Need help gathering information on Giants

[Asa]

I want to find as much on giant’s and there mythology as I can. I’m looking to collect how they live, social conflicts, cults, friends, food other then me, There path to the underworld, Once grown the trip back to the surface. How there made, there gods, Culture, cast system, types of giants. I want to get my grubby hands on all the Glorantha Giant information out there. “All Of It” 🙂

[David Scott]

Have you looked at all the references in the Guide to Glorantha. That’s certainly the best place to start. There’s also stuff here on this site using the search box.

[Asa]

I have looked up the stuf in the guides I’ll hit the info on this sight. Was hoping for information fom other Glorantha published works.

[Martin Helsdon]

The classic Griffin Mountain includes a variety of giants, including details about Giant Land in the Rockwoods and the most important giant of the Third Age: Gonn Orta.

http://www.glorantha.com/product/griffin-mountain/

[Asa]

Ok reading through the griffin mountain info. Thanks that was very helpful.

[Joerg Baumgartner]

Pavis and Big Rubble basically is built on the history of the True Giant babies on the River of Cradles. The Pavis history revolves about two True Giants (Paragua and Thog) who got overwhelmed by the EWF-backed magics of Pavis and the Arrowsmiths.

The depiction of giants as dumb brutes doesn’t quite gel with their reputation as builders – both the wall for Orlanth’s village (told in Thunder Rebels) and the citadels of Balazar were built by giants. Other Dawn sites featuring “cyclopean” walls possibly were built by giants as well. While those needn’t have been True Giants like Gonn Orta, Paragua or Thog, they surely would have seen a similar level of sophistication as Boshbisil.

The Praxian pantheon of (earth?) giants hasn’t seen much publication yet. The Guide offers a few hints in the Prax and Wastes section, with some emphasis on the Plateau of Statues (before it became infested with Chaos).

Gonn Orta’s rampage in the Nidan Mountains (was it in the First Age as per p.84 or Second Age as per p.193) was told in a little more detail in Dorastor and in the Mostali articles of Different Worlds, but basically that is stuff on the giant jolanti dwarf constructs and the ones given intelligence by elves in Aggar.

There is hardly anything about the gray giants of Pamaltela.

Earth giant deities/spirits are a border area. Earth Walkers like Gerendetho or the Earth Kings Genert and Pamalt are gargantuan beings whose steps shake the world. Not to mention Glorantha’s own Bigfoot: Larnste, whose footprint left a depression the size of at least one tribal tula and lifted up the Storm Mountains (or pushed them up more). Other mountain deities are represented as giants, too, whether Quivin, Tobros or the headless one of Stormwalk Mountain.

[Charles]

There are many different types of giants in Glorantha and there is a very human (and, I suspect, deliberate) confusion about the use of a single generic name for all these possibly/likely different types of beings.

There’s references somewhere to ancient wars between giants and dragons before the time of the gods. There’s the original Predark (the protagonists of Chaos from before the time when Chaos was corrupted by the evil of Ragnaglar and Wakboth [1]), who have been referred to as giants and who may or may not be the same giants that fought the dragons. There’s the uncles of the initiation of Orlanth (which include Genert), also described as giants. There’s the great spirits of Prax including Genert again, who are described by Praxians as giants rather than spirits. There’s the True Giants of the Rockwoods, such as Gonn Ort. There’s the disorderly (and relatively small) giants of the region around the Alda-Chur and Snakepipe Hollow. There’s the Giant Jolanti, often just called giants. In King of Sartar, there’s a battle where ‘all three types of giant’ turn up to support Argrath. And who knows what giants exist outside of central Genertela?mThe grey Giants of Pamaltela mentioned by Joerg above are unlikely to be the only additional type.

I’m not 100% convinced that Paragua and Thog are True Giants, the same as Gonn Ort. In particular, Paragua seems to be something else, a vast statue in a stone chair when animated by Pavis, as opposed to my memories of Gonn Ort’s close kin who just hunker down to become mountains, if my decades old memories of Griffin Mountain are correct.

[1] one of my pet hobby-horses, which I’m gradually working up to make a longer post about, one of these days

[Joerg Baumgartner]

Charles, you fumbled your Pavis lore – Paragua was the giant from the Rockwoods who flattened Robcradle in response to the True Giant Cradles being robbed and who planted the stone slabs around Cradlecatch Island. He was overcome by the Faceless Statue, a giant giant jolanti that used to sit on the Throne in the western part of the Eastern Rockwoods. That same statue also wrestled Waha. After both Paragua and Waha had been overcome, the statue lay down and was disassembled to solidify the wall started by Paragua.

I agree that the Gray Giants (out of Gloranthan Bestiary) are unlikely to be the only other oversized humanoids. Indeed, noone has mentioned the giants mentioned in Anaxial’s Roster (which is the best collection of giant info in one place). Mountain Giants (known as Hecolanti in Dara Happa) are the standard ones, Jolanti and Dringi get mentioned, and then there are the Hrimthur or Frost Giant descendants of Vadrus and/or Valind. (Mentioning the Grotatons in that category expands the term giant quite a bit…)

Other oversized humanoids of Glorantha include the Luatha and the flame giants of southernmost Pamaltela.

[Asa]

Thank for the info so fare I have been collecting every bit I can find. My current campaign in Glorantha will have alot to do with true Giants. My main concern is not to conflict with any existing information. I have not found much on the baby giants trip to the underworld and after they mature there trip back. Allso how much is known about the baby Giants other then there trip in cradles?

[Joerg Baumgartner]

There’s hardly any information on what is going on on the cradles. We don’t even know much about Argrath’s ride on the 1621 cradle from Corflu to where he met Harrek, and nothing of its journey from that point to its return in the sky, following the Boat Planet. Some little information on that was in the Sartar Rising campaign part 3.

Some more general information was in the Annilla cult of (RQ3) Troll Gods, but no specifics, either.

Don’t sweat too much about contradicting some previously published info that hides in the margins of some obscure magazine article or similar. There is little information in the Guide. If you don’t contradict that, you’re canonical, everything else is not up to date and might contain some misleading info.

[Charles]

About the baby True Giant’s cradle trip, I have a vague memory of a comment by Greg on some mailing list or forum along the following lines. The baby needs to make the dangerous trip down the River of Cradles and down Magasta’s Pool into the Underworld as part of their maturation process, they cannot grow without it. And then he added something like ‘if you think it is like the birth canal, you are not wrong’ – I’m not sure whether he was referring to the River or the Pool or both.
The Giants stopped sending their babies when the God Learners setup Rob Cradle (where Pavis is now). After Argrath achieved the Drinking Giants Cauldron, they sent their first baby down the river (1624).

[Charles]

Joerg, I’m amazed that I’m not caught out more often 🙂

[Paul]

I have a vague memory of a comment by Greg on some mailing list or forum

I recall a similar line from somewhere. When someone asked “Why are the babies exposed to such a hazardous journey down the river” the reply was that it was part of their birthing process and that they could no more avoid going down the zola fel river than a human baby can avoid going down the birth canal.

Actually – related link here:
http://www.glorantha.com/docs/why-do-the-giants-use-the-river-of-cradles/

[Charles]

That’s the one I was thinking of 🙂

[Asa]

“I have a vague memory of a comment by Greg on some mailing list or forum
I recall a similar line from somewhere. When someone asked “Why are the babies exposed to such a hazardous journey down the river” the reply was that it was part of their birthing process and that they could no more avoid going down the zola fel river than a human baby can avoid going down the birth canal.
Actually – related link here:”

So is he saying Glorantha is some sort of the giant?

But on a more serious note if that was absolutely required for giant to be born. It messes with the rest of Gloranthas mythology.

[Author]

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