Fleeing yet another sticky situation, the rogue Farwander lands aboard a ship bound for the mysterious Ghost Archipelago. Unwittingly, he has joined the Heritor, Lady Temnos, on her expedition to the fabled isle of Penitent's Landing, where a mighty treasure is said to lie at the pinnacle of the volcanic Mount Golca.

As the expedition approaches its goal, Farwander is entangled in the fight between Lady Temnos and her rival, the monstrous Lord Hekatar, prophet of the cruel sea goddess Scaravayle. Sea battles, creatures from the deep, and the myriad other perils of the Lost Isles threaten to bring the rogue's life to an abrupt and unpleasant end. Is survival Farwander's only aim, however, or does he have his eye on a greater prize?

Ben Counter is a lifelong gamer and miniature enthusiast living in the UK, near Portsmouth. He is best known for his series of novels for Games Workshop including the Grey Knights and Soul Drinkers series, and has also written supplements for roleplaying games including Dark Heresy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and World of Darkness. He is a founder of Death Spiral Games, publisher of the RPG Sleeper: Orphans of the Cold War. Trademarks of his fiction include flights of Moorcockian strangeness, gruesome horror, blood-spattered action scenes and stratospheric body counts. A connoisseur of creative ways to waste time, he is a passionate (and, he likes to point out, award-winning) miniature painter, as well as a regular at his local game shop where he can be found playing miniature wargames, refereeing tournaments of Magic: the Gathering or running RPGs.