The Real Federation of Magic

[SereneTsunami]

I have been reading the Siege of Tolkeen(good stuff) and couldn't help but think about The Coalition's ancient foe, The FoM. After detailing the size and capabilities of both the Coalition army and the defenders of Tolkeen I have to ask the question, would the FoM, given it's size, be able to fight the Coalition at all?

I read in WB#16(another great book) that the 3 main cities of the FoM have a way to scoot or hide if the CS comes calling. It seems to me this might work for a raid, but if Chi-Town decides to cross the Mississippi en mass to occupy those sites there is little that could be done.

I know magic is an excellent equalizer and Tolkeen brought some great ideas to bear on the CS Army, but it was still for naught. The size of the CS Army is just not a problem that can be managed by Tolkeen with a million beings, or the FoM with much much less population.

Am I missing something?

[HWalsh]

I have been reading the Siege of Tolkeen(good stuff) and couldn't help but think about The Coalition's ancient foe, The FoM. After detailing the size and capabilities of both the Coalition army and the defenders of Tolkeen I have to ask the question, would the FoM, given it's size, be able to fight the Coalition at all?

I read in WB#16(another great book) that the 3 main cities of the FoM have a way to scoot or hide if the CS comes calling. It seems to me this might work for a raid, but if Chi-Town decides to cross the Mississippi en mass to occupy those sites there is little that could be done.

I know magic is an excellent equalizer and Tolkeen brought some great ideas to bear on the CS Army, but it was still for naught. The size of the CS Army is just not a problem that can be managed by Tolkeen with a million beings, or the FoM with much much less population.

Am I missing something?

The FoM is technically like, in another dimension. So it makes it hard. If the CS occupied the area they would likely find it eventually, but the problem would be that the FoM isn't anywhere near as nice as Tolkeen was. The CS would have only the portals to go through, meaning they'd be walking into a killing field.

[Axelmania]

City of Brass is in another dimension, but I can't see anything stopping the CS from invading it if they become aware of the cave with the portal to it, unless Close Rift could deal with that in an emergency.

Dweomer and Stormspire are very much on Earth, the former masked by illusions and the latter I think can teleport to new places along the ley line its on or something like that?

The CS could attack the regions enough to destabilize all 3 cities even if they couldn't actually invade any of them.

[Shark_Force]

funny, the siege on tolkeen is probably one of the most widely *disliked* books i've seen from palladium.

i mean, i might be able to get more distaste for, say, lancer's rockers or something, once people actually became aware that lancer's rockers was a thing... but the siege on tolkeen just had everyone holding the idiot ball. repeatedly. on both sides of the war.

anyways, the CS can't really bring their numerical superiority to bear on the city of brass... all entry is through portals, which themselves are inside a mountain, which means the CS can only send in a few people at a time. i'm not saying they couldn't win that fight, but i will say that they're not going to have an easy time winning it with the battle plans we've seen them use so far. i can't remember much about stormspire, so i can't comment there (the federation of magic belongs to a friend who has since moved). dweomer doesn't really have much of anything to really stop the CS, though, as i recall. i mean, they have illusions, but if the CS ever just sends in a few hundred thousand dog boys to sniff out which trees are real and which are fake and tracks down the location and then launch a full-scale assault, i don't recall seeing anything that remotely suggests dweomer could do much to stop them. that said, there are 3 gods of magic there, as i recall. even normal gods have a fair number of tricks up their sleeve. gods of magic i would expect to have even more tricks up their sleeve, because magic. we don't know of anything they have that could really stop the CS from just brute forcing their way in and killing everything that i'm aware of, but i will say that i for one would not feel too enthusiastic about picking another fight with a powerful magic nation if i were the CS... comparatively speaking, tolkeen didn't even really fight nearly as dirty as they could have. the CS may or may not realize that, for example, tolkeen could have caused massive droughts, or sent tsunamis slamming into any coastal holdings they may have and inflicting massive damage, or just spammed summoning tens of thousands of demons per day and turning them loose uncontrolled in CS territory (the number of minions a shifter can control is fairly small, but if you don't care about controlling them and are perfectly happy to allow them to just rampage through an area causing damage, you can get a *lot* of summoned creatures out of a single shifter and a ley line). but they have, officially, learned at least some of what guerilla warfare with a magic nation looks like, and i dare say it wasn't anywhere near as easy as they expected.

[RockJock]

One of the things with Dunscon's True Federation is they will fight dirty. That was mentioned by several above, but geared towards their resistance in the Magic Zone. What I'm talking about is what they will do throughout CS territory. Think of towns in the CS bread basket being hit by plagues of rats eating crops, Demons being summoned, and unleashed on the town school/parade/festival. Shadowbeast stalking, and killing everyone on outlying farms. Even things like the town dam being broken by elementals and earthquakes, and PPE from the sudden deaths fueling more summoning. The more dark and nasty the better.

[HWalsh]

Yeah,

What the Pro-CS people don't get is... Tolkeen fought fair and honorably. Even the so-called "horror" that was the Sorcerer's Revenge wasn't really all that bad. They limited their offense to legitimate military targets.

The CS not so much to be honest.

The Federation of Magic? They're not going to play nice. They're going to poison food. Like not just destroy it. They'll poison it with the intention to kill civilian targets.

What people need to remember is that Tolkeen wasn't evil. That was BS CS propaganda. The only evil things that they did were maybe make a pact with the Daemonix and they were ruthless when pushing out hostile invaders. Compared to the war crimes the CS were pulling that was small potatoes.

The FoM's evil isn't propaganda.They really are evil.The CS has never fought an actual evil opponent in the setting before.

Would the CS win? Sure. They have more plot armor than a protagonist in a 1980's era kid's cartoon. It would still be the hardest fight they've ever faced.

[Freemage]

I've just finished reading SoT and FoM both, and I think it might be more accurate to say that the CS wouldn't lose, but I don't think they'd win, either. Rather, I suspect an overt conflict would result in a massive loss of life on both sides until such time as the war just sort of peters out, with neither side being able to actually achieve a true victory (but both Prosek and Duscon trying to claim they 'won'). Borders might shift either direction, but honestly, the borders of the various factions are more a matter of propaganda and bluster, anyway.

[Blue_Lion]

The Collation war campaign book actually covers an attack on the CS bread basket, they are stated as providing most the food needed by NA. So several non CS factions would help the CS stop such an attack on the bread basket.

[eliakon]

The Collation war campaign book actually covers an attack on the CS bread basket, they are stated as providing most the food needed by NA. So several non CS factions would help the CS stop such an attack on the bread basket.

Which honestly makes no sense.
The population of NA just isn't big enough to need a 'bread basket'
Its not like the modern world where you have hundreds of millions of people, most of them living in cities with no agriculture.
Never mind the insanity of anyone relying on the CS for their basic food supply (Yes, lets give an expansionistic empire a monopoly on our food. Brilliant! That way when its out turn to be conquered they don't have to actually fight, just starve us into compliance.)
I chalk it up to another of those "the authors go with the rule of cool and base things on what they know"

[Blue_Lion]

The Collation war campaign book actually covers an attack on the CS bread basket, they are stated as providing most the food needed by NA. So several non CS factions would help the CS stop such an attack on the bread basket.

Which honestly makes no sense.
The population of NA just isn't big enough to need a 'bread basket'
Its not like the modern world where you have hundreds of millions of people, most of them living in cities with no agriculture.
Never mind the insanity of anyone relying on the CS for their basic food supply (Yes, lets give an expansionistic empire a monopoly on our food. Brilliant! That way when its out turn to be conquered they don't have to actually fight, just starve us into compliance.)
I chalk it up to another of those "the authors go with the rule of cool and base things on what they know"

Writing about what you know is a basic rule of good writing. You want to fault them for it go ahead.
Weather or not it makes sense or we like it does not matter to canon as, by cannon we know they are a major food source for NA.

Based off what I know The true FoM are basically magical terrorist that act like insurgence in the area known FoM. They lack a organized structure to launch a large scale invasion.

In my games I have a custom NPC that arms the FoM and turns them into a real threat to NA. He single handly justifies the CS paranoia.

[Eagle]

The problem that almost any magical nation is going to have fighting the Coalition is that they can't absorb losses as easily.

Joe Smith graduates from Chi-Town High School, goes through 6 weeks of basic training, and now he's a 1st level Grunt. He gets his laser rifle and his body armor and he goes off to war. With just his basic starting gear, he's pretty damn tough, all things considered. And if he gets killed, well, the Coalition has a really big population relative to anyone else in North America. You just need another 6 weeks to turn another high school kid into a "hero of humanity".

Damien von Uberfiend is a 7th level Shifter. He can summon hordes of monsters and send them at the Coalition in waves. He's much more powerful than Joe Smith. But he's a guy in his mid-40s, and he's been practicing magic since he was a teenager. If somebody catches him by surprise and he blows his initiative roll, he could die and then you can't really replace him.

Sure, the Federation of Magic can produce a huge number of disposable troops. But their actual population is pretty small. Just remember, if Lord Dunscon thought he could win in a direct fight, he'd launch a war in a heartbeat. As it is, he's basically a magical Osama bin Laden (pre-2011), hiding from this massive military force that wants his head on a plate. And while Tolkeen was well-liked by everyone who wasn't the CS, and drew a lot of recruits from across the continent, everybody knows that the FoM is led by a crazy person. You won't have as many independent mages coming in and helping out when they know the FoM is going to "fight dirty" as other people have said.

[Blue_Lion]

When you catch some one by surprise there is no initiative unless you both are surpised. other wise the person that is ready goes first. It is what makes ambushes so effective, you attack first then they get to fight back with what ever you have not killed.

[Eagle]

When you catch some one by surprise there is no initiative unless you both are surpised. other wise the person that is ready goes first. It is what makes ambushes so effective, you attack first then they get to fight back with what ever you have not killed.

Well, by "surprised" I didn't necessarily mean the game term. But yeah, if you get the drop on somebody, or catch them off guard, or with low PPE because they just finished casting a lot of big spells, then that guy is in trouble.

And while that sort of scenario won't happen every time you go into battle, it will happen on occasion. And every time it does, that's a loss that the magic forces will have great difficulty recovering from.

[Axelmania]

Even though many wilderness community people are farmers that doesn't necessarily mean they can farm enough to sustain themselves so they may still rely on doing other things to trade for food. The CS can farm more efficiently because they have better defenses and technology. Farming is very dangerous and not everyone has an MD laser rifle to ping off the local supernatural raider like Doris at the start of Vampire Hunter D. My guess is when a threat comes, they abandon crop and maybe slink back weeks later and take whatever scraps are left behind after raiders got to it.

Tolkeen had evil generals and Daemonix weren't the only evil creatures they inflicted on Minnesota.

[Freemage]

BTW, for folks who claim that the CS has 'plot armor' because this or that blunder or strange coincidence that lets them escape destruction at the hands of their enemies....

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... i0A8gTsawu

This is how history actually works. War, in particular, is less a matter of one side winning because of power and resources, as it is the other side losing because of a seemingly inconceivable foul-up or miscalculation. Consider the course of World War II:

Hitler and Stalin are far more at loggerheads than Free Quebec and the Coalition States ever were--ideological differences and geo-political rivalries driving a seemingly inescapable march to war--until all of a sudden, they put their heads together and agree to divvy up Poland and free up Germany's Eastern front, which allows for the Blitzkrieg to fast-march through Belgium and completely bypass the suddenly worthless Maginot Line.

Hitler then seizes much of France, with the Vichy lapdog government left in charge of the rest. He turns his attention to Britain with a brutal and devastating bombing campaign--and then suddenly turns around and decides NOW is the best time to 'settle up' with Stalin, re-opening the second front and getting bogged down in a land war in Asia (one of the classic blunders, remember).

And then, even as Hitler's troops are bogged down on two fronts, Japan attacks the U.S., and for some bizarre reason Hitler actually opts to honor his treaty with the Emperor. Remember, these two men are both xenophobes, convinced they lead the only true race of humans--and yet they decide to join forces and try to divvy up the planet. Had Hitler just let the agreement lapse, the U.S. would've lacked a pretense to get into the war in Europe, and the citizenry of the U.S. would've demanded immediate retaliation against Japan for Pearl Harbor. So suddenly, a seeming genius of tactics makes a string of blunders that brings his whole empire crashing down, taking all of his allies with him.

[HWalsh]

Even though many wilderness community people are farmers that doesn't necessarily mean they can farm enough to sustain themselves so they may still rely on doing other things to trade for food. The CS can farm more efficiently because they have better defenses and technology. Farming is very dangerous and not everyone has an MD laser rifle to ping off the local supernatural raider like Doris at the start of Vampire Hunter D. My guess is when a threat comes, they abandon crop and maybe slink back weeks later and take whatever scraps are left behind after raiders got to it.

Tolkeen had evil generals and Daemonix weren't the only evil creatures they inflicted on Minnesota.

Uh... Actually, while Tolkeen did have a few evil NPCs... Every single one of the Coalition ones that I can recall were evil... And the evil ones of Tolkeen were vastly outnumbered by the good ones.

Axel, look, you aren't going to convince anyone that the CS is a benevolent force of good that wants to protect the Earth and all of humanity from the evils of Magic, D-Bees, and the Supernatural. We know that isn't true. Those is the lies and propaganda that the average Citizen of the CS, who is illiterate and ignorant, believes. We are players, with a scope of view that allows us a much deeper clarity. We know the CS leadership lies to its people. We know the CS leadership is evil. We know that Prosek is a megalomaniac who wants to conquer the planet and he's only using the D-Bee/Supernatural/Magic threat because, right now, it serves his expansion of power.

Was Tolkeen a city of angels? No. They are, like all things, flawed and, when the CS launched an unwarranted and unprovoked attack against them they retaliated in a harsh and brutal manner. However, compared to the literal war crimes the CS committed, nothing that Tolkeen did even registers on the scale.

[IGNG]

The WWII analogy kinda sucks because it relies on hindsight and perfect information which no one has at the time decisions are made.

Spoiler:

Hitler and Stalin are far more at loggerheads than Free Quebec and the Coalition States ever were--ideological differences and geo-political rivalries driving a seemingly inescapable march to war--until all of a sudden, they put their heads together and agree to divvy up Poland and free up Germany's Eastern front, which allows for the Blitzkrieg to fast-march through Belgium and completely bypass the suddenly worthless Maginot Line.

If Stalin had thought that he could take Germany or that France would move quickly and deceivingly his troops would have rolled into Poland and then strait on into Germany. Russia just wanted a few more years to train up a new officer corps before they rolled Germany. Its not like Russia decided Germany's continued existence was in their best interest which is what Free Quebec did.

Hitler then seizes much of France, with the Vichy lapdog government left in charge of the rest. He turns his attention to Britain with a brutal and devastating bombing campaign--and then suddenly turns around and decides NOW is the best time to 'settle up' with Stalin, re-opening the second front and getting bogged down in a land war in Asia (one of the classic blunders, remember).

Thats... not really what happened. On paper before the battle of Briton, operation sea lion was... workable. Problematical but workable given what the Germans knew at the time. Unfortunately for them they face checked into radar and lost all the advantages they should have had in an air campaign.

As for attacking the USSR right after, that's just the least bad of a lot of bad options. It was only a mater of time before the USSR attacks and wins regardless of what else is happening. The red army had adopted a posture that made it impossible to counter attack or even effectively defend their territory so Germany took the best shot they were ever going to get.

And then, even as Hitler's troops are bogged down on two fronts, Japan attacks the U.S., and for some bizarre reason Hitler actually opts to honor his treaty with the Emperor. Remember, these two men are both xenophobes, convinced they lead the only true race of humans--and yet they decide to join forces and try to divvy up the planet. Had Hitler just let the agreement lapse, the U.S. would've lacked a pretense to get into the war in Europe, and the citizenry of the U.S. would've demanded immediate retaliation against Japan for Pearl Harbor. So suddenly, a seeming genius of tactics makes a string of blunders that brings his whole empire crashing down, taking all of his allies with him.

There wasn't much reason for Germany to not declare war. The US was already involved pretty heavily in the battle of the Atlantic, and had garrisoned Greenland. What do you think is going to happen? The US ignores the British and Chinese campaign in Burma? The one that again the US is already involved in. That the US is going to refuse to give supplies to its allies in the war against Japan because they might be used directly, or may free up other supplies for use against the Germans?

Germany didn't lose the war because US troops made it ashore on D-day, or because of anything else the US did directly. Did it shorten the war possibly by years? Maybe, probably. But Germany lost the war at Kursk because the Red Army could redeploy assets much faster in large part due to foreign (mostly US) trucks.

Now as to whether or not the CS has plot armor... yes they do. There are numerous interesting ways that the CS could have won. They could have relaxed their stance on magic and claimed that d-bees and demons were the real enemy, they could have used nukes, they could have used the human wave tactics that they did and then been forced to deal with the consequences of doing so (free qubec and their population calling ******** on their propaganda about human life mattering after they threw away a million people of breeding age in a war that was kinda pointless). but instead we get jesus walking out of xitic territory

[SereneTsunami]

funny, the siege on tolkeen is probably one of the most widely *disliked* books i've seen from palladium.

i mean, i might be able to get more distaste for, say, lancer's rockers or something, once people actually became aware that lancer's rockers was a thing... but the siege on tolkeen just had everyone holding the idiot ball. repeatedly. on both sides of the war.

anyways, the CS can't really bring their numerical superiority to bear on the city of brass... all entry is through portals, which themselves are inside a mountain, which means the CS can only send in a few people at a time. i'm not saying they couldn't win that fight, but i will say that they're not going to have an easy time winning it with the battle plans we've seen them use so far. i can't remember much about stormspire, so i can't comment there (the federation of magic belongs to a friend who has since moved). dweomer doesn't really have much of anything to really stop the CS, though, as i recall. i mean, they have illusions, but if the CS ever just sends in a few hundred thousand dog boys to sniff out which trees are real and which are fake and tracks down the location and then launch a full-scale assault, i don't recall seeing anything that remotely suggests dweomer could do much to stop them. that said, there are 3 gods of magic there, as i recall. even normal gods have a fair number of tricks up their sleeve. gods of magic i would expect to have even more tricks up their sleeve, because magic. we don't know of anything they have that could really stop the CS from just brute forcing their way in and killing everything that i'm aware of, but i will say that i for one would not feel too enthusiastic about picking another fight with a powerful magic nation if i were the CS... comparatively speaking, tolkeen didn't even really fight nearly as dirty as they could have. the CS may or may not realize that, for example, tolkeen could have caused massive droughts, or sent tsunamis slamming into any coastal holdings they may have and inflicting massive damage, or just spammed summoning tens of thousands of demons per day and turning them loose uncontrolled in CS territory (the number of minions a shifter can control is fairly small, but if you don't care about controlling them and are perfectly happy to allow them to just rampage through an area causing damage, you can get a *lot* of summoned creatures out of a single shifter and a ley line). but they have, officially, learned at least some of what guerilla warfare with a magic nation looks like, and i dare say it wasn't anywhere near as easy as they expected.

I have recently read SoT for the first time and I'm not so sure what all the fuss is about. I have read alot of hate for the way the story ended, but I have a hard time seeing it end any other way. The Writers found imaginative ways to use magic as a equalizer to the Coalition's massive advantage in numbers and firepower. I kinda think after reading alot of threads about the SoT that most folks had a preconceived idea about how the war should end up. I like the idea of the Coalition. Part of the draw of the setting is playing as an outlaw from the "Evil Empire". I also read alot about "Plot Armor". I'm not exactly sure if plot armor is code for being the biggest and most advanced military on the continent, or eye rolling at the survival of General Holmes army. Perhaps it means different things to different folks. I don't think that Tolkeen losing was a goofy ending, I don't think a heroic figure in the Coalition Army(Holmes) was the one who broke the enemies back. Tolkeen had about 1 million citizens, total. The coalition had about a million soldiers, total. Tolkeen savaged the inexperienced troops early but couldn't keep up the war due to losses. Seems pretty strait forward to me. Bad decisons by leadership on both sides is pretty typical in war. I liked alot of things about the SoT and am very glad it was made, it adds alot to Rifts Earth.

[Riftmaker]

The CS could lay waste to everything in the magic zone, but lacking the power to control a layline or nexus point. The stars will always align more rifts will open more new comers good bad or indifferent will pile through. The magic wielding powers on rifts earth can mitigate (if they have a strong enogh mage at the moment ) or eliminate this( if they have stone magic and can build a pyramid ).

If the CS pushed into the magic zone they could take anything there in the short term but since they couldn't access the city of brass, or control the laylines/nexus points it would never be over.

[Riftmaker]

funny, the siege on tolkeen is probably one of the most widely *disliked* books i've seen from palladium.

i mean, i might be able to get more distaste for, say, lancer's rockers or something, once people actually became aware that lancer's rockers was a thing... but the siege on tolkeen just had everyone holding the idiot ball. repeatedly. on both sides of the war.

anyways, the CS can't really bring their numerical superiority to bear on the city of brass... all entry is through portals, which themselves are inside a mountain, which means the CS can only send in a few people at a time. i'm not saying they couldn't win that fight, but i will say that they're not going to have an easy time winning it with the battle plans we've seen them use so far. i can't remember much about stormspire, so i can't comment there (the federation of magic belongs to a friend who has since moved). dweomer doesn't really have much of anything to really stop the CS, though, as i recall. i mean, they have illusions, but if the CS ever just sends in a few hundred thousand dog boys to sniff out which trees are real and which are fake and tracks down the location and then launch a full-scale assault, i don't recall seeing anything that remotely suggests dweomer could do much to stop them. that said, there are 3 gods of magic there, as i recall. even normal gods have a fair number of tricks up their sleeve. gods of magic i would expect to have even more tricks up their sleeve, because magic. we don't know of anything they have that could really stop the CS from just brute forcing their way in and killing everything that i'm aware of, but i will say that i for one would not feel too enthusiastic about picking another fight with a powerful magic nation if i were the CS... comparatively speaking, tolkeen didn't even really fight nearly as dirty as they could have. the CS may or may not realize that, for example, tolkeen could have caused massive droughts, or sent tsunamis slamming into any coastal holdings they may have and inflicting massive damage, or just spammed summoning tens of thousands of demons per day and turning them loose uncontrolled in CS territory (the number of minions a shifter can control is fairly small, but if you don't care about controlling them and are perfectly happy to allow them to just rampage through an area causing damage, you can get a *lot* of summoned creatures out of a single shifter and a ley line). but they have, officially, learned at least some of what guerilla warfare with a magic nation looks like, and i dare say it wasn't anywhere near as easy as they expected.

I have recently read SoT for the first time and I'm not so sure what all the fuss is about. I have read alot of hate for the way the story ended, but I have a hard time seeing it end any other way. The Writers found imaginative ways to use magic as a equalizer to the Coalition's massive advantage in numbers and firepower. I kinda think after reading alot of threads about the SoT that most folks had a preconceived idea about how the war should end up. I like the idea of the Coalition. Part of the draw of the setting is playing as an outlaw from the "Evil Empire". I also read alot about "Plot Armor". I'm not exactly sure if plot armor is code for being the biggest and most advanced military on the continent, or eye rolling at the survival of General Holmes army. Perhaps it means different things to different folks. I don't think that Tolkeen losing was a goofy ending, I don't think a heroic figure in the Coalition Army(Holmes) was the one who broke the enemies back. Tolkeen had about 1 million citizens, total. The coalition had about a million soldiers, total. Tolkeen savaged the inexperienced troops early but couldn't keep up the war due to losses. Seems pretty strait forward to me. Bad decisons by leadership on both sides is pretty typical in war. I liked alot of things about the SoT and am very glad it was made, it adds alot to Rifts Earth.

Read xiticix invasion the bugs have a VERY certain way they act and that goes out the window in the siege books

[HWalsh]

funny, the siege on tolkeen is probably one of the most widely *disliked* books i've seen from palladium.

i mean, i might be able to get more distaste for, say, lancer's rockers or something, once people actually became aware that lancer's rockers was a thing... but the siege on tolkeen just had everyone holding the idiot ball. repeatedly. on both sides of the war.

anyways, the CS can't really bring their numerical superiority to bear on the city of brass... all entry is through portals, which themselves are inside a mountain, which means the CS can only send in a few people at a time. i'm not saying they couldn't win that fight, but i will say that they're not going to have an easy time winning it with the battle plans we've seen them use so far. i can't remember much about stormspire, so i can't comment there (the federation of magic belongs to a friend who has since moved). dweomer doesn't really have much of anything to really stop the CS, though, as i recall. i mean, they have illusions, but if the CS ever just sends in a few hundred thousand dog boys to sniff out which trees are real and which are fake and tracks down the location and then launch a full-scale assault, i don't recall seeing anything that remotely suggests dweomer could do much to stop them. that said, there are 3 gods of magic there, as i recall. even normal gods have a fair number of tricks up their sleeve. gods of magic i would expect to have even more tricks up their sleeve, because magic. we don't know of anything they have that could really stop the CS from just brute forcing their way in and killing everything that i'm aware of, but i will say that i for one would not feel too enthusiastic about picking another fight with a powerful magic nation if i were the CS... comparatively speaking, tolkeen didn't even really fight nearly as dirty as they could have. the CS may or may not realize that, for example, tolkeen could have caused massive droughts, or sent tsunamis slamming into any coastal holdings they may have and inflicting massive damage, or just spammed summoning tens of thousands of demons per day and turning them loose uncontrolled in CS territory (the number of minions a shifter can control is fairly small, but if you don't care about controlling them and are perfectly happy to allow them to just rampage through an area causing damage, you can get a *lot* of summoned creatures out of a single shifter and a ley line). but they have, officially, learned at least some of what guerilla warfare with a magic nation looks like, and i dare say it wasn't anywhere near as easy as they expected.

I have recently read SoT for the first time and I'm not so sure what all the fuss is about. I have read alot of hate for the way the story ended, but I have a hard time seeing it end any other way. The Writers found imaginative ways to use magic as a equalizer to the Coalition's massive advantage in numbers and firepower. I kinda think after reading alot of threads about the SoT that most folks had a preconceived idea about how the war should end up. I like the idea of the Coalition. Part of the draw of the setting is playing as an outlaw from the "Evil Empire". I also read alot about "Plot Armor". I'm not exactly sure if plot armor is code for being the biggest and most advanced military on the continent, or eye rolling at the survival of General Holmes army. Perhaps it means different things to different folks. I don't think that Tolkeen losing was a goofy ending, I don't think a heroic figure in the Coalition Army(Holmes) was the one who broke the enemies back. Tolkeen had about 1 million citizens, total. The coalition had about a million soldiers, total. Tolkeen savaged the inexperienced troops early but couldn't keep up the war due to losses. Seems pretty strait forward to me. Bad decisons by leadership on both sides is pretty typical in war. I liked alot of things about the SoT and am very glad it was made, it adds alot to Rifts Earth.

The ending was weird.

Okay, I'll give you the long story short.

The bugs are hyper territorial. They have these three, specific ones, that are really bad.

The Hunter, the Warrior, and the Super Warrior.

Hunters, the CS would get by. Its not likely they will mark them, and jumping them would be suicide. However they'd report their location, and that would be a problem. A warrior or super warrior would attack them. That would be a problem.

How much of a problem? Not much of one.

Your average Xitcitix Hunter or Warrior has the MDC of a Deadboy. Gunned down and dead in seconds.

Which is the one thing you don't want to do.

When a Hunter, Warrior, or Super Warrior dies they release something called a "death scent" that gets on everything. What does a death scent do? It attracts every Xitcitix within 4 miles directly to your location. To get this scent off of you, you need shaman and alchemical abilities... Something the CS doesn't have... Then these guys walked *through the heart* of Xitcitix territory without stirring up even a single hive.

It is ridiculous.

[SereneTsunami]

Yeah,

What the Pro-CS people don't get is... Tolkeen fought fair and honorably. Even the so-called "horror" that was the Sorcerer's Revenge wasn't really all that bad. They limited their offense to legitimate military targets.

The CS not so much to be honest.

The Federation of Magic? They're not going to play nice. They're going to poison food. Like not just destroy it. They'll poison it with the intention to kill civilian targets.

What people need to remember is that Tolkeen wasn't evil. That was BS CS propaganda. The only evil things that they did were maybe make a pact with the Daemonix and they were ruthless when pushing out hostile invaders. Compared to the war crimes the CS were pulling that was small potatoes.

The FoM's evil isn't propaganda.They really are evil.The CS has never fought an actual evil opponent in the setting before.

Would the CS win? Sure. They have more plot armor than a protagonist in a 1980's era kid's cartoon. It would still be the hardest fight they've ever faced.

I tend to agree. The FoM isn't capable of a stand up fight like Tolkeen was. They would have to fight like a terrorist/insurgent group. It would be an interesting story.

[SereneTsunami]

funny, the siege on tolkeen is probably one of the most widely *disliked* books i've seen from palladium.

i mean, i might be able to get more distaste for, say, lancer's rockers or something, once people actually became aware that lancer's rockers was a thing... but the siege on tolkeen just had everyone holding the idiot ball. repeatedly. on both sides of the war.

anyways, the CS can't really bring their numerical superiority to bear on the city of brass... all entry is through portals, which themselves are inside a mountain, which means the CS can only send in a few people at a time. i'm not saying they couldn't win that fight, but i will say that they're not going to have an easy time winning it with the battle plans we've seen them use so far. i can't remember much about stormspire, so i can't comment there (the federation of magic belongs to a friend who has since moved). dweomer doesn't really have much of anything to really stop the CS, though, as i recall. i mean, they have illusions, but if the CS ever just sends in a few hundred thousand dog boys to sniff out which trees are real and which are fake and tracks down the location and then launch a full-scale assault, i don't recall seeing anything that remotely suggests dweomer could do much to stop them. that said, there are 3 gods of magic there, as i recall. even normal gods have a fair number of tricks up their sleeve. gods of magic i would expect to have even more tricks up their sleeve, because magic. we don't know of anything they have that could really stop the CS from just brute forcing their way in and killing everything that i'm aware of, but i will say that i for one would not feel too enthusiastic about picking another fight with a powerful magic nation if i were the CS... comparatively speaking, tolkeen didn't even really fight nearly as dirty as they could have. the CS may or may not realize that, for example, tolkeen could have caused massive droughts, or sent tsunamis slamming into any coastal holdings they may have and inflicting massive damage, or just spammed summoning tens of thousands of demons per day and turning them loose uncontrolled in CS territory (the number of minions a shifter can control is fairly small, but if you don't care about controlling them and are perfectly happy to allow them to just rampage through an area causing damage, you can get a *lot* of summoned creatures out of a single shifter and a ley line). but they have, officially, learned at least some of what guerilla warfare with a magic nation looks like, and i dare say it wasn't anywhere near as easy as they expected.

I have recently read SoT for the first time and I'm not so sure what all the fuss is about. I have read alot of hate for the way the story ended, but I have a hard time seeing it end any other way. The Writers found imaginative ways to use magic as a equalizer to the Coalition's massive advantage in numbers and firepower. I kinda think after reading alot of threads about the SoT that most folks had a preconceived idea about how the war should end up. I like the idea of the Coalition. Part of the draw of the setting is playing as an outlaw from the "Evil Empire". I also read alot about "Plot Armor". I'm not exactly sure if plot armor is code for being the biggest and most advanced military on the continent, or eye rolling at the survival of General Holmes army. Perhaps it means different things to different folks. I don't think that Tolkeen losing was a goofy ending, I don't think a heroic figure in the Coalition Army(Holmes) was the one who broke the enemies back. Tolkeen had about 1 million citizens, total. The coalition had about a million soldiers, total. Tolkeen savaged the inexperienced troops early but couldn't keep up the war due to losses. Seems pretty strait forward to me. Bad decisons by leadership on both sides is pretty typical in war. I liked alot of things about the SoT and am very glad it was made, it adds alot to Rifts Earth.

The ending was weird.

Okay, I'll give you the long story short.

The bugs are hyper territorial. They have these three, specific ones, that are really bad.

The Hunter, the Warrior, and the Super Warrior.

Hunters, the CS would get by. Its not likely they will mark them, and jumping them would be suicide. However they'd report their location, and that would be a problem. A warrior or super warrior would attack them. That would be a problem.

How much of a problem? Not much of one.

Your average Xitcitix Hunter or Warrior has the MDC of a Deadboy. Gunned down and dead in seconds.

Which is the one thing you don't want to do.

When a Hunter, Warrior, or Super Warrior dies they release something called a "death scent" that gets on everything. What does a death scent do? It attracts every Xitcitix within 4 miles directly to your location. To get this scent off of you, you need shaman and alchemical abilities... Something the CS doesn't have... Then these guys walked *through the heart* of Xitcitix territory without stirring up even a single hive.

It is ridiculous.

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

[HWalsh]

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

There are other problems with it...

Honestly, SoT should have ended after book 3...

The CS forces are routed. They have wasted far more time and resources on Tolkeen than they had anticipated. It has cost them dearly, half of their timetable for the Campaign of Unity has been exhausted for no gain. The troops pushed into the Hivelands all perished. Unfortunately the Sorcerer's Revenge causes support to wane and the CK's abandon Tolkeen as do many others. This weakens the CS enough that they pull forces back from Free Quebec, and FQ and the CS reach a formal agreement. The FoM, and some of those at Lazlo, feel a renewed sense of hope seeing the invincible CS defeated.

The CS meanwhile spins it. They tell propaganda that the brave CS forces pushed back the demons and monsters from Tolkeen and protected the walled cities. They use the stories to foster more fear. They were dealt a blow, but will recover.

-----

Instead the CS suffers a humiliating defeat then just strike back harder and magically get troops from the Hivelands poised for an ambush. Realistically they put in a ridiculous amount of time and resources into fighting Tolkeen for almost no actual gain. It was silly.

[Killer Cyborg]

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

There are other problems with it...

Honestly, SoT should have ended after book 3...

It should have ended well before that.
The CS had more Dog Boys alone than Tolkeen had in it's total army and allies.
(granted, they wouldn't have sent them all to the front, but c'mon... since day 1, Erin Tarn said that Tolkeen didn't have a chance)

[SereneTsunami]

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

There are other problems with it...

Honestly, SoT should have ended after book 3...

It should have ended well before that.
The CS had more Dog Boys alone than Tolkeen had in it's total army and allies.
(granted, they wouldn't have sent them all to the front, but c'mon... since day 1, Erin Tarn said that Tolkeen didn't have a chance)

I think that's also true. To me that means that Mr. Seimbieda took a very plausible path(and cool) with the war. A large but inexperienced army meets an enemy, while smaller, that is using tactics and weapons that the CS cannot cope with at first. They git slaughtered, badly. They regroup learn from their mistakes and try again.

I was also struck by the excellent use of national morale in the story, and the understanding it demonstrated of how really important morale is in war.

[Shark_Force]

The problem that almost any magical nation is going to have fighting the Coalition is that they can't absorb losses as easily.

Joe Smith graduates from Chi-Town High School, goes through 6 weeks of basic training, and now he's a 1st level Grunt. He gets his laser rifle and his body armor and he goes off to war. With just his basic starting gear, he's pretty damn tough, all things considered. And if he gets killed, well, the Coalition has a really big population relative to anyone else in North America. You just need another 6 weeks to turn another high school kid into a "hero of humanity".

Damien von Uberfiend is a 7th level Shifter. He can summon hordes of monsters and send them at the Coalition in waves. He's much more powerful than Joe Smith. But he's a guy in his mid-40s, and he's been practicing magic since he was a teenager. If somebody catches him by surprise and he blows his initiative roll, he could die and then you can't really replace him.

Sure, the Federation of Magic can produce a huge number of disposable troops. But their actual population is pretty small. Just remember, if Lord Dunscon thought he could win in a direct fight, he'd launch a war in a heartbeat. As it is, he's basically a magical Osama bin Laden (pre-2011), hiding from this massive military force that wants his head on a plate. And while Tolkeen was well-liked by everyone who wasn't the CS, and drew a lot of recruits from across the continent, everybody knows that the FoM is led by a crazy person. You won't have as many independent mages coming in and helping out when they know the FoM is going to "fight dirty" as other people have said.

damien von uberfiend doesn't have to be anywhere he can plausibly be attacked in, though. he can just summon a dozen gargoyles, send them off to attack somewhere, possibly with a few magic items or creations (scrolls, ironwood shields, talismans, a bag full of fire globes, etc), and then tomorrow he can just summon a dozen more if they all die. yes, damien is pretty hard to replace, but he's not a grunt, he's an officer. the CS can't exactly replace an infinite number of experienced officers either.

now support damien with TW printing presses mass-producing scrolls and TW wood lathes mass-producing talismans, or TW factories turning conjured wood into ironwood armour, necromancers making hordes of zombies and mummies armoured in that armour (or captured CS armour) using vibro-blades also captured from the CS, and using scores of animated dead as meat shields, armed with fire globes mass produced in another TW factory, and in addition to the shifter summoning ability have al your other spellcasters using spells to summon and control groups of tectonic entities to inhabit the wood shavings and the smashed-up skelebots, and who knows what else...

the magic equivalent of a grunt is not a level 7 shifter, it's a summoned subdemon or half a dozen mummies with shields made from the corpses of the CS troops you've killed, or a CS grunt under the influence of a possession entity or something like that.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Things about the FoM that make it a different kind of campaign entirely from the one against Tolkeen:

- as previously mentioned, Tolkeen, as a society/people, were not "evil". They had some bad actors, certainly, especially among the Warlords, but their society as a whole was fairly non-evil. I wouldn't say they were good guys (years of their own propoganda campaign gearing up against the CS nixed that) but they werent agressors and the questionable things they did were largely in the name of survival.

This is NOT true of the FoM. While Dweomer is definitely "not evil", the same cannot be said of the rest of the FoM. Stormspire is definitely "not good" at best, and Dunscon is "effing Evil". And the population isn't concentrated into a few large cities. it's largely spread out all over the place. t's a lot more like say, Afghanistan. Think of all the issues that the Russians had there (or even the US in more modern times) - and now compound that with an area so smothered in magic that half the time your sensors and machines dont work, mists that literally swallow people, entire areas that D-shift away, etc. And then add a population that isn't just resistance fighters like the Afghanis against the Russians, but are ALSO largely BAD GUYS who will go to lengths like summoning demons, raising the undead, etc.

- The Terrain just isn't easily invade-able. Unlike Tolkeen, the population of the FoM is spread out all over the Magic Zone, which is largely mountainous and not terribly friendly terrain to outsiders. The war against Tolkeen was largely prosecuted on relatively open, well-mapped terrain. While yes, Tolkeens territory was a largely inundated with Ley Lines, it was fairly well mapped and "known" or knowable to the CS forces.

The Magic Zone is largely not this way - its valleys and ravines and mountains. You cant just roll in and take over and besiege the place like you could Tolkeen. A lot of times, the people you're trying to invade will just pick up and leave. For all you know, 1,000 of them could be just over the hill and you wouldn't even know. Add in the other hazards of the Magic Zone (mentioned above) like D-shifting areas, supernatural phenomena, and monstrous creatures that inundate the place that aren't even controlled by the locals. The place is so inundated with Magic that a lot of times tech just doesnt even work right. You could literally be walking around incircles and not realize it. (This is shown, IIRC, in one of the short stories/in-character reports in either Psyscape or FoM)

Similarly, Dog Boys are a lot less useful in the FoM. There are spots clear of Ley Lines, but in a LOT of the places where people are, there is so much Magic in the area that Dog Boys/Psi-stalkers' abilities would be handicapped at best and worthless at worst.

It's an entirely different beast.

- "Just Nuke Stuff" - the CS is shown to be VERY reluctant to use their Nukes. It's mentioned in SB4 (CS Navy) that the there is still a HUGE stigma against "old school"/super destrutive non-clean nukes. ("clean" nukes being the 2d4x100 MD LRMs) The (educated) world largely knows that a nuclear exchange is what caused the Cataclysm, and even "bad guys" dont want to let that demon out of the bottle again. Its mentioned that Prosek would only CONSIDER using them against the Splugorth if they launched an all-out invasion against North America. (And, i'd imagine, that with the Minion War coming to earth, maybe against a Hell Pit). Not only that, Nuking anything other than Dweomer is an effort in futility - the City of Brass is not even in this dimension, so the most a Nuke would do is collapse the caves (maybe). Stormspire can just move. Most of the other settlements are too small and too secluded to even be worth nuking. And given that the CS has no earthly idea where Dweomer is, there's not really anything to Nuke.

As to eventually being able to invade the City of Brass through the dimensional portals - i find it highly, highly unlikely. Even if the CS figures out where the portals are located, the moment the CS comes to invade the caves... the FoM just seals them up. A few Earth Warlocks can make the cave entrances dissappear completely and appear as if they are a natural hillside, and dig a new tunnel that could run for dozens of even a hundred miles to get out in a new spot. Its just not that viable.

Now... unlike Tolkeen, the FoM has no real ability to project force against the CS in a manner other than as a terrorist/insurgent force. They dont have the population or trained military capable of launching an attack against the CS that would be a military threat.

They COULD plan a LOT of terrorist like activities, destroy crops, raid outlying towns and villages (anything not protected by more than a platoon or two) and wipe them out, do a lot of damage in the 'Burbs, and even get a few attacks into the Fortress Cities, but they cant really do much to cripple the CS' military operations or defeat the CS in open battle.

All they can really do is make it not-worthwhile for the CS to bother invading the Magic Zone (too hard to hold, too hard to take in the first place, nothing there WORTH taking for the CS, too inundated with magic and ley lines in the area for the CS to want to settle). They could "defeat" the CS in the same way the Afghanis defeated the Russians/Soviets back in the 80s. Which, really, is all they need to do.

[Freemage]

The WWII analogy kinda sucks because it relies on hindsight and perfect information which no one has at the time decisions are made.

That's actually my point. There was a tremendous fog of war effect going on through the entire Siege. The CS and Tolkeen didn't have the perfect intel oversight that we, the readers were given. Instead, they had to deal, not only with bad intel, but with their own biases further clouding what intel they did have.

Exactly as has happened in human conflicts throughout the ages.

[snip discussion of WWII details] Honestly, that was one example. By an external, pre-existing information basis, there's no way a tiny little nation in the middle of a civil war could've fought the U.S. to a standstill--but it happened TWICE in the 20th Century, because the tactics used were not what the U.S. was capable of coping with.

Now as to whether or not the CS has plot armor... yes they do. There are numerous interesting ways that the CS could have won. They could have relaxed their stance on magic and claimed that d-bees and demons were the real enemy, they could have used nukes, they could have used the human wave tactics that they did and then been forced to deal with the consequences of doing so (free qubec and their population calling ******** on their propaganda about human life mattering after they threw away a million people of breeding age in a war that was kinda pointless). but instead we get jesus walking out of xitic territory.

Again, watch some of the videos I linked. The real history of warfare is full of bizarre, 'unrealistic' twists and turns that cause things to go head over head, and are only obvious in retrospect--and sometimes, not even then.

Also, there's no hypocrisy in the CS' position (there's a lot of evil crap, there but no 'hypocrisy'). Yes, human lives matter, but the Prosek Regime sincerely believes that the mere presence of non-humans poses an existential threat to all humanity; ergo, feeding a massive amount of your troops into a grinder warfare, with the end result of advancing the lines which are fully under the control of humanity is a key goal.

And the key thing to remember is that Free Quebec agrees with the overall goal; they just disagree about the urgency, and ergo the cost appropriate. Free Q. has an agenda; that agenda was met by allying with Prosek, because it both guaranteed their independence, and destroyed a huge force of demons (whom, remember, were sent by Tolkeen to wipe out the CS troops on that border) at the same time. For Free Q, that was a win-win scenario, no matter how the final Siege turned out.

Now, they still don't trust Prosek; but so long as he doesn't go back on his word, they have no reason to burn their own troops against him, or even take hostile economic actions against the CS.

Note: I'm not a "CS uber alles" type, either. I figure that Tolkeen had a lot of situational modifiers that do not apply to the Magic Zone in general, and the Federation of Magic in particular. The latter would require a much more massive outlay of force, much further from CS controlled territory, and with corresponding issues related to the possibility of losing supply lines at a key moment. I'd much more expect the CS to turn attention south, in an attempt to pacify the Pecos territory, long before they consider moving to the east. The terrain there is friendlier to the CS (not so many Ley Lines), and is more directly situated against solidly controlled CS territory. Any move against the FoM, as I've said, is far more likely to result in a mutual disaster that leaves the continent massively depopulated (again) with very little change to show for it.

[SereneTsunami]

The WWII analogy kinda sucks because it relies on hindsight and perfect information which no one has at the time decisions are made.

That's actually my point. There was a tremendous fog of war effect going on through the entire Siege. The CS and Tolkeen didn't have the perfect intel oversight that we, the readers were given. Instead, they had to deal, not only with bad intel, but with their own biases further clouding what intel they did have.

Exactly as has happened in human conflicts throughout the ages.

[snip discussion of WWII details] Honestly, that was one example. By an external, pre-existing information basis, there's no way a tiny little nation in the middle of a civil war could've fought the U.S. to a standstill--but it happened TWICE in the 20th Century, because the tactics used were not what the U.S. was capable of coping with.

Now as to whether or not the CS has plot armor... yes they do. There are numerous interesting ways that the CS could have won. They could have relaxed their stance on magic and claimed that d-bees and demons were the real enemy, they could have used nukes, they could have used the human wave tactics that they did and then been forced to deal with the consequences of doing so (free qubec and their population calling ******** on their propaganda about human life mattering after they threw away a million people of breeding age in a war that was kinda pointless). but instead we get jesus walking out of xitic territory.

Again, watch some of the videos I linked. The real history of warfare is full of bizarre, 'unrealistic' twists and turns that cause things to go head over head, and are only obvious in retrospect--and sometimes, not even then.

Also, there's no hypocrisy in the CS' position (there's a lot of evil crap, there but no 'hypocrisy'). Yes, human lives matter, but the Prosek Regime sincerely believes that the mere presence of non-humans poses an existential threat to all humanity; ergo, feeding a massive amount of your troops into a grinder warfare, with the end result of advancing the lines which are fully under the control of humanity is a key goal.

And the key thing to remember is that Free Quebec agrees with the overall goal; they just disagree about the urgency, and ergo the cost appropriate. Free Q. has an agenda; that agenda was met by allying with Prosek, because it both guaranteed their independence, and destroyed a huge force of demons (whom, remember, were sent by Tolkeen to wipe out the CS troops on that border) at the same time. For Free Q, that was a win-win scenario, no matter how the final Siege turned out.

Now, they still don't trust Prosek; but so long as he doesn't go back on his word, they have no reason to burn their own troops against him, or even take hostile economic actions against the CS.

Note: I'm not a "CS uber alles" type, either. I figure that Tolkeen had a lot of situational modifiers that do not apply to the Magic Zone in general, and the Federation of Magic in particular. The latter would require a much more massive outlay of force, much further from CS controlled territory, and with corresponding issues related to the possibility of losing supply lines at a key moment. I'd much more expect the CS to turn attention south, in an attempt to pacify the Pecos territory, long before they consider moving to the east. The terrain there is friendlier to the CS (not so many Ley Lines), and is more directly situated against solidly controlled CS territory. Any move against the FoM, as I've said, is far more likely to result in a mutual disaster that leaves the continent massively depopulated (again) with very little change to show for it.

Great post! I think any real war with the FoM would look totally different then SoT. I also agree that there is better things for Chi-Town to do then try to go into the Magic Zone and swat at flies. Better to Kill Xitictix or, like you suggested, clean up Texas.

Does anyone else think that the North American continent would be a more interesting place, if the Coalition wasn't so dominant in just about every way?

[IGNG]

That's actually my point. There was a tremendous fog of war effect going on through the entire Siege. The CS and Tolkeen didn't have the perfect intel oversight that we, the readers were given. Instead, they had to deal, not only with bad intel, but with their own biases further clouding what intel they did have.

I guess I didn't explain myself well enough. Yes none of the actors have perfect information or anything close to it. However we the people reading the books should have at least have very good information (that is the point of the books after all and the reason that the books are in the format they are in and not written as in character novels). Plot armor is more than just 'what happened' but also 'how it happened' and 'why it happened'.

So at the most fundamental level the 'what happened' is that the CS beat Tolkeen. This is not a problem. In fact this really should be the expected outcome (tolkeen views themselves as the good guys to do much more than try to beat the CS in a stand up fight), unfortunately this just makes the following worse as it means that there shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

The how is where the problems come from. The how is that a large CS military detachment 308,000 troops which were forced into Xiticix territory and presumed lost are just fine. They just walk out of the hive lands, months later I might add, at the perfect time to coordinate with the main CS push on Tolkeen. This being after a previous book says that the hive whose territory they were forced into was so stirred up that the CS can't even get UAVs in to look for the 308,000 missing troops and that up to 250,000 Xiticix are engaging something in their territory. Its kinda like making a sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. There is the Bolivian army ending a cut and then Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are joking as they walk into a bar in Utah. The audience is kinda entitled to calling ******** when no explanation is provided other than a single line about 'unproven ideas'.

This is THE problem most people have with the books. This is hardly the only problem with these books but its the biggest and and used up a lot of people's suspension of disbelief aka willingness to ignore inconsistencies and mistakes.

So why did this happen? There were 3 goals in this series. First make it entertaining. Second the CS must win. Third change as little as possible. KS did a very good on the first goal for the first five books but he didn't think about how what he wrote for the first few books would affect the other two. When he tried to make number two happened he found out that he had written himself into a corner and just forced it. Forcing it is plot armor plain and simple. I know why he didn't give an explanation for how the CS troops survived their time in Xiticix territory. The Xiticix are supposed to be a major threat to the CS and the rest of the world and that threat would be significantly diminished if the CS had a Xiticixbegone spray or something.

I know that he couldn't have the CS just brute force it and eat a million more casualties than they did (the force in Xiticix territory dieing plus a much harder final sige) because having that not weaken the CS severely would have been an even bigger handwave, and then an even bigger handwave for Free Quebec and the NGR to not realize that Prosek only cares about himself and his ego and not 'The inherent worth of each human being' like CS propaganda claims and just write the crippled CS off as far as people we want to work with in the future.

[HWalsh]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change. There was no reason for the CS to win. They could have lost and the setting wouldn't have changed.

The CS needs to be weakened in the metaplot.

As it is I don't believe that there is any threat to the people of North America in Rifts.

The Xitcitix aren't a significant threat. If a small portion of the CS military can just walk into the hivelands and come out unscathed then there is no threat to anyone as the CS can just beat them easily.

In real life the CS would have left Tolkeen. After the Sorcerer's Revenge they would have calculated that the gains weren't worth the resources expended and the setting would have continued on just fine.

[Freemage]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change. There was no reason for the CS to win. They could have lost and the setting wouldn't have changed.

The CS needs to be weakened in the metaplot.

As it is I don't believe that there is any threat to the people of North America in Rifts.

The Xitcitix aren't a significant threat. If a small portion of the CS military can just walk into the hivelands and come out unscathed then there is no threat to anyone as the CS can just beat them easily.

In real life the CS would have left Tolkeen. After the Sorcerer's Revenge they would have calculated that the gains weren't worth the resources expended and the setting would have continued on just fine.

The army walked in and out precisely because they did NOT try to 'beat' them. They hunkered down, did only purely defensive maneuvers, and deliberately stuck to non-lethal attacks. No death scent to trigger swarming, no hostile activities likely to further enrage the Xitixic, and sticking strictly to ground-based action--no flights.

Had they not done that, then the army would, indeed, have been wiped out to the last. So saying they 'beat' the Xitixic is a willful misreading of the book--they SURVIVED the Xitixic, in a way that will not be of any help whatsoever when the hives start encroaching upon CS territory--there, the only option will be to engage or to retreat.

And the reason this worked as well as it did is because it was an unknown unknown. Virtually every encounter with the bugs has been hostile in nature, and has thus led to an escalation, with the Xitixic coming out on top. The CS can't use Jones' strategy to deal with the Xitixic, because it leaves the hives fully intact.

[HWalsh]

The army walked in and out precisely because they did NOT try to 'beat' them. They hunkered down, did only purely defensive maneuvers, and deliberately stuck to non-lethal attacks.

Not buying it. That would be virtually impossible.

I've PLAYED Rifts. The Xitcitix are MDC creatures and things like Warriors and Super Warriors *will* attack them. Not only do the books NOT explain how they did it, but to believe that they never killed one single Xitcitix, which is all it would take, that they never got near a hive, that they never came into contact with a single patrol that got away... No. Not just no. Heck no.

Read the Xitcitix Invasion. What they did, using the tactics you outlined, would NEVER have worked. Not only that but they wouldn't have "made it out the other side" if they hunkered down. They would have been holding position, which they didn't do. These guys did a forced march right through the Xitcitix Hivelands and didn't rile up the hives. Uh huh... No.

Try knocking out an MDC creature. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Didn't work so well did it?

[Freemage]

The Collation war campaign book actually covers an attack on the CS bread basket, they are stated as providing most the food needed by NA. So several non CS factions would help the CS stop such an attack on the bread basket.

Which honestly makes no sense.
The population of NA just isn't big enough to need a 'bread basket'
Its not like the modern world where you have hundreds of millions of people, most of them living in cities with no agriculture.
Never mind the insanity of anyone relying on the CS for their basic food supply (Yes, lets give an expansionistic empire a monopoly on our food. Brilliant! That way when its out turn to be conquered they don't have to actually fight, just starve us into compliance.)
I chalk it up to another of those "the authors go with the rule of cool and base things on what they know"

You realize the continent has had a 'bread basket' since before the U.S. was founded, right? The central colonies served the same purpose, especially for the northern urban cities where there was less arable land. The existence of enclosed cities means you need a rather vast farming community to support them (unless you want to go all algae and mushroom farms with heavy genetic engineering--or, you know, full-blown Soylent Green).

Once you get north of Michigan and Minnesota, the ability of the big cities up north to rely on purely local sources of food, particularly during the winter, is going to be dramatically reduced, Trade is the only way to feed a city numbering six digits, let alone seven. And the only trading options available to Free Quebec and Northern Gun for food are the independent operations in the Magic Zone, the True Federation of Magic, or the Coalition States. The first are unreliable, the second are actively evil, and the third are someone you've demonstrated you can stand up against if it comes down to that. The choices are going to be pretty clear-cut.

[Eagle]

The big cities in RIFTS would likely have some sort of internal food production. If you've got cheap fusion power, you can just set up some UV lights indoors and grow food all year round.

https://www.freightfarms.com/

We don't really do it much today because it's cheaper to rely on the sun (which is free) and huge tracts of sparsely populated land in good climates. In today's economic environment, it's virtually never going to be cost competitive to grow wheat or corn in an indoor controlled system. But if you're on RIFTS Earth, where farming can be substantially more hazardous (and where fusion power makes electricity virtually free), it makes much more sense.

[SereneTsunami]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change. There was no reason for the CS to win. They could have lost and the setting wouldn't have changed.

The CS needs to be weakened in the metaplot.

As it is I don't believe that there is any threat to the people of North America in Rifts.

The Xitcitix aren't a significant threat. If a small portion of the CS military can just walk into the hivelands and come out unscathed then there is no threat to anyone as the CS can just beat them easily.

In real life the CS would have left Tolkeen. After the Sorcerer's Revenge they would have calculated that the gains weren't worth the resources expended and the setting would have continued on just fine.

I have to disagree with the last opinion. Chi-Town, after declaring it's intention to go on the warpath, gets it's butt wupped by Tolkeen and calls off the "Campaign of Unity"? No, that couldn't and wouldn't happen. They would lose all support from the masses who have been told that all they need to do is follow the Proseks and "all will be well". You are looking at the war on paper. That is not where wars are fought.

[Eagle]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change. There was no reason for the CS to win. They could have lost and the setting wouldn't have changed.

The CS needs to be weakened in the metaplot.

As it is I don't believe that there is any threat to the people of North America in Rifts.

The Xitcitix aren't a significant threat. If a small portion of the CS military can just walk into the hivelands and come out unscathed then there is no threat to anyone as the CS can just beat them easily.

In real life the CS would have left Tolkeen. After the Sorcerer's Revenge they would have calculated that the gains weren't worth the resources expended and the setting would have continued on just fine.

The CS has to be maintained as the primary antagonist in North America. To do that they also have to have real teeth.

There isn't really much of a meta-plot. RIFTS is a setting, not a story. It's been 25+ years since RIFTS was released. The timeline hasn't advanced anywhere near that far.

[Killer Cyborg]

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

There are other problems with it...

Honestly, SoT should have ended after book 3...

It should have ended well before that.
The CS had more Dog Boys alone than Tolkeen had in it's total army and allies.
(granted, they wouldn't have sent them all to the front, but c'mon... since day 1, Erin Tarn said that Tolkeen didn't have a chance)

I think that's also true. To me that means that Mr. Seimbieda took a very plausible path(and cool) with the war. A large but inexperienced army meets an enemy, while smaller, that is using tactics and weapons that the CS cannot cope with at first. They git slaughtered, badly. They regroup learn from their mistakes and try again.

I was also struck by the excellent use of national morale in the story, and the understanding it demonstrated of how really important morale is in war.

All I see is a nation led by people who studied WWII chose to fight a war on two fronts at once.
And they chose to send their army of robots that were specifically designed to fight Glitterboys against the front that had no Glitterboys.
And so on, and so forth.

[IGNG]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change. There was no reason for the CS to win. They could have lost and the setting wouldn't have changed.

And other than tolkeen no longer being on maps what precisely change?

Also if Rifts is a setting and not a plot then why have the SoT and why have the minion war?

Edit: I want to elaborate on my first question. From a purely narrative point of view from within a game there is little change by the loss of Tolkeen. Need a city of mages to give a quest? Lazlo. Need a city of mages to be the big bad? City of Brass. I'm not saying that Tolkeen was not unique or was redundant but its loss does not change the types of stories that can be told in the same way that crippling the CS would. Oh you wanted to run a campaign at the current date that used all the newest books that was about standing up to/surviving a world power? Sucks to be you the CS died in 105.

I get why it is felt that knocking the CS down a peg or two would be bad for the setting, I just don't like it much and hate the way its done most of the time. If the coalition wars had ended with a wounded CS facing down a shaky alliance of Tolkeen, Free Qubec, and NG I would have been ecstatic (hell that's probably my next game idea), but it would be a fundamentally different setting.

[Killer Cyborg]

The problem with making as little change as possible is... He wiped a city off the map. That's a pretty big change.

If sticking to a script that you gave people spoilers for when the RMB came out 27 years ago counts as "a big change," then sure.

[SereneTsunami]

I knew lots of folks disagreed/wern't satisfied with the ending of SoT, but I wasn't aware that Holmes Heroics were a big part of that. I'll reread that part again.

There are other problems with it...

Honestly, SoT should have ended after book 3...

It should have ended well before that.
The CS had more Dog Boys alone than Tolkeen had in it's total army and allies.
(granted, they wouldn't have sent them all to the front, but c'mon... since day 1, Erin Tarn said that Tolkeen didn't have a chance)

I think that's also true. To me that means that Mr. Seimbieda took a very plausible path(and cool) with the war. A large but inexperienced army meets an enemy, while smaller, that is using tactics and weapons that the CS cannot cope with at first. They git slaughtered, badly. They regroup learn from their mistakes and try again.

I was also struck by the excellent use of national morale in the story, and the understanding it demonstrated of how really important morale is in war.

All I see is a nation led by people who studied WWII chose to fight a war on two fronts at once.
And they chose to send their army of robots that were specifically designed to fight Glitterboys against the front that had no Glitterboys.
And so on, and so forth.

I'm not sure I understand why so many folks think that when a writer has a character making a "dumb decision" that it's a flaw in the writing. History is full of dumb decisions made by leaders like Good Old Karl. The Coalition leadership constantly makes what I consider to be poor decisions due to their paranoia and bigotry.

[Eagle]

The Coalition gives you a ton of story hooks. They're the default villain who can justifiably show up at any time. But they aren't so overwhelmingly evil that you can't work with them. They can even be the cavalry and save the PCs if they're up against an opponent that is too tough (Losing to a big nasty monster? Good thing that squad of SAMAS suits happened to be flying by. While they blast the monster, you can take the opportunity to slip away...).

Let's say you're playing the "average" Rifts game. You have 5 player characters, all 1st level. You've got a line walker, a cyber-knight, a burster, a juicer, and a borg. You have been hired by someone to go into the Magic Zone and recover some sort of mystic artifact, then bring it back. A Coalition squad can act almost as a random encounter for your heroes. They're generic bad guys with guns, and they fulfill the same role that a band of orcs does in D&D. You can kill them without worry, because they're Nazis. Or you can have a Death's Head Transport fly over, and it fills the same role as a great wyrm dragon. The Coalition is an opponent that can easily scale up or down to suit your party.

Or you can play a low-power game set in the Burbs. Think of the anime Akira (except without the world-exploding level of psychic power). The players are city rats. They are living on the mean streets, fighting rival gangs, looking for ways to make money, etc. The Coalition is an ever-present, virtually unassailable government. A 1st level Coalition grunt in MDC armor is somebody you avoid, because he can't be beaten with the SDC stuff that your character has. Of course he's not out to murder you either, though he might rough you up a bit if you give him any lip. The adventure takes place in the shadow of the Coalition. That is, until one of the characters manifests major psychic abilities. Or you find some sort of magical artifact.

Or you can play Coalition soldiers as protagonists. There are lots of seriously evil magic users out there, and you can play the guys who fight them. Do you look the other way when you find the old mystic in the village, who heals sick kids? Pretend you didn't see it? Lots of opportunity for good roleplaying there.


Without the Coalition, you lose a lot of those possibilities. Or you at least have to have several different factions provide them. With the Coalition, you get it all in one convenient entity.

[Killer Cyborg]

All I see is a nation led by people who studied WWII chose to fight a war on two fronts at once.
And they chose to send their army of robots that were specifically designed to fight Glitterboys against the front that had no Glitterboys.
And so on, and so forth.

I'm not sure I understand why so many folks think that when a writer has a character making a "dumb decision" that it's a flaw in the writing.

Because in good writing, such decisions are explained and highlighted enough to be plausible and understandable, as well as to let the readers know that it was a deliberate choice for the characters to act stupid at that time.

[Axelmania]

Uh... Actually, while Tolkeen did have a few evil NPCs... Every single one of the Coalition ones that I can recall were evil... And the evil ones of Tolkeen were vastly outnumbered by the good ones.

Selective recollection. Examples from Overkill of good ones (not including many unprincipled or anarchist)
31 Chaucer - Scrupulous
33 Hiroshi Yoshioka - Scrupulous
34 Raul Auerbach - Principled

Feel free to provide a list and tally of books to give us your idea of vastly. Not that particular NPCs mentioner necessarily represent demographics in million man militaries.

Axel, look, you aren't going to convince anyone that the CS is a benevolent force of good that wants to protect the Earth and all of humanity from the evils of Magic, D-Bees, and the Supernatural. We know that isn't true. Those is the lies and propaganda that the average Citizen of the CS, who is illiterate and ignorant, believes. We are players, with a scope of view that allows us a much deeper clarity. We know the CS leadership lies to its people. We know the CS leadership is evil. We know that Prosek is a megalomaniac who wants to conquer the planet and he's only using the D-Bee/Supernatural/Magic threat because, right now, it serves his expansion of power.

In paraphrasing you skew what I and the books say. Sticking to individual points will serve you better.

Was Tolkeen a city of angels? No. They are, like all things, flawed and, when the CS launched an unwarranted and unprovoked attack against them they retaliated in a harsh and brutal manner. However, compared to the literal war crimes the CS committed, nothing that Tolkeen did even registers on the scale.

It was provoked and warranted. Tolkeen is responsible for opening the door to things which eat babies for fun. They register. The scale has been tipped there way a while.

[Saitou Hajime]

BTW, for folks who claim that the CS has 'plot armor' because this or that blunder or strange coincidence that lets them escape destruction at the hands of their enemies....

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... i0A8gTsawu

This is how history actually works. War, in particular, is less a matter of one side winning because of power and resources, as it is the other side losing because of a seemingly inconceivable foul-up or miscalculation. Consider the course of World War II:

Hitler and Stalin are far more at loggerheads than Free Quebec and the Coalition States ever were--ideological differences and geo-political rivalries driving a seemingly inescapable march to war--until all of a sudden, they put their heads together and agree to divvy up Poland and free up Germany's Eastern front, which allows for the Blitzkrieg to fast-march through Belgium and completely bypass the suddenly worthless Maginot Line.

Hitler then seizes much of France, with the Vichy lapdog government left in charge of the rest. He turns his attention to Britain with a brutal and devastating bombing campaign--and then suddenly turns around and decides NOW is the best time to 'settle up' with Stalin, re-opening the second front and getting bogged down in a land war in Asia (one of the classic blunders, remember).

And then, even as Hitler's troops are bogged down on two fronts, Japan attacks the U.S., and for some bizarre reason Hitler actually opts to honor his treaty with the Emperor. Remember, these two men are both xenophobes, convinced they lead the only true race of humans--and yet they decide to join forces and try to divvy up the planet. Had Hitler just let the agreement lapse, the U.S. would've lacked a pretense to get into the war in Europe, and the citizenry of the U.S. would've demanded immediate retaliation against Japan for Pearl Harbor. So suddenly, a seeming genius of tactics makes a string of blunders that brings his whole empire crashing down, taking all of his allies with him.

There is no western front when Hitler goes after Stalin Dunkirk has already happened. Tactical choices during the Campaign bogged the Eastern front.

[RockJock]

I always saw the CS Army emerging from the bug zone as a fighting force almost the equal of a WW2 allied Army group showing up to lift the siege of Stalingrad.


Tolkeen was a city state versus a nation. Without major allies getting involved, and a major power shakeup on the continent they were going to lose the war. That being said, the plot twist of going the route across bug land was cool, but just make Tolkeen look hollow. The CS should of fought a war of attrition, and marched in an enveloping wave, but instead they were stupid and got lucky. It would have made more sense to me if Tolkeen had gone through the hivelands and popped up where they were not expected, say outside of FQ, to smash the CS army from an unexpected direction.

[Shark_Force]

The Coalition gives you a ton of story hooks. They're the default villain who can justifiably show up at any time. But they aren't so overwhelmingly evil that you can't work with them. They can even be the cavalry and save the PCs if they're up against an opponent that is too tough (Losing to a big nasty monster? Good thing that squad of SAMAS suits happened to be flying by. While they blast the monster, you can take the opportunity to slip away...).

Let's say you're playing the "average" Rifts game. You have 5 player characters, all 1st level. You've got a line walker, a cyber-knight, a burster, a juicer, and a borg. You have been hired by someone to go into the Magic Zone and recover some sort of mystic artifact, then bring it back. A Coalition squad can act almost as a random encounter for your heroes. They're generic bad guys with guns, and they fulfill the same role that a band of orcs does in D&D. You can kill them without worry, because they're Nazis. Or you can have a Death's Head Transport fly over, and it fills the same role as a great wyrm dragon. The Coalition is an opponent that can easily scale up or down to suit your party.

Or you can play a low-power game set in the Burbs. Think of the anime Akira (except without the world-exploding level of psychic power). The players are city rats. They are living on the mean streets, fighting rival gangs, looking for ways to make money, etc. The Coalition is an ever-present, virtually unassailable government. A 1st level Coalition grunt in MDC armor is somebody you avoid, because he can't be beaten with the SDC stuff that your character has. Of course he's not out to murder you either, though he might rough you up a bit if you give him any lip. The adventure takes place in the shadow of the Coalition. That is, until one of the characters manifests major psychic abilities. Or you find some sort of magical artifact.

Or you can play Coalition soldiers as protagonists. There are lots of seriously evil magic users out there, and you can play the guys who fight them. Do you look the other way when you find the old mystic in the village, who heals sick kids? Pretend you didn't see it? Lots of opportunity for good roleplaying there.


Without the Coalition, you lose a lot of those possibilities. Or you at least have to have several different factions provide them. With the Coalition, you get it all in one convenient entity.

you can do those things without the CS needing to be ridiculously dominant. in fact, you can even do those things if the CS didn't win the war against tolkeen. you can do those things without the CS winning the war by a completely ridiculous maneuver (a months-long forced march with no stops for food, sleep, R&R, bathroom breaks, etc, while watching your friends get picked off one by one and not being allowed to do anything about it resulting in a functioning group of human beings coming out the other side). you can do it without the CS having suddenly replaced literal millions of suits of power armour and who knows how many suits of body armour and laser rifles and robot vehicles etc at the start of the war while also massively ramping up production on skelebots, and having more troops at the end of the war than they had at the beginning of the war.

edit:

Once you get north of Michigan and Minnesota, the ability of the big cities up north to rely on purely local sources of food, particularly during the winter, is going to be dramatically reduced, Trade is the only way to feed a city numbering six digits, let alone seven. And the only trading options available to Free Quebec and Northern Gun for food are the independent operations in the Magic Zone, the True Federation of Magic, or the Coalition States. The first are unreliable, the second are actively evil, and the third are someone you've demonstrated you can stand up against if it comes down to that. The choices are going to be pretty clear-cut.

you realize that canada, which just so happens to be north of those areas, has tons of agriculture, right?

i assure you, it is entirely possible to have farms north of michigan. has been for quite some time, in fact. we do have a shorter growing season than, say, iowa. but it isn't remotely impossible.

[SereneTsunami]

All I see is a nation led by people who studied WWII chose to fight a war on two fronts at once.
And they chose to send their army of robots that were specifically designed to fight Glitterboys against the front that had no Glitterboys.
And so on, and so forth.

I'm not sure I understand why so many folks think that when a writer has a character making a "dumb decision" that it's a flaw in the writing.

Because in good writing, such decisions are explained and highlighted enough to be plausible and understandable, as well as to let the readers know that it was a deliberate choice for the characters to act stupid at that time.

Well said, sir. You make some good points.

[Freemage]

edit:

Once you get north of Michigan and Minnesota, the ability of the big cities up north to rely on purely local sources of food, particularly during the winter, is going to be dramatically reduced, Trade is the only way to feed a city numbering six digits, let alone seven. And the only trading options available to Free Quebec and Northern Gun for food are the independent operations in the Magic Zone, the True Federation of Magic, or the Coalition States. The first are unreliable, the second are actively evil, and the third are someone you've demonstrated you can stand up against if it comes down to that. The choices are going to be pretty clear-cut.

you realize that canada, which just so happens to be north of those areas, has tons of agriculture, right?

i assure you, it is entirely possible to have farms north of michigan. has been for quite some time, in fact. we do have a shorter growing season than, say, iowa. but it isn't remotely impossible.

How often are your farms are regularly raided by rampaging Rhino-Buffalos, or haunted by Wendigos, though? The CS is the only nation thus far to put the military defense of rural communities as a priority (even if much of that is simply a side-effect of their campaign against the D-Bees and a desire to secure the Rifts). FreeQ had been deliberately holding its strongest military asset in reserve and secret, in order to not tip their glittery hand too soon. That leaves their farms far more vulnerable. Most likely, farming in the wilds of the North are mostly going to be local affairs--a central town with a palisade (maybe constructed from scavenged MDC materials if available), with the farms immediately surrounding it. When monsters and their ilk come stomping through, the farmers all retreat into the walls with as much food as they can haul with their families, and hunker down and try to be a less appetizing target than the farms themselves. That's going to cut into the already shorter growing season.

A farm in Iowa, on the other hand, has a pretty solid barrier of patrolled land between it and the nearest wilderness, and may even have the ability to radio to inform the CS if something pops up unexpectedly, with the Coalition on rapid-deployment readiness for anything truly ugly.