Collating the weights of various giants from the Monster Manual I found a strange thing - there is a rising trend from humans up through ogres to the bigger giants - and two very signficant out-liers.
Up to Ogres, the height/weight ratio is the same as humans - they are scaled up humans, easy. For Minotaurs, Hill and Stone giants, they are about twice as massive for the height as humans. For Frost and Cloud Giants they are 3-5 times the mass per weight - but for Fire and Storm Giants it is nearly 10 times. A Fire Giant is about twice as tall as a man and weighs twenty times as much. Hitting a Fire Giant should be like trying to hack through an anvil. And they then wear armour on top. But this also says Storm Giants and especially Fire Giants are much, much heavier for their height than other giants. For a Frost Giant trying to punch a Fire Giant would be like trying to knock over three Frost Giants at once. This also suggests that Fire and Storm giants should be renowned for their huge appetites, even among giants.
For comparison to thing we find in our world, a Fire Giant weighs more than an average elephant - they are about as heavy as an elephant seal - and a Storm Giant is nearly twice that again. Looking to polar bears, our largest land carnivores, for an idea of how much food a giant would need, we get 150lbs of food in a meal for our ~ one ton bears - roughly a whole roast pig for a meal. Scale that up and our Fire Giants will be eating seven of these in a sitting, our Storm Giants will have an even dozen.
So, as a rule of thumb, assume a Storm Giant has the appetite of thirty - one sits to a table that would be a feast for thirty humans. Whoever is prepping for such a feast is going to be using everything they can get their hands on - from the tail to the squeal as is said. Sausages, broths, offal, everything is going to get cooked up and served.
With that in mind, assume there are whole roast oxen on the table - but what else? I think giant cuisine may look somewhat like poor peasant fare in places as they are looking to stretch their meat and offal - hence 'crafty as a giants cook' - being a phrase for someone who can make a little go a long way.
d30 offal dish ideas
1. Stewed hoof w/ tripe filled with salt pork, onions, garlic
2. Tripe (intestinal) in salads
3. Roast tongue with spiced oil
4. Tripe (stomach) in stew w/ ox hoof, herbs, brandy, veg
5. Heart kebabs
6. Hearts & liver dumplings
7. Fried kidney, heart, brain, liver and testicles with cubed potatoes
8. Pies with kidney, heart, meat cuts
9. Skin as crackling
10. Marrow in split roasted bones
11. Sweet-breads on kebab - glands (pancreas, thymus)
12. Pork ruffle - mesentery that keeps intestines in place - deep fried with hot sauce
13. Haggis (heart, lungs, liver) in intestines
14. Hot soup w/ spicy sausage, beans and stomach tripe
15. Tendons rolled in pepper corns
16. Braised bird tongues in sauce
17. Pigs-head soup w/ entrails (liver, kidney, tripe)
18. Black pudding (blood in intestines with less, ground grains)
19. Blood sausage (blood in intestines with more coarse grains)
20. Bird heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, lungs with butter, onions, nuts, herbs
21. Spleen with cheese
22. Cubed, breaded liver
23. Fish liver with eggs, rice, olives
24. Minced lamb stomach with onions in intestine cooked in broth
25. Marinated, breaded, fried tripe
26. Moussed bird liver w/ spices
27. Fat wrapped lung, heart, kidney balls
28. Liver & onions
29. Tail soup
30. Pickled tongue
Some final thoughts on this in how for Storm and Fire Giants, such massive appetites would drive their culture - you would always find them at the feast table or snacking, or with a stein of beer in hand because three beers is a meal. They would be those types of people who live in their kitchen, either eating, prepping food or talking about left-overs. I could see Fire Giants mixing in fuels like bitumen, charcoal or other flammable materials. Storm Giants in their aquatic domains would probably feast on whole whales or vast quantities of raw, lightly prepared fish. They would eat whole fish and crunch the bones up to large salmon size. Hill Giants, renowned as gluttons, possibly are trying to mimic this aspect of the top of the heirarchy without understanding that it is not the eating of lots of food that puts Storm Giants on top.
Constrast this with Cloud Giants, who would have prodigious appetites compared to humans but would focus more on lighter meals, delicate and artfully prepared things. This fits with the limited space and complex logistics of getting food to their cloud castles. Similarly Frost Giants would have their holds shaped by the scarcity of their frozen environments, they probably would have more of a focus on smoking, salting and preserving in their holds, for laying away the large quantities they need during summers.
Stone Giants are a strange one with their very slow metabolisms (a quarter that of a comparable human) - so on a day to day basis, their appetites would be less than a human. Given they can operate quickly in a fight when they need to I see this as laying away stores of energy slowly over time in their resource poor mountain and underdark environments. They can sustain bursts of high energy (like combat) but they will get hungry. Woe betide those who push Stone Giants into hard effort too often in a short time, you will wake a ravening hunger to refuel their depleted energy and suddenly these more placid giants will be akin to their troll brethren.
Height, weight numbers from the chart above.
| System | Weight (lbs) | Height (ft) |
|---|---|---|
| Storm | 12000.00 | 21.00 |
| Cloud | 5000.00 | 18.00 |
| Frost | 2800.00 | 15.00 |
| Fire | 7000.00 | 12.00 |
| Stone | 1500.00 | 12.00 |
| Hill | 1100.00 | 10.50 |
| Minotaur | 700.00 | 7.00 |
| Ogre | 650.00 | 10.00 |
| Wang Liang | 600.00 | 10.00 |
| Troll | 500.00 | 9.00 |
| Strong Human | 396.00 | 6.50 |
In answering Zedeck Siews call about citing your inspirations; this one ought to credit Monster Menu-All Part 1: Eating the AD&D Monster Manual by Coins & Scrolls.
A useful rule I've developed for giant scaling is that a typical D&D giant is to a human what a human is to a cat (on its hind legs). It's an intuitive rule that helps with scaling. So a cow to a giant is maybe a suckling pig to a human.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered the mass scaling though. Very interesting!
Thanks! I was just struck that some of the weights were absolutely enormous and went 'hang on'...
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