Pepsi Jedi wrote:I might point you to the Paranormal Animals of North America. There's hoopsnakes in there.
heh. Still gets the tourists, though, a surprising number of them americans
You do know in rifts, they simply covered about 80% of Australia with water right?
Yes. You know that inland Australia is actually rather flat, and a decent rise in ocean levels would result in precisely this happening? Most of the 'pointy bits' of the country (and we don't have much of that) is over here on the east coast, with the great dividing range running all the way down from the top to the bottom. Everything west of that is kinda flat, and used to be ocean. BCL put two and two together. To be honest, there's rather a LOT of 'magical' places that can be here, not just 'the rock'. Of course that would require research and another book... oh hang on, BCL wrote that and then it didn't get published.
1) They did cover most of Australia with water
Yes, the largely unimportant bits.
2) If I'm not mistaken.. he's not on earth.... I could be.. the book pained me to an almost physical sick level it sucked so hard.. but I THINK... he's not on earth. he's just sending his lil frog demons here to run amok.
True, in the same manner that a vampire intelligence originally makes contact with a single human, gaining followers until it can pull itself through to here. So too does Tiklikik, but he uses his demons to drain PPE instead.
3) They covered most of the magical sites (( that I know of)) in Australia with water. Even the Rock is under water. Most of he country was just erased, and while it's not said in the book, I think it's very much clearly done so they wouldn't have to cover all that space.
I'll assume for simplicity's sake you've not ever been here. What was covered is largely desert and wasteland. The primary food and agriculture producing areas (such as the New England and the Darling Downs, as well as all the fertile areas of Victoria and WA are largely untouched). Even mining areas are largely untouched. All the resources and 'civilisation' are still there without even getting too damp. This, alas, is the problem. Distance breeds contempt. I don't know where ANYTHING is in the US (except for what I see on TV, which is likely an unrealistic depiction), and I fear this is magnified even moreso for you guys viewing us here.
4) As for the magic and PPE... we'll never know. The books on the magic down there were never done and won't be done. Australia was a horrible horrible book and the ball was dropped. It's all but disavowed now by Palladium. They're not going to touch it again. Period. They've got soooo much other stuff fans are clambering for. They're not going to do anything more on Austraila, as they'd have to fix the smelly trainwreck of reffuse.. and re-write it all, before writing more.
I recall BCL mentioning that it was actually almost off to the printers, with Kev only doing some minor rewrites. Then he disappeared, not only from Palladium but also from this forum. I've a feeling that it was more a personality clash than anything else. The books are written and ready to go (after all, they were even planned on printing as a trilogy, which is why it's 'australia 1' and not 'australia')
5) I'm not scared of a big toad. lol I don't remember if his stats are there. but I remember being extremely unimpressed.
I'm not scared of whipoosh the demon beaver (and find it mildly ludicrous), but if it's a threat to rifts earth then you should sit up and take note. Then again, I feel that it's more a cultural thing: 'it's just a big toad'. I really must remember that for the next time I send an AI at the players. Just make it look like a harmless animal that they ridicule and it could take over the universe while they snort and laugh dismissively. The 'thirsty frog' motif (as mentioned before) is a story that covers aboriginal dreamtime legend across the country. I don't know of any other story that does that, except for the rainbow serpent.
Well I'd like to think it couldn't have gotten worse, but I've heard some.... stories, that indicate that they were, and that there are clear reasons that the others weren't published.
And I recall the author complaining at the time that KS had added things like sabre-toothed kangaroos and giant wombats to make it 'more funny' (something that our national cultural cringe just screams at).
Perez is my all time Fave Palladium artist. (( his art in this book wasn't his best work, but wasn't bad))
Burles.... well. My distaste for his stuff is pretty well known here. I wont' go into it again.
My response to this is 'Burles makes me Hurles'. When playing a game I do tend to go out of my way (even with a principled good character) to utterly destroy Burlestown. I do it for the sanity and artistic integrity of future generations.
-Trance Gemini (Andromeda)
