| Language | | The native tongue of the Ta’Golga’Vulk The Striding Men is May’Rhun Mother’s Tongue. A flowing language spoken in slow rhythmic beats, where each word flows into the next with minimal divisions. The only written form of the language is a cryptic series of unintelligible geometric shapes and spirals, whose meaning is known only to Giant shamans. |
| Society | The Ta’Golga’Vulk, or as they are known colloquially ‘Giants’, are the native inhabitants of central Maurtia’s Yen’Khal Dancing Sea, inhabiting the grasslands for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of humans. Impressively large they possessed few natural predators before the coming of men. Though native to Yen’Khal, Giants can be found wandering in migratory clans from from one side of the [insert planet’s name] to the other.
Their cousins in [insert name of the Not-Americas continent]
The Giants were strictly migratory without outside influence, wandering from one expanse of fertile plain to the next in search of viable grounds to graze their livestock and gather the earth’s bounty, they spread as far as the plains went avoiding forested and mountainous terrain. Herding the Mehan Friends, a catch all term for mammoths, mastodon, and thunderbeasts, as they went.
Traditional Giant society consisted of the Reg’Jo’Ma Close to the Soul, tight knit familial clans rarely more than fifty strong. Each member of a clan had a Kia Purpose, a broad role to which their talents are best suited. These were the Kia’Roh Purpose of Strength, Kia’Tau Purpose of Tenderness, and Kia’Mao Potential for Purpose. The Kia’Roh were hunters, beast masters, and protectors, whereas the Kia’Tau were gatherers, craftsmen, and herbalists, the Kia’Mao were children and exiles, those who would soon have a place or who forsook their place in the Clan. Most Kia’Roh were male and most Kia’Tau female, but there was no social stigma against an individual who found their place amongst the Kia of the opposite gender.
Their clans were run by two individuals, the Roh’Tai The Strong One of the Kia’Roh and the Tau’Tai The Tender One of the Kia’Tau. The Roh’Tai was a kind of chieftain, leading the Kia’Roh in hunts and when needed in battle, and took on the responsibility of tending to the physical security of the Clan. The Kia’Tau was a shaman of sorts, tending to the matters of hearth and home, likewise ensuring the spiritual well-being of the clan. The Shamans were blessed with the Niah Second Sight, which allowed them to commune directly with the earth and rightly judge where the clan should set their flocks out to graze, gather roots and tubers, and most importantly where the clan should travel next.
When a Giant entered adult life in the clan they would be given a place by the Kia’Tau, based upon what group their talents lended them to. They would undergo ceremonial rights that are poorly understood today, where in the youth would ingest a potent mix of herbs (capable of killing an adult human many times over) and undergo a spiritual awakening via their psychotropic effects. At rituals end the Kia’Tau would brand the initiate with the first of their Un’Oi Kisses, one designating their clan and the other designating their role in the clan.
Clans would meet on the road from time to time, trading stories and food, and only very rarely inflicting violence on one another. In the instances where violence did come death was a rare occurance and lamented by both clans. Every five years however, the Tau’Tai of the various clans in a given region would hear the Yema Calling, wherein dozens or even scores of clans would be drawn to the same location. Here they would exchange food, ideas, and their daughters in order to keep their gene pool fresh. In these times large clans would split as prospective Tau’Tais and Kia’Rohs would compete. Those that were chosen would found their own clans, members of established clans joining them as dictated by elder Tau’Tais.
Their alien nature and semi-isolationist outlook created a widely held belief that Giants were less intelligent than humans, this belief was untrue however. Giants were capable of the intellectual feats that a human was, they simply lacked the same ambitious drive to change that defined human ingenuity. Left to their own devices Giant society remained relatively stagnate, but when prodded by human development they proved capable of sedentary life and proved themselves some of the finest metal workers on the planet. |
| Religion | The Giants worshipped the Un’May Earth Mother and the Da’Fay Sky Father. In the deepest recesses of the past the Earth Mother, with seed from the Sky Father, gave birth to all the life of the earth. However she feared that the Sky Father’s wrath might harm their children, and so banished him from her presence. This angered the Sky, but he was powerless to prevent it. And so he was forced to watch his children grow from far beyond their reach. At times he blessed them with sun and rain, at other times he cursed them with droughts and lightning. Through both good and bad times the Earth Mother attempted to provide, and while she loved all her children deeply she felt the closest bond with the Giants. And so she granted them long lives, and tasked them with the Lhei’Rhai Long Journey so they might wander her surface and see all she could offer.
Their life revolved around the Lhei’Rhai Long Journey, a trek to supply the clan with purpose and sustenance. Over the course of their journey the Giants would be branded with various Un’Oi Kisses that would mark out and quantify their failures and their accomplishments. When an individual’s death, and thereby the end of their continuous migration, approached the Giants would cease their wandering for a brief time. When their member passed it was a joyous affair, rather than a somber one, marking a celebration of the individuals accomplishments and their reunion with the earth. The shaman would read the Un’Oi upon their flesh so the clan might recall the individuals deeds in clarity, and they would sing songs and consume copious amounts of psychotropic herbs or fermented mastodon milk, known as Leysh that was introduced to them through the Suufulk The Prancing Kin. Before covering their fallen comrade in symbols made with blue paint wrapping their comrade in tanned hides or furs and leaving them for nature to reclaim.
As part of their journey the Giants constructed Un’Rhun Earth’s Tongue, standing stone monoliths of sized far beyond those humans of the period were capable of erecting. These were constructed at the direction of the clan’s shaman, and upon erection would be smoothed out and engraved with powerful warding tunes by the shaman. These stones served equal parts road signs, sources of divine energy, and ceremonial setpieces.
Niah and Bethan Gifting were important parts of Giant religion, but Giants were incapable of any other form of magic. With the Niah shamen communed directly with Un’May, allowing them to heal injuries and receive visions as to how they might continue their Long Journey. And with Bethan shamen were able to fold raw ether into the Un’Rhuns and even into weapons crafted by their hands, through the carving of runic symbols. These runes have varying effects and much about their system for folding ether remains shrouded in mystery (due to their cultural silence on the topic). These runes can make wood as hard as stone, they can make flesh burn at the touch of them, and make the Un’Rhun remain in fresh condition even millennia after their construction. The process of ether folding is dangerous for humans, giants are generally protected from the side effects by their magic resistance. Later, as contact with violent humans became a regular affair, the shamen began to use the Bethan to infuse raw ether into a thick animal blood and plant extract paste called Qui Hide, that was worn upon the skin to function as unrestrictive armor. |
| Military | Despite their size, or perhaps because of it, the Giants were not a violent race, though dangerous when roused they were not the kind to strike the first blow unless their kith or kin were threatened first. Though once brought to battle they made dangerous foes for any hominid force. Their great size size and strength giving them obvious advantages over their smaller evolutionary cousins.
In battle the Kia’Roh would be led by the Roh’Tai, an individual of both phisical and mental might. They wielded flame hardened staves or mauls of carved wood and infused with ether rich runes, as large as many trees, and in proper form capable of turning both a horse and it’s ridden into a thick paste. At range they threw javelins large enough to fell elephants and shot three foot arrows. They wore little in the way of armor, mainly hide straps, trousers, or jerkins, but their thick skin would often prove a match for conventional weapons. As time wore on however warriors began to use the ether rich Qui as a form of armor, painting symbols of divine power on their fur and skin, and though the mechanisms associated are not fully understood it does appear that the Qui has legitimate protective capabilities.
The Giants seem to have been incapable of most traditional magic use, and therefore fielded no mages in combat, but this inability to pull from the natural ether of the world granted them a notable level of resistance to many of the more damaging effects magic could bring to bare. |
| Life Outside the Clans | Despite the peaceful nature of their society there are always outliers, to the Giants they were the Rum’Oui Lost Children. Giants that would abandon their clan and their Kia in pursuit of their own desires. Traditionally these individuals were young males that imposed lonely exile upon themselves, wandering the plains in search of worthy opponents that might claim their lives. Once they had worked out their anger they would return to the clan, or they would be claimed by the tropical grassland’s many dangers. Many of these individuals became valued members of the clan once their lonely trials brought clarity to their purpose.
But, as human civilization rose around them it became more common for these Lost Children to find themselves in the employ of petty kings or tribes as mercenaries, where they would find easy food and pointless battle in equal measure. As well as finer things that their clans were incapable of providing, many of these mercenaries would never return to their clans and if they did found life among their kin too simple to endure. Among these Rum’Oui mercenaries we see the rise of a cult dedicated to Da’Fay, based upon the power that can be granted to an individual rather than the purpose and peace Un’May traditionally provided her followers.
(To be filled with Giant mercenary stories and such) |
|
[ANW - Civilization] The Ta’Golga’Vulk
