Cornered and facing certain death at the hands of agents and soldiers of a royal usurper, a crown princess and her companions blindly leap through a magical portal which drops them into Empire Lanes, a Chicago bowling alley, with a sorcerous assassin in pursuit.

SYNOPSIS:

Princess Alarie and seven companions are at the Regent’s great hall for her coronation as queen. The coronation ceremony begins with Alarie approaching the Regent and lowering her head for him to place the crown upon it. Instead, the Regent places the crown on his own head and proclaims himself the new king.

Magda, a mage in Alarie’s party, magically tears the Emerald of Legitimacy out of the crown, and hands the emerald to Alarie. Chaos erupts in the coronation hall, and the party battles its way through the crowd and flees.

The forces of the Regent (now Usurper) pursue, and after months of fruitless searching, they finally discover Alarie and her companions hiding in an abandoned castle. In a surprise attack Usurper’s minions slay Magda and then begin to close in on the remainder of the party. With nowhere else to flee and death a footstep behind them, the party jumps into a magic hole leading them to an unknown world. Behind them, a dungeon collapses around the magical portal and cuts off their pursuers.

The party tumbles out of the magic hole in the back wall of a bowling alley on the south side of Chicago. This bowling alley, Empire Lanes, is destined to become their new home. Kate, the daughter of the Empire Lane owner, becomes the party’s first and truest friend in the strange new land.

Several hours later the party is followed through the magic hole by an evil sorceress, a member of the Guild of Sorceress Assassins, whose particular magic allows her to change form in order to pass through the rubble filling the magic hole. The sorceress ambushes the party and defeats the unwary companions. Arwin, the party’s warrior who wears a cursed belt of strength, is last to drop his sword and fall.

Before slaying all the downed and incapacitated companions, the sorceress grabs the crawling Arwin from behind by the head to discover the nature of the curse on the warrior’s belt of strength. The curse, the sorceress discovers, is a gender change. The sorceress begins to laugh hysterically at the notion that a gender change could be a curse, and while she is distracted by the reveal, the Arwin picks up the dropped sword and decapitates her..

As the beheaded Guild Sister dies, her entire inventory of spells is triggered at once, and strange magic creatures fizzle and scamper off into the night. The party, safe for the moment, return to Empire Lanes to recover from their wounds.