Stone Giant Ordinate (Basic Lore)

Stone Giant Ordinate (Sneak; CR 22)
Neutral - Large - Giant
This creature possesses the Sneak role, and therefore counts as 2 monsters for purposes of encounter size, XP award, and treasure. This monster frequently has the Sneak role, but may be set to other roles if desired. Dwarves like to say that they are the True Scions of the Stone, but that is a lie. There are many creatures that are far more attuned to the mysteries of the Solid Dark than mere dwarves. Even the Dwarven cousins, the Duergar, are mere pretenders. Of course, the most attuned out there to the joys of Structure are also among the most alien. Earth Elementals are barely comprehensible on their best days, the soutterrain are completely monstrous in their state of being as well as their form of body. The Xorn are paragons of reasonable intent compared to those two tribes, and everyone is familiar with how peculiar the Xorn are. And then, there are the Stone Giants. Stone Giants are easy to overlook. They are not actively horrible, like many tribes of giants. They do not raid and murder and campaign, they do not hurl lava or call storms, they do not revel in utter evil or enjoy cannibalism. As Giants go, they're fairly benign. Stone Giants are also thought to be rare, although there are certainly strong hints that they may be far, far more common than people think, because Stone Giants live inside stone. Much as volcanoes have Fire Giants and glaciers have Frost Giants, stone has Stone Giants. The problem is, there is a LOT more stone than there are volcanoes or glaciers. Every mountain, hill, and plain could be swarming with Stone Giants, in their deep nests, living contentedly in the solid stone like maggots in a fresh corpse. There is almost no way to know for sure. Stone Giants, when they are encountered, tend to be seen underground, stepping silently out of cave walls and floors, or in mountains, emerging blinking from a cliff to peer about at the open space, bemused. Indeed, Stone Giants seem to come to the surface in the mountains mainly for the novelty of hurling huge boulders across insanely long distances, which they apparently can't do underground. It is not uncommon to find whole tribes of Stone Giants peppered across mountaintops, booming with laughter as they engage in weird contests, blocks of stone the size of carts lofting across the sky like improbable kites.... Of course, there are also the occasional towns, villages, and even cities that are found...empty. No sign of the inhabitants aside from gore, gravel, stone, and sand scattered all over, and no sign of any attackers that ever breached the gates, as if the attackers appeared from the ground, or just walked right through the walls.... Stone giants seem to be fairly benign most of the time, but they sometimes attack without warning, for reasons likely related to their internal politics, which are mysterious at best. In battle, Stone Giants are terrible foes, their blows knocking you around like a drunken sailor, and their stony skins shedding bedeviling grit and shards as you battle them. Stone Giants are able to step into and out of stone like most creatures walk across a floor, which can make fighting them a travail. Shooting at a Stone Giant is not a good plan either, as they can pluck missiles out of the air like they were born to do it, and then they will flick stones back at you like sling bullets. Stone Giant Ordinates are the leaders of Stone Giant tribes, big, powerful warrior types. They can stand toe-to-toe with the best of them, but they rarely bother. Instead, they hit you where it hurts. They are incredibly skilled at vanishing into a swirling cloud of dust and grit, then hitting you from your blindside so hard that you're lucky to survive. When an Ordinate is in the battle, stay alert, and keep your healer nearby.