Fanfic / Contact at Kobol

Contact at Kobol by wilkins75 is a Battlestar Galactica/Stargate crossover fic, starting a few years after the televised conclusion of the Stargate series and a few months before the Cylon attack on the Colonies. When a chance encounter results in shots being exchanged between the two sides, the more fanatical elements of the Colonies (such as Helena Cain) force Earth into a new war with the Twelve Colonies.

Has a sequel Contact of Races, covering the aftermath of the Colonial war in relation to a new contact with the Race of Turtledove's Worldwar.

There is now a second sequel, Contact at the Citadel, which involves an expeditionary Tau'ri fleet encountering the Mass Effect 'verse.

Contact At Kobol

Tropes found in this story include:

• Achievements in Ignorance: In as much as anyone would consider it an 'achievement' to destroy a planet by accident; one of the Tau'ri's bombs accidentally hits the only piece of naquadah in the Twelve Colonies, in the oceans of Aquaria, escalating the resulting explosion to basically decimate the entire planet.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Defied in various ways; not only do the Colonials attempt to impose their laws on Earth in the belief that it’s one of their colonies, but the Tau'ri also mount various subtle espionage operations against the Colonials even before the war begins (albeit just to make sure they avoid any potentially delicate issues). As the storyline unfolds, the Jaffa and the Nox each make it clear they will be staying out of the war with the Colonials, but primarily because they trust the Tau'ri to handle it, although the Nox do attempt to act as neutral arbiters only to be rejected because certain Colonials think the Nox are just Tau'ri in disguise.
• Artistic License – Law: Cain's attempt to defend herself in her court-martial by making statements that would set national policy regarding Colonial-Tau'ri relations would never have been accepted by a rational judge. Allowing the defense to proceed on that avenue to the point where the court arrests a foreign dignitary for refusing to answer questions that were not relevant to the incident the trial was about is utter insanity. In any case, the entire question of whether or not the Tau'ri were actually the Thirteenth Tribe, whether they were officially part of the unified Colonial structure, and whether or not their officers were subordinate to the Colonial Navy was irrelevant: in a tribunal of this nature, what matters is the decision process involved in the officer making the decisions that are under investigation. The notion that Earth ships should be part of the Colonial military and thus answerable to her authority was not part of her thought process, as she didn't know that the ship she fired on was from Earth until after she gave the order to attack (she thought it was a new Cylon vessel class whose crew was playing dumb), and her ship's own communication logs could verify this.
• Authority in Name Only: Adar finds his authority being undercut by religious extremists and anti-Tau'ri factions in the Quorum so often that any effort he makes to de-escalate the war is doomed before it gets off the ground.
• Batman Gambit: General Leong's plan to deal with Spiros and his religious faction. She aimed the Ragnarok at the bunker where the Colonies' religious artifacts are kept, after deducing that Spiros cares more about his religion that he does about the lives of his people.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Several citizens of the Colonies are spurred to go to war as various figures talk about how they will be protected by the Lords of Kobol, with the Spiros family in particular continuing to insist that their gods will aid them even after the Tau'ri destroy Caprica City and devastate Aquaria.
  • During the battle for Hypathia the priests for the Temple of Ares lead a mob of civilians against Tau'ri tanks in the belief that Ares will protect them, with predictable results.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: At the end of the war, Helena Cain requests a knife from the Tau'ri soldier who arrested her so that she can commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the mission to recover the ZPMs, the Akula is exposed in orbit due to an accidental ramming by a ship coming out of hyperspace. All seems lost, for both the Akula in space and the marines on the ground, until the Britannia and her taskforce come sailing in to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to the colonials.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: For the Colonials, making contact with Earth is the final reunion of the Colonies of Man, but for the Tau'ri it's just another first contact situation, particularly when the Tau'ri know that they aren't 'related' to the Colonials in that context.
• Cargo Cult: The Tau'ri are surprised to learn that the Colonies have twelve Zero Point Modules, which they regard as holy relics known as 'the lights of the Lords of Kobol', completely unaware of the modules' true nature as a potential power source.
• Combat Pragmatist: While the Colonials see them as lacking in honour, the Tau'ri justify their more underhanded tactics as a willingness to win whatever it takes (while still not crossing lines such as deliberately attacking civilians).
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: At the end of the war, a Libran general notes that the whole conflict could have been averted if the Twelve Colonies had just left the Tau'ri alone as they wished.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: As much of a Curb Stomp is being delivered to the Colonials, the Tau'ri specifically intend to avert this.
  • General Leong actively passes up an opportunity to cut off her enemy' escape route.
  • One of the dicier moments of the Battle for Tauron comes when a group of Colonial tanks are trapped between a line of Dragon Fire and a Tau'ri firing line.
  • Later, the Tau'ri allow the Colonials to retreat from Lezbha, both to prevent this trope and to move the Colonial army onto flat open ground. This also has the unintended side effect of giving the Colonial soldiers a Hope Spot.
  • In the latter stages of the final battle, the Tau'ri begin alternating demands for surrender with escalating attacks on the Colonials.
    • That being said, the Tau'ri do have their limits, and if the Colonials had forced their hand, destruction would have ensued. It is implied in the main story that the Colonials folded just before the Tau'ri began to resort to planetary destruction.
• Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle: One of these is a particular sore point for the Tau'ri and the Colonials; by uncanny coincidence, a famous military figure in the Colonies has a personal sigil that looks almost exactly like the swastika.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Earth's ships are so much faster and more powerful than the Colony's that every engagement ends up as one, not helped by the fact that the Colonial Navy doesn't have the range to even try to attack most of Terran space. The only reason the war lasts as long as it does is because Earth only has a handful of ships, most of which are tied down in operations against the Wraith.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • A few of these contribute to the declaration of war between both sides, such as the Tau'ri being disturbed at how some of the more religious colonies basically make children the property of their parents.
  • The Colonials have particular trouble adapting to the Tau'ri's willingness to use what they would consider terrorist strategies as part of active warfare.
• Decapitation Strike: Attempted by the Tau'ri multiple times.
  • The initial shelling of the Senate killed almost half of the Colonial government figures, however this simply left openings for extremists like Cain and Spiros to gain power.
  • Later, the wartime government's secret bunker is unsuccessfully raided by Tau'ri special forces to attempt this.
  • By the late stages of the war, multiple opportunities to successfully pull this off are deliberately ignored, as using this tactic would throw the Colonies into disarray and make it harder to achieve surrender.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • As relations between the Tau'ri and the Colonies begins to break down, group of Colonials attempt to kill the wolves the Tau'ri brought to the Colonies to represent Earth's animal, but they underestimated the danger the wolves could pose and seven men are killed in the process of killing three wolves.
  • May arguably apply to the likes of Admiral Cain or the Spiros family, as they provoked a war with another culture they knew little about without considering the risk if that culture was significantly more advanced than they were.
  • Adar attempting to intimidate the Tau'ri when negotiations broke down. Or to put it another way: sending a fleet into another sovereign power's territory without their permission and expecting them not to view it as a threat. End result: a decimated fleet, the nuking of Kobol, and the entire Tau'ri up in arms. Oops.
• Easy Logistics: Due to the totally different FTL travel systems, it would literally take years for a Colonial vessel to reach any Tau'ri system other than Valhalla/Kobol, making Colonial conquest of Earth utterly impossible.
• Enemy Mine: The Colonial war succeeds in bringing together a divided Earth into a united Tau'ri front for this reason.
• Entertainingly Wrong: At one point Adar tries to 'threaten' the Tau'ri with the knowledge of their fourth colony world, only to be informed that 'Disneyworld' is actually a theme park rather than another planet.
• Gilded Cage: The solution for the problem of the Final Five Cylons is to have them confined to Earth, never to reach the Colonies again. Saul Tigh, at least, is happy with the arrangement and spends his days on Hawaii with an unlimited expense account.
• Godzilla Threshold: While the Colonies can’t threaten Earth itself, the escalating conflict eventually reaches a point where Earth decides that the best solution is to trap the Twelve Colonies in a time dilation field, which gives Earth five years to increase their military resources where the Colonials believe it’s just been a few months.
• Government Conspiracy: Interestingly, the opening chapter centers around the process of dismantling the pre-existing conspiracy.
• Heroic Sacrifice: As in "Unending", Teal'c volunteers to operate a time dilation device, albeit with the opposite results; everyone else gains a few years of age to prepare for the next strike on the Colonies while Teal'c spends a few months in the Colonies to protect the device.
• Hologram: The Tau'ri use one of the grim reaper to frighten and misdirect Colonial forces into shooting away from their advancing line.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance:
  • The best 'justification' for how so many of the Twelve Colonies provoked war with Earth is that they had no idea how powerful Earth really was, and are also unaware that the Tau'ri Earth isn't the Earth the thirteenth tribe travelled to.
  • When the war begins, the Colonials are at another disadvantage as they have no true experience with guerrilla warfare, allowing the Tau'ri to use alternative tactics to what the Colonials were expecting (although Earth did provide the Colonials with rules of combat that they expected both sides to obey).
    • Hell, Colonial warfare is outright compared to Napoleonic warfare. They have no concept of mobile warfare, blitz attacks, shock and awe, or many of the other tactics that the Tau'ri take for granted.
    • The Colonials also don't believe in fighting or moving at night.
• It's All About Me:
  • The definition of Admiral Helena Cain's attitude. When her actions result in a fight between the Tau'ri and the Colonial fleet because she assumed they were Cylons breaking the treaty and reacted accordingly, Cain goes out of her way to present a scenario where her actions are 'justified' under Colonial law so that the Tau'ri are punished for the resulting deaths while she is spared punishment (albeit presenting it as wanting justice for the Colonial soldiers who died in the fight), when she could have simply acknowledged it was just a tragic accident, accepted a personal punishment and let the whole thing go.
  • To a degree, this is part of the problem in trying to make the Twelve Colonies aware of the wider universe; religion is so important to them that many of their people find it hard to accept that aliens are real when their holy writings state that humanity was given the stars by the Lords of Kobol, and only 'reconcile' it with their existing beliefs by convincing themselves that they have a Gods-given right to rule the aliens, even the more advanced Nox.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • This is basically the reason for much of the initial hostility between Earth and the Twelve Colonies, as Colonial law rules that Earth is their thirteenth colony and their political process has been heavily based on that idea, to the point that a priest has been signing for Earth when circumstances require all thirteen of the Quorum representatives to vote. As Colonel O'Neill (Jack O'Neill’s now-adult clone) observes, Earth cannot be held legally accountable when someone signed a contract 'on their behalf' without their knowledge (even before they learn where the Colonials’ Earth actually is from the Cylons), but Cain insists that under the Articles of Colonisation Earth should be considered another colony and hence subject to their laws, even when none of the Colonials know where Earth is to try and enforce that decree and nobody from Earth agrees with that interpretation.
  • This also comes into play regarding the fact that the Colonials hold that since Valhalla was once their homeworld of Kobol, it belongs to them despite them having not lived there in millennia. Attempts to point out that they had lost all claim to said world after creating the border treaty with the Cylons with Kobol on the other side decades before are generally ignored.
• Iron Lady: General Leong, Supreme Commander of the Tau'ri.
• Iwo Jima Pose: To the extent that this can be done in a written media. It's mentioned that an image of soldiers raising the Tau'ri flag on Valhalla after the Colonial nuclear strike is on its way to becoming equally iconic.
  • Flag raising has become something of a theme, especially in the final battle on Tauron, where the Tau'ri deliberately taunt the Colonials by getting rid of the Tauron Bravery Flag and replacing it with the Tau'ri flag at any chance they've got.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Teal'c explicitly states that he feels the Jaffa should help the Tau'ri in the fight against the Colonials after the Tau'ri helped free the Jaffa from the Goa'uld, Daniel acknowledges that the Jaffa have a point that they took the brunt of the Ori offensive in the last major war while Earth was basically untouched.
• Knight Templar: Could apply to the Colonials (particularly after they learn that 'Valhalla' was originally Kobol), save for the fact that most of the Colonial religious leaders tend to order others to fight in their name rather than doing it themselves.
  • Adar's cabinet members from Sagittaron and Gememon are unwilling to give up the fight even after the destruction of the Colonial navy, occupation of multiple planets, and the reveal of the Ragnarok super-weapon.
• Know When to Fold Them: Libran was the only Colony to have its majority against the war from the beginning. By the end of the war, they've had enough and effectively secede from the Colonies in order to surrender. In exchange, the Tau'ri grant them status as an independent world again.
• Large and in Charge: Inverted with General Leong, who is rather petite.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The Cylons contemplated doing this for the Colonials and the Tau'ri, but as the Tau'ri prove to be more powerful and reasonable than the Colonials the Cylons abandon that plan and form a separate alliance with Earth (they do later provide assistance to the Tau'ri in the Colonial/Tau’ri war, but the Cylons had no part in starting that conflict).
• Logical Weakness: Basically applies to what the Tau'ri have discovered about the Wraith hive-ships; as the ships are living tissue, they’ve found a way to give the hives a form of cancer.
• Morton's Fork: Admiral Helena Cain basically sets the stage for the war by putting President Adar in this position. Under the Colonial legal system, Earth is the thirteenth colony, so its military forces are thus subject to Colonial authority, meaning that (Cain argues) the Tau'ri should have stood down when confronted by the Battlestars, and were therefore in open rebellion when they fired on Cain. Adar can't rule that Earth isn’t a colony without basically declaring the Colonial government invalid, but treating Earth as a colony naturally meets with dissatisfaction from the Tau'ri.
• Mutilation Interrogation: Invoked; when the Colonials try to interrogate Senior Sergeant Adrik Drugov, their only Tau'ri POW, at one point Cain all but cuts his right hand off, but Drugov dismisses that wound as Tau'ri medical technology can easily grow him a new limb.
• Named by the Adaptation: The Number Six that came to be known as 'Caprica Six' was never identified by a human name in the series; here she is revealed to have adopted the alias of Doctor Jenny Oldstone, with two other Sixes posing as her triplet sisters Gina and Jane.
• Never My Fault: Most of the initial tension between Earth and the Colonies basically comes about because Cain wants the Tau'ri to be punished for the Colonial soldiers killed in their first confrontation, ignoring the fact that she instigated the conflict that killed the soldiers in the first place.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Admittedly, it’s debatable whether Adar was ever a 'hero', but when the president attempts to make his meetings with the Tau'ri public to affirm that they have nothing to hide, his well-intentioned efforts cause further controversy when Woolsey's revelations upend so many Colonial beliefs, such as the meaning of 'Tau'ri' and the truth about galactic history.
• Noodle Incident: The decimation of Kobol was the result of the Goa'uld Zeus experimenting with stolen ZPMs; his human slaves retreated to the future Colonies with twelve of the ZPMs, but Zeus's experiments caused the thirteenth ZPM to detonate with the force of a super-volcano.
• Nose Art: This tradition is revived for Tau'ri pilots and their Eagle Fighters after the attack on Valhalla. One fighter in particular, Elsa's Revenge, mixes the patriotic and humorous variations of this trope.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: An interesting case where this backfired for the people arranging it; the highly religious Spiros family arranged for their son to marry the daughter of the equally religious Contos family, but husband and wife discovered that they each shared monotheist beliefs.
• One-Steve Limit: Jack O'Neill’s clone (as created in "Fragile Balance") is now an active member of the Tau'ri military, officially down on paper as Jack's son, with the two only really distinguished in text based on their rank.
• Orchestral Bombing: One of the Tau'ri propaganda videos/messages to the colonial government includes setting a video montage of their bombings to the 1812 Overture. And this leads to an Oh, Crap! moment when the video switches to live feed, closing in on the fake farm house where the Colonial Government's secret bunker is.
• Outside-Context Problem: As part of their campaign against the Colonials, the Tau'ri unleash Todd on one of the planets to spread terror, with the understanding that he won’t feed on children.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While they are not the primary Colonial leaders as they were in canon, William Adama and Laura Roslin come across as this in scenes dealing with the Colonies' leaders, each one recognising where the Tau'ri are coming from and offering a counter-argument to their associates' expressed desires for war, even if they remain loyal to their people.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • As part of the Cylons' attempts to learn more about Earth, three Sixes join the research program (one of them the would-be Caprica-Six and another Cain’s would-have-been lover Gina), with the three claiming to be triplets who don’t get along that well to justify how they never told any of their human contacts that they had sisters.
  • A neat summation of the way the Tau'ri gain an advantage in the war from the beginning, exploiting the fact that so many of their technologies, such as cloaking and teleportation, are believed to be impossible by the Colonials.
  • Also the foundation on which the final battle for the Colonies is built. First they trapped the Colonies in a time bubble, allowing the Tau'ri to massively build up forces. They then planned a blitzkrieg attack on the Colonies, intending to completely capture a planet, something that had never happened in Colonial history. The planet? Tauron, the military stronghold of the colonies and the location of the Colonial forces planning to invade Valhalla, as well as the majority of the Colonial fleet. Finally commence invasion during the 5-day holiday celebrating the end of the Colonial-Cylon war, and use the preserved Hill of Heroes battlefield in order to land their forces and establish a stronghold.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Many, it was an ongoing theory in the comments that the author's first language was not English due to this trope. The author eventually clarified that they had a reading disorder and do not trust Beta readers. Admittedly, that doesn't explain the mistakes that could be caught by the common spellchecker, but the story remains relatively readable.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Several Colonials take this as a sign when Earth is asked to bring its 'world animal' and 'world bird' with them; the owl chosen to represent Earth eats all twelve of the signature birds of the other colonies when it’s put in a cage with them (the Colonies' world birds all being songbirds rather than predators), and the wolves chosen as Earth’s world animal are slaughtered as a symbolic early stage of the war.
  • After Aquaria is 'accidentally' destroyed by a Tau'ri weapon, some argue that the continued existence of a statue of Hermes on the planet shows that the Colonials must keep fighting as the Lords of Kobol will help them survive, but Sharon Valerii (still unaware of her Cylon status) offers the observation that it could also be a reflection of the fate that will await them if they don’t stop fighting.
• Rules Lawyer: Cain demonstrates this to get out of her trial for the events of their first contact; as a witness from the Tau'ri is required to verify what happened, and the Tau'ri refuse to consider themselves part of the Colonial government, Colonel O'Neill is arrested for refusing to adhere to the Colonial chain of command despite his argument that Earth shouldn't be bound by Colonial law.
• Shout-Out: At one point during the early tour of the Colonies, Torren Sheppard shows D'Anna Biers a clip from Avengers: Infinity War (albeit a very different clip from what the film actually turned out to be like - the movie didn't come out until long after that scene was written).
• Small Name, Big Ego: The Colonies all regard the 'reunion' with their cousins as the biggest event to have ever happened in their history and believe that Earth is just as excited as they are, but the Tau'ri don't consider it that big a deal and see the Colonies as just another culture to make contact with, with news of alien tech being used to search for Bigfoot attracting more interest back on Earth then the contact with the Colonials.
• The Stinger: Ends with a teaser for the next story.
• Torture Is Ineffective: Drugov, the Colonials' only captured POW, resists their every attempt to make him give them useful information, simply making it clear that the Tau'ri are too powerful and the Colonials are going to lose.
• Too Kinky to Torture: He doesn't actually enjoy it, but Drugov is constantly nonchalant about the treatment he is subjected to by the Colonials, likely aided by the knowledge that his injuries can be treated back on Earth.
• Twisting the Words: Admiral Cain attempts to do this when Colonel O'Neill (Jack's clone) is talking with the Quorom, attempting to create the impression that the Tau'ri would conquer the Colonies when O'Neill just observed that they might have moved in to set up their own colony in the system if it was uninhabited.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Viper pilot on Adar's saber-rattling mission to Kobol who ends up launching missiles before getting shot down... accidentally nuking Disney World Valhalla.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Dr. Jenny Oldstone (the cylon) is willing to use Dr. Baltar to put herself in a position of power in the Colonial government.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Despite psychiatric professionals having observed that she has a tendency to focus on her targets while ignoring the wider implications, Cain was still a great battlefield commander, and formed so many connections that she was able to use her popular public status to get a position in government as the war with the Tau'ri unfolds even after being officially dismissed from the military, with Adar only able to oppose her by promoting Adama to admiral as a counterbalance.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Turns out the Tau'ri and the Colonies have very different ideas about what constitutes a WMD. The Colonials are 'much' more cavalier with chemical and biological weapons than the Tau'ri, to the point of storing a ship full of them above Caprica City. They are bewildered that the Tau'ri would respond to a planned bioweapon attack on Valhalla with nuclear weapons.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: When the Tau'ri send Todd into the Colonies, one of the few rules they give him is that he’s not to hurt children, but Todd notes that he never does that even when feeding normally.

Contact of Races

Tropes found in this story include:

• The Alcoholic: Kara Thrace has not taken her fall from grace well.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated:
  • Tau'ri media has become very popular among the younger generations of Colonials.
  • Food has also been exchanged between the Tau'ri and Colonials, with cinnamon being popular among the latter and Sagittarian Peppers among the former.
  • A Tau'ri special forces team briefly admires the architecture of the Opochti.
• Ancestral Weapon: A sword has been passed down through the ruling family of Ovea.
• Badass Bureaucrat: By the time this latest war begins, Samantha Carter has become the first President of the Tau'ri with Jonas Quinn as her Vice-President.
• Call-Back: A few to the previous story.
  • Many of the images that became iconic during the previous war, including the Iwo Jima Pose photograph, have been immortalized as statues in the Valhalla memorial garden.
  • The Akula incident from the previous story resulted in a reworking of military doctrine involving cloaked ships.
• Cowboy Cop: Kara Thrace's insubordinate tendencies finally backfired on her with the military already gutted. Despite her service record, she was dismissed.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In line with the previous entry.
  • The Race vs the Opochti during their conquest of Ovea (or Vantic 5, as the Race would call it).
  • The Tau'ri special forces verses the squad of Race soldiers at the farmhouse. Followed directly by a curb-stomp of the Race special forces when they follow the Tau'ri into the woods.
    • The latter battle is noted to be an absolute curb-stomp: 20 special forces members take on 200 Race males including 120 of their own special forces and walk away without a scratch.
  • The Race's commander at Vantic 5 threatens to nuke the Opochti city of Likna. The Tau'ri response simply adds to their curb stomp tally.
• Crazy-Prepared: General Leong orders full tactical work-ups for an situation involving the Race, up to and including full invasion of Home.
• Culture Clash: All over the place.
• Deer in the Headlights: An actual defense mechanism employed by the Race when frightened or startled. It does not work well against the Tau'ri.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Not right away, but the Tau'ri are well on their way to shaping the Colonials into an allied power. By rebuilding the Colonies and helping them get back on their feet, they've earned goodwill from the younger generation. And by saturating the Colonial market with Tau'ri products, especially media, they've encouraged even more positive associations. It is estimated that within two or three generations the Colonies will either join the Tau'ri outright, or as an ally.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • The discovery of the element Zephyr on Ovea, a common mineral on that planet but a key "ingredient" required for the creation of Zero Point Modules.
  • None of the Race's planners anticipated the strength of the response against their re-education programs, with even 'civilized' Opochti taking up arms against it.
    • At the same time, the Tau'ri special forces teams infiltrating Ovea are surprised and horrified to learn what the Race has been doing and elect to abandon their surveillance mission in order to intervene.
  • The Race have no concept of a standing army and thus grossly overestimate the time it would take the Tau'ri to muster an invasion of Home.
• Different World, Different Movies: At one point, Kara finds herself watching a TV show that turns out to be a crossover between The Addams Family and The Ploutons, a Colonial show that appears to be the local equivalent of the Addams'.
• Dramatic Irony: The Race are completely convinced that the Tosev campaign will be a cakewalk. For a reader just coming off of ~50 chapters of the Tau'ri curb stomping a much more advanced foe...
• Enemy Civil War: As powerful as the Tau'ri are, it's estimated that if all their enemies united as one, they would lose. Thankfully, their enemies hate each other as much as they hate the Tau'ri.
• Failed a Spot Check: A Race soldier shines a light right over a bush where a Delta Force member is hiding without noticing them. Justified, as the soldier is looking for Opochti who glow under UV light.
• Fantastic Racism: The Race believe themselves superior to the primitive species they conquer, meaning life has become miserable for the recently-conquered Opochti.
• For Want Of A Nail: There is a diversion from the timeline of Worldwar to explain why the Race are arriving now. In this world the Race decide to conquer Vantic 5 before moving on to Earth, and are further delayed by technical difficulties and unexpected resistance from the natives.
• Galactic Superpower: After the events of the last story, the Tau'ri are well on their way to becoming this.
• Gruesome Grandparent: The Tau'ri are still performing operations to recover all of the children seized by their grandparents on Sagittaron to 'protect' them from their unbeliever parents. Few were treated well.
  • Some of the Colonial religious extremists are prepared to kill their grandchildren rather than give them back to their parents.
• Humans Advance Swiftly: Compared to the Race? Oh yes. The Opochti are advancing quicker than the Race realized as well, as they had made an unexpected jump in firearms technology by the time the Race had arrived. The Race are amazed at how quickly the Opochti have advanced.
• Innocently Insensitive: The Tau'ri initially anger the Opochti by referring to their world as Vantic 5, but the Opochti accept their apology once the Tau'ri representatives clarify that they just didn't know what the natives called themselves and were relying on the databases taken from the Race.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Opochti are essential centauroid praying mantises.
• Interservice Rivalry: Invoked in Tau'ri special forces doctrine. The rivalries between teams are friendly, but they do improve efficiency.
• Invading Refugees: One of the initial Tau'ri theories about the Race's arrival. Quickly disproven when they realize how many weapons their ships carry.
• It's Probably Nothing: The reason the Race ships went undetected until they began using their maneuvering thrusters. The Tau'ri were aware of them, but believed that they were a cluster of asteroids on a strange trajectory.
  • In contrast, Atvar is much more concerned about receiving broadcasts from planets that he knows do not support life capable of broadcasting. Even after receiving a reasonable explanation for the phenomena, he remains uneasy.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: A Race hunter and tracker realized something is wrong before anyone else because of this trope. He knows that the woods aren't usually that quiet at night.
• Know When to Fold Them: The Tau'ri special forces team abandons their initial assault on Race forces when the Race mobilized helicopters. They're ready for them next time.
• La Résistance: One is alive and active on Ovea to resist the Race's occupation. Even before receiving help from the Tau'ri, they were surprisingly effective thorns in Straha's side.
• Legendary Weapon: Prince Unia can identify himself to any Opochti by flashing his sword.
• The Most Wanted: Prince Unia is public enemy number one as far as the Race is concerned.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Race's key problem is their fixation on bureacracy and procedure; when a Tau'ri force first comes to Home, the Race spend several days just trying to determine the protocol for a non-aligned race petitioning for a visit with the Emperor, and are shown trying to find the exact musical number they're meant to play during the opening of such a meeting rather than just adapt and let the Tau'ri in to talk.
• Outside-Context Problem: All over the place.
  • The Tau'ri have never made contact with a spacefaring race without faster-than-light travel.
  • The Race have never conceived of a civilization more powerful than theirs, and they do not take well to learning of their true position on the galactic food chain.
  • Ironically, the Opochti take the revelations about the state of the galaxy much better than the Colonials or the Race, despite being a medieval society.
• Plot Parallel: The situation with the kidnapped Saggitaron children mirrors Straha's plan to kidnap Opochti children and raise them in the ways of the Race.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: Averted. The Race's systems are so primitive that the Tau'ri have real difficulty hacking into them.
• Pragmatic Hero: While the Tau'ri dislike the Race's policies, they conclude that there's no point trying to liberate the Race's other two occupied worlds as those natives have been under the control of the Race for so long that their original cultures no longer exist, and so they likely wouldn't be able to cope on their own.
• Princesses Rule: Distaff Counterpart. Prince Unia is the highest ranking royal left on the planet. Not changing his title is Justified as he now runs the resistance instead of a city-state, as well as mourning for his family.
• Puppet King:
  • Or President. President Laura Roslin of the Twelve Colonies is not having a good time. Among her many problems, she is very aware that the Baltars hold the real power in politics.
  • Defied when the Tau'ri make contact with Prince Unia, as they make it clear that they consider him an equal and accept his input when preparing their battle plans against the Race.
• Rebel Leader: Mixed with Royals Who Actually Do Something, Prince Unia of the Opochti is the leader and face of the resistance on Ovea.
• Ruling Family Massacre: Prince Unia is the last royal of any kind on Ovea, all others, including his own family, having been slaughtered by the Race.
• Slave to PR: One of the Tau'ri's main problems when performing operations in the Colonies.
  • Dragging brainwashed children away from their abusive grandparents is the right thing to do, but it still doesn't look good, especially when filmed and framed by a Sagittaron news crew.
  • When a number of kidnapped children are discovered during a covert raid on arms dealers, the Tau'ri have to quickly disguise the below-board aspects of the mission.
  • The Race runs into the wrong side of this trope as well, when the extent of Straha's crimes on Ovea become clear the Tau'ri public rise against the Race.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The Race all over; they think they're the most advanced race in the universe and demand that the Tau'ri adjust the galactic map to accommodate their existence, but the Tau'ri make it clear that the Race lack the technology to be a truly advanced race, such as their lack of faster-than-light technology.
• Take Me to Your Leader: It is a first-contact story.
  • The Race demand to see the Tau'ri's Emperor, which leads to a major example of Culture Clash.
  • The Tau'ri special forces have the Opochti resistance introduce them to their leader, Prince Unia.
• Universal Translator: The Tau'ri generally deal with the descendants of the Goa'uld's slaves, where the language is descended from Earth roots. This all goes to pieces when they encounter the Race and Opochti, whose language comes from a different tree.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Dr. Jenny Oldstone's plan is beginning to pay dividends. Dr. Baltar is predicted as the next president of the Colonies, and observers have no doubt that he would earn all three terms. It's predicted that she will run for President after him, capitalizing on the goodwill and public presence she's cultivated.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The Opochti are so non-human in appearance that there is genuine worry about getting the Tau'ri public to side with the idea of helping them. On the other hand, Opochti emotional and social structure is so similar to humans that those who work in close proximity with them quickly form close bonds, to the extent that at least one Opochti mother contemplated naming her child after the Tau'ri who returned the infant to her.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: The word-for-word reaction from some poor Tau'ri intelligence officer when they realize that the latest information the Race has on Earth is from 900 years ago.

Contact at the Citidel

Tropes found in this story include:

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