There are as many fantasy worlds as your imagination can hold; while huge numbers of them have your usual mix of humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits and gnomes, goblins, orcs, trolls and giants, not all of them follow the same lore as the most popular tabletop roleplaying game settings or the most famous fantasy novels.
For example, in the lore of the fantasy world home to the Forbidden Lands RPG by Free League Publishing, the Hobbits and Goblins are flip sides of the same original species.
According to that world's mythology, the original species was created by the Moon goddess due to her jealousy of the Elves. Still, during a time of upheaval, her people had tried to trick a powerful god and as punishment, were split into two kin, the halflings are ashamed of what happened and desperately try to seem good-natured to conceal their legacy of deceit. The moon goddess Eor has become the goddess of lies, deception and hidden meanings, averting her face in shame every month. The goblins, on the other hand, are satisfied with their fate. They still worship the moon goddess with nightly rituals and sacrifices as do the halflings, although secretly. To this day, Goblins will only rarely kill a Halfling, as they believe their souls are connected, each goblin to each Halfing, somewhere there is their soul twin.
Anyone who is a fan of the movie The Dark Crystal should instantly love world-building fantasy themes where that sort of thing is real, although in that movie, the original species were called the Urseks and they were split into the UrRu (otherwise known as the Mystics) and the evil Skeksis thanks to a reckless experiment involving a hugely powerful magical World Crystal on the planet Thra. In their case killing one soul twin resulted in the instant death of the other, even suffering a minor injury would result in the same injury appearing on the body of their other half, they really were like one being located and operating in two different places. You could imagine that if this were the case in the Forbidden Lands in truth, then no halfling would kill a goblin as they would be also killing another halfling. The name of their race sure would make a hell of a lot more sense though, wouldn't it? I could imagine there would be secret magic of the goblins and halflings; dark rituals that allowed further strengthening of this bond, so one could see through the eyes of the other, perhaps even swap bodies.
Now as I ponder this theme, it makes me consider the Lord of the Rings, where we have the mythology found in the pages of The Silmarillion, it states that the Orcs were once Elves but were twisted and corrupted by an evil god named Melkor who transformed them with torture and foul magic craft.
So I thought, what if something similar happened with the Dwarves, because there are a lot of correlations between Dwarves and Trolls when you think about it, and in ancient mythology, they often are interchangeably the same sort of thing. Trolls turn to stone with the touch of sunlight, live in darkness, under bridges, in caves and such, they are very strong and hardy, able to heal extremely quickly, are always hungry and tirelessly hunt for food. They are an ancient species, their legacy and great works can often be found in long-lost ruins and some of the most primordial and often evil magic comes from their traditions. Dwarves live and work tirelessly under the ground, tunnelling through rock to find the world's greatest minerals and metals. Dwarves are also famously strong and hardy, able to shrug off injuries and poisons that would kill a human. Dwarves and single-minded and their ancient ruins and magic are also steeped in powerful, primordial forces. The Troll's magic tended to unleash demons and other evils into the world, the Dwarves' magic tended to bind such things into great works of craftsmanship, forging the most potent magic weapons, armour, tools and adornments.
But, were the Dwarves cursed by the gods long ago to become two different kin? Or did this happen gradually over an incredibly long span of years? Who knows.
In my recent and ongoing series of fantasy adventures for any tabletop roleplaying system, I have featured Trolls and Debased Trolls a few times, so all that refers to is that some Trolls retain a bit of culture, learning, family bonds and that sort of thing, they are a bit more civilized but even so, many are not, they are dark and twisted creatures who hunger and hunt down their favourite meat, the flesh of other humanoids, which is why I call them debased, they will not only attack adventurers on sight, they will do so with the intent of taking them back to a large fire pit, get a nice bed of very hot embers going, butcher the adventurers and then slowly roast them over the fire on large sticks. Unlike animal predators, they don't just hunt humanoids out of an instinct to do so, they really do enjoy it and will hunt humanoids down even when other game is available.
The debased trolls are not without the possibility of redemption however, in my Derailed Fantasy adventure titled The Blades of the Blood Beast, we see there is some ancient magic that the Trolls of the Ironwood Forest have been using for a long time to maintain their intelligence and culture, unfortunately, it is through the use of primal and dark magic that has slowly unleashed a true evil onto the land. The adventurers may not even realize that fighting and destroying that evil has also doomed the Trolls in that region to now, inevitably fall back into their evil and predatory ways, leaving their meagre dwellings and shrines to fall, once more, back into ruin and decay.
What an interesting twist to an intelligent species! They must actively take extreme measures to avoid their brutal fate.
We are sure to see a lot more of the goodly and also the debased trolls in my adventures, in the meantime, my name is AJ Pickett, thanks for listening and as always, I will be back with more for you, very soon.
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