Eroldren continues his spotlight review over Blizzard’s Heart of the Swarm short story series.

“A fast and fun short story despite having our strange new Hydralisk development.“ – The Founding Fields

For starters doesn’t that striking hydralisk at the foreground eye-catching, eh? Scarred with the Terran Dominion insignia and painted with distinguishable colored markings on their heads bound to perk interest what’s happened to these iconic zerg creatures.

Dr. Loew wants to tame the Zerg to save Terran lives. All past efforts to subjugate the Swarm have yielded nothing short of catastrophe, which is why Dr. Loew is pursuing a slightly . . . different approach. But when the Dominion takes an interest in her research, Loew realizes that the Zerg may not be the only monsters she’s dealing with.

While digging around to figure out who was this newcomer, Matthew Maxwell, I found out he’s independently established himself as author unlike most of Blizzard’s short story writers. Most notably of his work is the online Strangeways: Murder Moon comic series involving cowboys and werewolves in a post-Civil War setting out in “a haunted frontier of the shadowy old west.”

Anyway, the overall majority of “The Teacher” keep me entertained throughout the short there was a small quirk that did raise my eyebrows in confusion in regards with our hydralisk specimens.

For the most part I saw that Maxwell was reaffirming those old hydralisk information and fleshing out their anatomy of the in minor ways, however, there was one thing had just came across too bizarre to grasp: leaping hydralisks?  I assumed this new development was to help expand the capabilities of hydralisk beyond their longtime portrayal as those slithering creatures as superior example in some light of what snakes are somewhat capable of doing. However, this new imagery of leaping hydras came across being so strange that I wasn’t sure if I was reading the words right even though it did indeed happened.

Aside from that one aspect the rest of this short story was great to watch unfold and follow Dr. Loew’s divided morality as a scientist and person. Looking back I should’ve also expected that twist after the many years of reading the majority of StarCraft tie-in fiction except I didn’t kept attentive to those seeded details as I was rather caught up with the main storyline surrounding Dr. Loew’s world. Although the minor World of Warcraft reference planted here was something instead I notice which stuck out.

Until next time, more lore and more zerg!

Overall Verdict: 8/10