Cloak of Souls. Stolen souls swirl around the giant, draining life and warning of danger. Each creature that begins its turn within 10 feet of the giant or enters the area for the first time on a turn takes 13 (3d8) necrotic damage. In addition, the giant can't be surprised and has advantage on Dexterity saving throws. When the giant is subjected to an effect that would turn undead, this trait stops functioning until the end of the giant's next turn, and it must recharge its Shrieking Souls action before it can use it again.
Collect Souls. When a creature dies within 15 feet of the giant, if the creature isn't a construct or undead, its soul is stolen by the giant and begins to swirl around the giant's body until it is released. A creature whose soul is stolen cannot be brought back to life until the soul is released. If the giant dies, the giant's own soul is destroyed, and the souls it has stolen are released, or stolen by another death giant if that giant is within 30 feet.
Death Affinity. When the giant is targeted by an effect, it can choose whether to be treated as a giant or be treated as both a giant and an undead.
Detect Souls. The giant constantly benefits from the effects of the new detect souls spell.
Innate Spellcasting. The giant's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 18, +10 to hit with spell attacks). The giant can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:
At will: detect evil and good, inflict wounds (as 5th-level), speak with dead, thaumaturgy
3/day each: blight, dispel magic, flame strike (deals necrotic damage instead of radiant damage)
1/day each: harm
Necrotic Absorption. Whenever the giant is subjected to necrotic damage, it takes no damage and regains a number of hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt, unless it was dealt by a death giant. In addition, the giant's hit point maximum can't be reduced.
Spellcasting. The giant is a 30th-level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 22, +14 to hit with spell attacks). It knows the following bard, sorcerer, and wizard spells:
Cantrips (at-will): ego shock (new), shadow lance (new), vicious mockery
1st level (6 slots): blackout (new), charm person, delude (new), disguise self, sleep
2nd level (5 slots): blur, darkness, detect thoughts, invisibility, misty step
3rd level (5 slots): bestow curse, counterspell, fear, summon shadowspawn
4th level (5 slots): banishment, dimension door, greater invisibility
5th level (4 slots): dominate person, hold monster, seeming
6th level (4 slots): disintegrate, mass suggestion, soul blade (new)
7th level (3 slots): death's door (new), power word pain, teleport
8th level (3 slots): dominate monster, soul expulsion (new)
9th level (3 slots): desolation (new), psychic scream
Soulblood Weapons. The giant's weapon attacks are magical. When the giant hits with any weapon, the weapon deals 3d8 necrotic damage and 3d8 psychic damage (included in the attack).
Torturous Umbramancy. When a creature fails a saving throw against one of the giant's spells, if the creature is entirely in darkness, it loses resistance to necrotic damage and psychic damage and suffers disadvantage on saving throws made to maintain concentration until the end of its next turn. Creatures that can't be frightened are immune to this effect.
Multiattack. The giant makes two spiked chain attacks.
Spiked Chain. Melee Weapon Attack: +16 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 28 (6d4 + 9) slashing damage plus 13 (3d8) necrotic damage and 13 (3d8) psychic damage.
Rock. Ranged Weapon Attack: +16 to hit, range 60/240 ft., one target. Hit: 35 (4d12 + 9) bludgeoning damage plus 13 (3d8) necrotic damage and 13 (3d8) psychic damage.
Shrieking Souls (Recharge 6). The giant commands its guardian souls to shriek as one dark chorus. Each creature within 120 feet of the giant that isn't deafened must succeed on a DC 20 Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become frightened for 1 minute. It also gains one level of exhaustion if it doesn't have any exhaustion already. While frightened in this way, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from the giant by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a location where it doesn’t have line of sight to any death giant, the creature can repeat the Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the effect ends for that creature.
Description
Though they are not listed in the Ordning, there exists a race of giants that are nearly forgotten among the tomes of mortalkind. They are known as death giants, and they still lurk among their umbral castles and keeps that line the mountains of the Shadowfell, biding their time until they can reclaim their old glory in the Material Plane.
Each death giant is naturally connected to the Plane of Negative Energy. This connection grants them great necrotic power, but it also curses their souls to oblivion.
Remnants of a Dead Empire. Death giants are few in number, even among the races of giants. Once, they were a group of fire and stone giants that called them-selves the ash giants. The ash giants were so numerous and prosperous that they rivalled all the empires of the other giant races combined. They owed their prosperity and their name to their relentless conquests. The ashen armies were bolstered by the corpses of their slain foes, which they systematically raised as undead legions.
However, the empire of the ash giants soon found that their myriad successful conquests had a downside: they were running out of fresh lands to conquer. In a display of extreme hubris, the leaders of the ash giants chose to begin waging war on the empires of their fellow giants. They started by decimating the lands of the hill giants, taking their fellow giants as slaves and even raising the dead giants as gigantic undead warriors. Some claim that hill giant society has never recovered from the ash giants' onslaught.
As a result of this war, the other clans of giants came together and made the difficult decision to exile the ash giants from giant society. Moreover, they chose to gather together under one banner, waging a war to end the ash giants' conquests once and for all.
Souls Sold to Darkness. Faced with the combined might of the other frost, fire, storm, cloud, and stone giant clans, as well as even the normally pacifistic green giant clans, the war engine of the ash giant empire was unable to persevere. As the war raged on, the ash giants began to lose more and more ground, and their forces were pushed back until they occupied only their own homeland. A great fear of defeat overtook the ash giants' leadership, and in their craven malice they sought out aid from the dark, unknowable forces that lurk beyond death within the Plane of Negative Energy, choosing to sell the souls of their own people for access to power that might grant them victory.
Unfortunately for the ash giants, this soul pact hurled their people, their cities, their fortresses, and all that they possessed into the Shadowfell, the plane between the Material Plane and the Plane of Negative Energy, transforming their bodies in the process. In one terrible night, the ash giant empire was lost forever, and its giant-folk became death giants. Their cities and castles were strewn across the wastelands of that dark realm, left in a ruined state, and almost immediately the death giants began to war amongst themselves, blaming each other for the fate that had befallen them.
As they warred, these first death giants discovered the true cost of the soul pact: instead of passing on to some form of afterlife, their souls were bound to the Plane of Negative Energy, and were annihilated upon death. Only oblivion awaited them after death. Ruined and scattered, broken and hateful, the remaining clans of death giants decided to call a truce among themselves, so that they might instead focus on ending their curse without losing the mighty power that it grants them, and retake the old glory of their lost empire.
The other clans of giants, led by the wisest of the storm and stone giant clans, agreed to banish the ones now known as death giants from the Ordning and even to remove their existence from the books of history.
Sadistic Soulbreakers. Death giant society is largely ordered through pain and suffering. Torment is used to break the will of not only the living slaves, but the souls of the dead as well. Those death giants with a talent for torture are educated as soulbreakers. They are taught to use the dark magic of the Shadowfell by nurturing the most vile and wicked feelings within them. They gain mastery over the magic of shadows and souls, and they wield these powers to subjugate and torture the weak for their lord, for punishment, or for mere amusement.
Tyrannical Bone Kings. Reigning over the ruins of their once great empire, the rulers of the death giants are often known as bone kings for the masses of bones that they collect within their toppled ancient castles. A bone king typically uses these skeletal remains to make hordes of skeletons on demand, filling the empty courts and courtyards on a whim. They demand fealty from the denizens of the Shadowfell surrounding them, including the shadar-kai and the sorrowsworn. Those who resist must defend themselves from attack by the bone king's skeletal armies and death giant retainers. As they slowly claim territory, they build power hoping to eventually be the one crowned emperor when the empire is retaken.
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