Horag

Horags are uncommon crossbreeds of an unusually large ogre and a fairly small hill giant. Most look like tall ogres with a hill giant's long arms and hunched shoulders, tipping the scales near 1,000 pounds, and males make up nearly 90% of them. Whichever race raised it, ogre or hill giant, supplies its language; it lives around a century, slightly outlasting an ogre, and can never wield priestly magic. Its natural AC 6 improves to AC 4 with the hides and scavenged armor most of them wear.

A horag either pounds foes with an enormous fist for 1d12 or swings ogre weapons such as massive clubs and swords, adding +6 damage for Strength. It claims to scorn missiles and prefers to close and crush. When advising hill giants it urges them to soften the enemy with rocks before charging, but in fact a horag lacks the strength to throw boulders effectively, and they cover the weakness with ferocity at close quarters.

Most live among their ogre or hill giant kin, serving the giants as sharper tacticians and the ogres as hulking bruisers that soak up punishment. Those apart from their relatives tend to be loners denning in open, middling caves among the hills, half-blocked with rubble and boulders, since a horag works hard to hide and protect its lair. With so few of their own kind, most pair off with an ogre or hill giant, and the young are slightly strange-looking but otherwise normal members of that partner's race.

Like their parents, horags eat anything but prefer meat, now and then raid humanoid settlements or trade with other races, and even serve as mercenaries in evil armies, though they feel at ease only when ogres or half-ogres serve alongside them.