What Dreams May Come

It is a long way back. 

The series is set in an Empire which is presently ruled by a cruel and powerful Emperor. It is an imaginary world based loosely on a Classical Greek milieu, though transported to a northern temperate zone and with women playing a much more independent role than in Classical antiquity. 

The land of Gea is largely an ethnic, linguistic and cultural unity, though not a political one. Its history has been one of intermittent warfare between its fifteen independent states and with the surrounding countries. However, for the last quarter of a century, the inexorable rise of Troia, the largest and richest of the states, has welded the rest, now provinces, into a formidable Empire. An Empire presently ruled by a cruel and powerful Emperor.