The Barony of Brownridge was known for its well-ordered fields and pastures. A strict rotation of crops had been followed for centuries, alternating the growing of produce for the peasants and herdsmen, hay and alfalfa for winter feed, and pasture for the large herds of cattle. Over that time, every rock found in the fields had been added to the piles until the forty-acre fields were each surrounded by high bocage. This kept the herds in their pastures and not eating the vegetables or the winter feed. Large red barns dotted the land, providing snug homes for the cattle during the winter storms and dry storage for hay and grains.

The villages of the peasant farmers and herdsmen weren't nearly so snug as the barns. The buildings in the towns huddled close together, and the buildings were made of the same stone as the bocage with tight chinking of clay and chopped straw. A small house was easier to keep warm when the winter winds came howling. Many herdsmen, single or married, slept in the barns to 'keep an eye on the herds.' This saved a cold walk in the morning and evening, and a warm pallet in the hay was better than a drafty bed in their own home.

Butchers and Meatpackers went from barn to barn, culling the herds while scribes noted the weight of each barrel of salted beef. Carefully calculated amounts of meat were shipped to the markets of the empire. The amount of beef produced was always less than what could be sold. Scarcity kept the demand firm and the prices high. Meat from Brownridge supplied 53% of the meat sold in the Northern Dutchy. The other 47% was shared between nobles with similar but smaller, operations. Everyone was making a profit and looked to Brownridge for guidance. When someone new entered the market, they were 'encouraged' to play by the rules in place. These included buying market share from a current producer. This caused fights, of course. Often open and bloody conflicts as whole herds were slaughtered or Butchers with bloody meathooks and cleavers destroyed bootleg butcher shops and warehouses.

Brownridge meatpackers supplied 96% of the preserved meat needed by the legion outposts in the northern dutchy. Three years before, it would have been 100%. Competition from corporations in several small villages was cutting into their markets—especially the northernmost village Sedgewick. Pentex, Alchemarx, and Soylent proved amazingly easy to work with. The managers of the little villages that got what should have been violent lessons instead welcomed the Brownridge Butcher Squads, confusing them by asking about buy-in costs, organizational pyramids, and profit sharing. Deals were under negotiation to bring them into the larger organization.

The problem child was Sedgewick. The Baron of Gadobhra was selling more meat to the Legion each month and cheating by improving the quality. Sedgewick had stolen 4% of the pie and looked to be going for a larger slice. They had gone unnoticed at first. Far to the north, they sold to only one outpost and not directly to the Office of Acquisitions. But the cheap, high-quality meat had been noticed. OoA agents were buying all the excess meat that Rowan Keep could buy, raising the price to put a profit in their pockets, and still being able to sell to other Legion outposts at lower prices than Brownridge charged.

The problem had grown by the time it was noticed. Sedgewick was far to the north and presented unique difficulties.

Some were concerned that Baron William was planning to expand his meat sales to the legion. A representative of the Butcher's Guild confirmed that the Gadobhra branch had registered nearly two-hundred butchers, half of which were in the second Tier. There was talk of sending a senior guild administrator to make an inspection, but no one volunteered or could be coerced to take the mission. Even though the city had been lost for hundreds of years, the legends of a dungeon hungry for butchers persisted.

Alchemarx helpfully offered to solve the problem in exchange for 10% of the total market. After some haggling, they reached an agreement at 4%, and plans were made to undermine Baron William, take over Sedgewick, and send Gadobhra back to the dustbin of history. Like many plans, it might have worked if their opponent hadn't made plans of their own. Alchemarx and Brownridge found out they were out of time when the first load of meat hit the market in Wolfsburg.

Baron Angus MaCree was at dinner when his eldest son, Jordan, returned home. He entered the dining room leaving a trail of mud from his dirty boots. Angus approved of the entrance. Working clothes and muddy boots meant the boy was keeping busy. His dinner guests sat quietly as Jordan grabbed a random seat, speared a large T-bone off a platter, and began rapidly eating. "We have problems. I rode all night from Wolfsburg."

'Black' Angus had a hard rule about talking business in front of anyone but family. The lesser nobles, cousins, and hangers-on at the table couldn't be trusted for a minute. "You know the rules, boy. Leave it for later. You look hungry. Chow down, and we can talk."

Jordan looked around the table. "Get out. I don't care if you take your plates or leave your grub." One of his cousins started to protest. Jordan turned to his father's right-hand man. "Heath, if they aren't gone in one minute, toss them out the front door and set the dogs on them. Then come back and grab a steak with Dad and me." Heath turned to Angus who nodded.

"You heard him. Git!" People left. Heath returned, the doors were shut, they ate for a minute, and then Jordan started talking. "A thousand barrels of smoke-infused meat just hit the market in Wolfsburg. The damned stuff is so heavy with dark mana that it's like eating a strength potion and a minor health buff. Similar stuff to what the Legion was buying."

Angus lost interest in his steak. "Damnation. Which of the damned idiots in Acquisition is dumping on the market. I'll have their hide."

Jordan swallowed a chunk of nearly raw beef, drank a glass of wine, and spat to the side. "It isn't them. Someone is going door to door delivering barrels to every alehouse and eatery in town, selling at half the price the army pays. They could double their money just by making one delivery to the Legion. They hit the market hard and fast. Every time they showed up somewhere, they sold multiple barrels as soon as someone sampled it and took cash, no credit. Big men are making the deliveries with a barrel on each shoulder."

"Teamsters Guild? Why the hell would they get involved in this? We've had a good working relationship for a century." Angus didn't like this problem.

Jordan waited for his father to get angry, then hit him with the culprit's identity. "It wasn't Teamsters; it was Contract Workers. Specifically workers from Sedgewick. It's stamped right on the damned barrels. 'Smokehouse Beef, produced in Sedgewick.' This is Baron William taking a dump in our territory and not caring who knows it."

Jaxon Myrtle saw the first wagonload of barrels pass by his office a little before lunch. As he sat and ate his soup and sandwich, the master of the Grain Hall saw eleven more wagonloads go buy. They bore the distinct markings of barrels of groats. Something bothered him. "Smythe! Gibbons! In my office at once!"

The two scribes were there in less than a minute. "Yes, sir!"

"Why are we shipping wagonloads of groats at this season? The price won't peak for a month. Find out who in the warehouse authorized the sales and take them to a back room. Baroness Windrover will want to know who he took a bribe from and that he's been dealt with."

The scribes consulted log books. One ran to the warehouse and returned. "It's not us, sir. Someone put 500 barrels of groats on the market at cut-rate prices. The ranchers and grocers bought them as fast as they could get the cash. Our buyer tried to get in on the deal but was too slow." Both men were sweating.

"Who? Give me a name?!"

"The barrels all say the same thing, sir. 'Best Quality Sedgewick Groats! Grown in the Barony of Gadobhra.' Stamped right on the front and top of every barrel."

Jason was not looking forward to his meeting with the Baroness. He hoped he'd be in the room when she dealt with this upstart from the north.

Baron Orlo Fallowstone of Crystalthorn wished some days that he could turn over his duties as Baron to one of his siblings. He found the responsibilities of Nobility to be boring compared to his research and teaching at The College of Arcane Runecasters. There were only two problems with that: The first was that his title of Baron made his position of High Mage unassailable by any lesser faculty members. Tenure and talent didn't trump nobility. The second was the unfortunate fact that all three of his younger sisters had succumbed to the family curse and been given new homes in Fallowstone Sanitarium. He had made sure that their rooms had windows on the side facing his office so he could wave to them each day as they screamed at him.

He had hoped for a few hours of uninterrupted time to decipher a particularly difficult elven rune found on a pottery shard. He wasn't going to get it. Word had been sent ahead that Magistrate Greywater needed to see him immediately. The man was making his way up the fifty-seven stories to his office as he mused about his lost research time. It wouldn't take long for a mage with levitation, but it kept many other annoyances away. He often wished he could place his offices on the top floor of the sanitorium across the way. That would put him another twelve stories higher. Research would be impossible, though, as the entire building was under the effect of a mana-draining vortex located below in the catacombs.

Incarcerating insane mages and leaving them access to their magics wasn't a good idea. All of the sanitarium had to do things the hard way as a result, using mechanical elevators, wood-burning stoves, and lanterns for light. Barbaric but needful. Only the roof and jagged ruins on the top of the building allowed magic to function and only the most basic of effects. The flow of mana into the blank area of the building made casting very difficult, and runic formations were out of the question. The tower had originally had an additional dozen stories. A failed escape attempt had shut down part of the vortex, and those stories had exploded as the failsafe spells activated, allowing a ton of dwarven cataclysmite to explode. Better the destruction of part of the building than the escape of the most dangerous inmates.

Orlo had gone as far as to make plans to rebuild the top level and move his offices and research there. This presented several problems, and he was still trying to decide if it was worth the trouble. He was still musing when the magistrate knocked and entered his office. "We have a rogue rune smith, Orlo. Look at these!"

Greywater placed three finely made staves on his desk. They looked identical. Picking one up, Orlo could feel their strong affinity with fire. Very strong. The wood was smoke infused to the degree that he didn't think was possible. Not one bit of it, from the core to the outer skin, could hold more smoke. The dark shiny wood was carefully crafted to look like a natural branch, the look was very popular these days, but the hands of a Master Wood Wright had certainly shaped them. The butt was of Dark Iron, as was the setting for a small, dark red gem on the other end. He could see the natural Rune of Fyre in the gem, glowing and gathering mana to itself. The staff was only carved with simple runes to channel the fire and give better control. Some would scoff at that, but any Fire Mage who lived long enough understood it wasn't the fire in your belly that counted; it was your control.

The staves would enhance a student's control in the first Tier and provide more power to any practitioner of fire-based spells in a higher Tier. There was room for many more pieces of rune work to be added. Overall, a stave like this shouldn't be on the market for sale. Nobles would buy them for their children entering an arcane college, and rune smiths would pay a high price. After adding more runes, they could be sold for ten times the buying price. And with adventurers entering the marketplace? Costs were increasing quickly. In normal letters, the staves had an inscription near the butt. 'Crafted by Cingo Incorporated. Imported from the Smoke by Baron William of Gadobhra.'

"Three staves. Each of which could sell at auction for 200 to 500 gold pieces. Three staves with rare gems that shouldn't be for sale, even as small as these are. I think that we can count the rumors of an expedition to the Plane of Smoke to be true. I'll give you 500 for each, but tell me who you got them from and what you paid." The magistrate accepted the deal and the signed paper authorizing him to draw 1500 gold from the treasury.

"I paid 50 gold each. A merchant was selling them to the new students down at the cheap end of the market. He started with two dozen, and I only managed to get the last three. The merchant laughed when I asked him to accompany me and showed me his license to sell, bought just that morning. I was going to stop him, but that was when some student started playing with his new stave, and the fireworks started exploding."

Angry, Orlo took one of the staves and attempted to break it over his knee. The wood was too hard, and he only gave himself a bruise that made him limp for a day.