He of the Trees

Orphic Dionysus was worshiped under many titles, "He of the Trees" among them. In contrast to the relaxed, languid, party-foremost persona he would later be associated with in Classical Antiquity, the original deity was a conqueror to be feared: a god of madness, possession, violent anarchy, and often horrific transformation.

Colonel Avery Antioch has no taste for anything but plain straightforward soldiering. But when the newly-independent United States is plagued with crazed preachers, outbreaks of mass hysteria, and a sudden overgrowth of strangely foul apple thickets, what is there to do but what must be done?

Jack Orfeo was once considered a great poet, until the unfortunate business with his presumed-late wife. But then, it's not for his poetry he's been asked to investigate, or rather, not for the artistic qualities of his poetry. All he knows for certain is not to look back.

John Chapman, more commonly known as Johnny Appleseed, was an actual historical character: a drifter thought to have been attempting to exploit the wording of an imperialist homesteading law to lay claim to vast swaths of real estate and in the meantime use hard cider to spread his somewhat eccentric religious views among the settler population. The man himself has been almost entirely subsumed into the figure of legend.

But which figure of legend?

Old gods assume new forms. Old myths become new mysteries. But as there is a price to be paid for such transformations and renewals, there is a price paid to prevent them.