In the year 1031
AD, Zahn, an adventurous Song Chinese trader, keeps going north after trading
with Japan and Korea, following the currents North and West into new lands.
There he finds new civilizations, with valuable trade goods. He builds
relationships with the native peoples as he travels down the West coast of what
is now North America. Those bonds are cemented when he accidentally introduces
smallpox in bolts of Japanese silk, and a village is effectively wiped out.
Zahn
has found a better world than the one he came from. He desperately wants to
protect it from the greedy and brutal worlds across the waters, where life has
no value, and death is a currency. If he cannot equip his new people to stand
against the old worlds, their lands will be devoured, and their people enslaved,
for that is the way the old civilizations stay alive and the powerful thrive.