Finn Ferral, the main character in the novel, is a young hunter in an isolated village at the beginning of the trilogy, but by the time this novel opens, he has crossed most of a continent and has met with many strange events and people. In the course of rescuing his foster father and sister, who were taken by Slavers, he has further honed his already-sharp tracking and survival skills, and he has learned much about the Slavers' operations and machinery.

But many things about them still remain a mystery to be uncovered as events in this novel unfold.

Finn is also a young man of somewhat mysterious origins. His foster father, Joshua, found him as a toddler wandering in the forest. In the previous novel, during a stay at the Slaver base, he found that the raised dots on his arm marked him...