Giant

Ancient empires once cast tall shadows over a world that quaked beneath the giants’ feet. In those lost days, these great peoples were slayers of mighty beasts, dreamers, crafters, and kings, but their kind fell from glory long ago and their diminished status in global politics has only been further cemented by their bitter rivalry with Dragons which has led to many cataclysmic wars, one such being the imperial conquest of Drakkar by dragons which killed many giants and caused The Draconic Exodus. However, even though many of them are now divided among secluded clans scattered throughout the world, the giants maintain the customs, traditions, and order of old.
Called jötnar (sing. jötun) in their own tongue, each of the main giant races—the himinjötnar (sky giants), eldjötnar (fire giants), hrímjötnar (rime giants), hólljötnar (hill giants), bergjötnar (mountain giants), and hretjötnar (tempest 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. The half-fey half-giant Nefeles which once ruled the Etherian continent for the Faerir, their divine faerie lords in the fey realm, are perceived by giants as noble but misguided brethren who by their mixed birthright and innately torn loyalties cannot be fully trusted. Giantkin, the humanoid descendants of giant blood, are rare in Etheria specifically due to the relative lack of giants in that continent, and are globally perceived with a paternalistic eye by giants, deemed like favored pets or as natural curiosities.   
Giants belong to a caste structure called the stigveldi. Based on social class and highly organized, the stigveldi assigns a social rank to each individual giant. By understanding its place in the stigveldi, each giant knows which other giants are inferior or superior to it, since no two giants are equal. Nefeles and giantkin, due to their incomplete giant heritage, are generally considered to exist beyond the reach and order of the stigveldi. 
According to the stigveldi, the types of giants are ranked as thus, in descending order: hretjötnar (tempest giants), himinjötnar (sky giants), hrímjötnar (rime giants), eldjötnar (fire giants), bergjötnar (mountain giants), and hólljötnar (hill giants). A description of each of the giant races can be found below:

1. Hretjötnar - Around 26' in height with light green, violet, or black skin and dark green or blue hair and silver eyes, tempest giants are contemplative seers that live in places far removed from mortal civilization. They 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. Tempest 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, tempest giants learn of vast secrets previously unknown and troves of lore utterly forgotten. Tempest giants communicate infrequently with others of their kind. They do so usually to compare signs and omens or engage in a rare courtship. Tempest giants tend to be benevolent and wise unless angered, in response to which the fury of a tempest giant can affect the fate of thousands.
2. Himinjötnar - Between 22' to 25' in height with milky white, gray, or light sky blue skin and silvery white or brass hair and eyes, sky giants are spread to the winds, encompassing vast areas of the world and residing in extravagant homes atop high mountaintops in or above a near-perpetual cloud layer. In times of need, scattered sky giant families band together as a unified clan. However, they can seldom do so quickly. Although sky giants are lower in the strigveldi than tempest giants, the reclusive tempest giants rarely engage with the rest of giantkind. As a result, many sky giants see themselves as having the highest status and power among the giant races. A sky giant earns its place in the strigveldi by the treasure it accumulates, the wealth it wears, and the gifts it bestows on other sky giants. However, value is only one part of the assessment. The extravagances a sky giant wears or places about its home must also be beautiful or wondrous. Sacks of gold or gems are worth less to a sky giant than the jewelry that might be crafted from those materials, creating treasures that bring esteem to a sky giant’s household. Moreover, sky giants tend to be an easygoing people, highly creative, masters at strategizing, and in possession of a great appreciation for music. They often consider life to be a series of obstacles which are meant to be met with joy rather than sorrow and overcome with applications of skill. As a result, they can at times be perceived as flippant or uncaring of the consequences of their actions on "lesser" creatures.
3. Hrímjötnar - Between 18' to 23' feet in height with blue, gray, or white skin, blue or white hair, and blue eyes, rime giants are intelligent and secretive, using runic applications of Anima  to divine the secrets of the world and jealously guarding them against the curiosity of outsiders. Rime giants claim high mountain peaks and glacier fields for their homes where they build ice palaces and spend eons in solitude. Their impregnable mountaintop fortresses afford them clear views of the lights of the Nyktheon and their mystical secrets. They rarely leave their homelands and have no interest in raiding unlike many of their lesser kin, but they have a special relationship with any mortals who are gifted with prophesy or are oracles of the Deity / Gods who travel to them occasionally to trade information with friendly rime giants.
4. Eldjötnar - Between 17' to 19' feet in height with coal-dark skin and flaming-orange or red hair and eyes, fire giants tend to be brutal and impulsive, sharing their kins' physical strength and resilience but not valuing much of the forethought that those giants ranking higher in the stigveldi tend to value. Fire giants dwell in families and clans in establishments built around and inside volcanoes or near magma-filled caverns. From birth, a fire giant is taught to embrace a legacy of war. At the cradle, its parents chant songs of battle. Fire giants tend to be reckless, jealous, and competitive—like colossal children who are envious of their superior kindreds' secret knowledge but unable to grasp it for themselves due to their relative lack of resources and talent for prophesying.
5. Bergjötnar - Between 13' to 18' in height with stony-gray skin, mountain giants call secluded caves their homes. 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 mountain giants only rarely cross. Among mountain giants, artistry ranks as the greatest virtue. They create intricate tattoos, 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. Despite their great size and musculature, mountain giants are lithe and graceful. Skilled rock throwers are granted positions of high rank in the giants’ stigveldi, 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. Mountain 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. Many of Etheria's Giantkin descend from mountain giants of Drakkar. The most common type of mountain giant indigenous to Etheria is the artisanal stone giant while the much rarer many-armed hecatoncheir are among the most powerful.
6. Hólljötnar - Between 10' to 14' in height and with a penchant for gluttony, hill giants dwell in hills and mountain valleys across the world, congregating in shelters built of rough timber or in clusters of well-defended mud-and-wattle huts. Their skins typically are tan from lives spent lumbering up and down the hilly slopes and dozing beneath the sun. 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. With little else to occupy them, hill giants eat as often as possible. A hill giant hunts and forages alone or with a partner, 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. The hill giants’ ability to digest nearly anything has allowed them to survive for eons as relative savages, eating and breeding in the hills like animals. They have never needed to adapt and change, so their minds and emotions remain simple and undeveloped. Hill giants are indigenous to Etheria and elsewhere, existing in several subraces, such as the one-eyed cyclopes, the river-dwelling trolls, the swamp-hunting ogres, the ancient ur-cyclopes, and the two-headed ettin.  

Basic Information

Anatomy

The appearance of giants varies according to the type of giant, but they are generally humanoid in appearance, just much larger. Their bone structure is more dense than that of most of humanoids and their skin is much tougher, granting them enhanced endurance, fortitude, and ability to amass muscle mass. Giants are immune to almost all diseases which naturally afflict mortals and relatedly seem to have a resistance to poisons that would otherwise kill many humanoids many times over.

Genetics and Reproduction

A female giant has a pregnancy of between nine and fifteen months, depending on the type of giant. Their offspring reach maturity in around fifty years. 
Although their ancestors were immortal, giant life spans decreased with each generation. The life expectancy of a giant as of the time of The Draconic Exodus was believed to be between 300 and 500 years depending on race, although some sources stated that tempest and mountain giants could live several centuries longer on average. The oldest giants at the time of the exodus were well over 1000 years old. Because their lifespans were so much longer than most other mortals, giants are remembered now as having been slow to make decisions and refused to be rushed in any aspect of their lives.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Like Dragons, giants live in tribes or familes, but their numbers are limited because of their size and the difficulty of finding plentiful food. Beyond this, all giants are organized by the stigveldi which, beyond imposing a racial and interpersonal hierarchy on giants, dictates that the leader of a tribe and the leader's will have to be ordinarily obeyed.

Average Intelligence

Giants, or "jötun" in their own tongue, are intelligent peoples with their own set of cultures and customs. The intelligence varies according to the type of giant (and as with humans, with the individual), but most are at least on a humanoid level of intellect, with the exception of hólljötnar (hill giants). As a result, most giants see themselves as superior to all other creatures, a belief which is exacerbated by the stigveldi. This perception is also reinforced but their large stature as they are much larger than many other species, leading them to talk down to and patronize smaller folk, regarding them as unimportant.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Most giants have superior senses to most humanoids. In general, they can see and hear twice as well, and the sky giant, hill giant and mountain giant species had a particularly good sense of smell. Some have the capacity to see well in low light or total darkness as well, such as fire, rime, and tempest giants.

Civilization and Culture

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

Ancestry is important to giants. Most giants can trace their lineage back to Episophon the Cloud-Gazer, the alleged first giant born from the chaos of the Titans, and this lineage is recited formally when introducing oneself to other giants. Once a relationship has been established between giants, whether it was amiable or hostile, this would be continued further down the lineage. Therefore, reciting one's lineage helped to dictate the relationship that would be established.

Common Taboos

Giants have a different sense of good and evil than most other creatures. A "good" act for a giant is an act that honors a giant's deity or family, displays bravery, or honors another "good" giant, regardless of the consequences. An "evil" act is one of cowardice, stealing, betraying a giant's deity, family or trust. Violating the stigveldi is also considered to be an "evil" act. If a giant were to commit enough minor infractions or violate a large moral, social, or societal rule, exile or execution are often determined to be appropriate punishments.

Historical Figures

Without contradiction, Episophon the Cloud-Gazer is the most important historical figure in giant culture, history, and life. Said to be the first giant, Episophon was a wise visionary and inventor-hero among his kind who was blessed with the ability to see beyond the veil and prognosticate future events. As such, he has been situated in giant religious life as the god of giants, the father of their race, and the pinnacle of giant achievement. It was also Episophon who established the stigveldi, bringing an end to interracial conflict and feuds between giants, and for this reason, infractions against the stigveldi are perceived as not only legal and societal infractions but also moral and religious ones.