As I traversed the Lands Between back in 2026, few sights were as simultaneously common and unsettling as the lumbering form of a troll. From the windswept cliffs of Limgrave to the shimmering lakes of Liurnia, these massive, hair-covered beings were a constant, thudding presence. Some came at me with stolen golden swords; others simply tried to crush me with their bare, stone-like fists. For a long time, they were just another obstacle, another source of runes to be harvested. But the emptiness in their eyes—or rather, the emptiness where their eyes should have been—always gnawed at me. It wasn't until I stood before one of the armored trolls in Liurnia, its blade marked with ancient Carian symbols, that I truly began to ask: what tragedy carved out these hollow giants?
The history, as I pieced it together from crumbling monuments and the whispers of spectral soldiers, is one of divine genocide and cruel punishment. Long ago, Queen Marika dispatched her first consort, the mighty Godfrey, to the Mountaintops of the Giants. His mission: total eradication. The giants and their Fell God were a threat to the nascent Golden Order, and so they were slaughtered. All but one. The last Fire Giant was cursed to an eternity of solitude, forced to guard the very flame of his profane deity—a flame meant to one day burn the Erdtree itself. This act of mercy was, in truth, an act of profound cruelty, a punishment designed to outlast the ages. Yet, the giants' descendants, the trolls, still walked the land. Why?
Their bodies held the horrifying answer. I remember the first time I landed a killing blow on one of these creatures and saw its massive form collapse. Where its stomach should have been, there was only a gaping, hollow cavern, filled not with organs but with twisted, woody roots. This was no natural deformity. I learned that once, long before the Golden Order's rise, the faces of their Fell God stared out from that very spot, a single, burning eye sigil watching the world. The Golden Order didn't just defeat the giants; it performed a spiritual vivisection. It ripped the very face of their god from their flesh and sealed the wound with cold, unfeeling stone.
The nature of these stone tablets became my obsession. Their smooth, geometric surfaces were utterly alien against the trolls' rough hide. I found their likeness in the most unexpected of places: deep in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds, binding the cursed Omen twins, Morgott and Mohg. The same material used to shackle the royal family's shame was fused into the bodies of the trolls. To me, this was the clearest evidence. The tablets were not implants; they were brands. Chains of stone, taking root in the hollow where divinity once lived, binding their will to the Golden Order. Were they slaves? The evidence seemed undeniable.
But the world of the Lands Between is never so simple. I discovered the Knight's Sword, its inscription telling a different, more complicated story. It spoke of an oath, sworn to the Queen, that called the trolls into service. An oath implies a promise, a choice. The weapon of the Carian Knight Moonrithyll, found much later, called her a "friend to the trolls." She fought beside them, wielding their own massive blades. This wasn't the language of a master and a slave; it was the language of comrades-in-arms. My theory of simple enslavement began to crack.
Then I found the Sword Monument recounting the war on the Mountaintops. Its words were stark: betrayal. The trolls had raised their weapons not just under Marika's banner, but against their own giant ancestors. Why? Was it the insidious influence of the stone tablets, overwriting their loyalties? Was it fear of sharing their cousins' fate? Or was it a genuine, sworn loyalty to Marika and her new Order? The game, in its infinite mystery, offers no verdict. This unanswered question is the core of their tragedy.
The Three Possible Truths of the Trolls:
The Enslaved Pawns: The stone tablets are literal mind-control devices, making them unwilling weapons of the Golden Order. 🪨
The Willful Traitors: They made a pragmatic or faithful choice to side with Marika, betraying their kin for survival or belief. ⚔️
The Tragic Hybrid: They initially joined willingly, only to have the "oath" physically enforced and perverted by the tablets, leaving them trapped. 🔗
For me, the most heartbreaking scene is not a battle, but the aftermath. Seeing an armored troll standing eternally vigilant in some forgotten courtyard, long after the demigods it served have turned on each other in the Shattering. It is a ghost of a war already lost, a hollow guardian for a cause that abandoned it. Its purpose was stripped away twice over: first its god, then its masters. The stone in its belly is a tombstone for its own soul.
They are a decrepit species, yes. But more than that, they are a living monument to the Golden Order's conquest—a conquest that reshapes flesh, rewrites history, and repurposes souls. Every troll I face now carries the weight of this ambiguity. In your journey, you may see loyal soldiers fulfilling a sacred vow. In mine, I see prisoners, their bodies turned into fortresses for the very ideology that destroyed their world. The beauty of Elden Ring's lore is that both of our stories are true. The trolls' silent, stony gaze holds all possibilities, and their hollowed stomachs echo with the history of a war that stole their faces and left us to wonder who they really were.