The Invincibility of the CS?

[boring7]

I've always seen the parallels between the CS and the Nazis ever since I picked up the first books and I've never felt like I was on a soap box for using that frame of reference to my players (who also tend to see the same things without my descriptors).

Not that I have a dog in this hunt but I'm curious how they 'aren't'. I see a lot of heated debates that seem to only amount to countering points made by people who feel they are. Rather than actual points made to why they aren't.

Technically you can't prove a negative, so you can't prove they aren't (insert group here).

I think a lot of the CS-defenders don't actually have a clear concept of what the Nazis were beyond the Villains of movies and TV. Hans the German Soldier was NOT a bloody-minded sadist as he gunned down French Civilians in retaliation to the latest "terrorist attack" by La Resistance. He was a family man with kids to feed listening to propaganda and trying to quell the bad feelings with "these people are monsters, they tried to subjugate and enslave us after WWI, they must be controlled or they will do terrible things to us again." It's not THAT HARD to understand Hans or his thought processes or how he could shoot a kid in the face because that kid was randomly selected.

Understanding who and how he did it doesn't make what he did right.

[SycophantNagaraja]

I've always seen the parallels between the CS and the Nazis ever since I picked up the first books and I've never felt like I was on a soap box for using that frame of reference to my players (who also tend to see the same things without my descriptors).

Not that I have a dog in this hunt but I'm curious how they 'aren't'. I see a lot of heated debates that seem to only amount to countering points made by people who feel they are. Rather than actual points made to why they aren't.

Technically you can't prove a negative, so you can't prove they aren't (insert group here).

I think a lot of the CS-defenders don't actually have a clear concept of what the Nazis were beyond the Villains of movies and TV. Hans the German Soldier was NOT a bloody-minded sadist as he gunned down French Civilians in retaliation to the latest "terrorist attack" by La Resistance. He was a family man with kids to feed listening to propaganda and trying to quell the bad feelings with "these people are monsters, they tried to subjugate and enslave us after WWI, they must be controlled or they will do terrible things to us again." It's not THAT HARD to understand Hans or his thought processes or how he could shoot a kid in the face because that kid was randomly selected.

Understanding who and how he did it doesn't make what he did right.

Technically there should actually be a plausible reason for someone to take a stance, on one side or the other outside of continual counterpointing each comment that indicates that the CS are fashioned after the Nazis. Otherwise there isn't any logical reason for the debate on either side.

That's why I was wanting to hear the reasoning behind why people feel they aren't. I'm not worried about if they are accurate or inaccurate, I just wanted to see reasoning outside of effectively saying "nu huh no they aint"

[eliakon]

I've always seen the parallels between the CS and the Nazis ever since I picked up the first books and I've never felt like I was on a soap box for using that frame of reference to my players (who also tend to see the same things without my descriptors).

Not that I have a dog in this hunt but I'm curious how they 'aren't'. I see a lot of heated debates that seem to only amount to countering points made by people who feel they are. Rather than actual points made to why they aren't.

Technically you can't prove a negative, so you can't prove they aren't (insert group here).

I think a lot of the CS-defenders don't actually have a clear concept of what the Nazis were beyond the Villains of movies and TV. Hans the German Soldier was NOT a bloody-minded sadist as he gunned down French Civilians in retaliation to the latest "terrorist attack" by La Resistance. He was a family man with kids to feed listening to propaganda and trying to quell the bad feelings with "these people are monsters, they tried to subjugate and enslave us after WWI, they must be controlled or they will do terrible things to us again." It's not THAT HARD to understand Hans or his thought processes or how he could shoot a kid in the face because that kid was randomly selected.

Understanding who and how he did it doesn't make what he did right.

Technically there should actually be a plausible reason for someone to take a stance, on one side or the other outside of continual counterpointing each comment that indicates that the CS are fashioned after the Nazis. Otherwise there isn't any logical reason for the debate on either side.

That's why I was wanting to hear the reasoning behind why people feel they aren't. I'm not worried about if they are accurate or inaccurate, I just wanted to see reasoning outside of effectively saying "nu huh no they aint"

Well...
...I find it interesting that it is always the same two or three people that claim that the CS is not based on Nazis/evil/committing genocide/aggressors/what ever
And the arguments always seem to boil down to "all examples of bad things from the book are mistakes, all examples of good things from the books are the only things that matter, and ignore the man behind the curtain/leadership they don't count"
Now that it has started, it will become the usual circular flame war until locked.
My two credits is that some people are huge fans of the CS, and since they don't want to be fans of an empire of genocidal monsters out there doing evil... their fanon is that they are really just misunderstood; or that they are forced to do it; or that the other guys are worse; or that their enemies asked for it; or that it was all the mistakes of this junior officer or that one and not official policy; that the CS are these heroic noble defenders of humanity who are the only hope of mankind in a dark world where everyone else is out to kill of the humans; or basically anything but the CS being bad guys.

I also find it interesting that the people who always race to the defense of the CS also tend to support the "party line" on other issues such as magic, psionics, races, D-bees, property, manifest destiny and the like.

[SycophantNagaraja]

[quote="eliakon] Well...
...I find it interesting that it is always the same two or three people that claim that the CS is not based on Nazis/evil/committing genocide/aggressors/what ever
And the arguments always seem to boil down to "all examples of bad things from the book are mistakes, all examples of good things from the books are the only things that matter, and ignore the man behind the curtain/leadership they don't count"
Now that it has started, it will become the usual circular flame war until locked.
My two credits is that some people are huge fans of the CS, and since they don't want to be fans of an empire of genocidal monsters out there doing evil... their fanon is that they are really just misunderstood; or that they are forced to do it; or that the other guys are worse; or that their enemies asked for it; or that it was all the mistakes of this junior officer or that one and not official policy; that the CS are these heroic noble defenders of humanity who are the only hope of mankind in a dark world where everyone else is out to kill of the humans; or basically anything but the CS being bad guys.

I also find it interesting that the people who always race to the defense of the CS also tend to support the "party line" on other issues such as magic, psionics, races, D-bees, property, manifest destiny and the like.[/quote]


Thank you for that. And my statement to that effect is: it's a game. It's ok to like the bad guys. Fans of Star Wars are in the same boat and there are TONS and TONS of people who dress as Sith and Stormtroopers. But they are still the bad guys even if we happen to like them.

I've always viewed the CS, based on how KS has written them, as the Nazis but in a factual position of being humanity's savior (as written they are the strongest nation of humans in NA). The people who know better hate it (like Tarn) and know exactly what it means for humanity. They are largely powerless to stop it for now because they know most of the CS citizenry are just sheeple lead by a leader who really knows how to capitalize on that. And if you like those moral ambiguities (trying to be good in a system of evil, corruption, and malaise) then go read Karen Traviss' Republic Commando series. Almost the whole of the series could be ported over to a CS storyline note for note. It would make for a perfect story arc of CS Special forces types who work the fringe of their society to find that the story the Proseks are selling isn't exactly the truth, insert a version of Walon Vau and Kal Skirata and you have a heck of a game exploring the underbelly of the CS, it's machinations, the absolute ignorance of the population, and just how evil the government is.

But as for the original topic that started this thread: If you were the writer, or at least able to heavily influence the writing of a future book or two for Rifts how would you deal with what is written now and make it more inline with what you feel is better or more accurate? And I don't mean a retcon. Would you have the CS throw down with someone big to thin out the numbers and bring in more instability from some where? Would you create more political drama within the ruling party?

[boring7]

But as for the original topic that started this thread: If you were the writer, or at least able to heavily influence the writing of a future book or two for Rifts how would you deal with what is written now and make it more inline with what you feel is better or more accurate? And I don't mean a retcon. Would you have the CS throw down with someone big to thin out the numbers and bring in more instability from some where? Would you create more political drama within the ruling party?

All of the above.

Well, sort of. I just drop the Orb of Solomon (SoT 1) on his head and let things shake out from there. For those who DON'T remember; the Orb of Solomon let's you see with absolute clarity what a piece of garbage you have been your entire life, every lie you ever told yourself, every sin you ever rationalized, and after breaking you down psychologically proceeds to motivate you to fix it and start doing good with your life.

After that you basically start up the campaign idea running in a certain other thread about un-breaking Rifts Earth. Establish backchannel agreements with reasonable neighbors, send the psychopathic murderbot leaders into a campaign that will get them killed (hey look, Minion War), start quietly hiring deniable assets and working sanctioned, "safe" magic items into the repertoire (See the Invisible Amulets are a pretty big game-changer for fighting certain kinds of demon). Just start lying about magic things being "Psy-tech" and make an open alliance with the Lemurians, etc.

[Pepsi Jedi]

-Kevin Sembieda literally said, "yeah, they're the nazis but with more skulls."

Cite your source.

-It is canon that failing to go full genocide-purge on civilian D-Bees results in court-martial and (potentially) execution.

Again. Cite your source.

-The "leaders evil/troops good" is NEVER ignored in these threads,

It is, when people call the CS evil, when the vast majority of the people in the CS are not evil and the vast majority of the people in the CS military are also, not evil.

also "some" severely downplays just how much of the CS leadership is puppy-kickingly evil.

Not really. Some people have played the game for years, think they remember things that simply aren't in the book. Some of the CS leadership are evil, but seldom are they anywhere near how some people on the forums depict them. It's almost comical in that aspect. And yes, the guys screaming 'Nazi nazi nazi" because they dress in black, tend to 'lead' that faction.

-Rifts has a LOT of good-guy groups out there, these groups are even (occasionally) retconned to be "more evil" and it's still not enough to make the CS a "shade of grey" in moral terms.

You said there were a HOST of regions which humans are just fine, often better than the CS.

ok..... Where? Where are all these millions of humans doing just fine with out resorting to the CS's tactics.

-"Peace through power" while refusing to make deals with other powers (like Cyber-knights, or Lazlo, or any other power that is willing to talk/deal) is not just evil, it's stupid.

Not agreeing to do what other suggest isn't a mark of evil. Nor is refusing to ally with alien invaders from other planets and dimensions. Seeing what happened with the "Peaceful" Kingdom of Tolkeen and them field armies of thousands of literal demons. One could easily argue that not allying with that kind of power, is pretty flippin' smart.

-Doesn't matter if the other political groups are "smaller" or "less influential", they have power the CS could USE instead of beating its head against and it doesn't "because evil".

Buy the HoH book. .

Not trying to be cryptic but.. seriously. It's addressed. The CS "Does" use them.

-No, I'm not "misunderstanding the setting." I'm pointing out the setting can't have it both ways. You can't have dynamic character development AND have status quo is god.

You can. You just have to work at it. You can have a status quo and tell plenty of stories around it. Not for nothing but the movment of the setting is glacial. It's advanced under a dozen years in the time line, in decades of real time.

-Yes, the Coalition can lie to itself about who started the Tolkeen War. It's still a lie and the Coalition Leadership knows it.

Really? Did the CS invade another planet? Did they occupy territory on that other planet? Did they pose threat to the forces on that other planet? Did they squat there for 100s of years, building cities? Did they militerize on another planet, just a few 100 miles from a capital on that planet? No?

That was.. tolkeen and it's forces of Dbees, mages, dragons, demons, witches, etc?

The CS is defending humanity from a clear and present danger.

Proof. The siege on tolkeen books. Tolkeen's leaders. All Evil. Built up military might for years, broke out ARMIES of demons so horrible, that other demons even hated them and locked them up, to turn loose on humanity.

Please tell me more of how Tolkeen was sweet and innocent and not at all sharing in fault?

-Same regarding the Juicer Uprising

The Juicers were not murderous mercenaries? Huh.... Books seem to disagree with you.

-Minion War is CS' fault too.

Blatant lie. Sorry. but it just is.

It gets a foothold on earth because they kill everybody who can actually DO something about the rifts or hellpits

Also a lie. There's plenty of mages and what have you left on rifts earth. So the implication is a lie. That said. The people doing something 'about the rifts' aren't exactly flying around at warp speed pulling super hero like feats.

As to the hellpits. The CS is going to do something about those.

(takes a spellcaster to cast the close rift spell). It's like how if you destroy every medical lab you can find, it's your fault the next pandemic can't be stopped.

The CS Succeeded in destroying all the mages on earth??? Wow.. I missed that book. Please cite your source.

And no. "Fault" doesn't lay with someone destroying medical labs. They didn't cause the pandemic. A virus did. Perhaps someone created the virus, they may be attributed with it, buy you can't 'blame' someone for lack of action based on a first action. That's a post hoc egro protor hoc sort of arguement. After therefore because of it. It's vary rarely true.

Also I'm pretty sure the minion war is only a few years old. Age-old rivalries and cold wars don't count.

BOY are you wrong. lol. The ones landing on earth now, are landing after being 'in transit' for 100s of years. lol that's why they're landing staggered and in (Realitivly) small numbers. The Minion war has been going on for a long time.

-CS' biggest problem is they have to match numbers with numbers in Xit territory.

It is a large problem. One that the setting, other than a few stand out instances (The Xit book for example) Pretty much ignores. There's some new tactics being tried in the next few books. I've seen them in the preview books, but they won't solve the problem either. The problem, as written cannot be solved via conventional methods. Something 'new' will have to be developed to solve it. I.E. Super RAID or something that at this point, doesn't exist.

That said the Xit's aren't suddenly invading the lower 48.... they've been the 'same' problem up north for decades. They SHOULD be a horrifying problem but it's a 'out of sight out of mind' for the majority of rifts books and writers.

Kill a hive queen and suddenly you just have to contain the bugs while they go crazy, and Tolkeen special forces can kill a hive queen. Your analogy would work better if it was Iran's "million man army" being backed up with British Special Forces. Again, we understand your point, you either don't understand or ignore ours.

No. You're just wrong. There's a difference. I understand what you're saying. What you're saying is for the most part either fabricated or inaccurate. I.E. Wrong.

-Coalition actions make humanity less safe in every way.

Lie.

Sorry but it is. Killing invading demon armies doesn't make humanity less safe. Building and maintaining a strong military presence in a beseiged world of unspeakable horrors and aliens from other planets and dimensions doesn't make humanity less safe. When you make such blanket statements they're easy to disprove.

That's just the clear and present outcome of their actions.

Killing supernatural evil makes humanity less safe? Please explain this to me.

They kill, torture, and enslave more humans than the demons

Laughably inaccurate. Cite your source.

and their inability to compromise or even think through their actions have REPEATEDLY hurt themselves and other humans while leaving the True Monsters of the setting unharmed.

Also a blatent lie.
Source? The end of the 'war' (More of a police action) with Free Quebec.
The CS Compromised. The Emp even went on TV. took full blame for the hostilities wifh FQ. Apoligised and named them friends in humanity, and pitched in and aided them. In doing so the two human forces united against a common foe, I.E. Tolkeen, and their True Monsters, and defeated them.

-If the CS is "humanity at its finest" as it murders, tortures, and pillages other humans (as well as aliens and demons) then humanity is pretty dang terrible.

I belive that's the definition of a strawman.
you fabricated a statement "The CS is humanity at it's finest" then attacked it. Whom here claimed that the CS was humanity at it's finest? Some have said that it protects humanity on rifts earth, but to my knowledge I don't remember seeing someone claim that the CS are the finest of humanity, or the finest that humanity has to offer or anything of the sort. If I'm wrong, please point me to the person that said such.

-Again, even Kevin admitted they were supposed to be the space-nazis.

Well that's gonna be pretty hard to prove, as the CS have no space assets, and that entire 'killer satalite shield' keeps anyone from getting off earth.

-The CS is not nice to ANYONE, even their own people.

Sure it is. It keeps them safer than any other humans in NA. And safer than MOST other humans on the planet. It shelters them, many in megadamage mega cities. Provides them with technology. Jobs. And FEEDS them Delicious genetically altered super cattle (Book even says the meat tastes better). And the health care. Whoa! CS health care is AMAZING. As it's soldiers can attest. Troops can be mowed down with mega damage weaponry in the field and for the most part, their brains picked up and put in a borg if they signed up for that before hand. Even with out going to that extreme the CS medicine has given it's population a dramatically extended life span over those out side the CS. That seems pretty nice to me, in a post apocalyptic setting. In exchange for these wondrous gifts, it expects people to play by the rules that it sets up. Just like __EVERY COUNTRY EVER IN THE WORLD___ if you live in said country you abide by it's laws. Ther CS's gifts and bonuses are so vast and so dramatic in it's setting that literally millions of people live in shanty towns and squallar, waiting for years on end, to join up and become a CS citizen.

your statement is untrue.

-Feel free to show a SINGLE CS leader that isn't evil. Let alone 3.

General Ross Underhill: Selfish Alignment: Anarchist
Colonel Buck Murphy: Selfish Alignment: Unprincipaled
Dr Fredrick Alexander: Good Alignment: Scrupulous
Jonathan Williams the Third, Unprincipled
Lt. Laquisha "Doc" Sanders, Unprincipled
Ace Gardener, Psi-Battalion, Anarchist
Lt. Maxwell Selig A-Team Senior Officer Anarchist.
Lt. Raul Auerbach, C-Team Senior Officer Principled

Those are all officers or NCOs, or High ranking medical professionals. Generals Colonels, doctors, Lt's, sgts. I left out privates and ones with out rank as you said 'leaders'. So in just a few minutes I found 8... Will that do ya?

-Logic is the basis of my assertions. Fallacies are the basis of yours.

No.. I'm afraid not. You've lied repeatedly in your post, formulated "logical fallacies" such as your strawman as well. But mostly you just lied, and or if we're being cheritable "Purposefully misrepresented" things.

-No, seriously, Word Of God is that they are the nazis.

God said they were Nazis? Where about was that said?

-And yes, everything I have mentioned is from the books. Everything you have said is...well it's actually a misrepresentation/strawman of me.

Oh no. Your stuff isn't from the books. At the very best it takes something from one book.. something from another... a word here.. a sentence there, wraps them all together, claims it's true, extrapolates on the falsehood presented, claims it's fact and then uses it in defense.

When you're just making stuff up, it's not actually from the books. There's HINTS of stuff from some of the books in some (Little) of what you've said, but mostly it's wild extrapolation off of base or incomplete concepts presented.

[Greepnak]

They are Nazis that murder defenseless women and children. There is nothing redeeming about them. I mean, sure, it's easy to see them as heroes when killing a big snarling demon...

How do you reconcile that with gunning down a human kid?

You know that happens in basically every war, right? There are at least two dozen countries where that sort of thing is happening, today. And that's in the real world, where you don't have to worry that that kid might actually be a shape-shifting dragon in disguise.

I haven't read the Heroes of Humanity book, but from what I gather from people here, it emphasizes the CS' role as evil bastards, requiring them to gun down women and children for basically no reason. On the other hand, we have virtually every other Rifts sourcebook on the Coalition, where we frequently see CS soldiers turning a blind eye to rubber forehead aliens, and sometimes even to heroic magic users who have proven they aren't drooling baby eaters. Without directly comparing the text of the new book, I can't reconcile those two positions.

You want to see how soldiers could gun down kids? Watch the following movies to get into the Coalition mindset:
Predator
The Omen
John Carpenter's The Thing
Children of the Corn
Apocalypse Now

My bet is that the Coalition's official stance is something along the lines of "if we gunned them down, they probably weren't actually human children".

HoH actually is a lot about the CS's view of themselves as heroic in a world where you can't trust much of anything at face value, along with pointing out very emphatically that the CS is pressured by the Minion War to the point where the CS high command has a "dont ask dont tell" when it comes to magic/alien tech or working with Dbees at that book's metaplot timeline. The book even states that this new weird tolerance could go anywhere if the human race survives the minion war. Those are the stakes though. Basically the minion war legitimizes a lot of the CS attitudes because here is a literal 200 years dark ages style Demon Plague that nobody has the infrastructure to resist except the CS.

They do this because pre tolkeen conflict most CS troops only had a view on magic and aliens from Crazy Aunt Jemma's personal anecdotes and the propaganda machine, but now a lot of troops have been out there in the field (sometimes in entirely differrent bodies thanks to the CS going hard in the paint on full conversion cyborgs to try to save downed soldiers). The HoH book says that a lot of CS troops have experience now seeing mages/dbees in a heroic light or as peers fighting just to survive just like the CS troops are. I really think the metaplot is almost like a rise fromnear extinction, to barbarism, to enlightenment story with bonus lasers with the CS as the main character. I honestly applaud Palladium for it overall.

[Axelmania]

One thing worth pointing out here is we are disputing the CS are literally Nazis.

If people were saying "the Coalition are Nazi-esque" instead of "the Coalition are Nazis" there would be much less opposition.

Kind of like how I would disagree with Chairman Karl Prosek/Senator Palpatine being Hitler but would be fine calling either Hitler-esque after becoming Emperor. Before... not as much. Karl Prosek was born a celebrity and had a much more impressive military service than Hitler/Palpatine.

I would also say Karl is Napoleon-esque, Khan-esque and Caesar-esque of course. By his own thoughts he has some of their traits.

King Creed? Oh right. King Creed murdered his own diplomat. King Creed slaughtered innocent villages in Tolkeen territory. King Creed wanted to genocide all deebees and magic practitioners on Earth. King Creed is the cause of the CS invading. He didn't like try diplomacy... Oh wait. He totally did.

Creed was appointed king in 89 PA after the Council of Twelve ruled for a year after the death of King Henchu.

Tolkeen decided to end talks in 71PA so I don't think Creed tried diplomacy. It was presumably Henchu who tried that and even he spent his last 17 years avoiding it, hardening his heart over BagGate.

Sedition 101 didn't say anything about the 6 obliterated Minnesotan villages in 70PA being innocent.

[Greepnak]

I think whether a person owns Heroes of Humanity or not is a big factor on whether the CS are just a trolley problem (no non-harmful choices, including inaction. Somebody's gotta die and you are the one who chooses who) society or an edgier evil interpretation of COBRA.

Without getting lost in numbers (which is a losing game when you are comparing 30 years of books covering feasibly 35 years of canon timeline) the spirit of the thing is that the CS has forged the largest human nation on earth in the absence of reliable long range communication etc because of the nature of the zeitgeist created by propaganda. You need to constantly remind humans not to hate and fear (look at modern prejudice and what it takes to keep it corked) but you don't need to constantly remind them that they have an enemy and thus should rally with their neighbor to oppose that enemy. Karl Prosek straight up says "I have made of my people a weapon, which will accomplish great things." (sic)

As for the CS using scary uniforms... remember there are things on earth whose mentalities are so alien that their only joy is making you suffer as long as possible
in as many ways as possible before you die and are eaten. If my mom might wake up tomorrow in a Thornhead's rape and sausages cave I absolutely would put on the skull helmet and start misting things, as I think most people would. Priorities shift when you believe you are under constant threat of attack. Removed into the third person and safely behind the 4th wall, RPG players might think nothing of this, but truly transplant your thoughts into the mind of a 7 to 12 in all stats person born in a ditch in a world invaded by H.P.Lovecraft's imagination and .. yeah.

[SycophantNagaraja]

Pepsi Jedi/Axelmania: I posed the question before but either it was missed or the attention is elsewhere so I'll pose it again. Even if Boring7 posts again if you could refrain from going *** for tat with him and just put down your thoughts on why you feel the CS is not the Rifts version of Nazis. I'd like to hear your opinion on that.

[boring7]

And then we get more posts of insults, psychological projection, and other logical fallacies. Also a HELL of a lot of sea-lioning. For posterity, my sources are "RUE, SoT7, and some random interview where Kevin Siembieda said (paraphrasing) 'duh, they're nazis, but less subtle' ." Also some of my terminology comes from TVTropes.org, but I'm pretty sure everybody already KNEW that and are just playing stupid semantic games.

And with that I'm adding pepsi to the list of people I can't talk to. Time to move on.

I think whether a person owns Heroes of Humanity or not is a big factor on whether the CS are just a trolley problem (no non-harmful choices, including inaction. Somebody's gotta die and you are the one who chooses who) society or an edgier evil interpretation of COBRA.

Not really. HoH is more of the same.

Lots and lots of fluff about random, small samples of soldiers being forced to see the truth about the Coalition's overwhelming awfulness, the CS getting far WORSE within its own borders (well, within the territory it actually controls, it's "borders" are the entire friggin' megaverse depending on who's talking) and more "Coalition is the master race, rah rah rah. Coalition is the Ace, sis-boom-bah." Lots and lots of "we are the heroes, we are the greatest" which is vague as to whether or not it's CS propaganda or supposed to be the objective truth.

Not that I think anyone cares but spoiler-tag:

Spoiler:

The plot generally goes that the Coalition are the Heroes Of Humanity and Earth because...they soak casualties.
They don't even DO it for the first 6 months, if Northern Gun hadn't stepped up to the plate Chi-town would probably be a hell pit before the book even gets anywhere, but eventually the deadboys and Operation Hellbender are rolling and...they're still being rescued.

I mean it's more than that. But it's also something that's happened before. In Hellbender, like in smaller adventures and campaigns, the Coalition has a huge army and heavy firepower but without the help and expertise of magic users, D-bees, "heretical" technology, and/or "forbidden" lore to make that firepower KILL the enemy instead of just make a big mess but fail to defeat the enemy because they didn't know how.

Yes, my 40k is showing. But I think everyone understands the metaphors I'm using.

The book goes on and on about how the brave coalition soldiers save the world, but that they are also saved (and made able to save the world) through the help of the sorts of people that they spent the last metaplot arc brutally murdering. There are numerous examples of "Sam the Pilot and Jim the Juicer are forced to team up with Dory the D-Bee and learn a valuable lesson about hate and heroism." They are juxtaposed with "this is only happening in some cases" and "it's not official policy, just usually overlooked by the brass" and "the official-unofficial rule is to wait until the demons or deviants* WIN before opening fire on what's left." Also juxtaposed with, "and inside the burbs SLAUGHTER REIGNS! D-bees are massacred and the concentration camps are kicked into overdrive! whee!"

Yes, there is the potential for the Coalition to start reforming. There is the possibility for the next plot arc to be soldiers coming home from the war with new ideas, new understandings, and a sense that maybe the Coalition isn't so great after all. There is the possibility that all of the back-room dealings with the freakin' SPLUGORTH (yeah, Prosek KNOWINGLY takes assistance from Atlantis) will shift things. There is the possibility that the Lemurians will force a paradigm shift by stepping out of the shadows (not like they were in the shadows much).

But these possibilities existed before and were squandered. There have been soldiers coming back to the CS with knowledge of the outside, with stories of being spared or saved by deviants. The Coalition has been burned by its ideological purity and almost destroyed by something their much-vaunted military might would have either failed to stop or cost millions of lives to stop. They never learned from those exercises, so I'm not holding my breath that they will NOW.

I mean it's possible, the coalition's wells are running dry for the first time ever (seriously, they plow through trillions of credits worth of resources in their villain plots and the wars they fumble into, their economy is powered by a bulls*#$tium reactor). There are MORE examples than ever (and on a wider scale) of them accepting the help of Deviants. So we'll see.

But the test comes after the Minion War ends. Do all those "ideas" disappear? Do the Deadboys with dangerous thoughts and heretical knowledge start making waves in the Coalition or do they get written right out of the plot and forgotten?


*going to use "deviant" as a catch-all for d-bees, practitioners of magic, and anyone else on the Coalition's kill list.

One of the things I keep running into in various flavors of RPG is Agatha's Law. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science." The Coalition hates and fears alien technology, unknown magic, and forbidden brands of knowledge.

Now, if someone says "think of a group that considers technology dangerous and forbidden" and you think of backwards hicks and religious zealots like the Amish, right? That same concept applies to magic and alien tech: people who hate and fear it are needlessly and irrationally avoiding something that could make them more powerful, and leaving themselves helplessly ignorant of it when someone ELSE uses that power against them.

The upcoming book: The Disavowed dips its toe in the concept, I suspect.

[dreicunan]

A quick point on population of North America: WB30 does not unequivocally state that it is 30-40 million. It says that there may be as many as 30-40 million. While the normal reading of the phrase would be to assume that this is mean to serve as a maximum, it is not inherently so (they could have written "at most" if that was the desire). So it may be as many as 30-40 million. It may also be as many as 80 million, or 20 million, or 69,342,937.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

A quick point on population of North America: WB30 does not unequivocally state that it is 30-40 million. It says that there may be as many as 30-40 million. While the normal reading of the phrase would be to assume that this is mean to serve as a maximum, it is not inherently so (they could have written "at most" if that was the desire). So it may be as many as 30-40 million. It may also be as many as 80 million, or 20 million, or 69,342,937.

That is NOT how the english language works. "May be as many as" implies a finite upper limit, as listed. It is directly synonymous with "up to".

[Pepsi Jedi]

And then we get more posts of insults, psychological projection, and other logical fallacies.

Actually that's what you've been accused of and proven to indulge in. Is this a "I know you are but what am I?" sort of response?

Also a HELL of a lot of sea-lioning.

Not at all. You've put forth fiction and claimed it's fact. Therefore I've asked that you cite the source of the 'Facts' that you're swinging around like clubs. If they are indeed fact, then you should have little trouble finding them.

For posterity, my sources are "RUE, SoT7,

What page? Telling people to go read 100s of pages to prove your false claims is not providing source. Cite the page numbers in the book.

and some random interview where Kevin Siembieda said (paraphrasing) 'duh, they're nazis, but less subtle' ."

Provide said interview. It's something YOU are claiming was said, to shut others up when they claim other wise. You can't just go "Well that's what I heard!" while claiming other people are wrong.

Also some of my terminology comes from TVTropes.org, but I'm pretty sure everybody already KNEW that and are just playing stupid semantic games.

It's not a matter of not knowing tropes, Boring. It's a matter of your tropes and stuff being created whole cloth to support your claims and the inability to back up your claims when asked.

And with that I'm adding pepsi to the list of people I can't talk to. Time to move on.

You mean "The list of people that will call me on stuff if I make it up" Yes. Untill you can support your claims, they're not proven.

I think whether a person owns Heroes of Humanity or not is a big factor on whether the CS are just a trolley problem (no non-harmful choices, including inaction. Somebody's gotta die and you are the one who chooses who) society or an edgier evil interpretation of COBRA.

Not really. HoH is more of the same.

Lots and lots of fluff about random, small samples of soldiers being forced to see the truth about the Coalition's overwhelming awfulness,

It's not a small sampling of soldiers as it's an army wide occurance and concerns the high command due to it.

the CS getting far WORSE within its own borders (well, within the territory it actually controls, it's "borders" are the entire friggin' megaverse depending on who's talking)

Where is it claimed that the CS Claims the entire megaverse?

and more "Coalition is the master race, rah rah rah. Coalition is the Ace, sis-boom-bah."

The CS very much do have a -Human surpremacy- out look. But it's not about race. We're told that there is no racism in the CS. Black or white, asian or hispanic. they don't care. They care what species you belong to.

Lots and lots of "we are the heroes, we are the greatest" which is vague as to whether or not it's CS propaganda or supposed to be the objective truth.

They're both. The book is quite clear on those aspects.

Not that I think anyone cares but spoiler-tag:

Spoiler:

The plot generally goes that the Coalition are the Heroes Of Humanity and Earth because...they soak casualties.
They don't even DO it for the first 6 months, if Northern Gun hadn't stepped up to the plate Chi-town would probably be a hell pit before the book even gets anywhere, but eventually the deadboys and Operation Hellbender are rolling and...they're still being rescued.

You must have a different version of the book than I do.

I mean it's more than that. But it's also something that's happened before. In Hellbender, like in smaller adventures and campaigns, the Coalition has a huge army and heavy firepower but without the help and expertise of magic users, D-bees, "heretical" technology, and/or "forbidden" lore to make that firepower KILL the enemy instead of just make a big mess but fail to defeat the enemy because they didn't know how.

Not true. the CS wade on in there and kill um just fine.

Yes, my 40k is showing. But I think everyone understands the metaphors I'm using.

The book goes on and on about how the brave coalition soldiers save the world, but that they are also saved (and made able to save the world) through the help of the sorts of people that they spent the last metaplot arc brutally murdering.

Not really. Those other powers aren't bailing the CS out of anything in and of themselves. What you see is the CS choosing not to go after those other elements, when they're busy fighting off demons and what have you. Thought process being "If those mages want to fight the demons, A) They'll kill some of the demons, so we have fewer to fight and B) The mages that die, will take the place of troops to die killing the same demons, and C) If there's less mages around after the end of the fight, it's a win win" Sort of situation.

There are numerous examples of "Sam the Pilot and Jim the Juicer are forced to team up with Dory the D-Bee and learn a valuable lesson about hate and heroism." They are juxtaposed with "this is only happening in some cases" and "it's not official policy, just usually overlooked by the brass" and "the official-unofficial rule is to wait until the demons or deviants* WIN before opening fire on what's left."

Yes? That's in the book...... What's your point?

Also juxtaposed with, "and inside the burbs SLAUGHTER REIGNS! D-bees are massacred and the concentration camps are kicked into overdrive! whee!"

Concentration camps? I'ver not Read HoH over and over but I don't remember Concentration camps. Can you point me to that page?

Yes, there is the potential for the Coalition to start reforming. There is the possibility for the next plot arc to be soldiers coming home from the war with new ideas, new understandings, and a sense that maybe the Coalition isn't so great after all. There is the possibility that all of the back-room dealings with the freakin' SPLUGORTH (yeah, Prosek KNOWINGLY takes assistance from Atlantis) will shift things. There is the possibility that the Lemurians will force a paradigm shift by stepping out of the shadows (not like they were in the shadows much).

But these possibilities existed before and were squandered. There have been soldiers coming back to the CS with knowledge of the outside, with stories of being spared or saved by deviants. The Coalition has been burned by its ideological purity

They have? When have they been burned by it's ideological purity?

and almost destroyed by something their much-vaunted military might would have either failed to stop or cost millions of lives to stop.

When was the CS Almost destroyed by anything? Not since the 'rise' of the CS and the attack from the Fed decades and decades previous have the CS Lost a long term enguagement.

They never learned from those exercises, so I'm not holding my breath that they will NOW.

Perhaps you could point out at what point the CS have been burned by their idology or have almost been destroyed?

I mean it's possible, the coalition's wells are running dry for the first time ever (seriously, they plow through trillions of credits worth of resources in their villain plots and the wars they fumble into, their economy is powered by a bulls*#$tium reactor).

And tens of millions of people, along with golden age science and tech. For example, the genetically engineered cows that produce better tasting, faster growing meat. And MD materials that don't 'wear down' or 'wear out' shy of MD damage, which cuts way back on production and replacement costs, etc. If you can produce a door that will be 100% from the day you install it to the day your great great great great great grandson dies, (Baring a dragon biting it, or a plasma rifle shooting it) Noone has to buy that door for generations. Now multiply that across the entire society.

There are MORE examples than ever (and on a wider scale) of them accepting the help of Deviants. So we'll see.

But the test comes after the Minion War ends. Do all those "ideas" disappear? Do the Deadboys with dangerous thoughts and heretical knowledge start making waves in the Coalition or do they get written right out of the plot and forgotten?

You may be mistaking the book being trying to establish that sort of foot hold. It more shows that 'as they are now' they're heroes to the humans in NA. More than "Look how we're going to change for the better"

*going to use "deviant" as a catch-all for d-bees, practitioners of magic, and anyone else on the Coalition's kill list.

[dreicunan]

A quick point on population of North America: WB30 does not unequivocally state that it is 30-40 million. It says that there may be as many as 30-40 million. While the normal reading of the phrase would be to assume that this is mean to serve as a maximum, it is not inherently so (they could have written "at most" if that was the desire). So it may be as many as 30-40 million. It may also be as many as 80 million, or 20 million, or 69,342,937.

That is NOT how the english language works. "May be as many as" implies a finite upper limit, as listed. It is directly synonymous with "up to".

Yeah, it is how the English language works. Your interpretation is the common one - as I noted - but you can also see a sentence like "it may be as high as [insert number here], or even more" is a perfectly acceptable sentence. The use of the conditional here prevents the statement from being accepted unequivocally. That is what the modal verb "may" exists to do: To avoid declaring (used in the technical sense here for grammar: To say that what you say IS) what you are saying and instead just mention it. That is why we also use "may" to indicate the giving of permission. When I say "you may go now," I'm not saying "you go / are going now". If you want to actually declare that, you just say it. In the same way, if you say "it may be as high as" you are coming up short of actually declaring that it is as high as. This IS exactly how the English language (and others which have both declarative and non-declarative moods or modals) work.

Thus, saying that the population may be as high as a number does not actually serve to state that it is as high as that number but no higher. If you want to say that, you have to actually say that! If it said that the population may be as high as 30-40 million, BUT NO HIGHER, then you'd have a point. It doesn't say that, so you don't.

[SycophantNagaraja]

....so I got my answer then. There isn't a reason I guess, just a series of counter points to boring7's comments. Ok works for me.

[eliakon]

And then we get more posts of insults, psychological projection, and other logical fallacies. Also a HELL of a lot of sea-lioning. For posterity, my sources are "RUE, SoT7, and some random interview where Kevin Siembieda said (paraphrasing) 'duh, they're nazis, but less subtle' ." Also some of my terminology comes from TVTropes.org, but I'm pretty sure everybody already KNEW that and are just playing stupid semantic games.

And with that I'm adding pepsi to the list of people I can't talk to. Time to move on.

I think whether a person owns Heroes of Humanity or not is a big factor on whether the CS are just a trolley problem (no non-harmful choices, including inaction. Somebody's gotta die and you are the one who chooses who) society or an edgier evil interpretation of COBRA.

Not really. HoH is more of the same.

Lots and lots of fluff about random, small samples of soldiers being forced to see the truth about the Coalition's overwhelming awfulness, the CS getting far WORSE within its own borders (well, within the territory it actually controls, it's "borders" are the entire friggin' megaverse depending on who's talking) and more "Coalition is the master race, rah rah rah. Coalition is the Ace, sis-boom-bah." Lots and lots of "we are the heroes, we are the greatest" which is vague as to whether or not it's CS propaganda or supposed to be the objective truth.

Not that I think anyone cares but spoiler-tag:

Spoiler:

The plot generally goes that the Coalition are the Heroes Of Humanity and Earth because...they soak casualties.
They don't even DO it for the first 6 months, if Northern Gun hadn't stepped up to the plate Chi-town would probably be a hell pit before the book even gets anywhere, but eventually the deadboys and Operation Hellbender are rolling and...they're still being rescued.

I mean it's more than that. But it's also something that's happened before. In Hellbender, like in smaller adventures and campaigns, the Coalition has a huge army and heavy firepower but without the help and expertise of magic users, D-bees, "heretical" technology, and/or "forbidden" lore to make that firepower KILL the enemy instead of just make a big mess but fail to defeat the enemy because they didn't know how.

Yes, my 40k is showing. But I think everyone understands the metaphors I'm using.

The book goes on and on about how the brave coalition soldiers save the world, but that they are also saved (and made able to save the world) through the help of the sorts of people that they spent the last metaplot arc brutally murdering. There are numerous examples of "Sam the Pilot and Jim the Juicer are forced to team up with Dory the D-Bee and learn a valuable lesson about hate and heroism." They are juxtaposed with "this is only happening in some cases" and "it's not official policy, just usually overlooked by the brass" and "the official-unofficial rule is to wait until the demons or deviants* WIN before opening fire on what's left." Also juxtaposed with, "and inside the burbs SLAUGHTER REIGNS! D-bees are massacred and the concentration camps are kicked into overdrive! whee!"

Yes, there is the potential for the Coalition to start reforming. There is the possibility for the next plot arc to be soldiers coming home from the war with new ideas, new understandings, and a sense that maybe the Coalition isn't so great after all. There is the possibility that all of the back-room dealings with the freakin' SPLUGORTH (yeah, Prosek KNOWINGLY takes assistance from Atlantis) will shift things. There is the possibility that the Lemurians will force a paradigm shift by stepping out of the shadows (not like they were in the shadows much).

But these possibilities existed before and were squandered. There have been soldiers coming back to the CS with knowledge of the outside, with stories of being spared or saved by deviants. The Coalition has been burned by its ideological purity and almost destroyed by something their much-vaunted military might would have either failed to stop or cost millions of lives to stop. They never learned from those exercises, so I'm not holding my breath that they will NOW.

I mean it's possible, the coalition's wells are running dry for the first time ever (seriously, they plow through trillions of credits worth of resources in their villain plots and the wars they fumble into, their economy is powered by a bulls*#$tium reactor). There are MORE examples than ever (and on a wider scale) of them accepting the help of Deviants. So we'll see.

But the test comes after the Minion War ends. Do all those "ideas" disappear? Do the Deadboys with dangerous thoughts and heretical knowledge start making waves in the Coalition or do they get written right out of the plot and forgotten?


*going to use "deviant" as a catch-all for d-bees, practitioners of magic, and anyone else on the Coalition's kill list.

One of the things I keep running into in various flavors of RPG is Agatha's Law. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science." The Coalition hates and fears alien technology, unknown magic, and forbidden brands of knowledge.

Now, if someone says "think of a group that considers technology dangerous and forbidden" and you think of backwards hicks and religious zealots like the Amish, right? That same concept applies to magic and alien tech: people who hate and fear it are needlessly and irrationally avoiding something that could make them more powerful, and leaving themselves helplessly ignorant of it when someone ELSE uses that power against them.

The upcoming book: The Disavowed dips its toe in the concept, I suspect.

The Disavowed is going to be interesting to see how the pro-CS people spin it.
Since the material so far has suggested all sorts of pretty evil black ops doing some pretty evil stuff.

[lbrucegray]

Hey - I just got ahold of Dimension Book 8 - Naruni Wave 2

OK - Is it just me, or is there a "Naruni Wave =1= book floating around somewhere?

Or is the Wave 1 material in another book?

Bruce

[Axelmania]

Pepsi Jedi/Axelmania: I posed the question before but either it was missed or the attention is elsewhere so I'll pose it again. Even if Boring7 posts again if you could refrain from going *** for tat with him and just put down your thoughts on why you feel the CS is not the Rifts version of Nazis. I'd like to hear your opinion on that.

They aren't systematically killing non-Aryans. How much more do I need? If you get broad enough then you could declare the Starship Troopers "Nazis" for attempting genocide against another species, but the actual Nazis were in a genocide against members of their own species.

The Gypsy/Jewish cultures did not carry the same type of threat to human life that Shifters, Summoners, Witches or Soul Harvesters do. Tolkeen was a culture that allowed practises like that to thrive. Trying to wipe that out should not be equivocated to trying to wipe out Gypsies&Jews.

Now enough of us on the defensive, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim they are Rifts' Nazis. Free Quebec is probably closer to Nazis than the CS since they reject psihounds and psychics more.

In terms of racial subjugation of humans, Splynncryth is also a much better candidate. Humans are on the bottom.rung. As slaves anything can he done to them. Gassing them to death is probably only unpopular because it ruins the taste of the meat. Splynncryth's hold over Atlantis as a dictator is far more solid than Karl's over the CS.

, my sources are "RUE, SoT7, and some random interview where Kevin Siembieda said (paraphrasing) 'duh, they're nazis, but less subtle' ."

This isn't how you properly cite sources. You give pages/excepts or books, and direct quotes from the interview along with when/where it took place and who vouches for its authenticity.

[Killer Cyborg]

And then we get more posts of insults, psychological projection, and other logical fallacies. Also a HELL of a lot of sea-lioning. For posterity, my sources are "RUE, SoT7, and some random interview where Kevin Siembieda said (paraphrasing) 'duh, they're nazis, but less subtle' ." Also some of my terminology comes from TVTropes.org, but I'm pretty sure everybody already KNEW that and are just playing stupid semantic games.

And with that I'm adding pepsi to the list of people I can't talk to. Time to move on.

I think whether a person owns Heroes of Humanity or not is a big factor on whether the CS are just a trolley problem (no non-harmful choices, including inaction. Somebody's gotta die and you are the one who chooses who) society or an edgier evil interpretation of COBRA.

Not really. HoH is more of the same.

Lots and lots of fluff about random, small samples of soldiers being forced to see the truth about the Coalition's overwhelming awfulness, the CS getting far WORSE within its own borders (well, within the territory it actually controls, it's "borders" are the entire friggin' megaverse depending on who's talking) and more "Coalition is the master race, rah rah rah. Coalition is the Ace, sis-boom-bah." Lots and lots of "we are the heroes, we are the greatest" which is vague as to whether or not it's CS propaganda or supposed to be the objective truth.

Not that I think anyone cares but spoiler-tag:

Spoiler:

The plot generally goes that the Coalition are the Heroes Of Humanity and Earth because...they soak casualties.
They don't even DO it for the first 6 months, if Northern Gun hadn't stepped up to the plate Chi-town would probably be a hell pit before the book even gets anywhere, but eventually the deadboys and Operation Hellbender are rolling and...they're still being rescued.

I mean it's more than that. But it's also something that's happened before. In Hellbender, like in smaller adventures and campaigns, the Coalition has a huge army and heavy firepower but without the help and expertise of magic users, D-bees, "heretical" technology, and/or "forbidden" lore to make that firepower KILL the enemy instead of just make a big mess but fail to defeat the enemy because they didn't know how.

Yes, my 40k is showing. But I think everyone understands the metaphors I'm using.

The book goes on and on about how the brave coalition soldiers save the world, but that they are also saved (and made able to save the world) through the help of the sorts of people that they spent the last metaplot arc brutally murdering. There are numerous examples of "Sam the Pilot and Jim the Juicer are forced to team up with Dory the D-Bee and learn a valuable lesson about hate and heroism." They are juxtaposed with "this is only happening in some cases" and "it's not official policy, just usually overlooked by the brass" and "the official-unofficial rule is to wait until the demons or deviants* WIN before opening fire on what's left." Also juxtaposed with, "and inside the burbs SLAUGHTER REIGNS! D-bees are massacred and the concentration camps are kicked into overdrive! whee!"

Yes, there is the potential for the Coalition to start reforming. There is the possibility for the next plot arc to be soldiers coming home from the war with new ideas, new understandings, and a sense that maybe the Coalition isn't so great after all. There is the possibility that all of the back-room dealings with the freakin' SPLUGORTH (yeah, Prosek KNOWINGLY takes assistance from Atlantis) will shift things. There is the possibility that the Lemurians will force a paradigm shift by stepping out of the shadows (not like they were in the shadows much).

But these possibilities existed before and were squandered. There have been soldiers coming back to the CS with knowledge of the outside, with stories of being spared or saved by deviants. The Coalition has been burned by its ideological purity and almost destroyed by something their much-vaunted military might would have either failed to stop or cost millions of lives to stop. They never learned from those exercises, so I'm not holding my breath that they will NOW.

I mean it's possible, the coalition's wells are running dry for the first time ever (seriously, they plow through trillions of credits worth of resources in their villain plots and the wars they fumble into, their economy is powered by a bulls*#$tium reactor). There are MORE examples than ever (and on a wider scale) of them accepting the help of Deviants. So we'll see.

But the test comes after the Minion War ends. Do all those "ideas" disappear? Do the Deadboys with dangerous thoughts and heretical knowledge start making waves in the Coalition or do they get written right out of the plot and forgotten?


*going to use "deviant" as a catch-all for d-bees, practitioners of magic, and anyone else on the Coalition's kill list.

One of the things I keep running into in various flavors of RPG is Agatha's Law. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science." The Coalition hates and fears alien technology, unknown magic, and forbidden brands of knowledge.

Now, if someone says "think of a group that considers technology dangerous and forbidden" and you think of backwards hicks and religious zealots like the Amish, right? That same concept applies to magic and alien tech: people who hate and fear it are needlessly and irrationally avoiding something that could make them more powerful, and leaving themselves helplessly ignorant of it when someone ELSE uses that power against them.

The upcoming book: The Disavowed dips its toe in the concept, I suspect.

The Disavowed is going to be interesting to see how the pro-CS people spin it.
Since the material so far has suggested all sorts of pretty evil black ops doing some pretty evil stuff.

Keep in mind that The Disavowed is available for pre-order, so it might never actually see the light of day!

[ShadowLogan]

Hey - I just got ahold of Dimension Book 8 - Naruni Wave 2

OK - Is it just me, or is there a "Naruni Wave =1= book floating around somewhere?

Or is the Wave 1 material in another book?

Bruce

"Naruni Wave 2" is a reference to Naruni's second attempt to penetrate the Rifts-Earth-NA market IINM.

"Naruni Wave 1" material would be found in Rifts Mercenaries (1st Merc Book), but DB8 is the first book dedicated to Naruni (they also get time in several other books but not to this degree).

[Pepsi Jedi]

....so I got my answer then. There isn't a reason I guess, just a series of counter points to boring7's comments. Ok works for me.

Or, counterpointing direct lies takes a bit of time when they come in the volume that has been presented, and some of us only allot a certain amount of our days to being on the forum board and haven't gotten around to answering you yet.

[J_cobbers]

They aren't systematically killing non-Aryans. How much more do I need? If you get broad enough then you could declare the Starship Troopers "Nazis" for attempting genocide against another species, but the actual Nazis were in a genocide against members of their own species.

The Gypsy/Jewish cultures did not carry the same type of threat to human life that Shifters, Summoners, Witches or Soul Harvesters do. Tolkeen was a culture that allowed practises like that to thrive. Trying to wipe that out should not be equivocated to trying to wipe out Gypsies&Jews.

Now enough of us on the defensive, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim they are Rifts' Nazis. Free Quebec is probably closer to Nazis than the CS since they reject psihounds and psychics more.

In terms of racial subjugation of humans, Splynncryth is also a much better candidate. Humans are on the bottom.rung. As slaves anything can he done to them. Gassing them to death is probably only unpopular because it ruins the taste of the meat. Splynncryth's hold over Atlantis as a dictator is far more solid than Karl's over the CS.

If there is a proverb that should be true for this board I think this is it: The fastest way to derail civil conversations on the internet is to call someone a Nazi but on the PB Rifts forum, it's to call the CS Nazis."

I really do think they are a Nazi stand in, obviously not a directly point for point copy. They parallel Nazi culture and military doctrine, by creating an us vs them mentality to all non-humans, and magic users (those are your stand-ins for the non-Aryans) who either need to be removed from CS territory and areas the CS plans to expand into or killed. And yes some of these are legitimate threats faced by the CS, but not all. Some just want to make a home and a civilians, but to the CS, they are an existential threat and need to be eliminated or at least kept at bay in the burbs.

Calling FQ more Nazi than the CS may be on point, but doesn't make the CS non-naziesque. If both are modeled on the most evil regime of the 20th century then calling one more a Nazi than the other, does not mean they aren't both Nazis.

Likewise, just because there is a greater and more evil society on Rifts Earth like Splynncryth's Atlantis doesn't also eliminate the Nazi elements of the CS culture and military. Yes Splynncryth is probably worse as humans and other mortals are generally seen as literally cattle to be enslaved, bought, sold, abused and even eaten by the monstrous denizens of Atlantis. That does not negate or excuse the CS from it's actions against innocent non-human civilians or magic users. Nor does it make Atlantis Naziesque, evil, yes, but it's not structured the same, it's more like a free for all where might and wealth mean more than your race and ethnicity.

In Tolkeen there was a civilian population, just like in any war zone. Under modern law of war, the CS would be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (though possibly so would Tolkeen's leadership once things really progressed and they had to turn to demonic sources of aid). Of course the setting doesn't really outline a legal system that can handle this kinda of thing, but using the lens of real world law, there's more than enough blame to go around. And Tolkeen's general society is not structured the same way as the CS's, it didn't discriminate like the CS, and it didn't systematically hunt down and execute a particular group it didn't like on a routine basis.

[Pepsi Jedi]

They aren't systematically killing non-Aryans. How much more do I need? If you get broad enough then you could declare the Starship Troopers "Nazis" for attempting genocide against another species, but the actual Nazis were in a genocide against members of their own species.

The Gypsy/Jewish cultures did not carry the same type of threat to human life that Shifters, Summoners, Witches or Soul Harvesters do. Tolkeen was a culture that allowed practises like that to thrive. Trying to wipe that out should not be equivocated to trying to wipe out Gypsies&Jews.

Now enough of us on the defensive, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim they are Rifts' Nazis. Free Quebec is probably closer to Nazis than the CS since they reject psihounds and psychics more.

In terms of racial subjugation of humans, Splynncryth is also a much better candidate. Humans are on the bottom.rung. As slaves anything can he done to them. Gassing them to death is probably only unpopular because it ruins the taste of the meat. Splynncryth's hold over Atlantis as a dictator is far more solid than Karl's over the CS.

If there is a proverb that should be true for this board I think this is it: The fastest way to derail civil conversations on the internet is to call someone a Nazi but on the PB Rifts forum, it's to call the CS Nazis."

I really do think they are a Nazi stand in, obviously not a directly point for point copy. They parallel Nazi culture and military doctrine, by creating an us vs them mentality to all non-humans, and magic users (those are your stand-ins for the non-Aryans) who either need to be removed from CS territory and areas the CS plans to expand into or killed. And yes some of these are legitimate threats faced by the CS, but not all. Some just want to make a home and a civilians, but to the CS, they are an existential threat and need to be eliminated or at least kept at bay in the burbs.

That's because, when your entire planet has been shaken to it's core, and civilisation fell, the world was literally invaded by thousands of different sorts of horror from other dimensions and worlds. Supernatural, evil, monsters, of every color, stripe and type. It took literally 100s of years to dig out of that dark age and start regaining a foot hold as a species. The Humans of that time, could not afford to play "Is this a good Dbee or a bad Dbee" as if they made the wrong call that dbee might just rip off their heads, and eat their children. So for the safty of the human race they are hyperdefensive. As they -are- surrounded by so so MANY (Literal millions) Of supernatual and mega damage threats from all over the universe and indeed multiple universes.

This isn't "I don't happen to like the color of that guy's skin" or "I don't like which imaginary guy in the sky that lady prays to"

These are literal supernatural and alien invaders on Earth, that for HUNDREDS of years preyed upon and tried to wipe out the remaining vestiges of humanity. Think about how much US culture changed in the blink of an eye when 3,000 people were killed in NYC.

Now actually try and wrap one's head around billions and billions of people dieing. all civilization comeing to a crashing hault. Natural disasters the likes of which the world has never seen piling on top of one another over and over, and on top of it all, --literal-- demons, devils, and monsters never imagined, pouring into the world around, monsters immune to what ever weapons you might have at hand, that rape, pillage, kill and devour humanity for HUNDREDS OF YEARS. Generation upon generation.

Being scared of, and non tolerant to aliens and Dbees is not a 'racist' thing with out any logical explanation. it's an ingrained fear bred into those humans over dozens of generations of 100% verifiable proof that those creatures are indeed dangerous and deadly.

That's the difference between the CS and Nazi's. Nazi's were crazy evil and based their idology on crap. The CS Is responding to literal 100s of years of honest threat and generations of predation on the human species by monsters, real, not imagined, and unnumbered in their strangeness, evil, and numbers. Literal millions to the North West, god knows how many vampires to the south. An entire contientnat of millions to the East And God knows what to the west (As kevin has never allowed the west coast to be done. Sort of like Lucas with Yoda)

That's the difference between the CS and Nazi's. Are the CS draconian in defence of humanity? Yes. Look at the setting and all that besieges them on a dayly basis, and see why it's the only way that humanity on any sort of large scale has survived. If any alien 'child' may have the strength to punch through your mega damage armor, through your stomach, grab your spine and yank it out through the hole.... humanity's survival hinges on being able to respond to said threat and eliminate it before your spine is in their hands.

Does that mean the CS lumps them all together? yes. Sadly it does. If anything the CS are not AS VICIOUS as humans would actually be in that sort of situation. In reality we'd be far far FAR worse.

Calling FQ more Nazi than the CS may be on point, but doesn't make the CS non-naziesque. If both are modeled on the most evil regime of the 20th century then calling one more a Nazi than the other, does not mean they aren't both Nazis.

The CS isn't "Modled after" The nazi's tghough. There are some elements of the Nazi's there, but there's elements of the Nazi's in US culture too. There's a saying I heard growing up "The Nazi's had the trains run on time" the implication that while truely evil on a scale we'd not seen before on earth, there were aspects of the over all group that could be admired. While I hesitate to admire Nazi's for anything, they... had the trains run on time.. and their uniforms were pretty snazy. It's why they're copied even today.

The CS isn't "Nazi US" it's a combination of a number of things and a product of the environment that humans found themselves in after the destruction of earth and billions upon billions of people died due to inhuman invaders. Were some aspects of the Nazi's read about by it's leaders and emulated? Yes, So were aspects of other cultures and societies.

Likewise, just because there is a greater and more evil society on Rifts Earth like Splynncryth's Atlantis doesn't also eliminate the Nazi elements of the CS culture and military.

it doesn't eliminate them, it just fits the bill better.

Yes Splynncryth is probably worse as humans and other mortals are generally seen as literally cattle to be enslaved, bought, sold, abused and even eaten by the monstrous denizens of Atlantis.

Probably? ther CS doesn't have wide spread slavery. (It's mentioned as an aside in a sentence or two in one old book and NEVER expounded on again.) It doesn't treat it's humans like cattle, doesn't buy and sell them, the average cs Citizen is thrilled to BE a cs citizen to the point the waiting list is literally years long. The CS doesn't eat it's own people.

I think we can remove the 'probably' there.

That does not negate or excuse the CS from it's actions against innocent non-human civilians or magic users.

That is highly dependant on your definition of 'innocent'. The CS sees them as inhuman invaders, or humans embracing inhuman device (magic) that leads to corruption and the supernatural, which again is back to the inhuman invaders aspect.

See above where I speak of literal 100s of years of predation on the human species by said 'innocents' and how dozens of generations have fought against such 'innocents' as to a reasoning that thumanity and the CS have lost patience trying to figure out which one's are chill and which ones want to eat your soul.

In this instance, it's a case of finding a huge snake in your baby's crib. You don't pause to see if it's a harmless variety of some sort, you kill it before it kills your baby. If it happens to be a harmless variety after it's dead, well that's too bad. it was in the crib with your baby. You did what you had to to protect the baby.

Nor does it make Atlantis Naziesque, evil, yes, but it's not structured the same, it's more like a free for all where might and wealth mean more than your race and ethnicity.

Well Might and Wealth meant more than race and ethnicitiy with Nazi's too. They just didn't yell that from the rooftops. You ever see a picture of Hitler? he's not a 6'6" guy with blonde hair and blue eyes....

In Tolkeen there was a civilian population, just like in any war zone. Under modern law of war, the CS would be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (though possibly so would Tolkeen's leadership once things really progressed and they had to turn to demonic sources of aid). Of course the setting doesn't really outline a legal system that can handle this kinda of thing, but using the lens of real world law, there's more than enough blame to go around. And Tolkeen's general society is not structured the same way as the CS's, it didn't discriminate like the CS, and it didn't systematically hunt down and execute a particular group it didn't like on a routine basis.

Tolkeens civilian population were complicit in the militerization and offensive build up against the CS. They built up for more than 5 years. If the civilians did not support the war they had plenty of time to depart tolkeen before the war actually broke out. The CS went to war with a very close and clear and present THREAT to their own borders and security. The rulership of Tolkeen is every bit as "Evil" as the leadership of the CS, their generals every bit as evil.

The difference is, the CS took the field under conventional arms to commit war on an aggressive and threatening neighbor. Tolkeen --------- LITERALLY---------- broke demons that were so vile that OTHER demons had locked them up, out of demon prison, and unleashed ---armies--- of supernatural evil demons on the CS.

Does that make the CS good guys? No. Doesn't make them good guys (Though they certinly think so)

But lets put a little bit of a hault on trying to protray tolkeen as a sweet kitten just sniffing a flower when the mean jack booted thug comes up to stomp it. Tolkeen was every bit the threat the CS Thought it was, by the time the war started. They justified -everything- the CS accused them of being, and more.

[HWalsh]

*snipping for size*

Stop playing the victim card.

The fact that you think the Tolkeen civilians should have picked up and run because the CS said so is sick. Blaming the victim rather than the victimizer. If you didn't want me to beat you baby, then you shouldn't have made me mad.

Also... Invasion? Please. Tell that lie to people who are stupid.

D-Bees didn't largely invade Earth. Moron humans caused a massive disaster that ripped them from their homes and plopped them on a strange alien world. The books even say 75% of D-Bees aren't a threat and don't want to hurt humanity.

The CS has claim to nothing but their kingdom. They INVADED Tolkeen which the civilians of the CS WRONGLY thought was a threat, but leaders KNEW it wasn't. They know magic isn't dangerous and they know humans and D-Bees can live side by side in peace.

Lazlo.

The existence of Lazlo nullifies all of your arguments.

[Eagle]

By modern standards, the CS is a horrible place. You have none of the freedoms that people in the US hold dear. No free press (really no press at all), no freedom of association, no freedom of religion (though that isn't directly talked about, we can presume that some guy who wants to worship the Splugorth in Chi-Town would get an untimely visit from the guys in black skull armor). It's an oppressive, hateful place. I wouldn't want to live there.

That said, they live in a world where modern societies fell centuries ago. They pulled themselves up from Mad Max cultures and have fought tooth and nail to stay alive. And compared to empires throughout history, their evil is par for the course, really.

Saying that 75% of D-bees aren't a threat to humanity means that 25% of them are. Today, we have real social concerns about immigration from certain countries. Now imagine what if 25% of all Muslims were terrorists. Not just a random dude every now and then, but one out of four. Think we'd let anyone from those countries get on our planes? Probably not. That's the situation the Coalition finds itself in.

Certain D-bees, like the Quick-Flex alien and other similar "rubber forehead" guys, the Coalition seems to just turn a blind eye towards. There are a lot of these guys living in the Burbs, and CS troops walk past them every day. They're obviously unwanted, and the CS soldiers probably have some good racist nicknames for them ("What's up there, flexy? Lick your own butt today? I know that's what you guys do..."), but they aren't targeted for extermination. The Coalition seems to view them the same way certain modern people view illegal immigrants. "Go back where you came from", etc. But most of the time, if you're an SDC alien without any weird powers, CS soldiers just seem to rough you up and treat you like dirt. I mean, for some reason D-bees still choose to live in the Chi-Town Burbs, so the average treatment can't be that bad.

It's when you get to more unusual beings that the CS gets really bloodthirsty. If you are clearly MDC combat capable, they look at you as a threat automatically, and they're going to shoot first, shoot second, shoot third, and then maybe ask a question or two.

So... Nazis? There's clearly some Nazi undertones. They aren't actual National Socialists, of course. So technically, no they aren't. And they're meant to exist as a player character faction, and not just for players in evil alignment games. So comparing them to the standard bearer for 20th century evil empires seems to be too much.

[eliakon]

And the entire "Humans own the earth" argument is false on its face since we know for a fact that
1) there were non-humans on earth before
2) at no time in human history has the concept of "racial ownership" ever been considered to apply
3) the CS is not the representatives of humanity

Thus the CS is just as much an invader as Tolkeen.


Then there is the entirely false "We didn't know what was right and wrong" card
Bzzzzt Palladium is not our world. In the Palladium universe there is OBJECTIVE good and evil.
Things are evil because they are evil and good because they are good.
It is ALWAYS evil to do X. You can rewrite the rules if you want, but then you are not playing in the setting in which the author put the CS or looking at the moral situations that the ACTUAL CS is in but instead you are looking at your own version of a completely different moral situation.

We can then move on to the myth of the "all these murderous D-Bees"
Because it doesn't hold up.
It really, really, really, really doesn't.
When you start looking at the actual facts it falls down on its face.
ESPECIALLY if you look at it as someone from 1PA and not someone 1CE
After 300 years you would have the lore to know that the vast majority of races are peaceful and not harmful. The CS command point of fact knows this but they do not care. They are not interested in co-existence they want sole-existence. And that requires ignoring facts. Which is what their defenders do as well.

[dreicunan]

@HWalsh: It is ludicrous to argue that the CS leadership knows that magic isn't dangerous when anyone on Rifts Earth could tell you that magic is most certainly dangerous. Unlike a weapon like a sword, which is normally inoffensive until someone chooses to wield it, the mere existence of magic coursing through the world can cause dimensional anomalies that could deposit you in the depths of an ocean where you don't have time to drown because you get crushed first by the pressure, unleash entities, or deposit monsters of varying power onto the world, including potentially planet threatening ones like the Xiticix. Magic energy can end up mutating people into bald psychic vampires. As I know others have noted in the past, a single shifter trying to show off could have doomed the whole planet/solar system/galaxy to death by Mechanoids. Magic is by far theost dangerous force in the whole megaverse, and at the levels present on Rifts Earth its mere existence, even before we start talking about people using it, is a constant threat. That it can be used for good purposes makes it no less dangerous.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Hey - I just got ahold of Dimension Book 8 - Naruni Wave 2

OK - Is it just me, or is there a "Naruni Wave =1= book floating around somewhere?

Or is the Wave 1 material in another book?

Bruce

Rifts Mercenaries, and to a lesser extent, Phase World, and the Phase World Sourcebook (though that material may or may not be available on Earth pre Wave-2).

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

A quick point on population of North America: WB30 does not unequivocally state that it is 30-40 million. It says that there may be as many as 30-40 million. While the normal reading of the phrase would be to assume that this is mean to serve as a maximum, it is not inherently so (they could have written "at most" if that was the desire). So it may be as many as 30-40 million. It may also be as many as 80 million, or 20 million, or 69,342,937.

That is NOT how the english language works. "May be as many as" implies a finite upper limit, as listed. It is directly synonymous with "up to".

Yeah, it is how the English language works. Your interpretation is the common one - as I noted - but you can also see a sentence like "it may be as high as [insert number here], or even more" is a perfectly acceptable sentence. The use of the conditional here prevents the statement from being accepted unequivocally. That is what the modal verb "may" exists to do: To avoid declaring (used in the technical sense here for grammar: To say that what you say IS) what you are saying and instead just mention it. That is why we also use "may" to indicate the giving of permission. When I say "you may go now," I'm not saying "you go / are going now". If you want to actually declare that, you just say it. In the same way, if you say "it may be as high as" you are coming up short of actually declaring that it is as high as. This IS exactly how the English language (and others which have both declarative and non-declarative moods or modals) work.

Thus, saying that the population may be as high as a number does not actually serve to state that it is as high as that number but no higher. If you want to say that, you have to actually say that! If it said that the population may be as high as 30-40 million, BUT NO HIGHER, then you'd have a point. It doesn't say that, so you don't.

Nope:

Edumacayshun:

https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions ... as-many-as

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/as+many+as

"As Many As" sets an upper (but not lower) limit.

As Many As 40 million means that there are no more than 40 million. There may be way less, but there are definitely not more than 40 million.

Keep in mind this is sentient, non-supernatural, non-creature of magic beings. There are a lot of inhabitants of NA that are one of those two things as well - its never said how many but id be comfortable saying there's at least 5+ million more sentient beings that are supernatural creatures or creatures of magic (like Dragons, Fae Folk, Brodkil, et al).

[eliakon]

@HWalsh: It is ludicrous to argue that the CS leadership knows that magic isn't dangerous when anyone on Rifts Earth could tell you that magic is most certainly dangerous. Unlike a weapon like a sword, which is normally inoffensive until someone chooses to wield it, the mere existence of magic coursing through the world can cause dimensional anomalies that could deposit you in the depths of an ocean where you don't have time to drown because you get crushed first by the pressure, unleash entities, or deposit monsters of varying power onto the world, including potentially planet threatening ones like the Xiticix. Magic energy can end up mutating people into bald psychic vampires. As I know others have noted in the past, a single shifter trying to show off could have doomed the whole planet/solar system/galaxy to death by Mechanoids. Magic is by far theost dangerous force in the whole megaverse, and at the levels present on Rifts Earth its mere existence, even before we start talking about people using it, is a constant threat. That it can be used for good purposes makes it no less dangerous.

Your making a logical fallacy there
Magical energy is no more dangerous than electromagnetism is.
Ley lines are not magic they are magical energy in the same way that a laser rifle is not electromagnetism.
You use magical energy to perform magic in the same way that you use electromagnetism to perform technology.
But just because nuclear bombs destroyed the world doesn't mean computers are bad, or that lights are bad. Just because lasers can kill people doesn't mean that CD players are bad. Just because Tornadoes are destructive does not mean that air is bad....
...compare apples to oranges here man, not strawmen.


Also the argument that "one person can destroy us all" fails to hold up when it is also possible for one person to make a disease that can wipe out everyone.
Or one person to make a nuclear weapon.
Not to mention the fact that the fallacy requires that the one persons doom that they get weighted on requires the active complicity of others... meaning it is not one persons actions, but many peoples actions. Actions btw which could just as easily of happened by chance.

So yeah, your argument is totally 100% false.
Your basically making a shell argument that A is bad because B is even though A is not B

[Vrykolas2k]

Sorry, but the original poster is right.
It's plot armour, and not well-done at that.
Holmes and Co. should be dead... if not from the Xiticix (and yes, I follow what was put in that book totally) then of starvation and dehydration. Possibly some cannibalism.

[dreicunan]

A quick point on population of North America: WB30 does not unequivocally state that it is 30-40 million. It says that there may be as many as 30-40 million. While the normal reading of the phrase would be to assume that this is mean to serve as a maximum, it is not inherently so (they could have written "at most" if that was the desire). So it may be as many as 30-40 million. It may also be as many as 80 million, or 20 million, or 69,342,937.

That is NOT how the english language works. "May be as many as" implies a finite upper limit, as listed. It is directly synonymous with "up to".

Yeah, it is how the English language works. Your interpretation is the common one - as I noted - but you can also see a sentence like "it may be as high as [insert number here], or even more" is a perfectly acceptable sentence. The use of the conditional here prevents the statement from being accepted unequivocally. That is what the modal verb "may" exists to do: To avoid declaring (used in the technical sense here for grammar: To say that what you say IS) what you are saying and instead just mention it. That is why we also use "may" to indicate the giving of permission. When I say "you may go now," I'm not saying "you go / are going now". If you want to actually declare that, you just say it. In the same way, if you say "it may be as high as" you are coming up short of actually declaring that it is as high as. This IS exactly how the English language (and others which have both declarative and non-declarative moods or modals) work.

Thus, saying that the population may be as high as a number does not actually serve to state that it is as high as that number but no higher. If you want to say that, you have to actually say that! If it said that the population may be as high as 30-40 million, BUT NO HIGHER, then you'd have a point. It doesn't say that, so you don't.

Nope:

Edumacayshun:

https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions ... as-many-as

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/as+many+as

"As Many As" sets an upper (but not lower) limit.

As Many As 40 million means that there are no more than 40 million. There may be way less, but there are definitely not more than 40 million.

Keep in mind this is sentient, non-supernatural, non-creature of magic beings. There are a lot of inhabitants of NA that are one of those two things as well - its never said how many but id be comfortable saying there's at least 5+ million more sentient beings that are supernatural creatures or creatures of magic (like Dragons, Fae Folk, Brodkil, et al).

If the sentence said "there ARE as many as" you'd have a point. It uses "may be," not "are." The mere presence of "as many as" in a sentence does not establish an upper limit. For example, "there are not as many 15 million" clearly is not establishing an upper limit of 15 million. The fact that the sentence in WB30 uses "may be" and not "are" keeps it from stating unequivocally that 30-40 million is the upper limit and keeps it in the realm of speculation. Please see the post that you quoted for an explanation of why that is the case.

[Eagle]

Sorry, but the original poster is right.
It's plot armour, and not well-done at that.
Holmes and Co. should be dead... if not from the Xiticix (and yes, I follow what was put in that book totally) then of starvation and dehydration. Possibly some cannibalism.

Nah, if not for plot armor, Holmes and company would have been resupplied from Chi-Town. It's only about a 45 minute flight by Death's Head Transport. The Rule of Drama prevented the Coalition from actually using their enormous speed advantage, and made them march around like they were an American Civil War army.

[Shark_Force]

Sorry, but the original poster is right.
It's plot armour, and not well-done at that.
Holmes and Co. should be dead... if not from the Xiticix (and yes, I follow what was put in that book totally) then of starvation and dehydration. Possibly some cannibalism.

Nah, if not for plot armor, Holmes and company would have been resupplied from Chi-Town. It's only about a 45 minute flight by Death's Head Transport. The Rule of Drama prevented the Coalition from actually using their enormous speed advantage, and made them march around like they were an American Civil War army.

in xiticix territory? yeah, that isn't happening.

i'll grant that people holding the stupid ball kept the CS from just airlifting their entire army to surround tolkeen (the city) from day 1.

but no, death's head transports are not a viable option for resupplying an army in the middle of bug country.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

If the sentence said "there ARE as many as" you'd have a point. It uses "may be," not "are." The mere presence of "as many as" in a sentence does not establish an upper limit. For example, "there are not as many 15 million" clearly is not establishing an upper limit of 15 million. The fact that the sentence in WB30 uses "may be" and not "are" keeps it from stating unequivocally that 30-40 million is the upper limit and keeps it in the realm of speculation. Please see the post that you quoted for an explanation of why that is the case.

So, two links showing that you are unequivocally wrong in your assertion, and you double-down?

Are you.. you have to be trolling.

As to referring to the post i quoted - nothing you said had any validity. Its wrong. Incorrect. That is NOT what the phrase means.

And you're getting the line from the book wrong anyway:

Fast forward to Rifts Earth, 101 to 109 P.A.. There may be as many as 30-40 million people living in the entire continent. That's 30-40 million people in all of Canada, the USA, and Mexico combined!

Embiggened text by me.

It does not say "there may be as many as 30-40 million or more". It says there may be as many as 30-40 million.

Full stop.

End.

There cannot be more than 40 million.

Edit, to further clarify, the book doubles-down on this number by saying:

Take the 2007 population of California and scatter it across the entire United States, Canada, and Mexico, and you have the population of North America on Rifts Earth, 109 P.A.

2007 population of California - 36.25 million.

https://www.google.com/search?q=2007+po ... e&ie=UTF-8

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

but no, death's head transports are not a viable option for resupplying an army in the middle of bug country.

How do you figure, exactly? Nothing the bugs have can touch them, speed wise. Not even close. They could have air-lifted Holmes' entire army out in minutes and there's duck-all the bugs could have done about it.

[eliakon]

If the sentence said "there ARE as many as" you'd have a point. It uses "may be," not "are." The mere presence of "as many as" in a sentence does not establish an upper limit. For example, "there are not as many 15 million" clearly is not establishing an upper limit of 15 million. The fact that the sentence in WB30 uses "may be" and not "are" keeps it from stating unequivocally that 30-40 million is the upper limit and keeps it in the realm of speculation. Please see the post that you quoted for an explanation of why that is the case.

So, two links showing that you are unequivocally wrong/[u] in your assertion, and you double-down?

Are you.. you have to be trolling.

As to referring to the post i quoted - nothing you said had any validity. Its wrong. Incorrect. That is [u]NOT what the phrase means.

And you're getting the line from the book wrong anyway:

Fast forward to Rifts Earth, 101 to 109 P.A.. There may be as many as 30-40 million people living in the entire continent. That's 30-40 million people in all of Canada, the USA, and Mexico combined!

Embiggened text by me.

It does not say "there may be as many as 30-40 million or more". It says there may be as many as 30-40 million.

Full stop.

End.

There cannot be more than 40 million.

Which is a problem since if we add up all the numbers we get over 40 million.
Meaning that one of the sources is wrong.
So we are once again in the "dueling canon" situation that Palladium is famous for.

Or I guess it might mean that the "may" is meant to make the line itself of questionably reliability.

Either way 40,000,000 is not the be all, end all only number for the population.
Unless of course we simply decide that it is, and all other sources are wrong.
*shrugs* I don't really care as I don't have a dog in this fight and I adjust the population figures as I need them to match what I want for my game.

[eliakon]

but no, death's head transports are not a viable option for resupplying an army in the middle of bug country.

How do you figure, exactly? Nothing the bugs have can touch them, speed wise. Not even close. They could have air-lifted Holmes' entire army out in minutes and there's duck-all the bugs could have done about it.

Well, assuming that the army was never with in a mile or so of the bugs that is true.
But that is a pretty big "if"
And since the Army was in contact with the bugs then yes, showing up with anything means you are in range of getting shot.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Which is a problem since if we add up all the numbers we get over 40 million.

No we dont. All the population figures i can find dont even add up to the 30 million number. I'm willing to go with the "lots of small towns and villages and the few non-detailed civilizations like the Cyber-Centaurs make up that number" theory, but going through ALL of the books with population number for North America (even the updated ones that hugely inflated the 'burbs in Aftermath) doesnt land you anywhere close to 40 million. (Keep in mind, FQ is ~4 million, Lazlo less than 2, Tolkeen before the war was less than 1, NG/Manistique are about 1.5 million combined... and the Pecos Empire is somewhere around a million, but a decent number (at least 30%) of those are supernatural/CoM types that dont count against the 40 million number. That's ALL the big nations on the continent. The entirety of Baronies dont add up to more than ~400,000, Arzno and its area are less than 80k, MercTown is ~50k, Kingsdale is the largest at ~200k or less.

I actually just went through all these when i was doing the research for the "Is MDC actually rare thread" a while back.

Meaning that one of the sources is wrong.
So we are once again in the "dueling canon" situation that Palladium is famous for.

Or I guess it might mean that the "may" is meant to make the line itself of questionably reliability.

Either way 40,000,000 is not the be all, end all only number for the population.

I did say that it specifically says this is sentient, non-supernatural, non-CoMagic. There are, that we know of, at least close to a million Brodkil out there in NA that aren't in that number. And that's just Brodkil. So, sentient beings (full stop, regardless of type) in NA being over 40,000,000? Absolutely no problem agreeing to that.

Well, assuming that the army was never with in a mile or so of the bugs that is true.
But that is a pretty big "if"
And since the Army was in contact with the bugs then yes, showing up with anything means you are in range of getting shot.

And the bugs are therefore in range to be shot back at. They aren't likely to concentrate their fire on the DHTs (they dont really know what theyre for) and are likely to shoot back at the things shooting at them. The DHTs dont have to loiter for a long time to load the infantry. The bugs' long range guns dont exactly do heavy damage. Once the infantry are on board, they can bug out (pun?), and the guys in PA, skycycles, etc, can just go.

The fastest bug is still several hundred MPH slower than a Sam, Skycycle, Rocketcycle, or DHT.

Would it have been a landing under fire? Sure. Would the vast majority of them have gotten out? Yes, easily. The bugs just dont have the long-range firepower to bring the DHTs down fast enough before they can leave.

[eliakon]

Well, assuming that the army was never with in a mile or so of the bugs that is true.
But that is a pretty big "if"
And since the Army was in contact with the bugs then yes, showing up with anything means you are in range of getting shot.

And the bugs are therefore in range to be shot back at. They aren't likely to concentrate their fire on the DHTs (they dont really know what theyre for) and are likely to shoot back at the things shooting at them. The DHTs dont have to loiter for a long time to load the infantry. The bugs' long range guns dont exactly do heavy damage. Once the infantry are on board, they can bug out (pun?), and the guys in PA, skycycles, etc, can just go.

The fastest bug is still several hundred MPH slower than a Sam, Skycycle, Rocketcycle, or DHT.

Would it have been a landing under fire? Sure. Would the vast majority of them have gotten out? Yes, easily. The bugs just dont have the long-range firepower to bring the DHTs down fast enough before they can leave.

Yes, assuming that the GM wants to be generous and rule that way then sure it works.
But that requires some pretty big assumptions.
Like assuming that the Bugs just sit there and do nothing
Or that the Bugs are fine with other flyers in there territory
Or that the bugs just sit around and let you fly up unmolested
After all those DHTs are actually pretty fragile when you start getting into numbers.
One bug? No problem.
a couple hundred bugs taking a pot shot? Your in trouble.
A thousand? Thou Art Dead.

Its a case of "well if everything goes according to plan then the plan works"
Could it work? Sure. But that doesn't make it some sort of sure bet. It just means that it is theoretically possible.

[dreicunan]

If the sentence said "there ARE as many as" you'd have a point. It uses "may be," not "are." The mere presence of "as many as" in a sentence does not establish an upper limit. For example, "there are not as many 15 million" clearly is not establishing an upper limit of 15 million. The fact that the sentence in WB30 uses "may be" and not "are" keeps it from stating unequivocally that 30-40 million is the upper limit and keeps it in the realm of speculation. Please see the post that you quoted for an explanation of why that is the case.

So, two links showing that you are unequivocally wrong in your assertion, and you double-down?

Are you.. you have to be trolling.

As to referring to the post i quoted - nothing you said had any validity. Its wrong. Incorrect. That is NOT what the phrase means.

And you're getting the line from the book wrong anyway:

Fast forward to Rifts Earth, 101 to 109 P.A.. There may be as many as 30-40 million people living in the entire continent. That's 30-40 million people in all of Canada, the USA, and Mexico combined!

Embiggened text by me.

It does not say "there may be as many as 30-40 million or more". It says there may be as many as 30-40 million.

Full stop.

End.

There cannot be more than 40 million.

Edit, to further clarify, the book doubles-down on this number by saying:

Take the 2007 population of California and scatter it across the entire United States, Canada, and Mexico, and you have the population of North America on Rifts Earth, 109 P.A.

2007 population of California - 36.25 million.

https://www.google.com/search?q=2007+po ... e&ie=UTF-8

The California quote is definitive, and I thank you for providing it, as I had missed it.

The "may be as high as" quote is not, due to the inclusion of the term "may be." The sites to which you linked don't refute my post explaining why "may be" CAN'T be used to make a definitive statement, nor could they, because the modal verb "may" exists precisely to AVOID making a declaration in the sense described in my previous post. It has a deontic or epistemic modality: In other words, it indicates permission or possibility. Thus, it cannot be used to make an unequivocal statement. "He may be right" is not the same thing as "he is right." To say "there may be as many as 30-40 million or more" just lets a reader know the direction of your speculation, but without "or more" it still remains speculation, a statement of possibility, because that is what "may" expresses.

If you still don't understand why the key part of the phrase is "may be," I suggest that you look up modal verbs and enlighten yourself.

[eliakon]

I would just like to point out that World Book 30 uses the word "people"
Which basically makes the entire thing useless.
Since it doesn't define the term.
One could assume, that it means there might be 30-40 million "humanoid, non-supernatural, non-creature of magic, non-immortal D-bees" (and that the population oddly doesn't change from 105 to 109 since it uses the same number range for all five years)
Or it might not.
If your a CS Apologist you might argue that means there are 30-40 million humans...since nothing else is a person.

And of course, since none of the other books break their population down this way there is no way to know if they apply or not.

Basically the entire argument is pointless since it is based on bad data piled on bad data.

[dreicunan]

@HWalsh: It is ludicrous to argue that the CS leadership knows that magic isn't dangerous when anyone on Rifts Earth could tell you that magic is most certainly dangerous. Unlike a weapon like a sword, which is normally inoffensive until someone chooses to wield it, the mere existence of magic coursing through the world can cause dimensional anomalies that could deposit you in the depths of an ocean where you don't have time to drown because you get crushed first by the pressure, unleash entities, or deposit monsters of varying power onto the world, including potentially planet threatening ones like the Xiticix. Magic energy can end up mutating people into bald psychic vampires. As I know others have noted in the past, a single shifter trying to show off could have doomed the whole planet/solar system/galaxy to death by Mechanoids. Magic is by far theost dangerous force in the whole megaverse, and at the levels present on Rifts Earth its mere existence, even before we start talking about people using it, is a constant threat. That it can be used for good purposes makes it no less dangerous.

Your making a logical fallacy there
Magical energy is no more dangerous than electromagnetism is.
Ley lines are not magic they are magical energy in the same way that a laser rifle is not electromagnetism.
You use magical energy to perform magic in the same way that you use electromagnetism to perform technology.
But just because nuclear bombs destroyed the world doesn't mean computers are bad, or that lights are bad. Just because lasers can kill people doesn't mean that CD players are bad. Just because Tornadoes are destructive does not mean that air is bad....
...compare apples to oranges here man, not strawmen.


Also the argument that "one person can destroy us all" fails to hold up when it is also possible for one person to make a disease that can wipe out everyone.
Or one person to make a nuclear weapon.
Not to mention the fact that the fallacy requires that the one persons doom that they get weighted on requires the active complicity of others... meaning it is not one persons actions, but many peoples actions. Actions btw which could just as easily of happened by chance.

So yeah, your argument is totally 100% false.
Your basically making a shell argument that A is bad because B is even though A is not B

.

You don't use electromagnetism to "do" technology, though you do use it to power some technology. Also, I would argue that electromagnetic energy can be quite dangerous as well. Of course, on Earth electromagnetic energy is normally not spread all over the planet randomly zapping people (though at times it does, such as lightning). However, magical energy is far more dangerous, because it can produce so many other unpredictable effects.

And yea, one person could create a disease that could wipe us all out. That doesn't refute anything that I said, it just means that knowing how to make diseases is also dangerous.

Yes, I am arguing that both magic and magic energy are dangerous. I'd also agree that both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are dangerous. There is no logical fallacy there; both pose danger to people.

[eliakon]

@HWalsh: It is ludicrous to argue that the CS leadership knows that magic isn't dangerous when anyone on Rifts Earth could tell you that magic is most certainly dangerous. Unlike a weapon like a sword, which is normally inoffensive until someone chooses to wield it, the mere existence of magic coursing through the world can cause dimensional anomalies that could deposit you in the depths of an ocean where you don't have time to drown because you get crushed first by the pressure, unleash entities, or deposit monsters of varying power onto the world, including potentially planet threatening ones like the Xiticix. Magic energy can end up mutating people into bald psychic vampires. As I know others have noted in the past, a single shifter trying to show off could have doomed the whole planet/solar system/galaxy to death by Mechanoids. Magic is by far theost dangerous force in the whole megaverse, and at the levels present on Rifts Earth its mere existence, even before we start talking about people using it, is a constant threat. That it can be used for good purposes makes it no less dangerous.

Your making a logical fallacy there
Magical energy is no more dangerous than electromagnetism is.
Ley lines are not magic they are magical energy in the same way that a laser rifle is not electromagnetism.
You use magical energy to perform magic in the same way that you use electromagnetism to perform technology.
But just because nuclear bombs destroyed the world doesn't mean computers are bad, or that lights are bad. Just because lasers can kill people doesn't mean that CD players are bad. Just because Tornadoes are destructive does not mean that air is bad....
...compare apples to oranges here man, not strawmen.


Also the argument that "one person can destroy us all" fails to hold up when it is also possible for one person to make a disease that can wipe out everyone.
Or one person to make a nuclear weapon.
Not to mention the fact that the fallacy requires that the one persons doom that they get weighted on requires the active complicity of others... meaning it is not one persons actions, but many peoples actions. Actions btw which could just as easily of happened by chance.

So yeah, your argument is totally 100% false.
Your basically making a shell argument that A is bad because B is even though A is not B

.

You don't use electromagnetism to "do" technology, though you do use it to power some technology. Also, I would argue that electromagnetic energy can be quite dangerous as well. Of course, on Earth electromagnetic energy is normally not spread all over the planet randomly zapping people (though at times it does, such as lightning). However, magical energy is far more dangerous, because it can produce so many other unpredictable effects.

And yea, one person could create a disease that could wipe us all out. That doesn't refute anything that I said, it just means that knowing how to make diseases is also dangerous.

Yes, I am arguing that both magic and magic energy are dangerous. I'd also agree that both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are dangerous. There is no logical fallacy there; both pose danger to people.

No your argument IS a fallacy
You are trying to make the false claim that the controlled use of something is dangerous because the uncontrolled use of it is dangerous
That is a fallacy I'm sorry.
Ley Lines are not magic. Random Rifts are not magic.
Thus they are not examples of the dangers of magic.
Any more than tuberculosis is one of the dangers of Archeology.
I mean, its a disease right? And that's a natural force right? and science harnesses natural forces right? And archeology is a science right? Therefore Tuberculosis is a danger of archeology.
Anyone would look at that and think it was totally silly...
...and your argument is equally silly.

Applied Science X is not dangerous because Raw Natural Force Y is dangerous.

[HWalsh]

You don't use electromagnetism to "do" technology, though you do use it to power some technology. Also, I would argue that electromagnetic energy can be quite dangerous as well. Of course, on Earth electromagnetic energy is normally not spread all over the planet randomly zapping people (though at times it does, such as lightning). However, magical energy is far more dangerous, because it can produce so many other unpredictable effects.

And yea, one person could create a disease that could wipe us all out. That doesn't refute anything that I said, it just means that knowing how to make diseases is also dangerous.

Yes, I am arguing that both magic and magic energy are dangerous. I'd also agree that both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are dangerous. There is no logical fallacy there; both pose danger to people.

So... You're saying the CS should stop all Power Armor production... They make nuclear reactor and those are dangerous!

They should kill EVERYONE who uses or produces nuclear reactors.

Oh! They also need to kill everyone in CS Lonestar. Bradford. Also kill all Dog Boys, after all being that close to human increases the chance of dog viruses to become human ones...

Is the CS doing that? No... Because they're lying about magic being evil/dangerous and need to be destroyed.

[boring7]

Well, assuming that the army was never with in a mile or so of the bugs that is true.
But that is a pretty big "if"
And since the Army was in contact with the bugs then yes, showing up with anything means you are in range of getting shot.

And the bugs are therefore in range to be shot back at. They aren't likely to concentrate their fire on the DHTs (they dont really know what theyre for) and are likely to shoot back at the things shooting at them. The DHTs dont have to loiter for a long time to load the infantry. The bugs' long range guns dont exactly do heavy damage. Once the infantry are on board, they can bug out (pun?), and the guys in PA, skycycles, etc, can just go.

The fastest bug is still several hundred MPH slower than a Sam, Skycycle, Rocketcycle, or DHT.

Would it have been a landing under fire? Sure. Would the vast majority of them have gotten out? Yes, easily. The bugs just dont have the long-range firepower to bring the DHTs down fast enough before they can leave.

Yes, assuming that the GM wants to be generous and rule that way then sure it works.
But that requires some pretty big assumptions.
Like assuming that the Bugs just sit there and do nothing
Or that the Bugs are fine with other flyers in there territory
Or that the bugs just sit around and let you fly up unmolested
After all those DHTs are actually pretty fragile when you start getting into numbers.
One bug? No problem.
a couple hundred bugs taking a pot shot? Your in trouble.
A thousand? Thou Art Dead.

Its a case of "well if everything goes according to plan then the plan works"
Could it work? Sure. But that doesn't make it some sort of sure bet. It just means that it is theoretically possible.

I would run the Xiticix as being more focused on maintaining air superiority (prioritize the big flying transports) because they are aerial predators, but y'all are arguing minutiae.

Holmes' troops lived off the land, that doesn't work, it never works except when plunder and brutality are easyobviously A Wizard Did It. If that hadn't worked then a fleet of DHT's massive enough to blot out the skies would get it done, since as we established CS army strength and population are $enuff at all times.

Speed of plot worked both ways too. Sure an army of ground-pounders moving at an average of 30 MPH would only take about 30 hours to get there (and I'm rounding way up) but that wasn't dramatic so it didn't happen. Sure Tolkeen could have used a few scrolls of teleport, a few buff spells, and a handful of heroes to drop on CS high command's heads and unload a few hundred dice of damage; but that, as well, would not be narratively dramatic.

Is the CS' endless pool of people and really bad numbers plot armor? There's some subjectivity in the definition, but I think for most of us the answer is "yes."

I mean it was spelled out in book one of SoT with the Orb of Solomon: If you give the King of Tolkeen precognition-level "wisdom and clarity" he evacuates. The "right" and "moral" course of action was to force people to flee from their homes, dying in droves along the way, to make way for the Great and Mighty Coalition and its manifest destiny.

[HWalsh]

I mean it was spelled out in book one of SoT with the Orb of Solomon: If you give the King of Tolkeen precognition-level "wisdom and clarity" he evacuates. The "right" and "moral" course of action was to force people to flee from their homes, dying in droves along the way, to make way for the Great and Mighty Coalition and its manifest destiny.

It was more about the fact that Tolkeen couldn't win. Either way most of Tolkeen was dead the second the CS decided to murder them. Less total loss of life and more Tolkeen survivors.

Sadly... It sets the precedent to never fight the CS if you're a nation. The only chance for survival is to flee. Tolkeen put up the best fight anyone's ever seen. Against all odds they lasted 4 years. It's phenomenal but sad. It truly ruined my favorite city in Rifts.

More tolorant than the CS, not as much of a utopia as Lazlo.

[Axelmania]

D-Bees didn't largely invade Earth. Moron humans caused a massive disaster that ripped them from their homes and plopped them on a strange alien world. The books even say 75% of D-Bees aren't a threat and don't want to hurt humanity.

The CS has claim to nothing but their kingdom. They INVADED Tolkeen which the civilians of the CS WRONGLY thought was a threat, but leaders KNEW it wasn't. They know magic isn't dangerous and they know humans and D-Bees can live side by side in peace.

Lazlo. The existence of Lazlo nullifies all of your arguments.

1) do we know what % of Dbees came.Jere intentionally vs accidentally?

2) here is this 75% stat from? Just want to check context, like what year that was the case.

3) Tolkeen was clearly a militarized threat. Book/page for CS leaders knowing it wasn't?

4) magic is dangerous. Book/page for CS leaders knowing it isn't?

5) cats and dogs can live together in peace too..doesn't necessarily mean you should force that when it can't be properly policed.

6) we know next to nothing about Lazio, so how could they prove anything?

3) the CS is not the representatives of humanity

Thus the CS is just as much an invader as Tolkeen.

Except for the Republicans who are in hiding and the New Navy who are at sea, the Coalition is the descendent of the United States of America and certainly represents humanity on the North America continent aside from the Tundra Rangers up north who are the descendants of Canada.

Tolkeen has no sovereign rights to impede the Coalition from reaching out to Minnesotan humans as they did on multiple occasions. They should have expected this and they stopped trying for peace, never apologized for their interferences.

[HWalsh]

D-Bees didn't largely invade Earth. Moron humans caused a massive disaster that ripped them from their homes and plopped them on a strange alien world. The books even say 75% of D-Bees aren't a threat and don't want to hurt humanity.

The CS has claim to nothing but their kingdom. They INVADED Tolkeen which the civilians of the CS WRONGLY thought was a threat, but leaders KNEW it wasn't. They know magic isn't dangerous and they know humans and D-Bees can live side by side in peace.

Lazlo. The existence of Lazlo nullifies all of your arguments.

1) do we know what % of Dbees came.Jere intentionally vs accidentally?

2) here is this 75% stat from? Just want to check context, like what year that was the case.

3) Tolkeen was clearly a militarized threat. Book/page for CS leaders knowing it wasn't?

4) magic is dangerous. Book/page for CS leaders knowing it isn't?

5) cats and dogs can live together in peace too..doesn't necessarily mean you should force that when it can't be properly policed.

6) we know next to nothing about Lazio, so how could they prove anything?

3) the CS is not the representatives of humanity

Thus the CS is just as much an invader as Tolkeen.

Except for the Republicans who are in hiding and the New Navy who are at sea, the Coalition is the descendent of the United States of America and certainly represents humanity on the North America continent aside from the Tundra Rangers up north who are the descendants of Canada.

Tolkeen has no sovereign rights to impede the Coalition from reaching out to Minnesotan humans as they did on multiple occasions. They should have expected this and they stopped trying for peace, never apologized for their interferences.

Like the CS apologized for murdering Tolkeen civilians before the war started? Do you actually think the CS has the right to do whatever they want to whoever they want?