Hawks & Moons - Cepheus Engine rpg & The Gerry Anderson Factor

Does Earth's moon hold far more secrets then humanity understood?! Even as it was blasted from Earth's solar system in 1999?! 



Apollo 16, 1972. Unofficial picture from the Fox William Mulder archives provide by Andrea Bonazzi

Two days ago Paul Elliot of Zozer games came out with a really cool little comment in the Cepheus Engine Face book group; " You could combine Orbital 2100 with Hostile, swapping the Alien-style ships in Hostile for the 2100 centrifuge ships, just add a hyperdrive from Hostile.... Both are Cepheus Engine Zozer Games "  
Now this got me thinking about Hostile which according to Paul ;"In a way my later setting HOSTILE is the Orbital setting, 125 years later ... but with the caveat of hyperspace and anti-gravity." 

So does this mean that in the one hundred & twenty five years every small mom & pop adventurer start up is going to be able to afford the high end space craft of Hostile?! Hell no. They'll be relying on the hyperdrives to get them into the wild black of interstellar outer space. And this is where Orbital 2100 comes into play.

 This is one of the points of this is that mom & pop surveyors & prospectors are going to be using much of the equipment still found in Orbital 2100. Why not simply use Explorers & call it a day?! Space & especially interstellar space is mind bogglingly huge. This means that in some regions of space 125 year old technology is still the norm. Explorers is the upper end of the field for my Hostile/Cepheus Engine rpg campaign.  
But there's another reason all together and that's the Gerry Anderson factor. Orbital 2100 also offers the DM the ability to run a U.F.O. Seventies  TV style add on to the campaign. But how could you pull this off?! Easily with Michael Brown's Omega 99 campaign setting.  Omega 99 offers a moon with some interesting alien neighbors in the form of  the Edari, the Kahgg, and the Mecharchs.  Some great ideas as well to get the polyester sci fi  goodness underway. 

Since my wife & I were kids we've loved Gerry Anderson's  Seventies television show  U.F.O. but man this show could use an overhaul & it got one as the first season of Space 1999. But U.F.O. is still a favorite among fans. 



But what does this have to do with Hostile & Orbital 2100?! Everything as we see in the Space 1999 first season episode 'Wargames' which introduced the iconic Hawk IX  to the space craft line up. The Hawk would later appear in Starlog magazine issue 32 March 1980. Which had the Hawk as an unofficial space craft  link up between Moonbase Alpha beginnings & the Hawk space craft  defense program as a defense against the aliens of U.F.O. You can go to the Space 1999 catacombs here to read all about from the pages of Starlog. 

MPC's Hawk mark IX model that was available in Walmart. 

Not only can the Hawk program be done in Orbital 2100 but by using Attack Squadron Rosewell you & your players get the full on effect of sky borne action in an alternative Earth 1980. Orbital 2100 is the perfect space craft bed to design the Hawk program from. 

Why not just use 'The Stars Are Ours' as the campaign basis?! 
Well what if I total you that these aliens were just as much to a menace to the the Reticulan Empire as to the humans. And the reason is the humans. Human bodies & organs are being harvested by the aliens. The Reticulan's humans in TSAO  are simply another bell bottom  obstacle to be removed to the aliens of this campaign. The aliens of U.F.O. are particularly Lovecraftian in a sense. The aliens are actually a combination of the abductees who have been modified to hold the alien's life  essence with organ transplants. And originals who are trying to survive against a really nasty ecological disaster on their home planet. 
Details on these aliens & their craft as follows.. 

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