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CHAMPIONS OF KHANDIA
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Thank you very much for downloading "Champions of Khandia", a StarCraft campaign created by Andrea Rosa in 2020. This campaign was designed to be played with the original StarCraft patched to version 1.04 or later (it will not work with the retail version). While it is technically possible to play these maps in Brood War mode, this is considered cheating, since the extra units and technologies would severely alter the gameplay, making some of the missions too easy. If you have Brood War, please play "Champions of Khandia" in StarCraft mode. Also, this campaign has not been tested under StarCraft Remastered.




THE STORY
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Very far from Antioch, west of the archaic sea of Kna-Tari, lies the province of Khandia. Homeland of the Furinax Tribe, Khandia is renowned for its industrious people, mainly builders, artisans and weaponsmiths who revel in their progressive crafts, their greatest feats being the power suits wielded by Zealots and the Dragoon exoskeleton. Scientific research, logic and skepticism characterize the lifestyle of the Furinax, and their sheer ingenuity has become proverbial. Suddenly, an ominous sound penetrates the placid waves of Kna-Tari: the Zerg, fierce creatures intent on conquering Aiur, attack in force. Led by Cerebrate Gorn, just revived after his temporary death in Scion, the Zerg proceed to lay waste to the whole province. Now Khandia is on the brink of total annihilation, and it's up to you to restore hope in your people. Acting as the local Executor, and fully aware of the fact that receiving any help from other provinces will be nearly impossible, you strive to rally the remaining warriors and plan a counter offensive against the evil that changed the winds and wronged the tides. You will need to be extremely careful, because not only the revenant Gorn is one of the highest ranking Cerebrates in the Swarm's ranks, but he also has yet to reveal his deadliest servant.




INSTALLATION AND GAMEPLAY
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To play this campaign, unzip all the files contained in this archive into the campaign folder of StarCraft. Run StarCraft, select SINGLE PLAYER, PLAY CUSTOM and navigate to the campaign folder where you have unzipped the files. Make sure to set the game type to USE MAP SETTINGS and select "(1)Khandia01.scm", the first mission in the campaign.




KNOWN BUGS
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Mission 4: The total amount of units lost by all computer players is erroneously displayed as 0 in the achievements screen. This is due to how the trigger for the kills-to-cash system works. If anyone of you knows how to solve this issue without having to resort to hypertriggers then please contact me.




DESIGNER'S NOTES
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And so here it is, my third StarCraft campaign (fourth if we consider the reworking of "Enslavers"), I hope you will enjoy it. While I had initially envisioned these campaigns to be independent from each other, they ended up being interconnected in one way or another, so I strongly recommend you to play "Tales of Halcyon", "Voices of the Swarm" and "Enslavers Special Edition" if you haven't done so already. Warning: if you don't like gimmicks, tricks and restrictions, then don't play this campaign or any of the above mentioned ones, because you're going to run into many of them; I'm aware that a wave of affiliated StarCraft fans, led by some influential map makers, is pushing to redefine the philosophy of campaign design by shifting it toward a melee-like experience, with no preplaced units, full tech tree in every mission, mundane objectives, and generally nothing that the AI wouldn't do by itself, all this in order to give the player maximum freedom. While I respect their point of view, I cannot agree with such paradigms, because at that point I would just play melee instead of a campaign, in which each scenario supposedly calls for a different setting and feeling. As always, all maps have been created with StarEdit, with a precious help from ScmDraft2 during post-production: at first I intended to use it only to overcome some of the limitations of pre-BW StarEdit (such as the impossibility to place resources as pickups and rename powerups, both of which were critical features in Mission 4), but then I started playing with the extended terrain and I was instantly hooked. In conclusion, I think that using both editors may be the ideal way for me to make future maps (provided I make it out alive from the second dreadful lockdown in northern Italy, which is not granted at all), because honestly I can't picture myself creating an entire campaign from scratch with ScmDraft2: it's undoubtedly a powerful tool, but I find it cumbersome and too much dispersive. As for my transition to Brood War, I don't know if it will ever happen: the fact is, I'm not a big fan of how the story developed in the expansion (probably because I played it nearly 15 years after the original game), and apart from the Medic and the desert tileset I don't feel the need for any of the extras. We will see.




LINKS TO PREVIOUS CAMPAIGNS
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"Tales of Halcyon"
www.mediafire.com/file/skpwi66h339j4bh/Tales_of_Halcyon.zip/file

"Voices of the Swarm"
www.mediafire.com/file/iilmhvcteye84i5/Voices_of_the_Swarm.zip/file

"Enslavers Special Edition"
www.mediafire.com/file/i4emgwq0kie10vs/Enslavers_SE.zip/file




UNSOLICITED TRIVIA
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* I googled "Khandia" out of curiosity and it turned out that it's also the name of a small village located in the Saurashtra peninsula, India.
* The inspiration for the title of this campaign came from "Champions of Krynn" for Commodore 64 (1990, Strategic Simulations).
* Zollux is a reference to Alien Breed II for Amiga (1993, Team17).
* The Big Gun is a tribute to Quake II (1997, id Software).
* The name Bursenangur was first mentioned in "Gli Eoni Sepolti", an unpublished novella that I wrote in 2000 when I was 25.
* While it is not stated in the campaign, Utnabanezar is the composite name of Utnaban and Ezar. The accent goes on the third syllabe.
* Hybrasil (also known as Hy-Brasil or Brasil) is the name of a phantom island said to lie west of Ireland. According to the legend, the island is permanently cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years.
* The layout of "High Hopes" was obviously inspired by the Brood War mission "Drawing of the Web", because it was just perfect for the narrative design that I had in mind.
* The Dominion Anthem is a free sound clip created by Humanoide9000.
* This campaign is sponsored by Project Coweed-19.




SOFTWARE LICENSE
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This StarCraft campaign can be redistributed freely, provided you keep all of the files contained in the Zip archive unaltered. You can upload it on any website for free download, as long as you credit me as the author. You cannot redistribute this campaign for profit in any way without my explicit permission.

Andrea Rosa

ilpinky@libero.it
www.facebook.com/andrea.rosa.kriegbringer

Last update: 16 November 2020