In a world illuminated by gaslight, a wealthy, debauched dandy's mentor tests the limits of conscience with a series of human-alien hybridization experiments, facilitated by the decryption of a forbidden text now known as the Voynich Manuscript. Not knowing what it is they've unleashed, mayhem ensues, with hired killers, Brazilian Wandering Spiders, and shady professionals willing to undertake the performance of any act that one should be ashamed to ask for. There is flesh, and the power that holds. Juices run, blood flows, and ichor oozes. The dandy soon comes to learn that wealth cannot buy love, the past exists for nothing so much as to haunt the present, and as long as there is desire, the Star Flower will procure what it needs to bloom, and spread its seed through the cosmos.