Grim Discoveries
B y c.J. Carella & Kevin Siembieda
Shortly after the takeover of the Newtown, the Juicers make a
disquieting discovery. Several hundred graves where they had
buried their fallen comrades, have been disturbed. A few hun
dred Juicer corpses are missing. Somebody realizes that it ap
pears that only the Juicers killed by the Phoenix Chip seem to
missing. Even more unsettling is the fact that it looks like the
graves were dug from the inside out! Tracks leading away from
the gravesites look as if many of the corpses dug themselves out
and walked away, towards Newtown !
Attempts to follow the tracks fail after a few hundred
yards/meters. Either the walking dead vanished or somebody
covered their tracks. If a player character with a high tracking
skill makes a roll at -30%, he will recognize that the tracks have
been covered and might be able to follow a flimsy trail to their
destination (see
the Hidden Truth,
below). The Coalition is the
suspected graverobber. The theories are: they 're either trying to
cover up more lies by stealing the bodies (maybe there ' s more
incriminating evidence still inside the dead bodies), or they 're
trying to use some kind of psychological trick to scare them -
many Juicers are known to be superstitious.
In the following days, several Juicer patrols are destroyed by
an unidentified enemy. In some cases, the entire patrol disap
pears without a trace; in others, burned and charred bodies are
left behind. Nobody knows who this new enemy is, although the
CS is the leading suspect.
The Hidden Truth
The terrible truth about the Prometheus Treatment is that it
does indeed offer a measure of immortality - but as a Techno
Zombie controlled by an alien menace !
Unknown to both the Coalition and the Juicers, Operation
Phoenix Rising was orchestrated by transdimensional aliens !
The alien invaders are a disgusting insect-like race called the
Vallax.
It is the Vallax who created the "newcomers," who are
really advanced androids designed to look and act like humans.
In fact, they are so perfect (covered in human flesh and built of
organic and synthetic components and nano-machines) that a
newcomer will pass most bio-scans ! The Vallax are also the
masterminds behind the phenomenal growth of Ultra-Tech In
dustries and the developers of the Phoenix Chip. Occasional
sightings of these creatures gave rise to the rumors of giant in
sects running around UTI facilities.
Only a few dozen Vallax are trapped on Rifts Earth, the result
of a dimensional space anomaly (they 're not even sure where
they are or how they got here). Trapped on a strange planet with
no hope for escape, they decided to make the best of things. Re
alizing that humans would destroy them as monsters, the Vallax
decided to remain in hiding and strike first. Being familiar with
other humans, it was easy for them to create android fabrications
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and program them to react like the natives of this world (well,
mostly). This used up the last resources of their crippled space
ship which popped out of space from the other side of the uni
verse and was dumped into a Louisiana swamp.
After a year of carefully studying the human "natives" and re
connaissance of the surrounding region, the Vallax felt confident
that they could not only thrive on this world, but conquer parts
of it as well. After destroying all evidence of their spaceship,
they moved forward with their plan. Actually, it was standard in
vasion procedures for them, to quietly seize control of a suitable
operations site (Newtown), undermine the indigenous popula
tion, create an army (Techno-Zombies), and expand in a circular
radius from the operations center (Newtown) to the surrounding
area (Fort EI Dorado and neighboring towns and villages). They
had already formulated plans to infiltrate the CS as well. An an
droid look-alike of Emperor Prosek, Joseph Prosek II, and Colo
nel Lyboc can be found in one of the secret, subterranean
chambers beneath UTI ! Their most immediate problem (and de
lay) was to bring the primitive level of technology at New
town/UTI to a level that would allow them to build more
androids and create the Phoenix Chip (a recent accomplishment
of the last year) to build their invasion force.
The Vallax standard invasion tactics are insidious. They sub
vert the population by turning members of it into robot-like min
ions or zombies through the use of microscopic nano-machines
that enter the body and take control of it. Normal humans are too
frail to survive the insurgent, transformation process and rebirth
instigated by the nano-weapons, so the Vallax needed to focus
on augmented humans. Cyborgs don 't work well for a number of
reasons, but Juicers were the ideal choice. They were more plen
tiful than Crazies and had implanted nano-machines that could
be subverted and used by the Vallax already. Thus, the
Prometheus Treatment ruse was developed. Juicers who under
went the procedure were not only implanted with the so-called
Phoenix Chip (an ironic name the Vallax found very amusing),
but also with thousands of microscopic nano-machines. The
Phoenix Chip is the control center - a tiny computer brain -
that directs the nano-machines to do their dirty work, as well as
seizing control of the IRMSS (Internal Robot Medical Surgeon
System) and using them to enslave the Juicers ' bodies !
The microscopic devices immediately begin to carry out a
complex program of seizing control of the mind and body of
their victims. Once the process has begun, there is no turning
back; only mechanical nano-viruses that could be introduced
into the victim ' s body to hunt and destroy the others has any
chance of combating the insidious and horrific nano-enslavers.
However, the few civilizations who have tried such a remedy
have found that 50% of the patients are permanently brain dam
aged to some degree and the rest don't survive the process !
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