The No Takebacks RPG - Episode 3 - "The Eye of Jupiter"

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

We're here!  The closing chapter of our little RPG experiment.  It's been fun to read and write along with you all.  I hope everyone has enjoyed it too!  Maybe we can do it all again another time with another section of BSG history or even move on to something AU. 

Before we get going with our closing act lets catch up with what's happened in the NT RPG-verse!

Episode One: Unfinished Business  

Episode Two: The Passage  

and now for the conclusion we move on to "The Eye of Jupiter"   (Summary via Battlestar Wiki)

The fleet has finally started the harvesting operations on the Algae planet.  Both military and civilians are working together to get the algae packaged and back on the ships.  Major Adama leads the operation on the ground and situations become tense when both Dee and Sam are planetside with him.  With their relationship still new, Starbuck and Apollo take advantage of every opportunity to see each other.  Lee schedules Kara on as many Raptor runs as he can to and from the planet.  Meanwhile, Chief Tyrol senses something greater lies in the undiscovered hills of the planet and goes exploring.  The sacred Temple of Five is found and with it "The Eye of Jupiter" another marker on the road map to Earth.  Soon the Cylons join the party, Boomer tells Athena that Hera is alive, and the Cylons begin to use force to gain possession of the Temple and the Eye.

The No Takebacks RPG Cast List

Character	Roleplayer
Apollo	taragel
Starbuck	rayruz
Adama	sci_fi_shipper
Roslin	kdbleu
Helo	amaliak
Athena	angelicalangie
Tigh	mserrada
Sam	ninety6tears
Dee	lotus79
Chief	ddt73
Cally	thrace_adama
Kat	jeneviverose
Racetrack	ninjamonkey73
Cottle**	thegreenkitty
Specialist 22	nazkey
Guest Star	stripes13

**I know thegreenkitty   is going to be offline for awhile so if anyone is interested in picking up Cottle let me know! Until we can get someone to play and move him around any use of Cottle has to be in Sickbay.  So if you're character ends up there you can mod him for the purpose of your scene. Baltar is free as well since we know he makes his return to the fleet in this episode.

EDIT:  Anyone character not assigned a role player can be godmodded at this point as long as the character appears in a practical place according to the episode.  (example:  Gaeta must stay on the G since he never went planetside)

The RPG post for "The Eye of Jupiter" will remain active and open until 11:59PM EST Sunday.  Please let me know if your character will be unable to check in any of those days and if so, we'll try and work something out. 

Post, read and have fun!

Comments

OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

Role players only - post your questions and comments here

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

I'm still up there! Can Kat haunt the fleet as the Ghost of Solaria Past? We don't know for a fact that it wasn't a holiday while they were on the Algea Planet, do we? /crack

(In case it needs to be said, I'm totally not serious. Can't wait to see what you all come up with!)

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[amaliak.livejournal.com]

don't know how much i'll be around this weekend. *sigh* still computerless and updating from my phone. :(

BUT, if someone wants to godmod Helo for a while, I will jump in when I can!

cheers.
--Lex

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

I'm having kinda sudden RL issues and I can't be around much this weekend. If somebody wants to step in for Sam, I may be in and out.

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Work and RL ruined my ability to nose Racetrack into the last episode. If anyone has any ideas for a scene with their character and Racetrack for this ep, feel free to start it up! If I'm left to my own devices, she will wander from scene to scene finding things. :)

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering since EoJ ends on a cliffhanger, how do we want to handle that? Stay true to cannon and leave it on a cliffhanger, or perhaps have them wind up back on Galactica at the end?

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

If you guys are going to Rapture and beyond do you want me to make a new post on Monday as Episode 4? To keep them separated by canon episode to match your end game?

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Okay I wrote where the Chief finds the Temple of Five.

The next part would be where he lets everyone knows what he finds, and basically and hell breaks loose after that.

Since that part would involved pretty much every character, should I wait to write it. Or just post what I can and let everyone else react to it? Essentially I'm looking for suggestions on what I should do. Since the episode hinges on what happens after Chief finds the temple, I want to do it the right way.

Thanks in advance.

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

I give a thousand apologies for my phone typos!!!

Re: OOC POST (For RP-ers only) Questions, Requests, etc.

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

I know the post says this ended last night, but I finally had the time to post something. And it's sooo good, I hope I'm not the only one still looking to continue. :)

ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - BASE CAMP

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

A large tent serves as base command for the harvesting ops. Tables, maps, tools and giant containers of water fill the space. Major Adama dishes out assignments, rotations and communicates back with the Galactica from here.

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - BASE CAMP

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Chief had been planetside for several days first getting the base camp setup, then starting the algae harvest. It was a long, tedious and arduous process. It was just too frakking hot and humid. Dust from the planet surface seemed to get everywhere and cover everything. The pungent smell of algae turned his empty stomach.

He thought he must have finally cracked, cause he kept having the feeling that someone or something was calling to him on the planet. He had stopped himself on numerous occasions from searching out the source. The ridiculousness of doing so has stopped him cold so far. He had this constant sense of deja vu, the inscrutable feeling that he had been here before. Must have been too hungry, hot, stressed and overworked. What else could it have been?

If the bad conditions and slowly losing his mind weren’t enough. He had to walk around egg shells around camp. The tension was palatable, as Lee and Dee who worked in the base camp said little as possible to each other, and did their best to avoid each other which was nigh impossible in such tight quarters. They were nothing if not professional, but you could tell they'd rather grapple with a centurion then face each other each day.

This would have been bad enough, but he caught Sam sending Apollo more murderous glances then he could have counted. Also when Starbuck was around during one of her many doughnut runs, the high tension was only ramped up higher. Galen was wondering who was going to crack first, felt like it was only a matter of time. The wounds were far too fresh, and these conditions weren’t doing anything to mitigate the situation.

Chief sighed and mumbled to himself "Maybe when I get a chance, I should just go for a walk if only to get away from all this drama."

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - BASE CAMP

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Chief heard the sonic boom and looked up and saw a raptor coming in for a landing. He knew it was Starbuck just by judging Lee's reaction, who had immediately stopped what he was doing and all but sprinted to meet the raptor. As Lee walked away, Dee gave him a withering glance. Once Lee was far enough away, he had heard Dee muttering "Starbuck" and a few other colorful adjectives.

Chief turned and walked away and passed by Sam who had stopped what he was doing and was staring coldly as Lee walk toward the raptor landing area. Chief sighed and decided he was going to go for a walk. He had seen this show before, and did not want to see a repeat performance. “Hey Sam! I'm taking a break" he told Sam. Sam stopped momentarily and said to him "Okay" then quickly resumed watching Lee.

Yeah, it was definitely time to take a break.

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - BASE COMMAND TENT

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

--60 minutes after Raptor thread end--

An hour later, bliss had turned to chaos. The cylons had found them; Kara's raptor had been shot down somewhere in the north quadrant. Lee paced back and forth in the command tent going out of his mind with worry. He tried to hail Kara on the radio again and again, but her comms must have blew out when she was shot down. Frightening scenarios were racing through his brain, making his stomach flip like he was trapped in an FTL jump.

Of course, he was supposed to be focusing on the mission: protect the temple at all costs. But he couldn't. He couldn't stop fearing the worst. What if Kara had been seriously wounded, or -- gods, he felt sick just thinking about it -- dead? Or what if she wasn't, and the cylons had captured her, again? After what she'd told him about New Caprica, Lee knew Kara would consider that the worst possible scenario. He couldn't just let that happen to her again. Couldn't just let them take her.

And he couldn't truly give a frak about some supposedly important mystical temple right now.

He knew it would be breaching protocol to undertake an S&R mission for one pilot while the fight for the temple was on. After the temple was secured and the cylons vanquished, he could send an S&R party to Kara's coordinates. That was the right thing to do. The smart thing. Lee prided himself on always trying to do the right thing.

Well, not today.

There was no choice in the matter, no deliberation. Kara was in trouble. He wasn't going to leave her to the hands of their enemy, not this time. He'd made calls in the past, hard calls, where he'd put the mission before the man. That was what he'd been trained to do. But he'd also been trained to never leave a man behind. And he'd already left Kara behind (that dark moon, the mission with Shaw, New Caprica, his mind helpfully and traitorously crowed) far too many times. She'd managed to make it back somehow every time, just barely by the skin of her teeth.

This time he wasn't going to just wait and hope against hope that she'd pull another miracle out of thin air and find her way back. No. This time, he was going after her.

ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - RAPTOR LANDING AREA

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

A large patch of cleared brush away from the base camp marks the spot where the Raptors land to bring supplies to the harvesting crew and load up packed containers of algae to bring back to the fleet

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - RAPTOR LANDING AREA

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

Kara knew the sonic boom she made upon entering the atmosphere would catch Lee's attention. To be honest, she's completely content not to be stuck shoveling shit on this planet. The heat and the stench are unbearable even inside the raptor, she can't figure out how Lee's pulled it off the last two weeks.

Two weeks.

Two weeks stuck on Galactica with donut runs every once to catch a little bit of time with Lee. It was ridiculous. She'd done such a good frakking job over the last few years of putting him out of her mind, she wondered how she even did it. Because now, going without him...well it sucked. Lying in her rack at night, it was almost impossible to sleep. Her sheets still smelled like him. It made her feel like an idiot child sometimes, but she couldn't remember the last time she felt so... happy.

On the other hand, the way the Admiral looked at her these days balanced that out quite nicely. They never talked, she wasn't even sure he knew about the relationship, but enough people aboard had witnessed enough interesting events to generate some juicy gossip. So even if he didn't have the facts, he knew enough to know she was going against his warning.

Frak that, she thought as she brought the raptor in for a landing.

ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - THE TEMPLE OF FIVE

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

A passageway leads into an immensely large domed room, carved from within the mountain. In the center of the room is a center spire that reaches high into the structure. The spire is surrounded by five pentagonal obelisks. The center spire has ancient tribal carvings at the bottom, as well as illuminated crystalline pillars atop it. (Yes, c/p'd from Wiki)

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - THE TEMPLE OF FIVE

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Even before he had reached the edge of base camp the strange feeling, that dogged the Chief since he came to this planet, was stronger then ever. First he continued to ignore it, but each step made that increasingly difficult.

Eventually the feeling became so strong he just gave into it. He was on autopilot, and was heading somewhere, a destination. He still had no idea where he was going or what he would find, but was certain he was not wandering aimlessly.

He climbed up and over a small mountain, when he got to the bottom he saw a rock formation in the distance. He realized that was where he was supposed to go. It looked so familiar. This was odd, he had never been here before, but yet he seemed to know this place.

Once he reached the rock formation, he started searching around and found what looked like an entrance to a cave. Upon entering it he turned on a flashlight (he didn’t even know he brought one, until now), and began exploring.

He walked into the cave a little ways, and then saw that a passageway had been carved out of the rock. Suddenly excitement started to bubble up inside of him. He was close he was sure of it. Close to what? He hadn't a clue, but he just knew he was close. At the end of the passageway he reached a small set of stairs that led up to what appeared to be a stone door.

Once he reached the "door" he carefully gave it a push and it flung open. Slowly he made his way inside. What he saw nearly took his breath away. It was a gargantuan room with 5 small pillars that surrounded one large column in the center that was covered in strange yet familiar writing. He looked up and it had a large arched ceiling, just like the ones in the old cathedrals back on his home planet of Gemenon. It was simply amazing.

Suddenly he realized what this place was. It was the Temple of Five! His father had told him about it several times. It looked just like the pictures he saw in his father’s books. Chief had always resisted his parents’ faith and even mocked it. He thought the story of this place was little more then a fairy tale. Now here he was, standing in the legendary Temple of Five, the “holiest of the holies,” and it awed him.

Chief needed to get back to base camp and let them know what he found. From what he remembered this place held the key to finding Earth!

THE GALACTICA - CIC / OPS PLANNING

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

The sweeping noise of the DRADIS console reaches every corner. The crew monitors the teams on the planet surface and keeps a vigilant watch for incoming Cylons.

Re: THE GALACTICA - CIC / OPS PLANNING

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

Bill's eyes swung up to the DRADIS screen - multiple baseships had jumped into view. Frak! Just when they'd found a roadsign to Earth. They needed to jump a way but there were too many people on the planet - Lee and Kara among them.

"Prepare for emergency jump," he barked to Lt. Gaeta. "Get me Lee on the comm."

"Cylons are jamming communications, Sir," Gaeta said.

"You need to establish communications, Lieutenant. Find a way." Bill had put his faith into Felix Gaeta many times - he expected no less than success from his Lieutenant.

"Aye, Sir," Gaeta answered.

Bill stared again at the DRADIS screen. "What is going on? They're not launching raiders," he said.

Lieutenant Gaeta's voice called from across the CIC, "Admiral...it's the cylon baseship. They want to speak to you."

Bill's eyes widened and he looked over to Gaeta. "Put them through."

Bill grimaced hard as the model known as D'Anna spoke to him about their shared interest in the planet below. In Bill's mind, and in Laura's, he was sure, there was no frakking way that the cylons would get to the Eye of Jupiter before they did.

After a brief and intense conversation, Bill slammed down the receiver.

"Gaeta," he barked. "Get that communication problem solved. I need to talk to Major Adama." Bill gripped the console and waited.

A few moments later, Gaeta announced his success. "I've got him, sir."

Thank the gods. Bill picked up the receiver and spoke to his son.

FOLLOW THIS THREAD (http://community.livejournal.com/no_takebacks/127066.html?thread=7490906#t7490906) to read the conversation with between Lee and Adama.

THE GALACTICA - WARD ROOM

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

A large conference table and chairs fill the large meeting space.

THE GALACTICA - ADMIRAL'S QUARTERS

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

Marines stationed at the hatch mark the entrance to Admiral Adama's quarters

Re: THE GALACTICA - ADMIRAL'S QUARTERS

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

Bill paced his quarters, flipping options over in his mind about how to deal with Kara and Lee. It had been three days since the supernova that had shown them the eye of jupiter. Lee had defied his orders, just as he had expected and Kara had been nursing serious burns on her hands as a result of the crash.

He vacillated between fury at Lee's defiance and relief that he had saved Kara and that both of them had come back alive.

That relief could not guide him, however. He had ship to run and if rumors of the CAG defying orders circulated, it would be yet another morale and order problem. No, something had to be done.

Bill grabbed the receiver and clicked open a channel, wincing as he realized that Dee was on comm duty. "Lieutenant Dualla, page Major Adama and Captain Thrace to my quarters." That discomfort was something they were all going to have to live with.

THE GALACTICA - SICKBAY

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

Rows of hospital beds and medical equipment are scattered around the large space. Cottle can be found wandering patient to patient with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - RAPTOR CRASH SITE

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

The Raptor piloted by Starbuck has been hit by a Cylon missile and has crashed over the ridge from the base camp and is pinned down by Cylon fire.

Re: ALGAE PLANET SURFACE - RAPTOR CRASH SITE

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

Kara had blacked out upon impact. She didn't know how long she was out for, but searing pain jolted her back to consciousness. The control panel had gone up in flames when she'd gotten hit, sparking and igniting. Kara looked down at her hands, completely charred in the explosion, she was fairly sure some of the flight suit had melted into her skin. She squirmed her way out of the seat, unable to undo any of the buckles with her hands in that condition, and slumped to the floor.

The pain in her hands was dizzying, overwhelming. She knew she had to assess her situation and figure out the best plan of action, but she couldn't even think straight. Kara stared down at her hands, wondering if she would be able to peel her gloves off, get any kind of range of motion back. She gripped the fabric with her teeth, but when she tugged there was a blinding surge of pain and she sank back, whimpering. She couldn't help but feel like she was being punished.

The raptor had gone down with no cover, and Kara knew she couldn't just sit there and do nothing. She was a sitting duck for the Cylons to come find her and... then what? Would they kill her on the spot? She doubted it. A chill shot down her spine. No. No way. She'd sooner eat her own gun than get taken by them yet again. But before she was going to be able to defend herself in any way, she was going to have to do something about the pain.

She scrabbled for the medkit, trying to free the needle of morpha from it's container. Every thing she touched sent pain in shockwaves through her body. The simple task of getting that needle seemed overwhelming, daunting, impossible even. Tears prickled her eyes, making the world around her blurry. Frak, this was no time to cry. She felt like a child, unable to do for herself and it made her sick. But the facts were these, she'd been shot down, there was a cylon presence on the planet (had the Cylons attacked the base camp yet? Was Lee still out there? She couldn't stop to think about that), a SAR mission was out of the question. She was going to have to figure out how to do this on her own.

She had rested a bit before reattempting her battle with the medkit, but was suddenly distracted by the sound of...something approaching. It didn't sound like one of the bulletheads, which meant it was probably one of the skinjobs. She somehow managed to free the gun from her holster, blinking back the tears of pain stinging her eyes. She propped the gun against her wrist, unable to hold it up. She had six bullets. Five better be enough to take out whatever was coming for her, if it wasn't the last one had her name on it.

THE GALACTICA - CORRIDORS

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

Crew members walking to and from their posts. The numerous walkways lead to and from the Hanger Deck, CIC, Sickbay, Admiral's quarters, Crew quarters, Mess Hall, and Memorial Hallway

Re: THE GALACTICA - CORRIDORS

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Maggie exited the Mess Hall, bored and hungry. "Frakking Starbuck," she muttered under her breath. "I'm a Raptor pilot, for frak's sake, and yet she gets all the donut runs to that gods-awful planet. But I guess I already know who you have to frak to get anything to do in this fleet these days."

Resigned to another day of nothing to do, she turned toward the pilots' bunk room to make her way to her rack and the exciting choice of which book to read for the 100th time. A glint of metal caught her eye on the floor of the corridor. She bent down and picked up the delicate necklace, its chain broken but still run through the loop of a small sapphire and diamond pendant. Someone would be missing it. At least heading to Lost & Found would give her a few minutes of purpose.

VIEWER COMMENTS / FEEDBACK

[aurora-0811.livejournal.com]

Everyone not Role Playing please post all your comments and feedback in this thread