World, The Red Planet

Overview:

It was once known as Mars, and was once completely inhospitable to life. The atmosphere was less than one percent of the Earth's, and the average temperature was far below freezing, even at the equator.

For decades, centuries even. Mars had fired the human imagination and beckoned to imagine worlds beyond their own, world they frequently populated with their own fears or dreams. Its dramatic red-orange color and erratic movements through the heavens drew the attention of the earliest astronomers. Its color naturally made humans associate the planet with other red things, like fire and blood, and those in turn linked Mars with war and danger in almost every human civilization.

History

The world was untouched, a new thing. One could walk for thousands of miles, and see no signs of man, for none had been there before. Its expanses were barren and ruddy with ancient-looking chunks of rock littering the landscape. The color of the ground was a profoundly alien thing, a mix of rust-red and coal-black unlike anything Earthly. It almost seemed to vibrate in one's eyes. The dust flowed like water, fine and rich. The sky was white on a clear day, pink when sand was in the air, and occasionally, rarely, white-blue with ice particles. The sunsets were outrageously bright, a color almost sarcastic in its intensity. The landscape was huge. All the features were a hundred times as large as their counterparts on Earth. Valleys that would split continents. Volcanoes that thrust out of the atmosphere. Calderas that you could lose entire cities in. Cliffs like the side of the world.

The Terraforming of the Red Planet

The surface of Mars showed networks of canyons and run-off channels, dry lakes, and the seashores of dry oceans. There had been water on Mars, once, a billion years or more ago, and plenty of it. All that water was still there, hidden away.

The travelers had proven that-frozen in the polar ice-caps, locked into kilometer-thick hills of permafrost in the highlands and there was, in fact, far more water on Mars than previously suspected, frozen into enormous buried glaciers under featureless fields of sand. Enough to form whole oceans—if it could be melted. All that was needed was a trigger.

It's not easy to heat up a planet, even temporarily. Caspian did it by setting off a volcano. There were a number of ancient volcanoes on Mars to choose from; after many geological soundings to determine magma depth, he picked a small one. Or rather, a volcano small by Mars standards, still a monster by the standards of any mountains. Hecates Tholus; the Witch's Teat. To set it off, he determined, required that he drill five kilometers deep into the crust of Mars.

Just because it was clearly impossible was no reason he wouldn't do it. Mars has no magnetic field, and so the solar wind impacts directly on the planetary exosphere. A thousand miles above Mars, currents of a billion amperes course around the planet, driven by the solar wind-derived ionization. Caspian short-circuited this current with a laser beam, ionizing a discharge channel through the atmosphere, creating the solar system's largest lightning bolt.

He discharged the ionosphere of Mars into the side of Hecate, instantly creating a meter deep pool of molten rock. And then he did it again. And again, as soon as the ionospheric charge had a chance to renew. And again, a new lightning bolt every second until one million lightning bolts were discharged, all on exactly the same spot. They melted a channel through to the magma chamber below, and a volcano that had been sleeping for almost half a billion years awakened in a cataclysmic explosion. The eruption put carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere; more importantly, it shot a hundred billion tons of ash directly into the stratosphere. Over the course of several months, the ash settled down, blackening the surface.

For fifty-one years he dropped cometary chunks onto the northern hemisphere of Mars, each piece precisely controlled, each no more than a few tens of meters across, designed to vaporize in the slowly thickening atmosphere without causing major impacts or environmental threats. At the same time, huge, orbital mirrors, each a hundred kilometers across, were bathing the northern hemisphere in sunlight, raising the surface temperature.

The new, darker surface absorbed sunlight, warming the planet and releasing absorbed carbon dioxide from the soil. The released carbon dioxide thickened the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect of the thicker atmosphere warmed the planet yet more. The resulting heat evaporated water from the polar ice-caps into the atmosphere.

The landscape of Mars responded violently to these changes. The desiccated regolith sucked up the water in the air. The enthusiastic chemical reactions this entailed, and the increased weight of the soil, caused cliffs to fall and terrain to collapse. The sharp reduction in the weight of the polar caps caused the land under them to recoil upward, causing marsquakes and fracturing the ground. The added heat increased atmospheric turbulence, and dust storms were common.

It then rained, the first rain on Mars for over fifty million years. It filled the ditches and dikes of irrigation systems and touch the seeds he had planted and quicken them to life. Water in the atmosphere is an effective greenhouse gas, even more effective than carbon dioxide, and so the temperature rose a little more. Finally ice trapped underground for eons melted.

The Boreal Sea formed anew, liquid water once again flowing where an ocean had rolled two billion years before. In the beginning, only on a band around the equator was water actually liquid all year round. But that was enough for what he wanted to do. Slowly, the eons-frozen permafrost of Mars was melting across continent-sized regions, creating titanic sinkholes, Marsquakes, and mudslides of devastating of massive metal cells filled with helium and then covered with dirt and soil.

But the changes, even under tight control, were already wreaking havoc with a planetary surface essentially unchanged since the rising of the Tharsis Bulge a billion years back. A whole hemisphere of Mars was flooded, eventually to form the vast Boreal Ocean, as well as innumerable crater seas and ponds.

The atmosphere was still thin, and still almost entirely carbon dioxide, but Mars was a sulfur-rich planet. Sulfur dioxide frozen into the soil was also released, and rose into the atmosphere. Ultraviolet light from the sun photolyzed the sulfur dioxide into free radicals, which recombined to form sulfuric acid, which instantly dissolved into the new equatorial oceans. The new acid oceans attacked the ancient rocks of Mars, etching away calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, releasing carbon dioxide. In a few years, the acid oceans had been once more neutralized-and the atmosphere was thick, fully half a bar of carbon dioxide, enough for a greenhouse effect warm enough to keep the new oceans liquid year-round. Mars had been triggered.

But how to keep this new atmosphere, to keep the planet warm? Not even Caspian could keep a volcano erupting forever, and already the Witch's Tit was settling down from an untamed explosion of ash to a sedate mound of slowly oozing lava.

His answer was bacteria. Anaerobic bacteria, to live in the oxygen-free atmosphere of Mars---modified sewer organism, Yeasts, slime-molds, cyanobacteria, methanogens, and halophiles as well. He engineered a whole anerboic ecology. The bacterial ecology darkened the surface, taking over the job of the volcanic ash. It burrowed into the rocks and broke them apart into soil, releasing absorbed carbon dioxide in the process. The methanogens added methane, a vitally important greenhouse gas, to that atmosphere, and raised the temperature another few degrees. He didn’t dare establish too many photosynthetic forms, of course, because if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were to be converted into oxygen, the greenhouse effect that kept the planet warm would vanish, and the planet would return to its lifeless, frozen state.

He then planted forests. When they began the building of the forges tower, the architects knew that far more wood would be needed to fuel the kilns than could brought, so he had forests of trees planted. There are still crews whose job is to provide water, and plant one new tree for each that is cut.

In the deserts, the dust is as fine and as soft as talcum powder, and in the light gravity of this world, where a man weighs about one third what he would weigh back on Caspian, they raise the dust with every step. It clings to robes, clothes, it coats faces and works its way into eyes and nostrils and the inside of mouths. And there is nothing that can be done about it but endure it.

The desert dust is so soft that men sink to their ankles in it, and, after a time, walking becomes sheer torture. It is like wading through foot-deep molasses. Every step of the way, the dust drags against the pull of one’s muscles, until they ache as if hot needles were thrust into them.

The extreme harshness of the planet made mining seem nearly impossible, until it was decided that Mars would be the perfect place to deposit the worst criminals.

Current Status

Mars is still the possession of the God-King, and its status as a colonial world is accepted as an extension of his rule.

Mars is sometimes called the Forge World, it is seen as the domain of the Vandalier Bloodmist, though he serves more as general supervisor rather than actual ruler.

Tyer also is frequently seen on official inspections of the Martian landscape. As the commander in chief of the God-King’s forces, it is only natural that Tyer takes a vested interest in the means of war production; though in truth he keeps a careful eye on the General, constantly looking for signs of possible treachery or aggression that could threaten the homeworld. So far Bloodmist has conceded to any suggestions or requests that the Warlord (and Caspian) makes, and has loyally continued to supply arms and supplies to the Shining Host and their minions. Even so the potential resources of an entire planet is enough to tempt the greed and ambition of anyone, and one day Caspian may regret handing management of the Red Planet to Bloodmist’s keeping.

This is ostensibly so he can construct better and more durable vehicles and technology, although it is fairly clear that he is simply hoarding them.

Geography