Dungeons and Dragons Lore: History of the Giants
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- The first in the revised Giants series, we explore the origins of the Giants on Toril and the ancient kingdom of Ostoria on Faerun.
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Timestamps and Spoilers Below!
0:06 Intro, Become a Member
0:28 Updating the Giants (Part 1)
1:58 Ancient Empires, Annam Arrives, and Othea
4:20 Children of Annam
5:50 Fall of Batrachi and Tearfall
7:48 Dragons Arrive, Rise of the Aearee
9:44 Races of Toril Present at the time, and fall of avian creator races
11:40 The Thousand Year War
15:15 The Truce and The Draco Holy War
16:42 Note on Giant Religion (More of that in parts 2 and 3,) Religious culture for giants
18:49 Garyx (Yes he named a dragon after himself), Vonindod, Wyrmrever, and end of the war
21:13 A Shattered Empire, and More to come
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A bit late to the party but i'm catching up after a nice holiday season. This is part 1 of an ongoing series to update the Giants videos on the channel to be easier to listen to and add in a bit more lore he has learned over the last several years. Definitely appreciate the effort, and hey, who doeskin like learning about Giants. Links to part 2 and 3 below.
Just wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone who participated in the channel challenge and watched part 1 of Netheril video in December. While we did not reach the goal, AJ called it close enough and will hopefully be making part 2 soon. Look for it in the new year with any luck!
Giant Gods (Part two of Remake Series): th-cam.com/video/c4WbTqWzsVY/w-d-xo.html
Giant Kin (Part 3 of the Remake Series): th-cam.com/video/AotiaDGxN_w/w-d-xo.html
We met the goal for the Netheril video, on time, actually.
The real reason the dragons won the war? Dungeons and Giants doesn't roll off the tongue as easy as Dungeons and Dragons.
Hehehe
Zeus: I will screw literally anything.
Anam, about to clap a literal mountain's THICC peaks: Hold my omnipotence.
In one of my games, we found a sewing needle belonging to a particularly large giant, that was so large that we basically used it as a rapier until we found an enchanted sword. Fun stuff, really.
This made me consider having a portion of all magic items be for Giants or Dragons since their dynasties ran for so long, and as long as the location (of ruins) was suitable. Mages trying to unlock the ancient magic trapped in a giants helmet or a ring sized for a dragon sound like interesting and plausible sources of adventure. Perhaps an ancient Dragon Arch-wizard has an enchanted scrying pool sized appropriately or a......
AJ, i would pay a hefty sum for an accurate timeline of the various races of Toril. This is top notch info my friend!
How about a lake-sized "well of many worlds" i don't know if that magic item made it to 5th ed
AJ sits high in the Ordning.
The last time I was this early. Dragons and Giants were still having their little tiff with each orher.
That's some premium rare lore there with the Aeree right there. I was always curious about the origins of the corbies
When one falls in love with a literal mountain you know they like them extra thiccc
I love learning everything I can about the war between the Dragons and the Giants. imagine a Storm Giant punching a Bronze Dragon in the face as the dragon rakes the giant with its savage claws. So cool!
As my PCs level up they acquire henchmen, entire armies. Now I've got to learn to DM massive battle orders. A video on managing 2000 a side Beatles sometime perhaps, esp. with spice added- giants, dragons, seige monsters, etc.
I love Giant lore.
Just a point of real world science: thunder beasts (dinosaurs) would be warm blooded. Pterosaurs are true reptiles and were cold blooded but they also had hair like filaments called pictofibers making them flying giraffe sized monsters with shaggy hair. Mosesaurs, Ichthysaurs and other marine 'dinosaurs' weren't actually dinosaurs and were true reptiles as well, closely related to monitor lizards today. So the dragons being warm blooded isn't that stark a contrast from the terrestrial thunderbeasts but certainly is a contrast from aerial and marine thunderbeasts.
Oh my! AJ is doing remasters, my favorite video of yours is the Red Dragon your dragon series is almost perfect, just needs proper audio mastering. Much love
Giants are hands down, the most intriguing if races.
They should make giants playable in the future at some point. Just have the adventure take place on a plane where everything is larger. Historically speaking humans used to be giants before the great flood took place.
Yet that's only based upon the Bible though. In mythology giants play a huge part in epic battles. So having a giant setting where PCs are giants would be cool.
@@zacharygadzinski3147 yes, the great flood killed off the giant race entirely. Based on the bibble, we can deduce that dinosaurs were not that big at all, biggest human recorded was 36 feet tall, while a T-Rex was 44 feet.
At one point DND had half giants, hut it isnt as cool as playing a actual giant. Then again, mechanically, the game wouldn't let you play anything bigger than medium.
The one time you could do so was playing a board game, Assault of giants, where you control the ordening, attacking other giant clans.
@@kendrickrochelanzot2053 That's why having a setting/ plane dedicated to giants could allow for playable giants, yet all Giant PCs would be restricted to that plane. Yet I'm surprised they don't allow for large races yet. Couldn't they rebalance the game to accommodate large PCs at some point?
@@zacharygadzinski3147 I guess they are thinking things in a RP way, like how will someone so big enter a building or how will they he trusted since they are considered to be "monstrous"
Thank you Professor. That was a spectacular start to the giant updates
Will not lie. I never knew the war actually happened until about two years ago. Giants, and dragons were a bit out of my league. But the more I learn now it is actually very cool.
I do have a soft spot for giants though so it is nice that they did not shoot first.
Comedic campaign insert.
Krendalpamshkin.
Once a powerful demon lord.
One day a skinny, nerdy wizard named Krandok summoned him. Krandok had a severe case of what we'd call Tourette's syndrome.
Krendalpamshkin had no idea that Krandok had a gem embedded in his chest tgat contained the essence of a dead god.
Krendalpamshkin mocked Krandok's ticks..... bad move!
The most bizarre curse in history was laid upon this demon lord.
He has a unique form of Krandok's condition.
Roll a d20 each round.
11-20: nothing happens
6-10: Krendalpamshkin blurts out a compliment
3-5: random benevolent cleric spell cast upon all who can hear him (as cast by a LG cleric of 30th level)
2: A random harmful cleric spell cast upon all EVIL creatures whi can hear him (as cast by a LG cleric of 30th level )
1:HOLY WORD (As 30th level LG cleric)
As you can guess, the other denizens of the lower planes DON'T WANT HIM AROUND.
His name is often left for wizards to find. He's become a story that is used to horrify infernal creatures into understanding that you should never underestimate a mortal!
He has so many uses for a crwative DM to shake things up!
Imagine the face of your party's cleric as a demon suddenly blurts out a LG heal spell!
You and MrRhexx are my favourite DnD lore youtubers ❤️
Wouldn't that be awesome if they collab'd on something? Or better... had MrRhexx be a guest gamer in one of AJ Picket's AD&D sessions?
Definitely
@@That80sGuy1972 that would be amazing
@@siegwardinspirit Totally amazing! I would make that video one of my favorites. They are both brilliant AD&D guys, both AD&D positive, both really knowledgeable. How can we (the viewers) lose? Not at all!
Much respect to Mr Rhexx, I'd love to have a chat with him some day.
You'd think that The Dragon's would have basically finished off the remaining weaker breeds of Giant after the wars. I don't see Hill Giants being any threat to a dragon, even a juvenile one
Even the most brainless giant can still throw a rock far to hard and fast for comfort.
and there is rarely any shortage of rocks.
I would love to see a game where players play as different types of Giants(with PC classes) during the war with the dragons.
Sounds like a good superchat question for AJ's live stream. 😁
Great video. A favorite giant of mine is female frost giant on sled pulled by dire wolves. She pulls off to the side and throws ice balls. I am sure you will agree that frost giants and white dragons can be played very cleverly especially given extremely difficult terrain, imagine traps such as (frozen) slides, thin ice (waterfalls), avalanche, rough ice...
The Stone Giants looked really cool with the stone scrolls or wheels. Great maps in the video too, good stuff AJ, thanks!
Excellent video AJ. Giants in my campaigns are entwined with competition against dragons too, but mine are silly homebrews. The ancient Frost Giants were akin to what my version of the Nordic people's Thor fought and that's why winter comes and goes.
Here's an idea for your players in a campaign. They discover a massive under mountain tomb with giant doors. They find what looks like precious metal plates with runes on them. If anyone has an Ancient History proficiency (or the post 2nd Ed version of it), make a passive roll for them. Those are ancient Giant coin money. They are worth 5x their material value because of their rarity. However, nearby Giants will hear of selling those coins and know a coveted Gaint tomb was ransacked. Not cursed items per se, but the coveted status makes them cursed. Keep in mind that because Cloud Giants are more technologically inclined than most believe (Their cloud castles and cities are magic-technology hybrids. "Artificers" in the current AD&D world, I believe) they would be a faction that would be a problem for your current party as an antagonist.
You know what I find most annoying with how people play Giants as NPCs? They are pretty much just big tough monsters. The intelligence is never really played at all with most DM's. Hill Giants, that is forgivable. Frost Giants, that is tolerable... they are savage but not stupid. Any individual unaffiliated Giant, okay, that's like a random thug of any race. But all other Giants just charging in and assuming the little people are not a threat? Stupid. They would fear Dwarves the same way you or I would fear a wolverine, bobcat, or even an easily killed viper. Even if they saw all smaller creatures as how we see rats, if a swarm of rats charged you would you just laugh and charge them with a club? Nope. Most Giants are smart. New players to my games always get hit hard because other DM's rarely use the intelligence of the species.
21:09 - This may not be so foregone as the giants' scarcity implies, if it's something people want to actually have happen in their campaigns. Remember that Tiamat is on one side of a civil war; Bahamut may well have committed himself to the peace of the truce and in some part motivated to preventing Tiamat's return as an effort to maintain that peace. You could reasonably create a story where the metallic dragons, in an effort to extend that peace indefinitely, are working to end hostilities between giants and dragons outright only for Tiamat to be returned to Toril, where the metallic dragons end up actually _allied_ to the giants because of a shared goal in stopping Tiamat. Would all the giants of modern Toril accept this alliance? Would all the metallic dragons? Would there be chromatic dragons working to support the truce for their own purposes? Questions to answer.
Nah they’d try to kill each other You have to remember that all metallic dragons are good and most Giants are evil so that’s going to go very poorly very
This is my favorite video you’ve made so far!
I love all the ecology videos you make, but this one is really the glue that groups them all together in a meaningful and enlightening way!
I heard Dragon and Orb in the same sentence.
I hear if you gather 7 of them, a minor dragon god will appear and grant one to three guaranteed Wishes.
Fing Glorious. I had my copy of "Realms of Infamy" nearby waiting for ye to go into the betrayal of the Giants. I'll be hopefully awaiting the next installment. Also Midgard dwarves........
Thank you for the maps, they help a lot.
As usual, just in time for the stone giant encounter in my current campaign! 👍🏻
Early squad! Nothing like some quality D&D lore once you get off work! Thanks AJ.
I seriously appreciate your work. Once I have some extra cash I’ll be joining in your Patreon for sure.
wow! you've been deeply immersed in D&D lore since your 1st Giants video? wow! I barely noticed it!
love this channel, Kiwi loremaster!
Now this is a history lesson that's interesting!
Just as i started Storm Kings Thunder. Tnx man.
AJ Pickett, the Herodotus of D&D
Thanks for this video AJ, lots of awesome information - tons of rewatch value. Looking forward to more of these.
Why doesn't the giants team up with the Metallic Dragons against TIamat and her Chromatic dragons? it doesn't make sense that all the dragons after tiamats summoning would then kick down the Giants doors. Wouldn't Bahamut take on TIamat? >_< what's he doing? sitting on his treasures while TIamat runs a muck? It's like all the heavy hitters are frelling children geez!
glad to see the Giants are getting remade can't wait for the same to happen with my favoured undead looking at you skeletons and zombies
Can you imagine if the giants and dragons actually managed to work together and coexist.
HERESY!
Interesting premise for a campaign setting 😀
@@anthonyromasco3528 probably won't be a setting. Sense all there will be is dragons, giants, and half dragon-giants.
"How to Train Your Dragon" vibes.
A really good video. The most easily comprehensible giant lore video on TH-cam hands down.
Love it as always! Would like to see some from the books visuals of the creatures/races as you talk about them though, you’ve done it in other videos and it really helps when imagining what’s going on. But regardless keep it up! Thank you for all your hard work!
Just had a one-shot turn into a campaign and this is so helpful. So much info. It makes me want to roll out some dungeons.
Awesome video and information as always. Definitely will have to watch this one several times. Thank You!
Wow! That was a lot to absorb. I can’t wait to learn more about the long and epic history of Faerun!
Great Christmas gift! Thanks for the video and have a happy Holiday!
“A long time ago, in a sphere far away.”
I see what you did there.
Should have started the video with scrolling yellow letters.
Can't be too obvious.
AJ Pickett I like putting references in my stuff too. The Priest of Moq H’ajuss I made for the Monster Mash has a reference to 2112 in its description. I had to keep myself from being on the nose about it and calling them Priests of Syrinx.
Thanks AJ! Hello from Pennsylvania.
Hope things r going good.
Great Video.
You think Wizards of the Coast would make giants playable at some point. All that's needed is a setting off the prime material that is suited for giants. That way large and larger characters could be playable.
Play giants in Ysgard.
One thing I've always wondered about Ostoria is how did all the humans, half-elves and other small folk get along in this empire? Was there not enough of a human presence on Toril yet for them to have been a major factor, or did the giants use them as slave labor/serfs?
Most human population were not fond of magic on that time. Having also a very pushed back species by the dragons. (Like the fall of the Spartans in real life). Humans were used in Ostoria maybe by slaves, or servants. Even maybe as pets for little "giants" kids.
Humans were present in Ostoria, as well as Green elves, they were not generally regarded by the giants as "people". Ostoria had a much greater population of Hill and Cloud giants, the Stone giants stayed mostly underground and had a habit of acting like real dicks when on the surface (as they don't regard the surface world as being real), the Fire Giants, at that time, were not trusted and the Frost giants were quite dangerous and not welcome guests either. Storm giants have always been quite aloof and rarely present, but when they or Titans showed up, they just assumed charge of the situation and nobody thought it was a good idea to say no.
Looking foward to the next video.
cool needed this, i'm about to run the storm kings thunder campaign for the boys
_ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT DRAGONS ARE FUCKING ALIENS?_
Yes.
Yeah there are a bunch of dirty as aliens exterminatus all of them
Always a relaxing and fascinating listen. Could you possibly do an Ecology of primordials?
Oh and as a hat tip to you there is a loremaster NPC in my homebrew by the name of Master Pick who can answer literally any questions the players ask and happens to be a polymorphed mist dragon living in candlekeep.
In warhammer, the Giants became inbred due to their size limiting who the coukd reproduce with. Ive wondered myself how DnD giants aren't inbred themselves.
I thought it was because they had a population bottleneck when the Ogres genocided them.
@@bumblingbureaucrat6110 yes. When 95% of the population is dead and your the size of a house this leads to inbreeding.
@@mauktheogre4477 Well I thought that the Dragon Wars were not so bad as the Ogres.
@@bumblingbureaucrat6110 they weren't. But being scattered across the world in small tribes surely isn't good for the ole gene pool
@@mauktheogre4477 True enough.
Was smart enough not to put Tiamat to abyss. That would be disaster.
AJ 19:33 what is the name of the song I hear in the background?
At around 14:30 ish you/AJ mention dragons meta magic.
My question; what is
meta magic / magic? Is that a special form of magic like a hotkey in an mmorpg? (I hope that question makes sense lol)
Anyways thanks and love the continued work and dedication to the living world that comprises the d&d universe.
P.s
If you ever started releasing botany or biology videos on the Mythic land called Earth, you would educate a great many people and have at least one viewer for sure in me.
Meta magic is where a sorecer manipulates magic to change its parameters I believe, like shooting it farther or hitting too separate targets
@@Jackb290 Correct, so in the case of Dragon Breath, it means changing the parameters of the breath weapon, starting with turning a cone to a line, then things like compressing it into an exploding ball, reaching around corners, targeting incorporeal creatures, effects like Bigby's hand, etc.
AJ, is there any way you could add the resources you pulled from in each video description? It would be hugely helpful.
For these Giant vids, the primary resource is Giantcraft (2nd edition D&D, published Sept 1995) along with The Grand History of the Realms (published 2007).
AJ Pickett huge thank you
So Hartkiller was about the size of Vulkan (40k).
Yep, bang on.
Ha, Santa right at the end there.
: ) Merry Christmas
I wish
to know more about Vonnadod
Some more Vonindod info from the Fire Giants episode.
th-cam.com/video/gvQyv69kJcg/w-d-xo.html
Oooooh a new intro.
Leviathan is in the Dragon lore?
i need help answering a question. whats the difference between Jotunheim and Niflheim? like i know ones the world of giants and the other is the world of ice and fog, but i keep hearing and finding conflicting stories, videos, and information that both worlds are covered in ice. like if you type in jotunheim pictures of an ice covered world pops up(a bunch of people say thats because of the way marvel movies portrayed it). the reason why im trying to figure it out is cause im writing a sci-fi/fantasy book and i want one of the worlds to be covered in ice and have giant creatures and landscapes in it so i thought the perfect name for it was Jotunheim, until i kept seeing things about how niflheim was the ice world. but niflheim doesnt sound as cool. wondering if i can still use jotunheim or if that wouldnt seem right. if not what would a cool name be for that world?
In D&D, Niflheim is connected to the plane of Hades, it's terrain looks like rough foothills, with cooler temperatures (but not completely frozen), healthier vegetation including pine trees, and no disease. Everything is cloaked in dreary fog and mist, limiting vision to about a hundred feet. It is connected to Ysgard through the roots of Ygdrassil, the world tree. Jotunheim is also fairly wild terrain but has the full range of habitats you would find on a terrestrial world, and while there are many giant creatures there, it is mostly normal-sized wilderness broken by the homes of various gods and mead halls of the honored dead.
@@AJPickett thanks that helps! :) so if you had to name the planet what would you call it?
Map @9:49. Txt names not clear
Yeah, unfortunately the map is a fan creation and has been fragmented and scattered across the internet, but, I am hoping someone with the original, full version will see this and link it to me :)
I love these videos so much. However, I would really love if you could include a script for your videos in your video description area, as sometimes you speak a little quieter or not as clearly at the end of sentences, and I'm not 100% sure what word you used and it becomes harder to look deeper into topics I've just learned about or find interesting through your videos. Great work overall!
That is why I post the entire script for every video for my Patreon supporters, which anyone can access for as little as $1 per month.
Lol santa giant
You mostly talked about the dragons
Oh you mean the dragons that arrived during, fought for a thousand years and spelled the end of the Realm of the Giants? Yeah, they get a mention or two. The dragons I don't even mention until seven minutes into the video...
Allen Scott
Loving you put those dragons in Warhammer 40K never survive. Well they are aliens Invaders begin with
Can the different giant races procreate? What happens if a Fire Giant loves an Ice Giant? Does a Stone Giant mother and a Fire Giant Father make a Lava Giant?😋
Ps. 21:50 "Who's on the naughty list?!"
Tatsusama Fire giant loves an ice giant... bucket of water giant? Puddle giant?
Edit: Oh oh, Slush giant!
@@dboot8886 Maybe if the Father is an Ice Giant and the Mother a Fire Giant you get a slush giant, but if the father is the Fire Giant then the kid is a Steam Giant?
Tatsusama I would totally not be surprised if steam giants were already a thing.
@@dboot8886 In my campaigns, I have Steam Giants. The only place they live is around the Gyzer Rifts, both a small clan on the surface and a cave city in the Underdark. They are like heat-immune cloud (or fog) giants with a knack for machinery. Instead of Giant Rune Magic, they have Technomancy. They don't like Fire Giant areas because to them, they are like arid zero humidity temperate rock deserts are to us. Heat... not an issue... but dehydration is an issue.
21:43 Santa?? What type of Giant is Santa??
Frost
Efraim idk. Frost giants tend to not wear warm clothing.
Verbeeg
AJ Pickett I’ve always thought that name sounds like someone with an accent trying to describe the size of them.
“How big was the creature, Ling?”
“It was Verbeeg!”
I don't want to look like the simplest fool to question, but I don't get how giants actually conducted their war against the dragons. If we ignore the simplification of 5e, aging dragons have DR, and it's rather impressive DR. Even the strongest mundane stuff is likely to have just bounced off of their hides, and while I've seen a cloud giant archmage, or can imagine a awesome storm giant, riding a massive roc, and hurling lightning at red dragons, I just don't see giants, even smarter ones, as particularly "magical". Add to that most all dragons can fly, while even cloud giants typically lack this ability, and dragons' elemental breath is potent. What did the ancient giants have, that current ones lack, that allowed them to battle the wyrms for so long? Even the Vonindod could only be st place at a time, so what did they do other days to fight? Did their boulders possess elemental power they now lack? Should I just ignore the DR dragons once had, because now they don't, and simple knives can hurt them, much less giant boulders, and massive strength?
Where does runes come from?
D&D books
@@AJPickett Wich ones?
But seriously, is there an orgin?
Hmmm, if memory serves there are runes depicted in the Guide to the great glacier, but yeah, all the giant lore is derived roughly from scandinavian history, neolithic carvings and such.
@@AJPickett Strange since Odin was the one to discover runes and never thought them to any gigant besides maybe Loki so them knowing it is very strange.
@@absolutleynotanalien8096 derived from Scandinavian history, not the same as. th-cam.com/video/kW9KbtjyHN4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=khTAY45Et0ldlpZy here you go.
Woa I was here early
I would suggest mixing down the music, For some reason your voice seems to high in the mix versus the music and it seems jarring to your beautiful lore you've collected. It may be mic-spacing.
Thank you, fine-tuning a new Editor :)
Where is live chat? It is Saturday
Check the community tab, live chat is tomorrow.
Mmuch better
HAHA, i just watched the 4 year old, short version yesterday
now there's a new shiny version!
i had no clue of the grand history of the forgotten realms!
3.5e forever!
It's raining about the Giants about their history well the asshole dragons ruin it but yeah I'm not going to sugarcoat the giant or kind of dickish to I'm going to say