The Inverted Territories a Rifts RPG story
PA 15 Jan 100
It's 100 years in the future. Humankind has enjoyed a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and advancement. We've conquered most diseases, bottled the fountain of youth, extended our life span to 200+ years, and our toys are nano-technology and the genetic code. Our cities look like something out of a science fiction novel complete with robots, androids and flying cars. Our future appears grand . . . then it all comes to a crashing stop.
Imagine the end of the world. The movie Day After Tomorrow meets Nightmare on Elm Street.
In addition to the mass destruction and total chaos, lines of blue energy appear across the world. Where two or more lines meet, tears in space and time occur. From these Rifts emerge strange, alien beings. Some seem as mortal, scared and confused as you. Others are demons from the very pits of hell. At other places along the lines, weird and alien wildlife appear overnight. People start to manifest magical and psychic powers, ancient gods appear to claim portions of the land, titans clash and the landscape changes.
It is pure and utter madness.
Fast forward 300 years. It' s the planet Earth, but one you'd barely recognize. It has been
transformed into a patchwork of a thousand alien worlds with doorways to infinite realities.
Imagine each State, Province and Country an alien environment. One place may be a beautiful woodland, another is an alien jungle, another is dominated by humanoid insect people, another is filled with dinosaurs. Over there is the land of faeries or dragons. Over here is a place at war with itself. Some lands shift and change daily, while others straddle two or three realities at the same time.
At one location, people thrive locked away inside a massive fortified city of technology. Robots and black armored sentinels patrol its streets and strike down anything that isn't human. At another location is a city of magic and wonder. Dragons and a hundred different alien races live in harmony with human beings and share the secrets of magic and alien science. Across the sea is a land of wonder, magic and monsters who trade in alien technology, dark magic and human life.
Elsewhere are vast reaches of forested wilderness. Within its shadowy confines are barbarian tribes, aboriginal people, aliens, and monsters. Another stretch of wilderness is dominated by dinosaurs and
elsewhere, castles in the sky drift over grassy plains and bands of monster riders. Beyond the haunted mountains . . . who knows?
The lines of blue energy have calmed down and the Rifts are no longer a daily occurrence. Still, they open at random intervals throughout the year to unleash new alien beings or monsters into our world, or serve as portals to a thousand planets waiting to be visited. Some people have come to accept and embrace magic, some wield superhuman psychic abilities, while others rely entirely on advanced or alien technology. To cope with the harsh environment, humans have rediscovered some of the wonders of the Golden Age and use bionics, suits of power armor, giant robot constructs, and chemical augmentation or have turned to magic and other means to tum themselves into
supermen.
Now imagine being able to travel to countless alien worlds and civilizations. Not in a rocket ship, but by simply opening a Rift in space and time and stepping through it. Welcome to Rifts Earth, the intersection to the infinite Megaverse. A bus stop where dragons, gods and dimensional travelers come to find or create a dimensional door to wherever it is they want to go. A nexus to the Megaverse like Rifts Earth is a rarity. So rare that the god-like powers and galaxy conquerors have al l, unofficially, taken a hands-off policy, leaving humans and the other displaced alien people to fend for themselves.
Thus, humans struggle to reclaim the world, battle against alien, magic and supernatural forces, and learn to live with displaced alien people as mortal, frightened and vulnerable as they - well, almost.
Rift's Ultimate edition description.
