Enhancing Africa and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

[Hotrod]

Fellow Rifts fans, I'd like to submit for your judgment and commentary:

Rifts Africa and the Four Horsemen

A Supplement

My goal is to enhance the setting of Rifts Africa and the Four Horsemen campaign in three ways:
1. Make Africans the key players and front line against the Four Horsemen.
2. Establish more civilizations and organizations in five key regions of Rifts Africa.
3. Create a framework for an epic campaign in Africa that progresses from secret investigations and skirmishes to epic, climactic battles with huge stakes.

These first few posts will be "living posts" that I will edit and build on as I go. I will add replies mentioning new content as I go. Please let me know what you think and especially how you think I might improve what I write here.

History of Rifts Africa

The Golden Age: African Union

In the decades leading up to the Coming of the Rifts, Africa came to dominate the world in space exploration, agriculture, and bio-technology. Politically, the continent's many cultures and nations joined their economies and governments together, forming the African Union. This power bloc allowed free trade across the continent and established Africa as an influential superpower of commerce, technology, and culture. Africans enjoyed decades of uninterrupted growth and development, and Africans' lifespan, quality of life, education, wealth, and power skyrocketed. As their population expanded, Africans built colossal arcology-cities to house them. These arcologies towered over the rivers, lakes, and coastal waters of the continent as shining symbols of progress and harmony with Africans' environment and each other. The success of these arcologies inspired other countries to develop their own arcology programs, including what has become Chi-Town.

As the Golden Age ended across the rest of the world and the great arms races began, the African Union's Golden Age continued, as they enjoyed trade and mutually-prosperous relations with most of the world. Lacking any military rivals, the continent continued to flourish and develop even more as many other nations shifted their efforts into making powerful weapons and soldiers. While other powers squandered their wealth on weapons, the African Union became the wealthiest, happiest, and and most advanced civilization on Earth.

Then the Rifts came.

The Coming of the Rifts

Africans suffered more than most during the Coming of the Rifts. Tidal waves drowned the great African megacities along the Atlantic coast. Earthquakes toppled the great arcologies and leveled most cities further inland. Storms and extended winter wrecked the tropical crops. Even worse, debee invaders rampaged across the continent with few humans capable of challenging them. Having gone entire generations with no internal or external wars or conflicts, and without significant stockpiles of weapons or armor, humans fell in droves at the hands of demons and supernatural hordes. The African Union and almost all its member nations collapsed.

The coastal arcologies that had united Africans with each other now only served to isolate them from the rest of humanity. Their broken remnants littered the seabeds outside Africa, forming dangerous shoals that surround much of the continent. Many of these ruined arcologies have leaked toxic materials into the surrounding coastal seabed, rendering much of the African coast unsuitable for fishing. While a few have braved the ruined arcologies for salvaged technologies, this rarely ends well, as most are infested with entities, ghosts, and other nasty supernatural threats that are all too happy to prey on intruders to their turf. This has made getting in or out of Africa extremely difficult by sea, and the powers who can safely bypass these hazards usually do so only to raid the continent for slaves.

In the centuries since, most of Africa has reverted to wilderness, and the human population has shrunk to a small fraction of its former size. Still, as the P.A. calendar began, humanity managed to rally and organize itself in four regions, adapting the legacy technologies of its golden age or discovering new, supernatural approaches or allies. Across the continent, humans still spoke the unified language of the African Union as a common trade language, still shared legends of their former glory, and still dreamed of driving out the demons and monsters that plagued them. As the 100th year of the P.A. calendar approached, these four regions began to coalesce, and the people began to speak openly of uniting again into nations and a continent-wide alliance. Then it all went to hell.

The Time of the Horsemen

A sudden surge of suffering and death has arisen across the continent. Death cults have sprang up all over the pockets of civilization, whispering of dark days to come, sowing dissent, sabotaging infrastructure, and corrupting any who would heed the harbingers of Armageddon. Demons, witches, and necromancers walk the land, murdering and pillaging. As each region grapples with these new threats, psychics and clairvoyants warn that the worst is yet to come: four apocalypse demons with the power to annihilate all life across Africa and far, far beyond.

It is a dark time of grave uncertainty, when the destiny of a continent, and indeed the Megaverse, hinges on the choices and deeds of a few. Your characters are those few. What will they do?

What this is all about:

I've heard and read a lot of criticism of Africa over the years from people I respect. This is my attempt to address many of those criticisms while staying true to the themes of both Rifts in general and the campaign concept laid out in Rifts Africa. This project isn't meant to throw out what's in Africa or fix everything that I've seen objections to. Rather, it's to make the setting and central campaign of Africa more viable for both GMs and players.

The Gathering of Heroes will not be a central focus of this work. My concept is to use the Gathering in a reinforcing and supportive role, like an auxiliary, to support and back up the locals who know the land, culture, language, etc. Where The Gathering might take a more central role might be in larger battles after the early phases if/when a Horseman effectively destroys his region and unites with one of his brothers.

In general, I will also steer clear of shaman-magic and content built on cultural stereotypes. Players and GMs who want to use that content with what I create here still can; what I'm adding isn't incompatible with low-tech magic societies. That said, I intend to add enough content that a GM and party could play a complete campaign in Africa without using those aspects of the original book. Instead, I plan to use established magics and technology elements from other books or try to "look forward" in creating new content appropriate and specific to each region's themes based on my own imagining of a future history that could lead to and follow the Coming of the Rifts.

I also intend to develop the minions of the Horsemen and their secondary effects/tactics more. The Horsemen themselves are important, but they should be epic boss fights after wading through all kinds of nasty underlings, unraveling subplots, rooting out collaborators, et cetera. Each should have minions, death cults, and collaborators conspiring and fighting for that horseman.

Finally, I intend to present some optional outcomes for each region such that there is room for player choices and adventure outcomes to drive outcomes that include the prospect of one, some, or even all of the Horsemen laying waste to the regions in which they appear. My aim is to have any combination of these outcomes be compatible with the rest of the Rifts setting.

[Hotrod]

Mount Kilimanjaro: The Tech States

The Golden Age

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the best places to build a space launch facility on Earth due to its great height and geographic position just 2 degrees off the equator. In the Golden Age of Mankind, the great powers of the world poured treasure and resources into building the Kilimanjaro Space Complex and its supporting industries, and indeed well over 90% of what would become the Orbital community launched from here. Thus, the Kilimanjaro region became the greatest technology center in Africa and the greatest space technology center on Earth.

Ashfall

At the outset of The Coming of the Rifts, the Earth shook, and Mount Kilimanjaro and half a dozen volcanoes to the west erupted, destroying the space launch facilities and burying the surrounding areas in 4-24 feet of ash. Those who survived the earthquakes, choking fumes, the raining ashes dug themselves out only to meet rampaging alien invaders. The few survivors scattered and fled. For two centuries, the volcano and its surroundings became the domain of monsters. Still, the exiled survivors remembered the hidden and buried technology there, and they passed down that information to their descendants.

The Tech Rush

Around 50 P.A., scattered groups from Uganda began to return to Mount Kilimanjaro and its surrounding communities. When one of these groups discovered a surviving automated factory, word spread like wildfire, and a veritable gold rush of prospecting began as people dug up, rediscovered, and repurposed their ancestors' technology. The wild rediscoveries invariably led to claim jumping, thievery, and violence, even as it brought opportunity for scavengers, scholars, and scientists. Many of these opportunists banded together into roving groups. Some settled down and built towns and city states, while others remained nomadic, roaming from dig to dig. In the decades since humanity resettled the Kilimanjaro region, many of these groups have coalesced into two city-states that vie against each other and smaller towns and roving bands for the scraps of forgotten technology that yet remain buried.

Amboseli is the oldest and largest community, standing on the shores of Lake Amboseli to the northwest of Mount Kilimanjaro. Amboseli is built on jet and space propulsion technology. Amboseli have a strong affinity for hovercraft and hoverbikes. Amboseli warriors are especially fond of jetpacks and highly-mobile power armor. Amboseli weapons are potent, but short-ranged particle beams, ion blasters, and plasma-based melee weapons.

Amboseli's power structure is an oligarchy of nobles. Economic class is very important to the Amboseli, and land-owners are expected and required to defend anyone living on their land. This has led to the development of a land-owning warrior elite noble class, a highly-regarded engineer class that supports and supplies them, and other lesser classes categorized by profession. Amboseli culture emphasizes duty, courage, and martial prowess.

Kingori is Amboseli's main rival, built between Mount Kilimanjaro and the smaller Mount Arusha to the west. Kingori is built on communications, sensors, and robotic exploration technology. Kingori vehicles lack the speed of Amboseli's, but their optics, radar, and laser technology is highly advanced, giving their warriors the ability to engage foes at long distances and use small drones to scout surrounding areas. Kingori society is egalitarian and democratic, and citizens vote directly on most issues. Kingori adults are expected to keep and maintain a long-range laser rifle ready at hand. Kingori laser rifles are highly personalized and encoded exclusively to their users, and Kingori do not share or sell them among each other or outsiders.

Another dozen or so towns dot the slopes and surrounding areas around Mount Kilimanjaro, and another few dozen active camps and roving bands are active all the time. Most of these groups specialize in some other repurposed technology from the past: bionics, juicer conversion, M.O.M., rocket-based weapons (see Republic of Columbia in South America 1), rail guns, et cetera. These communities will share downgraded versions of their proprietary technology, but they always keep the best versions exclusively to themselves.While these communities trade basic technology and goods with each other, they jealously guard any technologies that they exclusively hold. To share a community secret technology with an outsider is a heinous crime worthy of death, and stealing such technology is considered an act of war.

The Time of War

War there shall be, for this is where War will appear! The apocalypse demon's followers will work to corrupt small communities and roving bands at first while worming their way into positions of influence within Kingori and Amboseli. His collaborators and pawns will include bandits, local warlords, mercenaries, witches, priests of darkness, and demons/deevils that revel in combat. They will provoke roving bands into fighting each other, raiding towns and city states, and goading the larger powers into arming and fighting en masse. At that point, War himself will appear and lead the most powerful faction his followers have come to control against whatever powers remain, reveling in the bloodshed and offering the defeated a choice: join him or die. If he wins, War will lead his followers west to join his brothers, leaving a blasted wasteland of craters and corpses in his wake.

If the people of the Mount Kilimanjaro region can defeat War, they will do so by setting aside differences and uniting against the horseman and his minions. This new, unified power can then become the preeminent technological center of the African continent. If War wins the regional fight, all these wonders and technologies will be smashed, buried, and forgotten.

[Hotrod]

South Africa: The Lone Survivor

The Golden Age: The Legacy of Apartheid

In the Golden Age, South Africa was one of the more prosperous members of the African Union. Despite this, much of the African Union in the Golden Age saw South Africa as a backward culture for keeping a strong focus on defense and security long after the rest of the African Union states let their militaries atrophy away.

South Africa's focus on defense and security was the legacy of its long history of ethnic conflicts that it couldn't quite forget. South Africa was a "rainbow nation" with a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. The large minority Afrikaner white population in particular had a strong distrust of other ethnic groups borne of the nation's legacy of apartheid segregation and ethnic conflict between them and black peoples like the Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Tsonga, and many others. The Afrikaners built up large stockpiles of weapons as "insurance" in fortified compounds away from the cities, and many of the other groups followed suit, as well as the national government, which needed to ensure it could squash any uprisings or sectarian conflicts. The rest of Africa scorned this legacy of ethnic tensions. Ironically, this legacy of ethnic tensions saved South Africa.

War Unending

The Coming of the Rifts toppled South Africa's coastal arcologies, drowned its coastal megacities, and ravaged its inland cities just as badly as the rest of Africa. When alien invasion hordes came, the people dispersed into the country. Overnight, the old tensions died. With aliens rampaging across the land, no-one cared about any race but the human race. The armories passed out weapons and armor to every human who could fight, and the united survivors of South Africa joined together and retook their inland cities. That campaign was the first of many long, bitter wars against their invaders. South Africa has been continually at war on at least one front ever since, but it has survived. South Africa is the only human nation in Africa to continually survive from before the Coming of the Rifts, and it has done so by the gun.

The Kathu Rift is a large, permanent Rift lying near South Africa's northern border, and this has been a source of multiple alien invaders. South Africa's army has eventually annihilated or driven every invasion force off into the Kalahari desert. The South African Army keeps at least a full division deployed to the area around the Kathu Rift at all times. Peaceful newcomers through the Rift are usually warned off (often with warning shots) and directed toward the Kalahari Desert, where patrols can observe and investigate them. Hostile newcomers are shot, and battles at the Kathu Rift are common.

The South African Army must also deal with hostile forces coming from the east, west, and south. Splugorth slavers and Horune pirates constantly raid South Africa's coasts to the point that the nation has no fishing or coastal settlements other than some patrol bases meant to fight off incursions. Though most raids are fairly quick, they are common enough that South Africa can be said to be fighting on three fronts most of the time.

As a result, South African society is unified and heavily militarized. Childhood education includes military training, and all able-bodied men and childless women are required to serve 6-year terms in the military upon reaching adulthood. The South African Army is the most developed, experienced, and professional human military force on the African continent, combining robots, power armor, artillery, and aircraft. Their technology is utilitarian and roughly equal to that of Northern Gun: effective, but not as good as that of the Kilimanjaro enclaves, who make better weapons, armor and vehicles. That said, South Africa's veteran troops are the best-trained and most-capable fighting soldiers in Africa. Culturally, South African society values spartan, efficient, and plain lifestyles and service to their nation.

Culturally, South Africa used to be quite xenophobic, with little tolerance for debees. However, a series of reforms in recent decades have softened this position. The first reform was the establishment of a foreign legion sixty years ago to bolster troop numbers. Though it was intended as a way for foreign humans to become citizens, its recruiters mistakenly misinterpreted the legal term "alien," to mean "alien humanoids" rather than "human foreigner," as parliament had intended. Parliament learned of this error when the first debees took their place in civilian society as citizens. In the decades since, this has become a standard practice, and now the descendants of debee veterans serve in the regular army. These debees are mostly non-supernatural (very few M.D.C. beings enjoy submitting to the authority of lesser creatures), and most look fairly human (elf, dwarf, mind bleeder, et cetera). South Africa's Army also uses some magic users and psychics in an irregular division of the Army, from which they get attached to regular military units for specific missions. Magic users and psychics have begun to find a place within civilian society as well. Most magic users and psionics try to use their powers in subtle ways or in private; flashy or ostentatious public exhibitions are considered wasteful and rude.

The incorporation of debees, magic, and psionics has bolstered South Africa and allowed its leaders to consider expanding their ambitions beyond survival. Up to now, South Africa has had little influence or interest outside its borders. Monsters and debees plague the Kalahari Desert and Savanna for almost a thousand miles to the north, while pirates and raiders dominate the seas around them. In recent years, the South African Army has sent a few long patrols to range out and meet with other powers, but the distances and dangers have prevented meaningful trade or alliances with the other human or friendly civilizations of Africa, with no way to grow except through military expansion. Thus, the republic of South Africa has been coiling its strength for a new campaign, a campaign in which its army would be the invader.

The Time of Death

Death will appear in South Africa, where he will lurk and use his minions to wreak havoc. His chief human collaborators will be necromancers, witches, priests of darkness, and death cultists. His minions will include undead terrors, as well as demons and deevils that delight in the macabre, like Ghouls and Nasu. However, Death will not try to thoroughly wreck the region he appears in like his brothers will; his goal will be to either keep the South African region too busy with fending off his minions to bother with troubles in other parts of the continent, or else to corrupt South Africa and turn it into a massive death cult. Death himself will not take much direct action until two or more of his brothers unite, at which point he will gather his minions and head north towards the other horsemen and their hordes, likely being the last to arrive. Once Death joins his brothers, they will seek out and destroy some Millennium Trees in Uganda before riding north to the city of Rama, where they can join at the super-nexus of in the Phoenix Empire.

South Africa will likely survive and weather the brunt of attacks from Death's minions as long as the Four Horsemen are ultimately defeated. However, the way that it survives will shape its future. The nation may become so focused on hunting down the agents of death that it embraces a culture of inquisition, presuming guilt and bringing death to debees and dissidents. If this happens, then Death will be able to remain and will become a driving force in this region for generations to come. Alternately, it may reach out and seek to help and unite and liberate other human peoples in Africa from the threat of the Four Horsemen and the oppression of evil debees, adapting an expeditionary mindset. If this leads to violent expansionism and imperialism, Death will also remain and become a driving force in this region and beyond. If this is more focused on diplomacy, trade, and cooperation, then Death will vanish when the last of his brothers falls.

[Hotrod]

Nigeria: The Fallen Giant

The Giant of the Golden Age

Nigeria was the richest, most populous, and most powerful member at the outset of the African Union, and its prosperity only grew in the decades that followed. Long known as "The Giant of Africa," Nigeria built towering coastal arcology mega-cities, a trend that other members followed through the Golden Age, though none built as many arcologies, or built them as large as the Nigerians. Nigeria's people and leaders led the development of the pan-African language, trade, and technology across the continent. While all of Africa prospered in the Golden Age, none prospered more so than Nigeria, and none suffered worse in the cataclysm that followed.

The Fall

Massive earthquakes toppled the great coastal arcologies, and the few lucky enough to survive the falling super-structures drowned in tsunamis that followed. Inland, the skyscrapers of the older cities fell, and the survivors soon found themselves without electricity, running water, shelter, or a reliable food supply. Half the country's population died in a matter of minutes, and half of the remainder died out in the subsequent year from injuries, sickness, exposure, and starvation. Then there were the Rifts.

Nigeria had no army and only a very small police force before the Coming of the Rifts, so when aliens poured out through the Rifts, the people had no way of fighting them off. In addition to the monsters that plagued all of Rifts Earth, a single Rift brought in many hundreds of a clan of Lizard Men who moved in and vied for control over people, ley lines, and nexuses. The people had little choice but to run, hide, or submit to the Lizard Men, the only invaders who seemed to value keeping humans alive as slaves. In a matter of weeks, the former citizens of Africa's premier state became refugees or slaves to the Lizard Men, scraping out a desperate existence in a chaos of shifting petty dominions. Over a generation, the Lizard Men forced out competing warlords and then focused their time on vying with each other in chaotic, petty squabbles.

Over the next fifty years, three things happened. First, many debees came through Nigeria and fell under the power of the Lizard Men, bonding with the native people under the same masters' yokes. Second, the people of Nigeria came to learn the ways of magic, first by providing P.P.E. to their masters in ceremonial magic, and then by learning the secrets of that ceremonial magic directly from their masters and fellow debee slaves. Finally, the people of Nigeria who remembered living in freedom instilled a yearning for freedom both in their descendants and the debee slaves.

Slowly, gradually, warlord by warlord, the humans and debees of Nigeria overthrew their masters. The process took generations and the concerted efforts of many people, but 200 years after the Coming of the Rifts, Nigeria killed or drove off the last Lizard Man tyrant, and the region became a collection of mostly free communities. Many of those communities were starting to discuss reuniting as a nation. Then the Splugorth came.

A People Without Cities

For the last century, the Splutorth City of Gorth to the west of Nigeria has been a major base for Splugorth slavers and raiders, and Nigeria is their favorite target. The High Lord in charge has long delighted in targeting its Nigeria's most populous population centers. This has encouraged the people to spread out and adapt an agrarian and somewhat nomadic lifestyle. It has also kept them from organizing and uniting. Instead, the loose communities have developed ways to help neighbors evade and resist the Splugorth slavers. Nigerians live out on the land, rarely building large structures and only gathering in numbers when necessary.

While Nigerians understand and appreciate what technology can do, their lack of permanent settlements makes it difficult to use any kind of industrial technology. Thus, high-tech is generally either imported by traders from far away or passed down as heirlooms. People capable of maintaining, repairing, and making new items are highly respected. Technology is more of a status symbol, not something they generally rely on. Instead, they rely on the magic they learned from the Lizard Men and other debees.

Nigerian magic users in Rifts have a particular focus on ceremonial magic. While they can use ley lines and nexus points like any magic user, they focus more on gathering people together to get additional P.P.E. needed for their most potent powers. They have a particular focus on weather control; most (75%) are Rain Makers. Their ability to regulate and control the weather makes them extremely useful for growing crops, impeding Splugorth slaver patrols, and hiding their people. Thanks in part to the Rain Makers, Nigeria's farms produce abundant food, far in excess of their own needs. The people are accustomed to plenty, and this makes the Time of the Horsemen all the harder for Nigeria.

The Great Famine

Famine will appear in this area. With a large population, Famine's ability to ruin food supplies will be a major threat. Collaborators will include witches, priests of darkness, corrupted rainmakers (bad weather to ruin crops), and appropriate demons/deevils that specialize in wasting/hunger. Famine and his minions/collaborators will seek to lay waste to the whole region, and once victorious will either migrate southeast to link up with Pestilence in the Congo, east to link up with War around Mount Kilimanjaro, or south to link up with Death.

Victory over Famine will require the loose confederation to pool its resources and have neighbors helping out neighbors, and this will effectively create a new, powerful, and cosmopolitan nation far more capable of resisting and defeating Splugorth slavers. Defeat will turn the region into a dusty, empty wasteland and likely result in the Splugorth abandoning their stronghold due to a lack of available slaves to capture.

[Hotrod]

The Congo Jungle

The Great Laboratory of the Golden Age

In a single generation after joining the African Union, the Congo went from being one of the poorest regions in the world to a center of science and industry. Nigeria led the African Union of the Golden Age, and the Congo's resources and people fueled it. Some of the Golden Age's greatest developments in biotechnology, electronics, and materials science came from the Congo.

In a short time, most people of the Congo moved to the new arcologies on the coasts and in the Congo River that sprang up in short order. There, they made and spent fortunes, raised large families, and enjoyed a quality of life never before seen in that region. At the same time, those who still lived and worked in the rain forests found new ways to harness the region's incredible diversity of biomes, plants, and animals in a renaissance of genetic engineering that resulted in leaps forward in medicine, agriculture, and many other industries. They cultivated and engineered biomes within biomes in the lush jungles to produce food, medicines, and materials in abundance. These developments encouraged the people of the Congo basin to expand and protect the rainforest even as they mined the region for its mineral wealth.

Another great contribution of the Congo to the rest of the world's Golden Age was the development of light M.D.C. composites mostly built with carbon: fibers, nanotubes, and diamonds. Though not quite as tough as M.D.C. metal alloys, these materials could provide nearly the same strength with less weight, and they were usually less expensive to make. Perhaps their greatest contribution came in the form of advanced electronics that formed the building blocks of microscopic robots capable of performing critical medical procedures and technology repair.

As international trade broke down and the Golden Age ended elsewhere, the African Union stopped looking outward and started looking upward towards the opportunities to explore and settle space. The Congo began to focus and team up its best minds at applications for human space colonization in partnership with the Kilimanjaro Space Launch Complex. This yielded some revolutionary new hybrid technologies: long-term contained life support, self-repairing spacecraft hulls and environment suits that could repair themselves automatically, and treatments that could extend productive human life well beyond even the standards of the Golden Age. Then the world ended.

The Death Marches

As with most of Africa, the populations in the coastal arcologies died first as these standing supercities crashed down in the opening earthquakes and tsunamis. The arcologies in the Congo River fared somewhat better, and many were able to evacuate safely before they toppled over. However, the vast majority of these refugees had no knowledge of how to survive in the wild after generations living in arcologies, and those who did had no means of defense against the alien predators that poured in from the Rifts. Most simply ran from danger to danger until they died from starvation, disease, and violence... or until migration became their way of life.

The engineered biomes, plants, and animals developed in the Golden Age adapted and grew wilder, and the jungle's size and species diversity grew as species long-thought extinct appeared once more along with entirely new creatures from the Rifts.

Human survivors learned to spread out in a nomadic lifestyle, using the jungle to hide and protect themselves in the vast jungle wilderness as they moved from biome to biome, gathering and hunting what they needed. Eventually, some discovered and learned to harness the powers of psionics, magic, or alien life forms to gain a measure of security. Even then, most humans just kept moving. A few established permanent villages and towns, but these rarely grew larger than a thousand people or so, with three notable exceptions.

Communities of the Congo

Deep in the heart of the Congo jungle, a large wall of fused, interlocking trees surrounds a vibrant and cosmopolitan magic community built around a tree-covered magic pyramid. This is the city of Heartwood, and it is home to many thousands of magic users and psychics, and none of them are quite sure why the city exists at all. What they do know is that something has drawn them all there for centuries through dreams, urges, and a sense of longing, until they feel compelled to leave their homes behind and migrate to Heartwood.

Most (60%) of Heartwood's residents are Biomancers (South America), Herbologists (England), Old Believers (Mystic Russia), or Psi-Druids, and each of these disciplines has a representative on the settlement's ruling council. There are also a few Rainmakers and warlocks, as well as a sizeable minority of other magic users, family members, and nature-loving people. Heartwood's people care most about the natural jungle, and they want to preserve it against all who would destroy or corrupt it, including invasive alien species, supernatural creatures, and genetically modified plants and animals. Supernatural creatures are not welcome in Heartwood (S.D.C. debees are fine, as long as they are not considered to be an invasive or destructive species). Heartwood's people have little interest or tolerance for other ways; to them, the The Ancient Father Millennium Tree is a puppet master, and its gifts are unnatural mockeries of nature. Similarly, Lake Mai's efforts to engineer the jungle's life forms to their ends are abominations, and they will not use Lake Mai weapons or armor.

Built on the lake of the same name, The Lake Mai Arcology was a prototype structure and testbed for the cutting-edge space colonization technologies developed just prior to the Coming of the Rifts. Since this prototype arcology was built in a remote area away from other population centers, few refugees from other areas knew of it, and most of them assumed that it had been destroyed, just like every other arcology in the African Union. They were wrong. While the ruins of every other African Union arcology lie rusting and broken off the African coasts or sunk deep into the river beds of the Nile and the Congo, the Lake Mai protoype endured, thanks to its small size (a tenth that of most African arcologies) and its unique, self-repairing construction materials. When the Coming of the Rifts hit, Lake Mai had not yet officially opened, and many of its systems were not online, so it held only a small fraction of its intended capacity. To protect themselves against the horrors rampaging through the jungle, Lake Mai hid itself in an artifical fog for generations, taking in small groups of refugees at a time and keeping the arcology secret. About a hundred years ago, Lake Mai turned off its artificial fog systems, abandoned its secrecy, and started engineering and settling the nearby jungle. Since then, it has grown steadily and established trade with communities in Uganda and Nigeria. While small by the standards of its day, the Arcology is a massive structure in which tens of thousands of people live and work.

Lake Mai's most famous technology is a fusion of genetic engineering, nanites, and materials science that allows them to create self-repairing M.D.C. carbon composite material known as Congite, a self-regenerating M.D.C. material that combines the hardness of diamond and the strength of carbon fiber and nanotubes in a light material. Congite contains self-sustaining nanites and microorganisms that can repair damage and deformation to restore its programmed shape and integrity. Exposed to air and direct sunlight, Congite will repair itself at a rate of 1 M.D.C. per hour. Cloudy days or indoor lighting will slow this repair to 1 M.D.C. every six hours. Alternately, special nutrient pastes applied to damaged areas will accelerate this process to 10 M.D.C. per minute (a tube is about the size of a large tube of toothpaste and will repair about 100 M.D.C. of damage). Lake Mai warriors use environmental Congite body armor (60 M.D.C., no mobility penalties) and flame-based weapons (use M.D.C. flamethrower weapons from Rifts: Mercenaries). To supply their warriors and grow food, Lake Mai has engineered the surrounding jungle to produce an abundance of food, medicine, the precursors needed to create and repair Congiteproduce food, and other useful products. The creation and spread of these engineered plants and animals have angered many of the ecological purists of Heartwood and even some of the Millennium Tree community of The Ancient Father. The genetic engineers of Lake Mai are equal to the best in Lone Star and could produce intelligent creatures, but their main interest is in plants and animals that can provide food, medicine, and materials for other Lake Mai technologies.

The final community in the Congo is that of The Ancient Father, another distinctive Millennium Tree. Most of its citizens and warriors rely on the tree's gifts and protection, eschewing most other forms of technology and magic and blaming sorcery and technology for most everything wrong with the world. Thus this community disdains both the people of Heartwood and the people of Lake Mai. The community of The Ancient Father is deeply rooted in tradition and customs, including a strong legacy of secrecy. Theirs is most secretive and xenophobic of the large communities in the Congo, though they will work with outsiders who have earned their trust and seem at home in the jungle. See Rifts: Africa's description of the Congo for more details.

While these three communities have little to do with each other thanks to the vastness of the Congo and the relatively tiny areas they control, they are aware of each other, and they view each other with a muted hostility, each seeing its way as the best way, and each seeing the others as backwards, ignorant, and dangerous. This mistrust has never devolved into open warfare, but there have been a few small-scale fights in neutral territory over the last 20 years, usually from competing visions of how to treat the jungle. Mostly, they ignore each other and only treat with each other if something threatens them all. Such a threat is about to come.

Pestilence

Pestilence will appear in the Congo. Devouring swarms of locusts and the diseases will consume the jungle and its denizens. The Horseman's collaborators will include witches, priests of darkness, corrupted biomancers and genetic engineers. Pestilence will create and send forth beetles from his staff, and his minions will create engineered or biomanced superbugs. Demons/deevils that specialize in pestilence (demon locusts, for example) will carve out dominions, consume them, and move on. Once he has laid waste to the Congo, Pestilence will either head northwest to seek Famine or east to seek War.

Defeating Pestilence will require the united efforts of the Congo's three largest settlements. If all three can set aside their differences and defeat Pestilence, they will come to realize that their visions aren't nearly as incompatible as they used to think, and they will make their alliance permanent. They may even try to unite themselves and the nomadic groups of people in the Congo into a new nation. However, even if they defeat Pestilence, they will not be able to provide much aid to other regions, as Pestilence and his minions will devastate wide swathes of the jungle and kill many; it will take generations of cooperative effort to restore the Congo. If Pestilence is victorious, the jungle will be laid waste, and the Congo itself will become a withered husk of itself. The land will quickly degenerate into a barren desert.

[Hotrod]

Uganda: the Front Line Against the Phoenix Empire

Missing the Golden Age

Prior to the Coming of the Rifts, many Africans regarded Uganda a country that much of the African Union's Golden Age progress had passed by. Landlocked and lacking unique resources, Uganda was a quiet and rural region. Many of its most ambitious people migrated to coastal megacities or the Kilimanjaro Space Complex to the south. However, Uganda enjoyed a quiet prosperity thanks to two key factors: the introduction of hardy, low-maintenance crops engineered to do well in its climate, and the healthy appetites of its wealthier neighbors.

Missing the Apocalypse

The Coming of the Rifts didn't hit Uganda as hard as most of the African Union. Being landlocked, lacking major cities to topple, and having plenty of hardy crops that grew wild with little need for active maintenance the death toll of the immediate Coming of the Rifts allowed much of the population to survive the initial earthquakes, especially outside the cities. The alien invasions that followed devastated much of the land, but in the midst of these terrors, the survivors found shelter around three ley line nexuses where sapling Millennium trees grew. In the centuries that followed, these Millennium Trees sheltered and protected Ugandans against demonic invaders and disasters of many kinds.

As the three trees shielded the Ugandans, so the Ugandans have come to shield much of Africa by stopping the southward expansion of the Phoenix Empire. Each tree is a bastion against evil supernatural creatures, a self-sufficient city-state, and a headquarters for one of the three fighting orders that focus on fighting supernatural evil.

While the Millennium Trees of Uganda are famous throughout Africa, and many Millennium Druids have visited them from as far away as Europe, such druids rarely stay; The Ugandan Trees have distinct and purposeful personalities; the kinds of people each tree befriends, encourages, and rewards are the people who share the goals and desires of that tree. None of the three trees are interested in supporting pacifist, soul-searching vegetarians, and in some cases, they outright reject and drive off such people through visions and dreams. These Millennium trees aren't hateful or corrupted; they just have other priorities. All three of them are particularly concerned with the demon empire that constantly encroaches upon them and the impending threat of the Four Horsemen.

The Three Trees of Uganda

The Tree at Gulu is the northernmost tree in Uganda, and thus the closest to the Phoenix Empire's frontier. The Gulu Tree is particularly determined to fight evil supernatural invaders both nearby and across Africa.

The Gulu Tree is not a place for quiet contemplation, peace, and relaxation; it is a place for training, healing wounds, and guidance in fighting supernatural evil. Few Millennium Tree Druids visit or stay long here. The tree regards such folk as useless bums worthy only of dreams implying they should do something productive or get lost. Many Millennium Tree Druids regard the Gulu Tree as an aberration in danger of corruption, especially after experiencing a sarcastic and rude vision from the tree. The Gulu tree couldn't care less; it has no time, charity, or patience for lazy moochers. Instead, the tree focuses its gifts on people who fight supernatural evil and those who support such warriors. Such visitors will sometimes get a single gift, but most of the tree's gifts go to support The Gulu Order.

The Gulu Order is a large group of warrior monks who use weapons and armor given by the tree. While they call themselves "monks," the Gulu Order accepts males and females of any non-supernatural race (no MDC), and members are inducted as youths and raised in a special monastery branch of the Gulu Tree. Gulu Monks are sworn to poverty and celibacy, as wealth and family are considered distractions. These aren't permanent vows, and any member can leave and rejoin the order at any time, but inactive members receive no gifts and don't enjoy the social privileges of the Gulu Monks (free meals, shelter, welcome, and support from pretty much every civilized household in Uganda). Additionally, any Gulu Monk, active or retired, is expected to uphold the ideals of the Order, and any evil acts like murder, robbery, et cetera will result in other monks hunting the corrupt monk down and forcibly taking all Millennium Tree items away, and returning the monk to the Gulu Order's ruling council for judgment.

Most active and inactive monks either live in the tree or in the surrounding communities, where they keep the peace and fight off supernatural invaders. Some members wander far from the tree, but all monks, even retired ones, maintain a mental connection with the Gulu Tree and will feel instinctively drawn to help the tree and other monks when supernatural evil threatens them.

Monks of the Gulu Order mistrust technology, preferring to use their symbiotic relationship with their gifts to solve their problems.
Gulu Order Spearmen use the Warrior Monk O.C.C. from Palladium Fantasy with appropriate skill selections for Rifts. Their weapon is the Spear of the Hunter (Eastern Territories from PF, p67, does 3D6 base damage) and they wear Bark Armor.
Gulu Order Archers use the Warrior Monk O.C.C. from Palladium Fantasy, but in lieu of that O.C.C.'s abilities with the spear, they take the Longbowman's O.C.C. abilities with the longbow. They use Millennium Tree Longbows (see Eastern Territories from PF, p67, does 3D6 base damage) and wear Leaf Armor.

Regardless of their specialty, monks of the Gulu Order develop such an affinity for their Millennium Tree armor and weapons that they can channel P.P.E. to repair these gifts and even reproduce some of a Millennium Tree's powers at a much smaller and weaker scale. At Level 1, their powers include:
1. Use their P.P.E. to heal Millennium Tree armor, gifts, and weapons (1 P.P.E. heals 1 M.D.C.). 2. Gulu Monks can also tap into the internal P.P.E. of some Millennium Tree gifts such as Bark or Leaf Armor, wands, and staves.
2. By touching and concentrating, A Gulu Monk can induce an energy eruption identical to the eruption caused by forcibly removing a piece of a Millennium Tree. This is a rare and desperate move that destroys the item creating the eruption. Most Gulu Monks will use this power only to prevent their weapons and armor from falling into the hands of supernatural evil. The damage and radius depending on the size of the items destroyed (see Rifts: England, p12). The Gulu monk will not be harmed, though he or she will be left unarmed and will have to justify the choice to destroy these gifts to the Gulu Order and the Gulu tree itself. Unjustified use of this power will get a Gulu monk expelled from the order.
3. Gulu monks are especially attuned to Millennium Tree gifts from the Gulu Tree, allowing them to form an empathic connection with each other and the tree itself. A Gulu Warrior can call for help through this connection to other Gulu monks up to 20 miles away. The tree itself and its avatar can also call for help from Gulu monks up to 100 miles away.
4. Gulu Monks have a special affinity for their primary weapon (spear or bow). They inflict mega-damage with that weapon regardless of the target, and they always inflict double damage to supernatural foes. Gulu Monk Spearmen inflict quadruple damage with a successful Spirit Strike (costs 2D6 P.P.E.).

Active Gulu Monks will continue get occasional additional gifts, either from the Gulu Tree or inherited from other Gulu Monks (GM's discretion, but a new gift of the player's choice every 2-3 levels is reasonable). Other Millennium Trees will not give Gulu Monks their gifts under any circumstances, but Gulu Monks can use gifts from other trees just as well as ones from the Gulu Tree. Their abilities to use Millennium Tree items develop considerably as they gain experience:
At level 2, a Gulu monk can use any Millennium Tree item to purify food and water (up to 20 pounds of either) at a cost of 5 P.P.E. They also gain the ability to damage any type of supernatural creature with Millennium Tree items (not just vampires/undead).
At Level 3, Gulu Monks can, with at least one Millennium Tree item of any type, spend P.P.E. to heal. One P.P.E. will heal 1 hit point and S.D.C (or 1 M.D.C). Additionally, Gulu Monks inflict an additional die of damage with their specialty weapon.
At Level 4, Gulu Monks become attuned to the supernatural senses of the tree's gift, and will gain the equivalent of the 6th Sense psionic power. Additionally, Gulu Monks can now inflict M.D.C. damage to any M.D.C. target with any Millennium Tree item, not just supernatural enemies.
At Level 5, a Gulu Monk with any Millennium Tree item of any type can perform a Ley Line Teleportation to any point along any connecting ley line. Gulu Monks can take people with them (must be touching) at a cost of 5 P.P.E. per additional person. Additionally, Gulu Monks wearing Leaf or Bark armor gain the power of chameleon (no P.P.E. cost, activated and deactivated at will).
At Level 6, Gulu Monks inflict an additional die of damage with their specialty weapon (spear or bow), and they become impervious to poisons, toxins, and disease (normal or magical).
At Level 7, Gulu Monks can channel their P.P.E. through their gifts to gain limited control over the weather in the immediate area around them, similar to that of a Millennium Tree, but for a far smaller area: a mere 200 meters in any direction. Still, this can create fog, light rain, change wind direction, and moderate (halve) the intensity of adverse weather. This control costs 15 P.P.E. and lasts for an hour.
At Level 8, Gulu Monks learn to reshape the gifts of a millennium tree and convert them from one type into another. This is a difficult and time-consuming process, requiring 20 P.P.E per day for a week to transform a leaf or twig, or 20 P.P.E. for three weeks to transform a staff or bow. This power can also purify a corrupted Millennium Tree item.
At Level 9, the Gulu Monk's attuning to the supernatural senses of the Millennium tree grow to the point that he or she can perform the equivalent of an Oracle spell and Clairvoyance power at a cost of 10 P.P.E. The Gulu Monk can share this vision with another for an additional 10 P.P.E. Additionally, Gulu Monks inflict an additional die of damage with their specialty weapon.
At Level 10, a Gulu monk can consume any small Millennium Tree gift (leaf or twig) to perform a one-time restoration, reattaching limbs and restoring health without scarring.
At Level 11, a Gulu monk can consume an small Millennium Tree gift to create or dispel a Ley Line Storm.
At Level 12, a Gulu monk can consume any staff-sized Millennium Tree gift to perform a one-time resurrection of a mostly-intact body. Additionally, Gulu Monks inflict an additional die of damage with their specialty weapon.
At Level 13, a Gulu Monk can consume a large Millennium Tree gift to open or close a dimensional Rift. If opening a Rift, the Gulu Monk must know the destination, or else it will be random.
At Level 14, a Gulu Monk can use any Millennium Tree gift to become one with the tree, becoming a Millennium Tree Avatar for a limited time, gaining all its powers. The cost of this power is one hit point per minute (does not affect the Avatar's M.D.C.). If the character stays in Avatar form for longer than his hit points allow, the character will die, leaving a pile of seven new Millennium Tree gifts in lieu of the character's former arms, legs, head, and torso.
At Level 15, Gulu Monks become so aligned with the Millennium Tree that their Gulu Monk powers no longer require having a Millennium Tree item (Powers specific to a gift still require the gift). Additionally, all "per day" power limits on all Millennium Tree items are doubled. Finally, all Gulu Monks inflict an additional die of damage with their specialty weapon.

The ruling council of the Gulu Order is a group of Gulu Monks who have permanently and physically bonded themselves to the Gulu Tree in an inner chamber. Only a Gulu monk of 14th level or higher can join them by transforming into an Avatar of the Tree and bonding with the tree; this process effectively makes the monk immortal, but ties them to the tree permanently; they cannot return to human form and can only detach themselves at great need for an hour or so.

Other communities in and around the Gulu Tree's region of influence live lives that are fairly simple, without much technology, depending on gifts from the tree to keep their lands fertile and productive. Most of these villages see the Gulu Tree itself and The Gulu Tree's sphere of influence is fairly small, as it devotes far more of its gifts to the Gulu Order than to the farmers supporting them. At times of great need, the Gulu Tree will create a true Avatar (see PF's Eastern Territories) and call all members who can come to fight off a great threat nearby.

The Tree at Mbale is closest to the Kilimanjaro region. Thanks to shared ancestry and robust trade with the Kilimanjaro region, the communities in and around the Mbale Tree are the most tech-savvy in Uganda. They are also the most widespread, most-organized, and most-productive farming communities in Uganda. Each village and community sends a representative to a council that votes on matters and selects the leadership of the Mbale Riders.

The Mbale Tree is the largest of the three Ugandan trees, and it delights in growth and productivity. It is more tolerant of Millennium Tree Druids than the Gulu Tree, though it rarely bestows gifts upon them and will send them visions encouraging such visitors to go start a farm, ranch, or business. The Mbale tree sees Millennium Druids as preachy sycophants and freeloaders, and it prefers to reward and enable hard work by giving directly to working people. Most of its gifts are the types that are useful for raising crops: the Staff of Purity, the Staff of Prosperity, and the Wand of Dowsing are especially common. The Wand of Dowsing is highly prized in the Kilimanjaro region among the scavenger groups seeking buried relics and technology. However, the Mbale Tree gives its gifts sparingly and rarely gives anyone more than a single gift of any type.

The community in and around the Mbale Tree has the look and smells of a well-tended garden, the bustle of a market, and the lights and sounds of technology, yet it somehow feels comfortable and homey. The people who live there value hard work and a sense of earning their place there. It is considered exceptionally rude to ask the Mbale Tree for any gift; as the locals say, "a gift that's demanded is no gift at all." Rather, folk will ask the tree for guidance and advice on how they might improve their own lives and businesses.

The Mbale Riders are a paramilitary organization based at the Mbale Tree. Their style of fighting is supremely well-suited to the wide-open savannah, using fast movement and long-range shooting. Hovercraft, hover-bikes, jet bikes, and jet packs are their preferred vehicles, while their favorite weapons are long-range guns like rail guns, laser rifles, and conventional (S.D.C.) rifles. Use the Reaver Mechanized Cavalryman O.C.C. from Warlords of Russia p79 for the Mbale Riders with appropriate substitutions for language: Russian and Pilot: Snow Mobiles. In lieu of the starting cybernetics, the character can select a Millennium Tree wand of choice

The Riders themselves train and live in and around the Mbale Tree and are the most centralized of the Ugandan fighting orders. Thanks to radio antennas at the top of the Mbale Tree and aerial drones repeating signals, the Riders will hear any call for help among its constituent communities instantly and send riders out within a few minutes. Riders also often go out on short patrols in variable groups, and occasionally, pairs or even individual Riders will go on long patrols across most of Africa, and sometimes beyond to gather information, explore, and meet with other groups.

The Tree at Fort Portal stands between Lake Albert and Lake Edward at the edge of the Congo. It is the wildest-looking Millennium Tree in Africa with a twisting, dense structure of branches that seem to shift when people aren't looking. It is the most mysterious of the three Ugandan trees. Its branches and inner passages are a bewildering maze that seem to open, and close when they are out of sight. They do not actually do so, but the magic of the tree confuses and confounds most visitors, who must roll to save vs magic at 18 spell strength three consecutive times or else become hopelessly lost in the tree's inner passages. Only a chosen few live inside and walk its passages unhindered. These are the Portal Rangers.

The Portal Tree itself revels in cycles of animal life and using animal life for a greater purpose. It has a deep love of hunters, ranchers, herdsmen, and livestock-keepers. The Portal Tree has no special antipathy toward Millennium Druids, but it cannot understand their commitment to veganism or pacifism, an approach that rejects many of the greatest gifts that animals offer. The tree has no interest in pacifism or veganism; it sees conflict and death as a part of life, and it wants to see the great cycles of life in the neighboring Congo and the rest of Uganda flourish. The tree also sees the demonic threats from the Phoenix Empire and the Four Horsemen as existential threats to itself and the animal life cycles it cherishes.

The savanna east of the Fort Portal Tree is dotted with ranches and herds: cattle, goats, and other livestock. To the west, the Congo stretches out, thick with wildlife, game, and predators. Settlements are small and spread out, and the only law is that of the Portal Rangers.

The Portal Rangers are a mysterious order, elite hunters known to appear and disappear without explanation. They take a minimalist approach to policing the region around the Portal Tree, keeping a watchful eye from the shadows, stepping in only when necessary, correcting problems, and disappearing immediately afterward. They keep the peace between people and ensure that no supernatural creatures or magic upsets the balance and cycles of life around them.

My rough concept for Portal Rangers:
1. They are sneaky hunters who use arts of invisibility, disguises, metamorphosis, and/or animal friends/magic to keep tabs on things.
2. They have some kind of capability to create 2-way portals that only they can use, and they can reposition one end at a time. This allows flawless, but limited teleportation between two places. It could also allow for a rapid escape and return.
3. "They could be anyone!" Portal Rangers live among the people; like classic superheroes, they keep their regular and Portal Ranger identities separate and secret. Portal Rangers never show their faces.
4. They fight up close, either in melee or with very short-range weapons. These are pouncers, not snipers or sluggers.
5. Some kind of ability, technology, or magic needs to bring together these elements into a single coherent concept.

Relations within Uganda

Though each tree and its surrounding peoples' have different approaches to living, working, and fighting, they generally respect each other, and they trade in basic goods, share information, and occasionally team up to fight demons. Despite their strength, Uganda remains a major crossroads for demons, minions, and collaborators moving north and south. This has become worse in the Time of the Horsemen.

The Battlefield of Africa

In the year leading up to the Horsemen arriving, demonic incursions from the north will increase threefold. All three fighting orders will have their hands full with hunts, skirmishes, and non-boss battles as the locals take on interlopers and invaders. However, there will be little of the corruption games or investigating local collaborators. The people of Uganda are solidly against the Phoenix Empire and the Armageddon demons, and they are prepared to die fighting them.

And die they may. Should Death unite with War, Famine, and/or Pestilence, Uganda is a good region for 1-3 climactic battles against each Millennium Tree. The Ugandan fighting orders are used to fighting disorganized demons, not the coordinated hordes of the Armageddon Demons and the professional army of the Phoenix Empire. They will need all the help they can get. This will probably be the best area for the Gathering of Heroes to go assist in fighting the Horsemen, and the Ugandans will take any help they can get to win.

Alas, even beating the Horsemen may not be enough to save Uganda. If either Kilimanjaro falls to War or the Congo succumbs to Pestilence, or if either region suffers too much to continue trading with and supporting Uganda, their support will lapse, the power base for two of the three Millennium Trees will be gone, and this region's prospects for holding off the wrath of the Phoenix Empire will become grim.

[Hotrod]

The Phoenix Empire: Army of the Fifth Horseman

An important thing to keep in mind in this campaign is Rama-Set's insane ambition to become a fifth horseman of the apocalypse. It's quite impossible, but that's how the Pharaoh sees himself. He has devoted the last three hundred years of his life to this goal, and he will use everything at his disposal to see the four horsemen united into the Apocalypse Demon. The story of this ambition begins with the story of Egypt before the Rifts.

A Reluctant Golden Age

Egypt was the last member to join the African Union, and it did so over the misgivings of many of its people who felt more kinship, religious alignment, and cultural similarities with the people of the Middle East than with most of Africa. Still, the benefits were indisputable: a huge jump in their quality of life, prosperity, and security. Under the flag of the African Union, Egypt played no part in the arms races, cold war, and nuclear stalemate that dominated the Middle East in the decades leading up to the Coming of the Rifts. However, they worried about the neighboring regional conflicts and tried to make peace for their neighbors amid the rising regional tensions of the Middle East and Europe. In this, they had little to no support from the rest of the African Union, which was quite happy to ignore the rest of the world and enjoy the riches of their united and prosperous continent. Egyptians thus resented the rest of their continents' isolationism even as they enjoyed lavish lifestyles in the safety of their cities and arcologies along the Nile.

Chaos and Slavery

The Coming of the Rifts ravaged Egypt. As with the rest of Africa, earthquakes toppled Egypt's great arcologies along the Nile, killing most inside. The cities on the ground fared a little better, but the survivors had no chance to recover. Egypt has an unusually large number of ley lines and nexus points, and supernatural horrors poured in, killing or enslaving all they found. Humanity in Egypt never recovered, and has suffered in chattel slavery ever since. The few who rose above the slaver of their birth did so by the patronage of their demon overlords, becoming witches and necromancers and serving as henchmen to their masters. Many learned to be even more cruel to the human slaves than demons.

In place of a unified country in a pan-continental union, Egypt became a land of a thousand petty fiefdoms. Some demon, deevil, or other horror ruled each fiefdom as they vied with each other over land, ley lines, nexus points, slaves, or other forms of wealth and power. Their contests frequently turned violent, and for decades, the survivors of Egypt toiled and suffered under a constantly shifting collection of masters and would-be rulers. Then Rama-Set arrived.

Feudalism and Feuds Under the Pharaoh

Rama Set's conquest of Egypt was different. Rather than wanton killing and pillaging, he built a system wherein fiends could continue to rule, abuse, and play their power games without ruining their spoils or losing everything. The dragon pharaoh set about establishing a sense of order in Egypt that soon took hold of the region that has persisted to this day by forcing every petty supernatural tyrant to become his vassal or die. Much like organized crime, there is a hierarchy among these vassals and a system of taxes and tributes that work their way up to the Pharaoh. Perhaps order is too strong a word; petty monstrous tyrants still cheat, rob, and murder each other, but the violence rarely rises above the level of a skirmishes that play within a simple set of rules made by Rama-Set:

1. Rama-Set always gets his cut. Those who disrupt Rama-Set's business (to include interfering with his tax collections) forfeit their belongings and their lives, both of which Rama-Set and his people will take in the most painful and humiliating ways possible: public torture and execution after seeing their fiefdom divided up among their worst enemies is standard.
2. No pillaging. Conflicts between vassals is expected and sometimes encouraged, but such conflicts cannot interfere with their ability to pay their tributes and taxes (see rule 1). Thus, killing a rival demon and his elite servants is tolerated, as is robbing them of personal possessions. Slaughtering more than a token number of slaves, destroying infrastructure/shops, acts of major sabotage, or wanton destruction of valuable property will interfere with the pharaoh getting his cut and bring the same draconian response as someone stealing from the Pharaoh.
3. Your tribute is your worth. The more taxes, services, or tribute you bring your lord and the pharaoh, the more influence, status, and protection you get. Conversely, the more wasteful you are with your fiefdom, the more likely the Pharaoh's forces are to turn a blind eye to your foes' attacks or even encourage them. This has also introduced an interesting quasi-meritocracy within the Phoenix Empire, as human witches, psychics, necromancers, and other magic users sometimes rise to positions of power and influence in the feudal system.

This system is rank with waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse, but it has held together a nation of objectively evil beings who normally never get along. In the centuries since the Phoenix Empire first began, it has grown well beyond the borders of pre-Rifts Egypt in a gradual expansion checked only by the sea, the desolation of the Sahara and the Middle East, and the Ugandan Millennium Tree communities to the south. The Empire maintains its strong position through the power of four key forces.

The Horde Militia: Feudal Fiends
This is the largest and most-powerful army in Egypt: a militia of evil creatures of magic and magic users who own slaves, land, and businesses, and who like to play politics. From time to time, Rama-Set calls some of them up and sends them off on short expeditions, normally in response to a local threat or as a show of force. Though powerful, they're sloppy, impatient, and undisciplined. They tends to do more in-fighting and desert when they've been in the field for more than a week or two, but they make great shock troops when sent straight into battle.

The Army: Professionals
These are Pharaoh's full-time supernatural troops. They enjoy special privileges over the feudal lords to enforce Pharaoh's three rules, contain feudal violence, and intercede when necessary. As full-time warriors, they're more disciplined than the Horde, though they suffer from their own form of in-fighting and jockeying for power as the ambitious vie for rank, positions, and assignments. Occasional patrols range far and wide across Africa, spreading mayhem and hunting down threats to the Empire.

Infiltrators
These Shapeshifters who revel in disruption, corruption, and betrayal are Pharaoh's secret police and spies. They enjoy the same special privileges over the feudal lords and serve the same purpose, but they rely less on violence and more on subterfuge. They are quite active both inside and outside the Empire, and Rama-Set likes to keep them busy, as bored shapeshifters tend to create problems at home.

Kittani Mercenaries
Rented from Splynncryth under secret terms, these are the Empire's most professional and reliable troops. Kittani troops bring a level of discipline that no demon troops could possibly match. Rama-Set uses these troops as auxiliaries to his regular army as scouts and skirmishers; he also sends them on surgical strikes and sensitive missions both inside and outside the empire, especially if the task calls for restraint or technological savvy.

Shepherding the Horsemen

After his initial attempt to summon the Four Horsemen directly at his pyramid fails, Rama-Set will send small demon army patrols and infiltrators out across the continent. These fiends have three objectives: to discover where each horseman will appear, to spread chaos among the free people of Africa, and to corrupt as many as possible into joining death cults.

Once the horsemen start appearing, Pharaoh's minions will get more aggressive, and Rama-Set will send larger groups south to aid and protect the Horsemen, paying special attention to send each type of monstrous minion to aid an appropriate type of horseman. Thus, Baal-Rogs will go to War, Ghouls will head towards Pestilence, et cetera. These will come from Pharaoh's army in special detachments.

As the Horsemen gather power, minions, and begin to travel toward Uganda, Rama-Set will step up his incursions into that area with large-scale raids to wipe out any vulnerable or unprotected communities outside the protection of the Millennium Trees. These raids will use both the regular Army, infiltrators, and, occasionally, troops from the Horde.

As the Horsemen arrive in Uganda and prepare to assault the trees, Rama-Set will send all the troops he can spare to help, including the Horde, regular Army, infiltrators, and Kittani mercenaries. His generals will coordinate with the Apocalypse demons. These troops may participate directly in the Battles for the Trees, or they may be used to fight off reinforcements from other regions and communities.

Salvation from the Splugorth?

One interesting potential plot twist to consider is to have Kittani mercenaries turn on their demon allies to prevent the Horsemen from winning, either subtly (sparing lives, leaving supplies/weapons unguarded for those fighting the Horsemen) or overtly switching sides. The Kittani's ultimate loyalty lies with the Splugorth, and Splynncryth does not wish for the Horsemen to win. Overt betrayals will not happen until the Battles for the Trees at the earliest. Their most likely time for such a move is in a final confrontation at the Tree of Sorrows in Rama, where the Kittani will prepare large-scale nuclear weapons to destroy the Four Horsemen (and a good chunk of the city for good measure).

[Hotrod]

This reply is for the Four Horsemen Campaign notes.

The Summoning: The Giza Pyramid, in Rama the City of Doom
Pharaoh Rama-Set planned and prepared for this moment for over a century. At a moment when dawn coincided with a lunar eclipse, thousands of demons would complete an elaborate ritual, and he would summon forth and unite the Horsemen. He planned for everything, psionically blocking the event to all would-be observers and clairvoyants, setting up barriers and force fields around the pyramid to keep out interlopers, and creating elaborate ruses and cover stories to keep the ritual's true purpose secret to all outsiders. Then, at the moment when the Horsemen began to emerge from the great Rift he'd created, some saboteurs blocked the critical flow of magic energy from the pyramid and released it in a titanic wave that flattened most buildings near the great pyramid. The Four Horsemen's arrival was delayed by a few years and scattered across the continent. The rage of Rama-Set and his demons was immense, and they vented it on the slaves and weaker citizens of Rama in a night of bloody slaughter.

The party could be in Rama when the initial summoning happens. If so, they will have to find a way to escape the wrath of the rampaging demon horde. In the days after, they could also work as spies and try to collect information about what is to come, where the Horsemen are expected to arrive, and what Rama-Set is doing about it. If they can get accurate information out to the free peoples of Africa, that will help the rest of the continent to better organize and prepare for the horrors to come. Alternately, the player characters themselves may be the saboteurs.

Conspiracies, Cults, and Chaos
Prior to the Horsemen arriving, Rama-Set will send out demons and emissaries to try to prepare things for the horsemen: establishing death cults, building hidden temples, setting up conspiracies to destabilize regions, and assassinating key leaders and figures across the continent. This will be a time of whispered rumors, secret meetings, and acts of terror across the continent. Violence will swell across the continent, but most of the violence will be on a small, personal scale.

Meeting this threat, heroes will rise in Africa to uncover and fight these demons, cults, and collaborators. Other heroes will come from around the world and across the Megaverse to help, called and guided there by forces they do not understand. There will be no single Gathering of Heroes at this point; these efforts will be spread out and uncoordinated as these heroes root out the conspiracies of the Horsemen's followers and try to learn as much as they can about the horror to come. The more they expose, the more likely these regions are to unite and cooperate with each other against the coming threat.

Regional Wars
After the Horsemen arrive, Rama-Set will send demons out as scouts, guides, and minions to attend to and assist the Horsemen, and their minions and collaborators will come out of hiding and put their plans into action, openly declaring themselves for the apocalypse demons. Battles will rage across the continent, most of them being fights between Africans defending their homes and the minions and collaborators of the Four Horsemen. Well-organized heroes and regional forces may attack a Horseman directly, and this is the best time to do so, before they can amass their horde, lay waste to the region, and gather. The famous Gathering of Heroes in the north of Africa will happen, but it will come too late to help with most of this fighting, at best showing up just in time to help with a final fight against a Horseman. More likely, the bulk of the Gathering will likely arrive in force only once two or more of the Horsemen join forces and prepare to attack Millennium Trees.

Battles for the Trees
Once all the Four Horsemen (or as many as are remaining on Rifts Earth) have gathered, they will head towards Egypt. However, they will not head there directly; instead, they will seek out, attack, and destroy 1-3 millennium trees on their way to the super-nexus in Rama. In order to join together into the unified Apocalypse Demon, the Horsemen must kill Millennium Trees. One tree must die for each Horseman before they can bond together.

Each tree will know that the attack is coming well in advance and will send out desperate pleas for help via dreams and psychic visions, which may draw the Gathering of Heroes to it. Most of these battles will happen in Uganda. It is possible that Famine and Pestilence may join forces to attack the Ancient Father tree in the Congo, but they are more likely to head east and link up with War and Death in Uganda. The final tree to die will always be the Tree of Sorrows in Rama, which is helpless and defenseless. This is the main reason why Rama-Set has allowed this Millennium Tree to remain alive, but crippled and marred, in his capital city. While the Horsemen themselves will always attack united, they may send some of their forces elsewhere to misdirect reinforcements like the Gathering of Heroes away from the true target of their attack until it is too late. The Horsemen are ingenious strategists and are likely to win at least one or two of these battles.

With the exception of the Tree of Sorrows, the Horsemen and their minions will have to contend with major resistance. Each attack on a tree will be a large-scale, direct assault. The Horsemen themselves are immune to the magic of the Millennium Trees (including their defensive explosions), and their weapons do triple damage against the trees and their gifts. Millennium Tree weapons will work against the Horsemen, just not any direct attacks or actions from the tree itself. Their followers are similarly protected, though they are not immune to the trees' defensive explosions. The Horsemen will focus on killing the tree; they will not retreat, and will only fight those who get between them and the tree. Their minions and collaborators will focus on holding off the tree's defenders.

Each tree assault will be a big, climactic fight that draws every hero in the area and gives them a chance to concentrate their efforts and destroy one or more of the apocalypse demons. The trees will attempt to heal their defenders and provide gifts of weapons and armor to anyone willing to defend them, but every gift and healing diminishes the tree. Even a successful defense will likely leave the tree marred and diminished for generations to come.

Once the Horsemen cut down the tree, it is slain, and the Horsemen and their followers will work their magic to corrupt its remains, creating tens of thousands of corrupted Millennium Tree items, making their armies all the more powerful and rallying more minions to their cause.

Armageddon
Once the Horseman have killed enough Millennium trees (one for each horseman, and remember, there's a weak, defenseless target in Rama: the Tree of Sorrows), they will make for the Pyramid of Giza, where Rama-Set and his demon army will unite them into the Apocalypse demon (sacrificing their mortal collaborators in the process).

Whatever is left of the Gathering will engage the Horsemen and fight to the death, and it is unlikely to prevail. The player characters may join this fight or may be tasked with some other desperate idea: nuclear attack, opening a Rift to the Xiticix homeworld or other hellish dimension, or any other longshot idea the player characters can think of that might prevent or interrupt this final ceremony.

[Captain_Nibbz]

I am so excited to see this thread

[Hotrod]

:? I am so excited to see this thread

Thanks!

I've revised the overall history and the Mount Kilimanjaro region. Happy to have your thoughts.

[Wise_Owl]

This is a strong effort. Generating distinctions between the different regions of the continent is a great first step in writing alot of the wrongs. Area's I think would be the most interesting overal would be the west Coast(the area where-in the Sonjay and Mali empires once resided) and the area's surrounding the 'Great Lakes'. Africa is intensly diverse of course.

One thing I would like to see is something placed on the East Coast in terms of trade and mercantile efforts. The Indian ocean was historically a massive trade-highway and South_East Asia, India,The Middle East and East coast of Africa are all intensly underdeveloped.

I also really like the idea of incorporating the Horseman as a challenge principal in opposition to the Local populations. That definately deals with one of the massive, and obvious problems with the original book.

[Captain_Nibbz]

Just finished reading everything again. I am absolutely loving this so far.

Two thoughts though: The Congo seems a little bit weak in detail compared to the other areas, do you have any plans or ideas for expanding on this area? Additionally, Uganda has some really good foundations going for it thus far, do you plan on fleshing this out more with different orders of hunters and defenders?

[Hotrod]

Just finished reading everything again. I am absolutely loving this so far.

Two thoughts though: The Congo seems a little bit weak in detail compared to the other areas, do you have any plans or ideas for expanding on this area? Additionally, Uganda has some really good foundations going for it thus far, do you plan on fleshing this out more with different orders of hunters and defenders?

I took what I wrote up on another thread and put it in here as an outline; I plan on building it up by edits as I go. So far, I've expanded the overall continent's history and the Kilimanjaro region.

You're 100% right on the Congo. I have a vague idea of having multiple cultures focused on bio-tech and/or bio-magic. It could be as simple as importing Biomancy, mystic herbology, and some genetic engineering/mutant animals from Lone Star, but I need to come up with some kind of history that takes the Congo from what it is today, through the Coming of the Rifts, and the three centuries after it, in ways that feel right for Rifts.

I'm thinking of having Uganda and the region around Lake Victoria be something akin to Gondor in Middle Earth or Cadia in 40k: a longtime front line against demons and monsters from the north. I do plan on developing it, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Phoenix Empire more.

[Hotrod]

This is a strong effort. Generating distinctions between the different regions of the continent is a great first step in writing alot of the wrongs. Area's I think would be the most interesting overal would be the west Coast(the area where-in the Sonjay and Mali empires once resided) and the area's surrounding the 'Great Lakes'. Africa is intensly diverse of course.

One thing I would like to see is something placed on the East Coast in terms of trade and mercantile efforts. The Indian ocean was historically a massive trade-highway and South_East Asia, India,The Middle East and East coast of Africa are all intensly underdeveloped.

I will look into the regions you mention.

Overall, I've been thinking of keeping most human civilization away from the coasts and oceans for two reasons. First, having major seafaring nations on Africa's coast might complicate the overall settings as laid out in Underseas and Lemuria. Second, and more importantly, Africa is described as somewhat mysterious in Rifts, and that seems more plausible if few people go there or leave. Keeping human communities away from the coast helps keep the people of the continent fairly isolated from Europe and the rest of the setting. The way I'm thinking of writing it is to have the Splugorth and Horune raid the coasts too often for people to build near them.

I also really like the idea of incorporating the Horseman as a challenge principal in opposition to the Local populations. That definately deals with one of the massive, and obvious problems with the original book.[/quote]

[Hotrod]

I've expanded the Uganda post with a local history and more local details. I'm centering the political and power structure of Uganda around three Millennium Trees and the groups that use each tree as home bases and bastions.

[Captain_Nibbz]

I've expanded the Uganda post with a local history and more local details. I'm centering the political and power structure of Uganda around three Millennium Trees and the groups that use each tree as home bases and bastions.

I really like this expansion on Uganda. I think that makes for a much kore interesting cultural center with a fleshed out and dedicated purpose.

Can't wait to see what you come up with next

[taalismn]

I'm intrigued.
It's no easy task to balance a region that's so rich in undiscovered history, hampered in part by the lack of the sort of chiseled-in-stone records we have for ancient Egypt, with a more modern worldview.
On one hand you have a part of the globe that would be second only to Asia in ancient magic dating back to the even before the Atlantean era.
On the other hand, you have the potential of Golden Age Africa, who, in a fair world, would have thrown off the damage of colonialism and the shackles of tribalism, retaining respective cultural identities while embracing the technological possibilities of the future.

The MCU gave us a glimpse of what one sort of such a land would look like, with Wakanda, complete with its own brand of bitter politics.
So I'm looking forward to see how this develops in its own unique way..

[Hotrod]

I'm intrigued.
It's no easy task to balance a region that's so rich in undiscovered history, hampered in part by the lack of the sort of chiseled-in-stone records we have for ancient Egypt, with a more modern worldview.
On one hand you have a part of the globe that would be second only to Asia in ancient magic dating back to the even before the Atlantean era.
On the other hand, you have the potential of Golden Age Africa, who, in a fair world, would have thrown off the damage of colonialism and the shackles of tribalism, retaining respective cultural identities while embracing the technological possibilities of the future.

The MCU gave us a glimpse of what one sort of such a land would look like, with Wakanda, complete with its own brand of bitter politics.
So I'm looking forward to see how this develops in its own unique way.

You make a good point. I've chosen looking forward vs looking back in my inspiration for this supplement, and that is not a risk-free choice. What I consider avoiding cultural stereotypes, another might consider abandoning or ignoring cultural history. The one region where I'm using the present-day culture and history into account is South Africa, and even there, it's more a matter of how they deal with the legacy of apartheid moving forward. South Africa is an exception in the Golden Age African Union, which prioritized bringing all African nations together and moving forward together over maintaining local and cultural traditions.

A skeptic might say that I'm using the concept of the African Union to paint the entire continent with a broad brush and ignore the depth and complexities of African history, cultures, and traditions. I make no pretense of being an expert on African history or cultures, and I generally prefer novel Rifts content over content built on present-day or historical tropes. That said, I also respect that there are fans who enjoy that kind of content, and if you have some suggestions on how to do so in ways that could be interesting and fun, I've got a lot of time for that discussion.

[Hotrod]

I've expanded the Uganda post with a local history and more local details. I'm centering the political and power structure of Uganda around three Millennium Trees and the groups that use each tree as home bases and bastions.

I really like this expansion on Uganda. I think that makes for a much kore interesting cultural center with a fleshed out and dedicated purpose.

Can't wait to see what you come up with next

Thanks!

I have expanded on the South Africa post now. My concept for their military is a generic modern-style army. They have a foreign legion (mostly debees) and a magic/psychic division. It might be fun to think up some toys or concepts for them.

[taalismn]

You solicited suggestions for some OCCs?

Okay, here's some suggestions:

-Mbale Riders---I'd go with a modified CS 'Fly Boy' OCC, or Russian Warlord Mechanized Cavalry

-Portal Rangers----These guys could be families of Psi-Ghosts(from Psyscape)...or, if you wanted to go the route of magic, maybe modified Shifters with an emphasis on stealth magic and short range teleportation magic. Or, if you wanted to bring in Ninajs & Superspies material, ninja-style martial artists with lots of Arts of Invisibility martial arts powers tacked on.

[Whiskeyjack]

Cool concept Hotrod.
With the Congo always having rumours as the last bastion of extinct creatures (from dinosaurs to ice age mammals) it would be neat to see some that either did survive, or similar creatures that have rifted into the region.
The riders or rangers should have some type of exotic mounts as well, instead of just tech options.
Maybe some Shing from the Thundercloud galaxy have found their way to Africa and are hiding amongst the local lion population while deciding what to do?
Can't wait to read some more!

[Warshield73]

This is really good stuff. I need to finish reading through it but my only concern would be what we see in North and South America and that is making it too full. When I did my original Four Horsemen campaign the players went days without finding any human or d-bee settlement so I would need to keep some open and monster filled areas for myself.

But still great ideas in here I look forward to finish reading it.

[Hotrod]

This is really good stuff. I need to finish reading through it but my only concern would be what we see in North and South America and that is making it too full. When I did my original Four Horsemen campaign the players went days without finding any human or d-bee settlement so I would need to keep some open and monster filled areas for myself.

But still great ideas in here I look forward to finish reading it.

That's a good point, and I'm 100% with you. Africa is enormous; four times that of the continental United States. I certainly don't want to give an impression of Africa being full, or indeed of any of these regions being full, either. Rifts: Africa discusses the vast geography of Africa at some length. Perhaps I should add some emphasis on how much of that vast geography is untamed wilderness.

[Warshield73]

This is really good stuff. I need to finish reading through it but my only concern would be what we see in North and South America and that is making it too full. When I did my original Four Horsemen campaign the players went days without finding any human or d-bee settlement so I would need to keep some open and monster filled areas for myself.

But still great ideas in here I look forward to finish reading it.

That's a good point, and I'm 100% with you. Africa is enormous; four times that of the continental United States. I certainly don't want to give an impression of Africa being full, or indeed of any of these regions being full, either. Rifts: Africa discusses the vast geography of Africa at some length. Perhaps I should add some emphasis on how much of that vast geography is untamed wilderness.

I think this is probably a good. Pointing out how dangerous and sparsely populated areas are would probably work to keep some of that wide open feel. Also, and I haven't had a chance to finish reading this yet so maybe it's in there, but also a description of what happens to these areas when the four arrive. Like this is what this town is like before but it dies during sort of thing. I did a horrible job of this when I ran the original Four Horseman, granted I was like 19, but it would have helped me if more of that apocalyptic atmosphere was built in.

Like I said though, great work so far.

[Captain_Nibbz]

This is really good stuff. I need to finish reading through it but my only concern would be what we see in North and South America and that is making it too full. When I did my original Four Horsemen campaign the players went days without finding any human or d-bee settlement so I would need to keep some open and monster filled areas for myself.

But still great ideas in here I look forward to finish reading it.

That's a good point, and I'm 100% with you. Africa is enormous; four times that of the continental United States. I certainly don't want to give an impression of Africa being full, or indeed of any of these regions being full, either. Rifts: Africa discusses the vast geography of Africa at some length. Perhaps I should add some emphasis on how much of that vast geography is untamed wilderness.

I think this is probably a good. Pointing out how dangerous and sparsely populated areas are would probably work to keep some of that wide open feel. Also, and I haven't had a chance to finish reading this yet so maybe it's in there, but also a description of what happens to these areas when the four arrive. Like this is what this town is like before but it dies during sort of thing. I did a horrible job of this when I ran the original Four Horseman, granted I was like 19, but it would have helped me if more of that apocalyptic atmosphere was built in.

Like I said though, great work so far.

I think all of this is a good idea You're doing a fantastic job so far Hotrod!

[Hotrod]

This is really good stuff. I need to finish reading through it but my only concern would be what we see in North and South America and that is making it too full. When I did my original Four Horsemen campaign the players went days without finding any human or d-bee settlement so I would need to keep some open and monster filled areas for myself.

But still great ideas in here I look forward to finish reading it.

That's a good point, and I'm 100% with you. Africa is enormous; four times that of the continental United States. I certainly don't want to give an impression of Africa being full, or indeed of any of these regions being full, either. Rifts: Africa discusses the vast geography of Africa at some length. Perhaps I should add some emphasis on how much of that vast geography is untamed wilderness.

I think this is probably a good. Pointing out how dangerous and sparsely populated areas are would probably work to keep some of that wide open feel. Also, and I haven't had a chance to finish reading this yet so maybe it's in there, but also a description of what happens to these areas when the four arrive. Like this is what this town is like before but it dies during sort of thing. I did a horrible job of this when I ran the original Four Horseman, granted I was like 19, but it would have helped me if more of that apocalyptic atmosphere was built in.

Like I said though, great work so far.

I think all of this is a good idea You're doing a fantastic job so far Hotrod!

Thanks! I'll be looking to emphasize the emptiness of the land the next time I do a top-to-bottom revision. In the meantime, I'm working through the regions. I just finished my development of Nigeria, a land of abundant food, but no cities, where ceremonial magic and weather control is big.

Next up: The Congo.

[Hotrod]

Ok, my first serious stab at the Congo is done! Most people there are nomadic, and there are only three large settlements: The Ancient Father Millennium Tree (described in Rifts Africa), Heartwood ("appeal to nature" as a way of life), and Lake Mai (the sole surviving pre-Rifts African Union arcology, loves science).

[Axelmania]

on the idea of enhancing the horsemen, Rifter 8 includes some necromancer variants clearly inspired by them, and I think it would be sensible to consider the horsemen to themselves be level 16 in each of their respective OCCs and get whatever bonuses that would afford. That'd make them a lot better:
1) Curse Bringer for Famine
2) Curse Bringer for Pestilence
3) Warborn for War (maybe Warbaby too, stacked, to make him a true combat god... or even stack a 3rd like Murder Mage for extra oomph)
4) Death Walker and Murder Mage for Death (two is fine since he's leader and should be strongest)

For a 3rd OCC for Death: you could use that Mortificant one from Rifter 50, or the new spells in 62/65

[Hotrod]

on the idea of enhancing the horsemen, Rifter 8 includes some necromancer variants clearly inspired by them, and I think it would be sensible to consider the horsemen to themselves be level 16 in each of their respective OCCs and get whatever bonuses that would afford. That'd make them a lot better:
1) Curse Bringer for Famine
2) Curse Bringer for Pestilence
3) Warborn for War (maybe Warbaby too, stacked, to make him a true combat god... or even stack a 3rd like Murder Mage for extra oomph)
4) Death Walker and Murder Mage for Death (two is fine since he's leader and should be strongest)

For a 3rd OCC for Death: you could use that Mortificant one from Rifter 50, or the new spells in 62/65

I'm not very conversant in the Rifters, but I do have a decent collection of them. Thanks! I'll take a look.

[Captain_Nibbz]

Just finished reading the Congo. I LOVE the idea of the people living in the arcologies being forced out and basically becoming nomads because of the early days. I feel like there aren't a lot of good nomadic cultures in the Rifts canon (though I'm not as well read in that as I want to be). I also like the logical conclusion that the Congo would be the resource hub of Golden Age Africa, it makes sense and gives the region a real flavor of its own.

I look forward to what you come up with next!

[glitterboy2098]

Cool concept Hotrod.
With the Congo always having rumours as the last bastion of extinct creatures (from dinosaurs to ice age mammals) it would be neat to see some that either did survive, or similar creatures that have rifted into the region.

honestly what might be more interesting would be to take a "zoological park" approach, with genetic science having allowed the quasi-resurrection of prehistoric species (through custom engineered critters made to resemble the palentological record (which *also* helps sidestep the whole "science marches on" aspect for the critters in the book)

basically Jurassic park meets Disney's wild kingdom, but on a massive scale. filled with prehistoric african critters (mammals at preference, possibly some dinos). which when the cataclysm hits and the park systems fail, escape and start populating the continent. 300 years later these critters have spread all over and integrated themselves into the african ecosystems.


the "lost world" myth gets harder and harder to accept IRL with civilization encroaching on those remote areas more and more (science expeditions, surveyors, mining efforts, etc) as well as things like satellite mapping and observation. and IMO relying entirely on rifts to bring in ancient critters is a little too close to the time portals in Dinosaur swamp concept wise.

but we know that genetic science was pretty powerful pre-rifts, and it would be nice to see examples of that that aren't intelligent humanoid mutants.

[Whiskeyjack]

That would be an interesting way to handle it glitterboy. Welcome to the Congo, home of Pleistocene Park!

[glitterboy2098]

actually one of the savanna dominated countries would work better. africa has been covered by grass for most of its post cretaceous history, and certainly during the time most of the really famous ancient mammals were around. actually your best bet would be northern Angola or Mozambique.. right on the border where the Savanna starts turning into jungle/rainforest. it would be the best spot for such a park since with some basic landscaping efforts you could replicate the thicker woodlands (though not true rainforest) of the center of the continent and the sparser grasslands of the Savanna. you could probably also pull off some small wetlands or even a mangrove forest in a simulated inland sea for the more amphibious species.
the northern Angola location would also put it close to a major coastal city, useful for tourism purposes since those have large ports and airports typically. a northern mozambique or southern tanzania location would have to have new ports and such built, but might be easier politically.

[Hotrod]

Update: I fleshed out the Phoenix Empire a bit more, giving it a feudal structure and four military branches (demon militia/horde, professional-ish demon army, infiltrator/secret police, and Kittani mercenaries).

The basic ideas are pretty much all down now. I'll be editing in some more details as the mood strikes me. The forces of the Horsemen are probably next to get detailed. Having re-read some of my other entries, I've also caught lots of little writing errors that I'm correcting off and on.

[Captain_Nibbz]

Oooh I really like what you did with the Phoenix Empire. I love the idea of the Kittani mercs being turn-coat at the crucial points, as well as how they interact with the normal troops. Additionally, I think that the government structure is a really strong idea and adds some good depth to the area.

[Hotrod]

Oooh I really like what you did with the Phoenix Empire. I love the idea of the Kittani mercs being turn-coat at the crucial points, as well as how they interact with the normal troops. Additionally, I think that the government structure is a really strong idea and adds some good depth to the area.

Thanks! A feudal system akin to organized crime seems like a good fit for the Phoenix Empire. As I was writing out the forces, I came to realize that massive demon armies would be difficult to overcome, and having a wild card that could turn against them seemed logical. Kittani mercenaries in service to the Phoenix Empire were in the Duty's Edge manuscript, and they seemed like a good way to give a party a final desperate chance to win.

If I were to run this campaign, I'd probably stack the deck to present player characters with a lot of setbacks and defeats early on. Having a chance for a last minute, snatch-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat option is always good. Of course, I wouldn't just have the Kittani go it alone; I would make it so the players would stay involved up to the very end.

[Hotrod]

Cool concept Hotrod.
With the Congo always having rumours as the last bastion of extinct creatures (from dinosaurs to ice age mammals) it would be neat to see some that either did survive, or similar creatures that have rifted into the region.

honestly what might be more interesting would be to take a "zoological park" approach, with genetic science having allowed the quasi-resurrection of prehistoric species (through custom engineered critters made to resemble the palentological record (which *also* helps sidestep the whole "science marches on" aspect for the critters in the book)

basically Jurassic park meets Disney's wild kingdom, but on a massive scale. filled with prehistoric african critters (mammals at preference, possibly some dinos). which when the cataclysm hits and the park systems fail, escape and start populating the continent. 300 years later these critters have spread all over and integrated themselves into the african ecosystems.


the "lost world" myth gets harder and harder to accept IRL with civilization encroaching on those remote areas more and more (science expeditions, surveyors, mining efforts, etc) as well as things like satellite mapping and observation. and IMO relying entirely on rifts to bring in ancient critters is a little too close to the time portals in Dinosaur swamp concept wise.

but we know that genetic science was pretty powerful pre-rifts, and it would be nice to see examples of that that aren't intelligent humanoid mutants.

I have added a bit to the Congo to indicate that it has a lot of engineered biomes within biomes, and that many new and old species have appeared since the Coming of the Rifts. I have no ambition to develop this further at this point, but it leaves the door open for the kind of content you're talking about here.

[Hotrod]

I fleshed out the Gulu Monks in the Uganda section. They have a unique and symbiotic relationship with their tree and gain significant powers as they level up.

I also added a blurb about the Ugandan Millennium Trees and how very few Millennium Druids visit them more than once. I personally despise the Millennium Druid O.C.C. and character concept. It's a sycophantic, preachy bum of an O.C.C. dedicated to pacifism, veganism, and soul-searching one-way conversations with a tree, all while surviving off the charity and protection of that tree. Meanwhile, everyone everywhere else has to deal with bandits, slavers, supernatural predators, wars, and a wildly unstable and unsafe world... and these bums presume to walk around telling other people that theirs is the right way to go? "Sure, person who uses magic sticks to make his garden grow under supernatural protection, please go on and tell me how I should be raising my crops better and greeting bandits with a handshake rather than a laser blast to the face." Puh-lease.

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to have these trees share my views. These trees are uniquely besieged by demons and under threat of imminent death from the Four Horsemen. Especially after what happened to the Tree of Sorrows in Rama, it makes sense that the Ugandan trees would develop strong personalities that have no time, patience, or charity for the likes of Millennium Druids. Instead, they would focus their gifts and energies on people whose views, goals, and ambitions aligned with theirs.

Then again, maybe I'm just indulging myself by inserting my condemnation of Millennium Druids into a few of the very trees they suck up to and mooch off. Thoughts?

[Warshield73]

I also added a blurb about the Ugandan Millennium Trees and how very few Millennium Druids visit them more than once. I personally despise the Millennium Druid O.C.C. and character concept. It's a sycophantic, preachy bum of an O.C.C. dedicated to pacifism, veganism, and soul-searching one-way conversations with a tree, all while surviving off the charity and protection of that tree. Meanwhile, everyone everywhere else has to deal with bandits, slavers, supernatural predators, wars, and a wildly unstable and unsafe world... and these bums presume to walk around telling other people that theirs is the right way to go? "Sure, person who uses magic sticks to make his garden grow under supernatural protection, please go on and tell me how I should be raising my crops better and greeting bandits with a handshake rather than a laser blast to the face." Puh-lease.

Wow. just Wow

I mean I have some OCCs I don't like, can someone please tell me what use a Burster actually serves you know if I already have a lighter, but wow I had no idea anyone felt that way about Millennium Druids or actual even thought about them.

Still very funny the entire time I was reading it I felt like I should be sitting at a bar with a beer in my hand listening to someone at the other end of the bar.

[Hotrod]

I'm taking discussion of the merits of the Millennium Druid as a character concept to another thread. My concern in the topic of this thread is whether I'm being a bit too self-indulgent in projecting my own views on those of the Ugandan Millennium trees?

[Hotrod]

I also went with the Reaver Mechanized Cavalryman from Russia for the Mbale Riders. Thanks for that suggestion.

For the Portal Rangers, I have a concept that's starting to come together: secretive, sneaky, pouncy hunters that have a limited kind of portal/teleportation power where they can move one end of the portal at once.

[Whiskeyjack]

Looking really good Hotrod.
I'm curious why so many people have a hatred of supernatural creatures even good ones. It doesn't quite fit for people who literally live in the branches of a supernatural creature.
For the portal rangers, have you ever seen Final Fantasy: Kingsglaive? They have throwing knives in the movie that instead of teleporting to their wielder when thrown, teleport the wielder to them. I love this concept. Might be a good fit for the portal rangers?

[Hotrod]

Looking really good Hotrod.
I'm curious why so many people have a hatred of supernatural creatures even good ones. It doesn't quite fit for people who literally live in the branches of a supernatural creature.
For the portal rangers, have you ever seen Final Fantasy: Kingsglaive? They have throwing knives in the movie that instead of teleporting to their wielder when thrown, teleport the wielder to them. I love this concept. Might be a good fit for the portal rangers?

I have not seen Kingsglaive, but that sounds like a neat concept. The folks in Uganda hate supernatural evil, not all supernatural creatures. I’ll take a look through the post and try to clarify that.

[Whiskeyjack]

I guess hate was a little strong of a word, but the fact that classes are exclusive to SDC beings only seems a little strange as does areas that aren't really tech based that have no allowances for MDC beings to be there (Heartwood seems especially strange being home to such a variety of magic users).

[Hotrod]

I guess hate was a little strong of a word, but the fact that classes are exclusive to SDC beings only seems a little strange as does areas that aren't really tech based that have no allowances for MDC beings to be there (Heartwood seems especially strange being home to such a variety of magic users).

That's a completely legitimate point. I've been focused on the indigenous human population rather than the debee population in this supplemental thread. Several of the critiques I've seen of Rifts: Africa decried the lack of content focused on those groups. However, focusing on these groups need not necessarily exclude MDC beings. I tend to think of MDC beings as somewhat aloof and disdainful of learning from or submitting to the authority of S.D.C. beings, which seems to be a trend in Rifts, but not a rule.

[Whiskeyjack]

I must say after reading your retake on Africa, there is an actual sense of suspense for the fate of the people in the area. This was completely lacking in the original book. Whether the four horsemen won or lost didn't really seem to matter. With your take there are actual lives and societies at stake.

[Hotrod]

I must say after reading your retake on Africa, there is an actual sense of suspense for the fate of the people in the area. This was completely lacking in the original book. Whether the four horsemen won or lost didn't really seem to matter. With your take there are actual lives and societies at stake.

Thanks! That's very much what I've been going for. What helps me here is that Kevin has already been writing the rest of the setting with Africa being a non-factor and/or isolated. Thus, as long as no local/regional outcome affects events outside of Africa, we're free to have a range of outcomes from "all of these regions become wastelands; look to other areas of Africa for human civilization" to "Every region is strengthened and is starting to reach out to and cooperate with the others, laying the groundwork for what may someday become a renewed African Union." and none of these outcomes will have any effect on the rest of the world/setting.

So really, why not play up the stakes and get the characters involved and invested in a series of adventures where decisive victories and crushing defeats are both totally viable options, along with all the natural consequences?

[SolCannibal]

Sorry for slightly threadjacking things - and with half an year of hiatus at that, but have been playing with some friends our own spin on the Gathering of Heroes on Discord and got on the mood to throw some bits and pieces from it in this topic.

Our method of filling out Africa has been quick, dirty & improvisational - and worked pretty overall because of it, GM throws a morsel of info/world-building taken from some book citation, PCs and/or their allies follow on it (or not), shenanigans develop for good and for ill from their actions and choices. Among others that have made appearances and occasional deals with the PCs and their forces, we have:

- New Freetown, a city-state with a large force and tradition of juicer commandos located in northern Sierra Leone. Have a long-standing soty of fomenting revolts in Atlantis colonies & allies in western Africa. One of the PCs once worked for them in setting up a huge juicer uprising amidst the Phoenix Empire slave populace. Have been major allies in the conflict and the decolonization of Africa happening in parallel to fighting the Horsemen & their worshippers.


- The Kanem-Bornu Witches of Chad, serving as vassals of Rama-Set and at the same time leading a native guerilla against him in the southwestern quarter of the Phoenix Empire. We have made some deals with them, to generate some internal dissension within the Empire ranks, but things have been.... sketchy on that sector, even among a bunch of far from good-goody allies of occasion we have picked.


- The Kingdom of Yang-Xenarthra and its necromancer ogre queens, descended from emigrants of Yin-Sloth, locked into a century-long war with the forces from Wormwood established in demonic Lalibella for control of what was once Ethiopia.
A number of crazy circunstances lead to the PCs jumping from their warring in western coast straight into a two-pronged invasion of Lalibella with support from allies in Worldgate, that turned into ever messier as the ogresses joined our side, the citadel of Dweomer decided to intervene, because some weird arcane empowerment shenanigans of my High-Lord Magus PC Cyprian Dunscon, were directly hurting the Three, what resulted in a overpowered near-suicidal battle/mexican standoff between them, Cyprian and the Unholy, with no real victor in the end.
Except the PCs managed to capture Lalibella and make it into a base with their Worldgate allies, while the Three of Dweomer made an alliance with the Cathedral of Light out of mutual distrust of the groups now in control of the "city of two worlds" aka ethiopian beachhead. Cyprian also contacted managed to contact his dad back in Brass, what has led to some exchanges, alliances and funny interventions.

(We also got invaded by an army of minions of Amon the Hidden that wanted to capture Cyprian and Lady Arson for crazy reasons of hers, what after a sequence of ups, downs & twists led to them imprisoning the mad goddess and inviting Alistair's forces in taking over her dimension/palace - yes, this games is nuts, not denying)

Anyway, the ogre necromancer queens have been some major allies in dealing with messes coming from either Wormwood or the Phoenix Empire, in no small part thanks to some slick intrigue and politicking on the part of Planktal-Nakton (yes, Doctor Reid's right hand man, the Rangers and Demonbusters formed a major part of our initial forces).


- The Empire of Flesh of the Trogos Demon Cannibals, a peculiar mix of marauding nomadic tribes and city-states that one can almost compare to the mongol empire and its successors. They are peppered through a bunch of places in both african coasts and some spots in the interior, with nexus and rift-hopping provinding some connection. They also seem to have allies in sister cities of their equals in Asia and trade ties with the Splugorth and Rakshasa-Princes of India, among others. While almost everybody is a bit leery of them - their becoming major customers of Naruni Enterprises due to a series of careless moves on the PCs' part doesn't help - their ports have been a major factor in facilitating of cargo & warships from Tarnow that support and have managed to make General Rasheen's expeditionary force in Africa into something beside a fool's errand (and a stealth betrayal of the D-Bee general by parts in NGR's high command).
There also seems to be a large number of Kinnie Ger among their minions in comparison to other D-bee races, though the issue might be somewhat confused by the fact the Trogos can assume the form of a variety of humanoid D-bees, what they like to exploit for diplomacy, espionage, trickery and even artistic purposes.


- The Anansi Kite-Cities, floating across Africa's atlantic seaboard (but mainly the Gulf of Guinea) are another group we have had some contact with but.... floating spiderweb inhabited by hundreds of mostly aloof Death Weaver Spiders and thousands of their pupils/puppets/minions. We had one major contact with them and it was plenty, have kept mutual distance since. They make rune weapons out of people, venture at your own peril.


- The Aka druids & shamans (don't call them pygmies, just don't), while more directly connected to the Defiance - Abkii & Fang Lo's wandering warband-nation of liberated slaves and tribes escaped of Phoenix Empire expansionism, coming and going from their borders - are definite good guys that have also been quite helpful to the whole war effort through their capacity to communicate and occasionally open rifts with their brethren among the Mbuti and Twa millenium druids in Congo and central & southern Africa respectively, not to mention their magics.


- The Territory of Saka-Asyut is a country formed around the city-state of the same name, in the border of the Phoenix Empire, in what was once Tunisia. A mysterious savage land inabited by either wolfen (coyles), lycanthropes and/or alu demons, or some combination of the three, dedicated to the worship of Anubis & Ammit the beast through murder, violence and death magic in their sacred citadel ruled by the Golden-coated, supposedly a child of either god (or both) that left the Phoenix Empire with its followers out of disatisfaction. These guys are even more hardcore than Rama-Set's ilk in some aspects but dislike the alliance with the Horsemen. We had some short but brutal & strange confrontations with them alongside the Defiance and we suspect they might have captured a weakened Death in another incident, for reasons still unknown for us. We do know they possess some kind of rune weapon-like artifacts made of obsidian or glass and the spirits of earth elementals.

I honestly don't know how i forgot about those bastards until now considering how much trouble they and their boss caused us - they even invaded Amon's realm and ran us and Alistair's people out of the place!

[Hotrod]

No worries at all! This thread isn't exactly dead; I've been editing the first few posts, and I think my last edit was just a few months ago, but I'm totally open to other ideas and content here too. I quite like how you have some villainous factions, something that I have neglected.

There are still a few items here that I've been meaning to get around to developing a bit more:
-the Portal Rangers (I've started and scrapped a couple of concepts now)
-Some other regional factions could use a bit more fleshing out.
-A section on the followers and minions of the Apocalypse Demons. I'd like to give them a bit more flavor than "necromancers and witches." I hadn't been thinking of these as specific factions like what you have here.

[SolCannibal]

No worries at all! This thread isn't exactly dead; I've been editing the first few posts, and I think my last edit was just a few months ago, but I'm totally open to other ideas and content here too.

That's good to know, always happy to contribute on some collective world-building.

I quite like how you have some villainous factions, something that I have neglected.

We prefer the term "double-edged allies" since most of them are on our side, though the occasional bit of skullduggery may come up from all sides, like:

- The fact the whole NGR's expeditionary force might have been large move to kill off, politically and literally, general Rasheen and other progressive parts in high command.

- Tarnow joining the effort to make Triax owe them for its success, flout Camelot's and other british knights for their slow and diminute answer to the crisis - in our games Tarnow is another center of knightly culture, resulting in a (mostly friendly) rivalry with the knights of the british isles and the bogatyr of the russian sphere - not to mention making a splash as world power while setting up ports & trade agoras all across the mediterranean and eastern atlantic (our game's Tarnow is something of a mercantile & naval powerhouse, an idea extrapolated from several bits of fluff in the Mindwerks book), to which the "Atlantean decolonization of Africa" partly started by current (PC & Horsemen-spurred) events has contributed immensely.

- Naruni Enterprises setting up a business partnership with Tarnow to fill into the power vacuum generated by the loss of many of their ports and colonies in western Africa (fighting either the Horsemen or uprisings started by the PCs with support of Freetown, the Defiance and other allies). Naruni Enterprises' relocation from North America to Africa being 100% the blame of the PCs' initiative in contacting Robot Control and Cheng seeing the war in Africa as a golden opportunity to escape from the CS manhunt with all the troops while keeping their dignity. Trader Joe came along and the rest is history in the making.

- Countless messes, petty fights and bothersome bits of gossip, misinformation and more in the PCs own ranks - our army being a fusion of Reid's Rangers, Demonbusters, the Sons of Quetzacoatl, a "sacrificial shipment" of three Splugorth slave ships bound to the Phoenix Empire that mutinied under Cyprian's leadership and decided to "go Spartacus" into the Splugorth colonies to boost their ranks with more liberated people & gear and number of tribal allies & contact through Freetown, among others.
We do suffer a bit of a "too many chieftains/lieutenants" syndrome at times, what leads to all kind of segues and occasional weird division of tasks/fronts, just to rid some people of each other.

But we kind of strive to make any and all factions to have several shades of gray, exactly because everybody, PC or NPC, occasionally engaging in a bit of underhandedness or spur-of-the-moment crazy plans tends to make things more lively.

There are still a few items here that I've been meaning to get around to developing a bit more:
-the Portal Rangers (I've started and scrapped a couple of concepts now)
-Some other regional factions could use a bit more fleshing out.
-A section on the followers and minions of the Apocalypse Demons. I'd like to give them a bit more flavor than "necromancers and witches." I hadn't been thinking of these as specific factions like what you have here.

Well, sometimes just getting an already existing OCC or RCC and giving it a more localized, specific characterization in contrast to its original generic presentation can be a good starting point - that's pretty much the case with the Kanem-Bornu Witches and the Trogos Demonic Cannibals, referencing two major empires of Chad's history (Chad being the one constituent country of the Phoenix Empire that is not mentioned as a hive of necromancy in the list in WB4, we wanted a group of evil non-necromancer spellcasters to be their foils, rivals and big players there) and the largest african species of vulture (the one animal demonic cannibals turn into. Demonic Cannibals with a rich society of city-states, trade & stuff was inspired by the monster race, according to WB4 itself, being present in Africa and India, what led us to think of the Thugge from the Temple of Doom) respectively, beside random fluff bits in the books like those cited. Saka-Asyut is even worse since "let's have evil wolfen to do Army of Anubis scenes from Return of the Mummy" was pretty much their whole point in the start. Yes, we could have said it was an Alu-only army of the Phoenix Empire, but why waste the chance of having an acrimonious splinter state/little brother?

The moment a group enters the table and PCs interact with them the ball will start rolling, resulting in new directions and ideas for further development. Saka-Asyut messing with elementals (sandstorms) and rune weapons came from further theming and in-game expansion (someone to surprise attack us into Amon's captured dimensional realm).