> I find it hard to believe that humans would write such nice
> things about troll if there wasn't some truth to it.
IMO, it's not that trolls don't dislike chaos, but rather that they dislike it about as much as they dislike lots of other things. Only one chaos god is monomanically anti-Chaos (Bozka-- er, damn it, BozTAkang). It's a tough, nasty foe and uz aren't happy it did bad things to them. Other foes have done stuff just as bad. They don't have the Heortling Obsession that chaos causes all problems, from cows that go dry to Lunar taxes to bad sex.
> So trolls would hapily co-operate with elves and dwarves in
> the Second Council, but left because it's activities were
> "too close to chaos".
While the outcome differed, I thought the free-form years ago depicted it pretty well. Uz participated on the project, sometimes at odds with others. Whatever the result, AFAIK Greg helped write the free-form, so presumably all the Uz Concerns mirroed those of the historical events. And the OOO (Sandy) almost did walk out when objectives weren't being met!
But, indeed, did uz quit *because* it was a chaos god, or because those f_at_#$ing Dara Happans were involved? Of course, we know that it was a nasty chaos god, but that may not be why the uz left in the first place. Are the histories (human histories from a Dragon Pass viewpoint) *accurate*?
> The trolls then went on to fight against Gbaji, who wounded
> Korasting and is responsible for the Curse of Kin.Now if I
> were a troll, I'd find that kind of hard to forget.
Yes, but they haven't forgotten about Yelm coming and booting them from Wonderhome, the Humakt-Orlanth duo for sending him there and bringing him back, or Mostal and Aldrya for existing, so we're looking at a 1:1:1:1:1 tie for Biggest Jerk Enemy God so far. <grin>
To put it another way, what act has chaos done that is so bad as to make it clearly the Worst Enemy? Attacking Glorantha isn't it (Yelm's invasion of Wonderhome was as bad), and D'Wargon's wombiting isn't it (Yelm kidnaps Korasting, so uz devolve from uzuz to uzko; I'd argue that's as big a leap as uzko to enlo). And D'Wargon was a Solar chaos god, too, so Yelm gets 1 point for the assist. : )
It seems like it's an Enemy, but not the Worst Enemy. If uz have a Worst Enemy, it probably *is* Yelm.
> The subsequent wars between the elder races in the second
> age are also at least partialy a result of the Chaos Wars
> and the struggle against Gbaji, so although they are more
> recent and therefore fresher in everyone's minds, the very
> fact they happened was triggered by the Chaos Wars.
Or, to Robert Kaplanize it, the Council of Friends kept a lid on ancient hatreds. Then, when the Cold War -- er, I mean, the Council -- was gone, the pot boiled over and the uz, elves and dwarves all eyed each other and said, "A-ha, you bastard, now I can pay you back for what you did so long ago!" So in fact, the wars were caused because of Elder Race ancient hatreds, and the Council merely had postponed inevitable wars, so Gbaji was merely a minor trigger mechanism. Depends on how you want to argue it, I suppose. : )
***
To cast all of this another way, "who's the worst enemy" probably
*varies* from troll to troll. Trolls, oh, in Yolp probably think of the
Sun as being the Big Enemy and Chaos as being an also-ran, because the
f#_at_$ing Dara Happans kept invading. Trolls living in the Rubble probably
have a different view. : ) Trolls in Dagori Inkarth might well consider
Chaos to be Worst Enemy, because they pretty much duffed all the local
elves, the local dwarfs aren't a problem, and the Solars are far away.
Note that despite the Evident Chaoticness of the Lunar Empire, the uz
sit around for *decades* trying to figure out if they hate the Stormy
Sartarites or Chaotic Lunars worse.
Donald Oddy wrote:
> I think the only reason trolls might distinguish chaos from anything
> else is if they can't safely eat it.
Sure they do! : ) The books point to it, and Sandy's explicitly said so on the GD long ago. (In fact, when a similar "do trolls hate chaos particularly" discussion took place).
Now, in the new world of the HQ rulez there simply must be a spirit (or several!) that gives special magics and rituals to eat chaos safely. (And other things, too: IMG, Iron as well: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~gerakkag/zz.pdf, page 14, is a strictly non-canon personal interpretation of this).
Of course, if you eat any of this without the rituals it's a bit risky... but IMO, IMG, there should be boss rituals like Eat Spirit, Eat Chaos, Eat Fire, Eat Iron, etc. It's every troll's ultimate dream about what to do with dangerous stuff, after all... : )
Cheers,
James
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