There are some 2500 dark trolls, trollkin, great trolls, and cave trolls in the Big Rubble. Now those trolls are divided into one great clan of over 750 trolls (the Kaggroka), three big clans of about 200 to 300 trolls (Javis, Loricek, and Xaragang), and 20 smaller clans from 10 to 100 trolls.
To put things in comparison, the Sazdorf Clan from Trollpak has 290 trolls, making them about the size of the Loricek or Xaragang clan. The Krang clan have about 90 trolls.
All of these trolls live in about 90 hectares of ruins – 65 hectares in the ruins of Trolltown and 25 hectares atop Temple Hill. She comparison:
- La Cité of Carcassone – 65 hectares
- Pompeii excavated ruins- 65 hectares
- Medieval City of York – 100 hectares
- Vatican – 44 hectares
- Skyrim’s city of Whiterun is about 12-15 hectares.
So that comes out to about 28-29 trolls per hectare, which is about as populated as medieval York or Carcassone was. Trolltown should feel like a sprawling, half-ruined medieval city — think York or Carcassonne after 500 years of decay and re-occupation.
Temple Hill is even more dense – some 40-50 trolls per hectare, with most of them in Opili’s Fort. That’s like a medieval fortress like the Tower of London or Krak des Chevaliers.
Another way of thinking about it is that there is a city with less people but more area than New Pavis inside the Big Rubble. The big difference of course is it is a city of trolls.
Also remember that about 2/3rds of the trolls are trollkin.
Along with lots of beetles, sting worms, midge flies, and the like. Thousands of them. And the thing about insects is you can pack them in. Feed them waste, rotting vegetation, and the like. Latrines might be made right by the beetle pens.
Do a lot of the trolls live underground? The key thing for the trolls is that they feel safer in darkness during the daylight hours. That’s it. If that can be inside a building, that is as good as being underground.
There are plenty of cellars, tunnels, and passages beneath Trolltown and Temple Hill, but there are also plenty of stone buildings that were easy to make secure and dark. And the trolls are pretty economical (others call them lazy) when it comes to investing in their living quarters. A bunch of multi-storey stone buildings require less work than making basements bigger or creating new tunnels.
For the most part, troll society are divided into:
- Elders. These are the trolls all other trolls defer to. All are dark trolls (mistress race are automatically elders, but they are so few).
- Mothers. These are the trolls all other trolls protect. All are dark trolls.
- Fighters. These are the trolls who do nothing but fight for the trolls. They include dark trolls, great trolls, and even trollkin.
- Providers. These are the trolls that make sure the trolls are fed. They include dark trolls and trollkin.
For the most part troll economics are based on gathering, hunting, and herding (insects). Left to Kyger Litor, Zorak Zoran, or Xiola Umbar they don’t have a lot of interest in other sentients except as foes.
Argan Argar provides a means of interacting with the other races of the Surface World. That is primarily exchange – give us food and we won’t eat you. But this can be more sophisticated – give us food and other things we want, and we’ll give you spider silk, beetles, and even things we found in the ruins that we don’t have a better use for.
Now what I find fascinating about it is that Trolltown is a mirror-mirror New Pavis. As adventurers you might be able to sneak into it, perhaps during the day – making you exactly as welcome as a bunch of dark trolls sneaking into New Pavis during the night! Or you could try to go into Trolltown during the night, but you better have some troll friends – otherwise you are going to be about as welcome as a bunch of dark trolls strolling around New Pavis! And forget about fighting your way through!
So WHY might you go to Trolltown? Maybe you want to recruit some trolls for something? Or maybe you know that some of those ruins in Trolltown or on Temple Hill still hold treasures from the Second Age? Gold, magic items, lost lore, you name it. Or maybe you want to use the old temple to Orlanth as the starting point for a magical quest or ritual? The point is that there are plenty of reasons why adventurers might want to go there – the trick is figuring out how to enter and not die!