Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The fishing vessel in question would seem large and elaborate to modern
Western eyes, given the technology and social level of the Atlanteans, it
was over twenty meters long and carried over one hundred crewmen. This
was a side-effect of their technology, however. These early Atlantean
vessels were sailing ships, for the most part, and had elaborate and complex
arrangements of sails to get the maximum value out of the wind, but they
also incorporated a mesh of properly alloyed and prepared orichalcum, a
feature that enabled the ships to be more efficiently propelled using the
psionic power of psychokinesis.

This, in turn, made a large crew desirable, since the more psions engaged
in the effort, the more effective psychokinetic propulsion could became.
The skills of these early Atlantean mariners included those to be expected
of ocean-going sailors, but also advanced psychic skills, especially those
related to the formation of psychic gestalts and specialized use of such
powers as psychokinesis. [1]

A large crew required a larger ship, which forced Atlantean shipbuilding
to advance much further, relative to their basic technology level, than
was seen in comparable societies either in the Antediluvian or later. [2]

These ships, when combined with the psychic power that the Atlanteans
were increasingly developing and mastering, were very effective tools for
fishing, able to maintain enormous nets, and pursue the fish as needed in
the waters of the northern Atlantic. They could also endure harsher and
colder weather than most ships of their comparable level of technology.

(Needless to say, the Atlantean diet was seafood heavy.)

This particular vessel set out before dawn, as noted above, on a routine
fishing expedition, heading eastward from their home port in the Great
Isle, in a time we today would call late September.

Perhaps someone had noticed, before they set out, that the winds were
strange for the time of year, but if so the history of that Age did not make
any later mention of the fact. Perhaps no one noticed.

Still, it was indeed so, the winds over the northern Atlantic were blowing
in an atypical pattern, and as a result, a massive hurricane that had come
into being in that region we today call the Caribbean Sea was being taken
far to the east of the ‘typical’ paths followed by such storms. A potent
storm, it had already swept through the islands of the Caribbean (still all
unknown to the Atlanteans at this time), battered the southeastern coast
of North America, and then been swept eastward toward Atlantis by the
odd change in the high-altitude winds.

Only a few days after the ship in question had set out, this storm swept
across the southern reaches of Atlantis, and inflicted enormous damage.
Caught by surprise (their psychic senses were powerful, but not even
the Eldest was omniscient), the Atlanteans lost thousands of lives to the
storm when all was said and done. [3]

Along with the deaths on land, most of the fishing vessels in the waters
off the coast of the Great Isle were lost, or at least those near the southern
end of the Isle suffered that fate. The particular ship with which we
are concerned, however, escaped that fate due to a fateful combination
of luck and skill and power. The luck was that the ship happened to
be lying out of the main path of the monster storm, and the crew of
this ship was unusually skilled, made up of some of the most seasoned
and experienced fishermen in the fleet, and led by an unusually able
and capable captain. It also so happened that the psionic power to be
found among them was greater than typical for most of the fishing ships.

As a result of this combination, this particular vessel survived the storm,
but they were blown far off course, to the south and east, by the time
the storm had passed and the leaks were patched and the wounds were
treated (as best they could under the circumstances), they were quite lost.

MORE LATER.


[1] In GURPS 3e terms, this involved a skill akin to levitation, M/VH,
levitation and telekinesis being required prerequisite skills.

[2] At this time, Atlantis was about TL2, but their shipbuilding was in
advance of what would be expected for that level. The same skill was
used on land in Atlantis to drive mechanical contrivances that could
alternate between wind power (windmills) and psionic power.

[3] Along with the storm proper, with its winds and rains, there were
floods, mudslides, and much of the harvest for that year was damaged,
the deaths included those deaths that arose from second-order effects.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The survivors had no idea where they were, how far from home they were,
or even of what direction home lay. They were far beyond the telepathic
range of even the strongest psion aboard, their extra-sensory perceptions
were defeated by the distance, the fear, and the confusion of their situation,
they simply had no idea how to get back to Atlantis.

Their ship was heavily damaged, the survivors were exhausted and short
of provision, many were wounded, and even if they had known how to
get home, they had no way to know if their damaged vessel could make
the journey. They were, however, close enough to land of some kind that
the extra-sensory perceptions of some of the more sensitive aboard could
detect it, and so they set out for that unknown coast, and made landfall
a few days later, in a totally unfamiliar region of the world.

They were able, at least, to take on fresh water, though the area seemed to
be fairly dry and harsh, they found some small rivers and streams. They
also encountered local natives who proved to be quite hostile as well, and
though they were more than a match for the non-psionic, less advanced
locals one-on-one, they were hopelessly outnumbered. Seeking a safer
refuge, the Atlanteans took sail again, keeping close to land as they sailed
to the east, following the coastline ever further into terra incognita.

Their ship was rapidly declining, they dared not sail far from the coast,
and their own strength was limited by their wounds, exhaustion, and
confusion. They could still propel their vessel psychokinetically, but
only slowly, and at great effort because of the damage to the orichalcum
‘web’ that was incorporated into the hull.

Periodically they put ashore to seek shelter, food, and water, and found
the second two more easily than the first, the lands alongside which the
ship was passing were mostly inhabited, and the inhabitants seemed to
be uniformly primitive (in comparison to Atlantis) and uniformly hostile.
Slowly but steadily they continued to move eastward.

Though they did not know this, they were moving steadily away from
Atlantis as they traveled. The hurricane had taken them south and east,
and they had actually managed to pass through what we now know as the
Straits of Gibraltar in the course of their subsequent wanderings. The ship
was now moving along the southern coast of Europe, though those coasts
were not exactly the same as they would later be, because of the then
lower global sea level.

It so happened that at that time, the eastern regions around what is now the
Mediterranean Sea were inhabited by a different tribal superculture than
was the case in the western regions, and as they moved eastward the lost
Atlanteans found a warmer welcome in some places, less hostility. This
was welcome, though often unreliable, because by now the survivors were
reasonable sure that they were not going to be able to return to their homes.

Eventually, their ship had deteriorated to the point that further travels were
effectively impossible, and the survivors of the great storm were forced to
settle where they were, which was on the coast of that body of water later
to be known as the Aegean Sea, not so far from the modern city of Athens.


MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Plato tells us that Socrates was informed by Critias that Solon was told
by an Egyptian long ago...

...in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your
land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and
your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which
survived...

and also that...

...Solon, your country shown forth, in the excellence of her virtue and
strength, among all mankind. She was preeminent in courage and military
skill...

Well, actually that came later, and that's not quite how it happened.
We can address that later, however.

The community founded by the survivors of the storm-lost Atlantean fishing
vessel was barely more than a village. They cannibalized their vessel for
some materials, and established what amounted to a tiny fishing village in
what we now call the Attic Peninsula. When they had departed from their
home port in Atlantis, there had been one hundred twenty people aboard
the vessel, when the voyage finally ended, about ninety of them remained.

That ought, by any rational expectation, to have been the end of the story,
ninety or so castaways, cut off from their home and its base of knowledge
and technology, ought to have, at best, merged into the surrounding peoples
and faded from history, assuming they survived at all. By any plausible
standard, that is what ought to have happened...but every now and then, an
improbable sequence of events unfolds.

The ninety survivors were young men, relatively speaking, with exceptional
psionic power even by Atlantean standards. It also so happened that among
them were some who had, along with their knowledge of seafaring skills, the
basic skills of farming and a few other things. Atlantean culture of that time
emphasized versatility. They were able to survive, by fishing and crude but
workable farming, and they married women among the local tribes of
primitives. Their offspring inherited much of the psionic power that was the
birthright of Atlantean ancestry.

Sometimes the mixed heritage resulted in weaker powers, sometimes there
was little difference, sometimes, occasionally, the genetic lottery produced a
winner in the mixed heritage, a child or grandchild of greater power than the
Atlantean average. This last was unusual, however.

The average Atlantean life-span, in this time, was about one hundred and fifty
years. This extended span was the result of the application of psionic power
to stave off aging, and the sailors who had come to rest in prehistoric Greece
were perfectly capable of using it, and teaching it to their offspring. As their
wives passed on, these men usually married again, and the result was a small
but thriving community of powerful, long-lived psions of mixed Atlantean and
local heritage, even their language became a ‘mix’ of the two ancestral tongues.

Naturally, retaining the relatively advanced technological skills of Atlantis
was out of the question. While the castaways and their children and their
grandchildren retained the psionic power of their Atlantean heritage, and
much of the associated skill, the technological knowledge could not be so
retained. One century after the foundation of the tiny village, the number
of psions had risen to over two hundred, but their level of technology was
no higher than that of the surrounding cultures. [1]

Two centuries after the arrival of the castaways, the original Atlanteans
were all deceased, but their descendants, including a rising generation
of great-great-grandchildren, retaining most of their ancestral psionic
power, now numbered well over six hundred people. The psionic power
and skill they possessed multiplied the effective size of their population,
enabling them to have a far greater impact on their surroundings than
would be expected of such a small group.

The psychic population became the center of a growing new culture, a
mix of Atlantean and local cultures, beliefs, and languages, dominated
by the psions but with a surrounding shell of members, relatives, and
associated tribes. This was the situation when the next ship arrived from
Atlantis, some few centuries after the castaways had first set out.

MORE LATER.


[1] Low TL1.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The fishing vessel was blown off course in the year we today would call
6250 B.C., and came to rest in the eastern Mediterranean about a year later.
This was a time just prior to the opening of the great age of Atlantean
seafaring, with the lone exception of our lost fishing ship, no Atlantean
vessel had yet reached any other land; though their technology, both mundane
and paraphysical, was now quite adequate for the task, the will was not
quite in place...yet.

Atlantis, The Golden Age...

The Atlanteans of the seventh millennium B.C. were not crowded, the Isle
was well-populated, after about thirty-six hundred years of settlement,
but far from impoverished. The soil of Atlantis was fertile, fresh water
was reasonably plentiful, the government was relatively competent, the
society cohesive, the farmers and artisans capable and skilled. Atlantis
was, by any reasonable measure, capable of continuing to exist as a
fully self-contained society, drawing on the safety and resources of the Isle.

The ‘mundane’ technology of Atlantis was the most advanced on Earth in
the sixth century B.C. In almost every area, they were well in advance of
the other emerging cultures of that age around the world (about which we
shall learn more in due time), but especially in agriculture, metallurgy,
stonemasonry, mathematics, medicine, animal breeding and handling,
construction, mining and related work, and literacy Atlantis was far
ahead of the other cultures of the time. [1]

Considering the psionic powers available to the Atlanteans, and the related
paraphysical applications of those powers, the Atlanteans were even more
powerful in comparison to their (still unknown) rival cultures. By this time,
after thousands of years of not-entirely-planned selective breeding, practice,
and study, the Atlanteans had developed the first high-psionic culture in
the history of the Earth, indeed, no Homosapient culture in the history of
the Greater Milky Way had ever developed psionic power and skill to such
a fine edge, there had never been such a culture before in galactic history.

Individual Atlanteans possessed significant psionic power, but they had
discovered early that it was possible to greatly increase the power of an
individual by combining multiple minds into fused wholes, integrated in
such a way as to enable many powers to work as one. [2]

In some cases, the Atlanteans could combined hundreds of powerful
minds into a single gestalt to engage in megaprojects. This had been done
only sporadically over the years up until about this time, but now the mood
in Atlantis was changing, the Atlanteans were becoming aware of their
own power and potential, and beginning to ponder ways to make use of
that power. Led by the Eldest, but with much initiative from his mortal
subjects, they began to apply their power to change the Great Isle.

Around the central cinder cone in the middle of the great eastern plain,
there had always been a circular lake, now the Atlanteans, wielding the
vast psychokinetic power available to them through their gestalts, opted
to smooth out the shores of that lake, and carve into a perfect circle
around the cinder cone, with symmetrical edges.

Not long after completing this project, wielding those paraphysical and
mundane skills they had mastered, they began carving out connections
between the other lakes dotted around the cinder cone, literally carving
out two more circular, symmetrical lakes, separated by rings of land.
Three such lakes came into being, with two great rings of land around
the central island-cone. Over these symmetrical lakes the Atlanteans
erected bridges, initially of wood and stone, later of metal and glass.

Around the outer lake rose a city, the largest city on Earth in those times,
but there were other cities in Atlantis nearly as populous and wealthy.

The great eastern plain was ringed by cliffs, many of them quite sheer,
rising up on all sides but the east, where the plain was open to the sea.
This coast was many miles from the central cone and its surrounding
city, however, and a secondary port-town rose where the plain came to
the sea, here the fishing fleet moored and the cargo vessels which used
the sea to move cargoes around the Isle loaded and unloaded, and it was
from this secondary city that the ship that would break the long isolation
of Atlantis set sail, over a century after the storm-cast fishing ship set out.

MORE LATER.



[1] In GURPS 3e terms, the Atlanteans of this age were high TL2 in most
areas, and had achieved TL3 in a few areas.

[2] In GURPS 3e terms, a ‘psychic gestalt’. The Atlanteans had mastered
the necessary skill to create truly large and powerful gestalts. (In my modified
3e psi system, there are normally limits to how many minds can join in a
gestalt, but with the right skills that can be overcome. The Atlanteans had
just those skills by this point in time.)

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The time that the first official exploratory ship went out was a time of
great projects, great efforts, the Atlanteans were in a 'heroic mood', to
borrow a phrase used by a President of the United States many millennia
later. After they carved out the circular lakes at the center of their capitol
city, which we shall call Atlantica for convenience, they turned their
attention to the agricultural activities that continued to occupy most of the
eastern circular plain, even after Atlantica rose at the center.

Though this plain, actually the top of a volcanic structure, was far smaller
than Plato would have it, the accounts of the philosopher were quite right
about the circular irrigation lake around the edge of the plain. The great
round, or actually oval, plain was about twenty miles by thirty miles, and
in a vast effort of psionic power and mining skill, the Atlanteans carved
out yet another circular body of water around the rim of the plain, fed by
rivers and streams flowing down from the surrounding mountain-walls,
providing both the perfect source of water for irrigation activities and the
additional benefit of flood control.

(One problem that had long plagued the farmers and settlers on the great
plain had been the occasional floods that exceptionally rainy years could
bring. They did not happen often, but when they did, they could be quite
devastating to crops and property and public safety.)

This irrigation reservoir was indeed about one hundred eighty meters in
width through most of its length, and about thirty meters deep. It was
far smaller than Plato would have it, of course, because of the smaller
actual size of the plain, but it was still a substantial reservoir, and it was
a major effort of time, psionic power, and money for the Atlanteans to
create such a thing. The effort absorbed over fifty years of difficult work.

It was at just about the time that this reservoir was completed that the ship
that would make the first intentional, official transoceanic voyage out of
Atlantis set sail, in the early spring of 6038 B.C. This ship had been over
two years in the building, and incorporated most of what the Atlanteans
had learned in their previous experiences in the waters near the Great Isle,
and it was commanded by a son of the Eldest and crewed by some of the
most capable and well-trained members of the Atlantean ‘military’. [1]

It also carried, as work animals, several trained Atlantean Elephants. [2]

MORE LATER.

[1] At this time, the Atlanteans did not really have an army as such, and
certainly not a navy. The Isle had been at peace with itself for thousands
of years, ruled by the Eldest and his offspring, political revolution was
nearly impossible and indeed almost unthinkable, they had the protection
of the Eastern Atlantic and Western Atlantic Oceans (to translate their
terms into something we would recognize) from all enemies, and so all
they really had was a well-armed police force and service corps.

[2] The account of Plato correctly recognized that there were indeed
elephants, of a sort, in Atlantis, but not of the sort with which he and the
ancient Hellenes were familiar. The Atlantean Elephant, Elephantidae
Elesavante plato, was a smaller but more intelligent genus/species, about
the size of a modern horse, adapted to island life.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The ship that set forth from the port sailed first due east, and then turned
south, beginning what a later age would refer as its 'shakedown' voyage.
This consisted of a circumnavigation of the Great Isle, something many
previous vessels had done. It was intended to work out the little problems
that any new vessel would display, to find the hidden flaws, to let the
crew learn to work together, and practice their ability to work as a group
in both the mundane and psychic aspects of their duties.

After the initial and successful circumnavigation of Atlantis, the exploratory
vessel turned eastward. This direction was chosen for various reasons.
To begin with, the ‘central plain’ and primary port city of Atlantis was
on the eastern side of the Great Isle. For another, it was remembered by
the Atlanteans in the dim mists of their past, through oral history and then
later in texts, that their ancestors had come to Atlantis from the east. This
story was confirmed by the living memory of their immortal ruler, who
had led that ancient Stone Age tribe to Atlantis over three millennia before.

The journey eastward was uneventful, their vessel was well-designed and
well-constructed and the crew competent, and after a journey of some weeks,
propelled by favorable winds and psychokinetic power, they made the first
intentional landfall by an Atlantean outside the Isle in millennia. The site
where they landed, a fertile and rich area, was dry land then, but would in
a later age be under the waters of the North Sea.

The first contact between the exploratory party from Atlantis and the natives
of that land we now call Europe was less than entirely happy. Indeed,
as the accidental explorers aboard the storm-tossed fishing ship a century
before had found, the tribal superculture that then ruled western Europe
was almost fanatically hostile toward outsiders of any stripe. The first
contact between the two groups consisted of a ferocious attack on the
Atlantean explorers by a much larger force of armed natives.

Unlike the storm-tossed castaways that had been driven from landing
to landing by the cousins of these tribes a century before, this part was
made of up armed Atlanteans led by an offspring of the Eldest, and
they were fresh, well-equipped, and trained in combat.

Though the attackers outnumbered the Atlanteans by a ratio of at least
seven to one, and had an initial edge of surprise, the Atlanteans had
superior armor and weapons, powerful psionic abilities, and their
leader had power out of the scale of the other Atlanteans as an offspring
of the Eldest. The Atlanteans took some losses, before rally to
slaughter the attack force with such efficiency that the attackers broke
and ran within minutes of the beginning of the attack.

This initial encounter, unfortunately, would set the tone for several of
the subsequent encounters around what we now call Western Europe.
Still, the initial explorers were followed by more, driven by combination
of curiosity, greed, idealism, and restlessness. Once made sufficiently
aware of Atlantean combat superiority, the locals across the coastlands
of much of what is now western Europe began to deal more reasonably,
and it was discovered that trade held out considerable promise. The
various natives had access to resources rare or non-existent in Atlantis,
and Atlantis had much to offer in return.

Trade and interchange were not confined to Europe, shortly after the
ships first sailed to Europe, Atlanteans landed in northwestern
Africa, and then the eastern coast of North America and the islands
of what is now the Caribbean Sea. As the ships improved and the
skills of the Atlantean sailors increased, their ships sailed southward
from their bases in the Caribbean to what we call South America,
and where they went, they set up first outposts, then bases, and then
in time small towns and cities began to rise along the coasts.

Naturally, contact with the Atlanteans had an effect on the peoples of the
eastern Mediterranean basin (and also on the indigenous peoples of
the eastern coastlands of the Americas). The crude society of those
regions absorbed some limited skills and knowledge from the Atlanteans,
though the Atlanteans kept many of their more interesting ‘mundane’
technologies and techniques, to themselves. They did, however,
introduce certain agricultural techniques, and the Atlantean language
began to be spoken along with the native languages on both sides of the
Atlantic in the time between ~6150 BC and ~5500 BC.

MORE LATER.

[1] GURPS 3e late TL2/early TL3 as opposed to late TL0/early TL1.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The nascent Atlantean trading network expanded rapidly, and as new bases
and towns rose, and as Atlantean seafaring technology improved, the ships
reached further and further outward. Materials rare in Atlantis, such as gold,
silver, iron, (iron was to be found in Atlantis, but far less than was desired),
various spices, various foodstuffs, various addictives, all came flowing in
toward the Great Isle. Traders and settlers flowed outward, and the process
fed upon itself. Some traders and trading families grew quite wealthy from
the spoils and treasures the trading network produced.

Some one hundred years after the return of the first intentional exploratory
ship, an Atlantean exploratory vessel in the service of a trading family came
to anchor in a sheltered harborage in what we would call Attica. There, to
the startled shock of the explorers, they discovered a small village or town
in which the local inhabitants spoke a recognizable dialect of Atlantean.

This was, of course, the village founded by the survivors of the fishing ship
that had been blown from the waters around Atlantis by a freak hurricane,
over one hundred and ninety years before. The original Atlanteans were all
long-since dead, but some of the children, and many of the grandchildren
and great-grandchildren, continued to thrive in their accidental colony.

By this time, the community had grown to a large village of over six hundred
men and women, possessed of psionic power, the Atlantean language, and
writing (something the local indigenous culture did not possess). Naturally,
this community totally dominated the surrounding tribal population, and an
odd syncretic culture had grown up combining elements of Atlantean culture
(of two centuries previous) with the local customs and traditions of the natives.

This contact would have substantial future implications. In contact with
their Atlantean cousins, the descendents of the castaways were far better
positioned to profit from, and make use of, the knowledge and goods available
in trade from Atlantis than were any of their neighbors. Likewise, their
friendly and familiar contacts with the local population, and local knowledge,
made them valuable to their cousins from distant Atlantis as well. Though
this village was far from the main zone of Atlantean activity at that time,
it rapidly became a secondary center of trade and commerce because of their
kinship and the many connections between the two groups.

Over the course of another century, the village of six hundred souls would
grow by virtue of a high fertility rate, immigration from surrounding lands,
and a modest but steady stream of new arrivals from Atlantis itself, into a city
of over six thousand people, which was itself the center of a territorial domain
extending outward across much of what we today call the Grecian Peninsula
and the lands of Turkey. The waters we know as the Aegean Sea were totally
in the control of the small but capable fleet of sea ships operating out of the city.

The society emerging out of this settlement, the combination of Atlantean and
native influences, had its own names in the languages of the Antediluvian
Age. Plato would one day refer to it, with little foundation, as being a
predecessor of Athens. Though the physical location of this ancient city and
Athens were much the same, culturally they are literally ages apart. Still,
for convenience, we shall refer to this city as ProtoAthens, and the dominion
over which it ruled ‘Athenia’.

In this time, Athenia was small compared to what it would later become,
and relations with their cousins in Atlantis were good. Indeed, the rich
heritage of Atlantis was what made Athenia a greater power than the tribes
of their local cousins. Still, even in this early time, there were some points
of difference between Atlantis and Athenia that sometimes created tension.

To begin with, the Atlanteans were affected by their contact with the less
advanced peoples of the outside world, and not entirely in positive ways.
Any Atlantean, even a random person off the streets of an Atlantean city,
was possessed of psionic powers outside the ken of the peoples of the
more primitive lands of the continents. Add in the advantages of superior
diet and superior health care and Atlanteans were generally physically more
capable than the average native as well. They averaged taller, healthier,
and stronger even aside from the psychic power that was Atlantean birthright.

Their technology was far more advanced than that of the natives, in almost
all areas, their weaponry and armor made them superior in combat to forces
of indigenous warriors far superior in number, even aside from their psionic
advantages. Their society was literate and sophisticated.

It was probably inevitable that a certain sense of cultural superiority would
arise among the Atlanteans in light of these facts. Human nature changes but
little with the passage of time, after all.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

At first, the new sense of cultural superiority was more pronounced in the
colonies than it was on the Great Isle proper. It was in the face-to-face
contact between colonist and local that the difference between the two was
so starkly displayed, after all. With the passage of time, however, the tendency
fed back to Atlantis, and there is worsened, in isolation from the indigenous
peoples of the continents and in lack of contact with their strengths and
positive attributes. The Atlanteans were not yet contemptuous of the locals,
sometimes the new arrogance took the form of a patronizing condescension
instead, or simply of indifference to their wishes, but it was there.

In the colonies, matters were more complex, the stark superiority in innate
power of the Atlantean over the native was constantly on display in the new
city-states on the continental coasts, after all. On the other hand, daily
contact also softened edges and reminded the powerful Atlanteans that the
natives were more complex than the caricature commonly accepted at home.

In most of the Atlantean colonies, a class system emerged over the course
of a century or so, the details varying widely but with a few features in
common. Local natives tended to gravitate toward the colonies, trading
and settling near them, learning new skills, providing a labor force. Each of
the city-states was initially governed, like the cities and regions of the Great
Isle proper, by an offspring of the Eldest and one of his many mortal ‘wives’.
This meant that Atlantean law remained in effect in the colonies, which had
some important consequences for how the Atlanteans and natives interacted.

Atlantean law had no provision for what we would call slavery, or at least, it
not exactly. Atlantis had never really practiced slavery, except as a punishment
for crimes not severe enough to rate death. Traditionally, truly heinous crime
in Atlantis, such actions as murder, maiming, rape, or arson or other major
forms of harm to person or property, resulted in execution, while mid-range
crimes were punished by enslaving the offender to the offended. This was
more nearly like indentured service than true chattel slavery, and was usually
for a period of time rather than permanent. Imprisonment, as such, was
quite rare in Atlantis and generally reserved for madmen rather than criminals.

In the colonies, the Atlanteans had no particular concept of slavery to bring to
the relationship with the natives. Some of the native cultures did have this
concept, but it was looked upon as somewhat barbaric by the Atlanteans.

Instead of slavery, the Atlanteans brought in the locals to farm their fields
and work their mines and build their buildings (under Atlantean direction) and
paid them in food, shelter, and security, and more than a few of the locals
were quite happy to accept a second-class status in the settlements in preference
to the uncertainty of life in their own villages and tribes. Thus emerged a
two-level society, in which the Atlanteans were aristocrats and the natives
commoners, through most of the Atlantean colonies. The difference between
‘official’ aristocrat and commoner among the Atlanteans blurred, in
the colonies, and in most cases the various social and legal classes of the
Great Isle merged into a single ‘Atlantean’ class in the colony cities. [1]

Matters were otherwise on Atlantis proper, there the distinction between
the legal and social classes of the home society remained distinct and even
grew somewhat sharper. Here there was no vast underclass of non-psychic,
culturally less-advanced people to provide a contrast to the Atlanteans,
and so the local distinctions among the Atlanteans continued to be
perceived to be of greater importance than in the colonies.

It should be noted that the life of the indigenous locals in the colonies was
not nearly as harsh as life in their home culture often was. They were all
but assured of plentiful food, physical security from attack and animals,
and in many cases superior medical care, and in most of the colonies,
those of the indigenous underclass who were discontented were free to depart.

Over the course of generations, the indigenous class in the colonies also grew
in skills and knowledge, though they still lacked the psychic power of their
rulers. The descendents of the laborers often became wealthy and powerful,
by the standards of their indigenous cousins, and an elaborate set of social
customs evolved as the new society rose. Even as the colonial Atlanteans
came to see themselves as more and more one ‘class’ in contrast to their
indigenous subjects, complex social stratification usually emerged among
the subject peoples in the colonies.

In some colonies, intermarriage between Atlantean and native was permitted,
in others forbidden, the level of social approval varied widely in those colonies
in which it was legal. Always, however, the two-tier primary social structure
remained, forming the foundation of the more elaborate distinctions.

This two-tier system was common almost everywhere that the Atlanteans set
up colonies, though the details varied. However, there was one glaring and
important exception to it, and that exception was ProtoAthens/Athenia.

MORE LATER.

[1] This was reinforced by the fact that the average Atlantean
was a two hundred fifty point character, in GURPS terms, while the average
indigenous local was 25-35 points.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

In Athenia, circumstances were different, because of the unique origin of
the realm. Instead of being settled by intentional settlement out of Atlantis,
in large numbers and back by significant support, Athenia had emerged
from a small party of castaways marooned far from home over a century
before the beginning of the Atlantean overseas trading empire. Instead of
a ruling class of pure-blood Atlanteans, the core population of ProtoAthens,
the founding city of Athenia, was made up of descendents of the castaway
and their indigenous wives. They possessed psionic powers very nearly
comparable to those of the Atlanteans proper, but spread much more evenly
through the population of the city, and the ruling class in ProtoAthens was
the same ethnic mix as the rest of the population, their heritage deriving
as much from the native population of the eastern Mediterranean as from
the people of Atlantis. This made Athenia fundamentally different.

No separate, psychically potent ruling class governed the cities and towns
of Athenia. Instead both the rulers and the ruled possessed psionic power,
at a slightly lower level than the true Atlanteans, to be sure, but still with
great strength. As time passed, intermarriage happened in Athenia more
commonly and with more social and legal acceptance then anywhere else
in the dominions of Atlantis, and the psionic power spread even as it was
slightly diluted, creating a radically different social and political situation.

Another key political difference: Athenia, like the other Atlantean realms,
was governed by an offspring of the Eldest. In Athenia, however, this
viceroy shared much more power with other institutions and bodies than
was typical in any other colony-state, or even on the Great Isle itself. In
a century or more out of touch with Atlantis, and with a heritage deriving
as much from the former tribal cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, the
government of Athenia was different than the government of Atlantis, it
was more of a ‘republican’ nature than the home culture.

Athenia never would entirely march in step with the rest of the domains
derived of Atlantis, though in these relatively early times that separateness
was not so pronounced, not so difficult to bridge. With the passage of
time, even as Athenia became more like Atlantis on the surface, the key
underlying differences would widen, and become more tense. That was,
however, still far in the future at the time we are now discussing.

As the trading empire expanded, and the colony-states grew prosperous,
wealth and resources came flowing into Atlantis. This was really the
beginning of what might be called the ‘Golden Age’ of Atlantis. In most
ways this was the time when Atlantis and its people were at their happiest,
if not yet their wealthiest and most powerful. This was the time when
the Atlantean culture was at its most creative and vital.

The new wealth enabled the Atlanteans to invest more resources into the
development and refinement of their psychic powers, both the core theory
and applications and in the interaction of those abilities with the mundane
skills which also advanced rapidly during this period. The population of
the Great Isle grew, and given such a psionically potent populace, more
people meant ‘more power’ with a very tight correlation.

Using the great wealth, knowledge, and power, the Eldest and his people
began enormous projects, and carried them to completion. Their cities
grew larger, cleaner, safer, and more beautiful. The ships became both
larger and faster, and ranged ever further around the planet. Their
mundane skills advanced steadily, mathematics and science and lore
all grew enormously during this period.

One of the megaprojects the Atlanteans completed during this period
would come down to later ages in the form of Plato’s account. Plato
would have a connecting canal running from the outermost ring-lake
around the capitol city to the sea, some 6 miles (9.6 km) in length, one
hundred meters wide and thirty meters deep.

In actuality, there was no such canal. Instead, the Atlanteans used their
psionic powers and growing skills at mining and engineering to cut a
tunnel linking the outermost ring-lake to the ocean. This tunnel
was longer than the canal Plato reported, and it was some ninety meters
wide and very high, running slightly downhill from the capitol to the ocean.
The enormous tunnel was supported by arched stone and metal supports,
built with enormous effort. Even for the Atlanteans of this age, this
was an immense project, requiring many years of effort, enormous sums
of money, and not a few lives lost in the process of its creation.

The tunnel was open to the sky periodically, to let in fresh air and
light, which were needed since the tunnel was much longer than the six
miles of Plato's canal. Light between the openings was provided
primarily by complex arrays of mirrors catching and reflecting the light
from the light-wells. The tunnel was customarily used only during day-
light hours, a ship arriving at night would be required to wait for dawn to
approach the capitol city.

Similar, but shorter, tunnels were cut between the ring-lakes, rather than
roofed over canals as in Plato's version. Bridges of stone and wood
connected the rings of land and the central volcano-island. These bridges
were initially utilitarian, but with time became ornate and elegant, marked
with statues and carvings, some scaled for pedestrians and some supporting
carriages and other wheeled vehicles.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

This was an age not only of brutal power and enormous megaprojects, but
also of artistry and detail, the Atlanteans had the time and energy not only
to build and delve on an immense scale, but to pay attention to the fine details.
In the Great Tunnel, for example, the enormous stone arches that supported
the roof of the passage were not only carefully engineered and designed,
but also intricately prepared with an eye to aesthetics. The arches were so
carved as to resemble the boughs of enormous stone trees, with leaves of
green. Most of this green was of ink and paint, but the redirected sunlight
that lit the Great Tunnel also fell here and there on sparkling emeralds, one
of the things the expanding trade empire had brought to Atlantis.

The new structures that bridged the ring-lakes likewise were intricately and
carefully designed with both aesthetics and sturdiness in mind. It had
become a point of honor for Atlantean artisans that their projects should
be both useful and effective, and also beautiful. It was not only in the rich
capitol city that this worldview was in play, though it was most visible there,
but all over the Great Isle and even in the colonies.

Subtlety became the mark of even the huge projects. The Great Tunnel, for
example, sloped downward toward the ocean, flowing as an underground
river. The Ring Lakes were not drained, however, because redirected flows
from the mountain streams descending into the circular plain constantly
renewed both the irrigation reservoir at the edge of the plain and the Ring
Lakes as well. This kept the Ring Lakes fresh, preventing the sea from
entering through the Great Tunnel, and kept the fresh water from stagnating.

The Atlantean artisans separated the flow of sewage from the Ring Lakes,
running it out of the capitol via secondary tunnels. Enormous tanks stood
atop high towers, filled with water pumped into them by a combination of
psychokinesis, animal power, and geothermal power, providing running
water first to public fountains, later to neighborhood basins, and eventually
to individual houses and buildings across the growing capitol.

The other great cities of Atlantis were not quite so far along, but the
great developments of the age were by no means confined to the capitol.

The engineering knowledge of the Atlanteans advanced tremendously. To
the power of animal energy that they had long used, and the psychokinetic
strength that was the Atlantean birthright, the Atlantean artisans now added
wind power, and even some forms of crude solar power, driving simple but
sometimes useful working-fluid devices. The volcanic heat available in
places in Atlantis had enabled the Atlantean artisans to develop mechanisms
to harness geothermal power. Complex clockworks were now within the
ability of the Atlanteans as well, and more and more these new techniques
were combined into greater creations.

While the engineers and architects of Atlantis mastered new techniques and
applied them in ever greater ways, the ships of the Atlantean seafarers were
improving even more rapidly, and Atlantean explorers and traders were now
ranging across the world, Atlantean ships penetrating into the waters we now
call the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Arctic and Antarctic Seas.
Atlanteans landed on the western coasts of the Americas, the eastern side of
Africa, then passed on not much later to reach Australia and New Zealand.

About a century after the completion of the Great Tunnel, Atlantean ships
actually penetrated the thick ice sheets around the Antarctic Continent, and
an Atlantean explorer became the first human to set foot on the southernmost
continent. They did not remain there long, even the psionic power available
to the Atlanteans was not enough to match Antarctica for long, unaided. The
technology available to the Atlanteans at that time was unequal to the
challenge of the icebound land, and their psionic power enabled them to
exist there, but was not sufficient alone to do anything useful there.

The explorers moved far ahead of the traders, who moved well ahead of the
settlers. Some regions were sparsely populated with the Atlantean colonists
arrived, and the establishment of new settlements was more a matter of dealing
with local terrain and weather than anything else. More often, though, where
the Atlanteans went they found natives already present, and not all of them
were as technologically and sociologically primitive as those around the coast
of the Atlantic Oceans had been. Though the Atlanteans found many tribal
societies, they also found places where agriculture was being practiced, and
even some functioning urban cultures, though none so advanced as their own.

In Asia, especially, the Atlanteans found an emerging urban culture, rising in
the fertile river valleys around what we would call the Yangtze River, and the
lush coast lands toward which it drained, lands now underwater but then open
to the sky due to the slightly lower global sea level of that time. When the first
ships from Atlantis came to these coasts, they found a civilization quite unlike
their own, independently emerging from the Stone Age. They were not so
advanced as Atlantis, but far ahead of any other culture know to the Atlanteans,
and they called themselves by a name we might anglicize as ‘Goravians’, even
though the word is not too close to the sound of their own word for themselves.

Had Goravia (to apply their word for themselves to the land where they dwelt)
been closer to Atlantis, they might have been overwhelmed by the technological
and psionic superiority of the Atlantean Civilization, and Goravia might have
become something like Athenia, a hybrid of native and Atlantean culture. The
enormous distance between the centers of the two civilizations, however, was
enough to prevent this. Halfway around the planet from Atlantis, the Goravian
Civilization was able to develop into its own form, influenced by Atlantis to be
sure, but quite different even so. [1] [2]

MORE LATER.

[1] At this time, Atlantis was high TL 3/low TL4 in GURPS 3e terms, while
the Goravians were at a high TL2/very low TL3. Their psionic power and
skill enabled the Atlanteans to operate ‘above their technological weight’.

[2] Though the Goravians lived in those lands that would one day be eastern
China, Goravian Civilization was manifestly not Chinese, culturally,
linguistically, religiously, or politically!