The Dark Age and Hesperia's Golden Age

With Atlantis fallen, the world slid into chaos. The survivors, no longer under Atlantean rule, turned on each other, and the old learning was scorned and forgotten as people fell back into barbarism for untold thousands of years. At length some large tribes resettled the coasts, and villages, towns and cities gave rise to new nations. Among them were the Erians and the Amazons, both copper-skinned and both reputedly sprung from Atlantean refugees of the Cataclysm, as well as the Khitans in the east of Jambu, the Tharshi of Mediterranea, and two black-skinned Gondwanan peoples, the Ophir and the Qaddani.

The Amazons of Hesperia, a warlike society ruled by women, soon led them all, conquering and colonizing much of Gondwana's northwest coast; only Qaddan and Ophir held out behind their stone fortresses. Checked there, the Amazons invaded Atlantis from the south and drove the weak Atlantean army back toward its new capital, and the city's fall seemed certain.

It never came. Hesperia was rotting inside, drained by quarrels with the Gorgons, a snake-worshipping Amazon cult, and by the struggle to hold down conquered peoples, and the Atlantean war stretched it further. Sensing this, Ophir and Qaddan struck back in Gondwana. Their attack only partly succeeded, but it sparked a Gorgon revolt and civil war, and Hesperia's garrisons in Atlantis and Gondwana were recalled. The Gorgons were beaten, yet Hesperia lost most of its conquests and its golden age was over.