The ogre village was a cluster. That was the only polite way that Elgar could think to describe what was going on. The battle had started out exactly as he had expected. The ogres were caught off guard. They lacked organization and despite their tremendous physical prowess; they were being cut down by arrows.

It got even worse when the knights closed to melee range. Not only did the knights have vastly superior gear, but they were also higher leveled than the ogres. The wizard got a surprise as he assessed the village. It was no big deal that they had some elites. The chief was level twenty-five. The head warrior was level twenty and most impressively, their shamaness was level twenty-one.

What was surprising was that most of the warriors, or rather slashers and bashers as they were officially called, were level ten, with a few even being as high as level twelve. If Elgar thought that was surprising, though, he was truly shocked when he heard Tauri whisper, “I count at least twenty-five shamans. Besides the elite, they seem to be between levels five and eight.

Robert whistled under his breath and Elgar couldn’t add anything more salient than that. Maybe there was something odd going on here. But the longer he watched, the less he thought of it. The ogres were simply programmed to be stupid. Their reactions were almost always suboptimal and with low Agility they were rather lumbering brutes.

Then the atmosphere changed. It wasn’t possible for Elgar to say exactly what happened, but the ogres seemed to become more coordinated. It wasn’t like an Agility buff, but rather that they began working together as a team. Belchor’s high mages had not been doing anything other than shielding. It made sense because battles were by far the fastest way to raise the level of soldiers and there were not that many opportunities for NPC armies.

Elgar’s head perked up as he suddenly felt a large surge of mana. Someone was channeling or casting a spell beyond any of the shaman here. “Look out, someone is gathering a bunch of mana.”

Robert raised his shield up and activated a defensive spell. A golden glow surrounded them as his Holy Bulwark appeared. They were cloaked by an invisibility spell while they waited for an opportunity, but the three of them had worked together long enough for the paladin to know that his defensive spell wouldn’t break the invisibility.

Elgar scanned the battlefield looking for where the energy was coming from, but then he felt it release. It was a rare spell, not one he had ever seen before. Just the way it manifested was unusual. Typically, offensive spells had to follow a path to their target. This one simply manifested.

Because of that, it bypassed the shield around the high mages. This sort of spell was every wizard’s nightmare. It would require entirely new types of defenses. Normally, Elgar and every other mage had to depend upon magical barriers to make up for his general squishiness. That meant keeping your shields as simple as possible. If there was some new type of spell that could bypass shields, then it was going to change things.

Worse than that, the explosion of force inside the shield was tremendous. Whoever cast it must have some type of item to augment the power of the spell. No one but maybe an elite monster should have that much mana at this level. The problem with that was magic drops from ogres were super rare and if you got one, it was usually an enchanted melee weapon.

Then he saw the source. It was an ogre, but he looked different from any ogre he’d seen before. What Assess told him was impossible, though. That was a level 11 ogre shaman, and it had a name, Oogliefrank. Normally, only elites had names. It was trimmer and walked with more grace than the others. Its face even had a slightly less beastial look.

“We should capture that one. There’s something different about him,” Tauri whispered.

Robert started to stand up. It was such a comedy that he was playing this holy paladin but was completely wrapped around the finger of this rogue half-elf. They had never even met in person, but the communication and experience in Legends of Selmia were so authentic that it was hard to not feel these relationships were real. It had taken a generation of people used to only communicating online and pushed it to a whole new level.

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Elgar held up his hand. At least they still accepted him as the leader because both of them paused. “No, he is the one that cast that spell. We need to be careful. Something isn’t right about him.”

“He’s just level 11, err… wait, now he is level 15,” Tauri replied.

The group watched the strange ogre as he jumped into the midst of archers. Elgar used that as yet another reason to not get close to this one. “Exactly, and since when should a level 11 or whatever be able to take out six high mages with one spell. That makes no sense. He is in the thick of things. We need to find one who is on the fringes.”

Robert just nodded and Tauri said, “Mmhmm.”

A new target presented herself a moment later. Only level eight and standing at the edge of the battle. Elgar had previously discounted her as an option because she stayed close to the shamaness elite. He was confident that their team could take her out, but not with a hundred other ogres to worry about. The risk just wasn’t worth it. Now though, the shamaness had jumped into the battle between the ogre chief and the knight officers.

The younger female was standing back. It was almost as if she had been instructed to stay out of harm’s way. Whatever the dynamic here, it worked for them. Tauri darted forward with her high stealth. Even after she left the invisibility field, she was little more than a shadow. She shoved a trio of needles into the ogre’s arm.

The beast, of course, reacted poorly, but the sleeping poison they had purchased for this was potent and Tauri wasn’t one to take chances. She had used up three of their twelve needles just to make sure they knocked the beast out. The ogre started to stumble. This gave Robert the chance to knock her over with a shield bash. Instead of howling in pain, though, she was soon deeply snoring. They would have to remember to work with that alchemist again in the future. His product worked exactly as promised.

Elgar conjured a translucent floating disc of force, which he then pushed to ground level. Robert, with a little help from Tauri, rolled the limp body of the ogress onto the disc. The strain was immediate as Elgar had to feed extra mana into the spell in order to get it floating again.

Then they were off. No one seemed to have noticed them. The battle with the chief had drawn all the attention. The quest notification showed that they had completed the first step of the quest and now simply needed to return this prisoner to royal mage Tolson back in the capital.

That was just as expected. But then another quest popped up, and this seemed odd.

Bait the Hook: You have captured the ogre shamaness known as Kittikork. Delivering her to Royal Mage Tolson will grant you the rewards already promised. However, capturing one of the ogres may serve as bait for the aberrant ogre, Oogliefrank. You are afforded two options.

1) Use this bait to capture or lure Oogliefrank into Belchor and deliver him to Royal Mage Tolson.

Rewards: +400 XP, +5 Gold, 1 Rare Magical Item.

Title: Ogre slayer. +10% damage against ogres, damage received from ogres -10%. Permanent faction modification to Kill on Sight with all ogres.

2) Parley with the ogre, Oogliefrank and forgo quest rewards for capturing Kittikork.

Rewards: Faction Modification with ogres changed to Feared (-2000)

Variable other rewards based upon the outcome of the parley.

The three of them all got the quest notification at the same time. They couldn’t stop to talk about it now as they were mounting their horses and wanted to get some space between themselves and the ogre village. But the expressions on each of their faces made it clear. None of them knew what to think of this strange quest.