Another night of our side plot about Pegasus and her small task force causing havoc for the toasters back at the Colonies on Thursday. In this episode, we had some housekeeping from the aftermath of attacking the Boneyard and cutting out an older battlestar, Ares. The small escort they’ve had with them since the Exodus began, Demosthenes, is so battered as to be deadlined. The old, great Ares and Pegasus, too, require serious repairs. To find some respite, they have retreated to Ragnar Anchorage to repair, refit, and provision.
Ares‘ automation systems are unique — the Cylons didn’t use a hybrid, like the Seraph would, but a complex series of computers that use biomimetic materials, but aren’t biology. Their surveys of the Colonies have shown the Cylons are building old-style raiders, rather than the biomechanical ones the Seraph fielded. The characters were curious as to why? Is there some kind of ideological reason? Cutting the ties with their skin job masters? Or maybe they can’t do the biomechanicals?
While the ships are under repais, Admiral Cain doesn’t want to waste time and let their OPTEMPO slide. She assigns some of the senior officers with ground combat training to make contact with the resistance movements on Aquaria and Libran — the two worlds that look to have the most successful and cohesive movements, and have the lowest concentration of Cylon opponents. They need a beachhead for work from, and the commander of Aegis — a PC named Philip Oscari — gets the Aquaria mission.
After a dangerous low-altitude atmospheric jump (LAAJ), they hard land in the snows of Aquaria and quickly make contact with suspicious resistance fighters armed with a collection of hunting rifles. Soon after, they are aggressed by “steel wolves” — sleek, wolf-like robots with razor claws and teeth. They are fast, light, and designed for snow operations, but the hunting rifles and automatic weapons soon make short work of them. They are, however, the harbingers for the “centaurs” — centurion bodies mated to snowmobiles. They don’t get a good look at these that night; they are too busy escaping to the “Complex” — a series of underground caves with hot springs in the mountains outside Kyros, the nearby city.
Here they find thousands of people — children to adults — living in the labyrinth, fed well on reindeer and other game and fish. They are led by a historian and politician, and a bunch of local hunters. They also have a Two, which they use to ascertain if the crew are “human’…apparently, they know the 12 models of skin jobs (or fleshies, as they call them), but there’s a new kind of skin job, and it’s worse than they can imagine. They didn’t get into that too deeply, as the night’s session concluded.
The Black Campbell 