Firbolg

**Firbolgs** are a reclusive and rare race of giant-kin with broad almost bovine-like noses and ears as well as tough thick soft pink flesh. They are a naturally hairy people, tending to let their hair grow long and wild which while it can commonly be any colour it is most often brown, blond, or anywhere in-between. Males ranged anywhere from eight to ten feet tall and are often rather light for their size usually weighing around six hundred and fifty pounds, while females generally could measure a height of seven to nine feet tall and often would weigh around five hundred pounds.

## Children of the Forest Queen

A great forest once stretched from the Blackcaps to Scion’s Sound. First the Dhakaani goblins and then humanity hacked away at the vast forest—but even then, there were regions most mortals feared to tread, places soaked in primal power and guarded by the archfey known as the Forest Queen. Today, these shunned woods survive as the Harrowcrowns, the Greenhaunt, and the Imistil, all feared by the people of the Five Nations. However, firbolgs have long called these forests home - and called themselves the children of the Forest Queen.

Though firbolgs aren’t fey, primal power is in their blood; they hear the whispers of root and leaf, and they delight in the darkness of the deep woods. The firbolgs of the Greenhaunt and the Imistil are largely friendly to travelers and serve much the same role as the Wardens of the Wood in the Eldeen Reaches—protecting their forest from outsiders while protecting outsiders from the dangers of their forest. The firbolgs of the Harrowcrowns are a harder lot; they blame civilization for the destruction of their Queen’s Wood—the vast forest lost to time—and use their powers of stealth to prey on outsiders who dare to enter the deep woods.

Firbolgs have always been few in number, and even the friendly guardians of the Imistil have little interest in the world beyond their woods. If you’re playing a firbolg, you're one of the first of your kind to venture into the wider world. Are you driven purely by curiosity, or did something else cause you to leave your comforting, whispering woods for the lands of steel and fire? Perhaps you found the pack of someone who died during the Last War, and you’re determined to deliver the letters that they were carrying. Maybe you’ve had a vision of a threat to your home forest, and you know the answer lies beyond your woods. Or perhaps you’ve been given a quest by the Forest Queen herself!

Firbolgs follow a primal tradition that shares some similarities with the Greensingers and the Wardens of the Wood, but their practices developed independently. Along with their druids and rangers, firbolgs also have bards and warlocks who draw on the magic of the Forest Queen. The warriors of the Harrowcrowns are fiercer than their cousins in Imistil, and their ranks include more barbarians and fighters.

## History

Like many giantkin, the firbolgs can trace their ancestory back to the continent of Xen’drik; during the Age of Giants, they formed a layer in the caste system only one step above the elven slaves. Their role was that of eyes and watchers for the giants, forming a relationship similar to that of a loyal hound to a shepherd who oversees the sheep. The Firbolg caste largely remained loyal and fought alongside their giant masters throughout the downfall of the empire, even when the other castes did not.

Just before the coming of the coming of the draconic cataclysm that would leave civilization on Xen’Drik nothing but hollow ruins, the firbolgs heard a message whispered to them through every beast and leaf. They were given a choice: to step into the forest, and escape the coming disaster. Those who answered the call found themselves in the great forest of Khorvaire, and would come to call themselves the Children of the Forest Queen. Others chose to instead flee underground, following the Umbragen drow into the depths of Khyber. The remainder chose to stand their ground and defend the ruins of their old masters, in the hopes of one day returning to their former glory.

**Tuatha Dé Nagaul.** The firbolgs who stayed behind in Xen'drik became the tribalistic and cruel Tuatha De Nagaul. Exposed to plagues and the wild magic that had claimed the growing steaming jungles of Xen’Drik has driven these self-appointed guardians into shamanistic tribes and endless war with the remaining drow. The Nagauls continue the giants' practice of ritualistic killing upon blood-stained altars within the temples of their masters, still seeking vainly to pave the way for the empire of old to return.

**Quaggoth.** To many the legends of Firbolgs fleeing into the belly of Khyber at the fall of Xen’Drik is the stuff of old wives tales to scare unruly children, even many scholars dedicated to the study of the giant civilizations chalk up that if such a thing was true such creatures would of been driven to extinction by Khyber’s Children or the arrival of the Daelkyr. However a few such scholars rave about the fact that such Firbolgs were not driven to extinction that instead they became the creatures known as the Quaggoth, a savage race of white furred bear-like monsters that dwell within the deepest tunnels of Khyber. No longer having the powers of their ancestors instead trading it for raw savage fury, yet a few of the race still manifest powerful magic in strange ways.