Troll

The Trolls were towering giants of the Nine Realms, juggernauts with great tusks who carried heavy stone totems carved with runes that granted them elemental power. Once the builders of a great civilization, they had dwindled to a scattered few by the time Kratos and Atreus crossed their paths in the Norse lands.

Appearance and bearing#

Trolls were towering giants, far larger than Kratos, with broad, muscular frames built for raw power and a hunched, beast-of-burden posture. Their skin looked like a mix of stone, bark, and flesh, cracked and rough as though their bodies were part of the natural world, and depending on their kind it could appear mossy, icy, fiery, or earthen. They had long, heavy faces with drooping, tusk-like lower jaws and large noses, glowing eyes, and curved or jagged horns that often set one Troll apart from another. They wore little beyond crude straps, belts, and rags, sometimes adorned with bones and runes that marked their elemental or regional identity. They were even larger than Ogres.

Mind and society#

For all their hostility and apparent brutality, the Trolls were intelligent creatures. They were capable of speech and had their own native tongues, and they were born and raised in their own tribes. The Bridge Keeper of Helheim could tell a dead soul from a living person, a mark of real sentience. They were also xenophobic to a degree: when Kratos and Atreus met their first Troll, it declared in its own tongue that the two did not belong in Midgard, seeing them, as some of the Aesir did, as outsiders to the Norse lands. Some were openly prideful, such as the frost troll who named himself the Stonebeard King out of confidence in his prowess, or the Death's Hammer of Veithurgard, who challenged Kratos and his son in hope of a glorious death in battle.

A fallen civilization#

The Trolls had once been a powerful and advanced civilization, with a series of settlements and cities spread all across Midgard and the rest of the Nine Realms. At some point in their history they were betrayed by the Aesir, and that betrayal brought about the catastrophic collapse of their society and a massive extinction of their race, leaving only a few of them scattered across the realms. They were not bound to Midgard alone: the Bridge Keeper was a Troll born and raised in the realm of the dead, and Muspelheim harbored a especially powerful Fire Troll.

The Stone Troll Tribe#

Among the Trolls was a people known as the Stone Troll Tribe, lean but powerful, with skin of rock and totems of granite. Two of their number were appointed guardians of the Black Rune of Jotunheim in the heart of Tyr's Vault. Others slumbered across Midgard, near Helheim Tower, in the Foothills near Sindri's shop, and at the Mountain's Base, waking only after the Black Rune was claimed. In later years more Stone Trolls were found slumbering in the realms, imprisoned by the dwarf Alviss Stonefoot and rousable only by a mystical heirloom. The Stone Trolls could enter a hibernation in which they lay unmoving yet remained aware of their surroundings, and in battle they conjured blinding ash and slammed their granite totems to raise blinding bursts from the earth.

Elemental power#

Every Troll possessed massive strength, durability, and stamina, able to withstand many blows. The element drawn from the rune carved into a Troll's totem strengthened and enhanced its powers. Fire Trolls could hurl flames from their hands and stomp the ground to melt the earth, while Frost Trolls could freeze their surroundings and slam the earth to send shockwaves of ice shards. The stronger the Troll, the further its element spread through its body and the brighter the runic glow of its totem: powerful Fire Trolls bore burnt skin and reddish markings and totems cracked with fiery energy, while powerful Frost Trolls bore bluish skin, frozen hair, and ice tusks, expelling great clouds of freezing energy. The Stone Trolls, by contrast, could imbue themselves with elemental power without carving runes at all, their totems bearing only a plain diamond-shaped marking.