The Elder Giants are one of the two Elder Races birthed from the last dreams of the World-That-Was, conceived in the moments before the Endless Night fell once more into slumber. Born in twinship with the Elder Dragons, they are among the First Ones—those ancient beings who awoke from the Dream of Creation and shaped the world through word, war, and wonder.
Origin and Nature
According to the oldest surviving myth-cycles, the Elder Giants were not merely made of the world, but with it—summoned forth by the dreaming night’s closeness to waking, and formed of her grief and her fury. While the Dragons were fire and hunger and dominion, the Elder Giants were patient thought, steady strength, and enduring presence. They were the wakers, the wanderers, the watchers.
In the Age Before Sun, the Elder Giants walked beneath a sky unlit by stars, alongside the other First Ones. They were slow to speak, slower still to act, but their wisdom was profound, shaped by silence and stone and sea. Unlike their twin race, the Elder Dragons, the Giants did not covet. They did not hunger. They observed.
The War of the First Ones
Though the Elder Giants sought peace, they were drawn into the great and terrible conflict known as the War of the First Ones, which shattered the fledgling world. In those days, the Giants allied themselves with the Arboriad and the Radiant, standing against the acquisitive Elder Dragons and the nihilistic Necrist.
The war's devastation is said to have scarred the face of the world forever. Mountains were raised and sundered, and seas were flung across continents. Though none can say which of the First Ones cast the first blow, all accounts agree that the Giants fought with unmatched endurance and dignity, and that their wrath—once kindled—was terrible to behold.
When the war ended, and the Radiant had flared into stars, and the Necrist had sunk into shadow, the Elder Giants withdrew from the world, retreating into the bones of the mountains. There, they faded from history, becoming legend.
The Acts of Creation
Though the Elder Giants diminished in presence, their legacy endured. In the long twilight following the First War, the Giants set about shaping children of their own. Their creations were many, and wrought with both care and purpose.
The True Giants, firstborn of the Elder Giants, were massive and mighty, bound to the elemental forces of the world. Fire, Ice, Cloud, Stone, and Storm—all were reflections of the dreaming world's primal forces, and each clan held dominion over a piece of the living earth.
The Goliaths were made after, smaller in stature but still of giant-blood. They were nomadic, resilient, and adaptable—able to traverse the waking world without shattering it beneath their feet.
The Elves and Dwarves followed, crafted with refinement and specialization: the Elves long-lived and cerebral, shaped for memory and wonder; the Dwarves stout and cunning, shaped for toil and craft.
Man, the final creation of the Elder Giants, was given laughter, curiosity, and a flame that burned bright but brief. Of all their creations, it is said that Man spread fastest and forgot quickest.
Each race bore fragments of the Elder Giants' nature—strength, wisdom, and a sense of the vastness of time—but none bore the full weight of their creators' legacy.
Philosophy and Legacy
Unlike the Dragons, who rule and hoard, the Elder Giants sought to understand and uplift. They believed the world was a place of becoming, not belonging—a place where wisdom could be gathered like stones from the riverbed, and passed down not through blood, but through deeds and remembrance.
To the Giants, the act of creation was not an expression of power, but of stewardship. They believed that to shape the world was to care for it. Many of their greatest teachings are said to lie hidden in the echoes of mountain halls, etched into the living rock in a tongue now lost to time.