What is a Troll?
A type of giant? A rock-skinned mountain dweller? A bag of regenerating HP with pyrophobia?
The Ermine Marches follow a strange funeral custom: when a greedy man dies, his toes are severed and buried separately in ten small urns packed with salt. They do this because the cats of the Ermine Marches can smell a miser’s toes from miles away; they’ll come by the dozens, hungry to feed. A cat that eats such a toe becomes a troll.
The process is painful and brings strange changes. Young trolls eat their kin and begin seeking bridges, motivated by the vestigial rent-seeking instincts of the toe’s doner. Their mutant obsessions demand weird tolls, and they cannot be satisfied with gold.
How Different are these Trolls?
A bit.
Use your system’s base Trolls. Give them a swallow whole attack and the ability to teleport between local bridges at twilight. Acid and fire disable a Troll’s regeneration, but only temporarily. Trolls return to life easily. The Trolls of the Ermine Marches each have an allergy. If fed this specific thing, they shrivel up and lose their regeneration ability. They can only regain it by drinking river water for seven days straight. In addition to these debilitating changes, the Troll also regurgitates some recent meals; see each Troll’s entry for the unique effect.
How Common are Trolls?
Not very.
Luckily, these funereal customs mostly prevent new Trolls. Not everyone gets a proper burial; foreign adventurers, in particular, often go unburied. Player Characters who fail to bury their fellows may expect to later meet a Troll who strangely resembles their fallen comrade in both appearance and interests.
Of course, there was a time before people knew how to dispose of their hoarders. Many of these ancient trolls have fallen in battle, but a handful still remain. Whenever the party crosses a bridge in the Ermine marches, roll 1d12. A roll of 6-12 indicates no Troll currently lives there. A roll of 1-5 means one of the following Trolls haunts the bridge:
1 – Oogolon Erf
Toll: Hair. Wants to suck every hair off the head of anyone who crosses his bridge.
Allergic to: Apples. The witch Igdra hangs hair-covered apples by the bridge near her cottage for this reason.
Regurgitates: Enough hair to affect the path of the river Oogolon’s bridge is over.
2 – Vani Vedito
Toll: Horses. Does not actually know what a horse is. Will eat any four-legged animal.
Allergic to: Goats. And the goats know it.
Regurgitates: Forty-two horses, five dogs, two pigs, a dozen cows, and nine hideous cats.
3 – Djarum Woe
Toll: Time. Years of your life. Djarum slithers his long tongue over the face of one party member, visibly ageing them by 1d20 years.
Allergic to: Clocks, corpses, and books of biography. This can be learned from the notes of the dead witch Gabhar.
Reguritates: A wave of pure time, acid-distilled in the pit of the Troll’s stomach. Every creature within 60ft de-ages 1d20+10 years; a saving throw (Wisdom, vs Magic, Will, w/e) reduces this by half if targets are unwilling.
Note: Djarum Woe was a prisoner of the witch Gabhar for eighty years. She purposefully fed him allergens to prolong her life. Eventually, he killed her and escaped. Magic users (especially witches) enrage Djarum Woe; he exclusively focuses on them in combat.
4 – Cambiss Kapra
Toll: Riddles. Anyone who wishes to pass must tell him one he hasn’t heard before. He’s heard every riddle the DM has heard, and no riddles the DM hasn’t. Can be seen chewing and growing visibly fatter when you tell him new riddles.
Allergic to: Songs. In addition to the usual allergen effects, exceptionally talented singers (performance checks, Charisma checks, w/e) can shatter Cambiss’s teeth.
Regurgitates: Thousands of tiny scrolls covered in riddles. The scrolls are printed on leather made of human skin. Studying them for ten days causes PCs to gain 1 Intelligence and lose 1 Wisdom. A creature can only be affected by this once.
Note: Don’t ask him to tell you a riddle. This is a one-way relationship!
5 – Chewing Charlie Cheef
Toll: Wine. Any poison will do, really. One bottle buys passage for a whole party. He’ll drink anything put in front of him, chewing the glass and gargling the wine.
Allergic to: Fresh water.
Regurgitates: Ground glass and spoilt wine. Make a save (Dexterity, Reflex, Vs Breath, w/e) to avoid a d4 of damage.
Note: Charlie is a recent troll; his widow secretly kept his tenth toe and fed it to her cat in the hope of keeping a piece of her shitty husband alive. The troll ran off into the night; now she wants him recovered. 500 coins are available to anyone willing to return this Troll, appropriately restrained, to his marital duties.
Like these Trolls? Steal ’em! I won’t tell. You can pay me back by checking out some of our Ermine Marches Adventures. If you like them, tell your friends! If not, go eat a greedy man’s toes!