Chapter 3: The Curse of Kaggen
Stargate Command, Isolation Room 2
Daniel looked up with surprise and just a little confusion when the base intercom in his room buzzed. He marked his place in his book, setting it aside as he crossed the room to pick up the intercom's handset.
"Not sure who you were trying to get a hold of," Daniel said, "but this is isolation."
"Danny, it's me!"
"Oh, Mitchell! Um... why are you calling me on the base comms?" Daniel asked.
"I've got nothing to do," Mitchell replied.
"I'm no more your personal entertainment than I am Vala's."
"No!" Mitchell cried. "I finished my backlog of paperwork nearly an hour ago. I was thinking we could play a game."
"A game?" Daniel asked. "Is that really the best use of the base's intercom system?"
"It's not like there's anything else going on," Mitchell argued.
Daniel pinched his nose. With a sigh, he said, "Okay, a game. Can we at least do this on the computer instead of over the intercom?"
Mitchell assented, and the pair hopped online to play. After a few rounds of Battleship, they even managed to get Teal'c in on the action, moving to digital poker.
After wasting away a surprising amount of time, and losing more chips than either Daniel or Cameron cared to admit to Teal'c, the group was interrupted by a klaxon sounding through the base.
Stargate Command Control Room
"Unscheduled offworld activation!" Sergeant Harriman cried as lights started flashing on his console and an alarm began blaring. While inbound travelers outside of predefined schedules were common enough, there was no way to know ahead of time who was coming, so unscheduled dial-ins were always a high-alert affair. In the embarkation room below Harriman, marines took up defensive positions with assault rifles, riot shields, and a pair of M2 Browning machine guns permanently affixed to the floor on each side of the ramp leading from the gate.
General Landry responded to the situation as expected, shouting, "Close the iris!" as he dashed down the spiral staircase from the floor above, where the briefing room and his office were located. Harriman slapped his hand onto a palm scanner, and twenty overlapping blades of trinium-titanium alloy slid together, covering the gate less than three micrometers in front of where the event horizon would form.
Landry walked up behind Harriman and leaned forward to better see into the embarkation room. After the incoming dialing sequence had completed and the wormhole had formed behind the iris, he asked, "What have we got, Walter?"
"Receiving a signal, sir," Harriman said. After a moment, the computer popped up with its analysis of the inbound message. The sergeant turned in his chair to look up at the general and said, "It's Bra'tac's IDC, sir. Should I open the iris?" Bra'tac was the First Prime of Apophis before Teal'c was promoted to the role, and he was pivotal in teaching Teal'c most of the things Teal'c now knew, including the truth about the Goa'uld as false gods. Bra'tac was a high-ranking member of the Free Jaffa Nation, and a close friend of many in the SGC.
Landry shook his head and moved his head closer to the microphone built into Harriman's station. "Master Bra'tac, are you receiving?"
"I am here. Is this General Landry?"
"This is. I'm afraid I can't let you through, Master Bra'tac. The SGC is under a self-imposed quarantine. Nobody comes in, nobody goes out."
There was a short pause over the radio. "Would this quarantine be because your people have been... transforming?"
Landry glanced at Sergeant Harriman, slightly dumbfounded. "How would you know about that?" he asked Bra'tac.
"This curse has struck many Free Jaffa, as well. If you allow me passage, I believe I have information you will find useful."
Harriman looked to the general, waiting for orders. Landry weighed his options, considering the information he'd received from his medical staff and the information Jack had relayed to him from the Pentagon, as well as the continuously deteriorating state of the infected personnel. With a nod, he grabbed a nearby handset for the base's intercom and said, "Hazmat team report to the gate room." Switching to an intercom that would only broadcast his voice to the gate room, he added, "Defense team stand down and pull back."
When everyone was finally in place, the general finally ordered Harriman to open the iris and called back to Bra'tac, "Okay, Master Bra'tac, you're clear to come through the gate."
The man that stepped through the gate was not what Landry was expecting from a visit by the aging Jaffa, though. While Bra'tac still wore his traditional Jaffa warrior armor and carried a staff weapon in one hand, much of his appearance had changed. His greying beard was completely gone, and where he normally wore a metal skullcap, he had a shock of unruly purple hair. His silvery cape did a decent job of hiding it, but every few steps a swish of a purple tail could be seen. His ears had elongated significantly and migrated further towards the top of his head, likely why he made no effort to continue wearing the skullcap Landry was used to seeing. His auricular muscles had also changed, as his ears twitched and rotated to catch every small sound around him. His normal brown eyes had become a brilliant purple color, and as he walked down the ramp from the Stargate he seemed to be taking special pains to keep his heels on the ground.
"You didn't tell me you were one of the Jaffa infected, Master Bra'tac," Landry chided the elderly warrior over the embarkation room speakers.
Bra'tac looked up to the control room window, his ears perked, and grinned, "You did not ask!"
"Escort our guest to Isolation Room 3," the general instructed the medical team at the entrance to the embarkation room. "I'm sorry, Master Bra'tac, but we can't have you wandering the base like this. Teal'c is in Isolation Room 3 as well, I'm sure he'll be happy to see you."
Stargate Command, Isolation Room 3
As the general predicted, Teal'c was pleased to see his mentor and surrogate father. However, he was less than enthused by the changes that had come over Bra'tac's body.
"I do not think pink is your color, Teal'c," Bra'tac said as he gestured at Teal'c's now long and flowing hair, and his tail that dragged on the ground.
"Nor is purple yours, master," Teal'c gave Bra'tac a half-grin. "How is this possible?" he asked. "We believed that the source of this transformation was an artifact we discovered on PHK-519."
"Yes, please," General Landry said as he stepped into the observation booth over the isolation room, "you said that you had pertinent information about this particular affliction?" Vala stepped into the observation booth behind the general, and she was followed by Doctor Lam. They all sat down and waited for Bra'tac to explain what he knew.
"The System Lords did not wish for the Jaffa to learn of their history, but a dedicated warrior can learn much that is meant to be hidden," Bra'tac began. "Chief among these secrets is how the Goa'uld were pulled from the waters of their home world."
"Hold on," Landry interrupted, "I thought the Goa'uld evolved from being aquatic predators to being amphibious parasites of the Unas?" The Unas, or 'first ones,' were the first race that the Goa'uld subjugated, as the two species originated on the same planet.
Bra'tac nodded. "Atok took an Unas as his host, and he was succeeded by his son Apep, who created the beginnings of the Goa'uld Empire," he said. "Eventually, Apep was devoured by Anubis, who was then overthrown by the rest of the System Lords. From there, Ra took power as the Supreme System Lord, and you are familiar with the rest of the story, I think." Bra'tac grinned at the implication, as Jack O'Neill had personally sent an armed nuclear device through a ring transport to Ra's ship during Jack's very first mission through the gate.
"But Atok did not take his host under his own power," Bra'tac said. "Do you not think it strange, that a predator would become a parasite? There was another, who the Goa'uld named 'Kaggen,' that was responsible for changing Atok and by extension, creating the Goa'uld as we know them today."
"That's great and all, giving us a name to curse for the atrocities of the Goa'uld," said Vala, "but what does this have to do with the transformations?"
Bra'tac grabbed his staff with both hands and leaned on it, looking up to Vala in the observation booth. "This is the curse of Kaggen:
With Two Score! Minus Two!
Ringed around a lake so blue!
Your memories removed, your body confused!
For your insolence you will pay,
Cast to worlds far, far away!
The snakes will rule over air and land,
Until the stars reveal my plan!
Forgetting everything and living lost,
You're all fools, and I won't be stopped –
Not at any cost!"
The general, doctor, and Vala all stared at Bra'tac blankly as he finished reciting the "curse." Teal'c, on the other hand, had closed his eyes when his master began to chant, and each word sent a shivering thrill down his spine. "I have heard these words before," Teal'c said shakily when Bra'tac was done.
The older warrior nodded to Teal'c, and looked back up to the observation booth. "You see?!" he cried. "The curse is real! Teal'c has not had the opportunities to learn of Kaggen that I have, and yet he too knows of this curse."
Landry turned to Doctor Lam and quietly asked, "Carolyn? What do you think?"
"It seems pretty far-fetched, sir," she replied. "And yet... if this Kaggen has the technology to spontaneously re-engineer a species, he's probably capable of a lot more. It's conceivable that Kaggen interfered with humanity's genome tens of thousands of years ago as well, and we've now flipped some trigger in our DNA that's causing these changes; there's certainly a lot we don't really understand about ourselves. The people that are affected simply haven't had Kaggen's influence bred out of them." Lam coughed, "This is all purely speculative, of course, sir. On the other hand, if this is a result of some alien mucking about with human DNA rather than an actual reaction with any pathogen or radiation source, it would go a long way to explaining why both Jaffa and humans are affected, but Sam's mice are not."
"Okay, so we might have the reason why this is all happening," Vala huffed. To Bra'tac, she asked, "What can we do about it?"
The Jaffa warrior gave Vala a predatory grin. "I know the address for the planet where Kaggen makes his home," he said. "With your assistance, I can mount an attack on his base, and we can force him to remove the curse from us!"
"Do you know anything about the layout of his base?" Landry asked.
"No."
"Do you know what security measures he has placed around the Stargate?"
"No."
"Do you know what forces he may have at his disposal?"
"No."
"Do you know what personal defenses Kaggen may have to protect himself?"
"No."
"Do you have a plan for what you're going to do or say to get this apparently extremely technologically-advanced individual to do what you want?"
"I... no," Bra'tac admitted.
Doctor Lam groaned. "This is suicide!"
"I would gladly die for my cause, doctor!" Bra'tac shouted, ears folding against his head. "I die free! What would you die for?"
Vala rolled her eyes and said, "I'd rather not die at all, to be honest."
"Is there anything you do know about the planet you believe Kaggen is on, Master Bra'tac?" the general asked. "I would love to be able to give my people a target that can solve this problem, but without more information I simply cannot risk a mission like this."
"I know that if we do not go to this planet and we allow this curse to continue, those of us afflicted by Kaggen will never be ourselves again." Bra'tac sat down in a chair with a defeated look on his face, knowing what General Landry's response would be. Without his beard and with the addition of a full head of hair, the old Jaffa looked much younger; in Vala's estimation, he almost looked cute, in a "that's adorable!" kind of way, not her normal usage of the word.
General Landry stood up and straightened his uniform. "I'm sorry, Master Bra'tac, but I simply can't let my people go into a situation like this so completely blind. You are going to have to stay here until Doctor Lam's team decides conclusively that your condition is not a danger to others. If and when that happens, our quarantine will be lifted and you will be permitted to return through the Stargate. I'll have a guest room prepared for you, and send an escort to take you there later." The general tossed an apologetic look to the man in the Isolation Room that went unnoticed before walking out of the observation booth, followed quickly by Doctor Lam. Vala stayed for a short while longer, not leaving until Teal'c began to give quiet comfort to his mentor; Vala was many things, and oblivious might often be among them, but even she was capable of recognizing a private moment.
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Hmm... A curse... And memory loss or something... Intruiging. ... How does this relate to Starswirl??
And how far would the genetic alteration be? Was Kaggen an Ancient or something?
Species Shift / Other Shifts drama!
Crap Bra’tac is becoming Scootaloo! A great warrior is about to become a possibly flightless pegasus.
8360683
Thank you! One of my editors thought he was supposed to be Sweetie Belle.
I am a bit confused about this.
What on earth was the point of the chapter showing Celestia and Starswirl going to that one planet, and then Starswirl leaving/trading his hat? Then what was the point of the chapter showing SG-1 going to that planet and retrieving the hat if it has absolutely nothing to do with the transformations currently ongoing? Did this story begin with what amounts to ten thousand words of filler that is for the most part no longer relevant?
8360478
No, Kaggen is a non-reformed Discord, if this story is running along the same lines as Five Score, divided by four.
8360683
The best part is he's Teal'c mentor, and we know who he is becoming....
8360478
Are you familiar with the original Five Score story? I won't spoil it for you if you aren't, but in case you haven't noticed the 'infected' have already begun gaining traits of ponies. The level of screwing around with DNA to cause people and Jaffa to spontaneously transform their body is pretty large. It's also well within the abilities of the ancients, but why they would do so is a valid question.
8360756
How?! He has unruly purple hair and purple eyes, Sweetie Belle would never allow her hair to become that way and she has green eyes. I wonder how Samantha will react when her memories return and realizes who her number one fan was. Heck I wonder how Bra’tac will handle that revelation.
8360775
The scene with Celestia and Starswirl at the start of the prologue was added late; part of the reason for its existence is actually because without it the initial submission would have needed to be through chapter 5 to comply with the site rules. (That is, a direct link to MLP at the time of submission.) That's not the only value in the scene -- I wrote it to weave into the other stuff I already had -- but it was my primary motivator for writing it.
However, that addition was literally just the scene with Celestia and Starswirl. SG-1 finding the hat, etc. was already there. While the curse may have been cast by Kaggen, Starswirl's hat is not irrelevant to current events.
8360756 i thought it was twilight
So, this is enough like the original Five Score that the people transforming appear to truly be the ponies they are transforming into. Now I just have to figure out how this could be given that everyone is different ages and it seems the curse happed well before anyone was born... Hmmm.
8360478
Goddess above! (Looks up at Celestia)
Has nopony here read the other Five-score stories? Only one being we know of uses a curse like that!
Discord!
8360478
Cagn (also known as /Kaggen) is the supreme God of the San of southern Africa. He is the first being and the creator of the world. He is a trickster god who can shape shift
8361109
One thing I always found weird about Five Score is that Discord's curse abided by too strict a set of rules.
Why would a spell cast by a deity of Chaos use ANY rules, or logic, or time, or space, or physics of any kind?
8361173
I thought it might be him, but the name chanve threw me off.
8361349
Thanks!
8361352
Good point!
8361349
Well somebody either knows uncommon mythology, or how to use Google.
Good job finding the deity referenced. Daniel mentions it next chapter.
8361795
Mixture of both really, purely luck, I vaguely remember reading a Stargate/star trek crossover once that had him = Q.
8360683
8360756
In my defense I'd miss-remembered the 'who's who' note, and 'soft lilac curls' plus the irony of such a sweet if slightly naive girly girl having become an ancient warrior-philosopher really seemed to point to Sweetie.
Still, in hindsight it was rather obvious, so my bad.
8362964
All is forgiven!
8361352
Magic has rules. Rules lead to predictable, reproducible results. Since Discord wanted to send everypony to a certain reality in a certain way at a certain time with the same time limit, he had to use a spell that produced a reproducible effect, hence the spell had rules that were set in place when he came up with it.
8364961
and he is not the originator of the spell, he just found it.
Definitely some mental effects at this point. By the time the afflicted are allowed out of quarantine, who knows what might have happened to them...
Im personally hoping the mental effects are minimal if not non-existent since that's a completely over played gimmick in these kind of four score fics. Literally every one of them does it so having at least one, that also happens to be a crossover as well, that doesn't do that would be a refreshing change of pace to say the least. That way we can see the characters( ones most readers will know from another series already ) dealing with the changes and the impact it has on their lives without the "Oh, im suddenly OK with this" type of cop-out such a plot device give the author.
That's just my opinion on things so don't take it personally
8364961
Well... No, in general, magic really doesn't have rules.
Any 'rules' magic might have in a given story/show/movie, are the ones the writers create.
Other than that, there are none, so no rules have to be explained
Hence the phrase 'it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit'.
8374336
And if you DO want to explain it, like Twilight does so very, very often?
The 'I don't have to explain' statement is a fallacy. Any magic that has to be used over and over has to have rules to it. It's just that, like the spell, YOU make the rules for that spell when you make the spell. Alchemy spells are some of the most heavily rule-ridden spells there are. Instant-cast spells usually only follow one or maybe two, and a good deal of the time, the 'rules' are ingrained into a magic-user when they learn how to cast magic. The only spell-caster in the show that doesn't have to apply rules to their spell-casting is Discord, and he only does if he wants to. Pinkie, on the other hand... she knows what her rules are, and she doesn't explain them to anyone.
8361173
ding ding ding i am thinking the same thing Discord