A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood, only to find that a blessing really can be a curse.

These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes; to sail into the Maelstrom, a raging whirlpool that no one has ever escaped, and take a fabled treasure from its heart.

First, they need a boat. Next, they need to learn how to sail it.

What they will find beyond the Maelstrom will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich.

The magic of the world is in peril and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, towering over the central island of Paranish, there is an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and all the people in it.

Can there be honour amongst thieves? Without it, they might never see another sunrise.