First off, a distinction needs to be made between technical sophistication and military/industrial strength.
Sure the Terrans are not good at teleportation, can't power all their machines with light or psychic energy etc,
but they have blown up moons with their nukes, and had built a scaffolding into an entire planet (New Folsom) to mine an important metal from it.
In terms of firepower and scale of their engineering projects, they are just as impressive as the Protoss, if not more.
The Terrans make up for their lack of sophistication by being much more aggressive as a species.
(When the Protoss first noticed the existence of the Terrans, they were appalled at how the Terrans went about stripping resources from planets.
The Zerg were not the Space Locusts in StarCraft. The Terrans were.)
Secondly, the Protoss being more "ancient" is made less relevant by the Aeon of Strife, in which their civilisation regressed significantly.
To the point that they had to "rediscover" writing in 500 bc, when the AoS ended (according to the Dark Templar Saga).
In comparison, humans have had writing since 4000 to 3000 bc.
As for the Tal'darim, Legacy of the Void has shown that their MO is to raid other Protoss factions and steal the latters' technology,
so once again how "ancient" they are is not so relevant anymore.
As for the Swarm, we don't exactly know how long it has existed in the first place.
We know that the Overmind was a very knowledgeable being, and the Swarm probably did not have to limit itself to the kind of "organic tech" it had been using,
but that's the limit it seemed to have adhered to.
A few reasons can be given. For example, just like Dehaka in Heart of the Swarm, Zerg in general despise non-living machines.
Either way, it suffices to say that while Zerg biology is hax, it's also, by its nature, limited in some ways compared to what Terran and Protoss tech can do.
Most obvious case in point: the Swarm has never shown the capability to glass an entire planet from orbit the way the Terrans or Protoss do.
The Zerg experiment only started after the age of strife began, well after said age began actually, and the swarm was only created around 1000 bc or there about IIRC, so yeah neither the current Protoss civilisation nor the Zerg swarm are all that ancient after all, and remember Terrans had to build back up from near nothing over the course of only 1000 years with only the confederacy having any sort of pre-exodus database for a leg up.
The Zerg experiment only started after the age of strife began, well after said age began actually, and the swarm was only created around 1000 bc or there about IIRC, so yeah neither the current Protoss civilisation nor the Zerg swarm are all that ancient after all, and remember Terrans had to build back up from near nothing over the course of only 1000 years with only the confederacy having any sort of pre-exodus database for a leg up.
no the Terrans have be in the Koprulu Sector for about 80-120 years before StarCraft 1. (has an old time starcraft lore book and from the crash landing of the supercarriers it took only 60 years for the three surviving groups to reconnect via space travel.)
Edit: slash that it was about 200 years the protoss history details how long they been there "Two centuries passed as the Protoss watched over the budding Terran colonists."
slash that it was about 200 years the protoss history details how long they been there "Two centuries passed as the Protoss watched over the budding Terran colonists."
At this time, Zerus was apparently a volcanic world (like Char in the game setting). The massive forests came about after eons had passed.
Paraphrased from the manual of SC1.
After Generic's rebirth, I am expecting/hoping for an Abathur...BACK TO READING!
Aside from gaining the Xel'Nagas' detailed records about the interesting life forms in the galaxy, the ability to create wormholes, and the ability to make itself and some of its minions practically unkillable (unless attacked by Dark Templar)?
That brings us to the question of: what were the Xel'Naga's "basic" psionic abilities?
The novel StarCraft: Evolution gives us a glimpse of those abilities:
Basically, under Kerrigan's instruction, Zagara and Abathur used some essence from the Xel'Naga corpses at Ulnar to create a new hybrid creature called the Dreamers,
who, while dreaming, could reach out to any trace of life and make it grow and evolve. A group of Dreamers turned a practically barren planet into a forest world within at most a few years. In the novel, they only created plant life, but they have the potential to create other forms of life as well. And theoretically they could also reverse this process and cause a target organism to wither and eventually die. The dreamers could also take an unusual sound they're hearing and project it into the minds of other people on the same planet. (they seemed to be doing this by instinct rather than for any special purpose)
Abathur also secretly created another Xel'Naga-based strain called the Psyolisks, who could emit a disruptive psychic field that shut down enemy minds, jammed Terran coms devices, and even shut down Protoss technology (causing a Protoss shuttle and fighter to crash). A Protoss could resist its effects but still succumb if the Psyolisks focus the field onto him/her. Psyolisks could also control Zerg around them.
The novel also reveals an interesting thing about Xel'Naga essence: it functions at a "quantum" level that the Zerg do not understand.
And it's so dominant that the Dreamers and Psyolisks turn out "more Xel'Naga than Zerg", and are not part of the Swarm's hive mind. (Abathur had to use an organic version of a Terran coms device to communicate with them)
This handily explains why the Overmind did not create any Zerg strain based on the Xel'Naga. The results would not be under its control the way normal Swarm Zerg were.
and depending on your purpose, those abilities could be considered very awesome or very boring.
As for other special abilities displayed by Amon, Narud or Ouros, they could all be unique to these three Xel'Naga,
or they could be present to some degree in some of the Xel'Naga that the Overmind assimilated as well.
Since this is fanfiction, the author gets to choose
Here's some (obscure) examples of how the Overmind applied Xel'Naga knowledge:
The SC1 manual mentions that it learned to wield the "energies of Khaydarin crystals" and use this energy to uplift the Zerg further, mainly "increasing their sentience, but still keeping them under its control". That's all the manual says, so what exactly this uplifting entailed is up to interpretation.
In StarCraft: Retribution, the Overmind made use of a powerful Xel'Naga relic called the Argus Stone to create an "ultimate being" on Char. The campaign ends without showing us what this "ultimate being" is like, but it's reasonable to believe that it's Kerrigan, if we choose to consider Retribution as canon.
(This handily explains why the Queen of Blades was so unusually powerful (to the point that she could remotely subvert the Dark Templar matriarch's mind). Infestation alone does not boost psionic power in that manner.
It also, in retrospect, foreshadowed Kerrigan's ascension into a Xel'Naga after Legacy of the Void)
Again, since this is fanfiction,
the author could always make reasonable assumptions about what other knowledge the Overmind might have gained from the Xel'Naga.
I did have a question in their even if implied. Does the larger gate use the void or the warp?
Also why was Generic bored? If he was traveling faster than light speed then the time to travel from Earth to Mars is less than 182 seconds (the time it takes for Light to travel the distance). Obviously that varies based on positioning, but even at the worst it would be 22 minutes (requiring the Earth to be on one side of the Sun and Mars on the other). That is less than the time taken for the average American to get to work lol (25.2 minutes).
edit: who is the second most advanced faction in Warframe? The first would be the Tenno, but the Infected and Grineer sound less advanced than the Corpus...ah Sentients?
Double edit: on Amon's behalf (before some possible retcons), he is fucking old. Even if we assume he has only lived from the beginning of a universe to its end via heat death a few times over, he would be what, 40E1000...I cannot even tell you what that number is, besides huge (looking over some things, I believe it would be 4 googolplexes...dear God, 4 followed by a googol of zeros). In the end, I believe the original point of it all was a Immortality sucks scenario...taken to an extreme never seen before in any fiction I have ever heard of. With Ouros not being reborn into a new body when Kerrigan received his essence, it becomes iffy on Amon's age plus the Xel'naga living as long as their souls do...but at least he would have lived out his Ascension to Xel'naga and the remainder of his Universe...which could still be an obscene amount of time.
I did have a question in their even if implied. Does the larger gate use the void or the warp?
Also why was Generic bored? If he was traveling faster than light speed then the time to travel from Earth to Mars is less than 182 seconds (the time it takes for Light to travel the distance). Obviously that varies based on positioning, but even at the worst it would be 22 minutes (requiring the Earth to be on one side of the Sun and Mars on the other). That is less than the time taken for the average American to get to work lol (25.2 minutes).
edit: who is the second most advanced faction in Warframe? The first would be the Tenno, but the Infected and Grineer sound less advanced than the Corpus...ah Sentients?
Filler maybe, but I am still finding the MC getting bored to the point of contemplating suicide through "crashing" after "driving" for a few minutes a little bit of a stretch, but I will end this here.
Thanks for the replies to my inane questions. Have a good day/night. I have classes early morning, so I will be signing off soon.
edit: who is the second most advanced faction in Warframe? The first would be the Tenno, but the Infected and Grineer sound less advanced than the Corpus...ah Sentients?
The corrupted are still technically more advanced? I dunno if they count, the Neural Sentry lore is vague at best. I feel like it's possibly a Cephalon or Sentient running that show, given someone is directing Vor it seems like?
Sseems like a useless response. What are you going to do when you wake up. The thing mindraping youbis not goint to be the last. Hell it might still be there. Atleast listen to what it is saying first.
