The story opens focusing on a conspiracy theorist named Janey Jackson. Janey is in an apartment and eats some bad meat from her friend's refrigerator. The reason she's eating bad meat is because she's at the apartment and watching the ~~president~~ First Speaker (There's the First Speaker, Second Speaker, and Third Speaker of Sarannia (America kind of vaguely if it was a land power), which are a president, vice president, and vice-vice president) pass by in a motorcade.

Janey leaves to puke into a toilet because she ate the bad beef, and then returns to see that the First Speaker has been shot. Next, a crappy mobster and protagonist named Castor Kerran talks to Janey's roommate, his sister Mairy Kerran. The two of them watch the assassination on TV, and we learn that the Second Speaker (the new First Speaker, former nuclear scientist, and atom-bomb-crazy figure Gertrude Lace) has taken power. Castor complains that everyone looks ugly now that it's not the not-50s anymore, and we learn that Sarannia fought the Twelve Years War against another country called Keth. Keth is a Sarannian puppet now, and Castor is tied to the Kethite mob in Sarannia.

Lace meets Janey for an interview, and Janey is a dork and Lace thinks Janey's an idiot. Lace rules from an office chair informally called the 'Strychtnine Throne', because it's not great to sit in it. We meet Jossalind and Risley in a bar called the Little Beet. Jossalind is an Avian (a winged humanoid from the Avian Federation, sort of inspired by France and filling the role of the USSR), and is nonbinary. Risley is a murderous middle-aged psycho who runs the Kethite mob in the area. Risley points out to Jossalind that they need to get a drug called 'Celestial Oil' from essentially a modernized version of the Taiping called Fangzhou. Celestial Oil basically blurs away one's sense of difference from everything around them, turning everything into a warm, possibly enlightening haze. Risley kills the bar owner, and now the Kethite mob has to figure out how to pay to buy the bar so they can hide the evidence.

We meet Kai Copeland, an actor from Keth who has ties to the Avian Pact (The Avian mob in Sarannia). The current leader of the Pact, Celeste Besson, is murdering someone violently, and Kai is kinda just watching that. We learn what Celeste is like, basically that she has a lack of empathy, put the Pact back together single-handedly, and keeps servants around. Kai is also nonbinary, and is AMAB, as opposed to Jossalind's AFAB-ness.

Kai goes to drop the oil off to Castor and Risley, but Kai asks for too much money and Risley tries and fails to murder Kai and Kai's multiple armed guards. Kai manages to defuse the situation, but Risley goes for drinks at Dirk Sprightly's Fabulous Alcohol (literally an entire page consists of Castor talking about how stupid this name for a wine and spirits place is and how much he hates it). Risley fucking murders everyone in the wine place for some stupid reason, because that's Risley and I think he's working off anger at being screwed by Kai.

Next, we get to introduce Rosalia Silver. Rosalia is a former night bomber for Sarannia during the Twelve Years War, who's currently working with the Kethite mob. She's a decent person. She and Castor - at the Little Beet - are talking about how they need to solve two problems. Firstly, Risley feels fucked by the Avian Pact and needs to get even with them. Second, they need the money to pay for the Little Beet.

So Castor and Rosalia bat around the idea of stealing the Avian Pact's shit, selling it at a fence in Verrum (a Rome/Fascist Italy/Modern-ish Italy analogue with a land border to Sarannia), and making the money. Then, Risley doesn't look like a wimp, and they get the money they need. So they agree to pass the idea by Risley.

And that's where I am so far, at 28 pages.