Prologue
Many things had changed at Stargate Command since Ba'al's death: months after his extraction, and in order to re-establish their supremacy in the galaxy, a group of surviving Goa'uld led by the former System Lords Kali, Morrigan and Amaterasu made the difficult decision to seek help from a Goa'uld who had disappeared three thousand years ago on Earth itself: Minos. Amaterasu infiltrated Earth and posed as an archeology assistant on the island of Crete to free the ancient System Lord who had been locked inside his own sarcophagus within a subway labyrinth at the behest of Athena.
Now, with Minos free and quickly regaining his former dominion, he began to dominate or exterminate in unimaginable ways the surviving System Lords who refused to submit to his mercy, and with technology never before seen, reducing the status of his once allies to mere Underlords and Morrigan as their "queen". Stargate Command was forced to seek new allies, finding a most unexpected one in a System Lord who had been an outcast among the other Goa'uld, and who had been a rival of Minos in the past: Apis.
This alliance with the System Lord Apis had a strong impact on Earth and its main allies: on the one hand, the International Oversight Advisory (IOA) did not entirely trust him, although he proved to be honest and a vital ally to contain Minos; the Tok'ra initially distrusted Apis, but when he provided them with a Tok'ra queen friend of Egeria named Methier, they changed their minds; thanks to her, their numbers would slowly but progressively increase again.
The Free Jaffa Nation was another story: to say they were dissatisfied with this Earth alliance was a mere understatement. Some council members tolerated it, while others, already distrustful of Earth since the fall of the Goa'uld and more so after the war against the Ori, were extremely displeased. Although the alliance between the Jaffa and the Ta'uri remained, it was in a relatively fragile state.
Also, with the discovery of Apis, came news of a new species, the Shu'halo, a large but primitive and peaceful minotaur culture on their home planet of Mulgore, which was discovered shortly thereafter. The big surprise would be to discover that the mysterious Shu'halo were not only not native to the Milky Way, but that they once formed a civilization on the technological level of the Ancients until less than fifty thousand years ago in their home galaxy, M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy.
This discovery, coupled with the discovery of Stargate coordinates to that galaxy found in a ship buried on Mulgore, forced the IOA and the Gate Alliance to form a new Expedition to M33 to contact the Shu'halo of their native galaxy, ally with them and prevent Minos from accessing new technologies, which he came close to achieving on several occasions.
In addition, the Gateway Alliance Treaty on Earth had incorporated new nations given the need for more scientists and military to join the missions to other planets, and especially the M33 Expedition: EU members, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, India, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, South Korea, Indonesia and despite political differences, Cuba, Iran and Taiwan. The latter caused enormous repudiation by the Chinese government, which had no choice but to repress its discontent with such an act, which it considered a "violation of its sovereignty", but given the current situation, it had no choice but to tolerate it.
With Earth's internal political situation somewhat tense, the alliance with the Jaffa faltering and the war against the Lucian Alliance in the Milky Way and the Wraith in Pegasus, the threat of Minos latent, and the inability of other worlds such as Langara, Hebridan or Galaran to be of help militarily speaking in the short term, the SGC came to a simple conclusion: Earth needed more allies, and soon.
In the meantime, SG-1 would stay in the Milky Way, exploring, patrolling, and discovering.