Atlantean

Atlanteans look much like surface humans with a mixture of (mostly European) features. They tend toward Roman noses and jaw-lines. Atlanteans are generally sleek, muscular swimmers, and have denser muscle tissue than humans, giving them super-strength (the average Atlantean can lift 1,400 lbs.). Some Atlanteans (particularly members of the royal family and some barbarian warlords) have even greater strength. Atlanteans do not have gills, instead, the lining of their lungs has adapted to allow them to extract oxygen from water and to withstand considerable water pressure. Atlanteans can also breathe air, although they’re most comfortable in an aquatic environment.

Civilization and Culture

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Although the Atlanteans descend from a highly advanced culture, millennia of adaptation to undersea life has transformed their culture, making much of it quite alien to surface world humans. Most Atlanteans remain unaware of this, as their culture is all they know, and retain a certain arrogance about their heritage. Suggesting that the surface world has begun to outstrip ancient Atlantis in many regards (much less present-day Atlantis) is an insult to most Atlanteans, even if it does happen to be largely true.
Atlantis is a non-industrial, largely agrarian society. Their technology is not given to mass-production or industrial processes, but rather relies on the world of specially-trained mystical experts and crafters. A great deal of Atlantean technology is made up of heirlooms from their surface world empire and their ancient ancestors, beyond the capabilities of modern Atlanteans to re-create.
Atlanteans farm undersea beds of kelp, plankton, and similar “crops” as well as pens of fish and crustaceans they raise for food. Cooking as such is largely a matter of preparing and presenting raw foodstuffs, although Atlantis does have a tradition of what they call “dry eating,” which consists of special meals prepared and served in air-filled chambers, allowing for the addition of spices and flavorings other than those of the food itself. This is high-class cuisine, largely reserved for the upper class and special holidays. The Atlantean diet most closely resembles Japanese sushi and sashimi and those are, unsurprisingly, the most popular surface-world cuisines amongst Atlantean who have sampled them.
Techno-magical crystals supply necessary light and heat for the city of Atlantis along with powering Atlantean weapons and other devices, such as hydrokinetic flow regulators for air-locks and emptying or filling water-tight chambers. Memory crystals contain recorded images (including text) and sounds and can project these as holographic-like displays, both for information storage and retrieval and entertainment. The Atlantean archives are largely made up of storehouses of these crystals, as both ordinary books and scrolls and electronics cannot survive immersion in cold salt-water for any length of time.
Crystals also power Atlantean blaster weapons and concussion torpedoes. All able-bodied Atlanteans are expected to undergo essential military training for the defense of the realm, and while Atlantis has a small standing army for defense against barbarian aggressors and sea-creatures, it can muster a much larger force in a very short amount of time.
In their leisure time, Atlanteans are fond of live entertainment, particularly plays and poetic recitals, which strongly resemble such performances given in ancient Greece and other Mediterranean cultures. The ancient Greek concept of catharsis from ritual drama is still held and practiced in Atlantis, and the often passionate Atlanteans derive some sense of peace and comfort from it.
Although they ostensibly still worship the ancient gods of their ancestors—particularly Poseidon, sea-god and patron of Atlantis, Ata-Helios the sun god, and Selene the moon goddess—they are not especially religious, and temples and the priesthood holds a largely ceremonial role in Atlantean society. More conservative priests and theologians point to this decline in religiosity as a sign of the decadence of Atlantean culture and proclaim that it will lead to punishment from the gods themselves, but few Atlanteans believe in or heed such warnings.
Atlanteans inherited a great deal of magical lore from their ancestors, and some of Atlateans still study and practice magic, although the ranks of truly capable spellcasters have diminished since the glory days of ancient Atlantis. Students with magical potential study with learned teachers to harness and control their abilities for the greater benefit of Atlantean society, and most skilled magicians hold positions similar to engineers, technicians, and medical or psychiatric doctors on the surface-world.
The life and culture of tribal Atlanteans is even more primitive than that of the city-dwellers. Life is primarily focused around a hunter-gatherer routine of finding enough food to sustain them, harvesting kelp beds and other sessile food sources and hunting or capturing fish and larger sea life. They tend to have primitive weapons and tools, mostly knives, spears, and tridents, along with a few heirloom items of Atlantean technology, and a decent sized tribe might have a priest-magician with some magical abilities at the tribe’s disposal, who serves as technician, healer, advisor, and guide and is responsible for finding and training a replacement, should any of the tribe’s children display some magical potential.
The same is essentially true of nomadic tribes of Lyonessean and Deep Ones, save that the Lyonnesseans are less aggressive and territorial, while the Deep Ones are far more so, and frequently raid other undersea tribes or settlements.

Genetic Descendants

• Deep Ones
• Lyonessean