For many years after their return, the trolls of Mt. Grieg lived in peace with their environment and each other. As time passed, planet Ode’s black water bogs thrived as the mystery of soil, sun and water gave birth to life-saving plants and trees.

  The bog’s swamps nurtured fens that merged and emptied fresh water into the rivers that ultimately flowed into the sea. Between the survivors of Manti’s hallucinatory potions and rumors that the fearsome bog troll protected the bogs, oil trolls were afraid to live in the bottomlands below the great mountain. Instead, they traveled in their crude canoes down the rivers that emptied into the sea. As always, by day they dug into the riverbanks, their tangled hairy bodies with twisted mouths and lifeless eyes hidden as gnarled roots. At night, they would wake from their sleep, their red eyes flashing as they prowled the woods. The mineral-rich waters and soil kept the oil trolls alive with fleshy bulbs, snakes and muskrats as their food. More important, they found black crude oil along the steep riverbanks. Ignoring the welfare of the river, its plants and animals, they satisfied their addiction by harvesting the oil.

  The oil trolls traveled to even more remote areas with only a few scattered trees growing on rocky outcroppings that hugged the ocean. Eventually, they encountered a village of violent trolls, much like themselves, who called themselves “sea trolls.” An evil breed, they also worshipped oil, but not the thick black oil sucked out of planet Ode. Their addiction was even more heinous. They sailed throughout the north seas in primitive ships made of strong spruce wood. Here, they hunted and killed majestic whales for the precious oils concealed within their massive bodies.

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  The life of the sea trolls surviving on the edge of the ocean was harsh and at times extremely cruel. Sea trolls wanted nothing to do with outsiders. When they met the oil trolls, they banded together and drove them off. The few they captured were either devoured or enslaved. Unfortunately, the captive oil trolls told them about the mountain trolls and the treasures of Mt. Grieg.

  Now, hidden in the silence of black nights while the moon is elsewhere, the sea trolls, with hearts of shale, whisper among themselves of conquering Mt. Grieg. The seed of greed planted in their heads will in time sprout into thoughts of war and the evil, self-indulgent desire to take another troll’s homeland. But for the moment, the gentle trolls of Mt. Grieg remain free and use the sun-rich crystals as their source of energy, all the while living in harmony with nature.