The Chosen
ATLANTIS
Atlantis; there is no more enduring a myth, a legend, or a conspiracy theory than the existence of a lost city of advanced technology and civilisation deep beneath the ocean. It is variously said that the ancient Atlanteans, an unknown race of beings who were practising civilisation when humans were still attempting to decide which end of the stick to use, destroyed their own civilisation through hubris, bringing a great cataclysm down on their heads.
The stories differ because, aside from Plato's account, we have very little in way of information, at least nothing concrete.
Lucifer has gone to a great deal of effort to make sure that it stays that way. Ensuring that no information escapes about the truth of Atlantis - together with shrouding the darkside of the moon and making humanity think Mars is still an arid rock - takes up a significant amount of Asmodeus' time these days.
THE DAWN OF THE FALLEN
Humanity was, indeed, still learning to successfully manipulate fallen vegetation when the Fallen came down amongst them. They were a battered and confused host of angels of all classes and Choirs for they had just lost the War and been forever Cast Down.
Their leader, Lucifer, was not disconsolate, he wore not defeat heavily upon his brow. He, according to Abaddon, had the strangest evanescent smile upon his lips. He had an idea and it was to be an idea such as had never been thought of before.
He had decided that they had been exiled to Earth by the Creator, He would not change His mind and allow them to return as some among the defeated host believed. Lucifer knew his Father well; this was - as the saying would later go - really IT. Lucifer decided that they must, therefore, make the best of it.
Penumael had discovered how to spin material bodies around their spiritual frames, to draw matter from the world to them and forge full functioning bodies of flesh. Fully. Functional. Bodies.
If he could not convince The Creator to eliminate this upstart human race, then he could find a way to improve it...
One hundred they were that spun bodies of flesh, fair and beautiful beyond mortal imagining, and set foot upon an island paradise in the middle of the warm and teeming ocean. Lucifer smiled and held out his hands in blessing and welcome as the humans gathered to gawp at their sudden and terrible appearance.
THE DAUGHTERS OF MAN
It seemed quite natural, at first, that the temptations of the flesh, new to each of the hundred angels, be so compelling. None chose to resist those temptations, instead they indulged them with great regularity, day and night, but that was not all.
As it has been written, Lucifer had a plan.
He was not simply looking to build a brood of hybrid offspring with the humans, he was going to build a civilisation.
In small groups at first, the angels took the brightest into the desert and taught them the secrets of heaven. Language, science, medicine, the magics of the stars, the speech of animals, the workings of stone and metal and of crystals and minerals, all this and more must the humans know that this new nation Lucifer intended to build could rival the halls of Heaven itself.
It took one hundred years for the village known as A'tla'Atan (Door of the Gods) to evolve from shacks of wood and mud to a vast and soaring city of shining marble and gold. Lucifer was in no hurry, though, none of them were.
Yes, the first couplings of angel and daughters of Man engendered giants and monsters that had to be driven off or slain but, eventually, they started to, at least, look human.
THE CITY OF ATLAN
Built in a natural harbour with high, curving cliffs, Atlan rose on four walled levels into the half bowl of rock rising above the ocean. Made from the locally mined solid grey stone with a subtle golden hue, the city could be seen for miles and defended with ease. Towers and fortifications made up each gently concave wall and, above it all, stood the Pyramid.
He called it the Temple of the Abyss and had always said that it was not made, a such, it was uncovered. Thought none but Lucifer and those he trusted, of whom there were very few - just his 'horsemen', with he whom he often rode out into the mountains behind Atlan often; Abaddon, Penumael, Sammael, and the other one - were allowed inside, it was widely said and never denied that the Temple was made of one gigantic crystal of the rarest and most powerful substance on Earth; Anathema.
THE FALL OF ATLANTIS
It seemed that either the Fallen did not care or had forgotten about The Creator entirely.
They continued to marry mortal women and, later on, the nephilim - or 'sons of the gods' - offspring that resulted from earlier unions as more and more of the Fallen took flesh to join them. They continued to breed Lucifer's planned superior human race. They continued to build and learn, to expand and conquer the world beyond Atlantis, to subjugate and enslave the early human civilisations they found like they had all the time in Creation.
Of course, they did not. The Creator was not blind, as such, not forever. What He could not directly see with His own eyes, he could find the eyes of others to look at for Him. Though the Anathema - especially in such quantity as existed in Atlan - was able to block His sight rather well, His ears still heard.
He sent Enoch as His envoy to discover two things; why He could not even see Atlantis and if there was any truth to the rumours reaching His ears.
His Wrath was something to behold when He found out.
The hybrids, the nephilim as Lucifer called them, had spread out, raided, raped, and pillaged their way across the entire world. Not one human soul remained free of Lucifer's infectious taint. Almost none. We are sure you know all about that story, the one about a man and his family, a large wooden boat and two from each current species of animal.
That is almost how it occurred.
The part about Atlantis was very carefully edited out.
Michael personally lead the host of Heaven against Lucifer's heresy. It was decided that nothing must remain above water, no nephilim abomination would walk the Earth and no Fallen remain clothed in flesh. All traces of Lucifer's perfidy were to removed human sight forever.
As the storm beat upon the Walls of Atlan and drowned the mortal world Michael, bearing the spear he had cast down Lucifer with during the War, undid the bodies of the Fallen and cast them into the winds as formless spirits forevermore.
THE NEPHILIM ENDURE
The ways of the Creator are often deemed ineffable (Asmodeus is of the opinion that His ways are "very effable indeed") and this time was no exception.
He decided that the five hundred surviving nephilim be allowed to live "as demons to plague Man and remind him of his earlier error", as well as serve as a buffer of sorts against the spawn of Lilith, over whom the Creator had no agency. It is said that only the weakest, least able, and cowardly fled Atlantis and made it to the relative safety of the newly drowned world, that, if any of them bred, their offspring would pose no danger.
We would like to believe that for it is better to think that than allow that the Creator may have made a mistake.
Afterall, He let Sable live...