Sekhmet

Sekhmet was an Alliance special forces commander who was a major antagonist (and frequent uneasy ally) in Black Cat Blues. I don't want to (and won't) go down the road of making a wiki page this extensive for every NPC I've ever put in a game, but Sekhmet was special, and deserves her own page, so there.

Background
Born Ophelia Miller into a military family on Bernadette, she enlisted in the Alliance Army Corps of Engineers never intending to see front-line combat. This changed when the Unification War broke out, and her unit took heavy casualties in an ambush on the moon of Bellerophon. She was sent to Dionysus Hospital to recover both from physical injuries and post-traumatic stress. Unfortunately, the same hospital hosted the Dionysus Project, an ill-fated attempt to cure Reavers that soon descended into madness as the medical staff began behaving like Reavers themselves. As punishment for a failed escape attempt, the doctors chose her as their next experimental subject. Dr. Maxwell Crane, later known as Osiris, was personally responsible for the bulk of her torture and Reaverization.

Sekhmet survived the Dionysus Project with some of her sanity by stealing and self-administering medications from around the hospital. She eventually developed a cocktail of painkillers, antipsychotics, and muscle relaxers that allowed her to temporarily function like a human rather than a Reaver - though of course this did nothing to reverse the physical mutilation she suffered. She fixed all of her hopes on rescue from the Alliance, and on retaining some of her humanity for the day they arrived. In her twisted mind, the Alliance became an infallible beacon of everything good and right and her only chance of salvation. After many failed attempts, she managed to send out a coded distress signal that informed the Alliance of the horrors of Dionysus Hospital and finally brought an end to the project (at least for the time being).

Following Sekhmet's rescue, the Alliance had absolutely no idea what to do with her: a woman who looked like a Reaver, but spoke and acted like a loyal Alliance soldier. They couldn't release her into polite society as evidence of their mistakes, but her actions at Dionysus Hospital had proven her both loyal to a fault and too useful to kill. The Alliance chose to keep her close, shuttling her around between secret bases and assigning her to various military research and development projects they thought might benefit from her prodigious intelligence.

Five years before the events of the campaign, Sekhmet was assigned to look into a few pages of Dr. Lincoln Jianyu's nanotechnology which an Alliance agent had acquired. Sekhmet quickly saw the potential in Dr. Lincoln's theories and made progress in implementing them to create a strain of tracker nanobots intended to serve as a means of universal identification for Alliance citizens. However, as Sekhmet began to understand the full implications of Dr. Lincoln's research, she expanded the project beyond its original scope. She also learned that other factions, particularly Blue Sun, were a long way ahead of the Alliance in their implementation of nanotechology. Blue Sun appeared to be planning to use its technological superiority to take over the Alliance, and had already infiltrated its highest echelons. Unable to trust her superiors, Sekhmet pushed ahead with her research using a secret funding stream gained by selling a nanotechnology-based assassination virus to the Syndicate. Her single driving goal became to save the Alliance from itself and ensure that it preserved its control over the 'Verse, no matter what.

In Sekhmet's interactions with the crew of Black Cat she was invariably calm, analytical, and precise, giving them the impression that she had thought five moves ahead of them about any plan they might make (because she usually had). She rarely lied about anything to them, all the better to make the lies she did tell more believable. Physically, she was anything but inconspicuous and cut a bizarre and imposing figure: six feet tall, dressed in an impeccably tailored Alliance uniform, and always wearing an oxygen mask that covered most of her face. She required frequent injections of the drug cocktail she had developed at Dionysus Hospital to avoid reverting to a Reaver-like state. On the rare occasions when she left her cruiser Blue Nile, she was accompanied by a small army of medical personnel who managed her condition, which her official cover story claimed was the result of gas inhalation and severe burns suffered during the Unification War. She didn't actually need either the mask or the doctors, but affected both to disguise her Reaver-like appearance and project a false image of frailty.

Sekhmet had a husband and two daughters, whom she abandoned for their own safety following her torture at the hands of the Dionysus Project. (Elisa was incredibly distressed when she learned this; nobody else cared.)

During the Game
Immediately prior to the events of the campaign, Sekhmet put her plans into motion by injecting Archer (who was sometimes posted to her security detail) with the first tracker nanos under the guise of routine medical care. She then posted a false arrest warrant for Daisy to the Cortex, causing Archer to desert and go in search of her daughter and giving Sekhmet the opportunity to start spreading the nanos to her enemies (along with everyone else in the 'Verse). Archer ending up on Black Cat with Osiris was merely a horrible coincidence.

During the early stages of the campaign, the crew was vaguely aware of Sekhmet's existence but rarely interacted with her. She was seen on Shadow looking into Elijah Gore's terraforming operations, and dropped in on the Bernotte family conference on Lilac to apprehend the journalist Jennifer Oliver before she could publish her expose of the Dionysus Project. Sekhmet's main point of contact with the crew during this time was Luke. She had clearance to give orders to the Inquisitor, and would sometimes dispatch him on his torture missions. Luke also filed reports with her informing her in general terms of the crew's activities.

The crew, of course, did not remember that they had dealt with Sekhmet before, during their failed attempt to run the Alliance blockade of Newhall. When the Alliance took the crew aboard Blue Nile, intending to kill them to stop them from spreading either the fungus or the Planetary Terraforming Division's secrets, Sekhmet intervened. Not wanting to lose her only means of controlling the spread of the tracker nanos, she ordered them fully decontaminated and their memories wiped. This incident raised considerable suspicion about Sekhmet's real motives within the Alliance, and incited some of her later conflicts with Admirals Shole and Nolan.

Sekhmet's first major dealings with the crew occurred during their infiltration of the Blue Sun R&D facility, which she learned of through Luke's reports. Recognizing the opportunity to begin spreading the tracker nanos to the bluehands, and maybe even to get her hands on Blue Sun's collection of Dr. Lincoln's notes, she reached out to the crew through Luke and offered them the use of a nanotech-based chemical that would allow them to burn a hole into the impenetrable vault in which the notes were kept, (supposedly) with no strings attached. She also offered to buy the notes off of them. Nik Gianconi (who was posing as Nicolas at the time) was not interested in this offer but was happy to accept Sekhmet's help anyway. She appeared untroubled by his refusal and gave the crew a secure way to contact her in the future in case they changed their mind. Indeed, after Michael Gianconi double-crossed the crew and Nik's secret identity was revealed, Sekhmet's offer suddenly looked a lot more tempting. She helped them escape the Blue Sun facility in exchange for the notes, and also paid them a sizable sum of ill-gotten Syndicate credits.

When Shyam Nagendra's attempt to usurp the Keyholder database from Siqin destabilized the Syndicate, it also had serious consequences for Sekhmet, who was by now deriving the bulk of her funding from her Syndicate interests. Sekhmet summoned the crew to a secret Alliance base, admitted her connection to the Syndicate, and also told the crew what she had done for them on Newhall. She offered them a cure for Nagendra's assassination virus (which was easy to provide considering she was the one who had created it) if they would reestablish order within the Syndicate and destroy the Keyholder database. The crew agreed readily to this arrangement and was left feeling that Sekhmet was someone they could work with in the future, even if neither party fully trusted the other. After Nagendra was defeated, Sekhmet and Siqin agreed to continue their alliance, with Siqin feeding information to Sekhmet in exchange for Sekhmet's protection.

However, Black Cat's investigation into the resurgent Dionysus Project was considerably less compatible with Sekhmet's goals. The harder the crew pressed against Blue Sun's secrets, the more they accelerated their timetable. This raised red flags for the Alliance with regards to all the secret projects going on under their roof, Sekhmet's included. When the crew's actions led to Osiris being picked up for questioning by Admiral Rebecca Shole (who did not know about either Blue Sun's activities or Sekhmet's, but was becoming suspicious of both), Sekhmet intervened, rescuing Osiris from interrogation to keep anything he told to the very by-the-book Shole from getting back to Blue Sun. (This was easily the angriest the crew ever saw her get - two needles in the neck!) Although this incident badly damaged Sekhmet's standing within the Alliance, it had the unexpected side effect of solidifying her alliance with Luke, who decided he would rather follow her orders than any of the conflicting ones he received from either Nolan or Shole.

After Luke told Sekhmet everything the crew had learned about the Dionysus Project, she realized that she had to come clean with them if she wanted to keep them from jeopardizing her plans. Sekhmet brought the crew back to Blue Nile to provide medical care for the grievously injured Siqin, then told them virtually everything she knew about Blue Sun's plans, the Dionysus Project, and the nanotechnology-fueled struggle for the 'Verse, holding back only the tracker nanos. She begged the crew to keep her secrets until she could finish her preparations for active war against Blue Sun, knowing that if the truth came out now, Blue Sun would make their move and she wouldn't be ready. The crew did not take kindly to this request. When the private investigator they were working with, Detective Marsh, said he saw no other option than to reveal the truth, Sekhmet immediately shot him dead.

Nicolas ripped off Sekhmet's mask in the ensuing struggle, revealing her Reaver face and causing Osiris to recognize her as his long-ago victim. Shole interrupted the proceedings and arrested Sekhmet, but she escaped custody. Just before Shole cut off her access to Alliance resources, she released the crew from their holding cell and told them where to find Osiris, who was being tortured by Luke in his full Inquisitor persona. The crew still promised they would kill her the next time they saw her, which she took in stride. After the crew escaped, Sekhmet closed ranks with her loyalists aboard Blue Nile as Blue Sun began to make its move. With an all-out war now inevitable, Sekhmet crashed the badly damaged cruiser into the Dionysus Project's facilities and fled in a shuttle.

Sekhmet was not seen or heard from for several months afterward, though Siqin kept her informed about the crew's activities. Cynically realizing the opportunity posed by Quinn and Osiris's daughter's Reaver-induced illness, Sekhmet approached Black Cat to offer a deal: a treatment (and eventually a cure) for Ronan's condition, in exchange for sanctuary about Black Cat until Blue Sun was defeated. The crew reluctantly accepted, and Sekhmet began sending them on missions in search of more pages from Dr. Lincoln's notebook.

While Sekhmet was tracking down the remaining notebook pages on her own and using them to finalize both a cure for Ronan and the final piece of her own scheme, the crew inadvertently discovered the tracker nanos in their bodies. They took this information to Admiral Shole, who confirmed that the trackers were one of Sekhmet's projects. By the time Sekhmet arrived with the cure, both Shole and Nolan were waiting for her. Osiris prevailed upon Shole to take Sekhmet into custody, but Nolan's forces intervened. Sekhmet left behind both Ronan's cure and a message that installed a copy of her personality and all her nanotech knowledge into Elisa's brain. HeadSekhmet explained real Sekhmet's final plan: the tracker nanos were really a Trojan horse, capable of delivering a targeted attack that could wipe out all the bluehands in the 'Verse (since they acted as a networked intelligence). However, the nanos could also be repurposed to wipe out any other group of people if someone other than Sekhmet were to learn how to trigger them. HeadSekhmet told Elisa that the Inquisitor was surely trying to torture this information out of her as they spoke, and that the crew would need to rescue the real Sekhmet from him before she broke.

Ultimately, Louise Kang rescued Sekhmet in the process of also rescuing Luke. But after HeadSekhmet admitted to Elisa that she planned to use the virus to turn all the bluehands into Reavers, thus breaking their control but also manufacturing a genuine threat for the Alliance to unify everyone against under its banner, the crew found a different way of shutting down the bluehands network. All of the bluehands then returned to their previous state - but since a sizable fraction of them had begun as Reavers, the Alliance still had work to do in eliminating them. With Blue Sun's plans thwarted and the Alliance reinvigorated, Sekhmet's goal had been achieved. The crew of Black Cat did not follow through on their earlier threats to kill her, and instead let her fade away into what was (maybe, probably, hopefully) a quiet retirement, with Siqin and Elisa checking up on her every now and again.

Memorable Moments

 * Humbleminion initially recognized the overarching need for a character like Sekhmet (an antagonist who would cooperate often enough with the PCs to let us infodump about the metaplot when we needed to); this NPC was referred to as "the Grand Vizier" in very early planning documents and initial conversations. Beth named her, wrote her background, and built in the connection to Osiris's Dionysus Project dark secret. As is likely obvious to anyone who has seen Farscape (a favorite show for both GMs), many elements of Sekhmet's backstory, personality, and the trajectory of her story arc were strongly inspired by the character Scorpius.
 * Sekhmet never had a character sheet or any formal stats, and I don't think I ever rolled dice on her behalf, which is something I can't say for any other NPC I've ever played this extensively.
 * As any gamer who has tried it will tell you, playing a character smarter than yourself is really freaking hard. Whenever Sekhmet took a major role in a session, a lot of the planning beforehand was working through all of her contingencies for whatever the PCs might do, which was sometimes a challenge even for two people working from the benefit of GMly foresight. This was a huge part of why I used her so sparingly for about the first 2/3 of the game - partly because it took so much effort to get her involved, and partly because I was deathly afraid of screwing something up every time I had to portray her.
 * The lore we came up with for the anti-Reaver drugs stated that a dose was good for about four hours under ideal conditions, but that the body metabolized them faster in situations of stress or high emotions. Periodically, when the PCs were really getting under Sekhmet's skin, she would pause mid-sentence, take out a hypodermic needle from somewhere, casually inject herself in the neck, and then carry on as if nothing had happened. It was fun when the PCs realized "oh, she does that when we're especially pissing her off." The most frequent cause of this, not surprisingly, was Nicolas's evil twin Nik Gianconi.
 * We kept expecting the PCs to kill Sekhmet at some point (and were pretty much braced for it any time she was onstage in the final season) but they never got around to it. (Admittedly, the final Luke-Louise-Sekhmet rescue mission happening offscreen helped a lot with this; if any PCs had actually been involved in those scenes, I suspect they would have found an excuse to ditch her on the cruiser as it went down.) As one player later morosely put it, "There was never a moment when shooting her in the head would have actually solved any of our problems." So. Success!
 * Relatedly, it was a nice surprise in the final season when Elisa actually took an interest in Sekhmet as a person - albeit one we were not expecting from that particular character after what Sekhmet did to her mentor. The other PCs kept their relationships with Sekhmet very professional (Luke and Siqin), dealt with her only to the extent they had no other choice to do so (Nicolas), tried to pretend she didn't exist (Osiris, understandably), or made no secret of hating her and wanting her gone (Birgitta and Quinn). It was fun to get to bring a favorite NPC out a little more frequently in the waning days of a long campaign, and also to go through with the HeadSekhmet subplot (which we hadn't been sure we were going to do, since we didn't want to spring it on somebody who wouldn't have thought it was cool).
 * Sekhmet's initial introduction led to one of my favorite bits of foreshadowing that I've ever pulled off in a game. When the crew first saw her on Shadow, Osiris thought she looked vaguely familiar. At the time, he was also mildly deranged from alcohol withdrawal. As he passed Sekhmet and her entourage on the street, Osiris hallucinated her turning around, staring at him, and taking off her oxygen mask to reveal a Reaver's face beneath it. I'm not sure anyone even remembered this incident when it became relevant with her actual unmasking two years of gameplay later, but it amused me, and sometimes that's all that matters.
 * Every interaction between Sekhmet and Black Cat's rules in the final season was comedy gold. When she first came aboard, the newest rule was "no canned beans aboard the ship" (no explanation was ever given for why this became a rule), and Nicolas insisted that she be fully searched. The image of this terrifying, monstrous, imperious person being thoroughly patted down by Archer in search of illicit canned goods will never leave me. However, Sekhmet got Nicolas back by pointing out that since she didn't actually need the oxygen mask and only used it to cover the scars, it technically counted as a disguise and was therefore forbidden - meaning everyone got to spend a good chunk of the rest of their campaign with a Reaver wandering around on their ship.

Soundtrack
An early theme song for Sekhmet was "Commander" by Girlyman":

Was it all there before you in a dream Was it something that only you could see Was it gold, or even better Was it weapons-grade metal Or a glimpse of your god?... Were they all there before you just waiting in line To include you in their crudest design? You were bad fruit, they knew you wouldn't ripen on the vine And they made you commander when you couldn't be it

For late-game Sekhmet, devoid of resources and dependent upon Black Cat, "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay:

One minute I held the key Next, the walls were closed on me And I discovered that my castles stand Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand... Be my mirror, my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason, I can't explain I know Saint Peter won't call my name Never an honest word But that was when I ruled the world