Re: Troll Morality

From: David Cake <davidc_at_cs.uwa.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 10:02:55 +0800

>David Cake:
>>But they are absolutely capable of deciding that they perhaps
>>shouldn't eat something because it is immoral or not very sensible.
>
>Wouldn't that decision from a troll depend rather on whether it's smart
>or stupid to eat the object rather than whether it's moral or immoral?
>
>Eating that tasty looking young human over there is tempting, but not
>very smart since his aunt standing next to him is a Sword of Humakt
>with an iron broadsword at her side. Moral on the other hand, what's that?

        I think that trolls have a definate moral sense - it is just an extremely alien one to ours. I don't think trolls see murder, cannibalism, slavery, as immoral, for example. But I think trolls do have a moral sense. Chaos, for example, is immoral to a troll - even if you could escape retribution, becoming chaotic would still be very wrong (excluding the normal Lunar fudging of the issue for Lunar trolls, of course). Doing something that seriously hurts your clan is wrong - I think some trolls would sacrifice themselves to aid their clan. And the troll cults promulgate their own moral code - even the Zorak Zorani (a ZZer will risk his life to kill something chaotic for no other reason than that it is chaotic - it may not seem like much of a moral code to us, but it is pretty important to them, and justifys the ZZers to the more society minded KLers). Some of these moral codes may seem a little odd (for example the Annilans believe that betraying a secret is a greater sin than murdering to preserve it, even if the secret is trivial) but they definately exist. I think trolls are weird enough already, thanks, without postulating major aberrancies in psychology that we can never really hope to play properly.

        Cheers

                David


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