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Character guide · first on-page appearance: Dark Age
Who is Atlas au Raa?
Atlas au Raa is the Fear Knight and commander of the Gorgons, the Society’s Zero Legion. He serves the Core through espionage, terror and elaborate deception. On Mercury, he deliberately leaves survivors mutilated to frighten the army and overwhelm its rescuers.
Atlas is Romulus’s brother, Diomedes’s uncle and Ajax’s father. Those family ties do not keep him from putting the Society’s interests ahead of their safety.
Current status
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Alive
Deceased
Appearance and personality
Atlas’s manner is controlled and intellectually engaged. He can discuss history, prejudice and the people he has admired while defending atrocities he ordered. During his meeting with Lysander, small stone figures commemorate people who challenged his assumptions, including a Red woman whose poisoned figs killed his soldiers.
Atlas claims terror will shorten the war and make the peace afterward more stable. He uses that belief to justify atrocities. He distinguishes between subjects loyal to the Society and people he considers expendable. He also resists interrogation, though Darrow does not learn the full extent of his conditioning.[1]
Attributes and abilities
Atlas prepares several kinds of attack at once. The Gorgons use ambushes, hidden communications, false information, chemical weapons and prisoners whose survival burdens the enemy. At Angelia, victims draw attention while a surviving backup network allows reactor sabotage. Darrow’s attempt to lure him to a different target fails.
Atlas accepts real danger to make a deception convincing. To get Lysander into Heliopolis, he allows himself to be captured and keeps some Gorgons uninformed, costing them their lives. Thraxa breaks his arms, and he remains trapped through the EMP until his soldiers drill into his cell.[2]
Atlas impersonates Helios using grafted features and a transplanted forearm to take control of the Dustmaker. He coordinates sabotage, a hidden weapon and Fá’s attack against the Rim fleet. The disguise requires surgery, and he later has his own eyes and arms restored.
Atlas depends on agents, codes and control of information. Diomedes survives, Fá confesses and Cassius reaches Lysander, breaking parts of that control. In the final fight, Atlas cuts off Cassius’s hand but loses the duel. Lysander then shoots him.[3]
History
Book 5
Dark Age
Atlas grows up on Io with Romulus and is sent to Octavia’s court as a hostage at ten. He becomes close to Lysander’s parents and later spends years fighting on the edge of the system. Other characters offer explanations for his cruelty, but he rarely gives a full account of how he became the Fear Knight.
Before Darrow reaches Mercury, Atlas’s forces capture and torture Orion. His operations leave thousands of maimed survivors, consume rescue resources and unsettle commanders who know what happened to previous pursuers. At Angelia, impaled victims and mutilated civilians distract the rescuers while reactor sabotage brings down northern shields. Later, he ambushes Darrow near Heliopolis and orders a filmed atrocity that is interrupted before it can be carried out.
The Gorgons unknowingly capture Lysander along with Republican prisoners. Once Atlas recognizes him, the two arrange a staged capture to insert Lysander into Heliopolis under the name Cato and turn Glirastes. Atlas accepts broken arms and the possibility of execution. Darrow rejects torture and orders interrogation under the New Compact; Atlas remains resistant to the permitted drugs.
Elsewhere, recordings and Xenophon’s confession reveal that the apparent Obsidian crisis is connected to Atlas’s covert work. Fá and Xenophon are Gorgons, and Fá’s position among the Ascomanni was created through infiltration. Atlas’s cell survives the EMP at Heliopolis, and his men eventually recover him by drilling through its barriers.[4]
Book 6
Light Bringer
Atlas’s campaign expands from coercion on Mercury to the destruction of the Rim’s capacity for independent action. Disguised as Helios, he takes control of the Dustmaker and coordinates the Kalyke ambush. Dido dies in the destruction of the Dragon Song. Lysander manages to launch Diomedes away, but discovers that Rhone and members of his escort serve the concealed operation.
Atlas identifies Fá as Vagnar and explains the long infiltration project that manufactured the Allfather. The intended political result is a devastated population grateful to a Core savior. He offers Lysander that role, threatens replacement by a carved impostor and makes clear that agents aboard the Lightbringer can enforce his demands. He also reveals Eidmi, a claimed biological weapon capable of targeting individual Colors, and plans to obtain it through an expedition to Orpheus.
While Atlas is absent, Darrow defeats Fá and forces a public confession. Diomedes learns enough to confront Lysander with the truth. Atlas returns from Orpheus with heavily injured Gorgons and knowledge that Fá’s operation has failed. In Hangar 17B, Cassius and Lysander attack him and Rhone. Cassius loses his right hand but wins the duel against Atlas with his remaining hand. As Atlas begins exposing Eidmi’s nature, Lysander shoots him in the head.
After Atlas dies, Lysander kills Cassius, hides the conspiracy and keeps the fourteen cubes of Eidmi. The weapon passes into the hands of a new would-be ruler.[5]
Relationships
Lysander au Lune
Atlas knew and loved Lysander’s parents. He speaks openly with Lysander about them, but still uses him in the plan to take Heliopolis.[6]
In the Rim, Atlas forces Lysander to pose as the savior of people his own operation has attacked. Lysander eventually turns on him and takes Eidmi. He shoots Atlas before he can finish explaining the weapon to Cassius.[7]
Volsung Fá
Xenophon reveals that Fá is a Gorgon sent to infiltrate the Ascomanni. The apparent independent conqueror still serves Atlas.[8]
Atlas identifies Fá as Vagnar and explains how they built his public identity. Fá later confesses the plan and calls Atlas his brother and teacher.[9]
Diomedes au Raa
Diomedes is Atlas’s nephew, but is not part of his covert operations.[10]
Atlas’s attack destroys much of Diomedes’s family and threatens the Rim. Diomedes tries to bring former enemies together against him.[11]
Cassius au Bellona
Cassius attacks Atlas to free Lysander from his control. He loses his right hand but wins the duel. Although later reports credit Cassius with the killing, Lysander fires the fatal shot.[12]
References
- Dark Age, chapters 59, 61, 79. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 1, 5, 7, 9, 59–61, 89. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 45, 47, 76, 80–84. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 1, 4–9, 17, 37, 42–43, 59–61, 75, 79, 89. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 15–17, 37, 43–50, 61–64, 76, 80–89. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 59–60, 89. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 47–50, 81–84. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 75. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 47, 76. ↩
- Dark Age, chapters 4. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 45, 61, 81, 85. ↩
- Light Bringer, chapters 83–84, 89. ↩