Beijing, 1900. Rebel thugs storm a European orphanage, somehow failing to kill one of the students. Vincent Rutland, a survivalist, leaves China and becomes a specialist in completely different sciences and arts. All of Europe listens to his orchestra, in Russia he finds traces of his mother, and in the mysterious Rattlescar the memory of his father. The hero will meet the last great alchemist, and a nervous Austrian artist, and a militant Italian socialist, and a whole international squad of murderous esotericists, but the descendant of the Bruces and Borg has control over them - the Governing Reality, Lv. One problem: the world is heading towards war, and some people will still have to die...