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On the Ecology of the Giant

"Yes, I would say we have a big problem" - Todis Aldan, Neo-
Empyrean Archaeologist

Nomenclature: Giants, Titans, Big Folk, Goliaths

Description: Large Humanoids

T hings that are known:

T hey are large creatures that resemble Men.

T hey vary in height f rom 8' to the size of small mountains
T hey are f ond of throwing things

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

Many people dif f erentiate the giants by the terrain in which they live. T hat
really has little af f ect on the nature of the giant
T hey are hated by certain breeds of Gem Dragons
T he terrain actually dif f erentiates the race of giant. Cloud giants are
elves, Fire giants are dwarves, etc.
Fire giants are actually ancient dwarven gods. T hey f led their home plane where they were the smallest
creatures and came here. To their surprise they were much larger then even the largest creatures here.
Giants traditionally live in sky castles. T here, they mine the clouds f or silver
Giants are all living on a clock. As they age they gradually turn to stone
Stone giants are giants that have f ound a way to overcome this curse

T hey are a proto-stage of titans or gods.

T hey are a proto-stage of titans or gods.
Gigantic ruins suggest they may have at one time ruled the world
Certain giants, like f ire giants, are the result of ancient
arcane experiments that ruined their civilization
T he giants are natures only response to the giant dire cow
Giants are bestial creatures, collections of the worst emotions
of man, too large to be contained in his small f orm. T hey
enjoy eating the f lesh of creatures that beg not to be eaten.
Instead of cooking their f ood, they torture it f or f lavor.
Giants consume as humanity does, just proportional to their
size. T his is beyond any sustainable rate, leading to f ighting
with other races.
T hat consumption is intentional the giants being
the harbingers of the apocalypse bringing f amine and leaving
destruction in their wake.
T he giants are a rare species who's size determine their
intelligence. Once they were wise titans who's heads touched faile 35 o n De viant Art (NSFW)

the clouds.
Giants are good eating
T heir toe jam is surprisingly sweet and delicious. Served with giant toes it is a royal delicacy
T hey were cursed by the Mother Maggot and have been shrunken and debased. Hill giants, Ogres and
other brutes are all that is lef t of their once majestic race
Giants retain magic enough to extract the energy they need f or f ood. Some giants of course have simply
adapted to eating anything, usually stone. T his works out f ine until the weather patterns start to change
as the mountains are ground down to nothing. Eventually they move below ground and begin to
consume the earth

T hey are the result of gods mating with mortals.

T hey carry traits of their divine f athers, of ten
seeing themselves f it to rule. However this is a
terrible idea, as they are a nexus f or f orces both
mortal and divine that prevent them f rom being
balanced or reliable
All giants are slaves to their addictions, either
alcoholism or worse
Giants are a f irst draf t of creation, messy and
still mixed with the primal elements. T hey envy
and hate the pure humans who are f ree f rom
elemental bondage
Tramp ie r
Giants are simply men of f ame and power. As you
accomplish more and more deeds, you absorb the energy of shrines and artif acts of the ancients and
your stature grows. Eventually this could lead to divinity.
Giants are animist avatars that become associated with an area. T hey manif est around large natural
structures, mountains, volcanoes, storms, hills. . .

Some manif est around temporary things. Fog giants in the

Some manif est around temporary things. Fog giants in the
morning mist that f ade away as the sun rises
Like most f antasy taxonomy, the sages have only covered the
most common breeds. T heir are cactus giants who stand still in
the desert, coral giants who lie in wait in oceans, giants of
waves of grain. . .
T hey survive by drinking the blood of men. T he magical f orce
inside the blood provides hundreds of thousands of calories. It
is also why giants have developed such a keen sense of smell
Everything large f ades. T he largest f ade the quickest. Giants
were the f irst to leave the mortal realms, f ollowed by ogres.
Now humans and demi-humans are f ading and the time of
goblins is coming. f ollowing them even smaller creatures will
dominate. Giants are only the echo of the past and regret; tales
of a world more f illed with magic and truth then the one that
exists now
Giants are f ed not by f ood, but by their elements. T hey are
guardians of the natural world, a literal physical def ense Tramp ie r

mechanism.
T hey kill humans of course, because humans are locusts, all consuming creatures outside of the natural
order.

T he giants are hired by the gods. T hey are masters of reality building
and dimensional manipulation. T hey come f rom a realm beyond that
knowable by humanity. Af ter a lif etime of service, they retire content
to be revered as creatures of ancient wisdom in the shadow realms
they once helped construct
Giants are a f orm of lycanthropy
A little know subset of arcane lore stipulates that any elemental
subject to summoning by the wizard is allowed to return and engage
in some f orm of obscene congress to obtain key genetic materials.
Once completed the elemental returns and gestates a humanoid. T he
resulting humanoid is a giant, a creature that one day the elementals
hope will replace all lif e with their own chosen race
Giants are actually domestic spirits. Ettins come to vent wrath upon
those who anger you, Ogres of rebellion, and true giants of
emotions more powerf ul. Fire giants are a miasmas of rage, Mountain
giants depression. T hey are emotions made manif est.
T his is also the reason the giants are so human looking, they are
simply manif estations of what lies within all men
Because giants are simply psychic projections, you don't f ight them by dodging them physically. You
manif est a psychic projection of a giant version of yourself to f ight them. T hese projections may or may
not look like giant bad-ass robots
T his is why dwarves and half lings get their bonuses versus giants, because they are so f ull of
themselves and overconf ident

When the wickedness of humanity becomes too great,

it bleeds over into the f ey kingdoms. T hey, being wise
and long lived, collect and concentrate this evil until it
reaches an intolerable level. T hey birth this
destruction into a giant f orm which then haunts the
kingdom that created it. Giants are the conscience of
man
T hey are pridef ul and arrogant creatures
Tiny dimensional beings wanted to visit, so they took
a f riendly meat f orm of the enormous humans they
saw. T hey overdid the size a little. Oops.
T hey began by trying to pretend they were normal
sized, but that didn't work very well. Now they are
stuck and regret their initial miscalculation. T hey keep
trying ways both physical (hunching over) and magical
to become smaller. Many have just become bitter, f rustrated and angry and lash out
Wizards who lost control of incantations like 'enlarge' and 'f laming sphere' of ten f ound themselves
stuck in strange magical f orms. T hose that were stuck this way were hunted and eagerly vivisected by
their peers.
T his led to the current situation today, those crusty nutjuob social pariahs who couldn't even master
magic and then were hunted by their peers were of f to a misanthropic start. T hings did not get better as
time marched on.

Giants come f rom a f allen other world. In this f ar

realm, everything was much larger and giants were
unaware of their size.
A great disaster came as gravity became heavier and
all the giants plants died. T he f ew giants that remain
are brutes, who stoop while they scavenge what is
lef t. Only the smallest and least capable were able to
survive by hibernating only waking to consume and
destroy huge amounts of f ood and human lands
bef ore sleeping again.
T hey are recruited as siege weapons and can catch
rocks. T his is of ten a surprise to the catapult team
that targeted them with the rock
Giants do not actually have a stable size. When you f ace a giant in the distance, they appear to be
huge monstrosities But if you f ace one bravely in combat, you discover it is not so large. T he giant
shrinks even f urther when struck, until f inally it shrinks down upon death to a mere eight or nine f eet tall
Giants keep giant animals as pets. Giant goats, beavers, and hamsters mainly
T here are six true giants, all the rest are ref lections

Cloud
Fire
Frost
Hill
Stone
 Storm

Giants are said to have magical powers to control the weather, levitate, hide themselves in f og, or more

Giants themselves are kind of boring in combat. T hey are large single targets, usually easy to hit and not very
dangerous. Players are af raid of them, but generally in classic games they are not much of a threat.

T his doesn't have to be the case though. T he f ollowing are some suggestions f or how to give giants more
interesting attacks.

T he sweep attack: Hit multiple man-sized targets and knock them back or prone
T he throw: Pick up a single man-sized target and hurl them
T he bite: Pick up a single man-sized target and bite of f his head
T he rock hurl: A ranged attack
T he earth stomp: Stop the ground causing everyone within a radius to make a saving throw or f all over
T he shout: A scream that stuns all targets in a cone
T he hot air: A blast of wind that knocks targets over, extinguishes f lame, and prevents ranged attacks. In
giants over a certain threshold of hit dice (or cold-natured) can also be a f reezing attack