Ares

The planet Ares is a large, massive world orbiting the star Xander (HIP 10842) known for its martial culture and Japanese-descended cuisine. The world was one of the first worlds colonised by humanity, first discovered in 2 101 CE by early human space telescopes, and colonised over a thousand years later with the arrival of the New Alexander. The planet has a long and varied history, having been continuously inhabited for over 10 000 years.

History

Ares is an old world, on of the oldest in all of the known galaxy. The planet has been inhabited for over 10 000 years, stretching through eons of galactic history and many different eras. Currently, the planet is a member of the Federation of Systems, a trade and political union between various worlds and polities across the Inner Sphere.

The planet was first discovered by an astronomer lost to time, operating the Tyson Exoplanet Lagrange Telescope. The planet's distance to Earth, plus the matter in between, made it hard to detect.

Later, in the First Exodus, Ares was colonised by the New Alexander mission. Funded by newly established colonies, the New Alexander named the local star after itself, and established the colony. Originally named Atarashī Nihon, anglicized Japanese for "New Japan," the planet was settled by primarily ethnic Japanese and Korean peoples, but as the decades progressed the world shifted towards a more mixed ethnic composition. Even today, however, the agriculture industry is tilted towards East Asian cuisine and food practises.

The planet declared peaceful independence from its colonial founder, with the founder's absorption into the First Empire of Earth, and began a long and hefty process of hominizing the resource-rich system they found themselves in. It was at this time that the planet began to be referred to as Ares, primarily by its Anglo and European denizens, but both names were still in use.

The planet was soon assimilated into the Ferrara Net, where it lay for over a thousand years, every need taken care of by the omnipotent and ever-caring Tau Ferrara. The populace soon grew complacent, but it was a golden age for Aresian culture and science. Popular martial techniques and practises flourished in this time, inspired by the planet's adopted name and ancient East Asian martial arts.

With the corruption of the Tau Ferrara, and the decimation of the Net's populace, Ares was brought to its knees. Of the planet's former 11 billion people, only a few tens of millions remained, to act as menial labour in the most difficult and dangerous jobs. The remainder were liquidated and buried in mass graves, some of which are still available to be visited today, thousands of years on.

Ares contributed heavily to the Ferraran Crusade, acting as a logistics and infrastructure hub for the AI to wage its unforgiving war on the universe. To the deficit of the planet's natural environment, the AI polluted and destroyed the world, rendering it nigh-uninhabitable to most biologicals.

Towards the end of the war, the Coalition arrived in orbit fo the planet and began to bomb it. The already devastated environment couldn't handle a sustained, multi-year long orbital bombardement and the planet's biosphere collapsed, along with a large portion of the remaining Aresian biologicals.

Once the war concluded, and the Tau Ferrara was destroyed, those remaining biologicals, no more than a few million in number, were free to self-determination once again, after thousands of years of Ferraran domination. They slowly rebuilt their world's biosphere and infrastructure over the course of a thousand years, making it habitable once again whilst maintaining an isolationist policy, aimed at protecting their world from conquest and decimation.

It was in this time period that the name 'Ares' became the sole and official name for the planet. Atarashī Nihon usage fell off slowly, and is only used in some places on and around the planet in the present day.

Today, Ares is a political and economic hub of its region. Though a ecologically unstable and largely a monoculture of a few select species, the planet is habitable once again, though large swaths of desert and glass still remain. 14 billion biologicals call this planet home, living in scattered arcologies on the shores of the remaining seas, while over 20 billion virtuals are hosted on computer banks and simulations ran deep underground or in orbit.

Biology

Ares hosts primarily carbon-copies of Terran life, imported directly from Earth during the First Exodus. Since the devastation wrought by the Ferraran Crusade, the planets biosphere has been terraformed to a shadow of its former glory, with large monocultures of specific species covering the habitable areas of the planet.

The planet is known for its eucalyptus forests, scattered with oak and pine outcroppings. In places one can find redwoods and birches, though they are more rare.

Grass covers vast areas of land were trees cannot grow. These make up the famous Aresian Steppes, were horses run wild and free and whole nomad cultures have risen up, secluded from the civilized shores of the seas. Furthermore, cows and sheep graze here, some kept for farming while others are wild.

Additionally, hawks and eagles make their nests across these steppes, making feasts of the younger and less-developed cattle and sheep, soaring the hot updrafts that carry over from the large deserts.

Geography

Ares' population is highly centralized, concentrated in arcologies scattered across the planet's isolated oceans. These individual arcologies can have hundreds of millions if not billions of people living inside and around them - the most populous of these being the planet's capital, Harmonia.

Ares has four major oceans, and many smaller lakes and seas scattered across its surface. Harmonia is the largest, followed by Enyalius, Thraxa and finally Abim.

Of the major arcologies around which the planet's population is concentrated, Harmonia is the largest and oldest. Dating back to the original settlement of the planet, Harmonia was named such before anything else on Ares, explaining the distinct and noticable difference in naming lexicon.

Economy

Ares economy is highly developed, focusing largely on maintaining, upholding and progressing IT infrastructure and research. The planet's living standards are largely post-scarcity, with all physical peoples having their wants and needs met by a variety of caretakers, both sentient and non-sentient. Virtual peoples on Ares however, have some of the highest living standards in the known galaxy. Massive computer banks lie below the planets crust, generating massive amounts of waste heat that is quickly and efficiently turned into electricity, constantly computing and simulating an infinite variety of worlds and scenarios which these virtuals can pick and choose at will. Ares is a major hub in the Inner Sphere for mind uploading, though the cost of the procedure and the associated privileges that come with it are not trivial.

Society

Ares hosts a post-scarcity society, dominated by anarchocapitalistic technodemocratic institutions largely run and upheld by powerful sub-sapient AI and computer programs. Both physicals and virtuals have equal rights, protected by the bare-bones government that controls the planet, the Polity of Ares.

The Polity of Ares is a member-state of the larger Federation of Systems, a primarily economic alliance of systems that covers a large swath of the Inner Sphere.

Aresian society hosts East Asian-style descended cuisine, martial cultures, and a reverence for hard work and meritocracy. The planet is renowned for the phrase, "If you can't make it on Ares, you can't make it anywhere," highlighting the impact of achievement on a person's social status and how it is easy to climb the social ladder on Ares.