High above our heads, in the tumultous and ever-changing currents of the winds,  floats the Cloud Giant fortress, the Himminin. Most have seen it, though they do not know it: if ever you have gazed into the far horizon and seen a great, piling cloud taller than the highest building, you have seen the Himminin. It casts its great shadow over the lands below it, and is always on the move, sailing wherever the winds will take it. 

The Himminin was constructed for the Cloud Giants, as a joint effort between all of giantkind – it is said that the designs themselves were made up by the Elder Giants as their last gift to their children. The result, though few mortals know it, is the single greatest fortress ever constructed. A mix of magical metals, enchanted stone, and the eternally-coiling clouds comes together to form this migratory bastion.

The Cloud Giants are fickle and territorial, and tales the world over tell of how anyone entering their ‘territory’ – the skies around the Himminin, wherever it may be floating on a particular day – is captured or sent quickly to the ground. Though there are also tales of how they may be bargained with, or amused by cunning or flattery. 

Home of the Cloud Giants

The Cloud Giants are not, by nature, a sedentary people. They, bound by their parents the Elder Giants to the element of the air, are constantly on the move, flowing and winding and dancing wherever fate takes them. They are also a fickle kin, cunning and teasing, who delight in mischief and cleverness of thought – an attitude which irritates their kin, particularly the slow and serious Stone Giants. So it was early in the days of the Agdu-Skye that the thought went out to make them their own fortress and to enchant it to move, so that the Cloud Giants might amuse themselves across the whole of the world. 

An Ever-Changing Design

The genius of the architects of the Himminin cannot be overstated: it is the single-greatest example of gigantothaumic engineering in the world, and a large part of that is the transient nature of the defenses. The walls, towers, halls and corridors are constantly on the move, changing the layout of the fortress every day – anyone who manages to scout the Himminin’s defenses on one day will find that they are different the next, making any planned assault impossible; and any attempt at drawing a layout laughable. 

Anchored to the World

Despite the locomotive nature of the cloud-fortress, its architects gave thought to the possibility that the might of the Cloud Giants – which is impressive indeed, should it be roused – might be needed by their kin, and so constructed two means of anchoring the Himminin. The first, a lodestone in the centre of the Agdu-Stein, stands as a last means of defense for the Kingdom of Endon. It has the means to draw the Himminin to it, from wherever in the world the fortress is wandering. The second is the gateway in the Giant’s Henge, a doorway to it wherever it is in the world. 

Stables of the Skye-kyr

The Himminin is also the home of another airborne population: the skye-kyr, or the cloudbeasts. Their numbers have dwindled in the last few centuries, hunted down for sport or driven from their customary homes, but where once they travelled in herds of hundreds, their largest herd is now the domesticated herd kept as livestock by the Himminin.