The Black Campbell

Tonight was one of those nights where it seems nothing and way too much happened in the game. We continued on from the last session where the fleet had found an old colony world of the Kobolians, Argos. They investigated, retrieved some DNA-based data storage, including the DNA and mind-states of six Lords of Kobol. Their resident lord, Athena, is unsure they should reconstitute them. She doesn’t think that waking thousands of years later to their culture destroyed will make these “gods” each to manage.

But they also have two other big problems: Argos is a habitable world for a tired fleet. The civilians are ready to give it a go on this uninhabited, but habitable world. The civilians want to stop. The second: they have found out the Blaze — Hades — escaped the destruction of Kobol and is regrouping with the remnants of his Cylon followers at a nearby world the humanoid Cylons (Seraph, as they are now known) “recovered” 200 years ago by force. A recon mission shows four basestars, and on the surface, Hades’ commandstar (a super-basestar, if you will.) He is conducting some kind of operation at the ruins of a large city centered on a huge skyscraper. Athena thinks he might have a shard of a Titan (a Ship of Lights) hidden there.

There was a lot of character interaction, including a dream sequence for the Leoben-ish character, who dreams of a great battle under the three faces of Hecate between centurions and Seraph on both sides, and Athena and Hades. In the end, Athena reveals herself to be an angelic creature — wings and all — who burns away Hades (and everyone else.)

A plan of attack is formed. They had established that the Cylons can imprint new memories and consciousness on those Seraph bodies still in storage on the resurrection ship. Also, their recon vessels are not being identified by the Cylons at the Blaze’s rally point; the centurions cannot tell the humanoids apart. Athena is going to implant new Seraph with the memories of her fellow lords, slip into Hades area of operations on the ground, and stop him before he can recover the shard and either become a real threat again, or worse…if it’s from Hecate’s body, possibly attempt to break causality (the only real immutable law of existence) which could go so far as to unmake everything.

Meanwhile, the fleet — Galactica leading Cygnus, their pocket escort, and Basestar 19 — will hit the Cylons in orbit and when the time is right, nuke the grounded commandstar. If they pull this off, they destroy the Blaze forever, and end the Sacred Cycle once and for all.

To do this, they are taking the massive risk of leaving the civilians at Argos, with only a few squadrons of rebel raiders and heavy raiders for protection.

Monday: the denouement of a four year long campaign.

This week’s game session saw our fleet discover the remains of a Kobolian outpost from millenia before the 13th Tribe decamped. The place is identifed by ATHENA as Argos, one of the colony worlds set up in the Olympians’ attempts to find the Titans that made them. The place is abandoned — cities standing empty and in collapse. There are plants and animals on the planet, however, and the idea of setting down and letting the grieving Colonials get some respite is quickly gaining popularity. The characters had been thinking of leaving the civilian fleet here with some protection so that they could race ahead to Earth to scout that world.

They do reconnaissance of the world and find the place deserted…except for the massive complex in a mountain range up against a glacier. Scouting the location, which they haven’t been able to get good data on due to a weather event, the scout raptor is shot down, and it’s viper escort nearly dropped, as well. They spot a SAM site with centurions operating it, and a heavy raider launched to escape. One of the characters does a strafing run that takes out the SAM site, and eventually drops the heavy raider before it can jump.

The SAR mission includes some of the humanoid Cyln (Seraph) who access the mind of one of the dead centurions and find out they’ve been assigned to 1) find any recoverable data — the Kobolians (Olympians, whatever…) store their data in DNA because it is more robust than optical or magnetic storage; millennia is easily possible. 2) There are other missions like this to other Kobolian outposts, and they were 3) given the mission by a massive, darkly-handsome man Athena identifies as Hades. Their nemesis is still alive.

Worse, he’s looking for a Titan body — a “ship of lights” — to inhabit. They now know the Blaze is alive, apparently in physical form, and is waiting at a world, New Ophiuchi (the Ophiucans were the 13th Tribe, in our game) for the scouts.

There were several action sequences as they explored the Olympian citadel — a massive, 50-story arcology — and in the end they discovered not just data storage, but DNA samples of some of the Olympians that had remained behind after whatever happened…happened.

They’ve figured that the Cylons that were here were on an indefinite assignment, and are thinking of having the civilian fleet remain and do harvesting on the world, while they race to New Ophiuchi and deal with Hades.

This is leading toward the denouement of the campaign much quicker than I had anticipated.

New Year’s Day saw everyone able to get together for an extended gaming session over jambalaya and beer. We picked up after a few rough starts because I had forgotten a few of the going-on last session, but finally we hit the ground running and the adventure I thought would be done by third hour ran five, almost until we knocked off for the night.

The Cylon player character (a Leoben type) and “Tana” — meaning “commander” in Kobolian — a Three than the Colonials had as a POW in earlier episodes figure out that someone has been tweaking the programming of the “humanoid Cylons” or Seraph when they have been going to the resurection ship to have their experiences downloaded directly. (They can’t simply upload wirelessly as they once had.)

The commander of the ship, a player character, was promoted to admiral, and after some politicking the Seraph leadership accepted him as the commander of the military assets. There was a moment of tension when ATHENA recommended not the One model to command the Cylon basestar, but Tana Three. After some consultation between the models that had come for the alliance confab, this was made the case. She was made a “commander” and the second highest ranking officer in the military, over the objections of the Colonial colonel commanding the light escort they have in tow.

Tana askes for Colonial help in sussing out what is going on, and during a state visit to the basestar, the admiral brought along two of the characters working on Cylon reproductive issues. They went with the PC Cylon to the resurrection ship and in a great display of mad scientist moments, they were able to distract the Caretaker of the ship and got a look at Cylon/Seraph coding. They discovered with a spectacular roll by one of their programmers that the Ones were trying to program in fealty to the models. He also found all the deep psychological blocks that the Blaze — their once God — had programmed into their machine part of their brains, preventing them from all manner of behavior. Essentially, they were slaves to this Blaze, fugueing out whenever they tried to address their infertility issues, or discuss certain things tied to the Blaze, or other important issues.

Despite the dangers, the programmer character wrote a virus that stripped all these inhibitors out of the Seraph and set it loose in the Cylon fleet. This not only freed them from the inhibitors their God put in place, but allowed them to know about the manipulation of the Ones. A full-scale uprising and overthrow of the Ones occurred in about a minute and a half as the models conferred and voted to keep most decisions a democratic quorum of the models, but they placed Tana 3 in command of the fleet’s military decisions. They also view the programmer as something of a hero of the Seraph, now.

The alliance looks solid, they are on their way to Earth, and the episode ended with the trial of the various ringleaders of the mutiny — which included the cousin and last remaining family of one of the PCs, the new CAG. She was able to make herself vote for death. Lots of role playing pathos ensued.

We started the next episode before closing out the night. One of the recon missions, following leads that the ATHENA had generated for possible Kobolian outposts, finds Argos — a colony of the Lords of Kobol that predates the 13th Tribe’s exodus by almost 1000 years. The place is barely habitable in a New Caprica sort of way, but there is the added possibility of ancient tech to be plundered. Athena seems intent on doing so. Might she have ulterior motives?

One of the things the players started tossing about was the idea of settling the civilian fleet, which has been slowing their travel as older vessel, and those not really designed for extended space and FTL travel are increasingly experiencing malfunctions. Additionally, the fresh food is about to end, and they’ll be on stabilized and canned stuff for the next six months or so it will take to get to Earth. But Argos has indications of familiar crops and animal life. After five months stuck in tight quarters, grieving over the loss of…everything, the players are starting to think it might be necessary to drop the civilian fleet someplace relatively safe, and press on at best speed to Earth.

That was where we ended the night with some big decisions that could decide how much longer the campaign goes on. The end, I think, is in sight after four years.

(This isn’t the longest continuous campaign I’ve run, but it’s damned close. IT has been, by far, the most rewarding from a storytelling and fun standpoint of any game in the last fifteen years.)

This week saw our last game of the year, most likely. (Damn you, holidays!) However, we did get the chance to start a new arc for the fleet, post mutiny and coup.

The first half of the night was concerned with picking up the pieces after the whole of the elected government was killed off. Rather than reconstitute the tradition set up of a quorum, there will be a council of ship captains, who will report their concerns to the small bureaucracy that is still mostly in place. Logistics Minister to handle food and other supplies; a morale and welfare minster for the necessary “bread and circuses” to keep people stuck in 74 tin cans occupied and out of as much mischief as possible; a justice minister (also our head and only judge) to handle criminal cases (and who is overloaded with the coup conspirators); a health minister; and a security minister controlling the civilian police force. The commander of Galactica, a PC, is doubling as defense minister — he is the last word on military matters. There is an “interim president”, which sounds better than “president placed there by the very angry military commander that just had his president dad murdered.”

The big move was the Quorum of Priests who demanded Lady Athena of Kobol rule them. She declined, but took the position of prime minister. She is not legally empowered to make policy or law…but everyone knows that she is guiding the whole show, now. This has actually created more stability in the fleet, despite her having to spend several weeks selling the people on the new government and more importantly, the announcement of the alliance with the Seraph (humanoid Cylons) of Basestar 19.

There was a lot of politicking and changing of the guards — including the PC pilot who was cousin of the mutiny leader finding herself as CAG — but this was overshadowed by two new plotlines:

1) The inclusions of Basestar 19‘s ships, including Resurrection 3. We introduced a new PC — a Leoben-like “messenger” model. This one, named Devet Cavil as a tip of the hat to the new show, is trying to find stability and answers in the wake of The Blaze turning out to be a false god (Hades, armed with Titan’s technology, to be specific) and his continuing revelations from God. He is convinced Athena is the key to figuring it out…what does she know? He has a second problem — the Seraph that have recently been “decanted” are showing odd personality traits — they are very docile, and overly amenable to the policies of the Ones and Twos…are they being programmed? Is this a move by a few of the models to be more equal than the others?

This is leading toward some espionage and politicking in the Cylon fleet.

2) They have gotten close enough to have their first distant survey of Earth’s star. This has raised morale (if only the mutineers had held their fire a few days!), but more important is that as they have moved past the stellar nurseries of the Orion Nebular group, they are picking up what look to be super high frequency and bandwidth communications from dozens of systems in the Orion Spur. These are between 500 and 1000 years in the past…but this section of the galaxy looks to be alive with settled worlds! What might be waiting for them out there, even the Seraph/Cylons — who had sent “Seeks” into the area to find humans to bring under the embrace of the Blaze — can’t know…

So we are about to wander further away from the show, and more toward the post/transhuman elements that have been hinted at throughout the campaign. We know the TITANS created the Lords of Kobol to rule/supervise the humans that they recreated on Kobol after destroying Earth. We know Hades left with the Ophiuchan Tribe (the 13th Tribe) and apparently contacted the Titans, and in his effort to find “God” or understand the universe, went mad and came back as “the Blaze” to overthrow the Olympians on Kobol and rule over the people there. He eventually created the Seraph (our humanoid Cylons) in the image of his brothers and sisters he destroyed, and had them reign in his stead, and also send them to find the rest of humanity and bring them under his gaze.

What we’re finding out: the Seraph lost any of their Seeks to unknown elements at Earth and other worlds near it. We now suspect that the Titans or humans from Earth or the 13th Tribe have settled this region of space…but the transmissions seen suggest they are far more advanced technologically than the Colonials or Seraph; what might they be encountering soon?

We’re in the home stretch of the campaign, and the flavor of the game is moving more toward a combination of the spiritual, but also more transhuman sci-fi. I’ve pretty much got the main elements of the next few episodes mapped out, but only can really plan an episode or two ahead of where I am, as player input is driving us in directions I hadn’t anticipated. (I know my players well enough to usually know where they’ll take us…this hasn’t been the case of late.)

The final acts of our mutiny arc were played out this week. Previously, one of the player characters connected to the black market, and who had been the Security Minister until it was discovered his aide was a Cylon, led a coup d’etat against the government. He and one two of his conspirators did for the entire Quorum of Twelve, as well as the president (the father of the commander — played, funnily enough, by the same guy with the coup leader.) Once they had secured the quorum chambers and president’s office (on Cloud 9 in our game because no politician is going to “rule” from a bitty liner…), they set about finding out what was going on with the mutiny on Galactica.

This play session was mostly on the battlestar. Of the two players there that night, one had his viper pilot and a veterinarian-turned-medic (and budding mad scientist researching Cylon infertility); the other had his coup leader and commander of Galactica as their characters. The viper pilot is the cousin of the mutiny leader — a very popular engineer who is also a master organizer, and whom managed to pull of the mutiny in a matter of minutes. They engineered a malfunction of the communications while most of the pilots (the majority of the officers) were out on an exercise, raided CIC, and placed the command staff in the brig until the mutiny was complete.

Things start to go wrong when some of the mutinous pilots with marines in tow try to capture the Three — who had been a sleeper in the Colonial Feet and is wracked with doubt and guilt over her actions — the commander had put back in uniform (along with our version of Boomer.) She was in the infirmary giving eggs for the vet’s experiments, along with Lady Athena — the Lord of Kobol they picked up in the Tomb of Athena. The mutineers attempt to take them into custody, only to get mangled badly by the two of them. (With some help from the vet.)

Athena sends the Three (call sign Trey) to round up the loyal officers currently being held in the pilot’s briefing room by one of the mutineers and the pilot PC, who was having a crisis of conscience. The PC decided she needed to find out what was going on and was being held at gunpoint when Trey arrives to aid her. The loyal pilots break out — some headed for the brig to rescue the command staff, some headed to the CIC to aid Athena, who had disappeared to go “get dressed for the party” — getting into her high-tech (yet Greco-retro looking) armor, with shield and energy-weapon firing spear.

A lot of the violence happened off-camera, but the vet (as their field medic) aided Trey, Helo, and a few others in rescuing the commander and his staff — who then headed for the CIC. The pilot PC, with Starbuck, and a few worshippers of Athena headed for the CIC and managed to link up with Athena before she raided the place on her own. In the ensuing fight, a bunch of the mutineers got dropped, but the pilot managed to talk down her cousin, who wound up in the brig. The Lady of Kobol chewed through the opposition scarily easy; the first time they’ve really seen her in action.

By the time the coup leaders called into Galactica to check on the situation, the ship had been retaken (or at least the CIC), and they were surprised to find themselves not talking to their woman on the inside, but Athena — who told them she was coming for them next. This lead to a chase to capture the coup leader, who was ultimately shot down.

In the end, both players each lost one of the troupe of characters, some of the former PCs were killed, and a host of main supporting NPCs went under the bus.

The players were left with a badly fractured fleet, a sudden loss of a lot of their officer corps, about half the marines of the fleet dead, and no political leadership. they instituted an interim president and decided to run with a periodic meeting of ship captains to manage the big issues, but they need to get the bureaucracy back online to keep supplies and services going. There was some talk of martial law, and the pilot PC is looking to fill their badly depleted ranks with pilots from the humanoid Cylon fleet they are weakly allied with; another idea is not to intermingle the pilots, but have the Cylons — now that everyone knows they’re out there — join the fleet to bolster their air assets.

The next episode, however, will show us that things aren’t exactly stable on the Cylon side of things, and that their “leadership” hasn’t bee playing on the up and up…