The Black Campbell

Last night saw the rag-tag fleet finally get to Earth. Last session, we had ended on the fleet suddenly finding itself face-to-face with a “Ship of Lights” — a TITAN, the ancient machine intelligences that, allegedly, made the Lords of Kobol.

The characters found themselves overwhelmed by light and sound, and then we broke for the night…

This week, we opened on Admiral Pindarus and the Lords of Kobol traveling with the fleet confronting Prometheus, one of the two TITANs that have remained at Earth to protect it (the other being Atlas.) We learned, obliquely, that the TITANs have mostly gone away — “they have become that which went before, and which — if you don’t muck it up — you may one day become.” The planet has been under their protection since Hades showed up with a fleet of arks loaded with the Ophiuchans — the 13th Tribe of Kobol that traveled with him to Earth to “find answers” after his war on Zeus to control Kobol. (He lost.)

Hades was welcomed back by his progenitor, Prometheus, who had been behind the creation of Athena, as well. They were based on the most approachable Gods the TITANs could find to lead humanity after the TITANs had to reconstruct them. Like so many machine intelligences, they destroyed their creators — in this case through neglect, then by “accident”…the casual indifference and sense of entitlement made Nike almost lose her s#!t and she began mouthing off. Worse than Prometheus’ attitude was his indifference to her scorn; she (and the others) simply didn’t figure into his future, anymore. He was a mirror for the same sense of entitlement and power that the Kobolians had shown toward their human charges.

Hades was shown knowledge and power beyond his ability to comprehend and resist. A hoarder by nature, who could never let a mind-state go, once he had it; who was perpetually looking for “more” to know, have, or be, he had to become that thing the TITANs had discovered — “God”, the universal power, whatever — and he killed and stole Epimetheus’ body and became “the Blaze”, returning to wreak vengeance on his family and give the people of Kobol a real god. When things didn’t work as planned, Hades commited one of the few real sins against the universe: he traveled back in time to “fix” his mistakes. Over and over again, he retread the same section of space time until is was worn threadbare. That was when “God” decided to step in and put his finger on the scales.

Earth — which was recreated by the TITANs’ hekatochires utility fogs as Kobol — is supposed to be the home of it all, yet there were archeological finds on Sagittaron that predate some of this history. It had been 3000 years since Hades went to Earth, 2000 since the Fall of Kobol. Earth history was supposedly 10,000ish years leading up to the TITANs…but the finds early in the campaign had the Colonies destroyed 7,000, 10,000 years ago! And there’s the question of the “Colonies of Man” out by the Pleiades cluster…these predate Kobol, as well (and tied into our original, abortive “second fleet” campaign. They would have settled these colonies.)

Could it be even the TITANs don’t know the full story? Or aren’t telling?

Prometheus had informed the humans of Earth that the fleet was coming, and they were waiting for them, offered to take the Lords with him, but Athena informed him she “was already there.” The characters woke to their ships coming back on line, in orbit around Earth six days later, although the internal clocks of the Seraph showed no time had passed.

Contacting Earth proved easier than expected. While the moon had once been the repository of Mnemosyne (the moon had been turned into a giant computer for “Memory”), that TITAN was gone, but her knowledge base “Selene” was online and pumping translation programs to the fleet to let them decode the data, television, etc. A “princep” or first citizen had been appointed by Atlas shortly before the last TITANs decamped for eternity, and negotiations to have the pilgrims to Earth land began.

The people of Earth still remembered the Lords of Kobol, and worshipped them as agents of God (angles, if you will), so their appearance with Pindarus at the confab between the fleet leadership and the major powers of Earth eased their way. Earth is populated, but only by about 4 million people. These decedents of the 13th Tribe topped out after two millennia due to their access to advanced science through Selene, and the use of robotic farming and other high-tech, low-impact living. They haven’t ventured into space — there’s no point; they have all the food, resources, and space they could wish for. Their affluent, comfortable lifestyle has led to a post-scarcity paradise where the people are happy but unmotivated. Spoiled.

There’s plenty of room for the hungry pilgrims. The big issue: without their protectors, the Earthers must look to build some kind of defense, and the only folks with operating spacecraft are the Colonials. They quickly bang out a confederacy of the four major powers and several bigger city-states, but this new group — settled in Athens, the “city of Athena” — are already one of the bigger political units. To smooth the way, Pindarus makes sure the princep and quorum that will be the central (and mostly powerless) government will be in the hands of the locals, but he is the commander of the fleet (all three warships.)

Once the treaty is signed, Pindarus and Athena go for a walk to her temple on the acropolis, a perfect recreation of her temple on Kobol. There she gives him a few more suggestions for how to proceed, then suddenly, she’s just gone. Her wish was for Hermes and Nike to return to Argos and try to steer Zeus and their people away from ruling the humans there, toward an advisor position, with Nike replacing Athena as the Goddess of War.

We ended the night with the arrival of the battlestar Aegis, Pindarus’ old command before Galactica, now commanded by Oscari — one of the commanders that returned to the Colonies with Admiral Cain. Intense distrust over the fleet’s alliance with the Seraph is dispelled when Pindarus sells Oscari on the idea of a grand confederacy of human worlds — Argos, Earth, New Ophiuchi, and the Colonies — working together to stop the sorts of massive, solar system-levels of destruction they’ve witnessed on their travels.

We ended the night there, with the fleet having found safe harbor, some answers, and more questions… Have they managed to break the Cycle of Time?

One last episode remains for the campaign. We will be jumping 25 years into the future for the coda to this campaign.

Overall — a satisfying conclusion to the main story, I think.

It’s been a while since the last AAR for the Battlestar Galactica game. We had the usual holiday nonsense, some winter wonderment (snow) that buggered up attendance, and a change of venue due to my daughter’s new school schedule, and the last few sessions were “talk about our feelings” episodes mixed with the setting is being fleshed out, and ti was being chewed on by the players and their characters. It was interesting, but not enough to require their own posts. Without further ado…

Since the fight at New Ophiuchi, the fleet had been looking hard for the Seeker ship — the massive Kobolian ark they’d seen being attacked by the Cylons. Eventually, they find the ship, but not before we had one of the characters biff their navigation test for the jump into the star system they were looking in. Their heavy raider comes in too close to a ring system around a gas giant and they get hit with a chunk of ice and rock that kills the raider, rips open the hull killing one of the PCs — our equivalent of the Leoben model — from exposure to space, and leaves the two pilots desperately trying to fix the ship while running low on O2. Eventually, right as they are near suffocation, the Seeker ship’s scouts find them.

After convincing the Seraph leadership of their non-beligerance, they suggest a meeting between the Seeker ship and the fleet. This leads to a long series of meetings where the admiral and the Seraph leadership councils try to hammer out an alliance between all involved. They learn the Seeker ship has a bunch of transports — mostly running empty from feeding the almost 13,000 humans and roughly 17,000 Seraph in Seeker 13 and Resurrection 5. (10,000 of the Seraph are still “on ice”.)

One night dealt almost exclusively with the admiral finally admitting his love for Tana — the Seraph model Three commanding Unity (the former Basestar 19.) He’s managed to impregnate her, and they marry in the hopes this will draw their peoples together.

As all of this is happening, the fleet is moving steadily toward Earth, stopping periodically as they run across ancient battlefields — ships that have been dead 300, 500, even 5000 years. The two worlds the Seraph had known were settlements of the 13th Tribe, and which had been locked into the “Gene/Tech War” 500 years ago — blasted and dead. The very old ruins of ships show another major conflagration that almost predates the Lord of Kobol and their rule…how long has the Cycle been going on, and what are they going to find as they get to Earth? These mysteries are intriguing and encouraging some, but many in the fleet are rapidly losing faith in Lady Athena and the other Kobolians…what are they leading them into?

Finally, they find themselves a light year from Earth, scanning the sky for any sign of life. They find ELINT from Earth and its moon, from Mars, and from Jupiter. Someone is home. Admiral Pindarus orders the final jump of the fleet — Jump 75, serendipitously — and they arrive near Pluto and Charon, and their moons. A search of the system shows a beautiful, Caprica-like, world with a moon that is unusually symmetrical in its gravity field, a featureless orb with a high albedo, which is pumping out signals and is very hot. That’s not the most unusual thing — Mars is swarming with some kind of activity — a utility fog large enough to engulf a planet. This, the Lords of Kobol tell them, is a hekatonchires, a planet “repurposer” In orbit around Earth and in the flux tube between Io and Jupiter, there is a Ship of Lights, like the one Hades/the Blaze traveled in! These are the TITANs’ bodies.

Before they can do much else, suddenly there is a TITAN amongst the fleet! The ship systems die, there is a loud growling noise that drowns out all other sounds, and bright, white light which oversaturated everything to white.

Next week…answers?