The Wraith

The Wraith are the great terror of the Pegasus galaxy. Gray-skinned, white-haired humanoids who don't feed the way we do: they drain the life force straight out of their victims by placing a hand on their chest, aging them to death in a matter of seconds.

The Wraith were born of an unfortunate encounter. A Pegasus insect that fed on the blood of the Ancients gradually mixed with human DNA to produce this race of perfect predators. For thousands of years, they hunted the humans of the galaxy the way a rancher watches over his herd.

To avoid exhausting their food supply, the Wraith sleep for long periods in hibernation, then wake in waves to feed before going back to sleep. The whole balance of Pegasus rests on that cycle, until the Atlantis expedition, while trying to defend itself, wakes far too many hives at once.

What follows is a long war, in which the humans from Earth find themselves fighting a battle that isn't theirs, against an almost unkillable enemy organized into hives and led by all-powerful queens. Over time, some Wraith, like Todd, even become allies of convenience, proof that nothing in this galaxy is ever entirely simple.

The Wraith tap into one of humanity's oldest fears: the vampire, the undead creature that feeds on the lives of others. The myth is staggeringly old. Blood-drinking creatures appear as early as ancient Mesopotamia, among the Assyrians and Babylonians, then in ancient Greece and in countless cultures around the world.

The word "vampire" itself appeared in Eastern Europe in the early 18th century, in the wake of genuine mass panics, before literature, and above all Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897, turned it into the icon we know today.

By crossing that immortal life-drinker with the cold organization of an insect hive, with its queens and colonies, Stargate created a predator that is both deeply familiar and radically new.