In The City of Gold and Lead, Will and Fritz, a boy from the White Mountains resistance, compete in 'the games', an Olympic competition the winners of whom are selected to serve in the domed, environmentally controlled cities of the 'masters' who operate the Tripods. En route, whilst in France, they meet up with Jean-Paul, known to them as Beanpole, an intelligent boy who fears that being Capped will stifle his curiosity, and who joins them on their quest for freedom. Will, an English boy, suspicious of the Tripods, and wanting to escape the mind-controlling Caps, flees with his cousin, Henry, to the eponyomous White Mountains, in Switzerland. In The White Mountains, the Tripods have ruled the world for a hundred years, mankind having been reduced to a medieval state, and kept docile by 'caps' which the Tripods surgically attach to their skulls around their fourteenth birthday. When the Tripods Came (1988), the prequel to the first three books.

This series of novels tells the story of the conquest and eventual liberation of Earth by alien invaders inspired by the Martians of The War of the Worlds (1898). The Tripods refers to a young adult trilogy-and-a-prequel series of Science Fiction novels written by British author John Christopher.

Tripods the city of gold and lead