Titans¶
"They do so even in death." — of the Titans' binding of the elemental to the physical (S448)
The Titans were created by the Einar "as living chains for the Primordials". Imbued with elemental and ethereal energy, they bind the physical plane to the elemental, and "They tame the Elemental plane, making the physical plane possible (and inhabitable)". Thousands were made; now "Only a handful of living Titans are known", and most continue as corpses whose energies still shape the land around them. The Giants are their progeny, the Primal Dragons were forged from them to be their masters, and a dead Titan's spirit may still mark a mortal with its spark (S448).
Living chains¶
"The Titans were created by the Einar as living chains for the Primordials (Elementals). Imbued with tremendous Elemental and Ethereal energy, the Titans literally bind together the physical plane and elemental. For a millennia they served as guardians and jailers. They tame the Elemental plane, making the physical plane possible (and inhabitable). They do so even in death. Only the complete destruction of a Titan's corpse and subsequent release of all it's elemental and ethereal energies destroys the binding. This normally has severe regional implications on the material plane. The sunken lands of Honuka, and the dead wastes of Khur are just a few examples of known effects of destroyed Titans" (S448, S543).
"Titans were truly enormous creatures with many different forms (Humanoid was quite common, as were giant sized beasts). They tower over giants and most are about the same size as the Primal Dragons (20 story office buliding sized). The Giants are related to the Titans, and are the progeny of the Titans with mortal races" (S448); the Marshford notes agree that "Giants are related to Titans" (S358). "Created to rule over the Fae, they directly bind Primordials. Each primordial is bound by several Titans. A titan also often bind more than 1 primordial. Originally there were thousands of Titans. Now there are only a handful that are awake and several hundred asleep. The rest have been destroyed and replaced by dragons" (S279). The Nature of Magic makes them the jailers of the Throne of Law: "The Throne of Law was formed to bind the elementals in eternal servitude and into its jailkeepers, the Titans. Each Titan was bound to a host of elemental subjects which were imprisoned on the Elemental Planes. This allowed the Gods to shape Terrun and the Titans aided them in this effort" (S208).
Their souls are not mortal souls. "Titans bind elemental essence to Titan-souls (not part of the Ethereal). Forged by the Einar to control/dominate the elements. Titan-souls are Einar souls and bound to one of the Einar" (S018). As Fae creatures they draw on their own lifeforce for Fae magic, which "was also widely practiced by Faeries and Titans" in the Age of Titans, and the Dragons were "placed above the Titans (the most powerful Fae casters)" (S208). The Fae Realms "were created after the primordial wars and were the dominion of the Titans. Here they stood in between the elements and the material and orchestrated the natural order. The plane still operates in this capacity to some degree, but most of the Titans are dead, driven mad or are enslaved to other powers... The machinery built by the titans to govern the natural order often still functions in many cases. In other cases, it has been bent or even outright broken, leading to cataclysmic results on the associated parts of the material plane" (S001, S013). "The few remaining Titans on the material plane are believed to possess some of the minor" astral demesnes (S013, S389).
The Titans and the Dragons¶
"When the Primal Dragons were forged by the Einar (from Titans), they were made the masters of the other Titans. In the days when Primal Dragons were at the height of their power, the Titans would be reborn from their master's dragon fire. Now that most of the Primals are dead and are slowly regenerating on their own, the Titans have no means to be restored to life. As there were hundreds of Primal Dragons, it is believed there were somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 Titans" (S448). The dragons "were created in the same manner as Titans, and were intended to replace them... For this reason dragons tend to dig up titans (and destroy them so that more dragons can be born)" (S279).
Titan corpses¶
"Very few titans are now living, and most continue on as corpses imbued with elemental and ethereal energy. They often have a strong impact on the land around them as their energy affects it in unusual and sometimes unpredictable ways. For example, the glacier Rok'Thorumal in Markhan is formed around the corpse of an Ice-Titan. Normally such a glacier would be impossible in a tropical environment such as Markhan. Blizzards, Ice-storms and other such weather effects also persist around the glacier. It is said that a dead Titan's spirit remains partially conscious and can continue to influence it's surroundings via its ethereal and elemental energy" (S448).
The bones of Titans are the only source of Adamantium: "Titan bones are the only known source of this metal. Scholars surmise that the elemental power of a Titan is required to force the bonding of Mithis to Titanium" (S419); the alchemists call it "a mineral mined from the marrow of Titan bones and associated to the domain of the Titan", and harvest Titanscale, "A lichen that grows on titan bones. Feeds entirely on Fae energy irrespective of climate" (S224). Their blood makes Aurumite: "Since the vast majority of titans are 'sleeping' deep in the earth... the most likely location where Aurumite has been known to form is in places with considerable seismic or volcanic activity... In fact, since most volcanoes are formed from Fire titan corpses, the lava they produce is very often heavily laced with the titan's blood" (S417). Mithis itself gathers at "Titan and Faerie remains" (S419). The Deep stratum of the Underdark is the place of "Sleeping titans, ancient burrowers, elemental uplift" (S340). A wizard of Proturas needed "a titan fragment", titan bone, to make drake eggs hatch into dragons without a Primal (S071).
Dragons and "most titans" were untouched by the corruption of Mithis in the Hollowing (S142), and in the Fifth Age Titans are counted a "Very Rare" source of Fae magic (S112). But the Titans have been "systematically hunted and destroyed, turned or enslaved", and the Fae demi-gods of the age are those who have "enslaved or absorbed part of the power of a Titan" (S014).
The Living Titan¶
Among the Isles of Sorrow lie the remains of "the Living Titan (an Earth-Water Titan)". The best-known deposit of red-gold Diaurumite Trioxide was made there: "It's blood flowed into a river whose waters flowed over and through a gold deposit" (S417).
Gap
The sources do not say why a corpse is called the Living Titan, nor whether anything of it still moves.
The Fungal Giant of the Pits of Turis¶
In the Pits of Turis, the Aurumite mine at Vaal'Dunak, the Marshford party met the Fungal Giant, "Titan-essence. Fungal Abomination", a demon of "Crazy Regeneration" fed by Myconid Thralls. The pits "are perpetually filled with fine white fungal spores, drifting slowly through the air like falling snow... Anyone who inhales them for more than a few minutes begins to hear music." The giant "presses a hand against an exposed metal vein in the wall or floor and draws power from the titan's bones directly", so that "the titan's regenerative essence floods through it"; it tears veins of magical metal from the walls to swing, and fungal tendrils erupt from the floor at its will (S362). The cultists there, the Children of the Choir, "consulted the Orb for info related to Thraazul/Fungal Titan" (S359, S362), and the party's gazetteer names the Fungal Titan as one of its quest hooks (S361). Thraazul is a named individual and belongs to Figures.
Gap
Whether Thraazul the Fungal Titan is the titan whose bones lie in the Pits, the Fungal Giant itself, or a third thing is not stated.
The Titanspark¶
"Titan marked / Titan's curse / Titan's gift / Titanspark. A Titan's spirit appears as a ball of glowing colored energy that seeks out an animate intelligence. It then bonds itself to that individual. If it's a mortal this almost always results in significant scarring and can be crippling (Hence the 'mark' or 'curse'). The scarred area appears to be random, even from the same Titan Spirit. Many times, crippling and scarring are the only noticeable effects. However, some marked individuals have been able to learn to harness the Titan's power. This power is strongest near the the Titan's corpse, but they lose all access to the it at great distances. The spark can be voluntarily extracted, but cannot be removed by force except in the case of death of the marked or the resurrection of the Titan by it's master's fire. A marked individual will feel some influence from the Titan's spirit, but most of the time this will just be a vague feeling in the back of their mind. It appears to be impossible for a mortal to be marked by more than one Titan" (S448). The author left a note to tie the scarring to the Titan's element, "cold, water, fire, life, electricity, earth, etc.", which was never written (S543).
Earlier accounts¶
The oldest archive gives the Titans a different fate. "Some of the first creations, the titans are entwined within the very fabric of Terrun. Some of the Einar's most powerful servants, they worked with the Einar in the formation of the planet and all of its forms of life. Many were destroyed, taking with them a portion of the planet's life and mass. Many were corrupted by the Dark Gods to spread massive destruction. The Einar put them to sleep and hid them to avoid further damage to Terrun. The Einar determined that the Titans were too easily corrupted and decided to put all of the Titans to sleep in order to keep them hidden from the corruption. Although the titans are asleep in form, their power still emanates and influences across entire regions of Terrun. It is said many of nature's mysteries are directly caused by the dreams of titans" (S434). The later conversion adds that "After Rakkar and the other Dark Gods had split with Kalar, the Titans became pawns in their conflict" and that "The Dark Gods are constantly searching for ways to locate, awaken and corrupt the remaining Titans" (S429, S372). The Compendium's early history counts the "Titan Races (Dragons, Giants, Dinosaurs, Faeries)" among the first creations of the Age of Titans, and the 2020 history makes them "Giants, Dinosaurs, Faeries, Ventari" (S372, S386). The later account of corpses that still bind (S448) is followed here; the sleeping Titans of the archive are kept as the older reading.
In Play¶
A Titan is met as a place: a glacier in the tropics, a volcano whose lava runs with blood, a mine whose veins are bone. Its spark may find a wanderer and mark them for life. Titan-forged things endure; Calcadyia's Crystal Lance, "a titan-forged adamantine spear capable of mortally wounding powerful creatures, especially ethereal elemental ones", was made for an Einar warrior and still works (S010).