Grolantor
God of hill giants, hunting, combat, battle, and war Intermediate god
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Domains: Chaos, Competition, Death, Earth, Evil, Hatred, Madness, Mysticism
Symbol: Wooden club with sharp spikes protruding from its head
Grolantor (pronounced GRO-lan-tor or Gro-LÆN-tor) is the evil deity of hill giants, but he also has a ragtag following among frost giants, ogres and ettins. He refuses any title but his given name. Grolantor is strong, and while he can be cunning and dangerous in ambushes, he is willfully stupid. Grolantor refuses to accept stronger giants as superiors, and this stubborn pride forces him into pointless confrontations. He has had to flee, his backside turned into a pincushion from the arrows of a wrathful Hiatea, on more than one occasion. He has enemies among the goblinoid gods, too, and above all among the dwarves, for whom Grolantor has an arbitrary hatred. The deity himself is a miserable specimen, dividing his time between the Abyss and Tarterus, scheming and muttering about slights which are mostly imagined rather than real.
Many years ago, the pair's treachery prompted Annam to prohibit Grolantor and his brother Memnor from involving themselves in the affairs of the Jotunbrud. Now that the All-Father has fled Gudheim, however, his decree is no longer applicable.
Once free to roam Toril in the wake of his father's exile, Grolantor started sending his avatar amongst the Jotunbrud, hoping to persuade the giants to accompany him on his mischievous outings. Naturally, he received the warmest response from the hill giants and frost giants, who most admire the godling's pride, courage, and skill in battle. Neither Stronmaus nor Hiatea is very pleased with Grolantor's activities, though neither feel empowered to put a stop to them.
Grolantor is wholly dedicated to his own conceit. He absolutely refuses to admit that any other being or deity is his superior and tries to instill this attitude in his followers. Without such pride, he believes, Ostoria can never be reborn. Needless to say, such impetuousness has made him a number of enemies, particularly the gods of the dwarven pantheon, most of whom attack Grolantor on sight.
Grolantor frequently sends his avatar amongst his followers in an effort to goad them into venturing out in search of military glory. Unfortunately for the faithful, however, the god is known to lose interest in these battles just as they are reaching their climax, withdrawing the avatar and abandoning his followers in their time of greatest need. Of course, to a true devotee of Grolantor, such occasions are not desertions at all but glorious opportunities to prove one's own mettle.
Grolantor rules the Steading, located in Carceri in the layer of Cathrys. He's one of the more dangerous deities of Carceri, but he's too foolish to use this to his advantage. Though he has access to abilities that'd make any mortal quake in their boots, he seems determined to destroy himself with his willfully stupid schemes. Grolantor splits his time between this plane and the Abyss, where he's got another set of steadings, but he prefers the grim moods of Carceri to the mindless chaos of the Abyss.
The realm of Grolantor encompasses a vast number of hill giants and their petitioner villages. It's set in the savannah, with an obvious dividing line between the realm and the rest of the layer. The scarlet grass ends, giving way to earthy brown hills that watch over the realm like surly sentinels. They cluster in chaotic order, but their inevitable focus is the hill in the middle of the realm, the Steading of Grolantor. The huge Steading itself literally covers miles of territory with its rambling wooden halls. It's all connected, and it's only a single giantish story tall.
Roaming bands of giants scour the realm, bringing down the lions and mammoths that roam here, seeking food for their god's insatiable appetite. If the patrols encounter intruders, it's a toss-up as to whether they kill the interlopers, leave them alone, or bring 'em into Grolantor's steading. If a person's taken to the steading, there's no telling what'll happen to them, they might be food for the god, granted treasure in hopes of winning non-giants to Grolantor's cause, or simply slain outright. If a person's a dwarf, they might as well forget about making it out of here alive, the hill giants of the Steading seek nothing more than the utter extermination of all dwarves.
Black Sheep: Grolantor is considered the least of Annam's six sons, the black sheep of the family who is scorned by his siblings and his parents. Most of Grolantor's problems, however, are of his own doing. Proud of his great strength (his only redeeming quality), Grolantor refuses to recognize the superiority of his older, smarter, stronger siblings, and insists on being treated as their equal. He complains constantly of his endless hunger, but rather than hunt for himself, he snatches food from the plates of his siblings and his parents. This behavior has caused many fights between Grolantor and his siblings, most of which Grolantor has lost. Tales about Grolantor invariably end with his gaining yet another scar on his back, received as he escaped the wrath of a family member who had been pushed too far by Grolantor's insulting boasts and selfishness.
Carry a Big Stick: Grolantor wields a huge club named Dwarfcrusher that hits for 4-40 points of damage and automatically inflicts double damage upon dwarves.
Church Militant: Grolantor's priests take it upon themselves to search for and eradicate perceived weaknesses in their societies. Wherever they hold positions of respect, the clergy constantly urge their chieftains to launch invasions and raiding parties, sometimes in the face of astronomical odds. A priest of Grolantor is never allowed to back down from a battle or challenge. Failure to observe this dictum divests the priest of all powers until he or she undergoes atonement (which usually involves plunging oneself headlong into an even more dangerous battle).
Dumb Muscle: Grolantor's great strength is regarded as his one redeeming quality, since he's a vain and foolish god, one who could be intelligent if only he let himself think about things. Instead, he's said to be willfully stupid, trying to drive home with force what he could've accomplished more effectively with subtlety.
Ethnic God: Grolantor is the god of the hill giants. Some myths suggest that Grolantor created the hill giants by collecting and interbreeding the runts of many earlier giant broods, and then personally polluting this degenerate stock by producing offspring with a series of earth-bound monsters, such as serpents, medusa-like hags, and the hag goddess Cegilune. Similarly, his mating with a monstrous serpent which had a head at either end of her coiled body is often considered to have given rise to the ettins. However, these accounts are not entirely true, as these giant races actually originated from Grolantor's brothers, the hill giants from Ruk, and the ettins from Arno and Julian. That being said, it is nonetheless believed that Grolantor was at least responsible for the degeneration of the modern hill giants and ettins.
Fantastic Racism: Grolantor has an arbitrary hatred of dwarves, and most of the dwarven deities attack him on sight. He usually wears several belts of woven dwarfbeards, and any dwarves caught in his realm are immediately killed.
Small Name, Big Ego: Grolantor stubbornly refuses to accept his siblings and stronger giants as his superiors, instead insisting on being treated as their equal. He also instills this attitude in his followers, with his creed instructing them to never admit weakness or treat other giants as superior. Even though hill giants are ranked dead-last on the Ordning, hill giant shamans refuse to admit that other giants are actually larger than they, preferring to think of them as equals.
Spell My Name with an S: Among the ettins, Grolantor's name is usually spelled slightly differently as Grolettinor or Grelinor.
Stupid Evil: Grolantor is usually represented by other giant races as evil second and stupid first. Although he possesses a certain cunning, Grolantor is willfully stupid to the point of being self-destructive. His stupidity and pride causes him to engage in pointless confrontations and stupid schemes that don't benefit him or his followers.
Villainous Glutton: Grolantor has an endless hunger, and the only thing close to a formalized ritual his priests regularly observe is their unrivaled penchant for gluttonous revelry. Grolantor's hill giant clerics feel it is their duty to regularly prove that they are capable of out-eating any member of the tribe, while the frost giant clerics routinely attempt to outdrink the tribe. Hill giants who become sick are called mouths of Grolantor and are revered as holy objects that embody Grolantor's eternal, aching hunger. Such giants are confined and starved to the point of emaciation before being unleashed during a battle or a raid, and their bile is examined by either a priest or chieftain in an effort to read portents from Grolantor, albeit to no avail, as Grolantor does not grant any form of omen to his priests.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Depending on who he's visiting, Grolantor can appear as a 25' tall hill giant, frost giant, or ettin.
War God: Grolantor is the giant god of war and his creed instructs his worshipers to never admit defeat and crush the weak (i.e. all those smaller than hill giants) underfoot. He often sends avatars to lead hunting and skirmishing bands of hill giants (and much more rarely, ogres), but only for a short time. In any confrontation with a strong enemy, the avatars are cowardly and are known to abandon battles shortly before they conclude. However, if challenged or mocked, his avatars will fight to the death.
Ogres (also Hill Giants and Ettins): Grolantor (war, pride, force).
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