Earthdawn Revisited - Trolls

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Appearance:
The average troll height is 8 feet 6 inches, and average weight is 500 pounds or more. Skin colors range from olive to mahogany-brown. Troll skin has a rough texture, increased by the ridges, spines, or plating resulting from deposits of trolthelia, a substance similar to the material in rhinoceros horn. Body hair is sparse except on the chest, and head hair grows considerably thicker and longer than human hair. Lower canines protrude from the mouths of a majority of trolls, making their pronunciation of Throalic muted and inelegant when using multi-syllabic words (which gives them an unfair reputation for stupidity and inelegance). The nose is broader than the human nose. Trolls exhibit fierce, aggressive personalities (which gives them a less unfair reputation as pirate raiders). The average natural lifespan is 50 years, though some trolls have lived into their seventies. Trolls reach physical maturity in their early teens.

Mentality:
Trolls are fiercely loyal to their family or clan. Multiple clans can organize through the ritual of the trollmoot, gatherings of several clans whose leaders swear the loyalty of their clans to one another, but such unified action remains rare. Troll clans often war among themselves when other enemies are lacking. Trolls prefer to live in caves, ice caverns, or other natural geographic features.

Background:
They find dwarven or elven settlements more comfortable than human or ork communities, and have been known to camp around obsidimen connected to a Liferock. Trolls find the serenity of the obsidimen calming and deeply moving. Their regard for the obsidimen mountains often prompts trolls to choose those sites for trollmoots.

The largest Troll settlements have always been in the mountains where they harvested stout and light weight woods to carve air ships they used to raid low-land settlements and make war amongst themselves. Though since the scourge there has been a grudging respect for city-dwellers and farmers who offered shelter to many trolls unable to afford to build their own Kaers. Likewise their actions against the Theran Empire has earned a grudging respect from low-landers.

Names:
Troll surnames are tribal, Generally named after air-ships. However Airships can be named quite variously, so troll surnames too are diverse. Some have the names of positive attributes (Defiant, Resolute or Venture), others have more poetic names (Cloud-Breaker, Sky-Lance) and some are named for other people.

Mechanics:

 * Big: clothes, equipment, weapons and armour need to be carefully custom-made (costing twice as much) and found items will generally not be useable. They need to consume nearly 4 times the food of a dwarf.
 * Edge: Brawny
 * Attribute: Strength D6
 * Attribute: Vigour D6
 * Gruff: The structures of their mouth make pronouncing Throalic and Theran languages difficult and so suffer a -2 to all rolls that rely on clear spoken communication, does not apply to other Trolls or Orks.
 * Low light vision: Can see in the dark and ignore dim and dark lighting
 * Code of Honour: Major - Pick one type of honour that you particularly defend. katorr (personal), kat’ral (Clan), and katera (Racial). You must answer any threat, slight or insult towards it. (Racial)

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