Once it had all seemed hopeful.  New discoveries in physics, innovations in mathematics, agriculture, energy and medicine.  Wonderous new technologies to enhance lives, lift millions from poverty and brighten humanity's future.  Now it had all fallen apart.   Great cities lapsed back into squalor as the payoffs of these great leaps forward fell into the hands of the few.   The moribund and balkanized remains of Earth's greatest nation states have slipped into bureaucratic paralysis and corruption while byzantine trade regulations allow mega corporations to operate with near impunity in every part of the globe.  The Mars colonies have not been heard from in years, and mankind's once buoyant aspirations for a future amongst the stars has sputtered and stalled as the great rockets of a previous age moulder and rust on derelict launch pads. 

 

Control amidst the fraying bonds of civilization is ostensibly maintained by the governments of hundreds of provinces, protectorates, principalities, emirates, commonwealths and territories that subdivide the planet.  These political boundaries, however, are all permeated by the influence of Solis Videns, a strict and omnipresent religious order headed by the so-called "Yellow Pope."  With adherents and pawns in the highest levels of government and industry, and its own martial order, Solis Videns claims itself to be a stabilizing bulwark against humanity's continued decline.  In the face of a decaying social order a great many believe this claim.

 

Some do not.  In the back alleys and rain soaked streets of Chengdu a handful of such dissidents are about to discover a clue that when followed, might unveil the true forces behind civilization's retrograde trajectory.  Such a revelation, however, is not for the faint of heart...or mind.