From: JF18974@academia.swt.edu
Date: Fri 22 Apr 1994 - 08:06:25 EEST
Hi all,
First, forgive me for not being able to put all the quotes in cute little carots. I'm too lazy to mess with my screwy mail editor, so I'll paraphrase.
Alex responds to Sandy's response to my response to somebody's (Mike Dawson, I think...) statement about Troll cruelty. I never argued that trolls didn't like to eat sentient flesh. Obviously they do. Aldryami and Mostali in particular. However, Trollpak does state (for whatever reason) that they usually will not kill other sentient beings for food. I don't recall if a reason is given for this. I always assumed that they just didn't like the taste, and therefore would only eat humans if nothing better was around. I can't imagine that a troll would be morally squeamish about killing a human for food when they are quite willing to kill a dwarf to eat. I doubt that trolls find dwarves or elves easier to kill than humans.
Another possibility is that Uz just don't want to tick off humans. They're already immortal enemies of the Aldryami and Mostali, why add another race? I don't think this is a major consideration, though, as most humans probably don't trust trolls anyway. This is probably only the case in areas of heavy troll-human interaction, such as Adari.
My main point, however, was about Trolls eating their own children. Sandy argued that the fact that this was outlawed by the cult of KL meant that it was a possibility. Good point, but I always viewed Trollpak as written by humans for humans about trolls. The average human might not realize that trolls don't eat their children. After all, they eat just about everythingelse, including trollkin (who aren't "children" in the cultural sense, biology notwithstanding). I imagine that a troll would not have to be told that he can't eat his dark troll children. Why should he want to? With the curse of the kin, a dark troll child is very valuable, and besides, a troll shouldn't have any trouble finding something else to eat.
Still, this is all open to interpretation. My copy of Trollpak is out on loan, so I have to argue my point from memory. Any other ideas?
By the way, I was interested in seeing the source for "Cold Wind Over Sartar". The first time I saw the name, I thought of Jethro Tull's "Cold Wind to Valhalla", which has a very cool acoustic opening. Ian Anderson uses the same motif in the song "Salamander", though that sounds abit Fire/Sky-ish. Makes you wonder where Tull's loyalties lie...
Ciao,
JIM FLAMMANG
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