Increasingly, as the plot progresses, his experiences impact his personality and make him more attuned to the planet's culture and changes him from the interstellar sophisticate he had been. He identifies five species of highly intelligent life forms (hilfs), the dwarfish Gdemiar, the elven Fiia, the rodent-like Kiemhrir, the nightmarish Winged Ones, and the most human species, the Liuar. His long and dangerous quest, undertaken with loyal companions from the Angyar, a local feudal culture, takes him through many lands, encountering various other cultures and species and facing numerous threats having nothing to do with the one he intends to confront. However, with his advanced means of transport destroyed, he must use other means of travel, such as on the back of "windsteeds", basically large flying cats, as well as by boat or walking. After the enemy destroys his ship and his companions, Rocannon sets out to find their base so that he can alert the League of their presence with the enemy's ansible. Unbeknown to him and his colleagues, there is a base on the planet of an enemy of the League of All Worlds-a young world named Faraday, which embarked on a career of interstellar war and conquest, and which chose this "primitive" world as the location of a secret base. It was through Rocannon's efforts that the planet had been placed under an 'exploration embargo' in order to protect the native cultures. He later goes on an ethnological mission to her planet, Fomalhaut II. The novel then follows Gaverel Rocannon, an ethnologist who had met Semley at the museum.
She returns to find her daughter grown up and her husband dead. Due to relativistic time dilation while the trip will be of short duration for her, many years will elapse on her planet. Semley descends into their tunnels, uses the spaceship for the flight and returns after sixteen years.
The interstellar League of All Worlds has placed an automated spaceship at the disposal of the more advanced underground dwellers of the planet. A young woman named Semley takes a space voyage from her unnamed, technologically primitive planet to a museum to reclaim a family heirloom. The novel begins with a prologue called "Semley's Necklace", which was first published as a stand-alone story titled "The Dowry of Angyar" in Amazing Stories (September 1964).
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