The Protoss are a race of technologically advanced beings that had just recently began to seriously engage in dimensional travel and were becoming familiar with the rest of the megaverse. The Protoss began as an artificially created species designed by an incredibly advanced race known as the Xel’Naga. During the early years of the species, the Protoss were divided up into several different clans that controlled different parts of their home world Aiur. The clans lived in peace with each other and worshiped the Xel’Naga as gods, but then one day the Xel’Naga left and the Protoss began to fight amongst themselves.
It began as a series of simple disagreements but eventually erupted into a global conflict that lasted untold centuries and became known as the “Aeon of Strife”. The clans continued to battle across the face of Aiur seeking the destruction of each other. During the war, the Protoss stopped developing their powerful psychic abilities and eventually forgot they even existed. The Aeon of Strife would have continued without pause, but a young Protoss warrior named Khas rediscovered his psionic powers through the use of a powerful artifact left behind by the Xel’Naga. Throughout the course of his life, Khas mastered his psionic powers and developed a path of enlightenment for the Protoss, which became known as the Khala. Khas, aided by a growing number of Protoss warriors trained through the Khala, would end the fighting and bring his teachings to every part of Aiur. Centuries later, the Protoss still live by the Khala and, with the exception of the Dark Templar, have never fought each other since the end of the Aeon of Strife.
The Khala was not simply a guide to enlightenment; it had rules on how to live, how to govern, and how to wage war. Khas dedicated his life to extending the Khala to include every part of Protoss life, from the smallest chores to the largest problems. While Khas was unable to eliminate the clan structure that he saw as causing so much destruction, his vision of three castes was adopted. The Khala created three castes that would exist above the existing clan structure. The first was the Templar caste, which would act as the military for the Protoss and the defenders of Aiur, the most powerful warriors and psychics became members of the Templar caste. The second was the Judicator caste, which was responsible for controlling the government and all administrative positions inside of the government. The last caste was known as the Khalai, which consisted of all other positions in their society: the workers, laborers, scientists, and engineers, just to name a few. To incorporate the castes into the clan structure, many clans became dominated by a single caste, but no member of a clan was forbidden from joining any caste that suited them. The three castes and the many clans were ruled by the Conclave, which consisted of the elders of the Judicator caste and had representatives from the Templar and Khalai castes.
Not all the Protoss agreed with Khas and his new system and a small part of the population refused to accept the Khala. While the dissidents did not want to continue fighting, the vast majority of the population that accepted the Khala unjustly shunned them. The Conclave actively sought to isolate the dissidents, who became known collectively as the Lost Tribes, in order to prevent the spread of their ideas. Leading solitary lives, some of the dissident clans began to research magic, an area strictly forbidden by the Khala, and were called the Dark Templar by those that followed the Khala.
This remained for many centuries and the Conclave learned to forget about the existence of the Lost Tribes. But for those tribes, this was a time of discovery. They continued their research into magic and learned that they could draw immense power from Aiur itself by using ley lines and nexus points, which the Conclave learned to create artificially using Khaydarin Crystals. When the Conclave discovered that the Lost Tribes Dark Templar were gaining in power, they ordered an army led by the legendary Executor Adun to attack and destroy them.
Since the tribes were spread across the face of Aiur and had no centralized government or defense, there was little they could do while Adun led his army against each of them, one by one. Finally, once all of the Lost Tribes were destroyed and all of the Dark Templar had retreated to a single location, Adun began to question his orders. The Protoss he had attacked and killed were not the monsters that the Conclave had described, they were innocent and peaceful people whose only crime was not following the Khala. Adun disobeyed his orders from the Conclave and refused to destroy the last remaining Dark Templar city. He and his army joined the Dark Templar to prevent any more unjust attacks by the Conclave. A stalemate was achieved between the Conclave and the popular High Templar. It ended when what was supposed to be a simple magical experiment when out of control.
After several years of peace under the protection of Adun, the Dark Templar returned to their research and developed a way to modify the Khaydarin Crystals that formed naturally all across Aiur. There experiment would transform a large piece of Khaydarin Crystal into an even more powerful crystal. The experiment went wrong and a huge ley line storm was formed and ravaged many surrounding cities, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Protoss civilians. While the devastation was unexpected, the experiment was a success, a powerful magical crystal they called the Khalis was formed, but a second crystal they named the Uraj, filled with psionic energies, was also created. The Conclave issued orders to form an army to destroy the Dark Templar before they could cause any more damage, even if it meant killing Adun and his army. To prevent a battle between his army and the rest of the Templar caste, which may have led to a full civil war against the Conclave, Adun negotiated a settlement between the Dark Templar and the Conclave. The Dark Templar would leave Aiur on spaceships left behind by the Xel’Naga and Adun would surrender himself and his army to the Conclave.
Within a year, enough of the Xel’Naga’s ships were fixed to allow all of the Dark Templar to leave. As a parting gift, the Dark Templar gave the Conclave the powerful Uraj crystal. Not trusting the Dark Templar, the Conclave sent the crystal to a small colony on the planet Braxis for further study. After a few decades, the Conclave ordered the Braxis colony to be abandoned and the crystal left behind.
No matter how hard the Conclave tried, they could not completely stop the spread of the story about the Lost Tribes. Too many Protoss had served in Adun’s army and had been given pardons at the request of head of the Templar caste. With his army taken away and his rank within the Templar caste lost, Adun retired and moved to an area that had been inhabited by the Dark Templar before his army killed them. He spent the rest of his life building a small community there and trying to atone for his crimes against the Dark Templar. Among the Templar and Khalai castes, Adun’s story was celebrated and he became a legend.
As for the Protoss developed higher levels of technology and began exploring the area around their planet, first by traveling through dimensional portals and later by building colony ships, they began to encounter other races. At first the Protoss were unsure how to treat these races, most of which were less powerful and less advanced then the Protoss, but eventually the Conclave chose a course of action that would determine the fate of their entire race. The Protoss decided to protect the other intelligent species they encountered, as a parent would protect a child. The Conclave viewed their race as being superior and therefore better able to protect the less advanced races. As the Protoss established new colonies, they expanded the area they protected, but it was centuries before the encountered the struggling Human Colonists in the Koprulu Sector.
The Humans, dominated by the Terran Confederacy, could only briefly detect the Protoss ships, but the Protoss felt they were in no danger from the aggressive Humans. It was not until the Protoss detected the presence of the Zerg that they took an immediate interest in the Terran Confederacy. Realizing the danger that the Zerg Swarm represented to the Protoss, the Conclave dispatched a large force under the command of Executor Tassadar. His orders were to deal with the problem, no matter the cost. When he discovered that several Human colonies had been covered with Creep Spores from the Zerg, the Judicator caste representative, named Aldaris, ordered him to cleanse the planets of all life, including the Humans. Aldaris believed that if it was necessary to destroy the Humans in order to defeat the Zerg Swarm, then that was perfectly acceptable. But after Tassadar’s fleet destroyed a few colonies, the Executor was having second thoughts and he ordered his fleet to withdraw from the Terran Confederacy.
In his effort to discover the source of the Zerg Swarm, Tassadar’s forces traveled to the planet Char, where the Overmind had established its most recent base of operations. While on Char, Tassadar encountered some Dark Templar warriors under the command of Prelate Zeratul. Quickly striking an agreement, the two investigate the Zerg Swarm and discover that the only way to kill the Cerebrates that command the Zerg is by using the Dark Templar’s magical abilities. When Aldaris attempted to arrest Tassadar for conspiring with the Dark Templar, he was forced to retreat and return to Aiur. Unfortunately, in their efforts to kill a Cerebrate, the Overmind learns of the location on Aiur and launches a full scale invasion against the home world of the Protoss.
One of the greatest strengths of the Protoss was the existence of the Grand Fleet. The fleet was so powerful, that no force in their part of the galaxy had ever challenged the stewardship of the Protoss. The first step in the Overmind’s invasion of Aiur was to eliminate the Grand Fleet. Otherwise there was a strong possibility that the Zerg Swarm would be defeated. The Overmind succeeded in opening a huge dimensional portal over the largest portion of the Grand Fleet and it was sent to another dimension. Knowing nothing about dimensional travel, the Overmind did not care where it went, as long as it was no longer within reach of Aiur.
With the loss of contact between the Conclave and Tassadar’s forces and with the sudden invasion of the Zerg Swarm, a new Executor is promoted to fill Tassadar’s position. The new Executor becomes instrumental in slowing the advancing Zerg, but as the Conclave becomes convinced they are winning the war, they send the Executor to Char to track down and arrest Tassadar. Tassadar was returned to Aiur and he surrendered himself to the Conclave in order to prevent his friends from trying to rescue him. Tassadar would have been executed, but the leaders of the Templar caste, having been told by the new Executor that the Dark Templar were the only hope in truly defeating the Zerg, mounted a rescue operation. The Conclave was furious at the betrayal of the Templar caste and launched their small, but powerful, army of Enforcers against their army in a vain effort to kill the source of their problem, Tassadar.
The Conclave’s efforts failed and together with the Dark Templar, Tassadar was able to mount a counteroffensive against the Zerg Swarm that allowed them to approach the Overmind, which had physically manifested on the Aiur. During what the Protoss hoped would be the final battle of the war, Tassadar combined the magical energies of the Dark Templar with his own considerable psionic powers and rammed his carrier into the body of the Overmind, killing them both.
The death of the Overmind did not have the desired results. While the remaining Cerebrates were thrown into confusion, the Swarm continued its rampage across the surface of the planet, and it was too much for the Protoss to confront. The rampaging Zerg, leaving no Protoss alive, overran even the capital city that held the defeated Conclave. By using their dimensional gates, the Protoss were able to evacuate a large number of people from the planet, but the gates had to be destroyed to prevent the Zerg from coming through them as well. One of the largest groups of Protoss to evacuate from Aiur traveled to the Dark Templar home world of Shakuras, but they were also followed by one of the largest groups of Zerg, under the control of three Cerebrates.
Most Protoss colonies were not designed to operate without support from Aiur, and many fell within the first few years, but some survived and struggled to become self sufficient. Many of the former colonies continued to use the Khala and most built a local version of the Conclave. The Protoss on Shakuras had a difficult job, as they had to deal not only with the destruction of Aiur, but they had to reconcile their differences with the Dark Templar. It was a difficult journey and there was a short rebellion led by the Judicator Enforcer Aldaris, but in the end peace was achieved on Shakuras.
At this point the Protoss began to diverge in technology; some colonies lost the knowledge to build their robot legions or the massive spaceships the Grand Fleet used. Some colonies developed new technologies to deal with problems that occurred. Some colonies began using ranged weapons with their Zealot Warriors. Nearly 50% of the all the Protoss’ colonies were either abandoned or destroyed within 20 years after the invasion of Aiur. The remainder continued to survive and began to look for other Protoss colonies and ways to contact or return to Aiur.
The following are some good examples of names that can be given to a member of the Protoss race: