Reef Giant

Reef giants have burnished copper skin and pale white hair, with deep chests and heavy muscles built by driving their great bodies through the sea. A typical one stands 16 feet and weighs 4,000 pounds, has a Strength of 22, and may live 600 years. Ashore they wear skins or garments of braided hair; in the water, only a belt hung with blades and pouches.

They speak their own tongue, the giants' trade language and the languages of cloud and storm giants, and 40% also speak common.

They prefer fighting in or under the water, where they suffer no penalties, and they are fierce once roused. Water- and ice-based attacks cannot hurt them. A huge trident deals 2d10+10, and now and then they swing a fist for 1d10.

Once a day a reef giant can conjure a whirlpool. Any creature within 10 yards that fails a Strength check is dragged in, taking 2d8 battering damage plus 2d10 from drowning and choking, though water-breathers take only the battering. The whirlpool is too weak to pull in a ship.

Ships themselves are what their boulders are for: they throw them up to 350 yards for 3d10 to sink unwelcome vessels, never at individual foes.

Reef giants are loners for long stretches but mate for life. At puberty their children leave to claim a reef or island of their own. They sometimes sail, though only the largest ships can carry them.

Their homes, sometimes set into island hills and gorges, look like shacks outside but are well-appointed mansions within, filled with furniture and treasures gathered over generations. The eldest daughter is raised to care for her aging parents and usually inherits the house and everything in it. Suitors compete fiercely for these well-dowered heiresses, trying to impress her and sabotage rivals by any means, often through diving, surfing and fishing contests.

Scavengers and foragers, they harvest coral reefs for a hundred kinds of food, net whole schools of fish, and dive for pearls, sponges and coral. Their strength lets them swim for hours without tiring, so they amass great stores of goods to trade with humans and other merchant peoples for cloth, sweets and metalwork. Older giants who forage less well may keep goats or sheep on their islands. Their plundering of the sea has made enemies of the merfolk, tritons and other ocean races.