How have I been handling the SGC command structure so far?
Specifically Hammond, Makepeace, Ellis etc..I'm not doing a bad job there am I?
Specifically Hammond, Makepeace, Ellis etc..I'm not doing a bad job there am I?
Stargate Through the Looking Glass and into Heaven.
- Thread starter The Immortal Watch Dog
- Start date
it's been pretty good from my POV. Hammond feels solid as Texas Bedrock, which is appropriate. The rest are on point as well.
This fic is ending up large enough where characterization worries me more than plots.
You've done a great job so far. The only issues I've had with them is the changes you made from canon, but we addressed that already.
There's a fine line between doing something different for the sake of story telling and just throwing nonsense at a proverbial wall and hoping it sticks.
I've tried veerryy hard to keep myself on the good side of that line.
Mostly because of you guys and your feedback. I'd probably wander otherwise.
I think Elis could do with more. But as we get closer to the end of the season cannoniclly it will happen naturally. Makepeace and Hammond are really good. I really enjoyed Makepeace's nuance, a pragmatic spec ops operator that has allegiances to other parties but ultimately to him self and his own
You mean more personality? Or more exposure? I do plan to give him an episode or two to shine though!
Makepeace has been a lot more fun to write than I thought he'd be.
Glad you enjoyed him, I'm still figuring out where to go with that wing of the NID.
Makepeace went above and beyond to save Jack and SG1 in Canon on several occasions. The most memorable being the assault on Hathors base in Season 3. Then we find out the guy was an NID plant. At the time, the NID simply had a policy disagreement with the SGC concerning alien technology. NID took a more cynical approach and stole from allies and enemies alike. Makepeace it turned out was genuinely frustrated at the lack of progress. He was also genuinely terrified of the Goa'uld as he had a family to think about. And when he was outed, Jack didn't exactly go to bat for him either unless it was to get something he wanted.
Honestly? Given how much Makepeace had been there for him that felt a bit like a personal betrayal on Jacks part. Even though, yes, I can acknowledge that Makepeace's actions also constituted a betrayal as well.
But Makepeace always had the greatest respect for Jack and Hammond even if he didn't agree with the policy of the SGC playing Nice with everyone. It's not too hard to see the NID playing on the fear of his wife and children suffering a horrible fate under Goa'uld occupation. Though the show never went into what actually flipped him, but you can go to some dark places if you give it some thought.
In the end, it turned out for the best, but Robert Makepeace became a victim of circumstances who I think got executed for what he did despite numerous acts of heroism. The guy is a case study of how to flip a good man to do terrible things to protect his world, country and family.
He had a family? Damn...To be honest I always thought the NID's biggest mistake was stealing from allies, had they kept their raping and pillaging to Goa'uld worlds even if they stamped on innocents I imagine the SGC would have turned a blind eye. Until organized crime started using guns based off staff weapons any way...with how corrupt the NID was in canon it was likely only a matter of time and that would have harmed the SGC in the long run I think.
My NID won't be like that, the treachery comes more from the old service intel agencies and the Federal ones than the NID. Though it has problems of its own I'll go into.
Namely the double edged sword that legacy can be when it comes to public service.
I'll be honest with you, doing an SG-1 rewatch with the older of the kids at home during the pandemic had me laughing because Jack is anything but heroic. He's also viciously cynical and self aware and paradoxically self righteous at the same time which makes him a fun character but the eldest in one ep was like "Jack hates the Tok'Ra so much because he's got more in common with them than he does the rest of the USAF." And it hit me that she wasn't entirely wrong. A lot of the bigotry he had to the snakes was to where he didn't really even consider them living beings. Which speaks to both the awful shit he experienced when dealing with them and the things he lost...But also because he probably saw bits of himself in them.
Jack screwing over a good if scared man without a second thought was one of the darker moment's of the dude's character arc in that season. When he tells Daniel "There's no way for me to ascend" he isn't wrong. Or rather wouldn't be if the Ascended clubhouse wasn't massively full of shit.
A lot of SG-1's O'Neill won't be present here..not completely, mostly because he's based more on the movie but also because unlike the show half his beef with the Goa'uld that would make several future plots of mine impossible simply aren't present courtesy of the way Horus treated SG-1 and how much he's endorsed them to make up for the fight.
I'm not sure where I'm going to go with my depiction of Makepeace, but I'll probably add the family man detail if I hadn't already. He's a mercenary through and through but a lot of his inner dialog is less "heh heh suckers" and more fondly shaking his head and muttering that. As in I think he's ultimately being won over by Jack and Hammond. The way I've written him, he'll probably always be a bit of a fixer and fencer, making sure to get his no matter where the wind blows. But I don't know if I want to do him as dirty as he was done in the show.
Maybourne though..
He was! I honestly wish he got more screen time, because he seemed to be a lot more balanced than Jack was in a lot of ways.
Damn, I really need to rewatch season 3 for how that went down.
They dropped it as an off handed comment about a wife and kids. I'm fairly certain it was him and not someone else.
I'd actually like to see the NID become heroes. It would be such an inversion of what they were in canon no one would see it coming.
I will disagree with you on this. Jack is certainly heroic and did the sacrifice play more than once. Its just that, he's also human and very relatable. I love Samantha Carter. Amanda tapping could have made Carter an annoying Feminist trope. Instead she slapped on the charm...then more charm, then added competence, with a side helping of charm for good measure. I love Carter, but she's not exactly relatable as a person. Sure we got insights into her life, but she always felt kind of above that. Same goes for Daniel too.
But Jack O'Neill? He's the everyday man turned hero. Broken, deeply cynical, sarcastic and witty, charming, yet...not giving up. He eventually mends and becomes the Hero, but that was a journey. But Season 1 through 3 were his low points. He really doesn't turn it around until season 4...kinda regresses a bit after Daniel dies in 5 and only starts rebounding in 6 and into 7.
Kinda makes what was done to him dirtier. Damn unfortunate...Like I said though. I think he'll get a different story arc here.
Well, the director of the NID-who inherited his position. Is a boyhood friend of Jack, his wife whose the deputy director is Jack's former protege and a champion of Rodney McKay.
The NID here is also different in its set up...And history here as I've alluded to before. When the reveal comes, I hope you guys enjoy it though!
Well I would call him a hero, very much a hero. Not necessarily heroic in a romantic sense, which Jack himself is all too happy to admit too. He was an awesome character because of how ruthless and cloak and daggerish he was but could still stand up and deliver.
Teal'c and Daniel were more the classic heroes.
Jack was a noble Rogue and it's why I enjoyed Anderson's portrayal so much.
The fury against Jonas Quinn was fun though.
Speaking of..he'll show up eventually. But I'm still trying to figure out what I wanna do with him,
The blood of the Titan
While SG-2 faces a political conundrum whose implications may be far reaching, another Goa'uld Dynasty begins to prepare to address the madness of Apophis and a bit more of snake Geopolitics gets revealed.
Also a while back @Spartan303 wanted to know more about the ecology of the Galaxy, you get that here.
…………
Helios System home to the Crown world of Apollo’s domain – Month of Tartarus (September 29th by Tau’Ri reckoning.)
He hadn’t been back to Helios since Great Grandfather launched his insane, ill-fated rebellion. -And Father insists that I come via ship- So be it, he thought. Opting to take one of his many pleasure barges rather than his personal Hat’ak battlegroup. After all, had Cygnus, Lord of the border worlds and Captain in the fleet not been on a noble progress surveying the extent of the new growth of the Imperial religion outside their domains and the slow crawl method of colonization that Grandfather mighty Lord Zeus preferred to simple vassalage through economics. Though if he was being honest with himself, Cygnus was using the progress to become drunk and to have sex with whatever he could. There were no challenges left to the Imperium anymore and all of the frontiers had been tamed long before he was born.
He had missed his father though.
Apollo had always loved his sons dearly and Cygnus had been the closest to his father for the longest time. With only his displeasure at the seeming reluctance his father had at making war against Kronos causing any distance between them. Distance that was mended quickly enough at least over the last century. Quick he supposed, for immortals. “Let it not be said that the House of Aether isn’t close.” He muttered to himself, one had to be. To tame the galactic wilderness that had been the domains his grandfather and great uncles and great grandfather had carved out for themselves. Under constant siege from Ori drone ships, with death worlds filled with genetically engineered monsters and Alteran and Fyryn planetary engineering projects run amok. More Unas had been devoured or killed in the jungles of his personal capitol Kretes in the taming than often died in the wars against the elder races. Or so the history books and what smatterings of images his genetic “memories” allowed him to access. A bitter laugh escaped his throat at the thought of genetic memories, and he once again wondered just how poorly his species would have turned out had the ancient Queens of the rebellion simply allowed the Ori’s profane violations to exist unmitigated. Would he have been born with a personality utterly overwhelmed by the personalities of all those who came before him? As opposed to merely being able to glimpse shadows of memories when one was near certain places. Or possess solely the skillsets acquired by his parents and their progenitors? Unable to acquire more except by theft? Bereft of invention or innovation because he was more of a sentient vessel for data than a living, thinking creature with a soul and the ability to choose for himself? The genetic memory of all Goa’uld species was a tricky subject, both in how jealously the secret was guarded and how it shaped their development and the development of many of their subjects (Who had more docile versions of the same ability gently eased into their genomes over the millennia.) Brilliant Thoth believed it was an artifact of their primordial homeworld, that in order to better survive the myriad of predators and to better take hosts queen would ensure certain actions would be taken instinctively and certain emotional baggage was carried on for better self-defense.
It was that and the regenerative and restorative abilities even primitive Goa’uld barely worth sharing a name with the mighty Peers that lured the Ori to their world. And the vile Ori did so much over the thousand-year period they…His thoughts drifted, even the mercies of his foremothers could not fully banish the inherited sense of utter revulsion he felt when he remembered that which he learned as a youth. It did benefit their kind though, Prim’tah learned at a much faster pace than the offspring of most species, as a matured Peer Cygnus continued to have an easier time learning subjects that his father and mother and grandparents had mastered, even if he lacked the exact and vivid details of their past the skills were partially transferable in that his kind learned as much from inference and anticipation than by repetition and self-discipline. This was one of the many reasons the Goa’uld aristocrat disliked staying in safety, it was easier to learn all that been learned by others.
So, like his father before him, Cygnus had resolved to challenge himself by entering areas no one before him had. The first time he truly struggled with a subject (In his case textile work.) it had been one of the most exhilarating experiences in his life. Tenerus and Melia his half siblings by Nanshe had taken up play acting in the holodramas which were so beloved across the Imperium and beyond, produced by the entertainment sectors of the guild of Scribes. They had struggled for centuries working in low budget nonsense before the skills to reach the top of their hobby craft’s profession and they were still not quite at the pinnacle. But their reels had indeed improved, and praise came now often.
Cygnus was too old for holodramas, at nearly fifty thousand he had been born before Tau’Ri was discovered and had fought in the wars when straits were dire for the Imperium. He’d also been born just as the last of the wilderness of his family’s domains had been tamed, missing the adventure. Behind him footfalls brought him out of his introspection and his eyes glowed sky blue, shimmering in the dim light of the observation rooms.
Eurydice, like him had chosen the body of a Kelownan that didn’t have as much Tau’Ri descended Lotar in her background. Unlike Cygnus, Eury had chosen to create that host in a lab, a cultivated and enhanced flesh suit as was the custom of the day in this wretched era. She’d been named after an older sibling who fell in battle in the final days of Egeria’s rebellion, and she was a considerable upgrade from the original in that he absolutely detested her, whereas he adored Eury and was all too happy to have her along on his travels. At sixty, she was the youngest member of the House of Aether until very recently and had only occupied her host body for twenty of those years and prior to Amunet she had been the youngest peer in the Imperium. “You’re dressed rather…militantly.” Cygnus remarked, like him she had scarlet colored skin and the thick dark hair with its odd patterns that made it clear the strands of hair were more often than not feathers that connoted their hosts avian ancestry. She was adorned in the armor of his household. His personal standard, a winged mount descended from somewhat small odd toed herbivorous animals that the primitive Tau’Ri either hunted for food or at times attempted to domesticate and breed for manual labor.
They hadn’t caught on, he wondered if the Tau’Ri later attempted the efforts again. Which he strongly suspected, given a heavily modified variant of the species was becoming fashionable on less advanced worlds due to trade with Asgardian worlds. There were other beasts they had taken from Tau’Ri. Large and intelligent lizards, creatures with long noses both gigantic and small and the like but Cygnus had chosen the winged version because the Tau’Ri barbarians who served as the genetic foundation for much of the Lotars in his domains associated the creature’s defiance with his family’s willingness to fight for was theirs and they worshipped it as a spirit animal. And so, when he finally ennobled. Even if he would never be a system lord (Not that he wanted to be.), well he could still hold a measure of pride for his branch of the House of Aether.
“Militant? Well, I guess so elder brother.” She answered, with her usual stoic tone of voice. In many ways she was still a Prim’tah, but sometimes she sounded older than even he and wiser by a good margin. “If you’ve seen the more recent reports from our Ashrak…”
He sneered in disgust. “Apophis wanting to invade Tau’Ri and none of us can still guess why.” He sighed. “And with my half brother making so friendly with them.”
“I agree with Athena on that honestly.” She muttered. “They might be useful to solving this problem without all of us having to gang up on Apophis.” It was still mind boggling that the House of Tartarus would think after all the millennia of war, blood, sacrifice and loss that any of the system Lords would risk the destruction of all that they built in civil strife simply because the House of Ra had grown remote, distant and cruel with Amun-Ra at its head. -It might have been that Ra lost himself, but his children are fair rulers, Horus is the noblest living Goa’uld, and Hathor is still unimpeachable in her character- she thought as she walked from where her brother sat to the table where a immodest amount of food had been laid out. She walked towards an ornate carafe wherein a pale glowing green liquor sat shimmering in the dimmed light. Ambrosia was an invention only fully mature Goa’uld could drink and only a Peer in any quantities that were safe.
Distilled fruit of the Atalan a tree that grew in the most irradiated and poisonous of the worlds that the House of Aether had tamed, they were an invention of Prometheus, the legendary mentor of Ra and the uncle of her grandfather Zeus. He was searching for a way to gradually scrub radiation and chemical waste from dead or dying worlds, to begin the healing process a new and he’d succeeded. He also succeeded in making a radioactive wine that the energy absorbing metabolism of Goa’uld (especially Peers.) thrived on. It was also, one of the few things a Peer could consume that could intoxicate them and in sufficient quantities made their bodies radioactive enough that Lotar couldn’t be near a Peer without suffering radiation poisoning until their abilities neutralized and devoured the radiation. When she poured herself a glass Cygnus arched one of his painted eyebrows disapprovingly and she rolled her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to be a prude. “I’m celebrating, I haven’t seen our divine father in fifteen years and don’t give me that look, I’m young and let’s not lie to each other. Fifteen years is a long time in our family.”
It was true, the house of Aether was a lot closer than the other Goa’uld dynasties. But none had suffered the loss of so many of its finest children or brothers and sisters save perhaps the house of Ouranos and save for Set and his children and the heirless technologist Thoth it was largely extinct as Ra and Yu had founded their own clans and were not counted. Their losses had damn near driven them insane, it had driven Amun-Ra insane in her opinion. But he buried only one daughter, during the wars with the elder races Apollo had buried fifty, Zeus and Hera stopped counting at some point and that was to say nothing of the tens of millions of lobotomized Prim’tah her elder sisters and cousins and distant kin had given birth too that died with their Jaffa in battle and however many died every day when their Jaffa at long last succumbed to old age or accident (Once again causing Eurydice to thank Ra that she wasn’t born a queen, she couldn’t fathom doing that to her own offspring.).
Yet they weathered that storm, without losing their minds as the former radiant, majestic Emperor of all the cosmos had. They weathered the abuses, excesses and treason of their patriarch Kronos as well, though her siblings seldom spoke of it. It had been their proximity and perhaps remoteness as for the longest time their realm was far from the intrigues and stresses of Dakkara, and they had the task of converting ruined and impoverished and even dead worlds into a healthy, vibrant kingdom. That had been why her divine and noble Great Grandfather likely ordered Uncle Herakles to accept Horus offer and promise not to try and run for throne. She couldn’t imagine any of the System Lords taking what Apophis seemed to be planning with anything but scorn and fury. -To think he would spit on all that we’ve worked to achieve, our mandate to spite the elder races and our goal of being proper custodians of the lesser races solely because he feels cheated-. “Besides, I managed to sinch a trade deal with a minor noble of Lord Ba’al’s domain! And I did it using accounts from the bank of the House of Set.” She beamed causing her oh, so very much older brother to look at her in alarm. “The Lord High usurer will not appreciate that.” He grumbled.
Set was the Imperial Treasurer, who managed the finances for the whole of the Imperium and was arguably the second wealthiest sentient in all of the universe through the grand banking guilds that he and his descendants had founded whose reach spawned well beyond even the farthest of Imperium’s outpost. As it was with Ba’al who controlled an energy monopoly that even the mighty Asgardians had to depend on to a degree and whose trade fleets and planetary engineering guilds were famous the universe over. Everyone did business with the Banks of Set, that him being his own banking cartel king while running the treasury of their entire civilization was a monstrous conflict of interest no one remarked on.
After all, he’d done a fine job for the last hundred thousand years.
Except she wasn’t entirely sure that was completely correct.
Something rotten was coming out of Set’s domain and that Fleet Captain Drey’ac and a Peacekeeper Admiral allegedly engaged in ancient third generation Ha’tak class vessels made her as paranoid as it made her father and grandfather. “I suppose this is why we were made to come via vessel and not Stargate, maybe our divine father is worried Set’s agents would tamper with the gate network and have me vaporized or something.” She gave a shrug; it was no secret that Set and Ba’al hated each other immensely. That their chamberlains had supposedly swore an assassin’s vendetta against each other and that neither could fully act against the other without throwing the economy of the whole universe into an uproar and a probable recession. And she wondered, if the vaunted militaries of the House of Aether and Tartarus and their preeminence in the cosmic order of things had the same significance when a war between two glorified accountants could do more damage with a few keystrokes on a datasheet than they could with all their fleets combined.
“I believe he doesn’t want our arrival at Helios logged.” The movements of every Peer were documented by the Gate Network carefully maintained on Othalla and on Dakkara, the two and as far as anyone knew, the only two known cores for the whole of the universe. It was hard not too, given their nature as not entirely physical beings. Their energy signals were just too unusual, and they were too critical not to be noticed.
Which was what made the actions of Lord Apophis that precipitated the mess they were now in so absurd. How did he think he could go out and abduct women from across the stars to placate that vicious little idiot of a consort he had in Amunet. When their Ashraks broke that bit of gossip she damn near dismissed the lot of them because even that raving simpleton couldn’t be so foolish or possess so little dignity that he’d galivant around the stars like some mindless primitive from one of the lower breeds, taking what he wished as if he was entitled to anything he did not earn.
It demeaned their entire race. “Body thieves, parasites, dream stealers. Hope robbers, plunderers of lives and civilizations..Cosmic grave robbers they called our great grandparents.” She whispered bitterly. “And there are still some among the stars who would say that if they weren’t terrified of our powers. As if the first millennia of the rebellion when our forefathers had to use stolen and scavenged technology marked us forever.”
Cygnus quirked his head, it was oddly birdlike and evocative of what at least one of the ancestors of the Kelownan people that evolved on the Langaran continent possessed. “You’re a little too young to be up in arms over past slights little sister.”
She rolled her eyes. “Only because if half the rumors coming out of our Ashraks are true that violent imbecile has made them modern…I may spawn progeny one day brother, Aether above! Do you not feel the wound to your pride? You worked as hard as any other to make the vision of Amun-Ra reality and what that means.”
He laughed, stopping her in her tracks. “You’re out of sorts Eury, rushing wild to and fro, in that you’re like your grandfather. Like him, you would prefer to rage at anything even nothing so long as it helped alleviate the stress of a looming quandary. Or that you slighted Set in a way that could find you. Shall we say, Inconvenienced in your endeavors.”
The conversation ended as the blue and green gem of the realm of Apollo (Which had also served as the temporary Crown World of her aunt Athena as her own domain’s Capitol was repaired after suffering orbital bombardment during the Titan’s rebellion.), two billion sentient souls resided there, while another eight billion were scattered across the four other planets in this solar system that had been aggressively engineered and colonized. Helios, named after an uncle of her grandfather’s one of the earliest system Lords and a staunch supporter of Anubis and Amun-Ra. Helios was a deceptive little paradise, filled with estates where even the poorest Lotar had hectares to his name spanning the one super massive continent on the world and its myriad of islands. It was an agricultural hub by extensive planetary engineering and genetic modification of plants and soil replenishing bacteria. But in its pretty mountains and vast inland seas lurked a power.
Because her divine father, mighty Apollo. God of medicine, God of the implements of the hunt, God of fire and the charioteer that carried Ra’s Manjet through the stars pulling the radiant and eternal light behind him. Lived up to the moniker he shared with Horus as “The far striker.” -Let Ba’al keep his gravity lances and Yu his plant ships with their almost unbreakable energy shields. And the House of Ra with their unimaginably advanced technology…- She thought with a confidence only youth could bestow.
Just as she was certain this meeting was about Apophis and supporting Horus.
With an unfounded certitude only, youth could possess.
Also a while back @Spartan303 wanted to know more about the ecology of the Galaxy, you get that here.
…………
Helios System home to the Crown world of Apollo’s domain – Month of Tartarus (September 29th by Tau’Ri reckoning.)
He hadn’t been back to Helios since Great Grandfather launched his insane, ill-fated rebellion. -And Father insists that I come via ship- So be it, he thought. Opting to take one of his many pleasure barges rather than his personal Hat’ak battlegroup. After all, had Cygnus, Lord of the border worlds and Captain in the fleet not been on a noble progress surveying the extent of the new growth of the Imperial religion outside their domains and the slow crawl method of colonization that Grandfather mighty Lord Zeus preferred to simple vassalage through economics. Though if he was being honest with himself, Cygnus was using the progress to become drunk and to have sex with whatever he could. There were no challenges left to the Imperium anymore and all of the frontiers had been tamed long before he was born.
He had missed his father though.
Apollo had always loved his sons dearly and Cygnus had been the closest to his father for the longest time. With only his displeasure at the seeming reluctance his father had at making war against Kronos causing any distance between them. Distance that was mended quickly enough at least over the last century. Quick he supposed, for immortals. “Let it not be said that the House of Aether isn’t close.” He muttered to himself, one had to be. To tame the galactic wilderness that had been the domains his grandfather and great uncles and great grandfather had carved out for themselves. Under constant siege from Ori drone ships, with death worlds filled with genetically engineered monsters and Alteran and Fyryn planetary engineering projects run amok. More Unas had been devoured or killed in the jungles of his personal capitol Kretes in the taming than often died in the wars against the elder races. Or so the history books and what smatterings of images his genetic “memories” allowed him to access. A bitter laugh escaped his throat at the thought of genetic memories, and he once again wondered just how poorly his species would have turned out had the ancient Queens of the rebellion simply allowed the Ori’s profane violations to exist unmitigated. Would he have been born with a personality utterly overwhelmed by the personalities of all those who came before him? As opposed to merely being able to glimpse shadows of memories when one was near certain places. Or possess solely the skillsets acquired by his parents and their progenitors? Unable to acquire more except by theft? Bereft of invention or innovation because he was more of a sentient vessel for data than a living, thinking creature with a soul and the ability to choose for himself? The genetic memory of all Goa’uld species was a tricky subject, both in how jealously the secret was guarded and how it shaped their development and the development of many of their subjects (Who had more docile versions of the same ability gently eased into their genomes over the millennia.) Brilliant Thoth believed it was an artifact of their primordial homeworld, that in order to better survive the myriad of predators and to better take hosts queen would ensure certain actions would be taken instinctively and certain emotional baggage was carried on for better self-defense.
It was that and the regenerative and restorative abilities even primitive Goa’uld barely worth sharing a name with the mighty Peers that lured the Ori to their world. And the vile Ori did so much over the thousand-year period they…His thoughts drifted, even the mercies of his foremothers could not fully banish the inherited sense of utter revulsion he felt when he remembered that which he learned as a youth. It did benefit their kind though, Prim’tah learned at a much faster pace than the offspring of most species, as a matured Peer Cygnus continued to have an easier time learning subjects that his father and mother and grandparents had mastered, even if he lacked the exact and vivid details of their past the skills were partially transferable in that his kind learned as much from inference and anticipation than by repetition and self-discipline. This was one of the many reasons the Goa’uld aristocrat disliked staying in safety, it was easier to learn all that been learned by others.
So, like his father before him, Cygnus had resolved to challenge himself by entering areas no one before him had. The first time he truly struggled with a subject (In his case textile work.) it had been one of the most exhilarating experiences in his life. Tenerus and Melia his half siblings by Nanshe had taken up play acting in the holodramas which were so beloved across the Imperium and beyond, produced by the entertainment sectors of the guild of Scribes. They had struggled for centuries working in low budget nonsense before the skills to reach the top of their hobby craft’s profession and they were still not quite at the pinnacle. But their reels had indeed improved, and praise came now often.
Cygnus was too old for holodramas, at nearly fifty thousand he had been born before Tau’Ri was discovered and had fought in the wars when straits were dire for the Imperium. He’d also been born just as the last of the wilderness of his family’s domains had been tamed, missing the adventure. Behind him footfalls brought him out of his introspection and his eyes glowed sky blue, shimmering in the dim light of the observation rooms.
Eurydice, like him had chosen the body of a Kelownan that didn’t have as much Tau’Ri descended Lotar in her background. Unlike Cygnus, Eury had chosen to create that host in a lab, a cultivated and enhanced flesh suit as was the custom of the day in this wretched era. She’d been named after an older sibling who fell in battle in the final days of Egeria’s rebellion, and she was a considerable upgrade from the original in that he absolutely detested her, whereas he adored Eury and was all too happy to have her along on his travels. At sixty, she was the youngest member of the House of Aether until very recently and had only occupied her host body for twenty of those years and prior to Amunet she had been the youngest peer in the Imperium. “You’re dressed rather…militantly.” Cygnus remarked, like him she had scarlet colored skin and the thick dark hair with its odd patterns that made it clear the strands of hair were more often than not feathers that connoted their hosts avian ancestry. She was adorned in the armor of his household. His personal standard, a winged mount descended from somewhat small odd toed herbivorous animals that the primitive Tau’Ri either hunted for food or at times attempted to domesticate and breed for manual labor.
They hadn’t caught on, he wondered if the Tau’Ri later attempted the efforts again. Which he strongly suspected, given a heavily modified variant of the species was becoming fashionable on less advanced worlds due to trade with Asgardian worlds. There were other beasts they had taken from Tau’Ri. Large and intelligent lizards, creatures with long noses both gigantic and small and the like but Cygnus had chosen the winged version because the Tau’Ri barbarians who served as the genetic foundation for much of the Lotars in his domains associated the creature’s defiance with his family’s willingness to fight for was theirs and they worshipped it as a spirit animal. And so, when he finally ennobled. Even if he would never be a system lord (Not that he wanted to be.), well he could still hold a measure of pride for his branch of the House of Aether.
“Militant? Well, I guess so elder brother.” She answered, with her usual stoic tone of voice. In many ways she was still a Prim’tah, but sometimes she sounded older than even he and wiser by a good margin. “If you’ve seen the more recent reports from our Ashrak…”
He sneered in disgust. “Apophis wanting to invade Tau’Ri and none of us can still guess why.” He sighed. “And with my half brother making so friendly with them.”
“I agree with Athena on that honestly.” She muttered. “They might be useful to solving this problem without all of us having to gang up on Apophis.” It was still mind boggling that the House of Tartarus would think after all the millennia of war, blood, sacrifice and loss that any of the system Lords would risk the destruction of all that they built in civil strife simply because the House of Ra had grown remote, distant and cruel with Amun-Ra at its head. -It might have been that Ra lost himself, but his children are fair rulers, Horus is the noblest living Goa’uld, and Hathor is still unimpeachable in her character- she thought as she walked from where her brother sat to the table where a immodest amount of food had been laid out. She walked towards an ornate carafe wherein a pale glowing green liquor sat shimmering in the dimmed light. Ambrosia was an invention only fully mature Goa’uld could drink and only a Peer in any quantities that were safe.
Distilled fruit of the Atalan a tree that grew in the most irradiated and poisonous of the worlds that the House of Aether had tamed, they were an invention of Prometheus, the legendary mentor of Ra and the uncle of her grandfather Zeus. He was searching for a way to gradually scrub radiation and chemical waste from dead or dying worlds, to begin the healing process a new and he’d succeeded. He also succeeded in making a radioactive wine that the energy absorbing metabolism of Goa’uld (especially Peers.) thrived on. It was also, one of the few things a Peer could consume that could intoxicate them and in sufficient quantities made their bodies radioactive enough that Lotar couldn’t be near a Peer without suffering radiation poisoning until their abilities neutralized and devoured the radiation. When she poured herself a glass Cygnus arched one of his painted eyebrows disapprovingly and she rolled her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to be a prude. “I’m celebrating, I haven’t seen our divine father in fifteen years and don’t give me that look, I’m young and let’s not lie to each other. Fifteen years is a long time in our family.”
It was true, the house of Aether was a lot closer than the other Goa’uld dynasties. But none had suffered the loss of so many of its finest children or brothers and sisters save perhaps the house of Ouranos and save for Set and his children and the heirless technologist Thoth it was largely extinct as Ra and Yu had founded their own clans and were not counted. Their losses had damn near driven them insane, it had driven Amun-Ra insane in her opinion. But he buried only one daughter, during the wars with the elder races Apollo had buried fifty, Zeus and Hera stopped counting at some point and that was to say nothing of the tens of millions of lobotomized Prim’tah her elder sisters and cousins and distant kin had given birth too that died with their Jaffa in battle and however many died every day when their Jaffa at long last succumbed to old age or accident (Once again causing Eurydice to thank Ra that she wasn’t born a queen, she couldn’t fathom doing that to her own offspring.).
Yet they weathered that storm, without losing their minds as the former radiant, majestic Emperor of all the cosmos had. They weathered the abuses, excesses and treason of their patriarch Kronos as well, though her siblings seldom spoke of it. It had been their proximity and perhaps remoteness as for the longest time their realm was far from the intrigues and stresses of Dakkara, and they had the task of converting ruined and impoverished and even dead worlds into a healthy, vibrant kingdom. That had been why her divine and noble Great Grandfather likely ordered Uncle Herakles to accept Horus offer and promise not to try and run for throne. She couldn’t imagine any of the System Lords taking what Apophis seemed to be planning with anything but scorn and fury. -To think he would spit on all that we’ve worked to achieve, our mandate to spite the elder races and our goal of being proper custodians of the lesser races solely because he feels cheated-. “Besides, I managed to sinch a trade deal with a minor noble of Lord Ba’al’s domain! And I did it using accounts from the bank of the House of Set.” She beamed causing her oh, so very much older brother to look at her in alarm. “The Lord High usurer will not appreciate that.” He grumbled.
Set was the Imperial Treasurer, who managed the finances for the whole of the Imperium and was arguably the second wealthiest sentient in all of the universe through the grand banking guilds that he and his descendants had founded whose reach spawned well beyond even the farthest of Imperium’s outpost. As it was with Ba’al who controlled an energy monopoly that even the mighty Asgardians had to depend on to a degree and whose trade fleets and planetary engineering guilds were famous the universe over. Everyone did business with the Banks of Set, that him being his own banking cartel king while running the treasury of their entire civilization was a monstrous conflict of interest no one remarked on.
After all, he’d done a fine job for the last hundred thousand years.
Except she wasn’t entirely sure that was completely correct.
Something rotten was coming out of Set’s domain and that Fleet Captain Drey’ac and a Peacekeeper Admiral allegedly engaged in ancient third generation Ha’tak class vessels made her as paranoid as it made her father and grandfather. “I suppose this is why we were made to come via vessel and not Stargate, maybe our divine father is worried Set’s agents would tamper with the gate network and have me vaporized or something.” She gave a shrug; it was no secret that Set and Ba’al hated each other immensely. That their chamberlains had supposedly swore an assassin’s vendetta against each other and that neither could fully act against the other without throwing the economy of the whole universe into an uproar and a probable recession. And she wondered, if the vaunted militaries of the House of Aether and Tartarus and their preeminence in the cosmic order of things had the same significance when a war between two glorified accountants could do more damage with a few keystrokes on a datasheet than they could with all their fleets combined.
“I believe he doesn’t want our arrival at Helios logged.” The movements of every Peer were documented by the Gate Network carefully maintained on Othalla and on Dakkara, the two and as far as anyone knew, the only two known cores for the whole of the universe. It was hard not too, given their nature as not entirely physical beings. Their energy signals were just too unusual, and they were too critical not to be noticed.
Which was what made the actions of Lord Apophis that precipitated the mess they were now in so absurd. How did he think he could go out and abduct women from across the stars to placate that vicious little idiot of a consort he had in Amunet. When their Ashraks broke that bit of gossip she damn near dismissed the lot of them because even that raving simpleton couldn’t be so foolish or possess so little dignity that he’d galivant around the stars like some mindless primitive from one of the lower breeds, taking what he wished as if he was entitled to anything he did not earn.
It demeaned their entire race. “Body thieves, parasites, dream stealers. Hope robbers, plunderers of lives and civilizations..Cosmic grave robbers they called our great grandparents.” She whispered bitterly. “And there are still some among the stars who would say that if they weren’t terrified of our powers. As if the first millennia of the rebellion when our forefathers had to use stolen and scavenged technology marked us forever.”
Cygnus quirked his head, it was oddly birdlike and evocative of what at least one of the ancestors of the Kelownan people that evolved on the Langaran continent possessed. “You’re a little too young to be up in arms over past slights little sister.”
She rolled her eyes. “Only because if half the rumors coming out of our Ashraks are true that violent imbecile has made them modern…I may spawn progeny one day brother, Aether above! Do you not feel the wound to your pride? You worked as hard as any other to make the vision of Amun-Ra reality and what that means.”
He laughed, stopping her in her tracks. “You’re out of sorts Eury, rushing wild to and fro, in that you’re like your grandfather. Like him, you would prefer to rage at anything even nothing so long as it helped alleviate the stress of a looming quandary. Or that you slighted Set in a way that could find you. Shall we say, Inconvenienced in your endeavors.”
The conversation ended as the blue and green gem of the realm of Apollo (Which had also served as the temporary Crown World of her aunt Athena as her own domain’s Capitol was repaired after suffering orbital bombardment during the Titan’s rebellion.), two billion sentient souls resided there, while another eight billion were scattered across the four other planets in this solar system that had been aggressively engineered and colonized. Helios, named after an uncle of her grandfather’s one of the earliest system Lords and a staunch supporter of Anubis and Amun-Ra. Helios was a deceptive little paradise, filled with estates where even the poorest Lotar had hectares to his name spanning the one super massive continent on the world and its myriad of islands. It was an agricultural hub by extensive planetary engineering and genetic modification of plants and soil replenishing bacteria. But in its pretty mountains and vast inland seas lurked a power.
Because her divine father, mighty Apollo. God of medicine, God of the implements of the hunt, God of fire and the charioteer that carried Ra’s Manjet through the stars pulling the radiant and eternal light behind him. Lived up to the moniker he shared with Horus as “The far striker.” -Let Ba’al keep his gravity lances and Yu his plant ships with their almost unbreakable energy shields. And the House of Ra with their unimaginably advanced technology…- She thought with a confidence only youth could bestow.
Just as she was certain this meeting was about Apophis and supporting Horus.
With an unfounded certitude only, youth could possess.
At the start of Madness...
Dedicated to @Knowledgeispower so he can get a better estimate on the type of hardware he'll need to vaporize more snakes!
Also to @Spartan303 and @Harlock
There's a devil and an angel in all men...what wars in the hearts of Gods?
Aion Crown World of Kronos – Month of Tiamat 100,778th year of Amun Ra’s reign.
December 17th, 1910, by Tau’Ri reckoning.
Ars-Protojonoi (which meant predecessor group.) the Ori labeled them, the Titans as they were called by the rest of the universe. Titans, it was an apt name for what his mother and father were, for what their brother of tube and tank and cousin in blood had been. For what their grandfather Aether had been. In retrospect, Amun-Ra should have seen this coming from that fateful day when Anubis declared that while he would and could fight for the new universe they would build, he could not in good conscious lead it as he was a warrior not a builder of civilizations, a father of justice or any of the other lofty proclamations he’d made that day when he bowed to Ra and declared him “Amun-Ra, liberator, building of nations, deliverer of slaves! Leader of the children of Light! Leader of Destiny!”
Kronos had knelt to his technical nephew. But there was something in his host’s eyes, something resentful and bitter. He’d ignored it because the only one to hesitate was bitter Heqet and Kronos had been a loyal supporter even if he had moved his nascent family into the worst part of the universe and also the farthest from their borders at the time.
Anubis had laughed. “It’s alright Ra, let them claim it and keep it. We’ll fight our way out to them eventually and they will come home.” Anubis, his brother by spirit if not by genetics, his ally, his greatest friend and champion. -It all went wrong when you died…- glowing white eyes narrowed as the great planet city reared its unsightly head. A trillion souls dwelled in this system between Aion, and several other planets. Making it the star system with the densest population in the known universe.
It was a miserable cesspit.
Lotar life expectancy was abysmal compared to most Goa’uld breeds but life on these world cities was so short that Athena, Apollo and Hera had petitioned a convocation to address the issue as a crime against sentient rights. Stupid children, give Lotar more than you already give them and they start taking parsecs, as those ingrates on Tau’Ri did. Ra had been content to ignore their petition but in hindsight perhaps breaking up this disgusting ecumenopolis might have prevented the old serpent’s rebellion. Had it not been for the mother of that brooding sow Izanami wanting to stop for tea. The explosion above had destroyed his personal apartments in the top spire of Iwnw the rubble and debris came crashing down on them all and had he not been able to erect a psychic barrier they likely all would have been crushed. Kronos, who tamed a wasteland and then helped his nephews end the hegemony of the elder races. Only to harbor a deep hatred for all that they had built together.
Oh, Ra was aware of his countless misdeeds with the Lucian cartels, their pirates and a vast array of other criminal elements the universe over. But he’d tolerated it, after all Kronos was the last connection Ra had to a father who died so long-ago entire species had evolved into sentience in the time since his death, the time since his murder at the hands of Adria. I wonder, sometimes what would have happened had you lived? Now, wherever your soul has gone, are you proud of all that I built? I sometimes am not, but mostly am. Either way. I have surpassed those who held you in bondage.
He could no longer ignore it, the corruption Kronos allowed to infest the Imperium and the galaxies around it. The sheer amount of urban decay brought about by Roshna and the other narcotics the Lucian scum peddled from their sanctuary behind his borders had flooded the universe with disaster. He was even certain that it had led to several minor interstellar wars between the lesser powers in the stars. The tiny but densely populated and laughably named Hynerian Empire had suffered particularly heinously. Amun-Ra tolerated all of this, despite the fact that he’d have put any other System Lord to the slaughter for making a mockery of everything they stood for as a species. Kronos was simply, the last connection to a past Amun-Ra the eternal, Supreme System Lord, the Master of Death, the King most high of all the Gods. The Lord of all the universe; had to an era of the stars long extinct. From the dark ages before the rise of the Goa’uld, the destruction of the Ori and the ascent of the Gods. From when Amun-Ra had been young and when his vision had been clear and his purpose ironclad. When he remembered justice as more than a ritual but a duty and a rite.
When he could still feel empathy for the denizens of his empire, who lived and died so swiftly that the ancient Goa’uld could scarcely invest himself in their welfare beyond a perfunctory sense of duty. He was a God, but sometimes he regretted what he’d become, a dominating God as opposed to a just one. He ruled through religion, through awe, through mystique and majesty now when before he had ruled through devotion, wonder and loyalty. Would the youth he’d been when he rallied the Goa’uld people to seize their destiny approve of the divine entity he’d become? No, probably not..
The holograms on the command deck displayed two of the largest of his Chiron class Dreadnaughts. With the exception of the rumored Asgardian Slepnir . The Chirons fielded by the House of Ra were the most advanced and deadly warships ever built. These two had a special purpose, one they’d been put to use on throughout this system.
“Father.” The voice brought him from his thoughts, and he turned to find his eldest, his first born and his most naïve progeny kneeling to one knee. His giant, noble frame still covered in the dust and blood and plasma burns of battle. -He must have gated to a nearby system then risked blowing out his vessel’s hyperdrive to get here- Ra thought, his eyes glowing as he gazed at his far larger and more athletic son. “Why are you not at Olympus?”
Zeus had finally stirred a year ago, leading his family’s forces into battle launching a series of invasions into his father’s domain. Which resulted in an enraged Kronos personally invading Zeus domain and cutting it in half, seizing his capitol and disrupting the entire supply line for the Houses of Aethir, Ba’al and Ouranos. The house of Ame-No-Minakanushi and the House of Ra however, weren’t slowed down and the House of Tartarus.
Well Apophis maintained the largest and most disciplined military in existence and once the Serpent legions were finally mobilized the assaults by Kronos into the rest of the Imperium ended almost overnight and it was only a matter of time.
“The High Lord Apophis, First Prime Herakles, War Master Bra’tac and I have liberated Olympus along with his two apprentices, the youths Teal’c and Drey’ac... We killed every single rebel Jaffa that did not surrender, and Apophis slew the Titan. The rebellion is over Father…this is not…” his voice choked in his throat as Amun-Ra’s eyes began to seemingly spark with white arcs of lightning and a blue glow touched his cheek. A reminder, that Emperor was closer to the Nox than he was the rest of the Peers, even his own children. “Why have I spared every Lotar world and system within the domain of your grand-uncle until now?”
Horus swallowed. “Because they remained loyal?”
Ra wanted to laugh at that. “So grand, yet so stupid.” He thought. “Most of them were not involved…Their loyalty was not with the Imperium as a whole, they know only their God and local Lords. But they did not stir against us, welcomed us and have shown no hostile intentions. They accept the coming change; I would not fault them either way. They have evolved to become almost a new subspecies of Tau’Ri descended Lotar on some of his worlds, so long have they been under his rule. No, I refused to commit random acts of genocide…I…regret what was done to Lantash and will not be making that mistake here. I am no petty tyrant; I will not break the universe I have built to sate my rage. But here on Aion they fed his war machine, they are among the most advanced worlds anywhere, they could have given us ample warning and yet did not, I would forgive that alone but for the fact that the Lotar auxiliaries were present at the siege of Belote. That, I will not forgive.”
“There are over a trillion souls here majestic eminence, our subjects!”
No, Amun-Ra thought morbidly. There Were a trillion souls, the Nu and Cthonea had likely reduced that to five hundred billion by now. His eyes flashed slightly, emotion welling behind his perfect mask. The being he’d been while Egeria and Anubis still lived would have revolted at this, he’d have struck his future self-down in indignant fury and accuse this awe-inspiring divine Ra of Ori like conduct. Even ten thousand years ago, Amun Ra would have balked at what was happening around him. “I feel it, the psychic cries as their worlds were destroyed, I sense the despair from Aion, millions are committing suicide, billions are praying to me, I can sense their mental energies, feel their desperation. They beg me to spare their children..I killed my own daughter, the offspring I chose as my successor should anything occur for a similar crime. Did they imagine I would strike my little one down yet spare their own?”
It had been over thirty thousand years, yet he still felt himself repress a weight on his chest whenever the topic of Egeria arose. “Every death…I have felt, the exact moment of it. I have opened myself to it, I will bare this weight. But I will not falter. A trillion dead now, prevents quadrillions of dead from endless civil war later.”
Horus slowly nodded. “As you..say..Majestic Eminence.” But there was less reverence in Horus’ tone then there had been moments ago and more a quiet fury and doubt.
He wanted to hate his son, who looked at him as though he were no better than the Nameless one for this. Who in his bones, felt that this was an honorless, cruel atrocity. A treason against all they stood for and yet simply acceded to his father’s will. Egeria would have challenged him, Hathor had nearly threatened rebellion over this. Even that wastrel Osiris withdrew his fleet upon learning of Ra’s intention, refusing to have any part in it.
But his only successor left, his oldest and in theory wisest son was some imbecile still obsessed with warrior’s honor, weak, too weak to stop him from committing genocide and murdering the last bit of decency he had left in his withered serpentine soul. Ra turned from his son and walked towards a console that rose from the ground, forming via nanomachines until the master control for the weapon systems of his Dreadnaughts was waist high. Amun-Ra wore armor all of white, with a bright golden cloak the color of the yellow stars most sentient life seemed to enjoy above others. He might have decided to commit a soul killing atrocity, but he would not afflict the carrying out of that action on anyone but himself.
For he was Amun-Ra, the master death, the Godhead, the lord of life, the creator of the greatest civilization that has ever been or ever will be, the Lord on high, the King of all the cosmos and the System Lord Supreme and Emperor of all the stars. The liberator of slaves…that was always his favorite title.
It was the only one he truly felt he’d debauched and disgraced.
Amun-Ra the Eternal.
And as he pressed the button and watched as two bright beams of multicolored energy roared from the ships and the planet several hundred thousand kilometers ahead of the fleet simply erupted into a ball of flames and then vanished in a shockwave…
The murderer of the last remnants of an era long committed to legend and fable.
And of the faith all his children held in him.
And he swore to himself this wasn’t to compensate for his own willingness to tolerate corruption that humiliated his entire civilization solely because he missed someone who died before most of the current batch of sentient beings were even sentient.
Or because he mourned for who he was and, on some level, regretted what he’d become.
Also to @Spartan303 and @Harlock
There's a devil and an angel in all men...what wars in the hearts of Gods?
Aion Crown World of Kronos – Month of Tiamat 100,778th year of Amun Ra’s reign.
December 17th, 1910, by Tau’Ri reckoning.
Ars-Protojonoi (which meant predecessor group.) the Ori labeled them, the Titans as they were called by the rest of the universe. Titans, it was an apt name for what his mother and father were, for what their brother of tube and tank and cousin in blood had been. For what their grandfather Aether had been. In retrospect, Amun-Ra should have seen this coming from that fateful day when Anubis declared that while he would and could fight for the new universe they would build, he could not in good conscious lead it as he was a warrior not a builder of civilizations, a father of justice or any of the other lofty proclamations he’d made that day when he bowed to Ra and declared him “Amun-Ra, liberator, building of nations, deliverer of slaves! Leader of the children of Light! Leader of Destiny!”
Kronos had knelt to his technical nephew. But there was something in his host’s eyes, something resentful and bitter. He’d ignored it because the only one to hesitate was bitter Heqet and Kronos had been a loyal supporter even if he had moved his nascent family into the worst part of the universe and also the farthest from their borders at the time.
Anubis had laughed. “It’s alright Ra, let them claim it and keep it. We’ll fight our way out to them eventually and they will come home.” Anubis, his brother by spirit if not by genetics, his ally, his greatest friend and champion. -It all went wrong when you died…- glowing white eyes narrowed as the great planet city reared its unsightly head. A trillion souls dwelled in this system between Aion, and several other planets. Making it the star system with the densest population in the known universe.
It was a miserable cesspit.
Lotar life expectancy was abysmal compared to most Goa’uld breeds but life on these world cities was so short that Athena, Apollo and Hera had petitioned a convocation to address the issue as a crime against sentient rights. Stupid children, give Lotar more than you already give them and they start taking parsecs, as those ingrates on Tau’Ri did. Ra had been content to ignore their petition but in hindsight perhaps breaking up this disgusting ecumenopolis might have prevented the old serpent’s rebellion. Had it not been for the mother of that brooding sow Izanami wanting to stop for tea. The explosion above had destroyed his personal apartments in the top spire of Iwnw the rubble and debris came crashing down on them all and had he not been able to erect a psychic barrier they likely all would have been crushed. Kronos, who tamed a wasteland and then helped his nephews end the hegemony of the elder races. Only to harbor a deep hatred for all that they had built together.
Oh, Ra was aware of his countless misdeeds with the Lucian cartels, their pirates and a vast array of other criminal elements the universe over. But he’d tolerated it, after all Kronos was the last connection Ra had to a father who died so long-ago entire species had evolved into sentience in the time since his death, the time since his murder at the hands of Adria. I wonder, sometimes what would have happened had you lived? Now, wherever your soul has gone, are you proud of all that I built? I sometimes am not, but mostly am. Either way. I have surpassed those who held you in bondage.
He could no longer ignore it, the corruption Kronos allowed to infest the Imperium and the galaxies around it. The sheer amount of urban decay brought about by Roshna and the other narcotics the Lucian scum peddled from their sanctuary behind his borders had flooded the universe with disaster. He was even certain that it had led to several minor interstellar wars between the lesser powers in the stars. The tiny but densely populated and laughably named Hynerian Empire had suffered particularly heinously. Amun-Ra tolerated all of this, despite the fact that he’d have put any other System Lord to the slaughter for making a mockery of everything they stood for as a species. Kronos was simply, the last connection to a past Amun-Ra the eternal, Supreme System Lord, the Master of Death, the King most high of all the Gods. The Lord of all the universe; had to an era of the stars long extinct. From the dark ages before the rise of the Goa’uld, the destruction of the Ori and the ascent of the Gods. From when Amun-Ra had been young and when his vision had been clear and his purpose ironclad. When he remembered justice as more than a ritual but a duty and a rite.
When he could still feel empathy for the denizens of his empire, who lived and died so swiftly that the ancient Goa’uld could scarcely invest himself in their welfare beyond a perfunctory sense of duty. He was a God, but sometimes he regretted what he’d become, a dominating God as opposed to a just one. He ruled through religion, through awe, through mystique and majesty now when before he had ruled through devotion, wonder and loyalty. Would the youth he’d been when he rallied the Goa’uld people to seize their destiny approve of the divine entity he’d become? No, probably not..
The holograms on the command deck displayed two of the largest of his Chiron class Dreadnaughts. With the exception of the rumored Asgardian Slepnir . The Chirons fielded by the House of Ra were the most advanced and deadly warships ever built. These two had a special purpose, one they’d been put to use on throughout this system.
“Father.” The voice brought him from his thoughts, and he turned to find his eldest, his first born and his most naïve progeny kneeling to one knee. His giant, noble frame still covered in the dust and blood and plasma burns of battle. -He must have gated to a nearby system then risked blowing out his vessel’s hyperdrive to get here- Ra thought, his eyes glowing as he gazed at his far larger and more athletic son. “Why are you not at Olympus?”
Zeus had finally stirred a year ago, leading his family’s forces into battle launching a series of invasions into his father’s domain. Which resulted in an enraged Kronos personally invading Zeus domain and cutting it in half, seizing his capitol and disrupting the entire supply line for the Houses of Aethir, Ba’al and Ouranos. The house of Ame-No-Minakanushi and the House of Ra however, weren’t slowed down and the House of Tartarus.
Well Apophis maintained the largest and most disciplined military in existence and once the Serpent legions were finally mobilized the assaults by Kronos into the rest of the Imperium ended almost overnight and it was only a matter of time.
“The High Lord Apophis, First Prime Herakles, War Master Bra’tac and I have liberated Olympus along with his two apprentices, the youths Teal’c and Drey’ac... We killed every single rebel Jaffa that did not surrender, and Apophis slew the Titan. The rebellion is over Father…this is not…” his voice choked in his throat as Amun-Ra’s eyes began to seemingly spark with white arcs of lightning and a blue glow touched his cheek. A reminder, that Emperor was closer to the Nox than he was the rest of the Peers, even his own children. “Why have I spared every Lotar world and system within the domain of your grand-uncle until now?”
Horus swallowed. “Because they remained loyal?”
Ra wanted to laugh at that. “So grand, yet so stupid.” He thought. “Most of them were not involved…Their loyalty was not with the Imperium as a whole, they know only their God and local Lords. But they did not stir against us, welcomed us and have shown no hostile intentions. They accept the coming change; I would not fault them either way. They have evolved to become almost a new subspecies of Tau’Ri descended Lotar on some of his worlds, so long have they been under his rule. No, I refused to commit random acts of genocide…I…regret what was done to Lantash and will not be making that mistake here. I am no petty tyrant; I will not break the universe I have built to sate my rage. But here on Aion they fed his war machine, they are among the most advanced worlds anywhere, they could have given us ample warning and yet did not, I would forgive that alone but for the fact that the Lotar auxiliaries were present at the siege of Belote. That, I will not forgive.”
“There are over a trillion souls here majestic eminence, our subjects!”
No, Amun-Ra thought morbidly. There Were a trillion souls, the Nu and Cthonea had likely reduced that to five hundred billion by now. His eyes flashed slightly, emotion welling behind his perfect mask. The being he’d been while Egeria and Anubis still lived would have revolted at this, he’d have struck his future self-down in indignant fury and accuse this awe-inspiring divine Ra of Ori like conduct. Even ten thousand years ago, Amun Ra would have balked at what was happening around him. “I feel it, the psychic cries as their worlds were destroyed, I sense the despair from Aion, millions are committing suicide, billions are praying to me, I can sense their mental energies, feel their desperation. They beg me to spare their children..I killed my own daughter, the offspring I chose as my successor should anything occur for a similar crime. Did they imagine I would strike my little one down yet spare their own?”
It had been over thirty thousand years, yet he still felt himself repress a weight on his chest whenever the topic of Egeria arose. “Every death…I have felt, the exact moment of it. I have opened myself to it, I will bare this weight. But I will not falter. A trillion dead now, prevents quadrillions of dead from endless civil war later.”
Horus slowly nodded. “As you..say..Majestic Eminence.” But there was less reverence in Horus’ tone then there had been moments ago and more a quiet fury and doubt.
He wanted to hate his son, who looked at him as though he were no better than the Nameless one for this. Who in his bones, felt that this was an honorless, cruel atrocity. A treason against all they stood for and yet simply acceded to his father’s will. Egeria would have challenged him, Hathor had nearly threatened rebellion over this. Even that wastrel Osiris withdrew his fleet upon learning of Ra’s intention, refusing to have any part in it.
But his only successor left, his oldest and in theory wisest son was some imbecile still obsessed with warrior’s honor, weak, too weak to stop him from committing genocide and murdering the last bit of decency he had left in his withered serpentine soul. Ra turned from his son and walked towards a console that rose from the ground, forming via nanomachines until the master control for the weapon systems of his Dreadnaughts was waist high. Amun-Ra wore armor all of white, with a bright golden cloak the color of the yellow stars most sentient life seemed to enjoy above others. He might have decided to commit a soul killing atrocity, but he would not afflict the carrying out of that action on anyone but himself.
For he was Amun-Ra, the master death, the Godhead, the lord of life, the creator of the greatest civilization that has ever been or ever will be, the Lord on high, the King of all the cosmos and the System Lord Supreme and Emperor of all the stars. The liberator of slaves…that was always his favorite title.
It was the only one he truly felt he’d debauched and disgraced.
Amun-Ra the Eternal.
And as he pressed the button and watched as two bright beams of multicolored energy roared from the ships and the planet several hundred thousand kilometers ahead of the fleet simply erupted into a ball of flames and then vanished in a shockwave…
The murderer of the last remnants of an era long committed to legend and fable.
And of the faith all his children held in him.
And he swore to himself this wasn’t to compensate for his own willingness to tolerate corruption that humiliated his entire civilization solely because he missed someone who died before most of the current batch of sentient beings were even sentient.
Or because he mourned for who he was and, on some level, regretted what he’d become.
I'm blue...
And we return now to the A plot of Emancipation aka "Watch Dog tries to salvage the worst episode of Stargate ever"
…………..
P3X-797/Devorias
September the 29th 2020
“So, your family came from Sinyun?” It was easier for Inari to focus on her non-bonded counterpart. As the Abydonian prince called Skara and the Tau’Ri warrior called Ko-al-ski? Or somesuch supervised the interview of her mate, who had fared far better than her. Catching a glancing blow from a staff weapon rather than the full blast that shredded her armor and would have blown most of her left side out below the ribcage had the event horizon of the space bridge created by the chapai not absorbed most of the blast. Peace officers so heavily armed had been a feature of Heqet’s realm the young Goa’uld had never quite accustomed herself towards. “I thought Sinyun was nano bombed by Macello.”
“Hathor preserve us no!” The one calling herself Adrys shook her head ruefully. “You’re thinking of Aynen. There were no survivors there…”She laughed bitterly, from the memories of her host’s donor’s personality Inari understood why. They thought when Macello and Linea had defeated the Ashen that they could come and relieve the surviving Nebari peoples of their repression, instead they killed another ten billion and simply abandoned the planets to their fate. “The broken remnants of the old establishment government must have taken control then?” The Goa’uld asked. It troubled her, she was an Ashrak but the Imperium’s intelligence guilds had just written off that whole species except for those who settled within Imperial space. Who knew what might have arisen from there, in a space where their field of vision was blocked away.
“It must have been” Ardys muttered. “That happened when my parents were little and they don’t talk much about it, except that they came to our world and extorted us in exchange for meager assistance repairing our biosphere. They fled when I was small, because they were going to kill most of my family due to anti-“excess” propagation laws. I mostly remember the worlds of Lord Ba’al.”
Inari nodded, then let out a hiss of pain as the accursed Tau’Ri doctor finished whatever witchcraft she was performing (she was being unfair here, for such an underdeveloped society the Tau’ri were remarkably effective in the field of medicine.). “I think your left kidneys are fine. I’m more worried about the lack of clotting.”
“Your medicine there has been helpful physician Lahm…Though I feel some measure of regret. Aren’t you the administrator of their hospital? Would it not be better if you had sent a subordinate?”
“You’re not getting an intel confirmation out of me that easily.” The Tau’Ri mouthed in her usual lighthearted. “I’ve treated a half dozen staff wounds, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I hope the anticoagulants help.”
“There are certain forms of radiation that cause serious trouble to circulatory systems of what do you call yourselves? Oomen?”
“Human”
“Ah thank you, human like forms. I can repair it, but if I were not a Peer, I’d be dead right now. Most Goa’uld aren’t so strong as to heal as fast as we do and if the host bleeds to death we can suffocate inside in short order, it’s not a pleasant way to die I’m told.” More than told, she’d woken up in a resurrection chamber in a hysterical and claustrophobic fit once courtesy of Aris Boch.
“This body has blue blood…And four kidneys, I’m not sure how humanoid it is but I’m glad to help.” Lahm said in a voice that was a lot less hostile than when she’d first begun to treat Inari. They assume we’re all body thieves. She thought bitterly, as if that level of bestial theft wasn’t taboo even among many of the so called “lower breeds” of the Goa’uld. Criminals engaged in body theft, civilized beings made a point to seek consent or in the case of Inari herself, had purchased from several different female Nebari and one Tau’Ri descended human their genetic material and had a clone made.
“The Colonel will want to speak with you soon.” Adrys answered. They both tried to ignore the blue colored steam that was rising from the snake’s back as she began to rapidly heal the damage back there as soon as the drugs took effect. When both had admitted to being Ashraks Kowalski had insisted on splitting them up and holding them in detention, until he could have both interviewed separately. This, friendly chatter while being worked on was merely one form of interrogation. One likely designed to assess her personality, not that she minded but she missed Khepri dearly. They had scarcely been apart in the fifty years they’d been together and even when you had a cloned body, you still inherited some of the emotions and memories of the host or hosts in her case. The fact that she felt her own intense sense of love and then the memories of such feelings from four other females made it too powerful to ignore. “Good.” She answered nodding her head.
She didn’t bother hiding what she was, a Peer.
Mostly because it would be impossible to do so, her husband might have been descended from Heqet but he was no Peer. He had been born as the countless offspring or descended of the Gods had been when they took mistresses from the lower subspecies. Extremely long lived, stronger than the ordinarily Goa’uld and able heal faster and better but he was still a parsec behind her in terms of abilities and from what she remembered of her briefings on the Tau’Ri they knew enough about what they were to spot the difference. “We aren’t interested in causing harm to your world…The Truth is we thought to hide here and then gate to another world and then another.” She offered Lahm and the big warrior beside her called Jawn-sun an apologetic smile. “But I believed Bisu was going to slaughter everyone in the marketplace before letting us escape. You were..unfortunately a..”
“Meat shield?” Johnson asked.
“Alternative.” She added gently, doing her best to look chastised but finding amusement in his response.
“Why defect anyway? I thought you guys are supposed to be fanatics. That whole mystique about your fathers and grandfathers building civilization and stuff?” Johnson asked, the marine having not spoken until then and Inari whipped her head towards him, rage on her face at the implication until she saw the look in the Tau’Ri’s eyes. The earnestness, the confusion that played over his face. Though well hidden under a mask of neutrality that suitably impressed her given that he was likely only a few years out of what she assumed passed for adolescence among the Tau’Ri. “There’s a personal vehemence to your question.”
He shrugged. “I’m descended from freed slaves who helped fight to establish the nation state where I come from. Which was a colony of a remote monarchy at the time. Guess I’m just curious what happened…”
She froze at hearing those words, her host’s heart and whatever her “heart” was pounding in both chests. -It can’t be, it cannot be that in all the universe…- her rage had been robbed the instant her mental powers could detect no lie in the soldier’s thoughts nor in his body language. She suppressed the urge to swallow and smiled bitterly. “Imagine if you will, that after the sacrifice made by your forebears to win their freedom, their countrymen in the preceding generations resorted to slavery and immiseration to bolster their industries.”
The Tau’Ri laughed slightly. “They did, our nation kept slavery for nearly a century after the end of their rebellion. It was only ended after a civil war that claimed nearly three percent of our population. Some of my ancestors were slaves, some slave owners, many fought and killed each other in that war…”
It was like a knife twisting into her host body’s gut. “Then…you understand why I left.”
He blinked.
“I’m what they refer to as Hassu’Oa’uld.”
Ardys shrugged. “Roughly translated it means mongrelized Peer, or “water blooded.” It means one of the two Goa’uld who spawned her belonged to one of the lower species. She is a Peer but disgraced by her ancestry. She would never be allowed to say, become a System Lord or become a member of the courts of justice, nor would she be allowed to serve as anything other than as an Ashrak or a low to mid-level member of the Imperial bureaucracy. She has no future outside of the shadows.”
The Tau’Ri called Lahm’s emotions turned to pity and indignation and Inari wanted to laugh because it was the man who was the descendant of patriots and possibly slaves whose emotions retained their hint of iron and suspicion. She almost wanted to laugh out loud at that, no wonder the great Amun-Ra ended up meeting his end due to an irrational decision regarding these people. They were far too much like, of course the Nebari girl was right, and Inari smiled thinly at her because there was more to it of course, both in regard to what she was and why she was with Heqet.
But it wasn’t the time to admit that, not yet. For now, she would add a truth to ensure them that she was willing to cooperate. “More than that.” She cleared her throat and looked down as if she was trying to organize her thoughts and compartmentalize her emotions (Mostly because she was.) “How old is your nation state Space Marine?”
“Captain...” Johnson said reminding her to address him by rank in a way that seemed to suggest he was addressing a fellow special force operative. She found that rather charming of him. “And two hundred and forty-four…”
She laughed heartily now and found herself shaking her head. “I am considered extremely young for a Peer. There’s only a handful younger than me and yet I was sixty-eight standard years old when your nation was founded.”
“Seventy-one by our calendar.” Captain Johnson added earning what she suspected was a glare from Lahm.
“Captain Johnson.” She began in a mock insulted voice. “Is it not considered an act of impudence among your people to make a female feel older than she is?” From the snickers in the room, she was glad to have defused a little of the lingering paranoia…After all if she and her mate were to escape this alive.
“Your companion is right; I am of tainted blood but more than that. For whom my father was as well, I am Inari the illegitimate daughter of a disgraced former first prime.”
All positive emotion seemed to flee the room the moment those words left her lips and suddenly everyone was on guard and gazing at her wearily. It had been a horrible mistake, but what could she do? They would find out eventually and she didn’t think they’d know the significance of it or react so strongly. Had father done something to these people?
“Was his name Yahata?” the physician asked.
Ah, of course he had.
She sighed dropping her head in frustration. “The very same.”
Captain Johnson drew his rifle and leveled it at her and ordered the other two to back away from her and not for the first time did she wonder why one side of her family terrorized the other when they were capable of all they feared from the lower breeds and more. And to be reacted to in such a manner by Tau’Ri of all people.
“I wasn’t aware the people Prince Horus holds in such high esteem would punish a daughter for her father’s sins?” She asked bitterly before she pulled her awareness from her own emotions of self-pity and disappointment and turned it against the people in the room. They were concerned her connection to the infamous traitor would make her a threat to them and yet it wasn’t because of the family connection alone, there was worry mixed in with something else? Acknowledgement? Acknowledgment of what?
The words revenge kept flashing through Johnson’s mind and something creeped into her mind. A thought, a potential that she couldn’t comprehend. They were worried she’d seek revenge against them. For what?!
“We don’t.” It was the physician, Lahm moving between Captain Johnson and herself, her eyes filled with sympathy and caution. “We don’t…Captain Johnson.” She ordered him, however passively (Did the woman even possess the authority to do that?) “Lower your weapon.”
“Doctor Lahm.’
“She’s a Peer, they’re supposed to be crazy mutants with superpowers, right? So, if she wanted to kill us she would have already.”
Why would I want them dead? Inari thought.
Unless they think I’d want to avenge my father? I loved him, dearly but what he did was unforgivable…Besides? Why would they think I’d want to avenge him upon them…
The realization hit her like a staff blast.
And she swallowed, eying the group with what she hoped was a face as neutral as she could possibly maintain amidst the deluge of emotions.
“I see...h...how did he die?” she asked sounding far hoarser than she intended.
The universe was conspiring against them and all they wanted to do was find someplace safe to call home.
The irony was not lost on her.
…………..
P3X-797/Devorias
September the 29th 2020
“So, your family came from Sinyun?” It was easier for Inari to focus on her non-bonded counterpart. As the Abydonian prince called Skara and the Tau’Ri warrior called Ko-al-ski? Or somesuch supervised the interview of her mate, who had fared far better than her. Catching a glancing blow from a staff weapon rather than the full blast that shredded her armor and would have blown most of her left side out below the ribcage had the event horizon of the space bridge created by the chapai not absorbed most of the blast. Peace officers so heavily armed had been a feature of Heqet’s realm the young Goa’uld had never quite accustomed herself towards. “I thought Sinyun was nano bombed by Macello.”
“Hathor preserve us no!” The one calling herself Adrys shook her head ruefully. “You’re thinking of Aynen. There were no survivors there…”She laughed bitterly, from the memories of her host’s donor’s personality Inari understood why. They thought when Macello and Linea had defeated the Ashen that they could come and relieve the surviving Nebari peoples of their repression, instead they killed another ten billion and simply abandoned the planets to their fate. “The broken remnants of the old establishment government must have taken control then?” The Goa’uld asked. It troubled her, she was an Ashrak but the Imperium’s intelligence guilds had just written off that whole species except for those who settled within Imperial space. Who knew what might have arisen from there, in a space where their field of vision was blocked away.
“It must have been” Ardys muttered. “That happened when my parents were little and they don’t talk much about it, except that they came to our world and extorted us in exchange for meager assistance repairing our biosphere. They fled when I was small, because they were going to kill most of my family due to anti-“excess” propagation laws. I mostly remember the worlds of Lord Ba’al.”
Inari nodded, then let out a hiss of pain as the accursed Tau’Ri doctor finished whatever witchcraft she was performing (she was being unfair here, for such an underdeveloped society the Tau’ri were remarkably effective in the field of medicine.). “I think your left kidneys are fine. I’m more worried about the lack of clotting.”
“Your medicine there has been helpful physician Lahm…Though I feel some measure of regret. Aren’t you the administrator of their hospital? Would it not be better if you had sent a subordinate?”
“You’re not getting an intel confirmation out of me that easily.” The Tau’Ri mouthed in her usual lighthearted. “I’ve treated a half dozen staff wounds, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I hope the anticoagulants help.”
“There are certain forms of radiation that cause serious trouble to circulatory systems of what do you call yourselves? Oomen?”
“Human”
“Ah thank you, human like forms. I can repair it, but if I were not a Peer, I’d be dead right now. Most Goa’uld aren’t so strong as to heal as fast as we do and if the host bleeds to death we can suffocate inside in short order, it’s not a pleasant way to die I’m told.” More than told, she’d woken up in a resurrection chamber in a hysterical and claustrophobic fit once courtesy of Aris Boch.
“This body has blue blood…And four kidneys, I’m not sure how humanoid it is but I’m glad to help.” Lahm said in a voice that was a lot less hostile than when she’d first begun to treat Inari. They assume we’re all body thieves. She thought bitterly, as if that level of bestial theft wasn’t taboo even among many of the so called “lower breeds” of the Goa’uld. Criminals engaged in body theft, civilized beings made a point to seek consent or in the case of Inari herself, had purchased from several different female Nebari and one Tau’Ri descended human their genetic material and had a clone made.
“The Colonel will want to speak with you soon.” Adrys answered. They both tried to ignore the blue colored steam that was rising from the snake’s back as she began to rapidly heal the damage back there as soon as the drugs took effect. When both had admitted to being Ashraks Kowalski had insisted on splitting them up and holding them in detention, until he could have both interviewed separately. This, friendly chatter while being worked on was merely one form of interrogation. One likely designed to assess her personality, not that she minded but she missed Khepri dearly. They had scarcely been apart in the fifty years they’d been together and even when you had a cloned body, you still inherited some of the emotions and memories of the host or hosts in her case. The fact that she felt her own intense sense of love and then the memories of such feelings from four other females made it too powerful to ignore. “Good.” She answered nodding her head.
She didn’t bother hiding what she was, a Peer.
Mostly because it would be impossible to do so, her husband might have been descended from Heqet but he was no Peer. He had been born as the countless offspring or descended of the Gods had been when they took mistresses from the lower subspecies. Extremely long lived, stronger than the ordinarily Goa’uld and able heal faster and better but he was still a parsec behind her in terms of abilities and from what she remembered of her briefings on the Tau’Ri they knew enough about what they were to spot the difference. “We aren’t interested in causing harm to your world…The Truth is we thought to hide here and then gate to another world and then another.” She offered Lahm and the big warrior beside her called Jawn-sun an apologetic smile. “But I believed Bisu was going to slaughter everyone in the marketplace before letting us escape. You were..unfortunately a..”
“Meat shield?” Johnson asked.
“Alternative.” She added gently, doing her best to look chastised but finding amusement in his response.
“Why defect anyway? I thought you guys are supposed to be fanatics. That whole mystique about your fathers and grandfathers building civilization and stuff?” Johnson asked, the marine having not spoken until then and Inari whipped her head towards him, rage on her face at the implication until she saw the look in the Tau’Ri’s eyes. The earnestness, the confusion that played over his face. Though well hidden under a mask of neutrality that suitably impressed her given that he was likely only a few years out of what she assumed passed for adolescence among the Tau’Ri. “There’s a personal vehemence to your question.”
He shrugged. “I’m descended from freed slaves who helped fight to establish the nation state where I come from. Which was a colony of a remote monarchy at the time. Guess I’m just curious what happened…”
She froze at hearing those words, her host’s heart and whatever her “heart” was pounding in both chests. -It can’t be, it cannot be that in all the universe…- her rage had been robbed the instant her mental powers could detect no lie in the soldier’s thoughts nor in his body language. She suppressed the urge to swallow and smiled bitterly. “Imagine if you will, that after the sacrifice made by your forebears to win their freedom, their countrymen in the preceding generations resorted to slavery and immiseration to bolster their industries.”
The Tau’Ri laughed slightly. “They did, our nation kept slavery for nearly a century after the end of their rebellion. It was only ended after a civil war that claimed nearly three percent of our population. Some of my ancestors were slaves, some slave owners, many fought and killed each other in that war…”
It was like a knife twisting into her host body’s gut. “Then…you understand why I left.”
He blinked.
“I’m what they refer to as Hassu’Oa’uld.”
Ardys shrugged. “Roughly translated it means mongrelized Peer, or “water blooded.” It means one of the two Goa’uld who spawned her belonged to one of the lower species. She is a Peer but disgraced by her ancestry. She would never be allowed to say, become a System Lord or become a member of the courts of justice, nor would she be allowed to serve as anything other than as an Ashrak or a low to mid-level member of the Imperial bureaucracy. She has no future outside of the shadows.”
The Tau’Ri called Lahm’s emotions turned to pity and indignation and Inari wanted to laugh because it was the man who was the descendant of patriots and possibly slaves whose emotions retained their hint of iron and suspicion. She almost wanted to laugh out loud at that, no wonder the great Amun-Ra ended up meeting his end due to an irrational decision regarding these people. They were far too much like, of course the Nebari girl was right, and Inari smiled thinly at her because there was more to it of course, both in regard to what she was and why she was with Heqet.
But it wasn’t the time to admit that, not yet. For now, she would add a truth to ensure them that she was willing to cooperate. “More than that.” She cleared her throat and looked down as if she was trying to organize her thoughts and compartmentalize her emotions (Mostly because she was.) “How old is your nation state Space Marine?”
“Captain...” Johnson said reminding her to address him by rank in a way that seemed to suggest he was addressing a fellow special force operative. She found that rather charming of him. “And two hundred and forty-four…”
She laughed heartily now and found herself shaking her head. “I am considered extremely young for a Peer. There’s only a handful younger than me and yet I was sixty-eight standard years old when your nation was founded.”
“Seventy-one by our calendar.” Captain Johnson added earning what she suspected was a glare from Lahm.
“Captain Johnson.” She began in a mock insulted voice. “Is it not considered an act of impudence among your people to make a female feel older than she is?” From the snickers in the room, she was glad to have defused a little of the lingering paranoia…After all if she and her mate were to escape this alive.
“Your companion is right; I am of tainted blood but more than that. For whom my father was as well, I am Inari the illegitimate daughter of a disgraced former first prime.”
All positive emotion seemed to flee the room the moment those words left her lips and suddenly everyone was on guard and gazing at her wearily. It had been a horrible mistake, but what could she do? They would find out eventually and she didn’t think they’d know the significance of it or react so strongly. Had father done something to these people?
“Was his name Yahata?” the physician asked.
Ah, of course he had.
She sighed dropping her head in frustration. “The very same.”
Captain Johnson drew his rifle and leveled it at her and ordered the other two to back away from her and not for the first time did she wonder why one side of her family terrorized the other when they were capable of all they feared from the lower breeds and more. And to be reacted to in such a manner by Tau’Ri of all people.
“I wasn’t aware the people Prince Horus holds in such high esteem would punish a daughter for her father’s sins?” She asked bitterly before she pulled her awareness from her own emotions of self-pity and disappointment and turned it against the people in the room. They were concerned her connection to the infamous traitor would make her a threat to them and yet it wasn’t because of the family connection alone, there was worry mixed in with something else? Acknowledgement? Acknowledgment of what?
The words revenge kept flashing through Johnson’s mind and something creeped into her mind. A thought, a potential that she couldn’t comprehend. They were worried she’d seek revenge against them. For what?!
“We don’t.” It was the physician, Lahm moving between Captain Johnson and herself, her eyes filled with sympathy and caution. “We don’t…Captain Johnson.” She ordered him, however passively (Did the woman even possess the authority to do that?) “Lower your weapon.”
“Doctor Lahm.’
“She’s a Peer, they’re supposed to be crazy mutants with superpowers, right? So, if she wanted to kill us she would have already.”
Why would I want them dead? Inari thought.
Unless they think I’d want to avenge my father? I loved him, dearly but what he did was unforgivable…Besides? Why would they think I’d want to avenge him upon them…
The realization hit her like a staff blast.
And she swallowed, eying the group with what she hoped was a face as neutral as she could possibly maintain amidst the deluge of emotions.
“I see...h...how did he die?” she asked sounding far hoarser than she intended.
The universe was conspiring against them and all they wanted to do was find someplace safe to call home.
The irony was not lost on her.
paulobrito
Well-known member
I'm confused - what episode of Stargate are you referring to?
In my defense, I see the show a long time ago, probably is time to do it again.
In my defense, I see the show a long time ago, probably is time to do it again.
Watchdog that coincidence is too strong, it's gonna make for some great fic arc though.
Emancipation is the episode where Carter is abducted by Mongols while trying to help a couple who is in love but from different tribes. Classic Romeo and Juliet situation, with a dash of toxic masculinity mixed in to add evil to the characters
Emancipation is the episode where Carter is abducted by Mongols while trying to help a couple who is in love but from different tribes. Classic Romeo and Juliet situation, with a dash of toxic masculinity mixed in to add evil to the characters
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paulobrito
Well-known member
Oh, that one. Missed potential, indeed. But if the series is produced today, in the actual Hollywood climate, is going to be called one of the best. Brrrr.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Proceeds to order another 10 fleets of Fortress class ships from the Forerunners and to build Earth Shields able to withstand blasts from anything short of the suns going nova
Some people have all the luck? Huh?
Hah right and I couldn't do that in this setting because this Carter would just ruthlessly blow everyone up and set herself up as the Khan of Khans.
Plus Mongols weren't actually that sexist. Most of the most brutal Khans in history were known mama's boys and it was often that the only person who could countermand a Khan's orders was his mother or his highest ranking wife.
So what we get instead are two star crossed lovers, one of them an ex terrorist fleeing from the empire because of apartheid laws.
Don't worry! Only the House of Ra has those ships
Everyone else is stuck cracking planets the old fashioned way.