Chapter 54: Mixing it up

Chapter 54: Mixing it up

"STOP!" Striding into his laboratory, Aliester was surprised to find Suzette there tossing bottles and pouring his precious ingredients into various jugs or beakers with no respect for measurement - and actually juggling with full bottles! Zephyr was behind her, stirring a huge pot of boiling mug wort leaves with one hand, and what smelled like chicken soup with the other.

Suzette smiled over her shoulder as she picked up a jug of blue liquid and poured it into eight potion bottles without looking. "Can't stop Aliester, you know that. I'm in the middle of making potions. It will ruin the batch."

"Ruin what batch? How do you even know what you're making?"

After she had stoppered two dozen bottles of various colors. Suzette wiped her hands and turned on the stool to face Aliester. "I'm sensing some hostility here. Didn't you ask me to help you catch up on your potions for all the dungeon delvers?"

"I will admit to asking, yes. But that is not the proper way to measure ingredients and you know it. None of those will turn out correctly. And why in the name of the Golden Order are there bubbles inside those bottles."

There was a proper way to do Alchemy, and while he had no idea what Suzette was doing, it wasn't proper!

Suzette looked up at Aliester and smiled at him. It was like the sun came out, and he had to remind himself he was married. "Tell you what, I'll finish this batch while you watch. Then you can check my work. If they're bad I'll pay for them and go back to the old way. But if the potions are good..."

"They won't be. They can't be. They have bubbles!"

"But if the potions are good, you have to learn how I'm doing it and help me perfect it. Deal?"

"Deal. There is no way those are properly mixed."N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

Suzette glanced at the two dozen potion bottles that were rapidly fermenting. "Oh, well if you are so sure, how about we make it a real wager? You wife is making her cherry and rhubarb pie tonight. I'll wager my piece of pie against yours."

There was a gasp from Zephyr. This was getting serious.

Aliester was fond of pie and never gained weight. This was a very good deal for him "I accept. I'm looking forward to eating your slice in front of you."

Over the next half hour, Suzette took four bottles at a time, uncorked them, and placed them on the heating pad until they reached the correct temperature for adding her mana to the mix. Each one turned the traditional shade of red, blue, or yellow that signified a good potion. Aliester then tested each one for quality. As the last one was analyzed and identified, the alchemist grumbled something under his breath.

"I'm sorry, Aliester, I didn't hear that correctly, can you repeat that?"

"I said, and I repeat, You Cheated! Now show me how you did it. You weren't even measuring!"

Suzette shook her head. "Nope, don't need to. Once I've used a recipe, I can always toss the right amount of ingredients into the mix. It's a barmaid skill called Mixology - let’s me put drinks together fast. What are potions except fancy magic drinks?"

"And the fermentation?"

"Oh, that's more complicated." Suzette pulled a small notebook out of her apron. "Notice that in each potion we have a base of alcohol and water. You even showed me the method for turning a bottle of wine into a weak potion in an emergency. My conjecture was that rather than starting with alcohol, I'd ferment it from the natural sugars and the potion ingredients. Most ingredients are plant based and some are even fruit. So, I started with those, some raw honey, and wine yeast. The wine cantrip makes them ferment quickly and seems to bring out the effects of the ingredients. Then I follow it up with empowering the potions in the normal way."

- Honey Brewed Stamina Potion

- Honey Brewed Mana Potion

- Healing Beer

=*=

Ozzy walked over to where the new worker housing was going up. Jorges and a crew of several stone masons had been working for a week on the building during the day shift. After dinner they had the help of about fifty more people. Everyone was anxious to move out of the huts. Not everyone had skills to help with the building, but everyone could haul materials, dig the basement, or haul dirt away.

The first story of the building was of stone. Each piece brought over from the quarry was two feet wide, three feet long, and a foot high. They weighed nearly half a ton each and the heavy wagons could only pack about eight of them per load. Two workers guided wagons back and forth from the quarry to the building constantly. Jorges needed a lot of stone for the first level.

He'd gone back and forth on the plans. He would have loved to make a nice motte and baily. Maybe something like Cardiff in Wales during the 1300's. But they needed something a bit more basic so he settled on a structure that was a large rectangle, 200' x 100' with a 60' x 120' courtyard. He could add corner towers and a nice gate house at a later date and make it a proper little castle.

With a roughly 600' perimeter, they needed 200 of the large stone bricks per layer. That was over 2400 bricks just for the outer wall, and another 2000 for the inner wall. The two feet between the two walls would be filled with hard packed dirt from digging out the basement. Jorges didn't know about magic or monsters, but such a wall could easily stop cannon balls and siege engines.

Eight bricks per wagon, two wagons making two trips each per hour for sixteen hours a day was about 500 bricks hauled in each long day. It took nearly two weeks just to haul the stone from the quarry. Four stone cutters worked each day using their specialized skills to carve the stones from the quarry. Vern had complained about all the man power going towards building worker housing. Billy wasn't worried. He had plans for a grand regional headquarters and this was just practice. Maybe something cozy like Versailles.

Each evening there was a steady stream of logs brought over to the building site, dragged or carried by the workers finished with their daily chores. These were quickly turned into beams and thick planks. The flooring between the basement and first floor was a foot wide and six inches thick, similar to what would be used in a medieval castle. The upper levels would be mostly wood and didn't have to be quite so heavily built.

The second level was where everyone would live, either in a large dormitory at either end for men or women, or in one of the smaller rooms in between. An open hallway with a railing overlooked the courtyard below.

The first level would have a kitchen and common room at one end. All the meals would be taken here, and in the evenings, it was a nice place to relax. The other end of the building was going to be a bath house and sauna.

The basement would cover the entire area of the building with storage for grain and food, along with some workshops. Jon and Cham had plans for a small drinking establishment in the basement, but they figured it was better to not tell Jorges that until after they got it built and moved in the beer. The tavern was a bit expensive for most of the workers, and was over-run with players too much of the time.

Ozzy helped out each evening and often in the morning. He was able to easily heft the stones and move them quickly to where they needed to be laid. It was ironic that he wouldn't even be sleeping here. But playing pack mule for Jorges had some benefits, like when you needed a bunch of rock for a pit bar-b-que.

"You need something Ozzy, or just early to haul rock for me?" Jorges had moved his forge over near where the front gate would be. This let him hammer out hinges and nails while keeping an eye on the growing walls.

"You'll get my help later, if that's alright. I came over to see if you had some smaller rocks, maybe left over from putting up the walls. I need a bunch to upgrade my pit." He sketched out the plans in the dirt and Jorges wrote down some notes.

"Yeah, we can do that. I'll have some of the guys turn the scrap rock over at the quarry into some usable shapes and we'll haul a couple of wagon loads over to you. I for one am happy with what you cook up in there. I'm getting really tired of groat muffins and the taste of chicken."

"Yeah, I agree with you on that. I mentioned to Billy that we needed some better food. Maybe once work gets done on your little castle, we can use some evenings to put in a few gardens for vegetables. I think ACME would happily feed us crap for five years so if we want better food, we'll have to get it ourselves."

Jorges agreed with that thought, "Hmm, I’ll put some thought into that. Maybe a big root cellar right under the kitchen - and a cold storage. We have an ice wizard, might as well make use of him."

"Sounds like a plan. I'll be back by the pit late afternoon and can help them unload the rock. Have to go see a farmer who lives down the road a bit about some pigs."