The sudden explosion sends you tumbling wildly out of control. Frantically, you grip the maneuvering sticks, struggling with the verniers and apogee thrusters in a desperate attempt to correct your flight vector. Luckily, the resistant outer layers of composite laminated armor covering the heavy torso of your exo-armor have flash-vaporized under the megajoule pulse of the enemy laser beam, sparing you a cold death in the vacuum of space. Your helmet display shows your new trajectory and the gigantic silhouette of the colony cylinder you are protecting, bright pinpoints of light marking the location of the attackers to your left.

You react quickly, spinning your exo-armor around and raising your right arm to align the targeting crosshair with the most likely vector of your rapidly moving opponent. Your massive battle machine mimics your action, its arm-mounted massdriver spewing out a barrage of hypervelocity slugs. A bright explosion in the distance - one down, one to go! Better end this fast, you think: the gauge on your reaction mass tank is already in the red. But you're not worried; you're the best pilot of the Confederation, after all.

The Jovian Chronicles recount the stories of one possible future, a time in which Mankind has expanded and settled the solar system, going as far as terraforming Venus and Mars. The Chronicles introduce a complete science fiction universe for roleplaying and tactical space combat, featuring giant spacecraft and epic space battles. The game features a blend of action/adventure and hard-science space colonization facts. Although the books are not intended to be big engineering manuals, they remain chock-full of the amazing yet plausible technical details that are so much a part of realistic science fiction settings. All those fascinated by the wondrous concept of space colonization will find more than enough to satisfy them in the Jovian Chronicles.

Jovian Chronicles is based on the Silhouette game engine, a streamlined, easy-to-use set of rules that is already described in Heavy Gear, Dream Pod 9's other highly successful science fiction game (see the Silhouette section of this Web site for more details). Depending upon your gaming group's preference, the Chronicles can be played as either a roleplaying game, a tactical board game, or a smooth integration of both. Roleplayers can easily ignore the tactical sections of the rules, if preferred.

To help newcomers get a better picture of the Jovian Chronicles, here are a few tidbits of information that paint a rough portrait of this great science fiction saga. Fasten your seat belts - we're boosting out of orbit right now!

• Introduction
• Genesis of the Jovian Chronicles project
• Jovian Chronicles world
• JC History
• Planets of the Solar System
• Mechanical designs
• Machines of Jovian Chronicles
• Mechanical Cyclopedia
• Glossary

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