Shady Palms

Political Affiliation

 * 3095 - Deep Periphery

Planetary History
Placed deep in the Deep Periphery astrogeographical feature known as the Orion Rift, the installation known colloquially as Shady Palms is located within the asteroid belt around the the yellow-white super giant star catalogued by the Star League as SLSC F81a.0086. Based upon a heavily modified Snowden-class mining station, the installation was deployed in the system in 2749 to conduct research; an advanced astronomical observation facility, Shady Palms linked together hundreds of visible, infrared, x-ray and neutrino telescopes and detectors that had been laced throughout the asteroid field. The star at the heart of the system provided power for both the installation and all of the deployed instruments via solar panels and collectors that drew on its massive solar output.

Shady Palms itself was home to scientists who undertook five-year tours aboard the installation; modifications to the basic Snowden design to support their deployment included the conversion of the ore processing station to house a complex central computer and the conversion of the pressurized bays into hydroponic gardens that provided food and space for recreation. From its location Shady Palms could process and analyze data that was used to pinpoint planets orbiting stars up to five hundred light-years away, and Shady Palms was responsible for providing the Star League with a significant amount of information on such areas as the Dark Expanse and other regions of the rimward Deep Periphery.

When the Star League collapsed, the last team of scientists stationed on Shady Palms were abandoned and left to die. Shady Palms then remained uninhabited and unknown to any in the Inner Sphere until 3010, when a small group of refugees from the Outworlds Alliance stumbled across the station. Shady Palms' life support systems were still running and the hydroponic bays were generating ample quantities of food, factors that led to the refugees deciding to settle aboard the installation.

The next group to visit Shady Palms were explorers from Interstellar Expeditions (IE), who rediscovered the installation in 3069 and who were surprised to find people living aboard the facility. The inhabitants of Shady Palms agreed to allow IE personnel access to the station, an act of generosity that ensured that IE staff treated the inhabitants respectfully. IE discovered that the Shady Palms computer core had overloaded shortly after the last of the Star League scientists had died and was still inoperable three centuries later; given the wealth of information likely to be contained within the computer core, IE went to work in an effort to repair the core and extract the records it contained. These efforts were still ongoing in 3095.