Mars 1
Mars is yes.
History time: so the 6 Nations all wanted to own Mars but were unsure how to go about things. Arguments like "why not equal parts?" were shot down by "but my nation totally did more to fight off the aliens so I should get the whole thing" and "what about shared ownership" by "eww take your international Communism out the door with you".
However, someone was like "dudes what if nobody owns Mars itself but can own whatever they build there and some of the area around that for resource/security reasons does that sound good?".
The 6 Nations, having each drunk 42 6-packs of Monster Energy laced with meth, agreed to this thinking that they could TOTALLY outdo all the others and claim the most of Mars for themselves by building as many bases, bio-domes, underground settlements and so on as possible.
The next day, they each woke up from their Monster Energy hangovers and realized that the only way to be certain they'd get ahead was to utterly disregard things like "long-term base functionality", "efficiency of resource application", "the safety of the families that will living and growing up in these things" and "these bases not looking like the turds of a giant robot" and got to it. However, it was the first planet humanity was colonizing and the people of Earth, being given this idea that the bases would be luxurious and function for long enough for their grand-children to grow up there without dying from suffocation and living in crowded settlements due to how the Goner invaders had a thing for destroying people's homes to force them into camps, flocked up to Mars to build and live in the bases without many viable means of returning and no means at all of telling their ex-neighbors that joining them was a bad idea.
The Scandinavian Union, which usually liked to pretend it was above dirty tricks, started sending criminals up there on a "second chance if you work real hard" basis to up their colonization count (in their defense they had the lowest population and so needed a way to up those numbers if they didn't want to stay that way) and the other nations quickly copied them (big F for the Scandinavian Union's dreams of getting ahead of the others). Among these criminals, asylum patients who were deemed "okay bro they messed up but not so messed up that we can't use them as cheap labor without it seriously backfiring... we think", kidnapped homeless people and even ex-slaves who had been sold to these governments by the criminal organisations that first kidnapped them from their homes (fun fact: criminal organisations had a really easy time during the Human-Goner War because "aliens did it", "damn we can't chase those criminals into alien territory or we could get laser-beamed", "oh no the criminals looted a battlefield and have better weapons than most armed forces let alone the police" and so on) could all be found yelling "WAIT A DAMN SECOND I NEVER STOLE A DAMN THING IN MY LIFE!". There were even attempts to make clones to add to this colonization effort but these all went super badly and so were discontinued before the clone population of the planet could go over 0.5%. Yeah they were desperate to get people and machines up there to build those bases.
So, Mars gets covered in tonnes of bases over the course of the 15 years between the 2nd Goner Invasion and the Human Offensive. This includes combined mining and ship-building stations because it turns out that a planet having reduced gravity - making it easier for ships to leave the atmosphere - and having tonnes of metals - with which to make ships - is super convenient. These bases, however, are rushed AF and very few of them are meant to last more than 50 years or so before they begin to experience serious malfunctions, so problems are on their way, and there are already problems because they utterly suck to live in and even the slightest slip-ups by those living inside can lead to serious tragedies but hey, the nation still owns the base and the surrounding area even if the base isn't operating properly and the people inside are dead so meh.
The Human Offensive is a massive success with ships created and launched from Mars and even the GMO Goner Remover 9000 disease that won humanity the war was created on this planet. The 6 Nations experience a period of "wowzahs look at all these pre-terraformed planets we get cos we frickin' murdered 99% of the aliens with a bio-weapon that didn't discriminate between soldiers, civilians, adults, children, able-bodied, weak, ready to surrender and unready to surrender in the slightest! Awesome!" and Mars is more or less forgotten as the 6 Nations all try and colonize these worlds.
Massive base malfunctions happen during this period, resulting 70% of the population either dying or emigrating while the remaining population concentrated into the remaining functional locations - usually having to make these places functional themselves - while the 6 Nations turned blind eyes because they were busy playing with their new planets.
Humanity War 3 (the "world" in World War gets replaced with "humanity" because having multiple planets but not wanting to disregard the world wars and the lessons they hold) happens and the people of Mars are ordered to battle one another by their respective nations and given the weapons to do so. This isn't how things were being done elsewhere since elsewhere is was "entire planet is owned by nation" but with some of the Martians that were now enemies being within days of one another the nations saw an easy way to add to the small (due to Mars no longer being that strategically important) forces of soldiers they deployed onto the planet and they took it. With how dysfunctional most bases were, destroying one and causing the deaths of all inside was easy. Big F for 80% of the population of Mars in this time. RIP. Nuclear wastelands were made on Mars in this time through good ol' "they can't cross the distance needed to kill us all if we make the distance between us impassible with a nice big nuclear explosion".
Later on, Mars basically comes to run itself regardless of the 6 Nations, its citizens paying a portion of the taxes they supposedly owe to whichever nations own their bases (*coughs in them pretending their output is far lower*) and often slicing from the top of many of the resources they pump out to keep for themselves. Bases belonging to different nations work together out of necessity and eventually a common identity forms since nobody wants to identify with the nation that tricked or kidnapped their grandparents, left them in unsafe conditions and then basically forgot about them when presented with new toys, with people moving through bases freely through tunnels constructed between them and even swapping their nationalities whenever their current one raises taxes. Most transactions are done with cash to prevent digital taxation and these people in general don't like giving their money or resources to their governments.
The Unification War. Oh yeah: the Martians tell every side to go frick themselves and form their own independent nation that gets left alone up until the Clean-Up part of the war (when the UHN was going around delcaring power over the other planets that had followed Mars's example or refused to cast off the loyalties to nations that didn't exist anymore) and are met with a massive UHN force. The UHN forces are surprised with the competence of the Martians, especially in technology and AIs, and suffer surprising losses in the initial (failed) attempt at a flash-conquest and so the UHN leader of the time, General Marxi, makes a deal with them in which Mars gets more autonomy than other planets so long as its people be ready to fight in its wars and pay slightly lower taxes to the UHN than everyone else. Hooray?
For a while: yes, but actually no. Martian tech/AI skills, fostered by a need to keep bases operational, are noticed by many companies that place themselves on Mars and hire the population in technological work. These companies, however, were competing with one another and the reign of the UHN was nothing if not full of corporate sabotage. If, for example, everyone in Base A works for a rival company, why not deprive that rival company of its labor by pretending that fire that destroyed the air cleaners was a weird accident and that you're totally super sad that everyone there died in their sleep because there wasn't enough oxygen in the air? Yup, that. A lot of it, in fact.
Despite that, things improved overall for the Martians as countless bases were properly repaired so that they could remain functional for 1,000 years rather than just another 50, more tunnels between them were built, shipyards and mining stations got bigger and the first terraforming devices, intended to make the air of Mars breathable over the course of several centuries, were brought onto the planet. Things were all fine and dandy...
Oof, the Great Rebellion includes a group that targets Mars because quite a lot of the UHN's ships are made there and they take over the planet to get ships for themselves but the UHN responds by laser-shooting anywhere they think there's rebels regardless of any Martians or vital infrastructure that also happen to be there, including the terraforming devices.
Oof, the CHG takeover includes a UHN remnant group trying to take Mars for a last stand against the CHG but getting rekked by the Martians who know they'll get rekked by the CHG if they don't rek the UHN but they also get semi-rekked in the process.
Oof, the CHG refuses to let them have any autonomy and some of them try to rebel but are killed.
Oof, the CHG doesn't give them many resources back for rebuilding so they gotta work with what they got.
Oof, most of their stuff is destroyed by the CHG during the Jeff wars due to fear of Jeff taking control of it.
Finally, some peace and quiet. The CHG, now having tonnes of matter-duplicating technology, decides to throw Mars a bone and put tonnes of terraforming machines there to make the air breathable and simultaneous matter compressors and matter fillers in the core of the planet to increase the gravity so that the residents don't have to keep using gravity spas. Oof that causes numerous Earthquakes, opening up some magma-loaded fissures and even causing changes to the number of tectonic plates Mars has. CHG decides to say F by also putting some life there but the ecosystems fall apart. By this point Mars has built and lost so many bases that the planet is just covered in abandoned homes. Oof, some of the abandoned bases giving out toxic gases and nuked areas being radio-active means that the planet has plenty of no-go zones. which have tunnels beneath them.
Nice. The Martians do a super-project to repair every base on the planet with new technology. Oof, they only get like 20% of it done but it's still a massive achievement. Now they have more bases than they need but hey hey hey it's the Population Program and now it's too much population growth for this planet because children should never outnumber adults by 7:1 (it becomes too easy for them to get up to shenanigans when they have 6 left per parent they gotta distract for said shenanigans). Big problems, mostly social. No biggy tbh.
The Great Terrorist War sees a Communist takeover of the planet and well well well would you look at that suitable redness. Communists on Mars get rekked by pirates hired by the Church of Blades but the pirates try to keep the planet for themselves but lose to the Church of Blades so Mars becomes Communist, a Pirate Nation and a Religion-State Totalitarian merger in under 4 years. Then the Democratic CHG gets control again and oh no the Martians are worshiping their technology because they're still boggly from the stuff the CoB was giving them. Also Dr Jimothy often claims to be the chosen ruler of Mars despite only being there on 3 occasions so there's that.
Geography
Lakes and rivers with high dissolved metal and pollutant contents within them, vast mountains (usually coated in scrap metal and both derelict and functioning bases) and sometimes even fissures in the ground from which lava will sometimes rise and which are adding to the general tectonic activities of the world. There are cave systems, a molten mantle with a solid core in the middle, both nuclear and normal deserts and, in most locations, breathable air.
Fauna & Flora
WTF is wrong with Martian wildlife? Oh yeah, radiation, attempts at adding animals and plants to Mars to make it more habitable, escaped lab experiments and escaped bio-engineered animals from underground cage-fighting groups.
Natural Resources
*Grins greedily*: "Did someone say numerous valuable metals, especially large quantities of iron and uranium? Get the mining machines, Bobby!"
Alternative Name(s)
Mars, Roman Ares, the Red Planet.
Type
Planet
Location under
Included Organizations
Owning Organization
Contested By
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