Troll

A troll is a mythical creature from Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore.

Different sources and stories depict trolls differently.

Common features associated with trolls include:

• Large, bulky, and muscular, skin in shades like gray, green, brown, or black.

• Long, tangled hair, beards, and eyebrows, sometimes with horns, tusks, or warts on their faces.

• Sharp teeth and claws, sometimes with multiple heads or eyes.

• Dressed in ragged clothes, animal skins, or naked.

• Living in caves, mountains, forests, or under bridges, away from human civilization.

• Hostile, aggressive, greedy, and may consume humans or livestock.

• They may also kidnap or enchant beautiful maidens or children.

• Sensitive to sunlight, turning them to stone or causing them to burst into flames.

• Strong connection to nature and magic, capable to shape-shift, casting spells, or seeing the future.

Examples of famous trolls in literature and media:

• The three trolls that Bilbo Baggins encountered in The Hobbit by J.R.R.Tolkien.

• The mountain trolls Harry Potter and friends fought in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K.Rowling.

• The troll dolls popularized in the 1960s, inspired movies and TV shows.

• Internet trolls posting inflammatory or offensive comments to provoke or annoy others.

Вased on some common features, one possible way to imagine a troll is as follows:

• A troll is a large, humanoid creature with a rocky or scaly skin that blends in with its natural surroundings.

• A troll has a long, pointed nose, a wide mouth with sharp teeth, and small, sunken eyes that glow in the dark.

• A troll has thick, coarse hair that covers its head and body, sometimes forming a beard or a mane. The hair may be black, brown, gray, or green.

• A troll has long arms and legs, with clawed hands and feet.

• It may also have horns, spikes, or warts on its head or body.

• A troll is very strong and resilient, but also slow and stupid.

• It can use simple weapons such as clubs or rocks, but prefers to rely on its brute force.

• A troll is hostile to humans and other living beings, and may attack them for food or fun.

• It lives in isolated places such as mountains, caves, or forests, and avoids sunlight, which can turn it to stone.

• A troll may have some magical abilities, such as shapeshifting, prophesying, or casting spells.

• It may also have some weaknesses, such as fire, iron, or certain words or riddles.

This is just one possible way to picture a troll.

However, there are many other ways to imagine a troll, as different cultures and stories have their own versions of this mythical creature.

For example, in the fantasy world of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, trolls are sentient beings made entirely of rock.

They have names based on minerals, such as Detritus or Ruby.

They are very intelligent when they are cold, but become dull when they are hot.

They have a complex culture and history, and some of them even work as policemen or lawyers.

Trolls are a type of mythical creatures that originate from Scandinavian folklore, but have also become popular in other cultures and media.

There is no one definitive description of trolls, as they vary in size, shape, appearance, and abilities.

Some trolls are depicted as giant, monstrous beings that live in isolated areas and are hostile to humans.

Other trolls are portrayed as smaller, more human-like creatures that can shape-shift, prophesy, or use magic.

Some trolls live under bridges, some live in mountains, and some live on the internet.

As for whether trolls are real or not, that depends on your definition of reality.

Some people may believe that trolls exist in a spiritual or metaphysical sense, while others may dismiss them as mere products of imagination and fiction.

There is no scientific evidence that proves or disproves the existence of trolls, so it is ultimately a matter of personal belief and interpretation.

Here is a funny joke about trolls:
Q: How do you cross a Middle Earth bridge?
A: You use J.R.R. Tokens!

Norse trolls are mythical creatures that vary in appearance and size.

Some are monstrous and ugly, with one eye or multiple heads, while others look like human beings or even cute animals.

They live in isolated places, such as mountains, caves, or forests, and are often hostile to humans.

They are afraid of sunlight, which can turn them into stone.

They sometimes challenge humans with riddles or tricks, but they are not very smart.

Far-far away, in the shadowed vale of Tarn, where mist wove tales into the earth, there lived an ancient troll named Thalgar. For centuries, he had dwelled beneath the Glooming Bridge, guarding its secrets and telling stories of a bygone era when the world was free from tyranny. Thalgar was a relic of a lost age, his skin gnarled like the roots of the great Elder Tree, his eyes two embers of faded wisdom.

The world above Thalgar's realm had changed. Once, lands were ruled by fairness and justice, but as time wore on, despotism spread like rot. The Kingdom of Tyria, led by the ruthless King Malvorn, expanded its grasp, leaving only suffering in its wake. The king's army, clad in iron and malice, crushed all who dared oppose him. Hope seemed a distant memory, smothered beneath the weight of oppression.

One fateful day, a young warrior named Elara ventured into the vale. She had heard whispers of Thalgar's wisdom and hoped that the old troll might hold the key to overthrowing King Malvorn. With a heart full of courage and a sword that had seen too many battles, Elara approached the Glooming Bridge.

Thalgar emerged from his lair, his gaze penetrating the mist. "Why do you seek me, young one?" he rumbled, his voice like distant thunder.

"I seek your counsel, mighty Thalgar," Elara replied, her voice steady despite the tremor in her heart. "Tyria is under the iron rule of King Malvorn. I believe you possess the knowledge to help us free our land from tyranny."

Thalgar's eyes flickered with something akin to amusement and sadness. "Tyranny is but a symptom of a deeper ailment," he said. "To defeat it, one must understand its roots."

Elara listened intently as Thalgar spoke of ancient prophecies and the cycles of power. He revealed that King Malvorn's reign was not an anomaly but part of a recurring pattern - a cycle of rise and fall, where power always seemed to corrupt and subjugate.

The troll told her of an ancient weapon, a relic of forgotten magic, hidden deep within the Caverns of Shadows. This weapon could pierce the heart of tyranny, but it came with a price: it demanded a sacrifice of purity and intent. Only one with a heart untainted by ambition could wield it.

Determined, Elara set out on a perilous quest to retrieve the weapon. She faced trials of darkness, illusions, and her own fears. Yet, each step was guided by the wisdom Thalgar had shared. Her pure intent was tested time and again, but her resolve remained steadfast.

At last, Elara reached the heart of the Caverns of Shadows, where she found the weapon - an elegant sword imbued with a luminescence that defied the darkness. Holding it, she felt a surge of power and clarity. She knew that the weapon's true strength lay not in its blade, but in its ability to inspire courage and unity.

Elara returned to Tyria, her presence a beacon of hope. Rallying the oppressed, she led a daring rebellion against King Malvorn. The battles were fierce, but the sword's influence rallied the people and inspired acts of bravery. The kingdom's once-feared army faltered as the oppressed fought with newfound strength.

In the final confrontation, Elara faced King Malvorn. As their swords clashed, the weight of history and the future of Tyria hung in the balance. With a decisive strike, Elara pierced the heart of tyranny. Malvorn fell, and his iron grip shattered.

The kingdom began to rebuild, guided by the principles of fairness and justice that had been lost for so long. Elara's name became legendary, but she knew that the true lesson of the war was not in the victory itself but in the understanding that power, unchecked, would always seek to dominate.

As for Thalgar, he returned to his vigil beneath the Glooming Bridge, a silent guardian of the valley. He knew that the cycles of power would continue, but he had imparted a crucial truth: that the strength to overcome tyranny lay not just in weapons or battles, but in the purity of intent and the courage to confront the deeper roots of injustice.

And so, the old troll's parable echoed through the ages, a reminder that while tyranny might rise and fall, the quest for freedom and justice is a constant, demanding vigilance and wisdom from those who would safeguard it.

Long ago, before the age of men and elves, when the world itself was raw and still heaving from its creation, the gods walked among their handiwork. Their power molded the lands, sculpted the skies, and breathed life into the first races. Yet not all gods were creators of beauty and light, for the universe was not formed by goodness alone. Hidden in the shadows of the divine, there were forces older than the stars - primordial entities, whose nature was entropy and whose work was decay.

One such force was Ghurthak, an ancient being neither god nor mortal, but a creature of the void itself. Where other deities crafted in light, Ghurthak toiled in the dark, in secret realms where time moved in agonizing slowness, where the air tasted of ash and the earth bled corruption. His domain was not bound by love for creation but by an insatiable hunger for unmaking and reshaping.

It is said that the birth of trolls came from this hunger.

The Betrayal of the Elements

The world in those early days was ruled by the elemental gods: great spirits of stone, wind, fire, and water, who danced upon the newly shaped planet and seeded its first forms of life. These beings were revered for their grace and wisdom, for their harmonious blend of creation and destruction, fostering balance in all things. However, one element had been denied dominion: shadow, an untamed essence that had no home in the heart of the new world.

Ghurthak, master of shadow, resented his exile. He had watched from the fringes of existence, his dark heart festering with envy. He longed to stain the pure world with his touch, to leave his mark not through fire or thunder but through creatures that bore his essence - a living curse.

He knew, however, that he could not do this alone. The elemental gods were strong, their dominion over the world absolute. So Ghurthak hatched a plan. In secret, he sought the Elemental of Stone, Olvarn, who ruled over the mountains and valleys of the young world. Though Olvarn was wise, he harbored a hidden greed, an ambition to make his stone creations eternal, unbreakable by time or wear.

Ghurthak whispered in Olvarn's ear, offering a pact: a new form of life, forged of stone but imbued with Ghurthak's dark essence, capable of outlasting all others. In exchange, Ghurthak asked for a mere fraction of Olvarn's power - a shard of divine stone - to shape this new breed of creatures. Blinded by pride, Olvarn agreed, unaware that his ambition would birth a monstrosity.

The Dark Forge

Deep beneath the earth, in caverns where no light had ever reached, Ghurthak set to work. He took the shard of divine stone and twisted it, warping it with the essence of shadow and decay. He carved bodies of massive stone, but where Olvarn's creations had been majestic and strong, Ghurthak's were misshapen, their forms warped and grotesque, their features hulking and brutal. Ghurthak breathed a corrupted life into them, filling their veins not with blood, but with molten rock and the slow, grinding pulse of the earth itself.

The first trolls were born.

These creatures were not like any other that had been made by the gods. They were crude, misshapen beings, towering over men, their skin as tough as rock, their muscles made of the earth's most primal strength. But it was not just their physicality that made them a horror. The shadow that Ghurthak had woven into their essence made them creatures of hunger and malice. They craved the destruction of life, driven by an endless need to consume the world around them.

The Reckoning

When Olvarn saw what Ghurthak had made, he was horrified. He had expected immortal creatures of stone, statuesque beings of grandeur that would testify to his power. Instead, he saw twisted abominations, brutish and hideous, with jagged teeth and empty eyes that gleamed with malevolence. Olvarn's regret turned to fury, and he sought to undo the pact.

But it was too late.

The trolls had already multiplied. Their bodies were made of stone and earth, and when they shattered in battle, the pieces would grow again, merging with the surrounding land to birth more trolls. Each was as relentless as the mountain itself, impervious to time, regenerating from even the smallest fragment of stone.

The elemental gods realized the depth of Olvarn's betrayal, and together they waged war against the trolls. Fire was their greatest weapon, for it could burn the trolls and melt their bodies into slag. But even fire was not a complete solution; the creatures learned to avoid it, burrowing deep into the mountains and hiding in the dark places of the world where flame could not reach.

Olvarn, shamed and repentant, was stripped of much of his power and banished to the farthest reaches of his domain. His creations, the trolls, were left to wander the earth, eternal and soulless, trapped between life and death.

The Curse of Stone

Trolls were not like other beings. They did not age, did not die as men or elves do. Instead, they simply existed, as mountains exist, as rivers carve their path. Trolls would slumber beneath hills for centuries, slowly regrowing from their shattered pieces, only to awaken in times of war or disaster, when their hunger for destruction could be sated once more.

Yet trolls were not creatures of pure malice. Some believed that deep inside them, remnants of Olvarn's original design remained: a faint echo of a desire for beauty, twisted though it had become. In rare moments, trolls were known to sit for days, even years, contemplating the landscapes they were once meant to protect. They would carve crude imitations of the world's mountains and valleys, not out of artistry but out of some dim recollection of what they might have been, had Ghurthak never touched them.

But these moments of peace never lasted. The shadow that was Ghurthak's gift would always reawaken, driving them to madness, to hunger, to endless destruction.

The Legacy of the Trolls

As ages passed and men came to rule the earth, the memory of how trolls were forged faded into legend. Some saw them as mere monsters, while others whispered tales of their cursed origin. Few remembered that they were born of a god's ambition and a void's hunger. Fewer still knew that deep in the forgotten caverns of the world, Ghurthak slumbered, waiting for the day he could awaken his greatest creations once more, to unleash them in an age when the world would once again tremble under their stone-shod feet.

For as long as the earth remained, so too would the trolls, guardians of forgotten shadows, endlessly reshaping, endlessly destroying - a testament to the dark, twisted heart of creation.

Long time ago, in the heart of the jagged Spinefang Mountains, where mists swirled like ghosts and the wind howled through broken peaks, there lived a Troll named Gruknar. His skin was the color of stormy skies, and his eyes gleamed like shards of amber trapped in ancient stone. Unlike other trolls, who lived solitary lives deep in their caves, Gruknar had always been curious about the world beyond. He was large and powerful, like his kin, but his mind was sharp, ever seeking to uncover secrets that lay hidden beneath rock and earth.

One fateful day, as Gruknar was wandering through the valley below the mountains, he heard whispers carried by the wind. They spoke of a treasure lost to time, a treasure that could shift the balance of power in the world. It was the Lost Coin of Olnir, a relic from an ancient age when gods walked among mortals, and its discovery could bring untold fortune - or ruin - to whoever found it.

The Coin of Olnir was said to be forged by the hands of a forgotten god, a deity of both fortune and chaos. Whoever possessed it could command the winds of fate, turn enemies into allies, and raise empires from dust. For centuries, kings, wizards, and warlords had sought it, but all failed. The Coin had vanished after the Fall of Olnir, the last city to challenge the gods, sinking into legend.

Gruknar, hearing these tales, felt a fire kindle within him. He knew the mountains better than any creature alive, and his strength was unmatched. If anyone could uncover the Coin, it was him. But the whispers carried a warning: a war was brewing, and many forces were now on the hunt for this ancient relic.

Days turned to weeks as Gruknar dug through the ruins of forgotten kingdoms, unearthing clues hidden beneath moss and stone. Finally, after much searching, he stumbled upon an ancient map, etched into the walls of a crumbling temple. It depicted the lost city of Olnir and the location of the coin - buried deep beneath the roots of a cursed forest known as the Shadowpine, where no light ever touched the ground.

However, Gruknar was not the only one seeking the Coin. News of his discovery had spread like wildfire. Armies, both human and beast, converged upon the Shadowpine. The Elven Queen of the Silverwood, Aelindra, sent her swiftest scouts to track the Troll's movements. The Dwarven King Gror Ironfist marshaled his legions, eager to claim the relic for his people, while the human warlord Aric Blackblade, who ruled with fear and iron, sought the Coin to cement his dominion over the lands.

But none were as dangerous as the Night Witch, Morgra. She had waited centuries for the Coin to resurface. Her magic was ancient and terrible, and she intended to use the Coin to break the veil between the living and the dead, enslaving the world to her will.

Gruknar knew time was running short. With the armies drawing closer, he plunged into the Shadowpine, navigating the twisting, cursed trees, where shadows moved like living things and the air was thick with decay. As he ventured deeper, the ground itself seemed to resist him, roots rising to trip him, stones shifting underfoot. But Gruknar was relentless.

At last, he reached the heart of the forest - a sunken crater where the ground had swallowed a once-great temple. And there, at the base of a withered tree, the Coin of Olnir lay buried beneath layers of soil and time. It shimmered faintly, even in the darkness of the Shadowpine, as if calling to him.

But before Gruknar could claim it, the first of his enemies arrived. Aric Blackblade, clad in black iron and flanked by his merciless warriors, charged into the clearing. Aric's eyes gleamed with ambition, and his sword was already drawn.

"So, the beast thinks it can take the prize?" Aric sneered. "Step aside, Troll, and perhaps I'll let you live."

Gruknar stood tall, his massive frame casting a long shadow across the clearing. "The Coin belongs to no man, and you will not have it," he rumbled.

The battle that followed was fierce. Gruknar's strength was immense, and he fought with the ferocity of the mountain storms, crushing Aric's warriors with his great fists and hurling boulders torn from the ground. But Aric was a cunning warrior, and his soldiers were relentless, their swords flashing in the gloom of the Shadowpine.

Just as Gruknar began to tire, a terrible darkness descended upon the forest. Morgra, the Night Witch, had arrived. Her form was barely human, twisted by centuries of dark magic. Her eyes burned like coals, and her voice was like the scraping of bones.

"You are all fools," she hissed. "The Coin belongs to me!"

With a wave of her hand, she summoned a storm of black magic, the shadows themselves rising up to choke and bind Gruknar and Aric's forces. The Troll felt the cold grip of her sorcery wrap around him, but he summoned all his strength and broke free, roaring in defiance.

As Morgra prepared to unleash a spell that would destroy them all, a brilliant light filled the clearing. From the depths of the forest, the Elven Queen Aelindra and her warriors appeared, their bows singing as arrows flew through the air. The magic of the elves clashed with Morgra's dark power, the two forces locked in a deadly duel.

In the chaos, Gruknar saw his chance. With a mighty leap, he tore the Coin from its resting place. The moment his hand closed around it, he felt its ancient power surge through him. Visions flashed before his eyes - empires rising and falling, storms of fate bending to his will.

But with the power came a terrible burden. The Coin's magic was too great for any one being to control, and it whispered to him, promising glory but demanding a price. Gruknar realized then that the Coin was not meant to be wielded, only guarded.

With a heavy heart, Gruknar made his decision. As the battle raged around him, he took the Coin and crushed it between his great hands. A blinding light erupted from the shattered relic, and the ground trembled as the magic of Olnir was released back into the world, beyond the reach of any mortal.

The armies, blinded by the light, retreated, their greed and ambition broken. Morgra screamed in fury as her power waned, and she vanished into the shadows, her plans undone.

When the light faded, Gruknar stood alone in the clearing, the Coin of Olnir now nothing more than dust in the wind. He had saved the world from its own destruction, but at the cost of the greatest treasure it had ever known.

And so, the Troll returned to his mountains, his name whispered in legend for ages to come as the one who found the Lost Coin of Olnir - and chose to save the world instead of ruling it.

This is the legend of Gruknar, the Troll who held fate in his hands and chose freedom over power.