Wriath Hierarchy (Warning spoilers season 4 episodes that HAVE BEEN AIRED)

[mja71889]

Tell me if this is a fair assement.
THE FOLLOWING BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4 EPISODES THAT HAVE BEEN AIRED AS OF LAST FRIDAY THE DISCUSSION MAY END UP CONTINUEING TO LATER EPISODES ONLY WHEN THEY HAVE BEEN AIRED.
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I preivously posted about a Wriath Hierarchy a couple weeks ago. Now from i forgot which season 4 episode but we discover that the Wraith have been cloning. The only clones that we saw were the wraith with the masks. And so far we have not met any intelligent wraith with masks and I make this assement based on that none of them have talked. It's far easier making clones less intellegent beings than intellegent ones. So the wriath in the black clothing seem to be the ones in control whether they are cloning themselves is up in the air but the majority of wriath warriors (ones with masks) are being cloned. The wriath with masks appear to be mear pawns in the Wraith society. So the hierarhcy would be as followed. At the top is the queen below that is the guys in black and below that are the wriath with masks. I really simplified the complex situation but never the less am I on the right track?

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

It was "Spoils of War" on the back half of season 4.

Anyway, remember that the warriors we saw getting spawned weren't cloned then but created by the Queen. Todd and the Wraith Commander said that the Hive Queen creates several Wraith who are used as a genetic template to create thousands upon thousands of clones. This doesnt necessarily mean that the lower ranking drones are the only ones cloned and its quite possible the higher ranking male commanders are also cloned a bit since across the seasons we have seen different Wraith that are exactly the same.

Now on the Hierarchy I think its pretty much like this:
*Hive Queen
*Keepers
*Male Commanders
*Male Drones

Typically, a Hive Queen rules a Hive Ship and a faction of Wraith. Their territorial nature means that they rarely get along with one another though. Despite that though, from the Sateda episode and from the various Todd ones, we can establish that not all Hive-Ships are ruled by a Hive-Queen but a Male Commander who has much influence can actually command it himself.

The Keepers are one element we havent seen much of but they appear to be the maintenance personnel. They appear to look after the Wraith's organic technology but its been said that they have 'made their alliances' since the Wraith civil war. The female Wraith in the second episode of Atlantis may have been one of these Keepers which might make sense since a maintenance personnel would excel at looking after the hibernating Wraith then a more important Queen. If thats the case, its possible Keepers are also female.

The lower ranking Drone appear to be grown simply to follow orders; to live and die by the hundreds if necessary. They appear to have little survival instinct among them and make somewhat good soldiers in that regard. Presumably a large batch of them are cloned. I suspect that they are the last ones to feed and kept underdeveloped in certain ways in order to keep them in the single role as warriors.

Thats my look at the Wraith.

[HyperspaceDaemon]

It was "Spoils of War" on the back half of season 4.

Now on the Hierarchy I think its pretty much like this:
*Hive Queen
*Keepers
*Male Commanders
*Male Drones

....

The Keepers are one element we havent seen much of but they appear to be the maintenance personnel. They appear to look after the Wraith's organic technology but its been said that they have 'made their alliances' since the Wraith civil war. The female Wraith in the second episode of Atlantis may have been one of these Keepers which might make sense since a maintenance personnel would excel at looking after the hibernating Wraith then a more important Queen. If thats the case, its possible Keepers are also female.

Overall I agree to your interpretation about the Wraith hierarchy, except from the Keepers. In my opinion, that female Wraith in "the Rising" was a queen. And that all the non-sleeping Wraiths in that facility were "Keepers".

My understanding is that Keepers = "those Wraiths who are not hibernating at a given moment in time".

So, the Keepers can include : queens, commanders and drones. There is nothing special about them except that they were awake while the vast majority of Wraith are hibernating. Maybe, every x hundreds of years another group of Wraiths were awakened for taking the role of "Keepers" ; and those who used to be Keepers started to hibernate.

[Ouroboros]

Keepers are apparently the Wraith who look after and preserve the knowledge and tech of their race. The Wraith in allies talks about how there are some things only they can fix on the hiveship for example and how they've already picked sides in the civil war.

The one we've seen so far was a female/queen but it's possible male ones might exist to, either to help the female ones who are in charge or just to operate in the same capacity themselves.

I'd say they likely operate outside the normal Wraith command structure. That's to say one of them might work for a queen but they're not going to be ordered around by one. Their skills are such that if they're not happy with their current employer they can easily tell them to piss off and go take their services elsewhere. It would be the queens/ship bosses who would need them more than the otherway around. Rising also suggests that they're all somehow in communication with each other. When the one keeper was killed the entire galaxy knew about it shortly after. They probably form some sort of internal guild type organization that decides who it's going to help and who it isn't. They're likely quite an important powerful group in Wraith society.

Now what's got me stumped now is the big guy from Sateda. I had up until this point been assuming he was just a noface guy without a helmet but apparently the noface guys really do have nofaces so that's clearly not the case. He had his own ship but as we've also seen from recent eps it's possible for males to have a hiveship without a queen so that in itself isn't as noteworthy as it once seemed. Furthermore since we now know that the Wraith reproduce asexually he's not some sort of male equivalent to a queen. So what is he?

I think for now I'm just going to say that he's an ordinary male Wraith who hits the gym more than usual. He was some sort of warlord or hunt leader so it's likely that he's a veteran of many hunts/runners personally which would potentially acount for him being so hardcore. While I have nothing to back it up I'd also like to think he was something of a holdover from the original ancient war, back when Wraith males were giant berzerker badasses who led armies of clones to tap dance on ancient faces, instead of little pansy science boys who get mowed down by Dex and Shep 40 at a time.

[dasNdanger]

From what I understand now and from a comment made - I believe by JM - is that the unmasked Wraith are born through more - traditional - means. These Wraith (unmasked) would be born and grow up as children into adulthood. These are closer (genetically) to humans, and probably come into existence in a similar manner.

But the masked Warriors seem to be less developed. These - we can assume - are closer to their buggy ancestors. They seem to be produced in a manner closer to insect reproduction, and emerge from their 'eggs' or cocoons as adults. Since these seem to have a lower intelligence, it is logical that only masked warriors are cloned, while unmasked Wraith - whether commanders or queens or whatever - are not.

If this is the case - then it raises the question as to whether there really are MANY unmasked Wraith. It is very possible that the unmasked Wraith, those who rank higher in society, are relatively small in number compared to the masked warriors. If so, this may not bode well for the survival of the species.


das

[ciannwn]

From what I understand now and from a comment made - I believe by JM - is that the unmasked Wraith are born through more - traditional - means. These Wraith (unmasked) would be born and grow up as children into adulthood. These are closer (genetically) to humans, and probably come into existence in a similar manner.

What does 'traditional' mean in relation to a species which evolved from Iratus bugs? The faced males might be less numerous than the masked soldiers but there are still too many of them in comparison to the number of Queens for the 'traditional human method' to be feasible.

Then there's the question of why genetic material taken from a Queen (female) should produce male warriors. Something in 'The Gift' could provide a clue.

McKAY: But I thought you already said they had a number of genetic characteristics similar to humans.

BECKETT: They do -- but they're still much closer to the bug creature that attacked Major Sheppard than to us.

I'm now going to repeat a few things I've said in other topics. If anyone's read it before just move on to my speculations concerning the male from Sateda.

Ant Reproduction

The life of an ant starts with an egg. If the egg is fertilized, the ant will be female; if not, it will be male

Asexual Reproduction

Female Komodo dragons (the largest lizard) can produce offspring by parthenogenesis when no male is available for sexual reproduction. Their offspring are homozygous at every locus including having identical sex chromosomes. Thus the females produce all males because, unlike mammals, females are the heterogametic sex (ZW) while males are homogametic (ZZ).

Maybe Wraith have a similar reproduction system. The Queens usually produce male offspring via unfertilised eggs (or whatever) and only mate on the rare occasions when they wish to produce a female. Maybe the production is now a technological process which can be done on a hive ship because it's making tens of thousands of clones at once which requires massive amounts of power, not stage one which is making a few genetic templates.

Something Todd says in 'Be All My Sins' suggests that Queens can create new soldiers on hive ships. It's unlikely that he was lying here because Wraith were reproducing before they got hold of the Z.P.Ms' for the cloning facility. It's also logical to assume that they'd already invented the 'technological creation' process and cloning before setting off to do it on a grand scale.

WRAITH: Not all of them were convinced that the mission was achievable, plus many of our ships are without Queens. We'd be unable to create new soldiers should they fall.

What does he mean by soldiers here? Is he just talking about masked warriors or does it include faced males because they're just as likely to die in a space battle as the masked soldiers?

Now what's got me stumped now is the big guy from Sateda. I had up until this point been assuming he was just a noface guy without a helmet but apparently the noface guys really do have nofaces so that's clearly not the case. He had his own ship but as we've also seen from recent eps it's possible for males to have a hiveship without a queen so that in itself isn't as noteworthy as it once seemed. Furthermore since we now know that the Wraith reproduce asexually he's not some sort of male equivalent to a queen. So what is he?

He didn't look like a typical faced male so here's a bizarre idea. There are two kinds of faced male. The vast majority are the equivalent of sterile workers but the Sateda type male is a breeding male for the production of females. How would a Queen produce a breeding male? No idea but termites could give a clue -

http://www.pestproducts.com/termites.htm

Termites have the ability to change from one caste type to another during their immature stages. This allows the colony to change the proportion of different caste members as the need arises.

Maybe there's no difference between faced males at birth (whatever that means in relation to Wraith) but one or more infants can be selected and turned into breeding males by a particular enzyme or something.

So here's another possibility for the heirarchy.

1: Queens.
2: Breeding faced males.
3: Non breeding faced males.
4: Masked soldiers.

We now come to the mystery of Keepers. At the moment the only reference we've had in the show came from the Wraith scientist in 'Allies'.

WRAITH: Before the civil war, there were Keepers who maintained the entire fleet, but they have made their own alliances.

WRAITH: Without your help, this damage may have been irreparable.

Earlier on in the conversation we have -

WRAITH: Many of the problems we encounter eventually heal themselves, yes, but there are smaller, more complex issues.

McKAY: Ah. Such as the programming code to make your old ships do new things?

WRAITH: Or bypassing inoperable systems, yes. It has been so long since we have fought a real battle.

This hive was involved in a complex plot to learn the location of Earth. The key element of the plan was pretending that the expedition scientists were needed in order to devise a method of dispersing Beckett's virus throughout other hive ships. Having wheedled their way into the expedition's tentative trust they handed over hive schematics which contained a virus.

ZELENKA: We got hacked. Within the hive ship's schematics was a worm-like computer virus.

WEIR: Your people went over the data.

ZELENKA: I know. We thought it was clean, but this virus was entirely different.

WEIR: What did it do?

ZELENKA: It very selectively probed our systems without damaging them or exposing itself.

BECKETT: I don't understand. If you didn't find it and it didn't reveal itself ...

ZELENKA: Once the hive left Atlantis, the worm began to destroy all of the data they had sent down.

I find it difficult to believe that Wraith who were able to come up with this virus would be incapable of bypassing inoperative systems or writing a programming code to make an old ship do new things. For all we know, the 'Allies' scientist might have been a Keeper who had made an alliance with this particular hive.

The Keepers are one element we havent seen much of but they appear to be the maintenance personnel. They appear to look after the Wraith's organic technology

If the 'Allies' scientist is to be believed, the organic technology repairs itself. The Keepers are technicians who are specialists in the 'small complex issues' department.

The female in 'Rising' didn't describe herself or her staff as Keepers.

WRAITH (lying on the floor, clearly in pain): You don't know what you have done. We are merely the caretakers for those that sleep. When I die, the others will awake. (She gasps, and her voice deepens for her final dramatic announcement.) All of them. (She dies.)

Queens have more powerful minds than the males. Maybe this female caretaker was a Queen because she was able to wake all the hives. So are the Keepers female? All the Wraith scientists we've seen up until now have been male while we've never had any indication that Queens involve themselves in the scientific aspects of hive running. They command and have male 'workers' to do all that for them.