With the world divided into several competing empires, Albion finds itself at war with more than it bargained for in West Africa. It slowly emerges that this is just a part of a larger pattern, and various agencies and chivalric orders begin the quest to get to the bottom of things.
The story begins in Timbuktu, capital of Albion's vice-royalty of West Africa, and centre of the ongoing war against the native Fulani. Only now it appears that they have gained the aid of much more formidable allies, allies that the Viceroy and his staff cannot begin to understand.