Plucky Geek

“Giant” © Saryth Chareonpanichkul, accessed at his deviantArt gallery here

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82. An Italian giant, one said to cause earthquakes. Not a lot is available in English, and most of the readily Google translatable material I could find were about earthquakes, not giants.]

Orcolat This immense giant has gray, craggy skin, a furrowed brow and a maw full of jagged teeth. It wears merely a loincloth, and carries an enormous spiked club. The ground trembles under its feet.

Orcolats, called earthquake giants by some, are enormous and ill-tempered giants responsible for many temblors and avalanches. They live in high mountain caves, hunting rocs, megafauna and other massive creatures for food. Orcolats are cannibals of a sort, and they will gladly prey on smaller giants if they get the opportunity. They are large enough to shake the ground around them as they walk, but can create even more intense earthquakes through magical means.

An orcolat is a dim and stupid creature, and has little culture beyond crafting of simple weapons. They have an inborn sadistic urge, and enjoy hurting creatures smaller than themselves (which is almost everything). Cleverer giants frequently manipulate them with gifts and food, getting them to provide security for cloud castles and other remote strongholds. According to giant lore, the orcolats are the products of a divine curse—their ancestors wished to be even larger and stronger than they were, and as their bodies swelled, their brains atrophied.

The average orcolat stands sixty feet tall. They speak Giant in halting voices, and rarely have vocabularies more than 100 words.

I went for a walk in the nature, and I took a path that was completely new to me.

I kept walking, when I came across a cute house surrounded by flowers. A little child was watering the plants, and a woman insisted to offer me a glass of water. I didn’t know her, but she was a friend of my uncle’s sister, apparently. We talked for a bit, then she told me to follow her, because she wanted to show me the laboratory where her husband produces honey. There he was, working.

He gave me a piece of honeycomb to chew on, then he showed me the complete process to make honey. Finally, he gave me a jar as a gift. The woman explained to me how to go back to town, and she walked me to the bridge I would have to cross. That looked surreal too.