I’ve always been fascinated by the troll race in Warcraft, partially because of what we do know about them, but mostly because of what we don’t know. Blizzard has not given us a ton of information about the loa, but what I had read I found very interesting.

This was a fiction I did for a character I never rolled. I think it’s sad, now, because she’s still a very vibrant, distinct personality in my head, but I’m so busy with alliance side nonsense I doubt she’ll ever come to exist.

Enjoy!

*****

Written in an imprecise hand with a dull brown ink. The pages are bound together by twine looped through jagged holes. Everything is in trollish.

The dark priestesses of Samedi worshiped their loa with blood and sacrifice, and my mother was no different. I remember watching her swirl a brush over her skin, the paint crusting on the curve of her breast in a brilliant smear of red. Copper beads adorned her pale hair, and loops of bells encased her ankle. The wooden bracelets lining her arm from wrist to elbow would click together with her steps.

Most trolls wear cloth and hides dyed bright yellows and blues, vibrant colors to match the paint on our tusks and the tattoos on our skin, but my mother always wore black, clearly marking her as an Oracle of the Dead. She looked different than everyone else, but she never seemed to mind. Her faith was strong, and she knew her sacrifices honored our loa. Everything she did – from dressing to eating to killing upon our alters – was done in accordance with ritual and propriety.

Every breath she took was in the great Samedi’s name.

Once a month – when the moon was fullest in the sky – she would dance on the shores of the Stranglethorn beaches to honor the fallen heroes of the Darkspear. The villagers would ask for her blessings so their loved ones would rest well at death. The faithful would gather at dusk to sing the spirits to peace. It was said that the priestesses of Samedi were the best dancers in all of the world, and from my memories of them, it could be true. There was no preparation for their rituals, no practice or choreography, there was only the dull beat of a drum and a reedy pipe instrument. The women would gather in a circle and move with the rhythm, taken by whatever inspiration they could find in the moonlight and the music. They were hypnotic, like blue and green flames swaying in the sand.

The villagers were devoted to the rites then. Sometimes the families of the fallen would come to find solace in the dance ceremony or the ensuing sacrifice. The priestesses did not mind their audience; death was just another part of life, and everyone should celebrate Samedi’s mysteries as much as they would a birth.

As a girl I would watch my mother prepare for the ceremonial dance, and I would dream of one day being like her, of serving our spirit as dutifully as my mother’s mother and her mother before her. My family had been blessed by death, they said, and with the proper ritual we could see the misty worlds beyond our own. Few were willing to dedicate their lives to the upkeep of our cemeteries and the care of our dead. I do not mean to imply that trolls fear death – quite the contrary – but we are a race who worships the elements and the battle and the blood in our veins. Honoring life calls to more of our young than the somber summons of the grave, and that is how it ought to be.

This was long ago, when the trolls were less spread than they are now, and the crowds they could muster were so much greater. This was before we had to rely upon orcs and taurens in times of dire need. This was before we were forced to embrace the abominations of the undead to our bosom in an outright act of betrayal to our great death loa.

Though Aziella – my mother – has been gone for many years, taken and then felled during a struggle with the Skullsplitter tribe, I sometimes hear the telltale jingle of her steps. I can hear the ringing of her bells, and the clacking of her bracelets. It only happens on misty mornings, when I peer at the beautiful waters outside of Zoram’gar where I make my home, but I know she’s there. I know her steps are echoing in the thrum of the tide lapping the shore, and it is this that keeps my faith strong.

I understand the importance of my call, of the black garb I wear and the copper bells I put around my waist, and I do honor to her by doing honor to Samedi. It is how she – and her mother, and her mother’s mother – would want it. I am their progeny, and even though there are few trolls around to witness my dances in the sand, I know that honoring our great dead matters, if not to our young who are ever changed by the influences of the rest of the horde, then to the spirits of our ancestors whispering on the tides.

Page Two.

There’s an ‘academic estimation’ that any race that eats the flesh of a dead person is savage and primitive. Everything I’ve read about trollish practices likens our rites to the feasting of mindless animals. They suggest our people rip flesh from bone simply for the joy of eating meat. They compare us to the forsaken, and I cannot tell you how much the comparison wounds. There is ceremony involved in trollish cannibalism, a sense of ritual, that goes beyond ‘I eat this flesh for power’. No, it’s not that at all, though many unfamiliar with Darkspear ways claim it is. Cannibalism for the sake of proving superiority over another is a forsaken trait, and one I liken to an animal pissing on something to prove its ownership. There is no glory in that, no meaning.

The trolls, we are not so petty or so doglike.

The spirits of the dead can be malicious creatures, angry at the living for drawing breath when they cannot. They are fickle, and vengeful, and even if they are given proper ceremony and homage at the funeral rites, it does not always appease. The process of eating the meat of the dead was to keep the angry spirits at bay, to hold power over them so their ghosts would not plague the living. It was – and arguably is – the best way to prevent an angry spirit from wreaking havoc on the living.

When our tribe joined the horde, Thrall told us that we had to stop eating our dead in ritual, that our traditions wouldn’t be tolerated. We relented, instead adopting other means of keeping the spirits leashed. These methods are less effective and lack the ritual of the old ways, and I loathe them for it. Samedi must rage over the bastardization of her sacred rites. She was, after all, the loa most affected by this ignorant decree.

(The fact that Sylvanas’s abominations still eat the flesh of the living does not make this slight any better, truth be told. I do not hear Thrall chiding the forsaken or demanding that they change their ways. I digress, though; my frustrations with our allegiances are a discussion for another day. I write today about cannibalism, not the double standards of our political allies.)

The first time I ate the meat of another being was at the Winter Rites. Our tribe had lost three great hunters to a group of humans in the Southern Peninsula, and there was much mourning in the village. The eldest of the fallen was to be our next chieftain, and his death was yet another harbinger of the ill times to come. My mother wore her paints that day, her white and red markings to appease the loa, and she told me that I would be allowed to dance for the first time as her apprentice and heir.

I was barely nine, and still had no breast or curve to speak of. I remember my frock as a shapeless black tube, as simple and as awkward as the gangly girl beneath it. Though I was not painted as my mother – that honor was for fully trained priestesses – I got to wear wooden jewelry and copper bells in my hair. The more skilled I became, the more accessories I would be allowed to wear, but until then, I was a smaller, less impressive version of my mother. I did not mind, though. The excitement of partaking in the dance was enough for me.

We approached the shores at sunset, and I remember the large crowds gathered around the bonfires. The three slain warriors were laid on slabs, surrounded by flowers and candles and rich incense sticks that sweetened the air. The musicians sat on small benches by the ocean.

When Samedi’s other priestesses arrived – there were three in total – we all took position around the fire, our hands above our heads, our eyes closed. As I stated before, there was no choreography to our dance, and my mother’s only instructions were ‘to dance what I feel’. It made no sense at first, and I remember some apprehension about it, but when the drum started tapping and the flutes began to play, my nonexistent hips moved of their own accord. Soon, I too was a small green flame dancing on the beaches to celebrate our woeful dead.

After a time, when sweat slicked our bodies and the crowds hummed along with the music, my mother raised her arms above her head and said it was time to lay our brothers to rest. She approached the stone slabs and pulled a great knife from her belt. Her words were as unrehearsed as her dance, but everyone there would swear she spoke Samedi’s own tongue as she cut into the chieftain’s thigh. The slices were small, smaller than the pad of her thumb, and she handed one to each of the priestesses with a hand motion that I later learned was our tribe’s own special blessing.

I was gifted with one of those first pieces as well.

I watched the elder women raise the flesh to their mouths, and I mimicked them, unsure of what to do. Aziella tilted her head back and bellowed a great cry that echoed through the jungle, and the tribe pounded their spears on the ground and screamed in response. When the ruckus reached its pinnacle, my mother put the meat into her mouth, signaling the start of the death rites, and everyone held their collective breaths as the other priestesses followed her lead. I, too, put the meat of our warrior into my mouth, chewing as they chewed. I’d expected it to have a strong taste. I expected it to be disgusting and rank, but truly, it tasted like an undercooked piece of raptor meat. It was rubbery and coppery, though not all together bad. I swallowed it down and waited, staring at my mother, hoping she saw how well I’d done copying her.

I could tell she was pleased by her wink. My cheeks flushed red and I had to suppress a girlish giggle against my shoulder.

After the priestesses ate the flesh, they moved aside, offering the bodies to first the families of the dead hunters, and then the rest of the tribe. I heard our people murmur prayers and blessing as they encircled the remains. It took a long while for everyone to get a turn, but finally, when the sky was full dark and I could see the stars on the wavecrests, we were done. The spirits would be appeased, all that ate of the bodies would not fear the wrath of the angry dead.

My mother hummed as she pulled a sheet over the mangled carcasses, sprinkling each of them with blessed herbs. Again she raised her hands to the skies, and again she yelled as the first flame was brought down upon the altars, setting the bodies afire. This time, when the priestesses danced, there was no music, only the crackling and hissing of our dead as they were sent to their afterlife, their ghosts no longer threatening us or our loved ones.

For those who have never seen this ritual, it is a beautiful thing, and a proper way to honor the loss of a great brother. I say to those who would call the Darkspear savages to experience the mysteries of our funerals before passing judgment, because there IS a magic to the rites that cannot be expressed on paper. There is a feeling on the air of completion and peace, of doing well by someone who would not want to haunt their loved ones if given the choice. What we did for them – it was a good thing.

Now, the rites have changed to accommodate our ties with the orcs and the tauren. The fleshless funerals are similar to the one I’ve described, but . . . some of the majesty of it is gone. The process is longer, as cannibalism is forbidden, and we have to add so many more things to keep the angry ghosts from harming us. I don’t mean to imply that I resent the extra work of a proper troll funeral; that’s not it at all. No, it’s more I remember the strong magics of my mothers own ceremonies and I grow nostalgic for the old ways, the good ways.

Perhaps one day, when we’ve reestablished ourselves, we can break away from our naysayers and return to our roots and the things we hold beloved. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but maybe by writing about my own past, a future generation will learn what they need to recapture our lost rites. Perhaps one day, a trolless oracle may do her Samedi proper by embracing rituals lost to time.