Baroq Station (Ba-rook Station)

It started out as a nice quiet ranch. Little did Old Man DiRosa guess what was in the hills behind his house.

— Kalas Pascal

Baroq Station started out as a single sprawling of 179 hectare or 442 acres. Set up by Julian DiRosa in 799 PC, the station was a kynou ranch and a place for him to raise his family. Water from the hot springs in Coffer Hills provided water and the hills and grassland provided an ample area for DiRosa’s growing kynou herd.

Things changed during the Heat-hail storms of 801. Between the oppressive waves of heat, lightning strikes, and the burning plasma hail, the grasslands in and around Baroq Station suffered. Grass either burned from the plasma hail or was sucked dry of moisture. DiRosa's kynou herd was devastated, leaving him only a few heads left. Not quite enough to survive on.

Heat-hail storms are ugly. It's a rain of tiny fireballs from the sky. The lightning just makes it more interesting.

— Kalas Pascal

Silver Lining To The Storm Clouds

The DiRosa family struggled on for another few months, working to rebuild their herd. But resources were scarce and none of the Markovia Alliance settlements in that part of the Shattered Lands went untouched. Then either fate, or a god or goddess that was looking after the DiRosa family stepped in.

Six months after the Heat-hail storm dissipated, Julian DiRosa was cutting a new channel for water down from the Coffer Hill hot springs when the ground gave way. Brittle from the storms, it broke out from underneath DiRosa, dropping him into a shallow cavern with an underground pool fed from the same spring. The water was a valuable find, but that paled when compared to what DiRosa saw on the cave walls.

Veins of copper mixed with the hard to find mineral, osmerite. Once Julian found his way back out of the cave, he borrowed the needed funds to set up his first mine, then went to work.

Rise of a Mining Town

Word spread and it took only a year before was started as a homestead grew into a small but thriving town. Merchants and other shopkeepers set up business in Baroq Station, all to support the osmerite and copper mines.

The town itself is several hundred buildings that are spread out alongside the DiRosa ranch. Industry from mineral processing smithing and more quickly rose to support the local inhabitants and the Coffer Hill mines. Now, almost ten years later, the town has developed a second source of income in metal smithing and some vegetable exports.

Fine craftsmanship of silver and copper devices and other items has drawn in a noticeable income, along with fruit from local orchards. But the town's primary means of economic support still comes from the osmerite mines.

Founding Date

799 PC, became a township in 802 PC

Type

Town

Population

~1943

Inhabitant Demonym

Baroqian

Location under

Coffer Hills

Owning Organization

Markovia Alliance

Related Materials

• Osmerite

Demographics by Culture

Markovians / Baroqians (50%)

Eltaa (25%)

Kindarii (15%)

Other (10%)

Industry, Trade & Guilds

DiRosa Mining Guild

Noikos Mineral Cooperative

Ristriel Mines

Maraj Silversmiths

Hammer and Tongs Copperworks

Greenleaf Coperative

Whittle Masonry

Tornos Shipping

Law Enforcement

Baroq Station uses the services the Marshal’s Guild. There is a resident member of the guild in Baroq who has the authority to deputize as they need for a given situatuion.

Coinage

Baroq station, being a full member of the Markovia Alliance, uses the same coin as the rest of Markovia, the triangular-shaped, metallic 'cred'.

Outside Baroq Station

 

Coffer Hills

Spread out to the north of town is the rolling stretch of Copper Hills. Rocky, and tall for an average hill, they are the forest-covered source of the town's osmerite and copper. DiRosa Mining Guild, Noikos Mineral Cooperative, and Ristriel Mines are the three largest outfits working the hills.

These hills, despite the unusual black rock at the tops of each hill, are covered in a thin treeline and tall brush. Mine entrances dot the hillside between scattered clumps of trees. There is also evidence that there had been another settlement in the area before the Final War in the Coffer Hills region.

The ruins are worn out, gray buildings, overgrown with vines and the advance of nature. It is often only a cluster of one to three buildings, with the foundation of a metal scaffold nearby at any location. So far there are seven ruins in total scattered throughout the hills. No one is certain if those scaffolds were for energy transmission, communication or something entirely different.

 

Coffer Springs

Due north of Baroq Station into the Coffer Hills is the Coffer Springs. References to the location phrase it as one 'spring', but in reality it is a series of terraced pools sitting at the highest point in the hills. Water from the springs runs down in a series of short waterfalls until it collects in a large pool where it continues underground.

Here aqueduct and pump system was built to redirect a portion of that water downslope. Midway down the route along the hills, the aqueduct splits in two directions. One to support the mines mid-slope in the hills, the other for Baroq Station. For the town, this is just an additional water supply to what they already get from Ellop Creek that runs down from Coffer Hills and in between the DiRosa ranch and the rest of Baroq Station.

Seertop Hill

On the Trollway Forest side of Coffer Hills is a hill with a flat, almost mesa-like top. It has the appearance as if some great force reached down and cut away the top of the hill.

In that space there is a partial circle of stone columns carved in a fluted design with a wave pattern at the base and top. They surround a strange, rectangular blue granite center stone. Even more curious is that the entire location has a lingering trace of magic.

No one knows where or how old the site is. Records mention Seertop Hill many times across the centuries. Often this refers to how the stones absorb lightning strikes or glow a faint yellow during the summer solstice while faint voices linger in the air nearby.

What they overlook is that the place is real old and still standing. To me that means someone put it there for a reason, and it may not have been a good one...

— Kalas Pascal