ECOLOGY

Environment temperate swamps or rivers
Organization solitary or pair (usually twins)
Treasure standard

Flood trolls are the mutated runts of scrag broods, cast out by their mothers.

While smaller and less organized than true scrags, flood trolls' solitary nature and desperation for food often drives them to commit atrocities upon unsuspecting humanoid populations—atrocities that almost invariably end with the flood trolls' eventual capture and execution.

Flood trolls average 7-1/2 feet tall and weigh 250 pounds.

Ecology

Flood trolls are not actual trolls in the truest sense of the word. Although flood trolls—like their scrag parents— are distantly related to mountain trolls, the species are distinct. Most humanoid societies, however, are content to simply refer to both scrags and trolls using the umbrella term “troll,” linking the species because of overlapping myths and their similar regenerative abilities.

Scrag mothers birth anywhere from two to six younglings in a single brood, and every brood has a small chance of including a half-scrag—known to many civilized peoples as a flood troll. Scrags with larger broods have a higher chance of producing flood trolls among their young. These runts are invariably smaller and more frail than true scrag younglings, and their growth rate is significantly slower than their non-mutated kin.

This makes them undesirable to their scrag mothers and more likely to be eaten by their stronger siblings. Those flood trolls who aren't simply abandoned to the wilds by their mothers are raised as lesser beings, and live in the shadows of their scrag brothers and sisters. Most flood trolls flee their aggressive broodmates before coming of age, preferring to fend for themselves in the terrors of the wilderness rather than deal with their cruel, savage family members.

The mutation that results in a flood troll stymies many of the racial abilities typical to scrags. For one, flood trolls lack the amphibious special quality, making them much less suited to hunting underwater. Unfortunately for them, flood trolls still rely on exposure to water to enable their regenerative properties, meaning they must dwell near water but never wholly within it. Not just any water will do, either—only water that is continually refreshed with minerals and oxygen can regenerate flood trolls. Stagnant or relatively still waters such as small lakes and ponds cannot provide the nutrients flood troll regeneration requires, which means these monsters tend to stay near active waterways and areas with high precipitation where they can find the flowing water and rainfall that helps them to survive.

The mutation that results in a flood troll also affects the creature's reproductive organs, rendering it sterile.

Because they cannot reproduce, flood trolls rarely seek out mates or even partners to aid in the hunt. Instead, they lead solitary existences steeped in ire for all living things; they are born amid hatred and rejection, and expect to die the same way.

In rare instances, a scrag mother may produce flood troll twins. In keeping with their primitive superstitions, scrags believe the arrival of two flood trolls is a dire omen that signals the coming of storms and floods, and cannot be dealt with by simply tossing the younglings away. Instead, the scrags believe, in order to appease the dread deities that they believe control the weather and the flow of rivers into their aquatic homes, the scrags must raise them as they would raise their true scrag offspring. The scrag mother—along with the other female scrags in her group—raises and nurtures the twins as best as she is able, albeit with grudging reluctance. In fact, the association between flood trolls and inclement weather in these old scrag myths is what originally inspired human adventurers to name the beasts flood trolls.

Habitat & Society

Flood trolls are monstrous nomads—wandering hunters who follow the herds of game and pay close attention to humanoids' travel patterns. They are cunning by necessity, since they are smaller than their brethren and must often surprise their prey to earn their meals. While not afraid to pounce on their victims once they can catch them, most flood trolls prefer to use stealth tactics and crude traps to put prospective victims in hazardous situations before attempting an ambush.

Scrag mothers eject their flood troll spawn from the brood as soon as the youngling's hormonal mutation makes itself known, which typically occurs a couple of years after the brood is born. Abandoned younglings survive in the wilds by sticking close to a river or freshwater source, and those who fail to find fresh water typically fall prey to wolves or other predators. Solitary by circumstance, flood trolls are seen in pairs only rarely, and usually because the two are twins. Because flood troll twins are pampered and treated with care by their scrag mother (rather than being abused and ostracized), these specimens tend to be more intelligent and creative than their solitary kin. Some flood trolls even learn how to wield arms or poison daggers; woe betide anyone who feels the sting of a flood troll rogue's dirk—if not for the blade, then for the savage claws that come afterward.

Because they can survive in arid environments for longer periods, flood trolls are much more common than their scrag forebears. The orcs claim that flood trolls wander over mountain ranges, fleeing their scrag families. Flood trolls may be found wherever scrags carry the mutation, though their physical features vary somewhat depending on where they originate.