The pace ticked up dramatically over the last couple of sessions, and tonight was no different. The “season finale” episode titled The Blaze saw a pair of players’ marshals investigating the attempted murder of the CAG character, who has been receiving divine visions throughout the campaign, and finally understands that he is an instrument of God and is supposed to destroy “the Blaze” — the angry god that started the war between the Lords of Kobol and the exodus of the 12 Tribes to the Colonies. He discovers that God is a rather impersonal creature, but that the endless Cycle of the story the Blaze has been telling — its attempt to become God after “staring to long into Its Face” — has destroyed Man, the Lords, and other civilizations for millennia. He is at peace, knowing that his time is coming and that he can finally break this endless cycle of violence.

The marshals investigate the Cylon “priest” and his cult members and through their investigations realize that his movements connect with another series of investigations (more of a group of conspiracy theories) one of them has been tracking to a private yacht of a former building industrialist. They mount up and head for the yacht in the company of the marines, led by LT Thorne, send by Pegasus to “help” them.

On arrival, the one marshal’s sixth sense is going haywire. They discover the industrialist is a Cylon puppet, and that the ship is some kind of biomechanical horrorshow that is used to create puppets for the Cylons to use in the fleet. There was a spate of combat that left all the marines dead, one of the player characters on death’s doorstep. During the fight, they made an unfortunate decision: trying to save the injured character, they had the raptor copilot take him off to the medical ship while calling for reinforcements. This left them with no way off the ship. Their discovery had triggered the ship to set itself for self-destruct. By the time they had figured this out, the other marshal had been shot critically. They accounted for two Cylons and the industrialist puppet along the way.

The ships around the yacht picked up the energy surge and had to move off, leaving the two characters left to try a desperate move of venting themselves and hoping for the SAR raptor’s crew to catch them. In the catch, the marshal lost his grip and would die in space. The pilot character lost his grip when the yacht exploded and hit the raptor with debris. He also died.

This was just the first act…we’re not even to the good stuff, yet. Two different players lost a character, and another has one down for at least 2-3 weeks of game time. The loss of Thorne before the Boomer interrogation removes one of the hot button plot elements that led to trouble in the show and might lead to a more civil relationship between ADM Cain and the fleet.