The year is 1261, the thick end of a century since the enigmatic westerners began to arrive in great numbers and began to crush the sacred groves beneath their monstrous forts of stone. Since that time these Germans have fought long and hard to subdue this forbidding landscape and proud people to the plough and the cross. Most of we Livonians, the Livi, have joined them now, and fought alongside them for generations. Only the very oldest can remember a time before we went to the river to dedicate our children to the Lord of Lords, or paid in toil the price of protection to the holy Order of Knights. 

 

Many see the foreigners as redeemers, bringing the light of God and civilisation into our lands like a warrior with a brand plunging into the darkness of the ancient forest. Others say they have it all alight. Many still hold in their hearts the same loyalty to the old ways that our ancestors have borne for a thousand years; they have heralded the defeats of our new masters with elation and rebellion and wept as time and again they have resurged all the stronger and cut us down once more.

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But we are not alone in these blood-soaked forests. Something greater than all the strength of the Ritters is stirring in the dark; something that loves neither us nor them.