The Black Campbell

Last night’s Battlestar Galactica RPG game was fantastic. It was one of those nights where all the plyaers were on it, all the characters got to not only do story-specific tasks but were able to have role playing/character development moments that were fun for all. As a GM, I was heartened by the fact that a half-assed plan and a vague idea of where the overall campaign is going combined with some inspired mental tap-dancing to create a spooky and intellectually engaging plot.

Having completed their murder mystery, it’s time for Aegis and her task force to set up for the Armistice Line to set up a forward operating base for their forays over the line into Cylon space. We opened with the master chief leading a bunch of the wrenches down to fix a problem with the magcats in the launch bay. There were comic moments where they are completely thwarted by a single, stubborn bolt holding the access panel closed. The new player/character got to experience the mundanities of service life — 0500 PT, communal showers in the general heads, breakfast on the fly as new NCO she gets the crap supervisor jobs. The CAG has to get the plan of action for their jump to the Polyxena system right.

The commander get s a gift from the chief engineer and master chief — a scanning electron microsope the engineer managed to appropriate from her last assignment at Scorpia Yards. Now they can identify Cylon tissue by the silica fiber optics and molecular machines’ signatures. Additionally, the master chief stole the material for a state-of-the-art holotank for their war room. Think Surface, but in 3-D. Of course, everyone’s first thought…we can get the 3D Pyramid games on this!

They jump to Polyxena, site of their first mission, wher they had been very cursory on their search before bugging out. the observation post is still abandoned, and the ancient tylium mine facility that had been discovered by the miners on the moon, and which the post had been conducting archeological research on, is still accessible.

While damage control teams get the observation post back online, a DC team under the ship’s CAG, Dr. Gio Mellor — an archeologist from the Sagitaron dig (search the site for the appropriate AAR), and the intelligence NCO head into the dig site. They get further than the crew did last time and discover several things in the dark, minute ammonium atmosphere of the old mine:

1) The doors to the mine were blown open by a shaped charge. 2) There is evidence of a fight. Shell casings from two different kinds of rifle — small caliber (.27 cal they later learn) and a mid-caliber (.335 cal.)…nothing they know of in use today. The dispersion of the shells suggest small caliber was used by the facility defenders. 3) Computers with keyboards in an unknown script. Some paper notes that have survive the ages, as well, with the same script. 4) All of the furniture, clothing, etc. is slightly larger than one would expect for humans, but is still recognizably human. 5) Coins with the symbol of Zeus on them… ( ♃ ) 5) They find musical instruments, personal items, and other humanizing trinkets in the labyrinthine living area. 6) The mine was extensive and equipment easily on par with current technology.

Lastly, they find a last stand with a line of armed remains protecting a group of unarmed remains. Most are skeletal, now, but a few were in space suits and are mostly intact. They look human.

The night ended with no answers, and they were shipping the bodies up to the ship for autopsy and analysis.

Monday we finished a short filler episode we started since the player of the ship commander was out at GenCon last week. The mission focused on a new PC, a Tauron marine staff sergeant who had been working as Colonial Fleet Special Investigations Division, Artemesia Largo.

She’s in the middle of getting introduced to her intelligence crew (she’s the intelligence NCOIC), and the other characters are going about their business. The ship’s command master chief, Ajax Giadis, comes across the chief engineer getting together a work gang to find a missing member of their team. Deckhand Reslou was posted to check and replace damaged life support sensors, requiring her to work behind the bulkheads in the tight, dark workspaces. It’s a lot of girders and the occasional catwalk, but it’s a hazardous place. A lot of the young kids don’t use their safety harnesses because it takes too long to clip on and off; people falling several levels is not unheard of.

The chief spots the FNG, Largo, and “hey-you”s her into aiding in the search. They find her body after half an hour of climbing around in the guts of the ship. (Of course, they find her; they’re in the credits!) She has been beaten sharply on the back of the head with a c-spanner, and fell several levels. She had then been dragged and deposited in an overhead air vent over a general storage locker. She is taken for forensics to the infirmary while the deck gang — the only people in the area — are held for questioning. The commander, in temporary NPC mode, assigns the CAG (a PC) to oversee the investigation, as he has uncanny instincts and they are in orbit around Picon with other ships and they aren’t running CAP.

The rest of the adventure is classic murder investigation. They don’t immediately interrogate  the 11 other members of the work gang. MAJ Muir, the CAG, is also ship’s chaplain and he chooses an unorthodox approach of doing “grief counseling” to get an initial read on the people. Only six have the right foot size for the boot marks in the oil and crud at the murder scene, only one transferred with the girl (she was only aboard for a week) from Scorpia’s Argenutm Bay Military Reservation. None are covered in blood (head wounds bleed copiously) and the perpetrator had obviously carried the murdered girl to her resting place. Two are Tauron and their tattoos suggest top her Ha’la’tha involvement, one is a massive “East German female weightlifter” type welder from Caprica, and the other is a bitchy Virgonian. Largo gets locked onto Deckhand Heraklea — a name taken by a lot of the Heraclitus regime after they were deposed following the Cylon War. Muir uses his Intuition to ask “is it Armov?” (the other Tauron.) The answer is yes…now they need proof.

The master chief heads up the search for the missing work jumpsuit that the murderer must have ditched in a relatively small distance from crime scene to their billets. They also turn over the victim and suspects’ lockers and foot lockers. In the victim’s footlocker, they find evidence that someone had taped a large amount of canaba inside for transit up to the ship. Drug smuggling — but was she a willing mule or no? They find the blood-soaked workvest in an access hatch behind one of the toilets in a general head not far from the scene, along with the c-spanner. The work clothes are Armov’s

With the evidence in hand, they go to arrest Armov — portrayed as a creepy, coiled spring sort of bad guy (think classic Russian mobster) — but he twigs they’re onto him, takes one of the other work gang hostage and tries to get to the launch bays, demanding a raptor. The characters give chase, bullets fly, and they manage to surround him. Largo puts a bullet through him, clearing the hostage, and Muir puts him down with a tight double tap.

Eventually, they find out from his Tauron buddy Heraklea that she was used unwittingly as a mule, but she discovered and flushed the canaba. Armov killed her for it.