Taranian

The Taranans were a human culture native to Taranis in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Taranis had once hosted an outpost used by the Ancients, which included the planet's Stargate; the Taranans apparently went without knowledge of either until a series of underground caves and tunnels led them to discover the facility. Within, they found a great deal of apparently undisturbed Ancient technology, including a damaged Aurora-class warship &mdash; and, more significantly, a fully functioning shield.

While the Taranans were relatively advanced by local standards, possessing personal computers and sufficient knowledge to operate some of the Ancient equipment, they soon recognized that they did not have the ability to repair the Ancient systems should anything go wrong. Therefore, when the shield generators on the Ancient outpost, which had become a place of refuge for many Taranans fearful of the Wraith, began showing problems, they sough to enlist outside help, ultimately contacting the Atlantis Expedition. This proved to be serendipitous, as it was soon discovered that overuse of the outpost's geothermal power system had triggered the imminent eruption of a supervolcano that threatened to extinguish all human life on the planet.

With the aid of the Earth ship Daedalus and the Ancient warship, which Doctor Rodney McKay was able to partially repair in time, most of the Taranan people were successfully evacuated, and resettled on another planet with the help of the Atlantis expedition.

About a year later, however, the Taranans fell victim to the renegade Wraith known as Michael, who used the population in his attempts to breed a new form of soldier based on the Iratus bug. By the time a team was sent from Atlantis to investigate their disappearance, every Taranan on the planet had apparently been killed.