Name: The Node
Government Type: Authoritarian Technocracy
Traits:
Exocortexization - many Node citizens have the very mechanisms of their thoughts strung out across arrays of memory modules, processors, sensors and remote limbs that help them function optimally in the harsh environment of Mars.
Fragmentation - Node augmentations are flawed prototypes, loaded with their own array of bizarre, tragic consequences. Overclocking a human being has associated costs. Psychological instability and violent difficulty in interpersonal relationships boil over from natural failures in the primitive transhuman mental architecture.
Purification - the Node's powerful mix of electrochemical and heat-refining installations churn out ultrapure silicon, rare-earth metals and expensive alloys for special use. As a state, it is quickly able to exploit ores to their full metallurgical potential - but currently lacks the industrial might to get large quantities of any kind of bulk material.
Austerity - Noders do not crave luxury goods or engage in conspicuous consumption to the degree of other cultures. From the outside, they appear dour and puritanical - but a closer inspection would show that they live for more abstract pleasures.
Black Operations, Black Ships, Black Death - the cold technicians, comms analysts and spies of the Node are the backbone of this disturbing, insular backwater, a state based around leadership by unelected researchers and ruthless intelligence agents whose names are restricted from the general population. Paranoia, signal-jamming, light-bending metamaterials and radar-proofed lines warp the location of their bunkers and make them somewhat difficult to root out of the terrain. Their assassins and saboteurs are without peer. The computer viruses and hijacker-ware in their databanks seethes with awful E-warfare power - just waiting to dust a hab module with burning pesticide or seize a foreign drone for the Node's incomprehensible purposes.
Background: "IF I AM FOR YOU, WHO CAN BE AGAINST YOU? MARS IS NOT FOR THE REJECTS OF YESTERDAY. MARS WILL FORGE A NEW INDIVIDUAL. FROM NOW ON KNOW WE ARE CENTRAL HUMAN NODE. THE PARTY IS OF WORKERS WHO BATTLE EACH DAY WITH HAND AND BRAIN. WE LIVE IN THE SAVAGE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE AMONG THE STARS. SWEAR TO COMMANDER, NODE AND BLOODLINE THAT YOU WILL UPHOLD THIS PREDATOR'S LIFE."