Nirrti
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Nirrti was a member of the System Lords, connected to the Vedic mythology of India. She was killed by Wodan on P3X-367.
History
Nirrti was first indirectly encountered by Stargate Command on Hanka, a planet upon which she had conducted experiments to create an advanced "hok'tar" host. She released a bacterial infection that wiped out the population of the planet - including SG-7, who had established an observatory there. The pathogen left only one survivor, Cassandra, in whom Nirrti implanted a bomb intended to destroy the Tau'ri Stargate. Her efforts were unsuccessful, though Cassandra would later show evidence of extrasensory abilities resulting from Nirrti's experiments. (SG1: "Singularity", "Rite of Passage")
She would later represent the collective System Lords during negotiations with the Asgard to add Earth to the Protected Planets Treaty. She attempted to destabilise the negotiations, using cloaking technology to attempt to implicate the shol'va Teal'c in the murder of Cronus. She was captured, and handed over to Cronus as a gesture of diplomacy, though she would later escape from her captivity after Cronus' death - at the hands of a robotic duplicate of Teal'c, ironically - and made efforts to restore her domain. She infiltrated Stargate once again in the hopes of salvaging some of her hok'tar research from the DNA of Cassandra; once discovered by the SGC, she agreed (at gunpoint) to reverse the harmful effects that were killing Cassandra, in exchange for her freedom. (SG1: "Fair Game", "Double Jeopardy", "Rite of Passage")
Despite her return, Nirrti was considered persona non grata among the System Lords, and was excluded from the Summit on the Hasara Station to discuss the mystery attacks later discovered to be perpetrated by the returned Anubis. As a fringe member of the System Lords, she was considered a vulnerable target by the Rebel Jaffa led by K'tano, although the attacks against her were later exposed as deliberate suicide missions engineered by the Goa'uld Imhotep to sabotage the Jaffa uprising from within. (SG1: "Summit", "The Warrior")
In P3X-367, Nirrti secured control of an Ancient device that allowed her to actively manipulate the DNA of the local population, once again using an engineered sickness to decimate the population which she then presented herself as a potential cure for. Her efforts to engineer a hok'tar led to widespread mutations and deformities among her subjects, though an encounter with Jonas Quinn of SG-1 revealed that the answer might lie in the divergent evolution of humans on other worlds. The was unable to do anything with this new knowledge, however: at the behest of SG-1, one of the locals, Eggar, read Nirrti's mind with the telepathy Nirrti had given him, and discovered her true intentions for the population; out of anger, another local, Wotan, killed her with his Nirrti-given telekinesis, although not before Eggar could extract the nowledge of how to use the Ancient device to heal his people from her mind. (SG1: "Metamorphosis")
In an alternate timeline created by Ba'al, Nirrti was one of the System Lords that Ba'al made efforts to recruit into his empire. Whether this is evidence of any prior affiliation between Nirrti and Ba'al is unclear. (SG1: Continuum)
Mythology
In the Vedic beliefs of Ancient India, and particularly in the Hindu religion, Nirrti is a goddess personifying death, decay, and sorrows. She is sometimes portrayed as a male god, Nirrta, who is a guardian and protector figure of the southwest direction. While the Sanskrit word Nirrti literally means "decay", is can also be interpreted as a state of disorder, lawlessness, or chaos. Vedic texts use this term to indicate a realm of darkness and non-existance, vaguely similar to Erebus. Some portrayals describe her as the daughter of "violence" and "unnaturalness", and as the mother of the personification of the underworld, Naraka. Some sources describe her living in a city in the southwest of Mount Meru.
Behind the Scenes
Nirrti was potrayed by Jacqueline Samuda in 3 episodes of Stargate SG-1, and Continuum.
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