Giants

[Demesnedenoir]

One must define "giant", LOL. But yes, there are mannish 15-20 feet tall people in the Sister Continents... but they don't figure into any stories quite yet. As a major culture? No. But The Touched is pushing 10 feet tall, trolls and ogres (more mannish than trolls) closer to 12-15 tall... so it depends on what qualifies as giant.

Giant preservation society, I'm sure Andre would've appreciated this, heh heh.

 

[Gotis]

My giants are basically scaled up neanderthals around fifteen to twenty feet tall. Due to their size they get overheated easily, so they tend to stay in colder areas though you'll find the occasional giant in a cave or a forest. They also tend to have tunnel vision. One of my concerns was how a race of giants wouldn't just dominate all us little people. On the northern continent giants do rule, forcing the other races there into paying tribute. The other major concentration of giants is in a huge mountain range that splits the "Europe" side from the "Asia" side of my largest continent. I've decided to ignore the square-cube law for now, though my world building is still in flux.

 

[Futhark]

One must define "giant"

Yeah, I was wondering if we are discussing large humanoids exclusively?

 

[skip.knox]

Humanoid was what I had in mind when I posted the original. People are free to take the thread in other directions. Giant elves? Giant sprites? Or *shudder* giant pixies?

As for my giants, I cheerfully ignore real-world physics as simplistic and tedious. Altearth has giants. Punkt.

Where it gets interesting for me is the practical business of where giants live and how they live. Do they build cities? The notion of twenty-thousand giants living in a giant city, with a whole network of giant villages all around, won't fly. Not realistic. <grin>

Well then, do they build villages? Heck, do they even build houses? Or do they just live in caves (or clouds)? Are they solitary, live in family units, tribes? Every choice has interesting ramifications.

What about agriculture and hunting? They might eat their way through entire valleys ... maybe they're semi-nomadic.

Are they literate? Among humans, literacy appears only with cities, so maybe not. They would have a language, though it could be pretty primitive, especially if they were solitary, coming together only to mate and raise the youngster.

Once I get some basic parameters, I soon start to think about how they relate to other folk. Do they engage in trade? With whom, and how does that work? Do they have any sort of political structure (can't have politics without a polis!), and if so do they have treaties with their neighbors (or among themselves)?

Do they have a sense of humor? What do they do on a Saturday night? What is their sense of justice or sin?

And, of course, how does all that fit into and alongside of humans, dwarves, elves, fae folk, orcs, trolls, dragons, and the rest?

I don't try to answer all that up front. I go for just enough to start working them into a story, then I let the story itself help me clarify fuzzy parts.

So far, I'm finding giants to be difficult. Their size drives me into silly corners. If I have giants, now maybe I need giant horses, and giant houses, and giant carrots to put into giant bowls, which get made by giant blacksmiths working giant forges and ... well, on and on, really. Giant typewriters. You get the idea.

I sort of wanted to work them into my next story. I have a role for them to play up around Lake Lucerne. But they may be more trouble than they're worth.

 

[Saigonnus]

Giants once existed in my world, but no longer. They were simply a larger strain of humans that got to be 9-12 feet tall. They had denser bones than their surviving cousins, so were often used to make weapons. Otherwise, they were not special.

Modern humans in my story world are descendants of them, but shrank over the centuries from food shortages, disease and natural selection.

Of course, most common folks don’t believe in Giants, or even have the inkling that they are descended from them.

 

[Futhark]

skip.knox. A little brainstorming for you -

I think giants could have an agricultural society with giant pumpkins and such. I don’t think they would be as finicky with what they eat as humans are. They may have an extra stomach or two so they can digest more fibrous parts of plants. Husk that corn? No way, thems good eatin’. And their population density would probably be smaller.

That would encourage some building and literature, storehouses, forges, keeping lists, etc. As for houses; maybe not, as they are more resilient to the elements and have few, if any, predators. Their bed is where they lay their head. You could have the standard ‘elders in charge’, but I seem to recall hearing about a sci-fi novel where the young were the leaders as the adults rapidly became mentally slower as they aged. Might be a nice twist.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Food sources would be dependent. If there are herds of mammoth or bison... it seems the classic cold weather giant would be less likely as a pure hunter gatherer, but it depends so much on their size. There might be a good reason that giants are famous for eating people... we breed fast and are big enough to make a decent meal of, heh heh.

 

[Ban]

Food sources would be dependent. If there are herds of mammoth or bison... it seems the classic cold weather giant would be less likely as a pure hunter gatherer, but it depends so much on their size. There might be a good reason that giants are famous for eating people... we breed fast and are big enough to make a decent meal of, heh heh.

Could even be simple sport. Ferrets and cats kill with abandon just to stay sharp and amuse themselves, a long-lived giant may do the same with a human tribe. Just over a much longer period of time.

 

[Orc Knight]

As for food and agriculture, big herd animals like mammoths and elephants might come in handy. Though I admit it's kind of cool in itself which was in part why I used it (Martin and Skryim with the whole mammoth thinking). That and plants and animals in Eld can get big anyways, plus dinosaurs are in the mix as a food source and therefore easier to make cities and build civilizations. Not sure Altearth has those oddities though.

Obviously nothing stopping them from being semi-nomadic or building cities. Building materials may be a bit harder to come by unless they got a green thumber who grows redwoods faster. Or good stone carvers and such. On Eld they carved their original cities from the mountains and the valleys had plentiful food sources, including humans at times.

Just think of what happens if someone comes across their left overs? Chairs that no regular size being can sit in (and to the really short ones, a mystical thing indeed), a house that can hold a village, skeletons of animals and beasts none would touch or thought could be tamed. And who knows, maybe they just can't survive Altearth due to environmental factors. To simply feed a being that big might take a lot and if they came from a civilization where they had things to match them and didn't bring them to earth, like their giant sheep herds, then they may slowly become feral giants who move about and take whatever is available to them.

 

[skip.knox]

Aurochs! If I'm going to have giants, I'm definitely going to have aurochs.

But I also like the idea of letting giants build--they could also use stone--and then have them go extinct, so later generations could find remains. Encountering them as a distant reality could add to a story without the fuss of actually bringing them on stage. The thing about the bones being valuable offers a different take on the usual dragon skin and dragon teeth.

Another notion I had was to have the giants migrate. They have withdrawn to a distant island(s) where they can live in peace. Then they could have this tragic phase where modern hunters go after them as trophies.

 

[Orc Knight]

Leave 'em on an island long enough and you'll have pygmy giants.

Also, yes, aurochs. I've always wanted to try the beef from one.

Edit made because of beef.

 

[JBryden88]

I have giants. Hell, my WIP is about giants. Giants are my heroes AND my villains. Giants in my world are creatures of magic in the sense that they bargained with the spirits of their ancestors for the strength to overthrow their enemies. They became the giants. I still haven't settled on their size, but they need to be able to have half giants with humans on rare occasion. I have them living in the kinds of mountain halls you'd NORMALLY see Dwarves in.

 

[skip.knox]

What do they eat? Do they have farms in those mountain halls? How do they fashion the tools they use to carve out those halls?

Questions like that occupy me from time to time.

 

[Ban]

What do they eat? Do they have farms in those mountain halls? How do they fashion the tools they use to carve out those halls?

Questions like that occupy me from time to time.

Can always make them mineral-eating giants that grab handfuls of rock throughout the day for sustenance, sort of like a whale sifts through enormous amounts of water to get its plankton buffet. Then you can even have heated conflicts between giants and non-giants on the basis of mining rights.

 

[skip.knox]

That made me think of sandworms. The giants would live in warrens of tunnels more than in grand mountain halls. Also, they would not be tool-makers. There's certainly plenty of room for variation here.

 

[KnightOfLain]

In one of the books I'm working on the only account of giants comes from a merchant who traveled to the far east of the main continent to the city of Dis. Located in the center of a major desert the majority of the city is underground and four giants stand around the entrance. Each one is buried up to their knees in sand yet the crests of their heads still easily reach a thousand feet above the ground. For miles around the city balls of fire will randomly fall from the skies through out the day and together the four giants hold up a giant metal shield to protect the city. Supposedly they never so much as grimace in pain when they themselves are struck and that they have gone for centuries without sustenance.

Commentators have noted that for whatever reason when he the account starts describing the city it swishes from prose to poetry and thus argue that the writer may have been taking poetic liberties to describe some kind of architectural structure designed to provide some shade, but considering that this is a world where every 700 years or so the dead refuse to stay dead for a few decades no one really knows.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

One of my worlds was a continent with various nations. Many of them were your standard European fantasy cultures, with slight variations (different gods, language, form of government, etc), but there were also Middle-Eastern inspired nations, a couple of feudal Japan inspired, and so on, all on the same continent (I was a teenager and likely did not think all of that through.)

Every race also had it least one nation of its own, including giants.

 

[Rob Ball]

The Romans claimed that the original inhabitants of Britain were Giants but were chased into Cornwall. Most of the British myths see them either as builders or as the cause of earth works such as mountains or valleys, generally by falling over and or dying. Some were cunning (Finn McCool) and some stupid but I always get the sense from the northern European myths that they represent the past. Creators of but not part of the landscape. In one world I have them exist but having separated themselves off from the 'real' world into a dimension more suitable. I have them as kind and clever but just too big to be around small squashy things. The old English for giant is Ent and I do see giants like Ents, part of an old world, a connection to the past, immensely powerful but wanting nothing to do with the squabbles of the little people.

 

[Eclipse Sovereign]

My giants are more... exotic.

These giants are generally 50-100 feet tall, and are immensely strong and durable. They are virtually immune to damage, with missiles or rail guns barely slowing them down, and can regenerate from any wound as long as their Nucleus is intact. The Nucleus is an orb about 5-6 feet in diameter, with numerous needle-like spines serving to integrate it with the rest of the body. It produces enormous amounts of blood when damaged, and is relatively weak. Giants are mostly empty except for the muscles, bones and skin. They are driven to devour animals and humans, but need no external nutrients.

Some giants, dubbed Traitors, can take the form of humans they’ve eaten. While in this form, they have no knowledge of their true nature. They have caused massive casualties by infiltrating human settlements and activating. This is part of the reason why humanity has no centralized government or single head of state.

The Shifters are the only means to really stop the giants. Their origins are unknown, but there are currently seven in existence. They are also used as terror weapons to maintain control of humanity by the military junta, as nothing short of a nuclear bomb down the throat can reliably do anything. Despite this, the Shifters are human, and sometimes disobey.

 

[TWErvin2]

Giants have played a part in some of my First Civilization Legacy Series novels, but as antagonists. In that world, they are not very common to begin with.

In my LitRPG series, Monsters, Maces and Magic, a giant has been mentioned several times, but he has not appeared, yet.