An edited summary from the Memoirs of Ivan the Iron. Dictated in 1009, on March 17th, transcribed and annotated by Silas di Noire, Chief Archivist of the Jeleznogórsk Rátusha.

I am finally ready to tell this story, after forty long years. It all started back in the 70s, three years after the civil war. I was a twenty-year-old fool, a regular gefreiter. I worked in a warehouse with numbers. The army provided great benefits to people with brains, which, I will be honest, is a commodity seldom seen in the Empire. I was never a fighter.

We were on a patrol near the peripheral hub when our navigator brought our brig through the wrong wormhole. What can I say? Perhaps the Empire should stop appointing people based on who they are nephews to and start appointing based on professional skill.

Anyway, we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. An uncharted hub. The Astral was rough, we had no idea where to go, and the food supply wasn't designed to handle a scenario where an idiot navigator leads us astray. And so we wandered and wandered for days, until we came across an allod. That was when those scumbag pirates ambushed us. Fortunately enough, our cannoneers and helmsman were actually competent enough to make them flee. But we didn't get off so easily. Especially me. You’ve heard the legend: how the ship’s Sister managed to stitch me back together when I was almost torn apart. Well, It’s quite exaggerated. Yes, I was in a bad way. But luckier than most. At least I didn’t end up in the Astral like some of our crew.

The ship was heavily battered, the thrusters were busted, and we had to land to fix ourselves up. And that was my very first visit to Dayn.

We had a great shortage of men and ran low on supplies. My bookkeeping didn't matter to anyone – we needed field workers, and so I was appointed for sorties with the rest of the soldiery. Me, short of a limb, an eye, and an ear. The Empire had long since stopped surprising me with its laxity.

Our mission was to collect supplies and survey for potential hazards and hostiles. Dayn is huge, as you know, one of the biggest out there, and covered in dense forests. For us – unprepared, scared, and low on morale – that wasn't at all the blessing it is for me now. Our officers managed to bunch the most miserable bastards together into my group. I don't know if it was intentional to get rid of extra mouths or just typical Imperial idiocy. Without a competent scout amidst us, we got lost quickly. We were hungry, cold, and eventually got ambushed by a smilodon. I managed to escape while it was busy mutilating my squad. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not a fighter, and even if I were, I’m not suicidal. I’m good with numbers, and I calculated the odds.

I ran until I found Lady's Lake. I fell on the ground, utterly exhausted, and crawled to the shingle shore, to hide behind the rock. At this point, I was ready to be eaten by a smilodon. At this point, I did not care much. I was ready to fall asleep and never to wake up. But, obviously, that didn't happen. I was awakened by Eglė, my dear zhmona. Like an angel of the Light, she arose from the water and took me in her arms. I think, in my fever, I told her I loved her. She walked into the water with me, and the next thing I knew, it was day. I felt damn well, not like a scared cripple who was running from a bloody monster all night should have felt. I felt renewed. Near me lay a flat coral with algae strips laid out like a salad. Intuitively, I knew I had to eat it. That very decision led me to where I stand now, dictating my memoirs.

I don’t need to tell you, dear reader, about the magic of Ivan’s Kelp. I am sure you have got a bit of Ivan’s Snacks in your cupboard, Ivan’s Water in your fridge and Ivan’s Wires are probably powering your mana-lamp right now as you sit and read this. But that's a familiar story, so let's hear something new. How did I get here, where I stand now, in my Iron City? I collected plenty of that seaweed. Of course, I wasn't going to share it with anyone on that damned ship of fools. I found my way back to the brig, and a few days later, we left Dayn.

Thankfully, our navigator was blown to pieces back then during the pirate attack, so our loodsman took over the visor. He got us out of this sector and we successfully returned to Yakhch, my home allod. I was given a leave of absence and some cheap prosthetics. That’s where the name came from. Not because I have an iron character or anything like that, though I like that legend. Everyone in the neighborhood just started calling me "Iron Vanya." Whenever my name was mentioned, and there were a lot of us named Vanya there, they'd always add, "Well, that one, the Iron one."

I was never ill with patriotism. I was blessed with a mind of my own. So that's why I wasn't going back into the army. I was going to get rich, and I promised myself that I would return to that lake and find the angel who saved me. I showed the seaweed to my closest friends and together, we decided firmly to make it our business.

This was the point where I realised just how much luck was on my side. You might wonder why the Empire didn't just follow our trail back. Well, I got to thank the notorious Imperial incompetence once more! During that initial pirate ambush, when our navigator was vaporized, the navigational charts went along with him. But for me, Dayn wasn't lost. When we set out for the second time, I didn't even need a visor to find Dayn again. I just knew which way to turn the wheel. It was as if the allod itself had planted a hook in my mind, pulling me back to where I belonged.

Each of us knew someone, who knew someone else. I’d gathered enough kelp to give the right people a taste, and soon enough, we found our sponsors – a group of high-interest speculators from the Yakhch trade guilds. They provided an Astral schooner, tools, and materials to build a small plantation. In exchange, as per our contract, we were to deliver the product for a year, and we had 4 months prior to set up the operation. Along with my friends, the guild provided us with around two dozen of the poorest of Imperial bastards – deserters and thugs, who had nowhere else to go. Needless to mention the list of Imperial laws we were about to violate. The moment we landed on Dayn to launch our project, we condemned ourselves to a lifetime in a working camp. Or worse…

For the first two years, I never stopped looking for the Lady. But the shore remained clear, and the water still. We spent our days knee-deep in silt, smuggling our harvests back to Yakhch in small batches. We were earning fair money, but I was playing a longer game. By the time our contract with the sponsors was finalized, we had earned enough to buy our own carrack. I insisted on naming her The Success. Once the hull was ours, I looked at the contract with our sponsors, did the math, and realized we didn't need them anymore. We returned them their schooner and paid the margin for their services, and went independent. The kelp was a hit on the local market, but I kept the distribution tight – didn't want the Imperial tax collectors noticing us just yet.

I hired talented alchemists and engineers to explore new ways of utilising the kelp. It was during this expansion that the "Poor Maria" found us.

Funnily enough, it was the same pirate caravella that had crippled me years ago. They thought we were an easy mark – a bunch of seaweed farmers. They killed a couple of our men before they even realized we weren't fighting back. So once again, I reached for my ledger.

That was how I met Hoov the Hoof, my dear friend and the 1st Brigadier of Dayn Brigade. Hoov was “Poor Maria” first mate. I told him that a pirate lives in constant threat and eventually dies by the sword for scraps, while an entrepreneur bathes in silver. Of course, I backed my pitch with some profit margins. I showed him that I had the product, the buyers, and the location, but I lacked some strong fellers to watch my back. Lots of numbers and smart words, and a promise for a cushy and abundant life, were enough to convince my horned friend to run a mutiny. The captain of the Poor Maria went feeding Astral plankton, and from that day on, the pirates re-qualified into our security and our logistics.

While our engineers were perfecting Ivan’s Wires – using the miraculous mana-conductive properties of the kelp’s fiber – and our alchemists were bottling Ivan’s Water, we ran into a different kind of wall.

Nix, the indigenous amphibian people of Dayn, finally showed themselves. They had been watching us for years, hiding in the deep trenches, and they were bloody furious. The pirates, bless their filthy souls, were trashing the Lake heavily. It started as a series of night raids – our men, indiscriminately, were silently taken and drowned in the waters of the Lady’s Lake. Soon, a small, nasty war unleashed. I knew we couldn't win a fight against a foe that lived in the water we were trying to farm, so I called for a parley. The negotiations were held in Nixes’ domain. Our delegation was granted the magic to breathe underwater, and there, in the Palace, I saw her again. Eglė, the daughter of their ruler.

The Nix didn't care for silver or marks, or any other money. First and foremost, they wanted the lake clean and the borders of cultivated territory demarcated. And they also wanted gin. Yes, gin! I bought them with the cheap, reflux-causing hooch that Hoov’s brutes were distilling and drinking. Nix managed to steal a couple of barrels during their raids, and they loved the taste. And to seal the deal, a marriage between me and Eglė was arranged. I didn't need asking twice. The Nix even began working the deep-water sectors of the plantation for a payment in pure gin. What’s amusing, is that they clearly preferred that gut-rotting Hoov’s booze over a high-quality Ghibberling gin.

Meanwhile, the plantation grew bigger and bigger, expanding, becoming more like a town with each month. And like every town, she’s been given a name – Beregovóy. As Beregovóy was expanding, we started building docks for The Success, The Poor Maria and our future ships. The dock was named Portovóy.

The word began to spread, carefully at first, through the trade guilds and pirates. "A new allod, a land full of opportunities." I started commissioning the construction of real houses, and comfortable inns for the investors and merchants I knew would follow the scent of silver. But a city cannot eat kelp alone. I needed fields, crops, and sturdy hands. I sent offers of land. Half-bovate of Dayn’s black soil to any peasant willing to make the jump, with low-interest loans for seed and tools. All they had to do was sell forty percent of their surplus to the Jeleznogorsk grain silos. They came in droves. We built the "green belt" around the city, miles of sprawling wheat and rye that fed the hungry mouths of the young Iron City.

Finally, we started distributing our goods in pursuit of a good deal. Our first grand success came when the notorious Nomarch Iblis took an interest in my Wires. They were lighter and cheaper than what the Empire had to offer. Not as durable or conductive, but easier and faster to produce. Iblis was one insightful son of a bitch. Before we even sat down to discuss the deal, he started "gifting" us state-of-the-art building machines for our docks expansion. He claimed he wanted to "expedite the infrastructure for our future partnership," but I knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that Ivan’s Wires was the future. The old crutch was buttering me up, trying to make me feel small and indebted before he dropped a buyout offer that would make a sane man’s head spin. I spent three nights in my office running numbers. Iblis’s offer was, not going to lie, some filthy amount of silver – enough to buy myself a little fleet, an allod, and put a fortress on this allod with a small garrison of grizzled mercs, and live a cushy life until my last breath. On the other was the projected revenue of a global monopoly on cheap wiring. You could see that today you’re buying Ivan’s Wires, not Iblis’s Wires, so the end of that deal is obvious.

And that wasn’t our only success. Parallel to that, we started selling Ivan’s Snacks and Ivan’s Water to the League and some mercenary companies. It is a tasty, cheap and efficient energy food and drink, and they of course wanted to use it in their MREs. The Empire pridefully held out for a while, disdaining the trade with us, traitors of the Motherland, but even these bigots succumbed to common sense eventually.

With the help of Iblis’s machines, and with incredible speed, a small dock town Portovóy sprawled into the magnificent international polis you see today – Jeleznogórsk. The City of Success. People come from all across the Astral to find their bounty here, just as I did forty years ago. And I no longer was "Iron Vanya". I became Ivan the Iron.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s five o’clock on a Thursday, which means that it’s time for me to head down to the good ol’ “Barrel” for a drink. I still like to see the look on a newcomer's face when they realise the man paying for their round is the man whose name is on the gates.