The Iron Road Company

The Iron Road Company is what you hire when you need something done east of the Drakespires and you want it done once instead of several times. They are not the most expensive mercenary company in Dracomere -- that distinction belongs to outfits in the Settled Lands who can charge more because their clients have more to spend. The Iron Road Company is the most reliable mercenary operation east of the mountains, which in the eastern territories is worth considerably more than expensive.

The Company was founded approximately sixty years ago by a retired Kethric Warboss named Rethath Ironwall who decided that the skills required to keep a hobgoblin encampment functional in contested territory were commercially transferable. He was right. His successors have maintained the original operational philosophy: clear contracts, fulfilled contracts, no discussion of past contracts. The Company's client list over sixty years includes eastern human settlements, orc War Chiefs, at least two Minotaur Kagrath, and several Settled Lands factions who needed something done discreetly east of the mountains where their own people would have been too visible.

The current Commander is Veth Ironwall (Hobgoblin, Fighter 10, LN, age 34), Rethath's granddaughter -- a quieter version of her founder relative, more focused on logistics than on presence, which is why the Company is larger than it has ever been.

The Iron Road Company maintains no permanent base in the Settled Lands. They have standing arrangements with three eastern human settlements for supply and recovery between contracts. They accept contracts in the Settled Lands but operate there as a foreign presence -- licensed under Coastal Confederacy trade law for the port cities, technically ungoverned in the interior.