Frost Giants

The Frost Giants - Deumana survivors of the Schism

The enormous humanoids who occupy the neigh-unreachable Cerulean Crown mountains beyond the northern Waste of the Continent. Kin to the extinct Deumana, they roundly defeated and then survived them by taking shelter in the impregnable mountains. Reports note variety in their shape and size, but typical sightings declare them to be symmetrical humanoids, twenty paces (10-20m) tall.

Deumana are historically recorded to have been equally majestic, alien and awful in their countenance. In contrast the Frost Giants became grizzled by time and toil. Sporting beards and wild hair, they robe themselves in furs and homespun cloths. Bulkier than their counterparts, having hunted and worked the land; significantly they managed to revive the ability to procreate naturally. The latter required they accept impermanence and decreasing infant sizes, and more injuriously, a high infant mortality rate. The alternatives were extinction, or resorting to Deumana-style methods of genetic control. They chose mortality.

To sustain themselves the Giants long ago adopted a pseudo-pastoralist lifestyle; they hunt the Verge Plains beyond the Waste for prey, maintain permacultured food forests in underground caverns and valleys, and shepherd Megafauna stock. They are deliberate in their actions, and philosophers to the core, enjoying their own company and often traveling alone for spans of time. Their hierarchy leans towards matriarchal, but not unreasonably so. See Philosophy and governance.

Perhaps due to their self-imposed exile, their subsequent isolation, and the ensuing Rotations, the Giants are practically mythical to common Lumians; the Gardeners and select Slenders alone retain communications with their culture. The ageless Gardeners hold a similar outlook to life to these introverted titans, allowing the two cultures to trade news and information, and goods in the process. This keeps the Giants informed in their isolation, and supplies the Folk with rare materials only the Giants can procure. Slenders have communicated with these recludes on occasion, generally through an Endolithic intermediary, but have thus far been unable to establish diplomatic relation. The nightmarish hazards of the Waste keep their cavernous society well-buffered from prying eyes.

Giant as the hills, steady as glaciers, wise as monks, and bloody vengeful if some idiot pinches one of their calves.