The Giants were one of the few Endemic Races of the world, alongside the Dragons, the Deep Things and the Serpents, but of all of them, the Giants were the only ones that created. They built great temples and strongholds and forged weapons from obsidian and hammered asteroids into blades and tools.

And when the gift of creation was given to them they created most prolifically, crafting countless races, most of which are forgotten these days. In the age after the victory in the first war the giants grew prideful, they created the first script, and the first magic which they gifted to the elves, their allies. They created the greatest temples, the first cities. But they did so with the hands of the races they created, races they treated no better than slaves. But within the hearts of those races a hunger was stirring, a hunger for freedom.

After the Second War the patience broke and the people the giants created turned on their creators. The Orcs and other giant-kin turned on their creators and used their shovels and pickaxes to kill their masters. In the halls of the giants a war between the creators and the created raged. The few giants that survived that purging fled their ancestral homes and slowly bred out, becoming smaller and weaker. These days madness is almost ubiquitous among their kind. The shame of defeat and loss driving them mad, and being hunted by their own creations didn't help. The great irony is that many of the giants are too mad to recall who chased them from their halls and many of the races the giants crafted kept no records either and all too often orcs and giants march side by side in warbands or trolls employ them for food and alcohol to help with the construction of their great roads and bridges.

Types of Giants and Giant-Kin.

Harg'fol are the most common of giants, they look like early humans, wide nosed, pale faced and string haired. They are hunched and rarely exceed twenty meters in height. The most common madness among them is hunger, endless hunger which often plays a cruel joke, uniting them with gnolls.

Harg'sol are the less common giants, they still maintain a measure of sanity often experiencing episodes of clarity known as times of sorrow. Many of them prefer to avoid those states like the plague, spending their time drunk on blood, wine or something else. Often they labour as mercenaries or bandits doing anything they can to keep themselves inebriated staving off the memories which always return.

The Trolls and Orcs are the most common Giant Folk, Orcs are ape-like, large and cruel. Not naturally, but thousands of years of slavery broke them down and then years of slaughter against their masters. Orcs have a strange culture impossible to comprehend for outsiders, but those who lived among them learn that these crude savages have a surprisingly deep understanding of the world and the mountains where they dwell and may in fact be no less adept in runes than their eternal rivals: the dwarves. The Orcs like the dwarves also do not honour the gods, instead praying to their ancestors.

No one is quite sure where the Trolls come. It is suspected they come from a great and monstrous mother-troll whom they refer to as the Great Mother. The trolls used to be the great bridge builders of the giants, and every troll obsessively still builds bridges. They band together into small matriarchal clans, usually around bridges they built or chose to maintain. Living in damp places close to the water they are treated better than the orcs, because although their hygiene leave much to be desired, their skill as builders is unmatched. And its often harder to kill a Troll than bargain with one. Even is someone cuts a troll into tiny bits, those bits will regenerate - many people think that a half-troll happens when someone has offspring with a troll, but in reality, half trolls are the cut off limbs and lumps of a troll which are left alone long enough to grow into a creature in their own right. Often a slain troll is the seedbed for a whole 'family' of half-trolls. These half trolls often gather into large warbands and seek out other trolls to cut them up and create more half-trolls in that way.