Father Cierrel Busk is wholly unsuited for adventure. Flabby, naive, and unemployed, he despairs of a dull existence in the civilized nation of Sanaro. Randyn, a vulgar madman, relieves Cierrel of his tedium after a brawl results in their exile to untamed Barbaria, accompanied by a distracted wizard-mom, a would-be philosopher, and a giant requiring court-ordered babysitting. The nominal leader of Sanaro's first "mobile, banished treatment clinic," Cierrel fails miserably at asserting his authority. Adept only at squabbling and squandering, the bickering band stumbles heroically through their exile. Each fiasco brings them closer to a confrontation with an ancient darkness in which they do not believe, and for which they are utterly unprepared."