United Earth Directorate
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The United Earth Directorate (UED) is the fictional government of Earth in the StarCraft universe.
The United Earth Directorate is loosely inspired by the Terran Federation of Starship Troopers, as is most clearly seen in the UED victory movie in the StarCraft: Brood War game.
History
The events of the original StarCraft game take place in the Koprulu Sector of space, a.k.a. "The Terran Sector".
Following a period of social anarchy and the "fall of western civilization", a new world-government is re-asserted over Earth: the United Powers League (UPL). A police-state, it encompasses all but a few politically unstable South American countries. Rounding up "undesirables" —cyborgs, geneticly "impure" individuals, hackers, policital dissidents— Project Purification was instituted: a mass genocide campaign in which millions died. However, the UPL wanted to explore deep space. It was very risky, but they had no problem with sending political prisoner "lab rats" to their deaths. Thousands were loaded into four sleeper-ships and loaded for a 1 year journey into deep space. However, the guidance computer failed, and they traveled at faster than light speeds for 30 years. When they awoke, the survivors had no idea where they were or where Earth was: all hope of making contact again was lost. One of the spaceships crashed killing all aboard, one founded the colony of Umoja, another founded the colony of Moria, and the last built the main Terran colony is the sector: Tarsonis. The Terrans of Tarsonis eventually re-built the stardrive and created an interstellar Terran Confederacy. There were roughly a dozen Terran colony planets in the sector by the end of the 25th century. However, war broke out with the Zerg invasion and subsequent clashes with the Protoss.
As was later revealed, the UPL had been observing the Terran breakaway colonies for some time. By this time, Earth had developed its own interstellar empire that was far larger than the combined colonies of the Koprulu Sector. Shocked by the appearance of two alien races in the Terran sector, the UPL reformed into the United Earth Directorate; now it encompassed all nations of Earth.
The UED took a more militaristic, pro-active stance with regard to the alien races, and dispatched a large Expeditionary Fleet under the command of Admiral DuGalle to the Koprulu Sector. He was given three main objectives:
- conquer all of the "rogue" Terran colonies
- take control of the Zerg Swarm by capturing the newborn Zerg Overmind with psychics and powerful drugs
- use the commandeered Zerg Swarm to conquer the Protoss
Initially, the UED was successful: most of the breakaway Terran colonies were conquered, and the fleet successfully took control of the second Overmind. However, the fleet was later defeated when Kerrigan rallied various remaining allies to her Zerg faction, and no UED ships returned to Earth.
Kerrigan, now commanding the entire Zerg Swarm with the 2nd Overmind dead, was left the dominant power of the Terran Sector. The Protoss were beaten off of their homeworld Aiur and retreated to Shakuras. The Terran Dominion, successor to the Confederacy, was broken.
The United Earth Directorate suffered a great loss with the defeat of the Expeditionary Fleet, but it is still the only other power that has sufficiant force to resist Kerrigan's Zerg, aided by the great distance between UED space and the Koprulu Sector.
