Looking For Water In All The Wrong Places
Above is a map of Mars produced in 1970, five years before first contact. Whilst rudimentary in comparison to modern depictions, it is nevertheless useful to reproduce here, to depict all that has changed.
Martian civilisation, long before first contact and ever since, is confined to the canals, oases and seas of the planet. Much of the planet is dry and inhospitable desert. In comparison to Earth, Mars is an arid world whose seas are more like lakes. These seas are also noticeably sterile when compared to Earth's - Mars has undergone global drying for centuries, and the result is that the Martian seas are highly saturated with chemicals and minerals making the average Martian sea more like the Dead Sea.
The global drying effect that Mars has endured is the reason for the development of the modern Martian hydraulic state, and the reason that first contact occurred in the first place. In 1970, Earth had begun its first halting steps into interplanetary travel, launching a number of probes and putting its first explorers on the lunar surface. This was the first attempts at interplanetary travel for millennia - Mars had long since devoted their civilisational efforts to mitigating global drying, and the Venusian efforts had ended in planetary disaster which still reverberates to this day. It should come as no surprise that the human space programme drew attention. Notably for Mars, which had been struggling in apparent isolation, it represented salvation. Ancient Martian listening stations on Earth's moon alerted the dense city state network between the Mare Boreum and Mare Sirenum, and a decision was rapidly made. The water rich planet of Earth was sure to be able to assist Mars in her hour of need.
A delegation of Martian ambassadors arrived on Earth in 1975 - though we had known they were coming for quite some time beforehand. Their pleas fell on listening ears. The United Nations mission to Mars was assembled in a few short years - technology brought by the Martians themselves helped outfit a credible international planetary mission. The Cold War came to an abrupt halt, and the world held its breath for an oncoming utopian age.
By the 1990s, we were still waiting for utopia - and the Martians were still waiting for salvation. The United Nations Transitional Administration on Mars never received the support it needed to truly assist the Martians - the outbreak of the Third World War in the 1980s did not help. Simultaneously, the various UN and other government/NGO missions and offices established on Mars soon became dens of corruption, vice and graft. Desperate Martian city states put up with increasingly exploitative treatment in exchange for ecological reconstruction. The wealth that poured from Mars was funnelled into a small number of pockets, and the boons to be gained from reverse engineering Martian technology were lucrative but never the transformative panacea that had been hoped for.
Mars also became home to hundreds of thousands of human settlers - the largest interplanetary migration in 70 million years. They were pioneers, scientists, archaeologists, refugees, colonizers and thieves. They came to an arid dying world from a planet scarred by it's second atomic conflict. Mars was rapidly changing in many different ways - whilst at the same time ossifying to some degree as compliant rulers were able to summon up support from landed human mercenaries.
It is easy then to wonder, how in these inauspicious circumstances did the modern Imperium come to be? All of these seeming separate problems converged over the course of the 2000s as a Marsborne generation of humanity emerged. They objected to the naked exploitation and graft - this was their home, even if they were in the minority compared to the hundreds of millions of indigenous Martians. The corrupt and poorly funded UN institutions were extensively reformed and streamlined, made more applicable to the global Martian hydraulic system. An emergent network of international institutions emerged, twinned to the patronage system of loyal oases centred city states. Initiative was taken. Ships were launched to transport ice from comets and asteroids.
In 2019, at the same time Earth began to look down the barrel of their own global ecological catastrophe, Mars announced the dawn of a new Golden Age, with the foundation of the Union of Hydraulic States, the unification of the nested and entwined Martian institutions across the Solar System. Initially received with indulgent chuckles on Earth, the seriousness of what was occurring soon became clear as American and Soviet forces sought to enforce control of their assets and were summarily repulsed. The United Nations single largest member state was now the UHS, and at a stroke had seized control of the Security Council. The unification had seen the summary seizing of assets across the Solar System - in particular control of comet and asteroid movement infrastructure. Martian technology had ensured that the Third World War was not the planet ending catastrophe that it could have been, and had rendered the strategic nuclear warhead virtually obsolete. Mars on the other hand had the means to repeat the KT extinction event.
This realisation is the foundation of the Imperium, the first recorded interplanetary superpower. The transformation of Mars' status from isolated oases city states clinging amidst centuries of desertification, to single largest state in the Solar System capable of making it's presence felt on every populated world, has been compared to the rise of the Soviet and Chinese economies from agrarian backwaters to industrial powers.
What follows is a breakdown of the various titles of the heads of the member states of the Union of Hydraulic States, including the incumbent Imperator. Shades of yellow to dark red are used to indicate increasing prominence.
Tia var'Za, Tyrant of Phaethontis and Co-Chief of State of Aonius Sinus Trust Territory
Traki var'Will, Archon of Thaumasia and Co-Chief of State of Aonius Sinus Trust Territory
Vladimir Andreev, High Commissioner of Argyre Trust Territory
Bryn var'Sael, Archon of Hellas, Chief of State of Hellespontus, Noachis and Ausonia Trust Territories
Autumn Zhao, High Commissioner of Eridania and Electris Trust Territories
Gar var'Broe, Hegemon of Cydonia, Archon of Trivium Charontis and Chief of State of Zephiria Trust Territory
Faen var'Syll, Archon of Aethiopis
Del var'Von, Tyrant of Hesperia
Sael var'Mella, Hegemon of Cydonia Dioscuria, Archon of Umbra and Chief of State of Aeria and Arabia Trust Territories
Jar var'Naeris, Archon of Lunae Lacus
Aurora Jones, High Commissioner of Xanthe and Chryse Trust Territories
Syllic var'Franklin, Hegemon of Arcadia, Nix Olympica and Amazonis, Chief of State of Memnonia and Aurorae Sinus Trust Territories, President of the Union of Hydraulic States
NOTE: Martian naming conventions - the nature of the ancient hydraulic civilisation means that surnames have long since passed into obsolence. Martians tend to use autonymics, choosing a surname to evoke comparisons to individuals. The Imperator Syllic is unique in this regard, selecting a human autonymic - Franklin to evoke comparisons to Framer of the American Constitution Benjamin Franklin, and also to legendary planetary ecologist Frank Herbert.
