Trolls, it seems, are unworried by dhar in as much as it's one of a pallet of dozens of natural forces that can corrupt and twist them. See, Klom's skin has been picking up rough green patches since he's been living in a forest for the last couple of years, which is sort of annoying, but is what it is. 

Klom agrees he probably couldn't fight a larger force, especially if they have guns. He's been shot a couple times, and while he can regenerate fine, it'd be pretty bad if there were a lot of them. 

Klom will let the Acolyte try and do some negotiating for him, if he thinks it will work? But he's not very optimistic. 

Hm. More reasons to look deeper into Determination. The Acolyte's new adventure will have him developing his knowledge of Determination quite a bit, so he'll see if he has anything to teach Klomm the next time he visits, whenever that is.

And, he'd be happy to give it a try if Klomm can point him towards the village. He'll come back to the fort and let Klomm know how it goes.

The nearest village is an hours walk down this road! but they don't like him very much at all (because he's robbing the travellers going to and from them), so when he wants to sell stuff he goes cross-country to the village on the other side of this patch of forest, which is about a day's hike even for a troll, and maybe twice that for a human, who merely hate and fear him for being a forest-beast and creature of chaos. 

Hm. It would be tricky, but would Klomm consider alternative work to highway taxing? Obviously it would involve a bit more labor on his part, so the Acolyte understands if he's not interested, but with his strength and Flames, he could help the locals cut down trees and build things from the wood. Helping them build like that, and reducing the amount that he taxes travelers on his road, will help increase trade through the town, which will both mean that taxing he still does will be a bit more profitable, that the villagers will be able to pay him for help, and that they'll have better things to buy with the money and pelts he has.

Klom's not particularly opposed to doing that work, but he has - a sense that if he did that he'd be much restricted in what he could do and his reputation would be poor nonetheless. He likes his freedom, and he likes doing work which at least would be respectable to his family, if not to anyone around here. 

The Acolyte strokes his chin contemplatively and nods. That's fair. Hopefully as Klomm's magic grows, it will let him win some glory for himself.

He heads off to the village that Klomm's taxes aren't impacting then.

A few days walk puts him in a small town, wooden palisades protecting farmers from the terrors of the forest that pushes against their fields from every direction.

"Hello there!" The Acolyte shouts over the walls. "I've heard you make some trade with a troll friend of mine?"

People had been merely concerned, when a strangers walks out of the woods, but now they're alarmed. Children and animals start being hurried away and men rush to grab bows and axes. 

"That. Bandit. Yes, you could call it trade, I guess." says a hastily-elected representative of the group. 

"Ah, yes, that's actually part of why I'm here today. I'm worried that this bad habit of his, disrupting the local economy with his raiding, is going to get him killed at some point, I know he's got more animal pelts than he knows what to do with, so I was wondering if I could talk you all into buying some, to help encourage him to take up hunting instead of banditry."

"... it's a troll. I'm not sure it can tell the difference." 

"His accent isn't great but he's not that stupid. I talked to him about it and he said he wouldn't really mind focusing on hunting or helping with construction instead, but that he feels like he'd be looked down upon and not respected, and that he wouldn't be as free to make his own choices. I don't think he's very free at all given he's on track to get killed, so I think I can talk him around on that part, but I'd need your help with giving him a place in society since I can hardly do that on my own."

"Trolls are creatures of chaos. That one is smart enough to avoid being hunted to death, but they're still fundamentally monstrous and corrupt. Trusting one is like trusting in thin ice; even if you don't die immediately it's still a bad decision. And probably you do die immediately." 

Hm. He did have a lot dhar taint, though the Acolyte isn't sure that it was actually that much more than most of the humans around here. "What if I could help him stop being so chaos-tainted? I'm working on a way to clear the taint out of people, I could talk to him more about it."

"... for that matter, we have no way of knowing that you're not a cultist either."   Bows go from in hands, to drawn and pointed at the Acolyte. 

Gosh, this problem just wouldn't stop rearing its head, would it? "I'd save your arrows, for all the good they'd do you. I'm not here to fight regardless. Is there anything I can do here and now to prove that I'm at least not interested in hurting or converting any of you to chaos? If not, I'll leave you be."

"Do we look like witch-hunters? No, begone, and take your tainted bargins with you." 

A man at the back speaks up. "If we had a priest of Ulric we - " Before one of his fellows slaps him and tells him to shut up. 

Well, that was a bust, though he'll remember that last bit if he ever encounters a priest of Ulric who has the temerity to talk with him.

Back to Klomm's fort to give him the bad-but-not-unexpected news. Perhaps he'll stay another day just to give his student a proper farewell, and maybe ask if Klomm wants to give learning Determination a try, since it seemed like the villagers' biggest issue was that he was dhar tainted and if the Acolyte's right about it then Determination might let him get rid of it.

Klom is indeed quite unsurprised by that. Klom doesn't think of himself as being particularly chaos-tainted, but he will entertain a pitch for why he should also learn Determination; learning Division was certainly worth it. 

Well, Determination doesn't just protect you from chaos, it can protect you from magic in general, probably at least. It's also useful for applying other knowledges in a way that acknowledges the seeker's self? It's hard to describe at the highest level, not the least because Determination is the Acolyte's own weakest aspect of Fire, but he knows that he grounded the theory he uses for his protective Flames in his Determination, and his understanding of Power draws from his Determination to know how to amplify the force of his body without tearing it apart. Honestly, even if Klomm's completely unconcerned with taint, learning Determination and developing it right might give him a much better chance of surviving the next time people come to kill him, at least for long enough to flee if he chooses to.

A stupider troll might not recognise the value of additional toughness, having certain faith in their regeneration, but Klom recognises the compounding value of additional toughness for a regenerator, hence his piecemeal suit of armour. He'll study Determination with the Acolyte.

The Acolyte, as always, is an eager teacher, though his lacking familiarity with Determination will probably extend the teaching period, even if Klomm's knowledge Flames helps shorten it as well. If they take breaks, it might be another couple days, or longer if something unexpected happens...

They study for a few days, considering matters of the self and determination, and eventually, something clicks. Klom's face lights up with insight - and then he screams. 

Ah! The Acolyte guides Klomm through a meditation to quiet his mind and turn it away from the knowledge, since something is clearly wrong. As he does so, he focuses on his own Determination, trying to feel for Klomm's. It's there, but it's...fighting, sort of, with all the other various stuff that's worked its way into him, and that process is evidently quite painful. Once Klomm's gotten his mind back under control, the Acolyte will explain the situation to him. He's confident that, if Klomm chooses to, he can feed his Determination and suffer through this to find the benefits of Determination on the other side, but that it's understandable if it's not worth the pain.

It burnt like fire, like a taste of the path to death. Klom is not enthusiastic. He's very annoyed about it, though.