The ice planet of Braxis has a well-deserved reputation as being one of the Koprulu sector’s most inhospitable worlds. More than sixty percent of this rocky planet is covered in ice sheets measuring in some areas over two miles thick. Millennia of glacial erosion have formed a winding network of steep, jagged mountain ranges and valleys across the planet’s surface. Around these areas, violent gusts of gravity-induced katabatic winds can reach speeds of up to 150 miles per hour.
Despite these austere conditions, Braxis has a long history of settlement that began during the golden age of protoss expansion. As the protoss ventured into the far reaches of the Koprulu sector, they claimed this frigid planet as one of their first colonies and named it Khyrador. Because it was regarded as a symbol of the species’ spacefaring achievements, Khyrador became home to the Uraj crystal, a sacred artifact gifted to the protoss by the xel’naga. The Uraj, however, was later abandoned when a series of violent psionic storms rocked the planet and drove away its protoss settlers. Afterward, Khyrador remained deserted for centuries until it fell into the hands of the Terran Confederacy and was renamed Braxis. When the Confederacy collapsed, the Terran Dominion then seized control of the ice world.
Shortly thereafter, the planet became a focal point of the Brood War. Viewing Braxis as a vital step toward dominating the Koprulu sector, the United Earth Directorate surrounded the planet with an orbital blockade. At the time, the Dominion military on Braxis was already fending off an attack by a protoss army assisted by the Queen of Blades. Intent on retrieving the Uraj crystal, these unlikely allies managed to overcome the Dominion’s defenses and seize the ancient artifact. After it slipped through the UED’s blockade unscathed, the Uraj was eventually transported to Shakuras and used with another xel’naga crystal, the Khalis, to purge the dark templar homeworld of a zerg invasion.
Undeterred by the failure of its blockade, the UED quickly overwhelmed the planet’s Dominion survivors and transformed Braxis into a heavily fortified stronghold. Under the command of Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov, Braxis became the site of the reconstructed psi disrupter, a powerful device capable of disrupting psionic communications among the Swarm. Aware that the psi disrupter could secure the UED’s conquest of the sector, Jim Raynor, the revered protoss warrior Fenix, Arcturus Mengsk, and the Queen of Blades put aside their differences, joined forces, and attacked Stukov’s troops. Together these former rivals destroyed the psi disrupter, a critical event in the Brood War that precipitated the UED’s fall.
Following the Brood War, a joint force of renegade zerg and terrans briefly took control of Braxis before the planet was incinerated from orbit by the protoss. In addition to extinguishing all life on the planet, the protoss purification melted Braxis’s vast ice sheets and obliterated the ancient protoss structures and terran installations clustered on the planet’s surface. With the incineration, Braxis’s tenure as a hotbed of brutal fighting came to an end.
In the years since the purification, Braxis has frozen over and returned to its original state. Most recently, the Terran Dominion has returned to the planet and rebuilt its fortifications. Despite the fact that there was no opposition on the lifeless world, the Universal News Network reported that the retaking of Braxis was a “valiant” military action. Due to the planet’s violent history and severe environment, serving on Braxis is seen as an ill omen among Dominion military ranks. As one marine veteran of the Brood War once said, “Compared to Braxis, Char is paradise.”
