Francisco Pizarro cannot read or write, yet he talks the Pope into naming him Governor of Peru in 1531 and spends the next decade extracting the Inca empire's gold by force. The film traces his rise from illegitimate swineherd in Extremadura to conquistador, following the campaign that lures Atahualpa and his unarmed retinue into a meeting at Cajamarca, where Pizarro's men slaughter thousands and take the emperor hostage. Atahualpa fills a room with gold and silver for his ransom and is executed anyway, a betrayal the film treats as the hinge of the whole conquest. From there Pizarro dismantles Inca administration and religion to secure the wealth for Spain and himself, sowing rivalries among his own captains in the process. Those rivalries catch up with him in 1541, when a faction loyal to a former partner assassinates him in Lima. The film keeps its focus on the mechanics of the betrayal at Cajamarca and its consequences rather than on spectacle, treating Pizarro's brutality as documented fact rather than legend.