Publisher's Synopsis
A vision, a peculiar international movement flooding the city, an Empress, and a strange artefact called the Chimaera. Petty Veniz will never be the same again, for it seems the Apocalypse is at hand. It is the bizarre culmination of a series of events which began a year or two before, when the 'The Most Ancient and Venerable University of St Mark the Evangelist, commonly known as Petty Veniz', found that it is not, as it had thought, securely wealthy: it is, in fact, insolvent. When the university's head, a hitherto unassuming academic called Bill Westey, announces that he has experienced a vision, the world of the University is turned upside down, culminating in the arrival of the Empress, who controls the Chimaera.