I am currently obsessed with Pinnacle Entertainments Rifts for Savage Worlds. I never played the original Palladium Rifts, in fact I made a point of avoiding because of all the stories I heard about the gross imbalances in the game. Thankfully i put those biases aside and looked into Savage Rifts and it has quickly became on of my favorite setting. I love the fact that i can put anything into Rifts Earth and it adds to the gonzo nature of the setting.
This adding anything gave me the idea of adding elements of one of other favorite settings for Savage Worlds, Richard Woolcock's Saga of the Goblin Hordes, to Rifts. It is a hilariously twisted game where you play vicious goblin gang bosses that are fighting off human adventurers. Its a great setting if you haven't check it out i highly recommend it. Plus, you will need it to make sense of the rest of this post.
https://savagepedia.wikispaces.com/Saga+of+the+Goblin+Horde
I used five of my favorite goblin archetypes from Saga of the Goblin Horde and applied Rifts Iconic Frameworks. Here is the link to the filled out character sheets of those goblins.
Here is a song by talented Harrison Hunt, of Tabletop Twats fame, to get you in the mood.
https://youtu.be/96FwqGgjV4E
****update*****
After I shared this blog post a fellow Rifts and Saga of the Goblin Horde acquaintance of mine, Patrick Greenlaw, wanted to join the fun. He created the Goblin Mystic, Mindmelter, and Wilderness Scout archetypes. Now there are eight nasty little goblin bosses to cause mayhem and mischief on Rifts Earth. Thanks again Patrick.
Plus I updated the Goblin Crazy. Chainswords are my favorite Rifts melee weapons, but it bothered me that I had two characters wielding the Great chainsword. I recently discovered the Juicer chainsaw in the Palladium Juicer Uprising book. It was so cool I had to update it to Savage Rifts. I gave the Goblin Crazy the WI-C8 multipurpose. Because a goblin with a chainsaw with a freaking laser on it is just five levels of Awesome!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8KlotSf6Qj5eE5GV3RmOC1rNjg
These Goblins are intended to either be used as characters for a player to use in a Rifts game, or as a GM to use in their game as NPCs.
For anyone that would like to use this gaggle of goblins here is some backstory for you to use and manipulate as you deem.
Our goblins are not originally from Rifts Earth. They came from a planet where the various goblin clans have carved a niche for themselves on the edges of civilized lands. They and their gangs of flunkies were playing one of their favorite games, Pigstickers. This game consisted of them running through a human town and stabbing a long sharpened pole in the town's inhabitants and seeing how many they can fit on one pole. The game was going quite well, lots of poking and screaming. This all changed when a large glowing portal opened up in the middle of the town. The humans ran into the portal in an attempt to make the game more exciting. (That was quite nice of them). Our goblins of course followed not wanting the game to end.
Sadly the fun came to a quick end, on the other side of the glowing portal was a group of humans wearing black metallic skeleton armor and large weapons that shot bolts of burning light. These armored humans decided to protect the towns people and opened fire on the goblins. The goblins barely survived. They had to sacrifice their flunkies to the burning light blasts in order to escape. After a time the skeleton armored humans left in their large horseless wagons, taking the townspeople with them. By this time the portal had vanished trapping our goblins in this new world.
Thankfully goblins are excel at three things killing humans, eating humans, and surviving so they can do more killing and eating of humans. Surviving is just what our goblins did. It took a while but their fortunes turned. It began when Reggie Furtongue was able to steal a suit of NG-V61 Gunwolf armor. Once he figured out how to control this giant metal beast he was able to lead his fellow goblins on a mission vengeance against the Coalition for ruining their game.
Big Chief Furtongue, as Reggie is now called, led his goblins into a the mercenary lifestyle calling themselves the Redfang Mercenary Company, in honor of their old clan. They made frequent attacks against Coalition patrols and accepting jobs from various D-Bees willing and able to pay for their services.
The Redfangs established a fortress in the north eastern Ozarks called Gob-Town. Their fortress resides on the top of a forested hill. The walls of their fortress are composed of reinforced salvaged metal sheets. The walls are decorated with trophies of their revenge against the Coalition. Impaled coalition soldiers line the ground leading up to the fortress. Suits of Dead Boy armor hang from the walls. When the wind blows they create an eerie clanking sound. On the front two corners of the fortress repurposed Coalition Spider walkers serve as weapon turrets.
Now that the Redfangs have a permanent base Big Chief Furtongue has wanted to recreate the glory of Clan Redfang. Unfortunately the lack of goblins on Rifts Earth that are willing to be the subjugated flunkies has forced Big Chief Furtongue to seek alternative methods. Big Chief Furtongue as enlisted his Techno-Wizard Krusty Snaggletooth to create goblins for him.
After a series of experiments Krusty has perfected magically enhanced nano bots, powered by energy siphoned from the nearby ley line, that can reform human DNA to a more pure goblin DNA. The procedure has been endearingly called, "Putting some goblin in ya." The procedure has varied levels of sucess. One out of three times the procedure works and the human becomes a perfect hybrid of goblin and human. The new creation is a proper Flunky and has been had their brains reformed to ensure they are completely loyal to the Redfang bosses. Flunkies will give their life to protect their bosses with no question. Use the Soldier from the Foes of North America adding darkvision and the Major version of the Vow hindrance.
The other two times the procedure does not work as well. The result is a Feral hybrid. With animal intelligence and horribly deformed and twisted bodies the Feral are the prefect cannon fodder. They are completely loyal, perfectly subservient, and almost seem to enjoy being slaughteres. Use the Mindless Minion from the Foes of North America adding darkvision and the Major version of the Vow Hindrance.
Big Chief Furtongue has been satisfied with his new minions. Sure they have the taint of human to them, but some times sacrifices must be made. Big Chief Furtongue finds great satisfaction on mainly using captured coalition soldiers to create his minions. That will teach them to ruin his fun.
Each of the goblin bosses are able to throw their minions in harms way. Once per turn when a goblin boss receives a wound they can spend benny and transfer the damage to an adjacent minion. when encountered out side of Gob-Town a goblin boss is usually accompanied by 1-2 flunkies and 3-4 Ferals.
The Tomorrow Legion has heard of the Redfangs and is still assessing their threat level. Yes they are twisted and malevolent little creatures, but their focus on attacking coalition troops has been their saving grace. They are not aware of the "Putting some goblin in ya" procedure. If they were to ever find out it may change their opinion.
The Redfangs can be encountered in a few ways. The players could come across the Redfangs as their are traveling off to their next job. They are not known for traveling discretely. Their resident Crazy, Squiggle Mushroomhead, loves riding on top of the lead truck playing heavy metal riffs on his guitar piping the music through loud speakers.
If the players are confronting Coalition Forces the Redfangs could show up and help with the destruction and capturing of the surviving troops to take back to Gob-Town.
Well thanks for reading over this idea of mine. I hope you enjoyed, and if you end up using any of this i would love to hear how it went.
