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The Asurans are a fictional race in the science fiction series Stargate Atlantis that bear many similarities to the Replicators of Stargate SG-1. Presumably, they are named for the Asuras of Hindu culture, who were said to be arrogant, much as the Asurans are.
History Desperate for more effective means of defeating the Wraith, the Ancients created the predecessors to the Asurans as part of an experiment to create nanites that would infiltrate and destroy the Wraith from within. To that end, these self-replicating nanites were programmed with an aggression surpassing that of the Wraith. As they grew in numbers, the nanites began to assume the form of their creators. Unable to remove the aggression that had been programmed into them, the Asurans - as they came to call themselves - requested the Ancients do so - a request which was denied since their creators sought to use them as weapons and since the Asurans' programming prevented them from doing harm to their creators. Upon concluding their research into the feasibility of nanites as weapons, the Ancients destroyed their creations and deleted all traces of them from their database, save for the planet's gate address. A few Asurans, however, survived. Through their replicative abilities, they brought about a "second birth" - this time, not only taking the form of their creators, but also recreating their city on a far grander scale. Several thousand years later, they were discovered by the Atlantis expedition. Their population had grown to number in the millions and some - such as Niam - had even began to contemplate ascension. Already they have a plan to destroy the Wraith, though it is a slow, long term plan that does not have the humans' best interests in mind. Believing that the aggressive tendencies the Ancients had programmed into them was what was preventing them from ascending, Niam enlisted McKay's help to remove these tendencies. Although McKay's attempts were successful, they were discovered before the rewritten command codes could be distributed to the others. Concurrently, at the direction of Oberoth - their leader - the Asuran city-ship jumped into hyperspace in an attempt to destroy Atlantis. This attempt was thwarted by McKay, with the assistance of Niam, who used the city-ship's ZPMs to destroy it. • A few episodes later, it was revealed that the Asurans had, perhaps due to McKay's early efforts, managed to rewrite the part of their initial programming that prevented them from attacking the Ancients. This allowed the Asurans to capture Atlantis, by surprise, and presumably kill the Ancients who defended it. • It is revealed that the Asurans hate Humans particularly, due to the fact that the ancients particularly favoured them. This could also be one of the factors why the Asurans are at war with the T'auri, due to the fact that the Ancients returned back to Earth and selected the Tau'ri as their inheritors. Characteristics The Asurans possess much of the knowledge of the Ancients, as evidenced by their manufacturing of ZPMs and by their creation of a near identical city-ship to Atlantis. They also possess the ability to directly interface with the human subconscious - just as human-form Replicators do and the ability to walk-through walls. It is also known that their strength is far superior to that of a normal human, as Oberoth was shown to lift Mckay with one arm and swat Ronon aside with little effort, again just like the human-form Replicators. Their interdependent organ constituents consist of over three billion chemical base sequences. EMP weapons are a threat to the nanites base forms. However they are somehow able to integrate organic technology into themselves to make them somewhat immune to this vector of attack ("The Real World"). Conventional guns appear to have minimal effect on them. Ronon's Gun, however, can temporarily stun them (as opposed to the original Replicators and Human Form Replicators, which were immune to any energy weapon used against them). Human built 'knockoffs' of the Ancient/Asgard Replicator disrupter weapon have been designed to destroy them (the weapons were not seen when the original Replicators were active, leading to the conclusion that Stargate command recently designed them to deal with the Asurans) but these weapons are as of yet untested. The fact that they are vulnerable to EMP and to a limited extent, stunned by energy weapons suggests the Asurans are less sophisticated than the human form Replicators seen in Stargate-SG1. This is not an unreasonable conclusion as while the original Replicators had a technology base comprised of Asgard, Ancient and other races technology from all over the place, the Asurans have limited themselves to perfectly duplicating late Lantian era technology only. See also | ||||||||
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