Mars

"'Martians all think they are the pinnacle of humanity, being above both the hicks of the outer colonies and the slum-rats of Earth. As one myself: sometimes, I don't think they're wrong.' — Jideofor Okafo, Martian native" Mars, also astrographically referred to as Sol IV, is the fourth planet in orbit around its parent G-type main-sequence star, Sol. The planet is home to the polity that controls all planemos and stations within the influence of Mars known as the Planetary Republic of Mars. Being colonized in 2021 as part of a United Nations initiative between the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the Republic of Germany, the Republic of Korea, and the United States of America, the advent of sophisticated terraforming technologies allowed the first planetary colony of humanity to quickly rise in "Terran Similarity Index" and become a home to thousands of plucky colonists.

However, the apparent dichotomies in growing culture, population, and ideology between Earth and Mars eventually resulted in the self-declared independence of various allied Martian colonies which had resulted in the First Martian-Terran War of 2042. Martian victory in this war, accomplished through the more veteran colonial fleets it possessed, lead to the astropolitical fracturing of the wider Solar System and the formation of the separate Terran and Martian political blocs that would collide in the Second Martian-Terran War of the late 2070s. The possible destruction and future implications of human annihilation to be caused by the war resulted in the Alliance of Independent States of Mars (AISM, the predecessor to the Planetary Republic) suing for peace with the UN and the rest of the Terran bloc in mid-2077. Mars was reformed into one of the first founding polities of the nascent Coalition of Congressional Republics, and maintains its autonomous status as a nation-level republic to this day alongside the likes of the modern day Planetary Republic of Earth.

In the modern day, Mars is home to 19 billion humans that live primarily within the mass-irrigated grasslands of the greater Martian continents. Due to the ecumenopolization of Terra and the smaller sizes of other rocky planemos within the Solar System, Mars functions as the star system's "breadbasket", contributing to 32% of the foodstuffs delivered to the Terran ecumenopolis. It is considered to be the more conservative of the republics within the Solar System due to its lower comparative population to Terra, maintenance of "old colonial cultures", and its government's insistence against mass urbanization.