Ostoria

In an age before human and elf, when all dragons were young, Annam the All-Father put the first giants upon the world. These giants were reflections of his divine offspring and also children of the world, birthed from the marrow of mountains, the hot blood of volcanoes, and the breath of hurricanes. Annam conceived the giants to be masters of the world. He gave them great height so they would look down on all they ruled. He created a hierarchy for his children — the ordning — so that all would know their status with respect to one another, and would know who among them stood nearest the knee of the All-Father. United in purpose, Annam’s children built Ostoria, the fabled empire of the giants, where they lived according to the ordning. Storm giants ruled all from both below and above. They held sway over the oceans from undersea fortresses and lorded over the land from castles in the sky. Cloud giants built immense floating cities and served the storm giants as their strong right hands. Stone giants and fire giants settled on the mountaintops and in the sprawling caverns beneath them, where they carved and forged the greatest works of giant art and craft. Frost giants defended Ostoria with the might of their arms, not just on the chilly peaks and glaciers but on every frontier. Hill giants sprawled over all other lands, subjugating lesser creatures through brute force.
Beginning of the End All told, the empire of Ostoria dominated the world for four millennia before its decline began in a genocidal struggle against the dragons that came to be known as the Thousand-Year War. Dragons had lived in and around Ostoria in relative peace since the empire’s foundation. Conflicts between dragons and giants in those days were personal, not tribal or regional, and usually involved bragging rights or hunting territory. Differences were settled by individual contests of might, wits, or skill. That situation persisted for generations, until the red dragon Garyx inflamed the greed and envy in its followers by railing against the giants’ prosperity, and they rose up in response. At least, that’s what most giants believed to have happened. No one really knows any longer what set off the war. But once battle began, the long-standing peace between giants and dragons crumbled everywhere. Foes tore at each others’ throats in all parts of Ostoria. There were no front lines or safe havens, only endless ambushes, sieges, and atrocities committed against giants and dragons alike. Eventually, none were left alive on either side who had seen the war’s beginning. Age and brutality had claimed them all, and the few giants and dragons then alive had spent their entire existence at war. The Thousand-Year War didn’t truly end so much as it wasted away through attrition and exhaustion. The realm that could still be called Ostoria survived only far in the north. A few outposts and fragment kingdoms, such as the fire giants’ Helligheim and the stone giants’ Nedeheim, clung to life in deep caverns and hidden valleys. In the millennia that followed, even these places fell, and what remained of Ostorian territory became barren, shrouded in ice as thick as mountains. Since that time, many lesser races have attained greatness and themselves fallen into obscurity. Few hints of the giants’ once-great empire have survived the relentless accumulation of years. But the giants remember. Their empire and their unified purpose are long gone, but a yearning for a return to the greatness that was once theirs burns in all their memories.