Fog Giant
Fog Giants are an offshoot species of the Cloud Giants in Dungeons & Dragons, characterized by their dwelling on land in misty territories, where their milky white skin and silvery-white hair better enable them to blend into their environments. Whilst often perceived as dull-witted and brutish by outsiders, they are in fact a highly intelligent and cultured race, which helps explain why they share the position of their Cloud Giant cousins in the Ordning.
Physically, they are characterized by excessive amounts of body hair (although, weirdly, they don't grow facial hair), their distinctive pallor, the length at which they wear their hair, and the fact their arms and legs are extremely well-muscled, if not disproportionately so, due to their culture revolving heavily around games and contests of throwing and strength. They have extremely sharp senses of smell and hearing, and are also particularly adept at rock throwing even by giant standards.
Living in caves, canyons, or thickets, which are themselves located in the most inaccessible areas of marsh, swamp, forest, or coast, fog giant life revolves around two activities: hunting and playing. The menfolk spend most of their time wandering in groups, typically foraying up to a dozen miles from their base camp at a time, in order to secure the food that they need to feed themselves and their families, whilst the women look after the children at home. The bulk of their diet is made up of (typically spit-roasted) meat, with a particular taste for flesh from hooved animals - centaurs despise fog giants, because the giants consider centaurs to be as valid as horses, cattle, deer and elk when it comes to filling their bellies. However, they also have a sweet tooth and relish consuming fruits or confectioneries when they have access to them. Like many other giants, they're also avid drinkers of liquor, although they don't distill their own.
When not hunting, or sometimes even whilst on the hunt, fog giants like to relax by either smoking milkweed pods in giant wooden pipes (which humanoids find disgustingly bitter) or through their games of strength, skill and fighting abilities. The favorite game of fog giants is called “copsi” and consists of the giants pairing off to toss larger and larger boulders to their partners until one of the pairs misses its throw.
Because of their size, fog giants consume a large quantity of food, and require a considerable territory per hunting group to support themselves. The giants will often place territorial markers of boulders and logs to define the boundaries between their hunting territories. They do not look kindly on anyone who tears down or moves these markers. Their regular pathways are hard to hide, and are instead trapped with deadfalls of rocks and logs to discourage trespassers. Territorial disputes sometimes flare up between groups, especially in times of bad hunting. Friendly disputes can sometimes be resolved by a game of copsi or an arm-wrestling match. Fog giants fighting amongst themselves will generally throw rocks and fist-fight, rather than use swords.
In general, fog giants don't mix well with other races, but the race displays a human-like flexibility of alignment (although giants of a given hunting group will usually share the same alignment, to keep squabbles down) and so it's impossible to truly generalize things. They usually will just try and avoid the smaller races, but they're not completely antisocial; trade in goods and services with other races is well-established, particularly when it comes to securing liquor, sweets and, above all else, refined silver. This precious metal is of deep importance to fog giants, and they hold it as sacred. By tradition, a young giant may not mate until he has obtained at least one large ornament of silver. Usually, the young giant joins with several others in a quest to find one (or acquire enough treasure to buy one).
Publication History
Fog Giants debuted in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, in the original Fiend Folio. They would be updated to 2e in the Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio Appendix, and from there be reprinted in the Monstrous Manual.
Their last appearance to date was in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, in the 3.0 Forgotten Realms splatbook "Monsters of Faerun".