Rifts World Books Week triumphantly reaches Offer 5, the resurrected May 2024 Rifts Coalition Wars Bundle. Running alongside the four World Books Week offers that preceded it – the revived December 2022 Rifts Core Megabundle, Worlds 1 (July 2018), Worlds 2 (all-new), and Land and Sea (Dec 2022) – Coalition Wars presents sourcebooks and adventures about the Coalition States and the Siege on Tolkeen in the shattered Earth of Rifts from Palladium Books. These five offers together give you all 36 Rifts World Books for an unbeatable bargain price. But move fast before the rifts close, because all five offers end together Monday, September 29.
Note: These sourcebooks and adventures require the Rifts Ultimate Edition rulebook, available in the revived December 2022 Rifts Core Megabundle offer in progress.
For decades in the shattered Earth setting of Rifts, the Coalition States have dominated the central United States. A militaristic high-tech human-supremacist dictatorship ruled by Emperor Karl Prosek, the CS brands itself a defender of humanity in a stand-or-die war of survival against wizards, psychics, mutant animals, and D-Bees (Dimensional Beings).
The Rifts corebook and early supplements portrayed the Coalition States as unambiguously evil – lots of skulls, etc. Fans used the shorthand term “Illinois Nazis.” Over time, as CS character classes and equipment proved popular with the audience, Palladium shifted its depiction toward moral grayness. This trend shows in the seven-book Siege on Tolkeen campaign (2000-2002), about the Coalition’s “Campaign of Unity” against the magical superstate of Tolkeen.
The campaign starts as a brutal war of choice. But in Book 3, Sorcerers’ Revenge, the Techno-Wizards, aided by the Legion of Dragons and an army of Cyber-Knights, respond to the CS invasion with blitzkrieg retaliation, motivated by “pure and simple revenge.” Corrupted leaders of the once-virtuous Tolkeen form an alliance with nightmarish Daemonix monstrosities. The war becomes “a murderous vendetta driven by a demonic lust for blood and revenge.” By the end – by the year 109 P.A., and the changed world detailed in the final installment, Aftermath – almost the only real heroes left on either side are the player characters.
The Coalition supplements, and the mercenary books with them, offer a wide range of cool stuff in over-the-top Palladium style, such as (among many, many examples) Techno-Wizard Spin-Disk Shooters and Turbo-Wing Boards, Northern Gun’s 1F Red Hawk Flying Power Armor, Cyber-Knight Zen Combat, Super-Psionic Powers, Shadow Dragons, Psi-Stalkers, Hellion Skelebots, N’mbyr Gorilla Men, Corgi Dog Boys, Dinosaur People, Threno Bat-Things, Iron-Dragonfly Heavy Air Juggernauts, Feculence Daemonix, and the Meganomicon. And the Siege storyline brings forward the movers and shakers in the setting – the Prosek dynasty, the Circle of Twelve, Cyber-Knight Lord Coake, Atlanteans, Timewalkers, and many mercenary companies – along with a gazetteer of Rifts hotspots like Mad Town and the Northern Baronies of Minnesota, the Dragon King city of Freehold, the Great Skelebot Graveyard, and of course Tolkeen itself, before and after the war.
Whether you send your Rifters to the front lines of the siege, or just want a trove of locations, characters, powers, and equipment, this revived May 2024 Coalition Wars offer once again gives you 15 big Rifts supplements and sourcebooks – including the 2022 supplement Psi-Ops (formerly Coalition Manhunters), which forcefully reassigns the Illinois-Nazi regime to its original role as villains.
Pay just US$19.95 to get all seven supplements and sourcebooks in this revived offer’s Coalition Collection (retail value $137) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Coalition War Campaign, Coalition Navy, Secrets of the Coalition States, and four supplements about the soldiers-for-hire who fight this war: Mercenaries MercOps, MercTown, and Mercenary Adventures.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $34.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this revival’s entire Tolkeen Collection with eight more titles worth an additional $154.50, including Psi-Ops (formerly Coalition Manhunters) and the entire seven-part Siege on Tolkeen campaign: Coalition Wars / Sedition, Coalition Overkill, Sorcerer’s Revenge, Cyber-Knights, Shadows of Evil, Final Siege, and Aftermath.
This revived May 2024 Rifts Coalition Wars offer get Brain Fogged by a CS Mind-Melter Manhunter and taken away to Psi-Ops Division – along with the other four Rifts World Books Week offers – Monday, September 29.
