Atlantis: The Second Age is the latest role-playing game from Khepera Publishing, whose usual spokesman is Las Vegas writer Jerry Grayson, although this book has him third billing behind designers Doug Bramlett and Kieran Turley.  It is somewhat based on the Bard Games Arcanum setting of Stephen Michael Sechi, although apparently there is someone else doing a more straight adaptation of that system.  This game is based on the Omega System, the latest iteration of Khepera's main rules (see below).  The first edition was financed by Kickstarter, and as one of the sponsors, I got one of the first copies of the $49.95 hardcover, tightly packaged and sealed in wrap, in full color and marvelous to behold.  (Also, Jerry- adding two copies of a Marvel New Universe comic book to the parcel was a cute touch.)
Atlantis: The Second Age is presented as “A Sword And Sorcery Roleplaying Game”.   It borrows from various sources, including Plato's story, African myth, Robert E. Howard and the Theosophists' theory of “root races” of the antediluvian period.
The various sections of the book are framed by a fictional narrative concerning an old Atlantean sage named Agathon, who is called upon to rescue one of his kidnapped students.  At the start of the narrative, Agathon is delivering a discourse to his class on the history of the world.  Essentially, in the First Age (or Golden Age) mystic shit was Big and In Your Face, but then someone fucked up and broke everything and Now Things Suck.  Unlike in the Plato story, Atlantis did survive the “Mega Kataklysmos” but much of its magic-based science and technology were lost, along with most of its overseas colonies, and barbarians and semi-civilized kingdoms have been trying to fill the vacuum for over 500 years since then.  Thus, the Second Age.

Chapter One is a two-page briefing on what ATSA is and what it is intended to accomplish. It is intended “in the vein of the old TOR and DAW books.”  It is described as an alternative play style to D&D; character creation is “front-loaded” in that player characters are intended to be of heroic stature at the start of the game.  The point of adventuring is not to gain wealth (indeed, as with the CONAN RPG, there are mechanics for losing loot very quickly) but rather to gain renown for one's legendary deeds, which will propel the hero towards his ultimate destiny.  In this, ATSA is also described as proactive- Renown is the primary mechanic for character advancement, and to gain it one must seek out heroic tasks like those of ancient myths.

The second to fifth chapters of the book detail the various aspects of character generation.  Chapter Two is also called The Hero's Journey.  This is because character creation involves a certain number of individual, story-type decisions in itself, including the use of a Life Path (see below).  A (not very complete) summary of the process is given on page 107, but one starts by choosing a character's race.  Racial template adjustments usually start from a default of 0, with benchmarks given such as -5 Charisma for “Repellent Boor” and +5 Speed for “Champion Sprinter”.  Each PC has ten Attributes: Intelligence, Will, Charisma, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, (movement) Speed, Combat Rating (how good the character is in combat) and Magic Rating (how good the character is at channeling magic).  
Races include the Ahl-at-Rab (fearsome, poison-spitting lizard people); Andamen (artificially created by the Atlanteans as human-animal hybrids, they come in various varieties including bull-men, Anubim/jackal-men, and Tritons, a.k.a. 'Gillmen'); Atlanteans (who are technically not humans, preceding them as a 'root race', they are optimized for leadership and Magic Rating, but are prone to arrogance and have a weakness to vice); Humans (to reflect their versatility, humans can adjust their racial attribute adjustments whereas non-humans have a net +5 points in fixed assignments; they also have the blessing of 'Tyche' and can re-roll a dice action once per day per WIL point, minimum once); Jinn (the first and strangest of the root races), Lemurians or Lemures (talking apes who are actually the best scientists of the Age) and Nethermen (brutish shocktroops first spawned as a failed experiment of Atlanteans).
After choosing a race, one next chooses a cultural background for his character, depending on home area.  This package gives several skills (including native language at maximum rating) and +1 in a specific Attribute.  Note that backgrounds are independent of race, as for instance a Human could have been orphaned and raised by Lemurians, and all races live on the island of Atlantis.
Then one chooses a profession from among four broad categories meant to represent archetypes of fantasy literature: Those That Slay (fighters), Those That Take (assassins and thieves), Those That Shape (spellcasters) and Those That Teach (scholars and priests, including 'saints' who are blessed by the gods).  Each category has four choices, each of which adds one point to a specific attribute (e.g. the Slayers packages each give +1 Combat Rating/CR).  They also have more developed skill packages that add onto the one's for a hero's background.  Finally, each profession has a choice of talents- for instance the Sorcerer's listed talent is “The Gift”, without which no spellcaster can use higher than dabbler-level spells.  To have talents besides the one listed for your type requires use of customization points (see below).

Then you have the most involved and fascinating part of the process, the creation of the character's Life Path.  This is technically optional, but strongly encouraged, not least because it adds extra potential skill points and other assets to the character and is a primary source of story elements for the campaign, such as learning from a master criminal, taking a mate, or “begged the god of Death for the soul of a loved one.”  One first rolls for the character's upbringing, then a childhood event, then for the events between reaching adulthood (18 for a human character) and the start of the game.  A PC can take up to five such “previous adventures” rolls, each of which takes a certain number of game years and can lead to both good and bad results.  “Note: The Game Master and players may have realized that this creates characters that are not balanced against one another, and that is fine.  Characters of all ages and walks of life populate the world of ATLANTIS.”

Basically, the first part of character creation involves adding “package deals” together with little randomness involved.  If you wanted to make a Viking raider-type, for instance, you would take the Human package, add the North Sea/Aesir package for native culture, and then the Pirate profession from “Those That Slay.”  But with Life Path rolls being random, and the player choosing which tables to use and how many rolls to make, each character is different from the one before.

After all this, you get to spend those customization points.  Each PC gets 30 points, on a scale where raising an attribute by 1 is 5 points (lowering an attribute only yields 2 extra points per), skills are 1 for 1 (to a max of +10 for a skill at character creation) and additional talents are 5 for one within your profession or 10 for one outside it.
Each character gets a set number of hit points dependent on race, usually 20, plus CON rating.  This number does not go up with experience except if experience is used to raise CON.  At this point the book discusses the trait of Renown, which is extremely important to play.  Even so, it isn't made clear how much Renown a beginning PC starts with, though there are several Life Path results that can raise or lower Renown.  Each 50 points of Renown will allow a character to improve his abilities (effectively 10 customization points worth) but it is immediately applied upon performing heroic deeds, engaging in romances, etc. and in this way can be used as a modifier to social rolls (sometimes a negative one depending on whether the character earned enemies).  It is however possible to lose Renown through cowardice or passivity, and one's accumulated Renown is of primary importance to the “endgame.”  
Each PC also gets 5 Hero Points + Charisma rating, which are used for the same “bennies” that hero points are used for in other games, to add to a roll or to minimize a critical result against the character.  Characters add two to their maximum Hero Points roughly every 50 points of Renown, but otherwise they fully recharge only at the end of an adventure.  There are certain mechanics to gain HP in play.  The primary one is the character's Disadvantages: Each character starts with 5 points that must be divided between three categories: Relationships (with other characters), Internal (personality issues) and External (factors which are not relationships or internal, for instance being a giant talking ape).  A character must have at least 1 point in each of the three and therefore no more than 3 in one Disadvantage.  These are usually invoked by the player to put the character in a dramatic situation; e.g. a character with an Internal (alcoholic) Disadvantage at level 2 could embarrass himself at a social function and reap 2 Hero Points for this.  There is also the concept of “Indulgence” where a character rolls against a certain attribute, roleplays the indulgence of a certain hobby or vice, and depending on the success level on d20 may yield at least one Hero Point (usually up to his CHA).  
There is also the possibility of reaping Hero Points by tempting Fate, which leads to the “endgame” concepts of Destiny versus Fate.  Destiny is the character's “object of the game” that completes his destiny, at which point he retires as a PC (e.g. 'become the King of Atlantis').  Fate is what happens if the character reaches 10 Fate Points before reaching the maximum of 325 Renown, the character dies in some ugly or obscure manner (for example, 'die in poverty on the streets of Atlantis').  Tempting Fate allows a character to get up to six Hero Points but if rolls with these Hero Points are a natural failure, up to half of the points become Fate Points.  In the course of the game, prior to achieving Destiny, a character may perform Great Works (quests) that stave off Fate; if you manage to get more Great Works accomplished than you have Fate Points, then reaching 10 Fate Points causes the Fate Track to reset to 5 and the number of effective Great Works is down by 1.  These must be appropriate mythic quests; a bad example is “cure my mother's illness” while a good example is “steal the enchanted apples of the Erlking's forest, which will cure my mother's illness.”
This chapter deals with the concept of Wealth Rating (WR) which is an abstracted means of measuring a character's purchasing power so as not to have to track every gold piece.  It is also used with the spending of treasure; whenever PCs get a treasure for their adventures it is represented with the concept of Treasure Points (e.g. 'a buried box of jewels worth +10.')  These can be saved to act like Hero Points to boost or mitigate Wealth rolls, and can also be spent on lavish celebrations, giving a PC two Renown per Treasure Point spent (the 'I Spent It All On Ale And Whores' Rule).  Characters start with a base WR from profession (usually +1), can increase it at character creation with the Wealth Talent, and can only increase it afterward by spending at least 5 Treasure Points to raise WR by 1.
Finally, Chapter Two gives the description of the various Skills in the game, apparently as an afterthought.  For one thing, several skills are listed as having “subskills” (mainly the ones where the Skill can be used with more than one Attribute) and it isn't totally clear whether buying the skill requires it to be specialized or whether points apply to all uses of the Skill.  I also noticed that in one of these cases, the main skill used for social interactions, Influence, shares its name with one of the Modes of magic in the next chapter.

Chapter Three deals with magic.  As in most Swords & Sorcery, magic in Atlantis can be very powerful but inevitably twists and corrupts the magician.  Specifically, in Atlantis, magic is defined as “unwoven pieces of reality” formed from the dreams of “the slumbering elder beings that sleep at the center of the earth.”  Simply being a magician creates a +2 bonus to Intimidation and -2 to other social rolls.  Increasing a given Mode (magic skill) to +15 will cause a permanent change to the character on the “Price of Power” random chart, and even before that, the character's tradition may cause other eerie effects- for instance a “Dark Arts” magician may smell of sulfur or rot.
Magic in Atlantis is defined in terms of separate Skills called Modes, each of which comprises all the potential uses of that ability, and thus if one knows the Attack Mode (for instance) one can use any or all of the options allowed with it as elaborated in the text, without having to define or learn a particular spell for each use (although there are such spells written up as examples of the system).
Modes are selected from the following: Attack, Illusion, Influence (mind control), Kinetic (telekinesis, flight, etc.), Manifest (creates temporary magical objects), Manipluate (alterations up to polymorphing a target), Sensory (ESP/enhanced senses), Shield (defenses and wards) and Summoning (extra-dimensional beings like demons and spirits).  There are also four listed traditions of magic: Animism (shamanism), Dark Arts (demonology), Sorcery (the main art of the Atlanteans) and Witchcraft.  Each of these gets its own bonuses, penalties or various rules, for instance Witchcraft is not good at direct attack but allows for sympathetic magic to affect a target at any distance provided there is some item or focus connecting the caster to the target.  Sorcery allows a Hero to choose what his favored and disfavored modes of magic are during character creation; the other traditions have set modifiers.  There is also a list of spells defined by a character's tradition so that the reader will have examples of how a given tradition uses magic and what spells work in the repertoire.

This chapter also deals with several important related subjects, such as the latent “Vril” energy that powers magic and pools in certain places of power, some of which are natural and some of which were engineered by the Atlanteans and Lemurians.  In game terms, Heroes can use a WIL roll to tap Vril from a certain site and receive Hero Points, although failure risks the prospect of damaging feedback.  This use of local Vril is a major factor behind Atlantean “technology”, which is basically the use of Vril collectors, ley line roads to enhance travel on Atlantis, and “crystal matrices” which are essentially a broadcast power system allowing Atlantean cities to have lighted streets, purified water and various advanced weapons and vehicles.  However, most of these wonders do not work away from a matrix, and the secrets of their manufacture have been lost, making the existing examples irreplaceable artifacts.  There is also a section on alchemy, which is not exactly magic but can have magical effects, up to the creation of golems and magical substances.  However, as more of an applied science than magic, it is usually the province of Those That Teach, and Chapter Two has a Scholar template with an Alchemical Scientist Talent.  This chapter contains specific rules on how an Alchemical Scientist uses his tools and skills, with many examples of powders, elixirs, and non-magical poisons.  Finally, Chapter Three gives the process for enchanting magical items, which first requires a Craft (handicrafts) roll for the item in question (an exceptional item is easier to enchant) and then a relevant Mode roll for the actual enchanting, with modifiers such as item quality and whether the item is to be one-shot use, limited uses per day or continuous (like a magic sword).  Four examples are given, one for each of the traditions.

Chapter Four: The Gods deals with religion and the major faiths in the Atlantis setting.  By Atlantean standards at least, the gods are all fragments of the primary creator god, Oludumare, who was destroyed by the evil entities Ba'al and Set, who are the primary gods of the various evil cults in the world.  The gods of Atlantis are the Orixa (modeled after the West African/vodoun deities) and other pantheons are considered to be of later generation from them.  The gods of this setting are quite real and there is a possibility of being forever changed by a physical encounter with one.  Otherwise though, mortals interact with gods through various sacrifices, potentially reaping Hero Points from the act depending on a CHA/Influence roll, though there is always a demand made by the god whether the sacrifice was successful or not.  In Chapter Two, “Those That Teach” have various Talents that affect their abilities in this regard.  “God's Ear” allows a character to double the Hero Points he receives from sacrificing to a god.  There are also characters called “saints” whose starting Talent is called Dominion Access, which allows them to access certain dominions of a patron god, as explained below.
Atlantis is a polytheist setting; most people acknowledge all of the gods and do not exclusively pray to a given one.  However each of the aforementioned saints devote themselves to a specific god and gain benefits from the god's portfolio, so that the follower of a war god for instance would gain a tactical advantage or “put rage in another's heart making him more impressive in battle.”  Mechanically this works through the Lore (theology) skill with -15 to the roll and the spending of 6 Hero Points as “cosmic currency to lure the god's attention.”  A hero/saint can channel more than one god depending on how high his Lore/theology skill is, but this is a greater penalty to the roll and more Hero Points for invoking a god other than his “Primary”.  

Otherwise this chapter goes over the mechanics of the various Dominions of a god and what powers a Hero gets from Dominion Access depending on which god he invokes.  Next the book describes the “anatomy of a god” or the template for how each god is described in terms of his/her dogma, precepts (what he expects of his worshipers and what he counts as sin) and the Dominions of each god.  Then the gods are organized in terms of pantheon, with the largest of course being the Atlantean Pantheon, which is given the most space given that the history assumes that many other lands worship the same deities under different cultural names.  There are however other pantheons described, namely the Veddan pantheon (from the setting's Vedic India analog), the Turani pantheon (worshipped by territorial desert dwellers) and the Tharshi gods (who most resemble the cults usually found in Swords & Sorcery stories).

Chapter Five gives the specifics on equipment, including the use of money to get equipment.  This is on a standard where a single “Gold Lotus” coin is -0 modifier to the Wealth roll and more expensive purchases are a penalty to the difficulty.  Given that Wealth Rating is abstracted, individual purchases that add up to less than the next higher difficulty can be “wrapped” into the price of the most expensive item, though this should only be done with up to three separate purchases.  
When buying weapons and armor, the standard material is considered bronze, with more exotic materials being a bonus or penalty to use (e.g., an iron weapon is +1 to its damage value, while a steel weapon is both +1 and armor-piercing).  There are also modifiers for the quality of the weapon/armor construction (good or bad) which also increase the purchase difficulty (over and above the WR modifier for the metal).  After describing item material, the book goes over the stats for said weapons and armor, with weapon stats for Accuracy (bonus or penalty to hit) Damage Rating or DR, Weight, Strength Minimum (the score required to use the item without penalty), Rate of Fire, Ammunition and Range (for missile weapons) and WR penalty or bonus for buying.  Some of these include Vril Weapons which have serious bonuses but are obviously not for sale (one of them is a Vril Cannon used with siege defense).  Armor likewise has WR rating, Weight and STR Minimum but is measured in terms of Protection Rating (PR) modified by its coverage (a full suit is more PR than a half-suit and is further modified by a helmet which may penalize PER rolls if used).  Shields are defined in terms of their bonus to Parry or minus to an attack, although they have a Maximum Damage rating (MR) determining how much damage they can take before being beaten up too much.  Exactly how that works is not made clear at this time.  
The chapter then describes various “conveyances” of the setting, including not only Atlantean gear like airships and submarines but realistic craft like triremes.  They are not given any real statistics other than their size and speed rating.  Finally there is a master list of equipment, including rules that state that certain well-made clothing can provide a bonus to reaction rolls in most social situations, while conversely wearing armor and weapons openly will create a penalty because the character is threatening or “itching for a fight.”  It also says here that nudity provides a social modifier equal to twice the character's CHA, which should give you another idea about what kind of setting this is.

Chapter Six is the chapter dealing with the game system and its core rules.  As with Khepera's HELLAS, the fact that the text takes so long to get to what should be introductory material is one of the few complaints I have with the game, as the other chapters setting up character generation go through many examples of “DoD” and other rules without giving us the context of how they work.
The Omega System is generally a “d20” system in that a single d20 is used for all rolls, and skill adds and attribute modifiers are added to the result along with any other modifiers.  There the resemblance to D&D ends.  In Omega, the final modified roll is compared to a Results Table where a modified 0 or less is a Critical Failure (with a potential fumble or 'botch'), 1-5 is a simple Failure with no other results, 6-10 is a Partial Success (you succeeded in your action, but only partly), 11-19 is a standard Success on the action, and a 20 or more is a Critical Success that may achieve spectacular results.  The difficulty of a task is measured not by an increased target number but rather with a roll modifier called Degree of Difficulty (DoD).  For example, a character's Parry skill of +10 is a -10 to the DoD of an attack, and if the defender uses a shield, its bonus to defense increases the DoD.  Multiple actions can be performed at a penalty of -5 DoD per extra action.  
In combat, a single round is 6 seconds, with standard movement rate (for a SPD of 0) being 30 meters per round, with a table given on page 247 for SPD rates in KPH (SPD 0 being 9 KPH and each +1 SPD being about +3 KPH thereafter).  Characters roll a die with their SPD rating modifier as an Initiative roll, rolled each round of combat.  As mentioned above, damage is a factor of DR (for weapons as well as things like spells), possibly reduced by armor/spell Protection Rating (PR) on a 1 for 1 basis.  Critical Failure or regular Failure on an attack roll means no damage on the attack.  Partial Success means half damage,  standard success is full listed damage and Critical Success is the full DR plus a Critical Wound, where the target must make a CON Roll at -10 DoD or be incapacitated even if he has Hit Points left.  Actually going under 0 Hit Points means the character is dying and must roll with CON minus the number of HP he is negative, with full Success meaning a full recovery (once the character is out of danger), Partial Success means recovery with a permanent injury, Failure meaning a further slide towards death, and Critical Failure meaning “all dead.”  Healing is 5 HP + CON rating per day (minimum 1 hit point).
It is somewhat more complex than all this, with various options given in the chapter, mainly emphasizing how the GM uses the player's “intent” in describing his PC's actions to modify the chances of success.  In some cases circumstances are given modifiers (attacking from above is a +2 and defending from below is -2 DoD) while “stunts” to shake things up in combat have to be adjudicated by the GM (an example is a thief who whips her cloak in some guards' faces, and the GM gives that an Acrobatics roll at -15 penalty to allow her to blind them and escape).
There are also simple rules for combatant “scale” of smaller to larger, usually a difference of 2 per factor to hit and about 5 per factor to damage, such that a Gargantuan Scale 3 giant against a human Scale 0 character is at -6 to hit the character and +10 to damage if he does hit.
Finally Chapter Six deals with environmental damage including the use of poisons, where a poison's strength is its DoD penalty to resist, and usually also the Damage Rating it inflicts each round until a CON roll “save” succeeds.  Interestingly there are also rules for damage from radiation and vacuum.  There are also various diseases listed with a “Level” equal to the DoD to resist, with leprosy being only Level 5 and Plague being 15 and up.  This being Swords & Sorcery, this section also describes gonorrhea (which is given a Level 10).

Chapter Seven is the Game Master's Section, appropriately headed “What Do I Do With This Game?” The text says that according to Aristotle, every great story (mythos) should have a beginning, middle and end.  Thus unlike other games where “campaigns” are potentially unending, Atlantis is intended to tell the story arcs of characters who live, grow, age and eventually succeed or fail.  Following Aristotle's model, stories are supposed to be “whole” and self-contained, with every event taking place in the context of the story, although with options for connecting events in a campaign.  It is emphasized, both in the classics and in this game, that the plot “should be of a worthy magnitude or greatness”, rather than “farming” boars, one is tasked to kill Nischak the Hellfire Boar.
Atlantis is specific in mentioning player participation in the framing of scenes (like, GM says 'Would anyone like to add anything?' and one player says 'Yeah, we notice a large map showing troop and ship movements around the area.')  This use of player input is regulated by “the unofficial rules of improvisation” (such as, no retconning) and can be done in conjunction with Hero Points to alter surroundings in his favor (like finding a cave when he would otherwise die of exposure in the wastes) although this is of course subject to GM approval.  
Further following Aristotle, GM's advice includes including moments of peripeteia (where a character tries to do something and has the opposite effect, as in the story of Oedipus) and anagnorisis (an unexpected discovery of the true nature of another character).  It is mentioned in this respect that the GM should not try to force players to follow a predetermined path in the adventure, since much of the point of roleplaying is that there is a nearly unlimited number of options in a situation.  At the same time, the GM is encouraged to use surprise and misdirection to keep things exciting: “Your players are going to surprise you.  Learn to surprise them back.”

In addition to such text, which is not atypical of other “game master sections” in core rulebooks, Atlantis Chapter Seven also deals with a couple of unique factors.  It is assumed that there is a “Respite Phase” of downtime in which characters go their separate ways and either rest or do miscellaneous things.  Depending on the results of a random table a PC could be involved in anything from a romance to a short military campaign, which in turn requires him to roll against a certain attribute and possibly gain a small amount of Renown depending on the results.  There is also a chart for “Adversaries' Machinations” referring to events that occur in the larger world while the heroes are in respite.  
There is also a system for determining a given Hero's Great Works, which centers around defining the attributes of a community (in terms of the four classical elements, along with 'Empyrean' for its ideals and 'Void' for its vices) and its government (ranging from Anarchy to Tyranny, each type affecting the starting values).  When Heroes encounter a given community they have the chance to affect and change its values using a point-based system.  The GM determines what quests are necessary in the pursuit of the overall goal, each of these contributing a certain number of points to the Great Work.  The example given is of a Hero who wishes to reform the crime-ridden area where he grew up.  It is currently under a protection racket run by a cult of Ba'al, who are currently fighting a rival serpent cult for control of the area.  Each step along the way creates a certain number of points, culminating with the confrontation and defeat of each of the cults.  

Chapter Eight describes “adversaries” by first giving a general bestiary of monsters ranging from wild animals to Atlantean experiments and demons, then presenting rules for creating adversaries of your own.  The stat list for monsters and most NPCs is deliberately simplified, including an adversary's “Ability Level” (AL), Scale, Hero Points, Renown and Threat Level (TL).  TL is measured on five levels determining how challenging the adversary is supposed to be and how much power it has, so that for instance a “Nightmarish” foe of TL 5 has Hit Points equal to 40 plus its CON x 20, and 50 Hero Points.  This section also describes miscellaneous abilities a given creature may have, such as Aura of Fear, Drains Life-force, Speak like a Man or Spell Ability.  Some adversaries may have weaknesses like an Achilles' Heel or fear of a certain threat, but these seem to be optional with no effect on the point-build system.  
In addition to listing a few standard-level adversaries, this chapter gives stats for one cell of a group called the Dogs of Jhuun, servants of an evil Atlantean sorcerer who sleeps in a crystal sarcophagus but occasionally acts through his magic and servants.  This particular cell are the “She Dogs” of Jhunn, three female adventurers who pledged themselves to Jhunn and gained certain powers of black magic.  

Chapter Nine describes the history and present culture of the island of Atlantis, centering on the city of that name and the surrounding province which is known as Olokunia.  In the first ages of the setting Atlantis rose up after warring with the serpentine root race called Annunaki and developed a Golden Age in which Atlanteans were both adored for their wonders and feared for their desire to dominate and their decadent use of magic.  Eventually one Prince of the home island created a gigantic Vril weapon to attack an Atlantean rival, destroying the surrounding island.  When the Prince was called on to give up his weapon, he lashed out and ended up sinking the capital region of Atlantis, causing not only tremendous natural calamity but magical fallout as ley lines were disrupted.  It took Atlantis several centuries to rebuild, during which time it was attacked at least once by rivals and it lost most of its old colonies as subjects saw their chance to gain freedom.
At the current moment it is all the Atlanteans can do to hold on to what they have, but even in its dilapidated state, Atlantis is still the largest and most powerful empire of the day.  It maintains its previous trade contacts and sailing tradition, aided by both Human and Triton sailors.  Much of its seafaring success depends on the use of Vril-matrix ships, the annual licensing of which is a very important and often cutthroat contest for Atlantis' merchant houses.  The Empire is contrlled from the region of Olokunia by a Royal Council of Satraps from each of the kingdoms on the isle of Atlantis, headed by a “Lord of the Sea” who is not absolute in his power but usually acts as the primary ruler.  
Most Atlanteans are convinced of their racial and cultural superiority and despite losing their colonies are still inclined to see themselves as rulers of others.  This is tempered somewhat by their cosmopolitan experience as home to various other races who came to Atlantis as either servants or traders.  They are inclined to treat foreigners better if they understand Atlantis and its culture (that culture is still a standard for many former colonies in the same way that Chinese culture is a standard for the East or the Roman Empire was for Europe).  However, it is known that Atlantis' bloodlines were in decline even before the Cataclysm, with Atlantean lifespans growing shorter and shorter and individuals being less magically potent.  Breeding with Humans explains this to some extent but not entirely.  Atlanteans developed a special longevity potion that slowed the aging process but also caused the elders who took it to sleep, often for decades.  Thus many houses have “True Atlanteans” of pure bloodlines kept in mausoleums for advice (and sometimes breeding purposes) although some of these scions have been known to grow demented or attack those around them when they wake up.

Obviously this chapter (and the corebook) center on Atlantis and its various cultural preferences, such as food, marriage customs, etc. After reviewing the various kingdoms of the island (mostly corresponding to the names in the classical myth of Atlantis), the book shows a map of the main island (along with the rival Amazon kingdom of Hesperia, which isn't too well detailed here) and then a world map with brief overviews of the cultures of the world.  This piece is apparently meant to be the viewpoint of a junior scholar, since a sidebar says “I will be speaking to your parents about this slovenly approach to your studies.  I pray to the Orixi that you have simply handed in your notes by mistake.”
Presumably later titles in the series will give better detail about the setting...


SUMMARY

Atlantis: The Second Age is easily the best Sword and Sorcery game since Mongoose's CONAN d20 RPG.  It is not perfect; there are several typos and points where the text is unclear, and again my main issue with the presentation is that the book takes til Chapter Six to go over the core rules.  Fortunately those rules are simple enough that one can figure things out regardless.  Atlantis works because it combines a simple, effective game system with authorship that conveys a certain freewheeling style, giving players and GM maximum opportunity to play a suitably epic and heroic campaign in the manner of the classics.

RATING: 8

Great review.

Quote from: James Gillen;748644Shields are defined in terms of their bonus to Parry or minus to an attack, although they have a Maximum Damage rating (MR) determining how much damage they can take before being beaten up too much.  Exactly how that works is not made clear at this time.

If you use a shield in defence and you suffer damage in excess of the shield's MD then its parry is reduced by 1.

Quote from: James Gillen;748644Presumably later titles in the series will give better detail about the setting...

Yep. Geographica is already out in PDF and gives a pretty detailed overview (at 250+ pages) of the entire setting

Very solid review!