PLAYER INFO. ✖ Handle: Kay ✖ Contact: plurk: stabs aim: galakrond ✖ Are You Over 16: Y ✖ Other Characters Played in Consignment: None
CHARACTER INFO. ✖ Character Name: Kerrigan, Sarah Louise ✖ Canon: Starcraft; Heart of the Swarm, prior to Raynor's "death" ✖ Character Appearance:Beep Boop ✖ Character Age: 31 (this is a rough estimate -- its never stated, but the year in current canon is 2504 and she was born in year 2473) ✖ Pick A Number: 24, 601
✖ Canon Setting:
Starcraft is set in a universe about sixty thousand lightyears outside of the Milky Way galaxy -- humans and Earth are a concept and considered ancient history to most species living in the Koprulu Sector (also known as the "Terran Sector"). "Terrans" are an offshoot race from those known as "Human" and possess psionic potential. They are descendants of a colonization attempt in the 23rd century. Earth and Humanity are both an absolute mess, plagued with overpopulation, cybernetics, and nuclear terrorism. It plays next to 0 role in Starcraft's main storyline, so I'm not going to expand on it here. I will come back to explaining Terran civilization in the Koprulu Sector.
There are several planets in the Koprulu Sector, most of which are uninhabitable, but the four I will focus on are the main catalysts in the storyline. There is Aiur, the homeworld of the Protoss, a (mostly) benevolent, long-lived race of aliens who communicate exclusively via telepathy. The Protoss once warred greatly with one another, but found harmony amongst one another through the Khala, which syncs all Protoss thoughts and emotions together in one network. Those who adhere to the communal Khala are known as Khalai, while those who reject it are known as Nerazim. The Nerazim believe that the Khala will one day be used against them, and instead choose "the Void", which is a separate brand of more chaotic psiionic energy. The Protoss, having been in civil war for many years, are considered a "warrior race" and a heavily militant society, despite the fact that they are rarely at war with anyone. The Protoss generally stay out of Terran wars and affairs, but greatly detest the Zerg blight.
The Zerg homeworld is known as Char, a volcanic planet that only the chitinous insectoid race is capable of inhabiting. The Zerg Swarm is a race of hivemind insectoids, descended from their individually minded cousins on Zerus known as the Primal Zerg. The Zerg Swarm were bound long ago to a psionic Overmind, who would later be succeeded by Kerrigan herself through a series of unfortunate events. Kerrigan and her Zerg Swarm dominate much of the Koprulu sector for several years, consuming, adapting, and evolving as much as they are allowed. Without an Overmind, they run wild without direction and become easy to kill. The Zerg are feared and hated by everyone in the Sector, and are seen as a blight that must be culled.
The final planets are Korhal and Tarsonis. Tarsonis, once the home of the old Terran Confederacy, is now mostly overrun by Zerg, having been made obsolete when Arcturus Mengsk and his rebel squadron, the Sons of Korhal, overthrew them and replaced it with the Terran Dominion. The Confederacy was the first government established amongst the Terran, and was considered to be oppressive and favoring toward the rich old families that dominated its inner halls. Mengsk, who believed he had a better vision for the Terran, staged a coup and succeeded, only to turn right back around and usurp power to perform similar tactics to keep everyone under his rule -- to keep them believing that Mengsk had the right idea, that it was Megnsk's way or the highway. Support for the Terran Dominion is much higher than that of the Confederacy, but many Terran have been made aware of the corruption from within and are now skeptical of their own safety in the face of both the Protoss and the Zerg with its Queen, Sarah Kerrigan.
Starcraft's setting revolves around the Koprulu Sector, though it is hinted that there are many neighboring galaxies nearby. Terran society can be described as futuristic and slightly dystopian, where the poor swim in filth and scrap while the rich live a higher life -- though not quite so high that they are capable of squandering all their resources at once. Civil War is common with limited resources and various powers vying for control in a galaxy where Terran are easily the weakest race in terms of raw strength (when compared to the Zerg and the Protoss). Terran are seen by the Protoss as hardy, but troublesome -- the Zerg are a much larger issue for both races, and thus the two are often united in an effort to drive them away.
Sarah Kerrigan is a woman driven solely by her personal beliefs and what she sees in front of her. Born into peasantry and later absorbed by the government to be used as a bioweapon, Kerrigan's trust in her own kind and other's is lacking. She was raised in a family until she was roughly seven years of age, but the trauma of her military conditioning had left her mostly bereft of what it was like to have someone who cared about her as a person. She is constantly reminded that she is a weapon, and she does her job very well.
That said, Kerrigan is not incapable of autonomy. In fact, Kerrigan is very determined to preserve her autonomy due to the fact that everyone around her is determined to squash it out of her. Kerrigan is keenly aware that those in power seek to control her, whether it is because they believe they can use her or because they are afraid of her own personal power. Such fears are generally unfounded -- Kerrigan does not thirst for power, or even positions of power despite her ability to command them. Though she evolves and changes many times, one constant in Kerrigan is her desire for autonomy -- for everyone to understand that she cannot and will not be controlled.
One thing that has stuck with Kerrigan through her conditioning is the subconscious memory of what happened to her parents when she was young. Kerrigan had accidentally killed her mother when an uncontrollable psionic burst overtook her, and her father was used as leverage to torture her when the Ghost Academy had tried to force cooperation from her. Due to a previously installed neural inhibitor, these memories are somewhat surpressed and only appear to her in flashes on random occassions. These memories, and the brief memories of the seven years prior instill Kerrigan with a conscious and a sense of compassion, however miniscule. But Kerrigan's treatment through the Ghost Academy and onward instill her with something much darker.
Kerrigan has an insatiable thirst for revenge. She will stop it nothing to achieve her revenge, including giving up her humanity and promise of a normal life. If Kerrigan believes she has been wronged, she will make sure you are perfectly aware of what she can do, and why you shouldn't cross her. If the offense is severe enough, she is not above murder. In fact, one of the greatest injustices done to her is done at the hands of Arcturus Mengsk, once a friend later turned enemy after he leaves her behind on a planet to be devoured by zerg. What he doesn't predict is that they will take her into their swarm to empower her even further, and break down all inhibitions holding her back.
As the Queen of Blades, Kerrigan had forgotten her past humanity. She was consumed by the zerg's insatiable need to consume, adapt and evolve and became one of the most feared beings in the galaxy. She came to command the zerg hivemind and found purpose in it, protecting and nurturing her broods while simultaniously breaking down society. She developed enemies with the Protoss, once friends with the Terran. Her lines of morality ceased to exist, and Kerrigan became little more than a highly intelligent predator. A piece of the Queen of Blades stuck with her even after she was forcibly reverted back to her Terran self -- a residual mutagen that makes her half Terran, half Zerg, and able to communicate and create with the swarm through her psionic abilities.
Her tenure as the Queen of Blades does not leave Kerrigan without scars. Kerrigan vividly remembers much of her time as a force of destruction. She remembers killing without care, tearing apart families and enjoying herself while doing it. It makes her sick, it makes her bitter, and it fuels her hatred for Arcturus Mengsk who used her to rise to power and then discarded her when he believed she no longer had use to him. Arcturs' betrayal delivered her right into the hands of someone else who was capable of controlling her, but instead desired to make her greater -- possibly the greatest she was ever capable of being. As great as it sounds (the fact that the zerg freed her mind from neural inhibitions), the swarm was still using her for their own purposes. Essentially, her tenure as the Queen of Blades was not particularly pleasant -- it forced her to do terrible things against the very values she held for so long: that she could not be controlled, and that she didn't need to enjoy killing to get the job done. She was forced to face the monster she was capable of being with no power to stop it. And yet, despite being faced with that horror, she falls back to revenge. She lays her attrocities at the feet of Arcturus Mengsk, whom she believes enabled her into becoming that weapon of mass destruction. She had placed her trust in him and even defended his ideals, only to have him betray her trust. For that, Kerrigan is willing to destroy who she is to rid the world of him, even if she must go down with him.
Mengsk's betrayal, in combination with her treatment as a child at the Ghost Academy, has left Kerrigan a very wary individual. It is difficult to gain her trust or to have her rely on you in any fashion. Kerrigan's neural inhibitor was designed both to surpress her memories and help control her ability to read the minds of others (for she would go insane from all the white noise, if left unchecked). However, when the supressants are removed, Kerrigan takes advantage of her power, learns to control it (to some degree) and uses it as a safeguard. Her psionic powers serve as an extra limb and she also uses them to determine first impressions and intent toward her. If she suspects someone of lying, she will go digging for that lie. The meager reserve of Kerrigan's trust currently lies with one person: long-time friend and associate rebel, James Raynor.
Kerrigan has explored a spectrum of human emotion with Jim. Their first meeting had been rocky (due to some less than pure thoughts he had experienced upon first laying eyes on her), but Kerrigan had learned to discover that Raynor was simply a very honest man who wanted to do good by his morals and fellow countrymen. He is also the only person who kept coming back for her (even after the zerg had taken her mind as the Queen of Blades) while the rest of the world turned their backs. Even after her cleansing, everyone around her believes her to be a danger and someone who should be put to death rather than given a second chance. Kerrigan herself even agrees for a time, suffering under the weight of guilt for what she had done as the zerg queen. But it is her love for James Raynor and her thirst for revenge against Arcturus Mengsk that brings her back around.
✖ Character Powers:
POWERS
Kerrigan was born as a psionic, which is essentially a human with psychic potential. To date, she is still one of the most powerful psionics the Terran have ever seen. After her infestation, Kerrigan’s psionic abilities amplified immensely and granted her control over the Zerg Swarm, which operated under a single hivemind (namely, herself). She has the ability to spawn the zerg virus and infest people with it and has also shown the ability to spawn zerg larvae using this virus, from which she is able to birth additional zerg units (namely queens, who will become birthing factories for faster production and infestation). Her psionic abilities allow her to manipulate space around her, giving her the ability to fly, read minds, bend both organic and inorganic matter to her will and fire bolts of energy. The only thing she does not seem to be able to do is mind control others, unless they have the zerg virus implanted within them. Kerrigan's eyes glow yellow when she is using any of her psionic abilities (outside of mind-reading, which tends to be as passive as listening in on someone else's conversation).
Her infestation also granted her immense speed and strength, though it is weakened without the primal zerg mutagen. She has shown vulnerability to intense and unexpected psychic trauma. Focused psionic attacks will disrupt her and cause her intense pain. Her source of power is only known as “energy”, so presumably, she is also vulnerable to exhaustion. Most of Kerrigan's weaknesses lie in fear and insecurity, the former being the harder of the two to prey upon.
Most of Kerrigan's strength lies in raw psychic power. She is confident only in what she knows and has experienced -- most other territory makes her uncomfortable and uncertain. Her only true positive personality point is that, somewhere in her tortured mind, she still has some form of a conscious and a desire to connect with people despite knowing it is practically impossible due to what she is.
SKILLS
Kerrigan is a highly trained assassin, proficient in a number of firearms, explosives, close-range weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. Even without her psionic cloaking ability, she knows how to move swift and silent and is a proficient killer. Though she is perfectly capable of outright brute force, she specializes in getting the job done quickly and quietly (unless her temper gets in the way). She is also capable of piloting and maneuvering small spacecrafts.
Its shortly after the pulse canon is destroyed that the agent comes to her. Kerrigan had fled the planet in hopes of escaping that feeling that had lead her away from zerg minds in the first place, that deep seated dark presence that she couldn't explain. Jim had tried to tell her that she was no longer the Queen of Blades, but what he hadn't understood was that the feeling wasn't exclusive to her time after infestation -- it had been something she felt her entire life.
And it was getting stronger.
Finding someone else (a terran of all things) on the dropship had surprised her, and it only takes the presence of another mind for her to raise her rifle and aim it. The agent is quick to show he is unarmed.
"I suggest you tell me what you want in the next 10 seconds if you want to keep your life," Kerrigan says almost immediately. The rifle is trained, the red laser of the scope lined up squarely in the center of the agent's skull.
"That's about all the time I have for this anyway," he offers, hands still in the air. "I represent the Cosmic Demolition Crew, and I'm here to make you an offer. Your Sector has been targeted for demolition--"
The agent is promptly cut off as the woman's eyes begin to glow, closing his windpipe to effectively end his speech. "You've chosen poorly." The agent struggles as Kerrigan lowers her weapon, obviously now intent on killing this man slowly with psionic pressure for his offense.
"Trying...to help..." he chokes. "Before...they come...grant amnesty..."
Amnesty. As if Sarah Kerrigan could hope for such a thing, even in her own homeworld. Still, this was bigger than her. If Koprulu was marked for destruction by some otherworldly demolition species, they would take her revenge from her before she could blink -- she had no army, she had no allies, and Jim was still stuck in that lab somewhere.
The agent drops to the ground abruptly, gasping for air. "Go on," Kerrigan replies, tone even.
"We could--use a few extra hands," the agent sputters from the ground, rubbing his throat. No hand had been placed there, and yet it had felt as if something had been crushing him. "Come with me, and I can ensure this Sector's preservation."
"And why should I trust you?" Sarah's eyes narrow, grip on her rifle tightening though it is no longer brought to bare. She's already proven that she doesn't need it to do damage.
"Because I can help you," he replies, breathing softly. "A man got left behind back there, didn't he? And another man trying to harm him, yeah?" The man does his best not to smile as the woman's eyes widen in surprise, and then narrow venomously. He presses onward before she can interrupt. "We can get him out -- keep him safe. We can give you your revenge. But only if you help us. You'd keep this Sector protected -- and he would be safe here."
It only takes Kerrigan a few long moments of pensive thought (and one "Whaddya say?" from the other man) before she offers a firm nod. It had already been proven that the Terran couldn't help her -- only she could build her strength and make use of it properly. She was safer outside of this galaxy, as was everyone who was unfortunately attached to her path of destruction. She might have argued against leaving Jim behind, but if this CDC could destroy planets, she could spare some time to make sure they protected one man.
Other planets were not her concern -- just Koprulu. She owed them that much after her reign as the Queen of Blades. If she told herself that enough times, she was certain she would have no regrets.
CHARACTER ITEMS. ✖ Pick a Team: Red ✖ Reason for Joining the CDC: Kerrigan has seen and been responsible for the death of millions of innocent lives in her sector of the galaxy. She believes herself responsible for the current state of Koprulu as much as Mengsk is, and would not see it come to harm if she were able to protect it. The sales pitch would include the preservation of James Raynor and the promised death of Arcturus Mengsk, which she is willing to give up her life and humanity for. (Both of these situations occur later in canon -- James lives, and Mengsk dies at Kerrigan's hand.) ✖ Mission Freebie: Ensured safety of James Raynor. (If that isn't applicable, then none. Almost everything she would ever want falls under the NO category, since she has simple and fixed desires -- she doesn't need a freebie for motivation.) ✖ Personal Item or Weapon: Kerrigan is equipped with her hostile environment suit, which allows her to channel her psionic powers through it in order to cloak herself and appear invisible. The muscle fiber it is made with is also designed to resist light bullet fire and enhances agility and strength, making her quite a formidable opponent when combined with her Zerg mutagen. It also typically has a mask to filter out harmful airborne agents, and increases visibility in harsh conditions, but the Zerg mutagen in Kerrigan's DNA makes this obsolete.
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stabs aim: galakrond
