Giff

Appearance

Giff are tall, massively built humanoids with the heads and heavy bodies of river and sea hippos. Their skin is thick, hairless or sparsely bristled, and ranges from slate-grey and muddy brown to soft mauves and blue-grey tones, often mottled with scars and sun-faded patches. Small round ears flick and twitch at every sound, and their wide nostrils flare when they laugh, snort, or prepare for a charge.
  They favour bright uniforms, sashes, and bandoliers that strain over barrel chests and heavy shoulders. Even the poorest giff will find some way to add braids, medals, or painted symbols to their gear. Weapons are always close at hand: oversized cutlasses, boarding pikes, harpoon-cannons, bombards, or whatever loud thing they can get to go “boom” in a satisfying way.

Culture & Society

Giff are herd-minded and love structure. Wherever they settle, they cluster together into “companies” and “brigades,” drilling on the decks at all hours and electing officers with alarming enthusiasm. A giff city inside a raft-town is a maze of barracks, mess halls, armouries, and parade squares, all run with loud discipline and surprisingly warm hospitality. Outsiders who follow the posted rules and survive the welcome-drink are treated like honoured guests.
  Their myths speak of creator-gods who strode through primordial rivers with thunder in their bones. Many giff believe that tiny sparks of that power remain inside them. Some can channel that “titan spark” unconsciously, adding unnatural force and noise to their weapons when they fight in defence of their herd. Giff argue endlessly over how their own name should be pronounced, half insisting on a hard “G” and half on a soft one; these disagreements sometimes escalate into head-butting contests, but rarely into actual grudges.

Biology & Lifespan

Giff are powerfully muscled, with dense bones and thick hides that shrug off blows which would cripple a smaller folk. They are strong swimmers in short bursts, capable of surging through the water like charging hippos, but prefer solid decks under their feet. Despite their bulk, they can move with surprising speed and coordination, especially when fighting shoulder to shoulder with their company.
  They grow slowly, reaching full size in their late teens or early twenties. A giff’s average lifespan is around seventy to eighty years, though older veterans often bear old wounds and stiff joints from a lifetime of charging, drilling, and hauling heavy guns. Age tends to soften their features rather than diminish them; an elderly giff looks like a weathered cliff-face, cracked but utterly solid.

Homelands & Environment

No one, including the giff, knows where their people first came from. In the present day, their “homelands” are the giff cities built inside major raft-towns: dense blocks of reinforced hulls, gun platforms, and communal halls lashed together into something between a fortress and a carnival. In the Seven Woods Afloat, two such giff cities are infamous for their constant drills, loud festivals, and reassuring willingness to repel pirates.
  Some clans refuse to stay in one place and instead outfit great caravans of heavy ships, venturing into the High Seas in search of signs of their dead gods. These “Pilgrim Companies” follow old charts, omens, and dreams, forever chasing rumours of a colossal stone spine on some distant seafloor or a jawbone big enough to build a city inside.

Relations with Other Peoples

Giff make a strong first impression and usually a good one. Their default setting is boisterous friendliness: hearty handshakes that nearly dislocate shoulders, invitations to eat and drink, and enthusiastic offers to help solve problems with “a modest and entirely reasonable amount of firepower.” Raft-towns value them as defenders and shock troops, and many captains hire giff mercenary companies to keep order on long voyages.
  Tritons and sea elves sometimes roll their eyes at giff subtlety (or lack thereof), but respect their courage. Humans, dwarves, and orcs often feel a comfortable kinship with their love of craft, drill, and loud celebrations. More cautious folk find giff exhausting but hard to dislike. Even when arguments break out over pronunciation, pay, or who gets to stand closest to the big gun, giff are slow to hold grudges. The only thing they truly struggle to forgive is betrayal of the herd, whether that herd is a giff company or the raft-town they have sworn to defend.