And the Tal'darim once more.
I really like the idea of united protoss race. Yes, the Tal'darim society is a cruel and savage. But those who stayed with the Daelaam and rejected the Chain of Ascension, will inevitably fit the new society and over time they will no longer be viewed with suspicion.
But they will proudly carry the colors of their tribe and fiercely rush into the flames of battle shouting "My life for Aiur!"
I'm not sure if it can be called a headcanon or just my thoughts but I like this idea (･ᴗ･ )
• I miss you. Is that allowed? Am I allowed to miss you?
• You were right. About all of it. I should have listened.
And one to write:
• I don't expect you to forgive me. I just needed you to know.
I chose those because from what you post about Ma'lash/Nuroka I think it suits them ^^
Whenever you have time and energy ofc <3
fr this kickstarted me into my actual comic career, thank you Arivia for the ask <3 <3 I'll be doing the other asks in separate posts bc I wanna make them very symbolic
First up we got Am I Allowed to Miss You? which is a 5 page short oneshot that actually captured the exact vibe of Nuroka & Ma'lash that I have, also I'm very happy that this was the vibe you got, it means I've succeeded as a writer <3 <3
bonus points if people can spot who the dead silhouettes are (my friends have met their counterparts :33)
The pits that I mentioned about Ma'lash's death is really out of context so I'll elaborate in the simplest way I can because it ain't a sandpit- it's a death pit.
They're officially called the Pits of Ascension which is really ironic because once you get pushed down, you fall all the way to Slayn (the planet)'s burning core and die, if you aren't dead already when pushed in. (I don't know how they dug a Pit that deep tbh it was never explained)
I am aware they appear to be north-west/south-east but the novel explicitly states West vs East; I believe the map is just designed diagonally.
These Pits are massive and can hold an entire fleet and thousands of people in terms of both audience and duels. Canonically it takes more than 30 minutes to walk from the middle to one Pit as mentioned in the short story Ascension, the game obviously scales this down for missions.
They are considered the Tal'darim's -Ma'lash's people that he rules over- sacred duelling grounds for a ritual called Rak'Shir which is basically a fight to the death for promotion/keeping your job. It involves two Primaries which is Challenger (lower-ranked) vs Challenged (highed-ranked) and they try and push each other into a Pit which obviously kills one of them. (Rak'Shir and the Chain of Ascension as a whole -Tal'darim hierarchy- is very lengthy and needs another post)
The Pits' second name is the Pits of Sacrifice which was never explicitly spoken, but was detailed in mission requirements in Legacy of the Void- more fitting lore-wise but I don't think the Tal'darim ever knew this saying.
Even if they were aware of this name, they'd probably blacklist this and push the guy who mentioned it into a Pit bc we can't have that here in our cult were we worship a dark god who wants to remake it in His own image, and the whole Rak'Shir ritual is to help our population Ascend and become stronger :)
(and note I'm talking pre-Alarak vs Ma'lash Rak'Shir bc after this duel, all Tal'darim are aware that Amon has lied to them about Ascension. Everyone believed on the Day of Ascension Amon -the dark god- would Ascend and uplift the Tal'darim while the rest of the universe died- this is not true and Amon wanted to kill them after they outlived their usefulness. Ma'lash is one of the few people aware of this truth.)
The darkness that covers the entire universe hides bloody hunters, prowling in the shadows. There is no place where they could not overtake their victim, just as there are no secrets that would be hidden from their ruthless Matriarch.
The Matriarch of the bloody hunters in all her terrifying glory!
Yeah Ihave a few difvbduhfvdv. I'm glad you enjoy my traumatised purple bean!
I see this as a pretty tall order because it feels like there’s a million of them fvhidbfvkd but yeah okay, I’ll do what I can to somewhat introduce them. If anything, it might help with the crushing, overwhelming feeling of not knowing what and when to start uploading shit because of the literal *hundreds* pieces of art I accumulated over the past few years.
I’ll also divide this into three parts because otherwise this post would be way too long.
Part 1/3 the Tal'darim <- you're here
Part 2/3 the Khalai
Part 3/3 the Nerazim
The Tal’darim
Dal’ranak is probably the most developed Taldy I have and also the oldest, dating to maybe 2016 or 2017. He remains mostly unchanged from how I imagined him back then, only receiving desing tweeks last year because I wanted him to look more spiky. He was kind of a foil to Zhakul (who we will talk about later) and a “looks into the camera like he's on the Office” moment that showed you can’t solve your problems by getting angry at them and beating them up. He has a really mean mommy and makes it everyone’s problem for like the first eighty, ninety years of his life before he goes “Ah, maybe I shouldn’t be an asshole. Maybe the problems I deal with are my own to deal with and I shouldn’t take my mommy issues on everyone else.”
So as any sane person would, he then decides to kill his mother in a Rak’Shir as revenge for making him that way in the first place. You know. As you do. A completely normal reaction imo. Anyway, while he’s climbing the Chain to get to Y’rash’s Ascendant position just to kill her, he realises how deeply flawed and messed up his society is and after he yeets her, decides to attempt to become the Highlord just so he can break the cycle and free his people from their self-imposed misery.
I haven’t yet decided if he will succeed. Like, he 100% yeets Y’rash (Rest In Piss) but idk if he makes it to Highlord yet, mostly because I’m not sure if he’s both physically and mentally strong enough to get on the very top of the Chain of Ascension and then survive Tal’darim cutthroat politics while he essentially forces his entire race to do a 180 of their entire culture.
(Dal's story also used to be veeeeery different back in like 2017 when I came up with him, in a sense that him and Zhakul became a ThingTM down the centuries. But as I grew older, I realised how incredibly fucked up and toxic this would be and decided that this just isn't the kind of story I want to write about, especially not for Zhakul. So Dal's was changed in about 2021/2022 to what it is now.)
Nerus. I keep scrapping and reviving this character over and over again because I cannot decide whether his story is good/interesting enough to go with (Also because it’d be strongly tied to yet another character and I’m not sure *this* is the best path for her to take) I think he’s from, like, early 2022?? Anyway, it was from a time I still HCd that protoss crests never stopped growing and since this bitch was supposed to be like 800 years old, his was fucking massive.
(Also from a time I HCd that the older a protoss is, the more bony and spiky they look until they essentially resemble a mummified body. Which ended up being a double edged sword for me because it meant drawing him with a really thin face and I don’t particularly like protoss with very thin, almost beak-like faces because they then remind me too much of a Tesla logo ifhbvkdfvdgb)
I love the kind of stories where, like, a god that was killed didn’t actually die. That thing is too divine and too powerful to truly be killed, something too incomprehensible for mortal minds to ever understand. The idea that the corpse of a god still radiates some kind of energy or magic that can be harnessed for whatever reason, that it still seeps out of the carcass and influences the world it died in is very very interesting to me, and also whether this residual energy could be harnessed in whatever way to bring that divine being back to life. The Xel'naga are born of the Void and can shape it to their will, it's a part of them, forever and always. Amon already came back once, so why not again?
The way I see it, Nerus was a powerful priest of some Amon-centred religion/cult for a looooooong time and was completely dedicated to his god and the duties his position enticed. His only goal in life would be to serve him, whatever it meant, even if the will of his god was the eradication of Nerus’s own people and the universe as a whole.
He greatly disliked Alarak from the moment he defeated Nuroka in a Rak'shir because he saw him as a potential threat to his religion and his god's great plan, which would only escalate when Alarak actually became the Highlord and was like "Lmfaoooo, Amon fucked us over, guys, time to yeet him" Nerus then saw his life’s work collapse all around him as nearly all Tal’darim turned their backs on Amon and instead joined Alarak in his quest to kill him. The ultimate heresy. He then went into voluntary exile and set himself on a path of finding out how to revive his dead god, because he wants nothing more but to serve him. He doesn't care how many people die on his quest, or even if he personally is successful. He only cares about figuring out if it's possible and either doing it himself or preparing someone else to do it in his stead.
And, as if this bitch wasn’t creepy enough, he was like 11ft tall and VERY spindly as additional contrast to the character he was supposed to share the story with, who was barely 5ft artist challenge: draw your OC in a way Vivziepop would draw them-*gunshot*
Y’rash, formerly Ulzea, because her original name sounded Nerazim-y instead of something a Taldy would be called. I fucking hate this character, mostly because I can’t get her design to look the way I want to. She’s on her *fourth* redesign now and I am STILL not satisfied with the way she looks. The black and white sketch of her is the most recent one and the one that’s most accurate to how I imagine her but it’s still not a 100%
Anyway, this is Dal’s mommy that was mentioned earlier (whether she’s his biological mother or just someone who stole a child and brainwashed them into thinking she’s their parent is left for interpretation. Probably the latter, who knows. I know.) She only ever saw him as a meatshield to use for her own gain and protection. Y’rash was a fairly highly positioned Ascendant but also unlike many others who climb the Chain because of ambition, power or just to hone their skills, she was comfortable where she was in the link because of the power it offered her, also being low enough to escape most political attention and not be deemed a big threat. The problem was that the only way she could stay where she was meant she had to beat anyone who challenged her for her position, and she didn’t particularly want to risk someone stronger than her climbing up and usurping her (read: kill her to get her job)
So, as any sane person would do, she decided to bring up her own child in a way that would assure her place in the Chain, meaning that Dal was supposed to hone his combat skills, become *stronger* than her and eventually climb, only to then position himself directly under her, so any potential challenger goes after him and not her, all while he’s completely brainwashed into blind loyalty towards her. He was one of many, but was her absolute favourite (read: he was the strongest) and for a while, he enjoyed the kind of twisted attention she “showered” him in because it was the closest thing to love he experienced so far.
That all ended when he got gravely injured on Endion, losing a whole limb, while the rest of his "siblings" made it out of the war with lesser injuries. This catapulted him from the position of the faavourite child to the very bottom of the family hierarchy, which he wasn't coping with at all. He was desperate for Y'rash's approval and as such was agreed to everything his mother wanted of him to win it back, something that eventually got him on Shakuras where he met Zhakul. Bla bla bla some shenanigans ensue, he gets a taste of what real love and kindness is, then it's all ripped away from him again because of his own hubris. He decides to blame Y'rash for this and the rest can be found in his section ifbvifjhnbf
(Story is subject to change tho. This was made up around 2016/2017 when I was still a teenager and I now see this as something very outdated with about as many plotholes as a cobweb has. I started rewriting this in early 2023 but because I only have such raw, early concepts for this story, I still see this as the more coherent of the two plotlines so for now this one is canon for the AU. So. Subject to change)
ANYWAY. Her plan kinda falls apart when her son decides that he’s had enough of her bullshit , comes back to Slayn and starts climbing the Chain with the intention to kill her instead of just taking a secure place right beneath her. She sees this as the ultimate betrayal, of course, but oh well. Maybe next time take your son to Disneyland once a decade or so to better make him believe your bullshit.
She also plays the same game with Alarak and Alarak (unknowingly) throwed half of them (they are at the same rank). He didn’t know about Ji’nara playing the same game tho he’s just easily tilted.
