From: David Cake (davidc@cyllene.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Fri 01 Aug 1997 - 06:10:21 EEST
>Paul Harmaty is also persuasive: even humans who *can* trust
>and deal with trolls, still fear them. Good stuff.
But remember, there is an important underlying truth here, not just
anti-human bias. TROLLS fear trolls. At least, trolls tougher than them.
And almost all troll leaders rule in part through fear.
I imagine the Kitori trolls, for example, don't have a really large
bias against Kitori humans over trolls in general (some bias is
unavoidable). Which means they try to treat humans just as they would any
troll who was much smaller than them, which is usually to keep them scared
and submissive if they can. But they treat them a bit better than the
trollkin, because the trollkin are even smaller.
(my troll PC knows quite well that if he fucks up, Javis Gan may
well eat him.)
I think my original comments have got a little misinterpreted,
though. I didn't mean to imply that Orlanthi don't fear, and often trolls.
But Orlanthi are in general vaguely aware that they can be dealt with in
trade and so on, and you can negotiate with them, and so on. Unlike Chaos
things. And whats more, many Orlanthi would be aware of the I Fought We Won
myth, and know that when it came to the crunch, trolls where on our side.
Its part of the appeal of the myth - even horrible baby-eating like
monsters fought on the right side, and chaos is even more horrible than
that.
Orlanthi do make that big distinction between Chaos and everything
else.
Cheers
David
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