The Delaware, on its way to New Zealand, hits a rocky reef during a tropical storm. The shipwrecked passengers abandon ship and reach the shore of a nearby island. Captain Becker wonders why the island does not show up on his charts. The castaways. to survive, have to work together and overcome their racial and religious prejudices. A stranger called William turns up at the camp and gives the captain a map of Izzania, the name of the island. Alexei Nobikov sets off to search for fresh water. He discovers a waterfall running into a creek. Then he sees a strange, fearsome creature with the body of an ape and head of a lion on the other side of the stream. The beast disappeared, and Alexei thought he had imagined it. The next day William arrives at the waterhole with the strange creature. He takes Alexei to a vast enclosure with standing stones around the perimeter. William, a scientist, working for Staxis, had been abandoned on Izzania 15 years before after experiments went wrong. William took Alexei to an underground research facility that generated its power. Another castaway called Skate Hunter found the same source of fresh water, and the other people set up a new camp nearby. As the shipwrecked people organised the new base, Julie Andrews, one of the castaways, is found murdered. Xavier Wood, an amateur detective, takes on the case to find Julie's killer. He discovers she had a friend called Sonya Norris, but when he went to question her, she was nowhere to be found. Sonya Norris, a CIA agent, lands at the Staxis facility and tells William she has come to wrap things up. She also has to deal with the monstrous results of the Staxis experiments. The intrepid castaways soon discover they are not the only ones on the island and find themselves having to deal with wild beasts, pirates, the CIA and a volcanic eruption.