124 Chapter 4: allies and adVersaries
known as the Keeper of the Moontides, or simply the
Keeper. This spy was never heard from again after her
first report.Giantkin
Some human folklore says that giants were precursors to
humanity, the gods’ failed attempts to create what would
become humankind. Others say that the giants are what
became of humans who tried to ascend to godhood them-
selves, making bargains with fiends and imbibing the
essences of titanic elemental spirits. Today, giants live far
away from major cities, as they have been hunted down for
centuries and driven far from humanoid civilization.lOWBOrn
Ogres, cyclopes, and hill giants are the lowest of the
giantkin and act as a sort of barrier between human and
giant civilizations. The lowborn group together, cast out
from highborn society and forced to fight and forage to
survive. Cyclopes tend to rule lowborn settlements, and
some hill giant warriors ritualistically tear out an eye
in order to emulate their rulers—and some zealous hill
giants do the same in worship to the Ruiner. Wealthier
hill giants create fanciful eyepatches to wear over one of
their eyes. Ogres are not clever beasts, and they lack the
charisma of cyclopes and the dull cunning of hill giants.
They rely entirely on numbers and brute force to over-
whelm their prey.
Sometimes lowborn tribes are taken over by trolls or
oni—creatures so loathsome that the highborn banished
them from the caste system entirely—and transform low-
born communities into terrifying armies of evil.highBO rn
The humanoid peoples of Tal’Dorei divide the highborn
giants into types: cloud, fire, frost, stone, and storm. In
truth, these are not different “races” of giant so much as
there are different cultures. Though they have adopted dif-
ferent magics, codes of ethics and law, and fighting styles,
they are all highborn. Even the hill giants were once high-
born, but they were stripped of their nobility and exiled
by the Council of Seven Scepters, and their people have
fallen into ruin.Cloud gi ant
Cloud giants are denizens of Jovatthon, the Castle of
Thunder. This mighty city-state flies invisibly above
Tal’Dorei enshrouded in thick stormclouds, tracing a
clockwise circular route around the continent, avoiding
its cloudless, arid heartland. The cloud giants are ruled
by two wedded kings, a City-King in charge of domestic
affairs, and a War-King tasked with the defense of Jovat-
thon against both dragons and other highborn giants.
The current City-King is a stern, fearsome ruler named
Ardokles, while the War-King is a much more charis-
matic and beloved general named Vasilios.