ANUBIS

Once a powerful Goa'uld System Lord, Anubis was banished by the others because his actions were deemed unspeakable, even among the Goa'uld. He was believed destroyed, but managed to escape and learn the secrets of ascension. But the Ancients did not want the Goa'uld to join them on a higher plane of existence, and tried to force him to descend. They were only partially successful, and Abubis became trapped between the two planes of existence.

Because of his knowledge of the Ancients, Anubis amassed unimaginable advanced technologies, gathering strength for hundreds of years before returning to take his revenge upon the System Lords and dominate the galaxy. With weapons and armies to rival the entire collective power of the System Lords, he posed the largest threat to ever enter their collective domain, as well as to hundreds of peaceful worlds that stood in the shadow of his destructive hand.

Physically, Anubis is still some form of energy, and wears a mask to keep his form intact. It appears like the liquid-like event horizon of the Stargate, akin to the Ancient's technology.

Anubis was responsible for single-handedly destroying an entire fleet of System Lord motherships with the combined powers of the Eyes, as well as annihilating the planet Abydos. Using the technology of the Ancient's healing device, he also engineered an army of nearly unstoppable Kull warriors.

An evil Goa'uld System Lord, once SG-1's arch enemy. He is the brother and mortal enemy of Ra, the sun god. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Apophis is the serpent, the god of the night and of death, and is in constant struggle with the god of the day.

Apophis invaded Earth and Abydos in search of Goa'uld hosts shortly after the humans destroyed Ra. Apophis took Sha're, Daniel Jackson's wife, and Skaara -- Sha're's brother and friend to Colonel O'Neill. Sha're became host to Amonet, Apophis' queen, while Skaara became host to Klorel, Apophis' son.

Apophis was a powerful System Lord, but had many enemies -- especially Sokar and Cronus. His attempt to invade Earth was thwarted by SG-1. Apophis died of wounds inflicted by Sokar, but was resurrected by Sokar and further tortured. For a number of months, he served as First Prime to Bynarr, warden of Sokar's prison moon of Ne'tu. His alias there was Na'onak. He later escaped Ne'tu to Sokar's home world of Delmak -- where he assumed control of Sokar's vast army after the latter's death. But when his ship was taken over by the Replicators, Apophis crashed into the atmosphere of Delmak and is again presumed dead.

Apophis and Sha're have a son, Shifu. The child is a Harcesis -- the child of two Goa'ulded hosts -- and possesses the collective knowledge of the Goa'uld who fathered him.

A powerful System Lord, Baal is not generally a fair player when dealing with his fellow Goa'uld. He once wiped out 60 million people in two star systems rather than lose them to Sokar during a territorial dispute. If he feels that he has been treated negligently, he has been known to give concealed explosives as gifts.

Baal was one of the System Lords who voted to have Anubis rejoin their ranks, perhaps not totally aware of the implications. Baal was not a System Lord during the era when Anubis was among the highest-ranking Goa'uld, more than a thousand years ago.

He also has a dark and complex relationship with Lord Yu, whom he has been particularly opposed to over the years of the System Lord's reign in the galaxy. But this does not prevent them from meeting for civilized discussion. Yu was the only opposing System Lord (and the only member to survive from Anubis' era), making him a prime target of Anubis.

Anubis sent Baal's forces as a final, crushing blow to Yu and his army -- but Yu managed to escape destruction. He did, however, finally manage to speak reason into Baal, and they unified against Anubis in orbit of Abydos. But Anubis had found the Eye of Ra, the final piece to the puzzle of his super weapon. He destroyed the System Lords' fleet of motherships, presumably including some of Baal's forces.

A member of the Goa'uld System Lord, Bastet did not come to power until the Goa'uld's second ruling dynasty collapsed. Uniting forces with the System Lord Kali, the two made a treaty with the Goa'uld Sobek. Then, at the celebratory feast, they moved against him. Rumor has it that Sobek's head still decorates Bastet's palace in Bubastis.

Bastet, admitting to suffering heavy losses against Anubis, voted to allow the powerful Goa'uld back to his former position as a System Lord.

A powerful Goa'uld System Lord. Historically, he probably posed as a Greek god on Earth, one of twelve Titans who ascended to supreme domination. Cronus became father to Zeus, Hera, Posiedon and Hades (which may indicate that Cronus is the father of Sokar, a powerful Goa'uld whom he and the System Lords banished).

Cronus is the most influential of the System Lords, and was sent to Earth as one of three System Lord representatives to negotiate a nonagression treaty with the humans (moderated by the Asgard). After Nirrti (a fellow System Lord representative) tried to kill him, his life was saved with a Goa'uld healing device by Samantha Carter.

Cronus is the sworn enemy of Apophis, a fallen Goa'uld System Lord. Teal'c's father was once First Prime of Cronus, but was unjustly executed for failing to win an unwinnable battle. For this reason, Teal'c vowed as a child to one day become First Prime of Apophis. With help from an android duplicate of himself, Teal'c eventually succeeded in killing Cronus when the System Lord moved to seize control of the planet Juna.

A powerful Goa'uld System Lord, Heru-ur is the offspring of Ra and Hathor. Until his death at the hands of Apophis, the cunning and self-righteous Heru-ur commanded one of the Goa'uld's largest fleets. He is known also as Horus the Elder, and his Jaffa guards are called "horus guards" (beaked creatures like those who once served his father, Ra.

Like Apophis, Heru-ur possessed a personal defense shield. It protected him from bullets and energy weapons, but is vulnerable to slower-moving weapons. He once tried to conquer the Asgard-protected world Cimmeria, but lost his attack force (and barely escaped through the Stargate himself) when the Asgard Thor arrived in force.

Heru-ur was a bitter enemy of Apophis, and was blamed by SG-1 for stealing the child of Apophis and Sha're -- which he actually tried to do, but failed. When he and Apophis met in the Tobin system to negotiate an alliance between their two great armies, SG-1 and the Tok'ra sabotaged the meeting to try and start a war that would decimate both sides. Instead, Apophis destroyed Heru-ur's mothership on the spot, and absorbed his huge fleet into Apophis' own.

One of the Goa'uld System Lords, also known as "Kali the Destroyer." She and the System Lord Bastet are on fairly friendly terms. They once combined forces and made a treaty with the Goa'uld Sobek. They betrayed him, decapitating him during the celebratory feast.

Kali once had an outpost on Cerador until it was attacked and destroyed by Anubis. She lost two motherships to him. Despite these losses, she was one of the System Lords who voted to have Anubis rejoin the hierarchy.

Treacherous and amoral, the Goa'uld Nirrti was regarded as a goddess of darkness and destruction in ancient Hindu culture. She was once a powerful System Lord, but was cast out by the other System Lords when she nearly threw their relationship with the Asgard into chaos by making a play for Cronus' territory. During a summit at the S.G.C. Nirrti used advanced phase-shift technology to become invisible, allowing her to try and kill Cronus and throw the blame on Teal'c. Instead, Nirrti was apprehended.

Nirrti is believed to be responsible for wiping out all but one of the inhabitants of the planet designated P8X-987, plus four members of the S.G.C. On this planet, Hanka, Nirrti had spent years conducting genetic experiments on the human population in an attempt to engineer a hok'taur -- a genetically advanced human host. She believed that taking a host with abilities like telekinesis and telepathy would make her more powerful than ever.

When the S.G.C. made contact with Hanka, Nirrti wiped them out for fear that the other System Lords would discover her experiments. She implanted a naquadah bomb within the lone survivor, a young girl named Cassandra, in a failed attempt to blow up Earth's Stargate.

After her betrayal of the System Lords, Nirrti was held captive by Cronus, whom she had attempted to murder. But when Cronus was killed, Nirrti found her freedom -- and began conducting her experiments again on another world. She stumbled upon a piece of the Ancients' technology, capable of reading and altering a person's genetic code. She experimented on the local population to learn how it worked, and even captured two SG teams from Earth (including SG-1) and used it on them.

When SG-1 convinced her test subjects that she was not a god, but was just using them, they used their new abilities to kill her. Nirrti was finally destroyed by the very thing she was trying to create for her own purposes.

One of the System Lords, Olokun was accused of being in league with the System Lords' enemy when some of his Jaffa were found to be in the service of Anubis. Olokun confessed to the others that the Jaffa betrayed him, switching their allegiance after being defeated in battle rather than fighting to the death.

During the System Lords' summit, Olokun submitted, along with the majority of the Goa'uld leaders present, to allow Anubis to rejoin their ranks as a System Lord.

Ra, the deceased sun god of Abydos, represented Earth's first exposure to the Goa'uld. Originally one of the most powerful and influential of the Goa'uld System Lords, Ra was responsible for finding humans on Earth (the "Tau'ri") and discovering that the Goa'uld could use them as hosts, maintaining their bodies indefinitely with their advanced technology. Ra stumbled upon the planet Earth thousands of years ago, and took an aboriginal boy as his host.

Ra is believed to be one of the aliens responsible for taking humans from Earth and seeding them all across the galaxy. These human colonies worship the Goa'uld as gods, serve as slave labor (such as on Abydos, where the people mined naquadah for Ra) and have no idea that their true origins lie on Earth.

As a powerful System Lord, Ra's enemies were many. He was mortal enemies with Apophis, his brother in ancient Egyptian mythology. He was also opposed by the Goa'uld Shaq'ran, and defeated the Tok'ra queen Egeria, who spawned a resistance movement within the Goa'uld. He came into conflict with Earth when the first Stargate team visited Abydos. After attempting to destroy Earth by sending a naquadah-enhanced nuclear bomb through the Stargate, Ra was killed by Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson when they transported the bomb to Ra's mothership -- which was fleeing Abydos after a rebellion by its people.

Ra had a bride, Hathor, whom he exiled to Earth. She spent thousands of years trapped in a sarcaphagus before being discovered by archaeologists. With Hathor, Ra was the father of Heru-ur, a powerful Goa'uld System Lord in his own right.

A powerful Goa'uld System Lord, Svarog rules several planets and is not afraid to take chances when he believes threats are minimal. Svarog was one of the System Lords who joined in the summit to discuss the latest threat against the empire. He voted to have Anubis rejoin their ranks, though he was not active in the debates.

Svarog led his forces into a campaign to take over the planet Latona when he saw no sign of "the Sentinel," an advanced piece of technology that once protected the world. But in the middle of his invasion, SG-1 reactivated the Sentinel and Svarog's forces vanished. It is not clear whether or not Svarog himself, who remained aboard the orbiting vessel, was killed by the device or simply sent away from the planet.

A powerful and intelligent Goa'uld, Yu is a leader among the System Lords, and is the oldest Goa'uld to currently hold that rank. Along with fellow System Lords Cronus and Nirrti, Yu represented the Goa'uld at an Asgard-mediated peace summit on Earth. Yu was the group's key spokesman, and eventually supported the non-agression treaty when it was discovered that Nirrti had attempted to kill Cronus and sabotage the negotiations. It certainly helped that Yu's own interests do not lie in our part of the galaxy.

When the System Lords met in a summit of their own to discuss a mysterious new threat to them all, Yu attended with who he believed to be his personal slave, Jarren. (It was, in fact, Daniel Jackson in disguise.) Yu was outraged to learn that the threat was none other than Anubis, his old enemy whom he believed to have been killed a thousand years ago. The other System Lords voted to reinstate Anubis as a System Lord; Yu was the only dissenting vote.
After surviving an attack by Osiris, Yu began a battle campaign against Anubis. Despite the latter's superior technology, Yu's forces managed to hold their own. He eventually convinced the other System Lords to oppose Anubis, and led their combined forces into a battle over the planet Abydos -- where Anubis used his advanced new weapon to annihilate their fleet.

When SG-1 offered Yu a chance to destroy Anubis once and for all, he inexplicably betrayed them and withdrew his forces from the battle. His First Prime expressed to Teal'c his concern over Yu's failing health. The sarcophagus no longer sustains the very old Goa'uld as it once did, and Yu has begun to exhibit poor memory and judgment.

Historically on Earth, Yu likely did not impersonate a god per se, but may have been one of China's earliest emperors. He also founded the first dynasty. Legend says that Yu sprang forth into the world from a dragon's body, and possessed great mythic powers.