RGB Troll Theater

I was a member of a troupe of performers, and the story we were performing was a tale of the rise to power and terrifying fall of an historic leader of the Tribe. Trolls were divided into three castes, Orange-Red were the political leaders, the Blue trolls were the educational and religious, and the Green trolls were the warriors. The lightest tinted of each group were the workers, farmers, and craftsman, and performers, of society. Being born to a family of depth (or strong hue) didn't mean you would inherit the hue, every troll started out like a clean white parchment.

There was something about your rank in society and your position that caused your skin to change as you aged, and there were even the rare trolls who took on more than one color. I was playing the roll of one of those sorts. My color, however, was applied by a combination of lights and makeup.

The show was a progressive show. In other words, the entire production moved through the village, and the regions around it, each change of location representing a new act in the performance. In many of my performance dreams, I became, as the dream progresses, more and more unsure of my actual lines in the show. (I think because I am waking up.) This time, however, I was very familiar with the show, and the story, and the character. As we moved into our second act, some of the crew, and performers were taking the ground route, to entertain our following audience, and some of the others were taking an actual airship. The trollop I was infatuated with was taking the airship. I tried to impress her with a little bit of magic, as I had recently discovered my flesh turning blue, and found I had shamanistic control over the wind and sand. It was getting so pronounced that in the first act, I no longer needed the blue lights and blue makeup.

At the end of the first act, I used my new power to stir up the dust under the red and blue spotlights that were on my left and right. This was a pivotal moment in the plot, my beloved whisked away by a powerful prince in his airship, and I a lowly shaman, had decided to take matters into my own hands in her regard, but there was a choice that had to be made, a path to choose, and until this point in history, no troll had ever chosen a blended path, at least not with any great success. (I knew as a modern troll that there were many such folks, even amongst our company and in our audience, but this was a historical piece and the castes were much more rigid in that time.) I stood as the lights picked up my swirling dust and the they swung over to each light a half of me...then suddenly the performance area plunged into darkness. (Part of the show, not a surprise to us in the company.)

We slipped away into the night so I could get a light dusting of red to make me a more purple or blended looking troll. I discovered that my beloved hadn't even been watching my climactic moment at the end of the first act, so hadn't even seen the magical effect, which I could hear our audience chatting about with no small appreciation. She asked if I could do it again for her, but my reserves were too low and the sand where we were conversing was a little too wet for the slight breeze to pick up the grains. She laughed and re-boarded the airship gondola, which was winched up into the sky as the airship, with the lighting and sound crews aboard headed to the location for act two. The makeup artist looked me over and put away his red powders. "Don't know what's going on with you, did you do your own makeup?"

I hadn't. I told him that. He grew very quiet when he realized it wasn't makeup.

He pulled out a jar of tan powder and slapped it all over me. "Well, however you did it, you need to tone it down, you're too hued for the second act."

I looked down at the palm of my hand. It was indeed purple, and much darker than I remembered. I reached out with my mind and sifted through the sands, grinding the grains even smaller and making an even finer powder out of the pile of sand at my feet. I was squeezing my hands so hard that the blood spilled into the sand, and was immediately absorbed and spread throughout the growing mound. I was immediately able to control the sand and the air about it with much more ease. With a start I realized that this was some sort of blood magic, something the character I was playing could do, but almost no trolls currently practiced, as it was considered a lost art.

We began our journey, the interlude route was where I would pick up my "army" of maimed and oddly hued trolls, the outcasts and untouchables of their time. We would also pick up members fo the local audience who fit those descriptions, and they would stay on the stage with me during the second act, no longer shamed for just looking different. It was in fact, during one such performance that I had joined the company as a young troll. Now our company director was stepping down, so he'd asked me to keep an eye out for promising talent, so I really looked forward to this part of the performance, part ritual and part improv.

What was different this time, was that some of the shamanistic miracles we would just read the holy text's descriptions of...I was fairly certain I had enough control to do some of the effects, even if just to a small scale. The first event was a sand bridge allowing the character and a maimed old man to cross a ravine. The bridge was in place and the airship would light it up as I approached. With the addition of all my flying red sand, the illusion was nearly perfect. We had a lot of people follow us to the second act at that point who might not have otherwise done so. I even heard surprised gasps from some of the crown, and saw a blue shaman eying me with a suspicious look on his face. He was missing some fingers, so I motioned for him to join me. I took his hand and noticed that I was already darker blue than him, it shocked me. He nodded to me, and fell in with my army. I could see my actress friend up in the airship looking over her balcony rail, she was in the company of an Orange Red troll of pretty deep hue, and I realized I had lost her. I didn't give up, as the character I was playing proved, "hue is a temporary thing, ever changing, and fortunes and feelings change with them."

After some more fluffing the sand around the dream broke up and I woke.