Rex Knight, a native West Virginian and Afghan War vet, is mysteriously teleported from a peaceful surveying job to the semi-lawless frontier of an alternate Appalachia world of Civil War era technology, slavery, drugs, cotton, and competing colonial empires. The world straddling Prussian Empire, whose emperor claims to have descended from God, is vying with the sinister Ichneumon Empire for control of the North American continent. Endangered by the clashing empires are the indigenous Wapitis. Rex is appalled by the oppression and murder inflicted on the Wapitis by James Donnelly, a warlord employed by the Ichneumons. Azure blood and social structure mark the Ichneumons as not quite human. The Wapitis, locked in a deadly struggle to avoid slavery and extinction, appeal to Rex, who looks like a Prussian, to help them obtain rifles and ammunition. Aware the Prussians hang people caught selling firearms to the Wapitis, Rex . . .
