Glory of the Giants
Myths, fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy literature throughout the real world depict a tremendous range of giants. Some tales suggest that the humans of past ages were gigantic, and the relatively small stature of present-day humans is a mark of their degeneracy. Others imagine remote realms—cloud castles or lost continents—where Brobdingnagian people dwell, set apart from their puny relatives.
In the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, the story of the giants is a tragic one that echoes this whole range of fantasy and myth. Begotten by the mighty god Annam, who intended them to rule the worlds with wisdom as well as might, giants have fallen far short of the lofty destiny their progenitor imagined for them. Now supplanted by myriad smaller peoples of the worlds, giants live apart in remote steadings, undersea palaces, subterranean realms, and flying citadels.
Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants explores giants' role in D&D and their realms across the worlds. It delves into the history of the giants and details the places where they live in isolation, as well as the ruins they left behind in their decline. Our guide in this exploration is the wizard Bigby, a former apprentice of Mordenkainen and creator of the spell Bigby's hand. Though he began his career determined to use magic to dominate and control others, he eventually changed his ways and has worked hard to make amends for his past villainy. One factor that influenced his change of heart was Bigby's recurring encounters with Diancastra, a demigod revered by many giants. Throughout this book, we see glimpses into the relationship between these two mighty figures of legend.
This introduction presents a portion of the saga of Diancastra. The saga is a window into important aspects of giants' life and thought, and it introduces themes that reappear throughout the book: Annam's retreat from his children, the giants' fall from grace, and the hope some giants hold for a future restoration of their ancient glory.
1 introduces giant-themed options for adventurers, including a subclass that allows characters to tap into the magic of giants (the Path of the Giant barbarian), two giant-related backgrounds (the giant foundling and the rune carver), and a wide selection of feats. The chapter also includes roleplaying suggestions to help you connect a character of any class to the grandeur of giants.
2 offers advice and tables to help Dungeon Masters use giants in play. It covers roleplaying tips, an overview of the hierarchical structure of the ordning and giants' religion, and ideas about giants' organizations and societies.
3 presents tools to help Dungeon Masters build encounters, adventures, and whole campaigns around giants. The chapter includes tables you can use to populate the giants' enclaves presented in chapter 4.
4 discusses the places where giants dwell: the remote enclaves and secret hideaways where they cling to the remnants of their ancient glory. Maps are a centerpiece of the chapter, presenting a range of sites steeped in giants' supernatural power that you can drop into any campaign.
5 details the treasures characters might find as they deal with giants or explore giants' hidden realms. These treasures range from the contents of a wandering giant's bag to the mightiest relics of giants' ancient civilization. The chapter includes more than two dozen new magic items.
6 provides stat blocks and lore for a tremendous variety of giants. The chapter includes new giant kinds (such as the 6) and new variations on the giants found in the Monster Manual. A range of other enormous creatures, from towering dinosaurs to magical giant geese, can help DMs populate a giant-sized environment.
Dear reader,
This book represents a journey for me, and I am excited to take your hand and lead you along the same path. I never had much interest in giants, though I certainly respected their strength. My various encounters with Diancastra—who is no less than a daughter of Annam, the All-Father of the giants!—opened my eyes to the glories, the deep magic, and the wisdom of these ancient people.
I've asked Diancastra to review this text, and her notes appear throughout the book where her perspective can enlarge upon my own. I trust that her insight and my erudition will expand your horizons as she has broadened mine.
Annam and the Giants
The saga of the demigod Diancastra is an epic poem treasured by skalds and storytellers among all kinds of giants. The portion of the saga excerpted at the start of this book is among its most popular scenes, describing how Diancastra convinced her father to imbue her with divinity even though her mother was a mortal giant.
The story is unusual among the sagas of the giants in its description of Annam's deeds "in time's dawning." It boldly claims Annam collected the fragments of the First World—the original world of the Material Plane, created by the primordial dragons Bahamut and Tiamat—and contributed in some way to their transformation into the Material Plane as it exists today with its myriad worlds. Other sagas claim Annam was similarly instrumental in the creation of the Inner Planes, slowly sorting the tumult of the Elemental Chaos until the four Elemental Planes took shape. These sagas explain the giants' close ties to the elemental forces of air, earth, fire, and water by pointing to Annam's early efforts in the Elemental Planes.
Diancastra's Saga also summarizes the central tragedy of giantkind's long history: Annam intended the giants to rule over all the worlds of the Material Plane, but his six sons—the gods Stronmaus, Memnor, Surtur, Thrym, Skoraeus, and Grolantor—failed to live up to their father's expectations for them. (Diancastra calls her brothers "boorish and bumbling." Notably, Annam does not refute her on that point.) Annam's disappointment in his sons caused him to retreat to a hidden realm within the Outlands, far removed from the Material Plane and the domains of other gods.
A key moment in Diancastra's Saga is Annam's challenge to his daughter. He dismisses her deeds as "pranks and rebellion" and defies Diancastra to bring him "pure perfection," some item that for all his craft and skill he is unable to improve. He clearly intends this to be an impossible task.
But Diancastra surprises him. Journeying to the outermost reaches of the Elemental Chaos, where unshaped elements form a tumult of matter and energy, she claims a mote of raw chaos and brings it to her father. Annam quickly shapes it, but he is unsatisfied with the result; he shapes it again and again, but—as Diancastra points out—each of his efforts to craft something from the chaos ends up reducing its raw potential into mere actuality.
The saga makes a point that concerns more than Diancastra's cleverness. In granting his daughter's request for divinity, Annam acknowledges that the same chaotic, changeable potential exists within his sons and their descendants. Ultimately, this acknowledgment holds out the possibility that Annam's faith in his descendants might be restored and the All-Father might one day be drawn from his self-imposed exile. That glimmer of hope, faint as it might be, is a significant motivation for those giants who hope to reclaim their people's ancient glory, and it might account for the saga's popularity among giants of all kinds.
A good saga, well-told, reveals a great deal about the teller. If you're lucky and self-aware, it can also show you something about yourself. Only rarely does it tell you much worth knowing about its subject among its alliteration and kennings and such. That said, Bigby presented me with several versions of my saga, and I insisted he use this one. The interpretation he presents here is a reasonable one.
Giantkind
The descendants of Annam are the various creatures of the Giant creature type. The precise details of genealogy linking Annam to these Giants are a matter of mythology, and myths vary from world to world and from one teller to another. Most tellings make a distinction between the main families of giants who are descended from the sons of Annam and the various other creatures whose origins are murkier.
Heirs of Annam
As described in the Monster Manual, the ordning ranks the six main families of giants. Each family's place in the ordning corresponds to the birth order of the associated son of Annam: Stronmaus, Annam's firstborn, is regarded as the progenitor of storm giants, and Grolantor, progenitor of hill giants, is Annam's youngest son. Thus, the ordning neatly encompasses and arranges storm giants, cloud giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, and hill giants by connecting them to Stronmaus, Memnor, Surtur, Thrym, Skoraeus, and Grolantor, respectively.
That neat structure overlooks the daughters of Annam: Hiatea, Iallanis, and Diancastra. Indeed, these goddesses and their worshipers often push against the boundaries of the ordning, both within each kind of giant and in the overall rankings of the giant families. No giants count the goddesses as ancestors, but that helps ensure their popularity extends across giantkind.
Fomorians
The structure of the ordning also overlooks the fomorians and their progenitor, Karontor, who is usually described as Grolantor's older twin. Just as Annam banished Karontor from the family of the gods for his part in inciting the fomorians to assault the Feywild, the All-Father also excluded the fomorians from the ordning.
Death Giants
Once cloud giants, death giants (introduced in 6 of this book) technically have the same rank in the ordning as the other descendants of Memnor. However, by turning away from the gods of their ancestors to serve the Raven Queen, they have abdicated their place in the ordning.
Other Giants
The other creatures of the Giant type, who are not included in the category of "giants," are connected to Annam but not descended from him.
Trolls and Ogres
The monstrous god Vaprak is connected to Annam in some myths, though he is never regarded as a proper son of Annam. The Dwarvish Saga of Gnarldan Steelshield describes how Vaprak arose from Annam's blood when it was spilled on one of the worlds he tended, and the trolls in turn arose from Vaprak's blood shed in a similar manner. The fensirs introduced in 6 of this book are descended from trolls. Ogres are sometimes described as descendants of Vaprak, giving them a distant and distorted connection to Annam. Oni are often said to be distantly related to ogres, but at this point they are more fiendish than Giant.
Cyclopes
Contradictory legends explain the origin of cyclopes, and none of those legends are told by cyclopes themselves (who generally display little interest in the question of their origins and their connection to the gods). Some myths lump them in with ogres as descendants of Vaprak, while others claim they were once ogres who joined the ancient fomorians' invasion of the Feywild and thus shared in fomorians' banishment to the Underdark and the resulting corruption of their physical forms. One myth suggests cyclopes are descendants of Karontor like the fomorians, but stemming from a line that began after Karontor's banishment rather than before it.
Ettins
A widespread folktale suggests ettins were once orcs who were transformed into their giant-like form by a blessing of the demon lord Demogorgon. If that were true, though, ettins would have no connection to Annam and couldn't be considered kin of the giants. Most giants acknowledge ettins as distant relatives and consider them descendants of Grolantor (and thus distant cousins of hill giants) or of hill giants who were transformed by Demogorgon.
Goliaths and Firbolgs
In addition to all these creatures classed as Giants, two Humanoid kinds also claim distant kinship to Annam's heirs. 6 and 6 appear in 6 of this book and also appear as character races in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. Their connection to Annam is undoubtedly distant, but some individuals among both peoples hold giants in high regard and even worship the divine children of Annam—especially his daughters.
Giants of Many Worlds
The saga of Diancastra hints that giants' presence throughout myriad worlds of the Material Plane might be attributable to Annam's role in the shaping of those worlds. Giants believe they were meant to rule the worlds of the Material Plane, and on many worlds, historical records show they once did. But their glory days are in the inconceivably ancient past, long before any smaller folk ever dreamed of writing histories.
Forgotten Realms
The origins of the giants on the world of Toril lie far in the past, long before any Humanoid peoples proliferated. According to the giants' sagas, Annam fathered the first giants and guided his sons in establishing an empire called Ostoria. In the sagas, this age is called the Time of Giants.
The age is also called the Time of Dragons, because dragons arose and flourished in the same period. Some say the giants were able to build Ostoria only because conflict among the dragons left power vacuums the giants filled.
After four millennia of coexistence and intermittent conflict, a mighty red dragon named Garyx—sometimes seen as a god among dragons—goaded the dragons into war with the giants of Ostoria. The conflict is remembered as the Thousand-Year War, though it almost certainly involved long periods of quiet interrupted by battles of intense savagery and widespread destruction. By the end of this conflict, Ostoria was reduced to a shadow of its former glory—and Annam turned his back on his descendants in disappointment.
For nearly thirty thousand years since the fall of Ostoria, giants have largely lived in seclusion, keeping as far as possible from the spread of smaller peoples' settlements. From time to time, giants lent their strength to conflicts among other folk. Charismatic giants occasionally forged short-lived kingdoms in ultimately futile efforts to restore the glory of Ostoria, but giants have never again been a driving force in the history of the world as they were during the Dawn Ages.
Greyhawk
If the giants of Oerth had a mighty empire founded by Annam in the distant past, that fact is not recorded in any of the extant histories of the world. Even so, many giants of Greyhawk revere the sons of Annam, though others have been lured into the service of demon lords or various elder evils.
Dragonlance
During the Age of Dreams, the newly created peoples of Krynn awoke to the first dawn of the world. The first to awaken were a Giant folk known as irda, whose myths claimed they were shaped by the hands of the gods. (Some interpreters of these myths identify the dragon queen Takhisis as their creator, while giant scholars on other worlds believe Annam must have had a part in their creation.) The irda quickly established the first mighty nation of the young world, subjugating humans as their empire grew. The irda ruled for thousands of years, but they fell into decadent cruelty and their empire gradually declined until their human servitors overthrew them.
Eberron
From the ashes of a mythic war between angelic and demonic forces that left the primeval world in ruins, an empire of giants was born on the mysterious continent of Xen'drik. The giants dominated Xen'drik for millennia, ruling over many smaller peoples—including elves who chafed under their rule. When the might of the giants began to wane, the elves rebelled. As the giants prepared to use world-shattering magic to smite the elves, the dragons of far-off Argonnessen attacked Xen'drik and brought about the fall of the giants' civilization.
Some giants still live among the ruins of their ancient civilization, though both their numbers and their sophistication are greatly diminished since the fall of their empire. Other giants left Xen'drik and now live alongside smaller peoples. Giants have been known to study in the universities of the Five Nations, to lead bands of marauders in Droaam, and to trade with dwarf miners far beneath the surface of the Mror Holds.
The giants of Eberron do not tell legends of Annam the All-Father, nor do they adhere to the rigid structure of the ordning. This might be another example of the effects of Eberron's isolation from the rest of the multiverse, but it is also possible that Annam abandoned his children at the fall of their ancient empire, just as he did on other worlds, and they have since forgotten him entirely.