On the remote, bleak planet of Breakness, far from his own people, Beran, heir to the Panarch's throne on Pao, was brainwashed.

Palafox, omnipotent Dominie of Breakness Institute, was the half-mad egoist responsible for the kidnapping and implantation of Breakness's totally alien thought patterns into the mind of Beran.

Palafox planned far ahead. Beran's future was to be shaped to serve the Dominie's ends: total universal conquest.

But Beran, with the vestiges of Paonese, had his own ideas.