Rifts European Royalties

[The ineffible GM]

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to this thread, been a bit of a crazy this time of year .

I love a lot of the ideas here. The Merovingian Kingdom in France is great, and I’m likely to use it some where down the road.

For the game I’m running I’m trying to focus more on Eastern Europe, in that span between the NGR and the Russian Warlords.

I want to try and use stuff from the books when possible, so I will likely have a small kingdom of giants helping the Phoenix empire, and wolfen in Italy. However those, and the Merovingian town in France, are farther geographically then where I am focusing my game at first.

I want to have a tech focused, isolationist surviving nation in the remnants of the Swiss Redoubt - but for the same reason I’m just not going to be getting there soon with the game I’m running that inspired this thread.

The first kingdom I’m bringing the game to is going to be a small kingdom located in what was once Romania, ruled by werewolves. I’ve got a short write up so far, and I tried to approach it with a few things in mind.
Start with something from the books. Conversion book 1 mentions that there are rumours of a pack of werewolves ruling a kingdom in Romania. So I’m going with that.
Start with why a nation would have survived the Cataclysm. The short answer with this one is that it didn’t, it has been built from scratch over the last hundred years or so.
Look at the real world geography and nation. I like the mountainous terrain in the Transylvania area of Romania, and it also is the area closest to Poland so it is close to where my game is set.
Start with the foundation that built or holds the nation and royalty there. This is the werewolves. How do they hold the Brodkil at bay? How would they rule? Why haven’t they been deposed? Why haven’t they become more powerful than they are?
Try adding a strange/powerful/unique thing that doesn’t appear in any book that is brand new here, because EVERYTHING in Rifts has something special. This, is the crest/brand that the werewolves use to empower some of their military.
Have a name that is probably kind of corny, because it is Rifts.

So, I present my first draft write up for Talonstein.

Talonstein

Situated in the North West of what was Romania, mostly in what was the province of Transylvania, is a small kingdom run by a small family of werewolves.

The werewolves are a tribe that has developed higher than average intelligence, but more than that the pack’s leader developed a narcissism that has driven him to desire a taste at playing human, and at being a king. He has titled himself Lord Thiess, and he decided to carve out a kingdom in the land where the pack had been roaming, northern Romania in what used to be Transylvania, and began by developing a taste for Brodkil flesh.

The Brodkil have not learned how to kill the wolves that began hunting them in the night, but they learned to stay out of the lands that the wolves lived in. The fact that the werewolves can effectively hunt the Brodkil with impunity has gone a long way to allow the establishment of Talonstein in the dangerous wilderness of Eastern Europe.

The people of Talonstein are poor, agriculture farmers or industrial workers, but they are fairly safe. The wolves do not hunt the populace, by decree of the king. The Brodkil have become the subject of the wolves hunt at night, and the werewolves walk openly among the populace without hiding what they are, but they spend most of their time in human form in order to be accepted more readily by the people.

The king does not care about the human population as individual human beings, but cares deeply about them as part of what makes him a king. He wants his people safe, he wants them able to live simple lives, because if he doesn’t have people he doesn’t have a kingdom. He doesn’t quite realize it, but in a lot of ways he treats them much like a shepherd would his sheep. He has no interest in lifting them out of poverty or enriching their lives with accumulated wealth or trade, he simply wants them alive, comfortable enough to keep living, and to provide him with the feeling of having a populace to rule.

Lord Thiess has developed a great many interests over the years since he established his kingdom, including an interest in pre-cataclysm artifacts. His greatest find within his territory was a largely intact factory for producing robotic horses, which he has taken great delight in getting up and running again. Many of the mechanical horses that are produced are actually constructed of SDC alloys and metals, due to a shortage of MDC materials available for manufacturing. While most of the horses produced (especially the MDC ones that are sometimes made) are supplied to the military.

There are other bits of machinery and small caches of arms and equipment that have been uncovered, but even in the Golden Age this was not a largely prosperous area of the world and there is only so much to find. Peasants that find caches or artifacts are rewarded for bringing these things to the attention of the authorities, and are rewarded lightly their find, are also punished for hiding any such finds from the authorities.

Magic in low levels is not uncommon, however higher levels of ability are distrusted and often unwelcome. The most common types of magic are Old Believers (see Mystic Russia) and Mystics, and are generally welcomed by the common people as healers, and bringers of good crops. They are welcome by Thiess and his authorities, as they often help the agriculture economy and bring better health to the peasants without Thiess having to spend money on healthcare infrastructure. Essentially, they improve the lives of the people without providing a threat to the rule of the King.

More powerful casters and psychics are likely to be investigated by someone within the military, or one of the wolves themselves. If the local lord happens to like the person, they are likely to be offered a position in the service of the lord or within the military. If the local lord does not like the person, or feels threatened by their power, the mage/psychic is likely to be encouraged to leave - or may find themselves driven out by the wolves themselves. Because of this recruitment/exile approach, most townsfolk do not like casters or dangerous psychics and will shun them in order to separate themselves.

As Lord Thiess slowly expanded his territory he ran into the problem of needing to protect more and more land, but with a very limited number of werewolves in his pack since they cannot simply create more by biting people. The nation has limited manufacturing, and limited resources for producing MDC materials, and so the small army has mostly mismatched armor and a variety of firearms that have been bought or stolen from other settlements nearby, or scavenged from the Brodkil.

He stumbled onto an answer, by the name of Cranyn - A wandering True Atlantean who had apprenticed as a tattoo maker before wandering the earth to fight evil. In Talonstein, the wolves found him, and Lord Thiess took an interest in this strange form of magic.

Cranyn refused to share what he knew, and was imprisoned and tortured until Lord Steiss started getting what he wanted. He was never able to learn the true art of tattoo magic, but has been able to create a crude corrupted version of it in the form of a single tattoo he has been able to endow on others. It is created by mixing his own blood with the ink, and while the design does not matter in this corrupt tattoo he always makes the symbol of a circle with three straight perpendicular lines crossing one side of the circle - meant to represent three claw lines across the full moon.

This tattoo has been endowed on a number of their soldiers, anyone of any notable rank, after they swear a further oath of fealty directly to Lord Thiess. The bearer can activate the tattoo once a day, and for the next half hour they receive a small increase to their strength and speed, but most notably makes their health MDC for the duration and grants them the Werewolf’s regenerative capabilities (but not their invulnerabilities). Another strange but welcome side-effect is that all the bearers of the tattoo, even when it is not activated, appear to have an increased sense of smell.

Without access to vast high tech equipment and large amounts of MDC alloys, this tattoo has provided an edge to the normal soldiers that has allowed them to hold their own a bit better against the Brodkil in the region. The enhanced sense of smell alone has helped warn of ambushes from the invisible demons on more than one occasion.

[Freemage]

That's a good one. Room for modified OCCs, enchanted "holy" artifacts, history revolving around the King's Burden (and whether or not it's still correct, oral history *always* gets corrupted and if it isn't oral history, how's it written down? Perhaps magically baked into the crown?)

What's the play on technology? Magic outsiders are scary because magic, but if a shot-up air transport does an emergency landing in the kingdom do the locals freak out about demon engines or just tell the local mechanic he's got a business opportunity?

Hm...

Tech isn't reviled as such, but after several unfortunate run-ins with Mindwerks minions, anyone with cybernetics or other prosthetic gear (M.O.M.s or Juicer rigs) is pretty much going to be lucky if they aren't on the receiving end of the power of prayer.

For the history, I think I'd magically bake it into the crown, actually, in which case it doesn't even NEED to be transmitted to the Heir before the coronation ceremony (which actually activates the spell to impart the Burden). This would further explain why every so often, an Heir goes 'bad' upon coronation. They can't reveal the truth or the people are likely to rise up, but they can't accept that they've been living a lie their entire lives, and must now do so until they die.

Hmm is the crown like a computer, a set of responses to the change of kings, combined with a history storage and a magical compulsion to keep quiet or would it have an entity or perhaps a soul like a rune weapon maintaining everything? So basically is it an automated magical item or does it potentially have intelligence and a goal?

I was thinking automated magical item. If anything, it might have a rudimentary AI-type function as part of the computerization, merely to be able to recognize an official crowning.

And would it be worth considering that the original mage/king was a shifter and the "prayers" were provided by "god" aka a supernatural intelligence or actual divine being backing him? For good or Ill. It could add another dimension to the area, possibly continuing to this day or having been cast off since the founding. Course it may not be needed with the already possible intricacies of noble courts and religion already in the area.

That was a level I was specifically avoiding, here--I was going for a purely human deception, one started with the intent of creating a comforting (and even empowering) lie to bolster people through the dark times, but which has now taken on a life of its own, with the monarchs unable to risk breaking the utter faith the people have in their 'Divine Reign'. Adding an outside intelligence to the mix actually would serve to undercut the responsibility of the monarchs themselves for their decision to perpetuate the fiction of the Merovingian Line.

[boring7]

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to this thread, been a bit of a crazy this time of year .

I love a lot of the ideas here. The Merovingian Kingdom in France is great, and I’m likely to use it some where down the road.

For the game I’m running I’m trying to focus more on Eastern Europe, in that span between the NGR and the Russian Warlords.

I want to try and use stuff from the books when possible, so I will likely have a small kingdom of giants helping the Phoenix empire, and wolfen in Italy. However those, and the Merovingian town in France, are farther geographically then where I am focusing my game at first.

I want to have a tech focused, isolationist surviving nation in the remnants of the Swiss Redoubt - but for the same reason I’m just not going to be getting there soon with the game I’m running that inspired this thread.

The first kingdom I’m bringing the game to is going to be a small kingdom located in what was once Romania, ruled by werewolves. I’ve got a short write up so far, and I tried to approach it with a few things in mind.
Start with something from the books. Conversion book 1 mentions that there are rumours of a pack of werewolves ruling a kingdom in Romania. So I’m going with that.

Spoiler:

Start with why a nation would have survived the Cataclysm. The short answer with this one is that it didn’t, it has been built from scratch over the last hundred years or so.
Look at the real world geography and nation. I like the mountainous terrain in the Transylvania area of Romania, and it also is the area closest to Poland so it is close to where my game is set.
Start with the foundation that built or holds the nation and royalty there. This is the werewolves. How do they hold the Brodkil at bay? How would they rule? Why haven’t they been deposed? Why haven’t they become more powerful than they are?
Try adding a strange/powerful/unique thing that doesn’t appear in any book that is brand new here, because EVERYTHING in Rifts has something special. This, is the crest/brand that the werewolves use to empower some of their military.
Have a name that is probably kind of corny, because it is Rifts.

So, I present my first draft write up for Talonstein.

Talonstein

Situated in the North West of what was Romania, mostly in what was the province of Transylvania, is a small kingdom run by a small family of werewolves.

The werewolves are a tribe that has developed higher than average intelligence, but more than that the pack’s leader developed a narcissism that has driven him to desire a taste at playing human, and at being a king. He has titled himself Lord Thiess, and he decided to carve out a kingdom in the land where the pack had been roaming, northern Romania in what used to be Transylvania, and began by developing a taste for Brodkil flesh.

The Brodkil have not learned how to kill the wolves that began hunting them in the night, but they learned to stay out of the lands that the wolves lived in. The fact that the werewolves can effectively hunt the Brodkil with impunity has gone a long way to allow the establishment of Talonstein in the dangerous wilderness of Eastern Europe.

The people of Talonstein are poor, agriculture farmers or industrial workers, but they are fairly safe. The wolves do not hunt the populace, by decree of the king. The Brodkil have become the subject of the wolves hunt at night, and the werewolves walk openly among the populace without hiding what they are, but they spend most of their time in human form in order to be accepted more readily by the people.

The king does not care about the human population as individual human beings, but cares deeply about them as part of what makes him a king. He wants his people safe, he wants them able to live simple lives, because if he doesn’t have people he doesn’t have a kingdom. He doesn’t quite realize it, but in a lot of ways he treats them much like a shepherd would his sheep. He has no interest in lifting them out of poverty or enriching their lives with accumulated wealth or trade, he simply wants them alive, comfortable enough to keep living, and to provide him with the feeling of having a populace to rule.

Lord Thiess has developed a great many interests over the years since he established his kingdom, including an interest in pre-cataclysm artifacts. His greatest find within his territory was a largely intact factory for producing robotic horses, which he has taken great delight in getting up and running again. Many of the mechanical horses that are produced are actually constructed of SDC alloys and metals, due to a shortage of MDC materials available for manufacturing. While most of the horses produced (especially the MDC ones that are sometimes made) are supplied to the military.

There are other bits of machinery and small caches of arms and equipment that have been uncovered, but even in the Golden Age this was not a largely prosperous area of the world and there is only so much to find. Peasants that find caches or artifacts are rewarded for bringing these things to the attention of the authorities, and are rewarded lightly their find, are also punished for hiding any such finds from the authorities.

Magic in low levels is not uncommon, however higher levels of ability are distrusted and often unwelcome. The most common types of magic are Old Believers (see Mystic Russia) and Mystics, and are generally welcomed by the common people as healers, and bringers of good crops. They are welcome by Thiess and his authorities, as they often help the agriculture economy and bring better health to the peasants without Thiess having to spend money on healthcare infrastructure. Essentially, they improve the lives of the people without providing a threat to the rule of the King.

More powerful casters and psychics are likely to be investigated by someone within the military, or one of the wolves themselves. If the local lord happens to like the person, they are likely to be offered a position in the service of the lord or within the military. If the local lord does not like the person, or feels threatened by their power, the mage/psychic is likely to be encouraged to leave - or may find themselves driven out by the wolves themselves. Because of this recruitment/exile approach, most townsfolk do not like casters or dangerous psychics and will shun them in order to separate themselves.

As Lord Thiess slowly expanded his territory he ran into the problem of needing to protect more and more land, but with a very limited number of werewolves in his pack since they cannot simply create more by biting people. The nation has limited manufacturing, and limited resources for producing MDC materials, and so the small army has mostly mismatched armor and a variety of firearms that have been bought or stolen from other settlements nearby, or scavenged from the Brodkil.

He stumbled onto an answer, by the name of Cranyn - A wandering True Atlantean who had apprenticed as a tattoo maker before wandering the earth to fight evil. In Talonstein, the wolves found him, and Lord Thiess took an interest in this strange form of magic.

Cranyn refused to share what he knew, and was imprisoned and tortured until Lord Steiss started getting what he wanted. He was never able to learn the true art of tattoo magic, but has been able to create a crude corrupted version of it in the form of a single tattoo he has been able to endow on others. It is created by mixing his own blood with the ink, and while the design does not matter in this corrupt tattoo he always makes the symbol of a circle with three straight perpendicular lines crossing one side of the circle - meant to represent three claw lines across the full moon.

This tattoo has been endowed on a number of their soldiers, anyone of any notable rank, after they swear a further oath of fealty directly to Lord Thiess. The bearer can activate the tattoo once a day, and for the next half hour they receive a small increase to their strength and speed, but most notably makes their health MDC for the duration and grants them the Werewolf’s regenerative capabilities (but not their invulnerabilities). Another strange but welcome side-effect is that all the bearers of the tattoo, even when it is not activated, appear to have an increased sense of smell.

Without access to vast high tech equipment and large amounts of MDC alloys, this tattoo has provided an edge to the normal soldiers that has allowed them to hold their own a bit better against the Brodkil in the region. The enhanced sense of smell alone has helped warn of ambushes from the invisible demons on more than one occasion.

Ideas that come to mind:

A history of vampire extermination. NGR book 1 (and possibly 2?) mention weak vampire activity in Romania currently and a major (major enough to push outside of Romania, anyway) outbreak in 14 PA. The people of Talonstein were not just intimidated into joining the wolf kingdom; a lot of vampire-enslaved communities were liberated by the Lupine Warriors in the beginning. Their loyalty to the crown stems from those initial "rescues", perhaps with exaggerated and grandiose tales of King Theiss' own heroic battle against a master-class vampire. Even now, most citizens know all the most important facts about vampires (basic powers, weaknesses, and the 4 classes of vampire) and rumor has it there's a broken-willed and silver-enchained vampire in the King's dungeon, kept "alive" so that everyone can see, know, and most importantly smell the blood-sucking fiends. Perhaps it is even that very same master vampire from the stories, though by now its mind has rotted away.

A strange (until you think about it) obsession with silver. Silver plating turns "useless" SDC bullets and blades into deadly weapons against the Nobility, as well as a lot of enemy types (unless I am mistaken, Brodkil count as demonic/vulnerable to silver, and then there's vampires/everything else). Therefore it is considered a tightly-controlled substance, but also highly valuable. If a local discovers a potential silver mine they are rewarded or punished for their discovery (similar to artifact and tech discoveries) and the location will be considered a place of interest (either to extract the silver or to bury it so no one else can).

Gypsies are all over that region, the state probably has an opinion on them.

Marked soldiers have the MDC, but still need MD weapons unless their strength turns supernatural. Is there a magical smith, or "just barely enough" weapons factory kicking around making vibro-blades? To be fair, mook-grade MD weapons are pretty cheap, so even any of the above are probably reasonable.