The title of this article is conjectural. The subject has no canonical name.
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The Umojan-Dominion Cold War was a series of skirmishes, proxy conflicts, economic sanctions and acts of espionage between the Terran Dominion and the Umojan Protectorate in the aftermath of the Brood War, continuing until well after the End War.
History[]
Background[]
The later years of the 2400s saw the increase in power of the Terran Confederacy, and with it their expansionistic tendencies, even bleeding into their neighboring nations of the Umoja and the Kel-Morian Combine. To help weaken their regime, Umoja supported rebel groups within the Confederacy, namely providing arms and supplies to the Korhal rebels lead by Angus Mengsk. When the Guild Wars ended with the defeat of the Kel-Morian Combine, Umoja and its colonies united into a mutual defense pact known as the Umojan Protectorate to help ward off potential Confederate aggression. However, the balance of power still vastly favored the Confederates. More subtle measures were needed.[1]
After the Confederacy destroyed Korhal with nuclear weapons, the surviving Korhal rebels united under Angus's son, Arcturus Mengsk, into the Sons of Korhal. Arcturus had connections to the Umojan Protectorate through his family's connections to the Umojan Protectorate and their ambassador Ailin Pasteur.[2] The Sons of Korhal received ample support from the Umojan Protectorate, including receiving the battlecruiser Hyperion, which would become the group's capitol ship.[3] With the outbreak of the Great War, the Sons of Korhal received their opportunity to topple the Confederacy, and after leading the zerg to Tarsonis, the rebels were able to finally destroy their hated enemy. From the ashes of the Confederacy, Arcturus formed the Terran Dominion to stand as a united front against the zerg and protoss. The Umojans and Kel-Morian Combine united the Dominion in this vision.
However, tensions quickly arose. The Umojan Protectorate saw the tactics of Arcturus Mengsk as brutal and oppressive, and no better than the Terran Confederacy before him. During a visit to Umoja to visit Juliana and his son, Valerian Mengsk, Arcturus was ambushed by a fragment of the old Confederacy known as the Confederate Resistance Forces. In response, General Edmund Duke defied Umojan orders and sent his battlecruiser into Umojan airspace to support his emperor. Mengsk for his part thought that the Umojans were complicit in the attack.[2]
After the end of the Brood War, the Dominion was damaged by the arrival and temporary takeover by the United Earth Directorate, but was able to reform. However, the Umojans separated themselves from the Dominion, and a shadow war between the two nations began.[4]
Shadow War[]
With the tenuous peace between the factions of the Koprulu Sector after the Brood War came a small arms race, as the Umojan Protectorate began to invest heavily in technology in preparation for a conflict with the zerg or the Dominion. Umoja became a refuge for political dissidents who opposed Arcturus Mengsk. The Umojans also began to fund and uplift separatist groups against the Dominion as they had done against the Confederacy. The Dominion, for their part, began impose economic sanctions on the Umojan Protectorate,[4] and taught in their education facilities that they, alongside the United Earth Directorate, were traitors to humanity.[5] The Dominion's sanctions on Umoja caused the Protectorate to begin to smuggle in foodstuffs into their territory.[6]
The Umojan Protectorate began to spread their intelligence agents and psychic shadowguard through the Dominion to keep track of their technological progress and potential movements. They also began to sponsor and shelter pirate holos, spreading anti-Dominion messages through the Dominion, and even planning to support infamous reporter Michael Liberty in his efforts to weaken the Dominion.[6] The Umojan Protectorate securely supported an anti-Dominion uprising on Anselm, but the Dominion was able to crush it before it gained any traction.[7]
Mengsk constantly pushed to gain a foothold in Umojan territories on the southern border, and attempted to use fear and aggression to claim them. However, he was never able to acquire the territory.[8] The Umojans for their part pushed to disrupt Terran Dominion authority in the Fringe Worlds.[9]
The Phash Incident[]
When the Dominion revealed that one of its senators, Corbin Phash, had hidden the psychic talents of his son Colin, the family separated and hid from the Dominion. Corbin traveled to the Protectorate and struck an alliance with Minister Jorgensen while Colin took shelter on a refugee world. However, Colin was captured and taken to the Ghost Academy, prompting Corbin to vow to expose the truth behind the Academy. Jorgensen promised to help, suggesting he knew Dominion media figures such as Kate Lockwell.[10] Corbin's presence was a thorn in the side of the Dominion, and a ghost was dispatched to assassinate him. It failed. The Umojans did not retaliate however, only taking further steps to protect Phash.[6]
The Umojans would eventually spread anti-Ghost Academy propaganda to dozens of Dominion worlds.[11] Eventually Corbin Phash would arrange for his son to be freed from the Academy, and he would be trained as a shadowguard.[9]
The Spectre Uprising[]
Moving as they had against the Confederacy, the Umojan Protectorate sought to support any group which would have a chance at destabilizing Mengsk's hold over the Dominion. One such opportunity presented itself in General Cole Bennett, who was in disguise as the Nova Squadron Colonel Jackson Hauler. Bennett was a survivor of Project Shadowblade, a secret Dominion project that used terrazine on ghost agents to create psionically super powered spectres. However, the spectres proved unstable, and the project was shut down. Bennett sought to bring Mengsk down for his crimes, and needed resources to restart Project Shadowblade.
Spectre Gabriel Tosh used his knowledge of former Dominion senator Corbin Phash, who fled to Umojan asylum, to begin a dialogue between the spectres and Umojans. Bennett and Tosh came to the Umojan Protectorate with a plan; if the Umojans would support the spectres, they would kidnap Mengsk and bring him to Umojan territory. There they would force him to confess his crimes to infamous journalist Michael Liberty, and the confession would be spread through the Dominion. The Umojans supported this endeavor, and with technology from the defunct Sector 9, the spectres attempted to raid Korhal Palace to kidnap Mengsk. This was foiled by Agent Nova Terra however. Nova would later be kidnapped by Cole Bennett after she and Wrangler Malcolm Kelerchian began to discover the connection between Project Shadowblade and the Umojans. This proved fatal however, as Nova destroyed their base of operations, killing Bennett and ending the Spectre Rebellion. Kelerchian stated that he would use his contacts with Senator Huntley in order to aid in getting what information he could on their connection to the uprising.[9]
The Simonson Facility Raid[]
Through the interbellum, the Umojan Protectorate continued their efforts to keep eyes on the Dominion's technological progress using shadowguard. One such effort was on Anselm, where Agent Pandora was assigned to protect a former Dominion weapon's engineer. However, the Dominion caught wind of the operation, and had him executed while the rebellion the Umojans provoked was brutally culled.
In 2503, the Umojan Protectorate again send in Pandora and her mentor Sage in an effort to find what the Dominion were testing in the Simonson Munitions Factory. Pandora was disguised as driver Rebecca Schafer, and infiltrated the base. There she discovered the Dominion's Odin undergoing testing. However, shortly after the Dominion were alerted to an intrusion. Schafer was able to escape with the intelligence, but was forced to abandon Sage. The Umojans later planted evidence that the raid was done by the Koprulu Liberation Front,[7] while the Dominion moved Odin testing to Valhalla.[12]
Second Great War[]
With the zerg invasion of terran space in 2504, the Protectorate mobilized to defend their borders from the new zerg invasion.[13] and closed its borders.[14] Meanwhile, the Dominion was focused on defending itself from the zerg and the rebellious actions of Raynor's Raiders.[15]
After the defeat of the Queen of Blades on Char, conflict broke out between Dominion forces under Arcturus Mengsk, who wanted to kill the deinfested Kerrigan, and the Dominion Renegades under Valerian Mengsk and Jim Raynor, who wanted to keep her alive. After a running conflict, the rebels were offered asylum in the Umojan Protectorate, in Research Station EB-103. Valerian assured his allies that base was kept a complete secret, and that not even the Dominion's best agents would be able to find them there.[16] There they began to experiment on the deinfested Sarah Kerrigan, to see the extent of the remaining zerg infestation.[17]
However, the Dominion did eventually track Kerrigan down, and a fleet was launched to assault Research Base EB-103. A squadron under Nova Terra attacked the facility, and engaged the Umojan defenders, with the goal of finding Raynor and Kerrigan. The Umojans began to evacuate the facility, and aided Raynor and Kerrigan as they attempted their own escape. When the Dominion deployed an Archangel, Umojan marines aided Kerrigan in destroying it. The Dominion Renegades were given enough time to escape, however, Jim Raynor was left behind and captured by Dominion forces.[18]
In the aftermath, Kerrigan returned to the Zerg Swarm, and rallied her forces against Mengsk. She, along with Valerian and Raynor's Raiders, were able to attack Korhal and end the reign of Arcturus Mengsk,[19] putting the half-Umojan Valerian Mengsk on the throne of the Dominion.[20]
New Age, Old Tensions[]
After his ascension to the throne Emperor Valerian began making good-faith overtures to the Umojan Ruling Council in the hopes of negotiating a mutual security pact that also included a technology partnership between the Protectorate and the Dominion.[20] However, beneath the surface the cold war continued, even under the reign of a new, more peaceful emperor.[21]
The Keep[]
Sometime after the End War, the Umojan Protectorate acquired documents linking Valerian Mengsk to the Moebius Foundation, the organization that bred the hybrid that took part in the End War. They stored these documents on disks in a nearly impenetrable space fortress known as the Keep. Valerian suspected that they would release these documents to destroy the people's faith in Valerian, and sent ghost agent Nova Terra to recover the documents.
Nova used a Korhalian light freighter named the Charon to approach the Keep, and disguised it as a derelict freighter, using a toxin to fake her own death. The ship was brought aboard for inspection, and she was brought to the medical bay for autopsy. Nova awoke, and used her psionic powers to give the doctor preparing her autopsy a nosebleed and headache, causing her to leave. Nova then go to work making her way back to the Charon, when she encountered a shadowguard. The two fought, and Nova wounded him, but the gunshot alerted the security system, which deployed black widow security drones. Nova lured the black widows down a hallway, and shot the liquid oxygen tubes lining the wall, which froze the drones.
Nova made her way back to the Charon, and deployed explosives in the maintenance shaft, causing the Umojan security personnel to begin to evacuate to the nearby sentinel watchtowers. However, these explosives were fake, and the actual explosives were on the evacuation shuttles. These exploded, destroying all four watchtowers. Nova made her way to the Keep's vault, and deployed a prototype terran particle disruptor to break through the wall. She was ambushed by the shadowguard from earlier, but managed to throw him in range of the particle disruptor, using it to incinerate him and the wall. Nova grabbed the disks and escaped before reinforcements arrived.
Later, not wishing to keep damaging secrets from his people anymore, Valerian released the documents detailing his connection to the Moebius Foundation to the public.[21]
Old Wounds[]
- Envoy Louise DuPre(src)
Even by 2511, the scars of the cold war were not lost on the Umojan Protectorate, who refused to trust Emperor Valerian Mengsk and allow him access to their southern border, as they had suffered greatly from his father's ambitions. They also refused to supply the biotechnology the Dominion needed to reconstruct their agriculture, despite the Dominion's offer of protection from a possible zerg resurgence, as the Protectorate wasn't interested, preferring to count on Hierarch Artanis and the Daelaam instead.[8] In spite of this, the Umojans did not sign on to the ceasefire among the three races.[22]
Around the time of the Battle of Camp Pitcairn, the Umojan Protectorate began making territory grabs at Dominion-held planets, forcing the Dominion to deploy their forces to counteract their movements.[23] The Umojans prepared their munitions factories for a potential conflict, outwardly saying it was for a xenos invasion, though many speculated that they were just as much for use against the Dominion.[22]
References[]
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