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This page covers sessions 1-8 of our Stargate SG-4 campaign.

The First Command — P3X-7997, session 1

We undertook this mission before officially becoming SG-4, and it was intended to be something of a training op. We gated to a world where SGC science teams had discovered large naquada deposits, and were using sonar devices to map their location. Shortly after our arrival, we found that the devices were somehow liquefying the incredibly volatile naquada, and we set out to remove them while the others evacuated the planet.

This was complicated by the appearance of hostile native bipeds dubbed “yetis,” as well as the side effects of the seismic activity: forest fires, rivers of lava, huge chasms, etc. It was on this mission that Specialist Eliot really earned his nickname, “Extreme,” with his death-defying leap over a river of lava — which wounded his foot badly enough that he was discharged from the SGC shortly thereafter.

During the mission, Colonel Weathers sacrificed his life to save Captain Decker. Both were stranded on a shifting rock and surrounded by lava, and the Colonel let Deck jump first — costing him his life when he tried to follow.

As far as SG-4 knows, shortly after we gated home large portions of P3X-7997 exploded due to the combined naquada/seismic activity — and it’s possible that the whole planet was destroyed.

Interlude: Crazy Talk — Earthside, session 2

On base between missions, SG-4 were to attend a class on the Goa’uld from one of the SGC’s premier experts on the subject: Major Danny Crane. Due to his time spent as a captive of the Goa’uld, Maj. Crane’s knowledge was quite unique — and unfortunately not very useful to neophytes like us.

This problem was compounded when Major Davis disagreed with Crane’s approach to running the class, and Crane decided to attack him — literally. SG-4 broke up the fight and reported it to command, and Maj. Crane wound up confined to his quarters indefinitely.

During this time, Dr. Raynes developed a fascination with the Major, and Capt. Decker and Lt. Green occupied themselves on the shooting range and in the gym.

Counting Coup — P3R-787, sessions 3 and 4

Our first mission as SG-4 took us to a world where SGC probes had indicated a high likelihood of civilized life. After a long hike, we found a village in the grip of a plague — a plague that could only be cured by a certain local fruit, their supply of which had completely run out.

Accompanied by one of the natives, SG-4 went off in search of more fruit. The villagers knew where the grove was located, but because of snakes in the region they tried to go there only in winter (when the snakes would be less active). En route, we encountered venomous spiders, extremely venomous snakes and large dragonfly-like insects (also hostile) — and our native guide lost his life to a snakebite (the origin of many, many out-of-character “the doctor watched him die” jokes).

Pushing on to the grove, we were set upon by a massive snake — over 60 feet long and as wide as a car. Narrowly avoiding winding up in its gullet, we dispatched the beast with several grenades. Our return to the village with a supply of the fruit saved many of the locals, and helped us lay the groundwork for future diplomatic relations between our two peoples.

Two important discoveries were made: first, that the Goa’uld had been to the planet at some point, as large chunks of a crashed transport ship were found near the grove; and second, that the naquada from these fragments was responsible for the mutant fruit (and the mutant snakes).

Dr. Raynes traced the source of the plague to the local livestock, and after this was confirmed back on base other teams were sent out to eradicate the disease (as well as clear a path to the grove).

Interlude: Recruiting — Earthside, session 5

Extreme’s injury from the fateful lava jump proved to be very severe, and he was forced to retire from the SGC. This meant that we needed to find a fourth person to round out SG-4, and Gen. Hammond gave us a list of fantastic candidates. Many of them quickly acquired nicknames, like Allergy Girl and Allergy Guy (who threw up every time they went through the gate), and most were completely unsuitable for SG-4 (or for anything apart from, say, janitorial work).

After scraping the bottom of the barrel, we started to get really desperate — we considered Major Danny Crane and Doctor Sarah Gardner. The former was clearly nuts (although Dr. Raynes was convinced otherwise), and the latter was standoffish at best and had a troubled past.

Lt. Green spent most of this interlude on the shooting range, or helping to try and find alternate candidates for our fourth. Capt. Decker offended Dr. Gardner, and then spent his time looking for alternates as well (including a pleasant jog with Colonel O’Neill, who liked the dune buggy idea). Dr. Raynes was able to get Dr. Gardner to begin coming out of her shell, which paid off on our next mission, and she also had a strange conversation about meatballs with Maj. Crane.

This interlude was also when Dr. Raynes found out that Dr. Gardner had previously been the Goa’uld System Lord Osiris, and decided not to pass this little tidbit on to the rest of SG-4 because it was “not relevant.”

The Good Fight — P3Y-211, session 6

While looking for a fourth person to join SG-4, we were summoned to General Hammond’s office and given a surprising mission. The Tok’ra had received intelligence of an underdefended Goa’uld shipyard — the destruction of which could destabilize a budding alliance between two System Lords. As every other SG team was in the field, SG-4 got the mission. We were supplied with a device that would transmit a signal used by the System Lord Kali, as well as a naquada destabilization bomb — which had been developed from the sonic technology that went awry on our first mission.

After getting a very certain “No” in response to our requests for Dr. Gardner to join SG-4 for this mission, we were most surprised when she showed up in the embarkation room as we were prepping to go through the gate — evidently Dr. Raynes had been able to convince her after all. With the whole team kitted out for stealth by Lt. Green, we set out for the shipyard.

SG-4 reached the shipyard by the simple expedient of killing every Jaffa we came across. The yard had one fully operational Hatak ship, as well as two partially-constructed ones — a major coup if we could pull off their destruction.

Close calls and pitched battles were the rule of the day, culminating in a standoff between Dr. Raynes and Lt. Green against a Jaffa patrol, which took place at the same time as Dr. Gardner and Capt. Decker were squaring off against Underlord Mot in a different part of the complex. As throughout the mission, Dr. “Deadeye” Raynes demonstrated some unbelievable marksmanship time and time again.

Lt. Green somehow remained alive and upright after taking a staff blast to the chest — due in no small part to Dr. Raynes’ medical skills. Dr. Gardner proved invaluable in the fight against Mot, helping Capt. Decker to kill him before Deck himself could be killed by the ribbon device, and in fact all four members of SG-4 distinguished themselves several times over on this mission.

Once the bomb had been expertly set by Lt. Green, we stole a Low’tau and made for the gate like a bat out of hell. We had two Death Gliders on our tail, and Lt. Green blew one out of the sky with an amazing shot from his captured staff weapon. We returned with the mission a success — although we had completely blown the covert aspect of it. (With any luck, no one survived to blame the Tau’ri for the yard’s destruction.)

Our only regret was that we did not follow up on what turned out to be a Tok’ra informant who was being held by the Goa’uld (passing him up under Capt. Decker’s orders), and that we couldn’t bring back the Low’tau for use on future missions.

En Passant — Earthside, sessions 7 and 8

After returning from P3Y-211, we met with an unpleasant surprise: Colonel Maybourne. Specifically, Col. Maybourne wanting to take Dr. Gardner off-base for some tender NID interrogation. He had decided that she wasn’t being forthcoming enough with her knowledge of the Goa’uld — which was technically true, but SG-4 felt that our recent mission had gone a long way to changing that. Maybourne disagreed.

While Dr. Raynes and Capt. Decker tried desperately to keep Dr. Gardner on-base and out of Maybourne’s clutches (without getting court martialled), Lt. Green was given a special assignment by Gen. Hammond. Apparently, an item had gone missing from Area 51, and Lt. Green was uniquely qualified to get to find out what had happened. He departed immediately.

Raynes and Decker discovered that someone had stolen Dr. Gardner’s medical files, and on reviewing security footage, that the thief was likely invisible. This prompted a systematic sweep of the entire complex with TERs, which proved fruitless. Other plans and stalling tactics (including a bit of clever hacking on Dr. Raynes’s part) were equally unsuccessful — Dr. Gardner’s departure was inevitable.

Meanwhile, Lt. Green was in Nevada finding out why he was so uniquely qualified to undertake his solo mission: his father runs Area 51. In the course of trying to track down the missing device, a side of Lt. Green emerged that would have surprised the rest of SG-4, had they been present: bad cop. Even without his staff weapon, Lt. Green intimidated his way to a successful investigation, discovering that an Area 51 geek had been framed, and that his father had been threatened into allowing the item to be stolen.

Around this time, Dr. Gardner was found to be absent from the SGC — along with Maybourne and his staff. To make matters worse, Lt. Green’s sister Sara was not answering her phone, and when he asked Raynes and Decker to investigate, we found that she had been kidnapped (or at least apparently kidnapped).

When the members of SG-4 finally stopped not telling each other things — you know, like Dr. Gardner formerly being Osiris, the Goa’uld memory button being the item stolen from Area 51, and Maybourne apparently having access to Osiris’s ship — we started making connections pretty quickly. Acting on the basis of Maybourne’s itinerary, we visited Area 52 in search of Osiris’s ship (a dead end).

Before departing, we laid out our theory to Gen. Hammond: Maybourne had stolen the memory recall device and was planning to use it to get Dr. Gardner to tell him about Osiris’s ship. Trusting that Capt. Decker trusted the members of SG-4, he pulled some strings and found out about an NID safehouse not far from Area 52 — where it was possible that Sara Green and Dr. Gardner were being held.

With orders to kill the rogue NID agents only as a last resort, SG-4 made off with most of Area 52’s armory and headed for the safehouse. After disabling a sentry and a potential getaway vehicle, we snuck inside, scoped out the situation, and then started a major firefight. Through a combination of good planning and luck, we were able to take down all of the NID agents save two without killing anyone, and rescue Dr. Gardner in the process.

High points included the takedown power of Deck’s shotgun, Lt. Green’s rundown of an agent who tried to escape on foot, and Dr. Raynes’s protection of the NID prisoners from Lt. Green in bad cop mode.

Two people escaped via what appeared to be an Asgard teleportation beam, and it was unclear if one of them had been Sara Green — who we still weren’t convinced wasn’t working with the NID by choice. In addition to capturing the agents and bringing Dr. Gardner back to the SGC before they melted her brain, we also recovered several NID laptops — hopefully containing enough blackmail material to get Maybourne to give up Lt. Green’s sister.