Asian Hawk leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the twelve Chinese Zodiac animals which were sacked by the French and British armies from the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860. Assisted by a Chinese student and a Parisian woman, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.

After his career is destroyed, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under her wing and trains him to defend the world against evil.