High quality real estate now available.
The star system of Jennifer's Star lies to the Galactic Southwest, and is one of the few systems still allowed to operate a jumpgate, retaining a commercial hyperspace lane back to the core systems via the Wilke's Star system. It is currently ruled by House Griswold on behalf of the Holy Terran Empire.
History[]
Founded in 2142, Jennifer's Star was originally one of the most distant colonies in the Earth Federation. Settled during the Bug War, it started out as a military outpost, and then gradually expanded into a full-fledged colony. It took to terraforming well and quickly developed into a major colony, due to its strategic position in accessing the systems in the Galactic Southwest.
During the 2nd Civil War of 2223-25, it remained loyal to the Federation, and suffered many terrorist attacks as a result. Because of its strategic location, it was the site the Treaty of Jennifer's Star in 2235 that established borders between the Federation, Eastern Bloc, and the Frontier Worlds Territory.
Early in the 3rd Civil War of 2243-44, the Tech Infantry Rebels seized the Jennfier's Star. It turned out to be a crucial system as it was the only link to the Federation's southwestern border systems when the Eastern Bloc invaded them. Although the TI Rebels fought the Bloc long and hard, they ultimately conquered all of the galactic southwest, including Jennifer's Star. It would remain under Eastern Bloc rule for the next twelve years, during which time thousands of han immigrants migrated to Jennifer's Star, leaving a lasting Asian influence on the system's society and culture.
During the Vin Shriak Holy War of 2251-55, the Vin Shriak aliens invaded and all but destroyed the Eastern Bloc, then moved on to the Federation. The Vin Shriak worldships and the Earth Fleet fought a major space battle in the Jennifer's Star system, and no fewer than three Star Control Ships were lost turning back the Vin Shriak tide. Jennifer's Star was attacked and briefly bombarded, but the Vin Shriak didn't manage to make a landing on the world. When the Federation finally defeated the alien invasion in 2255, the entire galactic southwest (including Jennifer's Star) fell back under Federation rule.
Jennifer's Star was the site of the first real battle of the Caal Invasion of 2264. The Caal, realizing that they had been discovered, seized the planet and possessed very nearly the entire surviving population of the system, then loaded them onto captured transport ships for their planned invasion of Avalon. When that fleet was destroyed in the Battle of Avalon, the citizens of Jennifer's Star perished with them.
In the aftermath, the newly-formed Holy Terran Empire sent forces to sweep Jennifer's Star and the other Caal-attacked systems of Edo, Khmer, Pyong, and Hadley to search for possible Caal hosts. Pretty much anyone the Caal didn't kill or possess, the Imperial Army killed just to make sure.
The Imperial forces withdrew shortly thereafter, as their exposed position there was untenable once the Ascension War of 2265 broke out in earnest. The system became one of the founding members of the Terran Republic, and remained in their hands until the Republic's disintegration and absorption by the Empire at the end of the conflict.
One urban legend from this period tells of a man named Scyr, a mysterious arms dealer and smuggler who appeared in Jennifer's Star seemingly out of nowhere shortly after the Caal Invasion, and promptly picked a feud with Kazimir Vitek, the president of the new Terran Republic. Their feud escalated from public disagreement to hit squads sent to each others' homes, and finally to Scyr sending a star freighter on autopilot on a cee-fractional collision course with Vitek's new capital on Babylon. The winners of the ensuing struggle to fill the power vacuum decided to make use of such brutal cunning by naming Scyr as Assistant Secretary of the Terran Republic Navy, a post he held until his sudden defection to the Holy Terran Empire a few months later. Scyr disappeared for good soon after, but not until making an apparent attempt to also assassinate the Emperor himself. (Only a handful of people know the truth: that attempt succeeded, and Scyr took Vin Dane's identity and place as the God-Emperor of Mankind.) The popular story of Scyr has been enshrined forever in the system's Impball team name, the Jennifer's Star Scyrs.
The methods of Caal invasion did not do severe damage to buildings or other infrastructure, so Jennifer's Star was left very inhabitable but very uninhabited. As a result, for the last decade, refugees from the recent disruptions have been flooding into Jennifer's Star, all looking for a nice intact home or business they could move into and take possession of. This made it a ripe prize for the emerging class of Imperial Aristocrats, military & political leaders with the Emperor's favor and the ambition to rule worlds as absolute overlords in the ancient feudal fashion. House Griswold, one of the most powerful and well-connected families in the Empire, was eventually granted the system as their fiefdom, and they rule it to this day on the Emperor's behalf.
By the time of the Y3K universe a thousand years later, Jennifer's Star is ruled by House Riva.
Geography[]
There are seven inhabited planets or moons in the system, mostly small domed or underground outposts for mining or research, but the vast bulk live on the third planet, known as "Angel One" after its code name from early in the Bug War. This world has large polar oceans and a series of medium-sized continents girdling its equator, most of their area having a pleasant tropical or subtropical climate, although some of the interior uplands are cooler and drier. The capital of Jennifer's Star is the coastal city Dynametro, and is served by the planet's primary spaceport, officially known as Dynaport, but more commonly referred to as "Deport".
Demography[]
Well over a billion people lived on Angel One and the other settlements in the system before the Caal Invasion. The entire population was effectively wiped out in the invasion and its immediate aftermath, and over half of all people lost in the conflict were from Jennifer's Star.
Since then, the population has rebounded somewhat, but the dismantling of the Jumpgate network greatly reduced the ability of those from other systems to get to Jennifer's Star, even though it is one of the few systems allowed to still operate a single Jumpgate. Still, that jumpgate has kept the local economy afloat after the initial phase of "steal anything not nailed down, the owner is certainly dead" had transitioned to "now how do we rebuild the economy when everything not cemented in place has been stolen and sold on the black market?" The 240 million people living in the system as of 2275 have rebuilt a significant industrial and transportation-based economy and are prospering better than most systems in the Empire.
Jennifer's Star retains something of a Wild West free-for-all atmosphere, and the population is still largely made up of a mix of former desperate refugees fleeing the destruction of everything they once knew (including a few hundred thousand people relocated from the abandoned colony of Hrothgar), and ambitious and unscrupulous people who came to this system expressly to loot the possessions of victims of the Caal. Friends and relatives of those victims, and the few lucky individuals who were off-planet at the time and escaped the slaughter, have had little luck suing in Imperial courts to regain the lost property they or their relatives held on Angel One prior to the invasion.
Season 8 Alternate Timeline[]
Jennifer's Star was one of the first worlds to fall to the Eastern Bloc advance, and became a major logistics hub during the campaign to conquer the Federation. The immense spaceport built on an equatorial plateau for military purposes during the war was later expanded into Yang Liwei Spaceport, one of the wonders of the galaxy. Commonly known as "The Slab", it was a perfectly flat square plane 40 kilometers on a side, providing an immense landing field where even the largest Star Control Ships could land for complex repairs and refittings. As part of the Middle Kingdom's anti-religious policies, the planet itself was renamed from "Angel One" to "Jennifer III", a more sensible and descriptive if less romantic name. The planet was the original home of Sharif Adams before he moved to Minos.
Behind the Scenes[]
The system is named after Jennifer Simmons, Nathan Bax's (the original creator) girlfriend at the time, and now his wife. The main planet in the system is Angel One. Awww.... ain't that sweet?