Santiro had been on his way to the Mountains of Rathe when he received a message that his brother needed him in Gukta, the relocated Froglok City. Why that slimy place had been chosen he didn’t know. He hated anything having to do with frogs, intelligent or not. Fingering the scar on his right cheek, he remembered the Frogloks that gave it to him and burned to destroy them all.

“Gah, I’m running late,” he muttered as he reached into his backpack for his Blood of the Wolf potion that his brother, Halyburton, had made for him and sighed. “Great, I forgot I drank the last of it a few days ago. Guess I’ll have to bribe Haly for some more.”

At least he was going in the right direction. The Plains of Karana were fairly large and luckily, he didn’t have that far to go. If he were lucky, he’d be in Gukta by nightfall. Admittedly, he could have taken a shortcut from Qeynos via the Plane of Knowledge. To be honest, going through Feerrot gave him the creeps. Never mind the fact he could easily have out run any of the Ogres that might have wandered by, but the many tales he heard and lived through were enough to make any sane Barbarian stay away from there.

Santiro was so lost in thought that he nearly missed the hulking figure just ahead of him bent over a bloody corpse. The sight of all that blood and gore almost made his stomach lurch. It appeared to be the corpse of a bear. A big one at that. And the figure huddling over it was a ..

“Troll!” he shouted drawing his sword and rushing toward it.

Just as Santiro was about to strike, the Troll looked up at him and caused him to deftly turn aside his sword to strike the ground just inches from the Trolls body. Santiro was shocked at the look on the Troll’s face. Was that tears? On a filthy Troll?

“Please, Brother of the Great White,” the Troll said in a surprisingly mild high-pitched voice. “Strike me down where am. Let the pain and anguish end I beg of you.”

A troll begging for death?

“I should seeing as you destroyed a defenseless bear,” Santiro said angrily raising his sword to strike. “My brother taught me to appreciate the wildlife that the Gods were kind enough to leave for us to hunt as we needed. Not to outright slaughter for the pure pleasure of it.”