Death giant

Death giants and death titans were a race of giants who had powers over shadows and the souls of other beings.
==Description==
Death giants were around tall and weighed around , and they were typically gaunt of build. Their skin was dark gray or black and they could not grow hair on their heads or body, similar to stone giants. They also had pointed ears, unlike most giant species. Their nails grew into hard ragged yellow claws and they had very sharp teeth. The souls they controlled formed a thin cloud of fog that swirled around them and manifested faces that moaned and screamed in torment, fear, and agony.
Those serving the Raven Queen in the Shadowfell had hair and skin of a deep purple coloration.
==Personality==
They were notoriously cruel.
==Abilities==
===Soul Shroud===
The majority of death giant powers revolved around their ability to capture and control the souls of the dead. Any living creature within or of a death giant that was weak enough and could not resist would be slain in a moment. Moreover, the soul of any creature that died near a death giant was stolen, sucked away to join the mist around it and become one of the giant's guardian spirits. The greater death titan could even absorb a portion of a still-living creature's soul, draining it of its life force. The mist was known as the soul shroud and individual souls within it were measured in portions known as soul shards. These aided, shielded, fed, and empowered the death giant.
The souls were bound by the giant's will alone. Affected creatures could not be raised, resurrected, or reincarnated until the giant was slain, whereupon the stolen souls were released. The souls were insubstantial and could not be targeted, removed, or freed from the giant in any way, although they could be temporarily subdued by an attempt to turn the undead, though for no more than several seconds to a minute, in which time the death giant's associated abilities were suppressed. If another death giant was nearby when the original soul thief was slain, then the released souls could be taken by the new giant. Only in the most rare and special situations would a death giant choose to release a captured soul. A death giant typically had only four soul shards available in a battle, and without any it would be hampered.
The guardian souls gave warnings of danger to the giant that controlled them, helping them in battle or to avoid ambush or harm. The giant could also command the spirits to make a terrifying keening sound, which could drive those who heard it into a blind panic until they escaped the noise and it still left them shaken for a full day even afterward. Only a great force of will could resist it. Needless to say, it was a disadvantage to any death giant so shrouded. Additionally, the souls allowed a death giant to be healed by negative energy without affecting its ability to be healed by positive energy.
Moreover, a death giant could expend its soul shards—souls—to both attack and heal. A soulfire burst would blast all nearby enemies with necrotic energy. Alternatively, a death giant could consume a soul shard to restore its own vitality. A death giant reaper could launch a "soul bolt", in fact, a bolt of shadow energy, which could a strike a victim up to away and drain the very vitality from them. A shrouded one had a stronger "soul burst". If the target was also in a state of fear, it would heal the giant too. 
===Other Magic===
Some death giants also commanded a shadow magic with which they could show a disturbing aspect shortly before disappearing and reappearing elsewhere, some away, leaving their foes terrified in their wake.
They also had innate spellcasting abilities that allowed them to dispel magic, inflict terrible wounds, call down flame, and cause an unholy blight. Shrouded ones knew such spells as detect magic, mage armor, speak with dead, and Tenser's floating disk. 
===Resistances===
Death giants were immune to fear and energy-draining effects or highly resistant to necrotic energy.
Upon death, they could not be resurrected by any means and, unless magical measures were rapidly taken, such as a soul bind spell or their soul being taken by another death giant, their souls were utterly destroyed a few seconds after their body died.
==Combat==
Death giants were both skilled melee fighters and powerful spellcasters. They would attempt to weaken foes with the screams of their guardian souls and their magic, then charge into the fray and attack with melee abilities. They were merciless in trying to slay the weakest opponents. But if it looked like the giant would lose, they would try to offer a truce, by bullying their opponents into accepting its terms, threatening the theft of the opponent's soul, or bargaining to release the soul of a slain ally.
As with other giants, death giants were skilled at hurling rocks in battle. They could throw rocks of in mass up to with greater than normal accuracy. Furthermore, they could also catch rocks and like projectiles if ready for them.
==Possessions==
In battle, they typically wore banded mail, chainmail, or plate armor and wielded greataxes. True to their names, death giant reapers swung mighty necrotic scythes and their armor looked not unlike the carapaces of enormous insects.
Shrouded ones eschewed armor and donned dour robes. They gathered up their skulls of their fellow death giants. On an especially valued specimen, they carved the death rune, dod, from the Giant language. With this rune magic, they could conjure their own scythe blade at the end of an existing staff, which could prevent healing and slay outright. They also used their death rune to command their shroud of souls. This skull disintegrated when its owner was slain.
==History==
In one account, death giants were originally a race of giants found within the Empire of Netheril. Although they were known at the time as ash giants, they had no known connection to the subrace of stone giants known as ash giants who lived on the Black Ash Plain. They lived alongside the Netherese humans as their allies. But as Netheril decayed and collapsed as a result of the phaerimm draining the life from the land during the Shadowed Age, the giants abandoned their human allies and made a deal with an unknown but mighty power to guarantee their survival. They chose to sell the souls of all their people for an unholy power. They chose poorly. The act bound the souls of the entire race and all their descendants to the Negative Energy Plane. While they gained powerful magical abilities, their souls were now doomed for destruction.
However, an alternative account of the World Axis cosmology held that the ancestors of the death giants originated in the Elemental Chaos and had moved into the Shadowfell, abandoning their ties to their former home plane. It was believed that, over time, they evolved into the death giants. In fact, they came to conquer, thinking themselves masters of all they beheld, and they soon overpowered and enslaved the beings of this plane. The dark ones actually came to the giants, mistakenly believing them to be their creators and gods and that they might find purpose in serving them. They were soon disabused of this belief. The giants forced their slaves to erect grand fortresses and cities from which to extend their reach still further. But then they began to fade, becoming unable to sustain themselves, thanks to the deleterious effects of the Shadowfell. Fearful and finding no way to stop the decay, they instead explored the powers of shadow, performing dark and dangerous rites and realizing a way of using mortal souls to slow their decline and stay in the Shadowfell. And so they gluttonously devoured the souls of almost all their slaves almost overnight; those few who survived had fled. The overfed giants became corrupted, debased, and driven solely by evil, while their cities and fortresses deteriorated.
A third tale told that a desperate troop of cloud giants, seeking a way to arrest the fall of their empire and preserve their people and culture, journeyed into the Shadowfell. There, they came across the Raven Queen and, as one, made a great wager with her. The details of it differ. In some versions, they made a series of wagers, with events, each more unlikely than the last, allowing the Raven Queen to succeed, every time. In others, it was a contest of riddles, but for every one that the giants put to her, the Raven Queen replied correctly until the giants were too tired too continue. Either way, they had greatly misjudged this mysterious figure, and they had lost. Thereafter, they became servants of the Raven Queen, and dwelled with her in the Shadowfell forever more. There, their bodies became decayed and shrunken, purple-hued, and they became the death giants.
==Society==
Their arcane powers allowed them to provide for all their needs magically and, as a result, their traditional skills and culture had severely decayed. They remained decent weapon- and armor-smiths, however, crafting these items so that they could fight in the violent "soul-trading" battles where one giant or group attacked another in an attempt to gain more guardian souls. All other time was dedicated to finding a way to end the curse brought upon them by their ancestors—but without sacrificing the power it gave them.
Death giants of the Shadowfell hunted living beings for the souls with which they sustained themselves. While they didn't have to do this often, most simply did it for sport. They would also harvest soul shards from the clusters that occurred in the Shadowdark, the Shadowfell reflection of the Underdark. These were the remnants of beings slain in that realm. Death giants were also known to trade their souls to demons. Those who serve the Raven Queen hunt both the Shadowfell and the Material Plane for souls that their mistress might find pleasing.
They were typically fighters, while clerics among them were rare. Among them were the warriors known as reapers and the shrouded ones, the true necromancers among the death giants. These shrouded ones had uncovered the secrets of death magic, maybe with no less a source than the Raven Queen as their teacher.
Death giants would be encountered alone or in pairs, or in gangs of up to eight members.
They spoke the Giant language as well as Common.
===Homelands===
Death giants primarily resided within the Shadowfell. There, death giants controlled large swathes of territory. They resided within their gloomy and crumbling keeps and cities and those they abandoned came to be occupied or built over by other occupants of that plane.
On the Material Plane, they could generally be found living in places where the barrier to the Shadowfell or Negative Energy Plane was especially thin or its effects were pervasive, such as in hollows beneath large cemeteries, inside mausoleums and necropolises, lightless locales, ruins of giant kind that they would research or restore, and places where giants had experimented with necromancy.
On Toril, they were found in a number of ruins of the Netherese empire in the deserts of Anauroch. Death giants joined the forces of the revived Netherese empire in the 15 century DR. One tribe of death giants occupied the deepest part of the cavern of Lorosfyr, in the Deep Wastes of the Underdark, where they served the dracolich Anabraxis the Black Talon. Death giants were also found in Thay of the 15 century DR, where they were almost the evil creatures serving Szass Tam.
===Religion===
The Giant pantheon, the Ordning, abandoned the death giants when they sold their souls or rejected them for the Raven Queen, but a few death giants still venerated them regardless. However, most death giants with religious tendencies worshiped evil gods who did not care whether their followers' souls remained intact upon death.
===Relationships===
Death giants usually gathered weaker creatures as allies, so that they could sacrifice them by axe or magic for their soul shards. Otherwise, they made alliances with mighty undead, with death cults that practiced sacrifice of living beings, and with other Shadowfell beings. They were often seen in the company of onis, howlers, blood fiends, abyssal ghouls, and nightwalkers.
Those that dwelled in the Shadowfell typically subjugated dark ones and shadar-kai, as well as shadowborn ogres and trolls. The death giants would steal their souls unless other victims could be found in their place.
Some within the Shadowfell were known to be servants of the goddess Shar while those on the Material Plane were known to serve powerful liches. Others were known to serve in the forces of returned Netheril as of 1479 DR.
According to some, who didn't believe the death giants to be servants of the Raven Queen, they were often opposed by sorrowsworn for acting against her wishes.
The death giants rarely had dealings with the other races of giants, but occasionally hired hill giants as their henchmen. As former cloud giants, the death giants ought to have their place in the ordning that governed the races of giant kind. However, as apostates of the Ordning gods, they had no place within their hierarchy.
==Appendix==
===Background===
The death giant first appeared in the 3.5-edition Monster Manual III. There, their ancestors had sold their souls for power and become bound to the Negative Energy Plane. The stated and implied similarities to stone giants suggest they were once stone giants.
This monster was revived as the smaller death giant and the larger death titan in the 4-edition Monster Manual. While their appearance, abilities, and overall concept are similar, they were given a new, more mundane origin in the Shadowfell, leading to the differences above. This was later expanded upon in Manual of the Planes.
However, in the 5-edition Adventurers League modules Hecatomb, Crypt of the Death Giants, and Uncertain Scrutiny, the name "death giant" is used for undead giants created from the corpses of other giants, with none of the same abilities or concept. These are assumed to be unrelated giants.
Death giants were introduced officially to 5 edition with Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, with a new origin blending elements of the previous two. Yet this introduces a new discrepancy: while 4-edition death giants oppose the Raven Queen, the 5-edition death giants are yet another of her servants. Moreover, they originate from cloud giants, rather than stone giants, and the soul-stealing concept is obscured.
===Appearances===
===Gallery===
Death giant concept art.jpg|Concept art for Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants.
===External Links===
* 
===References===
===Connections===
Category:Creatures found in the Shadowfell