Documented Evolutions & Mutations
At this point, we understand that trolls have some pretty wild things happening genetically. Given the nature of their reproduction and the gene pool being pulled from, along with their highly adaptive nature, the conception of a troll can be a little unstable. There's any number of possible variants that might come crawling out of those caverns. Some mutations are more frequent, some are considered variations, and some a strange form of evolution.
Evolutions
Sea Dweller
While the troll species is content to ignore most mutations as anomalies, there is one mutation that has become rather predominant and reoccurring; the sea dweller.
The blood castes of violet and fuchsia are both made up of sea dwellers exclusively. The notable mutations of the sea dwelling troll are the fin like protrusions from the ears and the development of gills, bestowing the ability to breath underwater.
For a sea dweller, when pupating from a wriggler to a kid, their grubscars form differently. What would have been a grubscar is harder and more chitinous than the land dweller, with a slit forming underneath. The grabscar acts as a protective layer for the vulnerable organ that fits delicately into the ribs alongside the lungs. These are their gills.
The ear fins appear to be a largely cosmetic change, helping to detect sonic shifts more clearly and improve their sensitivity to communications of organisms underwater. It is not unheard of for more webbing to occur to facilitate underwater mobility.
And unlike the more clicky and abrupt chittering of the land dwellers, a sea dweller's chittering has adapted for underwater communication, taking on a more echoy and rumbling edge, with more trills than chirps.
Rainbow Drinkers
The rainbow drinker abilities were first discovered in jadebloods tending to the brooding caverns, and are thought to be an evolution to assist in their caretaker role and traversal of the dark tunnels. A rainbow drinker's skin is washed white, with the ability to glow. Some sort of internal luminescence also seems to occur, lighting up their eyes and mouth a bright yellow, even when not glowing. Their chitters take on an eerie and sharp edge, able to pitch into fearsome scream like noises, thought to be useful in scaring away potential predators or trespassers. While still capable of consuming normal sustenance, the activation of the rainbow drinker genetics gives the troll a special taste for blood. It is thought that it provides certain kinds of nutrients the rainbow needs more than the average troll. More likely it was an adaptation of there being few sources of food in the brooding caverns save the Mother Grubs and the wigglers themselves. Not being a species to waste, the caretakers would clean up the wigglers that didn't make it, and even gives them a taste for it. It is said a troll is born a rainbow drinker, but what it takes to activate the abilities is rather unknown. For some, it's a near death experience, for others, extreme stress.
Blood Mutants
Blood mutants are one of the most well known discrepancies of the species. A blood mutant, quite obviously, is when a troll is afflicted by a mutation of the blood.
The troll could still be classified somewhere on the hemospectrum based on their physiology. By nature, a troll may be a blue blood. But due to the mutation of their blood pigmentation, their blood be red. In that case, the troll may seem to be a red blood by blood color, but based on the biology of the species, is a blue blood. This is one common case of blood mutation, and one that often flies under the radar unnoticed.
The second case, and the more known of the two, is unnatural coloration of the blood. Within the hemospectrum, there are average natural limits to the colors blood may take on. Nothing too dark, nothing too light, and with certain boundaries of desaturation. Any color that falls outside these bounds counts as a blood mutation. Same as before, the troll will biologically match a blood caste, but the pigmentation will not reflect it properly. The issue here is that the mutated color does not fall somewhere within a norm, but distinctly outside of it, marking them as anomalies.
From a biological standpoint, blood mutants are no different save for their blood color.
Physical Mutants
Physical mutants are, as one might deduct, trolls with a physical mutation of some sort. This counts as essentially anything outside the norm. And most things under the sun are free game in some way. Third eye? Seen it. Extra limbs? Yup. Wings? Those things are so last week. These mutations truly can range from rather inconsequential things such as strange eye patterns to mouths on a troll's hands. It's that unstable conception and slurry of a genetic pool that means sometimes, weird things happen. Most of the time, these don't interfere too badly with the troll's life, but they're often quite visible.
These are, of course, things with documented proof. If you'd like to see what has been speculated but yet to be confirmed, go get some hot goss. We only talk fact in here.
