Two hundred years have passed since the great palaces of the Mycenaean age burned. The fleet of Crete scattered. The Sea Peoples ravaged the coasts. What was once the most advanced civilization in the world has been reduced to scattered villages, fishing communities, and fading memories.
This is the Greek Dark Age — a time between the mythic glory of heroes and the classical age of philosophy. Iron is replacing bronze, but slowly. Literacy has nearly vanished with the loss of culture. The great trade networks connecting Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece and the world beyond have fractured.
And the gods have gone quiet.
Not silent — not yet. Priests still receive visions. Oracles still speak. But something has changed. The messages are muddled. The omens are contradictory. The divine presence that once felt as natural as sunlight now flickers like a guttering flame.
This is a time of upheaval. The old ways are fading. What is yet to be has not yet come. But with violent times comes opportunity. Those with courage might yet live to become legends.
The dominant culture, fragmented into countless small communities after the Collapse. They retain the heroic tradition and worship of the Olympian gods. They are resilient, independent, and deeply suspicious of change. Where once great palaces commanded the loyalty of thousands, now village elders hold council and fishing boats outnumber warships. Yet the Greek spirit endures — they tell stories of heroes, honor their gods, and dream of rebuilding what was lost.
Once the greatest civilization in the Mediterranean, ruling from magnificent palaces on Crete. Their fleet controlled the seas, their art was unmatched, and their magic was powerful. Then came the Collapse. The palaces burned. What remains are refugees scattered across the islands, scholars preserving dying magical traditions in fragments of Linear A script, and guardians of forbidden knowledge that most of the world has forgotten. They are proud, diminished, and determined to keep the old ways alive.
The survivors who thrived. While others collapsed, the Phoenicians of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos adapted with their revolutionary new tool: the alphabet. A writing system so simple it can be learned in weeks, not years. They dominate Mediterranean trade, their ships reaching every port from Egypt to the far west. They worship gods unknown to Greeks — Baal, Astarte, Melqart — and see opportunity where others see only ruin. Where there is commerce, there are Phoenicians.
The eternal kingdom endures as it always has. While the Mediterranean burned, Egypt watched from the banks of the Nile — ancient, stable, and deeply concerned. Their priests read the stars with precision learned from millennia of observation. Their Ka-priests tend the dead with sacred rituals that ensure safe passage to the afterlife - many more in recent times with the coming of the "Sea Peoples". Egyptian astronomers have noticed something troubling in the heavens — a wrongness in the cosmic order that their calculations cannot explain. They have begun sending agents abroad to investigate.
Magic in the Bronze Age is divine in nature. It flows from the gods through their priests, oracles, and chosen champions. Arcane magic exists but is rarer — preserved primarily by Minoan scholars who remember the palace traditions. The Phoenicians practice scribal magic through their alphabet, and the Egyptians ritualize everything with formulae perfected over centuries.
The relationship between mortals and gods is personal and immediate. Gods answer prayers. They send signs. They intervene — or they did. The growing silence from the divine realm is the central unease of the age. Something is changing in the relationship between gods and mortals, and no one is sure why.
Most people live in small communities — fishing villages, farming settlements, and pastoral camps. The grand palace economies of the Mycenaean age are gone, replaced by subsistence and local trade. A village like Kyparissos might have a hundred souls, a shrine to a patron god, a sacred grove, and a harbor that welcomes Phoenician traders once or twice a season.
Literacy is rare. Iron is expensive and poorly understood. Travel is dangerous. The Sea Peoples — raiders from unknown lands — still threaten shipping lanes. Piracy is common. Trust is earned slowly. And yet, in this diminished world, there is also possibility. The old hierarchies have crumbled, and a person of talent and courage can rise further than they ever could under the palace kings.