Cyclops

Cyclopses are savage giants living in loose tribes on islands and along temperate coasts. Most grow ten feet or taller (the appendix gives 8-10 feet) and have a single eye beneath a low forehead and heavy brow; their sight is often weak, especially at the edges. Meat-eaters, they keep flocks of sheep or goats for food and relish human flesh. Some form small communities, but most prefer solitude in a large cave.

Chiron the Wise, in his Natural History, warns that the island cyclopses love neither gods nor men and will pounce on stranded travelers both to eat them and for cruel sport. They are slow and dull, which is their weakness, since a foe too strong to beat by force can often be outwitted, but their fury is terrible and no evil is beneath them. Chiron oversimplifies, but cyclopses are indeed intolerant: they quickly attack strangers they think are trespassing or eyeing their few belongings, using rough clubs or thrown boulders; a hurled boulder carries about 100 feet and deals 4-24 damage.

They are thought to be related to the aegir and perhaps to the Jotun of the northern ice, though how is lost in the distant past. The cyclopses' own lore claims a half-divine origin: they once lived among the gods as craftsmen and laborers until their savagery got them expelled from heaven. Human legends tie them to the sea instead, calling them children of the sea-gods, or a degenerate branch of the seagoing Fomorians, whom they resemble in many ways.