The record of Lycroyon, who touched the tree of memory. There is no known beginning of everything, because no memory remains. The first memories of the grandfathers of the eldest are of a colder world. There were four species in those days, but no cities. Families lived by the spear and by fruit of the land. In those days Dragons came to the world. They came to a remote world [lit. a horizon] which could barely support life as they knew it. The Dragons were not immortal, though some were very old. They sought immortality. Ours was an inhospitable, remote world to withdraw and contemplate.
The Dragons made their home in a great rift valley, and began to fill the air with the poison they breathe. The animals within that valley perished, but some in the valley were more than animals. These, who were eventually named the Troll, made their home outside the Dragon's-air. They had no food, for it was winter.
Dragons are not so different from people. Some believe in the hardness of nature. Some believe in the inevitable ruling of chaos. Some believe in compassion. Tupovinaz first appeared to the Trolls. The Dragons could leave their valley for only a short time, but they helped this tribe survive the winter. Tupovinaz took interest in the world, for these sentient humanoids were unexpected to them [lit. speechless thinkers. Dragon communication was not verbal, nor were they capable of hearing]. Tupovinaz wandered the world, and saw that it held not just one species of humanoid, but three. A race like goblins, the ancestors of the elves and the ancestors of the dwarves.
Tupovinaz told the others, and Royonagaz was greatly interested. They knew of no developed world with three sentient species. Royonagaz desired to observe these three at a distance, over great time, but warned the others not to interact, lest they dispose one race above another. Tupovinaz was not content to watch alone, but desired to see the humanoids exceed their low condition.
To the Trolls Tupovinaz gave suits of flowing stone [lit. skin of water-rock]. In these shells [word refers to the shell of a mollusk] the Trolls ventured inside the Dragon's air. Tupovinaz showed Khiikum [lit. prince] wonders of Dragon's world [lit. horizon]. He taught the Trolls to speak in the tongue of dragons, and to write. Tupovinaz told them to teach his wondrous gifts to all people equally.
Royonagaz told the Trolls of the world. It spins in the void, he said, and beyond the night sky are an infinite infinite [number of similar worlds]. But most are empty. Fortunate was the chaos which caused this world to bear not just one but many sentient lives. Species compete, he told them, and some die while others live. But sentients are very rare among animals. It was as wondrous to him that their world should support three sorts of sentients among so many varieties of life as his own towering homeworld seemed to the Trolls. Royonagaz also taught the Trolls to count, to measure, and to think logically [lit. with exactness].
It is believed that Old-Trolls had a natural magic for the shaping of stone, but it is possible they gained their magic through Tupovinaz. They certainly advanced in skill through him, and through the suits of flowing stone.
Zaethagaz [lit. Tiotan, everywhere] taught the Trolls to build stone upon stone, then the Dragons went away to meditate.
The Old-Trolls were a people driven to the margins of habitable land by stronger or more numerous neighbors. But they learned to make for themselves suits of flowing stone. In those days there were no swords or bows. In the suits of flowing stone, the Trolls could not be hurt. They build a great city. All peoples, troll, elf and dwarf became subject to them. Only a few who wandered remained outside their rule.
The Old-Trolls grew, and built many cities. They ruled without question, but also taught many things to many people. Beyond their lands some of wanderers, clans among both elf and dwarf, built cities also. But the Trolls were jealous of this, and despised rivals. They saw that beyond the city, wanderers were multiplying. These, who had little learning and no magic for fire or stone, they called Goblins. And the Trolls were jealous of these also.
So the Trolls were not content. They set to destroy the cities of their rivals. They knocked one block from another in the dwarves' cities, and leveled them with the ground. Those dwarves who survived dug into the rock so they could not be overcome again.
In those days the Elves build only one city. It was a great metropolis on the plain. They fed gardens with great wells, and kept herds on the grass [these may have been new concepts, possibly introduced by Dragons]. They could not fight the power of the Trolls.
Zaethagaz saw what the Trolls had done in the tens of tens of years and was greatly displeased [this may mean centuries, or it could indicate multiplication, meaning one thousand years]. She came to rescue of the city on the plain. She and the others banished the Old-Trolls, and denied those with the skins of flowing stone to ever leave. Then she warned those that remained to be always in civilization, and went away to meditate.
[Because these stories predate the trees of memory, they are unfortunately inexact. It may be that some of the Old-Trolls grew a new stone-like skin which enabled them to breath Dragon's air because this accompanied other physical changes. The reference to banishment for them, rather than simply denial of their suits, suggests this. However, the rest of the document fits better with the idea that the suits of flowing stone were something that could be worn. The phrase “tens of tens of years” is also strange. It may be that there were not names for large numbers at the time, but other scholars believe that the idea of multiplication did not yet exist. It seems clear that many, many years passed during the Dragon's meditation, because that must have been the entire space of the Old-Troll empire.]
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