The Barony of Omsk

A GM Primer — Steel Age Starter Setting

The Shape of the Place

Omsk is a barony of exposed positions and calculated risks. It sits on the northwestern coast of Dyrhal where the mountain country pushes close to the sea, and the Black Isle — Zal-Kyrrith — sits on the horizon close enough to see on a clear morning from the battlements of Krak Guillenfre. The barony exists because the mountains are full of ore and someone decided the ore was worth the exposure.

The terrain divides into three bands. The northern third is mixed forest and coastal lowland — pine country bordering the Evergreen Swamp to the northwest and the pine wetlands fringing Lake Ard along the Ardale border. Sparsely settled, used for timber, not easily defended. The middle third is agricultural: the manor rings of both settlements, good soil fed by small ponds and the runoff of Lake Ard, the food base that keeps the garrison fed and the mines operating. The southern third rises into highland and mountain — the mine country, the resource fringe, rough going for wagons and rougher going for anything that has to move fast.

The barony has no navigable river. Everything moves by road. Caravans are the circulatory system of the economy — regular, predictable, and therefore vulnerable. Two roads matter above all others. The mine road running south from Krak Guillenfre into the mountains, sixteen miles of farm track and mountain path that ore wagons grind along every few days. And the Krak-Omskos road running southeast through mixed forest and agricultural land, the main artery connecting the barony's two power centers — threatened along much of its length by what comes out of the Evergreen Swamp.

The Two Settlements

Omskos — The Capital

Population: ~5,000 inside the settlement, ~2,000 in the innermost ring, ~4,000 in the manor ring.

The baronial seat sits in hilly mineral-rich terrain south of the agricultural plain that runs north toward Lake Ard. The city is older than Omsk as a barony. It has been a settlement, a garrison town, an administrative center, and now a capital. The layers show.

The agricultural plain north of the city is productive land fed by small ponds and Lake Ard runoff — the food base that makes a population of 5,000 viable in otherwise difficult terrain. Without it Omskos would be a mining camp with walls. With it, it is the seed of something that might become genuinely significant.

Baron Oleg Konstamis rules from Omskos. His garrison here numbers approximately 200 of his direct men-at-arms — the largest single military concentration in the barony, sufficient to project authority into the manor ring and keep the roads east to Dresslova as safe as roads in Omsk ever get.

Krak Guillenfre — The Frontier Fortress

Population: ~2,500 inside the walls, ~1,500 in the innermost ring, ~2,000 in the manor ring.

Built by the Guillenfre family within the last generation. The fortress sits on the northwestern approaches of the barony close enough to Strezgardzemak — the capital of the Starostwo of Strez — that its walls are visible from Krak's battlements on a clear day. It was positioned to hold the western approach, protect the mine road, and watch the Black Isle. All three purposes are active simultaneously at all times.

The walls are octagonal, tighter and more geometric than typical Dyrhali construction — Ardeaux military architecture, built by men who had seen what determined attackers could do to a poorly designed fortification. Inside: a central market square, warehouse district, residential quarters, and in the upper section a separate walled citadel containing the keep and the Guillenfre household's private compound. The citadel has its own gate. Most residents of Krak Guillenfre have never been through it.

Outside the southern walls: stables, smithy, tanner, and the Waystation Inn — the first stop for anyone arriving from the mine road or the Omskos road, and the last stop before either journey south.

The name on the gate is a political statement. Simon Guillenfre built this fortress with his own resources and his own people. The baron's name is nowhere on the stone.

The Roads

The Mine Road

Sixteen miles from Krak Guillenfre south to Harmund's mining manor — the furthest of the four mining thane manors. Four miles of mountain path descending from the fortress, twelve miles of farm track through the agricultural manor ring. The waystation sits at the mountain foot, four miles from Krak, where the path meets the farm road — the natural overnight stop for loaded ore wagons that cannot tackle the mountain approach in the dark.

The resource fringe begins beyond the manor ring. The mines themselves are out here — no permanent homes, no nightly patrols, parties that go out with purpose and return the same day when possible. The mine manors are the furthest anchored points of the barony's safety system. Beyond them is territory that belongs to whatever has claimed it.

The Krak-Omskos Road

The main artery. Roughly a day's travel on foot through mixed forest and agricultural land. The road skirts the southern edge of the pine forest belt and runs southeast into the hilly country around Omskos.

The threat on this road is not primarily bandits. The Evergreen Swamp covers nine map hexes to the northwest of the road — a large, deep wetland that produces bog creatures and occasional genuine monsters with no predictable pattern. The swamp does not send raiding parties. It simply produces things that emerge, and some of those things find the road. Baron Oleg's road patrol forces — drawn from his direct 400 men-at-arms — walk this road continuously because the alternative is losing it.

The Forest Road to Dresslova

Most of Omsk's trade goes east. The road to Dresslova in the Barony of Ardale runs through forest country along the southern shore of Lake Ard — demanding terrain, not especially dangerous by Dyrhal standards, but slow. Merchants who make this run regularly know its rhythms. The Ardale border is managed rather than tense — relations between the two baronies are functional, trade is the basis of that function, and both sides have reason to keep the road open.

The Military

Omsk maintains approximately 4% of its population under arms — roughly 820 men-at-arms in total, a high proportion reflecting the barony's exposure and ambition.

Simon's Household — 60 men-at-arms (separate). The Guillenfre veterans and local talent who have joined them. Personally loyal to Simon. The finest fighting force in the barony by training and cohesion. Not counted in the baron's military structure — they are Simon's private household retinue, present at Krak Guillenfre by the logic of his position there.

Baron's Direct Forces — 400 men-at-arms: 80 at Krak Guillenfre alongside Simon's men · 200 at Omskos · 120 on road patrol, primarily the Krak-Omskos road.

The 80 at Krak operate under Simon's effective command by Oleg's arrangement and assent. Many of them have come to regard Simon as their true commander in practice. The baron may not fully appreciate the depth of this admiration. It has not yet created a problem. Whether it eventually does depends on whether Simon and Oleg's interests ever diverge.

Thane Retinues — 260 men-at-arms. Thirteen thanes, each maintaining 20 obligated men-at-arms who report formally to the baron. Nine agricultural thanes in the manor rings of both settlements. Four mining thanes whose manors anchor the southern resource fringe — the most dangerous postings in the barony, commanding the best pay and attracting soldiers who have decided safety is less important than coin.

Guild Forces — 100 men-at-arms. The merchant and craft guilds of Omskos operate under baronial charter. Their 100 men-at-arms are garrisoned in Omskos and nominally serve the baron — but their day-to-day loyalty is to the guild masters who pay them. In practice this creates a third military faction in Omskos: less disciplined than the thane retinues, more politically complicated, and completely unreliable in any situation where guild interests diverge from baronial ones.

The Power Structure

Baron Oleg Konstamis

Aurikronton father, Drezdani mother. His name carries both heritages — a bridge or a provocation depending on who is saying it and why. Strong fighter, shrewd political mind. Not a man who acquired things by accident.

Oleg's long ambition is regional power. The mines provide the economic base. The Guillenfre household provides the military edge no purely Dyrhali recruitment could match this quickly. The Ardeaux connection through Charlotte provides cultural legitimacy and potential trade relationships eastward. The three young children — half-Ardeaux, half-Konstamis — are themselves a dynasty in progress. The Guillenfre blood is already in the next generation of Omsk's ruling line whether Simon remains loyal or not.

Baroness Charlotte Guillenfre-Konstamis

Simon's sister. The marriage was her choice as much as Oleg's — she saw in him what Simon saw, a capable man building something worth joining. Charlotte is not a political figurehead. She manages significant aspects of Omskos's administrative life, maintains the Ardeaux household traditions that Oleg has no framework for, and is the person Simon actually reports to when something matters. Oleg understands this. It does not bother him. A man who married Charlotte Guillenfre knowing her brother had 50 soldiers at his back was not under any illusions about what he was getting.

Simon Guillenfre

Early forties. Built Krak Guillenfre with his own resources after arriving in Dyrhal with 50 loyal men-at-arms and nothing else. Of those 50, approximately 40 remain. They have been together through the exile, the crossing, the construction, the years of watching the Black Isle from walls they built themselves.

Simon commands nearly 60 men-at-arms including veterans and local talent. He is formally subordinate to Oleg. In practice he is the most significant military commander west of Omskos, and everyone including Oleg knows it. He is not a political schemer. His loyalty to Charlotte is genuine and prior to everything else. The fortress is not a power base being prepared for a break — it is a home being built to replace one that was destroyed. A man commanding 60 personal soldiers in a frontier fortress his family named becomes a political fact whether he intends it or not.

The Thanes

Thirteen thanes total. Nine agricultural, four mining.

The agricultural thanes are the social infrastructure of the manor rings — they keep the roads walked, the fields worked, the farmers inside walls at night. Vasil Drakon is one of them: Aurikronton-Drezdani, loyal, proud, a man who built his manor's reputation on reliability. His eldest son Vasek is being prepared to inherit that reputation. His younger son Davan is a wound the family has not yet acknowledged.

The mining thanes are a different breed. Four manors anchoring the resource fringe, each a fortified position in territory that does not belong to the barony in any practical sense beyond the walls of the manor itself. Harmund is the wealthiest of them — a Rhenmari who holds his position by economic necessity as much as military obligation. The mines do not run without him and he knows it. He has been at Simon's door twice a week since the caravan went missing.

The Guilds

The merchant and craft guilds of Omskos are the barony's emerging middle power. The guild masters who control them are not nobles. They are freemen who have accumulated enough economic weight to rival prominent thanes in practical influence. The guilds are not a unified faction. They benefit from Oleg's ambitions because regional power means expanded trade, and they fear disorder because disorder kills the roads they depend on. This makes them reliable baronial allies up to the point where reliability costs them money. Beyond that point they become unpredictable.

The Threats

The Black Isle

Zal-Kyrrith sits on the northwestern horizon, visible from Krak Guillenfre's battlements. Raiders from the Black Isle are a real operational threat. The timing is irregular enough that pattern recognition is difficult and regular enough that complacency is lethal. The garrison at Krak has been watching that horizon for years. Normalization is the danger — sentries who have stared at the same threat long enough stop truly seeing it.

The deeper threat beneath Solkaris — whatever Vaelkuris Drazhir has been containing for five centuries — is not this barony's immediate problem. But its agents are already here. The cold thread at the end of the starter adventure points upward toward something no one in Omsk has named yet.

The Starostwo of Strez

Strezgardzemak is close enough to see from Krak's walls. The Starostwo of Strez controls the territory to the west — a Drezdani-governed domain whose relationship with Omsk is one of managed tension. Border incidents are a recurring feature of the relationship rather than an exceptional one. A serious incursion from Strez would reach Krak Guillenfre before Omskos could respond.

Mt. Kolasa

In the channel between the Omsk coastline and the Black Isle sits an active volcano. Kolasa is visible from the battlements — the glow at night, the occasional ash that settles on the walls when the wind runs east. The garrison uses it as a navigational reference. What nobody has answered is why Vaelkuris Drazhir chose an island next to an active volcano as his seat. The Aurikronton had theories. Those theories did not survive the collapse of the people who held them. The garrison does not discuss this. They have a name for the volcano and they look at it every morning and they do not discuss it.

The Evergreen Swamp

Nine map hexes of pine wetland covering much of the territory northwest of the Krak-Omskos road. The swamp does not organize. It produces creatures — bog fauna, things that thrive in dark water and dead timber, and occasionally something larger and harder to classify — on no predictable schedule. A stretch of road adjacent to the Evergreen Swamp develops problems faster than anywhere else in the barony.

The Hills — Goblins

The highland terrain around Omskos hosts several goblin groups, more organized than most baronies deal with. The reason is Skaza — the goblin matriarch who controls the largest single group in the hills, roughly 200 goblins under her direct authority with two smaller tributary groups paying her a loose form of deference. She is not a warlord. She is something more dangerous: a patient administrator who has spent fifteen years consolidating influence. Her consolidation has reached the point where she could redirect a coordinated strike at the resource fringe qualitatively different from the opportunistic raids the mining thanes are accustomed to managing. She has not chosen to. Whether that restraint reflects strategic patience or something else is one of the more important unanswered questions in the barony.

The Forest — Beastkin

The pine forest fringing Lake Ard along the Ardale border hosts several beastkin camps, each running 40-60 warriors. They are not organized — beastkin culture runs on dominance within the camp and indifference to anything outside it. Camps raid each other almost as readily as they raid Omsk's northern settlements. The forest road to Dresslova skirts this territory. Merchants who use the road regularly have learned which stretches are currently active and which camps are currently feuding with each other — a feuding camp is too busy to bother travelers.

Banditry

The road bandits working the mountain section south of Krak are not connected to any conspiracy. They are hungry people with weapons making a bad calculation about risk. They break fast when challenged.

Notable People

Aldric — Simon's sergeant at Krak Guillenfre. Rhenmari. Mid-thirties. Dry, capable. Navigates the dual-loyalty dynamic of Krak with practiced neutrality that costs him more than he shows.

Harmund — Rhenmari mining thane, furthest mine manor. Tough, blunt, economically indispensable. Doesn't care about politics. Cares about his ore.

Vasil Drakon — agricultural thane, Krak Guillenfre manor ring. Aurikronton-Drezdani. Loyal, proud, respected. Does not yet know what his younger son has done.

Maret Osken — agricultural thane, Krak Guillenfre manor ring. Drezdani. Fifties. Holds the northernmost manor, closest to the Evergreen Swamp. Has held that manor for twenty years by being the kind of person who does not panic and does not bluff.

Teodan Vrescu — agricultural thane, Omskos manor ring. Aurikronton. Late thirties. Wealthiest agricultural thane. Polished, politically attentive. Ambitious in the precise, patient way that Oleg respects and watches carefully.

Ilva Sorn — agricultural thane, Omskos manor ring. Rhenmari. Early forties. Blunt, practical. Supplies significant portions of Omskos's garrison meat. Has an ongoing dispute with Teodan Vrescu over grazing rights unresolved for four years.

Dasha Kolnik — mining thane, Omskos manor ring. Drezdani. Thirties. Deals with Skaza's groups more regularly than any other thane. Tired in the specific way of someone who has been competent under sustained pressure for long enough that competence has become indistinguishable from endurance.

Notable People (cont.)

Vasek Drakon — Vasil's eldest, default heir. Solid. Has known something was wrong with his brother for months and didn't look closely enough. Will not forgive himself for that easily.

Davan Drakon — Vasil's younger son. Has watched his brother be chosen his entire life. A wound that needed very little opening. Believes he is doing something significant. Is not.

Zoryn — warehouse keeper in Krak Guillenfre. Long established, considered a local fixture. The cell leader embedded in the fortress. Cool, controlled, professional. Does not know who is above him in the chain.

Pell — factor based at Krak Guillenfre. Organized the missing caravan and stayed behind. Has been sick with guilt since it didn't come back.

Brec — one of the original 40 Guillenfre veterans. Sixties. Runs the south gate rotation at Krak. Says little. Looks at the horizon the way men look at things they have made peace with and haven't.

Persons of Interest

The Guild Heads

Renk Asovar — head of the Merchant Guild, Krak Guillenfre. Drezdani. Fifties. Controls the warehouse district and the flow of ore shipments. A compact, careful man who tracks everything that moves through his district. He has been professionally cooperative with Simon during the crisis. He knows Zoryn. He has not said so to Simon yet. Whether this is because he hasn't made the connection or because he is deciding what the connection means for him is a question worth sitting with.

Mira Tern — head of the Craft Guild, Omskos. Rhenmari. Late forties. The most powerful guild master in Omskos in practical terms — her guild encompasses the smiths, the tanners, the armourers, and the stoneworkers whose labor the barony's military and mining economy runs on. She controls 60 of the guild's 100 men-at-arms. She is not disloyal. She is expensive.

The Temple

Brother Ondas — Omen-Born of Farrkjol, keeper of the Temple of the Forge in Omskos. Aurikronton-Drezdani. Sixties. The guild smiths bring their questions about alloys and smelting temperatures to Ondas as readily as they bring prayers, and he answers both with the same dry precision. His Omen-Born status gives him an edge in metallurgical knowledge that has never been explained satisfactorily in purely natural terms. The temple has a very complete record of every significant eruption Kolasa has produced in the last two centuries. Nobody has asked him why.

The Bandit

Yeva Sorn — called the Red Hare. Drezdani. Thirties. The most wanted bandit in the barony, operating on the forest road to Dresslova with a company of eighteen. An experienced former man-at-arms. Her company is disciplined by bandit standards, she does not kill merchants who cooperate. On two occasions her company has killed beastkin raiders threatening merchant convoys — both times without being asked, both times leaving the bodies where the merchants would find them.

The Mercenary

Captain Drest Halvaine — Rhenmari. Late thirties. Commands a company of twenty professional soldiers operating out of Omskos under a standing arrangement with Oleg. Professional, reliable, expensive. Not villains. Competitors. He is building something in Omsk — a reputation, a base, eventually something larger than twenty men. He is not in a hurry. Neither is the barony's supply of problems.

Adventure Hooks Beyond the Starter

The following are undeveloped threads — seeds for sessions after the starter adventure resolves. None of these are complete. They are the shape of problems the barony generates.

The Underlier — someone embedded in Krak Guillenfre manages Zoryn without Zoryn knowing their identity. The players will not find this person in the starter adventure. They will know they exist. That person is still in the fortress.

Josek in Omskos — a cartwright who fed the original caravan intelligence. True believer. Has no idea the starter adventure happened. Is still watching caravans leave and waiting for instructions that may not come.

The Watch Rotations — Zoryn's network was not mapping ore. It was mapping Krak Guillenfre's defensive vulnerabilities. Someone on the Black Isle now knows more about the fortress's patrol patterns than Simon does.

The Swamp Road — something has been coming out of the Evergreen Swamp with more frequency than usual. The road patrol has lost two men in the last month. Nobody has good answers yet.

The Hills Are Quiet — the goblin tribes around Omskos have pulled back from their usual pressure points. Tribes that were raiding mine approaches two months ago have gone silent. The mining thanes are more worried about this than about active raids.

Davan's Fate — whatever resolution the players reached with Davan Drakon in the starter adventure, it is not finished. The question of what Davan told his handlers, and whether those handlers know the players are the reason the cell is burned, is open.

Strez Moves — a border incident on the western approach. Strez outriders crossed the boundary marker and roughed up a Drakon farmhand. Vasil wants satisfaction. Simon wants to know if it's opportunism or provocation. Oleg, informed by letter three days after the fact, wants to know why he's hearing about this by letter.

A Note on Tone

Omsk is not a safe place that occasionally produces danger. It is a dangerous place that has been made partially livable by sustained effort and is being held that way by people who have decided it is worth holding.

The players begin their careers here because Krak Guillenfre is exactly the kind of place that generates problems faster than official channels can handle them — and because Simon Guillenfre is exactly the kind of man who recognizes capable people and finds uses for them.

What they do with that opportunity is up to them. The barony will keep generating problems regardless.