Rifts World Book 4: Africa by Alien Rope Burn

Epic adventure.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Yes, it's time for our eighth Rifts book and the sixth Rifts FATAL & Friends writeup I've worked on and...

Oh fuck me, not this shit again.

Wait. What.

WHAT?

Look, I understand that Kevin Siembieda was so steeped in the Satanic Panic that he did these warnings for over a decade after it had died out, reminding us that ridiculous nonsense like the Splugorth and their Blind Warrior Slave Women are fictional. Fine. Fine.

But when you have Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War - that combine to form the Armageddon Creature, and he wants to pretend this doesn't refer to Christian mythology?

Talk about wanting to have your religion and eat it too.


I hardly have the energy to fight this anymore, but let's look at one last piece of the above under a microscope for a moment.


Yes, that's right. It's time to explore the fictional realm...

... of Africa.



Rifts World Book 4: Africa Part One: "Epic adventure."

A warning for new readers

If you haven't read my and occam's reviews of the other Rifts books, you may want to start with those. Rifts® Africa contains blatant references to earlier material. Shilling, repetition, and book references are all present in this book.

This F&F review of Rifts® World Book Four: Africa is not intended to be any more comprehensive than the book itself. Elements will be referenced constantly from other material. Reader discretion is advised.

So, there are actually two covers for this book. The first is from earlier printings, the second is from later printings. Why the change? No idea.


_{Here is where I introduce my revolutionary skull counter . Skulls counted: 20.}

So, what do we have after Kevin's boilerplate warning that magic is make-believe? Well, we have this pic:



Yes, this is a man made of beetles with a beetle-staff riding a giant beetle.

I think it's safe to say he has beetlemania .

So! We have Kevin Siembieda doing the main writing, Kevin Long giving us the heavy metal horsemen, and Julius Rosenstein doing... something, I'm told. Alex Marciniszyn continues on as the "editor" with Thomas Bartold or James A. Osten also "editing". Interior art is by Kevin Long, Newton Ewell, Wayne Breaux, Kevin Siembieda, and Michael Gustovich.

So, on to the intro!


Apparently Kevin was questioned on why he was doing Africa for World Book Four! So he talks about his inspirations - Kipling, Conrad, Tarzan , Zulu , and... uh... Frank Buck. Also, it's huge! Really huge! It's a huge place! And...


Has he even been to Africa?


I hope so too, I hope so too, Kevin.

_{Please stop referring to Africa as exotic and mysterious and noble now.}


nnnnngh

nnnn

nnnnnnnnnnnn fucccckkkkkkk

fuuuucckkkk yooouuuuu

Next: ERIN TARN.

By the fates that control space and time, Victor can it really be you?

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa Part Two: "By the fates that control space and time, Victor can it really be you?"

The art in this part doesn't actually appear until later in the book, but I figured, why make you wait? So today we go straight into Erin Tarn's newest missive.


_{Angela Lansbury is Erin Tarn in: Rifts Africa.}

Apparently she is writing a letter to Plato from Northern Africa. Um. I have no idea how this is being delivered? There's no mail service in Rifts® , much less in Africa. So, basic logic out the window from the start. What next?

Well, she's recieved Plato's Edict of Planetary Distress (while in England, we learn later, even though it comes from Canada ), and she replies she knows the nature of the big evil in Africa - the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! She found out from an old friend of hers - Lo Fung!


_{David Carradine is Lo Fung in: Rifts Africa.}

Apparently he's not changed in 20 years and that is because he's a dragon, but the noted Rogue Scholar is a little slower to pick up on this obvious fact. Anyway, Erin and Lo met up at the court of King Arr'thuu (a name which just makes me think "Arr'thuuluu"), where Lo was like, "Hey, King, we need your guys to go and die against the The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

Because, I'm going to spoil, if you've looked at the stats for the Knights of New Camelot and the stats of the Four Horsemen, the Knights of New Camelot will have all the effect of a bug on a windshield. Wait, no, a gnat in a jet turbine. Lo Fung just might be a terrible dragon person. Or just a terrible strategist.

So Mrr'Lyn (the secret otherdimensional monster) busts in and is like "You asshole, you are sending off men on a wild goose chase! I'll have none of your tomfoolery!", but and then Erin Tarn steps in and vouches for Lo. Oh, Erin Tarn, you poor, stupid old biddy. And it is only Erin Tarn that moves the king's heart and gets him to send some men with them to Africa. Four of those men will be dead before they even arrive on Africa's shore.

Lady Guinevere (the secret otherdimensional monster) gets King Arr'thuu to stay behind, but he'll still send an "army". Lo Fung metaphorically fistbump Prrcyel because they're both Chiang-Ku dragons which makes part of the Chinese dragon Justice League. Erin Tarn suspects this! That's our Rogue Scholar!


Oh, fuck you, Lo Fung, you inscrutable oriental.

Anyway, the "army" that joins Erin Tarn and Lo Fung on the trip to Af-ri-caaa! is... uh... fourteen Knights of Camelot. So, more like a lance than an army, really. And there the letter ends.

And how the hell did she even send a letter from Africa to Canada?!

So we have another letter she sent. Somehow. I dunno. Maybe a wizard did it. Anyway, four knights are dead after fighting gargoyles and the Blood Druids of France . Man, if you got chumped by the blood druids, who are basically just homicidal hippies, they're not even gonna be a speedbump against the Four Horsemen. (Granted, gargoyles are a decent threat.)

She arrives at the "Gathering of Heroes" in Africa and there are all sorts of folks, D-Bees, dragons, and other heroes ready to fight the Four Horsemen. Apparently the Egyptian gods are supporting them in their heroes, except for the Egyptian gods of death, who are apparently pro-apocalypse. She points out that even there are a bunch of heroes, there won't be enough. (Sounds like what they need are some PCs .) It reminds her of the Alamo, which bums her out, because the Alamo had heroes, and they died! Bummer.

Then she meets a "young" "woman" named "Fang-Lo". Yes, you might guess, "Chinese" name = dragon. But then, guess who shows up!

Victor Lazlo!


_{David Bowie is Victor Lazlo in: Rifts Africa.}

Lo Fang and Lazlo have a bro-cry and then go into a tent for some... privacy. Anyway, Vic got sucked into a convenient rift in Ohio and got popped out near Germany, where he became a rogue scholar , wanted by the New German Republic for standing up for free thought in Germany.

Erin Tarn is sad she's too old to knock boots with Lazlo (?). I'm getting the impression Vic may already be in a relationship, myself.

And I still don't know how she's sending these letters.

Next: I hope you like skulls! It's time for skullomania with Death and the gang!

It is important to understand that the Apocalypse demons are not invaders trying to conquer new lands or to enslave people, but that they crave total destruction of all life forms, including, animals, insects, and plants!

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Three: "It is important to understand that the Apocalypse demons are not invaders trying to conquer new lands or to enslave people, but that they crave total destruction of all life forms, including, animals, insects, and plants!"

Now, time to talk about Africa- no?

No. No Africa. Time for something more important to Kevin. Yes, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . Yes, he is blowing his monster-load up front all over us. And these aren't even monsters thematic to Africa. But Mr. Long has some cool art worthy of being airbrushed on a black t-shirt. Yes, this also means he's opening the book with the end bosses for some reason, right where players are likely to stumble across their statblocks.


_{Skull Count +3. Skull Total: 23}

So, factoids about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:

• They aren't interested in conquest.
  
• They want to kill everything.
  
• Yes, everything. They want ants to die. They want grass to die. They want tubers dead. Die, tubers, die.
  
• They have no backstory, no origin, no history.
  
• It's not even really clear what they are.
  
• When they meet during a Solar Eclipse they form up like Voltron and become the Apocalypse Beast.
  
• In case you're wondering, Death forms the head. No kidding.
  
• They don't actually ride horses. They ride netherbeasts. What's a netherbeast? It's a thing they ride, of course.
  

And so the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have come to different parts of Africa. (Why they didn't just all appear together isn't clear.) By meeting up during a Solar Eclipse, they can join into one really big monster. (How they knew this was going to occur isn't clear.) It really helps to have a wizard help them merge up. (Apparently "Rama-Set" will help them out. We don't know who he is yet, or how they know to meet up with him.) And they all know how to meet up with each other. This happens by "instinct", it says. Coincidentally, this will happen in Egypt. You know. The center of Africa.

So the idea is that each of them is marching across Africa to Egypt, and that it's easier if you fight them one by one. Oh, and you're supposed to fight Death last as the end boss, but the PCs have no way of knowing that, so good luck! In any case, they have rush and gather aid and stomp the horsepersons one by one.

Oh, yeah, and you can't kill them permanently, they're just banished for 50,000 years. The text helpfully points out it'll probably take them longer than that to get back to Earth, because they have other worlds to de-life.

Death


_{Skull count +1. Skull total: 24}

Death is basically the brains of the operation. He's the smartest and the most powerful. The interesting bit is that he's banned from just killing people for shits or giggles; he can only murder people who attack him first. He can shove people around and threaten them all he likes, but unless you attack him, he can't seriously harm or kill anyone. Of course, it's presumed most people will fight or flight against him, and he gets to smug it up when people attack first, since he's pretty good at murders. He does live up to his name.

And his netherbeast and undead minions are also bound by the same stricture - they can't attack unless attacked. He can release undead to go wild and kill stuff, but then he can never take control of them again.

We get a note that he has a "greatest" rune weapon. Not great. Not greater. Greatest . It directs us to Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for details.

Numbers! He has 16,633 M.D.C. and regenerates an average of 42 M.D.C. a second . He takes double damage from magic fire (not too many spells make this), double damage from magic weapons (really not many of these outside of rune weapons), double damage from silver weapons (double... S.D.C. damage?), and ten times damage from weapons from Millennium Trees (which means they do pretty great damage, buy/see Rifts® World Book Three: England ). He has 5000 P.P.E. and 500 I.S.P. And special powers!


_{Skull count +3. Skull total: 27.}

• He can attach other people's limbs to his body, and they become M.D.C. limbs.
  
• He can mash up body limbs into "Nightmare Zombies" and animate them to make zombie performance art. They can't really do crap for damage, but they get an average of 250 M.D.C., so equivalent to a lot of greater monsters.
  

_{Skull count +1. Skull total: 28}

• He can animate 1d4 x 100 bodies at a time, a dumb rule, because when do you roll it? If he doesn't like the amount of bodies he's raised, can he just do it again until he rolls a 4?
  
• He can people decayed skin which destroys pretty much all your skills and bonuses, and gives everyone around you combat penalties because they're sickened. (He is not immunized against this, which I guess means it grosses even him out.)
  
• He can also inflict rigor mortis which basically destroys your ability to fight too.
  
• He can cast spells as an 18th level ley line walker or necromancer. There are no rules for spellcasters beyond 15th level, but what the hell.
  
• He's also a 18th level psychic! He can make a psi-saber and shoot mind blasts and make people feel sad and depressed.
  
• Death has a 92% chance of evoking fear. Yes, we know there's an actual mechanic for creatures that create fear (Horror Factor), so he has that too, at 19. So the average PC will have a 0.5% chance of not being scared of him. Of course, his ability to evoke fear (derived from his Mental Affinity) doesn't have any actual mechanics associated with it, so it's not clear what it does anyway...
  
• He has a Staff of Death! It has bat wings that let it fly around, because there ain't nothin' scarier than a flyin' bat-staff. It can raise the dead (even though he can do that anyway), shoot lightning bolts from its eyes, and... does extra damage against undead. Kind of like Superman carrying around kryptonite bullets, but and you can't steal it, it just magically goes back to him no matter what whenever he wants.
  
• Oh, and the weapon is a soul drinker. Which means there's really no point in using all his fancy decay / rigor mortis abilities when he can just poke you with his stick and force an unmodified save-or-die.
  
• Devil Skulls - he's got 'em! They're skulls that turn into winged demonic skeletons that are pretty darn tough.
  

_{Skull count +2. Skull total: 30}

• His netherbeast is named "Bones" (no, really) and is pretty damn tough at 1200 M.D.C. Other than being super-tough, it's nothing special, though it can pounce at 90% chance of knockdown and 60% chance of pinning. Yeesh. So now we know Death owns Bones.
  

_{Skull count +25. Skull total: 55}

Famine


_{Skull count +2. Skull total: 57}

... let's move on to Famine, another dickless horror. He's the stealth action sort of horseman and often likes to cause droughts and destroy food sources without people knowing, and also trying to instigate conflict in those ways. Also, Pestilence is his bro and they like to cause trouble together.

No real personality beyond that, we get numbers!

• 6,753 M.D.C., 2500 P.P.E., 250 I.S.P. Track that shit, GMs! He has the same vulnerabilities as Death, and recovers about 4 M.D.C. a second. Horror factor is 16 and he has a 80% chance to evoke fear.
  
• Like Death, he's immune to a bunch of stuff. Including magic herbs. Just in case you were going to stand in front of him as he charges while holding a sprig of enchanted parsley.
  
• 12th level psychic and wizard that gets a bunch of mid and low level magic, physical psychic powers, weather magic, etc.
  
• He can spoil drink and water with a touch, and eating it makes people sick. Also gives them... diaaaarrrhhheeeeaaaa .
  
• By touching people he can make them magically hungry and all they can do is look around for food to eat until they get sick from eating.
  
• Everybody around him gets distracted because they get hungry.
  
• He can detect water (so he can piss in spoil it).
  
• He can also muck about with weather to cause heat waves, droughts, frost, hail storms, and high winds.
  
• His rune staff can shoot beams of energy from its eyes, call down lightning, drink souls, etc.
  
• His netherbeast is called Cyno (that's Greek for "dog", FYI) and is mildly weaker than Death's.
  

_{Skull count +5. Skull total: 62}

Next: Pestilence and War! The Armageddon Beast! The skulls don't stop here!

However, those unprotected will have a horrifying experience that causes 3D4 x 10 points of S.D.C./hit point damage per melee round, plus the character must roll on the disease table listed in this section and suffers terrible mental trauma from being engulfed by bugs (they crawl into every orifice and cover every inch of his or her body).

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Four: "However, those unprotected will have a horrifying experience that causes 3D4 x 10 points of S.D.C./hit point damage per melee round, plus the character must roll on the disease table listed in this section and suffers terrible mental trauma from being engulfed by bugs (they crawl into every orifice and cover every inch of his or her body)."

Pestilence


_{Skull count +2. Skull total: 64}

Next up is Pestilence, who is really just a bug-covered skeleton. He's "clever" but has even less of a personality than Death or Famine, so really not much to talk about otherwise. Bugs!

• The numbers: 7,123 M.D.C., 1500 P.P.E., I.S.P. 250, heals about 2 M.D. a second, 10th level psychic and wizard, same vulnerabilities blah blah, and recovers 1-2 M.D.C. a second. Horror factor is 17, 70% chance of evoking fear.
  
• He can control 500,000 insects. Scary, right? Well, not exactly. See, this book was written without researching the sheer mind mangling scale insects work on. There can easily be 10,000 to 1 million ants in an anthill. The average beehive might have 100,000 bees or so. A locust swarm has about 40 - 80 million locusts per kilometer and can range into the billions of locusts.
  
  What I'm trying to say is that basic fact-checking can keep you from making an pestilence-themed, apocalyptic worldbreaker villain who can't even control your average locust swarm.
  
• He has the psychic powers of pyrokinesis and super telekinesis. You know, in keeping with his bug theme.
  
• Punching pestilence gets you covered in bugs, but that only affects you if you're S.D.C. and not wearing armor (i.e. have made some really, really bad character choices). It takes 30 seconds to "brush 98% of the bugs away." No idea what the 2% of the remaining bugs left are doing, but presumably they're ineffectual or have gotten lost inside an orfice or something.
  
  If you don't brush them off, you get severe penalities. Even characters in armor get a general -1 to combat rolls on account of goggles covered with BEES.
  
• Also he can swallow people into his body. There is no save for this, he can just automatically do it. Yes, even dragons. Those that aren't protected by environmental armor take S.D.C. damage and have to roll versus insanity (17 or higher!) or get a phobia of bugs or small spaces or darkness or whatever. Oh, and:
  
  

  Rifts® Africa posted:

  ... the character must roll on the disease table listed in this section and suffers terrible mental trauma from being engulfed by bugs (they crawl into every orifice and cover every inch of his or her body).

  
  Yes. Every. Orifice.
  
• Pesty-poo- yes, we're intimate after that last power description - can summon insect swarms. There's blinding swarms , which make you lose combat actions and all combat bonuses and slow you to a crawl. Also they can damage vehicles by clogging up tailpipes, vents, crawling into engines, but there are no rules for that. There's biting swarms ! These are like biting swarms, but do S.D.C. damage. However, you aren't as blinded by them ( exact same combat penalities, tho ). Deadly swarms! These do more damage, but you can save vs. poison to reduce the damage. Devouring swarms! These eat up plants. Disease swarms! These give better visibility than normal diseases but give diseases like pox, fever, sickness, plague, or "a terrible cold".
  
• He can also inflict the above diseases by touch or also infest food with insects.

  Rifts® Africa posted:

  If characters act quick they can kill the pestilence and save 1d6 x 10% of the food by boiling, deep frying, smoking, microwaving, and similar measure to kill the bugs and any possible disease.

  
  Pestilence: Ha ha, I have infested your delicious PB&J with disgusting vermin !
  
  Operator Joe: We can't be stopped - won't be stopped by the likes of you! Not while we have Wilk's Portable Microwave ! With M.D.C. grillin' tray!
  
  Pestilence: NOOOOOO! I am undone!
  
  Operator Joe: Mmm, PB&J piping hot out of microwave, just like my radiation-addled mom used to make! The dead grubs just add extra zest!
  
  
• Oh, and in the middle of the power section, we get:
  
  

  Rifts® Africa posted:

  Note: See Villains Unlimited, pages 21-26, for the power of insect and arachnid control along with stats on a dozen different insects. Also see pages 176-177 for the super-villain named Pestilence . This "super" source book also has a bunch of other great villains, powers and ideas.

  
  Man, is that why my Rifts® gamemaster started adding a bunch of supervillainous bank robbers to my game? I was wondering...
  
  Also, Rifts® nerds may want to note in Villains Unlimited there's an evil chiang-ku dragon (yeah, those guys again), and a supervillain that uses a prototype version of the Glitter Boy armor. Later on Palladium Books® would deny any connection between the two worlds. Just bullshit to sell books, I guess.
  
• Fuck, we're not even done with bug-boy here.
  
• He has a GREATEST rune staff too. The beetle on top can unfold to release M.D.C. magic beetles that grow to 5' in length and can attack people. It can also shoot beams (that do extra damage to Millennium Trees), and mostly just like the other dumb staves, he can teleport it back to himself, etc.
  
• He rides a giant beetle named "Raid", oh, ho, Kevin you are killing me. And not with laughter. Unlike the other netherbeasts, it is not actually a netherbeast, but a big bug. It's pretty much like the other ones only it can fly.
  

_{Skull count +2. Skull total: 66}

War


_{Skull Count +5. Skull tot- aaaah his crotch piece looks like a penis CANNOT UNSEE}

War is a little different in that he's a general and can use his leadership skills to gather up mobs and lead them to... well, war. Other than that, he murders anything and everything, and has the serious dearth of personality that the horsemen generally seem to suffer from. Also he can merge with weapons in a manner that seems heavily inspired by the Boomer robots from Bubblegum Crisis .


_{Yes. Like this.}

• The numbers: 8,482 M.D.C., 2000 P.P.E., I.S.P. 350, heals about 30-40 M.D. a second, 10th level psychic and wizard, same vulnerabilities blah blah. Horror factor is 17, 80% chance of evoking fear or hate .
  
• He knows how to repair a car perfectly at 98%. Just in case that's important. He's also a expert programmer at 98%! He also is a fantastic mathmatician at 98%! "War has no knowledge of medicine, science, or book knowledge." I guess he comes from the oratory tradition of programming and calculus.
  
• He has a section on favorite weapons that notes his rune mace is his favorite weapon but "he likes all weapons". Wow. What a waste of words.
  
• It repeatedly mentions his armor is not really armor at all but is instead a part of him. Why keep calling it armor, then...?
  
• It notes that gods generally have more M.D.C. than the horsemen, but that they're more dangerous because they regenerate faster (we'll see if that's true in just a bit).
  
• Powers! War can meld with any weapon and wield it and magically give it ammo or power. Yes, this means he can just use a boom gun, though presumably it knocks him on his rear. He can also gooify and merge with vehicles and take them over, but they have to be made for war and can't have a pilot in them. I guess he's too polite to jack vehicles, or something.
  
• He can also change size from 6' to 24'. This has no game effect. And he has psionic telemechanics so he can can repair just about anything.
  
• His magic mace is - yes, a greatest rune weapon. It can stretch its chain up to 100', so he can swing it far and near. He can also throw it up to 1000' and it magically returns. It can also entangle foes but this is not detailed. It's a soul drinker and he can always have it return etc.
  
• He also has lasers on his shoulders (no, really), can use magic chains he keeps on his netherbeast to whip folks or entangle them (this time there are rules, 70% chance), use the rings attached to the chains to bean people with, he can throw the skulls on the netherbeast to sock people as well, or use them as smoke grenades (that spread a 500' radius of smoke, but he can only throw them 200'), he can throw the crossbones with the skull like a frisbee, that teleports back to his hand after striking. He also has a bunch of other weapons (maces, spears, and a "runka" polearm, Gygax would be proud of his specificity).
  
• He has the biggest and toughest netherbeast (name of "Carnage"), and it also has armor on it for 2500 (!) M.D.C., and it has plasma cannons he can fire when he's riding it.
  
• For all the details on his weapons, they're pointless. Against robots and vehicles, he'll want to use stolen rail guns and missile launchers. Against living foes, the soul drinker rune mace. Anything else is pretty much wasting his time.
  

_{Skull count +4. Skull total: 75}

A lot of Rifts® concepts are wonderfully toyetic, but War is just pure monster toy. Skulls that detatch so he can throw them at foes? Throwing crossbonerangs? Stretchy mace? I can just see the blister packaging now.

The Armageddon Creature

If the four horsefolk join up, they become the armageddon creature. It's said to be a humanoid that's 60' tall, has 8-12 arms, it has War's body armor, death's head, a giant mace with a flaming skull attached, and Famine and Pestilence's staves join together to become one. Imagine this in the theater of the mind , since there's no picture, bizarrely. This may be Rifts® shining moment as pure metal, only A) you're not supposed to let things get this bad and B) there's no art for it .

If there's only two or three to join up, its powers are reduced by half or to three-quarters accordingly. Once they join up, though, they magically start world wars through magicky magic, and then natural disasters will sweep over everything as it all goes Day After Tomorrow. With a decade everybody sentient will be dead and a few years later everything will be dead. If there's three monsters joining up, that time is doubled and for only two horsefolk, it's ten times as long.

• Numbers! Almost all of its stats are at 30, except Physical Beauty (2) and Physical Strength (80) and Speed (293, that's 200mph that it can jog). It has 36,000 M.D.C. (less than all of them added together, oddly enough), 20,000 P.P.E., 5000 I.S.P., a horror factor of 19 and 20 attacks a round. 20 . Fuck, with that many attacks it'll kill the players out of sheer boredom waiting for its turn to resolve. It also regenerates 42 M.D.C. a second, or about 642 M.D.C. a turn.
  
• It has the levels of a "20th level warrior and line walker". "Warrior" is not a class in Rifts® , nor is 20 a defined level. It's literal nonsense.
  
• It gets all the powers, magic, psionics, and natural abilities of its component horsepeople.
  

• Rifts® World Book Four: Africa posted:

  Alliances & allies: None! Out to destroy everybody!

And that's all you get. No origin, no background, no details, just boring killamajigs that are out to murder everybody because that's what it says in the script . They are boss monsters that will take ages for your average party to kill - and take not heroism to defeat, but sheer force of numbers and dice. They have no weaknesses other than the order you're supposed to kill them in (Famine, Pestilence, War, Death) and the fact that Millennium Tree weapons do solid damage against them (ten times normal, or about that of a Boom Gun, so you can just use a bunch of rail guns instead). Of course, Pestilence can specifically destroy Millennium Tree components and does extra damage against them...

They are literally sketches with (bad) statblocks thrown on. Only Death has a really interesting element - the fact he has to troll people into attacking him - but otherwise these are even duller than your usual Rifts® monster that just considers humanity an interdimensional delicacy. This is the big culmination of the Rifts® metaplot up to this point, following ARCHIE, the Mechanoids, and the introduction of Mrr'lyn. And - for all of their flaws - all of the villains above are more interesting than the Four Horsemen, who may as well be 8-bit videogame bosses.

Next: The evil bus has its next tour through the scenic Pantheon of Taut . Evil wears a puppy head!

Set, the god of darkness and the sworn enemy of gods and men, is also considered the god of evil.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Five: "Set, the god of darkness and the sworn enemy of gods and men, is also considered the god of evil."

Now that we're done with the Horseman and their bugraping ways, we can finally talk about Africa - no? No. Now we talk about the gods of Egypt! (They're really from another dimension, they just franchise in Egypt.)

Gods of the Nile

This section has a helper for Siembieda in the form of Julius Rosenstein! Unfortunately, Julius may know aikido, but not quite so much about Egyptian mythology.

Anyway, it points out that the Egyptian gods haven't reached their full potential on Rifts® Earth and so they kind of weak with their paltry 5,000 - 17,000 M.D.C. Most of them have travelled across dimensions are are known on many worlds, and can draw upon those resources. There are two pantheons - the gods of Light (capital letter is theirs) and Darkness (ditto), and they fite. So, no more time for background, on to their radical powers!

• They can draw power from ley lines and nexuseses.
  
• Most of them don't care about Tattoo Magic. Nonetheless, it refers us to Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for details! Buy this exciting book!
  
• All of them are Stone Masters and can use stone magic. Buy Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for more details on this exciting form of magic!* Come on! Buyyy.
  
• Most of them have "a rune weapons", made by Thoth or the Splugorth. More info can be found after you goddamn fucking buy yourself a copy of Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis , you fucking cheapskate.
  
• There's no connection to the Millennium Tree, but they refer us to Rifts® World Book Three: England for no apparent reason, there's a plug, buy it, enjoy it.
  
• Necromancy... is not practiced much by the gods of Egypt. Still, you can find it by buying Rifts® World Book Four: Africa . This is an exciting addition to your game libr- oh, wait, that's this book.
  
• Many of them have supernatural minions, like demons or monsters, which fuck, buy the Rifts® Conversion Book , other book, you buy, buy, we hunger, buy, your blood, give us blood, buy .
  

_{* Actual excitement may not occur.}

Man, I'm tired after all that shilling. All you need to understand the gods of the Nile only requires three other books! See, the fact that I've done these Rifts® books in exact order isn't on account of OCD! Many of the books can make much less sense if you aren't familiar with the previous books in the line.

Look, I'll let Kevin explain it:


Kevin, if you cut out the long-winded references to other books and the long-winded explanations as to why you're referencing other books I'm sure you could fit those rules in.

Now we find out what the gods' relationship is with other factions is. The subtle subtext to watch out for is: the Gods of Light are unbelievable pricks .

• Humans: The gods consider humans as pawns, slaves, P.P.E. emergency rations, etc. We expect this from the Gods of Darkness, but the fact that the Gods of Light are still essentially just manipulative overseers too which makes them unbelievable pricks .
  
• The Coalition States / The New German Republic: The Pantheon of Darkness, predictably, will aid evil people like the Federation of Magic or the Blood Druids against such high-tech humans. The Pantheon of Light, though, will likely see these genocidal fascists as just misguided and might subtly aid them, which makes them unbelievable pricks .
  
• The Splugorth : Most of the Egyptian gods see the Splugorth as peers and generally stay out of each other's business aside from social gatherings and whatnot. But-
  

  Rifts® World Book Four: Africa posted:

  Ra, Isis, Horus, and Thoth all know Lord Splynncryth quite well, although only Thoth can be said to really like him.

  - the fact that Horus is pal-ing around with a monstrous, racist slaver and conqueror makes him an unbelievable prick .
  
• Vampires: Some of the Gods of Darkness like these bloodsucking blobs, where the Gods of Light don't like them very much. Ra in particular goes into murder-kill-death mode when running across vampires, but Isis and Horus have occasionally helped vampire intelligences escape to other dimensions rather than let them get killed by their godly bro. If you've read my review of Rifts® World Book One: Vampire Kingdoms , you'll know that this makes them unbelievable pricks .
  
• Mechanoids: All of the gods hate these jerks. (The Gods of Light get off scott free on this one.)
  
• Minions of the Gods: The gods have minions. Not much else to say, really. We'll get numbers on them later.
  

The Pantheon of Taut


_{The Pantheon of Taut just likes to hang around and chill.}

Remember the worms of Taut from the conversion book? This is the pantheon. How are they connected? Picture me shrugging. Some of the evil gods can summon them. That's as close as an explanation as we get.

Set


_{His ears have tiny hats!}

First off is Set. He has 16,850 M.D.C. I'm wondering how Kevin came up with these really specific numbers. Is there a dartboard somewhere deep within the Palladium Books® HQ with M.D.C. values? Anyway, he's the god of darkness, god of evil, god of destruction, god of deceit, god of betrayal, and the god of fratricide. As you may guess, he's for thugs and against hugs. He likes to fuck with humanity and ruin them because reasons. (There are no reasons.) Nonetheless, he gets worshipped by tools.

I'M THROWIN' NUMBERS AT YOU! P.P.E.: 6000! I.S.P.: 2950! Horror Factor 17! 20th level line walker and shifter! 12th level stone master, fire warlock and diabolist! Can teleport at 98%! The other 2% of the time, he's embarassed for 15 seconds and can just try again! Do they call it the "telefart" or what, do demons have a term when they suffer from momentary impotency over their control of all space? What about failing that 92% dimensional transport? "Whups, I just had a dim-dum!" Also he has priest powers like 90% chance to turn 2d6 x 100 dead! He can raise the dead at 70%, but only gets one shot! Wow! If they've been dead for awhile it can drop to 32% or 2%! "I cannot bring my favored priest back, I had... the raisey-whupsies." He has a suit of chain at 3000 M.D.C.! That's like a whole adult dragon's worth of M.D.C.! And he has 2d4 billion credits!

Whew.

He has a ton of psionics and magic, dear god, I'm going to be so tired of noting that, like every, every fucking godly being I'm going to cover over the next twenty-one pages is going to be loaded down with enough magic and psionic powers to choke an Elminster. Set can teleport naturally or by spell. It also notes what psionic powers he has in the Palladium RPG® , like we are supposed to give a damn - I mean, it's not like it has they rest of the conversions to make it work. All of the other gods have similar pissy conversions for their magic powers to the Palladium RPG® .

Also he has Boat - Rowboat at 98%, Set is like a rocket on a rowboat, man, look at him go-

Oh, oh no, I can't going this stir-crazy this early on, I've got at least another dozen or so gods like this to get through. But, for fuck's sake, why do you feel the need to go on about why Set doesn't use cybernetics! You do this for every supernatural monster writeup how every creature doesn't want cybernetics! We know, Kevin! We. Goddamn. Know. And for every deific writeup after this, you're going to be all "they don't want cybernetics" - thanks, I think we can work out a being with 16,000 M.D.C. doesn't want a 30 M.D.C. arm that's weaker than his pinky... joint. Any one of his pinky joints, stronger than a cyborg's arm.

Aaaaaaa-

Uh. Fuck. Where was I?

Anyway, Set treats Anubis as his son, and likes Bes and Apepi. He's a swingin' god and likes to hang with Splugorth and demon lords. Also he has a disciple in Egypt named Pharaoh Rama-Set, which I'm pretty sure was a Fantastic Four villain, wait, that was Rama- Tut , forgive me. He's also helping out the European gargoyles because he wants their worship. He can summon jinns or worms of Taut. He has The Black Rod of the Four Winds - another greatest item, they're comin' out like candy in this book. It can shoot lightning, fuck with the weather, create scary darkness (horror factor 10), and can beat on people for respectable damage. He also has The Impaler - see my review of Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for that one, it's the sword with the crawly fingers where it can walk around then shoot magic bladefingers at people.

Like I said. Toyetic.

Anyway, this is a shitty and one-note boring rendition of a god, and just goes at it with the narrow view of him as a pure villain, when in fact at times he was worshipped as a heroic god or villainous god depending on Egypt's political climate. You could do some really interesting stuff with the varying interpretations he recieved throughout history, but instead he's a one-note monster who does evil because that's the alignment on his character sheet. It is, frankly, a typical Western view of him and it's boring.

Anubis


_{If no goatee you see, Anubis it must be!}

You may think after Set "oh no, they can't just be making Anubis into a generic evil guy too", and I just want to say oh yes they can . He's the god of death! The god of transition! The god of the unknown! Anyway, he was the son of Osiris and helped kill him. Wait, kill him? Isn't that pretty much the precise opposite of his role in the myth, where he helps rebuild Osiris? Well, whatever. He's obviously way cooler as a generic necromancer with a puppyhead on.

And he commands an army of mummies! It's said people he kills come back as his mummy slaves. Oh, and he's eternally loyal to Set, because... um... I got nothin'. No particular motivation there, he just is. Anyway, he's often doing supervillain teamup with Set.

Nummmberrrrs 12,450 MDC 3500 PPE 1450 ISP 14th Level Necromancer 8th Level Diabolist and Stone Master 200 feet Nightvision 1d6 x 100 summoned rodents 98% turn dead 2000 MDC armor 60% computer operation 98% cook

Anubis wins all the BBQ wars of the gods with his mummy jerky and 98% Cooking skill.


_{Dear god, we're trapped in art... for the wrong book!!!}

Powers! Turn invisible, summon Alu demons, healing touch, animate/control dead, CREATE MUMMY, stone magic, hydrokinesis, psi-sword, metamorphosis into any shape, look out, that bidet is Anubis oh too late now he's a sharkmonkey now you're dead shit, goddamn you sharkmonkey who is also an Anubis.

Anyway, he doesn't get along with Splynncryth. No reason! He's best friends with Rama-Set but we don't even know who this guy is yet. (Rama-Set is a separate guy from Set. Or Ra. Confusing, I know!)


Considering he has 269 times the M.D.C. of an elite Coalition trooper and can do a flawless impression of a bidet, I'm not sure he can underestimate them enough . I'm not sure that's actually possible. That's like saying "Genghis Khan is a dangerous fellow, but one of his failings is underestimating lesser beings like ladybugs."

Fuck, we aren't done yet, we're not done, he has the The Sword of Anubis . Guess what kind of rune weapon it is. I'll give you a bit. If you guessed GREATEST you are correct. It does middling damage for an unstoppable god-sword but it's a soul drinker that "also drinks the blood of its victims". Yeah, it's not enough that it gives you a 75% flat chance of instant irrevocable death, but it takes your blood just to be an asshole.

Next: Apepi! He has the wrong name! Amon! She has the wrong sex! Fuck mythology, Siembieda's gonna Riftsify it!

Even if vaporized or having been blasted to -300 or more M.D.C., the creature will reappear at full power 48 hours later and be out for revenge!

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part 6: "Even if vaporized or having been blasted to -300 or more M.D.C., the creature will reappear at full power 48 hours later and be out for revenge!"

Apepi the Immortal


_{Even gods can be slack-jawed yokels.}

I'm guessing they mean Apep the evil serpent, not Apepi the pharaoh. Whups. In mythology, even Set opposed Apep, because of Apep's "eat the gods, all the gods" sort of attitude! This version? He's a thug for Set.

Oh! But there's a twist! See, he's immortal. Oh, sure, you may wonder "what does immortality even mean for a dragon that can take an average of 50 nuclear bombs to the face before dropping?" Well, see, even if you nuke him 50 times - and that is the number 6900 M.D.C. comes out to at this point in the game line - he auto-regenerates from any and all damage in 48 hours. You can turn him into dragon slurry and throw it into the sun and he'll still be back. There is no known way of killing this darn dragon. Set didn't drink the potion, though, because it makes you batshit crazy. (I dunno, it seems a small price to pay for utter invulnerability , but that could be my gamer brain talking.)


That's an awfully specific legend!

Anyway, Apepi is just the Leroy Jenkins of the Taut pantheon and is always just all-out attacking and ignoring harm basically because he's a tremendous suicidal showoff. Oh, and he's completely loyal to Set for giving him immortality, and if Set is ever killed, Apepi will chase them down and kill them (PCs, this means you) for basically forever. Apparently, Set is also the only thing that keeps Apep from being (yet another) murder-obsessed killamajig. He doesn't like Anubis... because, and likes Bes... because, and hates Ra because Ra can't stop killing him.

So right uh 8th level "spell caster", how lazy is that, shit, that isn't even a class in any Palladium Books® ... book, he has priest powers for no fucking reason, uh, he regens about 8 M.D.C. a second, he can cast Warlock spells even though he has no Warlock levels, look these statblocks are pure bullshit and I'm worn out.

He hates technology and mecha and loves Rama-Set, who the fuck is Rama-Set, we just know he's Set's flunky, we won't get any details for literally another hundred pages or so. Also:

Translation: "He doesn't care about money so he has collected enough money to buy out most small city-states."

Oh, and if you're wondering what kind of Palladium® dragon is he's just an unknown mystery dragon and there aren't any other dragons like him.

Amon the Hidden One


_{Well, not entirely hidden.}


You know, usually I think people make too much of a big deal of mythology being mixed up and altered for fiction. After all, the old priests and storytellers were always changing their own stories up, you get a god like Amun, who gets mixed up with Ra and you get a new god called Amon-Re or whatever, it's no big deal. Making Anubis into a generic dog-headed zombie king doesn't annoy me on that front, really. It's just boring . It's taking the personality out of a mythological figure to just have him be a punching bag for PCs (or more likely vice-versa). And you know what? Even that's not so bad about what we're about to deal with. I throw the mythology up front so you know that Amon-Re was a champion of the distraught and helpless. This is the equivalent of taking Baldur and making him an lady moll for Loki . Basically nothing of the original mythology remains but the name.



So this Amon the Hidden One was the most beautiful of the Gods of Light, but when she tried to hit on Osiris, he blew her off and everybody laughed at her. So she betrayed Osiris to Set and Anubis (how, it doesn't say) and so she was responsible for the war between the Gods of Light and Darkness that continues to this day!

... women . Amirite, guys?

Anyway, Thoth blasted her face with special magic accidentally in a fight and disfigured her in a special way not even the gods can fix, and so she's bitter and wants to torture and deform people... because, you know. That's what people do when faced with tragedy. Well, at least she has a motivation. It's a shitty, sexist motivation, but it's a step up from all these characters are evil for no apparent reason, and... nnngh, okay, I was trying to be fair, but honestly this is just as dumb and crummy, it's a woman who just cares about her looks causing eternal evil basically because she couldn't cope with being rejected even once .

She's the god of fear, horror, discord, bitterness, vengeance and "all that is ugly", loves monsters and is favored among "ugly non-humans". Because, I guess, the megaverse defines beauty by humanity. (It's the same theme we saw in Rifts World Book Two: Atlantis .)

10473 MDC, can vomit flame (yes, it uses the word vomit), can control vermin, is a fire warlock, diabolist, and stone master, can play the flute at 98% "very macabre and eerie tunes", can operate a computer at 60% so she can keep posting to hotornot.com, has a bunch of biowizardry items from the Splugorth to make freaks (it refers us to "Rifts Atlanitis" for these, which sounds like a skin condition), and she gets on well with Splynncryth. Apparently this Splynncryth fellow is like the social toast of the evil god town, since everybody has a goddamn opinion on him.

She has a rune dagger which is lesser that is a drinker of souls that sigh drinks the blood of its foes too. She also has an enslaver which is discussed back in my Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis review.

She also super-hates technology and destroys it whenever possible. Set has had to slap her down for trying to blow up their allies' stuff. No motivation is given for this attitude.

Goddamn it. I still have three more Gods of Darkness to go.

Next: The rest of the overpowered god-villain parade!

Both have incredibly strong personalities that sometimes even Bes cannot control, which only adds to the carnage (he seldom minds).

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Seven: "Both have incredibly strong personalities that sometimes even Bes cannot control, which only adds to the carnage (he seldom minds)."

Anhur


_{Secretly terrified from the looks of things.}

Anhur is a lion-headed god of war who-


Oh, Siembieda, I love your ability to contradict yourself without even needing more than two sentences.

Anyway, he's actually supposed to be honorable and show respect and courtesy towards brave or noble warriors, and backstabbers get his frontstabber. And yet, somehow, he is the patron of mercenaries, assassins, and diabolists, all of which are pretty defined by being sneaky, murdering fucks.

Hey, remember how War was a super-fast regenerator and there's a note that saying even though the horsepersons' MDC is lower than gods, they're still a threat because they regenerate much faster? Anhur has more M.D.C. than War and regenerates four times as fast . But let's not blame Kevin alone... let's blame:

• Julius Rosenstein, the co-writer on this section.
  
• Alex Marciniszyn, "senior" editor
  
• Thomas Bartold, editor.
  
• James A. Osten, editor.
  

Goes to show you what five sets of eyeballs on a book are worth... presuming they are editing and not just playing paper football all day and collecting a paycheck, which is starting to seem more likely now that I'm on book #8 of the Rifts® line and the same slipshod editing is coming up every time, and it's the same three guys that get credited over and over.

Numbers! 7470 M.D.C.! 1230 P.P.E.! NO I.S.P.! Horror Factor 16! 15th level warrior (not a Rifts class), 15th level headhunter (even though he has no cybernetics), 10th level ley line walker, and 5th level diabolist and stone master! Dimensional Teleport 53%! Resurrection 33%! (Himself? Others? ) Pilot Hover Vehicles 98%! 3000 M.D.C. armor! 2d4 x 10 million credits!

He's good friends with Styphathal of Atlantis (evil dragon asshole) and Zandragal the dragon-god (I'm guessing from the Palladium RPG® , and almost certainly an asshole), he also knows Joker of the Palladium RPG® and you know what, who gives a fuck, we have no idea who these people are without digging into an entire other game line, if I'm eight books into a game I should have some goddamn idea of what it's talking about and I only have the faintest.

Anyway he's thinking of helping the New German Republic because he likes humans and it might be more fun to fite Set. Rama-Set (that jerk again) is loyal to Anhur but Anhur doesn't like him too much. He knows Splynncryth but doesn't really have an opinion, which makes me wonder why word space is being used to note this. Oh, and he likes to use gremlins! It refers us to the Rifts Conversion Book . Again. (It actually refers to it way more than I'm mentioning, pretty much in every godly entry under the "minions" section.)


Salty. He's got The Scepter of Bedevilment, a grrreatest rune weapon (not as great as Frosted Flakes, tho), that he can use as an animated weapon to have fight on its own as the laziest war god, and also has a magic bow that fires extras, and a boom gun that he loves (even though rules-wise he gets thrown on his ass by it), and rocket launcher armbands like Destro. Also he has a mini-missile launcher which only he can handle, even though your average Coalition soldier lugs around a regular missile launcher just fine.

Ammit the Beast


_{Dammit, Ammit!}

Instead of just being the great punishment of the underworld, this is just a god-monster at the shallow end of the Gods of Darkness sunnin' pool, Anubis' attack gator. He's also the god of assassin and predators and depair and lycanthropy and werebeasts. Yes, an Egyptian crocodile god is a god of European and South American bear, wolf, and jaguar shapeshifters. Sure, makes as much sense as the rest of this. He's loyal to Anubis and has no other discernable personality.

Number attack! 5000 M.D.C.! 1000 P.P.E.! 750 I.S.P.! 10th level fighter (this is not a class) and 4th level necromancer! Summon/control 1d4 werebeasts! Where are they summoned from? Who the fuck knows! Electrokinesis! It's an electric gator! It can turn into any shape, like a gator shirt, and then it eats you from the shirt inside-out! It has Dance at 88%! It's a monster on the ballroom floor!


I don't know why you wouldn't take any people who call themselves "D-Bees" seriously!

Bes the Depraved


_{Maybe it's the hat that turned him to evil.}


Which is more interesting? You decide.

Next: Osiris - you can wear his skull as a hat! Ra - he kills vampire blobs with a dog! And introducing Thoth - Mary Sue of the Gods!

14,470 or so he believes; in actuality, Thoth has 40,000 M.D.C. (alien intelligence).

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Eight: "14,470 or so he believes; in actuality, Thoth has 40,000 M.D.C. (alien intelligence)."



The Pantheon of Ra Gods of Light

Yeah, it's time for the *ahem* good gods.

Osiris the Lawgiver

Greatest of the Gods of Light, was betrayed by Anubis, slain by Set, and torn into 14 pieces and scattered them across the Megaverse and since Isis isn't competent in this continuity, she still hasn't found them all. Whenever she builds one she builds a shrine and buries the part there and installs protectors. This seems like a lousy idea to protect god-parts from assholes with more supernatural power than a thousand magic tanks, but like I said. Not competent. For some reason, she only has one-third enshrined at any given time, because Set's folks keep stealing them and getting away with them.


Yes, the irreplaceable, millennia-old god-dong sought after by Gods of Darkness and Light alike will fetch but a tiny fraction of what it takes the Coalition to roll another Spider-Skull Walker off the assembly line (36 million). It also notes that necromancers can attach Osiris' body parts to their own body, Vecna-style, and get to become mega-damage and get super-strength with the affected part.

On to the parts!

• Right hand: gives extra strength and telekinetic powers.
  
• Right finger: Senses secret doors and water.
  
• Left hand: Can dispel magic barriers, and heal and purify people.
  
• Left foot: Doubles speed and lets you do rad flying kicks. No, really.
  
• Rib cage: Gives more mega-damage and gives bonuses on all saves.
  
• Right eye: Lets you see invisible, in the dark, and x-ray vision blocked by lead. Yes, just like Supes.
  
• Left eye: Lets you track, locate secret doors (again), identify plants and enchantments. Oh, and you can cry tears that heal people.
  
• Right femur: Can be used as a club that wrecks undead or shoots lightning.
  
• Left femur: You can throw this like a boomerang or have it shoot fireballs.
  
• Tongue: It's a medallion. Lets you speak all languages, detect lies, and resist mind control.
  
• Skull: You wear it as a mask, but it won't come off until you die. Gives you big mental bonuses, lets you understand any language, invokes fear, and regeneration. However, you have to automatically roll to see if you gain an insanity every year you wear it.
  
• Lungs: Can be squeezed to shoot wind, smoke, animal... repelling... gas... or confusion gas. Now that's just silly.
  
• Kidney: Worn as a charm, gives bonuses against poison and magic.
  
• The Heart of Osiris: Bonuses on all saves, and lets you do some high-level clericy stuff like turning dead, healing, and resurrecting people (maybe). This part will murder evil or selfish people who touch it.
  

And that's Rifts® Osiris for you: a god reduced to a loot table.

Ra, Lord of Light
The Sun God



He's a single-minded D&D paladin hawk-headed all evil must die sorta guy. Apep is his big bad and someday Set and him will fight to the death-


Oh, shut the fuck up, Wikipedia.

Let the drone of numbers lull you to sleep: 14,000 M.D.C., Horror Factor 17 (aaaaa hawk head aaaaa), 40 feet height, 6000 P.P.E., 2000 I.S.P., 20th level air and fire warlock (that level does not exist), 12th level stone master (is a class) and spell caster (is not a class), teleport 96%, turn dead 97%, he can resurrect like a Set but is a little better at it. Horsemanship at 98%, what the fuck does he ride, he's 40' tall, who knows? Read sensory equipment and streetwise at 65%, Ra knows what's going on. He has Scepter of the Greyhound, which has a greyhound on it and does like 2d4 x 100 mega-damage to vampire intelligences. Taste doggy vengeance, blobbies.

That's a pretty good note to end this on.

I just want to say I'm fifty pages in at this point and I have not learned nothin' about Africa, it's just been uber-NPC stats so far and we've got a ways ahead of us.

Thoth, Lord of Wisdom

Thoth is the god of nerds wisdom, knowledge, invention, cunning, alchemy... apparently he invented rune magic, diabolism and wards, pyramid magic, and all the sciences . Yes. Quantum mechanics, string theory, I guess he done that. Anyway. Also for those that read my writeup Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis , you may remember that rune magic was portrayed as irredeemably, ultimately evil. But Thoth gets to ignore that rule! Because he's special! How special?

Well...

Thoth's Dark Past

Thoth has god amnesia in his god brains, because he used to be a GREAT OLD ONE, who are like Cthulhu but like magical and a zillion times as powerful. He was called Xy, but his fellow Old Ones tricked him into a power circle that reversed him into a good guy. Well, mostly a good guy, he's kind of absent-minded and OCD, which is a result of the magic circle pretty much fucking his brains. He sometimes has visions of a great evil that's really just memories of himself , and he's unlikely to get them back, and even if he does get them back probably won't go back to evil.

So it's not much of a plot hook. Though it does point out that his is a role-playing game, so anything is possible!

He thinks he only has 14,470 M.D.C., but really has 40,000 M.D.C., uh. He's a 30th level ley line walker. That's double where the chart for ley line walkers actually ends. I hate to harp on that, but it's so So very . He has pretty much all the magic powers and nearly all the psionic powers.

Oh, and he made most of those greatest rune weapons, including the evil ones, because, in case you've forgotten, he is amongst the company of unbelievable pricks . Oh, and he likes the Splugorth, because prick . He hangs out with demon lords, because... prick . I mean, look at that face.



Prick.


Ever draw up with your perfect house when you were a kid? Sure you did. It had like a pool, and a launch pad, and a monkey house or whatever you could tack on that sounded cool? Like a garage filled with all the cars or a closet with all the clothes? That's what these statblocks are like! Thoth here was a like a bunch of servants that are tacked on because they sound cool, I guess? Including a sphinx with 65 levels of spellcasting classes?

Like, look at this:


The wish fulfillment train just keeps on goin'!


Okay we can stop, I think I've made my point, but hey-




... and now he's namedropping all of his favorite characters. Give up, you will never be radder than Thoth and his dickbill, just give up.

Next: We wrap up the Pantheon of Light - Isis and the Zoo Crew!

The Great Sphinx is a member of the extremely rare breed of super-sphinx, known as the 'great' sphinx.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Nine: "The Great Sphinx is a member of the extremely rare breed of super-sphinx, known as the 'great' sphinx."

Isis
The All Mother & Warrior


_{The whitest god of Egypt.}


So pretty much everything, got it.


How does a poor artist ever draw "P.B. 27"?


So, what you're saying is that she's a snobby

Anyway, she has cow-like horns (depicted in the art) and great feathered wings (not depicted in the art). She is usually holding a torch (not depicted in the art), has a quiver of arrows (not depicted in the art), and a black bow (not depicted in the art).

She's all vengeful against the Gods of Darkness for slaying her hubby. Also, she likes humans... because. Numbers: 12,000, 4,000, 3,000, 20th, 13th, 13th, 1d4, 1d6 x 100, 81%, 86%, 1d4 x 100, 81%, 94%, 85%, 200, 17, 3,000, 20, 1-15, 20th, 20th, 1-6, 1d4 x 10, +5, +10, +12, 65%, 83%, 92%, 98%-


Foreshadowing! In any case, she has all the magics, priest powers, the standard godly array (shapeshifting, dimensional travel, teleport, summoning, flight, etc.).

She's so busy fightin' evil on other worlds that she doesn't have much time for Earth, but has secretly disguised herself as a human to aid heroes against the Apocalypse Demons... or so the book says right now. The actual story is a little different. In fact, it contradicts the one we're given here! We'll get around to it in about a hundred pages or so. Anyway, it's a little roundabout when she has more M.D.C. than any one of the horsemen, regenerates faster than half of them, and has approximately 5 times their damage output in the short term with her rune sword. But she can't be bothered to fight them directly!

Also she's weak against silver. You know. Like in the myths.

Horus
A.k.a: Harmakhis the Great Sphinx

No art, so just think of the noseless wonder. He's said to be Iris and Osiris' son, but he's really adopted . In case you're wondering, Horus was depicted as the sphinx in the amalgamated god of Horus-Re. So, they're still getting it a bit wrong, but not terribly wrong. Of course, he was still a god, and not just a powerful mixed-up wuzzle like this guy, who is just an extra-powerful sphinx.

So Horus has a cousin - Lyphan, the albino sphinx that jobs for Thoth, as you may recall. But Lyphan is power-hungry and selfish, unlike Horus, and wants to become the most powerful practitioner of magic in the Megaverse. Yyyeah, no, we've already had a half-dozen immortal god-casters with "20th level" in their statblock alone so far in just this book . She may as well try and eat the moon.

Horus is the nicer one who hates Set and Anubis, and "can be the soul of tenderness and compassion" and "is a champion of light and justice" but has "the tendency to be selfish, obsessive, and underestimate lesser beings". Geez, make up your mind. He's one of the few non-immortals in this book so far; he can only live to be 12,000 years old.

He has a Physical Beauty of 25, so he's a saucy lion, FYI. Let's see, 5500 M.D.C., can't do psionics, 12th level fire warlock, 7th level stone master and diabolist, he can do flying backflips at 80% as a "natural ability", turn into a human, a "human-like humanoid", or a "humanoid with a hawk's head". He "likes high-powered energy weapons and rail guns" and "can use any human type of armor" but has "the body of a lion" in his natural form. (Yes, he can use it as a human, but he loses half his M.D.C. as a human, so gaining 30-70 M.D.C. isn't really useful compared to the 2250 M.D.C. loss.)

He hates Set, Anubis, Apepi, and vampires. He also hates the Splugorth, but only if they get in his way. (They do not get in his way.) And he has the "Spear of Horus" which has a bunch of magic powers and reveals shapechangers it damages (no saving through). How he throws around a spear using lion paws is left as an exercise for the reader, I suppose.

No psionics for a change.

Bennu
the Phoenix


_{The picture of apathy.}


Uh. Well, usually Bennu was depicted as a heron, and didn't really change into a human, but everything in this "chapter" (there are no actual chapter headings in Rifts® books) can change shape, so whatever.

Anyway, she's savage and selfish, and will let others die rather than be hurt, which is ironic, because like Apepi, she basically can't ever die. She does hate Set for killing a bunch of "phoenixi", who apparently she's a patron of, and trying to discover the secret of their immortality. Apparently he was so upset by failing at this he once "slaughtered 1100 phoenixi in anger". She's still pretty upset about that. Though she's "basically a good creature" she keeps to herself because "ignorance is bliss and if she doesn't know about any trouble she won't feel compelled to get involved."

Siembieda and Rosenstein have such a weird fucking defintion of "good".

6000 M.D.C., but she can instantly regenerate, but every time she does it it reduces her maximum M.D.C. by half, but if she dies she recovers in 2d4 weeks entirely. That makes Apepi a way better immortal than that dragon, let's see, she can do magic circles, is vulnerable to iron (???), has a ton of psionic powers (hypno-phoenix?), knows how to pilot a sailboat and operate a radio, hates Set and Anubis but won't deign to help out against the Four Horsemen because she's Unprincipled and apparently doesn't have to give a fuck about the end of a world.

Apis
The Sacred Cow


_{Maker of the sacred yogurt.}

Lady with a cow head, god of restoration, growth, and fertility. "She is the patroness of druids, healers, and clergy."... even though druids are a specifically English tradition in this universe so far. You know, whatever. She's close enough compared to many of the other gods.

6500 M.D.C., teleport 90%, gets priest powers and is "15th level earth warlock and psionic" but later has "20th level proficiency" with her low-level psionics, has Horror Factor 15 (oh shit, cow head!), can head butt for 2d6 M.D. (not sure why, her punches and kicks do twice that). She hates technology but is mostly just scornful of it and won't bust it up.

She hates those Gods of Darkness, and also hates the Splugorth but only messes with then when they oppose her (which is never). She has some Millennium Tree items and-


Why the fuck do we get a statblock for a character isn't even present in the setting ?

Bonus diatribe!

And that's it for the Egyptian gods. You know, once again I'm curious as to how a GM is supposed to use statblocks like these. They mostly seem to be the horrible legacy of these old D&D-style games where instead of saying "a god can create X effects along Y themes" or something reasonable and flexible, he has to define every last power. Gods like Isis or Set have literally hundreds of powers. Barring extreme plot devices, no PC presented thus far in the supplements can oppose them, since it's nearly impossible to do enough damage quickly enough to keep them from just teleporting or dimension-shifting away when they've had enough. I know the scuttlebutt is that Kevin is used to running for groups of a dozen or more players, and so they have a high damage output, that doesn't even matter if the gods are played smartly. They can turn invisible and ignore half the PCs' attacks, summon magic walls to entrap PCs, summon monsters to keep them busy, create magic circles to ward themselves, hell, the heads of the pantheons have a good chance of just being able to resurrect their fellows if you kill them. It's like having to fight a D&D wizard with all their terrible flexibility, only the wizard gets a bunch if innate get-out-of-consequences cards.

Moreover, actually trying to run conflicts between them would be a nightmare. Most of them could only do around a 50-400 M.D.C. a round and have M.D.C. in the thousands. It would easily take a dozen or several dozen rounds of play for gods to tear each other apart, and that assumes they're playing dumb and just swinging at each other mindlessly. And those who have played Palladium will know it's not a quick system, with 3-5 rolls made for each attack, and in the case of gods, 5-20 attacks a round.

There's basically no deliberate design sense here. It makes Deities & Demigods look elegant and well-designed by comparison, because this takes PC and NPC powers and just tries to build statblocks that can counter anything that gets thrown at them. Even worse, they repeatedly refer to different books. You need at least a copy of five books to run these gods: Rifts® World Book Four: Africa , Rifts® World Book Three: England , Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis , Rifts® Conversion Book , and the Rifts® RPG . And since seemingly Kevin convinced himself that the Diabolist stats and magic are in the Rifts® Conversion Book . They're not, just the conversion rules for Rifts , but he refers readers to it for the Diabolist stats mistakenly. Instead, you need to refer to an entirely different game line - The Palladium RPG - to get the rules for the Diabolist. And practically every god listed here has access to Diabolist magic .



In short, there is close to zero consideration as to how these blocks of numbers and powers actually function a game system, much less in actual play.

Next: It's time for the megafurries of the megaverse!

They also dislike tautons because they give crocodile-like creatures a bad reputation.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Ten: "They also dislike tautons because they give crocodile-like creatures a bad reputation."

Minions
Optional Player Characters

You can be a minion! Isn't that exciting! A minion! Wow. First, it points out that evil races as PCs are likely to be good-aligned weirdoes, but that you shouldn't play Jinn, because... well, it doesn't say why. It also notes that Set or Anubis, with their doggy heads, might try and win over the wolfen and their kin. A more interesting plot twist is that they might try to liberate the Coalition's dog boys to be their minions. (This plot twist will not go anywhere in later material, but it's an interesting idea.)

Phoenixi
The Children of Bennu


_{Gracefully he soared, glock in hand...}

They're called the Phoenixi, but aren't actually related to the Phoenix or Bennu. They're from some other dimension. Anyway, they're 10'-14' humanoid bird-people. (Like a chicken, I tell you, a giant chicken.) They know enough magic to have explored dimensionally, but they keep the Prime Directive and don't interfere with native cultures, even when those native cultures are imperiled. (This makes them unbelievable pricks .) However, some of them so go soft and aid other cultures in mild ways, and a few of them actually become saviors.

They try to remain neutral in the wars between gods (even though, as we know now, Set can't stop vivisecting them), though some of them side up with Bennu. They're generally kind of pacifistic and boring, tho. And none will ever think of directly harming Bennu, so don't even think of it, PCs!

They get better attributes than humans overall aside from Physical Prowess, with is the same, but get really high Physical Endurance. They get around 200 M.D.C., uh... 3d4 x 100 P.P.E. and 2d4 x 100 I.S.P.?! And it goes up at they level? Well, that's... fairly broken compared to the amounts that actual dedicated spellcasters and psychics get. And yes, they get all physical and sensitive psychic powers, all fire warlock spells, telepathy, pyrokinesis, can cast mystic portal / dimensional portal / close rift. They can also set themselves on fire (doing mega-damage), shoot fire, and instantly regenerate all M.D.C. once very 12 hours. They can use that regeneration to blow off all food, water, or sleep for about a month, which given they have 60 opportunities to use their power every month, basically means they just need to charge up once a month and never sleep, eat, or drink.

They kind of suck on skills, but that's a small price to pay for having all the spellcasting of an 8th level Warlock with more P.P.E. to dump on it. I hesitate to call any PC character type in Rifts "broken", as the core book has a fair deal of ridiculous bullshit, but this race pretty much invalidates playing Fire Warlocks or Bursters for the most part; they're insanely good by comparison, as long as you don't mind having a chicken head.

Ah, the design philosophy of Palladium: call classes "optional" when you don't care to ever balance character options.

Ramen
The Knights of Ra - Optional O.C.C.


_{Your daily dose of catbutt.}

Not a Japanese noodle, but instead a feline race that once fought a race of crocodile folk. When the Egyptian gods found them, the felines sided up with Ra (Ra-men) and the crocs with the pantheon of Taut (or Tautons). The gods made them mightier and now they fight across the Megaverse etc.

Anyway ramen are humanoid lions and are basically brave knights of Ra that fight for Ra and ra ra ra, that's the spirits we have here. They have great stats (rolling 4d6 to 6d6 for each stat), with the best being their super-strength. 250 or so M.D.C. They have some basic sensitive psionic powers, are really resistant to psionics, can charm animals (but are kind to them), and get some relatively minor magic spells if you roll lucky (40% chance of being a spellcaster). They get a decent spread of skills, but nothing too impressive. They're pretty much in-line with dragon hatchlings as far as power level goes, though they're a lot less flexible.

Some of them are convinced Anhur is their progentitor and have buddied up with him. Anhur insists he's not their dad, but has defended them nonetheless because he respects them. Most of them still serve Ra, though. I mean. It's in their name.

Kind of dull, but they're your cat soldier superheroes if you want them.

Tautons - The Minions of Set
Optional R.C.C.


_{"I'm holding a gun over my head!" "My hand is on fire!" "Help, I'm falling over!"}

These were once Set's main army of croc-thugs, but then he used them in too many reckless battles and has lost most of them. Set has blown them off as failures, even though he's the real screwup, and so the remaining Tautons have become even more fanatical to try and prove themselves to him. Because of this some of them are going to aid the Four Horsemen and try and kill them some heroes to prove themselves to Set! It's an underpants gnome kind of plan, but it just might work. Why? I dunno, Set doesn't seem to work on any sort of reason or... sense. Maybe it's his tiny dog brain.

They get really impressive physical attributes, but average mental attributes and bonus ugly. They around 250 M.D.C. and P.P.E., but no I.S.P. or psionics. They can resist fire and cold, change into snakes, swim and hold their breath, etc. They also have scorpion tails that inject mega-damage poison, and all of them are wizards, and get a pretty darn solid selection of spells. Their skills are pretty average, and balance-wise they're comparable to the Ramen.

Anyway, turn-ons include deserts, forests, the Gods of Darkness, the Four Horsemen, general generic villainry, and kinda don't mind the Worms of Taut. Turn-offs include the Gods of Light, good in general, and those darn Ramen!!!

The crocodile god, Sebek, has nothing to do with those guys. No, you didn't miss Sebek in the earlier section on gods. He's about a hundred pages down the line.

Children of Amon
Optional Player Characters

These aren't so much a race as a group of ugly people who follow Amon. This includes humans, d-bees, boogiemen, goblins, gigantes, harpies, and melech. A minority are orcs, ogres, trolls, and loogaroos. (All of which are in the Rifts® Conversion Book .) Also 1% of her minions are True Atlanteans, which means despite the fact that they're irritatingly noble doomed good guys, that means there's at 200-800 Atlanteans that follow her because... um... I got nothin'.



She generally uses the transfortifier, chest amalgamate, or zombitron symbiotes to mod her minions. You'll have to refer to my review on Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for them; the descriptions here are cut and pasted from that.

There's not much in the way of rules other than having normal PCs that might get a symbiote or two, I guess.

The Minions of Sebek
Crocodillians
- Optional Player Character R.C.C.


_{Draw a crocodile with a gun, instant character class!}

These other crocodile people were basically losing evolutionary bingo when Sebek rescued them. Sebek really cares for them and will often avenge acts against them. A lot of them live in Rifts® Africa and India, where he dropped him in a world crawling with predators and conflict because he loves them so much, I guess.

They are only partially bipedal and mostly run on all fours, but they can stand up (if not really walk). They mostly eat fish, but sometimes just eat their foes, they don't give a shit. They're crazy strong but a little dumb and definitely ugly. They get an average of 140 M.D.C., and 75 I.S.P., can see in the dark and see invisible stuff, swim super-well, hydrokinesis and basic psionics, psionic empathy with reptiles, and middling skills. If you roll really lucky you might be a mind melter (10%) or mind bleeder (5%), but in general they kind of suck because they need to be submerged in water every eight hours or they start taking severe penalties and eventually die after about a week of water-free existence. Also, the mind bleeder thing is kind of weird, because pretty soon we'll find out mind bleeders are a race , not a class . But hey, why bother keeping shit consistent within the same book.

They'll help against the Four Horsemen because "they don't want to die". That's a pretty solid motivation, you'd think more races would have it...

Jinn-
The Elemental Demon
The minions of Set -
Not available as a player character

Yeah, I just copy the section titles as they're listed in the book. Sometimes they get a little wordy...

Most of this is C&Ped from the Rifts® Conversion Book . However, there are some extra notes. Now, they have an extra weakness: weapons made from the Millennium Tree do extra damage to them, now. Also, it turns out the being that cursed them to follow the whole wish statute is Thoth, but it also turns out Set can use that curse to make them obey them. Yes, Thoth fucked up but good, but he can't reverse it, so the rest of us have to live with Set having superpowerful minions. The rest of the details and stats are as detailed elsewhere. I can see why he threw the Tautons away now, because the Jinn are more ridiculously powerful by half and another half and then probably another ten halves.

WE. ARE. DONE. WITH. GODS. FINALLY.
_{(For now. Yeah, there's more later.)}

Goddammit.

Next: Africans are magical!

There is no greater insult than to call a medicine man or priest a 'witch doctor' or to accuse a person of being a witch.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Eleven: "There is no greater insult than to call a medicine man or priest a 'witch doctor' or to accuse a person of being a witch."

The Mystic World of Africa


Wow. That's surprisingly honest and frank for Rifts® . He's obviously trying to show at least some cultural sensitivity, but...


Uh-oh.


Uh-oh.


Fuck. The reality? Occultism often isn't quite so enlightened. But here in Rifts®, it's just a sign of being more enlightened and advanced and in tune with the real world.

I need a moment.

Okay. So they don't see magic as good or bad, just there, and it's only evil spirits and "bad medicine" (the quote marks are Kevin's) that's evil. It points out that animals are not treated as special - they're not animists - but that some tribes have sacred animals they only use for ritual sacrifice. Many tribes venerate "The Great Spider - the Wise One", but some death weavers (see the Rifts® World Book One: Vampire Kingdoms review) use this tradition to manipulate people towards evil, and there are death cults and stuff that worship them.


_{The first picture we have of the locals.}

The Millennium Trees are the only plants that are seen to have a soul in Africa (apparently some beliefs are somehow homogenized), and they collect "good medicine" from it (the quote marks are Kevin's). There's five known Millennium Trees in Africa - one in Libya, one in Algeria, one in Kenya, and one in the Congo. It's rumored that there's another tree in the Congo and another in Madagascar. There are "Medicine Men of the Mystic Tree" that venerate the trees, but they just use the Millennium Druid class, as well the Herbalist class. All of the Millennium Tree jazz and classes refer to another book, naturally - Rifts® World Book Three: England .

African Magic
Occupational Character Classes

First, for whatever reason, Siembieda starts out by discussing certain roles within tribes. Not all of these get O.C.C.s, so it's a little beside the point after that misleading header.

• A King or Queen leads in battle, set up treaties, masters ceremonies, etc. "Truly great kings may be guided by good spirits of past kings", even though there's no real means for that in Rifts®' metaphysics.
  
• The Medicine Man , who is the doctor, prognosticator, and protector.
  
• The Priest basically is the tribe answer guy, who knows all the knowing there is to be known.
  
• Rain Makers often travel from tribe to tribe. It doesn't really say what they can do, but presumably they make it rain.
  

And aside from that, we have-

• The Witch , who is basically big evil magic person.
  

Speaking of witch, we have our first actual class.

African Witch
Non-Player Character Villain


_{Wait, is this a male or female witch?}


I have to wonder, sometimes. One, this this a game whose first classes in the main book are the Coalition - basically Nazis with bonus skulls - but if it's magic evil, that's a no-no? Two, if it's not intended as a PC, why write the whole thing up as a PC class? Are GMs expected to follow all the rules of PC character generation when following NPC design? Because the NPCs in the books frequently don't follow the rules... ultimately, presuming any level of forethought along those lines is probably too much.

So, the African witch serves evil and creates "bad medicine", pals around with evil spirits (i.e. evil supernatural creatures), and everybody in Africa hates these folks, except other folks who are evil. No relation to the Witch class from the Rifts® Conversion Book , mind.

It also notes that necromancers, blood druids, shifters, stone masters, mind melters, mind bleeders, etc., are considered to be evil witches and are banished are slain. Wait, stone masters aren't evil at all! Damn you for knowing how to levitate rocks, I guess! (Mind Melters aren't really evil, either.) Witches often take over tribes and enslave them, because even their piddly magical abilities can still explode heads.

Also, 75% of witches are female. Why? Doesn't say. Women , huh? And then we get the powers of the African Witch.

• Creatures of the night. Witches hate daylight. No reason in particular, and not that they're penalized by it, they just do. They get nightvision and can see invisible stuff.
  
• Lycanthropy. This is the power to turn into a M.D.C. snake, dog, panther, ram, or goat at night. Doesn't sound like any lycanthropy I've heard of, but let's roll with it.
  
• Create magic snakes. The witch can create magic snakes, but has to expend S.D.C. / HP to do so. The snakes will die from any hit, but have a bite that "leaves NO marks" and inflicts a poison that does 6d6 damage to either S.D.C. or M.D.C. Only medicine men can see the snakebite, which seems to be more of an advantage for the medicine man than the witch. "Oh, yes, you have an invisible snakebite, it will be only 20 cowrie to cure you..."
  
• Spit on snakes and cause them to split open and die. Uh, what the shit? What it says on the tin. They're also immune to snake venom.
  
• Eat away at or drain the life of their enemies. By sneaking up to a sleeping person, they can do 4d6 (non-mega) damage, and give then penalties, and once they're near-death, the witch can automatically mind-control them. However, the problem is that S.D.C. heals fast enough that they can never actually drain somebody to that point before they heal naturally, but who needs to pay attention to rules when writing them?
  

Some other observations...

• Witches get pretty pitiful P.P.E., and so have to rely on blood sacrifice and times and places of power to get anything done, really.. They get some mild physical bonuses, but hardly anything that matters.
  
• Also you have to have I.Q. of 10, M.E. of 10, and P.E. of 12 or better, which means randomly rolled characters only have a 15% chance to qualify for generic evil.
  
• Their equipment doesn't include mega-damage armor, so they have to rely on magic to not get shot once and deaded. It seems the best witch hunter would just be a sniper with a M.D.C. rifle...
  
• And even though they're a bit shit as a class, they get penalized with insanity as time goes on.
  

And they get their own spell list, which includes things like:

• Charge Object with Evil: Make cursed items that make their recipients blind, unlucky, sick, etc. One of the hitches is that the witch can't ever actually deny that it's cursed, so they have to talk around the fact if questioned while gift-giving.
  
• Delirium: Makes people go crazy in combat or stressful situations... and it lasts for days on a failed save. Yeesh. However, it's a random table and the witch can't control the effect.
  
• Evil Eye: Inflicts minor curses, like a headache that lasts for minutes, sneezing, or hives. Uh, not impressing me with the evil, Dr. Witch.
  
• Magic Drums: Can create a magic sound of spooky drums. A failed save means you're penalized and jumpy.
  
• Money Doubling: Lets the witch "double" money by making rocks or leaves magically look like money for several hours, but only if there's an equal amount of real money.
  
• Pestilence Touch: Lets you infest food with grubs. Kinda thinking it might be easier to just dump a bowl of grubs and save the magic, but whatever.
  
• Poison Touch: Can poison food with a touch. Not really dangerous to most PCs, doesn't do that much damage.
  
• Summon & Control Biting Insect Swarm: Does major S.D.C. damage and inflicts minor penalties.
  
• Summon & Control Locust Swarm: Mainly used to hold crops hostage, of course. No actual detailed rules for the swarm.
  
• Summon & Control Drought: Well, mostly just summon, anyway. A witch will have to do a looot of sacrifice for this one, it's way beyon their normal P.P.E. levels, easily three times that of an experienced witch. Also, the drought gives a 40% chance of brush fires a day ...
  
• Summon & Control Heat Wave: Like Drought, but... it costs more. Yep.
  
• Taboo: This allows the witch to make something taboo, basically putting a curse on those who violate a stricture about an item (looking at it, touching it, entering it, etc., witch's choice). There's a random table for effects!... or the which can just choose. Like the drought, costs way more P.P.E. than witches have.
  

Witches also get a select choice of spells off the main spell list, mainly for status effects, illusions, and summoning spells... but they have to pay twice as much P.P.E. to cast them, in addition to having shitty P.P.E. in the first place.

Basically, witches get some interesting curses, but as far as being a spellcaster, this sort of evil just doesn't pay. Be an actual witch from the Rifts® Conversion Book , instead - at least they get a free bonus nipple and the ability to punch heads off. Also, medicine men can counter pretty much every one of the witch's powers, where the witch gets no such advantage over medicine men. Africa witches are a fucking joke .

Medicine Man O.C.C.


_{Spookier than the witch for some reason. Maybe they traded art?}

It starts out pointing any skiled healer or wizard may be called a medicine man, but they're not real medicine men.

So, people love medicine men a lot, almost as much as kings, because they make "good medicine" and... uh... charge fair rates for it.


Yep. If you're an evil witch, chances are high you're a woman. If you're a medicine man, chances are high you're a man.

So, medicine men are either descendants of other medicine men (and taught by parents), or taken in as assistants. Small villages only have one, but large tribes may have as many as a dozen. When there's a group of medicine men, they are subservient to the eldest amongst them, and there's no rivalry because they're such great guys. They act as advisors, doctors, counselors, storytellers, etc. Their main goals are to help others and to fite evil, mainly evil that happens to be witches and monsters.

Unlike the witch, they're full-on spellcasters with decent P.P.E., get some tiny bonuses against magic and on attributes, and a big bonus against Horror Factor. They can learn spell magic, and start a few basic spells plus the "taboo" spell from earlier and "remove taboo", even though there is no "remove taboo" spell. Whups. There's a "chant to remove taboo" later on, but that entry says only rain makers can get it. Confused? Me too.

Then we get into their other class powers!

• Sees bad medicine. The medicine man can see objects charged with evil , magic snake bites, witch mind control, and possession / mind control in general. They're direct counters to the witch.
  
• Recognizes the footprints of werebeasts. Well, this is a misnomer, they can recognize the footprints of supernatural monsters in general, but they're kind of lousy at it, only halving a 30% + 5% per level chance.
  
• Recognize mind control. This is just to identify what sort of mind control, they automatically notice its presence, but is rather dicey like their footprint IDs.
  
• Recognize bio-wizardry, real rune weapons, and techno-wizard devices. They suck even worse at this, but they can try.
  
• Impervious to the magic snakes of witches. God, it must suck to be a witch.
  
• Impervious to possession. And they get a small bonus against mind control.
  
• Make medicine stick. This is a ordinary stick that does double damage against witches, and mega-damage against mega-damage creatures. It can also remove evil charges from objects by smashing them. It also makes them immune to all of the witch's magic. If they give it to another character, it gives a bunch of save bonuses as well. These cost 800 P.P.E. to make, so you have to find a way to get a bunch of surplus P.P.E. to make one.
  
• Make medicine horn. This is a focus a medicine man can use to store extra P.P.E.
  
• Psychic crap. All medicine men get basic sensitive psychic powers, but not much I.S.P. to work with.
  
• Meditation. This lets the medicine man recharge P.P.E. faster.
  
• The Emandwa or baalubaale, spirit guardian. This is where the medicine man believes they contact their ancestors to talk to them, but actually they're self-hypnotizing themselves to contact their subconscious mind and psionic powers! Kind of a weird moment to get all realistic , given everything else is overtly supernatural. The medicine man usually has to meditate for this, but sometimes in crises the ancestor will just butt on in. The ancestor will deliver warnings, solve mysteries, locates resources, give pep talks that give bonuses, untie ropes and undo locks, or save the medicine man from drowning.
  
• Medicine Man Charms & Amulets. Most of these are various protective amulets and wards, but there's also a charm that can give you bug wings to fly with, and there's a witch lure which summons the servants of witches automatically so they can be killed (wow, it sucks being a witch).
  

_{"Hm, I need another African pic... I'll take this old supervillain and paste him in as a shaman, nobody will notice!"}

Whew! That's a crazy detailed class. Balance-wise, they're really just comparable to the other spellcasting classes in the core book, though the amount of specialty powers they have to just counter one class is kinda blah, but they make up for it with a lot of very useful basic abilities. Unfortunately, with a minimum M.E., M.A. and I.Q. of 12 as requirements, you only have a 5% chance of rolling one, because Kevin Siembieda doesn't understand how a 3d6 dice curve works.

It also bears noting that they don't get any healing powers , ironically. They have to rely in the psychic diagnosis power and the Holistic Medicine skill. They're much better as anti-supernatural detectives than anything else. If you want to make an actual healer, you'd be better off as a Mystic, Mind Melter, Herbalist, or any number of other classes.

They get a decent spread of survivalist, language, and lore skills. It'd be useful enough in a party and is a full-fledged magic man, though you're saddled with a bunch of folklore-simulating abilities you're not likely to use very often.

Next: The African Priest and the Rain Maker - good for communities, bad for adventuring!

The dance is exclusive to the rain maker O.C.C. although others may participate in the ritual and provide additional P.P.E.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Twelve: "The dance is exclusive to the rain maker O.C.C. although others may participate in the ritual and provide additional P.P.E."

African Rain Maker O.C.C.



One of those "invaluable to a community, not so useful to a party" sorts of classes. They're much like medicine men, but can be more mercenary since they're in such demand. Some are nice and benevolent, and others are extortionists. Most are male again (70%), and the trade is mostly passed from father to son.

Right onward to powers!

• All rain making rituals. They know all of 'em.
  
• Sense elements and changes in weather. Just magical weather prediction up to 100 miles, and is automatic. You can estimate wind MPH and temperature, you know, in the scientific way magic does.
  
• Sense the purity of water. At 40% accuracy + 5% per level. Taste may be a more accurate measure.
  
• Divine water. Use divining rods to sense water within 5 miles.
  
• Control mega-damage lightning. In rain, you can control lightning bolts. Does level x 20 damage, which means high-level rain makers can actually do crazy amounts of damage.
  

They get a decent amount of P.P.E., can case normal spell magic, and get some small mental bonuses. They get survivalist, science, and boating skills, and a decent spread of skills. They're kind of weak as far as spellcasters go, though their lightning can make them into one of the best artillery pieces in the game at higher levels, even better than a Glitter Boy pilot. Not bad, but very focused.

Their rain rituals are detailed and include the following dances - yeah, they just gotta dance. Most of them require crazy amount of P.P.E., which limits them to very limited ritual circumstances, and often require whole groups of spellcasters.

• Rain Dance: Makes it rain, once.
  
• Dance of Bad Medicine: Makes it rain gross stuff like snails or fish. Makes a bad stink, drives animals away, and creates bad luck.
  
• Dance to Calm Storms: Lets them direct and calm storms.
  
• Dance to Part Waters: Like Moses done.
  
• Dance to Ride the Lightning: Lets the rain maker teleport himself and a small group scores of miles.
  
• Dance of Stones: Does S.D.C. damage and makes it easy for people to slip on the pebbles left over.
  
• Dance of Weather Control: Pretty much that.
  

Also, every dance comes with a reminder than only rain makers can use them, because Siembieda... loves to waste space in his books, I suppose. I mean, there are six different forms of class-specific magic in this book, I think we get it.

Oh, and here's the shittiest secret of the rain maker: there's a spell called "Summon Rain" in the corebook that costs 200 P.P.E. The rain maker's dance takes 300-950 P.P.E. Yes, any old wizard is better at making rain than the Rain Maker O.C.C. , because apparently double-checking existing rules is, you know. Hard work.

African Priest O.C.C.

There are a lot of that boil down to "like the medicine man, only with more music". Basically, they do music-based rituals (that are not rain dances) and are the wise folk who know all the stuff. Maleness quotient is down to 60% here, since some societies apparently allow women priests. It points out they're often like wandering adventurers, going after witches or seeing to a circuit of villages or the like.

And they have some powers.

• The secrets of the drums. Use drums to send messages. Mind, there's no skill for this, so presumably only other priests understand you.
  
• Make alcohol. Not a power, you just know how to make wine and beer. Sounds more like a skill, but at least it's automatic, I guess?
  
• Commune with spirits/entities: You can talk to "ghostlike entities", which if you've read the entity section in Rifts® Conversion Book , you know all the haunting entities are basically monsters and don't really have a lot to chat about, and I don't know what else the book might be referring to.
  

The priest gets some mental bonuses and crappy P.P.E., even crappier than the witch. Also, they can't cast normal spells, only ritual magic, meaning this is turning out to be a pretty crummy class. And their base attributes of I.Q. 10 and M.E. 14 means you only have a 5% chance of rolling one up! Ugh. Their skills revolve around medicine, music, lore, and... um... palming. They don't get many skills, to boot. They get magic music! What's that like?

Well, as previously mentioned, they don't get much P.P.E., so they need people to join in on their music to get their effects. That would be kind of neat if they had practical skills to go along with that, but they don't. The idea of them as witch hunters seems really dodgy, given that medicine men get all sorts of anti-supernatural powers and the priest will be lucky to have a tough stick.

I'm also going to give a list of how many ordinary, average people a starting priest will need for the following effects to give an idea of how niche and crummy they can be.

• Chant of Blessing (6 people): Gives six people a tiny bonus against witchcraft, poisons, and initiative. Takes about 4-8 people plus the priest.
  
• Chant/Ritual of Divining (14 people): Lets you ask three questions, and there's a long list of information that might be provided.
  
• Chant of Exorcism (14 people): This can be done by a medicine man, because they're just plain better than priests (and also, immune to possession). It exorcises, and protects everybody but the priest from being repossessed (the priest gets a bonus).
  
• Chant of Warning (20 people): Creates a minor Horror Factor of 11. The fact that it covers a mile is the only thing that saves it from being total garbage.
  
• Chant of Water Doubling (6 people): Doubles water in a container. The rain maker can do this ritual cheaper all by himself, though. Did I mention priests are a crummy class?
  
• Drums of Protection (24 people): Yeah, let's have 24 people busy themselves beating drums so the tribe gets +1 to saving throws. And they have to keep on beating them to provide the bonus. And I bet you thought 3e's Bardic Music was crummy!
  
• Dance of Blessing Weapons (174 people): Makes a bunch of weapons permanently magical and do actually decent damage against mega-damage creatures (though they're useless against robots). One of the most useful so far, but you better have a whole big tribe to do it with. The weapons also only work for the weapon's original owner during the ritual, so you can't even stockpile weapons this way.
  
• Dance to Chase Away Spirits & Witches (141 people): This drives away witches (no, they don't get a save) from a community for weeks. If they don't run, they're paralyzed. People who are possessed will fall to the ground and flail, though an exorcism will still need to be performed.
  
• Dance of Flames (136 people): Makes people immune to fire, poisons, and gives a big bonus against magic. One of the more useful dances, but as with all of the useful dances, needs a whole community to perform it.
  
• Dance of Good Medicine (91 people): Gives a variety of good luck effects for the GM to choose from.
  
• Dance of Life (106 people): Gives bonuses against disease, poison, a tiny bit of healing, and then a quickened healing rate. The effect can be amplified if you just focus on a few folks.
  
• Dance of Protection from Bad Medicine (106 people): Blocks witches and their minions from entering a town for days.
  
• Dance of War (44 people): Gives some minor combat bonuses and an extra attack to allies, and minor penalties to enemies. However, you gotta keep those drums beating to keep it going.
  
• Dance to Close a Dimensional Rift (104 people): This can be done by rain makers and medicine men too, does what it says. It also provides bonuses against fear and possession.
  

As you can see, the priest is very, very limited in what they can do magically compared to regular spellcasters, and what's worse, they need entire communities backing them to do it. Oh, sure, they can do a lot more of a medicine man or rain maker is assisting them, but... fuck, yes, that makes them dependent on those superior classes.

If that wasn't bad enough, a good number of their rituals can be done by medicine men or rain makers - already better classes in their own right. Oh, and the dungcherry on top is that there are even some chants they can't do , like the "Chant to Control Ley Line Storms, which rain makers and medicine men perform, and "Chant/Ritual to Remove Taboo (Curse)", which only a rain maker can do.

A lot of to give us a really niche and underwhelming PC class.

Next: Remember how necromancers and mind bleeders are banished or slain by all of the local folk? Now you can play them!

The Necromancer as a Player Character is not for everybody

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Africa: Part Thirteen: "The Necromancer as a Player Character is not for everybody"

Mind Bleeder R.C.C.


_{"... what?"}

See, they "bleed" thoughts and psychic energy from folks, and that causes their forehead veins to bulge. and their powers cause blood hemorraging in the brains of their victims! Their name fits them thrice , in a spastic fit of overwrought writing.

Unlike the references to them way back in Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis Crocodillians, it turns out they're not just another type of psychic, they're a human-like D-Bee and a species unto themselves. Which means races like True Atlanteans or Crocodillians can't be mind bleeders (as listed in Atlantis and once again contradicting earlier material in this very book ) , and it's not really clear why Kevin went a different direction with them.


Yep. Here in Africa, mind bleeders are evil whiteys . They came through Mediterranean rifts and are now around Europe and Africa.


Unless you've read Rifts® World Book Two, Atlantis , which already places them there. Siembieda wrote and laid out all these books himself, you'd think he'd be able to recall...

It turns out dog boys and psi-stalkers are natural foes of mind bleeders, because- Then the book diverges into the fact that the New German Republic (not detailed in this book, or any book as of yet) is registering and tagging psychics like the Coalition does, and they're doing that with the mind bleeders. Even though the New German Republic is worried about the mind bleeders, they have started recruiting them and using them as spies. Guess they're not that worried.

Though the NGR treats them badly, it turns out their concerns are basically 100% justified, because the mind bleeders are basically amoral asshats that regularly use their powers to fuck with people. Racism: justified! Woooo!

Anyway, they can automatically sense other psionics, have a great save against psionics, get special mind bleeder powers, and a standard array of psionic powers (though they get very few "super" psionic powers).

Their signature power is the "mind bleed", which is used to drain I.S.P. from other psychics, though they can only store it for brief periods. Also, if they repeatedly mind bleed somebody during a "stressful situation" they can cause memory loss or insanity. The target can make saves, but mind bleeding doesn't cost any I.S.P., so you can fuck all the brains if you have the time and inclination.

They don't start with much I.S.P. compared to others like the mind melter, though, which forces them to drain others. Of course, because this eats their actions up doing it, it honestly sucks in a combat situation, though at higher levels they can at least steal enough I.S.P. to really start draining standard psionic foes.

They get some minor attribute bonuses, but like most psychics, have crappy skills. Their big deal is their special mind bleeder powers, which they get to start with a few of:

• Bleed Aura: This lets them literally steal another creature's psychic aura and mimic it, though the victim ends up with a murky and screwed-up aura.
  
• Bleed P.E. Energy: As in "Physical Endurance". This fatigues somebody mildly and rejuvenates the mind bleeder.
  
• Bleed Memory: This lets the bleeder read a very specific memory or surface thought.
  
• Bleed Skills: Lets a mind bleeder temporarily steal a skil from somebody, who then suffers big penalities on the skill.
  
• Bleed Truth: This lets the mind bleeder detect lies by detecting what other words or thoughts are associated with what they're speaking. It's honestly kind of a neat take, and lets them judge exactly what the lie implies to an extent.
  
• Brain Bleed: This makes people feel like their head gonna explode, and actually gives pretty horrendous penalties to skills and combat.
  
• Brain Scan: The bleeder can basically detect any problems with somebody's brain or if they're being mind controlled.
  
• Day Dream: Dazes a target by focusing them on a random, pleasant memory, though once alarmed they're snap out of it.
  
• Healing Leech: Drains a target's health to restore the mind bleeder's, though it's all just S.D.C. and hit points, so it's of questionable utility.
  
• Impervious to Bio-Manipulation: This may seem niche - it provides immunity to the Bio-Manipulation power. However, that's one of the worst psychic powers to get hit with in the system, so there's at least some validity, and can cancel out existing Bio-Manipulation effects.
  
• Mental Block: Not to be confused with Mind Block. The bleeder can block people from remembering specific things with this, and it's permanent unless they or a psychic with Mind Bond undoes it.
  
• Mental Block Removal: Lets the mind bleeder remove blocks, of course, but also insanities and traumas. One of the few reliable ways of doing so in the game, though it notes they can't help Crazies (remember those dorks?).
  
• Mind Trip: This is a minor mental stun than can muck with skill rolls or briefly reduce somebody's combat bonuses.
  
• Neural Touch: Causes a variety of Bio-Manipulationish stun effects of varying costs.
  
• Neural Strike: A psychic attack that does damage directly to hit points - pretty murderous against people in armor, though no real big deal against mega-damage creatures. It can also paralyze/slow people as an alternate effect.
  

Honestly, mind bleeders actually seem like they'd be pretty fun to play! The fact that they're D-Bees is pointless, since it's not like the have any culture, origin, or homeworld that we're aware of, so there's no context for it. They're evil aliens who look almost just like humans, so what's the point? There aren't too many psychic classes at this point in the game line, however, and they fill an unfilled niche as dedicated mentalists. Surprisingly, most of their powers are actually interesting and well thought-out. There's not really much point to putting them in Africa - they don't really fill any role in this book - but mechanics-wise they're pretty alright, and it's the rare Rifts® class I get to say that about.

The Necromancer
(Optional O.C.C.)


_{Skull Count +3. Skull Total: 78}

This is a spellcaster that works with dead things and monster stuff. It points out this is more common in Africa and southern Europe thanks to Rama-Set (that guy again?) and the Gods of Darkness, as well as some handwaviness towards "death cults".

It points out most necromancers are eeevil, and that none are good, because its powers are eeevil. Now, honestly, reading through the powers, mostly it involves just violating corpses, which my my moral barometer is often more just gross than evil. It also involves summoning evil stuff, which is more dodgy, but at the same time, it just doesn't as clear-cut as the writeup would have us believe. You don't have to focus on summoning evil stuff, after all!

Often they carry around dead parts of creatures to use as tools, and often use skeletons and zombies around. Apparently this is a common sight in the Phoenix Empire, wherever that is! Rama-Set and the Phoenix Empire should have been at the front of the book, with all of the repeated references to him. As it is, it's just confusing.

At this point, I'll point out we're 100 pages into the book now without any locale details on Africa as of yet.

We get sex and racial divisions among Necromancers, for no particular reason!

• 24% Humans (65% males)
  
• 20% D-Bees (55% males)
  
• 3% Elves (50% male)
  
• 12% Ogres (70% females)
  
• 41% Other Monster Races (60% male)
  

It gives us a big list of those "Other Monster Races" and refers us, once again, to the Rifts® Conversion Book .

Before we get to NUMBERS, there's a big warning that not all groups will consider the necromancer appropriate for play and to respect your gamemaster's decision, and gives some basic suggestions on how to play one as a selfish character (since playing a good one is forbidden, once again).


_{Um, they can't actually hurt a glitter boy, rules-wise...}

So! Powers!

• Union with the Dead. Through a brief ritual, the necromancer can change their limb into an animal limb by tying that animal's limb to their body. The animal limb sizes appropriately; i.e. a chicken claw is doing to be a human-sized claw, rather than being stuck with a tiny, hilarious chicken foot out of your shoulder. At later levels the ritual can be done for others. Mostly this just gives natural weapons, most of which are pretty useless since they're just S.D.C. attacks, and there's a huge and pointless list of them. However, M.D.C. critters can give M.D.C. attacks... of course, there are going to be issues with lugging around a dead adult dragon's leg, then tying that half-ton piece of meat to your own limb, but PCs can find a way around, I'm sure.
  

_{"Lion's paw, chicken's foot... wait, how do I open doors like this?"}

• Augmentation and additional appendages. This is like the above, but lets you add additional limbs, horns, tails, wings, etc. It also lets you use monster skulls to gain some additional powers by putting them on your head.
  
• Animate and Control the Dead. Really just like the spell from the corebook, only you can animate and control way more bodies for cheaper. They're just S.D.C. mooks, but you can arm them with M.D.C. arms and armor to make them actually effective.
  
• Impervious to Vampires. Ha ha, no, vampires can still kill you. Misnomer, there. They just can't control necromancers with their bite or make them into vampires. Also, necromancers know all about vampire weaknesses for whatever reason, even though there don't seem to be any vampires in Africa.
  
• The necromancer is frightening and has a horror factor! ... of 6. Almost nothing with a Horror Factor has it that low. I think that's the Horror Factor of a ugly baby or a fridge full of mold.
  

_{Skull Count +5. Skull Total: 83}

The necromancer gets a big bonus against fear and some inconsequential attribute bonuses. They get a decent P.P.E. score, but can only cast "Necro-Magic", and an average spread of skills. They also automatically go crazy as they level up. No reason is given.

Now let's look at Necro-Magic! (Which a better name than necromancy, I suppose.)

• Command Ghouls: This lets you control grave ghouls and dybbuk, but has no effective on dimensional ghouls or "ghoulish demon lords", even though there's no such thing in the game so far. Doesn't summon them, so you need to find yourself some ghouls first.
  
• Consume Power and Knowledge: You can gain various powers from the organs of dead sentients, from the lame (liver keeps you from getting drunk) to the useful (chowing down on a brain provides their skills).
  
• Death Mask: Makes you scary, blocks poisons, disease, and curses, and helps you sneak better. Sure, okay.
  
• Death Strike: This lets you do double damage, and do mega damage against monsters with weapons or kung fu.
  
• Divining: Tombs & Graves: This lets use a wishbone from a bird to find graves or tombs ripe for the plucking.
  
• Kill Plants: Destroy plans with arcane might! Or just, I dunno. Get an axe.
  
• Maggots (insects): Another power that infests food with grody stuff. Personally, I skip the magic and just pee in people's Cheerios.
  
• Object Read the Dead: Like Object Read, only for... Dead. Gives clues as to their death.
  
• Recognize the Undead: What it says. Works to recognize vampires and vampire intelligences, the latter in case you're confused as to what kind of horrible fanged giant blob you have before you.
  
• Shadows of Death: Lets you do spooky shadow stuff to freak people out.
  
• Shadow of Doom (curse): I like when when Siembieda adds a clarification to a title in parentheses, apparently genuinely concerned that people won't read the text and need a heads-up. Oh, the spell? It's just a minor curse with minor penalities. Not very doomy.
  
• Stench of the Dead: Creates a stank so bad it makes you "retch twice per melee". Cripples people pretty bad in a fight, given they don't use the air filter or gas mask every equipment package in the game seems to contain.
  
• Strength of the Dead: Gives extra S.D.C. or M.D.C. based on the amount the dead thing you're touchin' had. That's what's implied, at least - it isn't real clear.
  
• Summon Insect Swarm: This summons 1000 flying insects per level that cover a 100' radius per level. That means we have a "swarm" with 1 insect per 2000 cubic feet (and even lower density at higher levels), because Rifts® is bad at math.
  
• Summon Magot (monster): Summons a giant three-legged three-eyed demon with thousands of M.D.C., but takes hundreds of P.P.E. to cast, and I'm sure some other acronym is involved.
  
• Summon Vampires: Summons (young) vampires if they're in the area. Most work with necromancers willingly because they're in the same evil undead worker's union, I guess.
  
• Summon Worms of Taut: This lets you summon nippers, fire worms, and tomb worms... but they don't go away when the duration runs out. They just stay and just start eating on whatever. Like you.
  
• [b]Transfer Life Force:
You can possess and puppeteer a skeleton or zombie, but can't access your magic while in a gross corpse.

_{Skull Count +1. Skull Total: 84}

Necromancers also get a limited set from the normal spell list, with a lot of curse, corpse animation, and summoning spells. There's also a list of costs for various humanoid and monster body parts; apparently there is a booming business in pixie tongues and scientist brains.

Next: Africa! No shit!

Most Africans will view the Apocalypse demons as an abomination, the ultimate harbingers of 'bad medicine' and try to stop them.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Fourteen: "Most Africans will view the Apocalypse demons as an abomination, the ultimate harbingers of 'bad medicine' and try to stop them."

Africa
Highlights

Finally. we're over two-thirds of the way through the book and we're finally getting regional information on Africa. Well, first it's got to recap how the apocalypse blew it all up . Then, apparently, the "tribal nations" - since apparently all of the actual countries of Africa instantly reverted to tribalism - were whittled down by monsters and whatnot, but the tribes that remain are lean, mean monster-fighting machines. The monsters of Northern Africa (they have their own country there) have gotten tired of most of Africa's shit and have gone north to fuck with Europe.

This is where I start the thrumming, ominous chord, because shit is about roll right on downhill.


I don't need to elaborate on the idealization of primitivism too much in this; it's farcical in how far it waxes on about its dream culture of African people; a cornucopia of utopias. The fact that every native O.C.C. in this book is a magical wise man is no accident, as it turns out. As far as the Rifts® goes, and this is a real low point, right in line with Rifts® Sourcebook's bold defense of genocidal fascism. It says something about how long ago this book came out - and how far we've come - that its romanticization comes off so, so very badly.



North Africa

Mostly desert and savanna.


Oh shut up I get the point-


Anyway, it's mostly monsters and the Phoenix Empire here. What's the Phoenix Empire? Pfft, like we have to explain that yet. So, some of the inland cities survived, but then monsters, Atlantean slavers, and the Phoenix Empire wore them down in just years. There are also some radioactive areas where nuclear stockpiles and power plants were destroyed.

Then there's the Sahara! Characters have -50% to land navigation here, even though you still have the stars and compasses and things like that. So even if you have your land navigation at max (98%), you have 48% chance of finding your way. I wonder how... you know... the Arabic people ever managed. Apparently they were just lost over half the time. Also, now the Worms of Taut have infested the desert, but sometimes bigger monsters come here to hunt for them.

Algeria
Northern Africa

What, didn't we just cover - okay, sure. Anyway, this is mostly desert and rocky hills, with a bit of savanna. Mostly it's just haunted by ghosts that roam the desert. The northern area is now submerged underwater. Most of the ghosts come from the Tassili n' Ajjer plateau, which is a ley line nexus and lets in all sorts of entities and jinn. It gives us some specific examples:

• Hounds of Tassili n' Ajjer: Eight ghost dogs that attack people.
  
• N'beh: An evil witch seeking her murderers.
  
• Apadda: A mad warrior who challenges other warriors to combat.
  
• Wailing Night Woman: She is sad and maybe looking for a child, and is really annoying with all her wailing.
  

No stats for any of those. Moving along!

Lower Africa

Or "everything below the Sudan, Chad, and Niger". This tends towards savanna, jungle, and woodland, to horribly generalize along with the book. There's a lot of percentage numbers thrown at us, that boil down to "mostly Swahili-speaking humans". However "75% speak American from the pre-rifts days of English colonialism and American tourism." Sure, what the fuck ever, I'm sure they hung onto that centuries after the apocalypse . (Oh, and in case you've forgotten, American is riftsese for English.)



The Ivory Coast

The Splugorth have the city of Gorth here (that sounds like a baddie name, dunnit) where they trade with other slavers like the Phoenix Empire. It's mostly Kittani here, the ape-people from Atlantis, though there are a lot of kydians and gargoyles. They have a pyramid these use to transport stuff back to Atlantis.

Hytril have escaped to form communities nearby (it refers us to Rifts® Conversion Book ) as well as yll-tree climbers (it refers us to Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis .

Nigeria

Mostly just savanna, hills, and forest where there a good number of small tribes live, though they constantly have trouble with Splugorth raids.

Note: The classes of the Congo: Cavemen and Pygmies!

Agogwe are small, hair covered humanoids who are surprisingly quick and agile, nothing like the hunched, slow moving australophithecine plainsmen imagined by pre-Rifts scientists.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Fifteen: "Agogwe are small, hair covered humanoids who are surprisingly quick and agile, nothing like the hunched, slow moving australophithecine plainsmen imagined by pre-Rifts scientists."

The Congo

By which they mean "the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, The Central African Republic, and the northern half of Zaire". Anyway, it's reverted to wild jungle and wilderness! Pretty much of Africa has, anyway. However, there are also death weaver spiders, werepanthers, and werewolves which are a constant threat with other monsters. Most people stay away from it because it's so monster-rich, but there's some communities - the pygmies, tree people, and agogwe. We'll get those in a moment, but first, a Millennium Tree!

The Ancient Father
- Millennium Tree

Yes, the congo has a Millennium Tree, which the locals believe is the first tree ever. Pygmies have their own Millennium Druids which keep the tree secret and stuff. We're referred to Rifts® World Book Four: England , once again, for all that hippy magic tree crap.

The Jungle People R.C.C.
Pygmy - Optional Player Character


_{Siembieda gets the blame for most of the art here, too...}

Yep. An R.C.C., see, because they're ethnic - oh, Palladium Books® - for the Pygmy people of the Congo. Granted, this is a oversimplification, as "Pygmy" actually covers a number of different groups, and might be considered pejorative by some... anyway, they're formed into tribes "from 3d4 x 10 to 2d6 x 100". Why bother having random rolls if you have to choose one? Oh well.

Anyway, they have kings, queens, councils of elders, and shamans instead of medicine men. They're a bit xenophobic and fear supernatural creatures in general, except for the tree people, who they're close allies with. They see the agogwe as sacred jungle spirits to protect, and the agogwe occasionally help them out in return. Mind, we've gone quickly from "acceptable simplification" to "gross oversimplification", as these people apparently revert right back to enlightened primitivism after the Riftivization of their world.

So how are they as a class? Well, they get bonus P.P.E. because they're so natural , but only a spellcaster can actually make use of it. They get some lame save bonuses. Their attributes are "Same as any human; all 3d6 (with possible bonus dice rolls)." These bonus dice rolls are never detailed. Oh, and they all need to have a I.Q. and P.E. of 10, so you only have a 40% chance of rolling one. No idea what happens to the poor pygmies that don't make the cut.

They get very shitty skills (they're decent survivalists and good at nothing else), no special powers, and their equipment is terrible. They only have a 20% chance of starting with a basic equipment package, 20% chance of getting an M.D.C energy weapon, and no M.D.C. armor.

Congratulations, Jungle People R.C.C. You win the dubious title of "worst class in the game" , beating out even the Vagabond O.C.C. from the core book for sheer shittiness. Even their weapons only do 1d4 or 2d4 S.D.C. damage. Given the S.D.C. values of most animals, it's a these guys - supposedly some of the best hunters on the continent - will be lucky to bring down a fierce monkey.

Pygmy Shaman R.C.C.

They're like the medicine man or druid, but total garbage. Let's see, they get... low P.P.E., some minor bonuses, a lot of basic skills but not much skill choice, and... the ability to make charms and talismans. Talismans duplicate magic spells, and cost a big amount of P.P.E. to make, and lets you cast a spell twice a day. The list of spells is short and utilitarian, but there's practically nothing for combat. Then there's Charms, which give an ongoing spell effect, but are easier to make, providing a bunch of protective spells, but nothing that'll protect you from an M.D.C. bite or claw.

So yes, pygmies have to be the "mysterious people of the jungle", because they can't survive any conflict with the supernatural or technology. If they have a medicine man or priest, they could at least fight the supernatural, but they're just helpless compared to just about any other faction in the game so far. The fact that PCs are "offered" these "classes" is the worst part; somebody who chooses to be one of the "Jungle People" will struggle to be relevant even compared to the basic Wilderness Scout O.C.C. from the corebook.

Bad.

Agogwe R.C.C.


_{Put your favorite joke about boners here.}

Yes, these are supposed to be "australophithecine type humanoids" - ancestors to humanity - who somehow survived millions of years, survived secretly during human civilization, and are flourishing again thanks to no pollution .

They're a small, hairy people, and have tribes much akin to the other folk of Africa, though they don't get rain makers. They are peaceful, kind, timid, secretive people who are in perfect harmony and zzzzz-

- eh, wha? Oh, my, I think this book is literally trying to bore me to death. As a class... well, you roll for psionic powers. 60% chance of dinky psionic powers, 37% of an average spread of basic psionics, and 3% chance of being a massive psionic powerhouse. Better hope you roll well! They're a bit dim and ugly compared to humans, but they're stronger-willed, faster, and more energetic. They get bonuses initiative and against poisons and nightvision, and are solid survivalists but bad at anything else. You only get a 10% chance of an energy weapon or a basic spread of equipment, though. If you roll very, very lucky this could be a useful class, but for the most part they're only marginally better than the Jungle People. And-

[quote="Rifts® World Book Four: Africa"] Note: Agogwe fear magic and the supernatural. They can be easily bullied by practitioners of magic and supernatural beings and may worship them. They never use magic items.[/i]

- okay, no, fuck lucky rolls, these hominids are just plain shit. Also they all speak Gobblely for some fucking reason, even though there are no goblins or orcs around that get a mention, I have no idea.

Tree People R.C.C.


_{Confuse several species of lemur, instant R.C.C.!}

All of a sudden this book jumps to eight-point font. In the first printings of this book, Kev forgot the Tree People, so they're literally jammed into later printings.


_{Like this.}

They're basically D-Bees who are 3' lemur people who live in trees, and can glide from tree to tree. They often have medicine men and herbalists, but no priests or rain makers. Mostly they're happy hippie tree people but will fucking murder the shit out of you if you kill one of them, and go after slavers with a teeny fury. Though they have violent crime, they're peaceful and never war against each other and there's a lot of detail on how they deal with criminals for some reason, I guess so you can play COPS: Tree People of the Congo.

They're more curious than other Congo folk, and they're curious and sometimes steal things out of curiosity, and yeah, they're basically your halfling / kender sorts because they're childlike and innocent and zzz... NO I WILL NOT LET THIS BOOK KILL ME WITH ITS DULLNESS. They're sometimes helpful and are tolerant and we get like a whole page of this let's move on to the numbers.

10% get healing psionics, though it doesn't say which powers, they can sense supernatural evil, see in the dark, glide, and have prehensible feet... hold up. Prehensible feet ? You mean they can swing a hammer from every limb? Is this game even concerned about balance, what with four-hammer-wielding lemur people?

They get bonus charisma and speed, but have a slightly reduced strength, get a bonus attack per melee, speak a bunch of languages (including Gobblely and Euro, bizarrely), and are gymnastic little survivalist fuckers, but have sucky skills. They only get a 10% chance of having a mega-damage weapon, and are just kind of lousy as well. I have no idea how they chase the Splugorth slavers at all like they're supposed to. (Mega-damage armor and scales means Ewok tactics are more humorous than heroic.)

The last of the shitty Congo-based classes is over and we can get back to actually discussing Africa.

Next: The rest of Africa! Plus: what makes Africans happy!

These bold and proud people sometimes see this as a reason to take cattle away from other people, especially those not indigenous to Africa (like the white man and D-Bees).

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Sixteen: "These bold and proud people sometimes see this as a reason to take cattle away from other people, especially those not indigenous to Africa (like the white man and D-Bees)."

Ethiopia

Though a forgotten wilderness, there aren't many humans here on account of all the monsters. There are peaceful tribes of adarok flying mountains (it refers us to Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis for those).



We got a lot of detail on the Lalibela churches built into a mountain, though nobody seems to live there, they're mysteriously kept clean by an unknown force. They're said to contain portals to hell and Wormwood, which is presented as DUN DUN DUN moment, but since we don't know what Wormwood is yet, it falls a bit flat. We also get a short bit on the river Omo; It's a big river and has lots of animals etc.

The East African Plateau

Bushlands, highlands, savanna, and wastelands. There's a lot of talk of rain, but we keep going.

Uganda

There are people here, and there's a low-tech city of Kampala, which is nice to hear about a city that isn't filled with monsters. But we don't get much detail.

The Great Rift Valley
Kenya & Tanzania

First, it points out the Great Rift Valley has nothing to do with dimensional rifts. Oh, good. That's something of a relief. I was really worried Kevin was going to turn into a super-rift. It's a really big fissure, pretty neat, look it up. Bunch of Volcanoes around here.

The Serengeti & Masai Mara
Tanzania & Kenya

Huge plains, lots of talk about animals, the Masai raise cattle and hunt here. Also homo habilis was found here, "A cousin to the red haired Agogwe." We get some details on Mount Kenya as well (mole rats! mole shrew!).

Tanzania
East Africa

All the cities here were destroyed. Instead, there are tribes and tree people and agogwe. There's a large down named Mahenge in the coast.

The Swahili live on the coast and use traditional boats to fish, but towns tend to be small to avoid the notice of slavers from Atlantis and the Phoenix Empire. It's these raiders that apparently prevent modern cities or factories from being built, since they attract too much attention and get blowed up.

We get some details on lakes:

• Lake Tanganyika: It's a really huge lake. The book goes on about how big it is, but the chemistry makes it slim on life. Still, locals fish here.
  
• Lake Natron: It has a lot of soda in the water, so it'll burn you, but flamingoes don't mind.
  
• Lake Victoria: Another big lake. It's big!
  

The Tribes of East Africa



We get a long list of tribal names, and then-

Just like the wild Kevin Siembieda is content to live as his ancestors have on manufactured foods and piped water like his predecessors have for decades, as many of the small tribes inhabiting the American Midwest do.

Apparently most tribes raise cattle, including the Masai. There's some unironic discussion about how they use every part of the cow or something like that. It notes that the Masai think that cattle are gifts from their god to them, so sometimes they'll take yours because they think it's theirs.

Other tribes fish, others trade with pirates and adventurers, etc.

Post Cataclysm Legends -
"The Great Change &
"Time of Spirits


See, they haven't regressed, they like things this way!



It notes how the tribes avoided the destruction of the world because they don't live in cities, and they see magic as a blessing, but monsters as a curse.


Ugh, white guilt + hippie fandom = double augh. This is hardly new; Palladium books like Erick Wujick's Mutants Down Under and Mutants of the Yucatan similarly fetishized local populations, forgetting that people are people and trouble is trouble no matter where you go or however much you'd like to idealize it.

How boring huge sections of Rifts® Africa must be to adventure in! "Oh, look, another happy tribe that's self-sufficient and content and doesn't need any help from anyone ever. Screw this adventuring crap, I'm just going to set down here and raise a cow." No wonder the Four Horsemen were added; without them and the Phoenix Empire, there'd practically be no conflict at all in the setting!

My objections aside, Mombasa and Zanzibar got swallowed up by the sea for the most part, and what remains has a bunch of bird-themed monsters perched all over it.

Strange Creatures of Uganda,
Keyana & Tanzania

It brings up the tsetse fly, which carries disease, and it suggests using the same disease rules as uh, the Pestilence Horseman. And there's the honeyguides, birds that are used to help locate beehives and honey. They're a thing.

Southern Zaire, Zambia & Angola

Most of these are uninhabited, but there are still a lot of people about. For some reason it goes on and on about the mineral deposits here, even though there are no mines here. Also, there are gorillas, who are protected by the adorak flying mountains ( Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis , again).

The City of Taunak

Then we have the City of Taunak, which is a city maded up of renegade tautons, crocodilians, and other non-humans, and "Kongamato bat-people", whatever those are. (They are not detailed in the book - see later.) They try and keep themselves secret because they're really worried about the Gods of Darkness. Theu generally force visitors into slavery or death, but they might allow travelers that somehow prove themselves worthy.

Southern Africa
Namibia & Botswana

There aren't many people here! Then we get some specific places.

Pyramid of Mystery

This is a mysterious new pyramid build after the cataclysm in Namibia, and it's defended by the undead and has a throne in the center with jackal-headed statues. Otherwise, it is as titled

The Kalahari Desert

Yep, It's a desert.

The Kalahari Oasis

This is a oasis inhabited by the Buntu, though it's a greedy rain maker named Iulus who rules as its king (with a dar'ota / succubus wife). He's a jerk who robs travelers and fucks with the locals because he can.

South Africa

Most of this place got wrecked, but there are some cattle herders and fishermen. There are also a number of supernatural predators here.

And that's all! We have the Phoenix Empire coming up, but even counting that, of a 160-page book, only 15 are dedicated to discussing Africa as a region.

Wildlife of Africa



There's a long list of Africa's fauna, but it mostly just refers us to Monsters & Animals for the Palladium RPG for stats. We get full stats for wildebeests, cape buffalo, lions, leopards, and crocodiles.

It notes that a wildebeest "may even attack a vehicle or giant robot". Mind, according to the the rules, the wildebeest can't harm or even nudge either, so not really seeing any reason to be concerned for your average gang of misfit murderhobos.

Monsters of Africa

Sphinxes like the deserts, worms of taut are all over the north, manticores sometimes team up with lions for hunting, madagascar has gryphons and harpies, and dragons are everywhere and sometimes take over a village or nation. Then we finally get some Africa-specific monsters instead of mostly just raiding Europe's monster closet for fauna:

Mokele-mbembe

This is treated as two monsters: the erythrusuchus (erythrosuchus, actually, if spelled right), which is a 16' lizard-like reptile, and massospondylus, a 15' prosauropod (ancestors to brontosaurus, etc.). The former is a mild mega-damage predator, the latter is mostly harmless.

Kongamato Giant Bat People

This is a legend of a giant bat, which is due to a vampire intelligence trying to settle down in Africa a long time ago. Which contradicts what we read about them living in the the City of Taunak, but hell, I'm sure with three editors there's something I'm missing that explains it all.

Buti-fas



These are small, dark-skinned humanoids with big noses, white eyes, white hair, and white beards. They're friends to the animals but hate humans, and often do all sorts of things to fuck with humans or revenge what people have done to animals, but they're timid and act indirectly.

They're actually pretty tough mega-damage creatures, can change into owls, and have psionic powers (tending towards empathic powers). Oh, and they live for 2000 years, in case it ever comes up.

Demonic Cannibals



They look kind of like people, only with sharp teeth and mouths on their fingertips. They can morph into various humanoid shapes, though, as well as vultures, and they're evil and eat people, of course. They also often kidnap children and trick them into becoming its minions.

Though they're mega-damage, they're only barely so (they have an average of 22 M.D.C.), and can speak any language and see in the dark. Oh, and they live for 1000 years, in case it ever matters.

Next: The Phoenix Empire and Rama-Set .

Even he can not envision what incredible advancement and enlightenment might result from the destruction of a thousand worlds. All he knows is that he must make it happen.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Seventeen: "Even he can not envision what incredible advancement and enlightenment might result from the destruction of a thousand worlds. All he knows is that he must make it happen."

The Phoenix Empire

Finally.

It's literally been mentioned dozens of times, but what is it? Well, it's full of evil evilness, mostly. It covers Egypt, Libya, Chad, and Sudan. And then, we get a listing of percentages which are supposed to give us some idea of the population (the biggest populations are generic D-Bees, Gargoyles/Gurgoyles, Orcs, and Tautons). It also has a bunch of slaves, which are chiefly D-Bees, humans, orcs, and goblins.

Remember Rama-Set? It turns out he's a pharaoh and necromancer, and he founded the Empire 132 years ago. Most of the free population is monsters, and most humans are enslaved, continuing the (seemingly arbitrary) pro-monster, anti-human sentiment we saw back in Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis . Most of the slaves do all the labor, while the monsters... well, it's not clear what the monsters do. Presumably they busy themselves with whatever.


_{Who in Africa can stop the Phoenix Empire? Oh, Noone.}

The Phoenix Empire has trade relations with "monster kingdoms in Arabia, the Middle East, the blood druids of France (even though they are predominantly humanoids), Atlantis, and even supply weapons and equipment to the monsters in Europe against the New German Republic." But why? Well, they're all monsters, duh. In Rifts, for whatever reason, even though they're a bunch of backstabbing, selfish gits, evil monsters find reason to team up like the Injustice League.

To be fair, Atlanteans tend to find the Phoenix Empire kind of overly focused on the whole "death and destruction" bit, and even Splynncryth thinks Rama-Set is cuckoo, but is glad he rallies similar nutjobs to his flag and "keeps all the madmen in one, easy to observe, area." It turns out Splynncryth is actually all sorts of against the whole "let the Four Horsemen destroy the world" plan that Rama-Set seems well, set on. But he only is helping secretly so he can keep good relations with the nutjob.

The Empire is full of necromancy, and often skeletons and zombies are used as manual labor and servants. There are all sorts of evil monsters who love it here, and they also have domesticated some of the worms o' Taut to serve as their pets.

The Law in the Phoenix Empire

Basically, it mostly goes on about how humans (and human-like races) are treated as secondary citizens... because. No real justification is given, much like Atlantis. What's more, you get sentences like:


Why would a mind slug or gremlin consider a human "handsome"? Wouldn't they have a standard of beauty all their own? And in a community where you have ogres, goblins, lizard men, ghouls, gargoyles, orcs, giants, and other humanoids, why would humans be singled out? Because they're natives to Earth? Are they blamed for the general asshattery of the Atlanteans? Do they because they have the "adventurer gene"? It's not really explained, and really betrays just how Saturday Morning the thinking behind Rifts® is at times. After all, we get lines like:


How would they even know what alignment somebody is? There's the Sense Evil spell, at least, but that only detects supernatural evil like demons and their ilk. It won't necessarily let you know what alignment a dragon or gargoyle is.

In any case, sometimes monsters hire themselves as representatives to secondary citizens who can can then act as go-betweens and bribe-presenters for a price, of course. Corruption is rampant, and these reps are often just another layer of such.

Rama The City of Doom
City Highlights

Why is it called the the "City of Doom"?

Anyway, it's a scummy place with all sorts of slaaaves and druuugs and criiime. Humans are sold like cattle and also et . It has "totem poles" and ledges for flying monsters to land on, because they like that.

Stockade Street

This is full of business that provide "representative" businesses to humanoids, and then there's a bunch of stockades for human prisoners to be tormented and mocked. There's also the Halls of Set, which are courts which mainly seem to proscribe torture a lot.

The Tree of Sorrows

It's a Millennium Tree that they've tortured and wrecked... because! Why not. I mean, it's beneficial and full of magic, but they destroy it because it's gooood. They make corrupted items out of it, but it is deliberately refusing to heal itself to try and spite them.


"Bwahahahaha!"


"Bwahahahahahahahaaaa!"

Demons guard it so that nobody who is goooood gets near it, though they've gotten so lazy that there is a secret sect of Millennium Druids who sneak in to show it kindness. It can still use its powers, but it's weak and keeps it a secret.

And that's all we get on the City of Doom. Amount of dooms actually located at the City of Doom: 0.

Troops and Defenders of the Phoenix Empire

There are 7,488 troops in the Phoenix army. No more, no less, apparently. But apparently this can be bolstered by citzen soldiers, bandit allies, "minions of the dark god", mercenaries, animated dead, etc. So it's really more like 30,000. So why have that specific number to start with?



It refers us to Rifts® Conversion Book .

Demon Troops

Yeah, somehow they get the most backstabbing, unloyal creatures in the Megaverse to line up and form an army. Yeah, I dunno how. They all get 100 M.D.C. body armor from eh, somewhere.

Then we get:


Wait. If we know there are 144 troops to a legion, then why does it use percentiles ? Wouldn't that just be a number? Why the fuck? What's 5% of 144? Does that mean there's 7.2 Dar'ota in every legion? How does that make any bit of fucking sense-

Okay, okay, I know it's a stupid nitpick. Siembieda loves throwing in percentile numbers to the point of farce. So there are there are 28.8 magots in each legion. Each has 1d4 x 1000 M.D.C.! That's like 72,000 M.D.C. of monster per legion. Somehow they get elementals to sign up in their army, even though they're supposed to be alien true neutral fuckers who don't give a fuck about fuckin' anything, and NnnnENNNNGHhhhennnnnGHHHHH-

Monster Slave Troops

This is a smaller army of 2016 slave troops who are about as loyal as their feet can take them. We get a bunch of percentages and small unit layouts and you do not care.

The Legion of Ghouls

This is an army of forcibly conscripted ghouls and undead zombies.

"Stop chewing on that bone! You're in this man's army now!" "Buwuh?"

It has 2016 troops, just like the monster slaves. Why? 14 divisions of 144 troops is why! Apparently none of them ever fall under or over that number. For being all about death and chaos, Rama-Set does like a tidy line of zombies.

The Legion of Worms

Yep. Worm armies. Apparently they use serpent beasts to keep the rest in line, but mostly it's worms they throw at people and watch them go berzerk.

No idea how many, though. There is three "legions" of troops, apparently. That's confusing. Wouldn't that make it Legions of Worms? Editing!

The Legion of Dead

These are animated dead. It's not clear how many or who commands them. Jerks, probably.

The Weapons of the Phoenix Empire

Phoenix Power Armor

This is basically the T-21 Hopper Power Armor from Rifts® Sourcebook (see my review for that), only upsized in a variety of sizes for ogres, trolls, gurgoyles, etc. It's made by the Kittani of Atlantis and sold as a second-rate power armor, and the Phoenix Empire has built a factory to make more.

It notes that human-sized minions just use the T-21 Hopper Power Armor. I'm curious how the Phoenix Armor is buying Triax power armor, given that the New German Republic and the Phoenix Empire are complete enemies, but an answer will never come.

Phoenix Sand Skimmer & Sand Crawler


_{Is it coming or going?}

It skims as it crawls ? Geez, just settle on a name.

This is a mysterious design produced by the Phoenix Empire that may be a pre-Rifts Triax design or a pre-Rifts Israeli design. Their big notable feature is that they have nanotech that... cleans sand out of the machine.

It goes nearly MACH 1, has a pulse laser that does average damage, mini-missles (of course), a utility arm that can do punches, and it can ram people. It also gives some pretty big combat bonuses, including a bonus attack (?) and +6 to dodge.

The Phoenix Sand Crawler

_{You're sure this isn't a very lost Mechanoid?}

Wait, wasn't that last one the Sand Crawler, too? Nomenclature is confusing. And editing is harrrd. No flavor text, so let's go straight to the stats.

It's a bit tougher than the Skimmer/Crawler. "Travelling at two feet above the ground makes the craft invisible to most radar systems (85%)." Man, you can make a gun that can shoot through a mountain but can't make radar that can notice a 15' vehicle going 200 MPH in a desert? Figures. Also it can use its little fin on the bottom to dig into the sand and hide from radar (?!). It comes with a plethora of weapons, including a double-barrel pulse cannon that does solid damage, lasers that do dinky damage, and an ion blaster that does average damage. It can also ram and poke with its little claw. In addition, it has a sensor system including fancy seismic sensors.

Robot Spy Wing


_{Robot cameras are essential to dystopian states.}

A fragile little flying bot that goes up to 140 MPH and takes pictures. No flavor text or details.

Weapons of Note

These are a bunch of Kittani weapons reprinted from Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis , you can check my review there if you're dying for the (boring) details.

Pharaoh Rama-Set


_{Get them, my mummy minions!... any day now...}

You know a character is going to have a dull demeanor when the first sentence starts out like this.


Well, shit, no need to give him character. As you may have guessed by now, he's obsessed with:

• Chaos
  
• Mass suffering
  
• Death
  

He worships Anubis and Set and so they help him out with his "generic villainry" hobby. He's constantly trying to "start the fire", unlike Billy Joel, and so supports a lot of monster groups in the region to go and fite them some humans. Alternately, sometimes he supports two different sides of a conflict, like Destro.

On account of him, Set is trying to take control the Gargoyle Empire in Europe (more on them in Rifts® World Book Five: Triax and the NGR ), and he's the main reason the Gods of Darkness have set up shop here.

Also he's a Chiang-Ku dragon! (Sigh- Rifts® World Book Three: England ) You may wonder why he walks around looking like a human, especially since most folks close to him know he's a dragon. We'll get to that in a bit.

The History of Rama-Set


_{Yes, this is a psuedo-Chinese dragon in psuedo-pharaoh gear.}


EDITING. I know what they mean, but... it took me a moment...

When Rama-Set first arrived he was known as Lo Li. He settled in China with his "casual friend", Lo Fung, another Chiang-Ku dragon. Presumably they settled there out of the amazing coincidence that they didn't have to change their names there, lawl. One day Lo Fung noticed that Lo Li was getting all bummed out about war and death, and then seven centuries later, he vanished!

Then, around WWII, Lo Fung hears that Lo Li is involved with the Nazis, but he's like "that's ridiculous". Then Fung runs into Li a little while later who is like "hey, did you hear about that Nazi thing? That was great." Lo Li is obsessed with how fast technology advanced during the war, and came to the conclusion that human advancement is tied to chaos and destruction and is like "THIS ATOM BOMB THING IS GONNA BE... THE BOMB!"

Well, he didn't exactly say that, but I'm trying to spice shit up a bit here. To be fair I actually kind of like an immortal being trying to drive human advancement by heaping disasters on them. That would be kind of neat! But that's where not where this is headed. No. It's time to get... boring.

Lo Fung, of course, thought he was nuts, but Lo Li became a "voyeur of violence". When Lo Li predicted the cataclysm and the coming of the Rifts, he was like "you gotta come to my end of the world party bro" and so Lo Fung goes to his party and Lo Li is all delighted to see the world semi-ending and Lo Fung is horrified-

- and then, only then, like, after centuries of having Lo Fung argue with him over this shit, Lo Li is like "Oh shit, Lo Fung really isn't down with this whole apocalypse thing, I'm gonna have to kill him someday." Lo Li, good at apocalypses, bad at reading people.

Anyway they survive the Rifts, and Lo Li goes and comes to the realization that the multiverse will SUPER ADVANCE once he kills a THOUSAND WORLDS. It's an underpants gnome kinda plan. Speaking of which, he builds the Phoenix Empire sometime after that. Somehow. Presumably he takes out a loan or something, I don't know.



It's Rama-Set who has summoned the Four Horsemen, though he knows they're not team players and so he can't help them directly, since they'll just kill anybody. He thinks the Phoenix Empire will be spared (it won't), but he's sending his thugs after anybody that tries to stop them. He's also put out rewards for the heads of Fang-Lo or Abkii the Defiant, who are other Chiang-Ku dragons that had passing mentions in Rifts World Book Three: England .

Oh, and he takes human form because humans are the ones that inspired him on his "blow up a thousand worlds" plan. Thanks, Rama-Set, you enormous shit dragon. Oh, and his real name turns out to be "Tor Li".

We have numbers! He's surprisingly reserved for an NPC so far, with only 2000 M.D.C. as an adult dragon. He can also turn into any animal of cat-size or bigger... or mist. Which he can stay indefinitely. "Ha ha, bet you thought you could kill me, now I am mist forever , get them minions!" He has magic tattoos ( Atlantis ), minor psionics, is a 7th Level Necromancer, and... he has access to the "Elixir of Power and Deceit".

Combat-wise he's a bit of a dork. His action figure comes with a sand skimmer, and here's the last word on him:




Next: The Gathering of (foreign) Heroes!

It is possible that Isis' affiliation with the characters will make the entire group the enemies of Set and his minions. Who knows, they may end up fighting gods!

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Eighteen: "It is possible that Isis' affiliation with the characters will make the entire group the enemies of Set and his minions. Who knows, they may end up fighting gods!"

The Gathering of Heroes
Non-Player Characters of Note

Begin the pet NPC parade!

Katrina Sun - Line Walker &
Worshipper of the Gods of Light

She's superhumanly good-looking because, uh, she's Isis , but Set made a microbe with the help of a Splugorth, and this microbe infects gods, and she has amnesia, because of a microbe, and thinks she's Katrina Sun, because of a microbe! So now she thinks she's a mundane wizard and worshipper of, um, herself .

Even though every time she looks in the mirror she's staring at somebody with a Physical Beauty of 27. Or when she gets shot she has thousands of M.D.C. Or occasionally she'll activate her psionic powers and is like "oh it must have been the gods". She is absolutely insufferable with this amnesia crap, and comes across as the most obnoxious and special GMPC.




To be fair, it does come with a reminder to not let her dominate the action, but damn, it sure seems hard for her not to. It does suggest you can further reduce her powers if necessary, but... then goes on how she might be affected by the "anti-god microbe" for centuries or decades and that she could be a regular supporting NPC for your group and what great adventures you could have with Katrina Sun and

Oh, and the Gods of Light will take a year of Isis being missing before searching for her. Some pals, huh? It points out Set has considered just killing her while she's weak, but hopes that the Four Horsemen will win and that she'll be traumatized. "A far sweeter revenge than simple murder." Revenge for what ? Isis is the one that wants revenge on Set , not the other way around.

Stat-wise, she has literally half the numbers of her godly form, and is a "mere" 15th level ley line walker with 6,000 M.D.C. Oh, and she has a special rare pegasus she can fly around on, whee.

Erin Tarn


_{If Kevin can reuse art, I can too.}

Aw, fuck.

Erin Tarn is genuinely kind of interesting in that she represents Kevin Siembieda's more highfalutin' desire for Rifts® to be more than its toyetic, powergamey surface. Instead of being some ridiculous asskicker, the core hero he first puts forth as the voice of the setting is an elderly woman in her sixties who just knows stuff.


The problem is that she's described often in a "tell, don't show" sort of way. We're repeatedly told how respected, clever, and knowledgeable she is, but her wanderings are a litany of obviously bad decisions in the earlier introductions to other books. Frankly, if you pay attention to her actual actions and not the descriptions, she often comes off as a bit daft.

And, of course, the fact she's an old lady is supposed to surprise people so she can be

She's a 14th level Rogue Scholar, and has a M.E. of 24 and an M.A. of 24; even excepting her other high attributes, only 0.006% of human PCs would be able to roll such a combination. She can also use magic scrolls, even though she's not a spellcaster, which is odd, because even most Rifts® mages suck at it, with only a 10-40% chance of success. (Hell, Rifts® mentions magic scrolls, but never gives clear rules for them anyway.) A tree gave her a special healing wand to use too!... mostly, though, she's completely hapless in a fight, and is maximized towards knowing stuff and impressing people.

Not honestly as bad as I was fearing, but still fairly self-indulgent.

Sir Winslow Thorpe
Erin Tarn's Cyber-Knight Protector


_{Your usual native companion.}

It's Erin Tarn's Native American bodyguard. He may be a descendant of James Thorpe ? Maybe. He sees their stumbling fumbling adventures as the "work of fate". He's trying to be a good face for the Cyber-Knights abroad, and has been a big strategist in fighting monsters, but he's mostly concerned with Erin Tarn. In fact, he's more concerned about protecting her than saving the world, which I suppose is stupidly sweet. Emphasis on "stupid".

He's a 9th level Cyber-Knight, and like Erin Tarn, has a ridiculously unrollable collection of stats. He has a bunch of anti-vampire stuff, a bionic horse given to him by King Arr'thuu, and a "rune flail named Isabart Wind." given to him by Lord Coake. It's a magic flail that does more damage against the undead and can cast a few air spells.

He's just a dull guy who's supposed to be a big hero type, mostly.

Victor Lazlo


_{The parapsychologist that doesn't play by the rules!}

Shit. This is the guy that gave us shitty in-world terms like P.P.E. (Potential Psychic Energy) and I.S.P. (Inner Strength Points). He (re)discovered ley lines and magic in the 1980s, as well as psychic powers, and then he found out about monsters! And then they laughed him out of the university. It should also be noted writeup was missing from the first printing of Rifts Africa , so it got put into future editions in teeny-weeny eyestrain print like the Tree People. He also gets reprinted only a few books later in Rifts® Sourcebook Three: Mindwerks .

However, he got a bunch of fringe folks that formed a society around his findings. When he vanished through a rift Indian mound Native American mound (?), his society then become The Lazlo Agency, who fought monsters for 50 years, and then the rifts killed them all, so why are we talking about them?! I dunno! Apparently they were a big deal.


Oh, shut up .

The Victor Lazlo of Rifts Earth

From a serpent mound in Ohio, Lazlo was sent to FUTURE GERMANY. He found out his books were a big deal now that magic was out there, but believed this was his homeworld until he met his old friend, Lo Fung. Remember him? I guess they knew each other back in the 80s and popped their collars all the time .

He has a love-hate relationship with the New German Republic. He's all for their "protect all humans" policies but against their "beat all non-humans" policies. So he goes up to the NGR government offices and winks and says like, "Hey, I'm that famous guy who wrote all those books four hundred years ago." and they promptly throw him in the looney bin. It looks like he hasn't gotten much smarter since the corebook.

So he escaped and joined an underground organization of subversives who educate and protect D-Bees, psychics, and wizards from the evil New German Republic. And now he's in Africa, ready to fight monsters that are like ten thousand times out of his weight class!... not the smartest, no.

He's a 12th level Parapsychologist, which isn't a class in Rifts®, but is from Beyond® the® Supernatural® . He has some dinky psionic sensitive powers he can't control, special skills to recognize and identify supernatural stuff that nobody else in Rifts® gets. Supposedly he can do ritual magic, but with his P.P.E. of 19, he's not going to be slinging many spells. Though he's just a dinky combatant, and he's a knowing-stuff machine.


Well, this book has already referred to mechanics in the core rules,
Rifts® World Book One: Vampire Kingdoms, Rifts® World Book Two: Atlantis, Rifts® World Book Three: England, Rifts® Sourcebook, Rifts® Conversion Book, Villains Unlimited, Monsters & Animals, and the Palladium RPG . So why not throw in a tenth book ? Why not just throw in Beyond the Supernatural ? At this rate I'm waiting for it to require fuckin'... Truckin' Turtles .

He has an Ulti-Max power armor, so he's just your average parapsychologist mecha pilot.

For some reason it goes on for quite some length that the NGR really wants him dead and will fuck up any PCs that are seen with him. They won't help against the Four Horsemen, though, so fuck the NGR, aka Reich Lite.

Lo Fung


_{Of course he knows martial arts!}

Yeah, it's that guy from Rama-Set's background, who was friends with Lazlo, and tried to find our occult investigator after he vanished, but never did.


Twenty years later and Lazlo Agency has never emerged, and thank goodness for that, lest we have an eleventh book to add to the list above.

Lo Fung likes humans, but feels responsible for Lo Li / Rama-Set being such tremendous dick and is seeking to stop him and the Four Horsemen. It points out even after the Four Horsemen are dealt with he'll be trying to stop Rama-Set, and the PCs can help him out with that! He'll want to be the one who kills Rama-Set once and for all. Much like Katrina Sun, there's a strange desire to force this NPC on PC groups, even though he's an adult dragon that outclasses PCs in every respect.

Speaking of which! He's got 2000 M.D.C., is a 15th level tattoo master (this is not an actual class), can shapeshift into a crazy number of crazy animals, some basic healing psionics, a ton of magic tattoos, knowledge of the Elixir of Power and Deceit, and some basic skills.

Also he is inscrutably and insufferably "oriental", as you may recall from the opening fiction... even though he's really from another dimension. Which makes him a poser, most likely.

Fang-Lo

Another Chiang-Ku dragon who has had visions of the Horsemen destroying everything and neeennnngh ho hum. She's just a hatchling, so she's much weaker than Lo Fung. She's a "5th level tattoo master", but has no magic tattoos (?), though she knows how to make them. Her statblock is so abbreviated it just lists "Standard R.C.C. Skills". There is no such thing.

Abkii The Defiant

He's supposed to be a big deal, and he's a swingin' Chiang-Ku dragon hatchling who likes fights and fucking. Well. The book says "make love", but I get the picture. He likes defending the weak and having epic adventures which are not detailed. He's a "6th level tattoo master and warrior", and has "standard R.C.C." skills. If Siembieda didn't care enough to stat him out, why would I care to read about him?

Sebek
The Crocodile God


_{A croc of shit.}

And it's the last of the Egyptian gods tucked in at the back of the book. He's mostly just a selfish, smug jerk who's always out to get the upper hand. Both the Gods of Light and Gods of Darkness hate him pretty well, on account of his general dickishness.

He's mostly just in this section because he's trying to get back at the Gods of Darkness and their "let the Four Horsemen blow up the world" plan. He's got all the deific crap, but is a lower-tier god, he gets mind-whammy psionic powers, and a lot of counterspell and travel kinda magic. He also has a crocodile staff (natch) that's a greatest rune weapon that's also a soul drinker. Oh, and he has a Boom Gun. "He got himself one because Anhur has one." Cute.

Oh, and have you noticed what I noticed? Three Americans (one from another god). Three "Oriental" dragons (actually from another dimension). Two Egyptian gods (actually from another dimension). Ten or less English knights. Yes, that means there are no African representatives detailed at the "Gathering of Heroes". But that's not surprising. Only one African has been detailed so far in the course of this book, Iulus Nemen, and he's a villain without aa statblock. For the most part, Africans are left faceless and nameless, idealized but never actually allowed to be important.



Next: The End of Africa.

Even those on Earth don't know about the arrival of the Four Horsemen, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are some True Atlanteans counted among the heroes.

posted by Alien Rope Burn Original SA post

Rifts World Book 4: Part Nineteen: "Even those on Earth don't know about the arrival of the Four Horsemen, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are some True Atlanteans counted among the heroes."

Encounter and Adventure Ideas

The book provides some ideas for encounters.

• You run into a necromancer and his assistants. No hook here, just a necromancer on the road, what do you do .
  
• Caravan of the Dead! Like above, but more necromancers. They attack! But if you beat or intimidate them they might give up stuff in surrender. Blah.
  
• A wagon driven by a lone driver. If the PCs investigate (why would they?) they find the wagon has thirty corpses . (Wait, wouldn't that stink badly enough to notice?) Why are they there?
  
• Pirates attack! It doesn't say what sort of pirates. It gives locations of pirate bases, a random table of what they're looking to steal, and that's that.
  
• Bandits! That's all you get, make up your own encounter. Wow, evil wizard, pirates, and bandit encounters? I could never had come up with those ideas on my own. New ground, being broken, right here.
  
• "Witch looking of trouble for the fun of it." Typo is in the original, a witch with some supernatural backup. It notes that "one-third" of witches know about bounties offered by the Phoenix Empire, not that PCs would be on that list for any reason, I'm sure.
  
• Taboo shrine: There's a taboo place with a valuable item inside, but there's a warning. Is it a trap?! (It is a trap.) Also tribes might attack you for violating the taboo.
  
• City Ruins. They have monsters in them, or maybe a "man-eating lion".
  
• Nightmare Zombies created by Death. These are crazy mixed-up zombies made by stitching a bunch of body parts together. "Wait.", you may be thinking, "I thought Death's zombies can't attack anyone?" Well, technically if he lets them free they can attack somebody, he just can't control them again, though. Yeah, it's a cheap loophole.
  
• "There are many other possibilities." These will not be detailed, however.
  

But what about the core plot of the book? I mean, it's never been covered - you can only really intuit it. Oh, here it is! In the very back!

The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse

Where did the Four Horsemen
appear in Africa?

It says you can put them wherever, but suggests:

• Famine: Northern Ethiopia
  
• Pestilence: South Africa
  
• War: The Congo or Ivory Coast
  
• Death: Southern Tanzania
  

It points out that the Four Horsemen are drawn to Giza because it's full of magic and because their best bud and summoner Rama-Set is there. It also points out that they might meander around just causing trouble for awhile and won't beeline for Giza.

Also, their presence will cause a lot of disasters and troublemakers to spring up, and Rama-Set will specifically be sending thugs after any heroes trying to stop them.

Some Specific Elements

• Other Heroes: It notes this can be an possibility for other heroes to show up, even from other settings (Rifts!) and whatnot. It also notes that if you want to have the PCs play some of these heroes temporarily for a lark, or even play the GODS OF LIGHT that's cool, too.
  
  Wait, was that decent advice from a Palladium Book? I...
  
• Gods of Light: It points out the Gods of Light might help out but mostly indirectly to avoid just butting heads with the Gods of Darkness. But the Gods of Darkness might get involved anyway! That's just how they roll. Or you could end up with full-on Godwar.
  
• Mrr'lyn & New Camelot: Mrr'lyn basically doesn't want to get any knights killed outside of his Grand Plan, so he's going to try and get Arr'thuu to try and blow off the conflict. Arr'thuu, on the other hand, will likely send too few knights too late. Mrr'lyn might try and help out personally or send some of his Nexus Knights, however, on account of "everything in the world dying" putting a kibosh on his Grand Plan.
  
• Atlantis & The Minions of Splugorth: Splynncryth will waffle back and forth on what to do, but will probably send some elite agents to help out against the Horsemen. The True Atlanteans as a whole aren't aware of the events going on, but some are likely to find out and help out.
  
• The Americas: Nobody in the Americas is really aware of what's happening, and the Coalition wouldn't believe it even if they heard. Only Lazlo is aware due to their... uh... letters... they somehow got... from Ms. Tarn.
  
• Europe & Asia: They don't know shit about this.
  

Story ideas for the Pharaoh

In case you haven't gotten your fill of him yet. More Rama-Set!

Armageddon Lost

If the Four Horsemen lose out, Rama-Set is going to go into a deep funk for months, and then he'll seek revenge against whomever responsible.




Demons from the Past

Lo Fang is likely to try and foil Rama-Set, though Victor Lazlo is likely to go back to the NGR and foil monster plots there.

A Great Returning Villain


Ugh, no thanks, I've had enough. We get XP tables for the classes and we're done.



Rifts® World Book Four: Africa may indeed be the worst book for the line, though I say that not having looked over all 80+ books in the game line. Why?

• Overpowered Opposition: All of the villains in this book are litanies of powers and "get out of consquences" cards. Having fights against them is going to be nothing short of miserable without a deus ex machina. (Yes, there are weapons that will certainly help fight them... in much later books.)
  
• Bad Mythology: Rifts Africa plays fast and loose with mythology, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that it alters it almost always to its detriment. Worse yet, they're near-homongenous in personality, with the majority of them being in on the "destroy the world" plot even when it's to their detriment.
  
• Romantic Racism: Though hardly intentional, there's just such an ignorance regarding the African people that it boggles the mind. Even if you could wind the clock four hundred or five hundred years, it wasn't idyllic. There's an overwhelming amount of terrible things and issues wrought by colonialism, but pretending people will return to some utopian tribalism without it is insulting. (Also, what happened to the numberous descendants of European settlers and colonials in Africa? Did they spontaneously implode?)
  
• The Phoenix Empire: It's basically just Atlantis but more boring and one-note. What's more, there are no signs of conflict between the African natives and the monstrous immigrants, which makes the African tribes look like a bunch of hapless pushovers. Rama-Set's madness is dull, reducing him to a scheming nihilist with no actual personality behind it. Their technology is even really dull, being a dull echo of the Kittani's more imaginative devices.
  
• Africa Without Faces or Names: Speaking of which, the locals take a back seat to the metaplot, hardly ever showing up save as victims in descriptions. If you have an entire social class - the medicine men and priests - dedicated to fighting supernatural evil, they need to matter. They don't. There are very few major communities noted, no local rulers outside of Rama-set. We don't get any serious discussion of African cultures, lifestyles, or communities. It's populated by caricatures, not people.
  
• Bad Classes: Classes like the Rain Maker and Priest are too one-note and dull to be taken up by PCs, and the African Witch is a paper tiger, the Pygmy classes are even more horrid and incapable... what's more, it has four added forms of magic or psionics, which eat up page space on material players aren't likely to use. The minions of the gods aren't deeply exciting either, with only the Phoenixi really standing out.
  
• The Gathering of Heroes: ... is self-indulgent as fuck. Most of the heroes are pet characters without interesting foibles, flaws, or agendas to bring to the table, but are mostly just fan service, Siembieda being the main one being serviced.
  
• Kevin Siembieda: ... should never have primary art duties. He just wasn't that great yet. He thankfully gets better over time, but I sense the powerful force of photo reference all over his art, and rough copies of photos just makes me cringe.
  

Are there good things? Well...

• Kevin Long: Though not his best work, his designs for the Four Horsemen stand out as strong and imaginative. They're not terribly deep, but if you want a bunch of monster men to fight, you can't go wrong with that art.
  
• Mind Bleeders: Aside from the silly concept, their powers fill an unfilled niche and it seems like they'd be fun to play.
  
• Medicine Men: Though not fantastic, they're solid enough to fill a role as a shamanistic casting class.
  
• Phoenixi: Powergamers, this is a gem in the rough. You get free casting levels over 1st and the ability to totally regenerate. Keep an eye on this one.
  

And that's it. Here, enjoy this musical palate cleanser .

Next: I bury this book back on the shelf for a good long time.