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eliakon wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:Start with you reasons for believing that the CS does not have a massive over-abundance of food, or easy wide-open access to trade nations.

Well, their trade partners all have to IMPORT food?

Oh yeah, and their is still massive starvation in their slums?

a) Source?
b) Source that this is due to a lack of food, rather than a lack of distribution, or even by design?

they would wipe out the bread basket and kill of the crops in Iowa and Missouri.
The resulting food crash would decimate the CS and cause millions of CS to starve, ripple on effects would cause wide spread famine in Quebec, Northern Gun, and the NGR.

Source?

Remember the CS is the food supplier to most of the Human Supremacist factions in NA. There are not a lot of people to buy from.

The first unsourced thing does not necessarily support the other.

Losing their food doesn't mean that other people are just going to miraculously have food to sell them... food which they have never had before because they have had to buy from the CS.
Its basic economics, if your the one importing a needed good, you don't have a surplus to sell.

That would depend on how much you've imported.
Also, it depends on what your exports are.
There are plenty of nations today (and historically) that both import food and export food. Especially if they're importing one kind of food, and exporting another.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

And there is the question of just how much food is available in non-perishable form in Rifts Earth anyway. Its not like the US of 2017 after all.

Correct-it is a futuristic world with futuristic technology.

Again, your making assumptions that are not supported by the game.

The books flat-out state that there is future technology on Rifts Earth.
That is not an assumption.

Your personal headcanon is not a basis for anything.

It sounds like you've made up an argument well beyond anything that I actually wrote, and are now insulting me over the argument that you imagined.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

People starve to death in Rifts Earth which sort of suggests that there is not just thousands of tons of food lying around to spare.

If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having any kind of food shortage problem, let's see 'em.

If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having millions of tons of food stockpiled I would be interested in seeing THOSE.
After all, your the one making the claim that the CS just happens to have stored months of food for tens of millions of people.

And YOU are the one claiming that they do NOT.
If neither of us can support our claim then we're at something of an impasse.

I've already explained my reasoning: the CS most likely has canning technology, freezing technology, and refrigeration technology, as well as other methods of storing food.
Barring any reason to think that they operate much different than modern nations in the way their grocery stores work, and the ways that most of the rest of society works, there's no reason that I'm aware of to believe that the CS does not have countless stores and warehouses full of food at any moment.
Is it necessarily enough to last for a few months?
I kinda think so, especially when all their livestock and animal food products would be unaffected directly by the blight.

Killer Cyborg wrote:Eh.
I can see that interpretation, and I even agree with it... but it IS an interpretation.
The spell makes things "wither and die," and there's no one answer for how that would affect dried grains or other seeds.

Even with that interpretation, once you start talking about stored foods/seeds you're talking about a much bigger attack area than just the farms themselves. A lot of that's going to be scattered about all over the place, or in storage (or on file) at Lone Star and other places.

Well there are a couple things here
1) we are talking in one night (one casting) you just lost Iowa. All of it. And a good chunk of the surrounding area. A second casting (this team can do that in one night easy) and there goes Missouri. Bam, 3 hours and you just lost the entire breadbasket.

No. We're talking about "IF somehow Tolkeen could wipe out the CS farms."
We're not talking about doing it in a single casting, because that would rely on far, far, far too many unestablished elements--some of which you personally listed in a different part of the conversation.
This part is simply indulging the "What If Tolkeen wiped out all the CS crops" scenario, NOT the "what if a 20+ level Dragon Lord cast made the scroll in the right time, in the right way, etc. etc." scenario.

2) as for seeds. It says 'destroys plants' they 'wither' trees are instantly turned leafless, and into grey and black. That does not sound like just simply 'dying' but being edible. But for the sake of discussion. Lets say it IS edible.

Okay, let's.
Because I'd really rather not argue back and forth whether or not "dried grain" is or is not technically already "dried and shriveled."

3) where are you going to get replacements? No seriously. If they did this... you have no crops, and every seed in the entire state of Iowa and Missouri is now dead and lifeless. Dead means "can not be planted and grown".

The bolded statement hinges on a number of semantic and philosophical elements, but okay, let's go with that assumption for now.

Now sure, they will have seeds in other places. But its not like there is going to be massive strategic stockpiles of seeds, there will not be the enough seeds. Seriously. For example soybeans? You need between 5 and 30 POUNDS of seeds per ACRE of planted ground, Wheat is between 30 and 180, for corn your looking at about 60. Now consider how many hundreds of thousands of acres of land your talking about here.
We are talking about tens of thousands of tons of seeds needed. Unfortunately most of those would normally be either in silos near the farms, or be collected from the crop and replanted.

There are too many unknown elements to say for certain how many seeds the CS has in storage, where they are, or how much they are needed.
You may well be correct.
Or you may be wrong, and the CS could have grain stockpiled all over the place.
They'd likely have massive amounts of grain set aside for stockyards, for example, for feeding livestock, and depending on the nature of CS life in general, there may be feed stores scattered throughout the more rural areas. They might also have planned for this kind of attack... though I agree it's doubtful... and have a huge seed vault somewhere.
Or they might be able to 3D print seeds by the ton in Lonestar, for all we know.

4) And for kicks and giggles, don't forget that you also lost all the micro flora in the soil.

Ooh!
THAT is interesting!
RAW, the spell would kill that too, which would have a LOT of fascinating potential consequences.
RAI, my guess would be that Kev would say it doesn't affect microscopic stuff that way.
Good thought!

5) Can anyone say "Dust bowl"

That would depend heavily on the CS's farming methods, but it would be one possible outcome.

What is the purpose of this line of argument? To show that if a GM rules that a bunch of different special abilities stack together, that Tolkeen could make North America uninhabitable? Okay, let's accept that premise. Tolkeen theoretically could have wiped out a huge percentage of the living creatures on Rifts Earth. You want to give them moral credit for not doing it?

Again, Tolkeen is North Korea. North Korea has nukes. North Korea could wipe out several cities. But doing so spells instant death for them. Not a single creature would survive the retaliation that would follow.

The Coalition has strategic nuclear weapons. The kind that wipe out cities in one blast. The ley line defense spells won't stop those, because you don't even have to nuke Tolkeen to use them. You can drop the nukes outside the city and kill everyone inside it with the radiation and the blast wave. The Coalition has this kind of nukes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9hL93HPMI

And they haven't used them. But if Tolkeen wipes out all plant life on the eastern half of North America, I think the Coalition might.

So really, all you're saying is that Tolkeen didn't unleash a continent-killing attack, when it may have had the ability to. And the Coalition didn't unleash a continent-killing attack, when it may have had the ability to. So Tolkeen's moral high ground is refusing to do something that the Coalition also refused to do? Well congratulations.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:Start with you reasons for believing that the CS does not have a massive over-abundance of food, or easy wide-open access to trade nations.

Well, their trade partners all have to IMPORT food?

Okay, so this "easy wide-open access to trade nations"?
Like who? What? Where?
They are the supplier of food to everyone else for one thing. For another thing, the other nations that they have access to are Northern Gun and Quebec and a few micro states. Oh and some limited contact with the NGR and Columbia. That is not like our world in any way, shape or form.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

they would wipe out the bread basket and kill of the crops in Iowa and Missouri.
The resulting food crash would decimate the CS and cause millions of CS to starve, ripple on effects would cause wide spread famine in Quebec, Northern Gun, and the NGR.

Source?

Hmmm lets see.
Iowa and Missouri are the bread baskets of North America where most of the food crops are grown.
They suddenly are NOT growing any food.
...
I guess its possible that the tens of millions of people that have been depending on them for food will just shrug.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Remember the CS is the food supplier to most of the Human Supremacist factions in NA. There are not a lot of people to buy from.

The first unsourced thing does not necessarily support the other.

The CS is repeatedly described as the main food supplier of North America
The CS is also repeatedly described as not trading with D-Bee nations and kingdoms of magic.
That sort of implies that yes, they are the main food supplier of the Human Faction.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Losing their food doesn't mean that other people are just going to miraculously have food to sell them... food which they have never had before because they have had to buy from the CS.
Its basic economics, if your the one importing a needed good, you don't have a surplus to sell.

That would depend on how much you've imported.
Also, it depends on what your exports are.
There are plenty of nations today (and historically) that both import food and export food. Especially if they're importing one kind of food, and exporting another.

If your importing food X then your not going to make up a deficit of food X.
If they suddenly lose their bread basket and stop supplying grains and vegies to the other nations, those nations are not going to turn around and provide them with grains and vegies.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

And there is the question of just how much food is available in non-perishable form in Rifts Earth anyway. Its not like the US of 2017 after all.

Correct-it is a futuristic world with futuristic technology.

Again, your making assumptions that are not supported by the game.

The books flat-out state that there is future technology on Rifts Earth.
That is not an assumption.

Try not splitting things up?

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Your personal headcanon is not a basis for anything.

It sounds like you've made up an argument well beyond anything that I actually wrote, and are now insulting me over the argument that you imagined.

Again try not splitting up the argument

Odd... the third part is missing.
Selectively quoting part of an argument by misstating it is a logical fallacy of the first order.
But here, let me redo it for you.
The world of Rifts is futureistic. However that technology advances at uneven rates, in some areas they are less advanced than we are and in fact they are at 1970s and 80's levels. Therefore any argument predicated on "they have advanced tech" is automatically flawed because no, they do not always have advanced tech. They only have advanced tech if we are shown that they have a specific advanced technology. Otherwise it is purely speculative.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

People starve to death in Rifts Earth which sort of suggests that there is not just thousands of tons of food lying around to spare.

If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having any kind of food shortage problem, let's see 'em.

If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having millions of tons of food stockpiled I would be interested in seeing THOSE.
After all, your the one making the claim that the CS just happens to have stored months of food for tens of millions of people.

And YOU are the one claiming that they do NOT.
If neither of us can support our claim then we're at something of an impasse.

I've already explained my reasoning: the CS most likely has canning technology, freezing technology, and refrigeration technology, as well as other methods of storing food.
Barring any reason to think that they operate much different than modern nations in the way their grocery stores work, and the ways that most of the rest of society works, there's no reason that I'm aware of to believe that the CS does not have countless stores and warehouses full of food at any moment.
Is it necessarily enough to last for a few months?
I kinda think so, especially when all their livestock and animal food products would be unaffected directly by the blight.

Considering that most cities in our world have around 3-7 days of food due to that canning technology, and freezing technology, and refrigeration technology and grocery stores...
then yes claiming that they have stock piles on the order of 20 or 30 times that of any nation on earth today 'just because' is the sort of thing that needs support.
There is a VAST difference between stating "they have the normal amounts of food that an industrial society keeps on hand" and "They have 20 times as much as a normal industrial society keeps on hand"

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:Eh.
I can see that interpretation, and I even agree with it... but it IS an interpretation.
The spell makes things "wither and die," and there's no one answer for how that would affect dried grains or other seeds.

Even with that interpretation, once you start talking about stored foods/seeds you're talking about a much bigger attack area than just the farms themselves. A lot of that's going to be scattered about all over the place, or in storage (or on file) at Lone Star and other places.

Well there are a couple things here
1) we are talking in one night (one casting) you just lost Iowa. All of it. And a good chunk of the surrounding area. A second casting (this team can do that in one night easy) and there goes Missouri. Bam, 3 hours and you just lost the entire breadbasket.

No. We're talking about "IF somehow Tolkeen could wipe out the CS farms."
We're not talking about doing it in a single casting, because that would rely on far, far, far too many unestablished elements--some of which you personally listed in a different part of the conversation.
This part is simply indulging the "What If Tolkeen wiped out all the CS crops" scenario, NOT the "what if a 20+ level Dragon Lord cast made the scroll in the right time, in the right way, etc. etc." scenario.

You might want to go read the thread then.
No seriously go read the thread and find out what is being said before you reply?
Because when you reply to a post about casting a spell, then a person generally assumes you are, you know, discussing that post?
And the "unestablished element" that would be needed to make this work is that K.S. is telling the truth when he directs us to TtGD and that thus that book is considered canon.
But regardless of that it really doesn't matter. Your making a distinction with out a difference.
Destroying all the crops in I/M is destroying all the crops in I/M. If it happens in two castings or two thousand the results are the same.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

2) as for seeds. It says 'destroys plants' they 'wither' trees are instantly turned leafless, and into grey and black. That does not sound like just simply 'dying' but being edible. But for the sake of discussion. Lets say it IS edible.

Okay, let's.
Because I'd really rather not argue back and forth whether or not "dried grain" is or is not technically already "dried and shriveled."

3) where are you going to get replacements? No seriously. If they did this... you have no crops, and every seed in the entire state of Iowa and Missouri is now dead and lifeless. Dead means "can not be planted and grown".

The bolded statement hinges on a number of semantic and philosophical elements, but okay, let's go with that assumption for now.

Now sure, they will have seeds in other places. But its not like there is going to be massive strategic stockpiles of seeds, there will not be the enough seeds. Seriously. For example soybeans? You need between 5 and 30 POUNDS of seeds per ACRE of planted ground, Wheat is between 30 and 180, for corn your looking at about 60. Now consider how many hundreds of thousands of acres of land your talking about here.
We are talking about tens of thousands of tons of seeds needed. Unfortunately most of those would normally be either in silos near the farms, or be collected from the crop and replanted.

There are too many unknown elements to say for certain how many seeds the CS has in storage, where they are, or how much they are needed.
You may well be correct.
Or you may be wrong, and the CS could have grain stockpiled all over the place.
They'd likely have massive amounts of grain set aside for stockyards, for example, for feeding livestock, and depending on the nature of CS life in general, there may be feed stores scattered throughout the more rural areas. They might also have planned for this kind of attack... though I agree it's doubtful... and have a huge seed vault somewhere.
Or they might be able to 3D print seeds by the ton in Lonestar, for all we know.

Again your just making up stuff to try and defend the CS.
The CS is farming. There is a way farming works. The CS is not described, ever, as having any miracles that allow them to do it differently.
That sort of means that they are farming.
Its pretty simple.
Now sure, we can plot armor them as having conveniently having a huge seed vault, larger than anything ever constructed in the history of humanity, that was so totally secret that it was never even hinted at...
But that's a bit absurd.
There are even problems with the "Set aside for feed" issue... since you feed cattle different feeds than you feed humans.
And of course there is the issue that you process feed so it is very rarely suitable for planting.
Which means that the chances of having tens of thousands of tons of seeds just 'happen' to be on hand would require plot armor.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

4) And for kicks and giggles, don't forget that you also lost all the micro flora in the soil.

Ooh!
THAT is interesting!
RAW, the spell would kill that too, which would have a LOT of fascinating potential consequences.
RAI, my guess would be that Kev would say it doesn't affect microscopic stuff that way.
Good thought!

I don't see how it couldn't it says "all plants" and plants is plants is plants.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

) Can anyone say "Dust bowl"

That would depend heavily on the CS's farming methods, but it would be one possible outcome.

It wouldn't matter in the slightest what the CS farming methods are.
When your killing off most of the plant life in two states you have sort of, by definition, already lost the ground cover plants that keep the soil anchored.
Unless you bring in a lot of Lemurians real quick you are going to get a dust bowl.

Eagle wrote:What is the purpose of this line of argument? To show that if a GM rules that a bunch of different special abilities stack together, that Tolkeen could make North America uninhabitable? Okay, let's accept that premise. Tolkeen theoretically could have wiped out a huge percentage of the living creatures on Rifts Earth. You want to give them moral credit for not doing it?

Again, Tolkeen is North Korea. North Korea has nukes. North Korea could wipe out several cities. But doing so spells instant death for them. Not a single creature would survive the retaliation that would follow.

The Coalition has strategic nuclear weapons. The kind that wipe out cities in one blast. The ley line defense spells won't stop those, because you don't even have to nuke Tolkeen to use them. You can drop the nukes outside the city and kill everyone inside it with the radiation and the blast wave. The Coalition has this kind of nukes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9hL93HPMI

And they haven't used them. But if Tolkeen wipes out all plant life on the eastern half of North America, I think the Coalition might.

So really, all you're saying is that Tolkeen didn't unleash a continent-killing attack, when it may have had the ability to. And the Coalition didn't unleash a continent-killing attack, when it may have had the ability to. So Tolkeen's moral high ground is refusing to do something that the Coalition also refused to do? Well congratulations.

310 miles is not "a continent"
310 miles is, in fact exactly what was described when they were talking about "wiping out the crops in Iowa and Missouri"

And yes, Tolkeen gets a lot of credit.
Tolkeen chose to die rather than win. It could have quite easily taken the CS farms out. And the loss of those farms would have resulted in the deaths of millions of CS citizens and likely the collapse of the entire country. If Tolkeen and just forted up and wiped out the crops the CS would have been to busy trying to avoid starving to death to do anything to them.
But they didn't do that.
Instead they chose to fight a conventional war, in the face of an enemy that was fighting a war of extermination and willing to use WMDs.

And for the record... the LL spells WOULD stop the blasts of the nukes.
That is sort of what they do, they stop damage. Damage is damage is damage.
The CS nukes btw are not the nukes that you and I are familiar with.
They are some weird rubber science ones that do a very limited amount of damage to a rather large area.

eliakon wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:Start with you reasons for believing that the CS does not have a massive over-abundance of food, or easy wide-open access to trade nations.

Well, their trade partners all have to IMPORT food?

Okay, so this "easy wide-open access to trade nations"?
Like who? What? Where?

Give me a complete list of nations that the CS trades with, and I'll point out the ones that I think fit that description.

They are the supplier of food to everyone else for one thing.

a) Source?
b) So... "everyone else" will starve if the CS crops are destroyed...?

For another thing, the other nations that they have access to are Northern Gun and Quebec and a few micro states. Oh and some limited contact with the NGR and Columbia.

Feel free to provide sources for anything that you're claiming, at any time.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

they would wipe out the bread basket and kill of the crops in Iowa and Missouri.
The resulting food crash would decimate the CS and cause millions of CS to starve, ripple on effects would cause wide spread famine in Quebec, Northern Gun, and the NGR.

Source?

Hmmm lets see.
Iowa and Missouri are the bread baskets of North America where most of the food crops are grown.
They suddenly are NOT growing any food.
...
I guess its possible that the tens of millions of people that have been depending on them for food will just shrug.

So.... it's just your headcanon, nothing official.
Got it.

If you come up with anything official describing what would happen, let me know.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Remember the CS is the food supplier to most of the Human Supremacist factions in NA. There are not a lot of people to buy from.

The first unsourced thing does not necessarily support the other.

The CS is repeatedly described as the main food supplier of North America

For example?
Book? Page?
Quote...?

Killer Cyborg wrote:That would depend on how much you've imported.
Also, it depends on what your exports are.
There are plenty of nations today (and historically) that both import food and export food. Especially if they're importing one kind of food, and exporting another.

If your importing food X then your not going to make up a deficit of food X.

That depends on what foods you're importing, and why.

If they suddenly lose their bread basket and stop supplying grains and vegies to the other nations, those nations are not going to turn around and provide them with grains and vegies.

That depends on what the CS has to offer in return; that's how capitalism works.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

And there is the question of just how much food is available in non-perishable form in Rifts Earth anyway. Its not like the US of 2017 after all.

Correct-it is a futuristic world with futuristic technology.

Again, your making assumptions that are not supported by the game.

The books flat-out state that there is future technology on Rifts Earth.
That is not an assumption.

Try not splitting things up?

I said that it's a futuristic world and that there is future technology on Rifts Earth.
You claimed my assumption was not supported by the game.
I disagree.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Your personal headcanon is not a basis for anything.

It sounds like you've made up an argument well beyond anything that I actually wrote, and are now insulting me over the argument that you imagined.

Again try not splitting up the argument

It's the simplest, clearest way to address each point.

Odd... the third part is missing.

Yeah, I cut irrelevancies and strawmen.
So no matter how much detail you go into attacking an argument that you've made up on your own, I'm not going to bother to address it.

What I actually said was this:
"it is a futuristic world with futuristic technology."

That's a direct quote.
Anything else--unless you can quote me saying it--is just something that you've invented on your own.
If you disagree with what I actually said, then make a case for it.
If not, then just agree and lets move on.

Killer Cyborg wrote:If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having any kind of food shortage problem, let's see 'em.

If you have any quotes from the book showing the CS having millions of tons of food stockpiled I would be interested in seeing THOSE.

I'm not necessarily claiming that they DO.
I'm claiming that they MAY, that it's a possibility.
YOU, on the other hand, seem to be claiming that it's IMPOSSIBLE.

You're the one making the more extreme claim, with the bigger burden of proof.

Considering that most cities in our world have around 3-7 days of food due to that canning technology, and freezing technology, and refrigeration technology and grocery stores...

Source?

Killer Cyborg wrote:We're talking about "IF somehow Tolkeen could wipe out the CS farms."
We're not talking about doing it in a single casting, because that would rely on far, far, far too many unestablished elements--some of which you personally listed in a different part of the conversation.
This part is simply indulging the "What If Tolkeen wiped out all the CS crops" scenario, NOT the "what if a 20+ level Dragon Lord cast made the scroll in the right time, in the right way, etc. etc." scenario.

You might want to go read the thread then.
No seriously go read the thread and find out what is being said before you reply?

Uh... back atcha...?

Because when you reply to a post about casting a spell, then a person generally assumes you are, you know, discussing that post?

Reread the conversation.

You posted about combining certain elements in order to boost the radius.
I replied to that post HERE.

But that's NOT part of these messages that we're exchanging now, which go back before you discussed wiping everything out in one casting, to some stuff that Nightmask said, and that I replied to.
Then you jumped in, and here we are.

And the "unestablished element" that would be needed to make this work is that K.S. is telling the truth when he directs us to TtGD and that thus that book is considered canon.

Really?
Because you listed more in your earlier post:
And then there are issues that are less canonically clear (if you write a scroll on a ley line nexus will it get the boosted range? Do Ley Lines increase spell ranges in RUE? How about if your wearing the Ring of Elder? Are the Nightbane books such as In-between the Shadows, and TtGD canon for Rifts or not?)
Those issues above become very important.

But regardless of that it really doesn't matter. Your making a distinction with out a difference.
Destroying all the crops in I/M is destroying all the crops in I/M. If it happens in two castings or two thousand the results are the same.

YOU were the one who said:
"we are talking in one night (one casting) you just lost Iowa. All of it. And a good chunk of the surrounding area. A second casting (this team can do that in one night easy) and there goes Missouri. Bam, 3 hours and you just lost the entire breadbasket." as if it mattered.

I simply corrected you on what part of the conversation you were in, that no, we weren't talking about one casting.
So no, it's not me making a distinction that makes no difference--it's YOU making that distinction.
If it's not important, maybe quit talking about it...?

Killer Cyborg wrote:

2) as for seeds. It says 'destroys plants' they 'wither' trees are instantly turned leafless, and into grey and black. That does not sound like just simply 'dying' but being edible. But for the sake of discussion. Lets say it IS edible.

Okay, let's.
Because I'd really rather not argue back and forth whether or not "dried grain" is or is not technically already "dried and shriveled."

There are too many unknown elements to say for certain how many seeds the CS has in storage, where they are, or how much they are needed.
You may well be correct.
Or you may be wrong, and the CS could have grain stockpiled all over the place.
They'd likely have massive amounts of grain set aside for stockyards, for example, for feeding livestock, and depending on the nature of CS life in general, there may be feed stores scattered throughout the more rural areas. They might also have planned for this kind of attack... though I agree it's doubtful... and have a huge seed vault somewhere.
Or they might be able to 3D print seeds by the ton in Lonestar, for all we know.

Again your just making up stuff to try and defend the CS.
The CS is farming. There is a way farming works. The CS is not described, ever, as having any miracles that allow them to do it differently.

You mean other than the Lonestar passage that describes all their genetic engineering stuff?
Regardless, no, a lack of description does not necessarily mean that the result is the modern American default.

Now sure, we can plot armor them as having conveniently having a huge seed vault, larger than anything ever constructed in the history of humanity, that was so totally secret that it was never even hinted at...
But that's a bit absurd.

Welcome to Rifts.

There are even problems with the "Set aside for feed" issue... since you feed cattle different feeds than you feed humans.

Not necessarily when starvation is on the line.

And of course there is the issue that you process feed so it is very rarely suitable for planting.
Which means that the chances of having tens of thousands of tons of seeds just 'happen' to be on hand would require plot armor.

Perhaps.
So?

Killer Cyborg wrote:

) Can anyone say "Dust bowl"

That would depend heavily on the CS's farming methods, but it would be one possible outcome.

It wouldn't matter in the slightest what the CS farming methods are.
When your killing off most of the plant life in two states you have sort of, by definition, already lost the ground cover plants that keep the soil anchored.
Unless you bring in a lot of Lemurians real quick you are going to get a dust bowl.

Well, now you're talking about "killing off most of the plant life in two states," which is different than just targeting the CS farms.
Unless you believe that the CS farms constitute most of the plant life in two states, in which case their farming methods would be pretty important.

The Dust Bowl came about in large part to farming methods of the time.

Y'all are WAY to focused on this farm-blighting thing.

For reference, part of the minion war subplot (pretty sure Heroes of Humanity has it) is that the CS is out of food. They drafted too many farmers and left too many fields fallow (or something, I read it in passing from the sneak-peek so PLEASE feel free to correct me on the details). They have shortages of a lot of OTHER stuff too, but the food loss is rather immediate and dire. They're buying tons of MREs from Northern Gun and trying (and apparently succeeding) to keep it a secret. I believe the book specifically mentions "ironically, this is the one thing that most of the Coalition's neighbors and even sometimes-enemies would help them with, the Lemurians alone could solve their problem unilaterally if the CS asked." (Paraphrasing, obviously)

Now as for the larger point...meh?

-If you blighted and burned (because the dead vegetation WILL burn merrily with a struck match) all the crops that would hurt. It's hard to stockpile that much food (food is BULKY on the per-year scale), not to mention that kind of stockpiling is a huge undertaking, because even with the best canning and refrigeration around it *does* go bad eventually, so you have to keep cycling the nearly-expired stuff out.

-Burning out the current crop and leaving people with nothing but emergency reserves makes them desperate, angry, and still fully-fed and healthy enough to charge into your home seeking your death and your food stocks. It's more of a "I'm dragging you to hell with me" move unless the war is reliably going to last for more than a year.

On the flip side there are a LOT of tricks and toys that have nothing to do with burning crops. Breaking supply lines with surprise armies, stealing conventional nukes, blowing up cities with stolen conventional nukes, assassinating leaders, throwing the orb of solomon at a certain leader's head and teleporting away, opening a rift to the surface of the sun for 2 seconds in a suicide run that takes out everything between Tolkeen and New Lazlo...

You know...stuff.

Food is easier to store if you dry it. With their future tech they can probably powder food pretty decently.

You couldn't feasibly target all seeds. Any major power of smarts will have emergency nurseries to start new populations from.

Targeting a major food supplier is a good way to earn the CS some allies. Places like Kingsdale who were staying out of things might decide to start killing off people blighting crops.

The thing about CS supplying most food sounds familiar but I forget from where.

Axelmania wrote:The thing about CS supplying most food sounds familiar but I forget from where.

Same here.

The canon basis for the assertion that the Coalition has superior food production comes from page 67 of WB#13 Lonestar. My opinion is that this genetic technology applied to almost everypart of the Coalition's economy is the source of their ability to dominate North America, leading us back to the OP question about the invincibility of the CS.

I just got the HoH and it does indeed speak to the economic costs of mobilizing such a large amount of new soldiers. I do think the CS is invincible when it comes to outside threats. I think the only threat to the CS as it is now is the people losing faith in the Prosek regime. This loss of faith could come as a result of the overextension of their economy.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Axelmania wrote:The thing about CS supplying most food sounds familiar but I forget from where.

Same here.

I just went over this a few months back. It isn't anywhere. The reference was in a HLS adventure in CWC and doesn't say that the CS provides everyone's food. I also showed the citations where it plainly says NG/Manistique and FQ, at the very least, have plenty of their own food and both are exporters.

Too lazy to look up the posts.

As for even preserved food going bad... yeah, in 25-30 years. We have stuff you can buy now (preppers!) that is good for 30+ years. And you can fit a whole years worth in a closet (caloric intake wise). Just add water.

As for the CS having a good shortage? Ugh, more awful writing... as WB13 and WB11 make it clear that CS farms are highly automated. One farm with 30-40 workers supported by Labor bots could produce enough food for hundreds of thousands of people. Hell, big corporate farms in the US now WITHOUT robots can produce that kind of food with only ~200 workers. A tractor and piped irrigation are miraculous things.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Axelmania wrote:The thing about CS supplying most food sounds familiar but I forget from where.

Same here.

I just went over this a few months back. It isn't anywhere. The reference was in a HLS adventure in CWC and doesn't say that the CS provides everyone's food. I also showed the citations where it plainly says NG/Manistique and FQ, at the very least, have plenty of their own food and both are exporters.

Too lazy to look up the posts.

As for even preserved food going bad... yeah, in 25-30 years. We have stuff you can buy now (preppers!) that is good for 30+ years. And you can fit a whole years worth in a closet (caloric intake wise). Just add water.

As for the CS having a good shortage? Ugh, more awful writing... as WB13 and WB11 make it clear that CS farms are highly automated. One farm with 30-40 workers supported by Labor bots could produce enough food for hundreds of thousands of people. Hell, big corporate farms in the US now WITHOUT robots can produce that kind of food with only ~200 workers. A tractor and piped irrigation are miraculous things.

It can still work, writing-wise. Those 30-40 workers have to be at least halfway competent and they have to be THERE the whole time. If you draft half the crew at the wrong time the crop will fail because nobody was there to irrigate or dose with pesticide or whatever. The replacements arrive from street-rat ville and face a dead crop; too bad.

Prepper-stuff is expensive for a reason, you put a lot of work into freeze-drying and sealing all that junk. Sure it's doable, but you're spending (google tells me 11) times as much. Sure the whole concept works (you build a stockpile, every year you add new stuff to the stockpile and pull the near-expiration stuff out and feed it to your endless supply of starving masses in the 'Burbs) but only if the Coalition is willing to spend a few billion on food every year.

Which brings up the weird quantum state of the CS' greatest plot-armor piece again. Their population and industrial power are "$enough_as_needed" at any given time, their protection/disposability of their citizens and quasi-citizen human residents is "$we_care_some". They'll cheerfully flip-flop between "infantry act as mine-detectors for the more valuable tanks" and "want more robots to protect the precious human lives."

Does the CS maintain massive reserves in case of starvation? Or does it solve major shortages by sending people out to die until the population/required reserves are back in balance? Well that depends on the metaplot for that day.

boring7 wrote:It can still work, writing-wise. Those 30-40 workers have to be at least halfway competent and they have to be THERE the whole time. If you draft half the crew at the wrong time the crop will fail because nobody was there to irrigate or dose with pesticide or whatever. The replacements arrive from street-rat ville and face a dead crop; too bad.

Except there is no reason to draft the farm workers. They make up 2-3% of the population at most. Just draft more downlevelers. The entire idea that the CS went "yeah, well just let the leeches in levels 1-10 continue to be leeches and draft the farm workers" is absurd on its face. Its bad writing.

Prepper-stuff is expensive for a reason, you put a lot of work into freeze-drying and sealing all that junk. Sure it's doable, but you're spending (google tells me 11) times as much. Sure the whole concept works (you build a stockpile, every year you add new stuff to the stockpile and pull the near-expiration stuff out and feed it to your endless supply of starving masses in the 'Burbs) but only if the Coalition is willing to spend a few billion on food every year.
.

Only because it isn't our normal mode of food consumption. You go back to about the 1930s and earlier and that was just how food was handled, full stop. You preserved EVERYTHING that you couldn't use within a few days of harvesting (at most). Fresh food that wasn't seafood (if you lived in a place where there were fishermen) was an absolute luxury for city-dwellers. You only ate fresh if you lived on a farm.

In Rifts Earth, you'd be doing the same thing.

Preservation of food is one of the reasons for civilization period. Jerking, salting, drying, and canning/jarring are pretty simple methods that have been around for a long time. How do you think mist people survived winter? Refrigeration has been around for centuries( cold storage rooms with thick walls, ice buried underground with food) so with cheap energy and life support AC/Refrigerators, you can just stick stuff whole into them. If the CS had any build up/setup time( I think they had 4 years, but don't have my books handy), then preserving the genetically engineered plants and animals would be a snap, especially since its easy to run a surplus of crops per year. Hell the gene stuff probably also is spoilage resistant, had all the essential ingredients and vitamins to keep humans healthy and doesn't lose any of those things when dried. If I can make Anthroform human animals and super soldiers, super crops would also be something I would heavily invest in.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:I just went over this a few months back. It isn't anywhere. The reference was in a HLS adventure in CWC and doesn't say that the CS provides everyone's food.

I vaguely remember this conversation, yeah. WB11p223 "Strange Bedfellows" says:

hundreds of thousands of people will suffer, including thousands of D-bees and wilderness folk who also count on CS crops and food processing

This means at least 2000 D-Bee or Wilderness Folk and at least 198 000 others (200k or more non-CS) depend on CS food supply to the point where blighting 3/4 of Missouri & Iowa croplands will make them "suffer".

I haven't found any data on the total non-CS population of North America

I agree that we shouldn't be including Northern Gun and Free Quebec in these numbers, since they have their own supply, which means the numbers need to be accounted for via some other populations.

That NG/FQ can produce food is quite irrelevant though, since we know the loss of CS food supply creates suffering, meaning NG/FQ can't make up for that kind of loss quick enough to prevent suffering.

on a side note, as i recall food was one of the things the NGR was hoping to receive from trading with the CS. now obviously they weren't starving before, and the book iirc notes that they also partly wanted at least some form of alliance as a mark of solidarity rather than out of any immediate desperate need for resources... but that doesn't exactly bode well for the likelihood of the NGR shipping food *to* the CS when the NGR was hoping to buy food *from* the CS (and presumably has, since then, though we know basically nothing regarding quantity unless that got expanded on in triax 2).

Shark_Force wrote:on a side note, as i recall food was one of the things the NGR was hoping to receive from trading with the CS. now obviously they weren't starving before, and the book iirc notes that they also partly wanted at least some form of alliance as a mark of solidarity rather than out of any immediate desperate need for resources... but that doesn't exactly bode well for the likelihood of the NGR shipping food *to* the CS when the NGR was hoping to buy food *from* the CS (and presumably has, since then, though we know basically nothing regarding quantity unless that got expanded on in triax 2).

Maybe. But if the CS has been a long-term exporter of food, then you'd have to think that (given their rather paranoid philosophy as a nation) they've stockpiled quite a bit of food. They'd definitely do that before they sold any.

The modern US puts an emphasis on freshness and rapid delivery. A head of lettuce is growing on the, umm, lettuce vine or something in California, and three days later it is on a supermarket shelf in Arkansas. This type of system allows for the best product and lets people in Montana eat fresh oranges and bananas. It allows us to have health food fads and lets the people selling the food make a lot of money. It's a market-driven system, where you can get gluten free stuff, and vegan soy burgers, and honey roasted kale chips (or whatever).

But that's not the sort of setup that the CS would have. They'd likely have much more of a "prepper" mentality. They have a command economy, where the government decides how much of what they are going to produce. Consumer demand is not really a thing for them. Storage space isn't an issue (somebody mentioned it earlier). You can fit a 1 year food supply into a small closet. You don't go to the trouble of building an arcology/fortress for your people and then forget about food supply.

I bet you could transport fresh food very quickly in a death head transport.

Killer Cyborg: I think it strains credulity to suggest that the massively overwritten CW series failed to somehow mention Tolkeen's Super-Seekrit plans to use the Spells of Legend and other potential magical WMDs. The distribution of the spells in the book reads to me, frankly, as an effort to make sure the spells themselves survive the regime. Nor, for that matter, do I think that such plotting is necessary for the "Tolkeen = Evil" argument to be made--Axelmania did that with his citation of Sedition, Northfields (which, oddly, neither side has picked up on). It's very clearly a targeted attack on a civilian population in CS territory--the epitome of everything that has been held up as a standard of proof.

This does not mean, for the record, that Creed's decision to not use the spells offensively, nor to engage in wider acts of terroristic violence against the CS, was a moral high-mark. It could have been anything from a tactical blunder to the belief that such tactics would result in a broader anti-Tolkeen sentiment to simply the conviction that there was no tactical advantage to be gained.

Interestingly, this latter is actually true. Wiping out the breadbasket would be devastating to the CS in the long run; it might even destroy it. However, the troops in the field are carrying weeks and months of MREs and other processed foods. They would've been fine for the length of time it took to carry out the final siege (and, in fact, probably would've recruited even MORE troops, since that would be the best option for getting yourself three square meals a day).

And that's something the "Tolkeen should've won through asymmetric warfare" folks never seem to grok--Creed didn't WANT to engage in asymmetric war that resulted in the cities of Tolkeen getting blasted to hell. He was hoping to keep his grand kingdom intact--and that, frankly, wasn't going to happen from the point when Prosek gave the first "go" order.

The plan to attack CS farmland is revealed in the CWC HLS, Sedition just gave the mechanics.

Freemage wrote:Killer Cyborg: I think it strains credulity to suggest that the massively overwritten CW series failed to somehow mention Tolkeen's Super-Seekrit plans to use the Spells of Legend and other potential magical WMDs. The distribution of the spells in the book reads to me, frankly, as an effort to make sure the spells themselves survive the regime.

Where's the part about distribution again?

I thought it might be under the spell description, but it's not.

There is this, though:
CW1 38
Tolkeen holds this spell in reserve to use on the CS crop fields in Missouri and Iowa as a way of buying negotiating and blackmail leverage, should they need it. It is also used for strategic purposes, and to intimidate the enemy.

In any case, I think that the SoT series is set up specifically NOT to cover everything, simply so that gamers have opportunities to play things out themselves.

Nor, for that matter, do I think that such plotting is necessary for the "Tolkeen = Evil" argument to be made

I wouldn't consider that plot to be evil, unless it was on the scale where it wiped out all the plants on a state or continent level.

Axelmania did that with his citation of Sedition, Northfields (which, oddly, neither side has picked up on). It's very clearly a targeted attack on a civilian population in CS territory--the epitome of everything that has been held up as a standard of proof.

Eh. I kind of consider that question closed just from KS repeatedly saying that they're just as hate-filled, revenge-driven, etc. etc. as the CS.
And the slave army, and so forth.
But yeah, this is another possible example.

This does not mean, for the record, that Creed's decision to not use the spells offensively, nor to engage in wider acts of terroristic violence against the CS, was a moral high-mark. It could have been anything from a tactical blunder to the belief that such tactics would result in a broader anti-Tolkeen sentiment to simply the conviction that there was no tactical advantage to be gained.

Well, I don't know that it was a tactical blunder (if he didn't use it). I'd assume that it just wouldn't be as effective as the pro-Tolkeen gamers would want it to be.
And yeah, it'd drum up anti-Tolkeen sentiment.

It wasn't a tactical blunder, it was plot armor.

Here's how a more realistic war goes down with the magic and associated situations:

-CS begins blowing up civilian towns with weapons tests.
-Tolkeen finally decides to step up and declare war.
-Force field goes up, the 3 cities are pretty-well impregnable
-Teleportation and summoned horrors with thousands of MDC get dropped on all major industrial centers and supply bases well behind the Coalition Military's lines.
-CS hits the force field a few hours later, can't get through, decides to start killing everyone they CAN reach but faces hordes of unbound alien monsters.
-CS is crippled, Tolkeen loses anyone that was outside the force field, Xiticix invade from the north.

That's boring though, so it didn't happen.

Just how many thousand-MDC horrors do you think Tolkeen is capable of?

The necro spell Summon Magot for example... Just how many Magots are there.in the Msgaverse?

At what point does a Lord of Hades wonder where all his minions went and comes to investigate?

The CS also has range/speed advantage over most horrors and can simply ping them to death.

I could defeat a Magot solo if I had a suit of Flying Titan PA.

The real challenge is to slow them from harming targets which can't flee until they are pinged down.

Which is why you keep body flipping or tripping a Magot to deprive it of attacks.

boring7 wrote:It wasn't a tactical blunder, it was plot armor.

Here's how a more realistic war goes down with the magic and associated situations:

-CS begins blowing up civilian towns with weapons tests.
-Tolkeen finally decides to step up and declare war.
-Force field goes up, the 3 cities are pretty-well impregnable

Because it's more realistic if only Tolkeen has plot armor.

-Teleportation and summoned horrors with thousands of MDC get dropped on all major industrial centers and supply bases well behind the Coalition Military's lines.

That'd be the equivalent of terrorist spree-shooters; pretty freaky, but they get gunned down.

Killer Cyborg wrote::x

Freemage wrote:Killer Cyborg: I think it strains credulity to suggest that the massively overwritten CW series failed to somehow mention Tolkeen's Super-Seekrit plans to use the Spells of Legend and other potential magical WMDs. The distribution of the spells in the book reads to me, frankly, as an effort to make sure the spells themselves survive the regime.

Where's the part about distribution again?

I thought it might be under the spell description, but it's not.

You missed it by a hair, actually--Page 37:

In the meantime, Tolkeen has made numerous scroll conversions of the Spells of Legend within the Book of Ten, and have distributed them far and wide to key leaders and trusted sorcerers throughout the Kingdom. Still, only 1% of Tolkeen's most notable spell casters know more than two or three Spells of Legend from the Book of Ten; those who do are almost always mystic instructors of the Kingdom and not front-line troops.

That said, I was actually in error--I was thinking of the original scribing of the spells into the Book of Ten, as described on Page 102 of the same book:

Sensing that his time was extremely limited, the last thing Gravander did was assemble his apprentices to his bed chamber where he lay dying. One by one, he taught each of them a single Spell of Legend from his extraordinary store of arcane knowledge. (That his entire spell knowledge was not preserved is considered one of Tolkeen's greatest tragedies.) Then he helped them commit these spells to an enchanted book Gravander had won in another dimension and brought home as a trophy. When the last spell was committed to the book, Gravander gave a great sigh and passed away. Tolkeen's finest hero was gone, but his spirit would live on in what would become the first of Tolkeen's mighty arsenal of magic artifacts: The Book of Ten.

There is this, though:
CW1 38
Tolkeen holds this spell in reserve to use on the CS crop fields in Missouri and Iowa as a way of buying negotiating and blackmail leverage, should they need it. It is also used for strategic purposes, and to intimidate the enemy.

In any case, I think that the SoT series is set up specifically NOT to cover everything, simply so that gamers have opportunities to play things out themselves.

Except that the use of those spells (especially BoA) would be a perfect set-up for a Plot Hook suggestion, and there's no hint of it in the book that I've found.

Nor, for that matter, do I think that such plotting is necessary for the "Tolkeen = Evil" argument to be made

I wouldn't consider that plot to be evil, unless it was on the scale where it wiped out all the plants on a state or continent level.

Axelmania did that with his citation of Sedition, Northfields (which, oddly, neither side has picked up on). It's very clearly a targeted attack on a civilian population in CS territory--the epitome of everything that has been held up as a standard of proof.

Eh. I kind of consider that question closed just from KS repeatedly saying that they're just as hate-filled, revenge-driven, etc. etc. as the CS.
And the slave army, and so forth.
But yeah, this is another possible example.

The specific dispute for 'just as bad' status was the targeting of civilian populations, which prior to this point, all the examples of that particular wartime atrocity were on the CS side. Northfields establishes very concretely that there were no scruples on that particular point on the side of Tolkeen, and so it becomes moot.

This does not mean, for the record, that Creed's decision to not use the spells offensively, nor to engage in wider acts of terroristic violence against the CS, was a moral high-mark. It could have been anything from a tactical blunder to the belief that such tactics would result in a broader anti-Tolkeen sentiment to simply the conviction that there was no tactical advantage to be gained.

Well, I don't know that it was a tactical blunder (if he didn't use it). I'd assume that it just wouldn't be as effective as the pro-Tolkeen gamers would want it to be.
And yeah, it'd drum up anti-Tolkeen sentiment.

[/quote]

The funny thing about tactics that weren't used is that the decision to not use them could be either a blunder or a sound decision, based entirely on the assumption one brings to the table. The key point is that there is no reason to assume that Tolkeen chose not to wipe out all the farms in Iowa as some sort of scruple of warfare.

Oh, and in a tangent on the side-question of "Did Prosek know Jo-Anna was still alive?"

Sedition, Page 105:

Lady Prosek would be thought dead until 105 P.A., when the Cyber-Knight Lord Coake and an elite team of heroes rescued her from her Federation captors. The three years between her abduction and her release, however, felt like thirty for the Emperor. Both sick with grief and maddened with thoughts of revenge, Emperor Prosek put even more energy into his Campaign of Unity, especially the upgrading of his military's weapons and equipment.

The word "grief" in there is pretty solid. One grieves when someone you love is dead. If she'd merely been captured and he knew it, Prosek would've targeted the Federation of Magic first, not Tolkeen. Since it was about revenge, not rescue, though, his mental habit of lumping of all the enemies of the CS together as a single thing to be destroyed worked against Tolkeen--they were closer and more easily made to pay the price.

Good post, Freemage!

Axelmania wrote:Just how many thousand-MDC horrors do you think Tolkeen is capable of?

The necro spell Summon Magot for example... Just how many Magots are there.in the Msgaverse?

At what point does a Lord of Hades wonder where all his minions went and comes to investigate?

The CS also has range/speed advantage over most horrors and can simply ping them to death.

I could defeat a Magot solo if I had a suit of Flying Titan PA.

The real challenge is to slow them from harming targets which can't flee until they are pinged down.

Which is why you keep body flipping or tripping a Magot to deprive it of attacks.

Hades is not the only hell in the Megaverse
Not all demons live in Hades.
In point of fact Hades has to be a pretty tiny number of the demons out there.
Although this is somewhat offset by the fact that there are canonically at least a dozen or so parallel Hades

Also note
The city of Gamora, alone, has a population of 40,000 Maggots
And that the Lords of Hades routinely release armies of tens of thousands of them into battle, and have sent thousands of them out into the Megaverse.

And that's just Maggots.

Freemage wrote:The word "grief" in there is pretty solid. One grieves when someone you love is dead. If she'd merely been captured and he knew it, Prosek would've targeted the Federation of Magic first, not Tolkeen. Since it was about revenge, not rescue, though, his mental habit of lumping of all the enemies of the CS together as a single thing to be destroyed worked against Tolkeen--they were closer and more easily made to pay the price.

We known that someone thought she was dead. Not explicitly Karl. Karl didn't know she was alive, but that doesn't mean he definitely thought she was dead.

He knew she was gone and he couldn't ascertain what happened to her. That is enough to grieve for. She could be dead, she could be imprisoned and subject to torture, changed into a vampire, etc.

Well if anyone remembers one of the tolkeen generals wear a amulet that was a gift from allistair that was rumored to have the soul of karl's youngest son, something some seem to not really pay attention too.

eliakon wrote:

Axelmania wrote:Just how many thousand-MDC horrors do you think Tolkeen is capable of?

The necro spell Summon Magot for example... Just how many Magots are there.in the Msgaverse?

At what point does a Lord of Hades wonder where all his minions went and comes to investigate?

The CS also has range/speed advantage over most horrors and can simply ping them to death.

I could defeat a Magot solo if I had a suit of Flying Titan PA.

The real challenge is to slow them from harming targets which can't flee until they are pinged down.

Which is why you keep body flipping or tripping a Magot to deprive it of attacks.

Hades is not the only hell in the Megaverse
Not all demons live in Hades.
In point of fact Hades has to be a pretty tiny number of the demons out there.
Although this is somewhat offset by the fact that there are canonically at least a dozen or so parallel Hades

Also note
The city of Gamora, alone, has a population of 40,000 Maggots
And that the Lords of Hades routinely release armies of tens of thousands of them into battle, and have sent thousands of them out into the Megaverse.

And that's just Maggots.

Their ranged attacks are of unclear range, too.

Drought is an especially fun spell. Coulda sworn there was a cold version but I can't find it. But "10 degrees Farenheit per level of caster" goes from "my this is uncomfortable" to "everything dies over there" rather quickly without some sort of house rule putting a cap on things. Just read a scroll and center it in the center of town; nothing says walls stop the spell, nothing says you can chill things down with air-conditioning or the like. Suddenly the air in a large area is anywhere between 80-220 degrees (depending on ambient daily temperature and caster level) and bad stuff happens.

But let's not get bogged down in details, Tolkeen even had a magical nuke. Doc Reed ended up with it because reasons and such as. They couldn't have two? Or Ten? Doesn't matter, they had the tech to make the whole thing a cold war MAD situation, the CS has the juice to just first-strike most of the kingdom by flying really fast and dropping those mile-radius nukes.

The issue is that in a line of derpy moves the CS win/loss is determined by relevance to the metaplot rather than any sort of logic. I.e. plot armor. i.e. the CS didn't HAVE to win, it just did because author fiat.

boring7 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Axelmania wrote:Just how many thousand-MDC horrors do you think Tolkeen is capable of?

The necro spell Summon Magot for example... Just how many Magots are there.in the Msgaverse?

At what point does a Lord of Hades wonder where all his minions went and comes to investigate?

The CS also has range/speed advantage over most horrors and can simply ping them to death.

I could defeat a Magot solo if I had a suit of Flying Titan PA.

The real challenge is to slow them from harming targets which can't flee until they are pinged down.

Which is why you keep body flipping or tripping a Magot to deprive it of attacks.

Hades is not the only hell in the Megaverse
Not all demons live in Hades.
In point of fact Hades has to be a pretty tiny number of the demons out there.
Although this is somewhat offset by the fact that there are canonically at least a dozen or so parallel Hades

Also note
The city of Gamora, alone, has a population of 40,000 Maggots
And that the Lords of Hades routinely release armies of tens of thousands of them into battle, and have sent thousands of them out into the Megaverse.

And that's just Maggots.

Their ranged attacks are of unclear range, too.

Drought is an especially fun spell. Coulda sworn there was a cold version but I can't find it. But "10 degrees Farenheit per level of caster" goes from "my this is uncomfortable" to "everything dies over there" rather quickly without some sort of house rule putting a cap on things. Just read a scroll and center it in the center of town; nothing says walls stop the spell, nothing says you can chill things down with air-conditioning or the like. Suddenly the air in a large area is anywhere between 80-220 degrees (depending on ambient daily temperature and caster level) and bad stuff happens.

But let's not get bogged down in details, Tolkeen even had a magical nuke. Doc Reed ended up with it because reasons and such as. They couldn't have two? Or Ten? Doesn't matter, they had the tech to make the whole thing a cold war MAD situation, the CS has the juice to just first-strike most of the kingdom by flying really fast and dropping those mile-radius nukes.

The issue is that in a line of derpy moves the CS win/loss is determined by relevance to the metaplot rather than any sort of logic. I.e. plot armor. i.e. the CS didn't HAVE to win, it just did because author fiat.

Just like when Tolkeen totally pulled out "Protection from Nuke", which is no spell in the books at all, that sort of plot armor? Everything hasn't been written for RIFTS or Palladium. As they write it becomes Cannon. Just like the Republicans actually using ARCHIE's own production facilities against him. Its only mention in SB1 Revised. People do stupid things all the time. Make mistakes. Have assumptions that are not born out by the plan or the world. That's life or, in this case, bad/good plot lines.

As for the spell, Drought(witches spell), I read it as it works on stuff outside. AirCons would would counter for a while. Until CS counters it with something else. Like a NegaPsi that walks in and wonders why everybody is thirsty, while dispelling the drought without knowing it. Prosek Jr then thanks Corporal Oblivious to Supernatural for patrolling that area with him. OOPs super spell gone now.

And then 1 out 10 shifters, loose control of a maggot and gets eaten a maggot or summons a Balrog instead.

Axelmania wrote:

Freemage wrote:The word "grief" in there is pretty solid. One grieves when someone you love is dead. If she'd merely been captured and he knew it, Prosek would've targeted the Federation of Magic first, not Tolkeen. Since it was about revenge, not rescue, though, his mental habit of lumping of all the enemies of the CS together as a single thing to be destroyed worked against Tolkeen--they were closer and more easily made to pay the price.

We known that someone thought she was dead. Not explicitly Karl. Karl didn't know she was alive, but that doesn't mean he definitely thought she was dead.

He knew she was gone and he couldn't ascertain what happened to her. That is enough to grieve for. She could be dead, she could be imprisoned and subject to torture, changed into a vampire, etc.

Grief implies a certain permanence--you believe the person is permanently lost, either through death or some other means (FREX: If he suspected she was captured and taken through a Rift, that could qualify, because where do you start looking for her?). Captured but still potentially rescuable wouldn't provoke the sort of mindless grief we see described in that passage. I'm inclined, though, to say that the strongest conclusion is that Karl believed Jo-Anna was dead, and decided that ALL mages and D-bees had to pay for that.

Mech-Viper Prime wrote:Well if anyone remembers one of the tolkeen generals wear a amulet that was a gift from allistair that was rumored to have the soul of karl's youngest son, something some seem to not really pay attention too.

That falls into the 'rumor' category, as you note, so it doesn't really factor into whether or not Tolkeen truly was just as evil (obviously, if true, it would fall into that category). The rumor certainly infuriated Karl and Joe2, though, and moved, "Turn Tolkeen into a scorched and barren wasteland" further up Karl's to-do list.

I was flipping through the second book, Coalition Overkill, and noticed that the real Nazi-esque tactics used by the CS weren't widely supported. I'll have to find the page numbers later, but basically after the CS got bogged down in the initial year or so of the war, a new group of generals steered the CS towards those tactics. Concentration camps, exterminating small towns, real scorched earth tactics that the CS apparently hadn't been using before. The book even notes that many CS soldiers (and even CS leadership) are opposed to these tactics and see them as despicable. Karl Prosek doesn't even approve, thinking they're too heavy-handed and are bad PR (he lets them try it out for a while, because he's curious and he's anxious to make progress in the war). The book notes that the people who are really for it are those who spent that year on the front lines, getting ambushed by mages and seeing their buddies get eaten by monsters.

This makes it seem to me that initially, the Tolkeen war is intended to be more of an ethnic cleansing, a forced relocation of D-Bees and mages rather than a campaign of extermination. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here. That's in addition to being an attempt to defeat a military rival and seize some territory. It reads very differently from the way some people in this thread have portrayed it.

boring7 wrote:The issue is that in a line of derpy moves the CS win/loss is determined by relevance to the metaplot rather than any sort of logic. I.e. plot armor. i.e. the CS didn't HAVE to win, it just did because author fiat.

Okay... but if Tolkeen had won, THAT would have been because of author fiat.
So...?

Eagle wrote:I was flipping through the second book, Coalition Overkill, and noticed that the real Nazi-esque tactics used by the CS weren't widely supported. I'll have to find the page numbers later, but basically after the CS got bogged down in the initial year or so of the war, a new group of generals steered the CS towards those tactics. Concentration camps, exterminating small towns, real scorched earth tactics that the CS apparently hadn't been using before. The book even notes that many CS soldiers (and even CS leadership) are opposed to these tactics and see them as despicable. Karl Prosek doesn't even approve, thinking they're too heavy-handed and are bad PR (he lets them try it out for a while, because he's curious and he's anxious to make progress in the war). The book notes that the people who are really for it are those who spent that year on the front lines, getting ambushed by mages and seeing their buddies get eaten by monsters.

This makes it seem to me that initially, the Tolkeen war is intended to be more of an ethnic cleansing, a forced relocation of D-Bees and mages rather than a campaign of extermination. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here. That's in addition to being an attempt to defeat a military rival and seize some territory. It reads very differently from the way some people in this thread have portrayed it.

Agreed.

boring7 wrote:Drought is an especially fun spell. Coulda sworn there was a cold version but I can't find it. But "10 degrees Farenheit per level of caster" goes from "my this is uncomfortable" to "everything dies over there" rather quickly without some sort of house rule putting a cap on things.

This is a level 8 Fire Warlock spell on page 80-81 of Book of Magic if anyone is wondering, I had forgotten where it was.

I also found a level 7 Air Warlock spell version of this on pg 64 of Book of Magic called Atmosphere Manipulation. It only says degrees though, not Fahrenheit explicitly. They can do the temp change every melee (assuming they do no other effects) but it only lasts 15 minutes if they can't maintain concentration (which is likely, they'd probably be intercepted long before 210 minutes)

The Fire spell has a much better duration (week/level) but there are probably more level 7 air warlocks than level 8 fire warlocks so it's worth noting.

Kurseteller wrote:As for the spell, Drought(witches spell), I read it as it works on stuff outside.

African Witch spell "Summon & Control Drought" is on pg 34 of Book of Magic. Unlike the Fire "Drought" spell this only explicitly prevents precipitation though, not temperature.

Pg 35 has "Summon & Control Heat Wave" for that purpose, which only causes a 20 degree (not per level) increase. That said... I can't see anything preventing casting this multiple times on the same area to cause further increases.

BoM 32's "Only the African Witch O.C.C. may practise this particular kind of magic" makes this seem irrelevant to the Tolkeen conflict though, do we know if even 1 of these is in North America?

Unlike Spoiling Magic (BoMp218) there doesn't appear to be anything about opening up the magic to the classic witch OCC which I think's prevalent everywhere.

boring7 wrote:Just read a scroll and center it in the center of town; nothing says walls stop the spell, nothing says you can chill things down with air-conditioning or the like. Suddenly the air in a large area is anywhere between 80-220 degrees (depending on ambient daily temperature and caster level) and bad stuff happens.

Couldn't a simple Negate Magic talisman ruin either spell though? I gotta think the Vanguard seeds these things all over the place.

Do we know if Psi-Stalkers/Psi-Hounds can even detect Talismans when they're not being used?

boring7 wrote:But let's not get bogged down in details, Tolkeen even had a magical nuke. Doc Reed ended up with it because reasons and such as.

Wha? Is that in the revised VK or vampire sourcebook somewhere? First I'm hearing of it, sounds interesting... anyone got a page?

Freemage wrote:Grief implies a certain permanence--you believe the person is permanently lost, either through death or some other means (FREX: If he suspected she was captured and taken through a Rift, that could qualify, because where do you start looking for her?). Captured but still potentially rescuable wouldn't provoke the sort of mindless grief we see described in that passage. I'm inclined, though, to say that the strongest conclusion is that Karl believed Jo-Anna was dead, and decided that ALL mages and D-bees had to pay for that.

I don't think we're really disagreeing here. Her being taken through a rift (or being teleported away) would've been the only likely explanation for how all but a finger could be gone with her possibly being otherwise intact.

Being potentially rescuable doesn't really help if you haven't the first idea where to begin looking, if there's absolutely no trail to follow. I believe that is what prompted the grief. He believed she was likely dead, and that even if she was alive, he had no way of knowing because there wasn't any indication of which mages took her, or where.

Eagle wrote:I was flipping through the second book, Coalition Overkill, and noticed that the real Nazi-esque tactics used by the CS weren't widely supported. I'll have to find the page numbers later, but basically after the CS got bogged down in the initial year or so of the war, a new group of generals steered the CS towards those tactics. Concentration camps, exterminating small towns, real scorched earth tactics that the CS apparently hadn't been using before. The book even notes that many CS soldiers (and even CS leadership) are opposed to these tactics and see them as despicable. Karl Prosek doesn't even approve, thinking they're too heavy-handed and are bad PR (he lets them try it out for a while, because he's curious and he's anxious to make progress in the war). The book notes that the people who are really for it are those who spent that year on the front lines, getting ambushed by mages and seeing their buddies get eaten by monsters.

This makes it seem to me that initially, the Tolkeen war is intended to be more of an ethnic cleansing, a forced relocation of D-Bees and mages rather than a campaign of extermination. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here. That's in addition to being an attempt to defeat a military rival and seize some territory. It reads very differently from the way some people in this thread have portrayed it.

Glad you brought this up. I was just looking in Sedition because with a title like "Coalition Overkill" I only figured "it just gets worse, I won't find any examples of tolerance at this point". What you describe is the "Second Wave" on pg 16 I believe.

17 interestingly refers to "a D-Bee holocaust, not unlike the horrors that unfolded beneath the pre-Rifts Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler" as being an idea Second Wavers have on how to Salvage the Siege, meaning that the First Wave was NOT a Holocaust or Hitleresque. Rather, that approach can be credited to Micander Drogue.

18 makes it clear this isn't appreciated:

Prosek does not particularly care for the brazen and outspoken nature of officers who lead the Second Wave,
Nor does he like their scorched earth plans and strategies,
fearing it appears to be too "desperate" and a bit "heavy handed."

Pg 27's Dirty Thirty are also an example of this problem.

Pg 12 the letter from Deon Canton only mentions taking out D-Bees/mages for example, not entire towns of non-magic humans which happened to have a boogie-man hiding in a tunnel snatching their babies which they couldn't catch.

Pg 14 does mention a group that operates the way some people have suggested:

This has turned many soldiers into killing machines whose souls have no room for compassion. So it is, they gun down every non-Coalition individual they encounter behind enemy lines.
[/quote]

"Many" is worrying, but it certainly isn't "most" or "all", so we should recognize that they are the exceptions not the majority.

The "some poor slob who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time" treatment of "should have known better in the first place" is only the attitude of the killing machine (KM) faction, not overall CS policy, though CS policy is clearly loose enough to allow the KMs leeway to do these things.

More statements of tolerance from 14:

human mercenaries, adventurers and refugees are spared, provided they agree to flee the war zone, never to return, or to join the CS as scouts and freelance agents


and 15 in particular...

known CS sympathizers, bounty hunters, and select traders, merchants, woodsmen, and civilians (sometimes entire communities) who seem to genuinely welcome and support Coalition forces may also be spared and allowed to continue to go about their business, or serve the CS troops.

This exception may also be extended to informers, unallied adventurers, mercenaries, vagabonds and locals (D-Bees among them) who win the favor of one of the current, local Coalition commanders or units in the area. In some cases, D-Bee children are kept as gophers, servants or entertainers and treated like "pets."

However, most Coalition Officers frown upon this, for the little urchins may secretly serve other masters as spies and turn against their keepers.


If the officers merely "frown" at allowing D-Bee children to live, then clearly it isn't any kind of "you must kill them or you will be executed" situation.

It also clearly sometimes spares communities known to sympathize with the CS.

14 also clarifies non-lethal consequences for being kind to the enemy:

Getting caught treating a nonhuman or practitioner of magic with kindness is a serious offense punishable by one or all of the
following "official" sanctions:
reprimand,
loss of pay,
harsh work-duty,
demotion (reduction of rank and/or loss of duty) and,
occasionally, dishonorable discharge.


What falls under the 'kindness'? Earlier there are examples:

giving a D-Bee prisoner (or sorcerer) a blanket, cup of water, food or medical treatment,
to showing a captive some measure of respect and/or kindness,
refraining from torture and
even letting obviously innocent people go
[/quote]

So the worst thing that happens here is that you could get discharged, and that only happens occasionally. Harsher punishments only happen if you aid ENEMIES.


Any soldier found "willfully" helping the enemy escape (even a child) is subject to court-martial.
If found guilty, he is branded a traitor, be stripped of his rank,
and either face life in prison or, more likely, public execution


So while there's problems if you let D-Bees/mages go, letting obviously innocent humans (for example a non-mage human who merely had D-Bee slaves working his farm, or children who happened to have their town invaded by Shifters or which had a vampire lurking somewhere they couldn't stop) go is something the CS has empathy for.

Pg 22 also notably highlights some tolerance from the evil (Aberrant) Jericho Holmes:

The General is a dyed-in-the-wool human supremacist who views all D-Bees as dangerous vermin who must be pushed
back to the ends of the Earth.
..
would rather banish D-Bees from Coalition territory than kill them.
..
If the vermin are willing to move away from human territory, then so be it. Mission accomplished.


"pushed back to the ends" not killed. This highlights that one of the CS' most celebrated heroes has a 'push them away' policy, not a 'kill them all' policy.

It's the Diabolics like Drogue who are doing this, a lot of the CS are honorable guys who simply want to reclaim human land for humans and set up a competent Xiticix barrier for its sympathizers. The "kingdom" of Tolkeen simply lacks the coordination for it.

Miscreants like Kira Moss (pg 23) are, like Aberrants, resistant to fighting humans and wants to "harass" D-Bees/mages

she does not relish the thought of fighting another group of humans
..
she leapt at the opportunity, both to harass D-Bees and vile practitioners of magic as well as to reunite with her idol

SereneTsunami wrote:The canon basis for the assertion that the Coalition has superior food production comes from page 67 of WB#13 Lonestar. My opinion is that this genetic technology applied to almost everypart of the Coalition's economy is the source of their ability to dominate North America, leading us back to the OP question about the invincibility of the CS.

I just got the HoH and it does indeed speak to the economic costs of mobilizing such a large amount of new soldiers. I do think the CS is invincible when it comes to outside threats. I think the only threat to the CS as it is now is the people losing faith in the Prosek regime. This loss of faith could come as a result of the overextension of their economy.

Prior to HOH the CS was pretty well supplied with food as lone star gave them access to a lot of genetically modified superfood crops animals. They talk about that in lone star but with HOH raising and supporting the huge influx of volunteers is straining their capacity but they are not letting that be known. It says that if lazlo or lemurians knew the CS was having issues with food they could easily supply them with enough.

Given how rapidly they increased their forces for the start of the minion war not to surprising there are some issues with food supplies/logistics. I am guessing their higher ups figure a lot of it is going to be a self correcting problem as many of the eager volunteers are going to meet their makers sooner rather than later once they start getting into contact with demonic/infernal forces.