Battle.net

Split into separate teams throughout the sprawling facility, these ambitious new scientists went to work on an array of assignments. Stetmann was paired with the brilliant Isabella Yorin, and they were tasked with creating a portable force field of ionized gas akin to protoss plasma shields, albeit without the aid of a psi-field generator. Believing that this device would have military and civilian applications, Stetmann devoted himself to the project and created a working prototype after only a few months.

As time wore on, Stetmann discovered that his task was merely one part of a much larger project that was purely military in purpose and grossly unethical in practice. After he was granted higher security clearance due to his success with the force field, Stetmann watched as test subjects were forced to endure grueling surgeries. During these grim operations, bones and organs were replaced with artificial components, all in the hopes of creating elite, cybernetically enhanced military units. In the experiment's later stages, Stetmann's force field prototype would be surgically attached to these individuals, allowing them to generate their own protective shields. Most disturbing of all, the patients were inmates unwillingly harvested from New Folsom Prison.

While Stetmann viewed these activities as morally reprehensible, Yorin and the facility's other scientists feared that his criticism would jeopardize their careers by stirring up trouble. Perplexed by this hostility, Stetmann concluded that the compartmentalization of the facility had dulled his colleagues' moral fortitude and idealism. His peers had come to see their individual work as completely benign, ignoring the nefarious nature of the experiment as a whole.

Unable to tolerate the status quo in good conscience, Stetmann designed a sophisticated computer virus to sabotage the Tyrador facility. In a more personal act of defiance, on the eve of the attack he stole the force field prototype and replaced it with an inoperable facsimile. When he executed his virus, the facility descended into chaos: all data was purged from the central computer; test subject holding cells were opened; and security turrets attacked guards on sight.

Stetmann made his escape amid the confusion, but he was intercepted by Yorin. His former research partner had commandeered the controls at a blast door leading out of the facility, and she refused to let Stetmann pass. Although angered by Yorin's loyalty to the Dominion, he couldn't bring himself to harm her. Instead, he overloaded the force field prototype, unleashing a burst of electromagnetic energy that not only distracted Yorin, but also fried nearby electronics and disabled the locks on the blast door separating him from freedom.

After smuggling himself off planet aboard a merchant ship, Stetmann spent the next few months in Deadman's Port, a hive of criminal activity where he could avoid the Dominion's grasp. There he made do by selling tech upgrades until a number of unscrupulous criminal groups took note of his talents. Eventually, he was harried by requests to plant tracking devices inside the brains of debtors and other individuals considered the property of local crime lords.

When Stetmann refused, he became a hunted man. Forced to live off of refuse around the city's starport, he all but lost his will to live. Despite his best efforts to hide, he was discovered by one of the criminal organizations he had spurned. In plain view of everyone at the starport, armed thugs prepared to execute the young scientist and send a bloody message to other rebellious inhabitants of the city.

Among the crowd of onlookers, two men -- Matt Horner and Jim Raynor -- wouldn't stand for the unjust killing. Along with the other members of Raynor's Raiders, they had come to Deadman's Port aboard the Hyperion battlecruiser in order to resupply the ship. After rescuing Stetmann and hearing of his escape from Tyrador, Raynor invited the scientist to join his rebel group as chief science advisor.

Stetmann accepted the offer, and he has since become an indispensible and well-liked member of Raynor's Raiders, despite the occasional confrontation with his crewmates due to his social quirks. Through the rebel group he has found a means to continue his fight against the morally unjust Dominion. Above all else, his time aboard the Hyperion has reignited something that he'd thought was lost on Tyrador: the belief that he can make a difference in the Koprulu sector.