Enlo, UltraSound, and Darksee...

From: Daniel McCluskey (Volt) <"Daniel>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 08:43:26 -0700


Angus Laidlaw mentions:

         perhaps trolls
always have a litter but only one survives to term the rest being reabsorbed.

I Really Quite like that idea. After all, UzUz have six breasts and I have always wondered what the point was, if they didn't have multiple births. (okay... I'm sure they could find SOME use for them, but I Meant biologically) I'm not a biologist, but four (I'm thinking cows here) seems to be the max for RW single-birthing mammals. I think it's likely that multiple births were the norm before Bright Death appeared (the beginning of Dark Trolls.)

        I suspect that the "mechanisim" (who let that dwarf in here???) for switch to single births was the light/heat burning away the fertility of the trolls, and starving the foetuses (foeti?) The one child that will ultimately survive has to eat her dead/crippled litter-mates in the womb to gain the extra bit of nutrition/energy to come to full term. Thus Dark trolls raise only one child, and that child is smaller and weaker then a litter of UzUz.

        Then of course, we get the curse of kin. Black Eater invades the womb (is placed in the womb by the evil Gbaji ;-) and eats the corpses itself... forcing the premature birth of an even MORE stunted and pathetic uzling -- lonely little mr Enlo.

        The obvious stopgap fix for this is of course to force the birth even EARLIER, saving the bulk of the starved and useless wretches. Thus civilized trolls all have litters of (nearly) completely useless trollkin, while isolated groups (Ice trolls IMG) still have single enlo of marginally higher quality (when compared to the multiple enlo births).

Re: sonar
my take -- Trolls can determine whether you are preggers or full (or if you are holding a big knife under your shirt) but can't tell you if the kid is male or female, exactly What you ate, (or if you are holding the knife behind your back). Uzuz can prolly do all the neat stuff (even "seeing" through the Darksence of all the trolls around them) and more... but dammit they're Uzuz, and they can do ANYTHING ;-)

        In my Glorantha, Trolls cannot read normal human writing (books and scrolls) on acount of ink being invisible to darksense (and their farsighted eyes not seeing things up close) but can learn to read engravings, or certain (thickly layered) paintings.

and a quick rant --

        WHY do Kyger Litor shrines teach Darksee???? I can't imagine a more useless spell for Trolls. I mean, yeah it's neat for human adventurers to easily gain that spell anywhere they might need it, but that just REEKS of crappy game mechanics to me. Why would KL give a spell (at EVERY shrine, according to troll gods) that is of little or no use to her children? Why not Crush, or or ANYTHING but that silly spell only a stoopid hoomen would ever want...

        Does anyone have an idea? I would be really interested in an inspired myth or explanation that would allow me to avoid directly contradicting published sources... but I just can't think of any reason for a troll to so desperately want to give up a bit of their soul so that filthy upworlders can see in the dark...

        Please, Please help me find a reason for this! (or lend me the MP support to succeed in my anti-Darksee HeroQuest ;-)

danm


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