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Description
In 1292 PE, Mars is no longer red.

Mars has a significant place in history; as well as being Old Earth's second ever colony after the Moon, and the second celestial body ever visited by cis-humans, it is also the first planet to ever have been terraformed. This is both the source of its divisions and also the key to its current prosperity.

The modern academic literature argues with itself whether Mars can really be counted as successfully-terraformed. Certainly Mars is a lot less habitable than most other terraformed planets - even Ancalagon itself is arguably more hospitable to cis-human life than the Martian surface. But to some extent this is an unfair comparison. Mars is a small object, with only 10% the mass of Old Earth, a diameter of only 6,779 kilometres and a surface gravity of only 0.38 G. Really, a fairer thing to compare to might be other oddball planets like Aerie, rather than the more normal "exo-Earth" category. Certainly today, a planet like Mars would probably never be selected as a candidate for open-air colonisation.

However, at sea level in the north polar basin, modern Mars now has an air pressure of 450 millibars. Of the air, the oxygen content is 18%, 78% is nitrogen, 2.5% carbon dioxide and various other gases making up the balance. Temperatures across the planet now average to -25 Celsius. While this is cold, pre-terraforming Mars averaged closer to -65 Celsius, so there has been a substantial improvement here. Low-latitude, low-altitude areas actually see year-round averages that are above freezing, having climates roughly similar to pre-greenhouse Canada or Scandinavia. Surface conditions on Mars are highly-unpleasant, but they are not instantly-lethal to cis-humans either. If you're going outdoors at sea level, you'll need warm clothes and a breathing mask, but you won't need a pressure suit. On this basis, most authorities do consider Mars to count as a terraformed planet, even if a rather marginal one. Agriculture is possible and practised, albeit using genetically-modified crops. Modern Mars has a complex ecosystem, which includes a large amount of rescued Earthlife. (Many formerly terrestrial sea-creatures now live in the new Martian seas.)

For such a harsh planet, Mars has a surprisingly-high population, currently numbering 4.98 billion. A large portion of this is due to its relative proximity to Old Earth. During the evacuation era, Mars was one of the places many displaced peoples went. In the First and Second Centuries Before Exile, the planet's population expanded by more than a factor of 100, most of that driven by mass emigration from the declining homeworld.

Modern Mars is split into two distinct political entities - the Planitian Federation and the Republic of Tharsis. These are often colloquially known as Low and High Mars, respectively. The Planitian Federation controls the north polar basin and its shorelines, these being the areas that were original the so-called "planitia" of Acidalia, Utopia and Chryse, prior to their inundation. The Republic of Tharsis controls the planet's highlands, roughly the southern hemisphere, plus the Olympus Mons region and also the Sea of Hellas (which used to be the Hellas Basin, before it too was inundated). Both states are fairly conventional, politically. The PF is a federal union, currently composed of eight states (two of these, Arcadia and Utopia, are actually basically just one city, albeit large cities). There is a directly-elected President and a Congress; the capital city is Arcadia, which is located on the southern shoreline of the Arcadian Sea. The Republic of Tharsis is a parliamentary democracy, with a much more centralised political system. The parliament meets in Olympus City, a domed settlement near the summit of Olympus Mons. Olympus City is also the oldest permanent settlement on the planet, being located as it is at the base of Mars's first space elevator. (The skyhook was anchored to Olympus Mons on account of the greater altitude, which puts the elevator out of most of the Martian atmosphere and thus minimises problems due to weather.) Relations between the two states are broadly-friendly, though even after all this time, they remain cool. No political union on Mars is expected any time soon.

Territorial division between the two societies is regulated under the so-called Impact Treaty of 315 BE (or 2183 CE). This agreement essentially cedes everywhere above 3500 metres in altitude over the current sea level to the Republic, and everywhere below to the Federation. Initially, the Federation also held Hellas, but this was transferred to the Republic in 362 PE following the Hellas Nationality Referedum. (The voters of Hellas found the PF to be increasingly-remote, and came to feel closer to the surrounding highlands than to Arcadia. This led to a separatist movement whose influence expanded throughout the Third and Fourth Centuries Post Exile. When the inevitable border-poll eventually happened, residents of Hellas backed ceding themselves to the Republic on a margin of 73%.) The Treaty also divides up Mars's moons - the PF gets Phobos, while Tharsis has Deimos.

Both Marses are wealthy societies, with a standard of living well above the Exile's mean. If they were ever to somehow unite, the combined Martian economy would be larger than that of the Union of New Innsmouth. Both Marses are prominent within the Solar System, and theirs is a significant (if querrelsome) voice within the wider Periphery region. Mars is a net exporter both of food and raw materials, with its main markets being the Galilean colonies around Jupiter, the asteroid belt, and the Moon and Venus.

However, the Martian internal split runs deeper than it sounds, as modern Mars has ended up with not one but two species. "High" Mars's population are, perhaps-ironically, still mostly cis-human. Since people have to live indoors inside pressure-domed settlements, and thus spend their lives in controlled environments, the usual pressures for genetic adaptation programmes have been much lower than normal. (This isn't to say that there have been none - the people of High Mars tend to have adaptations for things like low surface gravity and high radiation, for instance.)

The inhabitants of Low Mars have undergone genetic adaptation to allow them to best-use the open air environment that exists there. They have expanded lung capacity, to cope with the low-pressure, CO_2-rich air. They have prominent external ears, the better for hearing in the thin, cold air. They also have thick fur, for better insulation in the cold conditions that are prevalent even in the lowlands. They have snouts, whose main function is to warm the cold air before encounters lung-tissue. With all this extra upper-body bulk, tails have become necessary as a counter-balance for it all. Superficially, the external apeparance of Low Martians is passingly-similar to the pre-greenhouse popular idea of a werewolf.

Mars's divisions are a legacy of the controversial way its terraforming began. Sustained, permanent settlement on Mars began with the founding of Olympus City in 350 BE (2148 CE) - some abortive colonisation attempts had occured before this, though these ventures had all ended in failure. By 325 BE, the population had already reached 25 million, and living space and environmental systems were under pressure. Into this increasingly-tense social atmosphere, Elena Devreau released her Noachian Manifesto. The Manifesto was a radical document, demanding a full terraforming program for the Red Planet. It captured the imaginations of many in the population, while at the same time many more-cautiously-minded colonists worried about the possible dangers posed by the project. Debate over the proposal raged throughout the following decade, without any concrete conclusion being attained.

In 311 BE, a group of frustrated Noachians took matters into their own hands. They succesfully-seized an asteroid mining vessel, and used it to divert Comet Sakharov-Ellis toward Mars. By the time their efforts were inevitably-detected, it was too late to divert the incoming comet. The Martian authorities did consider using space defence platforms to shatter the nucleus, but switching a bullet to a shotgun blast is not necessarily an improvement. Instead, the authorities focused on evacuating the region around the impact-zone.

Comet Sakharov-Ellis hit roughly the middle of Utopia Planitia; its impact was at 2.31 AM local time on June the 12th, 311 BE. The cometary nucleus was relatively-large, at 23 kilometers in diameter. The impact was felt everywhere within 2,000 kilometres; there were widespread reports of minor damage as far away as Olympus City, even including a brief rupture to the city's pressure dome. Loss of life, thankfully, was minimal, but infrastructural damage was substantial, as was disruption to travel and commerce.

But the Noachian extremists weren't done. By this point they had relocated their stolen vessel to the outer solar system, where they were hard to apprehend. While they were eventually arrested, in the meantime they redirected no less than fifteen cometary nuclei inward toward Mars. During the so-called Bombardment Period - roughly, 311 BE to 302 BE - a common joke was that the weather forecast on Mars was comets!

In broad terms, the comets succeeded in their aim. Air pressures rose dramatically on Mars, though this was unevenly distributed, with most substantial gains being felt in the lowland areas. Also, the addition of huge volumes of water vapour into the Martian atmosphere caused an enormous deluge. Mars's thin air couldn't support much water, so most of it rained straight out, flooding Hellas and the north polar basin. While the chain of events was not what the lunar authorities had wanted, nonetheless they reluctantly decided to exploit it. The new seas were seeded with genetically-modified blue-green algae and a forest-planting scheme began along the shorelines of the new seas. The greening of Mars proceeded surprisingly fast - as soon as 220 BE, lowland Martian cities no longer needed full pressure domes and people were living "outdoors" full-time as early as 150 BE.

What did not proceed quickly, or at all, was social reconciliation. Anti-Noachians were furious about the unexpected devastation that had been launched on their world, while many pro-Noachians were unrepentant. Rising community tensions saw both groups begin to sort themselves geographically. Noachian sympathisers tended to move to the lowland areas, while anti-Noachians tended to stay in the highlands. While no actual civil war ever occurred, thankfully, nonetheless the divorce was completed by 315 BE, with the signing of the Treaty and the formal emergence of two separate Martian states. The two retained some cooperation on matters related to the terraforming (it didn't ultimately suit anyone's factional interests for the project to fail at this stage - Low Mars wanted their open air, and High Mars didn't want a wave of lowland climate refugees) but otherwise, relations stayed very frosty until as recently as the 500s Post Exile.

And that brings us to the present day with Mars, a world that is still divided even now.

Description
In 1292 PE, Mars is no longer red.

Mars has a significant place in history; as well as being Old Earth's second ever colony after the Moon, and the second celestial body ever visited by cis-humans, it is also the first planet to ever have been terraformed. This is both the source of its divisions and also the key to its current prosperity.

The modern academic literature argues with itself whether Mars can really be counted as successfully-terraformed. Certainly Mars is a lot less habitable than most other terraformed planets - even Ancalagon itself is arguably more hospitable to cis-human life than the Martian surface. But to some extent this is an unfair comparison. Mars is a small object, with only 10% the mass of Old Earth, a diameter of only 6,779 kilometres and a surface gravity of only 0.38 G. Really, a fairer thing to compare to might be other oddball planets like Aerie, rather than the more normal "exo-Earth" category. Certainly today, a planet like Mars would probably never be selected as a candidate for open-air colonisation.

However, at sea level in the north polar basin, modern Mars now has an air pressure of 450 millibars. Of the air, the oxygen content is 18%, 78% is nitrogen, 2.5% carbon dioxide and various other gases making up the balance. Temperatures across the planet now average to -25 Celsius. While this is cold, pre-terraforming Mars averaged closer to -65 Celsius, so there has been a substantial improvement here. Low-latitude, low-altitude areas actually see year-round averages that are above freezing, having climates roughly similar to pre-greenhouse Canada or Scandinavia. Surface conditions on Mars are highly-unpleasant, but they are not instantly-lethal to cis-humans either. If you're going outdoors at sea level, you'll need warm clothes and a breathing mask, but you won't need a pressure suit. On this basis, most authorities do consider Mars to count as a terraformed planet, even if a rather marginal one. Agriculture is possible and practised, albeit using genetically-modified crops. Modern Mars has a complex ecosystem, which includes a large amount of rescued Earthlife. (Many formerly terrestrial sea-creatures now live in the new Martian seas.)

For such a harsh planet, Mars has a surprisingly-high population, currently numbering 4.98 billion. A large portion of this is due to its relative proximity to Old Earth. During the evacuation era, Mars was one of the places many displaced peoples went. In the First and Second Centuries Before Exile, the planet's population expanded by more than a factor of 100, most of that driven by mass emigration from the declining homeworld.

Modern Mars is split into two distinct political entities - the Planitian Federation and the Republic of Tharsis. These are often colloquially known as Low and High Mars, respectively. The Planitian Federation controls the north polar basin and its shorelines, these being the areas that were original the so-called "planitia" of Acidalia, Utopia and Chryse, prior to their inundation. The Republic of Tharsis controls the planet's highlands, roughly the southern hemisphere, plus the Olympus Mons region and also the Sea of Hellas (which used to be the Hellas Basin, before it too was inundated). Both states are fairly conventional, politically. The PF is a federal union, currently composed of eight states (two of these, Arcadia and Utopia, are actually basically just one city, albeit large cities). There is a directly-elected President and a Congress; the capital city is Arcadia, which is located on the southern shoreline of the Arcadian Sea. The Republic of Tharsis is a parliamentary democracy, with a much more centralised political system. The parliament meets in Olympus City, a domed settlement near the summit of Olympus Mons. Olympus City is also the oldest permanent settlement on the planet, being located as it is at the base of Mars's first space elevator. (The skyhook was anchored to Olympus Mons on account of the greater altitude, which puts the elevator out of most of the Martian atmosphere and thus minimises problems due to weather.) Relations between the two states are broadly-friendly, though even after all this time, they remain cool. No political union on Mars is expected any time soon.

Territorial division between the two societies is regulated under the so-called Impact Treaty of 315 BE (or 2183 CE). This agreement essentially cedes everywhere above 3500 metres in altitude over the current sea level to the Republic, and everywhere below to the Federation. Initially, the Federation also held Hellas, but this was transferred to the Republic in 362 PE following the Hellas Nationality Referedum. (The voters of Hellas found the PF to be increasingly-remote, and came to feel closer to the surrounding highlands than to Arcadia. This led to a separatist movement whose influence expanded throughout the Third and Fourth Centuries Post Exile. When the inevitable border-poll eventually happened, residents of Hellas backed ceding themselves to the Republic on a margin of 73%.) The Treaty also divides up Mars's moons - the PF gets Phobos, while Tharsis has Deimos.

Both Marses are wealthy societies, with a standard of living well above the Exile's mean. If they were ever to somehow unite, the combined Martian economy would be larger than that of the Union of New Innsmouth. Both Marses are prominent within the Solar System, and theirs is a significant (if querrelsome) voice within the wider Periphery region. Mars is a net exporter both of food and raw materials, with its main markets being the Galilean colonies around Jupiter, the asteroid belt, and the Moon and Venus.

However, the Martian internal split runs deeper than it sounds, as modern Mars has ended up with not one but two species. "High" Mars's population are, perhaps-ironically, still mostly cis-human. Since people have to live indoors inside pressure-domed settlements, and thus spend their lives in controlled environments, the usual pressures for genetic adaptation programmes have been much lower than normal. (This isn't to say that there have been none - the people of High Mars tend to have adaptations for things like low surface gravity and high radiation, for instance.)

The inhabitants of Low Mars have undergone genetic adaptation to allow them to best-use the open air environment that exists there. They have expanded lung capacity, to cope with the low-pressure, CO_2-rich air. They have prominent external ears, the better for hearing in the thin, cold air. They also have thick fur, for better insulation in the cold conditions that are prevalent even in the lowlands. They have snouts, whose main function is to warm the cold air before encounters lung-tissue. With all this extra upper-body bulk, tails have become necessary as a counter-balance for it all. Superficially, the external apeparance of Low Martians is passingly-similar to the pre-greenhouse popular idea of a werewolf.

Mars's divisions are a legacy of the controversial way its terraforming began. Sustained, permanent settlement on Mars began with the founding of Olympus City in 350 BE (2148 CE) - some abortive colonisation attempts had occured before this, though these ventures had all ended in failure. By 325 BE, the population had already reached 25 million, and living space and environmental systems were under pressure. Into this increasingly-tense social atmosphere, Elena Devreau released her Noachian Manifesto. The Manifesto was a radical document, demanding a full terraforming program for the Red Planet. It captured the imaginations of many in the population, while at the same time many more-cautiously-minded colonists worried about the possible dangers posed by the project. Debate over the proposal raged throughout the following decade, without any concrete conclusion being attained.

In 311 BE, a group of frustrated Noachians took matters into their own hands. They succesfully-seized an asteroid mining vessel, and used it to divert Comet Sakharov-Ellis toward Mars. By the time their efforts were inevitably-detected, it was too late to divert the incoming comet. The Martian authorities did consider using space defence platforms to shatter the nucleus, but switching a bullet to a shotgun blast is not necessarily an improvement. Instead, the authorities focused on evacuating the region around the impact-zone.

Comet Sakharov-Ellis hit roughly the middle of Utopia Planitia; its impact was at 2.31 AM local time on June the 12th, 311 BE. The cometary nucleus was relatively-large, at 23 kilometers in diameter. The impact was felt everywhere within 2,000 kilometres; there were widespread reports of minor damage as far away as Olympus City, even including a brief rupture to the city's pressure dome. Loss of life, thankfully, was minimal, but infrastructural damage was substantial, as was disruption to travel and commerce.

But the Noachian extremists weren't done. By this point they had relocated their stolen vessel to the outer solar system, where they were hard to apprehend. While they were eventually arrested, in the meantime they redirected no less than fifteen cometary nuclei inward toward Mars. During the so-called Bombardment Period - roughly, 311 BE to 302 BE - a common joke was that the weather forecast on Mars was comets!

In broad terms, the comets succeeded in their aim. Air pressures rose dramatically on Mars, though this was unevenly distributed, with most substantial gains being felt in the lowland areas. Also, the addition of huge volumes of water vapour into the Martian atmosphere caused an enormous deluge. Mars's thin air couldn't support much water, so most of it rained straight out, flooding Hellas and the north polar basin. While the chain of events was not what the lunar authorities had wanted, nonetheless they reluctantly decided to exploit it. The new seas were seeded with genetically-modified blue-green algae and a forest-planting scheme began along the shorelines of the new seas. The greening of Mars proceeded surprisingly fast - as soon as 220 BE, lowland Martian cities no longer needed full pressure domes and people were living "outdoors" full-time as early as 150 BE.

What did not proceed quickly, or at all, was social reconciliation. Anti-Noachians were furious about the unexpected devastation that had been launched on their world, while many pro-Noachians were unrepentant. Rising community tensions saw both groups begin to sort themselves geographically. Noachian sympathisers tended to move to the lowland areas, while anti-Noachians tended to stay in the highlands. While no actual civil war ever occurred, thankfully, nonetheless the divorce was completed by 315 BE, with the signing of the Treaty and the formal emergence of two separate Martian states. The two retained some cooperation on matters related to the terraforming (it didn't ultimately suit anyone's factional interests for the project to fail at this stage - Low Mars wanted their open air, and High Mars didn't want a wave of lowland climate refugees) but otherwise, relations stayed very frosty until as recently as the 500s Post Exile.

And that brings us to the present day with Mars, a world that is still divided even now.