Overview
Giants are not one unified people, but two closely related cultures shaped by different responses to the Cataclysm.
Northern and southern giants share ancestry, scale, and long historical memory. What separates them is not biology, but the choices their ancestors made when the world began to fracture.
Giants live apart from dense civilization. Their size alone makes privacy difficult, so they favour remote terrain: high mountains, rough uplands, deep forested ranges, and in one case, an isolated northern island.
They are real. They are present. They are simply not numerous.
Population
Giants were never a high-population species.
Even before the Cataclysm, their numbers were modest compared to other peoples. Where humans, elves, and others are counted in millions, giants have always been counted in thousands.
Today:
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Northern giants likely number in the tens of thousands, spread across four enclaves.
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Southern giants number in the low thousands, scattered across older upland territories.
Birthrates are slow. Lifespans are long. Population stability is deliberate rather than assumed.
Especially in the south, numbers have thinned over centuries, and some ancestral settlements now stand partially abandoned simply because there are not enough giants to maintain them.
Homelands
Northern Giants
Northern giants maintain four long-standing enclaves:
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Two in the eastern mountain ranges
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One in the western mountains
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One on a remote northern island
These enclaves are geographically demanding environments — cold, high, sparse, and defensible.
Movement between enclaves is formal and rare. Lineage exchanges are planned carefully. Authority is conservative and precedent-bound.
Their isolation is not secrecy. It is preference.
Southern Giants
Southern giants once maintained small but stable mountain settlements. These were never cities in the human sense — more stone-built halls, terraces, and clustered upland communities.
Many still stand. Some are partially maintained. Others have fallen into gradual disrepair as populations declined.
Southern giants today live:
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In old ancestral upland territories
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In small kin groups
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Occasionally alone in rugged terrain
Their settlements are smaller and more scattered than those of the north.
Culture and Historical Identity
Northern Giants — The Withdrawal
During the Cataclysm, northern giants chose withdrawal rather than escalation. That decision remains central to their identity.
Their society values:
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Measured action
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Precedent
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Continuity
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Structural stability over rapid change
They tend to view large-scale conflict as something that should be avoided before it begins.
Southern Giants — The Burden
Southern giants were more entangled in Cataclysm-era conflicts. Whether through alliance, obligation, or miscalculation, they were involved more directly.
That involvement shapes their culture to this day.
They speak openly about inherited responsibility. Leadership carries historical weight. Memory is treated as unfinished business rather than distant myth.
Where northern giants focus on restraint, southern giants focus on accountability.
Physical Nature
Northern giants typically stand between four and five metres tall. Southern giants average slightly smaller, between three and four and a half metres.
Both are massively built humanoids with extraordinary physical strength and endurance.
They live roughly three hundred years.
Their size shapes everything about their architecture, agriculture, and settlement patterns. A giant hall is engineered for scale. A giant road must bear weight. A giant tool is not something another species casually borrows.
Knowledge, Scholarship, and the Lattice
Giants treat magic cautiously, but not fearfully.
They do not maintain large arcane institutions like human universities. However, within both northern and southern communities there exist small circles of scholars who study:
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The condition of the Lattice
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Lingering Cataclysm distortions
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Long-term changes in land and resonance
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The effects of instability on mortal populations
Among them are individuals capable of sensing disturbances in the Lattice. Some receive divine gifts aligned with perception, detection, or stabilization rather than overt displays of power.
Study is patient, generational work. Records are oral as often as written. Observations are compared across decades.
The Shattered Lands, where Cataclysm damage remains visible, draw particular interest. For some giants, visiting those regions forms part of scholarly duty or personal rite of passage.
The Shattered Lands and the Rite of Witness
For many giants — particularly in early adulthood — travel to the Shattered Lands forms part of a cultural rite of passage.
This is not a reckless pilgrimage. It is structured, supervised, and deliberate.
A young giant, usually past physical maturity but not yet holding formal authority, may undertake a journey southward under guidance from an elder, scholar, or small cohort. The purpose is not heroism. It is exposure.
In the Shattered Lands they observe:
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Visible distortions in terrain
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Areas where growth behaves strangely
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Residual resonance in stone and soil
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The ways other peoples react to instability
They are taught how to read signs of strain in the Lattice, how to distinguish natural harshness from metaphysical damage, and how to remain calm in places that feel unsettled.
Among northern giants, this journey reinforces restraint.
Among southern giants, it reinforces responsibility.
For some, it is primarily educational.
For others, especially those inclined toward scholarship or divine calling, it marks the beginning of more serious study.
The journey also serves a quieter purpose: memory made physical. Giants do not treat the Cataclysm as abstract history. Standing in fractured terrain makes it real in a way stories cannot.
A giant who has completed the Rite of Witness is not considered wiser — but they are considered grounded.
And in giant culture, that matters.
Relations with Other Peoples
Most modern peoples encounter giants rarely enough that they are discussed more in story than in politics.
When interactions occur, they tend to be:
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Formal
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Memorable
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Long-remembered
Giants do not integrate easily into dense urban life, but they are fully capable of diplomacy, trade, and alliance when purpose requires it.
Internal Diversity
Northern giants debate degrees of openness between enclaves and the proper balance between isolation and limited engagement.
Southern giants differ on how much of the past should shape the present — whether inherited responsibility requires active involvement or quiet preservation.
Neither culture is uniform.