Cewri’s tale begins with the Giants of old. Once, their grand cities and fortresses covered much of what, to them, was the known world. Exactly what led to their downfall—be it a cataclysm, a great war, or simple decline—is unknown to the broader population, but their ruins are scattered about the landscape. Those Giants who do still exist do not even approach the grandeur of their lost civilization. While even they have lost much of the knowledge they once had, they remember their fierce gods, their martial practice, and how their glory came to an end. They live far away from most other civilizations, usually in clusters of villages spread out over remote landscapes.

The Giants’ reclusive nature, however, does not prevent contact with the wider world—as Cewri’s mere existence shows. His conception was one of pure lust, a peasant woman and the exciting, gargantuan stranger she met on the edge of the fields one day. They never met again after that, never knew each other’s names, and probably didn’t even know they could conceive a child together. But they did. The pregnancy was ordinary for a human, so no one actually believed her stories about Cewri’s father, and he was the size of an ordinary infant when he was born. As he grew older, however, the truth revealed itself.

The farm on which he lived was in no way out of the ordinary, asides from its relative prosperity, and was considered part of a nameless village—much like any other. Other farmers would congregate their on market days, and numerous tradespeople made their home there. It was nestled along one of the main roads passing through Carnelia, a human kingdom of some prestige towards the north of what was considered human territory.

The most immediate occurrence happened when he, adventurous-but-fragile toddler that he was, broke an arm. The farm was prosperous enough, so they called on a nearby mage to heal him. When he tried, though, he met with a significant amount of resistance. As it turned out, Half-Giants are naturally resistant to magic, in all of its forms, a trait derived from full-blooded Giant’s near total immunity—though this does have its work-arounds for those so inclined (as an example, while almost no mage could use their magic to set a Giant on fire, they can still catch flame from foliage underfoot that has been set alight by magical means). This, on its own, revealed nothing, because an innate resistance to magic—while uncommon amongst humans—was the sort of thing one would hear about from time to time, in stories passed along by travelers coming through town. With significantly more effort than initially thought necessary, Cewri’s arm was healed. That mage made sure to charge extra to heal him from then on.

As the years passed by, Cewri’s heritage revealed itself in his physical changes. He built up far more muscle mass than the other village children, and he surpassed even those several years older than him in height. By the time he turned fifteen, he was the size of a fully-grown human, and could eat twice as much. This lent far more credence to his mother’s story, but that in turn revealed him to bastard-born. One would expect people to start turning their noses up at him, but he was capable of greater physical feats than anyone else to have ever come to the village in living memory, and he had known everyone there for years, so they ignored that fact. Well, his mother’s husband was upset, but that was not directed toward Cewri, since he had the most to gain from the Hal-Giant’s strength. And since Cewri adored his mother, his great capacity to render both aid and harm protected her as well.

Then the village was attacked. All told, the bandits were not particularly competent, not helped by the seven-foot-and-change Cewri’s mere presence sapping their morale, and their raid was a resounding failure. It did manage, however, to tot take the lives of some villagers, including the husband of Cewri’s mother. With his death, ownership of the farm passed to Cewri’s elder half-brother, who had never like the half-breed. In his jealousy of Cewri’s strength and long-nurtured spite, the now-farmer cast Cewri from his land. Cewri would later learn that his mother died shortly after. Her demise was assigned to the grief of losing both her husband and one of her children, but one knowledgeable in such matters would doubtless say differently.

So Cewri began to wonder. He was the only person to believe his mother’s stories about his father, and the Giants had fascinated him since childhood. Despite grieving over the loss of his old life, he decided not to be consumed by self-pity, and instead set out to learn about his ancestry. The open road was a harsher place than Cewri had imagined, but he made do. His world changed when he met a man from far to the south named Athklotep. As it turned out, Athklotep was a wandering scholar, and specialized in the Ancient Giants. He took Cewri under his metaphorical wing, and toured the young Half-Giant around the out-of-the-way ruins of fortresses, temples, and crypts to large to have been built by anyone but the Giants, taught Cewri to read the Giants’ language, and showed him all sorts of ancient wonders. Travel was harsh, of course, and so Athklotep taught Cewri how to fight. Cewri being so taken with the Giant half of his heritage, Athklotep commissioned a weapon for which the Giants are known: a two-handed blade longer than any man I tall, the pommel and cross guard engraved with swirling patterns in the style found in the old ruins.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. While exploring an ancient tomb, recently discovered and already renowned for how well-preserved the bodies there were, the Necromancer’s spells raised the long-slumbering Giants, their forms still wreathed in flesh from their embalming. Athklotep fought them off, commanding Cewri make his escape. He did so, and with a roar, Athklotep plunged into the risen hoard, where he died.

On the trail of the Necromancer’s misdeeds, a party of heroes had—by a stroke of pure luck—found themselves in the village that Cewri had fled to. He told them of the risen Giants, and all agreed that it could be the work of none other than the Necromancer itself. Cewri agreed to lead the heroes to the crypt, and there they made a horrifying discovery: the risen Giants retained the near-immunity to magic they had in life. If it had not already been clear, the immense power that it would have taken to bind the Giants to his will proved to everyone just how powerful the Necromancer truly was. The adventurers cut their way through the undead, the mages discovering along the way discovering some ways they could work around the Giants’ resilience. In the deepest part of the crypt, they fund something that shook Cewri to his core—ringed by Giants stood Athklotep, the rot of death having not even set in yet. He did not speak—could not speak—but it was clear that the Necromancer had raised the scholar as well. And so the battle began, and while his new companions fought the Giants around them, Cewri found himself locked in combat with his former mentor. The scholar’s speed and skill had been notable even in life, but something about the Necromancer’s magic had amplified his abilities, making him that much more dangerous. Covered in wounds from the fight, Cewri found an opening, and with a cry of mixed grief, rage, and triumph, he brought his sword down on a chink in his mentor’s armor between the shoulder and neck. The armor shattered, and the sword cut halfway down Athklotep’s chest. Cewri would swear from that day on that just before Athklotep’s body grew limp, a small smile graced his mentor’s lips.

Ultimately, the fight was won. The following day, they made several sweeps of to crypt, to make sure no more undead remained. They found not a single corpse—risen or unrisen. Behind a hidden door, though, they found an ancient set of armor. It was clearly designed for a small Giant—or perhaps an important Giant’s half-breed child. Whichever, it fit Cewri perfectly. It had been inscribed with runes designed to improve its ability to protect its wearer, but the magic within had long since faded to protect against nothing more than rust. The more academically inclined of the group, Cewri included, were shocked—the Giants’ immense resistance to magic, as it was understood, should have made it impossible to use magic as well. Cewri claimed the armor, and made time to cremate Akthlotep’s body—cremation used to prevent the Necromancer from taking their loved ones from their tombs. Once all was done, it was not even a question whether Cewri would join the heroes, his skills were known, and his thirst for revenge was obvious.

So they fought on. Cewri’s resistance to magic, while nothing compared to a full-blooded Giant’s, tripped up many of the Necromancer’s few living servants, and his size and strength were a benefit in almost every fight. Then the fight with the Necromancer came. His resistance to magic served him well against the vile creature as well, but the Necromancer’s power was not to be underestimated. With the vilest of mages slain, the time had come for both immense joy, and the time to finally grieve. Cewri was made to wait a week longer, as he fell into a deep sleep. The Necromancer’s magic was able to seep into him during the fight, and the same forces that helped him resist its harmful effects kept it there and doomed any attempts to forcefully dislodge it to failure. His sleep was haunted by terrible nightmares for years, but none worse than that week. He has never spoken in detail of what he saw, and never shall say more than thus: “I was taken to the realm of the dead, where I saw such things that made me weep and shriek like I was a babe again.” When he woke, his companions were overjoyed—having feared that, even though the war was over, they might lose another friend to the Necromancer.

Having sworn an oath to remember the dead, Cewri set off to find living Giants. He did not believe that he would find his father, and was convinced after his “Week of Nightmares” that his blood-father was dead. So he wandered for several fruitless years, questing for his elusive half-kin. To keep track of whence he had and hadn’t been, he purchased many maops, and even made several of his own, charting lands hitherto unexplored by known civilizations. Eventually, as he neared his third decade of life, he saw a gargantuan shadow fall from behind him. He spun around, and for the first time since the crypt he was dwarfed by another being. But this was no risen corpse, this was a true Giant, eight feet in height, and rippling with muscle. Her—and this was a female Giant, which would be clear to anyone who saw her—skin was like polished granite, and her eyes like fire. They stood there in silence, both prepared for a fight, but Cewri was, for the first time in years, truly giddy. He spoke aloud in common, and she replied in a rough, guttural language that could only have been Giant. Cewri took a stick up from the ground, and called upon his memory of what Athklotep had taught him to write in the Giant’s tongue. The Giantess was surprised, and wrote back.

He told her a summarized version of his quest, and she agreed to take him to her home. It was a village, surprisingly similar to the one that Cewri had grown up in. There was a much less pronounced high differential between male and female Giants than in the smaller races, and the women were just as bulky as the men. At first they were wary of him, but over several days they grew to trust him—or at least, trust that he was honest about his seeking them was no more than a quest for knowledge. He was disappointed to learn that much of the ancient lore of Giant-kind had been lost to time, but much more remained than could be gleaned from the ruins. First and foremost, they taught him to speak Giant, which he took learned quickly. They taught him of their gods, to which Cewri has found himself now devoted to. And he learned that the magic of the Giants of yore was done by calling on spirits and having them imbue objects with power—but the ceremonies behind this, like so much else, have been lost.

His quest completed, he took a new mission upon himself: find all the villages of Giants that still exist. He knew that they preferred their isolation, which stemmed from blaming the smaller races for their decline. Indeed, to hear them tell it, they had been scattered to the wind by the invading armies of multiple lands, some of which actually still existed. Nevertheless, he had to know what the different Giants knew, to piece together as much as he could. By this time, the Necromancer’s magic had faded, taking Cewri’s Nightmares with it. Life was undeniably good for Cewri Iorwerth,

Then, as he journeyed to remember those who died fighting the Necromancer, the Nightmares returned.