Giant
The giants are an ancient, monstrous race of massive proportions created by the gods of the Ordning during the First Intermediate Period. They consist of five distinct races with several offshoots or subspecies evolving over time and independent of the Ordning's supposed original intentions. Each giant race has varied appearances, attitudes, and social behavior, but they share each other's massive size, long lives, and ancient belief system.
The six primary giant races reflect the five primary deities within the Ordning religion. There are the storm giants or alvadis, favored of Jötu; the cloud giants or himinglæva, favored of Duris; the fire giants or hyrrokkin, favored of Frothga; the frost giants or ymira, favored of Thenn; the stone giants or bjargrisa, favored of Styr; and the hill giants or hrungnir, favored of Gronnar. A seventh true giant race, the forest giants, appears to have gone extinct sometime during the Middle Mithril Era. Other giant subspecies include the cyclopses, fomorians, ettins, ogres, trulladons , and trolls—each of which displays varying degrees of gigantic size and racial sentience. Two mortal races also trace their lineages to the giants—the competitive, mountain-roaming goliaths and the gentle, forest-dwelling firbolgs.
Basic Information
Anatomy
All giants—with one major exception—have a highly standardized tetrapodal body plan, with two arms ending in grasping hands, two legs ending in feet, a mammalian torso, and a head containing the nervous center and major sensory organs. Only the ettin deviates from this body plan, sporting two heads with two distinct personalities. The ettin's unique physiology is likely because of some strange magic or degenerative mutation that has persisted for generations. Beyond their standard body plans, giants and their kin boast a variety of unique anatomical adaptations such as damage resistances, as in the true giants and even the ability to regrow limbs after fatal attacks, as in trolls.
Growth Rate & Stages
Giants are exceptionally long-lived compared to humans, but none are immortal. A peaceful death from old age is a common occurrence among cloud giants and storm giants and isn't unusual among stone giants and fire giants. It's the exception among hill giants and frost giants, most of which die violently in battle against humans, dragons, other monsters, or their own kind.
Giants live at a slower pace than humans do. In the space of four heartbeats for a man, a stone giant's great heart beats just once. Giant mothers stay with their child for longer than human mothers do, and giant children grow to adulthood more slowly. Giants' families are small, because a couple seldom has more than a few children, and many have none at all.
The life spans of the various types of giants are generally in keeping with their place in the ordning; the lowliest giants have the shortest life spans, and the noblest giants are the longest-lived. Stone giants are the exception. Because of their long life spans, despite their low position in the ordning, many other giants consider stone giants to be the wisest of all true giants.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Unlike other sentient peoples, the five true giant races not only have social structures and cultures unique to their own communities, but also have a rigid social hierarchy between the five giant races. The broad social structure of the giants is reflected in their religion, the Ordning. Each giant race is favored by one of the giant gods and each remains in their place within the Ordning, lest the Tale of Twilight prophecy be accelerated by a world out of balance. Storm giants reign at the top, followed by cloud giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, and finally hill giants. Other giant subspecies are not explicitly mentioned within the Tale of Twilight or other Ordning texts and so are considered by the true giants to be races unto themselves and not bound to the same strictures. That being said, most of the true giants view other races as either eventual 'civilian casualties' of the War of the Twilight worthy of assistance and pity or outrightly inferior to those of the Ordning.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Today, giants live in isolated pockets at the edges of the world's maps. They have no grand cities or large settlements in Holos, with the only sizable populations being found in the Elemental Planes.
Average Intelligence
Giants vary quite substantially in intelligence between species and subspecies. Storm giants for example, are quite smart even without their prophetic abilities and regularly produce individuals of genius-level intellects. On the other hand, hill giants, ettins, fomorians, ogres, and trolls are famed for their stupidity with some of them expressing only a kind of bestial instincts. In general, the larger the race of giant, the more intelligent they are, though this is not always the case. Firbolgs, the shortest of the giantkin have minds equal to that of most elves and other long-lived mortals.
Civilization and Culture
Common Myths and Legends
Giants are unique in that the five major giant races all largely share the same religious belief system, even across mortal cultures and geographical barriers. This religion, called the Ordning, reflects giant society and dictates how giants should act and how they should interact with one another.
The central tenets of the Ordning draw upon a series eschatological prophecies said to have been witnessed by the leader of the Ordning Pantheon, Jötu, and recorded by his eldest child, Duris. This prophecy, called the Tale of Twilight, details a future conflict between the gods and their monstrous foe, the Dread Dragoness Valdra. Upon experiencing this vision of the coming Twilight Era, Jötu organized the Ordning and in so doing created the giants to both preserve the Tale of Twilight and begin preparing for the War that would come to pass.
Each giant race plays an important role within the prophecy, and each race's social structure and culture reflects their role. To the giants, the Ordning is not merely their religion—it is the system by which they understand the world around them, their role within it, and their duties to one another as giants.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Since the Breaking of the Dawn, when the gods of the Ordning first faced the Dread Dragoness Valdra, giants have been hostile towards dragons—regardless of their alignment or color. The threat of dragons is ever present throughout the prophetic Tale of Twilight and all giants believe that dragons represent a clear and present danger that, if not curtailed in the interim, will come to cause great suffering in the Twilight Era.
by Eric Belisle
Genetic Descendants
Origin/Ancestry
Ordning
Average Physique
All five of the true giant races are considered huge.
Related Ethnicities
Related Myths
by Chris Rahn
by Chris Rahn
by Chris Rahn
by Chris Rahn
by Chris Rahn
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