Terra

Terra is the home planet of humanity. Called the "cradle of civilization" by the inhabitants of the thirty-first and thirty-second centuries, Terra has been the capital of several interstellar nations and is the most industrialized planet in the Inner Sphere.

Industrial Centers on Terra

 * Aldis Industries
 * Amaris Arms Corporation
 * Bannock-Braigh Aerospace
 * Blankenburg Technologies
 * Bluefin Technologies
 * Bluth Corporation
 * Boeing Interstellar (decommissioned during the First Succession War)
 * Bowie Industries
 * Devils Peak Production Site
 * Di Tron Heavy Industries (decommissioned during the First Succession War)
 * Ford Military Limited
 * Grumman Industries
 * Holly Industries
 * Homer
 * Krester's Ship Construction (decommissioned during the First Succession War)
 * Krupp Armament Works
 * Leopard Armor
 * Matabushi Incorporated
 * Martinson Armaments
 * Maxwell-Pulaski Motors
 * Meers-Skobel Defense Corporation
 * Millennium Industries
 * Mitchell Vehicles
 * New Earth Trading Company
 * O'Neil Yards
 * Ostmann Industries
 * Pandora 'Mech Works
 * Quarry Arms
 * Quo Medical Technologies
 * Skobel MechWorks
 * StarCorps Industries
 * Titan Yards
 * Ulston Armor - destroyed in 2777
 * Vicore Industries
 * Windancer Marine Technologies

Manufacturing Centers on Mars

 * Blue Nose Clipperships (decommissioned during the First Succession War)
 * Cosara Weaponries
 * Deimos Clipperships
 * General Mechanics
 * Holden Planetary Engineers
 * Krupp Stellar Technologies Inc.
 * Rebel Industrial Technologies, Inc.
 * Sekkaris Mekwerks
 * Star League Defense Industries
 * Wangker Aerospace

Manufacturing Centers on Jupiter

 * Mercator-Campion Shipyards (located in the asteroid Andromache within the L5 Trojan Point above Jupiter)

Geography
While Terra is the third planet from the star Sol, "Terra" as a term has come to be understood as encompassing all of the Sol system. The second planet, Venus, and the fourth planet, Mars, are also inhabited. In addition, the Titan shipyards is an orbital factory that can build and repair JumpShips and WarShips.



History of Terra
Since the dawn of interplanetary travel, six flags have flown over Terra.

Terran Alliance
Terra was the seat of the Terran Alliance (renamed from Western Alliance in 2086). During the twenty-second and early twenty-third centuries the Alliance Parliament oversaw humanity's initial colonization efforts among the stars. This mass migration, eventually dubbed the 'Great Exodus', was responsible for the depopulation of Terra and solved the overpopulation problem the planet had been facing since the twentieth century. Following the Alliance's humiliating defeat in the Outer Reaches Rebellion of 2235-36, Terra spitefully declared all colony worlds beyond a 30 light-year radius independent, whether such worlds wanted independence or not. From 2236 until its final destruction in 2315, the Terran Alliance focused inward on Terra. As repression and tyranny grew unchecked on Terra, the Alliance Parliament became riven with factionalism, until civil war erupted on Terra in 2315, leading to the downfall of the Terran Alliance.

Terran Hegemony
As the Alliance Global Militia had remained aloof from the Alliance government's petty infighting, its leader, Admiral James McKenna, was able to use his fleet to end the civil war on Terra and dissolve the Alliance Parliament. The old nation-state members of the Alliance became provinces under a single world government crafted by McKenna, who established the Terran Hegemony upon the ruins of the Alliance, and was elected its first Director-General by the Terran public.

Having re-established order upon humanity's homeworld, McKenna next solidified his control of the other worlds that had made up the Alliance. With the former Alliance's borders secure, Terra set about expanding its sphere of influence. Trade and diplomacy persuaded a few systems to join the Hegemony, but most of its new acquisitions were conquered by the Terran-dominated Hegemony Armed Forces. After a disastrous setback at Syrma in 2338 and McKenna's subsequent retirement, however, the Hegemony's new leader Michael Cameron focused upon consolidating Terra's empire and establishing relations with the neighboring states that had sprung into existence.

Under the Cameron dynasty, Terra solidified its position as the military, political, and economic center of the Hegemony. In particular, arms manufacturing was concentrated upon Terra. In addition, national loyalty to individual Terran nations was weakened and finally replaced by allegiance to Terra as a single world. Terra's environmental scars from centuries of industrialization and overpopulation were erased and the planet was converted into a beautiful capital world.

Star League
McKenna's dream of reuniting all of humanity under Terran rule finally came into fruition with the creation of the Star League, which unified humankind under Terra and House Cameron. The Star League's capital, officially known as the Court of the Star League and unofficially as Unity City, was located near Puget Sound on the continent of North America.

Terra's golden age came to an end with the Amaris Coup of 2767, and the subsequent Amaris Civil War. Far from opposing Amaris, many Terrans in fact supported him - first in accepting his deposition of the incompetent Richard Cameron, and later against the Star League Defense Force's leader Aleksandr Kerensky when the latter invaded the Hegemony. It was only when Terra itself was devastated by the SLDF invasion and the atrocities of Amaris' increasingly desperate forces that public opinion turned against the Usurper. The post-war purging of Amaris collaborators and Kerensky's Exodus left Terra and the Hegemony without any effective government, and consequently the Hegemony was defenseless against the depredations of the Great Houses.

ComStar
With the death of the Cameron dynasty, the only thing the Star League Council could agree upon was the necessity of reforming the shattered HPG network that allowed interstellar communication. They appointed Jerome Blake to this task. Kerensky bequeathed whole divisions worth of troops to Blake. The onset of the Succession Wars forced Blake to stop short of his goal of reforming the Terran Hegemony, but he was able to ensure total ComStar control over the Terran system.

A shroud of secrecy descended over Terra while the quasi-mystical ComStar ruled the system. On Terra, they hid untold divisions worth of troops and protected Star League-era technology, while the Successor States blasted themselves back to the Industrial Revolution. ComStar ran their HPG network from the First Circuit Compound on Hilton Head Island.

In the late 3020s, Terra played host to the marriage of Prince Hanse Davion and Archon-designate Melissa Steiner that touched off the Fourth Succession War.

Word of Blake
In 3058, the Word of Blake splinter faction of ComStar seized control of the Terran system from ComStar. In 3065, it became the capital of the new Blake Protectorate. It was also host to at least three invasions. The first (Task Force Vengeance) came from Wolf's Dragoons in 3068. ComStar launched the second (Case White) shortly thereafter. Both of these attacks failed. The third invasion, led by Devlin Stone, was successful and resulted in the defeat of the Word of Blake and the cessation of their Jihad. At least one tactical nuclear device was used during that invasion to destroy the First Circuit Compound.

Republic of the Sphere
After the defeat of the Word of Blake, Devlin Stone created the Republic of the Sphere. Terra is home to the Republic's capital city of Geneva, Switzerland. Republican Terra has also seen its share of warfare.

Anastasia Kerensky, leader of the Steel Wolves, unsuccessfully attacked the planet in the early 3130s, hoping to fulfill the ancient Clan goal of capturing Terra. Shortly thereafter, infighting occurred between troops loyal to the republic's Exarch Jonah Levin and forces organized by Senate loyalists. Aided by Prince's Champion Julian Davion and his Federated Suns contingent, Levin's troops were able to drive the Senate loyalists off of Terra.

The planet's HPG station is one of the few working inside the Republic of the Sphere in 3135.

2764

 * 48th Royal BattleMech Division
 * 191st Royal BattleMech Division
 * 6th Royal Mechanized Infantry Division
 * 74th Mechanized Infantry Division
 * 156th Mechanized Infantry Division
 * 290th Mechanized Infantry Division
 * 89th Jump Infantry Division
 * 175th Jump Infantry Division
 * 34th Royal CAAN Marine Regiment
 * 406th Battle Regiment
 * 277th Light Horse Regiment
 * 138th Hussar Regiment
 * 118th Dragoon Regiment
 * 593rd Striker Regiment

3055

 * 201st Division
 * 1st Regiment - Brion's Legion
 * 2nd Regiment - Brion's Legion
 * 104th Division

3085

 * Stone's Lament
 * - At this point in time, the Lament were at 95% of full strength, with 100% of their equipment featuring upgraded technology.


 * Stone's Pride
 * - The Pride were at 35% of full strength, with 93% of their equipment featuring upgraded technology.


 * X Principes Guards
 * - The X Principes were at 85% of full strength, with 100% of their equipment featuring upgraded technology.

3145

 * Stone's Defenders
 * Stone's Lament

Terran Alliance
The Terran Alliance set about taming Mars in the late 21st Century. After years of study and research, this effort culminated in Project Lowell, which began in 2110 and continued despite the concurrent success of the Deimos Project and access to extrasolar habitable planets.

Project Lowell was in many ways a brute force, and massive ignorance, terraforming scheme that crafted a habitable environment by throwing raw comets at Mars, releasing potent greenhouse gases like chlorofluorocarbons, spreading aggressive engineered terraforming microbes and plants like the Arctic Blue Moss, and dealing with the problems of this "from the hip" terraforming later.

However, Lowell's methods had two advantages: they were fast, delivering an atmosphere that could be breathed unassisted in less than a century (officially 2201, when the average planetary temperature also rose above freezing), and they established a self-sustaining ecosystem that was far more enduring than the worlds (like Mars' sister Venus) that depended on technological environmental stabilization, like Storm Inhibitors, oxygen factories, atmospheric processors, and seismic suppressor stations.

Project Lowell filled much of Mars' low lying northern hemisphere with cometary water delivered simply by steering and slamming comets into Mars. However, the bulk delivery of water by cometary impact could not be repeated after Project Lowell was declared a success in 2205 and humans began settling the world. (That settlement was driven by mining companies, because by 2200 any Terran seeking a planet to colonize would not willingly select muddy, frigid, ugly Mars when much more attractive worlds were available outside the Terran system).

The inability to simply smash cubic kilometers of water onto Mars became a real problem by the latter half of the twenty-third century: the dry, fractured crust soaked water like a sponge, threatening to dry up rivers, lakes, and even the deep Hellas Basin Sea. The then prosperous Ryan Ice Cartel, which had conquered a similar challenge to deliver cubic kilometers of water ice to its customers at a time when DropShips might bear a couple thousand tons of payload, offered the solution: a "skyhook" dangling from Mars' inner moon Phobos would drop the water ice to the planet with only city-shattering force (rather than continent-shattering).

The Phobos Skyhook targeted (mostly successfully) its falling icebergs at the already flooded Valles Marineris, right where the super-canyon crossed the equator and emptied into the manmade Northern Ocean at Chryse Planitia. However, the southern Hellas Basin Sea was isolated from that new water by the high southern continental plateau and the equatorial orbit of Phobos. The solution was simple and fed on those early dreams of Mars: an artificial canal between the Northern Ocean (specifically, the Isidis Planitia Sea) and Hellas Basin Sea. Though simple in concept, this would be the largest excavation project undertaken by man. The "Schiaparelli Project" carved a canal 1800 kilometers long and kilometers deep, albeit aided by repeated Lowell cometary impacts that had anticipated the canal. Because the canal – and Hellas Basin Sea – were not necessary to Mars' terraforming, the Martian mining companies did not contribute to it (though they happily accepted contracts to dig the canal). Instead, the Schiaparelli Project was half funded by the ultrawealthy of Terra, who were lured by dreams of estates carved to order on a low-gravity canyon paradise.

Terran Hegemony
This would leave the Hegemony with a headache of ongoing ecological adjustment programs in the 24th and 25th Centuries.

The aftermath of Project Lowell would occupy the Terran Alliance and Terran Hegemony for centuries, and led directly to the world crafting of the Terran Hegemony's ultra-wealthy. Under the Terran Hegemony's aegis, the ongoing projects to terraform Mars, gradually ceased terraforming and became artistic endeavors. The results of those mammoth "world crafting" projects, often private vanity projects of the ultra-rich, are the topic of this article.

Mars' Grand Canal exemplified some of the more ostentatious displays of that wealth. It was not simply carved between the Lowell crater chains to link the Hellas Basin and Isidis Planitia Seas. The walls hosted terraces large enough for small cities (and some held small cities for the armies of servants who once lived on some estates), gardens grown wild that were better measured in square kilometers than hectares, and even private fjords carved for those who did not want to live on the "crowded" Grand Canal proper. After passing through kilometers of the Grand Canal carved with 2000-meter high bas-reliefs of long-dead trillionaires, two opposing fjords formerly owned by the Windsor-Smalls: not satisfied with Mars' native seasons, the family had created a year-round winter fjord cooled by subterranean and underwater fusion-powered heat pumps of a scale sufficient to refrigerate many square kilometers despite a lack of roofing. The ski slopes hosted some of the best "powder" in the Terran system. Across the Grand Canal, the waste heat of the refrigeration system produced a balmy, tropical fjord with white sand beaches and moderate surf driven by the largest wave generators ever built.

Star League
These great estates lay abandoned, stripped by orders of the dysfunctional postbellum Hegemony government, because so very many of the occupants sided with Stephan Amaris during the Amaris Civil War. Indeed, Reginald Windsor-Small V was appointed Mars planetary rules by Amaris.

At its peak in 2765, Mars hosted over 70 million people: a few hundred thousand in the highly automated mining industry, a few thousand of the richest people in the Inner Sphere, and tens of millions who catered to the ultra-wealthy.

That population plummeted after 2778 when the Terran system was liberated because Mars had become an enclave for Amaris' supporters.

ComStar
With no customers, the Martian service industry disintegrated, leaving about 1 million miners and their families to feed Terra's mineral needs by 2800.

Vengeful mobs and the restored Hegemony government were merciless to Amaris' supporters. While this was necessary in some cases (no one would leave Amaris' handpicked planetary governors in power), the craving for vengeance in the Hegemony reached the point where all of the elected officials and professional civil servants who had been in government during Amaris' tenure were banned from office, as were many professionals of all stripes who had joined Amaris' pet political parties simply to keep their jobs.

ComStar largely ignored Terra's sibling for the next two hundred and fifty years, treating it as nothing more than a sleepy mining world. But this neglect came with unplanned, undesirable evolution in the terraformed environment.

Word of Blake
Upon inheriting Mars, the Word of Blake found a low-cost means of securing the loyalty of Martians. Mars was restive after centuries of neglect and rumors that the Word’s "toaster worshipers" might frown on the large-scale use of robots in the mining industry. Nothing of the sort was true – the Word needed Mars, and needed its industry to grow to revive the fortunes of new members of the Word of Blake Protectorate. After consulting with wary mining company managers, the Word agreed readily to their proposals. Investment, new employees, and updated machinery boosted short-term production while the Word began a medium-term program of lowering operating expenses by adjusting Mars' terraforming.

In the centuries since Kerensky had fled the Inner Sphere, Mars' environment had not been maintained at all. It is a testament to the Lowell Program that Mars remained habitable despite the neglect, and probably would've been tolerable to humans for millennia more. However, it was not pleasant. The crust was drying up Mars, the ozone layer was failing, and the long seasons drove inhabitants into domed towns to escape the harsh weather. The environmental changes made mining Mars increasingly expensive. The Word revived the Phobos Skyhook in 3060, sending the first comets "gently" into the old receiving area at the Chryse Planitia Sea (the resulting tsunamis had the unfortunate side effect of stripping bare the once-beautiful subtropical beaches, leaving a barren landscape). Titanian nitrogen thickened the atmosphere by some 30 millibars while re-sown terraforming moss darkened the south pole and algae cracked oxygen from the new water. Thriving fusion-powered ore processors ramped up their power output simply for the waste heat to melt the space-icebergs now floating through the Northern Ocean.

As of 3071 the Word of Blake's efforts have rendered Mars several degrees warmer, re-flooded river beds, and secured the loyalty of the miners. Mars is, however, currently wrought by unpredictable tempests as its atmosphere and seas find new equilibrium. This is not always a problem: One brutal polar storm in the Martian autumn of 3067 is thought to have contributed to the demise of the Wolf Dragoon invaders on the now-barren shores of Chryse Planitia, quickly killing MechWarriors with exposure as their cockpits were sundered. Predictions said that if the current economic boom continued, perhaps those magnificent estates on the Grand Canal may soon find new inhabitants or, at least, tourists will rediscover one of mankind’s greatest wonders.

System Owner History

 * 2271 - Terran Alliance
 * 2319 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2341 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2366 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2571 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2596 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2750 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2765 - Terran Hegemony
 * 2767 - Amaris Empire
 * 2771 - Amaris Empire
 * 2774 - Amaris Empire
 * 3025 - ComStar
 * 3030 - ComStar
 * 3040 - ComStar
 * 3052 - ComStar
 * 3057 - Word of Blake
 * 3062 - Word of Blake
 * 3067 - Word of Blake
 * 3068 - Word of Blake Protectorate
 * 3075 - Word of Blake Protectorate
 * 3085 - Republic of the Sphere
 * 3130 - Republic of the Sphere