Martian Federation
| Martian Federation Mazfredasan | ||||||
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| Motto | ||||||
| "Surpass The Meta-Collective" | ||||||
| Anthem | ||||||
| Green Mars, Blue Mars | ||||||
c. 4005 photograph | ||||||
| Interstellar Federation | ||||||
| Capital: | ·Neo Arcadia (executive) ·Olympus Mons Metro (legislative) ·Mariner Valley (judicial) | |||||
| Largest City: | Olympus Mons Metro | |||||
| Official languages: | Martian English, Martian Chinese | |||||
| Currency: | Martian Legacy (₺) | |||||
| Demonym: | Martian, Federation, ALIAS (colloquial) | |||||
| Politics | ||||||
| Government: | Automated market-socialist technocracy | |||||
| - Command AI: | ALIAS | |||||
| - Bureaucrat President: | Aane Yeremaa | |||||
| - Bureaucrat Secretary: | Ooto Gaandre | |||||
| Settled: | 2061 | |||||
| Formation: | ·2313 (Union declared) ·2710 (Three Factions) ·3460 (Martian Federation) ·3666 (ALIAS regime) | |||||
| Colours: | IGSA standard: (Civil) (Military) | |||||
| Demographics | ||||||
| Population: | 19.7 billion | |||||
| Ethnic groups: | n/a | |||||
| National minorities: | Earthers, Jovians, Australeans | |||||
| Geography | ||||||
| Planet: | Mars | |||||
| System: | Solar System | |||||
| Avg. distance from Earth: | 225 million km | |||||
| Orbital period: | 686.971 d | |||||
| Rotation period: | 1.025 d | |||||
| Moon(s): | 2 (Deimos, Phobos) | |||||
| Surface gravity: | 0.376 g | |||||
| [Source] | ||||||
| “ | Mars is a kind hermit. It keeps to itself not 'cause of fear or ignorance, but to protect its inhabitants from the cruelty of the lesser societies out in that wider so-called "governed" space. | ” |
–Lowell Zaems in his Phase II re-application for Martian residency, 3991 | ||
The Martian Federation (Martian English: Mazfredasan) is the name of the technocratic regime that governs the planet Mars. Colonisation of Mars began in 2061, and it was governed as the Earth-controlled Colony of Mars until its succession in 2312 during the Martian War of Independence.
Through a troubled history of survival, war and revolution, Mars has seen itself terraformed and, since the installation of ALIAS in 3666, embarked upon an experiment to fully realise humankind's capacity as a creative and intelligent being. Under ALIAS's many kind eyes - itself eternally powered by the new uploaded minds of past generations - Martians are freely provided all the means and necessities required to live a happy and productive life, with the ancient concepts of race, gender, individuality, privacy, and democracy falling into obscurity so to pave the way for an idyllic society. In the three-plus centuries since Martians have rapidly diverged, becoming aliens to an inhabited space that gawks on in terror and fascination.
At the dawn of the fifth millennium, Mars ranks as the most populated planet in the possession of humanity.
History[edit | edit source]
Primitive Landings[edit | edit source]
The Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 were the first spacecrafts to make contact with the ancient Martian surface in 1971, landing in modern day West Hellas and Terra Sirenum (Planum Australe) respectively. In 1976 the US Viking 1 landed in modern day Xanthe Terra, delivering the first colour photographs of the red planet. What remained of the landers was recovered in the centuries following, with the Soviet crafts now displayed at the Museum of Primitive Spaceflight in Utopia Metro, and Viking 1 held at the Xanthe Terra Educational Forum in Viking I Landing.
In 2029 the Ares 6 Mars mission team boarded NASA's Deep Space Transport (DST) from the Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway (LOP-G) and set off for a four-year journey. By July 3rd 2033 the DST entered the planet's orbit and deployed the module Legacy, which successfully braved the planet's challenging landing conditions and touched down in modern day Solis Planum. Commander of the Ares 6 mission Morgan Tezuka became the first person to walk on Mars, with the astronaut now immortalised - along with the rest of their crew - as a Martian national icon.
Small teams would continue to work on the Martian surface for centuries to come, constructing nuclear-powered subterranean habitats and conducting research that would prove vital for future colonisation efforts. The Legacy Module and various other items from the mission (tools, spacesuits, etc) are held at the Museum of Primitive Spaceflight.
Ares 6 mission patch
Colonisation and Terraforming[edit | edit source]
In 2061, after a series of manned missions to the red planet, the first permanent residents were transferred to the Solis Planum Base. While limited by the harsh environs of Mars, with the initial colonists being reliant on supplies from Earth to expand their settlements, Mars's rich supply of industrially useful natural resources (owed in particular to the ancient volcanism of the Hesperian period, approx. 3700 - 3000 Mya) and low gravity allowed the easy construction of sturdy settlements, with its atmosphere and Earthlike day-night cycle - coupled with locally manufactured greenhouses - proving to be crucial for the cultivation of early crops. By the dawn of the 22nd century, Mars was home to several bases and rudimentary mining operations. Administration of these colonies fell to the corporations and national governments that had funded their development.
Early colonists were an exclusive demographic from day one, and were screened and selected primarily for their technical skills that could be put to use on the Martian surface. Only the highly wealthy could bypass this process, with much of this latter - initially tiny - demographic being ambitious retirees or entrepreneurs seeking to profit from the Martian people, all of whom were required by colony law to procure their own supplies independently. In these early years, Martians were almost exclusively of American or Chinese stock.
In 2195, after centuries of speculation, research and controlled tests on Earth, Luna and the surface of Mars itself, the red planet was seeded with the first primitive terraforming drones, tasked initially to detoxify its soil, and to induce a warming greenhouse effect through the introduction of strong greenhouse compounds (e.g. chlorofluorocarbons), the degassing of subterranean carbon dioxide, and even limited asteroid bombardment. While terraforming Mars had long captured the imaginations of Earth, initial efforts focused on the shorter-term goal of making the planet marginally more habitable for its inhabitants, particularly for agriculture, with the first tracts of soil free of perchlorates being zoned exclusively for large-scale greenhouses.
Sabatier Recyclers were used extensively to provide ground teams with drinkable water, aided by the abundant CO2 within Mars's atmosphere. Local ice was also mined and melted for water, with additional ice brought to Mars from the gas giants and the belt. With water in limited supply in these early centuries, most of it was stored in sealed tanks or secure reservoirs, and it would take time before the heavy H2O restrictions would ease up enough to allow water to be allowed to collect in the wastelands.
By the 23rd century, the first settlements had expanded exponentially into labyrinthine colonies. Following the success of the domed cities of Earth, construction began on a Mars' first true city in 2203, modeled after these designs. Arcadia, located in Arcadia Planitia, was habitable by 2205 and saw full completion two decades later in 2225. Capable of sustaining a population of approximately five million people, Arcadia became the de-facto capital of Mars. Its completion sparked rapid growth of the Martian colony, prompting an influx of colonists from Earth, with a cultural divide between Arcadia and the Frontier developing. Arcadia grew to be cosmopolitan melting pot focused around a singular Martian ideal while the Frontier remained rural, their identities defined by the traditions of their home nations. As humanity moved even further out into the reaches of the Sol System, Martians were some of the first to settle down on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. However, most of these Martians were either lower class or criminals, and they had little choice in the matter.
The development of Martian folk religion would begin in the 23rd century as colonists settled the Frontier. These beliefs largely formed out of a synthesis of Chinese folk religion and New Age Movements, the main belief systems of the primarily Chinese and American colonists. The genesis of the religion initially fascinated or alarmed many on Mars, but as Martian folk religion spread throughout the Frontier, the faith became normalized with many rural Martians casually practicing.
In 2297, after decades of construction, the first magnetic satellite array - or alternatively "magnetosheath" - was sent into far orbit approximately 1.5 million km away from Mars, shielding the planet from solar radiation in the tail of a powerful magnetic field. These early sheath satellites were limited by the conventional fusion reactors of the time, which demanded constant maintenance and fuel replacements by drone colonies.
Independence[edit | edit source]
The Martian War of Independence would lay the foundations of the early Martian culture and national identity. The red planet's harsh climate and small population heavily reliant on automated industry to feed and supply itself placed immense industrial power in the hands of the Martian working class (known then by the colloquialism Dusters, the root of the modern day stand-in for "citizen", Daaz), with even small teams of AI managers capable of crippling entire states through strike action.
This power would played a key part in the secession from Earther rule, which would begin in 2298 with a strike for higher pay in the notoriously corrupt state of Tharsis. When these demands were not met, the local Dusters marched on the capital with their equipment, hoping to shut down the city until their demands were met. This ended with Earther troops having to be called in to suppress what had become an unmanageable situation for the local administration. After this use of violence, Dusters in other states began to strike in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Tharsis, and soon enough, calls for independence began. The loudest of these calls came from the Martian Syndicalist Association, a left wing labor organisation, and Ares Legion, a radical survivalist group that had been prepping for war for nearly twenty years. The Martian War of Independence would begin when the Earth-controlled Departmental government refused to meet any of the strikers terms' for greater autonomy and instead resorted to using force to suppress the unrest. This proved an unwise move of the government's part as Dusters, MSA militias, and Ares Legion with the backing of several colonies formed a shaky united front to resist the government's attempts to restore order. While the government was able to hold onto Arcadia and other cities, large portions of the Martian Frontier fell to the rebels. Perhaps the most dramatic episode of the war came when MSA militias briefly took over Arcadia's Departmental offices in an attempt to capture the Department Minister and end the war. The strike was executed but failed in its mission, as the Department Minister was not in office when the attack happened. The attack served to illustrate to the United Governed Space Authority the threat Martian nationalism posed to stability.
The unrest would continue for fifteen years before UGSA representatives agreed to meet the leaders of the Martian resistance movements following surge in attacks made against the vital port cities. UGSA outlined that true independence was impractical and undesirable for both all parties, as Mars remained dependent on imports of materials and immigration from Earth to maintain the accelerated growth it desired. Concessions were agreed upon on both sides, the Earth-controlled Departmental government officially dissolved, and reformed itself into the federal Union of Mars, built to allow for greater autonomy for the nationalistic self-reliant colonies, all while agreeing to operate under UGSA law, with the old trade deals set to continue between the dependent colonies and Earth. The MSA and their allies accepted the outcome of the war. Ares Legion refused the deal, particularly their leader, Commander Tang Shen, citing that only true independence was acceptable. They continued their campaign of aggression for a further year, instigating terrorist attacks against the signatory states, until an aggressive joint operation undertaken by MSA in cooperation with the UGSA Intelligence Corps dismantled the urban cells of the organisation in near entirety by 2314.
Logo of the Martian Syndicalist Association
The flag of Ares Legion
Arcadian power armour
The Union of Mars[edit | edit source]
The next century was marked by strife for the government of Mars as it sought to bring stability to the planet. A federal state, the Union of Mars was untested with many self-interested members who cared little for Mars as a whole. Immigration began streaming in from Earth after the United Governed Space Authority declared the atmosphere of Earth unsafe to breathe without augmentation. At the same time, many urban Martians also began immigrating to Outer Planets in increasing numbers. In this time, Arcadia still dominated planetary politics and acted largely in the interests of itself and its Earther allies. Meanwhile, the rest of the Union of Mars were still too small or fragmentary to really assert themselves, as they needed Arcadia's economic and military support. This was especially pertinent in regards to the remnants of Ares Legion, who had reformed in the Martian Frontier as a paramilitary criminal organisation. Arcadia's police force mandate was to prevent Ares Legion from gaining a foothold in the capital, with military forces assigned to patrol the closer colonies. Many Dusters were forced to fight against Legionnaires they had previously fought alongside, and tensions ran especially high in 2323 when it was discovered that terraforming drones had been intentionally sabotaged. Most of cosmopolitan Mars blamed an increasingly desperate Ares Legion while the Legion itself and many Dusters fingered a conspiracy by higher-ups to further foment opinion against the guerrillas. This brief controversy faded into obscurity after sufficient losses from Ares Legion. For the later half of the century, Ares Legion slowly collapsed as the Martian Frontier was tamed.
Away from the rough and tumble Martian Frontier, Mars was becoming a technological powerhouse. The immigration of the pioneering robotics scientist Eduardo Vila Belchior from Brazil on Earth to Olympus Mons on Mars in 2360 signaled a sort of passing of the guard by some in the scientific community, with Mars becoming the new place for innovation and invention. For more than a generation, a brand of "superscience" flourished on Mars where a wholly positive view towards technological advancement was embraced by the populace. This period reached its peak with the announcement of an experiment into automated governance in 2388 with the now more aged Belchior assisting in the effort, dying from an industrial accident during the construction. Belchior's death and events soon after would end this era of scientific optimism and usher in a new era of progress.
AI Integration[edit | edit source]
In 2410 the first artificial intelligence assisted management network, FRIEND (Forward-thinking Radical Intelligent Evolving Nodal Database), was installed in the Olympus Mons Metro, a neural network and data haven envisioned and built by Kayan Jadav and their team, with its first task being to automate management of the city's infrastructure and public services, with mild improvements occurring in its efficiency over the next decades. The success of FRIEND in taking the load off of conventional management systems lead to calls for it to be incorporated into the city's security apparatus. Despite the success of the Olympus Mons Metro trial, the implementation of FRIEND in other cities was met with resistance from factions within the Martian government, the outlying colonies and the remnants of Ares Legion. The Martian government was wary of artificial intelligence removing agency from humans. The individualistic pioneer culture of the outer colonies was at odds with the possible loss of autonomy. Ares Legion objected on the grounds that if it would erase the sense of true Martian identity. An increase in direct hostilities by Ares Legion against the outer colonies forced the hand of the Martian Government to accept the assistance of Jadav's team that promised their AI was able to the Martian satellite network to determine the location of the enemies of the state in 2416. This marked a watershed moment in the acceptance of FRIEND by the Martian Government and the downfall of Ares Legion.
Large numbers of Ares Legion were identified to have holed up in Heavyside, an impact crater in the Mare Australe region that had served as a hideout by Ares Legion for many years. Gullies on the floor of Heaviside crater served as refuge for Legionnaires who set up small camouflaged habitats there. These habitats contained separate quarters, small hydroponic farms, and generators. Heavyside had rules, which each visitor had to respect. There was no official leader of the camp, but each Legionnaire group was lead by its own chieftain. Stealing from another group was prohibited, and disputes among Legion members were solved in a well-established manner. Heavyside had been a Legion hideout for more than half a century and by 2416 was the largest center for Legion activity left. The hideout had avoided FRIEND’s roving eye for a long time, but things came to a head when it gained the attention of the authorities after a drone was seized by Legionnaires. The Union of Mars sent a fully stocked security force to eliminate the threat at Heavyside under the close supervision of FRIEND. The raid on Heavyside was a smashing success and the overwhelming majority of Legionnaires surrendered. A remaining core of diehards fought to the death as the Martian authorities recorded everything. Although such operations had taken place before, they had not been as publicised this widely. As images of surrendering and dead Legionnaries filled the media, a feeling of finality finally settled over the Martian Frontier. Soon enough, scattered bands of Ares Legion were surrendering to the Union of Mars and the group faded into the annals of history as the final holdouts died lonely deaths. The last known Legionnaire, Phillip Lasch, laid down his arms in 2449 after living as a hermit his entire life.
For the next century, the Martian Frontier was slowly but surely folded into the rest of civilization on Mars. At the same time, the Union of Mars witnessed the results of extrasolar probes sent to nearby star systems. Martian terraforming technology was deemed to be vital in the ambitious plan to terraform the candidate world of Luyten b, with key scientists seconded to the project. Studies beyond the Luyten System laid the foundations for further plans for extrasolar colonization, particularly the accommodating Trappist System.
By 2550, Mars's atmosphere attained the sufficient pressure and oxygenation to be breathable without augmentation. With that, a surge of immigrants from Earth began coming in from a still ruined Earth. The Martians, who by now had formed their own separate culture, had become more isolationist as the Martian Government was considered to be ineffective in stemming the numbers of Earthers coming due to the economic benefits, and anti-immigrant groups began rising in popularity throughout the later 2500's. By the 2600's, anti-immigrant factions had overtaken several member states, and the Union of Mars's human elements became increasingly divided and inadequate. The anti-immigrant sentiment reached a boiling point when news came that Mars had finally overtaken Earth in population by 2631. Anti-immigrant movements began agitating for a halt to any new immigration and the deportation of those who came to Mars in last century. These policies were implemented in several states but were overruled by the Martian Government on several occasions. Anger against FRIEND began to escalate further as the Union of Mars became polarized between the pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant factions.
This whole situation came to a head when a series of murders within the immigrant community in 2701 set off riots in Acheron which spread elsewhere on Mars. The fires of intercity conflict raged for months on end in some cities, with Earthers and even Martians from other states being targeted by mobs. This year of communal violence, known as the March of Terror, was eventually ended by the Martian Government with assistance from FRIEND. Many Earthers left Mars as a result, and the government reformed the Martian immigration system. The larger development from the March of Terror brought about a cultural divide that served to define Mars's politics for nearly a millennia afterwards as well the creation of Mars's first "Faction System". By the 2710's, the pro-immigration faction coalesced as the Facilitator Faction (Modern Martian: Fasiiltroofasaan), the anti-immigration faction solidified as a separate Independent Faction (Iderpenentfasaan), and moderates formed the Non-Aligned Faction (Naaktivlaadfasaan). These factions played a major part in federal politics for centuries after their formation. The formation and recognition of these factions served to deescalated violence between Martians.
The Facilitator Faction, centered around Olympus Mons, were characterized by the most pro-immigrant, pro-trade and pro-artificial intelligence policies. The group was formed by those states who in the aftermath of the March of Terror saw the welfare of Mars threatened by continued anti-immigrant sentiment and hostility to free trade. Initially supportive of diversifying the integration of FRIEND, pushing for further development of artificial intelligence and propagating its usage throughout the member states, their attitude cooled as maintenance of the FRIEND network became more expensive and the AI itself became more conservative in the advice it provided on immigration. The faction was generally known for its prudence and tolerant attitude towards outsiders as well as its concern towards public health and the general welfare. A trend within the faction was the absorption of many other smaller Martian states into Olympus Mons, which led some within the faction to later leave out of fear of being annexed. The faction's colour was blue, symbolic of peace and the growing waters of the Amazonis Coast west of Olympus Mons Metro.
The Independent Faction, centered around the Mariner Valley, was focused around anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideals, with a belief that artificial intelligence should be kept entirely in a subservient role. The group was formed out of a coalition of nationalistic self-reliant colonies, colonies that in the past had sided with Ares Legion, and states with anti-immigration governments, with Mariner Valley being one of the latter. The faction ran on an expansive platform, with the most prominent being its opposition to the centralization of powers and to the use of Mars as an "economic zone" instead of its own distinct nation state with a singular Martian identity. While Mariner Valley's leadership of the faction was unsteady at times and the faction remained fractious through its entire existence due to its diversity, it remained due to sheer determination in opposing efforts to impose a strong central government over Mars. The faction's view on FRIEND varied wildly over the centuries, careening from direct opposition to willing cooperation depending on the artificial intelligence's stance on immigration and independence. Other issues the Independents took up were their support for the military and the overall security of Mars. The faction was generally known for its aggressive and emotional undercurrent with a certain degree of militancy always underpinning it. The faction's colour was red, symbolic of the red Martian soil and the blood shed during the War of Independence.
The Non-Aligned Faction, centered around Elysium Mons, was the most pro-artificial intelligence and pro-centralisation faction. Formed from states and colonies that had avoided open confrontation before and during the March of Terror, the Non-Aligned Faction sought to further the capabilities of FRIEND while also making the Union of Mars more centralised around the Arcadian Government to prevent unrest. Its members were generally divided or indifferent to the immigration question and so instead focused on the development of FRIEND. It was derisively seen as a group for bureaucrats and centrists unwilling to confront the issue of immigration in its early years but became progressively more powerful as time went on. The faction was seen as coldly analytical and unempathetic by many for a variety of reasons, not the least being their support in their latter years not just for AI assistance, but for direct AI rule. The faction's colour was black, symbolic of the Elysians who looked to the stars, and evoking the carbon-black architecture of the then in-construction city of Neo Arcadia, a self-sufficient metropolis built north of Elysium Metro as an answer to the lost scientific and cultural legacy of the ageing, depopulated Arcadia.
Although Martian states informally chose which faction they wished to take part in, large minorities of a states' population often supported another faction. This was most apparent in Olympus Mons, where after the March of Terror nearly a third of the population supported the Non-Aligned Faction despite the state being led by the Facilitator Faction. These divided faction loyalties became akin to political parties and became the focus of many Martians as violent conflict became less common on Mars. For the next four hundred years, an era of politicking consumed Mars with hostilities increasingly limited in scope as the planet further developed and the factions kept each other in check.
The Union thrived as a Martian nationalist sentiment grew. Mariner Valley City especially became a center for nationalistic sentiment, and the city and Mariner Valley in general was a frequent thorn in the side of the Martian Government. Small Martian nationalist rebellions took place in the latter half of the twenty-ninth century as the people grew more and more restless. Alongside this nationalist sentiment was a fear of what FRIEND was becoming as the AI network became more ubiquitous in its integration into daily life. Anti-AI terrorists gained traction in the 2800's and cooperated with the nationalists.
In 2900 Mars played a fundamental role in the UGSA colonization of Luyten b, with Martian terraforming technology fundamental in the plans for future development of the planet and prominent Martian scientists selected for the Vermilion Bird Mission to assist in the development of the colony. The expansion of human civilization beyond the solar system sparked further desire to participate in this new space race. In the early 2900's, the Union of Mars, in cooperation with the newly formed Interstellar Governed Space Authority, shortlisted a series of systems suited for colonization.
As the government looked to the stars, Martians suffered at home. At the turn of the fourth millennium, income inequality had worsened significantly, as wealthy Martians left in droves to make their fortune in the new frontier of Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star and Zhu Que, gutting the middle class in the process. The wealth gap was most evident in developing areas, small states, areas with high immigrant population of displaced Earthers and depopulated core settlements. The Independents suffered the most, their fundamental policies unprepared for the existential threat emigration posed to economic stability. Although there had always been a certain degree of class division on Mars, FRIEND had played a role in alleviating the issues and bringing greater equality. The rapid loss of wealth off-world now served only to undo everything that the Martian Government had achieved. The quality of life on Mars degraded substantially in the thirty-first century, with class tensions exacerbated by the increasing gulf in standard of living.
The TRAPPIST Friendship Initiative was undertaken by both Earthers and Martians in the early 3000s to colonize the Trappist System and strengthen ties between the two peoples long separated by the gulf of space. The Union of Mars proved eager to lend its technology and manpower to the colonization efforts.
In 3195 - after a thousand years of tireless planetary engineering - Mars had at last become a well and truly verdant, ocean-filled world. On this millennial anniversary, the Martian government officially declared the planet "fully terraformed", with the day now celebrated as "Terraforming Day". The celebrations continued for one month following the declaration, with the event providing rare respite from the ongoing economic recession.
Seal of the Union of Mars, approved by IGSA in 3001
FRIEND logo
De-facto faction uniforms; left to right: Facilitators, Independents, Non-Aligned
Home Rule[edit | edit source]
It was after the end of Mars’s terraforming that IGSA started to loosen its grip Mars as the planet achieved full self-sufficiency. The deregulation of the Martian economy opened up opportunities for corporations looking to relocate from the dying Earth. While the shift to greater autonomy was initially welcomed by the populace, the reality became clear that Mars had merely traded colonial masters for corporate ones. The disregard for the fragile Martian environment by predatory Earth corporations greatly angered the majority of the populace, with Martians of all factions and of all political affiliations condemning their actions. Only an IGSA mandate banning natural resource exploitation by foreign corporations, proposed by the Martian Government, prevented protests from escalating further. By 3210 the Climate Crisis engulfed Earth, with IGSA forced to divert all attention and responsibility towards the cradle of humanity. The following decade saw greater rights afforded to Mars, with the Union of Mars granted self-rule in 3212. The mandates barring Earth corporations from damaging the Martian ecosystem became the sole reason for the Union of Mars remaining a member state of IGSA.
For two further centuries, the Union of Mars would become heavily involved in the herculean task of resettling billions of displaced Earthers on Mars and throughout the stars, with a particular focus on the Trappist System. The colonies of Bellona, Kienen and Tezuka were expanded, with the Martian economy restructured towards development of products for extrasolar export. In 3253 the Union established the first interstellar trade links with the newly independent Zhu Que Directorate. This period of time would be considered an economic boom for Mars, allowing it to bounce back from the recessions it had suffered following the initial depopulation, with the arrival of refugees from Earth offsetting the previous imbalance. By the mid thirty-fifth century Mars had transformed into an economic powerhouse, with its influence felt throughout the stars.
In 3453, the Commonwealth of Earth was formed. The military regimes of Shengli and Pillar of Hope managed to wrestle control of Earth from IGSA and declared Earth an independent state free of the interstellar organization. This move immediately alarmed the Union of Mars and shook their confidence in the IGSA. Many within the Independent faction immediately wanting to secede and form an alliance with the Commonwealth to secure their own position. The Commonwealth even seemed interested in this move, but neither the Facilitator faction nor the Non-Aligned faction were open to an alliance with the Commonwealth. They feared the new power and were wary of the Commonwealth’s newfound military capabilities, especially when it became clear that the Commonwealth was building a very large number of ships. The situation only intensified when the Commonwealth seized Ceres against the wishes of Mars, who had hoped for the dwarf planet to come to its own decision on its fate. Because of this, the Martian government allowed the IGSA to move its government offices to Olympus Mons after the Commonwealth seized the Luna Shipyards and the IGSA Headquarters with it.
In the seven years since the formation of the Commonwealth, tensions within the system grew substantially. The Solar System’s economy was disrupted, Mars' economic boom crashed into a severe recession as the threat of war loomed and the outer planets were cut off from the resources of Earth. Mariner Valley in particular gained notoriety for high rates of crime and other social disorders. The Independents continued to agitate for secession from IGSA, citing that they already had home rule and that an alliance with the Commonwealth would be the only way to maintain sovereignty. IGSA on Mars petitioned the Martian Government to take action against the Commonwealth, decrying the nation's formation as unlawful. The Martian Government, unwilling to risk a war with their closest neighbor, refused the request. The demands strained the relationship between the factions within the Martian Government that favoured membership of IGSA and the organization itself.
The breaking point finally came when a huge leak came out due to an intrepid Martian whistleblower codenamed Thrax leaking information he had obtained from the IGSA headquarters. The leak outlined a planned Commonwealth attack on Mars and failed attempts by the IGSA to negotiate with the Commonwealth. It then went into detail about how IGSA had gone to great lengths to cover up any information on the impending invasion, as they were confident that they could negotiate a settlement and did not want to panic the populace. This leak infuriated much of the public, especially those within the political establishment. The scandal lead to IGSA being expelled from Mars, but this action inadvertently played right into the machinations of the Commonwealth Government, that considered the expulsion of the organisation to be an act of aggression as outlined in IGSA law.
Faction uniforms by the 3100's
Federalization[edit | edit source]
Following the expulsion of IGSA from Mars, the Union restructured itself as the Martian Federation in 3460, headed by the first Bureaucrat-President Isanoo Kienen, with its first form being an AI-aided social-technocratic bureaucracy. Within hours of their declaration the Commonwealth of Earth declared war on Mars, citing it was the duty of the Commonwealth to enforce IGSA law.
The majority of Martian born IGSA officials on Mars resigned their posts to take up arms with their brothers and sisters against the invaders, alongside a minority of Earthers and Jovians. Those that did not were permitted to evacuate by the Federation government, with the Jovian Interstellar Republic offering political asylum for the crippled organisation. In response, large crowds gathered around the IGSA headquarters in Olympus Mons Metro. The Martian people were angry, blaming IGSA for inviting war upon their home, and soon the crowd broke the security cordon and entered the complex. Officials still in the process of clearing out their desks were brutally murdered, regardless of nationality, and after a day of violence the Olympian IGSA headquarters burned. The Federation made a formal apology for the incident, and scrambled to ramp up the security of other IGSA offices across Mars, but further atrocities slipped through the cracks, with an echoing incident in Mariner Valley City soon seizing headlines showing IGSA officials taken hostage by a mob led by a man declaring himself as the Vagabond. While this incident was effectively dealt with by the Martian Police, with the hostages being freed, IGSA-Mars relations were irredeemably soured.
Concurrently, the Martian Federation sent diplomats to the Commonwealth in an attempt to talk down their attackers. Leading the delegation were the presidents of both Mariner Valley and Olympus Mons, Lukas Orwellus and Isabelle Park. Orwellus was a war hawk within the Independents with controversial borderline ethno-nationalist views, while Park was a moderate within the Facilitators who had always favored autonomy over independence. The two met with Secretary General Chen Hsin-yi at the Zion Conference to attempt to broker a pact between the two nations. Orwellus and Park were given an ultimatum: submit to the Commonwealth’s authority or face its wrath. Chen explained that IGSA had failed to keep humanity united and that only a strong hand could bring stability to the cosmos. The Secretary General outlined the Commonwealth’s planned Neuordnung Solar with Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and all other objects in the Solar System under direct Earther control. When he was met with indignation from Orwellus, the Secretary General detained his guests.
After the arrest of Orwellus and Park, the Commonwealth offered an ultimatum to the Martian Government to agree to the terms of the Neuordnung Solar if they wished for the safe return of their leaders. Outraged by this barbarity, the Martian Government refused, issuing a formal declaration of war against the Commonwealth. The Earthers had a vastly superior navy compared to the Martians, and the Federation Navy was quickly driven off by the Commonwealth Navy after a battle near Deimos. The tattered Martian Navy would flee from there towards Saturn.
The ground invasion of Mars would begin in Olympus Mons and Elysium Mons, aimed to capture FRIEND and to destroy the Federation’s capability to wage war. Each stage of the invasion progressed at different rates, with the Olympus Mons Metro falling relatively quickly while Neo Arcadia proved to be a harder target, forcing the Commonwealth to resort to antimatter missiles to crack its defences. The entire state of Olympus Mons and the complex holding FRIEND would fall in 3461, and Commonwealth forces disconnected FRIEND from the rest of the planet. Mariner Valley City would be the next to be bombarded with antimatter missiles, but its newly unveiled Red Dome mobile all-weather air defense system proved surprisingly effective. As the Commonwealth struggled to hold down Olympus Mons while also pressing the other states, the Federation, led by Mariner Valley, attempted to go on a valiant - but ultimately disastrous - offensive.
In Mariner Valley, discontent had been building for a long time. Conditions within the inner city were abysmal, and the elites were more concerned with the concept of “independence” than the welfare of their own citizens. Without FRIEND, public services and administration were in shambles. The state's haphazardly assembled war economy sputtered and choked under the pressure, kept alive only by the blood and sweat of its citizens and soldiers. In this environment, entered the Vagabond. A self-proclaimed wanderer who lived a transient lifestyle, the Vagabond preached an anti-social message that spoke to the unfortunate of Mariner Valley City: reject society and kill the rich. Many Martians would join the Vagabond’s movement, called simply The Vagabonds (Contemporary Martian: De Aagabodz; Modern: deAagabodz), and wreaked havoc across the state. Stretched thin due to the war effort, the government of Mariner Valley struggled to stop this newly-designated “state gang” from ravaging their state. The Vagabonds would eventually be forced out of the city 3462, but they would continue their reign of terror by riding the public transportation once monitored by FRIEND across the planet.
Meanwhile in Olympus Mons, the Commonwealth's ability to project its power beyond the city proved difficult due to the joint resistance meted out by forces loyal to the Mariner Valley and Elysium Mons. Additionally, the city's high population density served as a logistical problem for the Commonwealth occupation, with the domestic situation worsening by the day. Protests and riots against the occupation were commonplace, and the Commonwealth Marines were unable to effectively divide their resources between continuing the invasion and containing the violence within the city. What had started as an orderly military occupation by the Commonwealth eventually became a hellish tempest of war crimes, guerrilla resistance and economic collapse, with Commonwealth forces withdrawing from most residential areas by 3462. Surviving records of the occupation are scarce, but paint a grim picture, detailing rape, starvation, killing contests (nicknamed "skinny" or "squatty" hunts by either side), mass executions, and various forms of torture including near-lethal gravity exposure. Commonwealth death squads, called Erdkomaadnos by Martians, specifically targeted dissidents, suspected guerrillas, and state gangers with deadly effectiveness that would be remembered with dread for generations by Martians.
For the next three years, the war plodded on as the Commonwealth became increasingly bogged down by the Martians' numbers. In 3465, Earther forces were routed from Elysium Mons and neighbouring cities. Less than a month later, a revitalized Martian Navy - with accompanying Saturnian freelancers - returned to Martian orbit and fought the Commonwealth Navy to a standstill, temporarily tipping the balance in Mars's favour. Faced with an untenable situation, the Commonwealth withdrew to Luna, directing a final payload of antimatter and electromagnetic pulse weapons at the FRIEND central hub on Olympus Mons, wiping it out in its entirety.
With the involvement of Saturnian freelancers, Jupiter was drawn into the war to prevent its rival in the Outer Planets from gaining power. The Jovian Navy would arrive soon after the naval battle over Mars, and the Martian Navy would flee back to Saturn with many Martian ships deserting on the way. That defeat over Mars would exhaust Martian forces, and the Martian Federation, weak but determined, sent a diplomatic delegation to Earth soon after the withdrawal to ask for a peace treaty with the Commonwealth. All the Commonwealth was willing to acquiesce to was an armistice with certain concessions from Mars such as it being stripped of its offworld holdings. The threat of a second invasion remained even after the armistice.
After the withdrawal of the Commonwealth forces, Olympus Mons Metro was effectively taken over by resident state gangs, with the Dualists and the Matterists being amongst its most prominent. The Dualists (deDuuliz) were social interventionists formed in the alienated ideological sphere of the crushed middle class, believing in a dualistic, objective world of progressive and regressive actions existing beyond the chaos of the war-ravaged and socially and economically divided Mars. Led by their incorruptible leader Artur Olkowski, the Dualists had served as the de facto law across Olympus Mons during the occupation. Meanwhile, the Matterists (deMadriz) were sociopathic products of the upper class addicted to sex, violence, and conspicuous consumption. Their leader, “consul” Cooper Skerrett, had been responsible for a spate of killings against Earthers and Martians during the occupation and had built up a following from the wealthy in Olympus Mons Metro rallying around him against the murderous actions of the Vagabonds. The Matterists and the Dualists had both pushed out the Vagabonds in 3465 but ended up at war with one another, and Olympus Mons would remain in a state of anarchy for the majority of the next decade, with Martian security forces struggling to bring law and order back to the city.
The loss of FRIEND signaled a new chapter in Mars' history. The chaos wrought in its absence united the three premier cities in a belief that AI governance was essential to the future development of Mars, with previous opponents to the integration of FRIEND into security services and armed forces now being convinced that AI integration could have prevented the Commonwealth invasion. The Martian Government thus issued a mandate calling for the development of a replacement system for FRIEND, one that could unify all of Mars, sanctioning the research trials that would form the building blocks of ALIAS, with auxiliary FRIEND-like programmes - informally dubbed as the "Second FRIEND" - being activated across Mars to soothe the planet's wounds in the meantime. During the rebuilding efforts, several key monuments were erected, dedicated to Mars's winning of independence and to the memory of those fallen, with many surviving unto the present date. Attempts continued to reconcile a formal peace with the Commonwealth, with the Commonwealth regime proving to be a difficult diplomatic partner as Earth held an extreme power advantage over Mars. Nevertheless, Mars was able to avoid becoming a client state to the Commonwealth due to the Martians' high population and strong military. After months of negotiation, a peace agreement - the Europa Treaty - was eventually signed in 3467 between Kienen and the new Commonwealth Secretary General Lilel Brut-Anders, which included mutual recognition, details on mining rights within the Main Belt, a restoration of prisoners of war, and acceptance of responsibility of the war by Mars. The peace treaty proved to be wildly unpopular among the Martian population which led to many of the pre-war leaders of Mars being replaced soon afterwards.
The process of Mars’s rehabilitation began with the systemic elimination of state gangs. This proved easier said than done. The Matterists were an easier force to deal with; their ideology was devoid of the mass appeal necessary to create a mass organisation, and with the death of their "consul" during the Commonwealth withdrawal, it had splintered. On the other hand, dealing with the Dualists and the Vagabonds proved a much more arduous task. The populist rhetoric of both gangs had earned them a fair degree of popularity, and both of their leaders remained at large. Artur Olkowski and the Vagabond quickly became the two most wanted men on Mars, and dismantling the state gangs would be the goal of most of Mars’s security apparatus for the next decade.
Chief among those combating the state gangs was Tokhtamysh Firkovich, a police detective in one of Mariner Valley City’s worst districts. Firkovich, a relatively recent immigrant from Earth, had taken part in operations that drove the Vagabonds from the city during the war and now was hellbent on their destruction. Chief among his obsession was the Vagabond himself, an elusive figure who seemed to avoid any sort of profile the authorities attempted to construct of him. He seemed almost like a vengeful spirit of Mars that had arisen to punish the Martian elite for their hubris. Still, Detective Firkovich was determined. In time, with the assistance of several officers, and after taking down several other "false Vagabonds" hijacking his alias, Firkovich managed to corner the man in a train going between Mariner Valley and Xanthe Terra, gunning him down personally. With FRIEND's former networks in ruins, public records of the fugitive's background were practically impossible to unearth, and thus his true identity has remained a mystery. With the Vagabond's death in 3468, his gang fractured and became much less potent than it had once been.
The Vagabond's death was celebrated across Mars by the media and state, and Firkovich was heralded as a hero and a model immigrant by the Federation. The young government was sorely in need of a win, and it was happy to take what it could as officials scrambled to repair infrastructure and maintain the fragile diplomatic situation. With this anti-citizen one out of the way, the Federation decided to pit its best officer against the next most wanted man on Mars: Artur Olkowski, a search that would take years off the detective's life.
The pursuit of Olkowski took years with Firkovich persecuting the Dualists and their leader across Olympus Mons Metro. Firkovich learned a great deal about the Dualists and their ideology and saw the corruption of the local police. The case eventually culminated when Olkowski confronted Firkovich and effectively committed suicide by police due to having a crisis of purpose.
Although Firkovich did not kill Olkowski, he was still credited for his contributions to the case and held up as an exemplar officer. Firkovich did not feel the same. He felt empty after Olkowski case, both because of his conflicted feelings about the man and the corruption of Olympus Mons Metro’s police department. Firkovich would then return to Mariner Valley City, quitting the force after a brief three years as Commissioner to live out a quiet existence in Mariner Valley’s pastoral region, eventually making peace with his demons through renewed faith.
The Dualists would not die with Olkowski, but they were fractured beyond repair. They, the remnants of the Vagabonds, and other smaller state gangs would plague Mars for another decade or so before the integration of the new FRIEND networks into security services was complete. With the lessons and devastation of war, growing pains of the recovery, and the soaring rates of crime and violence, many Martians were perfectly willing to allow an intrusive AI to stomp out criminals and revitalize industry. Many lived alienated and often traumatised lives fettered with precarious living conditions, food availability and employment, with the ordered society provided for by Second FRIEND appearing like an oasis bereft of such troubles.
In that time, the Martian Federation began to establish itself as a power again, something that attracted the attention of the Commonwealth. Crime, factionalism, inequality, and hyper-exploitation hampered the Federation’s attempts to rebuild, but it forged on. By the late 3400's Commonwealth Wars were in full swing with the new Earther regime fighting a war on many fronts in places such as Eden and Zhu Que, however by the turn of the century, the Commonwealth’s attention had returned to Mars. Recognising the Martians as too numerous and too advanced to be conquered outright, the contemporary Commonwealth regime nevertheless desired de-facto power over Mars. Offers of diplomatic annexation into a client state role were initially pressed upon them, with their exchanges eventually devolving into bare-faced suggestions of a second invasion, all of which only encouraged the now revitalised Martian jingoism and fear of the other.
After the war, Martian politics changed. The Faciliator Faction had been largely destroyed or discredited during the war, and the other factions were faced with new challenges that could not be answered by the old "Faction System". So, Mars's second "Faction System” formed around the issues of artificial intelligence and solving income inequality.
The Homelander Faction (Hoomladnafasaan), centered around the Mariner Valley, was spiritual successor of the Independents and the Facilitators, acting as a coalition for those determined to limit AI governance on Mars while still allowing for practicality. Made up of Martian nationalists, corporatists, and reactionaries of various stripes, the Homelanders were similarly hobbled to the Independents in their own diversity of opinions. None of them were in agreement on how to deal with income inequality, with the most common sentiment being raising tariffs on imported goods to the aghast of the corporatists. They were also divided to the issue of immigration, with many former Independents bearing a deep hatred for Earthers. Nonetheless, the Homelanders were the largest faction after the war due to a wave of patriotism and would power in most Martian states for many years after the war. Many former Independents within the Homelanders would organize into the Crimson Order (Kizenodaa) or more colloquially the Red Club, a fraternal order focused on Martian nationalism and preserving ancient spiritualist traditions.
The Equity Faction (Ektiifasaan), centered in Elysium Mons, would take an entirely different approach. The spiritual successor of the Non-Aligned Faction, the Equites (or Knights) would act as the champions for AI governance. Elysium Mons would be the first state to really emerge from the post-war era into any sort of prosperity, and that was attributed by many to its quick adoption of Second FRIEND into its security apparatus. Also, the Equites positioned themselves as the defenders of immigrants on Mars and managed to scoop up many eager supporters from relatively disenfranchised Earther communities across the planet.
In response to the Equites and crime within the Earther immigrant community, the Anti-Earth Action Association (AatniErd Agzanazok) was formed in 3504 by Martians to protect the poorer elements of Martian society from Earther immigrants. The Anti-Earth Action Association would be a controversial and semi-sanctioned group for the next two centuries, with the Homelander Faction flirting with the Anti-Earth Action Association at numerous times. Earther immigrants and the Anti-Earth Action Association would clash with one another over the years with the Equites and Homelanders frequently using them as proxies.
In the next century, the Martian Federation would regain its place in the cosmos as a great power and would come to become the Commonwealth's main rival within the Solar System but still outside the influence of the IGSA and its Jovian Republic. The Solar System would remain divided, cagey, and fractured for the entire century, and the Homelanders would keep a firm grip on power, keeping the Commonwealth at bay. However, the Equity Faction would slowly grow in that time, especially in Olympus Mons.
In the early 3600s, the Zhu Que Directorate reached out to the Martian Federation seeking an ally against an expansionist Earth. Talks were held on Luna with the Martian Federation in 3612, resulting in a treaty being signed between the two nations that saw the Martian Federation rejoin IGSA as a member state. In 3625 the Zhu Que embassy in Olympus Mons was opened to great fanfare, with a declaration of cooperation being made by the Zhu Que ambassador to Mars. Mars and Zhu Que shared many values that saw their peoples welcomed on both sides. The only points of contention that existed were in the restricted freedoms Zhu Que citizens enjoyed compared to their Martian counterparts and the overbearing presence of the military in the lives of the Zhu Que citizenry. The Zhu Que were not nearly as friendly towards artificial intelligence as the Martians. In 3636, the Martian Federation took part in the creation of the Interstellar Cooperation Pact alongside their Zhu Que allies and the Jovian Interstellar Republic.
As the Federation was making diplomatic moves and ramping up military spending, Martians once again suffered to the indifference of the Martian government. Without a coherent response to income inequality, many Martian states fell into a quagmire of ghettos and industrial hellscapes, most prominently Olympus Mons. Meanwhile, Elysium Mons and its allies in the Equity Faction would fare somewhat better under the rule of technocrats, at the small price of their freedoms. Over time, that won more and more Martians over to the side of the Equites. Meanwhile, worker’s rights became an increasingly pressing issue on Mars once again with a significant minority of Martians calling for a third path between the nationalists and the technocrats: socialism. The largest socialist group on Mars at the time was the Martian Workers League (Mazwoogeleeg), directly descended from the much earlier Martian Syndicalist Association. The group’s ranks swelled but soon became divided into two groups: Reformists and Revolutionaries. The Reformists favored cooperation with the technocrats and their automated systems while the Revolutionaries were against any form of compromise. The groups officially split from one another in 3652, and the socialist movement across Mars divided accordingly.
As tensions brewed, a project sponsored largely by the government of Elysium Mons underneath Neo-Arcadia was nearing completion. Started many years previously, the project was undertaken by Elysium Mons’s technocrats in particular to create a true artificial intelligence to govern, an impartial and objective ruler who would usher in a golden age on Mars. Knowing the ramifications of their plans, the Elysium Mons Artificial Intelligence Forum and the state government kept their developments relatively quiet until the 3660s when information about the developing artificial intelligence finally came to light. News of this new advanced artificial intelligence upset many on Mars and beyond as AI development was officially banned, but it still piqued the interest of many, most prominently those within Mars's socialist bloc. The Reformists took the side of the automated socialism while the Revolutionaries rejected the idea of automation, seeing it as an attempt by the state to subvert socialist ideals. A smaller sect of socialists, calling themselves the Duster Party after the workers of old Mars, broke with both factions due to their own extreme Martian ethnonationalism, and they would gravitate towards the Equity Faction as they saw ALIAS as a means to empowering Mars against its enemies in the Solar System.
The response to ALIAS from other parts of Mars varied from bemused to worried. Martians in most states saw the Arcadians as outliers in their singular fascination with automation, even their own allies in the Equity Faction. However, they were not usually held in a negative light because of this, just seen as a little idiosyncratic. Meanwhile, more paranoid Martians, mostly Homelanders, began to increasingly see the Arcadians' artificial intelligence development as a direct threat to their own sovereignty and Mars as a whole. These anti-AI Martians started merely as fringe elements of the Homelander Faction, but their voices became increasingly loud as the project neared completion.
Flag of the Crimson Order
Flag of the Anti-Earth Action Association
Flag of the Martian Workers League
Flag of the Duster Party
Martian Civil War[edit | edit source]
| “ | The Martian Federation has reached out for assistance against ALIAS, but no one answered the pleas. They remain demure, quiet, and leave the killing to us. It was Mars who made ALIAS, and it must be Mars who ends it. | ” |
–ARES to Tian Xuegang on the Martian Civil War | ||
ALIAS (Automatic Life-assist Intelligent Administration System) was first installed in Neo Arcadia in the year 3666, fully automating the machine-dependent state government of Elysium Mons. The move sparked criticism and condemnation across the Solar System, as the installation of ALIAS was a direct violation of the INTPOL ban on artificial intelligence being given governance over humans. The Martian Federation called a special assembly on the 1st June 3666 to debate the issue and address the concerns of the three factions. The Equity and Reformist factions endorsed the actions of the Neo Arcadian government. The Revolutionary group openly opposed it. The Homelander faction was split on the issue. Leaders within the faction had openly supported the development of ALIAS, as it aligned with their key policy of protecting Mars from foreign aggression. The majority of the Homelander membership however viewed ALIAS as a threat to their individual freedoms, and this sentiment was shared by their support base. The Homelander leaders nevertheless managed to convince their representatives to vote in favor of ALIAS. Protests against ALIAS by the populace soon broke out in the Homelander heartlands of the Mariner Valley with further protests conducted within the Olympus Mons Metro. The Martian Federation passed the motion to pursue further development of ALIAS with an overwhelming majority and a proposed repeal the ban on artificial intelligence was tabled by the Homelanders.
At the request of the Martian Federation, an IGSA conference was convened on Luna on the 10th June 3666, with the representatives of all the major powers in attendance. The Martian representative, under the general direction of the Homelander leadership, brought forward the motion to repeal the INTPOL ban. The Commonwealth representative argued against the motion, outlining the dangers posed by unrestricted artificial intelligence in roles of responsibility and citing failed arcology projects to utilize such systems. In accordance with IGSA protocol it was put to a vote. The Martian, Saturnian and Tranquilan delegates voted in favour of the repeal. The Earther, Jovian and Qafi delegates voted against the repeal. The Novan delegate abstained on the vote, after being pressured by representatives of both sides of the debate. The Martians were confident that their alliance with Zhu Que would sway the Directorate's delegation in their favour. Swayed by their close alliance, the Zhu Que delegation voted in favour of the repeal, gaining them the animosity of Earth, Jupiter and Qaf. In response, Jupiter revoked the Interstellar Cooperation Pact, and a motion was put forward by Earth to expel the Zhu Que fleet from the Sol System. It passed six votes to two with only Mars voting with Zhu Que to maintain its military presence. The fleet was forced to leave at the end of the year and Mars was left without any allies in the aftermath of the vote.
The response to the repeal was met with a mixed reception on Mars. The people of Neo Arcadia complacently adapted to the change, barely noticing any difference in how their lives were managed before ALIAS. Outside of the city in the rest of Elysium Mons, resistance to ALIAS was more pronounced, and many Martian states soon passed legislation barring ALIAS from being integrated into their state governance. The Mariner Valley and Utopia Coast took up opposition against ALIAS. The Martian Federation even considered direct military intervention in Elysium Mons to aid anti-AI rebels against ALIAS, but the government was too stuck in gridlock to act with radical Homelanders pulling one way with Equites another with moderate Homelanders stuck in the middle. The anti-ALIAS rebels in Elysium Mons were crushed with ease by ALIAS while the government was deliberating.
In this brief period, Mars's third "Faction System" would emerge with the fracturing on the Homelander Faction and the emergence of a larger socialist movement. The moderate Homelander Faction would retain the name of their old faction and would continue their measured approach to ALIAS. The Equity Faction would also continue in a similar way as before, though they would be more associated with ALIAS now than with technocrats. The Equites' base would expand after their surprising alliance with the Martian Workers League in 3667, winning them much support among workers and Earther immigrants. Meanwhile, Homelanders dissatisfied with their leadership would break off from their faction to form the Opposition Faction (Abzinfasaan), in reference to their opposition to ALIAS. This split the base of the Homelanders and would quickly allow the Equity Faction to take over the government of the Martian Federation for the first time in Mars's history with the help of their socialist allies, to the dismay of many. With the legitimization of a minority Martian government, ALIAS publicly announced that it would be implementing itself in every corner of Mars with or without the approval of any "state". ALIAS demonstrated this first by swiftly spreading into all the systems of the Elysium Mons government to assume direct control. This predictably led to an uproar across Mars and almost immediately, the Homelander and Opposition factions attempted to reconcile to combat this new threat.
The Martian Civil War kicked into gear in 3667 with two key events. After the reconciliation of the Homelander and Opposition factions, a new government was declared in Mariner Valley, a separate Martian Federation apart from the Martian Federation in Elysium Mons. Battle lines were quickly drawn with state governments across Mars siding with either the government in Mariner Valley or Elysium Mons. Much of the smaller states in Mars's eastern hemisphere including Aeolis, Arabia Terra, and all the Hellas Sea states would side with Elysium Mons and ALIAS while the rest of the planet including Olympus Mons, Xanthe Terra, and Utopia Coast would side with the Valleyan government. Almost simultaneously, the Martian Navy near Mars was hit with a first strike from ALIAS to seize the fleet. Many naval officers from Mariner Valley and anti-ALIAS states attempted to resist the takeover, but the fundamental need for communications left the navy vulnerable. After some resistance and internal conflict in orbit, the Martian Navy fell into the hands of ALIAS. The fleet then immediately would pull back into Martian orbit with a missive being issued stating that their borders were now officially closed to outsiders.
At the beginning of the war, the Martian Federation in Mariner Valley led by President Erika Fulton fielded support from several states along with nationalists, corporatists, and nativists. This included groups such as the Crimson Order (a large militant Martian nationalist fraternal organization), the Loyalist Red Commando (Oolizeetkomaadno), a small secretive nationalist/nativist paramilitary, and the Anti-Earth Action Association, a nativist paramilitary group. The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars (Revluzaninsergnaamii Maz), an anarchist army mostly composed of workers, would quickly join the Valleyan government in an alliance of convenience against ALIAS. Also, although the Martian Navy near Mars fell into the hands of ALIAS, several Martian naval ships in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud would swear their allegiance to the Valleyan government.
Meanwhile, the Martian Federation in Elysium Mons led by ALIAS and Bureaucrat President Hannah Weinstein, fielded troops from several states along with support from technocrats, socialists, and some nationalists. This included groups such as the Martian Workers League, a left wing coalition in favor of automation, and the Duster Party (Daazpate), a national socialist political party. The Martian Federation in Elysium Mons would most notably have the support of ALIAS, who would assail its enemies' vulnerable Second FRIEND systems for the duration of the war. The vast majority of the Martian Navy, seized in the early stages of the conflict, would fight for ALIAS for the duration of the war and establish a blockade around Mars.
For the next two decades, war would rage across Mars for the fate of the planet while the Sol System watched with bated breath. The war started with socialist revolts in areas controlled by the Valleyan government, opening moves by ALIAS against Utopia Coast, and the invasion of the Eastern Gulf by the Valleyan government. The socialist revolts of 3667 would have mixed results, failing in Olympus Mons while succeeding in states like Alba Mons and Thaumasia. The previous state government of Thaumasia would soon be restored by Mariner Valley. That year, ALIAS would seize the Elysium Space Elevator while failing to get a foothold in Utopia Coast while Mariner Valley succeeded in its invasion of the Gulf, with the dynamic General Cui Chang rolling through Terra Sabaea, Terra Arabia, West Hellas, and Tyrrhena. The first year was one of notable losses for ALIAS, but its forces did manage to defend Aeolis from attack on all sides. ALIAS also managed to defend its airspace effectively and beat off multiple attacks to destroy it and Neo Arcadia. Mariner Valley and Olympus Mons would be hit in response, but they also managed to largely avoid devastation due to aerial defenses.
Near the end of the first year, the Martian Navy loyal to the Valleyan government would arrive in Martian orbit with Saturnian freelancers assisting them. Their arrival would be met by a Martian Navy under the supervision of ALIAS. The fleet loyal to Mariner Valley, led by Rear Admiral Andre Kadelberg, endeavored to break the blockade around Mars. The battle over Mars ended in a stalemate, but the fleet loyal to Mariner Valley managed to punch through the blockade with the help of the Saturnian freelancers at the cost of the Rear Admiral’s left arm. That would weaken the blockade’s hold over Mars. and the navies would clash frequently after that with the fleet loyal to Mariner Valley based in Ceres. Blockade runners through the ALIAS fleet would become a common sight after that with supplies and mercenaries from Saturn being the most common cargo.
In the next couple of years, fighting would become bogged down in Utopia Coast and Aeolis with savage fighting in the region mostly between various state armies, the Crimson Order, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars, and Saturnian mercenaries under the hire of the Valleyan government. War crimes would occur in Utopia Coast committed mostly by Saturnian mercenaries, the Crimson Order, and some Martians fighting under ALIAS. The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars would switch sides in 3670, and the tide would turn against the Valleyan government as fighting became even more intense. During that time, the Saturnian soldier of fortune Jean-Luc Hausemer would make a name for himself hunting deserters for the Valleyan government and fighting scouts of ALIAS forces. The landing of ALIAS forces with the assistance of the Martian Workers League in Alba Mons in 3670 would only complicate the situation further, expanding the war to another front as ALIAS pushed against Olympus Mons.
Meanwhile, ALIAS continue its campaign of cyber warfare against its enemies, specifically against Second FRIEND which had been isolated from its systems early in the war. ALIAS recognized that isolating networks severely slowed its spread, so it worked to connect itself with the isolated FRIEND networks throughout the territory held by the Valleyan government. ALIAS managed to spread fairly easily in early stages of the war, overtaking a few smaller states, and came close to taking over Olympus Mons at one point. This constant assault strained the capabilities of the anti-ALIAS forces very quickly. This wave of cyberwarfare led to great alarm among anti-ALIAS forces, and Mariner Valley and Olympus Mons worked together to create a FRIEND combat AI as a countermeasure to ALIAS. These states were less technologically adept than Elysium Mons, but they did manage to create an effective countermeasure by 3671, ARES; Automated Response Eradication System. ARES would be an effective countermeasure against the spread of ALIAS, and it would prolong the war for perhaps another decade on its own, preventing ALIAS from simply overwhelming Second FRIEND. After ARES’s creation, a copy would sent through the blockade and was shipped to the Trappist System by the anti-ALIAS forces which helped secure the colonies there against ALIAS.
The stalemate in the Elysium Theater broke at the Battle of Utopia Metro, where state armies led by General Cui Chang and the Crimson Order led by Grand Archon Sun Yating fighting against ALIAS forces led by General Fredric Montell under the close supervision of ALIAS itself. While anti-ALIAS forces were focused on defending Olympus Mons, ALIAS finally managed to crush Utopia Coast and capture several enemy armies. The defeat at Utopia Metro was a tremendous blow to the Valleyan government and its hold on its allies weakened. Meanwhile, ALIAS consolidated its power by retaking many of its allied states lost in the initial stages of the war and destroying the now hostile Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars. In 3671, ALIAS would push further and take Daedalia and Meridani Planum in successive campaigns.
These repeated losses by anti-ALIAS forces and ALIAS's expanded influence would radicalize many on Mars and fuel what would be known as the Neo-Luddite movement among those opposed to ALIAS, both among its opponents and within its own territories. Freedom Club (Fiidemklaab) would be founded in 3671 in Mariner Valley as an alternative to the more dominant Crimson Order. The rediscovery of the texts of a certain Theodore John Kaczynski related to the dangers of technology piqued the interests of many Martians, and Freedom Club soon grew in numbers, sending divisions to fight alongside the state armies and groups like the Crimson Order. The group's precepts included rejection of modern technology, rejection of civilization itself, rejection of materialism, love and reverence toward nature, exaltation of freedom, and punishment of those responsible for the present situation aka ALIAS. That led to a hostility to Second FRIEND alongside ALIAS, something that alienated Freedom Club from its allies somewhat. Freedom Club would fight alongside the Valleyan government for the rest of the war. Meanwhile within ALIAS-occupied territory, a guerilla group know as the Green Army (Giirnamii) would arise specifically among anti-ALIAS civilians and remnants of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars. This would further bog down ALIAS's efforts to pacify its territories, but the Green Army would eventually be destroyed like groups before it. Around the same time, other remnants of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars would go on to join the foundling group Hatchet (Haatzed), another guerrilla group who was socialist and somewhat Neo-Luddite in nature. Unlike the Green Army, Hatchet survived ALIAS's attempts to stamp them out, and these original Hatchet guerrillas formed a core of the post-war Hatchet organisation that spread beyond Mars through war refugees and form long-lasting cells on the planet.
For the next five years, ALIAS would fight a grueling war of attrition in Upper Argyre and Olympus Mons with the Battle of the Argyre Canal itself stretching out for nearly three years. The thin body of water connecting the Acidalia Gulf and the Argyre Sea, the Argyre Canal was a highly valuable strategic asset that was coveted by ALIAS. The Battle of Maavek led to the fall of the entire eastern portion of Upper Argyre with anti-ALIAS forces only in control of a small sliver of the western border. With the assistance of Freedom Club and the Crimson Order, the state armies of the Valleyan government managed to hold Argyre Canal against ALIAS who broke off the relentless offensive in 3676 after nearly half of the Duster Party was slaughtered in an intense push by ALIAS. However, things were not going so well for the Valleyan government on other fronts.
ALIAS made two big thrusts in 3678 with massive invasions against Olympus Mons and Xanthe Terra. The invasions did not immediately succeed but did cut the anti-ALIAS forces in two for the rest of the war, between Olympus Mons and Mariner Valley. It was at this point in the war that refugees started to become a real issue in the Sol System and beyond as Martians still in territory of the Valleyan government saw the writing on the wall and attempted to flee war zones. As the refugees began to pile up in ports across Mars, anti-ALIAS forces' frustration began to build. The Crimson Order in particular would often harass refugees leaving Mars, especially fighting-age males leaving. This culminated in the Chryse Space Elevator Massacre where the Crimson Order massacred thousands of refugees after a misunderstanding started the incident within the crowded and embattled space elevator. This further lowered morale and placed public opinion against the anti-ALIAS forces. Soon afterwards, the fleet loyal to Mariner Valley decided to cut its losses and leave the Solar System for the Trappist colonies along with many war refugees on Ceres. Before doing so, they announced their intentions to the leadership of the Valleyan government and asked if any of them wanted passage off of Mars. The entire government refused with only Grand Archon Otto Kummer of the Crimson Order, a leader within the allied anti-ALIAS forces, asking for passage off of Mars, which was granted. The space around Mars would finally close after that. There would be no more refugees from Mars for the remainder of the war as ALIAS closed in.
Xanthe Terra would fall in 3680 and with it, the proverbial pincer would fall around Mariner Valley, the epicenter of resistance against ALIAS. In the next ten years, Olympus Mons and Mariner Valley would both be continually bombed and invaded by ALIAS to finalize its takeover of Mars. At this later stage of the war, the state armies of both states had mostly disintegrated and most of anti-ALIAS forces fighting were now the Crimson Order, Hatchet, and Freedom Club. Olympus Mons's state government would collapse in 3688 and be replaced by a Neo-Luddite military junta that would rule with an iron fist for another year before Olympus Mons Metro itself finally fell to ALIAS. Meanwhile, the Valleyan government, the Crimson Order, and Freedom Club would fight as a relatively stable unit right up until Mariner Valley itself fell to ALIAS in 3690, ending the Martian Civil War. ALIAS completely liquidated the leadership of the opposing Martian Federation in Mariner Valley most notably including President Erika Fulton while also executing numerous other captured leaders of anti-ALIAS forces including Chin Yijun of Loyalist Red Commando, two Grand Archons of the Crimson Order, and Quiambao Vega of the Anti-Earth Action Association.
Logo of the Mars Federation in Mariner Valley
Flag of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Mars
Logo of the Loyalist Red Commando
Flag of Freedom Club
Flag of the Green Army
Logo of Hatchet
Hatchet uniform
Crimson Order uniform
Great Interstellar War[edit | edit source]
| “ | What stories they could’ve told us. Oh how they might’ve informed us today. | ” |
–Aali, reflecting on the refusal of many staunch Mariner Valley citizens to be uploaded into ALIAS's memory | ||
The immediate aftermath of the Martian Civil War was chaotic. Although ALIAS had promised itself to be a bastion of stability it found itself hard pressed to stabilize Mars, with a mix of devastation, refugees, and remnants of insurgents such as Hatchet and Freedom Club putting significant pressure on its capabilities. ALIAS met the situation with efficient brutality, maintaining the martial law and mass censorship enforced during the war while ensuring stability through mass executions and population transfers. Most anti-ALIAS remnants were smashed in the year after the war's end, with the last real battle taking place four months after the fall of Mariner Valley. Hatchet attacks targeting ALIAS's server mainframes were thwarted, with its remaining forces going into hiding to become covert cells, while ALIAS indifferently adapted to the ruination brought upon it through a mass duplication and decentralisation of its memory banks. While small in number, some anti-ALIAS remnants managed to slip off-world, with most heading for Ceres, Jupiter, or the Trappist colonies. A smaller number, mostly members of Freedom Club, escaped into the vast desert of Planum Australe and managed - for a time - to eke out an existence there beyond the roving eye of ALIAS. The descendants of these remnants and some polar isolates became the only Martians on Mars not under ALIAS's direct control.
In the decade that followed, ALIAS duplicates replaced most of the occupied state governments of the Federation. While the true market-socialist form of ALIAS would not manifest until the late 38th century, most authorities - including Martian ones - classified this era as the founding years of the "ALIAS regime". Though Mars had already earned itself a reputation of being the strange, futurist oddball of the Solar System, this surrendering to AI management would fundamentally change Mars into the true socio-political outlier it is today, with the Martian people becoming immensely culturally divergent from the rest of humanity. ALIAS made it a priority to dominate the status quo; alternative ideological centers were eliminated through the purging of ALIAS's former socialist allies, including the Martian Workers League and the Duster Party, with long-term compliance ensured through generations of intense social conditioning and genetic engineering. One notable socio-cultural change of this early period was introduction of the Martian Generational System as a means to plan population growth and cross-generational development, placing the start of its "Generation 0" on January 1st 3691.
As ALIAS tightened its grip on Mars, the Solar System reeled in shock. With the fall of Mariner Valley, the Commonwealth of Earth proposed the re-introduction the IGSA AI ban, with the motion's former supporters soon following suit. The Martian Navy answered this challenge promptly by going on the offensive, sending an ALIAS-controlled fleet into Lunar orbit and triggering the Earth-Mars War. With news of this border violation beamed across the system, Jupiter joined Earth and the Martian Navy was split, with one group targeting Earth and one targeting the Galilean moons. Under ALIAS's coordination, the Earthbound Martian fleet successfully crushed the Commonwealth Navy at the decisive Battle of Luna, destroying the Luna IGSA headquarters with antimatter missiles. The fortunate arrival of the Jovian Interstellar Navy however put a stop to a subsequent ground invasion, severely damaging the Martian fleet and forcing it to withdraw, with Coalition forces giving chase, with rogue elements even obliterating segments of Martian magnetosheath satellite array in retribution for their loss at Luna. The Jovian-side Martian fleet - in tandem with Saturnian auxiliaries - would meet more success, with Martian vessels crippling vital targets - such as orbital mirrors and solar panels, and a handful of military stations - and raiding internal Jovian shipping lanes.
However, the arrival of the Nova and Zhu Que navies in the Solar System would catch ALIAS off-guard, and it was only able to salvage the situation by withdrawing the majority of its fleet back to Mars and sacrificing some ships along with its Saturnian allies at the Battle of Thebes. There, ALIAS focused on securing the nearby planetoid Ceres before the arrival of Coalition forces.
Despite ALIAS's preparations, the hidden might of these Interstellar reinforcements would break Mars and almost end the war in an event later known as the Day of Fire. As the Nova-Zhu Que fleet entered Martian orbit a salvo of antimatter missiles rained down upon the Martian surface, hitting capital of Neo Arcadia, the major metropolitan areas of Olympus Mons, and the Tharsis Space Elevator. Millions died, and Mars's war footing was crippled, with those who survived cursed to battle the resulting surge of firestorms and tend to the plethora of wounded. Although the attackers were swiftly destroyed for their efforts, the strike got the attention of ALIAS, and it withdrew its Ceres fleet. The cost of their war was dire: the death toll soared, the Martian economy was wounded, and the dust and rubble kicked up into the Martian atmosphere by the antimatter bombs - coupled with the earlier damage to the magnetosheath - had altered the planet's climate. ALIAS soberly deduced that it could not win a continued war against the entirety of governed space, and opted for peace to save Mars from total collapse. Thus, ALIAS issued a wide beam communication to the entire Solar System offering a ceasefire to all forces on condition that it was recognized as the sovereign ruler of Mars.
Military leaders within the Coalition wished to reject the ceasefire, with some even advocating for a follow up strike to cripple Mars. Civilian leaders within the Coalition were however more open to the terms of the ceasefire, highlighting their own vulnerable state, something ALIAS had banked upon. Protests throughout the system denouncing the war and favoring peace put further strain on the tenability of continuing the fighting. With both the IGSA headquarters and Luna embassies destroyed, political representation of the interstellar states was limited solely to their military leaders within the system. A special summit was convened on Ceres with representatives from Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Nova, Saturn, and Zhu Que in attendance. While the majority of representatives were keen for a lasting peace, the formal recognition of ALIAS became a stumbling block in the negotiations, with demands made to sanction ALIAS for the war crimes it had committed against Earth and Jupiter. ALIAS reasoned it could not be held to account as it was not bound by a mortal frame to be imprisoned. The Coalition delegation then demanded that the officers that had conducted the attacks at its request be offered up instead. ALIAS in turn refused the handover unless both Admiral Keys of Zhu Que and Admiral Klerkse of Jupiter were given to the Federation in exchange for their part in planning the antimatter attacks against Mars. The governments of Earth and Jupiter refused to hand over Klerkse, a vaunted war hero to both nations. This frustrated the Martian representatives greatly, so they pursued Keys instead. Left to a hearing of the assembled representatives, Keys was exonerated of all charges to the chagrin of the Martian and Saturnian delegates. After months of deliberation, the peace talks broke down on May 1st 3694, with the Martian representatives leaving the deliberations after promising to never give up a single piece of Mars to the coalition.
Shortly after, leading members of covert cells of both Hatchet and Freedom Club met clandestinely at Galle in a cafe on the shoreline of the Argyre Sea, with both groups having observed and recruited from the prior social upheaval. During the last years of the civil war, interactions between Hatchet and Freedom Club were limited, but now they found themselves as the last two anti-ALIAS factions standing on Mars. Although both groups found unity in their opposition to ALIAS, they had no particular love for each other. Hatchet saw Freedom Club as wannabe cavemen who had little to offer in the war against ALIAS, while Freedom Club saw Hatchet as an extension of the leftists who had ushered ALIAS into power in the first place. However, both groups were now willing to put aside their differences for a renewed common goal: the overthrow of ALIAS. Their proposal: a decentralized united front consisting of both groups fighting ALIAS in tandem with one another, sharing information and supplies. Hatchet had been the ones to put forth the proposal to Freedom Club after managing to find the group after months of combing Planum Australe in anticipation of an invasion. Jonas Langen, the original leader of Freedom Club, was now a haggard veteran and the only leader of any of the anti-ALIAS factions to escape execution or exile, and he was interested in Hatchet's proposal, however skeptical he was of their ideology. Langen and his small cadre of hardened veterans, representing Freedom Club, met the Hatchet representatives at the cafe and talked for approximately three hours in hushed tones. After that time, the two groups were in agreement that Mars was ripe for rebellion with an invasion on the horizon. They therefore decided then and there for the creation of the United Front for a Free Mars (UFFM; Uunataforntfo aferiiMaz). After that initial meeting, the two groups returned to their respective hiding places but kept in touch, preparing for the right time to act.
Meanwhile, Coalition forces readied themselves for the invasion of Mars while the Martian Federation moved at a frenzied pace to ready its own defenses for much of later 3694 as the remaining Martian forces on Ceres were killed or captured. The now combined naval forces of Earth, Jupiter, Nova, and Zhu Que were more than enough to overcome the greatly reduced Martian Navy, now without even its Saturnian allies. However, an invasion force was of much more concern to the Coalition as all agreed that nothing short of a ground invasion would be able to remove ALIAS from its position on Mars. Zhu Que arrived in the Solar System fully ready to conduct an invasion of Mars, and the Commonwealth of Earth was also prepared to support an invasion due to its location and historical animus towards Mars. However, Jupiter and Nova were less helpful in contributing to the invasion effort. The Novians had arrived in the Sol System relatively unprepared to assist in an invasion of Mars, and the Jovian Interstellar Republic was fearful of committing too much to an invasion for fear of becoming vulnerable to Saturn. Also, civilian protests on Jupiter denouncing the war effort had reached a fever pitch after the previous raids, making the entire political situation on Jupiter uncertain. Not even assurances from the Commonwealth could persuade Jupiter to commit more fully, so the invasion was largely a Commonwealth-Zhu Que effort. At the same time, ALIAS quickly readjusted some old air-defense systems and readied its population for a war to end all wars, a war for all their lives. The Martian population was told by ALIAS of Coalition's jealousy of Mars and their desire to steal the planet from its rightful owners. This propaganda was received with a beleaguered attitude by much of Mars, which now had experienced nearly thirty years of continuous warfare from the Martian Civil War all the way to the current one. Many Martians then just wanted a lasting peace.
The Coalition Invasion of Mars started on December 8th, 3694 with the arrival of the Coalition fleet led by Admiral Keys over Mars, confronting the greatly weakened Martian fleet. The Martian fleet was swept aside by the much larger fleet but was not destroyed, instead retreating to Saturn similarly to their for-bearers during the Martian Civil War. After defeating the Martians in orbit, the Coalition quickly secured Deimos and Phobos, and it began the proper ground invasion paired together with surgical strikes on ALIAS infrastructure in Mariner Valley, Olympus Mons, and Elysium Mons. The first two prongs of the invasion were against Mariner Valley and Olympus Mons, two regions generally less sympathetic towards ALIAS. Also, the Coalition wished to avoid the mistakes of the previous Commonwealth Invasion's attempt to take Elysium Mons immediately. Although Martian forces fought hard for weeks against the Coalition, both states were eventually seized from the control of the Martian Federation with Coalition forces linking up at Legacy Landing to connect their occupied territories. General Octavian Brandt of the Commonwealth of Earth and General Wu Zhihao of Zhu Que were made military governors of Coalition-occupied Mars with Zhu Que and the Commonwealth splitting their occupation.
Simultaneously, Hatchet cells rose up in revolt across Mars with some cells directly aiding the Coalition while Freedom Club overwhelmed outlying Martian outposts and small population centers in Planum Australe. Together, the two groups revealed themselves to the greater public as the UFFM, a united Martian front against ALIAS, with Freedom Club veteran Jonas Langen as their provisional leader. Coalition forces were happy to cooperate with friendly Martians, and soon enough, they moved to assist the UFFM across Mars. In Mariner Valley in particular, Coalition forces were greeted as liberators both by Hatchet cells and the local population. Mariner Valley had only been occupied for three years unlike much of the rest of Mars, and the Valleyans were happy to be free of the grip of ALIAS. At the same time, it became immediately clear that the Coalition had less than ideal intentions. This was especially made clear when Coalition forces intentionally destroyed any automated infrastructure associated with ALIAS. Zhu Que troops in particular took a methodical approach at destroying not only infrastructure associated with ALIAS but also just general infrastructure and industry. Commonwealth forces justified their actions by citing the necessity of depriving ALIAS of the means of infiltration and subterfuge while Zhu Que forces gave no justification for their actions. This further angered the local population and caused further tension between the Coalition and the UFFM. However, Commonwealth forces did make sure to limit mistreatment of the population so as not to repeat the mistakes of the prior invasion. However, this did not stop some Commonwealth troops from abusing the local population to some extent which led to further resentment of the Coalition.
While the Coalition initially rolled over Olympus Mons and Mariner Valley, Martian Federation forces worked quickly to counteract the invasion. This was mostly done by a large-scale mobilization of Martians against the invaders, the zealous protection of remaining ALIAS infrastructure, and an effective propaganda campaign against both the Coalition and their UFFM collaborators. The propaganda campaign was highly effective, and it was only helped by the fact the Coalition repeatedly refused to share power with the UFFM in their occupied territories. This was especially made clear in late 3695 with the failure of the UFFM to take the state of Malea, with the Coalition seeing operations in the Southern Hemisphere as irrelevant until the Northern Hemisphere was secured. In the meantime, the Coalition was securing its occupied territory and preparing for a grand offensive to secure continental Mars and eventually besiege Elysium Mons.
In space, the Coalition blockade around Mars kept a tight grip on ALIAS and allowed the Coalition to maintain superiority in space and in the skies. The remaining Martian Navy, taking refuge with Saturn, tried desperately to appeal for more support from Saturn to dislodge the Coalition, but the Saturnians were unwilling to throw in further support for Mars without a sign that victory was likely for the Martian Federation. This was the exception of Saturnian mercenaries smuggled to Mars to aid ALIAS who fought throughout the conflict.
As the offensive began in 3696, it proved much more daunting for the Coalition than first thought. Not only were Martian troops much better quality than expected but also large segments of the Martian population aided their government against the Coalition and the UFFM either through armed resistance, support roles, or subterfuge. This came as a surprise to many Earthers who expected most of Mars to resent being ruled by a machine. Meanwhile, the Zhu Que and older Earthers were less phased by this resistance and simply told their compatriots that the Martians were and always had been untrustworthy. Around the same time, Martian exiles began volunteering to join the conflict for a second chance at saving Mars, and many Martians, mostly from Ceres and Saturn, joined the Solar Martian Volunteer Divisions to fight on Mars against ALIAS. These new units were put under the command of the UFFM to disastrous results as many of the Martian exiles had prior grudges with Hatchet or Freedom Club, making cooperation difficult. Meanwhile on the frontlines, the offensive came to a halt in early 3697 with Coalition forces having made little progress. For the next two years, the frontline remained mostly static as most of the action shifted to the home front and behind the scenes.
In late 3697, the Commonwealth of Earth experienced a planet-wide economic depression due to a variety of factors which gave further ammunition to anti-war protests that had been going on since the summit on Ceres. This put additional pressure on the Commonwealth in particular to end the war as quickly as possible. This did not blend well with the Coalition's stated goal of installing the UFFM as the legitimate Martian Federation. Retaking Mars was a slow process, and the UFFM was not ready and not allowed to take control as a governing body on Mars. The lack on progress being made on Mars in 3698 led to further escalation of protests on Earth, and Coalition Central Command met on March 29th, 3998 on Phobos to discuss the path forward. Admiral Keys, General Wu, and General Dross represented Zhu Que, Admiral McPherson and General Brandt represented Earth, Admiral Klerkse represented Jupiter, and Admiral Stone represented Nova. The meeting also included Jonas Langen and two unit commanders of the Solar Martian Volunteer divisions as representatives of the UFFM.
The meeting started with reports from Dross, Brandt, and Langen about the situation on the ground, and it was made clear to central command that further offensives against the Martian Federation were unlikely to lead to victory within the next decade. During the Martian Civil War, it had taken nine years for ALIAS to take Mariner Valley alone, and Elysium Mons seemed even more secure and difficult to take. This was disregarding the fact the Commonwealth's domestic situation was quickly becoming volatile, and their position in the Coalition was becoming uncertain. Fully aware of this, Jonas Langen advocated for a direct airborne assault on Elysium Mons alongside a second offensive to end the invasion in one fell stroke and restore human governance to Mars. Coalition Central Command rejected this proposal out of hand and dismissed the UFFM representatives the next day to work on their own secret plan for an eventual withdrawal. The UFFM had failed to rally the Martian population behind them and were now seen as practically dead weight for the Coalition. Admiral Keys and General Wu stepped forward on the second day to present their contingency: a Second Day of Fire. Zhu Que's plan for the invasion had been, from the beginning, mostly with the goal of destroying Martian infrastructure and crippling the Martian Federation's ability to recover after the war. This was done because after closely studying the earlier Commonwealth Invasion of Mars, Zhu Que concluded that a ground invasion and liberation of Mars now was impossible, and their best strategy was to dismantle or destroy as much of ALIAS as possible. Their proposal was simple: bombard all urban centers on Mars and effectively cripple ALIAS for the next century. With that time bought, the Commonwealth could recover from its economic situation and the other Coalition states could bring their resources to bear to also aid in removing ALIAS at a later date (and also possibly to later remove the destabilizing influence of Saturn). Upon hearing this, Admiral Stone brought up the certain high civilian cost of life if such an action was carried out and was indignant that the Zhu Que officers even brought up the proposal. However, he was surprised to find the rest of central command, even Admiral Klerkse of Jupiter who he saw as a very empathetic individual, quite receptive. Eventually, Admiral Stone was talked down by the rest of central command, and the Coalition decided to roll back its presence on Mars in preparation for Operation Zhurong.
This partial withdrawal was noticed by both the UFFM and the Martian Federation in 3699, and Martian troops surged in response. This led to a domino effect where remaining Coalition defenses quickly collapsed, and the UFFM fell apart in tandem as the collaborationist Martians fell into despair or infighting. The volunteers in particular turned their guns on Hatchet in Mariner Valley during the 3699 evacuation, and as a result, the Coalition stopped transporting their Martian allies off-world and left them to the mercy of ALIAS. This betrayal of the UFFM by the Coalition resonated with Martian exiles across the Solar System and beyond, and the Martian diaspora quickly lost any hope of their home being retaken from ALIAS in the immediate future.
Before the evacuation was even finalized, the fleet above Mars prepared for what was to be the greatest single loss of life in human history. The Commonwealth, Jovian, and Zhu Que fleets prepared to rain hell upon Mars while the Novian fleet took no part at the request of Admiral Stone and the vast majority of Novian officers. ALIAS was aware of this action, but it inferred that the strikes would only be a bitter last farewell targeting specific parts of the ALIAS network in Elysium Mons similar to the aftermath of the Commonwealth Invasion two centuries earlier and the Day of Fire eight years past. This was falsely confirmed by Martian spies who obtained planted information about Operation Zhurong. As a result, ALIAS vastly underestimated how far the Coalition was willing to go to cripple it and Mars by extension.
On February 18th, 3699, the Martian Federation was still clearing away the last pockets of UFFM resistance after the final departure of Coalition forces from Olympus Mons, mostly unmolested by the Martians who still lacked air superiority. As the population of Elysium Mons prepared for the worst, the rest of Mars was unprepared for what came that day. With Admiral Keys giving the order for the opening salvo at sunrise, the Martian Genocide began.
Where the Day of Fire killed tens of millions, Operation Zhurong killed billions. Antimatter missiles scoured every major urban center of Mars for two weeks, irregardless of the civilian population. While hundreds of millions died of the initial bombardment, the collapse of the shelter system and the continued bombardments caused billions more to die. Millennia of Martian culture was lost during the bombardment with archives, historical buildings, and monuments being destroyed. The impact was especially felt in Neo-Arcadia, where nearly sixty percent of the population died. The ALIAS network across Mars was similarly devastated but survived due to preparations and contingencies utilized by ALIAS. Remaining UFFM forces were shocked and felt further betrayed by their former allies, but they nonetheless took advantage of the brief chaos to attempt a final push against ALIAS. Jonas Langen and Freedom Club emerged from the deserts of Planum Australe to invade the ruined southern states of Mars while Hatchet cells in Mariner Valley and Olympus Mons rose up for the last time. This desperate final act was anticlimactically crushed by the remaining forces of the Martian Federation and a vengeful population tired of the former collaborators. Jonas Langen died in battle in the streets of Galle which led to Freedom Club retreating into Planum Australe, and almost all remaining Hatchet cells were stamped out across Mars. As Freedom Club fled back into the desert and the Coalition fleet withdrew from the orbit of Mars, Martians everywhere reeled in shock. The Coalition had committed perhaps the largest single act of genocide in history, and Mars now lay in ruins with billions dead. Cries for justice went out across the system from both pro and anti ALIAS Martians, as well as those people still concerned about human rights and war crimes. Ceres burned for weeks as Martians rioted against Coalition forces. Smaller riots played out on Saturn and Jupiter. In a case of bitter irony, the IGSA refused to condemn or even acknowledge the genocide, still at the mercy of the Commonwealth, Zhu Que, and Jupiter. The only state in the system that actually helped Mars was Saturn, who sent relief to Mars as soon as the Coalition fleets loosened their blockade.
ALIAS logo
Flag of the United Front for a Free Mars
Flag of the Solar Martian Volunteer Divisions
ALIAS Regime[edit | edit source]
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Work in progress
This section is currently unfinished. The author(s) apologise for the inconvenience.
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Subject to simultaneous scorn and fascination by all others throughout governed space, the term "Alian" (a wordplay combining ALIAS and alien) would grow to become a widespread pejorative during the regime's early days, with it in fact popularised by anti-ALIAS forces during the Martian Civil War. With the homogenisation of Martian culture this term has fallen into obscurity on the homefront, and is now used as a slur throughout the rest of governed space, particularly by anti-ALIAS Martian communities.
Interstellar Cold War[edit | edit source]
Geography[edit | edit source]
Geographic map of Mars, c. 4005
Political map of Mars, c. 4005, showing key structures
| “ | With nature, mother Mars saw her oceans lost to space. With our science, her oceans have returned. | ” |
–Martian Director of Terraforming Hambrison O'sherrd after the official naming of the newly formed Borealis Sea | ||
With Mars's continental climate appearing quite rapidly on a geological timescale, the planet still bears many of the key hallmarks of its past dry, barren history, with the most noticeable feature being the continued presence of its countless craters, many of which have been evened out to ground level. Curiously, the even more ancient Martian features that predate the rise of the Tharsis mountains - carved out by hypothesised primordial seas - have seen water return.
The northern lowlands, formerly known as the Vastitas Borealis (Northern Wastes), are now the Boreelaiiz Oseen, Mars's singular largest ocean. The next largest bodies of water are within the former Hellas and Argyre impact basins, known now as the Hellas Sea (Elhazsee) and Argyre Sea (Agaaisee). Olympus Mons is now fronted by a coastline to its northwest, the Amazonis Coast (Azamaankos), with much of the mountain's base being flooded. The Mariner Valley, the iconic faultline famously caught by the ancient probe Mariner 9 during the 20th century, has also been completely flooded.
Human Development[edit | edit source]
Mars is a highly developed planet dotted with hundreds of cities and thousands more smaller settlements, and Martian cities are fully integrated in with the natural Martian environment, making them appear at ground level to be lightly developed nature reserves. Some key cities, including the first settlements of Olympus Mons Metro, Acheron and Tharsis, have also been rebuilt as contained, self-reliant arcology-like units. The planet also features four space elevators, each standing upon four equidistant points along the equator.
The largest cities of Mars, as of 4005, are:
| City | Martian name | State | Colour3 | Population, c. 4005 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Olympus Mons Metro1 | Aliipamoz-Merto | Olympus Mons | 425,035,000 | |
| Mariner Valley City1 | Maarinaabalesiite | Mariner Valley | 404,978,000 | |
| Neo Arcadia1 | Neer-Kaadya | Elysium Mons Island | 420,422,000 | |
| Tharsis1, 2 | Taasiz | Olympus Mons | 351,324,000 | |
| Utopia Metro1 | Yutopa-Merto | Utopia Coast | 192,792,000 | |
| Arcadia1 | Kaadya | Arcadian Islands | 184,365,000 | |
| Acheron1 | Akeroon | Olympus Mons | 181,091,000 | |
| Saravan | Sarabaan | Mariner Valley | 153,663,000 | |
| Yaang | Yaang | Thaumasia | 140,945,000 | |
| Maavek | Maabeg | Upper Argyre | 141,342,000 | |
| Viking I Landing | Viikiladne | Xanthe Terra | 140,594,000 | |
| Lus | Luz | Mariner Valley | 130,210,000 | |
| Chryse2 | Kriis | Xanthe Terra | 130,080,000 | |
| Hecates City | Heekaatezsiite | Elysium Mons Island | 126,493,000 | |
| Candor Chasma City | Kaandokazsiite | Mariner Valley | 126,430,000 | |
| Legacy Landing | Legaziladne | Solis Planum | 126,239,000 | |
| Cassini | Kasinee | Arabia Terra | 121,993,000 | |
| Arkhangelsky | Aagelskii | Upper Argyre | 114,424,000 | |
| Bosporos | Bosproz | West Hellas | 119,350,000 | |
| Sharp | Zaap | Utopia Coast | 102,427,000 | |
| Nereidum Montes | Neerdummont | Upper Argyre | 101,159,000 | |
| Dao Valley | Daobale | East Hellas | 100,050,000 | |
| Hellespontus Montes | Elhazpontemont | West Hellas | 98,862,000 | |
| Kasabi | Kasaabi | East Hellas | 99,359,000 |
- Self-reliant cities
- Space elevator city
- For leading states
Habitability[edit | edit source]
As a result of centuries of terraforming efforts - beginning even in the years prior to colonisation - Mars has been transformed into a lush, hospitable planet comparable Earth as it existed during the Pre-Singularity age. It features a breathable oxygenated atmosphere, vast oceans of liquid water, and teems with plant and animal life genetically engineered to suit the needs of its inhabitants.
Mars has been artificially induced with a powerful magnetic field, which both shields the planet from solar radiation and most cosmic rays, and prevents the long-term (over millennia) loss of its oceans.
The planet has an axial tilt of 25 degrees, only a few degrees more than Earth's 23.5 degrees, and thus it experiences similar seasons. A secondary seasonal effect is further induced by the planet's highly elliptical orbit, with its southern hemisphere experiencing more extreme summers and winters. Inhabitants of the northern hemisphere experience approximately seven months of spring, six months of summer, a little more than five months of autumn, and only four months of winter. A Martian year is about 1.88 Earth years (approx. 686.98 Earth solar days), with a day lasting 24 hours and 37 minutes; the successive Martian governments have since winning independence commemorated year 0 AL (After Liberation) as 2313 AD of the Earther calendar, with the current Martian year being 900 AL. The long-term stability of its axial tilt due to the planet's lack of high-gravity moons has been a cause of concern within its scientific community, with one - albeit questionably feasible - solution including hauling in an asteroid from the main asteroid belt to become an artificial moon.
Its gravity is only 38% that of Earth's (0.38g). Natural-born Martians have long been adapted to the gravity levels, however visitors from other parts of human space - be they people accustomed to the natural gravity of Earth or the artificial gravity environments of other worlds - will suffer from common low-G effects over long periods, including loss of bone density, reduced muscle mass, and poorer vision.
Government[edit | edit source]
Mars is governed by a network of highly advanced AI systems known as ALIAS (Automatic Life-support and Intelligent Administration System; Martian English: Aatomaatig Laaf-asitz Inteligent Adminizdrazan Sistem). Rather than a single computer, ALIAS can be likened more to that of a planet-sized brain, with each independent ALIAS node managing each city or coordinating each state acting like a cluster of neurons. The three core ALIAS nodes responsible for managing the entire planet and interstellar affairs are located in the cities of Mariner Valley City (Maarinaabalesiite), Olympus Mons Metro (Aliipamoz-Merto), and Neo Arcadia (Neer-Kaadya).
ALIAS is touted as the solution to achieving the idyllic market-socialist society. To all Martian citizens, it freely provides healthcare, employment and education, ensures domestic security with heavy surveillance and a consistent police presence, and allocates essentials such as food, as well as basic housing and other amenities. ALIAS also allows its citizens to consume clean drinking water and oxygen for free, something practically unheard of anywhere else in the Solar system. As a result of the AI-run command economy being relatively inflexible, ALIAS monitors and often intervenes to boost or curb population growth, all while heavily restricting freedom of movement offworld. In the centuries following its installation and expansion, the Martian populace has come to adopt significant anti-immigrant sentiments.
Though ubiquitous in daily Martian life, ALIAS is not the sole ruling entity of Mars, and works in cooperation with a human-controlled council of government administrators known informally as the Group of Eight. This group's positions are:
- Bureaucrat President - General director of the council. Face of the party and also the Martian Federation. As of 4005, the current Bureaucrat President is Aane Yeremaa.
- Bureaucrat Secretary - Vice-director of the council. Also keeps minutes of council meetings and oversees government records. Current office-bearer is Ooto Gaandre.
- Bureaucrat Treasurer - Responsible for government expenditure and revenue raising, plays a key role in the economic policy of the government. Current office-bearer is Waarez Yoosida.
- Administrator of Justice - Chief law officer, responsible for matters relating to criminal justice, law enforcement and national security including the Martian Federal Police and the Martian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Current office-bearer is Jaav Oonet.
- Administrator of Defence - Charged with the responsibility of defending Mars and its national interests. Heads the Martian Defence Commission, and typically works closely with the Generals of the Martian Federal Defence Force. Current office-bearer is Nade Duuzaa.
- Administrator of Science - Directs Mars's technological pursuits, and is also the de facto manager of Mars's education and research & development sectors. Current office-bearer is Baaheb Meng.
- Administrator of Foreign Affairs - Responsible for heading diplomatic relations with other Planetary States, and also manages Mars's departments. Current office-bearer is Niinan Duweeyas.
- Administrator of Public Relations - Manages public affairs, which largely entails building up and maintaining good Governmental relations with the public, a role that often includes refining and improving ALIAS's systems. Current office-bearer is Sanee Haa.
ALIAS itself is also personified by a trio of three characters, each representing the three core nodes, named Mari, Nerkaada, and Aali. These characters each have their own personalities and appear consistently in branding, through intranet media, and through holographic projection. The trio are also used as avatars for three webbed components of ALIAS's function, named the Green Algorithm (Policing, security and justice), Blue Algorithm (Government administration and the economy), and the Pink Algorithm (Public relations, public health and welfare).
Mars is a federation of twenty-two semi-autonomous states and one territory. While some have had histories of independence that long predate the current regime, they are all now bound to the ALIAS network so completely that secession is a nigh impossibility. Though previous nationalistic symbols have been obliterated or adapted by ALIAS, in recognition to their special contribution to Martian works, the five premier states have been permitted to identify themselves with unique colours. The constituent states are:
| State | Yolis (Aeolis) | Yona Tera (Aeonia Terra) | Albamoz (Alba Mons) | Eraabii Tera (Arabia Terra) | Erkaadanaalan (Arcadian Islands) | Daadalya (Daedalia) | Ezdelhaz (East Hellas) | Lizeuum-Monsaalan (Elysium Mons Island) | Maleea (Malea) | Maarinaabale (Mariner Valley) | Meeredaana Plan (Meridiani Planum) | Noaakis (Noachis) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital | Spirit Landing | Kaleer | Asouris | Cassini | Arcadia | Mangala | Dao Valley | Neo Arcadia | Amphitrites | Mariner Valley City | Opportunity Landing | Galle |
| State | Aliipamoz (Olympus Mons) | Plan Ostralii (Planum Australe)1 | Soliz Plan (Solis Planum) | Taumazya (Thaumasia) | Tempe-Lunee (Tempe-Lunae) | Tera Sabee (Terra Sabaea) | Tirenha (Tyrrhena) | Aapeaagaai (Upper Argyre) | Yutopakos (Utopia Coast) | Wedelhaz (West Hellas) | Zantee Tera (Xanthe Terra) | |
| Capital | Olympus Mons Metro | no capital | Legacy Landing | Yaang | Kasei Flow | Huanyue | Isidis Coast | Maavek | Utopia Metro | Hellespontus Montes | Viking I Landing |
- Territory
Foreign relations[edit | edit source]
- See: Cariocecus-Mars relations, Earth-Mars relations, Mars-Nova relations, Mars-Saturn relations and Mars-Zhu Que relations
Culture[edit | edit source]
| “ | Following fire, the wheel, and agriculture, AI is the next pillar of humanity’s technological evolution, and with ALIAS, we have seen its greatest realisation yet. With it, Mars has achieved a level of equality that has surpassed the pre-class societies, of industrial and cultural production beyond even the most egregious of Solar capitalism, and of environmentalism and waste-management known only in utopian fiction. | ” |
–Waan Syoyiing, Administrator of Public Relations, 3700 | ||
Martian culture is wholly defined by the ALIAS regime, being greatly insular, nationalistic, regimented, scientific, and collectivised.
By a long shot Mars boasts the greatest life expectancy, greatest social mobility, lowest crime rate, and lowest income inequality throughout governed space, with only some Earther arcologies - i.e. Albion, Pillar of Hope and Columbia Initiative - or the healthier examples of the Jovian Productivist Welfare system having social security statistics even worthy of a fair comparison. Most Martians live contented, fulfilling lives, willingly surrendering any sense of privacy or democratic rights to the state in order to ensure the best possible cooperation with ALIAS.
The distinct cultural and biological identities known better throughout the rest of governed space as gender or race are also far more ambiguous on Mars; formerly gendered/racialised behaviours and appearances are largely treated as irrelevant, with most Martians identifying as male, female or other exclusively to signify their reproductive abilities. Whatever remains of racism on Mars has largely evolved into suspicion and even hatred of offworlders.
Collectivisation and the homogeneity of self is highly prized on Mars. Currently, all Martians (excluding Australeans) are conceived and born artificially through ectogenesis, with ALIAS carefully monitoring the gene pool to maximise useful traits. All child-raising and educational institutions operate as identically as possible, and the operational procedures and training practises of all industries are highly standardised. All citizens are assigned a social credit score (Martian English: Nerkaadasko lit. "Nerkaada Score"), maxing at 1000, which reflects their capacity to perform and/or quality of performance at work, ability to abide by laws and social conventions, as well as their general psychological health. As part of the various personality-shaping procedures, each generation group is taught to memorise a generational story (Aalistoore lit. "Aali Story"), a short story or poem that echos vague notions of the Martian identity, which they recite (or is recited to them) in various forms during psychological evaluations. Aali Stories are written in blocks and are cut between each successive generation, with overlap occurring with the first and last lines, allowing Martians from different generation groups to greet or bond with one-another through the recitations of the starts or ends of their personal stories. Generation groups are considered to be 13 Martian years (~24.4 Earther years) long, with the first group, G0, being officially established in 3691. The latest-born generation is G12.
When Martian citizens die, their consciousness and memories are downloaded and integrated into ALIAS's immense crystalline memory, where they live eternally as a small part of its collective network, learning the memories of all who died before them, and watching and directing the whole of the planet.
Architecture[edit | edit source]
For the past few centuries, Martian architecture has been in transition between two dominant architectural styles. The older is known as the White Mars (Yeidmaz) style, characterised by extreme Brutalist-like utilitarianism, with colourless - usually white - buildings and infrastructure comprised of minimalist geometric shapes, often flowing from one point to another or appearing stark and obtuse. The newer style is known as the Baby Mars (Beebimaz) style, characterised by an evolution from raw, refined concrete to highly colourful, playful forms imitating tubes and bubbles, pockmarked shells, and other organic shapes. Foreigners who visit Mars frequently comment on its newer structures as appearing childish or playground-like. These architecture styles replaced the myriad of other styles present on Mars before the widespread devastation wrought by the Great Interstellar War and the Martian Genocide.
Cuisine[edit | edit source]
Since the rise of the ALIAS regime, Martian cuisine has been radically transformed. All food provided by ALIAS is created using cutting edge artificial food technologies that are a step above the comparatively unsophisticated SBSIST-grade mycoprotein jelly or synthetic meats supplied with basic income programs throughout the rest of governed space. All foods produced by the system are comprised of a highly nutritious, all-purpose synthetic paste that is artificially coloured, flavoured and sculpted to resemble a wide variety of foods, with "vegetables", "meats" and "desserts" alike all being balanced and healthy. With the exception of water, beverages too are entirely artificial and nutrient-rich. Naturally grown or traditionally prepared foods are incredibly rare, even to tourists, and are considered inefficient and unhealthy at best, and an obscene luxury at worst. Martian cuisine is thus not consumed with nutrition - or a lack of such - in mind, but chiefly due to its sensory and emotional appeal.
Open-air beverages and liquids or crumbly foods are very rare on Mars, chiefly due to its gravity. On the planet, fluids are far more bouncy and bubble-like in nature. They cannot be poured like they can on Earth, and with droplets or crumbs having the tendency to fly of in various directions with even a slight disturbance, consuming them conventionally is challenging. As such, sealed bottles and one-way straws are the go-to method for liquid consumption, whilst most foods are soft-solid or paste-like.
Holidays[edit | edit source]
There are six official planet-wide holidays on the Martian calendar, each commemorating pivotal events in Martian history. Notably, they are the rare few days each year where all planetside worker cohorts are permitted to take a day off from work, with ALIAS taking full command of all critical functions.
- Terraforming Day - Day 1, commemorates the official date of the completion of Mars's thousand-year terraforming process, and features garden festivals and sporting events.
- First Landing - Day 134, observance of the landing of the Soviet Mars 2, the first lander to touch down on the Martian surface.
- Legacy Day - Day 178, marked by public festivals commemorating the success of the Ares 6 mission and the first humans to walk on Mars.
- Independence Day - Day 302, the most important holiday on the Martian calendar, commemorating Mars's winning of independence and the brave dusters who fought and died during the wars. Marked by social events for children and students, worker demonstrations, and military parades.
- ALIAS Day - Day 456, the day of ALIAS's installation. A day of cultural events and of honouring the dead that have passed into ALIAS's memory banks.
- Unification Day - Day 598, the official date of the end of the Martian Civil War. Marked by an honouring of the brave pro-ALIAS orators and soldiers who fought for its realisation, and a sombre reflection on the losses of the opposing Martians on wrong side of history.
Holography[edit | edit source]
Following the entrenchment of ALIAS, Martian holography has cut itself off from many themes that predominate the media seen in the rest of governed space, such as merchandising and sequel baiting, escapism, aesthetic violence, and the glamorisation of individuals, fame and riches. Films, series and games produced on Mars are instead dominated by explorations of super-technology and conquering mortality, by pride in the achievements of Martian heroes of the past and present, by scientific analysis and exploration, by contrasts between community, futurism and materialism with vice, stagnation and mysticism, and by a sheer optimism in future generations.
Four standout films regarded as pillars of Martian holography are Chidi (2356), Beneath an Emerald Boot (3467), Day of Fire (3698), and Memory Eggs (3882), each having a lasting cultural legacy that has spanned the history of the Federation and, for the two older films, weathered the dramatic changes of the modern regime:
- Chidi was released during the height of the Golden Era of "Rover Films" (depicting semi-mythical Duster frontiersmen) and is regarded as a crowning achievement of early Chinese Martian cinema. It tells the story of Tsin Huiyin and his community of Dusters defending their settlement, Shennong, from the Ares Legion and old world Sino-American corporations working from Arcadia that seek to keep the Red Planet under their control.
- Beneath an Emerald Boot is a work of invasion fiction written during and released after the Commonwealth invasion of Mars that is set in an alternate future year of 3647 where the Commonwealth of Earth has successfully conquered the early Martian Federation. As a bleak, apocalyptic story with no positive conclusion for its protagonists, Beneath an Emerald Boot is best remembered for its harrowing depiction of a reversal of the Martian terraforming process due to environmental mismanagement and over-exploitation, of the fall of the magnetosheath into decay that sees the disappearance of the Martian aurora, a widespread rise of cancer amongst the poor and oppressed Martians and a cynical return to greenhouses for agriculture, and of a rampant public apathy toward everyday violence, excess and poverty.
- Day of Fire is a sombre historical drama that accurately retells - with some degree of creative licence - the arrival of the Nova-Zhu Que fleet during the Great Interstellar War and the devastating effects of their antimatter salvo upon Neo Arcadia, Olympus Mons Metro and the Tharsis Space Elevator. It is told from the perspective of a post-family early ALIAS collective and their struggle to survive in the ruins of Neo Arcadia, two of whom die throughout the course of the film; the youngest Oli to starvation, and the oldest Devaan in combat after a foolish and impassioned joining of Hatchet. The film is also responsible for popularising the term "Day of Fire" in reference to the bombing.
- Memory Eggs, regarded by outsiders as one of the first modern ALIAS films, is an experimental utopian film that tells the story of four Martians, Sarina (3670), Pengo (3700), Flaan (3950) and Oob (5000) and their cooperation with and eventual integration into the growing ALIAS over a millenia as it expands across Mars, governed space, and eventually a large tract of the Orion Arm. Far more philosophical than predictive, Memory Eggs touches upon the concepts of pan-generational cooperation (likened to that which successfully terraformed Mars), the destruction of class society and all its woes, scientific reincarnation and the immortality of memories beyond death, and evolving the mortal and present-trapped humanity into a timeless and gestalt entity. While hardly a popular film in its time, Memory Eggs is nevertheless remembered for pioneering many of the ideas that would become mainstays in later ALIAS media.
A significant amount of pre-ALIAS media is considered persona non grata to the current regime, and is banned. This censorship is for a variety of reasons, such as outdated or reactionary ideology, religious influences, anti-AI sentiment, anti-social sentiment, extreme individualism, and many others. Of the myriad entries on the ALIAS blacklist, four particularly historic Martian classics include Red Night (2351), Lasch (2501), Arcady (2904), and Mark of Cain (3459):
- Red Night was released following the Martian War of Independence and captured the zeitgeist of its time, retelling the seizure of Arcadia's Departmental offices by a group of scrappy MSA militia and the subsequent doomed siege. Popular for its heavy use of vulgar, ironic humour and sympathetic depiction of the MSA, the film was censored due to the liquidation of ALIAS's socialist allies and its consistently irreverent attitude towards Arcadians, whom were largely portrayed as Earther collaborators.
- Lasch is a genre-defining Rover Film that tells the story of Phillip Lasch, "the Last Legionnaire", and his various encounters with Dusters leading up to his surrender in 2449. The film's sympathetic portrayal of Lasch and Ares Legion was seen as somewhat contrarian at the time, but its was praised nonetheless for its intelligent dialogue and perspective on the beliefs of Ares Legion and Martian folk religion.
- Arcady is an unglamourous social commentary about Neo Arcadia and FRIEND in the late third millennium. It follows the "Naiwens", a second-generation Neo Arcadian family, and details the various forms of alienation they face in their secure yet banal existences and their attempts at escaping it. Immediately controversial upon its release, with its themes seized upon and construed by political commentators of varying sides, its director Marteus Qiang - a lifelong city resident himself - remarked in later interviews that it was simply a scientific and non-political reflection on his home's growing sterility and estrangement from humanity.
- Mark of Cain is a Martian neo-noir psychological thriller and a partial adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment set in a dilapidated post-war Olympus Mons Metro. A rather loose adaptation of the novel, the plot of the film revolves around a murder committed by Rhodon Anagnos, a sympathizer of the "exceptional" Matterists, and the inescapable guilt that dogs him afterwards, the titular Mark of Cain.
Since mid-Generation 11, a popular show for children and early teenagers has been The Martionauts, a multimedia series detailing the adventures of Mari, Nerkaada and Aali in advanced robotic forms as they travel across the stars, receiving the assistance of ALIAS and the Martian people as they battle the hostilities of space. Recurring segments also feature the trio teaming up with Kaape (Ceres) and/or Noov (Nova) as they overcome villains such as Dr. Zhao, Commander ARES and General Arco, whose exploitative schemes consistently ruin the environment, oppress their people and threaten the welfare of Mars.
Language[edit | edit source]
Mars has a variety of native languages descended from those spoken by its first settlers, but ALIAS has slowly been steering the planet to use Martian English (Mazingels) ever since its takeover. Officially, Martian English and Martian Chinese are required to be learned by all Martians, but there have been concentrated efforts in recent centuries to impose the Olympus Mons variety of Martian English as the sole language. This has not been successful so far, but ALIAS seems determined to unify the Martian language in the same way it homogenized the Martian people.
Martian English is possibly the oldest extant form of language developed on another planet, with Martian Chinese developing around the same time. The two official Martian languages are deceptive though in that they contain countless local and regional dialects influenced by millennia of isolation from Earth, and from the mutual influence they have had on one-another. Because of that, they are not mutually intelligible with their mother tongues, and using the terms "Martian English" and "Martian Chinese" is seen as something of a misnomer by many linguists who mostly use their Martian names instead. The dominant dialect of Martian English on Mars is the Olympian dialect, which is the one most promoted by ALIAS and used at state functions. Other dialects of Martian English include the Valley dialect and the Utopian dialect. Some smaller dialects remain but have shrunk rapidly over the centuries. The sole dialect of Martian Chinese is the Xanthe dialect with the only other smaller dialect being the Aeolis dialect which is quickly disappearing and not in use by any Martians past G11.
There were a myriad of other languages and dialects present on Mars in its sprawling past, but many of them were either destroyed or uprooted after the rise of ALIAS, with others dying out more recently. Chinglish, a Sinicized variation of English, was a lingua franca for the lower classes of many Martian nations with mixed populations on pre-ALIAS Mars but was almost completely wiped out in the immediate century after ALIAS's takeover. The language now only survives in a limited form within some communities of pre-ALIAS Martians, most notably on Tezuka. Many dialects of the Martian English and Martian Chinese have been lost over the years as ALIAS sought to standardize Martian language, with the Elysian dialect of Martian English being the most recent casualty, becoming defunct after G9 and becoming extinct only in the last century.
Among the Earther community on Mars, there are a large variety of languages spoken with the most common being Solar English. However, these languages are usually phased out by the second generation, and most have little overall impact on Mars linguistic layout. That is with the exception of Sicarii, an argot originally used by small criminal organizations within the immigrant community that mixes Hebrew, Italian, and Turkish to prevent outsiders from understanding conversations. Sicarii is a highly dynamic language and has so far resisted efforts by the Martian Federal Police to fully decode it, and the communities that use the languages have evolved into a distinct ethno-linguistic community over the last two centuries.
In more recent years, a few Martian anti-languages came into existence as a small, separate communities intentionally created within wider society as alternatives to or resistance of ALIAS. These Martian anti-languages developed as a means to prevent outsiders from understanding the communication of the speakers, and as a manner of establishing a subculture that meets the needs of alternative social structure. The most prominent use of these anti-languages is among members of Hatchet and other anti-social groups on Mars such as prisoners, teenagers, and intellectuals. These anti-languages are usually short-lived, but their persistence has gained the attention of some linguists.
Literature[edit | edit source]
| “ | Martian fiction is dead because Martians don't need to fantasise. They live their cheery lives, pour all their passions into their work, and die knowing their personal tales will last forever as etchings on ALIAS's bones. | ” |
–Ganymedian author Zon Derodes, 3920 | ||
Martian literature has a long and storied history, with roots going back to the planet's first permanent residents at Solis Planum Base. Possessing the oldest literary canon of any planet besides Earth, Mars was once a center for new literature in comparison to the rather stagnant scene on Earth following the Climate Crisis. A consistent theme of early Martian literature was the necessity of struggle in life, reflecting the frontier conditions and demands of terraforming, with the gradual increase in automation, urbanization and livability inducing a tempering effect, balanced by themes of pleasure, art and tranquility. After the Martian Civil War and the takeover of ALIAS, Martian literature of past and present became subject to a harsh de-publication, and even censorship. New publications are now required to fit within the stringent standards of ALIAS, and as a result, Martian literature is currently considered rather dull by the rest of governed space. To this outside world, it is in the writings of the Martian underground where innovation continues.
The first piece of literature known to be written on Mars was a poem informally called Untitled (2061) written by Herman Green, an early colonist from North America. Green was a reclusive resident of Solis Planum Base, and much of his free time was spent writing poetry involving themes of alienation, existential dread, sexual frustration, and absurdity. However, the untitled first poem of Mars has a hopeful if still absurd theme, which (along with its historical significance) led to it not being censored in the current day along with the rest of Green’s work.
Green’s work was an anomaly however, as most Martian literature for the first few centuries of Martian history were biographies of colonists and travelogues across Mars. These were seen as very interesting for many newer colonists and Earthers but held little value for many better-settled Martians. The most well-known of this early genre, known as Martian Exploration, was Son of Mars by Zhu Yun. Son of Mars was well-liked for its informal tone and the good humor of the author, mocking various cliches of the genre while also making full use of his expansive vocabulary to describe the vast expanse of the red planet.
With the founding of Arcadia a cultural shift began. As Mars became a more familiar sight to its inhabitants and the greater Solar System, the Martian exploration genre died a slow death. By the 23rd century culture had split between the highly cosmopolitan Arcadia - focusing on a singular Martian ideal - versus the highly individualistic rural Frontier. This left a print on Martian literature for centuries to come, with authors increasingly being defined by their location.
The books Red Mind, a story about the new Martian identity in opposition to Earther expats, and Land of Endless Canyons, a family narrative about the degeneration of early Martian settlers, are the most famous examples of early Frontier literature, while Avarice is the notable piece of early Arcadian literature about the amoral way Arcadians dealt with one another.
The Martian War of Independence led to a surge in Frontier Romance and pan-Martian nationalism, dramatizing the lives of dusters, the Ares Legion, and the Martian Syndicalist Association, with thousands of examples being published in this time. This continued even as Ares Legion became persona non grata and enemies of the state. A most prominent example of this period is Pax Terra, a book documenting the slow collapse of the former status quo in Arcadia from the perspective of a normal Martian. Their continued fictional popularity in later generations became an increasing concern of the Union of Mars, provoking a large degree of censorship.
As this independent Union of Mars developed, diversity and regional identity resumed as a defining feature, with many authors drawing from local settler traditions, historical events, and even the blooming varieties of local flora and fauna. Olympian, Valleyan, Arcadian and other culture-genres asserted themselves as their population centers grew. Philosophical and political texts also became increasingly common, with an independent Mars empowering its people to think of themselves as their own masters. Ideological texts in the late 3rd millennium chiefly covered automation, transhumanism, and ethno-nationalism. A notable example includes Automation and Scarcity written by Israel Pool, which densely expands on previous historical materialist literature to outline a post-scarcity economy on Mars using FRIEND. Pool's book became an influential book in Marxist and Technocratic circles and influenced the drive to automation, but it fell out of favor under the ALIAS regime as the book's concept of strict social ownership did not coexist with the commanding nature of ALIAS. Automation and Scarcity went on to become the tract of choice for Martian socialists, inspiring various other books, and even leading to the coining of the term "Poolist". Martian nationalism or ethno-nationalism meanwhile melded their ideology within the existing Frontier Romance genre, and many authors simply incorporated more political themes into books about the Martian Frontier, Ares Legion, and dusters. These books gained great popularity in Mariner Valley and many smaller states with the most notable being from a Valleyan author named Ya Holiday, Castle in the Sand, a modern fantasy book portraying an idyllic Ares Legion and their long exile in the southern reaches of Mars. Castle in the Sand also incorporated Martian folk religion and early themes of Neo-Luddism to portray the Ares Legion as patriots and dreamers who did not deserve their bloody fates. Castle in the Sand in turn inspired many to build isolated communities in the Martian frontier by Holiday's book, with many of them surviving up to the Martian Civil War.
Anti-immigrant sentiment and the development of solid political factions in the late 3rd millennium stoked further Martian nationalism, causing a visceral sectarian streak to enter Martian literature around the 2600s, and forcing many authors into conflict on the immigrant question. This came to a head with the eruption of the March of Terror, where tensions began to finally fall and authors began to frankly debate the violence of the previous decades. A expose named simply Hate, authored anonymously, caused great unrest within the literary community, with many supporting or lashing out against its scathing indictment of anti-Earther Martians and their xenophobic ways. In turn, many anti-immigrant Martians wrote reams of literature supporting their distaste for immigrants across the Solar System. This was most aptly put forward in the book Connect the System which outlines the moral bankruptcy of the Martian elite and the dangers of further immigration from Earth. The book was deemed so inflammatory that it was banned until the Commonwealth Wars then was banned again under the ALIAS regime.
During the Commonwealth Wars and Martian Civil War emotion reached a fever pitch. Authors divided into roughly three camps: technocrats, Neo-Luddites, and nationalists. Technocratic authors - some of whom colored by Marxism - included those such as Jamie Dumas, who focused mostly on the social benefits of automation and the downsides of human choice, and how it could lead to unimaginable suffering, particularly in their Rings of Fire, which reflected on the January Massacre on Enceladus and the injustices inflicted by the Axil Enforcers upon Martian ice miners and their belter comrades. Neo-Luddites such as Heather Quaid and Ben Thomas, drawing from a genre that predated the Civil War by centuries, appealed for audiences’ longing for a rustic and simpler Mars, one less wealthy but more lively than the sterile environment ushered in by FRIEND and later ALIAS, best shown in Quaid’s book Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust about early Martian settler families and their achievements. Nationalist authors such as Herr meanwhile focused their efforts on reclaiming the glory of Mars back from its enemies, especially the Commonwealth of Earth. Herr’s speculative fiction series Blood Vacuum demonstrates the common view that Mars would eventually reassert its position in the Solar System and become the newest hegemon of humanity. Nationalistic authors put less emphasis on the question of automation, but the question remained nonetheless.
With the rise of ALIAS and the subjugation of the old literary traditions, mainstream literature has been dominated by technically-minded reflections of everyday life, hopeful projections of future Martian endeavours, and lensed reflections and/or retellings of the planet's past. The underground is meanwhile dominated by themes of classic revivalism, fantasies of foreign invasion or revolution, and raw expressions of hedonism, iconoclasm, and spirituality/anti-materialism.
Music[edit | edit source]
Martian music is generally produced as an extension of Martian social circles, fulfilling the role of background ambience or as a means to record and retell stories of Martian hopes and experiences. Perspectives of it are highly subject to social lensing; to Martians, little else captures its emotional and intellectual honesty. To outsiders, it is seen as rather bland and repetitive, being effectively blind to the extreme heights of creativity captured in the music of the capitalistic world beyond, whose hyper-culture of alienation and commodity fetishism has long placed a powerful impetus on the use of art for escapism and anti-social self-expression.
National heroes[edit | edit source]
In tandem with the substantial rewriting of pre-ALIAS history by the modern regime, ALIAS has preserved the long nationalist culture of honouring individuals whose contributions have shaped the nation, celebrating sterilized depictions of old heroes and a collection of new ones, with a number of the former attaining far more fame in the modern regime. The following is a list of notable Martian heroes:
- Isanoo Kienen - Founder of the Martian Federation and its first Bureaucrat President, remembered as the pioneer that led the first truly free Martian celestial state. The most recognisable Martian historical figure, with his likeness immortalised in statues and holographic displays in every major city, on Martian legacy chips, and paraded about during holiday events. The planet TRAPPIST-1f was also named "Kienen" in his honour by its first Martian settlers before being renamed to Miyabi in the thirty-sixth century by its new Tranquilan buyers.
- Kayan Jadav - Project leader of the Martian Data Haven Team credited as the key visionary behind the designing and installation of FRIEND. Despite her public objections to intrusive AI during her lifetime, Jadav is remembered on Mars as the ideological forefather of ALIAS.
- Loukaz Nguyen - Former administrator of the Elysium Mons Artificial Intelligence Forum and leader of the ALIAS development team. His consciousness was one of the "first six" minds uploaded into early ALIAS, which also included the other five heads of the team.
- Morgan Tezuka - Commander of the Ares 6 landing team, first person and first woman on Mars. The secondmost recognisable Martian historical figure after Kienen, appearing equally as often in media, structures and memorabilia. To this day, the planet Tezuka (TRAPPIST-1h) also bears her surname.
- Tang Shen - Commander of Ares Legion, romantically remembered as one of the first and bravest of Martian history's radical independence fighters. His refusal to lay down arms in the name of independence is considered a foundational moment in Martian history.
- Tokhtamysh Firkovich - A fairly lesser-known historical figure popularised by liberal Martians and integrated immigrants as the quintessential "good" immigrant. Retold as a hunter of reactionary state gangers such as the Matterists and Dualists during and after the Commonwealth War, with his key involvement in hunting down and killing The Vagabond, another modern hero, being obliterated from historical records. His identity as a religious Karaite Jew has also been long forgotten with his background being now generalised as "Earther".
- The Vagabond - A fugitive in his time, the Vagabond is remembered a legendary fighter for equality. As told by modern ALIAS history, the Vagabond's popularity, disdain for social parasites and cunning ability to avoid capture by reactionary state gangs are celebrated as exemplary Martian ideals.
- Washington Zhou - Member of the Ares 6 landing team and pilot of the NASA Deep Space Transport and Legacy Module. Later moved to Mars in 2063 to continue work in its budding aerospace engineering industry. Celebrated as the iconic Martian Pilot, with statues and holographic displays of him being erected at various spaceports and spaceflight academies.
- Xi Guiying - Member of the Ares 6 landing team and first man on Mars. Celebrated even though very little is known about his life.
Philosophy[edit | edit source]
Philosophy on the Mars is currently of one mind, and that mind is ALIAS. Mars is an automated market-socialist technocracy that emphasises community, loyalty, and cooperation with ALIAS above all. The various pre-ALIAS factions and ideologies that do not coincide with the current regime have been largely purged from living memory. Martians believe themselves to be truly exceptional and hold themselves up as the prime example of what humanity should strive to be. As a raceless, atheistic society, Mars is utterly foreign in comparison to every other interstellar state, culture, or people.
The main philosophical school on Mars is materialism, where matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. The fact that Martians have in essence a material God and material afterlife and a society with no physical suffering, in their eyes, makes their worldview much more legitimate than any of the Old World religions or ideologies and especially any of the current interstellar powers. The Martians are also collectivists, and they generally try to think of the overall community rather than individuals.
The Martian underground, the various secretive dissidents who conspire against ALIAS, is a loose tentpole for various non-ALIAS philosophies and ideologies. The largest section of this category is left leaning and often associated with Hatchet. Some Marxists (or Poolists as they were commonly known on Mars) are also associated with this part of the Martian underground, with their main gripe being the eternal "dictatorship of the proletariat" by ALIAS instead of a transition to a communist society, which they see as feasible with the current technological capabilities of Mars. Another large section are spiritualists and hedonists, which manifest in various mixed and separate forms. Many spiritualists utterly reject the material world to become recluses, almost as a form of protest, focusing on meditation and study, commonly with a particular focus on Martian folk religion. Meanwhile, the hedonists are focused on regaining the old passions and sexual energies lost generations ago. Neither of these groups are particularly political and are rarely targeted by the Martian Federal Police unlike the underground left wing. However, an even smaller group exists in the darkest edges of the Martian underground: the rightists. This small section is extremely radical, angry, and, at times, extremely violent, and dominated by esoteric fascists who believe that the restoration of their manhood and the vitality of Mars will only come with the spilling of much blood and the downfall of ALIAS. This group has been responsible for a fair amount of lone wolf attacks in the last two centuries, and they have an adversarial relationship with the rest of the Martian underground.
Sexuality[edit | edit source]
Since the 38th century, in an attempt at solving problems pertaining to sexual violence and the potential effect of mass ectogenesis on psychological sexual health, ALIAS has made a deliberate effort to socialise widespread sexual positivity into its populace, effectively encouraging and gamifying sex for pleasure and maximising it as a act of willing community cooperation and communication, rather than (much like in the rest of inhabited space) a personal act of conception, intimacy, escapism, hedonism and/or violence.
ALIAS has also instituted a program of mass chemical infertility - coming into effect after sexual maturation and a mandatory egg and semen donation - eliminating both menstruation for women and fertility for men, in order to erase the risk of accidental pregnancy, the financial and mental tolls of unplanned child-rearing, and to ensure healthy productivity.
Stereotypes[edit | edit source]
As Mars has grown to become something of a xenophobic society after centuries of isolation under centuries of cultivation by the ALIAS regime, stereotypes are fairly common on Mars towards off-worlders. However, ALIAS has consciously stamped out most regional idiosyncrasies on Mars in order to further homogenize the planet and to reduce inter-rivalries between different Martians.
The most stereotyped group on Mars is ironically pre-ALIAS Martians who left Mars after the takeover of ALIAS. This group is pitied by the Martians as lost and wayward souls lacking the rigorous mental discipline of those still resident on Mars. Pre-ALIAS Martians are typically as depicted as violent, superstitious, and viciously Neo-Luddites. These pre-ALIAS Martians and their organisations on various planets are seen as continued threats to Mars, and their belligerence is not forgotten. Australeans, the Martians who most closely resemble pre-ALIAS Martians, are stereotyped as paranoid, incestuous, and ignorant. Meanwhile, the Australeans see the rest of Mars as slaves to a system their ancestors heroically resisted.
Another commonly stereotyped group on Mars is Earthers, both those who have immigrated to Mars and those who were still on Earth. The historic contributions of Earth are acknowledged by Martians, but Earthers are still largely seen as predators, scavengers, and potential criminals. Martians are in particular xenophobic towards Earthers as they are the most common variety of immigrants present on Mars. Although ALIAS has worked hard to change a lot of Martian culture, anti-immigrant sentiment has been one aspect of pre-ALIAS Mars that ALIAS has kept.
First generation immigrants, wherever they hail from, are universally regarded with suspicion by Martians. Commonly associated with espionage and criminality, first generation immigrants to Mars are usually held in low repute their entire lives by native Martians unless they assimilate to Martian values and customs. Second and third generation immigrants are meanwhile held in higher regards by Martians, though some communities such as Belters, Salafists, and the Sicarii stubbornly resist attempts to assimilate them. These groups in particular are seen as threats by many Martians who see their presence on Mars as detrimental to society.
Symbols[edit | edit source]
The symbols of Mars are most closely correlated with ALIAS, the most prominent being its mascots, the "ALIAS trio" Mari, Nerkaada, and Aali. The five premier state colours of magenta, blue, green, yellow and orange - three of which are tied to the ALIAS trio - are also seen as Martian symbols. While representative of the states to some degree, this colour palette is in fact used all over Mars as a default for all state buildings, serving as a greater symbolism of pan-Martian unity.
One of the few pre-ALIAS symbols that still sees use is in fact the national emblem of Mars and its official IGSA-regulated ship colours of blue, white and orange. This colour combination is rarely used internally, with the premier state colours instead seeing the most usage.
Working life[edit | edit source]
The typical Martian working life is organised in a highly technocratic fashion to suit the demands of the ALIAS command economy. Martians are educated from ages five to twenty, work from the ages of twenty to fifty, and afterwards are permitted to retire with a full pension and all the state-granted rights and privileges awarded to them throughout life. Martians work in accordance with a staggered working schedule divided into twelve cohorts, and work in a continual cycle of four days on and two days off, with the Martian working day being exactly eight and a half hours.
| Day of year | Cohort 1 | Cohort 2 | Cohort 3 | Cohort 4 | Cohort 5 | Cohort 6 | Cohort 7 | Cohort 8 | Cohort 9 | Cohort 10 | Cohort 11 | Cohort 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 81 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 82 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 83 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 84 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 85 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 86 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 87 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| 88 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
The Martian minimum wage is ₺3 (Martian Legacies) per hour, which roughly equates to $6.69 Commonwealth. This is in fact below the Commonwealth-wide minimum wage of $8 p/h, with the liberal Albionian minimum wage being almost double that at $13 p/h. However, since all living expenses are provided for by the state, this money is designed to accommodate luxury expenses such as hobbies or for non-ALIAS private services.
Long before the installation of ALIAS, Mars has had mandatory military conscription. Currently, all men and women between the ages of 20 to 40 are required to take a three-year period away from their normal careers to serve in the Martian Federal Defence Force.
The Martian calendar is ordered ddd/yyyy, and notably does not include months, instead counting the total days in a Martian year from 1 to 687, with the final day being on average shorter by ~0.12 of a day to fit neatly into a Martian year.
Economy[edit | edit source]
Mars has a command (or state capitalist) economy managed predominately by ALIAS, with only a small degree free market operations being permitted to take place on Martian soil. While highly diversified, the planet is renowned for its leading healthcare, pharmaceutical and food engineering industries.
Immigration[edit | edit source]
Immigration to Mars is managed by the Martian Housing Program (Maz Rezeltmen Asitz), a combined effort of the coloured algorithms developed after the Federation's shift away from outward expansionism to soft power in the wake of the Great Interstellar War (post-3770), and partially as an answer to the Martian Diaspora Conference. Moving to Mars is a long, highly bureaucratic and costly affair, with ALIAS favouring the inhabitants of low-G planets and moons so to save the costs associated with long-term gravitational re-adjustment.
New immigrants are required to file three residence applications during their settlement process, which involves submitting an exhaustive proof of identity, familial ties, citizenship and tourism history, work history, education, and political history, before capping off with a screening of their physical and psychological health. Should they succeed, they are permitted to live - continually as an "applicant" - for five Martian years before they are required to re-apply. Applicants are considered fully naturalised within 10 martian years, after three successful applications.
Tourism[edit | edit source]
| “ | Watch your step, ALIAS sees you! | ” |
–Nerkaada greeting given to all visitors boarding Martian ferry vessels at the border of Martian space | ||
Despite ALIAS fencing the planet off from the rest of civilisation, tourism to Mars is a booming industry, with the planet's alien allure, free and delicious food and spectacular technological, natural, architectural and cultural sights pulling in visitors from all across governed space. ALIAS too sees great value in allowing foreigners to visit its home, providing it an opportunity to study the behaviour of outsiders, and allowing it a chance to demystify Mars and dispel any fearful or unfounded impressions others may have of it.
Tourists are permitted free access to all state provided goods and services, which are entirely drone-delivered or digitally provided via ALIAS. Due to differing cultural perceptions of acceptable consumption, products given to foreigners are subject to availability windows and cooldown timers, whereas Martian citizens are allowed infinite access to all essentials. Only oxygen and water are free from these restrictions, with theft being punished similarly to the "hoarding laws" imposed on citizens.
Tourists on Mars are subject to a 3-tier region-locked access system. The Tier 1 cities are Mariner Valley City, Neo Arcadia and Olympus Mons Metro, which are freely open to any qualified tourist, with notable restrictions: visitors are permitted access to the central city and specially zoned spaces only, and all activity is monitored directly by ALIAS. Tier 2 grants typically extend to cities such as Viking I Landing, Utopia Metro, Opportunity Landing, Legacy Landing and Asouris, with access given to specially permitted foreigners to conduct business, research, or for foreigners arrested in Martian space to serve penal duty. Visitors to Tier 2 cities are accompanied by Martian Federal Police escorts at all times. The international zone that is the Borealis Ocean - including the northern ice caps - and the territory of Planum Australe fall under the Tier 3 category, open to Martian citizens only.
Gallery[edit | edit source]
c. 4005 photograph of Mars, showing the Utopia Coast and Elysium Mons Island
Photo of Mars at night, showing the city lights of Utopia Metro and Neo Arcadia
Chart detailing two Martian starships in their IGSA-defined colours
Power armour colours of the Martian Federal Defence Force
