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Haunting Spirit
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/redeye.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: Who knows their trolls?
Alright, Wight, I know this thread is musty and that your article on the topic has now become BD "canon", but after re-reading the Silmarillion for the the first time in (at least) fifteen years during my recent vacation, I'm not sure I'm convinced by your argument that there were pre-Third Age sun-resistant trolls.
The reference you make from
Of the Fifth Battle to clinch your argument is far from conclusive. In fact, as nearly as I could discern, this is the sole reference to trolls in the whole Silma -- and it clearly states that Hurin is battling the trolls at night ("Day shall come again."
. Later (after sunrise??), Hurin is finally overcome by multitudes of
orcs, not trolls. The "sun went down beyond the sea" only after Hurin had done enough hacking to pile up so many orc corpses around him that he was finally buried beneath them and then was bound and dragged off to Angband by Gothmog.
If there were indeed sun-resistant trolls in the First or Second ages, why wouldn't Morgoth have used them as shock troops a la Sauron? I'll take up the flag and charge forward again to contend that the overwhelming circumstantial evidence seems to point to Sauron's trolls being
Olog-hai. It's not unreasonable to assume that Gothmog's troll-guard were sun-vulnerable -- the battle was fought on the plain in front of Angband, within easy march for the trolls to come up out of Angband's pits to act as fresh reinforcements once the sun had gone down.
The little foreword preceding the appendices states that "their principal purpose is to illustrate the War of the Ring and its origins, and to fill up some of the gaps in the main story"... and that's just what the reference in Appendix F has done.
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