The Martian Race

Martians are a race that evolved from single celled lifeforms buried in Mars' underground lakes. They live underground, as not much can survive on Mars' surface, and are currently an incredibly advanced species. The Martian society progressed at a crawl for millions of years up until the invention of the telescope. Martians scarcely traveled to the planet's surface, but were aware of the planets and stars' existence, mostly from legends and folk tales. This was until Martian scientists decided to create a device that would allow them to observe the planets and stars in a more refined fashion, in order to find answers as to why their entire society was stranded underground on a frozen red rock. The first Martian Telescope did not answer this question, but instead caused Martians to question why they were stuck on a frozen red rock, when they could be stranded on a certain oceanic green and blue one. Martians began to focus most research efforts on observing Earth, and the humans who inhabited it, and as a result, their society was catapulted from a medieval dark age to the digital age in a matter of decades. Martians ditched their native language and adopted a from of English as their way of speaking. They created inventions that Earth wouldn't see for decades, like smartphones, a Martian Internet, advanced and near sentient AI, and other things that they mostly kept to themselves.

Martians began attempting peaceful contact with humans in the 1990's but no grand reveal was ever made, at least, not on purpose. Martians were so eager to observe Y2K on earth that they didn't consider that their stolen infrastructures might also be affected by the bug. Martian scouts on Earth had their ships break down all across the world, and a global conflict was accidentally ensued.
 * Martians live to be 100-150 years old.
 * They are varied in height vaguely humanoid in appearance, and have rough, purple skin.