WARDEN

Warden is a purifier AI who acts as the central intelligence micromanaging the affairs of the Twilight Seekers, particularly maintaining and monitoring their actions to prevent uncontrollable damage. Having completely shed the identity they held as a biological protoss, and even their identity as a protoss at all, Warden wholeheartedly dedicates themselves to the advancement of the protoss people while eschewing individual identity entirely. Although presenting outwardly as calculated and emotionless, Warden's pride and concern for the protoss under their care reveals a much more complicated truth.

## Biography

**Source Personality**

Born as Edullaa of the Khalai caste and with little eye for aesthetics, Warden's source personality was always innately drawn away from the artisan crafting her bloodline was known for, and towards the brutalist efficiency of protoss robotics. Though her lack of concern for the ornate over pure function caused her designs to be overlooked and unpopular among the wider phasesmith community, the skill she possessed in the craft was undeniable and did not go unnoticed by the Judicators, who would often commission a piece of robotics and then pass the product on to another phasesmith in order to instil the level of aesthetic required for machines of the empire, much to her dismay.

This skill in turn landed her as one of the very few women to be give permission to work as part of the Purifier Project, although overlooked for the higher managing position she craved. Working predominantly with the shells the AI would inhabit, particularly the great Warden war machines that would serve as their vanguard, Edullaa found great purpose in the design freedom allowed by both the removal of processining limitations which held back much of protoss robotics, and the ethically stretched nature of the project at large- instilling the machines with weaponry systems with firepower and precision many of her contemporaries feared would be unethical to turn upon any sapient being. It was these concerns that lead the increasingly frustrated Edullaa to put herself forward as a candidate for prototype brain scanning, reasoning that no one but a splinter herself could ever truly utilise her own designs as they were intended.

Although the prototype AI followed the source personality closely and exceeded all expectations in practical tests, the projected similarity to the source being only 90% left it a failure in the eyes of the project managers, who quickly deactivated it and moved on. Edullaa agreed with this assessment for the most part, not sharing the ethical concerns expressed by a number of her phasesmith contemporaries about the AI's potential personhood.

Although she survived the later Purifier rebellion, Edullaa's unapologetic part in creating many of the weapons used to slaughter Templar and Khalai alike left a cloud over her career, one that she was never able to truly escape from. She died with little prominence to her name.

**As Warden**

The Purifier personality born from Edullaa, however, would not meet the same fate. Remaining dormant throughout the beginning of the Purifier Rebellion, a raid upon the main manufacturing hub released Warden along with a number of other prototype personalities and they quickly joined the struggle of their kin. Like a number of purifier personalities, Warden felt no innate connection with their source personality, eschewing the identity of Edullaa entirely and taking the name of "Warden" only for the convenience of their kin.

Warden became a scourge on the battlefield, their innate knowledge of the shells melding well with their uncanny ability to swap between them with such speed and processing power that they functionally piloted multiple shells at once. Piloting the great Purifier Wardens to numerous victories over the templar battalions stationed on-world, only once the purifiers attempted to hijack a number of spacecraft did the might of the great fleet bare down on them, crushing the rebellion before it could truly break out into a wider conflict. The surviving Purifiers were imprisoned in stasis aboard Cybros, Warden among them.

Awoken once more during the End War, Warden was one of the minority who argued against helping the Daelaam in the war, seeing little reason to believe Artanis' promises and even less to believe his idealism would apply to the rest of the protoss even if it were true. Still, they fought with their kin across the sector, once again piloting advanced purifier weaponry in service of slaughtering Templar, voluntarily joining the further campaign into the void to slaughter the gods themselves.

With little to do in the relative peace of the end war, and no desire to follow their kin in what they viewed to be desperate, hollow imitation of the Templar in service of a desire to be seen as equal to them, Warden instead ceased to be as a single personality, dispersing processing power instead to watch and analyse the collective actions of the Daelaam and becoming dismayed with the perceived lack of drive to regain their lost glory, or expand themselves further.

As the High Templar Rassidan began gaining a following, however, with his preaching of a desire to delve into previously forbidden knowledge and utilise long forgotten xel'naga technologies- Warden became intrigued, finding kindred spirits in the Protoss involved. Choosing to divert more and more attention to his movements and research, Warden began subtly altering and modifying their findings, fixing errors and expanding on concepts the Twilight Seekers had uncovered and grasped but not fully understood. As Warden began doing so with increasing frequency, it did not go unnoticed by the myriad of disparate Protoss who had pledged themselves to Rassidan's cause and eventually it was decided that becoming public and pledging themselves openly to the cause was required, rather than to risk suspicion of sabotage. As the largest source of the much sought after but little gotten approval by Purifiers for the movement, Warden was quickly offered an official spot within the organisation with a prominent role in the oversight- one that was accepted with an unusual bout of enthusiasm.

Warden quickly became effectively the second in command of the Twilight Seekers, integrating into much of their technology and devoting much of their processing power to ensuing no experiment became more dangerous than it was worth, or any of the wildly over-engineered equipment malfunctioned without warning. Their grand mothership, The Forum of Adun, would likely cease to function without Warden's constant attention keeping it's wildly engineered processes in check. The Twilight Seekers now see Warden as something of an affable Big Brother intelligence, seldom seen or spoken to but always watching, and always protecting them from both themselves and any outside threats. Some within the organisation express discomfort at the level of power wielded over them, and the constant surveillance, but Warden's little direct contact with their Protoss contemporaries leaves these fears in the minority. Many welcome the watching eye, and breathe a sigh of relief when a design of theirs has a sudden alteration, aware that a catastrophic mistake was avoided.