Once upon a time, the fire elves of Tuscoraura Mountain invited the famous Christian druid Johnny Appleseed to deliver the opening speech for their extravagant New Year's Eve party to welcome in the year 1284. On a mission to end the hunger and bloodshed plaguing Vinland, Appleseed freely offers the elves the good spell of the Lord Jesus, the apple seed, and the secret to blackflame.
But something is rotten in Vinland! Fearing the blackflame's potential as a weapon of mass destruction, the Inquisition launches a manhunt to haul in this ragamuffin preacher before his gifts fall into the wrong hands.
With undead wendigos plaguing the forests around Tuscoraura Mountain, Gog, the war chief of the Magog goblins turns to human sacrifices in hopes that the goblin gods will protect them from the rampaging wendigos. Johnny Appleseed begins to suspect that the fire elves' umpire-in-chief, Kibbler Earnestson, might have dirty hands in all this.
But Kibbler's daughter, Florenz, has a plan to make it right with the songs of nightingales until her father demands that she find for him the blackflaming Sword of Layban. Her heart is heavy and unsure whether or not she can trust her rich, charming, and cowardly boyfriend, Enganyon, with her secret as she sets out on epic adventures in this humorous alternate history of how medieval Vinland came to be modern Amerika.
