#marijar

People in SC fandom generally take the side of the rebel templar Tassadar, and do not try to look on his actions from the other side. It’s like “these stupid Conclave jerks go to hell, the time has come for true defenders of Aiur”. Not to mention those, who’d never played SCI don’t even slightly imagine what was their role in the Protoss society, Conclave is thought to be a bunch of idiots with lust for power and nothing else. That seems ridiculous to me. Really, Protoss are highly civilized society with strong ideology and rich ancient culture. Their Union (I cannot call this religious communist formation an “Empire” - there is no Emperor!) had stood for thousends of years since Aeon Strife before the zerg invasion and had enourmous territories under Dae’Ul doctrine. If their leaders would be such total idiots, as they are shown in SCI (btw we never see anyone of them - Aldaris is just an advisor that transfers their will to the templar), how would they ever get this far? So it’s the time when I begin to dig deeper into headcanons to deduce, how was this actually possible. And after years of thinking and writing I see the bigger picture - of my own, of’course. I say - the Conclave was an elite organization of really conservative, but intelligent guys, chosen for some unique qualities that allowed them to be very useful in this microunity inside the Khala. Their mind powers were enought to become secretive and partly isolated from the others - so actually not only the dark templar, but the ordinary Khalai don’t now fully their ways. They possess the best of technologies, that means - the best arbiters, the best temporal manipulators and psi-power improvements. Protoss are told to have the ability to predict future - Conclave should have a number of the best prophets and mystics in it. With such abilities they would have predicted many things and moved the evolution of protoss society slowly forward through space and time (and who knows, maybe one day they’d find a way to find peace with the dark ones) BUT the zerg was something that ruined all the plans. No, not like this - the zerg invasion that actually happened few decades before they were ready to oppose it - due to Zeratul’s deadly mistake. The other failure was Tassadar that took most of their military forces away from Aiur in the minute of invasion. After the zerg descended on Aiur and started rooting in its holy ground - it was all lost. Imagine that - you’re the powerful ruler of the ground you’ve considered holy and indestructable. And then you see it slowly eaten by some mould. Zerg are considered as cancer, that cannot be cured - only burned out with living flesh. When there is too much of it - the only thing left for you is death. After this terrible loss Conclave didn’t think they were winning this war, like Zeratul said - they did the opposite. All their actions after were like a directed euthanasia for their agonizing paradise. Why so? Also very clear. The only alternative, as we see in SC:BW, is escape to Shakuras - place that is a combination of everything the khalai Protoss are taught to hate. Escape that means leaving behind everything, that really meant to be a member of the Protoss society and turn into savage warrior, moved by survivor instinct. To descend to the level of the fallen ones, and then, later in LotV, to humans they once despised as minor species. And, judging by the fact that 70% of Aiur population was killed by the zerg by times of SC:BW, including the Conclave, that was a deliberate massive act of suicide. The best of them accepted their fate, and only cowards left alive. Stepping backwards to the picture and the side we generally take while playing the original campaign, I’ve always payed attention, that there are Ara tribe templars, defending the Conclave Citadel. They stand on the walls and throw psi-storms on the Executors army, and it looks like an act of dispair, especially when they attack a bind of carriers. And they really made me think of such thing. Ara is a proud judicator tribe, but we see templars here defending them. Most people would say that it’s just a gameplay, Aldaris also had a templar model, blah blah... But no. I see it as a deep tragedy of a new strife within the Protoss society. Tassadar had the Velari, Akilae and Sargas complied to his will and his rebellion. I can easily imgaine the other tribes, loyal to the Conclave, start calling them traitors. And I can clearly see the story of some loyal templars, that desired to switch their tribe not to have anything in common with the traitors. And so was the story of Ariko, a halfblood Velari that desired to turn into Ara after Tassadar’s betrayal. He has his reasons - his father is actual Conclave member. They both have no illusions on winning this war - but they are sure it is important to execute Tassadar - to remind everyone the true values they are standing for and dying for, while Aiur is actually already lost. Not a very smooth speech I guess. Still - someone has to be talking for the “bad guys” here :D