Walling off the Vampire Kingdoms with moats & other barriers

[Axelmania]

With the Minion War distracting everybody, I can see these demons wanting to spread North. If you don't have enough guards to actively patrol the border to track down and intercept vampires, you need a passive way of dealing with the incursions. Even though beings like Psi-Stalkers have the ability to sense shape-shifted vampires, they would need fast vehicles to keep up with their higher speed in wolf form, and stuff like jet packs to tail them in bat form.

I'm not sure what the altitude ceiling is of bat form, but if it's unlimited like other supernatural creatures (for example, Dire Harpies who could fly into outer space if not for the satellites that would kill them) that could cause a lot of problems if they could fly higher than a Psi-Stalker's sensing range. We generally don't have to worry about vampires flying to the moon in bat form since in the time it would take them to do that, the sun would probably shine on them.

The best passive defence to me seems to be running water, because vampires can't cross it in any of their forms. So supposedly if you could just build a continuous moat between North/Central America (separating the continents) vampires shouldn't be able to sneak past your psi-stalker patrols in bat form...

Page 18 of VKR "cannot willingly cross over running water unless there is a physical bridge to cross" means moats aren't exactly a guaranteed issue though. With supernatural PS+PE, it would be child's play for a vampire to dig up huge boulders or chunks of earth and toss them into a moat to block off the river to make a bridge, even supposing there were no trees around to push across it.

Vampires can brute-force their HF checks by trying 4x per hour until they can do it. This isn't really that hard, secondaries get +4 to save vs HF (VKRp45) so the 16 is more like a 12.

If you have access to the level 12 invocation "Amulet" you could create a "Protection Against the Supernatural" one (how ironic) for them to wear to get an additional +2 to save. Page 34 doesn't appear to indicate that Intelligences can know that, but with "All Summon Spells" and a network of minions it shouldn't be too hard to secure some mage who knows that and can start mass-producing it for all your secondaries. Amulets seem small enough that they'd come along for the ride if shapeshifting.

I can't help but notice that Intelligences ALL know Create Magic Scroll and Mystic Portal... so for 160 PPE (and they can even have their Demon Familiar cast this) they can encode level 1d6+3 (halved for Demon Familiar) versions of MP to hand out to literate minions to allow them to create micro-rifts (RUE 219) to teleport 1d6+6 people per melee (for 4 melees per level) up to 100ft/level away...

This makes me wonder if Mystic Portal would even require a physical bridge or generate HF checks. Anyone know if there's ever been exploration of that? It seems like we might need permanent Anti-Magic Clouds along the moat to prevent people from Mystic Portalling across... and I'm not sure how that works in regards to if the cloud only prevents MPs from being opened within the cloud, or if it might prevent them from crossing it...

In the meantime, they can just lurk about at high altitude as a bat until they are brave enough. The "physical bridge" requirement is easier to conceptualize for humanoid/wolf form, I can't say I fully understand the point of bridges for bat/mist form when they can hover hundreds of feet above the water, but I guess that's still technically canon... but if you were going to house rule it, I think something like +1 to save vs HF per 1000 feet over the water would not be excessive.

There's also the boat/aircraft issue. I think the strategy there would be you have a Master strategizing everything ("get in the coffins, we're going to move you into a nearby coal mine") but then instructing human minions to pilot a vehicle across the water, with the Secondaries inside having no idea what's going on. If they eventually catch on to the tactic and resist, you can just stake them beforehand and unstake them later.

Coffins take up a lot of room for human-form vampires, so if I was going to sneak a bunch of vampires across, I think I'd have them shapeshift into small bat form to take up less space. Then instead of a human-size coffin you could probably stuff them into a cereal box. This also has the benefit of hiding any clothing and small weapons they are carrying from metal detectors.

The boat/plane approach slows vampires down, because they would need to rely on their slaves to pilot the vehicles, repair the equipment, stuff like that. It's also probably much easier to detect planes/boats via radar than a tiny bat, and shoot them down before they cross the moat.

The extreme ease of vampires blocking rivers off by digging up the terrain needs a solution though. You need a way of protecting your running water. I'm looking for approaches on doing that. Is there a way to turn the earth into MDC so it would take more time for vampires to dig it up?

One idea I had was if the "Gardener" (canon Splicers OCC from Rifter 50) somehow made it to Rifts Earth, their Bao House (page 66) which provides 54+ gallons of water (regenerating at least 1 gallon per hour drawn from the air, even in dry climates) might be a solution for moat stabilization. If you design something to draw water out of the Bao Houses to dump the water into the moat, then you could supplement the water flow at various points if it is ever obstructed, or if there's a heatwave and it evaporates.

That still won't stop a temporary bridge being formed though, so you need something which can blast bridges faster than vampires can build them. Adult Photon Infusor Cannons (pg 69) have at least 16 shots, doing at least 20 MD at 2000ft, regenerating at least 2 per hour of sunlight. This seems adequate that you could place one every 4000 ft to destroy bridges as soon as they near adequate size for a vampire to cross it willingly. This also serves the dual purpose of shooting down boats/planes trying to cross your moat.

You could place these on the northern side of the moat to prevent vampires from destroying them. If they somehow manage to get across and try to pummel your cannon to death, Razor Willows (pg 69) seem like a good complement here, because if you have that alongside the cannon, since it is a tree (presumably WOOD) it should be able to harm the vampires if they get close enough to harm it.

The main threat against these strategies is vampires who learn how to use technology, since with long-range rifles they could fire across a moat. Laser rifles have the best range and PICs actually absorb that to recharge their shots, but there are other rifles like ion or railgun which vamps might obtain which could be used to snipe the PICs.

PICs can boost up to 6000ft range by expending multiple shots, which can exceed rail gun standard range of 4000ft, (and even 1 mile mini missiles at 5280) tying with the Skull Walker railguns. In that case vampires would probably need to use Boom Guns or get their hands on some Short Range missiles to hit the PICs before the PICs can shoot back and destroy their equipment first.

For situations like that, you would probably need some kind of fast-flying interceptor with long range weapons to come and target vampire long-range tech weapons before they can destroy the PICs and create a hole where you can easily build bridges.

[DD The Shmey]

Yeah Axlemania,
but how are you going to get mexico to pay for it?

[Mack]

Lock Warning

This forum is not for political commentary.

[eliakon]

If you are serious about making a barrier to vampires the solution is magic.
Protection Circle: Superior + Permanence Ward = a circle that a vampire can not enter nor get within 20' of.
Make the circles large enough, and overlap them and you could make a barrier that no supernatural being can pass.

How large a circle and how many do you need?
Lets assume that you need 1000miles of barrier.
A circle 600' in diameter is not unreasonable (that's smaller than a stadium)
that would mean you need 10,000 overlapping circles.
Very expensive, very time consuming, and frankly... probably not worth the investment.

[MadGreenSon]

Very expensive, very time consuming, and frankly... probably not worth the investment.

I have to agree. Walling off the Vampire Kingdoms is the kind of thing that might sound good*, but would end up being far more trouble than it's worth. Even if you successfully manage to wrangle all of the many obstacles to actually doing it, all you'd likely end up doing is giving the vampires a goal (getting past the wall) and motivation (spite). Once they have that, they would likely end up innovating in their methods along with being able to build up more freely in their own territory since most of those who could do anything about them will be occupied with the wall.

It sounds like a bad investment to me. If you have all of the resources needed to do it, you'd likely be better off using them to actually fight the vampires, build a kingdom, or just about anything else.

* I don't think it sounds good, but someone else might.

[Nekira Sudacne]

How far underground does the Circle extend though.

If you have a five story dungeon, and you draw a protection circle on the third floor, does it effect anyone in the floors above? below? I don't think so, otherwise you could just block the gate to any Castle with a basement and a circle there.

So logically if building barriers between you and the circle limits the effect, then the vampires could just dig a tunnel.

[Zer0 Kay]

If it has infinite depth. Then why bother with putting yourself in danger with vamps and just put the circles in the... dang never mind the antipode of Mexico is in the Indian Ocean.

[Axelmania]

If you are serious about making a barrier to vampires the solution is magic.
Protection Circle: Superior + Permanence Ward = a circle that a vampire can not enter nor get within 20' of.
Make the circles large enough, and overlap them and you could make a barrier that no supernatural being can pass.

How large a circle and how many do you need?
Lets assume that you need 1000miles of barrier.
A circle 600' in diameter is not unreasonable (that's smaller than a stadium)
that would mean you need 10,000 overlapping circles.
Very expensive, very time consuming, and frankly... probably not worth the investment.

Do you recall any height limitations with protection circles? I'm just picturing some Dire Harpy slamming into some kind of invisible barrier millions of miles above a planet just because it corresponds to some pinpoint line drawn from the centre of the planet up through that circle into space.

How far underground does the Circle extend though.

If you have a five story dungeon, and you draw a protection circle on the third floor, does it effect anyone in the floors above? below? I don't think so, otherwise you could just block the gate to any Castle with a basement and a circle there.

So logically if building barriers between you and the circle limits the effect, then the vampires could just dig a tunnel.

Also very valid exploration.

all you'd likely end up doing is giving the vampires a goal (getting past the wall) and motivation (spite).

I don't really see these as ever ranking highly in the driving goals of vampires, since their primary goal of sucking human blood would still probably be at the forefront.

Once they have that, they would likely end up innovating in their methods along with being able to build up more freely in their own territory since most of those who could do anything about them will be occupied with the wall.

Vampires don't strike me as very innovative. I'd expect their zombie-like servants to have more creativity. My best guess, as I suggest in the original post, is that Vampire Intelligences (as they all know Mystic Portal and Create Scroll) have probably used Scroll of Mystic Portal strategies in the past to get past watery barriers, and might employ this now.

I don't know if Wild Vampires would retain their literacy, but I figure Secondary Vampires must.

[eliakon]

How far underground does the Circle extend though.

If you have a five story dungeon, and you draw a protection circle on the third floor, does it effect anyone in the floors above? below? I don't think so, otherwise you could just block the gate to any Castle with a basement and a circle there.

So logically if building barriers between you and the circle limits the effect, then the vampires could just dig a tunnel.

At that point then you are to "barriers can not exist at all"
So if we are going to assume you can not make barriers it is sort of pointless to try and make them

[eliakon]

If your going to spend the sorts of resources to do this kind of thing...
...honestly your better served by tracking down the VI and killing it.

[eliakon]

The question of the height and depth of a circle is complex.
One side is, as pointed out the issue of things like effects a million miles away, or how circles in the lower levels of dungeons do not seem to affect people in the upper levels

On the other side is the fact that the circle prevents things from entering the circle, which would seem to require that it prevent things from entering its perimeter.

Thus, your going to need some sort of house rule on this regardless. And no matter what you do, it wont be a magic bullet.

But it will likely make things a lot more difficult. Especially if vampires are classed as lesser supernatural beings and not greater. Since at that point they would be unable to come within eyeshot of the circle itself which would extend the range of the warding significantly.

As for the tunnels.... once you find them, you can simply sanctify them so that no undead can enter them

[Mack]

And how hard would be for a vampire minion (not a vampire, but a lackey) to break the circle?

[Shark_Force]

as others have said: it would probably be more efficient to just use the huge amount of resources it would take to just build an army and go after the vampire intelligences. i mean, you're probably not going to be able to eradicate 100% of the vampires, but you can get rid of a lot of them and boot the intelligence off the planet with *comparative* ease (that is, compared to exterminating 100% of the vampires or building a vampire-proof wall that long). simple fact is, most things in rifts simply are not given the stats to withstand a lot of peons shooting crappy weapons, and the vampires simply don't really have particularly large armies last i saw (fair warning: last i saw was in unrevised, years ago... but i don't recall the numbers being particularly big). with 100,000 grunts and some decent weapons (conventional assault rifles with a mixture of wooden bullets and ramjet rounds for example) and armour you could do a lot. give them some basic vehicles and equipment and they'll do even better.

[MadGreenSon]

all you'd likely end up doing is giving the vampires a goal (getting past the wall) and motivation (spite).

I don't really see these as ever ranking highly in the driving goals of vampires, since their primary goal of sucking human blood would still probably be at the forefront.

Once they have that, they would likely end up innovating in their methods along with being able to build up more freely in their own territory since most of those who could do anything about them will be occupied with the wall.

Vampires don't strike me as very innovative. I'd expect their zombie-like servants to have more creativity. My best guess, as I suggest in the original post, is that Vampire Intelligences (as they all know Mystic Portal and Create Scroll) have probably used Scroll of Mystic Portal strategies in the past to get past watery barriers, and might employ this now.

I don't know if Wild Vampires would retain their literacy, but I figure Secondary Vampires must.

Whether or not vampires are willing to innovate is debatable and it still doesn't justify spending the resources and manpower that could be better used actually killing vampires. The only way I could see keeping the vampires nominally willing to stay behind this wall would be to also pin in relatively innocent people with them for them to feed off of and torment.

Which is a bit much, if you ask me.

[eliakon]

And how hard would be for a vampire minion (not a vampire, but a lackey) to break the circle?

In a word?
Very
The permanence ward turns the entire circle+ ward combo permanently active, and indestructible. Which is going to be rather hard to break.
Not impossible, but its going to take some serious effort.

[eliakon]

as others have said: it would probably be more efficient to just use the huge amount of resources it would take to just build an army and go after the vampire intelligences. i mean, you're probably not going to be able to eradicate 100% of the vampires, but you can get rid of a lot of them and boot the intelligence off the planet with *comparative* ease (that is, compared to exterminating 100% of the vampires or building a vampire-proof wall that long). simple fact is, most things in rifts simply are not given the stats to withstand a lot of peons shooting crappy weapons, and the vampires simply don't really have particularly large armies last i saw (fair warning: last i saw was in unrevised, years ago... but i don't recall the numbers being particularly big). with 100,000 grunts and some decent weapons (conventional assault rifles with a mixture of wooden bullets and ramjet rounds for example) and armour you could do a lot. give them some basic vehicles and equipment and they'll do even better.

You don't need an army of hundreds of thousands of people. Not that there aren't such forces available if you need them. Just that they are probably not the right tool for the job here.

Tracking the thing to its lair, followed by a raid in force with a properly equiped and protected special forces style unit of battalion size or so will kill it just as dead. With far less collateral damage, less need to destroy half the continent and all around less unpleasentness (for everyone but the vampires of course).

[The Beast]

The question of the height and depth of a circle is complex.
One side is, as pointed out the issue of things like effects a million miles away, or how circles in the lower levels of dungeons do not seem to affect people in the upper levels

On the other side is the fact that the circle prevents things from entering the circle, which would seem to require that it prevent things from entering its perimeter.

Thus, your going to need some sort of house rule on this regardless. And no matter what you do, it wont be a magic bullet.

But it will likely make things a lot more difficult. Especially if vampires are classed as lesser supernatural beings and not greater. Since at that point they would be unable to come within eyeshot of the circle itself which would extend the range of the warding significantly.

As for the tunnels.... once you find them, you can simply sanctify them so that no undead can enter them

I seem to recall reading that vampires are greater supernatural beings. However, it's going to take me a while to track down where I read that.

I also remember reading a Q&A that stated that the areas of effect for wards, magic circles, and the like don't extend to floors above or below the one they're cast on, so that would at least partially answer one aspect of what we're discussing. Again, I'll have to locate where I read that though.

[eliakon]

The question of the height and depth of a circle is complex.
One side is, as pointed out the issue of things like effects a million miles away, or how circles in the lower levels of dungeons do not seem to affect people in the upper levels

On the other side is the fact that the circle prevents things from entering the circle, which would seem to require that it prevent things from entering its perimeter.

Thus, your going to need some sort of house rule on this regardless. And no matter what you do, it wont be a magic bullet.

But it will likely make things a lot more difficult. Especially if vampires are classed as lesser supernatural beings and not greater. Since at that point they would be unable to come within eyeshot of the circle itself which would extend the range of the warding significantly.

As for the tunnels.... once you find them, you can simply sanctify them so that no undead can enter them

I seem to recall reading that vampires are greater supernatural beings. However, it's going to take me a while to track down where I read that.

I also remember reading a Q&A that stated that the areas of effect for wards, magic circles, and the like don't extend to floors above or below the one they're cast on, so that would at least partially answer one aspect of what we're discussing. Again, I'll have to locate where I read that though.

I would be willing to accept your word on the subject of the circles.
Vampires are likely both... wild vampires strike me as a lesser being, while masters are obviously greater, secondary ones split the difference so could go either way.
But regardless... it would appear that the solution is more and more "kill the VI" and not "mess around with showy, but futile half measures that cost vast amounts of money and resources and do nothing" (unless your a vampire pawn and your trying to siphon off resources while convincing people that 'something is being done' of course)

[Shark_Force]

You don't need an army of hundreds of thousands of people. Not that there aren't such forces available if you need them. Just that they are probably not the right tool for the job here.

Tracking the thing to its lair, followed by a raid in force with a properly equiped and protected special forces style unit of battalion size or so will kill it just as dead. With far less collateral damage, less need to destroy half the continent and all around less unpleasentness (for everyone but the vampires of course).

*shrug* large quantities of troops with minimal training and poor equipment seems more readily available than highly-trained specialist anti-vampire troops in sufficient numbers.

[Axelmania]

I seem to recall reading that vampires are greater supernatural beings. However, it's going to take me a while to track down where I read that.

Summoner OCC in PF?

They were originally listed among the Greater Demons in the PRPG. In "Library of Bletherad" a vampire can be found in the list of names of greater demons, so I assume that's still the case. Pretty sure 'demon' is dropped a couple times even in the revised vampire kingdoms.

[eliakon]

You don't need an army of hundreds of thousands of people. Not that there aren't such forces available if you need them. Just that they are probably not the right tool for the job here.

Tracking the thing to its lair, followed by a raid in force with a properly equiped and protected special forces style unit of battalion size or so will kill it just as dead. With far less collateral damage, less need to destroy half the continent and all around less unpleasentness (for everyone but the vampires of course).

*shrug* large quantities of troops with minimal training and poor equipment seems more readily available than highly-trained specialist anti-vampire troops in sufficient numbers.

Raising an army, and then equipping it so that it can both fight vampires, and their minions, and do so effectively is going to be incredibly expensive.
Your looking at truly absurd amounts of credits here.

Hire specialists. We know for a canon fact that there are specialist units that specialize in killing gods as they are mentioned in South America of the books as an option for Cibola. Locate the VI, and spend some of that money hiring them to do the job, and do it right.

Or, you can simply put your money into raising and training your own competent specialist forces for this sort of thing. It sounds like the sort of project that an Atlantian clan would subsidize if they were interested in actually fighting vampires and not grandstanding like the AMC.

[Shark_Force]

You don't need an army of hundreds of thousands of people. Not that there aren't such forces available if you need them. Just that they are probably not the right tool for the job here.

Tracking the thing to its lair, followed by a raid in force with a properly equiped and protected special forces style unit of battalion size or so will kill it just as dead. With far less collateral damage, less need to destroy half the continent and all around less unpleasentness (for everyone but the vampires of course).

*shrug* large quantities of troops with minimal training and poor equipment seems more readily available than highly-trained specialist anti-vampire troops in sufficient numbers.

Raising an army, and then equipping it so that it can both fight vampires, and their minions, and do so effectively is going to be incredibly expensive.
Your looking at truly absurd amounts of credits here.

Hire specialists. We know for a canon fact that there are specialist units that specialize in killing gods as they are mentioned in South America of the books as an option for Cibola. Locate the VI, and spend some of that money hiring them to do the job, and do it right.

Or, you can simply put your money into raising and training your own competent specialist forces for this sort of thing. It sounds like the sort of project that an Atlantian clan would subsidize if they were interested in actually fighting vampires and not grandstanding like the AMC.

equipping troops for hunting vampires is not that expensive. i mean, the flashlight with cross trick doesn't work anymore, as i understand it (which would *really* bring down the costs), but conventional firearms that are far less expensive and complex than things like railguns or laser rifles will get the job done just fine, so long as you provide some amount of MD-capable ammunition (explosive, ramjet, etc) to the party for the vampires' minions, some of which will be MDC in nature.

armour will be a bit more expensive, but seeing as how you've got several nations of vampires and you'll still have plenty of use for anti-vampire troops even afterwards (and again, those regular assault rifles can work just fine for MDC targets as well, provided you have quantity), i'm really not seeing the expense as being so spectacularly awful.

and if god-slaying mercenary troops were all that cheap and easy to find, i imagine there'd be a whole lot fewer living gods in the megaverse. they may exist, but i doubt they're anywhere near a 100% success rate at killing deities, they probably don't come cheap, and since it is highly specialized work with significant risk attached to it, i doubt they're all that common either. far more likely you've got regular mercenary troops in the megaverse, and some of them are powerful enough that they could potentially take on gods (in fact, there are probably a lot capable of taking down the gods if you were to somehow trap the god away from their minions and followers, but if you can isolate and trap the god you probably don't need to hire experts to do the actual shooting, because that's the relatively easy part).

but sure, i suppose hiring a mercenary troop to come in, defeat the VI's minions and allies (which are ultimately far fewer than most gods, which means there's probably a lot more companies capable of taking on the job), and finish off the VI afterwards is an option.

i just don't think they're going to do it on the cheap.

[Mack]

Reminds me of an old idea I toyed with...

Have the CS deploy a force of Dog Boys led by Full Conversion Borgs to attack the vampires. The overall idea would be for the CS send a force that risks few human lives, can learn how significant the threat is, and develop/refine anti-vamp tactics. The other upside of using primarily Dog Boys is their senses should give a tactical advantage against vampires.

[Axelmania]

Vampires seem easy enough to engage on infinite featureless planes, but I think it's really hard to quantify the problems stuff like flight and mist form would cause in humongous cities with sewers and huge populations that you can't feasibly evacuate. While you're pursuing one next, another could be setting up, and it would be hard to track unless you unified all places under a single authority, digitally tracked everyone, a psi-stalker on every block, etc.

[Hawk258]

For the amount of water being discussed, I would plant lots and lots of genetically modified trees. A hard wood tree that grows as fast as a popular tree would be ideal. And then turn them into giant claymore and landmines.

This doesn't deal with their minions, but it would be effective.

And for gitts and shiggles get a bunch of wild fire aircraft, and priest and run night time holy water bombing runs over vampire held kingdoms.

[Nekira Sudacne]

How far underground does the Circle extend though.

If you have a five story dungeon, and you draw a protection circle on the third floor, does it effect anyone in the floors above? below? I don't think so, otherwise you could just block the gate to any Castle with a basement and a circle there.

So logically if building barriers between you and the circle limits the effect, then the vampires could just dig a tunnel.

At that point then you are to "barriers can not exist at all"
So if we are going to assume you can not make barriers it is sort of pointless to try and make them

I don't think so. City Walls could be undermined as well, and yet people kept building them because they were useful right up until modern Artillery and air power. Even today, Concrete Barriers are used to harden some vital points. That walls can be undermined, flown over, or blown up doesn't mean they are pointless. It just means they are not perfect

The fact your barrier is not perfect does not mean that it does not exist, it just means any weakness's it has need to be taken into account and provided for by other means. Example: Digging counter-tunnels was a common tactic.

[dreicunan]

And for gitts and shiggles get a bunch of wild fire aircraft, and priest and run night time holy water bombing runs over vampire held kingdoms.

Is there a spell that blesses water, or does it have to be performed by a priest?

[Shark_Force]

And for gitts and shiggles get a bunch of wild fire aircraft, and priest and run night time holy water bombing runs over vampire held kingdoms.

Is there a spell that blesses water, or does it have to be performed by a priest?

hmmm... i think herbalists might be able to make it too somehow? it's just a vague memory, in any event. apart from that, the priest of light is the only way i can recall to make it...

[eliakon]

And for gitts and shiggles get a bunch of wild fire aircraft, and priest and run night time holy water bombing runs over vampire held kingdoms.

Is there a spell that blesses water, or does it have to be performed by a priest?

hmmm... i think herbalists might be able to make it too somehow? it's just a vague memory, in any event. apart from that, the priest of light is the only way i can recall to make it...

Priests can make it, and yes Herb Magic can make it as well (fun fact, England is where we find out that Holy Water does 3d6 MD to all varieties of demons in Rifts).
Neither of which is exactly set up for mass production.

It would be possible for someone to house rule up something to mass produce holy water of course. Either a spell, or some hybrid TW/Herbal device or something... but canonically there isn't much of an option.

[Hawk258]

As there is no cannon to quote on volume in regards to making holy water, I disagree.

[eliakon]

As there is no cannon to quote on volume in regards to making holy water, I disagree.

20 PPE per vial is pretty solid.
Sure, there is not quote on the volume in PF, but this is Rifts not PF. The Rifts priests don't get the ability to make holy water. The only source of holy water in Rifts is Herbalisim, which does have a volume limit (BoM clearly states that it is made in batches of 1 vial at a cost of 20 PPE each vial. As the BoM is a later publication than England it over rules the previous missed line in England where they had the text for potions in Rue but not Oak)

[Hawk258]

As there is no cannon to quote on volume in regards to making holy water, I disagree.

20 PPE per vial is pretty solid.
Sure, there is not quote on the volume in PF, but this is Rifts not PF. The Rifts priests don't get the ability to make holy water. The only source of holy water in Rifts is Herbalisim, which does have a volume limit (BoM clearly states that it is made in batches of 1 vial at a cost of 20 PPE each vial. As the BoM is a later publication than England it over rules the previous missed line in England where they had the text for potions in Rue but not Oak)

True there is a ppe cost, however using leylines and ppe channeling and batteries and a little preparation can allow such large volumes of water to happen.

In other words cannon does not prevent planning and preparation

[eliakon]

As there is no cannon to quote on volume in regards to making holy water, I disagree.

20 PPE per vial is pretty solid.
Sure, there is not quote on the volume in PF, but this is Rifts not PF. The Rifts priests don't get the ability to make holy water. The only source of holy water in Rifts is Herbalisim, which does have a volume limit (BoM clearly states that it is made in batches of 1 vial at a cost of 20 PPE each vial. As the BoM is a later publication than England it over rules the previous missed line in England where they had the text for potions in Rue but not Oak)

True there is a ppe cost, however using leylines and ppe channeling and batteries and a little preparation can allow such large volumes of water to happen.

In other words cannon does not prevent planning and preparation

Its going to be pretty slow going though if you have to make it a vial at a time.
If your GM rules that you can make it in batches of many vials and just pay the PPE in bulk then you still run into bottlenecks with PPE. There are limits to the amount of PPE you can have someone pull out of the ley lines first off.
And then you need to put it into a form that your herbalists can access as they don't have the ability to tap a ley line themselves.

So yes, you can make it in some quantity... but unless you have thousands of herbalists and mages situated on factories on ley lines your not going to be churning out truely vast quantities of the stuff.

[Hawk258]

Again how many magic users were displaced from tolkeen?
How many can tap a leyline?
How many can make ppe batteries?

Again, "there is something to be said for preparation"

I never claimed instantly. But a well organized effort could lead to a serious offensive that could result in the vampire kingdoms to rethink pushing further north.

It only took 1 atomic bomb to get japan to surrender.

1 huge container of holy water could put the vampires into being more cautious.

Especially since water (from multiple locations) can be flown in and used on it's own to equal effect.

A few night water bombings would be very effective.

[eliakon]

Again how many magic users were displaced from tolkeen?

We don't know actually

How many can tap a leyline?

almost all of them

How many can make ppe batteries?

very few of them unless you teach them how.

Again, "there is something to be said for preparation"

And how do you propose to track down and hire these thousands of mages?
And where are you going to get the thousands of Herbalists?

I never claimed instantly. But a well organized effort could lead to a serious offensive that could result in the vampire kingdoms to rethink pushing further north.

It only took 1 atomic bomb to get japan to surrender.

1 huge container of holy water could put the vampires into being more cautious.

Especially since water (from multiple locations) can be flown in and used on it's own to equal effect.

A few night water bombings would be very effective.

Unless the GM allows people to mass produce things (which there is nothing to suggest you can do at all. It says you can make items but there is nothing to suggest, whatsoever, that you can make multiple items at once), it will take months of work by thousands of herbalists assisted by thousands of mages to produce enough holy water to fuel up one small crop duster (the type you use on farms).
To fill a water tanker like they use for major fire fighting will take years of work... and the losses could be replaced in a week.

[eliakon]

Let me put this in perspective here.
A vial is 2 ounces.
A gallon is therefore 64 vials
A 55 gallon drum is 3520 vials
A smallish crop duster (say the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-Mielec_M-18_Dromader ) like you use on a farm is 550 gallons...
that is 352,00 separate 20 PPE enchantments.
That is going to take some serious work to fill. And is going to make, one run on a relatively small area, doing 3d6 points of damage that can be regenerated.

Water bombing in and of itself might be effective. But trying to make it holy isn't going to work unless you have an industrial scale supply.

[eliakon]

The way that your have a team of specialists kill a VI though is with holy water.
You have a hydrokinetic on hand to be able to throw ten gallons of it in one go.
9d6x640 is going to kill a VI. If not, throw another 10 gallons.

You want a team with someone with Karmic Power to neutralize the things bonuses. Preferably Karmic Power + Grant Powers + Ex PP + Ex Spd. Which you grant to your Hydrokinetic.
Another super with teleportational powers would be handy, if no you want a shifter for the teleport in strike
A Mystic Knight to shut down the Ley Line that the thing is using

Everyone previously gets buffed up with spells like eyes of the dead, chromatic protection, invulnerability, etc.
Make sure your wearing your Amulets, Talismans, Magic Knots, etc.

Scry and Die basically.
It works on very few things in Palladium... but VI's are one of the few things it can be used on... so use it.

[Hawk258]

You are right players are supposed to use the weapons and the NPC'S make them. (I don't personally agree but for this issue I'll play along)

And in terms of "dealing with any problem" you find a solution.

High volume water bombings (not crop dusting) would be very effective in lowering the numbers of wild, secondary and master vampires. Which would allow for less resistance when trying to deal with the Vampire intelligence.

Four 2,700 gallon (12,000 gallons est) "water bombs" over a vampire controlled village once a night is going to do wonders at slowing their desire to push north.

I was referring to this type of water bombing.

https://www.monsoon-bucket.com/Monsoon_Buckets

[Shark_Force]

It only took 1 atomic bomb to get japan to surrender.

1) the USA dropped 2 bombs on Japan, not one.
2) historians aren't even confident that the bombs were a major factor in the decision these days. there's lots of evidence in documents that they were worried about the Russians far more than the possibility of more bombs, actually.
3) Japan was pretty much willing to surrender beforehand with one caveat: the Emperor of Japan would still be the Emperor of Japan.

generally speaking, it is *really* hard to win a war with bombing. like, stupid crazy hard. you can use bombing to suppress an enemy for ground troops and take out hardened positions in advance of a ground attack, and that's generally pretty effective, but history strongly suggests that bombing mostly makes the civilian population more angry and determined to fight, and does not do nearly enough long-term damage to end a war on its own.

now, if you want to talk about flying a few dozen aircraft over a vampire/demon army and holy water bombing them straight to the face while there are large numbers of ground troops taking advantage of that to move in and stake them in small groups while they're all too busy hiding from the aerial bombardment, that's something that might have some benefit. best of all, you can do super close air support and you won't need to worry about hitting your own troops. but just dropping a huge volume of holy water on a group of vampires, well, history suggests you'll only make them more determined to kill you.

[Blue_Lion]

Passive barriers do not stop invasions. Even if you build said barrier the vampires can have their thralls transport them a crossed then make more vampires on the other side. Also there are likely some vampires that where shifters or ley line walkers that can use magic to get vampires past your front line.


You can fight vampire incursions but unless you remove the source they will keep coming. The masters likely do not care that you kill some of the low level vampires they can be replaced in a matter of days.


Active large scale bombing would likely cause a vampire counter strike. It would be like throwing rocks at a wasp nest.


Using TW you could discourage their incursion into a building or house.

Light bulbs modified by TWs with glob of daylight spells. Make the light count as mock-daylight and while it will not kill them would hold them at bay as long as the lights are working and have power(unless they changed things). You would need to place the lights in such a way that they would need to enter the building to shoot them then harden the building(outdoor lighting would be shot). I would also recommend placing inside MDC glass covers and checking people for weapons before letting them in to provide limited protection from thralls. (even this would not stop them if they where really determined but would make it a hassle.)

The only way to stop a vampire incursion is to take out the source the Vampire intelligence. Something much easier said than done as he will likely have a large force of vampire guards and thralls.

[Hawk258]

Passive barriers do not stop invasions. Even if you build said barrier the vampires can have their thralls transport them a crossed then make more vampires on the other side. Also there are likely some vampires that where shifters or ley line walkers that can use magic to get vampires past your front line.


You can fight vampire incursions but unless you remove the source they will keep coming. The masters likely do not care that you kill some of the low level vampires they can be replaced in a matter of days.


Active large scale bombing would likely cause a vampire counter strike. It would be like throwing rocks at a wasp nest.


Using TW you could discourage their incursion into a building or house.

Light bulbs modified by TWs with glob of daylight spells. Make the light count as mock-daylight and while it will not kill them would hold them at bay as long as the lights are working and have power(unless they changed things). You would need to place the lights in such a way that they would need to enter the building to shoot them then harden the building(outdoor lighting would be shot). I would also recommend placing inside MDC glass covers and checking people for weapons before letting them in to provide limited protection from thralls. (even this would not stop them if they where really determined but would make it a hassle.)

The only way to stop a vampire incursion is to take out the source the Vampire intelligence. Something much easier said than done as he will likely have a large force of vampire guards and thralls.

You are right bombing might get a counter attack, but that is far easier to deal with than the current situation.

Vampires work in subterfuge. Much more low key,

A full on attack could only come at night

And yes they "could" replenish their forces in days, however going into the heart of the vampire kingdom to kill the Intelligence is a far greater undertaking.

With the use of "nightly" bombing runs, you effectively force those vampires to fall back. And you can eventually force the line back to the Panama canal where the land mass is small enough to defend.

The vampire isn't using brute force to expand north, they are using stealth and human agents.

Once you start going on a full offensive it becomes harder to have a place to hunt. And more effort has to be made to hold territory.

It's a hell of a lot easier to run a spear through the chest of someone attacking you, or an arrow throw a bat or wolf coming at you to rip your throat out, than worrying about who is lurking around a dark alley to get the jump on you unprepared.

[Axelmania]

Again how many magic users were displaced from tolkeen? .. a well organized effort could lead to a serious offensive that could result in the vampire kingdoms to rethink pushing further north.

The problem with magic users is they would be prime targets for recruitment as secondary vampires, and then you have magic-casting vampires.

Passive barriers do not stop invasions. Even if you build said barrier the vampires can have their thralls transport them a crossed then make more vampires on the other side.

There's no absolute guarantee with any approach, but if the only way across is via thrall transport, this is going to slow them down to the means of their thralls (easy to detect vehicles) rather than hard-to-detect flying rodents, floating mists or sprinting wolves.

Also there are likely some vampires that where shifters or ley line walkers that can use magic to get vampires past your front line.

Or simply literate ones who can read the 'Scrolls of Mystic Portal' created by the sombrero-wearing Demon Familiar sent by the vampire intelligence.

You can fight vampire incursions but unless you remove the source they will keep coming. The masters likely do not care that you kill some of the low level vampires they can be replaced in a matter of days.

They can only replace vampires so many times before depleting their food supply.

The only way to stop a vampire incursion is to take out the source the Vampire intelligence. Something much easier said than done as he will likely have a large force of vampire guards and thralls.

Killing the intelligence is the biggest guarantee, but I don't agree it's the only way to stop an incursion. Even delaying an incursion is technically stopping it.

[Shark_Force]

wait, why would magic users be high priority for vampire conversion? last i heard, vampires didn't really care about wizard magic. they're all about the vampire natural abilities. a converted magic user may not lose all their knowledge, but they still iirc are not fond of using their magic...

[eliakon]

wait, why would magic users be high priority for vampire conversion? last i heard, vampires didn't really care about wizard magic. they're all about the vampire natural abilities. a converted magic user may not lose all their knowledge, but they still iirc are not fond of using their magic...

If your using wizards as a key part of the way that your fighting them? As a point of failure they would be an ideal target.

The big issue here is that the water bombing is not realistically going to do anything at all.
No, really its not.
Your not going to replicate a rainstorm with this. You might be able to make a few villages be wet, a little bit of the time. Right up until your airbase gets hit with a raid by vampires and your helicopters destroyed.

You are not going to soak all of Mexico, all night. scope and scale here people, scope and scale.
Not unless you can conjure up the equivalent of several hurricanes. And then park them on Mexico. And keep them from being tampered with by hostile mages....
Not Going To Happen.

Lets be realistic in what you can do. Can you support a specific operation? Sure. But even then you will need to be quick and careful. After all vampires regenerate absurdly quickly meaning if you don't get it in your first hit, you darn well need to get it with your second one or it is going to just heal back up.
Also, they are not stupid. As soon as they know that they are being bombed they are not going to sit around and wonder what the sound of helicopters means... they will take steps. First off, they can turn to mist and wait out the water. The second is they can have mindslaves shoot at the helicopters.

At the end of the day there are really two options to dealing with the vampire situation.
Option #1 is to do nothing and maintain the status quo.
Option #2 is to kill the Vampire Intelligence and wipe out the entire host at a go.

The option #3 is to raise an army, and then basically "burn down the village to save it" killing the tens of millions people in Mexico so as to deny the vampires food and servants while trying to kill off more vampires than they can produce.

There are reasons why people freak out about vampires, and why vampire infestations are seen as so disastrous. Because ones like the one in Mexico are disasters.

[Shark_Force]

mages being effective against vampires sounds like a reason to kill, not much of a reason to turn them.

also, i'm quite certain there's plenty of room between "kill ten million civilians to starve out the vampires" and "ignore everything else and go straight for the vampire intelligence".

actually, i'm not even particularly convinced there are ten million civilians to kill in rifts mexico. regardless, there are many things you can do with an army, and most of those things are not mass murder.

[Hawk258]

wait, why would magic users be high priority for vampire conversion? last i heard, vampires didn't really care about wizard magic. they're all about the vampire natural abilities. a converted magic user may not lose all their knowledge, but they still iirc are not fond of using their magic...

If your using wizards as a key part of the way that your fighting them? As a point of failure they would be an ideal target.

The big issue here is that the water bombing is not realistically going to do anything at all.
No, really its not.
Your not going to replicate a rainstorm with this. You might be able to make a few villages be wet, a little bit of the time. Right up until your airbase gets hit with a raid by vampires and your helicopters destroyed.

You are not going to soak all of Mexico, all night. scope and scale here people, scope and scale.
Not unless you can conjure up the equivalent of several hurricanes. And then park them on Mexico. And keep them from being tampered with by hostile mages....
Not Going To Happen.

Lets be realistic in what you can do. Can you support a specific operation? Sure. But even then you will need to be quick and careful. After all vampires regenerate absurdly quickly meaning if you don't get it in your first hit, you darn well need to get it with your second one or it is going to just heal back up.
Also, they are not stupid. As soon as they know that they are being bombed they are not going to sit around and wonder what the sound of helicopters means... they will take steps. First off, they can turn to mist and wait out the water. The second is they can have mindslaves shoot at the helicopters.

At the end of the day there are really two options to dealing with the vampire situation.
Option #1 is to do nothing and maintain the status quo.
Option #2 is to kill the Vampire Intelligence and wipe out the entire host at a go.

The option #3 is to raise an army, and then basically "burn down the village to save it" killing the tens of millions people in Mexico so as to deny the vampires food and servants while trying to kill off more vampires than they can produce.

There are reasons why people freak out about vampires, and why vampire infestations are seen as so disastrous. Because ones like the one in Mexico are disasters.

It's called a war of attrition. Once you start cornering them into a very small place and once the other nations such as atlantis and others in south America realize that the northern route is cut off by AMC, Reeds rangers and others, the nations south of the vampire kingdom can start forcing them back into the smaller are and starve them out.

Because you forget, the vampire intelligence can summon every vampire in a 10 mile radius plus communicate with master vampires can communicate up to 500 miles away. Which even if they can't come to the VI's aid, the human minions can.

Once you limit their hunting grounds the numbers dwindle.

Additionally it pushing the vampire into south America may cut many of its numbers in half as they have to sleep on the soil of their birth land. Which water attacks hurt vampires in mist form as well.

Taking out a vampire intelligence while they have thousands of vampires and the ability to communicate over a vast area, is suicide.

You have to whittle down their forces, limit their hunting grounds and make sure they can't escape further south and kill the vampire intelligence and his familiar. If the familiar lives so does the intelligence.

If a vampire intelligence is on earth there is no less than 2000 vampires under its control.

And those vampires can control canines of many varieties.

Which if done right, will do 3 things.
1 if you find the VI there is less vampires to come running when you do corn them, or to get through to kill it on the first place.

2 if the vampire intelligence fleas you don't have as many vampires in stasis to hunt and kill in the next 1d6 hundred years to prevent it from returning for 10,000 years.

3: limit the casualties until the vampire intelligence is located.

[dreicunan]

How easy or hard it is to take out vampires seems to rest largely on how intelligently the GM plays them.

That said, if one is going to bother making industrial scale amounts of holy water, it would seem a better use of it to equip a specialized unit and attempt to take out the VI with it directly, since holy water does triple damage to the VI's hit points, so 9d6 per six ounce vial, or an average of 31.5 points of damage. So a max hit point VI, 8400 + 100 to take it to the destroyed level is 8500 points of damage, would be destroyed by an average of 1620 (always rounding up here) ounces of holy water, or 12.66 gallons, if you hit it with everything in a single round of combat. To provide an extra margin of error, assume that each die will come up a 2, 18 damage per vial, and you'll need 2834 ounces of holy water, 22.15 gallons. IF you prepare against the worst run of luck with dice in history and have each damage die come up 1, you'd need 5667 ounces, or 44.28 gallons.

That of course, is assuming all of the water hits it in a single round, as the VI regenerates at 1d6x10 per melee round. Also, the delivery method for the water may not guarantee a hit with everything, but it is pretty safe to assume that if a specialized squad that knows what to do gets within range of a VI with 100 gallons of holy water at their disposal, the VI will not live past the end of the round.

As to how you get close enough, exploit their love of singing and invite them to compete against each other on Rifts Earth Idol.

[Eagle]

So really what you need is the ability to pour a 55 gallon drum full of holy water directly into the Vampire Intelligence's mouth? Doesn't really sound that hard.

The trick, of course, is to get to the Vampire Intelligence.

As I've always seen it, the vampires know that the Coalition has enough men and firepower to burn their little kingdom to the ground. That's why they bother with perpetuating the myth that Mexico is just a bunch of wild vampires running around with no organization. That's also why they keep almost all their forces below the Rio Grande. They keep their kingdom beneath notice for the Coalition. They've really limited their expansion goals, and I don't think they're doing that for no reason. The Coalition is exceptionally dangerous to them, and I don't think they can survive the full weight of that empire coming down on their heads. So they stay quiet.

The magic using nations of the North (Lazlo, Federation of Magic, and pre-war Tolkeen) could probably take them out as well, but they've got far more pressing threats (in the Coalition, and after them the Xiticix). Some of the South American nations could do it as well -- a buddy of mine estimated that one of the kingdoms had enough water warlocks to flood all of Mexico with a month-long rainstorm. I don't remember which one it was, but I believe he was right.

So the vampires are really looking at infiltration rather than making themselves a giant target. They don't want to engage in large scale warfare -- that's a losing proposition for them. So while a large enough empire could absolutely go into Mexico and just wipe the vamps out, they've kept themselves pretty low on the priority list. Everybody else has bigger fish to fry. So it's something they really wouldn't do. Put me in the "small strike team with special skills/equipment" to try and take out the Vampire Intelligence.

Of course, this means the strike team is in for an exceptionally lethal, practically Gygaxian dungeon crawl. Not everything down there is going to be a vampire (I've always been of the opinion that aging Juicers would be great vampire recruits).

[eliakon]

I would like to point out a few things here.

How the heck are you going to "corner" the vampires into smaller and smaller parts of Mexico?
No, seriously? Unless you are basically consecrating the entire country behind you then they can simply pop back up behind your lines and re-infest things again.
And if they have turned a single ley-line walker it gets worse since the walker can simply use ley-lines to teleport around the ley-network to deliver undeath.

While it is possible to clean out all the vampires in one small village or town, it isn't feasible to keep them all clean unless you are willing, and able, to garrison every village and town with a force of soldiers capable of fighting of vampires and their minions.

There is a reason that I said that 'cleaning out Mexico' Isn't possible. It simply isn't possible with out exterminating the entire population so as to ensure that no one can be turned behind you, or with out an army the size of the entire CS army, but equipped and staffed like the AMC...

That's why if you want to clear out Mexico your only real option is to kill the VI.

Which is why I suggested Hydrokinentics with Holy Water and a good support team for that job. But really, anything will do as long as it can kill the VI.

[Hawk258]

Well one of the issues that isn't pointed out is that the VI actually have far more enemies that it appears.

And the VI controls the leylines on its nexus and that's also an issue you seem to forget. So a leyline walker isn't likely to be moving anyone anywhere even if associated with the Vampires.

Add in as long as a vampire intelligence performs the ritual correctly he doesn't have to be there either.

You aren't sneaking up on him, you can't assassinate him.

Yes the vi needs to be killed, but if it were so easy why hasn't Reed done it? Or AMC? Or The Atlantians, ect, ect, ect?

Because you have to get through the cannon fodder first

And until you do that, you aren't likely to get with in 10 miles of the pyramid he is in to do anything.

So at this point killing the vi without cutting down its troops is a suicide mission.

Trust me... you need 65 HPs of damage every 15 seconds to the main body after accounting for regenerative healing you only do 5 hit points. It would take 1,700 attacks without the vampire familiar, without the masters and secondaries, and without the human minions, slaves, and other creatures they can summon and control. Unless you do a full daylight run, force the VI out into the sun (destroy its pyramid) and cut his powers and abilities 75% you don't have a snowballs chance.

You would have better luck assassinating Emperor Prosek. At least he doesn't regenerate.