United Earth Directorate

The United Earth Directorate (UED) is the fictional government of Earth in the StarCraft universe and was descended from the United Powers League.

The United Earth Directorate is loosely inspired by the United Citizen Federation of Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers as is most clearly seen in the UED victory movie in the StarCraft: Brood War game.

Early History: the United Powers League
The events of the original StarCraft game take place in the Koprulu Sector of space, a.k.a. "The Terran Sector".

Following a period of social anarchy and the "fall of Western civilization", a new world-government is re-asserted over Earth: the United Powers League (UPL). A police-state, it encompasses all but a few politically unstable South American countries. Rounding up "undesirables" &mdash;cyborgs, genetically "impure" individuals, hackers, policital dissidents&mdash; "Project Purification" was instituted: a campaign of mass genocide in which millions died.

The Exile and the Long Sleep
However, the young scientist Doran Routhe wanted to explore deep space. It was very risky, but he had no problem with sending political prisoner "lab rats" to their possible deaths. Forty thousand prisoners were loaded into four sleeper-ships, called the Nagglfar, Argo, Reagan and Sarengo and loaded for a 1 year journey into deep space to the outlying planet, Gantris VI. The lead ship, the Nagglfar, was also equipped with an artificial intelligence called ATLAS.

ATLAS scanned the prisoners, and discovered something unusual about them - a high proportion of them had a mutation leading to psionic potential. While currently weak, it would manifest in only a few generations. This information was logged and sent back to Earth. This may explain how the United Powers League came to know of this experiment.

However, the guidance computer failed, and they traveled at faster than light speeds for 30 years. When they awoke, the survivors had no idea where they were or where Earth was: all hope of making contact again was lost. One of the spaceships (the Sarengo) crashed on Umoja killing all aboard, another, the Reagan, founded the colony of Umoja, the Argo founded the colony of Moria, and the Nagglfar built the main Terran colony in the sector: Tarsonis. The Terrans of Tarsonis eventually re-built the warp drive and created an interstellar Terran Confederacy. There were roughly a dozen Terran colony planets in the sector by the end of the 25th century. However, war broke out with the Zerg invasion and subsequent clashes with the Protoss.

First Contact
As was later revealed, the UPL had been observing the Terran breakaway colonies for some time. By this time, Earth had developed its own interstellar empire that was far larger than the combined colonies of the Koprulu Sector, though (oddly enough) their technology and weapons of war were almost exactly identical and very similar to those created by the Confederacy. NOTE: This could be a result of the UPL's keen observation of the various colonies...? Shocked by the appearance of two alien races in the Terran sector, the UPL reformed into the United Earth Directorate; now it encompassed all nations of Earth.

UED Invasion
The UED took a more militaristic, pro-active stance with regard to the alien races, and dispatched a large Expeditionary Fleet under the command of Admiral DuGalle and Vice Admiral Stukov to the Koprulu Sector. The Expeditionary Fleet consisted of two "wings" - the Atlas Wing (a ground-based force, main color brown) and the Cronus Wing (a space force, main color white). Compared to the Terran Dominion the UED forces generally preferred to use space flight.

Admiral DuGalle was given three main objectives:


 * 1) Conquer all of the "rogue" Terran colonies (mostly under the control of the Terran Dominion) and bring them under UED control
 * 2) Take control of the Zerg Swarm by capturing the newborn Zerg Overmind
 * 3) Use the commandeered Zerg Swarm to conquer the Protoss and pacify all Protoss conflict in the sector

The UED started their invasion by setting Zerg on a Terran-occupied planet and watching the resulting massacre. Their forces attacked Braxis, capturing its capital and yielding strategic data on the Terran Dominion. During this time, they recruited Samir Duran, formerly a member of the Terran Dominion's Alpha Squadron.

Initially, the UED was successful: most of the breakaway Terran colonies (including Korhal, capital of the Terran Dominion) were conquered, the Psi Disruptor was activated despite the treachery of Samir Duran (severely weakening the Zerg) and the fleet successfully took control of the second Overmind. However, the fleet was later defeated when Kerrigan rallied various remaining former colleages and friends to aid her endeavours against the UED, which included her former superior, Emperor Mengsk of the Terran Dominion, also destroying the Psi Disruptor. But the UED didn't go down without a fight however, using the Overmind and various remaining Cerebrates, the UED was able to launch a coordinated assault against Kerrigan's forces on Tarsonis, but was later beaten back. The UED finally lost control over the Zerg Swarms after Kerrigan enlisted the 'aid' of the Dark Templar to kill the Overmind, since the Overmind can only be damaged by Dark Templar energies.

Kerrigan, with the second Overmind dead, took command of the entire Zerg Swarm, and was left the dominant power of the Koprulu Sector. The Protoss were beaten off of their homeworld, Aiur, and retreated to the Dark Templar's homeworld, Shakuras. The Terran Dominion, successor to the Confederacy, was broken, battered and too incapacitated to be of any threat to Kerrigan.

The United Earth Directorate suffered a great loss with the defeat of the Expeditionary Fleet, but it is still the only other power that has sufficient force to resist Kerrigan's Zerg, aided by the great distance between UED Earth space and the Koprulu Sector. However, the entire force within the Koprulu Sector was destroyed, so the UED must replenish forces from Earth if it wishes to attack the Koprulu Sector again. Presumably, they have some knowledge of the events, however in the epilogue text of the Zerg campaign of Brood Wars, it is revealed that the remainder of the UED Expeditionary Fleet were annihilated while in full retreat. It is also known that Admiral DuGalle committed suicide, due to a combination of grief at his choices regarding Stukov, and the humiliating completeness of his defeat.