Second half of the 19th century. The Siberian region is wide and vast. In the upper reaches of the Talaya River, which attracts gold miners, rogues and traders, the events unfold not in the family drama of Danila Shaidurov, who kidnapped his beloved without a blessing, but of national importance. Around a couple of rogues - the political adventurer Caesar Belozerov and the former defrocked monk Boriska, who dreams of “his own kingdom ", - in the Siberian wilderness, the Varnaki unite: escaped convicts, beggars and other robber people. The gang becomes the main trouble and threat to the blissful refuge of the Old Believers, who took refuge behind the Cedar Ridge. But neither one nor the other wants to live in such a neighborhood...