This is where I tell you all about my Adventure, plot twists and the like. I've been running this adventure since around July of 2000. Now while that may seem like a long running adventure, there's something you should know about my player group. We all have conflicting schedules and with a player group of 5 people including the GM it's been hard to get all of us together at one time. Something else you should now. It's been hard to keep this adventure together as one of the main portions of the adventure has been revenge. And with people leaving for the army and a couple characters being killed or lost (some of my players aren't very organized and sometimes lose their character sheets) it hasn't made it any easier. But I hope you find this adventure interesting enough to play with your group.
Part 1: The Beginning
The adventure started out with sets of characters being brought in by having confrontations with each other. The first two PC's I brought in were a Mind Melter Hunter Cat (Look in SA Book 1 for the Hunter Cat R.C.C.) and a Lanotaur Hunter ( see Psyscape for the Lanotaur R.C.C.) They were hunting and counter-hunting each other in a jungle in South America when they were BOTH attacked by two Pucara Red Giants (SA Book 2). They defeated the giants and afterwards a man stepped through a portal and offered them a job as trackers/bounty hunters. If they wanted the job it paid 2500 credits a day plus expenses and transport was provided. They were to meet at a bar named "La Casa de Sangria" in Bonito, Colombia in 2 days time. The mans name was Joe and he would meet them there along with other members of the party. The great part about bringing THESE two characters in this way was the fact that they had to work together but really didn't trust each other all that much to begin with. After all they WERE trying to kill each other. Now here is where I can tell you where to step in. Use this format for the adventure. Whenever you bring in a character, make them fight a fairly difficult enemy by themselves. Joe is testing the members to see if they are "skilled enough". The point of bringing them in separately is that they won't know each other when the Job begins. It doesn't have to start in South America but I find that South America is a great place to stage adventures or at least start them. After all the characters have been brought in then have them meet at the bar.
Now in the bar there should be a bouncer at the door and a large reserved table in the back where the party is supposed to meet. When Joe arrives, the bouncer is relieved of his job and joins them at the table. The bouncer should be one of your PC's. He works with Joe and is there to make sure the job gets done with maximum efficiency. He is paid the same as the other player character. This role was played by myself in the game as a way of having a little help in steering the adventure in the proper direction. This character always seems to have inside information and never really divulges it all in the first part of the adventure. Now, the job. Joe tells you that he represents an import/export company called KAOS and that the President of the company has a daughter named Aubrey but she has been kidnapped. Anyone using See Aura to see if he is lying will see that he's not. They will also see that he's about a 5th Level Merchant and not very skilled in combat. The bouncer is Joe's assistant and bodyguard and has worked for KAOS for about 8 months or so. Joe will hand them the keys to a hover boat that will be there transportation for the first part of the trip. A two day trip down the Amazon to a rather small port town where they can dock and find an APC for their trip through the Jungle. The Hover boat should have a fore and aft weapon system, sleeping quarters, mess hall, bathroom, supply closet, kitchen, and a weapons room. The weapons I put in were assorted guns and ammo from South America books 1 and 2, a few sets of 110 M.D.C Body armor, 4 cases of grenades (5d6 M.D. to a 10 ft area, 25 grenades to a case) and 5 pounds of C4. Plus wire, detonators, trap components and assorted little things. The same style weapons room will be aboard the APC as well along with two turrets up top and a cargo bay big enough for two medium sized hover cycles or bikes. But I'm straying away from the adventure. Everyone's money for the job will be deposited into the Bank of Bonito in the center of town. 2500 a day and a 300 Credit a day expense account. If they decide to take the job, Joe will give them a general direction to go in.
Part 2: The Job
To keep things interesting, on the hover boat on the trip down river, I had river pirates attack the ship. The journey takes three days. At the dock the APC is waiting outside of town and the keys are found on the hover boat somewhere (at the helm or in someone's quarters or something) The APC trip could take as long as you want but along the way there will be traces of the kidnappers and the girl. When I ran the adventure, I used Rahu-Men (conversion book 1) as the kidnappers but you might want to use something else. Its all up to you. I made forks in the road that if the wrong fork was taken it would lead the party in the wrong direction and they would come to a dead end and be forced to turn back and track again. At the end of the trail in the CORRECT direction, the party should rest for the night. Who ever is on watch will see someone stagger out of the woods to the APC and collapse. They are battered, bleeding and look like they were tortured. In my adventure I used a Falconoid. It turns out that he was taken prisoner while he was wandering through the dense forest and tortured as a spy by the kidnappers. And he was in seclusion when he heard talk of them "putting him with the little girl" or killing him. He decided to escape and he did, barely. You can either choose to have him die from the damage of the torture or have him live and become an NPC or even a PC, or have him live and return home. Anyway, the party should set out the next morning to trace the path. If they leave that night they will find a group of 4-8 kidnappers (whatever you chose them to be) sleeping and one rather large mean looking one asleep propped up against a tree but no sign of any little girl. If they go in the morning, they'll find traces of a camp and rather easy trail to follow. At night, they should try and capture one of the kidnappers to question him or in the morning they can just follow the trail. Either way it will lead another 50 miles through the jungle to a rather large clearing with 2 story wooden building, 2 watch towers on either side of what looks like a stone bunker built into the ground or a cave. This is it.
The girl is in the cave/bunker or whatever you choose it to be. BUT the entire perimeter is well guarded, there are about 8-15 troops in the building 2 in each watchtower and another 8 or so in the bunker guarding the girl. Have the party bypass the guards in anyway they want or have them all out fight them or use guerilla warfare or something. Just get the girl while keeping at least 1 of the kidnappers alive. After the girl is secure and one of the kidnappers has been taken prisoner, have the contact Joe.
Part 3: The Twist
When Joe is contacted he will arrive in MINUTES via Helicopter. This should seem strange to the party in that every other time Joe has been seen he has popped in Via a portal or rift (TW Rifting or Mystic Portal device) It will even seem strange to the guy working for Joe. Joe comes down from the Helicopter via a rope ladder. The party will show him the girl. He will smile, say good job, pull out a gun and shoot the poor girl in the head and then FLY OFF on his own power laughing. Then the party will be attacked from all sides by men in KAOS body armor or they will be knocked unconscious by gas.
Ok maybe this needs a little explaining. I know it will to your player group. Joe wasn't who he said he was. He was a 10th Level Talus (Skraypers) Mind Melter with the super powers of Wingless Flight, Bio-Armor, Multiple Selves (you'll see later), Extraordinary P.E., and Supernatural Strength named Vincent Renoa. Yeah he is a beefed up Villain, but that's what he is, a SUPER VILLAIN. And the reason no one with See Aura could see that he was lying was the he was using Alter Aura and mask I.S.P. and P.P.E. Now and explanation about the girl. The girl wasn't the KAOS President's daughter. Vincent is the president of KAOS. The girl was the last remaining heir to an actual import/export company that had REALLY screwed KAOS over a few times. Vincent already had his assassins kill her father and he was tracing her Guardian, a 9th level Bhlaze Alien (Skraypers) known only as the Guardian. He was a dear friend to her father and swore to protect her. But he was called away from Earth by a serious problem elsewhere in the universe. He left the girl in the care of the Rahu-Man who had appeared to be her kidnappers and they swore to protect her with their lives. the reason they were running and hiding like that was that when Vincent heard of the absence of the Guardian, he ordered the girl found and brought to him so that he may kill her to further extract vengeance. The Rahu-Men took her away and hid her. And since he was busy hunting the Guardian he hired a stupid, EXPENDABLE trackers to find her. And when they did he would come in and kill them all. He chose too well it seems and the party survived and was PISSED as hell. Now the bouncer character from the bar knew that Vincent wasn't named Joe and knew that Vincent was the president of KAOS. But what he didn't know was the Vincent planned to KILL the little girl and the rest of the party and he doesn't know the extent of his powers. He only knows the fact that Vincent IS powerful and that Vincent betrayed him. He thought of Vincent as a father. A reason for vengeance. The other characters should view him with much suspicion after the attacks are all over. Now in my adventure how we learned of the Vincent's true nature was through the bouncer (My character Banon Falimyr). We learned of the plot by keeping the Rahu-Men alive and making up with them (NOT an easy task considering we had blown apart about 20 of their comrades thus far) We also were fortunate enough to have a character with the restore live Spell and we brought the girl back to life and THAT helped in the explanation. I think this was a great twist in the adventure. Here's the deal, it was my first adventure I had ever run and I had a player in my group who had run DOZENS of Rifts and D&D adventures in the past. When Vincent came down and shot the girl and flew away and when he found out that they were working for the enemy the whole time his jaw dropped and he said one thing to me and nothing else for about 5 minutes, "You're shitting me" He was shocked and completely unprepared for a twist like that. It was my finest moment. Ok now on to the aftermath.
Part 4: REVENGE!
The party will come to and figure everything out and hopefully be pissed off enough to go after Vincent. My entire party was mad as hell. It was fun. The party should start tracking Vincent at the first reasonable place. KAOS headquarters. I think KAOS could do with a little explaining for the benefit of the GM AND the character who worked for Vincent. KAOS is not an import/export company. They are a HUGE mercenary company with a large headquarters on small island of the coast of South America and a secret headquarters on Atlantis (not even Banon really knows about that one) They also manufacture weapons, vehicles, armor, and mercenary/spy equipment through a public face called KAOS armaments. KAOS Mercenaries are trained within the corporation. They started out as a small mercenary company but grew to have a reputation in South America and had to expand. And with the introduction of KAOS Armaments, their revenue quadrupled from the sale of goods. They grew quickly after that becoming THE most powerful, most sought after, most infamous, and most highly priced mercenary company in South America. When the party comes to the Headquarters (a 7 story high building plus 3 sub levels) they will find that it isn't in as great a shape as it could be. It looks like a great battle took place there and the entire building was abandoned. (What had happened was the Bhlaze Alien had returned looking for the girl and found Vincent had murdered her and led a large troop or the Rahu-Men to KAOS headquarters and caught them off guard. Vincent and Guardian had fought inside AND outside the building and there were large wholes everywhere in the building) the inside looked like someone had set a nuke off inside. An angry mob of Rahu-Men is obviously nothing to be trifled with) So the building is deserted. This is around the time the party should be off to Splynn where one or two of them might have a few friends that could tell them something about KAOS. Once Splynn (or wherever you decide to take the party to gather information) is reached, the party will hear that Vincent and a large battalion of KAOS troops went to England in search of a powerful artifact. In fact Vincent is looking for the long lost Rune Gauntlets (described on my Items page) and will stop at nothing to find them.
The party will then head to England in search of Vincent and here stories of large winged men with reptilian faces carrying larges scythe resembling The Grim Reaper. These are the Death's Angel to be described later on my Creations Page. The party should ask around the little towns about Vincent or KAOS and they will get tidbits of information about when they were seen and which way they were headed. One person will even tell the party that the Vincent came into his Antique shop asking about the Gauntlets. The man told him that if the items existed anywhere on that island they would be at Dragon's Grave. A place said to be haunted and also said to be protected by the Earth Children (see Rifts England for Earth Children R.C.C. and Dragon's Grave) The party will arrive at Dragon's Grave, the ruins of an old pyramid long since destroyed. It lies on a Nexus point. Beneath some of the rubble the sounds of a battle can be heard. When the party decides to investigate they will find a tunnel going down into a staircase that opens up into a temple. As soon as they cross the threshold into the temple they will see Vincent and what looks like the Grim Reaper fighting (it's actually a Death's Angel). In the background they can see a pedestal with a green light shining down onto a pair of Silver Gauntlets (the Rune Gauntlets) Then they are attacked by 4-6 minor earth elementals. But when the M.D.C of the elementals gets down to 50 or less that elemental simply disappears. The Battle finishes and the party rushes to attack Vincent the Deaths Angel is dealing the Death Blow and Vincent collapses. The party should be shocked. THEN another Vincent will appear from a portal and grab the dead body of the first Vincent and disappear in the portal). The cave will start to collapse and the Death's Angel will simply laugh and disappear. The party has enough time to grab the Gauntlets before the temple falls in on them. The temple SHOULD fall in but they party is rescued by the Earth Children who treat them as dignitaries, especially the character who has the Gauntlets. They will tell them the story of the Gauntlets and then tell them where the Gauntlets are being kept/guarded/hidden. Fire Gauntlets in the New West. Water Gauntlets near Atlantis, Air Gauntlets in Russia, and Spirit Gauntlets in an ancient Pyramid in Africa.
Note on why Vincent picked up his own dead body. Vincent has the super power of Multiple Selves (See Skraypers for complete description) This power allows him to create exact copies of himself (same powers and all except for the ability to make duplicates of themselves) and have those duplicates function completely autonomous from him. As if they were another person. Vincent sent his duplicates out to find all the Gauntlets but didn't count on someone else looking for them too.
Part5: The Chase
Here is where my adventure gets less detailed and where it is more in your hands than anything. Vincent saw the party in the temple and recognized them and now knows that they are both alive and kicking, AND that they have the Earth Gauntlets. He has out a large bounty (750,00 credits per head) on the party. That throws in more confrontations with bounty hunters and the like. The party should realize that to find Vincent they should search for the Gauntlets and Vincent will follow. They just need to be a little quicker than him. Then they must decide where to start and how to go about it. All the Gauntlets lie on Nexus points in a Temple but are either guarded or trick locked by magic or something else (and a simple dispel magic barrier spell should only work on ONE of the locks. not all of them. Don't make it THAT easy). The Death's Angels are after the Gauntlets, not Vincent. They are demons that will Kill anyone in their way to get them. The one at Dragon's Grave only left so quickly because he was weary from fighting Vincent and would not have survived the Cave in. He figured the cave in would kill all involved and he could come back and take the Gauntlets at his leisure.
Side Note about the Final Battle (hopefully there will be one): The person who kills the President of KAOS becomes the President of KAOS. But only if they worked as part of the company and not hired help from outside. ~HINT HINT!!!~
This is your adventure now. I've pretty much given you the guideline to follow for the rest of the adventure. Let me know how your ending turns out and enjoy. If you have any questions feel free to e mail me at Madrcr187@aol.com