True to his word, Ben let everyone know about another batch of bar-b-que late in the evening. Mostly it was the original crew, but Ozzy saw a few from Layla's or Sammy's groups. He walked back and forth, now and then moving one of the large pieces of meat around with his tong, but the pit seemed to be cooking the meat evenly. Mostly he was just waiting to see if he got another notification from the pit when the time was up. He was a little leery of jumping in to haul out a chunk of meat from a pit that used screaming humanoids as an ingredient.

The fire in the center still shot up out of the pit like a roaring beacon. The smoke stayed in the pit though, swirling around and around. Some part of the magic? The heat from the fire was going straight up, the cooking was being done by the hot smoke. And the way it was moving it was like a huge convection oven. Ozzy shrugged, hard to understand magic, let alone the intriquicies of a complex subject like bar-b-que.

As far as he could tell, twelve hours after the pit had lit up so spectacularly, the flames died down to embers and the smoke in the pit started to drift out.

The Charnel Pit of the Butcher has finished its task!

Tasty Dark Roasted Sedge Beast x 24 may be safely removed.

You have earned 24x 5 EP for a Total of 120 EP.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 1 in Pit Alchemy. You have learned new recipes.

Select a new recipe learn from this list:

1) Hickory Smoked, Honey Glazed Bacon

(Requires cured hog bellies, honey, hickory logs.)

2) Ham of the Apocalypse

(Requires hog legs, screaming charcoal, barrel of dark mana.)

3) Dragonfire Smoked Sausages

(Requires meat ground by a butcher in a grinder of darkened steel. Casings from sedge beast innards. Peppers of the kind not eaten by sane humans, onions, garlic, horse-radish, and just a pinch of paprika. Also requires the aid of a smoke elemental to turn the sausages as they cook.)

While he really wanted to know more about the other two options, Ozzy selected the bacon recipe. He couldn't wait to try the bacon. Tomorrow was a day off, he'd have to go hunting up some pigs from one of the local farmers.

"Ok, should be safe, but let me go down first, just in case." Ozzy jumped down into the pit with a large wooden trough one of the carpenters had made for him. He sliced open one of the carcasses, and watched as clear juices ran from the cut. The meat tasted good, not quite as good as the stuff from the barn. It lacked the finishing touch of the dwarven whiskey. But considering how horrible sedge beast normally tasted, this was great. He'd let the others cool, and take some over to Suzette, and save the rest for the legion.

After filling the trough, he held it up over his head for Ben and Chad to grab hold of. He needed to build a better way to do this. At least a set of stairs to make it easy getting up and down. He wondered if changing anything about the pit would disrupt whatever odd magic was going on here. He left the rest of the carcasses down in the pit to cool.

After he climbed up from the pit, he saw Billy and Vern with heaping plates of meat. Someone had brought out beer and some bread to go with it. Billy wandered over to talk. "This is good Ozzy. Ben says you just started cooking it this morning? Scared the shit out of me when that fire shot up, got to tell you. I was glad to learn it was just you cooking and not some damned demon.

Ozzy decided not to meantion what he suspected about the pit. "Yeah, sorry about that, I wanted a hot fire but it sort of got a bit out of control. Old family recipe for pit barb-b-que from way back. Thought I'd try it out."

Billy talked around another bite. "Well, it tastes fine. And cuts off days of smoking the old way. Is this cured and ready to ship?"

Ozzy took a bite and nodded. "Yep, it's cured all the way through. A bit more moisture in it though. I think we should break up the meat a bit, and pack it in barrels, and salt it down good. Celery powder would be good."

"Celery? For taste?"

"Nope. For the nitrates. Helps preserve the meat. Just need to dry out the celery good, then feed all the pieces through a grinder. Sprinkle a couple of pounds into each barrel as you add the salt and meat. Will keep a long time that way."

Billy liked the idea. "Plus we can charge more, and it's easy to store excess for shipment, and easier to ship. I like it."

Billy was quiet for a moment, then continued. "Things are running pretty good so far. Hell of a start, and I know it was hard on you and the other workers. But with the meat processing, the brewery, and the dungeon, we should be ACME's most profitable group. If we get that city opened up, the skies the limit."

Ozzy said "I sense a 'but' at the end of that."

Billy looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot. "Yeah, there sure was. There may be some problems coming up the road. Momco. wants the area, so they'll be causing trouble. Plus, and I'll have to call you a liar if you repeat this, I can't trust everyone in ACME. Layla is in it for Layla. And I'm betting Sammy is already in Momco.'s pocket. So keep your eyes open, and if you see something, come talk to me. Don't talk to anyone else. "

Ozzy looked around at the people eating the food he'd cooked. Some were old friends, some he barely knew before this job. But they were all becoming friends. But not Layla or Sammy or Vern. They were here for themselves or the glory of ACME. So was Billy, but Billy had the most to lose here, and had the most to gain by keeping his crew of workers happy. He could work with Billy.

"Yeah. I can do that. And I'll let some of the others know. Suzetter and Ben for sure, and Rolly." Saying that, he realized he hadn't seen Rolly in a couple of days. "Hmm, you haven't seen Rolly lately, have you?"

Billy took a second to bring up a screen with his roster of workers on it. "He's assigned to work with the sheep and sedge beast herds, so I don't see him much, but it has been a couple of days. My roster shows him asleep some where out in the pasture area." Billy noticed something else on the list.

One of his workers had somehow changed their name. Checking, he saw that all of ACME's files now listed the new name. He needed to have a small talk with Benjamin Franklin the 7th at some point.