User:NewOriginalSchwann/Sandbox
History
Early Colonization (2100s - 2190s)
Despite Mars being a barren planet, a mixture of desperate living conditions on Earth and a bold commitment to exploration and colonization caused it to experience small scale colonization in the 2100's. After the terraforming efforts of 2200 began and with the discovery of massive fossil fuel deposits (therefore confirming Mars once held life), optimistic nations and corporations attempted to set up a foothold on it, causing tens of thousands of colonists to arrive during the first waves. After it became clear that Mars would remain hostile for quite some time, was passed over for more suitable, distant worlds for a long period, leaving the original settlers to etch out a meager life. The byproduct of this is that many issues, national and cultural, that plagued humanity at those times were brought over to the red planet, causing tensions between its inhabitants and new settlers. Despite the one world government of the Alliance, individual nations on Earth would finance and support colonies on Mars, pitting them against one another. Wars and skirmishes between the colonies, although rare, were not unheard of. The ones that survived have long since grown into large, independent arcologies, which are for the most part friendly competitors under the watchful eye of Sol Alliance.
The fossil fuels found on Mars were quickly put to use. Power plants, large factory complexes were constructed outside the arcologies, and the planet was becoming industrialized, which later on played into the terraforming process of the planet. Most of construction was done by crew-operated behemothian industrial machines, which are still used to this day in limited capacities for work outside the domes. Primarily cyborgs and programmed robots worked in these buildings outside the safety of the arcologies, until later on when the planet's atmosphere stabilized in 2400.
History of Terraforming (2190s - 2260)
The terraforming process started during the late part of the 22nd century, with massive terraformers designed to turn Mars’ natural minerals into gasses and legions of cyborgs put into action. The idea was to replicate the Global Warming process humans have inadvertently done on Earth, but in a more controlled environment with goals of increasing both air pressure and temperature. The process was incredibly slow and expensive, and dogged by a major catastrophe in 2298 that nearly ended the entire process and caused untold amounts of human suffering and economic damage.
Although controversial for both its cost and dangers, the terraforming project of Mars is considered a success. The air, until recently, was still slightly toxic, but it effectively raised Mars' near zero pressure to slightly tolerable, along with the average temperature. Furthermore, the vast amounts of polarized iron dust now flowing around the planet’s lower orbit created a makeshift electromagnetic shield, reducing harmful radiation by a large degree until it was disrupted by the massive ecological disruption of Violet Dawn. Limited efforts are being made to restore it, but these have mostly been unsuccessful. This difference meant that by 2400 a space suit was no longer needed to traverse its surface. Instead, pressure suits or thick clothing, along with eye, mouth and ear protection are enough to stop the worst effects of a low pressure environment. Single-cellular life prospered as well, due to an atmosphere now rich with organic particles, but does no longer due to the wide-spread poisoning of the Martian atmosphere from the fires ignited in the Violet Dawn disaster. Due to this, Mars’ famous red colour has been replaced with patches of black, deep, burned orange, and violet in some places.
During the period of terraforming, Mars received an immense number of cyborgs to serve as its workforce. In the late part of the 22nd century, humanity had achieved the ability to produce heavy cyborgs. Being able to function and work freely in the harsh environment, Martian terraforming firms pressed for more and more cyborg workers, but volunteers for this process were few and far between due to the risks around the procedure. Eventually, to meet demand, cyborgification was implemented as capital punishment for crimes, less and less severe as time passed. In total, between 2204, when the implementation of cyborgs started, and 2260, when it stopped, over 35 million cyborgs have been sent to Mars to serve as a workforce. The terraforming project started to backfire soon after.
The extent of the crimes Martians caused, as well other problems the synthetics caused, resulted in an overall negative view of AIs and cyborgification among the populace. Sometime after, Mars Senate constructed a large monumental graveyard for victims of forced cyborgification sometimes referred to CyTomb. Cyborgification, along with the use banned in several larger arcologies such as Crest Olympia, Greater London, Elysium and Red Gaia.
The Martian World War (2278 - 2284)
Considering Mars' strong ties with Earth governments and its dependence on Sol Fleets, Mars never had unified interests or tools to openly fight against the Sol Government during the First Interstellar War. Despite this, many Martians felt sympathetic to the Coalition of Colonies, as they felt they shared the resentment towards a growing, authoritarian oppression within the Alliance.
In the early stages of the war in 2278, the Alliance quickly pressed the small Martian self-defense force into service, merging the tiny Martian fleet into the Alliance navy. Anti-Solarian factions on Mars calling themselves the Red Coalition began rallying popular and political support based on many “injustices,”committed by the Alliance against the Martian people, an alliance which had also shown casual disregard for Mars. Financially backed by the Coalition of Colonies (CoC), on 18th of January, 2279, many Martian cities seceded from Sol Alliance and launched a coordinated, surprise attack on the rest of Mars.
The loyalist arcologies became known as the Sol Coalition, or more popularly, the Blues.
With the mighty fleets of the Alliance out fighting in the frontier, the Blue Coalition saw very little aid from the Alliance, material or otherwise. Red Rangers, special forces under the Red Coalition, seized lightly defended orbital Alliance military stations, including nuclear-equipped missile platforms. The Red Coalition threatened to use these weapons on any planet or fleet that attempted to intervene, effectively isolating Mars and throwing it into a Cold War with Earth.
As military conventions prohibited direct bombing of population centers, the Red conquest consisted of prolonged sieges while unrest, terrorist attacks, and counter-offensives began to sap their ability to wage war. In the face of growing losses, the leadership of the Red Coalition gained the dubious honor of being the fourth nation in human history to use nuclear weapons in warfare. In 2284, the Red Coalition arcology of Terra Nova, facing capitulation in the face of advancing Blue forces, successfully appealed to an orbital missile platform to launch a nuclear missile on a nearby Blue arcology of New Dresden in an attempt to turn the tide of war.
This action immediately fractured the entire Red Coalition, with most of its members distancing themselves from the action and its perpetrators. Within days the majority of arcologies in the Red Coalition abandoned the alliance, and within weeks the remainder had surrendered.
The Treaty of Olympus was signed on 5th of April, 2284 featuring unconditional surrender of remaining Red Coalition states. The Alliance, negotiating on behalf of the loyalist Blues, used the treaty to place harsh restrictions on Mars. The entire planet was disarmed and all factions on it surface were banned from fielding a standing army, navy, or engaging in armed conflicts with one another. In addition, the planet was put under "indefinite" martial law, with an Alliance sdmiral permanently stationed in orbit of the planet to enforce indirect martial law, overriding any local laws or ordinances.
The Catastrophe of 2298
The first of two major catastrophes in Martian history was the abrupt failure of its terraforming infrastructure in the winter of 2298. The entire infrastructure was linked to a single network, which suffered a serious melt-down as a result of human error. The network either shut down areas of terraforming or spit out wild algorithms that put the entire project into a tailspin. The network was restored after several days, but the result was catastrophic swings in the climate. For the next 10 years Mars experienced climactic storms that severely damaged or even destroyed arcologies and utterly wiped out smaller settlements. The atmosphere was flooded with excessive C02 that smothered people in the open without internals. Billions of credits of property damage was recorded, and millions were killed as a direct result of the disaster. It was estimated to have put back terraforming efforts by a century.
Despite the damages, an investigation by SolGov saw only three technicians arrested, with all three later acquitted despite anger and protest from the Martian population. In modern times, the ruins of arcologies lost to the catastrophe remain popular spots for scavengers, explorers, and tourists. The polar canyon regions of Mars started to serve as scrapyard for obsolete and abandoned machinery. Starting in the early 2370s, megacorporations began to dispose of their obsolete lineups by storing them in gargantuan “lots” for later retrieval when the manpower needed to sustain them returned. This would never be the case, and for years to come other megacorporations would do the same in haphazardly tossing their waste electronics into the canyon regions as time went along. In 2405, legal action was taken to prevent the excessive usage of this disposal, and it quickly halted. What was left were what would be referred to as the Metal Dunes of Mars, endless electronic scrapheaps as far as the eye could see.
The Violet Dawn Explosion (2462)
On the seventh of November, 2462, an unprecedented disaster came to Mars in the form of the Violet Dawn explosion. Initially an attempt by the Sol Alliance to produce synthetic phoron in response to an ongoing phoron shortage crisis, the Violet Dawn program would be remembered for much more. Safety standards were neglected in Violet Dawn facilities, located on Mars’ south pole and as a result, the synthetic phoron grew out of control before igniting. The resulting conflagration completely destroyed the southern pole of Mars, demolished a multitude of arcologies in the southern hemisphere of Mars, and spread toxic - and highly flammable - phoron particles throughout the Martian atmosphere creating massive firestorms the size of entire cities combined. The official death toll of the Violet Dawn catastrophe is unknown - and will likely never truly be known - but is estimated to be in the billions. Billions more were displaced from their arcologies, creating the largest refugee crisis in recent history and straining the already-overburdened government of Mars to its breaking point. The Mars of the post-Violet Dawn Orion Spur now bears little resemblance to what came before, and how the crisis evolves remains to be seen.
Prime Minister Frost, before his death, issued orders and directives to be released when Operation “Violet Dawn” began and despite his death prior to the event, much of the upper brass of the Navy was still loyal to his cause. They ordered his instructions be carried out, threatening those who disobeyed with desertion and treason. Even so, some captains disregarded these orders to let the burning planet’s billions of desperate sapients, some friends and family to the crew, burn in phoron fire. These brave men and women plunged into the Red Planet’s atmosphere and filled their cargo holds with as many people as they could cram in, dumping weapons and munitions out to make room. A few rogue ships even dove into the phoron-dense areas of the planet that could’ve still potentially held survivors. Tragically, most who attempted this found their engines rendered inoperable in the exotic atmosphere and crashed before clearing the danger zone.
After the Violent Dawn had effectively run its course, Frost’s staff ordered those who had defied orders quietly imprisoned and stripped of rank. After the junta took over and ousted the Frost loyalists, many of these “rogue” captains and crew managed to regain their positions. But, many more of them became disillusioned about Sol and fled the Alliance for nations such as Biesel or the Coalition.
A brutal information campaign was waged against the Navy defying Frost to maintain his loyalists' control over the Alliance. Outside of eyewitnesses testimony, any hard evidence was destroyed. Though Biesel may have known some captains betrayed Frost, choosing not to report these facts when revealing the whistleblower would vilify their main rival. The administration after Frost have uncomfortably ignored the consequences of Frost’s actions, instead opting to focus on stabilizing the territory the Alliance retains. As a result, those outside the Sol System at the time of Violet Dawn may never be fully convinced of the truth.
The Solarian Army’s Reunification Campaign (2462 - present)
At the start of May 2464, Solarian forces under the command of Governor-General Tereza Varzieva launched an effort to, “stabilize the planet and restore order to regions outside of the Violet Dawn hazard zone”, thus effectively bringing Mars back under Solarian control. The offensive against the various warring factions of criminal gangs, bandits, supply raiders, secessionist forces, and various other paramilitary or criminal forces, was successful and the sections of Mars outside of the government’s control mostly surrendered or were seized by force within two months, with major Solarian Army operations concluding at the end of June. Arcologies within the Moderate Hazard Zone still face extremely difficult circumstances ranging from environmental hazards, supply shortages, starvation, unrest, and violence. There has been little talk on the future of these arcologies from the Solarian Army in the wake of the campaign, but for now there is a line between civilization and lawlessness on Mars. Yet control and relative stability has brought Einstein Engines and other Solarian companies into the planet’s economy in an attempt to bring relief and assistance to the planet of Mars and its inhabitants. This economic upturn has sparked hope that Mars, against all odds, could have a future once again.