Cave Giant

Cave giants are the vicious loners of the giant world. Even their closest ancestral kin, the rampaging 

, mostly find cave giants too brutal and antisocial to form alliances with. For their part, cave giants—garbed in stinking hides festooned with the rotting skulls of their victims—seem ambivalent about their foul reputation. They are more interested in hunting and killing their next meal than forming alliances.

For all their disregard of others’ opinions, cave giants are cautious when it comes to defending territory. Cave giant traps are simple yet effective, such as rounded boulders that can be pushed down steep tunnels, camouflaged pits filled with sharpened stakes, and even compromised stalactites that can suddenly fall on unsuspecting intruders.

In coastal towns and hillside villages with caves a common feature of the landscape, cave giants star as common villains in local tall tales. Many youngsters and aspiring heroes dare one another to venture into remote grottoes or abandoned mine shafts in the hopes of discovering a cave giant, and all too often their searches prove successful. Grieving villagers pay skilled adventures handsomely to locate the whereabouts of their missing kin. The bounty for such hunts might be as much as an entire village harvest’s worth of gold, particularly if a local cave giant has been a frequent enough menace or the missing villager is particularly beloved.