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Heavy Gear: Earth Companion
01/02/2004 . Source: Stephen Hunt 
pub: Dream Pod 9. 256-page sourcebook. Price: $29.95 (US). ISBN: 1-894814-91-6. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.dp9.com
Another Heavy Gear sourcebook from our chums in Canada, Dream Pod Nine.
This times its everything you ever wanted to know about the bad guys of the Heavy Gear universe... aka Earth - cradle of mankind, ruled in the 62nd Century by the fascist-lite NEC ... the New Earth Commonwealth.
Believe me, if you're around in the 62nd century and it turns out like this, make sure you get out to one of the offworld colonies, because Earth isn't somewhere you're particularly going to want to be ... unless you have a kinky thing for black uniforms and have a good position in 'The Party', that is.
The 'ol homeworld has been through a third world war, near social collapse, an ice age, and is now overpopulated, starving and living - or perhaps surviving would be a more appropriate term - in an environmentally shagged out ecosystem.
The current strong(wo)men holding the planet together have retaken all the Sol system colonies from the Moon through to the orbital stations of Neptune, and now they're moving in on the long abandoned offworld colonies. Earth needs food and raw materials .... and the colonies are going to supply it, whether they can afford to or not.
Unfortunately, the colonials are still connected by wormhole gates to Sol, allowing the forces of Terra's Colonial Expeditionary Force (CEF) an invasion route leading right up to their human neighbors' orbital doorstep.
However, after an easy victory at the first colony world of Caprice, things have started going wrong for Earth ... continuing warfare of Terranova, stalemate on the waterworld of Atlantis, and everything they chuck into the New Jerusalem system has a nasty habit of vanishing without trace.
The mecha theme and manga-style graphics aside, the literary feel this companion work most reminded me of is the Merchanteer universe of the SF author CJ Cherryh, real corkers like her Downbelow Station or Merchanteer's Luck.
Dark days and a small handful of colonies at war with a desperate Earth. In DP9's engaging universe though, the callously treated vat-grown clone troops are on the side of Earth rather than the rebel colony worlds though.
These come in the form of the Colonial Expeditionary Force's GRELs - standard vat-grown groundpounders, or the more human like SLEDGE supersoldiers. The latter perhaps a small nod to the SLABs found in the pages of the last Ballad of Halo Jones comic strip.
This book is great value for money, weighing in at 253 pages packed with DP9's usual high standard of graphics and illustrations. Everything from starcharts to tech specs of the CEF's spaceborne assets ... Leviathan class dreadnoughts and the various classes of combat drones.
The Earth Companion kicks off with a look at the current tattered state of the mother world, and all various political groupings and nations which make up the New Earth Commonwealth. Hint, it's not as homogenous an entity as you might think, with lots of scope for infighting and backstabbing within the Party.
It then jumps onto to the military forces of Earth, looking at everything from CEF medals, dress uniforms to the various classes of GREL - that's Genetically Recombined Experimental Legionnaire program to you or me. These killer clones include the lovely - if hair challenged - Isabella Class combat medic and the brute-like Mordred Class thugs.
It's in the military side of things that this book really shines; logistics, machines, equipment, space assets, notable battle groups and their leaders. These are accompanies by skill point stats and the like where appropriate, but as you'd expect in a companion, the RPG gameage takes second place to the wordage and the fine illustrations.
If you're looking for a modern SF setting for your next RPG game, or are scribbling military science fiction as a sideline, you could do far worse than seek inspiration from the pages of this excellent tome courtesy of DP9.
Stephen Hunt
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