| The Willow Sourcebook |
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Notable for accuracy and circumstances, this famous summary of trolls survives as Lady Delphinia's only known proclamation. She made the observation seven centuries ago in the unsettled hills of Pallathor, as her palanquin fell to a pack of thirty trolls. These words, her last, come down to us in a vivid eyewitness account by Groy, "Milady's Loyall Scribe & Onlie Survivor of the Fell Attacke" (as the ancient scroll reads). Groy had run some distance by the time Delphinia toppled, but he heard the words clearly "for she did screame them so." The rest of Groy's lurid account is omitted here for reasons of taste and propriety. Among Bavmorda's Nockmaar minions, the full text, modernized, made popular light reading. TROLL PACKS Trolls are indeed animals and indeed filthy. Every Nockmaar villager or Nelwyn child knows legends of the trolls' cunning, serpentine intelligence and dark, ceremonial rites. But these legends survive mainly because most victims of trolls don't. The few firsthand accounts, including Groy's, depict beasts of monkeylike savagery whose only "rites" are struggles for the tastiest parts of their prey. As for cunning, sources say trolls rank higher than beetles but lower than pigs. On one point, though, the legends are true: trolls make ferocious opponents. Trolls are found in all habitats and every climate. Their ferocity derives from ruthlessness, stealth, and the strength of numbers. Trolls never run in packs of fewer than twenty, and some larger than fifty are reported. The few that Willow fought in the castle at Tir Asleen could only have been stragglers from a larger pack. The rest may have lurked elsewhere in the castle or gone out hunting. Trolls hunt deer, birds, rabbits, gophers, snakes, gopher snakes, bears, wolves, sheep, shepherds, and stray travellers, among other game. They eat walnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, every other kind of nut, fruit of every variety, garden vegetables, and wooden stakes that the garden vegetables grow on. They eat grass, and grass fertilizer. They eat - yes - poison ivy. In a word, they eat everything. But trolls eat mainly meat, in large amounts. Thirty trolls reduce a prize steer to bones in half an hour, and wipe out small herds in a week or two. So troll packs must roam constantly, seeking fresh food. One notorious pack ranged across three kingdoms, from Nockmaar up through the northern wastes, down into Cashmere, and even into Galladoorn (briefly). At last the pack ventured into Nelwyn Valley, where the Aldwins of six villages banded together to wipe them out. Nelwyn village archives describe this episode in detail, but each village portrays its Aldwin as leader of the expedition, so particulars (like the Aldwins themselves) are fuzzy. TROLL CLIMBING Trolls scamper at full speed atop any level surface, and just as quickly along its underside. They move up and down walls with equal ease, like spiders. The ability comes from the trolls' adhesive finger and toe pads, and is definitely not magical. But the effect can easily seem so, as it did to Willow in Tir Asleen Castle. "Trolls just appeared all at once," he recalls. One climbed down from a castle wall, while another clung beneath the courtyard bridge. (This coincidentally echoed Daikini children's tales of trolls who live under bridges.) Another misleading point is troll speech. They do sometimes speak after a fashion; not like parrots, for parrots repeat intelligible words, but in a peculiar hooting jabber that mimics speech without conveying meaning. Translated, all of their words seem to boil down to "food." It seems a smart troll does appear now and then, in every few hundred births. Such a rarity can think of new strategies, use weapons, and even speak. This "sport" rises to leadership of the pack, and for its lifetime the pack feeds well. Luckily, offspring seem not to inherit its cunning. Queen Bavmorda seemed fond of these troll sports. She domesticated a dozen or more as laborers in Nockmaar Castle, an unprecedented and offensive concept. Needless to say, none but Bavmorda has tried turning these beasts into servants, and probably no one else could. In the castle the trolls learned speech on the order of "Food good," "Queen wants speak you now," and "Hurt him, hurt him!" As messengers they lacked understanding of their messages. This helped to ensure their survival. When Bavmorda fell, her trolls fled into the castle. Their fate is unknown, but rumors persist that the intelligent trolls still run together in a pack, organized in a new system of deadly effectiveness. TROLL ORIGINS All cultures have troll creation myths. In Galladoorn old folks tell their grandchildren of a stone that fell from the sky, throwing off vapors that turned a village of perfectly ordinary people into the first trolls. The Cashmeran legend, characteristically more abstract, claims that when people reach the depths of depravity, they change into troll form, grow hair, and prey on their fellows for eternity. (It is believed trolls actually live about five decades at most.) The Nelwyns say an ancient Daikini wizard, Carbolomir the Mad, achieved awesome power. Declaring his godhood, he decided to create a race of worshippers. He began with apes from the southern jungles. In unspeakable rituals (at least the Nelwyn authors don't speak of them), Carbolomir endowed the apes with a germ of intelligence. But in the story, Carbolomir was distracted by a passing butterfly, and his spell went awry. Instead of producing worshippers, he created savage beasts that hated all beauty. They set upon and killed Carbolomir, and ever since then, they have been looking for that butterfly. GAMING NOTES Armor Class: 6 Trolls in Willow's world do not resemble the traditional trolls in fantasy roleplaying games. In particular, they do not regenerate damage (wounded trolls heal only as fast as human beings), and they may move freely in full sunlight. A closer analogy is a gorilla or baboon. Troll sports have 10 more hits than normal. A tribe seldom has more than one sport, and it is always the leader unless very young or female. Troll sports look just like ordinary trolls. |
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