Ori warship

"They cut through two of our 304's, an Asgard ship, and a fleet of Goa'uld motherships."

- Henry Landry

An Ori mothership is the standard attack vessel used by the Ori during their crusade in the Milky Way.

Overview


These white colored vessels are some of the largest ever encountered by the SGC being much bigger then the 304 and Ha'tak vessels as well as one Asgard vessel. They consisted of an oval shaped structure with a large Stargate styled ring in the center which glows with a white light. Two engines are present at the back of the vessel. Though quite large, they were capable of entering a planet's atmosphere and landing, where they towered over the landscape.



Upon their completion, the Priors are required to bring the ship's online through an activation ceremony. They are piloted by the Prior himself, who commands a crew of an unknown number of warriors from the Ori army, and is tasked with bringing planets under the banner of Origin.

Ori motherships appear to be smaller than Wraith hive-ships and Ancient city-ships and Aurora-class warships, while Asgard O'Neill-class vessels are roughly equal in size.

Technology
Ori ships are among the most advanced ships ever encountered by the Tau'ri, easily comparable to the Aurora- and O'Neill-classes in power.

Offensive and defensive features
Each Ori mothership is equipped with a powerful primary weapon fired from the dish on the front. This weapon is capable of destroying a Ha'tak with a single shot and heavily damaging the Asgard shield of a Daedalus-class vessel. For secondary weaponry the ship features several pulse weapons placed around the ship, allowing for complete coverage of the vessel. While these weapons are much weaker than the main beam weapon, they are still able to overwhelm a Ha'tak with only a handful of shots. Ori motherships also store a large number of fighters for attacking planetary targets and other fighters.

For defense purposes Ori motherships make use of a shield as equally impressive and capable as their weapons. They are able to survive weapons fire from multiple vessels with little apparent degradation in their performance, even Asgard weaponry. During an Ori assault on Chulak, a fully functioning ha'tak was rammed into an Ori mothership at full speed, but it merely impacted against the shield.

Weaknesses
While at first Ori motherships seemed to be unbeatable, ways of destroying them were finally found. During the Battle of P3Y-229, the crew of the Korolev discovered that the shields of the Ori ships fluctuated whenever their primary weapon was fired. SG-1 later tried to use this weakness by beaming a bomb on board of one Ori ship, but although the bomb seemingly arrived it didn't explode.

The first destruction of such a ship occurred when one of them was lured into the unstable vortex of their own Supergate, which literally cut the ship in half. In an alternate reality, it was stated that an Ori mothership attacking Earth was driven off by drone weapons from the Antarctic outpost, but whether the vessel was destroyed or if its shield was just depleted is unknown. Later, the Asgard granted Earth their latest technology, including their newly developed plasma beam weapons, which allowed the Odyssey to destroy more than one Ori mothership with relative ease.

Other systems
Control system: Ori ships are controlled by a single Prior, who uses a Control chair to control every aspect of the ship. Adria has shown the ability to activate the ship without sitting in the chair, and Samantha Carter theorized that she might be able to fly and operate the ship without using the control chair.

Energy: Energy for the ship is supplied by an advanced power core located in a large room. What energy the core uses is however unknown.

Hyperdrive: The Ori motherships are equipped with a hyperdrive which allowed them to travel around the galaxy. They made use of the Supergate to travel between the Milky Way and Ori Home Galaxy which implies that the distance is too great for extragalactic hyperdrive travel. Furthermore, they were capable of travelling between neighbouring galaxies as seen by their ability to reach Orilla and nearly matching the speed of an Asgard hyperdrive.

Transport rings: Like a Ha'tak an Ori mothership is equipped with ring transporters, whose design varies from the already known variants. Nevertheless both variants can be linked with one another.

Bridge
The bridge resides at the front of the ship and consists of a single Control Chair which has been specifically created to be controlled by a Prior of the Ori. This means that the ship is entirely controlled by the Priors rather then the Ori soldiers. The chair itself appears somewhat differently compared to an Ancient control chair and appears to resemble the symbol of Origin.

By the side of the chair is a computer screen that displays a constant stream of data. Several additional controls are present that can potentially be rigged to allow for manual control of the vessel.

Corridors
Among the corridors of the vessel resides numerous chambers such as the hangers by the front side under the main weapon or the living quarters for soldiers of the Ori Army or servants. SG-1 infiltrated one such vessels and ambushed an Ori patrol who attempted to use the walls to hide from their weapon fire. The various doors are opened by waving a hand over a control mechanism similar to those present on Ancient city-ships.

Power core
The Ori power core is located deep within the Ori battlecruiser and acts as an energy source for the vessel. The method through which they accomplished this was unknown. Colonel Mitchell attempted to place some explosives on the core in order to destroy a captured Ori vessel but the Orici used her powers to disarm the detonators.


 * It's unknown what, exactly, the power source is, with speculation ranging from a perfected version of Arcturus to perhaps a singularity-based source (similar to what powers the Supergate) to drawing power directly from the Ori themselves; however, no evidence (on-screen or otherwise) exists to either confirm or deny anything.

Ring room
Similar to the vessels of the Goa'uld, the Ori mothership contains a room where a ring platform resides. This allows for the deployment of forces between vessels or to be sent to planetary locations by the emplacement of ring platforms dropped into a region by Ori fighters.

It's possible to gain entry into an Ori mothership through the ring platform when the main weapon fires by activating another ring platform. The energy stream bypasses the Ori mothership's shields and allows either individuals or explosives to be sent to the Ori vessel.

History
After Earth made first contact with the Ori, the Doci ordered the building of ships to send them on their crusade. About one year later four were completed and, despite sabotage attempts carried out by the Anti-Ori underground, sent through the Supergate in the Milky Way galaxy. There they defeated a combined fleet of ships from the Jaffa, the Tok'ra, the Lucian Alliance and Earth in what became known as the Battle of P3Y-229. Afterwards they traveled to Chulak, where they attacked the Jaffa living there. It was at this time that the new leader of the Ori army, the Orici was born on one ship by Vala Mal Doran. During this short time the Ori ships appeared to be unbeatable, wiping out any resistance they were facing.

Some times later, SG-1 tried to block the Supergate by dialing from the Pegasus galaxy. During this time an Ori ship arrived at the Supergate but was destroyed by the unstable vortex of the activating gate, marking the first major victory against the ships.



The Jaffa, in the meantime, decided to use the Dakara superweapon against the Ori to capture their ships and the first such mission was carried out on a planet populated by 10.000 humans. The plan succeeded when the whole crew of the ship was killed. SG-1, who was on the planet at the time, used this opportunity to gather intelligence about the ships, but it soon turned out that Adria had also survived the attack. After finding out what weapon the Jaffa had used, she used her remarkable powers to fly the ship to Dakara, where she heavily damaged the planet, throwing the Free Jaffa Nation into chaos.

The next contact with an Ori mothership happened while SG-1 visited P9C-882, where they protected a village from destruction, using Arthur's Mantle. Shortly thereafter, Lt. Col. Samantha Carter was thrown into a parallel world where she discovered that Ori ships could be driven off by drone weapons. She again used Merlin's device, this time on the entire planet Earth, protecting it from an attack by Ori ships.



When SG-1 finally found Daniel Jackson (after he had been captured by Adria and turned into a Prior), he explains to them his plan sending an Ori ship with the completed Sangraal on board to the Ori home galaxy in his plan to destroy the Ori once and for all. The plan was successfully carried out but since SGC had to shut down their connection to the Supergate for this plan, it allowed the Ori to send six more ships into the Milky Way. It also remained questionable whether the Ori were truly destroyed. Nevertheless SG-1 learned new information from Daniel about the Ori motherships.

Several months later, the Asgard summoned the Odyssey to Orilla where they gave them their newest technology, since the whole race was dying. Suddenly several Ori ships arrived and attacked the Earth ship but by using the new Asgard beam weapons they were able to destroy one of them. Nevertheless the Odyssey was nearly destroyed since the Ori could detect the new Central Asgard Computer Core. Only after shutting it down the ship was able to escape. Earth now had new weapons capable of destroying Ori ships.

The last contact with the Ori motherships came in their own galaxy while SG-1 was searching for the Ark of Truth. During this time the Odyssey was attacked by four of them and nearly destroyed but when the Ark was activated and the knowledge about the true nature of the Ori was spread to all Priors in the galaxy, the ships ceased their attack. Since this marked the end of the Ori crusade it is unknown what happened to the remaining Ori motherships.