Somewhere in the Eastern Sector of Serenity Valley, Planet Hera

Looking down from above, Serenity Valley is impressively long and winding. Wearing a thick lush coat of century old pine trees, the valley was virtually untouched by human presence for decades after terraforming took. It was only when prospectors found a large deposit of nickel and copper near the western exit of the valley that the settlers of Hera turned their attentions to this tranquil dale. Soon after the initial establishment of the mining town of Emerald Glen, loggers began to clear away the trees to the east to fuel the development of the town and to create land for local farms.

For a few decades, Emerald Glen prospered as the demand for raw material skyrocketed in the Core Planets. Loggers continued to fell trees to make way for farmland, and a small scale space launch site was built against a near vertical cliff on the other side of the mountain, an effort made by the local officials to increase the frequency of ore deliveries to the Core.

And then, the raw ore market took a nosedive when an Alliance Dreadnought warship sent multiple megaton nuclear warheads and an experimental gigaton nuclear weapon into an asteroid on a near collision course with Planet Sihnon. The asteroid was blasted into pieces, and a brilliant and mostly harmless meteor shower graced the inhabitants of Sihnon that night. The remaining pieces of the asteroid flew off into deep space, all except the nickel-iron core that embedded itself on the uninhabitable moon that orbited Sihnon. The moon soon became a hotbed of mining activity, giving the Core Planets enough nickel and iron ore to last decades.

As a result, half of Emerald Glen shut down, and the forestry clearing stopped, never to begin again. Copper ore demand was still stable, and the town continued its operations until an astronomer on Whitefall discovered Higgin’s Moon, a minor planet on a 60 year elliptical orbit that trailed from the outer edge of the Core to beyond the edge of the solar system