The Butcher of Gadobhra

Chartok the Necrobunny was having a bad day. He'd really wanted to make the whole 'Undead Rabbit Horde' work. He'd been using wolves as his minions for ages and needed a change. No one ever conquered the world with undead bunnies! Just the looks on the humans’ faces would have been worth the trouble.

The problem was, they really weren't terribly effective. True, they were easy to raise from the dead. That little area near Sedgewick was an area where generations of beginning heroes had started their careers. There were thousands of corpses available, just under a layer of sod. He'd gathered up a horde of 30 zombie fat rabbits and decided to clear out a bandit camp for practice. Score: Bandits 30, Zombbits 2. And he'd even attacked while they were asleep!

He went back to the burrow under the hill to see if he could find some tougher ones. He took over a fresh bunny body and walked in. The silly things paid him no attention. It took about ten minutes for him to kill a few dozen and turn them into undead. The first level was full of fat rabbits and ruled over by a "Stout Rabbit." Chartok rolled on the ground laughing. What was next? Big Boned Rabbits? Portly Rabbits? He was never going to make this theme work. He was so glad he hadn't invested a lot of effort into it. Time to go back to working with wolves.

He wondered what to do with all of these stupid undead bunnies following him. Maybe turn them loose near a village and let the feral undead bother some humans? That sounded fun! He took them over to the nearest village and snapped all of the necromantic bonds he used to control his minions, eager to see what they did.

What they did was start eating grass. Stupid rabbits! Human zombies had a hunger for Brainzzz! but these were hopping around looking for Grazzzz! He was done. Time to head south and find a puppy to take over and build his pack back up.

Surveying the scene of last night's little battle, Ozzy was even more confused. What did those guys hope to accomplish by destroying a corral and a chunk of pasture? Easy enough to fix. He started dragging the killed sedge beasts over to his butcher block while Rolly filled in the hole. As he was cutting up the carcasses, Ozzy saw Rolly dragging some large logs over to the broken corral. "Aren't those a tad big, Rolly? We should probably go cut some lodgepole to fix that, not foot-thick timbers."

"Naw, I got this. I want to try out one of my new Shepherd powers."

Ozzy watched as bony blades sprouted from Rolly's forearms. The things were two feet in length and looked deadly. He took a log and ran the blade down the edge of the wood. He continued to cut the same grove until he cut all the way through the log, shearing off a 1" thick plank. Then, he proceeded to turn the entire log into a stack of planks.

"Holy shit, when did you learn to do that? What the hell are Shepherd powers?"

Rolly continued to make planks, easily cutting the huge timbers down to a more useful size. "Oh, I grabbed a perk for increased damage from natural weapons when we got points for killing that wolf boss. The enhancement interacts with my Shepherd class and lets me use some new abilities. Pretty cool, isn't it?"

Frightening was a better word, Ozzy thought to himself and then shrugged. Rolly had always been able to find weird little advantages in classes no one else bothered with. Looks like he'd done the same here.

It took a couple of hours to repair all the damage. Rolly quickly rounded up a small herd of cows and started feeding them into the rebuilt corral. The great slaughter began again. Ozzy called a break around noon and started up a fire. "I grabbed some onions and garlic from the garden behind the inn; let’s see how herb-encrusted sedge beast liver tastes."

After frying up the sliced liver and onions, Ozzy tried a bite and grimaced. "Damn, I think that's twice as bad." He staggered off behind a tree. Rolly munched on a slice himself. Five minutes later, Ozzy got back and saw that not only had Rolly finished the pan of meat, but he was frying up some more. "This stuff is actually pretty good, Ozzy; I'm not sure why you guys don't like it."

"Rolly, aren't you getting notifications about the poison? That much is probably going to kill you!"

"No worries, Ozzy. They keep showing up, but my Shepherd powers are neutralizing the poison pretty fast. Getting some nice increases."

[You have eaten enough poisoned meat to kill a normal human. Luckily, you are pretty far from normal right now.

You have gained 50 points in Minor Poison Resistance, achieving rank 1.

You have gained 50 points in CON. Your CON is now at rank 1 for a total of 3.

You are still famished. It's like you were eating for two!!]

Just then, two large wagons drove up to the barn, each pulled by four oxen. Two Legionnaires in light armor hopped down and walked over. "Greetings, citizen. Decurion Gustavus of the Emperor's Legion at Rowan Keep. I understand you have a load of hides for me and another of cured meat." He looked oddly at where Rolly was slicing up more liver and setting it to fry. The smell was horrible.

Ozzy decided to let Rolly enjoy his lunch. "Sure thing. Let's get you loaded up. Mr. Billy said you'd be coming by. I've got 200 full carcasses hanging, and 50 should be cured well enough. Check them out and tell me what you want loaded. I'll load up the hides."

Each wagon had a crew of four men wearing tunics but no armor. They carried swords, though. New recruits, probably. They started to grab individual hides off a stack, but Ozzy shooed them away. Easier to just do it himself. Bending down, he took hold of either side of the pallet, lifted the stack of hides, and carried it to the wagon. Everyone got out of his way. He set the pallet on the end of the wagon and pushed it up to the front. "You want another? It looks like your wagon can hold the weight, and I can toss another on."

Gustavus stroked his chin and took a long look at Ozzy. "That would be just fine, citizen. My men will make sure to balance the loads and stay out of your way while you load the wagons." Ozzy moved a second pallet to the back of the wagon and then started carrying out smoked sedge beasts two at a time and putting them in the first wagon. Both were loaded in about a quarter-hour.

The Legionnaire shook Ozzy's hand. "My thanks. That puts us back on the road much quicker than I expected. You have a large enough stock on hand that I'll be sending the wagons down again tomorrow, along with payment of course. Convey my thanks to Mr. Billy. And if you ever have a thought to other employment, please see me. The Legion would welcome a man with your strength. "

"I'll keep that in mind. Have a good trip, and I'll notify Mr. Billy about the second load." The wagons moved off down the road. After they left, Ozzy walked back down to where Rolly was finishing his meal. How Rolly could eat that shit was beyond him.

"Ok, round another bunch up. Might as well keep filling that smokehouse. The Legion seems hungry.”

Suzette burned. Her head exploded as daylight filled the room. She tried to hide under her blanket, but it was rudely ripped away. The light became brighter as Zephyr opened the other shutter.

"Damn girl, how late did you stay up last night. You knew we were leaving at dawn to go herb picking."

Suzette considered throwing Zephyr out one of the windows but was having trouble just getting up. A mug of tea was put in her hands, heavy with honey. Ok, maybe not kill Zephyr just yet. "Well, maybe a bit past 4 am. But I have this skill that doubles my hours sleeping."

Zephyr rolled her eyes. "So, an hour and a half sleep, but it counts as 3 hours. Yep, that's plenty. Well, no sympathy, I’m up, so you get to be up. If something horrible in the forest kills us, you can take a nap then."

Suzette downed the tea in three gulps. "Death, yes! Must look on the bright side. Wow, this place looks so much worse in the daylight when you can see the dust." Last night had been her first sleeping at the Tavern. The room was a long, narrow garret tucked under the eaves. The ceiling was 12' high in the middle but sloped down on either side to only 3' high. Small cabinets and shelving filled the long, low sides of the room, except where two windows jutted out on either side. Currently the room was mostly full of ancient junk that needed going through and tossing away. Derek had told her she could keep what she wanted and toss the rest. Things had been stored up here for generations. Right now, she had her bedroll in a cleared spot on the floor. Cleaning out the room could wait for later when she had volunteers. She had several in mind.

The girls headed downstairs to the kitchen. Granya refilled the mugs of tea and Betty had just brought fresh bread from the oven and gave them a loaf to split with some fresh butter. Granya leaned back against the sink, wiping her hands on her apron, and gave Suzette a nod. "Derek is happy with how things are working out. We went through quite a bit of alcohol last night to the adventuring crowd. When you get back, he'd like to show you the brewery in the basement. It's not much, but it keeps us in small ale and beer. The hard stuff we bring in from down south, along with that Bludgeon Brew crap."

"Will do. Herbs first. Brewing second. Then off to Alchemy school and then back to sling beer all night. Come, my young padawan; we have to go find valuable herbs and dangerous beasts in the wilds." Suzette downed the tea, grabbed the rest of the loaf, and they were out the door."

Out in the woods, Zephyr took charge. She gathered each herb or mushroom while lecturing on how to harvest them and a bit about their use. Suzette paid attention to the lecture, but more to the woods around them. She didn't want to have something like that damn worm sneak up on them again. Eventually, they came to the Phytolaccaceae Belladonna, where they had fought the thing, and Suzette had died. The bush no longer had its juicy-looking berries. Zephyr explained they only ripened like that for a week or so each summer, and then the berries dried up. They looked like bright red raisins and lay in heaps on the ground.

"So, these are still poisonous?" Suzette was gathering some up to experiment with.

"Not nearly as much. Birds and small animals will live for quite a while after eating them, then collapse. This spreads the seeds and provides fertilizer for the new bush. Dad and I actually pull a lot out of the ground each year to keep the spread down. Too many are bad for the area. Dad sent me for some of the potent kind for some work he was doing."

"These have their uses, though. They can be used in alchemy, and I've heard that there is a way to distill some potent alcoholic beverages from them. But you'd have to be careful, or you'd just end up with some very dead drunks."

Now that interested Suzette. While Zephyr was getting some watercress and wild asparagus by the river, she put on her light gloves and gathered up a large bag of the poisonous raisins. She was going to be working on alchemy, brewing, and poisons. Surely, she'd find uses for these. They made it back to town, and Zephyr waved as she headed home. Derek was waiting for her and she headed down to the large basement under the tavern to start learning brewing.