My Home is my castle

It was…homey? I guess…in the same way an old and well-worn wooden floor with age old stains could be seen as homey: it was simply put: old. However the last scribe must have been, I wouldn`t be surprised if he would have had the same appetite and mannerism as that fat scientist Baal had serving him, what was his name? Nilus? Nevtus? Something like that.

The only part of the house, mansion to be a bit grandiose, that seemed to be in perfect order was the kitchen. As for the rest, the less said the better. Most of the building structure seemed to be from the days Camulus had ruled Chulak and as such the house had a certain ancient Greek touch to it. A small entrance hall was the first part one saw when entering: a small pool for rainwater cooling and refreshing the windowless room, the only light falling down through an opening in the roof. From there on, one stepped into the column framed courtyard, with another pool and what might have once been a garden. Right now I was mostly looking at the withered remains of a few herbs and plants that might have once been used in the kitchen. Which in turn was on the right side of the courtyard, if one entered from the entrance hall, together with the other rooms intended for my servants and staff. After setting down my seamstress and her assistants in two of the larger room and instructing them to start cleaning their part of the house, I inspected the left side first.

Unsurprising for the dwelling of someone of my kind, it had a treasure chamber…or more like an oversized larder. I was rather surprised with its size, as I entered the first time I nearly slipped on the chairs as the cool air suddenly hit me and I passed underneath a stone arch, stepping into the vaulted cellar fully. It was at least as big as the courtyard and fully clad with stone masonry, the same dark grey which was so predominant on Chulak as building material. Running my hands along the walls I nodded approvingly, there was only a little amount of moistness gathered on the stone, even if all the pores littered over its surface would never endear it to me in an aesthetical way.

The stone was sturdy, so it wasn`t that surprising that the basement and the fundament of the mansion where build from it, the hill it was built on top of was too soft: mostly being chalkstone that might be formed quite easily, but didn't really work out as building material.

But back to my larder…uhm…basement, which had a rather comfortable temperature when compared to the rest of Chulak. As the mansion did not have a landing field I couldn`t take my glider again and spare myself from the old fashioned way of travelling. As such I had the first-hand experience to first of all see that roadmaking seemed to be something more common under Cronos rule than it was right now under Apophis: a fact which one could quite clearly see after inspecting what passed for a road network around here. Between the larger cities, which reached sizes of up to only 40.000 people and that even with the longer life span Jaffa enjoyed.

Again I have started to babble about something other than my basement. But I guess this isn`t that important anymore, I soon had to vacate it anyway, as the woman of the local village arrive to get everything ready for me, as in the last three months between my predecessors death and my enlistment nearly no one had entered this building.

As the first ones arrived I soon found myself subjected to the sheer...worship of the Jaffa! I could understand the piety and the adoration they showed at the ceremonies in the temples or at the palaces, both of which were rather similar, but this adoration being directed to me? On one hand my genetic memory was whispering to enjoy it and to take it as nothing more than what I deserve from the primitive creatures. The memories of my host were not helping much, her father had not been a god-king but…

I quickly stride away –excusing yourself is something one does not even always do with equals- and take the next door, gasping a bit pleasantly surprised as a cool breeze hits my face. Only a step further and I would have stepped into my own personal water pool, not one to swim mind you, but one which gathers rainwater and cools the whole room in the day. Stepping around it gingerly and letting my gaze sweep through the room I smile a bit, while it was certainly nothing at all like my desk at home (it was clearly missing a computer), it was strangely familiar nonetheless. It reminded me of university. The room had no windows, but each of the wall was painted in multicolour frescos that imitated masonry, maybe even certain kinds of marble? The floor certainly could be marble, it was rather smooth and shining, with just the right swirling texture one would expect, but it could just as well be some rather high quality stucco moulded and painted to look like the real thing. Who cared? I was busy stopping myself from laughing out loudly as I stared at the frescos. It was rather simply partitioned: a large blue base zone which imitated square stone slabs with some depth, above it, only divide by a small band-frieze, a large central zone which was drawn to look like masonry of bricks: with multiple colours. Compared to that the top was nearly boring with its simple red colouring which went along the whole wall. It made one wonder if Cronos visited the Greek again when they colonized Magna Graecia or was this simply a case of parallel development? If no Goa'uld set a foot onto earth after Ra lost access to the Chappa'ai, how could…

Ra.

No time to day dream Anai, the next time a Gua'old would access the Earth Chappa'ai wasn't that far away anymore, it had only been days since the messenger bringing the news of Ra's death had arrived and Lord Apophis was already reacting as fast as possible, trying to grab as many Jaffa, ships and planets as he could from his brothers former estates. I'm not sure how one could describe the current galactic situation: maybe compare it to the death of a Japanese Shogun who leaves no clear successor and whose clan is unable to hold the title? Or would the theory of peace through hegemony fit better? Maybe a bit from both. With the strangest of the Systemlords, the judge, jury and executioner in any case of overly aggression which works against his treaties death… now was the time to sharpen your blades and look eagerly at your neighbour's possessions.

All over the galaxy Gua'old Lords were calling upon their vassals and their Jaffa, while mothballed ships were pulled out of shipyards after thousands of years of uneasy peace and localized conflicts. None of them really wanted to go all out right now, rather they each had their little goal: a nudge on the border stones here, a few more slaves there, or if you were a Systemlord: one planet couldn't hurt you, or? But no one wanted the start a great war in 1914 and still… I do know what's going to happen to all those armies, all those ships and the hundreds of planets under Gua'old rule. Maybe I could not really say which fate was awaiting each planet or each Jaffa, but I was sure: in less than ten years there would be less of the Gua'old empires left than of Old Europe after the First World War.

The storm was coming and not even my little office was spared from the waves of changes that were sweeping through all Gua'old circles as we once again entered a time of concurrence, which had last been seen before the reign of Ra nearly twenty thousand years ago. In my little sphere the influence of what was to come was pretty clear: a single scroll lying on my table. I had pulled it out of the two low shelves, which reminded me of the ones used to hold wine, and hadn't dared to open it yet. Whatever else could be said about my predecessor: he had been efficient and capable: when I took over the room I had found prepared data slates which had informed me of the last actualization and the filling system he had used to order all scrolls. One hieroglyph for the category, one number which showed me which list I was looking at and a last exchangeable third glyph on messages to show their priority.

As I sat down on my stool…or was it a chair? I'm not quite sure. It's a collapsible chair like the own they claim to have found from Karl the Great…alas it had no backrest and I was forced to either sit straight or slouch forward to sit comfortably. Licking my lips a little, a habit of tension which, to my mortification, came not from my prior habits but those of my host, I opened the scrolls looking at the neat roles of Papyrus, spotted and discoloured papyrus: as more and more length had been added to it. Having all the data in paper wouldn`t have been necessary, if the administration would have been 100% recruited from Gua…my kind. But as there was the simple fact that paperwork wasn`t really suited to us -compared to pillaging, burning, fighting or simply enjoying life-, only the mayor hubs or the districts themselves had someone like me overlooking them. So the minor before my title was a bit deceptive, in fact I had a whole group of Jaffa under me, each of them with years of combat experience, a loyal and incorruptible sentiment and … a cribbing wound: mostly missing hands, feet, or whole limbs.

Before being wounded most of them had been leaders of smaller fire teams or even larger company sized formations and had done their job with enough brilliance to be rewarded with a new career choice, or rather assignment, after they got unsuitable for either the fields of valour or those of their family. It wasn't such a bad idea…compared to the human habit of taking the lack of a limb, which was lost for god, nation and head of state, as a qualification to teach. With the lack of a public educational system they at least couldn't dabble into those fields.

I made myself shove the thoughts away and instead reached to my right, pulling on a string which went along the wall and through a hole just below the ceiling it reached into the smaller office next to me, where one of those cripples [Sorry. But there's really no other label for them in this society (it's not derogatory)], was carrying out his duties to the flickering light of a candle and with even more scrolls littering the floor and walls around him. Later on I had some looks into the offices of other clerks like me and I could only faintly make out distinctions between the different preferences they had…some loved their rather Indian paper chaos, while others were more African in their set up, keeping all papers out of their office and safely at home instead. It goes without saying that home was only a few steps away and easy for a servant to get.

"Lateus?",

I asked as I heard the heavy metallic footsteps and looked up from the scroll to look into a grizzly face, with half of its side torn and molten after he took a far to close encounter with a staff weapons plasma discharge. That he survived had been seen as a favour from the gods and he quickly become something akin to a good luck charm in his home village and his family. He was more than a hundred years old, having been born around the time of the Franco-Prussian war and while I did think the practice of making former warriors like him into scribes wasn't that bad….he simply never seemed to think of himself other than a warrior and that even more than everyone else in this warrior culture did. I'm quite sure he is one of the most faithful Jaffa around me, even now he went on his knees and bowed to me respectfully and it took me most of the afternoon to talk him into only kneeling down with one knee on the ground, elsewise he would do a full proskynese. Afterwards it would take ages for him to get up again, with most of his right leg missing from the stump down and his wooden prosthesis not really helping like a modern one would. While his crutch might help, his insistence on wearing the full chainmail and breastplate armour, every time he came to work did not. But could you really stare down his face, which had a certain closeness to hard and crooked wood and say no?

I blame this weak spot of mine of having seen him having already build a little shrine dedicated to me at his workplace…I mean….I might not be a goddess but…if he has chosen me as his patron goddess I at least could…put up with his oddities. Not that he wasn't simply extremely useful.

"Divine. What can your humble servant help you with?",

He said reverently and I felt another shudder running down my spine, while one part of me bathed in his adoration…so I quickly stomped down on that traitorous notion: bad Goa'uld instincts. Gesturing for him to stand up, which he as usually –he did it so often, that it had already something I grew to expect after the few hours since I meet him – tried to fend off with some pious lines and I could barely stop myself from reaching out to help him up each time he struggled to get onto his wooden leg. I'm not sure if he could have forgiven me that even if I was his goddess.

"Lateus it's about the list: how does one normally proceed in such a case?"

The elderly – not going to call someone with that kind of expression old- Jaffa trembled lightly with his crutch as he reached up and stroke over his chin, faint traces of silver hair moving under his hands, while his eyes looked at the scroll contemplative:

"There's a sanctuary which was once dedicated to the god Cronos. After our Lord Apophis, may he reign eternal, wrestled this world from his rival them temple was dedicated to our true Lord instead. When I first went to fight for our victorious and divine Lord I followed the standards of his to the holy grounds before it, where each family send their sons and fathers and it was fought for the honor of marching into battle."

He said it in a reverent tone and his eyes glanced over as if he was seeing that day once more in his memories…I wouldn't put it past him to do so. But for the moment I was relieved, putting down the scrolls with the number of families for each settlement and shook my head: thankfully I didn't have to ride out like the scribe in Mulan and ask everyone for one son from every family. I had seen the standards of course, they were settled into a monopteros in front of my mansion, overlooking the closest village from a small hill and a place of worship dedicated to Lord Apophis: so of course one of my first acts around her had been the lead the cult for him: sacrificing flowers and fruits for him. At least in those ceremonies they Jaffa were pretty progressive, I'm not sure if I could have watched a whole cow burn for hours till it became ash.

"And what do you think of the numbers? 4000 Warriors for this seasons campaigns, would that have effects on the next harvest if so many able man are missing?",

He seemed to mull my question over and I was trying to find a question to this myself: The Dazai plains were a prosperous area with the name giving Dazai river flowing through it and a rich earth making harvests rich and secure: it wasn't surprising that there were around 20.000 Jaffa living spread through the hamlets and smaller homesteads that littered the area. The homesteads seemed to be most common: groups of houses inhabited by one clan or family, which toiled the floor since thousands of years, with decorations that trace back just as long, showing their service to their goods through trophies and old weapons.

Still: nearly all families were self-sufficient with their agriculture and only the larger cities with more than three thousand inhabitants had a notable number of craftsman that produced tools and luxury goods: which in turn were given out by the palace scribes to those Jaffa that needed new tools. That in turn brought up difficulties when mobilizing the warriors for lengthy campaigns, unlike the constantly serving warriors of the lifeguards or those that man the ships of the fleet, the levy warriors could only be used for short campaigns and attacks before the harvest and after they had planted their fields. So sending out a good quarter of the total population: it was mind boggling when compared to the drafts that came up in our history. I faintly remember that Rome had Earths record of total militarization of their society in the second Punic wars: with up to 10% of their whole population armed and in the army (largely death at the end of it too).

"If the return home before the harvest. Does our Lord Apophis…",

Lateus began, seeing the same problem but quickly stopped, piously gazing down as she mumbles some sort of excuse about trying to fathom the gods will and instead stared back at the scrolls again. Sighing softly I reached up and rubbed my temples lightly, brushing the hair away from them, before I looked at the Jaffa once more:

"I do not know what kind of campaigns the warriors from Dazai will take part in, but with the brunt of the last calls falling onto our neighbors it is now our turn to carry most of the recruitment: the other two regions together will send 4000 of their best warriors and the silos are still half full and should be enough to feed them till they reach the enemy….as for their families.",

Tapping against my chin lightly, I reached towards the drawer with the messages that come from Da'lamar, where Lord Zipacna seemed to remember me or rather my guest present. Pulling it out, I presented it to Lateus, who fluently but not overly swiftly, took in the words:

"Lord Zipacna, praised be his name, would send us human workers to help out with the harvest? The crops will be ripe to harvest in a two or three months, which would mean that the warriors need to gather soon and start their training if they want to arrive at the enemy when he's nearly finished harvesting. "

Nodding to him, I put the scroll back again and flared my eyes golden, something one simply had to do once in a while to keep the Jaffa…happy:

"So be it Jaffa. We will gather the warriors in three days: for the glory of our Lord. Jaffa! Cree!",

Lateus was certainly happy, happy enough to fall to his knees and start praying to me on the spot. Which was still kind of odd for an Jaffa but if he really survived a plasma bolt to his face: who am I to call him out for it? At least he straightened once again as I said Cree and swiftly limbed out of my office, letting me take a deep breath and sink back into my chair again.

I was pretty sure my room and bed hadn't been finished yet and even if it was, I still had to choose new servants from the woman who were taking care of the mansion right now and tiding up the last unused places…I could still hear their voices coming in from outside: my door simply wasn't soundproof. Servants, yes they were…

"…here to take care of everything daughter."

"But why father?", I asked, looking up to the large bearded man…kind…in front of my, my eyebrows furrowing as I looked out of my window again, seeing the people moving all around the courtyard to prepare for the fest this evening.

The large man only chuckled, reaching down and placing a hand on my head, pointing out of the window, one strong hand encompassing everything of the castle I could see:

"It's the way the gods have organized the world: we are their chosen ones and rule to preserve the order of the world: as such it's only natural that the others are going to serve us for our great goal. What would they be without us to rule them? Not more than pack of unruly animals that couldn`t do anything together."

I'm not sure why, but my lips pressed against another as I tried to understand my father's words, slowly looking down at the servants again: Mai my nanny was somewhere down there.

"So we are ruling to help them?"

I asked and only got loud laugh from my father, who seemed to hold his belly from laughing before looking at me with the found look one would give small children and petted my hair again, playing a little with my ponytail.

"Don't be silly my girl: they live to serve us, that's the place the gods have given to the in creation: to serve their betters, so those can concentrate on more important tasks and of course defend those unlucky creatures."

Was nanny Mai a creature? Like a cute bunny? Father was confusing me again:

"Creatures father?"

He gave me a nod and started to explain:

"They are hardly better than animals my girl, true they are a step above them, but true humanity? That is something which can only be reached through piety, humility and the knowledge of the arts my dear, the commoners are not even capable to grasp those concepts, so they can never gain true humanity and it falls onto us to shield and lead them.",

That did make sense, didn't it? Nanny Mai couldn't read what I was writing and she didn't know all the poems I had learned about the ancient Kings, Queens and Gods…but Mai could sing, so wonderfully! Maybe she was something akin to a bird that…

I gasped and quickly straightened again, reaching up and moving my white cloth to better cover my hair after I had just fallen asleep on my chair. Gua'old healing and such was nice, but I still had to deal with my cheek falling asleep when I simply nap on my desk: a good time to massage life back into it. A weird dream...or not a dream at all? A shiver ran down my spine: another of those memories, I really, really want them to stop. I do not want to know just who my host was and what kind of life I had ruined, I had problems enough already.

Standing up from my seat, I reached up and stretched myself lightly, at least some of my ancestors had been successful warlords and stretching exercises had been part of their warm ups for training: while I did it mostly to wake up. And it did work, soon I found myself pacing in my office, unwilling to continue with sifting through the documents on my first day and so I went out to do the more important things.

"You there, are you married?"

I asked the first female Jaffa I ran into abruptly. She for her part, spun around with wide fearful eyes and quickly sunk to her knees as soon as she looked up into my eyes and I let them glow golden.

"No, I'm not Lady Anai."

Nodding absently I gestured towards the servant part of the mansion and said slightly disinterested and only wanting to have the whole staff hiring behind me:

"Good, you can choose one of the servant rooms, bring a friend if you have one to work for me.",

While she was still bubbling her thanks for this great honor I was moving towards the next group of Jaffa, my eyes spotting an older woman, who seemed to have an aura of authority around her:

"Are you married?",

I asked with an arched eyebrow, the woman before me falling to their knees as I gazed down at her and waited impatiently:

"No I'm not anymore Lady Anai, my husband fell in battle when the last followers of Cronos tried to topple the Cult of our Lord Apophis in Da'lamar.",

With a nod I gesture towards the kitchen and ask simply: "Can you cook?", while I could theoretically, it was never good to do so when everyone thinks you are a god.

To my delight, I'm not a glutton!, the woman nods softly and keeps her eyes on the floor: "I can do so my Lady, I had also organized the household of my man for a long time when he was in the field."

My mood brightened nearly instantly at those information's: the chance to put more work onto someone else, especially something as mundane as organizing the household? With a haughty mask under which I hide my glee, I gave her a nod and gesture towards the first girl:

"In that case you can see yourself as belonging to my household now, the other servants will be under your direction. Wrap things up here.",

I said with a last look at everyone and moved towards the private quarters of mine. After nearly giving the last two woman who had changed my bed sheets a heart attack, by standing behind them for some minutes and eyeing them critically before they turned around and shrieked as they saw me, I could finally fall into my bed.

And another day in my life as alien parasite was coming to an end, which was good. At least until I remembered what another day spent meant: another day closer to the beginning of the Stargate series, another day closer to a decade of chaos and nearly ends of the world. I honestly had no idea how to play this: its not like I could simply go to Earth and say that I'm one of them and only misplaced in a Gua'old body…not going to work. I was the enemy, I couldn't even play collaborator like Teal'c did with them: if I had to spend the next decades of my life in a cell this was the optimistic outlook compared to the more likely existence inside of a glass tube after they found ways to remove Gua'old. And was Earth really that safe? There were dozens of near apocalypses in the series alone and if I was unlucky I could simply be in a very similar parallel universe and everything works out completely different.

Staying a scribe? It might be nice to be away from all the action, but would I really survive the coming events on Chulak of all things? The first planet of the free Jaffa and the later made an example by the Ori? What else should I do? Take a shuttle and run? Go to some primitive world and try to hide, living for the rest of my life with the constant fear of someone sniffing me out? If I would simply continue flying, from planet to planet and never stopping, wouldn`t that be the same: running till I'm the last Goa'uld in this universe.

I laughed a bit bitterly: what about the nearly constant god-mode Gua'old self inserts in fanfiction had thrown on: creating my own empire with competent Jaffa, superior armors and weapons and totally new ship classes and weapons?

Creating my own empire from what? Simply conquering it? Good luck with getting the Jaffa to hold it, I doubted I could simply get troops from any other Lord as long as they do not trust or know me and even then: those would most likely be their levy troops and as long as they don't move together with their whole family, they wouldn't be any use in garrisoning a planet for a long time. Not to forget: every pocket empire would lead to larger neighbors noticing me and either annexing or bullying me into submission, while the Tok'ra might simply blow me up. Something which would also happen if I try to change the tactics and equipment of the Jaffa: they are not only conservative to the bone, but any changes which would disrupt the balance of powers would lead to someone coming down on me with a hammer…or the Tok'ra blowing me up because I'm bringing up too many new ideas. Not to forget: conquering is easy: governing is hard and everything I could rule immediately would be primitive agricultural planets with nearly no worth to me, as I would need a Jaffa world to get new troops and a factory complex, something only the strongest lords had, to produce anything valuable from the naquadah primitive planets could give me.

Which was also the crux when trying to improve weapon and naval technology: How? There simply wasn't a really big Gua'old R&D, of course ships improved over the last thousand years, but as long as no new cultures were annexed, there simply wasn't anything new coming up: only improvements only certain compounds. It even got worse: with virtually all of the industry automated, thanks to Ra's ban on teaching humans on Jaffa about technology, everything was simply the same and changing anything major was something no Gua'old in the present time really had experience with, if it wasn't about oversizing things slapping superweapons onto it.

So? Running: no good option. Staying: a terrible choice. Going all high and mighty with an own empire: unsustainable.

And no matter what: in ten years the whole galaxy is getting flooded with Ori soldiers too: even worse for hiding.

Lets simply say: I did not sleep that well this night.