From the introduction: Karloff Kekyin had a son; a man of both his fathers virtue and vice but sadly very little else. Giorgi Kekyin has taken it upon himself to finish off his father's collection of fanciful historic wonders and top of his list is a very specific item long denied his family from Svetsk. He has taken the somewhat impersonal approach of hiring a small band of “Specialists” from the empire to find and retrieve it.