RE: Enlo fertility

From: Andrew Solovay <asolovay_at_...>
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 13:57:23 -0700

Peter Metcalfe wrote:
> At 12:44 PM 9/7/02 +0200, you wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> As I was munching on one of my food-enlo the other day, I
>> realized that I've never paid much attention to them before. My mum
>> won't tell me where they come from, so I wonder;
>
>> Are they fertile?
>
> Yes. They bred true but most of their births are stillborn (AR p168).

Though there's a tremendous variation among trollkin (who are all sports to a greater or lesser degree). Many might be sterile, or even sexless. And as noted, some "trollkin" may not actually be trollkin, but rather, natural dark-troll twins, who are judged "trollkin" by virtue of being multiple births. They might well produce dark troll children, except...

1. Raised as trollkin, they don't get fed or treated well, so they probably end up stunted. Their children might well inherit this. (Inheritance of aquired characteristics? Hey, it isn't *earth*, after all...) And
2. James F. has suggested that troll fertility might be highly magical, requiring heroquesting (as each mother quests to find Korasting's womb). If so, then even the most fit of superior trollkin would have a hard time, since the tribe isn't going to make much of an effort to support an enlo heroquester).

>> There is also some indication (I may be reading this wrong)
>> that the difference between darktroll and enlo may not be entirely
>> clear, and that sometimes it's a judgment call (are there single enlo
>> births, what about twins, triplets?) by the midwife or mother.
>
> That only applies in the case of twin births. Previously twin births
> were known to the Dark Trolls but now such births are considered
> Trollkin. Such a classification may account for the phenomenon of
> Superior Trollkin.

IIRC, Trollpack (I) said that right after the Curse of Kin, trollkin were judged on an ad-hoc basis: if the baby looks weak and scrawny, you call it an Enlo. Back then, the boundaries might have been blurrier (a naturally scrawny Uzko might be deemed an Enlo.) But an early attempt to break the Curse resulted in trollkin being born in litters. From that time, any multiple-birth has been ruled to be Enlo (even though there were, and are, very occasional natural twin-births to Uzko).

Mm, Enlo... making me hungry...

--AMS