Both obligations and privileges abound for the royal princes of the Barlow family, which rules the beset Bruin kingdom. Otto Barlow has been entrusted with the kingdom's northern principality, a land beset by barbarous and bestial races of a fetid nature, who worship perverse and violent gods. Managing to carve out a life of luxury for himself, the carefully-managed equilibrium of Otto's fraught realm is challenged by a massive political maneuver from the royal family. How will the pampered princeling cope after getting an intimate introduction to gnollish culture at the hands of Hyra the Head Hewer, a gnoll warrior queen of ferocious and unstable temperament?