It’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks, between teaching, handling financial issues, and wrangling a wee girl, as well as trying to recruit new players to the group. This week was another washout on getting people together (this is becoming a habit…I may need a new hobby), but the week before saw another Battlestar Galactica adventure.

The new player chose to play a Fox Mulder-esque Colonial Security Service agent (essentially, the Colonies’ FBI) who sees conspiracies everywhere. He’s a paranoid, but effective cop who is perpetually being shifted to crap jobs because of his tendency to slide off target. He has an uncanny intuitive mind and phenomenal pattern recognition…seeing connections that are sometimes not there (correlative, not causative.)

We started the episode with this new character on a stakeout, doing surveillance on a lobbyist for the Prometheus Foundation — a massive, multi-colony non-profit that is tied to policy analysis, education foundations, etc. Think the Tides Center, and you’re in the ballpark. They don’t know why, but Chaplin (the character) has learned that their information is going to an Operation Riptide. Riptide, however, isn’t on the books, so far as he can see…

They report on the lobbyist, who meets with an independent freighter captain based out of Aquaria (in our campaign, the most popular flag of convenience for shipping due to lax records keeping and regulation), where he arranges for a  transport of a dozen or so people that the freighter apparently smuggled onto Caprica without them going through immigration control (a formality in our campaign — there’s supposed to be open travel between Colonies, but it rarely works that way.) Why the secrecy? They appear to be from all walks of life and get deposited by minibus at various points in Caprica City. Chaplin, curiosity piqued, does some research on their target, but before he can finish, they are called to report the next day to CSS HQ.

He has been transfered to Riptide because of his pattern recognition skills and his ability to ferret out real (and imagined) conspiracies. He finds out about the Cylon agents active in the Colonies, and that Riptide is the codeword for the counterespionage mission to find and isolate these people. He finds out about the cybernetic enhancements to these people they believe alllows the Cylons to monitor their actions, and that some may not even know they are spies for the enemy, and worst — that some of these “people” may actually be Cylons! They have been infiltrating all levels of Colonial society, and he notes that they seem to have some kind of connection to the politically powerful Pindarus family…but are they targets or conspirators…or both?

Meanwhile, Commander Alexander Pindarus, who has been “beached” in his terms, by being transfered from his command of Aegis and the missions across the Armistice Line he managed to lobby for to Galactica (which he later learns is scheduled to be turned into a museum…with a skeleton crew to operate her), returns to Caprica. He is intercepted by Chaplin, who wants to question him and try to get a feel for it he’s a bad guy or victim. Pindarus’ wife, a big lobbyist in her own right, doesn’t trust this policeman — they’ve already had a raid by the CSS that has left the Pindarus Group under investigation and their funds locked up. However, after a conversation about the situation, Chaplin wants to roll him into the investigation for the three weeks he’s got before Pindarus must take command of Galactica.

They were lining up a “chance” meeting with the lobbyist he had been investigating, who they think is a major node in the Cylon spy network, at a big political do that night…

Screaming child brought the game to an early end, but we’re hoping to pick it up again next week.

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