That would make things interesting... we bug out, putting Famine between us and the Phoenix group.... or other way around.

What kind of non magical firepower can we bring as a group?  It might be better to drop the A-M bomb first and then just unload on the sumbich.  Although I do like the idea of it being our smoke bomb.

The giant robot, plus a bunch of guns, grenades, millennium sticks...

Not all that many grenades or millenium sticks. ;)

Let's bring this back to what is going on during the current day.  Brett, what are you specifically up to during the day otherwise?
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:19, Mon 07 Dec 2015.

During the days, I'll be grabbing PPE as I can, and getting it stored away. Prepare scrolls for the upcoming battle. I'll coordinate with other casters as well, to do this work... those who can. If we can camp near enough a ley line, that would certainly be optimum. Otherwise, until our Recce teams report back, not much use us moving around very much.

We should also have the usual sentry/patrol teams out, to protect our camp.

How many do we have in this army btw?

Another question is how quickly can the Gathering of Heroes move? If the main group is totally stationary as the recce parties are out we'll need to split up our day accordingly to allow the main group to move out an appropriate distance or we'll just be covering the same ground over and over.

I think it would be safe to assume that most of the recon groups would travel at least 50~60mph, so it would take them about 4hrs to do a full sweep and return. Depending on the basic travel speed of the group it would be 4+ hrs for them to travel to the target area. So that's pretty much a full day assuming setting up and breaking camp each day.

If we find some clue of which direction to go of course we can move out earlier and focus the recce, so I imagine we could move around 100~200km per day. A lot depends on the general group speed.

Bueller? Bueller?

Lol, I would suggest we do two recces a day based on the ideas that Mike presented.  The initial one with the main body moving up to the extent of the recce and then the recce party moves out again to do more recce for the remainder of the day.  In the morning we can rinse and repeat.  Once we have a trail we can just have the main body move along about ~15-30 minutes behind the recce elements.  Remembering of course that the recce elements are not to engage with the enemy and just scout.  Once Famine is found we haul back and then move as a group to engage.

In the evening, everyone takes stock - Jessica and Thorpe (the reconnaissance group that went north) found and destroyed a raised-dead monstrosity that looked like a giant gorilla skeleton with an elephant head.

No one found any ley lines.

Vrryl gets 4 hours of PPE recovery.

Does Mika still do an Oracle spell?  If so, give me a percentile roll in the dice roller Mike.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:07, Sun 20 Dec 2015.

Did any of the other parties find any other signs of Famine's passing or presence? Or was there nothing found?

Plus, Sophes will use his supernatural vision tattoo along with his flight tattoo while scouting to aid in him locating things.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:30, Mon 21 Dec 2015.

You can check the logs; rolled 55 for my Oracle spell, for the end of the day.

Could you let us know how many sorties we did as recon and for how long, for PPE consumption purposes? Secondly, I'm going to assume that we'll be resting 8hrs per day, if that's not the case let me know.

Lastly, if there is anything worthy of killing for PPE, like a supernatural monster, while in recon Mika will take the opportunity to kill it to feed her magic PPE so she doesn't have to leech off of Jessica and Vrryl.

Nope, there were no signs of anything like that.


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This message was last edited by the GM at 04:57, Thu 14 Jan 2016.

Once Sophes has been pointed in the correct direction he will use his supernatural vision tattoo to investigate the area.  He will concentrate on what the see aura portion can tell him about the people in the area as well as all the inorganic material exhibiting evidence of Famine.  He will also keep up vigilance to ensure no invisible enemies lying in wait can cause him troubles.  Once he has gained all information he can from the area he will meditate to gain back his lost PPE from the day.

No one has actually seen evidence of Famine in the area.  War was in the Congo and Pestilence was in Southern Africa.  The group decided that those regions were broadly eliminated so they traveled back north to where they are now to begin the search.  Death was in eastern Africa previously, but that was a while ago.

So the scouting groups didn't cover a ton of ground relative to the size of Africa.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:23, Fri 15 Jan 2016.

I thought that there was evidence of spoilage in the area?  From what was posted from the last session you guys played before the hiatus that is mentioned.  That is the biggest reason we are doing a recce of the area as that pointed to Famine's presence to us.  If not then we need to really rethink our plan of attack.

I was under the assumption we had no idea, other than he might be nearish the Phoenix Empire. Possibly. Maybe. Hence the recce to locate evidence of his whereabouts.

If there is no sign of any evidence in the area then how we are going about if is all wrong.  We are assuming we can cover a relatively small are and find what we are looking for.  If we have no idea where the enemy is, then we must look at a larger picture, kind of using satellite over a recce patrol.

This is Rifts Earth.... there are no satellites. We are using the traditional method for tracking anything... find evidence, and follow. We are coordinating a pattern of recce which can sweep over areas. Famine isn't exactly subtle, and he's been active a while. His trail should be long, and foul, and easy to follow once found. Villages may have rumours. Seek out villages encountered, and ask for rumours that may give direction. But this still requires the sweeps we're doing.

Farm lands that have gone unexpectedly rotten, pasture animals that have mysteriously died off, community starvation... these are the crumbs we can follow.

Kind of slow and sucks, totally agree, but at least it's a plan.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:26, Sat 16 Jan 2016.

We are covering around a 300 mile radius per day in our recce sweeps, that's pretty good. We could probably kick that up a notch if we sent out smaller, faster scouting teams, but that may put them in danger due to our relative proximity to the Phoenix Empire. For example, Mika can fly over 100mph, and could cast that spell (winged flight) on another strong person like Sophes (Spd = PSx5, 180mins) to do longer range probes if we want.

Erik, relative to modern Africa, where are we roughly? In my head I'm picturing that we're in northern Tanzania, or are we further along than that?

Do we have access to any kind of scrying magic?  I do know that satellites as we know don't exist in rifts anymore, but we could be wasting time just doing recces as we have been doing.  Eventually we will find some evidence, but we could be moving in the wrong direction and not even know it.  I truly did think we had some evidence of famine in the area, and that is why I helped with the original plan.  If we have nothing like that to go off of right now we are wasting resources choosing this as a starting point.

With scrying or something like it we can get a good idea of areas without putting ourselves in as much danger and find the general area to start the real recce work.  If we don't have magic like that then I suggest we go off of Mika's vision and perhaps look at the lake in northern Tanzania.  Perhaps we can find more information about Famine in that area.

You're in northern Tanzania now.  You're only 200-300 miles from the southern border of the Phoenix Empire.

Today, your groups pretty much investigated all of the regions around Tanzania, much of Uganda, western Kenya, etc.  You would have investigated relatively close to the Phoenix Empire.

Mika's Oracle spell is probably the best/most powerful scrying magic we have, especially considering we do not have any possessions or pieces of our quarry. Palladium is short on that stuff because it can seriously unbalance a campaign if you can just cast a spell and know where something is.

One alternative would be to travel in the Astral Plane, but I'm not sure how the 4 Horsemen show up there, and it could be somewhat dangerous.

As for evidence of his passing we did encounter a place where they were without food and such, and suspected that Famine was the cause behind it. So we're in relatively the correct area.

One thing would may want to consider is that Famine is deliberately being elusive, or someone is making it so. Considering we've already vanquished two the of Horsemen it would be prudent to avoid direct confrontation if possible, as surely the demons would be aware that their numbers have been reduced by 50% at this time.

Sophes is going to use Lore:Demons/Monsters and his Lore:Faeries/creatures of magic to see if he can recall any specific being that fits the shape-changers description. I will have the two rolls in the log to show my success. Whelp that was useless, lol!  I guess Sophes will just be clueless!

Sophes will also search out any in the larger group that might know of all major bodies of water in the area.  He will then have them talk with Mika if she is willing to see if we can pinpoint something.

It has to be a fairly impressive shape changing ability too, beyond Changelings and similar creatures. Metamorph Superior spell could do it, and probably the metamoprh abilities of dragons, not too sure how well versed Mika's knowledge of dragom transformations is though.

She could also attest to any number of Gods that can transform into anything... but hopefully we're not dealing with that... again.

Given our scouting missions I would imagine we'd have at least a basic idea of any decent sized lakes in our area. Could focus on some of them the following day. I'm going to assume we know about Lake Victoria at this stage since it's the 2nd biggest lake in the world; would take some time to properly scout the shore of it though.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:34, Tue 19 Jan 2016.

As an important note, Lake Victoria is already within the area your scouts surveyed today.  You are in fact quite close to it.