The Black Campbell

We were finally closing our “season finale” of the Battlestar Galactica game last night. The session before had seen two character deaths, and one nearly done for. And that was the first act… Last night saw three major plot moves, the most important being the culmination of the Lucky character’s plot arc, the next most the settling of Admiral Cain and Pegasus into the fleet.

The second act revolved almost exclusively around the defense council — led by President Pindarus (the father of Galactica‘s commander, a PC), player character VP Jones, the defense minister, and the security minister (another PC) — interviewing Cain about her actions since the Fall of the Colonies. There was a hard push for her having tried to execute her XO for refusing and attempting countermand her attack (this time on a Tauron shipyard the Cylons were using — a prime target, but a highly dangerous one), another for her stripping the Scylla and civilian ships for parts. They are not aware, yet, of the condition of the Six in the brig.

In the end, despite serious reservations, and her seeming unwillingness to submit to a change in operation command from her to Galactica, the characters decided having Cain and Pegasus‘ firepower was more important than pursuing her missteps while she was — to her knowledge — the only Colonial ship, and the entirety of the human race, left in the universe. She was on a mission of revenge — they convince her the missions has changed; she is now the guardian of mankind. The character in the game (and the show, I submit) is a creature of duty…having the civilian fleet and tens of thousands of people has given her new perspective. Much like the post-resurrection ship attack in the show, the admiral is getting time to breathe and reassess her situation.

As the admiral and the commander character were returning to their ships, the Cylons jump in right on top of the fleet — well within the defense perimeter, and the shooting starts. Two Cylon basestars jump in and are escorted by a massive, glowing, crystalline vessel — the Blaze that has been repeatedly seen in Lucky’s visions. He knows that this is the moment of truth — when the “two and ten vipers” have to ride into the flame (the Blaze.)

The next act was all battle. We used an even more stripped down very of the fleet combat rules in the BSG page here on the site. For each capital ship action, there would be two squadron level actions, and two personal fighter or raptor actions. The Cylons jump in and hammer the civilian and warships. Cloud 9 — which houses the government in our game (why stay on a small liner when you can have conference rooms and spacious cabins, and the best food still in the fleet?) — took a good hit, Pegasus got banged up, and they almost lost their wee escort vessel, Cygnus. One liner would eventually be destroyed.

The squadron combat was handled simply — both sides got to roll their alertness or intelligence, and their tactics skill, plus any assets applicable. The number rolled was the number of enemy fighters or raptors destroyed over a one-to-two minute period. The side with more numbers got a die step on the skills. This time around, I had the Cylons running with higher pilot and tactics skills to represent the experience the killed raiders had passed on to the Cylons. It was brutal — 40 vipers and 10 raptors lost over the course of the battle, and similar numbers for the Cylons.

In the end, Lucky and the squadron of rookies take a run at the Blaze, with their vipers attacked by strange ‘shard-like” glowing fighters or missiles that, on impact, simply disappeared their target. (We didn’t go into it, but they were destructively uploaded to the Blaze’s memory.) Lucky is the only one, thanks to liberal plot point use, to ram the Blaze. Having been prepared as an instrument of “God”, he is able to remain conscious of himself, even as he is incorporated into the Blaze. There was a virtual reality journey through Hades to the citadel of the Blaze, Dis, guided by the young girl/angel that had been helping him prepare. Finally, there was a battle of wills to destroy the Blaze, and Lucky wakes in an infirmary — his memory hazy, more like a dream, to find he is Colonel Aurelius, formerly of the battlestar Pleiades. The implication from the uniform flashes, etc. is that he is now resurrected 7000-8000 years in the past as the man who wrote the Aurelian Prophesies they used to guide them in the game ’til now. (It was also fan service for the gamer who was in the last iteration of the game…where the ship was Pleiades and Aurelius was the oracle.)

As for the “current” portion of the campaign, as Lucky hit the Blaze, there was a brilliant flash and the ship of lights was gone. The Cylons, stunned by their god abandoning them, fled and jumped away.

The goal was to keep the mystical elements of the show, but leave “god” more undefined and open to interpretation, but also to set up the idea that the Cycle of Time has seen a steady collapse of “gods” from once-near-omnipotent machine intelligences, through the Lords of Kobol, to Man and the Cylons. Like the Greek myth it’s stealing from, each “age” sees the heroes and gods as less — more flawed — than those who came before. It also allowed for us to have a heroic goodbye to a main character who has been in the campaign, but played by two players, before the current player leaves for San Francisco. (Selfish bugger!)

The final act saw the fallout of the battle and the shake up of the command structure the government demanded. The players mourned the loss of the popular Lucky, started putting the fleet back together with officers moved around, promoted or demoted. The president punished Cain tangentially by demoting her pet CPT Shaw, and her XO, Fisk for the Scylla incident (they opened fire on civilians, after all.) Other characters were moved to Pegasus to “keep an eye on” the admiral and to help her integrate into the fleet.

Overall, it was an exceptional game night. We ended, instead of the usual 9:30-10pm, at 11pm and none of us had noticed the time. Afterward, several of the players were obviously thrilled with the way the “episode” had gone and how the story is unfolding.

This week’s game saw the pressure and speed of the plot continue to ratchet up. Coming off of the cliffhanger in which the CAG/oracle character (a PC) found himself toe-to-toe with a Cylon masquerading as an Eleusinian priest named Iblis (a little 1970s fan service!) and lost the fight pretty handily, I had to scramble for a realistic deux ex machina to save his ass — a much less offensive move in a universe where there is actual divine intervention happening.

I kept the player hanging for the first 15 minutes by starting with an “earlier that day…” and followed the early morning activities of one of the Colonial Marshals — a player character — who is collared by the aide to the security minister. The aide — a Cylon who has “gone native” — has been tracking the movements of people in the fleet, trying to find the unidentified Cylons in the fleet in an attempt to keep himself safe and continue to hold his rarified position in the government. He spins a story about Iblis taking too much of an interest in Lucky (the CAG/oracle.) Iblis had placed a call to Galactica requesting a meeting to talk about some of the visions Lucky has been having and the aide suspects this might be a ruse; Cylon activities have targeted important scientists, investigators, and now with a confirmed oracle in the fleet…he’d be a prime target.

This leads to the showdown between the marshal and aide versus Iblis, but not before Lucky (the oracle) witnesses Iblis try to murder his 19 year old chaplain’s assistant. In the middle of choking her, the young girl bursts into a brightly-glowing, winged vision that blinds the Cylon temporarily and which berates Iblis — stating that the events in motion cannot be stopped. Lucky has a destiny — to destry the Blaze, the Cylon “god.” Iblis drops her and she falls to the ground unconscious, the angelic vision gone. At this point there’s a bit of skirmishing, and the arrival of the Marshal and aide leads to Iblis being shot by the aide, who gives the credit to the marshal.

The incident is reported to the military and Admiral Cain dispatches marines to investigate, leading to a verbal showdown between the admiral and the security minister (also a PC) who manages to convince her to work with the civilian law enforcement, and points out that there is a functioning and legitimate civilian government to which her oath of office still applies. Due to good player character moves and rolls, Cain — while still a new, belligerent, and ambitious force in the fleet — is more quickly being brought to heel than she was in the show. Partly, this is because of established connections between Galactica‘s commander (a PC) who served under her when she was a commander, and knew her socially; and the president, who was a military man, a defense minister, and is a person she has respect for (unlike Roslin in the show.) Cain has a history with these folks and I figured this would give her a quicker sense of duty to them.

Another change made was the character of LT Thorne, the rapist interrogator from the show. He’s still a jerk, still committed the offenses against the Six they have, but he is portrayed by the crew of Pegasus in the show as this heroic figure who’s save lives and earn respect of the men — this doesn’t jive with what we saw onscreen. So i made Thorne less a monster, and more a man who views the Cylons as machines and his duty to his crew as paramount. He’s a jerk, but is quickly won over by Lucky during his interrogation, who realizes the man is scared, hurting from loss, and unmoored from his morality — much like many of the survivors. While a confrontation over the interrogation practices in Pegasus are most likely in the offing, there is the chance that this may play out differently due to the connections the characters are making emotionally with Cain and Thorne.

The marshal, meanwhile, is tracking down the personal effects of Iblis and planning on questioning his followers. These leads will be directing them to another threat in the fleet.

Introducing Cain early was not originally in my plan, but the nature of our Kobol — apparently inhabited, modern, and well-defended by the Cylons; watched over by some kind of supranatural ship or creature (the Blaze) — and the introduction of the resurrection ships led me to believe this was a good time to amp up the pressure with a new set of issues, but it also gives the fleet more firepower for a confrontation. The introduction of more supernatural aspects — angels (?), a ship or creature that is the Cylon god — make the Kobol mission more of a real showdown between the fleet and the Cylons than it was in the show. Additionally, according to some of the players, the constant revelations surrounding the history of the fight between the Blaze and the Lords of Kobol, and the possibility that this “story” has been told over and over again, has added more of a sense of exploration and discovery than we saw in the show.

We were able to finally get the whole crew together Thursday for play, and saw a lot of movement in the various plots. There was a set of romantic subplots that look to cause trouble at some point in the future when the CAG (a PC) may have to put one of the other PCs in harm’s way. The players attempted to prove that Boomer — her personalities collapsed together by hypnosis — is a reliable source of intelligence. She confirmed their target star as the location of Kobol and has been generally cooperative, although they’ve noticed she has fugues where she doesn’t track the conversation if they try to get certain kinds of information out of her, such as the identity of other Cylon agents.

The big discovery was signals from 300 years ago emanating from Kobol, and showing what appears to be a divergent human culture that worships the Blaze, has technology slightly ahead of the Colonies at that point, and early space travel and exploration. they appear to be a unified world government led by a theocracy, but there’s no indications of the twelve or thirteen “humanoid Cylon” models that they believe exist. As the ship gets closer, they should get more up-to-date information.

The second discovery was of a strange cathedral-like ship, guarded by four basestars and their fighter groups. A raptor crew managed to get PHOTINT and ELINT on the vessel that shows it to be some kind of command & control, comunications, or some other high-value asset vessel. Boomer confirns it to be a resurrection ship – one of 13 that ply space providing support for the Cylon’s “immortality.” While she doesn’t know the exact nature of their uploading, she knows that a loss of the vessel would result in any Cylons whose mind-states are connected to the ship would be mortal, and that tens to hundreds of thousands of copies would be killed. It’s a tempting target and the characters are slavering to have a go at the ship.

The other comment Boomer makes is that the Cylons attacked the Colonies to “bring the Tribes” home to submit to the Blaze, and that they are rebuilding the Colonies. Also, she tells them the resurrection ships  are a “gift from the Blaze” and that the loss of one of these ships would get the attention of this “god.” So the choice: hit the ship and get some paycack, possibly strike fear into the Cylons and force them to adjust their style of fighting due to sudden mortality, and possibly piss off a supranatural being; or let the target go in the hopes of negotiating with the Blaze, should the time come?

The session ended with recovered drone footage showing another raptor that appeared to be trailing the resurrection ship battle group. It’s not their ship…so who is out there?

After a few weeks with game cancelled thanks to the swine flu flattening everyone in my house, (kids — little bioweapons! I’ve got a cold, now, thanks to one…) we were finally able to play last week. It was mostly following up little character interaction vignettes, but there were also a few big “push” scenes that advanced the arc:

Our CAG (a PC) has been prone to divine visions throughout the game (he’s the son of an oracle), and has been delving into the Sacred Scrolls, but also the “Aurelian Heresies” — an apocrypha that appears to predate Mankind on Kobol, and possibly even the Lords of Kobol themselves. There are more ties to the Titanomachy (the period of the Titans, only mentioned tangentially in the TV series), and he delves into the Eleusian Mysteries with one of the cults that use the Heresies –which they call the Aurelian Prophecies. One of the introductory rituals is the use of kykeon — a combination of ambrosia, chamalla, and other things that produces a strong hallucinogenic brew. Lucky (the CAGs callsign) takes part and has been having more intense visions of The Blaze — the jealous god that started the war between the Lords and Man. (It’s a toss off line they cut from the Kobol episodes, but became a central theme for the campaign.) The Blaze seems to the “God” of the Cylons, but is also venerated  by the Eleusinians as part of their cycle of death, discovery, and rebirth. During his vision, he is escorted by a minor NPC, his young chaplain’s mate who appears as a winged creature of light. He has the vision of the two and ten vipers, slithering into fire, but only one survives…could that be him? Is he destined to destroy the Blaze?

At this point, the Blaze “sees” him. There is a psychic connection of some sort and he realizes that the Blaze, his gleaming diamond-like spacecraft, are one and the same — some kind of incredibly powerful and intelligent creature or machine, but not God. And this thing has been retelling the story of Kobol, the Colonies, and Earth for thousands of years. To break the cycle, they need to destroy the storyteller…but what is helping him to do this?

The second push moment was a hypnosis session between Lucky and the lawman Chaplain (a PC), and Boomer. They are attempting to help her assimilate her Cylon and “human” personalities and memories. They rolled incredibly well and manage to pull it off — Boomer is Sharon Valerii, now, but her Cylon memories and personality have been integrated. She’s smarter, harder, but the “human” personality is dominant. She offers to help them find the Tomb of Athena, where they can get their roadmap to Earth. The humanoid Cylons (now confirmed to have come from Kobol and are “humans” that followed the Blaze after the War with the Lords) know where the Tomb is, where Hephaestus’ Forge is, have investigated the halls of Olympus, which overlooked the “City of the Gods”, but they cannot access the many of the places the Lords of Kobol left behind. They can only be opened by the faithful; Cylons, the automated systems kill. She can take them there, but she cannot enter.

The end of the session had the crew starting to look for transmissions from Kobol, hoping to develop a better picture of the tactical, political, and societal situation on the planet.

The goal has been to use the show as a jumping off point, to take the elements that caught my imagination and use those to tell another version of the Cycle of Time, linking it to an interesting idea from Zachary Mason’s excellent The Lost Books of the Odyssey — the idea Phaedrans had that every person’s story was a tale told by someone else, and if you could find the storyteller (and kill him) you could be free of your story to live as you pleased. The idea of escaping the predestination built into the Galactica universe was, to me, an interesting one — free will versus divine will. So the game has become focused escaping the Cycle of Time (as, to a lesser extent I would propose, was the bringing Cylons and humans together in the show.)

My hope has been to accentuate the themes of the show, while taking a new and fresh direction, and allowing for moments of “fan service” where the players think they know where the game is going (“Oh, this episode is Bastille Day!”) but then letting them change the outcomes.