Editing Notes from Freedom City setting for Man'O War (section)

==PREHISTORY==
Millions of years ago, intelligent life evolved on Earth—not early hominids, but the Serpent People. The pinnacle of saurian evolution, the Serpent People walked erect and built a civilization when humanity’s earliest ancestors scurried underfoot to avoid the predators of a savage and primitive world.
For untold millennia, the civilization of the Serpent People waxed and waned. Empires rose and fell and the saurians developed advanced science and sorcery. They were pitiless creatures, without morals, merely a need to satisfy their curiosity and a desire to control their environment. Among the many sciences they mastered was genetic engineering, used to create various slave races and “pets,” including experiments with early primates.
Serpent People society eventually fell into decadence and decay. They were impossibly ancient by the time the first human civilizations arose, and conflict between humans and the Serpent People was inevitable.
Humanity might have been doomed to remain slaves and playthings of the saurians, had it not been for outside intervention.

===THE PRESERVERS===
During the time of the first true humans, aliens known as “the Preservers”
visited Earth. The Preservers interfered with and encouraged the evolution of life across the galaxy. On Earth, they performed genetic experiments on tribes of primitive humans and collected extensive genetic samples, used to “seed” other planets in the galaxy with human life. The Preservers created a self-contained environment on the far side of Earth’s Moon and planted a human colony there, where it developed in isolation from the rest of the human race.
Despite their name and their devotion to promoting life, the Preservers were not kind. They were alien, and they often treated their human subjects no better than laboratory animals. They showed no interest in the Serpent People, because of the saurians’ civilization or genetics no one knows. Once they had done their work, the Preservers departed, taking with them numerous DNA samples, leaving behind scattered examples of their technology and the artificial lunar environment they created.
The alien intervention gave humanity a vital leg-up. Humans advanced by the Preservers eventually founded the island nation of Atlantis, which quickly rivaled the Serpent Empire of Lemuria in both technology and magical power. The two nations fought a series of wars, ending in the destruction of both and the sinking of Atlantis and Lemuria in the Great Cataclysm. So ended the great First Age of humanity as well as the Last Age of Lemuria.
Although there is evidence of the Preservers and their interventions throughout the galaxy, the ultimate fate of the aliens themselves remains unknown. The most popular theory is the Preservers transcended this plane of existence—and any interest in it—long ago.

===AFTER THE FLOOD===
Although remnants of the Atlantean and Lemurian civilizations survived the Great Cataclysm, they were scattered and isolated. The Serpent People were driven underground and to the netherworlds by the sinking of Lemuria, where they have remained ever since, except for occasional forays to the sunlit world. Ancient human heroes fought the savage Serpent People and their corrupt sorcerers.
Humanity fell back into barbarism and the Golden Age of Atlantis vanished into legend. Sorcery retreated into the shadows, where it has remained, perhaps because of some human racial memory linking it to the Serpent People and the doom of Atlantis. For thousands of years, humanity struggled slowly back up the ladder of civilization. There were heroes and villains in those ages, some gifted with abilities beyond those of ordinary mortals, but it was not until the modern era that such people became widely known as anything other than legends.