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The Doppleganger RCC was introduced in the Nightbane RPG and adapted to Rifts in Dark Conversions.

They heal faster than humans (hourly instead of daily) and can't be turned into vampires, and are immune to the slow kill bite ritual. They also all have supernatural strength allowing them to do massive damage compared to humans, and lift more.

skills[]

even though Doppleganger tend to be the same level (post-Awakened can exceed their humans if more active - separate tracking past then) skills are different and can often be absent or at a % penalty. It's unclear if that penalty is meant to apply to all of them or only unawakened ones.

Warlords get a % bonus possibly taking them to higher levels of proficiency than their human inspirations.

mirrorwall[]

Page 160 of Nightbane shows an illustration of a Doppleganger pulling a Humain through a mirror. This is confusing since the RCC (unlike Nightbane) establishes no way of a Doppleganger breaching the mirror wall on their own.

Page 175's "Breach the Mirrorwall" ability of Nightlords is the primary way this is intended to happen (they spend 5 PPE per minion)

Other explanations would be the use of magic to create a Nightlands Portal, something possible via a Night Priest or mage - Dopplegangers can also know magic if their originals did, meaning they might be able to create it on their own. It's unclear whether a Doppleganger is able to become a Shadow Warlock.

The "swapping" process seems to work differently in Rifts as Dark Conversions pg 119 talks about Dopplegangers replacing humans who visit the Nightlands as if it were an automatic process:

When a mortal human, be he a latent Nightbane or psychic, mystic or ordinary Joe, mystic or ordinary Joe, enters the Darklands - whether by intent or by accident - an evil Doppleganger takes his place in the "real" world

This also establishes the idea that latent Nightbane have Dopplegangers, something which seems to contradict page 159 of Nightbane's main book which stresses

"Nightbane never have Dopplegangers, which seems to indicate that Nightbane are indeed a completely separate species."

Rifts seems to take the approach that Latent Nightbane aren't really true nightbane (thus if they become a separate species it is only Post-Becoming) or just threw out that note entirely about Banes lacking Gangers.

Dark Conversions deviates from the Nightbane RPG's main book in that it does introduce a new racial power to spend PPE to cast a magic spell that ALL of them know called "opening a portal to its native Darklands" which costs 300 PPE and requires a full-length mirror.

Supposedly this 300 PPE is "meager" despite page 123 of Dark Conversions only assigning a paltry 1D4 PPE to them. Even most human mages would have trouble getting 300 PPE, and Dopplegangers of mages only have 2/3 of that!

Pretty much the only way to do that would be via ritual magic of some sort to pool PPE from other creatures.

supernatural[]

fluff on Nightbane 156 mentions they aren't REAL people:

they look more like sleepwalkers than regular pedestrians.
If they hear any loud noise, they instinctively cringe, but make little effort to hide or run.
These aren't real people, but Dopplegangers, supernatural doubles of the humans

psionics[]

In their original drone states they have none but becoming Awakened gives them psychic abilities plus a boost to save vs HF

stats[]

Nightbane pg 158 gave initials stats for the RCC and talks about statistics. They do not exist on a 1-for-1 ratio for all humans Apparently "millions have an exact double" and estimates are given that 20-30% of ADULT humans do, while less than 2% of dopplegangers are children/preteen.

two centuries[]

Nightbane 160 mentions "most appear fully grown" and they can exist for an average of 200 years after appearing, likely outliving their original inspirations. Most die by violence, and they age slowly and then just randomly break down at the end.

Dark Conversions 122:

ages at the same rate as its human doubles.
However, if the human double dies or is slain, the Doppleganger freezes at the age of their demise and lives for as long as a century without growing older

two days[]

explicitly, dopplegangers who visit earth die in 2 days coexisting on earth w/ the human they've copied - preventable by returning, killing the original or sending that human off-planet into the nightlands. It's unclear what happens if the human remains alive and is transported off-Earth by other means besides the nightlands, like if they were sent to Rifts Earth for example.

This death clock appears to be absent on Rifts Earth per Dark Conversions 120:

The only way to rid the world of a Nightlands Doppleganger for the original individual to find and destroy his Doppleganger!
This action does not actually kill the infernal creature but breaks its hold on the Rifts Earth reality and forces another swap, sending

it back to the Nightlands and leaving the human back in the space and time where he belongs.

122 reiterates this more clearly:

On Rifts Earth, a Doppleganger can coexist with its originator in the world.
Ordinarily, a Doppleganger will die within 48 hours unless he fmds and kills his double or one of them (human or Doppleganger) goes back to the Nightlands.
That is not the case on Rifts Earth, because the immeasurable level of magic energy, presence of the supernatural and melding of numerous

different realities changes the environment so the Doppleganger and the actual Earthling can exist simultaneously

awakening[]

Several things are described as being able to do this:

  • psionic stimulation and torture by Nightlords
  • psychic backlash by the death of the earth battle ("sometimes")
  • being brought to Earth (automatic)

Warlords[]

introduced on page 156 of Nightlands (world book 2) they are awakened subjected to mystical operates as a reward for services, extends their lifespan tenfold (from centuries to millenia) and massively increases their stats. Their healing is boosted from hourly to minutely.

Attributes[]

Attributes are explicitly the same as their original humans, 160 emphasizes

"if a copy of a specific character already known to exist, the stats will be identical."

This differs from the Nemesis below which states:

"relatively similar to the human whom they reflect. No attribute should be more than 5 points higher or lower than the human's. If possible, the attributes should be more extreme"

Warlords are the only known exception to this since they get attribute bonuses in addition to their human baselines.

Nemeses[]

The Nemesis RCC introduced on page 23 of Through the Glass Darkly confused the issue somewhat since it had many similarities. It wasn't even a 'race' on its own per-se (there are no stats) but a concept applied to various existing RCCs.

While it is established that most human adults do NOT have a doppleganger (billions vs millions) this book established that ALL humans (including children) have an "opposite and equal" in the Nightlands who is considered their Nemesis.

This can include a Doppleganger, though it doesn't appear to be required to be that own person's doppleganger, since in parenthesis it specifies "resembling anyone". This means it is more of a spiritual nemesis.

The humans are described as "always ignorant" and Nightlands creatures are "equally unaware".

Page 24 mentions how Nightbane do not have such reflections/doubles.

It also notably emphasizes that Nemeses always have the same experience levels as their humans - which resembles the Doppleganger note from page 160 of the main book:

If their counterpart is killed, Dopplegangers start at the same level as their mirror

Awakened dopplegangers explicitly can advance "in level beyond their double's current" which would violate the Nemeses restrictions, concurrent with the idea that a human's mandatory Nemeses can be someone else's doppleganger instead of their own optional doppleganger.

In fact this would have to be the common trend - if ALL humans have dopplegangers (from childhood) and most dopplegangers are adults (not children) then humans who don't have childhood dopplegangers would inevitably have to have a Nemesis who is either someone else's doppleganger or one of the nightlands creatures.

Nemeses always have opposite alignments whereas "total opposite" only happens 10% of the time with Dopplegangers - 20% of the time they have the same alignment and 70% of the time its other options (minor deviations or randomness)

Nemeses always die when their humans die - humans whose nemeses die are inexplicable depressed for 2-12 weeks. It's unclear if they are assigned a new nemeses past that point or not.

The overall purpose of this is probably to explain why most Nightlords are against the idea of mass-culling humanity all at once, even though there are those working for it - since it could cause unpredictable depletions in their minions before they can replace the numbers. This is why (aside from the inconvenience of subterfuge) why Dopplegangers are sent over at a slower pace to replace humans too, or why capture and sending them to Nightlands as a slave would be emphasized over simple murder.

Night Princes can be Nemeses and are the only example that do not die when their human does - they attach to a new human.

All is not All[]

23's "All human beings have a Nemesis in the Nightlands" is actually contradicted the next page on 24:

Not every human has a Nemesis, many have zombie-like, unawakened Dopplegangers.

One way to resolve this is that not every "human" is a "human being". Since they "tend to be reflections of special — important and powerful — people" one could posit that only special humans are 'human beings'.

The phrasing that Unawakened Dopplegangers is an alternative to a Nemesis is interesting as it may imply that these are created for innately un-special humans (those who get early Dopplegangers in childhood) or maybe for humans who had non-doppleganger nemesis that were slain and needed a pseudo-Nemeses replacement later in in life.

Given that only a miniority (around a fifth) of adult humans have dopplegangers, this may indicate that the majority of humans (80%ish) are considered special enough to be 'human beings'.

It's unclear who (if anyone) is actually aware of the nemeses phenomenon in-game or if it's purely a metagame construct. We are told "There is no obvious or causal link at work in any of this." and that Nightlords don't promote servants because a human got a promotion - patterns are at play but it's unclear who perceives them.

It seems required that the subject of the pattern is at best partially aware of it aware of it, since a Nemesis "made aware of his human reflection" is also "never realizing that killing its human reflection will cause its own destruction"

It may be that being 'made aware' is more just being aware of a character's existence, and not the nature of their existence as a reflection w/ a fatal link.

connection to nightlords[]

Page 120 of Dark Conversions firsts talks about this, firstly with interdimensional sensation:

can the Nightlords begin to feel that world and reach for it

This also appears to create a retroactive limitation on minion transport and their own inevitably immigration:

a Nightlord can send as many as 50 Minions into the world for every one Doppleganger under his rule
rule, he cannot enter Rifts Earth himself until there are at least one thousand Dopplegangers waiting

Page 148 of Dark Conversions reiterates how a thousand of them are needed to anchor a Nightlord to Rifts Earth - something not mentioned in Nightbane. This is similar to the thousand-vampire quantities of vampires required to bring a Vampire Intelligence. This was likely introduced to give mechanical explanations for why nightlords don't immediately invade planets.

Page 120 also says "that Nightlord or three of his Night Princes" being options at the thousand-doppleganger mark, indicating that the Night Prince is not one of those "1 per 50" since by 1000 dopplegangers on earth that should allow sending twenty non-doppleganger minions.

Page 148's "Breach the Mirrorwall" gives slightly different ratios: a threshold of 500 dopplegangers gives the option of 1 avatar or 1-4 Night Princes.

Dopplegangers dropping below 1000 tears them from reality until they get 2000, and this number doubles every time, so it seems unlikely Nightlords will come immediately when possible and instead get a huge excess. Voluntary leaving prevents that happening when it drops, explaining why they might come over in person infrequently and prefer to send avatars instead.

intelligence[]

The Summon and bind creatures ability from Shadows of Light. refers to the "unawakened" dopplegangars as "automaton-like creatures" who requires a lower PPE cost to summon+bind as compared to "intelligent humanoid creatures" - implying awakened dopplegangers would level up to the next category.

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