Stablizing Rifts

The Magical Miracle of Tolkeen: The Establishment of Clark's Law on Earth

2011-03-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

Despite its youth as a distinct civil and cultural entity, and its status as something of a rustic backwater in the greater cross-dimensional cosmopolitan civilization that exists in the milieu of RIFTS, the City-State of Tolkeen has to its credit one innovation that--for those aware of it--has magic-using societies dumbfounded. That innovation does not seem significant to those not familiar with either the practice of magic, but it is such a profound change that it amounts to a paradigm shift equal to that from the Rule of Man to the Rule of Law.

Now, to understand the significance of this paradigm shift, one must comprehend the old paradigm. In all but a few circumstances, the practice of magic first arises from the interaction between a god-like supernatural entity and a curious or cunning mortal; the first users of magic are those who strike pacts with such entities, for good or ill, a form of externally-bestowed power represented by the Witch and Shifter classes. (Closely related to it is the Warlock class.) Out of such initial contact arises cults, sects and greater institutions where one sees the emergence of the Priest, Shaman and Druid classes (in their variations). Only at a time of maturation in a society, where philosophical inquiry flourishes, do magical practices secularize into the non-denominational forms of the Wizard (including its variants such as the Ley Line Walker). The practice of magic rarely arises of an origin akin to that of inquiry into the natural world that creates scientific breakthroughs and the con-commitment technological development.

Even in societies with a secularized subculture of magical practice, the influence of religion--that of the original supernatural--is such that it maintains a dominance upon that society by way of dominating its elite social class (who, in turn, dominate the government and related institutions). The supernatural entities that created these magical societies, even if otherwise of a benevolent or disinterested perspective with regard to mortals, so routinely seek to suppress those useful arts and sciences from which the aforementioned breakthroughs and developments arise that it is notable when there is any significant co-existence within a culture at all- to merge them, while inevitable, is so great a change that it lights fires in the minds of mortal and supernatural beings alike as great as that which sparked Creation itself.

That said, it is rare for those who do merge magical practice and scientific inquiry to merge them completely. Specifically, it is rare for these hybridization practices to do more than to hybridize the end results--the casting of spells and the creation of technological items--into techno-magical artifacts. In the minds of the majority of techno-mages, these are still seen as separate and distinct things--Chocolate and Vanilla--that they do not mix until the last moment of creation (i.e. an ice cream cone with one scoop of Vanilla and one of Chocolate). They have not gone to the next step.

Tolkeen's contribution is to make that breakthrough. The reason for this comes from its past, where the first native Earth humans in the Tolkeen community learned magic from the off-world Atlantean magicians who decided to come to Tolkeen and establish a settlement there. Those Earth natives were not only trained scientists, properly educated artists and skilled technical workers--programmers, engineers, technicians, fine artists, etc.--but they often possessed significant overlapping expertise as well as a balanced scientific and creative knowledge base. Amongst them were those who knew--if not practiced--native magical practices of various sorts that existed in the pre-Rifts era. When the Atlanteans came to these survivors, who had already put together a functional community within the ruins of Tolkeen's pre-Rifts incarnation, and demonstrated their magical prowess the natives decided to learn what they knew.

Atlantean society retained a certain conservative streak from its last era on Earth, and so did not think--it never conceived in their minds to do so--to question as to what, if any, relationship existed between the principles that governed the universe of natural phenomenon and those that governed the supernatural. In this respect, it was normative of the greater multiverse of magical and scientific practice. When the native Earth students, each steeped in the tradition of skeptical inquiry, began this mode of investigation none of the Atlanteans thought it would go anywhere and decided to leave them to try and learn from failure.

The moment when the native Earth magicians gained the ascendency in Tolkeen's magical community came with the breakthrough of one trained as a computer scientist as well as a physicist. Along with his wife--no less a mind--he isolated the basic unit of magical energy and discovered what he called a "mote". This allowed for the energy of magic to be detected, manipulated and measured as if it were any other mundane power source. The reason? He approached the practice of magic as if it were just another science, because he never had to deal with the memetic shackling of religious institutions and cultural hegemony impeding his efforts or suppressing his work.

Soon, this man and his wife embarked upon a grand project. Using the massive magical power around them, they gathered their friends and established a laboratory. In the heart of that laboratory they created what--to the Atlanteans--seemed to be a rather shallow and small ritual space. Atop the ceiling seemed to be some sort of focusing apeature, and the area around a barely man-sized dais as the point of focus. They'd soon witness their former students routinely use this device to go elsewhere and then return hours later. Soon others, students of their students, also made frequent use of it, and curiosity overcame them.

Once the Atlanteans crossed this threshold for themselves, they stood in awe of what they beheld. Within a year of the native Earthers breakthrough and the establishment of the laboratory, they figured out how to use their own scientific knowledge as well as that of the magiclal principles that they learned from the Atlanteans and created a safe and secure city inside a pocket-dimension. This is the Crystal City, Tolkeen.

As the First Founder, Roger M. Ire, the man who made this possible, said to his former teacher: "We had myths and legends about magic long before your people returned. Not all of them are derived, in whole or in part, from the actual deeds of the last Atlantean age; we in particular were enamored of a far more recent myth, one created in our lifetimes, and used that myth to guide our creation of this place. Welcome to the Grid, Master."

The First Founder quoted a pre-Rifts author, Arthur C. Clark: "Any sufficiently-advance technology is indistinguishable from magic." So, they reasons, any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from the practice of magic. They thought of it as another science--no different from chemistry, geology or any other--and yet remembered that it had the quality of the Arts to it also. In time, a truly unique culture of magician-engineers arose and that Crystal City became the Inner City while outside arose the Outer City as the community's command of knowledge expanded and applications arose from the fruits of their inquiries.

Now we hear not "spells", but of "protocols". Now we hear not of "casting" and "banishing", but "resolution" and "deresolution". Now we hear not of "demons", but of "programs". We hear no priests calling people to prayer, but often of hear the philosophers call people to debate. We see the measurement of motes becoming means of measuring the time it takes for the Resolution Engines to execute the resolution of things, and we see the fusion of principles in the creation of Platonic Protocols whose use holds the promise of a sort of immortality--Tolkeen has never attempted to resolve a program over the form of a living being before, but those working on the Marvel Project assure the people that all necessary safeguards are in place--and the Council of Masters is confident that the threat posed by the Coalition States can be successfully defeated.

It is a time of great optimism in Tolkeen, a time of high culture, a time of great potential and hope- and a time of dangerous exuberance, unjustified confidence and romantic perceptions of life and one's place in it. Tolkeen stands at a crossroads, where the very esoteric modes of thinking that goes with traditional magical practice may well be the necessary balancing point that Tolkeen needs to endure. If it, like the Coalition, puts too much emphasis on the linear thinking that mundane scientific thinking is prone to producing then Tolkeen could be blind to the true threats to its continued existence and open itself to tragedy and ruin.

Tolkeen: The Sky-Blue Kingdom, A Place of Freedom and Hope For Tomorrow

2011-03-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

Tolkeen arose on the ruins of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Unknown to everyone, it is one of the key points on the planet's global network of ley lines; 100 ley lines meet here, making it ones of the lynchpins of the network, and thus it is not at all surprising that some form of supernatural power base would arise here. What is remarkable is that, instead of it being dominated by supernatural creatures or alien species, it is rules by a majority of native humans in concert with a minority of off-world humans and aided by a significant number of friendly non-humans of a diverse sort.

The off-world humans are a branch of Atlanteans who decided to establish themselves here as part of a larger, longer-term effort to unseat the usurping god-like alien Splugorth who occupy the Atlantean homeland now risen from beneath the Atlantic Ocean. They are the faction that brought magical training to Tolkeen in the wake of the Coming of the Rifts, and for some time thereafter dominated the emerging community. Today they have a strong presence in the government and drive its foreign policy, but no longer hold such an overwhelming advantage.

The native humans are far and away the majority, and as many of the surivors were also trained as scientists in various disciplines they took to the magical arts--once they saw it to be beneficial to learn them--quickly. What shocked the Atlanteans was they applied ideas commonplace before the Coming of the Rifts, creating a whole school of sorcerer-engineers that swiftly seized a memetic hegemony and impressed the Atlanteans greatly, revolutionizing magical practices heretofore fossilized and stagnant in their existence.

They industrialized magical practice. Entire machines now exist that ritually resolve entire buildings into existence directly out of magical energy, following plans that the architects and engineers created and loaded into the machine before starting the machine's resolution/manufacturing process. Most people learn how to use common items that resolve vehicles, armor, whatever into existence as an outgrowth of magic tattoo technology. Tolkeen is a place of wonder, optimism and vibrancy where the only thing that's scarce is knowledge- which compels the ambitious to scatter far and wide in search of it abroad as eagerly as it does searching for it in the labs at home. In Tolkeen, one can be whatever they want to be, for magic brings freedom and autonomy no one can have without it, and thus any commitment that they make is one freely made by choosing to do so.

This is also the crack in their armor. Ambition can lead to arrogance and hubris, and the unusual openness leads to easy infiltration by malevolent agents. Tolkeen's close proximity to the capital of the Coalition States poses a severe existential threat to the States, so war between the two is inevitable despite the denial that some around Tolkeen indulge in, thinking that its cosmopolitanism and links to many other magical societies and states through the multiverse will moot any aggression by the Coalition.

In short, Tolkeen has some distressing naiveity to its culture that the Atlanteans and other more sober-minded individuals have yet failed to rectify, and that will prove to be troublesome in the years ahead. Hopefully, the Marvel Project will prove itself as effective when the time comes.

Magic in RIFTS: A Conceptual Primer

2011-03-12T21:11:00.000-08:00

RIFTS features the use of magic by playable characters. These magic-users, these Men of Magic, gain their power through the ability to sense, tap and manipulate a mostly-unseen energy source that the rulebook calls "Potential Psychic Energy". The manipulation of this energy to create tangible effects or objects is what "spell-casting" is about, and that has implications heretofore ill-explored. The ability to train others and have them become able to do magic is also ill-explored. I am to address both and explore the implications of these two premises, both here and in later posts. As with the Coalition posts, I'm focusing upon Earth, specifically North America.

First: Magic Can Be Taught.

RIFTS published a lot of different methods for working magic. There are some methods one cannot learn because they arise out of a connection to an external source of entity, such as the ways of the Priest, Witch and Warlock. Some methods arise from a fusion of innate psychic ability and sensitivity to magical power, such as the Mystic. However, the most well-known and popular magic-users are Ley Line Walkers, Shifters and Techno-Wizards and these methods of magic-use can be used by anyone with the will and intellect necessary to master them. Race, sex, class and creed make no difference (save to psych yourself into thinking you can't do it). This makes magic use something egalitarian in its essence, which is as frightening to some people as what you can do with it. (As for the folks who gain their ability through other ways, I'll talk more about that in a later post.)

Second: Magic Has No Logistical Train

The use of magic does not rely on external sources of power, parts, munitions and so on to be effective. This makes a magic-user far more self-contained than someone who has no such power source open to him, which means that his range is limited primarily by his willingness and the limitations of his allies. It also means that he can live a far more self-directed, autonomous life than someone tied to a state (or similar entity) by means of dependency upon a logistical train. This mobility is a big deal, and wise magic-users make full use of it.

It also means that magic-users, while strongly preferring to stay on or near ley lines and nexus points due to the far stronger flows of magical power, it isn't necessary to do so. They can operate just fine while far from the rivers and lakes magical flows, and with the right application of knowledge they can even carve new channels to extend those flows where they haven't previously gone.

Third: Magic Is The Ideal Power Source

Much like how money arose as the ideal medium for facilitating trade in goods and services, magical power is the ideal medium for transmuting one form of energy or matter into another. It's infinitely renewable, totally clean and has only one side effect: attracting the attention of supernatural creatures. While we're used to the idea of magic-users transmuting magical power into something else, we're not so used to magic-users transmuting something else into magical power; spell-casting is usually thought of as resolving something into existence, not de-resolving something out of it, but clearly this could be done.

The implications of this are enormous and hardly explored at all- certainly not on RIFTS Earth. Contary to common assertions--including those in print--saying that a conflict between magic and science exists, not only does that not exist, but the best magic-users will be cross-trained as experts in mundane physical sciences; not just an expert on the magical arts, but an engineer in both. I will explore this in depth as I get into the Sky-Blue Kingdom of Tolkeen, home to a land where 100 ley lines meet to form one of the most powerful nexus points in North America. (Hint: Think of The Grid and not Disney Land.)

Fourth: It's All About Frequency

The use of magic to connect one place to another, be it to summon something forth, to send someone forth or to open a portal (etc.) involves the harmonizing of frequencies between this dimension (and this specific place in our dimension's space-time) and the destination's point. The use of magic to create tangible effects also involves the use of frequency, as it takes the magical energy employed and manipulates its into the form of the desired effect. If this takes more power than the magic-user has on hand, then time must be expended in conducting a ritual to gather up and suspend that power until there is enough to complete the process.

While it takes a living consciousness to discover and refine the techniques for doing this, the process for executing specific magical acts can be externalized. When one creates a magical item, one externalizes a magical process into an object; this can be done on an industrial scale. For example, the St. Louis Arch is now a Rift Machine and can connect to damn near anywhere through the whole of existence--anywhere, at any time--and if it were brought under control it could be the center of a vast civilized center. (It isn't, and instead is dominated by very powerful supernatural predators.)

The implications for this are mind-blowing, and are the basis for Techno-Wizardry in the game. I fully intend to explore these implications as I write about Tolkeen, for it will be a magical state that wholeheartedly embraces the potential to transform it into a post-scarcity state.

Keep these in mind as I go forward about magic in RIFTS.

The Cyborg: Recycling Humanity into Something More Useful

2011-02-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

Many of you reading this have an image of cyborgs derived from popular genre media such as Robocop, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, The Terminator, various other fiction from certain subgenres of science fiction literature (e.g. Neuromancer) and certain DC and Marvel superheroes such as DC's Cyborg and so on. Some of you may even think of cyborg technology as being one road to a transhuman ascension from our frail fleshly shells into something that promises immortality as well as far greater endurance and resilience to the physical rigors of existence.

To quote Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!"

I will not argue that a cyborg possesses greater physical capacity than baseline human bodies, or that a cyborg--if incorporating computer technology--can surpass baseline human mental capacities in certain areas. I do not argue that cyborg technology is not a viable means of augmentation. What I argue is that this augmentation is necessarily a path to greater autonomy and freedom for one so augmented. Instead, I'm arguing that becoming a cyborg is instead enslavement in ways that many who transform themselves into cyborgs do not appreciate until well after the fact.

A cyborg, as usually understood, is an individual that originally was an organic being but integrated into himself various mechanical and electronic substitutes for organic body parts lost sometime during his life due to illness or injury, including "illness" such as "weak and puny compared to requirements of the job" as well as "injuries" such as "member of an unwanted or disfavored group". As this process of integration cannot be done by oneself, this path requires the cooperation of another individual to make happen; that this individual is in a position of power usually results in the cyborg being exploited somehow by that individual. The result is that the cyborg, for all of his physical capabilities, is often little more than a very powerful slave warrior who is dependent upon his master for such things as maintenance and sustenance.

This is the thing that many popular media don't put before the reader or viewer, and it is the actual flaw that acts to enslave the cyborg in most cases. (It also marks the difference between those cyborgs that do become free from those that don't; free cyborgs acquire the skills, tools and resources necessary to shorten the logistical train that any technology-heavy character has to deal with. Losing access to those parts, munitions and technicians that keep a cyborg in good working order and ready for action is a big fucking deal. This threat should be front and center in the minds of individuals that decide to play a cyborg character. It is exactly this issue that keeps cyborgs loyal to their masters, because otherwise they will degrade into a useless hunk of junk quickly as their power sources run out, their weapons run out and their damage accumulates past their capacity to work with or around.

All of this combines into the concept of "recycling" people, which is where (once again) the state has it over the individual. States--and, for my purposes here, I will include any group that acts as a government in any way such as corporations and clans--look upon people as resources, regardless of philosophical practices, because a state must use the people to exercise its powers and execute its duties and wise ones will place significant value in their human resources- especially if they possess expert knowledge or sought-after experience of some sort.

Therefore, states will tend towards monopolizing cyborg reconstruction as they would other forms of augmentation; furthermore, those states that have Juicer or Crazy technology will see this as a way to retain the best of their augmented operatives once that technology renders those agents sufficiently dysfunctional or non-functional. This is where the recycling idea comes from.

A cyborg, therefore, is someone sufficiently valuable for states to retain in active service when they otherwise would have died or forcibly retired; in return for this renewed life, they are permanently leashed to that aforementioned logistical train just as if they were the weapons and vehicles that they used every day. They may yet operate on a deniable basis, and they may be sent far afield in their work, but they remain leashed--enslaved--to the providers of the services and goods necessary to keep those cyborg shells (partial or full) operating as intended.

So, unlike the Juicer and the Crazy--who are both suckers--the Cyborg is a victim of circumstance. Like the other two, the real cost of his power comes is his freedom and autonomy; unlike the other two, so long as his brain is intact he can be rebuilt again and again, quickly turning a would-be Iron Man into The Man in the Iron Mask. Beware, therefore, the siren song of Steel Immortality.

The Crazy: Augmentation for Expendable Assets of a More Indefinate Duration

2010-09-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

In the milieu of RIFTS the use of Mind Over Matter technology, "M.O.M." for short, is the basis for the Crazy type of augmented super-soldier. The performance increases are similar to, but noticeably lesser than, that of the Juicer in terms of physical capability. However, the implants produce psychic powers in those augmented and these powers often compensate quite well to even the effectiveness of both types. It is in the lasting consequences that Crazies got their name; the implants imbalance the brain chemistry of the subjects, causing insanities that increase in number as well as severity over time until the subjects become non-functional due to the aggravated degeneracy of the brain. However, this can take decades to play out and can be quite effectively managed in the meantime if the controllers carefully manage the mental health of their Crazy operatives.

Unlike Juicer augmentation, which lends itself very well to reaping large numbers of raw recruits and augmenting them as Juicers when war-making is immanent and the conflict can be finished within the lifespan of the augmented cohort, Crazies lend themselves to a different form of exploitation. Crazies start off normative, but as the implants damage them and cause insanities the Crazy individuates and compels the controlling agency to increasingly divorce the initial cohort into smaller and smaller subgroups whose insanities--at the least--do not conflict. Veteran Crazies, prior to that final degeneration into non-functionality, are turned into solo operatives with naught but a handler; they may or may not be attached to a group, depending upon the individual's insanities.

The exploitation that this technology facilitates is that of the long-term insurgent or assassin, deployed as a deniable asset by handlers who need something done but are not willing or able to openly take responsibility for it. They're perfect pasties for black ops meant to be blamed on a third party--false flags, in other words--because it does not matter if the Crazy succeeds or not. The Crazy is too nuts to be believed by most if caught, is easily disavowed if captured or killed for the same reason (despite their military training and gearing), but if successful they can be reused without end until either they're killed in action or degenerate into non-functionality.

It is highly unlikely that most Crazies, therefore, are uncontrolled. They may not be under the thumb of their creators, but most are controlled by someone able to come up with the way the Crazy's madness works and manipulate them to serve the handler's ends instead of their own. The most banal and mercenary reason, that it's not cheap to do this, will be sufficient cause to keep their subjects under control thoroughly. That doesn't bode well for a believable milieu anymore than the Juicer technology does; the Crazy, like the Juicer, is not the autonomous actor that they're implied to be- these super-soldiers take too much logistical support in the form of mental health resources to maintain themselves for long outside of such a system.

If the Juicer is a loser, then the Crazy is just as a loser. They trade off a longer lifespan potential for decreased ability to function within it, which means that they just live enslaved (one way or another) longer. This is not a heroic character; this is a victim in denial, as much as Juicers are, and just as pathetic in the end (and as dangerous until then). Not my idea of a good time.

The Juicer: Augmentation For Expendable Assets

2010-07-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

RIFTS posits a handful of well-known archetypes for human augmentation, and one of them is the chemical route. Juicers are chemically-augmented soldiers, usually used as Special Forces assets and commonly deployed as snipers and assassins, whose chemical enhancements bring them super-human capabilities in physical might and endurance at the cost of burning out the body within 5-7 years of completing the conversion process. As these are the facts behind this fictional system, I can only conclude that this process came about because the state or other entity that needed it had a massive surplus of men willing and able to serve as soldiers, but for whatever reason deemed utterly expendable and unwanted by the oligarchy ruling that state or entity.

In other words, Juicers came about because someone need a lot of jacked-up cannon fodder and didn't want to deal with the consequences of having that surge of veterans re-enter civilian life after the war ended. Long-time gamers may recall another game with a very similar vibe to it--Underground, published by Mayfair--that also had this question come up; the difference, as is commonplace with Palladium products, is the lack of effort spent in answering that question. Oligarchies that are prone to scooping up large segments of their population, using a large subset as a resource for achieving an objective and then discarding it like soiled toilet paper are exactly the sorts that would embrace Juicer augmentation technology.

In the canon, this is said to come out of Europe and I can indeed believe that one or more European states (or factions thereof) would indeed invent and deploy this sort of technology. They would use it to target the young men of their underclasses, recruit them into the military, convert them into Juicers and then manipulate the wars to last long enough for the process to kill them all off within months of the war's end (for all but a handful; all are dead within a year or so). Once the Detox process became viable, this could easily be extended to civilian convicts: accept service as a Juicer in return for your record being wiped clean upon Detox. (Once Cyborg technology gets to a point where swapping brains into shells becomes reliable, "promoting" Juicers to Cyborg shells becomes another viable alternative.)

As chilling as seeing European governments "solve" their "undesirable" problem through exploiting the men--and some of the women--as Juicers may be, I think that it would be far more commonly done in the Americas and Asia once the technology got out there and the means to convert people became easier to establish and maintain within a country; waves of wars would come as one age cohort reached prime draft age, got sucked into it as Juicers and either died in combat or died due to the process burning them out, with only a small core remaining to train the next cohort. The poor of the world, already a prime target for exploitation of this sort, become little more than crops reaped in regular intervals- and the very expendable assets used abroad would become used at home to quell dissension against such exploitation.

The real game-changing point, however, becomes when (by comparison) rather ordinary criminal syndicates become able to field Juicers. Right now we have well-known cartel organizations such as the Medellin of Colombia and Los Zetas of Northern Mexico, groups that were or are sufficiently flush with capital to acquire and maintain military gear and the skills necessary to make the most of it. In this hypothetical situation, once Juicer technology becomes that reliable and replicable these same organizations will be able to take scores of gang-banging street thugs and transform them into superhuman hitmen- utterly expendable superhuman hitman at that, and they will not have a hard time recruiting. The same goes for partisan or terrorist organizations, as they walk in the same circles, and (for the same reason) it's likely to come when this or that intelligence agency flubs an operation and loses a Juicer conversion set-up to a group of that sort.

All this, by the way, is pre-Rifts. After the Coming of the Rifts, there's no reset button- it's all the way back to the worst scenario as soon as someone starts up a conversion operation again because the scope and scale of institutional organization is so small. There's the Coalition & Free Quebec, then Lazlo/Tolkeen/Dwemeor and then Everyone Else- so far as North American goes. Elsewhere is no better, and often a lot worse.

So, what are we left with? The Juicer is a loser. If he volunteered, then he's either a well-meaning sucker or a brain-addled fool. Most likely is that he's forced into it somehow, which means that he's not at all privileged- and likely comes from an underclass or outcast status of some sort. The bravado, the bullshitting, the glamor- it's all ego-armor covering the fact that they're going to die, die horribly and die soon. To be a Juicer is to have No Future; you've chosen to burn out than fade away- so act accordingly.

Legion Delphi: My Take on the Coalition's Psychic Conscription Group

2010-06-20T02:22:00.000-07:00

I disagree with the divisions presented in The Coalition War Machine, as I do with there being any form of civilian apparatus. The Coalition States works far better as an outright military state, as a Nazi Germany stripped of its pretension of civilian life, than it does as written. (When I get to Free Quebec, I'll attempt to do justice to the other way this could go, which fits a more accurate description of "fascism".) Thus I prefer to stick to a single unified group, which I have Coalition sources refer to officially as "Legion Delphi" and unofficially as "Psi Corps".

Legion Delphi has the following purposes:

Provide the state with a standing militia of expert trouble-shooters when dealing with either supernatural or psychic threats. This is how Stalkers and Dog Boys are organized and integrated with Army and Intelligence operations, deployed on a detached basis as requested by the relevant officers. The more sociable ones are used as diplomats, of a sort, to those outside elements that the Inner Elite wants on their side- or, at least, not opposed to them at this time. (e.g. Wild Stalker tribes)
Provide the Inner Elite with yet another array of covers when they need to be visible to common folk and using more obvious psychic powers (e.g. telekinesis). This is also how some Inner Elite members that are not of the Vanguard can reliably interact with the Vanguard; they assume complex false identities with a Legion Delphi designation, backed by Intelligence clearance, as a foundation.
Provide the Inner Elite with a mechanism by which they can assimilate the psi-active population into their ranks, either by indoctrination or by more foul means (e.g. confinement to Lone Star for use in experimentation), as specific circumstances warrant. This includes detection of incoming psychics as well as their exploitation for State purposes, such as inquisitions.
Provide another means of acquiring reliable intelligence on targets and matters put to them by other agencies. (Staring at goats optional.)

Most Legion Delphi members have no idea that they're anything other than State-sanctioned mutants operating under the close scrutiny of trusted Dog Boy or Stalker supervisors. (Most often the former; if you've got a Stalker as your minder, you're considered to be a loose cannon and the Stalker is an implied threat.) The official dogma is that Legion Delphi are unfortunates, victims of fate, given the opportunity to serve Mankind by the grace of the wise and just Emperor and thus make the most of their degraded Humanity; retirement is, officially, not an option. (Unofficially, "retirement" means that you're no longer deployed and you may be permitted comfort in your dotage- you spend the remainder of your days training your successors.)

Some psychics taken in by the Legion disappear. They're too weak, either in mind or body, to be useful to the State (and thus the Inner Elite) so they're sent to Lone Star. There they become fodder for one of many experimental programs, each seeking to unlock exactly how the known link between DNA and psychic powers works so that the Inner Elite can finally begin a eugenic cleansing and reformatting of Mankind to suit their purposes. Some of these unfortunates get converted into Juicers, some into Crazies, some used in the Breeding Pits, some chopped up for parts and some just plain used. If a psychic isn't fit for service or chosen by the Inner Elite, they are condemned to an existence as monstrous as what they feared from the entities beyond Coalition power.

Some Things That Terrify The Inner Elite

2010-06-20T02:18:00.000-07:00

The Inner Elite of the Coalition States, the invisible ruling caste, stays to the shadows out of fear. This fear, in all its manifestations and regardless of the validity of specific forms, builds itself from an essential, fundamental belief in a scarcity of things that the Elite desires above all others. Combined with that fear is another belief, one that they received as an inheritance from their pre-Rifts predecessors, that they are fundamentally superior to and therefore better than the majority of Humanity- essentially a Divine Right conception, one validated in their eyes by their strong post-Rifts emergence as a proven line of powerful psychics. They are the North American oligarchy, changed by their environment early on and stabilized after a considerable period of internal strife into a small group of 100-150 individuals united into a single clan with a small handful of family dynasties within it- the Prosek family is one of them, and the most visible of them.

The Elite believes that there is a severe deficiency of useful resources, and far too many threats to their autonomy--which they believe can only be kept by maintaining dominance and hegemony over all within their reach--so they must work to secure their control over those resources. One of these useful resources are the common people, which they view as things and treat such, which is part of the reason for why their hypocrisy and fraud doesn't bother them: they don't see the common people of the Coalition as "one of us", but instead as Others that they can use and discard as one would robots. (This is, by the way, one explanation for why the Coalition doesn't make greater use of robots than is already in use; there is another, which I get into below.)

The Inner Elite sees everything through the lens of a world where there is no abundance of anything other than threats to their power and tools for their use. Even other human-supremacist states are seen as threats, just a lower-priority one that can be dealt with by stealth and fraud instead of war and slaughter. (See my take on the Coalition-Quebec conflict above.) Thus I see that the Elite, acting on their bone-deep existential terror, will enact a suite of policies meant to destroy those fears.

Psi Stalkers & Dog Boys: The Inner Elite did not create Stalkers. There is no reliable intelligence on who or what did. Inner Elite consensus is that the Stalker mutant variant is, as is claimed by the oral tradition of the wild tribes, in fact the reaction of one or more individuals that mutated into one at the Coming of the Rifts. (Note: Yes, I have a legendary creation myth for Psi Stalkers, as the tribes of North America call themselves "The Sons of Ken"- named for a mythical Father of Stalkers named "Ken", aka "He Who Hunts The Damned".) However, most Stalkers are no better educated than most Coalition subjects and thus had their DNA repeatedly sampled since the founding of the States.

The Dog Boys of recent generations were meant to be wholly-owned and easily-controlled alternatives based on what the Elite believed to be in the works just before the Coming of the Rifts- the creation of psuedo-men based upon animals. All the Elite did was splice in Stalker DNA and their new anti-supernatural hunter-killers would be complete, or so they believed. This did not work as planned, so instead the Army recruited certain Stalkers to be Pack Masters; the synergy of Stalker and Hound proved very potent, so the Inner Elite signed off on it.

However, the threat that the Stalkers present--Stalkers detect Elites just as they do other psychics--makes for a most spirited discussion within their own ranks. Aside from a handful capable of reliably masking themselves, the Elite hide themselves from the Stalkers; the Dog Boys, however, are easily controlled due to a combination of genetic tendency and early indoctrination to obedience and acculturation to the specific psychic presence that these psychics emanate. (This is why you'll see Dog Boy bodyguards, but never a Stalker.) There is currently two proposals meant to deal with this fear of the Stalkers; the first is to encourage the tribes into Coalition orbit, continually bring them into Army service and covertly sterilize them so that they slowly dwindle and die off and the second is to continue DNA sampling to decode in full their genetics so that a truly loyal version can be synthesized and put into production.
Magic: The Inner Elite, as confirmed by the Vanguard, knows that magic--unlike psychic power--is not truly linked to one's quality of blood. For a ruling oligarchy, which--being the heirs of pre-Rifts elites--are sincere and total believers in the validity of eugenics, the threat that magic poses to them is that anyone can learn to use magic. Sure, some specific types are more or less common, but to date they've not yet found anyone unable to master the ways of Witches, Warlocks, Priests, Ley Line Walkers and Shifters. (i.e. the magical practices most commonly encountered) Techno-Wizardry utterly terrifies the Inner Elite in that it simultaneously neutralizes their best strength and turns it against them in ways they can't resist; a captured Coalition robot can be re-purposed using Techno-Wizardry, and all they can do in turn is destroy the Magic Robot.

This hits them two-fold. First, they fear that they really aren't better than other people; second, they fear anything that empowers common people to become better than they are- for wielders of magic are often able to escape or otherwise not be dependent upon them for protection against the world, and if not dealt with swiftly they can act against mundane targets without fear of reprisal. (This fact, by the way, justifies the Vanguard to the Elite.) Finally, they fear anything that attacks their belief in scarcity, and magic's power seems to be without true limit- just momentary interruptions of flow. (This, by the way, is also why they fear Atlantis and all other magic-based states and peoples.)
The World Beyond: The Elite fears all beyond the Rifts because, aside from the very real threats that monsters and other malevolent entities that come across, the Elite correctly perceive that the many worlds beyond will include things--people, places, things, and most importantly ideas--that can upset their base of power and threaten their existence. Just like the people that owned the plantations of any slave-holding society, a persistent fear of their privilege and prestige (let alone power) being lost in a revolt by common folks--by their slaves, their serfs, etc.--is as alive in the Inner Elite as in all previous societies of this sort.

This is why the Coalition maintains deliberate ignorance in the people, thinking Free Quebec to be foolish to allow any form of education to the masses, has such a densely-repeated pattern of Divide & Conquer going on that you have to be telepathic to keep track of it (or be a computer), and deliberately restricts or retards technology that can pose a threat of this sort. (e.g. artificial intelligence; all Coalition robots are drones monitored by human operators because the Elite fears Skynet.)

Whyfor the Misogyny and Sexual Repression in Coalition Society?

2010-06-20T02:11:00.000-07:00

There are two reasons for why these are so prominent.

First, this was tried in Nazi Germany and the Coalition States are meant in many ways to be "Nazi Germany Done Better"; second, because this is a society that--like Orwell--is obsessed with control and one of the oldest ways (old, in large part, because it works) is division of the population against itself and the easiest way to do that is all lines of sex and gender. Removing individuality from the population, getting them to think in terms of being part of a greater--but fragile--whole without which they have no security, works when you institute a Greco-Roman style of patriarchy and make the patriarchs into agents of the state. It's a peculiar sort of neo-feudal social mechanism where you're nothing unless you're part of something bigger than yourself.

Why the repression? In part because of the fear, uncertainty and doubt that it generates- and tyrannies thrive on that anxiety because it opens an avenue of social control. In part out of cold logistical necessity, something the population understands intuitively; the Coalition's playing a numbers game, so it uses force and fraud to maximize the breeding rate knowing full well that it's their specific circumstances that make it viable to do so- if this were a more stable world, the ridiculous disparities amongst the sexes would itself become a threat to social stability and order. They need men to fight and women to breed; it's that simple at its basis, and they cook the books (as it were) to ensure that things work that way.

Why the misogyny? In part because the Inner Elite, being successors to the pre-Rifts global elites, see people first and foremost as tools--as assets--and not as fellow human beings. They look at women and see self-propelled baby manufacturing complexes; they view women that aren't breeding as being wrong, somehow, and a lot of their reactions to that perception of wrongness is meant to "fix" them (if possible) or recoup a loss (if not) by using them in some related capacity. The Inner Elite thinks in terms of math, of statistics, of profits/conquests and losses, and not in terms that would see the people under their power as equals, as fellows. They're not that much different than their predecessors in real history; the callbacks to Rome, Greece, China and other strongly patriarchal cultures is not accidental- it's, in many ways, an attempt to synthesize the successful (from their point of view) elements into a stronger whole- and they do this because they believe that this is natural law, and the women amongst their own class largely buy into it.

I'm trying my damnedest to create an evil society and culture that fits into the high concept of the States, and in my experience you have to get at elements like this to make it stick in play; the players (and their characters) may only see the tip of the iceberg, but there is a lot of depth supporting it that can make its presence felt if pushed.

The horror here is that, because the majority of Coalition subjects are totally ignorant of anything other than what Coalition propagandists tell them, all of this is normal to them. The women of the Coalition, by and large, don't think to question this social norm; in part because they lack the education needed to generate the critical thinking skills required to make that leap, and in part because--like all successful cults (and remember, the Coalition States runs off an Imperial Personality Cult)--they're kept far too busy working to think about much other than the here-and-now. The men of the Coalition don't do this because they are too busy fighting, training, recovering from same or in preparation for same to do much critical thought- even amongst the Outer Elite ranks. They aren't aware that they're repressed.; the Inner Elite successfully convinced the people that, as it were, the Devil doesn't exist.

Finally, the Inner Elite cheat like the rat bastards that they are. They know how past societies like theirs fell, they have a clear advantage in their telepathic powers, and they sure as Hell don't play fair. While they don't need to intervene often, they do need to keep their hands on the wheel (as it were) to keep this oppression machine going. It's why they are so focused on maintaining and sustaining perpetual warfare: it keeps the people focused on external threats, keeps the people away from looking at their leaders, and permits the government all of the power and privilege required to enforce their will. Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Mussolini, Tito, Pinochet and many other butchers would look on this regime and wonder at it- and, likely, feel at home.

The Outer Elite

2010-06-14T15:39:00.001-07:00

The Outer Elite is what most people, common Coalition subjects and outsiders alike, usually think of when they think of the upper class of Coalition society. It is the doctors, engineers, military officers, high government officials and other visible authority or expert figures that do most of the skilled labor or professional service provision that comprise the Outer Elite. Of these groups, the Army Medical Corps is the most visible as it is the most widespread.

The Inner Elite created the Outer Elite caste as "useful idiots": a class of people that are, like the common folk, kept in the dark about what's really going on (and who is really in control) but are permitted a certain degree of training and education in order to channel natural talent away from becoming a threat and into becoming a useful asset.

A certain degree of social mobility is part of this caste's creation; the very best and brightest amongst the common people are identified as early as possible and co-opted into their ranks (in a manner that resembles the Psi Corps of Babylon 5, in that it isn't an option to just refuse; most parents, being worshipful of many Outer Elite groups, think of it as a great honor- and, wisely, they get treated well for complying).

Most Outer Elite households work hard to ensure that their sons maintain that status, and that their daughters marry as high up as they can manage; that this resembles the society of the English Regency period is not at all an accident- the Inner Elite deliberately manufactured dogma to create this zeitgeist and tweak it now and again to maintain its effectiveness. The fortunes of such a family rely greatly on the performance and reputation of its men in service, and somewhat on the "success" of its women when taken into marriage. (More on that in another post.)

Commonfolk households are similar in their ambitions; it's just that their sights tend to be lower. Rather than climb into medical school, most are hoping to qualify as medics. (Note: "Nurse" is not a term in use; Coalition nurses are Army medics that are currently not in the field, having rotated out to train new medics or just to take a light tour in a base hospital.) Medics are hoping that their sons, thanks in large part to their active teaching at home, can work their way into becoming Army Doctors. Similar divisions are in place in the technical field; the grandfather is a grunt, the father a tech and the son an engineer.

The Coalition States doesn't have a separate law-enforcement agency; this is handled by Army and Intelligence assets as required, with the local militia taking the role of the beat cop or county sheriff. Its judiciary is a unified one, such as it is, with all people under military law; these courts exist not to find justice, but to maintain order and readiness, and would offend civil libertarians (that survived long enough to see one)- it's often just a prelude to punishment, and that is in large part to the omnipresent surveillance used.

Most of the manpower in the Outer Elite goes into the medical system, with a lot of medics and doctors spread throughout the States either working out of base hospitals or deployed into field hospitals. Base hospitals are common as every farming community has one (integrated with its citadel), and retired doctors are often put into administrative positions at the base hospital where they live. (Yes, this means that Rambo's being looked after by Hawkeye.) It is commonplace to use cybernetics for medical purposes, but augmentation is strictly controlled; lots of retired soldiers have a few parts, but any serious rebuild means being officially marked as dead and a transfer to the Immortals.

Second most common is the Technical group, as they handle infrastructure of all sorts (other than medical). Roads, communications, power production and distribution, building construction, etc. are all handled by them somehow and that keeps these guys busy. While the retired technicians can handle most everyday work in their communities, active-duty techs get called in on occasion when the locals need Army assets to get a job done. Engineers are often put into authority positions upon retirement. (So Rambo goes to the hospital where Hawkeye works, and he gets there on roads built by one of John Wayne's many characters in a car made by Q.)

As for the Army and Intelligence, most of their officers and agents also fall into this group. Inner Elite members use these two groups most often to cover their own movements within Coalition society. They often find that their careers stall out around the Major or Colonel rank, however, and that they get shunted out of tracks that lead other to the General's Club in favor of useful--but dead-end--positions such as managing basic training for this or that area, being put into command of a garrison in the middle of nowhere, or something else that's a political snub but an institutional necessity.

Spies get similar problems. Most are not James Bond types. They operate boring networks of informants, look after the tavern operations, scout out an area prior to the Army invading it, or other necessary--but dead-end--jobs. If they piss off their superiors, they get all of the exciting and adventurous tasks (because they're meant to die in action); the worst are filled with crap intelligence and sent into traps fully expected to either die or break under interrogation (and then die, either at enemy hands or as traitors upon return).

Everyday Counter-Intelligence

2010-06-10T00:26:00.001-07:00

Some retiring Coalition soldiers are unable to sire children. This is a severe blow to their pride, so it's officially classified as a "life-depriving injury" to facilitate the ability of the soldier to save face. (This seeming-mercy is self-serving; the Inner Elite, as noted above, places great value on being able to breed so as to keep population up and use the pressures generated to maintain an overall level of fear, uncertainty and doubt that can be exploited for propaganda purposes- it also acts as another tool in the social control toolbox.) Rather than risk the exposure of this inability by putting them in farmland homesteads, they're made into the managers of taverns located near Army barracks.

These men are, as usual, granted wives as well as land. The women, however, are actually homosexual women. They're drafted into a "finishing school" and then work as tavern wenches for their husbands. Since the active duty men are single men, and still as randy as soldiers usually are, it's not uncommon for the soldiers to attempt to pick up the wenches. Thus we have one of the most perverse, hypocritical and cynical examples of how the Inner Elite control the Coalition population.

The women are trained as spies, in the Honey Trap tradition; they use sex to seduce targets, get them to lower their guard and spill their secrets while in bed. These lesbians are used in a counter-intelligence capacity against the Army to ensure that all sorts of unwanted influence doesn't find a home in a Coalition facility; their husbands, by and large, are blackmailed into complying through the stigma of impotence. (Their supposed secret isn't one, really; it's more of a "don't step out of line and we won't ruin you" situation.) What makes this perverse is that these spies compound their husband's problems by cuckolding him and producing children by the men that they seduce; that stigma turns into scandal if it comes out that "your children" aren't yours- off to a Spartan unit with you. (Most evil is this petty and banal.)

So, the end result is a game most foul. On the surface, it's a game of randy soldiers screwing tavern wenches behind the old man's back for fun and lulz. (But don't get caught; off to the Spartans with you if you do!) Children that these wenches have are legally and official of the husband's household. Now, under that facade you have Coalition Intelligence exploiting homosexual women by forcing them to be whores for the state (or else), forcing retired soldiers to play along (or else), all to catch undesired political (etc.) influence from getting any traction. Now you know why that tavern owner is such a miserable old man, and often why the wenches are so surly, as well as why Little Bobby doesn't seem to resemble his father that much.

How the Coalition Holds Land

2010-06-10T00:24:00.001-07:00

The Inner Elite of the Coalition States, as noted previously, are a highly-educated caste of psi-active men. They have access to the lore of pre-Rifts Earth, and in addition to making very inside jokes to amuse themselves they also mine it for useful and proven ideas to recycle for their own use. One of these ideas is the granting of land to soldiers upon completing their 25-year term of service.

The common Coalition soldier enters the Army at age 15 as a draftee, serves on active duty for 25 years straight and retires at age 40. This means that those soldiers survived 25 years of campaigning, combat and constant contact with a hierarchy demanding obedience to superiors and (as these men are commonly senior NCOs upon retirement) and compliance from subordinates. The Inner Elite, reading Roman and Chinese accounts of the use of retirees as settlers in contested territory, decided early on to recycle this idea for their own use.

Now it is commonplace for Coalition territory to be held by scores of small farmsteads centered around a small, fortified town. Each of these are the plots awarded to retiring soldiers, who continue their service to the state by acting as the local militia and staffing the local government. The order that they became accustomed to in the Army is the order that they maintain in their small communities, treating their wives and children as subordinates and each other more or less as peers. Since the state automates the farming, the men have plenty of time to patrol their area and play county sheriff; that they retain the Army-issued equipment that they retired with (and still get new stuff, just not as fast) means that would-be raiders often end up facing a militia comprised of some of the toughest that baseline Humanity can make--an entire town of Rambos, Master Chiefs, Sam Fischers, Snakes, etc.--and get wiped out. In a demon-haunted world, this is a necessity for conquest.

Through these means that Coalition government achieves several objectives. They keep old soldiers from causing trouble by giving them all significant rewards for service that are tangible (wives as well as land), puts them into a position of responsibility that they are suited to handle (maintain order over this area and ensure its productivity in all things), and ensures that if the need arises these veterans can be called back while in good shape and familiar with current technology. The land that the government claims is occupied and put to use, secured against raiders and skirmishers and likely to hold long enough for the Army to relieve them if necessary- and this also denies that same land to hostile entities.

(There is a different track for soldiers rendered unable to sire children; they get assigned to the sanctioned watering holes that the government uses to let the Army blow off steam, but that's another post.)

Coalition Jucier Units: The Three Most Common Types

2010-06-10T00:22:00.001-07:00

Spartan: This is the common penal Juicer. He is an otherwise normal human male, either heterosexual or bisexual, who committed an offense and got caught. (Or got framed, but we're talking Official Dogma here.) He is a trained soldier, and the specific form of Juicer he becomes depends upon that training; most are baseline, a few are Phaeton (pilot) types, with others being rare or non-existent. These guys get used like marines; they get sent first where the resistance is hardest, and they are expected to succeed or die trying- those that retreat do get shot by their (not-Juicer) officers. Very few ascend into the Immortals. Their CO is always "Leonidas", and they come in 300-man units; amongst the Inner Elite, this is considered hilariously funny.

Theban: The Inner Elite has little love for homosexuals. Thanks to DNA testing, male homosexuals are identified early and then tracked into training as a Juicer upon draft age; neither they nor their families are ever told that this is anything other than a high honor. They are not mistreated, but--as with their namesakes--are encouraged to find love within the ranks. If those Spartans are the dogmeat sent into the grinder, Thebans are glorious soldiers sent to do Very Important Things that nevertheless are usually certain death such as hold the line during retreats, make diversionary assaults against hard points or take on enemy elites and tie them down so artillery can tear them up. (The artillery commanders aren't told to be precise, by the way.) Most of the Immortals come from these units. These also come 300 at a time; this too is often thought of as a hilarious joke.

Gorgon: The Inner Elite has no need of women that can't breed (not won't; they send those women elsewhere), and are too ugly to use as spies (not too plain; again, those women get sent elsewhere- we mean fugly). These women are the rarest of the Coalition Juicers, are always of the baseline model, and operate as three-man teams. They aren't used in military operations on the battlefield. They're used strictly as deniable killers by Intelligence. The team leader, usually the most personable of the trio, is "Medusa"; their handler is always "The Eye". The Inner Elite snicker like brats over this also. Gorgons that ascend into the Immortals are rare.

My Personal Take on the Coalition States

2010-06-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

For me, the think I enjoy most about Rifts is the Coalition States. They are one of the best iconic villains in tabletop gaming, and they make the base setting of North America far more compelling than it would be otherwise. Yet I find that my specific interpretation of the States is often at odds with others I see, either in print or online, so I'm interested in sharing perspectives and the reasons for these opinions.

I see the States as being a dystopia. This human-supremacist state is, very much, a totalitarian state that generates a cult of personality rooted in the worship of the Emperor (ala 40K). It is openly, loudly and avowedly xenophobic as well as manaphobic; fear and hatred of the alien and of the supernatural is as commonplace as breathing, and common language has a lot of tropes and jargon built upon slurs against the designated targets. It is also quietly, yet openly, sexist; the States portrays itself as being in a perpetual total war, by necessity a war of annihilation, and thus (like its Nazi roots) places a great deal of value on female fertility and domesticity. It is also quietly, covertly racist; "White Anglo-Saxon" is the definition of "pure Humanity", so you will observe a bleaching of color as you look higher up the hierarchy until you reach a perfect blond-hair, blue-eyed perfect specimen as the commonplace example. (This also doubles as useful social control.)

I see no reason for not avoiding the hypocrisy of the inspirations. I prefer to use the Straussian concept of an Inner and Outer Elite, with the Inner Elite as hidden from both the Outer Elite and the common people alike, save for the designated points of interface (e.g. the Emperor and a few other officials) so that the true rulers can operate efficiently in the shadows away from prying eyes- literal and metaphorical alike. Certain "elite units" are put into one or the other, with the vast majority being "Outer Elite" and used as covers for Inner Elites, but most of the core Intelligence community is firmly in the Inner Elite's hands. (e.g. the Vanguard is Inner Elite)

I also see no reason for not displaying the most fantastic ideas when it comes to social control mechanisms; this is one of the few settings where it isn't fucking retarded most of the time. For example, I think that the States uses the Army to manage its population. So, I think that "citizenship" comes only after either spending 25 years on active duty (for men) or getting married and producing a large number of children (by said husband) and then raising them to draft/marriage age. Service grants citizenship, for those that endure that long and don't get cheated along the way, in the form of being able to hold land and establish a household. I think that there's an imperial DNA database that tracks genetics, that much of the free healthcare provided (by the Army Medical Corps) is really just a cover for DNA engineering that alters the vast peasantry into forms that the elite prefers, and industry is automated to a degree we would find fantastic.

The Army gets used in other ways. The Emperor's elite guard? A unit of Full Conversion Cyborgs, all of then identical, 10K strong called "The Immortals" (in knowing homage to the Persian unit of old). The Army's penal units are all Juicers, as are certain "elite units" composed of undesirables, the specific type of which are code-named along Greek lines. (The three most common are "Spartan", "Theban" and "Gorgon".) Those that survive long enough for Final Call to hit are instead transferred to the Immortals and converted into cyborgs, with mental stability ensured through active telepathic intervention.

Coalition Society, therefore, is thoroughly militarized. There are no private firms providing arms; there are design bureaus. There are no individuals, just members of households (with paterfamilias re-instituted), and most men die young fighting in one of the Coalition's many wars while most women end up married to officers and retiring NCOs as part of their husband's retirement bonuses. (And no, monogamy is not the norm.) Farming is highly automated but most farms are small, as they are grants of land given to the toughest of Coalition men: retiring NCOs around 40-45 years of age (and 25-30 years of combat experience). (This too is deliberate policy, based on Rome.) Mining is done by automated assets, as is logging, protected by military assets (this is "light duty"). The States, therefore, are on a permanent wartime footing.

Education is entirely by voice and example, using iconography and advanced animation techniques. Fathers teach and train their sons; mothers do so for their daughters. Most people never see a book or other printed media; it's all electronic and iconic, like a Star Wars movie made for illiterates. Most are also illnumerate, with mathematics limited to basic four-function teaching- only the Elites (Inner and Outer alike) get any education in any of the sciences (including math), as Coalition operations possess a lot of tools and tricks meant to get to "good enough" without properly educating people.

This brings me to the Inner Elite. These are all telepathic, which is how they maintain their dominance; they can, and do, communicate constantly in utter silence and without display. The Vanguard is entirely made up of this faction and certain other Intelligence operations work entirely through this faction. I am of the opinion that they control the States' vital institutions as well as its institutions, often invisibly in the form of being trusted advisers, teachers or others commonly in the penumbra of a leadership position: "gray eminence" is their usual mode of operation.

Finally, I prefer the Coalition to be More Dakka and Less Pew-Pew. It allows control through logistics, which in a control-obsessed society like this is very important to maintain.

The Supernatural of Rifts and Its Fueling of Coalition Paranoia

2010-06-05T16:13:00.000-07:00

As stated in the Rifts rulebook, supernatural power works around Potential Psychic Energy (PPE) and Inner Strength Points (ISP)- respectively, they power magic and psionic abilities. These powers are augmented when on or near a Ley Line, and moreso at a Nexus Point. Likewise, recovering of spent energy is greater at these points than normal. This means that magic and psychic entities shall appear with greater frequency at these sites or along those lines than elsewhere. Furthermore, magicians have the option of using auspicious times and ritual sacrifices to enhance the gathering and use of supernatural power- an option that applies before the effects of Ley Lines or Nexus Points apply.

To use magic, a magician has to have the required PPE on hand at the time of working the spell. Psychics must have the required ISP. Once spent, it can be recovered by rest, again accelerated if on a line or at a point. Spells can be learned, imbued by another entity or spontaneously brought about depending on the tradition in question; psychic powers are usually handled along similar lines, with the caveat that psychic powers are genetic somehow (usually) and such abilities can't be taught like magic can.

Yes, that's right, some forms of magic can be taught just like one can teach science and make damn near anyone into a scientist. The two most iconic forms of magic use in the game--the ways of Shifters and Ley Line Walkers--are wholly teachable traditions of magic and require no inherent ability aside from the intelligence to comprehend the ideas and the mental fortitude necessary to handle the strain of working magic (as you are wielding the raw power of Creation bare-handed, as it were). This, predictably, makes magic use in some traditions not much more than another form of science- and that is a fact that has would-be tyrants and those terrified of the supernatural everywhere scared shitless.

Now, why does this matter to Rifts North America? That's because of the Coalition States (and its fellow travelers), the notoriously xenophobia and manaphobic empire of human supremacists, because in order for the Coalition to succeed in its desire to kill all extra-dimensional entities and supernatural forces they need to divorce their bases of production (including human ones) as far from these places of power as they possibly can. Magic can do mind control, possession, traffic with demons (or worse), transform victims into monsters or beasts, and so on; psychic powers are comparable in their potential for abuse. In an environment saturated in fear, uncertainty and doubt like Rifts North America--where one can count on one hand, with digits left over, the number of places where one may live without such an atmosphere weighing down on you--it is not surprising to see many people use whatever power they have to promote their own security at the cost of the freedom and autonomy of others (if not their lives) due to the significantly greater predation present in the world.

In short, the Coalition is an evil totalitarian empire that uses its milieu to justify its oppression. In the coming posts, I will go deep into the Coalition States and how to best execute the premises upon which this fictional empire is based.

The Coming of the Rifts: A Review of the Most Fundamental Setting Premises

2010-05-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

The post-apocalypse setting of Rifts Earth turns on an event called "The Coming of the Rifts", written in the rulebook to occur in 2098 at the fall of a so-called "Golden Age". After a military skirmish in South America, there was a nuclear exchange that occurred at a magically-auspicious moment and the massive death--acting as a ritual sacrifice--opened the world-wide network of magical ley lines; the resulting energies wrecked Civilization and brought the end of the Golden Age about.

Okay, first thing first: change the date. The setting works far, far better if we set the Coming to occur on December 21st, 2012. This change allows us to easily exploit all of the readily-available material regarding various fringe authors, etc. writing books and making videoes about UFO, the occult and all that stuff. If you really want to get that specific--and there is not much benefit for doing so--pick one of the various occult conspiracies/paradigms and use the local time of the relevant location of power wherein the Rifts erupt.

Now, after that, you get the usual ruined world-Dark Age-fragile recovery scenario. In North America, this covered a combined period of about 300 years (as of Year 101 of the Post-Apocalypse calendar). In the start date of the original rulebook, it is P.A. 101 and the Coalition States are starting to invade Minnesota. Those three centuries make for a lot of time, time in which survivors can again not only recover to the old world's previous apex but eclipse it and go further; in our real history, this is the fact of European history between Rome's fall and the emergence of the Middle Ages- by the time of the Italian Renaissance, post-Western Rome had easily caught up to Rome's remnant in the east (Byzantium) and began eclipsing it.

I say that, due to many of the world's major states having Continuity of Government plans in place for a cataclysmic event, the recovery phase of technological survivors can be accelerated--can be, because those survivors can fail due to external attack or internal collapse--significantly. It is this accelerated recovery that I say is what allows the Coalition States (as well as Triax/New German Republic and other such states in the setting) to not only recover as fast as they do, but to pass the former apex and move into new areas of advancement and deployment.

Now, the other big change that comes is that magic and other supernatural forces aren't so weak as to be immaterial most of the time anymore. They're obvious, and they're so wide-spread as to be omni-present in certain places. In North America, this includes my home town of Minneapolis and St. Paul--nexus of 100 ley lines--as it becomes the Magical Kingdom of Tolkeen. (Yes, I will post my own take on this, and it's going to make the most of this ridiculous name.) Making use of existing real world conspiracy theory regarding Continuity of Government, we can say that many parts of the world do not escape the Coming and get scoured by the energies bursting forth from the Rifts. This is what allows many of the magic-based states to establish themselves; the Coming wiped clean the sites, killed most of the people and warped the rest, and the new magic-active sites arise from a combination of native survivors (acclimated to supernatural power) and magic-using/magic-native aliens moving in to colonize the ruins.

Next time, we'll talk about the baseline rules for magic and the supernatural, and then transition into the Coalition because without this background many of the posts about the Coalition won't seem to be much more than misery porn. Good setting work does not do that, so we're laying our foundation accordingly.

The Author Displays His Intentions

2010-05-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

Palladium Books first published its flagship tabletop role-playing game, Rifts in 1990. Of the many tabletop role-playing games published in the history of the hobby, few of them (that are not Dungeons & Dragons) can boast being not only around but active and vigorously alive for as long as Rifts can. Regardless of what one thinks of the game, the company or the owner (Kevin Siembieda), this is a success story that cannot be denied.

It is my opinion that one of the strongest factors in favor of the game's success is the setting. A significant faction of the game's fans--including myself--do not like, and do not want to use, the Palladium ruleset for reasons that vary widely. However, that setting remains compelling enough to maintain interest, and interest in tabletop RPGs inevitably leads to sales, and that is good enough.

It is also my opinion that another of the strongest factors in favor of the game's success is that it remains open, as a matter of editorial policy, to people making of it what they want. To a certain extent, published support does facilitate this desire; unofficial support goes far beyond that official support, leading to conflicts driven in part due to third parties complaining about Intellectual Property violations and in part due to paranoia about such concerns between the publisher and the fans. I mention this because I intend, here and now, to make clear what this 'blog is about.

This 'blog is about the opinions of one man--me--regarding the setting of Rifts and how I think it would be improved if interpreted and presented different from what is the case at this time. The reason for why I opted to flag this 'blog as Adult Content is that I will talk about things such as gender-based oppression, slavery, drug abuse, social control mechanisms, etc. in no unclear or uncertain terms. Thus, it is adult in the same way that writing about Female Genital Mutilation is adult, or that writing about using rape as a weapon of terror is adult, or how political dogma can produce personality cults that justify Crimes Against Humanity is adult, and not as a euphemism for pornography or other prurient content.

This is not a light-hearted 'blog. It is not a casual thought 'blog. This is about thinking through the premise of the game's setting, and then figuring out how to make that useful in terms of playing at the table. You won't find mechanical expression of anything, in any ruleset, here; if you're reading this, chances are that you already have your own preferences on that matter, so you need no such advice from me. This is about the other half of the hobby, the role-playing half, the part that provides that context necessary for all of the dice-rolling and resource management to actually be any fun (and not an exercise in mental masturbation).

I'm going to start with the focal element of the core North American setting of the game: the Coalition States. This is a dystopia that I think Kevin Siembieda doesn't use to its fullest effect, in part because I don't see evidence that he understands either its explicit inspiration--Nazi Germany--or the traditions that this infamous historical example built upon. In short, I intend to display a Coalition States that is far more in keeping with its premise and not just an excuse for ridiculous artwork; the Coalition I present will actually creep people out and provide that vital visceral reaction that any proper horrific villain ought to provoke from readers and players. Free Quebec will follow quickly due to its close relationship, but Triax and the New German Republic will be a while due to its location in Europe.

I hope that you appreciate and enjoy what's to come, and that it inspires you to take up the game--regardless of what ruleset you use--and play it how you like it.