Okay this has been bothering me for quite a long time. I'm looking for people to shed light on the strength and unity in the swarm from the Overmind's time and Kerrigan's rule. I'll get straight to the point with numbered questions: 1. How big is the Zerg Swarm by the time of Starcraft 2, compared to in the first Starcraft? Was Kerrigan able to rebuild the Swarm back up to pre-first great war levels, or is it much smaller than it was under the Overmind? If you remember, the Overmind had multiple broods, each having a different color to represent them. However, I only see the Purple Jormungand brood under Kerrigan's rule. Jormungand was what Kerrigan controlled in brood war, and is all I've seen in SC2 campaign. It almost makes me think Jormungand was the only brood that was taken over by Kerrigan, and all the other renegade broods died off except for a few ex-renegade zerg that were asorbed into Kerrigan's swarm. 2. Is Kerrigan's rule during the time of the Wings of Liberty campaign as absolute as the Overmind's? Are all Zerg as eternally bound to her will and unable to defy heras they were to the Overmind, or do the more intelligent Zerg just accept her as ruler out of superior strength? 3. Does Kerrigan truely care for the Zerg's salvation as a race like the Overmind did, or is she just using them to further her own goals of revenge?
1. I'm not really sure. I think that all the zerg have the purple coloring because there is only 1 intelligent zerg at the moment, thus only 1 brood to follow, not an indication only 1 brood survived. Kerrigan never really executes an all-out attack in starcraft 2, so it's unsure how strong her numbers are. The number of zerg on Char is stated to be 5 billion IIRC, but I haven't got a clue how many the overmind started with. 2. It's not. It seems that she can only really fully control a relatively small group at the time. So she can do the macro, but not a lot of micro. 3. Unknown until heart of the swarm.
By the beginning of StarCraft II the Swarm was the most powerful force in the Sector. Kerrigan does have multiple broods, but (like the multiple sections of the Confederacy) Blizzard has avoided using multi-colored teams. You have to look at the decals to know which is which, since the team is identified by name only as "The Swarm". Also, the Jormungand (and other) broods shouldn't exist as the cerebrates are dead; they now have names like Char Brood (the brood seen most of the time), "The" Brood, Claw Brood, etc. They're all purple. Kerrigan's own brood in StarCraft I was unnamed, it was just also purple. That cerebrate died too (in the Queen of Blades novel). She would have had another brood in Brood War. Note that brood names were frequently inaccurate in StarCraft I and Brood War anyway, along with other team names (there's no way Mar Sara was defending Korhal, for instance). The latter, although it didn't matter until her fall. Kerrigan's Swarm had an advantage though -- instead of cerebrates, her brood mothers were capable of more independent thought, such as one brood going to Kaldir to pick up cold immunity. Also, the brood mothers weren't enslaved by proxy to the Dark Voice. The latter. It's not like she was born a zerg.
Thanks for the input. Back to the first one about the broods, I'm starting to believe what you said about the names being innaccurate. If that's true, wouldn't that make the brood you control in the zerg camapign in original starcraft NOT the Jormungand, but rather a newly created brood that happens to be the same color? This I think would also apply to the Garm brood, since Zasz was killed and the Garm brood wiped out in ep. 2, yet orange zerg named the garm brood appear in Brood War as well. I'm confused. How many broods were there under the Overmind's rule? There's only 8 colors and 8 names for each color, but there has to be multiple broods for each color in order to explain the above 2 (and any other) instances.
It's possible that there are major and minor broods. It was said that only the greatest of zerg cerebrates were ever granted a name, implying the existence of several weaker cerebrates we have never seen.
Yes, that's correct. The manual only mentions 7 or so, but the largest only had a few million zerg, and yet there were billions of zerg, so there must have been many broods and many cerebrates. Heart of the Swarm will probably tell us how many brood mother broods there are, and how many were lost, since brood mothers don't reincarnate.
Sorry for being SO TOTALLY off-topic but I need to do this!! This is why a small group of Raynor's Raiders could pwn Kerrigan on Char (which didn't make much sense...): Kerrigan: **** he found my main!! Flash: Awwww yeah time to win GG NO RE also, there was this leaked video of HotS and kerrigan was seen saying that she wanted the zerg's salvation. qeird.
I think he was referring to the final assault. While the Dominion distracted the bulk of the zerg forces, it was Raynor that launched the assault on Kerrigan's "lair." On to another thing I'm unsure about. By the time of Wings of Liberty, did Kerrigan control ALL of the zerg? When Zeratul said something like "the zerg sense a threat to their dead master" in Echoes to the Future, it got me thinking that there are still some renegades lingering, but how could leaderless "feral" zerg survice 4 years, and how could they have evolved the same changes Kerrigan's swarm has made since Brood war, like roaches, creep tumors, etc.?
I think bulk of the zerg forces is the keyword there. And, for most players, it wasn't exactly pwning kerrigan, as much as it was "WHY? I just rebuilt my defences!"
In Shadow Hunters the novel, the zerg on Aiur were "mostly" uncontrolled and no longer spawned. Indeed, when Ethan Stewart came to Aiur, he brought some of Kerrigan's zerg with him. However, the novel implied (a bit clumsily) that the Aiur zerg were still under Kerrigan's control, but just barely. In Echoes of the Future those zerg were referred to as the "Aiur Brood" rather than the "Char Brood". I suspect that (until the end of Wings of Liberty) the vast majority of zerg were under Kerrigan's control, but only the Char Brood was under her direct control, but the Char Brood was huge. (Zerg found on other planets, such as Redstone, were members of the Char Brood.) The zerg in Resurrection IV were almost certainly not under Kerrigan's control, direct or otherwise. I think the final battle of Wings of Liberty made sense. Most zerg were not on Char (they were elsewhere) and took too long coming back. Raynor's first strike, while successful, also saw the loss of massive Dominion forces (their bits and pieces were falling out of the sky!). His second strike (regardless of which one) took out a huge chunk of Kerrigan's forces, leaving her with only her personal guard to fight back. And still she should have won, but Raynor's forces had control of an artifact specifically designed to kick her ***, and were able to hunker down in a defensive position.
What do you mean by "barely"? The Aiur zerg clearly attempted to defend the dead overmind from the Protoss, but I'm sure Kerrigan wouldn't have much care for that. I can't see Zerg being somewhat controlled and somewhat not. Even if her control over the Aiur brood was similar to the UED slave broods having control difficulties on Tarsonis, I still think defending the 4 year old corpse of their past master Kerrigan despises wouldn't be on the swarm's agenda.
That's why it is barely. Kerrigan isn't so much controlling them, as she is stopping them from spreading.
How leaderless feral zerg can survival that long is beyond me, but I guess there's no other explaination. Even so, how could basically feral zerg evolve the same changes Kerrigan's swarm undertook, like roaches, creep tumors, crawlers, etc? Is there some universal genepool that somehow changes all zerg everywhere, regardless of alliegiance?
Those "feral" zerg still had overlords, which are intelligent. But presumably it's the same reason the Tal'darim have stalkers -- Blizzard didn't both putting the old units into the map editor.
Makes sense, Hey, I juat came up with another theory. By SC2, Kerrigan seems to have a special brood under her direct control (rather than through brood mothers), so you think the Overmind had one as well? I think the Overmind would have a special "elite guard" brood under his direct command, or at the very least a cerebrate with the sole purpose of defending it's master. The purple Zerg in the final protoss mission of SC1 I believe are this elite guard brood.
