RE: trolls, ducks, and more.

From: Sandy Petersen <SPetersen_at_ensemble-studios.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 16:43:23 -0500

	Erik Sleurin


	> How come trolls need an economy.

	James Frusetta


	>Because (as far as I can figure) there are more trolls in some

areas than


	>the local food base can support. I may well be wrong (Sandy? Am

I wildly


	>flailing about on this? ;)

		Technically, since trolls can eat dirt, there are never

more trolls in an area than the food base can support. But certainly trolls do have an economy, because there are imbalances between different strata of troll society as well as between differing troll habitations. That's not to say that troll economic structure has much in common with human.

	James


	>I figure an urban population of trolls needs to "haul in" food

if the


	>population is larger than the local food source + game within a

day or


	>two's range. Crabtown is probably among the larger trollish

slums since


	>the lake is a great food source, but some of the other towns

(Cliffhome,


	>the Castle of Lead, etc.) may need to import food.

		There's really not much of an "urban" population of

trolls. Places like Cliffhome & the Castle of Lead are more like gigantic lairs than cities. The trolls do venture forth from these places to hunt, but they also have huge caverns inside where they raise foodstuffs.

                I don't think they "import" food in the normal manner. Groups of trolls go out and hunt, and bring back some of the stuff they find.

	Stephen Martin


	>My own suggestion to Greg about year length before the Sunstop

was that


	>the year then had only 280 days. I suggested that the extra 2

weeks were


	>added as a result of the Sunstop.

	>Greg stamped on that pretty hard -- he seems firmly to want 294

days


	>since the Dawn.

		Interesting. I once spoke with him about the possibility

of the year having 365 days between the Dawn & Sunstop, and he didn't seem hostile. (Note: I'm not espousing this theory.) It's well-known that practically all Gloranthans feel that they were somehow "cheated" at the Sunstop, somehow robbed of life or time or something.

                Here is my current theory: Glorantha has had 294 days in a year since the Dawn. However, before the Sunstop, humans aged, reproduced, and matured at a rate similar to that of Earth humans - i.e., app 4/5 that of modern Gloranthans. An old-time Gloranthan was about as decrepit at 75 years as a modern Gloranthan is at 60.

        It's only a theory, but it's moderately compelling to me.

	Sergio Mascarenhas
	What about keets? I see two possibilities:

	1- they are a third duck family that, for some reason, wasn't
cursed in the
	golden age. When the darkness came, they were blessed with arms
instead of
	wings. That way they could hide and escape more easily their
enemies. They
	retained the hability to lay eggs.
		Keets voluntarily gave up their ability to fly in order

to empower Thella's Net, the mystical conjoinment of the East Isles. They regard this as a great loss, but the Net is more important than their power to fly.

	2- they are not ducks but a different species of birds. 
		Keets come in many varieties. 60-70% of them are ducks,

but there are also tern keets, gull keets, jaeger keets, crane keets, puffin keets, merganser keets, coot keets, avocet keets, heron keets, egret keets, killdeer keets, to name a few. And there are rarer varieties, too, such as albatross keets, ibis keets, tropicbird keets, pelican keets, and the dreaded flamingo-men.          

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