I've been reading Trollpak and understanding a lot more about the trolls, and how they seem to be these weird brutish creatures but there's a lot of sense in how they act and think. Well, as much as can be in a race of weird shadow hippo demons that escaped from Not!Hell and were cursed.
But later on, describing their living quarters, they're described as slovenly, and this keeps coming up. How their hovels are ramshackle, how they keep refuse to the side apparently unbothered, etc. But I don't get why though. Also they can be poisoned, so surely they're also prone to illness, and living in abject squalor can't be healthy.
Even the recent Glorantha Bestiary says:
QuoteBy human standards, even wealthy trolls live amidst squalor and wretchedness.
If anything, you'd think that the trolls would actually be quite tidy, because they have two equivalents of pigs to eat their refuse and even their dirt and poop (trollkin and beetles, which are notorious FOR being decomposers in nature). I understand being disorganized or even having different habits of cleanliness but squalor? Plus, page 30 has this little box:
Quote
WHAT TROLLS THINK ABOUT
When their bellies are full the uz show deeper motives. These give us insight into their psychology. Trolls seek four things to make them happy.
First is a full stomach, the most easily obtainable goal.
The second is to bear healthy children (among the females) or to be wanted by a fertile female troll (among the males).
The third goal is to kill chaos things, for they believe that their beloved fertility goddess, sweet Korasting, will return troll progeny to health when there are no more uz in the world than chaos things. Such a time will be known, they say, because their children will no longer number trollkin among them.
Fourthly, they seek three mystical tools with which to heal their goddess, each of which disappeared long ago. One is a set of adamantine claws which Gbaji wore when he ripped Korasting from shoulder to shin, for only the tools which wounded the goddess can ever heal her again. Second is the Otherworld Cloak which would allow Kyger Litor to avoid Gbaji’s deceitful embrace and deceive him the way he deceived her. The third is to rediscover the lost verse of a song which Kyger Litor used during pregnancy which will make their children once again into whole mistress race trolls. They believe that the song was lost when the world turned upside down, and was stolen by some other singing god. Trolls pay an inordinate amount of time listening to others’ music in hope of finding it.
Which implies both that trolls can get their bellies full and think about things other than eating and mating (or else they'd just be wild animals, like the cave trolls or the broo), and also that they can care about comfort. So why are they always referred to as dirty, slovenly, living in filth and squalor, etc?