Stargate TBO

[NecronLord]

Shaq'ran was considered a minor lord at least according to Stargate Wiki which goes a little by the show and some from the RPG.

A minor SYSTEM Lord.

Also, you're taking evidence from the RPG? Very well...

Apophis was a major System Lord, and a primary villain of Stargate SG-1 through its first several seasons. As such, he had a considerable army and fleet at his command. At the beginning of the show's first season, Apophis held a fleet of no less than twenty ha'tak pyramid ships, perhaps more.

He was confident enough in his force numbers to detail two ha'tak to attack the technologically backward planet Earth, while still holding his considerable territory against the constant incursions of his fellow System Lords.

Is there a canon ruling for Stargate?

The RPG claimed to be canon, but since then they lost the liscence. The books' pubisher does not claim to be canonical. Infinity has been called non-canonical by the producers.

The disease that Apophis created was rather interesting. How was this disease going to travel around the world in a week? The advantage of the Ori disease was its slower moving pace allowed it to infect people and travel without burning itself out.

There is no way a disease that could wipe out the world in a week would suceed. Unless it somehow can travel through the air

Which was precisely what it was said to be able to do. The stuff was also said to be 'like a virus' and biological, but beyond that, it immediately begins multiplying exponentially, travels through the air, and infects 'every living thing' it's more like some kind of nano-wank grey goo than it is any real virus.

and live forever it would burn itself out. Even if it was airborn and suvived any conditions killing everyone would take longer than a week.

Note that in one episode, a bacterial agent was supposedly able to survive a close range nuclear blast, as well as repeated attack with flamethrowers at short range. Early SG1 shits all over any kind of sanity regarding biological agents.

BTW. The fact that he had to use Ryac shows how weak Apophis was. He had the super weapon yet didnt even have a single hyperspace capable cargo ship (which even the Tok'ra had) to delivery it to Earth.

Err. Nirrti was in no way said to be weak, yet she did the same thing.

A kid-bomb through the stargate is a very economical way to kill a planet, for the goa'uld.

EDIT: This isn't terribly impressive, actually, compared to Pelops' nanocytes, which seem to be able to make children grow by magic, without requiring them to eat an abnormal amount of food.

[Bilbo]

Was not trying to use RPG information. I was just quoting from Stargate Wiki which seems to pull from the RPG some which makes the information suspect to me which is why I asked.

What Nirrti did though made some sense. Her weapon required close contact with a Stargate. Apophis had no such need with his bio weapon. A single cargo ship with a couple loyal Jaffa would have worked better than his lame subterfuge with Ryak.

[NecronLord]

Was not trying to use RPG information. I was just quoting from Stargate Wiki which seems to pull from the RPG some which makes the information suspect to me which is why I asked.

What Nirrti did though made some sense. Her weapon required close contact with a Stargate. Apophis had no such need with his bio weapon. A single cargo ship with a couple loyal Jaffa would have worked better than his lame subterfuge with Ryak.

Except of course, he didn't know that they lacked defensive ships (or at least, Bra'tac didn't) and it would take some time to get there.

And by 'lame subterfuge' you mean 'plan that would have worked save by sheer protagonist luck?'

[Bilbo]

Was not trying to use RPG information. I was just quoting from Stargate Wiki which seems to pull from the RPG some which makes the information suspect to me which is why I asked.

What Nirrti did though made some sense. Her weapon required close contact with a Stargate. Apophis had no such need with his bio weapon. A single cargo ship with a couple loyal Jaffa would have worked better than his lame subterfuge with Ryak.

Except of course, he didn't know that they lacked defensive ships (or at least, Bra'tac didn't) and it would take some time to get there.

And by 'lame subterfuge' you mean 'plan that would have worked save by sheer protagonist luck?'

Yes lame luck. The only reason it had a chance was due to Bra'tac showing up to tell them. Otherwise Teal'c would have never even known. Which makes you wonder if Bra'tec was a wonder agent or convenient dupe of Apophis. Now combine this with what if Ryak trips walking down the corridor and oops I hope Jaffa are all immune to this uber disease.

[NecronLord]

Yes lame luck. The only reason it had a chance was due to Bra'tac showing up to tell them.

Which Apophis knew would happen, because Bra'tac is a big damn traitor.

Otherwise Teal'c would have never even known. Which makes you wonder if Bra'tec was a wonder agent or convenient dupe of Apophis. Now combine this with what if Ryak trips walking down the corridor and oops I hope Jaffa are all immune to this uber disease.

How often do most children trip up and lose two teeth? And you're assuming Apophis didn't bother to produce some cure for this horrific nightmare agent.


I'm still waiting for you to provide evidence that he wasn't a System Lord.

[SCVN 2812]

Its all been my preference to take Teal'c at his word at 10c being the top for Goa'uld Ha'taks and that those two represented the tip of the spear for a radical new type of ship being put into service by the Goa'uld. Since the other System Lords had their own in service by the following seasons and dozens by the mid to late seasons, Apophis is probably not the originator or the security at his shipyards sucks. It may even have been something Ra was cooking up before he got nuked and fell into the hands of the rest of the System Lord before Heru'ur was able to assert control over his father's realm, assuming there is even any sort of succession rules in place for when a Goa'uld buys it but no one can claim responsibility.

At first glance its a little outlandish considering how breezily the Goa'uld circumnavigate the galaxy in later seasons but the Goa'uld are known tech scavengers and very sudden, massive leaps in tech quality are a recurring plot line in SG-1. Furthermore Goa'uld live for thousands of years, Jaffa for a century and a half or better so a decade long trip to an enemy planet in a Ha'tak to bomb the crap out of enemy defenses around the Stargate, securing it with onboard troops and then sending in the rest of the army via the gate is an entirely reasonable tactic for the Goa'uld. Heck, even humans with our comparatively short lifetimes have in the past had the patience to fight wars lasting decades.

If those two ships were the first with others still a ways down the pipeline and took an army of potentially thousands of Jaffa with them, then Apophis was extremely vulnerable. Any System Lord who could put the new motherships into service before he got his second batch could strike anywhere in his empire with impunity.

[Junghalli]

Its all been my preference to take Teal'c at his word at 10c being the top for Goa'uld Ha'taks and that those two represented the tip of the spear for a radical new type of ship being put into service by the Goa'uld. Since the other System Lords had their own in service by the following seasons and dozens by the mid to late seasons, Apophis is probably not the originator or the security at his shipyards sucks. It may even have been something Ra was cooking up before he got nuked and fell into the hands of the rest of the System Lord before Heru'ur was able to assert control over his father's realm, assuming there is even any sort of succession rules in place for when a Goa'uld buys it but no one can claim responsibility.

At first glance its a little outlandish considering how breezily the Goa'uld circumnavigate the galaxy in later seasons but the Goa'uld are known tech scavengers and very sudden, massive leaps in tech quality are a recurring plot line in SG-1. Furthermore Goa'uld live for thousands of years, Jaffa for a century and a half or better so a decade long trip to an enemy planet in a Ha'tak to bomb the crap out of enemy defenses around the Stargate, securing it with onboard troops and then sending in the rest of the army via the gate is an entirely reasonable tactic for the Goa'uld. Heck, even humans with our comparatively short lifetimes have in the past had the patience to fight wars lasting decades.

Just how big an area are the Goa'uld spread over in terms of percent of the galactic disk though? Because if it's a sizable portion of the Milky Way we'd be talking voyages of hundreds or thousands of years if they were really limited to 10 c. It would still take 10,000 years to get from one end of the Milky Way to another at that speed.

[Bilbo]

How often do most children trip up and lose two teeth? And you're assuming Apophis didn't bother to produce some cure for this horrific nightmare agent.

Who said he had to trip hard enough to knock out two teeth? The two teeth were weak enough that Ryak was told to just bite down hard to break them open. A simple fall or heavy bump may smack his jaw together hard enough to break and mix them.

As for a cure, if the disease moves as fast as they think it would it might be impossible to stop even with a cure. Unless the cure is another super nanite virus thats mobile and hunts it down even faster than the virus moves.

[NecronLord]

Its all been my preference to take Teal'c at his word at 10c being the top for Goa'uld Ha'taks and that those two represented the tip of the spear for a radical new type of ship being put into service by the Goa'uld.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The nearest planets with stargates are supposedly hundreds of years away, and one of those was not on the Ra cartouche. Osiris was able to get back into circulation within a year, in her five thousand year old personal ship. It must be capable of at least a hundred c or so.

Furthermore, there is some modern kind of ha'tak in Teal'c's flashbacks in Threshold IIRC.

There is certainly some degree of inheritance expected among the goa'uld, at least by the Jaffa. They expected Klorel to take over what was left when Apophis died...

Who said he had to trip hard enough to knock out two teeth? The two teeth were weak enough that Ryak was told to just bite down hard to break them open. A simple fall or heavy bump may smack his jaw together hard enough to break and mix them.

You're making this up. You have no idea how hard he would have to do it. You're just assuming the least competant explanation.

As for a cure, if the disease moves as fast as they think it would it might be impossible to stop even with a cure. Unless the cure is another super nanite virus thats mobile and hunts it down even faster than the virus moves.

If we're accepting that it's a nanite, then goa'uld nanotechnology can be shut down and even reprogrammed by a specially calibrated radio signal.

Of course, Apophis could always just nuke the area; unlike the SGC, he'd know what was going on.

Are you going to defend your assertions about Apophis not being a System Lord or what?

[Chris OFarrell]

Well, unless the TOB US is absurdly subtle and careful -and I'm not entirely sure if they will be, not because they are TRYING to piss everyone off, but because their idea of 'normal' involves nukes nukes and more nukes

Yeah, let's just all but outright ignore the fact that the TBOverse US has a small toolset for special operations, in the SEALs, who handle all sorts of things from rescuing US Nationals across the world from bad guys, rescuing shot down SAC aircrew, etc.

You know, given the TBOverse US slant on things; I can just imagine their reaction to an attack on a SAC survey base that was set up to observe the night sky on X212371 or whenever --- drive an old obsolete M60A1 into the Stargate and then show the Jaffa what 120mm Cannister does.

"There are some weird guys shooting these bolts of light at us, what do we do?"

*sound of tank comamnder racking the bolt on his .50 caliber*

"We kill them."

It would be interesting to see a evaluative test of .50 BMG rounds on Jaffa armor, considering that it's so weak that SGC used the P-90 for a while, and it's not that great a gun.

Yeah...and the SG1 US could easily have driven M2/M3 IFV's through the Gate and slaughtered the Jaffa, but they don't and didn't because:

A. Its almost always not neccessary.
B. You DON'T want to give the Goa'uld ideas. They are lousy at inventing their own stuff -except Anubis, Ba'al and a few exceptions- but they are GREAT at ripping ideas off.

And .50BMG goes right through Jaffa armor without slowing down, as proven when Jack in 'Forever in a Day' got on an M2 and scathed down a gigantic human wave charge, albeit with the help of a squad with MP5's, M16's, and at least one M249.

[MKSheppard]

B. You DON'T want to give the Goa'uld ideas. They are lousy at inventing their own stuff -except Anubis, Ba'al and a few exceptions- but they are GREAT at ripping ideas off.

And Humanity is a bunch of morons in return?

Given how fast we mastered long range spaceflight in SGCverse, it's just as likely that we'll see M2A5 Bradleys rolling out of Stargates with 30mm Naquadah Applique armor, and a rapid fire scaled up staff cannon in place of the 25mm....

[NecronLord]

30mm Naquadah Applique armor,

That shit is explosive. Stargates are pretty durable, true, but only when they're active, as far as we know. Transporter rings and other things made of the same material are not especially tough.

Are you thinking of the (also super-rare the-goa'uld-have-way-more-than-earth-does) other wank-element, Trinium?

[Themightytom]

Trinium idn't come from the gao'uld, the aliens in "Spirits" made the SGC aware of it when they shot O'Neill with an arrow. Didn't they point out it was problematic as armor in a vest because it becomes superheated? Im thinking of the episode where they do the documentary and frasier dies.

Obviously naquidah would make a bad armor, as, while it doesn't seem"Volatile" it DOES have the energy enhancing properties.

[NecronLord]

Trinium idn't come from the gao'uld,

Apophis encased the (huge) power core of his in-construction battleship in solid trinium. It's a fair bet they have access to the stuff. The Asgard also used it, in the hull of the O'Neill, alloyed with Naquadah and Carbon.

the aliens in "Spirits" made the SGC aware of it when they shot O'Neill with an arrow. Didn't they point out it was problematic as armor in a vest because it becomes superheated? Im thinking of the episode where they do the documentary and frasier dies.

I think they were talking about ordinary inserts there.