Why is Agoodon so rich?

Where was it?
This little scene was a lot of fun, though it’s still in a VERY rough draft form. Originally it was placed near the beginning of Finding My Lich where I was still describing Abaddon. Though it didn’t quite fit in Finding My Lich, don’t be surprised if elements of it appear in future books.

To fund their king’s venture on Earth, Abaddon had started a minor industry in smelting the gold they had mostly ignored until then. Collection was easy. The rocks could be scooped up by the shovelful from most any yard or field in the kingdom—and the farmers of Abaddon were more than happy to donate them. The trolls had mostly taken over crushing the rock. The majority of their childhood games involved crushing rocks, so they made sport of the task.

Last time Eric had peeked in on their operation, he watched them set up redstone boulders in a triangle at the base of a hill, then take turns rolling themselves down the slope to strike the boulders out like bowling pins. The cheers were the loudest for for the most pieces created and the highest fountain of stones into the air, as the audience danced in the resultant ‘stone-shower.’ Barely dodging falling shrapnel twice the size of his own head, Eric left them to it. But the trolls turned even boulders into sand in very short order.

The gold was separated out of the sand with a sort of water bath and sent over the the hydras. The hydras had started a companion competition to determine who could keep the most smelting fires going for the longest times. He’d heard in the interest of fairness, the hydra elders made a rule that they had to make teams with a matching number of heads after one old veteran with eight heads—the most of any currently living hydra—had soundly trounced all challengers by keeping at least two fires going with each head. Now each competition had to have teams or singles with the same head-count on either side. His eight heads could be against a two-person team with four heads each, or three and five, or even a four-person team of only two-headed youngsters. He’d heard it was excellent motivation for the youngsters to learn to control their flame. They all wanted to win the Smelting Tourney.