Is Trollball only a game ?

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 9/23/2022 at 12:44 PM, mfbrandi said:

as Zorak Zoran is not himself a troll

wait what

Edited September 25, 2022 by Qizilbashwoman

[mfbrandi]

9 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

wait what

Err … yeah: not descended from Kyger Litor or Dame Darkness (per latest genealogy — and this fits older material, IMO). This goes for Xiola Umbar and Argan Argar, too. IIRC, they don’t have the man rune, either. They are straight out of Darkness (although Argan Argar was born again later, but still not in KL’s line). They are depicted as trolls because — many/most of — their worshippers are Uz, no? Contrast with Karrg, Vaneekara, Jakaboom, and Korasting & her children.

(That is my take, anyway. See also, this thread — where @scott-martin promises fresh revelations … at some point.)

[PhilHibbs]

Most human gods aren't/weren't humans either.

[scott-martin]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Contrast with Karrg, Vaneekara, Jakaboom, and Korasting & her children

I was a little vague calling Annilla a "troll goddess." She is a goddess of trolls but not a goddess who is a troll, much as the entries in Troll Gods are gods for trolls without on the whole being trollish themselves except for the ubiquitous KL and her various imputed descendants.

We now know my brain blithering about whether trolls can be made (adopted, initiated) as well as born. I think this makes the KL adoption ceremony much more interesting because it makes her the mystery of how anyone can become one of uz, whether that entails physical birth or something more symbolic. In this model, the children of people like ZZ and AA (and Annilla and Gouger and . . . ) may not necessarily be born of troll mothers but they can still participate in the larger communion of trollishness. 

And as mentioned there, trollball has become interesting for me as the way these people figure out how to accept and even embrace the disorder of hurtplace. You want to disturb the tranquility of creation without letting the community devolve into self-perpetuating "chaos" . . . the goal is to create a rules-bounded space where just about anything can happen inside the lines but exit is carefully controlled and enforced. You're allowed to hurl stuff in. You're not allowed to hurl stuff out or else the referee (if any) will hurl you out hard. And those referees are touched with the disorder rune so their decisions are likely to be arbitrary, controversial and grossly unfair. This is where trolls learn that hurtplace is like that. Uz make rules for mutual boundaries but the rules are usually not biased in our favor. Some people's mothers are bigger than other people's mothers and they are all bigger than you.

It seems to be primarily a ZZ franchise with Karrg grudgingly allowed to participate, or at best a partnership between these two cults. The mandated engagement of a XU priestess seems to argue in favor of a ZZ origin but I can see the argument going the other way if this is designed to be a kind of "punishment" (forced lesson or ordeal) to test the priestess's ability to endure the ball's suffering without actively trying to put it out of its misery. The fact that she is "beautiful" in this context may also be a ZZ artifact. Either way, the AA priesthood apparently does not participate in the organized sport and so probably didn't carry it in the AA darkbringer diaspora. If we can track the historical spread of trollball we might be able to locate the original cult center of ZZ and maybe XU (at least nearby).

Personally, because the trollpak maps are so evocative, I think the mythic original for the game was the throwing of the thrown mountains in which the prototrolls learned a painful lesson about death at a distance. I guess this has been situated in the Elder Wilds somewhere? Zong is a much bigger deal there today, persisting where any original ZZ influence continued to migrate down to Shadows Dance. Zong is not a child of Korasting. Nor is he a brother to Boztakang, who went north and out of the central darkness tendency to abdicate his role to ZZ. Zong is the child of the hurler. He knows how to throw.

Throwing is a big deal in the evolution of consciousness because when missile weapons emerge you are no longer simply extending your corporeal reach but translating it across empty space, projecting your violence toward a relatively distant target. Vaneekara doesn't necessarily need to hit anything. She simply extends your range. Aiming at a specific target is Zong's job. Either way, the mere act of projection establishes the intervening space between you and your desire, makes it meaningful. For humans, this is a matter of depth perception and the holographic perspective. We're generally visual people and our main projectile weapons are sky weapons.

It's different for trolls, who need to build up their sense of the holographic landscape via sonar that has different parameters. Maybe they can see okay and can use sight to aim a sling or throw a pass. All you're doing is hurling at a fairly distant target. But to catch the ball, Zong can't really help you. We leave him behind in the Elder Wilds where other people throw things at uz. We need refined close-range sonar to make sure we're where the ball is going. And for that to work, we need a clear auditory field, which is not trollball. People are yelling and in particular they have what amounts to a ritual obligation (team spirit) to throw crap at the end zone where a long-range pass would otherwise be easiest and most effective to complete. The end zone is noise and again, fans of the enemy team hurling crap at you to hurt you and disrupt whatever sonar model of space you manage to maintain. 

I think the mysterious god of the game teaches catching. This might be an archaic role of Karrg if you believe trollball is not originally a ZZ ritual. Maybe that fits. Either way, it doesn't seem to be preserved in the conventional Karrg subcult so only comes up here. That's okay. No other troll really needs to be able to catch. But who are the catchers? On one hand, you have the offensive receivers whose job it is to make yardage. On the other hand, you have the goalie. The goalie is always in the red zone getting pelted with constant garbage. Maybe this person (strange how this seems to be a pastime for otherwise superfluous males except as a way to show off their mating desirability without killing each other but maybe uz women play? like the line in the virgin suicides, the boys' job and the job of trollball as an institution is "merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them") needs to develop the most acute combination of sensory awareness to catch under those conditions. You need to have pretty good vision for an uz as well as exquisite sonar to stay on top of the ball.

And the red zone is red, which means it's ZZ territory. Again, I suspect the goalie is primarily Karrg and the runners are primarily ZZ but maybe the real symbolic situation is flipped. Either way, they can see red and they can smell blood. This is the death zone. I would not be surprised if this is their understanding of where babies come from. Whoever gets the package across the line is the father. On the other hand, maybe most trollball players are gay? It's complicated and I'm really just testing to see if you're still reading here, or am I.

There are also "astronomical" elements (again, whatever passes for astronomy among the trolls) that I think ultimately get sublimated onto the ouranekki board (again, hinting at an eastern wilds origin, somewhere around the steppe nomad star lore) and reflected in Black Sun ceremonial combat on the far side. What unifies this part of the world is that it was once the Genertan empire, Genert being father of giants and thrower of mountains. I don't know if the use of giants as referees is simply an expedient because Gonn Orta is a patron of the game or something deeper, but it's strange how trolls and giants interact up there in those mountains so maybe there's a truly mind-melting link.

[mfbrandi]

18 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

trollball has become interesting for me as the way these people figure out how to accept and even embrace the disorder of hurtplace.

And indeed, the hurt of Hurtplace. This would suggest that to fulfill its allegorical function, trollball is played in enough light to be uncomfortable.

23 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

I was a little vague calling Annilla a "troll goddess." She is a goddess of trolls but not a goddess who is a troll

Well, I did tease you — with diagram — way back when. Actually, I had wondered whether it was a typo and you meant “formerly” — as in booted out for suspicious Lunar shenanigans.

[scott-martin]

8 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, I did tease you — with diagram — way back when. Actually, I had wondered whether it was a typo and you meant “formerly” — as in booted out for suspicious Lunar shenanigans.

Feels like a lifetime ago! But yeah, I think sources agree that the prototrolls who came to the Blue Moon Plateau (with Boztakang as their favored chaos fighter, so already a divergent population, ZZ is only 2% of the cult table, I doubt they have much conventional trollball there but might play weird "basko games" instead) found the goddess waiting for them already, so they might be hers but she is not theirs. If so, they might be on the brink of getting booted from trolldom, especially if they stay even tentatively aligned with the empire. Nice hook for jazzing up the apocalyptic struggle between competing troll philosophies beyond "Dagori Inkarth bred a mistress, bow down or be eaten" . . . especially because KOS tells us trolls don't really survive in their current configuration.

[scott-martin]

Mysteriously nobody can permanently die on the trollball pitch, which squarely places the game in otherworld territory.

I'm not sure about the ball.

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I was a little vague calling Annilla a "troll goddess." She is a goddess of trolls but not a goddess who is a troll, much as the entries in Troll Gods are gods for trolls without on the whole being trollish themselves except for the ubiquitous KL and her various imputed descendants...and so very much more not quoted...

WOW!

 

7 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

wait what

No doubt... may I second that! WOW!

 

44 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

I'm not sure about the ball.

...all while the ball is quite sure it squarely wishes it was in otherworldly territory!

 

[Bill the barbarian]

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Most human gods aren't/weren't humans either.

Most humans aren't human!
I know, I have met a few o' them!

Edited September 25, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Eff]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Feels like a lifetime ago! But yeah, I think sources agree that the prototrolls who came to the Blue Moon Plateau (with Boztakang as their favored chaos fighter, so already a divergent population, ZZ is only 2% of the cult table, I doubt they have much conventional trollball there but might play weird "basko games" instead) found the goddess waiting for them already, so they might be hers but she is not theirs. If so, they might be on the brink of getting booted from trolldom, especially if they stay even tentatively aligned with the empire. Nice hook for jazzing up the apocalyptic struggle between competing troll philosophies beyond "Dagori Inkarth bred a mistress, bow down or be eaten" . . . especially because KOS tells us trolls don't really survive in their current configuration.

Well, just look at the Assassin and Blue Moon School chits... but maybe the trollishness is simply invisible but still present. Like some other things related to the moon.

[Erol of Backford]

http://rpgreview.net/mob/trollball.htm

I had to link this from MOB's web site.

Trollball is much more than a game.

[JRE]

I really like the idea of Karrg as the catcher, as indeed, all sane trolls would rather dodge or put a shield up if something suddenly came fast in their diection. Karrg also trains you to put yourself in the way when anything threatens your mother, your sister or your niece, which is the first step to catching.

I would propose, as it happens with radar, that darksense is very good at detecting if the object is coming straight for you, or if it will just pass by the side, except for a blind cone directly  in front of your snout. So catching is harder than dodging, as it requires getting the object almost in the non-return zone. 

I am sure trolls have some personal darksense variation that makes every emitter slightly different, as otherwise they would be blind in large groups due to the echo of other trolls. Indeed Trollball may double also as training for mass formation fighting, getting used to many echoes and recognizing your own returns among hundreds of others. 

The subsonic tremors in the pitch must be impressive, specially if a powerful Mistress is in the audience, as she may overload lesser trolls' darksense.

As for trolkin spectators, I suppose most of the audience bring one or several with them, and it is a good omen if one of yours is chosen as a ball replacement. Most trolkin will be cowering in fear below or behind the troll that brought them, rather than watching, except for a few values that are used as spotter / callers, calling what the giants seem likely to do and any strange tactics used by the opposition. As they would be audience thay should not be hurted, but I suspect more than one such value have found themselves turned into the ball. 

I would also imagine there are big regional variations depending on the local deities, as Scott suggests. Halikiv may well have a shorter game, with hand passes and wide melee shield pushes, rather than the Vaneekara influenced long games as used by some Dagori Inkarth teams. 

I would prefer if the actual game is really ancient and pure troll, initiated by Karrg, even if some sdopted members like ZZ really took to it as one of their few ways to gain legitimacy among Uzdom. XU joined the game when trolkin became the ball, as I do not expect any troll to heal a badger, and anyway they probably lasted much longer, so that was during Time, while the game is older. I really like it as a symbolism of hurtplace, and I would have young trolls playing at it, with adult trolls acting as referees, player kickers. I would allow young females to play, but forbidden after initiation. The magic of the field is Death controlled, not any Life magic, and Kyger Litor would not like this otherworld death zone to taint the Fertility of her daughters. Even the Xiola Umbar priestess must stay outside the field for the same reason.

However, I would propose that a female troll Zorak Zoran devotee would be allowed to play, if you can find one, as she would not be considered a Mother but a Brother. Other cults (Basko, Boztakang...) may allow a female to adopt male trappings, including playing in the game. That would impact the fertility of any female, but not of any male.

I would not make a simplistic trollish Yin Yang, with Female as Life and Male as Death, but it is a part of the picture, and accepted by many traditional Kyger Litor communities. It fits with the one mother, many uncles social upbringing, and with males being supported only by his fellow uncles, that I would translate as brothers though most will not be biological brothers.

[mfbrandi]

Religious significance of the game: it is a trollkin deathquest, perhaps; the ball is the god who suffers and dies (repeatedly) to save the world or even to give birth to it. But that would be a deep XU/ZZ cult mystery — not for those who want their trollball to be KL-trollish.

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Religious significance of the game: it is a trollkin deathquest, perhaps; the ball is the god who suffers and dies (repeatedly) to save the world or even to give birth to it. But that would be a deep XU/ZZ cult mystery — not for those who want their trollball to be KL-trollish.

Maybe, although we know the game pre-dates the Curse of Kin.

[mfbrandi]

2 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Maybe, although we know the game pre-dates the Curse of Kin.

I am now picturing a very angry badger with three eyes — probably equally erroneously.

[Erol of Backford]

Sorry if I am missing the "more than a game" point but with Mr. Zit's suggestion the PC's could be part of an armature trollball team and head to the armature championships at Gonn Otra's Castle? Who has the list of the trollball teams? Redstone and Sazdorf had teams and with Troll Woods, Styx Grotto and Blackwell not to far from Backford I'd assume there would be plenty of opportunities for matches? I am thinking an exhibition game is in order:

Backford Ballers - Agmoiri x2, a Werebear maybe a minitour friend from the Grazelands and a young friendly giant, only 3.5m tall so about the size of a great-troll as goalie? Round out the team with a few oversized Orlanthi? Maybe the Werebear is the ball and cheats for the non-troll team in the Ota Championships!? is it every five years? Maybe the PC team has a strong relationship over time with Orta and his giants and they are permitted to enter the tourney with some minor illusionary modifications?

I assume there is a trolball pitch near every troll settlement of more than a few hundred?

Darkseason would be when most games were played? Likely the full season would span 2~3 seasons?

What was the old Dungeon Magazine game with monsters playing football against humans, elves and dwarves?

Edited September 27, 2022 by Erol of Backford

[Erol of Backford]

On 9/26/2022 at 5:15 AM, JRE said:

However, I would propose that a female troll Zorak Zoran devotee would be allowed to play, if you can find one, as she would not be considered a Mother but a Brother.

Your wish is in Griffin Mountain, p.145, Gerag Midem. She leads a Zorak Zoran war party who is also her trollball team, the Barrelheads.

[Bill the barbarian]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:54 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Reasonably sure I see a typo in the Jonstown translation of that cheer from the original Darktongue... I believe the Notchet Library correctly translates the third line as 

Quote

All by uzselves!

Pedantically yours,
Bill the librarian

[AlHazred]

3 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Your wish is in Griffin Mountain, p.145, Gerag Midem. She leads a Zorak Zoran war party who is also her trollball team, the Barrelheads.

I don't think the party she's adventuring with is her team. In fact, I don't know that she plays, but she sponsors the Barrelheads. Don't talk to her when they're having an off season...

[Erol of Backford]

As Mr. Zit has brought attention to the sport of trollball which this planned campaign has failed to notice we'll be making her the sponsor and she will likely be the goalie as well. I was also thinking she'd be the leader of the trolls in the Market Mayhem encounter as it plants future campaign ties that I like. Quarter century time adjustments will be needed as well.

19 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

her

her versus owns, no difference to me. MGWV for sure.

[jean]

As I understand it, trollball like football is obviously much more than a game. For the fans it is akin to a religion. They wait for the next match, talk endlessly about the referee's decisions (insert various football fans behaviours ...)

 

 

[Bill the barbarian]

30 minutes ago, jean said:

As I understand it, trollball like football is obviously much more than a game. For the fans it is akin to a religion. They wait for the next match, talk endlessly about the referee's decisions (insert various football fans behaviours ...)

 

The authors were Californian or living there in the '70s. Football and America, well, us Canadians are said to be fanatical about our football (or were when I was lumbering across the plains with the dinosaurs), but I bet we can not hold a candle to thems south of the border! I can not believe that Trollball's religious aspect did not come from this American devotion to its distant cousin, American football.

Edited October 3, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[mfbrandi]

14 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I can not believe that Trollball's religious aspect did not come from this American devotion to its distant cousin, American football.

This should have been Janet Jackson’s comeback: “Never mind my ‘wardrobe malfunction’ — what about the human sacrifice before kick-off? Get things in proportion, guys!” I don’t watch sports. I didn’t know what I was missing.

[Erol of Backford]

34 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Janet Jackson’s comeback: “Never mind my ‘wardrobe malfunction’

  is there a graphics program for turning your favorite human into a troll? Sort of like the American Werewolf in London? Are you able to transform into a troll per a spell, shape change in the current rules now? So humans could polymorph and infiltrate troll society, with a very strange dark tongue accent to play trollball.

[Qizilbashwoman]

35 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

  is there a graphics program for turning your favorite human into a troll? Sort of like the American Werewolf in London? Are you able to transform into a troll per a spell, shape change in the current rules now? So humans could polymorph and infiltrate troll society, with a very strange dark tongue accent to play trollball.

they're called kitori, or else you can do the Arkat thing and be reborn as an Uz-Uz.

(the kitori were originally Darkness Folk but not specifically uz originally, but then became Uz-Uz by affiliation with the Great Mother)

Edited October 3, 2022 by Qizilbashwoman