Cave-trolls

The breed

Cave-trolls are Trolls that live entirely beneath the mountains, in the tunnels and caverns that the Orcs of the Misty Mountains inhabit. Their name is given by Gandalf in Moria, and the one example described in the histories was the troll that came with the Orcs against the Fellowship in the Chamber of Mazarbul on 15 January 3019.

The troll of Mazarbul

When the Orcs of Moria attacked the Fellowship among the tombs of Balin's colony, the Company barred the eastern door, and a great arm and shoulder, dark and scaled in green, was thrust through the gap, followed by a huge flat toeless foot. Boromir hacked at the arm and his sword was notched and turned aside; then Frodo stabbed the foot with Sting, and the troll withdrew with a bellow, its black blood smoking on the blade. It did not enter the chamber, and the Company escaped down the stair beyond, though the same battle brought the Orc-chieftain who speared Frodo and, at the Bridge, the Balrog.

Nature

The cave-troll differed from the trolls of the surface chiefly in habit. It dwelt in darkness, so the sun was no threat to it, and its hide, scaled and dark, may have been an adaptation to the wet of the deep places. It served the Orcs as a battering-ram and a beast of war, as trolls did everywhere in the armies of the Shadow. Whether it had speech is not recorded; the trolls of Moria seem to have been the dumb kind.

Legacy

The cave-troll is remembered as the first great foe the Fellowship met and as the moment when Sting, forgotten in a troll-hoard for an age, drew troll-blood again.

Very large, with a dark hide covered in greenish scales, long arms, and broad flat feet without toes; the blood is black and smokes when spilt. Strength enough to burst a barred door of stone.

None. Cave-trolls were beasts of war and burden kept by the Orcs of the mountains.

Trolls of Morgoth's old breed that took to the caves after the fall of Angband, or were brought into Moria by the Orcs who occupied it.

Not recorded; presumably survived in the deep places of Moria into the Fourth Age.