Crocker’s Brick and Mortar

Located on the border of the Warehouse and Merchant Districts, Crocker’s Brick and Mortar is one of Freeport’s most advanced industrial facilities. Advanced clockwork equipment is used to crush rocks and stone.

Architecture

A high stone wall with one large gate surrounds the masonry factory; the top of the millhouse can be seen from the street outside. Clouds of steam and smoke often emerge from within the compound. Inside the wall, the two-story millhouse dominates the area, with several other workshops scattered around it. Carts run on rail lines from the millhouse to piles containing bricks or rocks of various sizes. The millhouse’s bottom level has no floor; the carts spill rocks down the mouth of a pit into a massive hopper. When the operator in the control booth above the pit activates the machinery, huge teeth and gears grind together beneath the hopper, which slowly rotates to drop its load into the gears. Doors and hatches in the hopper and beneath the gears lead to more rail lines, allowing workers to haul away the crushed stone. Excess rubble and powder is sluiced away into the sewers.
The gears of the mill can chew apart solid stone; unsurprisingly, they have little problems crushing human beings as well. A few workers have died or suffered serious accidents in the mill.

History

A stonemason named Crocker founded this business 10 years ago. At first it was a conventional operation, where workers used sledgehammers and picks to break apart rocks. Crocker found it hard to keep good workers; most able bodied men preferred to work the Docks or warehouses rather than take up such backbreaking labor. Looking for a way to meet demand with fewer workers, Crocker hit upon the idea of using machinery for the crushing. Such inventions had appeared in the past, but they were far from common. However, the savants over at the Kolter Clockworks Factory had some ideas.

Over the course of several years, Crocker was able to install steam-powered hammers, clockwork sorting beds, alchemical boilers, and more. The mad minds at Kolter Clockworks used his factory as a test bed for their own ideas, keeping the machines that worked even amid the more noteworthy (and in some cases explosive) failures. The crowning achievement for the factory was the “rock crusher,” a millhouse poised over a massive pit, filled with machinery that could grind large stones down into powder. With this at the center of the operation, Crocker was able to finally meet the demand for masonry in the city—especially the constant need for stone to make the Lighthouse of Drac.

Parent Location

Warehouse District

Owner

Crocker