> Trolls Eat Babies!
Hey! Have you ever *seen* a troll eat a baby? Just rumor and hearsay,
spread by sensationalist LM scribes.
> Trolls are, therefore, Bad. Just because, in
> their insensate violence towards all other forms of life, they
> occasionally kill Chaos as well as Farmers, Game Animals, etc.,
> does *not* mean they are "a Good Thing". Trolls are scary, evil
> monsters to those Orlanthi who live near them; and the opinions
> of those Orlanthi who don't hardly matter, now, do they?
There's a difference to be made, though, between "Trolls" and "Troll." While yon bigoted Orlanthi fear and loathe the superior merits of Trollish civilization, an *individual* troll can be good. The troll that saved you from chaos, for example, is a Good Troll. It's the strange and fearsome troll society that is Bad.
I don't think an Orlanthi will say the same of, say, a Broo or a Scorpion man -- those are monstrous critters which are almost incapable of being "Good" even on an individual basis.
> It's also worth remembering that, from both the Orlanthi and the
> Yelmic POV, it was Orlanth's act in slaying Yelm that weakened the
> universe to permit the incursions of Chaos. An orthodox Yelmic view
> sees the forces of Storm, Darkness and Chaos as *interchangeable*
> foes of Yelm's Divine Order, each as bad as the others.
While from the Uz POV, the Orlanthi are followers of a murderous power-grabber and the Yelmites worshippers of an authoritarian, merciless god of aggression, both of whom would cheerfully roast trollish babies over the flames.
Dainel McCluskey wrote:
>The only time it is safe to hang out with a troll is when the troll is
>afraid of you (Xiola Umbar aside). If they loose that fear, you are
>food. . . . I would not like to stumble unarmed and (otherwise)
>friendless into a hungry band of Uz -- no matter how well I knew them or
>how long they had been my "friends."
I'm not sure trolls are *that* incapabable of waiting for a meal. Is a troll so singleminded that it will eat you even if the potential rewards of not-eating you are greater? Would make for very limited AA traders. ;)
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