Jakob Fugger's scheming to become as rich as Croesus from copper and silver mining as banker of the mighty in Catholic Christianity requires seeing the papacy to organize a European crusader defense against the Ottoman Turkish threat. The church's self-absorbed puritanical Inquisition party would rather concentrate on fighting heresy and so on within, which includes burning at the stake converted Saracene Zobeida, the mother of monastery oblate Richard, the bastard son of Fugger's late brother, who swears revenge at inquisitor Heinrich Institoris -and remains his target- which he seeks to find as Jacob's confident.