It is the early viking age, and vikingr have just begun sailing to Angaland. Here they hope to find glory, fortune and fame. After all, cattle dies, kinsmen die, even you yourself may one day die; but there is one thing that never dies, which is the name of a respected man. Glory, fortune and fame respectively are all ways to earn that respect. Or, perhaps in the process, you may find death at the hand of a fearsome Anglo-Saxon foeman, and be rewarded with an eternity of battle and merriment with other einherjar. Either way - the prospects look pretty good, especially when the alternative is staying home where there is little to do, since the land is barren and the harvest has already been gathered.

It is here that we find a vikingr traveling by ship with the rest of a tribe, lead by a fearsome chieftain, jarl or even konungr, rare as they may have been. This vikingr is a repected þegn (thane) and as such is a man sworn to his leader, and rewarded with a silver armband and a respected position in the court of the local leadership.

But what happens when a group of thralls are brought back, who are followers of the White Christ? These thralls are spread among the vikingr that helped the leader obtain his victory during the raid, and must now find their new home in the village of their captors. What will be their new purpose, how will they adapt to their new life, and perhaps more importantly, how will they interact with their captors.

Why would you be a lamb of God when you can be a wolf of Odin? This story seeks to find out.

It is somewhere in the tenth or eleventh century, most certainly after 874. The Kievan Rus' had made a treaty that, in exchange for the hand of a Byzantine princess, the Rus would send soldiers to aid the Byzantines and would convert to Orthodoxy. Little did the Byzantines know that the ruler of the Kievan Rus would send only the most unruliest of his warriors - remnants of the Vikingr that had conquered the Russian tribes and, for the most part, tried to unify them under Rurik.

These men were eager to find battle and, when the Basileus lead them to battle, happily chased down the enemy troops that were fleeing from them when their leader had suffered a stroke and died. To the civilized Byzantine Empire, who were used to clean and well kept people as per modernized Roman standards, these axe wielding barbarians were savages, but none the less a useful force to keep at hand.

In this empire, things work very differently from home, and while the Varangian Vikingr are 'allowed' to resolve issues betwixt themselves in their own ways (mostly bloodshed), most of the vikingr habits are frowned upon. And, vice versa, a lot of the Byzantine bureaucracy and pompous showings of strength seem theatrical and useless to the vikingr.

Here, a Varangian of some renown finds himself cornered by the Basileus, who sees his death on the horizon. This Basileus is sickly, and the heir to inherit the Byzantine empire is a weak boy, no older than 14, who still suckles his mothers tit, and is sickly and disfigured. It is clear that when the Basileus dies, the empire will devolve into a civil war.

His final request is to take one of his children that were not born in the Purple North, to the Kievan Rus, so that they might shelter them and utilize them to retake the throne in their name, in exchange for a beneficial marriage here or there. The road North is, of course, full of dangers, and the dangers might increase trifold if anyone was to find out that one of the two was a pretender to the Byzantine throne. In return for this service, the Varangian would receive a large payment upon leaving, enough to cover the trip to the North and then home, and then have a luxurious retirement pension from the Varangians -- he would most likely not be welcomed back when the new Basileus sits upon their throne.

And so an uneasy alliance is formed between a wolf of Odin and a lamb of God. What happens when they arrive in the Kievan Rus territories, and find out that the Rus king has no intentions of helping them reclaim their throne? What if the Varangian was a two-timer that decided to take the payment and take the child as a prestigious ward/concubine?

It is 1920-1925 and the prohibition is in full swing. In New York, a detective and his partner struggle to make ends meet, and are tasked with a question on ethicality and morals; do you continue to uphold the law because it is the law, or do you take money on the side so you can feed yourself? Whether we play this story out as 'dry' champions, law enforcement officers just doing their job, or corrupt detectives that like a drink in their spare time and think anyone else should be able to, too, in the end the RP focuses on questions of morality.

The story can take us to many places that we wish to explore, from underground smuggling tunnels between Canada and the U.S.A., to entertainment venues, down to the precinct for hours at once just so we can get a key witness to talk.

When you kill a king, you don't do it in the darkness of his chambers. You do it in the middle of his court so that all present can see him pass.