Creatures: Giants

Cloud giants

Cloud giants can float at a movement of 18. They often appear albino, with pink veins and blue-streaked hair. They wear long, flowing robes, and love music and food—and sometimes that food is other intelligent races, such as humans and Halflings. They are extremely proud and narcissistic. They maintain precise lists of the relative status of all cloud giants, who is allowed to float at what heights, and so on.

Cloud giants live in great cloudstone castles atop huge white clouds. Their castles are filled with pale marble arches and columns; the floors are obscured in rivers of mist. The cloud giant’s castle will often be guarded by a pride of giant cats, such as giant lions or lynxes, who are loyal and friendly to their master. Cloud giants will often be served by lesser creatures, whose loyalty depends on how they are treated.

Cloud giants can make their clouds rain and thunder at will, and can make their clouds spit lightning to the ground, up to one per minute. These bolts affect an area five yards wide and cause 5d8 points damage. Victims can make an evasion roll for half damage. Their clouds can rain up to ten days within any month; thunderstorms can last up to forty-eight hours within any month.

Common giants

Hill giants and mountain giants are cannibals, though they’re more intelligent about it than ogres. They are misshapen, though not as much as ogres, and typically wear primitive clothing made from giant animal hides. Their clubs are often little more than tree branches or trunks. Giants will also throw stones, with a range of 20 (hill giants) or 30 (mountain giants).

Giants live in caves or rough wooden “castles”. Mountain giants may also construct rough stone castles out of boulders. In any area inhabited by giants, there tend to be several small communities, with one chief wielding power as the “king of all giants”.

Because of their low intelligence, hill giants can sometimes be taken advantage of by smaller, more mentally agile creatures. They have been known to join bands of Gnome, Halfling, or Goblin brigands. Mountain giants have more normal intelligence. They’re smart enough to know that they are easily tricked, and tend to eat outsiders before any trouble can come of it.

Giants: Grey men

Grey men resemble huge boulders when they’re sleeping or resting. Their skin is a touch, stone-like grey. They are very slow physically, which makes them appear mentally slow, but they have normal intelligence. They will trade in the hides of giant creatures and enjoy shiny, heavy things.

When they speak with creatures other than grey men, they will use very short, simple sentences, so that their slow speech doesn’t take too much time; of course, this intelligent choice makes them appear less intelligent to the “faster” races.

Grey men travel alone, but will gather for mysterious celebrations at seemingly arbitrary times every couple of years.

Giants: Ogres

Misshapen, their skin covered in warts, their nails long as talons and sharp as knives, ogres are known for their ferocity, their eating habits, and their size. ogres are usually greedy and always hungry. They are voracious meat-eaters. They prefer the flesh of men, Elves, and other intelligent human-like creatures. They live in caves and in thick woods, and avoid sunlight if possible. They have a penalty of one to attack rolls, health rolls, and perception rolls in sunlight.

Ogres can and do wear armor, often wearing leather, increasing their defense by another two points. They will also use weapons, preferring spears and clubs (which are resized for them). They generally have a bonus of 1 to attack and 2 to damage due to strength.

Ogres travel and live in small groups. They squabble and bicker in large groups before finally breaking apart or killing each other until the group is smaller. They tend also to find themselves in conflict with Orcs who, while weaker, are better organized and use Goblins as war fodder. Ogres occasionally enslave such lesser creatures but find it difficult to refrain from eating them. When faced with a common enemy, especially a Good enemy, Ogres and Orcs can forget their differences, fight together, and return to squabbling when the enemy is on the spit.

Giants: Orcs

Orcs are ugly humanoids with faces vaguely like a tusked pig (mostly it is their snout that gives this impression). Orcs tend to live in badlands and craggy hills. The term orc derives from the Roman word for “demon”, for the appearance of the Orc resembles many cultures’ imagination of the appearance of demons. That they prefer darkness and shun light did not help their public relations.

Where Orcs lead Goblins, they are often called hobgoblins.

Orcs will attack with their hands if necessary, but almost always use weapons. They organize themselves into clans with strict hierarchies of the strong ruling the weak—or, as is usually the case, the strong ruling the less strong. The weak do not survive in Orc society.

Orcs act with a penalty of 1 to attack during daylight.

Storm giants

The storm giant’s lightning bolt does 6d8 points damage in a bolt 200 yards long and four yards wide. It may be used three times per day. An evasion roll allows half damage. They can summon or clear storms, including wind storms, thunderstorms, and hail storms, at any time. The storms take one minute to fully form. A storm giant is never harmed by falling: the wind will come to their rescue. They can leap up to a thousand yards in any direction.

They often commune with dragons, great owls, and phoenixes within their great stone castles. Their castle is often guarded by rocs or gryphons of above normal intelligence for their species.

Storm giants are often knowledgeable about current events and styles in the human world, and will wear clothing appropriate for the modern era or one generation back.

Giants: Trolls

Cursed to live in darkness, these ugly, hairy giants are fearsome creatures. Their faces and skin are scaled, hairy, and bumpy. They live in caves, coming out only at night. Some have retreated deeper into the earth and rarely come to the surface. These are the most hopeless, for like their Ogre cousins they prefer the flesh of intelligent day-dwelling creatures.

Sunlight significantly harms them. In sunlight they have a penalty of two to attack, health, and perception. Even under overcast skies they suffer a penalty of one to those rolls. In true sunlight they lose one survival every round, slowly turning to a black, pitted stone.

In times of darkness, the trolls often ally themselves with Orcs and Ogres. They look forward to the day that the sun is blotted out forever, and the trolls will return to the surface to reclaim their own. Trolls are generally quite stupid, but are mildly cunning and very powerful. They live for centuries and zealously guard the treasures of those they have killed.