How would you write a civilization of intelligent giants, Veeky Forums?

How would you write a civilization of intelligent giants, Veeky Forums?

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They're giants, but they are intelligent. Presumably they'd have to coexist with humans, since metallurgy and farming would likely be difficult for such creatures.

I wouldn't,

i would actually have it be that giants are physical manifestations of community spirits that defend the settlemant from threats, do large labor, and general be awesome helps. Be They behemoth monsters or unfriendly giants.

By having them intelligent from the beginning.

What about human civilizations ruled by giants?
Especially in societies that see strength/power as especially important, provided they're at about the same intelligence level as humans are.

They are seafarers, and do most of their working in stone, not because they don't know how to do metallurgy, but because their magic is mostly stone based and it's just easier for them to make a stone tool and enchant it than to make a steel one to do the same job.

By making them extremely promiscuous, the women especially.

Small tribal societies that have avoided conquest by the kingdom through the fact that they're extremely hard to kill.

This. Just have them be intelligent giants

That was good thread. Too bad all we got a single story out of it and fucking fetish-bait.

Would've liked to see a child try to get to grips that the big, big woman who helps out around town wasn't a 'person' person.

Depends on size
If they're just big humans who are just 3-5 meters tall they might live among humans without problems, living in houses or villages appropiate for their size and working the same jobs as humans, probably with a majority into stone-working because their size and strenght makes it easy for them to quickly build things like walls or castles for humans
If they're very big humans (10-12 mts.) They probably live separated from common humans. Maybe on a very big steppe-like continent with great plains. I like the idea of nomadic giant tribes who just walk around the plains because they don't need horses. Contact with humans is rare but possible.
If they're like classic giant size a-la warhammer, they live in small communities in places that are very difficult to reach, like steep mountain tops, and avoid all contact with the 'small folk'. Mostly because their reality is so different they can't understand humans and humans can understand them.
If they're FUCKHUEG beings (mountain size) then a civilization is impossible. I like to think them as something like earth spirits given flesh, who rouse and stir only when disturbed or during some particularly catastrophic events like earthquakes and the like

Giants in a recent setting I've been playing are basically Nephilim. They are very intelligent, but also very alien in how they interact with others.

Do you wanna hear a story, OP?

>Colossi enthralled humans and other races as slave/servant races, who live in the walls of their cities
>Only really have one "city," which is proportionally just a town but due to the grand size and the number of thralls that live there, it's classified as such
>They inhabit a peninsula and eat rocks, while humans eat fruits and run farms on mesas the giants don't typically go
>They've dug quite a bit to farm for their meals while keeping the integrity of their cities; a giant's mine would put a dwarf to shame, and also make him rip his beard off in anger as all the metals and minerals go wasted
>They don't typically have a standing army, due to no other cities to have a rivalry with, but some giants are certainly stronger than others, and on the tip of the peninsula is a giant sage who casts magic with the power of a Howitzer, ready to defend fleeing giants should the day come they were to be hunted down

They need giant ears (like an elephant), slow metabolism, and think slowly or their brain overheats.

>slow to reproduce
>slow to think but not stupid
>small tribes or live in isolation
>focus on long-term activities that interest/benefit them (tending slow-growing magic trees, breeding golden geese from regular geese stock, shaping rocks with water, etc)

That way, you only have problems with giants if you want to fuck with them first.

Nephilim are pretty good intelligent giants

only good giant is a dead giant

Man BrĂ¼tal Legend was the shit

Race of intelligent and scholarly beings, forever expounding on the mysteries of the land and inventing new devices. However, due to their size, certain crucial tasks are beyond them, hence they must depend on a retinue of servants and slaves from the smaller races to actually build and implement their schemes.

This is how I like my giants. Older than time, taller than mountains, and mostly extinct

This is a low-magic setting. Giants are the only species capable of defying the square-cube law--because, shortly after birth, each giant goes through a ritual in which the god of giants permanently strengthens his bones and muscles beyond what's normally possible. This magic gradually increases in potency over time, so that the body of an old giant is infused throughout with magic.
Giants live far from other civilizations and cremate their dead, to avoid being hunted for magical ingredients.

I loved that game. So fun.

i love brutal legends story.
youtube.com/watch?v=AcPm-MQiCQ8

This is what I default to. I like them as predecessors.

These are good ideas

>The bigger they are, the longer they sleep. They aren't necessarily malicious or savage (no more than humans anyways), but they always wake up hungry...

>sages suggest that they are immortal, and eventually they fall asleep and become mountains and hills

>their oral history is filled with idioms and metaphors, but it stretches back to the first ages of the world.

>their only creature they must consistently fear is the dragon.

>fucking fetish-bait.
What exactly don't you understand about "you don't need other boards anymore", redditor?

This, except they're elemental forces of earth, dead and dreaming, and the earth of the world, down to it's molten heart, is made of dead giants. The gods slew them to build something in the First Void, and held them in place with the tendrils of the Green Woman.
Intelligent items made of stone or metal have a chance of 'giant corruption', where these dreaming voices press strange thoughts and desires upon them.

I do my giants as the leaders of many human civs. They have a lair or castle on a mountain on the edge or in the center of a territory, with many human (or orc, whatever) towns/villages/farms in the lower lying areas. These areas can signal the giants in times of trouble. Not many things can handle a single giant, much less a band or tribe of them. The giants get small soldiers who can swarm enemies and hold them down, or fit in areas they can't, as well as a big source of food (includes the people themselves if the giants are evil) and crafters/traders. Giants live longer than people, and typically better mental scores, along with more skill points, so they're typically more competent than all but the best people. This gives the humanoids a jumpstart in civilization and the giants a much more cushy living. The bigger and better the giant, the better the civ.

Giants mostly stick to mountains, but sometimes come down to hunt and gather, trade, raid, or fight as mercenaries.

Hill giants/ogres are basically the leaders primal hunter/gatherer bands, big guys who can fight off bears and dire tigers and shit and easily bring down mammoths. You're likely to get eaten or murdered, however.
Stone giants live too high up or underground, they're out.
Frost/fire giants are tyrants who keep slaves, but at least their somewhat civilized.
Cloud giants basically make/rule greece, both good and bad alignments present.
Storm giants are your atlanteans; they rule (very well and very altruistically) warm coastal civs while traveling the oceans. Their vassal states have strong militias and capable seafarers. Ideal conditions for people, but never too big; storm giants aren't too populous and don't want too much responsibility.

>eventually they fall asleep and become mountains and hills
Which of course means that some of the most terrifying giants are the ones who refuse to sleep, and go mad denying themselves any rest.
If they finally do fall asleep, either being tricked into it or just not having the endurance, the resulting mountains are either very quiet places or haunted by terrible screams that render men deaf and bloody.

Giants reproduce less than humans. The Giants have been slowly dying off due to conflicts and loss of defendable land.

Giants are as smart with some being far more intelligent due to the long 800 year life spans. The only thing the Giants lack are numbers.

Thus they have been hunted down. Numbered and means to reproduce eliminated. They are sold like cattle in the nations that allow such. A few still allow freedoms but a black market has formed and underground fights and hunts for the nobles.

>The only thing the Giants lack are numbers.
and leg day, apparently

Seven out of the Nine great nations allow for the purchase and selling of such property. The two remaining nations are of the largest. Which also bolster the largest population of Giants and Humans together. Foreign actors have been pushing a resentment in the noble houses of these remaining two great nations.

Pretty much something like this is gonna happen in a campign. They will assist the Giants in regaining or even eliminating the race from history to give way to human supremacy. Thus will start a war with the remaining elf and dwarf and other subhuman races.

well you the noble will not properly feed him and been locked in a house sized cage for 4 months.

Agents of a long forgotten titan god who slumbers under a mountain that he formed to keep a gigantic magic eating dragon from reforming, the titan god sleeps over the shattered pieces of the dragon to keep it from reforming, he sleeps to regain his strength, the Giants are his sons who spread his word and commit to restoring the titans power by making various journeys fulfilling ancient pacts that their god cannot and aid those who make oblations to the diety. They are also great masons and smiths and are often contracted to build settlments and cities by those who can afford them.

They have a natural enmity against dragons or reptilian lizard folk and will never willingly help them, infact they are straight up genocidal in policy against them, they were dragonscale cloaks and wear dragon bone or melted dragon fang armour, they often join dragon cullings and are greta friends of Humans who they see as the inheritors of the world and the most favoured species of their titan god.

do you have any examples?
I love the idea of giants with completely different ways of thinking than ours, and Nephilim are the shit.

How do humans keep them as slaves if they're thousands of feet tall and fall asleep once they leave the earth's crust?

I've been toying with an idea for giants in my setting.
Long before the current time in the setting, the traditional fantasy races fought in a magical war that nearly destroyed the world. Humans rose from the ruins and banned all magic because they didn't want to end up like the other races.

Before the fall, humans were experimented on in an attempt to create super soldiers. The result was immensely powerful 8-12 feet tall humans.

The giants were worth at least 20 conventional soldiers, as they were strong enough to single handedly break a shield wall, and fast enough chase down a horse rider at any speed other than full gallop.

The giants were also a powerful asset for naval warfare, as they could swim beneath the waves and sink ships by attacking them from below.

To prevent being overwhelmed by their own soldiers, the creators of the giants magically bred a gene into them. The gene causes great unease for the giants if they are around too many people or near the hustle-bustle of a town.

This fear of civilisation forced the giants to live nomadic lives on the great plains once the war had wiped out the other fantasy races.

The giants now control a huge portion of the world in a peaceful arrangement with the regular humans. The giants are too dangerous to go to war with, but will never threaten conquest as they are simply afraid of cities.

I'm loosely basing each nation off a real world country. The giants draw heavily from Mongolians.

-Traditional, nature-loving, low-tech people who live in small nomadic groups.
-Twice the height of a man and very strong
-Are vulnerable to smaller races in large groups because they have only few copper or bronze weapons and no metal armor, making a few humans with polearms a match for a single giant in close combat
-Have been driven out of the lands of many other races as a result
-Fight primarily using bows and arrows, as their great strength allows them to use bows that can far outrange the armies of any other race and pierce armor and shields
-Some more non-traditional individuals venture away from their groups and reside in the lands of other races, but tend to avoid large cities, instead often taking up the role of laborers or protectors in small communities
-While generally peaceful, a few warlike giants will sometimes join up with the armies of more industrial races; a giant with steel armor and weapons is a terror in battle and they are greatly sought after

Did you read it all m8

They'll do a lot of stuff for free if you ask. Is that slave labor?
And how long before they fall asleep after waking up? Days? Weeks? Years?

Basically I like the idea of playing with the natural bonuses of scale. A giant twice the size of a human is twice as strong, but isn't twice as resistant to injury. So it makes sense for giants to be naturally afraid of humans in the way that a human might be afraid of an angry cat, despite being far stronger.

And the bow is a natural weapon for such a species, being extra strong might make you very scary in close combat but it makes you untouchable at range, given that you can shoot arrows twice as far as your enemy.

Humans aren't afraid of cats because they're life threatening, they're afraid of pain and superficial injuries.

Exactly, that was my point. You're far, far bigger and stronger than a cat. But the cat can still hurt you, and you know that, so if it hisses you back up.

If the cats could coordinate and come at you pikes, well, you'd probably get the hell out of Dodge.

But if your life was on the line, you could probably charge them and break them up without mortal injury.
That's the biggest thing that bugged me about the Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones. Impressive and tactical as the shield wall was, Wun-Wun should have been able to break that line, especially if the wildlings charged with him. They didn't even give him a weapon!

>But if your life was on the line, you could probably charge them and break them up without mortal injury.
Without armor? No, probably not. A spear in the gut will kill you even if the thing delivering it is smaller and weaker than you are.

Now, a giant wearing plate armor scaled up to its size would be basically invulnerable to any human-scale weapons. Which is why I think if you're going to have giants as a race in a setting giving them a more traditional tribal-type culture makes the most sense.

Would there be any cases of humans putting armor on an allied giant, to help them fight?
What would other giants think of it?

>full plate Giants
>Giants as Knights

So, during creation God had a specific group of Angels who were present to help craft the world. Their job was to make all the unique things in the world, from a bird's song to a natural formation to the flow of a river. They even helped form the different living creatures and races of the world. However, many of the Artisans became obsessed with their work and fell in love with creation. This created a new race, the Nephilim. Due to their angelic heritage, Nephilim are nigh-immortal and can live for millennia. They also have an innate knowledge and understanding of creation, and it is for this reason they created the first great cities and taught the "younger" races science and reason. However, when the War in Heaven began, the Nephillim sided with the Angels and the Elves. The great cities and technology were lost to the deluge or swallowed by the Earth, and the Nephillim were cursed to despise society and industry.

Those that remain today live in small communities, no more than a few families. They are often found guarding natural wonders or pristine parts of the world- no doubt protect the works of their parents. It is not uncommon for a Nephillim to attack trespassers or those who "defile" creation. Those who have spoken with Nephilim report them to be a confusing and dreary lot, as their understanding of creation makes them both fatalist and impatient when dealing with younger races. Others report their conversations as half-explained and incomprehensible. They are tall with stone gray skin and white hair. Their eyes are dark, reflective black.

Basically mix an ultra autistic physicist or engineer with an ultra autistic naturalist and you'll have a Nephillim in this universe. One second they can be explaining quantum mechanics to a group of medieval peasants, and the next they are destroyed the village because they happened to mine a nearby mountain just because it turns out grandad designed that.

Lonesome wanderers with a really long lifespan, that develop the wiseness and the chill of somebody that has all the time in the world and the luxury of not giving a fuck about anything. According to age and personality they can be storytellers, explorers, teachers or just contemplative philosophers. Lorwyn giants are pretty based.

Yes, that's what I meant by my last bullet ().

Armored giants would be a very rare occurrence, since most giants keep to themselves and aren't particularly materialistic.
Because of the amount of metal involved and the difficulty in construction (in the same way that making a sword is harder than making a dagger, making a giant-scale sword takes a master craftsman), outfitting a giant twice the size of a man can cost the same as 3-4 human knights. But for any kingdom that can convince them to fight, this is absolute pocket change as far as return on investment, because a giant can wear armor twice as thick as a human knight while being just as mobile (if not more so, as giants are faster than humans thanks to their long strides.) Given that even human-scale plate armor is very difficult to penetrate with arrows, spears, sword thrusts or crossbows, properly armored giants are functionally invulnerable in combat against human-sized infantry.
Barring magic or similarly sized creatures, armored giants can be fought by somehow knocking or pulling them over (given their higher center of gravity they are slightly easier to trip than a human, but this is mostly counteracted by their greater weight) and rushing them on the ground, or by shooting them with a ballista. However unlike trolls, giants (being just as intelligent as humans) are fully aware of these dangers and work to avoid traps.

Traditional giants would not necessarily have any problem with the concept of wearing armor, however they cannot afford to do so themselves and would tend to frown upon any giant fighting for an army that could thus supply them. Even those giants comfortable with humans tend to live by themselves among small human settlements and would only take up arms to defend them.
Any giant fighting for a human kingdom was likely already an outcast or criminal banished from their clan before being offered a place there.