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theguidinghand) wrote2011-11-23 01:50 am
theguidinghand) wrote2011-11-23 01:50 am
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ataraxion
PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Pyraven
OOC Journal:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaviiq
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: No; I'm 18.
Email + IM: [gmail] maddening[dot]gale[at]gmail[dot]com / [aim] pyraven
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: "Todd" (Name given by the humans occupying Atlantis, refers to himself as Guide)
Canon: Stargate Atlantis
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Between Infection (S5 E17) and Enemy at the Gate (S5 E20)
Number: 099 (081 if 099 is already taken)
Setting: Todd is native to a fictionalized version of the modern-day Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. (Also of note: Wraith, the war with the Lanteans, the First Siege of Atlantis, Iratus bug)
History:
Being a supporting character (and an antagonistic one at that), Todd only reveals snippets of his past in the course of the TV series. The Legacy series of novels expands on his meager past, but their canon status is somewhat shaky. Using both, this is roughly what his past looks like:
He was born in the early years of the Wraith-Lantean War, some ten thousand years before present day. Todd chose the path of a Blade, a soldier in his Queen's service, and joined in the fight toward the end of the war. At some point between the submersion of Atlantis and the Lantean exodus, he witnessed the activation of the Attero Device - a machine created by a Lantean scientist that ripped apart hyperspace-bound Wraith ships. The Attero Device was shut down after a three-day test, when it was discovered that it interfered with stargate operations, and the Wraith siege continued without hinderance.
In the years following the Lanteans' defeat, he started to climb up the Wraith social ladder. He used his wits and his blade to pull together a grand alliance of hive-ships, even gaining the attention of a Queen in the process. After proving his worth to her, he became her Consort - the most favored man in her harem. She bore him two children: one son and one daughter. (Given the rarity of women in Wraith society, this was like simultaneously winning the lottery and being awarded the Medal of Honor.)
And then, disaster. Although the exact order and timing of events is somewhat vague, two things are certain. At some point, Todd's Queen was killed in battle, and he was landed in an underground Genii prison. Beaten, starved, and used as a tool for interrogating prisoners, and having lost his Queen, Todd gave up hope. He spent an unspecified number of years in captivity, feeding on people who were often kept in the cell adjacent to his. The fate of his children is left unknown, but it's implied that they, along with their mother, are dead.
In 2006, everything changed. The Genii running the prison captured one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the Tau'ri[1]. The Genii commander, Kolya, forced Todd to feed on Sheppard multiple times, but Sheppard proved to be made of sterner stuff than most men. After figuring that the Genii would eventually get around to killing him, Sheppard proposed that he and Todd should break out of the prison together - once they reached the planet's stargate, they would part ways, and all bets would be off. They succeeded, and during their escape, Todd was able to give Sheppard back the life force he stole.
A year later, Todd alerted the Tau'ri-led Atlantis Expedition to a new, mutual threat. The Asuran replicators, freed from their stand-down directive by the Tau'ri, began to glass human-populated worlds. The Asuran's logic behind such a drastic move was that it would eliminate the Wraith food supply. Todd worked with Tau'ri scientist Rodney McKay to create a program that would sever the bonds between the Asuran nanites. After multiple failed attempts to perfect the coding, McKay suggested that they do the opposite - force the nanites to become more attracted to each other, restricting their movement on the atomic level. This would leave the Asurans vulnerable to attack.
Unfortunately, the Tau'ri fleet was not robust enough to hold off the Asuran defenses while the program took effect. With only two ships to fight off an Asuran fleet of 30, they needed backup - which Todd had to offer. He and Sheppard struck a deal - Todd would bring his own ships to the battle, and he would be allowed to return to his alliance. Todd was able to bring seven hive-ships to the assault on Asuras. (An alliance with another group of humans, the Travelers, brought an additional six ships to the fight, improving the odds.)
While over Asuras, Todd sent a small wave of soldiers into the cities below. The soldiers were able to steal a number of Asuran Zero-Point Modules (ZPMs), ridiculously rare and powerful sources of energy. He planned to use the stolen ZPMs to power an ancient Wraith cloning facility, so that he could quickly build an army of drones. Before making it to the facility, one of his underlings ratted him out to the Queen of a rival hive. His crew were fed upon, and he would have as well, had he not been able to send out a distress signal before being imprisoned.
Puzzled, the Tau'ri sent a stargate reconnaissance team headed by Sheppard to investigate the distress beacon. They found the empty hive and the coordinates leading to the cloning facility. The team used the hive to travel to the specified planet. They scoped out the facility and freed Todd, but not before tripping the general alarm. In the confusion, Todd escaped and Sheppard's team was captured. They were freed when Teyla Emmagan, still on Todd's hive, took control of the rival Queen's body and released them.
Todd repaid Sheppard for rescuing him by ramming his damaged hive into the cloning facility, effectively wiping it off the map. The Atlantis team escaped the falling hive in one of their small spacecraft, and Todd fled in a dart, a small Wraith fighter ship. They remained out of contact with each other for several months.
Todd made a brief reappearance about six months after his failed attempt to create a clone army. In that time, his alliance, and indeed most Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy, suffered a major setback: contaminated food. Michael Kenmore, hellbent on eliminating the Wraith, exposed numerous human-populated worlds to a drug that killed 30% of the population, and rendered the surviving 70% not only immune to Wraith feeding, but toxic to Wraith. Knowing that the Atlantis Expedition had played a role in the early development of this drug, Todd was able to trade information about one of Michael's facilities for the Tau'ri research on the drug. With the trade complete, he cut contact with Atlantis once again, presumably to sort out which worlds in his territory were safe to cull.
When Todd surfaced again, it was at Atlantis' request. In the time since their last meeting, the Tau'ri had made significant advances in their gene manipulation technology. More specifically, Dr. Jennifer Keller had the groundwork laid out for a treatment that would eliminate the need for Wraith to feed on humans. The treatment would reverse some of the changes made during the Wraith equivalent of puberty, allowing them to draw sustenance from solid food.
With his feeding grounds contaminated by Michael's drug, and with clean food supplies dwindling from overfeeding, it was a very tempting offer. There was only one problem: Todd didn't have the authority to disseminate the treatment throughout his whole alliance. In order to treat his whole alliance, he would have to get approval from the Primary, the 'high queen' of his alliance - and she would only speak with another queen. As his queen was long dead, Todd needed to either find another, or create a convincing replacement.
Against all wisdom, he went with the latter. He disguised Teyla, a Wraithkin[2], as a minor queen, and then posed as her consort. He coached her on proper queenly behavior until he was convinced that she could play her role. When the time came to meet with the Primary in private, Todd weaseled his way into her throne room and, when she turned her back to him, fatally stabbed her. He handed his knife to Teyla, telling her that she must take the credit for the Primary's murder, or else they would both be killed. A man who killed his queen was a criminal, but a queen who killed another queen claimed the latter's hive and territory. By placing the blame for the Primary's death on Teyla, Todd effectively made her the queen of his entire alliance.
Once Teyla had convinced the Primary's hive that she was a capable leader, she returned to Todd's hive. In the process, she declared to the rest of the alliance that Todd would act in her stead, relaying 'her' orders to other hives in the alliance. Although Teyla was returned to Atlantis, she did warn Todd that if he was to set one foot out of line, she would reprise her role as his queen and have him removed from duty... permanently.
With Todd's position in the alliance solidified, he was able to convince his followers to go along with the Tau'ri gene therapy. He met with Dr. Keller on the Tau'ri vessel Daedalus, where they ran a number of simulations to determine the treatment's viability. Progress was interrupted when Todd received an urgent radio call from one of his ships - that a rival Wraith faction had attacked one of his ground facilities. He gave two of his cruiser-escort ships permission to defend the ground facility, and saw them off as they entered hyperspace.
Except the ships never entered hyperspace. They were torn to shreds the moment the hyperspace window had opened. Knowing that there was only one weapon that could de-stabilize Wraith hyperspace channels - the Lantean's Attero Device - Todd assumed the worst. He used a concealed stunner to knock out the Daedalus' crew, hijacked the ship, and set a course for Atlantis.
Once at Atlantis, Todd demanded to know how the Tau'ri had managed to get the Attero Device working again. As explained by Sheppard, the Tau'ri had recently stumbled across the laboratory of the Lantean scientist who had invented the weapon. Shortly after the laboratory had been discovered, Atlantis had been raided by a hostile race that had never been encountered before. These raiders, later revealed to be the Vanir[3], had taken two scientists - Drs. Rodney McKay and Daniel Jackson - as well as one of the devices in the lab. Sheppard also explained that he'd been able to approximate where McKay, Jackson, and the Lantean tech had been brought. Todd received the supposed planet's coordinates from Sheppard after threatening to feed on the Daedalus' crew, then left to destroy the device.
While underway, Dr. Keller and the Satedan weapons specialist Ronon Dex managed to elude capture. They made their way to the Daedalus' engineering room, where they sabotaged the ship's hyperdrive and weapons systems. The ship dropped out of hyperspace, and Todd was forced to round up his escapees.
Eventually, Todd's own engineers were able to fix the ship's hyperdrive, but not the weapons systems. They continued on to the planet where the Attero Device was being held, then set the Daedalus on a crash course with a Lantean facility on the ground. Todd left the Daedalus to its fate, and escaped in the shuttle he'd used to board the ship in the first place. (The Tau'ri trapped on the ship and the planet's surface were rescued in the nick of time by Sheppard and some of his Traveler allies. Sheppard proceeded to destroy the Attero Device without crashing a ship into it.)
In Todd's last appearance (at least until Vegas, which is both set in an alternate universe and is too far ahead), he more-or-less came crawling back to the Tau'ri for assistance. Although the video transmission he sent ahead had been corrupted and turned into a garbled mess, there was one phrase that could be clearly made out: 'help us.' When the Tau'ri went to investigate Todd's ship, they found that it was completely devoid of life. McKay was able to retrieve the original, clean video file that Todd had tried to send. In it, Todd explained what had happened, and why his ship seemed to be completely empty.
He'd stolen Keller's research while on the Daedalus, then developed an actual gene therapy based on her work. The initial results were impressive - he and his test subjects were able to sustain themselves on solid food, as the simulations had projected. But there was a complication to the gene therapy - it weakened the Wraith immune system while causing harmful mutations, giving the treated crew members a cancer-like disease. His crew started to grow weak, and some even died. To stave off their impending deaths, Todd ordered his crew into their hibernation pods, where they were all put into stasis.
Throughout all of this, McKay had been tracing a number of malfunctions within the ship's systems, including power fluctuations and ship-to-ground communication glitches. When McKay could no longer keep up with the malfunctioning systems, he asked that Todd be revived. Todd was able to discern the cause for all the errors - the disease that he and his crew had been afflicted with.
As he explained, when Wraith enter stasis, they connect to the entire ship, exchanging bodily fluids with it. This is possible because Wraith ships are organic in nature, and to a degree are alive. When he and his crew entered stasis, the disease made the leap from Wraith to hive, and started to wreak havoc on the ship's systems. The ship tried to compensate for the errors, reconfiguring and incorrectly repairing itself.
Todd proposed that there was only way to stop his ship from accidentally tearing itself apart: cure the disease, then allow the ship to correctly repair itself. He and Keller poured over her research data once more, until Todd noticed something: she had tried to use DNA from the Iratus, a spider-like animal and genetic ancestor of the Wraith, as part of the retrovirus that delivered the gene treatment. Knowing this, he had a sudden burst of inspiration, a bit of ancient trivia that had been forgotten until he needed it.
Before the Wraith immune system and rapid regeneration had evolved to the point where diseases could be shrugged off, terminally ill Wraith had a risky way to restore themselves to perfect health. They could allow the female Iratus, the queen of her brood, to feed upon them. The method nearly always resulted in the ill Wraith's death, but a few managed to pull through. He suggested that Sheppard allow him to travel to a planet with an Iratus nest, so that he could restore at least some of his crew to health. Sheppard was not impressed, especially since the hive was on the verge of falling apart.
Eventually, it did. The aft of the ship, the section that contained the hibernating crew, broke off after the ship's reconfiguration created a line of structural weakness spanning the width of the hive. The forward section of the ship was thrown into a decaying orbit, sending it hurtling toward the planet below. Todd was able to force the forward section of the hive into a glide, crash-landing it in one of the planet's oceans. A rescue crew from Atlantis brought him and the rest of the Tau'ri back to Atlantis.
While staying in Atlantis, Todd was given medical care - none of which he responded to. Figuring that Todd was at death's door anyway, Sheppard swayed the expedition's leader to let him go through the stargate to the world with the Iratus nest. If Todd died, it would be no skin off their nose, and if he lived, he would remember that they had given him the chance to heal himself.
Surprisingly, the treatment worked. After enduring an "excruciatingly painful" time with a queen wrapped around his neck, Todd was cured of both the disease and the gene treatment, reverting back to needing to feed on humans. He then returned to his alliance.
[1]AKA us Earthlings.
[2]A human with some Wraith DNA.
[3]Rogue Asgard.[4]
[4]Classic 'grey' aliens.
[5]There is no [5]. Congratulations for making it this far, though! You wouldn't think that only thirteen episodes would need this much description.
Personality:
In many ways, Todd exists to contradict nearly everything known about his species; he is a "friendly" Wraith, a predator with manners. He feels no guilt for feeding upon sentient life to sustain himself, but he does not think of all humans as animals to put to pasture. He never gloats over the apparent doom of his enemies, and he can even keep his voice at a reasonable volume, instead of shouting and growling and loudly carrying on about how much he'll savor the taste of his prey's defiance. He's classier than that.
Perhaps because he's spent a number of years as a person of political importance, Todd has developed what can loosely be called a code of honor. He may never come to fully trust any of his allies, but he usually expects a measure of respect from them, which he will return. This is perhaps most evident in that he will uphold his word to the letter (although perhaps not to the spirit), once he gives it. Of course, his word comes with a number of stipulations - namely, that there's nothing stopping him from going back on his promises if he's already been betrayed.
Todd may be able to speak plainly and politely, but he is still deeply ingrained in a culture of plots and counter-plots. He knows how to keep his behavior in check, but he is not afraid to use underhanded tactics - secret deals, thefts, even assassinations - to get what he wants. He'll get his hands dirty if it means that his plans will be furthered, even if that means killing other Wraith in the process. Todd straddles the line between the Wraith and human cultures, acting as a bridge. Humans might find him easier to relate to than the salivating monster they normally deal with, but he makes no attempt to disguise just how brutal his culture can be.
More than a schemer, Todd is a survivor. At over ten thousand years old, he's old even by Wraith standards. He didn't live to be that old by regular exercise and a healthy diet, especially in the Wraith culture of treachery. He keeps his wits about him, using anything that he can to gain an edge over his competition. Even if he has nothing of material value, he uses lies and bluffs as a shield, and wields harsh truths like a sword. Although he fell into near-complete despair in Kolya's prison following the deaths of his family, he only needed the little glimmer of hope Sheppard gave to him. That bit of hope was just enough of a handhold that he was able to climb up out of years of Genii abuse. Todd is tough.
Perhaps most amusingly, he has a human-like sense of humor. Never one to shy away from the unpleasant truth, Todd makes a number of wry observations, usually for his own benefit. Whether he's chiding Ronon for using more brawn than brain or jokingly offering to shake Colonel Carter's hand, he uses humor to ease tension - especially his own, when his allies are being particularly frustrating. Dry comments might lack the satisfaction of a good mauling, but at least it won't give anyone cause to shoot him.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
The key Wraith ability, the one that is the most important, is the ability to feed. Wraith consume human "life force" through an orifice on one of their palms. Though the exact method is handwaved as a poorly-understood but complex chemical process, a Wraith can only feed upon human life force - animals cannot be substituted. They do occasionally practice cannibalism, but only if there is nothing else to feed upon. The victims of a feeding undergo rapid muscle atrophy, loss of skin elasticity, and a whole slew of other unpleasant side effects which culminate in them appearing to rapidly age.
Though bad for the prey, this is good for the feeding Wraith. Wraith experience a form of Horror Hunger, which Todd compares to being burned alive. Without feeding, a Wraith would be driven mad by the pain of his vital organs slowly shutting down.
However, when properly fed, a Wraith is a force to be reckoned with. He is capable of great feats of agility and strength, his advanced immune system protects him from virtually any disease, and his flesh wounds heal themselves in seconds. At full strength, he can walk off a concussion from a 30-foot drop, swim under several hundred feet of crushing ocean water with no permanent effects, or charge into machine gun fire without a second thought. As a Wraith does not produce human inhibiting proteins, feeding also keeps his cells healthy, rendering him functionally immortal.
Immortal, but not impervious. Wraith can still be killed by conventional means. They simply take more effort and dedication to lay out. If it will kill a human, it will eventually kill a Wraith.
The biggest drawback to all of this is that a Wraith's resilience is directly linked to how recently and how well he has fed. If not fed for some weeks, a Wraith's strength begins to fade. He may go for up to three months without feeding, although at that point he is as vulnerable as an ordinary human - if not more. As a Wraith's hunger grows, he becomes listless, irritable, prone to fainting, and in the worst case, delirious. There are social impacts to feeding as well, especially in the presence of humans. If confined on a spaceship like Tranquility, forced to deal with prey as actual people, it would be unwise to be upfront about needing to feed. It would be equally unwise to feed too frequently, lest it draw suspicion.
Strangely enough, the feeding process works in reverse. Called the Gift of Life, a Wraith can inject another person with stored "life force". The Gift can be used as a sort of feeding by proxy, but it can also be used to heal someone who has been gravely injured. It can even be used to revive the recently dead, provided that the cause of death is relatively easy to repair. A clean knife wound is not a problem, but death by crushing, dismemberment, fire, and so on are difficult at best and impossible at worst. All of this is at the expense of the giving Wraith, and so it is only sparingly used.
All Wraith are natural telepaths, but their telepathy is limited. They primarily use it to communicate with each other, and to read vague surface thoughts of prey. They can project ghost-like shapes called "shadows" into the minds of humans as a form of crowd control, but this ability has little use outside of a culling.
Naturally, I have a permissions post set up in advance.
Inventory:
- One handheld Wraith stunner
- A simple knife with a 5-inch blade
Appearance: He's the green one on the right. It's hard to tell how tall he is from those pictures, but I'd estimate that he's between 6'4" and 6'6".
Mostly, Todd is just terrifying. Even without the pale green skin, a mouthful of pointy teeth, bright yellow eyes with slitted pupils, wild stark-white hair, a tattoo around his left eye, and a conspicuous lack of eyebrows, he would be more than a bit intimidating. It's not just his build, either. Todd carries himself like he owns the whole room, which might not be an exaggeration.
Age: ~10,100 years, give or take a few years. Old enough to clearly recall the First Siege of Atlantis, at the very least. Most of that time was spent in stasis between cullings, but even so, he's rather old by Wraith standards.
AU Clarification: N/A
SAMPLES
Log Sample: There was a deep burning in his neck as she sank her fangs into him; the great iratus queen with her long tail wrapped around his chest, constricting him, binding him, sucking out the impurities he'd taken into his body...
Someone screamed. When the sound stopped, he realized that there was no one else in the cavern save for the chittering insects.
As soon as he had his breath back, Guide lifted a hand to the spot where he'd let the iratus bite down. It had been a desperate maneuver from the beginning, and he had walked away with an all-too-thorough understanding of why his ancestors had long abandoned the process. A queen's bite was far worse than the pain of a failing body, and it cut deeper than the feeling of starvation. Whoever had used it in the past must have been desperate indeed, risking certain pain and uncertain death to cure an incurable disease.
But it had worked. As he withdrew his hand from his neck, he saw that the feeding slit on his palm had been restored. The keratin barbs lining either side of the slit were dull and soft, as they had been when he'd been just a boy, but they would hopefully stiffen with time. Thick, dark veins under his wrist pulsed, swollen with the feeding enzyme. And the old, familiar hunger had returned, a feeling like embers had been dropped down the back of his shirt - not the sickening hollow feeling he'd had under the influence of Dr. Keller's gene therapy. The disease he'd contracted was all but gone, and he was himself again.
It was time to return to his war.
Comms Sample:
[Text Message]
This ship is not of old Lantean design. Neither is it Wraith, although by size alone, it measures up well to a hive. The Vanir have all but been driven to extinction. Even if they still lived, at their peak, this ship would have exceeded their needs. The new Lanteans have the ingenuity, but do not have the means.
Who, then, is responsible for building such a ship?
Your Name: Pyraven
OOC Journal:
kaviiqUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: No; I'm 18.
Email + IM: [gmail] maddening[dot]gale[at]gmail[dot]com / [aim] pyraven
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: "Todd" (Name given by the humans occupying Atlantis, refers to himself as Guide)
Canon: Stargate Atlantis
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Between Infection (S5 E17) and Enemy at the Gate (S5 E20)
Number: 099 (081 if 099 is already taken)
Setting: Todd is native to a fictionalized version of the modern-day Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. (Also of note: Wraith, the war with the Lanteans, the First Siege of Atlantis, Iratus bug)
History:
*You fought against the Ancients,* the Old One said.
*I did.*
*And before that?*
Guide shook his head. *I was born at the beginning of that war, for that war. I came of age not long before our victory.*
*Our war with the Ancients is far older than that,* the Old One said sharply. *From our first beginnings, we were at war. But no matter. You saw Atlantis fall.*
*Yes.* Guide paused. *And I have seen it risen again.*Stargate Atlantis: Legacy: Allegiance
Being a supporting character (and an antagonistic one at that), Todd only reveals snippets of his past in the course of the TV series. The Legacy series of novels expands on his meager past, but their canon status is somewhat shaky. Using both, this is roughly what his past looks like:
He was born in the early years of the Wraith-Lantean War, some ten thousand years before present day. Todd chose the path of a Blade, a soldier in his Queen's service, and joined in the fight toward the end of the war. At some point between the submersion of Atlantis and the Lantean exodus, he witnessed the activation of the Attero Device - a machine created by a Lantean scientist that ripped apart hyperspace-bound Wraith ships. The Attero Device was shut down after a three-day test, when it was discovered that it interfered with stargate operations, and the Wraith siege continued without hinderance.
In the years following the Lanteans' defeat, he started to climb up the Wraith social ladder. He used his wits and his blade to pull together a grand alliance of hive-ships, even gaining the attention of a Queen in the process. After proving his worth to her, he became her Consort - the most favored man in her harem. She bore him two children: one son and one daughter. (Given the rarity of women in Wraith society, this was like simultaneously winning the lottery and being awarded the Medal of Honor.)
And then, disaster. Although the exact order and timing of events is somewhat vague, two things are certain. At some point, Todd's Queen was killed in battle, and he was landed in an underground Genii prison. Beaten, starved, and used as a tool for interrogating prisoners, and having lost his Queen, Todd gave up hope. He spent an unspecified number of years in captivity, feeding on people who were often kept in the cell adjacent to his. The fate of his children is left unknown, but it's implied that they, along with their mother, are dead.
In 2006, everything changed. The Genii running the prison captured one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the Tau'ri[1]. The Genii commander, Kolya, forced Todd to feed on Sheppard multiple times, but Sheppard proved to be made of sterner stuff than most men. After figuring that the Genii would eventually get around to killing him, Sheppard proposed that he and Todd should break out of the prison together - once they reached the planet's stargate, they would part ways, and all bets would be off. They succeeded, and during their escape, Todd was able to give Sheppard back the life force he stole.
A year later, Todd alerted the Tau'ri-led Atlantis Expedition to a new, mutual threat. The Asuran replicators, freed from their stand-down directive by the Tau'ri, began to glass human-populated worlds. The Asuran's logic behind such a drastic move was that it would eliminate the Wraith food supply. Todd worked with Tau'ri scientist Rodney McKay to create a program that would sever the bonds between the Asuran nanites. After multiple failed attempts to perfect the coding, McKay suggested that they do the opposite - force the nanites to become more attracted to each other, restricting their movement on the atomic level. This would leave the Asurans vulnerable to attack.
Unfortunately, the Tau'ri fleet was not robust enough to hold off the Asuran defenses while the program took effect. With only two ships to fight off an Asuran fleet of 30, they needed backup - which Todd had to offer. He and Sheppard struck a deal - Todd would bring his own ships to the battle, and he would be allowed to return to his alliance. Todd was able to bring seven hive-ships to the assault on Asuras. (An alliance with another group of humans, the Travelers, brought an additional six ships to the fight, improving the odds.)
While over Asuras, Todd sent a small wave of soldiers into the cities below. The soldiers were able to steal a number of Asuran Zero-Point Modules (ZPMs), ridiculously rare and powerful sources of energy. He planned to use the stolen ZPMs to power an ancient Wraith cloning facility, so that he could quickly build an army of drones. Before making it to the facility, one of his underlings ratted him out to the Queen of a rival hive. His crew were fed upon, and he would have as well, had he not been able to send out a distress signal before being imprisoned.
Puzzled, the Tau'ri sent a stargate reconnaissance team headed by Sheppard to investigate the distress beacon. They found the empty hive and the coordinates leading to the cloning facility. The team used the hive to travel to the specified planet. They scoped out the facility and freed Todd, but not before tripping the general alarm. In the confusion, Todd escaped and Sheppard's team was captured. They were freed when Teyla Emmagan, still on Todd's hive, took control of the rival Queen's body and released them.
Todd repaid Sheppard for rescuing him by ramming his damaged hive into the cloning facility, effectively wiping it off the map. The Atlantis team escaped the falling hive in one of their small spacecraft, and Todd fled in a dart, a small Wraith fighter ship. They remained out of contact with each other for several months.
Todd made a brief reappearance about six months after his failed attempt to create a clone army. In that time, his alliance, and indeed most Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy, suffered a major setback: contaminated food. Michael Kenmore, hellbent on eliminating the Wraith, exposed numerous human-populated worlds to a drug that killed 30% of the population, and rendered the surviving 70% not only immune to Wraith feeding, but toxic to Wraith. Knowing that the Atlantis Expedition had played a role in the early development of this drug, Todd was able to trade information about one of Michael's facilities for the Tau'ri research on the drug. With the trade complete, he cut contact with Atlantis once again, presumably to sort out which worlds in his territory were safe to cull.
When Todd surfaced again, it was at Atlantis' request. In the time since their last meeting, the Tau'ri had made significant advances in their gene manipulation technology. More specifically, Dr. Jennifer Keller had the groundwork laid out for a treatment that would eliminate the need for Wraith to feed on humans. The treatment would reverse some of the changes made during the Wraith equivalent of puberty, allowing them to draw sustenance from solid food.
With his feeding grounds contaminated by Michael's drug, and with clean food supplies dwindling from overfeeding, it was a very tempting offer. There was only one problem: Todd didn't have the authority to disseminate the treatment throughout his whole alliance. In order to treat his whole alliance, he would have to get approval from the Primary, the 'high queen' of his alliance - and she would only speak with another queen. As his queen was long dead, Todd needed to either find another, or create a convincing replacement.
Against all wisdom, he went with the latter. He disguised Teyla, a Wraithkin[2], as a minor queen, and then posed as her consort. He coached her on proper queenly behavior until he was convinced that she could play her role. When the time came to meet with the Primary in private, Todd weaseled his way into her throne room and, when she turned her back to him, fatally stabbed her. He handed his knife to Teyla, telling her that she must take the credit for the Primary's murder, or else they would both be killed. A man who killed his queen was a criminal, but a queen who killed another queen claimed the latter's hive and territory. By placing the blame for the Primary's death on Teyla, Todd effectively made her the queen of his entire alliance.
Once Teyla had convinced the Primary's hive that she was a capable leader, she returned to Todd's hive. In the process, she declared to the rest of the alliance that Todd would act in her stead, relaying 'her' orders to other hives in the alliance. Although Teyla was returned to Atlantis, she did warn Todd that if he was to set one foot out of line, she would reprise her role as his queen and have him removed from duty... permanently.
With Todd's position in the alliance solidified, he was able to convince his followers to go along with the Tau'ri gene therapy. He met with Dr. Keller on the Tau'ri vessel Daedalus, where they ran a number of simulations to determine the treatment's viability. Progress was interrupted when Todd received an urgent radio call from one of his ships - that a rival Wraith faction had attacked one of his ground facilities. He gave two of his cruiser-escort ships permission to defend the ground facility, and saw them off as they entered hyperspace.
Except the ships never entered hyperspace. They were torn to shreds the moment the hyperspace window had opened. Knowing that there was only one weapon that could de-stabilize Wraith hyperspace channels - the Lantean's Attero Device - Todd assumed the worst. He used a concealed stunner to knock out the Daedalus' crew, hijacked the ship, and set a course for Atlantis.
Once at Atlantis, Todd demanded to know how the Tau'ri had managed to get the Attero Device working again. As explained by Sheppard, the Tau'ri had recently stumbled across the laboratory of the Lantean scientist who had invented the weapon. Shortly after the laboratory had been discovered, Atlantis had been raided by a hostile race that had never been encountered before. These raiders, later revealed to be the Vanir[3], had taken two scientists - Drs. Rodney McKay and Daniel Jackson - as well as one of the devices in the lab. Sheppard also explained that he'd been able to approximate where McKay, Jackson, and the Lantean tech had been brought. Todd received the supposed planet's coordinates from Sheppard after threatening to feed on the Daedalus' crew, then left to destroy the device.
While underway, Dr. Keller and the Satedan weapons specialist Ronon Dex managed to elude capture. They made their way to the Daedalus' engineering room, where they sabotaged the ship's hyperdrive and weapons systems. The ship dropped out of hyperspace, and Todd was forced to round up his escapees.
Eventually, Todd's own engineers were able to fix the ship's hyperdrive, but not the weapons systems. They continued on to the planet where the Attero Device was being held, then set the Daedalus on a crash course with a Lantean facility on the ground. Todd left the Daedalus to its fate, and escaped in the shuttle he'd used to board the ship in the first place. (The Tau'ri trapped on the ship and the planet's surface were rescued in the nick of time by Sheppard and some of his Traveler allies. Sheppard proceeded to destroy the Attero Device without crashing a ship into it.)
In Todd's last appearance (at least until Vegas, which is both set in an alternate universe and is too far ahead), he more-or-less came crawling back to the Tau'ri for assistance. Although the video transmission he sent ahead had been corrupted and turned into a garbled mess, there was one phrase that could be clearly made out: 'help us.' When the Tau'ri went to investigate Todd's ship, they found that it was completely devoid of life. McKay was able to retrieve the original, clean video file that Todd had tried to send. In it, Todd explained what had happened, and why his ship seemed to be completely empty.
He'd stolen Keller's research while on the Daedalus, then developed an actual gene therapy based on her work. The initial results were impressive - he and his test subjects were able to sustain themselves on solid food, as the simulations had projected. But there was a complication to the gene therapy - it weakened the Wraith immune system while causing harmful mutations, giving the treated crew members a cancer-like disease. His crew started to grow weak, and some even died. To stave off their impending deaths, Todd ordered his crew into their hibernation pods, where they were all put into stasis.
Throughout all of this, McKay had been tracing a number of malfunctions within the ship's systems, including power fluctuations and ship-to-ground communication glitches. When McKay could no longer keep up with the malfunctioning systems, he asked that Todd be revived. Todd was able to discern the cause for all the errors - the disease that he and his crew had been afflicted with.
As he explained, when Wraith enter stasis, they connect to the entire ship, exchanging bodily fluids with it. This is possible because Wraith ships are organic in nature, and to a degree are alive. When he and his crew entered stasis, the disease made the leap from Wraith to hive, and started to wreak havoc on the ship's systems. The ship tried to compensate for the errors, reconfiguring and incorrectly repairing itself.
Todd proposed that there was only way to stop his ship from accidentally tearing itself apart: cure the disease, then allow the ship to correctly repair itself. He and Keller poured over her research data once more, until Todd noticed something: she had tried to use DNA from the Iratus, a spider-like animal and genetic ancestor of the Wraith, as part of the retrovirus that delivered the gene treatment. Knowing this, he had a sudden burst of inspiration, a bit of ancient trivia that had been forgotten until he needed it.
Before the Wraith immune system and rapid regeneration had evolved to the point where diseases could be shrugged off, terminally ill Wraith had a risky way to restore themselves to perfect health. They could allow the female Iratus, the queen of her brood, to feed upon them. The method nearly always resulted in the ill Wraith's death, but a few managed to pull through. He suggested that Sheppard allow him to travel to a planet with an Iratus nest, so that he could restore at least some of his crew to health. Sheppard was not impressed, especially since the hive was on the verge of falling apart.
Eventually, it did. The aft of the ship, the section that contained the hibernating crew, broke off after the ship's reconfiguration created a line of structural weakness spanning the width of the hive. The forward section of the ship was thrown into a decaying orbit, sending it hurtling toward the planet below. Todd was able to force the forward section of the hive into a glide, crash-landing it in one of the planet's oceans. A rescue crew from Atlantis brought him and the rest of the Tau'ri back to Atlantis.
While staying in Atlantis, Todd was given medical care - none of which he responded to. Figuring that Todd was at death's door anyway, Sheppard swayed the expedition's leader to let him go through the stargate to the world with the Iratus nest. If Todd died, it would be no skin off their nose, and if he lived, he would remember that they had given him the chance to heal himself.
Surprisingly, the treatment worked. After enduring an "excruciatingly painful" time with a queen wrapped around his neck, Todd was cured of both the disease and the gene treatment, reverting back to needing to feed on humans. He then returned to his alliance.
[1]AKA us Earthlings.
[2]A human with some Wraith DNA.
[3]Rogue Asgard.[4]
[4]Classic 'grey' aliens.
[5]There is no [5]. Congratulations for making it this far, though! You wouldn't think that only thirteen episodes would need this much description.
Personality:
"Here's the problem. Every time we get involved with you, I feel like I'm walking around with a live grenade in my pocket, just waiting for it all to go wrong... for that one thing you forgot to mention."Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, USAF, Enemy at the Gate
In many ways, Todd exists to contradict nearly everything known about his species; he is a "friendly" Wraith, a predator with manners. He feels no guilt for feeding upon sentient life to sustain himself, but he does not think of all humans as animals to put to pasture. He never gloats over the apparent doom of his enemies, and he can even keep his voice at a reasonable volume, instead of shouting and growling and loudly carrying on about how much he'll savor the taste of his prey's defiance. He's classier than that.
Perhaps because he's spent a number of years as a person of political importance, Todd has developed what can loosely be called a code of honor. He may never come to fully trust any of his allies, but he usually expects a measure of respect from them, which he will return. This is perhaps most evident in that he will uphold his word to the letter (although perhaps not to the spirit), once he gives it. Of course, his word comes with a number of stipulations - namely, that there's nothing stopping him from going back on his promises if he's already been betrayed.
Todd may be able to speak plainly and politely, but he is still deeply ingrained in a culture of plots and counter-plots. He knows how to keep his behavior in check, but he is not afraid to use underhanded tactics - secret deals, thefts, even assassinations - to get what he wants. He'll get his hands dirty if it means that his plans will be furthered, even if that means killing other Wraith in the process. Todd straddles the line between the Wraith and human cultures, acting as a bridge. Humans might find him easier to relate to than the salivating monster they normally deal with, but he makes no attempt to disguise just how brutal his culture can be.
More than a schemer, Todd is a survivor. At over ten thousand years old, he's old even by Wraith standards. He didn't live to be that old by regular exercise and a healthy diet, especially in the Wraith culture of treachery. He keeps his wits about him, using anything that he can to gain an edge over his competition. Even if he has nothing of material value, he uses lies and bluffs as a shield, and wields harsh truths like a sword. Although he fell into near-complete despair in Kolya's prison following the deaths of his family, he only needed the little glimmer of hope Sheppard gave to him. That bit of hope was just enough of a handhold that he was able to climb up out of years of Genii abuse. Todd is tough.
Perhaps most amusingly, he has a human-like sense of humor. Never one to shy away from the unpleasant truth, Todd makes a number of wry observations, usually for his own benefit. Whether he's chiding Ronon for using more brawn than brain or jokingly offering to shake Colonel Carter's hand, he uses humor to ease tension - especially his own, when his allies are being particularly frustrating. Dry comments might lack the satisfaction of a good mauling, but at least it won't give anyone cause to shoot him.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
"I've refined the retrovirus to create the perfect balance. Ability well beyond any normal human but without the one weakness that will be the downfall of the Wraith: the need to feed."Michael Kenmore on the superiority of his hybrid army, The Kindred, Part 1
The key Wraith ability, the one that is the most important, is the ability to feed. Wraith consume human "life force" through an orifice on one of their palms. Though the exact method is handwaved as a poorly-understood but complex chemical process, a Wraith can only feed upon human life force - animals cannot be substituted. They do occasionally practice cannibalism, but only if there is nothing else to feed upon. The victims of a feeding undergo rapid muscle atrophy, loss of skin elasticity, and a whole slew of other unpleasant side effects which culminate in them appearing to rapidly age.
Though bad for the prey, this is good for the feeding Wraith. Wraith experience a form of Horror Hunger, which Todd compares to being burned alive. Without feeding, a Wraith would be driven mad by the pain of his vital organs slowly shutting down.
However, when properly fed, a Wraith is a force to be reckoned with. He is capable of great feats of agility and strength, his advanced immune system protects him from virtually any disease, and his flesh wounds heal themselves in seconds. At full strength, he can walk off a concussion from a 30-foot drop, swim under several hundred feet of crushing ocean water with no permanent effects, or charge into machine gun fire without a second thought. As a Wraith does not produce human inhibiting proteins, feeding also keeps his cells healthy, rendering him functionally immortal.
Immortal, but not impervious. Wraith can still be killed by conventional means. They simply take more effort and dedication to lay out. If it will kill a human, it will eventually kill a Wraith.
The biggest drawback to all of this is that a Wraith's resilience is directly linked to how recently and how well he has fed. If not fed for some weeks, a Wraith's strength begins to fade. He may go for up to three months without feeding, although at that point he is as vulnerable as an ordinary human - if not more. As a Wraith's hunger grows, he becomes listless, irritable, prone to fainting, and in the worst case, delirious. There are social impacts to feeding as well, especially in the presence of humans. If confined on a spaceship like Tranquility, forced to deal with prey as actual people, it would be unwise to be upfront about needing to feed. It would be equally unwise to feed too frequently, lest it draw suspicion.
Strangely enough, the feeding process works in reverse. Called the Gift of Life, a Wraith can inject another person with stored "life force". The Gift can be used as a sort of feeding by proxy, but it can also be used to heal someone who has been gravely injured. It can even be used to revive the recently dead, provided that the cause of death is relatively easy to repair. A clean knife wound is not a problem, but death by crushing, dismemberment, fire, and so on are difficult at best and impossible at worst. All of this is at the expense of the giving Wraith, and so it is only sparingly used.
All Wraith are natural telepaths, but their telepathy is limited. They primarily use it to communicate with each other, and to read vague surface thoughts of prey. They can project ghost-like shapes called "shadows" into the minds of humans as a form of crowd control, but this ability has little use outside of a culling.
Naturally, I have a permissions post set up in advance.
Inventory:
- One handheld Wraith stunner
- A simple knife with a 5-inch blade
Appearance: He's the green one on the right. It's hard to tell how tall he is from those pictures, but I'd estimate that he's between 6'4" and 6'6".
Mostly, Todd is just terrifying. Even without the pale green skin, a mouthful of pointy teeth, bright yellow eyes with slitted pupils, wild stark-white hair, a tattoo around his left eye, and a conspicuous lack of eyebrows, he would be more than a bit intimidating. It's not just his build, either. Todd carries himself like he owns the whole room, which might not be an exaggeration.
Age: ~10,100 years, give or take a few years. Old enough to clearly recall the First Siege of Atlantis, at the very least. Most of that time was spent in stasis between cullings, but even so, he's rather old by Wraith standards.
AU Clarification: N/A
SAMPLES
Log Sample: There was a deep burning in his neck as she sank her fangs into him; the great iratus queen with her long tail wrapped around his chest, constricting him, binding him, sucking out the impurities he'd taken into his body...
Someone screamed. When the sound stopped, he realized that there was no one else in the cavern save for the chittering insects.
As soon as he had his breath back, Guide lifted a hand to the spot where he'd let the iratus bite down. It had been a desperate maneuver from the beginning, and he had walked away with an all-too-thorough understanding of why his ancestors had long abandoned the process. A queen's bite was far worse than the pain of a failing body, and it cut deeper than the feeling of starvation. Whoever had used it in the past must have been desperate indeed, risking certain pain and uncertain death to cure an incurable disease.
But it had worked. As he withdrew his hand from his neck, he saw that the feeding slit on his palm had been restored. The keratin barbs lining either side of the slit were dull and soft, as they had been when he'd been just a boy, but they would hopefully stiffen with time. Thick, dark veins under his wrist pulsed, swollen with the feeding enzyme. And the old, familiar hunger had returned, a feeling like embers had been dropped down the back of his shirt - not the sickening hollow feeling he'd had under the influence of Dr. Keller's gene therapy. The disease he'd contracted was all but gone, and he was himself again.
It was time to return to his war.
Comms Sample:
[Text Message]
This ship is not of old Lantean design. Neither is it Wraith, although by size alone, it measures up well to a hive. The Vanir have all but been driven to extinction. Even if they still lived, at their peak, this ship would have exceeded their needs. The new Lanteans have the ingenuity, but do not have the means.
Who, then, is responsible for building such a ship?