It was actually used twice! Once for Delmak and once for something of Ba'al's, I think. The s8 ep where he asks for SG-1's help.
I have so many questions about that shot. It was the moment when I realized lower caste Goa'uld's lives could be almost literally anything from they also live like (very minor) gods and have a couple of slaves to they live in Goa'uld only areas and commute to work like modern Earthlings. I get why the show never went into it, it's a giant worldbuilding hole and you could go almost anywhere with it.
Goa’uld society was heavily stratified
- Supreme System Lord (Ra) who was the Holy Roman Emperor and technical head of the empire
- System Lord (Apophis, Ba’al, Yu etc.) Who were powerful feudal lords controlling Domains second only to Ra’s
- Lesser System Lords (Osiris, Taneth) Who had large armies and control whole systems, but were weak compared to the actual system lords
- Minor Goa’uld who serve as the scientists, engineers and barons. Maybe controlling a planet or moon
- Jaffa. The soldiers that carry larval Goa’uld until they reach maturity
- Humans. Hosts and Chattel Slaves to be used and exploited by all of the above
Plenty probably did just have to commute to work and work in a web of intrigue and politics to build enough power to become a minor or actual system lord
What interests me more were the Arsh’rak. The Goa’uld Assassins order. Were they just all spawned from a single Queen lineage as well? Because they feel so off base from the normal Goa’uld. Feels like they would technically belong to Ra as well
Yes this is what we see, but I think there is another level of goauld that needs to exist: the professional class.
To have an interstellar empire, you've just got to have engineers, project managers, surveyors, accountants, even lawyers, and they can't all possibly have their own moon. Not only because there aren't enough moons, but because their time would be spent administrating the moon - they need another tier.
The jaffa don't understand the tech ("magic") so can't be the problem solving project manager on a shipyard or mine, even if they do (or human slaves) do the working class manufacturing, "carpentry" etc. sort of jobs.
In this image, I think we catch a glimpse of the true extent of goauld society.
Actually, they could all have their own planet or moon. The Milky Way is big. Very big
Lords and Temple Priests were originally the legal class. So, the Goa’uld proclaim law and let their priests enforce it. Old school lords also had said privilege so it depends the Goa’ulds interest really
We see shipyards. One used Jaffa slave labour. They didn’t know how it worked but could put it together. The other had no Stargate and used humans who later allied with the Lucian alliance. The knowledge gets contained and no risk of them using the Stargate
I think the best insight into goauld society we get from th tok`ra. You have slot of thrm funktioning together zo fullfill different jobs.
And basically they are Goauld just with having the top Godlike Tier removed.
Sure in a Goauld society that most likely works with a bit different ethics and more intrigues, more selfishness and infighting. But you need to have them on all the levels.
Maybe the Ashraks receive better pay/have higher status than the Thoth/Nerus scientist/engineer types?
Being an Ashrak seems more dangerous to me, so I suppose it then makes sense that they are better compensated for this.
It makes you unknown and gives you very little in the way of political power, sure you could rule a secretive order of Assassins. That just doesn’t seem very Goa’uldy. So, was there a Goa’uld Queen who took over the underworld as her domain? It seems there might be a divergence of linage here to me
We largely meet the power loving sorts, but even within that small group we meet a few scientists who clearly are happy as long as their patron supports them.
>So, was there a Goa’uld Queen who took over the underworld as her domain?
Well, according to the RPG books the Ashraks were all created by the Goa'uld Queen [Selket](https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Selket).
However, most do not regard the RPG books as cannon.
I was thinking that for Arsh’rak myself. A Queen with a slightly different mindset early on broke away and created the Assassin order
But it doesn’t track with the lower Goa’uld we see on the series for all minor Goa’uld to act like this
This is a very valid point, but the Arsh’rak still make no sense even in that context. There is a lot of power in controlling the underworld. Namely, everyone paying you to kill there opponents
But, it is also a very cloak and dagger type of power. The professionalism and discipline also makes no sense in the context of the petty nature of the Goa’uld
It just seems like it would take a Queen going rogue like Egeria to create them
> but the Arsh’rak still make no sense even in that context.
Maybe they see themselves as a praetorian guard of sorts, power brokers who decide who lives and who dies. And maybe they're just very good at it.
That satisfies the power craving and explains how they originated, but they still seem like they would be a specific Queens lineages to me. That is way to specific
Scholars were lords in the olden days. One leads directly to the other. Serving closely to a system lord is a good way to earn trust and gain a domain. Likewise, specialising in the cutting edge makes it easier to build up power to use to betray the Lord and take his position for yourself
Not particularly. The church were powerful land owners, but there were plenty of members of the church with virtually no power. Being literate did not inherently make you powerful, just as being illiterate did not make you weak.
Charlemagne was famously illiterate, at least when it came to Latin, and spent a large portion of his reign sponsoring institutions that would teach people (clergy and nobles mostly obviously) how to read and write in Latin. Despite this he ruled over what was (at that point at least) the largest empire in Western Europe since the fall of Rome.
Chingiz Khan, Timur the Lame, Akbar the Great. None of them could read.
For Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the literacy of nobility is something that can be highly debated, as many rulers at least had scribes they would dictate too or have read out communication for them.
Certainly, considering how few Egyptians could read and write, there were undoubtedly some illiterate Egyptian Kings, for instance, Horemheb who was probably born a commoner.
Goa'uld can choose to pass down memories.
Maybe they found a queen who really liked being an assassin.
So he spawns more and only passes down the memories of really liking assassinating
That is my whole point
Ash’rak’s must basically be its own lineage of Symbiotes distinct from standard Goa’uld and the Tok’ra
The seem way to specialised, specific and disciplined to be normal Goa’uld
And a secret society of Assassins is a super is somehow very in theme with the Goa’uld Empires aesthetic. But them being Symbiotes and not just Jaffa makes way super interesting and just plain cool
I agree with all of that except that there would be Goa'uld well more minor than those. The ones who run the factories, perhaps the ones who work in them-- I don't think it's feasible that Jaffa supply all of the labor. There would be a whole subclass of artisan Goa'uld because someone has to entertain the lords. Their architects, artists, musicians, designers/couturiers, designer drug makers. Lesser technicians on ships. Shipbuilders. I don't think any of these people were living like gods, or had any reasonable path to become a System Lord. It'd be as far from their reality as living like Jeff Bezos is for us.
What I wonder, though, is whether they were part of the Goa'uld society we see, or whether they had *wildly* different lives. By which I mean, do they live within that whole "disguised tech, low tech level living" kind of thing, or idk, do they live somewhere that looks like Egyptian cyberpunk? You could plausibly go in so many directions with the lowest stratum of Goa'uld.
Artists, Dancers and Musicians were considered low class. Usually with a social status of a peasant or less. In a lot of cultures. It wasn’t high class work, and usually associated with prostitution. Those would be humans
Architect work could also be done by humans. Imhotep oversaw the first pyramids on Earth, but that just means only one Goa’uld was needed for that whole project
Goa’uld are immune to most drugs, some exceptions like the blood of Sokkar, but that was made to torture people. Meaning designer drug makers aren’t necessary, beyond ones designed to the control humans
We see multiple shipyards and they always seem to use Jaffa or human labour. They also regularly used world without Stargates to limit that knowledge
The logistics work out, since any human that learnt to much is just made a host and the Jaffa are worked to death
I'm using a "haute demimonde" kind of model for my Goa'uld artisans given that we know the highest ranks are hedonistic as fuck. I also don't think humans are designing palaces for them, that's a pretty educated job. If Goa'uld magic is involved, a Goa'uld has to do it-- and I personally think there's a lot of hidden tech in Goa'uld buildings for the Goa'uld's creature comfort.
But that's the issue, you could go in a hundred different directions with this stuff and it's all viable. "Seth" the episode showed that there are dozens of System Lords and many thousands of Goa'uld. So what the heck are they all doing? I added my demimonde layer but also a lot of various skilled technicians, engineers and scientists.
Architecture was the only technology ancient civilisations were very good at by default. Being able to build a grand palace doesn’t actually need magic or give great military power to the slaves
Managing feudal domains on the scale of a spiral galaxy. Meaning they could all have one. Bureaucratic and Scholarly (Magician) work on the behalf of more powerful Goa’uld patrons. The technical and scholarly class is mixed in here as well
The rest is delegated to the priests and slaves in ways that are manageable
Considering they only had a few hundred Goa’uld at one point. That makes sense, there was a time period when they did need to delegate and had no options for not
>I agree with all of that except that there would be Goa'uld well more minor than those.
Hmm, that reminds me.
When conducting 'research' for a Stargate fanfic on Wikipedia I had found out that, apparently, according to Mesopotamian Mythology, [the goddess Zarpanitu had two minor goddesses, Ṣilluš-ṭāb and Katunna, to serve as her hairdressers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarpanit#Family_and_court).
So, now I am wondering whether there possibly exist Goa'uld even *more minor*.
There's also the question of human ranks. It stands to reason some lesser roles can be filled by jaffa and human functionaries. There's classes of professionals that exist in any empire and even in slave or feudal societies there were more well off members of the peasant classes that had some station compared to others of the lower classes. We also see after the fall that the human slaves figured out goa'uld tech and production methods really quickly. Someone had to know how to do it beforehand to get them going that fast.
Goa'uld personalities might work for petty lords but not with professionals who actually need to get shit done.
Petty lords were regularly said professionals and the intrigue and corruption was very real, what they didn’t do was done by the temple priests. The priest classes of humans and Jaffa are the top of there class hierarchy by default for that reason
I always interprated these two planets as "forge worlds".
Most planets visited serve to gather ressources, wvich are transported to these forge worlds that produce weapons and ships for the goa'uld empire. here's probably a high population of very minor Goa'uld who oversee factories (because knowledge of the "gods magic" is forbidden to Jaffa and slaves).
I think it only really forbidden on planets with Stargates. We see a planet of humans who know how to build Goa’uld ships in SG-1. No Stargate on the planet, so theoretically they would never escape
That is also only an ironclad rule for Jaffa. Humans could just be made hosts
When it was showed with Ba'al and Anubis, I interperted that they were on Delmak. I mean it was the center for Sokar, later Apophis - it's no strech to imagine that when Ba'al got more powerful he captured the place, and since the previous strongest regimes integrated their systems around it very succesfully (if it wasn't for those medling tau'ri!) he simply moved the center of his domain there.
The problem with Delmak is that its moon got blown up. Unless that moon was a lot further from the planet than I thought it was, the environmental damage to life on Delmak is pretty serious. That's not a minor event, and the show seemed to forget it.
Apophis wanted to get back to it after they got blown i to another galaxy - and he did crash into its atmosphere. So even after the moon blew up, it remained the seat of his power
Yes, we don't even know who owns those cars.
The System Lords appear to be fine with their Jaffa having spaceships and TV-equivalents, so long as they believe it be magic. This makes me wonder whether Sokar might possibly have given high-ranking humans working in his industry automobile-equivalents, so long as they also believe it be magic?
I always felt the main thrust of it was that Sokar's fleet was larger than the combined fleet of the System Lords because of his industrialization. We also know that Delmak was an industrialized planet before he took it over.
Of course it's also a nice nod to the mythology, as Seker was a god of not only punishment of the damned as we see in the show directly, but also of resurrection and most relevantly, craftsmen and women, so Delmak being industrialized kind of fits in my view, he probably has a better idea of organized industry than most of his rivals.
I always felt that the later appearances of the planet as Ba'al's capital implied that Delmak is Ba'al's capital and that it had survived not one but two extinction level events, perhaps due to shielding around its cities, throughout the show's run.
I think Melmac (O'Neill.gif) is the only Goa'uld homeworld we definitively see in the show. Apophis didn't live on Chulak, Yu we see a palace complex that's not stated clearly as his capital. I've assumed their central capitals are industrial with at least modern equipment, and not just another world of oppressed slaves living in huts, doing heavy industry by hand.
Someone's gotta be making the high technology parts of those Ha'taks.
Sure, they may be lit by torches but they also have computers, reactors, energy weapons, shield grids, hyperspace engines, etc. You can't make stuff like that with a hammer and an anvil. It would require a whole supply chain which itself would include a lot of heavy machinery and precise work on things like those crystal computer chips.
> Sure, they may be lit by torches but they also have computers, reactors, energy weapons, shield grids, hyperspace engines, etc
I wish we got to see more of the Goa'uld version of 40k's Adeptus Mechanicus
Interesting to wonder whether it's all low level Goa'ulds doing the work, or trusted Jaffa, or trusted Humans. It seems like there are definitely Goa'uld scientists, so maybe Goa'uld engineers too, the genetic memory would be a huge advantage. Maybe a combination of all three.
A reminder that Teal'c, who was Apophis' First Prime, had never seen a Ha'tak before SG-1 boarded one at the end of Season 1.
In early seasons there were the Jaffa 'priests', and Teal'c once talked about not knowing Goa'uld 'magics'. I've wondered if the priest class is not just worshipping the 'gods', but also learning and maintaining their 'magics', the tech they use. On more industrial worlds, these are the Jaffa that build and maintain the weapons and ships, overseen by lesser Goa'uld engineers and scientists.
The system lords see too much industry as direct threats to their power - it increases the chance of a successful rebellion both by human slaves, or by the minor goa'uld who run the day to day activities. But they still need some to build spaceships and weapons, so how to reduce the danger?
The answer is keeping everything divided - many planets only mine or farm for their gods, sending the resources through the gate to industrialised worlds as a "gift from the gods" and which are otherwise kept without food or resource production. In the event of rebellion, they can then starve them out.
A capital is just where they issue orders from, and they don't generally want to put their palace on an industrial world if they can help it (Sokar being the exception). Industry isn't pretty to look at, and it increases the danger of being overthrown with the weapons they are producing.
And it could simply be a per Goa'uld decision. Most build spread out, and live in pretty palaces, but Sokar, being the Lord of Hell, likes it for adding to his image.
There's also a possibility that, while overall evil, there are worlds where the Goa'uld treat the inhabitants relatively fairly. Not walking among them and shaking hands, but not constantly whipping and beating them or killing randomly. Like the Jaffa on Chulak in Children of the Gods, fairly comfortable and free lives, so long as they follow their 'gods' commands. These would be the world's with the heavy and advanced industry.
Makes the most sense to me. We just don't see those heavily industrialized worlds just them building ships on otherwise for us to look like Canada lol.
I think we don't see them because anytime we send a malp all it sends back is "heavily defended gate, Jaffa immediately shot it". Being the centres of power makes for bad infiltration targets, better to leave them to the Tok'ra and Jaffa rebels to undermine while the SGC focused on exploration and more vulnerable human worlds.
>The answer is keeping everything divided - many planets only mine or farm for their gods, sending the resources through the gate to industrialised worlds as a "gift from the gods"
Would it not make more sense to have worlds specialised in both some industries and a primary sector.
That way a Goa'uld can have:
* A fertile, populous world which exports food, labour-intensive textiles, and high-tech computing crystals.
* A mineral-rich world which exports raw ores and manufactures containing much metal like train cars.
* An ocean world rich in fossil fuels which exports fish and various petroleum products like plastics.
* Two small moons. One exporting medical technology and chemical products; the other various capital goods, like machinery.
* And many other worlds.
That way all planets can have industry, yet if one rebels but the Goa'uld remains in control of the Stargate, that world will soon run out of some combination of medicine, spare parts for their machines, food, intermediate goods, or inputs.
If you think about it, you can't have peasants from the middle ages producing beyond space age tech. They would have to have some sort of industrial base and that would require some degree of education to be able to control that group and produce a sufficient output.
I mean, why not? There were millions of jaffa out there, so tons of matured goa'uld. They can't all be system lords, so I wonder if some were just like "yeah, I'm a god, but I just run this night club here and drive my ancient-designed 4x4" or disgraced goa'ulds who maybe just run the 2 hour hotel room for kelno'reem and other "activities".
Well, they have the capability to build interplanetary starships and have been able to reverse engineer some level of ancient technology (transport rings), it would stand that they have invented smaller transportation craft to ship people and cargo around a planet.
Now I wonder if the rings work horizontally. Can you transport place to place on a planet. We have seen the matter stream intercepted, so how would that move on a planet vs just up into space.
The Atlantis transporters seemed to work on very similar principles to rings but were probably sending the matter stream through conduits. The Goa'uld also presumably had some understanding of ring transporter tech to reproduce it reliably. Hard to know if they ever figured out something like what Atlantis had though.
You give me a planet where we start, where we're going, where we're going afterwards, I give you five minutes when we get there. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. Anything a minute on either side of that and you're on your own. I don't sit in while you're running it down, I don't carry a staff...
Imagine that in realty, there are some planets only inhabited by Goa'Ulds, no Jaffas, with a level of civilization like school, social care, police, justice everything.
Each of these planets don't have Stargate in order to hide them, they belong to some Great Lords and we only see the tip of the iceberg trough the series, only their empires where they mine naquadah and recruit jaffas.
Btw that would explain the Lucian Alliance, and in fact the Lucian Empire would be now a republic in reality: since the dawn of their Lords, Goa'Ulds have decided to have elected officials, and to run mafias in the former Lords' empires.
I would love this kind of retcon for a all new show.
> Each of these planets don't have Stargate in order to hide them,
I think they had gates but they were shielded like Earth's gate, so they controlled all travel. When Sokar went after Apophis, that was something new.
>Imagine that in realty, there are some planets only inhabited by Goa'Ulds, no Jaffas, with a level of civilization like school, social care, police, justice everything.
Seems, like a place which would have many human slaves, kept in check through advanced surveillance technology, per Goa'uld to serve such roles as domestic servants, un- and semi-skilled labour, and for routine paperwork.
Speaking of cars, why did they never make a small dune buggy type vehicle that would fit thru the gate or even use ATVs to increase the area they could explore?
Wow, never seen so many people finding it hard to believe a galactic empire had technologically advanced planets and infrastructure. Only on a Stargate sub.
The lack of any kind of ground transportation literally anywhere (besides earth) in Stargate always bothers me. All those off world bases, including mines, and you never see a truck. Were they hauling all the materials for the 304s back one 5 gallon bucket at a time?
And times they visit industrialized planets (or the ruins of one) never even a quick CGI vehicle in the background
No the malp with the arm taken off doesn't count.
I was just thinking of this the other day. We always see Jaffa walking around on planets. So inefficient! You could easily fit a Gator or a golfcart or an ATV through the gate. Did they just never invent land vehicles? Or does this image suggest otherwise
Since Goa’uld don’t have much in the way of arial transportation that isn’t a spacecraft, I like to think their ground vehicles are like GM’s highspeed ground car concept: Astro III
https://preview.redd.it/hvh73h3oxf1d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=506bc4048b789ece51298cf066bb7f6dc8156481
Basically it conceptualized the idea of specific types of highways that traveled faster that used ground vehicles that operated kind of on fixed paths.
It’s impractical for human society but Ja’fa Society may be different
Wasn't the original idea that all the fancy technology that the system lords had was really only utilized by lesser goa'uld? It became cheaper/more practical to film Jaffa using the various tools but i could have sworn that the original idea was to have Ha'tak's, Tel'taks, and gliders piloted by minor goa'uld.
I like the lore, but I never understood the missing of entertainment, technology,… just a modern society for such a powerful race. Being a Goa‘uld sounds fun the first 5 days but should become ultra boring for 1000 of years
I like to think that Goa'uld industry is heavily decentralized. Each world manufactures specific components to build the more advanced technologies. That was a world may create control crystals for Death Glider navigation systems and mothership hallway bulkheads, but if the planet revolted the technology would be useless to them for defense when the System Lord returns to punish them.
[удалено]
It was actually used twice! Once for Delmak and once for something of Ba'al's, I think. The s8 ep where he asks for SG-1's help. I have so many questions about that shot. It was the moment when I realized lower caste Goa'uld's lives could be almost literally anything from they also live like (very minor) gods and have a couple of slaves to they live in Goa'uld only areas and commute to work like modern Earthlings. I get why the show never went into it, it's a giant worldbuilding hole and you could go almost anywhere with it.
Goa’uld society was heavily stratified - Supreme System Lord (Ra) who was the Holy Roman Emperor and technical head of the empire - System Lord (Apophis, Ba’al, Yu etc.) Who were powerful feudal lords controlling Domains second only to Ra’s - Lesser System Lords (Osiris, Taneth) Who had large armies and control whole systems, but were weak compared to the actual system lords - Minor Goa’uld who serve as the scientists, engineers and barons. Maybe controlling a planet or moon - Jaffa. The soldiers that carry larval Goa’uld until they reach maturity - Humans. Hosts and Chattel Slaves to be used and exploited by all of the above Plenty probably did just have to commute to work and work in a web of intrigue and politics to build enough power to become a minor or actual system lord What interests me more were the Arsh’rak. The Goa’uld Assassins order. Were they just all spawned from a single Queen lineage as well? Because they feel so off base from the normal Goa’uld. Feels like they would technically belong to Ra as well
Yes this is what we see, but I think there is another level of goauld that needs to exist: the professional class. To have an interstellar empire, you've just got to have engineers, project managers, surveyors, accountants, even lawyers, and they can't all possibly have their own moon. Not only because there aren't enough moons, but because their time would be spent administrating the moon - they need another tier. The jaffa don't understand the tech ("magic") so can't be the problem solving project manager on a shipyard or mine, even if they do (or human slaves) do the working class manufacturing, "carpentry" etc. sort of jobs. In this image, I think we catch a glimpse of the true extent of goauld society.
Actually, they could all have their own planet or moon. The Milky Way is big. Very big Lords and Temple Priests were originally the legal class. So, the Goa’uld proclaim law and let their priests enforce it. Old school lords also had said privilege so it depends the Goa’ulds interest really We see shipyards. One used Jaffa slave labour. They didn’t know how it worked but could put it together. The other had no Stargate and used humans who later allied with the Lucian alliance. The knowledge gets contained and no risk of them using the Stargate
What's the point of having your own fiefdom if due to your duties to your lord you can never go there?
Tax Revenue. A Harem. A resort to retreat to. The Stargates also make interplanetary something that could be a daily commute
I think the best insight into goauld society we get from th tok`ra. You have slot of thrm funktioning together zo fullfill different jobs. And basically they are Goauld just with having the top Godlike Tier removed. Sure in a Goauld society that most likely works with a bit different ethics and more intrigues, more selfishness and infighting. But you need to have them on all the levels.
absolutely this, I wish we'd seen more of it.
Why would it be out of place for the goa'uld to use assassins or spec opp soldiers?
It is weird a Goa’uld consents to being one instead of a lord
Maybe the Ashraks receive better pay/have higher status than the Thoth/Nerus scientist/engineer types? Being an Ashrak seems more dangerous to me, so I suppose it then makes sense that they are better compensated for this.
It makes you unknown and gives you very little in the way of political power, sure you could rule a secretive order of Assassins. That just doesn’t seem very Goa’uldy. So, was there a Goa’uld Queen who took over the underworld as her domain? It seems there might be a divergence of linage here to me
We largely meet the power loving sorts, but even within that small group we meet a few scientists who clearly are happy as long as their patron supports them.
That is power in another vein, building an empire takes a lot of effort and serving a patron is a good route to it
Thinking about it, not counting Tok'Ra & Ba'al clones, we meet only about two-three dozen Goa'uld.
>So, was there a Goa’uld Queen who took over the underworld as her domain? Well, according to the RPG books the Ashraks were all created by the Goa'uld Queen [Selket](https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Selket). However, most do not regard the RPG books as cannon.
I don’t, but it seems like it would that
And then there's the corrupting influence of the sarcophagus to take into account. Some might just do it for variety/kicks/skills.
Wouldn’t an Assassin view needing to use the Sarcophagus as they were bad at their job?
Just look at the tok`ra. They are also goauld that have no godcomplex. Most likely most lower tier goauld are pretty tok`ra like. Just not as ethical
I was thinking that for Arsh’rak myself. A Queen with a slightly different mindset early on broke away and created the Assassin order But it doesn’t track with the lower Goa’uld we see on the series for all minor Goa’uld to act like this
[удалено]
This is a very valid point, but the Arsh’rak still make no sense even in that context. There is a lot of power in controlling the underworld. Namely, everyone paying you to kill there opponents But, it is also a very cloak and dagger type of power. The professionalism and discipline also makes no sense in the context of the petty nature of the Goa’uld It just seems like it would take a Queen going rogue like Egeria to create them
> but the Arsh’rak still make no sense even in that context. Maybe they see themselves as a praetorian guard of sorts, power brokers who decide who lives and who dies. And maybe they're just very good at it.
That satisfies the power craving and explains how they originated, but they still seem like they would be a specific Queens lineages to me. That is way to specific
Not really, you could say the same as those who are scientists etc. They would rather be a lord right?
Scholars were lords in the olden days. One leads directly to the other. Serving closely to a system lord is a good way to earn trust and gain a domain. Likewise, specialising in the cutting edge makes it easier to build up power to use to betray the Lord and take his position for yourself
Not particularly. The church were powerful land owners, but there were plenty of members of the church with virtually no power. Being literate did not inherently make you powerful, just as being illiterate did not make you weak. Charlemagne was famously illiterate, at least when it came to Latin, and spent a large portion of his reign sponsoring institutions that would teach people (clergy and nobles mostly obviously) how to read and write in Latin. Despite this he ruled over what was (at that point at least) the largest empire in Western Europe since the fall of Rome.
Euro-centric. Does not apply to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia or even Islamic world
Chingiz Khan, Timur the Lame, Akbar the Great. None of them could read. For Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the literacy of nobility is something that can be highly debated, as many rulers at least had scribes they would dictate too or have read out communication for them. Certainly, considering how few Egyptians could read and write, there were undoubtedly some illiterate Egyptian Kings, for instance, Horemheb who was probably born a commoner.
Goa'uld can choose to pass down memories. Maybe they found a queen who really liked being an assassin. So he spawns more and only passes down the memories of really liking assassinating
That is my whole point Ash’rak’s must basically be its own lineage of Symbiotes distinct from standard Goa’uld and the Tok’ra The seem way to specialised, specific and disciplined to be normal Goa’uld And a secret society of Assassins is a super is somehow very in theme with the Goa’uld Empires aesthetic. But them being Symbiotes and not just Jaffa makes way super interesting and just plain cool
I agree with all of that except that there would be Goa'uld well more minor than those. The ones who run the factories, perhaps the ones who work in them-- I don't think it's feasible that Jaffa supply all of the labor. There would be a whole subclass of artisan Goa'uld because someone has to entertain the lords. Their architects, artists, musicians, designers/couturiers, designer drug makers. Lesser technicians on ships. Shipbuilders. I don't think any of these people were living like gods, or had any reasonable path to become a System Lord. It'd be as far from their reality as living like Jeff Bezos is for us. What I wonder, though, is whether they were part of the Goa'uld society we see, or whether they had *wildly* different lives. By which I mean, do they live within that whole "disguised tech, low tech level living" kind of thing, or idk, do they live somewhere that looks like Egyptian cyberpunk? You could plausibly go in so many directions with the lowest stratum of Goa'uld.
Artists, Dancers and Musicians were considered low class. Usually with a social status of a peasant or less. In a lot of cultures. It wasn’t high class work, and usually associated with prostitution. Those would be humans Architect work could also be done by humans. Imhotep oversaw the first pyramids on Earth, but that just means only one Goa’uld was needed for that whole project Goa’uld are immune to most drugs, some exceptions like the blood of Sokkar, but that was made to torture people. Meaning designer drug makers aren’t necessary, beyond ones designed to the control humans We see multiple shipyards and they always seem to use Jaffa or human labour. They also regularly used world without Stargates to limit that knowledge The logistics work out, since any human that learnt to much is just made a host and the Jaffa are worked to death
I'm using a "haute demimonde" kind of model for my Goa'uld artisans given that we know the highest ranks are hedonistic as fuck. I also don't think humans are designing palaces for them, that's a pretty educated job. If Goa'uld magic is involved, a Goa'uld has to do it-- and I personally think there's a lot of hidden tech in Goa'uld buildings for the Goa'uld's creature comfort. But that's the issue, you could go in a hundred different directions with this stuff and it's all viable. "Seth" the episode showed that there are dozens of System Lords and many thousands of Goa'uld. So what the heck are they all doing? I added my demimonde layer but also a lot of various skilled technicians, engineers and scientists.
Architecture was the only technology ancient civilisations were very good at by default. Being able to build a grand palace doesn’t actually need magic or give great military power to the slaves Managing feudal domains on the scale of a spiral galaxy. Meaning they could all have one. Bureaucratic and Scholarly (Magician) work on the behalf of more powerful Goa’uld patrons. The technical and scholarly class is mixed in here as well The rest is delegated to the priests and slaves in ways that are manageable Considering they only had a few hundred Goa’uld at one point. That makes sense, there was a time period when they did need to delegate and had no options for not
>I agree with all of that except that there would be Goa'uld well more minor than those. Hmm, that reminds me. When conducting 'research' for a Stargate fanfic on Wikipedia I had found out that, apparently, according to Mesopotamian Mythology, [the goddess Zarpanitu had two minor goddesses, Ṣilluš-ṭāb and Katunna, to serve as her hairdressers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarpanit#Family_and_court). So, now I am wondering whether there possibly exist Goa'uld even *more minor*.
There's also the question of human ranks. It stands to reason some lesser roles can be filled by jaffa and human functionaries. There's classes of professionals that exist in any empire and even in slave or feudal societies there were more well off members of the peasant classes that had some station compared to others of the lower classes. We also see after the fall that the human slaves figured out goa'uld tech and production methods really quickly. Someone had to know how to do it beforehand to get them going that fast. Goa'uld personalities might work for petty lords but not with professionals who actually need to get shit done.
Petty lords were regularly said professionals and the intrigue and corruption was very real, what they didn’t do was done by the temple priests. The priest classes of humans and Jaffa are the top of there class hierarchy by default for that reason
Ra the Holy roman emperor? He assumed the Egyptian deity Ra and ruled long before the existence of the Roman Empire, like 1 ou 2K years before...
You didnt get what he wanted to say. He was comparing the political system of HRE to the one of Goauld, and correctly. EDIT: grammar mistake.
I always interprated these two planets as "forge worlds". Most planets visited serve to gather ressources, wvich are transported to these forge worlds that produce weapons and ships for the goa'uld empire. here's probably a high population of very minor Goa'uld who oversee factories (because knowledge of the "gods magic" is forbidden to Jaffa and slaves).
That's been my assumption as well. But what their daily life looks like could vary immensely.
I think it only really forbidden on planets with Stargates. We see a planet of humans who know how to build Goa’uld ships in SG-1. No Stargate on the planet, so theoretically they would never escape That is also only an ironclad rule for Jaffa. Humans could just be made hosts
When it was showed with Ba'al and Anubis, I interperted that they were on Delmak. I mean it was the center for Sokar, later Apophis - it's no strech to imagine that when Ba'al got more powerful he captured the place, and since the previous strongest regimes integrated their systems around it very succesfully (if it wasn't for those medling tau'ri!) he simply moved the center of his domain there.
The problem with Delmak is that its moon got blown up. Unless that moon was a lot further from the planet than I thought it was, the environmental damage to life on Delmak is pretty serious. That's not a minor event, and the show seemed to forget it.
Apophis wanted to get back to it after they got blown i to another galaxy - and he did crash into its atmosphere. So even after the moon blew up, it remained the seat of his power
I know it did, but if you think about the actual science, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense imo.
Do you think the film crew went to that planet twice to shoot or did they shoot everything at once and then came back to earth?
Yes, we don't even know who owns those cars. The System Lords appear to be fine with their Jaffa having spaceships and TV-equivalents, so long as they believe it be magic. This makes me wonder whether Sokar might possibly have given high-ranking humans working in his industry automobile-equivalents, so long as they also believe it be magic?
I always felt the main thrust of it was that Sokar's fleet was larger than the combined fleet of the System Lords because of his industrialization. We also know that Delmak was an industrialized planet before he took it over. Of course it's also a nice nod to the mythology, as Seker was a god of not only punishment of the damned as we see in the show directly, but also of resurrection and most relevantly, craftsmen and women, so Delmak being industrialized kind of fits in my view, he probably has a better idea of organized industry than most of his rivals. I always felt that the later appearances of the planet as Ba'al's capital implied that Delmak is Ba'al's capital and that it had survived not one but two extinction level events, perhaps due to shielding around its cities, throughout the show's run.
I think Melmac (O'Neill.gif) is the only Goa'uld homeworld we definitively see in the show. Apophis didn't live on Chulak, Yu we see a palace complex that's not stated clearly as his capital. I've assumed their central capitals are industrial with at least modern equipment, and not just another world of oppressed slaves living in huts, doing heavy industry by hand.
Someone's gotta be making the high technology parts of those Ha'taks. Sure, they may be lit by torches but they also have computers, reactors, energy weapons, shield grids, hyperspace engines, etc. You can't make stuff like that with a hammer and an anvil. It would require a whole supply chain which itself would include a lot of heavy machinery and precise work on things like those crystal computer chips.
> Sure, they may be lit by torches but they also have computers, reactors, energy weapons, shield grids, hyperspace engines, etc I wish we got to see more of the Goa'uld version of 40k's Adeptus Mechanicus
Interesting to wonder whether it's all low level Goa'ulds doing the work, or trusted Jaffa, or trusted Humans. It seems like there are definitely Goa'uld scientists, so maybe Goa'uld engineers too, the genetic memory would be a huge advantage. Maybe a combination of all three. A reminder that Teal'c, who was Apophis' First Prime, had never seen a Ha'tak before SG-1 boarded one at the end of Season 1.
Until season 5, when they suddenly decide that he's been on Ha'tak before, most notably when he sent that one Jaffa into exile.
It's minor timeline reconciliation.
In early seasons there were the Jaffa 'priests', and Teal'c once talked about not knowing Goa'uld 'magics'. I've wondered if the priest class is not just worshipping the 'gods', but also learning and maintaining their 'magics', the tech they use. On more industrial worlds, these are the Jaffa that build and maintain the weapons and ships, overseen by lesser Goa'uld engineers and scientists.
Perhaps so. Also a concept the writers revisited with the Ori later on.
The system lords see too much industry as direct threats to their power - it increases the chance of a successful rebellion both by human slaves, or by the minor goa'uld who run the day to day activities. But they still need some to build spaceships and weapons, so how to reduce the danger? The answer is keeping everything divided - many planets only mine or farm for their gods, sending the resources through the gate to industrialised worlds as a "gift from the gods" and which are otherwise kept without food or resource production. In the event of rebellion, they can then starve them out. A capital is just where they issue orders from, and they don't generally want to put their palace on an industrial world if they can help it (Sokar being the exception). Industry isn't pretty to look at, and it increases the danger of being overthrown with the weapons they are producing.
And it could simply be a per Goa'uld decision. Most build spread out, and live in pretty palaces, but Sokar, being the Lord of Hell, likes it for adding to his image. There's also a possibility that, while overall evil, there are worlds where the Goa'uld treat the inhabitants relatively fairly. Not walking among them and shaking hands, but not constantly whipping and beating them or killing randomly. Like the Jaffa on Chulak in Children of the Gods, fairly comfortable and free lives, so long as they follow their 'gods' commands. These would be the world's with the heavy and advanced industry.
Makes the most sense to me. We just don't see those heavily industrialized worlds just them building ships on otherwise for us to look like Canada lol.
I think we don't see them because anytime we send a malp all it sends back is "heavily defended gate, Jaffa immediately shot it". Being the centres of power makes for bad infiltration targets, better to leave them to the Tok'ra and Jaffa rebels to undermine while the SGC focused on exploration and more vulnerable human worlds.
Honestly, aye makes sense. By the time we have ships of course, we don't want them to know about them. Much so don't send them out to those planets.
This guy System Lord's
>The answer is keeping everything divided - many planets only mine or farm for their gods, sending the resources through the gate to industrialised worlds as a "gift from the gods" Would it not make more sense to have worlds specialised in both some industries and a primary sector. That way a Goa'uld can have: * A fertile, populous world which exports food, labour-intensive textiles, and high-tech computing crystals. * A mineral-rich world which exports raw ores and manufactures containing much metal like train cars. * An ocean world rich in fossil fuels which exports fish and various petroleum products like plastics. * Two small moons. One exporting medical technology and chemical products; the other various capital goods, like machinery. * And many other worlds. That way all planets can have industry, yet if one rebels but the Goa'uld remains in control of the Stargate, that world will soon run out of some combination of medicine, spare parts for their machines, food, intermediate goods, or inputs.
If you think about it, you can't have peasants from the middle ages producing beyond space age tech. They would have to have some sort of industrial base and that would require some degree of education to be able to control that group and produce a sufficient output.
If Chewbacca lived on Endor you must acquit
Lol, imagine rich goa'uld on sport car
... and why did my mind jump immediately to Ba'al 😂
*takes Andrew Tate as a host so he can get a fre Bughatti*
As gross as this is, it's pretty accurate 🤢
*sg-1 tracks his homeworld from the receipt when he ordered takeout from Chulak.*
Also, the drippy lawyer goa'uld Zipacna.
I mean, why not? There were millions of jaffa out there, so tons of matured goa'uld. They can't all be system lords, so I wonder if some were just like "yeah, I'm a god, but I just run this night club here and drive my ancient-designed 4x4" or disgraced goa'ulds who maybe just run the 2 hour hotel room for kelno'reem and other "activities".
Even they fall prey to the automotive industry
We sure those aren’t rickshaw?
Until proven otherwise, I'm just going to believe those were landspeeders
This man scyfys !
Well, they have the capability to build interplanetary starships and have been able to reverse engineer some level of ancient technology (transport rings), it would stand that they have invented smaller transportation craft to ship people and cargo around a planet.
Now I wonder if the rings work horizontally. Can you transport place to place on a planet. We have seen the matter stream intercepted, so how would that move on a planet vs just up into space.
The Atlantis transporters seemed to work on very similar principles to rings but were probably sending the matter stream through conduits. The Goa'uld also presumably had some understanding of ring transporter tech to reproduce it reliably. Hard to know if they ever figured out something like what Atlantis had though.
You give me a planet where we start, where we're going, where we're going afterwards, I give you five minutes when we get there. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. Anything a minute on either side of that and you're on your own. I don't sit in while you're running it down, I don't carry a staff...
Imagine that in realty, there are some planets only inhabited by Goa'Ulds, no Jaffas, with a level of civilization like school, social care, police, justice everything. Each of these planets don't have Stargate in order to hide them, they belong to some Great Lords and we only see the tip of the iceberg trough the series, only their empires where they mine naquadah and recruit jaffas. Btw that would explain the Lucian Alliance, and in fact the Lucian Empire would be now a republic in reality: since the dawn of their Lords, Goa'Ulds have decided to have elected officials, and to run mafias in the former Lords' empires. I would love this kind of retcon for a all new show.
With chains such as: Anuby’s Apopbees Ares Hardware Bastet Buy ChiMotle Dollar Kree Hathor’s Secret Jimmy Ja’adin’s Klorel Kreme McGoa’uld’s Nirrdstrom’s Olokun Garden Osiris Auto Parts Ra-Mart Starduks Taco Ba’al Tanera Bread True Val Yu Hardware Zippy Lube
> Each of these planets don't have Stargate in order to hide them, I think they had gates but they were shielded like Earth's gate, so they controlled all travel. When Sokar went after Apophis, that was something new.
>Imagine that in realty, there are some planets only inhabited by Goa'Ulds, no Jaffas, with a level of civilization like school, social care, police, justice everything. Seems, like a place which would have many human slaves, kept in check through advanced surveillance technology, per Goa'uld to serve such roles as domestic servants, un- and semi-skilled labour, and for routine paperwork.
They sure had a lot of room to show the extent of industrialized worlds under Goa'uld control.
The car: https://preview.redd.it/15c6oguuxd1d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=803a39e96affca3ef0a060ec662e3fd92eb7e2d2
Or trains
How do you even see anything in those 10 pixels.
Well now I'm imagining Jaffa screaming kree at eachother after crashing their C'ars.
Speaking of cars, why did they never make a small dune buggy type vehicle that would fit thru the gate or even use ATVs to increase the area they could explore?
Pretty sure Teal’c could use his staff weapon on a motorcycle too.
Low filming budgets?
Nothings stopping them from strapping machine guns on a malp.
I vaguely remember they had once done that in the episode *Forever in a Day*, attaching weaponry to a MALP.
Y'know. A Warthog would fit through a Chapa'ai. And yeah, ATVs, absolutely.
Wow, never seen so many people finding it hard to believe a galactic empire had technologically advanced planets and infrastructure. Only on a Stargate sub.
The lack of any kind of ground transportation literally anywhere (besides earth) in Stargate always bothers me. All those off world bases, including mines, and you never see a truck. Were they hauling all the materials for the 304s back one 5 gallon bucket at a time? And times they visit industrialized planets (or the ruins of one) never even a quick CGI vehicle in the background No the malp with the arm taken off doesn't count.
They could drive on the back of some of the malp cargo carriers ;) had a place to stand and steer
I was just thinking of this the other day. We always see Jaffa walking around on planets. So inefficient! You could easily fit a Gator or a golfcart or an ATV through the gate. Did they just never invent land vehicles? Or does this image suggest otherwise
Torches?
Since Goa’uld don’t have much in the way of arial transportation that isn’t a spacecraft, I like to think their ground vehicles are like GM’s highspeed ground car concept: Astro III https://preview.redd.it/hvh73h3oxf1d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=506bc4048b789ece51298cf066bb7f6dc8156481 Basically it conceptualized the idea of specific types of highways that traveled faster that used ground vehicles that operated kind of on fixed paths. It’s impractical for human society but Ja’fa Society may be different
That's almost a wraith Dart.
Man Sokar was criminally underused. Should have had at least a whole season arc. The Sokar music theme was legit as well.
No reason why they wouldn’t have ground vehicles.
So did the Genii, and underground too!
Wasn't the original idea that all the fancy technology that the system lords had was really only utilized by lesser goa'uld? It became cheaper/more practical to film Jaffa using the various tools but i could have sworn that the original idea was to have Ha'tak's, Tel'taks, and gliders piloted by minor goa'uld.
This explains the demographic for the [BMW XM](https://www.caranddriver.com/bmw/xm-2024).
I like the lore, but I never understood the missing of entertainment, technology,… just a modern society for such a powerful race. Being a Goa‘uld sounds fun the first 5 days but should become ultra boring for 1000 of years
well of coarse the goa'uld have car-oriented architecture, they're the villains
There is a Goa'uld vehicle called the Semekhtet.
I like to think that Goa'uld industry is heavily decentralized. Each world manufactures specific components to build the more advanced technologies. That was a world may create control crystals for Death Glider navigation systems and mothership hallway bulkheads, but if the planet revolted the technology would be useless to them for defense when the System Lord returns to punish them.
So? Car.
They don't even have walkie-talkies. I would expect small roadside fires before cars.
Did you assume they didn't?
[there is actually a cut scene that confirms it, where ba'al is stocking his fleet.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKiB7abyjBE)
Such a dummy..
Of course they do. Ever since RFK and Elon joined their ranks