Re: A sense of smell

From: boztakang <daniel.mccluskey_at_dkU1mvdRBc5F9b-o04AVLriWt6cYhAYgEfRDDX3g-oF7h9iajQE5GtciF3f>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:17:58 -0000

Can't really speak for the stone and flower folks, but as fer Uz...

Uz, Body Odor, and Bathing.

By human standards, trolls are extremely smelly. They live in filth, rot, and garbage, and their thick skins are covered with musky oils, fungi, insects, and other less pleasant things. Humans forced to live in close quarters with uz often find it hard to breathe without feeling queasy or downright ill. For trolls however, the strong odors that surround them provide comfort, familiarity, and even community.

It smells like Home.

A troll's sense of smell is not actually more acute than a human's, just a Lot more meaningful to the troll. Smells are important to uz, and trolls are able to distinguish "shades" of odor much like humans can visually see worlds of color* and detail that trolls cannot, despite having somewhat similarly sensitive eyes. What humans universally experience as generic "stink" can contain intense quantities information and subtlety for the discerning Uz.

In the complete darkness of a troll's lair, sight is useless. Darksense functionally fills most of the gaps left by lack of vision, but it is not good for distinguishing the fine surface details and structure by which humans recognize each other. To further complicate matters, Trolls are often silent – so it is not always possible for them to recognize each other by the sound of their voice or darksense. In the absence of these other cues, uz primarily rely on smell to tell who is who.

Each troll excretes oils with a distinctive (to trolls) odor, and families, clans and other social groups can be easily recognized by the unique combined funk of their members. This "family odor" is maintained by the close physical contact of family or group members – hugging, wrestling, grooming, and sex. Friendly trolls take every opportunity to grasp, rub, and embrace each other, effectively marking themselves as part of the same community. Antagonistic trolls avoid direct contact, and enemy groups will often coat themselves with contrasting odors to help distinguish friend from foe.

Strangers and outsiders are immediately apparent, on account of their unfamiliar and alien smell. Humans, with all their bathing and perfumes, constantly mark themselves as alien and unfriendly. Many a "civilized" human has found their troll companions to be unaccountably surly after "making themselves presentable" by cleaning up after a hard day. Major changes of odor mark critical social and magical events for uz, and bathing is never a casual act. Trolls are liable to worry themselves silly trying to figure out what message or magic a recently bathed human is up to. Certain troll drinks, in particular, can help mask the smell of outsider and help put wary trolls at ease, or at least break down human inhibitions sufficiently to allow enough close contact to get a bit of friendly smell on them.

All trolls are bathed at least twice in their lives: At birth, to prepare the newly incarnated soul for life with its new family, and after death, to remove the smell of family and kin from the corpse, and prepare it for eating. Slaves and husbands are bathed as part of the ritual of transfer, and anyone adopted into a new clan or family is bathed to remove their old ties before the adoption proper is begun. Certain cults may require bathing or other modification of body odor to indicate membership. Zorak Zoran initiates favor burning away their smell and rubbing themselves with blood and ashes, while certain Argan Argar and Xiola Umbar initiates may take steps to reduce their odor, either to ease interaction with humans(AA), or as a powerful symbol of neutrality in troll politics(either cult).

(* really, it's probably more like "flavours" of smell than colors, but troll sorts of flavours, which are far more distinctive and interesting than the dull human flavour spectrum)            

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