Rifts World Book #15: Spirit West is a continuation of the exploration into the American West after the great cataclysm and coming of the rifts. This sourcebook devotes itself to the Native American, and highlights how the various tribes survived the changing world around them.
When the explorers from Europe arrived on the shores of the American continent, it sent ripples through the Native American spirit world. Representative of this world, the Nunnehi, called forth representatives of all tribes and brought them to the spirit world to wait until a prophesied event would wipe North America clean again. When the great cataclysm happened and the magical energy resurfaced, the Nunnehi brought these ancient Indians back. To the “Ancients”, they had been gone for a short time; however, some of the changes shocked and disturbed them. Some of their descendents, who had weathered the storm with the white man, had forsaken the old ways to embrace technology. Some Indians even forsook their tribes and became citizens of the Coalition States.
With the return of the Ancients and of magic, Rifts: Spirit West introduces the players to what has grown (in the Rifts world) into the Indian subculture, where different tribes compete, as well as Indians of different technological preferences.
It also “fictionalizes” many of the monsters and creatures of Native American mythology. One of the more intriguing aspects of this sourcebook is how it shows how some of the Native American cultural practices changed to adapt to Rifts Earth. It further enhances the Rifts Role Playing Game by incorporating many new character class options, and new forms of Shamanistic magic. Lastly, the books ends foreshadowing trouble between the Coalition and a few Native Preserves, technological city states with populations of Indian mechanics and scientists. These Preservists have discovered pre-rifts artifacts, including suits of US Army SAMAS Power Armor (a suit of armor outfitted with jet packs and armed with rail guns). This technology, one of the cornerstones of the Coalition War Machine, is a closely guarded secret to the Coalition and is likely to provoke them.