Massive giants with milky white to sky blue skin, living in clouds and demanding tribute

Cloud giants' skin ranges in color from milky white to light sky blue. They have hair of silvery white or brass, and their eyes are iridescent blue. Adult males are about 18 feet tall and weigh about 5,000 pounds. Females are slightly shorter and lighter. Cloud giants can live to be 400 years old. Cloud giants dress in the finest clothing available and wear jewelry. To many, appearance indicates station: The better the clothes and the finer the jewelry, the more important the wearer. They also appreciate music, and most can play one or more instruments (the harp is a favorite). Like most giants, they are suspicious of the smaller races, but cloud giants do not usually prey upon them, preferring instead to demand tribute from humans, demi-humans, or humanoids living nearby. Cloud giants fight in well-organized units, using carefully developed battle plans. They prefer to fight from a position above their opponents. Cloud giants can throw large stones up to 200' for 3d6 points of damage each. Also, 5% of cloud giants have the abilities of a Magic-User of level 2 to 8 (2d4). A favorite tactic is to circle the enemies, barraging them with rocks while the giants with magical abilities

This towering giant has finely chiseled features. Her skin is pale and smooth, and her long wispy hair flutters as if in a breeze.

Cloud giants live extravagant lives high above the world, showing little concern for the plights of other races except as amusement. They are muscular with light skin and have hair of silver or blue.

High and Mighty

Cloud giants are spread to the winds, encompassing vast areas of the world. In times of need, scattered cloud giant families band together as a unified clan. However, they can seldom do so quickly.

Attuned to the magic of their airy domains, cloud giants are able to turn into mist and create clouds of billowing fog. They dwell in castles on high mountain peaks, or on the solid clouds that once held their fiefs.

Still gracing the skies on occasion, these magic clouds are a lasting remnant of the giants' lost empires. Better spellcasters than most other giants, some cloud giants can control weather, bring storms, and steer the wind almost as well as their cousins, the storm giants.

Affluent Princes

Although cloud giants are lower in the ordning than storm giants, the reclusive storm giants rarely engage with the rest of giantkind. As a result, many cloud giants see themselves as having the highest status and power among the giant races.

They order lesser giants to seek out wealth and art on their behalf, employing fire giants as smiths and crafters, and using frost giants as reavers, raiders, and plunderers. Dimwitted hill giants serve them as brutes and combat fodder-sometimes fighting for the cloud giants' amusement. A cloud giant might order hill or frost giants to steal from nearby humanoid lands, which it considers to be a fair tax for its continued beneficence. On their mountain summits and solid clouds, cloud giants keep extraordinary gardens. Grapes as big as apples grow there, along with apples the size of pumpkins, and pumpkins the size of wagons. From the errant seeds of these gardens, tales of cottage sized produce and magic beans are spread in the mortal realm.

As humanoid nobles keep an aerie for hunting hawks, so do cloud giants keep griffons, perytons, and wyverns as their own flying beasts of prey. Such creatures also patrol the cloud giants' gardens by night, along with trained predators such as owlbears and lions.

Children of the Trickster

The patron god and father of the cloud giants is Memnor the Trickster, the cleverest and slyest of the giant deities. Cloud giants align themselves according to the aspects and exploits of Memnor that they most admire, with evil cloud giants emulating his deceitfulness and self-interest and good cloud giants emulating his intellect and silver-tongued speech. Family members usually align in the same direction.

Wealth and Power

A cloud giant earns its place in the ordning by the treasure it accumulates, the wealth it wears, and the gifts it bestows on other cloud giants.

However, value is only one part of the assessment. The extravagances a cloud giant wears or places about its home must also be beautiful or wondrous. Sacks of gold or gems are worth less to a cloud giant than the jewelry that might be crafted from those materials, creating treasures that bring esteem to a cloud giant's household.

Rather than steal from one another or fight over treasures, cloud giants are inveterate gamblers with a hunger for high risks and high rewards. They frequently bet on the outcome of events nominally outside their control, such as the lives of lesser creatures. Ordning ranks and kings' ransoms can be won and lost in bets over the military triumphs of humanoid nations. Fixing wagers by interfering in the conflict causes the loss of the bet, but such deceit is considered to be cheating only if it is discovered. Otherwise, it is cleverness honoring Memnor.

Cloud Giant

Giant of the Loftiest Heights

Cloud giants use the power of the skies to observe and subtly influence the world. These giants resemble humans with hair ranging from silver to blue and with skin in cloudlike shades from stark white to twilight hues. Curved canines grow in their upper jaws, extending past their lower lips. In battle, they attack with weapons wreathed in storm clouds and throw roaring thunderheads.

Most cloud giants inhabit citadels crowning tremendous mountains or magical palaces that drift amid the clouds. Many of these giants believe they possess similarly lofty status or purpose. Some view themselves as godlike beings who can manipulate and steal from terrestrial beings with impunity. Others claim their long lives and place among the clouds grant them unique perspectives, so they chronicle what they witness in the world below without interfering. In either case, cloud giants often possess fabulous magical treasures, either claimed from across the world or created by (and gigantically sized for) themselves.

Cloud giants rise in the ordning by amassing valuable and beautiful treasures—often by gambling. While many cloud giants are content with risking their wealth in games with each other, those who aim for the top of their ordning challenge all manner of beings in games of chance and wit. A destiny gambler is a cloud giant who has won increasingly high-stakes wagers against other giants, smaller folk, and even beings from the Outer Planes.

Destiny gamblers wear half masks that cover their eyes. The masks' runic magic allows these giants not only to see normally, but also to see through illusions, invisibility, darkness, and other forms of magical trickery.

Years of successful wagers make destiny gamblers so confident in their ability to win any challenge that they invite potential rivals to name the terms of a wager. Those who are foolish enough to issue a combat challenge quickly find these giants' magical prowess is nearly unmatched.

Given their inherent link to elemental air, cloud giants who turn from the gods of the Ordning often gravitate to the service of Yan-C-Bin, Prince of Evil Air. These giants' cunning, charisma, and sheer physical and magical might make them well suited to leadership positions in the cults of Elemental Evil. A cult with a cloud giant at its head can be a formidable force of corruption and destruction in the world. As if that weren't enough, cloud giants often bring tremendous wealth with them, swelling the cult's coffers to finance more far-reaching operations.

A cloud giant dedicated to Evil Air wears a magic vest adorned with wings made from roc feathers and enchanted with elemental air, allowing the giant to fly. The vest functions only for the giant who wears it.

Smiling ones are cloud giants who honor and emulate the craftiness and deceit of the deity Memnor above all else. They are tricksters supreme who use sleight of hand, deception, misdirection, and magic in their pursuit of wealth. They also possess a flair for unpredictability and a wicked sense of humor. Smiling ones overstep all bounds of decorum with their behavior, doing and saying things that even other knavish folk consider beneath their dignity.

Smiling ones take their name from the strange two-faced masks they wear. The smiling half of the face often looks more like a smirk or a triumphant sneer than a pleasant grin. The frowning half represents the displeasure smiling ones feel about cloud giants' place in the ordning—second to storm giants. The masks serve as symbols of smiling ones' devotion and also conceal their wearers' true facial expressions.

Cloud giants aren't, on the whole, religious. They tolerate many conflicting ideas about their patron deity, Memnor. The smiling ones strain that tolerance.

Smiling ones are cloud giants who honor and emulate Memnor's craftiness and deceit above all else. They are tricksters supreme who use sleight of hand, deception, misdirection, and magic in their pursuit of wealth. They also possess a flair for unpredictability and a wicked sense of humor.

While cloud giants expect a certain amount of trickery and deceit in their dealings with others of their kind, smiling ones overstep the bounds of decorum with their behavior, doing and saying things that nobler cloud giants consider beneath the dignity of their kind.

Mysterious Masks

Smiling ones take their name from the strange two-faced masks they wear. The smiling half of the face often looks more like a smirk or a triumphant sneer than a pleasant grin. The frowning half represents the displeasure smiling ones feel about their place in the ordning-second to the storm giants. The masks serve as symbols of their devotion, but they also conceal their wearers' true facial expressions.

Massive giants with milky white to sky blue skin, living in clouds and demanding tribute

Cloud giants usually live in giant castles at high elevations. When not high up in the mountains, their castles are on clouds given substance by magic. The majority (90%) of giants have average intelligence; the remainder are very intelligent and most often live in castles in the sky. When multiple giants are found in a castle, there is a 75% chance that it is a family consisting of a male, a female, and any remaining giants encountered are their children. The children have an equal chance of being male or female. Evil cloud giants keep 1 to 3 slaves 50% of the time and 1d4 prehistoric lions. Cloud giants often dress in flowing clothing and fancy jewellery. They have bronze to white hair, with skin in tones of blue ranging from nearly white to cold, light blue.