Unbreaking Rifts Earth - would like your thoughts.

[Greepnak]

So the theme of my campaign of the last few months has solidified into unbreaking the problems with Rifts Earth in meaningful lasting ways. The Coalition is actually being run by an illuminati type group of which an immortal Joseph Prosek (he is also his own grandpa) is a part to take the humans of North America on an abbreviated historical trajectory from "dirty tribal barbarians" to "civilized" in a very Lelouche of the Rebellion sort of way.

They're doing this because they want North America, at least, to be a safe home for humanity and to change the view of the Splugorth of Atlantis from seeing humans as slave stock/amusement to a legitimate entity to be feared or bargained with.

So to make this happen, NA needs to be made truly safe which means re-integrating magic into society in a way that works beyond something controlled almost tyrannically like Dweomer (DONT EAT PEOPLE.. BECAUSE THE LoM SAY SO..that wont work on a scale of millions)while maintaining the big scary shared enemy mindset that glues the CS together in the absence of the things that normally build large safe empires like trade and long range communication. I'm aiming for a similar story to the origin of the Federation of Planets from ST after the Eugenics Wars where the best of humanity gets a chance to shine but only after a period of terrible race-wide sufferring that becomes a shared experience the future is built upon.

So my party is VERY strong (including cosmo knights).

And I want to incentivize them to make real change everywhere from correctly assassinating the worst of the CS leadership (like the guy who ran the camps in the tolkeen war eff that guy... and scaard while I'm at it) to getting the orbital colonies and Lunar Base on board with the future.

So as I see it, the firmly in the setting problems appropriate for player characters to address could be...

Fix the Sky. Orbiting satellites are crucial. How would you do that, especially if you had cosmo knights to work with?

Fix Mexico. This one's sticky because Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth already, but its under the yoke of evil. Thoughts?

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

Kick the Minion War's Butt. Self Explanatory. This should involve fixing the CS's resource problems as detailed in Heroes of Humanity, but my J. Prosek and the Vanguard want CS troopers to get more experience seeing d-bees and magic users in heroic scenarios as part of their Long Plan to steer the CS into a more egalitarian pre-Nostrous Dunscon society in the decades to come. Side note, I really like that the real reason behind the tolkeen war was mining in North Dakota as presented in HoH.

Fix International Travel. Possibly resolvable if the CS can solve the above and integrate magic ? The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

New Balance of Terror. Somehow get Phase World tech into hands of major human powers like the CS and NGR maybe without putting the Splugorth into " OUR KITTANI SHIPS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUNNNNNN" mode? Maybe?


What else?

If anyone cares much, I wrote a plea and abbreviated history lesson from Prosek himself to my player characters (who are all firmly anti-cs thanks to the whole imagery thing) for the sake of telling the story from an unreliable narrator's point of view plus to free my players from needing thirty world books.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11oE ... Fiz24/edit

What else would you think would be really needed to really unbreak rifts earth, or at least get North America in a solid position?

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

[HWalsh]

So the theme of my campaign of the last few months has solidified into unbreaking the problems with Rifts Earth in meaningful lasting ways. The Coalition is actually being run by an illuminati type group of which an immortal Joseph Prosek (he is also his own grandpa) is a part to take the humans of North America on an abbreviated historical trajectory from "dirty tribal barbarians" to "civilized" in a very Lelouche of the Rebellion sort of way.

They're doing this because they want North America, at least, to be a safe home for humanity and to change the view of the Splugorth of Atlantis from seeing humans as slave stock/amusement to a legitimate entity to be feared or bargained with.

So to make this happen, NA needs to be made truly safe which means re-integrating magic into society in a way that works beyond something controlled almost tyrannically like Dweomer (DONT EAT PEOPLE.. BECAUSE THE LoM SAY SO)while maintaining the big scary shared enemy mindset that glues the CS together in the absence of the things that normally build large safe empires like trade and long range communication. I'm aiming for a similar story to the origin of the Federation of Planets from ST after the Eugenics Wars where the best of humanity gets a chance to shine but only after a period of terrible race-wide sufferring that becomes a shared experience the future is built upon.

So my party is VERY strong (including cosmo knights).

And I want to incentivize them to make real change everywhere from correctly assassinating the worst of the CS leadership (like the guy who ran the camps in the tolkeen war eff that guy... and scaard while I'm at it) to getting the orbital colonies and Lunar Base on board with the future.

So as I see it, the firmly in the setting problems appropriate for player characters to address could be...

Fix the Sky. Orbiting satellites are crucial. How would you do that, especially if you had cosmo knights to work with?

Fix Mexico. This one's sticky because Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth already, but its under the yoke of evil. Thoughts?

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

Kick the Minion War's Butt. Self Explanatory. This should involve fixing the CS's resource problems as detailed in Heroes of Humanity, but my J. Prosek and the Vanguard want CS troopers to get more experience seeing d-bees and magic users in heroic scenarios as part of their Long Plan to steer the CS into a more egalitarian pre-Nostrous Dunscon society in the decades to come. Side note, I really like that the real reason behind the tolkeen war was mining in North Dakota as presented in HoH.

Fix International Travel. Possibly resolvable if the CS can solve the above and integrate magic ? The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

New Balance of Terror. Somehow get Phase World tech into hands of major human powers like the CS and NGR maybe without putting the Splugorth into " OUR KITTANI SHIPS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUNNNNNN" mode? Maybe?


What else?

If anyone cares much, I wrote a plea and abbreviated history lesson from Prosek himself to my player characters (who are all firmly anti-cs thanks to the whole imagery thing) for the sake of telling the story from an unreliable narrator's point of view plus to free my players from needing thirty world books.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11oE ... Fiz24/edit

What else would you think would be really needed to really unbreak rifts earth, or at least get North America in a solid position?

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

Most player characters... However... Won't be willing to help Prosek.

A better way to fix North America would be to crush the Coalition States and have Lazlo take over as they pretty much have a freaking utopia already.

[Greepnak]

I'm looking at magic in society as a disruptive thing like industrialization's effects on World War 1. Enhance 1 guy's ability to kill thanks to a browning automatic and war doesn't go away, it just gets oh so much worse. Now let him summon meteors and raise the dead. This leads logically to me to attempts at magic societies being unable to expand beyond the city state level where the firm thumb of a bigger, badder dude can keep things in line like the Lords of Magic in Dweomer. By extension that's also the big conspiracy's logic and a better way needs to be found.

[HWalsh]

I'm looking at magic in society as a disruptive thing like industrialization's effects on World War 1. Enhance 1 guy's ability to kill thanks to a browning automatic and war doesn't go away, it just gets oh so much worse. Now let him summon meteors and raise the dead. This leads logically to me to attempts at magic societies being unable to expand beyond the city state level where the firm thumb of a bigger, badder dude can keep things in line like the Lords of Magic in Dweomer. By extension that's also the big conspiracy's logic and a better way needs to be found.

You're missing the point that, in Rifts, Magic isn't any more powerful than science. An MD Pistol is more dangerous than a level 4 spell that does ranged MD damage. Instead you're acting like the CS has legitimate claims. They don't and never have had them.

Like I said. Go look at Lazlo. They have magic, science, technology, TW items, and are a freaking utopia. They have education, they have security, they have food, they have water, they have electricity, they have modern amenities. They even have it rigged up where you can make TW items that you can run by plugging them into a wall socket.

If you are looking for a way to "Unbreak" Rifts Earth... You start with the most "Unbroken" place.

You don't start by empowering a monster like Prosek. You start with the places that have already proven to have a successful model.

[Ambrosius]

As a scholar of history, every attempt to make humanity better has often led the other way around. But I'm willing to play with the thought.

How far do the players want to go to make it "safe"? How far are they willing? There's a lot of moral implications. Boosting the CS in their fight may not be the best choice, even if the end goal is that they turn into some egalitarian utopia somehow. There's also the fact you'll have to change the mindset of every brainwashed citizen of the CS. No amounts of shooty-shooty is going to change that. Doesn't matter if you have a cosmo-knight on the team.

Trying to improve the CS is kind of...well wasteful IMO. It's better to build a house on good foundation rather than trying to fix the muck.

[Greepnak]

As a scholar of history, every attempt to make humanity better has often led the other way around. But I'm willing to play with the thought.

How far do the players want to go to make it "safe"? How far are they willing? There's a lot of moral implications. Boosting the CS in their fight may not be the best choice, even if the end goal is that they turn into some egalitarian utopia somehow. There's also the fact you'll have to change the mindset of every brainwashed citizen of the CS. No amounts of shooty-shooty is going to change that. Doesn't matter if you have a cosmo-knight on the team.

Trying to improve the CS is kind of...well wasteful IMO. It's better to build a house on good foundation rather than trying to fix the muck.

Yeah but New Lazlo.

Thats the dilemma I want the pcs to explore between resolving personal issues. The implication that the CS is gradually going to be ready to change is seeded in a few books, like the prophecies of Old Yorick or a lot of the stuff in HoH. It's just a question of whether it happens overnight or whether it's something that has to happen over decades, which is the theme I'm running with. Grandpa is going to be an old racist til he goes in the ground, especially when his 7-10 in every stat self has experience with non-humans eating his family members. The grandkids though, might have a differrent experience. A big theme of the HoH book is that the Proseks deliberately shaped the CS zeitgeist to create zealots that could fight savagely enough to make the demons of the minion war pause. If you think about it, it could very well be argued that having an entity like the CS on North America is why there's no equivalent to something like the Gargoyle Empire on the NA continent. Even the Vampires in mexico prefer to hide from the cs rather than fight them despite the arrogant vampire intelligence mindset. I like the idea that this fearsome thing was created deliberately to give humans on the American continent a shot, but isnt meant to stay this way forever.

the player chars are all effectively immortal and so is J-prosek in my version of things, so they can think in terms of years and really, should (two are godlings)

[Greepnak]

(an example of things the Long Plan wants to do is get the vampires out of mexico and let the Lyn Srial get some things done there instead of hanging out in the grand canyon only, or Lemurians. The Long Plan actually wants to get the CS into a war with mexico that they might very well lose, but the act might help them gain allies like happened with the Federation of Magic, and strategic manipulation of resources could get some of the more outright barbaric elements of CS leadership removed while still making them martyrs to build the next version of the zeitgeist upon. The need to do this is highlighted by the tolkeen war and the glory-murder generals that really made that spin out of control. Stable and good-minded kingdoms in Mexico could also address the CS's resource issues via trade, which is the big thing that brings stability and progressiveness.. the current kingdoms of magic are very isolationist, even lazlo. Basically illuminati that dont control everything, but want to turn events to fit into a greater plan. Like the Republicans.)

[boring7]

Simplest Solution: 1. You get (either by being or by buying at the Atlantis market) a Stone Master, a Mystic Kuznya, and a Necromancer. 2. you scout a place that has been uninhabited or at least irrelevant and isolated for the last 300 years yet still has a ley-line or nexus. 3. You go to Atlanta Georgia, rebuild the mound of time, and jump back to Chaos Earth. 4. You go build a pyramid so everyone can stop aging. 5. You secure a source of bodies and start building an endless horde of undead armed and armored by the Kuznya. Since the time rules are vague, you'll want more necromancers and Kuznya, but that's doable.

Most importantly, this ONLY uses RAW, no made-up rules for crafting, mining, constructing towns or building machines.

Massive army of doom comes out of hiding moments after the PCs first jumped back in time, crushes all enemies and establishes order.

No? You say that's boring, lame, and exploit-y? Okay, let's get a little more home-brew and a little BS.

Fix the Sky. Orbiting satellites are crucial. How would you do that, especially if you had cosmo knights to work with?

As I recall Cosmo-knights are hoss enough to just face-tank the orbital weapons (and fly up to them) so the job becomes fairly simple. Cosmo-knight(s) get a radio relay in a backpack (or whatever) and just start going up to satellites. As they shrug off laser and K-kill shots they (or someone better at AI cajoling) convince/hack the satellite to stop shooting and join the network. "What network," you ask? The one you're setting up that makes the satellites smarter (grid-links the AIs, gives 'em some extra servers to farm processes to). While flitting about you also equip your boys (or really tough ships) with giant electromagnets (or better yet gravity nets) to start collecting all the debris in that orbital range. All materials are collected and launched (gently, and with forewarning) at the various space stations. They will LIKE the raw materials you are shipping them.

Politically, you lie. Use a rift to Mars (Mutants in Orbit has a whole adventure about it) to get to Mars quietly and make up a whole liar's story about colonial survivors of the Martian Base somehow hiding for the past 3 centuries, developing weird powers, and finally returning ascendant and triumphant. The space folk will probably accept that easier (until you have a chance to fix it) than earth folk, because they get Earth Radio and it's freakin' crazy. Also water is the prime resource and there are 2 options (pull water from earth, go literally grab and harvest entire comets) to corner that market. Whether you use that wealth as a lever of control or give it away to establish yourself as benevolent, you end up with space people doing what you want.

The bugs on Mars probably have to die, but the book is extremely contradictory on whether they can be taught the ways of good or are incorrigible monsters.

Fix Mexico. This one's sticky because Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth already, but its under the yoke of evil. Thoughts?

Or this one's easy as pie. My group is doing this (with considerably less power) right now. It depends.

You establish enough power/industry to "uplift" a primitive town the way Iron Heart Armaments did (before they got Coalition'd). If you aren't sure how you literally go ask the IHA survivors because they're literally in Mexico right now. magic and techno-wizardry can 'cheat in' raw materials and many kinds of industrial basics (Golem labor). Once those ducks are in a row you begin conquest.

You start with Muluc, because no one likes it (not even its neighbors). When the Muluc intelligence dies its vampires all die (except the masters, who revert to human and are usually lynched), so you can easily take the cities. Politics will take a bit of time (locals will want the new boss to be better) but that's why you got your ducks in a row.

You follow-up with Camazotz (and present his head to Mexico City as a peace offering) and then Ixzotz. You cut a deal with Mexico City and keep it back-burner for the foreseeable future (the "second class citizen" for humans in Mexico city is better than "first class citizen" in the CS). You tell Milta to shape up or die screaming. When you crush Ixzotz you ship the "human cattle" from Monero to Mexico City and (if they play ball) Milta because they are *literally* the only people who can make use of those people while rehabilitating them. Then you assassinate the evil half of Reid's Rangers and make it look like the demons, brodkil, and psi-goblins of Ixzotz did it. This requires subtlety and is very specific to the OCCs and how the GM runs Fort Reid.

At that point Mexico's pretty clean, you've got a bit of a cold war with the remaining vampires, but they're probably AFRAID of you now, so when you offer peace they'll probably take it. And when you ask them to collect all the wild vampires for you, they will. And you'll want to collect those feral monsters because...

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

Wild vampires make excellent living munitions. Dropping them on enemies, even the kind they can't eat, tends to result in those enemies taking damage. Add suicide bomb vests and intelligent leadership with (hired) secondary vamps and you have a real pack of trouble. Hell, they're doing this to Atlantis right now. This is more generic than just Calgary, but Calgary's the start.

Kick the Minion War's Butt. Self Explanatory. This should involve fixing the CS's resource problems as detailed in Heroes of Humanity, but my J. Prosek and the Vanguard want CS troopers to get more experience seeing d-bees and magic users in heroic scenarios as part of their Long Plan to steer the CS into a more egalitarian pre-Nostrous Dunscon society in the decades to come. Side note, I really like that the real reason behind the tolkeen war was mining in North Dakota as presented in HoH.

Techno-wizardry cheats can solve both problems. A level 5 techno-wizard can create weapons that will help the Lemurians (and thus pay them for the food aid they send the CS) out of a flashlight and a Globe of Daylight spell. (See their underwater crab-vampire enemies, and their vulnerabilities). That same techno-wizard can use the Create Steel spell to turn 5 pounds of MDC steel into 7.5 pounds of MDC steel...every minute. Even if you DON'T cheat like that, Mexico has a TON of resources for exploiting and HoH mentions the Coalition State currently handling all manufacturing is the closest-to-mexico state of Lone Star.

Fix International Travel. Possibly resolvable if the CS can solve the above and integrate magic ? The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Circle of Transport is the safest, most-reliable teleport spell and if you combine it with a Techno-Wizard you're going to get SOMETHING good out of it. 800 miles per caster level covers a LOT of ground. Downside is you need a leyline or a nexus, but a big part of stabilizing Rifts Earth is capping every nexus with a pyramid to regulate mana flow and reduce the random rift problem.

New Balance of Terror. Somehow get Phase World tech into hands of major human powers like the CS and NGR maybe without putting the Splugorth into " OUR KITTANI SHIPS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUNNNNNN" mode? Maybe?

That's a threat even without phase world tech. Splynncryth wants Earth unstable so he can keep doing business without conquering the planet (which is politically untenable) or letting anyone else be strong enough to interfere with business as usual.

Basically, until your gang has enough juice (as in ARMIES) to kick his tentacled tail off the planet you've gotta keep the New Confederation of Greater Humanity on the Down-Low. A good distraction might help. Like assisting the freedom fighters on Atlantis.

Which brings us to one of the elephants in the room, Archie 3. I'm still not clear on Archie's whole character. He seems to vacillate between evil psychopath and just self-centered order-boy, a LOT seems to be GM discretion, but for my own headcanon I like to assume Archie's actually okay(ish) but currently sharing headspace (and addicted to the psychic powers of) the shamelessly evil Hagan. Pop Hagan and stick the helmet on a nice kid from Lazlo and you might end up with something decent. Most of his humanoid robot spies end up being nice people if exposed to nice people.

Anyways the point is that Archie can talk to Satellites, he has a sprawling industrial base, he has amazing technology, and he has the ability to run a lot of concurrent plots if you can get him to settle down and play nice. He can help with EVERYTHING, and can probably even establish "Titan Robotics II, Titan Harder" on Atlantis, buying, selling, improving, and studying all the vehicles and machines that get bought and sold on Atlantis (WB 21 pg. 40) and probably using magic and psychics to make repair and study that much more efficient (again, if he can play nice with such people). Run Mend the Broken over a used (and damaged) Naruni Bot and you up its market value by a lot, and while I want to say Telemechanics doesn't work on alien super-tech, but I can't even find a passage saying that at the moment.

Steal tech, spy on Atlantis, establish ways of helping The Resistance, and maybe even install a nano-tech virus that can take over nearly every machine on the continent for if it comes time for a fight.

...sorry, I've been thinking about this stuff a lot, work is boring and my mind wanders.

[Axelmania]

Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth

Source?

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

I don't see why nuking is necessary. Just siege the rift and bury it under something that would create suffocation problems for most invaders.

The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Killing him could be very difficult and pointless if he finds an ally to resurrect him. All you really need to do to minimize his impact is have whale singers on patrol singing to sever his Reachers, and then just snipe him outside of the range of his magic to keep him from doing anything meaningful in any location.

[Axelmania]

Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth

Source?

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

I don't see why nuking is necessary. Just siege the rift and bury it under something that would create suffocation problems for most invaders.

The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Killing him could be very difficult and pointless if he finds an ally to resurrect him. All you really need to do to minimize his impact is have whale singers on patrol singing to sever his Reachers, and then just snipe him outside of the range of his magic to keep him from doing anything meaningful in any location.

you're acting like the CS has legitimate claims. They don't and never have had them.

Source? Nemo has pretty legitimate claims to US inheritance and he recognizes them. Republicans also, and they propped up the CS, can't exactly blame them for not deferring to a shadow government.

Go look at Lazlo. They have magic, science, technology, TW items, and are a freaking utopia. They have education, they have security, they have food, they have water, they have electricity, they have modern amenities. They even have it rigged up where you can make TW items that you can run by plugging them into a wall socket.

A utopia for the few. They clearly are not serving the common man and stabilizing the continent with the efficiency that the CS does.

Lazlo is notoriously undetailed. How do you know how secure the common muggle is around there? How do we know that dragons like Plato and his ilk are treating humans fairly there? That place gets rose-colored glasses because it's Tarn's baby. Looking at it neutrally, what do we know?

Would be interested in a thread citing books about how great Lazlo is.

3. You go to Atlanta Georgia, rebuild the mound of time, and jump back to Chaos Earth.

Can someone point me in the direction of book/page for this? Sounds interesting.

You secure a source of bodies and start building an endless horde of undead armed and armored by the Kuznya. Since the time rules are vague, you'll want more necromancers and Kuznya, but that's doable.

Reminder that Mystic Kuznya are empowered by a canonical deity who is statted in one of the Rifters. Could he possibly take issue with you using his powers to arm skeletons run by selfish necromancers?

Better approach might be a good-aligned mage who simply knows necromancer spells (no alignment restiction like the OCC itself) or use those greater demons who have Kuznya abilities which aren't subject to being pulled back by deific whims.

A 3rd level shifter could probably manage this alone.

they (or someone better at AI cajoling) convince/hack the satellite to stop shooting and join the network. "What network," you ask? The one you're setting up that makes the satellites smarter (grid-links the AIs, gives 'em some extra servers to farm processes to).

This couldn't possibly backfire in the future, right?

When the Muluc intelligence dies its vampires all die (except the masters, who revert to human and are usually lynched)

What book/page mentions this? I don't remember reading it.

You follow-up with Camazotz (and present his head to Mexico City as a peace offering) and then Ixzotz.

I'm more concerned about the vampire-supporting gods in CB2 than I am the vampire-supporting demon (minor) lords in WB1.

the "second class citizen" for humans in Mexico city is better than "first class citizen" in the CS

I would be interested in debating this in a spinoff thread. What do you think happens to humans in Mexico City who refuse the blood tax? Which citizenry do you think has their free will more regularly abused with Hypnotic Suggestion?

At that point Mexico's pretty clean, you've got a bit of a cold war with the remaining vampires, but they're probably AFRAID of you now, so when you offer peace they'll probably take it.

Then the Aztec Gods show up to fill the power vacuum you created.

Asmodeus also visits his old hunting ground.

big part of stabilizing Rifts Earth is capping every nexus with a pyramid to regulate mana flow and reduce the random rift problem.

Notable mention: at every single Ley Line Nexus, if I have "Create Ley Line" from SA2, I can create 2 more nexuses. If a single Nazca Line Maker who knows this becomes aligned with wanting uncapped nexi, it will probably happen because he will be freer in sharing how to sacrifice 1D6 PPE to do it.

Run Mend the Broken over a used (and damaged) Naruni Bot and you up its market value by a lot

"used to repair inanimate objects" - robots are not inanimate
"not electronics or software" - some component of damaged high-tech MDC is often going to be electronics

[boring7]

Oh boy, the nazi-apologism again...

3. You go to Atlanta Georgia, rebuild the mound of time, and jump back to Chaos Earth.

Can someone point me in the direction of book/page for this? Sounds interesting.

WB 27 page 79.

You secure a source of bodies and start building an endless horde of undead armed and armored by the Kuznya. Since the time rules are vague, you'll want more necromancers and Kuznya, but that's doable.

Reminder that Mystic Kuznya are empowered by a canonical deity who is statted in one of the Rifters. Could he possibly take issue with you using his powers to arm skeletons run by selfish necromancers?

Better approach might be a good-aligned mage who simply knows necromancer spells (no alignment restiction like the OCC itself) or use those greater demons who have Kuznya abilities which aren't subject to being pulled back by deific whims.

Doesn't have to be a selfish necromancer.

they (or someone better at AI cajoling) convince/hack the satellite to stop shooting and join the network. "What network," you ask? The one you're setting up that makes the satellites smarter (grid-links the AIs, gives 'em some extra servers to farm processes to).

This couldn't possibly backfire in the future, right?

Not really. The "robot apocalypse" problem is fairly easy to contain when you know where they keep their brains.

When the Muluc intelligence dies its vampires all die (except the masters, who revert to human and are usually lynched)

What book/page mentions this? I don't remember reading it.

Vampire Kingdoms page 12. It is a fundamental part of rifts vampires, I thought everyone knew this. Unless you mean "master vampires survive." That factoid is listed...I don't recall. It's a relatively unimportant detail.

You follow-up with Camazotz (and present his head to Mexico City as a peace offering) and then Ixzotz.

I'm more concerned about the vampire-supporting gods in CB2 than I am the vampire-supporting demon (minor) lords in WB1.

Camazotz isn't "vampire-supporting" he is "vampire owning." He enslaved a VI (which is embarrassing to the vampires) and is using soul-magic to make the amazing and mighty (and over-rated) magic weapons out of murdered jaguar people.

Which brings us to another point, befriending the Bone Jaguars leads to recruiting some extremely powerful specialist units. They have 20-die melee weapons and interesting damage immunities, a very nice addition to commando squads.

Then the Aztec Gods show up to fill the power vacuum you created.

Asmodeus also visits his old hunting ground.

There's no power vacuum if you're filling the void, which was explicitly covered. Though to be fair, I'd farm a lot of the Yucatan off to the Jaguar Tribes. I don't like jungle and it's relatively easy to bolster them.

Run Mend the Broken over a used (and damaged) Naruni Bot and you up its market value by a lot

"used to repair inanimate objects" - robots are not inanimate
"not electronics or software" - some component of damaged high-tech MDC is often going to be electronics

[/quote]
An unpowered robot is inanimate, moreover you can explicitly fix "MDC armor" and do "structural repair of MDC objects." You may have to take it apart first and repair the components, and it comes out to nearly a minute per point of MDC, but that is still faster (and free) compared to the regular rules for repairing damaged vehicles.

[Axelmania]

Oh boy, the nazi-apologism again...

Coalition States aren't nazis, they're just presently lead by an emperor who studied a bunch of dictators and learned from them, not excluding the dictator of the Nazi regime.

WB 27 page 79.

Thanks, guess I need to look closer at those dino swamp bosok, hidden gems.

Doesn't have to be a selfish necromancer.

It could be an evil one, true, I was just being optimistic. The OCC forbids good alignments for some reason.

Not really. The "robot apocalypse" problem is fairly easy to contain when you know where they keep their brains.

This assumes you can keep their brains in a physical location. Think of what Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines revealed about SkyNet.

Vampire Kingdoms page 12. It is a fundamental part of rifts vampires, I thought everyone knew this. Unless you mean "master vampires survive." That factoid is listed...I don't recall. It's a relatively unimportant detail.

Yes, sorry for the lack of clarification, I meant about master vampires surviving and being lynched. Page 13 says "ALL of his vampire legions are also destroyed, instantly turning to dust" and I thought that included the master.

Camazotz isn't "vampire-supporting" he is "vampire owning." He enslaved a VI (which is embarrassing to the vampires) and is using soul-magic to make the amazing and mighty (and over-rated) magic weapons out of murdered jaguar people.

Slavers often support their slaves

Which brings us to another point, befriending the Bone Jaguars leads to recruiting some extremely powerful specialist units. They have 20-die melee weapons and interesting damage immunities, a very nice addition to commando squads.

Also dino swamps? Not much help against gods though.

There's no power vacuum if you're filling the void, which was explicitly covered. Though to be fair, I'd farm a lot of the Yucatan off to the Jaguar Tribes. I don't like jungle and it's relatively easy to bolster them.

It's a hard void to fill, the Aztec Gods of Darkness could just find other vampire intelligences to work for them.

An unpowered robot is inanimate, moreover you can explicitly fix "MDC armor" and do "structural repair of MDC objects." You may have to take it apart first and repair the components, and it comes out to nearly a minute per point of MDC, but that is still faster (and free) compared to the regular rules for repairing damaged vehicles.

You can repair certain components, but you can't fix electronic components. I can see it as helping out operators with MDC Environmental armors, power armors and robots, but not doing the entire job itself.

The explicit MDC armor can refer to simple ancient MDC armors, not necessarily advanced ones like environmental with electronic components.

In theory any "animate object" can be temporarily inanimate, but I'm pretty sure when they say inanimate object they mean objects which are NEVER animate, such as the example of pottery.

[Eagle]

This is an interesting topic.

For years, I've thought about whether it would be possible for a group of very high-powered characters to gradually "fix" Rifts Earth by making it non-magical again. I was thinking that perhaps creative use of the Nazca line drawing powers could help with that. In the real world, decades and decades ago, there was a river in my hometown that regularly overflowed its banks and flooded parts of the city. Then in the 1920s or 30s, the US Army Corps of Engineers came in and dug a bunch of creeks and streams branching off from it to handle the overflow. They did such a good job that the river is nearly bone dry today (the city actually had to hire a company to mow the riverbed). Maybe it's possible to do something similar with ley lines.

Or if you've got access to time travel, maybe you can jump backwards and stop those 12 Glitterboys from crossing that border and starting the war. You only need to delay them for a day or two, enough for it to not be during the solstice.

As far as the scenario in this thread, I think you need to prioritize your bad guys. The Xiticix are obviously going to have to be taken care of relatively quickly. You can probably leave Archie alone for a while without too many problems. And with the right equipment and tons of out-of-character knowledge, a single character could take him out. The Splugorth are probably going to have to be your last target. Them or maybe China. But you have to be careful when dealing with Atlantis, because you don't want to bring in invasion fleets from the Three Galaxies or anything. Rifts Earth is very profitable for Splynncryth and he's going to want to keep it that way. Escalating tensions there could be a problem for the heroes. You'll want to at least disguise the appearance of cooperation between the various human empires for as long as you can.

You might need to open up some portals and dump a few thousand strategic nukes onto Atlantis. Render the entire continent uninhabitable for ten thousand years. You may not kill Splynncryth, but the center of his empire would disappear. He's got no reason left to stay. Of course he might turn around and do the same to the rest of the planet out of spite, but that may not be politically feasible for him. You need a character who is an expert on Three Galaxies politics to guide you there.

I'd suggest having a high level "alien intelligence assassination squad". Some super-munchkin'ed out, ultra-cheesy group of characters who are designed to kill an intelligence in like one melee round at most. A custom 'borg that can fire 80 mini-missiles in one action. A mage that has Anti-Magic Cloud on tap. A guy with a dozen attacks and a soul-drinking rune weapon. That kind of thing. You need to be able to put the fear of god into those nasty creatures. Make Earth an unappealing place. Those Vampire Bone Spears the Coalition keeps in the Black Vault can almost kill a Vampire Intelligence in a single hit. The right group of well-equipped guys could maraud through a lot of the big villains in the Rifts Worldbooks.

If you can make contact with the Megaversal Legion, and convince them that they're actually on Earth again, you might be able to convince them to assist in a "make Earth safe for humans and D-Bees that don't eat humans" campaign.

Actually, that's a good use for Archie, even if he's irredeemable. Somebody with the right telemechanics abilities should be able to read all his files without alerting him to what you're doing. Arrange so that he gets hold of some Megaversal Legion technology, as well as some Kittani and Naruni stuff. Let him spend time reverse engineering it, figuring out how it works. Then you swipe his files with your telemechanics guys and you send it to your Coalition factories.

Realistically, you need to start assembling a space fleet to protect Rifts Earth. Perhaps it's time to seek an audience with the Promethians on Phase World. Or capture one of those Dominator Death Star things or something. Because as soon as you get Earth all cleaned up, somebody else is going to want to come in and take it away from you.

[Blue_Lion]

Mexico City is technically the safest place for humans on earth

Source?

Fix Canada. Calgary needs to be more or less nuked from orbit and the rift closed somehow.

I don't see why nuking is necessary. Just siege the rift and bury it under something that would create suffocation problems for most invaders.

The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Killing him could be very difficult and pointless if he finds an ally to resurrect him. All you really need to do to minimize his impact is have whale singers on patrol singing to sever his Reachers, and then just snipe him outside of the range of his magic to keep him from doing anything meaningful in any location.

you're acting like the CS has legitimate claims. They don't and never have had them.

Source? Nemo has pretty legitimate claims to US inheritance and he recognizes them. Republicans also, and they propped up the CS, can't exactly blame them for not deferring to a shadow government.

Go look at Lazlo. They have magic, science, technology, TW items, and are a freaking utopia. They have education, they have security, they have food, they have water, they have electricity, they have modern amenities. They even have it rigged up where you can make TW items that you can run by plugging them into a wall socket.

A utopia for the few. They clearly are not serving the common man and stabilizing the continent with the efficiency that the CS does.

Lazlo is notoriously undetailed. How do you know how secure the common muggle is around there? How do we know that dragons like Plato and his ilk are treating humans fairly there? That place gets rose-colored glasses because it's Tarn's baby. Looking at it neutrally, what do we know?

Would be interested in a thread citing books about how great Lazlo is.

3. You go to Atlanta Georgia, rebuild the mound of time, and jump back to Chaos Earth.

Can someone point me in the direction of book/page for this? Sounds interesting.

You secure a source of bodies and start building an endless horde of undead armed and armored by the Kuznya. Since the time rules are vague, you'll want more necromancers and Kuznya, but that's doable.

Reminder that Mystic Kuznya are empowered by a canonical deity who is statted in one of the Rifters. Could he possibly take issue with you using his powers to arm skeletons run by selfish necromancers?

Better approach might be a good-aligned mage who simply knows necromancer spells (no alignment restiction like the OCC itself) or use those greater demons who have Kuznya abilities which aren't subject to being pulled back by deific whims.

A 3rd level shifter could probably manage this alone.

they (or someone better at AI cajoling) convince/hack the satellite to stop shooting and join the network. "What network," you ask? The one you're setting up that makes the satellites smarter (grid-links the AIs, gives 'em some extra servers to farm processes to).

This couldn't possibly backfire in the future, right?

When the Muluc intelligence dies its vampires all die (except the masters, who revert to human and are usually lynched)

What book/page mentions this? I don't remember reading it.

You follow-up with Camazotz (and present his head to Mexico City as a peace offering) and then Ixzotz.

I'm more concerned about the vampire-supporting gods in CB2 than I am the vampire-supporting demon (minor) lords in WB1.

the "second class citizen" for humans in Mexico city is better than "first class citizen" in the CS

I would be interested in debating this in a spinoff thread. What do you think happens to humans in Mexico City who refuse the blood tax? Which citizenry do you think has their free will more regularly abused with Hypnotic Suggestion?

At that point Mexico's pretty clean, you've got a bit of a cold war with the remaining vampires, but they're probably AFRAID of you now, so when you offer peace they'll probably take it.

Then the Aztec Gods show up to fill the power vacuum you created.

Asmodeus also visits his old hunting ground.

big part of stabilizing Rifts Earth is capping every nexus with a pyramid to regulate mana flow and reduce the random rift problem.

Notable mention: at every single Ley Line Nexus, if I have "Create Ley Line" from SA2, I can create 2 more nexuses. If a single Nazca Line Maker who knows this becomes aligned with wanting uncapped nexi, it will probably happen because he will be freer in sharing how to sacrifice 1D6 PPE to do it.

Run Mend the Broken over a used (and damaged) Naruni Bot and you up its market value by a lot

"used to repair inanimate objects" - robots are not inanimate
"not electronics or software" - some component of damaged high-tech MDC is often going to be electronics

inanimate means non living/lifless. As robots are non living they can be called inanimate objects.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/inanimate
adjective
1.
not animate; lifeless.
2.
spiritless; sluggish; dull.
3.
Linguistics. belonging to a syntactic category or having a semantic feature that is characteristic of words denoting objects, concepts, and beings regarded as lacking perception and volition (opposed to animate ).

A robot vehicle would be lifeless 1, have no spirit 2, and lack its own volition and perception 3. So can be found in all 3 parts of the meaning provided by that dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inanimate
1: not animate: a : not endowed with life or spirit an inanimate object b : lacking consciousness or power of motion an inanimate body
2: not animated or lively : dull

So using merrian-wester
The robot vehicle would be -not alive or having a spirit 1 a, lacking a consciousness 1b, and would not be lively on its own 2.

So it does appear that a robot vehicle fits all the definitions of inanimate and is an object. (only transferred intelligence would not match any of the definitions.)


It repairs physical damage, -That would include things such as the main body of a robot. Would not repair any electronic malfunctions but basic repairs it can do.

animate is not moving but a reference to life.(the confusion is likely do to calling cartoons and computer motion animation.)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/animate
1 : possessing or characterized by life : alive
2: full of life : animated
3: of or relating to animal life as opposed to plant life
4: referring to a living thing an animate noun

[IGNG]

Oh boy, the nazi-apologism again...

Coalition States aren't nazis, they're just presently lead by an emperor who studied a bunch of dictators and learned from them, not excluding the dictator of the Nazi regime.

No they are Nazi's.

[Blue_Lion]

Oh boy, the nazi-apologism again...

Coalition States aren't nazis, they're just presently lead by an emperor who studied a bunch of dictators and learned from them, not excluding the dictator of the Nazi regime.

No they are Nazi's.

There are statements on the book that say he patterned his regime after him and compare him to them, so it is reasonable for them to be called nazi. (More so as it is a highly raciest state that depending on where you are are at different points in the Nazi treatment of those they where racist against. Early in the war they just wanted them out of their territory, then they where rounded up to camps, then killed in concentration camps. The CS during the war with Tolkeen went through all those steps.)

Nazi in this case being used for racist militaristic state.

We get it axelman you are hard core CS fan boy that can not see the bad through your own bias, you even advocated ignoring how the CS is described to new players because you did not think it was fair.

[Eagle]

Let's please not start that argument again. I like this thread. Can we just all agree that the author intentionally drew parallels between the CS and the Nazis, but also gave notes to the GM on how to make them either not as bad, or even worse, depending on the needs of the individual campaign? Because that's what he did.

[HWalsh]

Let's please not start that argument again. I like this thread. Can we just all agree that the author intentionally drew parallels between the CS and the Nazis, but also gave notes to the GM on how to make them either not as bad, or even worse, depending on the needs of the individual campaign? Because that's what he did.

I'm not going to restart the CS are Nazis debate but... The thing is...

Unfortunately, for a number of us, trying to rebrand Nazis is a very sore spot. So when we see someone trying to defend the CS, for their Nazi-like behavior, the defenses used are often the same ones that were used to defend real-life Nazis. There are those of us who have a very strong reaction to that when we see it so it becomes second nature to oppose and educate.

[boring7]

Yeah, I'm done talking to Axel. None of his questions add anything to the discussion beyond argumentum ad nauseum. I even answered some of them before he asked them but he asks them anyway.

Moving on: The biggest challenge is keeping your growth on the Down-Low. The Minion War casts into sharp relief what we've known for a while, the Rifts Earth political landscape is a living thing that reacts to major shifts. If a new power becomes a legitimate threat a LOT of forces (like the Splugorth, Vampires, and Coalition) will stop pecking at each other to go put the new power back in its place. This rule is true whether you're a giant conquering army crushing opposition or a master manipulator flipping allies to your side. Even so, there are mitigating factors.

No one likes Vampires: Seriously, no one. This is honestly useful though, because the methods of fighting and controlling vampires are an exceptional example of "the right tools make any job easy" and no one is ever going to offer them a better deal. They'll always be half-mad dangerous monsters but you can be relatively confident when they backstab you, they'll be doing it alone.

No one pays attention to space: With the debris and the mutants and the gentleman's agreement to not just conquer Earth with a space fleet there is just no reason to look up. For the space-faring powers Earth's only recognized method of travel is Earth's only recognized value: lots and lots of rifts. Cleaning up Mars, scaling up its terraforming operations, and exploiting its natural resources would be rather easy to hide. Successfully flip all the Mutants in Orbit, flip/exterminate the bugs on Mars, and you can pretty well conceal shipyards and war factories while getting Earth situated.

Sudden gear change: I had an idea about fighting Brodkil a while back. Brodkil love their bionics, they also regenerate. It seems like if someone could invent the right spell they could cause the Brodkil regeneration to cause massive (and crippling) implant rejection. Dropping a giant Healy Bomb that renders augmentations useless is both powerful and hilariously ironic.

To go further with the NGR, beyond being tough as nails, what do the gargoyles and brodkil have going for them against the NGR and what sort of magic can be used to combat that? The Amulet spell seems like a useful one, mass-producing amulets to boost NGR troopers with see the invisible (if that's important), or even just boosting their magic/psychic resistances seems like a good investment. Amusingly there's no written limit to how many amulets you can wear, either.

[J_cobbers]

How to fix things?

1) Unify that major powers of NA. That means major policy and regime change within the CS and FoM. Free Quebecc needs to be brought peacefully back into the fold. Lazlo is probably the best political entity for a unified and accepting government, how you get there is pretty iffy. ARCHIE 3 and the Republicans have to learn to make nice nice, again no easy feat as both are supposed to be all super secret. If Archie has been discovered then a promise to him of a place at the table of a unified government and a role to play in the elimination of the Splugorth may be something that brings him on board. Playing to his ego as a force to save humanity, and be part of the ruling government may be the piece of candy that is needed.

Smaller kingdoms and countries is less a problem, NG and Ishpeming, Wykin, the Colorado baronies and so on will need some persuasion to join a unified government, but trade, diplomacy, unified goals of eliminating common enemies such as Splugorth, Deamons/deevils, Vamps and Xits and such should be used rather than brute force. Amnesty for law abiding Dbees whether new immigrants or natural born on earth needs to be established, and policies for dealing with these kinds of issues.

2) Eliminate major threats: Minion War needs to be resolved, Xits need to be culled and systematically eliminated hive by hive, Vamps staked out and eliminated, Nxla and its harvesters need to be destroyed and so on.

3) Nexus points need to have pyramids capping and controlling them, and you'll need trustworthy monitors to ensure those nexuses remain unabused and safe from those seeking to control them for nefarious purposes. I imagine major security checkpoints with a combo of tech, magic and psionic monitoring and security forces to do just that for each one. Permanent rifts if they can't be capped should have Antimagic clouds centered on them at all times and major military resources ready to take on any hostiles coming through, and immigration controls for those non-threats brought inadvertently to Rifts Earth. Actually that should be standard protocol for every nexus and pyramid. Treat every site as a transportation hub that requires immigration checks to make sure they are being used properly. Major bureaucracy and security issues, kinda like a futuristic TSA.

4) Reach out and strengthen alliances with other world powers: NGR is already on good terms with the CS and FQ, that can be expanded on with mutual benefits. The human and mutant societies in SA especially in the northern countries can help with fighting Vamps on a 2 front, divide and conquer style military campaign. Linking up with the New Navy by playing on the common history of the U.S. and a new enlightened view on magic and mutants will be important for securing sea trade, and battling pirate forces, sea monsters and splugorth raiders. I think joint naval missions would be the place to start a military alliance with a long term goal of integration into a military NATO like pact or full integration to the unified government.

5) Space, use cosmo-knights for initial exploration and 1st contact, and establish new satellite relays for communications with the colonies. Magic could be used to provide new resources to sp. Archie may eventually figure out he still has some connections to space, and those could be used as a jumping off point too. Once relations are established, trade and tourism between earth and space should get up running. As part of that the clean up of orbital debris and reprogramming of killer sats can begin. Using killer sats as a new asset, in collaboration with the orbital community, the new unified NA government can attack things like Xit hives, Splugorth raiders, bases and Vamp locations from orbit, or call on targeted strikes from emergent threats from uncontrolled rifts. Space is the ultimate strategic high ground and good relations should be a priority.

[Blue_Lion]

Fixing Rifts, the problem is if you make rifts safe you would also make it less interesting to play in.

Personally I would say start small and do it as kind of a Empire builder campaign.

Start with making 1 small town safe then expand its influence. Adding towns and cities into its network one at a time. Make the Pcs be the driving force in this. When it gets large enough its influence would be able to possibly influence CS policy.

You do not need to close the perm rifts but do what the CS did at the rift they have on lock down. Place a large military force to contain it.

[taalismn]

Grab hold of enough ley line nexi and cap/control them so you can start up your own interdimesnional trade center, interest enough parties on both Rifts Earth and off it that have enough potential wealth, investors, and products lined up so you have steady trade going in both directions, and enough people willing to protect your new trade network from likely rivals/poachers/disruptors. Make it clear that it's not in anybody's best interests to upset the applecart, and that anybody who is anybody can profit from the trade establishment, even if all they're doing is running supporting industries. Get enough money collected from the trade traffic, you can start expanding your troubleshooting operations by acquiring the materials, technologies, and specialists to get the job(s) done.

[Greepnak]

I'd suggest having a high level "alien intelligence assassination squad". Some super-munchkin'ed out, ultra-cheesy group of characters who are designed to kill an intelligence in like one melee round at most. A custom 'borg that can fire 80 mini-missiles in one action. A mage that has Anti-Magic Cloud on tap. A guy with a dozen attacks and a soul-drinking rune weapon. That kind of thing. You need to be able to put the fear of god into those nasty creatures. Make Earth an unappealing place. Those Vampire Bone Spears the Coalition keeps in the Black Vault can almost kill a Vampire Intelligence in a single hit. The right group of well-equipped guys could maraud through a lot of the big villains in the Rifts Worldbooks.

Where can I find the black vault info? this is highly relevant to at least motivating one of my pcs, he is less driven by ideals than by shinies.

As for the CS =/= nazis thing... I've sort of gone the path that they went that way to turn barbarian mad max-esque Dark Age humanity into something that could out-scary the scary stuff running around everywhere (people get eaten by invisible monsters and such as a regular thing in my highly grimdark earth). The intent of the whole shadow conspiracy behind things is to get the CS (at the right time) into a losing war, blame the failure on certain parts of the nazi-ism, and control the zeitgeist so that the reconstruction era CS becomes more liberal. Establishing safe long range comms and having a lot of the ground-level CS people armed with personal experiences of mage and d-bee heroism when it all goes down will be a huge factor, and the tolkeen war was a huge setback to the Plan, which is what led to the spiral of events that brought the PC supergroup to the attention of the shadow conspirators. The guy that did the camps is totally going to die.

If the Republicans had more than 4 paragraphs to detail about what they are on about I'd love to use them. Right now all I know is that they like the CS, dislike it's current leadership, and have some indeterminate number of cry-frozen NEMA troops read to throw into some major PTSD-in-the-making from the blurb in HoH.

Five hours per week isn't enough to really make my players into statesmen so having somebody playing Zordon to their power rangers and using them like special forces seems the best way to make this all flow I think.

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it? "We should use the Hammer of Dawn ALL THE TIME" type scenario for drilling out hives with orbital bombardment would be in keeping with rule of cool.

Fixing Rifts, the problem is if you make rifts safe you would also make it less interesting to play in.

Off to Wormwood! Though really, its so much work that I expect months of campaign out of the concept, and even if it doesnt work out, you admire a person for trying more than for actually succeeding I think.

[boring7]

Where can I find the black vault info? this is highly relevant to at least motivating one of my pcs, he is less driven by ideals than by shinies.

Adventure Sourcebook - Chi-Town 'Burbs 03. Don't put all your hopes in it, it's a fun little list of rando magic BS items that the Coalition Army/police have confiscated and stuffed in a vault(s). Some are cool, some are lame, I don't think anything is truly "epic artifact" level (though with rifts that's a hard distinction to make). Mostly it has a large NUMBER of toys to look at and say, "ooh, shiny."

...the Plan...the shadow conspirators, etc.

Fair enough. When that level of necessary evil is on the table the solutions become fairly simple. First you take over the ministry of propaganda by hook, crook, or assassination. The new head and major talkers won't change anything yet, but they'll be poised to.

After that you identify all the crazy "true believer" space-fascists and start working your way through them. Most will be corrupt hypocrites who enjoy the fruits of magic or are willing to make a deal with the dyvval (dadjokes.com) for immortality or whatnot. A corrupt general trades a bunch of civilians for magic youth/health, but you have a wizard very publicly rescue those civilians from demonic enslavement; an evil Senator tries to set up a magical terrorist attack but the plot is publicly revealed (as well as the senator's involvement) and the would-be FoM terrorist is stopped by a mighty dragon.

For the less-easy targets you make the assassinations look like accidents, or like baseline humans did it. Perhaps a human who lost his D-bee friends "steals" a Glitterboy-killer and drops a pile of missiles on the guy who ordered the raid before shouting a "this is why you suck" speech (and then probably dying). Perhaps a bad guy just slips and falls. Maybe a chemist mixes up/collects some "xiticix frenzy" scent and stealthily dumps it on a troublesome colonel who is near the front. The main force is rescued by magical intervention but only after the colonel shows cowardice in the face of the enemy (Cowardice! *BLAM*) or gets eaten by bug-men.

In each case the ministry of propaganda starts with "strategic incompetence", failing to lie properly about each death. "Accidental" truth results in a number of reporters getting fired and jailed (which jail? Oh, the one that's on the southern border and actually run by people loyal to the PCs and really nice inside) but the damage is slowly being done while the bitter and hate-mongering holdouts dwindle in number. The tone of the propaganda slowly changes because there's no one left to be upset about that, the "accidentally NOT attacking magic users" becomes "actively promoting magic users", and all the jailed/exiled reformers get to come back.

At least in theory, this is a rosy scenario. Real manipulation of the masses is messy.

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it? "We should use the Hammer of Dawn ALL THE TIME" type scenario for drilling out hives with orbital bombardment would be in keeping with rule of cool.

During. You want to start space fairly early, because it's a mess up there and there are a LOT of killsats which are NOT all controlled by the people up there. But once you deploy the Hammer of Dawn you also alert EVERY major power to its existence. If the Splugorth know there is/are weapon(s) over their heads they are going to start taking steps.

Also the killsats aren't necessarily that powerful. The ones in the book literally can't target things on earth (minimum stable orbit is over 160 km, longest range gun in the book is maybe 3 km), but that assumes you CARE about precision targets (a big enough boom doesn't care if it's a kilometer off-target) and/or use the satellites in the book. This gets into the same territory as Rifts nukes and explosions, and why Aunt Phyllis is a crazy *****. But basically you're going to need to house-rule things for the orbital weapons.

One idea that will probably help in fighting the Xiticix is hitting the hives in the center of the territory. When those get severely weakened and the outside enemies disappear the Xiticix will turn inward (they fight each other a lot) to claim the newly-opened territory.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'm looking at magic in society as a disruptive thing like industrialization's effects on World War 1. Enhance 1 guy's ability to kill thanks to a browning automatic and war doesn't go away, it just gets oh so much worse. Now let him summon meteors and raise the dead. This leads logically to me to attempts at magic societies being unable to expand beyond the city state level where the firm thumb of a bigger, badder dude can keep things in line like the Lords of Magic in Dweomer. By extension that's also the big conspiracy's logic and a better way needs to be found.

You're missing the point that, in Rifts, Magic isn't any more powerful than science. An MD Pistol is more dangerous than a level 4 spell that does ranged MD damage. Instead you're acting like the CS has legitimate claims. They don't and never have had them.

The Mechanoids came to Earth because a lone shifter decided that he wanted to show off how to open a Rift.
That was almost a disaster not only for Earth, but for the entire dimension of Rifts Earth.
Because of a single mage, casting a single spell.

You don't start by empowering a monster like Prosek.

The OP's Prosek doesn't seem to be the standard Prosek in the books.

[Killer Cyborg]

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it?

Getting the orbiters on board would be the single biggest step to fixing everything else.

[IGNG]

The OP's Prosek doesn't seem to be the standard Prosek in the books.

The question was how to fix rifts earth not someone's homebrew.

[Killer Cyborg]

The OP's Prosek doesn't seem to be the standard Prosek in the books.

The question was how to fix rifts earth not someone's homebrew.

You'll have to quote what question you're talking about, who said it, and where.

In general, the conversation in a thread revolves around the original post by default, and in the original post for this thread, the OP lays out the context of the setting they're working on, then asks our thoughts on what to do with that setting.

[taalismn]

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it?

Getting the orbiters on board would be the single biggest step to fixing everything else.

Accurate. Orbital. Bombardment.
That solves a lot of problems.

[boring7]

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it?

Getting the orbiters on board would be the single biggest step to fixing everything else.

Accurate. Orbital. Bombardment.
That solves a lot of problems.

If that works. The only killsats I've found have a fairly limited range.

To be fair, I am pretty sure the fluff text mentions orbital-to-ground weapons. I am just curious if there are better weapons in the books or homebrew statted up.

[Killer Cyborg]

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it?

Getting the orbiters on board would be the single biggest step to fixing everything else.

Accurate. Orbital. Bombardment.
That solves a lot of problems.

If that works. The only killsats I've found have a fairly limited range.

Dude, just drop rocks. That'll do the job.

To be fair, I am pretty sure the fluff text mentions orbital-to-ground weapons. I am just curious if there are better weapons in the books or homebrew statted up.

None that spring to mind.
Although long-range missiles can travel up to 1800 miles, more than enough range to make it through the atmosphere.

[Axelmania]

Yeah, I'm done talking to Axel. None of his questions add anything to the discussion beyond argumentum ad nauseum. I even answered some of them before he asked them but he asks them anyway.

It is not ad nauseum to ask boring7 to source a claim that Master Vampires survive and revert to human if the Vampire Intelligence dies.

That is the first time I ever heard of it.

I do not see any answers to my questions from you prior to my asking them.

If I did miss one, it is not an argument to ask a question. Argument is if I voice disagreement with your answer.

I did not argue when I asked about Georgia. That added something g to the discussion, clarification to your comment for those unfamiliar with Swamps.

[boring7]

The xiticix do need to die... I wonder if that should come before getting Space on board, or after it?

Getting the orbiters on board would be the single biggest step to fixing everything else.

Accurate. Orbital. Bombardment.
That solves a lot of problems.

If that works. The only killsats I've found have a fairly limited range.

Dude, just drop rocks. That'll do the job.

To be fair, I am pretty sure the fluff text mentions orbital-to-ground weapons. I am just curious if there are better weapons in the books or homebrew statted up.

None that spring to mind.
Although long-range missiles can travel up to 1800 miles, more than enough range to make it through the atmosphere.

Oh yeah, there are enough examples of "making it work" in fluff, I'm just curious about stats. If there are any and what you'd do in lieu of them (and whether or not they MATTER for the campaign, possibly not)

I *also* spend too much time thinking about real-world physics, which is admittedly silly when Rifts Physics went on holiday to Tahiti 300 years ago and hasn't been seen since. Lasers are actually problematic orbital weapons because the beam spreads out too much (some fun commentary about the concept). The alternatives all use ammunition (even a particle beam needs, you know, particles) though in the case of the plasma and particle weapons you don't necessarily need MUCH. Just have a few tanks of water that gets supercharged, ionized, and ejected downward. Likewise the "big rocks" plan doesn't need particularly BIG rocks if you accelerate them enough.

This is all tangential. Sorry.

Moving back to something resembling a point, presumably MOST of the satellite weapons are controlled by the local space nation-states and most of the ground-targeting (and often nuke-carrying) satellites are pre-rifts (and thus uncontrolled). Bringing the new ones in is mostly a matter of remotely reprogramming (and not a high priority) while getting the nuclear ones (and putting up new ones) is a more complicated matter, probably involving hacking, re-programming, etc. But ultimately a Cosmo-knight can face-tank and (if necessary) kill anything up there. It's mostly a matter of time spent.

I must also reiterate my opinion that I still feel that it's a weapon you want to hold off on using though, for as long as possible. Rifts Earth is supposed to have lousy communication and information flow, but at the same time the Splugorth take slaves from EVERYWHERE and inevitably are going to get the rumors of death raining from the sky. When that happens, a lot of little evil empires are going to sit up and take notice, get involved.

As such, I really like the idea of throwing vampires at the Xiticix. Establish massive food production (easily done) for human settlements, establish blood collection branches in every settlement (food buys blood) and use the blood to feed and pay the vampires you hurl at the Xiticix. Vamps are weak, they'll lose any straight-up fight with a bug, but after the fight is over and the dead are collected, all the vampires get back up while the bug warriors stay dead. The main challenge becomes resupplying them with bomb vests and blood, digging out new tunnels for them to hide in during the day (you use the dig spell, in a TW device if need be), and occasionally rescuing them from those rare occasions that the bugs manage to trap them with sudden irrigation.

Once the Xiticix are cleaned out you open up a lot of empty space you'll want to fill up with something, probably preferring humans. One option might simply be to use the Time Travel cheat, spend the intervening centuries collecting people, making them strong enough to defend themselves (OCCs and MD gear), and putting them into stasis so that when the time is right you have not only a frozen army, but a whole bunch of frozen communities. Use a few magic workarounds (Stone magic, Create Wood&ironwood, Create Steel, Good old megacrete) and construction bots to make pre-fab fortresses the population can operate out of as they build their towns to live in.

Or you could rift in refugee D-bees, or try to build everything from rescued slaves and refugees from Tolkeen. Other problems arise from that...probably other things I'm not thinking of.

Or just leave the place empty. You'll want constant patrols running the leylines, looking for "new arrivals" to be assessed and either diplomatically engaged or violently removed, but that's just a job, doesn't even need special skills beyond "pilot the nearly-self-piloting TW vehicle" and "maintain regular check-ins".

[Greepnak]

After that you identify all the crazy "true believer" space-fascists and start working your way through them. Most will be corrupt hypocrites who enjoy the fruits of magic or are willing to make a deal with the dyvval (dadjokes.com) for immortality or whatnot. A corrupt general trades a bunch of civilians for magic youth/health, but you have a wizard very publicly rescue those civilians from demonic enslavement; an evil Senator tries to set up a magical terrorist attack but the plot is publicly revealed (as well as the senator's involvement) and the would-be FoM terrorist is stopped by a mighty dragon.

For the less-easy targets you make the assassinations look like accidents, or like baseline humans did it. Perhaps a human who lost his D-bee friends "steals" a Glitterboy-killer and drops a pile of missiles on the guy who ordered the raid before shouting a "this is why you suck" speech (and then probably dying). Perhaps a bad guy just slips and falls. Maybe a chemist mixes up/collects some "xiticix frenzy" scent and stealthily dumps it on a troublesome colonel who is near the front. The main force is rescued by magical intervention but only after the colonel shows cowardice in the face of the enemy (Cowardice! *BLAM*) or gets eaten by bug-men.

In each case the ministry of propaganda starts with "strategic incompetence", failing to lie properly about each death. "Accidental" truth results in a number of reporters getting fired and jailed (which jail? Oh, the one that's on the southern border and actually run by people loyal to the PCs and really nice inside) but the damage is slowly being done while the bitter and hate-mongering holdouts dwindle in number. The tone of the propaganda slowly changes because there's no one left to be upset about that, the "accidentally NOT attacking magic users" becomes "actively promoting magic users", and all the jailed/exiled reformers get to come back.

At least in theory, this is a rosy scenario. Real manipulation of the masses is messy.

During. You want to start space fairly early, because it's a mess up there and there are a LOT of killsats which are NOT all controlled by the people up there. But once you deploy the Hammer of Dawn you also alert EVERY major power to its existence. If the Splugorth know there is/are weapon(s) over their heads they are going to start taking steps.

Also the killsats aren't necessarily that powerful. The ones in the book literally can't target things on earth (minimum stable orbit is over 160 km, longest range gun in the book is maybe 3 km), but that assumes you CARE about precision targets (a big enough boom doesn't care if it's a kilometer off-target) and/or use the satellites in the book. This gets into the same territory as Rifts nukes and explosions, and why Aunt Phyllis is a crazy *****. But basically you're going to need to house-rule things for the orbital weapons.

One idea that will probably help in fighting the Xiticix is hitting the hives in the center of the territory. When those get severely weakened and the outside enemies disappear the Xiticix will turn inward (they fight each other a lot) to claim the newly-opened territory.

Sessy ideas for the propaganda and xiticix bit thanks! And true about the splugorth being like the "ugh, I can't get anything large scale done because then the politics change with the all-powerful aliens" issue...

I thought about luna base having a moon laser. Because moon laser and I saw Force Awakens (and disliked it, but I like spheres with rays coming out of them apparently)

I don't think my players would get on board with using vampires vs xiticix. One is a cosmo-knight that used to be human chattel on a blood ranch in Muluc territory the other is an elevated godling whose human brother in psi-batt was lost in Operation Night Owl.

[Greepnak]

The OP's Prosek doesn't seem to be the standard Prosek in the books.

The question was how to fix rifts earth not someone's homebrew.

You'll have to quote what question you're talking about, who said it, and where.

In general, the conversation in a thread revolves around the original post by default, and in the original post for this thread, the OP lays out the context of the setting they're working on, then asks our thoughts on what to do with that setting.

My J-pro is basically lelouche of the rebellion-ing things. Two faces, still an innocent-trampling monster with a cause because it's only ever the villains that try to take the long view when they consider what Good is. Think Dr Doom, but not acting alone. He's basically after a better world 100 years from now and doesnt see that happening without throwing today's world on the fire in strategic ways. And he really wants to out-immortal Alistair Dunscon and get Jason back. RIFTS npcs are all exactly the "die the hero or live to see yourself become the villain" bit from Batman. Dunscon. Creed. Etc. Even Grandpa Prosek the first just wanted to go hard on protecting humans, the anti supernatural stuff all came after Nostrous went bad. Because nobody can stay good intentioned more than 20 years in rifts.

Karl is exactly the books though, which I explain exactly as it is in HoH... he actually believes the super humanist stuff he says. A central theme of my writing is the difficulty in pinpointing what Good and Goodness really are and how you define them. By intent, action, or result? come to plato's cave and roll some dice.

[boring7]

I don't think my players would get on board with using vampires vs xiticix. One is a cosmo-knight that used to be human chattel on a blood ranch in Muluc territory the other is an elevated godling whose human brother in psi-batt was lost in Operation Night Owl.

Well that's a shame, probably going to end up killing all of them then.

Other ideas I had forgotten...

-Link up the Lemurians and the CS. Lemurians at base are surprisingly close to the CS range of "acceptable" and (if memory serves) can unilaterally solve the Coalition's food problem. You keep their magic on the down-low, emphasize how human they are as well as their similarity to the technically-citizen psychics, and emphasize how if Earth is Humanity's manifest destiny you need someone who can live in/hold the 70% of it that is covered in water. Biggest challenge becomes delivering food over great distance.

-Pull the Xiticix deeper into the Minion War. Run covert operations leading forces of demons and dyvvals into Bug territory or vice-versa. I doubt there are ANY rules for it currently but perhaps a shifter or a combination of magic users comes up with a way to "hijack" rifts and move them. Adventure hook: The party has to find out where a major staging ground in Hades is. They have to find out when the demons are about to open a rift (or find one that has a semi-permanent rift), and do something (maybe get a "portal reading" with a macguffin TW device, or plant one without the demons noticing) on the Hades side. The PCs then have to sneak/fight their way deep into the hivelands WITH a macguffin and/or a VIP (and squishy) Shifter, and then hijack the Rift so it opens in the middle of Hiveland Canada instead of relatively-safe Minnesota. After that it's a all about running away before the two forces meet and begin grinding each other up.

[ShadowLogan]

They're doing this because they want North America, at least, to be a safe home for humanity and to change the view of the Splugorth of Atlantis from seeing humans as slave stock/amusement to a legitimate entity to be feared or bargained with.

This is unlikely to happen. Humanity won't be feared by Atlantis, and I doubt they'd have the ability to bargin with them either. IINM Atlantis can take the entire planet, holding it is another matter (more from Rifts than individual powers already present, they can also crush the 'bugs and Vampires).

Fix the Sky. Orbiting satellites are crucial. How would you do that, especially if you had cosmo knights to work with?

This is unlikely. You can't get into orbit (from Earth's surface) due to the containment policies of the Oribtals, and they don't listen (or respond) to messages from the surface (Archie-3 hacked his way in and operates stealthly). So in order to get into orbit from Earth's surface you'd need to be able to counter what ever the Orbitals do for containment, which appears to be pretty difficult. That means you have to use Rifts (or Ley Lines) to travel into space (relative to Earth), and do so to locations that the Oribtals aren't watching like a hawk (ex on the Moon).

Mars has some advantages, but given that its home to the Bugs and Arkhons (SA2) you'd have to take care of the Arkhons before the Bugs. You'd be better off coming out at one of the outer gas giants, but then getting to Earth is going to be much more demanding and the Oribtals likely will see you coming to Earth (their ability to project into the outer solar system is limited, so likely coming out here means they aren't going to go after you). Mercury and Venus are possible, but have their own set of problems that make them unlikely destinations.

Fix International Travel. Possibly resolvable if the CS can solve the above and integrate magic ? The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Killing the Lord of the Deep see WB7 and its requirements.

International Travel is already possible. There are numerous powers on Rifts Earth that essentially engage in International Travel: CS/FQ (SA and Europe), NGR (NA), Atlantis (SA1, Africa, Europe, NA), New Navy & Horune (for all practical purposes). What you really need is more of it by certain groups, but they need a justification for it.

New Balance of Terror. Somehow get Phase World tech into hands of major human powers like the CS and NGR maybe without putting the Splugorth into " OUR KITTANI SHIPS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUNNNNNN" mode? Maybe?

Humans can travel to Phase World and buy the stuff. It isn't just the Splugorth that you have to worry about, its the other Inter-dimensional powers that have an interest in Rifts Earth becoming ticked off and also taking action to keep the status quo as they like it. And NA humans aren't likely to be able to stand up to them as those powers have resources that they can employ to simply overwhelm them.

Atlantis Empire also includes 3 whole planets to draw from. The Naruni are known to reposes entire planets to collect on debts. NA just doesn't have the resource base to handle that directly if either of those two factions ever wanted to stop pulling their punches... Never mind other factions coming in that we know nothing about.

Although long-range missiles can travel up to 1800 miles, more than enough range to make it through the atmosphere.

All missiles (MiO pg83) also receive x2 range in space, Earth's atmosphere's effective reach is less than 100miles (IIRC) which means you get 97% of the range or better after doubling in space, for all practical purposes might as well consider it x2.

Re: orbit-surface weapons in the books
The Archimedes Rift on the Moon has a Killer Satellite trained on it at all times. There are a few ways to achieve this that impact the range of the actual weapon (which isn't listed, but for practical purposes you can target anything coming out of the Rift, but we don't know the actual range), but that is the only orbit-surface weapon I can think of in MiO. WB5's entry on the Triax intercontinental transport mentions that 100,000ft (~20miles) is the maximum safe altitude one can fly, suggesting that the Oribtals either use missiles to project that far down (MRMs would do it) or have other weapons that can reach that far that haven't been detailed.

[DhAkael]

"Sympathy for the Devil" much?
All this pro-Prosek garbage is beginning to make me ill.
Yes, there are -ahem- GOODE Cs troopers; note that...TROOPS. re; line soldiers. The high echellons are EVIL. End it.
full stop.
Prosek Sr. & Jr. being the worst of the worst.
I don't care how much spin doctoring one does.

[HWalsh]

"Sympathy for the Devil" much?
All this pro-Prosek garbage is beginning to make me ill.
Yes, there are -ahem- GOODE Cs troopers; note that...TROOPS. re; line soldiers. The high echellons are EVIL. End it.
full stop.
Prosek Sr. & Jr. being the worst of the worst.
I don't care how much spin doctoring one does.

Yeah, while I feel the same way... You will never convince the pro-Prosek faction about it. I don't get it... I just recommend trying to ignore it, make your piece when you can and vet any games you are in. If the GM is pro-CS... Just say no and walk away.

[taalismn]

[

Yeah, while I feel the same way... You will never convince the pro-Prosek faction about it. I don't get it... I just recommend trying to ignore it, make your piece when you can and vet any games you are in. If the GM is pro-CS... Just say no and walk away.

Because Prosek supposedly stands for Humanity First(and only), and the fear that open tolerance and welcoming of d-bees will result in, several generations down the road, the native Earth humans being crowded out of their native soil. A stable Earth without local Humanity firmly and unchallengeably in charge, numbers and power-wise, is not a win-situation from that perspective.
That's a powerful incentive to the human population, in-game, to put on their Soviet-style, Nazi-brand, Pol Pot-tinted blinders to what Prosek is really doing to not just d-bees, but biological humans, intellectuals, and anybody else who disagrees with the Prosek-Cult State.

[Blue_Lion]

I got it so obvious.

To unbreak rifts you need to get rid of magic so a device that siphons all magic off ley lines. Thus retruning the level of magic to what it was during the golden age of man.

That would close all active rifts and reduce the number of rifts.
With the lower level of magic few mages will come into power.
Many super natural threats will leave, the sploogy would likely leave.
SN and creatures of magic would become SDC.
Magic weapons would deal sdc.

[Killer Cyborg]

I got it so obvious.

To unbreak rifts you need to get rid of magic so a device that siphons all magic off ley lines. Thus retruning the level of magic to what it was during the golden age of man.

That would close all active rifts and reduce the number of rifts.
With the lower level of magic few mages will come into power.
Many super natural threats will leave, the sploogy would likely leave.

Yup.
The trick there is getting a device that can absorb that much power.

SN and creatures of magic would become SDC.
Magic weapons would deal sdc.

Currently, I believe that canon is that Rifts is a mega-damage dimension in its own right, and that Mega-damage isn't caused by the boosted ley lines.

[dreicunan]

RE rebuilding the minor temple back into the time temple from WB 27: That won't help you change anything. It is made quite clear that if you end up at any kind of key moment in history, you go intangible. If you actually try to change anything, you go intangible and then get recalled; if you went through with any other people and anyone tries to change anything, everyone gets recalled.

[boring7]

RE rebuilding the minor temple back into the time temple from WB 27: That won't help you change anything. It is made quite clear that if you end up at any kind of key moment in history, you go intangible. If you actually try to change anything, you go intangible and then get recalled; if you went through with any other people and anyone tries to change anything, everyone gets recalled.

The plan is to specifically not change anything. Instead, you just use it to steal extra time. A LOT of empire-building plots become easier if you have a few decades or centuries quietly building up.

"But that won't work!" you say.

Well, maybe not, but if it does it's a GREAT way to get a large army of soldiers, specialists, and good old citizens built up and ready to colonize an area. Definitely worth a try.

[Blue_Lion]

I got it so obvious.

To unbreak rifts you need to get rid of magic so a device that siphons all magic off ley lines. Thus retruning the level of magic to what it was during the golden age of man.

That would close all active rifts and reduce the number of rifts.
With the lower level of magic few mages will come into power.
Many super natural threats will leave, the sploogy would likely leave.

Yup.
The trick there is getting a device that can absorb that much power.

SN and creatures of magic would become SDC.
Magic weapons would deal sdc.

Currently, I believe that canon is that Rifts is a mega-damage dimension in its own right, and that Mega-damage isn't caused by the boosted ley lines.

So it changed from they where MDC do to they high level of magic.

[dreicunan]

RE rebuilding the minor temple back into the time temple from WB 27: That won't help you change anything. It is made quite clear that if you end up at any kind of key moment in history, you go intangible. If you actually try to change anything, you go intangible and then get recalled; if you went through with any other people and anyone tries to change anything, everyone gets recalled.

The plan is to specifically not change anything. Instead, you just use it to steal extra time. A LOT of empire-building plots become easier if you have a few decades or centuries quietly building up.

"But that won't work!" you say.

Well, maybe not, but if it does it's a GREAT way to get a large army of soldiers, specialists, and good old citizens built up and ready to colonize an area. Definitely worth a try.

I'm pretty sure that quietly building up an empire would count as changing things. The general concept is worth a try, but you won't be traveling back in time through that rebuilt mound to do it (unless your GM decides to ignore that part of the entry).

[Axelmania]

The high echellons are EVIL. End it. full stop.

I guess this depends on how inclusive "high" is to you. Carol Black seems like a high-ranking person to me, in charge of Psi-Division, and she is good (Scrupulous). When I look at the hierarchy of COs on CWCp50, her Psyscape rank of Lieutenant Colonel doesn't seem all that high, but when we consider that she "will soon" (WB12p147) be a Brigadier General (promoted up 2 ranks (the 5th highest rank you can have) it takes on greater importance.

We should keep in mind there are many high-ranking unstatted NPCs with unknown alignments, such as 5-star general Charles reed Baxter or 4-star general Thomas Lopez. They are members of the Executive Council on CWC pg 36 and I think would qualify as 'high echelon'.

Pg 218 of CWC has a non-evil General, Ross Underhill, who is Anarchist. Although not a listed member of the council, he is presumably a 4-star by default, and notable.

CWC 46 says the average citizen is good or selfish (and 'not inherently evil') while CWC 47 says 20% of the military is "anarchist and evil", while CWC 48 says 15% of CS soldiers are evil (which mathematically I guess means 5% anarchist?) so what % of leadership do you think is evil and why?

The closest guideline I can find is CWC 45 which says "virtually the entire power base of the current Coalition States are fundamentally self-serving villains". It's a bit unclear to me what the 'power base' means though. I don't see it as synonymous with 'upper echelon'. The power base is not his generals, because they are mentioned separately and as merely "many" rather than "virtually the entire".

This could for example, mean doctors like Fronval/Lansport/Clinton (cwc 36 council) or Mr. Wilpepper, prof Korehira or Judge Martingale. 5 of the 13 named members of the council are generals, so their mere 'many' should not be discounted.

Prosek Sr. & Jr. being the worst of the worst.

Guys like Bradford or Drogue is arguably worse than these two.

[Greepnak]

I don't think my players would get on board with using vampires vs xiticix. One is a cosmo-knight that used to be human chattel on a blood ranch in Muluc territory the other is an elevated godling whose human brother in psi-batt was lost in Operation Night Owl.

Well that's a shame, probably going to end up killing all of them then.

Other ideas I had forgotten...

-Link up the Lemurians and the CS. Lemurians at base are surprisingly close to the CS range of "acceptable" and (if memory serves) can unilaterally solve the Coalition's food problem. You keep their magic on the down-low, emphasize how human they are as well as their similarity to the technically-citizen psychics, and emphasize how if Earth is Humanity's manifest destiny you need someone who can live in/hold the 70% of it that is covered in water. Biggest challenge becomes delivering food over great distance.

-Pull the Xiticix deeper into the Minion War. Run covert operations leading forces of demons and dyvvals into Bug territory or vice-versa. I doubt there are ANY rules for it currently but perhaps a shifter or a combination of magic users comes up with a way to "hijack" rifts and move them. Adventure hook: The party has to find out where a major staging ground in Hades is. They have to find out when the demons are about to open a rift (or find one that has a semi-permanent rift), and do something (maybe get a "portal reading" with a macguffin TW device, or plant one without the demons noticing) on the Hades side. The PCs then have to sneak/fight their way deep into the hivelands WITH a macguffin and/or a VIP (and squishy) Shifter, and then hijack the Rift so it opens in the middle of Hiveland Canada instead of relatively-safe Minnesota. After that it's a all about running away before the two forces meet and begin grinding each other up.

I like the lemurian idea a lot. I think shifters can change the destination of dimension spells if they sense them being cast by someone else.. not sure about switching rifts that are still open but hmmm.

:
The high echellons are EVIL. End it. full stop.

It's a mix. A central theme of my game's writing is how sticky it is to truly define evil. Trolley problem, or the Kill Baby Hitler problem.

Some of the CS leadership is straight horrible (General Drogue, Dr Desmond Bradford) the others (Underhill, Carol Black, maybe Holmes) are not, and the CS is liberal in a lot of ways (Rights for psychics, equal rights for men and women, etc). Free Quebec doesnt even treat psychics as humans but they dont get the same kind of bad press Chi-town does because Prosek gives a face to project godwin's law onto. The NGR also struggles to give nonhumans any rights, and the Republic of Japan is kind of a special case where it's subverted yet not (ROJ modern people go over to the spiritual japan way of thinking, but spiritual japanese almost never go over to the 22nd century life style... but they both have the benefit of shared racial identity/ancestry culture so they dont work against eachother and just let things happen which is probably why Japan will be TW-land in 30 years to my headcanon)

I got it so obvious.

To unbreak rifts you need to get rid of magic so a device that siphons all magic off ley lines. Thus retruning the level of magic to what it was during the golden age of man.

That would close all active rifts and reduce the number of rifts.
With the lower level of magic few mages will come into power.
Many super natural threats will leave, the sploogy would likely leave.

Yup.
The trick there is getting a device that can absorb that much power.

SN and creatures of magic would become SDC.
Magic weapons would deal sdc.

Currently, I believe that canon is that Rifts is a mega-damage dimension in its own right, and that Mega-damage isn't caused by the boosted ley lines.

You know.. this may actually be the way to manage the Splugorth. Splynn only hangs because rifts everywhere and it's entertaining as a voyeur. At least cap every damn nexus in NA with a pyramid and NA becomes boring to Splynncryth and he goes on making europe and africa worse instead.

"Sympathy for the Devil" much?
All this pro-Prosek garbage is beginning to make me ill.
Yes, there are -ahem- GOODE Cs troopers; note that...TROOPS. re; line soldiers. The high echellons are EVIL. End it.
full stop.
Prosek Sr. & Jr. being the worst of the worst.
I don't care how much spin doctoring one does.

Yeah, while I feel the same way... You will never convince the pro-Prosek faction about it. I don't get it... I just recommend trying to ignore it, make your piece when you can and vet any games you are in. If the GM is pro-CS... Just say no and walk away.

Depends on the tone your game wants to take. Villains you can kind of understand but not agree with make for more compelling stories, I think. But can turn them into Cobra from GI Joe fine if thats easier. Questioning the nature of good and evil and what motivates people to action in a survival setting full of invisible cannibal monsters isnt always what people consider a good time, but I enjoy it. I think the CS as presented in the assorted sourcebooks is meant to make a 20th century person uncomfortable, but to have firmly understandable roots in-setting for what they do. It helps to read that bit in the FoM book that when Chi-town first wanted to launch the CS the plan was to include all the kingdoms of magic just fine and dandy and it didnt work out that way because being able to raise the dead with your mind turns people into jerks eventually (nostrous dunscon).

They're doing this because they want North America, at least, to be a safe home for humanity and to change the view of the Splugorth of Atlantis from seeing humans as slave stock/amusement to a legitimate entity to be feared or bargained with.

This is unlikely to happen. Humanity won't be feared by Atlantis, and I doubt they'd have the ability to bargin with them either. IINM Atlantis can take the entire planet, holding it is another matter (more from Rifts than individual powers already present, they can also crush the 'bugs and Vampires).

Fix the Sky. Orbiting satellites are crucial. How would you do that, especially if you had cosmo knights to work with?

This is unlikely. You can't get into orbit (from Earth's surface) due to the containment policies of the Oribtals, and they don't listen (or respond) to messages from the surface (Archie-3 hacked his way in and operates stealthly). So in order to get into orbit from Earth's surface you'd need to be able to counter what ever the Orbitals do for containment, which appears to be pretty difficult. That means you have to use Rifts (or Ley Lines) to travel into space (relative to Earth), and do so to locations that the Oribtals aren't watching like a hawk (ex on the Moon).

Mars has some advantages, but given that its home to the Bugs and Arkhons (SA2) you'd have to take care of the Arkhons before the Bugs. You'd be better off coming out at one of the outer gas giants, but then getting to Earth is going to be much more demanding and the Oribtals likely will see you coming to Earth (their ability to project into the outer solar system is limited, so likely coming out here means they aren't going to go after you). Mercury and Venus are possible, but have their own set of problems that make them unlikely destinations.

Fix International Travel. Possibly resolvable if the CS can solve the above and integrate magic ? The Lord of the Deep or Atlantis can't do much about cross-planet ley line teleportation. But that being said, I want to kill the Lord of the Deep and bring the Lemurians on board. Thoughts?

Killing the Lord of the Deep see WB7 and its requirements.

International Travel is already possible. There are numerous powers on Rifts Earth that essentially engage in International Travel: CS/FQ (SA and Europe), NGR (NA), Atlantis (SA1, Africa, Europe, NA), New Navy & Horune (for all practical purposes). What you really need is more of it by certain groups, but they need a justification for it.

New Balance of Terror. Somehow get Phase World tech into hands of major human powers like the CS and NGR maybe without putting the Splugorth into " OUR KITTANI SHIPS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUNNNNNN" mode? Maybe?

Humans can travel to Phase World and buy the stuff. It isn't just the Splugorth that you have to worry about, its the other Inter-dimensional powers that have an interest in Rifts Earth becoming ticked off and also taking action to keep the status quo as they like it. And NA humans aren't likely to be able to stand up to them as those powers have resources that they can employ to simply overwhelm them.

Atlantis Empire also includes 3 whole planets to draw from. The Naruni are known to reposes entire planets to collect on debts. NA just doesn't have the resource base to handle that directly if either of those two factions ever wanted to stop pulling their punches... Never mind other factions coming in that we know nothing about.

Although long-range missiles can travel up to 1800 miles, more than enough range to make it through the atmosphere.

All missiles (MiO pg83) also receive x2 range in space, Earth's atmosphere's effective reach is less than 100miles (IIRC) which means you get 97% of the range or better after doubling in space, for all practical purposes might as well consider it x2.

Re: orbit-surface weapons in the books
The Archimedes Rift on the Moon has a Killer Satellite trained on it at all times. There are a few ways to achieve this that impact the range of the actual weapon (which isn't listed, but for practical purposes you can target anything coming out of the Rift, but we don't know the actual range), but that is the only orbit-surface weapon I can think of in MiO. WB5's entry on the Triax intercontinental transport mentions that 100,000ft (~20miles) is the maximum safe altitude one can fly, suggesting that the Oribtals either use missiles to project that far down (MRMs would do it) or have other weapons that can reach that far that haven't been detailed.

I'm hoping for hedgehog strat, like Lazlo or Kingsdale do. They can't win if the CS goes " DIE FOR THE ZEITGEIST" but they can make it such an expensive undertaking for the agressor that other options stay on the table.

What WOULD it take to convince the space stations and luna colony to stop being jerks?

[taalismn]

[
The closest guideline I can find is CWC 45 which says "virtually the entire power base of the current Coalition States are fundamentally self-serving villains". It's a bit unclear to me what the 'power base' means though. I don't see it as synonymous with 'upper echelon'. The power base is not his generals, because they are mentioned separately and as merely "many" rather than "virtually the entire"..

Good point...power base would properly be the CS citizenry and the military.....but if you regard the powr base blocs(military districts, industrial sectors, sub-communities, etc.), taking their orders and opinions from the respective leaders(or gauleiters, if you want to use the Nazi analogy) and they in turn are supporting Prosek, then you could broadly call them his power base.

[Axelmania]

The power base would have to be a small portion of the citizens or military since the majority are selfish or good.

In fact since Unprincipled is often referred to as a good alignment too, the CS military is 4/5 good.