It was a combination of organic power and technology, like their literally mother ships were indeed alive as it was some kind of being but it was also retrofitted with technology so they used a combination of power as the organic power but also whatever else they used for power, it's said in the lore their tech is not quite as advanced as the Atlantian's but it was close to being as advanced.

Lore wise that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but because it was written this way in the lore, it's become apart of the lore, but stargate kind of had a hard time explaining the wraith to the full degree, idk if they ever really explained enough, but they were humanoid mixed with that bug creature and it had to do with evloution of millions of years or something, i have no idea where they got their intellect in all that time?

But the non-cannon novel explains that they were created by an Atlantean scientist who was trying to find a cure or some way to fight off the Ori plague and was experimenting with that eratus bug and human DNA and also introduced intellect into these subjects, but something happened and his experiments killed him and escaped and eventually they breed like crazy and got to a point where they outnumbered most species and came into power that the other Atlantean scientists stumbled on and by accident woke them up and that's what started the war.

I personally like the novel's information to how they came to be over the in series lore, most of the time i don't like the novel's lore, but sometimes they do a better job in a way that sounds more realistic than the tv series explanation.

Cubbyman1,

Thank you, though I do wonder if they have to feed the ships, and if so what. Do you remember the name of the novel? I'd very much like to read it.