The Vanir

Not all Asgard are the wise allies we know. The Vanir are a lost tribe of that people, settled in the Pegasus galaxy, who chose a different path. To survive the degeneration eating away at their species, they are willing to try any experiment, even the most monstrous.

While the Asgard of the Milky Way were dying out with dignity, the Vanir fled to Pegasus and tried everything to stave off the end. Even if it meant experimenting on living beings, and gradually becoming the exact opposite of everything their people stood for.

When the Atlantis expedition crosses paths with them, it comes as a rude shock. These Asgard have not come to offer a helping hand, but to recover a dangerous technology, without the slightest concern for the damage they cause.

The Vanir prove that a great civilization can, out of sheer fear of extinction, sink into everything it once claimed to fight.

The Vanir raise a question human history knows all too well: how far can you go in the name of science and survival? By experimenting on living beings without their consent, they cross the red line of all medical ethics.

It took humanity centuries to draw that line. It took the horrors of experiments carried out on prisoners, exposed after the Second World War, for the Nuremberg Code to emerge in 1947, followed by the Declaration of Helsinki, both laying down a simple principle: no research on a human being without their free and informed consent.

The Vanir embody the opposite temptation, and a chilling warning: even the wisest can become torturers, not out of cruelty, but out of fear of dying.