Found in Far Away Places (just over a week later)

Several days now have passed without any notable happenings. The land here proves to be much more welcoming than that which you are accustomed to, and as a result your ranks have morale to spare. There are a myriad of variations between your home and this land in both flora and fauna, you had not quite expected such a contrast between Atmor and the unnamed lands. You have already encountered dozens of creatures that are different either in part or in whole from the kinds you are familiar with, though most are too small to be of any danger to you or your horde. So many things seem smaller here, the insects and the birds particularly so. You hadn't really seen any visibly dangerous creatures yet, though you could smell a few distant threats every now and then. Your horde has made good time, despite the hill ridden and uneven terrain through which you must pass. Today your efforts are rewarded most richly, it is on this day that your campaign truly begins. There is nothing quite like a hunt, the thrill of pursuing ones prey is almost unparalleled in its intensity.

The scent of foul smoke on the wind brings you that first spark of vigor, it is the validation of your efforts, proof that you have found your prey. Off in the distance lies civilization, wallowing in the filth of its own complacency and perfidy. Soon you will arrive to drag it writhing and screeching into the light of true life, thus the land will be liberated and the might of mankind restored. With the faint smell of smoke mixed in with the odor of saltwater goading you on, you hasten your pace to the south. You are too close to tarry in the hills any longer. In time you can hear the sounds of the sea off to the southeast, the crashing waves and the fervent shrieks of the gulls rising in volume with each passing moment. Shortly after midday you finally see it, your quarry, as you stand at the edge of a lofty plateau.

Your predatory gaze now falls on a thriving Atmoran port city, its harbors teeming with the activities of countless customers and merchants. Though you have never before seen this place, it strikes you as odd that you feel somewhat familiar with it. That feeling passes quickly when you vaguely remember dreaming of a similar city one miserable night just over a week ago. In your dream the city slept, it was veiled by the night and lit by the flickering fires of many torches. It was different in the dream but only slightly so. The ships in the harbor were different, and a few buildings had been expanded, but nevertheless the streets were the same and the walls were unchanged. Your eyes search the valley before you, poring over every detail and making quiet observations with a careful regard for every aspect of your prize.

The perimeter of the city was bordered on three sides by mighty walls of carven stone, the walls consisting of two layers of gargantuan blocks, each one nearly twice the size of a man in length. The walls were old, but not ancient and partially overgrown with vines. Atop its sturdy turrets and high steeples flew several yellow banners, each with a purple hart rampant at the center of the flag. The city had two gates at the center of two of these walls, one to the south and one to the west, while the wall which faces you to the north was entirely solid with no point of entry. The gates were manned by several squads of patrolling guards and each gate consisted of both a set of massive doors and a metal portcullis. The doors would prove little trouble but, if iron was truly as strong as Ardri rumor held it to be, the portcullis would be problematic. The east side of the city, that is to say the port side, was not protected by just a stone wall but also by large sharpened timbers capped with metal spikes which protruded outward from the banks near the city, leaving only enough space for two large walkways which connected the city to a system of ship docks.

Your first instinct was to send a **** to slip past the port side fortifications and take the city quickly, while the rest of your available troops would be dispatched to block the two exit gates. The glaring fault in this plan was exposed to you momentarily when movement in your peripheral vision drew your gaze out to the open sea. If it were not for your lofty vantage point, you might easily have missed the events unfolding off in the distant waves of the waters. Certainly no one in the town below would be able to see it. A flock of gulls had begun circling over the water, diving down at times into a teeming mass of schooling fish beneath them, but they were not alone. Off a short distance you can see something stirring just beneath the waters surface bearing directly into the frenzy. In a burst of violent activity and flying sea foam, an enormous webbed hand erupts forth from sea and grabs ahold of several gulls as well as fish, and drags them beneath the waves. The mere sight of that single hand was enough to make you certain that a port side invasion could quickly become a fools errand. Now you could understand why a row of mighty spikes stood before the stone wall, of what use was a wall against such a thing.

"Intimidating creatures aren't they, the titans." Said Inslod in an austere tone, evidently he had been standing beside you as the seaward spectacle unfolded. "Powerful, certainly, but intimidating? Hardly. I have been touched by a live dragon, if I am not intimidated by that, then I doubt that it would be possible for me to be intimidated at all." You respond. "There is a conspicuous difference in intent there my friend. The dragon wanted you alive, it had a purpose for you. For a titan it is not so, to them we are nothing, simply another mouthful of meat to feed an endless hunger. Make no mistake, they prefer easier prey, but I have never known a titan to resist temptation." He finishes, looking out across the land and sea. "Known them you say? Tell me Inslod, how is it that you 'know' them at all?" Titans were old, steeped in myth and lore alongside the behemoths and dragons of ages past. The occasional shaman or mystic might regale you with tales of them passed down from generation to generation, but these were only stories. Inslod spoke of them as though he knew them, not in the way a child knows a bedtime story, but in the way a man knows a beast. "How interesting. The man who admonished me for my explanations in the forest less than a fortnight ago now desires an explanation from me, I'm not one to deny someone a good story though. The migrations of the mammoth have led my people to many far away places, even unto the nameless shores of the northwest. I first saw them when I was just a boy from a distance that I, in hindsight, cannot consider safe. My father led us around a pair of them as they crouched upon the shore, picking apart a whale carcass. They are plenty strange any way you look at them, but to me it was their faces that I found most unsettling. They have such strange eyes, lidless and faceted they are, much like the eyes of a dragonfly. Did you know I hadn't actually seen one of those till just a few months ago? When we were gathering one of those bog clan folk explained to me that..."

"Inslod," You interrupt, "I think it would be best if you could just focus on one memory at a time for now."

"Ah, yes." He replies, "As I was saying their eyes were most distressing, but it is their mouths which inspired utter revulsion in me. As they crouched, ripping apart the rotting whale carcass, I found it hard to look away from them despite my initial repulsion with regard to their hideous form. At first I didn't see that they had any mouthparts at all, that was until two bony plates shifted out of the way, in a way which reminded me of a crab, revealing several palpitating segmented mouthparts. Watching them break open the whales bones and suck out the marrow, is one of the most haunting memories I can recall. The loud scraping and slurping of their feeding was almost insufferable. It wasn't until one of them started scooping up the putrefied innards of the carcass that I finally could bear the sight no more and turned away. It was... an abominably eerie thing to witness. I didn't sleep for a few days after that, my father always told me that they never wandered far from the ocean, but it was little consolation to me back then. For years I passed by their territory on the shores with my father during the migrations until, when I was old enough to go my own way, I avoided them entirely. It wasn't until a few years ago that I was unfortunate enough to be at odds with one in what was a hopelessly one-sided encounter. It was a singularly bitter winter then, we had lost more than just a few lives to the ravages of the wind, and the winter was yet young. The chaos of a fierce snow squall had tossed us off course by a fair distance, and so I chose the clearest possible path out of the mess. I realized all too late that the path I chose was leading us across a single massive sheet of ice and as soon as I understood my mistake I attempted to rectify the situation, but I was far too late."

As Inslod continues to speak, you can hear the faint clamor and speech of the groups gathering nearby at the edge of the cliff to take in their first sight of the fallen world, and the journey that lies before you all. "When the first crack in the ice sheet appeared I was certain that we were standing on weak ice, more than one of the mammoths began to panic. I would soon learn that the ice upon which we stood, was not literally, but rather metaphorically thin. Seconds after we had turned back, the webbed hand of a titan tore through three solid feet of clear ice beneath one of the hysterical mammoths, and nearly caught it. As the poor thing fled, the entire torso of the ambushing titan burst through the freshly sundered ice sheet and seized the struggling mammoth. The mammoth, in its panicked struggle for survival, only succeeded in further damaging the deeply fractured ice. Several people were plunged into those frigid waters when the shattered ice gave way. The rest of the group immediately fled as they should have, while I decided to stay and pull whomever I could out of the water, but the titan was hungrier than I had anticipated. There was no one left alive to save and no bodies to drag out of the stained water and crimson ice. The land reminded me that day of my own insignificance. When I first saw a man next to a mammoth, I realized how small men are. Then I saw a mammoth next to a titan, and I realized how small mammoths are."

"Mankind may be small yet like a thorn, a man does not have to be big to make a beast bleed Inslod, he must only be strong and sharp." You respond to him, "Well said my friend, perhaps you are right. That in mind, It would appear that seeing a titan again sent me out on somewhat of a tangent but, at length I have come full circle. I initially intended to speak to you about a little bit of trouble I have been having with a certain relative of yours, namely your brother Garran. Every day for over a week now he has been relentlessly trying to kill, and I assume eat, my spider hatchling. I understand why some might find its presence among them to be a bit disconcerting..." As he is speaking, you turn your head to look at him, noticing some gradual movement in the edge of your vision. You watch in disgust as a spider the size of a child crawls slowly to the periphery of the precipice, each step of its thick hairy legs falling in succession to one another with absolute silence. It's growth was unsettling to say the least. In little more than a week it had grown and shed its soft translucent newborn exoskeleton and grown a more durable brown carapace. It was no longer shiny, instead it was the dull color of oak bark, with a row of scarlet dots trailing down its center mass from its beady eyes to its twitching spinnerets. It's color was not like that of other pine widows. In fact one glance at it was enough for you to easily deduce that it was not a pine widow at all but a Cave Spider, and the spots quickly gave it away as being a young matron. You can now understand the reasoning behind Garrans attempts to dispose of it, the creature could quickly become a problem. "However, it's not really a danger to anyone." He finishes before you interject. "Not a danger?" You say, "Inslod that's not a pine widow we're talking about that is a cave spider, the only thing they are is dangerous! I had my qualms about you trying to tame a pine widow, but this is beyond my threshold for tolerance, and it's a matron no less! I can't fathom how Garran came to possess a damned cave spider egg to begin with, let alone how he could've been so careless as to give it to someone."

"Ogma I know it's a cave spider, Garran told me that days ago, and that only lends credence to my argument that it is not a threat to anyone here. It has imprinted on me! Unlike pine widows, cave spiders appear to have a strong connection with their parents. They operate far more on learned behaviors than they do on instinct, the thing almost thinks it's human! In that regard they are not so unlike Rockbiters, they are perfect for taming!" Your first instinct was to kill the thing without delay, but another part of you considered the benefits of having a cave spider matron for an ally. You reason that having a beast like that would certainly have its advantages. "I will overlook this for now, and I will try to persuade Garran to be more hospitable toward the little monster if I can. If the thing should harm anyone at all, I will personally see it slain, and you will pay a blood fine so mighty that mystics will tell of it as a cautionary tale for generations to come." 'Why must everyone try my patience?' You wonder. "Garran is likely not the only one who will try to kill it Ogma. What I am asking is for you to help me convince the people, and more specifically the group leaders, that my hatchling means them no harm and reassure them that have it under control." He says. "I will do no such thing as I have no evidence to support your claims whatsoever. It is your responsibility then to care for it and protect it accordingly. If the arachnid should happen to die by any unnatural means, or Garran should succeed in killing it, then those things shall have come to pass under your watch and would be the result of your own failure to adequately educate and protect the thing. If you have the hubris to undertake a dangerous task such as taming a cave spider matron, then you should at least have the courage to do it alone." You say. You didn't particularly like having to tell him this, as Inslod was always a cooperative man, and had been nothing but supportive of your own efforts. Nonetheless, you could not allow him to rely upon you to further his own designs, nor should your approval or disapproval of them matter to him in the least. He was still a free man and as such he remained free to make his own mistakes, provided that the penalty for such errors would not disrupt your own plans.

"Very well, I will abide by what you have determined. Keep in mind then, that the next person who tries to capture or kill my hatchling will have my spear to contend with. I can only hope for your sake that person is not your brother." With that Inslod disappears into the crowd behind you with his spider in tow. You were certain Garran wouldn't back down from his endeavors to neutralize the young spider, irresolution was not a quality which could readily be attributed to anyone in the mountain clans. On the contrary, the mountain clans were famous for their unyielding resolve and uncompromising nature. You of course had managed to defy these stereotypes from time to time, but the same could not necessarily be said of Garran. Your talk with him would have to wait however, destiny had its own designs for you now.