#stone giants

[spelviin]

My take on the "Thorin-yells-Kili" debate

Okay, so basically

There have been many times in my life when my parents, the people who raised me, have called me by my older sister's name by accident. It happens a lot, like, frequently enough to be annoying. And if any of you guys have siblings, I'm sure it's happened to you too, at least once in your life. 

And my sister's name doesn't even rhyme with mine I mean come on giving your children rhyming names is like a surefire way to get someone confused at least once. 

So, my theory is, in the stone giant battle scene, Thorin was a little bit stressed, a little bit disoriented (a perfectly reasonable reaction to have when the mountain you're climbing decides to stand up and have a rock'em-sock'em robot fight with another mountain), and just generally not at his best, what with the possibly-losing-half-his-company to said rock'em-sock'em mountain battles...

He knew one of his nephews was behind him, quite safe, and the other one was possibly dead around the corner, and he just... sort of... got them mixed up and called the wrong name by accident. 

[archaicheartstonemage]

Quarry, the minotaur stone giant. Protector of the lands. 🐂

-

Still technically a wip, I still need to add cracks and damage to show some wear and tear. I might ink the drawing as well. I'm not sure yet. He also has a war hammer that I'll add in another drawing.

[scatter--the--nuns]

Okay, am I the only one who wants to know WHY the stone giants are battling?

Is it just a thing they do daily?

Is it their mating ritual?

Did one of them borrow the other’s top without asking?

WHY.

[lumendelmari]

Chapter Forty-One

The Long Road Ahead

1485 DR / Day 42

Ghohlbrorn’s Lair, Gracklstugh

A strange calm washed over the companions as they returned to the tavern that had hosted them for the past tenday. The sound of their booted feet was muffled by the rush of conversation and the clinking of tankards. Lizva was behind the bar, shouting orders to the kitchen staff, while young Vanum scurried between tables, balancing trays of food and drink with the frantic energy only youth could sustain. The air was thick with the aroma of sizzling meats and the tang of duergar ale. Boisterous chatter filled the room, the patrons seeming to take solace in a small oasis of normalcy.

As the group settled into their usual corner, Prince Derendil gave a gracious bow, one clawed hand on his chest. “Allow me to secure the libations for the evening,” he offered.

While the others heartily voiced their orders, Nine declined.

“I don’t drink,” the ranger said, leaning back in her chair and watching the room with her usual wariness.

Derendil raised an eyebrow but nodded.

“Very well, I shall return shortly,” he replied.

Zelyra caught Fraeya’s slight smirk and shook her head, hiding her grin. Derendil’s attempts to retain his elven etiquette in a quaggoth’s body never failed to endear—and amuse—them all.

As the prince lumbered off to put in their order, Fargas kicked back in his chair and stretched his short legs out.  “So,” the halfling began, rubbing his hands together, “Now that we’re not busy dealing with dragons and duergar politics and nobody is trying to kill us—yet. What’s next for you lot? Once you stop running from that lovely drow priestess and her spider squad, of course.”

“Pass,” Nine said.

“Oh, come on!” Fargas winked. “There must be something rattling around in that thick skull of yours. Unless you just like tagging along with a bunch of misfits for the company.”

Nine rolled her eyes while the rest of the table fell quiet, considering the original question. Fargas’s casual grin belied a deeper curiosity; his hazel eyes swept over the group, each of whom he knew harbored many secrets. . . . To read more: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35100307/chapters/156331270#workskin

[cagemasterfantasy]

Dnd monsters explained Stone Giant

Stone giants are reclusive quiet and peaceful as long as they are left alone. Their granite gray skin gaunt features and black sunken eyes endow stone giants with a stern countenance. They are private creatures hiding their lives and art away from the world.

Secluded caves are the homes of the stone giants. Cavern networks are their towns rocky tunnels their roads and underground streams their waterways. Isolated mountain ranges are their continents with the vast spans of land between spans as oceans that the stone giants only rarely cross.

In their dark quiet caves stone giants wordlessly chip away at elaborate carvings measuring time in the echoing drip of water into cavern pools. In the deepest chambers of a stone giant settlement far from the chittering of bats or the patrols paced out by the giants cave bear companions are holy places where silence and darkness are complete. Stone takes on its most sacred quality in these cavern cathedrals their buttresses and columns carved with a beauty that shames the legendary stonecraft of the dwarves.

Among stone giants artistry ranks as the greatest virtue. They create intricate murals paint sprawling murals across cavern walls and indulge in a wide variety of other artistic disciplines. They esteem stone carving as the greatest of skills.

Stone giants strive to draw shapes out of raw stone which they believe reveal meaning inspired by their god Skoreaus Stonebones. The giants appoint the tribe's best carvers as their leaders shamans and prophets. The holy hands of such giants become the hands of the god as they work.

Despite their great size and musculature stone giants are lithe and graceful. Skilled rock throwers are granted positions of high rank in the giants ordning testing and demonstrating their ability to hurl and catch enormous boulders. Such giants take the front ranks when a tribe has cause to defends its home or attack its enemies. However even in combat artistry is key. A stone giant hurling a rock performs not just a feat of brute strength but also one of stunning athleticism and poise.

Stone giants view the world outside their underground as a realm of dreams where nothing is entirely true or real. They behave in the surface world the way humanoids might behave in their own dreams making little account for their actions and never fully trusting what they see or hear. A promise made above ground need not be kept. Insults can be made without apology. Killing prey or sentient beings is no cause for guilt in the dreaming world beneath the sky.

Stone giants lacking in athletic grace or artistic skill dwell at the fringes of their society serving as the tribes outlying guardians and far wandering hunters. When trespassers stray too far into the mountain territory of a stone giant clan those guardians greet them with hurled rocks and showers of splintered stone. Survivors of such encounters spread tales of stone giant violence never realizing how little those brutes dwelling in the unreal dreaming world resemble their quiet and artistic kin.

[galadhremmin]

I really like the idea of the stone giants mentioned in The Hobbit as Aulë's counterpart to Yavanna's Tree-Shepherds....maybe they protect the mountains from erosion and excessive mining. :)

[crownofbrains-archive]

SPOILER ALERT: The stone giants throwing boulders at each other are in fact just gay lovers having a spat. They'll have made up by morning.

[proxycrit]

(I point. Gently, in the voice of somebody who’s mind touched by the outer gods, i whisper truth in your ears:

Your honor the horses are now lesbians

(Anyways here’s the designs)

[askmiddlearth]

Giants in Middle Earth

Giants are definitely canon, although they are very mysterious and not much is known about them. Giants are mentioned briefly in a couple places (for example, it's said that Gandalf had told stories about giants, though we never get to hear those stories ourselves.) The only time we ever see giants is during The Hobbit, when Bilbo and the dwarves find themselves in the middle of a giants' game.

These particular giants, known as stone-giants (not storm-giants, although they made that very confusing in the movie, since the giants are made of stone, and we see them during a storm) live in the Misty Mountains, and are mainly known for the game that they play - they like to throw giant boulders at each other, or down into ravines, because they like the sounds that the rocks make when they crash into things.  The stone-giants of the Misty Mountains arrived in the area in the late Third Age (though where they were before that is a complete mystery - perhaps they were in the Northern Waste?), and their arrival drove many of the bears out of the mountains, which is where Beorn comes from, basically.

Though Tolkien's earlier writings included more giants, they were largely edited out of his later drafts. Also, interestingly, Tolkien's early giants were decidedly evil (in a lot of ways, they were the evil equivalent to the ents), but the giants that we meet in the published stories don't seem to be necessarily evil at all. In fact, Gandalf manages to convince a giant to block up the entrance to Goblin Town, which proves that the giants weren't in league with the goblins (and also that they're intelligent enough to be reasoned with.)

SOURCES: The Hobbit, The Lost Tales Part 1

[szynkaaa]

Just a gal and her Stone Monkey

this image pose template from here

HC since SWK cane change his size, the same applies for his Azure Dome form. So he can be as big as a mountain, or the size of a big yaoguai, or normal sized (whatever normal sized is for the Stone Monkey)

Much later on:

Slight NSFW under the cut

[imgoingtocrackeryouanewone]

Right, I've watched the stone giants scene many times, and I have realised it is KILI that talks when Kili and Fili are separated! He says "Fili, take my hand."

Once the stone giant falls, Thorin does say Kili's name because he's obv worried about him (Fili was on the same side as Thorin).

Hope this has cleared things up a bit for everyone!

[slimebombed]

i love when people draw game eggman with agent stone because it feels like this to me

[iggyshippingcorner]

alright cozy stobotnik hug before i go to work

stone’s fractal scarring a la chaos emerald is directly inspired by doctor_wumbo on tiktok because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about his art since I saw it <3

[lumendelmari]

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The Dreamwalker

1485 DR / Day 41

Laduguer’s Furrow, Gracklstugh 

The sad pattern continued as Zelyra, Kazimir, and Prince Derendil made their way westward to Cairngorm Caverns. Destruction, death, silence, fear… The once bustling city of Gracklstugh was rank with it. What should have been a ten-minute walk quickly tripled due to the damage the red dragon, Themberchaud, had wrought.

And yet, there was one bright spot amidst the fallout—

Gracklstugh was already starting to rebuild.

The petty war that had broken out between clans was forgotten. Duergar, who had been at each other’s throats, needlessly spilling blood mere hours before, now rallied together and stoically worked side by side to put out fires, clear the streets, and search for trapped victims. The trio did what they could to help along the way, which slowed them even further.

As they navigated the wreckage of the southern housing district, Zelyra’s sharp eyes fell upon a figure lying near a collapsed building. The druid gasped and rushed forward. Derendil and Kazimir hurried after her. The body that Zelyra had found was none other than Grinta Ironhead.

Not only had Grinta been one of the co-conspirators of Blackskull’s coup—she was Laird Thangus Ironhead’s only daughter. [1] The once proud and fierce weaponsmith now looked so small and fragile, her armor cracked and scorched. Further search revealed Grinta’s honor guard trapped among debris. The elderly priest who presided over their Heroes’ Feast was also there. He lay flat on his back, his dark eyes trained upwards, lifeless and unseeing.

They had never asked the priest’s name, let alone thanked him for the powerful adjuration magic that had undoubtedly saved their lives in the throne room…

And now they never could.

“How did it come to this?” Kazimir muttered.

“Pride was allowed to override reason,” Prince Derendil replied, his head downturned. “No side would have come out of the coup without substantial loss. But they knew that, I think. Blackskull, Amber, Grinta, and the other lairds who sided with them… Themberchaud knew it, too. That’s why he chose to attack when he did. It was his best and only chance. This was a battle that neither side could have won.”

“They didn’t deserve this,” Zelyra said as she dropped to her knees beside the priest and reached out with trembling fingers to close his unseeing eyes in respect. “None of them did,” the druid muttered. She then brought her hands to her mouth in a gasp. “Poor Blackskull! She must—”

Zelyra left the conclusion of ‘guilt’ unsaid.

But both of her companions knew what she meant.

“Yeah,” Kazimir breathed.

The wizard reached into the pocket of his robes for the small, polished stone that connected him to Captain Errde Blackskull. He hesitated, his thumb rubbing its smooth surface before relaying the news and location of the bodies. Blackskull’s response was swift and clipped, but the tiefling could tell it significantly weighed on her.

“I will send a recovery team immediately.”

There was a slight pause, and then—

“Thank you for letting me know, Kazimir,” the duergar said softly. “Stay safe. We’ve lost too many already.”

Not for the first time, the tiefling wizard warred with himself internally. Surely, they could have done something more. Or perhaps they should have done the opposite and turned their backs on Blackskull, washing their hands of the duergar city altogether when they had the chance. But a nagging voice in Kazimir’s subconscious that sounded suspiciously like Fraeya argued that Gracklstugh would have been worse off had they done that. If they had not exposed Shal, if they had not broken the succubus’s hold and returned Deepking Horgar to his right mind—

Themberchaud’s attack would have devastated the City of Blades.

And that effect would not have been limited to Gracklstugh. Had the duergar city fallen to the dragon, it would have had untold consequences on the entire trade infrastructure of the Underdark.

“Any news of Amber Thrazgad’s whereabouts?” the wizard finally asked.

“None,” the captain replied curtly.

The link between the sending stones fell silent.

Kazimir sighed. It was strange, given that their interaction with the head of Clan Thrazgad had been limited to just a few short meetings, but the tiefling felt as though a rock had settled in the pit of his stomach. Had the fiery armorsmith met the same fate as Grinta Ironhead?

The wizard took another deep breath and then released it. Around them, the duergar continued their grim work, cleaning the streets and tending to the wounded. There was resilience to them, some stubborn determination to keep going despite all odds. Kazimir had come to respect it during their time in the city. They might not see eye to eye on specific policies—the slave trade, for one—but these were a people who had built their lives in the harshest of environments, who had carved out a place for themselves in the unforgiving Underdark. They would survive this, somehow.

. . . Read more: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35100307/chapters/152830810

[warhead]

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 197

“Guys look, I got us pet rocks!” 

“That’s nice- Danny, why are the rocks moving?” 

“Ectoplasm. Obviously. They eat bad emotions, isn’t that cool?!” 

“They aren’t going to get that big though, right? I mean, we’re moving to the countryside but still.”

“I mean, they shouldn’t? Dang, maybe I should have asked Dora more questions…”