Why Trolls Hate Bankers

Once upon a time… many, many years ago in a world long since forgotten, there was a country called Anywhere. And in the land of Anywhere there was a fine and prosperous city called Anyplace, and one day, many miles away from this illustrious city, across mountain and moor, valley and peak, a lone Troll was searching for rurt mushrooms.
     Now, rurt mushrooms are a Great Delicacy in the Troll world. They are rare and hard to find as they grow only in the most inhospitable and isolated parts of Anywhere, but Trolls, such is their love for rurts, will travel long distances to harvest them.
     Our particular Troll, then, was about a day’s journey away from his Troll hole (and that at the incredible speed that a Troll In A Hurry can attain). As the Troll Squidged And Squodged through boggy ground, he was lashed by a Cold Rain and a Strong Wind. But he minded none of this; he was a Happy Troll for already he had gathered many rurts and had stashed them safely away in the large sack he had brought with him. He couldn’t wait to see the smiles on the faces of his Troll Wife and twin boy Trollettes when he showed them his fine harvest! It was for them he was a-gathering rurts: they were to be the centrepiece of a fine Birthday Feast for his beloved Trolletes, who very soon would celebrate their tenth year.
     When the Troll’s sack was Full To Bursting, he finally decided he had enough of the delicious mushrooms and began his homeward journey. He ran as fast as his powerful Troll legs could carry him, he ran through rain and wind, through light and darkness, full of excitement about the Birthday Feast to come.
 
     But the Troll’s homecoming was not to be a happy one, for he was to discover that in his absence, the Blind Old Weaver Of Fate had spun some threads that were Exceptionally Cruel even by her own Maliciously Random standards.
 
     The first sign that something was Not Quite Right came as the Troll approached his Troll hole. He could see it in the near distance, but no smoke was rising from the chimney of his comfortable home. And on a cold day like this? How strange! And as the Troll approached nearer his home things grew stranger, for he became aware of an Absence Of Noise. The Trollettes were boisterous things and constantly on the go, banging and smashing their way through their young lives. Why so quiet? How strange!
     At this point a Cold Spot opened up somewhere deep inside the Troll. Panicked he ran even faster than is usual for a Troll, eager to eat up the remaining space between him and his Troll hole. He knew, just knew, that Something Was Very, Very Wrong.
     Faster than you can say “Blimey, Trolls are big aren’t they,” the Troll was at the door of his Troll hole. He pushed it open and Despair overwhelmed him like a Huge Black Wave. For all was quiet, yet all was chaos. Inside his home furniture had been Upended And Upturned, personal effects and clothing were strewn all around, blood was spattered on the walls and pooling on the floor; there was the Scent Of Death. The Troll stared in wide-eyed Horror And Disbelief. There, in front of him, on the floor of his once comfortable home, not two arm’s length, but a Universe and Another Life, away lay the battered and mutilated bodies of his beloved Troll wife and his two darling Trollettes.
     The Troll collapsed to his knees, hands thrown up to his face, and let out a howl of rage and of despair and of unbridgeable, unfathomable loss that was so loud that it shook the very ground and was heard by every Troll within a hundred mile radius who, upon hearing that despairing cry, paused a minute in what they were doing and shed a tear of Sympathy And Love for the Deep, Abiding Loss of a Friend They Had Not Yet Met. The Troll fled his ruined home and ran outside, collapsing to the ground, rolling and pulling out his fur with his strong hands in great clumps; the fine fur caught the wind and floated up and away, just as had the Prematurely And Brutally Liberated Souls of his wife and Trollettes.
     As our unhappy Troll lay there crying, shaking, sobbing and occasionally screaming, a Faerie (attracted by such strong emotion like a Bee To Honey, as Faeries are) popped up. She hovered over the Troll and looked down at him and she felt great pity for she could almost taste his Despair And Loss. Looking into his Soul she saw all that had happened to him, and all that could happen to him, all that he was and all that he could be. And she shuddered inwardly as she Looked Further Afield and saw what had happened to the Troll’s wife and Trollettes.
     In her wisdom, the Faerie saw that the Universe Required that she Reach Out To and help this Sad And Broken Troll. “Troll, poor, poor Troll,” she said, “I am so sorry, let me hug you and share your grief.”
     Now given the Vast Disparity in size between a Troll and a Faerie, a Faerie giving a Troll a hug is a physical impossibility but the Faerie had an answer for that. She went one better than a hug; she reached out two big, strong Spiritual Arms that enfolded the Troll in Warm Comfort, holding him tight, stroking the back of his furry head and soothing his Soul.
     Eventually the Troll’s agitation calmed somewhat, but still the Faerie held him: two creatures come together as one in the Infinite Vastness Of Time, in the midst of a large empty landscape, in a land long forgotten, in another world: such is the Inexplicably Curious Randomness of the Universe.
     And then the Troll did a very wise thing. Now fully composed and full of a grim and cold determination, he asked the Faerie a question. Your own world lacking in Magick, you will not know this, but one of the many Peculiarities of Faeries is that if you should meet one and ask her a Direct Question, she is bound to give you a Truthful Answer. Beware though, this particular rule (which, strangely, would also apply if you were unfortunate enough to meet The Devil) applies only to your first question, after that it’s pot luck I’m afraid, as is much with any Faerie related dealings you may have.
     The question the Troll answered was this: “Faerie, tell me truthfully, as you are bound to do, who killed my family?”
     Our little Faerie paused; she was fully aware she had to give an Honest Answer, but feared she might be about to open a Pandora’s Box, and answered, “humans, Troll, it was humans, Bankers to be exact. They find amusement in hunting and murdering Trolls, they are bad people even by human standards, people who have sold their Souls to an evil and entirely abstract concept called money.”
     “Humans! Hah! I should have known!” said the Furious looking Troll, “I know nothing of this money thing you talk about, but I know full well of human evil…they have been stealing our land and persecuting us for generations, they are nothing but children of the Devil.”
     “I grant you, Troll,” the Faerie replied, “that humans are a race who seem particularly prone to cruelty. But remember that not all of them are bad; remember that, Troll…they’re not all evil. Forget my words and you will become no better than the humans who have so grievously hurt you, this is my warning to you, Troll, for I have seen all that you have been, all that you are and all that you could be.”
     “Having used your powers to see so much about me, Faerie,” replied the Troll, “you will also know that from here I intend to travel to that hideous hive of humanity, the city they call Anyplace, and kill as many humans as I possibly can. I will have my vengeance, Faerie. I thank you for the kindness you have shown me today but as a Troll my duty is to hold dear the virtues of Good And Decency and when these virtues are threatened and Evil disturbs the Equilibrium Of The Universe, then those who have sown the Bad Seeds must reap the Bitter Harvest, this is a Universal Truth that even God himself accepts.”
     “I have no argument with you, my dear Troll. I fully understand your need for vengeance, indeed I applaud it, but I ask you to aim it at those who deserve it. Look, I do not wish to see you lose your Soul and become as the evil Bankers who slaughtered your family, so I will give you a Faerie Gift.”
     “Hold…stay your wand, Faerie. Will this be a gift that is true, or one with Mischief hidden in it somewhere?” the Troll asked, suspiciously.
     The Faerie laughed at this comment from the Troll, for Faerie gifts really are Notoriously Unpredictable, and replied, “no, Troll, no mischief…just a pure gift!”
     “In that case, please give me your gift. I thank you for it, Faerie and I thank you again for the deep kindness you have shown me.”
     “Kindness is everything, my dear Troll, kindness is everything. One final piece of advice, dear Troll, Evil smells foul but the Evil you seek smells foulest.”
 
     And after that typically cryptic comment, the Faerie said to the Troll, “I give you the gift of being able to smell Evil and Good in people.”
 
     After the Faerie had left him, the Troll set about the Grim And Tragic Task of burying his wife and Trollettes. As is Troll tradition, he dug a large hole in the ground exactly two hundred Troll paces from his Troll hole and aligned to the direction of the setting sun. Lovingly and with Utmost Care he laid the bodies of his Precious Ones in the freshly dug grave. He also placed in the grave the Troll family’s collection of Faerie diamonds, those that were cried by a Faerie at his and his dead wife’s Wedding Ceremony; every Troll wedding is attended by a Faerie who cries tears of joy when the couple exchange vows, these Diamond Tears are then collected and saved as a precious memento by the couple and, traditionally, buried with the first partner who passes away. He also wanted to bury the Trollettes’ favourite Teddy Troll with their Precious Little Bodies (a big orange and yellow stuffed toy in the shape of Old Father Troll that he’d won for them in an arm-wrestling contest at last year’s Annual Troll Fair) but was, strangely, unable to find it. Instead he made do with the first pairs of shoes the Trollettes had ever worn, beautifully crafted, tiny little things, made of the softest of leather and charmingly embroidered with Snow Trolls made of silken thread.
 
     And with that, all was ready. Before filling the Final Resting Place with Earth, observing very, very old Troll tradition, the Troll took a knife and cut off the little finger of his left hand and dropped it into the grave, to rest there with his family until that time when, somewhere along the Infinite Circle that is life, death and rebirth, their Souls would all, once again, be reunited.
 
     Two days later, after a long and arduous journey in which he was again and again haunted by images of his wife and Trollettes, the Troll finally arrived at the city of Anywhere. Thanks to the remarkable and entirely instinctive sense of time, speed and distance that Trolls possess he arrived, Exactly As Planned, late at night and, Under Cover Of Darkness and by using his remarkable Speed And Stealth was soon deep within the city.
     However… it being late at night, and a cold and miserable winter’s night at that, the Troll found his Burning Desire for revenge Somewhat Thwarted, for there were no humans to be seen, not a one. For an hour or more the Troll wandered empty streets, amazed and unsettled by the closely packed buildings of the city and the cold, dead weight of stone and metal that it was constructed of, but still he could find no humans. He was beginning to think his plan for vengeance would Come To Naught, that he simply wouldn’t find any humans to kill, and he cried tears of bitter frustration at the thought of his loved ones’ murder going unavenged. But then, finally, turning into the street ahead of him, he saw a human. From hair and shape and her pathetic human attempt at a pair of breasts, he judged it to be a female: female humans he knew, as all Trolls do, are generally (though not, it must be said, always) less evil than male ones. Still, she was a human; she would be the first to die. Now, whilst the Troll could see that this human was a lady, what he could not see (for he was Troll not Faerie, after all) was that she was a Good Person. She was the only human out that night in that part of the city as she was on her way to work the nightshift as a cleaner at The Asylum For The Strange And The Different, that being just one of three jobs she worked to help support her family. She was a lovely lady, had you known her in your world you would have liked her: a kind lady, full of Goodness And Grace. She did not deserve to die and her death, as had warned the Faerie, would cost the Troll his Soul.
     
     Tip-toeing quietly and stealthily on the very, very end of his very, very big toes, the Troll approached the lady from behind, dark clouds of vengeance filling his mind.
 
     And then he abruptly stopped.
 
     For just feet in front of him the lady had pulled to a sharp halt, with one foot poised hanging in the air. For the lady, in the dim glow cast by a streetlamp, had seen a snail on the pavement beneath, her foot being about to crush that very same snail, she had halted its downward movement, her head full of strange thoughts and images of the Blind Old Weaver Of Fate, randomly spinning Malicious Threads Of Misfortune into the cloth of someone’s life and ruining it forever. She determined that she would not do the same. She would not crush the life out of this small, defenceless snail in the same random, unthinking way that the Blind Old Weaver crushed Life And Hope out of so many. She let down her dangling foot to the side of the snail, bent down, picked it up, placed it on a nearby wall where it would be safe from crushing and could live its life at its own slow, snail’s pace and its tiny, Unblemished snail Soul make its final journey across a Broad, Bright, Blue Sky when it was good and ready to do so and not before.
     Just as the lady placed the little snail on the wall, the nostrils of the Silently Observing Troll were filled with the wonderful scent of freshly baked brucht (brucht being the Troll equivalent of what you call in your world bread) and in a moment the Troll understood. It was the Faerie Gift! He could smell Evil and Good and, of course, Good smelt wonderful. Just like the smell of freshly baked brucht that the Troll now knew was emanating from the lady in front of him. This human female was obviously a Good person, for only a Good Person could take so much care to avoid killing a Creature So Humble as a snail; to kill this human female would serve no purpose, indeed it would upset the Equilibrium Of The Universe, it would be a repayment of an Evil act with another Evil act, an action that would lose the Troll his soul.
     Leaving the Good Lady be, the Troll slunk back into the shadows, thanking the Troll Father for the Faerie’s Gift. He now knew what he needed to do, he needed to locate the Bankers who had taken everything from him and kill them and only them. And he knew exactly how to do it. If the Faerie spell had allowed him to smell the Good in the Lady, then if he concentrated hard enough he’d be able to smell the Evil of the murdering Bankers. And so the Troll concentrated. He inhaled deeply and his senses were assaulted by a wave of foul smelling corruption, for this was a human city and was awash with evil, but the Troll had remembered the Faerie’s cryptic words, that the Evil he sought smelt the foulest, so, with great effort he sought out the worst smelling scent amongst the ocean of smell that surrounded him…and found it! There! That thread of rotting meat, of putrid dung. That was them. The Bankers. Time to do some killing.
 
     So, the Troll followed his nose. All the way, out of the city, to the hills just outside, where stood the Opulent Mansions of the fabulously wealthy Greedy One Percent. And as the sun rose, he tracked it to its very epicentre: a particularly large mansion, surrounded by a wall that was the height of two men. This was it. Whoever lived here had killed his family. With one great Troll jump the Troll was over the wall and into the gardens of the mansion, speeding up to the house itself. The Scent Of Evil led the Troll around to the back of the house, and from a nearby set of large glass doors he could hear voices. Quietly, he approached. Through the doors he could see four people gathered around a table: a woman, a smartly dressed man and two younger humans, also smartly dressed. In fact, the Troll was seeing a family, but not one like his own. The woman was the wife, the smartly dressed man the father and the two younger humans the sons. The father was, indeed, a Banker, a very High-Up and Prominent One. The sons were both in their early twenties and had their own mansions nearby but they (such is the Magick Of The Old School Tie) worked in the same bank as their father. It was a family tradition for all of them to meet for breakfast at the father’s mansion before they travelled to work together, for another day of Corrupt Dealings and Financial Manipulation at the bank.
     As the Troll stood there, On The Outside Looking In, one of the sons suddenly pointed at something lying, blood-stained and forlorn, in the middle of the table around which the humans were sat and all three of the males laughed. The Troll’s eyes followed the pointing finger and he was filled with Overwhelming Rage for what he saw was his Trollettes’ Teddy Troll. In a Thunderous Explosion of a Million Crystals he burst through the glass doors into the Banker’s home and yelled at the occupants to stay still. Very still. Or die. Which one was it? Which one of these people had killed his family? As the humans sat open-mouthed and petrified (if you ever have a Troll smashing his way into your kitchen early in the morning then you will understand their reaction, trust me) the Troll inhaled hugely and realised that all three of the male humans were exuding the Scent Of Evil. All three had done it; all three had killed his family…what fun they must have had defiling, torturing and mutilating: and what a price they were going to pay.
     The Troll shouted to the woman to leave, to run and not come back, for she smelt only of a Lesser Evil. She didn’t need telling again, she was off and away. She’d only married the Old Git for his money, she didn’t like him and the children she’d spawned by him were just as bad. She had no intention whatsoever of sticking around in the face of an obviously Very Angry Troll.
     Upon the hurried departure of the woman, the Troll gathered the Shocked-Into-Stillness Bankers and his trollete’s Teddy Troll up in his huge arms, the father and the Teddy Troll under one arm, the two sons under the other, a small burden for Trolls who are Massively Strong.
     Charging at Maximum Troll Speed out of the house, he ran down a long driveway to the imposing wooden gates of the Opulent Mansion; crashing through them, leaving only splinters behind, he made his way out of the hills and away from the Enviable Homes of the Greedy One Percent.
     The Troll did not stop until he’d reached a dense forest far, far away from Anyplace. Coming to a small clearing in the trees, he stopped and threw the humans to the ground and then, with Utmost Love, sat the Teddy Troll in a place where it would be able to see That Which Was To Come. The Bankers, meanwhile, were crying, bawling, begging to be released; constantly telling the Troll how much money they would give him would he but let them go. The Troll paid them No Heed. He ripped off their expensive clothes and used the remains to bind them hand and foot: annoyed by their constant whining, he stuffed their mouths with twigs and leaves.
     He then set about digging a hole, a big hole, a deep hole. His powerful arms and shovel-sized hands soon accomplished this task. He stood back from his work, and gave a grunt of satisfaction, for the hole was Fit For Purpose. Turning to face the shivering, crying and absolutely terrified Bankers, he addressed them, “You humans killed my family, an act of unspeakable evil. You took from me all that mattered to me, you took that which I loved and spat on it and beat it and cut it and mutilated it and destroyed it…and to you, to you…it was something…funny! Something you could talk and laugh about over breakfast! But now, now you must pay the price! You three have taken all that is Good And Decent and trodden it underfoot; as a Troll I am sworn to defend these Blessed Virtues and for this reason, and for my murdered family, it is my duty to remove you from this world, for Corrupted creatures like you are a disease that eats all around them…” the Troll paused, seemed to have run out of words. Actually…he had run out of words for Trolls are not big talkers so he decided to speed things on to the good bit, the part he was going to enjoy and said, quite abruptly, “I judge you guilty of the crime of murder; the sentence is death!”
     And one by one, he gathered the Bankers and hurled them, struggling madly, into the deep hole he had dug. When all three were lying, flopping like fish out of water, at the bottom of the hole, he straddled it with his big Troll legs and, following another very, very old Troll tradition, squatted and emptied his bowels, releasing a torrent of thick and pungent Troll excrement onto the Bankers below.
     Then the Troll turned to the Teddy Troll, nodded, smiled, walked over to him and picked him up. And, holding the Teddy Troll tenderly in one hand, he returned to his deep hole and began to use his other hand to slowly, very slowly, one handful at a time, refill it with earth and carried on doing so until the Bankers were buried alive and their black Souls oozed from their bodies to travel to the Dark Place where the Devil keeps his Children.