Colderyn
[KOLD-er-in]
Stranglehold on Resources
Use this section to determine how Colderyn exerts its control over resources and how it responds to opposition. Their presence should create economic pressure that forces other factions to comply or find dangerous alternatives.
How They Push for More Control
- Conquering new resource territories. Marching into foreign lands and taking what they want with hired mercenaries and corporate enforcers.
- Forcing entire regions into labor camps. Turning villages, towns, and even cities into permanent mining colonies.
- Bribing or murdering rival foremen. Ensuring that only Colderyn-aligned overseers control extraction sites.
- Razing exhausted mines. Making sure no one else can use a resource vein once they've stripped it bare.
How They Fight Back When Pressured
- Blocking access to raw materials. Refusing to sell coal, steel, and stone, causing industrial collapse for defiant regions.
- Turning slave labor into a weapon. Overworking captives to meet quotas, ensuring economic destruction through sheer output.
- Crippling infrastructure. If denied access to a region, they collapse tunnels, poison wells, and destroy roads to leave nothing behind.
- Assassinating rival resource barons. Cutting down anyone who threatens their monopoly, even from within their own ranks.
Colderyn on Other Factions
Colderyn uses alliances to secure resources and industrial advantages, treating other factions as tools to strengthen their control. They crush rivals through mercenaries and economic pressure, eliminating threats to their dominance. While they form partnerships when useful, their harsh methods often lead to rebellion and resentment.
Celtumpra. Colderyn is entirely unaware of the Celtumpra's existence. They attribute the magical sabotage that plagues their operations to their rivals or the revolutionary fervor of the Zaharmak, creating a critical and dangerous blindspot.
Mustring. The syndicate is a necessary tool for Colderyn, used to acquire untraceable slave labor and to smuggle goods past Navtog tariffs. They are, however, a deeply untrustworthy partner, and Colderyn has learned that many shipments go missing.
Navrow. Colderyn hires Navrow crews for smuggling operations to avoid tariffs. However, when Navrow acquires Colderyn materials by less official means, they often end up on the black market or being ransomed back to Colderyn.
The Navtog. The Navtog are the only faction capable of providing the large-scale maritime shipping Colderyn requires to move their raw materials. This necessary partnership is defined by Colderyn's resentment of the exorbitant tariffs they are forced to pay and the Navtog's control over their access to global markets.
The Osprey. The cartel relies on The Osprey's massive financial backing for their most ambitious expansion projects. They chafe under the weight of the predatory loans and manipulative contracts that come with this funding, viewing The Osprey as a necessary but parasitic partner they hope to one day be free of.
The Ironpenny Poke. The Poke is Colderyn's largest and most significant client, but their relationship is a constant economic tug-of-war. Colderyn leverages its control over raw materials to dictate prices, while The Poke uses its position as the primary buyer to demand better terms.
Zaharmak. Colderyn views Zaharmak as a pestilence within their workforce, a revolutionary infection to be purged with extreme prejudice. They see the revolutionaries not as an ideological movement, but as a direct threat to production that must be exterminated.
Colderyn NPCs
Colderyn's Guildmasters calculate profits in lives and labor, sacrificing everything for efficiency. Foremen pace the forges and mines, enforcing quotas with no room for weakness. Mercenaries patrol to crush dissent, wielding fear as their weapon. Miners toil under suffocating conditions, their strength drained for a system that grinds them into the dust.
Major Players in Colderyn
Hereward Dunsmore. As High Warden of Colderyn, the graying Kazaki Hereward Dunsmore carries the weight of the mines in his dust-filled lungs. His quiet authority is that of a man who can silence dissent by reducing the oxygen flow to a mine shaft or schedule faulty equipment with a single, written order. He does not posture; he reviews production ledgers and signs off on "acceptable loss" reports that correspond to cave-ins or equipment failures that show a remarkable correlation between dissent and fatal "accidents."
Riikka Vanhala. Petite, with a soft Ibunese accent, Riikka Vanhala's business is not in ore, but in the toxic alchemical byproducts of its refinement. As a Factor for Colderyn, she leverages her control over mercury, lead, and arsenic to secure deals, knowing that a rival's productivity will plummet if their water source becomes tainted. Her doll-like features are a deliberate contrast to the slow, wasting sickness she deals in; when she strikes, it is not with a dagger, but with a contaminated shipment or a poisoned well.
Catherine Wren. Catherine Wren oversees Colderyn's most profitable and expendable labor force: the indentured children who work the narrowest mine seams. Her polished appearance and porcelain skin stand in stark contrast to the soot-covered children she tracks on her ledgers. Her gentle smile is reserved for the parents she signs to contracts, offering them a small advance against their child's projected years of service. She tracks every debt with the cold precision of an actuary calculating a child's life expectancy against the value of the ore they can extract.
| d6 | NPC |
|---|---|
| 1 | Aethelwynn Stormhold. A Weighman in Azare Kazak, responsible for ensuring iron quotas. |
| 2 | Antoine Boudreaux. A Contract master in Keolarus who leverages the slave soldiers of Acadiana. |
| 3 | Hrothgar Fenrir. A Smith in Kizar Korath who exports mining tools to Colderyn. |
| 4 | Lauri Tuhkalampi. A Tuinlean Collier, indebted into working in the Colderyn coal pits. |
| 5 | Amaia Olatzaga. An Assayer in Kavesk who ensures exports meet quality standards. |
| 6 | Camille Fournier. A Ganite ironmine Foreman, known for her efficient dispute resolutions. |
Colderyn Adventures
Colderyn thrives on structure and precision, and they expect everyone to fit into the system, willingly or not. When you bring Colderyn into your campaign, think about how their control touches everything: raw materials for industry, contracts binding workers, and the quiet tension that keeps their empire running. They're not cruel for cruelty's sake, but every decision they make serves the bottom line.
As allies, Colderyn offers stability and resources, if the adventurers can meet their standards. Guildmasters might contract the party to secure a shipment, broker a deal, or eliminate a disruption. Failing them isn't just about losing a reward; it could mean debts that won't go away or a hard reminder that Colderyn doesn't tolerate inefficiency.
As a force in the world, Colderyn is predictable in their methods but relentless in execution. Their enforcers don't act out of malice, rather, they do what's needed to keep quotas met and contracts fulfilled. A foreman might look the other way on minor violations to keep the workforce functional, while a miner quietly accepts impossible hours to avoid worse consequences. Every part of Colderyn's machine is calibrated for survival, and when the pressure builds, the cracks reveal just how fragile that balance can be.
To make Colderyn matter, put their system in the adventurers' way. A contract might bind the party into resolving a rebellion or escorting resources through contested territory, forcing them to choose between fulfilling their obligations and facing the consequences of failure. Alternatively, Colderyn might be a background force, controlling towns where miners live in debt and mercenaries ensure the peace. However you use them, Colderyn's strength lies in the balance of their control and the chaos that erupts when it slips.
Faction Scenario: Colderyn
Primary Operation. To achieve a total monopoly over Oskara's supply of processed raw materials (coal, iron, copper, lead, timber), thereby making all other industrial and military powers dependent on them for the fundamental resources required to power their factories and wage war.
Methods
Industrial Desecration. The Colderyn practice aggressive, large-scale strip-mining and forging with no regard for the environmental cost. They view pristine lakes, ancient forests, and sacred mountains as resource nodes to be drained and discarded, leaving behind poisoned rivers and barren, slag-heap landscapes.
Technological Supremacy. They leverage superior Dwergar forging techniques to produce higher-quality steel and more advanced machinery. They use this technological edge to out-produce rivals and offer contracts that, while exploitative, are too valuable for developing nations to refuse.
Labor Exploitation. Their mines and forges are powered by a vast, disposable workforce. This includes indentured servants trapped in multi-generational debt, political prisoners leased from allied states, and slaves purchased from the Navtog, Navrow, and Mustring, all working in lethally unsafe conditions.
Complications
Revolutionary Threats. The fervor of Zaharmak has found fertile ground in the Colderyn's exploited workforce, leading to organized industrial sabotage and crippling strikes. These efforts are often covertly supplied by the Mustring syndicate and amplified by Celtumpra agents, who share the goal of disrupting the cartel's operations.
Corporate Warfare. The Ironpenny Poke poaches key engineers, steal proprietary schematics through espionage, and use their political influence in neutral cities to block the Colderyn from acquiring new resource claims or to impose trade sanctions. The Osprey alternates between supporting and hindering The Poke to exacerbate tensions and profits for their own gain.
Resource Scarcity. Colderyn's aggressive expansion is becoming a victim of its own success. They have exhausted many easily accessible resource nodes, forcing them to push into more remote and dangerous territories. This puts them in direct conflict with deity sanctums, unsympathetic nations, and the interests of their corporate rivals.
Adventure Hooks
Poking Back. An Ironpenny Poke sabotage operation caused a catastrophic train derailment, killing Colderyn personnel and civilians. The Colderyn hire the party to hunt down the Poke agents responsible and bring them back alive for "interrogation."
Hit the Big Time. A charismatic leader who escaped from a Colderyn labor camp tries to recruit the party to help him organize a mass breakout of Colderyn slaves. However, the leader is a fanatical Zaharmak Big, and among the enslaved are his operatives who have caused the deaths of numerous innocents in their quest for worker's rights.
Payday. A Colderyn Overseer wants to defect to The Ironpenny Poke. He reaches out to the party to extract him, however, word reaches the party (Zaharmak, Celtumpra, or The Osprey) of his notoriously sadistic methods of maximizing output from his slave workers. They must choose whether to deliver the monster to a new set of masters to get paid for a sizable reward, or eliminate him before he can do more harm.