I thought it would be best to introduce you all to the world of Saffron Wave before we get into the characters and the story. Not everyone may know about the Minoans, so providing some info about them seems like the best way to start. All art is by the creator @kellerybird (me)

Please bear in mind all the information I’m sharing here comes from multiple sources and may not be entirely accurate and isn’t in any sort of order. I try to stay up to date with my info but I’m just one person doing this as a hobby and can’t spend all my free time researching

The Minoan Civilization existed from roughly 3000 BCE (Before the Common Era) through 1450 BCE. That’s about 5000 years ago!

Saffron Wave takes place in 1625 BCE, a few hundred years before the general time frame for the collapse of the civilization, before the Mycenaean Greeks.

They’re contemporary with the majority of ancient Egypt, spanning about the same length of time from Old Kingdom (the pyramid builders) up through the beginning of the New Kingdom (the Amanda Period/Pharaoh Tutankhamen and Ramesses I).

The Minoans, however, are probably most famous for two things: being equated with Atlantis, which is understandable given the civilization just kinda disappears, and the myth of the Minotaur.

Bulls were considered sacred, along with a bunch of other animals. I can’t really comment too much on their religious practices, simply because there’s very little info I’ve found. They worked the land as any other civilization would, and had a special connection with the sea

The Minoans are considered to be very advanced for their time, going so far as to have modern things like plumbing and a type of flushing toilet. How society functioned remains a mystery, their written language hasn’t been deciphered yet so we don’t know how their gov’t worked.

Animals and nature have a large place in art as well, from beautiful frescoes to pottery to jewelry. The Minoans were merchants, making and trading luxury goods (for the time, anyway), and are considered a peaceful people as there isn’t any indication of any sort of army.

Of course, a navy isn’t entirely unthinkable given the civilization dwelled on an island, but again there isn’t any direct evidence for anything related to warfare aside from a few depictions in art that are given multiple interpretations anyway

It’s implied that society was matriarchal, but this is another thing lacking direct evidence. The predominance of women in art, particularly depictions of religious activities, indicates at the very least that religion was headed by women.

These mysterious people met with a rather turbulent end, a volcanic eruption at Thera, modern day Santorini, is largely credited as the beginning of the end for the Minoans (and possibly one of the sources where the Atlantis myth draws from)

A cataclysmic eruption shook the island and her people to its core. Typhoons and earthquakes bombarded the island, and people either fled to higher ground or left the island entirely. Religious upheaval took hold, fires, attacks, and implied famine ravaged what was left.

I say implied famine only because there’s evidence of human sacrifice and cannibalism found towards the end of the civilization. If you’re really interested in that I encourage you to read about it, but I won’t go into detail here for the sake of those with weaker constitutions.

The Minoans as we know them ultimately faded away, leaving room for the Mycenaean Greeks to take over the island of Crete and bury the Minoans in myth. The Mycenaeans eventually succumbed to the wheel of history as well, besieged by the Sea Peoples at the end of the Bronze Age.

The Sea People feature heavily in Saffron Wave as the enemy, albeit in a vastly different way than academic minded folks may think of them. There is proposed connection between the actual Sea Peoples and Minoan Crete, so I jumped on the opportunity to have some fun with the enemy

I think that’s all the main points you need to know to understand when and where this story is set! If you have any questions or want any further details please feel free to ask me, I’m more than happy to info-dump about all this lol I’ve spent... a lot of time on this subject...

In the next series of tweets I’ll go into more detail about stuff directly related to the story and we’ll start getting into character stuff! I’m nearly done with the character profiles for our three main characters so I’ll post those soon