GIANTS

Giants in Seamaide


LORE:

The mythology and legends of many different cultures include mythological creatures of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings.

In folklore from all over Europe, giants were believed to have built the remains of previous civilizations. 
Saxo Grammaticus, for example, argues that giants had to exist, because nothing else would explain the large walls, stone monuments, and statues that we know were the remains of Roman construction. Similarly, the Old English poem Seafarer speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants. Even natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants. Giants provided the least complicated explanation for such artifacts.

Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in the folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Some Irish giants such as Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) were considered benevolent and well liked by humans. Celtic giants also figure in Breton and Arthurian romances, and from this source they spread into the heroic tales of Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and their follower Edmund Spenser. In the small Scottish village of Kinloch Rannoch, a local myth to this effect concerns a local hill that apparently resembles the head, shoulders, and torso of a man, and has therefore been termed 'the sleeping giant'. Apparently the giant will awaken only if a specific musical instrument is played near the hill.

Many giants in British folklore were noted for their stupidity. A giant who had quarreled with the Mayor of Shrewsbury went to bury the city with dirt; however, he met a shoemaker, carrying shoes to repair, and the shoemaker convinced the giant that he had worn out all the shoes coming from Shrewsbury, and so it was too far to travel.

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ENTS

On Various types of Tree-Beings:
Treants
Treants are sentient trees with human characteristics. They are typically portrayed as protectors of the forests and antagonists to industrialization and despoiling of nature. They are typically allies of druids and fey, opposing malicious races such as orcs.
Ents were designed to be the Shepherds of the Forests.  They have mastery over other growing things.
Huorns
Huorns are simply ordinary trees save for the fact that they can move and communicate. They do not have mastery over other things and they can wither and die like normal trees.
Ents are almost immortal.  Huorns are not.

Leshii

Leshii, the woodland spirits, lords of forests. Legends tell that every forest  is governed by a leshii, who commands all animals in it. Leshii are told to be usually indifferent to humans, but willing to defend the forests if they are despoiled (similar to J.R.R.Tolkien's ents). It's natural that the people living mostly in forests would have an Ent-like entity in their myths. A somewhat wicked sense of humor is attributed to leshiis: they like to lead travelers and foragers astray. The leshiis are descripted either as humanoids or Ent-esque walking tree-things, and have the powers to change their size and weave illusions.