A minor Goa'uld in the service of Bast, Icarus administers a small naquadah mining operation on her behalf. He has a flair for the theatrical, employing elaborate costumes, lightshows and storytelling to help augment the awe and fear that he strikes in his Jaffa and in the community, which he rules with a mixture of mercy and cruelty, inspiration and dread. True to his namesake, Icarus has promised Bast that his mining operation will be the greatest in the galaxy, and that together they will soar above the sun - but Bast assigned him this mediocre operation as a punishment, and she enjoys some amusement in his constant embarrassment over his regular failures to deliver on his elaborate promises. Bast affords him her patience, for as long as he continues to entertain more than he misses the mark. He is, after all, a performer, and every performance has backstage drama.
What Bast may (or may not) know is that Icarus is actually the Tok'ra spy Denath, and all of his inefficient decisions, his not-quite-but-close achievements and his acceptable-enough failures are an elaborate act. Denath has been carefully sabotaging this operation, using his influence to learn more about Bast's operations and relying on his flair for theatrics to keep her amused enough to not replace him. However, Denath was recently caught by members of his personal guard, and forced to flee back to the Tok'ra. He has told his mining community that he is travelling in her name, to help expand her domain, and to not worry about the missing Jaffa as there are more where they came from and they weren't really good at their jobs anyway. How long this latest lie lasts will ultimately decide his fate with Bast.
Denath misses the intrigue of undercover work, the thrill of performing for an audience and the opportunity to beat the Goa'uld at their own game, and he has recently arrived at Phoenix Base to share the stories (and hopefully accurate intelligence) he has gathered on Bast's operations. If this performance is good enough, then perhaps he can book another show, play another character, sing another tune - he is, after all, a performer, and the show must go on.
