Freecities League Assessor Euphoma Hillbough goes by "Scorpion" in the Oatman Canyon region. She's not much of one for mixing company. She stings awfully hard on any attempt to wander too close to what she considers "her turf".

Unlike other member settlements of the Freecities League, Purgatory Gulch gets frequent visits from their assigned representative of the Freecities League Assessor Company. Once a year after harvest, this is to collect the Shrock Tax. The other visits are to distribute municipal assistance funds to a Freecity settlement currently struggling after some difficult years.

Mayor Jaeke Blaze keeps barrels and bins in the back corner of Purgatory Gulch General Store for the Tax Assessor's distribution visits. The residents are expected to fill these bins in each interval with a particular kind of stone often found in farm fields or ranch overnight camps: serhyllite chunks. It's a nuisance mineral, too alkaline for good nutrient absorption in plant root systems, too hard for easy crumbling to mix into clay for building, too soft to be a good building material on its own.

It also happens to be a useful material for weatherproofing and repair work on the ancient blackstone of the Warden Road.

Folks in Purgatory do not know this because they never bother to ask Scorpion why the Mayor's Council thinks three barrels full of "junk rock" is worth the expense of paying for a stagecoach crew to run mail every two months and Scorpion's salary and expenses for travel and just barely enough money to pay five people a week's wages each month. That week is (probably) spent shoring up the access points on Arjory Arroyo or doing seasonal maintenance on the Purgatory Schoolhouse or trying, yet again, to figure out a good location for well or at least a cistern so the population has some defense against another dry year.