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Interesting bit in the Titan Robotics book. The Mecvhanoids are always referred to as "The Devourers". This is with respect to their tech, the invasion and fighting Archie and Hagan did against them, and even in the write-ups of Argent Goodson and Diana where their power supplies are listed as "Devourer power crystals". It's very clear the Devourers are the Mechanoids so why was the name changed?

Is this something "global" in the Rifts setting now, or do Archie and Hagan simply call them Devourers for some reason?

Perhaps since it was a Shifter that was responsible for the original incursion, Archie and Hagan don't call them by their actual name out of a concern that some non-humanoid spellcaster might try to summon them and want to make it as difficult as possible by using a generic term like Devourers?

MidnightNova wrote:Interesting bit in the Titan Robotics book. The Mecvhanoids are always referred to as "The Devourers". This is with respect to their tech, the invasion and fighting Archie and Hagan did against them, and even in the write-ups of Argent Goodson and Diana where their power supplies are listed as "Devourer power crystals". It's very clear the Devourers are the Mechanoids so why was the name changed?

Is this something "global" in the Rifts setting now, or do Archie and Hagan simply call them Devourers for some reason?

Perhaps since it was a Shifter that was responsible for the original incursion, Archie and Hagan don't call them by their actual name out of a concern that some non-humanoid spellcaster might try to summon them and want to make it as difficult as possible by using a generic term like Devourers?

its because "The Devourer" was one of the seven dangers.
This is explicitly spelling out that the Mechanoids were the Devourer

eliakon wrote:its because "The Devourer" was one of the seven dangers.
This is explicitly spelling out that the Mechanoids were the Devourer

and it allows the game going forward to separate the IPs of Rifts and Mechanoids a bit more which is something PB has been doing lately to make them easier to market for non-RPG works. (the separation helps limit the legal shenanigans that a company can do as far as being able to claim the rights of other PB IP's as a result of owning one of them. which probably wouldn't hold up in court, but it would be an expensive battle for PB to fight)

PB has been informing freelancers to seperate the IP's a bit more for most of the last decade, ever since Rifts got optioned for a movie that one time. so like, you can have elf and dwarf groups in rifts, but you can't outright have them stated to be elves and dwarves from palladium fantasy.

it's a legal degrees of seperation thing, apparently.

MidnightNova wrote:Interesting bit in the Titan Robotics book. The Mecvhanoids are always referred to as "The Devourers". This is with respect to their tech, the invasion and fighting Archie and Hagan did against them, and even in the write-ups of Argent Goodson and Diana where their power supplies are listed as "Devourer power crystals". It's very clear the Devourers are the Mechanoids so why was the name changed?

Is this something "global" in the Rifts setting now, or do Archie and Hagan simply call them Devourers for some reason?

Perhaps since it was a Shifter that was responsible for the original incursion, Archie and Hagan don't call them by their actual name out of a concern that some non-humanoid spellcaster might try to summon them and want to make it as difficult as possible by using a generic term like Devourers?

My understanding is that once Rifts was optioned for a movie, Palladium became a lot more cautious about compartmentalizing their properties, so that a Rifts movie wouldn't have access to stuff from Palladium's other game lines. That way if somebody wanted to make a PFRPG movie and include Great Horned Dragons, while somebody else wanted to make a Rifts movie with a Great Horned Dragon, there would be no conflict.
This is why the Rifts dragons got turned into their own setting-specific breeds, instead of staying the same as the PFRPG version.

Similarly, The Mechanoids presented a problem, because they're their own property.
When Xiticix Invasion came out, it was heavily implied in that book that the Xiticix might be "The Devouring Horde" or whatever from The Prophesy, and it was at least rumored that the reasoning would be to separate the Mechanoids from Rifts for the same reasons as with the dragons.
It seems likely to me that Palladium has decided that just calling The Mechanoids by another name would suffice to keep this separation, and it wouldn't surprise me if any future books featuring The Mechanoids had them with different stats, using different names, so they're their own thing just like the Rifts dragons.