Why are the trolls so dirty and slovenly?

[Hellhound Havoc]

I've been reading Trollpak and understanding a lot more about the trolls, and how they seem to be these weird brutish creatures but there's a lot of sense in how they act and think. Well, as much as can be in a race of weird shadow hippo demons that escaped from Not!Hell and were cursed.

But later on, describing their living quarters, they're described as slovenly, and this keeps coming up. How their hovels are ramshackle, how they keep refuse to the side apparently unbothered, etc. But I don't get why though. Also they can be poisoned, so surely they're also prone to illness, and living in abject squalor can't be healthy.

Even the recent Glorantha Bestiary says:

Quote

By human standards, even wealthy trolls live amidst squalor and wretchedness.

If anything, you'd think that the trolls would actually be quite tidy, because they have two equivalents of pigs to eat their refuse and even their dirt and poop (trollkin and beetles, which are notorious FOR being decomposers in nature). I understand being disorganized or even having different habits of cleanliness but squalor? Plus, page 30 has this little box:

Quote

 

WHAT TROLLS THINK ABOUT
When their bellies are full the uz show deeper motives. These give us insight into their psychology. Trolls seek four things to make them happy.
First is a full stomach, the most easily obtainable goal.
The second is to bear healthy children (among the females) or to be wanted by a fertile female troll (among the males).
The third goal is to kill chaos things, for they believe that their beloved fertility goddess, sweet Korasting, will return troll progeny to health when there are no more uz in the world than chaos things. Such a time will be known, they say, because their children will no longer number trollkin among them.
Fourthly, they seek three mystical tools with which to heal their goddess, each of which disappeared long ago. One is a set of adamantine claws which Gbaji wore when he ripped Korasting from shoulder to shin, for only the tools which wounded the goddess can ever heal her again. Second is the Otherworld Cloak which would allow Kyger Litor to avoid Gbaji’s deceitful embrace and deceive him the way he deceived her. The third is to rediscover the lost verse of a song which Kyger Litor used during pregnancy which will make their children once again into whole mistress race trolls. They believe that the song was lost when the world turned upside down, and was stolen by some other singing god. Trolls pay an inordinate amount of time listening to others’ music in hope of finding it.

 

Which implies both that trolls can get their bellies full and think about things other than eating and mating (or else they'd just be wild animals, like the cave trolls or the broo), and also that they can care about comfort. So why are they always referred to as dirty, slovenly, living in filth and squalor, etc?

Edited October 27, 2023 by Hellhound Havoc

[John Biles]

Filth and squalor isn't necessarily a source of disease in Glorantha - disease spirits are what do it.

But I think an important part of it is that a lot of trolls' bellies are never full and cave trolls and trollkin are usally not going to care about hygiene unless you ride them like a horse.

 

[Hellhound Havoc]

7 minutes ago, John Biles said:

Filth and squalor isn't necessarily a source of disease in Glorantha - disease spirits are what do it.

But I think an important part of it is that a lot of trolls' bellies are never full and cave trolls and trollkin are usally not going to care about hygiene unless you ride them like a horse.

Cave trolls and trollkin won't, I get that, but don't the dark trolls own the trollkin and the beetles like cattle? Wouldn't it make sense for them to feed them the refuse, leftovers, and dirt instead of actual food, since the trollkin can live off of Dark Troll refuse and litter? So wouldn't it make sense for, say, Dagori Inkarth to be tidy because all the dirt is the trollkins' food?

[Cloud64]

To my mind, the only thing 'tidy' and 'trolls' have in common is the letter T. Trollpak, IIRC, will tell you that the olfactory sense is the trolls' favourite. Cleanliness would be a barren environment for a troll, much as an overly minimalist environment seems unstimulating to most of us modern humans. Troll art is based on the orchestration of odour to delight the nose. Smellscapes are their thing, something squalor provides in abundance.  I suspect that, as creatures of darkness averse to light, trolls would find the human penchant for colourful displays of art, draperies and furnishings to be as unpleasant as humans would find the stench of their squalor. 

[svensson]

To the OP

Because you are judging Uz by human standards. Let me explain:

Firstly, Uz are not concerned about visual appearances. Their primary sense is 'Darksense', essentially a form of sonar more similar to that of whales than of submarines. Where humans judge shape and color, Uz judge shape [via sonar return not sight], texture, and smell.

Secondly, Uz can eat and gain nourishment from *anything*, even rocks. And Uz are always hungry... there is no such thing as a sated troll and hunger is the top emotion felt by Uz. Even rage, pain, kinship, and love all come second place to hunger. The Uz love of texture even extends to their foods, as they enjoy the crunch of bone or stone as well as the taste of other items on the menu. Some foods that humans find disgusting [rotten meat, mouldy plants, live trollkin] are delectable to Uz as a combination of taste, smell, and texture.  A well off Uz keeps a large supply of foodstuffs available for when their hunger becomes so acute that it interferes with rational thought.

Uz do not make much use of fire and, like Aldryami, have unusual ideas about the preparation of foods for their own consumption. Uz might boil food in a geothermal mud bath, or 'pickle' food in an algae filled pond, but roasting is something they picked up from humans and is not often used in their own environment. Uz don't bake at all, and often find soups unfilling and stews as finicky. Oddly enough, though, Uz are great brewers. Uz drinks are not for the faint of heart or frail of constitution, however. Humans drink them at their own very considerable risk.

These two factors make Uz lairs dark, smelly pest holes to human senses, but snug, comfortable and safe by their own lights.

Edited November 6, 2023 by svensson

[Qizilbashwoman]

45 minutes ago, svensson said:

Oddly enough, though, Uz are great brewers.

yeast is Darkness rune

[Hellhound Havoc]

1 hour ago, Cloud64 said:

To my mind, the only thing 'tidy' and 'trolls' have in common is the letter T. Trollpak, IIRC, will tell you that the olfactory sense is the trolls' favourite. Cleanliness would be a barren environment for a troll, much as an overly minimalist environment seems unstimulating to most of us modern humans. Troll art is based on the orchestration of odour to delight the nose. Smellscapes are their thing, something squalor provides in abundance.  I suspect that, as creatures of darkness averse to light, trolls would find the human penchant for colourful displays of art, draperies and furnishings to be as unpleasant as humans would find the stench of their squalor. 

45 minutes ago, svensson said:

Firstly, Uz are not concerned about visual appearances. Their primary sense is 'Darksense', essentially a form of sonar more similar to that of whales than of submarines. Where humans judge shape and color, Uz judge shape, texture, and smell.

[...]

Uz do not make much use of fire and, like Aldryami, have unusual ideas about the preparation of foods for their own consumption. Uz might boil food in a geothermal mud bath, or 'pickle' food in an algae filled pond, but roasting is something they picked up from humans and is not often used in their own environment. Uz don't bake at all, and often find soups unfilling and stews as finicky. Oddly enough, though, Uz are great brewers. Uz drinks are not for the faint of heart or frail of constitution, however. Humans drink them at their own very considerable risk.

This makes sense to me, that trolls go by smell and that they would find different aromas more pleasant than others. That said, pages 13 and 14 of the Trollpak are an experiment to try and find troll food preferences, and the very first things are forms of leather, fruits, vegetables, and liquids. This isn't that different from human stuff, but I do understand that the combination prizes smells and what might appear to be "dirty" is actually carefully composed to smell nice.

That said, those same pages of the Trollpak mentions that the dark troll never ate his own feces, nor the trollkin's, and that the trollkin only ate the dark troll poop but never his own - and it died of hunger. The Dark Troll preferred to ritually devour the trollkin and subsequently die of hunger rather than eat his poop, so that indicates to me that they do have some concept of what is dirty and what isn't; and surely it's inconvenient to have sticky stuff like wine all over the ground.

And again, they herd beetles and trollkin. I understand that the preferred living of a rich troll would be to have a lot of food and other consumables laying around so he can eat whenever he gets peckish, but your average dark troll isn't that rich, and those beetles and trollkin gotta eat something, and I don't really see a dark troll wasting perfectly fine food on a trollkin or a beetle when they can very make do with least desirable food. That's exactly how humans have fed pigs for millennia.

53 minutes ago, svensson said:

Secondly, Uz can eat and gain nourishment from *anything*, even rocks. And Uz are always hungry... there is no such thing as a sated troll and hunger is the top emotion felt by Uz. Even rage, pain, kinship, and love all come second place to hunger. The Uz love of texture even extends to their foods, as they enjoy the crunch of bone or stone as well as the taste of other items on the menu. Some foods that humans find disgusting [rotten meat, mouldy plants, live trollkin] are delectable to Uz as a combination of taste, smell, and texture.  A well off Uz keeps a large supply of foodstuffs available for when their hunger becomes acute that it interferes with rational thought.

I have seen this claim numerous times, but only in these forums. I'd like to know where it originates from and if it's still canon.

 

The Trollpak doesn't say anything about the trolls being constantly hungry, neither does HeroQuest 2e or even the Guide to Glorantha, despite repeat mentions that they can eat anything, they can extract food from anything. And there's the excerpt I put in my main post, which very clearly states "a sated troll", which seems to contradict the idea that the Uz are constantly hungry. It is implied that eating is very important to them, and that they eat whenever they get the chance, but to me that seems more along the lines of them being gourmands and deriving much pleasure from eating (which is explicitely said in the Trollpak) rather than hunger.

The only place I've seen mention them being always hungry was in the Glorantha Bestiary, but the tone of the entry is very poetic rather than descriptive, and the more scientifically oriented Trollpak dissecates the Uz's entire digestive system but doesn't say anything of that sort. And it even emphasizes sometimes that certain trolls are hungry or go hungry, with mentions to sated trolls, which surely would make no sense if they were always hungry. If the definition of a troll is a Hungry Hungry Hippo, saying "hungry troll" makes no sense - starving troll would make more sense, yet it's almost impossible for a troll to starve in the wild.

[svensson]

@Hellhound Havoc Uz are more primal creatures than humans are. Uz have been consistently portrayed as 'always hungry' or, at the very minimum, very concerned about where their next meal is coming from. This goes back to RQ2 Trollpak and was reinforced in the RQ3 supplement 'The Haunted Caves'. In a game statistic sense, consider the effort required to feed an entire clan of SIZ 20 kinfolk. Things that humans find disgusting [cannibalism for example] are all used to keep themselves fed. Now imagine the work it takes to keep Redstone Caverns fed.... Just because Uz are 'always hungry' does not mean that they're always starving. Their hunger is a controlled one. But it's not unusual for a troll to grab a beetle for a snack if opportunity presents itself.

But Uz are NOT ravenous beasts! They're thinking beings and are wise enough not to over hunt their home region. Like a person on a diet, they control their hunger with behavior and social pressure. And certainly there are things they will not eat, their own feces being your example [and a good one]. This is because they know that their system has gotten all the nutrition it's going to get out of it. And yet, trollkin WILL eat the feces of their betters, do gain nutrition from it, and Uz will eat trollkin without a second thought.

[Ormi Phengaria]

3 hours ago, Hellhound Havoc said:

I have seen this claim numerous times, but only in these forums. I'd like to know where it originates from and if it's still canon.

It's hyperbole gesturing at something bigger. It's possible for a troll to be physically full and satiated, though it is a lot more difficult than it is for humans, even with the ability to eat and digest nearly anything. But with a full stomach one becomes aware of other, more subtle hungers, spiritual hungers. For trolls, all of these relate to creating more trolls, normatively, even their love of music. But this does not satiate. It only creates more hunger. It is a growing emptiness in the world in analogy of a stomach which demands more food the more you fill it. Ultimately, more trolls means less food for all trolls. That's a bit paradoxical, and I think very close to the heart of the nature of their curse by Gbaji.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[Malin]

I think the sentence "by human standards" does a lot of carrying here. Even between human cultures, there's a lot of judging going on. The wealthy Lunar is going to judge the Praxian nomad as living in intolerable squalor and poverty, while in the reverse, the Lunar might be judged as poor and pitiful, locked down by stone walls, and lacking both herd and freedom.

I love the troll pack, but if there is one thing it (and many other depictions of non-humans in Glorantha) is guilty of, it is showing them from the outsider's perspective. The culture is presented from a human perspective for player characters to interact with and not grow up in. You can use the troll pack to play trolls, sure (once again, one of my favorite modules), but since much of the flavor text is from the eyes of human scholars or travelers, you can't escape the terms of judgment.

A dark troll might be living in the most lavishly decorated home, with layered smells like the most perfumed garden, with echo symphonies that please the darksense echolocation like the most exquisite wall mosaics and wonderfully textured furnishings. However, to a human, it will still be a stinking, incomprehensible assault on their nose, filled with a labyrinthine clutter of soft, rotting things, hard reflective beetle shells, oddly shaped stone walls that look unworked, and furs filled with lice (a perfect snack). To a human, it would look like the troll lived in utmost squalor. For the troll, a human palace would look impoverished and bland. Straight, boring walls, no food, very sparse smells, and too large spaces for comfort.

And, since the text judges from a human perspective, of course, that is the first impression it gives us because it is the first impression that the player characters are supposed to get if they are invited to/invade a troll's private area.

The way I see it, the same goes for the focus on hunger. Humans eat to live, and they also get hungry, but it is rarely that is the top of their list of desires. It is a necessity. Procreating/making children/preserving family is a more pronounced goal, and this they share with the trolls. However, an outsider might look at humans and see greed as their defining trait. Amassing things, always more, bigger, better, shinier. This need for more THINGS might be as alien to the trolls as the way humans see the trolls HUNGER. Sure, trolls might like things and want more and useful stuff, but it's not that important compared to the pleasures of food, eating, and being full. Trolls can eat almost anything, so what does it say about their culture that they don't? That they are discerning, cultured, and sometimes even traditional in what manner of things they choose to consume? Humans have a different view of culture as food, apart from the odd gourmand, most people use food for other reasons. Sustenance. Sharing community. Showing off. Making peace with guests. It is the rituals that surround the food that is more important than the food itself. Not so for trolls.

It makes sense to me that humans would look at trolls and see a ravenous hunger (we too are gripped by hunger a few times a day, but temper it with traditional meals and sometimes even fasting; it doesn't control us) because for a troll the point IS the food. The focus is to bite down and enjoy whatever delicious morsel filled with flavors and textures that you have, the act of eating is the act of EATING. As some cultures frown on sexual activities divorced from procreation, it seems that humans have a hard time understanding the trolls' love of eating. Perhaps this is due to humans living in a food-scarce landscape. To eat more than your share might mean that your neighbors might starve, and it might mean that your body grows slower and less optimized for survival. Neither of these is true for trolls. They digest food too fast and effectively for it to hinder them, and they can eat most things, even if not all of them are delicious.

Well, I have rambled enough, need to go back and write about Sun County now, but this stuff is fascinating.

[Qizilbashwoman]

10 hours ago, svensson said:

@Hellhound Havoc

But Uz are NOT ravenous beasts! They're thinking beings and are wise enough not to over hunt their home region. Like a person on a diet, they control their hunger with behavior and social pressure. And certainly there are things they will not eat, their own feces being your example [and a good one]. This is because they know that their system has gotten all the nutrition it's going to get out of it. And yet, trollkin WILL eat the feces of their betters, do gain nutrition from it, and Uz will eat trollkin without a second thought.

lmao as a child of the 80s I now think of them angrily smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee

[Joerg]

Rot is a form of living Darkness, which may be desirable to detect with Darksense (which is not sonar, but uses ambient Darkness to interact with its targets). Thus the visible squalor might be something like glitter to Darksense.

Using trollkin to keep things clean can be difficult - training them to be picky eaters or chewers to eat only a specific component of the available food, which makes them very hard to train as a laundry service. Trollkin able to be this discerning and obedient are quite highly qualified specimen who could be used for other purposes.

Food class trollkin can be used for waste removal, but that can be used to remove rubble from digging or similar (as long as you can get them potty-trained to defecate outside).

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

lmao as a child of the 80s I now think of them angrily smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee

And listening to Nirvana in their thrift store flannels [yeah, I know that's early 90s but the image is there]

[svensson]

And troll lairs are remarkably free of rats and roaches! Trollkin DO have their uses, after all 😁

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, svensson said:

And troll lairs are remarkably free of rats and roaches! Trollkin DO have their uses, after all 😁

I agree about rats, but there might be giant roaches as livestock.

 

[Techpriest]

On 10/28/2023 at 8:36 AM, Joerg said:

I agree about rats, but there might be giant roaches as livestock.

 

I'm half wondering if they have giant hissing cockroaches they keep as pets and guard animals. It'd be something to see for sure. 

[Shiningbrow]

11 hours ago, Techpriest said:

It'd be something to see for sure. 

I'll pass, thanks!

As for this thread,  what would we say about those AA trolls who contact the outside world? I presume they curtail their underground habits, and so humans find them weird (stinky) but tolerable. When they go back home, is their place just as 'squalid'?

[Mark Mohrfield]

Trolls are not dirty and slovenly! It’s humans who are overly tidy and prissy.

[AndrewTBP]

The Uz in my 13th Age Glorantha campaign is easily the cleanest person around. He’s a Monk of Engizi the Sky River Titan and spends as much time as possible in the nearest watercourse. 
😉

[Darius West]

On 10/28/2023 at 7:31 AM, Hellhound Havoc said:

I've been reading Trollpak and understanding a lot more about the trolls, and how they seem to be these weird brutish creatures but there's a lot of sense in how they act and think. Well, as much as can be in a race of weird shadow hippo demons that escaped from Not!Hell and were cursed.

But later on, describing their living quarters, they're described as slovenly, and this keeps coming up. How their hovels are ramshackle, how they keep refuse to the side apparently unbothered, etc. But I don't get why though. Also they can be poisoned, so surely they're also prone to illness, and living in abject squalor can't be healthy.

Hi Hellhound Havoc.  Humans don't understand trolls and their senses. Trolls have rich olfactory senses, quite apart form their darksense, and many thngs humans regard as stinky and abominable, trolls appreciate for their unusual textures and aromas, much like dogs or pigs.  Remember that trolls can eat anything, and feces is potentially something a troll would eat if it smelled like it was full of undigested nutrients.  Similarly, Trolls would enjoy the aroma of flowers, as they find Aldryami absolutely delicious and delectable.

Where Humans see a stinking cesspit in the middle of a troll community, the trolls see an interactive community art project that they all contribute to.  Where a human sees a pile of elf and runner heads with their genitals stuffed into their mouths, and thinks "atrocity mongering trolls", the troll sees "beautiful flower arrangement" (because, let's face it, flowers are actually plant genitals, and giving ripped off plant genitals to your girlfriend is a bit weird when you realize this). Stinking untanned hides provide a pungent and homely smell with a meaty undernote.  Trolls are actually aesthetes wandering a world of beauty and sumptuous feasts at every turn.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Darius West

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 10/28/2023 at 1:09 AM, Hellhound Havoc said:

That said, those same pages of the Trollpak mentions that the dark troll never ate his own feces, nor the trollkin's, and that the trollkin only ate the dark troll poop but never his own - and it died of hunger. The Dark Troll preferred to ritually devour the trollkin and subsequently die of hunger rather than eat his poop, so that indicates to me that they do have some concept of what is dirty and what isn't;

Your conclusion about this fact is based on your conception of dirty

now imagine that in your culture, eating your own feces is good.  Now imagine why trolls don’t eat their own feces.

for example maybe they consider that their  feces is what their body did not absorb. In that case there is no reason to eat them again.  That would be fool

note I m not saying that is the reason, just that is not because a fact may be explained by our culture that our culture and the other one have the same explanation.

We unfortunately have no source of elder races based on their own perspective

not an issue if we play human, of course.

[svensson]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Your conclusion about this fact is based on your conception of dirty

now imagine that in your culture, eating your own feces is good.  Now imagine why trolls don’t eat their own feces.

for example maybe they consider that their  feces is what their body did not absorb. In that case there is no reason to eat them again.  That would be fool

note I m not saying that is the reason, just that is not because a fact may be explained by our culture that our culture and the other one have the same explanation.

We unfortunately have no source of elder races based on their own perspective

not an issue if we play human, of course.

While it's not considered 'canon', I personally like the writing in Mongoose's RQ2 'Races of Glorantha vol. 1'. This volume DOES discuss three elder races, the dragonewts, Uz, and Ducks, from their own points of view. Of course, these points of view are expressed 600 years or so ago in ST 900. I REALLY enjoyed both the dragonewt and Uz chapters.

[French Desperate WindChild]

5 hours ago, svensson said:

While it's not considered 'canon', I personally like the writing in Mongoose's RQ2 'Races of Glorantha vol. 1'. This volume DOES discuss three elder races, the dragonewts, Uz, and Ducks, from their own points of view. Of course, these points of view are expressed 600 years or so ago in ST 900. I REALLY enjoyed both the dragonewt and Uz chapters.

Didn’t know 🙂 

 

[svensson]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Didn’t know 🙂 

 

While Chaosium and Mongoose have repaired their relationship, the whole Second Age Glorantha series was thought to have 'gone off the rails' insofar as Glorantha lore and canon were concerned. There is a whole bunch of pretty goofy dreck in the series, but with a little effort you can find the odd and sundry gem. 'Race volume 1' is one of them.

[mfbrandi]

14 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

not an issue if we play human, of course

Except that it is OK for a player to be more “enlightened” (even though most uz hate the expression) than their human character.