Joghat

The Joghat are gone. All that is left are the Giants, and they are only a shadow of their former selves.

- Xhar'Neza

Joghat and Giants are the same beings, but Xhar‘Neza makes an interesting distinction. Giants in the current age, are solitary beings. There numbers are few and far between, so only rarely do they form communities. Usually, when talking about Joghat one refers to the Giant civilization of eons past, when their kind had settled all of Maelan. At that stage there was no talk of humans, elves, or dwarves. There were only the Joghat and the Dragons.

Basic Information

The Joghat come in a variety of sizes and colors, depending on their type. There are 6 major types: Hill, Stone, Fire, Frost, Cloud, and Storm. Nowadays, these types usually do not mingle anymore, but keep to their own kind. In the past at the height of Joghat civilization, however, they mixed and matched freely. Depending on their type, a Joghat's appearance can drastically change. In general Joghat can live up to 500 years. Some Stone Giants have reportedly lived for even longer.

Joghat	Average Size	Skin Color	Hair Color
Hill	4,5 m	tan - brown	brown - black
Stone	5 m	dark gray	no hair
Fire	5 m	smoke	red - orange
Frost	6 m	blue	white - blue
Cloud	7 m	gray - white	white - grey - silver
Storm	8 m	green - blue	grey - white - blue

Habitat

Generally, every type of Joghut can survive in any kind of environment. However, each type obviously has a personal preference.

Joghat	Environment
Hill	Rolling Hills, Forests and Plains
Stone	Hills, Mountains, and Undergrounds
Fire	Volcanoes, Scorching Deserts, and Undergrounds
Frost	Glaciers, Snow Deserts, Mountaintops
Cloud	Mountains
Storm	Mountains and Oceans

Social Structure

Nowadays the Joghut do not have any specific social structure of note, as they mostly live on their own. In small communities the strucure is determined by that community. At the height of their society they followed a strict caste system.

The Storm Giants, served as prophets and seers and religious authorities. They were in the highest cast. However, the Storm Giants were not the ones in charge.

Cloud Giants were the nobles among the Joghat and were the ones dictating daily lives and setting the laws. However, when a Storm Giant spoke they better had to listen. Disrespecting a member of a higher cast was usually a death sentence.

After the Cloud Giants came the Frost Giants, the warriors and hunters of the Joghat. Joghat of any kind could fight, but the Frost Giants trained their whole life for this purpose. First the Dragons, and later the Denizens of the Far Realm, offered plenty of opportunities for fights.

The Fire Giants were next in line. Feeling naturally at ease around fire and heat, they were ideal for working the forges. As such they were the smiths of Joghat society. Every Giant weapon in the olden days, was made from Fire Giant hands.

Below the Fire Giants were the Stone Giants, who had a natuarl affinity to working with stone. As such they were the builders of Joghat society. Most buildings were constructed by Stone Giant hands. Even smaller settlements, where no Stone Giant actually lived, often hired a few from far away to come and build their most important structures. Some of their buildings stand until today, millenia later, as if time had just pas them by.

At the lowest end of the caste system were the Hill Giants, the farmers of Joghat society. They made sure all the other Joghat were well fed.

Within a caste status is determined by merit. The mightiest Frost Giant warrior would have been in charge of other Frost Giants. However, even the lowest Frost Giant would have a higher status, than the best smith of the Fire Giants. Within the caste of Cloud Giants, merit was determined by wealth. The wealthiest Cloud Giant was in charge of all Joghat, even though they were still lower in status than any Storm Giant. The Storm Giants, however, preferred to counsel rather than dictate.

Giants in the current era are direct descendants of the Joghat of the past. However, that does not make them experts on the time that was. All they can do is rely on the same texts that are available to the rest of us. They just have a tendancy to study those texts a lot more.

Joghat Scale

Click the image for a larger version.

New Giants

With time, new kinds of Giants started to emerge. Ogres and Ettins for instance belong to Giant kind, but are not Joghat. Joghat specifically refer to the 6 primary Giants: Storm, Cloud, Frost, Fire, Stone and Hill. Ogres and Ettins did not exist back then, at least there are no records of them from that time. Goliath are also supposedely descendants of Stone Giants.

Joghat Terminology

Korungr

The Korungr were the wealthiest Cloud Giant and their 3 Storm Giant counselors. They were in charge of Joghat society.

Drakvir

The Drakvir were a specific supgroup of Joghat, that specialized in hunting dragons. They were made up of Joghat of different castes so they could work as an independantly as possible when they were out in the wilds.

Naviri

A group of renegade Joghat abondoning the caste system to better fight the invaders of the Far Realm.

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Clans

As Joghat were spread all across Maelan, they were further divided into clans. A Joghat clan was a collection of Joghat from all castes within a specific region. Within every clan, the usual caste system was respected.

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