Stone Giant
Stone giants, or bjargrisa, are a race of true giants and the chosen people of the Ordning god Styr. They are famed for their artistry, rich oral histories, and isolationism. Unlike other giants, whom are known from ancient stories or their violent interactions with other races, stone giants appear ubiquitous across mortal cultures as neutral, wise, and stoic figures. They are creatures of fascinating duality, at once friendly and social with individuals yet shunning any interaction with the mortal world at large. In many ways, stone giants are the most mortal of all the true giants, with each bjargrisa community having a unique culture and not unified by a cohesive set of traits endemic to their race as a whole.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Stone giants stand as tall as their fire and frost cousins, but are considerably more lithe and dextrous. This appears in contrast to their outward appearance—stone giants look as though they themselves are made of stone. They have granite-grey skin, dark black eyes, and gaunt features that endow them with a certain stern countenance. Contemporary stone giants do not grow hair, though oral histories claim that at least some individuals appear to have had long locks and thick beards during the Dawn or Mithril Era.
Stone giant bodies don't just look like they are made of stone. Stone giant bones have large deposits of minerals such as calcium, iron, copper, cobalt, magnesium and even lead. This helps them maintain their slower metabolism but it means that a large portion of their diet includes eating rocks or soils that have high concentrations of these minerals.
Stone giants have a significantly slower metabolism than most other animals and giants. This is because most of the stone giant's time in quiet mediation or though the continued practice of carving and storytelling. Stone giants are exceptionally athletic, but in their everyday lives, stone giants move very slowly, taking their time as they move through their homes. Their bodies are remarkably efficient at processing calories to help them survive on small amounts of food and this allows them to go long periods of time without eating, often when they become lost in their work.
Genetics and Reproduction
Over the course of their long lives, stone giants typically bear no more than three to four children. The gestation period stone giants typically lasts around three years.
Growth Rate & Stages
Stone giants are the longest lived of all giants, reaching sexual maturity only after a century. They can live to be be over five hundred years old, though some claim they can reach upwards of eight hundred years in the right conditions. When a stone giant nears the end of their lives, they become Linjenstein, or a "Stone Ancestor." On their deathbed, the elder stone giant's family carries them to a sacred chamber within the rocks, also called the Linjenstein. Their bodies are propped up, usually alongside other Linjenstein that have passed on to the other side. When the stone giant finally expires, the sacred magic of the chamber slowly begins to calcify their bodies until they themselves are turned completely to stone. Eventually, they become stalagmites or even pillars within the chamber. Other stone giants, particularly a tribe's shaman, may enter the chamber to seek wisdom from the Linjenstein or to pray to these ancestral spirits.
Ecology and Habitats
Stone giants are fundamentally subterranean creatures, feeling most at home in deep caverns with solid stone around them at all times. Typically, stone giants expend their caverns through carving and stone work to create vast networks of tunnels and chambers. Often times, these spaces have access to underground springs and even the fabled Underdark, though few stone giant communities actually dwell within the chthonic realm itself.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Stone giants do not have to consume as much as many other giant races because their slow metabolism processes food more efficiently. Stone giants are omnivorous, consuming many subterranean plants and fungi as well as hunting animals that also dwell around their home tunnels, including rothé, giant bats, and cave bears.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Stone giants live in tribes of between fifteen to forty individuals. Stone giant society is stratified along artistic lines, with the longest-lived and most celebrated of stone carvers typically leading their tribes. These elite stone carvers are usually advised by a shaman gifted with druidic magics. One's place within stone giant society is decided through small communal festivals held each decade. They consist of contests and displays of one's stone work, bardic tales, and stone throwing abilities. The lowest members of stone giant society are those whom aren't gifted with their hands or whom are considered clumsy. These stone giants live on the fringes of the tribe and serve as the tribes' hunters or scouts. Often these stone giants are the first of the tribe to encounter travelers or threats to the tribe.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Stone giants are found across Holos and have the widest geographical distribution of any true giant. They appear on every continent, however, because they rarely are seen above ground, their numbers are unsubstantiated. Large populations have been reported in the Underdark, usually on the fringes of that dark realm, and even in the Elemental Plane of Earth.
Average Intelligence
Stone giants are quite intelligent, and far more cultured than many of the other giants on the low end of the Ordning social hierarchy. Their tribes, though small, feature many complex rituals and they are known for recording long histories in speaking stones. Most stone giants are not gifted in the arcane, but many tribes are led by particularly wise individuals whom have been granted insight into the druidic magics by their god Styr.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
As subterranean-dwelling creatures, stone giants have excellent darkvision, able to see in total darkness as if it were dim light up to sixty feet. They're proficient in perception, even in darkness and their intimate knowledge of their underground environment aids them in perceiving friends and threats.
Civilization and Culture
Common Etiquette Rules
Newcomers who know only about the stone giants' focus on artistry might think them to be a peaceful and reasonable people. Among their own kind, they tend to be so. But outsiders, particularly non-giants of any sort, are unwelcome in the stone giants' caverns, and trespassers aren't treated politely.
It's possible for travelers to negotiate with stone giants for safe passage through their territory, if someone in the group speaks their tongue and the giants are offered a tribute. Beautiful and large furs, exotic food, or art objects are suitable tributes; money is a weak inducement for all but the lowest of stone giants. If offered such enticements, one or two giants might come forward to negotiate while others remain at rock-throwing range.
History
Like all true giants, the story of the stone 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. Jötu's fourth child was Styr, a quiet god of artists and athletes who then carved the stone giants in his image. Styr gave them their stoicism, their patience, their deft hands and dexterous arms, and their skill in darkness and stonework.
Some claim the giants ruled a great kingdom in either the Dawn Era or the Mithril Era and that it splintered with the gods of the Ordning ascended to their planes to watch over the souls of those whom had passed on in the Time before Twilight. These theories are supported by reports of floating castles of cloud giants crafted from ancient technology beyond the scope of modern giants or mortals. However, if such a kingdom existed in the Dawn Era, then it would stand to reason that the fire giants, and indeed all the true giants and their godly patrons, are far older than the other sentient races of Holos. They would have also been intimately connected with their deities in a way that contemporary fire giants do not appear to be. It would also beg the question of where the remains of that mythic kingdom are or if they were entirely destroyed during the War of the Dawn.
And while a giant kingdom existing during the Mithril Era is more plausible, questions of their contact with mortal communities, such as the powerful and semi-divine Temekanian Empire, crop up. Little written records of giants or giant communities can be found from that time, further complicating the hypothesis. Only oral histories from some social giant groups like the fire and stone giants affirm this idea, but these histories disagree on many important facts of the fabled kingdom.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Stone giants rarely keep pets. They sometimes cultivate colonies of giant bats at the edges of their territory, both for a food source and as a warning system against intruders. They also don't mind sharing their caves or warrens with cave bears, fire beetles, and other beasts that mean them no harm. They keep their other subterranean neighbors at arm's length. Purple worms are their greatest bane, because a hungry worm chews through everything it encounters, including the giants' finest carvings and sculptures.
by Chris Rahn
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