Cloud Giant

(From D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual - 2014):

Cloud giants live extravagant lives high above the world, showing little concern for the plights of other races except as amusement. They are muscular with light skin and have hair of silver or blue.

High and Mighty. Cloud giants are spread to the winds, encompassing vast areas of the world. In times of need, scattered cloud giant families band together as a unified clan. However, they can seldom do so quickly.

Attuned to the magic of their airy domains, cloud giants are able to turn into mist and create clouds of billowing fog. They dwell in castles on high mountain peaks, or on the solid clouds that once held their fiefs. Still gracing the skies on occasion, these magic clouds are a lasting remnant of the giants’ lost empires.

Better spellcasters than most other giants, some cloud giants can control weather, bring storms, and steer the wind almost as well as their cousins, the storm giants.

Affluent Princes. Although cloud giants are lower in the ordning than storm giants, the reclusive storm giants rarely engage with the rest of giantkind. As a result, many cloud giants see themselves as having the highest status and power among the giant races. They order lesser giants to seek out wealth and art on their behalf, employing fire giants as smiths and crafters, and using frost giants as reavers, raiders, and plunderers. Dimwitted hill giants serve them as brutes and combat fodder — sometimes fighting for the cloud giants’ amusement. A cloud giant might order hill or frost giants to steal from nearby humanoid lands, which it considers to be a fair tax for its continued beneficence.

On their mountain summits and solid clouds, cloud giants keep extraordinary gardens. Grapes as big as apples grow there, along with apples the size of pumpkins, and pumpkins the size of wagons. From the errant seeds of these gardens, tales of cottage-sized produce and magic beans are spread in the mortal realm.

As humanoid nobles keep an aerie for hunting hawks, so do cloud giants keep griffons, perytons, and wyverns as their own flying beasts of prey. Such creatures also patrol the cloud giants’ gardens by night, along with trained predators such as owlbears and lions.

Children of the Trickster. The patron god and father of the cloud giants is Memnor the Trickster, the cleverest and slyest of the giant deities. Cloud giants align themselves according to the aspects and exploits of Memnor that they most admire, with evil cloud giants emulating his deceitfulness and self-interest and good cloud giants emulating his intellect and silver-tongued speech. Family members usually align in the same direction.

Wealth and Power. A cloud giant earns its place in the ordning by the treasure it accumulates, the wealth it wears, and the gifts it bestows on other cloud giants. However, value is only one part of the assessment. The extravagances a cloud giant wears or places about its home must also be beautiful or wondrous. Sacks of gold or gems are worth less to a cloud giant than the jewelry that might be crafted from those materials, creating treasures that bring esteem to a cloud giant’s household.

Rather than steal from one another or fight over treasures, cloud giants are inveterate gamblers with a hunger for high risks and high rewards. They frequently bet on the outcome of events nominally outside their control, such as the lives of lesser creatures. Ordning ranks and kings’ ransoms can be won and lost in bets over the military triumphs of humanoid nations. Fixing wagers by interfering in the conflict causes the loss of the bet, but such deceit is considered to be cheating only if it is discovered. Otherwise, it is cleverness honoring Memnor.

(From Volo's Guide to Monsters - 2016):

Cloud giants are aptly named, or at least were at one time. Few of them live literally on clouds anymore, but most do reside atop high mountains, inside or even above a near-perpetual cloud layer. A select few — those at the apex of the clan’s ordning — claim the last of the ancient cloud castles that still drift across the sky.

No one can build those majestic structures any longer. The methods of their construction were lost (along with much other knowledge) when Ostoria fell. Some cloud giants believe the information might yet be buried in some long-forgotten, ruined library. Rumors of its existence crop up from time to time, stirring debate and dreams of resurgent glory among the cloud giants, but definite information has proven impossible to obtain. Many cloud giants think that someday, a hero will unearth this ancient secret. Until then, they must be satisfied with watching clouds drift past their mountaintop homes instead of living atop those clouds as in days of yore.

Family First. Most types of giants live communally in large groups of clan mates, but the central unit of cloud giant life is the family — a mated pair, their offspring (if any), and perhaps a couple of close relatives. Cloud giants prefer not to congregate in great numbers in any one place, to avoid drawing too much attention. It’s not that they fear attack from humanoids or monsters, because few creatures other than dragons can challenge them. But if more than a few lived in the same place, the size of their combined treasure hoard would attract an incessant stream of adventurers and other would-be thieves — a nuisance on the order of rats in the larder.

Despite the distances that separate the homes of families, cloud giants aren’t isolated. Every family or individual knows where its nearest neighbors are, even if the location is hundreds of miles away, and those neighbors know where their nearest neighbors are, and so on across the world. In a crisis, word is spread from family to family, so that a mighty squad of cloud giants could be assembled, in time, if need arises.

Most cloud giant homes include one or more pets. Wyverns, griffons, giant eagles and owls, and other beasts of the sky are popular choices. Pets aren’t limited to flying creatures, though. Any sort of creature might be found in a cloud giant menagerie, with rare specimens treated more as status symbol than as companions.

Benevolent Overlords. Cloud giants are famous (or infamous) for demanding tribute from the humanoids that live beneath them. Such tribute is only proper from their perspective, for two reasons. First, their presence in an area benefits everyone by driving away many evils, especially flying predators such as manticores and wyverns. Second, the giants believe they deserve to be rewarded for their forbearance; no one could stop them from simply taking what they want, but instead of doing that they allow their tribute to be freely given. (The logic of that position is clearer to the giants than it is to those on the other end of the arrangement.)

Much of the tribute that cloud giants accept is in the form of livestock and crops, but this isn’t their only source of food. Cloud giants are avid gardeners. Almost all cloud giant strongholds devote space to a garden that produces enormous yields: beans as big as turnips, turnips as big as pumpkins, and pumpkins as big as carriages.

The garden of a cloud giant family is seldom affected by drought, frost, or locusts. When such a calamity strikes nearby farms, families have been known to share their bounty to ease the humanoids’ food shortage. Such events are at the root of tales about magic beans and others about a human family living in a cottage carved from a single, enormous gourd. Beyond that, the cloud giants’ generosity in times of want helps to cement their reputation as friends of humankind — a reputation that serves them well, even though it’s not entirely deserved.

Ordning of Extravagance. A cloud giant’s position within the ordning doesn’t depend on talent or skill. It depends on wealth. The more treasure a cloud giant possesses, the higher its standing. It’s as simple as that. Almost.

Ownership is one thing, but wealth that’s kept locked away means little. To fully contribute to one’s status, wealth must be displayed, and the more ostentatious the display, the better. In a cloud giant family’s home, extravagance is omnipresent. One might boast windows framed in gold leaf, rare perfume stored in vials of crystal with silver lids, or a scene in the sky depicted in a tapestry composed entirely of pearls.

Another way for a family to demonstrate its wealth is by bestowing lavish gifts on other families. (A gift from one family member to another doesn’t prove anything about the family’s largesse.) No cloud giant truly believes that it’s better to give than to receive; a family does so only with an eye toward how the giving can elevate its status. Memnor and his trickery play a role in this “game.” The very best gift (from the giver’s perspective) is one that everyone believes to be far more valuable than it truly is. Only the giver and the receiver will ever know a gift’s true value, and neither of them would ever reveal that a gift is worth less than it appears to be, because to do so would reduce the status of both.

Wealth also changes hands between cloud giants when they indulge their obsession for gambling and wagering. Cloud giants don’t engage in betting for enjoyment; it is less a form of entertainment than a type of bloodless feud. No cloud giant is a good loser, and one would be aghast to hear someone else say, “I lost 40 pounds of gold, but I had a good time.” Betting wars between families can go on for generations, with fortunes and estates (and the position in the ordning that goes with them) passing back and forth repeatedly. What a parent loses, a child hopes someday to win back, plus more; what the child wins back, a grandchild probably will eventually lose again. The tales that cloud giants tell of their ancestors are seldom about wars or magic or battles against dragons — they’re about brilliant wagers won through boldness or deceit, and rival families brought to disgrace and ruin by the same.

Masks of Nobility. Ancient depictions of Memnor often showed him wearing a two-faced mask. Because of this, cloud giant nobles seldom show their faces, but instead wear exquisite masks made of precious materials adorned with gemstones. Each noble has a collection of these masks that it wears to conceal its face but still reflect its current mood; an individual might change masks many times during the day as its emotions shift.

A mask is prized both for its material value and for its accuracy in expressing the mood it represents. Only the richest of cloud giants can afford the dozens of masks necessary to show all the subtle differences in emotion possible among their kind. Artisans who can sculpt and craft masks that meet the cloud giants’ exacting standards in such matters are richly rewarded for their skill.

Two Faces of Memnor. The chief deity of cloud giants is Memnor, the cleverest of Annam’s offspring. But Memnor isn’t only clever, he’s sly and deceitful. Tales of his exploits emphasize his charisma, his smooth manner, and his ability to manipulate and mislead his siblings and other legendary figures into doing exactly what he wants, usually to their great detriment.

Thus, cloud giants have two distinct aspects of Memnor to admire and emulate. Those of a benign disposition revere him for his charm, intelligence, and persuasiveness, while those of a more malign bent take Memnor’s self-interest to heart and imitate his trickery. Cloud giants that take a particular interest in trickery, known as “smiling ones,” wear two-faced masks as they practice their deceptions and prey on those who are susceptible to their charms.