Better Tomorrow
Let me tell you of the Earth That Was. Mankind once roosted in cities with buildings that touched the sky, gleaming monuments of steel and stone and glass. Before the Earth That Is they flew about the world, not by magic or the power of their own minds, but in swift hollow birds of silver, magnificent engines with wings, soaring above the green and blue swirls below. Their greatest fear was not of their own safety but of their own boredom. They did not want, they did not cower, for they thought that the world was their own. They thought they were in control and that by their actions they could do no wrong. That science could explain all that was and that through science they could command their worlds. They thought themselves Master but in truth they were Child, a child who through ignorance and anger smashes their toys on unseen stones. They toyed with the fabric of the world and found it to be more than they could handle. The price of hubris strikes hard and its debts are ever-lasting. For once Mankind thought all was in their grasp. But then the Monsters came…
It is the year 127 PE (Post Event) and the world has changed, some say forever. Over a hundred years ago, as far as people can reckon, mankind reached too far in their pursuit of science and toyed with the underlying fabric of the universe. The results were disastrous, though no one really knows the cause. In the span of hours, all the technological progress of humanity burned out in a massive electro-magnetic storm that swept the globe. Hundreds of thousands of people died, some falling from the skies as their planes caught fire or lost their controls, and millions more in the following months as cities blazed, food became non-existence, and neighbor turned against neighbor. But this was only the beginning.
Whatever caused The Event also affected the world itself. Those places that mankind always held in mystery – the Pyramids, Stonehenge, the sacred places the world over, all came to life in a way that no human, no modern human at least, has ever seen. Pale blue effervescent light, sparkling with energy and power, pulsed out from these places and many more, flowing like a river over the land. Where these lines met, wild storms of energy and multi-hued luminescence played in all directions, a spring thunderstorm and the Northern Lights combined. Within these light storms could be seen glimpses of alien worlds. People later called these places a Nexus and it is from these Nexi that the Monsters came. Beings never seen or even dreamed up soon found there way to Earth. Some came through the Gates that opened within the Nexi. As these energy lines crossed the Earth and the momentum of dissonance built, the alien worlds and dimensions merged with our own in places called Convergences, an overlay of one world with our own. Some would be short lived and some still exist from the original days of the Event. What Earth was before ceased to be.
With these changes came not only fearsome and wondrous creatures but also powers beyond belief. Mankind found that things they used to scoff out, things that were the purview of charlatans and the delusional, were real and provable beyond reproach. Both on their own and with the help of beings both radically different and touchingly similar, humans kindled and nurtured the ability to channel their minds and the new power reawakened from the Earth, the power of the Ley lines, to perform wondrous and destructive tasks. Science and the arcane, often seen as opposing forces, merged to become the law of reality.
Through this, generations have lived and died. A portion of the human population lived through the Event and the years following it, enough to recover their footing and strive to survive on. They overcame famine and disease, death and destruction, to rebuild their lives and those of their children. Some chose to wall themselves away from those things that looked to destroy them, both in body and in soul, trying to preserve all of what it means to be human. Others have come to accept the world as it is now, even accept that they themselves have changed so much from their ancestors of a century ago. Some have become as the alien beasts of the Gates, demons in their own right, seeking power and fame, glory and wealth, and damn what comes after.
It is 127 PE. It is up to us to see what Tomorrow holds…
This game is a melding of sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic themes. It is at times dark, but never so bleak that there is not hope. I have always been a huge fan of some of the themes and ideas in the old Palladium Rifts game, though its execution was always terrible. This game pulls heavily from that setting, either directly or indirectly. Gone though is the gonzo nature, the over-powered teenage power fantasy that held the game back (in my eyes) from the very beginning. This is a rational Rifts game, as hopefully believable as such a thing can be.