Characters / Overheaven Mars

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Mars

The Red Planet... or at least it was, before it was terraformed ("noaformed," as the Martians themselves say). An early target of colonization, chiefly by the USA and its allies. Following a war over terraforming, Mars is united under the Martian Alliance. Mars is the focus of the Pax Per Bellum updates.

• Absent Aliens: Downplayed. There are alien life forms on Mars, but they're very primitive - simple microbes dubbed "greenmen" and strange beings called "Amphiformes" which resemble stromatolites.
• Alternative Calendar: Since Mars' year is almost twice as long as Earth's, dates for events on Mars use the Darian calendar.
• Americasia: Mars is a Culture Chop Suey, but the two most prominent cultures are shown to be American and Japanese.
• Arc Symbol: The "Shield of Mars," a circle with a chevron inside it, becomes the preferred symbol for Mars over the spear-and-shield symbol. It shows up a lot in Martian iconography, including the flag.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Early into the Red-Blue War, both sides start running out of ammo, and Mars being the Death World it is at the time, they've got no way to mass-produce more. So, Reds and Blues alike fall back on lower-tech weapons - spears, swords, axes, clubs and even high-tech bows. Guns are never abandoned, but they aren't relied on the way they would've been on Earth.
• Civil War: The Red-Blue War, fought in the 2070s over whether or not to terraform the planet. The pro-terraforming side (the Blues) wins, but both sides ultimately get most of what they wanted. The war becomes a defining event in Martian history and culture.
  • About fifty years after Hell Day, Mars has a second civil war, the Fed War. This was fought between the Alliance and the "Feds," a rebel faction who wanted Mars to unite with Luna. The Feds were few in number, but made extensive use of combat robots. In the end, the Feds lost. Most rejoined the Alliance and accepted amnesty when it was offered them, but the largest hardline faction, the Coalition of Duty, refused. The "Cods" were instead allowed to evacuate their forces off Mars entirely. They subsequently fought for the Lunar Union in the Solar Wars.
• Colony Drop: A comet strikes the Martian north pole, apparently naturally, in 2014. There are few if any casualties, but much of the polar ice cap is melted by the impact, kicking the terraforming conversation into high gear.
• Color-Coded Armies: Reds (anti-terraforming), Blues (pro-terraforming) and Greens (Team Switzerland).
• Cyborg: By 2585, most Martians are cyborgs of some description.
• Eagleland: Mars was colonized almost exclusively by America and their allies, who carved up the planet at the Treaty of Houston in 1979. (The Soviet bloc got Venus.)
• Fictional Currency: Mars uses the aureus.
• Fictional Province: Averted. On paper, almost every Martian "colony" is answerable to one Earth country or another (at least, prior to the RBW), but in practice, due to the sheer distances involved, they're all independent and, after the first few decades, mostly self-sufficient.
• Friend to Bugs: Insects served both as major protein sources and as pets in the early decades of Martian colonization. Martian culture thus developed a great fixation on them.
• Good Counterpart: To, of all things, the Terran Federation from Starship Troopers. The Martian Alliance's government operates on a "service guarantees citizenship" model and Martian culture is rather militaristic. However, it's also very egalitarian and entirely democratic, and service only guarantees citizenship in the Alliance, with citizenship in consituent nations being automatic. Civilian rights are no less protected than citizens' rights, with the only difference being that citizens can vote in Alliance elections as well as local ones. Furthermore, your service doesn't need to be in the military - doing a tour as a civil servant in SciCom or CivCom works just as well. It's also emphasized that joining MarsCom is 100% voluntary: the Martian Alliance's charter even outright states that conscription is completely illegal and if the Alliance can't earn your loyalty fair and square, it deserves to fail.
  • Ryzov does, however, liberally pepper the "Idiot's Guide to the Martian Alliance" post with references to the movie.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: The Red-Blue War is not very morally clear-cut. It's telling that both sides ultimately get most of what they want.
• Insistent Terminology: It's not terraforming, it's noaforming. The term refers to the Noachian Period, a geological era about 4 billion years ago when Mars is thought to have had liquid water - "noaforming" is thus promoted as a term by the Blues to suggest that they're returning Mars to the way it should be. The Reds, meanwhile, continue to call it terraforming, believing that it will make Mars too much like Earth and deprive Martians of their identity.
• Mars Needs Water: And air, for that matter. It's a Subverted Trope, however - rather than getting it through invasion, they get it through trade. The more environmentally-conscious nations of Earth send Mars their excess greenhouse gases, while the Martians buy greenhouse gases from Venus in exchange for the tech they need for their own terraforming efforts and water from Ganymede in exchange for nuclear bombs (which, to the Ganys, are basically just really big ice-breakers).
• Planetary Nation: The Martian Alliance, founded by the peace treaty that ended the Red-Blue War. Notably, the nations that comprise it seem to retain a degree of independence.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Proud Soldier Race variation. Martians take a lot of pride in their military. SciCom and CivCom even use the same military rank structure as DefCom.
• Settling the Frontier: Mars was that frontier from 1979 through the RBW.
• Space Cold War: Mars is involved in two: first with Earth, then with Luna. They come out on top both times - they win the Geo-Martian Conflicts by default because of Hell Day, and they beat the Selenites fair and square in the Solar Wars.
• Terraforming: Over the decades and centuries, Mars is gradually converted into a habitable world, albeit not without a good deal of strife along the way. The way Project Genesis (the Mars Treaty Organization's noaforming plan) was to be carried out was the primary sticking point for the Reds.
• Underground City: Many early Martian cities are built into caves and lava tubes.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: The Martians certainly seem to think so. European Mars -> Euromars. Mars Command -> MarsCom. United Forces -> UniFor.

The Colonies

Commonwealth of Tharsis

The American colonies on Mars, located around Valles Marineris.

• Eagleland: The USA took the lead in Martian colonization. Theirs is the largest colonial claim on the planet.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: The Mormons are migrating en masse to Mars, specifically Olympus Mons, after the discovery of a strange meteorite there which they believe was a sign from God.
• Naming Your Colony World: The colonies that comprise Tharsis are all named after their Martian locations (Boralia, Cydonia, Olympus Mons, Tempe, Valles Marineris, Zephyria), places on Earth (Alamo, New Archangel, New California, New Saigon, New Tacoma, Shambhala), or famous Americans (Eisenhower, Jefferson, Kamehameha, King, Laurentia, Reagan, Roosevelt). Laurentia, the first, is specifically named for Robert H. Lawrence, the first man on Mars.

Federation of Japanese Mars

The Japanese colonies on Mars, located in the Elysium Planitia region. Better known simply as Kasei.

• Naming Your Colony World: Kasei is simply Japanese for Mars.
• New Neo City: Perhaps inevitably, the capital of Kasei is called Neo-Tokyo.

Euromars

The European Federation's colonies on Mars, located in Arabia Terra, or Eurabia as it comes to be called.

• United Europe: Founded by them, and includes settlements by every EF member state.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: In true Eurofed fashion.

Confederation of Avalon

The British Commonwealth's colonies on Mars, located in the Hellas Basin.

• In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race: The Zeras (see the Earth page for more on them) gained rather more traction in Avalon than in Britain.
• Meaningful Rename: Hellas Planitia is renamed by the British colonists to Avalon Planitia.

Huitzilin Federation

Mexico's colony. Located in Margaritifer Terra, southeast of Valles Marineris.

• Animal Motifs: Their name means "hummingbird." It's a reference to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war.
• The Federation: It's in the name.
• Underground City: Their capital, Nueva Acapulco, is built into a cave.

South African Republic of Kruger

South Africa's colony. Located in Reull Vallis, just east of Avalon.

• The Atoner: The founders of Kruger came there in part to build a "final redoubt" for white-supremacist South Africa. They've since come to resent their apartheid past and seek to move beyond it. Unfortunately, a living reminder of that past also exists in Kruger, in the form of the "Blanks" ("whites"), various fascists and assorted bigots drawn by the promise of a white ethnostate. The Boers' reaction to the Blanks' fondness for Kruger can best be described as "Your Approval Fills Me with Shame."
• Take a Third Option: The reason Kruger's claim to Reull, which wasn't part of the Houston Treaty, was legitimized. Avalon and Kasei were in a dispute over the valley and giving it to the Boers seemed like a reasonable compromise.

Federation of Sarmatian Colonies

Sarmatia was founded by various non-Russian ethnic groups who didn't like the USSR, especially Ukrainians. They live in Tyrrhena Terra.

• The Federation: Consisting of Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Georgian and Armenian colonies, plus one crater full of Belarusians.
• Foil: Almost deliberately so to the USSR: conservative, very capitalist and the Ukrainians run the show.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: This is what happens when a group of these types aren't being persecuted, but nonetheless conclude they won't be getting what they want.

State of Rama

Thailand's colony. Located in Tycho Brahe Crater, in Terra Cimmeria.

• Wretched Hive: Thais back home see Rama as one, on account of the Thai government's very lax qualifications for colonists. The truth is that most Ramians are pretty much just ordinary, honest folks.

Korean Republic of Singye

Korea's colony. Located in Acidalia Planitia, on the northern plains.

• War Refugees: An interesting example. After the Second Korean War, former North Korean prison camp inmates are stigmatized in both halves of reunited Korea, but on Mars, most people don't really care, so many of them move up to Singye.

State of Vahram

Iran's colony. Located in Terra Cimmeria.

• Alternative Calendar: In 1976, the Shah changed the Iranian calendar to count from the date Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire. Vahram's flag thus features the date "2544," referring to the year the colony was founded - 1985.
• Naming Your Colony World: It means "victory."
• The Republic: While nominally ruled by the Shah (in the same way Charles III is technically King of Canada), Vahram runs itself like a republic in practice. Many Vahramians in fact believe the monarchy back on Earth ought to be abolished.

State of Battuta

Morocco's colony. Located in Teisserenc de Bort Crater, south of Eurabia.

• Irony: Battuta has wound up economically reliant on Euromars, paralleling Morocco's relationship with Eurofed.

Pakistani Republic of Qarmazi

Pakistan's colony - but what does that mean anymore? Located in Chryse Planitia.

• The Fundamentalist: There was a small population of Islamic fundamentalists in Qarmazi, but they went off to found ascetic settlements (most of which failed) after hearing about the Punjab War.
• In Name Only: After the Punjab War, the people of Qarmazi are having to figure out what they want their colony to be, and the majority opinion is in favor of moving away from being "Pakistani."
• Naming Your Colony World: "Qarmazi" means "crimson," in reference to Mars.
• Those Two Guys: With their neighbors, the Indonesian colony of New Mataram. By the time of the Red-Blue War, they've actually grown close enough to merge, creating the hybrid culture of Maqam.
• Voluntary Vassal: Some Qarmazis want to join Tharsis, which would technically make them the 101st state. Most people are more interested in closer ties with New Mataram.

Taiwanese Republic of Xinjia

Taiwan's colony. Located in Kepler Crater, north of Vahram.

• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: Xinjia is one place where Taiwanese and mainland Chinese have, following the PRC's fall, largely mended relations. Mainlanders still get looked down on by the Taiwanese, but it's less genuine racism and more something akin to an American state rivalry.

Egyptian Republic of Nasser

Egypt's colony. Located in Rabe Crater, west of Avalon.

• Animal Motifs: The Nasserian flag has a scarab on it, for good luck. That the average Martian's diet consists chiefly of insects proved to be a happy coincidence.

State of Petra

Jordan's colony. Located in Nirgal Vallis, between Argyre Planitia and Valles Marineris.

• Meaningful Name: Petra mimics its namesake with cliff-face dwellings made of locally sourced Martian brick.

Republic of Esperanza

Argentina's colony. Located in Lyot Crater, in the Vastitas Borealis to the north of Eurabia.

• Naming Your Colony World: Named after Argentina's first Antarctic station.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: A mild example. The first colonists bound for Esperanza left in 1981 and wouldn't find out about the Falklands War until they got to Mars at the end of 1982. (For the record, Argentina lost even harder ITTL.)

Yugoslav Republic of Partizanja

Yugoslavia's colony. Located in Aonia Planum, centered on Lowell Crater.

• Doomed Hometown: Their first capital had to be abandoned due to a critical airlock failure.
• Uniformity Exception: The only Martian colony founded by a communist country.

State of Sharon

Israel's colony. Also populated by an assortment of Jews from across Earth. Located in Huygens Crater.

• Crazy-Prepared: Intended as a refuge for Jews in case things get unsafe on Earth again. E!22 calls it "the spare Israel on Mars."

Empire of Noachia

Brazil's colony. Located in Noachis Terra.

• The Good Kingdom: Many Brazilians who wanted to restore the Braganzas moved to Noachia, and in 2010 they did exactly that. Noachia is now a constitutional monarchy.

Zairean Republic of Mbuka

Zaire's colony. Located between Cydonia and Eurabia.

• Afrofuturism: The only Sub-Saharan African state with a share on Mars (Kruger doesn't count), and very proud of it.
• Meaningful Name: Averted Trope. No one seems to know what the name "Mbuka" actually means. But it was Mobutu's idea, so it stayed.
• Take a Third Option: Much like Kruger, Mbuka originates from a territorial dispute. Tharsis and Euromars were arguing over a piece of land on their border and the best solution turned out to be "give it to Zaire."

Indonesian Republic of New Mataram

Indonesia's colony. Located in Chryse Planitia.

• Those Two Guys: With their neighbors, the Pakistani colony of Qarmazi.

Chilean Republic of Magellan

Chile's colony. Located in Utopia Planitia.

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Magellan seems to attract curious ideological strains - libertarians, communists and esoteric fascists all settle there in noticeable numbers.

Philippine Republic of Rizalia

The Philippines' colony. Located in Margaritifer Chaos, east of Valles Marineris.

• Land of One City: Rizalia's settlements are so interconnected they're sometimes treated as a single city-state.

Pegaso and Janna

A Hispanic and an Arab colony, located together in Argyre Planitia.

• Those Two Guys: The two colonies grow together and eventually become one entity, much like Maqam.

The Reds

UniFor as a whole

The United Forces, the alliance of seven rebel armies that championed the anti-terraforming (or at least anti-MarsCom) cause of the Reds.

• The Alliance: The United Forces were so called because they were a coalition of seven armies.
• La Résistance: How they styled themselves, standing up to MarsCom in defense of their beliefs and their nations, which they believed MarsCom's noaforming plan would callously sacrifice.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Even the main seven United Forces are an eclectic bunch, to say nothing of the minor Reds.
• Rebel Leader: Each of the United Forces had one, all of them interesting characters in their own right. The overall Supreme Commander of UniFor was Tobias Falco of the Primus Occupation Force, a former leader of DefCom who grew disgusted with the way MarsCom was being run.
• We ARE Struggling Together: A frequent problem for them - to the point where it loses them the war.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: Inverted Trope. The Reds lost the war, but won the peace - they ended up getting most of what they wanted at the Treaty of Petra-3.

Euromartian Defense Forces

The largest of the Red armies, hailing from Euromars. Led by Levi Brahm.

• Badass Army: The Spartan Corps, the elite core of the EmDF, considered to be among the best troops the Reds had.
• Base on Wheels: The EmDF had a whole squadron of them, known as Landmasters or "megatanks." One of them, the famous "Megatank Redhammer," led an entire salient by itself before being defeated in a David Versus Goliath scenario with a local Blue militia.
• Multinational Team: Their members claimed descent from nearly every country in Europe.
• National Weapon: Made extensive use of warhammers.
• Red Baron: Levi Brahm was known as "the Red Chef," since he'd been a caterer before he was a militia leader.
• The Resenter: Tobias Falco effectively sidelined Levi Brahm in the course of taking control of UniFor, and Brahm never forgave him. This eventually culminated in Brahm disobeying Falco to try and capture the MTOS Goliath, which ended up losing the Reds the war.
• Sigil Spam: The three overlapping rings on the main EmDF flag show up on all their battalions' unit flags.
• Token Evil Teammate: Their leader, Levi Brahm, is portrayed noticeably more negatively than the others, and it's mentioned that elements of the EmDF attempted genocide against the Barsu - though for what it's worth, Brahm publicly disapproved of that.

Avalon Red Commandos

The resident Red militia of the Avalon Basin. Led by Liam Merrick.

• Badass Army: Merrick knows who to delegate authority to, and the ARC wind up as one of the best-organized Red armies.
• British Rockstar: Liam Merrick was a rock musician first and an activist second, but the former gave him the charisma to be very good at the latter. Becoming leader of a revolutionary army didn't stop him from releasing an album in the middle of waging a war.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The ARC started out as a fairly small outfit, but they gradually grew and absorbed their rivals, eventually becoming the second-largest Red army.
• Improvised Weapon: In true British fashion, the ARC adopt the use of shovels as weapons.
• National Weapon: The ARC have their bows, shovels, "combi-clubs" and the Zulu iklwa spear.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: The ARC pioneer "power archers" - essentially cyborgs with souped-up high-tech longbows.

Code Red Coalition

The Red army of the Tharsis Commonwealth. Led by Utena Jackson.

• The Alliance: A relatively decentralized association of Red paramilitaries. This was their advantage - they could survive a decapitation strike if necessary and operate everywhere at once.
• Animal Motifs: Many CRC groups put wasps or scorpions on their flags.
• Eyepatch of Power: Utena Jackson wore one after having her eye shot out by a would-be assassin.
• Friendly Sniper: The Ophir Rangers were such good sharpshooters that throughout the entire war, when everyone else ran out of ammo, they never did.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Utena Jackson's response to getting her eye shot out:
  "It's only an eye, I've got another."
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Reaper Militia, "a group of black-clad edgelords" who put skull designs on their helmet visors and their flag.

Red Planet Revolutionary Ronin

The Red army of Kasei, known for its more ideological bent. Led by Minako Hiyama.

• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Red ideology of the Ronin often took an anarchist slant, and they considered themselves revolutionaries of a sort.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Ronin used a lot more black and white in their flags than most Reds.
• Young Conqueror: Minako Hiyama was only in her early twenties when she became leader of the RPRR. Her Red activism started as teenage rebellion against her strict (and very Blue) parents, but it grew into a cause that consumed her life.

Army for the Salvation of the Argyre Basin (ESCA)

The Red army representing the colonies of Argyre Planitia. Led by Sultan al-Khatib.

• Bilingual Bonus: Their acronym is Spanish: Ejército para la Salvación de la Cuenca de Argyre.
• Culture Chop Suey: Hispanic-Arabic.
• The Fundamentalist: An Odd Friendship between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, at that. It ends badly after the war.
  • However, these are a minority: most ESCA fighters just don't want their country turned into a lake.
• Puppet King: Sultan al-Khatib, the leader of ESCA, was sidelined by his generals after a failed invasion of Blue-controlled New California.

Army of the North

The Red army representing all the colonies of the Boreal Lowlands. Led by Ernesto Nores.

• Brain in a Jar: Ernesto Nores was a brain in a box on wheels. Why? Because that's just how frugal a businessman he was. (Also so that people would underestimate him. It worked.)
• Fragile Speedster: The AoTN relied on hit-and-run tactics. The 1st Qarmazi Cavalry, a fleet of armed ATVs and ground drones decorated in gaudy colors to taunt the Blues, were the resident experts.
• Non-Indicative Name: The 45 Immortals actually numbered about 600-900. They were called that because of their belief in esoteric numerology, including that the number 45 would protect them.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Army of the North was known for the wide variety of strange ideologies Nores was able to bring under one banner through his impersonal charisma. There were communists, libertarians, Chilean Neo-Nazis, Juche cultists, Maqamese nationalists and more besides.

Primus Occupation Force

The smallest of the main seven Red armies, consisting of Tobias Falco's personal troops.

• Cool Old Guy: Tobias Falco, the 80-year-old Zoomer himself. Proved a Reasonable Authority Figure and a beloved Rebel Leader during the war, a Graceful Loser at its end and an Inspirational Martyr in the years to come after his death at the hands of "Hard Red" terrorists.
• Cyborg: Most were augmented in some way.
• Defector from Decadence: Most were former DefCom special forces, personally loyal to Falco.
• Elite Army: Falco's own troops, the best and brightest of UniFor.
• The Gadfly: Spent the war mercilessly trolling the Blue forces besieging them.
• The Siege: The POF occupied Primus (the Martian capital) at the start of the war and held it until the end of the war.

Arean Consciousness Movement

The most prominent of the "Hard Reds," the extremist fringe of the Red movement.

• Blood Knight: "War was an end unto itself" for the ACM. They believed the struggle to protect Mars would have to be unending.
• Bullying a Dragon: Assassinating Tobias Falco at the Treaty of Petra-3 proved to not be the Areans' wisest move.
• Everyone Has Standards: The ACM was never part of UniFor.
• Fantastic Racism: The Areans saw Earthlings as weak and spoiled.
• Hated by All: Killing Falco and trying to continue the RBW after it was over made the ACM and their fellow Hard Reds public enemy number one on Mars for Blues and Red moderates alike. The Red-Blue War thus segues into the "Rust Wars," in which the nascent Martian Alliance hunts down the Hard Reds.
• Misery Builds Character: The hardships of life on Mars had, the ACM believed, made Martians strong, and to terraform the planet would make them weak.
• My Way or the Highway: The ACM and their fellow Hard Reds believed that noaforming would rob the Martians of their culture and identity, and that there could thus be no compromise whatsoever with the Blues.
• No True Scotsman: What most Hard Reds thought of UniFor when the latter agreed to a peace treaty. The ACM took it so far as to assassinate Tobias Falco.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The ACM flag was black with a red disk, symbolizing "Mars alone." They're portrayed extremely negatively.

Stop Genesis

A minor Hard Red group from Boeing City, New Tacoma, in Tharsis.

• Cult of Personality: Their leader, Rebexa Arya, was a teacher who built up one around herself, in part by indoctrinating her students. Eventually, the movement's other leaders grew sick of it and betrayed her.
• Take Over the City: Their aim during the war was to take over Boeing City for the Red cause and destroy the city's terraforming-related industries. The police and local MarsCom elements stopped them.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: When Stop Genesis was defeated, Arya was caught trying to escape the city, but decided it was Better to Die than Be Killed and inflicted this on herself.

Jean-Paul Lemay Brigade

A minor Hard Red group named after the university professor whose death at the hands of MarsCom helped start the Red-Blue War.

• Cult of Personality: Around the memory of Lemay.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Their aim was to find and kill the soldier who'd killed Lemay... and every member of his unit, and all their family, friends and business partners. MarsCom had to put the soldiers and their families into what amounted to witness protection.

Living Mars Defense Force

A group who believed Mars' native life forms (which were very primitive) should take precedence, and indeed that the whole planet was, in some way, alive.

• Cloudcuckoolander: Their belief in a sort of "Cosmic Consciousness" pervading all things got them treated as this.
• Didn't Think This Through: Late in the war, the LMDF fell apart as its members realized that if the planet really was alive, then giving it air and water (i.e. noaforming) might actually do it some good.
• Non-Nazi Swastika: Had one on their flag. It represented "cosmic life force."

The Nyctalopes

Cyborg separatists who fought for the Reds.

• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Their flags incorporated black and silver as well as red.
• The Exile: After the war, the surviving Nyctalopes moved to the higher-elevation parts of Mars, where noaforming couldn't reach, or to Titan.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Almost all Nyctalopes were these. It allowed them to live on Mars with no need for life support, something they were very proud of.
• Misery Builds Character: They believed that Mars didn't need to be terraformed, because it belonged by right to those who could withstand it as it was - i.e. cyborgs.
• Unwilling Roboticization: Some of them had a habit of turning those they captured into Full-Conversion Cyborgs. This tended to not work very well, as the Yashima Procedure can easily result in death, insanity and/or serious trauma when performed improperly.

Disciples of Bogath

A faction of heretical Barsu who, unlike most of their fellows, sympathized with the Reds.

• The Heretic: Seen as this by most other Barsu - admittedly less for their beliefs and more because they were Reds.
• No True Scotsman: The rest of the Barsu still consider them Persona Non Grata even centuries after the war, since the Disciples tried to make excuses for Red groups who massacred Barsu.
• The Prophecy: All the Barsu believed in one, that Mars would be brought back to life by the return of the Barsu, but the Disciples took a step further by claiming that Mars couldn't or wouldn't be restored until all the Barsu had reached Mars.

Dysonists & Singularitarians

Various groups who believed there were better ways than noaforming by which to transform Mars.

• Hive Mind: The Singularity Front sought to create one, unifying all of Mars into a higher consciousness. They never achieved this, but their extensive use of mind-linking technologies allowed the members' memories to be copied and propagated over the net in the centuries to come, granting them a strange form of immortality as they periodically got downloaded and took over random people.
• Take a Third Option: Rather than terraform Mars or leave it as it was, the Dysonists wanted to disassemble the planet and use the resources to build a Dyson Sphere.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Dysonists were divided between two organizations, one of which had been subverted by Scientologists from the asteroid belt. They didn't get along very well, in no small part because all Martians, Red, Blue or otherwise, hate Scientologists.^note The Church of Scientology had plotted to subvert and overthrow several Martian governments some decades prior to the RBW. They got banned from Mars by international treaty for it.

Red Hackers

An assortment of hacker organizations were part of the Red cause.

• The Cracker: The organization known as Venom Worms infamously once managed to sabotage a MarsCom nuclear reactor. The Red Planet IT Army, meanwhile, specialized in deepfake propaganda.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Red Planet IT Army's deepfakes proved so convincing that some governments on Earth actually fell for them, nearly prompting an intervention. Both the Reds and the Blues agreed to dial back the deepfakery after that, and UniFor almost severed ties with the RPIT Army.
• I Am Spartacus: Adam Kadmon was a hacker group named after its leader... and everyone else in the organization, who all claimed to be its leader when interrogated. Some of them even believed they really were. The Blues never did figure out who the "real" Adam Kadmon was, or if such a person even existed at all. Many historians believe the group's real goal was simply to confuse the MarsCom cyberintelligence corps.

Red Katipuneros

A minor Red group from Rizalia who were more interested in theater than war and were generally seen as a joke... at least, until the war's end.

• Cloudcuckoolander: Karen Bondoc, self-proclaimed "Revolutionary Commander" of the RKs, was obsessed with musical theater and the trappings thereof, and so the Katipuneros ended up spending more time putting on elaborate musical numbers than getting much done.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: Theirs came at the Petra-3 Treaty. When the ACM assassinated Falco, Karen Bondoc and the Red Katipunero representatives (who had been encouraged to come in hopes of convincing them to stand down) unexpectedly sprang into action and cut off the Areans' escape route, ensuring the terrorists' capture. In helping to save the peace treaty, the Red Katipuneros earned the respect of the other Reds (who'd hitherto scorned them as "LARPers"), and they were welcomed home as unlikely heroes.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Broadly regarded as completely ineffectual. The Rizalian authorities let them stay because they drew recruits away from more dangerous organizations.

The Blues

MarsCom as a whole

Mars Command was the service arm of the Mars Treaty Organization, and it was they who were tasked with defeating the Reds and making Project Genesis (that is, the noaforming plan) happen. They consisted of three main divisions: DefCom (Defense Command), SciCom (Science Command) and CivCom (Civil Command).

• Badass Army: DefCom was the only division that actually was one, but all three branches structured themselves like a military, with officers and unit systems.
• Beware the Nice Ones: SciCom and CivCom often proved themselves extremely valuable to the war effort in their own ways.
• Magnificent Bastard: In-Universe. Aaron James Lang, leader of MarsCom during the war. Described by Ryzov as a "heroic troll" character, Lang pulls out every trick in the book to win the war, and when he does win and can dictate whatever terms he wants... he agrees to most of what the moderate Reds wanted, establishes the framework for the Martian Alliance, pulls a Cincinnatus and reenlists as a private in CivCom, where he spends the rest of his life having adventures of his own.
• United Nations Is a Superpower: The MTO was essentially the Martian UN, and it did indeed wield a huge amount of power. Many Reds were just as uneasy about that as about terraforming, though the fears that it would evolve into a fascist superstate never quite came to pass.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Project Genesis was considered by many people to be too extreme in its methods, but its proponents, chief among them MTO General Secretary Fumikage Gondo, really did believe it would make Mars a better place.

Defense Command

DefCom, the military wing of the MTO and thus the army of the Blue Movement. Consisted of the Ground Corps, Space Corps, Ranger Corps, Cyber Corps, Intelligence Corps and Logistics Corps.

• Attack Drone: Made frequent use of "teletanks" - that is, remote-controlled armored vehicles, often piloted by Mars' gamer population.
• Badass Army: Easily the best-equipped fighting force on Mars.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Red, since that was the requisite color of Martian camo.
• Drop Pod: The 1st Suborbital Assault Division specialized in using these. It tended to result in significant casualties.
• National Weapon: When melee weapons return to prominence, Blue soldiers go in for katanas and naginatas.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Rainbows were a frequent symbol of the Blue cause, and after a unit that called themselves the "Rainbow Warriors" suffered horrific casualties in the course of trying to save their comrades, rainbow iconography became associated with military heroism on Mars.
• Space Marine: The Space Corps specialized in orbital operations, such as boarding enemy space stations.
• Super-Soldier: The famous 7th Cyborg Raiders were a unit of cyborg soldiers, most of them self-modified.

Science Command

SciCom, the scientific and technological wing of MarsCom. Consisted of the Innovation Corps, Astronomy Corps, Areology (Martian geology) Corps, Biology Corps, Xeno Corps and Education Corps.

• Colony Drop: One of the Astronomy Corps' jobs was to scout potential comets for these, albeit for noaforming purposes, not combat.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Blue.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The "X Troops" of the Innovation Corps' 1st Experimental Division got all the latest, most advanced weapons and gear, since it was their job to test it on the battlefield.
• Mad Scientist: The Biology Corps tended to attract the sort of people who really wanted to breed Big Creepy-Crawlies for various purposes.
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: During the war, one Education Corps project was a program about DIY solutions to problems civilians might encounter in the course of the war. One of the presenters had apparently originally been trained as an actual kindergarten teacher.
• Nanomachines: The 6th Nanotech Division of the Innovation Corps was responsible for projects relating to these. They weren't combatants, but the Reds tended to kill them anyway, since they feared the 6th were working on nanotech WMDs. In actuality, their projects mostly pertained to water purification, soil remediation and other such applications.
• The Smart Guy: SciCom's job was to be this to MarsCom.

Civil Command

CivCom, the infrastructure and civil engineering branch. Consisted of the Corps of Engineers, Medical Corps, Signal Corps, Nuclear Corps, Debris Corps and Traffic Corps.

• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Green.
• Cool Train: Trains were the main way of transporting cargo across Mars during the RBW, since there was no atmosphere for planes and no ocean for ships. The Corps of Engineers' 5th Railroad Security Division was responsible for protecting the trains.
• Dangerous Orbital Debris: The Debris Corps' job was to manage and dispose of debris in Mars orbit.
• The Engineer: Their specialty.
• Improvised Weapon: The 1st Civil Infantry Division were CivCom engineers called into frontline service. As such, when everyone started running out of ammo, they were already well-prepared, and it was they who supplied many DefCom troops with their melee weapons before MarsCom started mass-producing them.
• The Medic: The Medical Corps consisted of these.
• Mundane Utility: One part of Project Genesis was detonating nuclear weapons on Mars - not for military purposes, just to help cool the climate. The Nuclear Corps was in charge of carrying out these detonations and defending the infrastructure for them. They were able to carry out a few detonations during the war, but the project had to be scrapped because of how bad the PR was.
• Refuge in Audacity: The Corps of Engineers got into the habit of conducting missions behind Red lines, not to sabotage their enemies' infrastructure, but to repair it, as a propaganda tactic of sorts.
• Too Awesome to Use: The 1st Tactical Security Regiment, whose job was to guard the nuclear stockpile, were easily the most well-equipped troops in MarsCom - so much so that no one wanted to fight them.

Hard Blues

Some Blue organizations weren't able to fight for MarsCom, while for others, MarsCom didn't go far enough.

• Conspiracy Theorist: The New Mars Brigade, a Blue-aligned militia which followed the ideology of Lyndon LaRouche, believed the Reds (and the less extreme Blues) were pawns of a Neo-Platonist opium-dealing cabal run by the UN and the British Royal Family. (Never mind that the Windsors only reigned in Australia and New Zealand by then.)
• Eagle Squadron: The Bring the Rain Coalition was an organization of volunteers from Earth who came to fight for the Blues. Lang wouldn't let them join MarsCom, because he didn't want MarsCom to look like pawns of Earth, but the BTRC fought alongside MarsCom anyway.
• La Résistance: MarsCom personnel who became trapped behind enemy lines often started these sorts of groups.
• Red Baron: General Spencer Gordon, leader of a group of MarsCom personnel who'd become guerillas behind Red lines in Avalon, was nicknamed "Gandalf the Blue."
• Robot Soldier: The Avatar Company was a group of 268 sentient androids built to fight for the Blues on behalf of people who couldn't make the trip from Earth to Mars. Their programming was to help win the war, and afterwards, live their own free lives on Mars. When the war ended, the surviving Avatars decided to carry this out by gathering in one place and then each walking in a different direction. They went on to all have adventures of their own and become the Heroes of Another Story in their own right.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Reds of the EmDF did their best to not give the Blue Protection Units a reason to revolt, but their paranoia got the better of them, and the BPU revolted anyway.
• Uriah Gambit: One Hard Blue group, the Blue-Green Army, had this happen to them because Aaron Lang and many other MarsCom higher-ups thought the BGA (which consisted mostly of ex-cons) was too extreme and too undisciplined.

Shintoists

Thanks to Mars' large Japanese population, there's a lot of Shintoists on Mars. Most of them sided with the Blues, with some even taking up arms for their beliefs.

• Cool Mask: Shinto militants are known to wear armored kabuki masks over their helmets.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Shinto goes off in some odd directions on Mars. In particular, there arises a belief that humans have brought the kami with them to Mars, and that said kami are trapped in the colonies' life-support systems, meaning noaforming is necessary in order to free them.
• Paper Talisman: Many Blue Shinto militants got into the habit of pinning ofuda to their spacesuits.

The Barsu

The "indigenous" people of Mars - so they say, anyway. Most sided with the Blues.

• Church Militant: Seeking to get in touch with their supposed past lives as alien holy warriors, the Barsu militants known as the Warriors of Cydonia became one of these. Their weapons of choice were simple steel clubs, as they believed it was holier to fight without shedding blood.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: The Barsu believe that they are the souls of reincarnated ancient Martians, and that it's their duty to return to their "homeworld" and bring it back to life. As such, they tend to side with the Blues during the war, and the Reds tend to be suspicious of them.
• Fictional Holiday: The Barsu's winter holiday of choice is called Jedawar. It's celebrated the day after Christmas. Instead of a Christmas tree, Barsu put up a Jedawar tharzad, a stack of painted rocks which is then decorated as a Christmas tree would be, representing the promise of life returning in the spring. It's customary for Barsu to make resolutions for the next annum at Jedawar, as well as to have enormous vegetarian feasts, and it's a common time for people to convert to the Barsu faith. The tharzad stays up all winter until it's disassembled at the start of spring by throwing the rocks into the nearest body of water.
• Holy Ground: The Cydonia region is theirs.
• Saintly Church: The Barsu are generally portrayed positively - they try to stay out of politics, and they only take up arms during the war because the Reds are attacking their homeland in Cydonia.
• Virtuous Vegetarianism: Barsu believe that their souls reincarnated through every form of animal life in the course of going from "Old Barsu" to their present human forms. As such, they choose not to eat meat out of respect for these animals.

The Murphies

A group who believed that noaforming was necessary because the colonies' life-support systems would inevitably fail.

• Murphy's Law: The centerpiece of their beliefs and the source of their name.
• The Saboteur: The Murphies' idea of proving their point was to sabotage the life-support systems of Red-aligned colonies.
• Troll: The Murphies would also engage in cyberattacks, often incorporating troll-face variants such as the infamous "Mard" and slogans like "Why don't you go outside? The air is so nice" and "Genesis doesn't need you. You need it."
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the end of the day, the Murphies really did want people to learn their lessons and work towards making Mars safer through noaforming. Tellingly, historians would later conclude that in spite of their radical methods, the Murphies genuinely did push the needle in favor of noaforming, even among committed Reds.

Tank Kidz Robotank Army

A group of Neo-Tokyo teens who started a Blue militia of remote-controlled tanks.

• David Versus Goliath: The Tank Kidz' finest hour was successfully forcing the surrender of Megatank Redhammer.
• Kid Hero: Most of them were still teenagers when they took up arms.
• Teen Genius: Their leader, Yukitaro Goya, was 16 when he designed and built a fleet of robotanks and recruited his school friends to fight the Reds with him.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Tank Kidz.

Spider Corps Volunteers

A Blue-aligned militia formed by the Kara, who had settled in Noctis Labyrinthus.

• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Many worked as contractors for SciCom, since they were already experts in breeding these.
• Dual Wielding: Having four arms meant the Kara could dual-wield spears.
• Friend to Bugs: They left Australia for Mars because the Martians were less hostile towards spiders.
• Goth: Even on Mars, they kept up the "spider-goth" aesthetic.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Kara have four arms and four legs.
• Terror Hero: Some Kara fighters took to playing up the negative stereotypes about them to scare the Reds.

Z Division

An all-zoan Blue militia, founded by zoans who had been slaves on Earth.

• Fantastic Racism: MarsCom didn't allow zoans to officially enlist until the end of the war, so they started their own militia for self-defense.
• Little Bit Beastly: Many in Z Division were chimeras, including their leader, fox-girl Liberty Autumn.
• Natural Weapon: The members of Z Division excelled in close-quarters combat, since most of them already had fangs and claws.
• Uplifted Animal: Others were uplifts, such as the uplifted rats whom MarsCom would eventually recruit as spies.

The Greens & The Rest

The Green Five

An alliance of five colonies - Noachia, Petra, Nasser, Huygenia and Teisserenc (formerly Battuta) - who chose a path of armed neutrality.

• The Alliance: Just as committed to mutual defense as to neutrality. The moons and space stations of Mars had one as well, the Phalanx Eight.
• Animal Motifs: Moths and butterflies, which were considered symbols of peace.
• Character Development: In-Universe, Caleb "COSA" Aoyama, the Secretary General of the G5, underwent this. He started out as a Shameless Self-Promoter whose sole agendas were to keep his native Noachia out of the war and advance his own career. Over the course of the war, however, he gained a greater sense of responsibility and became less self-centered.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Take a wild guess.
• I Should Write a Book About This: After the war, COSA wrote several books about the hard questions he'd faced as leader of the G5.
• Kingmaker Scenario: By the war's end, they had all the best training and equipment (and were the only ones who still had any ammo), meaning that whichever side they joined would definitely win. (It ended up being the Blues.) The Greens are considered by some to be the real winners of the war.
• Neutral No Longer: The Battle of the Goliath prompted them to side with the Blues. This is one of the reasons why the Blues won the war.
• Only Known by Initials: Caleb Otavio Santana Aoyama, known to all as COSA.
• Take a Third Option: Some Greens tried to make the movement about alternatives to noaforming. It didn't catch on.
• Team Switzerland: The G5 subscribed to a policy of armed neutrality, takng steps to keep both the Reds and the Blues from interfering in their affairs. Some Greens also tried to suggest alternatives to noaforming, though none of these caught on.

The Green Cross

A neutral organization founded to provide medical care regardless of faction.

• Actual Pacifist: They never take part in the actual fighting, focusing solely on the healing.
• Defector from Decadence: Founded by deserters from the CivCom Medical Corps.
• The Medic: The Martian equivalent of the Red Cross. Unlike the Green Five, they stuck around after the war ended.

The MTOS Goliath

A spaceship whose precious cargo of nitrogen, ammonia and water from Ganymede proved instrumental in ending the war.

• Kingmaker Scenario: So important was the Goliath's cargo to drought-stricken Mars that a treaty was signed, stipulating that its resources were to be distributed evenly and if either side tried to capture the ship, the Green Five would join the war on the defending side. The Reds tried to call their bluff, and sure enough, the Greens sided with MarsCom, the Battle of the Goliath was a narrow Blue victory and the Blues won the war.
• MacGuffin: Whoever got the Goliath would win the war.
• Mile-Long Ship: Try five-mile-long ship.
• Space Trucker: On a seven-year round trip to Ganymede and back, bringing with them a full load of noaforming-related gases and the most valuable thing on Mars - water.

Team Horus

A video game company who negotiated for a peace treaty to protect their home city.

• Badass Creed: "Play. Don't Fight."
• Badass Pacifist: Game devs forming a human chain across a battlefield to get the two sides to stop fighting.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Descriptions of Team Horus tend to treat their history of top-quality video game development as being nearly as awesome as their role in the war.
• Screw the War, We're Partying: While the treaty was being negotiated, Team Horus set up multiplayer gaming matches in the local Internet cafes between Red and Blue soldiers.
• Truce Zone: Thanks to the "Gamer Truce" that Team Horus helped negotiate, the city of Oasis became one for the duration of the war.

The Blank War

During the Red-Blue War, the colony of Kruger had a civil war of its own - not Red vs. Blue, but Boers vs. Blanks.

• Abandoned Area: The Blank city of Agartha was destroyed and abandoned after the Blank War.
• The Atoner: The Boers wanted to put their apartheid past behind them by the time of the RBW.
• Evil vs. Evil: The Boers were rather puritanical on the best of days... but the Blanks were Neo-Nazis. They're essentially viewed as In-Universe Acceptable Targets, and it's implied the Boers' victory in the war saw the Blanks all but exterminated.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Kruger was nominally on the Blue side, but in practice, the Boers' sole agenda was to destroy the Blanks.
• Underground City: The Blanks' capital of Agartha was one.

The Rusties

The nomads of Mars.

• The Alliance: The "Pact of Pretty Maria," an alliance of four Rusty clans led by the bandit queen of that name, which briefly managed to conquer a large chunk of Daedalia Planum during the Red-Blue War.
• Fantastic Racism: Rusties are broadly regarded rather negatively by most folk, especially during the Red-Blue War, when they're stereotyped as being bandits and thugs.
• Wandering Culture: The Rusties live off the grid, away from the colonies, keeping to their clans and their rovers.

New Manchukuo

A colony founded by Manchu nationalists and Japanese libertarians.

• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: New Manchukuo would always try to ingratiate themselves to whichever side they thought was winning. MarsCom eventually exploited this to buy their loyalty.
• Merchant City: A monarchy, but one whose Princes ran it along libertarian lines.
• Team Switzerland: New Manchukuo was neutral for most of the war, doing business with Reds and Blues alike - albeit adjusting their entrance fees based on who the betting pools favored to win the war at any given moment.

The Cleaners

A group of nihilists who believed humanity didn't belong on Mars.

• Dark Is Evil: Their flag was black, and they were a bunch of nihilistic terrorists who sabotaged the life-support systems of various colonies.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Omnicidal Maniac. The Cleaners were so extreme that in spite of their zeal for sabotage, they attracted almost no actual recruits, and Red and Blue intelligence services were not above pulling an Enemy Mine to stamp them out. Ultimately, the Cleaners accomplished almost nothing.
• Foil: Interestingly enough, to the Murphies. Both were disorganized extremist groups active mostly on the internet whose modus operandi involved sabotaging colonies' life-support systems - but that's where the similarities ended. The Murphies were Blues, while the Cleaners had started out as Reds. The Murphies wanted to improve Martian civilization, while the Cleaners wanted to destroy it. The Murphies delighted in being trolls, while the Cleaners took themselves dead seriously. And, of course, the Murphies were Well-Intentioned Extremists and got what they wanted, while the Cleaners were Omnicidal Maniacs and completely failed in their goal.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Their "logic" was essentially that since humans had already polluted the Earth, they didn't deserve to do the same to another world, and therefore, all human civilization had to be removed from Mars.

Others

• Conspiracy Theorist: "Sector 6," a mysterious online cult positing that Red and Blue were both being masterminded by shadowy puppeteers back on Earth. It eventually turned out to be an ARG Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Dangerous Deserter: The "Blood Brothers," a gang of these types which remained active after the war for some years, helping hide fugitive war criminals from both sides.
• Eagleland: Type 2 in the form of the Sons of Liberty, a group who believed the American colonies on Mars should remain loyal to the USA as opposed to the MTO. Neither the Reds nor the Blues liked them very much, and both suspected them of being backed by the CIA.
• Private Military Contractors: Voyin Security, a notable example based out of Partizanja, known for styling themselves as literal Space Cossacks, complete with scimitars, fuzzy hats and colorful opinions on Jews.
  • There was also BlakHat.app, which could best be described as "Uber, but on the darknet and for mercenaries and private security guards." They were (barely) tolerated during the war, but driven off Mars after it.
• Yakuza: The Port Dread Yakuza took it upon themselves to keep the peace on Deimos, which they did through segregating establishments as specifically for Reds or Blues and sending anyone who caused trouble back to Mars.

The Alliance

The Martian Alliance

The post-war government of Mars, formed by Reds, Blues and Greens alike in 2078. It was envisioned by Aaron Lang, but he refused to be its leader, instead pulling a Cincinnatus and resigning within minutes to call for an election, in which Utena Jackson was elected the first President of Mars.

• The Alliance: Between every colony on Mars. It's described as an "international democracy."
• The Federation: The Martian Alliance seems to work like one of these in practice. Notably, though, it includes the quirk that citizenship (or at least voting rights) is earned through service in MarsCom, Starship Troopers-style. (Although it's definitely more democratic than the government Heinlein depicted and Verhoeven satirized, and said "service" doesn't need to be in DefCom.)
• Fictional Political Party: They're more informal than most and referred to by the Insistent Terminology of "cliques," but they exist:
  • The Shield Coalition are firm believers in military preparedness, but also in diplomacy and promoting trade. They're fiscal conservatives.
  • The Sword Group are the Shields' more liberal, more aggressive rivals. They tend to lean more towards Gunboat Diplomacy.
  • The Scars are the War Hawk faction. They hate Luna and have still never forgiven the Coalition of Duty, but they like the Jovian Empire.
  • The Reformers typically advocate for unproven technologies. Other science-minded cliques include the Genesis Bloc, Labcoat Mafia and Upgrade.
  • The Plowshare Group want DefCom's more advanced technologies to be turned towards SciCom and CivCom's ends.
  • The Maneuver Group is in favor of privatization and cost-saving.
  • The RHL Caucus advocate for interstellar colonization. (Their name is likely a reference to Robert Henry Lawrence, the first man on Mars.)
  • The Earthling Freedom Caucus protect the rights of Earthling refugees and immigrants on Mars, as well as Martian minorities on other worlds.
  • Lastly, the Unification Group wants to Reconcile the Bitter Foes with respect to the Coalition of Duty, and to a lesser extent Luna.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The moderate Reds and Blues became these in the early days of the Alliance, in the course of hunting down the extremists on both sides who refused to stop fighting. These campaigns became known as the "Rust Wars."
• Good Counterpart: To, of all things, the Terran Federation from Starship Troopers. The Martian Alliance's government operates on a "service guarantees citizenship" model and Martian culture is rather militaristic. However, it's also very egalitarian and entirely democratic, and service only guarantees citizenship in the Alliance, with citizenship in consituent nations being automatic. Civilian rights are no less protected than citizens' rights, with the only difference being that citizens can vote in Alliance elections as well as local ones. Furthermore, your service doesn't need to be in the military - doing a tour as a civil servant in SciCom or CivCom works just as well. It's also emphasized that joining MarsCom is 100% voluntary: the Martian Alliance's charter even outright states that conscripting civilians is completely illegal and if the Alliance can't earn your loyalty fair and square, it deserves to fail.
  • Ryzov does, however, liberally pepper the "Idiot's Guide to the Martian Alliance" post with references to the movie.
• Not Me This Time: Mars and Earth still weren't really on good terms when the Beijing Impact happened. The Martian reaction to the Impact is summarized as "Bring My Brown Pants, followed by 'we swear we didn't do it.'" (They really didn't. Nobody knows what caused the Impact, and the most likely possibility seems to be that it was entirely natural.)
• Ornamental Weapon: In a tradition dating back to the Red-Blue War, the judges in MarsCom's internal courts under the Alliance use non-functional revolvers as gavels.
• Planetary Nation: Humanity's first.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Proud Soldier Race variation.
• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: The Alliance was created by the Treaty of Petra-3 specifically to ensure this trope between Blues and Reds. It worked, thanks to a lot of clever compromises and concessions to the Reds, as well as the bonding experience of the Rust Wars.
• The Rival: They see themselves as this to Earth, in spite of the massive power difference between the two. Earthlings in turn tend to strongly distrust the Martians.
  • Later down the line, a more evenly matched rivalry develops between Mars and Luna. In both cases, the rivalry manifests as a Space Cold War.
• Super-Soldier: "Project Marabunta" (named after the army ant, an animal Martians consider emblematic of courage and David Versus Goliath scenarios) is an Alliance program to develop cyborg super-soldiers to compensate for the massive power disparity between Mars and Earth.
• Terraforming: Besides the Rust Wars, the Alliance's other main focus from the start is noaforming. They eventually succeed in making Mars fully habitable.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: The Alliance successfully defeats Luna in the Solar Wars, but fails to hold onto their newly gained hegemony in Jupiter for more than a few years. Their Jovian Moons Federation is overthrown in the Thunderbolt Revolution of 2249, which establishes the Jovian Empire.

Modern DefCom

Defense Command in 2585 now consists of the Alliance Ground Forces, Space Corps, Marine Corps, Alliance Navy, Ranger Corps, Space Patrol Corps, Cyber Defense Force, Intelligence Corps and Joint Support Service.

• Badass Army: Very possibly the best in Sol.
• Katanas Are Just Better: The "Kasei-Gunto," a variation on the katana pioneered by RBW-era DefCom, is a symbol of rank carried by commissioned officers in all three branches.
• Ranger: The Ranger Corps are responsible for keeping the peace in the mostly-empty Martian wilderness. The Space Patrol does the same thing in space, often tangling with Space Pirates.
• Space Marine: What the Alliance Marine Corps are.
• Space Navy: The Space Corps is DefCom's most important branch now.
• Sword and Gun: In the field, many DefCom officers will carry both the Kasei-Gunto and a more practical pistol.

Modern SciCom

Science Command in 2585 now consists of the Alliance Innovation Corps, Astronomy Corps, Biology Corps, Planet Corps, Xeno Corps, Education Corps, Weather Corps, Nano Corps, Esper Corps, Ocean Science Corps and Exploration Corps.

• Bio-Augmentation: Part of the Biology Corps' job.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Xeno Corps studies it.
• Colony Drop: The Astronomy Corps used to seek out comets to engineer these for noaforming purposes. Now, they seek out potential rogue asteroids to avert them.
• Cool Teacher: What the Education Corps aims to be.
• Nanomachines: The Nano Corps is in charge of producing and safely handling them.
• Psychic Powers: The Esper Corps' specialty, as the name suggests, lies in identifying and training espers and helping them put their powers to practical use.
• The Smart Guy: Their job is to be this to Mars as a whole. The Innovation Corps stands out for focusing specifically on blue-sky research.
• The Worm Guy: A whole army of them.

Modern CivCom

Civil Command in 2585 now consists of the Alliance Corps of Engineers, Medical Corps, Nuclear Corps, Space Rescue Service, Emergency Response Corps, Orbital Guard Corps, Signal Corps, Ecology Corps, Transport Corps, Agriculture Corps and Maritime Service Corps.

• Dangerous Orbital Debris: The Orbital Guard Corps' job is to clean it up.
• Distress Call: The Space Rescue Service and the Emergency Response Corps are responsible for answering these.
• The Engineer: The Corps of Engineers is the single largest corps in all of MarsCom.
• Interservice Rivalry: The Ecology Corps has one with the Biology Corps, as their jobs tend to overlap.
• Lighthouse Point: The Maritime Service Corps' jurisdiction includes lighthouses.
• The Medic: The Medical Corps fills a niche similar to Old Earth's WHO.
• Nuclear Option: The Nuclear Corps produces and defends the Martian nuclear arsenal. They also serve as Mars' international nuclear regulatory agency.
• Space Trucker: The Transport Corps is in charge of them.
• Terraforming: The Ecology Corps manages the noaformed biosphere.

Other

• Celibate Hero: Judges in the High Court of Mars are required to be single for the duration of their tenure.
• Fictional Currency: The Alliance Mint, nominally run by the Department of the Treasury but in practice mostly independent, is in charge of producing and distributing aureus banknotes and denarius coins.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The Alliance has the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) to handle its espionage.
• Internal Affairs: A rare heroic example in the form of the Disciplinary Court, whose job is to investigate MarsCom itself. They got their start handling the truth-and-reconciliation trials immediately after the RBW - Aaron Lang himself voluntarily testified before them and revealed a lot of the shadier things he'd done. The Disciplinary Court is generally seen as a positive force, making sure MarsCom personnel conduct themselves properly. (Incidentally, these are also the guys who use revolvers as gavels.)
• Praetorian Guard: The sessions of the Assembly (the Martian legislature) are ceremonially guarded by a unit of uplifted cats.

The Phalanx

The network of habitats in Martian orbit - basically, Mars' Exonesia. Also includes Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars.

The Phalanx as a whole

• Merchant City: All trade and immigration to Mars comes in through here.
• Space Station: Not as many as Exonesia, but quite a lot of them.
• Team Switzerland: They had their own equivalent to the Green Five, the Phalanx Eight, during the Red-Blue War.

Deimos

The Terror Moon. Deimos, and the spherical city of Port Dread anchored to it, forms the primary arterty of trade between Earth and Mars. Deimos, and Port Dread in particular, is the focus of the The Terror Moon update.

• Asteroid Miners: A variation. Gold is valuable, but it's easy to come by in an age of Asteroid Miners. The real money is in ice - water, after all, is in short supply on Mars, and ice is useful for plenty of other things besides. Deimos, which has rather a lot of ice inside of it, becomes home to a lot of prospectors in The '80s, and ice mining remains a key part of the Deimian economy. The settlements on the moon became Boom Towns, but most eventually went bust and had to find other industries. (One is now a monastery.)
• City of Adventure: Port Dread, very much so. The district of Spaceman's Quarter has a particular reputation for it, only somewhat unearned.
• Culture Chop Suey: Japanese and British, with a dash of Jamaican.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Their flag makes prominent use of black and red, and it features a snarling Oni face, but Deimos is a relatively friendly place to visit.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Terror Moon is a full map and lore document, all about Deimos.
• Oni: Oni are a common symbol of Deimos and especially of Port Dread, where they're often invoked in the local Shinto tradition as protectors. Spaceman's Quarter is full of oni statues (which superstitious spacers leave offerings at), and the Anthropomorphic Personification of Deimos (as promoted by the Port Dread Tourism Commission) is a Cute Monster Girl oni. Even their local variation on Santa Claus is an oni.
  • Later on in the timeline, a Human Subspecies genetically engineered to resemble oni appears in Port Dread. By 2585, the Oni more or less run the place.
• Port Town: IN SPACE!
• Serious Business: Some of the maid cafes on Port Dread are more gangsta than the actual gangsters.
• Wretched Hive: Yadorigi, the "opposite number" to Port Dread on the other side of Deimos, has (as of 2020) wound up full of drug dealers, drug addicts and (unorganized) crime, in part thanks to a widespread belief among spacers that it's cursed. The government of Port Dread is taking increasingly forceful measures to get their sister city to shape up.
  "So far, they haven't started throwing junkies out of airlocks yet, but one wonders what the policy will be when they run out of methadone, modafinil and Bibles."
• Yakuza: It's an Open Secret that the government of Port Dread lets the local yakuza have a monopoly on illicit activities in the city, so long as they don't step too far out of line. This actually keeps the crime rate down, since the yakuza don't approve of petty crime. During the Red-Blue War, the yakuza even help keep the peace between Reds and Blues on shore leave in Spaceman's Quarter.

Phobos

The larger of Mars' two moons.

• Out of Focus: In contrast to the full map and lore document Deimos got, almost nothing has been said about Phobos. What little we do know indicates that it was chiefly settled by Slavic-Americans and that its capital is named New Archangel, but that's about it.

The Halo

Mars' orbital ring, a series of stations encircling the planet.

• Naming Your Colony World: The six stations that anchor the Halo are all named for American astronauts from the first missions to Mars: Lawrence, Musgrave, Aldrin, Collins, O'Leary and Overmayer.
• Space Elevator: Built on six of them. (Space elevators are easier on Mars, since there's less gravity.)

Neo Hong Kong

A Space Station originally from Earth. How it got to Mars is a tale in itself.

• New Neo City: Started out as Hong Kong's slice of Exonesia.
• The Remnant: Neo Hong Kong came to see itself as the last bastion of Hong Kong nationalism.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Hong Kong voted to rejoin the Federal Republic of China, Neo Hong Kong decided they'd rather not, strapped engines to the station and defected to Mars. The Alliance, not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, accepted them. This nearly caused a war when a Chinese warship got a little too close for comfort and was promptly destroyed by the Martians. The Neo Hong Kong Crisis is generally agreed to be one of the inciting incidents of the Geo-Martian Conflicts.

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