Jungle-troll

* Portrait
* In Game

"Now living under the far-stretching canopy of the jungles of Far Harad, their skin turned green and stony over the course of sunny generations, and their arms lengthened to accomodate the climbing of enormous trees. It took several centuries before these Jungle-trolls reentered the stories of Men - which they did fearsomely, destroying several Numenorean expeditions and their camps."
—Age of the Ring Lore Compendium

Jungle-trolls were a rare sub-species of Troll encountered in the distant lands of Haradwaith and Khand. These great beasts were impervious to sunlight due to adaptations over generations that had left their hides green and stony. The tribes of Harondor, Far Harad and Nafârati were often victim to raids by these vicious creatures.

In Age of the Ring, Jungle-trolls are a monster unit in Misty Mountains, they are recruited from Jungle-troll Lairs converted by Wild Allegiance.

## AotR Canon

Jungle-trolls are an AotR Canon creation. Click **Expand** to read their entry in the AotR Lore Compendium.
In another age, many thousands of years ago, the combined forces of the Eldar, Edain, and the Valar besieged Angband, fortress of Morgoth - the Dark Enemy of the World - and destroyed it. Morgoth was then cast into the Void, to wander in emptiness. His servants, many in number, were slain and scattered. Orcs found their doom by the thousands. Dragons were brought low. Balrogs were decimated; only one is known to have survived.

Trolls too found their numbers greatly reduced, but they have ever been reclusive, and wilder than most of Morgoth's other creatures, having been created as a mockery of Ents. And so, even as the Thangorodrim were laid low and their Master's pits bare, scores of Trolls were far away, hiding in caves upon distant mountain ranges. When their Master's will vanished into the Void, they began to wander. Many of them crossed the Blue Mountains before Beleriand was cast into the Sea, and scattered across Eriador and the Misty Mountains, splitting off into subspecies: Hill-trolls, Cave-trolls, Snow-trolls, and other, less distinct variations. Some made it further, climbing across the length of the Misty Mountains towards the Gap of Rohan, then seeking in shelter the White Mountains.

Trolls are vicious creatures of limited intelligence, and wherever groups of them coexist, civil war is ever brooding. In time, a group of smaller, weaker Trolls were given the choice of exile or execution by the local Troll-king. Their group, no larger than two dozen in number decided to leave. It took several days of brutal infighting for everyone to realize that living was better than being dead.

In those days, Numenoreans hadn't yet began the large-scale deforestation of Middle-earth's southern lands, and so the Trolls were able to cross into what would later be Southern Gondor. And so they left the cool, shaded comforts of the mountains and made their way south, through a forest that did not seem to end. The journey was slow, and highly uncomfortable. They spent their days cowering from the sun below shaded canopy. Caves were hard to come by, and whenever a strong gust of wind split their leafy roof above, small rays of sunlight fell through, burning their skin and turning the spot to a lump of stone. At night they covered small distances, howling from the punishment they had suffered during the day.

Their leader, a remarkably stupid Troll by the name of Honk, was convinced that the sun would grow smaller the further south he went, and that they would soon come across some new, cool mountain range they could settle in. This never happened. One night, several months after their exile from the White Mountains, Honk found himself and his group out of the forest and looking upon a rolling landscape of barren plains. Erupting in an angry panic, his underlings strangled him and ate him. They spent many weeks at the edge of that forest, pondering what to do.

When all food sources had fled their vicinity, they gathered for one final deliberation. The facts spoke for themselves: going back meant suffering the daily pain of the peeping sunrays, only to end up back in the Troll-king's territory, where they would be killed. Going forward was an unknown: some Trolls claimed they could see rocky outcroppings on the horizon, where they might take shelter. And, they said, who knows? There might be more mountains.

And so they decided to undergo their suicidal journey into the scorching land known as Haradwaith. When, after the first night of frenzied running, they could only find a cave large enough to fit half of them, the other half was beaten bloody and made to await their demise before the rising of the Southern sun. When it had gone back down, the Trolls that had managed to secure a spot inside the cave came out expecting to find the stony corpses of their friends, but instead found them only half-dead, the tops of their heads and shoulders covered in stony outcroppings. Though none of them were smart enough to understand it, their slow, continued exposure to sunlight in the forest had caused them to develop some degree of immunity to the sun's deadly rays. Their outcast brethren recovered swiftly under the coolness of the desert night and took bloody revenge. And so their number was halved anyway, in reverse order.

The rest of the journey was predictable: though the sun was no longer a deadly threat, it still burned badly, and no distances could be covered beneath its glare. During the day they rested beneath the shade of rocks or sparse trees, or inside the huts of Men, who they ate as they went. Still, no mountains appeared. Instead, after months of laborious journeying, our Trollish dozen found themselves at the top end of an enormous cliff, looking down. The drop stretched for miles and miles, like a rift in the world. Beyond and below it they saw a sea of bright green, stretching as far as their beady eyes could see.

Over time, the Trolls multiplied by inbreeding, further decreasing their wits and increasing their pockmarked mutations. Now living under the far-stretching canopy of the jungles of Far Harad, their skin turned green and stony over the course of sunny generations, and their arms lengthened to accomodate the climbing of enormous trees. It took several centuries before these Jungle-trolls reentered the stories of Men - which they did fearsomely, destroying several Númenórean expeditions and their camps. To this day, their presence is feared amongst the Southrons that dare dwell in the southern jungles of Haradwaith.

## Strategy

In comparison to Misty Mountains' standard Cave-trolls, Jungle-trolls have a greater amount of health and stronger armour but are limited to only attacking in melee. Capturing a Jungle-troll Lair early with Wild Allegiance can prove to be an incredibly devastating strategy to catch enemies off-guard and effectively harass their structures with tanky Jungle-trolls. Whilst Jungle-trolls are more expensive than Cave-trolls, Misty Mountains' Moria-orc units are cheap enough to continue applying pressure on the enemy whilst still making enough resources to continually produce Jungle-trolls if the player has sufficient map control and resource structures.