee'' would get in a shootout with three British cruisers and be forced to scuttle in the harbor of Montevideo.
* '''''Admiral Hipper-Class Cruiser''''': A result of the British-German Treaty of 1935, supposed to cross the gap between the Bismarck-class battleships and the lighter Deutschland class. The most famous of these was the ''Prinz Eugen'', which accompanied the ''Bismarck'' on his fateful journey and was the only heavy German warship that survived the war intact. The planners of the Kriegsmarine called for a design that was exceptionally sturdy, and the result fulfilled these expectations more than they could have imagined; after the war, it was taken by the US Navy and used in the series of nuclear tests in American Samoa, [[Wat|where it survived all three hydrogen bomb blasts with only minor damage]], but it was so irradiated that the US towed it off the coast of the Bikini Atoll. Here it sank, after the propellers had dislodged as a result of the nuclear blasts in 1946. Its wreck is still above the surface, since the water where it sank isn't very deep.
* '''''Scharnhorst and Gneisenau''''':
* '''''Bismarck and Tirpitz''''': <s>A pair of battleships with guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees. As well as inspiration for a kickass Sabaton song </s> Memes aside, those were the largest battleships built by any European power and two of the biggest in the World; although not the biggest (''Yamato'' was heavier and around ten meters longer), or the ones with the most illustrious career (''Warspite'' served and kicked asses in both World Wars), they were by far the deadliest and best battleships around during the war, so powerful and dangerous to make Winston Churchill himself shit his pants. Much of the material regarding them as "technologically outdated", "useless" or inferior to their contemporaries are just results of the heavy discrediting campaign the Allies came up with during and after the war, so that everyone would think that "anything built by Nazi Germany = inferior to anything American and British and thus worthless", when that couldn't be farther from the truth: the ''Bismarck'' fought, with only the heavy cruiser ''Prinz Eugen'' at his side, the battleship HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and the battlecruiser HMS ''Hood'' and [[awesome|literally one-shotted the ''Hood'' after just five minutes of combat by hitting her in the aft magazine, with subsequent explosion breaking the ship in half]] and killed all but three of its crew, then pointed his guns on the ''Prince of Wales'' and mauled her badly enough to force her to withdraw; at that point, the ''Bismarck'' could have won the entire war for Germany. Alone. And that's for three simple reasons: A) Britain was already on the brink of starvation thanks to the German submarines and raiders, so a ship like the ''Bismarck'' left unchecked and free to hunt down convoys in the Atlantic for three months would have meant the UK would have been forced to surrender lest its population died for a lack of food; B) ''Hood'' had been always presented as the most powerful ship in the world and was the most loved ship of the Royal Navy; the fact that she had been sunk in an engagement where she technically had the upper hand in terms of power (since they were a battleship and a battlecruiser against a battleship and a heavy cruiser, even though the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Prinz Eugen'' were more modern) was an extremely heavy blow to the already strained British morale, that started raising questions as to the ability of the Royal Navy to actually counter the Germans' ambitions at sea; C) the Royal Navy lacked a ship powerful enough to confront the ''Bismarck'' in battle, without numbers on its side. It should be no surprise then that Churchill ordered every available ship to chase the ''Bismarck'' and destroy it, resulting in a fleet of more than 60 SHIPS searching the Atlantic to destroy him (and before you ask, yes, it is the biggest naval formation ever assembled to hunt down a single ship), that after three days of hunting managed to track him down, cripple him and then have a 5v1 engagement in which the Bismarck was shelled without mercy, [[awesome|yet still refused to sink]]. They tried torpedoes. [[awesome|And he still didn't sink]]. In the end it was left to the ''Bismarck'''s own crew to scuttle him, since they had no way of fighting back after the beating the ship had taken. All the while the ''Tirpitz'' proved to be another real bitch to kill, just like his big brother: after the ''Bismarck'' sinking, the ''Tirpitz'' received reinforced deck armor, even more advanced systems and a shitload more of AA guns to fight off enemy aircraft and she was considered so much of a threat that the British admiralty was forced to keep three ''King George V''-class battleships at Scapa Flow at any time and the Americans had to send the ''Iowa'', the ''Washington'' and the ''Alabama'' in case "The Beast", as Churchill called her, decided to move. After ship attacks failed to damage her, the RAF spent an entire year attacking her, but without results, forcing them to use almost [[what|6 tonnes bombs]] (the Tallboy) to destroy her, [[awesome|but ''Tirpitz'' survived even these]], until November 1944, when one of said bombs hit one of the ship's magazines and finally ssnk it. The only real "flaws" of the ships were the three-propeller system that made them difficult to maneuver at low speed and impossible if one of the rudders was to be destroyed, and the fact they were so massive that there were very few facilities capable of hosting them; in truth, the ''Bismarck'' class represented the very pinnacle of battleship design, with a perfect balance of overwhelming firepower, incredibly efficient armor protection (seriously, [[what|40% of their weight was dedicated to the armor]] and their armored belt was around 170 meters long, meaning that most of the ships were protected by it) and speed and their flaws were far less dangerous in a combat situation that those found on every other modern battleship of the war: the ''King George V''s were slower and both them and the ''Richelieu''s were uselessly complicated and suffered from severe mechanical failures and hydraulic problems (not to mention they couldn't shoot backwards), the ''Yamato''s were so big and heavy that they were impossible to maintain, furthermore their guns and shells were highly ineffective, their armor scheme was a total mess and their radar was much less advanced, the ''Iowa''s, while faster, with better technology and (only slightly) more powerful guns, had a terrible weakness in the form of extremely poor armor reliability to withstand both shells and torpedoes and that was discovered only months after the four battleships had been fully built and thus was impossible to rectify, a flaw they shared with both the ''North Carolina'' class and the ''South Dakota'' class, only that those two were also slower than the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Littorio''s were completely unreliable, lacking radar systems, their guns were extremely inaccurate and also had a very short lifespan.
**A counterpoint: Frankly, none of the battleship circle-jerking above really matters in the end, because the era of battleships would come to a sudden and violent end on December 7, 1941. Indeed, it was an obsolete goddamn biplane launched from the carrier ''Ark Royal'' that doomed ''Bismarck'' by nailing it in the stern with a torpedo and jamming its steering. Everything after that was inevitable. Likewise, the fact that ''Bismarck'' sank ''Hood'' in eight minutes should not be taken as proof of its utter superiority. ''Hood'' was an old ship with thin armor that hadn't seen a significant update in years; this is kind of like someone bragging that their brand-new BMW is faster than their neighbor's twenty-year-old Vauxhall Astra. It also isn't surprising that it beat ''Prince of Wales''; that ship was fresh out of the yards, with all the attendant teething problems thereof, and there were civilian technicians aboard calibrating its guns even as it went into battle. Also, any idea that ''Bismarck'' could have singlehandedly won the war is dubious at best and laughable at worst. There is no way that ''Bismarck'' would have been allowed to roam free for three months; the Royal Navy was stretched thin, sure, but as already noted above, killing ''Bismarck'' was a top priority for them, especially after ''Hood'' was sunk. They would have (and did) devoted whatever resources were necessary to sinking it. Moreover, ''Bismarck'' was under strict orders not to engage any major enemy warships unless it was absolutely necessary to sink a convoy. There proved to be a damn good reason for this, because ''Prince of Wales'' put a hole through ''Bismarck'''s bow that breached its forward fuel tanks and flooded several key compartments, forcing its admiral to call off the mission and head for France. Thus, its greatest and only victory also forced it to abort its mission before it had seen or fired a single shot at any merchant ships, meaning that it was an operational and strategic loss for the Germans. Losing ''Hood'' was a blow to British pride, but it was ultimately a relatively minor loss in the grand strategic scheme. ''Bismarck'', meanwhile, represented 25% of the Kriegsmarine’s strength in capital ships, and its sinking meant that ''Tirpitz'' and the rest of the surface fleet were confined to port for the duration of the war on Hitler's direct orders. It doesn't matter if your battleship is a one-to-one match for the enemy's battleships when the enemy has more of them and is perfectly willing to send all of them after yours to make sure it's dead; that's a losing game no matter how you slice it.

* '''''Graf Zeppelin''''': The Nazis' sole attempt at building an aircraft carrier that was a weird carrier/cruiser hybrid. Not the best idea because having the heavy guns meant it could field less planes and having fewer planes meant that it would punch below its weight in shooting matches with other surface assets, though this is theoretical. It was never completed, due to the squabbling between Göring and the Admiralty as to whose department it belonged to and the ever decreasing need of an aircraft carrier in continental Europe. Despite never being ''officially'' cancelled until the end of the war, frequent changes to the design and the planes that were supposed to be used with it as well as severe materiel shortages made sure that construction was put on hold in 1943. By that time the about 85% complete ship was moved from port to port in the Baltic Sea. The Soviets captured it in 1945, used it for target practice and ultimately sunk it in 1947 off the coast of Danzig (or Gdansk in Polish), where its wreck was rediscovered in 2006.

===Wunderwaffen===
Of all the technology the Nazis used, the Wunderwaffen are the thing that caught the imagination of the world and started the "Superior German Engineering" meme. As a preface, civilian engineering is great in Germany. Military? Well... you'll see in a bit. This is the place any of the "Nazi Super Science" stuff goes. You want lightning guns? Wunderwaffen. Super tanks? Wunderwaffen. Moon rockets? Wunderwaffen. [[Wolfenstein|Hitler in a giant robot spider powered by the souls of the damned?]] Wunderwaffen.

A lot of people argue that things like the Wunderwaffen and to a lesser degree the Gen 3 heavy tanks like the Tiger and Panther were wastes of time, money and resources at a point where the Nazis desperately could not afford to spend all three. These same people argue that it would have been preferable to produce more Panzer IVs and StuGs then produce expensive Tigers or Wunderwaffen. The truth is, as usual, a lot more nuanced. Take a quick look at even a modern map of Europe and you will quickly see the same hard truth that has confronted generations of Holy Roman/Prussian/German/Nazi/NATO strategists: Germany is small. It simply doesn't have the same kind of territory and resources at its disposal that Russia or America have. They could ''maybe'' match England or France one-on-one, but both had global empires that when factored in meant that Germany was dwarfed in the resource game (hence why trying to blockade England into submission was such a critical part of their strategy during both world wars). There is, frankly, no way Germany could ever have produced enough tanks to match the hordes of Shermans or onslaught of T-34s that the Americans and Soviets produced, and there was also no way for them to keep all those tanks fueled. It is with this mindset that one can understand the reason for the Wunderwaffen and Gen 3 heavy tanks. If there is no way to produce as many tanks as your enemy, your only option is to pack so much power into each individual war machine that they can achieve favorable kill/death ratios to make up the difference. At the core, it's Space Marine logic, a few stronger units outfighting many times their number. (This was also the idea Japan had, since they faced the same problem as Germany; unfortunately for them, their industrial infrastructure was even more gimped and dysfunctional than Nazi Germany's, and the result was that while they produced some absolute units like the Mitsubishi Zero, the Long Lance torpedo, and the ''Yamato'' and ''Musashi'', they could never hope to match America's productive capacity when it got going.)

When put that way, it makes the Wunderwaffe sounds like a good idea in theory. In practice they turned out not to be, due to many different factors, including technical limitations that could not be overcome with the available equipment of the time and sheer nepotism and human stupidity (more on this below). It is indeed true that the different wonder weapon projects were on the bleeding edge of their epoch's technology when envisioned, next generation devices which most of the scientists of other nations had been thinking about/started to toy with, but had yet to reach the prototype stage, much less mass production. Yes, the Germans pioneered a lot of things that were afterwards [[Blood Ravens|acquired and adapted]] by the Allies and the Soviet Union. The problem was, at the start of the war, the technology to make said Wunderwaffen '''efficient''' weapons (a real guidance system for the V1 and V2, for instance, and a decent fuel valve for V-1s to avoid engine death after a hundred turns) simply wasn't there yet, and once the war got into full-swing and the attendant drain on fighting a multi-front war along with the effects of Allied strategic bombing became dominant, the Germans never managed to close the gap. All that the Wunderwaffen '''could''' have been agreed upon having accomplished is the initial psychological shock upon deployment (such as the unstoppable V-2 launches), which wasn't much of a big deal after the human mind would adapt to the new threat.

On the negative side, while the German quest for military innovation lead to a number of advances and efficient war machines that did have everyone else scrambling to catch up, most were nothing more than a drain on Germany's already limited resources. Hitler had a documented fascination with anything that screamed "German Supremacy" and was willing to throw money at any such proposal. Thus, for every successful development that led to something like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 (which was a very good plane and a potential game changer); you had more half-successes like the Tiger/VK3X.XX series/Ferdinand-Elefant/... (which were decent enough machines in the field but were horribly costly and maintenance-intensive) and all the associated waste of time and resources that went into completely hare-brained projects like the ''Ratte''. Later on, once the multi-front war turned against Germany, it turned into an arguable desperation for something, anything to one-shot win-the-war. As you can imagine with four hands strangling Germany, one smelling of vodka, one of bourbon and apple pie, one of tea and gin and the last of white bread and frog legs, these weapons were developed and produced with a shortage of resources and time and the lack of quality only exacerbated their various shortcomings and strained an already breaking economy. They were rather dismissively called "voo-vah" by Allied troops, and they allegedly thanked Hitler for ultimately shortening the war by authorizing their construction and wasting Germany's precious time and resources. Perhaps ironically, the Wunderwaffen did help to shorten the war, since those resources may have been better used on propping up a failing wartime economy, or building "boring but effective" war materiel. As with anything on this wiki, YMMV and you're encouraged to do your own research (and find a lot of really interesting stories in the process; did you know that at point-blank range, the standard 88mm AP round could rip a furrow through the entire length of the roof of a M4 turret, peeling open the steel like a centre-parting in hair? SCIENCE!)

It's worth noting here that the Germans and the Allies (particularly the Americans) devoted equally insane amounts of resources to developing crazy sci-fi weapons during the war; the course of post-war history shows which side bet on the winning horses. While the Germans farted around with jets and giant cannons, the Americans were conducting the Manhattan Project and creating nuclear weapons, (and building the B-29 Superfortress, a plane so advanced that it cost just as much as the bombs it would deliver to Japan). Ultimately, the Germans' wide-reaching experimentation was a classic example of crippling overspecialization, developing dozens of potentially war-winning technologies and giving none of them the attention they needed.

* '''V1 flying bomb:''' The V1 is considered as an early version of the cruise missile and was used in the bombing of England, since a city was pretty much all they COULD accurately hit (and even then). The V1's used an early version of a pulse jet and they were quickly called "buzz bombs," "doodlebugs," or "farting furies" to discourage people from calling them "robot bombs," which gives the impression that they were unstoppable. Fun fact about the V1: it uses the same fuel as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle type of beetle] uses to defend itself. It was infamously known for cutting its engine as it dived (due to a fuel flow error), leading to it suddenly becoming silent just before it smashed into the ground. Its entire "guidance computer" was nothing more than a simple gyroscope system to keep it level and flying, plus a small spinning propeller in the nose that would set the flaps to dive the V1 into the ground once it revolved a certain amount of times (calculated to have covered the distance to the target city). Far too inaccurate to be used against a military target, the V1 was ultimately a gigantic waste. After the war though, with American and Soviet resources and improved controls, it founded the basis of modern tactical bombardment. Strategic? See right below.
*'''V2 rocket:''' The V2 was the world's first ballistic missile and spacefaring craft. The scientists that developed it, including Wernher von Braun, went on to work for NASA and developed the booster rockets on the Saturn V launch vehicle (so Nazi science really did put a man on the moon in the end). Unlike its brother the V1, it was utterly unstoppable by AA; not a single inbound V-2 was ever shot down by antiaircraft fire, owing to it moving at 3 times the speed of sound. As detailed in Thomas Pynchon's novel ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (the book's name referring to the ballistic trajectory of the rockets), the V-2 brought a new terror to late-war London: as the rockets impacted well beyond the speed of sound, the first sign of an attack was an explosion on the ground, ''followed'' by "a screaming across the sky." It was the first vehicle to ever reach space (but not the first object, that honor falls to Imperial German artillery in WW1, specifically the Paris Gun), from a vertical test launch in 1943, and after the war it was very frequently reused by the Americans (with extra shit often strapped on top) as an early spacecraft, with grainy images returned from suborbital flights in space as early as 1946. Less of a waste than the V-1 but even so, without a decent guidance system it had a hard time hitting England as well as the dubious distinction of being the only weapon which killed more people in its manufacture than it did enemies. (It achieved this distinction by being constructed in concentration camps, where prisoners' lives were freely exchanged for productivity. It's worth remembering that many of the "good" Germans that came to the US and NASA had to ''literally'' step over corpses to get to their Nazi rocket factories during the war.)
*''' Ruhrstahl X-4 and Panzerabwehrrakete X-7 Rotkäppchen rocket:''' The X-4 and X-7 were the first wire-guided missiles (by which they were guided by electrical signals sent down guidance wires spooled out behind the rocket in flight) to be developed, and an example that in some cases Wunderwaffen really did point the way to the future.
* '''Horten 229 and Horten 18:''' Commonly known as the "Nazi stealth fighter," this twin-turbojet flying-wing fighter was found in a secret workshop hangar by invading American forces. Nobody knows for certain if the Horten 229 was originally built for stealth, but its all-wood construction and smooth radar-fouling shape, coupled with what was claimed to be radar-absorbing paint on the outer shell, makes a fairly clear case for a stealth aircraft (Though [[Wikipedia:de Havilland Mosquito|the Allies had already been fielding wooden aircraft for years]] and the Germans knew radar worked poorly on them, as well as the "radar absorbing paint" being tested by Lockheed and being found to have no appreciable effect on radar returns). The concept that the 229 was build around was the "3x1000": 1000kph, 1000km range, 1000kg bomb payload. This, in 1943. During test flights, it outperformed the Me. 262 while using exactly the same engines. It was probably going to be used to fly through or knock out the British radar array in a second, never-realized "Battle of Britain 2: Electromagnetic Boogaloo." The Horten 18 was an even bigger flying wing, with a huge wingspan and 6 jet engines. This one was designed to be an intercontinental bomber, intending to hit American cities as the Western Front made Hitler [[rage|angrier and angrier]]. The Horten 18 was never built, but the 229 was rather successfully test flown. Both planes looked quite a bit like the modern B2 stealth bomber, which isn't much of a surprise considering the Americans hauled the Horten 229 prototype back home to be studied in a secret Air Force base (where it is today).
**The reason the Horten's design belongs under the Wunderwaffen entry and not up in Aircraft is the following: it simply wouldn't have worked with 1940's technology. Even though tailless gliders weren't particularly harder to fly than 'regular' ones and the powered prototype was flown successfully a couple of times; testing after the war demonstrated that the time's stabilizing hard-/software was simply not up to the task of preventing fatal losses of control on tailless airframes (and especially within the context of a military operation). It took 50-odd years and ''a lot'' of technological improvements for its spiritual (hah!) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit successor] to be successfully fielded in operation.
[[File:Maus_Trials_1944.png|350px|thumb|right|[[Approved_anime#Gaming_anime|Panzer vor]], motherfuckers.]]
* '''''Maus'':''' The ''Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus'' ("mouse") is the largest tank ever built. A 200 metric ton monster with a 128mm (5 inch) main gun and a 75mm co-axial gun in the turret, it crept along at a blistering 13 kph and sucked down liters of gas per kilometer. The most amazing thing is that (beyond not cancelling the project on sight like anyone withing hailing distance of sanity would) ''they actually managed to build this tank''. Five were ordered, but only two prototypes and one turret were built. It was originally going to be called the ''Mäuschen'' (Little Mouse), but because the Germans liked schadenfreude more than irony, just ''Maus'' stuck. Realistically, no Allied tank then in existence would have had the firepower to penetrate the Maus; only high-caliber antitank guns and artillery fire would have done the job. However, it was so big that there was no road or bridge sturdy enough to take it, so it had to have special snorkeling gear to get past rivers. Its sheer size and painfully slow top speed would have made it prime bait for bombers (which is one of the reasons why modern militaries don't use heavy tanks anymore). While neither side had antitank weapons strong enough to penetrate its armor, it's more then likely that it would never have gotten there even if it was built. It's not quite a [[Baneblade]], but they were getting there. The Nazis really didn't want anyone to get this monster, so they blew up the complete first model. The second Maus, armed with the first one's turret, was towed back to Russia by invading forces, and currently resides in the Kubinka Tank Museum for all to see.
* '''''Ratte'':''' The ''Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte'' ("rat") was an even larger tank, or "land cruiser", since it was essentially a naval warship on tracks. Never actually built, despite being ordered by Hitler. [[Wat|The Ratte was to be a 1000 metric ton tank, mounting a naval turret with two 280mm guns, a 128mm anti tank gun, eight 20mm FlaK cannons, and two 15mm aircraft cannons]], surpassing even the Eleven Barrels Of Hell of the Baneblade. It would have been so heavy that it would have destroyed every road it used, would have wrecked towns just by running through them, and it would have collapsed every bridge it crossed. It needed two U-BOAT motors to get around, or maybe EIGHT 20 CYLINDER ENGINES. Not surprisingly, Albert Speer canned the project (mostly because a single bomber dropping a 500kg bomb on top of the thing would fuck its day up immensely), which is a great shame because A. Building and maintaining such a monster would have posed a noticeable strain on Germany's logistics, thus accelerating their defeat (it would have required about six months worth of the Reich's ENTIRE STEEL PRODUCTION just to build the damm thing) and B. It would have made the most [[awesome]] museum piece in the known universe.
*'''''Karl-Gerät''''' The ''Karl-Gerät'' is one of the very few real world weapons ever built that is BIGGER then its 40K equivalent. Karl weighed 124 tons, was armed with a 60cm (24 inch) gun that fired a shell weighing more than a ton, and could hit a target between four and ten kilometers away depending on the size of its shell. This thing was the largest self-propelled gun ever made and it could give even a (admittedly small) Titan pause for thought. These things were actually used in combat to decent effect in Warsaw, but had mixed results in other deployments. It fucked up any target royally when it hit, most famously the Prudential in Warsaw, but the Gerät was so big and slow that it had to be disassembled and put on special tractor trailers to move around (one hell of a logistical operation) and and was moved any real distance by train. Its shells were carried by special turretless Panzer IIIs. Surprisingly one of these things survived the war and was captured by the Russians. It's currently in the Kubinka Tank Museum alongside the sole surviving Maus and assorted other war trophies.
[[File:Hitler-gustav-railway-gun.jpg|350px|thumb|right|If there was a fine line between [[Dakka]], [[Titan|massive overcompensation]], and [[Rape|"Holy shit, Greg! Is that a fucking landship on rails!?",]] then the Gustav sure hits the spot.]]
*'''''Schwerer Gustav'':''' An excellent example of the brilliance and impracticality of Wunderwaffen, ''Schwerer Gustav'' was a railway gun that resembled a cruiser fucking a freight train, built in the late 30s to defeat the Maginot Line. Two were built, the other called "Dora." It was a descendant of the German Empire's 1918 "Paris gun," a smaller gun ("only" 238mm) built in World War One to shell Paris from Germany, 120 kilometers away (a range so far they had to account for the curvature of the Earth when firing the damn thing). Gustav was designed to defeat any fortifications in existence; as such, it was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built in terms of overall weight, and fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece. It fired 80cm (31 inch) shells, weighing 4,800kg to 7,100kg, up to 48km. The AP shells could penetrate 7 meters of reinforced concrete. It completely succeeded in its job of defeating any existing fortification, but at the same time was hilariously impractical. It required two specially-laid parallel railway tracks to move (yes, it was a railway gun too big for the railway), took 54 hours to set up for firing, and had a rate of fire of 14 rounds per day as charges had to be heated up in a special device for roughly 1 day before firing. Since building a gun that fired shells that wouldn't fit through the front door to your house wasn't excessive enough for the Nazis, plans were made to mount the Schwerer Gustav's 80cm gun on a 1,500-ton self propelled artillery platform (the ''Landkreuzer P.1500 Monster''), with two 15cm howitzers and multiple 15mm autocannons as secondary weapons. Unfortunately, both guns were scrapped near the end of the war. The Schwerer Gustav, overall, was the biggest (if the strange rocket exhaust powered V3 listed below is not counted) motherfucking gun on the planet. The weapon likely could have blown a Titan away if its shields were down, and much science-fiction set in WWII features the gun (notably, in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, the gun is used to blow up two landed alien spacecraft from sixty kilometers away). There is no recorded case it of successfully hitting the target (and with the accuracy of that thing it's a miracle no German forces were harmed). There is an urban legend about one AP shot detonating an ammo dump through 15 meters of water and 7 meters of concrete during the Siege of Sevastopol, but no hard proof supports it.
*'''V3''': If you thought Gustav up there was nutty, wait until you hear about the V3, a gun that was as big as a 40k Titan. The V3 was an attempt to make a gun that could shoot across the English Channel. Now, there were a number of heavy guns that could do this, including railway guns and big bunkers built with battleship guns, but they could only shoot between the narrowest point between England and continental Europe. The V3 was built to shell London from France. I said earlier it was as big as a Titan, and I was not being sarcastic, (though it would only be as big as a knight, which despite being the smallest Titan is still bloody big). From breech to muzzle, the gun was 130 meters (430 feet) long, with a bore of 150mm or 5.9 inches across. Rather then use a single big explosion to propel the shells, the V3 used rocket motors mounted in pairs, set so their exhaust would thrust a 140kg shell out of the barrel like a reverse bolter. This setup allowed it to fire a shell out to 165km and put London well in range. Of course like all of the Nazi Wunderwaffen, in practice it sounded good but was actually kinda shit. The gun was so big that it had to be built in a hill, meaning it was impossible for it to change target after being built, and after all the time you spent building the damn thing, by the time you were done it might no longer be useful to have, such as what happened during Operation Nordwind. Further even if you ignore the logistical issues, compared to other period artillery the V3 was just plain shit. The 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 guns of the ''Iowa''-class battleship had a caliber of 16 inch or 406mm and fired a shell that weighed 1,225 kg, so over twice as big around and almost exactly nine times as heavy, and the ''Iowa'' had nine of them, and it could move. To put the cherry on this dipshit sundae, by the time the first five guns were finally built to shell London, the Royal Air Force had worked out where they were and immediately destroyed them with Tallboy Earthquake bombs. If anything proves how silly the idea of Nazi Super Science is, let the fate of the V3 super gun stand testament to how many times Hitler's scientists, and Hitler himself, had been hit with the stupid stick growing up. Hitler in particular, [[Meme|who was punished by his enraged father severely]].
*'''''[https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time N-Stoff]:''''' Someday, somewhere in the ''Kaiser Wilhelm Institute'' there was an Evil Overlord that was unhappy about the quantity of flammen his flammenwerfer could werf - so he went around and took two guys named Ruff and Krug to play around with some fluorine and some chlorine. Now, if you studied chemistry, you may realize that using "fluorine" and "chlorine" in the same sentence does not spell good news for anybody, but you know, ''Nazi Evil Overlords''. What they discovered made their commissioners - yes, the same ol' boys who thought gassing millions was cool - go '''NOPE!''', and when you discover something that's too crazy even for Crazy Nazi Science standards you know you're in for a treat. Indeed, Chlorine Trifluoride (as the compound is called) proved to be pretty good in burning bunkers to the ground - and by "burning bunkers" we mean the ''whole'' bunker, as in ''it reacts with the motherfucking concrete'' - plus it doubled as a chemical warfare agent, giving off corrosive and toxic fumes. N-Stoff (translating to Substance-N; yeah, they kinda failed the naming here) burns at a raging 2400 degrees Celsius - twice the temperature of lava and almost enough to BOIL steel - and can set fire to things that shouldn't burn, like glass, wet sand (or asbestos, a.k.a. the same substance that they used to make fireproof stuff out of) and things that have already been burnt. In fact fighting the fire with water is counterproductive, the water is just more fuel and it reacts to create deadly acids and gasses. In the 1950s a ton of the stuff was spilled in a warehouse. The chemical promptly burned through a foot of concrete and three feet of gravel while releasing a deadly gas that corroded everything it came into contact with. If there ever was something like [[Dakka|Enuff Dakka]] for flamethrowers, Substance N came close to delivering it. The Nazis planned to use it in war, but were never able to produce enough of it (only a few dozen kilograms total), presumably because it kept incinerating everyone who tried to make it. It later found its use in the semiconductor and nuclear industry - after being dubbed a bit too violent to use as rocket fuel, one rocket scientist famously said that the best way to deal with a Chlorine Trifluoride accident was "a good pair of running shoes". Also, [[Sly Marbo]] uses Substance N to spice up his Catachan takeaway.
*'''E-Series''': A very obscure piece of German tank engineering history that was brought to mainstream attention by being featured in ''World of Tanks''. The ''Entwicklung'' series of tanks were pure design studies, never produced or even properly conceptualized. They were designed as an attempt to streamline tank production and as replacements for the entire tank pool of the Wehrmacht. It consisted of 5 tanks in total (E-10, E-25, E-50, E-75, E-100) with different purposes; their number corresponded with their weight class. By the time these design studies were made (around late '44 to early '45) producing an entirely new series of tanks was way beyond the capabilities of the rapidly disintegrating remains of Germany's heavy industry, so it's best not to read too much into these tanks other than them being interesting curiosities. From what was left of their reserve steel, the Germans managed to scramble together one incomplete E-100 chassis that was found by the Americans and handed over to the British, which used it for target practive and ultimately scrapped it in 1950.
*'''''Uranprojekt''''': The Uranprojekt (Uranium Project is the most literal translation) was the attempt of German scientists to create a sustainable nuclear chain reaction. This project has since found its way into popular fiction as the German attempt to create an atomic bomb, often accompanied by claims that they almost had one, but when taking a closer look, this isn't exactly the truth. The project didn't exactly go all that well. Germany suffered a major brain drain when it expelled all its Jewish scientists in the 1930s, and it had next to no access to uranium ore or materials that could be used as a moderator (like highly pure graphite or heavy water). The material problems were sort of solved when France and Norway fell into their hands, but the problems only increased from then on. The scientists were unsure what to use as fuel for the bomb, as both proposed elements (Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239) are extremely rare and need to be created artificially in breeding reactors. To put it in perspective, plutonium wasn't believed to be a naturally occurring element ''at all'' until the 1990s, and common uranium ore contains usually 2% uranium in its most stable form (U-238) and generally only 0.7% of all uranium is of the 235 variety (U-238 is much more stable than U-235 and therefore harder to split). One must also take into consideration that nuclear technology in general was in its infancy and just at the very onset of leaving the purely theoretical stage, which adds to the problems in procuring enough viable fission material outlined above. The lead scientist of the project, Werner Heisenberg, (yes, that's where the name Heisenberg comes from) also had a crisis of conscience and reduced his work on the project significantly. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, the project was abandoned by the Wehrmacht and handed over to the civilian Reichsforschungsrat (Council of Science of the Reich) because of the material expenses and the lack of results. The project experienced a significant number of setbacks, the most important of which was an explosion of a globe filled with uranium powder in 1942, which destroyed a substantial amount of Germany's uranium reserves. (The accident in question actually bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Chernobyl in 1986, thankfully only on a much smaller scale). But it didn't stop there. The Allies caught wind of the project and feared that the Germans could succeed in developing a nuclear bomb and sent commandos to thoroughly sabotage the project in a series of daring operations that make for excellent reading material. In short, all German facilities that could produce materials, together with practically any uranium and heavy water for use in the Uranprojekt were destroyed by early 1944, either through sabotage or air raids, and the project worked off remaining reserves from then on. One last experiment in Haigerloch, South Germany was conducted in February 1945 and failed in producing a nuclear chain reaction. The leading scientists were taken into custody by the Americans, others from the rank-and-file by the Soviets, where they continued their work on the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons project. The effect the Uranprojekt was more to found in the looming paranoia of the Allies, particularly the Americans, about a possible German nuclear bomb that fueled the urgency behind the Manhattan Project, with the irony being that the Germans never even came close to creating a critical nuclear chain reaction, let alone a bomb. In hindsight, the project was in fact a complete failure. All that needs to be said is that around ten different organizations were all running their own programs, one of which was the German Postal Service. And finally the final nail in the German atomic bomb project was that they were competing against the United States: not only the one industrial power not being bombed at the time, the one all set to be a super power when the dust settled. To put in perspective just how out economically gunned the Germans were: in order to make a bomb you need enriched uranium, to make that you need electromagnetic mass spectroscopy, but to make those you need copper wire to use in the magnets and a lot of it, but copper was being used to make shells and other war material. So what did America do? instead of cutting into the war production of other items they went to the treasury and borrowed 14,000 '''tons''' of '''Silver'''. Against that kind of economic power, German had a snow balls chance in hell of making the bomb first even if they were not being bombed.
*'''Die Glocke (The Bell)''': Okay, so you know the Nazi zombie craze that got started back in 1941 (seriously the first Nazi zombie film was made during WWII), and the purported occult obsession several higher-ups in the party had? This is supposedly one of the end results of that branch of pseudoscience & conspiracy level crazy. Much like the "Philadelphia Experiment" or MK Ultra, Die Glocke was supposed to be "something" that would break the laws of reality, bring back the dead, power all the factories, and mind control the enemies of the Reich, etc etc. It's also complete horseshit, apparently made up by a Polish author/journalist named Igor Witkowski, and then later popularised by a British author/military journalist named Nick Cook. Still as it has helped shape the more fantastical view of the Nazi Wunderwaffen, especially in the realm of /v/idya, and the "factual" books are a good laugh, it is worth an honorable mention.
*'''Sonnengewehr (Sun Gun)''': Slightly less fantastical than the Bell above (as in theoretically feasible but just as impossible to realize with the tech available at the time) was the Sonnengewehr, or the Sun Gun. Originally proposed in 1929 by Hermann Oberth, the Sonnengewehr was a hypothesised space station that would orbit around the planet roughly five thousand miles up, and focus the sun's light into a death ray capable of burning down cities or boiling dry the oceans using a fuckhueg reflector made of metallic sodium. While the numbers involved are probably fairly woolly given just how batshit crazy the Nazi science machine was, the scientists involved claimed that the Sun Gun could be completed within 50 to 100 years, and if you consider that we landed on the moon roughly 40 years after the first proposal of the 'sun gun', that number does check out. The "designers" at least had some sense of reality when they realized that the platform could also make for a weather satellite since it might as well have such facilities on board due to size. On an amusing sidenote, the Russians eventually demonstrated the concept was sound (if stupidly impractical for any intended purpose) with their ''Znamaya'' solar mirror prototype in the nineties. Though of course in terms of a 'super weapon', any kind of 'sun gun' fails when compared to atomic weapons, which is why despite being sound in concept nobody has actually bothered to even consider such a weapon. (though as weather manipulator? that's a different kettle of fish)

===Misc===
[[File:Stalhelm.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Distinctive Stahlhelm. The Germans lucked out on helmet design during WWI]]
* '''''Stahlhelm'':''' The many variants of the iconic German helmet were derived from the medieval sallet and first appeared during the Great War. The purpose of these helmets was to keep shrapnel out of one's head. It was better than its contemporaries, as its design provided increased protection to the sides and back of the head. Not to be confused with the spiked Prussian ''Pickelhaube''. Used by pretty much all German infantry personnel except for the Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers), since it was impractical to jump with it. The paratroopers had a special version of the helmet that removed the front and back flanges, giving it a much more streamlined appearance. The basic design would go on to become the basis for most modern helmets, especially as the shape was well suited to wearing a headset under it.

* '''''Uniforms and Insignia'':''' As emblematic of the Nazi regime as the MP-40, the Totenkopf, and the Stahlhelm, the uniforms of the Wehrmacht and the SS are famed for their stylish yet sinister appearance. The stylishness was provided by companies such as Hugo Boss (yes, ''that'' Hugo Boss, athough he didn't design the uniform, as the design came from the SS itself, Boss was simply the biggest and most well-known contractor) who received lucrative contracts from the government to make uniforms for the armed forces, while the sinister-ness was provided by the Nazi fondness for [[Imperium of Man|eagles and skulls]] as decorative motifs and the use of black as the prewar uniform color of the SS. Several patterns of uniform were produced, but the most iconic is the M36 pattern field tunic; whenever Nazi grunts appear in a video game, movie, or TV show, odds are they'll be wearing an M36. The ''Schirmmütze'' peaked hat is equally iconic, especially when it appears with the ''Totenkopf'', the infamous skull-and-crossbones insignia. A variant known as the ''Knautschmütze'' was produced that lacked the wire stiffener of the ''Schirmmütze'' and became known as the "crusher cap"; it was especially popular with tankers who had to wear headsets over their caps. The M43 field cap was initially issued to mountain troops, and then later issued in tropical, panzer crew, and regular infantry variants; you may be most familiar with its appearance as the sexy Nazi chick's hat in the final part of ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade''. The Nazis pioneered camouflage clothing for infantry personnel, creating a variety of patterns, including ''Splittertarnmuster'' (splinter pattern), ''Platanenmuster'' (Plane-tree pattern, worn by the Waffen-SS), and ''Leibermuster'' (Leiber pattern), the latter of which inspired the iconic ERDL camouflage uniforms used by the US Army, Marines, and Special Forces in Vietnam. Following in the footsteps of the Reichswehr, the Wehrmacht used a system of colored trim and piping on uniforms to indicate a soldier's branch of service, known as ''Waffenfarbe'', or "corps colors". There were colors for every possible branch from infantry to engineers to war correspondents and veterinarians (on a side note, ranks were a confusing mess with among other weirdness had a special inbetween grade specifically for fortress engineer and farrier NCOs above all other enlisted specialists); some of the most common were white (infantry), golden yellow (cavalry, reconnaissance), meadow green (panzergrenadiers), and rose-pink (panzers). The Nazis also inherited the ''Totenkopf'' from the Reichswehr, who in turn had used it because of its long association with elite units in the Prussian and Imperial armies, so the Nazis adopting it was probably inevitable. It became the official insignia of the SS and was worn by both regular army and Waffen-SS panzer crews, [[Fail|which led to a lot of army tankers being shot on sight by Allied soldiers who assumed they were SS]].

*'''''Stielhandgranate'':''' Often called "stick grenades" or "potato mashers," these are those grenades on sticks you always see the Germans using. Used by popping off the metal cap at the end of the stick, giving the cord which doubled as a fuse a good yank, and throwing it at your target (of course, before the fuse went off). The Stielhandgranate is what is called a "offensive" grenade, known nowadays as a "concussive" grenade. The difference is that an offensive grenade uses explosive pressure waves to kill an enemy, thus allowing you to use it while advancing without getting a face full of shrapnel, while a defensive grenade (like the US "pineapple" grenade) uses shrapnel to kill an enemy, affecting a much larger area but also putting you in the blast radius, hence they were designed to be thrown over the wall of a foxhole or trench line at advancing enemy troops while you keep your head down. The reason the Stielhandgranate had the stick was to give more leverage when throwing it as compared to a round grenade. It actually worked pretty well, but nonetheless history moved past the concept and grenades on sticks didn't keep.
**'''''Geballte Ladung'':''' Take your grenades off of their sticks, wrap them all up around one stick grenade, and tie them around it with something. You see, as the Stielhandgranate was basically just a head of TNT lit up after the fuse at the end of the stick reached the explosive filler in the head, cramming more of these explosive heads around one will lead to a bigger boom when that one goes off, like planting more TNT on the same detonation location will, though the added weight would reduce the range advantage of hurling it by the stick and made it harder to carry them en masse (regular Stielhandgranates were only barely harder to attach to someone than actual sticks and soldiers could easily cram them just about anywhere on their person). This "bundled charge" was improvised for use against harder targets, like armored vehicles (though it didn't take long in World War II for this to become useless against tanks) and buildings. Six/Nine explosive heads fit nicely when tied around one stick grenade's head on the horizontal plane parallel to the head's circular ends, which was the usual upper limit for this improvisation, though logically it would be quite possible to tie even more around the grenade while making it even more difficult to throw and making it more resemble an explosive charge that you can't expect to throw very far with a stick in it.

*'''''Nebelwerfer'':''' A family of weapons whose very name means "Fog/Mist Thrower"; they were listed as smokescreen launchers before the war to get around the Treaty of Versailles, but in truth were rather deadly artillery pieces designed to deploy chemical munitions; though barring a few isolated instances on the Eastern Front, chemical weapons were never used in any meaningful capacity during the war, likely because Hitler had survived gas attacks in the last war and drew the line at using them himself, along with the fact that using chemical weapons would invite retaliation in kind. These types of weapons included some mortars, but more importantly, rocket artillery. Between the wars, there was a fair bit of interest in new rocket designs, as conventional artillery was either strictly regulated or forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, and the Nazis knew they had a use for that. These rockets were inaccurate, but you could easily fire a whole bunch of the things off at once for a good saturation bombing, though thanks to the smoke you had to scoot away afterwards or the other side would drop their own artillery right on top of you. The rocket based system made a very distinctive sound. The Germans nicknamed the thing "Heulende Kuh" (Bellowing Cow) and US troops would come to call them "Screaming Mimi" and "Moaning Minnie".
**In the later phases of the war, the Germans would also mount the launcher onto a half-track and designate it a "Panzerwerfer" (Armored Thrower). In many ways a German analogue to the BM-21, the Panzerwerfer saw intensive use during the Battle of the Bulge.

*'''Goliath:''' A remotely controlled mini-vehicle on treads, stuffed full of explosives. They were driven up to an enemy tank or a bunker and then blown up. (Games Workshop stole the idea and design for the Imperial Guard [[Cyclops Demolition Vehicle|Cyclops]].) Good idea, but the execution was lacking since Radio Control wasn't good enough yet. They had a cable like some sort of bargain remote-controlled car which limited their range dramatically, and cutting this would utterly defeat the weapon. (At least it's not as bad as the Russians and their kamikaze dogs which they trained to run under tanks, that is, THEIR OWN TANKS, but I digress...) On the flip side, American soldiers often made great fun with captured Goliaths by riding them around as the tiny thing could carry quite a load.

*'''[[Flamethrower|Flammenwerfer]]:''' A werfer zat werfs flammen. Your standard flamethrower in both name and function, though there wasn't much use for it, as there were no real trench battles like in WWI where people sat in <s>comfy</s> little (hell) holes and took potshots at each other. This is not to say they weren't used, but unlike the trench wars of WWI most of the fighting was mobile rather than static. For added nastiness, some bigger ones were mounted in Flammpanzers, able to shoot hundreds of liters of sticky, burning fuck you over distances exceeding 50 meters. Getting issued one was generally regarded one of the least desirable jobs on all sides of the war. Flamethrower operators were prime targets for reasons that should be obvious, but because they were bringers of an especially unpleasant kind of death, everyone shot them on the spot when they surrendered. It also bears mentioning that actually firing a flamethrower is a ''very'' unpleasant sensation. Some veterans of WWII battles where they were used are known to have mentioned that [[Grimdark|they can't stand the smell of roast pork anymore]].

*'''8.8cm flak gun:''' Known as the "Acht-Acht", this is THE German gun of WWII, and it sums up the German experience in the first part of the war: never being truly ready, but very clever and doctrinally flexible. The 88mm was designed as an anti-air weapon (Flak standing for ''Fliegerabwehrkanöne'', or AA gun) built to throw a high explosive shell as high into the air as it could so that it could explode somewhere in the same ballpark as the enemy plane and put one piece of shrapnel into something important and bring it down, which is a role it performed throughout the war. However against heavy Allied tanks such as the British Matilda 1 and French B1, the German tanks of the time had no ability to penetrate their frontal armor. The 8.8 cm flak gun, however, were able to deal with enemy tanks at unparalleled ranges, thanks to the high muzzle speed required to fire their explosive shell so high into the air. So the guns were pulled to the front by a certain Erwin Rommel during the battle of Arras, the barrels lowered, a French-British tank-heavy counterattack stopped, and it snowballed from there. In case you're wondering, the reason why the 88s had antitank rounds was because they had a secondary role in busting enemy bunkers and fortifications, hence why an ANTI-AIR gun had an AP round. Germany quickly pushed to have both a proper PaK version of the 88 (Pak standing for ''Panzerabwehrkanöne'', or AT gun) that had a lower profile, was easier to move around and had a shield to stop stray bullets from decimating the crew. They also started designing a tank armed with the 88mm as it became clear that the tanks they were fighting were only going to get stronger, which is why the Tiger I is a metal slab with a huge gun: its job was to get an 88mm gun into the battlefield as fast as possible. Using AA guns as AT guns was such a good idea that the US did the same thing with their 90mm AA gun, converting it into the primary armament for the M36 tank destroyer and the Pershing tank, and so did the Russians with their 85mm gun for the upgunned versions of the T-34 and KV-1. The Imperial Guard Basilisk cannon looks almost exactly like the Flak 88.

*'''2 cm Flak 30/38/Flakvierling:''' Remember the "Acht-Acht"? Now add two of these smaller guns to each flak 88 site, hill, hedge, ditch and rooftop in Europe and watch the fireworks. The German answer to the question of "enuff dakka" in a more reasonable package than the MG42 was this little bastard, which was like an American .30 cal [[Bolter|firing explosive ''and'' armor piercing rounds]]. Obviously devastating to infantry and aircraft, it even rained sufficient hailstorms of rounds that damaged and threw off approaching lightly armored vehicles enough to make a difference, and given luck, it could rip through tank tracks too. And the Germans made 150,000 of these fuckers. And those 150,000 Bolter-Expies, these unsung weapons, did more damage and inflict casualties than any other weapon during the Normandy landing and the push inland. [https://www.quora.com/In-WW2-why-did-the-Germans-never-develop-heavy-machine-guns-like-M2-Browning-for-their-half-tracks-SP-guns-and-tanks/answer/Allyson-Kliff As explained here.]

*'''Kooky Coal Chemistry:''' Germany lacked a lot of strategic resources, but if there was one thing they did have in bulk, it was coal, and by gum the Nazis did their best to make the most of it. Germany had been a leader in industrial chemistry well before Hitler came to power, but the prospect of independence from foreign imports was like catnip to ultranationalist wack-a-doodles such as the Nazis. German companies worked out ways of making gasoline, rubber, lubricants, and even freakin' margarine from coal. However a fair number of these methods were also rather expensive and needed a lot of resources to work (using 4.5 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of gasoline), with only synthetic rubber catching on in the postwar period (so much so that Standard Oil of New Jersey, who had the exclusive rights to make the synthetic rubber in the US stemming from an odd business deal struck in the 20s was basically forced via presidential decree to make the process common knowledge) and the South Africans using coal hydrogenation during the apartheid era because of sanctions.

*'''The S-mine:''' The Sprengmine (jumping mine), or, to use the name US soldiers gave it, "Bouncing Betty", was one of the most widely used and most effective weapons of its class. When triggered, it 'bounced' about three feet into the air before exploding at about waist height in an 'air burst', able to inflict casualties (the military definition of the word meaning more then just dead) at up to 140 feet. And it had a tendency to not kill you, but maim you. [[Grimdark|A deliberate decision, as the Nazis estimated that a wounded soldier takes up a lot more resources than a dead one.]] Later in the war, some were made out of glass and even pottery, with minimal metal parts, to make them even harder to find. Suffice to say they still haven't found all of them... 1.93 million S-mines were made and it was widely copied after the war. The damn things are still killing people to this day as old mines are stepped on and the explosive proves itself still good. While the S-mine is hardly unique in that regard (unexploded US aircraft bombs and shells make up the bulk of what they still find in Germany, around 2,000 pounds per year according to the Smithsonian) land mines, like the S-mine, are still dug up by the truckload in North Africa.

*'''Pervitin:''' Not a traditional weapon as such, but a key element in why the Nazi's blitzkrieg tactics were so effective. Pervitin was a methamphetamine drug that provided the base recipe for today's crystal meth and which was distributed to all members of the Nazi military. Its powerful stimulant effect enabled the German infantry to fight harder for longer and was essential in the breakneck races from the border to the battlefield. With all of the line troopers hopped up on this drug, which later incorporated cocaine for increased effectiveness, Nazi forces could keep fighting effectively well after their enemies were worn out. At least until their supply lines were cut and addiction/withdrawal symptoms crippled them all, that is. The use of Pervitin was cut drastically after the France campaign for that reason (and for fear of long-term side effects, especially when discipline issues started mounting), though many pilots and tank crew members still used it readily, especially during Stalingrad (with the hilarious side effect of turning into an on-the-spot popsicle when the crash came). It could also be issued for important operations. The idea that all Wehrmacht soldiers were drooling junkies is funny, but wrong. It has a fascinating legacy that lasted much longer than the Third Reich did. The Bundeswehr and NVA (Armed forces of Communist East Germany) kept stockpiles of it well into the '70s for emergency use and for paratroopers, as did the US Army in Vietnam. The first climb of Mount Everest in 1953 also saw extensive use of Pervitin and President John F. Kennedy used it to treat his chronic back pain.

*'''''Hs 293 & Fritz-X'':''' Another German WWII oddity, the Hs 293 and Fritz-X were basically remote-controlled bombs and the grand-parents of modern precision-guided ammo. In an effort to improve bombing accuracy without having to dive at the target, they came up with this idea: take a huge bomb, add small wings with control surfaces, actuators, a radio receiver and a big flare up the bomb's arse so the bombardier can see where it's going (and a rocket booster in the case of the Hs 293); and then add a radio transmitter with a joystick in the airplane so the bombardier can correct its descent. There you go, highly precise steerable bomb. It actually worked really well, but not without drawbacks: drop altitude was limited, since the bombardier needed to keep a line of sight on the flare, like all radio transmission it could be jammed and lastly the bomber had to remain in level flight during the bomb's entire descent to allow the bombardier to steer it. Ultimately the bombs only saw limited anti-ship use, the combination of limited drop altitude and level flight made the bomber a way too easy prey for any fighter defending its target. Still, they were pretty efficient weapons in the right circumstances as the ''Roma'', the ''Littorio'' and the ''Warspite'' can attest to.

*'''Kettenkrad (Sd. Kfz 2)''': Those stylish tracked motorcycles were built as a light general-purpose platform that could do basically anything, from reconnaissance to lying down telephone and radio cables and towing light antitank guns and artillery pieces. A very solid design in general, it was very maneuverable for its weight, had great off-road capabilities and was very easy to drive; if you knew how to drive a motorcycle you could drive a Kettenkrad. This was achieved by a rather complex steering gear that used the front wheel to steer it when making turns of about 8°, when making sharper turns a mechanism slowed down one of the tracks. It remained in production and use throughout the entire war and even after it, as its engine was about on par with that of a small tractor and decommissioned Kettenkrads quickly proved a popular and cheap asset for farmers, foresters and even firefighters in Germany after the war. It was so popular, in fact, that production of new Kettenkrads was only ceased in 1951, making it, the Gewehr 98, and a version of the MG-42 the only pieces of German military engineering whose production run outlived the Nazi regime.

*'''Kübelwagen''': In the 1930s, there were not many cars in Germany. With domestic production being pretty low, the Nazis thought that it would be a big propaganda boom if they could fix that. As such they gathered up a bunch of German engineers to try to design a car that was A: reasonably comfortable, B: got good fuel economy and C: was cheap and easy to mass produce so that the Average Aryan Arbeiter could afford one and began building a factory to mass produce them. This People's Car was the first iteration of the Volkswagen Beetle, with production beginning in 1938 to much fanfare. But in truth only a small number of them were made as civilian cars by the Reich and those that were made were given away to party members as presents. More of them however were converted into Kübelwagens, the Nazi equivalent to the [[Jeep]].

*'''''Zimmerit''''': Ever wondered why so many WWII German tanks look like someone covered them in putty and hence why they're such a bitch to model? This stuff is the reason. ''Zimmerit'' was a thick paste consisting of barium sulfate, polyvinyl acetate, zinc sulfide and some filling material that was applied at the end of tank production in thick layers with spatulas, giving it its distinct look. ''Zimmerit'' served as a reliable protection against magnetic anti-tank grenades like the German ''Hafthohlladung'' or . . . nothing. No other nation other then Germany deployed a magnetic anti-tank mine during the war, though concerns that the Hafthohlladung could be easily copied made the idea of Zimmerit a decent idea at the start of the war. However rumours about it igniting after sustaining hits lead to an order to cease production and application of the stuff on tanks. The rumours were never proven, but applying the stuff took days at best and by 1944 the German High Command didn't really want to bother with it anymore, especially since rocket propelled antitank weapons like the bazooka had made magnetic mines obsolete anyway.

*'''Jerry Cans''': Yes, the instantly recognizable jerry can is in fact a German invention, which given that the Germans were derogatorily known as 'Jerrys' does make a lot of sense in hindsight. Designed by Wehrmacht engineers in the late 1930s as an improvement over their predecessors, which required special tools and funnels to fill, a task that was tedious and took up a lot of time, not to mention how bulky they were. The perfection of the jerry can design cannot be understated; it's easy to stack, fill, takes up fairly little space and you can carry around a lot of them. The Germans were aware they had struck logistical-design gold and troops were under orders to destroy their cans rather than risk their capture, but unfortunately for them the design was brought to the Allies' attention when the American Paul Weiss traveled with a German friend through the entirety of India and realized that his modified car had no storage for reserve water. His German friend, who happened to have access to the a stockpile of jerry cans, brought them with him on the tour (though also fortunately for the Germans, it wouldn't be until 1943 that any of their enemies would mass-produce the can). After the tour, Weiss shared the design with the American military, who reverse-engineered the thing and issued it to every motorized company in the US Army.

*'''The Gas Chambers''': Industrialized Evil: One of the darkest inventions of the Nazis, the gas chambers were used to facilitate mass genocide on an industrial scale, human sacrifice on the level of factory farming. Anyone the Nazis deemed "undesirable" were sent to be executed regardless of age, although those capable of sustained labor were worked ragged first in camps before being sent to their deaths. Jews and Romani, Africans, educated Slavs, physically and mentally handicapped people; if you didn't fit into Adolf Hitler's insane dream of an All-Aryan Ubermensch World, you were sent to die a horrid death by Zyklon-B. The gas chambers were the result of a concerted effort to find the most efficient way to kill large numbers of humans covertly and with minimal involvement. At first, the victims of the Holocaust were simply lined up and shot by ''Einsatzgruppen'' death squads, but that was too messy and was deemed to hard on the men doing the butchery. Vans with the exhaust funneled into the rear compartment were used next, but these were seen as too costly in terms of fuel and machines. They finally hit on the idea of stationary extermination facilities using rat (and delousing- Zyklon B was first developed for killing lice in barracks) poison, and built them in concentration camps that were designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The prisoners were ordered to strip and told that they were to be deloused and given a shower prior to their work assignments. Once inside the chambers, the Zyklon pellets were dropped in, killing the screaming, terrified victims within 20 minutes. The chambers were vented, the bodies removed to crematories, and the process begun all over again. A cold and chilly logical methodology to achieve the goals of rampant hatred.

== C3i Waffen ==

Not exactly their strongest area...

*'''Enigma:''' Enigma was a communications scheme based on a sophisticated but easy to use electromechanical encryption/decryption device resembling a cross between a typewriter and an odometer. When used with proper procedures it was the one of the most secure means of communication available in the world for its time, offering effectively 76 bit encryption with 1920's technology in a device that was superior to anything the allies had. SIGABA was comparably secure but far heavier and fragile, and the M-209 was far inferior in both ease of use and encryption strength (although it was still adequate). However the combination of lax discipline, reuse of settings, and notes from a polish customs inspection of an enigma device resulted in the technology being reverse engineered and cryptographic attacks being discovered. Only Kriegsmarine communications remained difficult to decrypt by the end of the war, due to their practice of using secret codebooks to further compress their messages prior to encryption. Has become known for being completely cracked by a British team led by a gay man, only for him to be arrested and almost chemically neutered before committing suicide. Because yes, back then potentially saving the lives of hundreds of thousands did not make up for liking the dick.

*'''Bombing Beams:''' Wouldn't you know it, the Instrument Landing System used today at pretty much every major airport was originally invented to 'land' bombs on London in the middle of the night when the lights are out. By using narrow radio beams the Nazis could steer bombers to a precalculated drop point. All the pilots had to do was maintain a certain speed and altitude, and then drop their bombs when the signal detector said they should... except when the British were fucking with them. Towards the end they were fucking with them so hard German bomber pilots were landing at RAF bases believing they were in France. When it actually worked, such as at Coventry, it was more accurate than daytime saturation bombing, with most bombs falling within 90 meters of the beam centerline. This system is why Nazi bombing raids tended to less of a brief swarm like the allies used and more of a continuous bomb conveyor belt lasting most of the night; they would line up single file along the approach beam, and then after they hit the drop beam they'd change altitude, turn around, follow the beam back across the channel; no visibility needed. The British figured this out and started using their television antennas (which had far greater power output) to mess with the system. If the Nazis had continued to improve this technology with ECCM and built a lot more bombers instead of squandering money on Wunderwaffen, they probably would have won the Battle of Britain (even then, Göring would have found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory).

*'''Tank Radios:''' While today we take it for granted that any trooper anywhere in the galaxy could get a call from the emperor himself to execute order 66, this wasn't always the case. Throughout the 1930's, all German armored vehicles had radios, while their opponents would typically only have a radio for the unit commander. This was an enormous advantage for Nazi tank units that remained the case basically until America showed up. The Nazis also had the Torn.Fu.d2, a backpack portable infantry radio comparable to the American SCR-300, although they didn't distribute them as widely as the Americans did. This was an organizational thing; Germany dealt with communications by assigning a signals battalion to each division and delegating resources as needed, while the Americans always had radios at company level and sometimes had SCR-536 handy-talkies for individual platoons, the ideal being that every American officer's best ''weapon'' was their radioman. The main problem the Germans had with radios was that lots of American soldiers were fluent in German (and German isn't that different from English to begin with).

*'''Zuse Z3''': Lo and behold, for you look at the very first freely programmable digital computer in the world. Completed by Mathematician and Electronics Engineer Conrad Zuse in 1941, it was kept in extreme secrecy, so much so that it was rarely put into use. The rare times it was used, its purpose was to calculate trajectories for V2 rockets. Zuse advocated for its use in the war effort, but the original (and at the time only) device was destroyed in an allied bombing raid in 1943. Zuse built an improved successor, the Z4, just before the war came to a close. Although conditionally Turing complete, physically the Z3 was less advanced in implementation than its peers. Zuse was not able to procure thermionic components (vacuum tubes were in critically short supply for radios and radars in Germany) and so had to rely on electromechanical relays from phone switching gear; in practical terms this meant that the Z3 ran much slower than even purpose built non-Turing complete calculators such as the Atanasoff-Berry or the Colossus. The Z3 itself received little immediate recognition outside of Germany partly because of the American ENIAC computer; the strict secrecy Zuse worked under lead to the Z3 falling into relative obscurity, until the invalidation of the Sperry Rand patents in the 1970's, which hinged partly on Zuse's own patents which had been licensed to IBM as early as 1946 (FYI: you're reading this page on a computer today partly because those Sperry patents died; a year later the Altair 8800 began the long road of upstart Davids bringing down industry Goliaths). Today, a replica of the Z3, built in the 70s (which the by then over 80 year old Zuse himself built alone and [[awesome|from memory]]) can be found in the German Museum in Munich. The only surviving (and probably only completed) Z4 computer was used as the main computer of the Mathematical Devision of the University of Zürich, Switzerland, until 1958, when it was sold to the German Museum in Munich where it remains to this day. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI An example of the Z3 working can be viewed here. (Video in German, good automatic translated English subtitles are available)]

[[Category:History]]

Nazi Equipment

2023-05-13T01:54:22Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Tanks */

[[Nazi|Nazis]]. History's most stylish villains. They're famous as much for their cool equipment as for their total evilness, and because of its distinctive aesthetic and reputation- they did develop some of the most technologically advanced weapons of the 1940s, after all- it gets a lot of use in games, both traditional and otherwise. Here's a hilariously non-brief overview. As a general rule of thumb (with the exception of the Karabiner 98 which predated the Nazis by decades) Nazi equipment was [[plasma|very advanced in concept and potentially quite strong, but overly complicated and unreliable to the point of being dangerous to its user.]]

The vast majority of what you see below fall into four categories, staples of Nazi engineering:
* Decent design, but too little too late,
* Decent design, but too advanced for the technology available to be of any real use on a battlefield where ease of use and reliability are major contributors to success (case in point: the hybrid drive of the [[Elefant|Ferdinand]]),
* High Command squandered the potential because they either weren't using it to full capacity or for purposes it wasn't designed for, Jewish slave-labor doing little sabotages didn't help either (Such as V-2 rockets' rivets sometimes coming off),
* Completely and obviously fucking retarded, but if I don't follow orders I'm getting shot, sorry test pilot (and everyone else involved)!

===Small Arms===
====Rifles and SMGs====
[[File:Karabiner 98k.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Kar 98k: German for "boring, but practical". ]]
* '''''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBrh1euWg0 Karabiner 98 kurz]'':''' ("Carbine 1898 short" in German, also called simply ''Gewehr 98'', "rifle of [18]98") The standard German infantry rifle during WWII, from the old Mauser family. It was becoming outdated by the beginning of WWII, given that it was essentially just a shorter version of the venerable Gewehr 98 which armed most German soldiers in WWI. It used 7.92×57mm Mauser ammunition (often shortened to "8mm Mauser"). Probably the least "Nazi equipment" example on this list while also one of the most manufactured, the rifle's strengths were that it was fairly cheap, very accurate, and reliable. But its drawbacks were that it had a slow rate of fire and only a five-round magazine (typical for early and mid WW2 but struggled against late war Garand and SVT). The easiest weapon to compare it to in WWII would be the Soviet Mosin Nagant, which was cheaper to make, though the 98 was much more accurate. It fell short compared to the British SMLE rifle, which had a ten-round magazine and had a good rate of fire for a bolt action, though it has a substantial advantage due to 8mm Mauser being rimless while .303 British is not. Worse yet, the Karabiner 98k also went up against the semi-automatic American M1 Garand (which General Patton had called "the greatest weapon ever devised") which vastly outperformed it in spitting bullets down range. (All of the above are roughly the same range of calibre—.30 [inches] or 7 to 8mm—one which remains in use today by almost every major military as well as many civilian uses, although today's fashion is for smaller calibre, higher velocity rounds for infantry.) Even then, the gun was generally quite well regarded for what it was and there was plenty of them to go around. It was also the go-to weapon for German snipers who affixed a scope to it. The gun is still in production today (albeit with modern style furniture), it is still the German army's drill rifle, some states still use versions of it as a sniper rifle and it's sometimes found in Iraq and other third world nations where it acts as a cheap marksman's rifle. Of course, it's also an excellent hunting rifle in civilian hands.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUjPeAgvf3U '''''Gewehr 43'']:''' "Rifle 1943". the German army's semi-automatic rifle. This weapon was developed in response to their invasion of the Soviet Union, where the Germans were shocked to find Soviet troops brandishing semi-automatic rifles (primarily the SVT-40), drastically out-gunning their troops in firefights. The result was a fairly decent semi-automatic rifle/carbine chambered for the same rounds as the Kar98k, which derived many of its concepts from, while not being an outright clone of, the SVT-40. The rifle's magazine was detachable (allowing for quick reloads) but still had the option of allowing the shooter to rapidly use stripper clips when reloading (either attaching them directly to the weapon from above, or using them to push several bullets at once into a magazine which attached to the rifle below.) Much like the Kar98k, it worked well as a marksman/sniper's weapon when affixed with a scope. Unfortunately, mechanically it was far from perfect as it was overgassed (not surprising, as the gas pressure that was tapped from the barrel to cycle the semi-automatic action proved to be too strong for the rifle's quite complicated mechanism, especially when made by unskilled workers from lower-quality steel). This resulted in (comparatively) frequent breakdowns and shattered parts, in addition to requiring more maintenance. Copying overmuch from the SVT-40 may have also contributed to this problem, as the 7.62x54mm cartridge in the SVT-40 produces a lower gas pressure than the 7.92x57mm Mauser. For this reason, the G43 wasn't a very popular weapon among German troops, though its firepower was still welcome. The G43 has an interesting legacy that lasts to this day, however. Engineers discovered that, on occasion, the roller lock could fire fully automatic, careful adjustments to the mechanics provided. This discovery lead to the Development of the '''Gerät 06''' or '''StG 45 (M)''' which was the ancestor of the roller-delayed blowback systems used in guns like the MP5 or the G3.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdQhO8FtY7c '''''Maschinenpistole 38/40'']:''' "Machine pistol 1938/1940", the iconic MP 40 is a slightly updated variant more suitable for mass-production. The most common German submachine gun through the war used mainly by squad leaders and troops fighting in urban areas. It was also the go-to weapon of specialist units like paratroopers and the SS. Uses a 32-round magazine chambered for 9x19mm rounds and typically comes with a folding wire stock. In general pretty good for the time, but only a million of them were produced, compared to the 1.5 million Thompsons, 4 million Stens, and 6 millions PPShes produced by the Americans, British, and Soviets. [[Derp|The primary weapon of the Nazis, according to Hollywood at least, where every single German grunt has one.]] Known for its rather simplistic design; the weapon had only one fire setting (automatic), though its cyclical rate was much lower than equivalent Allied SMGs, allowing aimed single shots at the cost of some room-clearing power. Was a major influence that can still be seen in SMG development. There was also an MP 41, combining the core MP 40 with the proper wooden stock and fire selector of the MP 28. While very popular with the SS patent bullshit got in the way and they had to end production after just under 27,000 guns.

[[File:STG 44.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Few guns end up naming a whole class of weapons. The StG 44 is one of them]]
* [https://www.forgottenweapons.com/evolution-of-the-sturmgewehr-mp431-mp43-mp44-and-stg44/ '''''Sturmgewehr 44'']:''' The "Assault rifle 1944" or '''StG 44''' was the first assault rifle adopted on a large scale. Fun fact - the name was suggested by Hitler and was pure propaganda. Chambered for the new 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge, it gave a rifleman the power and accuracy of a rifle with the rate of fire of a submachine gun. As its name suggests, it entered the war very late, even though it is only an updated version of the MKB42, which, as the name suggests, came into the war mid-early 1942. In a rare demonstration of common sense, Hitler vetoed its mass deployment early on due to logistics (replacing over 10 million '98k' rifles with a new model that used different ammo couldn't be done overnight, or cheaply), though he approved of the idea and changed his mind later in the war when it became clear a limited impact would be better than none at all. This, combined with the fact that producing the Stg44 required the industry to adapt their tooling, and recurrent shortages of resources later in the war, heavily limited the scale at which they were produced. It was not that difficult to make though, being to Kar98k what the Panther was to the Panzer IV - roughly 120% of resources for superior result. It also had some mechanical issues, including a fragile feed mechanism which could jam if the rifle was knocked over. Anecdote: one of its optional attachments was the ''Krummlauf'', a curved barrel and periscope for firing around corners or from inside a vehicle hatch. Yes, it worked, but the bullets often shattered as they skittered along the curve of the barrel, causing a shotgun-like spread, and the barrels wore out quickly. In any case, the troops who received the regular StG 44 loved them because it gave the firepower of a submachine gun at about three times the effective range—and it was particularly interesting to the Russians, with contest for new "avtomat" design starting in 1943, even before StG 44 entered official mass production. Since they were already winning the war just fine without it, the Soviet Ministry of Defense decided that, instead of taking what they could in 1944, their avtomat designs should be perfected as neither of the prototypes available suited their demands perfectly (especially the one about the same weight as the StG 44 was deemed to be too heavy) - and we all know what the final result was after some bright young Red Army engineer named Mikhail Kalashnikov got his hands on a few. Some StG 44s remained in service in the East German ''Nationale Volksarmee'' until the 1960s.

* '''''Fallschirmjägergewehr 42'':''' "Paratrooper rifle 1942". If a Kar98k and a MG42 could have a baby together, this battle rifle would be it. Created in limited numbers for the exclusive use of German paratroopers. The high-ups realized that the Kar98k was too long for paratroopers, and the MP40 wasn't suitable outside of urban combat, so they wanted something that handled like a carbine but could fire like a machine gun. Beyond that, Hermann Goering wanted his Luftwaffe airborne troops to have something a cut above what the regular Heer grunts got in order to fortify his personal fiefdom in the Reich. The FG 42 was designed as a shorter, automatic battle rifle to give paratroopers superior firepower, using a side-loading box magazine. Its high recoil made automatic fire inadvisable, as with later automatic high-caliber battle rifles such as the US M14. While it never really took off, it was quite the solid design, and is notable for influencing the design of the American M60 machine gun after the war.

*'''''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knPDsJyCpjI Kriegsmodell]''''': as the war dragged on and as the Germans got their fascist asses kicked across Europe, and their factories and homes were being leveled by Allied bombers, the Germans started to try and make their equipment faster and cheaper. They started at first with small changes here and there, but by the end of the war they were cutting corners like it was crunch time at the Circle factory.
**'''''Volkssturmgewehr''''': Literal garbage guns made from parts of broken or defective weapons, surplus barrels and wood that barely deserves to be called so. Part of the vain efforts to make the Volkssturm units into anything resembling an organized fighting force and to make a quick and extremely cheap produced gun to defend what was left of Germany by 1945 and like the German war effort, utterly failed due to being too complicated. Yeah, the last ditch weapons that look like an Ork Mek would think they are too crude for his taste use in fact a fairly elaborate mechanism that put their price tag slightly above that of an StG 44.

*'''''MP-3008''''': Literally a British Sten gun with the magazine rotated 90 degrees. The Sten was designed early in the war to be as cheap and easy to make as possible so that they could be widely distributed in case of a German invasion of Britain. The Germans captured a few of them over the course of the war, and when they found themselves facing invasion, the Germans decided to copy the damn thing late in the war as a desperation measure. A few thousand of them were made before the Nazi regime died.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zielgerät_1229 '''Zielgerät "Vampir"''']: Night vision rifle. Produced too little and too late. Per the usual Nazi gimmicks, they were quite capable and powerful, but there just weren't enough of them because the industrial base was blown to shit and time wasn't on their side. Briefly caused distress to the Soviets.

====Pistols====

[[File:Lugar Pistol.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The quintessential Bad Guy pistol]]

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIX1EL1hTmE '''''Pistole Parabellum 1908'']:''' "Pistol Parabellum 1908". The Nazis used a bunch of pistols in truth, but none are as iconic of the Third Reich as the P08 Luger with its joint armed breech. It could load an eight-round box magazine or a thirty-two-round drum. The 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge was initially designed for this pistol and is still one of the most common pistol calibers in the world. It was eventually phased out in favor of the P38, as the Luger was too expensive to manufacture for the entire German army, although it was still available for the troops and officers who could afford it. The Luger was also somewhat unique at the time in that it could still double as a pistol carbine by affixing a stock and a 32-round drum-magazine to it, when carbine-convertible pistols had started falling out of fashion years before. The exotic toggle-lock mechanism of the gun meant it had shitty reliability in field conditions, but the gun was made at a time when sidearms were typically issued to specialists, officers, and policemen, who were typically away from conditions that could foul up the gun. WWII-vintage Lugers go for several thousand dollars as collectibles today.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXAMma6mUq8 '''Walther ''Pistole 38'']:''' "Walther Pistol 1938". The Walther P38 replaced the Luger P08 as the Wehrmacht's service pistol just before World War II, due to it being cheaper to produce. It loaded a 9x19mm eight-round detachable box magazine. Nerds will recognize this as G1 Megatron's alt-mode, and attentive [[James Bond]] fans will recall it seeing some use in ''Goldfinger''. MUCH more common than the Luger despite what Hollywood would tell you, and a decent pistol, if a bit annoying due to its hard-to-pull trigger. The Italians cloned its internals in the M1951, meaning the Beretta 92 is the P38's grandchild.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkU3CIPdMk '''Mauser ''Construktion 96'']:''' "Construction 1896". Popularly known as the "Boxcannon" (by the Chinese) and "Broomhandle" (by most everyone else); it loaded ten rounds from a stripper clip into an internal magazine, although there was also an option for a 20-round magazine that had the added bonus of the entire magazine being detachable instead of being built-into the weapon. The C96 was typically chambered for either the newer 9x19mm or the original 7.63x25mm rounds (which were so high velocity for a pistol cartridge of the time that they were only surpassed with the later development of the .357 Magnum). The C96 was not typically issued to the main German army during WWII; only the Luftwaffe were known users of the weapon during the war, as sidearms for their pilots. It was also one of the first and most iconic of the pistol carbine designs, innovating the wooden holster that could double as a detachable stock, making it (and Spanish and Chinese knockoffs) extremely popular in areas like China where proper longarms might be either too expensive or banned from import. However, by the 30s and 40s, this feature had fallen out of fashion in the West and wasn't included in newer production models, with only a few being modified to restore the functionality. Nerds will recognize this as Han Solo's DL-44 blaster pistol from the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, with some gubbins glued to it to make it more sci-fi.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4COZpIw9UMI '''Walther Polizeipistole/Polizeipistole Kurz''']: "Police Pistol/Police Pistol short". You know this one. It's the gun made popular by Ian Fleming and [[James Bond]]. The Walther PP is a compact pistol that was typically issued to German police units (Kripo, Gestapo, Gefepo and Feldgendarmerie), but also as a sidearm to military officers and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rz-jKH_V04 senior party members]. The PPK variant was an even smaller version of the PP, designed for concealed carry in mind (in fact it was so small that it can typically fit into the sleeves of most longcoats, making it useful for infiltrators). It could come chambered for either 7.65mm (.32 ACP to Americans) or 9x17mm (.380 Auto) rounds. The Cold War-era Soviet Makarov pistol would largely be based on the PP pistols, though it was chambered in a slightly more powerful cartridge known as 9x18 or 9mm Makarov (which is actually thicker than the now ubiquitous 9x17/9mm Parabellum, since Soviets measured width from a different part of the cartridge). The PPK and its cheaper clones (such as the Bersa Thunder, in .380 ACP or 9mm Kurz "Short") are readily available today and basically never stopped production. If you're looking to buy one in the states, be aware that there have been several license holders: Interarms (1978-1999, truest to the original design), S&W (2002-on, have had some recalls over serious defects), and Black Creek (1999-2001, very limited numbers).

====Machine Guns====

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJkU4Sah8I '''''Maschinengewehr 42'']:''' "Machine gun 1942". German infantry tactics during WWII were built around the machine gun and, as such, the Germans developed an exceptional machine gun in the MG 42 (basically an improved but functionally identical version of the earlier MG 34). It was lightweight (11.7 kg), belt fed (unlike the magazine fed LMGs it was usually pitted against), and it could nominally fire 1,200 rounds per minute (although, in practice, it was actually even faster) while most other machine guns could barely reach 600. That much [[dakka]] causes a lot of heat, so the gun was designed for easy swapping of barrels; although even with the barrels being regularly changed it was not uncommon for these guns to fire so fast that a cartridge would ignite before being fully loaded, completely breaking the gun and potentially injuring the gun's crew. Its terrifying rate of fire and distinctive report earned it the nickname "Hitler's Buzzsaw". The core idea of the MG42 was the universal machine gun; that is, the German army wouldn't have light, medium, heavy, or antiair, machine guns, but a single weapon that could do it all. That stupidly high rate of fire was designed to let it throw enough lead at enemy aircraft to be sure it hit something, the quick change barrels let it maintain that stupidly high RoF without being water cooled, and it was light enough to be man-portable, so it could be toted around by infantry squads and used as a SAW. The MG 42 was the basis for numerous other weapons throughout the Cold War (and is still in use by NATO forces today as the MG3, the only real changes were switching it to NATO-standard caliber and reducing the firing rate to actually be 1200 rounds per minute, as opposed to the 1500 rpm of the original MG42). The MG3 is still widely exported and its production licensed to NATO and allies. A ''double barrel'' variant of the MG3 was also produced as a ''low cost Minigun alternative''.

* '''''Maschinengewehr 34'':''' The predecessor to the MG 42, it was still in wide use at the start of the war. It had a lower, more controllable rate of fire of around 800-900 RPM, and had a single-shot mode that was removed in the MG 42. Its production went on parallel to the MG 42 because its swing-down barrel-swap method was more compatible with vehicle ball mounts than MG 42's slide-open method, so all MGs seen on German tanks even late in the war were still MG 34's.

*'''''Maschinengewehr 08/15''''': A mid-WWI improvement on the regular MG 08 of the Imperial German army. It was developed as an answer to the problem of assaulting positions without direct support from automatic weapons, since the standard MG 08 was too heavy to carry around. The result saw the mounting of the MG 08 being replaced by a bipod and the coolant jacket being reduced in size and volume, bringing down its weight from almost 40 kilos down to a more comfortable 20, and the addition of a shoulder stock also made it possible to use it like a more modern LMG. By modern standards, still way too heavy to reliably use it in that particular role, but it worked well enough for the Germans that they continued to improve on it, leading to a (and due to the end of WWI ultimately ineffective), fully air-cooled version of the LMG 08/18, which did away with water cooling entirely, reducing its weight to 16 kilos, actually making it comparable to guns like the Lewis gun (Also the reason why drum-fed LMGs never caught on in the German military, as Germany was forbidden from developing new automatic weapons by the Treaty of Versailles). The 08/15 remained the standard MG for the Reichswehr and even the early Wehrmacht. Loads of them remained in stockpiles well into the war, where they were issued to rear and police units for what the Nazis called "anti-partisan action", with reports of the weapons being used tracking all the way into late 1941 and 1942. Fun fact: The gun was so ubiquotous and regular training tasks on it so tedious, that the word "nullachtfünfzehn" (Zero-Eight-Fifteen) entered the German language as a derogatory term for something mediocre, uninspired and boring.

====Anti-Tank Infantry Weapons====

* '''''Hafthohlladung'':''' In English, "Attachable Shaped Charge" (get used to this very literal naming scheme, it continues below). Very soon into the war, the Germans realized they would never have enough tanks and antitank guns to go around, so they developed weapons that would allow an infantryman to (in theory, at least) deal with a tank. The Hafthohlladung was such an early attempt. A big AT grenade with three magnets that allowed it to stick to any metallic surface, it would make a nice hole into any tank it was attached to... Which makes the weapon's main drawback immediately clear: [[Tankbustas|running up to an operational tank to slap a bomb on its side wasn't exactly safe]]. In theory, you could also try to [[Genestealer#Genestealer_Cults|wait and hide in ambush]] for the tank to pass close by since visibility from inside a tank wasn't that great, but that would require being able to anticipate the path of the tank (without accidentally getting run over), and tanks were often supported by infantry anyway. At the very least, they were less suicidal than the Japanese "lunge mine." (A mine on a stick to be used [[Tankbustas]]-style) The Hafthohlladung wasn't really a successful weapon and saw only limited use, but it paved the way for the next item on the list:

* '''''Panzerfaust'':''' "Armor fist", or, more literally, "tank fist". A disposable one-shot anti-armor weapon for use against tanks and entrenched positions. Really cheap to produce, lightweight, and able to do a lot of damage to tanks at close range (maximum range being at most 150 meters for the later models). And it was really easy to use: hold in crook of the arm, flip a switch up that becomes an iron sight (and also arms the weapon), aim, squeeze the firing lever, and enjoy the fireworks. The basic idea of how they were used was to give one guy in every squad (or more) one of them so that if a tank ever did get close, there was a chance they'd be able to take it out or do some damage. This, among other things, made Allied generals wary about sending tanks to clear out German infantry forces, especially among the ambush-friendly hedgerows of Normandy. That said, Panzerfausts were useless for trying to snipe at tanks from a distance (with an effective range of about 60m of the most produced versions) and could not be reloaded with another rocket, preventing most troops from carrying more than one shot on their person. In the last days of the war, the Nazis gave these to grannies and kids on the off-chance that they could destroy an Allied tank when they rolled into town. In fact, it was so cheap to produce that every member of the late-war Volkssturm was generally issued one, while every third person was lucky enough to be issued a rifle. Looked like a fist in a tube, hence the name. Its general design was later copied by the Russians, eventually used in the RPG-2 and RPG-7 rocket launchers. The concept of the Panzerfaust is still very much alive in the form of many light anti-tank weapons (M72, AT4, MATADOR,...) in use today.

* '''''Panzerschreck'':''' "Armor terror", or "tank fright". A reusable anti-tank rocket launcher based off captured American bazookas, and you can almost imagine the Nazi scientist getting one and saying "[[Ork|Bigga is Betta!]]"! (Although the actual reaction was probably also: "VHY DIDN'T VE ZHINK OF ZHAT!!!", see next item on the list.) The Panzerschreck was larger than the bazooka, with an 88mm muzzle size (where the first bazooka was only 60mm)—in fact, it is still larger than most rocket launchers and mortars in use today. Like the bazooka, but unlike the Panzerfaust, it could be reloaded, and had a longer range than the 'Faust bar the latest version. The Panzerschreck has a distinctive steel blast shield in front, which has to do with the larger rocket blowing hot exhaust into the users face. Early models without the shield ended up requiring the operator to wear a gasmask and protective poncho (which must have sucked for the first person to test it, before they figured that out). The Panzerschreck was more useful as an offensive weapon than the Panzerfaust, since it was capable of easily penetrating the armor of any tank they faced (and at better ranges) thanks to the bigger rocket. But on the other hand, it was very much a temperamental weapon that required trained operators, so its use was restricted to dedicated tank hunter teams (unlike the Panzerfaust, which was simple enough that a 10-year old kid could handle it).

*'''''Sturmpistole'':''' An early attempt at making a lightweight antitank weapon, the Sturmpistole was little more than a modified flare gun equipped with a stock and sighting system, and fired oversized warheads out of the muzzle like the Panzerfaust. Unlike the Panzerfaust, it didn't see much success due to the small size of the warhead.

*'''''Raketenwerfer 43'':''' By the time Germany [[Blood Ravens|acquired]] the bazooka and refined it into the Panzerschreck, they had their own version of a rocket-firing antitank weapon: the Raketenwerfer 43 a.k.a. the "Puppchen" or "Little Doll". Why such a weird nickname? Because it was, for all intents and purposes, a miniature artillery piece: wheeled and towed and working from a a closed breech exactly like the rest of the German field guns and howitzers (except it fired rockets). Despite its better range and accuracy it was more expensive and harder to make then the Panzerschreck or the bazooka, so not nearly as many of them were made compared to the 'schrecks.

*'''''Panzerwerfmine'':''' "Mine to be thrown at tanks" (don't say we didn't warn you about the names). Another attempt at allowing infantrymen to deal with a tank, this is basically a shaped charge with deployable stabilizing cloth fins that was thrown overhand to land on the top a tank and blow a nice, big hole through it. Cheap to produce and very efficient, but it required lots of practice to use, so it was only given to trained "[[Tankbustas|tank-hunter]]" teams. The Russians captured some of those, were duly impressed, and promptly refined the German concept into their own "RPG-6" antitank hand grenade that was just as cheap and efficient but way easier to use, and so good it was still part of their arsenal when the Soviet Union fell and can still be found all over the world in relatively low-intensity conflicts. Sure, it won't kill a modern tank, but it sure as hell will kill third-world militiamen in up-gunned Toyotas.

*'''Various antitank rifles''': Germany utilized a lot of antitank rifles at the very beginning of the war, just like every other major power at the time did, and just like their counterparts, they became obsolete really, really quickly, with only the USSR really committing to their use throughout the entirety of the war. Here are some of the antitank rifles the Germans used.
**'''''Tankgewehr M1918''''': The daddy of the antitank rifle and, in a sense, most anti-materiel rifles to this day. Developed near the end of WWI by the German Empire in search of an reliable alternative to light or medium field guns in the role of antitank weaponry, it was essentially a Mauser Gewehr 98 on steroids firing a massive 13mm round that could penetrate up 20 millimeters of armour at ranges of 100 meters and below. It needed a lot of training to make it work right; the recoil was reported to be strong enough to dislocate a man's shoulder if used incorrectly and even if done right, the marksman would become nauseous after just 2 or 3 shots at maximum. To put it in perspective, imagine firing a gun whose recoil feels like a seasoned boxer just hit you in the nuts. The Wehrmacht used some of them that were still lying around in arsenals all over Germany and some they took from the Polish army.
**'''''Panzerbüchse 39''''': Or "Tank Rifle Model 39". Whereas other nations like the British and the Soviets tried to improve their antitank rifles by using larger calibers with bigger powder charges (the British used a .55 cartridge, the Soviets 14.5x114mm), the Germans actually made their bullets smaller, using a 7.92mmx94 cartridge. The idea was basically to increase the kinetic force of the bullet through speed instead of mass, and it sorta worked. The PzB 39 was comparable to most other antitank rifles of the time. Its shortcomings mainly came from (as is tradition) overengineering; the PzB 39 was a breech-loading rifle (like an artillery gun) and the action was expensive and labour-intensive to produce. Additionally, unlike most of its contemporaries and even some of the other antitank rifles the Germans used, it was single shot only (the Brits' antitank rifle had a 5 round magazine, as did the Soviet PTRS-41). The rifle proved barely effective already in Poland and France and was subsequently either phased out or converted into grenade launchers.
**'''''Panzerbüchse SS41''''': An insanely complicated, impractical marvel of engineering developed specifically for SS troops. The need for alternative weapons for the Waffen-SS divisions arose when Himmler wanted to use the SS alongside the Heer, the regular German Army; however the Heer's generals were understandably not thrilled about the idea of a paramilitary force loyal only to the Nazi party, so they did some political lobbying that led to the Wehrmacht keeping its monopoly on all weapons produced by the German arms industry. This was a privilege the SS didn't have, so Himmler sourced weapons from all over Europe and took whatever he could get his filthy hands on (In spite of what /pol/lacks and Wehraboos might tell you, most SS units outside the first few panzer divisions were poorly equipped and used a huge variety of surplus or obsolete rifles, submachine guns and looted guns). The SS41 differs in this regard as it was developed in secret specifically for the SS in Czechia from prototypes the Czechs developed on their own before their annexation into the Greater German Reich. Cycling this monstrous contraption requires the soldier operating it to slide the entire forward assembly forwards and backwards, a process that looks as awesome as it was tedious. Speaking of looks, this gun really is a beauty, and a bullpup design on top of that. Gotta hand it to the Czechs. It fired the same 7.92x94mm cartridge the PzB 39 used, so it's fair to say that it didn't take long to become obsolete and surviving examples are exceedingly rare.
**'''''Solothurn S18/1000''''': A ludicrously massive gun more akin to a cannon than anything else. Developed as part of the German schemes to gain access to modern firearms in spite of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. It was in fact so large that the Swiss put wheels on it and called it a cannon. It fired a FUCKHUEG 20mm round and needed 3 men to operate and carry it and built the basis of nearly all automatic cannons the German military developed and used through out the war.

====Misc====

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M30_Luftwaffe_drilling '''''M30 Luftwaffe Drilling'']:''' The Germans had never been too keen on combat shotguns for various reasons (during WWI Kaiser Wilhelm was famously mocked for his protests that the American use of pump-action shotguns constituted a war crime), but the emergent Luftwaffe air force saw the need for equipping their pilots with survival weapons in the event that they were shot down far from friendly forces and needed to hunt or defend themselves. They decided on a drilling combination gun (a double-barreled shotgun with a single-shot rifle barrel) as the ideal solution. However, Hermann Goering was a fucking idiot who had a propensity for being vain and flashy instead of practical, so he chose the fancy high-end hunting rifles that aristocrats would purchase instead of putting out an order for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_Aircrew_Survival_Weapon cheap, mass-produced weapons that would get the job done] at a fraction of the cost. As a result, the few surviving M30 drillings are extremely collectible and valuable.

*'''''[[Looted|Captured Weapons]]''''': Due to necessity and practicality, German troops also commonly used enemy equipment from all sides, predominantly Soviet weapons captured during the first stage of the invasion of Russia, as well as the vast stores of equipment the Brits left behind at Dunkirk. To ease supply concerns, some of these weapons were converted to use standard German ammunition, like the PPSh-41 submachine gun (which was converted from 7.62x25mm to 9x19mm), while others actually had new Soviet-style ammunition made for them in converted factories. Besides equipment captured from the enemy, the Germans also made use of equipment produced by countries under their occupation, including France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.

*Camouflage pattern battledress for infantrymen. Well, okay, the Italians came up with the idea in the 1920s, but it was the Germans who refined it, mass-produced it and issued it on a large scale. They also came up with the idea for reversible camo, with one side tailored for spring/summer and the other for autumn. Hilariously enough, several of these camo patterns, including the iconic dotted pattern, were patented for the Waffen-SS, meaning that the Heer couldn't use them. This is another example of Nazi Germany getting in its own way with inane bureaucratic bullshit.

*'''''Fliegerfaust''''': The very first MANPAD ever developed to be used against airplanes. Originally an offshoot of the Panzerschreck development program, the Fliegerfaust was supposed to offer decent firepower against low-altitude CAS aircraft for the lowly infantryman. In essence, it worked like an 8-barreled Panzerschreck, where the closing of an electric circuit fired a bundle of small, 2-cm charges up to 300 meters into the air like a shotgun, causing a small cloud of explosions and shrapnel to envelop the target for a brief amount of time. It was never used in any capacity whatsoever, as it was very late to arrive to the party (development started in mid-1944, with serial production planned to begin in March 1945). Only about 80 prototypes from field trials were captured by the end of the war by the allies and influenced modern MANPADS like the FIM-92 Stinger to a great degree.

===Artillery Pieces and Antitank Guns===

*'''''Granatwerfer 36''''': Leave it to the Germans to overengineer a simple tube that spits out explosives. This little critter was supposed to serve as light, indirect fire support on the squad level, with a bunch of gizmos tacked onto it that made aiming with it a hell of a lot easier - too bad the small caliber (5 cm) limited its range and effectiveness in its intended role. Production was terminated in 1941, the reason given that the thing was too complex and too heavy. In hindsight it's a real headscratcher as to why the High Command didn't come to this conclusion sooner (especially since the thing offered no significant advantage over rifle grenades), although it remained in use throughout the rest of the war.
*'''''Leichtes Infantriegeschütz 18''''': The LeIG 18 was an evolution of the proven and reliable "Leichter Minenwerfer 18", the German answer to the Stokes Mortar that the British used. It was meant to be a light field artillery piece designed to take out targets that were too insignificant to justify a full artillery barrage or tank assault, but too strongly defended or entrenched for an infantry assault alone. Think isolated pillboxes or MG nests holding a minor strongpoint. The odd naming stems from the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, to give the Reichswehr plausible deniability for any curious Allied noses poking into German arms research.
*'''''8 cm Granatwerfer 34''''': A carbon copy of the Stokes Mortar. Yes, really.
*'''''15 cm Schweres Infanterie Geschütz 33''''': The largest gun that any given infantry battalion had on offer. Fired 38 kilograms of explosives over considerable distances, and also served as the main armament of the Sturmpanzer IV.
*'''''Leichte Feldhaubitze (LeFH) 18''''': Another oddly named design, this 'Light Field Howitzer' was the most common field gun of the German army. Efficient enough early in the war thanks to its 105mm caliber, it was eventually held back by considerable downsides that became apparent too late (too heavy, too difficult to move around and rather short range of around 10 km). When it became clear that the LeFH 18 really couldn't compare with Allied artillery pieces (like the Soviet 152 mm ML-20 and American M114 155mm howitzers which delivered heavier payloads, or the British QF 25-Pounder, which fired much quicker), various improvements over the course of the war were attempted to keep it relevant. But ultimately it was outdated by 1941, and never could close the gap again.
*'''''3,7-cm PaK 36''''': Probably the most advanced antitank gun in the interwar period, but it often gets a bad rep due to the accounts of German soldiers who had to fire the thing at Churchills, T-34s and other more modern tanks, earning it the moniker "Heeresanklopfkanone", or "The Heer's (German armed forces) door knocking cannon". Its advantages were its very light weight and the perfected design of its mounting, making it very easy to transport and move. Seeing how much the German army invested in this gun before the war (over 9000 being built when the war started and an additional 5500 until 1941) they tried their damndest to keep the thing relevant even when it was very clear it could no longer keep up. Still, a remarkable and groundbreaking design for the early thirties, with 6000 being sold abroad and Japan, the USSR and even the United States outright copying the design with few modifications.
*'''''5 cm PaK 38''''': Practically identical to the 50mm gun of the Panzer III. The PaK 38's bigger, beefier brother, intended to fight off bigger tanks the light 3.7 cm couldn't handle, with very mediocre results. That is, until the Germans made APCR for them in 1942, at which point they accounted for most [[T-34]]s and [[KV]]s losses of the time. However, those APCR required tungsten, and Third Reich didn't have much of it, sooo...
*[[PaK-40_Anti-Tank_Gun|'''''7.5-cm PaK 40''''']]: ...this masterpiece was made. The first design that came onto the scene with WWII in mind. Introduced in 1942, it was very effective design that in the latter half of the war ultimately became the Germans' most used antitank gun. It retained its relevance all the way to 1945, with Soviets and Brits making heavy tanks that could comfortably take it out only in 1944, and even then those weren't impervious. With its' high penetration and low profile, the only problem the PaK-40 had was the ungodly kick that literally dug holes in the ground after every shot, making it difficult to reposition if it was outflanked. Modified versions became the main armament of a lot of German tanks and tank destroyers, the most notable of which were the Panther and the Jagdpanzer IV.
*'''''8 cm PAW 600''''': Hilariously obscure as far as this list goes, the ''Panzerabwehrwerfer 600''/8H63 was developed as the war progressed and Germany was finding its anti-tank weapons either too immobile to adapt to battlefield conditions or too short-ranged to properly handle a regiment's antitank defense in full with its Panzerschrecks. Thus, the PAW 600 was designed to be lighter than other antitank guns by the use of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High–low_system the high-low system] leading to a smoothbore gun that fired high explosive anti-tank rounds. The design was even atypically made with consideration for logistics by basing its rounds off of the Granatwerfer 34 to make continued use of existing manufacturing tooling, and it theoretically could have fired any other ammunition that would go into a Granatwerfer 34 (such as high-explosive or smoke rounds) which would have been noteworthy at the time antitankguns firing high-explosive rounds really didn't do much since not much explosive filler fit into the thick walls of high-velocity rounds...but as mentioned, the thing was hilariously obscure and only 260 of them ever got built, so accounts of them actually having been used at all is very sparse - there is only a statement from a major in 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars that they were used against the regiment near the River Aller on April 14th, 1945 to provide some evidence that the weapon had any effect on a battle in the war at all.
*[[PaK-43|'''''8.8-cm PaK 43''''']]: A modified version of the infamous 8.8-cm Flak gun, stripped down to its essentials and with a longer barrel, wheeled carriage and gun shield. Other than that, they're basically identical.
*'''''12,8-cm PaK 44''''': The biggest, baddest antitank either side devised during the war. One could argue that it was probably overkill, as it was so impractical and heavy that any use outside of fortified positions would be pointless. Given that the gun was designed when the war effort started to really go south and Germany found itself in a defensive war, this was probably a negligible downside, but then again, it didn't really seem to make any difference in the end. Some were used as part of the Siegfried Line and the defense of Berlin, but they were very rare and the only examples that remain today are the ones mounted on the surviving Jagdtigers and the lone surviving Maus.

===Vehicles===
====Tanks====
German tanks were in general well designed, but in hindsight were overengineered and prone to breakdowns in the field. For example, take their ''Schachtellaufwerk'' (interleaved wheel system for the tracks). The idea was: more roadwheels = weight distributed more evenly over track = less ground pressure = less bogging down and/or a higher maximum load. It was also supposed to lessen tank shaking and allow the panzers to fire (relatively) accurately on the move. Great idea on paper, and a pretty good one when testing prototypes at home... but an absolute hell on the Eastern front, where the almost supernaturally awful mud (caused by the spring thaw, or ''rasputitsa'') infiltrated between the wheels before freezing and breaking everything. Cue hour after hour of work for the maintenance teams, removing the track and wheels for cleaning before mounting them again [[FAIL|each and every time the goddamn tank sortied]], where a more traditional slack-track system would have required much less cleaning. And those were just added on top of the already quite large list of ''traditional'' mechanical breakdowns that plagued any and all vehicle pool of the epoch...

Another big weak point in the German Panzerwaffe was the lack of standardization between individual tank models. The Allies more or less made all the variations of their tanks (which were standardized for every company and factory making them) from existing models and fitted them with weapons they deemed appropriate for the task at hand([[Leman Russ (tank)|just like the Leman Russ, in fact]]), which eased supply and maintenance, whereas the Germans designed entirely new vehicles for every purpose and spread them across multiple manufacturers, each with their own specifications, tooling and production lines. In practice, this meant that parts between German vehicle types were mostly incompatible with each other; i.e. a gear made for a Panzer IV "A" could not go into a Panzer IV "J", compared to T-34s being basically entirely interchangeable. It quickly became a logistical nightmare to keep all the tank units in the field sufficiently supplied with spare parts or even fuel (the Germans never could make their minds up if they preferred gasoline or diesel). That's not to say that they didn't know or realize this (thoughts in this direction lead into the E-Series of design studies, planned to be a series of tank models that more or less shared all parts with each other except armament and chassis) but by 1944 Germany lacked the industrial capacity and resources to switch to a more economical model of production. Furthermore, the German model of tank production didn't help too; all of the German tanks were hand-crafted, using expensive and elaborate methods with strict tolerances to produce the best results possible, which becomes positively idiotic when you compare the results to the colossal production runs of the T-34 and the Sherman. As an example: the most produced German tank of the period was the Panzer IV, with 8,553 produced from 1937 to 1945. The Soviets, meanwhile, built ''over 57,000'' T-34s from 1940-1945. In 1943, they were cranking out 1,300 of the damn things a month, compared to Germany's puny monthly average of 252 Panzer IVs. The T-34 wasn't perfect, but it was good enough, and "good enough" is really all you need when you have 57,000 to your opponent's 8,550. Moreover, while the Germans kept tinkering with and refining the IV's design, the Soviets ignored any modification that would slow production and focused on finding ways to build T-34s as quickly and cheaply as possible. The "5 to 1 ratio" of Allied vs German tanks is as much the result of the modus operandi of the German war industry as it is of failed planning, overly complicated designs, fascist inefficiency, a whole lot of nepotism and corruption and having the SHIT bombed out of them.

In the end, the true selling point of the ''Panzerwaffe'' was not the tanks themselves, but the way in which they were used, the men manning them, the mechanics supporting them, and the radios installed in every tank that allowed for a level of coordination between armor, infantry, and artillery never before seen (all of which formed the core of ''Blitzkrieg'' tactics). This, along with some powerful late-war designs, occasionally gave German tanks an edge over Allied tanks until production problems, stability issues and most of all fuel shortages became overwhelming.

German tanks are called "''Panzer''", which when directly translated means "''armor''", and more specifically is the shortened version of "''Panzerkampfwagen''" (Armored Fighting Vehicle). The name is often abbreviated to just "PzKpfw" or even "Pz". The habit of naming tanks, airplanes and other pieces of equipment after animals, mostly predators, was introduced after a suggestion by Goebbels in 1944 to increase the propagandistic value of the vehicles. This is why earlier vehicles have none of these names and were named "at face value". At no point in time did these nicknames show up in official records of the Wehrmacht aside from anecdotal mentions in field reports. The official records of the Heereswaffenamt (Army armory office) used the ''Sonderkraftfahrzeug'' ("Special purpose vehicle", Sd.Kfz. in short) system of designations instead.
* '''Panzer I:''' Designed and produced in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the ''Panzerkampfwagen I'' was the first Nazi tank. It was small, weighing only 5.4 tonnes, and was armed only with two MG-13 machine guns. Some 1,493 were made, and were most notable in that they allowed the Heer to start training tank crews, and (after being sent to Spain) allowed tank doctrines be developed that the Nazis would use to steamroll Poland and France. They saw some use at the beginning of WWII, but were pretty soon deemed to be out of date even for scouting missions. Until they were deemed totally obsolete, they were continuously upgraded and specialized, and had several variants including a potential recon paratrooper-tank. Primary Nazi tank of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War. [[File:Panzer I.PNG|thumb|right|300px|Mein Herr! Can't ve get somezing better zan zis Panzer I?]] As with a lot of Nazi tanks that became obsolete, the old PzKpfw I's were sometimes stripped to the chassis and repurposed for things such as artillery and tank destroyer roles, though this was relatively rare. It should also be noted the Panzer I is the textbook example of a tankette rather then a full tank, though since early WWII would define the important strategic difference of tankettes vs tanks it's not surprising it became the primary armoured vehicle before the war.
* [[Panzer_II|'''Panzer II:''']] The ''Panzerkampfwagen II'' was designed using the experience gained in the Spanish Civil War. Heavier than the Panzer I at 8.9 tonnes, it was designed as a stopgap, as the Panzer III and IV were experiencing delays in production. It was armed with a dinky automatic 20mm cannon that was little better than an antitank rifle. Common during the early war, it was made obsolete by the arrival of the Panzer III and IV, and relegated to reconnaissance duties, training, or conversion into open-topped tank destroyers. Much like its younger brother, it too was pushed through several variants; however, instead of trying to upgrade it to keep it frontline-capable, it was turned into a better scout tank so that the Panzer III could take over the role of frontline tank. Primary Nazi tank for the invasions of Poland and France.
** '''Panzer II Ausf. L "Luchs"''': The final version of the Panzer II, with a redesigned turret housing the same 20mm autocannon in a new turret and a modified chassis. Speedy little bugger (it could reach up to 60 kph under optimal conditions) that served as a scouting verhicle for the tank divisions, with 100 being built.
* [[Panzer_III|'''Panzer III:''']] One of the two main German tanks of the war, the ''Panzerkampfwagen III'' was about when Germany really got the hang of this whole tank design thing. Introduced in 1939, it weighed 23 tonnes, carried a 37mm anti tank gun, and notably had a turret big enough for three guys (which is actually more important than you might think, as it allows the crew to share the workload, e.g., the loader's only task is to load the gun with the correct ammo as fast as possible, the gunner focuses on aiming and firing the gun, while the commander can retain situational awareness and, well, give orders). Contemporary tanks, most notably the T-34, often had two or even one-man turrets, forcing the crew to share responsibilities and lowering their combat efficiency; the Germans themselves noted that a good panzer crew could get off three shots in the time it took a T-34 crew to fire one. The Panzer III was designed from the ground up to engage enemy tanks, rather than the infantry and light vehicles of earlier models. In Poland, France, and North Africa it did well, even though some French vehicles still outgunned them. Against Soviet T-34s, however, it was completely insufficient, unless upgraded to a 50mm gun and firing APDS. Thankfully, unlike the French and Russians, the Panzer IIIs were all equipped with radios, allowing them to outmaneuver the better tanks. Production stopped in 1942, but since they had built 5,774 of them, they stayed in service until the end of the war. The chassis was used to produce the StuG assault cannon (although "Geschütz" is hard to translate to English: it's neither a mere gun, nor a cannon, being more of a tank destroyer, i.e., a "sniper"-style tank), which would be the most widely produced German vehicle of the war, clocking in at 10,086 units. Ultimately, the III switched roles with the Panzer IV to become the infantry support tank with a short barrelled howitzer, though this was soon also replaced with a dual-purpose gun. Primary Nazi tank for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
* [[Panzer_IV|'''Panzer IV:''']] Ultimately the most common German tank, with 8,553 units being built over the course of the war (now compare those numbers with the nearly 50,000 Shermans and 57,000 T-34s that the freeaboos and commies built), the ''Panzerkampfwagen IV'' was the Panzer III's big brother. The Panzer IV was originally intended to be used against infantry and was armed with a low-velocity 75mm gun for blowing stuff up with explosive shells. After the invasion of Russia they switched to a 50mm anti-tank gun, and later a 75mm high-velocity cannon while also being up-armored to the absolute weight limit of the chassis. After that upgrade, it was generally on par with the T-34 and M4 Sherman (on average, at least — they had a less powerful engine, but better optics). Unlike early Soviet tanks, every Panzer IV generally had a working radio receiver. Its chassis became the foundation of many German vehicles of all classifications. Primary Nazi tank from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945.
* [[Panther|'''Panzer V Panther:''']] The Panther was introduced in 1943, and [[Skub|to this day history nerds, Wehraboos, Russaboos, and rivetheads are still arguing whether it or the T-34 was the best tank of the war]]. It copied many features of the T-34 and improved on them. It was listed as a "medium tank," despite weighing in at 44.8 tonnes (due to the Germans labeling tank classes with the intended use in mind, not weight). Its 75mm/L70 gun was one of the most powerful tank guns of the war, and could destroy any Allied tank. Quite mobile for its weight, its frontal armor was more effective than that of the Tiger's thanks to sloping. It truly was a swift and hard as nails death machine... when it was in working order, that is. The Panther was rushed into service so that it would be online in time for the Kursk offensive and had even more mechanical problems than the Tiger did due to its rushed design. The transmission, for example, broke down on average after just 250 kilometers (that's 155 miles for you Yanks), leading to a lot of abandoned tanks, and its turret initially came with a rounded front mantlet that acted as a shot trap, deflecting shells down through the thin top armour. On the plus side, the Panther was only about 20% more expensive to produce than the Panzer IV, and the Germans managed to produce 6,000 of them, though switching over did cost them in terms of other production due to the necessary retooling time. Along with the Tiger, the Panther was enough of a threat for the Western Allies to up-gun their Shermans (the 'Firefly' with the British 17-pounder gun and the multiple American (76) variants sporting a more powerful 76 mm gun) and the Soviets to make up-armored and up-gunned T-34-85's (with, you guessed it, a 85 mm gun in the turret). Along with the aforementioned US and Soviet tanks, the Panther eventually became one inspiration for the post-war "Main Battle Tank" concept, the other being the British Centurion. An upgraded Panther II was planned, but never entered production. [[File:Panther_Tank.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Zis vill do nicely! Danke!... Gott im Himmel, zat's a lot of Shermans!]] In recent years the tank has been associated with a phenomenon known as the "Panther Paradox", based on the general consensus that it was one of the war's best tanks. Essentially the tank itself, on paper, vastly outclassed the Sherman and T-34 in combat and wasn't much more expensive to build compared to the Panzer IV, yet when looking at its actual field performance the Panther did horribly. The actual answer comes in the form of "hard" values and "soft" values."Hard" values are the typical stuff people think about when they talk about tanks, like armor, speed, and firepower. "Soft" values are things like price, crew comfort, ease of maintenance, etc. While the Panther got top marks in the former, it was pretty terrible in the latter. The moral of the story, kids, is that what makes an effective weapon can't be narrowed down to a bunch of values you can put on the back of a cereal box.
* [[Tiger_1|'''Panzer VI Tiger:''']] Even before invading Russia and France, the generals of the Wehrmacht were requesting a "breakthrough tank" that could be used as the speartip of an armored assault, crushing any resistance and allowing its smaller brothers to exploit the hole it made in enemy defenses. The work on this concept began in 1937, but the first prototypes were a far cry from the monster the Nazis rolled out in 1942. The "Durchbruchwagen" (breakthrough tank), or DW for short, had many iterations with many problems, such as faulty transmission, overloaded and unreliable chassis, and failed unification with Pz.III (yes, that Pz.III, the medium tank, that was also developed in 1937-1938) lengthening the project significantly. It culminated in Typ 100 Leopard, a tank with 100mm armor and 88mm gun, a prototype of which was completed in March 1941. However, the shock of encountering the previously unknown Soviet KV-1s and T-34s spurred the actual implementation of heavy tanks as perceived German tank superiority was shattered. The Nazi top brass took this as a challenge to refine existing prototypes into the ultimate heavy tanks, and the result of said project were "the Big Cats". The first of these was the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger heavy tank, built around the Typ 100 turret and gun, which entered service in 1942 (yes, the Pz. V actually came out after the VI did). "Heavy" definitely described the Tiger: it weighed 54 tonnes, had a 690 hp engine, had up to 100mm of armor, could reach 40 kph in good conditions to keep up with the little guys, and was armed with a hueg 88mm cannon that could take out a T-34 or Sherman from 2 kilometers with ease. In fact, it could do this to ''any tank the Allies would have at any point of the war'' from one kilometer away, barring IS-2s and Churchill VIIs. Despite this, the Tiger was over-engineered mechanically and somewhat under-designed chassis-wise. It was expensive, a drain on strategic resources, labor intensive to build, chugged gas like an alcoholic at an open bar, had reliability issues, and was [https://youtu.be/CVDDtbiGDxA?t=148 horribly maintenance-intensive once in the field]. Since the groundwork for the Tiger was laid out pre-Barbarossa, it did not implement the sloped armor concept of the T-34, which made the Tiger heavier and slower than it could have been for the same armor effectiveness. In short, it was essentially an upgraded Pz. IV and therefore a [[Metal Boxes|metal box]]. Only 1,347 Tigers were built, but they did have a colossal effect on Allied morale. In one instance a single Tiger destroyed most of the 22nd Armoured Brigade and forced them to retreat at the Battle of Villers-Bocage. The Tiger is without a doubt the most famous tank of WWII, known even to those illiterates who think WWII was only fought between America and Germany, and if most video games are to be believed, every Nazi tank was a Tiger. That is, however, somewhat understandable given just how often Allied tankers yelled 'Tiger' whenever they lost a tank, even to a regular Pz IV (which could be mistaken for a Tiger at a distance). The Tiger and Panther tanks, like a used car, came with an owner's manual (the Tigerfibel and Pantherfibel, respectively), and Heinz Guderian (German general with an ego that would make MacArthur seem modest, who wrote memoirs that are very good as literature and very bad as a primary source because he made himself look good at the expense of everyone else, especially Adolf) wanted every tank crew to read the manual. But even back then, people understood just how few guys actually read the instruction manual for anything. So it was written as a fun book to read, with humor, poetry, and naked girls alongside the information about how to use two of the most famous heavy tanks to be fielded in WWII.
* [[Tiger_II|'''Tiger II:''']] The Tiger II, sometimes known as the King Tiger (from an incorrect translation of ''Königstiger'', meaning "Bengal Tiger", but which literally translates to "Royal Tiger"), was the ultimate German tank, and introduced in 1944 as a successor to the Tiger. It weighed 68.5 tonnes (more than most modern tanks) and had 150mm of frontal armor, which was even sloped (a huge step forward from the boxy Tiger I)! Even so, between limited resources and an increasingly bombed-out industrial base, only 492 of these behemoths rolled off the assembly line before the war ended. These tanks were considered to be just as temperamental as the Tiger I, but for different reasons. The designers learned how to fix some of the problems with the Tiger I, and promptly over-built the Tiger II even more after patching the holes, because they thought they had wiggle room or something. It was damn near unkillable, but a fuel guzzler to the extreme, barely maneuverable, and prone to mechanical failures of almost any kind. Some historians argue that the King Tiger was only effective as a propaganda piece and little else, since the added size and weight often made maintaining the tank a nightmare, leaving aside its preexisting reliability issues. In the best conditions there was often a 50/50 chance they would even show up to fight, and in bad conditions you would be lucky if any made it. Interesting fact: since the Nazis were famous for constantly overcompensating, the first proposal of mounting a monstrous 8.8 cm Flak with a barrel 71 calibre long, that was ultimately made into 8.8 cm KwK 43 (the one Tiger II rocks), on a tank dates back to 21st of June, 1941, even before the invasion of the Soviet Union!
** Of note is the vehicles more recent reputation as a meme in historical groups as many Revisionists (armchair generals who believe war should be fought like WW2 again) often insist [[What|that it was the best tank ever made and could 1v1 the Abrams with ease.]](It could not, what makes modern tanks a lot more deadly than their ancentors are composite armour and advanced ammunition which are far more effective than the AP shells used in the WW2 era and this is not even accounting for other auxiliary systems like reactive armour, laser-guided missiles and reconnaissance via drone) Since then it is often brought up in mockery of the group.
*'''Anything they could steal:''' From French [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_B1#Operational_history B1 heavy tanks] to Soviet [http://www.achtungpanzer.com/panzerkampfwagen-t-34r-soviet-t-34-in-german-service.htm T-34's] to American [http://beutepanzer.ru/Beutepanzer/us/M4_sherman/m4-75-sherman-01.htm Shermans], the Nazis used everything they could get their hands on like Orks in spiffy uniforms (not that the Allies were any different: the Soviets, for example, had several companies armed with captured Panthers that they used as tank destroyers). This became so chronic that the British had a rule in place that said any tank which could not be repaired or salvaged was to be destroyed so the Germans wouldn't pinch it. They deployed stolen tanks pretty much everywhere, and of every type; hell, even Renault FT-17s were used in police roles in some areas.
**[['''Panzer 38(t)|Panzer 35(t) and 38(t):''']] the most famous tanks the Nazi <s>stole</s> were supplied with by puppet governments all across Europe were the PZ 35(t) and 38(t). Light tanks, both were Czech designs (hence the (t), for ''Tschechisch'') Germany acquired when they took over first the Sudetenland and then the rest of Czechoslovakia. While very useful early in the war, the designs were rendered obsolete by 1942 (they simply couldn't compete against a T-34), and the chassis was instead used to produce Marder 2 and Hetzer tank destroyers. A version of the 38(t), called the Stridsvagn m/41, was also used by Sweden. [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|The vehicle's Czech steel was lower-quality than German stock.]]

====Tank Destroyers/Assault Guns====
Between the First and Second World Wars, various nations were still trying to figure out what good designs were for armored vehicles and how to use them in general. The Germans were the most successful, creating the famed Panzer divisions, each of which was a small army in and of themselves, but everyone knows about those. However, Nazi military theorists realized that lowly grunts also required some armored support. Enter the brainchild of Erich von Manstein (at least officially), the assault gun. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the top brass about the need of ''Begleitartillerie'', "escort artillery" that could move into battle alongside infantry formations and lob 6 kg shells at any machine or field gun that interrupted the advance. The initial concept was to stick a huge gun (too big to put in a proper turret with then available technology) onto a Pz III chassis with a fixed casemate and open top (this was later changed) to allow the heavy gun to be moved around easily. Think of it like a [[Vindicator]]. The idea was approved, and the work on ''Panzerselbstfahrlafette III'' (quite a mouthful) begun with gusto. While primarily designed to bust fortifications, demands for the Pz.Sfl. III specified the ability to take on all types of existing armor at the distance of 500m. After being officially approved for production, they received the name of [[Stug_III|Sturmgeschütz III]], abbreviated to the StuG III. During the battle they usually engaged the enemy from the second line, where their limited firing arc wasn't such a big problem, and were universally praised both by infantrymen and their own crews. This all changed in 1941 when the Germans first encountered the [[T-34]]. The need to stop well-armoured tanks assaulting in mass shifted from a theoretical into a practical problem. The StuGs had to be upgunned and up-armored, and other, dedicated anti-tank vehicles had to be designed and built. The main difference between assault guns and tank destroyers was their affiliation: the former belonged to the artillery, the latter were part of the Panzer corps, which sometimes led to political disputes like Guderian's temper tantrum about getting Hetzers. Starting with lighter Panzerjäger tank destroyers as a stopgap measure, later in the war, Germany replaced them with big heavy tank destroyers, with thick armor and guns big enough to make an Ork blush with envy, and labeled the class "''Jagdpanzer''" (hunter-tank). Panzerjäger of both types had the advantage of being cheaper and simpler to make than turreted tanks, and having lower silhouettes that allowed for easier ambushes. Plus it was easy to convert an otherwise out of date, under-gunned tank into a destroyer. The disadvantage was, of course, that they had no turrets, so they could be outflanked and had no way to point their guns at any targets that did not drive in front of them short of turning the entire tank around. The StuGs and their descendants were such a huge success the Nazis actually pondered the idea of making them the mainstream of Panzer divisions even in 1943 (however, Panzer IV/70 (A) which was tagged for this role was ultimately labeled "unfit for frontline service"). Nevertheless, the turretless constructions meant that they were sacrificing much needed flexibility in the field, especially during bad weather or in difficult terrain, and the advantage of being able to build more units quickly becomes irrelevant if you're not losing them in the thousands yearly, so every major power in the post-45 world order didn't want to bother with it, especially since the British Centurion MBT showed the world for the first time that a tank could reliably perform all roles that were previously assigned to a variety of models. Only Germany kept some tank destroyers around after the war (the [[Kanonenjagdpanzer]]) and even that was thoroughly outclassed once self-directing ammunition like TOW missiles became available.
*'''Panzerjäger I''': Remember that little note in the Panzer I's description on how it was repurposed? Well, this is the end result. What basically amounts to a Panzer I with its turret taken off and a casemate installed instead, it had a nice 4.7cm anti-tank gun but was relatively weak otherwise. There were no vision slits in the casemate, meaning that in order to aim, the crew had to peek over the top and get themselves shot in the head (a pressing issue in particular for Anti-Tank Battalion 643).
*'''Marder:''' The Marder I, II, and III were all very similar tank destroyers, hence why they share a listing. The Marder I is based on the chassis of the French Lorraine 37L tractor, the Marder II is based off the Panzer II chassis, and the Marder III is based of off the Panzer 38(t) (the "T" means it was Czech in origin, not that it weighed 38 tons). All three were open-topped and armed with either 7.5 cm cannons or converted Soviet 76mm cannons they stole early in their invasion of USSR. At the start of Operation Barbarossa, German tanks were again under-gunned and armed compared to their enemies, especially when compared to the T-34 (which one German field marshal quipped was the best tank in the world in 1941). But, like the battle for France, the Germans alone in the world had an actual understanding of how to use tanks most effectively and were thus able to make massive advances anyway through superior tactical coordination. Still, a better antitank weapon was needed, so the Marders were created and armed with 7.5 cm weapons (although there were never enough of them, so they would revert to using Russian guns).
*'''Wespe''' and '''Hummel''': The Wasp and Bumblebee, respectively, and both with a nasty sting. Both were re-purposed tank chassis, but sporting artillery howitzers instead of antitank guns (Which makes them technically self-propelled artillery instead of assault guns, but in the end it's a huge gun on tracks so fuck that noise!) the Wespe was based off the Panzer II and sported a 105mm 'light' howitzer; the Hummel was based on a modified Panzer III chassis and sported a 150mm howitzer. They're the real-life equivalents of (and probably the inspiration behind) the Imperial Guard's [[Basilisk Artillery Gun]].
*'''Hetzer''': Repurposed Panzer 38(t) with a casemate-mounted 75mm gun. A nice late-war re-design and a dangerous opponent since its small chassis and decent speed made it easy to get in position for a good ambush, and its gun was strong enough to take on any Allied medium tank. Notorious for being an absolutely awful thing to be in, the interior was cramped to the point of farce and ergonomics were very poor. The chassis was overworked too, so mechanical breakdowns were constant. The Hetzer had some armour, but couldn't slug it out with the late-war tanks. Despite all this, it was adored by German grunts, because having an artillery gun at your side is always better than not having it.
*'''Nashorn''': Also called '''Hornisse''', this was a Marder-like tank-destroyer, with a chassis specially designed to mount the fearsome "Acht-acht" 88mm gun. Just like the Marders it was open-topped, but the huge range of its gun made it a dangerous opponent. The Germans later experimented with even bigger guns (105mm and 128mm) mounted like this, but those vehicles proved simply too heavy and impractical to use, so they did not evolve beyond a couple of prototypes.
*'''StuG III & IV''': By far the most widely produced German vehicle of WWII, the StuG was easily one of the most versatile combat platforms fielded in the war (and famous in the Panzer General series for easily knocking out Russian tanks). StuGs, short for "''Sturmgeschütz''" or "''assault artillery''", were built to combat a problem Germany encountered in World War I: that infantry alone lacked the ability to take on fortifications, and the artillery was too slow to keep up to allow direct fire on these targets. The StuG was the solution: by mounting a 7.5 cm <s>howitzer</s> [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgesch%C3%BCtz_III gun] in a fixed casemate on a Panzer III chassis, they allowed the vehicle to roll up with the infantry and blow any fortifications in the way to rubble. Of course during the invasion of the Soviet Union the Germans ran into tanks much better than their existing vehicles, namely KV-1s and T-34. In order to quickly counter these threats, the StuG was "up-gunned" (quote marks are there because the gun's caliber did not change), to mount a high-velocity 7.5 cm anti-tank gun. In 1943, the StuG chassis was changed from a Panzer III's to a Panzer IV's, otherwise no changes were made. StuGs, despite looking like and being compared to tanks, were not considered tanks, and were crewed by artillery personnel. StuGs are estimated to have destroyed 20,000 enemy tanks in the course of the war, impressive when you consider that just over 10,000 were made, and not all of those were armed with actual anti-tank weapons. After the war, the Soviets gave a number of captured tanks to Syria where they were used up to the 1960s. In a funny twist of irony, some of those ended up in Israeli hands during the Six-Day War and remain on display in Tel Aviv today. (There was a self-propelled-gun with an actual howitzer, too: the StuH 42.)
*'''Sturmpanzer:''' Known commonly to the Allies as the ''Brummbär'' (Grouch), this infantry support gun was based on the Panzer IV chassis. It mounted a 15cm mortar-sized direct-fire cannon, which fired a combined shell-charge weighing in at over 100lbs, designed to make infantry and buildings not be there anymore.
*'''Ferdinand/Elefant''': To put the Ferdinand into perspective, this is a tank that even Hitler though was too complex, too unreliable, and too theoretically advanced to use. The Ferdinand is the result of a competition between two of Nazi Germany's top companies, Porsche and Henschel (both of which still exist today), to produce a heavy tank that could use the 8.8 cm gun, what would ultimately become the Tiger I. The initial plan was to produce both tanks simultaneously, with contracts to make a "small" series of 100 tanks for both participants signed with Krupp on the same day of 22th of July, 1941. Both Tigers (P) and (H) had A LOT of problems, but due to unclear reasons even before final tests conducted in November 1942 came the order to stop production of Porsche version. That's why, despite losing the contract, Porsche had 90 Porsche Tiger hulls laying around, though he couldn't make more as he lacked production lines of his own. It was decided to turn those unused Tiger P prototypes into tank destroyers, and so they bolted even more armor on and added a fixed super structure for the gun, and thus the Ferdinand (named humbly after Porsche himself) was born. The Ferdinand was a troubled vehicle: rather than one engine, its immense bulk required two, and thanks to poor ventilation they often overheated. Bizarrely, the two engines did not even connect to the drive train (possibly because of issues keeping the two engines synchronized without modern computer control), and were instead connected to a set of electric generators that in turn powered a pair of electric motors. That's right, in 1942, the Nazi's built a 65 ton gas-electric, hybrid-powered tank destroyer, good for the environment maybe (but not actually, because the primitive technology just made the combo even less efficient), but maintenance for the thing was a nightmare worse than the Tiger. The concept of diesel-electric propulsion is not even as advanced for the time as many people think; the Soviets had developed such an engine for a locomotive in 1924, the German U-boats used the same technology for their underwater propulsion system (diesel engines charging a large set of batteries that drove an electric motor when underwater) and Porsche's own patent for this system dated back as far as 1896. The only innovation was that it was the first time this concept was implemented in an armoured vehicle. And before we forget, it did not have any machine guns for point defense. To be honest, it wouldn't have been that much of a deal (StuG-IIIs didn't have a machine gun until December 1942, for example) if Guderian hadn't used them as heavy tanks (he even calls them "Porsches' Tigers" in his memoirs), and even then out of 39 Ferdinands lost during the Battle of Kursk, only 4 were confirmed to be destroyed by Molotov cocktails, and in 3 cases they were damaged either by mines or artillery shells before that. It had one hell of a gun, however: the 8.8 cm Pak 43 could destroy any Allied tank at distances exceeding 2000 meters. In 1943, all 48 remaining operational tanks were converted to have a machine gun, more armor, anti-magnetic Zimmerit paste coatings, and a commander's cupola. The modified tanks were named Elefants. Overall, more Ferdinands were destroyed by their own crews after their tracks or suspensions were damaged by mines or artillery fire than were lost to enemy fire. Before we forget, the Elefants were also then sent to fight in Italy. [[Derp|Yes, they sent the tank destroyer known for its serious engine issues to a country known for its incredibly rugged and mountainous terrain]]. They did not last long. Maybe it is the inspiration for the Shadowsword Imperial Guard superheavy.
*'''Jagdpanzer IV''': A Panzer IV chassis mounting a long-barrelled 75mm gun in a casemate mount. Worked generally very well, the low silhouette being a great advantage over comparable assault guns, but had some notable downsides too. The inclusion of additional armour and the long 75mm KwK from the Panther strained the Panzer IV chassis to the absolute limit, limiting range and mechanical reliablity. The extra armour and long gun also made it particularly nose heavy, making it a bitch to drive and limiting its maneuverability, never mind being almost unable to make steep descents without bumping the gun on something, a problem tanks with a similar nose-heavy loadout like the Russian T-34 and SU-85 also had.
*'''Jagdpanther''': A Panther chassis mounting a long-barrelled 88mm gun in a casemate mount. Arguably the best "Jagd-" model combining decent mobility, decent protection and a very powerful gun.
*'''Jagdtiger''': Tiger II chassis outfitted with a long-barrelled 128mm (!) naval gun. Pure overkill, and ultimately a poorly-performing design. To put it in perspective, the M1 ''Abrams'' TODAY has a smaller and shorter 120mm cannon, even if most of its armor busting power comes from the fact it fires modern (and far more deadly) sabot rounds. Even back then, two of the most effective AT guns of the war were the German ''Acht-Acht'' 88mm gun and the British 76.2mm ''17 pounder'' gun; both much smaller, lighter and with a better rate of fire than this 128mm monster. No war machine used on the front line called for such a massive gun to be dealt with in World War II (save perhaps for the Soviets's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IS_tank_family IS heavy tanks], which were designed to be have armor good enough to stand up to 88mm AT gun fire, but ironically the Jagdtiger only served on the Western Front, making it a moot point) and even the fact it could double up as artillery support in a pinch didn't make up for the fact it was just too big and unwieldy and slow-firing a gun to deal with tanks. Add to that, a tank with a 128mm main gun is especially stupid when your enemies on both sides favored zerg rushes of Shermans and T-34s, much lighter vehicles that could reliably be taken out by much smaller guns. While anticipating future enemy capabilities is important in wartime weapon development, pretty much no one was working on a vehicle sufficiently armored to warrant this firepower (excluding absurd super-heavy design studies like the American T28/T30 and T95 or the British Tortoise), unless it was intended to fire on battleships from the shore—and firing from a stationary coastal-defense position probably would be for the best, because even at its crawling pace, going off-road tended to knock the gun out of alignment and require it to be recalibrated before firing again, so good luck with flanking maneuvers. The nicest thing that could be said about it was that it was great for shooting at enemy tanks hiding behind buildings, because it would shoot straight through building and tank alike. (Seriously, read Otto Carius' memoirs. His opinion on these is as first-hand as it is scathing.)
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On a sidenote:
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One could reasonably point out that the Russians weren't much better in that regard, since they too threw a couple of 'overcompensated' tanks/assault guns into the fray over the course of WWII: The KV-2 sported a 152mm howitzer in a gigantic (and horribly impractical) turret, and the SU-152 and ISU-152 were also equipped casemate-mounted 152mm howitzers (basically, the only difference is that the SU was based on the KV chassis and the ISU on the IS chassis). The difference here is that these vehicles had been designed for infantry support (and demolishing ''festungs''), making the huge gun just mobile enough to keep up with the grunts and chucking high explosive death at the enemy from medium/long range instead of blasting other tanks to smithereens. This doesn't mean they couldn't: indeed the ISU-152 was effective enough in that regard to be nicknamed the ''Zveroboy'' (''Beast Killer'' in Russian, which it inherited from the SU-152), but being able to blast a Tiger on its back was merely a handy bonus. Add to that the low-velocity 152mm howitzer was a good 30% lighter than the massive PaK 80; resulting in lighter, more compact, and more mobile vehicles overall once they realized trying to mount a huge howitzer in a turret wasn't such a good idea after all. All the Russians did was switch the unwieldy 152's for lighter 85's, 100's and 122's to make actual tank destroyers.
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*[[File:Sturmtiger.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Contrary to what it looks like, this is not a mock-up of a 40k [[Vindicator]] but a real combat vehicle.]]'''Sturmtiger''': The Sturmtiger is one of the most striking example of Nazi "mad genius" given form, to the point that this assault gun could almost belong in the "Wunderwaffe" section. As you can see from the picture, it looks like a [[Vindicator]], which is not a coincidence: both vehicles' role is to rumble up to a strongpoint and obliterate it with extreme firepower. Very quickly, the Germans realized that fortifications were a major pain in their Aryan butts to deal with and that static artillery was too slow and vulnerable to keep up with their ''Blitzkrieg'' attacks. So at first they relied on airplanes and Pz.IVs and StuGs, but as their opponents started to contest the skies and howitzers on both tanks and self-propelled artillery had to be replaced with antitank guns to stem the endless tide of T-34s, the problem of bunker-busting raised its head once again. The Sturmtiger is what you get when the point where you should have stopped putting bigger, larger guns on tracks is long passed, yet one still keeps going... and somehow manages to make it work. Starting as a direct response to the Soviet SU-152 (there's even an urban legend about some German general looking at it and going "I want this, but BIGGER") and based off of the Tiger I chassis, it sported a [[bolter|''380mm gun/rocket launcher'']] [[awesome|''adapted from a Kriegsmarine depth-charge launcher'']] as its main gun; [[wat|and only because the 210 mm howitzer they intended to use first wasn't available]]. Although it sported a gun that could obliterate anything in front of it, the Sturmtiger suffered the same problems as the Tiger itself. Overstressed drive train, maintenance-intensive and prone to breakdown, ''Schachtellaufwerk'' tracks to keep ground pressure tolerable, and an underpowered engine. On top of that, the rocket was so powerful that in order to not break the barrel of the gun or kill the crew, the exhaust gasses from launching the depth-charge rocket had to be vented out of a number of tubes that went back up the barrel.
*'''Flakpanzer IV''': Tanks whose main gun had been replaced with one (or more) anti-aircraft guns. With the Luftwaffe having been squandered by inability to adapt to changes (i.e. realize that ''maybe'' it should have switched priorities to defending the Fatherland before the latter half of 1943), the Germans came up with these SPAAGs in other to try to defend themselves from all those nasty American ''Jabos'' (German shorthand for fighter-bomber) making their lives hell. Didn't really work, because towards the end of the war the ground attack aircraft had become too fast to be engaged reliably by guns relying on human eyes to acquire and follow their target. They were, however, [[rape|murder on tracks]] when facing infantry and lightly armored ground targets. Four variants were made, all based on the ever-reliable Panzer IV chassis:
**'''Möbelwagen''': Odd looking thing that more or less was an armoured AA-emplacement on a tank; when deployed, the crew would fold down the "walls" of the open topped fixed turret with a 3.7 cm AA-gun on top of it. Needless to say, it didn't offer any significant improvement over existing and far more simple AA-vehicles which consisted of little more than an armoured truck with the gun in a trailer.
**'''Wirbelwind''': Perhaps the most iconic of the four, it massively improved the design by adding an again open-topped turret that could be turned almost as fast as a regular AA-gun on its mounting. Armed with a quadruple 2 cm FlaK 38 and 105 being built, it was ultimately the most common variant of the Flakpanzer IV.
**'''Ostwind''': The last Flakpanzer IV to be put into serial production. The turret remained pretty much the same from the Wirbelwind, although the introduction of a single 3.7-cm FlaK 43 made one of the two loaders on the Wirbelwind obsolete and a hydraulic turning mechanism pumped its turning speed up to 60 per second. Its prototype partook in the Battle of the Bulge and returned back home undamaged. 47 were completed by the end of the war.
**'''Kugelblitz''': Similar deal to the Type XXI U-boats, the Kugelblitz was the peak of military engineering for its time that remained unsurpassed until computer-guided tracking systems and heat-seeking missiles revolutionized ground-based AA weaponry. The Kugelblitz utilized a fully enclosed, roughly ball-shaped turret with two 3 cm MK 103 borrowed from the ME-262 fighter plane that were fed by belt instead of magazines or clips like the FlaK guns before. The shape of the turret, combined with an improved version of the hydraulic turning mechanism of the Ostwind, made for an incredibly deadly package that could cover the airspace above it completely and inspired many imitators after the war. That being said, the 37mm AA gun was really showing its age and post-war AA guns went for either high-caliber autocannons or rotary guns. Only 5 prototypes were made by the end of the war, one of which actually saw combat in Thuringia, where a direct hit by a bomb blasted its turret off into a forest, where it was recovered in 1999.

===Halftracks and Armoured Cars===
*'''Kfz 13''': One of the first projects of the German armament programs that started after Hitler started to outright ignore the conditions of Versailles. Very much a stopgap solution based on a civilian car, the Adler Standard 6. Some of them partook in the invasions of Poland and France and were relegated to training purposes shortly after.
*'''Einheits-PKW''': A German take on the US army jeep, general purpose cars meant for transporting officers and reconnaissance. Existed in three weight classes. Became redundant after the introduction of the Kübelwagen, who could do everything an Einheits-PKW could do for cheaper and also could be made into an amphibious vehicle with only minor modifications. The heavy Einheits-PKW served as the basis for the wheeled armoured reconnaissance tank Sd.Kfz 221.
*'''Leichter Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz. 221/222/223''': The 221 was the standard reconnaissance vehicle of the Wehrmacht in the early days of the war. Open topped and armed with an MG 34, its weak armor of only 25 millimeters, as well as its armament proved insufficient during the French campaign. The vehicles would be refitted with the 20mm autocannon from the Panzer II and redesignated as the Sd.Kfz. 222. Leading vehicles would be equipped with high-capacity radios instead of any armament and designated as Leichter Funkwagen 223.
*'''Schwerer Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz 231/232/233''': The heavy alternative to the 222. A six (or eight)-wheeled tank whose development already started when the Weimar Republic was still alive and well. It was the primary reconnaissance vehicle for the tank divisions. The different designations refer to the armament. A 231 was armed with two MG 15s in a Panzer I turret, the 232 with a high-capacity radio, and the 233 with the short-barreled 7.5-cm tank gun from the earlier versions of the Panzer IV and the StuG III.
*'''Schwerer Panzerspähwagen Sd.Kfz 234 "Puma"''': A completely new wheeled tank, where the major improvement over the older 231s and 222s was that they were designed around being tanks instead of armoured cars. The first serially produced version, the 234/2 was armed with the long 5 cm-tank gun from the Panzer III in the turret of the never realized Leopard reconnaissance tank, later versions were open topped due to material shortages. This gave the vehicles firepower unprecedented for such a light vehicle and often lead to crews to take the fight to the enemy instead of scouting, with mixed results.
*'''Mittlerer Schützenpanzerwagen Sd.Kfz. 251''': The standard APC of the Wehrmacht throughout the entire war. A design so flexible that it could easily be used in just about any role any commander wanted it to serve with tons of variants of it existing. In the standard configuration, it could carry 10 men plus equipment in an open topped chassis. An innovation over competing APCs of the time was that soldiers could enter and leave the vehicle quickly through a door in the back. The 251 was originally supposed to form the backbone of the Panzergrenadier divisions, providing infantry support for tanks in a vehicle quick enough and armoured to deliver them directly into the fray, but the lack of industrial capacity as well as the complicated Schachtellaufwerk of its tracks limited their production rates. The later years of the war saw the 251 relegated to an absurd number of combat roles, from light SPAAG with a 2-cm-FlaK 36, AT gun carrier and even Infrared night vision reconnaissance. One of the more prolific and successful vehicles of the German Army in general, with 15.000 of them being built throughout the entirety of the war.

===Airplanes===
After the Great War, Germany was explicitly forbidden from having an air force by the Treaty of Versailles. Once the Nazis came to power, they had to rebuild from scratch. First covertly with layers of deniability by bankrolling glider clubs and similar, then once the components were ready they could easily assemble an air force. A lot of grief and death could have been spared the world if France and England put their feet down in the 1935 or so, alas they chickened out.

* '''Messerschmitt Bf 109:''' The Luftwaffe's mainstay fighter through WWII. Work began on the project shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, the first prototype flew in 1935 and it entered service in 1937, seeing action in the Spanish Civil War. It is also the most produced fighter of all time, with nearly 34,000. The variants of the 109 and the Spitfire competed with each other throughout the war for the title of "World's Best Fighter" as they were both continually upgraded. The 109 was small, very fast, a good turner (early on), a god tier climber, and was inexpensive to produce and maintain. The 109's speed and climb rate made it a top tier fighter in the early stages of the war. That said it was also short ranged and as the war progressed it started showing its age, gradually losing manoeuvrability as its engine power was increased.
[[File:Fw190d9jv 1.jpg|thumb|right|250px|When the Nazis applied their sense of style to aerospace engineering, the result was the Fw 190D-9, the second sexiest son of a bitch in the sky, second only to the SR-71]]
* '''Messerchmitt Bf 110:''' The archetype of the Luftwaffe's "destroyer" concept, and a flying monument to hubris and doubling down on bad decisions. In the late 1930s, German engineers believed that the limitations of engine technology gave multi-engine bombers an unbeatable speed advantage over single-engine fighters. Thus, this beast: a fast, twin-engined air superiority fighter armed with heavy cannons and defensive machine guns. "Destroyers" never worked particularly well in their intended role, being handily outmaneuvered by even early-war Allied fighters. Although the very concept was flawed, Bf 110s and other "destroyers" soldiered on throughout the war, in large part because Hermann Goering had a massive hard-on for them and couldn't be told "no". It also helped that the planes' large airframes were well-suited to other roles besides air superiority; "destroyers" could be converted into effective tactical bombers or night-fighters when equipped with early radar sets.
* '''Junkers Ju 87:''' Probably the airplane used by the Nazis any random person is going to know about due to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzv-8pJSqY the highly-distinctive sound of its ram-air sirens, known as "Jericho trumpets"] as it dived in for an attack run - whether intentionally or not depending on how stringently the media this person watched actually portrays the Ju 87 or if they're just using its cool sound. The Ju 87 or "Stuka" as it was also known as (short for ''Sturzkampfflugzeug'') was a dive bomber that quickly became a symbol of German airpower in the beginning of the war and was a key part of Germany's initial Blitzkrieg victories. A novel design, it was equipped with automatic pull-up dive brakes to ensure the aircraft recovered from its attack dive even if its pilot blacked out and wouldn't have been a feasible concept at all if its cabin wasn't pressurized and without a lot of other pilot protection advancements since only 2 G (Stuka pilots going in and out of a dive went through 8 or 9 G) could have killed a pilot in an unpressurized cabin. The Stuka proved to be so iconic that its nickname was lent to another piece of German military hardware - the Werfrahmen 40 multiple rocket launcher became known as the "Walking Stuka". However, as the war went on and Allied air superiority became the rule of almost every battle, the Stuka wasn't really produced anymore, as it was absolutely helpless against the many Allied fighters filling the air (though there were occasions that the Stuka got to bomb things like it was 1939 again when the Allied ground units outpaced their air support).
** By the way, the Jericho trumpets were attached to the plane for psychological warfare purposes and while it ''was'' pretty certain that ground units hearing the Jericho trumpets did indeed shit themselves and dive for cover, the usefulness of them were debatable considering they produced drag on the aircraft and provided an advance warning sound for ground troops to get down (and the helpfulness of getting down was why [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target Time On Target] artillery coordination was developed) - though if nothing else, the trumpets provided audible feedback on the plane's speed for its pilot.
* '''Focke-Wulf Fw 190''': When first introduced, the Fw 190 was hands-down the best fighter on the planet, due mostly to its very powerful radial engine. The 190A-3 was rocking 1,700 horsepower at a time when the Spitfire V had 1,450. As the war dragged on, BMW failed miserably to improve the engine and the 190 dropped in effectiveness until it was given a completely new engine in the Dora variant. The 190 was horrifically fast at low altitude, had extremely powerful armament, outstanding high speed handling, and had the best roll rate of any plane in the war. However, it was a very poor turner. This set of attributes made the 190 one of the best "boom and zoom" fighters, going toe to toe with Mustangs and Thunderbolts but once again falling victim to shit production, just as the Russians started getting [[Dakka|P-39 Airacobras]] from America that could take on anything the Nazis had as long as the fight was below 12,000'.
* '''Fieseler Fi 156 Storch''': A product of the early, successful parts of the war, the Storch was a dedicated observation plane for forward air control and was a popular choice for generals making visits to the front line. It was unique for its '''EXTREMELY''' low stall speed of 31 mph which even in the 21st century is still impressive for a two seater and almost 25% lower than the American equivalent (the Piper Cub). The design continued in production well into the 1960s in France and the USSR; modern replicas using even lighter, stronger materials are capable of flight with a takeoff run of as little as 30 meters. Its capabilities for close support were illustrated best during the final days of the war, when famed pilot Hanna Reitsch landed one on a building-lined street in Berlin and then successfully got it airborne again.
[[File:HE111Z.JPG|thumb|left|150px|One of Germany's attempts at packing enough dakka in explosive form]]
*'''Heinkel He 111''': The main German bomber from beginning to end, it was developed in the 1930s; the Nazis called it a high speed passenger aircraft to get around the Treaty of Versailles. It was first put to its real use in the Spanish Civil War. The He 111 was a twin engine medium bomber, cheap to make and maintain and able to carry up to 3,600 kilos of bombs. Early on it performed very well and was one of the most effective bombers in the world, but after 1941 the British and Americans began building larger and longer ranged four engine bombers like the Lancaster and the Flying Fortress in large quantities. The German engineers had a plan to counter these with an enhanced version of the HE 111 called the HE 111-Z that consisted of two 111 fuselages fused together on a central wing (which is just as retardedly awesome and awesomely retarded as it sounds) therefore gathering twice the bombs and weaponry of a regular bomber while being powered by 5 engines. They did manage to make it fly but it remained a prototype. Note: Actually it was supposed to be used as a glider tug for the massive Messerschmitt ME-321 Gigant cargo glider and the proposed Junkers JU-322 Mammut.
*'''Heinkel He 177 "Greif"''': The only heavy bomber the Germans were fielding and the perfect counterexample for people who cannot stop blabbering about supposed German technical superiority. It was an attempt to combine the concepts of a heavy long-range bomber like the British Halifax or the American B-17 with the dive-bomb-capabilities of the Stuka. To that end, the plane was made deliberately heavier and had two engines, that were actually four that drove two propellers. Even though it became obvious very quickly that the concept of a heavy dive bomber was impossible, the Germans kept building them, which only revealed much more pressing concerns with the design, the most notable of which was that the engine cooling system never worked right and guzzled coolant at very high rates. When the coolant ran out, the engines spontaneously combusted. German pilots loathed the damn thing so much that they gave it grim nicknames like "Burning coffin" and "Imperial Torch". When it didn't burst into flames, it was an alright plane, but mostly used for short-range reconnaissance flights, supplying the trapped 6th Army in Stalingrad, and naval bombing. It was eventually retired in 1944, when fuel shortages meant that they could no longer take off.
* '''Messerschmitt ME-163 Komet''': Before the Nazis mastered jet engines, they toyed around with rocket-based fighters instead. The Komet was a tiny, zippy little fighter plane, and the first plane to travel faster than 1000 kph. It was also the first and last rocket-powered fighter, as they only succeeded to shoot down about eighteen Allied planes at the cost of ten crashed Komets. This was because despite being far faster than anything the Allies could field, the Komet proved very temperamental: it was difficult to control while building speed, its fuel was dangerous to handle, its landing gear could bounce off and smack the plane, its cannons were too slow to keep up, and it was vulnerable as it glided back to earth. Still, for its time, it was the only fighter capable of threatening the Allies' high-altitude bombers, until the ME-262 came about. The fuel, being hypergolic, had a nasty tendency to melt the test pilots, the plane itself, and pretty much everything it touched. Which, oddly enough, was still less of a OSHA hazard that what follows...
[[File:ME 262.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The ME-262: Nazi Germany's state of the art sky shark]]
* '''Ba 349 Natter''': The meaning of "double down" if Luftwaffe logistics was a poker game. Even crazier than the Komet, Natter was little more than a [[Grot Bomm Launcha]] with unguided rocket batteries up the nose. Adding to the madness was that it was designed to be built with unskilled labor, using wood. Yes, wood. Yes, the British Mosquito was made of wood, but the Mosquito was built by professionals with great care, and was not '''rocket powered!''' What's worse, its fuel was [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-peroxide-peroxides T-Stoff] (a highly caustic solution of hydrogen peroxide and a stabilizing chemical) mixed with C-Stoff (a hydrazine hydrate/methanol/water mixture). This shit spontaneously combusted whenever you looked at it funny, so extreme care was required to handle both chemicals; leave it to Nazis to use fuel made out of the second most dangerous and villainous compounds (See N-Stoff bellow for the stuff even they thought was crazy). The Walter motor generated about 1,700 kg (3,740 lb) of thrust but a loaded Ba 349A weighed more than 1,818 kg (4,000 lb) so liftoff required more power, like a rail launcher or catapult. Simply put, the design was fuck-nut retarded from scratch, killing every test pilot that had the misfortune to set foot in the thing, and it was canceled before it was used, not that a plane nearing the speed of sound made out of shitty wood firing unguided rockets wouldn't hit fuck-all.
* '''[[ME-262 Sturmvogel|Messerschmitt ME-262]]''': The Me 262 was the world's first operational jet fighter and one of the most advanced aircraft of WWII. It was very fast, able to achieve a speed of 900km/h (in comparison, a P51 Mustang had a top speed of about 700km/h) and carried four 30mm cannons. The latter was its most important feature because around that time, a single HE autocannon hit meant "instant death" for any aircraft facing them, forcing them to exploit 262's slow turning speed. Quality suffered due to a lack of high quality steel, which severely limited the shelf life of their engines to twelve hours. Even so, it was incredibly effective against bombers and made Allied fighter pilots shit themselves when they showed up. Much like every other advanced Nazi weapon, it arrived too late (in part due to delays involving the Nazi top brass-thank God for Hitler on not deciding whether it should be a tactical bomber or a fighter-) and in too few numbers to influence the course of the war, though it certainly helped spur development of jet aircraft on both sides of the Iron Curtain postwar. The Japanese built a rather similar jet fighter in the Nakajima Kikka, but that never got beyond prototype.
[[File:Heinkel He 162 CASM 2012 5.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The "Volksjäger" aka. "Spatz" or "Salamander". Tiny. Deadly.]]
*'''He-162''': With a max speed of 900 kph, 2 centerline 20mm cannons, and a 39 lbs/ft^2 wingloading, the He-162 was almost invincible in combat. Where the 262 was an interceptor, the He-162 was designed as a cheap, easy to build and fly air superiority fighter. It was also designed to be piloted by children. Developed as a Volksjäger (”people's fighter”) the He-162 was a last ditch design meant to be piloted by the high school aged Hitler Youth as Nazi Germany had almost completely run out of regular pilots at the time. Amazingly enough despite the incredibly short time between design and full production, it turned out to be a solid design; both cheap and easy to build (most of the frame was made of wood) and a dangerous opponent (Allied testing after the war showed that a large number of them would have been a major pain in the rear to deal with). The only point where the "Spatz" didn't deliver was the 'easy to fly' part; like all early jet airplanes it required an experienced pilot at the stick and being able to bench press to just turn the damn thing (which was a problem to everyone until the lessons of the Korean War).

===Ships===
As a general rule, Hitler dumped most of Germany's money into the ''Heer'' (army) and ''Luftwaffe'' (air force), leaving the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) out in the cold, so to speak, so they were not overly fond of him. (Although Hitler realised he wouldn't be able to build up a navy to rival the English quickly, so he prioritised planes and tanks over ships to seize land and industrial capacity at first, which kind of made sense, at least in his delusional dreams where Great Britain wouldn't have dared to come kick him in the balls if a war was to break out.) Hitler actually liked the idea of a huge navy and authorized Plan Z in 1937, which would have built a truly massive fleet to fight the Royal Navy in about 1945, as the building up to that point was designed to fight France, and predated the Nazis' rise to power.

Like so many of Der Fuhrer's calls, it is a controversial matter and bound to create much [[skub| Skub]]. On one hand, German submarines proved to be a deadly asset in the Atlantic, wreaking absolute goddamn havoc among the convoys directed to Britain and sinking more ships than all the Kriegsmarine's surface units combined, apparently giving credit to Admiral Dönitz's idea of winning the war through the U-Boats alone. On the other, the lack of success from the aforementioned surface fleet was almost exclusively HIS fault and his fault alone as, for starters, Hitler moved too fast with his plans of invasion like an impatient child on Christmas morning and started the war before the Kriegsmarine had enough surface units ready to deploy. Then [[What|he ordered the resources that were being poured into the construction of said ships to be directed towards other projects, including building tanks and airplanes]], ordering the construction to be halted and leaving Admiral Raeder with a severe shortage of materials and not enough ships to fight the British on equal terms or provide escorts to his capital ships (to give you an example of what a stupid idea that was, he ordered to stop working on the aircraft carrier ''Graf Zeppelin'' when it was about 85% complete, [[fail|and that could have saved a certain flagship's ass if it had been put into service]]) and then, for fear of losing the few ships he had, ordered the entire surface fleet to stay in port and not go out on sorties, and to slap the shit icing on the shit cake, he seemingly forgot all of the above and declared the surface fleet a complete failure because they weren't sinking enemy ships...without considering the fact that [[fail|HE and his orders were the reasons why his ships couldn't do anything]].

Overall, Hitler's utter incompetence and lack of knowledge about naval warfare doomed the Kriegsmarine and left nobody happy: Dönitz ended up not having enough submarines to fight the long war and Raeder ended up with not enough ships to meet the Royal Navy head on, although the few ships that saw combat inflicted heavy blows to the enemy and left one hell of a mark in history, fighting against impossible odds and always at a disadvantage, but refusing to surrender or go down without putting up remarkable resistance. Admittedly, it's easier to speak in favor of the Kriegsmarine due to a lack of major atrocities beyond unrestricted submarine warfare (also engaged in by Allied forces) and slave labor at a low rate compared to other forces. Raeder and Dönitz were no saints; indeed, Hitler thought so highly of Dönitz that he put him in charge of Germany before he committed sudoku in Berlin. It is however fair to say that their obedience to Hitler really fucked the navy over, hard. Also Hitler liking Dönitz only made him the first name to pop up to replace Göring who had offered to surrender to the Americans on Hitler's behalf, which Martin Bormann manipulated Hitler into believing that Göring had tried to coup him so Hitler likely just named the first Marshall or Grand Admiral that he thought of. Even then, Dönitz was suppossed to only be Head of Government while Goebbels was made Head of State, though Goebbels and his wife becoming an heroes a day after the drug addicted dictator painted the floor red made that a moot point.

* '''U-Boote''': U-Boote, (short for "''Unterseeboot''" or "underwater boat") are submarines. They were used in devastating effect to cut off Britain from supplies from the outside world by having "wolfpacks" of U-boats patrol around shipping lanes and sink any enemy ship they found. Their other uses involved seeking and destroying enemy battleships, placing automated weather stations all over the world (helpful for Kriegsmarine ships) and dropping off a substantial number of spies in Britain and even America, most of which got caught and subsequently replaced by British spies (some of the ways the British bamboozled the Nazis, like the moment the Germans gave a British agent the Iron Cross are just hilarious). As a consequence of all this, they worked very well in the first years of the war, sinking huge (and I mean HUGE) numbers of ships with very few boats (only about 15 U-boats, at most, were out at sea at any given time in the first year or so). Being such an absolute pain in the arse, the British thus invested a fuckton of money and manpower into hunting and killing said U-boats, and finally got very, very good at it, through a combination of new technology, a [[Wikipedia:Western Approaches Command|massive information network]] for coordinating defenses, and [https://www.google.com/amp/s/paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/the-wargaming-wrens-of-the-western-approaches-tactical-unit/amp/ navy wargamers] [[awesome|developing new strategies to counter the U-boats]]. Right when more and more U-boats were being produced, as German high command realized their potential, the British began sinking ever more of them (Example: in all of 1941, 35 boats were lost, in 1943, 244 boats were sunk, with 41 in May alone). Admiral Karl Dönitz, a former U-boat man himself, loved the U-boats and built one of the largest structures on earth at the time to house them: the German U-boat pens in captured France. U-boats had been used in the First World War, and their campaign of sinking any ship, even those with US citizens on them (even after the German government made a very public warning to the US that boarding a ship to England was a very bad idea), that approached England led to the neutral America to join the Entente and for them to be the last straw on the German back to end it.
**'''''Type VII''''': The most common type and with 703 ships in total also the most-produced submarine model in history. Generally well regarded as a very good design, it was rather nimble for its tonnage, was able to dive extremely quickly, and could go deeper than even the designers anticipated (U-95, the famous submarine from ''Das Boot'', reportedly went as deep as 290 meters after being hit by depth charges, and even though it was quite taxing on the ship itself, the crew survived in full and made it back to port). Its major downfall (as seems to be the norm with most Nazi equipment) was that it wasn't used in its intended role; the Type VIIC submarines in particular weren't designed for long-range operations and their firepower against anything larger than a merchant vessel was negligible. They were, at best, torpedo boats that could also dive, and only the Fall of France even made it even possible for them in the first place to operate in the mid-Atlantic as they did, even though their main theater was supposed to be the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Channel. Incompetent leadership as well as the aforementioned efforts of the British in fighting them led to the Type VII becoming obsolete by 1942 and a major bleed of trained Seamen and Naval officiers.
**'''''Type IX''''': The Type VII's bigger sister, and the actual ocean-going submarine of the Kriegsmarine. Much more spacious than the Type VII, and designed to operate as far away as the ''fucking Indian Ocean''. Quite a few of them remained a considerable threat due to their elusiveness and extreme range; multiple Type IXs made it as far as New York City and sank convoys there. As is tradition, incompetent leadership fucked this type and their crews; Dönitz was notoriously iron-fisted about keeping the Type VII wolfpacks in use and very narrow-minded as far as new technology goes. The Type IX was for the task at hand superior to its smaller cousin in every way, but materiel shortages and limited dockyards meant it was damned to take a step back behind the Type VII.
**'''''Type XXI''''': A technological marvel that came at the very end of the war, and too late to be used by the Nazis themselves, but these babies were by far the most advanced type of submarine devised at the time. Primarily designed to operate almost entirely under water and as trials with the finished ships by the Allies after the war showed, more than capable of that. The Type XXI ''Elektroboot'' marks a significant shift in submarine doctrine across the globe, as it proved that submarines were more than capable of operating far away from a port without needing any assistance while staying almost completely invisible. The modern nuclear submarines of the US and USSR are direct decendants of the Type XXI for that very reason. Unfortunately for the Nazis and fortunately for everyone else they had serious problems in their construction as Albert Speer decided [[wat|to farm out hull construction to a steel bridge company to speed up production]] and they never scored a kill.
* '''''Gorch Fock''''': The first of a series of five ships built very early in Germany's rearmament program, when the Nazis were still uncertain what might provoke the allies. Not in any way a warship, these were sail tallships, the last, largest, and finest ever made (although their engine systems were designed to train sailors for operating U-Boats). After the war all the ships of the class were seized as war trophies, notably the ''Horst Wessel'' which was taken by the United States becoming the ''USCGC Eagle''. The modern day ''Gorch Fock'' of the Bundesmarine is a new ship built from the same plans in 1958 and remains a training vessel to this day.
* '''''Deutschland Class Cruiser''''': The archetypal battlecruiser, the ''Deutschlands'' were the first new large ships designed by Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, and were carefully designed to get the most out of a very liberal interpretation of what the treaty permitted. Fast and heavily armed, they were ideal for commerce raiding and all three were used in this role. Of the class, the ''Admiral Scheer'' had the most successful career, sinking the most shipping tonnage of any surface ship in WWII, while the ''Graf Spee'' would get in a shootout with three British cruisers and be forced to scuttle in the harbor of Montevideo.
* '''''Admiral Hipper-Class Cruiser''''': A result of the British-German Treaty of 1935, supposed to cross the gap between the Bismarck-class battleships and the lighter Deutschland class. The most famous of these was the ''Prinz Eugen'', which accompanied the ''Bismarck'' on his fateful journey and was the only heavy German warship that survived the war intact. The planners of the Kriegsmarine called for a design that was exceptionally sturdy, and the result fulfilled these expectations more than they could have imagined; after the war, it was taken by the US Navy and used in the series of nuclear tests in American Samoa, [[Wat|where it survived all three hydrogen bomb blasts with only minor damage]], but it was so irradiated that the US towed it off the coast of the Bikini Atoll. Here it sank, after the propellers had dislodged as a result of the nuclear blasts in 1946. Its wreck is still above the surface, since the water where it sank isn't very deep.
* '''''Scharnhorst and Gneisenau''''':
* '''''Bismarck and Tirpitz''''': <s>A pair of battleships with guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees. As well as inspiration for a kickass Sabaton song </s> Memes aside, those were the largest battleships built by any European power and two of the biggest in the World; although not the biggest (''Yamato'' was heavier and around ten meters longer), or the ones with the most illustrious career (''Warspite'' served and kicked asses in both World Wars), they were by far the deadliest and best battleships around during the war, so powerful and dangerous to make Winston Churchill himself shit his pants. Much of the material regarding them as "technologically outdated", "useless" or inferior to their contemporaries are just results of the heavy discrediting campaign the Allies came up with during and after the war, so that everyone would think that "anything built by Nazi Germany = inferior to anything American and British and thus worthless", when that couldn't be farther from the truth: the ''Bismarck'' fought, with only the heavy cruiser ''Prinz Eugen'' at his side, the battleship HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and the battlecruiser HMS ''Hood'' and [[awesome|literally one-shotted the ''Hood'' after just five minutes of combat by hitting her in the aft magazine, with subsequent explosion breaking the ship in half]] and killed all but three of its crew, then pointed his guns on the ''Prince of Wales'' and mauled her badly enough to force her to withdraw; at that point, the ''Bismarck'' could have won the entire war for Germany. Alone. And that's for three simple reasons: A) Britain was already on the brink of starvation thanks to the German submarines and raiders, so a ship like the ''Bismarck'' left unchecked and free to hunt down convoys in the Atlantic for three months would have meant the UK would have been forced to surrender lest its population died for a lack of food; B) ''Hood'' had been always presented as the most powerful ship in the world and was the most loved ship of the Royal Navy; the fact that she had been sunk in an engagement where she technically had the upper hand in terms of power (since they were a battleship and a battlecruiser against a battleship and a heavy cruiser, even though the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Prinz Eugen'' were more modern) was an extremely heavy blow to the already strained British morale, that started raising questions as to the ability of the Royal Navy to actually counter the Germans' ambitions at sea; C) the Royal Navy lacked a ship powerful enough to confront the ''Bismarck'' in battle, without numbers on its side. It should be no surprise then that Churchill ordered every available ship to chase the ''Bismarck'' and destroy it, resulting in a fleet of more than 60 SHIPS searching the Atlantic to destroy him (and before you ask, yes, it is the biggest naval formation ever assembled to hunt down a single ship), that after three days of hunting managed to track him down, cripple him and then have a 5v1 engagement in which the Bismarck was shelled without mercy, [[awesome|yet still refused to sink]]. They tried torpedoes. [[awesome|And he still didn't sink]]. In the end it was left to the ''Bismarck'''s own crew to scuttle him, since they had no way of fighting back after the beating the ship had taken. All the while the ''Tirpitz'' proved to be another real bitch to kill, just like his big brother: after the ''Bismarck'' sinking, the ''Tirpitz'' received reinforced deck armor, even more advanced systems and a shitload more of AA guns to fight off enemy aircraft and she was considered so much of a threat that the British admiralty was forced to keep three ''King George V''-class battleships at Scapa Flow at any time and the Americans had to send the ''Iowa'', the ''Washington'' and the ''Alabama'' in case "The Beast", as Churchill called her, decided to move. After ship attacks failed to damage her, the RAF spent an entire year attacking her, but without results, forcing them to use almost [[what|6 tonnes bombs]] (the Tallboy) to destroy her, [[awesome|but ''Tirpitz'' survived even these]], until November 1944, when one of said bombs hit one of the ship's magazines and finally ssnk it. The only real "flaws" of the ships were the three-propeller system that made them difficult to maneuver at low speed and impossible if one of the rudders was to be destroyed, and the fact they were so massive that there were very few facilities capable of hosting them; in truth, the ''Bismarck'' class represented the very pinnacle of battleship design, with a perfect balance of overwhelming firepower, incredibly efficient armor protection (seriously, [[what|40% of their weight was dedicated to the armor]] and their armored belt was around 170 meters long, meaning that most of the ships were protected by it) and speed and their flaws were far less dangerous in a combat situation that those found on every other modern battleship of the war: the ''King George V''s were slower and both them and the ''Richelieu''s were uselessly complicated and suffered from severe mechanical failures and hydraulic problems (not to mention they couldn't shoot backwards), the ''Yamato''s were so big and heavy that they were impossible to maintain, furthermore their guns and shells were highly ineffective, their armor scheme was a total mess and their radar was much less advanced, the ''Iowa''s, while faster, with better technology and (only slightly) more powerful guns, had a terrible weakness in the form of extremely poor armor reliability to withstand both shells and torpedoes and that was discovered only months after the four battleships had been fully built and thus was impossible to rectify, a flaw they shared with both the ''North Carolina'' class and the ''South Dakota'' class, only that those two were also slower than the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Littorio''s were completely unreliable, lacking radar systems, their guns were extremely inaccurate and also had a very short lifespan.
**A counterpoint: Frankly, none of the battleship circle-jerking above really matters in the end, because the era of battleships would come to a sudden and violent end on December 7, 1941. Indeed, it was an obsolete goddamn biplane launched from the carrier ''Ark Royal'' that doomed ''Bismarck'' by nailing it in the stern with a torpedo and jamming its steering. Everything after that was inevitable. Likewise, the fact that ''Bismarck'' sank ''Hood'' in eight minutes should not be taken as proof of its utter superiority. ''Hood'' was an old ship with thin armor that hadn't seen a significant update in years; this is kind of like someone bragging that their brand-new BMW is faster than their neighbor's twenty-year-old Vauxhall Astra. It also isn't surprising that it beat ''Prince of Wales''; that ship was fresh out of the yards, with all the attendant teething problems thereof, and there were civilian technicians aboard calibrating its guns even as it went into battle. Also, any idea that ''Bismarck'' could have singlehandedly won the war is dubious at best and laughable at worst. There is no way that ''Bismarck'' would have been allowed to roam free for three months; the Royal Navy was stretched thin, sure, but as already noted above, killing ''Bismarck'' was a top priority for them, especially after ''Hood'' was sunk. They would have (and did) devoted whatever resources were necessary to sinking it. Moreover, ''Bismarck'' was under strict orders not to engage any major enemy warships unless it was absolutely necessary to sink a convoy. There proved to be a damn good reason for this, because ''Prince of Wales'' put a hole through ''Bismarck'''s bow that breached its forward fuel tanks and flooded several key compartments, forcing its admiral to call off the mission and head for France. Thus, its greatest and only victory also forced it to abort its mission before it had seen or fired a single shot at any merchant ships, meaning that it was an operational and strategic loss for the Germans. Losing ''Hood'' was a blow to British pride, but it was ultimately a relatively minor loss in the grand strategic scheme. ''Bismarck'', meanwhile, represented 25% of the Kriegsmarine’s strength in capital ships, and its sinking meant that ''Tirpitz'' and the rest of the surface fleet were confined to port for the duration of the war on Hitler's direct orders. It doesn't matter if your battleship is a one-to-one match for the enemy's battleships when the enemy has more of them and is perfectly willing to send all of them after yours to make sure it's dead; that's a losing game no matter how you slice it.

* '''''Graf Zeppelin''''': The Nazis' sole attempt at building an aircraft carrier that was a weird carrier/cruiser hybrid. Not the best idea because having the heavy guns meant it could field less planes and having fewer planes meant that it would punch below its weight in shooting matches with other surface assets, though this is theoretical. It was never completed, due to the squabbling between Göring and the Admiralty as to whose department it belonged to and the ever decreasing need of an aircraft carrier in continental Europe. Despite never being ''officially'' cancelled until the end of the war, frequent changes to the design and the planes that were supposed to be used with it as well as severe materiel shortages made sure that construction was put on hold in 1943. By that time the about 85% complete ship was moved from port to port in the Baltic Sea. The Soviets captured it in 1945, used it for target practice and ultimately sunk it in 1947 off the coast of Danzig (or Gdansk in Polish), where its wreck was rediscovered in 2006.

===Wunderwaffen===
Of all the technology the Nazis used, the Wunderwaffen are the thing that caught the imagination of the world and started the "Superior German Engineering" meme. As a preface, civilian engineering is great in Germany. Military? Well... you'll see in a bit. This is the place any of the "Nazi Super Science" stuff goes. You want lightning guns? Wunderwaffen. Super tanks? Wunderwaffen. Moon rockets? Wunderwaffen. [[Wolfenstein|Hitler in a giant robot spider powered by the souls of the damned?]] Wunderwaffen.

A lot of people argue that things like the Wunderwaffen and to a lesser degree the Gen 3 heavy tanks like the Tiger and Panther were wastes of time, money and resources at a point where the Nazis desperately could not afford to spend all three. These same people argue that it would have been preferable to produce more Panzer IVs and StuGs then produce expensive Tigers or Wunderwaffen. The truth is, as usual, a lot more nuanced. Take a quick look at even a modern map of Europe and you will quickly see the same hard truth that has confronted generations of Holy Roman/Prussian/German/Nazi/NATO strategists: Germany is small. It simply doesn't have the same kind of territory and resources at its disposal that Russia or America have. They could ''maybe'' match England or France one-on-one, but both had global empires that when factored in meant that Germany was dwarfed in the resource game (hence why trying to blockade England into submission was such a critical part of their strategy during both world wars). There is, frankly, no way Germany could ever have produced enough tanks to match the hordes of Shermans or onslaught of T-34s that the Americans and Soviets produced, and there was also no way for them to keep all those tanks fueled. It is with this mindset that one can understand the reason for the Wunderwaffen and Gen 3 heavy tanks. If there is no way to produce as many tanks as your enemy, your only option is to pack so much power into each individual war machine that they can achieve favorable kill/death ratios to make up the difference. At the core, it's Space Marine logic, a few stronger units outfighting many times their number. (This was also the idea Japan had, since they faced the same problem as Germany; unfortunately for them, their industrial infrastructure was even more gimped and dysfunctional than Nazi Germany's, and the result was that while they produced some absolute units like the Mitsubishi Zero, the Long Lance torpedo, and the ''Yamato'' and ''Musashi'', they could never hope to match America's productive capacity when it got going.)

When put that way, it makes the Wunderwaffe sounds like a good idea in theory. In practice they turned out not to be, due to many different factors, including technical limitations that could not be overcome with the available equipment of the time and sheer nepotism and human stupidity (more on this below). It is indeed true that the different wonder weapon projects were on the bleeding edge of their epoch's technology when envisioned, next generation devices which most of the scientists of other nations had been thinking about/started to toy with, but had yet to reach the prototype stage, much less mass production. Yes, the Germans pioneered a lot of things that were afterwards [[Blood Ravens|acquired and adapted]] by the Allies and the Soviet Union. The problem was, at the start of the war, the technology to make said Wunderwaffen '''efficient''' weapons (a real guidance system for the V1 and V2, for instance, and a decent fuel valve for V-1s to avoid engine death after a hundred turns) simply wasn't there yet, and once the war got into full-swing and the attendant drain on fighting a multi-front war along with the effects of Allied strategic bombing became dominant, the Germans never managed to close the gap. All that the Wunderwaffen '''could''' have been agreed upon having accomplished is the initial psychological shock upon deployment (such as the unstoppable V-2 launches), which wasn't much of a big deal after the human mind would adapt to the new threat.

On the negative side, while the German quest for military innovation lead to a number of advances and efficient war machines that did have everyone else scrambling to catch up, most were nothing more than a drain on Germany's already limited resources. Hitler had a documented fascination with anything that screamed "German Supremacy" and was willing to throw money at any such proposal. Thus, for every successful development that led to something like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 (which was a very good plane and a potential game changer); you had more half-successes like the Tiger/VK3X.XX series/Ferdinand-Elefant/... (which were decent enough machines in the field but were horribly costly and maintenance-intensive) and all the associated waste of time and resources that went into completely hare-brained projects like the ''Ratte''. Later on, once the multi-front war turned against Germany, it turned into an arguable desperation for something, anything to one-shot win-the-war. As you can imagine with four hands strangling Germany, one smelling of vodka, one of bourbon and apple pie, one of tea and gin and the last of white bread and frog legs, these weapons were developed and produced with a shortage of resources and time and the lack of quality only exacerbated their various shortcomings and strained an already breaking economy. They were rather dismissively called "voo-vah" by Allied troops, and they allegedly thanked Hitler for ultimately shortening the war by authorizing their construction and wasting Germany's precious time and resources. Perhaps ironically, the Wunderwaffen did help to shorten the war, since those resources may have been better used on propping up a failing wartime economy, or building "boring but effective" war materiel. As with anything on this wiki, YMMV and you're encouraged to do your own research (and find a lot of really interesting stories in the process; did you know that at point-blank range, the standard 88mm AP round could rip a furrow through the entire length of the roof of a M4 turret, peeling open the steel like a centre-parting in hair? SCIENCE!)

It's worth noting here that the Germans and the Allies (particularly the Americans) devoted equally insane amounts of resources to developing crazy sci-fi weapons during the war; the course of post-war history shows which side bet on the winning horses. While the Germans farted around with jets and giant cannons, the Americans were conducting the Manhattan Project and creating nuclear weapons, (and building the B-29 Superfortress, a plane so advanced that it cost just as much as the bombs it would deliver to Japan). Ultimately, the Germans' wide-reaching experimentation was a classic example of crippling overspecialization, developing dozens of potentially war-winning technologies and giving none of them the attention they needed.

* '''V1 flying bomb:''' The V1 is considered as an early version of the cruise missile and was used in the bombing of England, since a city was pretty much all they COULD accurately hit (and even then). The V1's used an early version of a pulse jet and they were quickly called "buzz bombs," "doodlebugs," or "farting furies" to discourage people from calling them "robot bombs," which gives the impression that they were unstoppable. Fun fact about the V1: it uses the same fuel as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle type of beetle] uses to defend itself. It was infamously known for cutting its engine as it dived (due to a fuel flow error), leading to it suddenly becoming silent just before it smashed into the ground. Its entire "guidance computer" was nothing more than a simple gyroscope system to keep it level and flying, plus a small spinning propeller in the nose that would set the flaps to dive the V1 into the ground once it revolved a certain amount of times (calculated to have covered the distance to the target city). Far too inaccurate to be used against a military target, the V1 was ultimately a gigantic waste. After the war though, with American and Soviet resources and improved controls, it founded the basis of modern tactical bombardment. Strategic? See right below.
*'''V2 rocket:''' The V2 was the world's first ballistic missile and spacefaring craft. The scientists that developed it, including Wernher von Braun, went on to work for NASA and developed the booster rockets on the Saturn V launch vehicle (so Nazi science really did put a man on the moon in the end). Unlike its brother the V1, it was utterly unstoppable by AA; not a single inbound V-2 was ever shot down by antiaircraft fire, owing to it moving at 3 times the speed of sound. As detailed in Thomas Pynchon's novel ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (the book's name referring to the ballistic trajectory of the rockets), the V-2 brought a new terror to late-war London: as the rockets impacted well beyond the speed of sound, the first sign of an attack was an explosion on the ground, ''followed'' by "a screaming across the sky." It was the first vehicle to ever reach space (but not the first object, that honor falls to Imperial German artillery in WW1, specifically the Paris Gun), from a vertical test launch in 1943, and after the war it was very frequently reused by the Americans (with extra shit often strapped on top) as an early spacecraft, with grainy images returned from suborbital flights in space as early as 1946. Less of a waste than the V-1 but even so, without a decent guidance system it had a hard time hitting England as well as the dubious distinction of being the only weapon which killed more people in its manufacture than it did enemies. (It achieved this distinction by being constructed in concentration camps, where prisoners' lives were freely exchanged for productivity. It's worth remembering that many of the "good" Germans that came to the US and NASA had to ''literally'' step over corpses to get to their Nazi rocket factories during the war.)
*''' Ruhrstahl X-4 and Panzerabwehrrakete X-7 Rotkäppchen rocket:''' The X-4 and X-7 were the first wire-guided missiles (by which they were guided by electrical signals sent down guidance wires spooled out behind the rocket in flight) to be developed, and an example that in some cases Wunderwaffen really did point the way to the future.
* '''Horten 229 and Horten 18:''' Commonly known as the "Nazi stealth fighter," this twin-turbojet flying-wing fighter was found in a secret workshop hangar by invading American forces. Nobody knows for certain if the Horten 229 was originally built for stealth, but its all-wood construction and smooth radar-fouling shape, coupled with what was claimed to be radar-absorbing paint on the outer shell, makes a fairly clear case for a stealth aircraft (Though [[Wikipedia:de Havilland Mosquito|the Allies had already been fielding wooden aircraft for years]] and the Germans knew radar worked poorly on them, as well as the "radar absorbing paint" being tested by Lockheed and being found to have no appreciable effect on radar returns). The concept that the 229 was build around was the "3x1000": 1000kph, 1000km range, 1000kg bomb payload. This, in 1943. During test flights, it outperformed the Me. 262 while using exactly the same engines. It was probably going to be used to fly through or knock out the British radar array in a second, never-realized "Battle of Britain 2: Electromagnetic Boogaloo." The Horten 18 was an even bigger flying wing, with a huge wingspan and 6 jet engines. This one was designed to be an intercontinental bomber, intending to hit American cities as the Western Front made Hitler [[rage|angrier and angrier]]. The Horten 18 was never built, but the 229 was rather successfully test flown. Both planes looked quite a bit like the modern B2 stealth bomber, which isn't much of a surprise considering the Americans hauled the Horten 229 prototype back home to be studied in a secret Air Force base (where it is today).
**The reason the Horten's design belongs under the Wunderwaffen entry and not up in Aircraft is the following: it simply wouldn't have worked with 1940's technology. Even though tailless gliders weren't particularly harder to fly than 'regular' ones and the powered prototype was flown successfully a couple of times; testing after the war demonstrated that the time's stabilizing hard-/software was simply not up to the task of preventing fatal losses of control on tailless airframes (and especially within the context of a military operation). It took 50-odd years and ''a lot'' of technological improvements for its spiritual (hah!) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit successor] to be successfully fielded in operation.
[[File:Maus_Trials_1944.png|350px|thumb|right|[[Approved_anime#Gaming_anime|Panzer vor]], motherfuckers.]]
* '''''Maus'':''' The ''Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus'' ("mouse") is the largest tank ever built. A 200 metric ton monster with a 128mm (5 inch) main gun and a 75mm co-axial gun in the turret, it crept along at a blistering 13 kph and sucked down liters of gas per kilometer. The most amazing thing is that (beyond not cancelling the project on sight like anyone withing hailing distance of sanity would) ''they actually managed to build this tank''. Five were ordered, but only two prototypes and one turret were built. It was originally going to be called the ''Mäuschen'' (Little Mouse), but because the Germans liked schadenfreude more than irony, just ''Maus'' stuck. Realistically, no Allied tank then in existence would have had the firepower to penetrate the Maus; only high-caliber antitank guns and artillery fire would have done the job. However, it was so big that there was no road or bridge sturdy enough to take it, so it had to have special snorkeling gear to get past rivers. Its sheer size and painfully slow top speed would have made it prime bait for bombers (which is one of the reasons why modern militaries don't use heavy tanks anymore). While neither side had antitank weapons strong enough to penetrate its armor, it's more then likely that it would never have gotten there even if it was built. It's not quite a [[Baneblade]], but they were getting there. The Nazis really didn't want anyone to get this monster, so they blew up the complete first model. The second Maus, armed with the first one's turret, was towed back to Russia by invading forces, and currently resides in the Kubinka Tank Museum for all to see.
* '''''Ratte'':''' The ''Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte'' ("rat") was an even larger tank, or "land cruiser", since it was essentially a naval warship on tracks. Never actually built, despite being ordered by Hitler. [[Wat|The Ratte was to be a 1000 metric ton tank, mounting a naval turret with two 280mm guns, a 128mm anti tank gun, eight 20mm FlaK cannons, and two 15mm aircraft cannons]], surpassing even the Eleven Barrels Of Hell of the Baneblade. It would have been so heavy that it would have destroyed every road it used, would have wrecked towns just by running through them, and it would have collapsed every bridge it crossed. It needed two U-BOAT motors to get around, or maybe EIGHT 20 CYLINDER ENGINES. Not surprisingly, Albert Speer canned the project (mostly because a single bomber dropping a 500kg bomb on top of the thing would fuck its day up immensely), which is a great shame because A. Building and maintaining such a monster would have posed a noticeable strain on Germany's logistics, thus accelerating their defeat (it would have required about six months worth of the Reich's ENTIRE STEEL PRODUCTION just to build the damm thing) and B. It would have made the most [[awesome]] museum piece in the known universe.
*'''''Karl-Gerät''''' The ''Karl-Gerät'' is one of the very few real world weapons ever built that is BIGGER then its 40K equivalent. Karl weighed 124 tons, was armed with a 60cm (24 inch) gun that fired a shell weighing more than a ton, and could hit a target between four and ten kilometers away depending on the size of its shell. This thing was the largest self-propelled gun ever made and it could give even a (admittedly small) Titan pause for thought. These things were actually used in combat to decent effect in Warsaw, but had mixed results in other deployments. It fucked up any target royally when it hit, most famously the Prudential in Warsaw, but the Gerät was so big and slow that it had to be disassembled and put on special tractor trailers to move around (one hell of a logistical operation) and and was moved any real distance by train. Its shells were carried by special turretless Panzer IIIs. Surprisingly one of these things survived the war and was captured by the Russians. It's currently in the Kubinka Tank Museum alongside the sole surviving Maus and assorted other war trophies.
[[File:Hitler-gustav-railway-gun.jpg|350px|thumb|right|If there was a fine line between [[Dakka]], [[Titan|massive overcompensation]], and [[Rape|"Holy shit, Greg! Is that a fucking landship on rails!?",]] then the Gustav sure hits the spot.]]
*'''''Schwerer Gustav'':''' An excellent example of the brilliance and impracticality of Wunderwaffen, ''Schwerer Gustav'' was a railway gun that resembled a cruiser fucking a freight train, built in the late 30s to defeat the Maginot Line. Two were built, the other called "Dora." It was a descendant of the German Empire's 1918 "Paris gun," a smaller gun ("only" 238mm) built in World War One to shell Paris from Germany, 120 kilometers away (a range so far they had to account for the curvature of the Earth when firing the damn thing). Gustav was designed to defeat any fortifications in existence; as such, it was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built in terms of overall weight, and fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece. It fired 80cm (31 inch) shells, weighing 4,800kg to 7,100kg, up to 48km. The AP shells could penetrate 7 meters of reinforced concrete. It completely succeeded in its job of defeating any existing fortification, but at the same time was hilariously impractical. It required two specially-laid parallel railway tracks to move (yes, it was a railway gun too big for the railway), took 54 hours to set up for firing, and had a rate of fire of 14 rounds per day as charges had to be heated up in a special device for roughly 1 day before firing. Since building a gun that fired shells that wouldn't fit through the front door to your house wasn't excessive enough for the Nazis, plans were made to mount the Schwerer Gustav's 80cm gun on a 1,500-ton self propelled artillery platform (the ''Landkreuzer P.1500 Monster''), with two 15cm howitzers and multiple 15mm autocannons as secondary weapons. Unfortunately, both guns were scrapped near the end of the war. The Schwerer Gustav, overall, was the biggest (if the strange rocket exhaust powered V3 listed below is not counted) motherfucking gun on the planet. The weapon likely could have blown a Titan away if its shields were down, and much science-fiction set in WWII features the gun (notably, in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, the gun is used to blow up two landed alien spacecraft from sixty kilometers away). There is no recorded case it of successfully hitting the target (and with the accuracy of that thing it's a miracle no German forces were harmed). There is an urban legend about one AP shot detonating an ammo dump through 15 meters of water and 7 meters of concrete during the Siege of Sevastopol, but no hard proof supports it.
*'''V3''': If you thought Gustav up there was nutty, wait until you hear about the V3, a gun that was as big as a 40k Titan. The V3 was an attempt to make a gun that could shoot across the English Channel. Now, there were a number of heavy guns that could do this, including railway guns and big bunkers built with battleship guns, but they could only shoot between the narrowest point between England and continental Europe. The V3 was built to shell London from France. I said earlier it was as big as a Titan, and I was not being sarcastic, (though it would only be as big as a knight, which despite being the smallest Titan is still bloody big). From breech to muzzle, the gun was 130 meters (430 feet) long, with a bore of 150mm or 5.9 inches across. Rather then use a single big explosion to propel the shells, the V3 used rocket motors mounted in pairs, set so their exhaust would thrust a 140kg shell out of the barrel like a reverse bolter. This setup allowed it to fire a shell out to 165km and put London well in range. Of course like all of the Nazi Wunderwaffen, in practice it sounded good but was actually kinda shit. The gun was so big that it had to be built in a hill, meaning it was impossible for it to change target after being built, and after all the time you spent building the damn thing, by the time you were done it might no longer be useful to have, such as what happened during Operation Nordwind. Further even if you ignore the logistical issues, compared to other period artillery the V3 was just plain shit. The 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 guns of the ''Iowa''-class battleship had a caliber of 16 inch or 406mm and fired a shell that weighed 1,225 kg, so over twice as big around and almost exactly nine times as heavy, and the ''Iowa'' had nine of them, and it could move. To put the cherry on this dipshit sundae, by the time the first five guns were finally built to shell London, the Royal Air Force had worked out where they were and immediately destroyed them with Tallboy Earthquake bombs. If anything proves how silly the idea of Nazi Super Science is, let the fate of the V3 super gun stand testament to how many times Hitler's scientists, and Hitler himself, had been hit with the stupid stick growing up. Hitler in particular, [[Meme|who was punished by his enraged father severely]].
*'''''[https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time N-Stoff]:''''' Someday, somewhere in the ''Kaiser Wilhelm Institute'' there was an Evil Overlord that was unhappy about the quantity of flammen his flammenwerfer could werf - so he went around and took two guys named Ruff and Krug to play around with some fluorine and some chlorine. Now, if you studied chemistry, you may realize that using "fluorine" and "chlorine" in the same sentence does not spell good news for anybody, but you know, ''Nazi Evil Overlords''. What they discovered made their commissioners - yes, the same ol' boys who thought gassing millions was cool - go '''NOPE!''', and when you discover something that's too crazy even for Crazy Nazi Science standards you know you're in for a treat. Indeed, Chlorine Trifluoride (as the compound is called) proved to be pretty good in burning bunkers to the ground - and by "burning bunkers" we mean the ''whole'' bunker, as in ''it reacts with the motherfucking concrete'' - plus it doubled as a chemical warfare agent, giving off corrosive and toxic fumes. N-Stoff (translating to Substance-N; yeah, they kinda failed the naming here) burns at a raging 2400 degrees Celsius - twice the temperature of lava and almost enough to BOIL steel - and can set fire to things that shouldn't burn, like glass, wet sand (or asbestos, a.k.a. the same substance that they used to make fireproof stuff out of) and things that have already been burnt. In fact fighting the fire with water is counterproductive, the water is just more fuel and it reacts to create deadly acids and gasses. In the 1950s a ton of the stuff was spilled in a warehouse. The chemical promptly burned through a foot of concrete and three feet of gravel while releasing a deadly gas that corroded everything it came into contact with. If there ever was something like [[Dakka|Enuff Dakka]] for flamethrowers, Substance N came close to delivering it. The Nazis planned to use it in war, but were never able to produce enough of it (only a few dozen kilograms total), presumably because it kept incinerating everyone who tried to make it. It later found its use in the semiconductor and nuclear industry - after being dubbed a bit too violent to use as rocket fuel, one rocket scientist famously said that the best way to deal with a Chlorine Trifluoride accident was "a good pair of running shoes". Also, [[Sly Marbo]] uses Substance N to spice up his Catachan takeaway.
*'''E-Series''': A very obscure piece of German tank engineering history that was brought to mainstream attention by being featured in ''World of Tanks''. The ''Entwicklung'' series of tanks were pure design studies, never produced or even properly conceptualized. They were designed as an attempt to streamline tank production and as replacements for the entire tank pool of the Wehrmacht. It consisted of 5 tanks in total (E-10, E-25, E-50, E-75, E-100) with different purposes; their number corresponded with their weight class. By the time these design studies were made (around late '44 to early '45) producing an entirely new series of tanks was way beyond the capabilities of the rapidly disintegrating remains of Germany's heavy industry, so it's best not to read too much into these tanks other than them being interesting curiosities. From what was left of their reserve steel, the Germans managed to scramble together one incomplete E-100 chassis that was found by the Americans and handed over to the British, which used it for target practive and ultimately scrapped it in 1950.
*'''''Uranprojekt''''': The Uranprojekt (Uranium Project is the most literal translation) was the attempt of German scientists to create a sustainable nuclear chain reaction. This project has since found its way into popular fiction as the German attempt to create an atomic bomb, often accompanied by claims that they almost had one, but when taking a closer look, this isn't exactly the truth. The project didn't exactly go all that well. Germany suffered a major brain drain when it expelled all its Jewish scientists in the 1930s, and it had next to no access to uranium ore or materials that could be used as a moderator (like highly pure graphite or heavy water). The material problems were sort of solved when France and Norway fell into their hands, but the problems only increased from then on. The scientists were unsure what to use as fuel for the bomb, as both proposed elements (Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239) are extremely rare and need to be created artificially in breeding reactors. To put it in perspective, plutonium wasn't believed to be a naturally occurring element ''at all'' until the 1990s, and common uranium ore contains usually 2% uranium in its most stable form (U-238) and generally only 0.7% of all uranium is of the 235 variety (U-238 is much more stable than U-235 and therefore harder to split). One must also take into consideration that nuclear technology in general was in its infancy and just at the very onset of leaving the purely theoretical stage, which adds to the problems in procuring enough viable fission material outlined above. The lead scientist of the project, Werner Heisenberg, (yes, that's where the name Heisenberg comes from) also had a crisis of conscience and reduced his work on the project significantly. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, the project was abandoned by the Wehrmacht and handed over to the civilian Reichsforschungsrat (Council of Science of the Reich) because of the material expenses and the lack of results. The project experienced a significant number of setbacks, the most important of which was an explosion of a globe filled with uranium powder in 1942, which destroyed a substantial amount of Germany's uranium reserves. (The accident in question actually bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Chernobyl in 1986, thankfully only on a much smaller scale). But it didn't stop there. The Allies caught wind of the project and feared that the Germans could succeed in developing a nuclear bomb and sent commandos to thoroughly sabotage the project in a series of daring operations that make for excellent reading material. In short, all German facilities that could produce materials, together with practically any uranium and heavy water for use in the Uranprojekt were destroyed by early 1944, either through sabotage or air raids, and the project worked off remaining reserves from then on. One last experiment in Haigerloch, South Germany was conducted in February 1945 and failed in producing a nuclear chain reaction. The leading scientists were taken into custody by the Americans, others from the rank-and-file by the Soviets, where they continued their work on the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons project. The effect the Uranprojekt was more to found in the looming paranoia of the Allies, particularly the Americans, about a possible German nuclear bomb that fueled the urgency behind the Manhattan Project, with the irony being that the Germans never even came close to creating a critical nuclear chain reaction, let alone a bomb. In hindsight, the project was in fact a complete failure. All that needs to be said is that around ten different organizations were all running their own programs, one of which was the German Postal Service. And finally the final nail in the German atomic bomb project was that they were competing against the United States: not only the one industrial power not being bombed at the time, the one all set to be a super power when the dust settled. To put in perspective just how out economically gunned the Germans were: in order to make a bomb you need enriched uranium, to make that you need electromagnetic mass spectroscopy, but to make those you need copper wire to use in the magnets and a lot of it, but copper was being used to make shells and other war material. So what did America do? instead of cutting into the war production of other items they went to the treasury and borrowed 14,000 '''tons''' of '''Silver'''. Against that kind of economic power, German had a snow balls chance in hell of making the bomb first even if they were not being bombed.
*'''Die Glocke (The Bell)''': Okay, so you know the Nazi zombie craze that got started back in 1941 (seriously the first Nazi zombie film was made during WWII), and the purported occult obsession several higher-ups in the party had? This is supposedly one of the end results of that branch of pseudoscience & conspiracy level crazy. Much like the "Philadelphia Experiment" or MK Ultra, Die Glocke was supposed to be "something" that would break the laws of reality, bring back the dead, power all the factories, and mind control the enemies of the Reich, etc etc. It's also complete horseshit, apparently made up by a Polish author/journalist named Igor Witkowski, and then later popularised by a British author/military journalist named Nick Cook. Still as it has helped shape the more fantastical view of the Nazi Wunderwaffen, especially in the realm of /v/idya, and the "factual" books are a good laugh, it is worth an honorable mention.
*'''Sonnengewehr (Sun Gun)''': Slightly less fantastical than the Bell above (as in theoretically feasible but just as impossible to realize with the tech available at the time) was the Sonnengewehr, or the Sun Gun. Originally proposed in 1929 by Hermann Oberth, the Sonnengewehr was a hypothesised space station that would orbit around the planet roughly five thousand miles up, and focus the sun's light into a death ray capable of burning down cities or boiling dry the oceans using a fuckhueg reflector made of metallic sodium. While the numbers involved are probably fairly woolly given just how batshit crazy the Nazi science machine was, the scientists involved claimed that the Sun Gun could be completed within 50 to 100 years, and if you consider that we landed on the moon roughly 40 years after the first proposal of the 'sun gun', that number does check out. The "designers" at least had some sense of reality when they realized that the platform could also make for a weather satellite since it might as well have such facilities on board due to size. On an amusing sidenote, the Russians eventually demonstrated the concept was sound (if stupidly impractical for any intended purpose) with their ''Znamaya'' solar mirror prototype in the nineties. Though of course in terms of a 'super weapon', any kind of 'sun gun' fails when compared to atomic weapons, which is why despite being sound in concept nobody has actually bothered to even consider such a weapon. (though as weather manipulator? that's a different kettle of fish)

===Misc===
[[File:Stalhelm.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Distinctive Stahlhelm. The Germans lucked out on helmet design during WWI]]
* '''''Stahlhelm'':''' The many variants of the iconic German helmet were derived from the medieval sallet and first appeared during the Great War. The purpose of these helmets was to keep shrapnel out of one's head. It was better than its contemporaries, as its design provided increased protection to the sides and back of the head. Not to be confused with the spiked Prussian ''Pickelhaube''. Used by pretty much all German infantry personnel except for the Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers), since it was impractical to jump with it. The paratroopers had a special version of the helmet that removed the front and back flanges, giving it a much more streamlined appearance. The basic design would go on to become the basis for most modern helmets, especially as the shape was well suited to wearing a headset under it.

* '''''Uniforms and Insignia'':''' As emblematic of the Nazi regime as the MP-40, the Totenkopf, and the Stahlhelm, the uniforms of the Wehrmacht and the SS are famed for their stylish yet sinister appearance. The stylishness was provided by companies such as Hugo Boss (yes, ''that'' Hugo Boss, athough he didn't design the uniform, as the design came from the SS itself, Boss was simply the biggest and most well-known contractor) who received lucrative contracts from the government to make uniforms for the armed forces, while the sinister-ness was provided by the Nazi fondness for [[Imperium of Man|eagles and skulls]] as decorative motifs and the use of black as the prewar uniform color of the SS. Several patterns of uniform were produced, but the most iconic is the M36 pattern field tunic; whenever Nazi grunts appear in a video game, movie, or TV show, odds are they'll be wearing an M36. The ''Schirmmütze'' peaked hat is equally iconic, especially when it appears with the ''Totenkopf'', the infamous skull-and-crossbones insignia. A variant known as the ''Knautschmütze'' was produced that lacked the wire stiffener of the ''Schirmmütze'' and became known as the "crusher cap"; it was especially popular with tankers who had to wear headsets over their caps. The M43 field cap was initially issued to mountain troops, and then later issued in tropical, panzer crew, and regular infantry variants; you may be most familiar with its appearance as the sexy Nazi chick's hat in the final part of ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade''. The Nazis pioneered camouflage clothing for infantry personnel, creating a variety of patterns, including ''Splittertarnmuster'' (splinter pattern), ''Platanenmuster'' (Plane-tree pattern, worn by the Waffen-SS), and ''Leibermuster'' (Leiber pattern), the latter of which inspired the iconic ERDL camouflage uniforms used by the US Army, Marines, and Special Forces in Vietnam. Following in the footsteps of the Reichswehr, the Wehrmacht used a system of colored trim and piping on uniforms to indicate a soldier's branch of service, known as ''Waffenfarbe'', or "corps colors". There were colors for every possible branch from infantry to engineers to war correspondents and veterinarians (on a side note, ranks were a confusing mess with among other weirdness had a special inbetween grade specifically for fortress engineer and farrier NCOs above all other enlisted specialists); some of the most common were white (infantry), golden yellow (cavalry, reconnaissance), meadow green (panzergrenadiers), and rose-pink (panzers). The Nazis also inherited the ''Totenkopf'' from the Reichswehr, who in turn had used it because of its long association with elite units in the Prussian and Imperial armies, so the Nazis adopting it was probably inevitable. It became the official insignia of the SS and was worn by both regular army and Waffen-SS panzer crews, [[Fail|which led to a lot of army tankers being shot on sight by Allied soldiers who assumed they were SS]].

*'''''Stielhandgranate'':''' Often called "stick grenades" or "potato mashers," these are those grenades on sticks you always see the Germans using. Used by popping off the metal cap at the end of the stick, giving the cord which doubled as a fuse a good yank, and throwing it at your target (of course, before the fuse went off). The Stielhandgranate is what is called a "offensive" grenade, known nowadays as a "concussive" grenade. The difference is that an offensive grenade uses explosive pressure waves to kill an enemy, thus allowing you to use it while advancing without getting a face full of shrapnel, while a defensive grenade (like the US "pineapple" grenade) uses shrapnel to kill an enemy, affecting a much larger area but also putting you in the blast radius, hence they were designed to be thrown over the wall of a foxhole or trench line at advancing enemy troops while you keep your head down. The reason the Stielhandgranate had the stick was to give more leverage when throwing it as compared to a round grenade. It actually worked pretty well, but nonetheless history moved past the concept and grenades on sticks didn't keep.
**'''''Geballte Ladung'':''' Take your grenades off of their sticks, wrap them all up around one stick grenade, and tie them around it with something. You see, as the Stielhandgranate was basically just a head of TNT lit up after the fuse at the end of the stick reached the explosive filler in the head, cramming more of these explosive heads around one will lead to a bigger boom when that one goes off, like planting more TNT on the same detonation location will, though the added weight would reduce the range advantage of hurling it by the stick and made it harder to carry them en masse (regular Stielhandgranates were only barely harder to attach to someone than actual sticks and soldiers could easily cram them just about anywhere on their person). This "bundled charge" was improvised for use against harder targets, like armored vehicles (though it didn't take long in World War II for this to become useless against tanks) and buildings. Six/Nine explosive heads fit nicely when tied around one stick grenade's head on the horizontal plane parallel to the head's circular ends, which was the usual upper limit for this improvisation, though logically it would be quite possible to tie even more around the grenade while making it even more difficult to throw and making it more resemble an explosive charge that you can't expect to throw very far with a stick in it.

*'''''Nebelwerfer'':''' A family of weapons whose very name means "Fog/Mist Thrower"; they were listed as smokescreen launchers before the war to get around the Treaty of Versailles, but in truth were rather deadly artillery pieces designed to deploy chemical munitions; though barring a few isolated instances on the Eastern Front, chemical weapons were never used in any meaningful capacity during the war, likely because Hitler had survived gas attacks in the last war and drew the line at using them himself, along with the fact that using chemical weapons would invite retaliation in kind. These types of weapons included some mortars, but more importantly, rocket artillery. Between the wars, there was a fair bit of interest in new rocket designs, as conventional artillery was either strictly regulated or forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, and the Nazis knew they had a use for that. These rockets were inaccurate, but you could easily fire a whole bunch of the things off at once for a good saturation bombing, though thanks to the smoke you had to scoot away afterwards or the other side would drop their own artillery right on top of you. The rocket based system made a very distinctive sound. The Germans nicknamed the thing "Heulende Kuh" (Bellowing Cow) and US troops would come to call them "Screaming Mimi" and "Moaning Minnie".
**In the later phases of the war, the Germans would also mount the launcher onto a half-track and designate it a "Panzerwerfer" (Armored Thrower). In many ways a German analogue to the BM-21, the Panzerwerfer saw intensive use during the Battle of the Bulge.

*'''Goliath:''' A remotely controlled mini-vehicle on treads, stuffed full of explosives. They were driven up to an enemy tank or a bunker and then blown up. (Games Workshop stole the idea and design for the Imperial Guard [[Cyclops Demolition Vehicle|Cyclops]].) Good idea, but the execution was lacking since Radio Control wasn't good enough yet. They had a cable like some sort of bargain remote-controlled car which limited their range dramatically, and cutting this would utterly defeat the weapon. (At least it's not as bad as the Russians and their kamikaze dogs which they trained to run under tanks, that is, THEIR OWN TANKS, but I digress...) On the flip side, American soldiers often made great fun with captured Goliaths by riding them around as the tiny thing could carry quite a load.

*'''[[Flamethrower|Flammenwerfer]]:''' A werfer zat werfs flammen. Your standard flamethrower in both name and function, though there wasn't much use for it, as there were no real trench battles like in WWI where people sat in <s>comfy</s> little (hell) holes and took potshots at each other. This is not to say they weren't used, but unlike the trench wars of WWI most of the fighting was mobile rather than static. For added nastiness, some bigger ones were mounted in Flammpanzers, able to shoot hundreds of liters of sticky, burning fuck you over distances exceeding 50 meters. Getting issued one was generally regarded one of the least desirable jobs on all sides of the war. Flamethrower operators were prime targets for reasons that should be obvious, but because they were bringers of an especially unpleasant kind of death, everyone shot them on the spot when they surrendered. It also bears mentioning that actually firing a flamethrower is a ''very'' unpleasant sensation. Some veterans of WWII battles where they were used are known to have mentioned that [[Grimdark|they can't stand the smell of roast pork anymore]].

*'''8.8cm flak gun:''' Known as the "Acht-Acht", this is THE German gun of WWII, and it sums up the German experience in the first part of the war: never being truly ready, but very clever and doctrinally flexible. The 88mm was designed as an anti-air weapon (Flak standing for ''Fliegerabwehrkanöne'', or AA gun) built to throw a high explosive shell as high into the air as it could so that it could explode somewhere in the same ballpark as the enemy plane and put one piece of shrapnel into something important and bring it down, which is a role it performed throughout the war. However against heavy Allied tanks such as the British Matilda 1 and French B1, the German tanks of the time had no ability to penetrate their frontal armor. The 8.8 cm flak gun, however, were able to deal with enemy tanks at unparalleled ranges, thanks to the high muzzle speed required to fire their explosive shell so high into the air. So the guns were pulled to the front by a certain Erwin Rommel during the battle of Arras, the barrels lowered, a French-British tank-heavy counterattack stopped, and it snowballed from there. In case you're wondering, the reason why the 88s had antitank rounds was because they had a secondary role in busting enemy bunkers and fortifications, hence why an ANTI-AIR gun had an AP round. Germany quickly pushed to have both a proper PaK version of the 88 (Pak standing for ''Panzerabwehrkanöne'', or AT gun) that had a lower profile, was easier to move around and had a shield to stop stray bullets from decimating the crew. They also started designing a tank armed with the 88mm as it became clear that the tanks they were fighting were only going to get stronger, which is why the Tiger I is a metal slab with a huge gun: its job was to get an 88mm gun into the battlefield as fast as possible. Using AA guns as AT guns was such a good idea that the US did the same thing with their 90mm AA gun, converting it into the primary armament for the M36 tank destroyer and the Pershing tank, and so did the Russians with their 85mm gun for the upgunned versions of the T-34 and KV-1. The Imperial Guard Basilisk cannon looks almost exactly like the Flak 88.

*'''2 cm Flak 30/38/Flakvierling:''' Remember the "Acht-Acht"? Now add two of these smaller guns to each flak 88 site, hill, hedge, ditch and rooftop in Europe and watch the fireworks. The German answer to the question of "enuff dakka" in a more reasonable package than the MG42 was this little bastard, which was like an American .30 cal [[Bolter|firing explosive ''and'' armor piercing rounds]]. Obviously devastating to infantry and aircraft, it even rained sufficient hailstorms of rounds that damaged and threw off approaching lightly armored vehicles enough to make a difference, and given luck, it could rip through tank tracks too. And the Germans made 150,000 of these fuckers. And those 150,000 Bolter-Expies, these unsung weapons, did more damage and inflict casualties than any other weapon during the Normandy landing and the push inland. [https://www.quora.com/In-WW2-why-did-the-Germans-never-develop-heavy-machine-guns-like-M2-Browning-for-their-half-tracks-SP-guns-and-tanks/answer/Allyson-Kliff As explained here.]

*'''Kooky Coal Chemistry:''' Germany lacked a lot of strategic resources, but if there was one thing they did have in bulk, it was coal, and by gum the Nazis did their best to make the most of it. Germany had been a leader in industrial chemistry well before Hitler came to power, but the prospect of independence from foreign imports was like catnip to ultranationalist wack-a-doodles such as the Nazis. German companies worked out ways of making gasoline, rubber, lubricants, and even freakin' margarine from coal. However a fair number of these methods were also rather expensive and needed a lot of resources to work (using 4.5 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of gasoline), with only synthetic rubber catching on in the postwar period (so much so that Standard Oil of New Jersey, who had the exclusive rights to make the synthetic rubber in the US stemming from an odd business deal struck in the 20s was basically forced via presidential decree to make the process common knowledge) and the South Africans using coal hydrogenation during the apartheid era because of sanctions.

*'''The S-mine:''' The Sprengmine (jumping mine), or, to use the name US soldiers gave it, "Bouncing Betty", was one of the most widely used and most effective weapons of its class. When triggered, it 'bounced' about three feet into the air before exploding at about waist height in an 'air burst', able to inflict casualties (the military definition of the word meaning more then just dead) at up to 140 feet. And it had a tendency to not kill you, but maim you. [[Grimdark|A deliberate decision, as the Nazis estimated that a wounded soldier takes up a lot more resources than a dead one.]] Later in the war, some were made out of glass and even pottery, with minimal metal parts, to make them even harder to find. Suffice to say they still haven't found all of them... 1.93 million S-mines were made and it was widely copied after the war. The damn things are still killing people to this day as old mines are stepped on and the explosive proves itself still good. While the S-mine is hardly unique in that regard (unexploded US aircraft bombs and shells make up the bulk of what they still find in Germany, around 2,000 pounds per year according to the Smithsonian) land mines, like the S-mine, are still dug up by the truckload in North Africa.

*'''Pervitin:''' Not a traditional weapon as such, but a key element in why the Nazi's blitzkrieg tactics were so effective. Pervitin was a methamphetamine drug that provided the base recipe for today's crystal meth and which was distributed to all members of the Nazi military. Its powerful stimulant effect enabled the German infantry to fight harder for longer and was essential in the breakneck races from the border to the battlefield. With all of the line troopers hopped up on this drug, which later incorporated cocaine for increased effectiveness, Nazi forces could keep fighting effectively well after their enemies were worn out. At least until their supply lines were cut and addiction/withdrawal symptoms crippled them all, that is. The use of Pervitin was cut drastically after the France campaign for that reason (and for fear of long-term side effects, especially when discipline issues started mounting), though many pilots and tank crew members still used it readily, especially during Stalingrad (with the hilarious side effect of turning into an on-the-spot popsicle when the crash came). It could also be issued for important operations. The idea that all Wehrmacht soldiers were drooling junkies is funny, but wrong. It has a fascinating legacy that lasted much longer than the Third Reich did. The Bundeswehr and NVA (Armed forces of Communist East Germany) kept stockpiles of it well into the '70s for emergency use and for paratroopers, as did the US Army in Vietnam. The first climb of Mount Everest in 1953 also saw extensive use of Pervitin and President John F. Kennedy used it to treat his chronic back pain.

*'''''Hs 293 & Fritz-X'':''' Another German WWII oddity, the Hs 293 and Fritz-X were basically remote-controlled bombs and the grand-parents of modern precision-guided ammo. In an effort to improve bombing accuracy without having to dive at the target, they came up with this idea: take a huge bomb, add small wings with control surfaces, actuators, a radio receiver and a big flare up the bomb's arse so the bombardier can see where it's going (and a rocket booster in the case of the Hs 293); and then add a radio transmitter with a joystick in the airplane so the bombardier can correct its descent. There you go, highly precise steerable bomb. It actually worked really well, but not without drawbacks: drop altitude was limited, since the bombardier needed to keep a line of sight on the flare, like all radio transmission it could be jammed and lastly the bomber had to remain in level flight during the bomb's entire descent to allow the bombardier to steer it. Ultimately the bombs only saw limited anti-ship use, the combination of limited drop altitude and level flight made the bomber a way too easy prey for any fighter defending its target. Still, they were pretty efficient weapons in the right circumstances as the ''Roma'', the ''Littorio'' and the ''Warspite'' can attest to.

*'''Kettenkrad (Sd. Kfz 2)''': Those stylish tracked motorcycles were built as a light general-purpose platform that could do basically anything, from reconnaissance to lying down telephone and radio cables and towing light antitank guns and artillery pieces. A very solid design in general, it was very maneuverable for its weight, had great off-road capabilities and was very easy to drive; if you knew how to drive a motorcycle you could drive a Kettenkrad. This was achieved by a rather complex steering gear that used the front wheel to steer it when making turns of about 8°, when making sharper turns a mechanism slowed down one of the tracks. It remained in production and use throughout the entire war and even after it, as its engine was about on par with that of a small tractor and decommissioned Kettenkrads quickly proved a popular and cheap asset for farmers, foresters and even firefighters in Germany after the war. It was so popular, in fact, that production of new Kettenkrads was only ceased in 1951, making it, the Gewehr 98, and a version of the MG-42 the only pieces of German military engineering whose production run outlived the Nazi regime.

*'''Kübelwagen''': In the 1930s, there were not many cars in Germany. With domestic production being pretty low, the Nazis thought that it would be a big propaganda boom if they could fix that. As such they gathered up a bunch of German engineers to try to design a car that was A: reasonably comfortable, B: got good fuel economy and C: was cheap and easy to mass produce so that the Average Aryan Arbeiter could afford one and began building a factory to mass produce them. This People's Car was the first iteration of the Volkswagen Beetle, with production beginning in 1938 to much fanfare. But in truth only a small number of them were made as civilian cars by the Reich and those that were made were given away to party members as presents. More of them however were converted into Kübelwagens, the Nazi equivalent to the [[Jeep]].

*'''''Zimmerit''''': Ever wondered why so many WWII German tanks look like someone covered them in putty and hence why they're such a bitch to model? This stuff is the reason. ''Zimmerit'' was a thick paste consisting of barium sulfate, polyvinyl acetate, zinc sulfide and some filling material that was applied at the end of tank production in thick layers with spatulas, giving it its distinct look. ''Zimmerit'' served as a reliable protection against magnetic anti-tank grenades like the German ''Hafthohlladung'' or . . . nothing. No other nation other then Germany deployed a magnetic anti-tank mine during the war, though concerns that the Hafthohlladung could be easily copied made the idea of Zimmerit a decent idea at the start of the war. However rumours about it igniting after sustaining hits lead to an order to cease production and application of the stuff on tanks. The rumours were never proven, but applying the stuff took days at best and by 1944 the German High Command didn't really want to bother with it anymore, especially since rocket propelled antitank weapons like the bazooka had made magnetic mines obsolete anyway.

*'''Jerry Cans''': Yes, the instantly recognizable jerry can is in fact a German invention, which given that the Germans were derogatorily known as 'Jerrys' does make a lot of sense in hindsight. Designed by Wehrmacht engineers in the late 1930s as an improvement over their predecessors, which required special tools and funnels to fill, a task that was tedious and took up a lot of time, not to mention how bulky they were. The perfection of the jerry can design cannot be understated; it's easy to stack, fill, takes up fairly little space and you can carry around a lot of them. The Germans were aware they had struck logistical-design gold and troops were under orders to destroy their cans rather than risk their capture, but unfortunately for them the design was brought to the Allies' attention when the American Paul Weiss traveled with a German friend through the entirety of India and realized that his modified car had no storage for reserve water. His German friend, who happened to have access to the a stockpile of jerry cans, brought them with him on the tour (though also fortunately for the Germans, it wouldn't be until 1943 that any of their enemies would mass-produce the can). After the tour, Weiss shared the design with the American military, who reverse-engineered the thing and issued it to every motorized company in the US Army.

*'''The Gas Chambers''': Industrialized Evil: One of the darkest inventions of the Nazis, the gas chambers were used to facilitate mass genocide on an industrial scale, human sacrifice on the level of factory farming. Anyone the Nazis deemed "undesirable" were sent to be executed regardless of age, although those capable of sustained labor were worked ragged first in camps before being sent to their deaths. Jews and Romani, Africans, educated Slavs, physically and mentally handicapped people; if you didn't fit into Adolf Hitler's insane dream of an All-Aryan Ubermensch World, you were sent to die a horrid death by Zyklon-B. The gas chambers were the result of a concerted effort to find the most efficient way to kill large numbers of humans covertly and with minimal involvement. At first, the victims of the Holocaust were simply lined up and shot by ''Einsatzgruppen'' death squads, but that was too messy and was deemed to hard on the men doing the butchery. Vans with the exhaust funneled into the rear compartment were used next, but these were seen as too costly in terms of fuel and machines. They finally hit on the idea of stationary extermination facilities using rat (and delousing- Zyklon B was first developed for killing lice in barracks) poison, and built them in concentration camps that were designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The prisoners were ordered to strip and told that they were to be deloused and given a shower prior to their work assignments. Once inside the chambers, the Zyklon pellets were dropped in, killing the screaming, terrified victims within 20 minutes. The chambers were vented, the bodies removed to crematories, and the process begun all over again. A cold and chilly logical methodology to achieve the goals of rampant hatred.

== C3i Waffen ==

Not exactly their strongest area...

*'''Enigma:''' Enigma was a communications scheme based on a sophisticated but easy to use electromechanical encryption/decryption device resembling a cross between a typewriter and an odometer. When used with proper procedures it was the one of the most secure means of communication available in the world for its time, offering effectively 76 bit encryption with 1920's technology in a device that was superior to anything the allies had. SIGABA was comparably secure but far heavier and fragile, and the M-209 was far inferior in both ease of use and encryption strength (although it was still adequate). However the combination of lax discipline, reuse of settings, and notes from a polish customs inspection of an enigma device resulted in the technology being reverse engineered and cryptographic attacks being discovered. Only Kriegsmarine communications remained difficult to decrypt by the end of the war, due to their practice of using secret codebooks to further compress their messages prior to encryption. Has become known for being completely cracked by a British team led by a gay man, only for him to be arrested and almost chemically neutered before committing suicide. Because yes, back then potentially saving the lives of hundreds of thousands did not make up for liking the dick.

*'''Bombing Beams:''' Wouldn't you know it, the Instrument Landing System used today at pretty much every major airport was originally invented to 'land' bombs on London in the middle of the night when the lights are out. By using narrow radio beams the Nazis could steer bombers to a precalculated drop point. All the pilots had to do was maintain a certain speed and altitude, and then drop their bombs when the signal detector said they should... except when the British were fucking with them. Towards the end they were fucking with them so hard German bomber pilots were landing at RAF bases believing they were in France. When it actually worked, such as at Coventry, it was more accurate than daytime saturation bombing, with most bombs falling within 90 meters of the beam centerline. This system is why Nazi bombing raids tended to less of a brief swarm like the allies used and more of a continuous bomb conveyor belt lasting most of the night; they would line up single file along the approach beam, and then after they hit the drop beam they'd change altitude, turn around, follow the beam back across the channel; no visibility needed. The British figured this out and started using their television antennas (which had far greater power output) to mess with the system. If the Nazis had continued to improve this technology with ECCM and built a lot more bombers instead of squandering money on Wunderwaffen, they probably would have won the Battle of Britain (even then, Göring would have found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory).

*'''Tank Radios:''' While today we take it for granted that any trooper anywhere in the galaxy could get a call from the emperor himself to execute order 66, this wasn't always the case. Throughout the 1930's, all German armored vehicles had radios, while their opponents would typically only have a radio for the unit commander. This was an enormous advantage for Nazi tank units that remained the case basically until America showed up. The Nazis also had the Torn.Fu.d2, a backpack portable infantry radio comparable to the American SCR-300, although they didn't distribute them as widely as the Americans did. This was an organizational thing; Germany dealt with communications by assigning a signals battalion to each division and delegating resources as needed, while the Americans always had radios at company level and sometimes had SCR-536 handy-talkies for individual platoons, the ideal being that every American officer's best ''weapon'' was their radioman. The main problem the Germans had with radios was that lots of American soldiers were fluent in German (and German isn't that different from English to begin with).

*'''Zuse Z3''': Lo and behold, for you look at the very first freely programmable digital computer in the world. Completed by Mathematician and Electronics Engineer Conrad Zuse in 1941, it was kept in extreme secrecy, so much so that it was rarely put into use. The rare times it was used, its purpose was to calculate trajectories for V2 rockets. Zuse advocated for its use in the war effort, but the original (and at the time only) device was destroyed in an allied bombing raid in 1943. Zuse built an improved successor, the Z4, just before the war came to a close. Although conditionally Turing complete, physically the Z3 was less advanced in implementation than its peers. Zuse was not able to procure thermionic components (vacuum tubes were in critically short supply for radios and radars in Germany) and so had to rely on electromechanical relays from phone switching gear; in practical terms this meant that the Z3 ran much slower than even purpose built non-Turing complete calculators such as the Atanasoff-Berry or the Colossus. The Z3 itself received little immediate recognition outside of Germany partly because of the American ENIAC computer; the strict secrecy Zuse worked under lead to the Z3 falling into relative obscurity, until the invalidation of the Sperry Rand patents in the 1970's, which hinged partly on Zuse's own patents which had been licensed to IBM as early as 1946 (FYI: you're reading this page on a computer today partly because those Sperry patents died; a year later the Altair 8800 began the long road of upstart Davids bringing down industry Goliaths). Today, a replica of the Z3, built in the 70s (which the by then over 80 year old Zuse himself built alone and [[awesome|from memory]]) can be found in the German Museum in Munich. The only surviving (and probably only completed) Z4 computer was used as the main computer of the Mathematical Devision of the University of Zürich, Switzerland, until 1958, when it was sold to the German Museum in Munich where it remains to this day. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI An example of the Z3 working can be viewed here. (Video in German, good automatic translated English subtitles are available)]

[[Category:History]]

Star Wars Setting

2023-05-12T17:25:25Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Side Characters */

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Describing even the cursory information on the sheer number of characters, amount of history, and various factions in [[Star Wars]] is a massive undertaking, and one that cannot be folded into another page. As such, here is a summary of things who either are influential, [[Awesome]], [[Fail]], hilariously meme worthy, or all of the above.

==Main Characters==
* Luke Skywalker: All-round good guy and idealist, despite being a complete idiot, Luke wishes to learn the ways of the Force to defeat the Emperor and save the galaxy. A Jedi prodigy, he can lift heavy ton space fighters with just his force powers, though he struggles with doubts. Although he starts all brash and teenage and shit, by the conclusion of the trilogy, Luke is well on the way to becoming a wise and powerful Jedi ready to rebuild the Order. Mark Hamill observed that Luke's role in Star Wars is that of the comedic "straight man"; a bland Abbott in a galaxy of Costellos.
** In Legends continuity, after ''Return of the Jedi'' Luke worked to restore the order and trained many generations of Jedi including his niece Jaina and nephews Jacen and Anakin as well as his future wife and son. About Luke's family? Long story short, Luke met a woman named Mara Jade, a former Force-using agent of the Emperor who sought to avenge him by killing Luke. But he and Mara were forced to work together to survive a death world before Luke freed her from Palpatine's lies and Mara joined the Jedi Order, where the two eventually fell in love, married and had a son - Ben Skywalker. Before and after this, Luke destroyed massive remnants of the Empire over and over again and also fought off an even bigger threat in the form of an [[Tyranids|extragalactic invasion]] by Force-resistant [[Dark Eldar|space Cenobites]] called Yuuzhan Vong, where he defeated many including their best fighter. Years later, Luke nearly turned to the Dark Side after Mara was murdered, but overcame the temptation though he violated the Jedi Code by attempting to murder her enemies in revenge. Following this he killed a resurrected Palpatine repeatedly and took on his most dangerous single foe in the form of a Force-Cthulhu called Abeloth (who was so dangerous Luke had to make a temporary alliance between the Jedi, the Republic '''and the Sith''' to defeat her). After this he continued to be a great hero until he died in an unspecified manner some time before the Cade Skywalker era, but still existed as a Force Ghost who guided future Jedi.

* Han Solo: Dashing [[rogue]] and space cowboy who somehow shoots his way out of debt to the mob, ends up a general, and bags himself a princess. Not a bad series' work. His ship, the Millennium Falcon, deserves a mention too for being as iconic as he is. In pre-Disney continuity he was once a Swoop (flying motorcycle) racer turned Imperial Officer who shot his superior that was beating a Wookiee to death and gained a lifelong friend in said Wookiee - Chewbacca. He also had three kids with Leia pre-Disney with two sons called Anakin and Jacen and a daughter called Jaina.

* Princess Leia: The regulation piece of lady crumpet in the movies, Princess Leia was a leader in the rebel alliance and (spoiler!) Luke's long lost twin sister. Also both a capable soldier and politician. Her being forced to wear a metal thong by an overweight space slug named Jabba the Hutt has since cemented her role as sex idol to legions of adoring fan boys, while her general [[Awesome|door-kicking deadshot sarcastic asskickery]] made her a feminist icon as well (this was back in the 80's when the two could be the same). With her home planet and entire adoptive family destroyed by the Death Star, she became a General although somehow retained her princesshood (yes, she's now a Disney Princess). In the pre-Disney EU Leia became a full-on Jedi warrior in the and had three kids with Han, one of whom had a daughter of his own.

* Obi-Wan Kenobi: If, at any point, in any work of fiction, the hero has an old master/father figure who teaches him part of what he knows, makes sure that he will grow up to be a virtuous and decent hero, but ultimately dies fighting a great evil to buy the hero time to escape, then returns as a spirit guide for the hero later, the Internet has probably accused that character of ripping off Obi-wan Kenobi. The prequels show him as a young Jedi and a deuterotagonist to Anakin Skywalker, acting as ''his'' master, teacher, partner, and dear friend before their eventual falling out [[FATAL|ends with Anakin losing most of his major extremities and organs]] and Obi-wan hiding out in a cave waiting to turn into Alec Guinness. In hindsight he was a fucking moron to expect Anakin stay sane with his mother separated forever from him and doomed to slavery in a shithole planet. Certainly this won't torment the kid's thoughts about her, what's that? Tuskens tortured her to death? We are the Jedi, we do not take reve- oh well he went Sith. So much for Jedi and their wisdom. He is a great source of memes within the SW fandom, as well as jokingly referred to as Jesus due to his hairstyle in Episode II.

* Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker/"The Chosen One": The black-helmeted face of evil and the most well known villain from Star Wars (and arguably the most recognizable character in cinema, full stop). Has become an iconic and memorable figure due to his menacing, robotic appearance and ultra-deep, wheezy respirator voice. He is [[Meme|(spoiler!)]] secretly Anakin, Luke's fallen Jedi father, thus allowing him to be able to say the most memorable line in the film series, "''I'' am your Father!" Abaddon wishes he could be this sinister. His children eventually manage to rekindle the spark of human decency in his heart, and he redeems himself by giving up his own life to save them and destroy the Emperor. Hates sand. Fun Fact: his portrayal required four actors in the original trilogy: body, voice, face and a stunt double. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okAyvguQucs His scene at the end of ''Rogue One''], where he goes absolutely berserk and tears some puny rebels to shreds, is probably the best in the movie, and one of the best in Star Wars as a whole. [[awesome|It ends with him standing in open space]], something originally intended for the original film and the original reason he was designed with the armor in the first place. The scene was well received, so Disney decided to have him go berserk again in the Star Wars: Rebels TV show (several times) and the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, before giving Maul a scene like it in Clone Wars. To this end, Vader’s recent portrayals (which have taught both neckbeards and the new generation of fans alike to be fucking terrified of him) have led many to claim that the changes to his character is the only thing Disney got right in their ownership of Star Wars (well, that and The Mandalorian. And the Clone Wars(*cough* Grievous)). Hreeeeee-kchooooooosh...

* Padmé Amidala: The future Darth Vader's waifu who spends most of the prequel trilogy being a hopeless idealist (though still has enough presence of mind to keep a blaster handy when diplomacy fails). Swaps out outfits and hairstyles at a near constant rate. Get's choked by Vader and dies giving birth to Luke and Leia, which ironically Vader was trying to prevent in the first place after seeing a vision. [[FAIL|Way to go, dumbass]]. Haven't you ''read'' a work of fiction with that kinda prophecy in it before? Much more skubby than her daughter, largely on account of the writing for her love story with Anakin being poorly received, as well as Natalie Portman's performance being divisive.

* Qui-Gon Jin: Liam Neeson as a Jedi. [[Meme|As such, he had a particular set of skills, skills to recognize a Sith plot]], and would've uncovered and exposed Palpatine if it weren't for Darth Maul's sword going through his gut. In life, Qui-Gon was known to be a gadfly who frequently disagreed with the dogma of the Jedi Council, instead putting his trust in The Force and eventually discovering The Chosen One in a little slave boy on Tatooine. Was the master of Obi-Wan, and tried to teach Anakin the basics from beyond the grave. Qui-Gon had learned the secret of immortality before his death, and passed on his knowledge to Yoda in a spiritual journey, and later to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thanks to him, he was able to preserve the legacy of the Jedi long after the purge.

* Ahsoka Tano: An orange, female togruta jedi padawan that helps tell the story of growing up. When she was first introduced in the skubtastic Clone Wars movie, she was basically annoying beyond belief and attached to the notoriously reckless Anakin Skywalker. However, she began to grow on fans, eventually becoming a fan favorite. Initially, she dressed only a little better than a Dark Eldar wych, raising serious moral questions about a girl her age dressing that way, but this issue was resolved in season 3 of the clone wars. Her character grows from beyond the simplicity of an <s>(un)</s>amusing wisecracker, much like her master, into a wiser, kinder woman, whose actions speak louder than her words. In the penultimate season of the Clone Wars, she leaves her master and the Jedi order, and some believe that she unintentionally caused Anakin Skywalker to fall to the Dark side (It certainly denied him the title of master since the standard way of gaining that is to raise a Padawan to knight). She reappears in Rebels, where she acts as an agent coordinating rebel cells, and takes on the wise guide and teacher for Ezra and Kanan, two other jedi who are fighting the Empire. Thought to have died in the second season, she is revealed to have been saved, and was alive even up to season 2 of The Mandalorian.

== Disney Main Characters ==

* Rey: Protagonist of the new trilogy. Most people either think she's a sloppily written Mary Sue and wish-fulfillment character for the writers' female-empowerment fetish or that she's a fine protagonist and the former group is just being salty about new things and/or a bunch of [[Neckbeard]]s and [[/pol/]]s. The sequel trilogy's Jedi and maybe the most immediately competent of the three (the others being Luke and Anakin). What invited critique in the first place is the fact she is readily bestowed new, often unexplained abilities as ''the'' means of moving the plot forward, and the few failures she has either turn to successes, or have next to no consequences. While it was foreshadowed she would have piloting skills with the pilot memorabilia in her home from which the audience was supposed to infer she knew how, Disney had to later specifically point out "she literally plays flight sims anytime she isn't working, that's the shit on her table". But since the memorabilia didn't look like a flight sim, some viewers concluded this was an asspull by Disney. To the credit of the writers however, the foreshadowing implies X-Wing obsession so it makes sense that she royally trashes the Falcon trying to escape TIE Fighters with it (like everyone else who played the old X-Wing video games). She also has fucking god tier Force talent, able to pull off Force techniques that took the previous protagonists years to learn such as the Jedi Mind Trick. The sequel semi-explained this with an actual asspull by suggesting the Force balances itself and with only one remaining trained Force user below a master left alive she pretty much got cheat-coded to be at his level as Light Side opposite...although that ignores Luke not gaining the same cheats and the Force users left alive in the Disney EU who have no Dark Side opposites while also relying on information from that same EU (the trippy metaphysical Force entity kind) so it only works if you turn off your brain and give up. Apart from all that, Rey is a scavenger who grew up parent-less in a wreck on a desert planet, earning from the scraps of old Rebel and Imperial machinery. While she's been seen using the Light Side of the Force for the most part, the Dark Side allegedly tugs a great deal in her. She also has a vision of herself as a Sith with a double-bladed red lightsaber similar to Luke's tree vision on Dagobah. Due to a spate of leaks, numerous details were revealed before the release of the film such as her being Sheev's grandaughter and the fate of her parents; Rey's parents hid her on Jakku because they were being hunted and were killed shortly after leaving. After Rey joins forces with Kylo to defeat Palpatine, she actually dies... only to be brought back to life by <s>Pokémon tears</s> <s>true love's first kiss</s> Kylo Ren using the Force to give his life to save hers, and the two share a kiss before Kylo dies. She ends up on Tatooine and with the last of the Skywalker line dead (by technicality, the Force powers always came from Palpatine so it just means Shmi's bloodline is dead) Rey, while gaining no new personality to speak of, [[Blood Ravens|takes the Skywalker last name as her own]] since she will never know her actual last name now. As one might expect from a character touted as a strong female protagonist, Rey is propped up by failures of men, sometimes turned failures after the fact for the purpose of redistributing their successes to her. Because of this Rey remains the only character alive with any Jedi training.

* Finn: A First Order Stormtrooper (serial code FN-2187) who has doubts about the First Order after a battle where he has to shoot innocent civilians and ends up defecting to the Resistance, allowing him to actually aim worth a damn. Finn ends up carrying ''The Force Awakens'' thanks to the acting talents of John Boyega. He probably would have made a much better main character than Rey because at least ''he'' has a fucking ''reason'' to go on a space adventure and undergoes actual character development. He’s basically Kyle Katarn, only he didn’t get to steal the Death Star plans or become a Jedi. The second movie unfortunately rendered Finn a character without an arc, as discussed below. Had a really cool scene where he fights a former squadmate with a lightsaber, before said [[FAIL|squadmate beat him with a big electric stick.]] He also had a second cool scene where he attempts to fight on a trained dark Jedi (not a Sith) with that same lightsaber before getting badly injured, showing tremendous fucking balls (and implying that Kylo Ren, after being shot by a laser crossbow that flings stormtroopers in the air, is about on par with a pissed off Stormtrooper with a lightning sick). Revealed to be Force-sensitive in Rise Of Skywalker, and finds an entire division of Stormtroopers on Endor who quit the First Order as a group the same way he did as an individual; the leader of them replaces Rose as his love interest, despite the same movie implying heavily he has an unrequited love for Rey (later in an interview JJ said he was trying to say he was Force-sensitive, while some fans think his knowledge that she is Palpatine's grandaughter was what he was supposed to say which meant a "why didn't you tell me" plot would follow). Ends the franchise as the general of the ground forces of the Resistance, a famous galactic hero, and probably going to be trained as a Jedi. So yeah, Finn is canon Kyle Katarn from start to finish.

* Poe Dameron: An X-Wing pilot and one of the best pilots in the Resistance who gave Finn his nickname. Poe is the son of an ace pilot and an elite Rebel soldier, who was seemingly conceived in an Ewok hut during the Yubyub song and grew up with a holy Force tree in his yard that was a gift from Luke. Gets captured by the First Order but gets rescued by a defecting Finn and they both escape using a TIE Fighter. Assumed dead by Finn after crashing the TIE Fighter, though ends up coming back shooting down an entire squadron of TIE Fighters. Its never really stated why did he leave Finn behind in the crash site, how did he leave the planet or why did he pretty much abandon his mission of trying to find BB-8. As such he's barely in The Force Awakens. This is because the original script George Lucas proposed for Force Awakens used Poe as a means of Finn escaping, whereupon Finn takes it on himself to complete Poe’s last mission and eventually replace Poe in the Resistance. After Poe’s actor lamented that he dies in every movie, Poe was made to survive the crash and Finn gained a fearful coward who becomes a hero subplot, which unfortunately left both characters with nowhere to go for character arcs. Poe is far more important in The Last Jedi, <nowiki>but not in good ways. He disobeys orders and leads an attack on a First Order capital ship which not only results in the destruction of most of the surviving Resistance small fighters, but delays their escape long enough for the First Order flagship (so large it is essentially a giant capital city for the First Order) to catch up with them and massacre the Resistance. Poe then mutinies when the now-comatose Leia’s subordinate Holdo is put in charge of the Resistance (Ackbar was killed before that because his Voice Actor died, leaving Holdo as highest ranking officer) to enact his own plan using Finn...which fails, resulting in the deaths of most of the rest of the Resistance and the loss of their last capital ship. Poe’s counterattack also fails, and by the end its only thanks to Rey and Luke that anyone survives. By the end, there’s barely enough Resistance left to fill up the Millennium Falcon, although the First Order got it just as bad thanks to Holdo’s last act. In short: Poe is Magnus the Red tier of fuckups (for the same reason too, not being trusted with the truth but with even less justification).</nowiki> OR ALTERNATELY : Poe actually scores a massive victory for the Resistance as he destroys a massive dreadnought that would have wiped out a base on the ground and then some with a squadron of a dozen bombers '''and one fighter to protect them''' at the price of said bombers that were so stupidly designed they would basically kamikaze as their payloads are dropped gradually meaning the first explosion would start a chain going all the way up to the bomber itself. So basically, Poe destroyed a massive enemy asset at the price of some worthless ships but he still gets demoted because he had the common sense to not follow the order to retreat '''as the bombers were already hovering over their target and were completely defenseless in the first place and would have been even worse off during a retreat'''. This order makes so little sense, it's safe to assume it was only put in here so Poe could disobey it and the audience would understand he's a hotshot who doesn't respect the hierarchy while he was in the right in terms of tactics and strategy and it's already a miracle he got the raid to succeed. Essentially, claiming Poe fucked up is like saying blowing up a pillbox full of enemy soldiers and loads of ammo stockpiled in it with a single grenade is "fucking up" because you maybe probably possibly could have saved the grenade for later and made even more damage. If Poe hadn't had the dreadnought destroyed, it would have with ease one-shotted their ships and their base if they would have even got there (especially as the First Order could track the resistance and therefore the Dreadnought would've simply followed them and blown them up immediately). Not to mention that the bombers where the worst designed starships to date. No big loss there. In other words, he is the only reason they survived. Revealed to be a former Spice smuggler who had a criminal crew in Rise Of Skywalker, which is the bulk of his character development for most of the movie since he otherwise just banters with Finn and Rey. He gets friendzoned by his ex twice (his abandonment of their crew '''really''' screwed them over and she decides to forgive him for it, so its not like its out of nowhere to not want to shag) and leads initially the small Resistance fleet before the combined forces of the militias and pirate crews and Rebel veterans suddenly show up, meaning he lead the biggest navy in the entire setting and does it well which mostly makes up for the stupidity of the Last Jedi "character arc".

* Luke Skywalker has become a [[Neckbeard|grumpy old man who just wants the Jedi Order to die with him since he's been disillusioned in people not being shitty now that his shitty-feeling self is considered the least shitty person in the universe.]] [[Rage|He also tried to kill his nephew because he had a bad dream.]] (something many fans, and even '''Mark Hamill himself''' considered out of character for Luke). It takes a direct Force-powered intervention from Leia as well as Yoda's Force ghost telling him "don't worry, we both fucked up and the kids still love our <strike>toys</strike> legends" to get him to nut the fuck up and help stop the First Order by embarrassing Kylo Ren in front of everyone. It got to the point where [[The Last Church|he tried to burn a sacred tree with contained the last books about the Jedi code]]. Yoda appeared as a Force ghost and told Luke the Force weren't limited to buildings or writings, destroying the tree which supposedly contained the last books about the Jedi code and history which turns out to be because Rey had already stolen said books and the destruction of the tree prevented Luke from discovering that fact, ensuring the Jedi will continue regardless of Luke's faith crisis. Of course the old codger gets to become a Force Ghost that resides mostly on Ach-To, so lets see if we won't see our boi Mark again in some future movie or series.

* Han Solo has, unfortunately, suffer from how Harrison Ford always went back and forth on wanting to continue the franchise, mostly because he thoroughly hated Solo and wanted him to die pretty much from day one, only to be thwarted in Empire and again in Jedi by the character's popularity. Ford agreed to return for Episode 7 when Disney finally gave him his wish, having Solo fail to redeem his son Ben and getting a metaphorical and literal lightsaber through the heart for it. Post-Disney Han's origin is covered in a solo movie named Solo. It's generally considered skub.

* Leia manages to somehow [[Roboute Guilliman|survive getting shot into space]] using her force abilities in TLJ, probably the most ridiculous part of the film (which is no mean feat considering the rest of the film). Due to the death of her actress Carrie Fisher (given the amount of cocaine and partying she'd done over the years it was amazing Carrie lived as long as she did) Leia only appears in Episode 9 using altered unused footage from Episodes 7 and 8 along with some dubbed lines, where she's shown training Rey then just dies by fading away.

* Dinn Djarin: the titular Mandalorian from the series of the same name. Dinn belongs to a radical sect of the Mandos called the Children of the Watch, who follow an uber-conservative version of the Mandalorian Creed in which they must not allow anyone to see their faces. Dinn is still an honorable, if reserved and standoffish warrior who works for the Bounty Hunter's Guild in the post-Endor galaxy. He ends up breaking one of his contracts when he's hired to kidnap a young Jedi child named Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) and turn him over to the Imperial Remnant; Dinn instead chooses to be the child's protector and deliver him to whatever Jedi remain in the galaxy. During their adventures he bonds with the child, and eventually learns that not all Mandos follow his extreme version of the Creed, eventually removing his helmet for Grogu's sake as they tearfully part ways. But then, Disney remembered that this duo were breakout stars that gave the franchise a massive shot in the arm, so they ended up reuniting shortly after during Din's latest team-up with Boba.

* The Bad Batch: Officially known as "Clone Force 99", they're a Special Ops squad made up of clones with genetic defects that give them a tactical advantage. Initially introduced in the Clone Wars series, before getting a series of their own. Because of their unique traits they were partially immune to their Inhibitor chips and thus didn't initially obey Order 66, later getting on Tarkin's bad side for being too disobedient and getting branded as traitors. Crosshair betrays them as his inhibitor chip still works; they're joined instead by Omega, the only known female clone of Jango Fett, and apparently part of a contingency plan where she and Boba Fett were to become the new gene template for the clone army. The clones witness the rapid transformation of the Republic into the Empire as they live on the run, likely to include the "decommissioning" of the clone army as a whole. Members are:
** Hunter: Team leader, his "trait" being enhanced senses. Hair and red headband, knife skills, and being a badass commando make his Rambo inspiration obvious. Becomes a father figure to Omega and the moral compass of the team, protecting them from their former brothers and an empire that wants them dead.
** Wrecker: Team bruiser and man-child. [[Space Marine|Is super strong, loves a good fight, and wears bulky black and red armor with skull imagery]]. Though sometimes a victim of the Worf effect, he's generally allowed to be fairly cool. In keeping with his gentle giant image, he takes a shine to Omega sooner than many of the others.
** Tech: The brainy one, which is conveyed by Dee Bradley Baker giving him an English accent. Also more mellow and less abrasive than most of the other squad, getting along fine with the "regs" who the Bad Batch as a whole often disdain and dislike working with.
** Crosshair: Vindicaire Assassin in Star Wars, being a cold-blooded sniper with incredible aim who wears black armor and is fanatically loyal to his fascist employers. With special reflectors he can make his blaster bolts ricochet off of solid surfaces. The team's asshole, he unsurprisingly betrays them in the aftermath of Order 66, though he still cares about his former teammates in his own way, even saving Omega in the Season 1 finale. Wants the rest of the Bad Batch to join him in working for the Empire.
** Echo: Originally a regular Clone Trooper, he was one of the titular rookies in the fan-favorite Season 1 episode, and by the end of the series was the only one still breathing. Now is a member of the Bad Batch, the cybernetic modifications he got while a prisoner of the Separatists making him more than ordinary Clone.
** Omega: A barely useful waste of...(sees giant mouse giving evil eye)...uh, I mean, sweet, endearing kid who befriends the Bad Batch and joins them on their adventures. Revealed to be a female clone of Jango and currently the only known one, making her effectively the Bad Batch's cute little sister despite technically being OLDER than them. Main source of Bad Batch's Skub. Also blonde despite being a Jango clone, likely a subtle reference to how Jango's sister in Legends was blonde. That or she's got some of Maketh Tua's DNA thrown in.

* Cal Kestis: [[Zero Punctuation|Young "Luke Skywalker"-type hero and ginger]]; the main character of the Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor vidya games. Was in hiding after Order 66 on a scrapperyard before being found by the Inquisitorius and taken on a planet-hopping treasure-hunting adventure with former Jedi master Cere Junda and the small-time smuggler Greez. Cal has the ability to use Psychometry, a Force-power that allows him to absorb memories and thoughts connected to items (a Force power made famous by Quinlan Vos), which has made it difficult to live with the lightsaber of his dead mentor. Personality is fairly stock for a Jedi, but does manage to fuck up two Inquisitors, battalions of Stormtroopers, Purge Troopers, vicious fauna and flora and the occasional bounty-hunter with nothing but a scratch on him. Has a thing for ponchos.

* Cere Junda: Another Jedi who survived Order 66, she and Cal join forces on account of him being a student without a master and her being a master without a student. Has a fairly dark backstory, having been captured and tortured by the Empire, and with her Padawan having suffered the same and blaming Cere for it. Come the sequel, she's effectively become a female Mace Windu, having gone bald and become a one-woman army who shreds through dozens of Stormtroopers, Scout Troopers, and Purge Troopers [[Awesome|and keeps winning ''even when AT-STs show up'']]. It takes Vader himself to take her down, and even then she gives him about as good of a fight as Obi-Wan.

== Side Characters ==
* C-3P0 and R2-D2: Two robots trapped in a sexless gay marriage who are the only minor characters to have been in all the movies so far, and even in stories like The Old Republic outside of their millennia of existence will usually have an equivalent. C-3P0 is the shiny golden humanoid robot who constantly fusses about keeping the furniture clean and worries that his pies are getting overdone in the oven while R2-D2 is the brash, brave husband figure who swings into action regardless. He looks like a salt shaker next to the Dalek's pepper shakers, although is he more a plucky rabbit to their rabid wild cats. He's also an angry motherfucker; in Revenge he iced two battledroids by setting them on fire, and his killcount throughout Clone Wars raises the question why the Republic isn't using R2's instead (explained nx the fact that Anakin never resets his memory and thus goes from [[Servitor]] to AI). The robots mostly have comedy roles in the movies, since they might threaten to upstage the human actors if they became too useful, though R2 has an electric cattle prod and serves as the party's computer skillmonkey, while C-3P0 saves the day with his mad linguistic skillz at least once per film in the original trilogy. They starred in their own cartoon series that was surprisingly good. In the pre-Disney EU the two are rarely joined as they are in the films. R2 frequently joins Luke on adventures, giving him someone to talk to during otherwise solo adventures, providing a Doctor Watson like figure even if the droid doesn't add much to the conversation. C-3P0 on the other hand stuck with Leia and assisted her in her duties as mother and head of state. In post Disney continuity the writers don't seem to know what to do with them and they're mostly just there; at least until Rise of Skywalker, where C-3PO's l337 tranzlation skillz are again important to the plot. Both are occasionally funny.

* Chewbacca: The original furry in space, the dog you can have a beer with in the space Winnebago. Nothing sexy about him; he is just hairy, huge, knows how to pilot a space ship, fix stuff, fire a <s>fucking space crossbow</s> gun, and generally get shit done which strangely makes him the coolest furry ever. Best friends with Han, has a family that we can all agree did not appear in the terrible Christmas special that does not exist (he got a much more badass family in the Galactic Battlegrounds games, so go with that). Hates Trandoshans like all Wookiees, since Trandoshans are almost always assholes and are particularly assholish to Wookiees. The prequel trilogy revealed he's REALLY FUCKING OLD thanks to Wookiee lifespan. In post-Disney lore, he is one of the few characters who has lived through the ''entire saga'', including the Clone Wars, the rebellion against the Empire and the resistance against the First Order. In the post-Disney continuity he ultimately generally ignored in endings and the plot overall (ironic that he was the first major character who died in the pre-Disney lore and he's one of the few still alive in post-Disney lore).
**In the pre-Disney continuity he was a slave that the then-Imperial Han saved, then he helped Han save the galaxy. He was also tough as nails having survived numerous injuries and abuse that would've killed most Wookiees, and Wookiees are already tougher than humans. His actual death was getting mooned to death by extragalactic space cenobites - as in they used a gravity manipulation device to smash a moon into the planet Vector Prime while he was accidentally trapped on it. He was hailed as a hero across the galaxy (with the boast among Wookiees that [[Awesome|Chewbacca was so tough, it took something that can wreck a planet to kill him]]) and the fanbase cried or raged at his death; even the authors who killed him off went on record to say they were sad about his death and only did so for the sake of plot.

* Lando Calrissian: Suave, charismatic, and an expert con artist, this guy is the original pirate king in space. He betrays Han and co. when Vader invades his city, later regrets it, and then atones by saving the cast from the Empire as well as the populace of his city at the same time, then helps save Han from the mafia, and finally leading the fleet that blows up the Death Star 2.0. Consistently one of the only two film characters to maintain his original actor in the EU, with Billy Dee Williams showing up for video games, audio dramas, promotional shorts, and the occasional malt liquor ad.

* Yoda: Ancient wise grand master of the Jedi Order who a tiny green alien is. Never named, his species was. Because of his size and age, most assumed just a harmless old teacher he was, your nice old granddad like. His pulling out a lightsaber and engaging a Sith Lord in combat at the end of ''Attack of the Clones'', one of the most surprising and popular fights of the series is. Incredibly powerful in the Force, he is, rivaled by the likes of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Sideous. Became a big franchise mascot he did, despite a surprise for the audience he was meant to be in his first appearance, ruining it for future generations. A unique way of speaking, he has. A very popular target for parody, it has become (though the original trilogy indicated it was just one of many things he was doing to annoy Luke as a test, since he doesn't talk that way to Obi-Wan). A symbol of the Jedi Order's blindness and rigidity in the prequel era, he was. But had a spiritual reawakening, after his journey following the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn. Even after death, a wise mentor he became.

* Wedge Antilles: The anti-redshirt. Has almost no lines in the original movies but somehow survives all of them, even blowing up the second Death Star with Lando. In the EU he is one of, if not ''the'' best starfighter pilot in the galaxy, and co-founder of the über elite Rogue Squadron along with Luke. It also establishes he was the son of humble (mobile) gas station owners who got killed by pirates. After tracking down and killing the pirates, he tried to live to a normal life, but failed when Imperials killed his alliance sympathizing girlfriend. Eventually rises to General after realizing his refusing promotions was screwing the career of everyone under him. Has a weakness of being more of a tactician than a strategist, which extends to his personal character which often fails to see the big picture. The other character to maintain his original actor in most EU works.

* Admiral Ackbar: Giant tactical fish who has the need to point out obvious traps in memetic fashion. Leads the rebel fleet in the sixth film. Dies in the eighth. He has a huge fanbase despite only appearing in a few scenes across the entire film saga and is one of the meme-faces of the fandom alongside Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine. His survival and high rank made him quite prominent in the EU's New Republic works. Pre-Disney was much of the same except he died during the Yuuzhan Vong War (the same war that led to Chewie's death in the Legends).

* Jar-Jar Binks: Solely exists to fuck up everything (and we do mean EVERYTHING) at the worst possible moment. This guy is so hated by everyone in and out of universe that his actor received severe backlash - including '''death threats''', and he even considered suicide because of it - even though he had nothing to do with the writing while also sympathizing with fans' complaints and Lucas shitcanned his role down into a very brief cameo at the end of Episode 3. He's actually something of a tragic figure representing someone good who tries to act to save the galaxy but ended up ruining it instead. All of this only gets more palm-to-head-worthy since Jar Jar was created as a fun kids characters, rather than anything truly important... But of course, [[neckbeards]] gotta rage. Got a depressing meta style sendoff in the Aftermath book after Disney got the rights, which is a shame since it was hinted at in the Clone Wars series that he would marry a powerful alien queen who thinks he's a sex magnet. No really.
** To those wondering why Jar-Jar is so hated, there's a multitude of reasons. Firstly, he's a clear "comic relief/child appeal" type character, speaking in a heavily accented language, being clumsy and bumbling, and just generally being clearly intended to appeal to the little kiddies and annoying the older watchers. Secondly, he has a bad record of making decisions that end up causing great problems for the rest of the characters... as in, this guy was one of the people who proposed they make ''Palpatine'' the Supreme Chancelor, so he is, from a certain point of view, the guy who let the Empire come into being.

* Mace Windu: The original only black dude in space (because everyone forgot about Lando), he was the hardest-as-nails Jedi master of the council during the prequel trilogy and the best swordfighter in the Order, hence his unique purple lightsaber. That, and Sam Jackson wanted his own color to stand out. If Anakin hadn't interfered, he would have killed Darth Sidious and none of the original trilogy would have taken place. His subsequent anti-climatic death in the movie is regarded with annoyance by his fans. His mastery of the Force allows him to channel his anger and enjoyment of battle into his combat style [[Bullshit|without being corrupted by the Dark Side]], basically getting as close to the Dark Side a Jedi can get and still be a Jedi. He can also detect what he calls "shatterpoints", which lets him detect weaknesses to either mess people up in combat or exploit the "for want of a nail" proverb to turn situations to his side. Has a novel, Shatterpoint, which is pretty much Heart of Darkness IN STAR WARS.

* CT-7567/Captain Rex: If the Clone Troopers are the equivalent of Guardsmen, then this guy is the equivalent of the likes of [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt|Gaunt]] and [[Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken|Straken]]. The defacto second-in-command of the 501st Legion under Anakin Skywalker, he fought in nearly every major engagement during the Clone Wars, leading his men through hellish battles like on Geonosis at the beginning of the war and on Mandalore at the end. He has a strong sense of morality and cares for the lives of both the men under him and the officers above him, which meant that he often came into conflict with asshat commanders like the Jedi knight Krell (who treated their troops as little more than disposable cannon fodder). He even managed to face off against dark-side Force users and live- something very few non-Force users are able to accomplish (To get a better picture of what this is like, imagine a sergeant in the guard facing off against a Chaos Space Marine, and living). After the war and his beloved Republic's transformation into the eventually-despised Empire, he and two other clone commanders went into retirement on a backwater world, fishing for worms the size of skyscrapers on an old walker they converted into a mobile home. He was brought out of retirement by a combination of the rebels of Phoenix Squadron, his old friend and commander Ahsoka, and the Empire being their usual backstabbing, overreactive selves, and so resolved to bring down the corrupt regime and restore the nation he had served out of pride (although most clones were programmed to follow the Republic, and specifically the Chancellor, many ended up choosing instead to follow the ideals of the Republic rather than the people in charge, and some even managed to overcome Palpatine's programming via removing the chip he had planted in their heads during the cloning process). To that end, he participated in many Rebel missions. Making him the old man you see with Han Solo's commando group in RoTJ was toyed with, but ultimately rejected due to the character already having an identity in the EU and him having the wrong ethnicity.

* Aayla Secura: The space waifu of many a generation of star wars fanboys. A hot Twi'lek jedi chick who dressed skimpy and kicked butt. She was such a popular side character that Lucas took notice of her and added into the second and third prequel movies. Her reason for ditching the traditional jedi robes and showing her midriff was to show pride in Twi'lek culture, as her race tends to be viewed primarily as slaves rather than as an important part of the galaxy. Much like Ahsoka, she wasn't entirely defined by being a hot chick, but had other redeeming characteristics that made her likable, like being mechanically inclined, kind, wise, and somewhat mischievous. Much like Captain Rex, she had a great relationship with clones under her command, and it was rumored she and her Clone Commander had a romantic attachment to each other. Suffers from two tragedies: her death in Revenge of the Sith was brutal, and Disney hasn't done anything with her character since they acquired the franchise. In pre-Disney continuity, Aayla and Jedi master Kit Fisto were rumored to have a romantic attachment to each other.

* Mon Mothma: A former Chandrilan senator and the political leader of the Rebel Alliance. She even had a movie appearance (the woman that presented the plan to take down the second Death Star in Episode 2) so that means, she is still canon! She, Padmé and Bail Organa were the heads of a small movement in the dying months of the Republic that sought to keep Palpatines power in check. The EU depicted her as a capable politician who managed to secure a lot of undercover support for the Rebellion, but had a bad habit of thinking too highly of herself, especially when Organa died when Alderaan was destroyed. This alienated Barm Gel Iblis, the leader of the Corellian faction of the Alliance, as she frequently put military matters on her to-do list while having no experience in that field (also kind of puts the Battle of Endor into a new perspective, an obvious trap that the Rebels only got out of due to sheer fucking luck). What she did after Endor in the canon timeline is unknown, in the EU she became the first chancellor of the New Republic after the Rebels managed to liberate most of the core worlds, including Coruscant, from the Imperial Remnants.

* Jabba the Hutt: A slug-like Hutt crime boss that was the head of a vast criminal enterprise operating from Tatooine. He had a hand in possibly every illegal business conducted in the entire galaxy. He also held a lot of political sway over the affairs of the Outer Rim because the size of his Empire meant that there was hardly anything that he didn't have a stake in. During the Clone Wars, he was actually on the Republican side because he likes to bet on the better horse and because Anakin and Ahsoka returned his kidnapped son in the imfamously terrible CW series pilot, although his duplicitous nature meant that he didn't care that much when the Empire took over. He was considered to be extremely obese and decadent even by the standards of Hutts and also deviant, since he preferred Human and Twi'lek courtesans over those of his own species. Han Solo was indebted to Jabba when he had to drop a load of spice drug cargo after he ran into an imperial patrol, which greatly angered Jabba. When Han went with the rebellion, Jabba organized a massive galaxy-wide manhunt for Han, which eventually culminated in the events of the end of Empire Strikes Back. In his arrogance, Jabba tried to execute Han, Luke and Lando by throwing them into the Sarlacc Pit on Tatooine, but he was strangled to death by Leia and the other three escaped.

== Disney Side Characters ==

* BB-8: The R2-D2 replacement and mascot of the new trilogy. Poe's buddy robot, started out as the plot device that the First Order was after in The Force Awakens, saves Finn and Rose's asses twice by taking down prison guards and piloting an AT-ST to attack Stormtroopers in The Last Jedi as well as Poe's in the comic. Saves Rey in Rise and reactivates a small antique droid companion that can speak Common AKA English, giving him his own C-3PO.

* Maz Kanata: An orange alien who knows a lot about the Force. In her backstory she was a Force-sensitive that’s somewhere in Yoda-tier age, but was never trained as a Jedi and instead used her talents to survive among the “third faction” (Hutts, smugglers, mafias, Mandos) while remaining as friendly to the “light side” factions as Hutts are to the “Dark Side” factions. Apparently also a supreme badass, judging from her brief appearance in TLJ. Definitely fucked Chewbacca and somehow survived. She procured Anakin’s/Luke’s blue lightsaber from the depths of the Bespin gas giant simply because she wanted it, and gave it to Rey in Force Awakens as well as some grandmotherly advice to her and Rey. She appears briefly to give the heroes contact information for a codebreaker in The Last Jedi. Joins the Resistance proper for the final movie, but not actually doing much onscreen other than spending some time with Leia.

* Saw Gerrara: Originally a member of the Space Viet Cong, this guy doesn't fuck around. Torture civilians? Check. Massacre entire patrols of Imperials? Check. In fact, his methods were considered so extreme that even the Rebel Alliance wanted nothing to do with him. Strictly speaking, he's a pre-Disney character as his first appearance on-screen was as part of the Clone Wars TV series; his first episode airing the same month that Disney acquired the franchise, making him one of the few characters to make the transition from the small screen to the big screen. Though he gets deaded within the first 30 minutes of Rogue One and does absolutely nothing of any value other than hinder the protagonists long enough to pad the run time, he has a lot more of his back-story filled out in the Rebels TV series. He was played by actor Forest Whitaker, so at least there's that.

* Sabine Wren: One of the main protagonists from the Star Wars Rebels show. A Mandalorian woman with a flair for art, explosions, and kicking Imperial ass, she is probably one of the most recognizable characters from the animated side of Disney canon. At first, she was a patriotic Imperial, designing weapons for the Emperor and his vassal ruler for Mandalore, Gar Saxon, until Gar decided to test one of her weapons on a group of Mandalorians, leading her to be labeled an oath-breaker by her people and cast out from her home-planet of Krownest by her mom. She then spends the events of the TV-series with her new surrogate family, the crew of the rebel freighter *Ghost*, and eventually recovers an ancient sword revered by her people, leading her to reconcile with her past, her birth family, and her people. Now, after the Battle of Endor, she is on a quest with Ahsoka Tano to find her 'totally-not-boyfriend', the Jedi Ezra Bridger, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, as they disappeared into the Unknown Regions following the events of the series finale. Was considered "another Disney female Mary Sue" until she acquired some nice depth in the last season of Rebels, however event before that their are several good moments with her such as her getting captured by Sith Inquisitors and used against Ezra and her fights with Kanan. Overall she is a very likable character and one of the better characters in Rebels.

* Amilyn Holdo: An [[Tumblr|overbearing, purple-haired “Rebel hero”]] and one of the key admirals of the Resistance. If you don't like the direction the Disney canon is going in, this character is your Jar Jar Binks and probably is to you even if you do approve/tolerate it. Her only role was to basically die in style but unfortunately she was pretty forgettable and nobody actually cared when she was atomized, even if it was a really fucking cool death. Tie-in material tried to fix this; the only real requirement for joining the Resistance was "didn’t think Leia was crazy for thinking the First Order was going to perform Star Wars 9/11”, and Holdo was only the captain of a small frigate before her battlefield promotion due to the entire chain of command other than the other frigate commander dying or being incapacitated by a single torpedo blast to the bridge of the Resistance flagship. As a matter of fact, [[skub|her "super-duper secret plan" ends up getting most of the Resistance killed after Finn and Poe fuck it up]], due to the fact that she decided to [[skub|not tell the freshly demoted highest ranking pilot who had just lost the resistance the last of their bombers her plan, causing him to mutiny]], and she only partially redeems herself via [[What|FTL ramming their command ship into the First Order command ship, destroying most of the FO fleet]], which is briefly visually spectacular but [[fluff]]-wise highly.... [[skub|take a guess]]. In the original script there was a subplot about there actually being a First Order spy aboard with the audience knowing in advance that there was a plan that spy could have ruined, but in an absolutely stunning display of terrible choices none of it was even filmed and the story was not changed to cut the references to that dropped plot.

* Rose Tico: A maintenance worker who acts as a tagalong for some of the most boring and annoying parts of The Last Jedi. After losing her sister in the beginning of the movie, she catches her idol Finn (who has apparently become something of a celebrity within the Resistance over the course of the week or so since he defected) trying to desert ship in order to warn Rey not to rendezvous as they were being chased by the First Order's fleet since Leia had given her a beacon indicating a rendezvous point (something that is entirely forgotten about for the rest of the movie, since Rey doesn't even use it to meet up with the Resistance at the end). She later went along with Finn to the Gilded Age planet to find the expert capable of helping them deactivate the First Order's tracking system, and despite literally growing up on a planet like that she still thinks its a great idea to just park their fighter on a luxury beach and run straight into a casino full of arms dealers wearing their military uniforms which results in the two being arrested and meeting a random criminal who sells the two out to the First Order because he overhears them literally explain their entire situation, despite the aforementioned "growing up as either a slave or a poor servant, its kind of unclear" backstory which means she should probably know more than the guy who literally only knows life as a Stormtrooper about shit like that. Her lust for Finn's BBC drives her to cockblock his heroic sacrifice on Salt Hoth before confessing his love for him at the worst possible moment in a plot point that will likely go nowhere. Also delivers the worst line in the entirety of the franchise: "[[What|That's how we are going to win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.]]" Which is even worse because Finn was not fighting a hated foe since he has no hatred towards his enemies and was instead just sacrificing himself for the people he loves. This quantum singularity of [[bullshit]] led to a substantial fraction of TLJ's backlash being directed at her actress despite the fact that she had nothing to do with writing any of it. Said backlash also basically single-handedly torpedoing whatever reputation the Star Wars fandom had with the greater public prior to this. Was an interesting character- how some heroes could come from unlikely places- that got handed shit writing in a movie that was way too crowded with a huge ensemble to begin with, and almost zero development. In The Rise Of Skywalker, instead of giving pithy speeches about love and being oppressed she spends her time doing actual ground crew technician work between battles, when characters are meeting to plan their next move she speaks like a high-ranking member of the Resistance (by process of elimination, but still), and the most important thing; '''she actually gets to participate in a battle and shoots some motherfuckers''' in an attempt address the "her figures don't sell" problem. The plot point of her being in love with Finn is not addressed, like in any way at all, and she has very little screentime so she's pretty much been simultaneously upgraded/downgraded into being the Wedge to Finn's Luke. That last part didn't go over well with a lot of people given her bigger role in VIII, leading to accusations that IX was pandering to the /pol/ crowd by giving Rose so little to say or do. Despite (or maybe because of), getting shafted in the movies proper, the actress has proven fairly game about reprising her role in voice-acting for various projects.

* Torra Doza: D.Va in Star Wars. No seriously. Young female, wears a blue and white bodysuit with gloves, is a pilot, likes video games, cheerful personality, she's got it all...except for being in something that's actually popular. Unfortunately, Torra had the bad luck to be a character in the widely reviled Star Wars: Resistance, which basically guaranteed a status as Skub at best and hated at worst.

* Merrin: Hot Nightsister goth babe who is actually the last survivor of her people after the Separatists wiped them out in the Clone Wars cartoon. Initially manipulated by Taron Malicos into helping her, Cal Kestis is able to get her to side with him, at which point she joins him. As a Nightsister, she can use the Force in ways the average Jedi and Sith can't, making her a powerful ally. Swings both ways, but eventually partners up with Cal in the sequel after much, much, MUCH ship-tease.

== Villains ==
* Darth Sidious/Sheev "Can't Peeve the Sheev" Palpatine/The Emperor: A creepy old wrinkly dude who sits in his badass evil throne constantly screaming "[[Just as planned]]!" And occasionally frying fools with force lightning. And the irony about him is that he hails from one of the setting's biggest pacifistic paradises, Naboo, yet still turned out completely evil. About on par with [[Nagash]] in terms of plain assholery (not to mention being crazy powerful). Built a giant planet-destroying weapon, then built another, bigger one as a trap when the first one blew up. He is very clever, managing to scheme and outwit everyone in the prequel trilogy (not particularly hard, given that every good guy in the prequels was written to be a complete dunce), moving them all into place so he could take over the galaxy (although he still needed a big superweapon anyway to hold onto said power) in the original trilogy and even manages to make [[Just as Planned|everything move to his design]] in the sequel trilogy. Chews so much scenery they had to resort to computer-generated imagery. [[Meme|He is the Senate]]. His survival in the third Disney film was so baffling and unexplained that even the characters had to admit that it made no sense; then again, he was only brought back because Disney had no other choice, having killed off Snoke too soon and Kylo Ren not being a credible enough villain on his own.

* Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin: [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Tywin Lannister]] [[Indrick Boreale|IN SPHESS]] (although, given that Star Wars came first it might be more accurate to say Tywin is Tarkin in Grimdark Fantasy). Ruthless, ambitious, and cold, Grand Moff (Governor) Tarkin is the epitome of all that is Imperial in the SW Universe, and represents all the non-Sith elements that makes the Empire so evil. Started out as a career officer in the republican navy, became promoted by Palpatine after he put down early resistance movements against the Empire with ruthless efficiency (including literally crushing protestors with a Star Destroyer). The Clone Wars also showed that he briefly served under Anakins command, where their philosophies showed be to quite compatible (Tarkins cold pragmatism combined with Anakins fierce determination to get the job done at any cost) and became the basis of a deep mutual respect for one another. Also happens to be one of the few characters outside of the force users to figure out that Vader was Anakin on his own. His idea of ruling pretty much comes down to [[Konrad Curze|"They can hate me as long as they fear me"]], which is symbolized ultimately by the Death Star. [[Derp|However, he uses the stick far too often and hardly uses the carrot]], and this policy backfires on him horribly when he destroys Alderaan, a Core World and one of the founders of the Old Republic- for instead of cowing the galaxy into submission, it, along with the Battle of Yavin which saw himself and his battle-station destroyed, [[Fail|galvanized half the galaxy into openly declaring for the Alliance]]. Before the Prequels rewrote the origins of the Imperial superweapon programs entirely, he pioneered the idea of weapons like the Death Star and worked hard to lobby political support from Palpatine and the military for their construction, and was the man in charge for a great number of military R&D developments until his death.

* Jango and Boba Fett: Father and son, though the son is actually an unaltered clone of his father. Badass, mostly-silent mercs who get shit done and come from a line of Spartan/Viking/Māori warriors in space called Mandalorians. Mandos are real hardasses who can go toe-to-toe with Jedi, and the Fetts were no exception. Sadly, both had very anticlimactic deaths, though Boba survived his in the EU, through the power of being too popular with the audience to kill permanently, later having his survival added to Disney Canon. With both of his former employers dead (Jabba and the Empire), and having just survived a fate worse than death and separation from his father's armor, Boba seems to have had time to reconsider his past decisions. He becomes an honorary Tusken after helping out a Tusken tribe that kept him alive, and after getting his armor back from Din Djaren, decides to take Jabba's old position as crimelord of Tatooine. Despite being Jabba's number one enforcer for years, he finds the job a lot harder than it looks, fending off Hutts and local gangs while trying to live up to his Mandalorian heritage and sense of honor. Both of them, ''especially'' Boba, are long-time fan-favorites, but there is also a very vocal and obstinate faction of haters who ''never'' shut up about Boba Fett's falling into the Sarlaac and his limited role in the movies proper. [[Rage|No matter how many times Boba's survival and numerous showings of badassery outside of the movies are pointed out, you can count on the Fett haters to stick to their guns as stubbornly as an Imperial Guardsman down to his last lasgun rounds.]] Sadly, the underperformance of Book of Boba Fett has ensured that the Fett-bashing is likely to continue, with Boba's softer characterization being one of the main points of contention.

* Jabba the Hutt: Obese slug who is a cross between a Mexican drug cartel kingpin and Mafia crime-boss. He runs his criminal enterprise from an old palace-monastery on Tatooine. A [[/d/]]eviant at heart, likes to fap to hot alien chicks dancing for him until they try to escape, then faps even harder when he feeds said chicks to Rancor. His power is such that the Republic, and later the Empire, had to negotiate with him to be able to have some influence in the Outer Rim, because even Sheev Palpatine knows that you don't do shit in the Outer Rim without dealing with the Hutts first. Gets strangled to death by a bikini-wearing Leia with her own chains, because symbolism. In short, he's one of Slaanesh's despite looking like one of Nurgle's.

* Thrawn: *Star Wars [[Creed]], if Creed was also a philosophical blue-skinned, red-eyed alien who loved art. Originally introduced in the pre-Disney EU/Legends, Thrawn was so popular Disney soon brought him back into the Disney canon (with a few tweaks to his story). Thrawn was renowned for being one of the few high-ranking aliens in the Galactic Empire and one of the Emperor's best subjects. He originally served as a member of the Chiss Ascendancy, but after being backstabbed (Disney canon retconned this into a ploy; he's still loyal to the Chiss, but pretended to be an exile so he can use the Empire as a buffer state) he signed up with the Galactic Empire and worked with Darth Vader - having met him back when the latter was still a Jedi - and even the Emperor himself. In his tactics, Thrawn notably employed his analysis based around understanding the philosophy and art of his enemies, and was a very capable commander. Always one step ahead of his opponents, Thrawn would frequently outplay both rebels and political rivals by anticipating their actions well in advance, sometimes even using their own plans against them. Literally the only things that can stop Thrawn are things he can't anticipate or control like The Force (and he even found an effective countermeasure for the Force in the form of some Force-resistant Sloths) or spontaneous insubordination. Thrawn quickly became very well-liked with fans, to the point many considered him the best thing to come from Star Wars since the original trilogy.
** He also set up a vassal Empire called "the Empire of the Hand" to combat an alien menace encroaching on Chiss territory that was considered a threat to the Empire; pre-Disney this was the Yuuzhan Vong (AKA the Far Outsiders, AKA the space cenobites who killed Chewbacca by dropping a moon on him), post-Disney it's Vong-knockoffs called the Grysk. Pre-Disney Thrawn was killed by the betrayal of his Noghri bodyguard but he is alive and well post-Disney, and was last seen when Ezra used the Force and space whales to yeet Thrawn's ship into the unknown regions with all of them on board. His actual name is the near-unpronounceable Mitth'raw'nuruodo. With his philosophical nature and fetish for art collecting, he's probably a deliberate ripoff of M'Quve from ''Mobile Suit Gundam'', but good luck getting Zahn to admit it.
** Out of all the Empire's elite command, Thrawn stands out not just for being a tactical genius, but also for being a stone-cold pragmatist without falling into Tarkin's genocidal dickery or Vader's open disdain for his own men. He prefers to handle situations with subtlety and long-term success rather than with violence or cruelty for short-term gains (though he'll use the latter if he thinks it's required). Had he not been saddled with working for such an openly tyrannical dictatorship, he could easily have been a more heroic (if ruthless) military leader when faced with an actual threat to the galaxy at large.

* Gilad Pellaeon: The Watson to Thrawn's Sherlock, Pellaeon was a veteran Imperial Navy Officer in the Legends canon with a career stretching from the Clone Wars to the Vong War. Well liked in-universe and out for being a reasonable, fair-minded person with a sense of honor. Basically the complete opposite of guys like Tarkin. As such, he often gets the role of "Token Good Imperial", with the implication that Thrawn was setting Pellaeon up as his successor.

* Count Dooku: An elegant, charismatic, gentlemanly Sith lord and master fencer who had dreams of liberating the galaxy from Republic control, but didn't expect his partner in crime to be a backstabbing douchebag (seeing how he was a full-blown Sith Lord by the time of Attack of the Clones, he really should have seen that coming). Was born as a planetary noble, but gave it all up when he became a Jedi, only to get it all back when he gave up being a Jedi to lead the secessionist movement against the Senate's corruption. In spite of all his unethical activities, including assassination plots against virtuous Separatists while actively promoting war criminals in the CIS military, Dooku genuinely believed that the New Order was going to wipe away corruption in the galaxy, and that even the Jedi would have a place once enough of them saw things his way. Turns out, Palpatine had been playing him just like everyone else during the Clone Wars. Hates Anakin/Vader for not being a gentleman.
** In the novels he's also an alien-hating human supremacist who believes the Empire's purpose is to establish humanity as dominant in GFFA; He'd do well as a citizen of the Imperium if he just changed which Emperor he revered. While actually a very cool villain in the EU, because he was so underdeveloped and underused in the movies proper, most younger or more casual fans (IE: anyone who hates or doesn't care about the EU), tend to dismiss him as boring, making Dooku the "unfavorite" of Palpatine's three apprentices despite being played by Saruman himself, Sir Christopher Lee (RIP).

* Darth Maul: Horned Sith primarily concerned with bloodshed and fighting. He'd do well as a Khornate Champion. Had his legs cut off then was brought back more badass than ever, making him obsessed with getting revenge on Obi-Wan, as well as Sideous for casting him aside. He creates a massive criminal syndicate and even conquering the Mandalorians to create a small army that posed a serious threat to Sidious' plans; that is, until he was utterly stomped by Sidious himself, then gets killed in a duel with an elderly Obi-wan almost 18 years later. Wields a sick-looking double-bladed lightsaber, doesn't actually gets a single line in the first film dubbed in by a different actor, and played by famous martial arts master Ray Park. He was a silent badass in the movie but for some reason he was made very talkative in the animated series. The EU gave him a backstory as the scion of a species of Sith-aligned Force witches that ''The Clone Wars'' later made canon. The director of ''Solo'' picked him out of a hat to be the leader of the nefarious criminal gang Han gets stuck working with, which is not unreasonable given his previously established connections. Despite being a rage-filled maniac, the TV shows gave him a lot of depth, as he recognizes that there are bigger forces at play in the universe, and by the time of his death, puts his hope in the Skywalkers finally defeating Sidious.
** In the Legends canon, he was resurrected by some Dark Side cultists very shortly before A New Hope and sicced on Darth Vader so the writer could have an excuse to give the fans the fight they'd been clamoring for since 1999. Vader sent Maul back to the grave, but not easily. Then his brain was salvaged by some mad scientist and kept alive (somehow), with Maul interacting with the world in a limited way through holographic projections. Luke Skywalker pulled the plug on it though, letting Maul finally die for good.

* General Grievous: An alien cyborg even more fucked up than what Darth Vader would become (being a robot body that was a canister for his eyes, brain, and vital organs), Grievous was the Supreme Commander of the Droid Army during the Prequels and the Clone Wars TV series (both versions), and a sadistic Jedi hunter. His competence is usually portrayed two totally different ways; in the 2D animated TV series (created by the same guy who made [[Samurai Jack|Samurai Jack]]), and other EU material created prior to the second Clone Wars cartoon, he is portrayed as an awesome, unstoppable killing machine who roflstomps Jedi left and right, can even outduel experienced Jedi Masters, and is only bested by Mace "The Ace" Windu. In the third film and especially the CG Clone Wars show, he is an [[Stupid Evil|incompetent, froth-mouthed imbecile]] with a record of failure that even [[Abaddon]] would laugh at hysterically and a win/loss record in combat that would make an Avatar of Khaine shake its head in disgust. Sadly, the latter was what Lucas originally intended him to be - even if the former is way more awesome. By the end of the Clone Wars, Grievous and his atrocities against civilians became the public face of the Separatist cause (while Dooku kept Grievous actions a secret from his allies); The death mask of Grievous became a potent symbol in Imperial propaganda in order to associate resistance to the Empire with the horrors of the Clone Wars - just as Palpatine intended. Ironically, in Legends the Empire gave copies of GG's mask to some of their secret weapons (Terror Troopers and Terror Biodroids namely).
** Actually has a somewhat-tragic past in Legends: he was a great and virtuous hero on his primitive planet, but Dooku arranged for the Separatists to shoot Grievous' shuttle down and harvested his shredded body to repurpose him into their general/assassin. Dooku also lobotomized Grievous in way that reduced him to a raging killer. When Grievous recovered, Dooku then pinned blame for the shuttle crash on the Jedi and Republic, turning him into the OG raging murder-machine we all know and love. In all, a considerably more grimdark past than his other versions.
** In the second Clone Wars cartoon, his backstory is kept vague, but Grievous claims he deliberately chose to become a cyborg in order to become better at killing Jedi (and actually becoming extremely good at it, at least in the first CW, where he cuts down four Jedi with ease). Hated being mistaken for a droid, being compared to a droid and all Jedi - especially Obi-Wan Kenobi. His competence ping-pongs around even more violently than before: Grievous [[Fail|loses to a barely-trained Padawan]], [[What|can't definitively outduel Adi Gallia despite killing her easily in the original canon]], and [[EPIC FAIL|getting taken down by the fucking Gungan army under Jar Jar and Captain Tarpals]] in a couple episodes while [[grimdark|committing on-screen genocide against the Nightsisters]] and going toe-to-toe with the likes of Kit Fisto and Obi-Wan in other episodes. He was voiced by one of the folks at Lucasarts, who submitted his audition under an alias to make sure he'd get a fair shake. Along with Anthony Daniels, he reprises his role more often than most other Star Wars movie actors.

* Clone Troopers: The predecessors of the Storm Troopers. These soldiers were vat clones of Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett cloned in large numbers, trained from birth in combat and clad in environmentally sealed suits of their famous gleaming white full body armor. Despite being genetically engineered to be perfectly obedient automatons, the Jedi they served under encouraged their individuality, and they began giving themselves names and unique tattoos and haircuts. But when Palpatine activated their inhibitor chips via Order 66, the clones' autonomy was completely overridden (the effect appears to only last a couple weeks, but it is extremely intense) and they executed the Jedi without hesitation. The original clonetroopers served the Republic against the Separatists, and were turned into the stormtroopers after Palpatine's total take-over. A very small minority of clones had their chips successfully removed and fought against the Empire, especially those who formed close bonds with their Jedi generals or local freedom fighters, but the vast majority of the Clones were more loyal to Palpatine than to the Republic itself, and didn't need much convincing to stick with the Empire, with or without inhibitor chips.
** Various sources (even within legends) disagree on the exact reasons why Palpatine replaced the clone troopers: the rebels blew up the gene-banks, the Kaminoans rebelled and created their own clone army, the clones were too susceptible to targeted genome-based biological weapons, or that the clones served their purpose and were too expensive to maintain, especially with their accelerated aging. Remaining Clones either were retired, served as instructors and in the case of the Commandos and the 501st Legion (having proven their loyalty and competence over and over, including at the Kamino uprising), kept serving in pure Fett-template units as Vader's personal enforces. Even they were retired after Hoth due to being too old.
** In Disney Canon, the clones were expendable once they served their purpose of killing the Jedi; removing them from the equation freed up resources for the Death Star and reduced the Empire's dependency on Kamino's cloning facilities. However, enough clones started to mutiny or desert that the Imperial military accelerated their replacement with recruited Stormtroopers. Some speculate that activating the Inhibitor Chip also made Clones worse soldiers due to their behavioral modification, though this is unconfirmed.
** The old EU canon had a different take on why the Troopers had little trouble with executing Order 66; where the order was merely one of many (151 in total) contingency plans that would be enacted by either the chancellor or the senate if the existence of the Republic or the functioning of its governing institutions were vitally threatened (the irony was certainly not lost on Palpatine) and were just part of the normal training program of the soldiers. Order 66 was buried under plans for events like the Senate being blown up, the Chancellor becoming incapacitated, Coruscant being destroyed etc. What made Order 66 so insidious was that the Jedi thought it was a protection against renegade force users (not unheard of with Dooku and Ventress running around) and that Palpatine masterminded his scheme in such a way that the legal prerequisites of Order 66 - Jedi staging a coup against the Chancellor or the Senate, which technically was what happened when Windu attacked Palpatine (even more explicitly so in the Novelization, where Windu planned to install the Jedi council as an interim government until the Senate would elect a new chancellor) - was fulfilled with no one there to question it. Combined with the Troopers inherent psychological conditioning and more than one Commander holding serious grudges against many Jedi ensured that the Order would not be questioned even by those Clones who were fond of their generals.
* Stormtroopers: The soldiers of the Galactic Empire. Unlike the Clone Troopers, the vast majority of the stormtroopers are enlisted, typically from the underclasses of war-torn and impoverished worlds. Contrary to popular belief, Stormtroopers are ''not'' the rank and file in the Imperial army, and are more skilled and fanatical, akin to Marines. There's ''technically'' an Imperial Army apart from the Stormtroopers, though you'd be forgiven for having never heard of them, because most writers of the franchise tend to forget they exist too. Either way, Stormtroopers are a step down in quality from Clone Troopers (including their armor, with a surviving clone trooper making a point of how awful it is compared to his old wargear), but by this point the Empire didn't really need that many high-quality soldiers when it was more concerned with keeping civilian populations under its thumb. Since the First Order doesn't have a good dental plan to bring in recruits, they instead resort to [[Schola Progenium|kidnapping or buying children and raising them as soldiers]] to fill their mook quota. They are unwaveringly loyal and obedient to the Empire, ruthless and brutally efficient foes in combat, and incredibly precise shots with their state-of-the-art weapons. And like the Clones, their primary loyalty was to Palpatine, *not* the Empire, and were discouraged from using their names or fraternizing with members of their unit. Naturally, these qualities all go out the window when they encounter the protagonists, but that's life when you're wearing a [[helmet]].
**There are some explanations as to the inconsistency in Stormtrooper quality; one is that the Imperial army is so vast that quality differences are inevitable. Stormtroopers that are an actual threat will defend the core worlds or accompany the more "serious" units, such as the 501st legion. Lesser recruits get sent to rim world backwaters or meat grinder conflicts, making them easier prey for the odd band of rebels or pirates. The rebels learned the hard way, though, that trying to fight a conventional way against the former was just asking for trouble (the Battle of Hoth being the biggest defeat in their history). That being said, by the Original Trilogy, the Empire hadn't fought a war even close to the scale of the Clone Wars before the Rebellion, so there were a lot of inexperienced troopers as well.
** Amusingly enough, Legends indicates that many of the Clone Troopers that actually stayed with the Galactic Empire ''hated'' the Stormtroopers, considering them a pack of incompetent idiots with no sense of their surroundings and terrible aim (which can be taken as a canonization of their memetically awful competence). One source even had Commander Cody (yes, that guy from Revenge of the Sith and the Clone Wars CGI cartoon) stating that he'd sacrifice an entire platoon of Stormtroopers for one real Clone Trooper and noting that Fett would probably kill the lot of them himself.
** Lastly, these boys comes in literally ''all'' the flavors. Variants based on environments (Snow, Desert, Shore and many more) and roles (Heavy, Incinerator, Commando and the elite Death Troopers), ensuring that the Star Wars brand always has a new bunch of cool soldier dudes to make toys off of. When things has to get really dangerous for the heroes, the elite variants are brought in, like the Storm Commandoes, Death Troopers and (in Episode IX), Sith Troopers (no relation to the troops of the same name used by the Sith Empires pre-dating Palpatine). For a (mostly) complete list, [[Stormtrooper|see here.]]

* Imperial Army/Navy Troopers: As stated above, these guys formed the bulk of the Empire's military forces, but we don't really see much of them in most media. The reason for this is that most of the time they serve primarily as basic PDF units to garrison planets from static fortifications; The Stormtroopers meanwhile are the ones that go on the offensive. Whereas stormtroopers are politically indoctrinated fanatics with access to heavy weapons, are only referred to by designations, and wear de-individualizing and fear-inducing armor, Army and Navy troopers just are and act like normal soldiers. Which works fine for the Empire in their intended role, but as the Galactic Civil War ramped up, the Empire began leaning far more heavily on its Stormtrooper forces, especially when Army and Navy troopers were less likely to carry out morally dubious orders against fellow citizens.

* Inquisitorius: Darksiders trained by the Empire. While the Rule of Two prevents additional Sith Lords, it says nothing about other force users under their command, especially if they're not given full access to Sith lore and thus can't properly challenge Sith Lords on equal footing. It is not known if Darth Bane expected the Imperial Inquisition or if he would have approved of the Emperor bending the Rule of Two such. Their job is primarily to ferret out the remaining Jedi and other force users, but they are also used for all manner of wet work and internal affairs. Since their first mention ''way'' back in ''The Star Wars Sourcebook'', they have served as enemy force users that while still dire threats could still ''conceivably'' be defeated by the player characters; while an Inquisitor would definitely be a threat to an undertrained Padawan or broken Jedi, the fact that they can only draw from the Dark Side in a more limited way makes them an easier foe to deal with than Vader. And even the Inquisitors know first-hand that there's no winning in a fight against Vader. The source of many prominent antagonists in the expanded universe, including Jerec.

== Disney Villains ==

* The Inquisitors: The Disney version of the above, here reimagined as fallen Jedi who have taken up hunting their fellows for the Empire and wielding spinning double-bladed lightsabers while doing so. Actually rock a pretty boss set of designs overall, but sadly most of them are underdeveloped in both personality and backstory, with the exception of the Grand Inquisitor and Fallen Order's Second Sister. Composed of about a dozen members, with the Grand Inquisitor at their head and the other members having a "brother/sister" naming system. The Grand Inquisitor is noteworthy for actually being a former Jedi Temple Guardian, who willingly betrayed the Jedi prior to Order 66 by murdering his fellow Guardians as he felt slighted by not being allowed into the forbidden archives. Despite being killed off, Vader resurrected him as captive Force Ghost to serve as a trap for surviving Jedi, with the ghost noting that he was caught in a fate worse than death. The rest of the Inquisitors were killed off one by one, with Palpatine apparently not recruiting replacements, either because he felt that the Inquisitors were too weak or because they'd already purged all potential force users. By the Original Trilogy, the Inquisitorious appears to have been either disbanded entirely or severely reduced in size, as there were hardly any surviving Jedi left to hunt down, and in the end Vader took over much of their role, especially since they were not full Sith they were much weaker in power potential.
** Grand Inquisitor: Head honcho. An Pau'an who used to be a Jedi Temple Guard before going bad. Voiced by Lucius Malfoy / Admiral Zhao and similarly evil. By far the coolest (and most competent), villain in Season 1 of Rebels, so of course they killed him off. Also shows up in live action in Kenobi where Third Sister stabs him, but his showing up in Rebels later suggests he walked it off, which was confirmed outright in Episode 5 of the Kenobi mini-series. His spirit is cursed by Vader to continue serving him in death as a trap for Jedi, and was only defeated by Luke Skywalker during his search for a replacement lightsaber after ''The Empire Strikes Back.''
** Second Sister: Main villain of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and as mentioned above, easily one of the more well-developed of the bunch besides GI himself. Once the Padawan of Cal's mentor in the game Cere, and hates her something fierce for feeling abandoned by her, leading to the Empire capturing her and giving her the [[Inquisition]] / [[Dark Eldar]] treatment. Just when it seems like she ''might'' make amends with Cere, Vader, unhappy that Second Sister failed him, cuts her down on the spot.
** Third Sister: Another one of the better fleshed-out Inquisitors. One of the main villains of Kenobi series on Disney+, hunting him in the hope that Vader will give her a promotion in exchange...or so it seems. Turns out she actually just wants a chance to get close to Vader so she can kill him for murdering her fellow Younglings during Knightfall. But of course, Vader's way out of her weight-class. Can pose and parkour like a superhero, and has a [[Angron|bad temper even by Dark Side standards.]] Character and actress got crap from the [[/pol/|usual offenders]]. The original script gave her less confusing motivations as she didn't know that Anakin was Vader and she blamed him and the Jedi Council for causing Order 66, so she was a more willing (if misled) participant in all the atrocities she'd commit as an Inquisitor.
** Fourth Sister: Another Inquisitor introduced in Kenobi. Looks a bit like a Twi'lek but isn't listed as one. Not much else to say.
** Fifth Brother: One of the more prominent male Inquisitors besides the GI (enough so that he shows up in Rebels and the Obi-Wan mini-series). Like Third Sister he covets the Grand Inquisitor's position, and the two dislike each-other. Confirmed by the creators as being blind in Rebels, but able to see through the Force. Killed off in Rebels Season 2 when Maul wipes the floor with him.
** Sixth Brother: Minor Inquisitor who's main moment in the sun is fighting Ahsoka and getting killed by her.
** Seventh Sister: One of the two main Inquisitors in Rebels besides Fifth Brother. Voiced by Sarah "Buffy" Michelle Gellar, who is also the wife of Kanan's voice actor, which the writers reference by giving Seventh Sister some flirting. Is a Mirialan like Barriss, but it has yet to be confirmed that the two are one and the same even though it would make sense. Killed off in Rebels Season 2, when Darth Maul takes a page out of Kenobi's book (oh the irony) and cuts her in half.
** Eighth Brother: Throwaway Inquisitor who also dies the most embarrassing death of any Inquisitor to date (his helicopter lightsaber malfunctions and he falls to his death). Cool helmet though.
** Ninth Sister: The "muscle" of the bunch, being big, brutish, and filled with rage. Though beaten by Cal Kestis on Kashyyyk, her death hasn't been confirmed, so we might see more of her...which we do, when she shows up in the second game as the starter boss. Unfortunately for her, Cal's a lot better than the last time, and gives Ninth Sister the Jango Fett treatment.
** Tenth Brother: So far exclusive to the comics, he was once a Jedi in the Clone Wars who tried to off Mace Windu, which went as well as you'd expect. Since Jedi tend to frown on executing people, they sent him into exile...which allowed the Empire to pick him up and turn him into an Inquisitor. Whoops. He eventually bit it when a Jedi manipulated several [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Purge_Trooper Purge Troopers] into Order 66-ing his ass, in a moment of positively delicious irony.

* Agent Kallus: Continuing Star Wars' proud tradition of unsubtly named characters, Kallus is Rebel's equivalent to Asajj Ventress, being the semi-competent, semi-bumbling secondary villain who gets a redemption arc. Was involved in a massacre of Zeb's people, but had not actually ordered said massacre and feels kind of bad about how it all went down. Later joins the Rebel Alliance after Thrawn outs him as a spy. Rocks some Wolverine-esque sideburns, but not the weird haircut to go with it. Art crew considered making him a Chiss based on the concept art, but it seems they decided there's only room for one in the Empire's hierarchy.

* Kylo Ren: A Dark Jedi (not Sith, they technically went extinct with Vader, Sheev, Dooku, and Maul) who is actually the son of Han and Leia, Ben Solo, which the Internet absolutely refused to shut up about after it was leaked. He's mostly based on Jacen Solo from the EU (a son of Han and Leia who became a Jedi then fell to the Dark Side and became a Sith) with his new name likely taken from EU character Kybo Ren and having the same real name as Luke's son from the EU with Mara, Ben Skywalker. He idolizes his grandfather, Darth Vader and wears a black suit and a mask to show this. He wields a unique crossguard lightsaber. People thought he would be a badass after seeing the trailers but after seeing the movie, he turned out to be a half-naked pussy looking like a gay Turkish oil wrestler who very often gets temper tantrums and gets his ass kicked by a teenage girl (though to be fair, if he had been a complete badass, everyone would’ve just complained that he was a rehash of Vader. So, you know, rock and a hard place. Also he only had his ass beat since he was already shot by a bowcaster and stabbed with a lightsaber, so fighting even in spite of that is pretty badass). Kylo's character became significantly more fleshed out in TLJ, ironically making him one of the only characters to have actual development in the whole movie. Between that and Kylo's actor Adam Driver being really bro-tier about the whole situation (he even appeared in a skit as Kylo which also included poking fun at Kylo's emo traits), Kylo has managed to win over many fans, with some citing him as probably the most interesting character in the Sequels. Serves Palpatine before turning on him with Rey and gives his life to heal her, scoring a kiss with her before he dies redeemed as Ben, ala Vader dying as Anakin. This relationship between Rey and Kylo ''sharply'' divided the fanbase and created some extreme reactions. The worst cases were some extremely rabid Kylo/Rey shippers who insisted Adam and Daisy Ridley - Rey's actor - become a real-life couple (despite both being in separate relationships), to the point that they '''harassed Daisy Ridley's boyfriend on social media, harassed Adam Driver along with his family (including stalking them and sending messages hoping for the deaths of Adam's wife and/or newborn son) and made death threats against JJ Abrams''' (far surpassing practically any other Star Wars backlash, even the death threats thrown at Ahmed Best - Jar Jar's VA - and the purported backlash against Kelly Marie Tran - Rose Tico's actress); it cannot even be “justified” (and justified is used ''very'' loosely here) as the ravings of butthurt ultra-fanboys, this crossed the line into full-on bullshit. To repeat, this one was Skub incarnate. Most fans either adore the Reylo ship or absolutely hate it with a passion.

* Snoke: Supreme Leader of the First Order who speaks to his underlings through a massive hologram. <s> Very little is known about him at the moment. Though many fan theories say that he is Darth Plagueis, the old master of Palpatine who was assumed dead (everyone assumes every new Darksider is him, though, so grain of salt) the powers that be have repeatedly denied the theory (though it's admittedly a better guess than suggesting that Snoke is [[What|Mace Windu, Boba Fett, or a clone of Darth Vader]], which we would like to stress are [[Derp|actual fan theories]])...unfortunately, we will have to wait for an inevitable comic book or novel to explain it, since he [[RAGE|gets killed like a chump by his own servant, Kylo Ren.]] It is possible he may return given that the ring on his finger has inscriptions that translate to various rephrasing of “survive death” that is carved from the stone of Darth Vader's lava castle (yes, you read that right), but that may actually be a nod to Palpatine’s EU resurrections.</s> Turns out to be a genetically engineered pawn of Palpatine's, like he was literally born looking as shriveled and injured as he did and had some kind of fabricated backstory like an organic Blade Runner Replicant, whose sole purpose was to babysit the First Order and get Ren to fall to the Dark Side. So in sum, a dime-store Palpatine knock-off. Of course, the explanation we got in Episode IX was still pretty weak so it took Lucasfilm years after the fact to finally give him a proper story; Snoke was a failed Palpatine clone who was still pretty strong in the Force, so Palpatine used him as his proxy in getting the Imperial Remnant back under his control and to help him find Rey, his only viable descendant. Snoke didn't like being Palpatine's puppet so he engineered a plot to have Ren kill Rey and the two of them would overthrow Palpatine. This failed however, as Palpatine knew that Ren would turn on Snoke and that he'd get his hands on Rey eventually. ''Would've been nice if they planned that from the start...''

* General Hux: The First Order's Tarkin equivalent and a moustache-less ginger Hitler in space. Delivers a pretty cool speech, but can't fight to save his life. The backstory for Hux is his father was an Imperial hero, and Hux wants to be the First Order version of his old man and lead the FO to a final victory. Hux openly dislikes Kylo Ren and has frustration with the Force-users borders on meta at times. Spends most of TLJ as a foil to the edgier and more toyetic bad guys, but he seems to be the only one to have noticed how impractical the Empire/FO's fuckhuge weaponry can be when you're fighting something smaller than a planet and have lost the element of surprise. Becomes Kylo Ren's comic relief ginger prison bitch at the end of TLJ, although he has an interesting scene where he was about to finish off the unconscious Kylo until he woke up. Sent some very simple info to the Resistance in Rise Of Skywalker that set off the movie plot (mostly by making them take the info they already had seriously) and later helped the main characters escape, and was immediately shot for his efforts. He is never mentioned again.

* Captain Phasma: A First Order operative in charge of instructing the new Stormtrooper legions, Phasma serves as the Boba Fett of TFA - which is to say that she does nothing of note other than stand around and look cool until she figuratively and literally gets thrown into the trash in Force Awakens. Lucasfilm have apologized for overadvertising the character in the lead-up to the film since she was just supposed to look cool and do nothing like Boba Fett originally did but the huge presence of her in the marketing implied she was going to be a major character (remember, Jar Jar and generic Battle Droids had far more merch than Maul during the release of Episode 1) and have promised to give Phasma an actual role and backstory for TLJ that will play into Finn's story. (This turned out to be bullshit due to the fucked-up nature of TLJ's production, but the reshoots managed to give her a good showing anyway.) Her backstory was released in a novel where she was a tribal on a planet the Empire stripped into the stone age, who backstabbed her tribe for a stronger tribe, backstabbed her second tribe and brother to rescue a stranded Imperial officer and join the Empire, backstabbed her mentor to become the supreme commander of the Stormtrooper Corps in the First Order, then in the comic series she was shown to have survived the trash compactor when a Resistance bomb blew it up and she entirely disregarded everything (including saving Starkiller Base or Kylo Ren) to backstab and frame one of her subordinates for lowering the shields then promptly hunted him down to “bring him to justice”. So [[Skaven|she’s a spear-wielding backstabber extraordinaire.]] At the present she's got a nasty scar on one eye where her hyper durable helmet was busted in, and fell into a fire on a shattered starship to her confirmed demise. Worth mentioning that even many folks who liked TLJ considered this an unsatisfying send-off.

* Commander Pyre: The gold and male version of Phasma, and often the closest thing [[Fail|Star Wars: Resistance]] had to a big bad due to being in charge of most of the First Order's operations in the show. More active than Phasma usually is, but still not likely to become anybody's favorite new villain. And then he died, and no-one fucking cared.

* The Knights of Ren: The Dark Side warriors who Kylo is the leader of, each one having their own unique look and signature weapon. Also probably one of the biggest bits of [[Fail]] in the Sequel Trilogy on account of being teased in the first movie but completely absent in the second, and saying and doing absolutely nothing in the third before being unceremoniously killed off. Seriously, if you're one of those people who grouses about Boba Fett not having enough to do in the Original Trilogy, the way these guys are handled will drive you crazy. To put it into perspective, a ''non-canon LEGO short-film on Disney+'' gave these guys more characterization than the actual Sequel Trilogy did.

* Moff Gideon: Gus Fring in Star Wars (or Antón Castillo if you're a Far Cry fan), he serves as the main villain for the first three seasons of The Mandalorian. Responsible for the Purge of Mandalore, where he nuked the planet and made the Mandalorians an endangered people, as well as laying claim to the Darksaber. If his wardrobe, willingness to kill his own men, and ultimate plan to make clones of himself who can use the Force are anything to go by, he seems to be almost as much of a Vader stan as Kylo Ren is. Because he needs an actual Force-Sensitive to make his cloning plan work, he goes after Baby Yoda, which is revealed to be why he was hunting him throughout the series. Though arrested by the New Republic at the end of Season 2, he gets busted out and forms an army of [[Awesome|beskar armored Stormtroopers with jetpacks while also donning his own suit of Beskar armor to lead them]]. Comes to a fiery end in Season 3's finale, but given the aforementioned clones, some fans have wondered if it really was the real Gideon who died.

* Dagan Gera and Rayvis: Main villains of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (at least at first), being respectively a Jedi from the High Republic Era whose gone crazy and a Gen'dai (the same species as Durge from the 2003 Clone Wars cartoon). Dagan discovered a hidden away planet that couldn't be accessed by normal spacelanes, and decided it would make a great place to build a new Jedi Temple, but the planet was discovered by the Nihil, so the Jedi decided to cut their losses and not set up shop on the planet after all. This pissed Dagan off, and he became obsessed enough that his girlfriend hacked his arm off and put him in a bacta tank. Said bacta tank somehow preserved him until Cal discovered him and woke him up. As a one-armed, fallen hero from an older time, one could make comparisons to the Winter Soldier, though Dagan gets a much less happy ending.

== Notable Pre-Disney EU Characters ==
* Thrawn: (See *below under villains since despite being created as part of the Legends - in fact, the 1991 book he debuted in is what began the Star Wars Expanded Universe - he was brought back into canon by Disney)

* Corran Horn: A Correllian detective who becomes a member of Rogue Squadron during the New Republic. Later becomes a Jedi. His unique bloodline makes him inept at telekinesis, but gives him the unique power of energy absorption. Often accused of being a Mary Sue by people who miss his huge ego and over confidence problem even though right from the start Wedge has to berate him on his putting himself before the squadron. Constantly makes bullheaded mistakes like ignoring his low fuel, causing him to run out of fuel, trying to use his girlfriend's dad infamy to his advantage on someone, before learning ''that's her dad'', thinking having a lightsaber and some ''very'' basic training made him invincible, which would have killed him if bacta didn't exist, and smugly mocked Exar Kun in his temple under the mistaken impression he's physically powerless, only to get mauled in return and needing rescue from Mara Jade. He had legitimate criticism about Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy and told Luke off when Luke tried to warn Corran about the lure of the Dark Side of the Force. Corran was once a police officer and God only knows how corrupt the Correllian police can be, so he's seen his own dark side from "down in the trenches" as it were. Also the only Rogue to ever get downed by SAMs. He also dated Chertyl Ruluwoor, a sterile Selonian (an alien race that resemble humanoid otters), during his time in CorSec, meaning he is also a [[furry]].

* Booster Terrik: A jolly but hot-tempered smuggler boss with a prosthetic eye. Helped Wedge find and kill the pirates who killed his family. Currently working/had to work to reestablish himself after a stint in Kessel, courtesy of Corran Horn's father Hal Horn. Father of Mirax Terrik. That his daughter is dating the son of the guy who put him away drives him crazy, but he eventually gets over it by coming to think of Corran as a Rogue instead of CorSec. Has a serious rivalry with Talon Karrde's organization. A crazy bluff eventually (and inadvertently) leads to him being the sole private owner of an Imperial Star Destroyer, which he operates as a mobile black market known as the Errant Venture.

* Mara Jade: A Force-sensitive former agent of Emperor Palpatine, and generally seen as Star Wars' second great strong female character after Leia (Nomi Sunrider wasn't high profile or developed enough). A fiery, snarky, sexy redhead who is generally considered one of the best characters to come out of the old EU. Taken from her parents at a young age and raised as a servant to Palpatine, Mara trained with him and with his royal guards to become one of several high-level Force-using operatives with the title of "Emperor's Hand", though she used the cover story of being a dancer that Palps liked called Lianna. A life of hard work gave Mara a liking for challenges, and she completed numerous missions for him, living the high life under his patronage. Upon Palpatine's death, he gave Mara one last command and a Force geas - kill Luke Skywalker. Bereft of the Emperor's patronage, without job skills besides spy and assassin and unable to find Luke, Mara was forced to live paycheck to paycheck in numerous jobs until becoming a smuggler under Talon Karrde. When Mara finally met Luke, she tried to kill him but ened up in survival situations that forced them to work together. When she finally learned the the truth of her master and killed and escaped Palpatine's compulsion when she killed Luke's clone. Mara then joined the Jedi Order, and over the years Mara's grudging respect for Luke grew into love - which Luke ironically developed before Mara did despite Luke saying he didn't like fiery women like Mara, and the two eventually married. Then a Yuuzhan Vong agent infected Mara with a deadly bioweapon, and she only survived through using the Force to keep it at bay. When the Yuuzhan Vong invaded at large, she fought while struggling with the virus, being cured of it around the time her and Luke's son Ben was born. After the Yuuzhan Vong War ended, Mara led the Jedi alongside Luke and fought in wars against various aliens and the re-emergent Sith. Years later her nephew Jacen turned to the Dark Side and became the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. When he tried to corrupt her son Ben, Mara tracked him down to kill him to protect Ben. During the fight, Jacen killed Mara via cheap shot with a poisoned dart. But before she died, Mara told Jacen off while using the Force to alert Luke and Ben and say goodbye to them (Mara's death was one of the main reasons the book series was hated by fans). She later appeared numerous times as a Force ghost, visiting Luke - at one point to give him tips on how to fight Abeloth, and warning her great-great-grandson Cade Skywalker against the Dark Side. Due to being a sexy redheaded woman with a backstory as a spy-cum-assassin (emphasis on cum for neckbeards) for an evil government before joining the good guys, plus her fiery disposition and penchant for black catsuits, Mara has more than a passing resemblance to Black Widow from Marvel Comics (ironically, this didn't stop Disney retconning her from the lore despite Disney now owning both the Marvel brand and Star Wars franchise).

* Ben Skywalker: Son of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade. Named for Obi-Wan Kenobi's pseudonym, Ben grew up learning the ways of the Jedi from his parents. He was close to his uncle, aunt and cousins too. Ben was nearly lured to the Dark Side when his cousin Jacen became a Sith but resisted, and any bond between them was destroyed when Jacen killed Ben's mother Mara. Years later when the Jedi got word of a lost tribe of Sith emerging and an emerging Force psychosis started spreading among the Jedi, Luke, Ben and the Jedi Order went to resolve the problem, Ben joining his father in re-tracing Jacen's steps to try and gain insight. Things went from bad to worse when the Jedi and Sith encountered the Lovecraftian Force Entity Abeloth, a shapeshifting being described as a dozen times stronger in the Force than Luke and able to use both sides of it. Things were so desperate, Ben accepted when Luke got the Jedi and the Sith to form an alliance against her. During this time, Ben encountered Vestara Khoi, a Sith apprentice and daughter of one of their leaders. While firmly on the side of the Jedi, Ben found himself often working alongside Vestara in their mission to stop Abeloth, and was attracted to her; for her part, Vestara reciprocated Ben's feelings but was hindered by Ben's disapproval of Sith. Eventually they confessed their feelings, and the two became a couple (with Vestara also leaving the Sith and trying to become a Jedi). Said co-operation proved invaluable when Abeloth kidnapped Ben and Vestara for the final part of her master plan. After Abeloth's ultimate defeat Vestara, after a ruthless act while fighting Abeloth, became convinced she had much of a Sith mindset to be a Jedi, reverted back to the Sith, ended the relationship by zapping Ben with Sith Lightning before fleeing. Heartbroken but resolute, Ben resolved to track her down and redeem her if possible (unbeknownst to Ben, Vestara was also heartbroken about leaving him).

* Jacen Solo: While George Lucas always had a story idea for a son of Han and Leia struggling with the Dark Side, Jacen Solo was the first incarnation, and a major influence on Disney's Kylo Ren. Born to Leia alongside his twin sister Jaina, he was a skilled Jedi, and often tried to be a calming influence on his younger brother Anakin Solo. Played a pivotal role in the Yuuzhan Vong War, killing their military commander Tsavong Lah and their true leader. However, his experiences during the war took a toll, and Jacen started struggling with the Dark Side. Falling into corruption of a Sith Lady, Jacen fell pretty hard. He became a Colonel in the Galactic Alliance and took control of their secret police and converted it into his own Personal SS division. He [[What|legally coup]] the Chief of State and turn the successor to the NR into a evil democratic republic.

* Jaina Solo: Jaina Solo was a Human female Jedi Master of the New Jedi Order and member of the Jedi High Council. Daughter of Han and Leia, twin sister of Jacen Solo and older sister to Anakin Solo, she inherited her father's mechanical aptitude and her mother's Force sensitivity, resulting in her eventual training at the Jedi Praxeum. During her time there as a youth, she had many adventures, including helping to thwart the Second Imperium, where she helped Zekk abandon the dark side of the Force and join the ranks of the Jedi. She became a distinguished pilot during the Yuuzhan Vong War, which also saw the death of her brother Anakin Solo and the birth of her cousin Ben Skywalker. Becomes the Jedi Saber, the Order's sword against the dark.

* Kyle Katarn: A stormtrooper commander who turns mercenary after learning the Imperials were responsible for the death of his father. After being one of the many people who stole the Death Star plans, he destroys an Imperial super soldier project essentially solo. After this he gets wrapped up in the head inquisitor's plot to revive the Empire and gets trained as a Jedi by a force ghost. Straightforward and prone to snark, but also very easy to trick. Partner (if not more) with hot space Asian Jan Ors. Considered one of the more powerful force users in the New Republic, even outside the games where his power level is rather over the top. Where Luke (and most Jedi) keep the dark side away with spiritualism and positivity, Kyle does it through sheer force of will.

* Talon Karrde: A suave rogue smuggler captain who became the new smuggling and black market kingpin after Jabba died. Compared to his predecessor, he's pretty benign given his preference for tariff evasion and illegal goods over straight up extortion and slaving and being a father to his men instead of someone who executes minions on whims. His favored product is selling obscure and/or stolen information. Explicitly what Han might have become if he didn't join the rebellion. Likes punny ship names, with his flagship the Wild Karrde (Wild Card, plus a pun on his last name) and secondary ships like Lastri's Ort (Last Resort), Uwana Buyer (You want to buy her?) and Amanda Fallow (A man to follow). He makes a business arrangement with Mara Jade when she's trying to track Luke down to kill him, where he provided her information if she worked for him temporarily. Years later he acts as a friend in the black market to the Solos and Skywalkers.

* Bevel Lemelisk: An old EU Character that hasn't been quite retconned out yet (even if Director Krennic and Galen Erso more or less took his place in the overall plot), Lemelisk is the Albert Speer/Wernher von Braun of the Imperial war machine. A genius architect and engineer with a serious boner for mass destruction, he designed the Death Star and several others of the Imperial Superweapons, like the discount Death Star battlestation ''Tarkin'' (kinda like a Proof-of-concept prototype for the Death Star concept) or the ''Eclipse''-class of Super Star Destroyers. He bore the brunt of Palpatines anger for the Death Star's destruction, who had him tortured, executed and ressurrected via cloning several times for his failures. After the Empires defeat, he ended up working for the Hutts and worked on a Death Star knockoff called the Darksaber (which he purposefully sabotaged by not pointing out obvious design flaws and the overall shoddy construction work), where he was captured by the New Republic and executed for war crimes.

* Tsavong Lah: An alien [[Horus|Warmaster]], Tsavong was a member of the Yuuzhan Vong species and in charge of their military during most of the Yuuzhan Vong War. His most notable accomplishments were conquering Coruscant and indirectly causing Anakin Solo's death. Tsavong was a skilled tactician but a poor strategist, [[Commander Kubrik Chenkov|a ruthless fanatic who's willing to throw countless lives away to achieve his goals]]. Also took on the Vong Nom Anor as his advisor, despite hating Anor's self-centeredness and lack of piety. At one point Jacen cut off his foot, so Tsavong [[Awesome|cloned an extinct super-predator so he could prove he was still badass by killing it and using one of its feet as a prosthetic foot]]. Also got caught up in a plot by the [[Haemonculi|Shaper Caste, seeking to control him through his body modifications]]. He also dearly loved his dad - a retired military officer he'd often turn to for advice, to the point that his death made Tsavong mentally unstable. Came to view Jacen Solo as his archnemesis, and was eventually killed by him.

* Nom Anor: A Yuuzhvan Vong member of the Intendant caste. After the events of ROTJ, Nom arrived with a Vong advance force as a saboteur to undermine the galaxy in preparation for the Vong invasion/Yuuzhan Vong War. During this time, Nom worked in disguise to manipulate various groups and even clashed with the Chiss Ascendancy... [[Not As Planned|the capture of some of his agents also clued the Empire in to the coming Vong threat]]. He was also such a selfish schemer even Thanquol would turn his nose up in disgust and a major [[Troll]]; before revealing his true identity, when negotiating with Leia he often dress up and act like Darth Vader just to mess with her. Also notable for being an atheist while the Vong as a whole are characterized by being deeply religious. Before the war, Nom infected Luke's wife Mara with a Vong bioweapon that caused a terminal illness, forcing her to use the Force to stop its progression. When Mara confronted Nom, he tried and failed to kill her and was sent packing. After being heavily demoted, Nom tried to rally the outcast class under the guise of a prophet, only to throw them away when they weren't useful to him. Nom later found his way onto the Supreme Overlord's flagship ([[Asdrubael Vect|not that supreme overlord]]) during the battle to retake Coruscant. When the Supreme Overlord was killed and the ship started falling apart, Nom tried to kill the heroes three times but was always thwarted. When offered the chance to escape with the heroes, Nom realized he'd burned all his bridges; he didn't fit in anywhere and was too proud to reconsider his life choices or face punishment for his role in the war. So Nom chose to stay behind and die on the exploding flagship. Essentially [[Fabius Bile]] as a self-centered alien bureaucrat.

* A'Sharad Hett/Darth Krayt: A human Jedi-turned-Sith. Born A'Sharad Hett, he was born to a Jedi and his wife who somehow managed to live among the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine, he eventually joined the Jedi Order, becoming a Padawan of Jedi Masters Ki-Adi-Mundi, and later, An'ya Kuro. When he was only a teen, Hett's father was murdered by the Jedi assassin Aurra Sing, who was later defeated in a duel by a young A'Sharad Hett. During the Clone Wars, he served the Republic as a General. He met and eventually befriended Anakin Skywalker after Skywalker struggled to come to terms with Hett's Tusken heritage. He managed to survive the Clone Wars and Order 66. He was eventually captured by the Yuuzhan Vong, who [[Haemonculus|tortured and experimented on Hett]], which drove him to the Dark Side.

* Darth Talon: A female Twi'lek from the EU comic series "Star Wars: Legacy" who became a Sith Lord in Darth Krayt's One Sith in 137 ABY. Best known for being one of Star Wars most fanservice-y characters on account of her attractive, tattoo-covered body and always wearing skimpy skin-tight clothing (though the character's creators have gone on record to say her appearance is meant to be primal not sexualized, and the skimpy outfit is to show off her tattoos). Apart from the fanservice, she's also visually distinctive for being a rare red Twi'lek and the aforementioned black Sith tattoos. Appointed personal assassin of Darth Kryat, Talon was sent to kill Luke's descendant Cade Skywalker, then later chosen to be Cade's Sith teacher when Darth Kryat tried to induct him into the Dark Side. During this time, Cade and Talon drew close and w slept together, which may have been Kryat's plan (Cade and Talon are shown kissing, and in one scene Cade is shown getting out of bed while a naked Darth Talon is sleeping next to him). Interestingly, George Lucas' original plan for a sequel trilogy involved Talon corrupting Han and Leia's son to the Dark Side of the Force and Talon was nearly in the Disney trilogy and there is early concept art of her.

* Abeloth: A Lovecraftian female entity strong in both the Light and Dark side of the Force, and one of the most powerful beings in any Star Wars canon. She first lived as the Servant, a mortal woman who served the powerful Ones on an unknown jungle planet over a hundred thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. Over the course of her life, she became the Mother: she kept the peace between the Father's warring Son and Daughter and became a loving part of the family. But she was still mortal—she grew old while her ageless family lived on—and she feared she would lose her precious family. In a desperate attempt to hold onto the life she so loved, she drank from the Font of Power and bathed in the Pool of Knowledge. Her actions corrupted her, transforming the Mother into the twisted, immortal entity known as Abeloth. Has numerous titles such as the Bringer of Chaos and Beloved Queen of the Stars (the latter self-proclaimed). Spent millennia trapped on a planet by the Ones, though she'd escape only to be re-imprisoned once more.

* Natasi Daala: Tarkins lover (which, in a surprising twist for the kinds of stories Star Wars tells, was actually reciprocated), the first woman in the Imperial Navy to hold the rank of Admiral and certified badass. Sets herself apart from other Imperial leaders by being much less of a self-interested power-hungry warmonger and instead being fiercely and unquestionably loyal to the Empire and its ideals, which in turn also made her reasonable enough to not want to rule the Imperial Remnants like Thrawn or others, despite being more than capable of it. Her relationship with Tarkin and her sizeable aptitude as a tactician earned her the position to guard the Ultra-Top-Secret R&D base at the center of the clusters of black holes known as the Maw, where she commanded a small flotilla of four Star Destroyers. After having been isolated from the Empire for over a decade after the Battle of Yavin, never wavering from her posting in spite of the suspisous lack of new directions coming in, she was alerted to the fall of the Emperor when Han Solo accidentally crashed right into her turf. Being mightily pissed off, she proceeded to wreck shit for the New Republic just because she could. Later, she allied with Pellaeon, killed a bunch of imperial remnant warlords and helped him fight the New Republic in a series of battles, but vanished without a trace after she ordered her ship to make an unguided hyperspace jump and was declared dead, but not without giving Pellaeon a code with which he could call her she the need arise.

* Garm bel Iblis: The former Senator for the Correllian worlds, Iblis was part of the triumvirate that founded the Rebel Alliance alongside Mon Mothma and Bail Organa. Unlike the other two however, he started his career not as a politican, but as a military man, embodying the much more radical and aggressive factions of the Alliance, eventually splitting entirely from the Alliance in favor of waging an open war against the Empire for years at the helm of his own resistance faction (He was also unhappy with Mothmas leadership of the Alliance, as her demands of absolute political power over the Alliance jeopardized several Rebel operations that he had advised against). As a veteran of the Clone Wars and well connected within Correllian society, he assembled a sizeable force whose strength rivaled those of the Rebel Alliance and zip-zapped through Imperial Space while also exploring lost or badly known Hyperlane Routes, which eventually lead to the discovery of the Katana-Fleet; a sizeable fleet of ghost ships that had been lost decades prior. Since the knowledge about the Katana-Fleets whereabouts was crucial to both sides of the war during Thrawns campaign, Iblis found himself becoming an interesting target for both sides and begrudingly rejoined the Alliance, now the New Republic. As he was a fairly significant character (and a fan favorite) in the wider lore prior to Disneys takeover of the franchise, he tended to show up in various EU materials, like followup novels to Zahns Thrawn trilogy and even The Force Unleashed, where he played a major role in the overall plot. Empire at War even made him a unit, where he commanded a massive Tank with as many guns as a Baneblade.

* Tyber Zann: A crime boss who appearance-wise is Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter in space (yes, really). Invented whole cloth for an expansion pack for the RTS title Empire at War (which is a pretty good game that you should check out) as the head of a criminal syndicate that he, in an expression of boundless humility, named after himself. While not having the best of characterizations, he is fondly remembered by Empire at War players for the priceless insults he dishes out against nearly every canon character that shows up over the course of his campaign. Best thought of as a kind of "Anti-Han Solo" (even has his own tall, furry/feathery loyal companion), as he is completely without moral restraints of any kind and fought the Rebels instead of helping them, and most above all, a colossal asshole whose scheming over the course of his campaign might even rival Palpatines own.

* Soontir Fel: Another fan-favorite and second token "Good Imperial" along with Pellaeon. Human TIE-Fighter pilot who commanded the elite 181st Starfighter Wing of the Imperial Navy and banged and married Wedge Antilles sister (a bit ironic considering he's basically Wedge's Imperial counterpart). While he is a bit of a pawn in the political plays of the big leaders of the Imperial Remnants, he is above all loyal to the Empire and the men under his command. It hardly needs mentioning in this context, but he is of course also a mad crackshot pilot who gave the New Republic a really hard time and defected to them after Ysanne Isard sacrificed his beloved 181st to buy herself time to escape from Coruscant, much to his outrage. His son later becomes one of the founding members of Lukes Jedi Order, and his descendants are running the revitalized Empire come Star Wars: Legacy.

* Ysanne Isard: Basically Star Wars version of Lawrenti Beria, the infamous head of the NKVD during the Stalin Era in the Soviet Union, or for another historical comparison, a female version of Reinhard Heydrich (she even had the nickname of "Ice-Heart", similar to Heydrich's title of "the man with the iron heart"). A prickly, sadistic woman that was in charge of the Imperial Intelligence Services during Palpatines rule and as such a major player in Imperial Politics. Even colder in her calculations than Tarkin, which is quite a feat, as well as equaling him and Palpatine in pure sociopathy (also quite something). She rose to prominence when she pulled off a coup d'êtat against the Council of Moffs that was nominally ruling the Empire in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor and concentrated all political power in her hand, only for her (and the New Republic) finding out that she isn't actually all that good at strategy. Her cold demeanor paired with a serious mean streak led to a great number of capable Imperial Worlds, Coruscant among them, deserting the Empire or defecting to the New Republic, setting the gradual disintegration of the Empire in stone. Her answer to this were war crimes in the form of biological weapons and tearing a hole into Coruscants skyline, killing millions in the process. Also has a Dark Eldar's love of (and expertise in), torture, [[Grimdark|and a preference for responding to desertions or betrayals by exterminating the offender's loved ones and, if there aren't any available, anyone tangentially connected to them.]] Her scheming wasn't worth much in the end and she ended up being killed by Booster Terrik.

== Old Republic Characters ==

* Revan: Simply put, you'd be hard-pressed to find an EU character with a bigger following than Revan and with good reason: the protagonist of one of the most beloved Star Wars games of all time, ultra-powerful, awesome design, red and purple lightsabers...he's got it all. This is reflected in how he's one of the only EU characters to get an official LEGO minifigure, action figures, a Gentle Giant bust, etc. For backstory, Revan was a bit similar to Anakin in that he was a talented but headstrong young Jedi who during the course of a war (in this case the Mandalorian Wars), got corrupted and fell to the Dark Side. From there became a Sith Lord who waged war on the very Republic he had led/saved before being betrayed by his cowardly dipshit apprentice Malak. One quick round of mind-wiping later, and the Jedi and Republic had themselves <s>a new tool and patsy</s> an important new ally for stopping Darth Malak, who had quickly proven to be a much worse Sith Lord than Revan had been (go figure). That's where the player comes in. After defeating Darth Malak, and remembering his true identity along the way, Revan goes off to fight an "I can't believe it's not Palpatine" Sith Emperor dwelling in the Unknown Regions and disappears. Later returns in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but how the game and its expansions portray him and end his story were divisive to put it mildly. Which is why we're going to skip right over that minefield in favor of giving a neutral summary of it in the timeline section.
**Interestingly, the kind of Sith Lord he was differs somewhat depending on the source. The first game actually depicts his Sith Lord phase as being fairly par for the course: wanting power for power's sake, social darwinist, etc. But the sequel and other sources have instead cast him as more of a [[The God-Emperor of Mankind|visionary who was trying to save/prepare the Galaxy for approaching horrors but also felt that only he had what it took to lead the effort, hence his war of conquest.]]

* Jedi Exile / Meetra Surik: The main character of the second game, and nowhere near as popular as Revan despite the fact that the fondness for her game is at least as strong among older EU fans. Started out as a general under Revan in the Mandalorian Wars. During the big battle of Malachor V, she activated a doomsday weapon that won the battle, but killed so many people and fucked up the planet so hard, that Meetra was shell-shocked and became cut off from the Force. Oh, and kicked out of the Jedi Order. The second game begins with her slowly rediscovering her connection to the Force under the guidance of a mysterious woman who totally won't later turn out to be a villain with an agenda. Her adventures take her to places recovering from the recent Mandalorian Wars and Jedi Civil War, and she gets to team up with some of the few surviving Jedi Masters until her mentor kills them near the end of the game. After putting the old woman out of her misery and also stopping the other Sith Lords who have been treating the Galaxy like their personal murder-playground, she follows Revan's lead and disappears into the Unknown Regions. Her anti-climactic death in a subsequent novel drew all sorts of white-hot [[Rage]].

* Carth Onasi: Quite possibly the skubbiest character to ever come out of a Star Wars video game. A Mandalorian Wars veteran and your first permanent party member in the first game, his betrayal by his old mentor and then said mentor's bombing his homeworld and killing his wife has left him with major trust issues. But he's also the romance option if you're playing female, and so many a fan ships him with the female Revan even as others find him whiny and annoying. In a case of history repeating itself, his voice actor would go on to voice ''another'' party member in a Bioware game set in space who is a polarizing romance option for female players. Also shows up in the second game as an NPC, so long as you don't decide that Revan was evil in the first game. "If you find Revan, tell him... tell him that Admiral Onasi is carrying on his duty".

* Bastila Shan: A Jedi with a talent for Battle Meditation (a Force power that basically makes the user's side significantly better in a given fight), Bastila is the one who faced down Revan when Malak betrayed him. Outwardly haughty, holier-than-thou, and a complete stickler for doing things the by-the-book Jedi way. Actually very insecure, and one of many examples of Bioware's fondness for the defrosting ice queen archetype. The romance option for male Revans (and by extension his canonical love interest), she gets captured by Malak later in the game and tortured into becoming his new apprentice, at which point the player has to decide to join her or not. Canonically, Revan doesn't join her but instead gets her to rejoin the Jedi. The two of them get hitched in the period after the game, but then duty calls so Revan has to abandon his wife, much to the unhappiness of many a KotoR fan. Her love story with Revan is roasted by HK-47 in the second game, while Bastila herself makes a return appearance in a minor role.
** Satele Shan: Bastila and Revan's descendant, and having the same voice actress and preference for double-bladed lightsabers as the former, and a similar talent for Battle Meditation too. Appears in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Also had a kid with a Republic soldier as it turns out and later formed an unlikely friendship with the Sith Lord Darth Marr. Said kid was a Republic Spy and was one of the best bros in SWTOR.

* HK-47: In running for the most popular character to come out of KotoR other than Revan himself, HK is basically a blend of Bender and Deadpool, being a sociopathic-but-funny anti-hero who enjoys violence, advocates for violence as a solution to all problems, and calls everyone meatbags (except his beloved master of course). Has a strange verbal quirk where he says the kind of speech he's going to say before saying it (IE: if asking a question, he'll first say "query"). So popular that he later showed up in an expansion for Star Wars: Galaxies despite that game taking place ''thousands of years after his debut appearance''. Got some would-be-replacements in the second KotoR game in the HK-50s, and hates their guts. SWTOR would also give him a successor in HK-55, as well as yet another appearance from the original...before he gets scrapped. As already stated, he shows up on Mustafar later, so he must have gotten rebuilt at some point.

* Canderous Ordo: A Mandalorian veteran of the war who has become a cynical and ruthless mercenary before deciding to join Revan. Actually very pro-Revan, respecting him for being a good warrior and tactician and actually being able to kick his people's teeth in. Becomes the new Mandalore in the second game. So in short, basically the Boba Fett of his day, and accordingly is one of the more popular characters. Unfortunately got his legacy tarnished when the Mandalorians joined the Reformed Sith Empire in the Great Galactic War, though they dodged the karma backlash until thousands of years later in the Great Peace of the Republic.

* Mission and Zaalbar: A young twi'lek and her Wookie buddy, they're ostensibly the game's Han and Chewbacca, but are actually very different. Mission is the spunky-but-somewhat naive female with a can-do attitude who manages to be interesting and not insufferable despite what that description might suggest, and Zaalbar is a depressed exile who's brother is a sociopath that's willing to sell his own people into slavery for profit. Sadly nowhere to be found in the game's sequel.

* Juhani: A Cathar (no, not the Medieval Christian sect condemned as heretical), Jedi who is introduced as a failed Padawan who's in a sufficiently bad mood that she's caused all of the planet's local Kath Hounds (basically lion-dogs) to get extra-aggressive. Dealing with her is part of the player's Jedi Trials needed to pass to become a Padawan, and assuming the player doesn't off her, she later joins as a party member. Probably most famous/remembered for being one of the first LGBT Star Wars characters, and her girlfriend will fall to the Dark Side if you did kill her. Alternatively, female players can hook up with her also.

* Jolee Bindo: A cranky old man living in Kashyyyk's shadowlands who is actually a Jedi living in self-imposed exile. Something of an "unorthodox" Jedi, he adheres firmly to the good parts of the Jedi belief system while relentlessly roasting the bad and dumb parts, such as the Jedi's general aversion to love and families. This, coupled with his often hilarious "back in my day" cranky old man lines, have made him another one of the more popular characters to come out of the first game.

* Atton Rand: He is as Atton as Atton will ever be! Initially appears to be a Han Solo clone, but it turns out this is a front to hide something much darker: he's a veteran of the Mandalorian Wars who, pissed that the Jedi sat the war out but had no problem fighting him and his fellows when Revan became a Sith Lord, reinvented himself as basically a serial killer of Jedi. Eventually, his conscience caught up with him and he struck out on his own. As the ship's pilot and a romance option for female players, he takes over some of the roles of Carth Onasi, but is a lot less skubby, his overall reputation with the fans being a lot stronger (everyone likes a bad boy). Meetra redeemed him into being a Jedi.

* Bao-Dur: Zabrak Carth, being like him a staunchly pro-Republic goody-two-shoes who hates Mandalorians and gets into arguments with Canderous. Is missing an arm but replaces it with an energy field that connects the metal hand to the shoulder, which is different from most Star Wars characters who lose limbs. Also has a pet remote and helps the player character get their first lightsaber. Notably, he is one of the only characters who's futures Kreia isn't able to glimpse into at the end of the game, suggesting the writers either had specific plans in mind for Bao-Dur in an unmade sequel...or that they just got lazy. Meetra also made him a Jedi.

* Brianna the Handmaiden: Only joins if the player is male (and yes, is a potential love interest option). Due to being a handmaiden to the most insufferably puritanical Jedi Master ever, she's been fairly indoctrinated to have an extremely black and white view of what is and is not acceptable behavior for a Jedi. Dislikes Atton (and vice-versa), and may be Kreia's daughter. Member of the Echani, a species that look a lot like humans but white haired and apparently all martial artists. Don't let her slender figure fool you; she's one of the best melee fighters in the second game, especially if made into a Jedi or Dark Jedi. Giving her a double saber is just mean, and is definitely the best leader on the Dxun team for the party splitting on Onderon and Dxun mission (though Atton's skill-set and Visas' power make them good alternatives to the point that the game guide recommends picking one of them, Mira and Bao-Dur are also good picks as team members to stealth through the mines and slice respectively). Canonically traveled with Meetra even though she was female and became a Jedi.

* Mira: One of the many, many tough, sarcastic redheads in Star Wars' old EU, she's a bounty hunter who, unusually for a character in Star Wars, is actually reluctant to kill people and prefers to avoid doing so. She also has a wrist-launcher that shoots out various projectiles. Has history with the Mandalorians but doesn't really identify as one. One of the more popular characters to come out of the sequel, but you won't get her if you're Dark Side unless you start off Neutral or Light Side on Nar Shadda and ''then'' turn into a dick after getting her on your team. As many people prefer Mira, this is exactly what some Dark Side players do. Meetra made her a Jedi.

* Hanharr: The Anti-Chewbacca, being a bloodthirsty, vicious psychopath who was doing the whole "evil Wookie bounty hunter" thing long before Black Krrsantan was ever a thing. Joins the player if the latter is Dark Side and fittingly for a Wookie who would have done well in Khorne's service, is a melee powerhouse. Actually very depressed to the point of secretly wanting to die, which is part of why he hates Mira for not killing him/constantly hounds her and attacks her; he's always hoping she'll put him out of his misery. Also [[Grimdark|killed his own tribe to keep them from being enslaved due to deciding they were better off dead.]] Mira put him down on Malachor V after she realized that his suicidal state made it impossible to help him.

* Mical the Disciple: The Handmaiden's counterpart, joining only if you're playing female (canonically he accompanied the female Meetra). A very nice and pleasant guy and one of the least morally compromised of the sequel's party members. And this in turn is exactly why some people find him boring relative to the more flawed Atton, though he's also often compared unfavorably to the Handmaiden as well due to the feeling that she's more useful in fights. Secretly a spy for the Republic, though most would say its not much of a secret. And guess what, Meetra made him a Jedi.

* Visas Marr: A Miraluka who has been Darth Nihilus' "apprentice" (by which we mean slave) for an untold period. Unsurprisingly leaps at the chance to ditch him for the player character the first chance she gets. A romance option for male players, to the absolute fury of the Handmaiden (to the point that she might stop speaking to you depending on how things go). Can be talked into killing herself to hurt her ex-boss in the final battle with him, but because Visas is cool hardly anyone takes this option even if playing Dark Side. Gets bonus points for being voiced by Kelly Hu. Canonically Meetra redeemed her to the light side (though it's not a redemption so much as a "literally anything is better than her current situation").

* GO-TO: No, no. Not [[C.S. Goto|he-who-must-not-be-named and who is universally despised and shunned]]. This is a different GO-TO, who is a droid that runs the Galaxy's largest crime syndicate. Looks exactly like the torture droids used by the Empire despite existing well before the Empire's time. An interesting character, but as he's considered pretty useless in a fight, most players hardly ever use him. Canonically blown up on Malachor after he got stuck with Bao-Dur's remote during the final mission of KOTOR 2.

* Vrook Lamar: Where Jolee Bindo is a funny cranky old man Jedi Master, Vrook is the opposite. Generally fitting the negative perception of "humorless jerk Jedi Master who preaches and lectures a lot", Vrook is one of the few characters to appear in both games. Dark Side players will kill him, and for all his grumbling, this old geezer has the skills and power to back it up. Doesn't save him from Darth Traya in the canonical Light Side path even with Master Zez-Kai Ell and Master Kavar being with him though.

* SWTOR PCs: A Jedi Knight, a Jedi Consular, a Republic Special Forces Soldier, a Smuggler, a Sith Warrior, a slave-turned Sith Inquisitor, a Bounty Hunter who can join the Mandolorians, and a Sith-Imperial Spy. The Eternal Empire/Eternal Throne expansions are basically a continuation of the Jedi Knight's story, though the Outlander's actual background is purposefully kept vague and the story can be tackled with any class. With that said, the story makes a heck of a lot more sense if its one of the Force-Sensitive classes (as otherwise you have silly things like Arcann losing to a Smuggler or a Bounty Hunter). Since their names are player-generated, each one has a title that the fanbase knows them by. Specifically:
** Jedi Knight: The Hero of Tython
** Jedi Consular: The Barsen'thor
** Republic Trooper: Havoc Squad Commander (or by the callsign, Meteor)
** Smuggler: Voidhound
** Sith Warrior: Emperor's Wrath
** Sith Inquisitor: Lord Kallig (actually a surname, the Inquisitor was a slave unaware of the lineage from Sith Lord Aloysius Kallig, later changes to a Darth title that differs depending on your alignment, Imperious for Light Side, Occlus for Neutral and Nox for Dark Side)
** Imperial Agent: Cipher-9
** Bounty Hunter: The Great Hunt Champion
** The one who went on to become the expansion PC is referred to as the Outlander, later the Alliance Commander and after the anti-Zakuul coalition dissolves simply as Commander. For the purposes of default timeline, we will assume that the Hero of Tython is the PC as that makes the most sense story-wise.

== Old Republic Villains==

* Darth Malak: Revan's former apprentice who turned on him because that's what Sith Lords do, and because Malak is a jerk. Unfortunately for the Republic and Jedi, it soon became clear that if Revan was like the Emperor of Man or Vlad von Carstein, Malak was closer to Abbadon or Konrad von Carstein, being that ever-disastrous mix of vicious and stupid. Where people often talk about Revan as a [[Tzeentch|tactical and strategic genius with a real talent for scheming and planning out victories]], Malak always goes for the [[Stupid Evil|bluntest, most brutally violent solution]]. Can't find a single person on a planet? [[Exterminatus|Bomb it]]. Wants to get Jedi on his side? [[Inquisition|Torture them until they join]]. And so on. As a consequence of pissing his master off at least once before betraying him, he's missing his lower jaw, hence the machinery where it used to be. We get a look at him without it on towards the end of the game, and its appropriately grisly.

* Darth Bandon: Malak's utterly generic and forgettable apprentice, who is basically the writers thinking "what if we did Darth Maul, but without the [[Awesome]]?Just about the only memorable thing he does is kill the Republic Soldier Trask Ulgo who helped amnesiac Revan escape the ship crash in the beginning of the game. Fittingly, he's disposed of by Revan and then basically never brought up again. Like Calo Nord, he leaves behind an outfit that doesn't look anything like his actual outfit.

* Darth Traya / Kreia: The main villain of the sequel, though she initially appears as an enigmatic mentor to the Jedi Exile. Generally remembered for her unique philosophy that is often highly critical of both the Jedi and the Sith, and is later revealed to hate the Force itself due to viewing it as a malicious deity (the lead writer has actually admitted that he basically used Kreia as a mouthpiece for things about the Force as a concept that bothered him). This unique perspective on the Force and her regular challenges of the player's actions, motives, and beliefs, has led to Kreia becoming a favorite among fans and critics alike. That her view of the Force is factually incorrect does little to change this (though to be fair, she doesn't have the benefit of knowing everything the audience knows). Was also Revan's Jedi Master as part of her backstory, and clearly still has fond memories of him, as he's one of the only characters she speaks about in an even remotely flattering way. There's also evidence to suggest that she might be the mother of one of the other party members, the Handmaiden, but this has never been conclusively confirmed.

* Darth Nihilus: Another fan-favorite to come out of the KotoR games, Nihilus is the poster-boy for the sequel despite not being the main villain and in fact having the least characterization of the three main Sith Lords. But, he's got the coolest look and has the highest intimidation factor, so he became a huge hit with fans anyway. Voice sounds vaguely like a toilet getting backed up and/or audio from Minecraft, but its much creepier/cooler than that sounds. Specializes in Drain Life, a Force power where the user sucks the life of a person or persons and gives it to themselves. Has become so addicted to using this power that he's become basically a wraith and needs to sate his hunger constantly, even on the planetary level, making him vaguely a Star Wars version of Galactus. Sadly, you can't ever wear his mask in the game, but you can get it as an item after killing him. To SWTOR's credit, you can wear it there.

* Darth Sion: A walking corpse of a Sith Lord whose main shtick is regenerating over and over again, hence his current physical appearance. Gets a crush on the Exile if she's female, and the Exile eventually convinces him to let go of his pain, causing him to die for good. Weirdly, he was also an alternate skin for Galen Marek in the later Force Unleashed game when no other characters from KotoR were.

* Atris: If ever there was a single character who perfectly embodied every negative stereotype about the Jedi, and was everything fans criticize about the Jedi distilled into a single character, it would be Atris. Self-righteous, rude, and more dogmatic and sanctimonious then a bus full of puritans, Atris quickly established herself as a hated character, especially with her constant insulting and lecturing of the Jedi Exile. She also kept the Exile's original lightsaber that she was forced to surrender because she's that petty. Turns out, of course, that she's fallen to the Dark Side from her study of Sith Holocrons, making all of her posturing and bluster completely hypocritical. Her Handmaidens are assholes too, with the exception of the one who joins you. The good news is, because she's gone Dark Side, you don't need to play a villain to have an excuse to cut her down. Though making her eat her words by sparing her and lecturing her right back as she realizes how badly she has been fucking up since the Mandalorian Wars started is on an entirely different level of satisfactory. Meetra most probably spared her and let her spend the rest of her miserable life in depression.

* The HK-50s: The "next-gen" HK-47s that appear in the sequel. Unlike HK-47, they are very much ''not'' on the player's side and are a recurring enemy throughout the game. A subtle difference between them and the original, is that while HK-47 enjoys knowing how to kill efficiently and/or with style, the HK-50s just enjoy killing period. This is why HK-47 hates them.

* Calo Nord: The first KotoR game's equivalent to Jango/Cad Bane, being the top bounty hunter of his day who dual wields blaster pistols. Doesn't save him from getting killed by Revan and company when they go to the first of four planets in their Star Map hunt. Short in temper and stature both, but weirdly leaves behind a shiny set of silver armor after he dies that fits everyone in the party perfectly despite being taller than him (with said armor also looking nothing like his outfit in the game).

* Darth Malgus: Though he was initially dismissed as a lazy blend of Vader and Malak when first introduced in SWTOR's announcement cinematic, this big, bald Sith has actually developed a solid following after both SWTOR and a tie-in novel told from his perspective came out. Where many other Sith in the Empire Malgus is a part of are alien-hating assholes with no real redeeming features, Malgus is depicted as more egalitarian. And while a believer in Sith ideals, argues that wars and other conflicts are necessary for people to grow and realize their full potential. Pulled a Kaiser Soze on his wife when his enemies tried to use her against him, and after a failed bid to become the new Sith Emperor later turned on the Sith in the pursuit of his own agenda, making him something of a spiritual successor to previous Old Republic Sith villains Revan and Traya. In short, he's generally seen as one of the better characters/things to come out of the fairly skubby SWTOR game and tie-ins.

* The Sith Emperor: Very blatantly a Palpatine rip-off (right down to having elite, fanatically loyal, red-robed, faceless bodyguards who can hold their own against Jedi), who serves as the main villain of SWTOR. Revealed to have been the one who finished corrupting Revan and Malak to the Dark Side before sending them out to pave the way for his arrival. Revan and Malak of course, had other ideas, but the Sith Emperor's longevity meant he was still around to launch an invasion of the Galaxy anyway 300 years later. His backstory is that he's a parasitic body-hopper who transfers his consciousness every time a new, more powerful vessel comes along, and also has the ability to suck ''everything'' from a planet in what is an even more extreme version of what Nihilus does. Not just people's lives, but color, sound, the Force itself, etc. This is seen as so messed up that the few Sith who know the truth about him want him dead as badly as any of the Jedi. Unfortunately, the Emperor's body-swapping shtick continues after the player beats him, and he gets a new form and voice in Immortal Emperor Valkorion. In this body he's even more ridiculously powerful and <s>basically becomes Fire Lord Ozai in space</s> forms his own faction to try and wipe out both the Jedi and the Sith. Gets killed, but his ghost sticks around to cause more trouble, until that's taken out...and then a fragment of him persists even then and has to be taken out too. Since the fragment of the Sith Emperor's essence was wiped out, the jerk's (hopefully) gone for good, but if the game and its expansions have taught us anything at this point, always assume that the Sith Emperor will come back in some way or form down the line. For the purposes of timeline, the Hero of Tython is held to have killed him for real with the destruction of the last fragment.

* Arcann and Vaylin: Valkorion's children. As siblings who are the kids of a heartless, despotic ruler with great power, with the son having facial scarring as a result of his dad's actions and initially being a villain before redeeming himself, they are basically Zuko and Azula in Star Wars. Like their old man they're nothing to scoff at in power, especially Vaylin who has inherited her dad's psychopathic traits (much like Azula relative to Ozai). Furthering the Avatar parallels, Arcann's voice actor also voiced Koh the Face-Stealer. Despite being Dark Siders, neither one is technically a Sith, and both use yellow lightsabers instead of red.
Arcann is defeated by the Outlander and since Republic Loyalist Light Side Hero of Tython is considered the most likely canon SWTOR expansion PC, turned to the light side. Vaylin is later implied to have soul hopped to one of the Jedi apprentices the Emperor's last fragment tried to take over, though further details are TBA as SWTOR is still on going.

== One-Appearance Characters / Other Characters of Note==
* Biggs Darklighter: Luke’s best friend from his Tatooine days, who would graduate Flight Academy with the promise of fighting the Empire. Deleted scenes show how connected the two are as Biggs gives his farewells to join the Rebellion, inspiring Luke with the same courage to want to rise up as his best friend. Tragically, he lost his life in the battle against the Death Star, but it was not in vain. While he would be cut from the movie, the old footage still exists on Youtube showing how Skywalker looked up to him, how they reuinited in the rebel base, and eventually losing his life.
* Owen and Beru Lars: Moisture farm couple and Luke's aunt and uncle (sort of, its complicated), who raise him on Tatooine. Effectively Luke's Ma and Pa Kent/Uncle Ben and Aunt May. And like Uncle Ben, their murders prove a major catalyst for Luke's transformation into a hero. Owen's main claim to fame is roasting Obi-Wan figuratively before later getting himself roasted literally. Isn't actually one-appearance, turning up in the prequel as their young selves and again in the Obiwan series where they defend their home from the Third Sister of the Inquisitors, ''successfully''. We can imagine they died fighting those Stormtroopers now.

* FN-2199/"TR-8R": a First Order Stormtrooper who wields a badass riot baton in combat. Appears only in The Force Awakens and notable only for two reasons; he shouts "Traitor!" at Finn, and then he kicks his punk ass despite the latter wielding a fucking lightsaber. Such is the stuff that memes are made of. Gets a bit of backstory that he and Finn trained and grew up together, hence his outrage at seeing Finn fighting for the opposite side. Even if he goes out like a punk to Han Solo, by all accounts, <s>FN-2199</s> TR-8R is what Phasma '''should''' have been. [https://image.prntscr.com/image/VFRN0EFuQkCz3pkBYGCN2Q.jpg He would make a great commissar].

* Jyn Erso: Appears in Rogue One. A former member of the Space Taliban (Rebels who refused to group up with the rest of the Rebels due to their extreme willingness to do evil shit to kill evil assholes) who is captured by the Rebels so they can talk to Space Bin Laden (Saw Gerrara, a character who guest-starred in a few episodes of the cartoon Rebels and pretty much shows up to die in Jyn's movie) about rumors of a planet killer being fueled by Space Iraqi oil crystals (that makes lightsabers work), one that was partially designed by her father. Jyn is angry all of the time because her life sucks, she watches every parental figure in her life die in front of her, most of them over the period of a single day, and the movie hopes this will hide the fact that she really doesn't do much other then flip authority figures the bird. Her name mirrors that of Jan Ors, partner-in-crime of legendary badass Kyle Katarn which is REALLY not as well-received by the fans of the series her movie retconned as Disney thought it would be (to be fair, the old EU had around ten different versions of the Death Star plans being stolen which many fans just figured were combined into the one Leia had, so that doesn't mean Kyle and Jan can't ever be made canon again). Gets killed when Tarkin used the Death Star to destroy the facility in an attempt to stop the Rebels transmitting classified information, but Jyn and Cassian got the Death Star plans beamed into space before that.

* Cassian Andor: Appears in Rogue One. A Rebel spy and assassin, Cassian angsts about the fact that he lives in a political thriller about the space mafia VS the space Nazis set mere days before the simple good and evil morality of the original trilogy kicks in. His only friend is a droid, but that's not exactly as unusual in the setting as the movie implies it is. Shares an award with Luke for not getting the girl in the end...kind of; they do share a final hug and possible kiss in the elevator before he died with her getting atomized by a partial-strength shot from the Death Star. The Disney Canon variant of Kyle Katarn, who was an Imperial officer turned Rebel turned Jedi Master, who is so badass he shaves with a lightsaber. A massive waste of character. UPDATE: We're now getting a TV series based on him, so there's at least that?

* K-2S0: Appears in Rogue One. What C-3P0 would be if he grew a pair and got a stronger droid body. A reprogrammed Imperial tactical droid and Cassian's only friend. Does that thing where he spits out survival odds in stressful moments. Caught a grenade in mid-air then tossed it back at it's original thrower without even looking, shot Stormtroopers (even took out two by [[Angry Marines|picking up a third stromtrooper and whacking them with him]]), and delivered some great deadpan lines which endeared him the audience - even those growing more jaded to these new movies liked him. So of course he dies first in order to establish that shit gets real during the last twenty minutes of the movie, although he died holding the line so Stormtroopers wouldn't reach Cassian and Jyn and his last act was smashing the control panel with his bare hands so at least he went out as cool as he came in.

* Chirrut Îmwe: <s>Discount Jedi</s> The real star of Rogue One. A blind martial artist who may or may not have force powers, can beat a squad of Stormtroopers with a staff, shoot TIE Fighters out of the air, and could take your girl if he wanted to. Haha, jk, he's totally homo for his bara partner-in-crime with the badass autocannon. Dies in a bombing run, but he doesn't fear death. Even his actor (from the badass "Ip Man" series) admitted that he was shoehorned into the movie in a desperate attempt to make China give a shit about Star Wars (which failed, because China really just doesn't give a shit about the franchise). Chirrut is memorable mostly because he belongs to the "Order Of The Whills", notable because "Whills" were a thing George Lucas kept wanting to use in the original trilogy (immortal beings who were supposed to be telling the story, hence "a long time ago", later the spirits that make up the Force itself, and finally an order of warriors that Leia was supposed to found after Luke's death in a sixth movie before he decided to take a break then do prequels instead. Basically Space Moirae).

* Baze Malbus: Chirrut's best mate and self-appointed bodyguard. Has three lines, but comes off as memorable because of his hellgun-looking backpack mounted autocannon with a scanvisor that lets him hold down the trigger and headshot stormtroopers until they are all dead. In early scripts Chirrut was his father figure, in the finished product they're ambiguously gay even though the director intended there to be a "finding peace with the pastor who heard his confession after a very grim life" vibe. Dies shortly after Chirrut, and actually makes a connection with the Force in his final moments. Quite a bit of work went into designing his visual style and his backstory, not a single bit of which ended up in the movie.

* Orson Krennic: Director of the Imperial Military Research Division and Rogue One's villain. Forces Jyn's father into building the Death Star for him, causes the death of Jyn's mother, then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie getting roasted by the more competent Imperial characters because he's a fucking moron with a grudge. He's typical of the average Imperial who doesn't wear Stormtrooper armor in the Expanded Universe as well as Disney canon, notable mainly for giving off "Resident Evil villain" vibes.

* TZ-1719 / Jannah: Appears in Rise of Skywalker. The leader of a unit of First Order Stormtroopers who, upon being ordered to shoot civilians, all laid down their guns at once despite there being no communication between them to do so. Implied to be Force sensitive, with the accidental subtext being that she simply subconsciously Force-tricked her troops into not being evil anymore. They stole their dropships and escaped to Endor, living a non-tech lifestyle by taming some kind of goat aliens as mounts. She personally took on the name "Jannah". Her primary purpose of the movie is to replace Rose as Finn's love interest since they couldn't decide on hooking Finn up with Rey or not (for problems such as "would it offend racists into not buying merch, would it be seen as sexist to end her journey with a Disney Princess ending of getting a relationship, etc"). Further unfortunate subtext is how TZ is quite literally just Rule 63 Finn, although it fixes the "Finn Problem" that has been pointed out where suddenly Stormtroopers dying can be seen as a tragic loss of a potential hero by adding the idea that "<strike>Kanye was right, slavery is a choice</strike> good characters who end up as Stormtroopers can just choose not to shoot the non-combatants so anyone that doesn't deserves to die like the nameless <strike>loot pinatas</strike> mooks they are. The end of the movie adds <strike>spinoff bait</strike> the implication she is Lando's grandaughter, or at the least he has an idea of who she was taken from as a baby.

* Qi'ra: Han Solo's old girlfriend and partner introduced in ''Solo: A Star Wars Story,'' filling in for a number of older EU characters (don't worry, the Disney Star Wars comics had already given Han an ex other than her anyway). Grew up with Han on Corellia before getting forced into the Crimson Dawn, which is like the Mafia in space except run by Darth Maul instead of the Hutts. Helps Han survive an unobtainium deal gone bad, then backstabs her boss to become her gang's alpha dog and Maul's personal agent. Too bad this will probably never be followed up on outside of tie-in novels thanks to how bad the movie did. Also kinda awkward they made her Maul's Personal Assistant right after Rebels killed him off, meaning that Star Wars fans felt absolutely no curiosity about how the entire thing was going to go. She was still kicking around the Galaxy and is now involved in the Bounty Hunter Wars. Qi'ra is played by the famous Emilia Clarke which is one of the many reasons she is popular

* L3-37: While K-2S0 brought droid characters to an awesome new high, L3-37 brought them to a new low. While not being as bad as Holdo and Rose, and being far more memorable than the chick, the spy dude, the TIE Fighter pilot dude, and the two Asian dudes from Rogue One (admit it, you don't fucking remember more than two of their names at best), she suffered the most from the reshoots the movie underwent. The /v/-tier name is only the warning label on this crock of shit. A droid that constructed a body for herself from spare parts and wound up as Lando's version of Chewbacca, L3-37 is a [[SJW|woke robot feminist in space by direct admission of the writers, with everything that implies]] while also being a revolutionary leader who gives no fucks about any disgusting meatbags and at the same time is physically romantically involved with Lando while giving romantic advice to other characters and at the same time is all about profit and shooting up the place while using other droids as just pawns in her rampages (did we mention this character REALLY suffered from the reshoots?) Her body is destroyed in an escape attempt but ends up as one of the droid brains running the Millennium Falcon (yes, the same computer C-3P0 complained about in the original trilogy; draw your own conclusions.) Long story short, the feminist/sexbot/droid-supremacist/human loving/spree killer provides constant tonal whiplash. Did we mention that since she began without having a body there was no reason to stick her in the Falcon which is a fate worse than death based on about 1/4 of her characterization, it adds a LOT of disturbing subtext to Lando's fondness for the Falcon and the fact that Han basically just kept it after winning the game despite knowing Lando's lover was trapped forever inside, the implications for the conversations she had with Threepio during Empire Strikes Back, and the fact it was kept abandoned by a criminal on a desert planet for at least a decade means she's probably gone even more insane? Fan reaction is mixed, but only between "worst character ever, would prefer to watch Jar Jar and Holdo star in a sitcom combining the bad parts of both original EU and Reboot than watch the movie again" and "had potential, was disappointed, still don't like the name".

* Iden Versio: Created for DICE's Battlefront II as the protagonist of the story mode (though she's also playable in multiplayer). The leader of a small squad of Imperial Special Forces (because apparently the Empire can't get enough of black armored elites despite already having Shadow Stormtroopers, Storm Commandos, Purge Troopers, and Death Troopers). Modeled to look like her actress. Initially rabidly pro-Empire, but changed her mind during Operation: Cinder due to Palpatine's posthumous orders to take the rest of the Empire with him if he ever died. Becomes a New Republic soldier along with the one member of her squad who decided to go with her, and then later married him. Dies around the time of the Sequel Trilogy, but takes the member of her squad who ''didn't'' side with her with her. General consensus is that her shift to the Light Side either shouldn't have happened at all (so players could have an Imperial protagonist from start to finish like in TIE Fighter), or needed to come way later / be less sloppily done.

== Nations and Organizations ==
* '''''The Galactic Empire''''': Ever seen an evil, fascist space empire imposing itself on the galaxy with huge, evil spaceships and cool mooks? Then it was probably inspired by the Empire. Itself inspired by the brutalist designs of Nazi Germany, the First Galactic Empire is overall ''the'' classic authoritarian dictatorship, propped up by legions of obedient but easily disposable troops, cool propaganda that paints them as the saviors of the galaxy and ambitious officers ready to be choked for their failures. The Empire was created from the infrastructure of the Republic when Emperor Sheev Palpatine took singular power of the Republic Senate, ostensibly to keep the galaxy safe after the Clone Wars, but totally because he was a powerful Sith Lord who wanted to get his evil fascist dick hard. Once the galaxy got wise to this, the Empire used fear to keep them in line, which is one of the reasons why they took a liking to huge Star Destroyers and Death Stars, since they look fucking terrifying. While evil overall (as our [[Emperor|Lord and Savior]] George of the Lucas proclaims it), individual people go from normal people who knows no better since they've lived with propaganda up their exhaust ports all their lives to genuine psychopaths like Palpatine and Grand Moff Tarkin (along with the obligatory Hermann Göring type corrupt hedonists taking advantage of their positions, and various sick fucks who Palpatine often puts into power for just that reason). Even so, The Empire still possessed deep flaws; apart from the authoritarian top-down rule, the Empire also wasted significant resources on its inefficient military, and their constant poaching of the Galaxy's brightest minds and permanent wartime economy meant the rest of the galaxy stagnated. Severe competition in the officer corps meant that infighting and backstabbing was not uncommon, either, and that the politically connected could still advance ahead of truly competent officers (that is, until their incompetency finally pissed off someone above them, as seen with Vader choking Admiral Ozzel). The Empire eventually broke apart after the Battle of Endor where the Emperor was killed (allegedly; it's more complicated than that...), his apprentice turned (back?) to the Light Side of the Force and the second Death Star blown up. The remains of the Empire's military became the Imperial Remnants who fought the New Republic and each other for control of resources.
** ''Imperial Remnant (Legends)'': in the original continuity, the Empire splintered into different warlord factions after the death of the Emperor and took several decades for the New Republic to defeat. At various points these remnants continued to threaten the New Republic for a long time, including the splinter lead by [[Creed|tactical genius Admiral Thrawn]]. They did team up temporarily to fight off the extra-galactic invaders, the Yuuzhan Vong. Eventually the largest remnant, which had greatly mellowed out its policies since Palpatine's death, made peace with the New Republic. It would continue to exist into Cade Skywalker's era 130+ years after the Battle of the Yavin, where it would split into two major factions; one that was more overtly associated with the Sith and reminiscent of the pre-Rule-of-Two Sith Empire, and the other lead by a royal family of Force sensitives more akin to Grey Jedi. After a war, the One Sith (faction name of the last Sith group) aligned faction is defeated, tries to go back into the shadows but is destroyed by a renegade One Sith, Darth Wredd, who wants to return to the Rule of Two but dies before taking an apprentice leaving the Sith extinct. The Fel Empire joins the New Republic successor government and the Jedi for to form the new galactic government.
** ''Imperial Remnant (Disney)'': In the Disney canon, the Emperor had a two-part plan in the event of his death; firstly, he'd destroy most of his remaining forces in Operation Cinder (this plan appears stupid on its head, but does serve a few purposes; it prevented Warlords from using Imperial resources to carve out their own empires, it tested the loyalty of the remaining officer corps, and denied assets to the New Republic. But mostly he was just a bitter asshole who wanted to take his ball and go home). In the second phase, those considered worthy enough were to retreat to secret fortress worlds in the Unknown Regions. Most of the remaining Imperial forces surrendered not long after the Battle of Endor, but various warlords still existed in the Outer Rim for at least five years since the fall of the Empire. The New Republic decides to just ignore them because fuck it Jar Jar Abrams wanted Rebels vs. Empire again, couldn't be asked to explain it and had no plans for the rest of the trilogy anyways. Considering how a large part of the Galaxy's history can be characterized as "Core Vs Outer Rim," and how the region had always been hard to control, its likely that the New Republic didn't want to fuck around with such a large clusterfuck of a region when they were still trying to consolidate the core, which unfortunately allowed for opportunists like Moff Gideon to grow in the shadows. There's also good evidence that Grand Admiral Thrawn, who's already been integrated into Disney Canon, will once again be a major power player in the Imperial Remnant. Whether he's still working for the Imperials in the Unknown Regions or in it for himself, we'll have to wait and see.
The problem is 90% has been retconned multiple times now and Operation Cinder has suffered from having four different interpretations. Currently evidence points to an Imperial Civil War breaking out have been retconed again and retcons have frequently become a problem. As such there are several schools of interpretation and the amount of factions.
# The Yomo Council: A faction which rejected the authority of Gailus Rax and Coruscant. This group was made up of Imperial Army elements and their families which ended up getting brutally attacked by the Loyalist Shadow Wing and the New Republic.
# The Jakku Remnant: The term for the Imperial Forces at Jakku during the battle under Fleet Admiral Rax. This was the force you see at Jakku and was the one who was defeated at the battle. After the battle the Imperial Forces are either killed, Captured and tried as War Criminals, or fled the battle to other Imperial Forces.
# Moff Gideon's Imperial Remnant: Also known as Gus' boys, these are the main Imperials seen in The Mandalorian. They are pretty good shots and made up of Imperial Veterans. The only reason they do not kill Mando is because of the literal plot armor. They also had Dark Troopers and some specialized Imperial Assets. There is implication from Behind the scenes interviews that Moff Gideon is backed by Grand Admiral Thrawn.
# The Iron Blockade: A faction led by a Imperial Governor name Adhard who locked down the Sector and pretended palps was dead, despite the blatant evidence to show otherwise. He held tough control of the Sector and had is own Purge Trooper Squads and custom Imperial Logo.
# The Outer Rims Remnants: A group of Imperial forces who rejected the FO as a bunch of larping Fags. They decided to fight against them and the Emperor because they saw them as traitors to the Empire they had fought for. These guys are kind of a cool idea of something not explored.
# The Core World Remnants: These are planets like Fondor, Kuat, the Deep Core, and Coruscant. They kept some Imperial Forces as defense forces and they desire the return of the Empire. Despite being banned by the New Republic from building armies and navies they built tons of weapons and warships from the FO without the NR [[FAIL|realizing]]..... When the FO took out Hosnian Prime, these forces joined up with the FO as sympathizers and auxiliary forces.

* The Republic: Before the Empire, the galaxy was governed by a ''huge'' representative democracy, seen in the prequel movies. It's corrupt as fuck, and not really capable of much other than ignore the fact most of the galaxy is already at war with itself, entire species are being wiped out in ethnic purges faster than they can be counted in a census, and slavery is pretty much everywhere. Acts like one nation, functions as an economic forum for oligarchs while planets police themselves to varying degrees. And since, by law, the Republic had no army before the Clone Wars, planets that were too poor to fight off pirates and slavers had little recourse. Besides failing to act on the many atrocities happening in the galaxy (and those they do intervene in ended up sowing resentment into the future Separatists), a major issue was that Republic policies gave special treatment to the prosperous Core worlds and large corporations over the remote and impoverished Rim worlds, one of those being that the Senate has a limited number of seats, so a lot of the newer worlds have to share a single senator for entire sectors of space. Don’t fuck with Hutts, leaving them to do whatever they want in most of the galaxy, and until Sheev took over and made it the prelude to his Empire the only thing they ever did to get shit done is ask the Jedi to deal with it, whatever it is. The scary thing is that in the final years of the Republic, the Senate voluntarily laid the groundwork for the Empire long before the Declaration of the New Order and nobody even noticed it happened until decades later, when Palpatine received his emergency powers at the start of the Separatist Crisis and the opening of the Clone Wars. As Maul would point out before the end of the War, the Republic was already gone.

* The Old Republic: The early Republic. Far less corrupt, and had a standing army made up of what can charitably be called a mix of rent-a-cop security and elite paramilitary volunteers, the Special Operations department was top notch (although it had a bit of a war crimes problem and had a humiliating defection in the Cold War phase of the Great Galactic War that only didn't destroy them because the rookie and the cynical intel officer in the defecting Havoc Squad and the hacker, the Sith Imperial defector, the demolitions unit and the prototype battle droid assigned to them to rebuild were even better than the traitors and managed to convince three to surrender and killed the psychos) and the Navy as well as the armored land units were great, infantry and random conscript from wherever not so much. It was also far smaller, as the Republic only gradually expanded in stages across the galaxy, with humans leading most colonization efforts. Still rely heavily on Jedi, but mostly just for dealing with Sith. Hutt territory is more formal rather than them operating everywhere.
** Ruusan Reformation: 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin, after the apparent destruction of the Sith, the Republic underwent a massive reorganization that made it into the Republic, but started with a dark age due to the damage caused by the war. Used to reconcile a problem in the films where the Republic is said to have existed for both 1000 years and "a thousand generations". This also solves how many details about pre-Prequel works had substantially different depictions of the Republic and Jedi from what the prequels wound up doing, and how there were wars when a character says there hasn't been a full scale war since the formation of the Republic.

* The New Republic: The post-Empire government that the Rebellion forms.
** Legends: Leia rules for a time, trying to manage the various monsters of the week and Imperial remnant groups, gradually stepping down to more minor titles to avoid being another Emperor. Then they have to deal with things like the extra-galactic cenobite invaders that cause a galaxy-wide holocaust while her Jedi kids died or flirted with being evil. Eventually it forms the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, a confederation that includes a less-evil Imperial remnants (which it had been at peace with for a while) and some other powers, remaining a stable force combating Sith and their empires ever. During this time, Leia's granddaughter was prophesied to bring the Light Side of the Force into ascendance while a female Force-Cthulhu tried to co-opt the prophecy for herself. After Luke defeats her, a few decades are skipped and the Federation is defeated by a Sith backed Imperial Remnant faction, the Fel Empire. The Sith then backstab the Imperials and kick off the Sith-Imperial war. The Federation and the Jedi help the loyalists defeat the One Sith, and the Sith themselves are rendered extinct after Darth Wredd (who wanted to bring back the Rule of Two) kills them all and dies before taking an apprentice, leaving the Federation, the Fel Empire and the Jedi (who had suffered another purge before the Sith back-stabbed Emperor Roan Fel, who died at the hands of his Gray Jedi/Imperial Knight Bodyguard in the final battle after falling to the Dark Side and succeeded by his daughter Marasiah) to form the last known government, the Galactic Federation Triumvirate.
** Disney: Focused on defeating the Empire, then dismantled the Rebellion militarily. Focused mostly on being an intermediary with independent planets, paying for each one in the alliance to have their own militia with treaties to support each other if attacked, while the Republic itself had a small fleet to bolster anyone in need. Despite sounding like the setup for World War 1, it actually is like the US/Soviet Cold War with the Imperial remnant then its successor the First Order, until the FO performed a Star Wars 9/11 and used a planet killer weapon to destroy all the planets in the sector of the New Republic capital then invaded the independent planets. [[what|Being essentially destroyed with their capital system despite being the galactic government which should have contingencies for such events since existence of planet killers is common knowledge]], the planets focused on their own survival until Lando performed a short planet-hopping tour to rile up the militias and all the scum, villainy, and pirates who wanted to see the true death of the Empire/First Order. During its reign it had far less control over the galaxy than the Republic or Empire, but clever administration and assigned leadership of the militias made traditionally dangerous and lawless planets like Tatooine finally civilized. Its ultimate fate is now unknown.

* Confederacy of Independent Systems: aka the Separatists. Due to the rampant corruption in the Republic, a lot of systems were very unhappy with the state of the galaxy and wanted out. However, many of these separatists included extremely powerful corporate goons, such as the Trade Federation, who simply wanted more power for themselves, and were willing to lease out their droid armies to that end. While outwardly they were simply disgruntled and neglected planets who wanted independence, in reality the CIS existence was deliberately engineered by the Sith in order to further their goals in the creation and maintenance of the Empire. Under the leadership of Count Dooku, they formed a formidable alliance that would threaten the core worlds of the Republic with the biggest army ever created, eventually leading to the Clone Wars that would throw the galaxy into one of the bloodiest conflicts in centuries. And despite Dooku's purported political idealism at the start of the war, the more idealistic and politically motivated worlds who wanted to escape the Republic's corruption found themselves sidelined by the big Corporate worlds who controlled the war effort and stationed their droid armies everywhere. These corporations liked to pretend that they were still neutral in the war and that any corporate executives openly engaging with the CIS were "rogue elements," if only because they still wanted to play both sides of the conflict with a little war profiteering. That being said, it was clear to anyone who was in the know that the corporations, under the Separatist Council, held much of the real power (the non-corporate CIS worlds simply didn't have the money or numbers to pose any real threat to the Core), and that the CIS Parliament was just a formality for getting the Outer Rim on their side. As the war progressed, bloodthirsty war criminals like General Grievous made the Republic fear and loathe any hint of disloyalty, which was a major PR problem for the early Rebellion. One of the big ironies is that, because the CIS turned out to be just as corrupt as the Republic, many Separatist worlds begrudgingly sided with the Empire as the "lesser of two evils" in their minds. The fact that the CIS was made up of powerful, alien corporations from the Outer Rim also served to justify the Empire's xenophobia, nationalization of virtually all heavy industry, and subjugation of worlds far away from the Core. Because the Separatists were simply an expendable puppet of the Sith, Palpatine had no qualms about sending Vader to destroy the remaining leaders once he secured his Empire and they'd outlived their usefulness. The Empire then proceeded to dismantle the remaining Confederate groups along with pirates and other anti-central government forces in the Reconquest of the Rim. Several remnants continued resistance and some helped Order 66 survivors escape. After the Rebel Alliance was formed, surviving Confederate Remnant forces joined it, for those who joined the CIS to fight against Old Republic corruption happily, and for those who were full on separatists somewhat unhappily as a lesser of two evils. Until at least 1 BBY one Imperial Moff, Conan Antonio Motti, referred to them as a threat alongside rebels and criminal enterprises. Presumably, the last few organics holdouts joined the rebels or took the opportunity to disband after the Death Star was destroyed. Handfuls of Droid units that didn't receive the deactivation signal remained active on Tatooine, Lok and Kashyyyhk and were destroyed by the Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG characters. A large leftover unit was present on Geonosis and were destroyed in a Galactic Civil War battle there in 3 ABY. A single Droideka, which had been infiltrated into the Outbound Flight voyage, was out of range of the shut down order and was destroyed by Luke and Mara in 22 ABY during their expedition to the Outbound Flight crash site, ending the last relic of the Confederate cause that was still nominally obeying CIS Parliament orders.

* The Rebel Alliance: After Emperor Palpatine's political takeover succeeded and the Jedi murdered in a [[Horus|galaxy-wide act of backstabbery]], Senators Bail Organa, Padmé Amidala, Mon Mothma and a small group of sympathizers come together to form a resistance group, knowing fully well that the new Galactic Empire won't be going quietly with their new "doctrines", especially since the Empire's militarization only increased following the end of the Clone Wars. Prior to the Battle of Yavin, the "Rebel Alliance" was more like the "Rebel Coalition of guys who loosely agree on some things," being made up of individual cells under the coordination of a High Command unit. The rebellion's supporters were an odd mixture of former Separatists, Republic loyalists who found themselves betrayed such as Kashyyk and Mon Calamari, and the occasional Imperial defector who found Imperial service either too immoral or too dangerous. For the next twenty years, the Rebellion will infiltrate, sabotage and generally frustrate the Empire as best they can, but unfortunately doesn't manage to really make a big difference; that is, before a certain Luke Skywalker gets swept up by them and leads them to their first, grand victory against the Empire's first Death Star. From here on out, the Rebellion does their best keeping themselves hidden from the Empire while maintaining strong relations with their allies, who, while few, did let them create a small fleet of outdated vehicles. Eventually, the Rebellion's hard work bears fruit after the second Death Star blows up and the Emperor goes missing. From here, the Rebellion and their members become the New Republic.
** The Resistance: From a first look, the Resistance looks extremely similar to the Rebellion visually (they are called "The Resistance" for Pete's sake!), but there's a little more going on under the hood. Feeling her hairbuns tingle with fear, Leia Organa realizes the First Order will become a galaxy-wide headache soon and moves to get the New Republic to give a shit - except they don't, because her father was Vader, and thinks she's a military maverick that just wants to feel important. Leia then begins to fund a secret militia of her own, looking for supporters among fellow senators and calling in old friends. The result is... Less than ideal. Functionally just a strikeforce of some twenty fighters and one or two capital ships (who by now are über-mega outdated), the Resistance can do jack ''shit'' against the First Order, who literally commands entire space empires by force. By the Force Awakens, they're pretty much fucked - but luckily gets themselves two new heroes to add to the fold (one who is among the most naturally talented forces users ever seen), re-connect with Han and Chewie AND find a fucking map to Luke Skywalker's personal pillowfort he left for some 5-10 years ago. Eventually fucked up after destroying the Starkiller Base and grinded to metal spacedust by a prolonged space chase, they eventually manage to ignite resistance in the entire galaxy, which gets a ''fuckhueg'' navy of ragtag ships to reinforce them at Exegol.

* Sith Empire: The Old Republic's mortal enemy. In the many millenia leading up to the Ruusan Reformation, the Sith Empire held a significant chunk of the northeastern galaxy, holding thousands of worlds under their iron grip. The Sith engaged in several major wars against the Republic, oftentimes defeating the Republic and nearly exterminating the Jedi, only for their own empire to descend into chaos as Sith Lords backstabbed each other once they no longer had a common enemy. This pattern would continue until Bane killed all the remaining Sith Lords and instituted the Rule of Two, plotting to take over the galaxy and exterminate the Jedi through slow and careful planning rather than overwhelming force.

* The Hutt Cartels: Essentially the space mafia, if the mafia had the clout to influence the national government (like in Russia during the 90s with the Russian Mob). The Hutts managed to drive of the Rakatan Infinite Empire despite having no FTL at the time due to the Rakata losing their connection to the force. The original Hutt empire, after fighting some wars of expansion against neighbors and fellow tyrants in Xim the Despot's regime suffered a massive civil war known as the Hutt Cataclysms which ruined their original homeworld and made them move to Nal Hutta (Nar Shadda is it's moon). To prevent things getting this bad, cartels were established between influential factions, all answering to the Council of Elders made up from the heads of houses. Hutt Space is nominally ruled by the Council but it essentially practices anarcho-capitalism and takes its cuts to rule the core planets and lets the cartels compete out of the core however they wish. If there's an affair that's illegal by legal standards, the Hutts probably have a hand in it. Keeps to themselves and doesn't care much for what the Sith and Republic is up to, though Jabba the Hutt, owner of Tatooine, takes part in the original trilogy because of Han Solo's longstanding debt to him, and Jabba had one of the biggest criminal empires at the time, competing with giants like the ancient Black Sun. Gets helped and funded by the Empire to do their dirty work and gets killed for his efforts, so there's a good reason why they keep out of all that. Hutt space has significant overlap with the cartels, but the two are technically separate as mentioned above, with the Council of Elders acting as a government for Hutt Space and as a mafia council for other holdings by the cartels. They get invaded during the Yuuzhan Vong war, but effectively form a guerilla force tying up major assets and reassert their rule after the Vong were defeated. After dealing with some slave revolts around the time of the Second Galactic Civil War and selling arms to Darth Caedus's uprising, they continue as they were until the Fel Empire (reformed Imperial Remnant), backed by the Sith, defeats the Federation. When the Sith backstabbed the Imperials, the Hutts secretly provide support to the Fed Remnants and Imperial Loyalists battling the Sith in the Sith-Imperial War. After the Sith blow up a Hutt temple, they officially declare war and join the anti-Sith coalition. Presumably they joined the Galactic Federation Triumvirate with at least nominal autonomy after the Darth Wredd Insurgency and the destruction of the Sith in 138 ABY.

* The First Order: If the Empire was the textbook fascist dictatorship, Disney's First Order is the Nazi Party itself as a military organization/cult. After the Imperial Remnants began fighting amongst themselves, an Imperial admiral fled to the Unknown Regions to rebuild her version of the Empire. Here the First Order grew slowly as former Imperials joined them and they subjugated small local fiefdoms and kingdoms. Eventually the previously unknown Sith Lord Snoke took control as their Supreme Leader and Ben Solo joined him as his apprentice, becoming Kylo Ren. The New Republic eventually learned of the First Order, but thought they were just a paper tiger with no real power. In actuality, their military tech and capabilities were quite high for how relatively small they were... Oh yeah, and they had created a superweapon built into a trench in the planet Ilum that could ''destroy a whole star-system''. Eventually they fired the thing and waged a war of subjugation on the anarchic remains of the New Republic.
**RETCONS: The First Order apparently never existed until about 8 years before TFA meaning a lot of this does not make sense. Its assume a minor civil war happened in the Unknown Regions but again the FO is not given much lore. They also apparently had a fleet bigger the Empire's fleet at its Height..... just do not bother.
** SPOILERS: Behind the scenes, the Emperor had manipulated the creation of the First Order to retake the galaxy, using an artificial body double (Snoke) to take direct control while hiding on the Sith homeworld. The plan was to eventually add his own fleet of Star Destroyers with planet-destroying capabilities to the First Order and form the Final Order, the one and final armada to take the entire galaxy through force and fear.

* Galactic Federation Triumvirate: The last known galactic government at the ends of the Legends continuity, formed from the Fel Empire, the Federation and the Jedi after the One Sith are defeated by a joint coalition of Fel Empire loyalists, Federation Troops and Jedi in 137 ABY. In 138 ABY, renegade One Sith Darth Wredd, wishing to restore the Rule of Two, manipulates the One Sith to destroy themselves and kills the survivors in the Darth Wredd Insurgency, before being killed himself without managing to take an apprentice in the last known battle, leaving the Sith extinct and the galaxy at least nominally unified by a well armed government.

== Significant Worlds ==

{{Topquote|I sense a great disturbance in the Force. (...) How else can so many worlds be totally covered with only one terrain type without regard to latitudinal variations?|Darth Vader, Irregular Webcomic!, Issue 87}}

There's a fuckton of planets in the Star Wars Galaxy, so we'll limit this list to the more noteworthy ones (mostly the ones that show up in films). As a whole, the franchise is famous for its love of the "Single Biome Planet" trope, to the point that it's been poked fun at multiple times (including ''within the franchise itself''), though given that planets with a single biome exist in real life, this aspect isn't as unrealistic as it sounds.

* '''Tatooine''': A run down desert world orbiting a binary star system on the outer rim of the galaxy. Its close proximity to major hyperspace routes and its location in Hutt space makes this otherwise unremarkable planet relatively strategic for illicit trade (ie: Space Juárez). It has a few dingy little cities, towns and farms home to a collection of criminals, smugglers, people scraping by and slaves with some basic order imposed by Hutt Crime families. The oral history of the native sand people suggests that it was considerably more lush before its inhabitants pissed off the Rakata, but the source for that notes oral histories are generally inaccurate. Surprisingly it is the most visited world in the franchise, showing up in every one of the six original films but ''Empire Strikes Back'' ''and'' appearing in countless other works due to the Skywalker family's connection to this craphole. This has actually become something of a point of criticism in recent years, with lots of critics and even some fans complaining about how often Tatooine shows up in Star Wars products. But hey, desert scenes are cheap and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yP7glaCT1M people still like Space Westerns].

* '''Naboo''': Lush planet between the Mid rim and outer rim, shared by both humans and gungans. Naboo's settlers are descended from Alderaaneans (Leia's home planet), so their culture and politics are extremely similar with a strong emphasis on pacifism, philanthropy, and high art (and ironically, early supporters of the Rebellion). Interestingly, the planet core is connected to the planet's oceans, though travel through the core is quite dangerous due to the leviathans living there. The planet hadn't been terribly important right up until the Trade Federation came knocking to demand tax payments over its trade routes (though in reality Naboo had ''massive'' untapped plasma reserves, and the Tradies wanted free reign to drill), which began a series of conflicts culminating in the Clone Wars. Relatively close to Tatooine, which is how the Jedi end up discovering Anakin Skywalker during the conflict when they're forced to evacuate the Queen of Naboo.

* '''Coruscant''': The Capital of the Republic and the Empire, a Ecumenopolis in which basically every square meter of it's surface is covered in a multi-kilometer thick cityscape. <s>So, Trantor. It's fucking Trantor.</s> Several sources claim it to be humanity's homeworld, or else where humanity initially expanded from since their enslavement by the Rakata. Originally found in George Lucas's notes as "Imperial Center", [[Timothy Zahn]] named it Coruscant (pronounced chorus-saunt and is similar to Coruscate, which is a fancy way of saying to sparkle) in the Thrawn Trilogy (as Imperial Center was clearly not the original name) and Lucas was convinced to keep the name when it came time to make the prequels. Before the prequels, pronunciation in audio books was all over the place. Descriptions of the city are not unlike your typical [[Hive city|Hive City]] (if not as extreme), where the elites live in the upper levels where the sky is still visible, while the lower class live in the dark, crumbling foundations, but with a more Art Deco vibe rather than Gothic. The actual planet surface is mostly landfill now, and the lower levels got increasingly uninhabitable after the Yuuzhan Vong terraformed the planet and later the Force-Cthulhu Abeloth made some new volcanoes. Not much is shown of Coruscant in the Disney canon after the prequel era, and its not even the capital of the New Republic. Supposedly J.J. Abrams wanted to blow the planet up but was told "no" by literally everyone.

* '''Yavin IV''': Jungle moon of the gas giant Yavin. The temples on this moon used to house a warrior race that had been enslaved by the Sith before being driven to extinction; it then became the secret base of the Rebel Alliance, which became the staging area for the Alliance's battle against the first Death Star. After the superweapon's destruction, the Empire launched a conventional attack and the Alliance was forced to relocate to Hoth. After the Thrawn Campaign, it became the site of Luke's new Jedi Academy which, after a brief incident with a Sith wraith haunting the place, flourished until yet another galactic war forced them to relocate.

* '''Hoth''': An obscure snow world devoid of any intelligent life, and seemingly named after a legendary Jedi master of old. It became the new headquarters for the Rebel Alliance after the fall of Yavin Base. It was established ''way'' back in the Newspaper comic that it was chosen by the rebels after Luke crash landed on it and encountered a pair of malfunctioning [[Android|Replica Droid]] prototypes fleeing from their creators. Further sources have expanded on its reasons for being chosen to include the fact that it's just off of a major trade route, which concealed supply runs (and is why Bespin is within backup drive distance).

* '''Bespin''': Gas giant with a breathable upper atmosphere. Home to Cloud City, an independent city that makes its income through mining Tibanna gas (used in blasters). Bespin's independence was used as political leverage when Vader arrived and extorted Lando Calrissian into betraying the rebels to him. After Vader double crossed Lando, the Rebels would later liberate Bespin from the Imperials.

* '''Kamino''': Ocean planet that technically exists outside the Galaxy proper, in between it and what is known as the "Rishi Maze," which was why it was a bitch to find. The inhabitants are expert geneticists, and the place is really hard to get to without knowing exactly what you're doing, making it the ideal location for growing the Republic's clone army. Kamino's cities were destroyed by the Empire shortly after the Clone Wars, as they had decided to switch to recruited soldiers; we don't know much about what became of the Kaminoans themselves other than some were forcibly recruited into more specialized cloning programs. Legends had a revolt break out by the Kaminoans making their own Fett clones which was put down and the planet was irrelevant afterwards.

* '''Geonosis''': Desert world inhabited by bug people. Was used by the separatists to build their armies and strategize, eventually becoming the site of the first battle of the Clone Wars. Geonosis is actually even more of a creepy hellhole than Episode II suggests, as the Geonosian Queen can use worms to turn corpses into zombies and mind control living hosts. During the Clone Wars, Geonosis was the first construction site for the Death Star, since it was technically the Geonosians who made the schematics in the first place. Most Geonosians were wiped out by the Empire when the Death Star was moved for completion.

* '''Utapau''': Temperate planet characterized by its massive sinkhole cities. General Grievous tried to rally the Seperatists here after Dooku's death, but was killed by Obi-Wan in the ensuing battle.

* '''Kashyyyk''': Forest/jungle planet and home to the wookies, who live in gigantic tree houses connected by enormous suspension bridges. The interior of the jungle, known as the Shadowlands, is full of a wide variety of dangerous lifeforms, so the wookies stay close to the canopy; the only time they enter the shadowlands is to hunt, in initiation rites, or to live in exile. In Kashyyk’s ancient history, the Rakata used dark-side powered technology to speed up Kashyyk’s evolution so that it could be used as an Agri-world for the empire; while the Rakata have long since disappeared, this machine is still active and is responsible for the many dangerous and twisted creatures that live on the planet. During the Republic it was an important trade world due to its location at the junction of several trade routes, highly prized resources, and the expert craftsmanship of the wookies. Despite their loyalty, during the Empire the wookies were severely subjugated and enslaved (with the help of Trandoshans) and their trees were chopped down for the valuable wood and sap. The Empire never truly took it over but did manage to pollute it to all hell.

* '''Mustafar''': Lava planet and the last holdout of the Separatists. Darth Vader makes his base here after he is forced to don his iconic armor, proving that he did have [[Meme|the high ground]] by plonking a gigantic black tower on the surface. The planet has a strong affinity with the Dark Side, attracting various Sith cults in its history.

* '''Ilum''': Small alpine planet covered in ice and snow and by the time of the prequels the galaxy's only known significant source of Kyber crystals, the core ingredient in a little thing we like to call "the lightsaber". Traditionally a place for Jedi to do pilgrimage to find their own Kyber crystal at, as Jedi initiates find that the only crystal visible to them in the caves is the one they're destined to use.
** In Disney canon, the Empire turned one half of the surface into a gigantic strip-mine several hundred kilometers down into the crust. It was eventually rediscovered by the First Order and turned into an actually moon-sized laser cannon called Starkiller Base (This is poorly explained within the films; its not even identified as Ilum except in side stories. The idea is that like the original Death Star, the superlaser is powered by gigantic kyber crystals, and Ilum happens to be well inside the Unknown Regions yet its location and route were still known thanks to Jedi pilgramages).

* '''Dathomir''': [[Death World]]-style hellhole and home of Darth Maul. Filled with gigantic brambles, noxious swamps, poisonous critters and savagely insular tribals. The native inhabitants use the planet's natural Dark Side energy to do all sorts of creepy and arcane shit, including necromancy. Nearly all of its magick-using females were wiped out by the end of the Clone Wars, leaving the planet to decay.

* '''Malachor V''': The last battlefield of the Mandalorian Wars, which blasted the entire planet into a Mars-like wasteland thanks to a superweapon deployed, ironically, by the Jedi. The Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians all regard it as perhaps the most critical place and moment in their respective histories despite it being a lifeless desert littered with crumbling temples and the rusting armor of countless thousands of fallen warriors. The general takeaway is this: Nobody EVER wins on Malachor. It is a tomb-world, a monument to the devastation wrought by pursuing raw power to beat your enemies.

* '''Dagobah''': Uncharted swamp planet where Yoda went to live in exile. Noteworthy for the Dark Side cave, a naturally-occurring phenomenon where the dark side would tempt anyone who entered. Briefly the EU made the cave a remnant of a random dark force user Yoda fought there, but this was retconned away when it was implied Yoda had never visited the place before his exile, then the Clone Wars series made it so Yoda ''did'' visit Dagobah before his exile. This would just be a random detail if not for a significant character having his backstory linked to this event.

* '''Endor''': A gas giant also known as Tana at the end of the Outer Rim before Wild Space (and it probably was in Wild Space before one of the most significant events in Galactic History took place there). The Empire built the second Death Star in its system.
** '''Sanctuary Moon''': Better known than the planet itself is its forest covered moon that the Empire build the shields for the under-construction Death Star 2 on. It's home to the short, furry and deadly Ewoks. It was the nominal capital of the interim Alliance of Free Planets and New Republic for two years till the capture of Coruscant.
** '''Kef Bir''': Ocean moon of Endor. Despite the Death Star II being in orbit of the Forest Moon, Disney decided that the wreckage landed on Kef Bir because JJ wanted an ocean setpiece. No explanation is given other than "wibbley-wobbly hyperdrivey-wimey." The LEGO Skywalker Saga game even takes a bit of a shot at it.

* '''Death Star''' & '''Death Star II''': We're fudging the definition of world here, but its not an exaggeration to say this thing is the size of a small moon and has a very sizeable population. While the Death Star II was incomplete, it was substantially bigger and more deadly. Its main purpose was the protection and operation of a garguantuan superlaser capable of blowing up an entire planet in a singular shot. This thing was able to get around with a battery of hyperspace engines, but still took a fair amount to time to get around in order to get within firing range. Curiously enough, the idea for the superweapon came from Tarkin, but was designed by the Geonosians of all people, which then terrified the pants off the Republic that the Separatists had a superweapon prompting them to start reverse-engineering the design ([[Just as planned]] as far as Palpatine was concerned). Its design ties back to their Genosian origins, who where insectoids living in large anthills with little regard for the concept of "up" or down". As a result, the Death Star became notoriously awful as a posting among its crew, many of which had problems with orientation and becoming nauseaous.

* '''Alderaan''': A perfect pacifist planet until the Death Star blows it up. The planet Leia was raised on by the Organas, and actually shown to have been very nice prior to its destruction, with lush forests and snow-capped mountains.

* '''Felucia''': Another jungle-world, but this one looking like something conceived by either Dr. Seuss or someone from the 60s who got a hold of the good stuff. Rancors can be found here, and some have been tamed by the natives, truly bizarre-looking beings that look a bit like tye-dye, technicolor tree-people who are all Force-Sensitive.

* '''Taris''': Ostensibly an Outer Rim version of Coruscant, in that the planet is a big city that really leans into the whole "what most people think of when they think of a far future city" aesthetic, beneath the shiny exterior is actually a pretty shitty society. Basically, it's society is like Pre-Civil Rights America in space (with aliens as stand-ins for out-groups), and that's before the Sith show up and put the whole planet under quarantine. Beneath the Upper City is the Lower City, which is a slum that gangsters constantly fight over and with shitty apartments that are more likely to house crazed killers or the aforementioned gangsters than honest citizens, as well as looking like they've been abandoned for years. Beneath ''that'' is the Undercity, which is where the descendants of Taris' failed <s>proletariat</s> uprising are consigned. Them, and Rackghouls, who, as the name implies, are basically Ghouls in Star Wars, but as there are no Elves, no one's immune (unless you have some handy Rackghoul serum). So to recap, its a planet that hates aliens, has crime-filled lower levels, and is much more [[Grimdark]] in its overall set-up than the average Star Wars planet. The Imperium would be proud...or would be, if Malak hadn't then bombed the hell out of it. Even thousands of years later, much of the planet is said to still be in ruins.

* '''Telos''': A mix of futuristic cities and natural environments, so unlike Coruscant and Taris it isn't all one big city. A major Republic world, and then Malak bombed it, leaving it badly scarred. As such, the Republic launched a restoration project to try and get the planet back on its feet. Or, in the words of Atton Rand, "a dying world the Republic is trying to breath back to life". Also houses a secret (and defunct), Jedi academy in its polar region, where ultra-bitch Atris and her similarly obnoxious handmaidens reside.

* '''Dantooine''': Farm planet. Fairly idyllic by all appearances, enough so that the Jedi in Legends had an Enclave here for a time...until Malak bombed it (you may be noticing a pattern by now). Even after this bombing though, the planet remains a major agricultural center up to the Clone Wars and beyond. First mentioned in A New Hope as a location Leia gives for the Rebel base to try and save Alderaan (it doesn't work). One of the Star Maps is located here.

* '''Manaan''': Water-world, but a lot less rainy than Kamino. Source of Kolto, the top healing substance in the Galaxy prior to Bacta. Once that stuff got on the market, Kolto became obsolete, and Manaan and its fish-folk inhabitants fell into decline something fierce. One of the Star Maps is located here.

* '''Korriban / Moraband''': The homeworld of the Sith, and as to be expected, a place that tends to scream "this is an evil location". A ton of Ancient Sith Lords are entombed here, as is a Star Map (in Legends anyway). The Sith also naturally had an academy here too, which was basically a Hogwarts for sociopaths before it became abandoned. So saturated with the Dark Side that its affected the local wildlife, making most of them vicious, fearsome looking monsters (though who knows what they eat with no apparent herbivores or plant life around).

* '''Jakku''': The Sequel Trilogy's absolutely shameless Tatooine clone (such that when the first trailer dropped, a lot of people thought it ''was'' Tatooine). Where the war between the Rebels and Empire ended in the Disney Canon, being the site of the latter's last stand and with ruined Star Destroyers and other wreckage still littering the place. As such, its mostly populated by scavengers, but in a feeble effort to convince you that it isn't a ''complete'' Tatooine clone, they aren't all Jawas this time.

* '''Hosnian Prime''': The Sequel Trilogy's absolutely shameless Coruscant clone (and again, folks initially thought it ''was'' Coruscant). Gets the Alderaan treatment from Starkiller base, meaning it rips off of two previous planets for the price of one (still better than actually destroying Coruscant though, which according to rumor is what JJ ''really'' wanted to do).

* '''Ach-To''': The planet Luke Skywalker flees to in the Sequel Trilogy. Apparently the planet where the Jedi originated (which is Tython in Legends). Mostly a lot of water, with at least one big landmass that's where Luke's holed up. Rey goes there to get training from him, but that clashes with Luke's whole "I don't want to be a Jedi anymore" bit. Briefly reappears in Episode IX when Rey considers doing what Luke did before his ghost talks her out of it. Also home of the [[Skub|"love 'em or hate 'em"]] Porgs.

* '''Canto Bight''': A mostly barren planet that hosts a giant casino where rich bastards can go. Seems to be a general dress code of only black and white allowed, and filled with wholesome activities like gambling, arms dealing, child labor, and war profiteering. So a lot of glitz and glamor standing side by side exploitation and "rich people are jerks" stuff. So basically Pre-Revolution Cuba in space. Generally considered to be where a bunch of largely unnecessary stuff happened, even by folks who ''didn't'' hate Episode VIII.

* '''Crait''': Site of an abandoned Rebel base that the Resistance remnants flee to at the end of Episode VIII, leading to a vaguely "Battle of Hoth" esque fight involving the First Order's own version of AT-ATs. As one Youtube LEGO video aptly put it, the ground is white but the dirt is red for no real reason other than that it looks "cool". Also, apparently its salt and not snow. So like, a salt-Hoth. Or something.

* '''Exegol''': A world shrouded in darkness and perpetual lightning storms that is where Palpatine and his cronies have been hiding out since losing the Galactic Civil War. How such a large number of people existed or thrived on such a dead world is never explained, but it does manage to give the other Sith world Korriban a run for its money in the whole "obviously evil death world" department.

* '''Rakata Prime / Lehon''': Home of the Rakatans, and where the species has become trapped ever since their empire fell. Actually a pretty lush and scenic place, though as Rakatan tribes and small-but-still-deadly Rancors roam about here, one vacations here at their own risk. That, and the same thing keeping the Rakatans from leaving (the Star Forge), also causes ships that get too close to crash-land, making it a ship's graveyard. By the time of Darth Bane, the planet seems to have become deserted, the Rakatans having apparently gone extinct.

* '''The Maw''': Bears mentioning for being one of the more unique places of the EU. An unusually dense cluster of black holes near Kessel whose gravitational anomalies make it the ideal backdrop for risky hyperdrive spice smuggling operations. Strongly implied to be the work of an unknown precuror civilization, the Maw was considered to be largely impassible, if not for the work of top secret scouting operations that the Empire undertook to find a place to house a big R&D facility kept from the public eye. Within the Maw station, developments like the prototyping of the first Death Star and several other imperial superweapons took place, protected by a small flotilla consisting of four Imperial Star Destroyers.

==Species==
One important thing to note about alien species in Star Wars is that almost all of them were originally singular costumes added to the films for background color or to make a character stand out, then had a species name and culture retconned onto them by Expanded Universe writers. As a result, most species' "personalities" are just shallow clones of the character they're derived from. Many of the species seen in the original trilogy were given names and backstories by [[Star Wars RPG|the original RPG from West End Games]] that became canon as every other EU novel to come after used Star Wars D6 as a reference. All entries after humans are alphabetized.
* '''[[Human]]s''': They originated in the Galactic Core, but have spread to most inhabited planets, first as slaves to a now-extinct species of precursors and then through initial space exploration with pre-hyperdrive generation ships. As a result there are a lot of [[Abhuman|"near-human"]] species kicking around that are basically just weird-looking humans and pretty much the only species humans can crossbreed with.
** '''Mandalorians:''' Bobas/Jangos. A society of space [[Spartans]]/[[Vikings]] with cool armor. Actually not human majority initially (Unless you are a Disney fan), originally made up of a species called the Taung. The Taung had a habit of adopting orphans of other species to the point that when shit hit the fan and they died out following a war with the Jedi, their culture was preserved by other species who remember them as their Progenitors. As it stands, a Mandalorian can be of any race (the adopting the orphans-thing was something else the Taung passed down) but are usually human. Way, way back during the Old Republic, they were death-worshipping genocidal crusaders who were used by the Sith to crush the Republic and provoke the Jedi into war. In more modern times they mellowed out and mostly work as mercenaries or bounty hunters (and for a brief time, even flirted with pacifism), though some extremist sects like the Children of the Watch still exist, clashing with mainstream Mandalorian culture. Following the Empire's purge of Mandalore, the Mando's Beskar Armor became a priceless resource (As only Mandos knew how to make Beskar Iron, a near-impenetrable material and one of the few that can block blaster bolts and lightsabers), with the surviving Mandos sometimes being hunted just to be stripped of their armor.
** '''Corellians:''' Hans. Literally an entire culture of dashing rogues and space cowboys who like to go fast and smuggle shit (and penniless street urchins looking for their big break to become dashing rogues and space cowboys). The Corellian Engineering Corporation made the YT series (of which the Falcon is officially part of, though its modifications are extensive enough to make listing CEC as its manufacturer a [[Wikipedia:Ship of Theseus|Ship of Theseus]] problem) and many of the Rebel ships seen in the original trilogy. Nearly ruined their planet with starship factories, but now they've gone green and relocated all of their heavy industry to space stations. Their home system reeks of precursor meddling and is detailed enough to be a setting in itself, complete with a Big Dumb Object in the middle (Centerpoint Station) for PCs to fuck with. Worth mentioning they (at least in Legends), also have their own special group of Jedi called "The Green Jedi".
* '''Aqualish:''' Ponda Babas. Vaguely spider-like (from the neck-up) aliens who are easily one of the ugliest looking species in Star Wars. Generally portrayed as violent thugs, though not always. Apparently they don't usually get along with Biths.
* '''Bith''': Another species that debuted in the original Star Wars movie, and because they did so as a band playing the famous Cantina theme, they were naturally given the species-wide hat of being musicians (though some Bith do pursue other careers). Their bulbous heads are probably owing to their being a fairly intelligent species, as they are big on mathematics and science as well as music. Generally a peaceful species.
* '''Bothans''': [[Meme|Died to bring you this information.]] A species of [[Beastmen (40k)|wolf-men/horse-men/goat-men]] (depending on which author/illustrator) who are almost universally spies thanks to that one-off line from Mon Mothma. When you remember these are hairy-ass, man sized, cloven beastmen, it seems like the bothans would be the shittest race for something as subtle as spywork. In truth the best and early EU works portray them as something far worse than spies: politicians. The most prominent Bothan is Borsk Fey'lya, a Bothan politician who used his role in the acquisition of the second Death Star plans to maintain a place in the New Republic's senior leadership and uses his position for personal gain like any proper politician should. Now possibly NOT wolfhorsegoatpeople, thanks to some Lucasfilm [[Troll|source]] being all like “uh actually, it’s never explicitly stated that they’re aliens, maybe they’re humans, *WINK*”. Let’s hope they’re humans - or at least less dumb than wolfhorsegoats. EU Bothans were as ridiculous a concept as [[Derp|force cancelling weasels]].
** '''Half-Bothans''': Satyrs/Fauns in Star Wars. Seriously, look up a picture of them and that's exactly how they're drawn. Don't seem to be too common, suggesting most humans in Star Wars ''aren't'' Furries.
* '''Chiss''': Thrawns. Near humans with blue skin, dark blue/black hair and red eyes. They dwell in the Unknown Regions, with they’re own fancy schmancy empire, crack navy and altogether superior technological advancements that make the rest of the galaxy look fucking backward (see blaster resistant clothes...whereas [[Derp|fucking stormtroopers in armor can be knocked down by arrows loosed by Care Bears]]). Known for being superb pilots, traders, negotiators, tacticians and all round scheming bastards with Danish accents.
* '''Dugs''': Sebulbas. Except, most of them aren't Podracers, instead being even more explicitly criminal in their professions (gangsters, drug dealers, members of Black Sun, etc.). Usually abrasive, arrogant, pushy, and violent. They share a homeworld with the Gran, which leads to some tension. Understandably hated in-universe by most.
* '''Duros''': Seen once in ''Hope'' during the cantina scene. Naturally they're one of the most important species in the EU despite not having a canon character until The Clone Wars introduced us to Cad Bane. Enslaved by precursors alongside humans, they were among the first to develop FTL travel based on salvaged hyperdrive technology and are the only non-human species to have an equivalent of "near-human" in a few "near-Duros" species. Look a bit like classic sci-fi Gray Aliens, as well as the Tau, but without the whole "Space Stalinism" thing.
* '''Echani''': Similar to humans in appearance, but most if not all of them have white or silver hair. They're also a culture of martial arts experts, specializing in armed and unarmed combat and even being able to "read" their opponents to an extent. [[Bretonnia|Generally seem to prefer melee combat and have comparatively less impressive ranged weapons]] (at least to hear Mandalorians like Canderous tell it).
* '''Ewoks''': If skub became a species, Ewoks would be a contender up there with Gungans and Yuuzhan Vong. Small koala-like creatures, similar to Jawas, that live on the forest moon of Endor, Ewoks are super primitive and live in tribes. They end up playing a big part in the Rebel victory in ''Return'' by attacking Imperial stormtroopers and destroying some walkers. Their reception didn't seem too bad at first, but in the following decades they've become reviled by many, not so much for their design but more for the idea that small bears with spears and rocks could defeat what were supposed to be the Emperor's finest troops. Some people don't mind them (and they were ''definitely'' profitable for merchandise) but others hate them and say they're a prime reason that attitudes toward ''Return'' have gotten increasingly negative over the years. That being said, people tend to overlook that Ewoks have a dark side to them; remember how they were going to eat Luke, Han and Chewie? Some EU material reshaped them into brutally savage death world survivors who practice some shady tribal customs, but are also well-accustomed to hunting much bigger and more dangerous creatures than themselves, which would make them fighting the Empire a little more credible.
* '''Gamorreans''': Space [[Orc]]s: Pig-like, brutish, stupid and violent. Constantly at war with each other, their clan identity is so strong they'll try to kill each other if from opposing clans if they meet off-world. Frequently brought into the galaxy as slaves or by clans trading labor/muscles for outside resources. Like Wookiees, can't physically speak Basic. Unlike Wookiees, only their clan matrons and some high ranking men are literate in their native language.
* '''Geonosians''': The franchise's token bug alien race, because every space setting needs bug aliens. Hugely vital to the CIS due to their homeworld being one of the main planets the Droid armies were built on. Various sources describe them as as rather arrogant. [[Skaven|They're hive-like, seem to treat their warriors and minions as expendable, and use a mix of polearm melee weapons and ranged weapons with green projectiles no one else has]]. Genocided by the Empire in Disney's Canon.
* '''Gran''': Three eyed goat (?) like aliens with rough, tan skin. They are quite nice and peaceful with excellent vision, especially in distinguishing color. Unfortunately for the galaxy at large, Gran exile most of their criminals: They consider being unable to see the rich and beautiful environments of their homeworld a fate worse than death. These exiles often fall into criminal groups.
* '''Grysk''': A near mythical species from the Unknown regions, where starships usually can't go because the hyperspace along its border is a level of fucked-up that only warp storms can match. Little is known about them except that they live on a spacefleet, have a fierce warrior culture, are humanoids with tapered skulls, their weapons and armor are ritualistically disfigured on the right side and they had a penchant for [[Tesla|electrical weapons]]. Likely Disney's replacement for the Yuuzhan Vong, since Space Cenobites with bio-tech is too weird and grimdark for Disney. tl;dr the Grysk are the Rak'gol to the Yuuzhan Vong's Tyranids.
* '''Gungans''': Jar-Jars. These guys suffer from an extremely poor choice of poster-boy (compared to Wookiees who have one of the best possible poster-boys of their species). You may think that just because Jar-Jar is one of the least intelligent (and most hated) characters in the entire Star Wars galaxy, the rest of his species are too, and this is certainly how a lot of people feel. But if you can look beyond Binks you'll see that the Gungans are pretty cool in their own way. Remember that, canonically, Jar-Jar is considered a disgrace in Gungan culture before the Battle of Naboo and after the rise of the Empire (as Senator Binks directly enabled it). Masters of organic technology, they live in bubble-buildings under the sea and have access to bioelectric spears and booma (essentially organic shock grenades fired by the [[Sling|various]] historical throwing devices) alongside [[Awesome|army-wide shield generators]] (in defiance of everyone else in the galaxy deriding them as primitives). Like the Wookiees these guys have a warrior-culture to be proud of, but unlike them they have at least made the effort to have a go at learning to speak basic (even though they still need to work on it). Due to their cartilaginous skeletons they are especially athletic and dynamic, making them pretty good fighters if they are trained properly, and in a rarity for a sci-fi species they have a racial weapon that's actually entirely practical (sling hurled explosives continue to see use today). Certainly if you want an accurate Gungan poster-boy, look no further than Captain Tarpals, who manages to hold General Grievous up in a duel for several minutes with nothing more than his spear. Oh, and their king is voiced by [[Awesome|BRIAN BLESSED]]. Still, for most folks, being the species of Jar-Jar is a hard thing to forgive, but like with many things from the Prequels, time has been a bit kind to their image. Worth mentioning that the writers are acutely aware of how much people find Gungans annoying, and so take shots at them now and then.
* '''Hutts''': Jabbas. (Fun fact: "the Hutt" was just a title in the original trilogy and Jabba was just some random slug dude. The original film didn't even intended for him to be an alien!) Naturally they're all mini-Jabbas who live in a clan/crime-family/zaibatsu type of arrangement known as the ''kadjic''. Kind of like the Mexican drug cartels in that they have their own corner of the galaxy that they rule independently, even after they join the Empire they pay the Moff to look the other way when they do shady shit. (They're always doing shady shit.) Because the Hutts own exactly one third of all organized crime (and a significant number of planets) in the galaxy and it is the third (after Basic and Binary) most widespread full language, Huttese is a good language to take, especially for criminal-types . Be warned! Hutts have four fingered hands and their numbering system uses base eight! Despite being looking and acting like fat [[neckbeards]] they're actually insanely strong and their less bulky youth are very agile for their size. They LOL at the Force, so the RPGs tend to give them a huge bonus to resist mental influence, although the old EU had a full blown (and mad) Hutt Jedi master named Baldorion who avoided Order 66 and fell to the dark side after he became the tyrant of a minor planet in Hutt Space.
* '''Jawas''': Utinni! They roam Tatooine (and a few other planets) scavenging technology and selling it. A handful of sources mention they are [[Ratfolk|rodents]] under the hoods. Popular with the fans, but sadly we haven't yet gotten an (official), Jawa Jedi or Sith.
* '''Kaminoans''': A tall, gaunt species with super long necks hailing from a water-world who's species-wide hat is being expert cloners. Anyone who has a thing for clones always goes to Kaminoans to do the job, including the conspiracy behind the Clone Army that fought in the Clone Wars. Unfortunately for them, the Rise of the Empire led to their downfall in both Disney and Legends, though the circumstances between the two differ. The origins of modern Kaminoans are actually pretty grimdark for Star Wars: Originally an aquatic species confined to Kaminos vast oceans, their society was nearly driven into extinction when a climatic shift slowly turned these oceans into solid ice. Their solution to this issue was to enact a selective breeding program which later bloomed into full blown eugenics. As a sideeffect they accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about genetic engineering, which lead to the rise of their highly profitable cloning business.
* '''Miraluka''': A species that look very similar to humans, but for two major differences: they're all blind, and they're all Force-Sensitive. That first part's not as debilitating as it sounds thanks to the second part, as they effectively "see" through the Force. If Visas Marr from Knights of the Old Republic II is anything to go by, they can see what alignments other people are, with good guys being blue, ultra good guys being glowing dark blue, bad guys being red, super-evil bad guys being glowing red, and neutrals being a yellowish-white.
* '''Mirialans''': Luminara Undulis. Look a lot like humans, but with skin along a green/olive spectrum and also often black diamond markings on their cheeks, forehead, and/or chins. As the setting's resident "green-skinned space babes" (other than Twi'leks), they naturally have a bit of a following with the fans.
* '''Mon Calamari''': Ackbars. An aquatic species whose long history of making airtight vehicles for travel in three dimensions has made them excellent ship-builders. During the early days of the Rebellion the Mon Calamari were one of the few species to successfully throw off the Empire during Operation Domino and not be subject to immediate reprisal thanks to their isolated location and strategy of mining hyperspace routes; basically they turned their system in to Space-Finland and the Empire gave up suiciding ships into them. Those weird-looking bubble ships from ''Return of the Jedi'' are built by Mon Calamari.
** '''Quarren''': Another background species from ''Jedi'' who share their homeworld of Dac with the Mon Calamari. Prideful isolationists who stick to the depths, with their main contact to the surface being trading deep sea mined materials to the Mon Calamari. Look more than a bit like [[Illithid]]. Quarren and Mon Calamari have a complicated (by which we mean bad), history and hate each other with a passion, with each species taking opposing sides in the Clone Wars.
* '''Neimoidians''': Nute Gunrays. [[Meme|They will not survive this.]] Their reproductive cycle is really weird: they produce lots of grubs which are raised in warrens fighting over a limited amount of food; this results in only the biggest, most paranoid, and most greedy surviving. Unlike how this usually goes, this process makes the Neimodians prone to hoarding resources and wary of danger. They're also fouler than Luke (not Luke Skywalker, [[Luke|that ''other'' Luke]]) when it comes to hygiene; their homeworld's principal export is considered to be Type-B Brainrot, and even the Republic had the place functionally quarantined because of the sheer number of diseases they shit out.
* '''Noghri''': Primitive, short saurian people who happen to be some of the deadliest non-Jedi melee combatants and assassins in the galaxy. Darth Vader bought their loyalty by saving them from the environmental damage a crashed ship caused. They are a major part of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, which they were invented for. Thrawn still has one as a sidekick in ''Rebels''.
* '''Pykes:''' humanoids with bulbous heads and small beady eyes, and typically wear decorative masks. Don’t let the appearance fool you, the Pyke syndicate is one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the galaxy as they have a stranglehold on the underworld’s number one resource: Spice. Yes it’s a blatant reference to [[Dune]]. No, it doesn’t give you freaky superpowers, it’s just a very powerful narcotic. The Pykes control the Spice supply chain for the entire galaxy, taking in mined pre-spice from various planets (most of it coming from Kessel, located deep inside a maelstrom that makes navigation extremely hazardous), having it refined on their homeworld in Oba Diah, and then distributed to every corner from Tatooine to Coruscant. The Pykes allow independent smugglers to do supply runs for them but expect their cut, regardless of the smuggler’s success or failure. If you’re really unlucky, they’ll just kill you on the spot, since their leaders are constantly high on their own product.
* '''Rakata''': The aforementioned precursors, developed by [[BioWare]] for the ''Knights of the Old Republic'' game (though there were a few mentions of precursors here and there before that). Formed an "Infinite Empire" long before the Republic using dark side powered hyperdrives only they could use. When they gradually lost their force sensitivity their empire fell apart. Responsible for why there are so many Humans and Human off-shoots everywhere: They were seeded throughout the Infinite Empire as a slave species and abandoned when it fell. Also ''enormous'' assholes as it turns out, doing everything from eating people to genocide and basically having a level of sociopathic awfulness that wouldn't be out of place in 40K. There is no evidence they existed past the Old Republic era, where a few fractured and primitive survivors were seen on their home planet and this planet was devoid of life by the time of the Ruusan Reformation.
* '''Rodians''': Greedos. Their home planet being a death world full of predators means they are often aggressive and put hunters in high regard, which is the EU excuse for most Rodian characters being criminals. Despite being somewhat popular with the fans, they tend to be given the role of blaster/lightsaber fodder, especially in the KotoR games where hordes of Rodian goons and thugs are a relatively common sight. Those Rodians who want to live longer seem to generally gravitate towards jobs like bartenders and merchants if the KotoR games are anything to go by. That, or politicians, but as Senator Farr reminds us, that can be hazardous too.
* '''Shards''': Sapient crystals. They are incapable of movement and don't speak the way humans do. They can however control droid bodies they are implanted into. Several are force sensitive which led to a Jedi teaching them the ways of the Force. The Jedi order shunned these "Iron Knights" and excommunicated the master responsible. This wound up benefiting them though, as the master and his students were able to survive the Jedi purge due to the obscurity this granted. When Luke's new order emerged they welcomed the Shards with open arms.
* '''Sith / Sith Purebloods''': Red skinned near-humans with bony tentacles growing out from near their nose and an affinity for the dark side, especially illusions. Natives of Korriban, the order most people know as Sith were a result of exiled dark Jedi interbreeding with them and adding their knowledge of technology. So diluted with human blood they were extremely rare by the Old Republic era and believed extinct by the time of the prequels. A few small mostly primitive pockets had been discovered however, but were covered up by Palpatine so he could grab more dark side goodies. More or less invented whole-cloth for the EU.
* '''Sullustans''': [[Dwarf|Short, tunnelfaring, crafters who can drink a lot without getting drunk]]. Vaguely simian near-humans with flappy jowls, large ears, and black eyes that originally evolved for tunnels. Their SoroSuub company is one of the largest tech makers in the galaxy, and likely the largest that isn't Human run.
* '''Tarasin''': Invented whole-cloth for the Living Force campaign for [[Star Wars D20]]. Lizardmen with scales that change color based on their emotions and frilled necks. With focus they can control their colors enough to camouflage themselves and even "speak" silently amongst each other. They had a high degree of force sensitivity, though if this a result of their species or their home system being a place where the Force is strong is unknown.
* '''Togruta''': Diet Twi'leks. Humanoids with lekku and hollow horns that allow echolocation. Shaak Ti and Ahsoka were Togruta.
* '''Toydarians''': Wattos. Blue tapir-looking dudes from Hutt Space who can hover on fly-like wings. As their source character is a hilariously offensive Jewish stereotype, the EU largely ignored Toydarians until ''The Clone Wars'' reinvented them as a vaguely Cambodian monarchy on a mud world. Mind tricks don't work on them (only money). Of the non-Watto Toydarians who showed up pre-Clone Wars, they're mostly surly and greedy like Watto, but with the Jewish stereotypes downplayed for obvious reasons.
* '''Trandoshans''': Bossks. Brutish, scaly [[Lizardfolk]] capable of regenerating severed limbs and absolutely obsessed with hunting shit. Have had a continuous species war with the Wookiees since before FTL was a thing, which is a ''long-ass time'' in Star Wars (well over 150,000 years), owing to the fact that the two species share a home system. Their religion is about scoring "points", with the only known method of gaining them is violent action and the only known method of losing them is being captured alive by enemies. The system was first mentioned a mere three years after ''[[Doom]]'' so the fact that they essentially see life as a giant, violent video game is likely pure coincidence. Despite this they aren't universally evil, though they often are. Have their own Predator <s>ripoff</s> homage movie.
* '''Tusken Raiders:''' More commonly known by civilized folks as "Sand People," they are the native race of Tatooine and are your typical desert-dwelling nomadic raiders, with the added twist of having a major cultural taboo against showing any flesh (including their faces) and having "blood spitters" as part of their biology. One of Tatooine's two primary non-human races (the other being Jawas). One of the first alien species encountered in the franchise, yet never as fleshed out as others. Even the actual name of their species is unknown; their current name originates from the first Human colonists, who named them 'Tusken Raiders' after their repeated assaults on Fort Tusken. Fiercely xenophobic and violent, the Tuskens typically have an antagonistic relationship with the other peoples living on Tatooine, usually raiding moisture farmers or sometimes outright kidnapping and killing civilian homesteaders, or even massacring small frontier towns, and in turn being seen by most as [[Always Chaotic Evil|pure monsters]]. In reality they have more nuance than they're often given credit for, and more recent appearances have made them a bit closer to portrayals of 19th Century Plains Native Americans; not taking crap from trespassers, but honorable and fair with those who respect them. Its been shown to be entirely possible to live peacefully with the local tribes if you can communicate and work out a deal with them (that you don't break). Their civilization is quite ancient, with them remembering when Tatooine still had seas and having adapted to both the harsh desert and salvaging the technology of foreigners into blaster-muskets. They also seem to be one of the few cultures in Star Wars that haven't heard of women's liberation, because with the exception of a female Tusken warrior in [[Skub|the Book of Boba Fett]], the female Tuskens seen thus far all seem to tend to the home and not be armed warriors.
* '''[[Twi'lek]]s''': Technicolored humanoids from Ryloth (which is about as far as you can get from the core worlds without leaving the major hyperspace lanes) with weird head-tails ("lekku") that they have instead of hair. Enough have been transported off world, generally as slaves, they can be found anywhere, and many have never seen their ancestral home. Given it's a borderline death world whose chief economic exports are drugs and slaves, they aren't missing anything. Their most interesting physical quality (aside from the girls being hot) is that they can communicate silently with their lekku. TORtanic tried to rationalize their fetish for enslaving their own as being the result of a precursor project to design the perfect slave species, but nobody cares about this because TORtanic is <s>shit</s> Skub.
* '''Wookiees:''' Chewbaccas, and one of the only species to be named in the original films. Huge, swole sloth people that do not live on Endor and can't speak (but absolutely understand) Basic. Most are actually pretty peaceful and intelligent and they have produced a lot of highly skilled engineers. They also have a reputation for being the best [[Navigator]]s in the galaxy, in part because their highly secretive Navigator's guild has plotted all sorts of shortcuts across the galaxy - plus you better be bloody good at orientation, pathfinding, and being able to make your way back to your treehouse at days end if your entire planet is a fucking forest. They highly value people who save their life, becoming their eternal friend in what is known as a Life-debt; this is how Han met Chewie. They have retractable climbing claws, but a cultural taboo on using them in combat leads to those who do so being exiled as "madclaws". Has the unfortunate distinction of being the first species in Star Wars lore to have their home planet and culture detailed... via the ''Star Wars Holiday Special''. Despite the infamy and single airing, the broad strokes survived the entirety of the Expanded Universe's lifespan and would reappear in ''Revenge of the Sith''.
* '''Yuuzhan Vong''': Humanoids with pallid skin and tapered skulls [[Tyranids|from another galaxy and who only use organic technology]]. Native to a living planet called Yuuzhan'tar which they worshipped as a god, their first contact experience was [[Necrons|an interstellar robot war]]. They weaponized their biotech and defeated the invaders - and in so doing gained [[Khorne|a taste for war and conquest (plus a hatred of machines) that led them to invent a war god and conquer their galaxy]]... [[Fail|which they later destroyed through infighting]]. The destruction of their homeworld [[Culexus|cut them off from the Force, unintentionally making them mostly immune to it]]. Their attempts to undo this gave them [[Dark Eldar|a species-wide fetish for pain and body modification]] instead. Centuries later they found and invaded the Star Wars galaxy, leading to a galactic war that decimated the New Republic, caused multiple genocides and had a death toll around '''365 trillion''' ([[Lamenters|including Chewbacca]]). Luke and his family ended the war by killing the various Vong leaders and finding Yuuzhan'tar's offspring, Zonama Sekot. The Vong colonized Sekot, were reconnected to the Force and became terraformers as penance for the war. Rendered part of the Legends by Disney. Some fans consider the Yuuzhan Vong a fresh blast of originality that provided a threatening and utterly badass new foe (even Dave Filoni has tried at least twice to pull the Yuuzhan Vong into his projects), while others consider them a nonsensical edgelord race that relied on major retcons to make sense.
* '''Zabrak''': Mauls. Near-humans with mostly bald, spikey heads and two hearts. Those black markings Maul had are actually ritualistic tatoos that Zabrak men often get. They were pretty divided internally till the Empire decided to oppress them all and force them to join together. Eeth Koth and Agen Kolar of the Jedi Council were also Zabraks.
** '''Dathomirians''' are a sub-species of Zabrak native to Dathomir who supposedly interbred with humans to create a new group, though their origins have been neglected in current canon. Even so, the females of this sub-species do not have the spiked heads typical of other Zabraks, looking more like ashen-skinned humans. Strictly divided along gender lines, with the bulk of the females forming the Nightsisters while the men are [[Drow|relegated to the role of slaves and breeding stock]]. Darth Maul is the most prominent Dathomirian in the films and TV series, with Asajj Ventress close behind.

==Ships, Superweapons and anything in between==

Please see the articles on [[Star Wars: Armada|Armada]] and [[Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game|X-Wing]], because pretty much all the interesting stuff has been depicted in one game or the other.
{{Star wars Miniature games}}

==The Galaxy (and beyond)==
The Galaxy Far Far Away is a spiral galaxy about 120,000 light year in diameter. It is home to an unusually high number of populated planets and species. It has a few smaller satellite galaxies, though only one is ever visited in the entity of Star War media and only in an obscure short story (but visitors from the others have come).
*The Deep Core: The innermost part of the galaxy. Due to a high number of black holes, and dense star clusters, only the outer most areas are explored. The sole exception is a top secret Imperial bunker world of Byss, also Empress Teta (a world that once rivaled Coruscan in population, named after the badass who broke Naga Sadow's attempt to destroy the Republic with the Old Sith Empire) is just on the inside of the border between the Deep Core and the Core.
*The "Core" worlds: The most populated and best mapped part of the galaxy. Holds the actual capital of the Republic/Empire/New Republic, and some of the biggest sources of culture. The earliest known home world of Humans and Duros, but the Rakata taking these species as slaves leaves the world of their origin a mystery.
*Colonies: The first areas that was expanded to after hyperspace travel came about.
*Inner Rim: The next set of areas colonized. By the time of the films, they’re pretty developed.
**Hapes Cluster: An independent system of stars ruled by the matriarchal Hapes Consortium. Even for Star Wars, it's incredibly dense in populated worlds. They took in a large number of Separatist scientists at the end of the Clone Wars and by the New Republic it has unique technology that's more advanced in some areas despite lagging behind in some other areas.
*Mid rim: An even further area of expansion. Where the Mid Rim ends and the Outer Rim begins is a bit vague, with a lot of the outer Mid Rim being barely if at all better off than the Outer Rim.
*Outer Rim: The farthest reach of the galaxy. Civilization is sparsely populated, neglected by the galactic authorities and/or largely dominated by the independent and cruel Hutt Empire.
** Hutt Space: An autonomous section of the galaxy ruled by the Hutt clans ("Kajidic"). How, exactly, head of state (or any government function) is determined and what titles they hold is unclear, but there seems to be some Hutt that somehow becomes on top of it. A lack of extradition agreements with the Republic renders it a haven for criminals, who in turn kick money back to the Hutts. It joins the Empire during its existance, only to continue its shifty ways after early Imperial attempts to wipe out crime fail and regain independence after Palpatine's death.
*Corporate Sector/Tingel Arm: The "northern" most edge of the galaxy. Over 400 years before ''The Phantom Menace'', the Republic had the brilliant idea to develop an unpopulated section of the galaxy: Get a bunch of large companies to do it in exchange for some autonomy, resource rights and lower taxes. [[Not As Planned|Naturally this went poorly]], and the whole place is a [[Cyberpunk]] style megacorp controlled dystopia. Originated in the Han Solo books, one of the first expanded universe books ever, and the fluff from there has seen little change.
*Unknown Regions: The vast, largely unexplored due to similar issues to the core, western chunk of the galaxy. It actually has several native hyperspace capable civilizations forging their own empires by the New Republic era, one of which was already active over 4000 years before the Battle of Yavin.
*Wild Space: Wild Space is the area of the galaxy that ''is'' charted and open to Hyperspace travel, but unsettled and most of the detail on the maps is lacking. Holds the Rishi system, the only publicly known path to the Rishi maze (a state secret path in the Outer Rim's Rothana goes to Kamino).
*Rishi Maze: The only one of the satellite galaxies to be visited by those from the main galaxy, able to be accessed by traveling a chain of systems stuck between the two. The one short story that actually goes there describes it as a mess of radiation, but this could be the particular system within the maze. The only people known to live here are exploiting the natural resource deposits and hiding from The Empire. More well known is the cloner planet of Kamino, which is between the main galaxy and the maze.
*(unnamed) Yuuzhan Vong galaxy: This was the home galaxy of the EU race the Yuuzhan Vong, their original homeworld of Yuuzhan'tar, the planet Zonama Sekot, the reptoid Chazrach, and possibly the Silentium (who made first contact and war on the Vong) and the Abominor droid civilizations . The galaxy was a spiral galaxy like GFFA and had a vast number of sentient races in it; however, the Yuuzhan Vong [[Tyranids|wiped the others out]], save the Chazrach [[Dark Eldar|whom they instead enslaved]]. The Yuuzhan Vong referred to it as the "ancestral galaxy", and much of it was destroyed when [[Horus Heresy|the Yuuzhan Vong started fighting among themselves after dominating the galaxy]], with its current state of what's left of it unknown.
*Firefist Galaxy: Another one of the orbiting galaxies. The only contact the main galaxy has had with it has been sending probes. Home to the Faruun, Maccabree, Nagai and Tof, all of which arrived during the early New Republic fleeing the problems of their home or in pursuit. All of this comes from the Marvel comics (with some smoothing in the details in reference books), but despite the general oddness of fitting the Marvel comics into more modern canon and many silly concepts in those comics, the presence of these species and their conflict is largely accepted because, unlike the ''other'' extragalactic visitors, it's not very disruptive to overall canon to include them. Given that Disney now owns both Marvel and Star Wars, we may see more of them.

==Technology==
Star Wars appears to be a fairly standard sci-fi world (because it ''set'' that standard), but there's many subtle nuances that are easily missed
* Hyperdrives take ships to Hyperspace where they can travel and arrive at other destinations at FTL speed. Using a hyperdrive takes careful calculation to not only arrive on target, but avoid hitting anything on your way there.
** Each hyperdrive has a class, which multiplies travel time. At the time of the Rebellion, the standard was 2x, with newer/upgraded ships often packing class 1x and the Millennium Falcon (proclaimed to be the fastest ship in The Galaxy) had a class 0.5 as a result of modifications that made it unreliable. Anything larger than a fighter has a backup hyperdrive of much higher class (typically double digit) to ensure the crew can limp to the nearest populated system in the event of failure of the primary drive.
** Most travel occurs along the great hyperspace lanes, where the way is known to be clear and calculations are more established.
** Vehicles have to start up their shields ''after'' they complete their jump, which makes them vulnerable if you can predict where they are coming from. This makes launching an attack purely to target any reinforcements possible.
** Hyperspace itself [[Warp|is weird]], and standard procedure is to avoid looking outside long term during travel to prevent people from going nuts. Communications while in hyperspace (except to ships making the same jump) are near impossible. Leaving hyperspace without the ship you came in on is impossible, and ejecting someone during travel ensures their death.
*** Disney Retcon: In Rebels, the Ghost ejected its shuttle in hyperspace, resulting in it quickly (and violently) returning to sublight speed in normal space.
** There's a handful of instances of of hyperdrive failures sending people to Otherspace, an alternate dimension populated by a ship graveyard and hostile bug aliens with organic technology.
** One thing that's often overlooked is that modern hyperdrive technology is adapted from the dark side powered hyperdrives of the ancient Rakata after they lost the ability to use The Force and could no longer travel to maintain their empire. The result is that even [[Adeptus Mechanicus|experts don't have a total understanding of ''how'' Hyperspace works]].
** Hyperdrive is quick, a good hyperdrive capable ship can get you across the galaxy in at most a couple of days.
** Interdictor ships are capable of generating artificial gravity well to stop travel through their path and prevent ships from getting away. These first appeared in the Mandalorian Wars of the Old Republic, using spammed tractor beams to fake gravity wells, but these couldn't keep pace with hyperdrive improvements and disappeared till a superior successor technology was developed in the Imperial era. During the early days of the New Republic, Admiral Ackbar devised a tactic of using of such ships to prevent ''ally'' movement, ordering one to power up if it detected sabotage on a planned target had failed so the incoming attackers would be pulled from hyperspace far enough away to retreat. It would be Thrawn however that would prove the true master of such maneuvers, developing a system that allowed reliable same-system hyperspace jumps during tactical combat, hence it's name, Thrawn Pincer. Thrawn himself nicked that idea from Plo Koon and Saesee Tin when they wanted to bomb a planet but also bypass the superior blockade around the planet.
* FTL communication comes in four forms, all with their own issues.
** Holonet: The best known method for FTL communications. Vaguely comparable to the early internet, with news, primitive BBS, email, and some other stuff. Quite rare once you get past the developed core areas, and expensive to use both in setting it up and bandwith costs. Only military command vehicles and those for heads of state are likely to have personal holonet transceivers.
** Subspace relay: The cheaper alternative to the holonet is subspace relays. Relatively slow and has problems with dropped communications, but still FTL. Most capital ships have subspace transceivers, and some smaller vehicles are known to have them as upgrades. Comparable to snail mail, with shopping being a mail order order system like the Sears Catalog (view catalog, send order and payment, await shipping) rather than online shopping.
** Hyperspace Courier: Has all the problems of courier communication, and all the problems of hyperspace combined. Despite these faults, it's often the only choice for the most remote systems or if someone is disrupting the above two (like in a war) and always the only way to send physical goods.
** The Force: Occasionally powerful Force users are seen communicating via The Force across very long distances. This requires both parties be strong in The Force and have a very close connection. Even then being able to do anything more than sense the other is in danger is a crapshoot.
* Blasters use energy to excite special gas that is then expelled to deadly effect. Most blasters have an alternate stun setting which provides less-lethal takedowns. Stun setting is quite reliable and consistent even on physically tough species like Wookiees, though it's not safe to use on pregnant women and outside of specialized stun-only blasters the range is rather low. Despite being energy weapons, they have quite a kick. Routinely dismissed as "slow" despite multiple sources contradicting this idea. How fast they are is somewhat debatable (and differs depending on which canon), but they're considered more advanced than Slugthrowers (detailed below), implying that Blasters are better overall, including in projectile speed.
** [[Stubber|Normal firearms]], known as slugthrowers, are also present. Compared to blasters they're cheaper, cause bleeding, are far more dangerous to block with a lightsaber (it'll usually just melt the slug and make you get hit with molten metal instead), can be suppressed, and lower maintenance requirements, but have less initial stopping power, lower capacity, can't stun, make far more noise without a suppressor, and have heavier ammo. Considered more primitive than blasters, which is why you rarely see them (well, that and the powers that be preferring Star Wars to not be rated R).
** Ion weapons disrupt electric systems, but cause little structural damage and only minor burns on living creatures. This allows them to disable droids or ships without totally destroying them, making them important in capturing them.
** [[Sonic Weaponry]] exists, but it's considered an odd fork (as powerful as a slug thrower with none of its benefits) by everyone outside of water worlds and Jedi hunters.
* Replusorlift keeps vehicles, industrial equipment and some droids floating off the ground a good distance. Most spacecraft have repulsor systems as well, which is how they're able to operate in atmosphere despite their poor aerodynamics.
* '''[[Robot|Droids]]''' aren't a true species, but are playable in all RPGs. They're supposed to be really smart appliances, but Star Wars technology is so fucked up that a few develop sapience if left on too long without formatting. Despite this droids aren't considered people by the galaxy at large because sapient droids are as rare as non-evil [[drow]] and most of the time leaving droids running for a long time just makes them slower and buggier until they can't do their jobs anymore, like Windows, or, at best, overly attuned to a specific user. That a good number of sapient droids have learned to bypass that pesky "no killing" clause doesn't exactly encourage experimenting with it and trying to replicate it either.
** Class 1 droids are designed to preform scientific applications like medicine or lab work. Since they were designed to be used in fixed locations most, but not all, have limited mobility.
** Class 2 droids are designed to preform technical labor like repair work. Since they are expected to work within artificial locations they are generally on wheels or treads and have short, non-human shapes. One notable subcategory of Class 2 droids are Astromech Droids (like the famed R2 series), which are designed to plug into fighters and bombers where they function as a co-pilot, navicomputer and in-flight repair.
** Class 3 droids are designed for human interaction, with jobs like translator or chef. Some lower end Class 3 droids were made for positions like waiter. Almost all of them are roughly human shape, with the main exception being those built by and for non-humans that instead resemble their intended masters.
** Class 4 droids are the most varied but have one thing in common that clearly separates them: They are made for combat and (except for a few armed with only stun weapons) don't have programming against killing. Class 4 droids vary in intelligence from blaster turrets with some targeting AI to clever and ruthless assassins/commandos. Even [[Android|Human Replica Droids]], designed to be indistinguishable from humans, are technically Class 4. Many Class 4 droids have their nature obfuscated by building them into the shell of a Class 1 or Class 3 droid.
** Class 5 droids are made for manual labor like heavy lifting or a power generator with legs. They are barely intelligent, rarely have names and almost never become sapient. They are however cheap and quite common.
* Cloning: Fairly realistic on most accounts. You take a gene sample, use it to make an ova, grow it in an exowomb and decant it as an infant you raise to adulthood. The main difference is that SW cloners are much, much better at it, with a vastly higher success rate compared to real life plus the ability to do accelerated aging for army building. The Kaminoans are the best at this. Generally, Force-Sensitives can't be cloned, and when they are, they most often come out as physically and mentally unstable nutjobs who need to be put out of their misery. "Perfect" Force-Sensitive clones are exceedingly rare, to the point that (again), most in-universe consider it impossible.
* Cloaking devices come in two types. Palpatine bent the rules a bit by creating soulless husks that his spirit would hop between if one of the bodies would die, but this was generally only a temporary solution, as every clone body he inhabited would quickly shrivel and age at a rapid pace.
** The first was dependent upon crystals that became rare due to overharvesting. Use of a superweapon for deep excavation allowed an imperial research project to toy with the idea of fitting an entire squadron of fighters equipped with one.
** The second, the hibridium model, used a different rare material and was developed near the end of the Empire, though didn't see use till after the fall. It was substantially (though still only relatively) cheaper but had two unique drawbacks. The first was that it also blinded the ship to the world outside and rendered it unable to communicate as well. These problems would briefly be overcome with the use of the Force instead. Afterwards the Remnant gave up on it as mostly useless, and agreed to ban it during the peace treaty with the New Republic.
** Personal "stealth field" generators also seem to exist, unrelated to these. They simply dampen sound and bend light to make the wearer harder to spot and difficult (but not impossible) to see. Presumably these aren't upscaled for vehicle use because of the real world problem with such a concept of being completely useless against any sensor beyond just human level vision (still being blatantly obvious to thermal, as well as radar if they're big enough ect.).
* In many ways, while technology is advanced it's still in the mindset of 1983, if not 1977. As mentioned above, the internet (at least the interplanetary one) is quite primitive and poorly connected. Even though everyone has a tiny radio set (Comlink), there's no such thing as cellphones (you have to broadcast to a channel and hope whoever you want to hear something is listening). Aside from portable computers, which are quite expensive, and datapads, which still have limited functionality, most non-droid technology only does one thing. Unlike the 1913 rail and M-Lok equipped guns of the 90s onward, weapon accessories either need to be made for a single model or hand-fitted by an expert. Video games are either professional simulators or extremely primitive.
* Energy shields come in several variants
** Ray shields protect from energy weapons but are useless against physical attacks. Most ships are equipped with ray shields.
** Particle shields protect from physical attacks but are useless against energy attacks. Generally only bigger ships are equipped with particle shields while smaller ships such as fighters only have ray shields.
** Planetary shields are the reason why ground battles happen and why orbital superiority isn't enough to secure a planet. They can withstand even the most severe bombardment for weeks, with only weapons like the Death Star being capable of penetrating them almost instantaneously. As a result, it is generally more feasible to land troops on the planet.
* [[Lightsaber]]s are the most iconic weapon of the setting, being plasma-based melee weapons only used by crazy space [[wizard]]-[[monk]]s.
* [[The Force]] isn't so much technology as something in between a religion, [[magic]] and [[psionics]]. This is ''the'' element that turns Star Wars from [[Space Opera]] into [[Science Fantasy]].

==Setting History==
{{stub}}
Bear in mind the highly contradictory nature of canon and many sources from EU to Disney means any attempt to truly form a concrete history would take an in-depth scholarly pursuit of all sources and debate amongst the global community while taking into account upcoming new results that can entirely rewrite the record. You know, like real history ([[Tolkien]] did an admirable job, but nothing quite says plausible history like something everyone has an opinion on but nobody that anyone wants to listen to has fully researched). At any rate, what is presented here is an abridged version of the lore history prior to the Original Trilogy, using the most complete accounts, and combining the EU AKA “Legends” with the Disney canon when not contradictory (because despite having supposedly wiped it out of canon, there are frequent callbacks to parts of it). Though in fairness, Legends lore is far more fleshed out and takes priority in practice. Since it is under construction, it will probably be split into different sections (or we'll put parentheses showing whether it's Disney or OG, going in year order). As a note, most dates are referred to Before or After the Battle of Yavin (with both 0 BBY and 0 ABY existing) for the sake of out of universe convenience. There are various in-universe calendars, but this is pretty much the standard at the time of the end of the story and is the easiest to follow IRL. Thus, when the contradictions majorly start after Episode 6, the format will be Legends-5 ABY, Disney-5ABY, Legends-6 ABY and so on.

* The universe begins, life begins to evolve. A lot of small things happen that tie into other stories, but aren’t worth mentioning outside that story.
* The unknown Celestial race holds dominion around a hundred thousand years Before the Battle of Yavin, they mysteriously vanish soon afterwards.
** Before disappearing, a set of force wielding physical gods known as the Father, the Daughter and the Son help them to seal Abeloth "The Mother", a mortal who lived with them and in desperation for sharing their immortality did some extremely bad dark side Force stuff and turned into an eldritch abomination, in the Maw Cluster of black holes using Centerpoint Station, a super weapon in the partially artificial Corellia System.
* The first galactic civilization (that we know of except whatever the Celestials were, if they even count as a formal polity) are the Rakata, cruel aliens who uplift various other species for slaves and food in the Rakatan Infinite Empire. This explains most aliens that are just paint and simple face prosthetics away from being human, as well as recurring traits like bipedalism.
** The Rakata encounter the Sith species, who also use the dark side. The Sith drive them off after a costly battle thanks to Sith King Adas sacrificing himself.
*** The Sith'ari prophecy is made to indicate a worth successor to Adas who would bring the Sith to the height of their power, Bane would be the Sith'ari more than twenty thousand years later.
** At some point the Rakata encounter the Hutts, and the result is the Rakata being nearly wiped out. Hutts did not possess space travel, nor would they until much later so how the fuck that happened isn’t clear, though it is mentioned that they lost their connection to the Force (universally the Dark Side due to species wide enforcement of being an asshole) after an unknown illness.
** Time progresses and the Rakata are forgotten from general knowledge outside of archeological and historical circles, even then only Force sensitives really know the major significance other than "big empire that collapsed before the Republic was even a dream".
* Civilizations develop and discover space travel, then hyperspace travel. Initial hyperspace colonization and mapping is risky, requiring oftentimes blind jumps and the hope there isn’t a star or something where you end up.
** Blind jumps result in colonists losing contact with the rest of the universe and evolving on their own, explaining some groups that are VERY similar but not the same species (for example, Miraluka are lost human colonists who ended up on a planet with poor light and over generations they evolved to not have eyes, but instead all have a Jedi-tier connection to the Force to “see” with).
* The Force-users find their jumps guided to a specific planet, with aliens from many diverse backgrounds guided to a planet (First Tython in Legends, changed to Ahch-To in the Disney canon. Later material for The Mandalorian brought Tython back alongside Ahch-To as both being early Jedi planets and nobody knowing for sure which was actually the first).
** Bringing their own religions, traditions, and cultures, the Force-users develop schools of thought on the philosophy. Eventually one group decides the meaning of life for the Force is to destroy evil (like [[Paladins]]), and wages war on the others saying “you’re with us or against us”. One group resists which saw honor and personal development as the meaning of life (like [[Cavalier]]s). The rest were split between the two.
** The Paladin-like aggressors were victorious, slaughtering and driving off the Cavalier-types. The Paladin-like Force-users would become the early Jedi. The Cavalier-types would find pain and misery in exile after multiple Great Schism's, sinking deep into worship of power and personal gain. After the Third Great Schism caused by Jedi Knights Ajunta Pall, Sorzus Syn, Xoxaan, Remulus Dreypa and Karness Muur wanting to study the Dark Side after the balance started falling towards Light Side use lead to the Hundred Year Darkness civil war, they are exiled. The exiles find and enslave a species of aliens and stole both their dark Force/alchemy teachings as well as their name when Ajunta Pall killed the last King Hakagram Graush, the Sith, and interbreeding with them to build the Old Sith Empire, Pall as the first Dark Lord of the Sith.
*** The Hundred Year Darkness leads to the invention of Lightsabers, inspired by Rakata Forcesabers, though initial examples like the one Karness Muur used require energy batteries on belts connected by cables.
*** Karness Muur discovers the method of immortality when he transfers his spiritual essence to his Muur Talisman amulet created by Sith Alchemy. Dreypa, his rival, makes a stasis coffin to hold Muur in, said coffin is later named the Jebble Box and is misidentified as a Jedi artifact.
** This becomes a recurring pattern in Star Wars history regarding good and evil Force-users. Good creates its own evil by standing up and declaring themselves good and morally correct, turning any challengers to their orthodoxy towards the Dark Side (look, it comes up whenever Lucas or some other writer wants to go back to the Taoist roots of The Force). Good then defeats the evil it created once evil has almost won, and they reestablish order with some oppression in an attempt to prevent another evil which restarts the cycle.
** The Chosen One to bring balance to the Force prophecy is made. Anakin Skywaker would fulfill this prophecy a thousand years after Bane fulfilled the Sith'ari prophecy.
* Humans and Duro, the first two species to discover hyperspace travel from Rakata technological remnants, eventually meet. The planet they meet on has been implied to be the human homeworld, the Duro homeworld, Earth, and various other things, but it doesn’t matter, final decision settled on as Human homeworld with any connection to real Earth slashed and Duro homeworld being described as another planet in another part of the galaxy. It becomes Coruscant (the homeworld of the Taung, a.k.a. OG Mandalorians, and also the homeworld of the human predecessor race, the latter won and drove off the Taung to Mandalore), and they create the first Galactic Republic in 25553 BBY.
** The exiled Taung found Mandalore, a martial society of warmongers and Social Darwinists, on the planet of Mandalore, which along with it's moon and nearby systems has a massive amount of the substance known as Beskar, capable of making Lightsaber resistant armor.
* Various expansion wars occur after the Republic is founded, including a religiously motivated 1000 year long pro-human genocidal regime, the Pius Dea cult, taking over, brought down by the Jedi and those sick of their shit after their reign, leading to a few decades of Jedi Grandmasters pulling double duty as Supreme Chancellor to restore democracy and arrest leftover cultists. Other wars also occur such as the the Hutt Wars with Xim the Despot, the Hutt Cataclysms (a major series of Civil Wars and natural disasters that ruined the Hutt Empire and instituted the Hutt Cartel system and founded the basis of the galactic criminal underworld), and a series of wars on and off for 20000 odd years over whether Coruscant or another planet (Alsakan) is to be the capital.
** Two important worlds that need to be noted are Corellia, which has disproportionate influence in the founding of the Republic and even has the right to declare neutrality in civil disputes due to economic power of its status on the most important hyperspace shortcut in the galaxy (as well as the Celestial influenced state of their system), and Kuat, founded by pre-Hyperspace human colonists launched from Coruscant and the premier shipyard in the galaxy.
* Eventually the Sith return to destroy the Jedi after two Republic scouts accidentally stumble upon Korriban, the Sith species home planet and now the burial site for the Dark Lords, and return while being followed, kicking off the Great Hyperspace War.
** The Republic is almost destroyed, but survives, and led by Empress Teta (the Empress of a member world that is) in turn smashes the Old Sith Empire led by Dark Lord Naga Sadow.
** The Sith slink back into the shadows. The Jedi start their other big tradition, over-correcting from their past mistakes and creating new ones, by beginning a time of non-interference in galactic affairs and a general desire only for peace.
** During this time, Darth Vitiate (born Tenebrae as the illegitimate son of Sith Lord Dramath [[Grimdark|who raped one of his slaves]]) exploits the defeat and manipulates 8000 fellow Sith Lords to a secret ritual to live forever. It goes [[Just as Planned]] for Vitiate as he consumes the souls of his fellows to become immortal (but not invincible) and names himself Sith Emperor of the Reformed Sith Empire. He secretly builds his forces from the remaining Sith armies and lords.
** Duringthe final battle of the Great Hyperspace War a Sith ship crashes into a planet and the survivors become the Lost Tribe of Sith.
* Freedon Nadd, Jedi apprentice, is denied knighthood and falls to the Dark Side after finding Sadow's tomb and his spirit. He causes the Beast Wars on Onderon and its moon Dxun and rules for a hundred years before dying, his cultists becoming weirdo beast rider types who plague Onderon.
* Two Jedi Knights, Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma fall to the Dark side after finding Dark Lord Marka Ragnos and Nadd's spirits respectively and become Master and Apprentice in that order. After Ulic kills his brother and former fellow Jedi, he returns to the light and kills Exar Kun during their war to destroy the Jedi. Ulic wanders around for a while and then dies in his former lover Grand Master Nomi Sunrider's arms, who had become Grand Master after Exar Kun and Ulic's war ended with the formers death.
* Mandalorians, the space Mongols/Aztecs, start attacking the universe because all they understand is war (and because the Taung species is dying out, leading to them allowing worthy foreigners to join, humans end up as the vast majority).
** This massive war almost wipes out several species but the Jedi do nothing. Eventually one of their number, nicknamed the Revanchist and his friends Alek and Meetra Surik are dispatched to investigate, and upon finding the atrocities committed decide to forsake the Jedi wuss way and break the back of the Mandalorians.
** The Revanchist takes the name of Revan after picking up and putting on the mask of a female Mandalorian who refused orders to massacre civilians and died defending them.
** During the fighting, Mandalore the Ultimate orders Serocco and Jebble nuked from orbit, killing everyone who failed to escape and leaving Jedi Assassin Celeste Morne stranded on Jebble in stasis, which she had gone in to to keep the Muur Talisman which contained to soul of Karness Muur, one of the Dark Jedi exiles who founded the Sith Order, from escaping. The stasis coffin is the same one built by Remulus Dreypa to keep Muur in.
** Revan kills Mandalore the Ultimate in single combat, leaving the Taung extinct. After learning that Mandalore the Ultimate was manipulated through his final words, Revan and Alek go to Dromund Kaas to investigate, then fall to the Dark Side and create a fascist government centered on Dromund Kaas (actually the hidden capital of the Reformed Sith Empire who brainwashed the leader of the Mandos). The Sith Emperor had brainwashed both of them.
** Revan becomes Darth Revan and Alek becomes Darth Malak, which almost destroys the Republic, again (a third recurring theme), with the only loyalists remaining being Surik and her chief engineer, who had returned to the Order after the final battle at Malachor V where they fired a super weapon, the Mass Shadow Generator on Revan's orders which the brainwashed Revan used to kill the other loyalist Jedi, before Revan and Alek went off to open revolt.
** A Jedi named Bastila Shan is sent to assassinate their leader Darth Revan, but believing in redemption instead she wiped his mind. The two went on an adventure while Revan was trained as a Jedi again, and he defeated his apprentice Darth Malak and dismantled his own army (also did a bunch of racing, theme #4).
** Afterwards, the remaining Fallen Jedi institute the First Jedi Purge under the Sith Triumvirate, Darth Nihilus (who vored planets after being reduced to a husk by the superweapon Revan used at Malachor V), Darth Sion (who was so edgy he had to be convinced to let go as he was too angry to die), and Darth Traya (a.k.a. Kreia, actually Jedi Master Arren Kae, who wanted to destroy the force itself) and their followers, survivors of Malak's remaining army.
** The only loyalist Jedi survivor of Revan's initial force, Meetra Surik, having been exiled from the Order after being the only veteran to return, comes back and destroys the Sith Triumvirate (redeeming the only apprentice they had, Visas Marr, in the process) along with her companions (including Visas and her old chief engineer) who she trained as Jedi, plus Revan's old war buddy/current Mand'alor (Mandalorian king) Canderous Ordo and an asshole droid.
** Revan's companions and Meetra's companions then presumably rebuild the Jedi Order and the badly damaged Republic over 300 years, while Revan and Surik go to Dromund Kaas to finish off the Emperor (Revan not telling anyone like a moron, while Surik just went to help her friend) but are betrayed by their ally Darth Scourge, who foresees the Emperor is not going to die for three more centuries.
** Surik ignonomously dies, while Revan is tortured for 300 years while managing to keep the Emperor from attacking the Republic when it is vulnerable.
* A clusterfuck of things happen.
** The Sith create a nearly galaxy-wide coalition to start a civil war with the Republic. The Sith have overwhelming advantage, but are so backstabby and hedonistically asinine they fail to accomplish anything major after the initial strikes, though Darth Malgus manages to sack Coruscant and the Jedi Temple.
** Things cool of for 12 years in a Cold War, then heat back up again and are disrupted when the Sith Emepror (who as stated was the guy who manipulated the Mandalorians and brainwashed Revan) is apparently killed by the Hero of Tython (who is then promoted to Jedi Battlemaster) aided by Darth Scourge (who the Emperor life-extended to serve as his personal assassin, while plotting to kill the Emperor).
** Revan splits in two from the 300 year torture, and after the torturers (the edgiest Sith ever, the Dread Masters, who were personally trained by the Emperor) get killed by the SWTOR player character of your choice (story-wise, the Hero of Tython makes the most sense as the Jedi Knight so will go with that for the purposes of timeline), who had also apparently killed Darth Malgus when he got pissed at the [[Stupid Evil]] of the other Sith and tried to make his own empire, and tries to bring the Emperor back to a physical body, with the protagonist and their allies barely stopping him.
** It turns out the Emperor manipulated Revan's last efforts and used the bloodshed there to transfer all of his spirit to where he was actually focusing on, the Eternal Empire at the planet of Zakuul he made over the past few centuries, after finding a super robot fleet in the planet of Iokath and possessing a local hero named Valkorion. His body is destroyed by the protagonist, and the Emperor's son Arcann (who killed his light-side twin in a rage) invades both the Republic and the Sith Empire.
** Meanwhile, the protagonist is placed in carbonite for five years, while Arcann used the Emperor's supposed death to drum up support for his regime in Zakuul. He is defeated and (due to Light Side Republic Loyalist Jedi Knight being the most reasonable choice for storyline purposes) is redeemed to the light side. His sister tries to take over, and is killed. A large part of the Emperor's soul is destroyed after trying to take over the SWTOR protagonist.
** Afterwards, the Republic and Sith Empire return to war over the remaining superweapons on Iokath and the SWTOR protagonist rejoins the Jedi and the Republic. Empress Acina (who took over the Reformed Sith Empire after Darth Marr, regent after the Emperor faked his death, was killed after being captured along with the protagonist prior to the 5-year timeskip) dies in the fighting and Darth Malgus returns, having survived and rebuilt as a cyborg.
** The Emperor finally loses control of the Force and all three of his personalities (Tenebrae, Darth Vitiate and Valkorion) are destroyed, finally killing him for good and thus letting Revan and Meetra become one with the Force. The protagonist continues heroics and defeats/captures some Dark Council Sith Lords (and Malgus, presumably in the next expansion as of the time of writing - which happened and he was captured by the Republic, further details TBA as SWTOR storyline continues) and the final phase of the Great Galactic War eventually ends in Republic victory, the Reformed Sith Empire shattering to pieces.
* Around 2000 years before the Battle of Yavin some dickwad Jedi falls to the Dark Side as Darth Ruin and reignites the brewing low intensity conflict as the New Sith Wars at full scale as the first undisputed Dark Lord in a millenium since the Sith Empire Remnants shattered to insurgencies and individual Dark Side cabals. Ruin instigates the Fourth and last Great Schism of the Jedi.
** The Sith eventually reform into the Brotherhood of Darkness to prevent the mass backstabbing that restarted with the New Sith Wars and bans the title of Darth, with all Sith Lords being equal (though of course, [[Communism|some are more equal than others]], like fallen Jedi Master Skere Kaan).
** After a thousand straight years of war, a Galactic Dark Age settles in and ruins major tech infrastructure and companies, fixing the dissonance between movie era tech being worse than literally thousands of years ago. The last three hundred years until 1000 BBY are particularly brutal, killing FTL communications past the Mid Rim sans courier and brings the Republic to its knees.
* 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin, Sergeant Dessel, transferring from the Sith Army to the Sith Academy after his force sensitivity was discovered, thinks the Brotherhood of Darkness is a bunch of bullshit. He decides that the Dark Side can only have two Sith, one Master to embody power and an Apprentice to crave it, after finding Revan's edgy fanfiction he wrote after the Mandolarian Wars and before the Jedi Civil War in a Sith Holocron. He names himself Darth Bane and manipulates Lord Kaan into building the Thought Bomb, a Dark Side Force weapon.
** The Brotherhood of Darkness are defeated at the (Seventh) Battle of Ruusan. They detonate the Thought Bomb, which wipes them out along with the Army of Light, a Jedi army formed in desperation by Lord Hoth as a last resort to save the Republic, as the Army of Light sacrifice themselves to force Kaan to detonate it early and end the New Sith Wars, [[Just As Planned|exactly as Bane planned]].
** The Rule Of Two is instituted by Bane who takes Zhannah as his apprentice, preventing the Dark Side clusterfuck that happens when too many assholes exist as “equals” in one faction. The Jedi almost destroy the Sith as Zhannah is caught spying in the Jedi Temple and is forced to retreat, chased by three masters and two knights.
** Bane and Zhannah defeat them and Zhannah's cousin is made insane by her Sith Sorcery and attacks the Jedi task force sent after them, who are forced to kill him. Thinking that was the Sith they were looking for the Jedi pat themselves on the back and go back to Coruscant to report the Sith being destroyed.
** Zhannah defeats Bane and takes Cognus as her apprentice. Cognus takes Millenial (yes, Darth Millenial) as her apprentice, who disagrees with the Rule of Two and goes to Dromund Kaas to start the Prophets of the Dark Side, who worship the Dark Side. Cognus takes another apprentice and things continue as they hide, plan, research, and backstab in secret for 1000 years.
* After this apparent victory, the Republic undergoes the Ruusan Reformation, beginning the Great Peace of the Republic in which no major war occurred.
** The Jedi are greatly weakened in political authority and demilitarized. They also begin strictly enforcing the age maximum for training people as Jedi. Having lost its best and brightest save for Grand Master Faye (namely, Lord Hoth and Master Valenthyne Farfhalla) in the Army of Light's sacrifice, degenerate into Lawful Stupid morons with the Ruusan Reformation, which states that the Jedi can no longer create an army, and that the Jedi are under the command of the Senate, although they still have their own Council for internal stuff. They decide to vigorously enforce the age limit and become more and more detached from the people and the small good deeds that help reinforce the light side in an individual (demonstrated in SWTOR with the Hero of Tython, whose dead master as a Force Ghost instructs him to give labor and medical assistance in a small village to help reinforce his soul).
** The Republic disbands its military except for a small anti-piracy force in the Judicial Forces and leaves actual defense to Planetary Defense Forces.
** The Republic massively decentralizes and executive, as opposed to legislative or home planet/sector, power starts falling back into Senators hands for the first time since pretty much the Pius Dea period as Supreme Chancellors and Vice Heads essentially become first and second among equals to other Senators, thus making the executive and legislative significantly accountable to the larger and more bribe friendly Senate rather than the government.
* Due to the infrastructure damage, a period of [[Medieval Stasis]] sets in, turning for example battle droids from multi legged hyper mobile tanks and super deadly assassins to crappy shit tier fodder infantry outside of expensive special models.
* Megacorporations gain power in the sparser regions of the Mid Rim and the Outer Rim as the republic falls into a combination of absurd political corruption and Inner Rim/Core Worlds exceptionalism, to the point that some corps have Senators of their own (not even bribed, literal voting members presumably elected/bribed the electoral offices from corp owned worlds). Senators essentially become mouthpieces of planetary interests or big business and vote based on who bribes them.
* 65 years before the Battle of Yavin, a man from Naboo's House Palpatine (dubbed Sheev in Disney canon) became the apprentice to a Sith Master named Darth Plagueis.
** He learned secrets of Sith Alchemy and pretty much any other plot-related evil shit that writers want, takes on the name Darth Sidious, then killed his master and began a (very convoluted) plan to wipe out the Jedi, rule the galaxy and wage war on things outside the galaxy, and live forever. Just assume anything that happens from here until his death is [[Tzeentch|because of him]].
** Palpatine takes on an apprentice, an older Jedi who left the Order due to its hands-off approach to galactic governance. The now ex-Jedi Dooku Serenno reclaimed the fortune and title of Count he had relinquished to join the Jedi and was secretly contacted by Palpatine to slowly cajole him over years.
* A Jedi named Sifo-Dyas has a prophecy that the galaxy will soon be at war, and concocts an elaborate plan to get an army for the currently armyless Republic using money from criminal organizations and the genetic material of a Mandalorian descended from the old warriors. He’s killed by Palpatine ([[Just As Planned|the guy that planted the idea in his head]]), who takes over the project via Dooku and had each clone implanted with a secret control chip that would override their training and loyalties when Sheev gave “Order 66”.
* As the Republic weakened due to corruption and the rising power of corporations, and the Jedi weakened due to Sheev’s (and his predecessors) tampering with the Force via bullshit Alchemy handwaves and becoming detached from the common people weakening their compassion and the light side, planets and organizations within the Republic began to act aggressively. Sheev was behind many of their moves as his public identity rose as the Senator of his home planet of Naboo.
** As aforementioned, many organizations gained enough power to have Senatorial representatives, making corporations as powerful as entire planets and causing the clusterfuck of alliances and conflicting interests to render the Republic almost powerless.
* The Trade Federation, a simple shipping company that had its own Senator and via shared interests controlled many, MANY more, began using its private army to blockade planets. They did this to secure exclusive contracts with the goal of controlling all trade everywhere eventually, and even hold power over the Republic due to its lack of military.
** Sheev as Sidious reveals himself to be heavily invested in their projects, and they gladly accepted his patronage. He advised them to upscale their ambitions and blockade the planet Naboo, which was far more powerful politically and economically than their previous targets, 32 years before the Battle of Yavin.
* We leave the mists of backstory/dubious canon and enter into the Movie/TV Canon.
** Two Jedi, an apprentice and a master (Obi-wan and Dooku’s old apprentice Qui-Gon) were sent to negotiate an end to the blockade. Fearing that the Federation had gone into dangerous territory, the leaders contacted Sheev, who ordered them to kill the Jedi and continue the blockade as if nothing had happened.
*** The Jedi escaped to the surface of the planet and escaped with the planet’s leader Queen Amidala. They were delayed due to engine problems from the escape, and stopped at Tatooine where they picked up a slave boy named Anakin who was Force-sensitive (implied to be an experiment from Sheev’s Alchemy to create life as he learned under Plagueis, abandoned after accidentally rendering Anakin's mother pregnant with no father, bot Plagueis and Palpatine deeming it a failure). Meanwhile Sheev’s own apprentice Darth Maul had been sent to ensure his plans were carried out. A couple of weeks after this Palpatine kills Plagueis and becomes the Dark Lord.
** Sheev convinced the Queen to start a movement against the administration of the Republic, which was joined by the majority of the Senate; even the corrupt were sick of everyone else’s corruption.
*** This destabilized the Republic leadership, shuffling Sheev into power as Supreme Chancellor and putting his lackeys in charge. Meanwhile, the queen and Jedi returned to Naboo and lead a revolt, defeating the Trade Federation and leaving their leadership as prisoners of the Republic, but Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin dies at the hands of Sidious's apprentice Maul and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi is left grieving and Maul believed dead as he was cut in half by Kenobi.
*** Sheev worked behind the scenes to keep them from being prosecuted for their actions while making plans to turn Anakin Skywalker, who had been found and chosen for training by the Jedi as part of the Chosen One Prophecy (by Obi-Wan, who had literally just become a Knight after Qui-Gon's death, so that was a dumb fucking call giving the kid who needed a father figure to a rigidly dedicated young man in mourning who had almost failed out of the Jedi into the Jedi Service Corps due to relative weakness in the force), into a future asset.
** Sheev progressed his plan for a war to further destabilize the galaxy by pitting the various corporate powers he controlled as Darth Sidious against the united planets he controlled as Supreme Chancellor. This leads to a Separatist movement with both sides financially powerful, both sides possessing armies, and both sides feeling they were the ones who were wronged and both firmly in Sith pockets, the Separatists as a disposable tool under Dooku (who, after Maul's believed death, had become Sidious's apprentice Tyrannus) and the Republic primed to vote for Palpatine to gain more and more power.
*** The “Clone Wars” began after a series of events orchestrated by Dooku where the Jedi discover and deploy the clone armies against Separatists who had been planning to execute the Jedi and former queen of Naboo as revenge on behalf of the Trade Federation.
** Sheev manipulated both sides of the conflict to deplete the strength of all participants. The Separatists were led by the cyborg General Grievous, Count Dooku (Sidious planned to replace both Maul and Dooku from the beginning, with Anakin) and the corrupt Separatist Council essentially acting as Count Dooku's mouthpiece, while the Republic forces were led by the Jedi Master Mace Windu and Grand Master Yoda.
** Public opinion began to turn against the war, and groups of Senators who had previously been allies of Sheev began meeting in secret and planning for militarizing their planets so there would no longer be a need for an army of the Republic.
** When the time was right Sidious orchestrated a finale of battles which resulted in the deaths of Dooku and Grievous, then enacted Order 66 to slaughter almost all of the Jedi and turned Anakin to his side as Darth Vader. He declared himself Emperor and the Republic his Empire, eliminating much of the old government over time, and allowing cronies to make it into the ranks of a galactic military dictatorship which used powerless puppet governments on the local level.
** Separatist remnants continue resistance and a majority of them are defeated in the Reconquest of the Rim.
** Small rebel cells popped up everywhere, which would eventually unite under the surviving members of the old Senate following Palpatine using Vader's "secret" apprentice to lure them out and failing to kill them as said apprentice turns to light and sacrifices himself (the plot of The Force Unleashed).
** The Great Jedi Purge comes to an end one year before the Battle of Yavin with Master An'ya Kuro being killed by Vader, leaving several dozen Jedi alive as the Empire shifted focus to fight the Rebels, now united as the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Alliance is led by Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, two Senators.
** The Emperor dissolves the Senate and orders his military second Wilhuff Tarkin to use the newly built Death Star, a planet killer super weapon, to enforce his rule, while his civilian second Sate Pestage handles the bureaucracy.
** Han Solo, would be Imperial Officer, quits the academy after saving Wookie Warrior Chewbacca's life due to personal aversion to Imperial policy and turns into one of the best smugglers in the galaxy (having a Wookie owing a life debt to you really helps in fights, by the way).
** Vader turns out to have fathered twins with Padme Amidala, the Naboo senator after Palpatine became Chancellor, who died due to her life force being drained after giving birth to Luke and Leia. Leia got sent to live with Bail Organa and his wife in the idylic paradise Alderaan as Princess, while Luke got given to his in aunt and uncle at the sandy shithole Tatooine, utterly worthless except as a shadowport since the Rakatans bombed it to dust in such a way as to render minerals mined from it useless due to ion fluctuation after the world defied them. When we said the Jedi degenerated into [[Lawful Stupid]] morons, we meant it, given it was Obi-Wan and Yoda, basically the two big name Jedi of several dozen who had their heads screwed on straight, who made this decision.
** In 0 BBY Leia, by this time a very active but powerless Senator, acquires the Death Star plans after various different missions gather bits and pieces of it and rushes to Tatooine to get Obi-Wan's help on her fathers orders. Obi-Wan was on Tatooine to help guard Luke. Leia's ship and its escorts are intercepted by Vader and his units and her corvette attempts to escape from the battle only to be boarded by Vader's personal elite unit since the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion. Leia is captured but two droids, C-3PO (a protocol droid built by Anakin as a child) and R2-D2 (an astromech that used to belong to Naboo and was used by Anakin in the Clone Wars) manage to escape with the plans which Leia gave to R2-D2. The droids crash onto the planet in an escape shuttle.
**The Droids find their way by sheer happenstance into the hands of a lowly moisture farmer Owen Lars and his Nephew, Luke Skywalker, the latter of whom manages to find Leias hidden message in R2-D2 and brings it to Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Imperials on the other hand managed to trace the movement of the droids to Lars and kill him and his wife; this prompts Luke to travel to Alderaan with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
** Luke and Kenobi make the aquaintance of Han Solo, who hire him and his ship, the Millenium Falcon, to make the journey to Alderaan. On the way, they accidentally discover that Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star and get captured by the Empire. Han and Luke escape with Leia, but Kenobi sacrifices himself in a duel with Vader. Leia guides the other two sods to the Rebel hideout on Yavin IV, but the Imperials had traced the Millenium Falcon and were preparing to destroy Yavin IV with the Death Star.
** The Battle of Yavin occurs. The Rebels use the Death Star plans to find the stations achilles heel in the form of a tiny exhaust port leading directly to the stations main power generator (EU canon had it that this was simply an oversight, Disney Canon has it that it was purposefully placed there by the leading engineer of the Death Star as a sort of contingency plan he cooked up as revenge against the Empire for forcing him to spend all his life with his work and away from his family). Since the Death Star was designed to face massive fleets, rendering any large-scale attack pointless (and also save on the SFX budget), the Rebels instead concoct a highly risky operation to attack the station with mere fighters until Luke lands a hit on the exhaust port, blowing the entire Death Star to smithereens.
*** Anything after this is referred in the official time as ABY. The time between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back also suffers from dubious canonicity, since all of it was contained either in novels, comics or other stuff and even then, it wasn't well covered.
** The Rebels, with their cover blown, find themselves immetiatly beset by a very pissed Vader leading a massive Imperial Fleet to exact vengeance on them. Yavin IV is abandoned in a messy evacuation, forcing the Rebels to stay spaceborne for some years. Luke, while exploring opportunities to expand his knowledge of the Force, crashlands on Hoth and proposes the ice planet to become the new Rebel headquarters. The Rebels start to accumulate more covert support from big players in the political sphere of the Empire, most notably the Bothan senator Borsk Fel'lya and the Corellian resistance fighter Garm Bel Iblis and become a bigger thorn in the Empires side through constant guerilla warfare.
** Vader, having learned about Lukes identity, makes it his mission to find his son and leads a vast effort to locate the Rebel headquarters. A probe droid sent out by the Imperial Navy eventually finds the Rebel base on Hoth; however, a premature attack by the incompetent Admiral Ozzel gives the Rebels proof that they had been found out and prepare to get the fuck out of Hoth. Vader leads the Imperial troops that attack the Rebels covering the evacuation in a brutal onslaught (that also serves as a reminder that the Empire is not to be trifled with, as the Rebels stand absolutely no chance in taking the Imperial forces head on). Most of the Rebels manage to escape, but their forces are crippled and take years to reconstitute. Luke starts his Jedi training under Yoda and ultimately learns that Vader is his father.
** The Rebels learn via the Bothans that the Empire has begun construction of a second Death Star with cocaine and hookers over Endor and moreover, that the Emperor is personally overseeing the construction. Any common sense gets thrown out of the room when the Rebel leadership decides to attack the Death Star directly with all of their forces only for the whole ordeal to have been a trap set by the Emperor who fed the Rebels false intel, catching them between the Death Stars hammer and the Imperial Navys anvil (which they should have smelled from five miles away). In spite of all the odds, the Rebels still manage to disable the Death Stars shields, blow up the stations generator like the last time, killing the Emperor, Vader, most of the Imperial Navys commanders and get away with it. This is where the old Lucasfilm canon ends. The Empire is defeated and the galaxy liberated from its tyranny.
* Here we continue on with the old EU timeline, although what is and isn't considered canon is a bit difficult to determine.
** The Empire's leadership collapses into total anarchy, as various factions of politicians and warlords vie for power. Nominally, a council of regional govenors stays in charge, but it gets undermined by various factions trying to take control over the majority of the Moffs via blackmail or corruption and several military leaders outright seceding from the Empire with the forces under their command. The Rebels still face the daunting task of taking down the Empire properly; while the weakened grasp on power of the Empire is obvious, it still is a force to be reckoned with. The immediate fallout of the Battle of Endor involves an invasion of a far outpost near the uncharted regions by reptilian invaders whose call for aid, originally meant for the Imperial Command aboard the second Death Star, gets intercepted by the Rebels who send Luke and company to fix their mess. The first truce between the Rebels and an Imperial Faction gets signed and the world becomes independent shortly afterwards.
** The first big internal Imperial kerfuffle gets resolved when the former head of the Imperial intelligence services, Ysanne Isard, manages to instigate a successful coup against the council of Moffs and take control of Coruscant. The Rebels move fast to take control of Coruscant themselves and while the attack on the planet is successful, Isard escapes with a Super Star Destroyer [[What|buried in the planets crust]] and unleashes a bioweapon that only targets non-human species, stoking paranoia and racial tensions in the Alliance and on Coruscant while Isard manages to keep the upper hand on the Alliance by embargoing a number of planets producing a vital substance needed to cure the effects of said bioweapon. Rogue Squadron suceeds in tracking her down and ultimately kill Isard shortly afterwards. The Alliance takes control of Coruscant, various imperial worlds defect to the Rebels, the New Republic is officially founded and Leia becomes its first chancellor.
** Thrawn returns from the unknown regions to single-handedly take control of the badly battered Imperial factions, several of which were contemplating surrendering to the New Republic. Thrawn reinvigorates their fighting spirit, reforms the Imperial fleet and starts a campaign of conquest that proves to be a major headache for the New Republic. Luke starts his first earnest attempt to reform the Jedi Order on Yavin IV that gets thwarted when Mara Jade lures him into a trap. After a series of twists and turns, Thrawn is assassinated by his Noghri bodyguard and his rule over the Imperial Remnants comes to an end.
* Here we will discuss the post-Endor to start of TFA Disney timeline.
* Here we will discuss the aftermath of Thrawn's death until the Abeloth fight in Legends timeline.
* Here we will discuss the Disney Sequel trilogy and it's surrounding side stories.
* And finally, the end of the Legends timeline.
{{Star Wars}}

StarCraft

2023-05-12T02:54:37Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* The Zerg */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

There is also a subsect of Primal Zerg, which are, as implied, the Zergs original form; a collection of carnivorous animals hailing from a Death World at the edge of the known Galaxy. Their ability to directly and quickly absorb genetic traits and incorporate it into their own DNA (i.e. big Zerg with claws eats small Zerg with spikes, what makes the big Zerg grow spikes when it consumed the smaller Zerugs flesh) was what got the Xel'Naga interested in them in the first place. The Primal Zerg, in contrast to their swarm cousins, are highly indivdualistic and put a strong emphasis on Darwinism, to the point that they considered being kept on a psionic leash via the Overmind to be sacriligious.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]]. The Primal Zerg regarded the Overmind as a perversion of their racial ethos, which emphasized biological evolution on an individual level, in contrast to the Overminds version of evolution as a collective swarm and considered the creation of the Overmind as one of the single biggest crimes committed against their species.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. He is a simple-minded, slug-looking thing that is obsessed with creating the perfect organism for the Zerg swarm and best remembered for his robotic way of speaking. He was also the guy... uhm, thing looking over Kerrigans initial transformation into the Queen of Blades which is described in agonizing detail in Heart of the Swarm (which basically involved breaking every single bone in her body, skinning her alive in acid and replacing it all with a Zerg exoskeleton).

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

'''Dehaka''': One of the Primal Zerg of Zerus, a sapient, individual being looking like a half-way cross between a sabretooth tiger and a dinosaur. He comes to respect Kerrigan for her killing of one of the oldest Zerg to have ever existed (a gigantic monstrosity the size of a small mountain) and joins her merry crusade because he feels that she could provide the best essence for his own evolution.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who joins the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

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StarCraft

2023-05-12T02:53:08Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* The Zerg */

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[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

There is also a subsect of Primal Zerg, which are, as implied, the Zergs original form; a collection of carnivorous animals hailing from a Death World at the edge of the known Galaxy. Their ability to directly and quickly absorb genetic traits and incorporate it into their own DNA was what got the Xel'Naga interested in them in the first place. The Primal Zerg, in contrast to their swarm cousins, are highly indivdualistic and put a strong emphasis on Darwinism, to the point that they considered being kept on a psionic leash via the Overmind to be sacriligious.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]]. The Primal Zerg regarded the Overmind as a perversion of their racial ethos, which emphasized biological evolution on an individual level, in contrast to the Overminds version of evolution as a collective swarm and considered the creation of the Overmind as one of the single biggest crimes committed against their species.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. He is a simple-minded, slug-looking thing that is obsessed with creating the perfect organism for the Zerg swarm and best remembered for his robotic way of speaking. He was also the guy... uhm, thing looking over Kerrigans initial transformation into the Queen of Blades which is described in agonizing detail in Heart of the Swarm (which basically involved breaking every single bone in her body, skinning her alive in acid and replacing it all with a Zerg exoskeleton).

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

'''Dehaka''': One of the Primal Zerg of Zerus, a sapient, individual being looking like a half-way cross between a sabretooth tiger and a dinosaur. He comes to respect Kerrigan for her killing of one of the oldest Zerg to have ever existed (a gigantic monstrosity the size of a small mountain) and joins her merry crusade because he feels that she could provide the best essence for his own evolution.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who joins the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-12T02:49:07Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Zerg Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]]. The Primal Zerg regarded the Overmind as a perversion of their racial ethos, which emphasized biological evolution on an individual level, in contrast to the Overminds version of evolution as a collective swarm and considered the creation of the Overmind as one of the single biggest crimes committed against their species.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. He is a simple-minded, slug-looking thing that is obsessed with creating the perfect organism for the Zerg swarm and best remembered for his robotic way of speaking. He was also the guy... uhm, thing looking over Kerrigans initial transformation into the Queen of Blades which is described in agonizing detail in Heart of the Swarm (which basically involved breaking every single bone in her body, skinning her alive in acid and replacing it all with a Zerg exoskeleton).

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

'''Dehaka''': One of the Primal Zerg of Zerus, a sapient, individual being looking like a half-way cross between a sabretooth tiger and a dinosaur. He comes to respect Kerrigan for her killing of one of the oldest Zerg to have ever existed (a gigantic monstrosity the size of a small mountain) and joins her merry crusade because he feels that she could provide the best essence for his own evolution.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who joins the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-12T02:45:54Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Zerg Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]].

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. He is a simple-minded, slug-looking thing that is obsessed with creating the perfect organism for the Zerg swarm and best remembered for his robotic way of speaking. He was also the guy... uhm, thing looking over Kerrigans initial transformation into the Queen of Blades which is described in agonizing detail in Heart of the Swarm (which basically involved breaking every single bone in her body, skinning her alive in acid and replacing it all with a Zerg exoskeleton).

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

'''Dehaka''': One of the Primal Zerg of Zerus, a sapient, individual being looking like a half-way cross between a sabretooth tiger and a dinosaur. He comes to respect Kerrigan for her killing of one of the oldest Zerg to have ever existed (a gigantic monstrosity the size of a small mountain) and joins her merry crusade because he feels that she could provide the best essence for his own evolution.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who joins the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-10T04:20:08Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Zerg Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. The Overmind was created by Amon as part of his plot to subjugate the entire galaxy in order to have something to make sure that the Zerg would nom the right people, but the Overmind was struck by a vision of the Universe being destroyed by Amon and how Kerrigan was the key to saving everyone, hence why the Overmind assimilated her into the swarm instead of killing her. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]].

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death. Being the most powerful human psyker ever conceived, she was abducted by the Confederacy and trained into being a government hitwoman, similar to Nova, but unlike the latter, she fumbled an operation to kill Mengsk and found herself at his mercy; luckily for her, he saw her being useful in his service and unveiled the truth about the government she was serving, which promptly made her switch sides, only for Mengsk to betray her on Tarsonis. SC2 sees her transformed back into a human-zerg hybrid, which doesn't sit well with her when she sees her boytoy Raynor supposedly being killed and goes full Super Saiyan on Mengsk by transforming ''back'' into the Queen of Blades. It also turned out that she is the central object of an age-old prophecy concerning Amons revival and becomes a fully-fledged angel at the very end of SC2, in one of the derpiest
video game stories ever devised.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. Diminutive and monotone, but he proves vital for improving your units in the campaign.

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who gets captured by the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-10T03:59:34Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Zerg Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after. Looks like a [[Sauron|giant eyeball]].

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. Diminutive and monotone, but he proves vital for improving your units in the campaign.

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who gets captured by the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-10T03:57:55Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* The Xel'Naga */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. Diminutive and monotone, but he proves vital for improving your units in the campaign.

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.
*'''Amon''':
*'''Samir Duran''': A duplicitous Amon-adjacent being that secretly pulled the strings to aid his masters return and create a Zerg-Protoss hybrid army. First introduced during Brood War, he poses as a Confederate Remnant militia leader who gets captured by the UED and aids them in their project to create a UED-controlled Zerg Cerebrate, a plan which royally backfires on the UED and ends up with all of them being killed. That he is not quite what he claims to be is being made clear in the secret missions of Brood War, where he unveils the first Hybrid-Prototype. He resurfaces in Wings of Liberty under the guise of a Professor Narud (real clever there, Blizzard) and advances his plot by posing as a scientist that wants to reclaim Xel'naga artifacts while getting his funding from Valerian. Wings of Liberty's secret mission in conjunction with the plot of Heart of the Swarm implies that he also talked Mengsk and the Dominion into creating Hybrids in a ultra-top-secret R&D lab.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-10T03:43:57Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Protoss Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. Diminutive and monotone, but he proves vital for improving your units in the campaign.

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help. He gets tricked by Duran into giving away the location of Aiur to the Zerg Overmind, which ends with Aiur being eaten by the Zerg and him being branded a renegade. In SC2, he becomes the guy who figures out long before anyone else what is actually going in the universe and scrambles to keep the sector from eating itself, but barely anyone listens to him. He sacrifices himself to free Artanis from Amons control.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact. Dishes out priceless insults by the minute against everyone he meets, including his own kin.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-10T03:39:09Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* The Protoss */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UED's expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Despite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb implanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcraft's Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend, Alexei Stukov. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''': Arcturus's son who luckily happens to have none of the colossal asshole genes. In fact, he tries to be more of a reasonable leader than his father, especially after being forced to succeed the role of Emperor of the UED.

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''': One of Raynor's partners way back in the day as the "Heaven's Devils". Got arrested during one raid gone wrong and was locked up in cryosleep until such a point where Mengsk decided to wake him up use him as a mole within Raynor's ranks (and his personality meant that a cover story of breaking free by himself would totally make sense) and to kill Kerrigan.

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

====Zerg Characters====
'''The Overmind:''' Essentially the Tyranid [[Hive Mind]], except it has a physical body and is a distinct consciousness separate from the rest of the Zerg. Dies at the end at the Brood War, but its remains prove to be valuable long after.

'''Cerebrates:''' Enormous psionic maggots who basically serve as lieutenants to the Overmind. You play as one of these in the Starcraft 1 and Brood War Zerg Campaigns. These guys all get killed off by Kerrigan after they decide that they don't like the idea of playing second fiddle to a filthy half-human and instead turn against her to try and grow a replacement Overmind. What happened to the one remaining loyal Cerebrate that ''you'' played is never made clear.

'''Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades:''' Originally a Ghost under the Confederacy until Mengsk stabs her in the back and feeds her to the Zerg. This results in her mutating into a superhuman monster that's now psychic and has a massive grudge against humanity and that gets worse when she gets command of the entire Zerg Swarm following the Overmind's death.

'''Alexei Stukov:''' A scummy Russian admiral of the United Earth Directorate who died during the Brood War as part of a lengthy political game. However, death was not the end for him as his space-coffin got captured by the Zerg and Stukov reanimated as a lab experiment to see how a Cerebrate can infect a human into a leader and then caught by another lab to see how to cure it. He would eventually break free of this and find himself allying with Kerrigan in his search for revenge.

'''Abathur:''' Chief mutationist NPC for Heart of the Swarm. Diminutive and monotone, but he proves vital for improving your units in the campaign.

'''Zagara:''' One of the first Brood Queens Kerrigan made in an attempt to make more autonomous leader organisms. While she had the mental power to lead the Zerg, she wasn't necessarily good at using it and lacked the tactical experience to succeed at it. Kerrigan would teach Zagara as a mentor. Would assume control of the swarm as supreme Overqueen once Kerrigan went off to be a mary-sue god.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

====Protoss Characters====
*'''Tassadar:''' The Protoss POV character for the first game, whom questions the pointless exile of the Dark Templars as they proved to be vital to the survival of their race and gets branded a [[heresy|heretic]] in return. Unfortunately, he martyrs himself when the Zerg attack Aiur.

*'''Zeratul:''' One of the few Dark Templars who manage to make friends with both Tassadar and Raynor, being rational enough to understand when he'd need help.

*'''Artanis:''' Tassadar's protégé and POV character for Brood War and Legacy of the Void. Eventually finds a way to unite all of the Protoss kindred against Amon. Starts out as a zealous crusader befitting of his station as Templar Executor, softens up after the events of SC1 and Brood War to become an idealist hell-bent on reclaiming Aiur, but unlike Matt Horner or Ariel Hanson isn't afraid to cut you to size if you cross him.

*'''Fenix:''' Artanis' friend who sacrifices himself to protect the gates as the Protoss fled from Aiur.
**'''Talandar:''' So during Legacy of the Void, Artanis comes across knowledge of the Purifiers, an abandoned army of [[Transformers|transforming]] Protoss [[Dreadnoughts]] who are programmed with the memories of their dead brethren. Among them was one who carried the memories of Fenix. Though he stuck to this story at first, he eventually realized that just because he had Fenix's memories didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Fenix. Thus, the name change to Taldanis.

*'''Alarak:''' The leader of the Tal'darim, a subrace of Protoss who essentially channel the [[Dark Eldar]] and is delightfully voiced by John DeLancie. Alarak finds that the current policy of the Tal'darim aiding Amon is proving to be less useful than allying with his own kindred, especially once he finds out that Amon was betraying his kind as well. He's just as deceitful as one expects, only upholding his deal to not betray Artanis because of their non-aggression pact.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

Lightsaber

2023-05-10T00:54:38Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Basic fluff */

{{Topquote|This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as random or as clumsy as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.|Obi Wan Kenobi, [[Star Wars|A New Hope]]}}
{{Topquote|Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.|Han Solo, who doesn't give a shit how "civilized" your weapon is}}

'''Lightsabers''' are one of the most iconic weapons in [[Star Wars]], if not in all of sci-fi, being energy swords used by the Jedi and the Sith. Your basic lightsaber is a cylinder about 20cm long which at the push of a button emits a "blade" of plasma about a meter long which can reflect blaster fire and cut through pretty much everything that's not another lightsaber blade with minimal resistance.
[[Image:Lukesaber1.jpeg|thumb|right|Luke holding his fathers saber, [[skub|Debatably]] The most famous of lightsabers.]]

== Basic fluff ==
The main components of your basic lightsaber are the outer shell, power cell, a focusing emitter, power switch, and a kyber crystal which powers and generates the blade. Everything is fairly common stuff except for the crystal, which is attuned to the Force. In Legends, kybers were both mined (Jedi Padawans of a sufficient age went to an icy planet to find one that would fit them the best) and could be made by Force users (Sith made theirs traditionally by forcing multiple kybers together using the Dark Side, back when they were at war with the jedi often crystals taken from fallen enemies, this also produces the red colour) while in the new Disney canon they are exclusively of natural origin. Blade length can usually be adjusted. The Jedi order made less powerful lightsabers for use during training for fairly obvious reasons. Likewise they're also rigged to turn off if dropped.

Non Force-users can use Lightsabers, but generally can't make the best of them. Of course, the same can be said about any untrained individual learning to use a certain weapon, but the gatekeeping isn't just about training. It's also about understanding how to use it and control the balance in minute ways (some sources even claiming the plasma blade produces a gyroscopic effect) without having to always switch your grip over such a small area. An affinity to the Force also gives a lightsaber user a measure of subconscious precognition, which lets them to predict where a blow will come from and let them effectively parry blaster fire.

In legends early Lightsabers known as Protosabers were powered by a fanny pack sized power cell worn on the belt connected to them by a cable.

Contrary to what [[/d/|certain people]] would tell you or the hentai would lead you to believe, lightsabers do not vibrate in that way.

== Lightsaber Combat ==

=== Hilt Variants ===
*'''Protosaber:''' The prototypes that were made during the transition from Force powered katana to beam of plasma suspended by magnetics and powered by Force Imbued crystals. Power packs had to be carried on the belt and connected by cables before sufficient miniature technology was developed.
*'''Crossguard:''' A lightsaber with a bit of cortosis or other lightsaber resistant material as a crossguard. Despite how obvious this is and the era of cortosis being obtainable matches the era where lightsaber fights were reasonably common, they are barely mentioned.
**'''Lightsaber Crossguard''': aka the Kylo Ren. One regular lightsaber acts as the main blade, two small ones go out perpendicular to the main one to act as a crossguard and vents for excess energy. If one were to ask about energy consumption, these things would probably be the bottom of the list when it comes to energy efficiency. Not very useful as an actual crossguard but has shown some use as an additional cutting edge; the crossguard can be used to cut in the enemy if the two are clashing in melee. If Kylo Ren's saber is anything to go by, it's also terribly unbalanced and difficult to use due to having three exhausts. While many use it as an example of why Disney-era Star Wars sucks, it was in fact invented in Legends material.
*'''The Darksaber''': Truly unique among lightsabers, as only one of its kind was built- by a Mandalorian Jedi, no less. For one, the blade is, well, black, with a glowing white edge to it, with the additional effect that makes it seem like the blade is "electrified". Secondly, the blade shape is along the lines of a tradition single-edge sword- to be specific, a falchion or a seax. This is also reflected in the hilt design. The blade is also considered to be the Excalibur of Star Wars, as the one who wields it has the potential to unite the clans of Mandalorian Space and declare themselves Mand'alor (basically the king/queen of all Mandalorians)
*'''Lightsaber Shoto:''' A smaller lightsaber for use as an off-hand weapon for dual-wielding Jedi who did not have the balls to carry two regular sabers, or as a main weapon for small-sized wielders.
**'''Guard Shoto:''' Essentially a short lightsaber built into a tonfa hilt, allowing for unique techniques such as blocking or trapping.
**'''Dual Phase:''' A lightsaber that can swap between short and long length.
*'''Curved Lightsaber:''' A hilt design preferred by duelists, allowing for greater finesse. It was based on the hilt of an actual fencing sword since Christopher Lee knew how to fence and holding a hilt like that was most natural for him.
*'''Great Lightsaber:''' The exact opposite of a shoto. Much larger hilts and longer blades designed for larger individuals, or those who prefer a more brute force style.
*'''Saberstaff''': Two lightsabers stuck together. Best known for being used by Darth Maul, but was initially invented by the Old Sith Empire, long before the Rule of Two.
**'''Lightsaber Pike:''' A double bladed variant with a much longer hilt, giving more reach. They are sometimes depicted as being foldable for easy storage. Confusingly shares a name with the actual "blade on long stick" below.
**'''Interlocking Lightsabers:''' Two lightsabers that can be combined at the base to make a saberstaff.
*'''Lightsaber Pike:''' A long, saber-resistant shaft often with a shorter lightsaber blade at the end; creating a large, but cumbersome weapon with decent reach. An uncommon sight, used by the Knights of Zakuul often paired with a shield like a [[Hoplite]]. Also used by some of the Emperor's Shadow Guards. Confusingly shares a name with the "two blades on one long stick" above.
*'''Lightwhips:''' Lightsabers with longer, [[What|flexible]] beams, making defense against them more difficult. In fluff this flexibility is often traded against a weaker beam strength. The story for its initial appearance was blatantly inspired by stories of [[Wikipedia:Miyamoto Musashi|Miyamoto Musashi]] beating Shishido Baiken and his kusarigama, with Luke figuring out the solution to "enemy wraps up your sword" is "have a second sword".
*'''Inquisitorial Lightsaber:''' A double-bladed variant with a unique hilt design allowing it to spin on its axis introduced in the Disney-era show Rebels. [[What|Also allows its wielder to spin it and fly like a helicopter,]] because ''"I'm Mary Poppins y'all!"''
* '''Blaster Hilt:''' A perfect combination of [[choppy]] and [[shooty]]. This jury rigged thing was created by Ezra from Rebels and looks kind of like a mechanical riding saber's handle, but with a blaster barrel attached to the top of it so he can shoot dudes before chopping them up.

===Rifles===
Yeah. Two different models of "ranged lightsabers" actually existed at different points in time. Listed in order of publication until more are revealed. The real reason for their existence is because other franchises like [[Dune]], [[Warhammer 40k]], [[Star Trek]], [[Doctor Who]], Mobile Suit Gundam and even recent [[XCOM]]s had ranged physic weapons long before Star Wars did. None of these weapons have appeared in the movies or tv yet. Because a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first certain hack] doesn't understand what the term "anti-hero" actually means.

*'''Lightsaber Rifle:''' This weapon was used by Jedi Master Jocasta Nu against Darth Vader. [[fail|It only had five shots before the saber loaded into the top of the rifle melted.]]

*'''Farkiller:''' If you thought the Jedi were morons before. The story behind this thing will multiply that opinion two fold or more. [[awesome|The Farkiller was a Sniper Rifle that used Lightsaber technology to kill targets kilometers away.]] The Jedi excommunicated both it's creator and primary user than they were killed when a war broke out, because reasons. [[Ork_Snipers| They were most likely assassinated by the Jedi themselves.]]

=== Lightsaber Styles ===
Fighting with a lightsaber is more than simply swinging your laser sword and hoping to hit the enemy while blocking his attacks. Lightsaber combat is considered a true martial art that developed different styles and forms over the ages as eras moved on and needs changed. There are a number of canonical ''(and non canonical)'' lightsaber combat styles with their own pros and cons.

*'''Form I - Schii-Cho:''' When lightsabers were invented, the first style was based primarily on existing sword-fighting techniques. Schii-Cho was the ''basic'' lightsaber style learned by most beginners and is the gateway to lightsaber combat with most later styles building upon its principles. Few actually go on to master the style properly, which is unfortunate because Form I is a perfectly functional style in its own right - in other words, it's the "boring but practical" form. It is best suited for melee combat against multiple opponents, though it pales horribly against ranged weapons. Kit Fisto (the Green-Abe-Sapien-with-dreadlocks guy mostly seen in Episdoe III and Clone Wars) was said to have mastered and stuck to this form in the Visual Dictionnaries. Obi Wan's fell back on Schii-Cho in his last fight against Darth Maul in ''Rebels'', much to the latter's shock.
*'''Form II - Makashi:''' If Form I is "sword fighting," then Form II is "fencing." It uses a more precise and elegant method of attack and defense versus the sweeping movements of Form I, though still operating on traditional "sword form" techniques. Makashi is a style best suited for one-on-one combat, though as with Form I it offers no defense against ranged weapons. Its name is Japanese for "to defeat." Count Dooku's style.
*'''Form III - Soresu:''' Someone somewhere noted that the first two forms were useless against ranged weapons and moved to correct this, creating an all-new style that catered to defense and was the first style to truly teach how to block blaster bolts. In melee combat it placed emphasis on small, efficient movements, outlasting your opponent(s), and waiting for them to tire and/or make a mistake. Its inoffensive nature marked it as the ultimate expression of the Jedi philosophy but meant that inexperienced initiates were left without effective means of attack. Obi Wan took up this style after Qui-Gonn's death and is considered THE master of Soresu.
*'''Form IV - Ataru:''' Forms IV and V were developed concurrently, as lightsaber masters looked at Form III and decided it was far too passive a combat form, as simply waiting for your enemy to tire out isn't really an effective means of fighting. "Ataru" therefore was developed as an "aggressive" form that placed emphasis on overwhelming attack; teaching its practitioners to strike relentlessly and acrobatically from multiple angles, requiring high agility and endurance on the part of its users. The main problems with Ataru are that it is not suitable for long encounters, or for closed environments. Also, its emphasis on acrobatics means its strikes often lack power, and thus are easy to parry by another lightsaber, especially if the defender is on firm footing or physically stronger than the attacker. Its name is Japanese for "to hit." Yoda uses Ataru exclusively, as does Anakin Skywalker in episode 2.
*'''Form V - Shien:''' As with Ataru, the developers of Shien looked at Form III and said that being passive was a poor form of offense. But rather than overwhelming an opponent with relentless attack as with Form IV, the Shien style maintained its emphasis on defense but taught how to redirect an opponent's strikes, moving around the battlefield and creating their own opportunities for counterattack. It is considered to be one of the better styles for combat against ranged opponents and multiple attackers, but is less suited as a dueling style (because it requires superior strength, see below).　Its name is Japanese for "support", which is fitting for a non-offensive style. Ahsoka Tano and Galen Marek use Shien while using their lightsabers in a reverse-grip.
**'''Djem So:''' The more physically demanding variant of Form V, the style is still grounded in the same principles of controlling your opponent and creating opportunities for counter attack, but is more suited for fighting against a single opponent as it instructs the user to physically dominate the fight by battering their way through the guard of the opponent, or opening the opponent's attacks into new opportunities to strike. As a true evolution of lightsaber-on-lightsaber combat; a Djem So practitioner ''with sufficient strength'' could overcome a skilled Makashi duelist. The specific failings of Djem So are that it is criticized for having a lack of mobility (powerful strikes require a firm footing), and is less useful for physically weak practitioners. Anakin Skywalker, learning his lesson of not recklessly charging a master of the dueling form (that is, Dooku) after losing an arm, primarily uses Djem So during the Clone Wars and episode 3. As Darth Vader, he uses a mix of Djem So, Soresu, and Makashi. The close of Anakin's fight with Bariss in Clone Wars is Djem So at its finest.
*'''Form VI - Niman:''' The "Moderate" form that combined elements from all of the previous forms into a single hybrid style, allowing its practitioners to learn the basics of lightsaber combat in all areas, eventually replacing Form I as the ''"standard"'' style by the time of the Clone Wars. Critics point out that this form is insufficiently demanding, provides no decisive edge in battle, and is ill-suited to both dueling and the open battlefield. However, Form VI does encourage its adherents to be highly flexible and to incorporate more Force techniques in combat, encouraging the user to strike and guard telekinetically and control the fight intuitively. This made ultimate mastery of the Niman style very difficult, so as with Form I, most initiates eventually gravitated towards a different style to suit their preferences. However, true masters of the art, like Exar Kun (who is pretty much unmatched in melee except by freakishly powerful beings like Vitiate and Luke) are incomparable in combat, having no weakness in form to exploit, closing the advantage gap by sheer skill.
**'''Jar'Kai:''' Technically the "Jar'Kai tactic" refers to fighting with two lightsabers at once, regardless of the chosen lightsaber form. However the ''"Jar'Kai Style"'' was a specific predecessor to the Niman style that existed before the actual invention of the lightsaber and was later incorporated into the Form VI curriculum. Therefore while Form VI is a style unto itself, those who wish to learn how to use two lightsabers often find that the principles of Niman lend themselves well to two-weapon combat, occasionally combined with a Shien style reverse grip.
*'''Form VII - Juyo:''' The "Ferocity" form, and is one of the most physically and emotionally demanding forms. It was designed specifically for lightsaber duels, being compared to the directness of Form V combined with the energy of Form IV, although the movements come across as chaotic and erratic, often appearing raw and unpolished, the goal was to be unpredictable and vicious, with a heavy emphasis on offense. Juyo was sometimes labelled a "Sith style," Form VII is particularly aggressive and opens the users mind up to the dark side of the force if they are not careful. Darth Maul and Emperor Palpatine used Juyo in the movies.
**'''Vaapad:''' The Mace Windu variant of Juyo that was only perfected much later. Vaapad was exactly the same lightsaber style as Juyo with a different mindset; Vaapad requires the practitioner to exert a certain measure of control by channeling the emotion back into the fight rather than letting it overcome the user. Though this was difficult and required a constant stream of Force use to achieve, therefore it was actively discouraged by the Jedi council as being too risky to attempt.

Below is a chart comparing the strengths of the various forms in relation to each other, from the perspective of how they would spend points to buy what they're good at if each had 5 points to spend. Color coded points denoting some sort of mastery, and hollow stars denote half-points.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Form !! vs 1v1 !! vs Many !! vs Blasters !! Notes
|-
| Form I - Schii-Cho
| ★★☆
| ★★☆
|
| Starting form for beginners.
|-
| Form II - Makashi
| ★★★
| ★★
|
| For lightsaber duelists.
|-
| Form III - Soresu
| ★☆
| ★☆
| ★★
| Impenetrable defense. Won't lose, has difficulty winning.
|-
| Form IV - Ataru
| ★★★
| ★☆
| ☆
| [[Fist of the North Star|ATATATATATATATATATATA!]]
|-
| Form V - Shien
| ★★☆
| ★☆
| ★
| Djem So requires +4 Str.
|-
| Form VI - Niman
| ★★
| ★★
| ★
| Liberal use of force powers and perception.
|-
| Form VI - Jar'Kai
| ★★
| ★☆
| ★☆
| Dual wielding.
|-
| Form VII - Juyo
| ★★★☆
| ★
| ☆
| Feel the power of the dark side.
|-
|}

In the Legends Continuity, there are a number of other styles and techniques used in lightsaber combat:
*[[Meme|"I have the high ground"]] is an actual style... Or more appropriately a methodology called '''Sokan''' which teach the user how to use their environment to their advantage: bottling the enemy into small spaces to restrict movement, using open spaces to generate speed etc, and of course; gaining the advantage of higher terrain to limit your opponent's avenues of engagement while increasing your own.
*In a unique case of gamers getting shit done, even one fanon technique made its way into the continuity. '''Trakata''' is a technique which takes advantage of the fact you can turn a lightsaber on and off very quickly, allowing for rapidly re-positioning the blade through an opponent's guard. This was first named as a distinct technique in the [[Star Wars D20|Saga Edition RPG]], and since made its way into expanded universe materials.
*The Jedi Knight series of [[/v/|video games]] created the '''Fast''', '''Medium''', and '''Strong''' lightsaber styles for those trained in the New Republic Era, ostensibly as a gameplay mechanic, since three styles are easier to animate than seven or more. But this was later explained in EU materials as a necessity due to Luke's informal training and the scarcity of written materials following Order 66, meaning that New Jedi Order had to practically invent brand new styles based on the limited information available to them and unrelated melee combat techniques.
*The sideways Disney-canon guidebooks indicate that the Sith have access to all of the styles of the Jedi ''(aside from Vaapad)'' but have modified them to suit their purposes and have discarded elements as they feel necessary. Condensing the seven forms to only three: '''Strong:''' with its foundations in Djem So and physical domination, '''Fast:''' with a focus on footwork and precision, and finally '''Juyo:''' which remains unchained from the standard curriculum, lending credence to its status as the "Sith" style.
* '''Cho-Mai''': Disarming a foe by slicing off their hand. Of course you can technically do this with a regular sword, axe or whatever but between their cutting power and the automatic cauterization this option is a lot more viable if you have a lightsaber if your aim is to quickly and very emphatically neutralize a foe without actually killing them.

=== Lightsaber Colors ===
{{Topquote|So I said to George Lucas, 'You think maybe I can get a purple lightsaber?' He’s like, 'Lightsabers are green or lightsabers are red.' And I’m like, 'Yeah, but I want a purple one.'|Samuel L. Jackson}}
In the original films, the colors of Lightsaber blades hadn't any particular important role, other than Blue/Green = Good, Red = Bad. Green blades were added when Luke had a costume change for the third movie (Because the blue blade wouldn't have shown up well during the fight at the Sarlacc pit). Since then, other colors have been added through material outside the main movies (though the first new color to be added famously came about because Samuel L. Jackson wanted to stand out in the fighting pits on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones, so he got a purple blade).

* '''Blue:''' Blue Lightsabers are the most common color for padawans and initiates and is kind of the "aggressive" Jedi blade. Not to say that it's a violent color; it's more that the blue-wielding Jedi tend to be more martial and will more readily use their saber to defend their friends and allies. Most Jedi we know of has used a blue lightsaber, including Luke and Anakin Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Rey and so many more. The most notable blue lightsaber has got to be Anakin's Lightsaber which eventually found its way into the hands of Luke, until he lost it on Bespin, alongside about a handful of hand. It ''somehow'' ended up in the basement of Maz' castle where Rey took it over (infuriatingly, marketing now calls it "Rey's Lightsaber" - just take my life work why don't you. Some fans have gone to call it the "Skywalker Saber" in response).
* '''Green:''' The "wise" color, wielded by Jedi masters who take a distanced, scholarly approach to the Force and the galaxy at large. Green is almost always used by masters or thoughtful Jedi, in particular the ones that take a religious adherence to the Force and the Jedi way. Well-known wearers of green sabers are Luke after losing his father's lightsaber on Bespin, Qui-gon Jin and Yoda.
* '''Purple:''' Where the blue saber is martial, the purple saber is decidedly bloodthirsty. It's no coincidence that it's close to the Sith's red lightsabers in color, since the users of the ultra-rare purple sabers tend to be battle-loving warriors who dance on the edge of Dark Side methods. The only know bearer of a purple blade is <s>Samuel Motherfucking Jackson</s> Mace Windu, Jedi master and general during the prequel era, though Luke took up a purple shoto in the Legends continuity. One can also acquire purple lightsaber crystals in some of the video games and a very select few NPCs in those games use them (most notably in the MMO ''Star Wars The Old Republic'')
* '''Yellow:''' Used to be associated wtih Jedi Sentinels, those who tried to balance learning and combat, as well as the Jedi temple guardians. Rey shows up with a yellow lightsaber at the end of Ep. IX.
* '''Red:''' The color strongly associated with Sith. In the expanded universe continuity, this is because the lightsaber crystals that Sith use are synthetic, as they have no access to proper Kyber crystals and prefer to make ones infused with Dark Side energy. In-fact, before ''Attack of the Clones'' (and especially before the prequels entirely), it often treated Vader and later Maul's use of red as having no real meaning, leading to groups of darksiders like Jerec's band of Inquisitors (''Dark Forces II'') and the Sith corrupted Jensaarai (''I, Jedi'') using every color possible, while some prominent Jedi used red blades. In the Disney continuity, the Sith use the force to dominate the living Kyber crystals, causing the change to red in a process known as "bleeding".
* '''White:''' An unnatural Kyber crystal color like the red one, but created by cleansing a Red Kyber crystal from Dark Side influence. Little is known about what they are like since few Jedi even get to see a white blade. Ahsoka Tano eventually ditch her blue saber for two white ones.
* '''Black:''' Exclusive to the Darksaber, a lightsaber made by the first Mandolarian Jedi. Because it responds to the user's emotions and state of mind, it allows non-force users to wield the blade effectively against lightsaber-armed force users.

== Issues with Lightsabers ==
{{Topquote|Arc trooper: Are you Jedi as good with blasters as you are with lightsabers?" "Obi-Wan: Better. We only use lightsabers to make fights more equitable.|The Cestus Deception, a [[Star Wars]] novel}}
Specifically, weightless blades. Because light weighs pretty much as low a mass as you can get not counting your dick (oh snap!), the center of balance of the blade is likely somewhere near the end of the handle (going by that's where the battery is, and that they likely weigh more than the blade projector). The problem with this is that you are essentially wielding a lever which will, upon being hit, flop all over the place because your hands function as a hinge. This might be less the case when used in two hands but when used in one your sword will go all over the place when it is struck. There ''is'' some in-story stuff to justify this, mostly based around how the arc-waves that form the blade do have a kind of mass that balances it correctly, but this is mostly hand-waving the issues.

Another point is the double lightsaber. Based on a variety of unbladed [[pole-arm]]s like the Gun or the Bo, it has a double-sized handle with the laser parts coming out from both ends. The problem with this style is that it gives the wielder only a limited surface to work with without burning or chopping their hands off. Maybe this can be discredited as training in the Force and all that jazz (plus Ray Park, the actor and stunt performer for Darth Maul, is REALLY good at what he does, in fact it was his input that resulted in the double lightsaber's handle being the length it is, since the original concept had a much shorter one), but this would still involve swinging a large dangerous rave stick very close to your body, and a good number of these styles involve holding the weapon near the end to gain great striking power at the tip of the weapon like with a [[pole-arm]]. With a lightsaber this is not possible, though not needed since it can just cut through anything by touching a target and letting the plasma do all the work.

And the lightwhip and all other kinds of outlandish lightsabers can go right fuck themselves. And don't use the Force argument; if someone focuses on holding a plasma whip properly they will get shot because, super powerful or not, you still have to think. The "lightcrossguard" on the lightsaber of Kylo Ren certainly looked silly, but for one, they gave him an edge in close combat letting him use them to burn his opponent in a bind, and secondly, expanded material say they are vents required because his lightsaber is unstable. You'd think that his boss might fix that problem for him, but that would be using logic.

One of the biggest issues with lightsabers is shown in the side material of Star Wars itself. They block most energy blots well enough. Assassins who specialize in killing Jedi use slug throwers to bypass their ability to block blaster bolts. So when the users tries to deflect bullets, a Jedi instead has to deal with very hot goo coming at them at hypersonic speeds. So Railguns and Gauss weapons would easily defeat them.

Star Wars writers also ignored most energy weapons would have larger bore sizes or a higher rate of fire than a blaster. As blocking them would just cause thousands of micro-explosions that sets it's victim alight with plasma while knocking them flat on their asses or into the nearest solid object. IRL a plasma bolt travels at nearly 3000 times the speed of sound. Way faster than those fired from Blasters. A proper laser firearm (or those firing exotic particles that move at speeds faster than light) would make short work of most Sith and Jedi. Which is the only reason lasers are only used on vehicles and other energy weapons barley show up at all.

== Countering Lightsabers ==
A lot is made about the lightsabers ability to cut through most known materials given enough time and exposure. They aren't god-tier weapons though, and there are several materials that are capable of not only resisting lightsabers, but blocking or redirecting them outright.

*'''Cortosis:''' the material often first thought of when people want to counter lightsabers. Cortosis in its refined form will immediately shut down a lightsaber that comes into contact with it. Whether this shorts out a lightsaber briefly or for a few minutes varies from source to source, but the property is imminently desirable nonetheless. The main problem is that mining and refining cortosis causes [[Cancer]] like some space asbestos, so it is hazardous to work with and most sources have been depleted in the era where Jedi and enemy force users were more common so it's quite rare by the era of the films. Not only that, but pure cortosis is considered to be quite brittle and unsuitable for a lot of applications. Less-refined variants will not shut down a lightsaber, but they are impervious to lightsaber damage, making it still useful for blades and armor.
*'''Phrik:''' a material useful for its ability to disperse any form of energy, not just lightsaber blades, and was known to be highly durable ''and'' light. Phrik weapons are most notably used by the droid Magnaguards of the Clone Wars with their electrically arcing staff weapons.
*'''Beskar Iron:''' Used by the Mandalorians, most notably in their armor but also in their blades and starship hulls. Beskar iron is considered practically indestructible, not merely to lightsabers but practically everything. The main problems with Beskar is that the ore is only found on the planet Mandalore and its moon Concordia, and the techniques of working with it are secrets of Mando smiths, making it virtually impossible to find anywhere else. To add in the difficulty of obtaining it, Mandos have a MASSIVE FUCKING HATRED of non-Mandos (especially Jedi due to bad blood in Legends and canon) having anything made of Beskar, as they consider it part of their culture. So they refuse to make any for foreigners, and see others having any on them as a huge insult.
*'''BFG:''' When all else fails, the old Imperial Guard proverb of just blow it to hell works fine. Spamming enough shots, or even just firing one big shot, will usually be enough to either overwhelm the opponent or cause an explosion when contacting the Jedi so powerful it'll kill them outright.
*'''Flamethrowers:''' KILL IT WITH FIRE! On a more serious note, flamethrowers are great, because no matter what manner of Matt Ward level bullshit you pull out of your ass, no amount of logic bending is going to allow a lightsaber to block a flame. The only problem is making sure the Jedi stay in place, but meh. Just lure them into a corridor and burn them in the confines. The upside is that gaseous flamethrowers exist, so they can't as easily be shot back at you
** Of course, Jedi also have the potential to throw jellied fuels (and even gas if the Jedi is strong in the force) back with the force, somewhat negating these advantages. Breath masks are also quite common in the Star Wars galaxy, so you can't flush them out: you're gonna have to get PTSD and actually light them on fire, or use a lot of fuel.
*'''Slugthrowers''' Yes, even traditional projectile firearms can counter a lightsaber-wielding Jedi or Sith. You see, blaster bolts are actually a fair bit slower than a chemically powered FMJ round, with the tradeoff being that the power packs can hold a lot more ammunition. This means that while a Jedi can generally see and either block or deflect a bolt with his saber, the same can't be said for bullets, especially those coming from an automatic action-style of gun. And even if the Jedi did manage to get a saber in front of one, what ends up happening is that essentially they've turned the speeding bullet into a molten shotgun spread still traveling at the same speed.
*'''Sonic Blaster''' Similar to the above, a lightsaber can't stop sonic blasts. They were the preferred option when fighting Jedi was a common occurrence, as they were about as powerful as a slugthrower but with the capacity of a normal blaster. They also work better underwater—but are completely ineffective in space.

== Influences on the rest of /tg/ culture ==
The lightsaber is, as previously said, a very iconic weapon that has had considerable influence on weapons throughout sci-fi and fantasy. Though we cannot compile all of them, here are a few likely ones.

* [[Power Weapon#Power Sword|Power Sword]]: Games Workshop could't stand to miss out on the opportunity to add their own version of a lightsaber, which they very much did with a power sword. It's similar, in that it has a dispersion field that turns on around the blade, but differs in that it only can reliably penetrate certain armors or materials, unlike the lightsaber. On the same point, Lightsabers appear to be rather limited, whereas power weapons can be attached to more and differing vehicles, like titans or warships. As to whether a Lightsaber or Power Weapon would win, it falls down to the weapon or the wielders. The power field can theoretically blow away the plasma blade by molecular destabilization but it depends on the users.
* [[Force Weapons#Force Sword|Force Sword]]: A weapon very much like a Lightsaber, but also distinct. It is a weapon that is enhanced if the user is psychic, but can still function as a sword or beatstick (albeit an excellent one as they need to be built extremely well, in the RPGs it counts as a Best Quality Monomolecular edge weapon if not used by psykers) in a pinch. Force weapons in DoW are pulled back to the User when dropped, which is very reminiscent of Jedi and Lightsabers in general. IT is possible to place power fields on force weapons but this is very expensive.
* [[Melta#Fusion Blades|Fusion Blade]]: GW couldn't resist the opportunity to rip Star Wars off though. Enter the Fusion Blades, which are the [[T'au|weeb]] melta swords. They spurt out energy that has the power to take out tanks. To be fair, the Jedi never had Crisis suits or made their lightsabers the size of a man, but still. We all know what they are.
* [[Eragon]]: A dumb fantasy rip off of both Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings, the main character is allowed to carry a Blue flame sword. It's dumb and it should feel dumb.
* Control Freak from Teen Titans: Not the cancer one, but the good one. The man is literally a walking fa/tg/guy, and wields a quad bladed lightsaber as a weapon. Also dresses like a Jedi.
* Kiba: An obscure anime that basically is a Grimdark version of Pokémon where the monster trainers also fight each other with energy swords instead of standing around giving their monster orders.
* Sun Blade: A magic item from Dungeons and Dragons that is a sword hilt that generates a blade of energy that does radiant damage.
* Beam melee weapons: From the long running franchise Mobile Suit Gundam. In-universe, the first Mobile Suit (the name used in the series for the giant robots) armed with a beam melee weapon is the titular Gundam RX-78. It carried two beam sabers in its backpack, which also served to recharge them when not in use. It could also be armed with a beam javelin (a long rod that emitted a larger, spiked beam and was suited for throwing). In-universe this was a game-changer: other MS were armed with heat weapons (i.e. melee weapons with super-heated edges for better cutting through armour) which could be pretty bulky with an exposed power source. Beam weapons were lightweight, compact when inactive and they could cut through just about any type of armour around. Mass-producing beam weapons (and mobile suits to wield them) was one of the major turning points of the war in the original series but the vast majority of the time the original anime shows them used pretty much exclusively for destroying battleships, with only a single beam duel that's cut in the movie version. Later series got really crazy, with beam scimitars, beam daggers, beam whips, beam fans...yeah, shit goes crazy over at [[/m/]].

[[Category: Star Wars]][[Category: Weapons]]

StarCraft

2023-05-09T18:13:28Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Terran Characters */

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[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UEDs expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Depsite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb inplanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcrafts Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket. Little of that complexity or interesting stuff remains in the games however, where she is a very bland, forgettable villain that throws edgy one-liners (not even [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Grey DeLisle aka Princess Azula can save her character]] ) and an even blander protagonist in her own very mediocre campaign.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''':

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''':

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

StarCraft

2023-05-09T18:01:09Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* Terran Characters */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:StarCraft 1998-2013.jpg|400px|thumb|right|The 90's were a good time. From left to right: Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.]]
'''StarCraft''' is Real Time Strategy [[video game]], made by [[Blizzard]]. Despite being THE most balanced asymmetrical RTS ever and the South Korean national religion, StarCraft is most famous in [[neckbeard]] society for the "It's all stolen from [[Warhammer 40000|WH40K]]" holy war.

Long story short, there are rumors, denied by both Blizzard and [[GW]], that StarCraft was initially developed as a WH40K game, until GW for some [[Derp|retarded]] reason rescinded their permission to use the 40K universe (<s>like they don't want a part of the bazillion tons of money Blizzard tend to earn for their games</s>back then PC gaming was something only a handful of nerds did, compared to consoles, and Blizzard wasn't an established powerhouse, yet; 1998 was the year PC gaming started booming with HL, SC, etc.). [[/v/]] tends to accuse GW of stealing Blizzard's ideas, which sounds silly at first, until you see the current Tyranid design. Prior to SC, the nids looked very different, as in, they looked even sillier than the Space Marines do now.... until you then realize that the Zerg also looked really different pre-Starcraft 2, looking more bizzare and alien like the original Tyranid designs, whereas Starcraft 2 made the new Zerg very Nid-like (As the new Tyranid aesthetic had been established before Starcraft 2 was even announced officially) and , with things like segmented carapaces and draconic features in the new bugs, whereas the old Zerg were generally even more insectoid than the Tyranids of the time (Who were more giger-esque, rather then the weird dragon-dino-bugs we have now). And you wouldnt want to be a [[/b/|/b/tard]] who confuses the difference between the massive art and design shift from 2nd to 3rd edition that is clearly accidental in being after the release of Starcraft with graphical (and tabletop model detail) as neither species of alien locusts got any real design (non-crunch) differences since then, unless growing 4 more spikes is as big of a change as going from [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gA0hnkRNbss/Tzu86RwIMWI/AAAAAAAABdE/IEgaPO5GkQw/s400/warrior_Metal_2nd.jpeg this] to [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VV_PyFTrfRw/Tzu88DgylrI/AAAAAAAABdo/xoUWM6vz7SU/s1600/Hive_Tyrant.gif this].

To be fair, there is a lot in common between the Starcraft and 40k universes; but if you remove your fanboy glasses it's obviously because [[Starship Troopers|both settings are shameless rip-offs of]] the entire sci-fi genre with less then 0.1% original content - it's not like there weren't human space marines, ravenous, rapidly adaptable bug monsters, and psychic alien warriors before 40K. Deep inside your heart you know it to be true.

Besides, anyone who takes the time to play both games will immediately notice that the actual rules and gameplay are radically different, even when ignoring the fact that one is a video game and one is a tabletop game. StarCraft is very much based around the collecting and spending of resources, shifting army compositions, microing individual units, scouting, etc. 40k on the other hand has you pick out your army before a game even starts, uses randomized elements (dice), and most of the decision making is in how you position your units and engage the enemy. Yes, there is overlap, but a lot of that is simply because they're both strategy games. There is also a huge emphasis on scouting and counter-scouting in StarCraft, where gathering and denying information and outright deceiving your opponent makes or breaks matches, while in 40K like only two armies even have the ability to hide anything (and it's only a minor details, like whether your Deathwing deep strikes turn one or two), and denying your opponent any information is against the rules. Regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off GW, or GW ripped off Blizzard, or both, the actual gameplay experiences are quite distinct.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of 40k or SC, stop bitching about all that "stolen" shit. Doing it marks you as a fool, and by doing it you make all your fellow fans look retarded. 40k is a blatant Mega crossover fanfic, 90% ripped off from 2000AD, [[Dune]], [[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]], [[Doom]], Alien, [[Starship Troopers]], [[Star Wars]], [[1984]], Event Horizon, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos Hyperion] ([[Hyperion|not this one]]), [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Anime]] about [[Mecha]] and so on, all pasted straight onto [[Warhammer Fantasy]] anyway. Recent studies show that people are unconsciously "inspired" by things far more than we know and that it's possible to plant and predict "original" ideas from people down to pretty detailed levels, all the while they think they just came up with a new idea. So next time you want to complain, try to remember the last time YOU had a truly original good idea, and not one heavily influenced by the media you enjoy.

==The Story in Brief==
Starcraft takes place in the Koprulu sector (named after a prominant dynasty in the Ottoman Empire, go figure), a distant part of the galaxy where abandoned human colonies <s>are disrupted from their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy</s> find new ways to continue with their usual routine of civil war and internecine piracy by the sudden attack of a race of alien lizard-bugs that take over and mutate planets to suit their needs, determined to infest the galaxy. Things only get worse when a bunch of stuffy psychic aliens show up, determined to destroy the aforementioned lizard-bugs - and not caring much if they kill humans in the process. Havoc ensues.

==The Races==
===[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|The Terrans]]===
====Terran Gameplay====
[[File: Best Space Marine Art Ever Made.jpeg|thumb|right|400px|Freehand paint this on a mini.]]
Terrans are the "jack of all trades" of the three factions. They use a combination of specialized power armor suits, tanks, fliers and mecha in battle, and are the only faction whose vanilla trooper is a ranged fighter rather than a melee fighter. Terrans are the absolute champions in turtling up and defending, and tend to have great counter-attack and [[Steel Rain|drop tools]], but on the other hand their defense is reliant almost entirely on units, which means they must leave parts of their armies at home if there is harass threat, while other factions can just spam defensive buildings. Their core buildings can actually take off and fly to new terrain to move the entire base, though they are slow as molasses. Their unique racial tactic is to launch base-annihilating mini-nuke missiles with the aid of a Ghost or Specter, [[Vindicare|a telepathic invisible sniper rifle-wielding super-commando]].

The main problem of the Terrans in competitive play is that their late game suffers from "win more" syndrome. Nukes and battlecruisers are such resource intensive overkill that they simply will not reverse a disadvantage. The Terrans have their biggest advantage with the unlocking of firebats and siege tanks, or when they first gain shuttles.

====Terran Lore====
Right around our current present in the Starcraft universe things went cyberpunk before hard veering into being [[Starship Troopers]]. The United Power League, later called the United Earth Directorate, is the latter and they began to genocide all other genres of humanity resulting very quickly in 400,000,000 deaths until suddenly deciding to gather them up the remaining 40,000 that were physically fit and sealing them into four massive ships along with cryogenically frozen sperm, egg cells, and cloning technology on top of it and sending them all into the Koprulu System to colonize it.

In reality it was more of a social and evolutionary (since many mutants and the first psychics were in the population) experiment than actual planned colonization. The result is most Terrans being somewhere between well-dressed lunatics, dirty space pirates, and rednecks in power armor (Starcraft 1 was almost entirely made up of the latter two, the third mostly disappeared or cleaned up a great deal by Starcraft 2...possibly because they already died in droves in 1's cutscenes).

Two ships crashed on the jungle planet Umoja, the occupants of one all dying leaving the other with a surplus of resources. They formed the “wealthy, democratic, heroic” factions (which you never get to play as). One ship crashed into the “desolate but rich” planet Moria forming the “industrious corporate” factions. One crashed on Tarsonis, becoming the “evil and roguishly heroic” factions (which you almost entirely play as). Specifically Tarsonis became the Confederacy, which was aggressive and resembled an Alabama version of the UPL. They skirmished back and forth with the other factions and put down insurrections constantly until encountering the Zerg and Protoss at around the same time.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a planetary magistrate assigned to the remote world of Mar Sara. There, with the help of local Marshall James "Jim" Raynor, you encounter the first attack of the Zerg, and witness nearby planet Chau Sara being [[Exterminatus]]ed by the Protoss fleet for being infested with Zergs; in your flight to escape the planet before the Zerg devour all humans, you are abandoned by the ruling Terran government, the Confederacy. This leads to you allying with the rebel group known as the Sons of Korhal, and turning on the Confederacy... only for the Sons' leader, Arcturus Mengsk, to backstab you by using the Zerg as a living weapon to overthrow the Confederacy, proclaim himself Emperor Mengsk of "The Terran Dominion", and abandons one of his own agents, Sarah Kerrigan, to the Zerg. Raynor, who was kinda sweet on Kerrigan, turns on Mengsk and runs off. By the Protoss campaign you learn that Raynor and his band of pirates have become the buddies of a diverse group of Protoss united to stop the Zerg regardless of the rest of their race’s bullshit politics, and he stays behind on a suicide mission to give the Protoss a chance to escape their dying homeworld.

In the expansion, Brood War, you play as a ranking captain in the United Earth Directorate fleet, subordinated to Admiral Gerard DuGalle, sent to investigate what became of the lost colonists and bring them back under Directorate control and pacify the Zerg and the Protoss. The mission was partially successful until the Terran colonists, Protoss and Zerg formed a desperate alliance and defeated the UED. You and the rest of the UED expedition force are ultimately wiped out to the last man by Kerrigan(more on ''her'' later) in the final episode of Brood War. In the Zerg campaign you find Raynor is alive and well, and bring his pirates into the aforementioned alliance before it breaks apart.

Novels and comics fill in the gap. The Dominion gets as evil as it can be, Raynor turns to heavy drinking, and a lot of small stories that don’t tie into anything bigger after the story ends occur other than multiple ones creating and expanding on the character Nova who becomes the secondary main Terran character after Raynor.

In the Terran-focused sequel, Wings of Liberty, you play as James "Jim" Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders. They're a rebellion group that seeks to bring down the Dominion and destroy the Queen of Blades (or well...sort of. Despite Jim swearing he'll kill Kerrigan in Brood War after betraying and killing his Protoss buddy Fenix, he now downgraded to saving her instead. This is mainly due to the lack of any other alive Zerg characters in the setting). Raynor builds up the strength of his pirate militia into an actual faction again, agrees to listen to his Protoss buddy Zeratul regarding some prophesies, then greatly reduces Mengsk’s political power and destroys his alliances by revealing information on how exactly Mengsk took power (The offical dominion version has it that Mengsk defeated the Zerg on the Confederate home World, in truth he lured them there with a psionic device and nuked the planet to make himself look like a hero, also using the opportunity to tie up loose ends by betraying Kerrigan and Raynor, leaving them to die, which, as outlined here, royally backfired as SC2 went on). He ends the campaign by helping Mengsk’s son attack the heart of Kerrigan’s Swarm and de-Zerg her like Zeratul told him to do.
Because Blizzard loves introducing [[Cheese]], the player gets access to lots of campaign exclusive stuff like stronger versions of each unit and campaign exclusive upgrades a ton of units. They featured a few too many units in the campaign with some being useful only for missions they were introduced, something fixed in later campaigns.

Terrans feature heavily in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns of SC2 as well. Kerrigan Zergs herself up again, but without any ancient gods mucking around in her brain (see the Zerg entry) after she thinks Raynor is dead. She starts fighting the universe again, coincidentally mostly through insane factions of cultists from both Protoss and Terrans, this time just to regain her strength then finds out Raynor is alive and rescues him. He swears to kill her again, then a few missions later he joins her in killing Mengsk. Mengsk’s son takes over and turns the Dominion into a more morally grey faction. The Terrans later all join up with the Protoss to kill the ancient god shit (see Protoss entry).
In the Co-Op Starcraft 2 content which take place during the Protoss campaign it was stated that the events are non-canon (since you can play as characters like Mengsk and Tychus who would be dead and characters like Alarik who are still enemies at that point) but the general events are supported by content that actually is canon. More lore is revealed in the paragraph-long text blurbs for cosmetic items as well as some short stories and comics. The general gist is setting up Starcraft 3 plots like Raynor’s chief scientist starting a Terran/Protoss cult worshiping a sapient planet, intelligent Zerg seeding Terran worlds and seemingly starting to slowly make intelligent hybrids, and Mengsk’s son setting up a more united humanity since the United Earth Directorate is still big enough to wipe out the sector and will eventually return. There is also a Protoss/Terran shared colony, a faction of renegade robots with humanlike AI, a faction of robot Zerg, and new factions rising in newly colonized worlds. Raynor is missing and his pirates have merged into other factions especially Mengsk’s son’s Dominion, so Nova is the main character now.

Most of the Terran aesthetic comes from Chris Metzen, far more than most Blizzard properties. As a teenager he apparently wrote stories and made art about some story about a cowboy marshal during the second American civil war, this time in space. Most of the ideas were recycled into Starcraft, with the exception of the main character who was split between Jim Raynor and much later the character Soldier 76 (the original character name) from [[Overwatch]]. So if you wonder why there is a Confederacy that is full of toothless hillbillies in space wearing grey fighting the blue guys, that's why.

The Terrans also feature the most hilariously underpowered variant of the [[Space Marine|Power-armoured soldier in space]]-archetype in all of Sci-Fi, where for some reason guys (and gals) in powered armour the weight of a truck are even less effective than a Guardsman of the [[Imperial Guard]] and this is decidedly not the result of the opposition being as batshit overpowered as in 40k, it's just fun [[Grimdark]] that the average infantryman's giant armour is about as useful for protection as a soldier's uniform during the age of flintlocks (while the guns firing on them are ''much'' better) and having medics around them which can magically heal injuries in moments makes them live over nine seconds in combat. There can a point be made that in-universe, the Marines are more or less conscripted militia that receive basic, if any, training and are acting more like a hyper-militarized police force and the suits themselves not really designed with combat in mind (they're outright stated to have the main purpose of providing environmental protection) since that's what the ships, mechas and other gizmos are for.

====Terran Units====
'''SCV:''' A utility exosuit used to mine minerals, transport refined vespene gas, construct buildings and repair damaged structures and machinery. This unique ability to heal mechanized troops makes them incredibly useful.

'''MULE:''' A mining drone introduced in SC2 as a summon from an Orbital Command. It can mine faster than a SCV but has a timed life, and mastering its deployment greatly helps your economy.

'''Marine:''' A generic grunt in powered armor armed with a gauss rifle that launches hyper-velocity spikes at people. Can take combat drugs that let it boost firing and movement speed in exchange for health, and in StarCraft II can take a shield that boosts survivability (which originally also would have included a purely-visual bayonet [[Derp|that fans complained about for some reason despite how the average Marine dies from drowning in Zergling swarms]] and got cut). Is notable for being the only starting troop that is a ranged attacker and can shoot air units.

'''Firebat:''' Arsonists and pyromaniacs strapped into specialized powered armor outfitted with flamethrowers. They specialize in burning through hordes of lightly armored organic units such as Zerg infantry, and like Marines, they can also do combat drugs to speed up the burninating. Their suits were bulked up in the sequel, making them much more durable but taking up more slots in the bunker and losing their stimpack ability. Their lore states that the gases used in their flamethrowers leak into the suit and drive the trooper nuts, so if they weren't pyromaniacs beforehand, they will be after a tour of duty. They were replaced by the Hellion and subsequently its Hellbat transformation but are still available in SC2's campaign.

'''Medic:''' Power-armored nurses who can heal organic troops... and that's it. They buff the survivability of other troopers, but can't fight themselves. They had a few support abilities in Brood War like their optical flare that reduces their target's vision to the minimum while disabling detection capability, and the ability to purge any negative effects from friendly units.

'''Ghost:''' Brainwashed psychics who can telepathically cloak themselves for invisibility and use telekinesis to give themselves the super-strength needed to wield hyper-powered sniper rifles. Used as assassins and covert troops. Their special gimmick is the ability to target nuclear bombardments. They died too easily in the original and had upgrades that were too expensive to be worth using. The sequel gave them better abilities, while only requiring their invisibility to be researched, put them much lower on the tech tree while making the more durable so they were much more useful. The lore behind Ghosts might be some of the most [[Grimdark]] parts of Starcrafts as a whole; they are usually taken as children under the guise of a patronage for psionically gifted kinds scheme, but psionic children being abducted by mercenaries or government agents (also usually Ghosts, going full circle) is also anything but unheard of. The children are then subjected to training and routine memory wipes to keep them docile and compliant, as well as neuroleptics and anti-psionic goodies. And the tragic thing? Especially with the last part, you're actually doing them a ''favor''. Psionics in Starcraft, especially the stronger ones, are very often unable to control their powers and suppressing them is often the only way they can even function as people. Kerrigan and Nova had both the problem that they could not sleep because other peoples thoughts kept crept creeping into their heads. Add to that that the Government essentially employs you as its own personal hitman (or -woman) and will keep erasing your identity, or what semblence of it remains after training, if you talk back, step out of line but sometimes also simply for shits and giggles. Being a Ghost is not fun in Starcraft.

'''Marauder:''' An SC2 retrofit of the Firebat that swaps the flamethrower for twin grenade launchers; they specialize in smashing structures and armored foes, but are kind of crappy against lightly armored grunts, in a reverse to the Firebats. Shockingly, they are the most sane and socially well-adjusted of Terran infantry in spite of their enthusiasm in blowing shit up, possibly because Terran forces decided arming madmen with weapons that would be effective against their infrastructure instead of just the numerous cannon fodder they don't care about was a final logical straw to them.

'''Reaper:''' Murderers and scumbags strapped into jet-propelled power armor, armed with dual pistols and explosives, and deployed as suicide-trooper scouts and fast attack squads. They are most often used to harass worker lines and damage your foe's economy, jumping up and down cliffs or rushing past defenders to get at the lightly armored workers.

'''Spectre:''' A Ghost upgraded with a psy-enhancing chemical, burning out the brainwashing mojo and giving them enhanced psionic attacks. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as an alternative to Ghosts.

'''Vulture:''' Grenade launcher-toting hoverbikes used as scouts and hit-and-run troopers. Can be upgraded to deploy spider mines which, instead of waiting for someone to step on them, suicide charge into nearby enemies. While replaced by the Hellion, it is usable in SC2's campaign where you can upgrade it to replenish its mines for a small mineral cost.

'''Siege Tank:''' Big badass tank that can also shapeshift into an immobile but more powerful mortar unit. The cannon in their mobile mode packs a decent punch and they're resistant to (but not immune) small arms but they are mostly used immobilizing themselves to fire their big gun, which has the highest damage of non suicide and non ability attack outside of campaigns [[Derp|and all in all means they aren't really used like tanks]]. It also has range that actually extends beyond the tank's line of sight so you need a spotter to take full advantage of it.

'''Goliath:''' [[Sentinel]]-like combat walkers outfitted for anti-ground and anti-air capabilities, later replaced by the Viking and Thor but available to be used in SC2's campaign. In the base SC game it suffered from trying to be good too many things and ended being good at nothing, starting in the Brood War expansion it was made into a dedicated anti-air unit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K_G4hyxCk| It also had legendarily shitty pathing.] When you get access to it in SC2's Terran campaign the campaign exclusive upgrades make it damn good at its job.

'''Hellion:''' SC2 replacement of the Vulture; a hyper-speedy land rover outfitted with a powerful flamethrower. Later became a transforming mech able to shapeshift into the humanoid exosuit mode "Hellbat" which functions similarly to the Firebat.

'''Thor:''' A humongous heavy artillery walker specialized in anti-air missile barrages. Initially had the ability to immobilize itself to briefly fire cannons that would destroy almost any ground unit, but expansions replaced that with the ability to switch between anti-air missiles for groups of weaker air units and big guns for single big air units. Is also infamous for its numerous [[Alpha Legion|canon conflicts with regard to its origin]], where you face one in a secret enemy lab [[Wat|despite it only being developed the previous day in the previous mission by your own chief engineer]].

'''Diamondback:''' Hovertank armed with twin railguns that rape enemy armor and is one of the few units that can fire on the move. Exclusive to SC2's campaign. While it sounds useful on paper, it's mostly good for the mission you find it in where your goal is to kill fast moving targets with heavy armor, something that doesn't appear elsewhere.

'''Predator:''' A robotic panther that attacks with an area of effect shockwave around it, but is [[FAIL|too fragile and expensive to consider using]]. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Hercules.

'''Wraith:''' Standard Terran starfighter that also sports a personal cloaking field; fragile, but hits like a brick to the head against enemy air unit and a wet noodle against ground units. Replaced by the Viking in the sequel but is playable in the campaign.

'''Science Vessel:''' Non-combat space station that can penetrate enemy cloaking efforts, deploy protective forcefields, and coat enemies in a toxic radiological fog. In SC2, they gained the ability to repair nearby mechanical units too but are exclusive to the campaign as an alternative to the Raven, which you'll never take since the Science Vessel's repair beam is too good to pass up. Humorously, it's one of the largest units in fluff (to the point an entire mission is set inside one) but looks barely larger than a Siege Tank in game.

'''Dropship:''' Basic flying transport with no gimmicks unlike the speedy Protoss Shuttle or the invisibility detecting Zerg Overlord.

'''Valkyrie:''' UED-designed anti-air frigate that takes down masses of light enemy flyers with clusters of missiles, but can't deal with heavily armored vessels and is defenseless against ground units.

'''Viking:''' Anti-air flyer that can transform into a ground-based anti-<s>infantry</s>armor combat walker. Its lore makes it known for its a steep learning curve and high attrition rate claiming the lives of many trainees trying to master its transformation sequence, which makes you wonder how it [[Derp|became the new standard fighter jet in the sequel]].

'''Banshee:''' A cloaked anti-ground aerial bombardment VTOL that is flexible in both base raiding and dealing with enemy ground forces.

'''Raven:''' AI-controlled support craft replacing the Science Vessel as the Terran's detector-spellcaster flying unit, which can create and deploy various drone units for different purposes.

'''Medivac:''' SC2 replacement for the Dropship and Medic, combining both into a transport that can also heal biological units like a Medic.

'''Warhound:''' Badass anti-armor mech that was [[Cheese|too strong and unable to be balanced]] and was thus cut from the game, but still shows up as enemy units in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Hilariously the thing was intended to break stalemates caused by Siege Tanks, those actually proved to be one of the few things that could counter it during tests.

'''HERC:''' Asteroid miners conscripted into the military. Armed with a grappling gun that can pull itself into the fray or up cliffs, and a highly specific immunity to Zerg suicide bombers, they didn't make it into the main game since the Hellbat fulfills the same niche of tanking hordes of lightly armored units. Exclusive to the Nova Covert Ops DLC campaign.

'''Widow Mine:''' The descendant of Spider Mines taking heavy inspiration from the Zerg's burrowing capabilities. You get a drone that can burrow itself and shoot airburst missiles over nearby enemies, dealing [[Rape|massive damage to clumped up enemies]]. However, they will deal friendly fire so be wary of engaging fast melee enemies near them.

'''Cyclone:''' Missile truck that can lock onto an enemy, firing a continuous volley of missiles while still being able to move as long as the enemy remains in range, making it ideal for "kiting" and dismantling slow armored enemies but it can't deal with masses of cheap units or heavy long ranged firepower.

'''Hercules:''' Massive and incredibly tough, but also very slow, flying transport. Unlike other transports, its passengers deploy almost instantly and will make an emergency landing albeit taking some damage if it gets destroyed. Exclusive to SC2's campaign as the alternative to the Predator.

'''Liberator:''' Flying artillery unit that can switch between anti-air and anti-ground missile barrages, making it sort of a lovechild between a Valkyrie and a Siege Tank. Unlike the Siege Tank, it can only rain death upon units inside a player-designated killzone and doesn't do splash damage.

'''Battlecruiser:''' Fuckoff huge warship armed with batteries of lasers and a mega-energy cannon. In LotV, it also gains the ability to warp jump to any point on the map. In the original they relied on a sorta big laser (despite the attack saying it was a battery of lasers) that didn't pack as much of a punch as you would expect. In the sequel they fire a barrage of small lasers that because they are a bunch of small attacks can't be reduced by armor (since armor can't reduce damage to zero). In both games it can fire its big gun as an ability which destroys most targets instantly.
* SC2 has a few missions with a version called the Gorgon, the biggest and most powerful ship used by the Terrans. When first fought in Heart of the Swarm they are immune to all conventional attacks and abilities (even from Kerrigan). The only way to destroy them is to use a nest of full Scourges. You sorta get control of them in a DLC Terran campaign where you have a calldown ability that sends Gorgons in a straight line to shoot everything in their path. They aren't indestructible in this level but they have more than six times as much health, double the armor, more than triple the firepower of a normal battlecruiser and as much range as a Siege Tank. It's easy to see why you don't get to directly control these monsters.

====Factions====
'''Terran Confederacy (defunct):''' One of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they are ostensibly modeled after the Confederate States of America down to using its battle flag to represent itself. A [[High Lords of Terra|corrupt, decadent and feudalistic]] power from Tarsonis, they are aggressive against their neighbors and deal with dissidents using excessive force, such as the nuking of Korhal, which ended up being their undoing. Despite being overthrown by Arcturus Mengsk, Confederate holdouts continue opposing the Dominion or sell their services as mercenaries. They were known to have conducted experiments on Zerg to use them as potential bioweapons and on psionic humans to turn them into Ghosts, [[FAIL|both of which were turned against them by Mengsk.]]

'''Umojan Protectorate:''' Another one of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, [[Tau|they control the smallest number of planets and rely on highly advanced technology]] over mass conscription or material wealth. Opposing the militaristic Confederacy, they aided the father of Arcturus Mengsk and later his Sons of Korhal rebel group, until they realized that Mengsk was no better than the Confederates and withdrew support. They are willing to cooperate with his son, Valerian Mengsk, who is much less of a power hungry madman that his father is.

'''Kel-Morian Combine:''' The last of the initial Terran powers in the Koprulu Sector, they own many planets rich in resources and function more like a corporation than a country. Despite being brought low by the Confederacy, they nevertheless continued amassing wealth and remaining neutral, even when the UED entered the fray. Lacking a large military force, they rely more on subterfuge and diplomacy over brute force, paying off rivals to leave them alone and even hiring pirates and mercenaries for more underhanded work. After the games, they are looking to contest the now weakened and still recovering Dominion for territory.

'''Terran Dominion:''' The main antagonistic Terran faction replacing the Confederacy, it was formed by charismatic ex-Confederate officer Arcturus Mengsk after overthrowing the Confederacy in revenge for assassinating his family and nuking his homeworld. Revealing himself to be no less tyrannical than the Confederates he overthrew, Mengsk turned the Dominion into a strong but dystopian empire, where his propaganda laden speeches are played regularly and citizens live in fear of being resocialized or conscripted for [[1984|wrongthink]]. Ultimately, Arcturus was overthrown by Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and his son Valerian took over his position as Emperor, repealing many oppressive laws and introducing many social reforms to show that he isn't a tyrant like his father, most notably turning the military into a volunteer force rather than relying on resocialized criminals and conscription.

'''United Powers League (defunct):''' The ruling government of Earth, they were [[Imperium|a fascist, atheist one world government]] [[Nazi|obsessed with human purity]] and [[Inquisition|led many bloody purges]] against dissidents, cyborgs, mutants and others deemed too degenerate from the human form that were covered up by the media. They kickstarted the Terrans' story when one UPL scientist, certain of new resources outside the solar system, collected 4 colony ships worth of prisoners and sent them to colonize an outlying planet. However, the ships [[Not As Planned|missed their destination]] and crashed in the Koprulu sector, their passengers forming the major Terran powers in the sector.

'''United Earth Directorate:''' After knowledge of the Zerg and Protoss reached the United Powers League on Earth, the squabbling factions decided to band together against the potential xenos threat. They sent an expedition fleet to the Koprulu sector with the intent to subjugate the Terrans under the UED's banner, establish control over the Zerg and use them to purge the Protoss. Through some clever tactics and brute force, they managed to overthrow the Terran Dominion, enslave the new Zerg Overmind and usurp Kerrigan's control over majority of Zerg forces and beat back the Protoss. Only a desperate alliance between the Terrans, Protoss and Kerrigan managed to defeat the UED before Kerrigan betrayed her allies, then finished off the UED expedition fleet when they in turn allied with the angry Terrans and Protoss against her. The remaining UED forces, now stuck in the Koprulu sector, have been absorbed into the Dominion or became mercenaries, and the main UED government continues to plot its next move in the background. They are hinted to have highly advanced technology that they didn't bring to the Koprulu sector due to...BEING TOO ADVANCED. To the point they had to use the same type of equipment the Terrans use because there was absolutely no facilities in the Koprulu Sector that would've maintained their own tech.

====Terran Characters====
'''James "Jim" Raynor''': The main protagonist of the faction and the players avatar in the Terran Campaign of Starcraft 1 and Wings of Liberty. An Ex-Convict and veteran of several corporate wars between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morian mining combinate, who, by the merit of being the only guy left who could hold a gun, was named Confederate Marshal of the Tatoonine-expy planet of Mar Sara. Had an overall decent run as Marshal, but he found himself stuck between the Zerg, who came to nom his planet and the Protoss which arrived to [[Kryptman|glass the planet to deny it to the swarm.]] As the Confederacy abandoned him, he turned to the Sons of Korhal under Mengsk for aid, which started his stunt into being a rebel. When Mengsk stabbed him and Kerrigan in the back, he seceded with his squad from the Sons, founding Raynor's Rangers to continue the rebellion, this time against the Dominion, only for him to be backstabbed ''again'' by Kerrigan when they drove out the UED during the Brood War campaign. SC2 changed his character in various ways, not all of which were well received. The most divisive change was his sudden attraction to pre-Zergification-Kerrigan, which felt to many to come out of nowhere (mostly because Blizzard is Blizzard, they had outsourced much of this background to tie-in novels) and a bit misplaced; to say the least, as he had vowed that he would be the man to kill her once the time comes at the end of Brood War. He starts off Wings of Liberty as being throughly miserable due to all the backstabbing and ends the first chapter of SC2 being reunited with his girlfriend and spending the other chapters of SC2 being mostly moral support for Kerrigan and Artanis. Character-wise, he is somewhat of a disgruntled veteran who somehow always ends up being where shit is going down ''hard'' and just throughly tired of everything by the end of it. However, he is a good leader and a true friend to those he likes and hardly ever dishonest, even when it's to his own detriment (as seen with the various times he has been betrayed by his closest allies). He disappears from the story at the end of Legacy of the Void with Kerrigan to.... somewhere. We're not quite sure. But it probably involves copious amounts of [[/d/|extradimensional sex.]]

'''Arcturus Mengsk''':The ice-cold pragmatic leader of the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion, the largest of the four Terran nations. If you forgot who the other three were, don't worry, Blizzard did too. His backstory was that he was the scion of a noble family on Korhal (hence the name) that got killed when his father pissed off the Confederacy. Ironically (or not so ironically, as we'll see in a couple sentences), Kerrigan was the one who killed his family. He was already kind of a scumbag at the start of SC1, recruiting most of his allies at gunpoint; Raynor was left with the choice of either joining him or be murderfucked out of this plane of existence by the combined might of the Protoss and Zerg, Duke was literally recruited at gunpoint. Later on, he found a bunch of psionic gizmos that he could use to lure the Zerg to the Confederate homeworld of Tarsonis (and accepting Billions of civilian casualties as collateral), used them despite the strong opposition from Kerrigan, Raynor and Duke to this plan and succeeded - only for him to betray all of his allies then and there, leaving Kerrigan and Raynor to die on Tarsonis for his own petty revenge. He then collected the fractured Confederate military to found the Dominion in its stead, with him as military dictator no less, and not that much better than the Confederacy when it comes to his policies. During the Brood War, his six months in the sun came to a sudden end when the UED arrived on the scene and he only survived because Raynor of all people saved his ass. After the UEDs expulsion from the Koprulu sector, he promptly reestablished his Dominion and mainly serves as the friendly face of Dominion Propaganda during the Wings of Liberty campaign. Depsite being supposedly one of the big bads of Starcraft, he actually never gets all that much screentime, especially in Starcraft 2, where his most memorable moment might actually be his death, being impaled by re-Zergified Kerrigan and then having a psionic bomb inplanted in him.

'''November "Nova" Terra''': If Kerrigan is Starcrafts Fap-Bait number 1, Nova very closely follows at number two. Nova is a bit of an interesting tidbit in the Starcraft story because the game that was supposed to bring her to the forefront never came out. She was conceptualized as the protagonist of the third-person-shooter Starcraft: Ghost, first announced in 2002 and then cancelled in 2005. It even had its own cinematic trailer. She later made a reappearance in Wings of Liberty, where she warns Raynor about Gabriel Tosh and his true intentions (and also gives him the knowledge to create Ghosts along the way, funny how she betrays her own government and never faces any punishment for it). Due to being a hot blonde, there was instant fan demand for more of her (although to be fair, her own snarky, sarcastic attitude, combined with being voiced by [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Princess Azula]] is genuinely cool) and they got more of her as Starcraft 2 went on, eventually being pushed to main character level in her own (quite frankly, not very good) standalone campaign for Starcraft 2 that wraps up some of the loose ends that Legacy of the Void left behind. She has gotten a crapload of supplemental material for such a minor character that expanded on her (actually quite tragic) backstory. Her family was murdered as a result of some political intrige in the Confederacy. She killed the murderers right back in a psionic explosion, where it turned out that was only second to Kerrigan in Psionic potential. Now, before you, dear reader might think this pushes her into Mary Sue-territory, this comes with the serious downside that she, unlike lesser psionics, could not stop reading and hearing other peoples thoughts, which made her very dependent on a drug dealer, who kept her compliant with a device to suppress her psionic potential and abused the fuck out of her. Later on, she escaped her boss and made it to the Ghost Academy of the Confederacy, who routinely subjected her to mindwipes to erase her identity. From then, she stayed a hapless victim of the people in charge, be it the Confederacy, the UED or Mengsk who kept her as their most skilled assassin in their backpocket.

'''Matthew Horner''': Goody two-shoes idealist right hand of Raynor in Wings of Liberty. Despite his kinda bland exterior, he proves that still waters can reach really deep. For one, he basically managed Raynor's Raiders while his boss drank his worries away, two, he is a kickass commander with the skill to boot, and third, he ended up accidentally being married to an insane mercenary warlord as the prize of a poker game. Other than that, he serves as the ever idealistic, morally upstanding angel on Raynors shoulder, in contrast to Tychus Findlay, who plays the devil. Ends up becoming the Commander-in-chief of the reformed Dominion after Starcraft 2.

'''Rory Swann''':

'''Gerard DeGalle''': Main commanding officer of the UED expeditionary fleet, he ends up falling under the psychic influence of Samir Duran (a being pretending to be the leader of Confederate remnant partisans) which costs him the life of his subordinate and close friend. After he gets his ass handed to him by Kerrigan after a last-ditch alliance between him, Mengsk and Artanis, he commits suicide after writing a last letter to his family. Neither the letter, nor the remnants of the expeditionary force make it back to Earth.

'''Valerian Mengsk''':

'''Edmund Duke''':

'''Tychus Findlay''':

===[[Tyranids|The Zerg]]===
A race of alien space-locusts armed with biological weaponry, the Zerg travel from world to world, killing all independent life and assimilating its genetic code in order to produce new strains and species of Zerg, all in hope of achieving genetic perfection. In their wake, they infest worlds, terraforming them to sustain the Zerg's constant expansion of its terrible Swarm. Individually sentient, but linked by a crude telepathic network, all Zerg are bound to the will of a singular sapient will, who use this [[Hive Mind|hive-mind]] to enforce their dominance and command their legions as extensions of themselves.

It was eventually revealed though, that the Overmind's actions were not solely to OMNOMNOM delicious genetic information of the protoss like their [[Tyranid|voracious cousins]], which the Zerg could probably give a run for their money if it wasn't for the difference in galactic wide numbers, but as his way of opposing a Xel'Naga named Amon by creating a force powerful enough to resist them. This all culminated with the creation of Kerrigan(we're getting to her, hang on...), one who could freely control the Zerg like the Overmind. It should be noted that he still wanted the zerg to eat everything, but not if it means Amon will just take control of them and dispose of them afterwords. The Overmind "tricked" the protoss into killing him to get Amon out of the zerg hive-mind.

Zerg are the "fast 'n' flimsy" faction; cheap to get up and running, very easy to spam units for, but the absolute squishiest of the three factions. Zergs rely on drowning enemies under wave after wave of cheap, quick-moving troops, expending their resources faster than any other faction because they're certain to die anyway. Unlike Terrans or Protoss, Zergs grow their bases quite slowly, as they have to sacrifice basic workers to create new buildings, and they can only grow buildings on a specialized, slowly-growing terrain mat they produce called "The Creep". On the other hand as their base buildings are very cheap compared to other factions, and also double as their unit-production buildings (with all others being "unlocks" for certain units or upgrades), Zergs are encouraged to expand faster and wider, generally having more resource-harvesting bases. This also corresponds to their ability to switch their army production from one composition to another in almost an instant, while for example if Terran wishes to start producing mechs instead of massed infantry he needs to build a lot of factories first, which takes resources and most importantly time.

In competitive play the Zerg are generally regarded as the baseline against which the others are compared. They are consistently good. They are the fastest of the three in terms of responding to immediate unit demands and their units don't tend to need micromanagement. Relative to the Zerg, the Terrans have a stronger midgame, and the Protoss are the kings of endgame if they can form their deathball.

In the original Starcraft, and Brood War, you play as a Cerebrate; a massive psionic maggot-thing that is second in the Zerg's mental hierarchy only to the Overmind itself. You are charged with protecting and serving the Overmind's latest and greatest creation; the Queen of Blades, a human Ghost (psychic assassin) named Sarah Kerrigan(told ya we'd be getting back to her!) whom they captured and assimilated into the Swarm instead of just eating her. After spending some time helping Kerrigan grow into her powers, the Overmind tasks you with invading the Protoss homeworld of Auir so he can manifest physically on the planet. When the Overmind is destroyed at the end of the first game, in Brood War, you play the only Cerebrate to remain loyal to the Queen of Blades, helping her in her quest to take total dominion over the Swarm - up to and including destroying an attempt to create a second Overmind. The campaign ends with you taking back Char and kicking the collective asses of the Dominion, the UED, and Protoss off the planet. The Queen of Blades is also notable for her combat heels which do FUCKING NOTHING as well as her bony "wings" which in the first game produce a whipping noise and cause things to blow up into sprays of gore and in the second do all of jack and shit because somehow she can fly in literally only one scene which they seemingly do nothing to cause; maybe they're hollow and full of pressurized Vespene or some shit.

In the Zerg-focused sequel, Heart of the Swarm, you play as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, and only surviving zerg character from sc1 (Duran was something else) who voluntarily rejoins the Swarm to destroy the Dominion and to prepare for the coming of Amon. Kerrigan can be customized with different abilities which makes her really broken, and if she dies she can just be brought back at a hive cluster. All your units, non-campaign exclusive at least, have options for campaign exclusive abilities you can switch out, and you'll get the option of one other campaign exclusive upgrade for each of the main units that can't be switched out

====Zerg Units====
'''Larvae:''' The basic form of all Zerg, a squirming maggot-thing that is produced at your capital building (Hatchery/Lair/Hive) and which is mutated into all of your individual units. Because of this, Zerg are unique in that they generally require multiple capital buildings in order to be able to really pump out troops at an accelerated rate.

'''Drone:''' The worker unit of the Zerg. Gathers minerals and vespene gas. Is also physically mutated into all Zerg structures, so Zerg as a faction are unique in a) the cost and time needed to erect structures (first you gotta mutate a larva into a drone, then a drone into a structure), and b) the high turnover rate of their worker units.

'''Overlord:''' A kind of secondary worker unit, the Overlord is a slow-moving flyer and one of the few "sapient" breeds of Zerg, reinforcing and broadcasting the will of the Overmind to lesser strains. As such, the Zerg player needs to <s>spawn more Overlords</s>pump these guys out continually in order to boost up their population cap, letting them produce larger swarms. They also double as detectors against invisible units and transports... at least, in the first game; in StarCraft II, you need to choose between keeping them as transports or upgrading them into '''Overseers''' to make them detectors again.

'''Zergling:''' Basic melee trooper, a six-limbed raptor-thing that is fast moving and hits hard, but can't take a lot of damage. Incredibly cheap, fast-developing, and spawns 2 to the larva; the term "Zerg Rush" comes about from the fact that a good Zerg player can easily overwhelm a less-skiled player in the early game by just spamming zerglings. In StarCraft II, they can also be mutated into '''Banelings'''; living acid bombs used for suicide strikes.

'''Hydralisk:''' A weird mishmash of a xenomorph, a snake and a giant mantis, this is the most iconic Zerg unit. Despite the fuck-off huge claws, it's actually your basic ''ranged'' trooper, shooting organic railguns mounted in its head at people. Can be evolved into a creature called a '''Lurker''', which was the only burrowing Zerg unit that could attack whilst burrowed until StarCraft II, but on the downside can ''only'' attack whilst burrowed and only attack ground units.

'''Queen:''' A support unit that changes rapidly between the first game and the sequel. The first game depicts the Queen as a flying support unit that can spray a slowing, invisibility-cancelling sticky web over areas, infest enemies with a fog-of-war nullifying parasite, implant a parasitic embryo that insta-kills the host after a timer, and corrupt a Terran Command Center so it produces Infested Terrans, but can't attack (don't bother with this, you need to damage but not destroy building and the Infested Terrans are too expensive and die too easily). The second game reimagines them as a slow-moving base guardian that can spread the Creep, heal Zerg units & structres, and beat shit up that gets too close.

'''Roach:''' A secondary ranged trooper and alternative to the Hydralisk introduced in StarCraft II. Spews acid, dealing less damage than the Hydralisk but is much tankier and regenerates at stupid speeds while burrowed. One of two only units that can move while underground, making them powerful infiltrators. Can also evolve into the '''Ravager''', which is basically the Zerg's answer to the Siege Tank; a living acid mortar.

'''Scourge:''' An aerial equivalent of the zergling; a cheap, rapidly produced anti-air unit that works as a flying kamikaze bomb.

'''Mutalisk:''' The basic Zerg aerial unit; a flying worm-thing that launches ricocheting biological ammo called "Glaive Wurms". In the original StarCraft, they can be evolved into both '''Guardians''', which are slow-moving air-to-ground acid-spewing crab-things, and '''Devourers''', which are anti-air focused. In StarCraft II, they can instead mutate into either '''Vipers''' (flying scorpions focused on a combo of anti-air and spellcasting) or '''Brood Lords''' (anti-ground flyers which attack by raining down showers of short-lived broodlings).

'''Aberration:''' An evolved form of the Infested Terran only seen in StarCraft II. Hulking deformed spidery humanoids that are basically fit the midpoint between the Zergling and the Ultralisk as a mid-tier melee trooper.

'''Infestor:''' Support caster unit only seen in StarCraft II. Can paralyze enemies with fungal growth, take over minds with neural parasites, and spawn Infested Terrans as expendable grunts, but can't fight on its own. Can move while burrowed.

'''Swarm Host:''' A siege unit introduced in StarCraft II; a revisitation of the Lurker concept, this Zerg burrows into place and then spawns an endless wave of expendable suicide minions called "locusts".

'''Corruptor:''' A heavier anti-armor flyer introduced only briefly in StarCraft II. For some reason deals more damage to larger targets, also mutates into Brood Lords.

'''Defiler:''' Scorpion-like caster unit only seen in the original game. Has no attack, but uses energy-fueled Dark Swarm and Plague special attacks to ravage wide areas of effect. Can also insta-kill allied Zerg units to replenish its energy immediately.

'''Ultralisk:''' Most powerful melee trooper the Zerg have, a demonic elephant-thing that slices foes apart with huge scythe-blade talons. Deceptively fast despite how big it is but its bulk means it can get stuck.

'''Infested Terran:''' Terran Marines consumed by Zerg parasites. Gimmicky suicide bombers in the first game that aren't worth using because it requires you to infest a Terran Command Center after bringing down to half health, as opposed to blowing it up, and while their explosion does the most damage of any attack in the game they die way too easily. Expendable ranged troopers produced by Infestors in the second game, where they are actually worth using.

'''Nydus Worm:''' Blurring the line between building and unit, a giant worm introduced in StarCraft II that can basically act as a kind of fast transport for Zerg units.

===[[Eldar|The Protoss]]===
Highly advanced psychic warriors, the Protoss are an ancient and highly technologically advanced race, possessing access to teleportation tech, forcefields, cybernetic exo-suits, robots and energy weapons...but [[Meme|you must construct additional pylons]]. They are divided into two primary factions: the Khalai and the Nerazim, but derogatively called by the Khalai as "Dark Templars". The difference is more cultural than anything: Khalai draw their psychic energy from "The Khala", the collective mental energy subconsciously produced by all Protoss, which they mentally tap into and use for communication or psionic energy storms. Nerazim abandoned the Protoss homeworld of Aiur generations ago over their belief that the Khala was unnatural, and brought the risk of reducing Protoss to mindless drones in a great mental hive. Metaphorically and literally severing themselves from the Khala, they are instead able to tap into "the darkness between the stars", allowing for more shadowy psi-powers like invisibility and teleportation. Khalai generally tend to be lawful stupid, [[Imperium|full of self-righteousness, glory, honor, noble sacrifice and burning heretics]], while Nerazim are more pragmatic, cynical and bro-tier, if a bit sinister. The sequel introduces a third faction, the Tal'darim, who left Auir before the invention of Khala and thus have no external source to empower their psychic powers - they compensate by using psychic drugs and taking power from their subordinates. They worship Xel'Naga and built an insane society based on social Darwinism and strict hierarchy - less [[Dark Eldar]], more Sith Order(complete with edgy black clothes and red lightsabers) with more straightforwardness and less backstabbing.

Protoss are the "slow 'n' tough" faction; they're extremely expensive and slow to produce, but they can take a hell of a beating, thanks to all their units and buildings coming with forcefields as standard (for example in direct confrontations their basic warrior the Zealot in both games will win against its counterparts the Marine and the Zergling if equal resources are put into them, not taking into account other supports). They fall between Terrans and Zerg when it comes to base building; uniquely, they teleport their buildings into place so they need fewer builders, but they need established power-grids, otherwise their buildings won't work. This also gives them a key infrastructure weakness, as it means you can cause buildings to stop working if you destroy the (conveniently fragile) generators powering them. Protoss armies tend to be "deathballs" relying on a single concentrated fist brutally plowing through the enemy defenses, while casually soaking up incoming damage, although vulnerable to being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions or being outmaneuvered, with enemy armies bypassing said deathball and attacking the Protoss base directly.

In the original Starcraft, you play as a Khalai Executor (A Templar commander, confirmed to be Artanis) seeking to defend Aiur, the Protoss homeworld, from the coming Zerg invasion. Things go not as planned by the end of the campaign due to internal strife.

In the Brood War, you play as an Executor (speculated to be Selendis, a student of Artanis) seeking to help the Protoss survive after they have been driven from Aiur by relocating them to the Dark Templar world of Shakuras, which is more problematic than it sounds due to the fact that Khalai Templars see the Dark Templars as heretical outcasts (although the Dark Templars themselves were more than welcoming of their holier-than-thou brethren). If you thought the first campaign was filled with political dissent since Tassadar's shenanigans, this has as much, if not more intra-species conflict.

In the Protoss-focused sequel, Legacy of the Void, you play as Artanis (the Tassadar fanboy) reuniting all the Protoss groups, retaking Aiur, blowing up Shakuras cause fuck you and making the preparations for the final showdown against Amon. Easily the darkest of Starcraft II's campaigns with about the first half being mostly pyrrhic victories against Amon, till Artanis goes on the offensive and starts getting some real (if a bit costly) victories. Eventually, they get Kerrigan to kill Amon, and let her hoof it to the dark corners of space with her boytoy Raynor.

Like Heart of the Swarm, you get variants for units. This varies from what you get normally to lots of campaign exclusive units, which includes lots of OP stuff like cloaked warriors that can comeback if killed. But the real fun comes from this giant ship called the Spear of Adun that can do anything from kill enemies with giant guns or giant lasers, to automatically constructing an additional pylon wherever you want and warp your army straight to it.

====Protoss Units====
'''Probe:''' The Protoss' worker unit. Its unique gimmick is that it ''summons'' structures into place, so rather than needing to devote multiple workers to building like the Terrans and Zerg, a Protoss player can have a single little robot running around and planting magical energy bubbles wherever the player wants buildings to pop into existence.

'''Zealot:''' Basic melee trooper; a Protoss warrior who [[Soulknife|punches things with daggers of concentrated hate]]. My life for Aiur! Is the strongest of the basic units, being the only one that can survive a hit from a Siege Tank's big gun.

'''Dragoon:''' Basic ranged trooper; a mortally wounded Zealot stuck in a walking life support unit mixed with a plasma-blasting turret, ala a [[Dreadnought]]. Largely absent for most of StarCraft II, replaced with the newly invented '''Immortal''' (much tankier, and with twin dual-linked blasters meant for punching through armor) and the '''Stalker''' (the Dark Templar analogue, able to teleport short distances). Eventually it returned in Legacy of the Void's campaign where they hit harder and deal more damage.

'''Adept:''' Female Protoss warriors armed with teleportation and psi-powered blasters. Introduced in StarCraft II.

'''High Templar:''' Protoss mystic that can't attack, but can cast a number of useful spells, including blasting an area with a psionic lightning storm. Two High Templars can merge into an '''Archon''', an [[elemental]] of pure psionic energy that has great shielding, but shitty health, and has no spells, but instead blasts ground and air targets with [[rape|psi-beams]]. In recent balance patches High Templars gained an attack that does as much damage as a thrown water balloon.

'''Dark Templar:''' Perma-cloaked Protoss [[assassin]]s with [[Soulknife|beefier versions of the Zealot's psi-blade]]. Initially appeared as campaign only units in the first game before the expansion. Gains teleportation in StarCraft II. Two Dark Templars can merge into a '''Dark Archon''' in Brood War & StarCraft II, which is like an Archon that has the spellcasting abilities of a High Templar. It's weaker than the regular Archon in direct combat but still powerful due to their unique abilities which include mind control. Legacy of the Void's campaign brought it back where it's built like a normal unit and can now fight. It's not as strong as a regular Archon, though it's still really strong packs really strong spells.

'''Sentry:''' Robotic support drone that can broadcast protective energy fields to make allies tankier, block off paths with forcefield walls and project illusions of protoss units that [[Wat|can fly around and see things independently, making them great scouts]].

'''Reaver:''' Slug-like robotic tanks that need to build its ammunition - kamikaze robot drones called "Scarabs" - individually. Packs a hell of a punch, but expensive and slow moving.

'''Colossus:''' Giant walkers with insanely long legs that rake the ground with heat rays. They are so tall they can casually walk up and down cliffs, but are vulnerable to anti-air fire. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Disruptor:''' Robot drone that can launch exploding bolts of pure psionic energy. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Observer:''' A Probe reworked into an invisible scout and detector of cloaked enemy units.

'''Shuttle:''' Basic Protoss transport ship. Replaced in StarCraft II with the '''Warp Prism''', which can both teleport units across the map and act as a fill-in pylon.

'''Scout:''' Basic Protoss aerial unit, able to attack both ground and air targets.

'''Corsair:''' Dark Templar-created aerial support caster that has (pitiful) anti-air attacks but the ability to paralyze ground units. A key component of Protoss's tendency to dominate the late game.

'''Carrier:''' Protoss battleship armed with a fleet of AI-controlled drones, called "Interceptors". These can be shot down and must be manually replaced, so they require a fair bit of micro-managing. While an iconic unit they struggled with attempts to make them viable due to the lack of damage from the Interceptors, to the point where SC2 just kept them around for the iconic status while the Tempest was meant to take up their role. Legacy of the Void finally made them viable since their Interceptors are made much cheaper and can be sent out away from the Carrier without it having expose itself to fire, meaning it can actually function like a real world aircraft carrier. In lore they have beams meant for glassing planets though you never get to use those in gameplay outside of version used by a CO-OP commander.

'''Arbiter:''' Support vessel only found in the original StarCraft and Legacy of the Void's campaign; can teleport allies, freeze enemies in an area, and passively renders nearby allies invisible. The last ability doesn't work on other Arbiters so you don't get to a invisible army with them.

'''Phoenix:''' Fast-moving anti-air skirmish ships with the ability to use a Graviton Beam to levitate ground units into the air so they can then blow them up. Slightly less obnoxiously OP than the Corsair it replaced.

'''Void Ray:''' Secondary offensive battleship that uses a focused laser beam attack; the longer it concentrates on one target, the more damage it does.

'''Tempest:''' Protoss battleship that acts as a ''very'' long-ranged siege unit, staying well out of harm's way and hurling destructive energy bolts.

'''Oracle:''' Aerial support caster that actually has surprisingly decent attack against Light type units, it detects hidden units, can peel back the fog of war, and paralyze things with its Stasis Ward. Only found in StarCraft II.

'''Mothership:''' The ultimate Protoss battleship...in theory. In practice, it had so many things going against it that the game eventually shifted to let you play with a wimpier version called the ''Mothership Core'' first that could then be upgraded into a proper Mothership. Actually, Motherships aren't battleships but support vessels. They replace Arbiters in StarCraft II as unit that cloaks and teleports allies. As a nice bonus can project fields of slowed time to reduce enemy movement speed and fire rates. Stronger versions tend to show up as boss enemies in campaigns. You never actually get to use the regular Mothership in Legacy of the Void's campaign, instead you get the Tal'Darim version that is more expensive, but significantly tougher, better armed, and its abilities are all focused on offense.

===[[Old Ones|The Xel'Naga]]===
A highly advanced alien race... and the cause of all this misery. See, they helped shape the Protoss into the powerful psykers they are today, and then got booted off of Aiur. They then created the Zerg, and got eaten for it - but one of them survived (though he died too, he was just revived). Amon secretly manipulated the Overmind into seeking out the Protoss, and serves as the big bad of the Starcraft II trilogy, with his plans to create an army of Zerg/Protoss hybrids and then annihilate all life (and energy, rendering everything dark and still) in the galaxy, so he can start over from scratch.

The background revealed that the Xel'Naga always wanted the Protoss and Zerg to meet and merge and form into the new Xel'Naga, it turns out the Protoss didn't kick them off Aiur they were just done with them. Amon's just an asshole who messed up the Zerg before they were done. In addition, the Xel'Naga never really put Terrans into account, in part because they never directly toyed around with humanity (since they developed psychic powers through mutation during spess travel, rather convenient) and in Amon's case grossly underestimated mankind throwing a wrench into his plans. Terrans also make the perfect slaves to build the machines that create the Hybrid.

===Post-Starcraft 2===
The Zerg are controlled by an independent feminine Overmind that calls up the humans and Protoss on the phone sometimes in order to have peace because Mommy Kerrigan told her to, humanity is clearly evolving into something far stronger and is increasingly incorporating nanomachines and crystal tech into their bodies as well as zerglike manifestations of mutation, and the Protoss civilization has no clue what its doing in the future because every time they run out to the grocery store for milk and eggs they come across another group of exiles from their race with radical new ways of looking at things that skullfucks their current understanding of their own civilization sideways. Oh yeah, and the UED may still be watching everything going on in the Koprulu sector because they have nothing else to do

So...happy ending for now?

As of October 2020, Starcraft 2 has been put into maintenance mode, with Blizzard announcing that they would cease any content updates in the future. Many saw it coming as Starcraft 2 dropped a lot in popularity once the MOBA games took off in popularity (much to Blizzards anger) and most content packs after the release of the last expansion for the game itself were met with mixed success. Blizzard made a last attempt at putting SC 2 in the spotlight again by turning it into a Freemium-Game in 2017 with equally mixed results.

[[File:Risk StarCraft|thumb]]
[[File:Risk Starcraft|thumb|Playing field and all available models]]
===/tg/ relevance===
Aside from having ideas worth mining for space games, StarCraft has been ported to Risk, thankfully with changes to core gameplay to make it resemble its vidya parent closer.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:3875524-1342590432983.jpg|<s>fixed for accuracy</s> While <s>accurate</s> not accurate at all, the railguns/Gauss rifles (you know, the same electromagnetic type that the Tau use as their BFG, just smaller) Marines carry can turn pretty much anything across sci-fi into Swiss cheese, but also note that Starcraft's Marines are the Guardsmen, more specifically the '''Penal Legion''' cannonfodder unit in their universe, and Space Marines are the most elite fighting force of the Imperium asides from the GK and Custodes. Almost all Marines are either so dumb they barely know what side of their gun the bullets come from, are brainwashed and mindraped and drugged up until they're like angry robots, or are disorganized pirate mercenaries.
File:Starcraft zelot by eloblazewicz-d9e7f4j.jpg|My life for Aiur!
File:Latest.png|The Zerg rape train has no brakes
File:Hybrid.jpg|Hybrid Reaver
File:Swarm host.jpg|Mother of the endless Locust swarm
</gallery>

{{Alternity}}

Forge World

2023-05-06T15:17:54Z

2A02:8070:8E81:DD40:B679:150C:42BF:4848: /* An Alternative Point on the Price (which is your soul, by the way) */

{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|Alas, expensive things are better than the cheap.|Janina Ipohorska}}

'''Forge World''' is a term associated with [[Warhammer 40,000]]. In-universe, it applies to planets owned by the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] devoted entirely to manufacturing. Out-of-universe, it applies to a division within [[Games Workshop]] that specializes in large and finely-detailed, hyper-expensive models. Seriously, you could spend the same amount of money on a decent used car as one of their premium lumps of plastic.

== Company ==
[[Image:Manta.jpg|thumb|Hello, I'm a Tau [[Manta]]. I am reasonably priced at a mere £1,100 (€1,360) ($1,705).]]
[[Image:Trumpeter-KT.jpg|thumb|Hello, I'm a Trumpeter 2-in-1 1:16 King Tiger. You can buy four of me for that.]]
The first meaning of Forge World is if you took [[Games Workshop]] and leveled it up a few times. It's a sub-division of GW and produces [[finecast|resin-cast models]] for 40k, [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Fantasy Battle]], [[Battlefleet Gothic]], and [[Epic]]. Forge World grew from one of the oldest official giant [[butthurt|stupid]] model projects, the early 40K lead [[Thunderhawk]] Gunship, which was originally created as a limited edition and routinely thrown at people who won GW contests. The Thunderhawk proved so popular that GW realized there was a serious market for giant stupid models, and thus Forge World was born to provide them, starting with [[Baneblade]]s and suchlike, working up to full-sized [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|40K Titans]]. Over time it's since gone about producing its own range of models and rule sets for a huge array of different factions, and even has its own home-grown [[Imperial Guard]] variants (the badass <s>[[Death Korps of Krieg]]</s> (or at least codified what was once little more than a doodle in the 3rd Edition IG Codex) and [[Elysian Drop Troops]]). The awesome-looking Chaos Renegades for [[Lost and the Damned]] also came from here.

More recently, Forge World has been spitting out gloriously beautiful and horrendously expensive Horus Heresy-era models, meaning every mark of Astartes [[Power Armour|Power Armor]], Cataphractii [[Terminator]]s, and older patterns of [[Rhino Transport|Rhino]] and [[Land Raider]]. This, in turn, creates the best and worst things ever; re-built, revamped [[Rogue Trader]] models. The horrible, goofy weapons, tanks, and dreadnoughts are back, in wonderful, goofy new resin kits. They all look amazingly terrible (and terribly amazing), but the icing on the cake includes [[Primarch]]s like ''[[Horus]] himself'' and ''fukken [[Jetbike#Imperial_Jetbikes|JETBIKES]].'' Yes, Forge World put out pre-Heresy Jetbikes, and they are everything you hoped and dreamed for (provided you hoped and dreamed for resin dicks with Spess mahrienss inside them), including a new forgotten weapon type (the [[Volkite Weaponry|Volkite]]). And now they also have Mechanicum models too- because who doesn't want to play around with the oft-forgotten Imperial Robots?

In addition, many of their older models (read: all the ones you want) are no longer available and command even ''higher'' premium prices, and all special models (read: all of them) require an attendant overpriced supplement containing rules that tell you how the hell to actually use it, since just including these as a printable PDF on the site would remove a valuable opportunity to steal your moneys. These are called [[Imperial Armour]] Volumes, and are handily abbreviated by [[Neckbeard|everyone here]] as '''IA''' (and then a Volume Number). People who claim they have these either do not actually have these and instead have [[Heresy|.pdf copies]] '''/''' only have one or two (generally out of date) and treat them like Gutenberg Bibles '''/''' have like 4+ and are [[Flash Gitz|way too rich for their own good]].

Also responsible for the [[Forgeworld Reserve Phenomenon]].

As of April 1st, 2016 (and no, it doesn't appear to be an April Fools joke), Forge World has apparently jumped onto GW's "Last Chance to Buy" bandwagon and has decided to do some housecleaning on their product range. Thankfully, it's mostly obscure bits that likely hardly anyone ever bought or used, but notable losses include the Ork Kill Krusha Tank, Macharius Omega, and almost the [[Rage|''entire'' MKIV Dreadnought line, ''both'' Chaos and Loyalist]]. Many other models have gotten the axe since, notably all the Elysian line, mark 2, 3, and 4 space marine armor, etc. Combined with the retarded markup they now give to buyers outside the UK and the Adeptus Titanicus <strike>fiasco</strike> [[Adeptus Titanicus| glorious]] [[Adeptus Titanicus/Tactics| rebirth]], Forge World is <strike>now seemingly becoming the hated company Games Workshop once was, while the main branch keeps rolling out PR successes.</strike> showing the true colors of Games Workshop as a whole once more - with their "faster shipping" fiasco proving that the entirety of their social media is merely a publicity stunt (like most corporations). It's worth nothing that FW represents GW as a whole - they are run by the same people on the highest levels.

As of 2022, their relevance has seen a decline. With the Horus Heresy, one of their most popular lines, getting a full-fledged reboot and its models being transferred over to the main studio, FW has been relegated to dealing with only the niche games, such as the LotR game and Blood Bowl...which GamesWorkshop ''also'' has stuff for on their main site. Even then, it's not very clear if they're the ones writing the rules to the games or if they're just making models. Their main claim to relevance with the 40K crowd right now seems to be keeping Death Korps of Krieg players content.

'''In conclusion:''' "Five hundred quid for a fucking titan? [[Rage|If I ever find the fucker responsible I'm going to beat them to death with their own]] [[HHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnnngggggg-]]".
Note: Look at the new Warlord titans, 900 POUNDS for a titan, 1240 with weaponry.

'''*This doesn't mean to imply that you're limited to only two models unless you happen to be a serial killer or a corrupt mortician.'''

=== Notable Writers ===

*[[Alan Bligh]], who unfortunately died of [[cancer]] on May 26, 2017, and who was responsible for the creation of many rules concepts eventually used in the Forge World rulebooks. [http://www.john-french.com/2017/05/alan-bligh-remembered.html Read an obituary written by fellow GW writer John French here.]
*[[John French]]
*[[Andy Hoare]]
*[[Neil Wylie]]
*[[Anuj Malhotra]]

=== Things Forge World Loves ===
[[Image:Red_Scorpions_Marine.png‎|thumb|150px|right|Screw giving the Sisters of Battle some [[Sisters of Cleaning|much needed loving]], let's just concentrate all our resources on some [[Red Scorpions|obscure chapter that nobody cares about]].]]
* Your money
* The [[Horus Heresy]]
* Aircraft
* Rapiers
* [[Tau]] [[Battlesuit]]s <strike>(XV9s!! fap fap fap) (XV107s!!! fapfapfapfap)</strike> (HERESY! '''''BLAMBLAMBLAM''''')
* IG Tanks
* Have we said your money?
* [[Daemon Engines]]
* '''[[Red Scorpions]]'''
* [[Terminator]]s, all the Terminators (except for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator robots originating from a certain movie], even though Games Workshop lifted from that movie to make [[Necrons|a race of robots for their setting]])
* [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]]s and the price to go with them
* TEH [[Baneblade|BANEBLEHDS]]
* <s>[[Kroot]]</s>
* We may as well say it again, your money
* Charging 100$ for a book
* High quality Customer Service
* [[Space Marines]]
* [[Dreadnought]]s (they actually sell autocannons!!!)
** Now really only true for Contemptor/Leviathan/Deredeo Dreads, since they axed most of their Mk IV/V Dread stuff, including FW-exclusive variants like [[Chaplain]] and [[Noise Marines|Sonic]] Dreadnoughts.
* [[Death Korps of Krieg]] (enough so that many of their units aren't as overpriced, though still not for the stingy).
* Adding an extra "0" to the end of reasonable prices
* The word "siege" attached to everything
* Turrets & Immobile scenery
* <strike>Units that are broken to play against</strike> not anymore, GW realised they lost money because of that
* Your ''Opponent's'' money
* Selling towing vehicles to move that immobile scenery around
* Bringing civilian vehicles to battle. Seriously, a Sentinel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise)| Power-lifter]?
* Introducing Salvo Weapons on units that will never use the rules for salvo weapons properly, or making them so bad that no-one ever takes them.
* Papa [[Nurgle]]
* The [[Orks]], when [[Games Workshop|GW]] won't love them because they aren't serious enough
* [[Total War: WARHAMMER]] (Especially the Norsca DLC, which whilst [[Awesome]], was basically a playable Forge World advertisement! Until they stopped selling most of those things. But hey, they still sell the Mourngul and boob troll.)
* [https://i.imgur.com/BgYmszI.png Discontinuing items more-or-less at random], apparently. Including ones you might actually need for making viable Horus Heresy armies.
* '''Your Money'''

=== Things Forge World Hates ===
* Decent shipping
* Australians
* New Zealanders
* EU Citizens
* 'Rest of the World' citizens
* Anyone not in the UK, really
* Poor people (eg. most of the editors of 1d4chan).
* You.
* Making sure their rules all have models.
* Making sure their models all have rules.
* Making sure their weapons have weapon profiles.
* Making army lists (the rules for their models are fine; their lists, on the other hand, are not).
* Making sure their stuff is balanced.
*Making sure the £180 Fellblade Super Heavy Tank you just bought came with THE FUCKING TURRET
* Spell Chequing.
* The Sisters of Battle
* Did we mention you? You.
* Proofreading books before release for rules/timelines/basic logic errors ''(supersonic transports that cannot land?)''.
* Warhammer Fantasy.
* <strike>Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit.</strike> No longer true, ever since they were given full control over the range. Now it's one of the few things they still make stuff for.
* Chaos that isn't Khorne or Nurgle.
* [[Dwarfs]]
* The Empire
* Other games workshop stores
* [[Gabriel Angelos|Making faces that don't look like shit.]]
* Making their instructions anywhere near understandable.
* Making uniform base sizes.
* Making sure their weapons don't have similar (or in some cases, the same) names.
* Releasing anything they advertise until long after the initial hype has died down.
* '''You'''

=== An Alternative Point on the Price (which is your soul, by the way) ===
While it’s a tradition of neckbeards everywhere to bemoan having to pay an arm, leg, testicle and unicorn blood for Forge World, it could be argued that Forge World’s high costs do have the beneficial side effect of taking some of the overpowered weapons and wargear that are supposed to be rare in the fluff, and bringing them into the tabletop while still making them rather rare in the meta, as comparatively few people are willing or able to fork over the [[teef]] for the models and rules. This is a good thing because, well, everybody ''wants'' a Titan, but do you really want everybody to actually ''have one''? This way, it’s a bigger deal when this stuff actually shows up on the tabletop, as it should be, and if you’re the sort that doesn’t like to go up against that sort of cheese you’re not likely to run into it too often.... or at least that's how it WOULD be if Forge World units weren't such a mixed bag these days. Not everything they make right now is overpowered, in fact if they aren't they tend to be absolute shite.

A case in point of what happens when that little status quo is disrupted, with the release of affordable plastic Contemptor dreadnoughts and Cataphractii terminators, and with Angels of Death giving us non-Forge World rules for them, you can bet that everyone and their [[squig]] is gonna have the damn things now, even with the rather dumbed-down rules compared to Imperial Armour.

There is also the point to be made that FW intended audience never was your average 40k player or casual fans of the setting, but the hardcore hobbyists who have been in the hobby for years, if not decades and accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about how to even handle this stuff correctly. Indeed, most FW models are extremely difficult to put together, not helped by the fickle material they are made from. This automatically pushed them into a niche audience, which was FWs entire business model; giving die-hard fans the possibility to see and own pieces of the most obscure lore from head honchos of GW. As such, production runs of FW models likely never were produced at scale or had substantial amounts of stock, which is important in price calculations, as mass produced goods can be made with bigger machines which put out more stuff at less of a cost in time and money, which in turn, makes the finished product cheaper. In essence, your Tau Manta costs an arm and a leg precisely because your Manta is very likely to be a custom piece just made for you and this costs an extra premium on top of the massive costs for material, labour and taxes.

=== Common Misconceptions ===
You'll occasionally find arguments online or perhaps within local gaming groups about the validity or "official-ness" of Forge World products. This has become less prevalent in recent years as the general perception of Forge World has become more mainstream, though every now and then the prejudice rears its ugly head, usually when a [[That Guy|certain opponent]] [[Butthurt|won't let you play]] the FW model you forked out a small fortune for.

Lets make one thing perfectly clear: Forge World ''(and Black Library)'' is Games Workshop. They share the same trading address and legal identity. It is not a subsidiary company (which would be a separate legal entity, but owned by the parent) nor is it a [[Fantasy Flight Games|licensee]] (which is a third party permitted to use the IP).

By comparison, [[Citadel Miniatures]] was founded as a subsidiary company and had its own separate projects outside of Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 ''(so your opponent can [[Rage]] when you tell him your Forge World model has more direct legal provenance than his old metal models)''. GW also acquired Sabertooth games, which operated as an independent subsidiary, but both were eventually absorbed back into Games Workshop.

So, back to the issue with Forge World. Many [[Trolls|people]] had an innate dislike for the fact that Forge World models and rules were not actually declared by Forge World *or* Games Workshop to be "officially" part of the game; they would refuse to allow them on the tabletop, since they did not come from a Games Workshop primary rules source (such as a Codex, or the Big Rule Book). Forge World eventually started printing prefaces in their books explaining that their rules were official; but some still claim that since "Games Workshop" itself hasn't come out and said it, that they remain unofficial. However, since the spines of FW's books have always had the Games Workshop logos on them and the inside front cover have the legal copyright and property notices from GW, this argument seems specious at best; rather, much like how the Big Rule Book has no actual explicit declaration that rules from [[White Dwarf]] are "official", the Imperial Armour books themselves should be considered as canonical (what ever that means in 40k) as GW sources.

However, as with White Dwarf, GW hates you far too much as a gamer and customer to label any of their rulebooks/codices with edition numbers, much less ensure that their FW rules are always kept up to date with the current edition, and unlike Codices where you can typically determine the edition at a glance, a lot of Forge World books superficially "look" similar and may even have exactly the same name ''(to date there have been FOUR books with the title "Imperial Armour Apocalypse" but only two of them have sub-titles)''. This can be a major reason the rules are banned at tournaments, and an opponent might object for the same reason they might object to fighting a [[Squat]]s army under the current rules - however "obvious" the rules translation might be, some people are uncomfortable playing games across too wide an edition gap, as rules interactions may make no sense at all and/or have utterly pathological balance ramifications. '''Update''' this has become pretty much irrelevant with the release of 8th edition where Forge World have released complete indexes for pretty much their entire line.

We all know how [[ChapterHouse Studios|litigious]] GW can get with regards to "unofficial" products using their copyright, so you can bet if it wasn't official/legal Forge World would have had their asses handed to them, but it would seem absolutely stupid to sue the guys in the next office over in the same building as you. Seriously, there isn't even a divider between the FW and main parts of the store at Warhammer World anymore...

So next time you get to the table and your opponent starts whining about your Forge World models not being legal, just batter him over the head with your Imperial Armour book, which will be an order of magnitude heavier than his little codex and claim your victory by default.

'''As an additional side note''' - this has nothing to do with the perception of FW rules being either powerfully unbalanced or too focused on the narrative, but on reflection, that's no different from the [[skub]] surrounding [[Grey Knights|codex creep]] and [[Tyranids|painful nerfing]] already rampant within "core" GW material. So what's new?

If a Tournament Organiser decides that they don't want to include Forge World rules then that is entirely their prerogative as they will want the tournament to be as balanced or as hassle free as is reasonable, especially since FW have a tendency to publish their rules with minor variances across multiple "in-date" books, which can be a nightmare to manage, especially where some books have "current" rules alongside other rules which have been superseded elsewhere. Though with the advent of 8th edition, and all factions receiving simultaneous rule updates via indexes (Imperial, Xenos and Chaos Imperial Armour indexes), these rules are much easier to keep track of than ever before.

But these organisers ''(if they are smart)'' will also likely restrict "core" army selections too, so no Unbound lists or may exclude certain FOCs, because in the end which is more unbalanced and [[Cheese|cheesy]]? The guy who takes a contemptor dreadnought in his Combined Arms detachment or the guy who take an unbound army of Heldrakes? (Ha Held Rakes sound scary). If the tournament organizer is using the ITC standard for 40k, Forge World units themselves are in fact quite legal.

All that said however, there is a somewhat valid reason why someone may be a bit "model-shy" around Forge World rules; and that is information. There are 16 armies in 40k, and each dex tends to have more than one valid build; the Astra Militarum alone has six (tank heavy, artillery heavy, balance, flying circus, infantry spam, veteran spam). From a player's perspective, throwing MORE armies, rules, and models at them only compounds how much they need to consider. By counting Forge World, the number of army lists jumps to over 28 without considering supplements or mini-codices with only a handful of options, and again, each list can be played in more than one way, and then there are the (admittedly handful) of differences between Forge World and Games Workshop about the same model "is that the vanquisher with the coaxial? or not?" and then on top of all that you need to consider allies. While Forge World is legal from any logical standpoint, people are not logical, and may be daunted by just how much new information they have to learn in order to make proper gameplay choices and not lose, because they did not know that the Death Korp can give orders to artillery. Again, though Forge World is by any standard as legal as any codex, the other player may feel intimidated by your Space Marine siege army just because he does not know for sure what it can do and chose to walk way from it the same way he would if you brought an unbound army made of nothing but riptides.

== Planet ==

The second, fluffy, definition is a type of [[Imperial Worlds]] that refers to an entire world converted into a factory; one that runs at high capacity, even for its size. They produce everything from [[laspistol]]s to [[Land Raider]]s to [[Titan]]s, so they are needed to keep the Imperial war machine trundling forward. Many of them have particular specialties, such as Ryza's plasma weapons. Because of their nature, the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] highly regard these worlds as holy places, and the Mechanicus owns just about all of them, which is fine since there are only a few of them and the Mechanicus is best at maintaining that shit. Losing a single one is considered an unacceptable loss by the Mechanicus, and the Imperium as well since it'll be harder than fuck to fill in those planet-sized gaps in their industrial sector (with that said, it's frequent to see hive worlds being described as essential industrial centers, and many of them certainly live off of their industrial output alone, so being industrial centers alone doesn't make a planet a forge world). In the [[fluff]], there is actually a Forge World called [[What|'Zpandex']]. Turns out, many of them are actually [[Tomb World]]s.

=== A few Forge Worlds of note: ===
{| class="wikitable"
|+ '''Known Forge Worlds:'''
|'''Accatran'''
|Makes all the wargear for the [[Elysian Drop Troops]]. Their Titan Legion, the Legio Destructor, is the largest of all the Titan legions and their constant battles against Orks have made the Legio Destructor increasingly unorthodox in its outlook and behavior (read: Orky), and they have the awesome battlecry, 'big death, Big Death, BIG DEATH! '''BIG DEFF!!!!!!''''
|-
|'''Agripinaa'''
|One of the Forge Worlds near the [[Eye of Terror]]; too bad [[Typhus]] turned one of their Agri-Worlds into his own little Daemon World. Has kept itself independent and Chaos-free since the fall of Cadia by "recruiting" refugees into its Skitarii legions and occasionally making them into [[servitor]]s.
|-
|'''Angstrom'''
|Situated near [[Badab]]. Pledged loyalty to Ryza and doubles as an Explorator base and watchtower for the Maelstrom. When Lugft Huron's secession occurred they initially supplied both sides but ultimately fell in line with the Imperials and contributed the [[Adeptus Titanicus|Legio Crucius]] to the invasion of the Badab System.
|-
|'''Anvilus'''
|Prime maker of the [[Land Raider]] before the Heresy, as well as the [[Dreadclaw]] during the [[Great Crusade]]. Described as the only serious rival to Mars for manufacturing output once Phaeton was bullied into splitting its assets. Taken over by Horus's forces during the Heresy and if the lore of the [[Storm Eagle]] is any indication, suffered catastrophic damage during the war.
|-
|'''Aphret'''
|A minor Forge World during the Great Crusade. Contributed frigates to the Imperium's fleets, notably the ''Grey Talon''.
|-
|'''Arachnus'''
|A Forge World that seems to specialize quite heavily in big fucking lasers. They're the assholes that produce the "Heavy Laser Destroyers" that are sometimes mounted on [[Dreadnought#Deredeo_Pattern|Deredeo]] Dreadnoughts, as well as the ones used by Custodians. Despite this, their integration into the Imperium was a shaky one and when the Horus Heresy happened they declared their independence from both the Emperor and the Warmaster and began carving out an empire of their own. It would only be reconquered some time later. Home to the Legio Venator, whose renegade elements renamed themselves as the Legio Tritonis.
|-
|'''Atar Median'''
|Founded by exiles from Phaeton. Home to the Legio Atarus (Firebrands).
|-
|'''Chaeroneia'''
|A minor Forge World that turned traitor and started using extreme amounts of biomechanical tech to the point where literally every building, computer, and engine on the planet was at least half-biological. [[Titan_(Warhammer_40,000)#Castigator_Titan|An advanced AI]] was responsible for the world's fall, corrupting an Archmagos who subsequently converted the ruling class into a [[Chaos Cults|Chaos cult]] that worshipped the Chaos-corrupted AI as the Omnissiah.
|-
|'''Cyclothrathe'''
|Home to a particularly brutal sect in 30K, who followed Horus into rebellion. Used a House of enslaved and tortured Knights, and their warlord [[Draykavac]] became one of the most hated members of the nascent Dark Mechanicum.
|-
|'''Deimos'''
|One of the moons of Mars, a micro Forge World. Deimos is pretty much the size of an asteroid (and shaped like a potato); it made the old-school patterns of vehicles that we players refer to as "heresy era". After the Horus Heresy it was displaced and put into orbit around Titan to provide all the goodies to the [[Grey Knights]] instead, so it's now a moon of a moon. The functionaries of Deimos are mindwiped at both ends to prevent them knowing about daemons, but the moon still maintains three knightly houses with complementary skitarii ready to assist the Grey Knights should they need support. Apparently attending to one order of Knights wasn't enough; they need ''four'' to really be satiated.
|-
|'''Phobos'''
|In case you're wondering about the other moon: Phobos in 40k was covered in guns literally as Mars' last line of defence. In reality it is expected to slam into Mars at some point in the future (by 'future', we mean about 30 or 50 million years). But that's without having a shit ton of guns on it, and they can probably fly it somewhere like they did with Deimos, so who knows what its orbit is now. Interestingly, Phobos has a [[Monolith]] on it. [[wikipedia:Phobos_monolith|Seriously]].
|-
|'''Estaban III'''
|Had a feud with [[Ryza]] over the [[Thanatar-Class Robot]]. Home to the Legio Tempestus maniple which went heretic, and went with them. Eventually reclaimed by the Imperium.
|-
|'''Firestorm'''
|Homeworld of the [[Aurora Chapter]] located in the Ultima Segmentum, its manufacturing capacity can top that of several noted Forge Worlds combined.
|-
|'''Graia'''
|A Forge World made of space stations that orbit the planet Graia. Their Tech-Priests and Skitarii are so coldly logical and rational that even psykers struggle to breach their minds. The last known makers of the Rapier Laser Destroyer, and incur misfortune (like getting attacked by [[Orks]] in [[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine]] and then eaten by the [[Tyranids]]) because GW ''hates'' the Rapier. Known for recently dealing with their frequent invasion problem by indulging in that most ancient of human tradition of taking ones ball and leaving, Graia no longer resides in its own home system. Poetically, [http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Guard/Death-Korps-of-Krieg/GRAIA-PATTERN-RAPIER-LASER-DESTROYER.html Forge World loves Rapiers.]
|-
|'''Gryphonne IV'''
|Got wrecked by the [[Tyranids]], although some pretty cool artillery and [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]]s made from there still roll with the [[Imperial Guard|IG]]. Currently trying to find a place to rebuild as a nomadic Explorator fleet.
|-
|'''Incaladion'''
|A Forge World on the fringes of Imperial Space and constantly raided during the Age of Strife, it was home to the Legio Fureans ('Tiger Eyes').
|-
|'''Jupiter'''
|I know right? Bet you didn't know about this one. The Imperial Navy's foremost shipyard and drydock. It only makes ships. It is a hotly contested Imperial political debate as to whether Jupiter is sovereign to the Mechanicus or the Imperium. They went totally green though, the hippies.
|-
|'''Kai'''
|Once relatively close to Eye Of Terror. Due to [[Just as planned|an unfortunate flux]], the Eye expanded and engulfed it. Managed to maintain an Imperial presence for a time, considering that their weapons didn't have to obey the laws of physics. Eventually, they had to barter their services (and guns) to various daemons and Chaos Legions inside the Eye in return for protection. Made the legendary [[Bolter#Kai_Gun|Kai Guns]] during this time. Chaos being Chaos, the Machine Smiths of Kai got eradicated in the battle between daemons wanting their [[dakka]] fix. GW being GW, the hundreds of other strange and mystical weapons forged on Kai during its time in the Warp will never be elaborated upon.
|-
|'''Kaurava I'''
|A Forge World (continent-spanning Manufactorum, to be precise) which is capable of producing [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|over 100 Baneblades]] at any given notice. The status of this world is unclear, although it was likely abandoned or destroyed during the Kaurava conflict of [[Dawn of War|Dawn of war: Soulstorm]]. (Dawn of War III confirms that Gorgutz won the Kaurava Conflict)
|-
|'''The Lathes'''
|Actually a group of three Forge Worlds in one system, named Het, Hesh and Hadd individually. These planets all have an extremely odd orbit around their parent star, which somehow results in their native ores having unusual properties because of [[bullshit|"gravity fluctuations"]] (the truth is probably way more heretical). Besides being the centre of production for the Calixis Sector, their most famous exports are Lathe-forged Blades, which use the aforementioned ore to basically be indestructible, able to stand up to even power blades.
|-
|'''Lliax'''
|30K-era Forge World. Supplied Shadrak Meduson's warbands during the Heresy, but they seem to have been involved in subverting his command with the Cult of the Gorgon.
|-
|'''Lucius'''
|First colonized by [[Battletech]] players from the late Eighties. [[Awesome|A hollowed out world that has replaced its core with an artificial sun.]] Though everyone knows that someday the sun will fail, the Tech-Priests of Lucius hold that death in pursuit of innovation is the greatest offering once can give to the Omnissiah. Maintains the ancient Legio Astorum, better known as the Warp Runners, and supplies the [[Death Korps of Krieg]]. Most notable for their teleportation tech, as well as how they fought against [[Hive Fleet Leviathan]]: rather than concentrating all the [[Imperial Guard|meat]] in one futile last stand, they hunkered down in the hollow of their world and sent their military out piece-by-piece, accepting the loss of their servitors, but retrieving the undigested mechanical bits (presumably after they were shitted out) for recycling afterwards. Unable to breach the crust and access the gooey center of the mechanicus tootsie pop, the Hive Fleet fell back, losing more biomass than they gained. [[Tomb World|Does any of this sound familiar?]] They have exclusive patterns for some Titans which are cheaper to produce, [[skub|but not as sweet looking as Mars patterns]]. Didn't get super-heavy tank STCs for a while, which is why they were one of the few major Forge Worlds that launched Macharius tank production when its STC get re-discovered, while most others frowned on it as a "poor man's Baneblade". Unlike most other Mechanicus, they favour white robes for both their priesthood and skitarii, probably because it's the colour of hot plasma. So yeah, those unusually white-robed Enginseers from the Ciaphas Cain novels are probably Lucians. Although they've since been retconned into wearing dark red, so maybe not.
|-
|'''[[Mars]]'''
|The big boss of the other Forge Worlds and the go-to guy for [[STC|stock patterns]] of weapons. Home to the original three titan legions, the ''Triad Ferrum Morgulus'': Legio Ignatum (Fire Wasps), [[Dark Mechanicus|Legio]] [[Nurgle|Mortis]] (Death's Heads), and Legio Tempestus (Stormlords). Has a giant shipyard called the Ring of Iron in orbit, which claims to be one of the largest human-made objects in existence.
|-
|'''Metalica'''
|Home to the Legio Metalica. Also known as Metalicus due to GW not wanting to get sued. They maintain the only known [[Titans_40k#Imperial_Titans|Imperial Titans]] capable of out-rocking the [[Gargant]]s made by the [[Ork#Rokkas|Goff Rokkas]]. They also provide most of the Adeptus Mechanicus forces fighting on Armageddon at any given time, and are notable for [[Awesome|going on Tyranid safaris]]. Following the Charadon Campaign, its techpriests been preoccupied with keeping the techno-virus that [[Typhus]] infected it with from corrupting the planet. So far they've been relatively successful, but the virus has yet to be eradicated.
|-
|'''Mezoa'''
|A Volcanic Forge World where no Titan can walk for fear of falling through the planet's crust. Was besieged during the Horus Heresy and the Gothic War.
|-
|'''Mordax'''
|The one that got taken over by the [[Orks]]. They named it Mordakka ([[MOAR DAKKA|Yes really...]]) and [[Blood Ravens|Blood Ravens-ed]] the titans on it. Despite the dubious [[Canon|canonicity]] of the old 13th [[Black Crusade]] materials, Geedubs hasn't forgotten about Mordakka, giving it a place on the Skitarii 7th Edition Codex and AdMech 8th Edition codex's galactic map. It's more than can be said for other worlds on this list...
|-
|'''Morvane'''
|Mentioned in the [[Adeptus Custodes]] codex, Morvane is a "lost" Forge World and the only lead the Custodes have to a possible fix for the [[Golden Throne]].
|-
|'''M'Pandex'''
|Also called Z'pandex, Mappandax and Zaphadak. [[Lulz|You may commence laughing]]. (The original joke may have been that, during the Rogue Trader days, the Imperium needed a Forge World dedicated just to making all of the 80's-style spandex it would chew through.)
|-
|'''Orestes'''
|Supplied the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, but got attacked by Chaos Titans. [[Awesome|''And won.'']] [[Dan Abnett]] wrote [[Titanicus|a book]] about it. Presumably get overrun by Chaos with the rest of segmentum during the Night of Thousand Rebellions. It's apparently a Mechanicus-affiliated Knight World now. [[What|What the hell, GW?]]
|-
|'''Paramar'''
|Invaded and overrun several times during the Horus Heresy by both Loyalists and Traitors.
|-
|'''Phaeton'''
|Used to be where the standard Leman Russ, Chimera and Basilisk patterns came from, before GW changed the models to the Mars pattern. Home to the Legio Osedax (Cockatrices). It probably still is where the STCs were discovered, and Mars just "lifted" them for safe keeping.
|-
|'''Ryza'''
|Makes all the coolest plasma stuff because nobody else could keep their act together. Their Titan Legion is the awesomely named Legio Crucius (Warmongers). After fighting Orkz for so long their Skitarii have the most badass war cry among other Forgeworlds: "[[Rip and tear|Red in Cog and Claw!]]"
|-
|'''Sarum'''
|Forge World closely aligned with the [[World Eaters]]. Home to the bound daemon Sa'ra'ram, the source of Obliterators. It's since become a full-on Hell Forge, with all the Warp weirdness that goes with that, fading in and out of reality across the Golgothan Wastes.
|-
|'''Stygies VIII'''
|Makes awesome guns and ammo, as well as the (apparently rare) [[Leman Russ Battle Tank|Leman Russ Vanquisher]]. Cannot keep their act together, losing [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|''two whole Titan Legions'']] to [[Chaos]] and having to get another legion [[Fail|transplanted in.]] [[What|Also it is a moon.]] Their tech priests constantly get into fights with Deathwatch killteams due to their intense interest in xenos technology.
|-
|'''Toil'''
|Got fucked over by [[Perturabo]] invoking Nurgle, causing the factories to become living Daemon Engines. Completely lifeless, [[Fail|with dying horribly to the Iron Warriors being its only notable purpose]].
|-
|'''<s>Tigrus</s> Tigris'''
|Originally made/discovered the Vanquisher Cannon, the Fellblade Accelerator Cannon, and several other Great Crusade-Era Imperial ordinance pieces and ammunition. Like Anvillius, it got absolutely wrecked during the Heresy. Currently overrun by the [[Orks]], specifically the Murda Meks of Tigris. Most players generally consider the Orkish takeover a good thing, seeing as this world now makes the [[Kill Tanks]] from IA8.
|-
|'''Tigrus'''
|Sits on the "dark" edge of the galaxy-wide fuck-off warp rift known as the Cicatrix Maledictum. Notably ''not'' overrun by Orks. Unlike the above world of ''Tigris'', which is also conveniently in the Ultima Segmentum. Seriously guys, Tigrus ''just'' won a campaign against the Tau in M41! They ''totally aren't'' the same Forge World, and GW ''totally didn't'' [[derp|forget about one of the most famous Ork-held worlds]] between 5th and 8th Edition when the new Adeptus Mechanicus codex came out, and the ''totally unrelated'' former Forge World Tigris ''totally isn't'' a misspelling existing only in IA8! Why are you all looking at me like that?
|-
|'''[[Tolkien|Tolkhan]]'''
|[[Imperial Armour|IA Vol. 1]] gave us this gem. Oh [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|Rogue Trader]], how you haunt [[Games Workshop|GW]] to this day. [[/tg/|We]] love you so. Incidentally, it is home to the best named Titan Legion ever: Legio Pallidus Mor, the Pale Riders.
|-
|'''Triplex Phall'''
|A Forge World on the Eastern Fringe, nearly got shitcanned by attacks from Hive Fleet Kraken and the Death Guard. Used to produce lasrifles for the [[Solar Auxila]] and currently produces the M-Galaxy Pattern lasgun. Constantly pisses of Mars by hoarding archeotech while refusing to hand them over.
|-
|'''Urdesh'''
|A Chaos-tainted Forge World in the Sabbat Worlds Sector, and contested heavily during the Sabbat World's Crusade. It was a more general-purpose Forge World, in that it produced all sorts of munitions, from Lascarbines to Autocannons to APCs and much, much more. Its specialty, however, was a large number of tank designs, most notably the AT-70 ''Reaver'' and the AT-83 ''Brigand''. While not quite as useful as Leman Russes, they were capable enough for the PDF in the sector. It remained under control of the Blood Pact army of Chaos until sometime towards the end of the Crusade. The [[Tanith First (And Only)]] face off against a lot of production from this world.
|-
|'''Vanaheim'''
|Known for producing its its own pattern of the [[Medusa Siege Gun|Medusa]] and [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisk]] with a unique gunshield as well as being the Forge World of origin for the [[Salamander Reconnaissance Tank|Salamander]] and [[Centaur Utility Vehicle|Centaur]].
|-
|'''Voss Prime'''
|A ''prime'' example of [[Imperium|Imperial]] [[fail]], has no idea what to do with [[Plasma|plasma.]] On the other hand, it made a Lasgun 2.0 called the Voss Pattern Lasrifle (it was [[awesome]]) and supplied the entire [[Solar Auxilia]] with it, down to a man. Who cares about plasma when you manufacture enough flashlights to light the whole Galaxy up? Still manages to maintain the goofily-named Legio Invigilata though. Also makes Vulture gunships and Lightning Strike Fighters. Main supplier for the Armageddon fleet, and known for their unconventional ideas about escort ship designs (most of which were produced for all of about three weeks before Games Workshop decided to shitcan their molds).
|-
|'''[[Xana II]]'''
|A neutral Forge World that tried to play both sides during the Heresy, only for the Loyalists to fuck their shit up. Taken over by a hardcore motherfucker named [[Anacharis Scoria|Anacharis "I Eat Primarchs For Dinner" Scoria]] and became the first of the Dark Mechanicum Hellforges. Now drifts through the warp, selling Hellblades, Hell Talons and Harbinger Bombers to Chaos Warbands.
|-
|'''Zhao-Arkhad'''
|Also spelled Arkkad, the Anarcho-Capitalist Forge World that decided it was best to buddy up with the [[Thousand Sons]]. Their mistake led to their Forge World being razed during the Heresy. It would be re-founded in M41, and the schematics for the [[Crassus Armored Assault Transport|Crassus]] and Praetor found there. Once home to the Legio Xestobiax (Iron Vigil), who used heretekal Psi-Control cores in their Titans. It is unknown if this made Xestobiax titans Psi-Titans or not.
|}

{{40k-Planets}}
[[Category:Games Workshop]][[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Dark Mechanicus]]
[[Category:Model Manufacturers]]