Ithyqonian Frost Giants
"Are you lost in the frost?" A lone giant speaks, a cloud of chill air escaping his blue-lipped mouth.
In the distance, through a thick fog, you can see more of them coming out a cave lit by blue light. Almost like a portal to the netherworld is it’s eerie glow. You can feel fear growing in your belly. These aren’t normal giants. Their skin is blue, their hair and eyes silver. Stone jewelry hangs about their bodies making them look like brickwork monsters.
"Tiny man," The leader speaks, icicles breaking and falling from his jowls. "What brings you so far north?"
Full Description
Frost Giant of the Ithyqonian Bloodline stand roughly 30 feet tall and weight over 6 tons. With tight light blue skin, you can see the darker blue veins near their eyes and on their powerful arms. They have long silver hair and beards which are often braided and decorated with stone chunks mined from their snow-capped mountains.
These Frost Giants live in the frozen mountains known as Ithyqonos' Last Grasp. They typically carve large chunks of ice and stone out of the mountain-side, with their ancestral tools made of bone and stone, to create practically designed frosty caverns that have been the death of many explorers.
The Giants are generally friendly to strangers. The exception to this rule is those bearing fire, or wearing brightly-colored clothing. They prefer sober colors of dark blue, grey, black, and white. While dark green and mustard yellow are acceptable, red, yellow, pink, or neon green would invoke a violent reaction. The Frost Giants can not stand bright colors or bright light of any color other than blue, which is the color of their rime-fire. If they see the Colors of Gyransithor, as they call them, the colors of the ancient Fire Giant who felled Ithyqonos, they will attack the source of the insult with brutal force until is has been squished into an unrecognizable pulp.
The Rime-Fire is the only magic used by the Ithyqonian Frost Giants, and it is, quite literally, in their blood. When a wound it made, it oozes a chilling fire of blue luminescence, that burns up like standard lamp oil when exposed to cold air. The Giants actually inflict minor wounds upon themselves to create fires by which to see, as real flame is anathema to them. When exposed to the flesh of non-Ithyqonians the fire causes severe pain and frost-bite-like injuries that can literally wither and destory parts of a normal man's body.
The Ithyqonians have a long history of oral epic involving the rule of the massive and legendary Ithyqonos over the world during the last ice age. When asked what happened to end such a mighty reign, they respond negatively as any would who supported an usurped king. They tell of The Melter, Gyransithor, who put frost to flame and began to purge the world of ice. They also tell of a incredible battle between two impossibly gigantic men, one of fire, one of frost, that ended with the defeat of both. There is a volcano located in the southern isles called Gyransithor's Encumbrance. This is said to be the grave of the fire giant, and there may be a similar species of flaming giant men living there as well.
However, the Ithyqonians have long lived in the secluded Ithyqonian Peaks, far from small-folk, guarding their legacy with fervor. They say that All That is Cold, Belongs to Ithyqonos, and will go out and claim frozen travellers as bizarre decorations for their other-wise simple caves.
For food, they hunt the feral, and often just as gigantic as themselves, animals of the untamed Frozen North. Their diet consist of the greasy meats of wooly mammoths and saber-toothed cats, which they are knowingly careful not to hunt to extinction, supplemented with the coarse yellow grass that breaks through the snow as the only vegetation around. They do not cook with rime-fire, and it is unknown if this is possible, impossible, or against certain codes of conduct for the giants.
There is another strange piece about these giants. No one has yet been able to get deep enough into their society to discover how many of them there are, or even what their social customs are. The appearance of an Ithyqonian Frost Giant seems to be very rare, and only occurs extremely deep in the peaks of Ithyqonos' Last Grasp, and even if you are lucky enough to stay with the clan for a night, they are likely to move on, to another, cave soon after you depart. You are far more likely to find a normal frost giant, than an Ithyqonian one, and there are no reported incidents of finding both at the same time.
No one has ever seen an Ithyqonian Frost Giant child or women, either. They are all men of over thirty feet tall, which is typically how you can tell they are Ithyqonian, being over ten feet taller than a typical frost giant and much more massive than their assumed cousins.
Truly, the Legend of Ithyqonos and the Last Ice Age is a tale that may never be fully understood by non-giants.
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? Responses (9)
30 feet is a lotta giant, but 10 tons? danG! I have no issue with it, just wondering just how dense those frosty bones are I guess. I think I'll like this one.
Yup, this could turn out good.
As it stands, its a good start, but a little more in the line of how they might be expected to behave when you interact with them would be good. What do they generally think of the little men? Will they strike you down for bearing a torch or having a campfire? Do they make merry at their camps when you encounter them, or are they a dour bunch?
Also, to Muro's comment: We expect that a creature five times taller, five times thicker, and five times wider than a natural human should weigh not five times what a man does but 125 times his weight. At six foot, a human is 'supposed' to weigh about 165 pounds, so we expect a 30 foot giant to weigh about ten and a half tons.
Rather than painting a picture, it throws up questions.
As for their dimensions, they'd have to be disproportionately thicker than a simply enlarged human, as strength of bone increases with its cross-sectional area, but the burden placed upon it with the volume of flesh. Hence, why elephants are so stocky.
I like it. The rime-fire is interesting, as is their mythology.
Like Siren, after reading the summary I was curious about how these giants react to men and their torches.
A nice take on the frost Giant take. As for dimensions, I don't worry about them for fantasy, because as soon as you do, Dragons, really Giant Bugs, etc, become impossible or twisted from our intent.
If more was added, I'd like more on their motivations and culture :)
An interesting culture, though a bad one to spring on PCs who like wearing gaudily-colored adventuring outfits. Perhaps a little bit of warning from the townfolk would be in order before the PCs set out into the wilderness. Also, the rime-fire intrigues me. Could some frost-giant blood be"harvested" and kept in a vial for later use? Would be fun to use it as an impromptu grenade . . .
Nice.
Tools out of bone and stone...giant bones? Bones of their ancestors? Their size makes me think they might use mammoth bones or other large creatures you mentioned but I wonder if using their own people's bones might make it more interesting. Could be an interesting concept for a creation of weapons too if they could get a hold of some bones.