Guide (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theguidinghand) wrote2012-10-14 11:32 pm
theguidinghand) wrote2012-10-14 11:32 pm
Entry tags:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
montauk_1_allende_18
OOC:
Name: Pyraven
Personal DW:kaviiq
Email: maddening [dot] gale [at] gmail [dot] com
Timezone: Central US (GMT -06:00)
AIM/Plurk: pyraven [AIM] / Kaviiq [Plurk]
IC:
Character name: "Todd"/Guide
Character Journal(s):theguidinghand (derigo on LJ, now defunct)
Canon: Stargate Atlantis
Point of Origin: just after being cured of his disease in S5E17, "Infection"
Appearance: Have a slideshow. He's the one that looks like a heavy metal guitarist crossed with a dogfish. The pictures don't come with much of a scale, so for reference, he's about 6'6". He likely weighs in at around a lean and mean 250 pounds when well-fed, most of that being the super-dense muscle and bone that would be necessary to support his inherent superhuman strength. He has a star-shaped tattoo around his left eye. Given that Wraith men decorate themselves as elaborately as possible to catch a Queen's eye, my headcanon is that he has ink on his chest and back too.
Background: (As a note, this section contains mostly copypasta with a bit of find + replace from my Ataraxion app. It has been updated to reflect new information gained from Legacy in the past year, some of which is not yet noted on the SGWiki/Gatewiki articles on Wraith.)
Guide reveals very little of his backstory in the TV series proper, so I have supplemented my version of him with details from the Legacy series of novels and the word of their authors. These novels are considered canon by MGM.
He was born to a Queen of Night in the early years of the Wraith-Lantean War, some ten thousand years before present day. Guide 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 hindrance.
In the years following the Lanteans' defeat, he left his mother's hive to join the crew of a young Queen named Snow, a woman of Osprey. It's implied that they bonded with each other over a mutual fascination with biology, and that she taught him more about science than his training as a soldier ever would. As he began to prove himself to be both capable and clever, she took him into her zenana, her trusted circle of officers and advisers. He proved himself to be just as capable in the zenana as he was on the battlefield, and Snow eventually chose him to be her Consort. They spent an unspecified but extremely happy number of years together as friends, lovers, co-rulers, and parents to one son and one daughter.
Their time together was cut short when their hive was boarded and taken by men under the command of Queen Hightower. Snow was mortally wounded before Guide could aid her, but she lived long enough to give him her dying wish. She urged him to protect their daughter and their unborn grandchild at any cost, even though it would mean that he would be dishonored forever for outliving his Queen. He secured a cruiser for their daughter Alabaster, an effort that was apparently made useless when Hightower's men fired upon it as it entered hyperspace. Guide managed to turn the tide of the battle long enough to capture an enemy commander, a man who swore on his life that the cruiser had been destroyed. Guide, either unconvinced by the lack of wreckage or simply in denial, rejected his word and set out on a frantic search for Alabaster. He spent a year fruitlessly searching the places where he suspected her ship may have jumped to.
His search was forcibly ended when Genii soldiers led by one Acustus Kolya captured him. They threw him into a cell in a secret prison, where he spent seventeen long years as a prisoner and an instrument of torture. Kolya forced him to feed upon human prisoners bit by bit, giving him just enough food to stay alive. In addition to being starved, Guide was hit with cattle prod-like devices if he showed too much hesitation to feed, fed too long, or (very likely) if his jailers simply felt like it.
In 2006, everything changed. The Genii running the prison captured one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the Tau'ri[1]. Kolya forced Guide 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 Guide 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, Guide was able to give Sheppard back the life force he stole.
A year later, Guide 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. Guide 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 Guide had to offer. He and Sheppard struck a deal - Guide would bring his own ships to the battle, and he would be allowed to return to his alliance. Guide 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, Guide 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 was 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 Guide, but not before tripping the general alarm. In the confusion, Guide escaped and Sheppard's team was captured. They were freed when Teyla Emmagan, still on Guide's hive, took control of the rival Queen's body and released them.
Guide 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 Guide fled in a dart, a small Wraith fighter ship. They remained out of contact with each other for several months.
Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide 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: Guide 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, Guide 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, Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide's hive. In the process, she declared to the rest of the alliance that Guide would act in her stead, relaying 'her' orders to other hives in the alliance. Although Teyla was returned to Atlantis, she did warn Guide 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 Guide'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 Guide 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 - Guide 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, Guide 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. Guide 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 Guide was forced to round up his escapees.
Eventually, Guide'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. Guide 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 Guide'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 Guide's ship, they found that it was completely devoid of life. McKay was able to retrieve the original, clean video file that Guide had tried to send. In it, Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide be revived. Guide 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.
Guide 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 Guide 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. Guide 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, Guide was given medical care - none of which he responded to. Figuring that Guide 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 Guide 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, Guide 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.
Personality: Wraith, consummate telepaths that they are, have devised a simple, yet difficult to explain way of giving each other names: names do not shape a person, but rather a person shapes their name. It's not that he is named Guide, but rather that he is Guide. He is the one who takes the first steps into unknown places; he is the one who creates a safe path through treacherous ground; he is the one who leads his followers not out of a desire to rule, but out of a desire to see them brought to safety. He is, in a sense, a shepherd who tends his flock with great care.
It's not the only sense in which he seems to be a mirror to John Sheppard. Throughout the series, Guide shares a number of thoughts and feelings that are disturbingly human. Where this new war with Atlantis and with other Wraith has at times allowed the Lanteans to paint the Wraith as monsters that want nothing more than to suck the life out of every human alive, Guide shows from his very first appearance that there is much more to Wraith than anyone has cared - or lived long enough - to ask.
From his first appearance, Guide proves himself to be a reasonable man. He is initially skeptical that Sheppard can escape from the Genii prison that they met in, but he gradually comes to see John's reasoning: if they're not going to be getting out alive, they'd be better off not waiting around to die. This sets a precedent for their interactions later in the series, with one or party presenting a risky deal and the other taking it up on the grounds that it's better than waiting around for something worse to happen.
Despite being reasonable, Guide is not the most trustworthy of men, nor is he the most trusting. He plays the convoluted game of Wraith politics, which rewards ambition and scorns satiation. It's not unheard of for Wraith to carve out their niche in society by carving their superior officer's innards out with a knife. For Guide to have lived for over ten thousand years while playing this deadly game, he had to develop a sense of entirely justified paranoia and suspicion. He is quick to punish even suspected betrayal, though usually not without good cause. (See: Attero Device incident) He views every accident with a critical eye, and always keeps a trick or three up his sleeve in case his plans go south. Even when he doesn't have to rely on tricks, Guide is not always completely honest about his intentions - he usually has a separate agenda from what he claims, and it's only discovered what he really intends after he's tricked people into doing his dirty work.
Yet Guide can, on occasion, be too trusting. He may be a trickster at heart, but he is just as fallible as any human. He is a creature of pride, a man who occasionally puts a little too much stock in his own ability to outwit others. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, he trusts Teyla enough to successfully play the role of his Queen... which leads to him installing her as leader of his alliance, i.e. the one person who can order his permanent removal from power without anyone asking questions. Or again, when he wants Keller's retrovirus to work so badly that he injects himself and a hive's worth of men with it before the control group developed health problems. Clever as he is, Guide is perfectly capable of outfoxing himself on occasion.
When cleverness fails, he falls back on his own strength of mind. Ten thousand years of plotting, scheming, and outright fighting has left him jaded and, more importantly, difficult to rattle. He's taken a long fall from the glory of Snow's court to the dank little cell Kolya kept him in, and he's clawed his way back up to the top again. He is not easily disturbed or shaken, and will easily meet stressful situations with a calm and clear head. Even when he's presented with an unbearable stress, Guide does not usually panic. Instead, he becomes clearly and purposefully angry, all while maintaining a steady hand and eye.
But by far, his most important revelation is that he - and, by extension, all Wraith - are not only capable of love, but that love is very much a desirable thing. His relationship with Snow is the best thing he's ever had in his life, though having children with her comes as a close second. She wasn't just his other half; with Wraith being telepaths, every thought and word is tinged with emotion that any other Wraith can sense. Their relationship was not based around lust or ambition, but love, trust, and an almost uncharacteristic amount of honesty. Long after Snow is killed, Guide still resists the advances of other Queens. Even twenty years later, her murder haunts and hurts him.
Losing Alabaster, however, was just life's way of kicking him while he was down. Guide is, by all implications, a very attentive father to his children. Small asides and flashbacks in Legacy inform us that he would let a young Alabaster sit on his knee while he told her stories, or that he would answer all of her endless questions about his work, or that he would make a bit of extra effort at the end of his shift to bid her goodnight. It's not known how well he takes to young humans, but he knows more about parenting than anyone would expect from him. What is known is that Alabaster's apparent death hits him even harder than Snow's - a reaction that isn't terribly foreign or alien.
But Guide's fatal flaw is not his pride or his grief alone, and instead that the two together facilitate his bad habit of gambling with his own life. He sees his own probable death as an acceptable risk to, over the course of only three years: escape from prison long enough to see the night sky (Common Ground), establish connections with Atlantis (The Seer), test a gene therapy designed to drastically alter his metabolism (Infection), cure a terminal disease by allowing an iratus to feed on him (also Infection), and exact revenge upon a traitor (Enemy at the Gate). His willingness to sacrifice himself is tempered somewhat by his desire to keep his followers alive and safe - he is far more willing to accept losses than Sheppard is, but he strives to minimize casualties whenever and wherever possible.
On the whole, he's a man with a hard life and a handful of redeeming qualities. He just happens to be a life-sucking alien on the side.
Skills/Powers:
Powers:
All adult Wraith take in nutrients by liquefying their human prey's muscle tissue and sucking them dry. To do so without killing their prey, the Wraith injects an enzyme into the bloodstream that stimulates and strengthens the human heart. The feeding process is so painful that without the stimulant, the human being fed upon would die of shock.
In addition to specialized feeding, Wraith have the superhuman strength and agility that most modern vampires have. A healthy Wraith is capable of lifting up full-grown human men, tossing them about like ragdolls, and chasing them to exhaustion. Wraith can easily go 30 hours without sleep, though presumably they make up for it by requiring more than the 8 hours of sleep that we do. Their tolerance for pain is incredible - Wraith have been known to walk off gunshot wounds, bone-shattering falls, crushing ocean pressures, and other injuries that would leave a human incapacitated or worse.
Their pain tolerance is likely a product of their ability to nearly instantly heal their wounds. Where a human would be hampered significantly for weeks by a non-fatal bullet wound, a Wraith will be fully mobile within minutes of being shot. Wraith can even recover from wounds that would be fatal to humans, ranging from being stabbed in the back to taking the better part of a P90 clip to the chest before dying. In addition to their incredible healing rate, Wraith are practically impervious to disease, and as long as they have food, are biologically immortal. It is unheard of for Wraith to die of old age.
Unlike modern vampires, Wraith have the option of returning the "life force" that they take from humans. This is typically done only to allied Wraith or to human Wraith-worshipers, but a few exceptional humans have been known to receive what the Wraith call The Gift of Life. It can also be used as a means of feeding by proxy, if an injured Wraith is unable to feed himself (such as by losing his feeding arm).
Wraith further distance themselves from vampires via their incredibly powerful psychic abilities. They are consummate telepaths, and will very rarely use their voices in the company of other Wraith. Male Wraith like Guide are relatively weak when compared to their Queens, but their mental powers are potent enough that they can invade the minds of sensitive humans if they so choose. Telepathy is for the most part a passive ability, but Wraith can keep their thoughts veiled to some degree if they so choose. (Doing so is in fact a courtesy, since listening to a never-ending stream of mundane thought and feeling is likely to get very, very annoying.)
They also have heightened olfactory and auditory senses, even though they're largely visual hunters. While they're far from being as sensitive as dogs, Wraith are sensitive enough to pick up the scent of human fear when in close proximity. Their hearing is not much more improved over the baseline human range, but their rapid healing likely prevents hearing loss brought on by age and damage. Their sight is clear and sharp, if not overly photosensitive. Wraith night vision is excellent, but they'll find lighting tailored to human comforts uncomfortable at best.
Presumably they can also sense heat with the pits on either side of their face, but no word is ever made on the subject.
Finally, their intelligence is not to be underestimated. Baseline, run-of-the-mill Wraith easily rival human savants in problem-solving and learning new skills. Their apparent on-screen stupidity is mostly derived from a culture of hubris and a total lack of exposure to Earth media. When a Wraith stops fooling around, he is a frighteningly fast learner.
Skills:
Blades are the caste which command their Queen's forces in combat. As such, they are trained in hand-to-hand and ranged combat, as well as tactics and vehicle operation. Guide is no exception. He prefers to use a knife in combination with a compact stun gun, but he's not afraid of improvising (such as by taking up a Genii pistol in Common Ground, or stealing a ceremonial pike in The Furies). Large wounds are more difficult for Wraith to recover from, so Guide has likely been trained to use cleaving and slashing weapons in combat against his own kind.
While he's not used to firearms, Guide has a good aim and a steady hand for his stun pistol. This has potential to be translatable to firearms.
Outside of combat, Guide is an accomplished biologist and computer programmer. He's just as comfortable working alongside Lantean medical doctors as he is around the outspoken physicist Dr. McKay. Their combined efforts (read: mostly his, but Keller/McKay helped a bit) have accomplished feats such as the complete destruction of the Asuran Replicators and the creation of a retrovirus designed to allow Wraith to sustain themselves on solid food. Guide has even hacked into McKay's computer before without raising immediate alarm. But it should be kept in mind that, however good he is, he's not a scientist by trade. He's potentially a valuable asset to a science team, but he's not the foremost expert on any given subject.
Weaknesses:
Of course, none of his abilities work very well if he doesn't feed himself. Wraith suffer from particularly nasty hunger pains, a sensation often likened to being burnt alive. All of the advantages that Wraith have over their prey - regeneration, enhanced strength and agility, and psychic abilities - weaken when a Wraith starts to go hungry. The longer he goes without feeding, or the more he taxes himself, the weaker he becomes.
Most Wraith can go anywhere from three to six weeks without feeding and still live comfortably, though how well they feed and how often they regenerate determines when they'll need to feed next. When a Wraith goes too long without feeding, he'll feel a burning sensation through his arm and chest. He will also likely become irritable and unreasonable, at least until he's had a chance to feed again. When starved, the pain becomes too much for a Wraith to bear, and he may become delirious if allowed to go too far. It is entirely possible for them to starve to death, but it's not very common. Medical complications caused by a compromised immune system and an overinflated sense of pride will usually kill a Wraith long before he can starve to death.
Unsurprisingly, ten thousand years' worth of mileage has not been kind to his joints. Guide is described as being stiff and unable to flex as well as the younger men that he commands. While it seems like a rather trifling thing when compared to all his other abilities, it should be kept in mind that Guide is roughly the equivalent of a fifty-year-old human. Some things just don't work as well as they used to.
Gear:
One set of Wraith officers' leathers (longcoat, shirt, trousers, and tall boots)
One long knife plus sheath (steel blade, no ornamentation)
One handheld Wraith stun gun, mostly charged
Steel claw covers (finger implants)
One Wraith tracking device (spine implant)
Assorted biotechnological components (enough to make two or three crude transmitters)
Why do you want to play this character in this particular setting? I've tried Guide in another survival horror setting (Ataraxion), and it is fun as hell. He sparks a lot of IC controversy, being both highly skilled with an interest in keeping people alive, and essentially a vampire that can't feed on anything but humans.
I was also invited into the SGA cast by Sheppard-mun, so there's that.
Writing Samples:
Guide and Sheppard find themselves stranded together. Again.
Name: Pyraven
Personal DW:
kaviiqEmail: maddening [dot] gale [at] gmail [dot] com
Timezone: Central US (GMT -06:00)
AIM/Plurk: pyraven [AIM] / Kaviiq [Plurk]
IC:
Character name: "Todd"/Guide
Character Journal(s):
theguidinghand (derigo on LJ, now defunct)Canon: Stargate Atlantis
Point of Origin: just after being cured of his disease in S5E17, "Infection"
Appearance: Have a slideshow. He's the one that looks like a heavy metal guitarist crossed with a dogfish. The pictures don't come with much of a scale, so for reference, he's about 6'6". He likely weighs in at around a lean and mean 250 pounds when well-fed, most of that being the super-dense muscle and bone that would be necessary to support his inherent superhuman strength. He has a star-shaped tattoo around his left eye. Given that Wraith men decorate themselves as elaborately as possible to catch a Queen's eye, my headcanon is that he has ink on his chest and back too.
Background: (As a note, this section contains mostly copypasta with a bit of find + replace from my Ataraxion app. It has been updated to reflect new information gained from Legacy in the past year, some of which is not yet noted on the SGWiki/Gatewiki articles on Wraith.)
*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
Guide reveals very little of his backstory in the TV series proper, so I have supplemented my version of him with details from the Legacy series of novels and the word of their authors. These novels are considered canon by MGM.
He was born to a Queen of Night in the early years of the Wraith-Lantean War, some ten thousand years before present day. Guide 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 hindrance.
In the years following the Lanteans' defeat, he left his mother's hive to join the crew of a young Queen named Snow, a woman of Osprey. It's implied that they bonded with each other over a mutual fascination with biology, and that she taught him more about science than his training as a soldier ever would. As he began to prove himself to be both capable and clever, she took him into her zenana, her trusted circle of officers and advisers. He proved himself to be just as capable in the zenana as he was on the battlefield, and Snow eventually chose him to be her Consort. They spent an unspecified but extremely happy number of years together as friends, lovers, co-rulers, and parents to one son and one daughter.
Their time together was cut short when their hive was boarded and taken by men under the command of Queen Hightower. Snow was mortally wounded before Guide could aid her, but she lived long enough to give him her dying wish. She urged him to protect their daughter and their unborn grandchild at any cost, even though it would mean that he would be dishonored forever for outliving his Queen. He secured a cruiser for their daughter Alabaster, an effort that was apparently made useless when Hightower's men fired upon it as it entered hyperspace. Guide managed to turn the tide of the battle long enough to capture an enemy commander, a man who swore on his life that the cruiser had been destroyed. Guide, either unconvinced by the lack of wreckage or simply in denial, rejected his word and set out on a frantic search for Alabaster. He spent a year fruitlessly searching the places where he suspected her ship may have jumped to.
His search was forcibly ended when Genii soldiers led by one Acustus Kolya captured him. They threw him into a cell in a secret prison, where he spent seventeen long years as a prisoner and an instrument of torture. Kolya forced him to feed upon human prisoners bit by bit, giving him just enough food to stay alive. In addition to being starved, Guide was hit with cattle prod-like devices if he showed too much hesitation to feed, fed too long, or (very likely) if his jailers simply felt like it.
In 2006, everything changed. The Genii running the prison captured one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the Tau'ri[1]. Kolya forced Guide 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 Guide 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, Guide was able to give Sheppard back the life force he stole.
A year later, Guide 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. Guide 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 Guide had to offer. He and Sheppard struck a deal - Guide would bring his own ships to the battle, and he would be allowed to return to his alliance. Guide 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, Guide 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 was 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 Guide, but not before tripping the general alarm. In the confusion, Guide escaped and Sheppard's team was captured. They were freed when Teyla Emmagan, still on Guide's hive, took control of the rival Queen's body and released them.
Guide 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 Guide fled in a dart, a small Wraith fighter ship. They remained out of contact with each other for several months.
Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide 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: Guide 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, Guide 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, Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide's hive. In the process, she declared to the rest of the alliance that Guide would act in her stead, relaying 'her' orders to other hives in the alliance. Although Teyla was returned to Atlantis, she did warn Guide 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 Guide'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 Guide 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 - Guide 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, Guide 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. Guide 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 Guide was forced to round up his escapees.
Eventually, Guide'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. Guide 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 Guide'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 Guide's ship, they found that it was completely devoid of life. McKay was able to retrieve the original, clean video file that Guide had tried to send. In it, Guide 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, Guide 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 Guide be revived. Guide 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.
Guide 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 Guide 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. Guide 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, Guide was given medical care - none of which he responded to. Figuring that Guide 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 Guide 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, Guide 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.
Personality: Wraith, consummate telepaths that they are, have devised a simple, yet difficult to explain way of giving each other names: names do not shape a person, but rather a person shapes their name. It's not that he is named Guide, but rather that he is Guide. He is the one who takes the first steps into unknown places; he is the one who creates a safe path through treacherous ground; he is the one who leads his followers not out of a desire to rule, but out of a desire to see them brought to safety. He is, in a sense, a shepherd who tends his flock with great care.
It's not the only sense in which he seems to be a mirror to John Sheppard. Throughout the series, Guide shares a number of thoughts and feelings that are disturbingly human. Where this new war with Atlantis and with other Wraith has at times allowed the Lanteans to paint the Wraith as monsters that want nothing more than to suck the life out of every human alive, Guide shows from his very first appearance that there is much more to Wraith than anyone has cared - or lived long enough - to ask.
From his first appearance, Guide proves himself to be a reasonable man. He is initially skeptical that Sheppard can escape from the Genii prison that they met in, but he gradually comes to see John's reasoning: if they're not going to be getting out alive, they'd be better off not waiting around to die. This sets a precedent for their interactions later in the series, with one or party presenting a risky deal and the other taking it up on the grounds that it's better than waiting around for something worse to happen.
Despite being reasonable, Guide is not the most trustworthy of men, nor is he the most trusting. He plays the convoluted game of Wraith politics, which rewards ambition and scorns satiation. It's not unheard of for Wraith to carve out their niche in society by carving their superior officer's innards out with a knife. For Guide to have lived for over ten thousand years while playing this deadly game, he had to develop a sense of entirely justified paranoia and suspicion. He is quick to punish even suspected betrayal, though usually not without good cause. (See: Attero Device incident) He views every accident with a critical eye, and always keeps a trick or three up his sleeve in case his plans go south. Even when he doesn't have to rely on tricks, Guide is not always completely honest about his intentions - he usually has a separate agenda from what he claims, and it's only discovered what he really intends after he's tricked people into doing his dirty work.
Yet Guide can, on occasion, be too trusting. He may be a trickster at heart, but he is just as fallible as any human. He is a creature of pride, a man who occasionally puts a little too much stock in his own ability to outwit others. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, he trusts Teyla enough to successfully play the role of his Queen... which leads to him installing her as leader of his alliance, i.e. the one person who can order his permanent removal from power without anyone asking questions. Or again, when he wants Keller's retrovirus to work so badly that he injects himself and a hive's worth of men with it before the control group developed health problems. Clever as he is, Guide is perfectly capable of outfoxing himself on occasion.
When cleverness fails, he falls back on his own strength of mind. Ten thousand years of plotting, scheming, and outright fighting has left him jaded and, more importantly, difficult to rattle. He's taken a long fall from the glory of Snow's court to the dank little cell Kolya kept him in, and he's clawed his way back up to the top again. He is not easily disturbed or shaken, and will easily meet stressful situations with a calm and clear head. Even when he's presented with an unbearable stress, Guide does not usually panic. Instead, he becomes clearly and purposefully angry, all while maintaining a steady hand and eye.
But by far, his most important revelation is that he - and, by extension, all Wraith - are not only capable of love, but that love is very much a desirable thing. His relationship with Snow is the best thing he's ever had in his life, though having children with her comes as a close second. She wasn't just his other half; with Wraith being telepaths, every thought and word is tinged with emotion that any other Wraith can sense. Their relationship was not based around lust or ambition, but love, trust, and an almost uncharacteristic amount of honesty. Long after Snow is killed, Guide still resists the advances of other Queens. Even twenty years later, her murder haunts and hurts him.
Losing Alabaster, however, was just life's way of kicking him while he was down. Guide is, by all implications, a very attentive father to his children. Small asides and flashbacks in Legacy inform us that he would let a young Alabaster sit on his knee while he told her stories, or that he would answer all of her endless questions about his work, or that he would make a bit of extra effort at the end of his shift to bid her goodnight. It's not known how well he takes to young humans, but he knows more about parenting than anyone would expect from him. What is known is that Alabaster's apparent death hits him even harder than Snow's - a reaction that isn't terribly foreign or alien.
But Guide's fatal flaw is not his pride or his grief alone, and instead that the two together facilitate his bad habit of gambling with his own life. He sees his own probable death as an acceptable risk to, over the course of only three years: escape from prison long enough to see the night sky (Common Ground), establish connections with Atlantis (The Seer), test a gene therapy designed to drastically alter his metabolism (Infection), cure a terminal disease by allowing an iratus to feed on him (also Infection), and exact revenge upon a traitor (Enemy at the Gate). His willingness to sacrifice himself is tempered somewhat by his desire to keep his followers alive and safe - he is far more willing to accept losses than Sheppard is, but he strives to minimize casualties whenever and wherever possible.
On the whole, he's a man with a hard life and a handful of redeeming qualities. He just happens to be a life-sucking alien on the side.
Skills/Powers:
Powers:
All adult Wraith take in nutrients by liquefying their human prey's muscle tissue and sucking them dry. To do so without killing their prey, the Wraith injects an enzyme into the bloodstream that stimulates and strengthens the human heart. The feeding process is so painful that without the stimulant, the human being fed upon would die of shock.
In addition to specialized feeding, Wraith have the superhuman strength and agility that most modern vampires have. A healthy Wraith is capable of lifting up full-grown human men, tossing them about like ragdolls, and chasing them to exhaustion. Wraith can easily go 30 hours without sleep, though presumably they make up for it by requiring more than the 8 hours of sleep that we do. Their tolerance for pain is incredible - Wraith have been known to walk off gunshot wounds, bone-shattering falls, crushing ocean pressures, and other injuries that would leave a human incapacitated or worse.
Their pain tolerance is likely a product of their ability to nearly instantly heal their wounds. Where a human would be hampered significantly for weeks by a non-fatal bullet wound, a Wraith will be fully mobile within minutes of being shot. Wraith can even recover from wounds that would be fatal to humans, ranging from being stabbed in the back to taking the better part of a P90 clip to the chest before dying. In addition to their incredible healing rate, Wraith are practically impervious to disease, and as long as they have food, are biologically immortal. It is unheard of for Wraith to die of old age.
Unlike modern vampires, Wraith have the option of returning the "life force" that they take from humans. This is typically done only to allied Wraith or to human Wraith-worshipers, but a few exceptional humans have been known to receive what the Wraith call The Gift of Life. It can also be used as a means of feeding by proxy, if an injured Wraith is unable to feed himself (such as by losing his feeding arm).
Wraith further distance themselves from vampires via their incredibly powerful psychic abilities. They are consummate telepaths, and will very rarely use their voices in the company of other Wraith. Male Wraith like Guide are relatively weak when compared to their Queens, but their mental powers are potent enough that they can invade the minds of sensitive humans if they so choose. Telepathy is for the most part a passive ability, but Wraith can keep their thoughts veiled to some degree if they so choose. (Doing so is in fact a courtesy, since listening to a never-ending stream of mundane thought and feeling is likely to get very, very annoying.)
They also have heightened olfactory and auditory senses, even though they're largely visual hunters. While they're far from being as sensitive as dogs, Wraith are sensitive enough to pick up the scent of human fear when in close proximity. Their hearing is not much more improved over the baseline human range, but their rapid healing likely prevents hearing loss brought on by age and damage. Their sight is clear and sharp, if not overly photosensitive. Wraith night vision is excellent, but they'll find lighting tailored to human comforts uncomfortable at best.
Presumably they can also sense heat with the pits on either side of their face, but no word is ever made on the subject.
Finally, their intelligence is not to be underestimated. Baseline, run-of-the-mill Wraith easily rival human savants in problem-solving and learning new skills. Their apparent on-screen stupidity is mostly derived from a culture of hubris and a total lack of exposure to Earth media. When a Wraith stops fooling around, he is a frighteningly fast learner.
Skills:
Blades are the caste which command their Queen's forces in combat. As such, they are trained in hand-to-hand and ranged combat, as well as tactics and vehicle operation. Guide is no exception. He prefers to use a knife in combination with a compact stun gun, but he's not afraid of improvising (such as by taking up a Genii pistol in Common Ground, or stealing a ceremonial pike in The Furies). Large wounds are more difficult for Wraith to recover from, so Guide has likely been trained to use cleaving and slashing weapons in combat against his own kind.
While he's not used to firearms, Guide has a good aim and a steady hand for his stun pistol. This has potential to be translatable to firearms.
Outside of combat, Guide is an accomplished biologist and computer programmer. He's just as comfortable working alongside Lantean medical doctors as he is around the outspoken physicist Dr. McKay. Their combined efforts (read: mostly his, but Keller/McKay helped a bit) have accomplished feats such as the complete destruction of the Asuran Replicators and the creation of a retrovirus designed to allow Wraith to sustain themselves on solid food. Guide has even hacked into McKay's computer before without raising immediate alarm. But it should be kept in mind that, however good he is, he's not a scientist by trade. He's potentially a valuable asset to a science team, but he's not the foremost expert on any given subject.
Weaknesses:
Of course, none of his abilities work very well if he doesn't feed himself. Wraith suffer from particularly nasty hunger pains, a sensation often likened to being burnt alive. All of the advantages that Wraith have over their prey - regeneration, enhanced strength and agility, and psychic abilities - weaken when a Wraith starts to go hungry. The longer he goes without feeding, or the more he taxes himself, the weaker he becomes.
Most Wraith can go anywhere from three to six weeks without feeding and still live comfortably, though how well they feed and how often they regenerate determines when they'll need to feed next. When a Wraith goes too long without feeding, he'll feel a burning sensation through his arm and chest. He will also likely become irritable and unreasonable, at least until he's had a chance to feed again. When starved, the pain becomes too much for a Wraith to bear, and he may become delirious if allowed to go too far. It is entirely possible for them to starve to death, but it's not very common. Medical complications caused by a compromised immune system and an overinflated sense of pride will usually kill a Wraith long before he can starve to death.
Unsurprisingly, ten thousand years' worth of mileage has not been kind to his joints. Guide is described as being stiff and unable to flex as well as the younger men that he commands. While it seems like a rather trifling thing when compared to all his other abilities, it should be kept in mind that Guide is roughly the equivalent of a fifty-year-old human. Some things just don't work as well as they used to.
Gear:
One set of Wraith officers' leathers (longcoat, shirt, trousers, and tall boots)
One long knife plus sheath (steel blade, no ornamentation)
One handheld Wraith stun gun, mostly charged
Steel claw covers (finger implants)
One Wraith tracking device (spine implant)
Assorted biotechnological components (enough to make two or three crude transmitters)
Why do you want to play this character in this particular setting? I've tried Guide in another survival horror setting (Ataraxion), and it is fun as hell. He sparks a lot of IC controversy, being both highly skilled with an interest in keeping people alive, and essentially a vampire that can't feed on anything but humans.
I was also invited into the SGA cast by Sheppard-mun, so there's that.
Writing Samples:
Guide and Sheppard find themselves stranded together. Again.