Troll, Flood
This tall, gangly giant has a thick hide of mottled blue; protruding yellowed canines; narrow slits for eyes; and large, powerful hands that end in wicked claws.
Troll, Flood (CR 2)
Medium Humanoid (Giant)Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Initiative: +8
Senses: Darkvision 60 feet, Low-Light Vision; Perception +4
Speed: 30 feet, Swim 10 feet
Space: 5 feet
Defense
Armor Class: 14, touch 14, flat-footed 10 (+4 Dex)Hit Points: 22 (3d8+9) rain Regeneration 5 (acid or fire)
Saving Throws: Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +1
absorbent hide
Offense
Melee: 2 claws +6 (1d6+2)Reach: 5 feet
Special Attacks: Pounce
Statistics
| Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 (+2) | 18 (+4) | 16 (+3) | 8 (-1) | 11 (+0) | 7 (-2) |
CMB +4
CMD 18
Feats: Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse
Skills: Perception +4, Stealth +5, Swim +11
Languages: Giant
Special Qualities: Hold Breath, oversized limbs
Special Abilities
Absorbent Hide (Ex)
A flood troll's flesh is highly resilient to the stresses of long dry periods. A flood troll who has gone without touching flowing water for at least 24 hours gains a +2 natural armor bonus to AC. A flood troll who has touched water within the last 24 hours gains cold resistance 5 instead.Oversized Limbs (Ex)
A flood troll's hands are larger than its body would suggest. Flood trolls can wield Large weapons without penalty.Rain Regeneration (Ex)
A flood troll's regeneration functions as long as the flood troll is touching flowing water or precipitation. Even a slight drizzle is enough to activate the flood troll's regeneration. However, any acid or fire damage dealt to the flood troll suspends its next round of regeneration.Ecology
Environment: Temperate Marshes or RiversOrganization: solitary or pair (usually twins)
Treasure: standard
Flood trolls are the mutated runts of scrag broods, cast out by their mothers and destined to haunt the lonely valleys and river basins beneath Avistan's frosty peaks. They lurk amid the craggy hills of Belkzen, Varisia, and other wildlands of northern Avistan, and serve as a menace to orc raiders and human adventurers alike. 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 what the scrags call an aruk-taii—\"half-scrag\" in the Giant tongue—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 aruk-taii twins, aruk-taikii, 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 aruk-taikii 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 as they journey between the distant settlements of northern Avistan. 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 aruk-taii 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 an aruk-taii 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 in Belkzen than their scrag forebears. The orcs of Belkzen claim that flood trolls wander over the Mindspin and Kodar mountain ranges, fleeing their scrag families in the Mushfens and Varisia's other wetlands. In the frigid Lands of the Linnorm Kings and Irrisen, scrags dwelling along the coast of the Arcadian Ocean and in Glacier Lake drive their flood troll offspring south along the Marblef low River or east toward the Gullik River. While they are most commonly encountered in Avistan, flood trolls may be found around the world, wherever scrags carry the aruk-taii mutation, though their physical features vary somewhat depending on where they originate. The Zenj tribes of the Mwangi Expanse speak of blue-skinned, humanoid horrors—jeburo in the Polyglot tongue—that stalk the jungle's riverbeds during the dry season and boldly attack villages as the storm season approaches. A number of these flood trolls make their way into the Sodden Lands. Never lacking for the rain that allows for their regeneration, these flood trolls terrorize the few remaining enclaves of humanity in that drenched land.
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