Treaty of Mars - Age of Strife: In times long past, during the Dark Age of Technology, both Terra and Mars maintained separate interstellar empires and collaborated peacefully for the benefit of all Mankind. The onset of the Age of Strife would shatter this amity, as Terra descended into techno-barbarism.On Mars, the situation became even more dire, for the Red Planet's terraformation was still incomplete. Because of the lack of maintenance of the planet's infrastructure during the conflicts that consumed Mars in that period, its atmospheric radiation shields and oxygen generators soon disintegrated, allowing deadly solar ultraviolet radiation to destroy the fragile Martian ecosystem and wiping out the sparse, genetically-engineered vegetation which had taken millennia to cultivate.As other toxins spilled into the environment from the degeneration of the world's great macro-industrial complexes, Mars returned to being the red wasteland that had characterised its past. Plagues caused by high radiation levels slew most of the population and many of the survivors devolved into mutants or ghoulish cannibals.Faced with total extinction, a new idea began to spread among the surviving Martian people, a belief system that made a religious faith out of the preservation of the technical knowledge required for their continued survival -- the Cult Mechanicus dedicated to the Machine God.The devotees of this faith, the so-called Tech-priests, sought out ancient technology scattered across the Red Planet that was needed to rebuild temporary radiation shields, atmospheric generators and weapons to defend against the rad-mutants, insane automata and the dangerous artificial general intelligences or "false minds" that had claimed the wastelands as their own.The cult demanded absolute devotion from its followers, for only by selfless dedication and often personal sacrifices could the needed archeotech be recovered or the planet saved. Under the direction of their Tech-priest leaders, the cultists set about restoring order to their world.They built new subterranean shelters to protect themselves from the radiation storms that now scoured the Martian surface, and constructed new oxygen generators and food processing machines to enable them to live beneath the protective shielding. Yet there were few shelters even for the Tech-priests and none for unbelievers. Marauders and mutant raiders tried to force their way inside the hurriedly constructed underground warrens. Many of the cultists died defending their shelters and some of these early settlements were destroyed, but the survivors emerged all the stronger and more determined.The Martian people interpreted their survival in the face of tremendous odds as a vindication of their belief in the dogma of the Cult Mechanicus and the divine protection of the Machine God. Their resolve and devotion to the cult soon became unshakable as the Age of Strife wore on.While rival techno-barbarian warlords battled over the remnants of the once-great civilisation of Terra, the Tech-priests built Mars anew, and the first temples and forge city settlements dedicated to the Machine God were erected amidst the crimson sands as the Tech-priests cleared away the mutant tribes and insane thinking machines with the tools they recovered from the surface.The Tech-priests scoured the ruins of Mars for surviving advanced technology which they enshrined within the greatest of the cult's holy places, the Temple of All Knowledge. In time, the towering forge cities of the Cult Mechanicus' magi rose into the pink sky, as advanced technology and industry returned to Mars for the first time in centuries.Now unified under the theocratic alliance of Cult Mechanicus theocratic overlords known as the "Mechanicum" and its ruling parliament, the Priesthood of Mars began to dispatch Explorator fleets blindly into the still-turbulent Warp without the aid of Mars' long-dead thrall-Navigators.The Tech-priests even plundered the surface of war-torn Terra when the opportunity presented itself in hopes of discovering lost technologies as part of the continuing Quest for Knowledge. Facing resistance to their quest on the Terran surface, the Mechanicum soon became bitter enemies with the techno-barbarians which plagued the devastated Earth.In the meantime, each new world discovered across the galaxy by the Mechanicum's Explorators that survived their blind jumps into the currents of the Immaterium was colonised and rebuilt in the image of Mars itself, transformed into a planet-wide manufactory known as a Forge World, where industry was the only true religion.