by Eurostar
"Their story is quite incredible," begins Exile, speaking telepathically into Rhyme Guardian's mind. "They're dinosaurs! Intelligent dinosaurs evolved on Earth sixty-four million years ago. The problem in their story is that is full of religious crap. Maybe in all this time, history gave way to myths. Anyway, they built a great civilization, much more advanced that our own now. They think that civilization was a gift of their god, whom they named after a serpent -- we'd translate it as 'Viper.' But their greedy civilization was slowly causing the rest of life on Earth to become extinct, so a powerful being they call the Lord of Chaos -- I'm not sure if this is meant to be a separate figure from the serpent god or not -- sent a great asteroid to destroy them and restart evolution on the planet.
"Many of them, to survive, built a very large starship to roam the stars in search of a new world to inhabit. Each planet-ship had no way to contact the others, because in those days they had no means of traveling through hyperspace. They traveled at half-light-speed, and their voyage was very slow. After much time had passed, millions of Earth years, the scientist of this one ship discovered a way to travel through hyperspace. They also found that, on Earth, life had evolved nearly from scratch, and it was now a paradise. So they came back.
"They arrived in the solar system more than thirty thousand years ago, putting the ship in orbit around Earth, like a moon, and began sending scouts over the planet. And they soon found two problems. One minor problem was that on Earth there were various intelligent species, evolved from those furry pests that they remembered from their ancient legends -- mammals. One particular species was very intelligent, possessing mental powers and living in the continent now called Europe, and another less intelligent and with a smaller brain, but with a gift for abstract thinking, was spreading from Africa to the rest of the world, and soon would have taken over."
"Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man," whispers Rhyme Guardian.
"Probably. The dates coincide, at least," responds Exile telepathically. "Anyway, it wasn't a huge problem. The two species were fairly primitive and posed no danger for the Basilisks. The Neanderthal, with their mental powers, actually could have been a danger, but they were few, scattered in the icy plains of the north, where no Basilisks would have chosen to live, and they were hunted by the the other species nearly to extinction.
"The second problem was greater. The planet was full of diseases -- viruses, bacteria, things that millions of years of life in the artificial environment of a starship had left the Basilisks with no defenses against. Their science was not prepared to delve into it, and, after the first scouts returned to the ship, various diseases began to spread throughout the Basilisk population, decimating it. Of two million Basilisks, only a mere two hundred survived.
"The plans were suddenly changed. Conquering the planet was not a solution any longer. Now they could only rule the planet. But how could they rule a planet of wild jungles, inhabited by primitive creatures? The surviving Basilisks were divided into two factions -- one wanted to leave for outer space, allowing their population to grow big, and the other wanted to go into suspended animation and be restored to life only when a great civilization appeared on the planet, so they could rule over it. The second faction won, sentencing the members of the first one to death. Only one survived, running away to Earth, where he disappeared.
"After eighteen thousand years, the computers awoke them. On Earth, the first human civilization had begun to flourish. On the southernmost continent, many different populations, from the coasts of Australia, Asia and Africa, were stranded after big hurricanes had caught their canoes, and slowly built a new way of life, inventing agriculture, rearing, and metallurgy. Towns evolved into cities, and then into nations."
"Atlantis," whispers Rhyme Guardian.
"Yes, or Lemuria, or Mu -- whatever you want to call it. The lost continent. And it was located -- can you imagine? -- here, on the continent of Antarctica! Anyway, let me continue. The Neanderthal were extinct by that time, killed off by Cro-Magnon. One less threat for them. Also, their computer had found a way to protect them from disease. The world seemed ready to be controlled and ruled.
"But what the scout found was different. Another race was ruling the continent. Superficially looking like humans, they were not the product of millions of years of evolution. They were the product of an act of a god. And there was more… another god, to protect the human race from the powers of these conquerors, had given a gift to humankind: magic!
"To make it short, the Basilisks entered the conflict, bending the rules of this new game to their own profit. Allying themselves sometimes with the ruling race, sometimes with the human races of the continent, soon they put the ten city-states of Atlantis under their dominion, imposing the cult of Viper over the whole continent, and succeeded in having Viper himself be hosted in the body of the most powerful magician of the continent, a giant named Titanus. It seemed that the final victory was near, but a hunter from the north, a primitive by the standards of Atlantis, who was somehow immune to magic, was deported into the one of the cities. He began a revolution, and then a war, that brought him to retrieve Viper’s sword, Ladnikia. With it, he killed the host and then found a way to the planet-ship, destroying the aliens right in their own base.
"But the ship fell out of orbit, and crashed on the continent, right here. The Earth's climate changed, the Ice Age ended, and while the continent was covered by the ice sheet, the rest of the planet experienced a warming process. History then began as we know it."
"And these aliens?" Rhyme Guardian asks Exile through their telepathic link.
Exile replies, "Well, the ship, as you can see, was protected by the force field and survived intact. Only, the motors were not able to be fired up any longer. The surviving aliens regrouped here. They had discovered magic and worked it into their science, creating a strange hybrid of an art. Basically, they found a way to become immortal, and became gods for the growing Egyptian kingdom. The plan to rule Atlantis was now extended to the whole world, since civilization was spreading faster.
"But another defeat came, now at the hand of the united population of the Mediterranean area. The Sea people, as archaeologists call them. The last remaining Basilisks came here, back in the ship, and changed their strategy. They began to manipulate humankind through secret societies, although whether there was one or more than one, I couldn’t understand from the alien's mind. Maybe it was just one, who changed names throughout the millennia, but maybe it was more than one. The so-called 'musketeers' we fought are from that secret society, which sounds like 'Siecle Draco' or something similar -- they must have somehow been transported in from a secret location in France hours ago, after the aliens came out of hibernation. The goal is conquering the Earth for the cult of Viper. I don’t believe in this religious crap, so I think it's a basic plot to substitute Earth's leaders with clones controlled by them."
Rhyme Guardian smiles. "You 'don’t believe in this religious crap'? I am a god, don’t you know?"
Exiles half-smiles, then catches a small thought of Rhyme Guardian. "The god of rhyme? Oh, don’t make me laugh."