This document updates the major powers in the north-eastern part of South America, originally described in Rifts World Book 6: South America 1. The original information provided in that book is accurate up to 101 P.A., but the new "current" time is 109 P.A., just following the defeat of the Kingdom of Tolkeen at the hands of the Coalition States in North America.
First Inix made a miscalculation and placed Cibola close to both Manoa and Omagua, and then the alien intelligence did nothing to prevent the Kingdom of Lagarto from falling into the hands of the hated Splugorth. Inix would love to assist the Tribes of Green World and Maga Island when the war against the Kingdom of Lagarto starts, secretly of course, just to see that kingdom collapse, but a new problem has risen. After so many years of distrust between Manoa and Omagua, the two cities have finally formed an alliance against Cibola and are currently waging a war against the gilded city. Inix is not really worried about the state of the war, the alien intelligence has minions to handle that sort of thing, but it does draw resources away from working against the Kingdom of Lagarto.
The peaceful Kingdom of Bahia has slowly come to the realization that it will be a target of the Kingdom of Lagarto simply because of its location and its apparent vulnerability. Since this realization really struck home in 105 PA, the Kingdom of Bahia has been actively building its military to defend itself from an invasion. Unfortunately, all of the plans to defend the kingdom expect a full-scale invasion from the Kingdom of Lagarto, not the hit-and-run raids that the Lagarto is actually planning. Instead of an invasion, the Kingdom of Lagarto will target strategic areas of the island nation and destroy its facilities, terrorize its citizens, demoralize its troops, and generally weaken the Kingdom of Bahia. Unfortunately, this strategy will likely work against Bahia at least in the early part of the war.
During the last eight years the Kingdom of Bahia has come under increasing attack by pirates operating out of the pirate kingdoms to the west of the kingdom. With the forced merger of Kryang's Land and Kharkon's Nightmare Island, a new danger is emerging in the west that is certain to pose a danger to the kingdom. The Kingdom of Bahia suspects that it will be the next target of Kharkon after most of the pirate kingdoms are under his control. To stem off the danger represented by the pirates, the Kingdom of Bahia purchased additional Black Galleon vessels from the Republic of Columbia and even a few vessels from the now destroyed company Iron Heart Armaments.
The greatest weapons in the arsenal of the Kingdom of Bahia, known only to a few in the kingdom and the Tree Councils of Maga Island and the Tribes of Green World, is the acquisition of a small number of Iron Juggernauts from the fallen Kingdom of Tolkeen. As news of the battle traveled to the Kingdom of Bahia, the Bahia King and Queen ordered several representatives to travel to Tolkeen as observers. When it became apparent that the kingdom would not stop the Coalition States, the observers from Bahia began to secretly recruit Iron Juggernauts that would agree to relocate to the Kingdom of Bahia once their kingdom had finally collapsed. Even though they were very selective about who they approached, the observers were able to recruit a fair number of Iron Juggernauts of nearly every type; over fifty had been recruited before the observers decided it was time to leave. The Iron Juggernauts have been slowly introduced into the Bahia Militia and because they are still so new to the area, their total usefulness is still unknown; the only thing that is known is that they will be a nasty surprise for whoever attacks the Kingdom of Bahia.
The Kingdom of Lagarto has grown in power over the past eight years and much of this growth can be attributed to the death of Stleet in 102 PA and the subsequent rise in power of Klind, a powerful lizard mage. While initially suspicious of Klind, Melastirth, the dragon overlord of Lagarto, has come to accept him as the new High King of Lagarto, and has allowed Klind to instigate sweeping policy changes within the Kingdom of Lagarto.
While the Kingdom of Lagarto had always planned on invading its neighbors, there were two large problems with this: much of the population was uneducated and most of them did not support the new government. Klind had a plan to increase the power of the Cult of Dragonwright and bring the population into the new government. Chapters of the cult began to spread out into the kingdom, establishing churches and offices in nearly every community instead of just visiting them to collect taxes, and they began to set up schools, hospitals, and services for the lizardmen population. Seeing how the cult gave jobs to all those who joined, many lizardmen raced to become members, but those that did not continued to benefit from the new services offered by the cult, except those services were more limited then those offered to cult members. Within a span of four years, most of the rebels had rejoined the population and had given up fighting the new government.
Unfortunately, Klind is no less evil or ambitious than Stleet, he is just far more subtle, and quickly realized that the Kingdom of Lagarto would pull itself apart if it continued the way it was going. Amazingly, he even convinced Melastirth to support his new policies and cut back on the atrocities that turned so many of the lizardmen away from the new government. With the problem of rebellions eliminated, Klind and Melastirth have spent the last four years increasing the level of education within the Kingdom of Lagarto and increasing the size of the military. Satisfied with the initial field tests from the Carnosaurus series, the Kittani continued to designed equipment along the same theme. New suits of power armor, new robots, newly designed flying units, and new units designed for use in water, were designed by the Kittani and sold to the Kingdom of Lagarto. While no manufacturing facilities were built within Lagarto, the Kittani built several advanced repair facilities throughout the kingdom and never missed an agreed shipment of units.
The appearance of the Erbacce and the formation of the Tribes of Green World right beside the Kingdom of Lagarto was completely unexpected and forced Klind and Melastirth to change many of their plans. They had initially wanted to begin their invasion of South America by 120 PA, but as they saw the Tribes of Green World quickly establish themselves and field a powerful army, the two realized that they had to act immediately. Their invasion plan is simple, they will simultaneously invade the Tribes of Green World and Maga Island and using Slavers' Port as a base of operations, they will continually harass and raid the Kingdom of Bahia to keep it from sending too much support to the other two nations. While Melastirth is confident in the plan of assault, Klind believes that the Tribes of Green World and Maga Island are much more powerful than Melastirth believes, but his objections were overruled. Of course Klind is still very confident in victory, but he suspects it will be far more costly then initial projections.
The worst thing that could have occurred in central South America has happened. Kharkon, the master of Nightmare Island and a fleet of Black Ships, has become the ruler of Kryang's Land. The old ruler, King Kryang, surrendered in 106 PA after several years of fighting. Since then, Kharkon has begun to unite all of the pirate kingdoms into his new empire. He still has nowhere near the strength of any of his major neighbors, like the Republic of Columbia or even the Kingdom of Bahia, but he is quickly changing that.
Between 106 PA and 109 PA, Kharkon has united nearly half of the independent pirates operating within South America. Among with allies like a large number of Horune Pirates escaping the destruction of much of their race on Rifts Earth. He still has close ties with Atlantis and has even become the ruler of Slavers' Port, but his future plans do include conquering Atlantis and killing the Splugorth operating there. He has established close ties with the Kingdom of Lagarto, but knows that they too must be conquered, as they are close allies of Atlantis.
The population of Maga Island has greatly increased over the eight years as a streak of refugees continued to pour out of the Kingdom of Lagarto until 104 PA. The population also expanded with an influx of Jungle Elf refugees from Green World that traveled with the Erbacce. In addition to the Jungle Elves, the Erbacce also brought a number of Faeries and Wurms that have migrated to Maga Island. The population of Maga Island and the surrounding island communities has grown to around 500,000, but the growth rate among the population is once again quite low.
The most important change to Maga Island has come in the form of the El'Shara, an elite army of Jungle Elves left behind on Green World during the initial exodus. The El'Shara have rejoined the Jungle Elves on Maga Island to prepare the island nation for war against the Kingdom of Lagarto. At first these preparations proceeded slowly, but starting in 104 PA, the El'Shara launched a series of raids against the Splugorth at Slavers' Port. Starting in 106 PA, when it became apparent that the Kingdom of Lagarto was preparing for war, the leader of the El'Shara was placed on the new War Council of Maga Island and participated in the extensive planning for the expected invasion. One contingency plan created by the War Council even calls for a small invasion of the Kingdom of Lagarto itself to seize or destroy the limited number of high-tech repair installations or to kill Melastirth, the dragon overlord of Lagarto.
In an effort to decrease the threat posed by the Kingdom of Lagarto, the Atlanteans in Manoa have formed an alliance with the Tribes of Green World and Maga Island, but when the fighting finally begins, there will be little that the Manoans can actually accomplish. Already hundreds of soldiers are traveling north to set up operations near the Tribes of Green World, but due to their reliance on technology, the Erbacce view them with distrust and do not like working with them. Most likely, the Manoans will be asked to assist the Kingdom of Bahia once the raids against that kingdom begin in earnest.
Unfortunately, a real war has broken out between Manoa and Cibola. While the war is slow and will most likely end without any significant change, it is a new drain on the resources of the Manoans even though it finally saw a thawing of relations between Manoa and Omagua.
Living fairly close to the Tribes of Green World, the Omagua established contact with the Erbacce early in 104 PA, but since then there has been little communication between the two powers. While the divine cats in Omagua are willing to allow the soldiers from Manoa to travel through their territory, they do not wish to dedicate anything to a war against the Kingdom of Lagarto while they are still fighting a war against Cibola.
The war against the Vampire Kingdom of Haktla has continued without pause and many people within the republic have become disillusioned by the never ending war, but they realize that they only other option is death. This has caused many of the people within the republic to either give up hope or become very hard and uncaring about the world around them. This attitude extends in how they deal with other regional powers and they have become increasingly distant from groups that they believe will not help them in their war.
Two events have occurred within the last eight years of significant interest. The first occurred shortly after the CS revealed their new military. When the CS forcibly shut down Iron Heart Armaments, there were a fair number of employees not present, and a large group of those employees were down in the Gulf of Mexico on a trade mission. During the years since the collapse of Iron Heart Armaments, a number of those employees, mostly engineers, have traveled to the Republic of Columbia seeking asylum. The republic has made a policy of secretly allowing these people to stay as long as they join the military. By using these engineers, the Republic of Columbia has developed several new and powerful war machines to use both against the vampires and against the increasingly aggressive pirates.