> While this is clever I think that the evidence seems to be that the KY clergy
> by and large put the kibosh on further attempts after the last disaster. Am I
> wrong in this?
Disaster? There's only two mentions AFAIK of major attempts on the curse
- -- one resulted in mutiple trollkin (a boon) and the other in great
trolls (also probably a boon). Not all that bad, IMO. Granted, there are
probably hundreds of other cases that failed that haven't been
published...
I think the KL priestesses still might HQ to remove the curse, in part or in toto, but that they're very, very careful about it.
> I think it might be possible that the Curse is being maintained because Gbaji
> did something that twists the support that the Trolls give to their gods into
> the wrong shape: some sort of Divine Judo that uses the opponent's
> force against him but this is clearly an Exception to the general rule
> and people seem hostile to those....
The hazily-mentioned "Removal of Korasting"? There's a suggestion or two
in Trollpak that Korasting and KL were originally the same (p. 19; or note
that the decline of the Uzuz is attributed to the sorrow of KL over the
loss of Korasting (5), but alternatively to the "lost verse of a song
which KL used during pregnancy..." (29)). Is Korasting a seperate deity,
or was it part of KL that got ripped out at some point? (I'd tend to lean
to the former, but the latter is possible).
If Korasting used to be part of KL, and part of Gbaji's curse was "removing" her, then trollish fixation on Korasting being wounded helps keep the idea of their separation fresh.
> And I believe it is the trolls' opinion too. They don't like the whiny little
> sods except to eat. Otherwise they would not have tried to fix the problem.
AFAIK, Hasni's point was that while single dark trolls are better than
trollkin, multiple trollkin births are better than single trollkin births.
I'd agree -- if you have to have the stunted mutants, better to have a
*lot* of slaves than fewer of them...
Alex Ferguson suggests that there are other forms of Arkat worship among trolls besides secret society (Peter Metcalfe) and sorcery career (David Cake). One of the most important (and I've not seen it mentioned) is ancestor worship -- Arkat had uz kids, after all, and after a thousand or so years there may well be a *lot* of Arkati descendents out there. Probably different from the AKT cult, though.
And on a possibly heretical note -- IMG, Guhan is rather different from other troll lands. As a land settled by trolls only after Arkat's victory, I'd rather envisioned it as a community in which Arkat meddled with normal troll social dynamics (there was no "native" society, Guhan being settled by colonists). So you might see Arkati elements present (e.g., *lots* of trolls worshipping Arkat Kingtroll as a secondary cult) that you wouldn't find in other lands. YGMV.
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