Oranbega...

Spoilers ahead...

The more i read up on Oranbega it makes me wonder why the devs didn't just call it Atlantis... It's obvious that it is.

Atlantis = Brutal Warriors and Thinker/Philosophers
Oranbega = Philosophers and Thinkers
Atlantis = Mu came first
Oranbega = Mu came 2nd
Atlantis = Ahead of it's time
Oranbega = Ahead of it's time
Atlantis = sunk
Oranbega = sunk
Atlantis = Supposedly ended for making the gods mad
Oranbega = Ended for making the gods mad
Atlantis = Supposedly existed in 12000 BCE
Oranbega = existed in 12000 BCE

So...two differences...but the first, historically speaking, the accounts we have of Atlantis comes from savages that were their enemies. I'm sure they would call our guns Brutal and us Warriors. and the second could be the result of a dev getting the mythology wrong.

With it being so obvious...Why not call it Atlantis?


** commentary about the possible social commentary of Oranbega **
** Read at your own risk...don't start flaming or trolling **

Also... the message of Oranbega seems... pretty ****** up. Everyone in the game that knows about the history of the Mu seems proud of it and that is really sick. Hequat is a goddess who is literally attacking and oppressing philosophers and scientists and people that make the world go round and in doing so raised up a civilization of braindead zealots which every magic NPC is proud to be related to.

And also the idea that these highly advanced people who directly informed how to perform magic and that there were gods, by a god that knows they have enemies, would have to call upon Demons to win a war screams so much of religious bigotry it's insane

On the other hand Hequat being shown as an evil goddess and a thriving Oranbega society that is peaceful seems to change this perspective...but the thing is these both happen at 40+ which seems to indicate to me someone realized what I said above and went in and wrote those up. It makes me wonder were those written by the same person... it doesn't sound like they were.

The thing about history is that it has a strong tendency to be written by the victors.

Everything we know about Oranbega is thus propaganda.

It is Atlantis. Folks like us, who have been there, and know the natives--we know the proper name, though. Istanbul=Constantinople.

Because if they called it Atlantis, OP would be complaining about it not being underwater and populated by merfolk.

Ask Requiem about Atlantis

I leave it to others to explain the tangled history of Mu vs. Oranbega, which is rendered more confusing by the fact that much of the Mu-related side of it was written second (during CoV development), even though Mu is the "parent" civilization.

As for the Atlantis thing, yes, there are clear similarities. (Note that I'm writing in this paragraph about popular culture, not the CoH backstory.) Both are sometimes cities, sometimes continents, both are sometimes said to be "lost" (Atlantis far more often than Oranbega), both are associated with enlightenment, splendor, and riches, and so on. That said, while Atlantis was first mentioned by Plato in the late 5th century/early 4th century B.C., Oranbega is a much more recent idea. The concept of Oranbega, also called Norumbega, really took off during Europe's Age of Discovery in the 1500's-1600's. This rich and splendid city, whatever it was called, was usually placed in the vicinity of present-day New England. Eventually, after Europeans started poking around the area and failed to find a utopian city of gold there, Norumbega disappeared from the maps.

The important part of that story, for CoH purposes, is "placed in the vicinity of present-day New England." When the early developers decided to place Paragon City in the American Northeast and to include a subterranean, ruined city, the decision to call it "Oranbega" was a tip of the hat to those sixteenth century stories. The connection to Mu came later, when it came time to flesh out the backstory of the magical enemies CoH-Oranbega was created to hold.

So, why not call it "Atlantis?" Because of the development arc. When pondering questions like this, it's important to remember the order in which the lore develops. First, the developers come up with a broad concept ("Let's have the magical enemies be based in an underground city."). Second, they come up with names and broad outlines ("Circle of Thorns," "Oranbega," etc.). Only once all this is done, and the related mechanics are ready for prime time, do they attempt smooth the backstory into the rest of the setting ("Where did Oranbega come from?"). The development doesn't happen from the setting's distant past forward or from start to finish. It's a piecemeal operation. The backstory is not a novel; players should stop expecting it to work like one.

First off, I have got nearly the entire Oranbega part done save for referencing and a few more lines in the last section...
http://www.fbsavanguard.org/wiki/Mul...Earth/Timeline

Why does it say something different than ParagonWiki's version? Because ParagonWiki's version for at least that section is obviously mistaken. Nothing to do with the person, but rather the writing explaining it is somewhat confusing in how it is said. Breaking it down sentence by sentence and action by action makes it a lot easier to see what happened...

Gods came about and needed worship so allied with humans.
1 pantheon learned a different method, which the other gods felt was bad so they were banished...

So with this we have the set-up of 2 factions... The Worship gods and the Fear gods (Banished Pantheon)

Next we have a goddess, Teilekku, discovers magic and teach it to the other gods, until this point they used their "divine" abilities, not magic.
Ermeeth and Hequat were apparently both prized students and lovers. Ermeeth however felt that humans should be taught magic so they don't have to worship the gods any more. He is either stupid, figured out a different way to get sustenance, or that wasn't his intent by teaching magic.
Teilekku gathers her forces and put Hequat in charge to go deal with Ermeeth and the Humans that have learned magic from him. Ermeeth is beaten and flees with his followers to establish Oranbega.

So here we have the establishment of a Top god (Teilekku) and 2 factions Ermeeth and Teilekku (who is not mentioned beyond this point) who passes the responsibility onto Hequat. So within the realm of gods what we have is 3 factions:

Ermeeth: Good -> Tielekku's Faction: Gray <- Banished Pantheon: Evil

We also have the move from where they were from (Mediteranean/North Africa) to a new location (the US).

Next we have the construction of Oranbega and peace. Hequat learns of it's location, incites a rebellion which is exiled. These exiles flee to the Mid Atlantic where Hequat raise an Island which is the Coralax's home... They win and Construct Mu.... and then in a few hundred years they attack Oranbega...

So now we have 3 factions of humans now as well...

Non magic humans: good -> Oranbega: good -> Mu: evil

When the Mu attack the press the Oranbegans into a corner and Ermeeth doesn't help but a Demon Prince does and the Oranbegans decimate the Mu, but show mercy... however the Demons figured this would happen and set the contract up so there would be consequences...That being lose of physical body for all oranbegans.

So... We now have 4 factions of the other Planes fighting against each other with only 1, who is mysteriously absent, being the only real good guy in this whole situation. We also have "spirits" of Oranbegans wandering about and several Mu running around and breeding with non magic users...


IN the whole thing Teilekku is absolved of all her wrong doing while Ermeeth is oddly absent. The good Oranbegans are shown to be only good on the surface and when ush came to shove they'd rely on a demon rather than a god and the Mu go on to create magic users who are proud to be on the side of oppressors. It seems the only group that left unscathed from this brief history are the Demons.


Also I forgot all about that there was a real Oranbega myth... If we were to speculate out Atlantis was according to myth concurrent and warred with Mu or was after Mu... and according to various other myths current humans are the 7th generation of humans so Oranbega = 4 Mu = 5 Atlantis = 6 current = 7. If you were to add before Oranbega, the Virtea, and the Coralax that would give us 7 generations.


Also a correction Atlantis was/wasn't orignally brought up by Plato. He presents it as something like a a friend of a guy went to egypt and got the story from them and told him who was relating the tale when plato overheard it. There is some evidence to back this up but it's been a while since I last read up on atlantis.

After reading over the important parts and browsing over the both of those arcs you mentioned Samuel...

I think that someone got that messed up. There are something like at least 3 other sources that disagree with that and the source for that is from a character is a translator and not an authority on magic history.

There are 3 solutions...

They purposely messed it up and the in-game character didn't read it properly, but got a rough translation which is why it is semi accurate semi not. This is also something that often happens and would have happened in this case.

The dev that wrote it up got it wrong.

The other 3 sources are wrong other 3 are...
Game: Magus Mu'Drakhan - Nerva Archipelago (1658, 166, 3170) - The Secret of the Circle
Game: Diviner Maros - Sharkhead Isle (-1336, 0, -758) - The Cult of the Shaper
Game: Cadao Kestrel - Founders' Falls (1594, -16, 925) - The Envoy of Shadows

Mu = Atlantis

Oranbega is different.

DC has an Atlantis, Marvel has an Atlantis and a Lemuria, Champions has a Lemuria (I think), why can't CoH have something different?

I think it's all mixed up and messed up from being really old, and the Mu and the CoT have their own versions of the war that was fought between them.

But yeah, Orenbega is the ancient forgotten city under Paragon City. It's not Atlantis. I seem to remember Faultline was caused by the CoT trying to tear it back up to get it flying through the sky again (and destroying Paragon City in the process). It's like one of those ancient flying wizard-god cities of Netheril out of D&D lore. They have a flying city gap! The Mu have flying islands...or at least Scirocco does.