History of Atlantea

Prehistory

The first archaeological evidence of habitation on Atlantea dates from around 43,000 BR, consisting of a pottery fragment unearthed near Coonibango. Around 1,000 years later, agriculture began to develop on Atlantea, with the oldest farming village known being excavated near Kahurangi. These early Atlanteans grew sweet potatoes, rice, coconuts, sugarcane, breadfruit, pineapples, and taro; and raised pigs, coconut crabs, and chickens for their meat.

The Gods' Curse and Early History

As with most of the other early societies of the galaxy, the early Atlanteans were issued threats by the powerful Oni Demons, and many began worshiping a false religion dedicated to them. As a result, many abandoned the old Gods altogether, focusing instead on this new religion. In addition, this same trend was occurring across the entire galaxy and not just on Atlantea. However, in the lowland areas, this religion, for one reason or another, never caught on.

By 40,000 BR, this new religion had overtaken basically the entire galaxy with the exception of these lowlanders and a few isolated tribes on Awal. This angered the Gods immensely, causing them to transform everyone who belonged to this new religion into various anthropomorphic animal species. As a result, all of Atlantea's mountain and ocean tribes were now made up of talking animals, while the lowlanders remained some of the last humans in existence.

Shortly after this event, the City of Atlantea was founded in the lowlands, and quickly grew to dominate the lowlands in the form of the Atlantean Empire. Eventually, as an additional reward for remaining faithful to The Gods during the time of the false religion, the Atlanteans were taught the power of Astral Magic by The Gods. While the knowledge of Astral Magic spread quickly throughout the galaxy, the Atlanteans fused magic and technology like no other society could.

For the next dozen millennia or so, the Atlanteans enjoyed a golden age, building massive cities and even creating magic-based automatons that would not be rivaled until the Ishgas invented the first true robots over a dozen millennia later. The Atlantean Civilization also began participating in transgalactic trade, taking many cultural cues from other trade hubs, such as nearby Aurea and Awal. In the lowlands at least, wood and thatch huts were supplanted by brick walls and marble columns. Domes and minarets replaced slanted roofs. Clubs and boomerangs were supplemented with pikes and scimitars. Most crucially, the Aurean traders brought their alphabet with them, and the Atlanteans soon began using their script.

There was a change even in the lowland Atlantean's diet, as new crops and livestock were brought in to supplement Atlantean agriculture. While the climate was mostly too warm for the wheat agriculture that had taken off on other planets, millet, maize, soybeans, squash, melons, and citrus all found their way to Atlantea and did well there. Water buffalo, donkeys, sheep, zebu cattle, camels, peafowl, and even elephants joined the domesticated animals already present on Atlantea, and many more non-native wild animals joined the ecosystem by escaping zoos.

However, there was a large economic disparity between the rich and prosperous Atlantean Empire in the lowlands, which participated in galactic trade and diplomacy; and the mountain tribes, which mostly lived out rural, isolationist existences, only dealing with the Atlantean Empire when absolutely necessary. Here, ancient architecture, weapons, and culture prevailed and agriculture mainly stuck to the original Atlantean crops, often grown in terrace farms to accomodate Atlantea's often freakishly high mountains.

Despite their best efforts, however, the mountain tribes found themselves under increasing influence from the Atlantean Empire, with many either being subjugated outright or made into client states. By around 17,500 BR, Emperor Godwulf had conquered the last mountain tribes and unified the planet of Atlantea. Despite being under Atlantean political and economic control, however, the mountain tribes stubbornly held onto their unique set of cultures and refused to assimilate into the wider empire.

Vikings, Gunmonga, and the Great Flood

In 15,821 BR, Atlantean history would be changed forever. A band of vikings, space pirates fleeing an ice age on their homeworld of Ryu 108, attacked the planet. Though they were repulsed by the Atlantean Empire's military, they damaged the Lunarium badly enough to scare the imperial government. A few more years of eerie silence passed until 15,818 BR, when the vikings returned with a fleet carrying what seemed like enough vikings to swallow Atlantea whole.

Gunmonga, the current Man of Light and Shadow, was from Atlantea, and as a result, he rushed home to defend his planet from the vikings. However, the vikings' attack coincided with a solar eclipse, triggering Shadow Mode in Gunmonga. As a result, Gunmonga completely lost control of his own actions during the eclipse and his power was increased immensely, causing him to sink the viking fleet with a massive tidal wave. However, the sea levels on Atlantea did not stop rising once Gunmonga came out of Shadow Mode.

Nothing Gunmonga or anyone else did could stop the sea levels from rising, and as a result, the Atlantean Empire began building glass domes around its cities to protect them. Gunmonga rode around the lowlands trying to assist this process, but the Atlanteans could not build domes in time to stop all of the lowlands from flooding. As a result, the Atlantean Empire's citizens all either drowned or packed up and left the planet, eventually going on to start the Ishga civilization on the planet of the same name.

Eventually, the sea level finally stopped rising, but only the highest mountains on Atlantea were above the waves now. All of the lowlands had been buried beneath a planetary ocean thousands of feet deep. Feeling guilty for accidentally drowning most of the planet, Gunmonga went into exile.

The Aftermath

While the Atlantean Empire proper had been completely submerged, the mountain tribes were largely spared from the flooding, as they already lived on the higher ground that was still above sea level. Before long, the mountain tribes had diverged into three groups: the Yiri Islanders (inhabiting the Yiri Archipelago in the far west), the Omnesians (inhabiting several thousand islands in the north and west), and the Squidian Nomads (inhabiting the Squidian Archipelago in the south). Due to geographical differences, the Omnesians in turn soon split into the Platypusians in the north and the Dolphinesians in the south. In addition, many Squidian Nomads emigrated to Awal (and then to Muungano after that, which they renamed Planet Squid) after some of their lower-lying villages were swept up in the flood.

Yiri

Centered around the Coorabar Alps, the highest group of plateaus and mountain ranges on the planet as well as the entire galaxy, Yiri is an archipelago consisting of 3 main islands surrounding an inland sea, with hundreds of thousands of smaller islands and islets in the surrounding area. The largest island, Wolloway, makes up half the total land area of Yiri, comprising the entire east coast, some of the south coast, and most of the north. Yiri's 2nd largest city of Coonibango is located here. Pegoona, the southernmost island, is long and thin, comprising most of the southern coast. The western island, Jandamirrah, is the smallest of the main 3 islands but is much wider and more robust than Pegoona.

All of the islands are tropical and extremely mountainous, especially on the outer coasts (the coasts facing the Great Atlantean Ocean). The inner coasts (facing the inland sea) are generally flat, varying in climate from lush tropical rainforest to savanna to desert, but always hot. Due to the way the islands were created by Gunmonga's flooding and the placement of the highest peaks, the entire outer coast is comprised of the only tropical fjords in the entire galaxy, complete with massive snow-capped mountains that look extremely out-of-place for such a tropical location. Many of Yiri's largest cities are located in these fjords, using them as natural harbors. Younga, Coonibango, and Darbut are just a few.

The extremely high mountains this close to the already almost entirely tropical planet's equator have resulted in a climate phenomenon that occurs in very few other places in the entire galaxy: in the middle altitudes of the planet, the climate is wet but temperate year-round, never getting cold enough for frost but almost never climbing past 90 fahrenheit. This has allowed the growth of dense forests of eucalyptus, tree ferns, giant sequoia, coast redwood, and stringy gum trees. These forests are home to the Thylacoleo, the most powerful mammalian predator in the galaxy and Atlantea's national animal. In addition, the wetter portions of these areas are extremely productive agriculturally, with the terrace farms here producing a whopping 4 harvests annually due to the constant climate.

The capital of Yiri is Jubenar, located on the southern coast. It is positioned in Jubenar Fjord (which is technically a strait between two mountains and not a true fjord), a narrow strait that separates Pegoona and Wolloway. It is currently the largest Atlantean city built on land, although it was little more than small port before the Tatian War. Its strategic position not only links Pegoona to Wolloway but also controls 1 of only 3 passages from the Great Atlantean Ocean to Yiri's Inland Sea.

Since even before Gunmonga flooded the lowlands, Yiri (then called the Yiri Mountains) was one of the most isolationist and rural places in the galaxy, consisting entirely of subsistence farming villages in some places and hunter-gatherers in others. Due to the mountainous and wet terrain, terraced rice agriculture was and still is extremely common here, but other crops such as yams, coconuts, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, taro, and pineapples were and are not uncommon. In addition to the chickens, coconut crabs, water buffalo, and pigs raised elsewhere on Atlantea, Yiri's unique ecosystem gave it many more large animals that the Yiri Islanders were able to domesticate. Giant Mihirung birds, giant marsupials called Bunyips, and mountain camels (descendants of the camels brought to Atlantea by Awalian and Aurean traders) were the most important of these. Due to the mountains, however, these farming villages remained mostly isolated from each other and unable to congeal into large cities or empires of any kind. In fact, it was from one of these small villages, around 150 miles northeast of present-day Younga, that Gunmonga hailed.

Gunmonga's flood and the destruction of Atlantea's lowland civilization did not affect the Yiri Islanders much in the short-term, as the Atlanteans barely controlled the region and the average villager had absolutely no interaction with them or their culture. In fact, the Yiri Islanders did not even use the Aurean writing script introduced by the Atlanteans. While a few of the lower-lying Yiri Islanders fled with the Atlanteans and became proto-Ishgas, most of the Yiri Islander flood refugees either moved to higher ground or fled to Aurea, where they founded what would come to be known as Tiorangi. Yiri would eventually hear of Gunmonga's victory on Iteru against the vikings and he would go down in history as a hero in the area, with his body even being returned to the islands for burial.

While some of the more iconic aspects of Yiri Islander culture (i.e. the didgeridoo) date to well before Gunmonga's flood, the islands underwent a great deal of change and development at the time. Sometime around 15,000 BR, the villages had built up enough cultural similarities with each other to feel comfortable unifying under one nation. The small fishing village of Jubenar was made the capital, and Chief Wiberoo I was placed on the throne as the first Grand Chief of Yiri. This did not affect the average citizen all that much, however, as the Grand Chief was mostly a ceremonial leader tasked with overseeing diplomacy and holding the new nation together, while power over pretty much everything else was left in the hands of local village elders. Despite this, however, Yiri Islander society remained (and to a degree remains, especially outside the cities) fragmented into hundreds of different tribes, known as "mobs", each of which generally had its own culture, beliefs, and language.

While Yiri Islanders did not yet have a system of writing, they kept track of their history via oral tradition. Stories from before or during the time of Gunmonga were known as the "Fartimes" and each individual story was called a "Fartelling". While many Fartellings are common to all Yiri Islanders, the vast majority of them are unique to a specific mob or group of closely related mobs, resulting in massive variation in stories across the archipelago. The paths traveled across the land by historical and mythological figures on Yiri were even revered, referred to as "Telling Tracks". These Telling Tracks were and still are often told around campfires as songs and memorized by travelers, to the point where those well-enough versed in them could use them to navigate across the entire archipelago. Yiri Islander oral tradition is generally regarded as the most important part of their culture, as they regard knowledge of the Fartimes and recitation of Fartellings as necessary to maintain one's connection to the land. In addition to oral tradition and later writing, creatures, sentients, symbols, objects, and events from Fartellings were also depicted in the Yiri's long and vibrant tradition of art, featuring cave paintings, rock art, wooden carvings, and body/face paint. The use of red ochre for body/face art is particularly common, especially in the Mullaring Desert.

By the early 14,000s BR, the Yiri Islanders had begun writing with the runic script introduced by the Eyjagardian colonists to the far south. It was around this time that the various Fartellings of the Fartime were written down, though a comprehensive book of all the known Fartellings would not be written until much later.

Over the next 10,000 years or so, Yiri would be content to live mostly peacefully among the other nations of Atlantea. However, brief wars did erupt from time to time between Yiri and Dolphinesia and Platypusia, mostly over the northeast of the Yiri Archipelago and Taku Island. In 4,203 BR, Alexandros Magnus Maximus, the first Dominus of the Aurean Dominate, arrived on Yiri, chasing governing elements of the former Haxamanian Empire that had fled there. Bindi II, the Grand Chieftess of Yiri at the time and an ally of the Haxamanian Empire, was defeated in battle by Alexandros and forced to accept Aurean suzerainty for the time being. After huge deposits of iron ore were discovered in the Coorabar Alps around 100 years later, the Aurean Dominate invaded with a much larger army and navy, Yiri was annexed and made into an Aurean province, and the Grand Chief of Yiri was forced to govern Yiri on the Aurean Dominus's behalf. While some Aureans settled in Yiri's cities and the Aureans attempted to introduce their language and script, their presence was practically nonexistent outside the cities due to both the Grand Chief of Yiri's very decentralized governance and the extremely rugged geography of the archipelago. In fact, most in Yiri's interior were not even aware they were under Aurean rule. Aurean impact on Yiri's culture was minimal, especially in the countryside. However, Yiri did benefit from some technologies brought in by the Aureans, such as Aurean-style roads, chainmail armor, Aurean architecture and city planning, and Aurean-style military organization. The Aureans also built a network of roads through Yiri's wilderness, often following the routes of Telling Tracks, that connected most of the archipelago's cities together. This was mostly done to facilitate iron ore extraction via Yiri's ports, but linking the cities together had the additional effect of creating a common urban culture on Yiri that made the coastal areas somewhat more unified and easier to govern. Other than being an iron ore supplier, Yiri was of little importance to the Aurean Dominate, although its system of terrace farming was introduced to Aurea's tropical regions, greatly improving its agricultural productivity.

Eventually, Alinta III, the Grand Chieftess of Yiri at the time, grew sick of her predecessors' arrangement with Aurea, gathered an army, and rose up in revolt against them in 3,324 BR. While the Aureans easily defeated her tiny navy and were able to hold most of Yiri's cities, her army's extensive use of guerilla warfare and Yiri's extreme geography made the interior of the province impossible for the Aureans to hold. Cut off from the iron ore they had conquered the archipelago for in the first place and unable to recover it, the Aurean Dominate withdrew from Yiri in 3,320 BR and recognized its independence the same year. Few people in Yiri outside the cities noticed.

By 206 BR, Yiri, Dolphinesia, and Platypusia had been locked in a 3-way conflict for the past few centuries over Taku Island, a volcanic island off the southeastern coast of Yiri that all three powers had claims to. Soon, the Ishgas, new arrivals to Atlantea who had set up colonies in parts of the previously uninhabited East Islands, decided that it would be more profitable to use the convicts they had previously been sending there as slave labor in their factories to build their spaceships, instead importing slaves from Planet Squid to work the sugar plantations in the Ishga East Islands. This egregious violation of sentient rights enraged Eyjagard, Yiri, Platypusia, Squidia, and Dolphinesia, who all formed a coalition and declared war on Ishga in 187 BR. The technologically vastly superior Ishgas easily annihilated the coalition's navy off the coast of Taku Island, forcing the entire coalition to beg for peace terms.

The coalition was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Kahurangi, which forced all of the coalition nations to pay heavy reparations to Ishga. In addition, the Ishgas were now to have unrestricted naval, settlement, and trading rights in Atlantea's entire eastern hemisphere. Finally, all three nations fighting over it had to renounce their claims to Taku Island and hand it over to the Ishgas. These reparations proved to be a huge problem for Yiri, with the Ishgas using Yiri's default on them in 50 BR as an excuse to send its navy in and annex Yiri that year, reducing its Grand Chief Coorabung I to a figurehead the Ishgas used to control the country, similar to Aurean rule there a few millennia earlier.

Like had been the case with the Aureans, Ishga influence was largely confined to the cities, as the terrain was generally too rugged and dangerous for the Ishgas to venture far inland. However, Ishga influence in the cities was much more substantial than Aurean influence had been in millennia prior, as the Ishgas were an industrial superpower. Heavy industry, Ishga styles of dress, Ishga-style education, electricity, sewage treatment, the GalactaNet, steam power, the railroad, and most importantly the Ishgas' Galactic Basic Language were all adopted in Yiri's urban areas fairly quickly. A common language linked together Yiri's cities like never before, as they previously spoke a motley of loosely related indigenous languages much like the countryside. Ishga settlers also arrived in Yiri's cities in much larger numbers than the Aureans of millennia prior. Today, an estimated 10% of Coonibango's population is either Ishga-born or of full or partial Ishga descent, 15% in Cockamarra, 23% in Neenynah, and a whopping 33% in Jubenar. Seeing Yiri's old system of government as outdated and unrepresentative of the cities, the Ishgas in 38 BR forced Coorabung I's successor, Coorabung II, to accept a series of reforms known as the Jubenar Governance Acts that created a new elected Parliament and Prime Minister in Jubenar to represent Yiri's cities, subservient only to the Ishga Parliament and Monarchy on the Ishga homeworld. Grand Chief Coorabung II remained Yiri's head of state on paper, but his authority over Yiri's cities was only nominal after this and his authority over the countryside and interior remained shaky through the old system of village elders, who found themselves increasingly used by the Ishgas to extract resources from the interior. Coorabung II and the village elders attempted an armed rebellion against Ishga rule later that same year, but unlike the uprising that freed Yiri from Aurean rule, Ishga arms and technology were so superior that this was crushed within months and Yiri's vast interior found itself occupied by a foreign military for the first time in its history.

Upon realizing that Atlantea was the long-lost Ishga homeworld prior to their migration to the Planet Ishga following Gunmonga's Flood, the Ishgas gained a renewed interest in settling Yiri's interior. At an alarming pace, Ishga settlers, escorted and protected by Ishga soldiers, grabbed most of Yiri's agriculturally valuable land, especially arable land near cities, and sealed it off from the locals with barbed wire fences, which became known as the Red Line. The indigenous Yiri Islanders who worked the land prior to their arrival were generally either forced into sharecropping or made tenants of new Ishga landowners who charged intentionally outrageous rents, with the punishment for not paying them being exile from the settlements. Under this system, millions of indigenous Yiri Islanders were forced to either flee into the shrinking pockets of wilderness and countryside outside the Red Line, or melt into the Ishga underclass. Indigenous children in these settlements whose parents failed to pay their rents found themselves kidnapped by Ishga soldiers, taken to orphanages in Yiri's cities, and forcibly assimilated into Ishga culture.

Today, the urban-rural divide remains a the predominant issue in Yiri, with cities such as Jubenar, Coonibango, and Cockamarra enjoying a high standard of living, an industrialized economy, and a common culture; while the thousands of remote villages in Yiri's interior rely mostly on subsistence farming, hunting and gathering, mining, and logging. They lack access to sanitation, education, and other modern conveniences, and the language barrier is a huge issue as well, as the cities and Ishga settlements are uniformly Galactic Basic-speaking, while the rural areas outside the Red Line speak dozens of indigenous languages. Additionally, while the Ishga settlements have been integrated into Yiri's Parliament, the indigenous Yiri Islanders beyond the Red Line are subject to the arbitrary whims of the village elder system or the Ishga military depending on the location. As Ishga settlements encroach on indigenous land by the day, indigenous Yiri Islanders living on land outside the Red Line are not considered citizens, lack voting rights, are tried by Ishga military tribunals with 99% conviction rates rather than formal courts, and are not permitted to cross the barbed wire fence into Ishga settlements without explicit permission (which is almost never offered). While Yiri's cities and Ishga settlements only make up around 5% of Yiri's total land area today, around half of Yiri's population lives there, and they occupy over 70% of Yiri's arable land. The Congress of Worlds, in addition to several sentients' rights organizations, have criticized this system as apartheid.

Today, an estimated 87% of Yiri's population identifies as indigenous, while the other 13% identifies as Ishga. However, almost half of them live on the Ishga side of the Red Line, and are known to those outside of it as "Redliners". While Redliners identify as indigenous, they enjoy most of the same privileges and rights that Ishgas do, speak almost exclusively Galactic Basic, and have mostly adopted the Ishga way of life; although some, particularly on agricultural settlements, maintain some degree of connection to their culture, such as reciting Fartelling stories. This is further complicated by the fact that Redliners and Ishgas frequently intermarry, and around a fifth of them are estimated to have at least one Ishga parent or grandparent. Indigenous Yiri Islanders beyond the Red Line generally think of Redliners as Ishgas in all but name who have lost touch with their indigenous roots and become foreigners in their own land, viewing them with a combination of pity and disgust. Indigenous Yiri Islanders beyond the Red Line, known as "Wildlings", are generally viewed by both Ishgas and Redliners as backwards savages who lust for the blood of Redliners and Ishga settlers.

Violence along the Red Line is widespread, with Ishgas and Redliners being responsible for the lion's share of it. When an Ishga or Redliner settler kills a Wildling beyond the Red Line, the local police under the authority of the Grand Chief of Yiri and the village elders lack the jurisdiction to do anything about it, and the Ishga soldiers overseeing the occupation almost always look the other way. This has resulted in an environment in which indigenous rights advocates say "we are being hunted for sport on our own land". From 36-32 BR, the Wildlings launched what would become known as the 1st Rising against the Ishga occupation beyond the Red Line. This manifested as a series of protests, civil disobedience, and riots. Activities included barricades, graffiti, several general strikes, and the throwing of stones, boomerangs, and improvised explosives at the Ishga military and its infrastructure. The Ishgas responded by sending in 80,000 troops, who fired on the Wildlings with live rounds and flattened them with tanks, resulting in massive casualties and widespread international condemnation. During the 1st Rising, around 150 Ishgas and Redliners were killed, more than half of them soldiers, while almost 20,000 Wildlings were killed. In the years after the 1st Rising, many Wildlings beyond the Red Line turned to militancy and guerilla activity to resist the occupation, with the YSA (Yiri Salvation Army) forming in 33 BR with the aim of protecting Wildlings from further settler encroachment and driving out the Ishgas from Yiri entirely. As the Grand Chief of Yiri and the village elders were seen more and more by Wildlings as impotent stooges of the Ishga occupation, with their failure to side with the Wildlings during the 1st Rising being seen as their ultimate betrayal of the Yiri Islander people, the YSA became more and more willing to use force to oppose the Ishgas. This quickly led to the YSA rising in popularity among Wildlings as an alternative to the old system.

In 22 BR, the killing of an influential Wildling shaman by a Redliner near Munnion sparked massive outrage among Wildlings, leading to a new uprising that would become known as the 2nd Rising. At first, the 2nd Rising seemed to be a repeat of the first, but quickly turned much more violent when the YSA got involved. Gunfire, stone-throwing, bombings, use of improvised explosives, and rocket attacks became commonplace. Unlike in the 1st Rising, these were directed at both Ishga and Redliner civilians and the Ishga military. In response, the Ishgas deployed a whopping 150,000 troops beyond the Red Line and largely repeated their response to the 1st Rising, albeit much more harshly and with airstrikes. The violence culminated in 16 BR when a YSA suicide bombing on a crowded bus in downtown Neenynah killed 35 civilians and injured 40 more. The fighting deescalated a month or so later when the Ishgas withdrew from the entire island of Jandamirrah, where the violence had been the worst. Seizing a golden opportunity, the YSA pushed the powerless and unpopular Grand Chief of Yiri and village elders out of Jandamirrah and established their own de facto Yiri Islander state there with its capital in Neenynah. The 2nd Rising had been far deadlier than the first, with over 10,000 Ishgas and Redliners killed, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. An absolutely horrifying number of 34,000 Wildling civilians were killed, in addition to 356 YSA terrorists.

Since the conclusion of the 2nd Rising, the Ishga navy has maintained a strict blockade of the YSA-controlled Jandamirrah, kept a list of the island's over 10 million residents, and barred anyone, civilian or YSA, from leaving the island out of both fear of additional violence and racism. Sentient rights organizations have decried this as turning the entire island into essentially a giant prison.

Platypusia

Before Gunmonga's flood, the Platypusians had a rather odd geographic distribution, not only living in the mountains that would eventually become the Platypusian archipelago but also some of the lowland valleys between them. During the latter years of the Atlantean Empire, these lowland Platypusians were conquered and, while not assimilated entirely, showed more of an inclination to adapt to Atlantean culture than their stubborn mountain cousins. When the waters of Gunmonga's flood rolled in, these lowland Platypusians overwhelmingly fled with the Atlanteans to Ishga, with only a handful moving to higher ground.

Those Platypusians who remained in the mountains originally formed a huge island nation with their Dolphinesian cousins on the other side of Yiri, but the distance between the two groups, both culturally and geographically, made this "Amnesiac Empire" impossible to govern and it split into Dolphinesian and Platypusian halves less than a decade after the flood.

Te Waipounamu, the southern of the two main islands of Platypusia, while still being highly mountainous, has much shorter peaks than those on Yiri. As a result, the lion's share of the island is tropical, while the northern third is subtropical. This, however, is due to latitude and not altitude. More than half of Platypusia's total population lives here, and the capital, Te-Hokianga-Nui-a-Kupe (named after Chief Kupe I, a chief from the lowland village of Hawaiki who fled Gunmonga's flood and separated Platypusia from the Omnesians), is located in the northeast of the island.

The northern of the two islands, Te-Ika-a-Maui, is small, temperate, and volcanic, being covered in forests of northern beech, kauri, giant sequoias, coast redwoods, and tree ferns. This area, along with the northern third of Te Waipounamu, is home to the elusive Moa, a huge flightless bird endemic to the region, as well as the massive Pouakai eagle that preys on it.

On Te Waipounamu, rice, sugarcane, taro, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, coconuts, and pineapples are the main crops, while pigs, water buffalo, and chickens are raised as livestock. However, further north, many of these crops fail in the temperate climate. While coconuts, sugarcane, breadfruit, and pineapples all fail here, rice agriculture is prevalent in the north, as well as taro, sweet potatoes (although even these are somewhat of a challenge here), and a native plant called Platypusian flax. In addition to chickens, pigs, and water buffalo, northern Platypusians have domesticated the Moa.

While not considered an urban civilization by most standards, the Platypusians started building Pa fortresses (hill forts made mostly of extremely sturdy kauri wood that even cannons have difficulty breaking through) very soon after separating from the Omnesian Empire.

In these fortified villages, there would almost always be a meeting place known as a Marae where various ceremonies would take place. However, what Platypusians are known across the galaxy for is the Pakanga war dance that warriors would perform before battle to intimidate their opponents. The Pakanga was first recorded by an outside source when Chief Kupe IV, on request of the Dolphinesian King Holokai IX, sent a large group of warriors in an attempt to remove the viking colony at Eyjagard. The vikings defeated this expeditionary force and sent them packing, but took note of the dance the warriors performed before engaging in battle.

In addition to the Pakanga, the Platypusians were famed for what they would sometimes do if they won a battle: they would often cook and eat the bodies of slain opponents to gain their "mana" or spiritual energy. This is no longer practiced in modern times, and had been completely phased out by the time the Ishgas arrived on the planet.

Not long after this, the Dolphinesians and Platypusians learned to accept the Eyjagardian presence on Atlantea and started trading with them. By the mid 14,000s BR, the Platypusians had picked up the Eyjagardians' runic script, and had used it to record their own previously oral history.

For the next 14,000 years, the Platypusians coexisted with the other Atlantean nations, trading with but sometimes also fighting with them (especially Yiri to the south).

Dolphinesia

Before Gunmonga's flood, the Dolphinesians, close cousins of the Playpusians to the north, lived exclusively in the Koulapo Mountains south of what would eventually become Yiri. There, they grew most of the main crops that other Atlantean civilizations grew, with the notable exception of rice. Chickens and pigs were raised as the main livestock animals here. Like the other mountain tribes, the Dolphinesians were barely affected by the rule of the Atlantean Empire, not even adopting their writing system.

Once Gunmonga's flood submerged the Atlantean Empire, Dolphinesia tried to reach out to them in the form of the Omnesian Empire, but this collapsed very soon after it was created due to the geographical and cultural differences between the two groups. The Dolphinesians pioneered the double-hulled canoes that, via trade, would soon become the dominant sailing vessel across all of Atlantea, until it was joined by the viking longships introduced by the Eyjagardian colonists.

Koulapo Island (what the Koulapo Mountains became after Gunmonga's flood) has much shorter peaks than either Yiri or Platypusia, and as a result, the island is almost entirely tropical. Due to the almost complete lack of large animals on the island, the Dolphinesians developed advanced aquaculture technology, even going as far as to transport sea salt into artificial inland pools to raise saltwater fish for consumption. Unlike most other places on Atlantea, Koulapo Island is highly volcanic in nature, with the volcanic soil providing agricultural productivity, while the threat of eruptions put the Dolphinesians constantly on edge.

In their villages, the Dolphinesians built massive temples called Heiau, which serve similar functions to Platypusian Marae. In addition, the Dolphinesians started spreading out over the ocean, using the stars and bird migration patterns to navigate the seas. They colonized hundreds of isolated islands and atolls in Atlantea's south-central region. In fact, Moetorua, the current Dolphinesian capital, was built on one of these atolls.

When the Eyjagardian colony appeared to their south, the Dolphinesians initially reacted with hostility, launching an expedition with the Platypusians to drive the vikings out. However, this attack failed, and eventually they learned to coexist and trade with the Eyjagardians, even going as far as to adopt their runic script as their writing system, using it to record their previously oral history.

For the next 14,000 years, Dolphinesia would intermittently trade and fight with the other Atlantean nations, especially with Yiri over Taku Island.

Squidia

Of the island nations present on Atlantea today, the Squidians were hardest-hit by Gunmonga's flood. Due to their contempt for the Atlantean Empire that colonized them (the Squidians were the mountain tribe that was most affected by Atlantean dominance), the Squidians displaced by the flood fled in a separate event, journeying to Awal, where they eventually founded the Qarthadast Empire. Later on, Qarthadast explorers journeyed to the Planet Muungano, which they conquered and renamed Planet Squid.

Like Atlantea's other mountain civilizations, the Squidians grew rice, coconuts, bananas, breadfruit, taro, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and pineapples while raising chickens, pigs, and water buffalo as livestock. However, due to the increased Atlantean presence during the Atlantean Empire's time on the planet, Squidia was the only place where horses survived post-flood.

Due to the unique topography of Squidia (a ring of mountains on the coast of the largest island shielded a central plain that now lies almost 1,000 feet below sea level from Gunmonga's flood), the Squidians became horse nomads, mostly eking out an existence on the plains rather than engaging in maritime trade with other Atlantean nations. As a result, the Squidians fell behind technologically, and were briefly conquered by the Dolphinesians.

The Dolphinesians introduced the double-hulled canoe, as well as the runic writing script they adopted from the Eyjagardian colonists, as well as opening up the Squidians to sea trade. Eventually, the Squidians overthrew their Dolphinesian overlords and regained their independence, but their isolationist lifestyle was over.

Horse domestication remained a closely guarded secret and was never exported to the other Atlantean nations (except for the Eyjagardians who already had their own horses and largely did the same thing). Unlike any of the other Atlantean nations however, the Squidians on Atlantea maintained contact with their offworld cousins on Awal and Planet Squid, and as a result, many animal species previously endemic to those two planets can now be found in Squidia.

For the next 14,000 years, Squidia coexisted peacefully with the other Atlantean Nations.

Eyjagard

In 15,740 BR, the vikings who had terrorized Atlantea twice before returned to the planet for a third time. However, this time they came looking not for plunder but for a place to settle. They found what they were looking for in an uninhabited archipelago in the southwestern corner of the planet that they would come to call Eyjagard. At first, colonization was mostly limited to the southernmost of the two largest islands, called Sudgard, due to its similar climate and topography to Ryu 108.

While attempts were made to settle the northernmost of the two largest islands, Nordgard, its tropical climate was extremely unfamiliar to the vikings and their crops and livestock did not do very well there. Only when the Eyjagardians made contact with the Dolphinesians and got tropical crops from them were they able to successfully colonize Nordgard. Due to its proximity to the rest of Atlantea's civilizations, Nordgard soon became the richest and most prosperous part of Eyjagard, becoming the planet's largest trading hub. Viking King Thursson Icehammer visited the colony in 15,733 BR, founding the city of Eyjagard City in a natural harbor in Nordgard and declaring it the colony's new capital.

Eyjagard City soon became the largest city on the planet, attracting not only colonists from Ryu 108 but also Dolphinesians, Yiri Islanders, and even faraway Platypusians to its rich harbor. This caused Eyjagard to diverge culturally somewhat from Ryu 108 as it absorbed customs and people from neighboring civilizations.

Before long, Eyjagard began attracting interplanetary trade as well, since it was the gateway to all of Atlantea's markets. As a result, Eyjagard City is often viewed as the first truly "galactic city". While the Eyjagardians kept most of the trappings of the Ryu 108er society that they descended from, they soon adopted the traits of so many other cultures that Ryu 108 had a harder and harder time governing the colony.

In the early 15,400s BR, the opportunity the Eyjagardians had been waiting for came when a civil war left the 108er Government completely incapacitated. Taking advantage of this, Eyjagard declared independence and was able to slip out of the Viking Empire almost unnoticed. Eyjagard became an independent kingdom, spending most of the rest of its history content to trade or sometimes war with the other civilizations on Atlantea.

Crustacean Empire

Before the flood, there were small tribes of water-breathing sentients that existed deep beneath the waves of Atlantea's then-small seas. However, once the lowlands flooded, many of these tribes expanded out into the submerged ruins of the abandoned Atlantean ruins and began developing civilizations there based on kelp farming and dugong ranching. The most successful of these were the Crustaceans, who used iron deposits they mined from the East Platypusian Trench to make iron tools and weapons they used to conquer all of Atlantea's other underwater civilizations and create the Crustacean Empire by around 12,500 BR.

Due to the fact that going above water would cause them to suffocate, the Crustacean Empire and Atlantea's terrestrial civilizations (Eyjagard, Dolphinesia, Platypusia, and Yiri) never came into contact with each other and were completely unaware of each other's existence.

While the Crustacean Empire had no contact with any terrestrial Atlantean civilizations, they both had access to Astral Magic. The terrestrial civilizations had been using it since their inception, and the Crustaceans had learned it by reading ancient Atlantean scrolls they found in the ruins they colonized.

The Rinascitans and the Ishgas

For the next dozen millennia or so, other planets mostly left Atlantea alone, since the magical value of Atlantea's ruins was both inaccessible and mostly forgotten to time. A Haxamanian Invasion in the 4,000s BR was repulsed by the Eyjagardians at the Battle of Geirsa, but other than that times were peaceful and the Atlantean civilizations all enjoyed a protracted golden age. The only real change that occurred during this period was in 304 BR, when Rinascitan settlers colonized some of the uninhabited East Islands.

While the Rinascitans brought early gunpowder weapons with them, they did not end up using them very much, being mostly content to use their new colony, the Rinascitan East Islands, as a trading post. However, Eyjagard feared that Rinascita was trying to usurp their position as the planet's primary trade hub, and launched an invasion of the colony in 288 BR. While the invasion failed thanks to the Rinascitans' superior technology, the Eyjagardians were able to get their hands on some cannons and arquebuses, and managed to reverse-engineer them and begin making gunpowder weapons themselves.

These gunpowder weapons proved instrumental in defending Eyjagard from a Rinascitan counter-invasion the next year, and the war ended in a draw. However, Rinascita eventually began growing greedier and pettier and began sinking Eyjagardian merchant ships, claiming that pirates were the culprit. In 242 BR, Eyjagard got sick of it and realized what was going on, declaring war on Rinascita again. This time, Eyjagard brought its massive navy and large population to bear, and was able to completely decimate the fledgling colony's forces at the Battle of San Marcos.

Rinascita sued for peace and was forced to sign the Treaty of San Marcos, which forbade Rinascita from claiming any more land on Atlantea than the portion of the East Islands they had already settled, as well as curtailing their trading rights on the planet. Now that the Rinascitan East Islands were no longer profitable, the colony was largely ignored for a while, and the Rinascitan Monarchy even considered abandoning it. Instead, the Rinascitans focused on setting up trading posts on Aztlan for the time being.

However, during this time, some farmers in the Rinascitan East Islands discovered that sugarcane grew extremely well there and that they could make tons of money with it. However, the Rinascitan East Islands had too small of a population and workforce to exploit it on any large scale. Seeing a golden opportunity, the Rinascitan Monarchy began deporting convicts to the Rinascitan East Islands to work the sugar plantations. Before long, the population of the Rinascitan East Islands practically exploded and the colony became profitable again. However, the trade that made the Rinascitan East Islands profitable was mostly interplanetary, since trade with other Atlantean civilizations was made much more difficult by the Treaty of San Marcos.

Jealous of the money Rinascita was making from its Atlantean colony, Ishga copied them and founded the nearby colony of the Ishga East Islands in 206 BR. Almost right away, thousands of convicts were deported there to grow sugar. Since the Ishgas were not bound by the Treaty of San Marcos, the Ishgas had much more land in the East Islands to work with, and thus were able to claim a much larger part of the archipelago.

Meanwhile further west, the Yiri Islanders, Dolphinesians, and Platypusians had been locked in a 3-way conflict for the past few centuries over Taku Island, a volcanic island off the southeastern coast of Yiri that all three powers had claims to. Meanwhile, what none of the powers fighting over it had noticed was that the island was beginning to form a distinct culture of its own, one that was a fusion of the three powers that claimed and settled it.

Soon, the Ishgas decided that it would be more profitable to use their convicts as slave labor in their factories to build their spaceships, instead importing slaves from Planet Squid to work the sugar plantations in the Ishga East Islands. This egregious violation of sentient rights enraged Eyjagard, Yiri, Platypusia, Squidia, and Dolphinesia, who all formed a coalition and declared war on Ishga in 187 BR. The technologically vastly superior Ishgas easily annihilated the coalition's navy off the coast of Taku Island, forcing the entire coalition to beg for peace terms.

For the next few decades, all of Atlantea's nations except the Crustacean Empire and Rinascitan East Islands would find themselves on the receiving hand of Ishga tribute demands, being threatened with massive warships if they did not comply. Having finally had enough, the King of Squidia finally stopped paying his tribute in 52 BR. In response, the Ishgas simply sailed warships right up to his capital and sent troops to escort the Squidian King off his throne. Having deposed the Squidian King, the Ishgas simply incorporated Squidia as a colony and began using its tropical grasslands for sugar cultivation.

Additionally, the Ishga Empire used a reparations dispute in 50 BR as an excuse to send its navy in and annex Yiri that year, reducing its Grand Chief Coorabung I to a figurehead the Ishgas used to control the country, similar to Aurean rule there a few millennia earlier.

Seeing how much money using slave labor on their plantations was making the Ishgas, the Rinascitans jumped on the bandwagon and also began importing hundreds of thousands of slaves from Planet Squid to the Rinascitan East Islands. Although the Ishgas were growing sugar in the Ishga East Islands, Squidia, and Taku Island, the Rinascitans had settled some of the most agriculturally productive land on the planet, and as a result, the Rinascitan East Islands produced a bumper crop that allowed them to keep up with Ishga production.

However, things on Atlantea began to change for the better once the benevolent King Michael ascended the Ishga throne in 2 BR. Almost immediately after he ascended the throne, he declared slavery abolished in all Ishga and all its colonies.

The Tatian War

In 2 AR, once news spread around the galaxy of Tate (a mutated dictator from the Planet Navayu with Godlike powers) and his plan to master Shadow Magic and use it to "rewrite" the galaxy, all of the powers on Atlantea except the Crustacean Empire simultaneously declared war on Tate, along with Ishga, Aurea, Awal, and dozens of other planets and nations. In order to keep the war effort organized and streamlined, all of Atlantea was placed under temporary control of the Aurean Government for the duration of the war. The Atlanteans were supplied by the Ishgas and Aureans with advanced technology to help fight in the war, such as assault rifles and advanced spaceships.

While there was no fighting on Atlantea itself during the opening stages of the war, a large battle between the Aurean and Tatian starfleets was fought in the atmosphere, a battle which was an Aurean victory.

However, things turned for the worse when Tate took control of the Aurean Government in a coup. Atlantea, like most of the rest of the galaxy, was under temporary Aurean rule when this occurred, meaning the Tatians now controlled all of Atlantea except the three Ishga colonies. For the first time in their history, Eyjagard, Yiri, Dolphinesia, the Rinascitan East Islands, and Platypusia were under foreign occupation. The Crustacean Empire would remain free for the time being since the Tatians were unaware of its existence.

Although Tatian rule was tyrannical in theory, its surprisingly laissez-faire approach to Atlantea made them much more popular there than in parts of the galaxy that they spent more time micromanaging. In fact, the Tatians only ever really showed up on the planet to extract its resources, and the average Atlantean never even saw a Tatian soldier. However, the Ishga navy on Atlantea, using bases in the three Ishga colonies, continued to resist the Tatians, managing to liberate the Rinascitan East Islands within two years.

The Ishga navy then began effectively privateering in Atlantea's vast global ocean, disrupting Tatian shipping whenever they could and sinking any Tatian vessels they could isolate. Meanwhile, the Tatians began using their aligned company UniSyn to set up their own colonies in the uninhabited portions of the East Islands that had not yet been settled by the Ishgas or Rinascitans, and in uninhabited tundra fringing the north and south poles.

The Tatians turned a blind eye towards and sometimes even downright sponsored the slave trade, resulting in millions of slaves being imported from Planet Squid and sometimes even Ryu 108 or Eyjagard to work the sugar plantations in the UniSyn East Island Colonies. However, these colonies were only barely profitable for the Tatians because Ishga piracy often kept the sugar crop from really going anywhere to be sold.

As a result, the Tatians began cracking down on Atlantea, ending the sort of salutary neglect that the Tatian-controlled parts of the planet had enjoyed at the beginning of the war. Individual rights were curtailed, the Atlantean people were brought under the full force of Tatian propaganda, and more soldiers were garrisoned. Tate tried to create a navy on Atlantea to defend his merchant shipping from the Ishgas, but every time he tried, the Ishgas would simply annihilate him with their better ships. Tate also found an isolated, uninhabited volcanic island in the southern hemisphere that he began building a massive base called Fort Palm on.

In 17 AR, the Ishgas mounted a 3-pronged invasion of Yiri, Dolphinesia, and Platypusia from Taku Island, but when they arrived at their landing sites, they discovered that local resistance movements had already done most of the work for them and that the Atlanteans had liberated themselves for the most part. Once the Ishgas had finished the Tatians off there, the only parts of the planet the Tatians still controlled were Fort Palm and the UniSyn colonies. However, the Ishgas would not liberate these areas due to the attention of the Ishga high command being mostly elsewhere until 21 AR.

It was during this time that the Ishgas, noticing what crops the locals were growing, what languages they spoke, what past their storytellers told of, and what animals they domesticated, finally began to suspect that their ancestors originally came from Atlantea but fled to Ishga after the Great Flood. Desperately curious, the Ishgas sent a small force underwater in submarines to look for traces of the old Atlantean Empire.

By 21 AR, these explorers had found the ruins of Atlantea City (the Atlantean Empire's Capital) and had built a watertight, air-filled glass dome over it to allow them to excavate the ruins. However, the Ishgas were not the only ones whose interests were piqued by Atlantea's long-lost Empire.

Tate, who had just lost control of Aurea to a revived Weasel (my series' main protagonist) and his friends, heard a fable about another Shadow Artifact, the Atlantean Tomes, being located deep in the ruins of Atlantea's ancient Empire, and that he could finally master Shadow Magic if he found it and absorbed its power. While Weasel and his friends were helping the Ishga explorers dig for artifacts, Tate discovered and forged an alliance with the Crustacean Empire, directing them to raid the Ishga exploration domes and cause as much of a distraction as possible while he figured out how to get his hands on the Atlantean Tomes.

While the initial Crustacean raids were successful, severely damaging the Ishga exploration domes to the point that they leaked and very nearly flooded at times, Taftenkhamun (Aurea's magister militum, or military commander) eventually managed to get a joint Aurean-Ishga force together that destroyed the Crustacean Empire's army at the Battle of Kelp Grotto and brought the emperor to the negotiating table.

In exchange for peace, the Crustacean Emperor was forced to cede the portions of the ruins of Atlantea City under his control to Ishga, release Weasel and his friends from captivity, pay a monetary penalty, and agree to stop assisting the Tatians in any way. In addition, the Crustacean Emperor had to betray Tate and declare war on the Tatians. Knowing he would have the full backing of the Ishgas in a war against the Tatians, the Crustacean Emperor reluctantly agreed.

While the Ishgas were putting up domes over the portion of the Atlantean ruins they were just given by the Crustacean Empire, Weasel and his friends managed to get the Atlantean Tomes. However, Tate and Santa Muerte (Tate's right-hand woman) easily defeated them in battle, took the Atlantean Tomes, absorbed their power, and unleashed a massive invasion force on the planet as part of a larger Tatian counteroffensive aimed at taking back this part of the galaxy. While the Tatian counteroffensive on Atlantea managed to retake most of Dolphinesia including the capital of Moetorua and around half of Taku Island, a team effort of all of Atlantea's nations, the Ishgas, and some help from a couple of Arturian Cowlander regiments that happened to be on the planet at the time managed to reverse their gains within weeks. However, even this massive combined force could not stop the Tatians from taking the Atlantean Tomes to Fort Palm and fortifying it with the remainder of their invasion force.

For the next few months, the Ishgas would completely cover Atlantea City in exploration domes and declare it the first underwater Ishga colony, opening it to settlement. In addition, they worked with the Aureans, Yiri Islanders, Eyjagardians, Dolphinesians, Platypusians, Crustaceans, and Rinascitans to raise an army massive enough to take Fort Palm by storm. While the 1st Battle of Fort Palm began with high morale for the Ishgas and their allies, the defenses of the fort were simply too strong and the army was cut to ribbons by Tatian machine guns and barbed wire.

By the time Michael gave the order for this army to abandon the mission and retreat, they had already lost almost half their soldiers. A frontal assault on Fort Palm was simply impossible. Michael spent the next month or so trying to raise another army to take the fort, while the Ishga navy finally succeeded in seizing the Tatian-aligned UniSyn colonies on the planet, freeing the slaves there and making them into Ishga colonies for the time being.

Now that the UniSyn Colonies on Atlantea were Ishga Colonies, slavery had finally been effectively abolished planetwide. Meanwhile, anticipating an even larger attack on Fort Palm, Tate landed reinforcements at the fort and docked a good portion of his starfleet there as well. After another month or so, Tate did the unthinkable on Aurea and succeeded in incapacitating and kidnapping the Gods. A Shadow Artifact called the Eye of Horus, hidden in an unknown location, then became the only hope for saving the galaxy from Tate's plans.

Weasel and his friends then deduced that since the Atlantean Tomes is a magically omniscient document, they could use them to find the Eye of Horus, but they would need to get the Atlantean Tomes out of Fort Palm. As a result, they decided on another approach: Michael's main army would assault the fort again, but this would only serve as a distraction while a strike team composed of the small but famous Squidian Brigade would don enemy uniforms and sneak into Fort Palm to steal the Atlantean Tomes. The Ishga Starfleet would provide aerial support to both ease pressure on the ground troops and prevent the force from being stranded on the ground in the event of a Tatian counterattack.

Correctly predicting that the Ishga and/or Aurean fleet would attempt to support the mission, Tate set up a shield generator over the entire planet at the last minute, causing the Aureans to have to make changes to their plan: the Squidian Brigade (the only available strike team in either the Aurean or Ishga Armies) would arrive on the planet using a stolen Tatian cargo ship, and once they were on the ground, they would find a way to deactivate the shields so the fleet could get into Atlantea's atmosphere.

The mission went well at first, with the Squidian Brigade successfully disabling the shields and Michael's army providing a good distraction. However, problems arose when many of the Squidian Brigade's leading members were picked off by the Tatians, including galaxy-famous war heroes such as Reshon and Lord Jimenez. The Ishga Starfleet was able to draw the fire of the Tatian Starfleet for the most part, while its smaller fighters helped take out Tatian tanks and battlements on the ground.

While the battle was beginning to go in the Ishgas' favor, Tate had an ace in the hole: his superweapon, the T-Ray, is on its way. Meanwhile, what was left of the Squidian Brigade managed to steal the Atlantean Tomes and use Fort Palm's communication tower to transmit them to the Aurean Flagship. Just when the remnants of the Squidian Brigade were about to leave in their stolen cargo ship, the cargo ship was found and destroyed by a Tatian bomb crew. Michael's army had already abandoned the scene via their boats once they saw the T-Ray appear in the sky, and the Aurean Fleet had abandoned them there for similar reasons. Surrounded by hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and with the T-Ray baring down on them, the remnants of the Squidian Brigade prepared to fight to the last man.

Unaware that the Aureans had seized the Atlantean Tomes, the T-Ray fired at Fort Palm in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Atlantean Tomes from escaping, with the Tatians thinking there were still Squidian Brigade members on the communications deck trying to send the tomes over. The beam emitted by the superweapon instantly vaporized the entire island Fort Palm was built on, along with anyone and anything still on it, and created a massive underwater explosion that caused planetwide earthquakes and tsunamis. Since the explosion was underwater, there was no massive ejecta cloud that blotted out the sky or raised the global surface temperature, but the earthquakes and tsunamis created a state of emergency in Atlantea City, whose domes began leaking to the point that they almost flooded. Hundreds of thousands of sentients living on the planet's coasts were killed and millions were made homeless. The end result of the explosion was a massive, lava-filled crater twice the size of the entire Squidian Archipelago and visible from space. No traces of Fort Palm were left from the explosion, and obviously everyone in the area was killed instantly.

The force of the explosion turned over the crust near the crater, resulting in the crater being fringed with islands of rare minerals not normally found on the surface in high concentrations. As a result, Michael decided to set up a mining colony there to exploit the resources, using Tatian POWs and Ishga convicts as a source of labor and calling it The Great Scar Mining Colony. Now that the Tatian presence on the planet had been completely erased, Michael decided to finally grant independence to Squidia, reinstating the Squidian Kingdom.

In the closing stages of the war, the Ishgas on Atlantea spent most of their time trying to convince Atlantea's various nations to merge together so the planet could join the GTU (Galactic Treaty Union) Government that would prevent something like the Tatian War from ever happening again. Eventually, an agreement between all of the nations was reached in the form of the Treaty of Jubenar.