Erin Tarn as a Character

[Dunia]

Is there somewhere where Mrs Tarn is made as a Character with stats and skills?

[wyrmraker]

I think in Africa, IIRC.

[Greyaxe]

CWC . It even mentions her 6 sisters by name. Pg 15

[Braden Campbell]

She is the youngest of 7 daughters, yes... but the names of those sisters isn't canonically listed. I just made them up.

BTW> They are, in order of birth: Rumor, Crystal, Brittany, Tammi, Soozi, Pix (and, of course, Erin). Tammi and Soozi are twins

[mobuttu]

Is there somewhere where Mrs Tarn is made as a Character with stats and skills?

WB4 Africa (pg. 147)

[Icefalcon]

The most up to date stats are in Coalition War Campaign.

[DevastationBob]

How much MDC does she have?

[Icefalcon]

How much MDC does she have?

By armor only.

[Icefalcon]

Can she walk and chew gum at the same time?

Probably, her IQ is high enough.

[Eclipse]

How much MDC does she have?

Probably <1

[Eclipse]

I'd like to hear a debate between her, Joseph Prosek and Dr Bradford, in public or behind closed doors in a variety of settings including inside Lone Star, on TV in Chi-Town or in Lazlo/New Lazlo.

[Icefalcon]

I'd like to hear a debate between her, Joseph Prosek and Dr Bradford, in public or behind closed doors in a variety of settings including inside Lone Star, on TV in Chi-Town or in Lazlo/New Lazlo.

She has said she is willing but doubts that Prosek is.

[DevastationBob]

I would like Archie to create a robotic Erin Tarn to draw out the Coalition and then for her to deploy her mini-missles, modified Shemarrian Rail Gun and lazer tentacles and lay unholy waste to them while still signing copies of her book.

[Dr Megaverse]

She's a moderately high level Rogue Scholar with a Cyber Knight protector and buckets of luck. She is hardly in need of vast amounts of combat prowess, she has the plot on her side in much the same way as the Coalition States does!

I sometimes wonder why some people hate her so much really, she is a harmless old lady wandering around spouting plot exposition, not a terror of the multiverse!

A sense of obligation to the CS seems the biggest culprit in Tarn-hate, IMO.

[Nightmask]

Agreed.

Though I recognize her as a real threat, in the long term, to C.S. stability. She isn't going to topple their government, ever, on her own, but should it happen, so should some sort of real change come about, I expect her to be a major power player in those changes.

And because of that, in universe, I can see the savvy sort of people in charge of the C.S. recognizing her threat and working to create a rapidly anti-Tarn imagery.

Out of universe, I have to scratch my head in wonder at the sheer fan boy appeal the C.S. seems to have, I love SAMAS, and am a big fan of Skycycles and Enforcers, but really, black armor? Skull motif? rapidly anti-any thing not nearly pure strain human? Look! There go the bad guys of the setting! Wow, they sure made that one easy and obvious!

Because evil appeals to some people, others just don't care how evil they are because they look so cool or badass. So they fanboy on a group no one should be gushing over.

[Dr Megaverse]

Agreed.

Though I recognize her as a real threat, in the long term, to C.S. stability. She isn't going to topple their government, ever, on her own, but should it happen, so should some sort of real change come about, I expect her to be a major power player in those changes.

And because of that, in universe, I can see the savvy sort of people in charge of the C.S. recognizing her threat and working to create a rapidly anti-Tarn imagery.

Out of universe, I have to scratch my head in wonder at the sheer fan boy appeal the C.S. seems to have, I love SAMAS, and am a big fan of Skycycles and Enforcers, but really, black armor? Skull motif? rapidly anti-any thing not nearly pure strain human? Look! There go the bad guys of the setting! Wow, they sure made that one easy and obvious!

I agree in part with them, I don't like D-Bees and don't really trust magic.
Not a huge fan of the genocide thing, but I don't agree with most of the policies that the current heirarchy institutes. Although I wouldn't call myself a fan-boy either so there's that.

Also Death Head SAMAS are super cool

VSAMS are cooler! Plus if you don't mind the weird accent FQ is the CS light lol.

[Nightmask]

Agreed.

Though I recognize her as a real threat, in the long term, to C.S. stability. She isn't going to topple their government, ever, on her own, but should it happen, so should some sort of real change come about, I expect her to be a major power player in those changes.

And because of that, in universe, I can see the savvy sort of people in charge of the C.S. recognizing her threat and working to create a rapidly anti-Tarn imagery.

Out of universe, I have to scratch my head in wonder at the sheer fan boy appeal the C.S. seems to have, I love SAMAS, and am a big fan of Skycycles and Enforcers, but really, black armor? Skull motif? rapidly anti-any thing not nearly pure strain human? Look! There go the bad guys of the setting! Wow, they sure made that one easy and obvious!

I agree in part with them, I don't like D-Bees and don't really trust magic.
Not a huge fan of the genocide thing, but I don't agree with most of the policies that the current heirarchy institutes. Although I wouldn't call myself a fan-boy either so there's that.

Also Death Head SAMAS are super cool

VSAMS are cooler! Plus if you don't mind the weird accent FQ is the CS light lol.

I've never appreciated FQs isolationist attitude, it makes it seem like they don't have the guts to go out and solve any of the worlds problems.

It has nothing to do with not having the guts, they just don't see the rest of the world's problems as anything they should care about. They feel that they've no reason to bother anyone else as long as they're left alone, which isn't a bad attitude overall.

[SAMASzero]

Agreed.

Though I recognize her as a real threat, in the long term, to C.S. stability. She isn't going to topple their government, ever, on her own, but should it happen, so should some sort of real change come about, I expect her to be a major power player in those changes.

And because of that, in universe, I can see the savvy sort of people in charge of the C.S. recognizing her threat and working to create a rapidly anti-Tarn imagery.

Out of universe, I have to scratch my head in wonder at the sheer fan boy appeal the C.S. seems to have, I love SAMAS, and am a big fan of Skycycles and Enforcers, but really, black armor? Skull motif? rapidly anti-any thing not nearly pure strain human? Look! There go the bad guys of the setting! Wow, they sure made that one easy and obvious!

I agree in part with them, I don't like D-Bees and don't really trust magic.
Not a huge fan of the genocide thing, but I don't agree with most of the policies that the current heirarchy institutes. Although I wouldn't call myself a fan-boy either so there's that.

Also Death Head SAMAS are super cool

VSAMS are cooler! Plus if you don't mind the weird accent FQ is the CS light lol.

I prefer the Super. Mostly because I have a thing for both grenade launchers and shoulder-mounted cannons.

[Hotrod]

She's a moderately high level Rogue Scholar with a Cyber Knight protector and buckets of luck. She is hardly in need of vast amounts of combat prowess, she has the plot on her side in much the same way as the Coalition States does!

I sometimes wonder why some people hate her so much really, she is a harmless old lady wandering around spouting plot exposition, not a terror of the multiverse!

It's not hate. It's suspicion, and a bit of fatigue at her overly-prominent role in laying out the setting.

(Understand, this assessment is based off her writings and her property, because the narrator's description of her seems to be as biased as her descriptions of, well, everything. I base my opinion on her writing style and her personal hoard. I have my own way of portraying Erin Tarn; assess it as you will)

My issues with Erin Tarn:

1. She's full of herself. Her writings are saturated with false modesty. The whole bit where she expresses so much surprise over the popularity of her books over and over and over again gets really old. She is clearly in love with her celebrity status, and this detracts quite a bit from her writing.

2. Her "scholarly" works suck. She uses a lot of incomplete sentences. Like this one. Missing a subject. Or a predicate. Incomplete. In other words, not finished. Bugs me. A lot. And no, I don't buy those protests she makes against publishing her works without her permission, anymore than I bought Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's outrage over the publication of their porn tape as they raked in 1.5 million for it. One stray letter gets published? I can understand that. Any more than that and it's just a cheap marketing ploy and an excuse for shoddy work and editing.

3. She clearly knows a lot more than she publishes. Her house is filled with a private collection of 300 million in pre-rifts artifacts. She owns the biggest library outside of Chi-Town, but keeps it all locked away. What does she publish? Autobiographies, self-absorbed documentaries about her travels, and collected rumors she's heard. Rogue scholars are supposed to SHARE knowledge and TEACH. She hoards.

4. Her judgement of Lazlo is impossibly utopian. Any country that open, that friendly, and that naive would be too vulnerable to infiltration, corruption, and attack. Clearly, she has an agenda that is pro-Lazlo and anti-CS, but the driving purpose behind her works remains unclear.

It's quite clear what Tarn is against. I just don't see much that she's for, beyond some kind of quest for personal fame. Her contributions to society are very suspect. At best, she's a widely-published peanut gallery. At worst, she's either a selfish megalomaniac or a pawn of Lazlo. Either way, I don't see her as a heroic figure.

[Subjugator]

She uses a lot of incomplete sentences. Like this one. Missing a subject. Or a predicate.

That was beautiful.

Or a predicate.

/Sub

[Eclipse]

Interesting take on her Hotrod. Of course what she says is really what the writer says, so the buck probably stops there. But that was a funny diatribe

[Braden Campbell]

While working on my portions of the revised Vampire Kingdoms and the Vampire Sourcebook, I submitted an "opening piece" that cast Erin Tarn in a very different light than what we have seen thus far. In case it actually gets used (kind of doubt it) I won't repost it... but the gist of it was that Erin is at home in Lazlo, drinking and making a recording an audio journal. In it, she recalls the first two times she tried to go to Mexico to proove the existance of the Vampire Kingdoms. Both times she failed. Now, she feels haunted by those that went on without her and (presumably) died, and vows to make one final expedition, come hell or high water, even if she has to finance it herself.

This was, somewhat obviously, a launching point for PC parties to become Erin Tarn's entourage and head south of the Rio Grande, circa 110 PA... although we also learned that she drinks whiskey, throws knives, and was so scared by her first encounter with a vampire that she faked an illness to get out of going into Mexico. She also, and this was important, hates to loose/be beaten.

Erin Tarn as a character? In my mind, regret-filled, lonely (recall that she has never once mentioned a boy friend, husband, or children), and facing the autumn of her life perhaps trying to either forge a legacy or pass on her mantle to a young heir.

[DevastationBob]

Thanks for sharing it here Braden. Certainly puts an interesting spin on things. Stored for later use

[palladiumjunkie]

She is the youngest of 7 daughters, yes... but the names of those sisters isn't canonically listed. I just made them up.

BTW> They are, in order of birth: Rumor, Crystal, Brittany, Tammi, Soozi, Pix (and, of course, Erin). Tammi and Soozi are twins

I have a first printing of Coalition War Campaign, and it lists her as the oldest, not the youngest, of seven daughters. Did this get changed to youngest in subsequent printings?

-Chris

[Hotrod]

3) Disagree, vehemently! First, what we read isn't her scholarly works on knowledge, but effectively an edited and fore shortened travelogue instead. We can hardly point to what we have as an example of her lack of effort to impart knowledge and teach about the previous era. I admit that there should have been something form her about NEMA in Chaos Earth, but my impression is that her knowledge there is very murky at best. It's entirely possible she DOES have texts dedicated to enlightening the masses as to what the Golden age and prior were all about. It's equally as possible she isn't interested in writing that sort of thing, and trusts in people like Victor Lazlo to handle that sort of stuff instead, allowing her to go about the Multiverse and enlighten others as to what's really going on. Since we aren't getting the entire text, we can hardly guess as to how much teaching she does or doesn't do in her materials that manage to get back to her home...however they do that. (Really, Plato would need an entire organization just to protect her for rare visits to home, she simply has too many enemies to waltz in and out every few months. Someone would notice, and they would move on her with enough strength to eliminate her and whomever her current protectors are! Though this series of events would make for a good adventure I suppose...)

In terms of personal security, she has her own pet master cyber-knight. I doubt she's losing sleep over personal security, and Lazlo is probably the safest place for her.

Shoot, forget her personal security. Her private library, all located in her house, is worth over 90 million credits, according to Rifts: Africa, page 148. I'm sure she has a whole posse in charge of keeping her house secure. By the way, 90 million credits worth?! I guess it pays to be Public Enemy #1! For such an supposed altruist, she seems fantastically loaded. It must really pay to have your works plagiarized and published without your permission (over and over, and over, et cetera)!

I remain skeptical.

[Hotrod]

So really, she's not hoarding. Rather, Erin Tarn is fighting ignorance among the masses by keeping her primary sources locked away from the masses. Instead, these cultural treasures simply gather dust in her house/vast library/private collection, to be pulled out and shown to the select few she deems worthy of a social call. That makes sense. That kind of knowledge should only be entrusted to a few select elites, who can pick and choose what should be passed on to the people... wait, who are we talking about again?

I don't understand the logic of your Louvre analogy. If the Louvre was in Bill Gates' house, and its contents kept away from everyone but his friends and colleagues, you can bet that everyone would be hopping mad. Tarn herself has expressed outrage at Chi-Town's hoarding of books. How then is she above the same line of reproach?

The great mystery that you allude to is one of the more ominous aspects of Erin Tarn. Anyone who owns 90 million bucks worth of anything is loaded in my book. How does a wandering scholar accumulate such a collection? Is she a thief? Is she a clandestine businesswoman? Is she an heiress? Did she just stumble upon 90 million credits over the course of her travels?

The greatest example of what a Rogue Scholar should be isn't Erin Tarn. It's Indiana Jones. In his infallible words, "That belongs in a museum!"

[Subjugator]

Why in the hell aren't the books digitized and spread around freely?

[Nightmask]

So really, she's not hoarding. Rather, Erin Tarn is fighting ignorance among the masses by keeping her primary sources locked away from the masses. Instead, these cultural treasures simply gather dust in her house/vast library/private collection, to be pulled out and shown to the select few she deems worthy of a social call. That makes sense. That kind of knowledge should only be entrusted to a few select elites, who can pick and choose what should be passed on to the people... wait, who are we talking about again?

I don't understand the logic of your Louvre analogy. If the Louvre was in Bill Gates' house, and its contents kept away from everyone but his friends and colleagues, you can bet that everyone would be hopping mad. Tarn herself has expressed outrage at Chi-Town's hoarding of books. How then is she above the same line of reproach?

The great mystery that you allude to is one of the more ominous aspects of Erin Tarn. Anyone who owns 90 million bucks worth of anything is loaded in my book. How does a wandering scholar accumulate such a collection? Is she a thief? Is she a clandestine businesswoman? Is she an heiress? Did she just stumble upon 90 million credits over the course of her travels?

The greatest example of what a Rogue Scholar should be isn't Erin Tarn. It's Indiana Jones. In his infallible words, "That belongs in a museum!"

So you think preserving ancient texts for study isn't something a Scholar (Rogue or otherwise) should be aspiring to? What do you think a museum is but a place where precious artifacts including ancient books are stored for study? Whether personal or public a library where people come to learn is still helping to preserve and spread knowledge, one can hardly claim to be a scholar seeking to preserve and spread knowledge if one does neither.

[Nightmask]

Why in the hell aren't the books digitized and spread around freely?

A good question if I've ever heard one

Because most people still can't read and a book whether hard copy or digital is fairly worthless until you teach people how to read it first. Which is why the average peasant was kept illiterate, so he couldn't read the bible or otherwise form thoughts easily on his own and have them fed to him by religious or secular leaders. Until you get people literate books aren't going to be of much use and when you're trying to get them literate War And Peace isn't going to be a must have 'See Dick Run' is what you'll be making use of.

[Nightmask]

Why in the hell aren't the books digitized and spread around freely?

A good question if I've ever heard one

Because most people still can't read and a book whether hard copy or digital is fairly worthless until you teach people how to read it first. Which is why the average peasant was kept illiterate, so he couldn't read the bible or otherwise form thoughts easily on his own and have them fed to him by religious or secular leaders. Until you get people literate books aren't going to be of much use and when you're trying to get them literate War And Peace isn't going to be a must have 'See Dick Run' is what you'll be making use of.

What about the people in new lazlo, lazlo, the former tolkeen, and all the city states outside of the CS where there is no forced illiteracy?

Is there anything that says at least some of the materials aren't scanned for digital copies? Of which do remember that's still an arduous task because you have to be certain of the quality of the scans meaning they have to be reviewed for quality and many books likely are fragile (just look at how many books are degrading below the ability to salvage in the great libraries we have because we lack the resources to salvage them all). Got a lot fewer people around who can do something like that, it's not as easy as some make it out to be and the originals have to be protected somewhere so why not somewhere people might not see as a worthwhile target to plunder like an obvious library (like the Great Library).

[Subjugator]

Because most people still can't read and a book whether hard copy or digital is fairly worthless until you teach people how to read it first. Which is why the average peasant was kept illiterate, so he couldn't read the bible or otherwise form thoughts easily on his own and have them fed to him by religious or secular leaders. Until you get people literate books aren't going to be of much use and when you're trying to get them literate War And Peace isn't going to be a must have 'See Dick Run' is what you'll be making use of.

That's irrelevant to the goal of preserving the knowledge. What is more easily saved, a physical paper copy of a book or something uploaded in 20,000 different places?

/Sub

[Subjugator]

Why in the hell aren't the books digitized and spread around freely?

A good question if I've ever heard one

Because most people still can't read and a book whether hard copy or digital is fairly worthless until you teach people how to read it first. Which is why the average peasant was kept illiterate, so he couldn't read the bible or otherwise form thoughts easily on his own and have them fed to him by religious or secular leaders. Until you get people literate books aren't going to be of much use and when you're trying to get them literate War And Peace isn't going to be a must have 'See Dick Run' is what you'll be making use of.

What about the people in new lazlo, lazlo, the former tolkeen, and all the city states outside of the CS where there is no forced illiteracy?

Is there anything that says at least some of the materials aren't scanned for digital copies? Of which do remember that's still an arduous task because you have to be certain of the quality of the scans meaning they have to be reviewed for quality and many books likely are fragile (just look at how many books are degrading below the ability to salvage in the great libraries we have because we lack the resources to salvage them all). Got a lot fewer people around who can do something like that, it's not as easy as some make it out to be and the originals have to be protected somewhere so why not somewhere people might not see as a worthwhile target to plunder like an obvious library (like the Great Library).

Actually, the scans are pretty easy. You can take digital photos of each page and then do transcriptions directly. Our lack of ability to 'salvage' them comes from our lack of ability to restore the originals, not to extract the information.

/Sub

[Hotrod]

So you think preserving ancient texts for study isn't something a Scholar (Rogue or otherwise) should be aspiring to? What do you think a museum is but a place where precious artifacts including ancient books are stored for study? Whether personal or public a library where people come to learn is still helping to preserve and spread knowledge, one can hardly claim to be a scholar seeking to preserve and spread knowledge if one does neither.

Tarn's collection is in her house while she wanders the war-torn world. Unless Lazlo is some kind of commune, I doubt she lets anyone she doesn't trust absolutely come and peruse her library in her absence. Such a private library may serve as a vault to preserve the knowledge, but it does nothing to spread it.

If I seem a bit paranoid about her, please understand, it's simply a reflection on how I like to look at Rifts Earth. I freely acknowledge that my interpretation of Erin Tarn is skeptical and very mistrustful. As presented, Erin Tarn is the principal heroine of Rifts. She wanders the world, sees everything, gets involved with every major plot development, and thrusts her opinion in our faces as the dominant and morally righteous perspective.

Erin Tarn is far too dominant an NPC. It should be the player characters who are out there exploring and making up their own minds about right and wrong in the world. In any conflict, there will be reasonable people on both sides. With the number of species, cultures, nations, and languages present in Rifts Earth, there are a myriad of perspectives on the same places, people, and conflicts. These alternate perspectives have too little representation. Tarn's perspective dominates the canon material. This might not be an issue if she was an impersonal narrator a la Walter Kronkite, but her writing is heavy on opinion/personal anecdotes and light on facts.

When Erin Tarn and her opinions are fallible and suspect, the world of Rifts becomes more complicated and interesting to me.

[MurderCityDisciple]

How can anyone hate a little old lady?

She makes a great narrator for the newbie Rift gamer.

When I read her writings I pretend I'm tucked all cozy and snug in my bed, with my footy jammies on. I hear her coming down the hall, she's bringing me some milk and cookies and is going to read to me before I go to sleep. The imaginary Erin Tarn is being portrayed by Happy Day's Marion Ross and my jammies are fuzzy and blue.

[Braden Campbell]

When I read her writings I pretend I'm tucked all cozy and snug in my bed, with my footy jammies on. I hear her coming down the hall, she's bringing me some milk and cookies and is going to read to me before I go to sleep. The imaginary Erin Tarn is being portrayed by Happy Day's Marion Ross and my jammies are fuzzy and blue.

I can't "like" this enough...

[MurderCityDisciple]

When I read her writings I pretend I'm tucked all cozy and snug in my bed, with my footy jammies on. I hear her coming down the hall, she's bringing me some milk and cookies and is going to read to me before I go to sleep. The imaginary Erin Tarn is being portrayed by Happy Day's Marion Ross and my jammies are fuzzy and blue.

I can't "like" this enough...

Thanks for the kudos Braden....

[Hotrod]

How can anyone hate a little old lady?

Hillary Clinton, Marguerite Thatcher, and Jane Fonda are little old ladies, and they have legions of haters.

She makes a great narrator for the newbie Rift gamer.

Absolutely. She gives a good overview. I prefer her original overview, errors and all; it feels more like a chaotic world when an educated person is totally misinformed about whole regions of the globe.

I just wish they had introduced more alternate narrators, as C.J. Carella did in South America 1.

When I read her writings I pretend I'm tucked all cozy and snug in my bed, with my footy jammies on. I hear her coming down the hall, she's bringing me some milk and cookies and is going to read to me before I go to sleep. The imaginary Erin Tarn is being portrayed by Happy Day's Marion Ross and my jammies are fuzzy and blue.

You know, I was about to ask what kind of whacked out bedtime stories you grew up with, but now that I think about it, the classic fairy tales, in their original forms, are pretty gruesome/disturbing. I was just reading an old version of Little Red Riding Hood to my 5-year-old yesterday. Little girl and granny get eaten, and then a hunter literally cuts them out of the Wolf. Someday someone will need to explain to me why that's not scary to my little girl, but a cat in that Cinderella movie makes her hide under a pillow and beg me to fast-forward, even though she's seen the movie four times.

[Hotrod]

First and foremost: your points are all completely legitimate. My suspicious opinion of Erin Tarn is not directly supported by anything in the books; they're simply extrapolations of carefully-chosen facts (other than her writing). Your opinion reflects her intended portrayal, and if Palladium ever published a book on Lazlo, I'm sure they'll paint a more-complete picture of Erin Tarn's impeccable goodness that mutilates my present perspective.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Erin Tarn being rich, but even most well-known authors don't have collections worth 90 million. This isn't a stamp collection, or a nice home library. It's more akin to a major university library. The author doesn't explain how she got it or what she does with it, besides keeping it in her house. I use this narrative gap to help justify an opinion of Tarn that clearly isn't consistent with her overall portrayal. The author does state that she rarely has much money, since she tends to buy books or give it away to charity. Her alignment and the fawning description of her are more consistent with an author's intent to portray her as hugely successful.

Of course, the reality that characters face is that they can't just look up a stat block on people they meet and say "hey, that's a good guy/gal!" (even those who can read alignments can be fooled, too). Most hook/line/sinker adventures (of which there are a metric euphemism-ton) involve plot twists where the characters don't know who the villain is, or are misdirected (until it is revealed to be... another alien intelligence). Projecting a player's total confidence in Erin Tarn into a character would make that character seem pretty naive.

After all, without the God's-eye perspective of the books, what do our characters have to go on? Her possessions aren't likely to be common knowledge. That leaves her published writings, which are
1. So adoring of Lazlo's Council of Learning and its dragon leader that they come across as propaganda.
2. So condemning of the Coalition that they come across as propaganda.
3. Riddled with flagrant grammar errors.
4. Mostly opinion-based, with only vague and heavily-generalized facts.
5. Focused heavily on herself.

In a world of shape-shifting supernatural horrors, where anyone you meet could be a deranged mind-melter, a demon, a dragon, a witch, or one of a myriad of horrible things, why should characters take anything that Erin Tarn writes at face value? For that matter, why do we as their players, or their GMs?

We do it because Erin Tarn's perspective is thrust upon us. Her point of view is the game's most-dominant. While our characters might be able to have alternate viewpoints, we don't really have any other options. We do it because her description is so very lopsidedly positive, and because anyone against her is portrayed as evil.

A stat block alone isn't enough for me. I prefer a more complicated world, in which Erin Tarn might actually be wrong, in which good people can be against her (and vice-versa) without automatically being villains.

[MurderCityDisciple]

First and foremost: your points are all completely legitimate. My suspicious opinion of Erin Tarn is not directly supported by anything in the books; they're simply extrapolations of carefully-chosen facts (other than her writing). Your opinion reflects her intended portrayal, and if Palladium ever published a book on Lazlo, I'm sure they'll paint a more-complete picture of Erin Tarn's impeccable goodness that mutilates my present perspective.

I find your opinion very valid.

I've been reading about the Federation of Magic and I can definitely see why the Coalition hates magic and D-Bees. When a magic lead army complete with a summoned demonic horde neary commits genocide upon you and your people, well that kinda galvanizes folks against things of that ilk.

So yeah if I was a survivor of Dunscon's assault I'd fear anything non-human and think Erin Tarn was the 'demons, D-bees and magic are just mis-understood' crowd's Joseff Goebbles in a pinafore.

[Cybermancer]

I think some of the the alternate visions of Erin Tarn in this thread are interesting. I've given her character and her relationship to the Coalition States a great deal of thought. Enough that I've been working on a rather long fan fic that was inspired by a number of factors. Although she's going to be pivotal to the story and appears several times through out, she's not a main character.

I'm taking the 'company line' with regards to portraying her for the most part. I am going to have to think about her library and how others might percieve her. There certainly should be some contrasting and yet still valid views in world about the woman.

[Dunia]

In the current game that we have and my sisters first real try as a GM, I play a human vagabond who comes from a place we have invented called St Joan. It lies just outside Free Quebec (If you look at the picture of Free Quebec on page 242 of RUE, you see that there are small cities outside fortress city, the tall one in the left is St Joan and it is a part of the Republic).

The reason why I am out adventuring is that I got my hands on Tarn's book "Traversing..." and thought that this is nothing but propaganda for Lazlo and nothing else, so I decided to set out to write a more non-biased book and publish that and give a option to Tarn's bashing of FQ, CS and other things that she does not like.

This is really fun as I travel with a human Body Fixer and an Dog Boy (Wolf) Cyber Knight. We have just reached (well me and the doc) level 2, while our proud Knight is almost there.

We were allowed to roll once at the special abilities from Lone Star Book and I ended up with the "Defined Talent and got +20% to two skills. So I ended up with (now at level 2) with Creative Writing 76% and Photography: 86% (both at professional levels).

This will be a good campaign, as my little Natalie will write a book about North America, seen from the eyes of someone else than Erin Tarn and we will write this book as we play.

It will be a fun project.

[DevastationBob]

Keep us updated if you're so inclined Dunia.

[Tor]

I hate Winslow Thorpe and his stupid "Psi-Tomahawk".

Isn't that supposed to be a special Spirit West exclusive ability?

Flavour text has him using it as a CLIMBING tool. Since when can psi-swords be used to climb?

[Hotrod]

Really, considering that the cyber-knight can re-shape his psi-sword at will, it makes sense that it could also be used as a tool. Psi-plowshare, anyone?

Side note: I forgot about her more recent stats in Coalition War Campaign. Her private library (still in her house) is worth 150 million as of the start of the "Campaign of Unity".

I guess running off to Mexico, Wormwood, England, Europe, and Africa pays well.

[Tor]

No, NGR skinny mag royalties pay well.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

There are some good threads on her, with some interesting viewpoints on her, I would bump them but last time I did that I got in trouble for it.

[Hotrod]

After all, without the God's-eye perspective of the books, what do our characters have to go on? Her possessions aren't likely to be common knowledge. That leaves her published writings, which are
1. So adoring of Lazlo's Council of Learning and its dragon leader that they come across as propaganda.
2. So condemning of the Coalition that they come across as propaganda.
3. Riddled with flagrant grammar errors.
4. Mostly opinion-based, with only vague and heavily-generalized facts.
5. Focused heavily on herself.

I'm going off memory as I've been away from Rifts since my previous campaign fell apart due to burnout a few years ago, but, IIRC, weren't Traversing Our Modern World and her other "published" works unauthorized compilations of her letters to various individuals? If so, of course they would be filled with personal opinions and descriptions of the events in her life. Just some food for thought.

They may be technically "unauthorized", but they get published far too often for her not to be complicit in their publication. Reading Erin whine about unauthorized publications is like hearing Kim Kardashian complaining about her sex tape being distributed while reaping the benefits of her subsequent publicity and fame.

I don't buy it.

[DevastationBob]

I think she's part of an alien intelligence.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

She is Karl Prosek ex-lover from his young and wilddays, he had to dump this piece of gutter trash and find a respecable woman

[Hotrod]

Interestingly, I had a conversation with Kevin last weekend in which I touched on the subject of Lazlo, and how I really liked how, in Aftermath, it was described as having major crime problems, since Erin Tarn's earlier descriptions were so positive about it that they were, in effect, a propaganda effort.

Kevin's response: "There are no utopias in Rifts."

Man, oh man, I'd love to see Kevin make a Lazlo book now.