Hill Giant
Hill giants, or hrungnir, are a race of true giants and the chosen people of the Ordning god Gronnar. They are known as being the lowliest of the true giants, for they are plagued with insatiable appetites, pitiful stupidity, and a penchant for lazing about whenever possible.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Hill giants are the smallest of the true giant, yet even they are huge creatures, usually growing to over fifteen feet tall and weighing over a thousand pounds. Their skin ranges from pink to tawny, to dark brown. Many hill giants consider a large, pale hill giant to be the height of beauty, for it suggests that they do not labor for their food but are able to satisfy their enormous appetites.
Hill giants have remarkably small stomachs, and so often cannot extract much of a meal's nutrients. This causes them to feel constantly hungry and slothful, alternating between ravenous anger and dim-witted contentedness. Their bodies do make some effort to preserve what they can of meal—largely fat. This is often to the detriment of a hill giant's health, resulting in a bulbous and slow creature that remains haunted by the ever-present sensation of starvation.
Some have argued that the unique and often counterproductive anatomy of a hill giant is the result of some curse passed down through the generations to eternally plague the hill giant species. Many stories of Gronnar, the hill giant's patron deity, tell of how the youngest of the Ordning got himself into trouble with witches and sorcerers, only to fight his way out of the dangerous situation. This could support the cursed species hypothesis, particularly if it is true that Gronnar is actually representative of his hill giant children, but such a link between morphology and mythology cannot be proven conclusively.
Genetics and Reproduction
Hill giants are largely solitary creatures who loath having to share the spoils of their labors with others. However, whether through cultural heritage or biology, hill giant females adore the pregnancy period and the few years that follows as they nurse their infants from birth to early childhood. During this time, the male hill giant, who is usually smaller than the females, is considered beholdant to the female. Female hill giants do not feel the need to physically dominate their mates into submission—their vague understanding of the Ordning and the hierarchy of giant societies demands this of male hill giants. Male hill giants go forth and forage for food for both themselves, their mates and their children during this time, often begrudgingly but with great tenacity. For other communities that live near hill giants, a pregnant female hill giant can be as destructive a force as any plague or pestilence. Only after the young hill giant is weaned off the mother do the weekly raids cease and the mother abandons the hungry toddler to fend for themselves.
Growth Rate & Stages
Hill giants have the shortest lifespans of any of the true giants, rarely exceeding a century. Hill giants are able to fend for themselves after being weaned off their mothers milk and already stand some six feet tall. Over the next decade, they will nearly triple in size. This is the most dangerous time for a hill giant, as they have not yet reached the size needed to take on whole villages or large prey. However, once they reach adulthood, around age fifteen, the greatest threat to a hill giant's survival isn't other creatures but starvation. Their inability to absorb enough nutrients from their meals means that many hill giants succumb to anemia, scurvy, and infectious diseases that are stronger against a weakened immune system. A hill giant's bloated appearance is as likely to be caused by kwashiorkor as it is to be the result of a fully belly.
Ecology and Habitats
Hill giants dwell in the hills and mountain valleys of Holos, congregating in steadings built of rough timber or in clusters of well-defended mud-and-wattle huts. They are diurnal creatures and so their skin is tan from lives spent lumbering up and down the hill slopes and dozing in the sun. Unlike other giants whom have biological requirements for where the live, hill giants can survive in a variety of climates—so long as there is ample food around for them to consume. Only in the inhospitable deserts, lofty peaks, freezing tundras, and empty steppes do hill giants struggle to survive.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Hill giants are always hungry. It is their natural state and they are not picky about what or how they eat. They are omnivorous and will hunt down anything smaller than them that moves, apart from dire wolves or wargs, whom they keep as hunting companions. Even rotten meat, decaying plants, and nitrogen-rich muck can be eaten in a pinch. Some hill giants swear by eating rocks, claiming they taste good and have a satisfying crunch. These gastroliths do aid in digestion, but it is advisable that hill giants swallow them whole rather than risk cracking their already crooked teeth.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Hill giants have two kinds of social structures. In environments where food is abundant and renewable, hill giants live in small family-led chiefdoms called dens. These dens number between five and twenty individuals. However, when food becomes scarce, hill giants revert to their selfish natures and refuse to share their spoils with the den, resulting in a break down in the community. Those hill giants become solitary wanderers and only interact when mating. Some solitary male hill giant avoid female hill giants because they know that after mating, the male will be committed to gathering food for them as a unit.
A hill giant tribe's chief is almost always the tallest and fattest giant that can still move around. Only on rare occasion does a hill giant with more brains than bulk use their cunning to gain the favor of giants of higher status, cleverly subverting the social order. However, if a hill giant feels that they have been deceived, insult, or made into a fool vents their wrath through terrible violence. Even after beating the offender to a pulp, the giant rampages until their rage abates, it is distracted by something more interesting, or grows hungry or tired.
If a hill giant proclaims themself king over a territory, or if a den decides to assert its influence over a mortal community, hill giants rule strictly by terror and tyranny. Their decisions shift with their mood and if they forget the title they bestowed upon themself, they may end up eating their subjects.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Hill giants are found across Holos in a variety of environments. They live wherever food is abundant as well as places with weak mortal states or few mortals at all, so as to avoid confrontation with large, organized bands of giant-slayers. Places of persistent hill giant habitation include the foothills of the Basceron in Placidia, Savia, and Faleret; the forests and farm country of Czeršia and Reikerk; the lower Varangian Range; the Bashari Timberlands; the rugged parts of Kanesh and the Mashiq; the fertile vales of the Shanindar; the Deccan Plateau; the outskirts of the Tao-Tē Dynasty; the slopes of Rhalpalkan; the Mazabar Highlands; the savannahs of Ulukanda; and many other parts of the largely uncharted continents of Hakoa and Teroa.
Average Intelligence
Hill giants have no "culture" to speak of—they have few traditions or superstitions that do not come from a vestigial faith in the Ordning religion. Most of their knowledge of how to craft weapons or structures comes from observing the settlements they raid. However, unlike ogres, do see a connection between themselves and the other true giants, though their understanding of the Ordning is limited to their hope that upon their deaths they shall enter the Pastures of Paradise, where each day sees a feast greater than the last.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Hill giants do have some perception abilities and are proficient in the skill. However, they are easily fooled and their doleful nature makes even spotting a threat not a guarantee of an effective defense for a hill giant.
Civilization and Culture
Beauty Ideals
Hill giants prize food and leisure above all other things and so they find those whom appear to have a great deal to eat and a great deal of free time to be be the most beautiful of their kind. This usually means that the paler skinned and fatter the hill giant, the more beautiful they are considered.
Relationship Ideals
Male hill giants are smaller than females and are expected to provide for female mothers during their pregnancy and for the years that their child remains on their mother's milk. Many male hill giants resent having to share the spoils of their labors, even with their mates, but do so begrudgingly according to custom.
Average Technological Level
Hill giants have only the dimmest conception of crafting and no cultural understanding of art. Their weapons are uprooted trees and rocks pulled from the earth. They wear only crude animal skins and leather loincloths stitched together with hair. When they build structures, they are ramshackle yet secure against a giant's weight and usually made of crude timber or wattle-and-daub mudbrick.
History
Like all true giants, the story of the hill giants begins at the end of the Dawn Era, when the young god Jötu helped the deities of the Heavenly Council seal the Dread Dragoness Valdra within the Material Plane's Underdark during the War of the Dawn. Unlike these other deities, legend claims Jötu foresaw Valdra's escape from the Material Plane and a great conflict that would culminate in the end of the Holosian world as we know it. He established the Ordning, a way of life designed to prepare him and his children and his people, the giants, for this Twilight War. Each of his children took those giants that had stood with Jötu at the beginning and infused them with their own personalities, virtues, and flaws.
The last of Jötu's children Gronnar. It is said that while his mother, Vaynera, was using the Old Magic to see beyond Jötu's prophecy of an Era of Twilight, Gronnar grew frightened within her womb and burst forth, killing the mortal sorceress and forever clouding the final moments of the Tale of Twilight to creation. This made Gronnar a creature of basal, bestial instincts. At first, Jötu was prepared to exile his youngest child as he had with Thenn, his other son born of ill circumstance. But as Vaynera lay dying, she cradled her infant and made Jötu promise not to take his fury out on the child for "his blood shall anoint the Time After Twilight." None know precisely what this means, but after the burial of his dear wife, Jötu crafted a realm for Gronnar called the Pastures of Paradise, where all creatures and mortals of low birth will go to upon their death. Here, each day is marked by great feasts, drinking, gaming, singing, and celebration.
Gronnar then went on to forge the hill giants, his patron race of true giants. He endowed them with the things he liked most and gave them their prodigious size, their monstrous appetites, their mighty arms and straight-forward minds. Some say the first hill giants were the greatest of the giant species, until the other children of Jötu corrupted them. Regardless, once set upon the Material Plane, the children of Gronnar went on to call every continent their home and become the most famed and feared of all giants among the common mortals.
Historical Figures
The hill giant Pyrémondias is known from "Pyrémondias & the Raven" for actually not remaining a hill giant but for being transformed into the first protocyclopean and the forebearer of the Fomorian and the Cyclops races.
Common Myths and Legends
Though most hill giants do not tell stories or tales, in Varskogan culture—which borrows heavily from the faith of the giants—Gronnar, the patron of hill giants, is regarded as the patron of slaves and farmers and appears in many legends.
Many of these stories in giant culture depict the brothers Thenn, Styr, and Gronnar, with Thenn acting as the antagonist, Styr as the wise but cautious counselor, and Gronnar as the impulsive, brash hero. In these stories, Gronnar is depicted as dimwitted yet powerful so that despite the scheming of Thenn, the Hill Creature often triumphs in spite of himself to comedic effect. One such tale, the Mirkul Edda, tells the story of Styr and his brother Gronnar traveling across Varangia to visit the realm of the Feywild and the Fomorian giants that live there.
But perhaps the best example of Gronnar triumphing against the odds is found in the foundational text, the Tale of Twilight. It is believed that of all the gods of the Ordning, it is Gronnar who will be the one to finally end the Twilight War by finally slaying Valdra and bring about the enlightenment of all mortals and even to himself. As a result of this highly anticipated event, some mortal cultures whom follow parts of the Ordning actually give tribute to hill giants as a way of honoring their creator.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Hill giants rarely keep pets—they see most animals as livestock or creatures to be hunted for food. However, solitary hill giants may employ the help of dire wolves or wargs to assist them in flushing out prey. Some advanced hill giant communities do keep livestock, though the size of their herds fluctuates drastically with the rumblings of their stomachs. Animals bred by hill giants include sheep, markhors, pigs, goats, cattle, and aurochs. Smaller domesticated animals aren't enough to satisfy a hill giant's hunger and so aren't usually considered worth breeding.
The stench of a hill giant den can be so foul it may attract other scavengers to their lairs. Oozes, carrion crawlers, ropers, and otyughs are tolerated by hill giants, or sometimes seen as curiosities. Ghouls and clever ghasts also sometimes attack hill giant dens and are thus less welcome.
by Chris Rahn
Genetic Ancestor(s)
Origin/Ancestry
Giant
Lifespan
50-100 years
Average Height
4.67-4.9 m (15'4"-16 ft.)
Average Weight
430-640 kg (940-1400 lbs)
Average Physique
Hill giants are considered Huge creatures.
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Pale pinkish to tanned and tawny to deep brown.
Related Ethnicities
Related Myths
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