The Ori

The Ori are beings who have risen to pure energy, like the Ancients, but who made the opposite choice. Where the Ancients hide and refuse to intervene, the Ori want to be worshipped. Because the more they are adored, the more powerful they become. And to harvest that faith, they will stop at nothing.

The Ori share the same origins as the Ancients: two peoples who reached the same summit, with two radically opposed worldviews. The Ori built a religion, Origin, and turned their followers' worship into the fuel for their power.

To spread that religion to our galaxy, they build a Supergate and launch a crusade. The principle is simple and terrible: convert, or die. Their ships are nearly invulnerable, their preachers, the Priors, spread the faith through fear and miracles, and one world after another falls before the advance of a fanatical army.

Brute force will never be enough to stop them. It's by striking at belief itself, with a weapon capable of revealing the truth about these false gods, and by eliminating the Ori on their own turf, that Earth finally breaks the crusade.

The Ori are probably the most direct critique in the whole saga: of religion turned into a weapon of conquest. Where the Goa'uld ape the gods of antiquity, the Ori embody pure fanaticism, faith imposed by fire.

Their crusade points straight back to a very real and painful chapter of human history: holy wars and forced conversions, where the promise of salvation came with the threat of the stake. Historians point out, too, how much the crusade, from its very beginnings, fed a fanaticism whose effects were felt long after its time.

And the mirror Stargate holds up is a cruel one: facing the Ori, the Ancients, every bit as powerful, refuse precisely to be worshipped. Two answers to the same question: what you choose to do with the power of a god.