Taker Tribe

The Taker Tribes are the tax-collectors of the gargant world, ruled by Kraken-eater mega-gargants who marry a magpie's eye for anything that glitters to a king's conviction that all of it was always theirs. They stake out a stretch of coastline as their domain and settle into the comfortable business of extortion, and the folk who live there swiftly grasp the arithmetic: pay whatever the giant demands, or watch a mega-gargant rearrange the harbour with its bare hands.

A Taker's greed is total but, in its way, curiously fair. Render the tribute and the giant may loom over your fishing village for years as a ruinous but predictable landlord, wading out to wrestle sea-monsters and hanging its ever-growing plunder from a vast net slung across one shoulder. Refuse, or fall short, and the arrangement ends the only way a gargant knows how.

What the Takers build, in the end, is hoard: sacks and slung nets bulging with the proceeds of a hundred such shakedowns, treasures jumbled together with the utterly worthless by a logic only a gargant follows. To a Taker the hoard is the whole point of being alive: proof of dominion, measure of worth, and a monument to the truth that when something big enough decides it owns you, ownership is a settled question.