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WARNING - This page contains unmarked spoilers for Starcraft II. Continue reading at your own risk.

Xel'naga

"The Xel'Naga created both the Protoss and the Zerg, Commander. They were the gods of their time."

—Emil Narud

A race of near god-like beings, they travelled the stars cultivating the growth and evolution of species in the interest of creating a "perfect" lifeform. The Protoss and Zerg are their creations, as are any number of other beings not yet revealed. The Overmind is believed to have killed them all long before the start of the series.

Entire Race

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: A common MO of theirs, as it makes their targets more agreeable to what they want to say. Narud/Duran disguised himself as terran, while Ouros impersonated Tassadar.
• A God Am I: While it's unknown if the Xel'Naga specifically presented themselves as gods, it is implied they did, and the Protoss and Zerg see them as such and directly refer to them as gods several times. Amon, on the other hand, is definitely all over this trope, in the God of Evil manner.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: They are supposed to only observe the lesser races, and not intervene in their evolution. The fact that Amon did so with the protoss marked an ominous precedent.
• Always Lawful Good: Generally played straight; the Protoss and even the Zerg Overmind remember them as benevolent deities. Amon and his buddies? They're exceptions.
  • Though to be fair, since the benevolent Xel'Naga never intervene in uplifting new species, it's Amon's branch that the Protoss and the Overmind knew in the first place - turns out they were good at playing the part of benevolent folks too.
• Ancient Astronauts: They had advanced spacecraft millions of years before humans even had clubs to hit each other with, and their influence on the two races they uplifted is definitely visible in Protoss architecture, such as the Nexus physically resembling Xel'Naga temples.
• Benevolent Precursors: The non-interfering Xel'Naga seeded life across the universe and would simply watch from afar to await the day the next generation of Xel'Naga would emerge, bestowing their essence upon them. They also fought against Amon and his Xel'Naga after learning what they had done. Though they died in the end, they were still able to slay Amon and most of his servants.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Their attempt to create the ultimate lifeform by merging purity of form and purity of essence was reproduction. The Xel'Naga travelled between universes seeding life, and then went into slumber to let their creations evolve. When two races that possessed these qualities found the Xel'Naga homeworld of Ulnar by natural evolution, the Xel'Naga awoke and the two races would be made as one, and the Xel'Naga would pass their essence into them to turn them into a new generation of Xel'Naga. The new generation would find a new universe to populate with life, and the cycle would continue.
• Cthulhumanoid: It took until Legacy of the Void to actually see what they look like, but when we do, their standard form appear to be gigantic creatures with squid-like faces. They are shown to be capable of Voluntary Shapeshifting, however, and Ascended Kerrigan retained a humanoid form (albeit an Energy Being one). Justified by the fact that the Xel'Naga pass on their essence upon the next generation of Xel'Naga, not their form.
• Eldritch Location: Ulnar, a place where life exists where none should. Also, a conduit between the material universe and the Void.
• Friend to All Living Things: With the exception of Amon and his servants, Xel'Naga apparently respected all life in the Universe with no exception whatsoever.
• Fusion Dance: They are meant to come into being by the final fusion of 2 races, one with purity of essense and one with purity of form. The Zerg and Protoss represent these, respectively, but the actual process of the Xel'naga uplifting is supposed to naturally occur. Amon forced the process by uplifting the Protoss and the Zerg. It... didn't go very well.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Xel'Naga as a whole are an inversion of this trope, but one of them, Amon, is the Greater Scope Villain of StarCraft II and, retroactively, StarCraft as well.
• Not Quite Dead: This is how Amon and Narud survive — if Xel'Naga are killed, they are sent back to the void, and will stay there until they acquire a new form. How do you kill them permanently? On their own turf.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: As described elsewhere, the Xel'Naga are revealed to have been non-interventionist to a fault and valued life above all. That the benevolent Xel'Naga actively tried to destroy Amon and his followers says much about how much of a threat he is.
• Perfect Pacifist People: So it seems; the Xel'Naga greatly valued life and refused to kill anything. Even The Voice In The Darkness. Though they made an exception for Amon, since his goal was to kill everyone.
• Precursors: To the Protoss and Zerg.
• Shrouded in Myth: Only the Overmind, Preservers, and Duran know more about them than the vague description given above, and even then the Overmind and the Preservers likely do not know everything. Duran is an exception, as he is one of them.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Terrans are baffled by Protoss technology, considering some aspects of it so advanced it's like magic to human minds. The Protoss largely see Xel'Naga technology in the same manner.
  • How advanced is their "advanced" technology? The Keystone was engineered by the terrans to remove Kerrigan's infestation and Amon's residual influence on her, and the protoss engineered it to hold Amon's essence long enough for followers of the Khala to sever their nerve cords. What was its original intended use? A map for interstellar travel, although it does have a secondary function (releasing energy to awaken Xel'Naga hibernating within Ulnar).
• Time Abyss: They existed long before the first primate ever walked on Earth, millions of years before recorded history at least. Though, given their propensity for universe-hopping, it could be longer than we could ever comprehend.
• Touched by Vorlons: Subverted. Their modus operandi was to wait until two species developed purity of form and essence on their own in order to create the new Xel'Naga. Amon broke the rule by uplifting the Protoss and the Zerg.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The Protoss and Zerg both rebelled against them. It's since been implied that Amon had a hand in this. In Legacy its revealed in full that both the Protoss and the Zerg were uplifted by Amon and his followers, who had gone rogue. The Protoss turned out more violent and powerful than expected and killed several of his followers. Amon then went for the Zerg, adding the Overmind to make sure this wouldn't happen again... only for the Overmind to hatch an entire plan of its own to kill him and free the zerg.

Amon

Our new Big Bad.

^{Click here (Spoiler Alert)}  to see his true form

"Foolish, prideful children."

"The Void reflects my will... and I will your destruction."

Voiced by: Rick D. Wasserman (English), Oleg Kutsenko (Russian)

An ancient and mysterious Void entity, it orchestrated the creation of the Zerg/Protoss Hybrids. He is later revealed to be a rogue Xel'naga that desires the destruction of the galaxy and all life within it.

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Provides examples of:

• Abusive Precursors: He and his faction uplifted the protoss and created the zerg with the eventual goal of mutating them together to form the hybrids. After that, he intends to render both species extinct. Also, he created the Khala as a means to enslave the protoss, which is what he did in much of Legacy.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In the Ascension short story, this is his reaction to a Rak'shir manipulated by Alarak, where he set up hundreds of Tal'darim to fight.... while he sits it out and lets them kill each other. The resulting carnage caused Alarak to fly up the Chain of Ascension towards the rank of Fourth Ascendant, the deaths of an entire wing of the Death Fleet's best leaders left the entire fleet in disarray and delayed Amon's own plans, but Amon cared little, and instead, he found it amusing.
• Always Close: After completing the objectives to "defuse" the Void crystals protecting Amon's corporeal Host body, Amon begins unleashing his phenomenal power. Artanis and his Allies unleash Orbital Bombardment just in time to annihilate Amon's host before he goes on a potentially unstoppable rampage.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: His true form is huge, to the point it's never seen fully.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Up until just before Heart of the Swarm, Amon was long dead, but Kerrigan's deinfestation gave Narud and his hybrids the power needed to bring him back. Legacy of the Void clarifies that his "death" merely sent him back to the Void, and he's only now gotten the power to exert his influence outside of it.
  • Outright defied in the epilogue campaign. Knowing that he will return, probably in a time the likes of Raynor, Kerrigan and Artanis could be dead, they go to the Void and defeat Amon there, ensuring that this time he's not coming back, no matter what.
• Badass Boast: Nearly all of his dialogue is this or a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Bad Boss: He has zero qualms about letting his followers die. He even encourages the Tal'darim to slaughter each other in constant bouts of Rak'Shir for his own amusement.
• Big Bad: The main antagonist of the sequel trilogy, though he doesn't take center stage until Legacy of the Void.
• Blessed with Suck: The reason for his Start of Darkness was that he felt that way about being a Xel'Naga; for all the insane power he gained through his ascension, he found out that power couldn't actually be used for personal gain, and was instead intended to just serve spreading life in the universe before going to sleep until it was time to pass it on to a new generation. This resulted in him despising this cycle and attempting to break it by going full-on Omnicidal Maniac.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He's aware that all life exists because the Xel'Naga seeded it, and due to his disillusionment with the Xel'Naga and their infinite cycles, he considers all of their creations to be beings living pointless lives that exist only to fight, suffer, and die. In his eyes, eradicating all life in the galaxy is "freeing" its inhabitants from the suffering of life and granting them the peace of death. A Tal'darim in one of the short stories directly states "Amon does not see death as failure. He sees death as the highest ideal."
• Body Surf: As a Xel'naga dwelling within the Void, he has no body of his own, which is why he uses the Protoss and later his hybrid host body as vessels to allow him to act in the real world. He uses Selendis as his primary host in the meantime, but also slips into Rohana at times. Stopping him from doing this is a plot point — when his host body is destroyed and the Protoss sever their nerve cords, Amon has no bodies left to dwell in, and so he's forced back into the Void.
• Boss Arena Urgency: In the final battle against him, Amon will destroy portions of the ground, including the ground underneath your bases. This effectively puts the mission on a timer, because he will eventually destroy all the resource patches on the map and/or tear out enough of the ground that you can't easily reach the mission objectives.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Everything in the Zerg and Protoss backstories was his doing: he uplifted the Protoss and then the Zerg, and enslaved the former to the Overmind in preparation to use the two races to forge the Hybrid for him. When his fellow Xel'naga found out his plans and acted to stop him, he had them killed by the Zerg. Though dead, the Overmind was still compelled by its instincts to carry out Amon's will to find and infest the Protoss for him. The only reason his plans derailed at all was because the Overmind created Kerrigan (someone strong enough to lead the Zerg and not bound to Amon's will), and then committed Suicide by Cop.
  • Even before his demise, but after his expulsion from Aiur by the ancient protoss, he and /or his faction left artifacts behind so that future Protoss generations would have the chance to reconnect themselves to the Khala, aka give him another opportunity to enslave the Protoss. This was unwittingly carried out by "Khas". Indeed, the scenario came to pass in Legacy.
• Civil War: Started one within the Xel'Naga, which pitted him and his supporters and the uplifted Zerg against all other xel'naga.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: His physical body ends up this; the Protoss manage to weaken it while it's still sleeping by damaging its power sources, and when it does start to awaken, they just proceed to deliver it an Orbital Bombardment with their entire weaponry, destroying it before Amon can even do anything.
• Comes Great Responsibility: He wanted the powers that come with being a xel'naga, but not the responsibility of continuing the cycle. His solution was to eliminate life from the universe.
• The Corrupter: His dark taint is confirmed to have influenced Kerrigan, meaning that he's partially responsible for her atrocities as the Queen of Blades.
• Dark Is Evil: Like the Dark Templar, he takes his power from the darkness of the Void. Unlike them, he's definitely an evil entity.
• Demiurge Archetype: Amon abuses his powers to uplift the Protoss and Zerg and gets the upper hand against his fellow Xel'Naga who he killed save for Ouros who was imprisoned. Notably, the Protoss have units called Archons, but they don't serve Amon unless enthralled by the Khala or are members of the original Tal'darim. However, Amon can be defeated by someone who absorbs enough power and is tenacious enough.
• Demonic Possession: He is capable of doing this to the Khala Protoss. For the likes of Rohana, he only goes in and out, though.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • It becomes obvious after a few times he tries taunting Artanis and Vorazun through Rohana, but Amon never considered that as someone trained to master every intricacy of the Khala, she can read him as well. She finds out Amon's true motive (wanting to kill everything out of hatred) and what he was doing with the Protoss back on Aiur this way, and Rohana's reminder that Amon will warp the Golden Armada back to Aiur using the psionic matrix (strongly implied from peering into his thoughts) prompts Artanis to devise operations to blow the matrix up.
  • If what he says in the epilogue campaign is true, then his Start of Darkness is also caused by this trope - when he found out he would be ascended from whatever species he was to Xel'naga, he was delighted at the power he would get. Once he learned what the Xel'naga actually have to do... he ends up despising the Infinite Cycle and starts to arrange his plan, to make sure his cycle was the final one.
• The Dreaded: If you hear anybody not working for this guy talk about him, then they're terrified of him. Even Kerrigan doesn't deny that she's afraid of him.
• Eldritch Abomination: In the purest sense of the trope: he's a giant amorphous Xel'naga that dwells within the Void.
• The End of the World as We Know It: What would've happened if Kerrigan ended up dying.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Played with; on one hand, he has no qualm using servants from all three races to do his bidding; even the Terrans are a vital part as the enthralled Moebius Foundation Humans use their talent to create his Hybrids. However, he actually has nothing but disdain for them and pretty much intends to pull a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on all of them until only the Hybrids remain. His Void Warriors include units from the three races, but they seem to be ghost-like imitations rather than the real thing (though every unit causes real damage and has the same abilities as their real counterparts), so it's questionable whether they count or not.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Word of God compares him to Artanis; while Artanis sees a galaxy full of chaos and strife and wishes to unite the Protoss to bring peace to it, Amon sees an "ordered" galaxy as chaotic thanks to his Blue-and-Orange Morality, and decides to destroy it all to fix the problem.
  • The true depth of his backstory and motivations makes him one to Kerrigan. Like Kerrigan, he's a pawn in a game he didn't even want to play, that being his unwilling participation in the Xel'naga's cycles. And much like Kerrigan during Brood War, his solution is to flip over the table and kill everyone as a way to take control of his own destiny again. Amon even gives her a "Not So Different" Remark that notes the similarities between them.
• Eviler than Thou: In Zeratul's vision, Amon has established himself as the biggest fish in the pond of villainy by wiping out all the other bad guy factions. The Zerg Swarm will then be wiped out by his hybrids when the protoss are killed.
• Evil Is Petty: Behind all the power and schemes, Amon’s main reason for declaring war on the entire universe was because when he ascended, he didn’t realise that his newfound power came with an important purpose, and now having realised it doesn’t want to own up to it. Yes, he wants to destroy everything because he doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own actions.
• Evil Overlord: He has a great power enough to destroy civilizations either through his own or through his enormously large army. This army is not just one species but many, enough to overwhelm his foes.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Has a deep, booming voice.
• Expy: Starcraft's version of Warcraft's Sargeras. Both turned against their own kind and sought to remake the universe as both perceived fatal flaws in reality. Sargeras uses an army of Demons while Amon needs Hybrid bred to act as his own super soldiers.
• Galactic Conqueror: He is threat to all life in the universe who comes into conflict with many of the heroes of the setting and is very boastful about his accomplishments. His endgame is to possess a powerful host body to bring phenomenal power to bear against the universe, and he can gain a significant amount of supporters through Mind Control abilities to achieve this goal. Unlike the usual conqueror, he wishes to annihilate the universe to remake it as he sees fit.
• The Ghost: Before Legacy of the Void, his true shape was unknown; he was represented by an edited Protoss unit with its face in shadows. Ends up being doubly justified since the Xel'naga can take many different forms and host bodies, anyway, and up until Legacy of the Void, he didn't have a body of his own.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: All that can be seen of him is his glowing red eyes glaring out from his portrait. It's not until the last epilogue mission of Legacy of the Void that his true form is seen.
• A God Am I: He's a creator of life and the dark master of the Void, and revels in his godhood.
• God Is Evil: Artanis is horrified to learn that the Xel'naga that uplifted the Protoss were Amon and his accomplices, and only did so as part of his plans.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He's behind the creation of the Protoss Khala and the Zerg Overmind, which makes him directly responsible for the entire franchise and most of the conflicts within it. However, he's been sealed in the Void and inactive until Legacy of the Void where he finally acts the Big Bad.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Terrans notwithstanding, Amon is defeated by the very races he uplifted to enact his plan.
• Humiliation Conga: In Legacy of the Void. Amon's corruption of the Khala was his last success. The Protoss under Artanis proceeded to escape under his nose, rescue their Nerazim brethren (and blowing up a good chunk of his Zerg forces at the same time), reclaim the Purifiers (who then also nuked his Zerg forces in their vicinity), retrieve the Keystone (while rescuing the Dominion, a future ally), destroy his Hybrid production facility along with what's left of the Moebius Foundation, lure his Tal'darim followers over and used them against him, destroy his physical body on Aiur, break his mind control over the Khalai Protoss and banish him back to the Void. In the epilogue, the three races venture into the Void and finally kill him there.
• Hypocrite: In the final mission he calls Kerrigan a murderer and a hypocrite, clearly forgetting that he himself is one. He talks about bringing salvation and ending suffering, but he intends to kill everyone in the universe, aside from himself and his hybrid. Also, Kerrigan spent most of her time as Queen of Blades partially following the directive Amon put on the Zerg. After being cleansed from Amon's corruption, she turned into a Noble Demon, showing regret for her past actions and trying her best to avoid unecessary losses, as seen on Char and Korhal. Amon also describes his opponents as "Foolish, prideful children." but he suffers from the same traits, being childish and unwilling to uphold the responsibilities of the Infinite Cycle, and having great pride in his Hybrid army.
• I Shall Taunt You: About eighty percent of his dialogue is a mocking taunt.
• It's Personal: Though he despises all non-Hybrid life in general, he harbors particular hatred for the Protoss - mainly because they rebelled against him and drove him off Aiur.
• Knight of Cerebus: Even though Starcraft II starts of Lighter and Softer than Brood War any appearance made by Amon is a sign things will get bad. The reveal of his existence comes in a Bad Future that ends with mass deaths. When he finally shows up in Legacy Of The Void it sets up the darkest campaign of the trilogy with much of the Protoss failing prey to a Demonic Possession by him, Zeratul dying in order to free Artanis from his grip, and most victories against him are bittersweet.
• Large Ham: He fancies himself a god and definitely acts the part.
• Last of His Kind: He was one of the only three Xel'naga in existence, aside from Ouros and Narud. The destruction of his species was a result of his own actions.
• Mad Scientist: Can be viewed as one, especially among his fellow xel'naga, since the uplifting of the protoss and the zerg were essentially illegal experiments being conducted by him.
• The Man Behind the Man: To Duran and the Overmind, and in turn to the Tal'darim, the Hybrids, the Zerg Swarm, and more than likely Ulrezaj. May also be this to Mengsk and the Dominion; the full extent of Duran's dealings with Mengsk are unknown. He's also this, to an extent, to the Conclave: the Khala is his creation, and as Artanis comes to realize, the Khalai's adherence to it has only ever caused them trouble and war.
• Meaningful Name: Amon is the demon prince of Wrath in Christian demonology. You know what's another name for Amon? Satan. It also means "the hidden one".
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He sees the Xel'naga cycle of reincarnation as a defiance of the natural order, while he himself is a Xel'naga.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: In his eyes, the eternal cycle of the Xel'Naga only results in perpetuating conflict and suffering, and by breaking it he intends to end what he sees as an endless torment for all of existence. Rohana reveals near the end of the Legacy of the Void campaign that this is just an excuse; beneath his grand vision, Amon really is only driven by his hatred and spite for all living things.
• Omnicidal Maniac: What he truly is underneath all his posturing about ending the suffering of the universe. He is driven by nothing but spite and hatred towards all living things, and wishes to kill them all to remake the universe in his image.
• Outside-Context Problem: Until Legacy of the Void, everybody knew literally nothing about this guy, and his influence is so well hidden that only the Overmind's vision of the future revealed it. Apart from anybody that's seen that, almost nobody even knows he exists.
• Posthumous Character: He's an odd case of one of his creations instead of himself having this role in One People, One Purpose. Even after his defeat and death, cutting off the Khala (which is one of his creations) does not come without consequences for the Khalai Protoss, and the story explores into said consequences.
• Power of the Void: Is a Void-based entity, but unlike the Dark Templar, Dark Is Evil is in full effect.
• Pride: This guy makes Arcturus look humble by comparison. He never questions the effectiveness of his actions, and up until the end, he never thought that any action of his was wrong.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Every time he interacts with other characters, his dialogues are mostly composed of this. Artanis, however, does deliver him some spectacular comebacks.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His entire color scheme. His Moebius servants use red as their faction color with some unique decals to add more black, the Tal'darim wear black armor and red psionics, his Void energy manifests as mists of red and black energy, and his bodies, both his Hybrid host body and his true form, are red and black.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Dark Voice portrait sports these, and not much else. His true form has ten glowing red eyes.
• Satanic Archetype: Is pretty much the closest the thing to him in the Starcraft universe, being a godlike being who is the main force for evil.
• Shrouded in Myth: There's a line in the prophecy about him, and that's about it.
• Sinister Silhouettes: His portrait before his true form was revealed was a shadowed figure with red eyes.
• Spanner in the Works: To most of the other Xel'naga. He began by undermining their work on Aiur. Eventually, he waged an all-out war against them, after creating the zerg Overmind.
• Villain Has a Point: Amon's motive for destroying the universe is that he sees it as a corrupt cycle. Though it obviously doesn't justify omnincide, cycles of abuse are a recurring theme throughout the entire story for all three races: Mengsk overthrew the oppressive regime of the Confederacy only to become the new face of oppression himself, the Zerg are a Slave Race constantly being forced to serve as living weapons for new masters, and the Protoss were trapped in the Aeon of Strife until they found unity in the Khala, only for it to end up causing more strife when the Nerazim rejected the Khala.
• Villainous Breakdown: By the ending of the Legacy of the Void campaign and the epilogue, you can hear Amon starting to lose his composure, even going as far as to hurl insults at his enemies instead of giving Badass Boasts.
• Void Between the Worlds: He dwells in the Void, the rift between different universes.
• Xanatos Gambit: His faction's expulsion from Aiur did little to scuttle his plans for the protoss.
  • If the protoss slaughtered themselves due to the loss of the Khala (which was what happened during the Aeon later), it's of little loss to him as his ultimate aim is to exterminate them.
  • If the protoss reconnect themselves to the Khala, he'll just return when the time is right, "reclaim" the protoss, and use them to snuff out life in the galaxy, then pull a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on them. He pulled off the first two in Legacy.
• You Are Too Late: In the alternate timeline in In Utter Darkness, he reveals to the Protoss that he could have been stopped by Kerrigan, but by that point, she was already dead. Fortunately, the Overmind was listening from the past.
• You Fool!: To the Protoss. See the quote above.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: This is his plan for his biological servants after everyone else is gone. Only his hybrid will be spared.

Samir Duran/Emil Narud

Evil wears many faces.

^{Click here (Spoiler Alert)} : to see his true form

"I am a servant of a far greater power. A power that has slept for countless ages."

Voiced by: Castulo Guerra (Brood War), Armin Shimerman (Starcraft II, human form), Patrick Seitz (Starcraft II, true form) (English), Sergey Yudaev (Brood War), Stanislav Strelkov (Starcraft II, human form), Mikhail Sushkov (Starcraft II, true form) (Russian)

During the Brood War, "Samir Duran" appears as the leader of a rebel force opposed to Mengsk's Dominion and allies with the UED. After betraying them and revealing himself to be infested, Duran turns to Kerrigan and helps her take out the UED, then mysteriously vanishes. Zeratul finds him on a dark moon, where he has engineered a Protoss/Zerg hybrid, and reveals he is not even human, much less infested.

In Starcraft II Duran returns under the name "Emil Narud", and is revealed as a Xel'naga that serves Amon. Wishing to create a powerful hybrid host body for his master, he has worked for centuries to this goal, taking on different forms to manipulate the Protoss and Zerg in the name of his experiments.

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Provides examples of:

• Always Someone Better: Is this to Abathur. Abathur says that Duran's work on Stukov is beyond his abilities to replicate, and Duran's creation of Hybrids is something Abathur never managed.
• Arc Villain: Of the Skygeirr missions in Heart of the Swarm.
• Arch-Enemy: To Stukov.
• Ascended Extra: Duran might have just been forgotten as Kerrigan's second-in-command if not for that secret mission...
• Back for the Dead: In Legacy of the Void, he came back during the epilogue campaign, but it didn't last as he was killed off shortly afterwards (end of first mission), with Stukov sending his best regards.
• Beam-O-War: With Kerrigan in one Heart of the Swarm mission. And until Stukov de-powered him, he was slowly winning.
• Beard of Evil: Short-trimmed around the mouth similar to Raynor and Stukov.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acts polite and friendly to DuGalle and Stukov, but is actually very dangerous and working to undermine their efforts.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: He's Ouros's jailer, but somehow fails to detect that his prisoner is calling out to help from beyond the Void.
• The Chessmaster: He's behind most of the events of the sequel trilogy's first two parts, manipulating events to revive Amon and destroy Kerrigan. He succeeds in the former, but fails in the latter.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: First he sided with the UED against the Dominion (for which even Admiral DuGalle called him a turncoat and a traitor), then he betrayed the UED to the Zerg, then he abandoned Kerrigan to the three-pronged attack by the Dominion, the UED, and the Protoss. He later helps Valerian and Raynor through the Moebius Foundation, then betrays them to Arcturus and the Dominion, then is revealed to have been just using them for their resources in the name of his research. However, this trope is ultimately subverted — he was loyal to Amon all along and just manipulating other factions to further his plans.
• Double Speak: When Raynor is evacuating Moebius's base as Kerrigan attacks, Narud comments "That Queen of Blades, really is quite a nuisance, isn't she?" as Casual Danger Dialogue.
• The Dog Bites Back: How he dies; he is personally slain by Stukov, who he experimented on like a lab rat. And more importantly, by the one he has killed years ago..
• The Dragon: To Amon.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He works for Kerrigan in Brood War, but is only using her to further his own plans.
• Enigmatic Minion: His backstory and the full extent of his schemes took until Heart of the Swarm to be spoken of at length, and it wasn't even until the epilogue of Legacy of the Void that we learned everything.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: His Terran forces consist of mercenaries-for-hire, former Confederates, and probably some turncoat UED troops. Then in Starcraft II, he has both Moebius forces, Dominion military personnel, hybrid, and Tal'darim working for him.
• Eldritch Abomination: His true form in Legacy of the Void is revealed to be a Xel'naga, a shapeshifting monstrosity of void energy. Even among other known Xel'naga, his true appearance is unique. Considering Kerrigan remained humanoid after ascending a Xel'naga, it is then implied that Duran was not originally of the same species as Amon and Ouros (that are somewhat similar to each other).
• Evil Chancellor: To the UED and then Kerrigan.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Gets glowing eyes and green Volcanic Veins when he reveals his apparent true form in Heart of the Swarm.
• Faux Affably Evil: During Brood War, he acts friendly and personable. "Acts" being the operative word. In StarCraft II his true personality comes out, and it turns out he has nothing but contempt for everyone in the galaxy.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Has them on and off in Heart of the Swarm. In a mission they're green, but in the following cutscene, they're red.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In Brood War, he was setting up Hybrid production facilities while everyone was busy fighting each other. Duran merely got involved as a diversion.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: Practically his last words. Doubles as an Ironic Echo from Starcraft: Brood War.
  Stukov: Hello, Duran. Do you remember what you did to me?
  Narud/Duran: Stukov... You have come to gloat, haven't you?
  Stukov: No, I've come to say goodnight, you son of a bitch! (Fires a corrosive bolt at Duran, killing him for good).
• The Heavy: In Starcraft II. While his master is busy being dead, Duran is the one busy moving the plot along behind the scenes.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He is personally killed off by Stukov, previously a lab rat of his.
• Humanoid Abomination: He masquerades in human form, but it's ultimately revealed that he's a Xel'naga, a creature of the Void.
• Humanshifting: He's able to impersonate other Terrans this way.
• Humans Are White: Averted. Turns out he is not human at all.
• Humiliation Conga: In Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void :
  • Kerrigan destroys his hybrid lab and kills his physical body in Heart.
  • Then all three races, which he has crossed at some point, beat down on him in Legacy, with Stukov getting the final killing blow.
• I Have Many Names:
  "I have had many names throughout the millennia, young prodigal. You would know me best as Samir Duran."
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Courtesy of Kerrigan's bone wings, after he pulls this trope on her with a blade of psionic energy.
• Karmic Death: In Legacy of the Void, he was Killed Off for Real by none other than Stukov, whom he experimented on like a lab rat and killed years ago on Braxis, in the Psi Disrupter.
• Laser Blade: Wields one in Heart of the Swarm to combat Kerrigan.
• Lastofhis Kind: He is the very last active, living Xel'Naga on the physical plane. Several other, benevolent ones slept on Ulnar but they were slain in their sleep at some point by Amon's followers. Ouros was also alive, but he was jailed in the Void. After he and Amon were killed for good in the Void, Kerrigan remains as the last
• Made of Iron: Kerrigan calling a Nydus Worm to slam him through rock doesn't have any visible effect on him.
• The Man Behind the Monsters: The mastermind of the hybrid.
• Manipulative Bastard: Manipulates DuGalle.
• Meaningful Name: The name Emil shares its Latin roots with the verb "emulate". He's a shapeshifter creating the hybrid who are a twisted mockery of true Xel'naga.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: It might not have been the best of ideas to brag to Zeratul about the hybrid, and hint at his plans for the future. As a result of this discovery, Zeratul went looking for ways to stop him, and found one. He does it again in his battle with Kerrigan: as she strikes the fatal blow he brags that her victory is meaningless as Amon has already returned. Because of this warning Kerrigan goes on the warpath, seeking out and destroying his hybrid cloning facilities. By the time Amon makes his move he's only got one left.
• Really 700 Years Old: He mentions having had "many names throughout the millennia".
• Rebel Leader: He presents himself as the leader of the Confederate Resistance Forces when the UED finds him. This makes Stukov immediately trust him.
• The Remnant: He leads a faction of Confederate loyalists fighting the Dominion when you first meet him on Braxis. This is all nonsense of course, but he is in fact the last living member of Amon's followers.
• The Reveal: His appearance in Dark Origins reveals he has been using Kerrigan to further his own plans for a Protoss/Zerg Hybrid. Everything learned after is another reveal on top of that.
• Sdrawkcab Alias: Narud = Duran.
• The Stinger: His appearance in Dark Origin is a stinger for the Amon and the Hybrids in the second game.
• This Cannot Be!: As Kerrigan slowly overpowers him in Heart of the Swarm.
• The Unreveal:
  • Wings of Liberty and especially Heart of the Swarm heavily hinted that Samir Duran and Emil Narud were the same being, but didn't confirm it^note Heart of the Swarm has a few lines by Stukov talking about "Duran" instead of "Narud", but they were Dummied Out. Whispers of Oblivion officially revealed it, alongside the fact he's a Xel'naga.
  • His real name is never revealed. Everyone refers to him as either Duran or Narud (depending on the form they met him first as) but he never states his true name.
• Villainous Breakdown: He starts to lose his composure as Stukov depowers him and Kerrigan begins to win their Beam-O-War in Heart of the Swarm.
  Narud: No... No! [...] This is not possible... [...] No, it cannot be!
• Voice of the Legion: When he reveals himself (supposedly) as an infested Terran, his voice echoes ominously. Then he takes it further in Dark Origins, such that Zeratul didn't immediately recognize him by voice.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: A particularly notorious user of it in the Starcraft universe, especially when all of his Xel'Naga brethren could do that as well, up to the point he practically describes himself as such. In-game, he posed himself as Confederate rebel Samir Duran, later as a seemingly-infested Duran (fooling even Kerrigan), Emil Narud in Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, as well as Jim Raynor and human Kerrigan in one of the latter's cutscenes.
• Walking Spoiler: His entire appearance in Starcraft II spoils that he is actually Emil Narud, which in turn makes you look at the first two parts of the trilogy very differently.
• Warm-Up Boss: He's the guy to beat for the first epilogue mission in Legacy of the Void.
• Wham Episode: Dark Origin, where he reveals his true colors.
• Wham Line:
  • At the end of Episode V, "Excuse me Admiral, but I'd like to introduce someone to you." Said as he arrives alongside Kerrigan and his voice suddenly takes on an "infested" distortion. Stukov had already hinted that this might be the case, but that line confirms it.
  • And then in Dark Origin, his appearance at the end of the mission is pretty much a Wham Speech, from the first line where he is revealed to be behind the strange experiments Zeratul has found.
• You Are Too Late:
  • He informs Zeratul that destroying his secret lab will only be a futile gesture as multiple copies of the Hybrid have already been secretly seeded on several worlds.
  • When Kerrigan kills him the first time, he lets her know that Amon has already been resurrected.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Holds this opinion of the Swarm, as shown in his quote.

Ouros

Don't mind the appearance; he's on our side.

Voiced by: Michael Dorn (English), Vladimir Levashev (Russian)

An ancient and benevolent Xel'naga, long sealed in the Void by Amon. Unable to do much against Amon in the Void, he appeared to Zeratul, and later Artanis, in the guise of Tassadar, to guide them to information and relics that would lead to Amon's defeat.

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Provies examples of:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Why he chose to appear as Tassadar.
• Bequeathed Power: Given to Kerrigan so that she may continue the Cycle. He doesn't survive it, and is fully aware and accepting of the fact all along.
• Big Good: If it wasn't for him contacting Zeratul as he did, Amon's existence would still be an enigma till it would be far too late to counteract him, making him indirectly responsible for changing the course of events.
• Eldritch Abomination: He's a gigantic amorphous mass with tentacles on his face and ten eyes.
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: A benevolent Xel'naga.
• Eye Lights Out: His eyes go out when he has finished transferring all his powers to Kerrigan so she can become a Xel'naga.
• Gentle Giant: Guy's huge, but is a Non-Action Guy.
• God Guise: Inverted; he chose to appear to the Protoss as Tassadar because he knew they would trust him in such a form, while appearing as a Xel'naga might not give the same result.
• Good Counterpart: To Amon.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: He had been having an influence on the conflict against Amon since Wings of Liberty, but his very existence is not known until Legacy of the Void's epilogue campaign.
• Last of His Kind: Sole survivor of the "good' Xel'naga; at least Amon has Narud as a companion.
• Meaningful Name: Taken from "Ouroboros," the snake that eats its own tail, in reference to the Xel'naga cycle of infinite rebirth.
  • Alternatively, it may be taken from the Greek word οὖρος (ouros), meaning watcher/guardian, to distinguish him from the villainous Amon and Narud.
• Peaceful in Death: He knows that transferring his essence over to Kerrigan will kill him, and does so willing without a second thought to protect their inheritors. He doesn't even seem the least bit pained when he finally goes.
• Power Echoes: Fitting, as he is a Xel'naga.
• Spanner in the Works: His efforts in appearing to Zeratul on Aiur are ultimately what leads to Amon's eons long scheme being slowly undermined throughout the trilogy.
• Unreliable Narrator: The revelation that he impersonated Tassadar's spirit throws all of "Tassadar's" words in doubt, including the Overmind's true intentions.

Hybrid

"This creature is the completion of a cycle. Its role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young."

— Samir Duran

Hybrids are a combination of Protoss and Zerg DNA. Engineered by a variety of mysterious figures, most prominently Samir Duran, their coming is said to be the dawn of a new era, and not a good one. Their existence serves as The Stinger of Brood War, and they are pivotal to the plot of Starcraft II.

Entire Race

• Always Chaotic Evil: All Hybrids seen so far have been malefic and destructive, and there's no indication that they can be anything but that. Justified because they were clearly created with Amon's malign influence, so it's not like they really have a choice in the matter.
• Artificial Hybrid: Created in labs by Terran scientists under Narud's orders.
• Beyond the Impossible: One of the clearly established rules in the Starcraft Universe is that Zerg and Protoss DNA cannot be combined. Somehow, Duran found a way around the rule.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: If a lone Hybrid appears in a mission, it's generally a boss in its own right. If they appear in groups, each one will generally be a very powerful mook.
• Degraded Boss: They become less powerful with every expansion. Compare the Hybrid bosses from Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm to the Elite Mooks in Legacy of the Void.
• The Dreaded: Everyone who learns about them is terrified of the very idea of them existing. Even the zerg consider them abominations.
• Elite Mooks: The strongest race serving Amon and the centerpiece of his army. Most of his servants fought in Legacy of the Void are in fact just mind-controlled by the Hybrids.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": They are introduced as an unholy and extremely powerful and dangerous perversion of the fusion of Protoss and Zerg which was supposed to occur naturally, and everyone, Terran, Protoss and zerg alike, is terrified of them, without exception, even god-tier psychics like Kerrigan or the Overmind. You'd think that in the World of Ham that Starcraft is, creatures of such caliber would get ominous, intimidating or at least mysterious names. No, everyone, from their enemies to their creator, just calls them "the Hybrid".
• Evil Counterpart: Legacy of the Void reveals they are this to the Xel'Naga, being created as a corrupt equivalent of what a natural union between Protoss and Zerg should result in.
• Expy: Of the Burning Legion, especially since Amon's motive is revealed in Legacy of the Void. Led by a Physical God? Check. Said Physical God got dissatisfied by how life was developed? Check. Does he want to kill everything and remake the universe in his own image? Check. Is that Physical God The Dreaded to his enemies? Check. Has beings that are Not Quite Dead when their physical body is destroyed? Only two, but check anyways. Those god-like beings unable to reproduce normally? Check. Empowered two of the playable non-Human races? Check. Requires three playable races on bad terms with each other to ally in desperation to be defeated? Check.
• Humanoid Abomination: The most Protoss-like Hybrids don't look that outlandish, but their powers and nature put them squarely in this territory.
• Killed Off for Real: The Hybrids have been wiped out as of the end of the main Legacy of the Void campaign.
• Light Is Not Good/Bright Is Not Good: Most of them have at least parts of their bodies shining with a bright blue light, much like Archons. They are still the Always Chaotic Evil minions of a God of Evil trying to bring the end of the Universe.
• Lightning Bruiser: Hybrids move fast and hit hard, and take a lot of punishment to put down.
• Made of Iron: If a cutscene in Legacy of the Void is anything to go by. A Reaver killed by Kerrigan took getting stabbed through the head to kill it, a second only appeared to be enraged by getting limbs hacked off and getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice with a warp blade and only died when Kerrigan ripped it in half. In-game, even the weakest Hybrids have health on par with an Ultralisk without counting shields; you'll need overwhelming firepower to put them down.
• Magic Knight: Hybrids have a variety of powerful abilities in addition to great attack power. Their exact abilities change between missions but include Blink, area-of-effect damage and stun, single-target damaging abilities, and more.
• Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: As mentioned above, they are part-Protoss and part-Zerg.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: The Zerg-based Hybrid Reavers and Behemoths are melee fighters that ravage enemies up close with their claws, while the Protoss-influenced Destroyers and Dominators attack with powerful psionic abilities from afar.
• Uneven Hybrid: Destroyers are more obviously Protoss-influenced, while other hybrid including Reavers and the Nemesis are Zerg-influenced.
• The Usual Adversaries: In Co-op Missions. Though most missions pit you against a random enemy race (and a select few will make you deal with two or more), you will always be fighting at least a handful of Hybrids.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Formed as a fusion of Protoss and Zerg genetics and psionics.

Maar

He likes to EMPHASIZE meaningful WORDS!.

"Your life is FORFEIT... surrender to DESPAIR!"

Voiced by: ??? (English), Victor Bohon (Russian)

Maar is a Protoss/Zerg hybrid that appeared in the Protoss world of Zhakul. Zeratul had to fight against him and the Protoss forces he had recruited/possessed in order to access the Preservers, who can decipher the prophecy.

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Provides examples of:

• Advancing Boss of Doom: A giant can of psionic whoop-ass that slowly advances on your base until it can ruin your day single-handedly. If you manage to fend him off, he just teleports back to his base to come at you again some minutes later, and he gets stronger every time it happens.
• Bold Inflation: His in-game SPEECH emphasizes random WORDS in the SUBTITLES.
• Came Back Strong: Repeatedly. Every time you defeat him, he charges himself up with more protoss energy from the elders and comes back physically larger, with more hit points and a stronger attack. The longer it takes to finish the mission the harder it gets.
• Large Ham: Just look at his profile quote. Maar might as well be Evil Is Hammy personified in the mini-campaign he is encountered in.
• Hybrid Monster: May be the first Hybrid to awaken, showing players a taste of their power.
• Mighty Glacier: This guy is slow but hits like a freight train that hooks up an additional carriage each time you beat him back.
• Mind Control: Pulls this on an entire Protoss base.
• Mini-Boss: Routinely strikes throughout the mission and needs a lot of firepower to beat.
• Power Floats: He's essentially a beefed-up Hybrid Destroyer, and just like them he moves around floating a short distance above the ground.
• Psychic Powers: Has several abilities stemming from psionic power, including Psionic Shockwave.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He's a caster-type enemy with a large energy pool fought in the same mission that introduces Protoss High Templars into the mini-campaign. High Templars have the Feedback ability, a single use of which is enough to take down Maar's shields and prevent him from doing anything but use his basic attack.

Hybrid Reaver

A Zerg-attuned Hybrid that attacks at close range with claw attacks. Their advanced form is the Hybrid Behemoth.

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Provides examples of:

• The Brute: Among the other Hybrid units, and in contrast to the Hybrid Destroyers, Reavers don't demonstrate any special abilities aside from spraying a constricting slime around it that temporarily slows units. They make up for it by being better in a straight-up fight, with high HP, attack power, and defenses.
• Deflector Shields: Actually the only hybrid unit that does not have them.
• Elite Mook: In Heart of the Swarm you fight several of them as minibosses in a mission.
• Fangs Are Evil: Have the distinctive Zerg jaws.
• Giant Mooks: In gameplay they're taller than an Ultralisk. They're not as big when in an FMV, but they still tower over Protoss.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Their eyes glow bright blue. Behemoths instead have a single eye that glows red.
• Horrifying the Horror: If the Reaver in the hidden Terran mission is released before killing the restrained Ultralisk in its room, not only will the Reaver kill the giant Zerg, is presence will cause the broodlinge thst spawn from the corpse to run away in terror. Keep in mind that broodlings are literally suicide units, but they still bolt at the sight of this thing.
• The Juggernaut: The one found in the secret mission in Wings of Liberty is too strong for the player to fight with the units available making it into an Advancing Boss of Doom. Even if it's killed it just respawns.
• Life Drain: They have access to the exclusive ability Consume DNA, which instantly drains a chunk of health from an enemy to heal the Reaver/Behemoth.
• Mighty Glacier: It may be slow, but with very high HP and high armor, it's going to take a lot of firepower to take it down. Its powerful attacks (moreso in Wings of Liberty where it can deal over 120 damage in one hit) don't make things any easier.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: They're mostly Zerg in design but have some Protoss elements as well.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: While it's not easily visible since you'll probably be too busy fighting them to notice, take a look at a Reaver's portrait and you'll see multiple rows of teeth in their maws.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Hybrid Behemoth are black with some of their limbs glowing with red psionics.
• Tron Lines: Their skin has glowing blue lines over it.
• Uneven Hybrid: Zerg/Protoss, leans towards the former.
• Units Not to Scale: Unlike most examples, this one is actually much bigger in gameplay. In gameplay it's taller than a Ultralisk. When one is seen in an FMV in Legacy of the Void it's definitely big, but nowhere near the size it's gameplay model makes it out to be.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • One of the most efficient ways to win the final Protoss mission in Wings of Liberty where the Hybrids swarm you in waves is to build a fleet of Phoenix and use their Graviton Beams to levitate the Hybrids, taking them out of the fight and making it easy for your other units to focus fire them down. Remedied in Legacy of the Void, where they're tagged as Heroic and therefore immune to many abilities, such as Graviton Beam, and are merely slowed down by Shadow Charge, instead of stunned.
  • While they lose their original major weakness in Legacy of the Void, they get another instead. Being huge, slow, armored enemies, they get torn into shreds by Tal'darim Vanguards, which excel against huge, slow, armored enemies - they can easily kite Reavers and, in groups, One-Hit Kill them. Behemoths don't fare much better.
  • Being melee attackers, Reavers are helpless against air units; all they can do is chip away at them with Consume DNA, which has a cooldown. Behemoths had an anti-air projectile attack in the campaign, but in Co-op Missions it was removed.

Hybrid Destroyer

A Protoss-attuned Hybrid that fires blasts of psionic energy. Their advanced form is the Hybrid Dominator.

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Provides examples of:

• Divergent Character Evolution: In Heart of the Swarm, the Hybrid Dominator used the Hybrid Destroyer model. Legacy of the Void gives the Dominator a model based on the Destroyer, but distinct from it.
• Elite Mook: In Heart of the Swarm you fight several of them as minibosses in the second Skygeirr Station mission.
• Expy: You're forgiven if you mistake them at first glance for Archons. The glowing tendrils on their backs vaguely resemble those of the angels in the Diablo series.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Also glowing blue.
• Mighty Glacier: As with the Reaver, they don't move that fast but do a lot of damage.
• Mind over Matter: In their appearances as Elite Mooks, the Destroyer's trademark ability is Graviton Prison, effectively a non-channeled version of the Phoenix's Graviton Beam that also damages the target while lifting it off the ground.
• Power Floats: Being Protoss-derived psionics, Destroyers eschew walking in favor of floating some feet above the ground.
• Power Glows: They're surrounded by a psionic aura.
• Sickly Green Glow: In Legacy of the Void and Co-op Missions, Dominators are distinguished from Destroyers by being larger and having a green glow over their body compared to the Destroyers' blue one.
• Superpower Lottery: Across various missions, the Hybrid Destroyer's abilities include Blink, Psionic Storm, a single-target high-damage spell similar to Yamato Cannon, they can create copies of themselves (which, unlike Hallucinations, deal full damage), stun units while dealing damage over time, and have an area-of-effect damage shockwave that knocks units back. In Co-op Missions, their more notable abilities are used either by the Moebius Hybrids in Part and Parcel or by Hybrid Dominators (namely Plasma Blast and Psionic Storm).
• Uneven Hybrid: Zerg/Protoss, leans towards the latter.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • In Wings of Liberty, just like the Hybrid Reaver, it's rendered helpless by the Protoss Phoenix's Graviton Beam. No longer the case in Legacy of the Void due to them being tagged as Heroic units.
  • The Hybrid Dominator suffers from the fact you can remove all of its shields with a single Feedback, and at the same time making it unable to unleash its Psionic Storms.

Hybrid Nemesis

A flying Hybrid based on the Reaver, it attacks with an energy beam.

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Provides examples of:

• Eyeless Face: Although the would-be eye sockets are visible, covered with skin.
• Flying Mook: The sole airborne Hybrid.
• Lightning Bruiser: Unlike other Hybrid units, the Nemesis is somewhat fast, but it's still very tough and it hits hard.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Their bread-and-butter ability, Phase Shift, prevents an enemy unit from attacking or being attacked. They're also smart enough to prioritize defensive structures.
• Out of Focus: The Nemesis does not appear nearly as often as Reavers and Destroyers after its first appearance in "Last Stand". This also goes for Co-op Missions, which aren't shy at all about peppering maps and attack waves with Hybrids, but the Nemesis still only spawns in a few missions.

Void Thrasher

An extremely powerful Void entity that has a ridiculous attack range.

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Provides examples of:

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Undeniably one of the largest units ever made into the game. In the same vein as the Colossus, its size means that it counts as both a ground unit and an air unit.
• Eldritch Abomination: Has tentacles, glowing eyes, sharp scythe-like cleavers, and a very horrendous appearance.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Without question the biggest and toughest of Amon's minions, and can lay waste to fortifications from long range. However, because their in-game purpose is to serve as a soft timer on missions by forcing players to kill them before they destroy something important, they're surprisingly weak in a direct fight.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: As a Void creature, it sure does have 'em.
• Long-Range Fighter: Can attack designated targets with extremely long-ranged energy bolts, but when attacked by units from close range, their only means of fighting back is a slow, highly-telegraphed lightning breath that can be easily avoided.
• Siege Engines: Generally used as such due to their ability to attack a target from all the way across any given map.
• Shock and Awe: Has lightning-based attacks to harm your units.

Other beings

Critters

Critters refers to a variety of background creatures found throughout the series. Critters are benign and peaceful animals who just happen to be wandering around where you're fighting and do nothing to harm you, except maybe get in the way. They exist to add more variety to the fauna of the worlds you visit.

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Provides examples of:

• Beary Friendly: Ursadons are based on polar bears and are easily the cuddliest and cutest critters in the game. They become aggressive in Starcraft II, but thanks to Art Evolution they barely qualify as bears by that point.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Scantid are based on large scorpions.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: While the other critters are vaguely recognizable as based on Earth animals, the ragnasaur is weird. It vaguely looks like a lobster, if instead of pincers the lobster had two large feet it used to drag itself around.
• Butt-Monkey: Critters only ever play an important role in missions when you need to kill them for some purpose, and in the single-player you're advised to still do that since they will often get in the way of your units and your buildings.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Ursadons are based on polar bears, scantids on giant scorpions, bengalaas on panthers, kakaru on pterosaurs and rhynodons on rhinos.
• Made of Explodium: As an Easter Egg in the series, clicking on a critter multiple times in succession causes them to explode like a nuke, though it does no damage.
• The Mole: One of the few uses of them in the series is to use the Queen's Parasite ability on them to see everything the critter sees; units left unsupervised don't attack critters, so they can wander around the enemy base spying for you until the opponent realizes what you're doing and manually has their units kill it. This is possibly why critters are usually not placed in multiplayer maps.
• Non-Action Guy: Most critters don't even have an attack.
• Panthera Awesome: The bengalaas are panther-themed critters.
• Prehistoric Animal Analogue: The kakaru is obviously based on pterodactyls.
• Rhino Rampage: Rhynodons are based on rhinoceros.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Starcraft II you encounter critters that can fight back. Ursadons in particular go from big and cuddly polar bear-like beings to towering yetis that can fight a small pack of zerglings and win, and hunting them for their valuable genetic essence is a mission objective in Heart of the Swarm.

Voice in the Darkness

An ancient entity sealed in a temple by the Xel'naga, until Terran researchers release it.

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• A God Am I: He calls himself the "One True God", not to say he isn't powerful enough to back it up.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He tries to tempt Xy'tal to let him live. Then again, seeing as how he survives, he might just be trying to get a new minion.
• Red Herring: Word of God says this thing isn't Amon, though you might be forgiven for thinking he was, since Amon was also referred to as the "Dark Voice" before his actual name was revealed.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Until some idiot scientists let him out.