So how much more does a Troll eat in comparison with an Ogre? as a side question, has it ever been defined if Trolls are bigger than Ogres (based in WFB stats I would say no)?

It is a bit silly but I asked this myself when reading Gathering the Storm. In warhammer 3 they have "defined" that and Ogre in game terms must eat 1 pound of meet every hour, which makes 24 pounds of meet per day. Then in Gathering the Storm pg 48 you can read

" The troll glutted itself on all the food in the pantry. Within a day it needed feeding again. There were cows, horses and sheep on the farm, as well as the captured humans, but within two days the troll had eaten everything "

So, the Troll there eats in 48 hours cows, horses and sheep in plural!!!!! A single cow is (aprox) 1200 pounds, a horse make it 1100 pounds aprox and a sheep 150 pounds, human 150 pounds. Let's take the minimum of the plural, that is two of each. The troll ate 5200 pounds (ok, this includes bones) so lets take 3000 pounds of meat (although I am sure the Troll takes also the bones) in 48h!!!!! So that is….108 / 63 (with / without bones) pounds per hour!!!!!!!

Is this ok? or just the guys that wrote the adventure does not diferentiate a Troll from a Giant? (I am not even sure that a Giant from warhammer eats that much)

Cheers,

Yepes

I picture a troll as a creature that eats just to eat, it will eat anything, its stomach will just bulge out. It uses vomit so most of this food is ammunication. Its full when it can no longer move.

The 3 trolls i know chaos, river and stone. The river one is more hunched over so looks smaller, but typically they are same size or bigger than an Ogre.

DurakBlackaxe said:

Ok, lets put it like this then, if the Troll eats (at least) 2600 pounds a day, which is much more than the troll's weight, then how much does the troll's weight oscilate during the day? how often does he need to **** or vomit?

Cheers,

Yepes

This must be the most entertaining "why would ever even try to figure it out"-conversation in ages.

Given the way that the amount of food that the troll eats is given you have to wonder why they Old World still exists. Trolls regenerate - a thing that ogres do not and a thing that would require a huge amount of energy. They eat an incredible amount of food and might even be relatively intelligent so they would be likely to overrun the whole world.

To speculate why this is not we might consider the fact that the more a troll eats the more stupid it gets. I justify this with chaos trolls. They are lean and not as hunched (I base my opinions of Fantasy Battle miniatures only) as river trolls. This could indicate that the amount of food eaten reduces the brain capacity (and actual space as fat clusters inside their skull). Thus the troll's thinking capacity would be reduce causing it to only search for more food (again chaos trolls and stone trolls have more ambitious goals).

If we consider the troll special abilities the example of regeneration should give us a reason why they need such amounts of food. They cannot actually sustain themselves anymore but are in constant state of regeneration. The food they eat fuels this ongoing transformation which could in fact cause such pain that it could explain the trollish habits of cruelty and stupidity.

Should we take it as a fact that the more the troll eats the more stupid it is it could explain why a river troll emits "stench and slime" (O&G armybook p.57) - it sweats the excess food/energy that its body is not capable of turning into fuel for regeneration or into excrement. That is to say that to approach a troll's den would require the person to be insane or be using something to fight of the obnoxious odors.

All that being said I'm inclined to think that what the writers of the Gathering Storm actually meant was that the goblins, the troll AND the squigs had eaten all the food but it was the troll that was causing the trouble. Because the lack of food could cause it incredible physical pain and eventually kill it.

Doc Cthulhu does bring up an interesting idea.

The food is converted into energy to aid regeneration. I can picture a lean troll being fast and super smart to hunt and trap get its food, and a full troll being slow and lethargic.

The question about how often a troll needs to go to the loo or vomit.

I can picture the troll having multiple stomachs like a cow, processing food far faster than we would. Maybe they just leave troll droppings when needed. The vomit i think they use to hunt so thats likely common for them to fill it up between hunts.

doc_cthulhu said:

Pointing out the energy consumption due to regeneration is brilliant. Then you suggest about the stench and slime that a troll would release to get rid of the toxins… this makes me think that may be I was to fast on suggesting that a Troll has to vomit and poo often, indeed the stench of a Troll den may suggest that they fart a lot! Such a huge amount of farting releases a lot of gasses, which would certanly create a mesurable greenhouse effect in the Old World.

I suggest to send an Academic of Aldorf University on a trip to the poles of the world to study the atmosphere there. Sure there should be possible to measure the effects that the Troll farting has on the atmosphere, this could prove if the Troll food-regeneration-fart-stench hypothesis is correct. Of course the academic will need to deal with the two Chaos gates, which definitively will hide to some degree the fart-greenhouse measurable data..

I would suggest also to send the academic with a good band of adventurers…just for protection.

Cheers,

Yepes

The Daily Empire would also like to send a reporter on this expedition and print out any futher studies/field journals on the subject.

In other news - The Daily Empire is looking for an intern. The job includes traveling in exotic locations and writing culinary articles.