atlantis

In the final analysis, war between the Atlantean factions was not only inevitable but necessary. What surprised everyone was the shocking savagery and brutality that played out in the conflict, whose survivors are still coping with it today.

Atlantis casts a very long shadow over the Homeworld. For seven hundred years, even during the Burning Century, the multi-ethnic, multi-national Antarctic settlers survived and even prospered. They conquered the "tyranny of oxygen" and built homes under the water. They engineered themselves and the animals they brought with them. Nobody will deny that without them, the Shepherds and other returner groups would have faced a steep uphill fight in making the world livable again.

It is that very heroic history that worked against Atlantis in the last century, and especially with respect to the Venus incident. It is this author's considered opinion that the conservative factions which dominated Atlantean political thinking secretly yearn for a return to the Burning Century, when they were the preeminent civilization on the planet, and certainly the only one to hold land on the Homeworld.