The second half of the 19th century. The wide, boundless Siberian edge. In the headwaters of the Talo(y) River—luring gold prospectors, rogues, and merchants—unfolds not a family drama of Danila Shaydurov, who kidnapped his beloved without a blessing, but a matter of state importance. Around a pair of villains—the political adventurer Caesar Belozerov and the former monk-disgrace Boriski, dreaming of “his own kingdom”—in Siberian backwoods, the outcasts gather: escaped convicts, miserable poor people, and other lawless troublemakers. The gang becomes the main trouble and threat to the benevolent refuge of the Old Believers hiding behind the Kedrov Ridge. But neither these people nor those others want to live side by side in such a neighborhood…