Almost a century has passed since the Last War. The states—more precisely, what remained of them—fell apart. On the ruins of the former world, city-states and dominions arose. Growing up amid the wreckage of the old world, the dominions build a new society: harsh, cruel. People in the dominions are divided into castes, and belonging to a particular caste is human happiness—for everyone except the lowest human class: the wretched. Raised among the ruins of Simferopol, the theocratic polis New Ark became home for Dim Set—a foundling orphan and the future genius of robotics.