Richard, my WWI fighter pilot in Phantoms of Vendôme, enters the Great War to end chaos and restore balance to the world. An idealistic poet and musician, he envisions himself as the light-bearing Apollo, soaring into the sunrise on his mighty wolf.

Apollo is most commonly known as a god of the sun, of music and poetry, truth, prophesy and healing. But Richard’s favorite embodiment of the beautiful sun god is “Apollo Lykaios” – Apollo, Lord of the Wolves. In this form, he is both a divine artist and a fearless protector, a bringer of light and an averter of evil, an illuminating sun to his followers but a ravenous wolf to his enemies.

Naturally, when Richard first encounters his beloved Nieuport 11 biplane, he sees her as his faithful She-Wolf, and his comrades as an unstoppable flock of flying wolf warriors.

The daring new flight, led by Apollo, Lord of the Wolves, is invincible. Each new dogfight (or wolf-fight) brings another dazzling victory. Soon, even the great von Richthofen’s “Flying Circus” will be burned to a crisp by the fiery gaze of the lupine god and his ferocious Sun Wolves.

But the young hero’s career is doomed to be cut short, demolished by horrifying accusations that the light-bringing Apollo has transformed into a savage, deranged werewolf and incinerated his own flight instead. Is it a hideous lie, invented by traitors and saboteurs to frame an innocent man? Or has the unearthly dreamer Richard lost his way in the nightmare of war and descended into madness?

The most tragic part of the story is that Richard himself believes it.