Stargate: āHoagāĀ - Mass Xāover Idea
About this time last year, I started watching Stargate with my dad. We watched the original movie and SG-1. And Atlantis. And the SG-1 movies. And Universe. And Origins.
We finished the franchise somewhere about a third of the way through 2020, though with how this yearās been it feels like that was years ago, now. And for a lot of the time we were watching it and for at least a little while after it, I had a thought that wouldnāt go away and that I kind of liked.
Namely that I wanted to write a Stargate fanfic of some kind, possibly even a crossover. A mass crossover, in fact. As with most of my fan-fiction thoughts, no matter the work, they eventually fell onto my pile of half-started ideas. Iām awful at keeping to things and not getting distracted byĀ ānew shinyā ideas like some kind of fanfic magpie, even when I like the idea.
That said, this was a concept I really liked, so iām going to share the basics of it now, as far as I got with it. Maybe it will inspire someone else, or maybe iāll come back to this someday.
Regardless, though hereās the notes:
- Post-Universe, the war with the Lucian Alliance is still going, and despite the slightly dire situation things were headed toward last we saw, the SGCās winning. The LA are on the back foot, and is starting to break into smaller factions. One of the larger LA factions decides to cut their losses and make a run for it, their space fleet making a beeline for the Supergate the Ori Army built to link the Milky Way and Alteran Home galaxies, having either deciphered or stolen the codes required to dial it. The SGC puts together an attack force to intercept the faction at the gate and stop their escape. The fleet is accompanied by several characters from existing series.
- The battleās one sided, but the LA faction continues to make a run for the gate. And then it happens. Iām undecided on the details, but a mix of weapons fire on the ships trying to pass through and other circumstances - in much the same way as that classic episode of SG-1 - causes the open Supergate toĀ ājump tracksā, the destination shifting to somewhere not in the Alteran Galaxy. A side effect of energy on this scale causes all ships in the vicinity to be pulled through.
- Emerging on the far side, the surviving ships exit through what seems to be another Supergate, albeit of less refined design. Later study will show it to be Ancient, instead of Ori. This lesser design proves unstable, leading to the SGC fleet being forced to destroy both it and their crippled ships to force a ceasefire with the LA ships, stranding a cast of both old and new faces wherever theyāve ended up.
- As for where theyāve found themselves, itās the Hoagās Object galaxy, they eventually discover. For those unaware, this is a real ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from the Milky Way (~200 times further from Earth than the Pegasus Galaxy). Itās a galaxy for which we have a low understanding of the mechanics behind its formation - which sparked my interest as the ideal location for a Stargate series with an underlying mystery beyond justĀ āget homeā, in the tradition of Atlantis and Universe. Itās a fun place to read and speculate about.
- The base of operations for the āHoag Expeditionā as they try to contact Earth (a challenge when their arrival method and much of their equipment has been destroyed), is the āSpireā, an automated Ancient outpost which is, as the name implies, a massive pointed tower in space. The story behind it, as the cast discover, is that the Ancients were very interested in what was causing Hoagās Objectās structure, and sent a large automated seeding ship to the galaxy, with the intent that it would automatically drop Stargates on various interesting worlds and other locales - similar to the Destiny - also seed a few worlds with human life, as was their MO to an extent, then take up a preset location and convert itself into a stationary... station, that would serve as the Ancientās home once they were ready to arrive - a local Supergate also being constructed as one of the projects they were intending to test alongside their studies in Hoag. Like Destiny, though, they never arrived. The Spire was dispatched late in the Ancientās time, likely around about when they were fighting the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy. After that, they focused on ascension, and the Spire lay forgotten, its systems waiting for a crew that wasnāt coming.
- Some of the first things the expedition discover on arrival are tied to the local gates. Firstly, they canāt dial home. Even when they work out where they are relative to Earth, they canāt calculate what the 8 symbol address required to dial would be (for reasons made harder by the second point). Thereās no indication what the address would even consist of, given thereās noĀ ādial Earthā address in the Spireās database - presumably the Ancients didnāt know where theyād end up dialing from, and no-one ever arrived to clarify. Secondly, while the local gates are Pegasus-era 3rd generation Stargates, they have a different color palette - being purple rather than blue, because I like purple - as well as a completely different set of symbols. These symbols are determined to be a very symbol numeric system set up in 5s, presumably because the gate seeding was automated and chose a structured visual system. I actually created a guide for this system. As might be obvious, this gate network has more symbols them any other - to account for Hoagās Object being a larger galaxy - featuring 41 non-Point of Origin options:
- As I mentioned before, however, I wanted this to be a mass crossover, which is where the Ancientsā MO of seeding human life comes in. Like the Pegasus Galaxy, you can still have those human cultures, but how far out Hoagās Object is - as with Stargate Universe - allows for more alien cultures as well. Which naturally lets you drop pretty much any non-Earth (or otherwise, in some cases) setting into this concept amid other, more original planets and have it turn up as the expedition does what Stargate does best: explore new worlds. RWBY? No problem. Avatar? Eeyup. Fairy Tail? Definitely. Madoka Magica? Trickier, but even with that being set on Earth the Incubators have to come from somewhere, right? MLP? Simple, if the Equestria Girls world is considered the local side of the mirror and Equestria another reality. Heck, you could even throw in something as out there as Hermitcraft and probably make it fit.
- And yes, I did briefly play around with gate addresses for a few of the above places, too, but didnāt get very far due to waning inspiration (the above symbol system itself was already my 5th or 6th attempt to make something workable). I did include my meta-logic for choosing the symbols, though:
- There were other ideas I had for this whole thing, too. I played around with the idea of writing this on a forum thread on somewhere like SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and maybe I still could one day, where other people could write in the setting too if I got enough traction (always been a big fan of interactive and/or collab ventures). Also played with the concept of a story-line of two GoaāuldĀ ābrothersā who had left the Milky Way in centuries past in search of new pickings, finding Hoagās Object and setting themselves up as gods over multiple worlds (one of which may have been RWBY, if that gives you an idea of where that was probably going), but that fell apart once I started questioning how they got to Hoagās Object when the Spire and its gate hadnāt been touched before the SGC arrived.
All that aside, though, this idea is out in the open now. If someone wants to play around with it, they can. Or if people want to ask what iād do with various settings or features, iām happy to give it some more thought to get the creative juices pumping again.
For now, though, enjoy! :)
