Troll rituals and ceremonies

Just a little snippet from the section on shamanism, as it relates to Trolls ( from: http://www.wowwiki.com/Shamanism_and_Nature_Worship )

"The jungle trolls are also experiencing an overhaul of their faith. Their savior, Thrall, convinced them to give up their evil ways of sacrifice and cannibalism to embrace the Horde’s divine worship, so the jungle trolls are finding new ways to praise their bloodthirsty ancestral spirits. They have turned from sacrificing their enemies to sacrificing animals, and they no longer feast on their enemies’ corpses—because that is what the undead do."

Just to highlight, that this aspect of Troll religion is currently being revised and the amount that the old ways are followed depends entirely on the individual. As the Heritage (and the villagers of Sen'jin) are in constant contact with other races of the Horde, it seems likely that (at least outwardly) we would support these new innovations.

they no longer feast on their enemies’ corpses—because that is what the undead do.

Which does not mean that Snicka won't cook and eat his slain enemy... but he will do it in secret, because he knows how much it is disrespected by the other Horde races.
There's difference between troll and undead cannibalism anyway; while the latter would just devour the raw corpse, the former will boil or fry and put herbs on his foe.

But that's good, then it makes total sense what Ry did to Barz's body and head.

Yes, if the body is the spirit's link to the mortal world, then it's more than logical that Barzovia's body was burned, because Ryleen wanted to destroy his soul. Let's not forget that when troll witchdoctors communicate with the dead, they'll usually talk to their head - like in that Stranglethorn quest when you talk to Gan'zulah and Nezzliok. (Although, if you remember, when we summoned Snicka's grandfather, Umagaur's body was possessed by his spirit instead.)

This is going to sound silly, but what about on top of the Colossal in Feralas, its hard to find the way up,(need to speak to a Nelf) and its fairly safe because of this, excpet for the decent, that might cause a few..... injuries

I have been wondering about ritual tattooing and peircing for trolls. It's a fairly common thing in tribal culture and i know many troll-players have tattoos in their discriptions (Vypra doesn't but that's because hers aren't usually visible ) and the model (the female one at least) shows multliple peircings of the ears. Added to this, Ryleen mentioning something about a peircing to indicate marrige got me thinking about what kind of tattoos would be appropriate for the different tribal roles and would there be ceremonies for the recipients.

To go back to Vypra, she has the symbols of the elements tattooed down her spine. She recieved each one as she acheived mastery of each elemental call.

So'oro (probably unsurpisingly) has many snake tattoos.

Essentially, i'm wondering wether it would be likely that Chabat would begin getting tattoos as she develops and would there be interest in a bit of ceremony around them?

I think that sounds really good. There is also a reason why Ry doesn't have any, since she broke all bonds with troll culture during her own training.

http://www.metal-tiger.com/Wu_Tang_PCA/tattoo.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0618_040618_tvtattoo_2.html

just a couple of sites with info about tribal ritual tattoos.

Usually done to represent rites of passage( ie puberty/adulthood), marriage, tribal rank, and roles.

Okay...this question comes from an incident last night at the Keel...

Vypra was invited to a birthday party an asked to invite a few of her freinds. When she mentioned it to Liontooth and Gellion, they had (IC'ly) no concept of what a birthday celebration was or why you would have one (it was very amusing trying to explain it )

So, the question is, Do trolls celebrate birthdays? and which of the other races would be likely to?

The first question to ask is if they keep track of exact dates or not. If not, they probably won't know what day they were born, only roughly at what time of the year.

I don't picture the forsaken taking much stock in Birthdays, as, well, they're undead. Sin'dorei live for centuries, so I can't see them seeing much relevence in a number, and trolls.. Hmm, maybe. They and orcs would most likely see something of merit in such a celebration, if not least because they have the shortest life expectancy. I could of course be wrong. I think seeing such relevence in a Birthday is a very human thing, and so wonder, if there is life out there in the real world, would they even pay much attention to such a trivial thing?

Well, as you said, both orcs and trolls are the ones that can expect to live the shortest. Especially if you consider their sometimes violent surroundings. How many of them are really privieleged to die of age? I can totally see them celebrating not as much getting older as surviving one more year.

I agree with Lyranne about the Forsaken and about the long-lived races, such as Sin'dorei. For trolls, who very rarely reach eighty winters, old age would probably be a sign of great skill or wisdom. For such a relatively short-lived race, how old you are is almost certainly more important, to mark when you are old enough to make your own decisions, choose a mate, go hunting with the tribe etc. So I suspect that, although they may not mark an exact day, trolls would almost certainly mark each passing year in some way.

Ryleen's point is a good one, though. Presumably, Darkspears, and certainly the Zandalari, who are guardians of troll history, must have some way of recording the passing of time. But here we need to make some assumptions, I think. I'm not sure if an Azeroth year is the same length as ours. There are no phases of the moon (the more visible one, the White Lady, that is), as far as I know, so can we be sure that 'months' are even measured in any way? And the idea of a seven-day week is, I believe, arbitrary.

Does anyone have any knowledge of game lore about measuring the passage of time?

If no established lore exists, then the way is clear for us to invent a system of our own (Hurray!). If so, we should keep it simple and easy to remember (sun-day, moon-day, two-day, etc.) Any thoughts anyone?

Since they celebrate new year's eve, we can be sure their years are as long as irl. There are also the rest of the festivals, which always happen during the same time of the year. I don't know the lore around all of them, I think they originate from different cultures but nowadays most of them are universally celebrated (like the lunar festival being something the druids of moonglade originally celebrated. and greatfather winter being a dwarf?). They are easy to use as the only real fixed dates in our calendar, and then letting the rest be a bit more vague such as "two weeks after the midsummer fire festival".

Well, Blizz, in my opinion, made a silly mistake in having almost every real world holiday marked on the WoW calender. This gives the impression that the years are the same, and because there are 'humans' one could assume, I suppose, that Azeroth is itself an alternative Earth where Pangaea didn't become the many continents we know and love, but instead remained two. This is mostly because, as everyone knows, a year is the time it takes for Earth to complete its rotation around the sun ( and as the time ingame is realtime, this stands true for the planet matching ours for day length, though mayhaps Blizz should have been clever and had time zones... So for the planet to have the same day duration, and year rotation, it pretty much has to be the same planet ( just from a logical point of vew, that is ). A minor annoyance is that Blizz don't seem to bother with eclipses, which seems utterly foolish to me.

If this is indeed the case, then the years would be measured as ours are.

However, as the Norse pantheon of Deities does not exist within Azeroth ( save for some subtle name lifting, such as the wolf on SFK being called Fenrus ) Then certain days of the week will not be named as such. Again, the lack of Norse referencing in game is daft when you consider the game uses North, South, East and West ( named after four Dwarves in said mythology, who stood at each corner of Midgard, I believe ). Certainly, Wednesday ( Woden/Odin's day ), Tuesday ( always forget the spelling of the Norse deity it's named after ), Thursday ( Thor's day ), and Friday ( Friiya/Freya's day ). That leaves Sunday, Monday ( Moonday, as Zanick pointed out ), and Saturday ( Saturn - named from the first visible planet/Roman God ).

With that in mind, the days of the week should most likely be named from the Cenarian pantheon. There's little you can do about the compass directions, sadly - unless you lift from an Eastern religion, and their names for such.

As for how many days in the week, one can assume that there'd not be seven, as the biblical association is irrelevent, and without that, the seven-day week is rather redundant. I'd summise that measuring in small chunks, such as 'weeks' and 'months' would again be of little concern to those races with the most longevity, though I do believe some quests reference such passages of time.

Well, this is an interesting topic.
Concerning that there are no seasons (the vegetation doesn't differ in winter and summer), no moon phases, and no timezones, we can assume that Azeroth is not spherical like our planet, but as flat as Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Although the lack of seasons implies the question: how can the people of Azeroth measure a year? Maybe the vegetation actually should change, only the game mechanics make the early summer in Elwynn, the late summer in Westfall, the autumn in Azshara and the winter in Dun Morogh permanent.
The seven-day week is often used - the guild meetings are held weekly, etc. - so despite the lack of the Bible, number seven is probably considered magical. I never knew that the English names of the days come from the name of Norse deities, thank you, Lyranne, for sharing that piece of information. The Hungarian names are the following (from Monday to Sunday): Hétfő (literally translated Week's Head), Kedd (perhaps coming from the word "kettő", meaning "two), Szerda, Csütörtök, Péntek (meaning third, fourth and fifth in Slavic languages, but mean only these days in Hungarian), Szombat (from the Hebrew Sabbath), and Vasárnap ("vásár-nap" means "market-day", because usually people went to the market after the Holy Mass on Sunday). So referring to the days as third-day, fourth-day etc. is quite reasonable. But let's not forget that the weeks begin with Monday in most European countries, but Sunday in Britain, which might lead to confusions.

I think most use the seven-day week simply as a matter of convenience. It is, after all, the standard across much of the globe. But from a lore point of view, I don't see any correlation. Mind you, this is the same game that hints at various religions without actually flat-out stating such. The ToL form could so easily have been call yggdrassil ( or however it's spelt ), as that's the inspiration. I believe there is also an item named after Loki, and may other such hints ( not including easter, Christmas and suchlike ), so its possibly safer to assume that Blizz did/do intend the weeks to be seven days long. I still question the relevence of a seemingly short passage of time to a sin'dorei, night elf, tauren, or dwarf though. The forsaken are in that unsual situation of having been human, so they would have marked such a short duration, but as they are now undead, I doubt they much care.

Though it's true that the week begins on a Sunday, as it's also 'the day of rest' it's rarely considered the real beginning of the week ( it is, after all, 'weeks end' ). As the working week starts on the Monday, as with most Countries, I don't think any of us Brits are going to be overly confused ( forgive us our backward ways - we only learnt what fire was last week ^^ ).

I think, in most British peoples minds, the weekend is a self-contained passage of time. People look at the Monday-to-Friday as being the week, and Saturday and Sunday as being essentially a free-for-all. Or not...

As you say, there is no indication that Azeroth is a sphere, so it's entirely possible it's flat ( though one assumes from the way Outland is, that this is not quite how Blizz envisioned the planet, seeing as the map could have easily been designed to show water falling from the planet - as is shown in certain places in Outland ). Maybe Azeroth is on the back of four giant elephants, astride a giant turtle, maybe not. maybe it's held up by Atlas, or maybe Blizz just didn't think about anything beyond aesthetics when planning the regions. As I say, a lack of time zones is... dumb.
I'm thinking maybe it's like a discus the rotating on a plinth at a 45 degree angle. Although that doesn't exclude the lack of time variation, it does at least make it clear why it's night across both Continents at the same time ( though it really, really shouldn't ).

As for the rediculous season limitations... I hate it, personally. I think it utterly stupid that you can walk from the barrens, ( a very hot area, but not so much that there's no vegetation ), North, then east, and it's clearly Autumn... Or even walking from 1,000 needles into Feralas... I know they did it to add variety, but I'm sure they could have managed this in a less jarring way, most likely with better varieties of flora and fauna ( and fungi ).