HuzundarOC.jpg

Name: Huzundar 

World: Starcraft

Story

When the UED(United Earth Directorate) were sent fleeing from the Koprulu sector by the vicious pursuit of Kerrigan’s zerg forces, they left behind secret bases and laboratories, scattered on obscure planets and moons. With the main force annihilated, these isolated bases, cut off from all contact with earth, alone in the darkness of space, realized that in order to survive, they would need to be prepared for any inevitable situation. Thus, they developed techs unheard of before, out of sheer desperation. Anything that fell on their secluded planets, whether a displaced protoss vessel, a zerg corpse, or even a dominion ship, was studied, scavenged and incorporated into a grand design of surveillance and observation. And all this was the means, by which an unfortunate Dark Templar, the sullen Huzundar, became prisoner to the schemes of these terrans, an instrument of their surveillance, and a prisoner of a robotic shell that his essence was bound to.

 

Now during the second war, the protoss Dark Tempar of the planet Shakuras, developed the Stalker weapons, cybernetic walkers that rather than being piloted or having an AI, required a Templar to permanently infuse his own life essence into the machine. The Stalker thus being a fusion of life and machine, could utilize Templar’s psionic power, in order to teleport and attack with void blasts. Huzundar was one of the volunteers, who sacrificed themselves, even though beforehand he did not find it to his liking to abandon his true living body for a cybernetic one, he was nevertheless proud of this sacrifice, and considered such acts as both an honor and necessity for the protection of his people.

 

But in a horrific battle with a zerg force, on a mineral-rich moon of an un-documented planet, he was stricken down, his husk could not be rescued, he was left stranded. Still bound to the broken cyborg shell, Huzundar’s essence did not die when the body went offline, rather he was forced to endure this hopeless isolation for what seemed like an eternity. He was finally picked up by the scavengers of the secret UED base, and this was not the end of his pain. The scientists of the UED were delighted to experiment with protoss tech, and even more so when they realized that a living protoss was somehow fused into the machine.

They picked and prodded at the design, intent on finding the locus that connected the living consciousness of the templar, and the cybernetic frame, for with this knowledge they could modify the design to their liking. After years, they remodeled Huzundar, and installed a virtual brain system that subjugated the intent of his consciousness, a soul cage. They then let Huzundar loose, for he was their slave, with an agile neo-steel frame, DT cloaking, psionic shields and short range teleportation, he was their eye, travelling across the stars, undetected by many. But can a digital brain and a metal frame truly contain a soul, a question remains to be answered.

Check out more of Alkh’s work on Tapas Media.