Troll

Proud like orcs, hungry like wolves, trolls are horned, woolly mountain-dwellers who rarely leave their home country.

**Horns, Tusks and Hunger**

Trolls are large, shaggy humanoids built for mountain living. They tend to be powerfully built, with similar proportions to orcs, but sporting thick, curly wool that covers most of their bodies. Their skin has a rough, stone-like texture, and a cracked or spotted appearance. Their complexions match the spectrum of skin colours found in humans, elves and halflings. Like orcs, many trolls have large, jutting tusks.

Trolls are always hungry. Trolls also have horns of varying sizes. These two aspects are connected.

The horns are one of the most distinguishing, notable features of a troll. They vary greatly in size, from little nubs to enormous curved horns nearly half a meter long. The horn length of their parents is a factor. The primary thing that decides how large a troll’s horns are, however, is how much that troll eats. Because trolls eat a lot. Most trolls will keep eating until they are asked to stop. Horror stories abound about unwary establishments going bankrupt because the proprietor didn’t pay proper attention to a troll customer, who proceeded to eat their entire winter stock. While the stories are a touch embellished, they have a truthful foundation. Troll appetites are insatiable.

The size of a troll’s horns, therefore, often maps closely to a troll’s socio-economic status. This is especially true of trolls from Rodynia Strana. Trolls who work in the mines and industry tend to have smaller, less conspicuous and less lavish horns. Between limited rations and constant physical exertion, there is simple less growth. By contrast, trolls from the upper crust, who live a life free of manual labour and are able to eat all that they want, tend to have long, developed horns. Horns are a status symbol.

The physical similarities between orcs and trolls have not gone unnoticed in Kalarain. While impossible to know for sure, there is a general consensus among non-trolls and non-orcs that the two are probably related. This idea makes many trolls and orcs very annoyed, and has been the source of countless fights. Most will argue that either there is no relation, or that *their* race was the original one – a typical troll, for example, will either deny the connection, or argue that the trolls were the original race, and that the orcs descended from them. Some trolls who are born with orc-like tusks, especially upper-class trolls, remove them.

**Homebodies**

Trolls rarely leave Rodynia Strana. There are a few reasons for this. First, Rodynia’s cool, mountainous conditions are ideal for trolls, and they tend to find most climates and conditions uncomfortable. Trolls who do leave often shave off most or all of their wool to prevent overheating. Second, there is a cultural norm around sticking with other trolls and following the well-worn groves of Rodynian existence. Third, voracious troll appetites can make them unwelcome in other societies.

Like dwarves, trolls lean towards working with their hands. Most trolls, however, find dwarves finnicky and obsessive in their work (while most dwarves find troll work inelegant and messy). Conventional troll culture places a premium on manufacturing and industry, on engineering and functionality. Almost every Troll works. When it comes to Rodynia Strana trolls, if you’re not working, you’re fighting in the Aethalorian army, and if you’re not fighting in that army, you’re fighting in one of the many, rebellious workers militias that are scattered throughout the mountains. The few exceptions are those who own things. Those who own the mines, the factories, the transport systems and so on, do not need to work, they simply “govern”.

Magic is rare among the trolls. They find it difficult. And a certain Rodynian cultural ideal discourages it. Why do you need magic when you have as many workers as you could ever want at your disposal. Alternatively, what time do you have for magic when your wages have been cut again, and you have to be back in the mines in two hours?

**An Unusual Lifecycle**

Trolls age in a way that is very different to many other races. They mature at the same rate that humans do, yet they remain at their physical prime for far longer. It is very difficult to distinguish between a troll that is 20, and one that is 55. But after a Troll reaches 65-70, they rapidly age, going from peak physical performance to bedbound, and sometimes in less than a year. It is unheard of for a troll to live longer than 75.