Volkovo is the historic capital and largest remaining urban center within the lawless, fractured Valkari States. Located in the arid eastern steppes of the region, near the militarized borders of Boskenmark and District VIII of Kresimiria, the city is a haunting monument to the collapse of the Vosti Empire. Once a heavily fortified imperial garrison town designed to project power into the western frontiers, Volkovo has spent the last century in a state of near-constant warfare, decay, and warlord occupation.
Today, the city serves as the heavily armed headquarters for the Volkovo Directorate, a military junta composed of the descendants of Vosti imperial officers. While the Directorate claims Volkovo is the legitimate capital of a unified Valkari state, the city is functionally an isolated, heavily fortified fiefdom sustained by illicit arms trafficking, extortion, and the desperate poverty of its trapped civilian population.
Geography and Architecture
Volkovo was built around a massive, star-shaped limestone fortress known as the Imperial Garrison. This citadel, though heavily scarred by decades of artillery fire during the “War of the Five Atamans” in the 1920s, remains the most defensible structure in the region. It currently serves as the command center for Ataman Branko Kuras and the Directorate’s officer corps.
Surrounding the garrison is the “Old City,” a labyrinth of crumbling, 19th-century stone barracks and administrative buildings. Nearly all original civilian infrastructure—including plumbing and centralized electricity—was destroyed during the civil wars of the early 20th century and was never rebuilt. The outer ring of the city consists of sprawling, disorganized shantytowns constructed from scavenged military debris, corrugated steel, and mud-brick.
The Economy of Chaos
Volkovo has no legitimate, internationally recognized economy. It is entirely cut off from the global maritime trade network that enriches coastal powers like Kruhlstutt.
- The Black Bazaar: The economic heart of Volkovo is a massive, open-air smuggling market located in the ruins of the old imperial rail yards. Here, Directorate soldiers levy heavy “protection taxes” on merchants trading in stolen Kresimirian medical supplies, Boskenmark munitions, and basic foodstuffs.
- Arms Trafficking: For decades, Volkovo functioned as the primary receiving hub for covert military aid funneled from Vost by Boskenmark Presidents like Nielz Metzger. Today, the Directorate survives by selling off these aging, Cold Peace-era weapon stockpiles to nomadic militias and bandits.
- The Zelen Threat: Historically, Volkovo controlled the lucrative smuggling routes leading north into Kresimiria. However, in recent decades, the city has been economically besieged by the Zelen Cartel, which operates further north. The Cartel’s staggering wealth, generated by the synthetic opioid (“V-Dust”) trade, has allowed them to bypass Volkovo entirely, severely impoverishing the Directorate and sparking frequent, bloody territorial skirmishes on the city’s outskirts.
Life in Volkovo
For the civilian population of Volkovo, daily life is defined by extreme hardship and arbitrary violence. The Directorate enforces a brutal, archaic form of martial law. Any able-bodied male is subject to immediate, involuntary conscription into the Directorate’s militia. It was precisely this threat of violent conscription that prompted a young Nino Arh (the future billionaire CEO of Kresimiria’s DecelChip monopoly) to desert his post and flee the city as a refugee in 1984.
Humanitarian aid rarely reaches the city. International organizations are blocked from entering by the heavily militarized borders of Kresimiria and Boskenmark, while the Directorate frequently confiscates whatever meager medical supplies manage to cross the frontier. Consequently, thousands of civilians attempt the perilous journey north every year, hoping to reach the massive refugee camps in the Kresimirian border city of Ozla, despite the severe discrimination they face upon arrival.