Space giants! They are like a sci-fi fantasy TV trope right? I had to have them, and they must be green or blue. But I'm a child of the anime 80's so I'm tapping into a little Macross and Starblazers with this one as they come to mind when I think about giants in space. It sort of unfolded and evolved from there.
The Shojon
The Shojon are a race without culture, history or identity. They are an aggressive giant humanoid race, being remarkably close to human appearance, but with green to blue skin and slightly pointed ears. As giants they come in at 9' to 11' in height causing them to stoop in the average pedestrian zone.
They awoke after the crash from damaged cloning chambers across the ship. The visitors had been experimenting on them and were seeking to tap into their aggression and military potential for use as a proxy race. To facilitate this they had been tampering with the Shojon genetic code to make them more susceptible to mental influence, a trait they retain to this day. A side effect of this is that their maturity and intellect is slightly stunted compared to other races. Waking in this way they had no baseline of a culture or society and quickly grouped up into packs to seek out food.
Unfortunately for them, both genders awoke in completely separate parts of the worldship. Slight differences in their gender pre-culture developed after awakening and physical gender differences coupled with their formative intellects led them to conclude they were different species. It didn't help that the other group caused them odd feelings they couldn't explain, nor did their aggressive tendencies. This differing species view and competing over the same sustenance sources led to conflict and segregation, a racial war that wages to this day. They also refer to themselves by different race names being the Kagion-jin for the male culture, and Madion-jin for the female. Databases unearthed have since proven that the race was known as the Shojon, though the Kagion-jin and Madion-jin consider such data heresy and believe it to be visitor lies. Additionally it has been revealed that the race was originally twice the size it is now, with visitors utilising biomass adjustment to bring them down to the current 10' average from the original 20' size.
They have since learned to operate the cloning machines found throughout the ship and use them as their only form of reproduction. As such they value biomatter fluids, energy crystals and genetic databases over all other things. Such items can be sold to them at inflated prices if negotiations can be started, which can be difficult given their hostile nature to those not of their gender species. Where they find genetic data they use it to ensure there is variety in their pseudo-clones' genetic makeup as they seek to edit out the visitor tampering. This ensures they do not all look identical, though they do ensure the gender matches their 'species'.
Overall both humans and visitors tend to give the Shojon a wide berth, they are territorial and aggressive making any relations with them extremely different. Their own language of Shojon is known by some but relations are often used to deflect their aggression rather than make peace.
All Shojon, regardless of gender, appear as giant humans with pointed ears and blue to green skin pigments. Their hair colour is extremely varied including vivid greens, blues and violets amongst the more regular human colors. They stand 9' to 11' tall and weigh about 1,200lb. Visitor tampering with their genetic makeup has left them susceptible to mental influence, their charm save duration is one month (the lowest rate). They are territorial and aggressive leading to most encounters with them resulting in conflict.
Shojon carry crossbows that, in their hands, are effectively medium ballistas. These weapons do 2d8 damage in a 5' line (damaging two targets if they are in a line) at a range of 200'. They may also hurl massive spears with a range increment of 40' that do 2d8 damage.
Kagion-jin: Male Shojon refer to themselves as Kagion-jin. They equipped themselves with dinosaur leather armor and wielding massive great axes, two-handed swords or polearms suited to their size. Whenever they engage in melee combat the Kagion-jin are engulfed in a battle fury. When enraged they gain +2 to their melee attack value, and they battle fearlessly until killed (+4 morale).
Madion-jin: Female Shojon refer to themselves as Madion-jin. They wear elaborate dinosaur scale armor which they adorn with feathers and elaborate plumage. In battle they wield swords or spears one handed along with shields. They are armor specialists, having trained to optimise their use of shields and armor in combat granting them a bonus of +1 to armor class compared to their male counterparts (factored into their AC in the stat block).
New Item - Biomass Adjustment Chamber
This device is similar in nature to the cloning and regeneration vats, though it is significantly larger. It consists of a 25' long cylindrical chamber that is 12' in diameter lying on a large metallic slab containing various tubes that connect into either end of the cylinder. Only an arcane Spellcaster, or equivalent, can understand the alien interfaces required to operate the biomass adjustment chamber and determine its key function. The chamber is used to increase or decrease the size of the person placed within.
Enlarging the subject placed within increases both size and mass by cloning existing cells within the host and inserting them between current cellular matter. This subjects the recipient to the permanent effects of the growth spell (player's companion).
Reducing the subject placed within selectively adjusts or replaces cellular material to be smaller and lighter, they retain the same number of cells, just more efficiently packed. This subjects the recipient to the permanent effects of the reduce spell (below).
Such transitions may only be applied once to any subject, though it may be reversed using the alternative process to the one taken. For the purposes of stacking this procedure should be treated as having the relevant spells cast permanently (permeance rules in ACKs page 120) though this effect cannot be dispelled. Shojon have been exposed to such effects at a genetic level but still use these chambers to become human sized (leading to many stories of Shojon infiltrators) or be restored to their full ancestral size.
Enlargement requires significant addition of mass drawing on a large amount of organic materials (costing 20,000gp) and 10 energy crystals. Reduction requires refinement of cellular material only and as such draws on less organic material (costing 5,000gp) but draws on the same 10 energy crystals. Regardless of the procedure undertaken all materials required are consumed through the process. The process takes 2d6 days to complete during which the subject is unconscious within a tank of biofluid.
New spell: Reduce
Arcane 3
Range: touch
Duration: 2 hours
The recipient of this spell and all their equipment halves in size. The reduction also halves their mass but they maintain similar muscle density and suffer no negative impacts to their strength. The size reduction grants them +1 AC. Being smaller than their normal form they also see the world differently and gain a bonus of +2 to move silently and hide in shadows checks. If the recipient lacks these abilities they may escape detection with a proficiency throw of 14+ on 1d20 by remaining motionless and quiet in cover.
If a creature under the effect of a growth spell is subject to reduce or diminution, or vice versa, both spells are cancelled. If a creature under the effect of a reduce or diminution spell is subject to either spell again the most recently cast one applies.
Notes
Shojon: Yes, I know I could have just written them up as one monster but it brings it home giving them two stat blocks. In the end it's only a slight difference. I left the throw ability in from other giants but there are no rocks lying around on the world ship so made it spears and doubled the spear range increment, I dropped its damage a notch and added in the ballista as well, not worth a special as they are really just ranged attacks. Potions of giant strength would use this spear rule in my setting. The proficiency equivalent is not worth a special, similar to the barbarian. The treasure split reflects their nature somewhat, the males are raider and the raider tables have more chance at having magic weapons which suit them.
BAC: I somehow got carried away with this one, I think it might be something to do with micro sized Shojon love stories… I benchmarked the fluids on double and half a clone vat in BCK respectively.
Reduce: Price check was that protection gives +1 AC for 5 and granting a proficiency is 20 (it effectively grants the skulking proficiency). The spell itself is supposed to be a positive size reduction effect so I went a little the ant man route of maintaining density, under normal reductions it would have shed four times more the mass. As it is it has some utility for thieves that would be seen as a bonus and some situational advantages that could be nice to have.
Reduce (3): Transmogrification, current form shrinks to half size (25), 1 living creature (x1), range touch (x0.6), duration 12 turns (x2), total cost 30.
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