The names of people from Silk's home city of Viron follow rigid conventions. Male humans are named after an animal or animal product: 'Blood,' 'Musk,' 'Quetzal,' etc. Female humans are named after a plant or plant product: 'Chenille,' 'Orchid,' 'Hyacinth,' etc. Androids (known in the book as "chems") are named for inanimate minerals and rocks: 'Marble,' 'Sand,' 'Schist,' etc.  Patera Silk begins the tetralogy as the 23-year-old Augur of the Sun Street Manteion, arguably the poorest manteion in Viron. Augurs, in the religion of Silk's city, Viron, sacrifice animals to the gods, and examine the entrails of these sacrifices to seek knowledge about the future of the person who has provided the sacrifice, and the future of the augur. He believes himself to be "enlightened" by a minor deity known as the Outsider, who charges Silk to save his manteion, which has been sold to the crime lord Blood for tax reasons. His quest to save the manteion starts him on a journey into Viron's underworld. In the first book in the tetralogy, "Nightside the Long Sun", Silk begins to question his own moral fiber as he engages in various "immoral" acts for the sake of this quest. His theophanies continue, and Patera Silk eventually develops a large following because of his continued contact with the gods of Viron. He becomes a popular hero, and with the help of a spy named Doctor Crane, he is elevated to the political position of Caldé, the high administrator of Viron. It is later discovered that Patera Silk is the rightful heir to this position, having been secretly named successor by the previous Caldé, Tussah (Silk's adoptive father), before he was assassinated by the oligarchical councilors of the Ayuntamiento, another governing body of Viron. Silk eventually marries the ex-prostitute Hyacinth and journeys with Auk to the city Mainframe, where the whorl's main computer is housed. During this trip he goes through a brief suicidal crisis, and comes to final conclusions about the moral doubts that he possessed during the earlier parts of the series. When "The Book of the Long Sun" concludes, Patera Silk's fate is unknown. Silk is an allegorical character, as is typical for Wolfe's work.