The Giant’s Legend

As if these old bones tumbling through a sodding natural Portal wasn’t enough, it dropped me at the feet of a great Swamp Giant and did me the indignity of shutting thereafter. I feared the worst, but the giant deigned to set me on my feet. Walked me back to his hovel, he did, and, as another shock, began singing in the giant’s tongue. Though I parsed not a word, it conjured such vivid images that his meaning became clear as day. Lacking his magickal aptitude, my responses were reduced to much prolonged, wild gesturing. I had thought all giants to be towering men, like the old fairy tales. It seems the familiar sort, Sun Giants, keep to the deserts. I asked all I could about his mythical kin, but my benefactor knew little. While cousins, I suppose, the two clans rarely meet. Only one Swamp Giant had bridged the gap, coming to understand the sun-folk and what they desire. Then, as I never thought to experience in all my years, he sat me down like a babe for a story, and began to sing anew. His voice painted a great legend of his people, about the hero called Danu.

Now, to hear a Swamp Giant—or <i>Grendel</> as they prefer—sing this tale is to sit for hours as they weave each note into an immense tapestry of the most precise detail. For the sake of space, I shall summarise. The story begins with the Druid, Danu, setting out on a quite peculiar task: to retrieve the many scattered pieces of the Grendel’s Song. The Song is, as I understand it, somehow both sound and place. A hidden Realm, I gather, which giants called home, now destroyed by the Fae and scattered to the winds. She collected these pieces, listening as the song beckoned her toward each of its disparate parts, like adding instruments one at a time to a grand symphony. One such piece led her to the land of the Sun Giants, or <i>Skyfallers</>. As the Grendels are so different in appearance, they thought Danu to be Fae and refused her claims of kinship. Though she tried to calm them, their furious chief challenged her to combat. Danu, small and hunched, was no match, and, as the chief raised a great boulder to strike her down, she gave all that she knew of their shared history—the Song.

From the first note, the Skyfallers froze, moved in unfathomable ways by a melody that spoke of grievous loss to each giant’s heart in turn. The chief lay down his arms and sobbed, begging Danu to tell him all that she knew of the Song and their stolen homeland. They sat together then, retelling stories and remembering when all giantkind had lived as one vast family. It was then that Danu understood her purpose. Around the chief’s neck hung a cage of Pellucidia and, trapped within, a piece of the Song only she could hear. She proposed an exchange, offering what the Skyfallers value most, a Curio Configuration, totem of the Fae who had shaped them. The chief agreed, relinquishing his treasure and bidding Danu continue on her quest to one day reunite their lost family. As the Grendel showed me, Danu yet lives, seeking the Song. I cannot help but wonder, perhaps naively, if I might hear that melody and be so moved. He tells me she last departed for a swamp, deep within the Gloom. Sentimentally, I hold tight to my old Realm travelling cards. Perhaps my journey home could bear one small delay.