Retconning my Martians

[Froggy the Great]

Ok, so I'm making a C.S.A army for the Atlantis campaign (gonna go straight-up Deadlands with it - should be fun).
I go to my deviantArt gallery and type in "confederate" just to see what I've got in addition to the Perry figures I'm working up, and I find that there's a Barsoomian cowgirl in there that I'd tagged as Confederate for some reason I cannot adequately reconstruct:

http://spielorjh.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=confederate

There, you see?  

It'd be really cool if my Confederates somehow had a Barsoomian cowgirl in it as a character.  This makes one wonder about the nature of Mars.  Is it Barsoom?  Is it as we see in Space:1889?  Is it all of the above?

Anyway, I was thinking that maybe my Martian Hinterlands force, which has been causing my Brits so much trouble in Greater New Cornwall southwest Atlantis might not actually be Martian at all.  I crave your assistance in this retcon.

What needs to be explained:
--They're all identical blonde caucasian women who speak Italian
--Their uniforms are all vaguely Prussian.
--They may or may not be shapechangers.
--Their tech seems to echo War of the Worlds, with some insect-life thrown in.


Some Ideas I had, none of which I'm unwilling to discard:
--The fact that every battle report thus far has labeled them as Martian can be put down to sensationalist reporters in London, if it comes to that.
--They could be ancient colonists from either Barsoom or a Space:1889 version of Mars, long before the sinking of Atlantis in the first place - they've been dormant while it was under the sea, or this could explain how they all have breather units.
--If Space:1889, they could be Pre-drought Martians - that's long ago enough that they could have become shapeshifters through evolution - Earth was a weird place 10,000 years ago.  Their uniform, language and appearance is just copied from the first European they saw and it was good enough to get by when they didn't understand the culture, and too much bother to change once they did.
--of Barsoom, they could be descendents of Holy Therns or something, with the same caveats.  This explains their incredible bellicose nature and their soaring-tower sort of architecture.
--They could have been here long enough that they prefer to call themselves High Atlantean instead of Martian, and they're going to burn the next journalist they see.  Or not.

What do you think?  What works best as a slot-in for the Atlantis campaign?

[Mancha]

I'll have to change up large portions of my Customer Gallery.   

[Red Orc]

Hi Froggy,

almost all of that could be connected with the Atlantean campaign somehow. The backstory though (which is floating about somehwere and is only canonical in my head) is that Atlantis fell through a kind of wormhole - it wasn't hidden, it travelled in time. One night in 9,000BC the Atlanteans went to sleep and when they awoke the next day, it was January 1890. Some of the Atlantean priests were muttering about 'strange stars' and 'strange times have come' and whatnot.

My thoughts about Mars are that it's a mish-mash of Martian Empires, War of the Worlds and John Carter. Earthmen (pretty much always men) are establishing their empires on a planet that has both Barsoomian city-states and big tentacley things. 11,000 years ago, it was different - how, I'm not sure, but Barsoom and Perelandra were at war 11,000 years ago, unleashing mighty weapons on Earth to try to wipe out each others' colonies - that's why Atlantis was sucked into the wormhole in the first place.

The upshot is that any Martians or Venusians on Atlantis from before the catastrophe would be Martians or Venusians from 11,000 years ago, rather than 'current' Martians or Venusians. Were the inhabitants of Barsoom 11,000 years ago shapeshifters? Might have been. Do they have breathers because Earth air isn't good for Martian lungs? Possibly. Were they originally part of a commando team sent to operate at low altitudes (equivalent of human frogmen I guess) assaulting a Venusian base in the swamps by the coast in one of the last acts of the war? I dunno.

Perhaps they are all blonde Italian women. Maybe a steamer carrying the Milanese Ballet Company from Genoa to New York was caught in the re-appearance of Atlantis; the few surviving Martians brainwashed the ballerinas who inexplicably found themselves aground on this new landmass, and now they fight for the Greater Glory of Barsoom. On point.

Or any other explanation you fancy, really.

[Doomsdave]

The only question I have is who makes the cowgirl figure? 

[Froggy the Great]

Red Orc:  That was actually quite helpful.

Doomsdave:  It's a converted Reaper figure - see the comments on her gallery page in the above link.

[Chairface]

Duh. They're clones. The Martian's haven't been able to clone the Y chromosome.