Maidenhead

Maidenhead is a small colony in the Sextans Sector of the Perseus Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy. It is significant due to the role it played in turning the Second Aurelian War. 
=== Geography and Environment ===
Maidenhead orbits a cool orange dwarf star and has an orbital period of 110 solar days, and a rotaional period of twenty-six solar hours. Large areas of the planet are uninhabitable due to the accretion of toxic gases secreted by volcanic activity. As these heavy gases settle in the lowland valleys and plains, the human population lives atop plateaus and mesas that rise above the contaminated atmosphere, primarily on the planet's major subcontinent. 
=== Civilization ===
Maidenhead had a modest level of development when charted by the Explorer Ship Unlocked Achievement and its Defender Ship Iron Will had a planetary population of approximately 150,000,000 centered around the planetary capital, Novi.
=== Role in the Second Aurelian War ===
Approximately thirty solar years after the initial Aurelian attacks, an attack force un unknown origin appeared in the Maidenhead system which had until then been spared attack. 
The enemy ships orbiting Maidenhead had not bombed the planet from orbit, but demanded immediate surrender, which the colony had offered, its defense fleet having been destroyed. When reinforcements of the combined Commonwealth/FreeWorlds Alliance fleets arrived (months later), the enemy ships engaged them in a short and indecisive battle ensued, during which it was recognized that the enemy ships were not of Aurelian design.
Instead, the ships belonged to the Lynx, a species descended from the felines of Ancient Earth, raised to sapience by Commonwealth Era gene-tech. The Aurelians had attacked several Lynx worlds within the Lynx cluster, and the Lynx initially did not distinguish between Aurelians and humans. They agreed to negotiations only after a long list of demands… including copious requests for food delivered to their ships… were met and agreed to. 
Careful negotiations were carried out at Maidenhead Colony, although the Lynx refused to meet face-to-face with the human negotiators. The negotiations lasted for two Solar Years, but in the end, the Lynx agreed to a limited, wartime alliance with the New Commonwealth and the Free Worlds. This new alliance proved decisive in the ultimate defeat of the Aurelians.
Category:Worlds