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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11695 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Mar 2018 : 12:38:55
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So, I just happened to be glancing at Cities of Bone and I saw this
History of Sokkar
At the dawn of time, giants ruled the jungles that engulfed the now-desolate terrain of the Land of Fate. These magnificent creatures founded the city of Sokkar. The giants governed wisely, and the city's human citizens prospered. But all that is good must pass, for the Destroyer of Delights and Sunderer of Societies visits every giant, every man, every nation. With time, the female giants began to produce only male heirs, and the population of giants steadily dwindled until only a few males remained. Renouncing their rulership of Sokkar, the giants built massive cairns for themselves far outside the walls of the city and shut themselves up inside their necropolis.
Although many giants passed into eternity, the three most powerful and principled members of their race could not rest leaving their beloved city unguarded. Noq the Inspired, Arun the Ever-Vigilant,
and Merodach the Deprived all ignored their own deaths. Animated by their forces of will, these giants became rom, the Undying. (See the rom entry in the MONSTROUS COMPENDIUM appendix for the AL-QADIM
setting, MC13.)
After the giants' exodus, humans continued to rule in Sokkar according to their ancient laws. New kings and queens deferred to the memory and traditions of their forbears. Each year, the rulers visited the necropolis to confer with the rom and hear their undying wisdom.
Before long, the rom were praised as noble heroes and worshiped as demigods in Sokkar. Citizens begged to be buried near their sacred cairns. The rom welcomed the expansion of their necropolis and encouraged a reverence for the dead. As the centuries passed, a vast
city of tombs expanded around the giants#146; funerary complex, until even their towering mausoleums were lost in the avenues of vaulted tombs and memorials
I'm interested in this story of a giant kingdom that may have infested this area. I'm even more intrigued with these 3 giants that turned themselves into something akin to divinity. I also wonder if Noq the Inspired didn't inspire Nogaro the kingdom. Given that the necromancer kings of Sahu had some involvement with Nogaro maybe there is some linkage in the line between all the of these areas.
Just as a further seed, I looked up the Rom in the 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium. This is what little there is
The rom are a race of subterranean, undead giants that withdrew
from the surface world in the distant past. They are sullen,
malicious, and angry creatures, attacking any who disturb their
final dwelling places or cairns.
Rom are all male. They have tall, muscular physiques, similar to humans in proportion, with thinning, bone-white hair, sunken, glassy eyes, long, curling fingernails, and ashen-gray skin. They stand about 17' tall, retaining the supernatural Strength they possessed in life (20). They speak with sad, resonant voices. All are talented singers, poets, and musicians.
It further goes on to explain that they are masterful poets and singers, they were a herding society with giant cows that used to graze in what is now a desert, and that those bards that visit them learn very "goth" like techniques (haunting melodies, etc..). I'm personally not seeing these as children of Annam. Part of me wants to link them to death giants, but they're different. I also wouldn't be surprised if their death by lack of females being born wasn't some kind of curse placed upon them by some kind of epic or high magic (and my first thought there is damned dirty elves... but actually, what if they pissed off some genies).
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Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
Edited by - sleyvas on 20 Mar 2018 00:00:25
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Baltas
Senior Scribe
Poland
955 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2018 : 14:07:11
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| This may not mean anything, but Sokkar is the name of an Egyptian God, usually spelled Seker (and Tom Costa wrote he was in the Realms subsumed by Ptah), and Merodah is the Hebrew form of the name Marduk... |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2018 : 17:13:11
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Rom is a Spaceknight. 
EDIT:
I had always assumed the Rom were somehow connected to the Great Guls (not that I gave Al-Qadim lore very much thought).
EDIT2:
Also, I've been talking lately about a group of 'proto-giants - the Jotuns - that would have existed in the Time before time (Pre-Dawn War), that were 'all of one race', but could take on templates that linked them to elements and energies. Thus, after the Dawn War, when everything became more 'fixed' (less mutable), the giant sub-races were born from those groups that had focused on the templates (Frost, Cloud, Storm, Fire, etc., etc). However, that means it is possible that some 'primordial giants' (Jotuns) stayed 'pristine' - stayed in their true, pure forms, and survive until this day. I believe Kara-Tur has some of these (Giants in the K-T material are ALWAYS simply called 'giants', and they appear to be little more than very large men). So I guess a group of these Jotuns may have also been living in Zakara at one point.
EDIT3:
Connecting them to the 'unaligned' giants in K-T may actually be a very good idea, now that I just reread what you quoted there - if they lived in the 'Jungle Regions', that would be in the upper NE corner of Zakhara, which is right on the border of Kara-Tur. A lot of those giants may be living in the Yehimals now (and Jotuns living in glacier-covered mountains makes SO much sense). Perhaps Redfang the Reaper from the Utter East was actually a giant/jotun Tiefling? Now that 'Tiefling' is a (silly) race, whats the proper term? Fiend-touched? (and do I need to call an adult if that happens to me?)
EDIT4:
Given the 'vedic' vibe in that particular area (lower and Eastern Yehimals, on into Tempat Larang), these 'Jotuns' could also be the daityas from those traditions. I'm glad you stirred this particular pot, Sleyvas - when I get back to my Utter East stuff (probably in the Autumn), I have to remember to add some giants into the mix in that new area I created (porting the Mahasarpa stuff into those forests/jungles between K-T and Zakhara). Since Daityas are connected to Rakshasa in hindu mythology, and I have Rakshasa in those mountains (who came from Zakhara!) it all makes a lot of sense to me. The Rakshasa empire fell when their genie slaves rebelled, and they fled into the Yehimals. I used to say that happened between 35-25K years ago, but now I am thinking of syncing it up closer to the arrival of the dwarves, in -16000 DR (Rakshasa show up and start taking-over the dwarven caverns, and they flee north, to the Shaar region). Thus, the Jotuns/Daityas may have been their servants they brought with them, but many of them may have become free over the years. The ones that stayed behind in Zakhara would have become the Rom. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Edited by - Markustay on 19 Mar 2018 17:48:21 |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11695 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2018 : 12:01:34
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So, I was thinking about how all these female giants just quit being born. I was thinking curse by someone, and I was thinking genies. So, my mind went "what if it was a wish gone wrong?". So, that got me to thinking of something like some giant in his cups saying "I wish my son never has to deal with a pestering old hag like I have to". Then it hit me. All the females disappeared and the male giants were still around. One of the ideas I've thrown about with hags is that like elves... they "breed true" with certain races.... as in males born are the father's race, females born are hags like the mother. What if a large number of hags insinuated themselves into this giant society. The hags might work together to make it appear that the female births are all stillborn (illusion over say a sack of sand might work), while they transport the children off to elsewhere to be raised in a grand coven. Thus, they introduce more male giants into the society than females for the next few generations. Eventually the hags leave (reason to be created... maybe they have to focus on raising these hags).
Society moves on with the humans taking over Sokkars down in the haunted lands. Some of the giants become Rom and are deified/worshipped by these humans. The society takes on a necromantic focus. Then, the hags come back again centuries down the road, this time to do the same thing to the humans that they did to the giants.
In this concept... it has a very Slavic / Rus feel. Hags and giants, spirits of the land, etc... that kind of fits with relatively nearby societies further north. For instance, Konigheim I've heard people say has a very "Viking" like culture. I've heard of a lot of tattoos, etc... I know that we have the Ffolk showing up in 621 DR to subjugate the Mar of the Utter East... but we also have the possibility of Rus / Illuskan / Arkaiun peoples showing up here possibly earlier, no? I know there's also a temple to Untamo in the desert of desolation area. So, maybe this area had some Slavic and/or Finnish roots (outside of the Mar peoples)? I know someone has mentioned "the Mead Hall of the Northmen", but that doesn't necessarily mean "Norse". It could involve deities like Ukko of the Finns, or the Slavic gods like Perun, Chernobog (who could easily be Ysdar), Veles (who sounds like a great god for these cattle herding giants), etc... and could also include gods like Ereshkigal who fit the pantheon and might have death hags.
Why do I mention this? Because both of those "Viking" type cultures (Finnish and Slavic) brought stories of hags into their culture.
Does this work or even remotely sound good? I ask because I can tend to be enamoured of my own ideas, so I wanted to float it. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 22 Mar 2018 : 22:17:30
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quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Does this work or even remotely sound good? I ask because I can tend to be enamoured of my own ideas, so I wanted to float it.
Preaching to the choir. 
Yes, it all sounds very good, and meshes with my own thoughts very, very well.
I have it where the original proto-giants (Jotuns) didn't have females, or rather, their females were Hags, which may have been a type of fey back then (not sure how I want to spin hag origins just yet). All giants are male, and all dwarves are male... at first. Perhaps 'male-like' would be a better term, since initially they wouldn't have even needed reproductive organs. The dragons are also connected to all of this, but I am not quite sure about their sexuality - it could be the proto-dragons were mutable enough to change sexes at-will, or reproduced asexually... until Tiamat showed up on the scene. She could have possibly brought several layers of polarity to the dragons (and maybe the greater universe). If Tiamat and Bahamut are both aspects of the Asgorath(?), they could represent a splitting of the 'divine masculine' from the 'divine feminine' - this may have not even been that big a deal back before the Dawn War - gender may have been a non-issue (so now I guess I've started blending my stuff into this new elven take in MToF). Perhaps the entire idea of 'genders' didn't come into being until after that war and the fragmentation of the universe. Like so many other things, classically 'female' traits became separated from classically 'male' traits across the board. In other words, the universe had already split into Law & Chaos, and then it split into good & Evil (The Godswar), so why not an an actual split in various beings as well?
Corellon may be the most 'human'(ish) deity to have stayed androgynous (Scaled, draconic, and other 'monstrous' types also would have). We even see in the earliest myths in multiple religions that the first gods created other beings asexually, including Zeus and even Odin. Perhaps the concept of 'pairing' became a thing because they didn't just want "minnie me's" (clones), they wanted something new and different - something that might not agree with everything they say, and to that end, they felt by co-creating newer beings, that have aspects of both 'parents', and thus the concept of dual-sexual reproduction was born (the rule that 'the sum of the parts is greater than the whole', which we see in RW biology - many hybrid species and breeds are superior to the originals).
Anyhow, getting back to giants: After the Dawn War, they would have needed females to reproduce (for some reason the laws of the universe had changed), and maybe certain fey (like magically powerful nymphs) became Hags to mate with the giants, to the benefit of both species. Then at a later time, for whatever reason, the hags withdrew from the Rom.
Other species of giants had learned that enough 'fey blood' had become part of their own anatomy that they could now reproduce with other species, and with those they had 'giant females' for the first time (much to the chagrin of the Hags, who had a monopoly on controlling some of these other races through their reproductive needs).
And since I think these Hags may have started-out as beautiful nymphs (they seem to grow uglier over time, and I have linked that to how often they are forced to change size, so by controlling their urges they can possibly stay young and beautiful looking for longer periods of time... but most don't/can't), I would also relate them to another proto-species I've been considering - the Air Maidens/Valkyries/Succubi/Erinyes (I may just use the 'Erinyes' term for the catch-all prto-group now, since 4e dropped that term from the D&D lexicon).
So Erynies may have been a type of beautiful air-nymph (Sylphs?) from the Feywild, that took it upon themselves to breed with many other species post-Dawn War (in order to keep them viable), and over time they've become part of various 'camps' (groups), which would include all of those I mentioned above, plus dozens more we don't even know about.
They are allowed to have one major metabolic 'adaption' per form they take, thus many are winged in what they would consider their 'natural state', but they must loose the wings in order to procreate (I think that would be the best way to blend all of those together). The Hags of today are the result of tens of thousands of years of Sylphs interbreeding with giants, until now they can't even change form, only size - they've lost whatever magic made them 'Fey'.
I don't know if you can use any of that, but that's how I spin things in my games. Females just ain't natural. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Giants of Long ago Zakhara
