The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: The Confederated Principalities of Europe, an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the town of Grantville, West Virginia. Grantville was hurled from the year 2000 to 1632 by a sort of cosmic joke or accident and has become, under the leadership of Mike Stearns, the embodiment of American Freedom: Liberty, with a sword in her hand.<BR>In Franconia, whose peasants have revolted several times, even before the arrival of the West Virginians, the living example of American freedom and justice has inspired the rise of an independent revolutionary movement, flying the banner of the head of a ram. The West Virginians fully approve of liberating the peasants from the nobility, but they are also aware of how revolutionary movements can lead to bloodbaths. And avoiding that deadly possibility will require all of their future knowledge plus all their plain old American horse-trading diplomacy.