Starcraft: Dark Templar, book one: Firstborn |
I am the happy and honored owner of a copy of Starcraft: The Dark Templar. Not just because it’s a novel by Christie Golden. No. Not just because it is a book with the Starcraft logo and Blizzard Cash Cow & quality-track-record-games logo. No.
But because it is a …
STARCRAFT 2 Novel Tie-in!
For that matter, I have left the quiet and comfy, secluded sanctity of my room to go to Barnes and Noble library personally. I usually order the books online or have Simon & Schuster send me a copy, or in the case of Diablo: The Sin War, straight sent and signed by Richard A. Knaak.
I had to pick this Starcraft book personally. The anxiety, the cheerfulness as I approached the bookshelf … and I didn’t even have to go too far or waste time searching for it. There it was … in front of me, greeting me, welcoming me. Found at first sight.
I made eye contact with the front cover’s dark templar/terran eyes. Extended my arm forward and reached for it. Embraced it in my hands. And after picking a copy of Diablo: The Sin War, Scales of the Serpent headed to the cashier to pay some gold, I mean … minerals, err … well with the plastic credit card. It’s been so long since I used the card. Always buy online. As the cashier asked me to enter the pin number, I made a Jim Carrey-expression. “Sorry, I don’t remember it …”—she was kind to just let me place my signature on a receipt and let me go with my dear prize.
On my way home, read at least 25 pages … slowly. And the prologue made me go whoa? The preserver, mentioned by Christie Golden, in the Q&A makes its first appearance. And from the looks of it, well, I will just quote:
PROLOGUE
“TIME WAS NOT LINEAR. FAR, FAR FROM IT.
Time wrapped in on itself, converged and entwined and embraced events and feelings and moments, then danced away into separate gleaming, shining, precious strands that stood alone and resonant before merging again into the vast stream.
The Preserver rested and dreamed, and time wove itself in and around and through her. Memories fluttered through her mind like gossamer-winged insects: a word that shattered centuries, a thought that changed the course of a civilization. Individuals whose insights and aspirations and even greed and fear turned seemlingly inalterable tides of destiny into something new and fresh and hitherto inconceivable. Moments where everything teetered precariously on a crumbling brink, where something as intangible as an idea would send everything hurling into oblivion or pull it back to safe, solid ground.
Each thought, word, deed, life was a mere drop in the vast ocean of time, constantly merging and separating to merge again. The concept would challenge some minds, the Preserver knew; but her mind had been destined to hold such contradictions as things being separate and having no separate identity. Grasping such elusive concepts was what she was born for.
Over all these thoughts of words and lives and ideas floated a terrible urgency and fear. Time was not linear; time was shifting and changing. But there were patterns that floated to the surface, their interwoven strands so clear and strong that even the dimmest minds could grasp them. Inevitability? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Again and again the pattern appeared in the swirling waters of time and destiny and luck, submerging and manifesting with a cold precision that made even the Preserver quail.
All the knowledge she held was precious; everuy memory, every sound, scent, sensation, voice, word, thought. All were vital to her people. But this knowledge, of the pattern that had happened so often before and was about to happen again—ah, this was what made the Preserver more than important to her people.
It was what made her indispensable.
She opened to what was out there, every second that ticked by in its nonlinear, unique majesty challenging her to close in on herself, to not expose herself to the pain of the debris caught in the swollen river. She could not allow herself such luxuries.
Not when the horrific knowledge of what had come before, and what was certain to come again, polluted the waters of time in her psyche.
She summoned her energy, and sent forth the cry.”
—Now that you read the prologue, you need to know Arcturus Mengsk has a secret he kept hidden from his enemies for two decades. So important, only his elite soldiers knew of and protected at the Umojan Protectorate for years. Something that would carry forth the dynasty of the Mengsk.
Temples and artifacts like those found in Bhekar Ro (read Starcraft: Shadows of the Xel’Naga) are surfacing in various planets. A third alien race is coming. The phoenix-like energy beings that absorb zerg and protoss alike. Mengsk wants every possible knowledge and power he can extract from those temples. Jake Ramsey, reknown for the Pegasus excavation, is the man to unravel the mysteries of one of various temples. Except, he did not count on a Preserver uploading the memories of all protoss who ever existed into his mind to be holder of a knowledge that will seal the fate of the galaxy.
Pick the book.
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