A Morality Tale:
In ancient England, there was a small village near the coast. It had strong defensive walls and its smug inhabitants lived a comfortable life save from harm.
One day, lookouts spotted a viking ship on the horizon. The village inhabitants had never been beaten by barbarians so they confidently awaited the arrival of the Norsemen. The vikings landed on shore and quickly made mincemeat of the village men guarding the shore. By the end of the day, the vikings had forced the hapless villagers back inside their walls where they cowered in fear. All night, the vikings pounded on the village gate with a huge battering ram until the timbers began to split. Then just before disaster struck and the villagers were all slaughtered or carried off into captivity, the largest villager, a veritable mountain of a man, accidentally fell off of the village wall and crushed the viking battering ram.
The vikings returned home defeated and the villagers rushed out of the gate, removing their armor in celebration. They spent the next year in feasts and celebrations of their incredible fighting skill and military prowess. They constantly boasted of how they were the greatest and strongest village that ever there was.
The vikings spent that same year going doggedly from fjord to fjord of their native land, recruiting the fiercest and mightiest warriors in the land.
Then, after that full year, as the autumn winds blew across the moors and the leaves of late October fell from the trees, the vikings returned...