Giants

The colossal giants have been one of the most powerful neighbors of humanity for millennia. Some of them formed kingdoms while others remained savages, some were known as monstrous beasts while others befriended the humans. They have had many names such as the Jötnar, the Nephilim, the Titans in Greek antiquity and since the Middle Age simply the Giants. While today they are nearly driven to extinction, it is undeniable that these titanic beings have influenced the development of humankind in a remarkable way.

## History

Experts traced back the origins of all the giants in the world to an age long before even the Hyborian and Thurian Age in the Westerosi age. In this age of prehistory the entire Arctic north polar region was frozen solid and was an ice waste named Niflheim. It was in this ancient time that the omnipotent creators of the races sired many fearsome children like the first Cyclopses and Hecatonchires as well as the icy cow Audhumla and a creature known as Ymir, as well as Kronos. But compared to his brethren Ymir was weak and thus decided to strengthen his son by bringing him to the Arctic region where Ymir was blessed by the Ice of Niflheim and the Fire of Muspell. Thus Ymir turned into a being of colossal size and enormous power. Meanwhile , the god Uranos sired several children with the earth-deity Gaia. But Uranos hated the offspring that Gaia bore him, and his offspring hated him as well. Thus Kronos used a powerful magic to render Uranos impotent. Uranos of course has no physical form, but the best metaphor to use would be to say that Kronos castrated God. Outraged by his son's recalcitrance, Uranos cursed him and all those of his blood to loose all their powers. To maintain his strength and his enormous size, Ymir had to gather and consume a powerful plant-based substance granting immortality and power. This substance was known as the Food of the Gods, Amrita or Ambrosia. With the Food of the Gods Ymir remained powerful and he sired his own offspring,

After an unknown time the small Arctic reserves of Ambrosia dried up and Ymir decided to lead his people southwards. The giants entered Europe over the part of Niflheim that today forms Scandinavia. The giants spread all across Europe which led to frequent battles against some belligerent people. The giants managed to survive the flood just well, thanks to their colossal size and their preference for inhabiting mountainous regions. With human civilization falling apart, Ymir saw the perfect chance for him and his people: from the ruins of the fallen human realms rose the empire of the Titans.

Spreading all over Europe the Titans fathered the gods of Norse and Greece religion, the Aesir and the Olympians respectively, as well as many weaker species such as the Ettins, the Ogres, the Dwarfs, the Trolls and the Vanir. But for a people as large as the Titans, Europe was merely a peninsula. Thus they were eager to lead war after war in order to expand their territory. Soon the Titanic influence spread to the Middle East and North Africa, but Ymir and his children had been created as creatures of the cold ice wastes of Niflmein and thus they were not able to withstand the scorching heat of the Persian and African deserts. Only a small force of Titans led by the giantess Dili managed to pass the desert and reach India where they settled down, founding the people of the Daityas. But the Daityas were helpless against the hegemony of the local Hindu gods and many of them had to flee northwards, hiding in the enormous mountain chains of the Himalayas. There they reverted to ape-like savages known as the Yetis due to malnutrition of the Food of the Gods.

But dry deserts were not the only obstacle for the Titanic armies. The Empire of Melniboné situated on the island continent of Mu - which would one day become known as Atlantis - survived the Great Flood, too, and its vast armies of sorcerers and dragon riders resisted the invading naval power of the Titans for generations. Eventually, this constant warfare and reckless expansionist policies led to two major uprisings in the northern and the southern outskirts of the Titans' empire. In Scandinavia, the first-born Aesir - Odin, Vili and Vé - began to slaughter the frost giants, the most powerful of Ymir's children. At roughly the same time, the Olympians ignited a rebellion in Greece, supported by Ymir's siblings - the Cyclopses and Hecatonchires - as well as by the local human tribes. Following the example of the Aesir and the Olympians, revolts broke out all over the empire and soon the Titans had to face many enemies such as humans, pagan gods, ogres, trolls, elves, dwarfs, goblins and the vengeful Melnibonéans. Although at first the Titans managed to withstand the revolting hordes, the order of the empire eventually collapsed after the deaths of Ymir and Kronos. The Aesir tell the story that Odin slew Ymir and used his corpse to create the realm of Midgard, thus banishing Ymir and the Frost Giants to their own realm, and to the plane of the Dead. The Olympians speak about how they banished the Titans to the prison plane of Tartarus. Without a strong leader, the giants' empire collapsed due to infighting between the survivors of the so-called Titanomachy, the War of the Titans.

After learning about the decline of their home nation the Titanic fleet that had been sent to conquer changed its goal. The new aim of these giants was to find a new home where they could live peacefully without being pursued and hunted. In the following decades these giants circumvented South America and followed the American coast northwards until they reached what one day would become Vancouver Island. It was there that the giants founded their new nation: the Kingdom of Brobdingnag. Without any enemies Brobdingnag became a prosperous and powerful monarchy which developed poetry, mathematics, literature, printing and an ethic code long before anyone else in the Americas. Furthermore, many groups of Brobdingnagans left their nation looking for new land in the East. There the giants split up and settled areas all over the northern parts of the continent reverting to much more savage giants than their Brobgingnagian relatives. These giants include the Inupasugjuk living with the Inuit, the tribe of Dzunukwa, the Dehotgohsgayeh people, the Si-Te-Cah in Northern California and the Sasquatches (today also known as Bigfeet) who evolved in a similar way as their Yeti relatives: without enough sources of the Food of the Gods they became savage ape-like creatures preying on the local human tribes.

But the surviving giants in Europe were not as fortunate as their Brobdingnagian relatives. Hunted by the "little peoples" all over their former realm, the giants were slaughtered by the native population and only the smartest and strongest giants survived. Several tribes of giants managed to escape their pursuers by hiding in the mountains, such as the Jentil and Mairu in Basque territory. There is another story about a giant building a flying castle on the clouds and thus escaping his pursuers. This specific giant would one day be killed by a young Englishman named Jack who used a magical beanstalk to reach the fortress. Hordes of giant refugees fled over the English Channel, for there were nearly no humans in Albion (ancient England). Thus Albion became a safe haven for giants who seized power over the native peoples such as elves, fairies, goblins and some human tribes such as the Picts, the Woads and the Scots. Albion was ruled by giantkind until the Trojan refugee Brutus of Britain set foot on English territory which would result in the creation of first English human realms and the suppression of magical native creatures such as the giants. Accounts vary but some believe the giants Got and Magog were killed by either Brutus or Corin of Corwall. The longest remaining giant realms in Albion were Cornwall which existed until the death of the giant king Cormoran, the Welsh giants ruled by Bendigeidfrân and the giants under Cichol Gricenchos who were ousted to Ireland where they were called the Fomorians. The Fomorians had Ireland under control until they lost the battle against the Irish-Celtic gods during the rule of the half-Fomorian half-Cyclops Balor.

But Albion was for a long time not the only save haven for giants. In the Middle East the Titanomachy had only little effect and the local giants - a people calling itself the Rephaite - still wielded power of the humans. But once more the giants' rule would find an end: after the demise of the greatest Rephaite leaders, Goliath of Gath and Og of the Amorites, the remaining giants were driven out of the human territory. Only a few survivors of the Rephaite are known.

The Titans imprisoned in Tartarus tried to return to the world and to take their revenge several times: first of all, after the end of the Tojan War an outraged Poseidon betrayed his people and allied with the cyclops Gargarensis in an attempt to open one of the four gates leading to Tartarus. But Gargarensis was defeated by the Atlantean hero Arkantos although Atlantis was destroyed in the process. Only some years later, in 1177 BC the Titans tricked the surviving Atlanteans into invading Mount Olympus, the seat of power of the Olympian gods. With the assault of the gods' fortress the barrier between the mortal realm and the plane of Tartarus was weakened and the banished giants managed to return to their home plane where they began to wreak havoc all over Greece, Egypt and Scandinavia, until they were defeated by Kastor, a descendant of Arkantos. The third and last attempt of the Titans to return to the mortal world took place shortly after the Battle at Attica (486) between the allied Greece city-states under the hero Kratos and the Persian Achaemenid Empire under God-King Zyros. Kratos attempted to slay the Olympian gods and out of this reason he freed the Titans to aid him in his quest. Although Kratos eventually failed because of the intervention of the "Hero of Helos", after this incident the Olympians decided to cut the connection between Olympus and Earth.

During the Middle Age the European giants were nearly driven to extinction. The survivors turned into lone wolfs roaming the countryside, preying on humans and human settlements both out of sheer hunger and out of a grudge against humanity for the genocide of giantkind. This aggressive and vengeful attitude gave the giants their medieval reputation of being mindless, brutal monsters. This led to many battles between giants and humans such as Roland, Amadis de Gaula, King Arthur, El Cid, the Twelve Peers, the Mayor of Shrewsbury and Jack the Giant Killer. Following the demise of King Arthur during the Battle of Camlann, Britain descended into barbarism and anarchy, plagued by ogres, giants, and faeries ruled by Arthur's half-sister Morgan le Fay. Still, some giants managed to live peacefully with humanity, such as the Basque giant Olentzero, the German colossus Rübezahl and the giantess Neringa who worked together with local humans and funded the Neringa municipality in westernmost Lithuania. there were also the traveling Giants of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

In 1680 the magical and the non-magical society signed the 'International Institute of Secrecy'. This treaty would not only segregate the wizards and witches away from the Muggles, it would also affect the shrinking giant population. After millennia of being hunted by humans they were only a handful of European giant tribes left while the American giants and the Indian Daityas were becoming fewer and fewer, too. To prevent the giants from becoming extinct, the wizard community secretly supported the expedition of Lemuel Gulliver, hoping he would discover the nation of Brobdingnag. He did, indeed, but the King of Brobdingnag was far from willing to join his relatives in Europe, as his opinion regarding humanity was very low, describing humans as "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth." Nevertheless, during the 19th century some Brobdingnagans traveled eastwards and joined the growing United States of America. Furthermore, the American Dream lured several giants from the Old World to America, where they hoped to be save of their pursuers. These American giants did a great deal at helping to build the growing American nation and today many of them still hold a strong place in folklore, such as Paul Bunyan, Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, Mose the Fireboy, Henry "Ole Pete" Peterson, Johnny Kaw and Big Joe Mufferaw. While others were allegedly giants by some accounts such as John Henry and Pecos Bill.

But not even migration to America and the support of the wizard community would increase the shrinking number of giants. During the late 19th century, Brobdingnag plunged into anarchy after the king was assassinated by a group of radical revolutionaries, followed by a civil war that cost the life of nearly the entire population of the kingdom and a war with Utopia that saw both nations destroyed. The remaining native giant tribes (excluding the Sasquatches who seem to be extremely skilled at hiding from humanity, as are the Yeti) were forced to live in reservations where they slowly lost their powers and their enormous size as there was by far not enough Food of the Gods available. Furthermore, the Indian Daityas died out during India's time as a colony. And after millennia of being hunted and centuries of being on the edge of extinction, the last tribe of Eurasian giants died at the end of the 20th century while allying with the dark mage, Lord Voldemort.