On Trolls: A Natural History of the Archive's Oldest Institution

The third episode title ever recorded in the archive is 'Trolls on Parade!' — which means the trolls were there before the lore, before the Psychenomicon, before most of the panel. Any honest natural history must begin from that fact: the troll is not an invasive species in the cult's ecosystem. It is a founding one. The taxonomy, as the record built it. There is the parade troll, celebrated in the very title of the founding era — noisy, seasonal, essentially decorative. There is the 600 Pound Troll (see episode of the same name), a heavyweight class requiring a full spoken-word counter-offensive and a truth-based rebuttal doctrine. There is the outside raider — the IP2 infiltration night, the one class the record treats without affection, because threats are not trolling, and the archive knows the difference. And there is the domesticated troll, acknowledged in the lore wing's friendly neighborhood under-the-bridge troll and in the doctrine that named Psyche a professional troll handler. That last title is the finding of this essay. Institutions are defined by what they must continuously metabolize, and the show metabolizes trolls the way the Codex metabolizes drama: as raw material. The trolls provided the founding parade, the whisper wars provided the poetry, and the lore wing quietly catalogued the whole bloodline (see: troll bloodline, cosmology). A cult that can archive its trolls has, in the only sense that matters, already won. Filed under: institutions, unwanted, load-bearing; parades, ongoing.