Story Bone

Blood Sands of Mars

So the sands of Mars are red because of iron oxide. But, it's a thin layer. Mars was also supposedly very Earth-like in the distant past (okay, so when Earth wasn't so very Earth-like). So what happened?

Massive casualties. Imagine a very dense biosphere going all Battle of the Wilderness all at the same time. Natural disaster, say like a comet strike that also rips most of the atmosphere away (yeah, yeah, gravity, don't bother me when I'm on a role).

Or, how about this. In the Lovecraft Cthulhu world, back before the dawn of history, time out of mind, there was a hugh battle between the Elder Gods and the Old Ones. Although (as far as I have read) Lovecraft never specified where this happened. Both Old Ones and Elder Gods are space faring (well, flying through space like birds), although the later Older Ones lost that ability (along with living in the Ocean).

Now, within my world of Cthulhu (at least the few stories I've produced) I know where that battled happened (no, I'm not telling until I get the stories published or trunk them). But for other people it could be anywhere. Why not Mars? Imagine billions of squamous aliens battling it out across a verdant Mars. Demolishing every thing in their path in the zeal to kill each other (a phalanx of a thousand shoggoths rolling down Olympus Mons into entrenched Spawn). Oooh. Squishy death from above. And at the end, as the remnants negotiate the peace, Cthulhu enters R'yleh and it sinks beneath the waves, Mars is left desolate with rotting corpses of the aliens, covered in ichor feet deep, bereft of atmosphere, and sporting two new moons, planetoids ripped from Mars and blasted into orbit.

What would we find when we send people there? Sure, most the evidence of such battle has long stained the sands the murmuring winds have blown to cover Mars, killing what organic matter had survived. Ancient cursed-life that now lay dormant in the sands. Waiting for fresh organic life to feed on. Or, what artifacts would be find there? Cyclopean cities, castles and fortifications worn away by time, consumed by Mars, covered by meters of sand.