their description revolves around their calloused skin.
they lived in remote villages in the mountians.
they were peaceful before the cleansing wars started.
they were miners.
they worshipped the rising sun.
they became very dangerous when BLEEPED with.
Windreaver was quite the tactician and general (trolls are neither known for their tactics nor leadership abilities).
just thought it was interesting.
But Rajaat didn't have his Champions cleansing monsters but people. All the other D&D races have been changed in some way (it seems that lizardmen really aren't changed at all) when ported to DS, so making DS trolls tall, green, crooked, long-nosed, regenerative and fire-vulnerable is almost a lack of effort. RaFoaDK makes a great effort IMHO in transforming the troll while keeping the theme of fire in the picture (trolls aren't linked to fire: its Myron that loves burning people up).
That is interesting. Hadn't really looked through that book, but I might have to check it out now.
Same here, and I have that book.
/me starts reading
I always thought of them as sun-resistant Fensir Trolls (from Planescape hailing from Ysgard).
Still trying to find those.
What accessory were they in again?
The D&D troll is very...evocative. Makes for a good monster, just like the beholder and illithid.
But Rajaat didn't have his Champions cleansing monsters but people. ).
Mostly due to the fact no one has bothered to flesh out troll society prior to RaFoaDK. FR and even SJ fleshed out both Beholder and Mindflayers as a people rather than monsters.
All the other D&D races have been changed in some way (it seems that lizardmen really aren't changed at all) when ported to DS, so making DS trolls tall, green, crokked, long-nosed, regenerative and fire-vulnerable is almost a lack of effort.
I always felt that DS races changed or evolved during and after the Cleansing War from their core D&D couterparts. However I also feel that they were excatly like the races from the PHB at begining and through out most of the Green Age.
What follows is a fragment of the propaganda underlying Myron's campaigns against the trolls during the Cleansing Wars, discovered mouldering and forgotten in the library of Hammanu:
"Trolls...One of the most vile races spawned by the Rebirth, these deadly creatures were born from the sludge leftover at the other races' creation. Unlike the other races created during the Rebirth, the trolls were born with no intellect beyond that of a savage beast, with their only instinct to hunt and fight, to eat and reproduce. They are asexual predators that breed by warring and fighting among one another and with other creatures; in this way, a single troll can quickly become an infestation."
Unfortunately, this view runs counter to established to one known fact of the history of the trolls during the Cleansing Wars: the trolls had a king (Windreaver), implying they had a civilization.
In truth, the trolls were a mountain-dwelling people, strong, thoughtless, shiftless, and yet capable of great works when they were inclined. They were created from the sludge leftover at the other races' creation, and so there was much about them that was dark and terrible.
They ate flesh, even the flesh of their own, and decorated their structures with the bones of their fallen prey. Their homes and territories were littered with waste and refuge. War and slaughter was their cup. They loved fire and storm, and great shaking landslides and earthquakes. They were the cast off sins and egos of the halfling race, the hubris and anger of the first people.
In the early years after the Rebirth, some among the other races claimed the trolls were Nature-benders who had been Reborn, from a few who had slyly crept into the Tower with lies and guile, hoping to survive the apocalypse that would consume the rest of their kind, and been branded by the elemental powers of nature in Rebirth for their sins against life.
Trollish names implied the destruction of the elements: Windreaver, Flamequencher, Forestsmasher, Sunburner, Stormcaster, Earthchainer, Stonebreaker, and others. The troll's body was laced with the elements: stone and rock made their skin, crystals grew upon them at times, and veins of ore ran in their flesh -- some held searing fire in their skin -- molten blood of rock and lead -- and had thick smoke in their lungs, and called out with defeaning voices like the thundering sky. Many of the Reborn claimed the trolls were more element than creature.
Favoring their mountain haunts, they lived apart, preying upon those who entered their demense, trading with the dwarves, warring with the giants, emerging rarely to raid and hunt in the lands below. It was said they ate mountains, chewing upon the roots, sleeping bare in the snow and ice like great boulders, and crafted great blades of untold elemental fury in their forges.
In craft, the trolls were mad with an ill sort of genius. Where the dwarves prized beauty, the trolls prized strength, and the most terrible weapons of the Cleansing Wars, those that led to the doom of whole peoples and were wielded by the Champions themselves, were items of craft that often fell from trollish forge.
The preferred and often only successful way to rid a place of trolls was to scorch it with flames and fire. During the Cleansing Wars, vast tracts of forest were burned to ash and plains were set ablaze as the armies scourged trolls from the earth; of course, this pales next to the volcanoes that were raised and the great molten gorges opened by the Champions' sorcery in their war to eradicate the trolls.
Their last king, Windreaver, was a Stone troll, one of the tough, ponderous trolls mingled with the element of earth, plated with rock, and as strong as a giant. The Smoking Crown mountain marks the site of Windreaver's death, the very spot where Hammanu raised a volcano to engulf the last troll, the king of his people.
There were other sorts of trolls as well, such as Forest trolls, who often had moss growing on them, and tended to favor the taste of horseflesh (and packmules). The beasts known as Mist trolls haunted the misty highland plains. They were great, lumbering boulders that could awaken suddenly and steal you away for supper. The Cave trolls were the last of the trollish peoples to fall, and the most numerous of their civilizations.
Cave trolls lived beneath the earth in massive caverns, now collapsed and bared to the surface by the Champion's armies, that site marked today by the Troll-Grave Chasm. Strange bones veined with precious metals and minerals still line the floor of that haunted gorge.
-----------------
Now, historically, one wonders at the situation surrounding the trolls and Myron's failure to eradicate them during the Cleansing Wars. What if...the other sorcerer-kings, or rather just Oronis, were not the first to have second thoughts about the genocidal war they had comitted themselves to?
(Editor: you'll note references regarding the motivations behind the Cleansing Wars, and the propaganda used to keep the fires of hatred and war burning for centuries. I've toyed with these ideas as being those Rajaat utilized to create and extend the wars.)
Myron...close to slaying the last few trolls, decides to "taint" himself by reading the thoughts of those left before him, to better glory in his triumph over their evil and impurity, to fully comprehend the truth of the wickedness he has destroyed.
There is no danger in this now, no danger he might turn from his task, he thinks, no possibility he might be corrupted by the tricks of the trolls who would seek to turn him from his master to their own ends. After all, the righteousness of the Elements is with him...and soon the trolls will be gone.
The Elementals desire purity. The trolls are genetic waste, the sludge of all races, the worst traits of all creatures. Their evil, their impurity, source and breeding of their vile behavior, must be eliminated to correct the mistakes of the ancient halflings and purify Athas.
The pagan druids are gone. Their preserver allies eliminated. Now only those races opposed to the elemental purity -- the elven druid-lovers, the pixies who scream of the forest, the dwarven stone-lovers, and the others -- and the foul things that crawled forth -- like the ogres, goblins, orcs and trolls -- remain.
He takes in the minds of the cowering trolls, takes in their evil, their wicked nature, their savagery, their beastiality...and their suffering, their fear, their sorrowed agony! And Myron, awash in the blood of an entire people, is overcome by the gravity of his error...
...and wallowing in misery at the great lie he has participated in, shocked at the extent of his own terrible crimes, he turns from the surviors, aflame with rage, savagely maddened by the betrayal of Rajaat, by the lies he was fed and incensed by the shattering of his world. He marches upon the other armies of the Champions with his own, alongside the surviving trolls, and engages them.
In return, Rajaat descends upon him, the Champions combine their powers, and Myron "tainted and tricked by the impurity of the trolls" is slain, his spirit torn from his body and his powers passed to another: Hammanu, whose hatred of the destruction wrought by the trolls, wrought by Myron's betrayal of men, is uplifted -- and Rajaat believes controlled him who would become his greatest Champion.
This choice is Rajaat's error, for Hammanu's love is for men, his hate is a burning desire for justice and for the protection of those in his care, not the fervrent religious devotion of Myron to the spiritual principles of the Cleansing, as false as he found those to be in the end. Rajaat, in uplifting Hammanu, uplifts his own doom, for when Hammanu learns Rajaat will turn upon men as Myron did, Hammanu's rage rises once more, and is directed now towards the betrayal shown by Rajaat!
Knowing (and fearing) the strength of Hammanu and his army, of his favored status among them and thus his power, and finally of Rajaat's plans to eliminate them as well because they are human, the other Champions turn aside from their master and plot to decieve and slay the Warbringer.
I think if we combine what you have done here for the trolls with some of what's mentioned in Races of Stone for the Goliaths, (which has many similarities of that presented here) I think we will have our Athasian Green Age Trolls.
I alos like what you are doing with the history as well, I too always thought there was more than meets the eye to the whole Cleansing Wars thing and how some of the Champions might have felt, etc., and that they had to feel more than fear against Rajaat and fear for their own lives to finally change their minds and combine efforts to take down their master, and I think you hit on that beautifully. The propaganda you have Rajaat throwing out fits nicely with this as well, and I especially like what happens when you get too close to understanding the enemy, you begin to like the enemy and sympathize if you aren't careful.
Great work as always man.
Good catch guys. :P
I have written some material on ogres, too, which I am very happy with, and may post it some time. I also did a bit on orcs, but I'm not so happy with that so I likely will not...except that, hrm, I just came up with something cool while thinking about it.
Anyways, where do I find information about these Goliaths? Races of Stone? (What company produced the book?)
Anyways, where do I find information about these Goliaths? Races of Stone? (What company produced the book?)
It's published by Wizards. SHould find it next to all of the other D&D books where you find yours.
What accessory were they in again?
Not that it matters so much after that post, but it was from the Planes of Chaos Monstrous Supplement (p.12). Fensir.
Not that it matters so much after that post, but it was from the Planes of Chaos Monstrous Supplement (p.12). Fensir.
Hmmm, don't think I have that one.
Guess I'll have to look through my planescape stuff tonight and hunt for it.
I'm thinking Irda for Athasian Ogres.
I did that too, I just like the Irda too much and think the Green Age Ogres wouldn't be anywhere near what's presented in the normal MM.
I also had a few hundred remaining, but they lived on a hidden island in the only sea of Athas, much like where they live in Ansalon or whatever the Dragonlance world is called.
But this was also back in the day when I had quicklinks and other nuttier things, so I might rethink that. Haven't been brainstorming much on what the Green Age should be about in awhile.
Raven is helping though, keep it coming Raven.
Ogres were brutish beast-men, whom some claimed were a mutation of the orcs; savage and beastial in the wild, they could be raised and trained for simple tasks and were often kept as something like pets or servants by the civilized races (and particularly among orcs). Though simple, the ogres were not necessarily stupid; a number of ogres attained high-ranking positions among the priesthood of the Way, and the untrained psionic prowess of their wild cousins was also notable.
In the wild, ogres were natural druids and rangers, spending lives alone as hermits, rarely congregating together, living like beasts among the splendor and fury of nature. For the most part, ogres were animalistic brutes who laired in caves in the wilds, assaulting (and often eating) travelers, and plaguing small villages with theft and destruction of property. During the Cleansing Wars, ogre-hunting was highly profitable and occurred on a mass scale until there were none left: Kalak paid his bounty hunters well.
However, even "savage" ogres were powerful with wizardry, at ease with the ways of preservation because of their instinctual connection to the land. Many so-called "free ogres" studied under Rajaat in the early days after he emerged from the Pristine Tower. When Rajaat would no longer teach them, turning to humans instead (and secretly teaching them of defiling), these cast out ogres spread the ways of magic to their wild brethren, until nearly their entire race knew something of wizardry.
Perhaps this combination of natural talent in both arcane and psionic pursuits, of connection to the wilds, of hermitage and druidry, led Rajaat to fear them as the precursors of something else not under his control. Perhaps his scrying sight had gained knowledge of the power of psionic-wizardry, and so he destroyed those most suited towards opposing the power of his Champions.
The last stand of Kai Shar Ga
----------------------------
Kai Shar Ga was a powerful psionicist of the Way who gathered many wild and civilized ogres together for their mutual protection, forming an army and the beginnings of an ogre civilization. That civilization was short-lived, however, for though they made many savage strikes against the armies of the Champions, and might even have been able to eventually turn the tide of the wars, the Champions' armies, led by Kalak, descended upon the ogres and slew them all amid the stones of the fortified city they had begun to construct.
Btw, I can't imagine you not knowing but kaisharga is ancient halfling for undead.
Btw, I can't imagine you not knowing but kaisharga is ancient halfling for undead.
I KNEW that sounded familiar! ;)
So, what do you suppose it means?
I KNEW that sounded familiar! ;)
So, what do you suppose it means?
They had undead running around in the Blue Age?
They had undead running around in the Blue Age?
In the above context you doofus!
In the above context you doofus!
:D
I'm assuming then that the "leader of the ogres" was nothing more than an undead psionicist.
What I was thinking really doesn't work, though, because it means he would have had to have been around during the Blue Age in order to have an entire, er, species(?) named after him...and of course, there were no ogres during the Blue Age. Suppose Kai Shar Ga means something other than "undead" -- what if the current use is a corruption of its original meaning? Perhaps it meant "immortal" or "eternal body" or something similar? (Did they have undead during the Blue Age, such that they would need a word for it?)
Though the idea of a lost, half-finished ogre city populated by the undead remains of the ogrish race is a rather cool idea for explorers to stumble across. There would be raaigs (undead druids protecting vanished gardens and groves), t'liz (ogre mages corrupted by undeath), savage "poltergeist"-like presences, and mostly frightening phatasms and such -- any ghostly presence that affects the mind, emotions, etc. rather than the physical being.
Hrm, I could change what the ogres were about/like...make them tied to death, Reborn from halflings who had used life-shaping to stave off their own demise. Make them necromancers and spirit callers, carrion-eaters and such, ghouls who dug up graveyards to feast and create armor and tools from the bones and such.