Boris Ursus

Boris Ursus, remembered as the Red Tzar, was the first ruler to bind all the peoples of the frozen oblast into a single nation and call himself Tzar of Kislev. In the age when the Gospodars had ridden west and conquered the Ungol lands, it was Boris who forged the two peoples into one realm, quelling their feuds beneath his own iron hand and raising the great citadel of Kislev as its capital and heart. A giant of a man, clad in red and crowned in the pride of his line, he was as much warlord as king, and the tales say he never lost a battle he chose to fight.

His reign set the pattern every Tzar since has followed: to face north, to trust in horse and axe and the old gods, and to spend his own blood freely in defence of the realm. The chronicles remember him as proud, hard, and sometimes cruel — a ruler who ruled a cruel land and shaped himself to fit it. Whether every deed the sagas heap upon him is true hardly matters now, for Boris the Red Tzar has passed into the founding-legend of Kislev itself, the first and greatest of a long line of rulers who have given everything to keep the north from swallowing the world.