She will kill you!
The Blind Warrior Women of Altara. Slaves of the Splugorth of RIFTS Atlantis. The Altarains were enslaved 2,000 years ago. Psionic, fit warriors, three quarters of them have been thoroughly brainwashed into happily serving the Splugorth, the rest yearn for freedom. There are no males and they reproduce by cloning themselves every 12 years. My drawing above portrays them as flirtatious...they are not!...but then again, it's your game.A couple of weeks ago, this arrived...
Keith Parkinson cover painting, one of the most iconic images in the history of Role-Playing.
This is the original game reprinted in hardcover with a bunch of extras including concept art and several pages depicting all the RIFTS covers ever published. This is raw RIFTS before the multitude of expansion books. The thing I love the most is all the Larry MacDougall art, which for whatever reason is completely absent from RIFTS Ultimate Edition. There are a few samples of his high contrast art below.
The black ink in this book POPS, I mean, the black is BLACK and crisp.
You can purchase a copy here: https://www.palladiumbooks.com/
Once again, I have absolutely zero affiliation with Palladium Books, just a fan.
Well done! Those Atlanteans are hard to forget. (And Parkinson's sketch is, hm, even more suggestive than the rulebook cover. C'haalt level stuff!)
ReplyDeleteI loved Larry MacDougall's artwork. It showed the grimy, desperate side of RIFTS where th Kevins (Long and Siembieda) captured the sleek war machines. MacDougall's art with his ruined cities and ragged scavengers drew attention to the fact that life for the average Joe in RIFTS was cruddy and desperate. I got chills when I first read those rulebooks. Good stuff.
Yep, although other good artists followed, with the absence of MacDougall's art, something is lost.
DeleteI have really fond memories of running Rifts (and making fun of its many shortcomings between sessions). Even though it's usually the bare-bones products that most appeal to me design-wise (Mongoose Traveller 1E, The Heroic Legendarium, Five Ancient Kingdoms, Ghastly Affair, etc.), the cover arts definitely captured my imagination - and all those giant robots and plasma rifles!
ReplyDeleteYou could very easily do RIFTS with Traveller, especially Mongoose Traveller 2E because of how they handle DD (destructive damage) it would be a great way to handle mega-damage. And yes, I've purchased many a Palladium book simply for the cover!
DeleteOh man, makes me want to play Rifts! I had a blast running original Rifts, I agree about the MacDougall art, it always emulated my preferred style of Rifts play/setting.
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