Dramatis Personae
PCs
- Anthony "Loco" Riaz (SAMAS pilot) - A street rat captured and raised by the Coalition, now in his late 20s, and a fugitive SAMAS pilot from CS El Dorado, wanted for stealing his SAMAS suit, Stella, along with some other things. He fled north towards Castle Refuge, and joined with Shan, Layla, Faith, and Midnight.
- Layla Lacoi (DB Mystic) - A tall dimensional mystic being with a bit of a catfish face. Her gentle demeanor belies how powerful she is.
- Midnight (Psi-stalker variant) - A dark and mysterious stranger, riding a strange horse. He seems to have influence over lightning, and is a man who lives off the land.
- Faith Macavoy (covert Psi-ghost) - A non-descript vagabond woman, who seems to be quite capable and full of supplies.
- Shan Medsans (Cyber-doc, I think) - A hardcore cyberdoc apparently from a long line of traveling healers, renowned enough to know Erin Tarn personally. Her clinic is in an upgraded Mountaineer ATV, traveling around to help those in need. She has helped Tony, both healing him and repairing his SAMAS. He has, in return taken to staying with her, and guarding her. Her nephew is its dedicated driver, although Shan can also drive.
NPCs
- Paruuku is the woman whose uncle is the tribal administrator for the Comanche, whom we rescued from the worm wraiths.
- Ardyn is the man who was with her when we rescued them from the worm wraiths.
- Scott Bernard is a soldier and pilot with a mission to kick the alien Invid off of his Earth.
- Lancer is a military intelligence expert.
- Annie LaBelle is a teenager who has been fighting with the local resistance since before she was a teen.
- Lunk is a huge protoculture and conventional mechanic.
- Marlene Rush, a.k.a. Ariel is a human-form Invid who has devoted herself to helping the human resistance.
2025-11-13
GM's recap of the last few moments of last session:
As the Spulgorth spell of recall completes, a wave of scintillating blue energy erupts out from it, blanketing everything within 100 meters of it. As the wave passes through Tanky McTankface it washes over a cylinder 8” wide, 18” long, an energy cell discovered in the wreckage of a strange ship. A vibrant pink cocoon of energy briefly surrounds the cell, coming from within.
Then the pink energy erupts out, taking over the building rift energy of a spell meant to transport the Spulgorth, along with anything within 100 meters, to the nearest Atlantian outpost. Instead, the semi-sentient energy force known as Protoculture sensing a way for it to return to a reality where it belongs, takes control of the spell and redirects it across the dimensional barriers to take everything touched by the spell to a completely different reality.
As the pink energy rolls over Midnight he hears the hauntingly faint sounds of a choir signing a wordless song.
The next moment the group finds themselves surrounded by woodlands, in a small clearing. Across the gap in the canopy a string of pink energy discs streak across the sky followed immediately by an early 21st century fighter jet.
From Tony’s perspective he sees the blue painted jet being chased by 3 large red flying ‘crab’ like robots spewing discs of pink energy at it while it locks onto a 4th one. 2 light missiles streak out from the jet taking out the one it was chasing, only to have the jet itself seem to start falling apart as the rear section seems to start separating from it. Then, in the blink of an eye the jet transforms into a hybrid form with the forward half of the jet as its body, but with legs and arms. It is also now facing the opposite direction it is flying in, in a maneuver that should have seen any normal pilot passing out from gee forces.
The jet-man, now facing the 3 oncoming crab robots, opens up with its handheld heavy gatling cannon, disintegrating one of them before the other crashes into it, sinking their claws into the jet’s wings.
From the forest a light power armor leaps into the air through the canopy, at its peak unleashing a swarm of six guided mini-missiles into the back of one of the crabs, engulfing it in a flaming death as the light power armor lands back beneath the canopy.
In the same moment, the jet-man once again seems to start falling apart as it transforms, this time into a massive humanoid form almost the size of the last crab, which finds itself staring down the barrel of the gatling cannon in its last moments.
Silence fills the sky as Tony struggles to keep his smoking SAMAS airborn, the jet once again a jet, now keeping the SAMAS in its engagement range but not actively targeting it.
The sound of a motorcycle can be heard moments before a person, dressed in armor of similar design to the one Tony has been recently wearing, pulls up beside the barely conscious Layla.
On an open radio channel, the following is heard.
“Unknown ground vehicle, this is Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard of the REF. Please identify yourselves.”
Only a few seconds have passed since the rift teleported everyone here.
2025-11-23
We came through the rift.
- Two of the Altara warrior women nearest us were just dead.
- The Splugorth barge was there, but not its Splugorth occupant.
- Tony's SAMAS, Stella, was further damaged going through the warp. He barely gots her down intact.
Lancer, in the blue jet, flew off to distract the Invid, the crab-like mecha D-bees.
Scott drove to a river, got us to wash Tanky's tires, and then guided us through terrain past Invid patrols.
- While we were cleaning the tires off, Tony noticed that Scott's armor has seen a lot of wear and tear.
- Scott noticed Tony, who was wearing his fancy armor since Stella was wrecked.
- Scott didn't seem at all fazed by Layla or Midnight.
In the distance, Midnight saw a strange dome structure.
As we were getting close to clear of the zone, Tony spotted a patrol, just as Tanky got stuck. We didn't do anything, and they just passed us by.
At the edge of the danger zone, with Scott in the lead, we got attacked by two shock troppers and three armored scouts. It looked like Scott was toast, with the explosion that tore up where he was at. We shot down two of the scouts, and then saw Scott jumping out of the explosion in battloid form, popping off the shock troopers with well-placed mini-missiles.
2025-12-04
Scott lets us know that the Invid know we've been discovered.
We get to their base, which is entirely stealth based. Faith notices that there are a number of exits from their camp.
This was definitely prepared as a fallback safe spot, but it was never really intended to be used.
Scott interogates Tony on what happened before we got here, and determines that we're not bullshitting him.
Meanwhile, Shan comes out of Tanky with coffee for everyone, and has a conversation with Lunk, the giant REF Bioengineer about how our two nuclear reactors are quantum unstable. He shows her with his hand scanner, which scanned Tanky in about two minutes. Shan scans him with her bioscanner, and from her point of view he is quantum unstable.
Marlene, an eerily beautiful woman comes out, and asks to speak to all of us. Midnight has noticed that everything out here as tasted off or not right, but Marlene tastes/smells/feels like death (the natural kind). If they were on Rifts Earth, he would say she's a mind-melter of paramount power, but she has a different power. Midnight has sensed this power once or twice before, and had the same feeling from the ship.
Midnight and Faith feel uncomfortable around Marlene/Ariel. Marlene lets us know she feels the same way about them.
Marlene lets us know her name is really Ariel, and she is the daughter of the Invid leader, the Regis. She also tells us that those of us who are supernaturally sensitive are probably going to die here soon, because we don't fit in this world.
Then she says they're coming, and goes to clear out.
Lunk gives Tony the 30 second crash course about how to the controls for the blue cyclone. Tony notes that it doesn't have the missiles on the front wheel that Scott's cyclone does, instead having some sort of discs on them.
Tony tries it out, and manages to connect to it.
Then the Invid arrive.
Roll for initiative.
2026-01-08
We flee, pursued by the Invid, and miraculously manage to evade all but three of them without significant injury.
2026-01-22 Session 17
We met Lancer in their relatively secure backup base. His first greeting was a big gun on his shoulder. When he recognized Scott & Marlene, he was more cordial. He warmly greeted the other four locals.
We hashed out what must have happened with the protoculture cell and the Splurgoth slaver that ended up getting us here: the Splugorth triggered something, and then the protoculture cell redirected the energy to home.
We tried to figure out where we could get the power from to get Tanky and the rest of us home: the protoculture furnace of an Invid Hive.
Lancer agreed to let Tony take Lancer's old cyclone with him, and warned him to only use the gasoline engine when near or in the hive.
Faith shares with us that she can go invisible, which Tony connects to her being a Psi-ghost. When Faith uses this ability in front of Marlene, she agrees that this should be effective for sneaking into the Genesis pit, but probably won't be useful in the hive itself.
Paruuku and Ardyn were stretching and went to bed.
Shan asks Marlene on the sly why she was looking at Marlow. Marlene tells her Marlow is a robot.
Marlene shares that she was made to integrate with and monitor some humans, and wonders what Marlow's purpose is.
Faith comes up and asks Tony "Are you going to try to kill me in my sleep?"
Tony responds with "Well, you haven't killed me in my sleep yet, so I figure we're good."
2026-01-29 Session 18
Lancer gives Tony a more fleshed out crash course on using a VR-041 Cyclone.
We have one last night here, and the local resistance has one last night together to catch up.
Tony and Shan sleep like babies. Faith & Midnight have trouble. Layla is utterly exhausted.
In the morning, we serve up some coffee and eat breakfast as Scott goes over the plan, which involves cloaking Tanky and trying to pass ourselves off as harmless until Scott and Marlene can get to the Genesis Hive and set of a Reflex missile. Then, Scott and Marlene say goodbye to Annie, Lunk, and Lancer, and come over with us.
Scott gets into his VR-052 Cyclone, Marlene gets onto her VR-038 Cyclone, and we start heading out. Lunk and Annie start cleaning up breakfast while Lancer watches us go.
Scott leads us out, and down a canyon, which we manage to travel without attracting attention. From there, we get to an area that is a little more exposed on our way. Layla keeps an eye out for patrolling Invid, Tony suggests driving to avoid ambushes or easy visibility, Faith prowls ahead, and Shan drives Tanky to avoid the worst of problems. By the time we get to a tunnel Scott had found before into the Genesis pit, it's now about noon. The rough tunnel has a slight but noticeable air current. We proceed into the long, winding tunnel, which has minor branches going off of it. It's large enough that Tanky McTankface is not hampered by the tunnel.
A half-hour in, Scott suggests getting onto Tanky, since its nuclear engine is quieter than the internal combustion engines of the Cyclones.
We eventually come out to a giant hemispheric hollow, the relatively flat bottom thick vegetation. Light just comes diffusely from "around" and above, but the cause of the light is not obvious. This really bothers Shan.
We see flying creatures.
Shan can tell this is definitely not the appropriate flora for this region of North America.
We manage to use some of our limited remaining magic to feather fall Tanky McTankface. Once Tanky is down, Faith starts to scout ahead.
As we approach the hive along a winding path, we come across strange flora, which Shan identifies as coming from earlier periods in Earth's history, and in a hodgepodge, not all from one time. There are also a group of prehistoric hominids, and further on a number of herbivorous dinosaurs, along with signs of other large creatures.
Off in the distance, we see an enormous grown dome structure with three towers reaching up into the "sky". As we get closer, Scott checks the crate with the Reflex missile.
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