If you're not in the cult, you probably have noticed, even if it's just subconscious and lingers in the back of your mind as cognitive dissonance, that racism is a hoax. White guys are the nicest, most accommodating and welcoming population, probably in the history of the human race, and yet we're constantly accused of racism. Every time anyone tries to examine a supposed incident of racism committed by white people against the poor black, brown, red and yellow people who we've (mostly) foolishly allowed to live here among us, what you find is merely a shakedown racket by an entitled, whiny, demanding narcissist. In spite of the fact that nobody ever finds any racism, we're to believe that it's all around us everywhere, invisible, yet insidiously destroying... something.
Other times, normal human behavior is retroactively described as "racist" but only if white people do it. This is the case for a lot of early pulp authors that I like to read. The early Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs are among my favorite stories ever written, and ERB didn't have any ill-will towards Africans. But we're told that they're unforgivingly racist because Africans are described as primitive... pretty much exactly the way everyone who saw them first-hand a hundred some odd years ago described them, because it was an accurate description of them. H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are similarly cast in this dishonest mold, because they sometimes had stories in which a plot point would be a foreigner pitted in an existential struggle against the white man. In spite of this, we're to believe that the white man is in an existential struggle against everyone, but unless we lay down and grovel unceasingly while every black, brown, red or yellow person on the face of the planet has his way with us and our stuff, we're the racists.
I bring this up, because my concept of the Atlantis in Dark Fantasy X is more akin to that described by Robert E. Howard in Skull-Face. If you haven't ever read this novella, I highly recommend it. It's quite ingenious, and well written, and has a fantastic concept; taking the idea of Cthulhu from his pen-pal H. P. Lovecraft and remixing it pretty substantially. I can't describe this without spoiling the plot of Skull-face, (it's in the public domain, and not hard to find full text copies of it) I recommend that you go read it and come back to this post afterwards. I promise; it'll still be here. In any case, Skull-face is almost always accused of being racist, merely because the story itself is clearly a Fu Manchu pastiche, and therefore it must be just because. Never mind that most Hollywood movies are constantly preaching the fake White Peril and making white men the constant villains, that's not bad, because the elites in our society define themselves by their hatred of whiteness; western Civilization, and especially Christianity. Skull-face isn't racist, and if you read it without looking for an opportunity to shriek, pretend to be offended, and run for your fainting couch, it's got much to recommend it.
Cthulhu in Skull-face is re-spelled Cathulo, and he's not a big tentacle monster asleep under the sea at R'lyeh, he's an undead Atlantean sorcerer, dredged up from the bottom of the sea by some fisherman, and awakened, and then turned into a Fu Manchu-style character, who's especially keen to destroy Western Civilization and the men who built it. Although he's singular, he's also not—there are who knows how many other undead Atlantean sorcerers who put themselves in lacquered, airtight coffins prior to the sinking of Atlantis, and went into some kind of undead hibernation until such time as they could resurface and reclaim their ancient empire. This was their plan to "survive" (in undead form) the sinking of Atlantis, and return someday to reclaim the world. This is naturally seen as racist, because anything with a Fu Manchu storyline is called racist, regardless of any facts related to it. It just is, because white men aren't allowed to have their own countries, their own culture, or their own anything. Because if they did, they'd be "white supremacists." It's all a gigantic hoax, but it actually makes Skull-face remarkably topical. Just recast the Atlanteans with cultural Marxists, who are a mix of Jews and ambitious, grasping white elites who hate their own people and their own culture, and who want to plunder it into oblivion while it still has something worth plundering left, and it could almost be a shockingly prescient portrayal of our day. It's not quite as on-the-nose as Camp of the Saints because of the intrigue, skullduggery and action sequences with what is obviously a fantasy dark lord. Frankly, you should also read at least the first Fu Manchu novel by Sax Rohmer. It's pretty good, and doesn't feel as dated as you'd think.
Anyway, in Dark Fantasy X, Atlantis hasn't existed in millennia. As noted above, that doesn't mean that they're entirely gone as a race, although they mostly are. In fact, the Mind-Wizards (of the upcoming MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTELAND are a couple of undead Atlanteans of the original ancestral stock. Because they're undead, they're thousands of years old. They could exist as statted enemies in Dark Fantasy X, they'd be equivalent to Heresiarchs; undead creatures that combine most of the strengths of both liches and vampires and few of their weaknesses.
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| A Mind-Wizard, a former Atlantean master sorcerer |
But this isn't what I mean by the playable race Atlanteans. Those are, rather, the descendants of ancient slaves who were present on Atlantean colonies on the mainland when the cataclysm struck their homeland. Although they survived the sinking of Atlantis, they did so with great loss of life and the complete collapse of their culture. If you watch the Netflix documentary series Ancient Apocalypse which is made by (or at least strongly featuring) Graham Hancock and his theories* which have been floating around in print for decades now, you have a pretty good idea of what the Atlantean civilization befell. However, there were no benevolent Atlantean survivors to bring knowledge to the primitive people of the mainland; the Atlantean survivors "survived" by becoming undead, locking themselves in watertight coffins and going into a state of torpor until such time as they can be returned to the surface to rebuild their ancient empire, sweeping the world clean of the modern nations entirely, unless they have some use as chattel. The slaves who survived, who were of mixed race, although with some Atlantean blood, because the degenerate Atlanteans had often abused the women of their slaves until such point as a not insubstantial degree of Atlantean blood flowed through the slaves too, were also neither friendly, nor capable of maintaining the esoteric scientific and magical knowledge of their masters. In fact, a curse fell upon them because of their mingled Atlantean blood. The undead mind-wizards only escaped this curse because as undead, they have no blood flowing through their veins—they effectively evaded one curse by embracing another even worse one.
This curse—taking another cue from Robert E. Howard—is that the Atlanteans cannot use any advanced technology, ensuring that they remain a backwards and devolved people. In fact, they are slowly regressing and devolving back towards becoming man-apes, although at different rates for different individuals. The most civilized still wear leather clothing, and can use bone, wood, or stone tools and speak normally, etc. The most devolved have only rudimentary tool use, and their language is stunted and primitive, and they live little better than the most primitive conception of cave-men.
No Atlantean can use or possess any items of metal without falling under the curse, and rapidly sickening, withering and dying in a painful way, returning as a husked undead creature who eats the living. By rapidly, I don't mean minutes or hours, though—more like weeks. If an Atlantean is in possession of a metal object, there's time to get rid of it and stop the curse from spreading. This curse is what separates them from normal men and causes them to be treated as demihumans; they are literally leaving their humanity behind, and they've already lost enough of for it to be immediately obvious to anyone who sees one.
Because of this, Atlanteans are stuck permanently in a stone age state of society, and in fact as they devolve, they will over generations become more primitive and savage, not less. Physically, they are often small and hunched, but with rangy limbs, and a heartier, more robust build than one would expect; pound for pound, Atlanteans are often stronger than other men, although because they are usually smaller this usually levels the playing field. They have darker nut-brown skin, and brown hair, but with shockingly blue eyes. They are quite secretive and stealthy. They usually live in small bands in secretive places of the world, often deep in trackless forests, such as the Haunted Forest and the Bitterwood, where (relatively) large remaining populations of them remain, although many more such bands still linger in other lonely and isolated parts of the Three Realms. The largest—albeit widely spread—groups live in red deserts of Baal Hamazi. They are usually unremittingly hostile towards any non-Atlantean, but occasionally one will have some kind of social intercourse with one of their neighbors beyond simply attacking him.
Another group lives in the Orlock Marshes and has actual relations with their neighbors. Most overland travelers will not see any as they pass through their territory (although they will most likely themselves be seen) but they do occasionally talk, trade, and interact with the people around them in places like Innsburough. Some of the countryside swampies even consider them to be friendly, although to anyone else they're merely "not actively hostile" while still being furtive, secretive, withdrawn and aloof.
Sometimes others leave or are forced out of their communities, and eventually find their way into the wider world. And occasionally, one finds and abandoned baby or toddler of the Atlanteans that hasn't died yet. This rarely works out well, unless the baby is somehow kept from metal, and few would know to do so, but a tiny amount have managed to be raised in human society this way, albeit usually in extremely isolated and backwards environments; nearly as much so as the society which they were abandoned by.
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| A successful Atlantean hunter/warrior |
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| An Atlantean that still hearkens back to his human ancestry |
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| A much more regressed Atlantean hunter |
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| One of the Atlanteans' dark shamans, wielding a stone hammer and daemon-blade of bone |
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| An Atlantean praying by firelight to his dark gods |
Atlanteans call themselves Wendaks. Although their language is variable and primitive, it is obvious to scholars that it bears some resemblance to the ancient and poorly known language of Atlantis, and it is generally believes to be a debased and degenerate collection of descendants of that language. Wendak itself seems to be a much changed and eroded reflex of the old word for "slave."
Along with their general hostility towards the races who have arrived on the scene since the fall of Atlantis, the greatest danger the Wendaks pose is their daemon-worship. Their daemon-shamans have a power not unlike that of the sorcery of other peoples, yet it is completely dependent on their faith in their daemon-lords. Not only do these daemon-shamans occasionally whip up their tribes to go on the warpath at the behest of their daemonic masters, but they are also able to call daemons into the world to plague people from outside of their tribes. One that is particularly common among them, but which sometime spread from their isolated Wendak origins to plague normal people as parasitic predators, familiars to dark sorcerers and worse, or the nuzzle-rats; strange rat-like creatures with a human-like face. These are not animals, however, but a particularly vile form of small daemon, and they can speak (somewhat) and occasionally even warp reality in an effect that is similar to a sorcerous spell.
There is also often a more subtle influence left in places where the Atlanteans trod. I wrote this paragraph over three years ago about the Haunted Forest, but the same can apply to other areas as well. Keep in mind that at that time, I called the Atlanteans skraelings. I no longer do, but I decided not to edit the text. There will be some people in the setting that yet refer to them with that label.
The territory of the Hill Country, up to at least the borders of what is today Timischburg, was probably first settled by early ancestors of the skraelings. Some few still live deep in the Haunted Forest and other remote areas of the territory, but it is here that their touch is the least disturbed. Cursed burial grounds, sacrificial altars, barrows and more leave their lingering taint on the ground, and there is a rumor that "sympathetic magic" ties the skraelings to the land in a way that it does not for other peoples; the land itself, and some kind of genius loci favors them and occasionally actively fights against more recent interlopers. In addition to a kind of vaguely defined genius loci haunting the region and making modern peoples uncomfortable deep in the forest, lingering semi-sentient spirits—either cursed Wendaks or those whom they summoned in ancient times—still linger, worn down to being little more than vague emotional resonances of hate and defensiveness, but which can occasionally embody themselves in bodies of earth and wood and stone, animate ill will in the animals and trees and brambles, or even appear as wraiths or wights of some kind. These skraeling spirits are not organized by anything other than a general animus towards anything in the forest that is not skraeling, and they are usually essentially mindless, possessing no thought, but only emotions such as hate and rage.
While the Atlanteans look human enough, their curse not only makes it difficult for them to live like or among humans, but it also creates a sense of wrongness or unease about them, that most people can recognize. Animals do so even more, and Wendaks can rarely ride horses or keep dogs. A particularly nasty breed of dog-like animal, often called a grimshuck will tolerate their presence. These animals look like wiry dogs, mangy or nearly hairless except for a hyena-like mane down their neck to their back, and oversize teeth and jaws and oddly shaped faces. Nearly the size of a wolf, they serve as surly and aggressive equivalents to dogs in their society, and are just about the only animal that the Wendaks can domesticate.
Atlanteans: +1 to DEX and Stealth affinity. Atlanteans, or Wendaks in their own language, are the original inhabitants of the area where the protagonist nations are, and some of them still linger deep in the wilds and woods that are lightly settled by the other races. They look human enough, albeit exotic: short and dark, with bright blue eyes, and a primitive technological material culture. Never very common to begin with, they have not prospered in competition for the land with other more recent arrivals.
It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway; as the Wendaks have developed in my setting, they've become an antagonist race, and those that could serve as models for PC-like behavior would be very few and far between. That said, they've been part of Dark Fantasy X ever since it was Dark”Heritage Mk. IV at least, way back in 2011 if not even earlier. I'm reluctant to excise them now as a playable option, but any playable Wendak character would probably have to have an unusual backstory (for his race) since the culture that they are embedded in makes them difficult to run as is as a player character in a (presumably) mixed race PC party that would be expected to interact with normal society. You'll need to think about why this Wendak isn't part of Wendak society, how he rejected the daemon-worship of his people, and what his whole deal really is.
Finally, it's worth noting that there is another group that is sometimes (erroneously) associated with Atlanteans, although this is just an accident of geography. There are a few remaining fragments of the mini-continent of Atlantis that still remain above the water, and this the archipelago of Nizrekh. Nizrekh will occasionally get mentioned here and there, but it's really beyond the scope of the Dark Fantasy X setting as I intend to develop it, just as the orclings homeland of Gunaakt is. The Nizrekh people are people who live on those islands, and who occasionally find their way to the Three Realms. However, they arrived on the archipelago after Atlantis sank, and they are in no way related to the Atlanteans. They are, in fact, just a population of humans; small and brown-skinned, with dark hair and eyes, who often shave all of their hair. They have been psychologically and spiritually perverted by the lingering malice of the Mind-Wizards, many of whom slumber in the waves near the islands, and one or two of whom have managed to infiltrate the islands themselves. Their dark cults to snakes and undead make them extremely hostile to outsiders, but they do mostly remain on their islands, and seem to have little interest in leaving them.
* So, Graham Hancock is obviously a controversial figure. In defiance of the expectations of binary thinkers, just because I like certain things that he does doesn't mean that I endorse him. I like how he challenges the mainstream narrative, and points out where it's full of holes, has weaknesses, and needs either shoring up, or revision. I've long ago come to realize that most of the mainstream narratives we take for granted in most sciences, in disciplines such as history, politics, sociology, etc. are weak, if not observably fake. The mainstream archeological narratives are built more on assumptions and cult-like beliefs than they are on facts, and Hancock not only does a good job of challenging them, but he does a good job (inadvertently in this case) of demonstrating in real time exactly the personality problems with too many archaeologists, who are smug, arrogant, and dismissive of evidence, because it threatens their social status and their legacy, not because it threatens their models and theories.
That said, Hancock's alternative proposal isn't any more convincing than the mainstream one. I would hardly be happy seeing it replace the Establishment narrative, because it's at least as weak. More work to be done here all around, guys. Frankly, our forebears were on to more than we are now, because they started from the assumption that written testimony in the form of scripture, and very old history, even semi-legendary stuff, was based on reality. We're often finding that many details that had been dismissed by "modern" scientists have something to them after all in the fields of archaeogenetics, and others. I strongly suspect that looking at those kinds of sources to be our guides will be more fruitful than starting from dogmas that are literally built from thin air, like most of our mainstream archeological models are.
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