Heavy Gear

Lore & Background

Heavy Gear is set on the fictional planet Terra Nova around 4,000 years from now (AD 6132). Once a colony of the United Earth Government, Terra Nova was abandoned after an economic collapse, leading to a Dark Age. City-states eventually rose and united into Leagues, which formed the superpower blocs of the northern and southern hemispheres. The planet has no oceans, a desert equatorial belt called the Badlands, and small ice caps. The military focus of the setting centers on Heavy Gears—12- to 20-foot-tall bipedal combat machines powered by a unique hydrocarbon-burning V-engine. Major wars include the War of the Alliance, where Terra Nova united against an Earth attempt to reclaim its colonies using hover tanks and GREL super soldiers.

Reader's Guide

The Heavy Gear universe is notable for its detailed background, with more than a hundred books and game accessories published since 1994. The game system, Silhouette, was developed by Dream Pod 9 after Gen Con 1993. The setting's continual epic storyline moves chronologically with new publications. The Heavy Gear books are heavily illustrated, with detailed plans, cutaways, flags, and maps, primarily by illustrator Ghislain Barbe. The TV series featured a much simplified version of the universe. The game is best known for its humanoid combat vehicles, the Gears and Striders, which emphasize maneuver warfare over raw firepower. The most recent rulebook, Heavy Gear: Blitz! Locked & Loaded, is a dedicated wargame with no role-playing material.

Did You Know?

• The V-engine powering Heavy Gears is not a modern V-engine design but an alternative invented by students at the University of Colorado.
• The planet Terra Nova has very little axial tilt, resulting in small to non-existent seasonal weather differences.
• The War of the Alliance saw Earth use purple-skinned GREL super soldiers (Genetically Recombined Experimental Legionaries).
• The Badlands equatorial belt is not dominated by any political group and contains bandit groups known as Rovers.

Origins and the Birth of a Franchise

Dream Pod 9, a Canadian publisher, has been releasing Heavy Gear material since 1994. The franchise traces its roots to the 1993 Gen Con convention, where the company's designers concluded they needed a proprietary game system in order to publish their own books independently. That decision produced the Silhouette System, which became the mechanical backbone of Heavy Gear. From that tabletop foundation the property expanded into a tactical wargame, a role-playing game, and a combat card game called Heavy Gear Fighter. The setting also crossed into digital media when Activision published PC game adaptations in 1997 and 1999, projects developed after Activision lost the rights to the Battletech and MechWarrior franchises. A 40-episode, 3D-animated television series followed in 2001, though it presented a considerably simplified rendering of the universe. Across more than three decades, well over a hundred books and game accessories have been published, all threaded together by a single continuous epic storyline that advances chronologically with every new release.

Terra Nova: A World Without Oceans

Heavy Gear is set on Terra Nova, a distant colony world roughly four thousand years in the future, around AD 6132. Once the pride of the United Earth Government's colonial portfolio, the planet was abandoned after an economic collapse, plunging its population into a prolonged Dark Age. From that wreckage, city-states gradually emerged and consolidated, through treaties or tyranny, into nations called Leagues. Those Leagues in turn merged, peacefully or by force, into two great superpower blocs controlling the temperate northern and southern hemispheres. The planet's geography is unusual: it is almost entirely land, holding deep underground water reserves but possessing no true oceans. Its native fauna includes the bison-like Barnaby, raised as livestock, and the Hopper, a rabbit analogue, though most creatures are reptilian. The single dominant land feature is the Badlands, a vast mineral-rich hot desert belt circling the equator, claimed by no single power and home to roving bandit groups called Rovers. Most human settlements cluster in the polar regions where temperatures are livable, and the planet's minimal axial tilt keeps seasonal variation nearly nonexistent.

The Heavy Gears and the V-Engine

The machines that give the franchise its name are bipedal, single-occupant combat units standing between twelve and twenty feet tall and weighing five to twelve tons. A pilot sits within the chest-and-head unit, and the Gears are deliberately less armored and less heavily armed than the main battle tanks fielded by Terra Nova's armies. Their tactical value lies instead in mobility: they cross difficult terrain faster and change direction more quickly than tanks, fitting a rules system that rewards maneuver warfare over raw firepower. Power comes from a distinctive hydrocarbon-burning piston engine known as the V-engine, typically mounted as a backpack. Despite the name, it bears no resemblance to a modern V-engine; it was an alternative design invented by students at the University of Colorado. The engine features two rotating cylindrical blocks, each with multiple chambers, set roughly ninety degrees apart. Shared V-shaped rods act as pistons, and as the blocks turn inside static housings, aligned openings serve as intake and exhaust ports while electrical contacts fire the spark plugs. The rotation also drives electrical power generation for the unit.

The War of the Alliance and a Fractured Peace

The setting's most significant conflict is the War of the Alliance, in which Terra Nova's northern and southern superpowers set aside their differences to repel a new dictatorial Earth government attempting to reclaim its former colonies by force. Earth deployed advanced hover tanks and armies of GREL, purple-skinned Genetically Recombined Experimental Legionaries. During the Colonial Expeditionary Force's first defeat and withdrawal, many personnel, both human and GREL, were left behind. These abandoned soldiers eventually settled in the equatorial Badlands and founded their own city-state, Port Arthur. As of the local year TN 1936, corresponding to AD 6132, the Confederated Northern City-States and the Allied Southern Territories are still rebuilding from that war. Despite the shared memory of Earth's aggression, the two blocs harbor deep mutual suspicion and animosity, a dynamic the creators have likened to the real-world NATO-versus-Warsaw-Pact Cold War. Meanwhile, the independent city-states of the Badlands struggle merely to survive the crossfire between the polar giants.