Introductory Note

Welcome. I am pleased to inform you, the good reader, that my “research” did not take as long as I thought. The adventuring party I was studying did not take as long as I thought to come to grief, losing one member to a trap so simple I was sure a child would be able to avoid it. (But not the childish, or so it transpired.)



Normally I would have been glad to restore life to him, but his companions got rude. I do not tolerate rude. When informed that he would stay dead, they became so impertinent as to draw weapons and start casting. That goes beyond the pale. Insult my parentage, insult my work, but you do not pull weapons on me.



But that is all in the past. Albeit the recent past. Besides, I believe the five of them are much happier as canary basilisks. Indeed, one is now resting at my feet, consuming one of the castle lizards that so bedevil the staff. A good sized male, draped in the drab brown of their winter plumage. Though he has been a basilisk for but a few hours he has done a very good job of learning how to use the paralyzing gaze and rending claws of the basilisk born. They should do well in their new roles.



With that taken care of, we now proceed to (As Mr. Kellogg would say) our regularly scheduled program. [He knows I'm going to type his letters up, and he persists in his little gibes.] [He loves the attention, good people.]



Atlantl, the Very Early Days

As I noted in the very first installment of this series, the island of Atlantl was a far different place then than now. The frost giants still marched, the Gods’ War still raged, and the northern lands were still covered in deep shields of ice. Atlantl’s clime was a temperate one when the first Atlantlans arrived. Forest was the predominant terrain, with patches of bog, swamp, meadow, and scrub where conditions were not right for trees. The mountains that form the spine of the island were home to forest and brush on the lower slopes, with sedge and lichen further uphill, and snow and ice higher still.



Atlantl is a volcanic island in origin. But not one of a natural birth. Her gods had plans, and needed a place where they could shape a people peculiarly their own.. So they created a volcanic hotspot and encouraged it to, well, blossom. Thus they were rewarded with an volcanic island larger than most. They then encouraged the sort of activity that gives birth to the granitic rocks. By this means they enlarged their playground, and -in effect- made it a small continent.



When the survivors of that epic voyage across hundreds of miles of open ocean landed on Atlantl they found a land teeming with life. Birds of all sorts, many flightless. Lizards and snakes. Even a few bats. Including a species of bat shaped by the gods of Atlantl in an attempt to create a sophont of their very own. Unfortunately, a netherling got a hold of them, and corrupted the creatures in a manner most foul. (At least that’s what the gods of Atlantl say, and I don’t have the resources necessary to ferret out the truth.) By the time the humans arrived the manbats were will on the way to reverting back to a bestial state, and so posed no danger to them.



It was paradise. Game abounded, fish swarmed the seas. Fire wood could be gleaned from the ground mere yards from an encampment. It should come as no surprise that their numbers virtually exploded. Indeed, all eighteen of the women in the group were pregnant when they landed. (What else had they to do when it was either too dark or too hot to paddle?)



Within a century they numbered in the hundreds. (Twins, triplets and more than their share of healthy quadruplets and quintuplets helped here.) Within a millennium they numbered in the thousands.



The flightless birds were now extinct, as were the flightless bats. Many other species were gone as well. The great forest that had once covered the whole of the island was showing substantial patches of grassland and savannah, the beginnings of a process that would see Atlantl virtually denuded of trees before the gods stepped in to put a stop to it. The rich fisheries and beds of shellfish that had once supported the Atlantlans in the early years were starting to give out. But still things were not as bad as they would become with the end of the Gods’ War and with it the end of the last ice age.



The Atlantlans of this time lived in small family bands, roving from place to place in search of food. Contrary to the recreations you are so fond of, they customarily went nude. Some even went so far as to decorate their genitalia, the better to advertise their “endowments”. They were a tall, slender people, with skin a reddish copper in hue. Cranial and pubic hair was black, thick and straight. The former was cut short to prevent entanglement in the foliage, the latter stayed short naturally. They had no facial hair to speak of.



Thanks to their lifestyle and their religious practices, they were a healthy people. From the beginning they engaged in human sacrifice, giving a sickly or “deficient” child to the gods. Along with volunteers from their own number, the elderly unable to provide for themselves or others, and the occasional war captive.



Their magick was as primitive as their lives. Mostly involving herbalism and a basic form of divination. Their religion was as primitive, with their gods being identified with certain phenomena, objects, and animals. Something the gods themselves encouraged, when they learned it made dealing with the mortals easier than it would’ve been otherwise. Such religious services and rites as they had would be lead by the band’s leader. On those rare occasions when different bands of close relationship came together the leader of the senior band would lead the observations. Such were times of feasting, gossiping, and the settling of disputes.



When bands who weren’t as closely related met they would first engage in bouts of boasting, followed by one band chasing off another, or the two bands getting together for feasting, gossiping, and fornicating. Depending on how the boast fight had gone. There were occasions when one band would wipe out the other. At other times when two bands met, and “partied” three bands would go their separate ways. This all was contingent on local conditions and how the alpha males were feeling at the time.



This is what modern day Atlantlans refer to as, “The Golden Age.”



)Don’t laugh, your ancestors were much more like the Atlantlans than you’d care to consider.) [Believe him, he was there.]



But then the world began to change. Some fifteen thousand years after Atlantl was settled by humans the Gods’ War came to an end, and with it the ice age. Ærth was now warming up, and her climate changing. Atlantl and her people would be going through many changes. Old ways of life would disappear into the mists of time, new ways would replace them. The Atlantlans would become seafarers, wanderers and explorers, and in due time colonists and imperialists. But that is a story for our next installment.



In the Next Chapter

The Atlantlans discover agriculture, permanent settlements, tribal government, and seafaring. And rediscover Afrika.



Your host, Aeros Aristophanes



(Aeros will be back, but the delay may be longer then it was this time around. It appears one of his transformed adventurers is having trouble with her first clutch, and Mr. Aristophanes feels somewhat responsible for her situation. Fortunately she is young, and he does have access to materia and potions sovereign in these cases. (His salve for easing egglaying is very popular among the local farmers.) So he should have little trouble in this matter.



(As before, any messages you have for Aeros regarding his series will be sent on to him, and he shall respond when conditions permit. Till the next time,



Alan Kellogg)