Geriviars are rare and mighty giants who fight as living siege engines. They prefer their isolation in remote lands and have an irrational hatred of buildings.[1]
Description[]
A gigantic and imposing figure, a geriviar stands 25‒30 feet (7.6‒9.1 meters) tall and is around 12 tons (11,000 kilograms) in weight. With a small amount of black body hair, its hide is various shades of gray, rough in texture, and ensconced with thick plates like armor. These plates bristle with spiky spherical nodules, not unlike huge caltrops and 1‒2 feet (0.3‒0.61 meters) wide, that can be broken off. The geriviar has six limbs in total: two legs and four arms, which have two elbow joints. It has a smooth and rolling gait, despite its massiveness, and can sprint by going to all six limbs. Its head is sunken below its bulky, hunchbacked shoulders.[1]
They wear a little clothing as necessary to keep warm, as they do not like the cold, and a few wear armor. They carry their possessions in a sack or portable container.[1]
Personality[]
Geriviars are characterized by a strange yet all-consuming loathing for permanent structures of any kind. Buildings provoke a pathological rage in them and practically offend them on a personal level, driving them to immediately destroy them and those who built them.[1]
Inflexible, stubborn, and utterly unyielding in almost anything they do, a geriviar that has started a task or set its mind on a course cannot be stopped from finishing it, except through death or an equally forceful will.[1]
They are highly hostile and hateful to any being they see as a threat—seemingly just about anything that moves. They are especially suspicious of any person or race that erects buildings to lay claim to land, as well as those who trespass in their territory.[1]
Abilities[]
A geriviar batters structures and objects with special fierceness, damaging them more effectively than otherwise possible, even with their enormous strength. They also train to more easily break the weapons and equipment their opponents carry.[1]
They are adept at throwing and even catching large rocks. A geriviar can hurl a rock weighing 60‒80 pounds (27‒36 kilograms) to a distance of 160 feet (49 meters). Furthermore, with four arms, they can throw two rocks at a time: picking them up or from a sack with two, and hurling them with the other two. In addition, an alert geriviar with good-enough reflexes can catch a rock or similar projectile about to hit it. And then probably throw it back[1]
If that isn't enough, geriviars come equipped with their own explosive projectiles. The spiky nodules that grow on their bodies contain a volatile fluid secreted through the skin and small fragments of their natural armor plating, forming natural grenades that explode with fire and shrapnel over 10 feet (3 meters). The geriviar can break two off and throw them at a time. A healthy geriviar has twelve such nodules, and they grow back simultaneously in just three to eighteen minutes, or in two to three days if regeneration was prevented.[1]
Beyond this, geriviars are also capable of magic, producing effects like reverse gravity and telekinesis both thrice a day, and invisibility, shout, and stone shape each once a day. They are highly resistant to spells.[1]
These already incredibly robust creatures are also immune to disease and poison, fire, sonic effects, and mind-altering magic. Weapons do less injury to them; only a magical adamantine weapon can fully harm them. However, like trolls, they can regenerate injuries and even regrow limbs and body parts in three to eighteen minutes, or reattach them in an instant; acid and cold are needed to damage them permanently.[1]
Despite their massive bulk, geriviars can move shockingly swiftly, being faster than regular giants their size. This might be due to their double-jointed limbs. They can walk 70 feet (21 meters) in several seconds, and by going down on all six limbs sprint six times faster. Moreover, they can jump with ease and if they leap purposefully off a cliff or castle wall, they can absorb and ignore much of the impact. They are quite skilled in climbing, and expert in jumping.[1]
Combat[]
While some geriviars wield weapons, the majority favor slamming with their arms, biting, or hurling their exploding nodules. They make full use of their awesome strength, using brute force, powerful swings, cleaving through ranks, and shoving foes, yet they are also quick to seize an opening. The one refined technique they have is to break an enemy's weapons.[1]
Given the opportunity, they tend to follow a set sequence of tactics. They start a fight invisible to surprise their enemy, and from as far away as possible to take advantage of range as long as they can. Then they bombard their foe with rocks and exploding nodules to soften them up, favoring magic-users and archers who can return fire. They keep their distance by running or leaping away, or using telekinesis or reverse gravity to move foes away and delay them. They do this despite their devastating capacity for melee combat, but when forced, they favor breaking enemy weapons or shoving them into hazardous terrain where possible.[1]
Society[]
They are a nomadic race, always on the move out of a paranoia that someone might be building something on some other piece of land they claimed, and intending to find it and tear it down. Fortunately for those who build, wherever geriviars go, they usually seek isolation in remote places, even from each other. The majority are solitary or paired wanderers who linger in remote spots, patrol their territory, and drive away so-called "invaders". Others roam in small family groups, in bands of six to nine active members with one or two non-combatants. These geriviars are utterly dedicated to their family and fight to the death to defend a member who is attacked, but those very rare few who cannot keep up because of age, injury, or sickness are just left behind.[1]
Some geriviars might be found serving in military forces, whether voluntarily enlisted or forcibly conscripted. Either way, they act as siege experts, or as living siege weapons, a task for which they are perfectly suited. Some even enjoy this for the chance to destroy their hated buildings. However, commanders of geriviars have to be just as hard and uncompromising, and they will still struggle to order them to change tasks or retreat.[1]
In contrast to a lot of giants, geriviars seldom capture slaves.[1]
History[]
Because of their strange habits and unique array of powers, geriviars are theorized by scholars to be an artificial race created for use by warlords as mobile siege engines in ancient times. Few can doubt this after witnessing them in battle.[1]
In any case, they were used in this role by the goblinoid empires of ancient Khorvaire, and some survived into modern times in Darguun.[1]
Lands[]
Geriviars usually dwell in marshes and rough mountainous areas, usually inhospitable and hostile to others. Here, they are unlikely to find buildings to offend them.[1]
A small population of geriviars live in Darguun. They serve to provide defense for Rhukaan Draal and other big goblin settlements.[1]
Independent geriviars are found in the Ironroot Mountains and Hoarfrost Mountains of the Mror Holds and in the islands of the Lhazaar Principalities. They wander in isolated valleys and assault everyone they come across.[1]
Appendix[]
External Links[]
- Geriviar article at the Forgotten Realms Wiki, a wiki for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.