Trolls

Trolls: Bioweaving, Virpaela in Great Ape

Trolls

Trolls were the first successful products of the Morvaren's experiments with Bioweaving virpaela. Created by permanently weaving the fungus into the Great Apes, trolls developed a thick living layer of mycologic skin that functioned almost like an exoskeleton, granting tremendous strength, resilience, and accelerated healing.

Curiously, the trolls changed again after virpaela was woven into sentient subjects. The Morvaren observed that the once purely bestial creatures developed a crude sapience, as though they were benefiting from intelligence carried through the fungus itself. This suggested that virpaela had never been entirely absorbed by its hosts, but remained somehow networked between the Virborne. As orcs and goblins joined that network, the trolls appeared to gain something from them.

They never approached the reasoning of the mortal races, remaining aggressive, dangerous, and deeply animalistic, but they were no longer merely beasts. The descendants of those first trolls retained this strange semisapience alongside the tremendous physical gifts of the fungus.