Reviewing D&D Monsters - Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is a 'splatbook' type that mixes a bunch of stuff together, and I've gone to accept that this is basically 5E's equivalent to the bestiaries of older editions. And with 5E's recent output, I believe most of the newer monster coverage are either going to be setting-themed bestiaries (like Spelljammer and Planescape) or books like this and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. 

And as the title tells you, Glory of the Giants is all about giants! Which... which already received a huge chunk of lore in Volo's Guide to Monsters. But I guess that book is quite old now, and with them kind of quietly retiring Volo and converting the older bestiaries into a compilation called Monsters of the Multiverse, without the lore, they needed somewhere to put all the giant lore. I would really rather have a undead book, or a Far Realm book, or a proper Feywild sourcebook, but here we are with more big guys. 

And... and I'm going to say that I'm not very enthused about giant lore. I'm sorry! I just don't find giants all that interesting. I absolutely respect the writers' respect in really trying to make the Ordning work. There's a lot of effort put into it, and the giants are one of the better 'monster history/lore' segments in Volo's. I respect that. And out of that respect, unlike the adventures, I will still cover every single entry in this book (which is the rule I use for all 'bestiary' books). There are some interesting entries, but for the most part I will still note once more that, again, I don't find giants all that engaging! So apologies to giant fans all there. 

_________________________________________________________________

• Click here for the next part
• Click here for the previous part.
• Click here for the index.

_________________________________________________________________

    

Regular Giant Variants

• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 18 (Fire Giant Forgecaller), CR 17 (Frost Giant Ice Shaper), CR 20 (Storm Giant Tempest Caller)

Glory of the Giants presents its stat blocks in fully alphabetical order, which is terribly difficult for me to cover because some of them are clearly meant to be a 'Cycle', borrowing a Magic: The Gathering vernacular. There are six main types of giants in the Ordning, which is the primary basis of true giant culture. To recap, we've got from highest to lowest the Storm, Cloud, Fire, Frost, Stone and Hill Giants. I think it's fair to say that most books, when they do statblocks for the giants, try and give an equal amount of variations to all the giant types. When the giants were spotlighted in Volo's Guide to Monsters, this was what happened to every giant type. 

And we get a much more powerful 'boss' for them in this book, which is... neat, I suppose. They tend to have 'rune magic', which is a brand new type of action spotlighted in this book that, I'm sorry, I just don't find particularly exciting. I've seen so many of these giants before that a slightly-different one that still behaves similar to the archetype for the giants. The Fire Giant Forgecaller is still a fire-themed, smithing-themed giant who uses fire runes to cast fire magic. The Frost Giant Ice Shaper is still a fantasy jotunn, and uses rune to create more ice magic. Storm Giant Tempest Caller, surprise surprise, manipulates lightning magic except it uses the lightning as weapons. 

• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 19 (Cloud Giant Destiny Gambler), CR 12 (Hill Giant Avalancher), CR 16 (Stone Giant Rockspeaker)

The Cloud Giant Destiny Gambler is probably the most memorable to me, being an older lady that wears blindfolds with runic magic to help it look for cheaters in a gambling game. Both the Hill Giant Avalancher and Stone Giant Rockspeaker manipulate rocks, but I like that they tried to give them something a bit different. The Hill Giant, being a bit more than the brutes that her kin is known for, uses the rocks as bolas before causing avalanches with her runes. The Stone Giant, meanwhile, is themed around art and using stonework for art, so his stone magic manifests in what's essentially a stone-themed prismatic spray. Neat.

_________________________________________________________________

Evil Elemental Giants

• Huge giant; lawful evil (Evil Fire) / neutral evil (all others); CR 12 (Cloud Giant of Evil Air), CR 10 (Fire Giant of Evil Fire), CR 11 (Frost Giant of Evil Water), CR 9 (Stone Giant of Evil Earth)

I did promise to do all entries when I do a 'proper' bestiary book, but here we go, have four more giants who are hanging out with the four evil elemental cults. Honestly, the Fire Giant of Evil Fire doesn't even look different from your average D&D Fire Giant, and if we're being honest neither does the Stone Giant of Evil Earth, who's just swapped his artistic stuff for a stony setup. 

The Frost Giant of Evil Water is kind of neat since he's got a lot of sea-themed armour, but that just makes me wish we had adapted the older editions' Sea Giants. New giant subtypes would at least give me more to talk about, like what I had with the dragons. The only really cool one out of these elemental cultists is the Cloud Giant of Evil Air, who not only fights with a gale boomerang, but also has a cape with roc wings.     

_________________________________________________________________

Scion of Giants' Gods

• Gargantuan elemental; chaotic evil; CR 22 (Cradle of the Hill Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); chaotic evil; CR 22 (Scion of Grolantor)
• Gargantuan elemental; chaotic neutral; CR 26 (Cradle of the Cloud Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); chaotic evil; CR 26 (Scion of Memnor)

Also important to the giants are the giant gods, where each giant in the Ordning gets a specific giant god, and there's also All-Father Annam above them all. It's a long backstory, but we get another 'cycle' of giant variants that are called Scions, being apparently Annam's grandchildren. These are essentially more mythological titans, who depending on the backstory of your worlds, are essentially god-like beings themselves or are even holding the substance around the world together even as they slumber. The whole idea of this is a nice adaptation of something like ancient titans that founded and created the world. 4th Edition actually included Titans as more powerful, elemental themed 'bosses' of the giants, but then didn't really give us too much lore or frankly much in lieu of any specialness other than being 'bigger' with them. This book goes all the way in with the 'final boss' vibes for these Scions, which I absolutely approve of. 

Each of these Scions are encased by a Cradle, which itself is a powerful elemental that is a container for the Scion, essentially functioning as a two-part boss fight. None of the Cradles are illustrated, but we get descriptions and they usually match the theme of the Scion within them -- a giant ice-snow humanoid for the frost titan, a giant mass of molten rock for the fire titan, et cetera. 

It's not my thing, but it's the kind of 'end-of-campaign' threat that some of these newer 5E books are trying to push for in some of its content. We'll talk about them two at a time, yeah? The Scion of Grolantor represents the scion of the hill giant god, and surprisingly, it's one of my favourites here. It's not just a giant force of gluttony, but the Scion of Grolantor's slumbering presence actually causes abundant fertility and good weather, leading to the tragic result of many farming communities creating their settlements around where the Scion of Grolantor slumbers... inevitably becoming victims if the Scion is awakened. Artwork's pretty cool, showing off a huge 'sucking vacuum' attack. 

The artwork for the Scion of Memnor, representing the cloud giants, is very ephemeral. A giant figure made entirely out of clouds, towering and looming over the mountains below. The Scion hangs around as a giant cloud, causing weird stuff for anything it hovers above, like a compulsion to offer sacrifices or make pranks; and just more duplicity and paranoia. The Scion of Memnor itself manifests as a laughing titan... which seems to imply it's friendly. If only it doesn't look down at all the little guys below it and treat them all like toys!

• Gargantuan elemental; neutral; CR 23 (Cradle of the Stone Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); neutral; CR 23 (Scion of Skoraeus)
• Gargantuan elemental; chaotic good; CR 27 (Cradle of the Storm Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); chaotic good; CR 27 (Scion of Stronmaus)

Love the art of the Scion of Skoraeus. The Stone Giants with their strange, dream-like view of the world has always been my favourite of the giants of the Ordning, and the Scion of their god, Skoraeus Stonebones, apparently just warps stone around it into artwork. It's a nice showcase of the titan's nature-warping abilities while also playing into the whole 'stone art' and 'dream' themes of the Stone Giants. The Scion seems to just be... be there, pursuing art and dreams and just accidentally turning everything around it, including living creatures, to stone. Like the Scion of Grolantor, I like the plot thread given to the Scion of Skoraeus here -- its presence warps stone in the mountain it slumbers into strange, beautiful jewels... but inevitably someone's going to dig too deep, and awaken the Cradle, which in turn will awaken the Scion of Skoraeus. It's a nice take on the 'dug too deep', only instead of a Balrog or Shub-Niggurath, you awaken a confused, half-asleep giant artist who can warp reality into stone art. 

There is always something cool about the artwork of a titan made up of the waves and lightning, the manifestation of storm itself... but the lore around the Scion of Stronmaus is not the most interesting. She's just... a big stormy guy that causes storms and elemental portals to appear around it. There's some note about how the Scion of Stronmaus sometimes is awakened on its own due to prophetic nightmares, but she's also the token 'good guy' that doesn't attack humanoids. Eh. 

• Gargantuan elemental; lawful evil; CR 25 (Cradle of the Fire Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); lawful evil; CR 25 (Scion of Surtur)
• Gargantuan elemental; neutral evil; CR 26 (Cradle of the Frost Scion)
• Gargantuan giant (titan); neutral evil; CR 26 (Scion of Thrym)

Again, no knocking on the artwork because the art for the Scion of Surtur is marvelous. Such great usage of colour, and the whirling storm as the giant fire titan swings around his big fire-blade while the earth around him breaks into primordial lava is an amazing visual image. But it's also what you'd expect from the whole 'Scion' stuff. It stays in the volcano, its slumber causes volcanoes to be a bit more active, and when awakened by mining it just wants to unleash conquest upon the world with his fire giant buddies. 

The same thing for the Scion of Thrym, god of the frost giants, who is just a big ice lady, causing a big ice blizzard and big ice avalanches around her to happen. She's sleeping in a giant iceberg or glacier, an aura of biting chill is emanated by her cradle, and she herself is just a big ice giant. 

Overall... I didn't care for the Scions or the Cradles the first time I flipped through the books, other than to the art. But now? I actually really like them. The idea of these slumbering titans that just lie beneath the world after its creation feels so much cooler and like an actually great campaign hook, tying into the Ordning lore while feeling epic and standalone on themselves. And I do appreciate that their CR 25+ monsters really do feel like a god-like being that can destroy towns casually instead of just being 'Phil the really really good Storm Giant Wizard'. 

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Hulks

• Large elemental; chaotic evil; CR 7 (Cinder Hulk)
• Large elemental; chaotic neutral; CR 5 (Dust Hulk)
• Large elemental; chaotic neutral; CR 6 (Mist Hulk)
• Large elemental; neutral evil; CR 5 (Rime Hulk)

And now we've got versions of all of them transformed into elementals. Which I will admit is a fair bit more interesting than just putting a different set of armour on them. Now we're getting somewhere! Again, there's really only so much that I can get excited about when a lot of them are just 'big human made up of X element', often times with the backstory being 'the giants spent time in the elemental plane and were transformed'. They also don't have any real attachments to their past culture as giants, merely reduced to the elements they are in. Some of them have the 'death burst' ability that, in a very video-game-y way, causes them to explode and deal damage when they die. 

The Cinder Hulk, Dust Hulk, Mist Hulk and Rime Hulk are, respectively, fire, stone, cloud and frost giants that were transformed by the Elemental Planes into those elements. There is some nice nods to the 'demiplanes' of older edition with some of the hulks representing elements that are in-between the main four (ice being air plus water, for example) but that honestly made me think that an Elemental-themed sourcebook might be more interesting to me. Again, it's nice, I suppose, to have the visual spectacle of a giant figure striding towards you made entirely of lava or ice... which I did find to be a lot more interesting compared to the general giants. 

• Large elemental; chaotic neutral; CR 9 (Lightning Hulk)
• Large elemental; chaotic evil; CR 3 (Mud Hulk)

The Lightning Hulk, transformed from storm giants, probably gets the nicest writeup describing them jolting here and there, transforming from lightning bolts into humanoids briefly before turning back into a living bolt of lightning with a ton of resistances. I also like the Mud Hulk's backstory. Hill giants always have a theme of gluttony around their culture and mutations, and the Mud Hulk is transformed not when a hill giant is trapped on the elemental realms, but when they eat so much that they even consume mud and earth, and the elemental energies transform them into sticky, sometimes-amorphous mud blob people. 

_________________________________________________________________

Undead Giants

• Huge giant; chaotic evil; CR 7 (Barrowghast)
• Huge undead; neutral; CR 9 (Cairnwright)
• Huge undead; lawful evil; CR 11 (Firegaunt)

We get yet another cycle, this time for 'undead' giants. Not just a boring old zombie giant, though, we have those in the Monster Manual. No, playing to the almost Pokemon-esque vibe of the Ordning giants, each giant under specific circumstances can be turned into a weird themed undead. The Barrowghast is created from hill giants that die on empty stomaches and regret, being turned into a rotten, smelly energy vampire that seeks out humanoids and drains their life because it's so hungry. Those it kills become zombies. I think the Barrowghast might be the favourite out of the six undead giants, for the simple reason that I feel it marries the hill giants' themes of gluttony with the 'super-zombie' theme.

Cairnwrights also have a somewhat interesting backstory, being Stone Giants so obsessed with the creation and subsequent protection of their artwork that the obsession resurrects them beyond death, turning them into the art piece's guardian. Not the biggest fan of the physical gameplay design, where it's just a stone dude that turns other people into stones. 

Firegaunts are fire giants, who look... pretty much what an 'epic' fire giant looks like. It's got black armour, its leaking fire from within its body, and it's driven by hatred and wants to unleash destruction. It's still cool in the primal sense, but we've got six of those 'badass fire giants' in this book alone. 

• Huge undead; neutral evil; CR 10 (Frostmourn)
• Huge undead; neutral; CR 13 (Spectral Cloud)
• Huge undead; chaotic evil; CR 15 (Tempest Spirit)

I actually like the cool artwork depicting the Frostmourn dissipating or forming out of blizzard. Warcraft jokes aside, though, the Frostmourn is basically what you'd expect from a frost giant zombie with elemental powers. Which sadly is what most of these themed undead giants tend to be. Frostmourns are created specifically when a frost giant dies to treachery and rises beyond the grave to unleash vengeance. 

Spectral Clouds are Cloud Giants that are also created when they die via treachery, but their design is actually very cool. The combination of a giant, roiling mass of fog or cloud with a skeletal figure within is neat. Apparently, some cloud giants actually seek out this fate to prolong their lives, sort of like an exclusive form of lichdom. 

And finally, Tempest Spirits are created by Storm Giants who undergo a botched ritual to escape death. Apparently Storm Giants just inherently have a ritual that allows them to turn into semi-conscious storms, but if they do it foolishly in a place suffused with negative energy they get turned into living stormy beings whose lower body is noted to be very 'djinni-like'. I'm not too impressed by any of these, honestly. _________________________________________________________________

Fiendish Transformed Giants 

• Large fiend (demon); chaotic evil; CR 6 (Echo of Demogorgon)
• Huge fiend (devil); lawful evil; CR 11 (Fire Hellion)
• Huge fiend (demon); chaotic evil; CR 12 (Stalker of Baphomet)

We've got another set of 'transformed' giants, and I do like it a bit more when the transformations are a bit more visually and thematically distinct. This time, we've got five giants transformed by the energies of the hells, and we'll start off with the Echo of Demogorgon, represented not by a giant of the Ordning but by an Ettin. Nice to see some other giants getting a bit of love! There really isn't much thought other than going 'Ettins and Demogorgon both have two heads', and at the end of the day it's just a more fearsome Ettin with tentacles. But it's the thought that counts. 

Fire Hellion is pretty cool on its own, but it doesn't even have a specific named devil that it's hanging out with. And regular fire giants are already walking armoured furnaces, I felt like just adding horns, a tail and cloven feet isn't as dramatic as you could go. The Stalker of Baphomet is a transformed stone giant who worships Baphomet, with the stone giants apparently susceptible to Baphomet's labyrinths. Again, the legs becoming a bit scalier and horns grow out of the stone giant's head, because Baphomet's a big minotaur. Not the best or most dramatic change, and honestly you could almost mistake it as a helmet instead of a demonic transformation. 

• Huge fiend (demon); chaotic evil; CR 14 (Fury of Kotschtchie)
• Huge fiend (demon); chaotic evil; CR 10 (Maw of Yeenoghu)

The Fury of Kotschtchie is a transformed frost giant, and in the lore Kotschtchie is actually a giant demon lord. In addition to turning into a frosty Hulk with ice spikes, the Fury of Kotschtchie actually 'burns with fury', meaning that its soul is being burnt away to power itself. This sadly doesn't translate into anything in-game other than a resistance to fire, although it does lend itself to a pretty cool artwork. 

As mentioned before, hill giants have a gluttony theme. And like its previous variant, the 'Mouth of Grolantor', we get a much more nasty variation in Maw of Yeenoghu, where the hill giant is transformed by the gnoll demon lord Yeenoghu into having a quadrupedal body (representing its transformation into a hyena-like being) and a circular mouth with rows and rows and rows of sharp teeth. This is a very dramatic change that looks very cool and genuinely fiendish. The writeup for the Maw of Yeenoghu is even a bit tragic, noting that the transformed giant sometimes try to rip out its own teeth as it keeps growing and subconsciously forcing the giant to find something to feed on... and those that have devoted themselves to Yeenoghu just pull out the fangs and use them as an always-regenerating supply of thrown projectiles. 

Storm Herald

• Huge aberration; lawful evil; CR 17

Not quite transformed by a fiendish source but by a deep, aberrant one, the storm giant's 'evil transformed' variant is the Storm Herald, who is transformed by a kraken or an aboleth or Cthulhu himself. She's transformed into having features of oceanic creatures similar to a Kraken Priest or Deep Scion, with hair made up of squid tentacles, webbed fingers and fins on her limbs. Also, she's gained psionic abilities. That's neat! It's a bit obvious, but I can't say that I don't like a good warped aberrant cultist.

Is that all? ...I think that's all? I'm done with the Ordning giants and the different hats the book puts on them? No Celestial variants of the Storm-Cloud-Fire-Frost-Stone-Hill gang? No smaller versions, no draconic versions, no lycanthropic or vampiric or mind-flayed versions of them? We get to move on to other stuff? Whew! Finally! 

...and I might be a tad exaggerating there, but that was how I felt going through this book. I do feel like the sextet of Ordning giants are nice and different enough, but I did really think they went a bit too much with variants of the basic giants, especially compared to the dragon book.  

_________________________________________________________________

Bag Jelly

• Medium ooze; unaligned; CR 1

I do love that this is a thing. Bag Jellies are basically just a regular ooze similar to the many variants in the original Monster Manual, but they hang out in the bags of giants to feed on whatever organic material they find. With the abuse that a giant would do while tossing the bag around, only an ooze could realistically survive it, which I love the little detail of. I like how most giants keep their bags clean to avoid bag jellies, but others actually use these bag jellies like how we'd use locks on our bags, using the bag jellies as a trap for the pesky smaller humanoids that try to pickpocket them. It's like a glue trap for flies or rats. It's kind of silly, but I love it. 

_________________________________________________________________

Death Giant

• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 12 (Reaper), 15 (Shrouded One)

We do have a returning new giant sub-type, the Death Giants. Having shown up in previous editions before, the specific origins of these Death Giants have been changed a bit between editions but the idea is that they are giants who made a bad deal with a powerful entity in the past, and are now cursed to wield the power of death forevermore. In previous versions the made a deal with fiends, or with aberrations. In 5th Edition, they are specifically Cloud Giants that made a bad deal with the Raven Queen, the enigmatic goddess of death and memory in the Shadowfell. It's a neat nod to how the Cloud Giants do like wagers, and they would totally be the type to overestimate their abilities and try to gamble a god.

The Death Giants now serve the Raven Queen in the Shadowfell and their bodies are transformed... but they can't complain, because they look cool as hell. Their skin have turned deep purple, they can teleport and cause fear, and they're given jobs to go around reaping souls for the Raven Queen. That's a much better deal than the Shadar-Kai got, I would say! And actually, a lot more 'goth' than their previous incarnations from 3E and 4E, who turned them into just ghoulish demons with axes and surrounded by an aura of screaming skulls. I do like the older death giants a fair bit, but they're a bit 'samey' to many of the emo-undead creatures in 3E. 

5E gives us two variations of the Death Giants, with the weaker one being called the Death Giant Reaper, dressed in a very cool armour made up of the carapaces of giant insects, and they have a giant lightsaber scythe, what the hell. I'm sorry, that thing looks like it belongs on a Gundam, and that fact does make this Death Giant a lot cooler. 

The stronger variant, the Death Giant Shrouded One, uses the 'rune' mechanics we touched upon earlier to cast powerful death-themed magic. She goes around inscribing death runes on the skulls of fallen giants, and uses them to conjure that nice aura of tormented, undead spirits that fly around it, similar to the older variants (although less skull-y) of the death giants. I also really like her scythe. It's 'merely' a scythe whose blade is made up of pure shadow, but the fact that the connecting point is a mass of gnarled shadows makes it a bit cooler. 

_________________________________________________________________

Dinosaur - Aerosaur

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 10

Surprisingly, we've got dinosaurs... but giant-scaled, gargantuan dinosaurs! The lore behind this is that they're created by All-Father Annam and the dinosaurs crackle with energy, and they hide within 'lands untouched by the rest of the world'. That's... that's just kaiju, aren't they? Particularly the more 'sci-fi' kaiju as introduced by the more recent Godzilla movies? This, I can get behind! 

First among these gargantuan dinosaurs are the Aerosaur, a colossal Rodan-sized creature who can snap up regular Pteranodons like popcorn. Love the extra spikes and the yawning mouth. Love the artwork showing its wings just cutting through the clouds in the sky, and it's crackling with lightning energy! Giant elemental kaiju-dinosaurs aren't what I expected from this book, but that's awesome. I can see these things as even tying into the 'Scion of X' titan enemies as their pets or guardians.

Dinosaur - Altisaur

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 13

Altisaurs actually share their name with D&D's sibling fantasy game/franchise, Magic: The Gathering. Specifically, their Sauropod-expy dinosaurs from the plane of Ikoria. Neat! The Altisaur is an immense gargantuan titan... and, again, the artwork can't really do it justice, but these are dinosaurs scaled to giants. A swing of the Altisaur's tail causes tall trees to snap the way a you would crush grass underneath. 

I really like that the Altisaur's description of a 'walking mountain'. Its neck cranes up to the clouds in the heavens, and its body is filled with rocky spikes and volcanic lava. I also really like that the Altisaur has like maybe 8 legs, which I guess makes sense considering its size? Another really cool kaiju design and concept!

Dinosaur - Ceratops

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 9

I do think the Ceratops, representing the ceratopsian dinosaurs, is pretty cool. Assuming the trees are the same one as the ones near the Altisaur's tail, the Ceratops isn't as large as the walking mountain, but it's still quite large, large enough to trample giants like a triceratops would trample a human. Its tail has a bunch of spikes, and its dorsal hide is covered by Nodosaur-esque armour plating. It is admittedly slightly harder to see thanks to the perspective, but the central beak horn is shaped like a massive anime sword. 

The narration notes that the Ceratops is 'crackling with vibrant green energy', which I assume is meant to be lightning from the art... but the mechanics don't actually give the Ceratops any elements to its attacks or defenses. It's perhaps one of the bigger weaknesses of these 'titan' dinosaurs, where despite the very cool art and the buildup of their size, they're not... not that much more powerful? Or at least not impressive, since those numbers are not bad. But a Ceratops, a kaiju-sized dinosaur whose 'mere horn is the size of a giant', is just as dangerous as an abominable yeti which feels very off. 

Dinosaur - Regisaur

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 14

Of course the T-rex equivalent is the most powerful of the dinosaurs, and calling it a "Regisaur" is a nice nod to how the 'rex' part of the Tyrannosaurus rex meant king. But I actually think the Regisaur is the most boring of the four kaiju dinosaurs for the simple fact that... it doesn't do much with the base Tyrannosaur design. There are some slight spikes and at least the magma element is a bit more prominent here, but it's at the end of the day just a bigger, spikier T-rex. It is technically big enough to swallow giants whole, but the artwork doesn't really show that off, not without smaller creatures or trees around it for scale. 

I don't know... the artwork and concept is neat, but the execution lacks somewhat. After going through the reams and reams of ability they were happy to give the random giant variants, it felt kind of lame that the giant elemental ancient titan dinosaurs were just given boring 'bite', 'tail' and 'multiattack' things to do. At least give one of them a Godzilla atomic breath, cowards!

_________________________________________________________________

Ettin Ceremorph

• Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 8

Someone in the writing team for Glory of the Giants clearly liked the Ettin among the 'non-Ordning' giants, cause they've got a fair amount of creative love. Sorry, Cyclops, you don't get anything until the 2024 Monster Manual.

But this answers a fun question I never thought I had. What happens if a Mind Flayer attempts to convert a two-headed being via ceremorphosis? As a reminder, Mind Flayers reproduce by implanting their larval stage, tadpoles, into humanoids. In a very Alien-like sequence, these tadpoles will bury into the minds of these captured humanoids and eventually merge and transform the body into a Mind Flayer. 

Apparently, Mind Flayers have been trying to create larger, stronger Mind Flayers... and in that process, they find out that most larger bodies like giants and ogres are too big for a single tadpole to take over. The solution? A two-headed giant body. An Ettin has two heads naturally, so they can take two tadpoles. As the process of the transformation, the second head 'sinks into the body', which you can see shown in the art as a growth-like Illithid head on the Ettin Ceremorph's chest. This leads to a wonderful biology which reminds me of older theories about larger dinosaurs, where the 'head' brain focuses on cognition, intelligence and psionic powers, while the 'body' brain focuses on controlling the body. That's honestly quite cute. I like this one. 

_________________________________________________________________

Fensir

• Huge celestial; chaotic neutral; CR 8 (Fensir Devourer)
• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 6 (Fensir Skirmisher)

The Fensir are another new type of giant, originally introduced in the original Planescape setting as the trolls of the Nordic-themed plane of Ysgard. Their appearances in older editions were inspired by a truer-to-text adaptation of Scandinavian and Nordic myths of trolls, who turn into stone when exposed to the sun -- something that was used as origin stories for some stone formations. This trait of trolls very famously made it into Tolkien's trolls in Lord of the Rings. The Fensir in D&D has this trait as well, being temporarily turned into stone if they are caught in sunlight, but also is able to turn mud into stone. In addition, of course, to regular regenerative powers that trolls in D&D have.

The origin story given by the 5E adaptation of Fensirs had them be trolls that were introduced by frost giants to Ysgard. Ysgard is a plane that is inspired by Nordic myth, and a unique part of the plane is that creatures that were slain on that plane returned to life on the next dawn, to facilitate an 'eternal battle'. Trolls themselves already have insane regenerative capabilities, and fused with the constant rebirthing in Ysgard, evolved into Fensirs. The constant mutations have altered their regeneration properties to... somehow mutate and cause them to go through the whole 'becomes stone in sunlight' deal, which, sure The description of the Fensirs have them be a lot less grotesque compared to their previous appearances, noting that they have 'prominent noses and a hint of green skin', but otherwise resemble smaller giants. 

I feel like they could've given us more about the Fensirs, but a quick skim through the tome doesn't really give me much about them. Maybe the Planescape books have more lore about the Fensirs? We do get two variants of the Fensirs. The Skirmishers are 'regular' Fensirs, who are warriors fighting in Ysgard's eternal battle and wield weaponry and earth magic. Meanwhile, Fensir Devourers are those that have lived over a thousand years, expanding to a height of 25 feet, are always hungry, and upon death they unleash a curse that constantly deals psychic damage to those afflicted by it. It's this Devourer that is displayed in the artwork, and they are counted as 'celestials' instead of mere giants. Which is really interesting to showcase this strange evolution and mutation of trolls from just regenerating ugly dudes into these lanky, sun-allergic titans.

I do really wish that there was more to them. Couldn't they have tied something in to the stone giants, since the Fensirs actually do turn into stone? I don't know. It's a bunch of interesting tropes on traditional mythological trolls that makes for an interesting variant, I suppose. 

_________________________________________________________________

Firbolgs

• Medium humanoid; any alignment; CR 4 (Primeval Warden), CR 5 (Wanderer)

I am committed to talking about every single entry in a bestiary book, even entries like these. Firbolgs were introduced immediately as a playable race in Volo's, so it never entered a monster manual and was never 'statted'. Firbolgs are technically giants, and old-school, pre-5E Firbolgs were just big dudes. I do think the more calm somewhat-cow-people is a way more memorable design both visually and flavour-wise compared to 'viking, but big' that they were before. Anyway, we've got two Firbolgs, a Primeval Warden that guard Firbolg towns and Wanderers that go around. There's some talk about which giant god they are trying to emulate. Neat.

_________________________________________________________________

Flesh Colossus

• Gargantuan construct; unaligned; CR 20

Oh, this one is a bit cooler! If creepier. We've got a bunch of corpses stitched together like a Frankenstein's Monster Flesh Golem, but ratcheted up to eleven because this big dude is created with the body parts of giants. This was made by giant wizards stitching 'the flesh of various giants over an adamantine skeleton', and its run by an elemental magical sphere. That elemental core is funny, by the way, because you'll see the giant flesh golem and think that it's just a big brute enemy, maybe even an undead. And for the most part, you're right! Until it belches out cold or fire out of its mouth. The Flesh Colossus is apparently left behind in many abandoned ruins, working as essentially pre-programmed robot sentinels. If your robot sentinels are made up of the flesh of three dozen giants stitched together, and presumably rotting all the while. 

The art isn't quite as grotesque as some of the 'corpse fusion golem' type of monster we've covered in this blog in Resident Evil or Elden Ring, but I suppose they didn't want it to be too grisly. Some nice placement of fingers and hands where they shouldn't be; with my favourite being the two that form the Flesh Colossus's lower jaw and an entire smaller arm on the leg. There's also a nose and upper jaw on the Colossus' left arm, and a random smaller giant's arm acting as a 'topknot'. 

The Flesh Colossus is one of the two Colossi introduced in this book, bringing back a creature type from older D&D material that has mostly been ignored in 5E. Bigby flavours Colossi as being essentially golems created by the giants, but I suppose it's also a hint at the need of much more impressive end-game threats, something that the 2025 re-release of the Monster Manual will talk more about. Which we'll cover in this blog soon! 

_________________________________________________________________

Fomorians

• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 10 (Deep Crawler)
• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 12 (Warlock of the Dark)
• Huge giant (wizard); chaotic evil; CR 15 (Noble)

So all non-Ordning giants -- except the poor Cyclops -- got at least a couple of entries. The Fomorians got a couple of the more interesting ones. The Fomorian Deep Crawler is just a very uncomfortable-looking contortionist, but it really does make sense for a race of giants who were banished to the Underdark to be able to crawl through tunnels that even medium humanoids find hard to scuttle around, right? Their god Karontor is even called the 'King that Crawls'. Honestly, I'd actually remember the Fomorians more if they were creepy contortionist giants that scuttle through the dark caves of the Underdark! It makes sense that they'd evolve this ability! They'd actually be actually scary instead of just being ugly warty underground giants. 

The other two aren't super interesting. The Fomorian Warlock of the Dark is your regular 'give a sentient monster a class' upgrade. They're all right. We also get the Fomorian Noble, which is what the Fomorian giants looked before they were cursed and banished to the Underdark. And... did we really need them? I felt the whole point of the Fomorians being interesting is that they were removed from the Ordning and all that backstory. I guess they wanted to fill in the question of what the Fomorians looked like, but, really, is 'giant elves' the best they could do? 

_________________________________________________________________

Gargantua

• Gargantuan aberration; chaotic neutral; CR 21

The Gargantua is an interesting thing. The story behind them really reminds me of the story of the Omens from Elden Ring, not helped by me playing that game a lot during the production of this article. But the Gargantua is born to seemingly regular giant parents, but upon adulthood their skin transforms into an unnatural purple, they grow rapidly to tower over their kin, and giant horns sprout from their head. It's just a spontaneous mutation that can happen for any other reason, with Glory of the Giants bringing up the possibility of a curse, a contact with a Far realm entity, or the whims of some god. Interestingly, it's not just 'evil' giant gods like Karantor that giant culture thinks creates Gargantuas, but even All-Father Annam, who wants to wipe out giantkind, apparently. 

Gargantuas, towering over even giants, almost always never feel at home and go around looking for places where their enormous bodies can feel like home. Which isn't exactly easy to do. Some Gargantuas just want peace in a world that is afraid of them (and considering they could accidentally wipe out houses by walking, understandable) while others just lash out fiercely at a world that fears them. Very X-Men, I approve. 

In combat, including its massive size, the Gargantua is also able to teleport. Yes, this walking mountain can teleport. They have an aura that causes fear around it, which explains the ostracizing by giant communities. And they can cast spells. Not just cast spells, copy spells. That's all very interesting mechanically, and I feel the brief write-up does give us quite a bit of story threads to talk about. Visually... it's all right. It's a big dude. 

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Goose

• Large fey; neutral; CR 3

Ha ha, the goose on one of the more famous giant stories, Jack and the beanstalk. Yep! Glory of the Giants gave us a bunch of random giant animals, who are much larger than the traditional 'giant' template they give to animals in the Monster Manual. The Giant Goose is a fey, and as you expect, they can lay a golden egg once a year. They also have a deafening honk attack, very accurate for the nasty creatures that real-world geese are. 

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Lynx

• Medium fey; neutral; CR 1/2

Another fey giant animal is the Giant Lynx, who originate from the snowy woods of the Feywild. Why does the giant book get all the fey wildlife, and not the Feywild book? The Giant Lynx has appeared since the pages of the very first Monster Manual, and even there the Lynxes were already established to 'speak their own language'. It really is kind of weird which animals that they arbitrarily decided to make intelligent or fey or something. The Lynxes are also additionally capable of casting the Clairvoyance spell. 

They're in the giant book because frost and cloud giants keep them as pets, but also need to respect the cats' intelligence and independence. Which, honestly, is every cat owner out there, isn't it? 

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Ox

• Huge fey; unaligned; CR 3

It's a big cow! They're also fey. Not much to say here, other than the fact that Glory of the Giants notes that the fey ancestry could be seen by their blue or violet fur. They sure are cows that the giant keep as pets! As commenter RJ pointed out below, the giants seem to have just used the giant ox as a way to pick up anything they looted, including some giant pine trees and a house with a poor guy stuck inside. Sorry, guy, you're stuck on the side of a giant kaiju bovine now! 

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Ram

• Large fey; unaligned; CR 1

I'm not sure which legend it draws from, but the giant ram has the ability to absorb force with its magical fleece, and then channel it back out in a magical force blast. Is it Hercules, perhaps? In any case, giants keep giant rams to shave their fleece due to this property. Giant Rams, unlike the Giant Lynxes and Geese, aren't intelligent and are just completely dumb beasts that happen to be big and have magical fur.

_________________________________________________________________

Giant Tick

• Medium monstrosity; unaligned; CR 2

Oh, I love this random addition. Not just because it's a bug and I love bug, but also because with giant humanoids, of course their parasites are also going to be gigantic. Interestingly, instead of being a fey or just a regular beast, giant ticks are considered 'monstrosities'... a category that, by the way, is not applied to any other regular giant creature. Except that the giant tick's abilities are basically what you'd expect from a giant tick, stabbing people and draining their blood. Yeah, it's big and it's probably going to be able to drain all of a medium humanoid's blood, but it's still a big bug! 

I do like these bits that would make exploring a giant's castle a lot more fun. Instead of just dealing with 20 giants with different weapons, you deal with the ticks that grew because one of the frost giants refuses to practice basic hair maintenance; or the local pet cat; or the jelly they use to clean their giant bags. 

_________________________________________________________________

Gigant

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 20

I feel like between 'Garantua' and 'Gigant', we could've looked up better monster names instead of just looking for synonyms for giant. The Gigant isn't even a giant, it's an even bigger bug! Large enough to lift up that poor hill giant, the Gigant has a giant, monstrous and decidedly non-insectoid mouth, two large eyes, and a body plan that's best described to resemble a beetle. Not my favourite insect design, I'll be straight up, but after seeing so many variations of 'giant dude', I am quite happy to see a giant buzzing bug kaiju. 

The Gigant is described as a towering insect that's regarded as a 'harbinger of doom',  but also a 'defender of nature' or a 'divine messenger of mysterious purpose'. Giants hate the Gigants, because giants are one of the few types of creatures large enough for Gigants to feed on. How do they survive, otherwise, though? Do they eat like, dinosaurs or something? Giant lore apparently says that Gigants are created by the weird magical aura around a Gargantua, something that isn't actually confirmed anywhere else. So it would fit as just one of the evil superstition spread about the Gargantua, but also a nice way to tie the two into an encounter. 

Cool big bug. Not the coolest bug in D&D, since the artwork just drew a rockier beetle with a fleshy dinosaur mouth... they could've gone a bit weirder with it!

_________________________________________________________________

Goliath Giant-Kin

• Medium humanoid; any alignment; CR 3

The other 'half-giant' playable race is the Goliath, who also skipped being a monster stat and went to playable immediately. We get a Goliath stat-block, but this one is specifically a Goliath that has entered a giant community and earned their respect with strength. I suppose it's a nice foreshadowing to how in the new 5.5E/D&D-2024 Player's Handbook, the Goliaths become a core playable race, and they get to draw powers from all of the basic Ordning giants. This is a nice little draft to that. 

_________________________________________________________________

Grinning Cat

• Large fey; chaotic neutral; CR 1

Another fey cat! This one is just straight-up the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, which does beg the question why it's in the giant book? In addition to grinning unnaturally, they often mislead travelers, with some vague handwave that they live around giant homes... because... eh? I felt like they really should've spotlighted this Grinning Cat a bit more in Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Did we really need another elf NPC? One of them could've been a giant Cheshire Cat. 

Anyway, they can also talk, and the invisibility power also makes a note that the Grinning Cat can leave any part of its body (its smile, it's always going to be the smile) visible. And its whiskers can be used as a wand to cast Misty Step. Okay. 

_________________________________________________________________

Runic Colossus

• Gargantuan construct; unaligned; CR 21

The other Colossus in the book is the Runic Colossus, just a giant stone golem with runes drawn all over it. I suppose it makes sense with how the book wanted to push a bit more of the flavour of powerful giant rune. Runic Colossi are created in the past by a cooperation of all the giant tribes, and as thus it's got a bunch of powerful runes emblazoned into it. 

The Runic Colossus itself is a pretty neat concept even if I'm not in love with the visual design. It's got all the hallmarks of a giant enemy, the spell resistance and 'immutable form' of a golem, and it's even got a laser arcane beam, as befits a giant ancient robot. And they will immediately attack anything that's not a giant, while the giants themselves have lost the instructions and ways to create these ancient titans. It's all very Breath of the Wild, very Studio Ghibli. It's neat.

_________________________________________________________________

Spotted Lion

• Huge beast; unaligned; CR 3

This one is a beast. It's a bigger lion with spots, and it's a bit confusing unless you know about the Marozi, a Bigfoot-style cryptid from back in the day. I approve of the reference, even if D&D's version does blow up the size to being twice of a lion. They're kept by giants as pets, and hilariously they're apparently as good at being sentries as your housecat would be -- if they're well fed, they'll just stretch and yawn. 

_________________________________________________________________

Storm Crab

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 11

Fuck yeah, giant undersea kaiju. The Storm Crab is another gargantuan beast that would be giant-to-a-giant, and in the art it's shown crushing a Dragon Turtle. It's got four claws (two smaller than the other), and interestingly, a spiky tail that ends in a stinger. They can also unleash jets of pressurized water, something that real crabs can't do... but real crabs also aren't large enough to snap up ship-sized turtles. 

They seem to be a retooled version of an obscure favourite of mine from 3.5E, the Siege Crab, which were also four-claws gigantic kaiju crabs, except the Siege Crabs were associated with the Kuo-Toa. The Storm Crabs, meanwhile, were supposedly created by the storm giant god Stronmaus as a biological weapon to use against dragons. 

_________________________________________________________________

Titanothere

• Huge beast; unaligned; CR 5

A prehistoric creature that appeared in the original Monster Manual was the Titanothere (now referred to as the Brontotheriidae family), best described as prehistoric mammals related to horses and rhinoceroses, with varying sizes and horn shapes. Very neat! I don't have a whole ton to say here because I'm not as much of a prehistoric mammal geek as I am a dinosaur geek, but in the 5E art, the longer-necked one seems to be something like a Moropus, and the distinctive T-shaped horn is a Megacerops. 

_________________________________________________________________

Trolls

• Gargantuan giant; chaotic evil; CR 17 (Troll Amalgam)
• Large giant; chaotic evil; CR 7 (Troll Mutate)

And we finish the giant book with the last 'giantkin'. Unlike the goliath, fomorian and firbolg, however, the trolls get to actually be cool! Taking advantage of the trolls' regeneration properties, we get this horrifying entry called the Troll Amalgam, which happens when a bunch of troll corpses are stacked together in a mass grave or just in a large battlefield, causing the regeneration to indiscriminately mesh together different troll limbs and heads and faces together. The result is just this gnashing ball of limbs and legs just scuttling around screaming and screeching. It's, as you might guess, not a happy existence and a chaotic force of nature, ripping off parts of itself to toss it towards enemies.

I actually do really like the Amalgam. Not just because it's a horrifying mass of limbs and heads, but because it is a nice way to pull the troll regeneration ability to a satisfyingly horrific conclusion. I like it when stronger versions of monsters actually build up on what made them unique in the first place and not just "the same green guy, but he's got better armour now". 

The Troll Mutate's origin story is a bit more simple, just a simple mutation to energy from the Far Realm or whatever... and they go full-on Fantastic Four. The prose and book gives a bunch of potential mutations, ranging from the mundane (additional limbs/eyes, externalized organs) to the more dramatic. The art shown here combines a bunch, with wings, a stretchy neck, bent-backwards legs and a visible brain. Obviously, the visible brain gives it psionic abilities! It's pretty creepy looking, and, again, it is completely something that I would expect from 'regeneration gone awry". One of the newer adventure books, Phandelver and Below, actually takes place with a lot of Far Realm mutations going on and that's definitely going to be an adventure that I'll cover at some point.

_________________________________________________________________

Honestly, I like that we ended with a bit of an interesting one. I'm not saying that all the giants needed to be body horror, but the other giants also felt like they were just going through the same formula. Put all the Ordning through elementals, then demons, then zombies, then scions... Keep in mind that the book was fully alphabetical, too, so it was a slog for me to go 'didn't I already see a fire giant like this before? Oh, this one's a demon instead of an elemental, that makes all the difference.'

I did want to get this out of the way because I do know that I don't really have much to say about glory of the Giants. Again, apologies for any giant fans out there! If you're excited about this book, good for you, I am happy that the designers clearly liked the giants enough to expand what we got in Volo's into a full book. And I do like the giants, I just don't necessarily want to see so many of them. Next week, we'll start the 2024 Monster Manual!