Sarah's Psi rift exploded into existence from a single point of light, bursting into an all-encompassing purple sphere.
I just sort of sat in Steve and 'watched' the thing go off. One second there was some grey blocky ship just about as big as a Leviathan, and the next that ship'd been surrounded by this black-purple thing, swirling like the eye of Jupiter.
It reeked of the void. I could feel it from here, and I could sense things dying over on that ship, tiny flickers of life fading away. If there were any organics onboard that ship they'd be dead, dying or wishing they were dead right about now. Exploding head syndrome was a thing, mmph.
And well, given that I could sense things dying there were probably organic life forms on that ship. Hey, the lights were going out-
And that's when Sarah's Rift imploded on itself, taking a large spherical chunk out of that grey blocky ship.
Then it exploded again.
That was pretty. Really pretty.
Point is, fucking psionics.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Starcraft in a nutshell.
"By the way, where'd you-"
"The memories of those Ethereals." She sent back casually. "Moriarty allowed me to study the body of one of their Avatars. We were able to replicate their psionic techniques after."
"… Imma stop you right there. That's… Cool. Great."
We're gonna find out more about the bullshit they could've pulled off but didn't aren't we.
"Void shielding."
"What was that Moriarty?"
"Psionic techniques extracted from corpse of Ethereal Proxy-Bodies. New sequences available. Essence examined."
"So like, what shield Steve with my mind?"
I got a sense that Moriarty was slightly exasperated. "Mutation causes Leviathan to grow organ. Extra nodes in the nervous system. Able to exhibit ability similar to psionic ability referred to as 'Stasis.' Void Shielding. Absorbs energy. Kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic. More esoteric forms of energy."
There was a brief pause.
"Would also prevent psionic attacks from affecting Leviathan. Like how inferior ships were destroyed by 'Rift'." Moriarty sniffed. "Overmind could also 'Shield Steve with their mind.' Rudimentary but effective."
That's... actually really useful.
"Wait, how long have you been working on this?"
"Dissection of Ethereal-Proxies almost immediate. Examination of new sequences longer. Ethereal essence… Rudimentary, yet refined. Cobbled together, yet flawless. Xel'Naga influence. Necessary sequences identified five minutes ago."
... Ignoring those hilariously broken R&D research speeds, or well, what passes for R&D with the Zerg-
"… Xel'Naga influence?" I asked. "I'm sorry, what the fu-"
"Ethereal essence… Noticeable Xel'Naga influence in DNA markers, in psionic fingerprint. Similar to Zerg, possibly more similar to Protoss. However, greatly inferior in design and form. Skeletal and muscular atrophy. Useless."
I had to force myself to resist the urge to scream. I tried to force myself to scream. Nope, couldn't stop it.
In space, a Mutalisk screeched incredibly loudly and then its head exploded.
Another Mutalisk began to screech before that Mutalisk's head also exploded.
Okay, clearly I needed to ask about these things on a regular basis holy shit wtfbbq.
wtfbbq is right jesus christ holy shit
I was approaching this the wrong way. I didn't need to send in units, I didn't really need to capture any captives, I just needed a way to kill everyone onboard and sort through the bodies later.
Biotoxins. No, no, Viruses. Hyper-Evolutionary Virus? No, their suits probably had NBC protection, those stupid helmets and spacesuits probably weren't for show. Corrosion though, some way to get through the suit coupled with-
The lights finally went on in my head.
"Moriarty. I have an idea."
Oh dear god. It's going to be unintentionally horrifying.
You thought this was dead, but it was I, Generic_Generica!
Anyways. I'm gonna finish the next chapter and then insert links. Because inserting links is not fun. But writing is fun. And we like fun things.
All jokes aside, I'll get to it eventually. Eventually.
If anyone's still reading this after it's gone a month without an update at any rate.
Meh, real life sucks up a lot of time. I'd spend way more time on my Let's Play but noooo, taxes need to be filed, work has to get done, etc. So yeah, don't worry about it too much.
Also, I have some speculation as to what we're gonna see. From Moriarty, we know that he's made some new strains for the Swarm, so here's what I'm thinking. First, the sectoid is probably going to largely stay the same minus getting the Zerg treatment (armor, claws, a couple other nasty things). It's still going to be a low-level psionic unit focused around debuffing the enemy. And is typical for the Zerg, is totally expendable.
Second, the Viper is going to have to change to be more of a specialist unit if kept at all. While agile and maneuverable, the Viper does not have exceptional physical strength nor innate weaponry and relies on ADVENT's beam weaponry to provide most of its killing power. The only good things it does have is the ability to spit poison clouds (which the Roach does better with acid), the ability to pull enemy units out of position (which the Swarm's own Viper from HotS already does), and the ability to put an enemy unit in a bind (which is of questionable value). That said, a use could be found for the Viper by converting it into a pure capture unit or infiltration specialist. The former because the Zerg can use more Psionics, and having the ability to capture more of them can only be a good thing. Assuming you're suppressing your morals anyway. The second is more because the Zerg are pretty much lacking such specialists entirely outside of Changelings. Changlings are good, but when shit goes down, they're found to be sorely lacking. A team of Vipers going in as a Vanguard and causing as much chaos as possible sounds fun.
The Muton and the Berserker are both things that I'm not entirely sure about. I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that the Swarm would like about them. At best, any useful essence will be copied and transferred into something more useful. One thing I can think up though would be the addition of glands producing Overdrive Serum. The Zerg's version of Stim Packs basically.
Archons and Chrysalids? Don't make me laugh. They're either pointless or obsolete as hell for the Zerg.
Gatekeepers though? Powerful psionic essence. Limited in terms of utility in comparison to the Sectoid, but eh. It'd probably be for the best to fold it's abilities into another unit, perhaps the Sectoid, Queen, or maybe even the Overlord if you want to be really evil about it. I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong with Overlords reviving Zombies everywhere?
Lastly, the Avatar. Oh, boy. Oh, boy! I see that Sarah and Moriarty have already dissected and fully examined an Avatar corpse. The greatest benefit from the Avatars and the Black Site vials is the ability to pretty much have everything necessary for Moriarty to make Avatar's for the Swarm. Before Starcraft 2 introduced Amon and retconned a lot of why the Overmind did what it did, the reason the Zerg went after the Terrans was for their Psionics so they could face the Protoss on a much more even ground. With the Queen of Blades, it even succeeded pretty spectacularly... but then it never mass produced its own psions for some reason.* But now? SI!Generica has everything needed to create Avatars and a need for them.
unintentionallyhorrifying.jpg
*As a side note, Kerrigan eventually figured out how the Overmind and Abathur managed to infest her in the first place and used the process to infest a human who she thought was a powerful psionic (he wasn't). After the guy fucked up, he was cut loose from the Swarm and left for dead. Spoiler alert, he died. Presumably the only reason she did it at all was so she would know how she herself was infested.
