Leon Hamar and his friends were out-of-work and starving in San Francisco after the firm they worked for went out of business. Leon acquired a strange book and some cash in a trade for his watch-chain, one of his last posessions. He hated books and had no intention of reading the thing, but of course did, and discovered that it told the tale of Atlantis and the society of sorcerers who inhabited it. It not only told the story, but also gave specific instructions for initiation into the black arts. The friends decided they had little to lose and perhaps much to gain, even survival, if they underwent the tests and initiation into the ancient Atlantean black arts. What followed was not, perhaps, what they expected.