Ogres and Trolls make their homes in the Death Marshes and similar uninhabitable areas. Ogres are the larger of the two, very muscular and extremely cruel. They rule over the smaller Trolls with an iron fist, treating them as slaves. Neither creature is very intelligent, though both are extremely aggressive.

Ogres and Trolls have an inherent knowledge of where the harder patches of ground lie in the marshes. This instinct keeps them safe from the threat of the Bog Birds that inhabit the same territories. They make their homes in dug out holes beneath the surface, concealing the entrances with vegetation. Any adventurer falling down one of these holes is likely to suffer broken bones as well as capture.

Ogres have extremely acute hearing and therefore tend to attack anyone that passes near them. Whether this is out of true aggression or just an attempt to stop the noises that they find unpleasant is a matter of strong dispute between adventurers. The majority argue that Ogres attack with such excessive force that they must be aggressive. When these creatures do attack, they tend to focus on the larger objects, such as wagons, focusing on overturning them so their victims cannot escape, before falling on anyone present.

Unlike the Cyclopes, they do not have any ability to make their own weapons or armour. Instead, they arm themselves with whatever they can steal from those who violate their territory, along with improvised clubs when the need arises.

Ogres have only one weak spot in their thick hide, on their upper spine. Fortunately, their skin is numb, so a skilled Rogue can often climb an Ogre’s back without being noticed and attack this spot directly!

Trolls are an oppressed people; they are treated as slaves by the Ogres. Do not let this gain your sympathy, however, as they also relish eating humans alive and listening to them scream! Ogres do not seem to approve of this (likely because of the disturbance it causes to their hearing, rather than any moral issues!) and have been known to punish their Trolls for doing so.

Trolls are more easily fooled than Ogres. They rush to join a fight as soon as it sees one break out, while an Ogre is far more likely to wait for the fight to reach it (though I suspect this is due to laziness rather than tactical aptitude!). Thus, a Troll’s impulsiveness can be used to an adventurer’s advantage: a Troll will assume that every bunch of rags placed next to a campfire holds a sleeping person and that every stone thrown the opposite way down a tunnel is someone walking in that direction. Even pitiful attempts at ventriloquism will generally work to confuse this weak-minded species.

I should add that weak-minded or not, it is clear that some Trolls are dissatisfied with their current position in the Ogres’ society. Some Trolls are seen without their Ogre masters nearby in secluded places, such as under bridges, which indicates that a resistance movement against the Ogres is forming. While the Trolls are hardly commendable, they are a much easier adversary to defeat than Ogres, so it is best for adventurers to offer support to any of the renegade Trolls they come across, in order to overthrow and eliminate the threat of Ogres to the Kingdom of Yarnolth forever.