The old ways

The journeyman days

Pre-human Troll society was a marvel of nomadic travel only barely shadowed by modern trolls. Like the Horned Bison that travel the Solaris areas of Levis, pre-humanity Troll society was based on migratory patterns, the sea based trolls on skips that follow the breeding cycles of one of the fish species, the land based following the Bison in a semi-symbiotic relationship.

Troll Seers would divine danger or boon, their spell enhanced mages using long lost castings to long-step around and guide the bison to safety past budding country and natural risk.

Their residences when they sought to camp were large longhorns, grown quick from plants that would be taken by the bugs days after they left, leaving fertile patches in their wake. This meant that the Troll camps were replenishing the supplies they would harvest from nature, in a slow boom and bust cycle spanning years.

Their seers held the leadership roles within these super-clans. Though the names of the clans and their leaders have been scrubbed from history, even as archaelogists now try to seek them back.

The cullings

For the troll clans, the first signs of the portals between lands coming to being were the younger seers going mad and the elder seers weeping blood. In Oceanus the super clan there split, its vessels spreading out across the sea like oil in water, though without their seers, this would mean they were reliant on their guile and diplomacy with the Nocturne to survive.

For when the humans arrived in Levis it was with a sense of self importance and arrogance. They came seeking resources and land and the horned-bison provided a great source of leather for their armies, and the land the bison travelled would be great for their settlements. And the Trolls were in the way. The fishing routes were great for food sources for their castles, and had they stayed the trolls would have been in the way.

The easiest way to get them out the way was a very simple, antagonise them in the fields, then pick them off with bow and sword and armor. They slew any troll that did not retreat to the deep forests, and they culled the bison to near extinction, all while claiming friendship with the local foliad and using words and bribes to persuade them that the foliad would be better without the bison and the troll destroying their path to progress.