What's the deal with giants?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


I'm struggling to find a lot of information about the history of giants / their place in Golarion. It seems that they mostly originated from Thassilon, but is there any information from before their enslavement? Both the stone and taiga giants claim to be the first, but do they have any creation myths or lore that places them in the greater context of the world? Are they native to the Material Plane, or do they have a similar elemental origin as the giants of D&D?


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Giants are humanoids like any other - just regular folk, nothing elemental.

Most history stuff would probably be found in various books of the Giantslayer AP for 1e - seems most of the books had chapters on them and their history/ecology.

Most bestiary entries for them will detail their culture per giant type.

Book 6 of Giantslayer details the gigas, the titan-descended progenitors of the giants.


Aren’t giants descended from gigas?


According to Giantslayer, yes, giants are descended from Gigas, who in turn were created indirectly & apparently unintentionally by the Titans as they walked across the planes fresh after being created by the gods.

Giantslayer further explains that what separates a "true" giant from lesser giantkin like ogres is that true giants physilogically adapt to their environment in extreme ways, hence, fire giants & frost giants & desert giants and so on and so forth.

That's presumably something of an inherited trait from how the Gigas were shaped by the planes they were born out of. Though I'd note that by this logic, trolls should be classified as true giants given how mutable they are to their environment, but they get stuck as giantkin regardless.

Giantslayer from my skimming of it seems rather mum on exactly how we got from Gigas to Giants & how the descendants of the planar based gigas got to the prime material but I'd imagine the specifics of that are 1; best left to mythology rather than history, and 2; best filled in by a given dm if they want to make it important rather than dictated by Paizo.

Giantslayer #1 has a Giant Primer chapter that gives brief descriptions for ash, cliff, desert, jungle, ocean, river, rune, shadow, slag, tiaga, & wood giants & longer, half page descriptions for cave, cloud, fire, frost, hill, marsh, stone, and storm giants.

Giantslayer #s 3 & 5 have chapters on Minderhal & Zursvaater, respectively, which give some insight into Stone & Fire giant culture.

Giantslayer #4 has a chapter on "Titanic Alliances" which give run downs of giants & their relations to & positions in various organizations throughout the inner sea, tying them into existing cultures & societies more concretely.

Giantslayer #6 has an ecology of the Gigas article.

Given that Return of the Runelords goes heavily into the origins of Thassilon, I'd imagine it has at least some information on the state of the giant societies that lived in the area & were enslaved. I wouldn't go so far as to state that the region that would become Thassilon is the place of their origination, though. I suppose it could well have been the craddle of their civilzation on Golarion but more likely there just happened to be a relatively large population of giants in that region & the Runelords decided that if they were going to enslave people for manual labor, might as well go big. The only giants who can be directly said to have originated from Thassilon would be rune, slag, & inverted giants, who were created directly from their magical experiments on natural giant breeds.

Giants Revisited would also be a prime source to check. The Monster Codex also has chapters on Frost & Fire giants.


Since we know some species of giants have their own gods, such as Minderhal (stone), does that mean every species of giant has a racial god, and most of them just haven't been detailed yet?


Yqatuba wrote:
Since we know some species of giants have their own gods, such as Minderhal (stone), does that mean every species of giant has a racial god, and most of them just haven't been detailed yet?

Probably not. Some giant species have specifically giant gods, but at least as many worship (or are associated with) not-exclusively-giant gods.

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