Rok, The Dire Troll
Guts and Gears — Trollbloods
The great dire troll Rök might have remained an elusive legend of the far north were it not for the interference of the great shaman and warrior Borka Kegslayer. While Borka may have sought out Rök after hearing tales of his uncontrollable rage and violence, their unlikely friendship and partnership would be rooted in a shared love for ale. This preference set Rök apart from other trolls — he did not drink to survive but was motivated by desires familiar to all Northkin: the need to drink either to mourn or celebrate. From such commonalities, a powerful bond was forged between a legendary warlock and his equally mythical warbeast.
It still seemed angry and dangerous, even once it found the stores of ale in my tavern and had drank its fill. Five of us hid in terror in the blizzard and tried not to be spotted as the dire troll drank cask after cask of my best ale. The thing was ugly when we first saw it and even uglier when it finally wandered off into the night.
— Borivar, innkeeper
BECOMING A LEGEND
In hindsight, I think my kompany can claim the fame of introducing that dire troll to dark beer. Is that the right word? Wait. Perhaps it is not fame. Instead, I should say fault.
— Kapitan Korvo
While not always attached to the name, tales about Rök go back for nearly a hundred years. It’s possible he has been blamed for destruction caused by other dire trolls in the frozen region he roams, but there is little doubt he has been terrorizing the Scarsfell for almost a century.
Dire trolls of the far north are much less common than their southern cousins. Due to the reduced number of species for them to prey upon, northern dire trolls can command a sweeping territory that they jealously protect from any invasion. As a rule, all dire trolls are solitary creatures — their isolation springing, in large part, from their exceptionally antisocial and violent behaviors, but this is even more pronounced in northern species. Family units are almost unheard of and last briefly, if at all, as most females drive away the males they’ve mated with in order to keep the males from consuming newborn trolls. While sibling groups do happen on occasion with young, developing trolls, these invariably dissolve in time. Females are more likely to stay together longer than males.
Prior to his bond with Borka Kegslayer, Rök was seemingly no different from others of his kind other than the extent of his rage-filled sprees. Rök’s habit of preferring to roam and indulge his appetites rather than to hunk down in some remote mountain lair put him in regular contact with humanity, leading to the many stories attributed to him. Indeed, Rök seemed to prefer attacking human settlements to seizing easier prey, a habit that should have shortened his lifespan. The dire troll made frequent raids on isolated mountain kriels and tribal human villages. A juvenile Rök would break open storehouses for food and grain, leaving whole communities bereft of sustenance. After decades of suffering from Rök’s hungry rampages, stories began to grow about the angry, reckless troll.
As stories of his raids spread, his victims, mostly Khadoran villagers and travelers, tried to account for the dire troll’s aggression by ascribing to him human motivations. Underscoring this fable was the alleged discovery of remains, found in the cold northern wastelands from which Rök first emerged, indicating that he was once one of three siblings and literally ate both of his younger relatives far before the dire troll’s natural aggression and appetite would normally cause such behavior. The notion of the fierce cannibal dire troll captivated the Khadoran imagination.
Storytellers added the detail that his enraged mother drove him off over the act before he learned to create a proper lair, explaining the constant and violent raids he launched on their communities. Other tales about Rök’s younger years suggest he grieved over what he’d done to his kin and that he shunned the company of all other dire trolls, as his guilt and grief manifested in bursts of rampant violence and, eventually, a taste for ale to drown his sorrows. The veracity of these tales is dubious at best.
As he matured, Rök’s natural appetite for meat, preferably living, remained typical of his kind — but his method of hunting did not. Though dire trolls are territorial by nature, Rök seemed to have little interest in claiming any lands as his own hunting grounds — he wandered farther than many of his kind, going so far as to invade the territories of other dire trolls. This went against the hierarchy of such brutes, who usually give each other a wide berth unless seeking to mate or to seize a territory from a rival. This seemed to demonstrate that Rök might be ignorant or openly contemptuous of the few unspoken customs shared by other dire trolls.
During one heated battle with a female dire troll named Albina by locals and notorious for her attacks on Khadoran military squads south of the Shard Spires, Albina dealt Rök a debilitating
injury with an oversized stone axe. She was reputed to have wiped out a sizable Northkin kriel in the neighboring foothills, where she obtained the weapon of one of the kriel’s troll axers. The weapon was likely a surprise to Rök—he had faced many armed humans and trollkin in the past, but this was his first time encountering one of his own kind wielding such a weapon.
Terrified hunters hiding in the frozen tree line in the foothills above the combatants describe Albina besting Rök and dragging him off, presumably to her lair where she would consume him. Within the week, however, fresh reports of Rök appearing on hunting trails and chasing ulk across open plains resumed, though now he was described as clumsily wielding the axe that had previously belonged to Albina. To this day, Rök carries the same weapon with him into battle.
Within months of this particular encounter, Kapitan Korvo of the 2nd Border Legion and a platoon of his soldiers weathered an attack by Rök on their outpost, resulting in three dead men and another half-dozen wounded. After breaking into the supply storage building, Rök greedily consumed the platoon’s entire reserve of dark beer, no less than three hogsheads’ worth.
In the days that followed, Rök committed subsequent attacks on villages, mining encampments, military patrols, and even individual homesteads as he searched for more liquor. He was not particular about meads, beers, spirits, or wines, consuming them all with equal vigor. On one noteworthy occasion, the dire troll passed out in the wine cellar of an inn, having consumed over a hundred bottles of a cheap vintage.
A Khadoran Army patrol that Rök ambushed reported a second dire troll involved in the attack, a female that Rök seemed oddly protective of. This led some to suggest it was Albina, which lent legitimacy to the stories of Rök having been subdued by the female and likely mating with her instead of being eaten. Those who have knowledge of dire troll behavior can attest that female dire trolls are often even fiercer than males, and their courtship rites are brutally violent by human standards. The patrol managed to injure the female, but this only enraged the pair.
In a frenzy of violence, the two dire trolls tore most of the Khadoran soldiers apart, leaving only two survivors. This pair managed to hide by squeezing under a nearby fallen log and watch in horror as the female ate their brothers-in-arms, rapidly regenerating her wounds, while Rök guzzled their alcohol. Eventually the pair left, but it was hours before the terrified soldiers had the courage to leave their hiding place. The rare appearance of two dire trolls with a seemingly shared goal only added fuel to the tales of how Rök lived before his fateful encounter with the legendary trollkin Borka Kegslayer.
BORKA’S CHALLENGE
When Borka returned to the kriel with the dire troll at his heels, we were all surprised. It was like none we had ever seen before. Its ferocity and its ability to drink incredible amounts of ale made it a legend even among trollkin.
—Kormis Clawbreaker
During his time in the southern regions, Borka Kegslayer befriended both Madrak Ironhide and the Shaman of the Gnarls, who gave him a precious secret: how to gain the allegiance of dire trolls through battle and barter. Borka felt driven to earn the respect of one of these fierce creatures himself—his pride would not allow him to settle for borrowing any of the dires already befriended and tamed by Hoarluk Doomshaper. Given the importance he placed on his own legend, it is no wonder Borka would seek out a similarly infamous dire troll to recruit into his boisterous forces.
Borka had little trouble finding the destructive dire troll. Rök left behind a trail of sightings and bloody battles, including a clash with a trio of ogrun who survived the confrontation but lost the sizable supply of ale the were transporting. Borka tracked the dire troll by following a trail of empty and shattered casks, broken bottles, and trees pulverized to splinters in what were likely fits of drunken rage.
To hear Borka tell the tale, it’s likely Rök knew the trollkin was searching for him and so began stalking Borka in turn until Rök ambushed him deep in the Rimeshaws, far from any of the warlock’s kin. Borka had deliberately led Rök away from any potential source of alcohol. The warlock knew that by the time the two mighty combatants found one another, Rök would be hung-over and thirsty. The trollkin had the foresight to bring along a secret weapon unlike any other. Borka’s only companion in his search for Rök was a hearty pyg carrying a cask of the strongest ale the Northkin could brew.
In the titanic battle that followed, Rök sought to cripple Borka to devour him while the warlock used every trick and stratagem learned in a lifetime of battle to evade the troll’s clutches. Several times, Borka was able to gain the upper hand and deal crippling injuries to Rök, only to watch the dire troll regenerate and renew his assault. After hours of battle, the two exhausted one another until each could barely move. It was in this state that Borka crawled to where his keg had been secreted and uncorked it, offering Rök what the dire troll most desired.
If Rök had been offered this keg initially, he would simply have had a tantrum and sought to seize it, but by this point, the dire troll had expended so much of his energy that Borka’s maneuver achieved the result the trollkin hoped for. Rök put aside thoughts of violence to focus on slaking his thirst, and both warlock and dire troll shared a drink together. A bond of understanding was built between them in this moment, a grudging respect amplified when Borka promised to provide Rök with more where that came from, so long as the dire troll fought at his side.
The two of them trekked back down the mountain as a pair, Borka content to have brought a powerful weapon to his Northkin arsenal. On their way, Kegslayer did not expect to encounter a second troll. A female crashed out of the trees to interrupt their descent, roaring as if to mark her territory. The larger surprise lay in Rök’s reaction to the confrontation, as the fierce brute turned submissive. Borka recognized this behavior as clear signs of a mated pair and did not interfere as the female
led Rök off into the trees on the opposite side of the trail. Borka continued down the mountain, hoping that allowing Rök this chance to spend time with his mate would serve Dhunia by ensuring the dire troll’s vital line would persist. That his bond with the dire troll was intact was proven when Rök rejoined him the next day, eager for the battles to come.
In recent years, Rök has been at Borka’s side as often as have the trollkin’s keg carriers and his mace, Trauma. They have journeyed far from the lands where they first joined forces, but in recent memory, Borka returned to his homelands again, with Rök accompanying him. There, they encountered a very young dire troll bearing a strong resemblance to Rök. The younger male was loud and ferocious and shouted out his name, “Gör!” as he uprooted foliage, smashed rocks together, and pounded the earth, all while never taking his eyes from Rök. Rök, however, appeared bored and unthreatened—he never even lifted his axe from the ground. Eventually Gör withdrew, his pride satisfied, and Borka and Rök continued on their way. The young dire troll was too immature to be enlisted by Borka, but he felt certain they had just encountered Rök’s progeny, a creature that might one day seek to rival his sire. Should legends of Gör filter down from the northlands in years to come, Borka will be certain that Dhunia has seen fit to let Rök’s bloodline thrive.
Fonte: No Quarter 71
