Novoroska
Iron Kingdoms Gazetteer — NQ 51
One would never know by its current state that Novokorska was once a prosperous industrial town. Its original prospects long ago stolen by rivals, the town has fallen into disrepair. Located within the old Khadoran territory of the Volozk of Rorschik, in present day Umbrey, southeast of Shattershield Lake and north of Rorschik, Novokorska once held great promise. Now it is dusty and lonely, its population dwindling.
While in recent years the efforts of those living there have brought some new life to Novokorska, it is still a town struggling to grow. Not everyone considers the quiet seclusion a bad thing, however; its remoteness makes Novokorska useful to Khadoran criminals, from bandits to dangerous bratyas living in self-imposed exile from the great cities. The town hangs in a precarious balance: it offers enough industry to sustain its population and draw in gangs to leech from its resources, but too much improvement could hinder those criminals. These elements have a vested interest in holding back the town’s progress to keep them free from law enforcement, but not so much that Novokorska suffocates and withers away. This difficult balance makes Novokorska extremely volatile.
The arrival of well-armed newcomers threatens to initiate a chain reaction that could leave the town in smoking ruins or set it on a course to renewed prosperity. Any action impacting the struggling town’s future affects the hopes of honest citizens and craven outlaws alike. Whether they act to save Novokorska or condemn it, outsiders will find great challenges on both sides of the divide.
Novokorska
Ruler: Posadnik Bel Ivasch
Population: 1,500 humans (mostly Umbrean), small numbers of gobbers and trollkin
Military Presence: None
HISTORY
Once a symbol of unquenchable Khadoran ambition, Novokorska is a town in decline. The region, located in Khador’s largely untapped north-central interior where rolling plains slowly give way to lowlands surrounding hills, promised growth and prosperity. Though plagued by extreme seasons, the region is blessed with mighty river tributaries providing shipping avenues and lakes rich with resources.
Settlers who came to mine coal from the mountains to the northeast founded Novokorska in 383 AR. In its early years, the town was a small community of hardy miners and those catering to them, overseen by the posadnik and a few well-established merchants. Farmers outside the city grew what crops they could for the local market but were sometimes the targets of roving bands of thieves.
Novokorska grew slowly over the following centuries. At its height, the town was home to nearly ten thousand hard-working souls and more than a few criminal bands. Descendants of Novokorska’s leading citizens continued to guide its growth for generations, buoyed by old family wealth. Several kayazy from Rorschik and heirs to Novokorskan estates helped shape the town’s growth as it became an industrial center. By 583 AR, however, the town was ruled by Bel Ivasch, a descendant of the first posadnik.
Around this time plans were implemented to extend a spur of the Iron Highway from Korsk to Rorschik, which Ivasch anticipated would have a dramatic impact on Novokorska’s future. The posadnik and his allies among the kayazy spent most of their fortunes and called in their favors to lobby for their town to be connected to this railroad, and by the end of 597 AR it seemed their plans to grow their coal-mining industry would come to fruition.
Toward the turn of the century, however, those dreams withered. Ivasch’s political support evaporated as nobles of neighboring regions won the favor of the empress and her most prominent kayazy supporters. Novokorska’s rulers abandoned the town once they realized it now had few prospects for the future.
By 604 AR, political outmaneuvering left Novokorska adrift and Ivasch with little power. Many of the local kayazy and the hundreds of laborers who served them moved on to more promising destinations. By the end of the year, Bel Ivasch was posadnik in name only, barely wielding enough influence to have a say at the table of the merchants. He pleaded with Iosef Cheko, chief agent of Viscount Solomino, ruler of the lands around Novokorska, for more support. But Solomino had lost favor along with Novokorska and had little good will to spare the beleaguered town.
Into this power vacuum moved the gangs. The first bosses came to retire from more urban areas to a place where they could still control their piece of the action, and in deteriorating Novokorska they saw potential. With Khador’s fortunes on the rise in Llael and rumors whispered of a broadening war, the most forward thinking of the bratyas sought to establish outposts along the border where men and supplies flowed in ever-greater numbers.
In the meantime, the conflicting interests and political rivalry of Novokorska’s remaining kayazy turned into open disputes. Some, like ruthless kayazy Drae Delvosk, felt that making the town a center of trade was a pipe dream; they saw much more to be gained in reinventing Novokorska as a military outpost. Others remained faithful to Ivasch’s original vision, arguing to lobby once more to connect the town to the Iron Highway.
Among these conflicting ideas about how to proceed, Mera Korskod offered the intriguing suggestion of Novokorska as a leisure destination, both for soldiers on leave and Khadoran citizens escaping the smog and bustle of the cities for a while. She even advocated offering Llaelese comforts and cuisine to attract citizens of Llael displaced by the war.
With Novokorska pulled in so many directions, its potential as a bastion of criminal activity blossomed. Though it lacked any true industry, the attempts of its first citizens to renew Novokorska’s fortunes were a clarion call for the hungry and dispossessed of the war. While most would stay only briefly before realizing the true lack of opportunities, the locals became increasingly adept at fleecing newcomers of their limited wealth.
As conflict among the kayazy increased, some sought to align themselves with the growing power of the town’s gangs. Even the most legitimate of Novokorska’s business interests were tainted by hastily arranged alliances. Drae Delvosk himself hired a small mercenary force to protect his holdings and person. Matters grew increasingly tense. Novokorska continued to sink, the disunity of the kayazy leaving them powerless to stop the town’s decay.
Slowly but surely, gangs began to infest the city, further squeezing out honest citizens and spreading their influence over the town’s remaining industries.
A new hope came from unification of Umbrey, and while attempts to revitalize Novokorska bore some fruit they were far less effective than the leadership had hoped. The empire, flush with victory and struck by the post-war necessity of rebuilding and reorganizing, needed new industry to accommodate its growing borders. Those who could manage the changes brought about by Khador’s expansion won favor from the throne, and the kayazy of Novokorska vied for that favor. The town might have risen from the ashes but for the influence of the Khadoran underworld.
An intense period of violence followed. The better-armed bratyas came into conflict with the old unaffiliated gangs, the agents of the kayazy, and the local militia, raised when the local Winter Guard garrison was summoned to the eastern front. When the dust cleared the bratyas had consolidated their power and a rough semblance of order fell into place, occasionally broken by the arrival of new criminals jostling for control.
Though calm on the surface, Novokorska remains an open town with no faction able to seize and hold power for long. The old guard of the kayazy remains entrenched with their criminal allies to fight proxy wars in the streets. Despite the apparent power of their gangs, the lives of bosses at the top of Novokorska’s criminal underworld are very short.
THE TOWN
Novokorska is a rugged place, built to withstand bitter winters and shelter its equally rugged people, but a closer look reveals the decay beneath the surface. The streets are poorly maintained and cracked by weeds. Many buildings are worn and remain unpainted or unfinished, used only by those vagrants or low-level thugs unable to seize more favorable holdings. Trash and ruffians clog the alleyways in the worst parts of town. The town’s main coal-processing facility still operates, employing hundreds as it belches black smoke into the sky both day and night. Others find mining work to the north or pursue other production professions, and many struggle with low wages. Small mercenary companies act as ersatz law enforcement, but by their very nature their loyalty can be readily bought.
Novokorska is roughly horseshoe-shaped, with the ends of the U-shape facing southward. Prevailing winds tend to blow north and west, so the factories and smithies have been built up on the west side of town in a rough semicircle. Smaller textile and meat-processing plants sit in an adjacent area and constantly exude noxious odors.
At the center of town lies the posadnik’s manor, by far the largest and best-constructed estate in Novokorska. Ivasch still maintains a small number of servants, who help tend the manor in exchange for a life of relative luxury amid the squalor of their neighbors. The manor is surrounded by a large iron fence, and Ivasch keeps a couple of guards on duty at all times, though they are often tired, overworked, and ineffective.
In the north-central part of town is a small, crudely built arena for sporting events, but the only games hosted there now are violent. Bare-knuckle boxing and drunken wrestling contests are a regular feature, with gangs of all different affiliations comingtogether to bet on the matches. It is a place where one can find representatives of nearly every faction in Novokorska.
The eastern half of Novokorska is mainly comprised of private residences. Over one thousand people live in the area, spread out enough that there are sometimes empty houses even between neighbors. Many of the residents are too poor to escape their situation and too frightened to organize any kind of resistance against the criminal filth that infests their town.
In the southeastern part of town stands a lone church of the Morrowan faith, which the honest locals patronize and the criminal residents largely ignore. It is maintained by a lone priestess, who does her best to maintain the morale of the citizens.
Many of the most disused and dilapidated structures were built in preparation of railway transport, and even those are slowly being repurposed. Whole warehouses sit dark and silent, their contents scavenged to build and repair other structures. Some of the smaller shacks and outbuildings on the edge of the town are overgrown and full of animal warrens. In the worst areas, a few houses hold the bones of victims of violence and poverty.
Novokorska has seen better days and the dream of its prominence seems long in the past, but the town is not dead yet. Khadoran people are tough and endure strife better than most in western Immoren. Though the town holds more than its fair share of seedy elements, music still flows from its gaming establishments and its people still work hard in the foundries and factories, building the materials that make modern life possible. No single gang openly rules the streets because each must tread a fine line between fear and reprisal. The neighboring farmlands yield enough crops to sustain many families and provide some trade, so there is still hope the town will find its feet.
Most locals withdraw into their homes at dusk and do not often come out, even to help anyone foolish enough to go out at night and find trouble. The criminals know this and are emboldened to do as they please at night, vandalizing, stealing, or simply carousing without the presence of law enforcement to rein them in. While the many factions keep one another in check, it is a chaotic balance to which newcomers either adapt or fall victim.
PULLING THREADS
Novokorska is a place of desperation and tension where its leaders vie against one another for command of its future. The gangs keep the locals, who are poor and outgunned, in constant fear. It is a volatile situation in which the right catalyst can set off a series of changes. Player characters may find many opportunities to interject themselves into this chaos as heroes, criminals, or something in between.
LIBERATORS
Players can intervene to drive away the worst criminal forces in Novokorska. They might have heard rumors about the situation here or have been contacted by Posadnik Ivasch, or by a friend or relative living in the town. If they are a mercenary company, they may have been hired by one of the town’s wealthier interests to help bring order to the town’s chaos. Alternatively, they might simply be passing through on another mission.
Once in Novokorska, player characters will find numerous hooks to become involved in the town’s tenuous situation. Most of the locals are too afraid to be seen openly helping, or directly opposing, the gangs, but a few might take a chance on working with a group of promising adventurers.
- Dimir Vanke, a local tailor and owner of Dimir’s Threads, is afraid for his daughter’s life and hates the criminal element infesting Novokorska. He is also proud and, like many people with roots there, stubbornly refuses to abandon his home to a bunch of thugs. As a man whose patronage includes many of the gangs and even the kayazy, Dimir hears many rumors. He can provide the characters with basic information about most of the major players in town, including their habits, territories, and routine schedules. He is willing to work with the characters to help bring down the gangs one by one, as long as his daughter is kept safe. Dimir particularly hates the bratyas and what they represent, all the more so because his daughter has fallen under the spell of a rising underboss.
- Posadnik Bel Ivasch still maintains more authority in the town than the gangs or the other kayazy realize. He remains in close contact with Viscount Solomino. With the unification of Umbrey and relative peace restored to the region, Solomino may soon have the troops at his disposal to sweep away Novokorska’s criminal elements, at least for a time. Presently, however, Ivasch commands limited manpower — the few men working in his remaining factories, honest folk much terrorized by the gangs, are loyal and depend on him for their livelihood. What he does possess is a tremendous amount of knowledge about the town, its history, and its inhabitants. He holds records pertaining to most of the local buildings and can describe their interiors in some detail. Of course, Ivasch won’t risk a direct confrontation with the gangs, but he will work with the characters in his own way to gain an advantage in Novokorska.
- Mera Korskod is a kayaz who has fallen on hard times. After losing her legitimate business interests to the hardships of the past decades and her hospitality services and gambling establishments to the gangs that came later, she reinvented herself as a local fight promoter for a stable of bare-knuckle boxers. The hard-bitten old woman is no saint, but she detests the situation in Novokorska. She will gladly aid anyone looking to make a difference. She still possesses a number of buildings throughout every quarter of the town, any of which can be quietly occupied as a base of operations. She also keeps close tabs on the gangs, many of whom she has business dealings with and pays protection to. Mera is respected as an unaligned operator, and her matches have a reputation for being honest, so she holds a valuable place in the local sporting scene.
Mera may also make direct overtures to physically hardy characters she believes could make money in the ring. The life of a boxer is hard. In addition to the obvious risks, the gangs are always looking for leverage over fighters willing to take a fall in the ring. This is especially true of honest fighters, like those Mera represents. Despite her best attempts to counter the influence of the gangs, she suspects some of her boys have already been compromised, and she would go to great lengths to keep them out of the arena. She takes such interference very seriously and has ended the life of at least one would-be fixer who was fed to wild dogs on the outskirts of town.
The people are scared of the gangs, and few will join any active resistance. Instead, the characters will have to gather support, perhaps to help set up an ambush and a turf war, and be subtle where possible. All the gangs battle one another for power, so it is possible to play them off against one other by acting as double agents or even simple couriers of messages, whether real, embellished, or outright lies.
Both Ivasch and Mera will be powerful allies, should the town be liberated and brought under control. Victorious characters can expect positions of stature and respect in a revitalized Novokorska, as the townsfolk will be extremely grateful to anyone freeing them from the shackles of fear and restoring their failing town to prominence.
INSTIGATORS
The player characters need not act as underdog heroes fighting to liberate a faded town from its oppressors. They may well choose to thrive in Novokorska’s shadowy underbelly, perhaps setting themselves up as the puppet masters. In that case, the frequent gang wars might work to their advantage — or sweep them up in its fury.
- Drae Delvosk is not a man to be trifled with. Historically Ivasch’s chief rival, Delvosk is the owner of Novokorska’s most prominent industry, its coal-processing plant. At the heart of virtually every conspiracy in town, Delvosk’s policy is to align himself with the most powerful and ruthless gangs at any given time. If a faction will not yield to his overtures, Delvosk has no qualms about supporting its rivals until the balance of power shifts. Delvosk uses his personal fortune to employ a mercenary gang that serves as both the town watch and the kayaz’s own bodyguards. These mercenaries are as distrusted as they are hated but are viewed as a necessary evil by the unaffiliated locals.
- Delvosk’s mercenaries are a skilled group. Their loyalty is to coin above all, however, and not to the kayaz himself. Characters who can offer a more lucrative bargain could convince the mercs to join their cause or to leave at an opportune moment, robbing Delvosk of much of his power. Alternatively, the characters might well join Delvosk’s men or hire on as a secondary company in Delvosk’s employ.
- Would-be boss Voron Valissen has little in the way of muscle with which to threaten his rivals. He is on the lookout for newcomers he can hire as bodyguards and soldiers. An agent of his might approach the characters if they are not obviously affiliated with another group and offer them cash and access to pleasures of the flesh, along with a promise of great reward after Delvosk and Korskod are taken out of the picture.
- There is always friction between the gangs. Young toughs are always looking for a way up to become the boss of their own gangs. More established gangsters are constantly on the lookout for threats within and beyond their organizations. Make too much money, and you become a target. Expand too quickly, look too weak, cross the wrong man, and you become a target. Gang wars spasm to life and flare out quickly in Novokorska.
Player characters could easily find themselves in the midst of a shootout just by crossing the street. Depending on how they respond, they could make friends, acquire enemies, or simply gain an introduction. Fast guns are always sought, and handy characters could easily find themselves recruited into a growing outfit. Sooner or later one gang or another will make its move, and then the characters will be presented with an opportunity to move up in the ranks.
TIME BOMB
No matter which side they take, player characters will find themselves caught up in a situation ready to explode. Someone will notice newcomers, and eventually the characters will be forced to stake a position alongside either the embattled citizens or one of the groups maintaining a chokehold on Novokorska’s redemption.
If the characters are smart and quick to act, they can find allies to help hide them and possibly act as shields while they set gang against gang. Striking out to eliminate disparate criminal elements one at a time can work in their favor, as few if any would act to save a rival unless perhaps they realized they were next on the short list. In that case, the plan could backfire as the new group finds itself the target of several dangerous factions.
By working together with the people of Novokorska, the characters can minimize collateral damage while touching off a powder keg that will leave their foes destroyed or weakened. Whether they want to step in as conquerors in the aftermath or help rebuild a fractured dream, many risks and rewards await the adventurous party in Novokorska.
Fonte: No Quarter 51
