The Butcher of Gadobhra

When the situation was explained to them, Sven, Jon, and Cham volunteered to handle the task of hiding Ozzy's bag. All three of them had a STR score over 12, and Sven was at 15. His job was cutting and moving the huge blocks of granite and marble used in constructing the new fortress and most of his skills were based on strength. While Jon and Cham held the bag and pulled it back, Sven removed the paving stones and cut into the road until he had a bag sized hole over eight feet deep. The three of them managed to move the bag and get it into the hole. After that, sven laid stone on top of the bag, rebuilt the road bed, and replaced the paving stones. Within a couple of hours, you couldn't tell anything had been there.

The second job was supposed to be cleanup of the bodies of several dozen ghouls, but there was nothing there but a few dark stains on the stones when they arrived. Either ghouls from Hungrytown or animals from the Beastwoods had hauled the bodies away. Either way, the road was cleared. They headed back to Sedgewick for beer and a nap in the sun. Everyone appreciated the extra day off and were determined to enjoy it.

Suzette took a bath. It immediately reminded her that Ozzy was gone. Normally he used his cleanse cantrip on the group after a fight. But not today. She'd trudged back to Sedgewick with aching muscles and covered in dried blood and sweat with bits of fur and feathers stuck in her hair. She started to get a drink from downstairs, but thought better of it. She had enough snakes in her head without starting to drink for no reason. It could become a habit all too easily. Drinking with Layla while they slaughtered strange creatures? Sure. That was a girls-night-out. But she wasn't going to drink alone, or because she missed Ozzy.

Instead, she packed a barrel of water upstairs for her bath, thankful for her improved STR score. Ben had been looking for projects to practice some of his trade skills, and she had paid him in materials and beer to craft her an old-fashioned copper bath tub. Filling it with water, she heated it with several low powered Solar Arrows. That trick had taken a lot of practice down at the mill pond. Her first attempts to heat water had resulted in explosions of boiling water and clouds of steam. After a long bath, she climbed into the too-large, and too-empty bed and slept for four hours.

A short night's sleep for her was the equivalent of eight hours for most people, and was enough to make her feel totally refreshed, in body, if not spirit. The Baron and Baroness were staying at the inn, and wouldn't be stirring for another couple of hours. They'd sent a message saying they were sleeping in and taking a long afternoon lunch. They weren't workers with inexhaustible amounts of stamina.

That got Suzette to thinking. While the first night with Layla had been fun, wasn't drinking while grinding Butcher quests going to be counter-productive? Layla would slow down early if they were drinking, while she herself could handle quite a bit of alcohol because of her minor poison resistance, poisoner, and Booze is Power skills. The last one she had picked up after fighting with the other witches to contain the star-spawn.

Titania had suggested it to the rest of the circle: "Oh, bless my blackened soul, that's a nice skill. I think it only got offered to us because of having a goblin in the circle. If you want it, try to take the skill and put enough experience in to get it to Rank 1. Trust me, it will pay off."

It wasn't as potent a skill as it was for goblins, where their racial heritage multiplied its efficiency, but even reduced, it was a potent skill for a wizard or sorcerer. At only Rank 1 she was 51% resistant to the effects of alcohol, and her mana regeneration was increased by 1%. Both of those effects would increase at a rate of 1% per rank. She could level the skill while doing the drudge work of training butchery, or stripping trees of bark to increase her Adze skill.

What she needed was something lighter than wine, maybe with a little bit of energy to keep Layla going longer. She had made a beer that doubled as a healing potion, so why not some sort of alcoholic drink that restored stamina? The dryads were supplying Sedgewick with apples and cider, maybe an apple wine? She needed some help with the details so she headed to where the expert brewers were.

She had ten workers in the brewery crew now. Ben had been able to reset their class to Contract Worker: Brewer, and they had gained the needed cantrips for making beer, ale, wine, and other light alcoholic drinks. An assembly line of sorts had been set up for the production of Blud Dark. The operation was running smoothly. In part because Ben had talked to all the workers, and found a few that knew something about brewing in both VR and in the habs where they lived. Toby and Violet were old hands at fermenting, and each was in charge of a four person crew of brewers. Fresh fruit was of course difficult to get in the habs, and horribly expensive, but dried fruit, dates, and raisins could be bought in bulk, making them cheap enough even for hab dwellers. There was a whole culture of fermenting nearly anything into alcohol. The workers with this experience easily handled making beer and ale for the town, and Blud Dark for export.

One wall was lined with empty barrels. Some of these had seen use before, and had been bought. Others had been made here in Sedgewick by their two coopers. Every morning, forty barrels were lined up, the water, hops, malt, and 'special ingredients packet that gave Bludgeon Brew its unmistakable flavor' were dumped in, along with two buckets of the thick, dark mana that oozed out of Gadobhra. The barrels were sealed and the process of adding mana and casting the cantrips began.

All of the brewers were level 4 or 5 and had over 1000 mana. Each worker could produce four barrels in the morning and then another four barrels at night. In between they loaded barrels onto carts and hauled them from the underground brewery up to a warehouse where the folks from Bludgeon Brew picked them up with wagons each day. A steady stream of Blud Dark was rolling out of Sedgewick on a regular basis, and heading to spots all over the empire.

The barrels of Blud Dark were held at Rowan Keep until there was enough cargo to warrant a caravan. Most weeks, a large caravan left for Northguard and other destinations to the south. Guarding the beer convoys was becoming popular mercenary work. For bandits, beer wasn't valuable enough compared to its weight to be worth the trouble of attacking a caravan. (Goblins excluded. A roving band near Northguard had run off the guards and drank the barrels dry over the next two days, becoming quite powerful. Troops had to be sent from the Capital to deal with them.)

Suzette had some questions for them today. "I want to try something a little different. We're going to have a lot of apples coming in from the dryads. We already processed some of that into cider. Any ideas for fermentation?"

Toby pointed a thumb at the vat of dark mana. "Not with that stuff. It seems to work good with ales and beer, but we already tried fermenting some batches of peaches, apples, and raisins. Didn't work. The fruit rotted from the dark stuff before it fermented and smelled horrible. There's a lot of ambient dark mana down here, soaking into the barrels. Even if you used your own mana, I think it would just waste the cider."

Violet had a suggestion. "Try some experiments, but I'd start with two-thirds of a barrel of cider, and then fill it up with apples. The fruit will have some natural yeasts that will help with the fermenting. Then add a gallon of honey and two handfuls of bread yeast that Granya uses. That should give you something with some kick to it. Use fresh barrels from the coopers, and keep them where they get a lot of sun, and no dark mana."

Suzette was writing that idea down. "What about the cantrip? Beer or wine? We don't have a cider cantrip."

Toby and Violet discussed that for a bit and then shrugged. Toby said "Do both. Wine cantrip on one barrel, Beer cantrip on the other. Then compare the result. Hopefully both are drinkable. If they aren't, give them to the goblins. You might even consider making graf, which is sort of an apple beer. You start with cider and a pale ale wort. I'll talk with a couple folks who have made something like it before and get you a recipe. Don't be upset if the first batch turns out bad, just keep experimenting. What you want may need to be a light apple wine, or maybe a heavy bodied graf. Once you get the basics down, we can add some flavor to it. Apple will go nice with a bit of nutmeg, cinnamon, sassafras root or cedar berries."

An hour later, armed with some new recipes to try, Suzette was pulling a wagon with four barrels of cider using different recipes. One was a graf using cider and fermented ale wort. She went ahead and added sassafras root and ginger to it. Another was just the basic graf recipe. The other two were fermenting with the wine cantrip. One plain, and the other with orange peel and a pound of raisins. Into all four barrels she had added enough ingredients for twenty stamina potions and crossed her fingers.

She was going to leave the barrels in a sunny field just outside the village. If dark mana wasn't working, then maybe her barrels could soak up some radiant mana out here in the fields. And she would help that along. Concentrating on the feel of casting her Solar Arrow spell, she forced a few hundred mana into each barrel. She'd add more the next day around dawn, and then late tomorrow or the next day she'd see if she had hard cider, apple wine or a gift for the Goblin Chief.

As she moved away from the town, she noticed the horizon had changed. A huge tree was growing where the oak forest had been. It wasn't hard to pull the little wagon, so she headed in that direction, her curiosity aroused. The area around the tree was different. A bright green lawn of low grass was growing everywhere with patches of flowers and small dogwood and cherry trees. The dogwood and cherry were all blooming, which she was pretty sure they shouldn't be. The massive maple tree proved to be both further away, and bigger than she had first imagined.

The entire area was saturated with a low level of mana. Some of it was radiant mana, but a lot of it had a strange, and strangely familiar feel to it. She had a very strong sense of Deja vu. Well, she had come looking for a sunny meadow, and it probably didn't get any better than this. She left barrels and wagon sitting in the field and went towards the tree. Motion to her side made her spin around and get a glimpse of three small unicorns playing a game. Entranced, she stopped to watch.

They were playing tag, taking turns chasing each other. Even as she watched, one streaked by her, using her as an obstacle. The unicorn chasing the other elected to stop in front of Suzette and lightly touch her with its horn, before running away to join the others. All three grouped up, neighed, laughed, made sounds like birds and rolled their eyes at her, tauntingly.

"Right, I get it. I'm it and can't catch you. Prepare to find out you're wrong." She took off her shoes and apron and sprinted at them.

It had been an exhausting day for Alwyn, the Summer Lord. The mortal realm side of his gateway had been anchored inside of the growing tree. He had been forced to expend considerable amounts of mana to convince the tree to let him form a passage to the outside. Then the surprise of finding out they were a hundred feet in the air. More work ensued to construct a modest platform on the side of the tree and a spiral staircase running around its girth to the ground. They were only halfway down when Twitterberry tugged on his sleeve. "I think you should look at this M'lord. It may be important."

Alwyn looked to where his courier pointed, and saw three of his unicorns racing around a mortal woman. "Interesting, but I'm missing the point. Unicorns play all the time, and isn't this area infested with mortals? It's not surprising they already found a playmate."

Twitterberry could tell his Lord was tired. Working like this, even with magic, just wasn't something he was used to. It was a difficult thing to do hard labor when one was expected to feast and drink all night long. "They are playing a game of tag with the mortal, M'lord. Please observe."

Alwyn did try, but he was thirsty, and they had been at this slave-labor for all of two hours. "Just tell me, Twitter, I'm tired beyond all reason."

Twitterberry made a small bow, and pointed. "She's winning, sire. She's catching them."

Alwyn's eyes got wide. "Oh, well that is interesting. Maybe we should go say hello." Twitterberry pointed to the unfinished stairway. Alwyn sighed. "Oh, dash it all. Head back and hire three tree wrights to come finish this. I can at least manage a featherfall and go talk to her."

"Of course, sire. And please, take the hound with you. He's very good with first impressions on anyone except badgers."

The staff at the inn was delighted to host the Baron and Baroness. Rumors were already running around the village how the Baron had personally led a party of his workers to defend Sedgewick from a terrible Ghoul Lord and his undead minions. Certainly, they were covered in blood and gore when they arrived exhausted at the inn. Rooms were made ready, hot baths poured, and a huge breakfast was laid out for them in their rooms. By early afternoon Baron and his lovely wife had come down for a late lunch in the common room. The staff noted that they had dressed in rather plain 'adventuring style', readying themselves for another day of monster slaying.

"A bug saved your ass." Layla was still bugging Billy about the revelation of the true identity of 'Fearless Leader'.

Billy wasn't amused at all. Mostly because Layla was laughing about it constantly. "Supposedly. I still think that maybe Rolly is a ventriloquist and the talking bug is a fake."

Layla laughed again, then spread more jam on her toast. She was enjoying a long meal with plenty of time to enjoy herself at Billy's expense. "That just makes it worse. Then it's 'a contract worker with a goofy pet bug saved my job'. I'd go with the magical talking bug before trying to convince people it was Rolly behind it all. Or say nothing. Let the legend of Fearless Leader grow. You might need him again."

"God, I hope not." Billy's head was still reeling from the last couple of days. "But I will admit he pulled my ass out of the fire with the win over Momco. I've gone over all the information I can, but there are just too many crazy stories about that war. The dungeon disaster didn't help. It really muddied the waters. The picture I got was that our workers were involved up to their teeth in helping behind the scenes to take Momco apart."

Layla thought for a second and got serious. "Something to keep in mind if you ever decide to oppress the peasants."

Billy nodded. "Yeah, push too hard and all of a sudden we'll have a secret rebellion making our lives difficult."

"Just your life, Billy dear. I'll side with the peasants, help overthrow you, and become their beloved Baroness and get some handsome hunk to take your place."

Billy thought that one over. "Some days I'm tempted to just let you have it all, and I'll lay around HQ eating chocolates. But not today. Today we have strange critters to kill and skin, and maybe some ghoul hunting.

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