Drokla and humans

...I'm salvaging my dignity a bit by writing up some thoughts and design ideas on the Drokla, or "trolls" as the humans call them.

Drokla are humanoids, usually about 6½-7 feet tall, with pointed, leaf-like ears, sharp, slightly canine teeth, thick manes of scalp-hair and a tail. Their skin tends towards fair, with definite hints of bronze or even orange, and their hair is usually some hue of red, blond or black, though brown is not uncommon either, and their eyes are generally gold, gray, green or blue in color. The irises are rimmed with a darker trim, much like the eyes of a wolf, and the pupils are slightly larger than those of humans. Their tails are mostly hairless, long and slender and about the same thickness from the base (just above the buttocks, at the end of the spine), but they always have a thick tuft of hair at the tip, similar to that of a lion. The tail is somewhat prehensile, they can't pick things up with them, though, and they're mostly for balance. Touching the tail of a troll is tantamount to grabbing the buttocks or breasts of a human, it's very much only done between lovers, and a troll will respond to such harassment with aggression. This might be related to some suggested tales that the tail has erogenous surfaces...

Most Drokla live in closely knit tribal societies, in the inhospitable regions of the north where elves, dwarves and humans won't go, and they usually keep to themselves. Trolls and humans do not get along. It's a basic fact of life that has a lot to do with the way the Church of Seven, or Sept, has taken over old traditions and ways that aren't all that compatible with human nature, and everything to do with troll biology. Because humans and trolls do get along. A lot. Too well, in fact, especially for a church that teaches human superiority over the other races. It spreads tales of trolls as flesh-eating monsters, savage barbarians who lure humans with various wiles only to feast on their intestines while they're still alive, evil inhuman beastly feral grotesques who can turn from human-like to monstrous in a heart-beat.

The truth is far from this. Just ask any male human shepherd in areas close to troll territories, and he'll give you a somewhat more...positive description. There is a reason for this.

Troll gender dimorphism is much the same as human, males are broad-shouldered and strong-limbed, females have wide hips, large mammaries and are somewhat stronger in the legs than the males. There the similarities end, for the most part. Troll males have little to no interest in sex. Troll females, for some reason, have human-like sexual urges.

You see the problem?

For most of the year, female trolls have very little congress with the males, who for eleven months out of twelve have about as much interest in procreation as an ant does in studying other languages. Thus, for most of the year you have very frustrated female trolls, with only a tiny minority engaging in homosexual experimentation (there is an actual gay minority among trolls much as all humanoids have, but not every troll who tries lesbian sex is an actual lesbian). There's a lot of hormones and not much outlet, and so, when a hapless human male wanders by, well...
Let's just say there is always a sizable human minority in any troll clan.

Trolls mate for life, but also have a skewed birth-rate, only one in four children are male, and this, added to the biology and society, makes for many lonely troll women. And here comes the thing the Sept has an issue with: trolls can conceive with humans.

Half-elves are extremely rare, most such unions end in stillbirths or deformed infants who rarely live more than a year. Humans and dwarves have never produced offspring in the history of the world, but humans and trolls...works like a charm. The offspring usually get the best of both worlds, the strength and resilience of the troll and the brains of the human, and the traits often carry for several generations before being too watered down to be obvious. Though half-trolls rarely have the balance their troll parent has, due to the tail usually not following along the bloodline.

So a church that teaches of how the humans are destined to rule because the Gods love them best now has to deal with how in the North, humans and trolls can interbreed. How do you teach someone to look down on non-humans when half the congregation is half-troll?

Now, things aren't as bad as they might sound. Most Northerners think the Sept is teaching nonsense, and the royal family of Birkwald (largest northern nation) has so much troll blood in them that the Sept is wisely keeping their mouths shut there, though they are trying to undermine the royal family's power among the nobles, slowly and...subtly.

As for the south, most people believe trolls don't exist. It's just a northern fairytale, just like their stories of elves in ice palaces and subterranean albino dwarves who kidnap children...

...too bad they're wrong on all points.

Dragon Age ruined everything...in a good way.

Yeah, I'm having a massive problem with the setting I had cooked up: Bioware beat me to it. The setting they've created is very similar in large portions to what I had in mind for Enoa, and so I find myself having to rewrite some sections to compensate, and alter others to fit the re-written stuff.

The dwarves and trolls/drokla are the only races I can keep much as they were, to my great horror.

Ah, well. Shit happens. :-)