"letters from pegasus" wraith beam

[Bragi]

I always thought it was a mega-culling beam.

[SoulReaver]

I always thought it was a mega-culling beam.

same here

[Lord batchi ball]

I always thought it was a mega-culling beam.

Makes more sense then "tagging" the planet.

[Mister Oragahn]

I always thought it was a mega-culling beam.

Makes no sense to send darts. Though I wish they did deploy ships with huge culling beams. It would have made it more creepy, really.
This has been talked about in those threads about what you'd see new on the Wraith side.
There was a thread which went off-topic, a while ago, about all sorts of units and ships we'd like to see, and a more recent one, though dated now, where ideas were posted about Ori and Wraith robots, ships and vehicles.

Back on the big harvester.
Considering culling beam ranges, assuming it's boosted, the menacing ship would still need to ominously hover above the cities, a bit like the cityships in ID4.
It would fit with the carving seen on Athos, displaying some kind of big Wraith ship culling people, while dart corresponding silhouettes are flanking it.



There's that episode of Captain Future/Flam (the anime from Toei Animation) where it featured aliens attacking a civilized world. I can't remember if they killed or stunned people, but the cities' streets were littered with lying bodies. The aliens used ships equipped with sorts of tentacles/tubes, that would swallow the inanimated bodies back into the vessel.
Damn that scene was very very creepy. But well, animes back then were another kind of stuff anyway.

On the carving I posted, we can see bodies lying horizontally. Really, I think that during war times, the Wraith would have no time to loose to hunt humans like they seem to do now, as a sort of sport.
Right back in the war, I think they'd go for efficiency, and fire huge stunning beams from orbit, and then bring down the superculling creepy ships, and voila.

But back on topic, the blue beam would makes less sense as a culling beam. Considering that we see the beam start off the ground, I find it really appropriate to relate it to an energy sucking mechanism.

[Bragi]

Makes no sense to send darts. Though I wish they did deploy ships with huge culling beams. It would have made it more creepy, really.
This has been talked about in those threads about what you'd see new on the Wraith side.
There was a thread which went off-topic, a while ago, about all sorts of units and ships we'd like to see, and a more recent one, though dated now, where ideas were posted about Ori and Wraith robots, ships and vehicles.

Back on the big harvester.
Considering culling beam ranges, assuming it's boosted, the menacing ship would still need to ominously hover above the cities, a bit like the cityships in ID4.
It would fit with the carving seen on Athos, displaying some kind of big Wraith ship culling people, while dart corresponding silhouettes are flanking it.



There's that episode of Captain Future/Flam (the anime from Toei Animation) where it featured aliens attacking a civilized world. I can't remember if they killed or stunned people, but the cities' streets were littered with lying bodies. The aliens used ships equipped with sorts of tentacles/tubes, that would swallow the inanimated bodies back into the vessel.
Damn that scene was very very creepy. But well, animes back then were another kind of stuff anyway.

On the carving I posted, we can see bodies lying horizontally. Really, I think that during war times, the Wraith would have no time to loose to hunt humans like they seem to do now, as a sort of sport.
Right back in the war, I think they'd go for efficiency, and fire huge stunning beams from orbit, and then bring down the superculling creepy ships, and voila.

But back on topic, the blue beam would makes less sense as a culling beam. Considering that we see the beam start off the ground, I find it really appropriate to relate it to an energy sucking mechanism.

I always thought it was a mega-culling beam.

[Lord batchi ball]

I think it is a Culling beam, look you can even see little people getting sucked up, maybe when it hits them they are knocked unconcious. 600!!!

[jds1982]

Maybe the blue beam is some sort of drop off for darts to place harvested humans, who are then transported to the hive by the beam, so the darts don't have to constantly fly back to the hive ship.

[Lord You]

Maybe the blue beam is some sort of drop off for darts to place harvested humans, who are then transported to the hive by the beam, so the darts don't have to constantly fly back to the hive ship.

Ya I thought it was a combonation of mega culling beam and a drop off for darts. I also thought that it also was a way to give the ship humans... back then I thought the ships fed on humans too, but now I see that was a silly idea.

[jds1982]

back then I thought the ships fed on humans too

"I've got a big big thirst, for human blood!"

[Mister Oragahn]

Maybe the blue beam is some sort of drop off for darts to place harvested humans, who are then transported to the hive by the beam, so the darts don't have to constantly fly back to the hive ship.

While buzzing around, the darts never get close, nor stop next to the blue beam to drop their precious cargo. Rising has shown that there's a working procedure for the darts to return to the ships, dock and drop their cargo. Now, obviously, the cattle has to be dropped somewhere else than in the landing bays.

A way darts could unload their cargo is to dock, then get plugged to the hiveship's circuit that "sucks" their cargo, still as energized matter, and reroutes it directly into cocoons, for the preys to be rematerialzed there, or all the cargo is dropped inside massive chambers where all humans are concentrated, like in camps, before being taken away.

The darts could also pass through that big chamber, unload the preys, before continuing their route towards the docking bays.

[Gormagon]

What this beam is is the Zetnikatel three shot disintegration of Stargate Atlantas instead of SG-1, just less publicized.

Here is what happened...

"So we need something creepy and scary for the Wraith to do in this episode" 1

"Like they aren't scary enough" 2
"how about something we havent seen before?" 3
"I know! A giant glowing blue beam from the sky that descends into the village!"1
"Good one, what does it do?" 3
"I dont know we can figure it out later" 1
"Ok well lets write it in quick we have an episode to shoot"2





Frankly this doesent make much sense at all, however a long range transporter is the only thing that makes any sort of sense. As a marking tag it is just plain inefficient, much easier to use a piece of hardware or just turn the guns onto a mountain and carve "so and so's buffet no touchy." So what is left? A long range culling beam and or transporter, as the carvings on Old Athos showed us, we know they have them, so this is the only thing that this could be passed off as.
Really.

Add limitations, they are energy inefficient and consume far more energy then Asgard or Ancient transporters, meaning they are not used all the time. Make it clumsy and not as accurate/pin point as Wraith Dart beams. We know the Wraith compete with one another, so I doubt all Wraith would have this technology, so say only a few clans do. Say that the beam is used for mass culling, but the Wraith rarely get an excuse to use it due to lower population throughout the galaxy. It could serve to deposit troops on the ground. Wraith Darts would be a more energy efficient way to cull, and a more pin point way to both cull and deploy troops into strategic areas. Wraith Darks might be able to switch their culling beams to "out" mode and dump their loads into the beam.

Just some thoughts.

[Railgun]

I don't like the Tag idea. It's not the easiest way to mark a planet as culled. Why use a physical beam thingy at all when you could just have a shared Wraith database of planets that have been culled?

Also the state of the planet will change with time. So if they cull it today and put a tag when they come back in a few thousand years it will still be tagged. All humans need to do to avoid being culled is to relocate to a previously tagged planet through the stargate.

Why not just use their life signs detectors instead? That would be a more reliable way of deciding if there were enough humans for a light snack.

I think it could have been part of an Ancient weapons system. Like a targeting beam or something. Where the weapon itself has been depleted or damaged long ago, now only the beam works.

The Wraith seem to just leave damaged weapons, like the satellite weapon, rather than take the time to destroy them once they cease to be a threat.

[thekillman]

I don't like the Tag idea.

at first i thought that it was a tag, but as i later watched the episode, that thing went on throughout the night.

I doubt ~6 hours of keeping a beam on target is an effective way of tagging.

[Mister Oragahn]

at first i thought that it was a tag, but as i later watched the episode, that thing went on throughout the night.

I doubt ~6 hours of keeping a beam on target is an effective way of tagging.

That's a hell of a wee methinks.


Other than that...
http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/5...-Powered/page2
http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/4...th-Powersource

[Lt.UrsulaKenmore]

In my third Stargate Atlantis Season Six story, "The Ruins", I actually go into what I think this specific thing is.

After discovering that a rogue group of Asgard are in the Pegasus and have been for quite some time, I think it's downright dumb to think that the Wraith didn't have a clue that the Asgard (allies of the Ancients) weren't still somewhere in the galaxy. And we do know that these Asgard were conducting experiments not unlike Loki's experiments of human abduction that got him in trouble with Thor and the others. Well, why not take humans during cullings? It's perfect cover... until the Wraith, whom I think would be using their sensors to take count of how many humans their culling just to maintain stocks sake (like with cattle farming, you only take so many of your herd to sell but do maintain some to help out with the new stock coming in) and realize that there are less humans on the surface their monitoring and the count in the Wraith darts aren't matching up.

So the Wraith, perhaps encountering this more and more as the Asgard take more people for their experiments, would have ample opportunities to observe this discrepancy, start to scan for it, and find out that they aren't the only ones with beaming technology even with the Ancients out of the Pegasus. I think they'd create a beam weapon of some sort that can easily be deployed whenever they find this discrepancy and disrupt the specific signal of Asgard beaming technology.

Voila! Or at least it's voila for me and makes for a nice detail in the story of "The Ruins" as well as a handy way of not one-offing the Pegasus Asgard from Atlantis.