It seems likely that they would have had their own name for their race. "Half-elf" was just an outsider's description of that race until they became influential on their own and the term Khoravar developed, so I imagine it was the opposite for the giants.
So anyways, I'm just curious as to whether there's an answer for this out there or, if not, if anyone else has given the giant race its own name.
It's certainly a place to start, if nothing else.
Of course, the real irony is calling the giants of the ancient civilisation giants even though they were giants compared to the giants of the current age ;)
Personally I love the fluff and story behind such concepts, but each time I design them, they always end up being dumped in actual game play ;) Giants write in Giant. They probably have a word other than giant for themselves (likely something like people), but in the end anybody translating a text would translate it as giant. The players certainly are not going to remember various terms, which is the main reason it never stuck in my games.
Of course, the real irony is calling the giants of the ancient civilisation giants even though they were giants compared to the giants of the current age ;)
Which is a fair point. Only reason I felt it necessary to come up with such a thing in the first place is because I run an online game via IRC: Because it is a text-based medium, it actually works fairly well to emphasize that the Ye Olde Giants were something distinct and special. Some of it was also due to the unique circumstances of the game: The PCs were exploring a derelict orbital platform in the Ring of Siberys and a ctivated aterminal that was expositing to them via tongues, but which still had to resort to the word cenyor'xen because there's nothing of equivalent meaning in Common.
The subtle distinction, I think, flew over the PCs' heads. Can't really blame them, though, because the orbital platform was full of woeforged and a restless Overlord.
Man I love it when Eberron games go into space. What's the story behind your orbital platform? Was it built by the overlord or is it a prison for him built by the dragons before the Silver Flame got the rest of the rajahs?
Actually, the platform in question had been built by the greatest sage of the cenyor'xen, as a redoubt in which their best and brightest could escape to, hunker down, and wait out the arcane distress that plagued Xen'drik following the deployment of the Moonbreaker and the end of the Nightmare War giant-quori war. (The platform was dubbed, simply enough, the Ark.) While in the final stages of the Ark's construction, a terrible discovery was made: During the war, the cenyor'xen had discovered the prison site of a rajah, and had been working on "weaponizing" it to fight the quori by weakening the bonds of its prison and using it as an arcane power source. Knowing what the dragons -- then starting to scour Xen'drik -- would do if it was discovered that the cenyor'xen had been meddling with, it was determined the only way to keep the dark secret of his people was to relocate the rajah to a new orbital prison, built into the Ark. Such was done using immense amounts of handwavium, and for the next 40,000 years the rajah -- Bolothamogg -- sat unmolested, until the party bumbled up into the final frontier. (Well, all right, it was the Cyrans who first bumbled up there two decades before the "present" in Eberron. And were, after the Mourning, followed by the Lord of Blades as they discovered and utilized the portal site the Cyrans used.) Bolothamogg was actually secure, but 40,000 years is a very long while for a system to maintain operation with minimal oversight, and cascading problems came to a head as the party came aboard and they had to forge a temporary plug to keep the rajah contained. (In my favorite bit of 3.x nerding out, Bolothamogg is the Elder Evil revered by the aboleths. It is also That Which Watches From Beyond the Stars. It just felt too right not to run with. It also gives me an excuse to throw memory fish at my party, which'll be plenty of fun.)
At any rate, it's actually a Plot Point that the dragons don't know about the Ark. Which made it fun when the party, who had in the past had contact with the Chamber, told them about it: Their handler in Sharn told them that such was way above her pay-grade and that they needed to take a road-trip to Argonnessen. Where I'm sure they'll be greeted warmly, what with being the bearers of news that the ancient civilization dragonkind went out of its way to obliterate not only has a mostly intact redoubt left, but that it's also home to a barely contained rajah and that, by mucking about the Ring of Siberys, the cenyor'xen might have caused an unknowable number of false conclusions and/or predictions about the Prophecy to be drawn over the past 40,000 years.
...how do I get in on this action?
Man I love it when Eberron games go into space. What's the story behind your orbital platform? Was it built by the overlord or is it a prison for him built by the dragons before the Silver Flame got the rest of the rajahs?
Actually, the platform in question had been built by the greatest sage of the cenyor'xen, as a redoubt in which their best and brightest could escape to, hunker down, and wait out the arcane distress that plagued Xen'drik following the deployment of the Moonbreaker and the end of the Nightmare War giant-quori war. (The platform was dubbed, simply enough, the Ark.) While in the final stages of the Ark's construction, a terrible discovery was made: During the war, the cenyor'xen had discovered the prison site of a rajah, and had been working on "weaponizing" it to fight the quori by weakening the bonds of its prison and using it as an arcane power source. Knowing what the dragons -- then starting to scour Xen'drik -- would do if it was discovered that the cenyor'xen had been meddling with, it was determined the only way to keep the dark secret of his people was to relocate the rajah to a new orbital prison, built into the Ark. Such was done using immense amounts of handwavium, and for the next 40,000 years the rajah -- Bolothamogg -- sat unmolested, until the party bumbled up into the final frontier. (Well, all right, it was the Cyrans who first bumbled up there two decades before the "present" in Eberron. And were, after the Mourning, followed by the Lord of Blades as they discovered and utilized the portal site the Cyrans used.) Bolothamogg was actually secure, but 40,000 years is a very long while for a system to maintain operation with minimal oversight, and cascading problems came to a head as the party came aboard and they had to forge a temporary plug to keep the rajah contained. (In my favorite bit of 3.x nerding out, Bolothamogg is the Elder Evil revered by the aboleths. It is also That Which Watches From Beyond the Stars. It just felt too right not to run with. It also gives me an excuse to throw memory fish at my party, which'll be plenty of fun.)
At any rate, it's actually a Plot Point that the dragons don't know about the Ark. Which made it fun when the party, who had in the past had contact with the Chamber, told them about it: Their handler in Sharn told them that such was way above her pay-grade and that they needed to take a road-trip to Argonnessen. Where I'm sure they'll be greeted warmly, what with being the bearers of news that the ancient civilization dragonkind went out of its way to obliterate not only has a mostly intact redoubt left, but that it's also home to a barely contained rajah and that, by mucking about the Ring of Siberys, the cenyor'xen might have caused an unknowable number of false conclusions and/or predictions about the Prophecy to be drawn over the past 40,000 years.
Cool. You could make this platform (with the transported Overlord's prison / eldrich machine as it's arcane power source) the Moonbreaker lunch platform itself (sounds like something that needed to be activated from orbit): inhabited by Xen artificers that worked on the Moonbreaker project (which are now undead and/or under the rajah's influence / mind seeded by Quori or in sleep/cryogenic - with only one or two titans waking up every few years to maintain the platform/prison) also LoBster can use the found platform to threaten/extort the leaders of the Five Nations or and an Aurum plot to mine the Ring of Siberys...
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure"
-Aliens (1986)
"Other campaigns may promise you The Moon, but we deliver! MOONRAKER"
~Moonraker(1979), James Bond ;)
Course that's where the similarities end. Wow!
Fantastic ideas like this (the "Xen" = "Giants" in Giant) that make me read threads you comment on, Juums.
What's ironic is that Xen might refer to the Giants, but I doubt that they would refer to themselves as Giant, just the way humans don't refer to themselves as "Mediums".
I would find it funny, however, if PCs met giants and were constantly referred to as "little people"