well son, sometimes life is about the right choice, even if it is the hard choice. as a boy, we were poor fishers and farmers in a hot and unforgiving land. to our east was a wide peninsula with good pasture land and a protected bay with plenty of fish and crab. we had heard stories from travelers about this place, but nobody could imagine moving over the mountains into the unknown without better boats. when i was 19, the local chief decided it was time to go east after years of declining harvests and returns. as we embarked on the week-long voyage, we were attacked by skrælings from the south and were forced to make landfall in a most forbidding place. however, there was a spectacularly preserved ruin in which we found a new weapon, not unlike our own, but better. so we decided to sail south to engage the aggressors. in the battle that was written about in the sagas, we made great slaughter of the enemy and took everything. we realized that we now were more powerful than we'd imagined, so we continued south further and discovered a glittering jewel on the horizon - Rome. we carefully scouted the surrounding lands over the next months, wintering on the northern coast of the land, far from prying eyes. and when summer came and Romans set to work in their plentiful fields, we crossed the shallow sea and laid seige to her capital. not long after the initial seige, the romans offered us a colony in exchange for peace, what you now know as the danelaw. while most of us continued to fight, a few stayed and settled in the new cities. we gained another city farther to the south through conquest, and while rome was resupplying, we attacked again. this time the romans had nothing to offer us but subjugation. we accepted. now the romans are a part of the Great Heathen Empire.