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Updated 3/21/25
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have a fear of things resembling collectives or hiveminds, in any sort of way. Despite this, I have these faint feelings of the familiarity that the interconnectedness of the Khala brought to the protoss, the species specific psionic emotional link. It's a faint ancestral memory even though I was never actually part of it. The Khala allowed everyone to share their inner most thoughts and feelings, while keeping their own core sense of self, yet it still irks me. Although, it is possible to get lost in it at times.
This familiarity is inherent with being a protoss, to my disappointment. And this gives me many mixed feelings. To quickly summarize its history, the protoss were found by a highly advanced progenitor species, (the Xel'naga), and were genetically manipulated and given the Khala to bring about an end to a cycle. In the end, this resulted in those connected to the Khala to become possessed by an evil entity. I will talk about this later on in this essay. Because before we get to the end of the Khala, I have to discuss where the dark templar, or Nerazim as they've called themselves later on come into this, hi.
Small cw for mentions of religious trauma and possession.
The dark templar learned a few Void powers by a Khala following protoss that wanted to help them, named Adun. The Void is both a place and a field of energy, considered to be the Khala's opposite. And in the centuries that followed their exile, they tried to learn more about the Void. In the time of writing this, I don't know how Adun learned about the Void.
(This is all a quick summary of these events. If anyone wants to know more of the lore details and the specifics, I will direct you to these wiki pages: Khala, Nerazim)
I wasn't alive to witness these events myself. But a grandparent or a great grandparent of mine were likely witnesses to the expulsion, unless they exiled themselves at some future date. I'm lacking any sort of semantic memory on these details. What I know with near 99.9% certainty is that I was born into the Nerazim culture, already excluded and exiled from the major protoss faction that followed the Khala. I was around to see our people eventually reunite at the end.
As I mentioned in the first two paragraphs, there is something scarily familiar with the way it's described in the lore; This oneness, unity, and tranquility where there are no lies, and everyone knows you intimately. A place where everyone understands you and is like you. Even these words on the page don't give justice to the feeling I'm describing and experiencing, even though I don't think I have directly experienced it. At the same time, I feel ashamed for feeling any sort of connection or resonance with this. It feels taboo to me. Perhaps, it's the same way that the Khalai would feel about the Void. The Khala philosophy is an antithesis to our culture and our experiences at some angles, despite the nuance the actual energies provide.
If I was in the olden days of Aiur, I'd be called a heretic for saying that: At its very core, the Khala, created by the Xel'naga whom come from the Void themselves, is a byproduct of the Void. And as I have mentioned earlier, the Void has been thought of as the Khala's opposite. But like many things, it's actually more nuanced than that. The Void and Khala could be used together, as rare as it was. Paradoxically, I believe it would be correct to say that the Khala are just gaps inside the Void. The Void in my understanding, is a place of chaos and infinity, not emptiness or nothingness.
Consciously, these feelings that the Khala bring scares me. I don't want to be like everyone else. I don't want to be thought of as little more than a clone who believes everything told to them, without free thought. I don't want to be known by complete and total strangers. I really don't want it to feel familiar. My instinct is to hide my thoughts and emotions until I feel the time is right. I understand what this unity is describing and experiencing on a deep level. And despite the warmth it can bring, it's not for me. Much like the way marriage isn't for me. If someone needs to get to know me, it has to take time. Trust must be earned. In a way, I view the Khala as a crutch. It was used in place of truly getting to know someone by putting in the effort to learn about them in the first place. Without the Khala, the ones who used it and relied on it so much were truly lost.
Growing up, the ways of Nerazim culture were always in the back of my mind, even before I knew about them. I sometimes wondered why spooky and dark things were considered evil. I always felt like an outcast, and a heretic, even before I knew I was queer. I understand that not having friends growing up would have resulted in me feeling like an outcast. But why would I feel like an unholy heretic? Nothing would have caused me to feel this way. I had zero religious trauma growing up, yet I would always have the impression of being impure or unholy despite not being any of those things. I shouldn't have these experiences in the first place because nothing in my childhood would have caused these feelings of impurity and unholiness to emerge. When I first looked at the Nerazim wiki page, I felt like I was witnessing an exact snapshot of my culture. Where for the first time, I was really able to understand what it meant to belong to a culture and a group of people. Everything on the page felt like it was describing me, which is a pretty strange feeling to get. I completely believe that there is no other culture out there that fits me better than Nerazim culture. It even surpasses the connection I have to the specific human culture this body was raised in. I still identify with the human culture I was raised in, but it's to a lesser extent.
And although I do have diagnosed OCD, these feelings of unholiness aren't intrusive or obsessive thoughts. As someone who does still suffer from intrusive thoughts from time to time, these are not it.These feelings of unholiness feel more like the result of low self esteemed brought on by other people and then internalized. The situation is that I believe that the ones that caused me to internalize these feelings aren't from here or human. I particularly have always felt like a dark, misunderstood being.
One way these feelings came out was through writing when I was a teenager. My oc from another source at the time wanted to feel holy, after feeling unholy and evil because of her undead condition. I think this sadly stemmed from some unresolved feelings of inadequacy back then. In the present day, I have different characters that are disconnected from the holiness they were once part of because of things out of their control. The only differences now are that my characters embrace this disconnection, and that I am consciously aware where these feelings are coming from. It's always been a trope that greatly interested me.
(Small off topic babble: During my teenager years, I really vibed with the undead Forsaken from Warcraft. But as I got older, the Krokul and Nobundo's story from Warcraft took that place. Yet the krokul have always sparked my heart in a very certain way. It's to the point that I consider the Krokul a paratype because of their cultural similarities to the Nerazim. When I saw the artwork where Nobundo saw his old self in the water's reflection, 12 year old me really felt that. It was a whole decade before learning about alterhumanity.)
Another important memory from my teenage years was sitting with my back against a fence during lunch break in the school courtyard. With my earphones in, I remember listening to 'Master of the Moon' by Dio, a song that I'm obligated to give a shout out to. The lyrics of the songs always stood out to me, and gave me some sort of catharsis and feeling of being understood in a way that I never had really put into words before. It makes sense, given the context of this essay. Whenever I hear the song, I'm transported back to this time back in 2012. And looking back at the lyrics now, I can see that my feelings about these themes haven't changed at all. It makes me wish that I can thank Dio personally for this song because of its impact on me.
These particular lines of the song always stood out to me:"Turn around and when you face the sun. We can make you be like everyone you know...We just need to shed some light upon your darkness. We need your mind....Turn away and never face the sun. You'll never make me be like you."
This feeling isn't even directed at the religion I was raised in. I'm not afraid of human priests or churches when I see them. I've sat across a table from a priest and felt zero fear and anxiety, even though I doubt they'd actually accept me and all of my identities if they knew. Instead, I believe that it's the result of the religious exotrauma caused by the Conclave and Judicator caste. The anxiety that this gives me is a very specific feeling that is sparked only from in-source situations. Even after we reunited with the other factions, they didn't all necessarily like me. Because I represented the Outsider to them. Even now, unquestionable authority makes me uncomfortable. It feels like it's in my very nature to rebel against unjust authority, and it surprises me when this isn't the norm in typical western culture.This is a pattern that seems to follow me into this life, sadly. Although I believe that I got along with the more scholarly ones because of our shared interest in history and archaeology.
As I have sadly mentioned in the start of this essay, the Khala's ultimate goal was to be used as a means to possess the protoss and to bring an end to a universal cycle. I think I've come into this life and unconsciously associated this sort of emotional link to possession and puppetry before even knowing it. I've already had highly specific phobias before certain parts of the lore were even made, as I mentioned in detail within the last four paragraphs of this essay. Despite my upbringings as a Nerazim, I have worked and trained with Khala followers, ones that I have so much respect for. Since the Nerazim had no Khala, they were responsible for freeing those possessed by the Khala (not fun). When they were freed from that possession, I mourned the loss with them, even if I have never directly experienced the Khala myself. I still understood and sympathized with them. And the way they lost it and the way they felt about it afterwards honestly just breaks my heart, and I'm not much for sentimentality and expressing emotions. There is more to my experiences than this, but there's a good amount I'm just not comfortable with talking about because of how much it hits me. But I will say that I've written a poem directly based on this.
I can't speak for other Nerazim's perspectives and feelings of this matter, since I'm the only one here. I am sure that some would hypothetically have vastly different experiences from me.
