The last game session saw a hard move from the “talk about our feelings” sort of episode to an action piece. It also saw the introduction of a new PC (and a gamer to go with it — welcome, Iz!), a Seraph called Alala, one of the new heavy raider/raptor pilots aboard Galactica.

Last week, we had a slow run with a lot of character interaction, and a lot of “getting to know you” side chatter. Some GMs get annoyed by side talk and out of character exchanges, but we’re not getting paid to put on a show; it’s play. And important is getting to know each other — I’m of the opinion a gaming group doesn’t hold together unless the members are interested in hanging out and being friends outside of the game room. we had ended that session with a cliffhanger — Arden, the CAG of Galactica, had led a two heavy raider recon mission to New Ophiuchi, the world where they had finally defeated “the Blaze”, if only to confirm that there was no change in that false god’s DEAD status.

They found a basestar duking it out with a ship that Alala identified as a Seraph “seeker” ship, massive galleons that were used to “recover” thousands of people from the various colonies the 13th Tribe had left in its wake to and from Earth thousands of years ago. The seeker was escorted by a few dozen transports and a resurrection ship. Before they could react, however, they were hit with some kind of electronic warfare emissions and their ships shut down. They were dragged into the bsestar for a nice night’s cliffhanger.

This week, Alala graduated to PC, and the game revolved around their being captured by the Cylons, which apparently intended to do awful things to them to find out information and — they assumed — then be either turned into puppets of the Cylons or worse… Two of the Cylons were “IL models” — similar to what we had seen in the Pegasus mini-campaign this summer: Terminator-esque flesh over machine hybrids.

This led to a panicked, vicious fight in the medical center where their interrogation/torture was to take place, with two Seraph and two humans battling a pair of these ILs and a squad of centurions. One of the NPCs is MIA/KIA, the other severely wounded, and both of the PCs escaping the torture chamber with serious injuries. A chase and evasion sequence through the basestar led to one of the Seraph (an NPC) splitting off to draw away the centurions, and if lucky, scuttle the ship.

The other two dodged bullets, fought their way to a heavy raider in “maintenance mode” that Alala hijacked, and they jumped back to the fleet right out of the landing bay of the basestar, doing serious damage.

The play lasted about three hours and saw serious back and forth of plot points as the characters desperately tried to avoid getting killed. In the end, they were able to escape with vital intelligence, and warn the fleet about the possibility of the lost crewmember giving up the fleet’s location. After a jump to a new RP to avoid conflict, we ended for the night.

Not a bad way to break in a new player, with three hours of action that represented about 20 minutes of actual time.