Giant Kingdoms

Nephilim-inspired: every Giant is born with six fingers and six toes, a trait human scholars fixate on and Giants consider about as remarkable as having a nose Non-playable — monstrous humanoids rather than a player race

Territory: Morocco, Gibraltar, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Belgium, and Hungary.

Government: No single Giant nation. Four kingdoms, each built around a founding tribe and bloodline rather than a fixed border — kingdoms are traditionally named for their founder, in keeping with real-world naming customs for tribal-founded nations. They are loosely allied at best — a shared feast-day, a common enemy, an old marriage pact between royal lines. Absent a reason to stand together, Giant kingdoms are just as likely to go to war with each other as with anyone outside their people. Outsiders who treat "the Giants" as a single actor are making a mistake that has gotten diplomats killed.

The Four Kingdoms: - Chorakim — the Levant heartland (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria). - Ashtakim — the Atlas/Strait territory (Morocco, Gibraltar), bordering the Monster Kingdom. - Zephakim — the Ardennes (Belgium). - Zumakim — Hungary. Settled Giant territory, taken very early in the Long War around the same time as the sea-draining and the Catfolk Diaspora — see Geography document. No longer contested; the Imperium's old claim to it is a schoolbook grievance, not a live dispute.

Physicality: Giants stand anywhere from 10 to 20 feet tall, and height is rank as much as it is size. The tallest are born to it or grow into it through feats significant enough to be sung about; a Giant king is rarely under 18 feet, and a Giant who stops growing short stays a commoner no matter how sharp they are. Status and stature run along the same axis, which makes Giant hierarchy visible at a glance in a way human hierarchy never is.

Skin and tribe: Giant skin runs a wide range of unusual tones — ash-grey, basalt-black, clay-red, bone-white, moss-green — and the color tracks bloodline more than geography, though the two reinforce each other over generations as tribes settle where their coloring already serves them: stone-grey tribes hold the high crags, ember-red tribes hold the volcanic country, moss-toned tribes hold the deep timber. A tribe's color tells another Giant, at a glance, which kingdom they're looking at and — depending on history — whether to expect hospitality or a blood feud.

Intelligence: Not brutish. Giant courts run on rhetoric, oral epic, and long memory as much as on strength — a king without a sharp tongue and a sharper court philosopher doesn't stay king long. Human nations that write Giants off as big and simple are making the same mistake as the diplomats above, and Giant kingdoms are entirely content to let that assumption stand uncorrected.

Culture: Oracle-consulting, hospitality codes with real teeth, contests that test wit as much as muscle, honor cultures built on debts owed and slights remembered for generations. Kingship is earned and defended rather than simply inherited — a throne without the strength or cunning to hold it invites a challenge, and the challenge is expected, not treasonous.

Diet: Giants eat people. Not out of savagery or hunger — it's a delicacy, reserved for honored feasts, and eating a particularly notable enemy or captive is closer to a rite than a meal: a way of taking their measure and closing the account. This makes diplomacy with human nations fraught in ways that go beyond simple horror. A Giant king offering a guest the honored cut at a treaty feast believes he's extending the highest courtesy his culture has — and the wrong answer, either way, can end the negotiation. The bones don't go to waste afterward either — see the Bone Sigil, below.

No boats: Giants don't sail, and no Giant kingdom has ever fielded a navy. Their weight makes conventional hulls impractical, and the culture has folded that limitation into something closer to superstition — the sea is one of the few places a Giant's size stops being an advantage. Whatever the real reason, the practical result is the same: the Giant kingdoms are confined to their landmass. They cannot project power overseas, and no coastal nation has ever had to plan for a Giant invasion fleet.

Sigils: Giants hold the Bone Sigil — necromancy, tied directly to their feasting culture: the skeletons of the honored dead they eat are kept and raised as servants and slaves rather than discarded. It sits outside the thirteen Great House Sigils, in the same category as the Goblin and Hobgoblin Sigils — see The Sigil Houses document.

Origins — unconfirmed: Giants tell their own epic of origin: a mortal woman and something not mortal, generations before the Long War, old enough that even the Elves only have it as inherited story rather than memory. Human scholars mostly file it as myth-borrowing. Whether it has any bearing on the current world — the Sigils, the walking gods, the war — is undetermined and deliberately left open. See Open Questions.

Shemazar: Giants trace their ancestry to a fallen divine being. See World History and Religion documents for the broader theological context; Shemazar's true nature is a campaign-level reveal, not front matter. Shemazar has a sister archdevil, followed by the Hobgoblins of Ssyrathis — see Ssyrathis and Religion documents. What that relationship means for the Giants themselves is unresolved and low priority.

Engineering legacy: The Giants dried the sea between the dinosaur continent and Mexico very early in the Long War, with the Caldrian Imperium's help — the mechanism was redirecting Mexico's own rivers to empty into the open ocean on the landmass's far side instead of into the enclosed sea. This wasn't infrastructure maintenance, it was an act of war: draining the sea took the Catfolk out of the Long War entirely, scattering them into the Catfolk Diaspora rather than defeating them militarily — a staggering scale of coordinated power for a people most human nations still underestimate as "big and simple." Unlike most Giant business, this isn't held as a tight secret anymore — it's known, or safely assumed, well beyond whatever small circle used to guard it, though exactly how open varies by nation. See Geography and Catfolk documents. The Dwarves were never involved in this.

Goblins: With the Catfolk gone, goblins spread to fill the vacuum across Mexico — a development the Giants more or less expected, if they didn't outright intend it. See Goblins document.

Borders: Share Gibraltar with the Monster Kingdom — the single most tense border location on the map, two non-human powers in direct contact.