In the latter half of the 20th Centuary the Earth was plagued by UFO sightings and the populations of various countries made numerous "alien abduction" claims. Most, including government agencies, dismissed these as the psychotic ravings of lunatics and madmen.
In the early years of the 21st Centuary the reports increased, but with no acknowledged plausable foundation, however the so called "Western" governments increased their National Security spending considerably.
On the 3rd September 2008 at 00:26:03 the NSA detected an object just beyond the orbit of Saturn on an apparent collision course for Earth. The object, estimated at 6 miles in diameter, was no natural phenomena. Alerting other worlds governments the object was watched as it slowed going into Earth orbit at the L-5 point on 5th September at 06:27.
The populace at large had remained unaware of the objects presence until 05:32 on the morning of the 5th when it was spotted by an amateur English astronomer. Alerting the media, the U.F.O made the 07:00 BBC news and world wide panic set in. At 12:00 the world watched as the object shed 50 smaller 1 mile diameter craft which headed earthward, entering the atmosphere at 50 pre-chosen points at precisely 13:00. At 13:30 they settled over their targets, areas outside of major towns where large numbers of people were gathered, often exhibitions, sports meetings, and universities.
Projecting some form of force field from their ships the aliens cut off all access by the outside world to the area directly under the saucer shaped craft. Launching robot minions, similar to skeletal terminators, the aliens proceeded to round up those caught inside. Placing each human, in turn, into a scanning device the aliens selected about 1 in 3, using some form of gun to incapacitate those selected. These were then transferred to their ships. The rest were simply penned until the aliens left.
It took the aliens 36 hours to process their captives, then they left, as easily as they arrived. The world some 48 hours later is still on alert, but is powerless to do anything, even if they should return. The big question on everyones lips is why were these particular people taken and will they ever be seen again. The world mourns the loss of 1.85 million of its citizens.
Like my Rifts Mechanoids game, Xeno is still in its early conceptual stage so I'm not giving much away at the moment.
This is not an X-Men, Conspiracy X, X-Files, Super Heros, or similar game since it doesn't take place on Earth. I've not even worked out how the Earth Governments will react to these events.
All the characters in this game are those captured by the aliens. They are your average Joe on the street, caught up in events and taken for a reason known only to their alien kidnappers.
In the capaign I shall be running the players were all at a military equipment exhibition in the southern UK, and unlikely to know one another. Their jobs can be anything from cleaner, cook, lavatory attendant, to computer technician, munitions expert, robotics technician (current Earth state of the art robotics). They can be anything from sales execuative, journalist, civil servant, government minister, to military police, body guard, or intelligence operative. They can be any of the NATO or European Nationalities, as well as Australian, New Zealanders, Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti, Korean, Japanese, or Chilean. They start with only that which they may have about their person or in a briefcase or camera bag, excluding any obvious weapons.
Their first obvious task is to escape their prison, or is it? More will be revealed once I get around to running this. Details of their "prison cell" will follow once I've sorted the plans out.
Characters will be generated using the Palladium system for basic atrributes, plus my own modifications for Reflexes and Perception. Character skills will be generated using a modified version of the Hero's Unlimited® education derived skill programs which is described on the "Generating Characters" page. So far I'm not allowing any "Hardware" or "Special Training" classed characters.
I'm also only using a sub-set of the full Palladium Skills List which is described on the "Xeno Skills List" page.
|
This Quality Palladium Material Web Ring site is owned by vortex. Click for the [ Next Page | Skip It | Next 5 | Previous | Random | Full List ] Do you have a Quality Palladium RPG Site? Click Here to join the Rifts webring. |
| ||||||||
© 2002 Kevin Siembieda; © 2002 Palladium Books®, All rights reserved world wide.
No part of this work may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form or by any means, without permission from the publisher.
All incidents, situations, institutions, governments and people are fictional and any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.