I'm mining for ideas, a bit. What would you include in an alternate vision of the British Isles?
I'm leaning towards including a darker more nihilistic vision of London, influenced heavily by the 2000AD aesthetic. The entire city is a huge, overpopulated slum where mixed gangs of humans and dbees battle each other for territory and rations while the elite enforcers of the oligarchic legal system mete out summary executions to keep the population contained if not controlled. The city itself is besieged by mad mutant cannibals and their demonic masters. And beneath the city, in the ancient tube lines, a malevolent entity bides its time.
An Alternate Vision of Britannia
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MikelAmroni
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
One of the neat things about how little overall information that was actually in Rifts England, there's actually a lot you can do with it. For instance:
You want a huge over-populated slum. Do that!
London
Where other parts of the British isles have seemingly regressed several hundred years, London is another story entirely. Large sections of the city were ruined and rebuilt by the survivors. For the entirety of the worst years after the apocalypse, anarchy reigned. Human survivors fought alien/d-bee refugees and monstrous predators from who knows where. Faerie folk of the darkest sorts found themselves drawn to the gutted remains of old buildings, constructing a post-apocalyptic version of the standing stones they built elsewhere in the isles. London remained a den of iniquity until the arrival of Splynncryth's forces. Not even a full task force of Splynncryth's best could truly control the populace. Well, this is not entirely true. The Splugorth are quite able to level the entire place and start over, but after a series of captured gang fighters became prized champions, the leader of the Splugorth force, High lord K'lazzat saw oppourtunity. He only leveled a small area around the remains of Big Ben, which has been incorporated into a pyramid which serves as the main government building of Splynn's London. This small city is then surrounded by a massive wall built of stone, the gutted remains of buildings, and simply melted slag formed into a physical barrier keeping the unwashed masses out of the area. Within the wall is an orderly, clean splugorthian city, with a variety of services and goods available. Spreading out in a rough circle from there is a confused mass of buildings, cars, crashed jets and other debris forming the physical home of the gangs that battle each other and the Splugorth who claim dominion over the city. K'lazzat has only imposed a few rules on the city itself, and due to the power of the Splugorth, these are mostly obeyed.
The Laws of London:
1. There are only two punishments for any of these crimes: Death or Enslavement.
2. The walls of Little Splynn are inviolate. Anyone found within a half mile of them has committed a crime.
- A common tactic of some slaver gangs is to chase a quarry into a waiting Splugorth patrol, who pay these slaver gangs handsomely for their efforts.
3. Attacking a minion of the Splugorth, or a citizen of Little Splynn, is a crime.
4. Any attacking force will be annihilated, as will any the area within 5 miles of where they are from, as well as the territories they traveled through to get there.
- The result of this law is that any force intent on attacking Little Splynn is usually destroyed long before they reach its walls. It also keeps the populace as much at each others' throats, instead of uniting to destroy their alien overlords.
Gangs of London
There are a hundred or more gangs, and there is a full underground economy, including Splugorth supplied cyberdocs, and even a few clinics that will allow the wealthiest to obtain bio-wizard enhancements. A small selection of the other powerful forces in London follow.
The Royal Society
This gang is actually quite large and supposedly controls an uninterrupted geneological record that dates back over two thousand years. All full members of the Society can trace their membership to some ancient member of the nobility of Great Britain or its component nations. Interestingly, a large portion of them are either psychic or magical in nature. This has led to the idea that such abilities are a reason to check the geneological records, or the genetics database, as such records exist. In pre-rifts times, the structure that houses the Society's main encampment was a private research facility trying to complete a complete genetic database of all members of the nobility, including exhuming remains in order to get possible DNA samples. The founding members of the Royal Society were members of a pre-rifts secret society that funded the work of the Royal Research Center, as the foundation and it's building were called. As nobles themselves, they were actually quite well equipped, at least at first, and managed to carve out a good size niche for themselves. Since the arrival of the Splugorth their holdings have been reduced to a small smattering of neighborhoods, barely a mile in any direction from their stronghold. Their gathered psychic and magical strength has made them a tough nut to crack, and they are experienced treasure hunters and have uncovered many caches of old british governmental supply caches, including weapons and vehicles. They are one of the few gangs to have tanks and power armor at their disposal, including a few custom made suits they give out to the occasional Royal Knight that the Society sponsors. Despite their status as a gang, they tend to view themselves as the rightful rulers of London, and constantly plot at how to take down the "damn Spluugies" without the resulting destruction of their home base and everywhere in between. So far it has been through the careful manipulation of the other gangs and the occasional wandering knight.
The Hellboys
This gang is like a thousand others, composed of a bunch of undisciplined toughs held together, barely, by a strong leader. In this case the leader is Rory, a demon-looking creature with great horns on his head, and a power demonic looking body. He is in fact a Nightbane rifted here from in the middle of a fight with the Nightlords in his London. Lacking the ability to go back, he has instead carved out a territory of almost three blocks, which is impressive for a newcomer. He rarely uses his facade form, finding his demonic features inspire a much greater respect. He does, occasionally, dress as a beggar and go about in his facade form, simply to gather information, but most suspect this is some form of magic, not a natural ability. He uses simple disguises to make sure no one sees him the same way twice. His gang is composed of a variety of orcs, goblins, ogres, humans, and dark faeries. One, a spriggan joined the gang early on. Rory nicknamed him Archimedes, but most of the gang are so ignorant of who Archimedes was that they simply call him Archy. He has used junk and native earth and stone to create a fortress and standing stone garden that helps to exert some control over the ley line the gang currently controls. It does not go through Little Splynn, which is the only thing allowing them to control it at all. The gang has few wizards of any type, but it does have a few instinctive magic users, and at least one Earth Child who likes Rory and Archy.
(will add more soon, and others will too I am sure)
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I haven't added more simply because I haven't done a whole lot of research on the city and its history, and I like what I write for Rifts to make sense historically as well as generally. I've made more than a few broad strokes here, easy to adapt to any setting. In this scenario, Little Splynn becomes the only truly civilized section of London, rather than simply the entirety of London. In this way you don't invalidate anything, but you bend the canon passages to your story needs. To be fair, I've always intended something like this for my version of Rifts England, but you did give me some good ideas I could use to make it work. There's a lot more to be had. Use the idea of Knights warring as proxies for simple gang violence. And just as the "knight" might well be just some brutish thug pretending at a title, so too can gang warriors be noble. One of the early influences of the Royal Society (one of the earliest major powers in this London) was the obsession with nobility and the knighthood. The gangs may not buy into chivalry and its tenets, but everyone likes having folks swear fealty to them, and the basic concepts of fealty (I protect you because you promise to support me) is as basic as human nature gets. This way you get to keep the whole knight mystique, but you have dirty, rotten scoundrels pretending at being something. You have bikers in spiked leather armor jousting on dirt bikes, and instead of crowns, the leaders have the most piercings and tattoos. He still calls himself "Sir." And the accent and general level of education (none to very little) betrays his low born nature, but he can rip your head off if he gets half a chance.
And so we have the written aspects of England maintained, while maintaining that dark post-apocalyptic feel that makes dystopian futures so beloved in story-telling.
You want a huge over-populated slum. Do that!
London
Where other parts of the British isles have seemingly regressed several hundred years, London is another story entirely. Large sections of the city were ruined and rebuilt by the survivors. For the entirety of the worst years after the apocalypse, anarchy reigned. Human survivors fought alien/d-bee refugees and monstrous predators from who knows where. Faerie folk of the darkest sorts found themselves drawn to the gutted remains of old buildings, constructing a post-apocalyptic version of the standing stones they built elsewhere in the isles. London remained a den of iniquity until the arrival of Splynncryth's forces. Not even a full task force of Splynncryth's best could truly control the populace. Well, this is not entirely true. The Splugorth are quite able to level the entire place and start over, but after a series of captured gang fighters became prized champions, the leader of the Splugorth force, High lord K'lazzat saw oppourtunity. He only leveled a small area around the remains of Big Ben, which has been incorporated into a pyramid which serves as the main government building of Splynn's London. This small city is then surrounded by a massive wall built of stone, the gutted remains of buildings, and simply melted slag formed into a physical barrier keeping the unwashed masses out of the area. Within the wall is an orderly, clean splugorthian city, with a variety of services and goods available. Spreading out in a rough circle from there is a confused mass of buildings, cars, crashed jets and other debris forming the physical home of the gangs that battle each other and the Splugorth who claim dominion over the city. K'lazzat has only imposed a few rules on the city itself, and due to the power of the Splugorth, these are mostly obeyed.
The Laws of London:
1. There are only two punishments for any of these crimes: Death or Enslavement.
2. The walls of Little Splynn are inviolate. Anyone found within a half mile of them has committed a crime.
- A common tactic of some slaver gangs is to chase a quarry into a waiting Splugorth patrol, who pay these slaver gangs handsomely for their efforts.
3. Attacking a minion of the Splugorth, or a citizen of Little Splynn, is a crime.
4. Any attacking force will be annihilated, as will any the area within 5 miles of where they are from, as well as the territories they traveled through to get there.
- The result of this law is that any force intent on attacking Little Splynn is usually destroyed long before they reach its walls. It also keeps the populace as much at each others' throats, instead of uniting to destroy their alien overlords.
Gangs of London
There are a hundred or more gangs, and there is a full underground economy, including Splugorth supplied cyberdocs, and even a few clinics that will allow the wealthiest to obtain bio-wizard enhancements. A small selection of the other powerful forces in London follow.
The Royal Society
This gang is actually quite large and supposedly controls an uninterrupted geneological record that dates back over two thousand years. All full members of the Society can trace their membership to some ancient member of the nobility of Great Britain or its component nations. Interestingly, a large portion of them are either psychic or magical in nature. This has led to the idea that such abilities are a reason to check the geneological records, or the genetics database, as such records exist. In pre-rifts times, the structure that houses the Society's main encampment was a private research facility trying to complete a complete genetic database of all members of the nobility, including exhuming remains in order to get possible DNA samples. The founding members of the Royal Society were members of a pre-rifts secret society that funded the work of the Royal Research Center, as the foundation and it's building were called. As nobles themselves, they were actually quite well equipped, at least at first, and managed to carve out a good size niche for themselves. Since the arrival of the Splugorth their holdings have been reduced to a small smattering of neighborhoods, barely a mile in any direction from their stronghold. Their gathered psychic and magical strength has made them a tough nut to crack, and they are experienced treasure hunters and have uncovered many caches of old british governmental supply caches, including weapons and vehicles. They are one of the few gangs to have tanks and power armor at their disposal, including a few custom made suits they give out to the occasional Royal Knight that the Society sponsors. Despite their status as a gang, they tend to view themselves as the rightful rulers of London, and constantly plot at how to take down the "damn Spluugies" without the resulting destruction of their home base and everywhere in between. So far it has been through the careful manipulation of the other gangs and the occasional wandering knight.
The Hellboys
This gang is like a thousand others, composed of a bunch of undisciplined toughs held together, barely, by a strong leader. In this case the leader is Rory, a demon-looking creature with great horns on his head, and a power demonic looking body. He is in fact a Nightbane rifted here from in the middle of a fight with the Nightlords in his London. Lacking the ability to go back, he has instead carved out a territory of almost three blocks, which is impressive for a newcomer. He rarely uses his facade form, finding his demonic features inspire a much greater respect. He does, occasionally, dress as a beggar and go about in his facade form, simply to gather information, but most suspect this is some form of magic, not a natural ability. He uses simple disguises to make sure no one sees him the same way twice. His gang is composed of a variety of orcs, goblins, ogres, humans, and dark faeries. One, a spriggan joined the gang early on. Rory nicknamed him Archimedes, but most of the gang are so ignorant of who Archimedes was that they simply call him Archy. He has used junk and native earth and stone to create a fortress and standing stone garden that helps to exert some control over the ley line the gang currently controls. It does not go through Little Splynn, which is the only thing allowing them to control it at all. The gang has few wizards of any type, but it does have a few instinctive magic users, and at least one Earth Child who likes Rory and Archy.
(will add more soon, and others will too I am sure)
------------------------
I haven't added more simply because I haven't done a whole lot of research on the city and its history, and I like what I write for Rifts to make sense historically as well as generally. I've made more than a few broad strokes here, easy to adapt to any setting. In this scenario, Little Splynn becomes the only truly civilized section of London, rather than simply the entirety of London. In this way you don't invalidate anything, but you bend the canon passages to your story needs. To be fair, I've always intended something like this for my version of Rifts England, but you did give me some good ideas I could use to make it work. There's a lot more to be had. Use the idea of Knights warring as proxies for simple gang violence. And just as the "knight" might well be just some brutish thug pretending at a title, so too can gang warriors be noble. One of the early influences of the Royal Society (one of the earliest major powers in this London) was the obsession with nobility and the knighthood. The gangs may not buy into chivalry and its tenets, but everyone likes having folks swear fealty to them, and the basic concepts of fealty (I protect you because you promise to support me) is as basic as human nature gets. This way you get to keep the whole knight mystique, but you have dirty, rotten scoundrels pretending at being something. You have bikers in spiked leather armor jousting on dirt bikes, and instead of crowns, the leaders have the most piercings and tattoos. He still calls himself "Sir." And the accent and general level of education (none to very little) betrays his low born nature, but he can rip your head off if he gets half a chance.
And so we have the written aspects of England maintained, while maintaining that dark post-apocalyptic feel that makes dystopian futures so beloved in story-telling.
"Be strong and do as you will. The swords of others will set you your limits." (Marauders of Gor, p.10)
Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
Thanks for your contribution, Mike. Let's not fixate on London though. What other ideas have you got?
In the Scottish highlands a tribe of ancient Picts has emerged from a rift and is causing all kinds of havoc amongst both humans and fomorians. They use a primitive form of temporary tattoo magic, drawing protective symbols on their bodies in woad and augmenting their prowess with shamanic magic.
In the Scottish highlands a tribe of ancient Picts has emerged from a rift and is causing all kinds of havoc amongst both humans and fomorians. They use a primitive form of temporary tattoo magic, drawing protective symbols on their bodies in woad and augmenting their prowess with shamanic magic.
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The Dark Elf
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
I have loads of ideas on the British Isles as I have pipe dreams of writing a quartet of books expanding them.
Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
The Dark Elf wrote:I have loads of ideas on the British Isles as I have pipe dreams of writing a quartet of books expanding them.
Spoilers! I demand spoilers!
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MikelAmroni
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
Bill wrote:Thanks for your contribution, Mikel. Let's not fixate on London though. What other ideas have you got?
In the Scottish highlands a tribe of ancient Picts has emerged from a rift and is causing all kinds of havoc amongst both humans and fomorians. They use a primitive form of temporary tattoo magic, drawing protective symbols on their bodies in woad and augmenting their prowess with shamanic magic.
It's Mikel, but I'm glad you liked it. Well you specifically asked about London. I've actually got enough ideas for an entire book (or two). I was just giving you the one thing you actually asked for and how to integrate it with what the book actually has already.
As for the picts, I wouldn't use them like that, but if you want to, then go with simple to convert stuff and mold it to what you need. I'd just have them using pictographs instead of runes and give them a version of diabolism based on their written communication. I'd also look at how to convert over some of the existing druidic classes to something akin to RUE magic classes (part of what I have done actually), and work on expanding the knight code into something that actually makes sense in a post-apocalyptic world (the Royal Society actually works perfectly as the impetus of why that started, so I'm glad you wanted to do more with London).
My whole problem is I don't have the discipline to sit down and write a book or even a decently written Rifter Article. While my writing is decent, it's not THAT good, and definitely not consistent.
"Be strong and do as you will. The swords of others will set you your limits." (Marauders of Gor, p.10)
Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
MikelAmroni wrote:As for the picts, I wouldn't use them like that, but if you want to, then go with simple to convert stuff and mold it to what you need. I'd just have them using pictographs instead of runes and give them a version of diabolism based on their written communication.
Can you elaborate on what you'd do with the Picts? This thread is really meant to be a general brainstorming environment for the British Isles as a whole, with no territoriality intended.
Skimming over the Wikipedia entry for the the Isle of Man, I came across the description of the buggane. They're a mole-like ogre of sorts who get along with fairies and tend to be reclusive. Except for the size, I think they resemble the description given for the ronpo from Thundercloud Galaxy. I might drop a family unit there as part of an adventure and chalk up the size discrepancy to exaggeration and legend. Maybe the Isle of Man would be a good starting point for adventures in Britannia...
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MikelAmroni
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
Quite simply take the diabolist from Palladium Fantasy, conform the skill set to something resembling what the Picts might use and instead of the symbols and runes from Palladium Fantasy, they have the their own pictograms. Functionally there is no change, just in the set dressing.
"Be strong and do as you will. The swords of others will set you your limits." (Marauders of Gor, p.10)
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Seneca
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
The England book is fertile ground for a rewrite now that Europe has been fleshed out abit in the past two decades since its release.
What books I would like to see:
RIFTS-Japan 2, England 2, Africa 2, China 3, Lazlo (PLEASE!!)
Phase World- The Galactic Tracers Sourcebook
A RIFTS video game RPG/Shooter like Fallout 3
RIFTS-Japan 2, England 2, Africa 2, China 3, Lazlo (PLEASE!!)
Phase World- The Galactic Tracers Sourcebook
A RIFTS video game RPG/Shooter like Fallout 3
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MikelAmroni
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Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
Yup, exactly my point. 
"Be strong and do as you will. The swords of others will set you your limits." (Marauders of Gor, p.10)
Re: An Alternate Vision of Britannia
MikelAmroni wrote:Quite simply take the diabolist from Palladium Fantasy, conform the skill set to something resembling what the Picts might use and instead of the symbols and runes from Palladium Fantasy, they have the their own pictograms. Functionally there is no change, just in the set dressing.
I was leaning toward an even simpler approach; borrowing the basic mechanics from the tattoos of strength from WB8, but further limiting them by only allowing the wearer to activate the power as long as the designs last (2d6 days).