Timeline: Starts about 20 years before beginning of "Luvirini's Journey"

As told to Luvirini by Adventure guild master Gisanna in "know your enemy" class in the adventurer guild academy.

This was our second mission ever after having graduated from the academy.

We were sent to a small village Abedale in Ixbridge that was the victim of cattle theft.

There were five of us, me, the light fighter in my fighting leathers and dual swords, Xirkel, a high man fighter in his chain shirt with his great sword, Kuume, our wood elven fighting priestess with her rapier, dueling shield and leathers, Celicia our dragon blood-elven bard/sorceress and Hiipi, our tall-fellow halfling ranger, who mostly used his sling.

As it was in the heartlands of the kingdom, so the guild representative who briefed us on the mission expected the thief to be either some human or a bear or similar minor threat. He thought that if it was something more dangerous like a large group of bandits there would likely have been some other sightings, as there were only small coves of woodlands and similar between the large grain fields.

As we got to the village, the villages told us of the losses, how every few days one of their cows would just disappear from the field. It could happen at any time of the day or night, though mostly at night and their posted guards never saw anything.

As we had arrived late in the afternoon after a long day of walking, we decided to start looking around the next morning and went to the inn to freshen up and then sleep.

Next morning we were told that again one cow had disappeared during the night, so some villagers took us to the herd where that had happened.

We arrived at the remote field and Hiipi went to work.

He never was a man of many words and his report consisted of something like "Large humanoid, one. Maybe a small ogre."

We were all a bit puzzled at the possible ogre, as someone should really have seen one if there was one, given how densely populated the place was and how stupid ogres are. Also none of us others saw any tracks and according to stories we had heard ogres were supposed to be easy to track.

But Hiipi started to follow the tracks and we followed. While walking, we discussed fighting an ogre and came to the conclusion that close combat with such would be a bad idea, so we made a plan.

Xirkel and me prepared our bows, Hiipi got out his sling and Celicia would cast a fast running spell on everyone at first sight of trouble and we would split up, running in different directions but keeping in sight of each other. If the ogre followed one of us that person would concentrate on staying ahead of the ogre and the others would use ranged attacks. If the ogre attacked by throwing things we would mostly concentrate on dodging until the ogre ran out of things to throw, trying to do quick ranged shots if possible.

After following the tracks for couple of miles we finally arrived at a forest glen.

We were moving through the small forest when suddenly this ugly green thing rose up in front of us.

It was a "ooh no, a Troll, we are so screwed" moment, as we all realized that our original plan was not going to work, as a troll would regenerate any wounds faster than we could deal them while running away.

But in any case we had more a immediate problem when the troll charged us, so we ran away.

Celicia cast the fast running spells on each of us and we were able to outrun the troll. The troll gave up after having run a mile or so with us several hundred yards ahead.