Introduction and First Mission

This is the mission of the player characters in the 21st century (the day after tomorrow). It will be railroaded as the player characters are members of a team headed by an NPC. This ensures the players make it to the correct place at the correct time to start the "real" campaign.

Themes

The adventure starts "the day after tomorrow" in the world of the our players themselves. Their beginning characters are a contemporary United Nations team put together to investigate and defend against supernatural events. Because of the international nature of this team, any Rifts Wordbook can be mined for source material for the player characters. So North and South American, Japanese, European, African and Asian characters are all acceptable. Keeping in mind possible evolution of these beginning characters into Rifts classes or adopting new characters upon arrival in Rifts Earth allows us the maximum freedom for players to play the exact character they've always wanted to play. Any fantasy, horror, mutant, alien or hi-tech character can be represented in the game.
Because we expect players to be new to Rifts and Savage Worlds, every player will start as a human member of the team in the modern setting. Here we will learn the system in familiar, less lethal surroundings. Soon, however, players find themselves in Rifts Earth, over 300 years into the future. Upon arriving, players will be given the option of continuing on with the characters they have been using or creating new characters native to the new setting. Of course, existing characters also have the option of "going native," converting to cyborgs, for example, or awakening latent powers they didn't know they had. There is even a means for a 21st century character to become a Psi-Stalker. What's a Psi-stalker, you ask? A psychic vampire, of course, who must feed on life energy to survive.
It is a sandbox world not designed with a central plot in mind for the players to follow. The world is populated with its own independent stories, events and plots happening whether the players are involved or not. This should hopefully allow the players to determine their own direction and making sure there is always something intriguing for them to pursue. The world will abound with plot hooks, and I have no idea which way they will go next. This also allows us to determine if the players like exploration, horror, intrigue, or dungeon diving. Whether players want more combat or more diplomacy, or a mixture of all of the above.
To that end, this WorldAnvil world is established to provide a central repository in order to keep consistency and to record where and when random events occur and to document timelines.

Structure

Exposition

The game starts as the party is about to investigate a dark temple somewhere in South Korea. They've been investigating local disappearances and rumors of dark magic. The leader of the unit gives each player an objective, and when they are ready, he gives the order to breach.

Conflict

The temple is full of cultists all of whom are chanting. There are dozens of sacrificial victims, most of whom have already been sacrificed and are suspended upside down above a floor carving in the shape of a ritual circle that is full of blood.
There will be some security at the entrance to the temple armed with handguns and knives.
A cultist is among the sacrificed victims. This cultist is the agent who was acting undercover.

Rising Action

No mater how quickly or slowly the player characters act, the ritual nearly completes. A rift opens up in the floor and an enormous demon begins to climb through.
The unit leader instructs the players to end the ritual and/or close the rift, depending on the expertise and make-up of the party. No matter how they do it, the rift will close and the demon's hand will be severed. (Optional, if a player character can have a limb severed by the rift, it may be preferable, because we intend to use this demon again near Rifthaven and it would be pretty cool to have a player recognize his or her own hand being worn as a trophy.)
The characters then investigate the temple and will come across some correspondence in the double agent's possession that indicates this group was a fringe group of a bigger organization. This group had gotten impatient with the larger organization and chose not to wait for nearly a hundred years for the plan to come together. Instead, the opted for a more short-sighted approach with smaller, more manageable objectives like summoning individual demons. The greater objective of the larger organization is revealed to be to bring the demonic realm to earth in its entirety.
The characters find out that the first step of that grand plan will be in two days in Green Bay Wisconsin during the Packer-Bears game. (if possible, make this a code puzzle that the players have to solve. Or maybe they find a travel itinerary to and some airline tickets to GRB in the trash of the cult leader)
The players are granted some down time during travel to the USA. Use this opportunity to allow them to interact with each other.

Climax

The unit stops off in Vandenburg Air Force Base in California to refuel and reorganize. Give them an opportunity to re-equip based upon player feedback on their own characters. Now they are getting into a C-17 Globemaster for this leg of the flight and they are joined by a platoon of US troops, some FBI agents and a few more UN special unit troops. All but the UN special unit are told they are responding to "credible threat of an imminent terrorist attack." The group will be joining units already in place at and around the stadium. After they take off again, make sure to describe the rocky mountains, Yellowstone National Park, and the fly-over country between California and Wisconsin.
When the plane arrives in Green Bay, the game has already begun. As they enter final approach, the stadium explodes. The terrorists used a fuel air explosion by using fake fireworks to launch powdered aluminum, ionized by fused quarts casings, into the air above the stadium and then igniting them in a blast measured in the kilotons. The stadium is obliterated. The airport is knocked out of commission by an airplane crashing. The C-17 is told to fly a damage assessment and then land in Appleton (ATW). While flying recon it goes through a rift to Rifts Earth, it can't find ATW and immediately loses all power.
The plane crashes in the forest of the Fox River Valley. Before it does, a number of people jump out using parachutes. But there aren't enough for everyone. None of the characters use a parachute.
The crash survivors are attacked by a swarm of carnivorous creatures and must defend themselves. This is a good opportunity to kill off any player character who does not want to keep his or her character.
Sir Lucas, a cyberknight, and his squire arrive to save the characters if necessary or if there is a potential Cyberknight in the party.

Falling Action

The cyberknight will inform the party about Rifthaven and tell them they can get medical assistance there. If there is a potential cyberknight in the party, give that character enough time to bond with the knight and then kill off the knight, forcing the knight to dispense the nano tech into that character's bloodstream rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of a random stranger.

Resolution

The party now has to figure out where they are and what to do.
Segway into the Garnet Town Gambit and The Call of the Rasta adventures.

Plot type

Chapter