Martian Defense Front
The military dictatorship that rules over Mars, its moons, Ceres, Pallas, and several other asteroids.
Structure
The MDF government structure is inherited from the military structure that built it. Things are run by and for the military. At it's head is the First Admiral and underneath as a cabinet of administrators and fleet admirals called the Admiralty Board. Underneath them minor admirals, captains, and so forth preform the functions of government and use corporate contracts for many specific functions the military is not interested in managing themselves, such as all of Pallas being run by the Pallas Mining Company. These mega companies are extremely powerful and close to the MDF's upper Admirals leading to large scale corruption.
Civilian government does exist in the Public Interest Committee, which is a civilian elected board of representatives. However this board is largely only advisory, with its limited real power amounting to matters the Admiralty Board fines irrelevant to their concerns. Add to this that the Admiralty Board's ability to dissolve the committee at will, any concept that the MDF isn't a dictatorship is evaporated.
Culture
This culture is very nationalist and martial, as almost all children are raised to be able to defend their lands and the populace of Mars has state funded genetic therapy and cybernetic eyes installed, making them stronger and famously occasionally more green in skin color.
Martian culture exists in largely four spheres. About a third of all martians live in rural towns and farms on the coastlines and valleys of mars, occasionally ranching in the more dangerous and infected deserts. The people there are famously self reliant and have a stronger sense patriotism and national identity than the cities.
Another third of the population lives in the twin cities of North and South Station. These are massive industrial centers on the poles, left over from the original teraforming project that burrowed into the core to restart the magnetosphere. While the project had long since ended the industry and population did not. Especially as the Infected population flooded the cities seeking work and safety. These people are often abused and neglected leading to a large criminal underground and repressed rights movements focused there.
The rest of the population lives as Spaceborn(ethnicity:5c948ccc-2481-4ce8-86db-0ed4a9dbca8a) on station or the wealthy elite that exist on @[Phobos Station and the research station Deimos. Here in these moons are used as the anchor for huge stations of the wealthy elite whom live in extremely well off excess divorced from there lessors. Many join the defense forces hoping to be elevated to the admirals place high in Phobos, but few do.
History
The MDF formed during the days of The First Wave. For the bulk of the fighting in the first wave, the solar systems defenses focused on protecting Mars, which was at the time between the earth hand the bulk of the wave. When the battle for Mars was turning into a bloody stalemate and it began to move out of the way of the wave, which quickly simply stepped around mars for earth. The United Earth's Sphere commanded it's navy to pull all forces from mars to protect earth, leaving mars to it's own devices. While much of the fleet did so, however Vice Admiral Ajit Aris and many break away detachments refused to abandon mars going AWOL to do so.
This remainder force became the Martian Defense Front famously saving the polar cities of mars and slowly reclaiming it's rural deserts. Officially designated as cowards and traitors, the MDF were seen as heroes and Martians in bulk supported breaking away from Earth whom they saw as abandoning them. Since then Mars has operated as a military dictatorship, at first out of heroic necessity, increasingly out of despotic desperation.
The government would eventually be involved in The Second Wave in which it came to the defense of earth in exchange with rights over many asteroids and being acknowledged as an independent state. Afterwords the recently elevated First Admiral Maḥrem Aris would focus military development towards automatons and expanding even further into the asteroid belt as well as strengthening his power and ties to the Human Elevation Foundation by othering the [Infected Persons, an existing cultural ideal that became intense under his First Admiralship
The Celestial Connection would condemn this and begin also spreading into the asteroid belt. This would lead him to start the Belt War in which the MDF would suffer many casualties, but win it's on paper goals, if not their larger strategic ones. It would drive Mars to form a defensive pact with the Foundation and further cemented their focus as mechanized armies being the future of warfare.
We Did Not Run
Capital
Alternative Names
MDF, Mars, The Front
Predecessor Organization
Demonym
Martian
Leader
Leader Title
Government System
Dictatorship
Power Structure
Unitary state
Economic System
Market economy
Currency
Defense Bond or DB often stored as digital currency or rarely as paper slivers, sometimes earning them the nickname "Slivers of Silver". A single DB is worth 10 Earth Dollars.
Location
Official Languages
Neighboring Nations
Notable Members
Related Ethnicities
Comments