Dark Earth: Book of Beasts

Ogres and Trolls

Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata
Class - Mammalia
Order - Primates
Family - Hominidae
Genus – Brutus

Hideous brutes looming up out of the shadows of time. Terrifying monstrosities used to frighten children since time immemorial. Voracious maneaters driven to fitting near-extinction. Such are the first labels often applied to ogres and trolls alike, yet none are truly applicable to either creature. Without the teeming numbers of the goblinoids or the sheer size of giantkind, both have made their mark on history in a number of different ways and have established firm niches in the modern world. Generally speaking, both ogres and trolls are large and powerful humanoids noted for their great strength and enormous appetites, but their various physical features, colouring, behaviour, culture and temperament can vary significantly. Both species are waning ones, but their future is seen as potentially brighter after the revolutionary developments of the last few momentous centuries.

Ogres and trolls share many common physical features, stemming from their long extinct common ancestor. They are physically imposing creatures, the tallest subspecies reaching up to 9 and a half feet when fully grown, and universally heavily built, possessing strong musculature and tough hides. Both have sharp fangs and claws, thick bones and exhibit exceptional strength. Trolls tend to have long, gangly arms and legs out of proportion to their bodies and generally have green or grey skin. Ogres come in a variety of shades which can change greatly over a lifetime and have a conventional limb structure. The intelligence of each species can vary greatly, depending on their location and history. Both species were renowned as monstrous man-eaters in days of yore, which contributed to their wicked reputation and decline in numbers, but in modern times practice extreme omnivorism. Certain unique characteristics mark them apart from each other and indeed from other intelligent humanoid species. Trolls possess an advanced form of regeneration of lost tissue and organs, up to and including limbs in some observed cases, and are capable of hibernation for long periods. Ogres not only possess the ability to secrete different scents, but are capable of subtly altering their body temperature to evade predators.

Undoubtably the largest amount of variance of ogre species can be found in the Occident, where the four major strains of Ogrus can be found. The golden ogres are the largest and most curious specimens, with their development apparently linked to a long dormant genetic mutation that has left modern scientists quite baffled. They are possessed of considerable intelligence and a higher degree of manual dexterity than any of their fellows. The blue ogres are the smallest of their kind, but are almost as intellectually capable as their golden kin, being given to underground and indoor activities and eschewing the sun. Green ogres make up a small majority of their kind, heartily enjoying manual work and violence, although the latter tendency is more focused on competitive sports and military service in the modern era. Red ogres are perhaps the most primitive of their kind and tend to shun the ways and company of man in favour of their fellows and traditional life. The oni of China, Japan and India come in a variety of colours, but can be distinguished from their Western relatives by their horns, great fangs and wild hair. The Indian belu in the modern world can mainly be found in Burma and the mountains of Bengal, where perhaps the last of the truly wild ogres of the world can be found by the fortunate or not so fortunate traveller. Trolls are largely divided into the mountain and forest trolls, with the former possessing an almost stony grey hide and having an extremely powerful build; it is thought by some sages that the combination of these factors and trollish hibernation lead to the folk stories of trolls being turned to stone by the sun. Forest trolls have a green, mottled appearance suitable to their environment and are notably smaller than their highland kin.

Both ogres and trolls share a common ancestor that broke off from the giant family of development approximately 1.6 million years ago in what is now Eastern Europe. This was apparently a large brutish creature that dwelt in the foothills of the Carpathians. Dramatic climactic events resulted in the split of the species between the larger primordial trolls of the northern mountains and the somewhat smaller proto-ogres of the swamps and forests. The two types then spread out across the Old World over tens of thousands of year, although the range of trolls did not extend into the Americas due to intense competition with the earlier sasquatch. By virtue of their differing environments, the distant cousins grew further apart, with the ogres forming large tribal groups that dwelt in their own distinct territories, whilst trolls remained in small packs that would hunt and scavenge above and below ground in the bitter cold of the highlands. Distinct regional types of ogre emerged in this period – the oni of the Far East, the belu of India, the fir bolg of the outlying reaches of Western Europe and the eponymous ogrus of Caucasia and the Balkans. As human civilization emerged in Atlantis and elsewhere around the world, ogre villages and the first glimmerings of primitive kingdoms arose in the more fertile uplands of the Levant, often subjugated by the more advanced giants, as the majority of the ogrus rufus were tough, powerful hunter-gatherers, but backward compared to their larger relatives and the smaller humans. In the same period, as the great glaciers finally receded, the trolls multiplied and began expanding from their mountain homes in Scandinavia across the northern world, albeit in a far more primitive, tribal state.

In the last years of Atlantean expansion, a tribe of ogres had been placed into servitude by a colony in modern day Georgia and, through exposure to an advanced sorcerous artifact, developed into a highly intelligent and advanced community noted for their goodly ways and golden skin. These golden ogres were apparently wiped out in the cataclysmic events that followed the fall of Atlantis. The dawn of the first great civilized cultures built up around cities in the Old World resulted in a waning of the fortunes of the ogres, just as the giants receded with the advance of mankind. With their greater size, natural ferocity and strength, ogres held the upper hand in individual combat until the introduction of composite bows and chariots turned the tide in favour of humanity. Throughout the Fertile Crescent and the wider Middle East, the ogre tribes were gradually but ruthlessly driven into the high mountains, although many faced outright extermination at the hands of the warlike Assyrians and Hittites. In this time, separated from the more easily accessible food sources of the lowlands, several different varieties of ogre returned to the habits of preying on humans as a source of nutrition, which had mostly been left behind in their own rise from the Neolithic darkness. This in turn lead to further warfare betweens humans and ogres and is considered by some scholars to be the basis for a number of the prototypical fairy tales that occur across many cultures. Far off to the west, the fir bolg had a brief period of dominance in the north of Ireland before being crushed by the Tuatha de Danann and their human vassals, their fate lost to the pages of history.

As the glory and grandeur that was Greece and Rome swelled in the height of antiquity, the ogres of the Mediterranean world came close to extinction, with the survivors being driven into the hardlands of the Barbaricum. Trajan’s Dacian campaigns resulted in the destruction of one of the few ogre kingdoms in his furthest expedition to the banks of the Dniester in 105 A.D. This lead to the first change in the dynamic appearance of ogres in recorded history, with a gradual shift towards more green-tinged hides rather than the red hue that had developed in the warmer lands of the Middle East. Many ogre tribes found a niche alongside the various groups of goblinkind dwelling in the areas, being employed as heavy fighters in the constant state of battle that characterized the age. Trollkin enjoyed a brief flourishing of fortunes, before being dealt a disastrous defeat by a coalition of dwarven kingdoms in the War of the Green Hand in 258-275 A.D., which resulted in their harrying into the heart of the Scands.

The fortunes of both ogres and trolls turned with the onset of the Long Winter, reducing the strength of their greatest foes and leading to much chaos and flux across the northern world. Mass migration cleared out space for both species to surge forth into the forests and mountains of Europe, with the ogres swiftly asserting a place at the head of orcish hordes in the Great Orc War and the trolls establishing a large range over Scandinavia, Germany and the British Isles. The gradual reestablishment of civilisation came at a great cost in blood and much of it came from the savage green ogres of the north. A bizarre sorcerous experiment by an unknown wizard in the Eastern Baltic sometime around 600 A.D. is thought to have been responsible for the development of the blue ogres, a notably intelligent subspecies that promptly took to the underworld to escape the barbaric slaughter above. The trolls of Scandinavia were the most advanced of their kind and their power reached its apex of development during the Viking age and their rapacious raids upon goblin and orcish villages lead in turn to an increase in their attacks on the humans in the lowlands and coastal areas. Undoubtably the most famous of all trolls was Grendel, the mighty scourge of Danes of King Hrothgar, who was slain by the hero Beowulf along with his insane monstrous mother in 562 A.D. It would be the coming of Christianity to the Viking world that would spell the beginning of the end for the trolls, who were subsequently viewed as wretched wild animals suitable only for slaughter rather than the much-feared supernatural entities of the heathen epoch.

Improvements in human military technology and rediscovery of potent magics turned the tide against the brutal ogre tribes on the Continent and a host lead by King Alfred and his dwarven ally Baldar Morngrim routed out the last organized groups in England in 885 A.D., showing the beasts no mercy. As the Middle Ages proceeded, the ogres of Europe were increasingly driven to the verges of the land, to swamps, mountains and forests by the relentless expansion of mankind. The end of the days of trolls and ogres alike seemed nigh. Even as the Church and emerging nations worked for their eradication, some knights and local warlords began to make use of enslaved ogre warriors to gain advantage over their rivals. In one well-known case, a band of ogre guards of the infamous French wizard Rastabonde Quelle slew their wicked master and took over his lands before being slain through the clever schemes of a magical cat, but on the whole, they gained a reputation for fearsome skill at arms and loyalty. Particularly in the Germanies and Italy, small bands of ogres established themselves as mercenaries under rather unscrupulous wandering knights and they progressively became greatly prized in the armoured infantry armies of the day. The survival of the trolls was doubted for a long time, with sightings and attacks being ascribed to superstition and banditry by the 14th century as they faded away into the northern mountains, a circumstance assisted by their habits of hibernation.

In the Eastern world, the circumstances of the oriental ogres, the oni and the belu, were considerably different. Both had developed reputations for sophistication and intelligence, being employed in the armed forces of all manner of emperors, kings and potentates. Their greater degree of acceptance can be ascribed in part to the teachings of Eastern religion as well as the more ordered nature of their societies and to a large degree, they were assimilated long before their Western kinfolk. The armies of Imperial China featured contingents of ogres from the Han dynasty forward, being used particularly for the defence of the Great Wall against the northern barbarians. A notable exception to this generalization are the Japanese oni clans, whose cruelty and mischief became legend as they established a firm position as bandits in the mountains of the Nipponese islands. The renowned ronin Miyamoto Musashi proved to be a great scourge of the oni, slaying six in one battle. Concerted military campaigns by the forces of the Tokugawa Shogunate finally put paid to their menace in the early 18th Century, with the surviving oni being placed into ceremonial service with the Imperial Guard.

The medieval era gave way to the Renaissance, and, amid plague, reformation and the advances of science and magic, a remarkable occurrence changed the course of the development of the ogre race. In 1432 A.D. in Bohemia, a young and highly intelligent ogre warrior named Maugwrm Grogr determined that he was discontent with his intended lot in life, and quested to find a means of changing it. Through many long and perilous adventures, he rediscovered the forgotten blue ogres deep in the underworld and heeded their wisdom, leading the few remaining tribes of red ogres out of the Caucasus and reuniting the western ogres for the first time in centuries. He painstakingly authored Scriptum Ogrus Virtus, a collection of his meditations on morality, philosophy and the future of ogrekind. It was under his stewardship that the first golden ogres in modern times were born, resulting from a union between the long-lost branches of the family. Grogr’s main thesis was that ogres needed to adapt to the ways and beliefs of man whilst still retaining their own distinct identity in order secure a future for their species. He took his petition for an autonomous ogre community to several great courts across Europe, but was met with a mixture of ridicule and hostility until finally being given succour by the Doge of Venice. The ogres of Venice became a major factor in the good fortunes and security of La Serenissima over the next three centuries and their descendants gradually spread out across the Mediterranean world and into Northern Europe.

The onset of the Industrial Revolution created a new niche for ogres, who were well suited to heavy labour in the hard conditions of the new factories that spread across Europe. It was in this role that the first ogres were transported to North America as contracted workers for the construction of the Trans-Canadian Railway, particularly for the tough slog through the terrain of the rugged Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario and Manitoba. More surprises were to come in Scandinavia, with the rediscovery of the remnant troll population by prospectors seeking iron far in the north. Less success was encountered in the use of trolls as beasts of burden in the mining and timber industries, but it was soon discovered that young trollings could be used to some effect so long as they were spayed and kept isolated from their kin. A number of enterprising businessmen tried to import trolls to the New World to fulfill a similar role, but the attempt met with disaster after a mass breakout of trolls in Labrador in 1846. In the 20th Century, ogres were recruited by the militaries of all major powers for service in the World Wars, although their large size was increasingly becoming a liability in the age of modern firepower. This latest circumstance of cooperation between ogres and humans has lead to some talk of emancipation and normalisation of ogre rights from some liberal politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. For the trolls, the introduction of modern machines has obviated their previous brief use, leaving them as a wretched species largely viewed as a relic of a bygone age.

The general personality and behaviour of trolls and ogres has often been depicted as driven by bestial hunger and violence, but this is perhaps a simplification, particularly in the latter case. Being creatures of great size, they have been driven over much of their existence by the requirements of basic subsistence, but both have strong familial and tribal instincts that characterize their behaviour. Trolls form lifelong pairs and, should one mate be destroyed, the other will enter into a rogue state, becoming homicidally ferocious to trolls and other species alike. Modern ogres that dwell inside of contemporary human society have mostly adapted themselves to mannish mores, but even those that remain in the wild or villages have close ties with their extended family groups and many of their customs and celebrations revolve around the simple pleasures of home and hearth. The remnants of ancient polytheistic ogre beliefs persist in ceremonies such as the hallowing of the feast, tempered by the more secular lessons of Maugwrm Grogr, whose maxims are celebrated as the salvation of their species. Many ogres within human society have been drawn to various sports and physical competitions, where they enjoy great success, but the few proposals for the integration of ogre leagues with those of man are met with the disdain they deserve. Whilst the brain of trolls is not substantially smaller or less capable than that of the ogrish kin, it seems to function on a more basic and bestial level in a manner than baffles most scientists. Perhaps the most curious functional consequence of trollish regenerative capacity has been to stimulate an apparent obliviousness to danger or physical threat; injuries that would put other humanoids into shock seem only to excite and provoke trolls. It is for this reason in particular that extensive medical research and behavioural experiments on trolls, including vivisection, have been conducted over the last several decades in several different nations including the United States and Soviet Union.

Arguably the most clear sign of the separate paths of development taken by ogres and trolls can be found in examination of their habitat and diet. Ogres, having been almost entirely assimilated by human society, have left behind their ancestral diet and now consume broadly similar foods to those of their cultural neighbours, with a greater emphasis on protein-rich meats and substantially larger quantities. They can typically be found in ogretowns in larger cities or in industrial housing close to their places of work, with their dwellings being functional and dimly lit. They have considerable capacity for the consumption of alcohol, but, at the same time, a tendency towards dependency on the same substance over time. Trolls, on the other hand, are generally found in wild regions across the north of Eurasia and North America and exist as primitive hunter-gatherers, much disassociated from mankind. The lack of plentiful prey has resulted in gradual changes to the trollish diet, although they relish meat and fat when they can find it, whatever the source. They are subject to various degrees of protection from hunting in the Western world, but this is often honoured in the breech rather than the observance and the situation is completely reversed in Iceland, where traditional troll hunting is greatly celebrated. Despite their common origins, the destinies of trolls and ogres seem to have diverged decisively in the modern era, with the latter able to successfully evolve in both culture and development, whereas the former have never fully arisen from their savage roots and are thus facing a high degree of uncertainty.