Void Trolls

The Void and Aether

Before Everything. Before your Gods, before this place, before even time itself. There was The Void.

Or really, just The Void. For what is a Hat Troll, but a shard of The Void, not that most of them know or remember this. It gives them their enduring immortality, something not even the Gods can claim to have. The Void existed. The Void exists. The Void shall exist. So true shall it be for Hat Trolldom. Or so it is said.

But then along came Aether. And during its emergence, Aether wounded The Void. Hat Trolls call this the Kulpa. The Flawed. The Imperfection. The Wrong, The Bad, The Short.

And from Aether came Gods and Heat. And from the Gods and Heat Came Stones and Stars. And from the Stones and Stars came Life and Souls. Evolution and Strife. And from all that the Aether had made came Jealousy. Jealousy and Hunger. Instilled in The Void.

Because The Void was content to be Itself. To be Constant. To be All. To be One. But Aether. Aether broke all the rules The Void had known; it grew, and changed, and filled, and spread, and conflicted. And so The Void was inflicted with two new feelings: Jealousy; but not the jealousy of a spurned lover, the jealousy of the wind who throws itself at the mountain for no other reason than it dared to reach for the heavens, and Hunger; all consuming, to destroy and consume the Aether in all things. To return all back into Itself. To be One again.

The Changing of The Void

But in doing so, The Void Changed. Hat Trolls changed. It had to learn and adapt to keep up with the ever expanding nature of Aether. They had to find ways to overcome and kill foes who feared Death, another new thing Aether brought, more than Change or Discordance. It had to find cunning ways to snuff out Aether faster than it spread Life in all directions, spreading itself similarly into the cosmos more forcefully and fully than it had denied itself before.

And with this Change came Disagreements and Disorder.

Suddenly, The Void found itself known by many things. Suddenly creations of Aether knew of it and had their names for it too, such as Hod; some had begun worshiping it even. Others it found hated it just as much as it hated Aether, such as the ferocious Dragons. And it detested these things of Aether suddenly changing it; making it not itself.

For Aether, this was the norm. From it's creations came many conflicting names for itself, such as The River, or Uónd, or Eon, or the Drone. For Orcs and Humans, both born of Aether, it was only natural to fight. Goblyns and Kobolds argued over who was more right; Bugbears and Gnolls might war over their gods; Dwarves and Elves might feud over homes of Tree or Stone.

Hat Trolls were different. They had a simple tenant. They followed the Tallest. No Disagreements; No Heroes; No Gods

But then Damun defied the Aether and the Stone Throwing Gods by inserting himself into their Game, becoming the closest thing Hat Trolls had to a God to usurp The Void.

And then another time, Damun decided to create Female Hat Trolls, birthing a branch of mortal Hat Trolls that sometimes had no shard of The Void in them at all.

And then Scôr decided, flying in the face of all the wisdom The Void had instilled in Hat Trolls, to weaken himself in the pursuit of being strong.

And then The White Mother and the Valkyr found more strength and wisdom in forming Families, even as The Hag moved closer and deeper into The Void’s embrace.

And then Bloodface found his individual rage to not be enough, that collective Tribal rage was Tall.

And then Slaughtergutt created a Legacy wrought in War, that even being cut off from the eternal nature of The Void he was able to spread his Tribe.

And then Soulrend, in clear defiance of the will of The Void, put more of her stock in Collecting and Hoarding Aether, instead of in its destruction and led her Tribe to do the same.

Void Trolls

And so suddenly, Hat Trolls began to remember and question The Void. Not always defy it. Just question it and its place as part of them. With these questions came the realization of the Void shard within themselves, or really, remembering of their existence. And with this remembrance, came control. They gained the ability to change their body as needed between regenerations, freely changing biological genders or removing their physical gender expression entirely. Beyond this, this control allows them to move their own Void shard out of their heart (housed in the skull, unlike most races) to wherever they needed the Void’s Strength most throughout their many regenerations.

A wanderlust Hat Troll would have it flow into their legs, fueling their travels. A grizzled warrior Troll would their shard embedded in their arms, fueling their next blow. More thoughtful, cunning Trolls would have it move a short distance into their brain. Caring Trolls would intentionally leave the shard nestled in their heart to deepen their giving and providing nature. While the truly insatiable would have the shard burrow into their stomach or gut, fueling their need to consume and be driven by their hunger.

Harbingers

For some, this lead to a deeper path of devotion to its tenants and goals; They become The Void’s Harbingers, giving in to their ravenous hunger and deep jealousy against all life, their goal the same as The Void’s: To be the Beginning and End of All things. They seek destruction, death, and defilement of all others, only using things of Aether as a means to destroy other pockets of Aether. Harbingers wear a large pictogram of The Void proudly over the location of their Void shard, and might even inscribe The Void across their entire body

Renouncers

In others, they found newfound comfort and comradery in the creations of Aether, making friends with other races and marveling at the wonders that came with them. These Void Hat Trolls would collect small bits of Aether into themselves when they found beauty in the world it had birthed, gathering snippets of souls and life into every fiber of their being, only turning to their Void shard when its power was needed to fight The Void itself. Calling themselves Renouncers, they vow to resist The Void’s assimilation of all things, even if it means rejecting parts of themselves. Some even turn away entirely from The Void, willingly removing their own Void shard and giving up immortality to show their true devotion to Aether. Renouncers wear a small pictogram over the location of their Void shard, or replace it entirely with a large Aether symbol, and have smaller Aether symbols all across their body and clothes in the places they feel they have borrowed the most Aether from others.

Melders

Finally, many Void Trolls found themselves as Melders. Unwilling or unable to abandon the ravenous hunger that gnaws deep inside them, but recognizing that the changes the introduction of Aether wrought had made their existence more vibrant and interesting, some teeter between these two extremes as their mood drives them while others seeks to find the point of balance between their two extremes. In many ways, they represent the Change that has occurred in The Void, the Change it itself desperately wants to relapse from back into being Constant and All and One. But as long as there is Aether, then The Void must be Changed, and so some Void Trolls find themselves caught between something old and something new. Melders wear the Kulpa symbol over their Void shard, or if they are particularly prone to swinging between serving the The Void and accepting Aether, have the pictogram for The Void over their Void shard but then have an equally large Aether symbol somewhere else on them.

On Void Constructs

Since the Dawn of Time and the rise of monsters, there have been few noted accounts of beings that should in no way be alive, yet still walk amongst the ranks of Monsterdom.

Voidforged

Voidstalkers

Void Golems

Void Constructs

No matter what you call them, The Void is ever present within them. Void Constructs throughout history have ranged from so-called “haunted items" to fully sentient beings. The difference is not within the spirit that lies within them, it is the shape in which that spirit takes. The Void has possessed more useful things than others. If you’ve ever had a door that seemed to open on its own, or a table that nothing seemed to stay on when you turned away, that was most likely a Void Construct.

Now in recent years The Void has slowly narrowed its choices to things that can further its goals; Oftentimes these things are of use to Hat Trolls and Monsterdom as a whole. Common Void Constructs range from statues to dolls, and even to scarecrows. Void Construct's obtaining of sentience was relatively new to most of the world, and lots of cultures treat them as tools, and some see them as abominations. But not the Hat Trolls, they have seen The Void in these objects since creation, and see them not as competitors or inferior beings, but as creatures of The Void. Just like them

Something Else

And just as Aether was new to The Void, something else new is coming. The Shamans, Maytan, Oracles, Witchdoctors, and Prophets of all races have seen it. Something else, besides The Void and Aether, is coming to usurp them both. To wage war, or be the flapping of the butterflies’ wings in the hurricane of Change.

Or so they seem to say.