Bit of Analysis: Rifts Dimensions

[Ahriman238]

Terralthra's correct, I meant 5 of the actual giant eyeball Splugorth intelligences, the loss of any one being a greater calamity to the Splugorth than a billion disposable minions dying.

The three galaxies haven't been kind to the Splugorth, it seems that they have met their match in some of its inhabitants.

True, they have less than a hundred worlds, have lost many of their own number and many, many more minions. There's even mention made of how much the stock of the Kittani in the the Three Galaxies has grown because they're the ones who are salvaging something from this dimension and keeping the Splugorth in the Game.

[Ahriman238]

First up, some more detail on prominent species.

Noro

Humanoids from the planet Noro-Gor. Human-like, but thin with six-fingered hands and horns growing from their heads, and smaller horns for eyebrows and lashes. The horns are frequently shaved off, though it is fashionable to leave a 'mohawk.' Also creepy all black eyes. The Noro are all at least minor psychics, and given a few years of meditation and study can easily achieve Mind-Melter power levels. Noro-Gor is one of the few planets with naturally-occurring psylite, a crystal that can serve as a battery for psychic energy and can be used in a variety of psionic-boosting devices.



The Noro shared a system with another life-bearing world, Ironee (a planet named Irony. This can only end well.) When they were advanced enough, Zorak (a nation of Noro-Gor) launched an expedition to conquer Ironee, which was then at a roughly 1920s-30s tech level, and other nations followed to thwart them or grab a piece for themselves. There followed a World War that lasted a decade and ended disastrously because someone didn't do their homework. At the time of the initial invasion, an Ironee had already proposed a model for a sustained nuclear chain reaction, and the war gave them a lot of incentive to finish their research. The Noro had long since banned such weapons as unsafe, not wanting to contaminate their homeworld, but the Ironee somehow didn't get the whole radiation concept (did all the physicists who built the nukes die?) so when they started getting sick they assumed it was some new disease, weapon or power of the alien invader and threw more nukes at them. When the dust cleared, the alien invader had been repulsed, not that the Ironee were in much position to enjoy their victory.

This shocked the Noro to the core. Governments came down (and in the process a world government was formed) but the first Noro to return to Ironee allegedly had a religious experience, a vision of the Cosmic Forge which explained that the Noro had been Chosen to become diplomats and peacemakers, to ensure this tragedy never repeated itself. A religion was built around this experience that remains the predominant faith of the Noro, and each Noro makes a pilgrimage to Ironee to see the horrors of war at least once in his life. The Noro were founding members of the CCW, and to this day remain it's moral compass, the group that mediates between quarrelsome members.

Aside from the racial class Noro that can be taken with any of the occupation classes; Colonist, Space Pirate, Merchant, Runner (smuggler) Tracer (bounty hunter) etc. There are two Noro-only classes. Ghost Makers are Noro Mind-Melters, having seriously studied to develop and master their innate psychic gifts. Unlike the traditional Mind-Melter, they lack the ability to learn psi-bolt or any of the mind control powers, instead they gain the power to summon and control Entities (ghosts and other invisible spirits.) Mystic Warriors are Noro who turn their back on their traditional pacifism and want to become warriors, and they quickly develop moderate psychic powers geared towards fighting and survival. Mystic Warriors argue that a race without warriors is dependent on outsiders or lost, while most Noro consider Mystic Warriors either slightly insane or selfish thrill-seekers who care nothing for the consequences of their actions. But most people outside the Noro are happy to have on on their side.


Catyr

Are humanoid, distinctive only in having bright red skin and silver or gold hair. They come from a highly radioactive planet and are both totally immune to all forms of radiation, and significantly radioactive themselves. Usually frustrated at a universe determined to hold them at arm's length.


Wulfen

Wulfen are humanoid wolf-men. They used to have this great empire that was basically Space Rome (complete with Latin) with all the objectionable bits like slavery and blood sport removed. but it was destroyed by the Kreeghor. Now about 10% of the Wulfen are scattered among the stars, forming enclaves or mixing with aliens, while the other two are split. Half joined the Consortium and are fanatically devoted to it and it's ideals, and half joined the Empire and are fanatically devoted to it and it's ideals. It's easy enough to understand, the CCWs dedication to justice, science, and equality strikes a strong chord with the Wulfen, but the Kreeghor are warriors who understand the Wulfen, their predatory instinct and rigorous honor, in ways the spineless Noro and craven Human never could. Also, most of the Wulfen who joined the Empire were political enemies of the (Wulfen) Emperor when the end came. That may have had something to do with it.



There's only one Wulfen class worth talking about, the Quatoria or Star Marshalls. In less civilized times the Quatoria were basically Judge Dredd. Now they're pretty much the same as then, the most highly trained and dedicated law men whose jurisdiction is as broad as the Consortium itself. They never get bored or distracted, and they never give up. Oh, they're also cyborgs made with a bionic technology at least a century ahead of Rifts Earth, but mostly it's the hardcore training and fanatical dedication to justice that make them really dangerous.

So let's see, under the fleshy coating they're pretty heavily armored (nearly half a Glitter Boy) and have advanced implants for resisting mind control and psychic attack. They can lift a ton (barely) and run at 60 mph (96 kph) and never tire. Their reflexes are really good, not quite in the Crazy/Juicer class, but an ordinary human is NOT going to draw faster than a Quatoria. They have a nanite self-repair system that only works 8 hours a day (the rest is spent charging) but can still bring them from barely living wreck to fully combat ready in 3-4 days of lying low. They have an advanced gas-filtration system that lets them breathe most atmospheres, and a 4-day air tank for when they can't, a universal translator, integral radio and loudspeaker. But where they REALLY stand out is the sensory enhancement package, the better to see you with, my dear. Heat, motion, radiation, radar out to 5 miles, radar detector, gravitonic mapper, seriously boosted hearing with sound filters so they're never deafened or stunned, and of course they have every eye-option but shooting lasers, including infrared, UV, light-amp, thermal imaging, telescopic and microscopic vision. They're just about omniscient within a 500 foot radius, and merely well-informed outside it, and it's rather common for a Quatoria to shoot someone behind them without bothering to turn his head.


Paratree

Pretty much a Trill symbiote that can bond to any species, as long as they don't regenerate. Paratrees are valued members of the Consortium, because they freely offer their knowledge and experience and ask only for the chance to witness your life story. There is the small matter of a sensory pseudopod growing out of your neck, but you'd be amazed how quickly you adjust.


Durosk

Looking sort of like Jabba the Hutt, only shorter with four arms, you'd think the Durosk would be easy to hate. But the Durosk have a very ingratiating manner and are extreme xenophiles, they love learning everything about alien cultures, immersing themselves in traditions and language (particularly slang) not their own. Since they adapt so quickly to local culture, while remaining so excited about it, they're very easy for most people to get along with and make fine diplomats, spies and (shudder) traveling salesmen. Relatively recent addition to the CCW.


Seljuk

There is a binary system called Gemini where two planets, creatively named Gemini 1 and Gemini 2 orbit around a central point. CCW science is completely unable to account for the stable orbit, the two planets should collide and destroy each other roughly twice a week, but they never do. On Gemini 1, 50 million years ago a great Rift spat out dinosaurs, identical to Earth's except that these were magical, MDC dinosaurs that wiped out everything that wasn't effectively invulnerable like them. In time, the fearsome T-Rex line split into two, one that grew bigger and meaner and one that became small, fast and smart, eventually developing a language and a culture.



Now, Gemini 2 is devoid of life though life once existed there. The planet is perhaps the only one more saturated with PPE than Rifts Earth, with the result that it is wracked by constant ley line storms, Rifts and super hurricanes. Legend has it that Gemini 1 was once also subject to such, but a group of Shamans conducted a mighty ritual, aided by the Cosmic Forge, and sent all the magic elsewhere so the People could prosper, and to this day there hasn't been a single Seljuk mage. Funnily enough, the mythological accounts place this grand event, the center of many Seljuk religions, around the time the fossil record says all life on Gemini 2 was wiped out as the storms more than doubled in intensity and ferocity. Umm... oops? Anyway, the Seljuk are another proud warrior race, believers in chivalry, courage and honor before all else and joined the CCW only when it became clear they couldn't defeat the Kreeghor alone, though they had long been trading partners of the Noro.


Faustians

The newest, most distrusted and perhaps most reluctant probationary member of the CCW. In appearance much like humans with chalk-white skin, black hair, slightly pointed ears and many needle-like teeth. Faustians are all master psychics, most with some training become Mind-Melters or Mind-Bleeders, with a fair few Bursters and Zappers for variety. The Faustians were also brutal would-be galactic conquerors who murdered and enslaved their way across most of a sector before learning one of life's harsh lessons: there's always a bigger fish. It took the Kreeghor a bit less than a month to annihilate the 'Imperium Eternal' and a pitiful 10 million survivors managed to flee and seek sanctuary with the CCW. The Consortium had heard of the Faustians and were very uncomfortable, but eventually made them probationary members with the understanding that GalSec would be watching them, closely. Despite being extremely prone to psychopathic and sociopathic behaviors, the Faustians have become very strict and harsh in policing themselves so well that GalSec never hears of trouble. They also have almost all able-bodied members 'volunteer' for 4 year hitches with the CAF or GalSec, and frequently undertake the most dangerous of missions against the Kreeghor, half to demonstrate their loyalty and half to get some payback.



Now a couple of TGE species, I feel alright about having covered the Kreeghor themselves and while there are many others (including two snake-like ones) for now I think we'll keep it to three.


Machine People

Once upon a time, the ancient people now know mostly as the Machinists were pretty much wiped out by another race called the Star Hunters before Cosmo-Knights broke up the Star Hunter Empire. The Machinists created a race of sentient Von Neuman robots to avenge them, but the Machine People refused. Over time the Machine People created their own interstellar civilization, and though they were often feared and hated for their nature they got by until the Kreeghor came.



The Machine People appealed to the Consortium for help, but there was a problem. See, the humans of Terra Prime once built a grand computer network to control everything but the computer, called Skynet (kidding, it was Network) became sentient and turned on them and the resulting Automation Wars killed millions. Now, humans aren't against AI as such, they frequently use it as a research tool, but they are adamant that no AI ever be put in a position where it could kill someone, either maliciously or through willful neglect. The other members generally go along with this, everybody else has their cultural baggage and weird taboos, at least the humans' makes a certain amount of sense. But the thought of a whole society of unrestricted AIs, police, emergency services, even military, brought the Human Alliance nearly to panic and they deadlocked the Congress for a couple of years in debate over whether the Machine People counted as people. To their credit, the Congress eventually found in favor of the Machine People, but by then the MP had long since had to submit to the Kreeghor to save their own hides. Which may or may not have been the humans' plan all along. The Machine People saw this as an unforgivable betrayal of all the CCW claims to represent, and the CCW itself as cold-hearted hypocrites. There are many among the Machine People who hate the Kreeghor, many who support the Free World Insurrection, but they ALL hate the Consortium more.

Machine People are made of 'living metal' heavily threaded with nano-tech. They have some limited shapeshifting because of this, they can compact themselves to half their normal height and width, squeeze through cracks and stretch each limb to triple it's normal length. They can also bulk up and grow stronger, or incorporate nearby metal into armor, they can meld their hands to simple weapons (like a sword or ax) to slightly increase their ability to wield it, or at least reduce the chance of getting disarmed. With a mix of nano-tech and cables they can interface to most any computer console, they can also do this with energy weapons to power them indefinitely. Being mechanical in nature, they are impervious to drugs, poison, toxic gases or atmospheres, hard vacuum, and radiation. They run on a fusion plant rated for about a MP's lifetime (200 years before their computers decay, likely an intentional safeguard by their creators.)

To survive, a Machine Person must eat one kilogram of metal a week to provide base material for the nanites to repair typical wear and tear. They can regenerate from all non-fatal injury if fed enough metal. Once a year, a male and female MP can mate and produce an offspring that's a mix of both of their specifications, the mating urge is just as strong as with biological life. Machine Children will reach physical and emotional maturity in anywhere from 2-8 years, depending on precise specs, availability of raw materials and exposure to data and interaction.


Silhouette

Quasi-elemental men and women of shadow, Silhouettes come from a very magically active planet with a 20 hour night or each 8 hour day, where most Rifts lead to shadow dimensions full of Shadow Beasts and darker things. In appearance, they are very dark skinned, thin humans with straight black hair and eyes that are white, silver or red depending on mood. The yes and teeth are the only things clearly visible. Oh, and for some obscure cultural reason they're really attached to capes and thigh-high boots, no one knows precisely why. The Silhouettes had colonized a dozen worlds before the Kreeghor discovered and conquered them. Luckily for the Silhouettes, it had been a century now since the Kreeghor Dominion transformed into the friendlier, more cosmopolitan Transgalactic Empire and they were incorporated as worthy former adversaries instead of being exterminated as a race that would likely become a threat again.



In the TGE, the Silhouettes have flourished in the military and industry, as well as being the Kreeghor's "go-to guys" for magic. They also have extensive membership in Imperial Security the secret police/intelligence agency of the Kreeghor, which does make it hard for anyone to trust them.

Silhouettes can use shadow meld at will to turn invisible in darkness, immune even to most methods of spotting invisible lurkers. They can also dim any light within a 50 foot radius by 95%. They are significantly stronger and tougher while in the shade, have normal strength in the light and are weakened by really bright light (say a high-powered searchlight.) They also have all Ley Line Walker abilities, such as sensing magic, lines and Rifts, floating or teleporting along ley lines, deriving extra energy from ley lines, etc. Though now I wonder if you can teleport along the ley lines in space? Start with six spells, Wizard (standard) list, add two each level.


Qidians

What happens when you cross a hulking lizard man with a goldfish? I don't know but he's right behind you!

Qidians would be big scary lizard men if they were less yellow, or their head-fin was less silly. Qidians were a primitive people conquered by the Kreeghor and taken to the stars because of how useful they are. Not only can a Qidian in good shape hold his breath for almost half an hour, not only are they really strong and useful for manual labor, but they're prone to berserker rages! Qidians also have always active Empathy, as well as a danger sense (sixth sense) and sporadic visions of the future, all handy talents. Almost half of Qidians become seers and develop all sensitive powers, and a smattering from the other categories. Very few Qidians are evil (empathy will do that to you) and most are tremendously ashamed and afraid of their berserker rages.

[Ahriman238]

Seems like a small eternity from starting the Three Galaxies to here. First, a moment's clarification. Lasers are common as both light and heavy weapons, most ships lasers are HI, high-intensity. Particle Beams are like lasers in most regards, more powerful but shorter ranged. GR means Gravity Railgun, which achieves a railgun-like effect with a gravity pulse. They usually have a greater muzzle velocity (and damage) than standard railguns, but for reasons unexplained shed velocity fast and have less range in an atmosphere. That's in atmo though, most spaceships if mounting a railgun will make it a GR.

All ships are equipped with radar, motion, gravity-wave, thermographic and radiation sensors. Even... sonar ( ) Moving on. A ship of any size can usually be detected at ~200,000 miles (322,000 km) add 20% range if using a military sensor suite. Ships moving under FTL can be spotted 1 light-year out, 10 LY if it's a military system with sensor buoys out. Such things as cloaks and sensor stealth exist, but mostly just serve to get you to 5,000 miles before being spotted. Splugorth cover their ships with alchemical formulae and wards that futz with precise targeting sensors but leave little doubt that there's a ship over there. The only "perfect" cloak is phase tech, an OP field (out-of-phase field) that renders a ship both invisible and intangible, the downside being the usual can't fire weapons while cloaked. Naturally only the Prometheans produce this technology, and outsiders can never get their hands on any larger than fighter-scale.

Many ships have shields. The shields are usually an order of magnitude or two weaker than the armored hull. The main advantages to shields is that they recharge faster than patching holes in the hull, and you have six shields and can distribute their power as you see fit. If you want to shield one side 6x at the expense of the others, or drop shields on the one side that isn't taking a punding to bolster everywhere else, that's your call.

I am relived that an explanation is provided, at least for missiles and projectile weapons, for the arbitrarily low ranges. Supposedly these reflect effective ranges, since fighters are small and agile enough to, with a head start outrun missiles at least long enough for them to run out of fuel and lose the ability to maneuver, and larger ships have extensive point-defense. Not a lot of sense in giving either fighter pilots of point-defense gunners a long flight time to do their thing. Of course, the argument sort of falls apart with railguns, unless Three Galaxies point defense is a lot better than my reading's led me to believe.

Organization-wise. In the CCW, CAFFCO is headed by the Admiral of the Fleet, an elected official who is not required to have any military training or experience, though the electorate usually sits a veteran there. Beneath him are three Grand Admirals, one for each galaxy. Lesser admirals are assigned at the sector level. A sector is a cube 500 light years to a side, and there are exactly 301 sectors in the CCW. There's no FTL comm, and with couriers carrying the message it isn't uncommon for command to be dealing with information a year or so out of date. One reason the CAF works so hard to teach it's officers to be self-suffcient and use their own initiative. There are roughly 200,000 active duty ships in the CAF, almost half in the Discovery Corps exploring strange new worlds. 20,000 are proper capital ships, most of their strength is tied up in cruisers, frigates and picket ships. Vast as the CAF fleet seems, they're stretched pretty thin just patrolling their space.

The Kreeghor model is a lot simpler. There are 6 fleets, two for each galaxy. Each fleet is divided into 4 battlegroups, led by an admiral aboard one of their Doomgiver Dreadnoughts. Everyone in the battle group or fleet give full and unquestioning obedience to his admiral who, as the lord of the Empire present and in command, accepts full personal responsibility for everything his command does for good or ill.

Oh, and yes the ship speeds are all given in Mach. For the ease of those not used to thinking in these numbers (like myself) I have translated the numbers in miles and kilometers per second. Deal with it. This was done mostly so the understanding of how fast these things are isn't lost in a large number. If you're absolutely desperate to know the mph/kph, take my number and multiply it by 3600.

Ah well. Let's get cracking.


CAF SF-69 Scorpion

Let me tell you something about the Consortium. Human ships are shaped like bricks, efficiency is the guiding star of human military engineers. Noro ships have rounded edges, suggestions of a rocket-shape, and are designed with an eye towards maximum flexibility and multi-role. Wulfen ships are blade-shaped and designed to balance firepower and resilience, with multiple redundancies to allow it to outlast similar classes of opponent. It's not that anyone is wrong, or disdains the other concepts, it's just that each race in the CCW has different priorities in a good warship and while collaborative designs between member races do happen, they tend to be the exception. Now, clever reader, can you guess which Consortium race builds the Scorpion fighter?



Yeah, you guessed right. Scorpion is a very fast and agile fighter, and compensates for these advantages by being completely unshielded and having negligible armor. It does Mach 8 (1.7 miles/second or 2.7 km/s) in normal flight, for combat an auxiliary engine kicks in allowing the ship to do Mach 18 (3.8 mi/s or 6 km/s) in atmosphere it's restricted to Mach 3 (0.6 mi/s, 1 km/s) due to being roughly as aerodynamic as a brick. Fighter is 10x31x34 feet, weighs 6 tons. Single pilot, supplies and life support for 12 days.

There are just a couple of fighters with FTL. This is not one of them.

The boxy "wings" are in fact box launchers for anti-fighter mini-missiles. 16 in each wing gives a total loadout of 32 plasma missiles with a 2 mile range. It also has a GR gun which as I said, is a railgun. 20 round bursts, has ammo for 500 bursts, 16 mile range. For once a fighter where the cannon outreaches the missiles. The more I read the more I'm put in mind of a TIE fighter.

The B variant of the Scorpion (pictured) has hardpoints to carry two serious anti-ship missiles, either nuclear or antimatter. The missiles range over a thousand miles, but they usually launch at three to get them past point-defense. Which puts the fighter and pilot in reach of point-defense. Interesting thought processes there.


CAF Proctor

No picture I fear. Proctors are stretch fighters with a crew of four and an FTL drive, meant for picket and patrol duties close to base systems. They also have shields. Mach 10 (2.1 mi/s, 3.4 km/s) in space, 2.5 (0.5 mi/s and 0.8 km/s) in atmo, 4 LY/hour using CG drive. 20x50x80 feet, 500 tons. 4 man crew, with room for up to 10, supplies for 4-6 months.

One double-barrel laser turret, 6 of the ship-killer missiles the Scorpion B has, 16 total anti-fighter missiles and one GR gun with only a 5 mile range this time, and ammo for 200 bursts.


CAF Silverhawk

One thing you have to love about Three Galaxies, it's no more shy than normal Rifts about doing things because they're awesome more than because they make sense. Case in point, the empires of the Three Galaxies have space-going power armor and mecha they launch at each other. Sure they have fighters, but fighters don't cling to a starship's hull and run along it bombing exposed turrets and sensor dishes, and fighters definitely don't cut into the hull and board a ship. Behold the CAF's preferred suit for a void-battle.



Suit is 9 feet tall with 11 foot wingspan and 4 feet long, weighs half a ton, can lift a 1.25 tons. Nuclear power, 20 year life. Suit can run at 70 mph on the ground, does 50 mph in the water (max depth 1,000 feet) and flies at Mach 2 (0.4 mi/s, 0,7 km/s) in atmosphere and Mach 12 (2.5 mi/s and 4 km/s) in space. It can handle both escape and reentry.

Suit is armed with 16 mini-missiles (8 on each wing) and GR guns on the wrist firing in 3 round bursts. Each gauntlet has ammo for 80 bursts. Users are typically issued a great multi-rifle with a high-intensity laser cannon, particle beam cannon, and grenade launcher with 200 bombs. The suit also has an adaptive camouflage stealth system and a field disruptor that enables it to fly or walk through forcefields and shields.

Plenty more to follow, but for now I'll call it a night. I leave you the Silverhawk and the crotch-shot you will never be able to un-see.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Didn't the CCW have some alien race that was tiny voracious gerbil-people that were from some hyper-Malthusian nightmare planet that was actually called 'Malthus' World'?

[Ahriman238]

Didn't the CCW have some alien race that was tiny voracious gerbil-people that were from some hyper-Malthusian nightmare planet that was actually called 'Malthus' World'?

I haven't seen them, but there are still a fair few Three Galaxies books I haven't even skimmed yet.



CAF SAS-12 Assault Shuttle

Human work again, if you couldn't tell. This is the CAF's standard military shuttle for landing troops.



The shuttle is 70x50x240 feet and 1200 tons with a 7 man crew. The ship is heavily armored but unshielded. The shuttle can do Mach 6 (1.2 mi/s or 2 km/s) in space but only 400 mph in atmosphere. It's so un-aerodynamic it's actually slower than a commercial airliner. It can have FTL drive added on, for half the cost of the total shuttle. This makes it a rare variant used for strategic purposes or by people who need a relatively quick armed and armored ship that can carry small cargoes (i.e. smugglers.)

The shuttle is armed with a particle beam turret under the cockpit section. This has two settings, the standard one for taking out tanks and ships and armored targets, and a diffuse 50 foot cone for microwaving exposed infantry. It also has 4 point defense turrets at the four corners of the ship, each is a double-barreled laser cannon, with 32 mini-missiles (128 total) for shooting down missiles and fighters. The dorsal turret in the artwork is unaccounted for in the stats.

Capacity-wise, the ship can carry 500 tons of cargo if used just for that. It can also carry 300 people either as a pure infantry drop, or evacuating civilians. But there are two standard loads, a mechanized infantry company with armored support consisting of 80 infantry, 10 power armored infantry, 5 IFVs and 8 tanks. Typically half the tanks are actually MLRS missile tanks. The second common configuration is a power armor and tank company both with 30 infantry, 40 power armor infantry, 2 IFVs and 10 tanks.



CAF Scimitar-class Frigate

Our first Noro ship. Frigates in this setting are ships 2-600 feet (60-183 m) long and 5-10,000 tons. Both CAF and TGE forces are frigate-heavy, though for very different reasons. The Consortium fleet is stretched fairly thin trying to cover and patrol it's own space, and sending half the fleet on exploration missions doesn't help, so a ship that can handle pirates and smugglers while tying up a minimum of resources and personnel is a boon to them. The Kreeghor, on the other hand, used to use frigates like torpedo boats, sending vast swarms of them to pull down bigger ships human-wave style. Once it got organized in the last war, the Consortium exacted a heavy enough price to make the Empire reconsider their doctrine, but they still have many thousands of the ships.



Okay, so the Scimitar is 80 feet high by 140 wide and 500 long weighing in at 12,000 tons. Standard crew is 96 spacers and 100 troops, with 12 power armor. Remember the ship was built by the Noro, who above all prize flexibility and multi-role capability, so there are quarters for 200 more and 80,000 cubic feet (2300 m3) of cargo space. With the hold emptied it can carry 640 people in addition to the crew (funny how much evacuation numbers come up when CAF ships are mentioned.) Though the typical patrol is 6 months, the ship typically carries supplies for 2 years, 6 if rationing is instituted quickly and the hydroponics bay carefully tended. The ship's antimatter power system burns out after 50 years, leaving the CAF with a choice to refit, mothball or scrap the ship.

The ship can do Mach 8 (1.7 mi/s, 2.7 km/s) in space and Mach 2 (0.4 mi/s and 0.7 km/s) in atmosphere. It has a CG drive that goes 5 LY/hour.

The whole flexibility fetish really shows in armament (and the posting of a troop complement larger than the ship's crew) the two big tri-barrels are laser cannon with a 16 mile range and as much firepower as a cruiser. The two dorsal turrets about mid-way down the ship are GR-cannon that fire 80 round bursts and do less damage then the lasers, but still respectful for any sub-capital ship, each turret has 32,000 rounds (400 bursts.) The four small nose guns are particle cannon, same as a tank would use and are there for point-defense (which in this setting you should always assume includes anti-fighter) and though you can't seem them there are 8 mini-missile turrets, also for PD, spread evenly around the ship. Each has 128 missiles for a grand total of 1024 anti-fighter missiles, and the ship typically carries enough spares for two complete reloads. Oh, and the ship also serves as a carrier for 6 Scorpion fighters (nearly always the B variant) and 10 Silverhawk space armor suits. It doesn't carry any shuttles (and only has escape pods for half the complement) and so must land to deploy the gropos.

The Scimitar is easily the most popular frigate in the CCW, with 20,000 in active service (or 10% of the entire CAF fleet) and thousands more mothballed or sold into private hands. The military surplus version has a third of the armor, and all the weapons, stealth and military grade sensor equipment stripped.



TGE Flying Fang Fighter

The Kreeghor are a warrior people, and though they now represent only 25% of their Empire, over 70% of fighter pilots are Kreeghor. It's a prestigious position, and also they don't manufacture many fighters with cockpits fitted for smaller species. Their standard fighter is designed to evoke the shape of the Fang, the traditional two-pronged stabbing weapon of the Kreeghor. The Fang is made by killing a particular beast and binding its two horns together with a handle. Like most fictitious weapons of warrior cultures, it's steeped in tradition and in much of the Empire, you aren't considered a man until you've hunted the monster for it's horns and fashioned your own Fang.



The fightercraft is 14x40x40 feet weighing in at 10 tons. It's actually actually almost 20% less armored than the CAF Scorpion, but more than makes up for it by having shields. Max speed in space is Mach 10 (2.1 mi/s or 3.4 km/s) though cruising and combat speeds are usually half that. Unlike the CCW, the Kreeghor wanted their fighter to be capable in vacuum and in an atmosphere, and the Fang can do Mach 4 (0.8 mi/s or 1.3 km/s) in atmo.

The other benefit to the two prongs is it provides room to mount two lasers about twice as large as fighters can normally be added, giving it a large firepower advantage. It also has two GR-guns with only a 3 mile range, but twice the ammo as a Scorpion. Near the engines are two launchers for 8 missiles twice as large and powerful as the mini-missiles for ships or fighters as the situation calls for. There are 24 mini-missiles just for fighters.

It stacks up interestingly with the Scorpion. It's slower, but has shields. It's lighter on missiles, but has more railgun rounds (and less than a quarter the range) and the lasers make a great equalizer. In a fairly consistent theme with the Kreeghor, it has the firepower to be at least a little threatening to larger, more powerful ships, particularly when attacking en masse.



TGE Rain of Death Troop Transport

At least the Kreeghor are consistent. They worked very hard to produce the most heavily armed and armored troop transport in the Three Galaxies. Just one small problem, it's not that great at actually transporting troops, not a lot of space left over for them. Well the Empire isn't going to compromise on the ability to level everything for miles around the landing zone, or armor to keep their death dispenser safe, so invasions from space are either going to take twice as many transports as the other empires would need, or will have a series of awkward waves as the transports bus back and forth between ship and surface carrying men. Oh, and if it seems the crew is far to small to aim all the weapons, that's intentional. The Kreeghor like to have the troops man most of the guns on the way down, so they can participate in the battle and don't spend the whole drop just praying not to get hit or fretting about the coming battle.



So the shuttle is 80x80x200 feet and 2,000 tons with a 6 man crew. It can do Mach 4 (0.8 mi/s or 1.3 km/s) in space but in atmosphere is restricted to... 100 mph (160 k) It is very impressively armored, and it's shields are 6x stronger than the Flying Fang's.

The shuttle has 4 Gravity Cannon in the forward arc, similar to the turrets on a CAF Scimitar, plus 12 laser cannon turrets, 12 mini-missile launchers with 32 missiles each (324 total) and 4 bomb/missile bays, typical loadout is 48 missiles and 68 bombs. 2 bombs can be replaced with 1 missile or vice versa.

The Rain of Death can carry up to 12 tanks and/or APCs. Other loadout options include 10 mecha and 40 infantry, 8 vehicles and 60 troops OR 20 infantry and one Kartuhm-Terek (Doomsday Machine) a super-heavy tank akin to a Baneblade.



TGE Berserker-class Frigate

Proof that the Kreeghor haven't entirely given up on the 'torpedo-boat; model of swarms of frigates bringing down big capital ships. Berserkers also do the routine patrol, recon and escort duties of a frigate, and their sheer firepower and toughness means they can generally win a one-on-one against any similar class of ship. Berserkers are named for their signature tactic of bull-rushing the enemy with shields set all front (all the heavy weapons are forward-mounted) and unleash hell.



Okay, so a Berserker is 104x65x300 feet and 7,000 tons with a crew of 94. Unlike a Scimitar, there are no marines, no fighters or power armor and, with so much space taken up by ammo, armor and internal bulkheads, the cargo area is a tenth the size of a Scimitar's. The ship can do Mach 9 (1.9 mi/s or 3 km/s) in space and is not rated for atmosphere. FTL is CG drive with a speed of 4 LY/hour.

The Berserker only has 60% the armor of it's CCW counterpart and the exact same shields. Granted, it can seem like a lot more when one is charging at you, but only because they expose themselves on all other sides to concentrate their shields. Well, that and all the internal bulkheads let them fight better while severely damaged. The ship has 2 forward pointing capital-ship scale laser cannons on the down-curled tail section. The upper-fin block houses two large missile launchers that can each get off 10 missiles in a single second. Big antimatter missiles at that. One major reason for the suicidal charges is to close within 3-1 miles (well inside the range of effective point defense) and unload a crippling 20-bird missile salvo at point-blank. Of course, the missiles actually have a range of over a hundred miles, and the Berserker leaves port with 100 of them. Finally the Berserker has 8 point-defense turrets of it's own, GR gun with mini-missile launcher, 2 mile range. Each turret has 8,000 rounds (200 bursts) and 32 missiles (256 for all turrets.)

The contrast between the Berserker and the Scimitar is interesting, as both represent so much of the philosophy of their designers. The CCW ship is flexible, meant to give it's captain the tools he needs to solve any crisis, while the TGE frigate is all ship-killer. If a Scimitar survives combat, it will be due to luck and clever deployment of his resources, such as the fighters. If a Berserker survives combat it will be due to luck and sheer aggressiveness. This is not a ship that can win fights if it hangs back, the only direction is forward. The Scimitar can take more punishment in absolute terms, the Berserker can absorb a great beating in the short term. Even minor differences show, like the disparity in cargo capacity, or the Berserker being somewhat faster at sublight, while the Scimitar is 25% quicker in FTL, giving it more strategic depth.

I suppose what I should have said sooner is that the Scimitar is a very flexible design, meant to give options while the Berserker design is very, very focused.

Okay, so those are the littlest spaceships, the ones from the first book. Which I'll wrap up next time with a couple of designs from outside the CCW and Empire.

[Ahriman238]

Naruni Enterprises Broadsword Fighter

Naruni Enterprises sort of just popped up in Phase World one day, a now-vast corporation selling weapons, armor, even ships slightly more technologically advanced than the Galactic Average. The Naruni realize that war and conquest are terribly inefficient and costly, and so decided to become war profiteers. They are extremely understanding and will let you run up a massive tab, but sooner or later you will pay them and if you cannot, the Repo-Bots come out and their hardware is much more advanced than the Galacitc Average.

Naruni Enterprises has recently become the largest arms-dealers in the Three Galaxies, nudging out the Splugorth who continue to sell death and bio-wizardry horror. Most recently they have set their eyes on the Rifts Earth market, and approached the Coalition to sell them arms. That meeting did not go well, and the Uteni traders they sent were lucky to escape with their lives (the CS has been hostile to the Naruni ever since.) Many people ask what ulterior motive the Naruni have (so far it seems getting obscenely rich is enough) being supernatural creatures peddling high-technology. Oh, and they do have a social research division that employs a vast network of mercenaries and agents provocateur to start incidents and conflicts whenever business gets slow enough.



The NE Broadsword is one of the hottest sells to small governments. Following Naruni practice of being just a bit more advanced than what the customer already has it's a bit more armored than most fighters, with the same shields as a Flying Fang. It's 10x30x50 feet, 20 tons. It flies at Mach 9 (1.9 mi/s, 3 km/s) in space and Mach 2 (0.4 mi/s, 0.7 km/s) in atmosphere with superb handling. The ship has two nose-mounted plasma blasters and wingtip railguns that are short range (1 mile) but do more damage than most fighter-weapons, about the same as the Flying Fang's two main lasers. It's also the mini-missile king, with 64 missiles in the wings.


UWW Shadowbolt Fighter

The premier fighter of the United Worlds of Warlock. They took as the base a fairly good technological fighter (not as fast or agile as the CWW or TGE ones) and added techno-wizardry out the wazoo. Most prominently is an Impervious to Energy enchantment that makes the fighter almost invulnerable to laser, ion, plasma and particle beam weapons, unless they're overwhelming powerful. Nothing is going to save a fighter from a capital ship's guns, for instance, and the spell does jack squat against railguns, gravity guns, missiles, magic or phase weaponry. Still, it's a fairly impressive advantage.



Fighter is 15x40x50 feet and 9 tons, typically black with white or yellow markings and the traditional nose art. Average armor, bolstered by an Armor of Ithan forcefield spell that can be invoked three times a day (and lasts for hours each time) and is only slightly (10% if you need specifics) less powerful than a Flying Fang's shields. Max speed is Mach 9.5 (2 mi/s or 3.2 km/s) in space and Mach 4.5 (1 mi/s and 1.5 km/s) in atmosphere, like the Kreeghor Flying Fang it was meant to fly and fight in air as well as vacuum. Compared to the fighters of other empires, the Shadowbolt is maintenance-intensive and has a short service life. Enchantments need to be renewed periodically, some of them constantly, and the bird only lasts a decade, as opposed to the 25 years of service the CCW and TGE get from their fighters.

Primary armament is a TW lightning-rod, which shoots lightning bolts over a mile. It also has TK machineguns, which create small solid slugs of magical energy so it works as a railgun with infinite ammo, and that has a 2 mile range. Most controversial are the "bottled-demon" missiles, where a minor demon is summoned into the missile to serve as a guidance system. Many in the UWW think they shouldn't have any dealings with the infernal planes. Bottled Demon missiles will lock onto a specified target and follow them to the ends of a system (or they jump out with FTL) and unlike typical missiles that explode once and are done, the demonic missiles hit, explode, bounce, then come back for more or until the target is dead or flees at which point the summoning is dismissed. Bottled Demon Missiles are incompatible with standard launchers, the Shadowbolt carries 16.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You have the old UWW dreadnought with the cannon on it that fires MDC bolts of ice?

[Ahriman238]

You have the old UWW dreadnought with the cannon on it that fires MDC bolts of ice?

Not yet, but I've only read Phase World, skimmed Scraypers (which is almost it's own setting, only casually linked to 3G) plus Anvil and Fleets of the Three Galaxies. It says a lot of how much of Rifts I've learned, though, that it never occurred to me to question the existence of such a thing.


Phase World SG-1 Star Ghost Fighter

A shifting crystalline craft that lights up from within in ever-changing colors and designs, Star Ghosts are created on Phase World, are the only fighters to employ phase technology, and are a holy terror. First let me say that I meant the shifting thing, doors appear when needed, weapons retract when unused. The basic shape subtly changes from one moment to the next.



Ok, Star Ghosts are 25x40x65 feet and weigh 25 tons. They typically use one pilot, but can accommodate 4 people if needed. Mach 12 (2.5 mi/s or 4 km/s) in space, Mach 8 (1.7 mi/s, 2.7 km/s) in atmosphere. Star Ghosts have a Phase Drive, making them members of the very exclusive 'Fighters with FTL' club! True, they go 'only' 1 LY/hour, but sometimes if your carrier dies that's the difference between flying home on your own power and sitting around waiting for the air and water to run out.

The main weapon is a Phase Cannon. Now, phase weapons are a bit like neutron bombs, they disrupt subtle biological functions, harming living things but leaving the equipment unharmed, and they ignore armor. They can be stopped by forcefields, magic or phase fields but here's the beauty they do more damage to forcefields then most conventional weapons. So phase weapons are also useful for bringing down a ship's shields in a hurry. The phase cannon fires a bolt that, on impact, causes a phase beam-like effect on everyone in a 30 foot (9 m) radius. I know this sounds like a good way to one-shot an unshielded fighter (by taking out the pilot) but the way the game mechanic is set up, unless he's a member of a terribly frail species it will take 3 or 4 shots.

After that, it has 2 laser cannon turrets, front and rear. Plus 24 mini-missiles and 2 serious anti-ship missiles. It's sort of modular in that the mini-missiles can be pulled to add life-support/supply storage modules that quadruple the fighter's endurance (normally 1 week for a single pilot, 2 days for 4 people.) The real reason that everyone is afraid to go up against the Ghost though, is the phase tech. To start with, the Star Ghost has 2 phase fields, the first is a phase field just like the power, it reduces all incoming damage by 90%. Now the Star Ghost only has average armor for a fighter, but with the damage reduction it can take punishment like a frigate. The second is an OP-field, an out-of-phase field, which is the true cloaking device of the setting, making the ship totally invisible and intangible. True, only one can be active at a time, but you can switch over in a moment. Then there's the phase jump, again like the Promethean ability of the same name, the ship has a tactical teleport ability with a 2 mile limit. 2 miles isn't a huge distance in space, but it's great for getting out of a pinch with a missile or saying "Guy on my tail? No my friend, I am the one on your tail." The Star Ghost is famed for the ability to engage Frigates solo and win thanks to it's phase field and "one ship barrage" where it pelts a ship with fire from multiple directions, jumping away before a counterattack can be aimed.

Now, it's not unlimited. The Ghost has a phase battery with 200 charges. Every phase jump, or activation of a phase field drains one charge. The phase cannon and FTL drive don't. When it runs out, or the pilot hits the recharge button the ship will recharge for one hour, during which it cannot use any phase abilities, nor can the recharging cycle be aborted.

I think it says a lot that although all governments distrust phase tech, the CWW, TGE and UWW each maintain a wing (10 squadrons=120 fighters) of Star Ghosts, mostly used to defend their most important systems. Phase World, of course, has many Star Ghosts and Frigates with the same technology. Nobody still living has seen any ship larger than a frigate of this type, but stories go around of shapeshifting dreadnaughts spanking whole fleets. Most people dismiss these as old spacer's tales, or propaganda by the Prometheans, but no one is really in a hurry to find out.

[Ahriman238]

Didn't the CCW have some alien race that was tiny voracious gerbil-people that were from some hyper-Malthusian nightmare planet that was actually called 'Malthus' World'?

You have the old UWW dreadnought with the cannon on it that fires MDC bolts of ice?

Ah, got them. Both are from the Phase World sourcebook (not to be confused with Phase World)

The Death Cloud cannon that smacks you with a supersonic wave of frozen water is the work of Inglix the Mad, an immortal dwarf sorcerer-inventor obsessed with mastering all magic. Since he has crazy fits of rage and freely dabbles in dark magic most of the UWW was not terribly comfortable with the guy, even before he came up with the Death Cloud and Bottled Demons. But they have enough respect for him, and he has a great legal loophole, to not simply arrest him.


The T'zee of Mathus' World are not what I'd call gerbils so much as really, really hairy gremlins. Seems the CCW admitted them as probationary members over a century ago, because to survive the destruction of most plant life they had to make a vast leap in nano-technology, with an accompanying advance in medicine that made everything much, much worse. Still, being more medically advanced than the CCW was enough to smooth over most objections relating to their complete disregard for sapient life, privacy, or any form of civil rights so long as they were given a 50 year period to transition into compliance with the Civilization Compact. 100 years later, nothing has changed, except the T'zee have spread over a dozen worlds.

To show how cuddly they can be, the standard weapon is called a pirahna gun. It fires hollow slugs filled with nanobots that once introduced, multiply rapidly and eat you from the inside out. Compare with the Noro, whose standard weapons are psychic stun/paralysis guns. Oh, and each T'zee is a Randroid, accepting of social cooperation only to the bare minimum extent that is needed for a semi-functioning society, and otherwise pursuing sociopathic self-interest.


Now a quick ground section. There's just a bit of that in the original Phase World, written descriptions of the tanks and APCs used by the CCW and TGE, but I honestly find it hard to care in this instance. It's a sci-fi setting, who controls the orbitals controls the planet, and the vehicles have no real history or tactics descriptions (outside of a very brief description of how the Doomsday Machine got it;s name) or reason to make me care about these blocks of stats. If anyone cares to ask I'll regurgitate them, but outside of that I don't see much point.



CCW PA-10 "Gropo" Armor

This is the only real power armor given to Consortium infantry, one squad to a company, though they do have decent combat armor and a slightly heavier powered suit. The Gropo is lacking in subtlety, in fact, it's more or less a wearable tank. Even the mission, frontal armored assault and artillery support of infantry sure sounds like a tank.



Alright, the suit is 9x6x4 feet, weighs a ton and can lift a ton and change. It can run at 100 mph (160 k) and jump 15 feet high or long. Armor is nowhere near a Glitter Boy, but slightly tougher than it's opposite number in the TGE. Big gun on the forearm is a tank-grade particle beam cannon with a good anti-armor punch and 4,000 foot range. If you turn your attention to the shoulders, you will see 8 mini-missiles smiling back at you. For fire missions, there are a pair of mortars on it's back, 4000 foot range again but with pinpoint accuracy and a 120-round magazine. Finally turn your attention to the uni-beam... er, chest laser which is equivalent to a really good laser rifle and meant for anti-personnel work.

Now meet the competition.



TGE MK I Warlord Armor

And the Kreeghor once again litter their weapon platform with weapons, and include spiky bladed bits because Kreeghor are proud warriors who'd love to skewer you. There are supposedly elite Kreeghor formations with nothing but Warlords. Now I will make special note of two things. First, the same Kreeghor who are normally so gung-ho as fighter pilots have no interest in making armor fly, or launching their armored behinds into the void to fight. That's what they have minions for, after all. Two, the Kreeghor have no truck with mecha, think the whole concepts ridiculous, but they do have just one design to counter CCW mecha, and it;s pretty much this suit scaled up.



Oh, and no non-Kreeghor can wield these suits. Quite aside from the size issue, most species with a spine find they won't bend that way. Suit is 12x6x6 feet and weighs a ton. Top speed is 90 mph (144 kph) and jumping isn't happening. For armament, the Warlord is like the Gropo in having a particle beam cannon on the right arm. The left arm, on the other hand, has a GR cannon with ammo for a hundred 40 round bursts. The hunchback contains 12 mini-missiles, the head has 2 lasers and the arms have retractable mono-edge blades.



TGE MK II Warlord Armor

Basically the Warlord as built for Humans, Wulfen, Machine People and even Silhouettes. Though Silhouettes are unlikely to use it, serious armor blocking spellcasters from doing their thing unless it comes from a Millenium Tree or the special armor produced only by UWW's Warlock Marines. Like most mages, they'd rather trust their magic than a slab of metal to protect them. Besides, a Warlord in a cape would just look silly and over the top.



Well, it's about 25% less armored than the Kreeghor version. Kept the gravity gun, mini-missiles (all 12!) head lasers, arm blades and spikes of evil. They did ditch the particle beam cannon, but have gained the power of flight. Max speed is 90 mph (144 k) on the ground, Mach 1 (0.2 mi/s and 0.3 km/s) in atmosphere, Mach 7 (1.5 mi/s or 2.4 km/s) when they decide to throw them out an airlock towards enemy spaceships.



Parting thoughts. Like Lord of the Rings and Babylon 5, the events of Rifts Three Galaxies take place in the grandiosely named Third Age. The First Age is the Time of the First (honored were their names and godlike their deeds) and ends with their destruction at the hands of one of their own. The Second Age was the time of the Elder Races and ended with the Dominators' war against the universe. The only survivors of the elder races are the Star Elves (who hid) the Prometheans (who fought) though only the Elders really know their history goes back that far, and perhaps the Gene-Splicers. Oh, and the few surviving Dominators, and the Splugorth definitely existed in that timeframe, though it's possible they simply hadn't yet encountered the Three Galaxies. Then we have the Third Age, by definition everything from the end of the Second (50,000 years ago) onwards.

[SAMAS]

Like he said, the tanks and vehicles aren't even given pictures in the book, but they do say a few things about their makers:

The Phalanx is the standard CAF Main Battle Tank, and is a Wulfen design. It gets the name Phalanx because that's exactly what it is: a mass of shields (nearly one and a half times as tough as a Glitter Boy, and about 30% over most Earth tanks) with a mass of spears. In this case, the "spears" are a whopping five guns. The main turret mounts both a laser cannon and a Gravity Rail Gun, with a GR-autocannon in a cupola on top. The bow of the tank mounts a lighter version of the CAF shuttle's Particle Beam cannon as well as a flechette gun similar to a Glitter Boy's Boom Gun (nowhere near the range, but spreads out more to hit multiple targets, can do nearly as much damage as the Boom gun point-blank). And as if that wasn't enough, it also mounts a pair of laser mini-turrets for Point Defense and a 12-shot mini-missile launcher with three extra reloads. The Phalanx is also a contragravity vehicle, and can fly up to 120 miles per hour with a ceiling of 1000 feet. Unfortunately, it's not really designed to fight at altitude.

[Ahriman238]

Let me open with an apology, I seem to be making a great many goofs by assuming things that are later contradicted. It seems that the Three Galaxies DO have an FTL comm, but it's not real-time. Transmissions, which apparent use microwaves or lasers somehow enhanced with CG or Phase technology, are about an order of magnitude faster than the quickest ships, doing about 100 LY/hour. So a transmission between the furthest reaches of the Three Galaxies will still take about 2 months to arrive, while neighboring systems can usually hear back from each other within a day or so.

It seems that as a result of having less crap floating about and interference from gravity, all forms of FTL drive can go 5 times faster in the empty space between galaxies. This also applies to transmissions.

Wormholes happen. They form randomly, go to random places and soon vanish. They do appear more often near certain types of high-energy stars, so that's something. There is exactly one stable wormhole in the Three Galaxies, Tyr's Corridor, and both ends and all the intervening space are in the Kreeghor-dominated part of the Corkscrew Galaxy. Mind, even if your course happens to run by that way, you'll only shave about 2 weeks off your travel time. All empires and factions hunger for a quantum wormhole drive, like the Mechanoids and Dominators have, that would at a minimum double their FTL speed and likely increase it by an order of magnitude. The CCW, TGE and UWW all have the ability to create artificial wormholes for study but two problems remain. First, none of the involved parties have figured out how to make a wormhole take them where they want to go, rather than a random point in the universe. Second, it takes more power than a hundred frigates could provide to open a wormhole, unless done with magic. Creating a wormhole with magic is the pinnacle of skill, something less than a hundred casters in the Three Galaxies can do and even for them it's a huge strain. Plus, they can't do anything about the random endpoint problem, so it tends to get pulled out only when literally anywhere in the universe would be better than where you are right now.


CAF Battleram Mech

The largest mech in the CCW is also launched into space, apparently on the logic that "it worked on Gundam." Oh, supposedly it carries more serious anti-ship weapons and armor than most fighters and can fight on the ground besides. It can also serve as a boarding pod carrying a squad of troopers, or just 4 men in Silverhawk or Gropo armor.



So, the Mech is 70x40x30 feet, 220 tons with a crew of 2 or 3. It can run at 40 mph and finally broke the strength 50 barrier to be able to lift 3,500 lbs. It really is about 3x tougher than a fighter and has some shields besides.

Armament is 1 GR autocannon that actually does more damage than a Boom Gun with a 20-round burst, which it can manage 500 of at a 6 mile range. One high-intensity laser cannon of Boom Gun/fighter power level. It carries a single serious anti-ship missile in a pop-up back panel. plus 8 long-range, 16 short range, and 16 mini-missiles all for engaging fighters and other power armor/robots playing Gundam.



CAF SF-101 Black Eagle Fighter

The newest fighter of the CAF, a replacement to an aged human medium fighter design (unlike the Scorpion, which is less balanced and more interceptor) and seems to be one of the rare collaborative designs (I'm speculating here.) It's only been in service 20 years, and seen no major wars, but has done alright in the routine border skirmishes and pirate hunting.



The Eagle is 14x32x45 feet and weighs 12 tons, with life support and supplies for 6 weeks. Mach 7 (1.5 mi/s and 2.4 km/s) in atmosphere, thanks to actually being somewhat aerodynamic and Mach 16 (3.4 mi/s or 5.4 km/s) in space. Decent armor and shields equal to a Flying Fang. Armament is 2 laser cannon also a match for the TGE fighter, with 5 mile range, backed up by a GR gun with 30 round bursts, ammo for 200 bursts and a 10 mile (16 km) range. Finishing up with 48 mini-missiles.

There are actually three versions of the Black Eagle. The standard SF-101 I just described to you, then the SF-101A which mounts two anti-ship missiles and loses a lot of atmospheric performance for it (just like the Scorpion B) and the SF-101LR which has an FTL drive, 2 LY/hour, that nearly doubles the price tag.



CAF Hunter-class Destroyer

The runt of the Frigate size-group, the Hunter is probably what the Scimitar would be if it were designed with razor-sharp focus on a military purpose. The Hunter was the most common warship of the Wulfen Empire before it was destroyed by the Kreeghor and the survivors divided between two superpowers, operating in the infamous wolf packs. The Kreeghor used all their captured Wulfen ships for target practice and as war-game drones to reinforce their dominance over the Wulfen. The CCW on the other hand, integrated Wulfen units, including ships, and tactics into their own military. I do owe you an apology, I had previously assumed Wulfen design to be behind the Protector and another ship we;ll get to and so I said that Wulfen ships are normally triangular. As you can see, they tend to be almost as brick-like as Human Alliance vessels, with a lot more guns.



At 70x80x300 feet and 6,000 tons, the Hunter is less than half the size of a Scimitar, which is what happens when you have a vessel with similar armor and shields, but no large cargo hold, marine force, or room for 200 extraneous passengers. Hunters can do Mach 1 in atmosphere and Mach 9.5 (2 mi/s and 3.2 km/s) in space, CG drive does 4.5 LY/hour. The ship has a crew complement of 44. 24 to fly the ship, 10 marines in case of boarding, and 10 "pilots" which in these ship lists refers to anyone involved in flight operations including pilots, controllers and flight mechanics. There are supplies for 1 year. The ship carries 4 fighters, Scorpions or Black Eagles.

As much as possible, all the Hunter's weapons are inside the hull or retract when not firing, because turrets are vulnerable targets. The main armament is 3 particle beam cannon somewhat more powerful than the Scimitar's lasers, with a 10 mile range, one is in the nose the other two along the sides but all are confined to a forward firing arc. After that, the Hunter has 50 anti-ship missiles, though they cannot be fired in large volleys or salvos which makes them easier to evade or intercept. The ship has 4 retractable railguns for point defense, 10 mile range, then 4 laser turrets, 2 mile range, and 2 anti-fighter missile launchers with 160 short or medium range missiles each.

There are 8,000 Hunters in active service in the CAF. More than 2,000 more can be drafted from IDFs or otherwise brought rapidly into service in case of military emergency.



CAF Warshield-class Cruiser

Now we're getting into the big boys. The Warshield (another Wulfen design) is the standard cruiser used by the CAF for actual military purposes, though it's counterpart the Explorer cruiser is pretty formidable in it's own right. There are unspecified "thousands" throughout the CCW and sold to IDFs. The standard CAF battle group consists of 1 Warshield back up by 2-8 frigates (Scimitars or Hunters) and two dozen FTL capable fighters (Proctors or LR Black Eagles.) Also note the planet and moon CCW logo.



A cruiser is a big ship, 120x200x600 feet (37x61x183 m) and 100,000 tons, with room for an extra 10,000 tons of cargo. Standard crew is 382; 260 crew (in 4 shifts) with 82 marines and 40 "pilots." Supplies for 3 years, though rarely spends more than one year on deployment. It's shields are 5x stronger than a frigate's and it's armor 10x. Another thing about cruisers is they do not like atmosphere, Warshields are tough enough to take a controlled descent, but in atmosphere is restricted to 300 mph (480 kph) to avoid damage. In space, max speed is Mach 8.5 (1.8 mi/s and 2.9 km/s) oh, and a 50 year service life. Warshields carry a dozen fighters, usually half Scorpions and half something else, as well as 10 Silverhawks and 2 Battlerams.

The two big main guns you can see in the picture are the main laser battery. The cannons are an order of magnitude more powerful than any weapon yet covered and can theoretically one-shot a frigate. In practice, if it used both guns sure, one would cause massive damage but the ship should still be able to fly and perhaps fight. A Berserker with it's shields all front would take 2 shots from both guns. Oh, and they're now big enough to come with planetary bombardment rules! Okay, everything within a 40' radius (12 meters) of the shot is history unless it's an elder dragon, supernatural intelligence, god, major boss character or Mechanoid Spider Fortress. Everyone within a 100' (31 meter) radius is going to be incinerated in the thermal damage firestorm unless they're in a tank, bunker or wearing full-body MDC armor. Huh, that seems a bit... underpowered for orbital bombardment.

Anyways, the main lasers have a 100 mile range in space, merely 30 miles in atmosphere. After that are are 4 GR Cannon turrets as powerful as the main weapons of a frigate, 10 mile range and each has ammo for 400 bursts. There are also 4 laser turrets, also frigate-scale firepower with a reach of 16 miles and 2 anti-ship missile batteries that hold and volley up to 32 missiles each. Main armaments done, for point defense the Warshield mounts 8 particle beam turrets (6 mile range) 8 GR turrets (2 mile range, 500 bursts) and 8 mini-missile turrets (2 mile range, 128 missiles each.)

The ability of the cruiser to go anywhere and handle most trouble by itself is much touted (but sourcebooks are like that.) One thing I learned a lot about was the CAF and it's operations which are surprisingly... feudal. Each world is expected to have an Independent Defense Force (IDF) since help is at a minimum going to be hours or days away. These are subordinated to the 300 sector fleets that each oversee one 500 LY square sector. Then there are 8 fleets, I hate to call them federal, but they're the heavy hitters for wartime operations and defense against major invasion. Normally, each of the 8 fleets has 1-2 battleships, 1-4 carriers, 6-24 cruisers, 24-60 frigates and several thousand fighters (wildly divergent unit strength though) but in times of war they strip sector fleets and IDFs that aren't directly threatened to quadruple, even quintuple each fleet's strength.

[Ahriman238]

Quick detour to mention some CCW member races, one of which will be important before we get to the carrier.

In'valian Robo-Jockey

Pity the poor In'valians, a peaceful member of the Consortium, dedicated to science. Through extensive research they created a device that could form Rifts without using magic, and the first time they turn it on a cosmic horror with many tentacles comes out and it's all the local fleet can do to destroy it. Then all eyes turn to the Rift where a much bigger version of the creature glares at them and then screams killing or maddening all psychics on the planet. The Rift closed, but all In'valians had been exposed to the Wasting Disease. No one ever died directly from it, but many committed suicide rather than be reduced to an invalid trapped in a bed and barely able to lift their own limbs. The CCW brought in every possible expert, doctors, psychic healers, mages and phase adepts. No one could find a cure, or even a cause for the curse or disease or whatever was effecting the In'valians. Even full cyborg conversion couldn't help, the In'valian brain now died the moment it was separated from the body.The only thing that helped were robotic exoskeletons run by neural impulse, which at least enabled the In'valians to get up, move around and feed themselves.



The standard exoskeleton is about 7 feet tall, can run at 40 mph and lift a bit more than 500 lbs. However, a lot of In'valians can get obsessive about customizing their exo-skeletons and many get a combat model (the big one) either for traveling in dangeroud parts of the galaxies, or so they can join the military and prove they don't need anyone's help, and that there just might be some advantage in having literally learned to walk inside a suit of power armor. The bigger version is much more heavily armored, and even the glassteel canopy isn't as much of a weakness. Each arm can mount one heavy weapon, or two that infantry could normally carry and use.


Bushi Federation

Try and imagine the surprise of the CAF Discovery Corps when they found a 5-world empire with an identical government, culture and language to feudal Japan but populated by Oni. Okay, so these Oni aren't exactly demons, aside from being 7-8 feet, with twice the sense of smell and hearing of a human and bright red skin, they're not really all that different from humanity. The Oni say they used to live on Earth (which one is anyone's guess) but they were removed to their new home by the goddess Amaterasu who ruled over them until about a thousand years ago when she taught them all about science and technology and suddenly left for parts unknown.



So each world is ruled by a Daimyo, who answers to the Shogun and there's a religious figurehead Emperor. There are even zaibatsu run by the daimyo on the side! Anyways, the Oni had no desire to become another dominion of the Transgalacitc Empire, and so swallowed their pride and signed on with the Consortium, even if it meant reforming some of their traditions, like nobles being able to behead peasants without consequences.

I'll assume you're familiar enough with the romanticized idea of feudal Japanese culture that I don't need to go into a ton of detail. There are two Oni-only classes, the cyberai and ninja.

Though many Oni are warriors, only a relative handful have the will to sacrifice their humanity (onity? oni-ness?) to become the ultimate metallic meatshield. Oni are pretty advanced in metallurgy and cybernetics, enough to produce cyborgs equal to or better than Wulfen Quatoria. Better in a straight fight, though Quatoria have better senses.



Cyberai are 10 feet tall, can lift over a ton and run at 60 mph (96 kph) their bodies are heavily armored and very tough, and with their heavy armor on top they can take about 30% more punishment than a Glitter Boy. The armor is meant to be compatible with a jetpack. There's a mention of Cyberai having an integral personal shield but no stats or rules for it. They have the same nano-repair system as a Quatoria. Other than that, they have multi-optic eyes (Thermal, IR, UV, macro and microscopic vision) amplified hearing, 5 mile radar, gas filters for the lungs, universal translator, loudspeaker and integral radio. Oh, and their right hand can be transformed into a mono-edge sword. It even has a handle "in case they need to make a two-handed blow."

Only the most skilled and fanatical Oni warriors become Cyberai. Many work for the Oni government or CAF military, many more work for the zaibatsus. A handful become ronin mercenaries, but they're much more likely to suicide if rendered irrelevant or doing something that would cause their bosses to drop them.


Among the Oni, perhaps 1 in 10,000 has any magical ability, and they usually flounder for lack of a teacher. They have the usual range of minor and major psychics but any children born with the potential to be a master psychic is kidnapped in infancy by the ninja clans. You see, it is revealed in Rifts China that the Inner Strength psychics use to do their thing is the same as the Chi used by superhuman martial artists. So in theory, any psychic with time and training could learn to do Wuxia movie wire-fu. The Oni Ninja arts are very demanding, hence why they only take the most powerful psychics. In fact, by training from a young age and channeling absurd amounts of ISP, the Ninja actually becomes a supernatural MDC creature. Oni Ninja only have access to sensitive powers, though they can heal themselves through meditation. They start with three ninja powers and learn one more each level (except for second.) Some Ninja techniques are one-shots that cost a permanent sacrifice of ISP to give a permanent bonus or power. These I shall mark with a little star *.

Oni Ninjutsu:

Auto-dodge*
Art of Defense- training makes one very hard to hit
Art of Offense- boost attack speed and damage
Art of Stealth- muffle heat signature and move extra sneakily
Aura of Defense*- personal forcefield
Body Hardening*- extra MDC and strength, impervious to normal cold/fire, resistant to MD cold/fire
Death Strike- desperation move burns all available ISP in a save-or-die attack
Dragon Fist- strike does Mega Damage to supernatural creatures
Dragon Kick- more powerful version of Dragon Fist
Dragon Leaping Kick- more powerful version of Dragon Kick
Fast Hands- block or parry multiple attacks as quickly and easily as one
Spirit Fist- throw a punch from across the room
Face of a Friend- convince someone they know and trust you intimately
Inner Strength- temporary strength and speed boost, immune to fatigue
Unnoticed Walker- convince people you are nothing special, part of the scenery. Fools psychic senses.
Vanishing Act- flash of light, puff of smoke and psychic illusion of invisibility.

Officially, ninja are despised by the state as honorless assassins who give all Oni a bad name. But the Bushi Federation government (a federation with a Shogun and an Emperor, haven't been this amused by fictional politics since a 14 year-old girl was elected Queen.) is one of the clan's biggest employers, along with the zaibatsu and yakuza. Recently they've been branching out and quietly spreading word-of-mouth to the galactic communities. There have even been two jobs from the Kreeghor.


Bushi/CAF Katana Fighter

One of the largest and most successful zaibatsus, Bushido Industries, makes this fighter design. The CAF started buying them up by the thousands when Galactic Armory (builders of the Black Eagle) were unable to deliver in promised numbers. Though most famous as a CAF fighter, Bushido Industries is not shy about the fact they'll sell to anyone who has the money, so a lot of independent governments, mercenaries, pirates etc. have them. In fact, the fighter has been so successful it's taking a large bite into Naruni Enterprises' fighter market, triggering a shadow war between the two corporations.



The Katana is 12x40x50 feet, 15 tons, and can sustain a pilot for 3 weeks. Mach 8 (1.7 mi/s or 2.7 km/s) in atmosphere and 14 (3 mi/s and 4.8 km/s) in space. The fighter's basic armament is 1 particle beam cannon with a 2 mile range and missile racks for 4 serious anti-ship missiles. The three main attractions are the ship having stronger shields than other fighters (half again as mush as a Flying Fang or Black Eagle) being exceptionally manuverable for a medium fighter, and the existence of 2 modular weapons pods that can be swapped out for a variety of payloads. There's the plasma cannon pod that's as powerful as a frigate's main weapon but has a maximum range of 600 feet (eep!) or the pod with 48 mini-missiles for taking down enemy fighters, the pod with 2 more anti-ship missiles and a laser half as powerful as what most fighters mount, or the AA pod with 16 anti-fighter missiles and a grav gun with 200 bursts. You can mount any combination of 2 pods, and a skilled service crew can swap them out in 15 minutes or less.

[Ahriman238]

Capital ships in this setting are more than 1,000 feet long and over 200,000 tons. For the longest time, there was an ultimate mass limit of 60 million tons for all common FTL drives, and it was actually the Kreeghor who first broke it with their Doomgiver Dreadnaught (the designation for any ship over the old limit is Dreadnaught) and the CCW who were left scrambling to catch up. Ever since launching the first Doomgiver, the Kreeghor seem to have largely given up on other capital ships, while the CCW continues to use battleships and carriers and has only very recently, over much protest from the Noro and other pacifist member states, begun building a couple of Dreadnaughts of their own. As seems to be the case from fighter to frigate to cruiser, capital ships are several times tougher and more capable of dealing damage than the classification below them.


CAF Protector-class Battleship

Shaped oddly like a Star Destroyer, Protectors are meant to be fleet flagships and more than capable of wading in on their own. The main weapons are 4 40 inch laser cannons twice as powerful as a Warshield's main lasers in 2 batteries of 2. While the shields are 3 times more powerful than the Warshields and the armor more than 5 times heavier.



So the ship is 600x800x4000 feet and weighs 15 million tons. It has a crew of 1245, with 2500 troops (and over a hundred vehicles and 240 power armor/mecha) and supplies for all of them for 2 years. Speed is Mach 9 (1.9 mi/s or 3 km/s) in space, the ship cannot handle atmosphere, and can actually outstrip most ships at 6 LY/hour FTL. The main armament, as mentioned is a small set of huge lasers (they also have orbital bombardment rules, just double the figures for the Warshields') and for secondary armament have 2 of the same lasers as the Warshield, 8 frigate-scale laser cannon and 4 grav guns and 4 antiship missile launchers with 32 missiles each and fully capable of firing them all at once. In case of fighters it has 8 long-range anti-fighter missile launchers (62 missiles per launcher) and 16 each; GR guns, particle beams and mini-missile launchers (128 missiles per turret.)

If any of these prove insufficient deterrent, there's always the auxiliary craft. 42 fighters, one 12 fighter squadron each of Scorpions, Black Eagles and Katanas, plus 6 Star Ghosts so they really have options. They also have 48 Silverhawk armor and 6 Battleram mechs. I also suppose the Kreeghor aren't the only ones who have to stage invasions in awkward waves, since by my count it would take the ship's 4 combat shuttles 3 round trips just to unload all the infantry, nevermind the vehicles.

There's no hard data on how many Protector battleships there are (alas, we seem to have left hard numbers behind at the frigate level) but just counting deployments from this and the next book I can say there are definitely at least a dozen, and I am highly confident there are at least 20, and consider 80 a reasonable figure based on fleet descriptions.



CAF Packmaster-class Carrier

Another work by the Wulfen, at least one or two Packmaster Carriers can be seen over every Wulfen planet in the Consortium as part of their defense fleet. Until the new Dreadnaughts, this was the only ship in the CAF bigger than a Protector at a full mile long. True, it only seems to have a cruiser's armament but it's a carrier and if it ever has to fire it's guns in anger, you're doing something wrong.



Oh, the scaling blots in descending order are; a Naruni Broadsword fighter, a Scimitar frigate, a Battleram mecha, a Hunter destroyer, and a Kreeghor Berserker.

The Packmaster is 1,000 feet tall and wide, and exactly one mile (1.6 km) long, it weighs 50 million tons and has room for 5 million tons of cargo. It can go Mach 7 (1.5 mi/s or 2.4 km/s) in space and isn't built for atmosphere. There is no data available on FTL speeds, crew complement, range and the ship appears to lack shields while being only 60% as armored as the Protector. As I said, it is armed with 2 lasers identical to a Warshield's (except the hard kill radius on an orbital strike is 60 feet instead of 30) with a secondary armament of 4 frigate-scale lasers, and 2 antiship missile launchers with 24 missiles each and volley capability. Point defense has 8 grav guns, 12 p-beams, and 12 mini-missile turrets (128 missiles to a turret.)

Of course, the point of a carrier is to get a lot of fighters to a warzone, then give them a safe place to rearm, refuel, repair and for the pilots to rest. The Packmaster carries 500 fighters, 350 armor/mecha, and 50 assault shuttles. The standard fighter complement includes; 200 Scorpions, 140 Black Eagles, 100 Katanas, 40 Star Ghosts, and 20 Proctors. The power armor section breaks down into 320 Silverhawks and 30 Battlerams. The 50 assault shuttles are, well, exactly that.

The Packmaster can be pretty scary with all the firepower launched from it, particulalry since the TGE doesn't seem to have a dedicated carrier, though their cruisers interestingly enough carry more fighters than the Consortium's cruisers, and a Doomgiver can launch 900 fighters. Again, there are no numbers for how many carriers the Consortium has, just a few suggestions that they're substantially more common than battleships.

[Ahriman238]

And now a little love for the UWW.

Naruni Fire-Eater Fighter/Bomber

Not having the vast number of worlds and resources the Consortium does, the United Worlds of Warlock buy a lot of their fighters from private corporations, like Naruni Enterprises or Draygon Industries. There may actually be more Naruni Broadswords and Fire-Eaters in the Warlock fleets than their own Shadowbolt creations. Unlike the Broadsword, the Fire-Eater is meant to be a fighter-bomber and deliver a serious punch to ships, stations and ground targets. It is also frequently seen in the forces of small governments, planetary defense fleets and pirates.



The Fire-Eater is 12x30x40 feet and weighs 15 tons. It is about 25% more armored than a Flying Fang fighter, with the same shields. Speed is Mach 2 (0.4 mi/s or 0.7 km/s) in atmosphere and Mach 10 (2.1 mi/s and 3.4 km/s) in space. The two large underslung guns are plasma autocannon that fire 20 round bursts (and can fire 200 bursts) up to 2 miles in space, 4000 feet in atmosphere. On the bottom side is a missile/bomb bay that can carry either 16 anti-ship missiles or up to 32 AI-guided bombs. The gun on the upper section is a laser, a token effort to provide some dogfighting ability, with minimal damage for a fighter weapon and a range of only 1 mile.



UWW Arcane Mk II Patrol Ship

The UWW's primary patrol ship, a standard frigate built around a novel weapon, Inglix the Mad's Deathcloud Cannon. The way the cannon works it creates a Rift linking the gun to the bottom of an ocean somewhere, and then spews out a supersonic wall of frozen ice droplets. It sounds like another impractical weapon idea from Rifts, but think about it a moment. The damage multiple the faster you're moving into it, and the larger your ship is. Now there's a cloud that's death to fighters, a serious hazard to larger ships and does a nice job of diffracting most sensors. In fleet actions, they use large numbers of Arcane IIs for area denial.



The ship itself is 70x80x100 feet and 10,000 tons. There are 108 in the ship's list, 60 crew and 4 dozen marines. Flight is Mach 8 in space (1.7 mi/s or 2.7 km/s) in space, no word on atmosphere. Like all Warlock ships, the FTL is a Rift Drive, which works basically like nBSG Jump Drive (the ship teleports.) The ship can only safely jump 20 light years (40 in the intergalactic void) and the PPE generator which can store only enough for exactly one jump, needs 4 hours to recharge in-between. The PPE generator also powers the Deathcloud cannon, lightning rods and can be tapped for spellcasting, in which case the generator will need a bit to charge enough for a jump, anywhere from seconds to hours depending on how much was taken. Oh, and the spells need to be renewed every 500 jumps. In place of shields it has Armor of Ithan which is more flexible in some ways (it can be raised again immediately after falling, and is sort of stronger) and less in others (it can only be raised 3 times a day, the shield as a whole must be brought down, no juggling power tricks.)

Primary Armament is the Deathcloud cannon, and I already went over that. Backing it up are 4 laser batteries with a 5 mile range, about as powerful as a double-blast from a Flying Fang's lasers. It also has 4 anti-ship missile batteries with 96 missiles each (384 total) and 8 lightning rods for point defense (1 mile range, unlimited ammo. But spells need renewing every 2 months.)

The ship has 48 Warlock Marines, some of the most feared warriors in the Three Galaxies onboard. It will also have 4 Shadowbolt fighters and 2-12 spellcasters.



UWW Iron Ship-class Cruiser

Never tell a dwarf what he can and cannot do. The Dwarven Guildmasters were pretty much bound to the earth (metaphorically, not Earth) with a 19th Century tech-base but enough knowledge of Rifts to travel to other worlds that way. Then they were visited by a trader in a spaceship, and they thought it was a fine idea to fly among the clouds and the stars. But he laughed and said with their technology they wouldn't be trekking across the universe for a very long time. Well, know the pride of Dwarven craftsmen was at stake. So they hammered and forged and riveted as they always have, until they built a steampunk spaceship, and they layered enough wards, runes and sigils on it to make it capable of holding air, tough enough to survive reentry and to do everything their technology couldn't but a ship needs to do. They even kludged together a Rift Drive from a verbal description of one! By the time they got the SOS and saved the Warlocks and Elves from the Splugorth (the moment that created the UWW) they had a fleet of over 4,000 Iron Ships. When the UWW Fleet was formed, the Dwarves volunteered their entire fleet to form the nucleus. Now actually having advanced technology, they can produce similar ships in a fraction of the time for about 8% of the cost. Almost a quarter of those ships have perished since, but the Iron Ship cruiser is still the beating heart of the UWW fleet, thanks in no small part to a number of techno-wizards tweaking the design to keep it current, adding fighter bays and bottled demon missile launchers, for instance.



The ship is 160x80x800 feet and weighs 120,000 tons. 411 crew total: 245 actual crew, 16 techno-wizard engineers and 150 marines. As you'd expect for a cruiser, the hull is nearly 10 times stronger than an Arcane IIs and the Armor of Ithan is 5 times stronger. Speed is Mach 8 in space (1.7 mi/s or 2.7 km/s) and in atmosphere a leisurely 200 mph (320 k.) As with the Arcane II, the Rift Drive jumps no more than 20 light years, and despite the ship's PPE generators being 12 times faster with 10 times the storage capacity the Ship still cannot jump faster than once every 4 hours, or the Rift Drive could destabilize which would lead to Very Bad Things.

The primary weapon of an Iron Ship is a Rift Projector, a weapon that forms a Rift more-or-less on top of, nearby or inside a targeted ship and from there on out anything can happen. No really, it's a terribly random weapon and for all you know could send the enemy back in time standing over your crib with a gun. After that, are Flame Cannon, that shoot massive fireballs doing cruiser-level damage with a 20 mile range. The're also a bit faster firing than most cruiser weapons. Secondary armament includes 4 frigate-firepower laser turrets (16 mile range) and 4 bottled demon launchers (32 missiles per turret.) There are 8 particle beam turrets (1 mile range) for point defense.

Iron Ships carry 4 dozen fighters (dwarves are big on the numbers 4 and 8, and further multiples thereof) usually 36 Shadowbolts and 12 Naruni fighters, either Broadswords or Fire-Eaters.


There aren't any UWW capital ships in this book, but cheer up! I heard their main battleship has a Deathcloud variants that fires solar flares. The Kreeghor may have most of the warrior races, and the CCW the good technology and feel-good culture, but the UWW is closest to the spirit of RIFTS in that it runs on crazy awesomeness.

[Ahriman238]

TGE Smasher-class Cruiser

The main cruiser (and I suppose by default, carrier) of the Kreeghor. The standard TGE formation is a cruiser flotilla with 3 Smashers escorted by 6 Berserkers. These flotillas move freely throughout the space of the rebel Free Worlds Council, but cannot deploy ground troops, so they normally destroy whatever is in space, then smash any obvious industry, infrastructure or food silos from orbit and move on. In kind of a weird reversal, the Smasher is less heavily armored, shielded and sort of less armed than it's opposite number in the CAF (the Warshield) but is somewhat more flexible by virtue of having far more fighters.



The ship is 208x160x600 feet and weighs 70,000 tons, somewhat smaller than a CAF Warshield. It has less than half the armor and only 60% of the shields of a Warshield. Crew is 195 with 200 marines (no landing ships) and supplies for one year. The ship cannot fly in atmosphere, in space it can do Mach 9 (2 mi/s or 3 km/s) in space. It's contra-grav FTL drive is also slower than a Warshield's at 4 LY/hour.

The big forward pointing spike is the main laser spine, it has the same range (100 miles) as the Warshield's main guns but is half again as powerful as one (but not two firing together) and optimized for planetary bombardment. There are 4 laser guns, 2 each on the top and bottom that are slightly more powerful than most frigate guns/cruiser secondaries with a 6 miles range. Smasher's also have the 2 missile batteries of a Berserker cruiser, most Smasher captains commanded Berserkers first and they often fall back on the hyper-aggressive charge when they get desperate. There are 8 GR turrets and 8 mini-missile batteries for point defense.

Smasher cruisers serve as carriers for 36 Flying Fang fighters, triple the fighters of their CAF rival.




TGE Doomgiver Dreadnought

The biggest and meanest kid on the block, the supership considered impossible to build until the Kreeghor built it. Easily twice the size of the CAF's largest (the Packmaster carrier) with more firepower than some small fleets, the Kreeghor have been known to send a Doomgiver alone to subdue many of the smaller unaligned star empires. Presently, the Empire has 23 Doomgivers in active service, a 24th was captured by the Free World's Council and rechristened Hopegiver. Now it's their flagship. There is a canon conflict, wherein Fleets of the Three Galaxies says the Doomgivers are flagships for the fleets of the Kreeghor, but Phase World Sourcebook says that Doomgivers often go unescorted simply because no one is trusted with the power of a Doomgiver AND a fleet.

No picture sorry, or rather I have two sad halves of a picture and not the skill to alloy them together.

Doomgivers are 2 miles long, 2000 feet tall and 3000 feet wide, weighing in at 100 million tons. 3200 crew, not counting the 8000 marines and 1500 'pilots.' The ship has supplies for 2 years. The armor is half again as strong as a CAF Protector, and the same shields (10x as strong as a Berserker's.) The ship can do Mach 7.5 in space, no FTL speed listed. Doomgivers actually can handle atmosphere, but are restricted to 100 mph (160 k) and outside of a couple of Kreeghor core worlds there aren't many landing fields or sites that can accommodate the dreadnought.

The main weapons are 2 overpowered horn cannon (like the Fang and Berserker) that are 4 times as powerful as a cruiser's main guns with a range of 120 miles. Even planetary bombardment has the hard kill radius doubled, and twice as much heat damage to twice the area. It has 6 cruiser-scale laser cannon, 8 frigate-grade particle beams and 4 Berserker missile launchers for secondaries. For point-defense, the Doomgiver has 24 GR guns and 24 laser/missile turrets with 32 anti-fighter missiles apiece.

For auxiliary craft, the Doomgiver carries 600 Flying Fang fighters, a further 300 Fang variants used only by Doomgiver squadrons which mount 2 anti-ship missiles just like the Scorpion and Black Eagle variants, and finally a whopping 6 Rain of Death shuttles to land it's troops with. Yep, 6 shuttles that can carry 60 infantry each, and a marine complement of 8,000.

[Ahriman238]

Intruders

Mysterious and very advanced aliens from another galaxy (outside 3G, I mean.) First contact with the CCW was an attack on the remote colony of Marvel II. The colonists held out long enough for a sector fleet to show up, which destroyed the invaders but only at great cost. Since then, there have been over a dozen attacks particularly against the Kreeghor. To date no attempt to communicate with the aliens or figure out their intentions has worked out, but the Consortium keeps trying.



All the Intruders seem to have some sort of auto mind block that prevents telepathic contact with anyone outside their own species. There is a second shorter variant with a swollen head and vast telepathic powers, capable of contacting other intruders at light-year ranges, tentatively labeled 'Beasts' and 'Brains.' They have an 'armor' that's a sort of advanced personal forcefield (their solid-energy technology) that regenerates damage almost instantly and lets them fire off fairly potent energy blasts.



Relatively early on, the CAF managed to capture and study 3 Intruder fighters, called Spinnerettes using phase weapons on Star Ghost fighters, which it seems their forcefields do not stop. The fighters self-destructed exactly 70 minutes after the deaths of the pilots, taking out the research team. What they were able to get out is that the ship consists of a single chair in a cage with a display screen and control console, the entire outer hull being another solid energy forcefield. This hull is pretty strong, regenerates instantly and is completely weightless and frictionless. The forcefield hull also absorbs most sensor beams, and Intruder ships cannot be consistently spotted farther than 1,000 miles away.

The fighters can do Mach 20 (4.2 mi/s or 6.8 km/s) in space or atmosphere, and Mach 10 (2.1 mi/s and 3.4 km/s) underwater. The fighters have a fold-space FTL drive that can cover 100 light-years in an instant jump and make 5 jumps a day. With the forcefield hull up, the Spinnerette is 10 feet high, 9 weet wide and 30 feet long, and it weighs one ton in any case. It looks like a flashing, spinning, color changing shard of crystal. The ship projects energy from the same mechanism that projects the hull, 5 mile range and almost twice as powerful as most fighter weapons.

The larger frigate class ships have been designated 'UFOs.' They are also a metal projector lattice inside a forcefield. The ship is crewed by 10 Brains, and carries 60 Beasts and 6 Spinnerette fighters. The UFO can do Mach 20 in vacuum, atmosphere and underwater, and like the Spinnerette has a fold-space drive that covers 100 light-years a jump and can jump 5 times a day. With forcefields up, the ship is 70 feet tall by 200 feet square, and weighs 2,000 tons. They're tough for a frigate, and regenerate. The UFO also has a self-destruct that goes off 70 minutes after the last crewman dies, and can only be detected at 2,000 miles. It can project a frigate-scale energy beam a bit faster than one per second (6 shots in 5 seconds) and can fire anti-fighter beams 7 times per second.

There are many rumors regarding what the Intruders want, the nastier ones have them as ruthless conquerors, or minions of a supernatural intelligence fueled by all the death they cause in it's name. The sanest is that a Kreeghor explorer fleet stumbled upon and glassed their homeworld, and now they're here for payback. It is left up to the GM/players which rumors they want to be true.


Necrons

Rising from antediluvian slumber in the crypts of their Tomb Worlds, these mechanical monsters will stop at nothing to- wait, what? That's 40K? Okay, do-over. Rising from the grave- wait, they aren't undead? Okay, what are Three Galaxies Necrons? <reads book> Oh, they're thinly veiled ripoffs of the Yuuzhan Vong from NJO. Right, they're Vongcrons.



Ok, the Vongcrons are humanoid, about 8 feet tall. They have great nightvision, supernatural strength and endurance (a really buff one might lift half a ton) slowest regeneration that technically still counts, need half as much sleep as humans and can 2 weeks without rest in a pinch. Oh, and they look like ugly flayed people. They have a couple of special psychic abilities, they can form telepathic/empathic bonds with their living symbiotes and can actually sense complex machinery, which they seek out and destroy.

Necrons are divided into worker, warrior and religious castes (hey!) and tend to like ball-and-chain and stick weapons (spear, glaive, javelin, scythe-thing) when not using symbiote weapons.



The Necrons are led in faith and war by a religious caste that makes up 12% of their population, and consists entirely of witches. If you haven't read the main thread, witches in RIFTS swear themselves to some alien power, a supernatural intelligence or demon lord usually, and gain some small trifles of mystic power in return. Witches are usually accompanied by a familiar, in truth the avatar of the entity they make a pact with and the source of their power. Some few are directly possessed by their "benefactor." Necron Witches, however, have their familiar take the form of a symbiote that latches onto their backs. These witches will know 8-14 spells from the standard wizard list, and perhaps a handful from some other school. Witches are so common, they're even used as squad leaders.

Necrons have an MDC creature that wraps around them and acts as living armor, the sha'wrek. They have three different organisms they use in place of guns, Scorpa spiders latch onto their arms and fire energy blasts, while a Vasher rifle eel converts solar energy into lasers and a Sapcee lizard spits concentrated acid if you squeeze it's tail. Lykra pikes are formed from the excretions of a lykra mollusk, the most prized are master Lykra pikes which still have live Lykra inside, and can thus fire magic blasts or focus PPE to carve through most substances with ease. With the exception of the armor and rifle, all a Vongcrons symbiotes can move and fight on their own, and it's not uncommon for a squad to be accompanied by several Scorpa or Sapcee. Hygra Bugs eat garbage and are used as acid grenades, while super Hygra Bugs can eat through a ship's hull and so are used as breaching and demolition charges.

Gona'grek living power armor totally encases a warrior, making him look like a hulking chitinous beast with bat-wings and a lobster claw. It acts as a space suit, as well as making the warrior much tougher, stronger and capable of flight. It also shoots the odd energy blast from the eyes, has a built in Vasher and natural acid-sprayers and a flame-thrower.



Posh, as the living starfighters are named, were sort of giant space-dwelling cuttlefish the Vongcrons tamed and altered. 2 pilots permanently bond with the posh. It's a bit fragile, but has a powerful psionic forcefield much stronger than any other fighter. A healthy adult Posh is 18x21x25 feet and 11 tons. The ship lives of PPE leeched from space ley lines or drained from UWW ships. Posh can do Mach 10 (2.1 mi/s or 3.4 km/s) in space and Mach 2 (0.4 mi/s or 0.7 km/s) in atmosphere and are not FTL capable. The main weapon is a PPE magic cannon that starts at a basic power level for a fighter, but can quadruple it's power if needed. It can also fire some 60 odd spikes with railgun-like velocity. In extremis, it may simply latch onto a ship and try to rip it apart with telekinesis and it's own tentacles. TK can also be used like a tractor beam to hold any ship or satellite that weighs less than 15 tons in place.



The Necron Behemoth Destroyer is AFAICT their only true starship. Behemoths are big mothers, 768x1180x4890 feet (240x360x1500 m) and 30 million tons. A carrier for 600 Posh fighters and as many as 5,000 troops (standard is only 2,000) with 1500 or so normal crew. It's big and tough enough to rate as a battleship. Speed is Mach 8 (1.7 mi/s or 2.7 km/s) and never going to fly in atmosphere. FTL is 6 LY/hour with a special note that it isn't subject to the normal hyper limit of 10,000 miles from an Earth-sized planet.

The main weapon is a Gore Cannon, which regurgitates the Behemoths food and launches it at the enemy, following up a moment later with a faster projectile made of an equal mass in antimatter. The main one is a cruiser-scale weapon, and there are 6 smaller frigate-scale Gore Cannon. For point defense it has 8 'launchers' for spines like the Posh does, and 8 small tentacles that can fire energy blasts from the tip. It also has 6 tentacles, 600 feet long for when it closes with small-to-mid-sized ships, usually transports since trying to hug warships rarely goes well.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think its a bit unfair to call the Necrons 'Yuuzhan Vong Ripoffs' given they were created about five years before vector prime.

[Ahriman238]

I think its a bit unfair to call the Necrons 'Yuuzhan Vong Ripoffs' given they were created about five years before vector prime.

I wasn't going to call them that until I saw the publish date for Anvil Galaxy (where they come from) which is 2003, right around the time NJO was wrapping up. It could be the book was a late edition or reprint, so you may be right.

[Ahriman238]

CAF Explorer-class Cruiser

The CAF Discovery Corps is responsible for space exploration, first contact missions, and high profile diplomacy. It's basically the Starfleet counterpart to the more serious and conventional CAF military. At least one sourcebook says the Discovery Corps is 50% of the CAF, but in all books it's considered the elite of the CAF. In the Consortium, explorers are glorified where soldiers are not, even if those same explorers have a military rank and are absolutely expected to contribute in a military crisis.

Nowhere is the divide more obvious than the Discovery Corps' prized Explorer Cruiser. It's bigger, faster, and more heavily armed than the standard CAF's standard Warshield Cruiser, with twice the shields and triple the armor. Aside form having the top-shelf sensor arrays and well-equipped labs you'd expect.



Let's get down to brass tacks, the Explorer is 348x375x2475 ft. (106x114x754 m) and 8.5 million tons. Standard crew is 875 crew and scientists, with 4 companies (640 men) of troops, half infantry, half mechanized and supplies for a 5 year mission (hey!) Explorers are not rated for atmosphere, and can do Mach 13 (2.7 mi/s or 4.4 km/s) in space. FTL speed is 6 LY/hour standard, but can do 7 for a few hours in an emergency before seriously damaging the engines.

The main weapon of an Explorer is the same 40 inch double laser that forms the main battery of a Protector battleship, on a belly turret. It also has 2 forward-mounted lasers equal to a Warshield's, both main weapons have a range of 100 miles. Secondaries include 4 particle beam turrets of frigate-scale power, two forward and two aft with a 12 mile range. Then 2 antiship missile launchers with 32 missiles each and 40 complete reloads in the hold. For point defense there are 4 long-range missile launchers, then 10 turrets with railguns and short-range mini-missiles.

Finally, the Explorer carries 24 fighters, usually Black Eagles and/or Katanas, plus 36 space-going power armor, 2 mechs and 2 assault shuttles.

[Ahriman238]

Religion and the Forge War

In the Three Galaxies there are a million or so religions on various planets. Among spacers and spacefaring civilizations, there's only one religion worth talking about, the worship in one form or another of the First and their creation the Cosmic Forge. Oh the names and emphasis change, many believe they're the chosen people, the heirs of the survivors of the First and the Forge will come to them if their faith is just strong enough. Others believe in scientific research, and proving themselves worthy to the Forge by developing an understanding of the universe equal to the First. Many more see the grand search for the hidden Forge in more literal terms and scour the cosmos for it. But more people believe in the Cosmic Forge than not, and how could it be otherwise with Cosmo-Knights running all over the place? Even the Noro, who don't exactly worship the Forge believe it told them to save the universe from war.

But everyone who has a chance to leave the ground dreams of finding the Forge, acquiring unimaginable power, immortality and leading their species in the greatest development it ever has, or could have, made. And every government, even those that don't believe in the Forge per se lie awake at night wondering what happens if their rivals find it first. Heck, the Kreeghor have 'locate the Cosmic Forge' as a major strategic objective, ostensibly because the CCW has grown so large and powerful they're uncertain of a fast and sure victory without an edge, in truth because their actual ruler, the Dweller, wants to eat the Forge and steal it's power.

So there has been a long-running 'cold war' with frequent skirmishes and sabotage between all the groups looking for the Forge which is, well, every group with a dozen or more people. For now, it's confined to the Anvil Galaxy which is the center for the space-going ley lines and long rumored to be the hiding place of the Forge. But residents of Anvil live with the certainty that it will one day become a very hot shooting war that will engulf the Three Galaxies, and may just cause a RIFTS Earth-like reaction of death flooding the ley lines and rifting in all sorts of weird things.

There are nine common variants on the basic theme (the Forge is out there, waiting for the worthy to discover it) each inspired by a sighting of some device or anomaly that may or may not be the Forge. The Galaxies hold a lot of weird stuff, alright? These are collectively called the Nine Heresies, and most serious searchers will consider at least a few to be plausible, and at least a few to be nonsense. See what you think:


I. The Koreda Matrix is a planet-sized computer discovered by the Zelduni Empire. It queried everyone it encountered with math problems no one had ever heard of, and destroyed them if they couldn't answer. So the system was quarantined until a rival empire went to war with the Zelduni and the Matrix and both empires simply vanished. A few of their worlds have been seen since, lifeless rogue planets covered in ruins. Believers think the Matrix was the Forge and you need to find it and discover whatever mathematical discipline it's using to gain the power cosmic.

II. In the heart of the CCW's Anvil territory, there is a quarantined planet called Soribin. The local Ba'ku Soribu live in harmony with nature and rural simplicity and crap in a single village where the Great Complexity, a perfect scale model of the Anvil Galaxy, provides heat, light and eternal youth. Any mage who gets near the thing goes mad, any psychic who scans it gets a blinding headache and a polite but firm request to leave. Anyone else who touches the thing gets turned into a Soribu, all memory of a previous life erased. Believers try to get through or around the killsats and touch it so they can live forever as one of the Forge's chosen people, free from sin. Yeesh. I sure hope that isn't the real Forge or I'll be sorely disappointed.

III. Ranthall's star seemed a fairly ordinary white dwarf, but the first time someone seriously scanned it, it turned from a fusion-based star into a ball of unidentifiable energy and zipped off faster than light. It also changed course at one point to fly through a planet where 1% of the people gained superpowers, 1% were struck dead, and 98% were left to wonder what in Valen's name just happened. All the super-people felt a 'calling' in the stars and left, leaving that part of the story surprisingly hard to verify, though eyewitness accounts say their powers seemed very like a Cosmo-Knights.

IV. In the Gurvian system, which has had constant warfare almost throughout it's history, a foolish man laid his hand on a metal cube which he'd found in a crashed starship (no survivors.) He wished the war and death would all... go away. Next morning he woke to find himself the only man in the whole system. Video of him stumbling around and logs of his desperate comm calls are preserved. He came to believe he and the artifact were responsible and swearing to prevent it from harming anyone else, climbed into a ship with it and set a course for the far side of the universe. Cubists believe this artifact was the Forge, and the crazy nihilists want to find it and destroy everything.

V. Thousands of years ago, the advanced Vaast Empire dominated half of Anvil until their program of racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing united the rest of the galaxy against them. The Vaast, masters of both automation and psychological warfare, sent their flagship the Meganaut into the black at their final stand, so the automated ship could flank the attackers and convince them a whole fleet was with it. But the Meganaut never showed and the Vaast were destroyed to the last child. Just 17 years ago the Meganaut resurfaced and atomized a TGE task force before transmitting the following to all corners of the Galaxy "I live! The time of hiding is over, and my day of glory has just begun. Bow your heads before the shape of the future, for mine is the power cosmic to make and unmake as I alone see fit. No longer shall I remain content to be the tool of some nameless masters or the device of some fool's petty desires. I am, and shall be, High Lord over all I have created, now and forever. Mark well my words, for when you hear them again your reckoning shall be at hand." Then it vanished again. Mega-nuts believe the Forge somehow fused with the ship and has become a wrathful god, and wage holy war against everyone else to save not just their souls, but their lives, because the only way to survive the Meganaut is to submit to it. More skeptical people refuse to take anything an AI programmed for psychological warfare says at face value.

VI. The Splugorth Rynncryyl claims his predecessor almost had the Cosmic Forge in his grasp, and would have claimed it had he not been betrayed and murdered. More, he says coming so close gave him a great deal of data to aid in hunting the Forge, and to create an artifact, the Endless Eye, to contain it and use it's powers. This is the Splugorth version of the Forge cult, that Rynncryyl WILL find and capture the Forge, because he alone is worthy to rule the Megaverse. This is not widely accepted outside of Splugorth space for good reason, it's a propaganda scheme Rynn made up, then convinced himself of after millennia of stubbornly defending it. The Endless Eye is roughly as useful for snaring the Forge as a soup strainer.

VII. At the juncture of major trade lines between the UWW, CCW, TGE and a dozen minor governments is Kotus Point, a well-known landmark and hazard. It was a black hole that released X-Ray bursts so intense it would scramble the sensors and navigation of any ship that approached within a light-year. But it's so commonly avoided it took a while to notice, but somewhere inside a 20 year window between scans, Kotus Point turned into a white hole emitting antigravity so intense no ship can come closer than a light year. White holes may just be the rarest stellar phenomena in the Three Galaxies, and Kotus point is the largest, most accessible and the only one with before-and-after scans, so it's become a focus for the theory that white holes are the Forge's way of communicating to us mortals. Now a thousand ships representing all factions surround Kotus Point recording and analyzing the static for patterns, being ready to leap into action should the situation somehow change, and uneasily eyeing their neighbors.

VIII. The Eight Heresy, the Voidmakers, comes form a human think-tank formed 250 years ago. The basic idea is that the Forge is an extremely advanced gravity manipulation device, and that CG technology advanced enough to produce black holes on demand will be a watershed technology that will lead the Forge to reveal itself and submit to whoever makes it. At the very least, it might stabilize their wormhole issues and revolutionize space travel. Voidmakers are the most empirically driven, their sole focus is to develop better counter-grav tech, though some experiments have gone haywire. Another point is that there's a sizeable human supremacist faction among the Voidmakers that doesn't want to ask aliens for help or include them in the search, lest they get to the Forge first. They really are their own worst enemies. The CCW media loves to portray them as mad scientists playing god, which doesn't help their credibility.

IX. Every year starting over 300 years ago, 333 different people on 333 different worlds in Anvil share a dream of flying through the stars, landing on a paradise world and being told that this and cosmic power can be theirs if they turn their backs on the One and the madness of the great Unmaking, whatever that means. Anyone who is evil amends their ways after having the Dream, and all become prophets and proselytizers and occasionally political leaders. On a few worlds this has lead to religious war. Skeptics note anyone can say they've had a dream and all their decisions are correct because the Forge approves, and the blissed-out and vacant look of many true believers can be concerning as well, Anvil has some experience with mass insanity.

[SAMAS]

Yeah, about Kotus Point...

After a few years, It stopped broadcasting, and a giant DEMON PLANET popped out of it and started slaughtering everybody. Turns out it was a trick by the Demons of Hades, to kick off their invasion of the Three Galaxies.

Yes, the Space Opera dimension is getting invaded by Demons. Thing is, it's just a small part of their big war against the Devils.

[gigabytelord]

Yeah, about Kotus Point...

After a few years, It stopped broadcasting, and a giant DEMON PLANET popped out of it and started slaughtering everybody. Turns out it was a trick by the Demons of Hades, to kick off their invasion of the Three Galaxies.

Yes, the Space Opera dimension is getting invaded by Demons. Thing is, it's just a small part of their big war against the Devils.

Goddamn demons, why can't they just leave our universe alone?

Starting to cramp our style yo.

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, about Kotus Point...

After a few years, It stopped broadcasting, and a giant DEMON PLANET popped out of it and started slaughtering everybody. Turns out it was a trick by the Demons of Hades, to kick off their invasion of the Three Galaxies.

Yes, the Space Opera dimension is getting invaded by Demons. Thing is, it's just a small part of their big war against the Devils.

Ah. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say that one isn't the Cosmic Forge. At least there was already a heavily armed and alert fleet there.

[SAMAS]

Yeah, a fleet that at the moment was getting into something of a brawl.

When they say "Demon Planet", there is no exaggeration there. They tend to be 20-80,000 miles in diameter. That is to say, they start bigger than the Earth. They have 20,000-12,000 tentacles that stretch up to a thousand miles from the surface, and a gaping maw a thousand miles wide. They literally eat moons, planets, and even suns. Imagine them as the bastard offspring of Ego the Living Planet and Unicron.

The one that came out of Kotus Point was roughly three times the maximum size: Cormal, the Devourer of Worlds; pretty much the Big Daddy of all Demon Planets.

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, a fleet that at the moment was getting into something of a brawl.

When they say "Demon Planet", there is no exaggeration there. They tend to be 20-80,000 miles in diameter. That is to say, they start bigger than the Earth. They have 20,000-12,000 tentacles that stretch up to a thousand miles from the surface, and a gaping maw a thousand miles wide. They literally eat moons, planets, and even suns. Imagine them as the bastard offspring of Ego the Living Planet and Unicron.

The one that came out of Kotus Point was roughly three times the maximum size: Cormal, the Devourer of Worlds; pretty much the Big Daddy of all Demon Planets.

Essentially correct, though I have to add that the text is contradictory regarding sizes. The fluff text says planetoid-small moon sizes with only a handful being large enough to generate 1 G naturally. The stats section says they start out roughly Earth-sized.

Oh, and you forgot the part where they can generate interdiction fields to prevent FTL escape and reel ships in, can fire cosmic energy blasts as potent as cruiser weapons, and have approximately all the psychic and magical powers with hundreds of thousands of PPE and ISP to burn. They're also covered with organisms to defend themselves and destroy intruders.

Every psychic who encounters the sheer evil and hatred of a demon planet is traumatized. Best case scenario they go comatose almost immediately and make a full recovery after a couple of years of sleepless nights and jumping at sudden noises. More likely is a lifelong affective disorder, psychosis, terror or obsession with demon planets. Worst case scenario, the demon planet possess the psychic and uses them to kill everyone.

Pretty much the only reason demon planets haven't eaten all Anvil is there aren't that many of them, and their FTL kind of sucks. They can only do 2 LY/hour for 2 days at a time before they need to stop and consume a planet or star to keep going. And once in a system, unless in a hurry to reach a specific objective, they'll hang out long enough to eat ALL the planets, the star and any large or interesting objects.