Cragmire Smelting House
A century ago, local mine managers maintained their own smelting houses, but constant conflict resulted in frequent sabotage that choked the flow of recources from Cragmire to Cloudbreach markets. The city directors reluctantly stepped in, monopolizing the smelting trade and basing the town's only smelting house in a massive fortress-workship perched on the edge of the lake. Runoff slag belched from the great sub-surface pipes accounts for the majority of the pollution that has killed off most aquatic life in the region, and production these days is more robust than it has ever been. Five massive furnaces and great chemical vats crowd the building's interior, criss-crossed with shallow channels containing molten iron. Noxious fumes and scalding heat require special suits that filter the air and protect exposed skin. The rarely seen chief smelter, Vulgan Durtch, is one of the richest men in Cragmire, but few neighbors know anything about him. Durtch runs the palce with a precision that requires his near-constant supervision over a team of two dozen menials and overseers, but rumors suggest mroe sinister motives for his seclusion.
A tower on the building's northwest corner serves as the residence and workshop of Benazel the Alchemist, a talkative chemist from Cloudbreach who oversees the alchemical rituals and reagents neessary for the smelting prcess and who makes a minor fortune selling potions from his first-floor office.
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