In order to survive after 2400 years of war and slaughter the remnants of a once powerful and arrogant civilization cobble together the Founding Edicts. Two hundred years later, a few of the wise and a few of the ruthless come to understand that these Edicts are strangling life out of the living. At the urging of his mother but contrary to everything his grandfather has taught him, a young prince escorts a wizened Sybil to minister to his dying father. The Company of the Lords is outraged and the Hall of Justice become awash with blood. In the Valley of the Sybils a forceful young woman, abandoned as a baby on the dunes and now chafing against her constricted life, hears a hope filled prophesy that humankind will once again flourish on an Earth green and bountiful. The boy-prince hears this same prophesy but immersed in his struggles with his father he replies as he has been taught. "The whimsy of dreamers is for the weak." Trapped in a hellish world these two characters collide.