Atlantean

The Atlanteans, also known as Fisho's, Squidies, Divers and Quadies, are not a single people, but a convergence of many. Originating from the complete ocean world of Atlantis, they encompass hundreds of distinct sapient aquatic species, unified not by shared biology but by shared history and identity. Their physical forms vary more wildly than almost any other Federation people: some possess fins, bladders, and sinuous bodies; others bear limbs, tentacles, or elongated forms adapted to pressure and current. Size alone ranges from creatures scarcely longer than a finger to vast beings measured in dozens of metres, their mass spanning from negligible to monumental. What little they share biologically is functional rather than aesthetic, each is fully aquatic, each requires liquid to breathe, and each is most at home suspended in water rather than standing on land.

Despite this diversity, patterns do emerge. Most Atlantean species exhibit sexual dimorphism, typically with two sexes, and in many cases the females are larger or more robust. Their senses are often adapted to lightless depths, pressure gradients, and fluid motion rather than open air, and while some can survive limited exposure to non-liquid environments, none can breathe standard atmospheric mixtures. Movement through water is effortless to them, instinctive in a way that walking is to terrestrial peoples. On land, without assistance, most Atlanteans unable to propel themselves, and rare few who can are often diminished, slowed, constrained, and profoundly out of place.

To most Federation citizens, however, an Atlantean is not first recognised by the body within the water, but by the body that walks among them. The Modular Biosuit, commonly called a Mod-Suit, is the most visible expression of Atlantean presence beyond Atlantis. These pressure-sealed constructs house water, life-support systems, sensory translators, articulated limbs, and typically made of brass composite, allowing their wearers to interact with a universe never designed for them. Though once based on early Elven artificer designs predating the Federation, Mod-Suits have long since become an Atlantean art form. Each is customised, maintained, and often inherited, reflecting the needs, personality, and lineage of its pilot. For many Atlanteans, the suit is not merely a tool, but an extension of self—sometimes spoken of as a second body, sometimes as the true one.

Within Federation space, accommodation for aquatic life is widespread. Liquid conduits, communal fluid chambers, and universal medium pipelines allow Atlanteans to travel without suits if they choose, drifting unseen through infrastructure designed to support many water-bound peoples. Even so, most Atlanteans prefer their Mod-Suits, valuing the ability to stand eye-to-eye with others, to gesture, to eat, and to participate directly in shared spaces. Thus, across stations and worlds alike, the sight is common: towering brass forms moving with careful grace, guided from within by beings as small or strange as the oceans themselves. In this way, the Atlanteans embody a paradigm familiar to the Federation at large. They are endlessly diverse, often alien even to one another, yet bound together by a shared past and a collective decision to stand as one people. As Atlantis itself is a world of many depths, so too are the Atlanteans, a federation within a Federation, held together not by sameness, but by choice.

Culture

Atlantean culture is inseparable from the nature of Atlantis itself, a world of depth layered upon depth, where pressure, darkness, and isolation shaped civilisation long before unity was imaginable. Because sapience arose independently across vastly different strata of the planet, Atlantean society did not begin as a single culture, but as many: peoples separated by kilometres of crushing water, incompatible biologies, and mutually hostile environments. When these cultures first encountered one another, the results were rarely peaceful. Early Atlantean history is defined by cycles of discovery followed by conflict, with entire species erased before others even knew they existed. For many Ages, genocide was not an aberration, but a recurring outcome of contact.

The arrival of the Elven peoples marked a turning point, though not the one the Elves intended. To the Atlanteans, the Elves were something unprecedented: outsiders who could traverse pressure layers with ease, who spoke across cultures, and who possessed tools that rendered ancient environmental boundaries irrelevant. The gifting of early Mod-Suit technology was meant as a bridge, a way to foster communication and shared identity. Instead, it became an accelerant. Long-standing rivalries were suddenly unbound by geography, and conflicts that once took generations now consumed entire peoples in mere Ages. This period remains one of profound cultural trauma for the Atlanteans, not only for the lives lost, but for the knowledge that much of their annihilation was self-inflicted, made possible by borrowed power.

In the aftermath, what survived was not a return to isolation, but a radical rethinking of unity. When the Atlanteans eventually forged a planetary government, it was not based on dominance, but on coexistence, an explicit rejection of biological supremacy in favour of cultural pluralism. Species, lineages, and traditions that remained were preserved not as relics, but as living parts of a broader identity. Difference became something to protect rather than erase. Even today, Atlantean society places extraordinary value on cultural memory, ritual exchange, and the deliberate celebration of variance. To lose a people is to lose an entire way of perceiving the universe, and that loss is considered irreparable.

This history has made Atlanteans deeply committed to the ideals that would later define the Federation. They are not naïve about violence, nor do they pretend conflict can always be avoided, but they are among the most ardent supporters of First Contact Protocols and interspecies governance. These systems mirror the principles that ended their own Age of Bloodshed: slow engagement, mutual recognition, and restraint in the application of power. Where once their world taught them how easily difference could lead to annihilation, modern Atlantean culture teaches the opposite, that survival, at scale, requires cooperation without homogenisation. As a result, Atlanteans are often seen as some of the Federation’s most passionate advocates, not because they believe unity is easy, but because they know exactly how catastrophic its absence can be.

Role in the Federation

Within Federation popular history, the Elven peoples are often described as the first race of the Federation, their language, aesthetics, and early technologies so deeply embedded that it can seem self-evident. Among the Elves themselves, however, a different account endures, one still taught in their academies and remembered as recent history by some lineages, as it was only a mere dozen generations ago for some. In this telling, the Atlanteans were not only present at the Federation’s birth, but were its first true architects. After the Age of Bloodshed ended on Atlantis, the surviving peoples forged a united system of governance to prevent their world from ever again tearing itself apart. When the Elves later joined this structure, it expanded outward, becoming what would be known as the Federation of Sapient Races.

The decision that would change history began with a name. The newly unified Atlanteans, burdened with countless cultures and old grievances, could not agree on what to call their world, as each people had named it differently. Over time, the stories of the Elves — long absent, elevated to myth and divinity, took on a reverent tone. Believing they had driven away gods through their sins, the Atlanteans chose the Elven name Atlantis and resolved to seek the Elves out, not as conquerors or rivals, but as penitents. From this resolve came the first great undertaking of interstellar civilisation. Led by J’Son and a devoted cadre of followers, the Atlanteans began construction of a vast vessel inspired by Mod-Suit principles: a mobile ocean, habitat, and cultural ark capable of sustaining life across the void. Though it lacked what would later be known as D’jump technology, it was nonetheless the first Homeship ever built. Named the Argonaut, it carried its crew into the dark between stars on a journey that would take many Ages—far longer than a single lifetime. None of the original crew would live to see its end, but their descendants would carry their purpose forward.

When the Argonaut finally reached Avalon, it found not benevolent gods but a civilisation in crisis. The Elves, in an attempt to atone for their earlier arrogance toward Atlantis, had sought to halt all outward exploration and upset the balance of their system. In doing so, they incurred the wrath of Ladon, the ancient Dragon Spirit charged with guarding the Golden Apples, the planetary bodies of the Celestia System. They had attempted to bind the Dragon Spirit to their will, to police their space above all others and in his fury, Ladon had bound the Elves into servitude, turning protectors into prisoners. The Atlanteans, raised on struggle and sacrifice, took up arms without hesitation. Though many perished, their intervention allowed the Elves to rise alongside them, and together they broke Ladon’s dominion.

Restored to harmony, Ladon withdrew into the Astral Space, resuming his vigil over the realms. In recompense, he granted the descendants of J’Son the Golden Fleece: an advanced Mod-Suit design that allowed Atlanteans unprecedented freedom beyond water. This gift would become the foundation for all modern Mod-Suits. In the Ages that followed, Elves returned with the Argonaut to Atlantis, and from the alliance forged in blood, regret, and shared resolve arose a new ideal, one that welcomed difference rather than feared it. Thus, Elf and Atlantean together carried the Federation to the stars, offering its promise to all who would join it.