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Finding myself in a Robotech and Rifts mood again I've dug up some old books and I'm revisiting an old crossover. Perusing through New West and Spirit West got me wondering. Are there any other books that give some details on the western coast of North America? Maybe in a Rifter I can go hunting for? I find threads from a year or two or more saying that's all there was but is that still all there is?

Was leaning towards San Fran as a spot for the SDF-3 to crash but would like to see if there is anything more canon or semi-canon wise covering the area.

Most of the us is pretty well covered except whats west of the rockies. The rifts canada book does cover the northern areas and spirit west has a bit of info of the washington/oregon area but the west cost is one of the areas that has never really been touched on that much.

The only other bit of "new" info on the west coast is the "M'Daghiile Tree Men, mammalian forest dwellers of the sequoia forest," as listed in D-bees of NA.

But yeah, besides the few bits of info that others have said, it's a free range for whatever you may want to put............er, have crash there.

Have fun!

There are I think a couple brief mentions in lemuria as well in the world info at the end of the book as it covers some pacific rim locations but it seems like the powers that be are keeping the west coast somewhat intentionally a bit of a blank spot at the moment.

kaid wrote:There are I think a couple brief mentions in lemuria as well in the world info at the end of the book as it covers some pacific rim locations but it seems like the powers that be are keeping the west coast somewhat intentionally a bit of a blank spot at the moment.

And if it is intentional I like it. A space with room for players to fill.

Kevin/Palladium has always purposefully kept the West Coat vague. Other than knowing that the rockies that are there, are not the same Rockies we have (Not errosion, as in a completely other range was rifted in) We know little. Being 100% honest, I think the minor mentions in Spirit West were a mistake and slipped by with out being 'caught'. There's been a number of times where Kevin has said he had something in mind for the West coast, but was waiting to write it or have someone knock him out with a submission to write it for him. It's a large part of the US, that is uncharted, but it's that way on purpose. Sort of like Lucas with Yoda's species. Yes it's a hole in the information and what not, but it's not accidental. The story hasn't been told yet, but on purpose. It may be told at some point but it's supposed to be 'special' and that hasn't been done yet.

The stuff in spirit west talks about Native tribes but by and large they spurn technology and their tech level is huts and maybe a log house or two. I think there's one enclave of tech up in the Pacific north west. Still I seriously think that one was slipped in, and it was forgotten for a bit that they wern't touching that area and then it was printed before it was really caught.

spirit west gives us a few native american groups there.
undersea's has mention of unspecified small nations there that have bought some tanks from the New Navy.
the cyberknights have at least one monastery in the area according to SoT4.
the cyberhorsemen are in that part of canada according to WB:canada. said book also have a sea monster native to that part of the world.
new west has some dinosaurs (T-rex, hardrosaurs, tritops) listed as being found in the area.

RUE has erin tarn retracting her RMB claim of completely uninhabited and instead make the claim it is filled with alien plants and stuff.. (which like most erin tarn claims, might also be wrong)

Pepsi Jedi wrote:The stuff in spirit west talks about Native tribes but by and large they spurn technology and their tech level is huts and maybe a log house or two. I think there's one enclave of tech up in the Pacific north west. Still I seriously think that one was slipped in, and it was forgotten for a bit that they wern't touching that area and then it was printed before it was really caught.

Yeah I was looking through it last night and you've got a preserve around Seattle-Tacoma and one around Sacramento. There are tribes all over the west but they could be very scattered. Those are the most western preserves.

The Oregon and California coast does seem to be intentionally left very vague. Plenty of room to come up with home brew for LA and SF

One thing that anouther thread reminded me of, the new MiF book expands on the northern coast and into canada, the demon empire up there is more detailed now thanks to the demons...its more west coast info if nothing else

So, would the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz still be there, or turned to rust and fallen into the ocean, if not already underwater?

Brayon wrote:So, would the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz still be there, or turned to rust and fallen into the ocean, if not already underwater?

Unless the golden gate bridge was turned into something like the saint luis arch and is indestructiblde its gone by now. About san fransisco, with the sea rise alot of it is probably under water.
It would be cool if the golden gate was a "bridge to other universes" now like the saint luise arch though.....maybe a less menevolent one like its the gate way for good or at least not pure evil.

Zamion138 wrote:

Brayon wrote:So, would the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz still be there, or turned to rust and fallen into the ocean, if not already underwater?

Unless the golden gate bridge was turned into something like the saint luis arch and is indestructiblde its gone by now. About san fransisco, with the sea rise alot of it is probably under water.
It would be cool if the golden gate was a "bridge to other universes" now like the saint luise arch though.....maybe a less menevolent one like its the gate way for good or at least not pure evil.

Oh come on... this is San Fransisco we are talking about. How about a gate that neither good or evil...just WEIRD!

Brayon wrote:So, would the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz still be there, or turned to rust and fallen into the ocean, if not already underwater?

I don't think the sea levels rose that much, parts of SF are pretty hilly, and the bridge may have been repaired. Really depends on who is living there now. Just traditionalist Indians or maybe the city-state the New Navy sold those tanks too.

SirRobin wrote:

Brayon wrote:So, would the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz still be there, or turned to rust and fallen into the ocean, if not already underwater?

I don't think the sea levels rose that much, parts of SF are pretty hilly, and the bridge may have been repaired. Really depends on who is living there now. Just traditionalist Indians or maybe the city-state the New Navy sold those tanks too.

awhile back some of us calculated it based off the shown coastlines.. the average seems to have been 100ft o rise, but enough oddities and outliers existed to indicate to us that there was some land rising and falling as well..

Well SF would have had the low lying areas swept away by the tsunamis, or whatever wasn't taken out by the liquefaction from earthquakes. Maybe it is a series of islands. Perhaps for amusements sake Oakland survived unscathed.

West coast has to deal with being nearish to Lord of the Deep. This may be why California is considered to be pretty primitive. It also has to deal with vampire incursions from Mexico. No large communities will be left if they get eaten frequently. However you could have some renegade Native Americans set up near the sunken ruins of LA who are using the old oil wells to support themselves. LA sits on top of a large oil reservoir. You don't need massive amounts of cash to buy nuke plants when you have oil. This allows much cheaper vehicles and power plants. Petrochemicals means plastics and fertilizers. That regions isn't far from Imperial Valley where massive farms are today.

You should have mutant apes living in the forests north of SF.

lol I think that's a magnificent idea.

When an area is left blank or sparsely covered by rifts canon, ask yourself what post-apocalyptic movies, books, etc cover that area. Speaking of SF and post-apocalyptic movies, the book of Eli covers that area. You could have both mutant apes and a colony of rogue scholars hoarding pre-rifts books. That right there practically writes itself.

Pepsi Jedi wrote:lol I think that's a magnificent idea.

mutant apes? I thought it was sasquatches/bigfoots

Svartalf wrote:

Pepsi Jedi wrote:lol I think that's a magnificent idea.

mutant apes? I thought it was sasquatches/bigfoots

The new planet of the apes movies has the apes living in the woods north of SF.

ah... I didn't know that... gorilla boyz FTW

apex-prey wrote:

Svartalf wrote:

Pepsi Jedi wrote:lol I think that's a magnificent idea.

mutant apes? I thought it was sasquatches/bigfoots

They say big foot is a grate ape like a gorilla so.....they are kinda the same

Ehh... More a great ape, like a human, but I see what you're trying to say.

Nothing. Well hardly anything at all about the West Coast. Being from California I've hoped that someday we would see a world book. I am currently working on a Rifter submission to cover the West Coast (Rifts). I am only 10 k words into it but have been typing away at it as I can. I'm sort of surprised no one has submitted anything as of yet. I'm not the only one who would love to see some information on the West Coast am I? Maybe the majority of Rifts players are from the East Coast

That must be it.

Come now... we all know Rifts: California is going to have Psi-Surfers on megadamage surfboards, with Hollywood being flung into an extradimensional space, only to have appeared 3 years ago as an entertainment capital.

And an alien intelligence. And at least one human supremacist faction.

I think Hollywood would be more fun if it was struck by some sort of(localized) magic that makes movies come alive in the area around it. Or even all of CA. One moment you're walking through an action movie and the next some sort of animated flick, the next day you're hearing swells of music as people around you fall in love. etc.

Ok. It's pretty gimmicky but so is rifts. lol

Mark Hall wrote:Come now... we all know Rifts: California is going to have Psi-Surfers on megadamage surfboards, with Hollywood being flung into an extradimensional space, only to have appeared 3 years ago as an entertainment capital.

And an alien intelligence. And at least one human supremacist faction.

Awe now I have to start over. That's exactly what I was going to write about and try submitting.
Geez. You ruined the surprise.

Ha Psi-Surfers

Pepsi Jedi wrote:I think Hollywood would be more fun if it was struck by some sort of(localized) magic that makes movies come alive in the area around it. Or even all of CA. One moment you're walking through an action movie and the next some sort of animated flick, the next day you're hearing swells of music as people around you fall in love. etc.

Ok. It's pretty gimmicky but so is rifts. lol

Kinda like in the Black Market Book, Las Vegas, in Nevada had a similar thing.

I think you should just cross a bunch of Kurt Russel films. Escape from LA meets Big Trouble in Little Chine meets Furious 7.

Toss in Godzilla and you pretty much got 'murica west coast the way i see it.

Mark Hall wrote:Come now... we all know Rifts: California is going to have Psi-Surfers on megadamage surfboards, with Hollywood being flung into an extradimensional space, only to have appeared 3 years ago as an entertainment capital.

And an alien intelligence. And at least one human supremacist faction.

And laws where you can't have more than 4 shots per eclip and E Rifles with barrel lengths of at least 58 inches.

As a native of the Bay Area, a survivor of the quake of 89' and now a resident of Reno, I see plenty of opportunities for ideas.
Reno is now pushing to become the new tech hub for companies. With the Tesla Giga Factory among other things setting up in the area, Burning Man (ugh) and other local events. I don't think SF would survive because it's built on swamp land.
I could see there being underwater colonies in the area though.
The nuclear waste from the Farallon Islands rupturing and mutating local wildlife, Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Facility, the Top Gun facility being located in Fallon, Nv and all of the other military posts that haven't been covered yet, there is plenty out there to go with.
San Jose could be a lost mecca of technology or a locale overrun by radiation damaged robots.
There could be a nexus in the middle of Lake Tahoe bringing in dinosaurs (look up Tahoe Tessie).
'The Spot' in California could become a paranormal inhabited area.
The Winchester Mystery House could become a portal to Hades.
Giant Highway near Pinole, could become a haven for Giant's on the West Coast. (A la Mount Nimro.(My dad used to scare me with stories about giants on Giant Highway when we drove by it when I was a kid.))
Hercules California could have had another arms factory built there that got blown up again.
For me though, the West Coast would have been such a target rich environment for retribution from foreign powers. Much like DC, New York or any major military post.
I don't see Sacramento as a prime target or anything north of Travis AFB really. From there down to San Jose. For the southern part of the state, I see Los Angeles, San Diego, Beale AFB, Edwards AFB, Fort Irwin, Camp Pendleton, Miramar, 29 Palms, and China Lake as the major targets.
We do have a lot of agriculture in the region, so that could be a major concern if they released defoliants. It was my understanding though that they went after population centers and people not animals or food sources.
For fun, you could have San Dimas over populated by appearing and disappearing phone booths out side of Circle K's.
I hope this gives people an idea of how to move forward.

the difficult part of the west coast is the same as the east coast.. anything pre-rifts that was within 100 miles of the coastline was flattened by the tidal waves.. and then a lot of it sank into the sea when the sea level rose.

the west coast got it worse, because of the fualt lines creating earthquakes, and the ring of fire erupting and burying most of it under 10+ feet of ashfall..

so erin tarn's dual claims about "untouched by man" and "alien jungle" seem perfectly viable to me.. most of the human presence along the west coast pre-rifts would be washed away or buried deep, and the whole area would pretty much have to be heavily recolonized, both both plant and animal life.

Well, what about some amphibian humanoid species taking and repurposing one of the flooded coastal cities for themselves as a hideout or trading spot with surface people?

Ahhh if only Palladium still had the TMNT license.

mellowmaveric wrote:...For fun, you could have San Dimas over populated by appearing and disappearing phone booths out side of Circle K's....

Ha.

All Funny or Fun ideas.

I took a break from writing and finished up a map of the West Coast (version 1 of many I am sure) detailing each location I have been working on.

Thankfully I am enjoying this because who knows if it'll ever see print in a Rifter. At least I can use it in my own Rifts game if nothing else.

It's just nice to give my ideas and observations to other people. It does help that I would like to see California sunk in to the sea. Maybe a portion has become a demon controlled ammusment park. They have enough of those.

mellowmaveric wrote:Maybe a portion has become a demon controlled ammusment park. They have enough of those.

Nah, variant techtonic entities take over a bunch of dolls, puppets and robots as their own bodies in their kingdom and never-stopping carnival of destruction.

Maybe a Fantasy or Alien city can be Rifted in?

We already have a fantasy city here, it's called Hollywood.


Daniel Stoker

Ba dum CHING!

lol

Though having visited, I can't argue the point. I'm fairly certain a large part of the population were inhuman, of varying races, fantastical and frightening.
In West hollywood I'd almost swear I saw the Dude walking down the street in conversation with a goblin.

What you came out here and didn't say hi? For shame PJ, for shame.

Though I'll admit I've seen stranger stuff out at Venice Beach, but West Hollywood can be pretty 'special'.


Daniel Stoker

About 15 years ago. yeah.

Daniel Stoker wrote:We already have a fantasy city here, it's called Hollywood.


Daniel Stoker

That one counts as alien and fantasy both, i guess.

That said, what would be the most probable state of California in Rifts Earth, underwater or separate from the continent as an island?

I'd think we'd lose a lot of the coast due to the sea level rise and sure some of SoCal will have jumped north with the push the the plates, but with the Santa Monica Mountains and the rest of the Transverse Range I think you'd either have some protected areas near the coast or some rather large mountainous islands.


Daniel Stoker

SolCannibal wrote:

Daniel Stoker wrote:We already have a fantasy city here, it's called Hollywood.


Daniel Stoker

That one counts as alien and fantasy both, i guess.

That said, what would be the most probable state of California in Rifts Earth, underwater or separate from the continent as an island?

the forum netbook project determined the most probable state (barring any weird changes like what happened to manhattan island) is that the sea rushed in through the lower elevation parts near san francisco, and turned the california valley into a shallow sea.

so the whole state isn't underwater, but much of its current fertile area is. one upside of this is that the sea would alter the weather patterns, turning the surrounding mountains and deserts into more fertile areas.

The volcanic ash in the area would also help fertilize the land. Much of the land has lain fallow so, it has plenty of room for a bountiful harvest. Black Rock, Nv could be a location of a nexus. Burning Man and all that. I would love to spitball ideas some time with anyone if your up for it. Drop me a line on here.

apex-prey wrote:

Svartalf wrote:

Pepsi Jedi wrote:lol I think that's a magnificent idea.

mutant apes? I thought it was sasquatches/bigfoots

They say big foot is a grate ape like a gorilla so.....they are kinda the same

Did you say grate ape?

In my game I had Northern Cali as a massive redwood forest a Kingdom of Elves, they used magic and tech freely.
Southern Cali was under attack by vampires.
Area around disney was a NightLord and an evil Dragoness they literally had the movies come to life with all the stories having bad endings. Evil witches and all. All the heroes dead or enslaved. Was a nightmare land nobody aged in the area. Got this idea from the forums so thank you to whoever posted it.

Except for vague mentions of an archipelago where parts of California should have been, haven't done much involving the West Coast in my games but that has more to do with my habit of playing more along the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean than anything else in particular i guess.

edit: just came across a paragraph on the "californian archipelago" i never really got to use, but basically the place was eventually settled by a wave of escapees/imigrants from what would later become known as Lone Star, dodging and fighting a lot of crap along the path of their exodus, eventually forming an isolationist-leaning feudal nation of mutants, mystics & psychics halfway between Tokugawa Shogunate and modern Israel, ruled by an immortal superpowered mutant (HU style superbeing) that lead the original escape when rifts started to open in the complex.

glitterboy2098 wrote:

SolCannibal wrote:

Daniel Stoker wrote:We already have a fantasy city here, it's called Hollywood.


Daniel Stoker

That one counts as alien and fantasy both, i guess.

That said, what would be the most probable state of California in Rifts Earth, underwater or separate from the continent as an island?

the forum netbook project determined the most probable state (barring any weird changes like what happened to manhattan island) is that the sea rushed in through the lower elevation parts near san francisco, and turned the california valley into a shallow sea.

so the whole state isn't underwater, but much of its current fertile area is. one upside of this is that the sea would alter the weather patterns, turning the surrounding mountains and deserts into more fertile areas.

I live in the central valley and i could see this whole valley flooded with the mountains between the valley and the coast creating a large atoll type area. i think reconditioned ships from the naval areas near SF could be used to create a large raiding/mercenary fleet or an additional base for the New Navy. I'd like to see new amphibious R.C.C.s maybe, there would be alot of pre-Rifts underwater structures for them to live in. Also a resurgence of the Miwok Indians in the mountains of Yosemite, and ley line flowing right next to Half-Dome with a myth about the ley line teleporting the other half of the mountain. just some ideas ive come up with.