To clarify, trolls can find lots of excuses to kill, frex, a weak sojourner, and then, since he's already dead, eat him. For instance, on entering a troll house the male points out all the things that if touched warrants death -- this would include his familiar. The ally then decides that you are weak enough to not worry about, and jumps on you. Result, the troll has promised to kill you, and is within his rights by his standards. This sort of behavior is probably considered declasse by civilized trolls, but is a real problem with snow trolls, as my group decided by playing in our last session. Trolls don't have any equivalent to the Orlanthi Greeting to moderate this, either, so visiting requires constantly worrying about how defenseless you seem to them as well as how hungry they are.
The solution is just to make sure that the trolls know that killing you (even if they *don't* eat you) will make things unpleasant enough that it isn't worth the bother. You don't need to make them fear you, just make sure that they don't take you for an easy mark. Deadman Switch spells, publicly announced and demonstrated, will do the job quite well, even if the trolls never heard of you or your kin.
And keep them fed, of course.
Also, as was pointed out to me, Orlanthi behavior would seem to civilized humans like Uz behavior is to Orlanthi. The women are uppitty, the men become violent at trivial offences, everyone is a dirty slob, the peasants (ie, carls or trollkin) almost uncontrolled, etc.
PS: picking your teeth at you is an obvious threat or insult, as she is either making room for you or removing the remains of your relatives. See Maori property law, where ownership is apparently decided by whose ancestors ate whose last.
Powered by hypermail