#180 – Rifts World Book 9: South America 2

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Hey folks, today it's just me and Buckley. Jacob couldn't make it, so at least for the next few episodes, you're stuck with us.

That's unfortunate, but it's okay. You'll get used to my voice, and, uh, when Jacob gets back, He will correct everything I'm about to say, I'm sure.

You know, actually, now that you say it, while he's not here, we should quickly record another Techno Wizard episode.

We totally should. Totally should. We could get a 3rd episode out of that because then he would have to be here for the 3rd episode to rebut everything I say.

Yeah, I think that, well, dear listener, it'll be a surprise whether or not it happens. What is happening is we're back on the World Book kick. We're, you know, we're quite a ways behind, and we've been doing this for a few years, and right now we're only at Rifts World Book 9. We haven't caught up to 1996. Yeah, South America 2, that's what we're doing, by CJ Carella.

Absolutely. And if you were listening to our previous cast, we had CJ on just recently and talking about all of his different books and his writing and such. This is the companion piece to South America 1. I know we oftentimes hear ask if it's needed. If you aren't gonna play in South America, I'll say it up front, you probably don't need this book. But if you have South America 1, you want this book because it fills in the rest of that continent and it does it really well in my opinion.

It does it really well. It fills it with some fantastic art. We've got a shitload of art from Randy Post. We've got a lot, I believe, from Vince Martin and some in here from Kevin himself. Oh, and Wayne, Wayne, the mainstay of like Palladium forever.

When I was flipping through it recently, Wayne and Vince is the majority of the art in here. It's a lot of Wayne and Vince. Every time I was looking at the symbols, I was looking at the names and I'm like, wow.

Bro and VM.

Everywhere.

Yep. But there's just enough of the RK Post stuff and it mostly full page pieces that And in true Randy Poe style are fantastic. So South America 2, we have Nazca lines coming to life and punching aliens out of the sky. Thanks for listening, folks.

That's pretty much it. You have a species of kind of anthropomorphic dogs that have this massive empire somewhere out in space, and they decide to send a fleet to Earth because they're gonna take over Earth. Well, they do it once and they get, well, they get beat up pretty badly and they decide to go away. They come back later and it gets worse for them because the rifts have happened. They lose a third of their fleet with all the killer satellites and then another third with the micrometeorites. And then they make landfall and they realize this is not the planet we got our butts kicked on. a couple of thousand years ago.

Yeah, it reminds me a lot of a series of books that I read in high school by Harry Turtledove, the World War in the Balance series, which was a series of alternate history books in which right in the middle of World War II, aliens invade. But the aliens get their butts kicked largely after a lot of the, uh, the, the humans you know, get over their bullshit and fight back. But because the aliens were really, really, really, really slow to evolve, and they had scouted the planet before about 4,000 years ago, and they did not expect the technology that we had when they came back. Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Then that sounds very similar to the, the, the times that these, what are they called?

Archons.

The Archons came. Yeah.

Yeah. They're an interesting species. They have some fun tech. Again, it's technology. And with the, as we've talked about, the power balance in South America 2 is up a little bit. It fits well with South America 1. And when I look at the artwork for the Archons, it's very consistent. It very much falls into this kind of cyclops ice motif. I'm not really a fan of it, but I appreciate that it's very consistent and that all their stuff looks very similar. So you would know, oh, that's an Archon piece. That's, that's a suit of armor flying through. Most of the— we'll talk about them— most of the groups in South America, South America 2, each of their militaries do look like the same thing. They, they— you would visualize them on the battlefield fighting each other and you could look out and go, oh, I know who those guys are. Okay. Those are those guys.

Yeah.

Which I, which I appreciate when there's a consistent theme for a group of people.

Definitely. And the Archon's look is a bit, uh, the Cyclops thing. We got that already with, with, um, Triax.

Triax.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. This, it looks weird to me. It feels like a repeat of that. So, or maybe some art got repurposed or recycled for that. I don't know. There's not that much of it. And it really does, because it's Kevin Long pieces. Uh, it looks like Kevin, these are Kevin Long pieces of the art. Yeah.

Some of them are Kevin Long, but I don't think Kevin's long. Okay. He's not in the interior artist list.

Nope.

Nope. That's Wayne Broe. Okay. That's Wayne Broe doing a really good rendition of Kevin Long. Yeah.

No, on page, uh, 92. That is a Kevin Long piece.

Yeah, there we go. And what is up with those legs?

I know, I know.

You got needle legs? What?

What? What?

We defeated their entire army by having a field of mud.

Seriously. Oh, oh, oh, but we got tanks.

We got tanks.

We got tanks. We have hover tanks. CJ likes his tanks.

Yep, yep.

He loves tanks.

Hover tanks.

Okay, we're all over the place though here. So we are. Sorry. Okay, we, let's take this thing back to the start. We start with some look at the Incans. That's pretty cool. We get detailed look into their gods, what happened to their gods, the scions of those gods, and then like the fluctuating levels of power within the kingdom. It's some pretty cool stuff.

You have an entire storyline just with the Incas because there is one of their kings who becomes a bad guy. And then he shows up again. So you could run an entire campaign in the first like 20 pages of this book and never do anything outside of it. You can be battling your own internal politics. You can do some fun stuff with that. But the book is much longer than that. It's not just the Nazca Lines, which is also kind of cool.

Yeah, we haven't even gotten to the Nazca Lines in this book yet. The, so the thing here carries forward what I love the most about South America one, and of course Nightbane. Like, you get a detailed look into a faction, a nation in this region, uh, one of the main players on the battlefield here, and it's dripping with ideas of stories. Like, it's not just like, and on the 5th day he did this and, uh, the Coalition hates him. Okay, next. It's, it's all really good usable stuff. Looks into their lifestyles, their religious beliefs. So much here is very, very, very tangible stuff for a game master to work with.

This is— I mean, the book has 2 or 3, 4 groups that are very South American focused. Yeah. And culturally they've done a lot here. And I don't— I know bits and pieces of that. I wish I knew more, but you kind of get a feel, okay, this is not— this is not small town Midwest. This is very different.

It does a really good job of taking you somewhere foreign. And yeah, then we get to the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines, uh, it's just some cool stuff because, okay, like, who drew them? Do we know now who actually drew them?

I don't think so.

Like, in real life?

I, I, no, I honestly don't know because I think Nazca is the name of the region. Yeah, right. So, you know, it's like But in this book, they tell you it was the Incas and it was the gods. And they built these huge things that are magical spells, 600 feet, 800 feet, half a mile large spells that do multiple different things. And that was part of their defense system and part of their energy gathering system for magic. You're like, what?

Okay, cool. Yeah. The, they are. South America books, we've mentioned before, they get a bit of flack for the power level. And the Nazca are, they're up there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then again, the first character class in the book is the true Inca RCC demigod. So it kind of sets the stage for what we're going for here.

Yeah. Average lifespan, 40,000 years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. You've been around a while.

Yeah, it's pretty, pretty cool. Yeah. The Inca warriors are pretty badass. The sun priests. And then we get to the Nazca line makers. They are, they're pretty awesome. They have some really cool powers, but I think, you know, the whole ability to animate Nazca lines and, you know, punch alien ships out of the skies.

I don't know how it would fit in a lot of campaigns, but unless you played in this area, right? Like it's, it's pretty specific. The Rune Warrior. I've seen people play the Rune Warrior before. Those are kind of cool. They're very, they feel like another take on the anti-monster or a magical version of a Borg, basically.

Yep.

Yeah. And those are, those are kind of cool. I really appreciate those.

They're, they're pretty awesome. They, I mean, they have some pretty badass stuff. They, they have some pretty strong weapons. They are, if you were to take them back to North America, they could be considered a little bit OP, but again, These guys are meant to stand up to Borgs and, you know, they are, they simply have a different source of power than technology. Works fine for me.

Oh, absolutely.

The, the, the line drawing stuff I think is pretty cool. One thing I think Palladium always does well is bringing in new ways to do weird shit like magic. And the Nazca line stuff is just one more way. It's not all immediately useful. It's, I mean, it's not as restrained as something like the Summoner from the fantasy game. But again, this is a character who has a kind of a more long-term potential.

It's almost, I don't think there's any other class in Rifts that I can think of that's normally a playable class, like the tattoo magic, like a Chengku dragon that can do tattoo magic. Because a lot of these guys, this magic is Very utilitarian. Like you, you would, you have to take the time to draw the picture to do the thing, but they're pretty powerful once you've drawn the picture, which is kind of cool. I envision someone that has like some sort of like Plastiman armor, right? This horrible cheap Plastiman armor, but has all these blue, indigo, black, and red drawings all over it. Like, what the heck is that? You know?

And then one of the drawings just punches you. Yeah.

Yeah.

It turns into a horse and he rides away.

You know?

That'd be cool. Okay, so I have some notes here highlighted in my, my PDF. One of them is on page 38. So there is a bit of text in the lower right corner that's called the Super Nexus Point.

Mm.

And I would like to point out a bit of wording here. The area's ley line energy is so strong, the lines can be seen with the naked eye as glowing blue walls. Which is fascinating to me because the implication here then is that ley lines being visible is unusual. And yet, since the first freaking Rifts book, the iconic picture of a ley line is a massive blue wall going across the landscape.

And so when I've done this in games, when I've GM'd games, I will set if that's going to be standard for that incarnation of the game for me.

Mm-hmm.

It's always seen at night. I always say that you can see a ley line at night almost invariably because it just, it glows and you see it. But on a big bright day, you might not see it. Yeah, this is, this is pretty clear, at least a clear indication that unless it's a nexus or something like that, you may not see them, which does like the beautiful artwork that I have, I see in my head from the Rifts main book. from the Butts edition where they're standing on that cliff and there's that huge line and you're like, what? You know, it's like, or, or if you're a leyline walker or a TW and you can sense it, you're a leyline walker, you can sense it. If you're a TW wingboard guy and you're doing your Green Goblin, but you can't see the line that you're on, that's like driving down the freeway, but you can't see the freeway. That could be very interesting.

I would suppose that the idea for the line walkers and the TWs is that they sense quote unquote where it's going.

They use the Force trademark.

Yeah.

Yeah. They use the Force to follow the line. When I remember when I read that, I was very intrigued by that, by that phrasing, because I always thought that they were, you know, they were frequently visible. I know that there's like really tiny ones.

Right.

But again, iconic, you know, iconic.

Yeah, absolutely.

The other note that I have here is on page 42. Under the description of Enti the Sun God is a real nice callback to one of CJ's other books where rumors that the deity once did battle with a group of godlike beings known as the Night Lord in a mysterious shadowy dimension. Dun dun dun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There are other books that CJ has done that he does callouts like that. I can't recall them, but I know I've seen that before. Uh, in, in others. And it might not just be CJ. I think other people have done it.

Yeah. I, I imagine it's pretty common.

But that is kind of cool. Like, especially at this timeframe when South America 2, not everyone would have seen Nightbane yet. Right. It's around the time it was released, I think. So it's a nice, you know, cross, cross thing there.

I really like the art for the ancient RCC Incan undead. It's fantastic. That's on page 49. Yeah. And I also really like Post's art of the, uh, the Bloodweeper on page 51.

Yep.

This is, this is what I come here for.

The, the 50— that, that's nightmare fuel.

Yeah.

Like that's, that's not, that's unpleasant.

And largely the rest of the book is just like stuff. Pretty much stuff, weapons and robots and gear and some bad guys and some OCCs. Oh, that's right. There's the Megaversal Legion.

I forgot about that. Yeah. Don't forget about the Megaversal Legion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's, you know, the basically, hey, we're, uh, is the Dakir? I think is the, yeah. Uh, I think that's how it's pronounced. Dakir. Basically we are space mercenary slave masters, and we're gonna go through time and space, grab really cool fighting units, the entire unit, suck them out of their time, give them some cool tech, and then force them to fight for us. I'm sure this won't turn out badly at all. I'm sure we can always do this.

Yeah.

Um, the, the story there, you know, you basically have 2 different species. One of them is, what is it, like the, the 7th Cavalry? In early Gulf War II, basically, are pulled out of Iraq or something and forced to work for them and forced to fight for them.

Those crazy humans.

Those crazy humans.

Had to go fuck everything up.

We're going to give them really cool tech and really cool weapons and hope that they don't fight us later. And then they show up on Rifts Earth and kind of make their own little beachhead because they don't think there's any way for them to get home. They're joined by a couple of the races. And they make their own little spearhead. And it's interesting. It's like, again, it's in itself, it could be thrown away, but then they tell you, hey, no, they tried to build their own little home. And like with everything else in here, here's how they interact with all of the other governments and countries in the rest of this region.

Mm-hmm.

And those ones that like them, those are the ones that don't. You know, they, they bring in the ideals of those people and it's, it's really interesting. And then here's some cool gear.

Here's some cool gear.

Here's some cool gear.

And another one of these tanks. Another tank.

A main battle, a main battle hover tank. Yep. There we go. And it's a good callback to like, you know, that the tank is a, is an Abrams, a Neo Abrams. And then you have the Neo Bradley and a Neo Apache, because that's what they knew, right? So they upgraded contemporary old Earth equipment and made it super high-tech, uh, which was interesting. One of the things I thought was a little overkill, but I understand why, is most of the new unique tech that's for the different alien species or different groups all have a self-destruct feature. Did you notice that?

Yeah.

Like, it's like, oh, if you try to modify this, there's a good chance it's going to explode. So players stop trying to steal it. You know, it's almost, it's almost a little meta. You know, it's like, There's a really high chance that if you try to modify this in any way, it'll blow up.

It's almost like Kevin read over the whole thing. It was like, oh, oh, oh, we got to put something in there.

Something in there.

I think the classes in this game are fascinating. You get everything from basically the gaucho.

The gaucho, a cowboy.

A cowboy to the techno wizard crazy.

Yeah. It's like, how can we make Technowizard or Crazies more unique? Well, Technowizard does it. Cool.

And then finally on page 137, have you ever wanted to play a velociraptor? Well, we got you covered.

You want to play a sentient velociraptor? Absolutely.

Yep.

I would love to see in a game 2 players where one plays the— was the dino and one plays the rider and they work as a pair. And watch that kind of develop. That would be an interesting pairing. And then kill one of them and watch what happens. Like, like, like, 'cause it specifically says like if the rider dies, that the bonded lizard, pretty much you should put 'em down because they'll go through such anguish that they can't handle it. Right. You know, you're like, you know, that, that'd be a horrible story.

But yeah. Yeah. I mean, Sim Van ain't got nothing on these guys.

No, no, not at all. Oh, that'd be interesting. A group of these that go on up and interact with Simvan and see—

What if they introduce a revolution in the Simvan culture?

What if you find out that the dinos that they're riding are actually sentient and been kept down?

And actually, you have to go free the Simvan's mounts. Oh, oh, see, see, it drips inspiration.

Yeah.

And then you have one of my classes because I'm a TW person. The Gizmo tier, the psychic TW basically, but much more constrained. And they're Babylonian-inspired stone dudes that run around with basically light or, uh, lifesavers for all intents and purposes.

Yeah, pretty much. This book has everything that you think should be in it.

Yeah.

Doesn't disappoint. No. Like this book and South America 1 make a great combination. You have an entire continent to explore. You have infinite imagination to unleash here.

And you have some really bad, bad guys, and you have some really good, good guys, and then a bunch of stuff just kind of scattered in the middle, you know, stuff like, well, is Project Achilles bad or good? Well, I don't know, you know, they could be, but you, you, it's, they don't give you a lot of clear indication on some of these groups.

Yeah.

Santiago and Cordova, human-based, primarily human kingdoms that are just trying to survive, right? And, and doing their best to survive, but both of them have slightly different slants on how they view the world and who their allies are and who their allies aren't. It's, yeah, just so much material in here. When I was going through, just, there's so many different ideas. that you can pull out. And I would say one of the mistakes that I often see people make with this particular book is they try to drop it somewhere else.

Yeah. Yeah. We've, we've, we've talked about that. Yeah.

I think it's a mistake from the standpoint of a lot of times players want to play in the thing they know they want to play in North America. Yeah. Right. So they want everything to show up in North America. And that's always one of those things to me. I'm going, but why?

Why not just go to South America?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not start in South America?

Playing Rifts with a bunch of white dudes that you grew up with, you all grew up in the same place together. And even if you gather a gaming group, you move across the country, you get some people to come play with you, chances are many of them all grew up in the same area or somewhere in your nation. The idea of taking your game and doing it in a completely different nation, continent, country, region of the world is a lot harder to many people than going somewhere with elves and dwarves because there is this pressure to try and not weeaboo that shit. Like, you want to at least have something approaching an authentic experience. And it's hard to have that authentic experience when you're a game master is from fucking Sheboygan and has never left the country or something. You know, it's, I can see why people want to do that. Like, yeah, they probably don't feel right running a game in a country they know nothing about other than some pages in a Rifts book.

And I would say this book and the South American one almost gives you enough to do it.

I think it gives you everything and then some.

And, and, and you can pick out the flavor and pick it up and pick up the, the, the feeling for each of these empires. and what's going on in the people.

You can mentally picture how they dress. You can think of how they live their daily lives. You can probably just, you can look through this and piece together enough context clues to just imagine the day in the life of any citizen of any one of these places.

Yeah.

It's that well put together.

Yeah, absolutely. And I often wonder if these 2 books were one manuscript.

I think he says something to that extent at the beginning of the first one.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think, I think he had said something about he wrote too much and they had to split it up or something. I don't have it immediately handy to check that, but I'm pretty sure we were expecting that.

What would have made it like a 400, 450 page game book, which is a really big game book.

For Palladium, definitely. Yeah.

Well, for anyone.

I mean, I have books much bigger than that.

But for a game, yeah. Okay.

Okay.

That's valid.

That's valid. So yeah, South America too. Great book. You should get it. Chances are you already have it. Maybe you have it, but you haven't read it because like good Palladium fans, you've bought everything, but probably never gotten around to reading everything. If this is one that you've been putting off, maybe you've heard people talk about it being overpowered. You should probably just avoid it. Give it a shot. I think you'll be happy with what you find in these pages.

Every time I go through it, I find something interesting. Yeah. Especially when you put them together and now you have a whole new setting. Give it a shot. Start a game, plan for 4 sessions, and then a year later determine that, uh, that was a heck of a campaign and never leave the continent because you don't have to.

Yeah.

There's so much there.

Just these 2 books.

Just these 2 books.

Well, thanks for listening, folks. We've got more world book discussions coming up very soon. In the meantime, I would encourage you, if you would, go find us on whatever podcast source you can and leave us a review. We haven't gotten many of those recently. I got a notification in my email like 2 days ago that I had a new review, and that new review was from September of 2024. It's like, wow, you're really late on that notification. Yeah, we would, we would love to, to see some more reviews. reviews out there, get some more listeners, build a bigger community. So, you know, drop a nice word, or, or don't. I would prefer that you do. Or just tell someone else who hasn't listened and say, hey, you know, we got these guys over here, they're big fucking nerds, you'll probably like them, give them a listen.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And then drop by our Discord and tell us all about it.

Hope to see you there.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook It's available in ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one.

Thank you.

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