#summerfolk

Giants, seafood, fruit and sunny beaches... this really might be heaven.

Introducing another creature to the setting of Encounters in the Frontier: the giants.

For their redesign I adapted the concept of insular gigantism to a close ancestor of humans.

Giants live in an island close to the southwestern coast of Alwaysummer. They inhabit a giant dormant volcano whose crater now delimits a shallow lagoon.

Giants are adapted to catch mollusks, sea urchins, octopusses and sea cumbers by striding over the lagoon to locate them and then catching them with their dexterous hands. They also complement their diet with fruits they can easily access from the tallest trees.

Giants live slow and long lives and show very little tool usage besides smashing rocks to open shells and coconuts. Still, they have complex social structured, usually consisting of a dominant male and many females and their children. Males engage in screaming singing competitions for dominance and younger males might do this playfully.

Males grow long beards and braid it and poke branches or sea urchin spikes into it as decoration.

They also smell pretty bad.

The discovery of the isle of Titans took place during an expedition sent by the Sun Empire to discover if Alwaysummer had an end to the south and to set and man trading outposts in this region.

This expedition was manned mainly with people from the plateau. In the creation myth of these people, earth used to be a warm and fertile heaven and all people were colossal and child like, but humanity was punnished with a great flood and made small and vulnerable.

When the crew members discovered this islands and the giants, they started to believe that it was the mythical last remnant of paradise and that the giants were the spirits of their legendary heroes and ancestors. (I'm sure this won't eventually turn into a rebellious cult...)

Giants are generally gentle to humans, since to them, they are child like (it's not that they think that adult humans are baby giants, but they find humans cute like we would find a small dog cute). Even though giants are sacred of fire, they did enjoy the taste of cooked food, so it started being common for them to bring food to the humans so that they could cook it (and keep some for themselves).

Male giants started doing favors to the crew members such as reaching fruits and helping them build by moving heavy objects in exchange for getting their long beards groom and braided into intricate styles by the small and precise hands of the humans.

Giants also found the songs and instruments these humans played to be soothing and would stand in the sea at night next to were the humans were playing to hear their music.

Still, most of the times both species stuck to themselves, with the humans building the outpost and having an epiphany and the giants fishing as usual and watching their new neighbours from a distance.

Even though their interactions have been peaceful and even wholesome at the moments, some abandoned shipwrecks and pirate hideouts scattered in the island with no signs of their inhabitants remind the crew members of the island's potential hostility.

Here is a quick evolutionary tree I did of the spec-evo primates of the setting:

Somewhere in Hawaii

Three young adult giants, from left to right: A male, a female and a mother.

(Some parts of this lore are inspired by @serpentface 's elowey).

In this post I'll talk about their secondary sexual characteristics.

During puberty, giants grow to around 2,50 meters of height. The growth spurt starts sooner in females and males do grow a bit larger, but they are way less sexually dimorphic than humans regarding size and muscle mass.

All giants grow hair covering their head, backside of their neck and skin covering the trapezius muscle since birth, as well as thick hair on their legs.

During puberty males start growing hair on their armpits and pubic region, as well as their mane, which covers their whole neck and sometimes also their chest and back almost down to their buttocks. Depending on the specific ethnicity, they also grow a moustache on the side of their lips. Similarly to human beards, the mane probably will still be a little patchy at the end of puberty.

During puberty females grow in stature and muscle mass and their mammary tissue develops a bit and their nipples elongate, but not as much as humans. (They don't deposit that much fat on the breasts or buttocks). They'll also grow hair on the armpits and pubic region, but usually none in the mane region (some maned females do occur, of course, as well as maneless males).

Other than this, giants don't grow much body hair on arms, thighs or torso.

If a female becomes pregnant, their body will develop further. First of all, they will start putting on weight, specially on the lower back, buttocks and as a soft hump (Giants are otherwise very lean). They'll also grow breasts more similar to those of human females which they'll retain even after lactation is over. The most impressive of their body changes are their face flaps, made out of fat and connective tissue. They'll also grow some patches of mane (similar to a pubescent male).

In some giant cultures, mothers are considered their own gender of sorts, and have different duties and rights under tribal law.

Wedding of two giants. (And some lore regarding this character’s and giant culture).

In most giant communities marriage isn’t a stablished institution and the conditions and dynamic between the two parts depend a lot on the agreement between their respective clan’s mothers.

In this case Uluu (right), a young giant male is going to be spend the next five years with Bor’s (left) clan. Bor is an older female giant from a related clan that Uluu has met and developed a crush on during this year’s Salt festival. Bor is a woman, but not a mother (explained here) and if she doesn’t concieve during the next five years, they will renew or revoke their vows. This is a very common agreement for a marriage between a young male and female.

The Salt festival takes place at the end of the wet season and nomadic giant clans (and some human) gather next to a very salty inner sea to gather salt (important for food preservation), trade, form alliances with other clans and plan how they will manage their herds and use the pastures further north during the dry season. Athletic games, such as races or wrestlin, cattle competitions and general socializing take place during this festival.

Giants often spend several days at a time standing up and can even sleep like that (though many prefer to rest on a cane or against a partner). Their height makes it so that getting up from the sitting position takes a bit and can cause dizziness or even to pass out if done too quickly. This makes it so that sitting or laying on the ground is a very vulnerable position for giants and simbolizees great trust. The festival is also the time for resolving any fights or disagreements that have occured during the rest of the year between clans or individuals. In these “trials”, which are more like discussions moderated by third parties, the two parties usually meet sitting down, as a show of good disposition to resolve the disagreement in a peaceful way. The party that proposes the discussion has to sacrifice a head of cattle (usually a cow) and provide a whole hide that they use to sit on during the discussion (this makes it so that not everyone can afford these formal discussions and that even richer clans will think twice before accusing someone). After an agreement is reached, the “winner” gets to keep the hide, signed by both parties, as a guarantee. This method is not exclusive of trials, and is used in any kind of formal agreement. In this case, it was Uluu’s clan that provided the hide but will also keep it in case he is not treated properly by Bor’s clan.

Uluu and Yandod smoking and getting to know each other + Tail being a freak.

I already introduced Uluu the Summerfolk in an earlier post. He's a lowlands Summerfolk that got in trouble with Osdu da Lag's bandit band in Alwaysummer and is now fleeing to the Sun Empire, where he will join a wandering group of entertainers as a wrestler and later work as a bodyguard, soldier and eventually die. This poor man's life has always centered around violence but his dream was to be a shepherd and spend his days alone in the wild.

During his voyage to the Empire by boat he met Yandod, a crewmate of the unregistered/illegal fleet that Uluu used. This is the only time that Uluu had been at sea and he hated it.

Yandod is native to the northern coast of Alwaysummer and his culture is one of the most hateful towards Summerfolk but during his voyages to the western coast of Alwaysummer he met plenty of Summerfolk and his prejudices lessened so in the current day he has no problem befriending Uluu.

Tail is an old, female talking monkey that was given that name because she lost most of her tail in an unknown accident. In this picture she's trying to give smoking a go, but is very displeased. She's an alcoholic though. Talking monkeys are native to the deep forest that surround the central mountain range, but can also be seen in some cities, where they are often considered vermin and in ships all around the sea, where they are valued because of their ability to climb ropes and sails and to obey specific orders in exchange for some food/liquor. Tail, bc of her injury and age, is no longer able to climb that much and is kept in the ship because the crew mates have become fond of her and they find her funny.