09-07-2010, 10:23 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
As the Atlanteans spread outward, one thing did tend to slow down their expansion, and that was, paradoxically, a side-effect of the same psionic power that was their great strength and advantage. Every Atlantean, with rare, rare exceptions, was potently telepathic. This varied in strength from person to person, but the huge majority of the Atlanteans had at least sufficient native telepathic strength to reach out to others as much as much as a several hundred meters away, and no few had much more power. [1] Furthermore, in Atlantis, artificial means of extending the range of their telepathic faculty were common, psionically active drugs were routinely used in Atlantean culture at this time, and Atlantean science was fully capable of creating mechanisms, based on the special and very strange properties of orichalcum, that could act as relays to extend telepathic range still further. There was no post service in Atlantis, no messengers, for over a thousand years any Atlantean could contact any other by use of telepathy from almost any point in the Great Isle. All that was really necessary was an approximate idea of the location of the contactee. In addition to this, the Atlantean culture was saturated in telepathy, it was something every individual was accustomed to from birth to death. As a result, Atlanteans were utterly used to being able to make contact at will with anyone they wished, any time they wished, without difficulty or effort. This created a psychological trait that only became apparent when an Atlantean left the Great Isle and the company of his fellows. When such a person did leave the presence of his or her fellows, moving beyond the range of telepathic contact, it was a form of being alone that most of them had never experienced in their entire lives. To be unable to reach out and contact others mentally, to not be able to feel the presence of other minds, familiar minds, it was something that Atlanteans who were raised in the telepathically-saturated culture of their homeland had great difficulty in enduring. Most Atlanteans of the age suffered from it. Let us call it ‘isolation syndrome’. Most Atlanteans suffered from anxiety, restlessness, poor sleep, and other difficulties when cut off from telepathic contact with their fellows. The intensity of this varied, for some it was a nuisance, for others it was effectively crippling. [2] Some Atlanteans of sufficient strength of will could endure the effects and with time and experience they faded, but this often required years. Also there were also some few who simply did not suffer from this problem, natural loners, or a few other personality types able to function without the reassuring mental contact their fellows required. This greatly complicated exploratory efforts...and produced a tendency to favor oceanic exploration over continental work. A ship could carry a large enough crew to permit the individuals to avoid the isolation effect entirely. Exploring on land, on the other hand, often involved far smaller groups, or individual travel, exploration on land with huge parties was not as efficient as exploration by individuals at their technology level. This in turn meant that the coastlands of the continents were explored by the Atlanteans far more quickly than the continental interiors. As new cities grew up on the coasts, isolation syndrome ceased to be a major problem there, and this in turn encouraged the Atlantean settlers to go to a more urban sort of culture in the frontiers than might otherwise have been the case. Landward exploration did occur, especially after the coastal cities began to rise and grow, but the Atlantean globes and maps showed the continental coasts with perfect accuracy around the planet long before the blank spaces of the continental interiors filled. MORE LATER. [1] In GURPS modified 3e terms, a typical adult Atlantean of pure ancestry usually possessed Power 12-15 Telepathy, plus an extensive suite of skills relating to that Power. High-end psions tended to be stronger, ranging from Power 15-17 in Telepathy. [2] For information about Isolation Syndrome in game terms, see: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=73000 Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 09-08-2010 at 12:03 AM. |
09-20-2010, 10:08 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The Atlantean social system during its Golden Age was not quite like anything else ever used. In part, this was an effect of having an effectively immortal ruler from the beginning of the Atlantean society, and in part it was side-effect, of their strongly psi-based culture. The Eldest (that would be the English translation of his title and his name both) was of course already thousands of years old by ~5500 BC. His early memories were vague (actually artificially blocked by the alien-entity fragment that was his symbiotic 'other half'), but he had millennia of practical experience as a leader and a politician, and he was good at it. His enormous psionic powers and his odd and anachronistic knowledge also served him in good stead in ruling Atlantis, from its primitive settlement to its High Golden Age. In legal theory, essentially all political and legal power in Atlantis was concentrated in the hands of the Eldest. In practice, the Eldest formed the nucleus of the ‘royal family’. Since the Eldest could father only sterile children, there could never be a third royal generation, which probably made having an immortal ruler workable. The immediate offspring of the Eldest governed various regions and sections and groups of people in Atlantis. The Eldest retained many primary political powers to himself, of course. He controlled the coinage, appointed all the Atlantean equivalent of judges, was final arbiter of all disputes appealed from the courts of his offspring, and combined the highest legislative and executive power in his own person. For money, Golden Age Atlantis used gold and silver coinage, stamped oddly in square form, alloyed together or in purer forms. The system varied with time, but finally stabilized with gold, silver, and gold/silver alloy coins forming the basic denominations. In terms of what moderns would call finance, the Atlanteans had the concept of banking, but most of the rest of it was not as yet, and would not be until late in the Golden Age, or not at all. They did have the concept of credit, and some rather draconian laws about how it could be used and what could happen to those who misused it. The Eldest also took a dim view of debasement of the currency. During the High Golden Age, Atlantis was divided into ten (not twelve) ‘provinces’, including the great eastern valley that housed Atlantica. The Eldest ruled all of Atlantis in the ultimate, and directly governed the capitol province as well. The other provinces were governed by various offspring of the Eldest, usually his older sons (though upon occasion, a daughter rose to this level of prominence as well). Since there could be no third generation of this ‘royal family’, when a provincial governor died or retired, he or she would be replaced by a younger sibling or more often by a half-sibling. The Eldest generally had multiple sons and daughters on hand, since he typically had multiple wives. Atlanteans generally tended toward monogamy, but polygamy was permitted, with some limitations. It was only common for the Eldest and the highest nobles, however. The rulers of the Ten Provinces were usually male, but there were female viceroys occasionally, as has been noted. Females could hold most of the other offices and positions in Atlantis, except active military command or infantry service, though it wasn't really common. By modern Western standards, Golden Age Atlantis would be considered a reactionary patriarchy, by the standards of the sixth millennium BC, Atlantis was egalitarian where gender was concerned. Along with the provisional viceroys, the offspring of the Eldest also were assigned to head things like the naval force (which in fact was quite small at the start of the Golden Age), the internal police and security forces, the lordships of the major cities within the provinces, etc. Generally speaking, a son (or daughter, occasionally) of the Eldest would first assist in ruling a city or the leadership of an institution, then with greater age and experience he or she would govern a city, then later in life become a provincial viceroy. A provincial viceroy or municipal lord might govern until death, or until retirement. Of course, the Eldest could always remove an offspring from any position, as well. The Eldest always remained the final font of all political honors and authority, and final arbiter of all grants of such. The offspring of the Eldest shared some of his genetic pattern, and thus tended to long lifespans (350-400 years). They were most certainly mortal, but by human standards they had very long lives, and tended to pick up a great deal of experience in that time. Since they could expect to rise in power throughout their lives if they followed the rules, and since the ruler was their own father, and ultimately since a rebellion would probably be futile, they tended to be very reliable servants to their father. The occasional exception tended to find his or her long lifespan suddenly cut short. Of course, the majority of the Eldest's offspring would never rise as high as a provincial viceroy, but most could realistically expect to become at least a municipal lord. So there were certainly incentives toward loyalty. The general population of Atlanteans, by the start of the Golden Age, had come to be divided roughly into various 'clans', to use a modern word that only approximately fits the concept. These ‘clans’ were only partly based on blood relationships, and intermarriage was permitted and common, in which case the clan membership derived from the father. Each clan had a semi-hereditary leadership, who represented the clans to the Eldest. The clans had no specific homeland by ~5500, being spread among each other across Atlantis. There were also subgroups within the clans, making for complicated social patterns, there were complex and cross-connecting clan alliances, rivalries, and everything in between always in play. Cutting across the familial clans were the various guilds of specific types of worker and artisan, some of which were very powerful. The Orichalcum Guild was by far the strongest, economically, politically, and socially, since this pseudo-metal formed the basis of much of the psi-society of Atlantis, and it had to be mined without the use of psionic assistance. The prevalence of psionics, and training in them, had another effect that transformed Atlantean society: the lifespan rose sharply again. Already, their plentiful food and easier physical lives had enabled the Atlanteans to bring their average lifespan up to nearly modern levels. When they mastered the life-extension psionic skill to go with psionic self-healing, and it spread through the society, Atlantis achieved the remarkable distinction of bringing their average lifespan above 21st Century Western levels. By ~5500 BC, the average Atlantean could expect a lifespan of one hundred and twenty years. By ~5300, that average had risen to one hundred and fifty, where it leveled off, though occasional, exceptionally powerful and/or skilled psions reached as far as two hundred. The birth-rate was not overwhelmingly high in Atlantis during its Golden Age, but it did not drop to modern Western levels either, in part for cultural reasons, and in part because one thing the Atlanteans did not manage with their psionic abilities was an entirely reliable method of birth-control (until very late). Thus the Atlantean population grew steadily, and eventually all of the farmland and pastureland and so forth was staked out and used. By approximately 5300 BC, ambitious young Atlanteans had only two real choices: suspend their ambitions or look beyond the seas. MORE LATER. |
09-22-2010, 01:53 AM | #23 |
Join Date: May 2009
Location: In Rio de Janeiro, where it was cyberpunk before it was cool.
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
I am loving it, please keep posting it!!
Last edited by D10; 09-22-2010 at 12:21 PM. |
09-26-2010, 09:42 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
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09-26-2010, 10:49 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The acceleration of the overseas expansion that occurred in the last centuries of the seventh millennium B.C. was driven in part by a dearth of opportunity for the ambitious in Atlantis proper, in part by advancing technology (both paraphysical and mundane) making expansion both easier and more rewarding, and in part by the continuing maturation of the already-extant Atlantean colonies. As these older colonies grew and become prosperous, they naturally became secondary centers of expansion, growing outward and ‘inward’ away from the coasts and into the vast and still mostly unexplored continental interiors. A steady stream of settlers and traders and explorers coming out from Atlantis proper was thus joined by the settlers from the older colonies. Naturally, the economic basis of these colonies varied from place to place, and not all of them were true ‘colonies of settlement’, though permanent new settlements tended to grow up around the mining colonies and trading centers anyway. Oceanic trade remained the life-blood of the expanding Atlantean demesne, and the Great Isle always remained the center of the web, though the prosperity of the time was felt both in Atlantis proper and in the far-flung and varied colonies, the greater wealth flowed steadily back toward Atlantis. As time passed, the percentage of the total wealth generated by the world-wide trading system that flowed to Atlantis slowly but steadily increased as well. This did not, however, cause an immediate problem, because while the homeland was gaining disproportionately relative to the colonies, the increase in total wealth was faster yet, so that everyone was still gaining. If the share of that total growth enjoyed by Atlantis was greater than that of the colonies, few were really aware of the full extent of the matter and fewer would have much cared...then. The disparity was not, after all, something that most people in either the Isle or the colonies felt much in any direct way. The daily lives of the people of the Isle and the colonies, for the most part, were unaffected. There were various reasons why the percentage of the total wealth generated by the global trade regime accrued to the center. Some of them would be quite familiar to the modern world: Atlantis was the center of government, the home of the owners and masters of the trading networks and transport fleets, it was the center of science and education, and was physically as well as metaphorically at the center of the trade web, since the key areas of that trading network were on the Atlantic coasts of the major continents. There was another and more basic reason, however, a reason that could not be legislated or managed away. This reason was rooted in the nature of the physical goods that were traded and transported around the world. These goods were various, lumber, agricultural products, even such things as fresh milk could be transported using cryokinesis to preserve the goods. Metals such as iron, tin, copper, silver and gold were mined around the world and traded back and forth in exchange for manufactured goods, foods, and even rare luxuries. Atlantis collected taxes at every stage, but for the most part these taxes were not particularly excessive, and the infant Atlantean navy did make a useful return in protection from piracy and mishap at sea. Of all the metals that moved around the world in that time, however, one was more precious economically and psychologically than any other. This was the rarest of all precious metals, found in only one place in the world, and it was also an industrial metal, the demand for which was insatiable and the supply of which was never close to matching the demand. That metal was, of course, orichalcum. Orichalcum was not, in the strictest technical sense, a metal at all, of course. An example of an entirely different kind of matter than that of which the normal universe is composed, it was and is more nearly like a metal than any other category of conventional baryonic matter, however. It looked like metal, specifically copper, it felt like metal to the touch and was found in ores and minerals much like other metals. Again, the element to which orichalcum was most similar was copper, and the two tended to be found in the same ores, when orichalcum could be found at all. Orichalcum was found in Atlantis, and as far as the people of the Antediluvian World were aware, it was found only in Atlantis. Even on the Great Isle, it was far from common. The deposits the Atlanteans were able to mine effectively were all to be found in the foothills or upper slopes of the central mountain spine of the Isle, none were easily accessible and all required enormous amounts of dangerous manual labor to extract and refine. Still, orichalcum was more readily available on the Great Isle than elsewhere, as Plato would later note, orichalcum was second only to gold in value in the Great Isle throughout much of the history of Atlantis. In the colonies, there was no comparison, orichalcum was never valued less than fifty times its weight in pure gold, and the price was usually higher. Much higher. The reason was that orichalcum had properties that rendered it incredibly, indispensably useful in any technology based on psionic phenomena. It was the basis of much of the paraphysical technology of the Atlanteans, useful in everything from telepathic communication to psychokinetic machinery to extrasensory sensing devices. Industry, communication, travel, and medicine all had uses for the strange substance, devices could be made from it that made even the life-extending processes of psychic phenomena more useful and reliable. The demand never decreased, the supply was always orders of magnitude too small to begin to cover the demand, and the one and only known source of supply of this sine qua non of civilization was the Great Isle. With this condition in place, imposed by the geological reality of the situation, it was inevitable that the share of the wealth from the trading network flowing to Atlantis must increase with time, since Atlantis had a monopoly on supply of what was quite literally the most precious substance on Earth. This was a delicate situation, advantageous for Atlantis, to be sure, and yet also a danger on several levels, some of them quite subtle. The situation called for the application of skillful and patient diplomacy and careful and effective government. The Eldest was fully capable of supplying these requisites. During this long and prosperous Golden Age, the Eldest carefully navigated between the extremes, his offspring governing both the Great Isle and the colonies, and for a time all seemed to smile on the Atlanteans at home and in the colonies. MORE LATER. |
09-26-2010, 11:43 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The Eldest knew, with the experience of thousands of years of life, that the huge advantage held by Atlantis due to the monopoly on the supply of orichalcum was also a danger. It could be a danger in the temptation of overexploitation, creating resentment and uniting the colonies into a single force opposed to Atlantis. It could be a danger in the temptation of complacency. It could be a danger in the economic power it produced, tempting the central realm to economic decay, becoming dependent on the orichalcum monopoly to the point of allowing all other economic activity to atrophy. The Eldest recognized these and other threats, and was moving to prevent them and make the orichalcum monopoly a positive force. He saw the hope of using the central supply of the truly indispensable commodity as a way of keeping the Atlanteans together. With the experience of millennia, the Eldest recognized that there was a danger in the spread of the Atlanteans all over the world, thousands of miles beyond the Great Isle. The Eldest knew that there would be, as time passed, a tendency for the colonists to grow distant from the home island, for their cultures to become separate, their interests to diverge, in time the colonists might cease to even think of themselves as all being Atlanteans. The Eldest wished to prevent this development, and he saw also that the key to keeping the Atlanteans ‘psychologically unified’ was their psionic power, the key factor setting them apart from the rest of the human race. Here, though, also lay a danger as well as a possibility. The Eldest knew that the vast psychic power his people had developed, during their long millennia apart from the rest of the human race, would represent another temptation, the temptation of superiority. Their ruler knew that the Atlanteans would be drawn to the temptation of seeing themselves as innately superior to other peoples, due to their greater knowledge and innate power. Aside from the moral threat this danger represented, a danger to which the Eldest was not blind, there was also a very real physical danger lying down that road. The rest of the human race far outnumbered the Atlanteans. Should the Atlanteans succumb to the temptation of their power, make themselves an odious and tyrannical force in the world, in time even their vast power might be overwhelmed by a resentful population of ‘lessers’, individually far less powerful but collectively vastly stronger than the Atlanteans. The Eldest knew that the psychic advantage of the Atlanteans was such that it would be hard to lose, since it was in much the result of thousands of years of selective breeding. He also knew all too well that their other great advantage, their technological superiority, was quite fragile. It was only a matter of time before their advantage in ‘mundane’ technology was eroded by the growing knowledge and skills of the rest of the race as they came into contact with the Atlanteans. [1] Already, in the colonies, the vast populations of ‘lesser’ men were in the process of adopting Atlantean technology, Atlantean knowledge, they were learning mathematics and sciences from their Atlantean overlords. At this time, there was little danger of rebellion or revolt, the commoners in the colonies tended to be quite loyal to the rulers, but the Eldest knew that this could change with time, especially if the Atlanteans were unwise. Also, there were other cultures rising in the world at that time, Atlantis was not alone. The Atlanteans were, by a considerable margin, the most powerful and advanced people on Earth, even in ‘mundane’ skills and technologies and knowledge. Others cultures, however, were rising, and some were not so far behind that catching up was impossible, at least in the matter of ‘conventional’ science and technology. One culture in particularly, the Goravians, were only modestly behind the Atlanteans in most areas of ‘conventional’ science and technology. Contact with Atlantis was accelerating their development, there was a profitable if shaky trade relationship in place, but Goravia was in far off eastern Asia, far enough away that Atlantis could not simply deal with them by overwhelming their culture. Goravia was likely to remain a separate culture, even as they advanced and grew in power. [2] Nor was Goravia the only ‘indigenous’ culture rising separately of the Atlanteans. It was merely the largest and most advanced and powerful of those cultures. Crude but rising non-Atlantean urban cultures were on the rise in the lands of what we would now call the Indian subcontinent, the western coast of South America along the Andes Mountains, and in scattered small areas elsewhere. All represented potential challenges and threats to Atlantis as time passed, something the Eldest knew well. They all also represented opportunities and possibilities for Atlantis as well, something the Eldest also knew. The challenge before him, as the ruler of the Atlanteans, possessed of powers and experience beyond any other monarch in the world, was to arrange matters that Atlantis gained the possibilities and avoided the potential disasters. It was a daunting challenge, by any measure, but the Eldest was uniquely qualified to deal with the matter. Immortal, thousands of years old, possessed of vast and subtle psychic powers, firmly in control of the most effective government on Earth, ruling over the more advanced culture on Earth, the Eldest was probably fully equal to the challenge now facing his people. Unfortunately, the multi-millennial reign of the Eldest was about to end. MORE LATER. [1] The Atlantean tech level at this time was a high TL3/low TL4 on the GURPS 3e scale. The rest of the world ranged from TL0 to TL3 in the Atlantean colonies, and in the rising Goravian culture in Asia. [2] Recall that Goravia was in what would someday, in a distant future time, be called eastern China, along the Pacific coast of Asia. At this time the Goravian culture was spreading into what we call the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese home islands, though of course they were nothing remotely like that in those times. |
09-28-2010, 12:26 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
Atlantis and Crisis... In previous posts, we saw how Atlantis reached it's Golden Age, with dense and prosperous settlements spread across the coasts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and further settlements scattered around the world. We have also seen that that Atlantis was ruled by a single immortal 'demigod' throughout its history, from its settlement all the way through the Sixth Millennium B.C. The Eldest had ruled both the Great Isle and its rapidly expanding colonial empire throughout their history. From the beginning of Atlantean history, from the time when the Atlanteans were a tiny and harried tribe of nomads who had not yet come to the Great Isle, the Eldest was their ruler, their leader, the center of their culture and society. His offspring ruled the cities and provinces of Atlantis, governed the colonies, and led the armed forces and the teaching institutions and almost all the other centers of power, knowledge, and influence. Then, on a bright, sunny morning on what we would call May 19th, 5193 B.C., a loud, piercing, terrified scream echoed through the ‘royal palace’ atop the central peak of the innermost island of the city of Atlantica. The guards and others came running in response to the scream, which had come from one of the seniormost wives of the Eldest. She had walked into the private chambers of the master of the Atlanteans to find him lying, freshly dead, his throat slit and bleeding green on the polished basalt floor. There was no trace of the murderer to be found. The guards were in their places, the wives and minor children of the Eldest were all about the inner court of the Palace, functionaries came and went as usual, and yet someone, somehow, had managed to get past all these undetected and murder the immortal, transcendently powerful ruler. This was a tremendous shock on a number of levels. For one thing, the Eldest was a telepath and psychokinetic of immense power. For another, he was physically stronger and faster and more alert than most humans. Yet somehow, someone or something had gotten into the palace, past guards, watchers, psionically potent courtiers and servants, and into the Eldest's private chambers, and then managed to slice open the throat of a demigod, and get out again undetected. It is difficult to overstate the psychological and emotional impact of this event on the Atlanteans, both on the Isle and in the colonies around the world. There is little in the modern experience of the world to compare to this incident, it was a turning point in human history, though just how important a turning point it would be would not be clear for millennia. The Eldest had ruled as monarch throughout the history of Atlantis, generation after generation, century after century, millennium after millennium. His telepathic powers meant that most of his mortal subjects had personally communicated with him, at least occasionally, or at least had sensed his presence. He was Atlantis, psychologically, to most of his subjects. Now, the eternal ruler was dead. More than dead, he had been murdered. It was inconceivable, unimaginable, and yet it was fact. As the word spread, a psychological and cultural crisis unlike anything in Atlantean history began. Naturally, it did not take very much time for the Atlantean government and society to begin to come undone. There simply was no mechanism for an orderly succession. For that matter, since the Eldest had not been altogether human, there could not be an orderly succession, since no mortal could hope to take the place of the Eldest in the Atlantean society. Such a thing was not even psychologically conceivable to the Atlanteans, especially in the shock of the sudden death of a being who had seemed as much a part of the natural order as dawn and sunset. The Eldest was the Eldest, the very concept of anyone else fulfilling his role in their society was simply unimaginable. The offspring of the Eldest governed under his authority in the regions and cities, but they had no legal or cultural authority to step into his place, even if they had been capable of it. Further, there was no specific ranking among those offspring, no straightforward way for any one to step forward for the role. Worse yet, since the hybrid offspring of the Eldest were sterile, they could not found royal lines anyway, at least not by the usual means. What followed, beginning within weeks of the death of the Eldest, was the first true civil war in Atlantean history. There had been occasional rebellion and violence in the history of the island-continent, but always local, and always more a matter of organized criminals or brigandage than actual war for power. This was true civil war, a combination of a succession struggle of sorts, and sheer disruption and chaos as the psychological shock sank in. The war went on, waxing and waning, for nine years. It was very strange, waged with a combination of mundane arms including crude gunpowder weapons, and powerful and subtle psionics. Warriors engaged in autotele- portation during knife fights, used cryokinesis and pyrokinesis to destroy enemy crops and facilities, used telereceive and ESP to spy on each other, it was an eerie and devastating time. The war disrupted agriculture, disrupted shipping, and spread beyond the Great Isle to the settlements. Many of the most powerful and talented psions were killed in the fighting. Training and education were disrupted, the economy strained, the fabric of the whole society unraveled. Matters were made more complicated by the fact that there was no defined goal for the contending factions and groups. The belligerents were fighting for things they themselves could not entirely define. It was inconceivable that anyone could ever take the place of the Eldest, the very concept could not be meaningfully expressed in the Atlantean language. Yet they were struggling for power, or to keep some rival group from gaining power, or to protect something from the other belligerents, often they could only define what they sought in negative terms. The war raged on as the varied factions and contenders struggled for control of something that was as yet inchoate and shapeless, the new power that must take the place of the ruler, a concept that even the contending factions recoiled from expressing, which in itself led to the war going on, and on, and on. Still, in the passage of time, the war did come to an end. The winners were a specific group of the Eldest's offspring. They were all psionically potent, skillful strategically and tactically, and very lucky. Many of the other siblings and half-siblings were dead, or lined up behind one of the major contenders or another. What emerged from the war was a new social and political arrangement in Atlantis. MORE LATER. |
09-28-2010, 12:43 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
There were ten winners, and each one took one of the ten traditional provinces of Atlantis as his personal domain. They elected from among their own membership a single over-ruler, with limited powers over his fellows, held for a limited time. Atlantis breathed a sigh of relief with the end of the war, and they were too battered and shocked by the death of the Eldest to do otherwise anyway. Atlantis needed decades to begin to seriously recover from this first civil war. The ten winners of the civil war still faced the succession problem, since they were reproductively sterile. They solved it by a technique that would later be used by the early Imperial Romans: each of the winners adopted (in legal theory) a promising and talented young mortal, usually a teenager, and named him as his heir. Since these adopted successors were pure mortals, not hybrid offspring of the Eldest, they couldn't match the psi power of their adopted fathers, but they were usually among the strongest pure-human psions, and trained in the arts of rule by the initial committee of rulers. Over half of the offspring of the Eldest died in the first civil war. The remainder more or less governed Atlantis for the next couple of centuries, either as part of the governing council of ten or lieutenants of them. But there could be no more of this peculiar group. One by one, the long-lived but mortal offspring of the Eldest died, until, by ~4990 B.C., Atlantis was for the first time in its long history ruled by entirely by humans. Another few decades saw the last mortals who could remember the rule of the half-demigods were gone as well. It was a fundamental change in Atlantis, things never were, and could never be, the same again. Meanwhile, the settlements had been on their own, more or less, after the death of the Eldest and during the ensuing civil war. Some declared their independence of Atlantis and each other, some warred on each other, some formed alliances. Over the decades after the end of the war, Atlantis began to reassert authority over the settlements, but not without resistance, and sometimes fierce, violent resistance. Some settlers who had been loyal to the Eldest often saw no particular reason that the successor council should govern them. Some settlements found they liked independence, others eagerly adhered to Atlantis again. But one by one, those city-states trying to remain independent were reconquered by the resurgent power of the new Atlantean government. Some were brought to heel by force, some by bribes and promises, some by persuasion, some rejoined eagerly. But the reunified empire was never as internally peaceful or 'comfortable' as it had been previously, and never would be again. In the Mediterranean Basin, the resistance was strongest, and the city-states there were older and already more independent than the others even before the murder of the Eldest. Here, far from Atlantis, faced with stronger resistance, the Atlantean Empire found itself tangled into an ongoing minor, stop-and-start war. The greatest of the resisting city-states, the one near the sight of the future Athens, formed its own federated alliance with her neighboring Atlantean colony-cities, creating a mini-state that was about halfway between a rebellious province and an independent nation. This was that region we have already noted and opted to call by the name of ‘Athenia’, and the central and oldest city-state of which we have called ProtoAthens. In the chaos that followed the death of the Eldest, this region grew more tightly integrated, more formally and officially unified, and more militarily and economically powerful. Myths and legends grew up about the Eldest, and his mysterious murder. The Atlanteans never did learn who murdered him, or how. As time passed, and living memory of the former state of things faded away, even the Atlanteans themselves began to remember it with a gloss of nostalgia and a memory of horror at the end of it, and the war that followed. MORE LATER. |
09-28-2010, 09:49 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
The new governing committee came to be called by an Atlantean term that would translate into English, closely enough, as the 'Circle of Ten'. An interesting insight into the psychology of the Atlanteans can be gleaned by the legal structure that they built to legitimize their power they gained by their victory in the civil war. Throughout their time in power, over the course of many generations, the Circle of Ten claimed to rule in the name of and by the authority of the Eldest, even centuries after his death. Why was this so? Because the Atlanteans, after quite literally thousands of years of rule by one person, had a culture in which it was difficult to even express the concept of a sovereignty not vested in that one person. The Atlantean words that described such concepts were linked inextricably to the words used in reference to their murdered ruler, he was the sovereign power, even if he was dead. The Circle of Ten, de facto, governed because they won the civil war that had followed on the death of the Eldest, and built upon that victory to construct a new power structure to take the place of the former government. They had to link that new structure to the Eldest in some way in order to legitimize it, even in their own minds. Still, though the Circle claimed through a rather elaborate skein of complex justifications to rule in the name of the Eldest, their government was quite different in many basic ways from that of the Eldest. One of the most vital differences was that the highest rank in the Atlantean realms was no longer above all possible ambition. While the Eldest ruled, the highest rank in the realm, the ultimate font from which all other legal and political power flowed, was beyond any possible sane ambition. The Eldest held that position, his half-mortal offspring were in possessions of most of the secondary positions, leaving political ambition limited to third-tier positions, or ‘deputies’ to those worthies. Ambition was certainly not absent, but it was limited by the nature of the system. Under the rule of the Circle of Ten, even if they ruled in theory in the name of the Eldest, matters were otherwise. The individual members of the Circle were mortal, especially after the deaths of the original members, who were all offspring of the Eldest. It was not inconceivable that an ambitious man (or woman) could usurp a place on that Circle, and exactly that did happen from time to time. As new layers of custom and tradition accrued around the new Circle, various means of seeking a place on that body became more or less accepted, some seen as legitimate, some questionable. After the founders of the Circle of Ten died, their adopted offspring took their place, and the seats on the Circle became formally hereditary. [1] The complex (and somewhat convoluted) legal justifications used to link the Circle of Ten with the Eldest granted that body a collective legitimacy in the eyes of the Atlanteans, both at home and around the world. This was made solider by the fact that the initial membership in the Circle were all of them offspring of the Eldest themselves. This collective legitimacy grew with the passage of time, as new generations were born who had known only the rule of the Circle, and the Eldest as only a legend. This legitimacy was held by the Circle, however, not its specific members. As a result, a member of the Circle could be replaced by someone else, or in theory the entire membership could be replaced, leaving the Circle itself still legitimate in the eyes of the general public. In practice, the hereditary membership in the Circle meant that an individual did not take a Circle seat, a family did. Further, only a family that was formally part of the Atlantean aristocracy was legally eligible. An ambitious politician who sought to take a Circle seat must either derive of an aristocratic family, or else first arrange for his family to be elevated to the aristocracy. This was not, however, an impossible thing, because the Atlantean aristocracy was not exactly like any such in the post-Cataclysmic history of the Earth. It was by no means impossible for a family to achieve elevation to the nobility. There were several criteria for this, one of which was psionic ability, one of the traits most admired and respected in Atlantean society. A family that showed a multi-generational tendency toward either exceptional psionic power or skill was a definite candidate for joining the aristocratic class. That was necessary but not sufficient, however. MORE LATER. [1] Recall that the first members of the first Circle of Ten were all halfling offspring of the Eldest, and as such sterile. They adopted promising mortals, in something like the same manner that the early Roman Emperors would do, and these adopted offspring founded the first hereditary lines of the Circle. |
09-30-2010, 10:07 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Orichalcum Universe: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age...
LATER.
Let us take a closer look at the pinnacle of power in the Atlantean society for a moment, since this is relevant to the events that followed. The Circle of Ten would look to a modern like a cross between an aristocratic coterie and a parliamentary cabinet government. Its membership was drawn entirely from the highest circles of the hereditary aristocracy, no commoner could hope to become a member. [1] In theory membership was not automatically hereditary, in practice it most often was. Often, but not always, because any member of the Circle could be challenged for his seat by a variety of means, all legal and none necessarily violent, as time passed a considerable body of official and customary law grew up around the Circle, much of it concerned with the question of who was entitled to a seat, and how that could be changed. If nobody challenged and took a seat, in theory when it was vacated (by resignation or death), a new candidate was chosen by the remainder of the Circle. In practice, this was more often than not the son of the former holder, but this was never a certainty, the heir had to be capable enough to hold the seat, and the Atlantean aristocrats were power-wise enough to realize that their positions in society were not written in stone. It was not unusual, when an open seat was being filled, for some noble family with a promising scion to attempt to slip their own kin into the empty chair, displacing the family that held it, and this worked often enough to keep it a viable path to power. The amount of pressure, political, social, monetary, and 'extracurricular' that could be brought to bear to change a family's hold on one of the seats in the Circle was enormous. A wise man would not even consider trying for a seat on the Circle unless he was very sure of himself, and his abilities, political, social, financial, and psionic. [2][3][4] The Circle of Ten was organized in theory as a group of equals, in practice, of course, some were more equal than others, though they were usually comparable enough in ability and resources that the shifts in power among them went back and forth over time. Rarely one would be so skilled, or connected, or both that he would dominate the Circle for long periods, acting in practical effect as a single ruler, more often rival power centers split the Circle and created their own sort of ongoing stability. The Circle of Ten, in theory, held the full governmental and legal powers of the deceased Eldest, when they acted in concert. In fact, even though the Eldest had now been dead for about a century and a half, the Circle of Ten continued to rule 'in his name' as a legal basis for their power. The very nature of the autocratic rule of the Eldest had been such that there could never have been any sort of succession system, the legal basis the Circle of Ten ruled under was put together after the fact to legitimize the outcome of the civil war that had erupted after the death of the Eldest. For all of its convenient origins, though, the legal system that grew up around the Circle of Ten proved functional enough, and the Circle proved able to govern. Traditionally, there were ten provinces in Atlantis, and as a matter of custom, each member of the Circle of Ten ruled one of them. This was more a matter of customary honors than direct power, the former power structure was utterly shattered by the succession war in the aftermath of the death of the Eldest, and the provinces were in actual fact governed directly by government officials appointed by the Circle. The Circle proper had larger concerns. Along with ten highest aristocrats who sat on the Circle of Ten, there were two other especially important public officials, their official titles would translate into modern English, very roughly, as the ‘Lord of the Army’ and the ‘Lord of the Fleet’. In theory both answered to the Circle of Ten who appointed them, in practice both seats tended to be filled by aristocrats already so powerful that they were practically equal to the Circle. Thus these twelve men (and occasionally women) were the highest political and social power in the Atlantean Age after the death of the Eldest, they were the rulers of the rulers. [5] However, it should not be thought that the Circle and the Two had everything their own way. There were other centers of power, financial, social, and other that had to be respected, as with any state the actual workings of the government were different than their theoretical basis. There were great merchant guilds whose combined wealth made them a force to be reckoned with. There were great aristocratic families who held no formal power in the state, but who were in practice almost equal to the twelve rulers. There were colonial power centers on the continents, and there was the necessity of keeping the military loyal, and there was, as in any place and age, the question of how to pay for it all. The Circle ruled, but in practice their power was far from absolute. One very important 'special' power center was, as has been noted before, the Orichalcum Guild. This was important enough that we'll address it in our next posting, it needs special attention. MORE LATER. [1] However, the aristocracy of Atlantis was remarkably flexible, while no commoner could become a member, a commoner could hope to become an aristocrat and thus be, in theory, in consideration, since he would not be a commoner any more. [2] Psionic power was one of the key status markers of the Atlantean society, their aristocracy really was 'rule of the best' if 'best' is defined as possession of and skill with psychic Power. Being psionically able was 'necessary but not sufficient' to rise to the top. [3] Trying and failing to gain a seat on the Circle could be financially, socially, and politically disastrous for an unprepared candidate and his family. [4] Note: though I use the masculine pronoun, because the large majority of Atlantis' rulers were male, it was possible for a female of sufficient ability to gain and hold a seat on the Circle of Ten. It was not common, since the society was male-oriented, a female had to be better than the abilities and resources of a male to hold the same status, but it did happen from time to time. [5] In a much, much later age, these twelve officials would be mutated by legend into twelve princes, as Plato would have it. |
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