Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Free Old School Space Comic Book Resource - Space: 1999 #6 Charltonv August 1, 1976. For Your Old School Space Campaigns


The Charlton company  from Derby Connecticut had among their silenced properties, Space 1999 back in 1976. There was a particularly haunting and odd story which featured a very memorable android character who would make a fantastic NPC for a space opera game. Charlton's black and white Space: 1999 #6 story  (cover-dated August 1976) and by Mike Pellowski and Vicente Alcazar features the "The Infinity Mechanism". 
READ IT RIGHT 
HERE

One the things that was odd in the story was the mention of the Hawks space craft. These were assumed by many fans myself included to be only featured in the Space 1999 episode War Games. But recently rereading the comic contingency the Hawks were a regular part of the make up of Moon Base Alpha.

One of the things that was very interesting about this story is the 70's space opera vibe that echoes throughout the story from the groovy space craft see on the first page. To the 1970's astronaut suit as well. There's some very cool about how this story is put together from the strong characterization to the fact that your own PC's could easily stand in for the Moon base crew.

The mechanism from Xenon called Infinity looks like a Robocop cyborg reject but the fact that he has an organic mind makes him something very interesting. He easily be a stand in for a number of cyborg NPC's in a wide variety of campaign universes.
But he's not simply a cyborg or an android, he's actually a lich like level drainer. He's got the appearance of a simple 'Andy' but in fact he's murderous cybernetic horror on the loose. 

Given what and who this android horror is, I would say he's got a couple of levels in cleric or another old school wizard class. He's swift and very dangerous as well as simply waiting to drain the hell out of anyone on Moonbase Alpha.

Infinity is a prime canidate to get a reworking over into a Stars Without Number or another old school retroclone system adventure. This particular character has a ton going for him. And he's perfect fodder for going into a campaign to play merry havoc on a group of old school gamers. What makes this issue so solid is the black and white artwork that has so many old school bits that its perfect fodder for adventures. 
Of course the Space 1999 crew figures out a way to defeat him. But today this story is almost completely unknown even among Space 1999 fans making it perfect fodder to pull this issue's story whole cloth into an old school frighter
Infinity is perfect fodder for an old school adventure complete with murderous android. This story's plot like could easily be adapted into any number of retroclone rpgs. For the Xplorers rpg system Infinity is going a perfect foil for either small party of adventurers or as a hazard left behind on some forgotten remote corner of the universe.
For Stars Without Numbers Infinity is perfect material for depicting an A.I. whose far exceeded its programming and must be taken out for the good of galactic society.

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