Hey folks:
If anyone remembers the thread from a week ago, I made a giant list of questions to scare the writers with, and people asked if I'd post the answers I got when I got back. Well I actually did get a few!
But like five of them. And the vast majority for the new comics (Soldiers and This Sacred Land) since those were the only authors around.
So yeah, sorry to disappoint but I'll deliver on my promise and post what I got!
Still, was a fun experience, and I really loved talking to all of the devs and the like. Sadly never found the holy grail of SC lore historians, Justin Parker, or one of the bigger writers of recent history Valerie Watrous but I'll find them next year!
Big thanks to Andrew Robinson and Robert Brooks for humoring questions about their work, and for Madi Buckingham, one of the lore historians for the recent comics, who was deeply passionate enough to have a twenty minute conversation with me about datapad consistency. Also Chris Fugate who showed there are still super knowledgeable lore people fighting the good fight on StarCraft's dev team (and for putting up with me being bad at Mengsk), and Kevin Dong (Monk) for being chill and putting up with my jetlagged questions. Yall are great and I hope to harass you all next year.
Questions That Got Answered
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When does This Sacred Land take place in the timeline? - It takes place after Legacy of the Void, but before Raynor vanishes. Brooks noted that after calm had come to the sector, this was the Dominion taking stock of the situation and realizing they forgot Stetmann. One thing to note is I also tried to clarify that, while the game says Raynor vanished two years after Amon died, the revised book timeline says both the epilogue and Raynor's vanishing takes place in the same year. Sadly Brooks couldn't comment either way on that, but it does give us a time period, either way between 2506-2508 and before Raynor vanished and things like Nova Covert Ops.
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Who is the Ghost in Sacred Land? Is he a character we've seen before? - Internally the team has a name for the ghost, but he is nobody we've seen before in prior works. He was set up to create another character in the story of Stetmann, and it is someone they would like to use in future works, though they clarified that nothing had been confirmed in that regard.
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In Soldiers, is the Swill an actual place, or is it slang for poor Korhal communities? - "The Swill" was futurist slang for poor communities that Kevin Anderson worked with the lore team on, to make slang that was both distinct to StarCraft while carrying the idea. It was not the name of a set place.
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When does Soldiers take place? Does it take place during Shadow Wars? - Soldiers takes place approximately 2-3 years after the defeat of Amon, just enough for a new generation of recruits to be raised in the ideals of Valerian Mengsk and fully believe them. On whether it was during Shadow Wars, Anderson wasn't sure, though the comic strongly implies that it does.
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Why was there a Defenders of Man/General Davis Vardona symbol on Colonel Perkin's desk in Soldiers? - Anderson does say that the smaller details were added by the lore team and approved by them, however he was unsure when those were added. Given that this is presumably sometime after Nova Covert Ops, when the Defenders of Man were defeated and Davis killed, this does raise some questions.
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According to Phil Gonzo SCII was ordered not to have cerebrates in the game to “play nice” with Games Workshop. Is this still in effect? - Yes, it's still in effect, we very likely won't see cerebrates anytime soon if ever, and they're very unlikely to show up in an Overmind commander. However, I didn't get any deeper clarification as to why.
Things I Learned Not in My Questions
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There are comics being produced down the pipeline, and some of them seem to be War Chest ones. While this is far from confirmation, this seems to imply strongly they intend to keep doing War Chests.
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Both Buckingham and Roberts stressed that a big point in This Sacred Land was making a story that captured Stetmann's silliness while not "breaking" the universe and suspension of disbelief, and thus keeping the story and Mecha Swarm more grounded.
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The reason StarCraft is spelled the way it is, with a capital “C,” is because the Starcraft RV and bus company had already trademarked the name “Starcraft.” So this was a means to get around that.
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Mengsk will have a trailer coming soon(tm). I also got to play a good bit of Mengsk, so I can give thoughts on that too. He probably won't get special modified map lines (like Vermillion Problem) but he does have special lines when Raynor, Kerrigan and Tychus use Hyperion, Immobilization Wave and Odin respectively.
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One of the main SC lore historians, Justin Parker, has an obsession with keeping starships depicted realistically in comics, with different functional rooms. One shot of Elms standing in front of a massive space window in Shadow Wars apparently plagued him. I am still bitter I was never able to find him, since battlecruiser consistency was a major thing I wanted to ask about.
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Nobody seems to know who is in charge of the website to ask about getting short stories and lore sections of the SC webpage undeleted.
So yeah never let it be said I don't make good on my promises, but sorry I couldn't get more! I'm hoping to expand the packet to twenty pages and try again next year!
