There was always a sort of quiet, passive-aggressive war between monsters and men, between men and magic, and between magic and malignancy. The hierarchy was set in stone, with sorcerers at the top of the food chain and monsters scraping along the bottom, and any intermingling of the two was unthinkable. Still, there were those who, whether it be by intention or circumstance, found themselves in between. There was Rodi, the spunky halfling whose strange gift made monsters stop in their tracks. There were her companions - the one-eyed, one-legged pirate captain Rosa, a necromancer with a flair for botany called Scarecrow, and Grendel, a beast rumored to devour people whole. There was August, the voice thief, and Lorne, the doll maker. There was Geraldine, the witch who would treat any malady or malevolent spell for a price, and there was Sunny, who came to her out of desperation. And finally, there was Benjy and there was Poppy - the former an enigmatic bookbinder, the latter a cursed creature changed into something not quite human and not quite insect. For better or for worse, each one of them found themselves drawn into the grey area of a black and white society, and none of them would ever be the same.