My homebrew setting history, for those who would rather run Stargate RPG in the present day.

[Aisynia]

In case anyone is interested, I run my game in the present day. I do run the official stuff, but just updated for present day, and I intersperse homebrew into it as well. I basically devised a whole scenario that allows us to be fighting the Goa'uld and the Jaffa in 2022. Here is the text of that document. I have more noted below it.

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Long, long ago, there was an Ancient. Like many Ancients, he was weird and made bad decisions. He founded an entire faction of Ancients, and they had a goal.

As part of some sort of experiment, or series of experiments, he cut off and isolated part of the gate network. Like Atlantis, there was only one way into this isolated gate network from the outside. The rest of the gates in that network could not be dialed from the outside, nor could they reach the rest of the Milky Way. As it turns out, this isolated network is actually not strictly within the Milky Way, but the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby satellite galaxy. It is not so far away that it requires significantly extra energy to dial to, and doesn't require an 8 chevron address—the LMC is only about 160,000 LY away, not far outside the distances that gates are typically dialed in the show.

As a result, the LMC is absolutely lousy with Ancient ruins. All kinds of facilities, serving all kinds of purposes, are hidden away on many worlds across the dwarf galaxy.

At some point in the past, the Goa'uld became aware of this place, and since travel there was not difficult, merely bottlenecked, they colonized the LMC in their usual jerkass manner, bringing their human slaves along with them.

Some time later, probably a few thousand years, the Goa'uld system lords who had territorial stakes in the LMC kinda got in a slap fight over this one single way into the galaxy. Three of them did bloody battle over this planet, and destroyed one another. The pyramid the Stargate was held in was destroyed in the process, burying it.

The remaining Goa'uld in the LMC got into an even larger fight, and while this splinter of the empire survived and eventually recovered, the location of the buried Stargate was eventually lost to time.

And so the Goa'uld in the LMC just did their normal Goa'uld things and pretty much festered there. They never made the same leap in hyperdrive technology that Apophis seems to have made, being stuck puttering around the LMC not much faster than 10 times light speed. They could dominate their little dwarf galaxy (given enough time), but travel back to the Milky Way was just not practical without a breakthrough in drive technology, effectively isolating them.

Fast forward to 1998. The gate address that leads into the LMC was input into the SGC's dialing system along with many other new stargate addresses by Col. Jack O'Neill after having an ancient repository downloaded into his mind. Some time later, this address is dialed, but fails, as it remains buried.

Between 2010 and 2018, the continued control of the Stargate by the US military was debated and argued about among the representatives in the IOA, especially now that America didn't have a grey alien to beam down in the middle of a conference to convince everyone it should maintain that control.

Diplomacy between the nations of the IOA broke down as it became apparent America was unwilling to let go. The idea behind the IOA was always that the Stargate, wherever it resided, would be under civilian control, but after Dr. Weir stepped down to lead the Atlantis Expedition, it had once again been under the command of the USAF. Tensions flared, and the world came closer than it ever had to disclosure by way of these nations going to war with one another using their advanced technology. This war was thankfully averted by some shrewd ambassadors who hammered out a deal.

Publicly, the US Space Force was founded by then President Cabot. Cabot was a man often considered to be a weak, middle of the road political centrist who didn't get much of anything done because he was so busy trying to appeal to both sides of the aisle he accomplished almost nothing. The Space Force was to be his political win, but publicly, ended up being seen as a bit premature by most people.

In reality, Cabot was well aware of the Stargate Program and the rising tensions among the IOA members. He created the Space Force to man and oversee the daily operations of the SGC, but in cooperation with the IOA and their agreement, placed command of the program and the SGC itself back under civilian control.

Any USAF members involved in the Stargate Program were moved to the USSF, which would work more closely with IOA associated foreign militaries in the interest of cooperation, and the Tau'ri not blowing each other all up.

Likewise, by this time, any Goa'uld remnants have long since stopped trying as what few remain got smacked down by various powers any time they got it into their heads that they should start conquering or scheming. The Lucian Alliance has largely been smashed. The Wraith in the Pegasus galaxy are no longer a threat (through one means or another), and even the Vanir had disappeared back into the shadows. 

Effectively, the major threats are gone, and with the IOA already de-escalating the situation, including putting the majority of earth's interstellar warships into mothballs, the SGC was looking less and less relevant.

The politicians and the IOA have argued that what needs to be explored largely has been, and Earth has reaped the benefits of a lot of the technology procured from off world. Disclosure of the Stargate Program has been discussed, anticipated, and even planned out occasionally, but never happened. Instead, the Stargate Program kind of just got defunded, and wound down to nearly nothing.

By late 2019, the Stargate Program was a shadow of its former self, with the SGC only maintaining three SG teams: SG-2, SG-3, and SG-4, as the SG-1 designation had been officially retired at this point.

However, as we learn in "New Ground", the SGC occasionally redials old gate addresses that previously failed. I like to think they have a program that runs under the supervision of the night shift that just goes down a list and dials the gate a whole bunch of times.

One of the gates on this list was the failed dial to the primary gate of the LMC, and in November 2019, the gate connected.

On the other side, SG-2 made contact with the city-state of Hyseria on the planet Dromesis, a society of humans with technological advancement roughly equal to late 1950s-early 1960s earth. Diplomatic relations were quickly established, and the Hyserians were very interested in getting help understanding both the stargate and the other ancient technology that had been left on their world.

The representatives from the SGC quickly learned that the extensive ancient ruins on this world held secrets beyond imagining, and most required the ATA gene to activate. It turns out, the Ancient DNA Resequencer of the type found by Nirrti was merely a prototype for something much more extensive and powerful.

Beneath Hyseria was a powerful genetic manipulation device, with much more extensive capabilities than the original, including the ability to work on a genome and see results without needing to experiment on a living subject—or at least, that was the idea. The machine was obviously advanced, but it was also terribly complex and unfortunately broken.

Not long after however, a major discovery was made in one of the Ancient facilities: a vast repository of stargate addresses, the addresses to much of the LMC gate network. Along with this was data indicating that the keys to repairing the genetic resequencing technology almost assuredly existed elsewhere in the galaxy at any number of other buried or forgotten facilities.

Initial explorations with MALPs showed a galactic landscape much like the Milky Way 25 years before, ruled by the Goa'uld with iron fists.

And yet, while such a device could be considered very dangerous, Dr. Crystal Hao of SG-4 bitterly realized in her report that it likely could have resolved the Asgard genetic degradation problem. This report reached the desk of Dr. Lee at the SGC, who was privy to knowledge very few held: the Asgard core granted to the Tau'ri shortly before their suicide not only held the secrets to their technology, it also held two thousand Asgard minds.

If the SGC could repair the device on Dromesis, they could resurrect one of their greatest allies, allies that many among the Tau'ri felt they owed a debt to.

It took serious convincing, especially with the threat of an extant Goa'uld empire, but the promise of new technology tipped the scales. A new base, the Phoenix Site, was founded in Hyseria, with cooperation from the local government.

The Phoenix Site was envisioned as a cooperative effort by the IOA, of the nations of earth, and their allies from other worlds. The Tau'ri, humans from other worlds, the free Jaffa, the Tok'ra, and even the newly met Aturens would be represented on the base. Command was given to someone that, despite her military background, the IOA and all other parties felt they could trust implicitly: Major General Samantha Carter of the US Space Force.

As per the agreement with the Hyserians, base personnel had permission to live in the city when not on duty, as frequent trips back to Earth or other homeworlds might not be very feasible.

Regardless, with Phoenix Site founded, and its official mandate to bring back ancient technology and to resist the Goa'uld in mind, new teams were formed, teams that would explore a new galaxy in search of great possibilities...

 

Some notes.

So obviously, the Phoenix site is now in the Large Magellanic Cloud instead of the Milky Way, Haven is now a section of a larger city (Hyseria) that is built in the ruins of an even older Ancient city that had been bombarded from orbit. I used the following art I found online to represent Hyseria (click). I placed Haven in one of the craters, while Phoenix Base itself is built into the side of one of those craters. This creates a lot of fun opportunities for diplomacy with the natives.

I went with General Carter instead of General Loyer, since I have no attachment to that character and now that I moved the plot into the present day, she's free.

Basically any time the premade adventures mentions Anubis as being the Goa'uld in charge, I instead change this to Zeus, since he is the supreme system lord of the LMC in my story. While I have left several of the existing Goa'uld mentioned in those adventures with their original names, I have changed the names of a couple. For instance, I changed Tawaret to Urania, as I am putting a lot of the Greek gods and goddesses in the LMC, at least the ones not explicitly mentioned or shown on the show to be in the Milky Way. For instance, I can't use Cronus or Ares for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of others up for grabs.

The actual stated goal of the SGC's mission in the LMC is acquiring new technology. Unofficially, there are two other goals. First, of course, there are some veterans of the original fight with the Goa'uld, both of the Tau'ri and their allies, that see Zeus' empire as unfinished business in need of smashing. This has been what has attracted a lot of the Tok'ra and Free Jaffa who joined the expedition. Secondly, several top people in the SGC, such as Gen. Carter and Dr. Lee, would like to use the technology there to give the Asgard a second lease on life.

Hopefully this is interesting to some people. If you have questions about how I'm handing anything, just ask.

EDIT: To differentiate the gate addresses, we are using C as a prefix (example: C6H-985). Most Milky Way gates use P (example: P3X-254), and most Pegasus gates use M (example: M2R-435).

Edited April 4, 2022 by Aisynia

[millard_audene]

Oh I do love the idea of the return of the Asgard. I haven't yet started construction on my own homebrew campaign, but I was going to bring back the Asgard by utilizing previously unknown Asgard clusters in the Pegasus galaxy.

[SteveR]

Cool idea!  A possible twist: Are they really mainstream Asgard, or are they Vanir?

[Inquisitor Sciurus]

Nice, I’m so going to borrow some stuff from you. If you’re interested, here’s my take on present day SG-campaign: 

 

[McKayRulez]

Ooo very cool modern ideas and setting! Very interesting!

[King_Thomas]

It may not go anywhare but I'm hoping to put together a westmarches style SGP server, and I'd like to use this setting, and maybe the basic premise of trying to ressurect the asgaurd. (I have many ideas, and very little plans so we'll see how it goes)