What if Stargate Command buried the gate?(RAR)

[Simon_Jester]

He can keep the gate on his ship, either in orbit (where we know it works) or after the Ha'tak lands, so the "secure a beachhead" option has become easier.

You're right, he could use ring transporters to get the troops to the planetary surface, and a landed Ha'tak is immune to, probably, anything Apophis thinks the Tau'ri have. Good point.

As for your comments on Goa'uld expectations of Earth's population, those are good points, but as was shown repeatedly Goa'uld are not the most sensible or reasonable of beings, so what might make sense to us may not make sense or even occur to them.

This is true- thing is, do we have any evidence Apophis wouldn't bring plenty of soldiers?

Remember, we're trying to explain why the loss of two Ha'taks is a decisive setback to Apophis' cause. That can be partly explained if he only has, oh, twenty of the things total. And it is reasonable to suppose that a loss of ground troops might affect him badly too- if he had enough ground troops aboard the Ha'taks that their loss would actually be a problem.

Besides, we saw what Apophis' plan would have been...and it was effective. Season 1's "There but for the Grace of God." Earth is getting it's ass kicked, with an estimated 1.5 billion casualties so far and the SGC about to be overrun.

Missed that episode... So, did Apophis land large Jaffa armies, or not?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually he was largely bombing places from orbit, that's where the "Ha'tak shots are 200 megatons each" line comes from. It's the episode immediately before "Politics/In the Serpent's Grasp" season ender. AS for why losing two Ha'tak was such a loss, I think it's a combination of "losing two Ha'tak to a primitive race and thus looks weak) or that those two Ha'tak contained a disproportionately high number of his best trained/most loyal Jaffa, so afterwards he's left with new recruits and garrison troops to fend off the other System Lords.

EDIT: I think it's quite reasonable that Apophis only has maybe 10-20 of the things, since his "huge" fleet at Vorash at the end of season 4 was maybe 15-20 plus his flagship, and that was all ships gained from absorbing Sokar's forces. So him losing 10-15% of his fleet in one go, with all hands, with no losses to the enemy, against primitives who don't even have spaceships of their own, is going to be a serious blow. The rest of his fleet may well have been enough to fend of other System Lords if he didn't suddenly appear weak to them.

@Elheru: I know the Goa'uld would have won if SG1 hadn't lucked out, I never said otherwise.

[NecronLord]

If the Jaffa are crappy fighters, but there are fifty thousand of them on the ship, you might expect to see some evidence of that from the point of view of the boarding party. They might not have trouble dealing with any individual group of Jaffa guards, but as soon as the alarm sounds they should be up to their asses in hordes of such guards even if individually they are weak.

They err... were.

Half of SG1 were captured right away, and only Skaraa being able to overpower Klorel's conciousness briefly caused him to spare O'Neill and Teal'c, as Apophis ordered them killed immediately on capture half-way through part 1, if you don't die because your captor can't bring himself to excecute you, that does't really mean his security sucks, and episode 1/2 of that story ended with them being up to their asses in guards when the alarm was raised, who just rolled a stun grenade in and captured them all.

They wake up in a cell at the start of Episode 2, when Bra'tac took them out of the cells and spent most of the second episode helping them sneak past guards; IE he would walk ahead, the guards would salute Bra'tac's rank (he was the highest ranking jaffa on board), then Bra'tac would kill them.

While they did get to run around on the goa'uld ships at the end of the episode, they did so mostly by avoiding the the active collaboration of the ship's XO.

The staffs being made to look scary was explained by O'Neill in a season 5 episode: "This is a weapon of terror, it is meant to intimidate people" compared to a P90: "this is a weapon of war, it is made to kill people."

As for security on the Ha'taks being absurd, yeah it is, but consider that as far as Apophis and Klorel were concerned they were going to put down an uppity world with a small population, so blowing up some stuff from orbit and deploying a limited number of Jaffa would have been enough (this is exactly what they do in "The Sentinel." They're used to fighting primitives that have no idea about spaceships or gate travel,so the idea of enemies sneaking aboard their ship is what TVTropes would call an "outside context problem."

You see in There but for the Grace of God, that the Goa'uld are capable of rendering an entire planetary surface radioactive, and that in one alternate reality Apophis and Klorel had depopulated large swathes of Europe and America with their ships. They had no intention of landing and occupying the world. Klorel was very explicit - "We shall burn their world to ashes" as was Apophis "we will wipe out the scourge that plagues us."

While it's said that he has brought an army, there's no reason to think he planned to take any ground facilities apart from the SGC, just as in There But for The Grace of God, where the goa'uld ships just imperviously fly around Earth blasting things and ramming Air Force One on their shields.

Also I suspect that there's minor goa'uld who would relish to the chance to boost their standing by taking out a system lord that was seen as weak (either to take that system lord's place or to gain prestige among the system lord's enemies) so actual loses that Apophis suffered there might a lot more then just 2 Ha'taks and their crews but he might also lost several important vasals/allies and their fleets so that the losses in the end were much worse,thus weakening Apophis' position within the System Lords.

Also, Apophis was chosen as a target by Sokar after this, in season 2, and though no one knew it at the time, Sokar's fleet was able to defeat the entire system lords' by season 3, and ten times the size anyone thought.

Sokar of course, had a heavily industrialized homeworld with motorcars and highways, so it's hardly a wonder that his realm was more productive than all the other goa'uld.

SG1 didn't "sneak aboard" the Ha'tak. It was pure accident that they landed there-- they were gating to Apophis' world and intercepted the gate in orbit.

Actually it was said to be a staging post IIRC; I'll have to check. Teal'c didn't recognize the address as far as I'd recall.

Also, Apophis claimed that his homeworld (which was never Chulak) had an iris or shield on the gate (Season 2, Serpent's Song) as Sokar used his Iris-breaching device on it, so they presumably would have died if they went there.

You're right, he could use ring transporters to get the troops to the planetary surface, and a landed Ha'tak is immune to, probably, anything Apophis thinks the Tau'ri have. Good point.

And indeed, anything they did have at that point. We know that their shields operate at what, 40% capacity in atmosphere from later episodes? You're still talking some serious kilotonnage of energy dispersal given their chromosphere antics in season four.

That said, yes, there's no reason to assume he had more than a dozen or so ships as far as I know.

[NecronLord]

It occurs to me that if they buried the gate, Hathor might have had to stay on Earth, and with no one to stop her. She might even had been well ensconced in the USA's upper echelons by the time Apophis or whoever appeared, if she was unable to get the gate unburied. She was found and woken by people who weren't involved with the gate programme after all, then tracked the gate down.

[NecronLord]

I'd also be very cautious about suggesting that Apophis is an idiot, or that he buys into his own propaganda. His first response to the attack from Earth was to send mass troops, and then nuclear weapons, through the gate, then he sent ships to bomb the planet from orbit, and then he deployed a bio-weapon that made the Ori plague look like a mild case of Athlete's Foot. Each time, only incredible, amazing luck preserved the Tau'ri.

He also went out of his way to capture and interrogate/host members of the SGC, and had a force being trained as infiltrators for the SGC. He was clearly interested in the possiblities of Earthican weapons and tactics:


Apophis' jaffa infiltration force training camp, Season 3, established prior to his first death.

There's no reason to think he wouldn't have eventually adopted modern US military ground tactics, when he deemed it politically safe to do so; the fact that he didn't do that immediately doesn't mean that he was outright dumb, it simply means he was smart enough to want to try out new training and military techniques in isolation, under controlled conditions. While this group were being trained as infiltraitors, they had a full armoury of SMGs, rifles, pistols and other duplicates of US equipment produced in both intar (training stun-gun) and live forms, presumably on one of Apophis' worlds; so he had a factory somewhere cloning US gear.

He may well have been very interested in things like tanks and attack helicopters, but those he could get from picking over the ruins and infesting survivors with goa'uld larvae quite happily.

He has a poor reputation compared to later villains like Anubis, but that's chiefly because Anubis was allowed to win more often on the show, because Anubis' goals were often directed at taking out other goa'uld, etc. Apophis rarely gets to win, because if his plans weren't foiled by incredible fluke, he'd have wiped out all the protagonists, take for example the season 5 opening episode, where Apophis' genre savvy response to the idea of working with Selmak and SG1 is "It's too late for that" and he prepares to kill them... whereupon the replicators happen to turn up at that exact second.

Or of course, The Nox, where he personally kills them all when they try to ambush him on a hunting trip (which incidentally, he is doing for biological research), and they're revived from death by an elder race.

Apophis is actually extremely competent in most appearances, his enemies just manage to survive by an amazing set of coincidences. He always takes Earth seriously as a threat, and immediately orders the excecution of SG1 several times when they're his captives; his only real problem is that he trusted Bra'tac.

[Elheru Aran]

I wasn't sure it was Chulak that SG1 was going to. I knew it was one of Apophis' worlds but didn't have time to look it up. Ah well.

But yes. The trend of fortune favouring SG1 and the SGC in extraordinary fashion makes one wonder whether the Ancients were deliberately intervening to support them every now and then. I suspect that may well have been the case, as Ark of Truth implied that Morgan had been watching them for some time.

[SilverDragonRed]

Bra'tak had a plan to get Apophis and Klorel to start fighting each other through a deception. Would that have been able to save Earth had SG-1 not been aboard the Ha'tak?

[Elheru Aran]

Bra'tak had a plan to get Apophis and Klorel to start fighting each other through a deception. Would that have been able to save Earth had SG-1 not been aboard the Ha'tak?

We don't really know enough about that to tell. It would have depended upon how many Jaffa were more loyal to Bra'tac than the Goa'uld, I think. But it could certainly have been enough of a distraction to prolong Earth's survival. I doubt it would have actually helped for any significant time, though.

[SilverDragonRed]

There were two Jaffa on Klorel's Ha'tak who were part of the fledgling Jaffa Rebellion. Bra'tak's plan involved him and his loyal padawans striking at Apophis' Ha'tak in Deathgliders 'under the orders of Klorel'.

[Elheru Aran]

There were two Jaffa on Klorel's Ha'tak who were part of the fledgling Jaffa Rebellion. Bra'tak's plan involved him and his loyal padawans striking at Apophis' Ha'tak in Deathgliders 'under the orders of Klorel'.

So... pretty much just stepping off the curb and winging it, then? Yeah. No. They might have noted that there would be a live Ha'tak behind them with an actually-loyal Klorel being pissed off at the current trend of treason and ready to send a few plasma bolts up their asses... as useful a way as any to demonstrate his loyalty to Apophis.

[Simon_Jester]

If the Jaffa are crappy fighters, but there are fifty thousand of them on the ship, you might expect to see some evidence of that from the point of view of the boarding party. They might not have trouble dealing with any individual group of Jaffa guards, but as soon as the alarm sounds they should be up to their asses in hordes of such guards even if individually they are weak.

They err... were.

Half of SG1 were captured right away, and only Skaraa being able to overpower Klorel's conciousness briefly caused him to spare O'Neill and Teal'c, as Apophis ordered them killed immediately on capture half-way through part 1, if you don't die because your captor can't bring himself to excecute you, that does't really mean his security sucks, and episode 1/2 of that story ended with them being up to their asses in guards when the alarm was raised, who just rolled a stun grenade in and captured them all.

Okay, fine by me.

Again, I (to my regret) never got a chance to watch this episode. In any event, if the Ha'taks were in fact swarming with Jaffa, that supports the idea that Apophis brought a lot of Jaffa, which he would have reason to do anyway, in which case that supports the idea that part of Apophis' "humiliation and weakening" at losing the Ha'taks was in fact losing the troops on the Ha'taks.

While it's said that he has brought an army, there's no reason to think he planned to take any ground facilities apart from the SGC, just as in There But for The Grace of God, where the goa'uld ships just imperviously fly around Earth blasting things and ramming Air Force One on their shields.

Okay, that is a good countervailing point; if Apophis is simply planning to totally exterminate all life on Earth via orbital bombardment, he would have little need to bring an unusually large force of soldiers.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It just occurred to me that we actually have an example of what would have happened if they never used the Stargate in the first place, namely Stargate: Continuum, where Baal goes back in time and sinks the freighter carrying the gate to the US in 1939.

Things go pretty normally (by real-life standards, not Stargate standards), right up until Baal shows up with a fuckoff huge fleet to conquer the planet. His queen Qetesh promptly assassinates him and orders a massive bombardment. It does not end well for Earth. Though there is no mention made of what happened to the Replicators in this new timeline.

[NecronLord]

It just occurred to me that we actually have an example of what would have happened if they never used the Stargate in the first place, namely Stargate: Continuum, where Baal goes back in time and sinks the freighter carrying the gate to the US in 1939.

Things go pretty normally (by real-life standards, not Stargate standards), right up until Baal shows up with a fuckoff huge fleet to conquer the planet. His queen Qetesh promptly assassinates him and orders a massive bombardment. It does not end well for Earth. Though there is no mention made of what happened to the Replicators in this new timeline.

As I mentioned in the thread we had on the film, my hypothesis was that Ba'al, having been heavily involved in using the anti-replicator weapon to defeat them in the original timeline, presumably used it after he went to the new timeline, or perhaps told the Asgard how to do it early on.

Presumably he ambushed Anubis early on and dealt with him too.

[NecronLord]

Bra'tak had a plan to get Apophis and Klorel to start fighting each other through a deception. Would that have been able to save Earth had SG-1 not been aboard the Ha'tak?

Another question is why would he bother? He's not got a personal connection to the Tau'ri in this scenario, nor any belief that they will help free the Jaffa.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good points. It still remains true though that burying the gate is the absolute worst possible move. Either Apophis or another system lord finds them by chance or by finding Sha're as someone pointed out, or the Replicators obliterate them and everything else. Earth has everything to gain and nothing to lose by operating the SGC.

[Elheru Aran]

Bra'tak had a plan to get Apophis and Klorel to start fighting each other through a deception. Would that have been able to save Earth had SG-1 not been aboard the Ha'tak?

Another question is why would he bother? He's not got a personal connection to the Tau'ri in this scenario, nor any belief that they will help free the Jaffa.

There are two situations I can think of:

--Some sort of last ditch "honourable death" against the tyrants who he has been forced to serve for the past, what, couple of centuries.

--Or, more realistically, he didn't have a plan to start with, just two loyal Jaffa and he was straight up making it up as he went when he saw an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into Apophis' plans. Sort of a "fuck it, I'll go with whatever to stick it to the man" moment.

[NecronLord]

Bra'tak had a plan to get Apophis and Klorel to start fighting each other through a deception. Would that have been able to save Earth had SG-1 not been aboard the Ha'tak?

Another question is why would he bother? He's not got a personal connection to the Tau'ri in this scenario, nor any belief that they will help free the Jaffa.

There are two situations I can think of:

--Some sort of last ditch "honourable death" against the tyrants who he has been forced to serve for the past, what, couple of centuries.

--Or, more realistically, he didn't have a plan to start with, just two loyal Jaffa and he was straight up making it up as he went when he saw an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into Apophis' plans. Sort of a "fuck it, I'll go with whatever to stick it to the man" moment.

Yeah, but in-canon, he knew about the tau'ri. He and Teal'c have both stood by and watched various atrocities before. The goa'uld exterminated two billion people on Ma'chello's planet while Bra'tac was Apophis' First Prime, and Apophis may have been involved in that (he sent Teal'c to hunt for Ma'chello later) and he didn't try anything then (Not because he's a coward, but because there was no opportunity to act productively, as Teal'c said, 'many have said that, you are the first I believed could do it!'). Without the belief that the SGC would do something, I can't imagine he'd throw his life away to help Earth either. It also sounded like he was going to wait until joined battle with the Tau'ri warships that Bra'tac imagined to exist...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmm..an extra tidbit on Goa'uld fleets has just turned up. I was watching season 6's "Disclosure" (where they inform the British, French and Chinese about the Stargate program) where they say that the Goa'uld have "Dozens, if not hundreds" of Ha'tak in total. Given that there are at least a dozen System Lords (8 were present at the conference in mid-season 5's "Last Stand," and those were only the most powerful) plus a couple historically who were outcasts but still had large fleets (Sokar, Anubis), each System Lord having maybe 10-20 Ha'tak tops sounds reasonable, and it explains why losing two was such a loss for Apophis.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Missed the edit window, but the same episode also states that a Ha'tak can carry "hundreds if not thousands" or Jaffa.

[NecronLord]

Consistent with this is Thor's remark that the System Lords collectively are capable of launching an attack one hundred times the size of the two-ship attack by Apophis.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh good point, I'd forgotten that one.

[NecronLord]

So I went ahead and re-watched the episodes. There's various bits that do seem to imply the ships are quite empty, but there are several instances of hiding from patrols and SG1 get captured twice (once only two of them) though they do break out too.

Within the Serpent's Grasp

They arrive in a cargo hold, dark, with an unguarded but active stargate in it, steal weapons from the crates. It's implied they're using the gate to ship supplies through onto the ship.

11:00 Some guards come in, SG1 hides behind the crates.
14:12 SG1 move through the ship's corridors, using as much cover as possible. All corridors appear dark and relatively uninhabited. (Ship on night-cylce?)
14:49 They actually just walk up to Klorel's sarcophagus while he's in it. This is later said to be the bridge.
15:49 Hammond prepares to send SG3 and the other marine teams to 'arrest' SG1 'officially' for court martial. It's pretty obvious he means for them to act as reinforcements mission though.
16:43 A guard enters the bridge, SG1 kill him, vapourise him.
18:40 SG1 relocate themselves.
19:20 SG1 hide from a patrol of ten serpent guards and at least four un-helped jaffa.
19:30 They sneak into the hangar deck. Jaffa priestesses walk past with Klorel's sarcophagus.
20:30 SG1 follow them to a meeting in the stargate chamber, various military and 'civilian' personnel are seen. SG1 just sneak in the back and hide behind the crates. The jaffa then leave.
23:20 SG1 plan to kidnap Klorel. Teal'c says "They do not know we are aboard, there would be little reason to keep him aboard."
23:45 The team attack the goa'uld ship's bridge, three guards with Klorel. Teal'c advises O'Neill to lock the doors, then shoots the lock for both doors.
26:30 Sam & Daniel hide from a patrol of eight serpent guards in a corridor, approaching the hangar bay. Plant explosives on one of the death gliders.
28:00 Jaffa attempt to override/repair the lock, others physically work on opening the door, while serpent guards stand by to enter the room.
29:30 Jaffa break through the doors, surround Jack & Teal'c.
31:20 Klorel brings Teal'c and Daniel as prisoners to the stargate chamber to present them to Apophis' hologram. Apophis asks how many more came with them, O'Neill claims 'thousands' Klorel says 'I assure you father there can be no more' when Apophis orders a painful excecution for Teal'c and orders O'Neill killed however Klorel pleases.
33:50 Klorel/Skaara orders the priests and guards to hold off on the excecution, and take Teal'c and Jack back to the bridge.
35:40 The ship drops out of lightspeed somewhere past Saturn.
36:40 Daniel and Sam hide from a a large group of Serpent Guard and Jaffa, then tail them to the hangar bay, where they man the death gliders.
38:28 Daniel and Sam duck out of the way of a couple of guards leaving the bridge, distract more with a smoke cannister, along with Jack and Teal'c they overcome the guards, kill Skaraa.
41:09 The ship approaches Earth, Earth and the Moon are visible.

The Serpent's Lair

01:37 Jack says "we should expect some of their reinforcements through that door any second." Sam says that she'd set a 24 hour time delay on the explosives they'd been planting, as of this point, they prepare to detonate manually.
02:20 Guards arrive and begin to crowbar the doors, throw in a flash grenade, capture SG1.
04:45 SG1 wake up still blinded in a cell. "We've been in worse situations" Everyone disagreed.
05:40 Daniel "Right now they're getting ready to wipe out the major cities of Earth. They'll do it from orbit, out of reach."
07:00 Bra'tac chews out the former leader of the jaffa onboard (has he come over from Apophis' ship?) and executes the guy. He puts Klorel in the sarcophagus.
07:50 Major Samuels claims they'd not be in this situation if they'd buried the stargate. Hammond doesn't seem impressed.
08:50 Bra'tac rings over to Apophis' ship, reports on what has happened and assures Apophis that he's put Klorel in his sarcophagus. Apophis orders Bra'tac to excecute SG1, Bra'tac says he'll do it himself.
10:00 Samuels' goa'uld buster plan with the gigaton warheads, been discussed before.
11:25 Bra'tac enters the prison cell, Jack and Teal'c, punches Jack in the face and decks him, then starts chewing them out again. God I love that guy.
13:00 The ships have been in orbit for eighteen hours. It seems like a goa'uld shock grenade can make people unconcious for many hours, or that that's how long the sarcophagus might take to deal with chest wounds from a 9mm.
15:00 Bra'tac gives the group back their weapons, in the Stargate Chamber. Scene linked above.
19:24 The C4 is now 41m from detonation.
23:17 SG1 encounters two guards, kills them..
24:22 Apophis orders Klorel to burn the first city on Earth down to the ground (would be interesting to know the target).
24:50 Bra'tac claims "There are sentries in every corridor." Presumably around the bridge.
25:30 Bra'tac beats two sentries up.
27:00 Bra'tac goes in first with the a rebel jaffa (the serpent guard with him), creates a diversion by blaspheming Klorel.
28:11 SG1 and the two other rebel jaffa attacks, guards begin coming in from elsewhere, Daniel mortally wounded (he gets better). They take Klorel with them to use as a human shield briefly. We only see two of the rebel jaffa killed, but presumably the serpent guard dies too, unless he was killed in friendly fire there.
30:10 SG1 beam over to Apophis' ship, holding Klorel as a hostage, which causes Apophis to order them to hold their fire, run out of there and shoot the locks. This is one of the scenes that always made me believe the claim Daniel makes one time that goa'uld don't feel familial love. If Apophis didn't care for Klorel in an emotional way, he'd just shoot through him and put them in the sarcophagus again.
31:00 They make it un-challenged to the top of the shield generator, destroy it with grenades.
33:30 They use a goa'uld shock-grenade to take out the maintenance personnel in Apophis' ship's glider bay and steal grenades.
34:45 Daniel is revived, and escapes by stargate. Apophis and Klorel escape by ring transporter presumably to a smaller ship hyperspace or by going through the stargate after Daniel.

I'm not sure how many soldiers one could conclude were aboard from that.

I know also from later episodes that crews of 1000 (ha'tak) and 2000 (unknown class) are given for goa'uld capital ships, by Teal'c and Ba'al respectively, while we once scaled the ships at 650 m or so and production art gave them a maximum width of 1km.

[Death Zebra]

I'm not sure if the replicators would attack The Milky Way after taking out the Asgard as Goa'uld technology would be a downgrade. I know we've seen them consume inferior tech before but I don't know of any instance where that wasn't just to shore up the numbers in a pinch except maybe season 5 on Apophis' mothership; I can't remember why the hell they were involved there.

If the Replicators do take over enough of the Milky Way maybe Anubis uses the weapon on Dakara to start over again like he tries at the end of season 8 assuming he's in a position to do so. After that maybe he goes through with whatever he was planning with Khalek; Building an ascended army or whatever. Fuck knows whether he'd manage to defeat the ascended Ancients but they seem to be largely too stupid to defend themselves at all having not taken any real action against the Ori even knowing they intended to wipe them out. And after that, if he does defeat the ascended Ancients, presumably the Ori become aware of whatever the situation in The Milky Way is (with no ascended Ancients to conceal anything from them) and there's some conflict between them and the Anubis ruled Milky Way since both sides are megalomaniacal but there's too many unknowns to predict that and I've probably used too many maybes and speculated too much by this point anyway.

[NecronLord]

It's worth noting that in-canon, they came to the Milky Way when they found out about Delmak (Sokar, then Apophis, and later Ba'al/Anubis' capital planet) which is heavily industrialized, and might well have more industry on it than the entire Asgard civilization (the goa'uld System Lords' forces supposedly outnumbered the asgard even during peacetime after all and Sokar's fleet was able to defeat the System Lords) - if they never found out about Delmak by getting aboard Apophis' flagship - there's no evidence the Asgard knew about it; the Tok'ra and System Lords didn't know how developed it was until Season 3 of the show.



In the show, the lights on the raised roadways between the landed ha'taks are a six lane highway leading into/beneath Sokar's palace, and move as though they're motor-cars. When they board a goa'uld ship they immediately head for that world to consume it. Without the Tau'ri/Tok'ra assassinating Sokar it's also reasonably conceivable that Sokar would end up defeating Anubis. Anubis' knowledge didn't prevent the divided System Lords from giving him a good fight, after all; a single leader might well have crushed him with overwhelming numbers.

So SG-1's actions may have caused the replicators to come to the Milky Way much more quickly than they otherwise would have. But they would have done so eventually.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Wait, Delmak was used as a capital world by Anubis and Ba'al? Are you sure? I thought it could smashed to rubble by the Replicator-infested Ha'tak crashing into it at a high fraction of light speed.