The world of Arlisse, a bright, blue-green orb hanging like a sparkling jewel in the velvet black of space is a paradise. No person suffers from poverty, there is no crime, war is a word that they have not ever heard. Their civilization is technically and culturally advanced-so advanced that they are days away from making their first voyage to the stars-when something happens. Inside, something breaks, and they collectively go crazy. Their spiritual and temporal leader, a man named Omi does his best to stem the tsunami of madness that rips their world apart, but alas he is unsuccessful. One day they commit racial suicide and blow their world up. Except that not all die. Omi gathers together a remnant in a remote wasteland and tries to rebuild from the ashes, but everyone, most of all Omi, can tell that something has gone very wrong. Now they, with Arlisse on the verge of ecological collapse, the remaining survivors dying by the droves from some new wasting disease, their minds unstable and likely to erupt into derangement over the smallest of disagreements, come to realize that only a miracle can save them. Meanwhile the Astari merchant prince Ralmon Shemoth, youngest son of Seena and Carriey Shemoth of the planet of Garshen (who are themselves fighting for their lives back at home), is wrestling with not only personal despair after the tragic murder of his beloved Janath, his intended fiancee, but he, the captain of Lion's Pride, despised by his crew for what they see as personal arrogance, faces disaster of a different kind in the slipstream between the stars when a bomb, secreted aboard by whom they think are friends, detonates, nearly destroying the ship and imprisoning them in pseudospace unless they can find a way to work together and get themselves out. These two races and these two men have a meeting with each other and with Destiny in the very near future but between now and then, they will fight depression, despair, brutality, horror and every kind of spite a twisted soul can imagine on Arlisse, once a paradise, but now a world gone mad."