Ataegina: Lost Colony World Of Phalanx

Name: Ataegina
Type: Planet (lost colony world)
Moons: Three Sisters
Known for: Crown of War holds; the Rising; Nan-Shan wreck; caminus leaves
Key holds: Lemeth, Dakatera, Keflan, Takanta, Vinden, Jantal, Biseth, Hibernia, Pendaran
Hive sites: Black Smoke Mountain; later Pendaran peninsula
Native life: Caminus, imbid, capertine mold, plinton, vooterverts, vindeedees, humped gish
First appearance: Aliens: Phalanx (2020)
Status: Unified after the first Queen. Second hive cleared under Pendaran.

Ataegina was the lost colony world of Scott Sigler's Aliens: Phalanx and of Another Mother, his story from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. Locals treated the island as the only world they had, with three moons they called the Three Sisters. Survivors hid in mountain holds after a Rising of demons emptied the plains, then marched on the hive under Black Smoke Mountain. The first Queen was defeated there. About twenty years later Ahiliyah Cooper hunted a new Queen under Pendaran with Yeh'kull.

Lost Colony

Ataegina began as a Weyland-Yutani colony voyage on the interstellar ship Nan-Shan. Sabotage and fighting aboard wrecked the landing. Every colonist aged eleven and older died in cryosleep, and most of the crew died before impact. A synthetic named Zachariah, registration WY2100023, had been assembled in a Tokyo factory. He was brought online to put the ship down. He got 119 children, all ten or younger, off the wreck with seed kits and told them never to come back.

Those children included Kyle Barrow, Samuel Cooper, and Amy Dinashin, ancestors of the runner crew that later found the hive. They had no tools, no books, and no memory of Earth. Later holds treated the wreck as a volcano story and the demons as a curse, not as cargo from a company ship. Zachariah stayed in the wreck for 319 years by his own count. His assembly date sat 334 years before Ahiliyah reached him.

Geography And The Map

Map of Ataegina from Aliens: Phalanx, showing the island, lakes, mountain holds, Boiling Plains, and Black Smoke Mountain

The painted map in Lemeth Hold showed Ataegina as one island in an ocean the hold people had never seen. Coast and plains ran in dark green with blue rivers. Hills lightened and turned brown as they rose toward the mountain rings around Lake Lanee and Lake Mip. Those lakes had been volcanoes, the same as Black Smoke Mountain on the southern coast. Old town names sat on the lowlands. Color marks sat on the mountain forts that had been King Paul's Crown of War.

The Margrave's Chamber also held a nine-foot-square table model of the same island. Its edges were blue ocean, cut from a material no one in the hold could name or make. Metal markers stood on the peaks that remained open. Lemeth's marker was the largest. Runners plotted circuits on that table before they left, then reported on it when they came home.

On the printed map the northern interior was the Northern Plains, with Lemeth and Biseth in the northeast ranges and Dakatera west of Lake Lanee. Keflan sat south of that lake. Takanta sat southeast of Lake Mip. Jantal and Hibernia marked the west coast. Pendaran sat on the southwest peninsula. Vinden sat near the southeast coast. The Boiling Plains filled the south-central lowlands, with the Great Geyser between the lakes and those flats, and a dark blotch for Black Smoke Mountain. A Nine River ran west toward Pendaran.

Points Of Interest

Lemeth Hold

Lemeth sat in the mountains north of Lake Lanee and was Ahiliyah's home hold. King Paul's builders cut it into Lemeth Mountain, then the place sat empty after he was assassinated. People fled back in during the Rising. At its height the hold had held more than 5,000. By Ahiliyah's runs it was smaller, sick with Glynnis flu, and proud enough to put the largest marker on the table model.

Glowpipes carried luminous river water through the corridors. The Bitigan River roared through the lower hold and lit the stone the same pale white as later tunnels in the hive. Imbid mushrooms grew only there. Hold people wasted the white flowers at homecomings, then traded them because imbid soup treated weakling disease in other holds. A factory level sat below the river, hot enough to bake bread and blow glass, with stone escape tunnels in the ceilings if the water rose.

Panda kept the signaling station on the peak. From that deck the tree-covered ruins of Tinsella were visible on the lake shore, and crews flashed short codes such as a request for Takantan silk. The training pit, hospital, and Margrave's Chamber sat deeper in. Aulus Darby ran the council for decades, with Vinus Tinat as the hold's best-known living demon killer before the caminus war. Ahiliyah later drilled mixed units on the slopes outside after the first Queen fell.

Dakatera

Dakatera stood west of Lake Lanee on the Crown of War ring. It was the only hold with a woman in charge: Margravine Herriet Lumos. Women there wore high-collared yellow dresses and men wore red. They showed as little skin as they could. The hold exported plinton fruit, which stopped forgetter's syndrome, plus paper, iron powder, and sizzle spice.

Lumos wanted runners to volunteer rather than serve a forced term, and she offered Ahiliyah a trainer's post so the girl would not have to walk the circuit again. Lemeth's council treated her as a rival who might cut the road to Keflan. She had lost two runner crews sent straight to Biseth for salt. Dakatera looked better fed than Keflan, but disease and hunger were easy to see. The hold fell during the later demon wave. Survivors in yellow and red reached Lemeth's slopes at night while a horde ran the Lake Lanee shore behind them.

Keflan

Keflan sat in the mountains south of Lake Lanee, higher than the Lemeth approach. It was the only place capertine mold grew. Dried and ground, that mold became blue-dissolving powder that treated Glynnis flu. Other holds tried for decades to grow their own and failed, so Keflan's stockpile set the price of every circuit. Ahiliyah's fifth run was supposed to bring back one hundred doses. The Margrave of Keflan released eighty and said flu had hit his people too.

Keflanians looked sickly and thin when Lemeth crews arrived. Lemeth's council talked as if the hold was hiding powder to cheat on imbid prices. On the sixth run Ahiliyah's crew found the fortress empty, took the remaining medicine, and left by a back door. A demon caught them on the way home. That fight showed them that crimson caminus leaves stopped acid blood. Hibernia and Pendaran were gone before Ahiliyah's fifth run. Keflan was the next Crown of War hold to fall.

Lake Lanee And Lake Mip

Mountain ranges closed in a rough circle around Lake Lanee. Lake Mip sat farther east, with Takanta off its southeast shore. Both basins were old volcanoes. Night light from the Three Sisters could show Lemeth Mountain from a Keflan plateau across Lanee's water. The main runner road from Lemeth went to Dakatera, then on to Keflan, then home, hugging that western lake. Ahiliyah's one Takanta run followed the northern range above Lake Mip instead of cutting south across the Boiling Plains.

Takanta

Takanta sat southeast of Lake Mip, cut off from easy plinton trade after the Rising. It was known for hotspice and for longbows that other holds carved in toy form as souvenirs. Tinat counted about 1,500 Takantan warriors when the holds talked of marching on one another. After Keflan and Dakatera fell, commander Anette Tasker brought Takantan troops to the Black Smoke campaign. She recognized Tinat from an older fight against the Northerners.

Vinden

Vinden sat near the southeast coast and traded red fabric. Lemeth treated the Vinden road as safer than the Dakatera-Keflan circuit, though crews vanished on it. Tinat put Vinden at about 1,000 fighters. Aiko Laster was overdue from a Vinden run after Ahiliyah's fifth circuit, then later came home from Jantal with wounds that killed her in the night.

Jantal

Jantal sat on the west coast. The valley run to reach it was the dangerous job. Jeanna Bouchard's crew left for that road two weeks before Ahiliyah's council meeting and was presumed lost. Bouchard's people were not the first. Aiko's crew did come back from Jantal, but Aiko died of those wounds under Doctor Talbot. Twenty years later, when a new hive grew under Pendaran, most of the eighty-two dead in that search came from Pendaran, Hibernia, and Jantal.

Biseth

Biseth sat in the northeast mountains and mined salt. Lemeth and Biseth had fought each other in living memory. Ahiliyah's father died in a raid against Biseth when she was ten. Former general Sinesh Bishor used the Battle of Bigsby's Pass as his proof that Lemeth could beat a Bisethian army in the open. Salt from Biseth kept Dakatera's plinton trade alive. Leith Malmsteen's crew brought a full load home just before Ahiliyah's sixth circuit, and Dakatera had burned two crews trying to reach Biseth on its own.

Hibernia And Pendaran

Hibernia sat on the west coast south of Jantal. Pendaran sat on the southwest peninsula, closest to the southern shore and Black Smoke Mountain. Both holds were lost when Ahiliyah started her fifth run. They were the Crown of War forts nearest the first hive. After the first Queen fell, people moved back onto those coasts. About twenty years later a young Queen nested in volcanic tunnels under the Pendaran mountains, on fertile ground the search line had not cleared.

Ahiliyah's divisions drew a tightening ring around the peninsula. Everything north of it, including the Nine River Delta, Hibernia, Jantal, and the old Black Smoke ground, had been swept. Yeh'kull forced Ahiliyah and Creen Dinashin to map those uncleared tunnels, then killed the young Queen in an honor melee. Clan elders had sent the female Yautja only to survey the primitive continent, not to hunt it.

Black Smoke Mountain And The Nan-Shan

Black Smoke Mountain sat on the southern coast as a dark volcanic mass on the map and as the place of nightmares in hold talk. The Demon Mother's hive filled the wreck of the Nan-Shan inside that mountain, about five miles north of the nearest water. Adults, eggs, and spiders the holds had named from old warnings lived in the corridors. Zachariah moved through them because demons ignored a synthetic that did not threaten the hive. Ahiliyah, Brandun Barrow, and Creen reached him there. He named the demons Xenomorphs, the spiders Facehuggers, and the chest-worms Chestbursters.

A geyser plan failed because mineral crust on the Queen's body kept the heat off her, and a protector killed Zachariah in that chamber. Brandun killed the first Queen and died there. Ahiliyah and Creen got out after a Facehugger each, then vomited ruined Chestbursters because they had eaten caminus. Two years later Creen kept pulling knowledge out of the wreck for the new towns. The mountain stayed on later search maps as cleared ground, not as a living hive.

Boiling Plains, Great Geyser, And Bigsby's Pass

The Boiling Plains filled the south-central lowlands between the lake mountains and Black Smoke. Ground there kicked out heat the way the deep factory levels did in Lemeth. Caminus did not grow on those flats. The Great Geyser sat north of that heat, between the lakes and the plains. Ahiliyah had never seen it. Her Takanta road had stayed on the northern range above Lake Mip. Sinesh once led 5,000 fighters onto the Boiling Plains. Five hundred lived. Hold people called him Spider after acid ruined his face, arm, and eye.

Bigsby's Pass ran northwest from Lake Mip toward the northeast shore of Lake Lanee, on the road home to Lemeth. Sinesh used a victory there against Biseth as a teaching story. Ahiliyah's crew came through the pass after Keflan, then climbed Lemeth's foothills with Dakateran refugees on the slope ahead of them. Hollow Hill was another old battlefield, where Sinesh's two hectons of two hundred beat a larger Northerner force and drove that invasion back to the ocean.

Hellan, Swarmore, And Tinsella

Before the Rising, about 500,000 people lived in lowland cities. Hellan had held about 15,000. Swarmore had held about 20,000. Tinsella had held about 50,000. Its tree-covered ruins were large enough to read from Lemeth's signaling station and from the Lake Lanee shore. Those names sat on the painted map as dead towns, not as living trade stops.

After the first Queen fell, Creen laid out a new Hellan on a street grid, with roads, a lamp line, and work pulled from Nan-Shan modules. The rebuilt town was a plains settlement again, not a mountain hide. Ahiliyah's later army drilled in the open instead of waiting behind hold doors.

Manroon Island And The Northerners

Manroon Island sat off the main island. Raiders came in one or two boats at a time, killed who they found, and left with fruit. Hold people thought that a poor trade for crossing demon country, but the boats kept coming after the plains emptied. The printed map showed small islands off the east coast. Hold talk never placed Manroon on one of those labeled specks.

The lands of the Northerners sat off the painted map. No one living on Ataegina had seen them. Northerner armies had been a constant threat to the coasts and plains before the Rising, then stopped coming because there was nothing left worth the demons. In the third year of the Rising another hundred thousand people took every ship and sailed. They may have drowned, or the Northerners may have killed them. No one on Ataegina could build ships after that. Two years after the first Queen, scouts saw Northerner hulls off the Northern Plains. Ahiliyah later fought three wars against them and one more demon war.

The Rising

Demons rose in local year 252. About a thousand people died that first year. The next year the dead numbered about 35,000. The third year wrecked the lowlands. Some said another hundred thousand died from demons, hunger, and disease, and another hundred thousand sailed away. Survivors ran up the river valleys into King Paul's empty mountain forts. Sixty-seven years later, fewer than 30,000 people remained from that half-million.

Hold religion called adult Xenomorphs demons, Facehuggers spiders, and the hive's ruler the Demon Mother. Bronze helmets and dented T-slot faceplates came from older wars against Northerners and between Ataegina's own cities. A phalanx held a human army and failed against a demon charge, which is why Sinesh's Boiling Plains march ended in a rout.

Holds And Runners

King Paul built the mountain forts as the Crown of War: Keflan, Dakatera, and Lemeth around Lake Lanee, Takanta southeast of Lake Mip, Vinden on the southeast coast, Jantal on the west coast, then Hibernia and Pendaran south of that, plus Biseth in the northeast. The forts sat unused after his assassination. The Rising put people back inside. Each hold guarded a scarce good. Lemeth had imbid. Keflan had capertine. Dakatera had plinton, paper, and spice. Takanta had hotspice and bows. Vinden had red cloth. Biseth had salt.

Trade meant runners, youths from sixteen to thirty who walked by day in leaf hidey-suits. Crews of three carried packs, letters, and a short knife they called little friend. They hid, listened, and waited if a stick snapped, because demons usually hunted after dark and could feel steps in the ground. Ahiliyah was nineteen on her fifth nine-day circuit. Aiko Laster had trained that stillness into Lemeth's crews across twenty-three runs. After the first Queen, Ahiliyah ended the runner post and used scouts instead.

Wildlife And Caminus

Crimson caminus bushes grew across the mountains and hills, but not on the Boiling Plains. Demon acid blood hit the leaves and turned grey. Creen boiled them with starch into a paste that foamed blood into ash and poisoned adult Xenomorphs on a smeared blade. Ahiliyah's people coated spears, shields, and hidey-suits with that paste. She and Brandun later vomited ruined Chestbursters after eating the leaves. The plant grew only on Ataegina, and it became the holds' answer to that Xenomorph weakness.

Runners also lived among vooterverts, vindeedees, humped gish, and getum bugs. A vootervert call was a crew signal. A gish throat-box opened Lemeth's gate. Pokey plants and brownish-yellow moss covered the slopes. Demons later bred through burrowing vooterverts and dug into hold walls, which is how they got past doors that had stood for decades. Hidey-suits used those same leaves and animal calls to look like the mountain instead of like a person with a pack.

Unified Ataegina

After the first Demon Mother was defeated, Ahiliyah became General of a unified Ataegina. She drilled mixed units on the open plains with hard-iron shields, shorter spears, and small groups she called modules. She would not use demons as a weapon against other humans. Creen's steam cart, farglass, and Nan-Shan salvage changed how the new towns moved and watched.

In Another Mother, about twenty years later, the population had more than doubled. Ahiliyah had won four wars: one against demons and three against the Northerners. When demons returned she ran a shrinking-perimeter search of fifteen divisions so a new Queen could not grow. Yeh'kull killed that Queen under Pendaran, branded Ahiliyah and Creen, and left atmosphere toward a mothership. Ahiliyah and Creen walked out of the mountain after that.

Conclusion

Ataegina was a Weyland-Yutani colony world that forgot Earth after the Nan-Shan wrecked and 119 children walked away from the crash. Its people spent generations in King Paul's mountain holds around Lake Lanee and Lake Mip, then took the first hive under Black Smoke Mountain and a second hive under Pendaran. The island remained their whole map when Northerner ships came back to the Northern Plains.