Jungle Giant

In general forest-dwelling giants seem to be nicer than their most other giant races.  (Probably a resource thing: forests have food and resources, whereas mountains have icy, craggy death.)  That doesn’t mean the neutral jungle giants are benevolent like wood giants; it just means they might allow you to run away when they threaten to kill you for trespassing.

For relatively simple monsters stat-wise, jungle giants are packed with evocative flavor touches: almost tree-like features (a reflection of the land…or hints of treant or fey influence?); the ability to wield bows in melee combat; spell storing, warding tattoos; and a matriarchal society (perhaps due to custom, religion, biology, curse, plague, you name it).  Plus anything involving runes is always good for an adventure hook…

A jungle giant warns trespassers against visiting a forbidden ruined city.  She sends leaf leshys to spy on them, and if they disobey they find themselves harried by druid-summoned animals and girallon ambushes.

A well-meaning but hapless scholar wishes to study the runic brands and tattoos of a jungle giant tribe.  The matriarch is quite understandably less than enthusiastic about her people being examined like butterflies.  She also wishes to preserve the secret reason for their matriarchal society: a stain of corruption that renders a percentage of their males into brutes (use cave giant statistics) or even violent psychopaths (ash giants) who must be driven underground.

Explorers searching for a lost jungle nation of elves succeed—sort of.  What they find are a nation of jungle giants attended by wild elf servants and laborers along with strange obsidian golems.  This horrifies the elves in the party (used to their own nation of oak-tree-and-living-crystal cities that dominates a subcontinent), and they are stunned to discover the wild elves approve of the arrangement.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 129

Quick one today.  Got Florence + the Machine tickets that need using.

Speaking of which, I never kvetched about Saturday, did I?  Was supposed to go to this; was even on guest list thanks to a radio connection.  On the day of, almost too exhausted to go, but I rallied because I’d never seen Flogging Molly live.  Get there and…

…The door people don’t have my name.  Sigh.  Which I should have expected.  (Pro Tip: Never trust guest list at an outdoor show.  Almost always lots of temporary staff and there’s never anyone higher up/with an Internet connection to appeal to.)  So of course suddenly I go from not even wanting to go to the show to having never wanted to see a show more in my life.  Predictable.  #patchlogic  (The worst part is that by coincidence a client of mine was involved in the show, so I probably could have gotten tickets weeks ago if I had a brain.)

Anyway, back to jungle giants.  I know all you Star Wars Expanded Universe fans read “jungle” and “matriarchal society” and started going, “They’re giant Witches of Dathomir!”  To which I reply: “Uh, sure?”

Finally, remember I’m looking for reader-generated random hooks!  Per yesterday’s post, roll three times on whatever monster/spell/terrain/plane/NPC/whatever tables you like.  Send the results to me (in the comments, here, or at my Gmail address) and I’ll do my best to work into a post!