Nicias

Nicias was the progenitor of the cloud giant race. He was also one of the first ever two runecasters.

Description
Nicias was the tallest of all his brothers besides Lanaxis, taller even than Vilmos. As dynast of the cloud giant kingdom of Ostoria, Nicias wore a golden crown and bejeweled rings. He was dressed in a cloak of the whitest linen. He fought with a great pearl-colored morningstar that could shoot forth bursts of intense steam.

Relationships
Nicias was one of the many terrestrial sons of Annam All-Father and his wife Othea. His many siblings were his elder brothers Lanaxis and Vilmos and his younger brothers Masud, Ottar, Obadai, Ruk, Arno and Julian, and the youngest, known as Hartkiller. He had a half-brother through his mother named Dunmore, as well as three other half-brothers through his mother whose names are forgotten to history. Through his father, he was half-sibling to the giant gods Stronmaus, Hiatea, Grolantor, Iallanis, Memnor, and Skoraeus. He was likely related to the gods Surtr and Thrym as well.

History
Nicias was born sometime around &minus;30,000 DR. When he and his terrestrial brothers came of age, Nicias' father, Annam, granted each of them an inheritance in the great giant empire of Ostoria. Nicias laid claim to the skies of Faerûn, ruling as dynast, and his offspring became the cloud giants.

Nicias won his first cloud palace from his half-brother Stronmaus in a betting match. This cloud palace was enormous, but it was only a smaller version of Stronmaus' realm of Stormhold. Here, Nicias and his descendants floated over Toril.

Almost a thousand years after the Thousand Year War with dragons, Nicias' father Annam won an epic game of lots against a high modron from the plane of Mechanus and learned the secret of runecasting. This he taught to Nicias and his brother Vilmos, and the two giants became masters. For several hundred years, Vilmos and Nicias taught many apprentices their great skills in the art.

Nicias cloud palace eventually crashed, but by the time this happened, the runecasters had come to understand most of the secrets of how to create new cloud palaces. The cloud giants moved to the storm giant aerie of Lake Woe mountain, and a few years later, they determined the missing steps, allowing them to sail the skies again.

After many millennia, it was revealed that Nicias' mother Othea had had an affair with the sea god Ulutiu and that his younger brother Dunmore was probably not a full brother. After Ulutiu's amulet caused the Great Glacier and the Endless Ice Sea to form, Nicias and his brothers soon discovered a way to halt the amulet's magic; however, they were forbidden from doing so by their mother. Lanaxis, Nicias' oldest brother and the leader of all of them, summoned them together for a meeting in Voninheim. There, Lanaxis planned to murder his mother by poisoning the waters of the Well of Health, but he accidentally poisoned not only Othea but also Nicias and all of his other brothers except Arno and Julian and Dunmore.

With all his brothers, Nicias was buried in a drumlin outside of Voninheim. There his body lay for about 3000 years until 1369 DR, when the firbolg Tavis Burdun unveiled the Twilight Vale and challenged Lanaxis. Lanaxis used powerful magic to reanimate Nicias' corpse as a zombie, and he did the same with all of the other brothers. The undead giant kings attacked Tavis with the full fury of their magics, but he and his companions were protected by Annam's axe Sky Cleaver. Tavis then used the magic of Sky Cleaver to reveal to them, even in their undeath, that Lanaxis, their older brother, had betrayed them. Nicias and the other dead giants turned and charged at Lanaxis instead. Lanaxis created a magic shield to protect the portico from their onslaught. Nicias was the one powerful enough to break through, shattering the shield with his morning star, but then Lanaxis killed each of them a second time with his sword.

Rumors & Legends
The ruins of Nicias' cloud palace were thought to be located somewhere in the great desert Anauroch.