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I connected to vulcans, before discovering my main protoss identity. And I now consider vulcans to be a paratype despite learning about them first.
To explain what I'm talking about, I will need to start at the beginning. About ten years ago, before I knew anything about alterhumanity but knowing already that I specifically felt nonhuman or animal, I remember getting interested in Star Trek. And although I vaguely knew what protoss were at the time, I didn't look too deeply into them even though my thoughts at the time towards them were "I find them interesting. I should read more about them in the future", and you can guess what happened once I looked into them more closely and looked past their in game appearances. Although I was always interested in science fiction, I feel that getting into Star Trek made me look into the genre more closely in general. And as I was watching the movies and series, I began to develop an attachment to vulcans. So when I first looked into Starcraft, the knowledge I pulled from to understand the historical events and telepathic abilities were from the vulcans.
In hindsight, they do have some similarities with protoss, even though you'd think of klingons first, since we were considered a warrior race as well. After all, one of the quotes from a protoss unit in Starcraft 1 based on a klingon warcry: it's a good day to die. But I can't clearly make sense of why I developed this connection with vulcans, and near zero with klingons, past the honor components. Maybe I latched to them because of my anxiety at the time, and wanting to be able to control my anxiety (an issue I still struggle with and will always have to). Or my brain truly made some barely remembered connection to them based on what it knew about my life as a protoss, which I believe I've had since birth, or both.
I became so interested in their desert world, their culture and history, and I even began to learn the language. I recently went back to trying to learn the vulcan language and figured out that I still remember some of the basic grammar and vocabulary rules after nearly an entire decade. I don't know it fluently but I can pick apart grammar and verbs in a sentence, to the point that I consider it my third language. A few years later, I'd go on and try to learn the protoss language (called khalani), which there are only a few translated phrases on. To make life harder for me, there is apparently a real life khalani dictionary that the franchise uses, but it's not public. So I have to use my own imagination. My mind seems to be pulling on what it remembers about learning about vulcan and tries to construct it onto the protoss language, because it sees a similarity between the two. Now, there isn't anything inherently spiritual about that, it's just interesting that it's where my mind goes to, instead of pulling from the other languages I know much better. Although there are some similarities in word structure and sounds between the two. It could be that my brain also sees similarities and has an easier time remembering both of the languages that way.
I believe the passerby will look like phrases from the same language, but the first one is in khalani, the second is in vulcan:
"Ki nala atum...na adan saiosh."
"Ki'sarlal nash-veh gla-tor du."
Despite how human vulcans look, they are similar to protoss in a few ways. Mostly, we are both telepathic and have a focus on the mind and on mental abilities a little bit more than humans generally do. Control, practice, discipline and a focus on martial art skills are all things that they have in common and resonates with me. Vulcans culturally have a great respect for privacy and although this isn't an entire species specific trait for the protoss, it is also important in nerazim culture, a certain protoss group that I will talk about later. We also ironically, have a very similar history of bloodshed. I still recall that my first thought when I went through protoss history in the fandom wiki was something like: "Huh. So they went through that vulcan thing too", even though the outcome was the EXACT opposite of what the protoss had done back then.
To summarize to those who don't know, vulcans had a very violent period in their history and were close to destroying themselves. But then along came Surak, who managed to bring peace and discipline by teaching the importance of logic and the control of your emotions. Contrary to what most people believe about vulcans, they experience emotions at a greater level than humans do, though they are forced to suppress them through practice and discipline. Vulcans aren't born logical and emotionless, it's learned through practice. Although I personally don't think suppressing them is a healthy long term solution. Now protoss on the other claw, also went through a violent period of history where they went back to the stone age from all of the wars they fought with each other. And then came Khas, who fills the same literary role as Surak. Only instead of bringing logic, he brought a giant crystal that connected all of the protoss through an emotional link. There, hiding your emotions and thoughts were very difficult. A group of protoss, the nerazim, severed themself from this link for the sake of privacy and individuality, which is a group I'm a part of. But to put another wedge into things, there were also a group of vulcans who despised Surak's philosophy and left. Those became the romulans, which I don't really have any strong feelings towards. I think this is because romulans took on an adversarial role throughout the story lines but the nerazim weren't presented as evil, just as wanting different things.
Still, there is more. Nerazim settled on a desert planet called Shakuras, and Vulcan is a desert planet itself. I always felt a longing to their desert planet and their architecture but I ignored it at the time. But when I look back on it now, I can see and make guesses on why I was drawn to it in the first place. Despite knowing about Vulcan before I truly remembered the planet Shakuras in this life, I attribute my connection to deserts and sandstone formations to half remembered memories from Aiur, our ancestral planet. Funny enough, although Aiur was known as a humid jungle planet, it also had different ecosystems. One ecosystem I have vivid memories of is this dry, arid region. It was around this time that I got into Star Trek that I began getting extremely vivid dreams about seeing sandstone and deserts in person, despite never being in a place that contains them.
![สรุปเรื่องราวของ Protoss [En Taro Adun/Adun Toridas!] | Dui-sama](https://duisama.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/pro00.jpg)
(I can't be the only one who sees these similarities)
As a note, my memories are often pretty reliable, and go to great lengths to make sure I remember everything correctly and am not applying what I know now to the past. But I'm sure that despite that, there might be additional details that I'm missing such as more of my specific thoughts when I was learning about vulcans. As I mentioned on my tumblr once, I picked the name 'Sya' while learning the vulcan language on a forum. And I ironically decided to stick with the name 'Sya' when I started out in the therian community in 2017, completely oblivious about my protoss weirdness at that time.
To explain what I'm talking about, I will need to start at the beginning. About ten years ago, before I knew anything about alterhumanity but knowing already that I specifically felt nonhuman or animal, I remember getting interested in Star Trek. And although I vaguely knew what protoss were at the time, I didn't look too deeply into them even though my thoughts at the time towards them were "I find them interesting. I should read more about them in the future", and you can guess what happened once I looked into them more closely and looked past their in game appearances. Although I was always interested in science fiction, I feel that getting into Star Trek made me look into the genre more closely in general. And as I was watching the movies and series, I began to develop an attachment to vulcans. So when I first looked into Starcraft, the knowledge I pulled from to understand the historical events and telepathic abilities were from the vulcans.
In hindsight, they do have some similarities with protoss, even though you'd think of klingons first, since we were considered a warrior race as well. After all, one of the quotes from a protoss unit in Starcraft 1 based on a klingon warcry: it's a good day to die. But I can't clearly make sense of why I developed this connection with vulcans, and near zero with klingons, past the honor components. Maybe I latched to them because of my anxiety at the time, and wanting to be able to control my anxiety (an issue I still struggle with and will always have to). Or my brain truly made some barely remembered connection to them based on what it knew about my life as a protoss, which I believe I've had since birth, or both.
I became so interested in their desert world, their culture and history, and I even began to learn the language. I recently went back to trying to learn the vulcan language and figured out that I still remember some of the basic grammar and vocabulary rules after nearly an entire decade. I don't know it fluently but I can pick apart grammar and verbs in a sentence, to the point that I consider it my third language. A few years later, I'd go on and try to learn the protoss language (called khalani), which there are only a few translated phrases on. To make life harder for me, there is apparently a real life khalani dictionary that the franchise uses, but it's not public. So I have to use my own imagination. My mind seems to be pulling on what it remembers about learning about vulcan and tries to construct it onto the protoss language, because it sees a similarity between the two. Now, there isn't anything inherently spiritual about that, it's just interesting that it's where my mind goes to, instead of pulling from the other languages I know much better. Although there are some similarities in word structure and sounds between the two. It could be that my brain also sees similarities and has an easier time remembering both of the languages that way.
I believe the passerby will look like phrases from the same language, but the first one is in khalani, the second is in vulcan:
"Ki nala atum...na adan saiosh."
"Ki'sarlal nash-veh gla-tor du."
Despite how human vulcans look, they are similar to protoss in a few ways. Mostly, we are both telepathic and have a focus on the mind and on mental abilities a little bit more than humans generally do. Control, practice, discipline and a focus on martial art skills are all things that they have in common and resonates with me. Vulcans culturally have a great respect for privacy and although this isn't an entire species specific trait for the protoss, it is also important in nerazim culture, a certain protoss group that I will talk about later. We also ironically, have a very similar history of bloodshed. I still recall that my first thought when I went through protoss history in the fandom wiki was something like: "Huh. So they went through that vulcan thing too", even though the outcome was the EXACT opposite of what the protoss had done back then.
To summarize to those who don't know, vulcans had a very violent period in their history and were close to destroying themselves. But then along came Surak, who managed to bring peace and discipline by teaching the importance of logic and the control of your emotions. Contrary to what most people believe about vulcans, they experience emotions at a greater level than humans do, though they are forced to suppress them through practice and discipline. Vulcans aren't born logical and emotionless, it's learned through practice. Although I personally don't think suppressing them is a healthy long term solution. Now protoss on the other claw, also went through a violent period of history where they went back to the stone age from all of the wars they fought with each other. And then came Khas, who fills the same literary role as Surak. Only instead of bringing logic, he brought a giant crystal that connected all of the protoss through an emotional link. There, hiding your emotions and thoughts were very difficult. A group of protoss, the nerazim, severed themself from this link for the sake of privacy and individuality, which is a group I'm a part of. But to put another wedge into things, there were also a group of vulcans who despised Surak's philosophy and left. Those became the romulans, which I don't really have any strong feelings towards. I think this is because romulans took on an adversarial role throughout the story lines but the nerazim weren't presented as evil, just as wanting different things.
Still, there is more. Nerazim settled on a desert planet called Shakuras, and Vulcan is a desert planet itself. I always felt a longing to their desert planet and their architecture but I ignored it at the time. But when I look back on it now, I can see and make guesses on why I was drawn to it in the first place. Despite knowing about Vulcan before I truly remembered the planet Shakuras in this life, I attribute my connection to deserts and sandstone formations to half remembered memories from Aiur, our ancestral planet. Funny enough, although Aiur was known as a humid jungle planet, it also had different ecosystems. One ecosystem I have vivid memories of is this dry, arid region. It was around this time that I got into Star Trek that I began getting extremely vivid dreams about seeing sandstone and deserts in person, despite never being in a place that contains them.
(I can't be the only one who sees these similarities)
As a note, my memories are often pretty reliable, and go to great lengths to make sure I remember everything correctly and am not applying what I know now to the past. But I'm sure that despite that, there might be additional details that I'm missing such as more of my specific thoughts when I was learning about vulcans. As I mentioned on my tumblr once, I picked the name 'Sya' while learning the vulcan language on a forum. And I ironically decided to stick with the name 'Sya' when I started out in the therian community in 2017, completely oblivious about my protoss weirdness at that time.
