Goa'uld

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The Goa'uld are a species of eusocial parasitic sapients that are the first revealed and primary villains for much of the Stargate franchise.

Attributes

Goa'uld resemble lampreys and are about thirty centimeters long. They are capable of entering the body of a humanoid to commandeer control of it. Surgical removal of a Goa'uld from a host organism is possible, but is a difficult and complex operation. Once established, the parasite increases the host's lifespan, strength, and general health. Advanced technologies, such as sarcophagi, further increase the host's life expectancy to practical immortality while the symbiot itself can live unaided for milenia if it moves from host to host. Surgical Removal of a Goa'uld Symbiot without killing the host is possible, although it is an extremely difficult proceedure.

Goa'uld reproduction is done via Queens, which are capable of producing large quanities of offspring as well as being able to pass on a genetic memory to their offspring and are capable of selectively altering them, being able to produce Goa'uld born scietificially literate as well as drones with highly limited minds and mindless blanks.

Most Goa'uld have Naquadah in their blood and release trace amounts of it into that of their hosts', although this is not vital to their survival. The Goa'uld occasionally install sensor systems geared to detect said Naquedah into certain machines such as Hand Devices for security purposes.

Jaffa, Goa'uld and former Goa'uld hosts have an ability to sense a Goa'uld symbiot in close proximity. The mechanism of this detection has never been reveiled.

History

Native to P3X-888, the Goa'uld emerged as a powerful faction after the collapse/Ascension of the Ancient civilization. Using the Stargate network, the Goa'uld managed to come across ancient Earth and posed as gods among several early Terran civilizations. They relocated populations of humans to various other worlds, transplanting human civilizations across the galaxy and eventually abandoning Earth. The Goa'uld established a feudal empire over most of the Milky Way, keeping themselves in power via armies of Jaffa and religious indoctrination, with human serfs under the Goa'uld worshiping them as gods.

Organization

Goa'uld society was feudal, but far from united. The Goa'uld sphere of influence was divided into different kingdoms consisting of several planets ruled by a System Lord, who in turn had several administrators ruling over smaller domains within the kingdom. Various staffs of officers, administrators and scientists served these administrators. Beneath them were the Jaffa, who served the Goa'uld in a military capacity, and human serfs and slaves. Administration was often rather loose, with many worlds simply being abandoned and left to their own devices after their usefullness expired.

Under normal conditions, the Goa'uld system lords were constantly at each other's throats, vying for power in a semi-ritualised form of warfare, cooperating only in the face of major threat to their status-quo. To prevent potential threats from cropping up, the Goa'uld banned scientific and technological learning among their subjects and any civilization that was deemed hazardous was to be quickly dispatched.

Despite there fractured nature, the Majority of the System Lords in the Goa'uld Sphere of Influence were willing to collectively make agreements in responce to external forces, ethier diplomatically (such as the Asgard) or with military force (such as with Anubis) in a very loose alliance. A few Renegade System Lords existed outside this alliance however, generally after being exiled after being thrown out after a military defeat.

Threat Assessment

At their peak, the Goa'uld collectively had a vast interstellar domain under their control and were the dominant faction in the Milky Way galaxy, ruling over billions of human serfs and thousands of star systems. However, most of these worlds were at an Iron Age period of development, although there were some industrial hubs, such as Delmak, with shipyards. Each System Lord commanded a fleet of Ha'tak-class Motherships, each one capable of wreaking massive damage on a planetary civilization via orbital bombardment with weapons rated at 200 megatons. Very prominent System Lords somtimes fielded larger command ships, but these were quite rare.

Goa'uld ground forces were composed of Jaffa infantry, which -- as stated before -- normally fight in a semi-ritualized form of warfare. The standard Jaffa infantryman wore metallic armor which offered some protection against small arms and wielded a spear-shaped staff weapon capable of firing energy bolts at a rate comparable to that of a semi-automatic rifle. Additional weaponry included more powerful staff cannons, Zat'nikatel sidearms and stun grenades. Their forces lacked indirect artillery, ground vehicle support, camouflage, and night vision equipment, and they used outdated tactics such as massed charges, putting Jaffa at a massive disadvantage against Terran infantry in combat. Airpower in the form of Al'kesh Bombers and Death Glider fightercraft somewhat offset the lack of surface support gear. The Goa'uld were known to supplement their Jaffa forces with levied Humans to serve as cannon fodder, a pratice most commonly used by Goa'uld driven to despairation.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Goa'uld was the fractured nature of their society; the constant infighting was a glaring weakness to those seeking to undermine it (most notably the Tok'ra and the forces of Stargate Command). Exposing the plans of one particular System Lord involving the violation of an agreement or the development of new weapons technology that could tilt the balance of power in his/her favor to the rest and could easily bring down their wrath upon the offending System Lord. Another flaw was their dependance upon religion and mysticism to keep there Jaffa and human subjects in line; a major effort of Stargate Command was to dispel the notion of Goa'uld divinity.

Goa'uld of Note

• Ra
• Ba'al
• Apophis
• Anubis
• Yu
• Sokar