Butcher of Gadobhra Chapter 272 (Patreon)

Ozzie was enjoying himself. He still wondered why Suzette and Ben had thought it necessary that he be the one to start leading families out to the open land by the unicorn fields. Still, he'd learned over the years of working with his friends that you sometimes just went along with things and got the whole story later. So if they needed him to get together a crew and start building hamlets, that's what he would do.

The families he met up with at Rowan Keep were in rough shape. Ben and Rolly had given him a brief rundown of the chaos around Northguard that had driven out so many peasant farmers. The situation stunk. At least one corporation was in bed with the Baron of Northguard. Everyone called him PinchPenny, and his family's miserly ways were legendary for generations. So far, over 500 refugees had shown up at Rowan Keep, many of them helped to safety Rolly and Ben. The Legion was overwhelmed with feeding and keeping them safe, and they were slowing the keep's construction.

Suzette had devised the idea of settling them all near Sedgewick and pitched it to Billy. The Baron had agreed. It moved them out of the construction zone, and Suzette assured him she could make the new hamlets profitable. Billy liked profit, and Suzette found herself in charge of another project. Of course, he also stuck her with the responsibility of turning a profit. The new hamlets and farms were part of Sedgewick, not Gadobhra. Billy would take a cut of the profit, and Suzette was responsible for any losses. As soon as she had agreed to do it, she'd gotten a quest.

• Extending a Helping Hand
  
  You've offered to house and feed 500 refugees driven from their homes in the south. Commendable, but it's easy to say and harder to do!
  
  Requirements:
  -Lead 500 refugee peasants to the Promised Land. (Or at least the land you are promising them.)
  -House 500 refugee peasants.
  -Clear 500 acres of farmland.
  -Construct five small hamlets with a well, town square, 10+ houses, community storehouse, and roads connecting them to Sedgewick.
  
  Success will be rewarded by building points, increased options for Sedgewick, and increased trade. Duke Carl will look more favorably upon Gadobhra.
  Failure will incur the wrath of the Baron as he tries to deal with increasing banditry within the Barony and the distrust of Duke Carl.

She had shared the quest with Ben, Ozzy, and Rolly, along with her new tab for building hamlets that had come with the quest.

Current Options for spending Sedgewick Build Points on hamlets   
Cost Description   
10 Town Gates (Wooden)   
100 Shabby Wooden Walls (basic walls of wood, planks) around Hamlet's Perimeter   50  Protective Hedge Barrier around Hamlet's Perimeter   
10 Signal or Lookout Tower   
20 Large Barn   
100 Lighted Town Square with oil lamps (must provide oil)  
50 Store House (Foodstuffs, grain, oil, water, wood, coal.)   
10 Artesian Well   
20 Town Square

Given time, they could have dug the wells and done all the work. Time was something they didn't have. Every day the refugees were at Rowan was half a day's construction time lost. Suzette decided to jumpstart the construction by giving each hamlet a Town Square, Artesian Well, Store House, and Protective Hedge. That came to a total cost of 400 building points out of Sedgewick's total. She had a lot of Building Points currently from her cut of the points from opening the trade routes.

Sedgewick fed 200 contract workers each day. Adding 500 refugees wasn't easy. Betty had demanded another set of ovens and three people to help her with baking bread. To everyone's surprise, Runt volunteered, working twelve hours a day and doing the job of two contract workers. Betty rewarded him with as much food as he could eat and baked him special treats. The ex-minion thought it was a great deal. He wasn't working nearly as hard as he had in the dungeon, where he only got a couple of beetles each day to eat.
Barrels of smoked meat, ground groats, and fresh bread was sent to each storehouse. A load of apples from the dryad orchards provided some fresh produce. It was enough to get the people through the first few days and give the village time to gear up food production.

Over the last year, the amount of food Sedgewick needed to import had dropped as their fields increased and the farmers progressed in levels. A level 10 farmer could produce five times what a level 1 farmer could. And that was without specialized Core Skills. Skilled Provider and Abundance were skills that could help nearly everyone. As some farmers started gathering in harvest ten times bigger than expected, Suzette purchased more and more of the magical storerooms with the town's building points. She'd been up to 12 when Ozzy got back. After gaining 12,500 points, she purchased 38 more, turning the underground area from the barracks to the brewery into a vast network of storerooms for grain, vegetables, alcohol, and meat. Delbert became progressively more powerful as he strained his refrigeration abilities to keep everything cold. Now that stored food was being used to feed the refugees until they could grow their own.

The crew of people Ozzy had recruited arrived and got to work. Makken was an old hand at stonework, as most dwarves were. He could shape a rock to fit a gap and needed no mortar to make a tight chimney and hearth. Wagonloads of stone were delivered to each building site, and the Peppermancer got to work while two stone cutters laid a basic foundation for each house. Wood they had in abundance. Oak beams and logs had been stacked high in this area to season. John and Cham arrived and began cutting the beams for the foundation and frame of each building and the boards needed for the floor and siding. Sedgewick had eight carpenters. They split into two teams of four and started work on two farmhouses.

The chimney and hearth were on the side near the front of the house where the cooking would be done. A high, peaked roof gave room for a loft that covered the back half of the main room. Older children slept upstairs, leaving two rooms on the side for parents and a nursery. Along the other side would be a large pantry and storage. The back of the house, with the lower ceiling looked out over where the gardens would be. Plans included a window with nine panes of glass, which would be delivered later. With four carpenters working together, they had the house frame done in an hour, hammering away constantly. Another hour and they finished the floor, siding, and roof. The inside of the house would need a lot of sanding and finishing work. Getting the basics done to provide a place to live was the goal. The first team to finish took a little over two hours and the other team wasn't far behind.

Ozzy and Woodrat beat them by thirty minutes.

As Dave, Clara, Seth, and Sarah took a beer break to look over their work, they spied Ozzy and Woodrat, starting the frame of their second house. No nails were being used, and their tools weren't a hammer or saw. Ozzy had a massive axe in one hand, using it like a carpenter's hatchet to make the notches needed to fit the wooden beams together. He concentrated as he fitted each beam, and smoke poured from his hands into the wood, fusing the two pieces. Captain Woodrat was ten times faster than Ozzy. Taking large pieces of wood, Woodrat cut foot-thick beams with one slice of an enchanted sword. Each piece of timber warped into the shape he needed as he infused each beam or plank with smoke. The four carpenters walked over and stared as the two Captains continued their work.

The workers in Sedgewick were used to people with high strength, and many of the workers were above ten. So seeing Ozzy lift two logs needed for a ridge beam wasn't that out of the ordinary. Seeing him fuse them into one beam using magic smoke was beyond their experience. And watching Woodrat work was another thing entirely. Woodrat was clearly having fun as he added his own ideas about what a proper farmhouse should be, even though Ozzy had needed to explain what a farmhouse was. The back of their first house had a bowed wall of windows similar to his Captain's quarters on the Splinter with built-in sea-chests that doubled as benches along the window. Each of the rooms on the side had rounded windows like portholes with heavy shutters. The wood around the completed hearth was dark with infused smoke and fireproofed. Unlike the other partially completed houses, all of the wood was smooth and fitted tightly together. Woodrat only had to wave a hand, and his smoke ran along the surface of a floor or wall, smoothing the splinters and rough areas.

Ozzy laughed silently as he watched Woodrat leap around the construction site and show off what a Wood Wright from the Smoke could do. The wood in the conjunction was easy to smooth, and Woodrat had decades of experience and the power of a Captain to back his skills. He deserved to have some fun showing off his hard-earned skills. The houses he and his apprentice built were tight and smooth, with beautiful woodworking inside and a roof that wouldn't leak. The carpenters walked around the completed house, making comments and appreciating the work.

After seeing how skilled Woodrat was, Seth made a suggestion. The carpenters and Ozzy worked on the basics of the next house under the Captain's direction. Woodrat concentrated on fixing any cracks and making each house a solid home to live in, along with adding small improvements as he thought of them. By the end of the day, the first hamlet had ten farmhouses ready for families to move into. They lacked furniture, hinges, and glass for the windows. That would be done over the next few days. But they were a lot better than a drafty wagon or the cold ground.

Woodrat found himself to be very popular. Many of the farmer's wives requested additional shelves, cabinets, and other additions to their homes. Never having been called on before to show off his abilities for such an audience, the wood wright went all out, improving each home to its owner's needs. Two fathers were asking about apprenticeships for their children. Woodrat listened to them and nodded. But explained that a ship sailing on the Smoke might prove difficult for an unskilled lad or lass from the conjunction.

Ozzy declared a break for dinner, and afterward, they would do a gopher hunt and start clearing some land. During the meal, Jonathan found out that the wives had held a meeting and decided he would get the job as mayor of their new hamlet. The men congratulated him and were secretly thrilled the job hadn't fallen on them. The new mayor was pushed to ask what precisely a gopher hunt was.

The Butcher opened the large bag he always carried and brought out a hammer and a plow. Jonathan backed away two steps, something telling him not to get near either of the tools for some reason. The hammer was a giant mallet with a wooden head over a foot in diameter. The plow was bright and sharp. It looked like an ordinary plow with a sword instead of a normal plowshare. His eyes were drawn to the edge, where he saw it had carved a grove in the flagstone. Any fool could see that the items were magical. Ozzy picked up each in turn and explained them. "I won a bet a while back and picked up some odd items. This hammer can drive out gophers and moles from the ground in a big circle around me. It usually kills them as well. Betty sent along a great recipe for gopher stew. The kids can run around and collect the carcasses. The fun starts if we get a named gopher. They're too small for me to gain points from and can't hurt me. I thought maybe you and some other farmers could whack them with an adze while I keep them under control. A few Core Skill Points go a long way when starting out."

Jonathan was staring at the hammer and suddenly very scared and excited. Points were hard to come by. Even when a small named creature invaded the village's lands, the farmers were told to run away and not fight them. Guards from the keep would come and claim the kill and the precious points that came with them. Things worked differently here. Much differently. He was being offered a chance at some points and even a somewhat safe way to get them. He'd never been in a fight with a monster before, but Ozzy was correct that some of the magical points could mean the difference between a poor harvest and having extra food to sell. The richest farming families he'd heard of had sons and daughters with the Abundance skill or a talent for Earth magic. He was scared, but not going to pass up a chance like this. "That sounds good to me. I'll get people ready whenever you want to start. But what does the plow do?"

"Oh, it's useful but not nearly as much fun. I can use it to level out some farmland and save you some time. Using it takes a lot of stamina, but it makes a nice field. I'll do twenty acres in three of the hamlets today. The plow can level out the land, break up the ground, and stack all the rocks around the edge in just a few minutes. I just run along behind as fast as I can. Jon and Cham will convince the stumps to go away while we hunt gophers. By the end of the week, you should have 100 acres of farmland ready for you to plant."

Jonathan waited for everyone to start laughing at Ozzy's story, but it didn't happen. Eventually, he just said 'Thank you.' again, and got people ready to hunt gophers.

Hammer of Gopher Thumping (Legendary)
Created by an unknown smith during the South Farthing Gopher Wars. This enchanted Warhammer will do double damage to gophers and can be ‘thumped’ upon the ground once a minute, which forces any rodent within 100’ of the wielder to appear above ground and take 100 crushing damage.

Vorpal Plowsword +3 (Legendary)
At one time, this legendary sword could slay armies with a swing and brought about a time of great peace in the empire. The hero, Cathbert, retired and vowed to have it forged into a plow. While it still looks like a sword, it is indeed a plow. Thrice per day, it will till the soil, weed, and fertilize the ground. Unfortunately, it drains the stamina needed to do the job the hard way. Each acre turned into cropland this way drains 250 stamina from the user. Cathbert did his whole farm in a day. Other people struggle to get 40 acres done in a month.