> Somewhere I saw a comment (in trollpak?) that most trollkin pregenancies
> resulted in miscarriages or still births. Therefore, I've ignored this
> effect. Given I have no idea how many enlo are in a litter, I think the
> maths is already skewed enough to ignore the trollkin born of trollkin problem.
Especially with a 50:50 ratio for uz:enlo "at large" in society, if I read your article right: IMG, I usually figured something closer to a 25:75, or even 15:85 ratio. (Counting in the really worthless food enlo: 50:50 sounds right to me as an uz:"worthwhile enlo.") Presumably most enlo births are food enlo.
I'd probably argue that females actually slightly outnumber males in uz society, though: after all, male uz are pushed into most of the high-risk occupations (except for heroquesting), so it's likely female uz outlive them.
There's suggestions in _TP_ that trollkin are fertile enough (the Trollkin Horde, for example); IMO, however, each "generation" that enlo are removed from their uz lineage results in less fertility (because they're not renewing their bond to Kyger Litor: no one lets an enlo in on the fertility rituals), so an enlo population without uz will after a couple generations die out from neglect (but they'd die out from overstripping the local food supply, first). So the "second-generation" of enlo might be useful, but after that their utility drops quickly from there.
Your article makes a darn good case on the value of enlo. After all, most enlo are almost the equal of most humans, so no point in mindlessly killing them! Most of the enlo that get et are probably wild food enlo that get captured, or are "domestics" saved for special occasions like you suggest. (And the odd natural death).
> Trolls born of trollkin are a different problem entirely, as my players are
> starting to realise.
Now that's just *creepy*... : )
***
The biggest problem I ever ran into when I tried to "run the math" on uz births is that with the Curse, out of (say, 64 pregnancies) only about 2 in 5 "birth opportunities" gives an uzko (accounting for the enlo "double-burden"); so only 1 in 5 gives a female uzko (a bit better than the 1 in 6 you give, but not that far off). In old clan generation stats from Trollpak (which are *clearly* completely screwed up: clans will always die out according to it) it only gives a "2d6-2" chance of pregancies in an uzko's lifetime, so the pregancy rates you use sound high according to that (not that I'm complaining, mind: the 2d6-2 rate is clearly unworkable). TP is specifically citing them as slow breeders -- maybe part of this is more time between pregnancies, but a longer period as fertile breeders (one uzko in 6 years works if you double the breeding period to 40 years, which might be possible).
Anyway, the old TP system suggests you need either a lot of luck or a lot of pregnancies to manage to maintain your uz population, which the Sazdorf clan doesn't seem to accurately reflect. Way too easy to get a string of bad luck, and have too many enlo, or too many males, and that's all Kyger Litor wrote. Then again, I guess uz aren't supposed to have it easy...
Of course, stronger mothers will have a better chance to beat D'Wargon and have more uzko births, so the stats could vary quite a bit from clan to clan andf amily to family. And some clans may have additional benefits: special magics unavailable to others, certain rituals, etc. Just birthing the female uzko *first* on an automatic basis makes for a big difference. And all the other random environmental factors, too.
Cheers,
James
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