Planet Safehold Data

From David Weber's "Safehold" series. Information from the Safehold Wiki

In the 25th century, the alien Gbaba destroyed the Terran Federation and it's many colonies. In a last ditch effort to save the human race, nine million colonists were placed in stasis and the ships went into hyperflight for two years, trying to escape the Gbaba and Operation Ark was put into effect.

Operation Ark was the secret Terran Federation mission to assure the survival of the human race by sending a colonial fleet beyond Gbaba space to settle on a new planet. Its chief administrator was Eric Langhorne.

The plan was to maintain a preelectric level of technology on the new colony for at least three or four centuries, avoiding any betraying emissions while preserving the records of humanity's history and the war with the Gbaba.

The original plan also included the positioning of two or three of the expedition's ships in completely powered-down orbits somewhere in the same star system, where they would be impossible to detect or differentiate from any other asteroid without direct physical examination, but available for recovery once indigenous spaceflight was redeveloped. They would serve as an enormous bootstrap for technological advancement, and would also provide a yardstick by which to evaluate the relative capabilities of further fleet developments.

After the two years in hyperflight, they reached the planet Safehold.

Safehold was a little smaller than Earth, though it retained Earth standard gravity due to its higher density. In comparison, it had a higher percentage of land surface. The largest continents were Haven and Howard, which were connected by a narrow strait of land. The rest of the landmass was scattered all over the planet's three oceans: the Great Western Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Carter's Ocean; none of which had the size of those on Old Earth.

Many landmasses, like Charis in the south of the eastern hemisphere, were traditionally referred to as islands, even though they were actually small continents in their own right, surrounded by a sheer infinite number of smaller, actual islands.

Because of Safehold's pronounced axial tilt, the planet experienced greater seasonal shifts than Earth. This included an average lower temperature than on humanity's homeworld, due to the star which it orbited, aptly named Kau-zhi.

Originally Safehold was unfit for human habitation and was terraformed over a period of eight years by the Alpha Terraforming crew. Headed by Pei Shan-wei, they used genetic manipulation among other technologies to adapt the terrestrial plant and animal life to the planet while also culling back the native predators.

After terraforming was complete, Operation Ark's Administrators, Eric Langhorne and Adorée Bédard, changed the plans of Operation Ark. They changed the memories of the millions of colonists that were sent to the planet Safehold, making them believe that they were created by a god who had sent them "archangels" as emmissaries. Langhorne himself posed as the leader of these beings, the much-revered Archangel Langhorne.

When Pei Shan-wei and her followers opposed his plans to forever eradicate all memory of humanity's ancient history and the Gbaba, he had the Alexandria Enclave, in which he believed all who stood against him to reside, bombed from orbit.

Langhorne was supposedly killed along with most of the other "angels" during Pei Kau-yung's retaliational attack on the Temple of God.