Trolls and the Drow.

You smell trolls.

Of course, they love to make their homes in the mountains, so you should have expected to encounter at least their kind. You recall from your early days as a ranger having to take down one or two trolls, but you had your fellow friends to help you, one of them being your wife who was the most daring out of all of them. Of course, she also had, at least, a hundred years of experience being a ranger. You learned quite a bit from her.

You frown, realizing that you were reminiscing. Thinking of her can't bring her back, so only action can. Despite the known fact, it is difficult not to recall your experiences with her since they held so much impact to your current abilities and knowledge. She was as much as a mentor as she is your wife. You are indebted to her, so you need to save her, even if it means risking your life.

Speaking of which, you aren't planning to have to risk your life to trolls. While they are difficult to kill when on the offensive, they are also incredibly dumb and slow. In this case, it will be an embarrassment to your skills if you aren't able to evade them or kill one unsuspectingly.

Trolls also can't see very well in the dark which adds to the fact that while they make their home in the mountains, they can't move too deep. They have to go out from time to time to gather wood to make fire so that they could see.

Considering the fact that it the mountain is a frozen, winter landscape, you have to make the assumptions that the trolls probably developed a resistant to the cold if they had to regularly exit the mountain to resupply.

You decide it would be best at this point to extinguish the flame that lit your path so far. While it will be annoying given that you'd much see rather than smell or hear, you didn't want to give away your presence. If the trolls have to at least memorize and feel their way around when exiting or entering the cave, so will you.

Now without any light to help, you rely on the rocky, cavernous walls and slowly moving your feet forward to make sure you are stepping on solid ground. You unsheathed one of your knives and held it close in case you encounter any surprises.

You silently creep for seemingly hours. Feeling the rocky wall which have been slowly increasing in temperature, you recognize it as a sign that you are closing on to either a fire, a bunch of trolls, or both. Tightening your grip around the handle fo your knife, you hold your breath, breathing in slowly and maintaining as much silence as you can.

Just as you expect, a small light appears. You aren't sure how far you traveled to reach this point, but it didn't matter as you intend to keep moving forward.

The light gets bigger and more defined that you can see it is a large fire on the ground and surrounding it looked to be three trolls who are on the ground, snoring loudly. You can't help but grin, finding this a most welcoming situation.

You can easily move past them if you wanted to, but your smile falters when you smell a different race amongst the trolls. It is faint, but detectable with your trained nose. The only problem is that you couldn't identify what race would stick around troll.

Trolls did keep prisoners for either sexual relief or more commonly, to eat them. The only problem is that there are very few people to travel and come across trolls in Madness. The scent isn't a common race either, being nothing of human, elf, gnome, dwarf, or any of those who you pass by frequently.

Your eyes narrowed and you frown, not liking this extra variable. The fact that the scent would have been undetectable to anybody else also bode ill for you. You will find soon enough though who the third party is as you creep closer.

Within meters of the snoring trolls who are, at least, seven feet with their clubs in their hands, you widened your eyes to find what looked to be a female drow, completely naked and sleeping on the ground next to the trolls. You could only see the woman's face, but she looked unkempt and appears to have been captured recently.

You've heard about drows before from Elayna and you recalled knowledge from her explanations. They are long-distant cousins of the Elf, but are much darker and even a little purple too. They usually dwelled underground and rarely come up to the surface to socialize. Some people say they embody evil and were once separated from their paler relatives, banished to the underground.

This is the first time you saw one and of all times, she is ****. You can't make out her appearance with the trolls blocking most of her body, but you figured that she is some sort of wizard or assassin based on the typical occupations that drows excel at. Regardless of class, they make use of the shadows as much as possible and easily thanks to their naturally dark skin.

The question is how she was captured and why a drow would be found here under the mountain? Well, you could ask her...or simply ignore her.