The Colors of Mars

An allegorical game about giant robots, colonialism and catharsis of the weak made strong by circumstance. Run by Exhack on an undecided day.

Background

The Exploration Era

Despite gripping the imagination of humanity for eons, the colonization of Mars was a staggered, drawn-out affair that spanned generations. Unified governments on Earth rose and fractured before the first permanent colonies on the planet were established, as those powers instead focused on Earth's high orbit where it was easiest to artificially recreate the conditions that fostered human life. Billions lived in space before even a few attempted to settle on the red planet.

It took decades, but eventually new technologies eventually opened the way to the total ecological reformation of the planet to something hospitable and earthlike. One enterprising group led great waves of colony ships and settled the world, calling themselves the First Martians. Their civilization set the foundations of later colonists, but eventually petered out as the resources for a sustainable civilization were still too scarce. Many First Martians returned to the sphere of the Earth until conditions became right, taking with them the great innovations they had stumbled upon while on the world.

The Colonial Era

Others came and took up the flag of Martian colonization as technology and the world's changing climate allowed, welcomed by the remaining First Martians. These new people were primarily researchers in the long-banned fields of nanoconstruction and other disruptive technologies that had become banned on Earth, as well as their families, and dissidents who had become resentful of the social and economic stagnation on the homeworld. Together they founded a new society on the planet, based on the principles of direct democracy, the new economy and the freedom of information, called the Martian Unanimity. The Unanimity was responsible for building the first truly great cities and settling even the inhospitable periphery beyond the green equator with dome cities and ambitious megastructure projects. Then, while digging a borehole to support mass resource extraction for the construction of an orbital elevator in the Tharsis region of Mars, the settlers discovered a cache of xenological artifacts- in the form of strange tools and other devices of incredible power and sophistication. The sudden discovery of alien technology that promised such radical changes to society set off a gold rush to the planet.

Meanwhile, terrible wars raged around the Earth as ideological tensions between distant colonial players became untenable. A final iteration of unified human government rose up, calling itself the New United Nations, crushing the warring factions and imposing stronger political, economic and cultural unity than had existed since the beginning of era of space colonization. Desiring to leave and sensing the opportunity that lay on their prior homeland, many descendants of First Martians living around the Earth rallied their community and petitioned the N.U.N. for exclusive rights to the planet. Influencing select members of government with promises of giving the Earth access to the xenological artifacts, which the colonists restricted access to preserve their integrity, they received the backing.

The notions appealed to the New United Nations for other reasons: Mars has slid beyond the control of the Earth, so it was about time that it was brought back into the fold, and its norms had begun to deviate too strongly from the models that had been successful on Earth. As successive conflicts between the colonies were caused by polarization and social divergence, the N.U.N saw the ventures on Mars as a way of hedging off future civil wars in space.

So a hundred years ago, the departed First Martians returned to Mars.

The Reconquista Era

The returning First Martians and even the New UN were welcomed with open arms by the Unanimity, with efforts made to accommodate them and open new areas for their settlement. Although turning over the planet was refused by the local government, both the returning First Martians and New United Nations pretended to accept the terms of equal citizenship offered, while intentionally beginning to subvert Mars' resistance from the outset. Tensions began fairly quickly as the First Martians demanded special permissions, the right self-administration and access to the green areas of the planet without being beholden to the restrictions put in place to protect the delicate ecology that had begun to take root. They quickly began setting up enclaves at strategic sites, defended with military support from the N.U.N. and self-raised militias to hold them, leading to tensions and clashes between the new settlers and the citizens of the Unanimity. After just a few years after making planetfall, they attempted to seize one of the planet's largest water condensators, setting off a civil war.

The Unanimity were miners, farmers, scientists and academic dissidents first and foremost- and lacked the resources and manpower to oppose the New United Nations-backed First Martians. After fighting that lasted about a year, the Unanimity was already in the process of being dismantled. Many cities had been destroyed and decades of ecological work had been undone by the deployment of weapons of mass destruction, but it was enough to cow the colonists and prevent further insurrection, as many were altogether too shocked to retaliate further.

The New United Nations remained a time but eventually left the First Martians to their own devices once the situation stabilized, a decision that would be altogether regrettable. The new conquerors formed a tyrannical government that payed lip service to the norms of N.U.N. mandate, but was ultimately a genetic heirarchy with the First Martians (now calling themselves the High Martians) as the sole full citizens, evicting many out of the remaining cities and collecting the wealth of the planet for themselves. The former citizens of the Unanimity were cast out into the slums and the wastes, given only the meager equipment and genetic modifications that would allow them to survive these conditions.

As reprisal for their resistance, every member of the Unanimity not descended from a First Martian was branded- physically at first, but later iterations imposed genetic changes. Those who resisted violently were given red skin and the lowest status, those who did not immediately side with the High Martians were stained green, and the few collaborators with the new order were given blue skin and privileges that approached that of the ruling group.

The High Martian Era

Under the auspices of their Martian Federation, the High Martians tightened their grip on the xenotechnological artifacts and enforced the genetic branding of the former Unanimity, unopposed and nominally supported by the Earth. As the first generation of branded children were born, there was a vague hope that the UN would intervene and undo the terrible oppression the High Martians were imposing. All these hopes were quashed when the N.U.N. capital at Lhasa was the subject of an H-bomb attack by Lunarian terrorists as a precursor to a bid for independance, sending the entire region into yet another war that saw unified governance collapse, seemingly for good this time.

Another civil war on Earth and the collapse of the New United Nations meant that the High Martians were now the undisputed masters of the planet. Four generations have passed since the world was taken, with only the very oldest people on the planet remembering a time before the Martian Federation.