Despite often violent suppression by forces blinkered by monotheistic absolutism, at the height of the Renaissance seekers after secrets are determined to discover all there is to know about the universe. Yet, right here on the earth beneath their feet, there is no greater secret than that there is a Cathonic Dome. The second greatest secret beyond the Cathonic Dome is that a continent the size of Africa lies underneath it. The barrier between the Inner and Outer Earth is anything except sealed hermetically. Most of the reason for that is down to the atomic ruination of the Laughing Lands of so many pantheistic paradises in 4825 YD, when Morgan Abyss ruled the Weirdom of Cabalarkon as its Master. Some sixty-five decades after claiming credit for abolishing the Death's Head Hellion - and more than fifty-plus decades after finally realizing their long-held dream of Panharmonium - Thrygragos Everyman and his just as immortal firstborn, the Unities of Chaos, Order and Balance, are horrified to learn that the plagues and poxes ravaging the Inner Earth are far from natural. They're deliberate attempts to end its days. Utopian biomages, the daemonic or chthonic creatures they've sometimes made, and their Hellion allies, armed as they are with the thrice-cursed Godly Glories, have been venturing outside the Dome for centuries now. There they've been ensnaring seekers after secrets and bringing them back inside. It's not their brains or curiosity they're after, though. It's the diseases they carry.These are the Contagion Collectors. Their aim is to destroy devil-gods by killing off those who would worship them - virtually everyone alive beneath the Dome.And it all started in the European year of 1284 with the Rat Catcher of Hamelin.