Giant

Man-like creatures named for their impressive size, giants are one of the closest things to human the world has ever seen. The fact that such humanoid creatures could reach such massive size is awe striking in its own right, and giants are known for being grand and, in the same way an elephant is, beautiful.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Giants are humanoid in shape, standing upright with two legs and arms, but have key differences that differentiate them from humanity. Due to their size, and the fact a humanoid body structure isn’t intended to support such weight, giants have been forced to have a number of adaptations to support their weight. Their hips are the same width as their shoulders, giving them a stout appearance, and their legs are elephantine: straight and sturdy, with squat, wide, rounded feet. They also have large, chambered stomachs, giving them a potbellied look to their already stout frame.

Biological Traits

As there is variation in human diversity, so too are there distinctive giant races that are separated by various physiological characteristics and by the regions and habitats they inhabit:

• The most northern of the giants are known as the fir bolg, which are also one of the largest of the giant races. These giants can be spotted by their thick coat of hair covering their entire bodies, except for their faces from the nose to their forehead, the palms of their hands, and the soles of their feet.

• The only giant race that approaches the fir bolg in height are the goliaths. These beasts have a thin, scraggly coat of hair, which still covers most of their bodies but not all, and tend to have tan skin.

• The giants after them in height are known as the fomorians, a race of ugly creatures often described as monstrosities. These giants have a fuzzy coat of thin, coarse hair all across their bodies, bulging eyebrow ridges, long, beaky noses, and are notorious for their appetites, being among the more carnivorous of the giants even hunting fir bolgs.

• The only giants that rival them in that category are, ironically, the smallest breed, known as ogres. Ogres are known for their ugliness and savagery and have the thinnest coats of the giants, being so thin and patchy that one has to get close to see it.

Between the four distinct types of giants, there appear to be two distinct lineages, consisting of the fir bolg and goliaths and the fomorians and ogre respectively. Little is known about the evolution of giants, but it seems based on fossils that the former lineage is closer in anatomy to the basal conditions, which would make the latter lineage more derived. At what point this divergence occurred and why is unknown, but the fomorians and ogres, despite being closer to each other than the fir bolgs and goliaths, are not particularly close to each other, suggesting either they changed rapidly or the group is quite old. One hotly contested issue among naturalists with regards to the relations of giants is how distant the fir bolgs and goliaths are to each other, with some arguing they are so similar to each other that they are more likely to be regional variations than distinct but related species.

Genetics and Reproduction

Giants reproduce as most mammals do, via intercourse of a male and female. Due to their massive size, giant young are much more developed than human babies at birth, and as such require a longer pregnancy, generally ranging between 20 and 22 months.

Growth Rate & Stages

Giants are born the weight of a pony or small horse and are much more developed than human newborns, to account for the needs required to grow to such a large size. Giant offspring are usually able to walk within two to three weeks of being born, and eating solid food within a year. Giants stay with their parents until they reach sexual maturity at age 20, wherein they strike out on their own and search for a partner of their very own.

Ecology and Habitats

• The fir bolg and fomorians prefer cold, chilly environments, as it suits their massive size well. They tend to live in heavily forested areas, with rich plant life.
• Ogres, on the other hand, are adapted to warmer regions, generally living in Mediterranean type locations. However, they only live in places with incredibly rich resources, which can satiate the needs of many ogres at once.
• Goliaths prefer something akin to both such habitats, liking temperate areas that are rich and bountiful. While coniferous forests will do, mixed or deciduous trees are preferable and favored.

Regardless of their type and habitat, giants are almost never prey-animals, as taking down creatures of such a size would not only have a high risk of injury but also entail a large expenditure of energy. As such, if giants are preyed upon its usually the young and only by the largest and hardiest of predators.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Because of their large size, giants lack the stealthy abilities required of a predator, and as such much of their diets are mostly plant matter. As such, giants tend to have large guts, a necessity for most herbivores to digest the plants they consume.
As they’re so tall and grass and bushes are so low to the ground, giants take on the role of high browsers, feeding off the leaves, fruits, and nuts of the trees. They aren’t particularly picky about what they eat off the trees either, often grabbing large handfuls of leaves, fruits, nuts, and buds and shoving into their mouths, or ripping entire branches off trees and chewing them into bits. Giants have also been observed tearing the outer bark off trees to get at the softer inner bark.
Carnivorous habits are usually as dietary supplements, with giants not being the most apt predators. If they consume flesh, they usually bully other predators off of kills they make, such as wolves. The only species known to hunt are the fomorians and ogres: fomorians are known to be the only predators of the fir bolgs that share their region and ogres have been documented killing domestic catoblepones for since ancient times. Intergiant predation has been studied by naturalists for some time, with both mystical and purely natural explanations put forth. As it is only commonly seen between fomorians and Kiaglachtian fir bolgs, it seems most likely that the ancestors of the fomorians have had a predator prey relationship for quite some time, though why they are not present beyond Kialegcht when fir bolgs are much more widespread is unknown.
Giants of the fir bolg/goliath lineage lean more towards herbivory and are generally not particularly predatory. However, an exception can be drawn of the extinct Jötnar of Hadorstadir, of which accounts of predatory behavior are not only common, but seem to be quite consistent: these giants were known to hunt large game and were the only predators on the island able to take down adult mammoths, which they seem to have preferred as prey.

Behaviour

As is to be expected, the behaviors of giants is partially influenced by the two lineages, though there are plenty of nuances to this. The general trend though is that the fir bolg/goliath lineage are generally docile and tend to ignore most other animals, while the fomorian/ogre lineage is more aggressive and likely to attack other animals. This is at least partially due to the more predatory nature of the latter grouping, with those giants having behaviors and instinct for killing and a decent percentage of meat making up their diets, as the extinct Jötnar- despite being closer to fir bolgs and goliaths -are also noted as having been aggressive towards people, though those accounts may be more than slightly biased.

Additional Information

Social Structure

The social structure of giants varies from species to species, but they all overlap to a certain degree:

• Fir bolg and goliaths travel in small family groups, consisting of a male a female, and their young. These groups are tightly knit and close to each other, as the two types of giants are monogamous and mate for life. Offspring stay with their parents until they are old enough to survive on their own, at which point they leave the family group and start one of their own.

• Fomorians, on the other hand, have a very different social structure than the above mentioned giants, with males largely being solitary. While young males tend to form small bachelor groups which provide much need social stimulation, these groups are tenuous and tend to be lead by the strongest male regardless of relations. When males feel the need to breed, they leave the bachelor group and roam in search of females willing to mate. They fight furiously for the right to breed and many fomorian males have been known to die of injuries sustained in these bouts. The victors will stay with a female for only a few days, however, mating with them multiple times before they leave her to do the same process all over again.

• Ogre males control small harems of multiple females, all of which they breed with, obviously excluding their own offspring. These harems are ruled harshly and cruelly, with ogres being very clingy of their ogressess and doing everything in their power to keep them from leaving, including discipline of females who show too much interest in passing males. However, ogressess have been to turn down males who are vicious over males who are kind, so cruelty isn’t universal among the species. Regardless of how he treats his harem, however, an ogre protects his harem savagely and with no hesitation, attacking any challenger who dares to oppose him.

Domestication

Giants have never been truly domesticated, but occasionally they have been tamed for use by humans. This is similar to the taming of elephants, as well they are unfit for domestication, they make fine use while they are alive. The best way to tame a giant is how most wild animals are tamed: to raise it from a juvenile. Should one acquire a giant and manage to successfully provide for its great needs, one can make great use of their size and intelligence.

Uses, Products & Exploitation

Giants that have been tamed are mainly used to perform physical task humans cannot do. This includes feats of heavy lifting for construction and destruction of unwanted buildings and structures, to make way for something else. The most intuitive and creative of people, however, have turned giants into machines of warfare, outfitting and training them to become the ultimate siege engines. A giant trained in use of a sling can crumble walls better than any trebuchet and one with enough momentum can splinter the doors of fortified locations better than any battering ram.

Facial characteristics

Giant faces eerily similar to that of humans and so they can be unsettling for some to look at. The differences are that all giants have large brow ridges, sloping foreheads, and large cheekbones, which attach powerful jaw muscles. While a giant’s head is small compared to its body, the noticeably smaller braincase that they have makes it look even smaller.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Giants are found all across Kadagard, with each species occupying different regions of the continent. Giants are thus known in some capacity throughout the entire continent, with each culture having their own stories about giants. While each culture also has a different name for giants, these names are in truth applied to one of the four types of giants.

• The fir bolg live in the north, past the Allfire Peaks particularly in the region of Brainey with the richness of the Wodenwood. They do inhabit the surrounding regions, as well, living as far north as to hit taiga and as far west as the mountains that separate Kiaglatch, with a sustainable population even being present in the region.

• Fomorians are almost entirely restricted to the isolated region of Kiaglatch and the regions of the north that border it. These giants have evolved to that region and have a distinct look about them and are known as the “ogres of the north.”

• Goliaths live just south of the Allfire and many of the regions of the eastern coast. One such area is Remana, which is where they are most known and most well established.

• Ogres are the most widespread of the giants, stretching from the west coast to the southern tip of the eastern coast, inhabiting the near entirety of the most southern portions of the continent. The life in the rocky hills of Korgosht, all the way down to the southernmost island of the Karnica Stretch.

Average Intelligence

Whether giants are comparable in intelligence to humans is a heated subject of debate among scholars, and is tied into a larger issue of whether or not giants should or should not be considered human. They are more intelligent than other animals, being comparable to a chimpanzee. Whether or not giants have a culture or a language is a subject of major debate among scholars and philosophers that has been raging for ages.
If they do possess a culture, it’s a very simple one that isn’t material: no evidence has been found of giants creating or understanding the concept of art, or even tools like that which ancient humans used. Observed giant usage of tools is that of branches as weapons and rocks to open bark in trees, very limited and primitive. Without art or more advanced tools, it is thus difficult to tell whether giants have a religion, unifying belief, or other traits that indicate a culture, but something similar to ceremony has not been observed, or at least not able to be proven.
Likewise, if giants have a language, it is one tailored to their biology and thus one that would be difficult for humans to learn and speak. Additionally, it would most likely difficult to understand by normal humans, and thus, hard to tell it was a language at all. It also depends on where one draws the line between language and animalistic sounds: some philosophers believe that the sounds animals can make should be considered their languages, but others and many scholars would disagree. With these caveats in mind, it is difficult to discern whether giants are truly human, or are just incredibly intelligent animals.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Most giants do not possess any extraordinary senses, being comparable in sensory capabilities to humans. The exception is the ogre, which is known for having a good sense of smell, though not an incredible one.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Jötun

Origin/Ancestry

Hominid

Lifespan

78-89 years

Average Height

Fir Bolg-13’-14’3”
Fomorian-12’-13’
Goliath-13’-14’
Ogre-9’-10’

Geographic Distribution

• Brianey
• Iron Hills
• Kadagard
• Karnica Stretch
• Kiaglatch
• Korgosht
• Remaea