Mars

**Mars**, also known as the Graveyard and the Red Planet, is the fourth planet in the Sol System, the first world in the system to birth sapient life, and the site of a demonic invasion which rendered the planet uninhabitable.

## Description

### Overview

Mars is the fourth planet in the Sol System, a terrestrial planet that was rendered uninhabitable for several million years. While habitable, it was known to be very Earth-like, although its gravity was notably lighter. Once rendered uninhabitable, its gravity became much lower, and its atmosphere became inhospitable. Originally, Mars had a very strong connection to the Weave, but following the Fall of Mars, the Weave connection was neutralized, rendering the planet no more inherently magical than the other dead worlds of the system, and leaving Earth as the system's only magic hotspot.

### Geography

Mars was once mostly hospitable landmasses, with seas and lakes as its surface water, and ice caps at its poles. A wide variety of natural landscapes encompassed Mars, varying depending on the climate and area, with a large number of hills and highlands to its south with flat plains at its north. After the demonic invasion, Mars' geography was greatly rearranged. It kept the plains at its north and the highlands at its south, and its ice caps, but was now devoid of liquid water, and the rest of its surface became dominated by red sands rich in iron oxides, every other natural formation destroyed. Craters, some from asteroid impacts and others being scars left from the invasion, littered the planet's southern hemisphere, the remains of the Martian civilization long buried.

### Urban Layout

Historical Martian cities once sprawled over the Martian landscape in manners similar to Terran cities, but with much more harmony with the natural landscape. Rather than razing or flattening land for urban developments, most Martian cities built over and around what was already in place, often using the land to guide urban layouts, their buildings rising like spires.

Under human rule, settlements on Mars were initially made as tightly interlocking cities built under domes, as to keep them secure from the outside environment. Many of these cities had artificial gravity technology built under them to give them Earth-like gravity. However, after Mars was terraformed, many of the domes remained in place, as to keep the Earth-like gravity within. Other settlements dotted the Martian landscape, but without any domes or artificial gravity generators, the inhabitants of these settlements grew tall and thin over generations.

### Environment

Mars used to have a range of Earth-like environments, although the planet as a whole was quite cool compared to Earth. After the invasion, Mars' atmosphere became thinner, comprised of 95% carbon dioxide and less than 1% oxygen, with nitrogen and argon taking up the rest of its composition. Its temperatures varied to an even greater extent, averaging at inhospitably cold temperatures, with its pressure reduced to 1% that of Earth. Mars' weather was known to consist of dusty winds, often throwing rocks at high speeds. During the Trans-Galactic War, human terraforming returned Mars to an Earth-like atmosphere, but its environment remained desert-like.

## Inhabitants

### Native Species

The native sapient species of Mars were the Martians, the first sapient species in the Sol System, who inhabited Mars over 65 million years ago. They were a very magic-sensitive species, and their knowledge of magic was passed on to humanity in the form of alchemy and many powerful spells.

### Citizens

Following the Terran colonization of Mars, the citizens of Mars were primarily baseline humans, known as Mars Colonists, or simply Colonists. They represented the first major colonial endeavor of Earth onto another world that was not Earth's moon.

### Flora

Martian flora was once very similar to that of Earth, but also very distinct. Haidimoros flowers were known to hold a similar symbolism in Martian society as a rose on Earth, but all Martian flora was rendered extinct during the Fall of Mars.

### Fauna

Most information of Martian fauna is lost, but Mars once hosted diverse ecosystems not unlike Earth, but with visibly different life. One of the most notable creatures of Mars, extinct even before the Fall of Mars, was the Arcensior, a draconic creature that was said to possess semi-sapience. Another notable Martian animal, and the only one to survive the Fall of Mars, was the Mimiclaw, a spindly, giant, insectoid predator that was capable of shapshifting its head and neck to resemble other lifeforms, while the rest of its body would hide in burrows. During the Fall of Mars, several Mimiclaws were brought into Hell, where they survive to this day as unholy monsters, albeit shorter and with thicker, stronger limbs to survive in Hell's higher gravity.

## Colonial society

Colonized by Terrans in the 21st century, Mars was quickly converted into one of the Sol System's top industrial words, and has remained as such ever since. Colonist cities, already distinct from the flowing, elegant design of the original Martian civilization, housed massive factories and connected to manufacturing yards that dotted the red sands, or held spaceports that ferried workers to and from partially automated orbital shipyards. First used to create wartime assets, Mars' industrial output has decreased following the Trans-Galactic War, but continues to be the Sol System's top producer of spacecraft, industrial products, and military equipment shipped across the galaxy and beyond.

The early society of Mars colonists was defined by a sense of adventure, braving a literal new world for the survival of Earth and the galaxy at large. Due to the circumstances under which the colonization of Mars happened, Mars colonists consisted almost entirely of workers, engineers, and scientists who could convert the long-dead planet into a powerhouse of the military-industrial complex. Indeed, bravery and a sense of patriotism to what would become the Trans-Galactic Government flourished in the early colonies, with Mars representing over half of the Sol System's military production during the start of the war. Cybernetics became increasingly popular among the population, initially for workers, but soon spread to an aesthetic subculture.

Long after the Trans-Galactic War, Mars continues to spawn citizens with desires to explore the stars beyond the frontier, whether in uniformed service or otherwise. Cybernetics remain popular on Mars, more than the other worlds of the Sol System. However, the population and industrial output of Mars has seen a slow decrease as its citizens spread ever outwards in space.

While initially hailed as pioneers, Mars colonists have also faced some considerable criticisms from humans with Martian descent, who saw the colonization of Mars as desecrating a planet-wide graveyard of a species destroyed by forces of darkness. This contributed to Mars colonies having a very low population of mages, who would prefer to study the Martian relics left on Earth rather than the barren wasteland of a world long dead.

## History

### Coming of the archangel

4.6 billion years ago, Mars formed in the Sol System before its sister world, Earth. The planet began as significantly larger and denser than its current state, and for eons, developed like Earth. Liquid water, lands of plenty, and life of all kinds flourished on Mars, and over 65 million years before the Trans-Galactic War, evolution spawned the Martians. Like early humans, early Martians went through ages of development, rising from an age of stone to metalworking, their naturally high affinity for magic accelerating their development. However, unlike the more savage ancestors of modern sapients, the Martians would not shape their world through destruction for the sake of wealth or power, for they saw a higher purpose. The original historical records of Mars' first contact with higher powers are lost, but it is known that an archangel set foot on its soil, to be sure that Mars would be safeguarded from approaching forces of Hell, especially one enigmatic greater demonic presence. The archangel named the planet Mars, after an angelic term roughly translated to "Sentinel". Seeing the Martians in a very early stage of development, the archangel made no attempt to rally the population, but as he measured and analyzed the world for signs of demonic corruption, he would preach to those who came to him, telling them the Word, the principles of white magic, and the scope of the greater cosmos. To those who listened, the archangel gave them the task of building a civilization in righteousness, to be both sentinel and shepherd to any race that emerges in the other worlds of the system, and to fight against the great evils of the cosmos wherever they threaten to appear. With that, he ascended back to the heavens, finding the world clear of demonic presence.

### Martian civilization

The Martians who followed the archangel until his ascension knew what they had to do, and that their task would extend far beyond their natural lifespans. As such, they set about building a new civilization to be a model across the stars, which would be colloquially known as the Kingdom of Valleys, officially known as the Regnus Vallis, as it was founded in valleys near what would be known as Tharsis. It came with hardships, ranging from natural disasters to invasions from Martians who rejected the Word or sought their own goals. However, most of the barbarian tribes ultimately destroyed themselves, whether through infighting or through being unable to ride out the same strife that the growing state did. Over the centuries, the Regnus Vallis expanded, and within it, art and reason flourished, both scientific and magical. Cities flowed like rivers up and down the landscape, energy ran clean and strong, and great churches of the Ecclesin Lumina, centerpiece of Martian faith, stood as the centerpieces to each new settlement, the people soon turning their gaze to the stars above. It was during these times that Mars experienced demonic incursions, a quick series of direct invasions on different cities across the planet. Each one was destroyed by the Domin Saluts, the militant wing of the Regnus Vallis, forged to be Mars' defenders against any evils that befell it, whether it be demonic, mortal, or otherwise. However, what the rulers of the Regnus Vallis did not know was that during the incursions, several Martians were corrupted by the demonic influence, starting secret underground cults to the unholy powers even as the invaders were repelled. These Martians were taught Black Magic, a form of unholy magic manipulation, a defiling of the white magic that was granted to them by the archangel.

Not knowing what was transpiring in the hidden corners of its society, Mars developed sub-light spacefaring technology not through an arms race, but through a necessity for a means of managing their expanding civilization. Satellite networks, scientific instruments, and probes were all launched into orbit around Mars, and soon enough, live Martians would leave their world for missions to the other planets of the Sol System. Earth, then a primitive world ruled by giant reptilians, was of great interest to the Martians, as it was the first world they found with the capacity to spawn life like their own. However, there was a darker side to the Martian space endeavors, unknown to even the king. The Martian demonic cultists had secretly placed themselves into key positions of the rising space industry, and purposefully directed missions towards the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. On Ganymede, Europa, and Titan, the cultists established permanent bases, supposedly under the guise of scientific exploration. The bases served that purpose, with non-corrupted Martian personnel documenting and studying the worlds and their primitive signs of life, including aquatic fauna under the surface of Europa and Ganymede, but the cultists led seemingly exploratory mining operations into the surface of the moons, which actually sought hidden demonic artifacts. Once retrieved, these artifacts formed pieces of a puzzle that the cultists gradually assembled, a device which served as both the blueprint and foundation of an unholy machine that could bring demons of great power right into the heart of Mars, under the nose of the Ecclesin Lumina itself. The artifacts came from the very evil that the archangel had been trying to safeguard Mars from, a mechanical, artificially intelligent demonic war machine known as the Omni-Manipulator, which had entrusted its agents to leave the artifacts around the Sol System during the first failed incursions on Mars. For centuries, the Omni-Manipulator had plotted the downfall of the Sol System's first cradle of life, which would come at their own hands.

### Fall of Mars

The cultists reconstructed the demonic device in hidden caves well below the sprawling metropolises of the Regnus Vallis, working unseen and unheard. The device was given life through the forbidden Black Magic, allowing it to give the cultists both instructions and a direct link across the stars to the hidden Omni-Manipulator itself. Following the commands of the insidious supercomputer, the cultists slowly began to poison the Regnus Vallis. As the years went on, they sowed seeds of distrust in the Ecclesin Lumina and the mission of Mars, subtly turning parts of the populace away from an altruistic vision of being both guide and protector to the inevitable rise of sapient life on Earth, and instead towards turning Mars into a strong empire in its own right. They fed the people lies, lies that the church and crown were nothing more than petty tyrants slowly turning the commoner into a mindless subject, and that true enlightenment would be found in what the Ecclesin Lumina had deemed evil. Slowly, the flourishing art, science, reason, and innovation of Mars slowed to a halt, the cultists driving the populace against itself. Faith in the mission of Mars was lost as cultists managed to insert themselves into all levels of society, using positions of respect and power to have their words heard, and slowly shifting power away from the crown and towards agencies that they had control of. Space travel was halted, with off-world personnel recalled to Mars, and resources once used for the industry mysteriously vanished. Radicalization became rampant as the cultists implored Martians to chase vain aspirations of wealth and power, and suddenly, many rising figures would mysteriously vanish. In truth, they were killed by the cultists, who used the blood of their victims to fuel occult rituals that gave their demonic device more power. However, the cultists manipulated events to pin the murders on both royal agents and the Ecclesin Lumina, supposedly out of fear of having their power usurped by said individuals. For the first time in centuries, riots and uprisings occurred across several Martian cities, stretching the already-shrinking and now-underequipped Domin Saluts thin. The cultists used this opportunity to kill dozens of Ecclesin Lumina priests, as the blood of the righteous would fuel the final part of the ritual. When the time finally came, Mars was so divided amongst itself that even those still loyal to both their faith and the mission of Mars couldn't see what was about to happen.

In the final days of Mars, remaining leaders of the Ecclesin Lumina sensed something more than a rising unease in the populace, finally realizing that the demonic blight had been festering beneath their feet all along as the unholy energy started to literally seep through the ground. However, they were too late to stop it, and not enough people would listen to them. The cultists had turned their device from a small communicator into a vast summoning array using the resources from Mars' now-stagnant space program, powered by the occult rituals. At the command of the cultists, the machine ripped a hole through the very fabric of the cosmos, a rift directly to Hell, blasting the cavern open. A storm of unholy energy swiftly engulfed the skies of the planet as legions of demons were summoned through the rift, bringing destruction wherever they went. Chaos erupted across the planet as vast swathes of the populace were slaughtered in swift strikes, entire cities blasted apart by the demonic weaponry. What remained of the Domin Saluts rallied towards the capital city, evacuating who they could as they mounted a desperate defense. Around them, the land literally burned as the summoning array began the dreaded process of Hellforming, the massive influx of unholy energy warping the planet's surface. Cities built to last a million years crumbled like porcelain as the rivers boiled away, the ground tearing open as lava and brimstone poured out, and the summoning array forced itself towards the surface, causing geoquakes of massive scale as it did. The cultists, while awaiting the end of the Hellforming, were ordered by the Omni-Manipulator to destroy the last of the resistance, and managed to breach the defenses of the Martian capital. Ultimately, almost all the cultists were killed in their assault, but took the life of the Martian king and his only heir. It was then that the Domin Saluts managed to activate the last surviving Martian spacecraft, held for years in the capital's spaceport, stored for a potential future mission back to the gas giant moons. With the ships active, Martian survivors were quickly herded into them, and launched the moment they were full, but the soldiers of the Domin Saluts remained on the ground, keeping the demonic invaders at bay until the last ship cleared the atmosphere. As the last of the Domin Saluts fell, Mars was firmly in demonic control, the only survivors on the ground being the few remaining cultists, who now awaited the arrival of an even greater evil.

The Omni-Manipulator was the mastermind of the end of the Martian civilization, but it was not the supreme commander of its own invasion, for the Omni-Manipulator had a master of its own: Legion, the composite Demon Lord. Mars was to be his entry into the Sol System, the focal point of a demonic incursion that would surely sweep over the galaxy. The planet's surface warped and twisted as it fell even more under Hell's control, and in space, the fleeing Martians were soon assaulted by demonic crafts that chased them into the void, and an entire armada of demonic crafts slowly poured out of the rift and into orbit. When all seemed lost, a light shone through the darkness of space. After millenniums of campaigns against the forces of Hell, the archangel had returned to Mars in its darkest hour, ultimately led back to it in pursuit of Legion, and bringing with him an army of angels and Astarans of Polaris. The archangel, true name Slayer, used his forces to destroy the demons attacking the Martian survivor ships, boarding them to see what had become of Mars. On the surface, the summoning array had created a rift for Legion himself, and the hulking demon was about to take his first step on the burning world. Acting fast, Slayer turned his full firepower on the summoning array, and out of options to end Legion's incursion, Slayer destroyed the very world he had fostered. With an almighty blast of holy energy, he blasted a hole into the surface of Mars, obliterating the summoning array in an instant and preventing Legion from materializing on the world. The very land of Mars, infused with unholy energy during the Hellforming, disintegrated in the blink of an eye, as did the demonic forces unable to flee the planet in time. At once, the Hellforming was undone, and the unholy energy around Mars dissipated. However, what was left in its place was no longer a world of life. Mars, the first home of life in the Sol System, was dead.

### Red Planet

The demonic armada that deployed from Mars scattered, to be chased to the ends of the galaxy by the Astaran Crusade, given the task by Slayer himself. The survivors of Mars, comprised of those who kept their faith to their mission, would see the end of their race on Earth 65 million years later. Behind them, the surface of Mars would restabilize, but its atmosphere was forever rendered inhospitable. Red sands, partially formed from trace elements left by the planet's fall, covered the surface of Mars, which was also dotted by volcanoes and other rock formations. As Earth developed in ways akin to Mars, Mars stood as an empty, silent graveyard, the only relics of its once-magnificent civilization being trace elements scattered across it, and a few horribly corroded and damaged remains of Martian structures that had been pulled deep under the surface during the Hellforming. Additionally, Mars had become physically smaller and less dense due to the extreme destruction, reducing its gravity. This would be the planet observed by early humans, and through the Martian survivors, who put themselves in stasis on Earth's moon until past the dawn of mankind, Earth would learn of the planet's name.

As humanity progressed, Mars became the subject of speculation and study. In 1965, NASA's Mariner 1 became the first human spacecraft to flyby Mars. In 1971 to 1974, Soviet probes crashed onto the Martian surface, and in 1976, NASA's Viking landers successfully made it onto the surface and remained operational for years. In the decades that followed, Mars surface exploration continued, marked by many hardships, and including more Earth nations. In the early 21st century, plans for Martian colonization were developed, but the plan would ultimately play out differently than anticipated, for it was then that Earth was drawn into the Trans-Galactic War.