The First Age

Atlantean history splits into the vanished First Age and the present Second Age. Legend holds that the earliest Atlanteans were near-savages until Poseidon came to the island continent, married, and fathered ten sons. He granted each a kingdom, bade them raise many children to found a new race, and set the eldest, Atlas, over the rest to settle quarrels.

The new race thrived. Unlike their forebears they were tall (seven feet, say the tales), strong-featured, copper-brown of skin and black-haired. They raised stone cities and built a high culture on alchemy and sorcery. The ten kingdoms eventually joined as the nation of Atlantis, named for Atlas, and their great ships carried wealth and learning to savage lands. For thousands of years they ruled well.

Later kings lacked that wisdom. They fought one another and enslaved weaker peoples abroad. Hungry for power, their sorcerers meddled with the old gods' creations, breeding chimeras, manticores and griffons, and made armies of Nethermen and Andamen for their wars. They blasphemed the old gods and forced subjects to worship stone idols. Then came the Cataclysm, a catastrophe without equal. Some blame an angry Poseidon raising the seas, others the Atlanteans' own misused sciences. Either way, the capital sank, most of the empire's splendor was erased, and only part of the continent survived largely whole.