Bit of Analysis: Rifts Dimensions

[Ahriman238]

Fun Fact: Sometime around 109 P.A., both Spike Tail and Truk somehow ended up on Rifts' Earth.

That's interesting. Of course, there are enough strange D-Bees and adventurers running around Rifts Earth that no-one's likely to give them a second glance. Outside of Triax and the Coalition, that is. Yeah, I bet the Coalition would have lots of fun with them, Chi-town is probably the closest thing Earth has to Rylor, they'd feel right at home evading security there.


Epoch Riders

The Burning Scythe's organization. Far too vast for even a decent partial listing, apparently, having folded into itself every other resistance group and most Bio-Freak communities in East Sector, as well as controlling half the black market there. So this is going to be a couple of Scythe's lieutenants, the policy-setters for the largest organization of superhumans on the planet.



Three-Eyes Klynt is Scythe's right hand Seerman and operations manager, and the only one privileged to know about Scythe's immortality. Klynt was born one of (probably THE) most power psychics on Seeron, and with 3 unusual eyes, double-slitted. His parents doted on him, but he was orders of magnitude more intelligent than them, with vast mental powers they couldn't understand, and he never overcame thinking of his family as limited, lesser beings. At age 13 he was recruited as a Special Agent of Control, but the more he saw of the Tarlok, the more he saw them as dumb thugs, trying to dominate or destroy that which they could never understand. He escaped Control while on a mission, by murdering the Dreadmaster he reported to and fighting his way past 4 berserk Dreadlors. Some time later, he met Scythe and for the first time in his life recognized an equal, even superior being.

Don't get me wrong, Klynt is still smart, manipulative and ambitious, but he already has basically unlimited freedom and resources as Scythes Number One, and for nothing he wouldn't have to do himself if he were the boss. It helps that Scythe and Klynt are really close friends with no major secrets, Scythe trusts Kylnt implicitly.

Klynt is a Master Psychic with 250 ISP and all "lesser" (healing, physical, sensitive) powers. His super (psychic) powers are Bio-Manipulation, Psi-Sword, TK Forcefield, Mind Wipe, Hypnotic Suggestion and Mentally Possess Others. Almost all his tricks work even on other powerful psychics owing to his force of will. He lost a hand at some point and got a cybernetic replacement of his own design with 2 vibro-blades, an ion blaster, a drill and the clenching strength to snap steel bars, with the precision to grasp your fingers. Klynt is Scythe's go-to man for accounting, hacking, research, and intelligence. He commands a large group of Master Psychics to probe the ranks for disloyalty or overweaning ambition, track the movements of Control, and spoof their psychics. Klynt is a skilled torturer who likes to work over traitors and spies when he has the time and it is practical to do so.



Pytr Piper, who prefers just "Piper" or his occasional nickname "Mr. Payback" is also a Seerman Master Psychic, Klynt's best enforcer, assassin, and fireman. Piper is often sent to where Rider operations are hitting a snag, because he has a gift for finding the most efficient solutions to problems. His reputation is that he'll give a fellow Epoch Rider one frank explanation of what's gone wrong and how to fix it, and if this lieutenant doesn't listen, Piper will kill him and find someone competent, or at least afraid enough of him to do exactly as he says. The other thing he spends most of his time doing is eliminating troublesome criminals, Control agents, and rival resistance leaders. Piper is extremely loyal to Klynt and Scythe, who have given him wealth and power.

Piper has 180 ISP, still good for a dedicated psychic. He has most lesser powers, and his super (psychic) powers are Electrokinesis, Psi-Sword, Psi-Shield, Bio-Regenerate, Mentally Possess Others and TK Accel Attack. Piper is skilled with all ranged weapons, particularly sniper rifles, and knives. He's also great at research, cards, computers, disguise, driving, climbing, and is a passable pickpocket.



Booma was once EmaLee Hoystin, who lost her family to the Tarlok Invasion. She got full-conversion into a Cyborg and worked with one of the first handful of Skrayper teams after the originals died for years. Then she was captured by Control and pulled apart by the Shertar so they could hurt the chewy meaty bits underneath, Her team rescued her 2 weeks later, but the damage was done. She became more obsessed with revenge, starting fretting less about collateral damage and civilians until her teammates kicked her out. Scythe and Klynt recruited her 4 years ago, thinking it'd be nice to have the legitimizing force of a high-profile hero on the team. Her old Skrayper team publicly claimed that Booma was just infiltrating Scythe's organization (what a terrible thing to say if it were even half true) so she publicly killed her former leader and lover, Glory Guy, to prove herself. Those rumors still persist though.

Booma is completely focused on revenge against the Tarlok, prefers to work alone or with small teams that don't slow her down with whining and moralizing.

As a Full-Conversion Cyborg, Booma has 280 MDC, 630 when wearing her heavy armor. She can lift ~1500 lbs. and run at 140 mph/224 kph. She has an integral radio, bio-computer (that one's new, but I can guess) gyro-compass, clock calender and loudspeaker. Her eyes are multi-optic (IR, UV, thermal and nightvision, plus telesopic and microscopic) with the left having a laser besides. Her right arm has 2 retractable vibro-blades and a chemical sprayer, the left has a wrist and slightly weaker finger blaster, plus a grapnel hook. She has a removable gauntlet she can wear other either arm with 2 mini-missiles, and usually carries 8 more in a backpack. About half of each thigh is hollow, hidden storage compartments.


So yeah, Klynt does the management and intel stuff for Scythe, Piper does a lot of the killing and leg-breaking. As far as I can tell, Booma is the psychopath criminal organizations always have in movies, whose sole purpose is to be scary and make you wonder who keeps hiring/bringing this guy to do jobs.



Dark Quorn



Thelgiar Quorn was a young independent hero in West Sector, until the Tarlok captured, tortured and tried to brainwash him. He broke, but not the way they'd expected and after a brief stint as a Control stooge, he escaped while on a mission (lot of that going around.) Quorn's mind was shattered into MPD, maybe worse, and he has displayed 3 distinct personalities so far. The dominant one appears to be "Dark Quorn" a ruthless and vengeance driven villain, but every so often he'll randomly switch gears and be the old "Hero Quorn" or even more rarely, the naive "Child Quorn." This has earned him a reputation as an unpredictable man, one who can and has broken down crying in the middle of battle, or turn bat an eye at 30 civilians caught in a crossfire, then risk everything to save the life of one child. One time he beat a man half to death in a terrifying rage, then stopped and said "That's enough. We all make mistakes. Go... just go clean yourself up. And be more careful the next time, OK?" Heroes, villains and Control alike can't figure out what this guy's deal is, and ironically the ones who just shrug and say "he's crazy" are the closest. Quorn has staked out a territory in Rylor he runs like a fief, he protects his people from the Tarlok and other villains in exchange for money and unswerving obedience. He has his own team of villains who spend most of the time fighting the Tarlok, fulfilling his desire for payback. The one consistent thing about Quorn's behavior is that he'll help anyone who gets in trouble with Control, just to spite his one-time tormentors.

Powers-wise, Dark Quorn has Superhuman Strength (can lift roughly 6.5 tons) and Invulnerability (1129 MDC) Flight (at 340 mph/547 kph) and Energy Expulsion (Electricity.) So flying brick with electric blasts. Maybe not the most creative, but serviceable enough.

His nameless wrecking crew get only brief, one-line descriptions in the book. Bad Ax (the pun! It burns!) is an arrogant 17-year-old Talu speedster who can make energy axes. Killer Klav is a Bio-Freak with Multiple Limbs, Super Energy Expulsion and a Healing Factor. The Imitator, in truth an 18-year-old named Nax Malc, is even cockier than Bad Ax with powers to Bend Light, Energy Resistance and Mimic (power copying.) Red Mad looks like the Red Hulk grew spikes all over, is the oldest of the group at 26 but has the intellect and maturity of a ten year old and has Invulnerability, Supernatural Strength and Body Weapons. Finally, Quizzler is the team psychic. There are also usually a small crowd of young street-toughs working for and with Quorn's people.

[Ahriman238]

The Power Brigade

Probably the most successful villains in West Sector, because they have tons of firepower and pick their fights very, very carefully. The Power Brigade don't have political motives, they figure the rule of law is coming apart, might as well get ahead of the curve and start looting now. The group of pretty disparate people was brought together by their leader, Nightwitch, a career criminal and master manipulator who knows exactly what drives her people, and how to get them to get along. Most of the group have become great friends, with only Six-Barrel remaining anti-social.



Nightwitch is living the dream, having a crew that'll let her pull any job, bonus points for all being nakama. Born Angel Bryz, fourth child of an impoverished Seerman household, she was ruthlessly mocked and bullied for her lack of money and marginal psychic powers. Ran away from home at 15, when her powers manifested to join a gang. Got bored with the gang, too smart for them and too independent for the mob, so she went solo and spent 6 years building a rep before she went recruiting. Nightwitch always knows exactly what her people need, and provides. She is meticulous and methodical in her planning, though she improvises well she hates to have to. She has a self-assurance that borders on megalomania, she and her crew will make it thorugh any odds, because any other result is unacceptable.

Nightwitch has the basic Seerman psychic powers; meditation, sense evil, mind block and clairvoyance, plus two of her own in alter aura and telepathy. Good for hiding from psychics and getting information, only has enough ISP to use 2 or 3 powers in an hour. For super powers, she has Darkness Control, which lets her create and control large clouds of darkness, and Nightstalking, which makes her tougher and stronger in the absence of light, and gives her perfect nightvision. You see where this is going? She also has CEF: Air, which means she can control wind, from small subtle movements that can mimic telekinesis, to bowling people over with a blast of wind. She also has some limited weather control, but two things she can do is call down a bolt from the blue (in a clear sky!) and given a minute to work, she can whip up and sort of control a tornado.



Hammerjack is a rather bitter Bio-Freak named Treg Jax. He hates the whole world, except for the the Power Brigade, other Bio-Freaks and children. He's the only besides Nightwitch without a "joining the team" story, which makes me suspect it was just the two of them in the beginning. How sad if it were true! You see, Hammerjack loves Nightwitch, and she does not return the affection, which they both know, and Jax is too self-loathing for any sort of relationship to work, which they both know. She manipulates him with this all the time, getting him to stay with the team and do other things she sees as in his best interest, and they both this too.

Hammerjack has Supernatural Strength (can lift 15.25 tons) and Invulnerability (1081 MDC.) He is an expert streetfighter and boxer. But taking hits and breaking things are all the skills he brings to the table.



Slinger (Jon Toran) was a young Skrayper when he decided the profit margins of a criminal and mercenary liked him better than noble self-sacrifice. One day he sort of teamed up with the Brigade and never left. He still does solo jobs from time to time.

Minors first, Slinger has Extraordinary Endurance and a Healing Factor and somewhere along the way picked up 236 MDC. He does have superhuman strength, to the tune of lifting 6 tons. But his main shtick is Manipulate Kinetic Energy. Brief review, that power lets him double the force (damage) or range of any thrown weapon or object, or to "program" maneuvers into it, like arcing around obstacles, ricocheting off surfaces or returning to his hand. Insane accuracy with thrown weapons isn't part of that power, but that's what obsessive training is for!

Slinger regularly carriers 6 throwing knives, 6 throwing stars, 6 throwing spikes, 2 discuses (disci?) 4 large throwing irons and 12 golf-ball sized ball bearings. He further carries 36 arrows, on the theory that with his power he can throw them faster and more accurately, if not further, than any bow. His signature weapon is a bladed ball-and-chain, that energizes. A formidable enough weapon in superstrong hands, but the worst of both worlds for anyone facing him. See, swinging the ends around counts as throwing, as far as his power is concerned, but remaining in contact via the chain means he can still apply his power. So he can, say, make the ball slide around any attempted block, or if he misses have it bounce off of air and return at full force. Or if he's not feeling creative, he can just apply his power to whip the thing around twice as hard or fast as he could using muscle-power alone.



Skullknocker was god-king of an underground community of 7,000 odd Bio-Freaks and refugees who worshiped their protector as the avatar or return of an ancient Talus war-god. Nightwitch was intrigued by stories that leaked to the surface, and though Skullknocker casually defeated her team, she was able to lure him into hide-and-seek in the tunnels and best him through guile. Then she convinced him the place for a "god" wasn't hidden underground, that his daring exploits should be on the lips of millions. As long as he stuck with her, Nightwitch promised him fame and challenges worthy of his power. Ever since, he's been the team's big gun and second in command, a position he accepts because 'everyone knows' he could be the boss if he really wanted, but he's lazy and complacent enough not to want the responsibility. Skullknocker is, at heart a simple Talus who wants three things from life, good fights, good booze, and easy women. Against all expectations, he, Sligher and Hammerjack have turned into solid drinking buddies.

Skullknocker is very strong, can lift 7.5 tons. He's not exactly the average big strong brute though, too fragile with just 268 MDC. On the other hand, he has Gravity Manipulation which lets him pick up things 100x heavier than he could with strength alone so...750 tons? Okay, that's a bit scary, even if it's not like all that strength will be realized in a backhand. He also has Extraordinary Endurance, so he'd have a major edge in not tiring if everyone nad their grandmother, including the entire Tarlok species, didn't already have it. Oh, but he does have one little power I haven't mentioned. Alter Physical Structure: Fire. Our boy here can turn from an 8-foot mound of muscle into a humanoid inferno, capable of tossing aorund firebolts, fireballs, firebreath, conjuring roaring walls of flame, etc. and can't be hurt by conventional force (now, a garden hose, on the other hand.) He also has this weird sort of flight/teleport hybrid power. He can turn into a stream of fire and fly at 300 mph, but needs to land every second or two to sort of collect himself, make sure all of him got their and and he can rebuild himself alright. For most practical concerns, it's a tactical teleport, but going against a speedster or real teleporter it might matter at some point.

His weapon of choice is a Tarlok warclub, which can fire energy blasts or be charged with energy to do extra damage. Of course, it's a 60 lbs/27 kg metal bar, if it's brought down on someone's head that's all she wrote, energy charge or no. I suspect the idea of a weapon "mortal" men would find it hard to wield effectively appealed to 'Knocker.



Six-Barrel used to be an engineer named Blum Wriith, we'll get back to what he is now. The Tarlok have no concept of robotics, and the science is still in it's relative infancy (compared to Triax anyway) on Seeron. But when a company started putting together a fancy war-bot to sell to the Tarlok, a resistance group (secretly, the Shadow Government) hired Nightwitch and the Power Brigade to steal it, destroy the plans, and reprogram the bot to work for them. Wriith was Nightwitch's inside man for the job. Well, things went south, Wriith was caught in the crossfire and mortally wounded but used his dying breath to upload his brain into the robot. It was meant as a means of remote control while they figured out the finer points of programming, and all the engineers had done it and returned to their fleshy bodies again, but now Wriith's body was all a mess. Well, they got the robot, and they destroyed the plans but Wriith insisted on sticking with Nightwitch, so they only got half-pay for the job.

Over time, Six-Barrel has become more detached, and more sadistic to his enemies. He spends all his time and money on improving himself in his hidden workshop. Nightwitch worries that he's losing his humanity and coming to see all life as his enemy, and she's correct. Six-Barrel and Skullknocker really, really rub each other the wrong way, and have almost come to blows a few times.

Six-Barrel is 7 feet tall and has 425 MDC. His strength enables him to lift 1,500 lbs. He can run at 300 mph/480 kph and boot jets help him jump 50 feet high or long, double with a running start. He has thermal, nightvision, laser targeting, integral radio, a translator and loudspeaker, and radar. Extensive computer support tracks targets and suggests firing positions, as well as handling all number-crunching and interfacing on a subconscious level. He works fine underwater, to unspecified depth, and has two small arms inside his chest for delicate tool use or opening doors where big gun arms are unwelcome. They also let him maintain and repair himself. His right arm has a grenade launcher (4 grenades, 1200 ft/366m range) a high-powered laser (sniper weapon) and ion blaster and finally a retractable vibro-sword. The left arm houses a second laser, an automatic rifle that can fire exploding bullets (80 rounds) and a flamethrower. He has hidden compartments in his legs, the right has a hold-out sidearm.

[SAMAS]

Fun Fact: Sometime around 109 P.A., both Spike Tail and Truk somehow ended up on Rifts' Earth.

That's interesting. Of course, there are enough strange D-Bees and adventurers running around Rifts Earth that no-one's likely to give them a second glance. Outside of Triax and the Coalition, that is. Yeah, I bet the Coalition would have lots of fun with them, Chi-town is probably the closest thing Earth has to Rylor, they'd feel right at home evading security there.

Actually, it seems they were hanging around Tolkeen.


Spike even picked up a Shattergun on his way there.

[Ahriman238]

Wow. When I'm done with this and the world tour, I really need to break into Siege of Tolkeen. Also Psyscape and Federation of Magic, since they apparently had some serious revisions and additions.

[Ahriman238]

Next is the Charizolon system, Seeron being but the latest in almost a thousand years of Tarlok conquest and colonization. About five minutes of google-fu revealed the numbers given were coming from someone's ass, and nobody involved subscribed to the idea of a "Goldilocks Band" where liquid water can exist. I'm pretty sure the Forschell/Avunlor thing can't work either, but I could be wrong and it's fun to try.


Charizol itself, the sun, is a yellow star (good news for Kryptonians?) roughly 25% smaller than our own Sol, but twice as hot.

The first planet is Vuulok, homeworld of the Tarlok and seat of their Empire. Vuulok is 3.4 times the size of Earth, but has only 1.3 Gs. Lots of low-density metals? It also orbits Charizol at 62 million miles (0.67 AU) which actually puts it closer to it's sun than Venus, and recall Charizol is a lot hotter than our sun. Vuulok is home to 39.4 billion Tarlok, give or take a few thousand.

Next we have a binary pair, two planets orbiting around a central point, drawn by each other's gravity. The larger, Forschell, is a Jovian gas giant roughly 66% the size of our own Jupiter, with 5 moons. The smaller, Avunlor, is an aquatic super-earth exactly the same size as Vuulok, with exactly the same gravity but 4 more hours to a day. I can't see how this adds up to a stable orbit. Anyways, Avunlor and 2 of Forschell's moons are habitable, while a third had microbial life in the distant past and one of the remaining is home to a great shipyard. These are 87.4 million miles (0.94 AU) from Charizol. There are around 4.5 billion Tarlok in this part of the system, on Avunlor or the moons of Forschell, and a Tarlok battlefleet permanently stationed to protect their interests. There is a sentient species native to Avunlor, and 2 on Forschell's moon Razuul. Each of the 3 number over 10 billion.

Then Dilm, 23% larger than Earth but with 0.86 Gs, and 110 million miles (1.18 AU) from the sun. There are two sentient species, both fliers and numbering just under a billion each. Here the Tarlok have only 0.6 billion troops stationed. One airless moon, Nel-Nel by name, has a Tarlok military base with 100,000 troops and 3 fighter squadrons, and a relay for messages moving into the inner/outer system.

Next is Talavera, home to the Seleniak aliens the Seeronians eagerly visited and caught the Plague from. There are actually 3 sentient species on Talavera, but I'll get to them. Talavera is roughly Earth-sized with 1 G and 1 airless moon. It has a 24 hour day and is 156 million miles (1.67 AU) from the sun. The population is still much reduced from the Plague and invasion, with hardly a billion natives to 3.3 billion permanent Tarlok residents.

The 6th planet is Seeron, which is only 67% the size of Earth with 0.96 Gs and orbits the sun at a distance of 202 million miles (2.17 AU.) As previously mentioned, there are 3 moons, Etopia is habitable where Texlor and Zeg are not. This doesn't stop them from being the sites of a prison and a Tarlok base, respectively. There are 20 billion humans on Seeron, 3.3 billion Tarlok and 450 million slaves, allies or vassals of the Tarlok. Yeah, there really aren't enough Tarlok to provide adequate control for a rebellious and troublesome population.

Finally, Trath is the 7th and last planet, almost twice the size of Earth, lifeless at 276 million miles (2.96 AU) from the sun. It does have a thin CO2 and nitrogen atmosphere, a small sea, and vast underground rivers and caverns and a few species of fungi. Trath is a major Tarlok slave mining operation, with 7 million slaves and 4 million Tarlok as overseers. It's vast mineral wealth feeds the empire and justifies it's major spaceport, which is also the last port of call for Tarlok ships leaving the system to explore the universe or visit Phase World.


So yeah, there's your system map. I mention this largely because I respect the effort that went into providing numbers, even if I think the numbers are sad. Also, to emphasize how many and widespread the Tarlok are. I make 51.4 billion in all. Sure, it's not the "10 for every man, woman and child on Earth" I was thinking of my first read through, but considering how physically powerful a Tarlok is, I'm thinking it's close enough. And yes, 11 different sentient species evolved in this system, not counting the human variants since they can still interbreed.

Next I'll get into more details about the aliens.

[Highlord Laan]

Wow. When I'm done with this and the world tour, I really need to break into Siege of Tolkeen. Also Psyscape and Federation of Magic, since they apparently had some serious revisions and additions.

No, you don't. It was a steaming pile of bullshit written for the sole purpose of making the CS look cool. It was merely poorly thought out writing up until Final Seige, at which point KS went full retard, completely ignored what was written in other world books (Lazlo and the Xiticix primarily) and made up some super-general that was somehow able to move an entire mechanized division, with air assets, through the Hivelands in a move to outflank Tolkeen's defenders. And managed to come out with a force that was still combat capable.

Also:
-Death camps for DB's
-Roving bands of CS soldiers out for the sole purpose to wipe out whole villages of "undesirables"
-Carpet bombing refugee convoys
-The CS is still totally just a misunderstood regional superpower with the misfortune of being led by an evil man, and the guys running concentration camps are really just people that have been fooled into thinking they're doing the right thing.
-Cyber Knights and everyone else on the continent just shrugs and goes back to their own business, despite the CS being on their doorsteps.
-The CS trains, equips and fields a million man combat force, loses it, the trains, equips and fields another one to acheive victory.
-Ends the war with a booming economy, a surging population, and a massive war surplus.

[SAMAS]

Also:
-Death camps for DB's
-The CS is still totally just a misunderstood regional superpower with the misfortune of being led by an evil man, and the guys running concentration camps are really just people that have been fooled into thinking they're doing the right thing.

Actually, they were basically concentration camps for Tolkeenites in general. Then when the war wound down before the final push, orders were given by the asshole general who set them up to destroy them. IIRC, Some commanders complied, others were liberated first, and one commander (a CS viewpoint character) let the prisoners go.

Note: That last part was actually a bit of a sore point with me, in that there was never a Tolkeenite viewpoint character to contrast.

-Cyber Knights and everyone else on the continent just shrugs and goes back to their own business, despite the CS being on their doorsteps.

Actually, the Cyber-Knights are busy escorting refugees to the Dakotas with the help of the Juicer Army of Liberation, Larsen's Brigade was on their way to help, but got caught up in a war against a Demon army that likely has something to do with the Minion War. Allistair Dunscon is using the war to tighten his grip on The Federation of Magic and planning his own campaign of "Retribution". The Lazlos are busy trying to both fortify their own defenses while taking in and trying to assimilate even more Tolkeen refugees. There's not a whole lot else they can do at this point.

-The CS trains, equips and fields a million man combat force, loses it, the trains, equips and fields another one to acheive victory.

Yep, as you likely have realized by now, Palladium does have a problem with sensible numbers.

[Simon_Jester]

The first planet is Vuulok, homeworld of the Tarlok and seat of their Empire. Vuulok is 3.4 times the size of Earth, but has only 1.3 Gs. Lots of low-density metals?

Planetary mass and volume, for a constant density, scale with the cube of the radius, because volume of a sphere is proportionate to R cubed.

Planetary surface gravity scales with mass divided by radius squared- so it increases with the radius, not the volume. Therefore, surface gravity is proportionate to (R cubed) divided by (R squared), or just plain R.

So Vuulok's surface gravity would (if it were identical to Earth in composition) be G, times the cube root of 3.4... 1.5G on the nose. Assuming by "3.4 times the size" you mean volume and not radius. In that case, Vuulok just needs to have a relatively small nickel-iron core, and I think you'd be OK.

If it's got 1.3G surface gravity and 3.4 times the radius, I think you'd need the planet to be hollow.

Next we have a binary pair, two planets orbiting around a central point, drawn by each other's gravity. The larger, Forschell, is a Jovian gas giant roughly 66% the size of our own Jupiter, with 5 moons. The smaller, Avunlor, is an aquatic super-earth exactly the same size as Vuulok, with exactly the same gravity but 4 more hours to a day. I can't see how this adds up to a stable orbit.

A planet with 66% the mass of Jupiter would have roughly 200 times the mass of Earth. Forschell has roughly 3.3 times the mass of Earth, so Jupiter outweighs Forschell by about 60 to 1. By comparison the Earth outweighs Luna by 81:1, so the common center of gravity of the Forschell-Avunlor system is probably (like that of the Earth moon system) physically inside the larger planet. No problem.

The real issue would be the presence of the massive Avunlor tending to expel any other moons of Forschell from the system. The orbits of the other moons would be highly distorted... unless, of course, Forschell and Avunlor orbit very far apart (i.e. millions of kilometers, in which case they're pretty loosely associated, and a near pass by anything else of planet size would cause the two planets to go their separate ways, and this might even occur naturally over time due to perturbations caused by solar gravity or that of other Jovians in the system). A radius of millions of kilometers for the mutual orbit would also allow the common center of gravity to be outside Forschell.

Now, if Vuulok or Avunlor has 3.4 times the radius of Earth, given its surface gravity its mass would have to be about 15 Earth masses (very fluffy for a planet), but that's still about 1/12 the mass of Forschell. In that case, it's more like the Pluto-Charon relationship, still very credible, but in all honesty the little moons of the system should be catapulted out into space over the long haul.

Then Dilm, 23% larger than Earth but with 0.86 Gs, and 110 million miles (1.18 AU) from the sun.

OK, this suggests a pattern of all the planets in the system, with the notable exception of Seeron, being on average considerably less dense than Earth. The whole system might have a different balance of metals to make that credible. More silicon and less iron, maybe...

The 6th planet is Seeron, which is only 67% the size of Earth with 0.96 Gs and orbits the sun at a distance of 202 million miles (2.17 AU.) As previously mentioned, there are 3 moons, Etopia is habitable where Texlor and Zeg are not. This doesn't stop them from being the sites of a prison and a Tarlok base, respectively. There are 20 billion humans on Seeron, 3.3 billion Tarlok and 450 million slaves, allies or vassals of the Tarlok. Yeah, there really aren't enough Tarlok to provide adequate control for a rebellious and troublesome population.

Actually, it probably is. Having ten warrior overlords for every 60 or so peasants would be enough... unless of course a huge number of those overlords have superhuman powers that make them a match for a fully armed and equipped warrior overlord, even when deprived of equipment and training.

So yeah, there's your system map. I mention this largely because I respect the effort that went into providing numbers, even if I think the numbers are sad. Also, to emphasize how many and widespread the Tarlok are. I make 51.4 billion in all. Sure, it's not the "10 for every man, woman and child on Earth" I was thinking of my first read through, but considering how physically powerful a Tarlok is, I'm thinking it's close enough. And yes, 11 different sentient species evolved in this system, not counting the human variants since they can still interbreed.

The population of the Earth would have been 5.14 billion in... oh, 1988-89, so it's pretty close.

[Ahriman238]

I'd sort of assumed death camps for D-Bees/magic-users was the Coalition's thing, to be honest.

Planetary mass and volume, for a constant density, scale with the cube of the radius, because volume of a sphere is proportionate to R cubed.

Planetary surface gravity scales with mass divided by radius squared- so it increases with the radius, not the volume. Therefore, surface gravity is proportionate to (R cubed) divided by (R squared), or just plain R.

So Vuulok's surface gravity would (if it were identical to Earth in composition) be G, times the cube root of 3.4... 1.5G on the nose. Assuming by "3.4 times the size" you mean volume and not radius. In that case, Vuulok just needs to have a relatively small nickel-iron core, and I think you'd be OK.

If it's got 1.3G surface gravity and 3.4 times the radius, I think you'd need the planet to be hollow.

I really do learn the most interesting things about math, physics, chemistry and occasionally military R&D when I do these threads. Thank you, Simon. Surface gravity proportional to radius, I'll remember that.

Sorry if I was unclear about size, all planetary sizes here are given in equatorial diameter. So, effectively the same as radius. So the hollow super-earth with dinosaurs? Jules Verne would be so pleased.

Now, if Vuulok or Avunlor has 3.4 times the radius of Earth, given its surface gravity its mass would have to be about 15 Earth masses (very fluffy for a planet), but that's still about 1/12 the mass of Forschell. In that case, it's more like the Pluto-Charon relationship, still very credible, but in all honesty the little moons of the system should be catapulted out into space over the long haul.

I stand corrected.


Aliens of Razuul

So let's talk about the most habitable and heavily populated of Forschell's moons (Vizah having a small mining colony of 1,000 and Kriin's 1.5 million slaves and overloads processing minerals from asteroid mining) called Razuul. Razuul is half-again the size of our own Luna (again in diameter) but enjoys 0.7 Gs and circles Forschell every 21 days, tidal locked. That's fast. Sorry for the geek-out, only moon we're given anything like size, gravity and orbital time for.

Anyways. About 20% of Razuul is covered in shallow sea, but there are freshwater lakes and ponds beyond measure so that 30% of the remaining surface is taken up by marshes, mud-flats and swamps. And most of the remaining half of the surface is (or was, rather) jungle and rain forest. The humidity is a killer, except for the poles it rains almost daily and the average temperature is 89 F. Razuul was the Tarlok's first interplanetary conquest, almost 800 years ago, and they've since turned it into their personal Forge World, with strip mining, vast factories with zero environmental concerns, slashing and burning the forests and other acts of Captain Planet-style villainy.




The Glinerach avert the Three Galaxies mostly-humanoid alien convention hard, being something between a giant flatworm and a ray. There normal position is crawling on the ground or swimming the shallow waters, but they can stand upright and since being conquered almost always do in the presence of aliens. Vision is achieved by 18-32 eye-spots along the front rim area, providing 300 degrees of vision. Glinerach eyes are meant for murky water and darkness, and see IR light, and they're rather near-sighted in normal daylight. As amphibians who generally stick to the solid earth, Glinerach can still hold their breath 13-18 minutes and dive down 300 ft. They have 21-36 MDC (less 5 MDC for the belly) and can can regenerate slowly, bisect one and they'll be whole in 6 months. Their backs are covered in short quills or spines, tipped with one of the most potent hallucinogenic substances known to the system. A Glinerach's venom is a trip and a half, and it'll be hours before you can even think about pursuing them, unless you work hard at building up a tolerance.

Glinerach are easily the most intelligent species in the system, and powerful master psychics. They have ever thrived on riddles, logic puzzles, thought experiments and philosophy, and love discourse and debate, music and art. They are also extremely compassionate and moral beings. Naturally the Tarlok despise their weakness and distrust their intellect. As powerful psychics, they fall under the auspices of the Dread Chief and are employed as investigators, prison guards, interpreters and sometimes as interrogators. The Dreadmasters love forcing Gline to do something uncomfortable, and the Glinerach sometimes withhold information they learn or let a prisoner go when they're reasonably sure they won't get caught. Or if it seems worth their lives and the inevitable reprisals against their people anyway. A handful of Glinerach have been seconded to Seeronian universities as teachers and consultants about medicine,physics and mechanics. Secretly, they also teach philosophy and art, useless subjects the Tarlok have ordered dropped from all schools in their dominion, except the Shertar ones.

The Glinerach in the normal state of affairs communicate with telepathy. It's fast, reliable and overcomes language barriers. They can make whistling, clicking and trilling noises, but do so only for musical purposes. Disliking this means of communication, the Tarlok have every Glinerach sent off world or coming into regular contact with them surgically fitted with crude cybernetic voice boxes. The Glinerach have no native sense of modesty, but the Tarlok insist on loose robes. Partially to reduce the risk from those spines, but mostly because Glinerach biology freaks them out. The Glinerach used to just rise periodically to survey the area, the Tarlok have forbidden them from being prone in the presence of their betters.

As master psychics, they have 70-516 ISP and the following powers: telepathy (special, 10x normal range) lesser TK, super TK, TK push, float, levitate, ectoplasm, see aura, object read, mind block, group mind block, auto mind block, mind bolt, telemechanics, read dimensional portal and mask ISP/psionics. They also start with 2 more physical powers and 2 sensitive or healing. Add 2 lesser or 1 super psychic power every 4 levels. Lacking hands, the Glinerach use telekinesis and ectoplasm for tool use and manipulating their environment.

63% of the Glinerach died from the initial Tarlok Plague sent to soften them up, more died in the invasion. Even now, there are only 64.4 million Glinerach in the entire universe, and one in six of them have been spirited from their homeworld to serve the needs of the Empire. Most Glinerach have accepted the futility of struggle when they are so close to the Tarlok's seat of power, they believe they will be free only in death and enjoy life too much for the moment. Many more believe Seeron is the only planet in the system with a realistic chance of winning freedom, and a few hundred Glinerach on Seeron have defected to aid the Skraypers.




The Nazeer are predatory psychics who have evolved alongside the Glinerach in a sort of mutual psychic arms race. When the Tarlok came, the Glinerach had no technology or recognizable tools at all, the Nazeer had simple wood, stone and bone weapons and almost a third of them had heard of and built the new mud huts for shelter. The Nazeer in particular were devastated by the initial plague, losing 70% of their number and many more in suicidal, futile resistance to the Tarlok. Fast forward 800 years and the vast majority (97%) are fierce patriots of the Empire, seeing the Tarlok as mighty warriors and worthy masters. This is an unfortunate trend in this book, almost every planet save Seeron and Avunor has 2 species, a noble one that resists or sullenly obeys the Tarlok, and a violent warrior species that embraces their conquerors.

Yeah, anyways, like the Glinerach, as psychics the Nazeer are the charge of the Dread Chief. They are used as guards, trackers, foot soldiers, hunter-killers, assassins, torturers and sometimes as overseers over Tarlok slaves. Squads of Nazeer, 6-10 strong, are one of the most common Control patrols.

Nazeer have pretty good daylight vision, and decent nightvision. They have 20-180 MDC and regenerate slowly, able to regrow a limb in a year. Like the Glinerach they are skilled swimmers able to dive down to 300 ft. and hold their breath for 11-16 minutes. The Nazeer tail is prehensile, but the psychic powers are the main selling point. 22-468 ISP, powers include telepathy (special, triple normal range) sixth sense, see aura, see invisible, mind block, resist hunger, resist fatigue, telekinesis, TK ounch, TK push, TK leap, levitate, hydrokinesis and 2 more super (psychic!) powers and get 1 super or 2 lesser powers every 3 levels. Nazeer as a rule don't get much technology, they're usually trained in basic marksmanship, but prefer the Tarlok's energy-blasting melee weapons. They usually wear a torso-armor with 50 MDC.

There are only 50 million Nazeer, many remain on Razuul as suspicious overseers to the Glinerach. Many more go wherever there's trouble, like Seeron.

There's also a beastie called a Chyknz worm from Razuul. Sort of like a leech the size of your arm with a paralzying venom that can drain a human dry inside 10 minutes. The Tarlok have preserved this, of all animal life on Razuul as a tool for interrogation.

[Ahriman238]

Aliens of Avunor

Avunor is the super-earth in a binary orbit with Forschell. It's a very... purple little planet. This is because 90% of the surface is covered by ocean. Not seas of H2O, by the way, but breen. What's breen? A transparent lavender-colored liquid with the consistency of olive oil, and the pH of hydrochloric acid.

All the land that exists is scattered among small island chains. The Tarlok settled on the islands, built extensive floating cities and generally had a thriving colony of millions for almost 80 years before they even realized the planet was inhabited. The local aquatic aliens, the Cryden (pronounced "sigh-den" like Posiden) generally don't care a bit about the "overbreen" and had zero problem bending a knee, hailing the Tarlok as Lords of all Avunor and offering some paltry token tribute. The Tarlok generally don't care enough to push the issue, an odd 'live and let live' perspective from them. It probably helps that breen is too thick to swim through conventionally. The Tarlok have submarines, but they're a lot slower than they'd be in water and very maintenance intensive. It seems they can't make a diving suit that can stay underbreen for more than a couple hours without melting. How did these dummies make it into space anyway? An armored air-supply and covering for their soft tissue should be plenty, their armored hides laugh at fire and anti-tank weapons. Oh well.



Cryden are sort of vaguely humanoid and human-sized with the usual fish-man accouterments, webbed hands and feet, feelers on the head and large eyes. 35-294 MDC, no regen but a Helaing Factor. They also have the Underwater Abilities package, giving them great swimming speed and strength equivalent to a human with Supernatural Strength while in breen, just Extraordinary Strength when dry. They also have infrared and UV vision. Swimming is achieved by sucking water in through two large slits at the neck/shoulder junction (passing it over their gills in the process) to fill two internal bladders before jetting it out two slits on their lower back. Cryden can live outside the breen for a week without much discomfort, 25-130 days before agonizing death. One of the two things I actually like about the Cryden is that water is alien and quite unbreathable to them, an hour held underwater will kill them. Give them a wetsuit and a tank of breen and they're fine swimmers, though.

Cryden have an oral tradition going back 10,000 years, and a written history of just 2 millennia. There are presently 9 Cryden kingdoms and empires, but their history holds hundreds more. This is the other thing I really like about them, sad it isn't explored more but all we get are there are these 9 kingdoms, but 20% of the population are fish-chasing nomads unaffiliated with any Cryden state, and that 3 of these are really violent and militarized, but are by far the smallest in both population and territory, in the most remote areas and are pretty well marginalized by the others.

A handful of Cryden (okay, 700 million) are less convinced that things are much better under the breen. A lot come from those marginalized warrior kingdoms I mentioned, who feel like the Tarlok get them, and a lot are curious youth eager to see the stars. Whatever the reason, millions have left their homeworld to serve the Tarlok as mercenaries, spies, assassins or what-have-you.

Their are 15.6 billion Cryden underbreen, to 3.2 billion Tarlok and almost a billion slaves on the surface. The Avunor air smells foul to anyone not native, it rains acidic breen regularly and most of the fish species are not edible. But enough are to get by, and the planet has great mineral wealth, hence all the slave miners.

[Simon_Jester]

I really do learn the most interesting things about math, physics, chemistry and occasionally military R&D when I do these threads. Thank you, Simon. Surface gravity proportional to radius, I'll remember that.

Let's go with surface gravity being proportional to radius *times density.*

Sorry if I was unclear about size, all planetary sizes here are given in equatorial diameter. So, effectively the same as radius. So the hollow super-earth with dinosaurs? Jules Verne would be so pleased.

Yes, basically that is WAY too low-density to be credible as an Earthlike planet unless there's something pretty drastic about the interior. Basically the planet needs to just not have a nickel-iron core, and I'm not sure if even a stone core would be satisfactorily light in these conditions.

Note that any hollow spaces could easily be thousands of miles down and thousands of miles across, and hell, this is RIFTS scifi, so it could be that the massive hole in the ground is propped up by force fields sustained by generators whose waste heat drives the planet's vulcanism where normally radioactive materials in the core would do the job.

Now, if Vuulok or Avunlor has 3.4 times the radius of Earth, given its surface gravity its mass would have to be about 15 Earth masses (very fluffy for a planet), but that's still about 1/12 the mass of Forschell. In that case, it's more like the Pluto-Charon relationship, still very credible, but in all honesty the little moons of the system should be catapulted out into space over the long haul.

I stand corrected.

Again, the problem here is that any moons smaller than the giant terran planet should be slung into space by the planet's gravity, unless the orbit between Forschell and Avunlor is really, really broad. Even then, the orbits of minor moons will be unstable on timescales of more than a few million years, although it's possible that Forschell can just keep scooping up and capturing asteroids and stray planetoids for Avunlor to eject.

...Come to think of it, that sounds like a staggeringly unstable solar system, sort of horribly Velikovsky-esque. Lots of random asteroids up to and including the size of a small moon, periodically getting unpredictably hurled across the solar system by this monster double planet slingshot, and causing cosmic catastrophe on whichever planet they hit, with practically no upper limit on the amount of damage it could do. Could be tough.

Now we know why THIS system's dinosaurs are such badasses. They're the post-apocalyptic survivors of multiple Chicxulubs!

Also, adventure idea- astronomers determine that a slight adjustment to the trajectory of one of the asteroids/moons in the unstable double-planet system will send it to [planet of your choice]... the big bad dinosaurs' navy is the only force in the system that could plausibly go all Deep Impact on the asteroid and deal with it, so either you're trying to stop them from doing that (shielded asteroid ramming attack BANZAI), or you're trying to enlist them to do that. Or it was their idea in the first place. Hah.

The Tarlok have submarines, but they're a lot slower than they'd be in water and very maintenance intensive. It seems they can't make a diving suit that can stay underbreen for more than a couple hours without melting. How did these dummies make it into space anyway? An armored air-supply and covering for their soft tissue should be plenty, their armored hides laugh at fire and anti-tank weapons. Oh well.

Acid is a whole different order of problem than acid; what you'd really want is something made out of glass or ceramic plating, that would have acid resistance enough and you could easily just coat a submarine hull with Pyrex and it'd hold up fairly well. But for diving suits there are... I honestly can't think of a flexible substance corrosion-resistant enough to make a good choice for someone who wants to go diving in lethally acidic molasses. There might be something, but it is NOT an easy problem to solve.

[Ahriman238]

Again, the problem here is that any moons smaller than the giant terran planet should be slung into space by the planet's gravity, unless the orbit between Forschell and Avunlor is really, really broad. Even then, the orbits of minor moons will be unstable on timescales of more than a few million years, although it's possible that Forschell can just keep scooping up and capturing asteroids and stray planetoids for Avunlor to eject.

...Come to think of it, that sounds like a staggeringly unstable solar system, sort of horribly Velikovsky-esque. Lots of random asteroids up to and including the size of a small moon, periodically getting unpredictably hurled across the solar system by this monster double planet slingshot, and causing cosmic catastrophe on whichever planet they hit, with practically no upper limit on the amount of damage it could do. Could be tough.

Now we know why THIS system's dinosaurs are such badasses. They're the post-apocalyptic survivors of multiple Chicxulubs!

Also, adventure idea- astronomers determine that a slight adjustment to the trajectory of one of the asteroids/moons in the unstable double-planet system will send it to [planet of your choice]... the big bad dinosaurs' navy is the only force in the system that could plausibly go all Deep Impact on the asteroid and deal with it, so either you're trying to stop them from doing that (shielded asteroid ramming attack BANZAI), or you're trying to enlist them to do that. Or it was their idea in the first place. Hah.

That actually sounds like a lot of fun. You could even exploit the existing Nebular/Victor conflict, have the more violent heroes (and maybe some villains) trying to silence any warning to the Tarlok and squelch efforts to save Vuulok or any other world, while Victor leads the more idealistic heroes to try and save the entire Tarlok people.

We'd have to accept poor Razuul being screwed though. Then again, it'd be kind of funny for the Tarlok's major industry center to go zooming off into the great black. Maybe you could play pool with the planets, and try and set up a later sphere to capture it, or nudge it into an appropriate course?

Acid is a whole different order of problem than acid; what you'd really want is something made out of glass or ceramic plating, that would have acid resistance enough and you could easily just coat a submarine hull with Pyrex and it'd hold up fairly well. But for diving suits there are... I honestly can't think of a flexible substance corrosion-resistant enough to make a good choice for someone who wants to go diving in lethally acidic molasses. There might be something, but it is NOT an easy problem to solve.

And sometimes I say really dumb things. Yeah, we can do industrial containers for acid. I assume the Tarlok can too, else the subs, floating cities and breen tanks for off-world Cryden would be difficult. Yes, making something that bends is a lot harder, especially if you can't leave a weak area because you'll be completely immersed.

I'm still amused (and somehow forgot to include earlier) that the Tarlok can make environmental suits full of breen for the Cryden and they'll last forever but can't turn it inside out for their own use.


Aliens of Dilm

Dilm is the Earth-sized one between Forscell/Avunor and Talavera. Dilm was once very geologically unstable, and is covered with mountains, plateaus, and deep canyons with only sparse vegetation. Oh, and 31% ocean coverage, with water this time. The smallest mountain in the Northern Hemisphere is the size of Everest. The Tarlok started with mining colonies and slaving raids, and that's more or less where they remain, just on a much larger scale. There are really only about 0.7 million Tarlok on and around Dilm. 20% of the old (Klied) cities still stand, the Tarlok don't completely control the surface as they do on other worlds.



The Klied ("Clyde") were peaceful dwellers of vast cliff cities, about 17th Century in technology, bit ahead in metallurgy, when the Tarlok came. Yes, they look like bronze-colored (with red and white highlights) pterodactyl-men, it's RIFTS. Klied are NOT MDC. But they do have a flying speed around 60-100 mph, Advanced Sight/hawk-like gaze (can read street signs from 2 miles) have Radar Sense, Energy Resistance and Super Energy Expulsion (Electricity) plus Superhuman Strength. Female Klied have kangaroo pouches to carry and nurse their young.

Klied are generally peaceful, but will defend themselves. Every Klied is, in the ways of their people, raised and trained a hunter/warrior. The men go on to learn building, where the women become artisans, scholars and healers. Before the invasion, the average Klied had the equivalent education of a trade school and maybe a two-year degree. The Klied lost a third their number to Plague and Invasion 130 years ago, and another 40% of their people have been sold into slavery to aliens outside the star system. Now just 906 million remain, a third of them scattered across the Tarlok Empire as slaves, the Klied aren't numerous or organized enough for a serious revolution, but turn hopeful eyes towards Seeron.




The fossil record suggests the Klied and Nikari have a common ancestor, but that was clearly a very long time ago. They're not actually insects, occupying the same vague area between mammal and reptile the Klied do, with armor, (116-1254 MDC.) Similar flight abilities to the Klied (technically the Nikari are 40 yards/minute faster, but I'm feeling lazy.) 12-15 feet from head to stinger. Like the Klied, Nikari have a Radar Sense, Advanced Vision and Superhuman Strength. Instead of the Klied's electric powers, Nikari have Super Energy Expulsion (Fire) and a special resistance to cold ability. The stinger does Mega Damage (so do their claws and teeth) but seems to lack venom.

Primitive tribal folk, the Nikari are some of the most pragmatic, practical, and logical people in Charizolon. This leads to hilarious misunderstandings with everyone, because the Nikari are very... binary (or black and white) in their thinking. They don't get subtlety or deception, and make no distinction between a threat, a lazy punch in a bar room, and a fight to the death so they treat all threatening situations as the latter. They can eventually learn. On Dilm, the Nikari buzz around the tallest mountains, where wind and obstacles are too hazardous for even the most daring Tarlok pilots. They lost 10% of their population to the Plague, another 25% to slavery, but for the most part the Nikari occupy a sweet spot where they're too much trouble to bother hunting down unless they manage to fall into the Tarlok's laps or start making trouble, which happens periodically.

There are 946 million Nikari at present, with almost 50 million as off-world slaves. 4 million of these have managed to win their freedom and limited citizenship in the Empire for serving as willing minions. Many of these work for Control on Seeron, and are fondly known to the locals as "Devil Hornets."

[Simon_Jester]

That actually sounds like a lot of fun. You could even exploit the existing Nebular/Victor conflict, have the more violent heroes (and maybe some villains) trying to silence any warning to the Tarlok and squelch efforts to save Vuulok or any other world, while Victor leads the more idealistic heroes to try and save the entire Tarlok people.

We'd have to accept poor Razuul being screwed though.

Well, you need some kind of engine capable of applying a meaningful acceleration to planet-sized rocks. Not easy, and hard to set up.

God knows how you'd do it, but I suspect that the entire Tarlok fleet couldn't stop the thing once it was in motion, even given years to work on it (and it would take years; orbital mechanics ain't speedy). They've got a lot of firepower, but that much? They might be able to at least disable the engines and fire enough nukes at the planet-sized body to slightly deflect it, but that's about the best you could do.

So from a physics standpoint, the "point of no return" is before the engines fire. Once the engines fire and move the planetoid, you're guaranteed to start experiencing some serious consequences sooner or later. Once the engine burn is done and it's on course to its target, there is fuck all you can do to stop it unless you have something ELSE that can juggle planets handy.

Then again, it'd be kind of funny for the Tarlok's major industry center to go zooming off into the great black. Maybe you could play pool with the planets, and try and set up a later sphere to capture it, or nudge it into an appropriate course?

It's probably possible- the real problem is setting up the damn engines, with the Tarlok trying to stop you as hard as they can.

Note that if the Forschell/Avunlor system is inside the habitable belt of the star, so that Razuul isn't actively dependent on heat from an outside source, then this may not actually be fatal to life on Razuul (until the rogue planetoid hits something, that is).

By the way, I did a few quick calculations; Razuul is about the size of Mercury. Mercury has a surface gravity of about 0.38g, so Razuul must be a bit less than as dense as Mercury. No WONDER it's a miner's paradise, the thing must have a solid tungsten bowling ball for a core or something...

I'm still amused (and somehow forgot to include earlier) that the Tarlok can make environmental suits full of breen for the Cryden and they'll last forever but can't turn it inside out for their own use.

Now THAT is amusing.

Of course, one possibility is that the Tarlok use a breen-like substance of lower acidity. Just lowering the pH by a point or two (i.e. making the solution one or two orders of magnitude less acidic) helps solve the engineering problems of suit design, and might well be at least tolerable for the Cryden to live in, sort of like how human beings can tolerate drinking water of a fairly broad pH range.

[Ahriman238]

Just as an aside, I only now noticed Forschell's orbital partner is referred to as Avunor, Avulor and Avunlor at different points of the text.


Aliens of Talavera

Talavera is Earth-sized with the same gravity and day, mostly covered in jungle, in fact, 40% of the surface is jungle even after 40+ years of Tarlok occupation and general Captain Planet villainy. A quarter of the planet is ocean. Home to 3 sentient species, the Seleniak, Lashreg and Shrilt. When the Tarlok first found the planet, there were a billion Seleniak, 5 billion Lashreg and an unknown number of Shrilt (they're not big into geopolitics.) The Lashreg are sort of like Tarlok-lite, lizard-men proud warrior race guys. But where the Tarlok warrior code is flexible and pragmatic, the Lashreg one is... prickly. The Seleniak are a tree-dwelling people descended from local lemur-equivalents, while the Shrilt are the same but much smaller and more primitive.

When radio contact was first established with Seeron, the Seleniak were at a 1940s/50s tech-level which let them dictate peace for the first time to the Lashreg, who were still muddling about with pike-and-shot armies. When it turned out there really were aliens, and they were friendly the Seleniak rejoiced while the Seeronians put together a mission to Talavera. The Seeronians were even nice enough to help the Seleniak iron out some of the engineering issues they were having with nuclear power and their own space program.

Oh, I should mention that for 6 days out of every year, Talavera and Seeron are just 20 million miles apart. This triggers "the Frenzy" on both worlds, an effect "not unlike the full moon on Earth" where millions of people go nuts, crime and injury rates triple for no discernible reason etc.




The Seleniak aren't MDC, they don't regenerate or have superpowers, nor are they exceptionally strong. They do have really good eyes for day vision, and they are exceptionally acrobatic. By which I mean they can scurry up a wall twice as fast as they can run on the ground, are all double-jointed and ambidextrous with exceptional balance, can leap 20 feet across (more with a running start) and harmlessly drop to the ground from 15 stories up.

44% of the Seleniak died in the Plague and invasion 40 years ago. By that time, there had been numerous flights between Talavera and Seeron, and 10 million Seleniak were living in Rylor. Today, there are now 863 million living Seleniak, over 300 million off-world.



Lashreg have 25-362 MDC. They're quite a bit faster and stronger than humans too, but nowhere near the close combat monsters the Tarlok are. Actually, bit of a lie, the Lashreg are faster than anything that isn't a Cyborg or a speedster-type superhuman in a sprint, doing about 50-60 mph. There eyes are slightly better than human, but nothing spectacular. They get a bunch of hand to hand bonuses, and are slower and weaker in any sort of cold.

Culturally the Lashreg are reputed as warriors who fear no man or god, and never back down even in the face of certain death. Got to question that last part, since first the Seleniak, then the Tarlok were able to cow them with technological supremacy and face-saving diplomacy. Anyways, the Lashreg have no gods. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of atheists in Skraypers, in fact only the Tarlok have an explicit religion (some sort of vaguely-defined ancestor worship) but the Lashreg have never had religion at any point in their history or myth. In once sense, they're very 'humanist' in that they have an unshakable faith in their own destiny to rule the universe... someday. The Lashreg will mindlessly pursue whoever offends their rather delicate sense of honor, even if that person is insanely powerful. "A Lashreg's vengeance ends only in death. His or yours. But if you kill him, you'd best be prepared to kill his friends and family, and their friends and family and so on." The Lashreg normally live in clans of 10-60 extended families.

The Lashreg are also suspicious xenophobes. They never believed in people from other worlds when the Seleniak told them of radio transmissions and even played them. When the Lashreg actually met men from Seeron, they decided these aliens were conspiring with the Seleniak to destroy them. Never ones to miss an opportunity to divide and conquer, the Tarlok backed this version of events, and the Lashreg who drove themselves half to extinction resisting the Tarlok became their allies instead. That's still the party line today.

At the time of the Invasion, there were 6 billion Lashreg. Forty years later there are 1.8 billion, 60% of them off-world.

On the spectrum of Control response and command, the pecking order goes something like this: First the extremely-highly trained human cannon fodder, then the somewhat-less-expendable Lashreg cannon fodder, then the valued Nazeer hunter-killer squads, then actual Tarlok, then Dreadmasters leading Dreadlor packs. The Nikari, Cryden mercenaries and Tarlok allies just sort of fit in around the sides. Likewise special (superhuman) agents, who can order around the non-Tarlok if they're powerful or skilled enough.




Finally, the Shrilt are the most primitive Talaverans, having almost nothing in the way of tool use (but they can and do use existing rocks and sticks) and occupying a functional level somewhere between a monkey and a 6-year-old with ADD. They're definitely sapient, but most of the things their peers do bore them, and they're too impulsive to be allowed near dangerous tools.

The Shertar, after long years of research, have concluded that the Shrilt people offer no value to the Tarlok Empire and are further "very annoying." The Emperor and Chiefs have therefore ordered the total destruction of the Shrilt. On Talavera, the Lashreg have carried out their orders with gusto and reduced the Shrilt population to around 117 million and falling fast, and the Tarlok have never taken Shrilt off-world. The Seeronians, however, have. In the decade during which there were regular flights, Seeron imported 100,000 Shrilt against the advice of their Seleniak allies. At the time Rylor had a serious infestation of Wikkles, the Seeronian equivalent to cockroaches, and it turns out Wikkles are a wonderful delicacy to Shrilt. Well, the Shrilt refused to be contained like animals, romping free across the city skyline, and in the absence of predators they multiplied furiously. No one knows how many Shrilt are in Rylor, estimates are upwards 100 million. The Lashreg and Control do send out regular hunting parties, but the superhuman insurgency takes priority over hunting "girder rats." Soon, Seeron will have more Shrilt than Talavera.

[Simon_Jester]

How do you use 1940s/50s technology to beat an entire species of MDC opponents?

[Ahriman238]

Extensive use of artillery and air strikes? We know some high explosives do MD damage, including most all grenades in RIFTS, though we don't know if the technology advanced much. Still, an Abrams Tank has more MDC than most Lashreg and while the Abrams would be a terror on the 40s/50s battlefield, I don't think it'd be unstoppable. I could be quite wrong however.

Failing that, nukes. I doubt the Seeronians would have helped the Seleniak with nuclear energy if it would have meant introducing them to nuclear weapons over the radio. So I suspect the Seleniak already had the bombs and were working on the power plants. The older and more physically powerful Lashreg might survive a nuclear blast if they were lucky, but they'd still be grievously injured.

[Ahriman238]

And now the Tarlok's allies from beyond the Charizolon system.

Rithe

The Rithe are master psychics. The float through the air with gas-bladders and use their powers when they want to go faster than 30 mph/48 kph. 30-282 MDC, no regen. In place of arms, the Rithe have three tentacles growing from each shoulder, great for multi-tasking and delicate tool use, not so much for heavy lifting. The tips are extremely sensitive (Heightened Touch power) and can identify most materials by touch, find subtle cracks and flaws with ease, and detect changes of temperature even a degree or two. As long as we're talking superpowers, they also benefit from Cloaking, making them invisible to security cameras, radar, audio recorders and all forms of mechanical sensor, scanner or alarm. They have long tails with 2 blades, one that's good for stabbing as a defense measure, and a serrated one for sawing.

As master psychics, Rithe have 63-450 ISP and powers: bio-regen, psi-sword, telekinesis (lesser and super both) TK forcefield, TK push, TK punch, levitate, telepathy, mind block, mask ISP and psionics, read dimensional portal, sense dimensional anomaly, and psychic body field. Gain 3 lesser and 1 super power every level. Should it come to battle, a Rithe will manifest a psi-sword for the tail and each tentacle, shield itself with bodyfield or TK forcefield, and whiz about as a rapidly moving ball of lightsaber-y doom, perhaps enhancing it's mobility or hampering yours with TK. This fighting style takes a lot of ISP and can quickly exhaust the younger and weaker Rithe.



Originating from the Vek system of the Corkscrew Galaxy, Like the Tarlok, they conquered their own diverse system, unlike the Tarlok, they got FTL flight and limited dimension travel a thousand years ago, and realized they're only small fish in a very large pond. Obscuring their system of origin, the Rithe have spread out, connecting with organized crime across the Three Galaxies. They are close trading partners with both the Splugorth and the Naruni, in fact, their major trade with the Tarlok has been selling them Naruni weapons (at generous mark up, naturally) for exotic alien/super slaves, which they sell to the Splugorth, again with generous profit margins. The Rithe are THE major buyer for Tarlok slaves, and have been since the races met 230 years back.

Well, until about 20 years ago. Then the Tarlok, having sold a couple million superhuman slaves to whet the appetites, cut off the Rithe and demanded FTL drive to open the market. The two races have been in intricate negotiations ever since, regarding the precise value of the Megaverse. Interesting plot hook there, an open invitation to throw a monkey wrench into the talks.

There are roughly 5000 Rithe in the system, diplomats, traders and advisers. They usually get an honorary rank of Warlor. Of these, about a thousand are on Seeron, fascinated by the mental challenge involved in staying ahead of the superhuman insurgents and winning over such a hostile populace. They serve as consultants on propaganda, interrogators and partners in the ongoing research into what went wrong with the Plague and how it made superhumans. The average Seeronian knows damn well the Rithe are allies of the Tarlok, and party to the enslavement of millions of their brethren.

In the wider Galaxies, the Rithe have reputations as deal-makers and master manipulators. There's particularly some bad blood between them and the Prometheans of Phase World, something about an attempt to intervene in Promethean internal politics. Their coin still spends as well as any others, but Security always watches them a bit more closely.

[Ahriman238]

Have one more alien and that'll wrap up Skraypers. Sorry it's been taking so long, lot going on these days. I suppose this is where I ask if anyone has lingering questions or comments? I was pretty surprised (but I can get very mechanical about games) there wasn't more discussion over the super-power system, particularly APS.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying reading it. Don't have much to discuss, though.

[Ahriman238]

I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying reading it. Don't have much to discuss, though.

Don't worry about it, I have a bad habit of second guessing myself when I go too long without feedback, good or ill. I'm working on it. I was surprised with APS at the resemblance between it and a popular manga/anime, and the sheer variety of forms. I'm thinking you'd have a hard time selling "I'm one of the good guys" if your power was to turn to blood, a bone monster, or a cloud of ash. While things like plasma, lava or vacuum are overkill against anything you might possibly want to capture alive.


Anyway, let's get this show going and Skraypers closed out.

Tandori

Coming from the hidden world of Keilaga (somewhere in Corkscrew, at least a week's travel from Charizolon) the Tandori are skilled assassins, spies, saboteurs, bounty hunters, smugglers, mercenaries, and occasionally pirates. Not that space pirates don't come from all species and worlds. The Tandori aren't MDC, aren't psychic or magical, and have no exceptional racial abilities. They're only slightly taller than humans. They are, on average slightly stronger than most humans, moderately more dexterous and quite a bit more clever and mentally capable. SO they make the most of that. They aren't warriors or conquerors, they hold no significant territories, they much prefer to be assassins and kingmakers and rake in obscene profits than to pursue other race's ideals of power. About a third of Tandori have some cybernetic implants, 20% of them are reasonably impressive full conversion 'borgs. For reasons unclear, the Tandori are utterly terrified of magic and refuse to have anything to do with it, including using magic items. So they're hard to find in UWW space.



No one has ever seen a Tandori unmasked, they're one of only a handful of species in the Three Galaxies that doesn't like the "standard" nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. This standard atmosphere will cause them to pass out in 20 minutes to 2 hours and eventually die unless returned to a methane-nitrogen air mix. Most people imagine them as reptillian, if only because of the one feature that is obvious, two tongues (average 8 and 15 inches long) too big to fit in their mouths. On the streets of Rylor, Tandori are called "Two-Tongue Louies." Their basic environment suit is like a poor man's power armor, providing some MDC protection and a bit of strength enhancement. When they get serious, they pull out the real thing.

Personality-wise the Tandori stand at the pinnacle of dispassionate logic and ruthless pragmatism. They are singularly devoted to the acquisition of wealth, but understand that long-term benefits outweigh immediate rewards, and the Tandori reputation for always honoring their contracts is worth more in the long-run than any windfall they could get by betraying a client. When Tandori meet on opposite sides, if possible they arrange a quiet neutral meeting to see if one party can back down without breaking a contract or losing face. If no one can, they agree to do their best by the client to kill each other. They have no problem killing their own kind, many prefer it, since they have an idea of the enemy's attitude and abilities.

The Tarlok and the Tandori irritate the hell out of each other. The Tandori have no patience with the Tarlok's warrior posturing or their hypocritical and self-serving "code of honor." The Tarlok think the Tandori are cowards and weaklings, unable to fight like real warriors. Various polite and not-so-polite jabs are exchanged whenever the two races share a room. Still, the Tarlok appreciate results, especially as the Seeron Insurgency wears on with no end in sight, and the Tandori still love money. 99+% of the time, that's good enough for them to set aside their differences and work together as professionals.

Okay, their power armor is called Serpent Armor. It's fully functional enviromental armor, does fine as a diving or space suit. It's more-or-less SAMAS armor with shitty flight characteristics (100 mph and a 2,000 ft flight ceiling) but an awkward flight pack that can be donned with help from friends and gives 300 mph with a 10,000 ft ceiling. It also has slightly more armor and a fair bit more firepower than standard SAMAS. Specifically 6 mini-missiles, 2 forearm lasers and mounting points for 6 more interchangeable weapons. The armor has an integral computer with HUD, time-date, calculator, compass and damage-warning functions, as well as the ability to interface with most advanced computers. Skimps a bit on sensors, mostly laser range-finding and targeting. Oh, and monitors the user's vitals.

Like the Rithe and Blhaze, the Tandori are a canon part of the Three Galaxies setting introduced here, and can be freely used even if you never have players venture to Seeron. The Tandori in particular have long-standing ties with the Splugorth, Naruni, and Kreeghor.


And yeah, that's all of Skraypers as presented. Every faction, character and alien species. Large portions of it are old hat to gamers and comic-book fans, a dark dystopian future, alien invasion and occupation, etc. But it manages to keep some original feeling to it, for better or worse (the costumes are the very worst of late 80s-early 90s comics though.) If anything, I'm disappointed the setting was never explored more than this one book. It was nice to see a serious attempt to fit silly superhero stuff into RIFTS, and I think the Tarlok are more detailed and menacing than most Three Galaxies alien warlords.

[Ahriman238]

And back to the Three Galaxies. How about we start with more aliens?



The Iborians were genetically engineered as a slave race at some point thousands of years ago, before rising up and destroying their masters to the last woman and child. Deeply ashamed of their genocide, and because it's pretty much what they were designed for, the Iborians renounced violence and became a race of healers. Oh, they believe in self-defense and doing violence to protect others, but are utter pacifists until they reach the point where lives could be lost by their inaction. Mostly they're described as wandering the galaxies offering their services, even the suspicious Kreeghor allow them free and safe passage. Still, they seem to have at least a couple of worlds and some involvement in CCW politics. While governments as a rule never harm or hinder Iborians, pirates and mercenaries are known to kidnap them for healing, for ransom or to torture over the persistent rumors that Iborian healing powers don't come from genetics, but from contact with the Cosmic Forge.

Those rumors probably aren't helped by Iborians being THE race most commonly approached in dreams to become Cosmo-Knights. The Iborians usually turn this offer down, preferring to do good through quiet healing as opposed to a long life of fighting. Still, there are more than a few Iborian Cosmo-Knights.

Whoever put together the Iborians knew what they were doing. Iborians are the real universal donors, able to give blood to any carbon-based life form. A single pint of Iborian blood will neatly deal with any bacterial or viral infection. It will also cure anemia, and any other blood disease or immune disorder. Certain secretions of the skin can be easily turned into a balm that relives itching, and triples the healing speed of any abrasions, rashes, cuts and burns while preventing scarring. They are also master psychics with all healing powers plus bio-manipulation and enough ISP to spam healing powers half the day without running out. They cannot gain any additional psychic powers. Iborians are born with an instinctive knowledge of how to use their powers and bodily fluids to best effect. Anything more than that is education, and an Iborian education is weighted towards bio and anatomy/physiology.

One thing outsiders don't know about the Iborians is their death touch ability, which can strike dead anything with less than 30 MDC naturally (it works through armor) and shock anything tougher than that into a coma. This works by directly affecting the nervous system. The Iborians see it as a curse added to their genome by their cruel masters as a goad to their peaceful nature. There's probably some cultural bias there, as the Iborian tradition holds that this is how they overcame and exterminated their ancient masters, and that any use of the "cursed touch" is an eternal reminder of the crime they are all heir to. 94% of Iborians will prefer personal destruction to using the death touch, but will do it if they have to save others. Use of the death touch takes a physical and emotional toll, halving their speed for 2-12 minutes. After using the touch, an Iborian is expected to go thorough a 2-8 month period of mourning and repentance, during which they wear the Sigil of Pentinence, the meaning of which is obscure to outsiders. Using the death touch during pentinence, under any circumstances, will result in that Iborian becoming a pariah and exile forever.

Kind of makes you wonder why their makers gave them the death touch. Or any of their abilities, really. I assume they weren't made for back-breaking labor with primitive tools, or they could have been made strong. When I picture a slave race, I don't really imagine a group that can kill or heal with a touch. Perhaps their creators had odd priorities and wanted first-rate medicine without any of their own having to study and work hard for it, ruining themselves for most any other profession?



Strata

Sorry, no pic.

Anyway, the Strata are humanoid, 8-12 feet tall grey, light brown, or mustard yellow with crystalline growths all over. Okay, that description really just make me picture Doomsday.



Anyway, the Strata are a silicon based life that, beginning with the single cell days, has lived in symbiosis with a sort of living crystal that grows over time using photosynthesis. This crystal is similar to the psynetic crystals the Noro use as psychic boosters, in ways that are still being researched. As part of the Strata biology, the crystals nurture with photosynthesis, and act as the brain. The Strata breathe nitrogen gas, which means they're fine in most atmospheres. Humans sometimes get slightly high off the air on Strata Prime, though. About 15% of a Strata's nourishment comes from photosynthesis, the rest from traditional eating. They can consume nearly all known varieties of vegetable matter, but are thoroughly disgusted by the idea of consuming once living animals.

I just don't know what to make of Strata reproduction. I suppose they're technically hermaphrodites, but without any alteration to the genetic material passed on, I'm not sure it counts as sexual reproduction. In the center of a Strata's chest is their core, effrectively their crystal brain. The crystal buds, producing a smaller crystal that is slowly moved out the Strata's back, where a second Strata contributes their silicon-based cells, forming an egg which eventually hatches into a baby strata, with the brain of one parent, and the genetic material of the second. Well, congrats on Siembienda for creating something original and puzzling.

Strata have 37-290 MDC, supernatural strength and endurance. They can identify most common minerals by touch, and possess the Stone Mage's ability to mold any stone like it was soft clay. Standard psionics, meaning 5% of them have psychic powers of varying degrees. Doesn't often go for magic, but when they do they usually become Techno-Wizards or Stone Mages. However, their unique physiology and bio-chemistry means they can't get cybernetic implants. They are also extra vulnerable to sonic weapons, which can shatter their crystal vitals. They can live to be a thousand years old.

Strata society is very clannish, the head of a family wields absolute power in his household and over even the most extended families. The largest and oldest family on a given world makes up the entire government bureaucracy, while the second largest commands the military. They have developed a crystal technology that mostly shows itself in crystal weapons that can fire MD energy blasts and evade standard weapons detectors. Most Consortium worlds ban such weapons. The Strata barely saw off a Splugorth invasion then joined the CCW so they would never have to stand alone. They join the Noro and Iborians in making up the hardline pacifist bloc of CCW politics.

[Simon_Jester]

On the subject of the Iborians- it might be that the death touch wasn't designed into them, and was an unintended side effect of their psychic healing powers. Perhaps the discovery that this was possible was the catalyst for their slave rebellion- and why they associate it so much with that genocide.

Hell, I can picture their creators finding out about the death touch, and deciding "it's them or us," starting to make secret plans to exterminate the Iborian slaves, and the Iborians then rising up in self defense.

[Ahriman238]

On the subject of the Iborians- it might be that the death touch wasn't designed into them, and was an unintended side effect of their psychic healing powers. Perhaps the discovery that this was possible was the catalyst for their slave rebellion- and why they associate it so much with that genocide.

Hell, I can picture their creators finding out about the death touch, and deciding "it's them or us," starting to make secret plans to exterminate the Iborian slaves, and the Iborians then rising up in self defense.

It fits, and makes a better story. Of course, all of this took place so long ago it's mythologized. Apparently the Iborian's origin as artificially engineered slaves and their violent revolution is common knowledge, it's just the death touch that gets edited out. It seems people in-universe speculated that the Gene Splicers or Gene Threshers (who as far as I can tell are Gene Splicers in every regard except being more numerous and organized) created the Iborians, but they were firm. The ancient masters are gone. There were no survivors.

Which really makes me think there should be a campaign where survivors exist, rebuild and come back for revenge. It's not an implicit story hook in the book, I just get suspicious when characters in an RPG speak in such absolute terms.




The Golgan Republik

Several thousand years ago, the great Golgan Republic effectively ruled the Anvil Galaxy. Except for the Core, some of the Halo and a few strong holdouts, but no empire's perfect. The Golgans weren't brutal conquerors, brilliant technocrats or clever tacticians, but they were amazing administrators, organizers and diplomats, and convinced brutal conquerors, clever tacticians and brilliant technocrats to work for and with them. It was an era of peace and prosperity unheard of since the bloody end of the Second Age. Then, a bit over a thousand years ago the Vaast conquered most of the galaxy, smashing the Republic to splinters and devastating the Golgan homeworld, nearly wiping out the entire species.

Well they eventually pulled together and started piecing together the 'ol Republik (now with a k!) again, but something had changed. The Golgans were now paranoid xenophobes, less interested in pooling everyone's talents for the benefit of all, and more looking for a whole lot of expendable dupes to form a buffer zone between any possible aggressor and anything they'd mind losing. The charter of the new Council Politik specified that there be two Golgan representatives for every alien on the Council. Aliens still joined the Argosy (Golgan military) but now all Golgans were officers, and all aliens, were not. This might have been a plan of the Vaast, who were reputed as masters of psychological warfare when mentioned earlier in the book.

300 years ago, the Republik starts contracting rapidly. One insurrection proved so costly to the Argosy, they decided to glass the planet as a warning to others, and to avoid either giving up or wasting a few million more lives. This horror convinced most of the Republik that the Golgans had gone off the deep end, while the civilian Golgans were so shocked that the Counci Politik decided there and then that using force to subdue rebellious worlds simply isn't worth it, and secession movements began in earnest.

The modern Republik's situation mirrors that of the Centauri at the beginning of Babylon 5, a once vast and powerful empire, reduced to a handful of worlds "and a thousand monuments to past glories." But not everyone takes that lying down. Ten years ago, a group of ambitious and politically active young Golgans calling themselves "the Assemblage" staged a silent, bloodless coup. Centered around their charismatic leader, Guas Binjo, they are enacting their policies the "Kultural Revolution" to breathe new life into the dying Republik. Mostly these involve reforms to the Argosy and the laughably broken Golgan justice system, plus a growing militarization of Golgan society. In just a decade, they've modernized a fleet that was still using thousand-year old ship deisgns and doctrine, and built it up to a strength unprecedented since the Vaast.

Now they plan to use it to reestablish the Republik's borders as of 300 years ago, except the planets that joined the CCW, and those just because they'll be pissing off enough people. This project will, among other things, entail the total conquest of the Central Alliance, getting embroiled in a serious shooting war with the Transgalactic Empire, and destroying the Altess in revenge for an ancient defeat the rest of the galaxy has long forgotten. The Assemblage are gambling everything , all their political capital, their planned future reforms and the entire Golgan treasury that this war can energize their people and bring about a renaissance of power. Now that I think about it, there are some more disturbing parallels to this political scene.

Anyways, yeah, this whole thing is sort of do-or-die for the Golgans, but they have a hidden trump card and have enjoyed one bit of exceptional, let's call it luck. Novus IX, the planet where the Altess fleet and war-robots are mothballed suffers a temporal shift removing it from our understood reality to the distant past, future, or some alternate timeline. This leaves the Altess on the eve of war with only their peacetime fleet. The reason I doubt this is a coincidence is because the Golgan trump card is a tachyonic antitelephone, a device that receives messages from 400 years into the future. The people on the other end of the antiphone (whom the Golgans blithely assume to be their own kind) aren't terribly forthcoming about future history (the head of the antiphone facility assumes it's all bad, that the future Golgans are ashamed of the past they're trying to avert) but will sometimes warn of disasters at the last minute to stop them (and sometimes just too late) and are terribly obliging with technical specifications. Really helped to modernize the fleet.



The Golgan used to be exceptionally friendly and outgoing. Now if you stick the average Golgan in a room with an alien, he'll be about one loud noise or sudden movement from running, or pulling a holdout gun and vigorously defending himself. This is why they try to let only the more level-headed Golgans interact regularly with off-worlders. They can still keep a good show of civility and warmth, but remain terribly elitist and racist. They live 2-300 years, and have an exceptional education system, most Golgans being fluent in 6 languages or more, and well versed in their own history and law.

Golgans have no MDC, magic or psionics. They're neutral towards cybernetics, have no problem with prosthetics that work better than the original parts, but outside a few are unlikely to actively seek out implants. The one special ability they have is Heightened Sense (yes, just like the super powers) 75% of Golgans have a heightened sense, 15% have 2, 8% have 3, and 2% have 4 heightened senses. Hearing is not a heightened sense they get, but their heightened vision includes telescopic, IR, UV, and X-Ray vision. There's a slight stratification thing going on there. All Golgans have the biological hardware for their senses, it's processing that's hard, so they filter out most sensory information before they leave diapers. Golgans with more boosted senses are assumed to be more capable of processing data, aka, have superior brains. A Golgan with all 4 senses can expect a free pass to the finest universities and a cushy government job if he wants it.

Expect more tomorrow.

[Ahriman238]

The Lurgess are a race, mostly of space nomads, traders and explorers. Their planet of origin was isolated form the wider galaxy for a very long time, with a few unfortunate effects. The Lurgess have no immunity to a vast variety of common diseases, while the average Lurgess is a carrier to 3-12 varieties of bacteria that are harmless to them, and literally world-ending plagues to everyone else.

That's it, no psionics or magic. They're not MDC though they usually wear 40 MDC hazmat gear, nor are they really faster or stronger than humans. What they are, is galactic pariahs, forbidden to set foot on any world they don't already have a colony on. People always take care never to touch or speak to them casually, hence why they're mostly spacers. This isn't helped by a small criminal minority ("what are you going to do. huh? Shoot me?") who can hold a world hostage by holding a knife to their sleeve.




Ultrovians are the Golgan's experts on matters relating to magic. Pretty rare for an Argosy ship to launch without an Ultrovian mage aboard, and in fairness, they seem suited for all magic classes save Mystic (no psionics.) More than suited they have a prodigious talent, represented in game terms by a +1 on all level dependent spell effects and double the usual PPE recovery rate.

Problem is, they're kind of new to this whole magic thing. Their mystic powers were discovered only a generation ago and they went sort of nuts trying to find as much information as they can. Now 80% of the population are spellslingers of one kind or another. But their techniques remain unpolished. Worse, they feel they have something to prove and often do unwise things, like enter into Pacts unawares, to try and prove they're real magic users. Basically, they're powerful and know just enough about magic to be really dangerous to themselves and others, while being prideful enough to reject good advice. Not a great mix.

While almost everything is being thrown into the Kultural Revolution, Binjo has tasked a gross of the most accomplished Ultrovian mages with keeping up the search for the Cosmic Forge. Half the reason the Golgans have tolerated the Ultrovian's antics while they figure out magic is because they can pass freely through the Threshold, into the Core. Naturally, if they find unlimited cosmic power, all the Assemblage's hard work will have been for nothing.





Finally, Zebuloids to break up the general trend of "bipedal or lamia-form humanoids" in this setting. Zebuloids are amazing pilots with an instinctive grasp of three dimensional space, a profound ability to multitask, great vision and insane reflexes. When I mentione multitasking, I mean they can put the same care and attention into 4 tasks that a human does in 1. Plus, they're good team players. They say a starfighter flown by a Zebuloid is worth three of anyone else's, while Golgan gunners can double or triple the fire rate of any energy weapons without suffering in accuracy. They also have exceptional hearing, are good swimmers, and can stretch their tentacles out to 20 feet or retract them completely.

Mind, the rest of the Three Galaxies is sort of hung up on the "not-humanoid" and "terrifying monster" aspects of the Zebuloid. But the Golgans accepted them, first because they were sensitive people, able to see past appearances to the wonderful and talented people beneath that hard shell. Later, because all aliens were pretty much equally terrifying to the Golgans. The Zebuloids aren't morons, they know they've relegated to second class citizens, but to their minds that's still a net gain. The modern Republik has never had to earn the Zebuloids' loyalty, because the old one earned it long ago. They know how ugly the Republiks gotten, they know these are probably the final years of months, but they refuse to abandon the first people to accept them and if that means going down with the ship, then down they'll go.



And finally, a quick word on the Mekaniks. There was an experiment, a world colonized exclusively by Von Neuman robots. Then the robots gained sentience and petitioned for citizenship. The Council Politik hemmed and hawed, than Binjo and and Assemblage took over and said, "sure."

The robots of Mekanik designed and built the antiphone, which is on their world. They've built almost all the future technology they've gotten designs from off the phone, and were major part in building a modern/futuristic fleet so quickly.

[Ahriman238]

Kultural Revolution

Most obvious of the reforms at home is the introduction of compulsory military service. Past that, the old Golgan Republik had so many laws it was all but impossible to go about one's daily business without breaking a few. Imprisonment was relatively rare, an extreme measure. Instead, most crimes earned you a certain number of demerits, which would accumulate in revocation of social privileges; banning from the Golgan internet, reduction of pay, fines, and restriction of travel. Bit odd, but alright. Where this gets really out there is that other people could take on some of your debt to society. This lead to extended families and social circles forming debt pools that distribute their members demerits, allowing people to walk on minor crimes all the time, and occasionally huge ones like murder if your circle was large enough and willing. In fact, the fig leaf for most secessionists is that an entire world or sector forms a debt pool, allowing the blatant treason of a few government officials in declaring independence to be distributed among the entire population.

Glaus Binjo has ended the practice of taking on someone else's demerits, while removing some of the more minor and annoying laws.


Golgan Argosy

Life in the Argosy is simple enough. If you're Golgan, you're an officer. If you're an alien, you aren't. The military also theoretically serves as law enforcement, but most Argosy officers feel this is beneath them and leave it to the Auxillary Guard.

The Argosy uniform is black and yellow, dived by a diagonal stripe across the chest. Over this, infantry wear a light purple breast and back-plate with 40 MDC. Golgan officers get the armor in gold coloring. More, the first time they get promoted, a Golgan gets shoulder pads and greaves. The armor continues to get added to, made thicker and more elaborate as rank and honors accrue until staff officers are clanking around in full golden plate that would make a 40K Chpater Master blush. Enlisted who earn the highest awards for skill and valor get to add the shoulder pads, sometimes.




The Jesstra fighter is recent, the design coming over the tachyon antitelephone. The Zebuloids have been peerless fighter pilots for a thousand years, but it took the antiphone to convince the Golgans to create a fighter with controls and displays optimized for Zebuloids, rather than one anyone could drop in and fly. These things add at least another fighter's worth to the Zebuloid squadrons, and have been a pretty nasty surprise to the opening of their grand campaign.

The Jesstra is 20x40x7 feet and weighs 16.5 tons. It has no shields and just 300 MDC, because it's meant to make the most of speed and agility to get around point defense. The fighter can do Mach 5 in Atmosphere, Mach 15 in space, making it half again as fast as many fighters. No FTL. The fighter is armed with twin disruptors, a Golgan hybrid laser/plasma weapon and can fire very rapidly without loss of accuracy. The fighter can carry 4 medium or 8 small missiles.




The Haelra drop shuttle is an older design. The Golgan have always been big on safety in numbers and overkill, while fearing retaliation, so their combat shuttles are heavily armored bricks that carry 300 infantry, or half that number and a superheavy tank. Or 500 tons of a given cargo. The shuttle has a frigate's engine, so it can make a ground to orbit trip in just a few minutes, but maneuvers like a, well, flying brick. Specifically it can do Mach 2 in atmosphere, 6 in space. It also has negligible armament, just 4 disrupters with less damage and rate of fire than the fighters, 2 each dorsal and ventral sides. 240x50x70 feet, 1200 tons and 2500 MDC.




The Bindas cruiser has been the mainstay of the Argosy for a thousand years (it's also given me a new pet peeve, people who include lens flare on drawings.) Named for a legendary military hero completely unknown outside the Republik. Like most cruisers, it has a heavy cruiser-grade spinal weapon, a massive Mega-Disruptor Cannon. Unlike most cruisers, this is located to the rear of the ship, where it can discourage pursuit. This is great fodder for xenopsychologists, who can wax at great length about how the Golgans subconsciously expect defeat, to the point there ships are designed around the ability to escape more than fighting effectively. Much remains to be seen about this in the present conflict. Oh, like most Golgan ships, it's a lot more manpower-intensive than equivalent ships of other races.

The ship is 1220x190x620 feet, and a quarter million tons. It's got 8,000 MDC and shields are 6,000 MDC to a side. Mach 1.2 in atmosphere, Mach 12 in space, and 6 LY/hour FTL. Crew is 770, with quarters for 4 companies of troops.

Armament, the Mega-Disruptor cannon is on a ball turret and can fire on things "above and below" the ship, not just behind. Range is 70 miles, 1-4,000 MD like most all cruiser weapons. The six turrets you see on the front are "Siege Disruptors with a range of 14 miles and just knock a zero off the damage for the Mega-gun. The ship has 4 particle beam point defense turrets, two on each side (port and starboard) but they're manned by Zebuloid gunners which makes a great difference. Other thing it has is a torpedo system, with 20 tubes each forward and back. The torpedoes in question are ion-fusion warheads, roughly 300 kilotons from the damage, with a range of a thousand miles. 300 KT isn't a ton in the Three Galaxies, but the cruiser can spam 240 of them a minute for 4 minutes and change, and that can add up. Plus 2,000 more torpedoes in storage.

Golgans live in fear of attack, and are huge believers in safety in numbers. Golgan ships never travel in less than threes. A Bindas Cruiser will normally have an escort of 2-12 Auntin frigates, which receive neither pictures nor stats. Some cruisers carry fighters, but not this one.




The Sylnor Command Ship is the new gem of the Argosy fleet. The first ship built exclusively from designs from the future, easily the most advanced and powerful ship the Golgans have. Many of their enemies refuse to believe the ships could be Golgan, they're too big, too powerful, too advanced and menacing. Looking like Shadow Crabs probably doesn't help. The first operations these ships were seen in was the seizing of old territory from the Kreeghor (taking it was always going to be easy, the hard part is holding it) and driving off a Naruni Repo Fleet, which says grimmer things about the Republik's future.

The ship is properly rated a battleship, 4000x600x800 feet (yeah right, shouldn't it be wider than long or tall?) and 20 million tons. 7,000 souls, divided equally between crew and infantry, with room for half a million tons of cargo. 90,000 MDC, with shields 15,000 MDC to a side. Sylnors are too big and awkward for atmosphere, but can do Mach 10 in space and 6 LY/hour FTL.

The main, rear weapon is a Super Disruptor (the Kreeghor swear it's a disintegrator) with a range of a thousand miles and doing 3-18,000 MD. It has 4 of the same Mega-Disruptors you see on a cruiser, 2 each on the top and bottom able to reach forward and back. It also has a dozen Siege Disruptors on turrets scattered around. It also has the same torpedo launcher as the Bindas cruiser, but mounts 6, 3 forward and aft respectively for the ability to fire off 720 torpedoes a minute. The point defense is seen too by 24 particle beam turrets, though the Siege Disruptors have a decent track record against fighters too (taking half the normal penalty due to advanced targeting systems.)

The Sylnor is the only carrier for the new Jesstra fighters, 96 of them. It also has 36 combat shuttles, more than enough to drop all of their troops and crew, with a few shuttles left over. But then, it has 50 of those superheavy tanks to support 3,500 infantry. Chalk it up to being prepared for attrition with the drop ships. It also carries 2400 "quantum tracking mines." Basically, if you fly a ship within a thousand miles of a mine, it comes to life and homes in at Mach 10, before detonating it's 100 KT charge. Mining space is already sort of a lost cause unless you can predict your enemy will be forced to pick one of a very small number of possible courses, and anything bigger than a frigate can laugh off 100 KT anyways.

The robots of Mekanik worked night and day, and drained the Golgan Treasury to launch just 5,000 of these ships to lead the charge. Already, they're starting to have issues with dividing them up between three fronts.