The cleric Hannon, honest and lawful servant of the Norse god Heimdall, was not to find happiness when all the trolls in the eponymous Troll Fens were slain.
Lo, he was unhappy though he was able to gain ample vials of the Arch Mage Toth's famous Universal Solvent - which according to Toth's brochure was necessary to dispatch a troll's cruelly-regenerating form, and lo, though he was able to smite the entire population of trolls in a mere 24 moons of constant violent campaigning and lo, though he was able to finally plant firmly in the ground near the spot where Trolls had carried off his boyhood dog, his family's battle standard with the crest so familiar to the people (and in particular the troll population) of this particular plane of existence: "Dude, have you seen my dog?"
Hannon and his party of robust adventurers had searched multiple planes of existence for the necessary means to defeat the trolls of the Troll fens. They had slain mighty balrogs, giants and even a few ice dragons. They had defeated entire armies of time-travelling undead, including many score thousand ghouls and ghasts as well as several very powerful arch-liches. To win they had to use some of the mana they found whence they ventured to a plane of existence known as the Reagan Administration. Thoughts of this made Hannon grimace because he knew that he would have to explain himself to his Lord Heimdall on the Bilfrost Bridge during the final, rear-guard battle of Ragnarök for his use of the fire weapons that greatly assisted his fight against the trolls. Naturally, no self-respecting cleric of Heimdall should use anything but a trusty sword. Hannon would have to explain his cowardly use of these devices even though their impact was not unlike the powers Heimdall himself had granted Hannon through the awesome powers of his Blade Barrier and Flame Strike spells. Surely he could plead his justifiable and honorable blood lust resulting in many glorious victories and a land shorn of all trolls to his master.*
But all that glory in the defeat of the trolls and his myriad accomplishments, trophies, and battle streamers had left Hannon wanting for something. He recalled his reading of the sages from the amok time of the undead wars:
"Without stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with nothingness, the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential anxiety. Heidegger states this idea nicely: "Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals
being as a whole." Arthur Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to prove the vanity of human existence, stating, "...for if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us."
What did it all mean? What was left? He must undertake a journey to find out. He must discover that which was within....
*despite the clear stipulation in the 1979 edition of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules that clerics could not use edged weapons.
