Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...

[Johnny1A.2]

First of all, for a list of other threads about the Orichalcum Universe,
See here: Orichalcum Universe: The Basics

I've been reposting some things originally posted on rec.games.frp.gurps about
my game/story-world, the Orichalcum Universe, in a few threads for those who
were or are interested. This thread is about Atlantis and related subjects, and it's
going be kind of long by necessity, I'm afraid. Note that the Atlantis material I
originally posted was some of the first bits, and since then inconsistences have
gotten in, so I've tried ot clean it up, correct some errors and oversights, etc.

Anyway, for those interested, here it is.

-------------------------------------------------

ATLANTIS and the ANTEDILUVIAN AGE...

Our story actually opens a good distance from Atlantis, in the continent
of Africa, and has its earlier roots in the events that occurred when
the Eldren were transplanting the majority of the Homosapient
population of the planet Earth to new homes on terraformed planets
across the Greater Milky Way. [1]

Out of all the several hundred Eldren trapped on Earth, only two
remained semi-conscious, initially. Others would regains this state
as time passed, but initially only their leaders on each side, the oldest
and most powerful in each case, were even semi-conscious.

Actually, 'semi' is perhaps generous, they were in dreamy half-state
between consciousness and dormancy, varying back and forth. Unlike
the others, they were retained some limited ability to affect their
surroundings. It was only a fraction of what they would possess 'awake',
but even a minute fraction of such vast power was still quite impressive.

Recall that a full Eldren possesses, by mortal standards, gargantuan
powers. These half-dormant entities were only a pale shadow of their
normal selves, but still immensely capable compared to TL0 Humanoids.
Even trapped, and all but unconscious, it was possible for them to make
remarkable things happen, if they could become sufficiently focused.

Over the course of time, thousands of years of time, the Watcher eventually
managed to come up with an idea for an attempt to escape from the trap
in which it was caught. Of course, the passage of time alone would
eventually bring this about, over the course of a few million years. In the
scale of the Eldren, this is a very short time, but the Watcher would have
preferred to be free sooner. Thus the loose plan it gradually assembled.
It was a slow thought, since it was thinking slowly, and sporadically.
It might have taken it a century to conceive the idea, another few
centuries to ponder it, another few to decide to act on it, and another
century or so to make it happen. It might have taken longer, even
the Watcher itself could not have said. Its sense of time was as
scrambled as his consciousness. Perhaps it took millennia, not centuries.
The Watcher had no way to know.

The Watcher needed a way to manipulate the physical world, a way to
seek out and reassemble its de-integrated self, and to awaken the other
trapped Eldren of its following. It needed, first, to awaken its four
primary ‘lieutenants’, who could assist with the next steps. To do so, it
needed a tool, an instrument with which to manipulate the outside world.

What it eventually produced was the idea of creating an artificial humanoid,
what another age might called a sort of ‘bioroid’ for lack of a better term.
Drawing on the relatively enormous psionic and other powers it could
still use, the Watcher created over the course of time something that might
have been classifiable, very loosely, as a bioroid growth-tank.

It would have looked very strange to a later Homosapient bioengineer,
more like a huge mass of living tissues and weird glassine elements than
a machine in the Homosapient sense, but it performed its purpose. It was
assembled by a combination of psi-controlled humanoids and apes and
monkeys, and by the action of psi-directed microorganisms and insects.

African termites assembled a variation on one of their nests to form
the framework. Spiders spun structures of silk far more complex than
anything they could produce on their own. Droplets of blood and bits
of skin from the psi-controlled humans who worked to help bring about
this living machine provided DNA and cells to work with as a basis.
It took centuries of steady, patient, tricky work. [2]

The first efforts were not successful. Each attempt came closer to being
viable, however, and eventually, after many failed tries (the results of
which are perhaps best not dwelt upon), the Watcher succeeded in its
goal of creating a living, artificial Homosapient host for itself. It then
merged one of its ‘fragments’ into the new being, enabling the Watcher,
most of the time, to be able to perceive the world through the senses of
its new creation.

Most of the time, of course, the Watcher was not even close to sufficiently
aware or focused to even attempt to make use of this ability, but it was
present, and the connection could be used when the Watcher was ‘awake’.

The resulting hybridized entity awakened into the paleolithic world of
Earth, thousands of years before the settlement of Atlantis, or the
Americas.

MORE LATER.

[1] For information about those events, see here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70292&page=3

[2] The Eldren, as has been noted, are not natural, instinctive
tool users in the same way Helians and Homosapients are. Their
abilities are more 'instinctive' with natural things, they are far
more comfortable in manipulating living biospheres than to shape or
use purely non-living tools.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The bioroid had a mind of his own, of course. With a living brain
based on human (and human-cousin) DNA and cells, he was in fact
basically ‘one of us’. But his brain and body were 'designed' to be an
ultra-efficient psionic system, among other things, and his own innate
psi potential surpassed anything naturally occurring in H. sapiens
(at least so far).

His body, likewise, was an 'idealization' of the human form, stronger,
faster, tougher, etc, though not superhumanly so, unlike the psi factor. [1]

Of course, one other difference between the bioroid and the natural
humans who were his cousins was that he was, for practical purposes,
ageless. Though no living thing can endure eternally, the processes of
aging that were at work in all natural Homosapients were all but
totally absent from this entity, even aside from the enormous psionic
potential that could enable him to overcome such processes had they
been present. The Watcher had no wish for its living tool to lose all
utility in what would be, for an Eldren, the merest instant.

This entity would die only from violence or starvation or other such
causes, age alone would not end his life (save perhaps on a scale of
hundreds of millennia). He was, perhaps, as close as it was possible
for any sort of Homosapient to be to immortality.

The Watcher then returned to its near-dormancy, storing a piece of
itself in a perfect symbiosis with its creation, in specialized organ
structures the bioroid possessed that normal humanoids don't. The
mind of its creation, in theory, could have access to all the knowledge
of its creator/symbiotic partner. In practice, it didn't work that way.
The young entity emerged into a world equipped with a smattering of
knowledge he didn't know how he knew, some imperatives he didn't
quite comprehend, and powers he soon realized others didn't have.

One of the imperatives was to seek out the other 'fragments' of the
Watcher, scattered around the planet, and 'awaken' and
absorb them. He didn't know that's what he was doing, but it was, and
he began, over the course of the following centuries, to do that.
Along the way, he also looked, as a result of another subconscious
imperative, for the dormant fragments of the other Eldren.

And, of course, he was programmed to be on the lookout for his
creator's enemy, who the Watcher knew would sooner or later
awaken, and who represented a problem to the Watcher, and a
dire potential threat, in its way, for all live on Earth.

MORE LATER.

[1] In terms of his physical abilities, think Captain America,
not Superman.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

This first artificial being came into the world with little understanding
of his own abilities or nature, only some instinctive urges and priorities
and a smattering of knowledge that he had no idea how he knew, only
that he knew it was true. He was fundamentally different than other
Homosapients, most notably in the fact of his effective immortality, but
other differences existed as well.

Along with the superb and effortless physical abilities that his genetic
pattern provided, this first immortal was semi-sterile. His sexual urges
were no different than any natural Homosapient, but as a side-effect of
the combinations of genes used to bring him about (and not entirely
without intent on the part of his creator), he could father only infertile
offspring when partnered with a woman of any natural Homosapient
species. The hybrid offspring resulting from such unions were unusual,
both long-lived and possessed of unusual abilities, but were also invariably
sterile themselves, with any partner.

Also, this artificial man had never had a childhood. He had come
into the world as a fully developed (at least in body and in some ways
mentally) adult. Psychologically, this had many effects, and was probably
second only to his longevity as a factor setting him apart from his ‘fellow
men’, it was a gap in experience between them that could not close. [1]

He came into a world that was not yet emerged from the paleolithic age
in any way that really mattered. The exact time of his ‘birth’ and life is
unanswerable, nobody on Earth in that time was yet using calendars or
clocks, life for those early humans (and the few remaining near-humans)
was measured more in the passing of the days and seasons than anything
else, the only history was oral history.

In theory, he could have lived into the present, and far beyond. In the
event, he survived for slightly more than one thousand years. For all
his power and ability, he was still a creature of flesh and blood, and
though his psionic power made him a potential match for almost any
other creature, it required that he use it effectively. Eventually, he made
a small but fatal mistake, and perished under the feet of an angry elephant.

The Watcher took perhaps a century, in its dreamy half-aware state, to
notice that its living tool had perished, and it would be too much to say
that the ancient being was either saddened or angry. Instead, in its slow
half-helpless way, the Watcher set about creating a new ‘agent’ to take
the place of the dead one.

This time the process was rather smoother and more efficient, since the
Watcher had a fairly good idea of how to go about the matter. Further,
the first ‘agent’ had found and made contact with some of the other
trapped Familiar Eldren, and enabled communication between them and
the Watcher. Inspired by the Watcher, some of the other Familiar Eldren
now used the same processes to create ‘avatars’ of their own.

For our purposes, we shall refer to these artificial people as Avatars, a
name not without applicability, though they have as a ‘race’ gone by
many names among many peoples and in many places, usually names
assigned by those with no more than the tiniest grasp of their nature or
origins. Indeed, they themselves had little grasp of those things.

Those early Avatars, for the most part, lived very short lives in
comparison with their potential for life. Most of them, like the
first one created by the Watcher, made some error or mistake in
the dangerous world they lived in, and perished after a few centuries
or so. The brighter, luckier ones lasted longer, a few unlucky or
less capable ones lived much shorter lives. [2]

Eventually, the life-spans increased as the Familiar Eldren began to
copy some memories from previous Avatars into the minds of younger
ones, enabling them to learn, albeit as a remove, from the experiences
of their predecessors. This was slow and clumsy, since the new Avatars
had no idea how they knew what they knew, but their survival and
success rates did get better.

Some of the Familiar Eldren maintained only one Avatar at a time, some
maintained more than one. Again, it should be held firmly in mind that
these were individual, separate people, not merely remote-controlled
puppets of their creators. They had minds and personalities and wills of
their own, though their creators could influence them strongly, and much
in their personalities ‘echoed’ some elements in the personalities of those
Eldren who created them.

Also, it should be kept in mind that the Avatars had little understanding
of their own origins and nature, and many of them never encountered
another of their own kind in the course of centuries-long lives. The Earth
is vast, its distances enormous, and most of the time there were no more
than a few dozen Avatars in the world at any given time, spread out all
over Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. The number of Avatars did tend,
though, to increase very slowly as the centuries passed.

As time passed, one particular Avatar was brought into being, in what
would one day be called northern Africa, who will play a key role in later
events, and who was unique even among a unique race in terms of his own
potentials and abilities and native intelligence. He would be known by a
variety of names down the ages, but we shall use the name ‘Zadatharion’
to identify him, an Anglicization of one of his oldest and ‘favored’ names.

His role in our story will become clear later, for the moment our attention
must move to another Avatar, one rather younger than Zadatharion. This
Avatar also used various names through his long life, but by far the one he
used most readily, and was addressed by most commonly, was actually a
title rather than a name. To the Atlanteans, he would one day be known
as ‘the Eldest’. [3]

MORE LATER.

[1] He was, after all, essentially human.

[2] Even for physically superior and psionically
uber-powerful people, TL0 life is dangerous and difficult.

[3] This title was awarded and claimed in ignorance of the existence
of older Avatars.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Again, no one can say just when the Eldest 'awakened' (a better term, perhaps,
than 'born') into the world. The location was somewhere in central Europe or
western Asia, most likely, certainly the Eldest spent most of an indeterminate
period in what we today would call Europe, Asia, and Africa, but mostly
Europe and western Asia. He traveled from place to place, and after a time, he
began to gather a group of mortal followers, mostly drawn from the primitive
peoples then dwelling in Europe.

The world was a different place in those days, including in ways that are lost
to history in 2010. Suffice it to say that the Eldest, effectively immortal, very
powerful psionically, was able to offer protection to threatened mortals, and
he was a competent and charismatic leader. Over the course of generations, a
motley collection of followers turned into a people, a tribe, organized around
an immortal chieftain. Even as this was happening, circumstances too involved
to go into here were pressing them westward.

The ‘tribe’ initially came together in the region of what is today called the Alps.
Their first home was a fertile mountain valley in what we today know as modern
Switzerland, but various circumstances forced them first to the north, out of the
mountains, and then westward, moving toward the Atlantic Ocean. As they went
new members joined the tribe, selected by the Eldest on the basis how well he
thought they would fit into his tribe, and also, half-consciously, for other criteria.

The tribe grew, in spite of being pressed westward against their will, until at last
they found themselves making a home of sorts on the coast of modern France.
Unfortunately, they were pressed in by both hostile human neighbors, and also
by other creatures as well. We will discuss the nature of these creatures at a later
time, for now suffice it to say that even the powers of the Eldest were not fully
sufficient to protect the possessions and safety of his followers.

However, ‘within’ the Eldest was another consciousness, a half-aware mentality
belonging to the particular Familiar Eldren that had created the Eldest. From
that mind, the Eldest had a smattering of information that he knew to be true,
even though he did not know how he knew it. He knew, for example, that
the Earth was a spherical body, and that it circle the Sun. He knew that the Sun
was larger than the Earth, and that the Moon was smaller than the Earth, and
that it circled the Earth. He did not know how he knew, but he knew.

He knew a great many such odd bits and pieces of information. Among them
was a particularly interesting piece of information: he knew that there was a
large and fertile island, located far out at sea in the ocean to the west of their
lands.

Pressed on all sides, the Eldest and his tribe were trapped against the Atlantic.
The thought came to the Eldest, though, that if they could reach that empty island,
which he knew to be empty, they would have enormous amounts of fertile land,
and nearly total safety and protection from the threats they were dealing with in
Europe. To reach that island, however, in the primitive age of which we speak,
was no small challenge. Still, the Eldest and his people were familiar with
small boats, they used them to seek fish. They were crude hide and wood boats,
but they did work.

Also, the world was a different place then in terms of climate. The interglacial
period had begun, but the ice was still retreating, vast amounts of pack ice were
to be found in the Atlantic far south of its present-day extent. The Eldest and
his followers knew they might be able to follow along the edge of the ice to
reach the island their leader knew existed, using the ice as ‘land’.

In the end, the attempt was made, and the story of their journey along the edge
of the ice would make an epic in itself. They took heavy losses, but they had
little to lose, staying where they were was not practical. They could have held
on for some time, but not indefinitely.

Between the powers of the Eldest, and an epic effort by his mortal followers,
this tiny tribe of primitive people were able to make the dangerous and difficult
journey from Europe to that central Atlantic island. They arrived in the spring
(northern hemisphere) of the year 9840 B.C., their battered, barely-floating
boats pulling ashore amid a gap in the cliffs, near a vast and fertile valley.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The Rise of Atlantis...

The island, of course, was that land mass that would once day be called by
Plato, ‘Atlantis’. The newly arrived settlers, of course, had their own
names for it, most of them translating to some variation on the ‘Great
Isle’. Other cultures also would remember this island and its people, under
other names, but ‘Atlantis’ is the best-remembered one, and the accounts
of Plato were at least slightly closer to the reality than some, so we shall use
the terminology of that philosopher.

The account of Plato was far from fully accurate, but it did contain some
pieces of the truth. The Great Isle was large, and geologically freakish. It
came about as a side-effect of Eldren interference tens of millions of years
before. A small mantle plume that was approaching the surface happened
to do so under that geological structure known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
This plume was creating a situation not entirely dissimilar to that to be found
under Iceland, but on a larger scale. The Eldren, for reasons of their own,
had ‘dammed’ the plume, and this had led as a side-effect to the creation of
the Great Isle. We will delve into the peculiar geology of Atlantis in more
depth (no pun intended) later.

For now, let a modest description of this geologically strange island suffice.

The Great Isle ran in a serpentine path, along the line of the Mid-Atlantic
Rift, roughly from thirty-five degrees north latitude to very approximately
fifty-five degrees north latitude. The Isle was not extremely wide through
most of its twisting length, and a ‘spine’ of volcanic mountains ran along
the central length, rising to truly imposing heights in the south and north.

A belt of fertile land lay about the central spine on either side, with wider
areas of foothills and land in the northern and southern extremes. Many
smaller volcanoes and hills dotted these relative lowlands, and a few very
large volcanic features were also to be found in the lowlands. Along the
coasts, cliffs marked the meeting of Atlantis and the sea, save in a few
places, Atlantis always suffered from a shortage of good natural harborage.

The climate ranged from mild and much like the modern Mediterranean
in the far south at this time, to subarctic in the far north. As the years
passed and the world warmed, Atlantis became steadily more clement.
Even in these times, it was almost paradisiacal to a tribe of primitive and
fleeing fugitives from late Paleolithic Europe.

On the eastern side of the Island, and somewhat south of the center of the
Isle, was the great valley that became the first home of the settlers, and this
valley would be remembered in the accounts of Plato as the great
circular valley in which the Atlantean capitol city was raised. In this Plato
was right, but that came later. At this time, it was merely the place were a
fleeing rag-tag band of refugees settled, finding good land, shelter from the
worst extremes of weather, fresh water, and safety.

The valley was not so large as Plato would have it, but it was roughly round,
and it did have a central hill with a lake around it, in turn surrounded
by broken up bodies of water (as opposed to the concentric rings of water,
which would come later). This hill was on the eastern side of the huge valley,
about halfway between the coast and the center of the depression. In nature,
it was what a modern geologist would call a cinder cone, somewhat worn by
wind and rain, but still recognizable for what it was.

Even the springs of which Plato spoke had their origins here, there were
springs of hot waters flowing from the sides of the ancient cone, water that
circulated down from rainwater and aquifers and was heated by deep magma
still bubbling away beneath the immense valley, rising back and emerging
as steady streams of warm or hot water. There in fact many such hot springs
to be found on and around the cinder cone, as well as shallower springs which
had colder water.

Originally, the settlers all avoided the cinder cone out of a sort of superstitious
dread. Towering over the open plain, covered by the trees that were absent
from most of the rest of the vast valley floor (it was a grassland), it seemed
ominous to the settlers, it was two generations after arrival before the Eldest
led a small contingent of his human followers, accompanied by two other
Avatars who had made the trip to Atlantis with the Eldest, to scale the hill. [1]

As the superstitious dread faded with time and familiarity, the Eldest set up his
headquarters on the lower slopes of the tree-covered cinder-cone. At first this
was little more than an elaborate tent of the sort that the tribe had used back
in Europe, but within a few generations of their arrival, hide and bone and crude
wood had begun to give way to more elaborate, if yet crude, stone constructions.

MORE LATER.

[1] Little will be said of these two other Avatars for some time, but they do
matter.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Atlantis was, in many ways, a paradise from the point of view of the new arrivals.
It had no inhabitants, plentiful game, rich soil once they discovered the
eastern plain and some of the smaller valleys, a mild climate, and the protection
of vast stretches of ocean from their former enemies. While the lives of the first
Atlantean settlers would seem hard beyond imagining to twenty-first century
Westerners, to resettled paleolithic tribesmen, their new lives were a blessing
beyond measure or easy expression.

Agriculture had not yet fully developed in the Old World at that time, but in
Atlantis, it was a natural development, and it advanced faster than it did in
Europe or even the middle east. A few centuries after they arrived in Atlantis,
their population had grown by several times, and they had become fairly
competent farmers and builders.

It should be noted, as ought to be obvious by now, that the history of the
Earth in the Orichalcum Universe is not entirely like the history of the world
as recorded in the year 2010. Why is the history of the world as remembered
in 2010 wrong in the Orichalcum Universe? We shall see. [1]

Atlantis was not the only place in the world in which groups of humans were
advancing. Still, there was no question that in terms of technological and
social development, Atlantis in the Tenth Millennium B.C. was the most
advanced society on the planet, solidily into what we would call a ‘Bronze
Age’ level of technical ability by 9000 B.C. [2]

It should be noted that the Atlanteans were still ruled by the same being who
had led them to Atlantis in the first place. The Avatars, as noted above, are
immortal, unless they die by violence, starvation or other ‘unnatural’ cause.
During this period, he refined his skills, learning how to use his own powers more
efficiently, and he also began to teach some of those skills to others, to those
among his mortal followers who proved capable of learning them.

It was here that the Atlanteans began to seriously diverge, as a race, from the
track the rest of the world was on.

Among the gifts wielded by the Eldest was the ability, initially used only in a
half-conscious way, to sense latent psionic potentials in others, especially
in ‘ordinary’ members of the species H. sapiens. One of the things that
the Eldest had chosen his initial followers for was this potential, though he had
himself at the time only a dim grasp of just what it was he sought. Later, with
experience and understanding, he came to grasp the at least some mortals had
the innate potential to wield powers of the same sort as his own, within limits
of nature and intensity.

In Atlantis, even as the Eldest refined and increased his own native powers, he
began to train his followers in the same skills, or those of his skills which they
were capable of learning. [3]

The powers possessed by his trained followers were never more than a tiny and
pale fraction of the power their ruler commanded. This was rarely a source of
difficulty, however, it seemed natural enough to them that their immortal ruler
would be possessed of powers beyond those of mortal subjects.

Though progress was slow at first, the Atlanteans did begin to learn how to use
their potential psi-talents. They were already psionically stronger than the
average population of the Earth, since that was part of what had led their chief
to choose his followers. The Atlanteans therefore had a genetic ‘head start’ in
the effort to master psionic abilities. [4]

They advanced in other areas as well, of course. They developed bronze well
ahead of anyone else, as we have noted. They had once of the first systems of
writing ever created on Earth, though it might not be the very oldest. As they
were developing in extreme isolation, the Atlanteans were moving along a path
unlike that of any other population in the Antediluvian Age.

MORE LATER.

[1] In my gaming world, the accepted history of the world, both lay and academic,
in 2010 is the same as it is in the real world. It’s just that in my world, that history
is incomplete and sometimes wrong.

[2] In GURPS 3e terms, they were in at TL1 in 9000 B.C.

[3] Some of the psychic abilities possessed by the Avatars are unique to them, and
not present in ‘normal’ Homosapients.

[4] Psionic potential has a definite and significant hereditary component.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

One interesting side-effect of the combination of the excellent volcanic
soil, relatively mild climate, and the Atlanteans own growing psi-talents
(which made them unusually effective farmers), was that they
consistently had what were, for the tine, excellent harvests. Even the
poorest Atlanteans rarely went hungry. On top of that, their diets
contained plentiful fruits of various sorts from the native trees of
the island (and later from orchards), and they obtained a large percentage
of their calories from meat protein, both wild game and later domestic
animals (especially goats at first, a strain bred from wild Atlantean
goats). Atlantis was also rich with various forms of edible fowl.

This had the result that the Atlanteans tended to be somewhat taller, as well
rather stronger, and rather healthier than the majority of the H. sapiens
population of the world at that time. Between their plentiful and varied diets
and the fact that they were fairly well-insulated from most contagious
diseases, the average life-span of the Atlanteans rose notably in comparison
with the planetary average for Homo sapiens at that time. Simple old
age became the most common cause of death among the Atlanteans.

Naturally, the early Atlanteans did not immediately build cities. They settled
near the edges of the great central plain at first, viewing the central cone
with a certain superstitious dread, as we have noted. But as time passed and
their population grew, they spread inward across the plain, and outward into
other smaller valleys and plains as well.

As the population of Atlantis grew so did the complexity of their society.
What started out as a fairly basic late paleolithic tribal grouping, exceptional
only in their leadership, grew over time first into an agricultural community,
and then later into blossoming towns.

The first towns were along the edges of the sea on the Eastern Plain, but later,
they moved toward the center of the Plain, drawn by the dead volcano itself,
and by the ores and material they discovered that they could mine from it. The
Eldest, as we have noted, set up his primary dwelling on this ancient cinder
cone, and what began as a large tent grew over centuries into a large and very
complex and well-constructed stone palace.

The central volcano was not terribly high, but was broader than Plato had it,
over a mile wide at the base. It was indeed surrounded by a ring lake, like a
moat, this rough circle of water filled a natural depression that had formed
around the edges of the cinder cone. Other depressions a little further away
held bodies of what that were not initially connected to each other.

Furthermore, the hot and cold springs existed, as we have noted already.

The emerging Atlantean society, in this ancient, emerging time, could not by
any means be called a democracy. All power was held by the Eldest, or in
his name, he was the ultimate font of all political and legal authority, no one
could possess any form of political authority absent the sanction of the Eldest.
Immortal, possessed of vast telepathic and psychokinetic powers, highly
intelligent and when necessary ruthless, the Eldest was a very effective ruler.

Naturally, as the population grew and the emerging society spread out across
Atlantis, and the complexity of the society grew, the Eldest could not govern
every aspect of life personally. The authority of a tribal chieftain had to
grow over time into the authority of a monarch, and that monarch could
not be everywhere at once. The Eldest required subordinates to whom he
could delegate power, and whom he could trust to act in his name.

The solution to this came of the fact that the Eldest was fully capable of
siring children with mortal women, and did so often. The Eldest generally
had at least one mortal wife, and sometimes more than one such, as well
as concubines, and sired children on both. [1]

These children were invariably gifted with psychic power greater than the
norm even in Atlantis, power inherited from their immortal parent. Add to
this the careful training their father could provide, and these individuals
could wield power no other person in Atlantis could match, save their own
father, who was mightier by far than any of them.

Of course, all such offspring, as is the nature of their case, shared in
one disadvantage as well: all were genetically sterile.

MORE LATER.

[1] The terms ‘wife’ and ‘concubine’ are used loosely, naturally, to translate
their role and social status in Atlantean society.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The emerging political system was actually quite practical, and stable, in
much because the sheer power of the Eldest made him nearly impossible
to overcome by any rebel. Along with that, that age of the Eldest, and
the fact that he had ruled the Atlanteans literally throughout the history,
from before the days when the came to Atlantis, made the idea of any
sort of rebellion against his authority very nearly unthinkable. It became
culturally difficult for the Atlanteans to even imagine their society
absent the rule of the Eldest.

With his ability to sire sterile, but powerful and intelligent, offspring to
act as his lieutenants, it was possible for the Eldest to expand and evolve
his role from chieftain to absolute monarch.

Atlantis, as its society grew in population and sophistication, came to be
divided into ten regions, centered on the central mountain spine, these
regions were the primary political subdivision of the Great Isle, though
they were far from equal in territory, wealth, population, or resources.

Each of these ten ‘provinces’ was ruled by a particular offspring of the
Eldest, while the great eastern plain, and its emerging capitol city, were
under the direct rule of the monarch. Since the local viceroys were all
sterile, they could not found dynasties of their own. Instead, those who
were successful and capable and loyal would rule for a century or two,
and then retire or die in office and be replaced by a new child of the Eldest.

Along with these ten provinces, there were secondary levels of power,
such as the lords of individual cities, the heads of various sorts of guilds
and organizations, leaders of the small Atlantean army (really more of a
police force at this stage of history), etc. These positions, too, tended to
be filled by the sons and daughters of the Eldest, and it was from among
the most successful of these positions that the nine viceroys were chosen
by their father to rule the various provinces.

(Incompetent offspring were usually assigned lesser work, disloyal or
rebellious ones rarely survived long enough to matter.)

It was in this period of rule by the Eldest and his long-lived offspring that
another of the differences between Atlantis and the other emerging realms
and nations of the Antediluvian Age emerged. The Eldest did not have
any hesitation in appointing his female offspring to positions of power,
and their psionic strength and life-span were no less than those of their
various brothers. This early experience of great political and social power
in the hands of females made the Atlantean culture far more accepting of
female power and position than most other societies of the age.

By modern Western standards, the Atlanteans of this time would seem to
be chauvinistic and reactionary, by the standards of the ancient world, and
most Homosapient civilizations at TL1, the Atlanteans were egalitarian
with regard to the sexes.

The emerging psionic power of the Atlantean population became a key
social status marker, greater powers, and greater skill with those abilities,
marked a person as notable and important, and such people tended, over
time, to marry others like themselves, increasing their social status and
the importance of the psionic power that was partly hereditary. The fact
of this importance led to a great deal of effort to improve skills, work led
and approved by the Eldest himself. His own innate powers and skills
were still growing, and he was mastering new techniques as the centuries
passed. Some of these techniques were adaptable for used by mortal psions.

As the centuries passed, the initially limited and halting psionic powers of
the Atlanteans grew, becoming more powerful, more extensive, vastly more
subtle and sophisticated, and far more commonplace. The Atlanteans were
emerging as a race of psions, in a culture placing high value on these powers
and on accomplishment with such abilities.

As time passed, these powers enabled them to accomplish feats far beyond
what their mid-TL2 (at that time) technology should have enabled them to
manage, especially once they mastered the technique of creating psionic
‘gestalts', mental unions capable of greatly amplifying individual powers.

Pyrokinesis enabled them to extract small quantities of ore from hard rock,
and to melt and work metals superior to bronze, including, eventually,
small amounts of iron for weapons and armor and tools.

Gestalt-amplified TK enabled them to build large structures out of heavy
stone, to transport loads easily, etc. Their mostly subconscious precognitive
abilities tended to function as 'superintuition'. This enabled them to find
ore deposits, good water, the best soil, etc. It also enabled them to advance
their technology anomalously fast in some areas.

Telepathy made communications easy, and eventually Atlantis was linked
together by a telepathic network that made communication in Atlantis possible
with an ease that would not be matched again until the late 19th Century.

The Eldest also discovered something else, something that would revolutionize
Atlantean society. A fragment of the vast knowledge of his dormant symbiotic
partner led him to recognize the existence of 'orichalcum'. This was a unique
substance, occurring in nature but normally buried deep in the planetary mantle
on Earth. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as a zone of sea-floor spreading, in part
as a side-effect of the former Eldren tampering that had brought Atlantis
into being to begin with, sometimes brought small amounts of the material
to the upper levels, and thus it was that occasional small deposits of orichalcum
could be found in Atlantis (and also in Iceland, though they didn't yet know
that).

Orichalcum is not conventional matter, it doesn't fit anywhere on the periodic
table. In my background, it has a nucleus in which protons and neutrons
are interspersed and sometimes replaced with more exotic particles that the
Standard Model doesn't even recognize in 2010. The electron shells are
fairly conventional, giving it surface properties similar to copper, save that
it is about thirty percent lighter than copper, and glows bright red in sunlight.

The red glow is the result of ultraviolet light, being converted by the material
into red light. Thus, most forms of artificial light do not produce that red
glow. In ancient Atlantis, the only serious source of UV was the Sun.

Orichalcum could be alloyed into metals, producing lighter alloys of bronze
with greater strength, or it could be alloyed with iron to make a truly peculiar
form of steel. But they never had enough of it for large scale use in weapons
or armor, though an impure alloy of it was used for decoration in the most
expensive and most important places.

What made orichalcum really important to Atlantis was that it had
various weird properties when it interacted with psionics. For example,
used one way, it could be used to amplify the effect of psychokinesis, making
it easier to manipulate, heat, or chill large masses. Used in a different way,
it could be used to amplify, or to screen against, telepathy or extra-sensory
perception. Still other applications were also possible, some of them subtle.

It has been observed, however, the nature seems to trend toward making life
harder. The orichalcum of Atlantis, for all its utility, was not an exception to
this general rule. The very psi-active properties that made orichalcum so
valuable also made it spectacularly dangerous to try to mine and refine using
the psionic techniques that made other forms of mining so much easier and
more efficient for the Atlanteans.

The Atlanteans had mastered techniques using psionic power to locate, mine,
and refine various metals. Extra-sensory perception could be used to find
the richest veins, the best sites to mine. Telekinesis could be used to extract
ore, pyrokinesis to melt rock and separate the constituents, cryokinesis to
chill materials rapidly, telepathy made mining safer by making communication
between the miners almost trivially easy.

None of these techniques were applicable to the mining of orichalcum. This
wondrous material had to be mined and refined by the conventional techniques
of TL2, which made for back-breakingly difficult, dangerous, slow, and very
expensive work. The Orichalcum Guild was born in this age, among the miners
who sweated, toiled, and sometimes died to provide the material on which the
advancing Atlantean Civilization so depended.

Their deposits of orichalcum, once they figured out how to extract and
use it, combined with their own ever-growing psi powers, created
something approximating an industrial revolution in Atlantis.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The account of Plato report that the ancient Atlanteans were skilled
mariners. In the fullness of time, the ancient Atlanteans did indeed
become skilled mariners, their ships would penetrate every sea and
land on every coast, but this came in a later time, as with all things,
the Atlantean maritime tradition had a beginning.

The Atlanteans had originally arrived in Atlantis by sea, in crude
boats of hide and wood. Over the following centuries, as the original
tribe grew into a sophisticated and increasingly urban society,
they never did entirely forget that. This was partly from a long
cultural memory, and also because their ruler, the Eldest, could
personally remember those times.

As time went on, the Atlanteans began to use boats again. They used
small boats to travel the rivers of the island, and a bit later slightly
larger boats to fish off the coasts, and to reach the smaller islands
associated with the major landmass of Atlantis. Some of those
islands were close enough to be easily visible to the naked eye from
Atlantis itself, a few were further away (but not very far, they were
all part of the same volcanic system).

A further incentive to develop seafaring came as they spread over the
island, into other valleys and regions. Atlantis was highly mountainous,
and at times it was actually easier and faster to take a boat and sail
around the island rather than try to cross the very mountainous
central region of the island. The 'Central Plain' was actually very
much confined to the eastern side of the island, the actual center of
Atlantis was very mountainous, with few passes or useful trails.

The Atlantean tendency to rely on their growing psionic powers turned
up here, as well. In an application of psychokinesis akin to levitation,
the Atlanteans learned to apply a psionic force to propel their boats.
They also mastered various ways to harness the wind. As their
seamanship improved, they learned to combine wind power and psionic
power efficiently, using them together or alternating them as the case
demanded. The passage of time saw the design of the sails grow ever
more sophisticated, the ships ever more seaworthy.

While they were developing their seafaring skills, they also developed
tremendous skills in woodworking, and stone carving. The ability to
move multi-ton weights long distances using gestalts enabled them to
build buildings like no other on Earth at that time. Their greatest
city, built around the dead volcano in the Central Plain, grew
steadily more comfortable, elaborate, and beautiful, with wood and
stone used in ways undreamed of by the rest of the world at the time.

In part because of their psi powers, and in part due to the fragments
of knowledge the Eldest had, the Atlanteans began to excel in biology.
They mastered the basics of Mendelian genetics, and became quite
skillful at selective breeding. They were able to produce improved
varieties of their basic staple crops, and they also bred 'better'
(from the human point of view) forms of wood for construction and
shipbuilding, as well.

The discovery of orichalcum, and its psionic properties, multiplied
their abilities at least by an order of magnitude overall. It was
during the heady times of the 'orichalcum revolution' that an
enterprising shipwright thought to incorporate a mesh of orichalcum
wire into the hull of a wooden ship, with the mess containing larger
nodules of orichalcum alloys as well. This had the effect of making
the ship effectively lighter than it really was, as far as PK was
concerned. By putting a gestalt of strong psychokinetic psions aboard
to propel it, along with a good set of sails, his shipwright created the
first of the Atlantean wide-ocean vessels, capable of rapidly
travelling at high speed across the Atlantic to Europe and Africa on
one side, and North and South America on the other. The long
isolation of the Atlanteans was over.

This ship, crewed by psionically powerful seamen and commanded
by a son of the Eldest himself, made the first intentional journey
away from Atlantis in ages. A few others had of course made abortive
attempts at sea travel, but they didn't know where they were going, or
what they were doing, and hadn't returned. This ship, on the other hand,
returned to Atlantis after making a journey to what we today know
as Europe, even penetrating a short distance into the Mediterranean
Sea, and sailing along the western coast of Africa, as it was then.

However, it should be noted that this was merely the first such voyage
made by intent. There had been at least one successful (by some
definitions of ‘successful’) oceanic voyage beyond Atlantis before,
this one made not by intent but by accident...and thereby hangs a tale.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Before we discuss the interaction of Atlantis and the outside world, however,
a little more should be said of the Great Isle and its people and culture, to
set the stage for later developments.

The Great Isle had a rich and flourishing ecosystem in the period before the
arrival of Man. The volcanic soils were rich, the climate varied from warm
to tolerable throughout much of the island, save in the upper north reaches,
and a rich flora was present. In the upper altitudes, conifers of a variety of
species dominated, the lowlands were covered by a thick deciduous forest
derived primarily from North American ancestry, though some European
and African species were to be found as well. Many familiar species of
deciduous tree were present, as well as some evolved specifically to Atlantis.

(There were also plants evolved in Atlantis that would later be spread to
the rest of the world by the Atlanteans, commonplace plants with an
unsuspected exotic source.)

Animal life on the Great Isle derived, as might be expected, from both
Europe and North America as primary sources, along with a few species
of South American origin. There were also some species present on the
Great Isle that ought not, logically, to have been expected to be present
there. The reason for these ‘out of place’ species will be made clear later.

Many birds common to the continents to both east and west were present,
and some had evolved to become flightless in the relatively secure environs
of the Great Isle. Among the species present on the Great Isle at the time
of the arrival of the first settlers in 9453 B.C. were chickens, doves, hawks,
eagles, crows, and three different, non-interfertile species of turkey, one
of which sometimes grew to nearly the size of an ostrich and filled a grazing
herbivore niche in some isolated reaches of the western side of Atlantis.
Also to be found were local varieties of duck, goose, and

Land animals were not as varied and numerous on the isolated Great Isle
as they were in the Americas and Eurasia/Africa, as was to be expected.
Still, a variety of goat had somehow made the crossing to Atlantis, long
enough in the prehistoric past to evolve to suit the conditions, becoming
smaller and adapting to the mountainous central reaches. Other natives
of Atlantis was an island-adapted cousin of the North American squirrel,
and a cousin of the European wild pig.

Predators were scarcer on the Great Isle than the mainland, the top predator
(prior to the arrival of Man) being the Atlantean ‘russet bear’ (Ursus
americanus atlanticus), a subspecies of the North American black bear.
This Atlantean subspecies was slightly smaller than their cousins, and had
a fairly uniform reddish tinge to their fur (a limited genetic base). They
were also somewhat more aggressive than their North American relatives,
though this proved to be a less than ideal trait in dealing with humans.

The Great Isle, oddly, was entirely free of snakes, even snakes akin to the
ocean-going species. It was, however, home to several distinctive species
of spider, some of them extremely venomous, and some of them large,
some of them both. One particular genetic line produced species both tiny
and large, but all possessed a venom so intense as to surpass the black
widow, a single bite was often fatal in the days before psionic healing
and other defenses became common.

The largest of these Atlantean spiders could be as large as a grape, and
so large a problem were they in the early days of the Atlantean culture
that they left a permanent imprint on the language and iconography of
the Atlanteans. [1]

There was also a species of honeybee native to the Great Isle, cousin
to the North American version, and one of the first native creatures the
Atlanteans began to domesticate and breed for honey. Honey would be
the primary source of concentrated sugar in the Atlantean diet for some
millennia after the foundation of the Atlantean society.

The Atlanteans domesticated the native goats, breeding them for meat,
hide, and milk, as well as several of the local birds. They consumed
squirrels for meat as well, but never truly domesticated them.

Of course, the Atlanteans had access to the fish and other creatures of
the sea around the Great Isle, and it was fishing that first drew the men
of Atlantis back out onto the oceans, further and further outward as
their skills and sea-faring technology improved.

It was such a fishing vessel, setting out shortly before dawn on what
would otherwise be a perfectly ordinary day in Atlantis, that would go
on to found, quite without intending it, the first Atlantean colony to
rise up beyond the shores of the Great Isle.

MORE LATER.


[1] One of the deadliest curses/personal insults in the Atlantean language
would translate into modern English almost precisely as ‘spiders take
him/her/them/you’. This endured long after the time that the spiders were
a serious problem, indeed right up to the time of the Great Cataclysm.