Not a lot happened in our Battlestar Galactica game this week…or so it seemed. The “episode” was entitled “Mission Shift” and dealt primarily with the changing of several officers in the command staff and preparing for their next mission — planning and executing Operation Undertow, an attempt to collect intelligence on the Cylons in the wake of discovering they have cybernetically-augmented human agents (or possibly some new biomechanical Cylon?)

What they’ve learned: these agents are similar to humans in appearance and biology. Their DNA reads as normal. However, the blood contains molecular-sized machines, the purpose for which they haven’t ascertained. A fiber optic-like network was suffused in the brain and nervous system of the one agent, tying together into what they think was a central processing unit near the brainstem. There was some kind of heavily shielded superconductive liquid housed near the pineal gland — purpose unknown. The intelligence corps cannot decide if these are some kind of biomechanical Cylon, or humans augmented to be more pliant.

They have begged a scanning electron microscope to do the work needed to locate the nanobots, although a biopsy of the nervous tissue run through a spectroscope can also give a good indication of whether or not a person has been altered (or is a Cylon…) This information is still highly classified and the likelihood of a Colonies-wide test for Cylon agents is so politically toxic the fleet hasn’t even thought to suggest it.

Undertow’s current mission is to investigate systems with likely sources of tylium, radioactives, and other materials necessary for building Cylon and basestars. One of their vessels is the battlestar Valkyrie under William Adama (this is a version of the mission where Bulldog goes missing.)

I’m thinking about opening another front on the campaign, having the group play a second set of civilian or civilan and military counterintelligence characters investigating possible Cylon incursions on the Colonies.