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Trolls are a species of large bipedal ape capable of stepping. They are also sapient, though not as intelligent as humans. In the wild they use stone tools, but they can be taught to use a variety of human technologies.

Trolls are omnivores, and live in small hunter-gatherer family bands. Their presence is very important to the ecology of much of the Long Earth. They are known to live from The Gap all the way out to the East Gap, as well as out on the tall tree worlds like Earth West 230,000,000 plus change.

One of the main ways trolls communicate is via song. Different troll bands will often gather and exchange knowledge through song, and in this way information can be passed between millions of bands and eventually transmitted across the whole of the species. This “long call” is like a species-wide encyclopaedia and social media network. Though trolls and humans are physically incapable of speaking each others’ languages, “troll-calls” have been invented which act as translator devices between species, and a pidgin sign language is sometimes also used.

Evolution[]

The ability to step first evolved several million years ago in Homo habilis, a bipedal ape that utilised stone tools.[1] Stepping is hypothesised to be linked to the higher intelligence, specifically the capacity for imagination, found in the Homo genus. It may be linked to planning and forethought: perhaps the ability to imagine alternative outcomes depending on whether you risk hunting a large animal or fall back on a reliable fish-filled river is linked to the ability to imagine how and why another world in the Long Earth might be different from your own. Or, it might be related more directly to tool use: the ability to imagine the changes needed to turn a stone into a handaxe, and then to go ahead and do this with your own two hands, might be linked to the ability to imagine how you might travel into another world, and then do it yourself. [2]

The ability to step appears to have evolved only once, on the Datum Earth.[3] After this, a rapid divergence occurred. Those habilines that were better at stepping quickly moved away from the Datum and out across the Long Earth, radiating out into many different niches and becoming the trolls, the elves, and other kinds of humanoid, like the seal-beasts on Earth West 1,300,000 plus change.[4][5] Some humanoids, once they found a lush Earth to settle down on, secondarily lost their ability to step; the bonobo chimp is hypothesised to be a kind of stepping humanoid that travelled back to the Datum Earth and then lost the ability to step, stranding the species there.[6]

On the other hand, those early Homo habilis that weren’t as good as stepping or couldn’t step at all stayed on the Datum Earth, never even leaving to begin with. This group gave rise to all the human relatives we know from the fossil record, like the Neanderthals, and eventually to humans.[2] This explains why humans are not as good at stepping as trolls and other humanoids.

Physiology[]

As bipedal apes, trolls have the same basic anatomy as humans, but they are a lot larger. They have wide chests, with mitten-like hands the size of tennis racquets.[7] Their heads are very inhuman, with faces like chimpanzees or gorillas, and most of their bodies are covered in thick black fur.[8][9] They have brown eyes and pink mouths.[10][11] Trolls are extremely strong; cubs are able to throw balls fast enough to splinter wood and can hold teenage humans upside-down,[12][13] and elderly trolls can easily carry around adult humans.[14][15]

Trolls have a distinctive smelly musk, which can be overwhelming at close range, and hangs around areas they frequent.[16][17] Cubs have almost human-like facial features, and even very young cubs can cling onto their parents’ back.[18][19] As they move into their old age, the fur around their face and on their back begins to grey.[20] Individual trolls have an intelligence somewhere between chimpanzees and humans. They appear to have an expanded frontal lobe, possibly to help store and process memories.[21]

As bipedal relatives of humans, trolls are skilled at walking and running. However they are also good at climbing trees; when they do so, they spit on their hands to improve their grip and skilfully find foot-holds with their human-like feet.[22] When they are tired, they pant to cool off.[10] Trolls are masters at stepping, and can use soft places to travel tens of millions of worlds in a single step. Their soft-place stepping is so powerful that it is a gruelling ordeal for humans to experience.[23] They even have the ability to sense certain Long World phenomena in advance, like upcoming joker worlds.[24]

Trolls have expressions comparable to both humans and chimps. They make smile-like faces when happy or satisfied, laugh when amused, or scrunch up their faces and bare their teeth when they are stressed.[10][25][26] Aside from singing, they will communicate with hoots and chatters, panting and gestures.[25][27] While much of their communication is done at frequencies that humans can hear, some of it is also done with ultrasonics- sounds too high-pitched for humans to hear.[28]

The Long Call[]

One of the main ways trolls communicate is with song. They use songs taken from other species, like humans, but sung in groups with harmonies and multi-part chords in a way that sounds beautiful to humans.[10] They only need to hear a song once or twice before they can sing it pitch-perfectly in the voice of whoever they heard it from.[29][30] As well as human songs, they are known to mimic the birdsong of species like starlings and nightingales, and the song of other sapient species, like beagles.[30][31] One of the ways they use song is as a timing device, to do things like stepping together in tandem.[32]

Troll song is densely packed with information; everything from whether a kind of berry is edible or where prey is located on a stepwise world, to who a human is or the fact they have visited a particular location on that day. They can sing to each other across great distances, and will do this often, usually at twilight.[33][34] As troll bands migrate across the Long Earth, so spreads the information that their songs carry. Eventually, all information that any one troll knows will be transmitted to every other troll in existence.[35][36] Known as the long call, this giant world-spanning choir is like a species-wide encyclopaedia and news network.

Troll society[]

Sociality[]

Trolls do have names, in the form of a description of who they are, pronounced as a motif in their singing.[37] They live in small bands of a dozen or more. These bands usually consist of several smaller families, sometimes monogamous pairs and their offspring, as well as some unrelated elderly trolls.[38] They often groom themselves or each other, picking insects and fleas from each others’ fur.[39][40] They also enjoy activities like wrestling.[41][42]

When an entire troll band moves from one world to the next, they travel in a specific order. Females travel first, especially the mothers, so they can ensure the safety of the cubs. Elders travel in the middle, and finally the males step last so they can protect the rear of the column, because elves tend to attack from the rear.[43][44] Troll cubs don’t tend to step without their mothers, even if they are in danger, for fear of getting separated.[45]

Trolls sometimes associate with other stepping humanoid species. This may be for protection: different species may use different sensory ranges- trolls can hear ultrasonics, for instance- meaning a group of different species would be better at detecting danger than just trolls alone.[46] They have even been known to offer sex as gratitude to other humanoid species.[47] Trolls’ main predators, however, are also other stepping humanoids: elves, which can pursue trolls between worlds where other predators cannot.

Ecology[]

As a common megafaunal species, trolls have become crucial to the health of the ecosystems of the Long Earth- they are a keystone species, like elephants or beavers.[48] If they were to disappear, many of the Long Earth’s ecosystems would suffer collapse.[49] Trolls are most commonly known in the approximately four million worlds surrounding the Datum Earth, from The Gap in the west to the East Gap in the east- they rarely cross gap worlds, for fear of the empty vacuum within.[50] They are also found in faraway bands such as the tall tree worlds like Earth west 230,000,000 plus change, which they reach by travelling through soft places.[51]

Diet[]

Trolls are omnivores, with a highly flexible diet.[52] They are known to eat fruits, root vegetables, grubs, beetles, honeycomb, fish, small prey like rabbits and deer, and occasionally much larger game.[53][54][55][56][57][58] When they do eat meat, they prefer the animals’ softer parts, like the lungs, heart, kidneys, and guts, but will also eat harder parts like the ribs.[54][59] They like cooked meat, but can’t make fires of their own, so they will use naturally occurring fires or get humans to cook meat for them.[60][61] They also have a sweet tooth, and will happily eat human sweets like ice cream and sugar cubes.[62][63]

Troll bands will gather resources by sending scouts stepwise across multiple worlds. If one finds a promising source of food or water, they will return to the other trolls and tell them what and where it is. More scouts will then investigate this possibility, and return with either a confirmation or a contradiction. Eventually the whole band comes to a decision, bursting into song. In this way, troll bands can survey a large variety of possible foods before deciding which to eat.[64][65]

When troll bands hunt very large animals, they typically pick out an elderly or injured one. They will trail their quarry in a stepwise world, stepping in momentarily and then leaving faster than their prey can notice, returning to the stepwise band to report their observations in the form of song and dance. At an opportune moment, the band then steps into their prey’s world and begins wearing down their prey by clobbering it with their fists and with sharpened stones. After the kill, they sing a song of victory, about joy at such a large meal and thanks to the prey’s gift of life. The whole band then feasts while they butcher the kill.[59]

Tool use[]

Trolls use a variety of simple tools, including poking sticks and stone hand-axes.[66] Like their habiline ancestors, they will knap these hand-axes from chunks of rock.[67] They use these stone blades to kill prey, and to then to butcher it.[59][68] They can’t make fire themselves, but will use naturally occurring fires to cook meat.[61] They have also been known to tie knots.[69]

Trolls have plenty of medicinal knowledge stored in the long call, and will feed injured trolls (and humans) medicinal herbs.[70] They will also apply poultices to wounds, which they make by grinding up plants between their molars.[71][72] When trolls do die, their families bury them, and scatter flowers on the grave site.[73][74] Trolls aren’t known to make art, but they have been seen drawing shapes in mud with their forefinger.[75]

Troll librarians[]

When trolls become elderly, their brains become large and good at storing memories. These trolls store information from their own experiences, as well as that heard from the long call. When rare events happen, like droughts, or floods, or even volcanic eruptions or gamma-ray bursts, these troll librarians share their wisdom stored from the last time such things happened, using it to help those in danger.[76][77]

Elderly trolls no longer stay with their old band, but instead drift from one band of trolls to another. They earn their place in these groups with their stored knowledge, spreading their wisdom around the population as they move between bands.[78] Troll librarians will also occasionally meet up in groups, in places like Earth West 230,000,000 plus change, to share and correct their knowledge via song.[79][80]

Interaction with humans[]

Trolls and humans appear to be physically incapable of speaking each others’ languages, but they have developed two ways of speaking with each other. One is a kind of pidgin sign language developed in laboratories; the other is a direct translation device called a troll-call.[81]

Trolls have a peculiar ability to sense other sapient minds. Powerful minds like First Person Singular give them great discomfort and migraine headaches,[82][83] but even human congregations of more than exactly 1,890 people make them uncomfortable. In the latter case, they will usually leave and only come back when the number of humans has gone back down.[84] Because of this, trolls rarely ever travel into the Datum Earth, or similarly crowded worlds.[85]

Trolls are fascinated with other sapient species and their technology, and can quickly learn their way around more complex tools.[12][86][18] They are also willing to help out, like by lifting heavy loads that smaller sapients can’t manage on their own.[84][12] Many human communities across the Long Earth take advantage of this, getting trolls to help build, farm, clear land, and transport goods.[87] Troll labour has become a crucial part of many Long Earth communities, like Happy Landings, but it is also often exploited for commercial purposes, often to the detriment of the trolls.[84][88]

Trolls are usually friendly, gentle giants, but will not hesitate to defend themselves or their cubs with violence.[84][89] In fact, there are no known incidents of trolls harming humans except by accident, or by first being provoked.[90] They have even been known to nurse injured humans back to health, even if that human is a stranger to them and they expect no reward for doing so. [91]

The Long Earth[]

In Happy Landings, humans have been living alongside trolls for centuries with the trolls helping them with manual labor like carrying heavy loads.

JoshuaAndTheTrolls

Rendition of Joshua's first encounter with trolls - Created by DSonla

Before Step Day and Lobsang and Joshua Valienté's journey, only few people, like Sally Linsay knew about their existence (except rare incidents like with Private Percy Blakeney who lived several decades with trolls and thought they were Russians).

Sally, fond of the trolls, soon noticed, fifteen years after Step Day, that the trolls were migrating East for an unknown reason.[92] In order to find the reason behind it, she seeked Lobsang and Joshua's help and embarked on the Mark Twain.

It was later discovered that the trolls were feeling a mental pressure, a migraine, coming from the West and that it was caused by a living organism called First Person Singular.[93][94]

Lobsang, in order to prevent the creature to reach Datum Earth, merged with it and diverted her course.[95]

The Long War[]

In 2040, trolls had become an ever-present in the stepwise worlds colonized by mankind. They are willing and clever workers who help tend to clear fields, build schoolhouse, help in sheep farms like in stepwise Australias and even work in the assembly lines of factories in some Low Earth Americas.[96]

But as mankind spread across the Long Earth, incidents between humans and trolls began to happen more and more often. One of the most iconic incident was when Mary, a troll female residing at the GapSpace facility, killed one of the GapSpace researchers who tried to force her to give away her cub.[97]

This incident, among others, prompted Sally Linsay to reach out to Joshua Valienté and ask him to go in front of the Congress on Datum Earth to ask for the creation of a protection law for trolls.[98][99]

Joshua, accompanied by Bill Chambers, met up with Senator Starling but failed to convince him to intervene in favor of the trolls.[96]

While Maggie Kauffman, aboard the USS Benjamin Franklin, was solving more and more incidents involving trolls as much as she could, in June 2040, the trolls, swapping information with the long call, finally reached the decision to leave the worlds with humans in it.[100]

This is why Lobsang summoned Joshua to Madison West 10, to a transEarth Institute facility, where he asked him to go find Sally and Monica Jansson, who disappeared with Mary and Ham, find the trolls and convince them to give mankind a second chance.[101]

The trolls were eventually found on Earth West 1,617,524, the beagles homeworld, and there Joshua and Bill unpacked a translator box looking like a tablet that with a message part human and part troll where a hologram of Lobsang apologized in the name of mankind.[102]

By September 2040, the trolls started to come back and show up across the Long Earth and Senator Starling claimed that he was a supporter of the trolls all along.[103]

The Long Mars[]

According to Maggie Kauffman's observations of the family of trolls she kept aboard the USS Benjamin Franklin and now aboard the USS Neil A. Armstrong II, trolls could sense danger coming well before humans could respond, like the imminence of Jokers.

Media[]

The_Long_Earth_-_Joshua_meets_the_trolls

The Long Earth - Joshua meets the trolls

References[]

  1. The Long Mars- page 323
  2. 2.0 2.1 The Long Earth- page 327
  3. The Long Earth- page 263
  4. The Long Earth- page 269
  5. The Long Earth- page 327
  6. The Long War- pages 325-326
  7. The Long Earth- pages 161-162
  8. The Long Earth- page 219
  9. The Long War- page 9
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 The Long Earth- page 161
  11. The Long War- page 228
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 The Long Earth- page 320
  13. The Long War- page 400
  14. The Long Cosmos- page 97
  15. The Long Cosmos- page 295
  16. The Long Earth- page 300
  17. The Long Earth- page 360
  18. 18.0 18.1 The Long War- page 359
  19. The Long Cosmos- page 137
  20. The Long Cosmos- page 87
  21. The Long Earth- page 320
  22. The Long Cosmos- pages 295-296
  23. The Long Cosmos- page 288
  24. The Long Mars- page 77
  25. 25.0 25.1 The Long Earth- page 220
  26. The Long Cosmos- page 188
  27. The Long Cosmos- page 185
  28. The Long Earth- pages 163-164
  29. The Long Earth- page 12
  30. 30.0 30.1 The Long Earth- page 167
  31. The Long War- page 368
  32. The Long War- page 258
  33. The Long War- page 160
  34. The Long War- page 213
  35. The Long Earth- pages 308-309
  36. The Long Cosmos- page 185
  37. The Long Cosmos- page 5
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  42. The Long Cosmos- page 239
  43. The Long Earth- page 361
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  46. The Long Earth- page 253
  47. The Long Cosmos- page 284
  48. The Long War- page 117
  49. The Long War- page 262
  50. The Long Mars- page 156
  51. The Long Cosmos- page 302
  52. The Long Earth- page 327
  53. The Long Earth- page 162
  54. 54.0 54.1 The Long Earth- page 172
  55. The Long War- page 259
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  59. 59.0 59.1 59.2 The Long Cosmos- pages 6-7
  60. The Long Earth- page 173
  61. 61.0 61.1 The Long Cosmos- page 91
  62. The Long War- page 23
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  64. The Long War- page 259
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  66. The Long War- page 264
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  69. The Long Cosmos- page 184
  70. The Long Cosmos- page 178
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  73. The Long Earth- page 319
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  75. The Long Cosmos- page 245
  76. The Long Cosmos- pages 188-189
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  81. The Long Cosmos- page 366
  82. The Long Earth- page 364
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  89. The Long War- page 10
  90. The Long Mars- page 419
  91. The Long Cosmos- pages 135-140
  92. The Long Earth - Chapter 36
  93. The Long Earth - Chapter 39
  94. The Long Earth - Chapter 48
  95. The Long Earth - Chapter 49
  96. 96.0 96.1 The Long War - Chapter 24
  97. The Long War - Chapter 1
  98. The Long War - Chapter 2
  99. The Long War - Chapter 3
  100. The Long War - Chapter 35
  101. The Long War - Chapter 36
  102. The Long War - Chapter 65
  103. The Long War - Chapter 68
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