The Giants are an old race of people towering to enormous heights.

Ancient empires once cast long shadows over a world that quaked beneath the giants feet. In those lost says, these towering figures were dragon slayers, dreamers, crafters, and kings, but their kind fell from glory long ago. however, even divided among secluded clans scattered throughout the world, the giants maintain the customs and traditions of old.

In remote regions of the world, the last remaining plinths, monoliths, and statues of the great giant empires bow their heads in desolate obscurity. Where once those empires sprawled across all lands, now the giants dwell in isolated tribes and clans.

Giants are almost as old as dragons, which were still young when the giants' heavy feet first shook the foundations of the world. As they spread across new lands, giants and dragons fought bitter generational wars that nearly brought both sides low. No living giant remembers what started the conflict, but myths and tales of their race's glorious dawn are still sung in their steadings and holdfasts, vilifying the primeval wyrms. Giants and dragons continue to harbour grudges against one another, and it is seldom that they will meet or occupy the same area without a fight.

Jötunheimr

Kids book
There is a page that represents the city of Jötunheimr up in the clouds

Some of the iconography represent some of the religious aspects. Within the drawing of the city, the most prominent building in the drawing, situated in the centre, has the symbol of the Allfather's eye, but broken into different pieces.

Allfather

The first Giant.

The Ordning

Each of the main giant races - the cloud, fire, frost, hill, stone, and storm giants, are related by common elements of history, religion, and culture. They view one another as kindred keeping any inherent animosity over territory and ambition to a minimum.

Giants belong to a caste structure called the ordning. Based on social classes and highly organized, the ordning assigns a social rank to each giant. By understanding its place in the ordning, a giant knows which other giants are inferior or superior to it, since no two giants are equal. Each of the giant races analyzes a different combination of skills or qualities to determine the ordning. giants make excelling in these qualities the purpose of their lives.

At the highest level of the ordning, the races of the giants are also ranked according to status. Storm giants are the highest in the ordning, followed by cloud giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, hill giants, and finally giant kin such as fomorians, ettins and ogres.

Regardless of a giant's rank among its own races, the chief of a hill giant tribe is inferior to the most common of stone giants. The lowest ranked giant of any type is superior to the highest ranked giant of an inferior type. It isn't considered evil to disrespect or even betray a giant of another type, merely rude.

Cloud Giant

Cloud giants live extravagant lives high above the world, showing little concern for the plights of other races except as amusement. They are muscular with light skin and have hair of silver or blue.

High and Mighty

Cloud giants are spread to the winds, encompassing vast areas of the world. In times of need, scattered cloud giant families band together as a unified clan. However, they can seldom do so quickly.

Attuned to the magic of their airy domains, cloud giants are able to turn into mist and create clouds of billowing fog. They dwell in castles on high mountain peaks, or on the solid clouds that once held their fiefs. Still gracing the skies on occasion, these magic clouds are a lasting remnant of the giants’ lost empires.

Better spellcasters than most other giants, some cloud giants can control weather, bring storms, and steer the wind almost as well as their cousins, the storm giants.

Affluent Princes

Although cloud giants are lower in the ordning than storm giants, the reclusive storm giants rarely engage with the rest of giantkind. As a result, many cloud giants see themselves as having the highest status and power among the giant races. They order lesser giants to seek out wealth and art on their behalf, employing fire giants as smiths and crafters, and using frost giants as reavers, raiders, and plunderers. Dimwitted hill giants serve them as brutes and combat fodder — sometimes fighting for the cloud giants’ amusement. A cloud giant might order hill or frost giants to steal from nearby humanoid lands, which it considers to be a fair tax for its continued beneficence.

On their mountain summits and solid clouds, cloud giants keep extraordinary gardens. Grapes as big as apples grow there, along with apples the size of pumpkins, and pumpkins the size of wagons. From the errant seeds of these gardens, tales of cottage-sized produce and magic beans are spread in the mortal realm.

As humanoid nobles keep an aerie for hunting hawks, so do cloud giants keep griffons, perytons, and wyverns as their own flying beasts of prey. Such creatures also patrol the cloud giants’ gardens by night, along with trained predators such as owlbears and lions.

Children of the Trickster

The patron god and father of the cloud giants is Memnor the Trickster, the cleverest and slyest of the giant deities. Cloud giants align themselves according to the aspects and exploits of Memnor that they most admire, with evil cloud giants emulating his deceitfulness and self-interest and good cloud giants emulating his intellect and silver-tongued speech. Family members usually align in the same direction.

Wealth and Power

A cloud giant earns its place in the ordning by the treasure it accumulates, the wealth it wears, and the gifts it bestows on other cloud giants. However, value is only one part of the assessment. The extravagances a cloud giant wears or places about its home must also be beautiful or wondrous. Sacks of gold or gems are worth less to a cloud giant than the jewelry that might be crafted from those materials, creating treasures that bring esteem to a cloud giant’s household.

Rather than steal from one another or fight over treasures, cloud giants are inveterate gamblers with a hunger for high risks and high rewards. They frequently bet on the outcome of events nominally outside their control, such as the lives of lesser creatures. Ordning ranks and kings’ ransoms can be won and lost in bets over the military triumphs of humanoid nations. Fixing wagers by interfering in the conflict causes the loss of the bet, but such deceit is considered to be cheating only if it is discovered. Otherwise, it is cleverness honoring Memnor.

Fire Giant

Master crafters and organized warriors, fire giants dwell among volcanoes, lava floes, and rocky mountains. They are ruthless militaristic brutes whose mastery of metalwork is legendary.

Fire Forged

Fire giant fortresses are built around and inside volcanoes or near magma-filled caverns. The blistering heat of their homes fuels the fire giants’ forges, and causes the iron of their fortress walls to glow a comforting orange. In lands far removed from volcanic heat, fire giants mine coal to burn. Traditional smithies occupy places of honor in their demesnes, and the giants’ stony fortresses constantly belch plumes of sooty smoke. In more remote outposts, fire giants burn wood to keep their forge fires lit, deforesting leagues of land in all directions.

Fire giants shun cold as much as their cousins the frost giants hate heat. They can adapt to cold environments with effort, though, keeping their hearth fires burning bright and wearing heavy woolen clothing and furs to stay warm.

Martial Experts

From birth, a fire giant is taught to embrace a legacy of war. At the cradle, its parents chant songs of battle. As children, fire giants play at war, hurling igneous rocks at one another across the banks of magma rivers. In later years, formal martial training becomes an integral part of life in the giants’ fortresses and underground realms of smoke and ash. The fire giants’ songs are odes of battles lost and won, while their dances are martial formations of pounding feet that resound like smiths’ hammers throughout their smoky halls.

Just as fire giants pass down their knowledge of crafting from generation to generation, their renowned fighting prowess comes not from wild fury but from endless discipline and training. Enemies make the mistake of underestimating fire giants based on their brutish manner, learning too late that these giants live for combat and can be shrewd tacticians.

Feudal Lords

Humanoids conquered in war become serfs to the fire giants. The serfs work the farms and fields on the outskirts of fire giant halls and fortresses, raising livestock and harvesting fields whose bounty is almost entirely tithed to the fire giant kings.

Fire giant crafters work through insight and experience rather than writing or arithmetic. Though most fire giants place little worth on such frivolousness, they sometimes keep serfs at court who are versed in such skills. Serfs not destined for court or the fields (especially dwarves) are taken to the fire giants’ mountainous realms to mine ore and gemstones from deep within the earth.

Fire giants low in the ordning manage the mine tunnels and the serfs that toil there, few of which survive the difficult and dangerous work for long. Though fire giants are skilled in the engineering of mine tunnels and the gathering of ore, they place less importance on the safety of their serfs than on smelting and working the bounty those serfs produce.

Skilled Artisans

Fire giants have a fearsome reputation as soldiers and conquerors, and for their ability to burn, plunder, and destroy. Yet among the giants, fire giants produce the greatest crafters and artists. They excel at smelting and smith work, as they do at the engineering of metal and stone, and the quality of their artistry shows even in their implements of destruction and their weapons of war.

Fire giants strive to build the strongest fortresses and most potent siege weapons. They experiment with alloys to create the hardest armor, then forge the swords that can pierce it. Such work requires brawn and brains in equal measure, and fire giants high in the ordning tend to be the smartest and strongest of their kind.

Frost Giant

Gigantic reavers from the freezing lands beyond civilization, frost giants are fierce, hardy warriors that survive on the spoils of their raids and pillaging. They respect only brute strength and skill in battle, demonstrating both with their scars and the grisly trophies they take from their enemies.

Hearts of Ice

Frost giants are creatures of ice and snow. Their hair and beards are pale white or light blue, matted with frost and clattering with icicles. Their flesh is as blue as glacial ice.

Frost giants dwell in high peaks and glacial rifts where the sun hides its golden head by winter. Crops don’t grow in their frozen homelands, and they keep little livestock beyond what they capture in their raids. They hunt the wild game of the tundra and mountains but don’t cook it, since meat from a fresh kill tastes sufficiently hot to their palate.

Reavers of the Storm

The war horns of the frost giants howl as they march from their ice fortresses and glacial rifts amid the howling blizzard. When that storm clears, villages and steadings lay in ruins, ravens descending to feed on the corpses of any creatures foolish or unlucky enough to stand in the giants’ path.

Inns and taverns suffer the brunt of the damage, their cellars gutted and their casks of ale and mead gone. Smithies are likewise toppled, their iron and steel claimed. Curiously undisturbed are the houses of moneylenders and wealthy citizens, for the reavers have little use for coins or baubles. Frost giants prize gems and jewelry large enough to be worn and noticed. However, even those treasures are most often saved for trading opportunities with other giants more adept at crafting metal weapons and armor.

Rulers by Might

Frost giants respect brute strength above all else, and a frost giant’s place in the ordning depends on evidence of physical might, such as superior musculature, scars from battles of renown, or trophies fashioned from the bodies of slain enemies. Tasks such as hunting, childrearing, and crafting are given to giants based on their physical strength and hardiness.

When frost giants of different clans meet and their status is unclear, they wrestle for dominance. Such meetings might resemble festivals where giants cheer on their champions, making bold boasts and challenges. At other times, the informal ceremony can become a chaotic free-for-all where both clans rush into a melee that fells trees, shatters the ice on frozen lakes, and causes avalanches on the snowy mountainsides.

Make War, Not Goods

Though frost giants consider the menial crafting of goods beneath them, carving and leatherwork are valued skills. They make their clothing from the skins and bones of beasts, and carve bone or ivory into jewelry and the handles of weapons and tools. They reuse the weapons and armor of their smaller foes, stringing shields into scale armor and lashing sword blades to wooden hafts to make giant-sized spears. The greatest battle trophies come from conquered dragons, and the greatest frost giant jarls wear armor of dragon scales or wield picks and mauls made of a dragon’s teeth or claws.

Hill Giant

Hill giants are selfish brutes that hunt, forage, and raid in constant search of food. They blunder through hills and forests devouring what they can, bullying smaller creatures into feeding them. Their laziness and dullness would long ago have spelled their end if not for their formidable size and strength.

Primitive

Hill giants dwell in hills and mountain valleys across the world, congregating in steadings built of rough timber or in clusters of well-defended mud-and-wattle huts. Their skins are tan from lives spent lumbering up and down the hilly slopes and dozing beneath the sun. Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks pulled from the earth. The sweat of their bodies adds to the reek of the crude animal skins they wear, poorly stitched together with hair and leather thongs.

Bigger Means Better

In a hill giant’s world, humanoids and animals are easy prey that can be hunted with impunity. Creatures such as dragons and other giants are tough adversaries. Hill giants equate size with power.

Hill giants don’t realize they follow an ordning. They know only that other giants are larger and stronger than they are, which means they are to be obeyed. A hill giant tribe’s chief is usually the biggest giant that can still move about. Only on rare occasion does a hill giant with more brains than bulk use its cunning to gain the favor of giants of higher status, cleverly subverting the social order.

Voracious Eaters

With nothing else to occupy them, hill giants eat as often as possible. A hill giant hunts and forages alone or with a dire wolf companion, so as to not have to share with other tribe members. The giant eats anything that isn’t obviously deadly, such as creatures known to be poisonous. Rotten meat is fair game, though, as are decaying plants and even mud.

Farmers fear and loathe hill giants. Where a predator such as an ankheg might burrow through fields and consume a cow or two before being driven off, a hill giant will consume a whole herd of cattle before moving on to sheep, goats, and chickens, then tearing into fruits, vegetables, and grain. If a farm family is at hand, the giant might snack on them too.

Direct and Deadly

Hill giants’ ability to digest nearly anything has allowed them to survive for eons without needing to adapt and change.

With no culture of their own, hill giants ape the traditions of creatures they manage to observe for a time before eating them. They don’t think about their own size and strength, however. Tribes of hill giants attempting to imitate elves have been known to topple entire forests by trying to live in trees. Others attempting to take over humanoid towns or villages get only as far as the doors and windows of a building, taking out its walls and roof as they attempt to enter.

In conversation, hill giants are blunt and direct, and they have little concept of deception. A hill giant might be fooled into running from another giant if a number of villagers cover themselves in blankets and stand on one another’s shoulders holding a giant-painted pumpkin head. Reasoning with a hill giant is futile, although clever creatures can sometimes encourage a giant to take actions that benefit them.

Raging Bullies

A hill giant that feels as though it has been deceived, insulted, or made into a fool vents its terrible wrath on anything it encounters. Even after smashing those who offended it into pulp, the giant rampages until its rage abates, it notices something more interesting, or it grows hungry.

If a hill giant proclaims itself king over a territory where other humanoids live, it rules strictly by terror and tyranny. Its decisions shift with its mood, and if it forgets the title it bestowed upon itself, it might eat its subjects on a whim.

Stone Giant

Stone giants are reclusive, quiet, and peaceful as long as they are left alone. Their granite-gray skin, gaunt features, and black, sunken eyes endow stone giants with a stern countenance. They are private creatures, hiding their lives and art away from the world.

Inhabitants of a Stone World

Secluded caves are the homes of the stone giants. Cavern networks are their towns, rocky tunnels their roads, and underground streams their waterways. Isolated mountain ranges are their continents, with the vast spans of land between seen as oceans that the stone giants only rarely cross.

In their dark, quiet caves, stone giants wordlessly chip away at elaborate carvings, measuring time in the echoing drip of water into cavern pools. In the deepest chambers of a stone giant settlement, far from the chittering of bats or the patrols paced out by the giants’ cave bear companions, are holy places where silence and darkness are complete. Stone takes on its most sacred quality in these cavern cathedrals, their buttresses and columns carved with a beauty that shames the legendary stonecraft of the dwarves.

Carvers and Seers

Among stone giants, artistry ranks as the greatest virtue. They create intricate murals, paint sprawling murals across cavern walls, and indulge in a wide variety of other artistic disciplines. They esteem stone carving as the greatest of skills.

Stone giants strive to draw shapes out of raw stone, which they believe reveal meaning inspired by their god, Skoraeus Stonebones. The giants appoint the tribe’s best carvers as their leaders, shamans, and prophets. The holy hands of such giants become the hands of the god as they work.

Graceful Athletes

Despite their great size and musculature, stone giants are lithe and graceful. Skilled rock throwers are granted positions of high rank in the giants’ ordning, testing and demonstrating their ability to hurl and catch enormous boulders. Such giants take the front ranks when a tribe has cause to defend its home or attack its enemies. However, even in combat, artistry is key. A stone giant hurling a rock performs not just a feat of brute strength but also one of stunning athleticism and poise.

Dreamers under Sky

Stone giants view the world outside their underground homes as a realm of dreams where nothing is entirely true or real. They behave in the surface world the way humanoids might behave in their own dreams, making little account for their actions and never fully trusting what they see or hear. A promise made above ground need not be kept. Insults can be made without apology. Killing prey or sentient beings is no cause for guilt in the dreaming world beneath the sky.

Stone giants lacking in athletic grace or artistic skill dwell at the fringes of their society, serving as the tribe’s outlying guardians and far-wandering hunters. When trespassers stray too far into the mountain territory of a stone giant clan, those guardians greet them with hurled rocks and showers of splintered stone. Survivors of such encounters spread tales of stone giant violence, never realizing how little those brutes dwelling in the unreal dreaming world resemble their quiet and artistic kin.

Storm Giant

Storm giants are contemplative seers that live in places far removed from mortal civilization. Most have pale purple-gray skin and hair, and glittering emerald eyes. Some rare storm giants are violet-skinned, with deep violet or blue-black hair and silvery gray or purple eyes. They are benevolent and wise unless angered, in response to which the fury of a storm giant can affect the fate of thousands.

Distant Prophet-Kings

Storm giants live in isolated refuges so far above the surface of the world or below the sea that they are beyond the reach of most other creatures. Some make their abodes in cloud-top castles so high that flying dragons appear as specks below. Others live atop mountain peaks that pierce the clouds. Some occupy palaces covered with algae and coral at the bottom of the ocean, or grim fortresses in undersea rifts.

Detached Oracles

Storm giants recall the glory of ancient giant empires forged by the god Annam. They seek to restore what was lost when those empires fell. They don’t compete for status in the ordning but live out the centuries of their existence in contemplative seclusion, watching the starry heavens and the ocean’s depths for signs, symbols, and omens of Annam’s favor.

Storm giants see the events of the world in a wide perspective. They can foretell the rise and fall of kings and empires, see the beginnings and ends of fortune and disaster, and find the patterns within seemingly unrelated events. By reading omens and prophesying, storm giants learn of vast secrets previously unknown and troves of lore utterly forgotten.

Kings will rise and fall, wars will be won and lost, and good and evil will wrestle in conflict. Storm giants have watched these events in the manner of mortal gods over many lifetimes, and they know it is pointless to intervene. Even so, a storm giant might willingly disclose certain secrets to benevolent beings that visit its remote domain with specific purpose. Such creatures must speak and act respectfully, however, for a storm giant roused to anger is a force of utter destruction.

Solitary Lives

Storm giants communicate infrequently with others of their kind. They do so usually to compare signs and omens or engage in a rare courtship. Storm giant parents stay together to raise a child to maturity, then return to the solitary isolation they cherish.

Some humanoid cultures worship storm giants as they would worship lesser gods, creating myths and stories around the giants’ exploits and vast knowledge. A storm giant is governed by the dictates of its conscience, however, and not by any culture’s laws or codes of honor. As such, a storm giant that bends its mind toward greed or gains a taste for petty power can easily become a terrible threat.

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