Ft. IronWood was only recently founded by a joint venture of the King and Duke Mandolin. With the need for steel and fine metals in a continual upswing due to the war effort, and imports from Alleria increasingly unstable the King felt it advisable to begin a separate mining operation close to the front.
With refineries available in Bonnifuss and in Dorchak the shortage of fine steel was due more to a difficulty in supply than manufacture. So with typical Royal perogative the King issued command to found a new barony designed solely around securing a supply of raw materials for the war effort. Though the funding of this barony was subsidized by the royal treasury, rumor holds that it has to this point severely taxed even the wealth of the renowned Mandolins.
The barony consists entirely of a single fortified town with a wooden palisade and a stone lined dry moat. The rock dragged up from the mines has supplied enough stone to line roadways and provide shale roofing, but not enough to provide for the solid walls that Baron Healfdane desires.
The Baron
The Baron comes from northern stock, and fought beside Grayston in several historic battles before taking an injury. He held lands as a thane within the Duchy of Gilbain, but was promoted to Baron by the writ of Grayston for his valor in battle and for his selfless sacrifice in leading many of his own men to seal a breach in the defenses of Gilbain during the Horde’s push in the fall of 998.
When the need for a new Baron rose in the south, Grayston convinced his brother that he had just the man for the job. Baron Torm Healfdane works ceaselessly to insure the safety and prosperity of his new lands. He has commissioned a full five hundred troops to maintain the garrison and protect the mining efforts. Though he is often forced to rely on a cane due to his previous injury, Healfdane busies himself overseeing the day to day construction of homes and defenses. He can often be found surveying the battlements and drawing up notations on his war board long after the sun has fallen.
The Populace
Of the remaining population of Ft. Ironwood, less than one hundred are female, and most of those the wives of his guardsmen. The rest of the populace is made up entirely of miners and engineers whose families have remained in Bonnifuss. Due to the perpetual threat of invasion, should Gromm turn his attention southward, it was considered unwise by the Baron to provide facilities for women and children at this time. Due to this the fortress is even more crass and bare than most within the frontier.
Ironwood sends barges laden with ore downriver on a nearly weekly basis and rotates its troops out for training in the plains surrounding Bonnifuss every two weeks. The miners get a holiday every fortnight and a week to themselves and their families every season. Though the work is brutally hard, discipline is sharp the men are paid well and a traveler or messenger will hear little grumbling in the tavern after sunset.
The Council
Among the staff manning the fortress are several young bloods who have proven themselves in the heat of combat. Rumor has it among the soldiers that each man on the Baron’s council was handpicked by either Healfdane or Grayston. When last I stopped through there in the company of a post rider Sir Thomas of Gateway was commanding the guard and serving as constable. He won his stirrups in the defense of an Allerian noble against the haunts which pervade the mountain pass at night. After delivering the man and his cargo safely into the merchant guild’s waiting hands and seeing the gates once more safely barred Thomas was knighted for his bravery and quick thought. Serving for Jacorik is a woman by the name of Lady Win’Mitar. She has seen time in the court at Gilbain, Dorchak, and Bonnifuss. Although I have heard in the past that her fiery temper has led to trouble and prevented the swift rise through the ranks that her quick intelligence promises, she is certainly no-one to trifle with. Already since gaining her post within the Barony she has foiled two assassination attempts on the Baron and rooted out a ‘guild’ operating illegally within the mines.
Toevass and DeVris both sent young members to the Baronial seat, neither more than thirty years of age. It is said that the man who sits for DeVris, one Jonin McVain was once a cavelier and gave it up for the stable life of a town magistrate only upon hearing he could see more action in Ironwood than in a year on the trail. Toevass’s Laric Carverson is a master scrivener and able to do miraculous recordkeeping that seems to make ends meet and provide all the right supplies to the right destinations with no questions asked. His ability to organize and his impecable memory make him an asset that not even Harold Miller the tax collector and representative of House Mandolar can find fault with.
Ecology
Unfortunately the dangers of Ironwood and the struggles of founding a new barony more than make up for the skill and talents of the men and women involved. Even should they work flawlessly and to the limit of human endurance it is only a matter of time before Gromm or some other force slips by the King’s army to the north and pushes this Barony to the limit of its people.
With the open plains to the west, and the inherent dangers of plains wyverns and snow sprinters to prevent reinforcements or easy travel by land Ft. IronWood is esentially cut off when the supply boats are not in town. With no source of food readily available, the populace has been forced to rely on trade with the hill barbarian tribes who occasionally visit and the generous spirit of the few trappers hardy enough to remain in the hills and plains with the conflict continuing. Winters are incredibly harsh in IronWood, bringing FrostHounds down from the mountain passes in large numbers and worse yet once the peaks clog with snow. When blizzards clog the landscape the icereavers come calling in the night. One of the guards I spoke to who survived last winter remembered the chill glow of their blue eyes. He said they rode upon the backs of longlegged lizards.