The Black Campbell

25 years later…

We open on Argos, the marginally inhabitable world (our New Caprica, if you will) which has become a thriving colony, thanks to the Kobolians and their technology. While the humans and Seraph have their own planetary government, everyone knows it’s the Olympian Council,  led by Zeus, who is in charge.

Visiting the Forge of Hephaestus, we reintroduce Nike, now the Goddess of War after Athena’s disappearance. She is inspecting the massive galleons — half warship, half ark — being constructed to protect the world by the Smith God’s multitude of mechanical assistants. Among his other toys, is a strange craft that she was not able to get a read on, but was a ship designed to reintroduce plant and animal material on Kobol — a world that had apparently been reconstructed by one of the TITAN’s leftover  hekatonchires — the great utility fogs that can repurpose entire worlds.

This led to a diplomatic party scene, where Argos was culminating its 25th anniversary since settlement. Among the guests were diplomats from the Cyrannus Colonies (the 12 Colonies of Man), Earth, and the Pleiades Colonies. Hermes was introduced, just back from his mission to the latter, where he found a culture older than Kobol, the source of the “Aurelian Heresies” — thousands of years ld prophesies that pre-dated Kobol and were frequently referenced throughout the game — and currently more advanced than the Kobolians. Other guests included the twin children of Athena and Admiral Pindarus — Athena and Alexander III, young, handsome, and smart half-Kobolians on a mission to the various worlds of Man.

We got a taste of the politics of Argos — the in-roads the monotheism of the Seraph was making, the shaky “alliance” between Argos and Earth, and the internal beefs of the “gods.” Zeus asks Nike and Hermes to represent them at Earth’s 25th anniversary of the founding of the Earth Alliance.

Six months later, we picked up on a rescue mission in the California Republic, one of the four great polities of Earth, where an earthquake has destroyed much of the City of Angels. Alala — the Seraph pilot introduced a few months back with the addition of a new player is now commander of the new basestar, Galactica, and is commanding the efforts. She is warned by one of the pilots on CAP, the daughter of Hermes and one of the major NPCs that had been a bit player throughout the game, of a tsunami coming, and is rescued by said pilot in a daring move.

When they return to Galactica, a more modern, welcoming basestar, with a much more advanced look, we reintroduce Admiral Armenta — a character that started as a pilot in old Galactica, just before the Fall, and who had wored her way up through the campaign to wing commander. She is 50, now, and older, more tired, and a bit less idealistic. After some character bits with her old friend Alala, and her operations officer, the daughter of Pindarus and Tana, his Seraph wife, she makes ready for the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Alliance. The ship bearing Hermes and Nike arrives from Argos about this time.

After some politicking in the Temple of Athena, in which we meet the older version of Pindarus, now 68 and the Princep (first citizen) of the Alliance, and his wife Tana — now ruler of the Athenian Republic (the city-state where most of the people who survived the Exodus live). There were a few bits of diplomacy, but in the end, the second night of the finale saw a day where the old characters getting together for an old fashioned picnic.

We learned about the fates of these long-running characters. Pindarus’ time as defense secretary putting together the Earth Defense Force, his marriage to Tana and its near collapse after an infidelity five years ago. His widespread cancers from a decade ago, cured by a bone marrow transfusion from Tana. He is now the first prince elected by planetary vote, he wrote a massive history of the Cycle of Time, and now potters about cooking and painting.

Zoe Armenta (formerly Arden, call sign Billboard, then Boss) became a lifer — commanding the fighter wings of Earth, then a basestar, before getting knocked up by her yeoman and taking command of the Sparta Military Reservation, training the EDF soldiers. She has recently taken over the new Galactica. She is married, mostly a settling for the most stable choice sort of match after two decades of short flings and throwing herself into building the EDF.

Hermes has been the chief diplomat for the Kobolians on Argos, but is more interested in furthering Athena’s dream of the worlds of Man (in all its iterations) united. Various NPCs that had been in the game for years were referenced or seen, and in the end, the last night had that same bittersweet quality that the Babylon 5 finale had. These are our heroes — old, tired, at the end of their working lives…but still standing. Still family.

Cut to 500 yeas later, Capricorn Colony in the Pleiades Colonies of Man. Starbuck (a Dirk Benedict-esque one) and Apollo are gambling at “Casino Planet” (this was some fan service for Jim, one of the gamers, who has been lobbying for a casino planet visit since he joined the group) on the Elysium Station over the colony. They are suddenly recalled to their battlestar, Galactica, when a massive fleet, led by the ousted Leader Baltar, strikes without warning. The vessels attacking are “Olympian”, and their mechanical Myrmidon troopers invade the station. After fighting them off in the hangar bay, they take their very futuristic vipers and race back to Galactica, where the ship is preparing for battle.

Apollo meets his father, Commander Adama, who informs him that Fleet Admiral Pindarus is reporting half the fleet has already been destroyed, their worlds nuked. There are refugee ships everywhere, and Galactica has been ordered not to join the main battle, but instead take the civilians out of the combat zone to the only safe harbor they know, the only world that could stand up to the Olympians…Earth.

Thus ended 4 years, 10 months  of one of the best and longest games I’ve ever run. The pay-off — seeing ones characters having come through their epic journey, succeed at rebuilding their lives — seemed to resonate well with the players. The coda 500 years later lend more power to the Cycle of Time, and suggested that the story wasn’t truly over.

Was this episode really needed? After all, they’d gotten to Earth and found a new home. End of story…but after investing so much in their characters, letting them see them aged, well-lived, and a new generation of heroes coming into their own (the children of the characters), gave a sense of continuity and closure. As finishing a campaign — especially one of this length — is relatively rare for a gaming group post high school or college, having that glimpse of what became of your characters is important for the players.

One way to go about this is for the GM to have a plan of what the world looks like five, ten, or a quarter century out. Another is to let the players each have a moment where they tell you what happened to their characters. Either works well. In this case, I asked what the characters wanted to do, long term. I had them roll their attempts at diplomacy or whatever, then I grafted on elements of the overall story arc to show how sometimes this or that didn’t quite work out.

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?