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The Pilgrim King
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A mighty stag rested beside a small creek, enjoying the shade of a great oak tree as he ate at the occasional tuft of young grass. Suddenly, there came a heavy boom from further in the wood, accompanied by the sound of snapping twigs and branches. The stag's head shot up in alertness and it saw a gargantuan creature approaching. The great thing was an ogre, and no ordinary one at that; standing perhaps sixteen feet tall and as corpulent as anything, this one was a giant even by ogre standards.

It continued to lumber forward through the treeline, grunting in mild annoyance as it simply walked through tree branches and snapped them off. As in for the stag, it had frozen in utter stillness. Fear paralyzed it, but normally such feeling would only make a beast flee. This time, however, there was some curiosity mixed with that fear, and so it made the mistake of staying.

When it was no more than perhaps forty feet away, the ogre noticed the deer from across the small stream. The majestic beast locked eyes with that brutish thing. The ogre did something strange, stooping down to snatch up a large stone. Then it stuck that rock in the pouch of a leather sling and hurled the stone straight at its prey. The stag was felled in an instant.

Ommok put away his sling and then hungrily devoured the raw meat. It made for a savory breakfast, and yet he did not slow his feasting to enjoy the flavor of fresh meat still dripping with blood. Slowing down to enjoy a meal was a frivolous thing, and the Ogre King was now ancient by mortal standards and had experienced enough of those such pleasures in his life. Now, he simply wanted to make good time in his journey.

The wanderer followed the creek until it made its way into a larger stream, and then he followed that a good ways longer. A few hours saw him out of that dense wood and into something of a pleasant grassland. In the distance, his eye perceived something unusual: plumes of smoke rising into the air. [i]'Fire djinn,'[/i] he figured. The spiryts were no strangers to ogres for they abounded in the Venomweald, and the djinn's callous savagery rivaled that of the jungle's beasts.

The king moved to travel in a wide berth around where the smoke came from, for though the djinn had no grudge against beings of flesh it was never wise to test their mercy. He trudged on for some time, but then something found him, and it was no djinni.

The ogre glimpsed the creature out of the corner of his eye, still as a statue as it cowered in a patch of brambles in hopes of not being seen. The thing was tiny, perhaps a third of Ommok's height if even that, and it somewhat resembled a bird. Immediately when the giant monster saw him, the Hain threw down his bow and ran; the hunter knew that arrows would be as mere annoyances to such a hulking creature. His flight was in vain.

Though Ommok's corpulence spilled out, beneath the fat there was muscle. With incredible strength behind each great stride, the ogre charged at a surprising pace and easily overtook the fleeing Hain. Ommok snatched up the creature with one hand, and looked at it. It kicked and struggled, so he squeezed. The thing's body did not yield, for it seemed that it had some sort of natural armor. [i]Were its bones on the outside, like some sort of insect?[/i]

Ommok's eyes then turned towards the thing that the strange creature had dropped. With his other hand, he snatched up the bow and examined it too. The ogre saw nothing more than a strangely shaped stick with a string of sinew, and try as he might the king could not fathom a use for such an object. Still, the ability for the creature to craft such an object was proof that it was no mere animal.

Ommok debated internally whether he should eat the Hain in his hand, but decided against it. The exoskeleton would prove troublesome to peel off, and he had no desire to linger in the area near the fire djinn. So it was that the terrified Hain found himself abruptly dropped, and then he scrambled to run. Right towards the smoke? Why would it go to a fire djinn?

Curiosity seized control and Ommok soon began to lumber after the Hain once more. As the two walked further into the distance, small huts came into sight and Ommok finally realized that the smoke was no doing of an elemental. [i]These creatures had stolen fire from a spiryt and harnessed its magic? They were powerful indeed![/i]

With newfound caution Ommok strode forth to the village, and a party of a dozen or so of the creatures were waiting. He stepped closer to the little creatures, and they each raised those strange sticks into the air, and then they brought some sort of sticks up to the sinew strings...the ogre's eyes widened as he suddenly realized the purpose of the implements. They were like his sling! The Hain released their arrows just as Ommok ducked down, yet still a few of the shafts struck him. With an agitated grunt, he looked at the sticks poking into his skin and pulled them out. No blood dripped forth, for their stone heads hadn't even managed to pierce his hide.

In a panic the Hain began to nock arrows again, but Ommok stepped back and then let out a fearsome roar that stopped them in their tracks. With some confusion they stared at the ogre: on the one hand it roared and was a monster, but on the other it didn't seem like it was going to attack.

Ommok snorted and returned their stares, wondering how he might be able to pacify the dumb little creatures. A bird flying in the air provided him with his answer. The ogre quickly stooped to snatch up a stone, and the Hain jumped to fire their bows. To their surprise and furthered confusion, the ogre put the stone in his sling and hurled it at the bird and not them. In one shot he brought the creature down, and then strode into the distance to retrieve its carcass. When he walked back, he threw it to the Hain as an offering, and then they understood.

Over the next few weeks the ogre king stayed at that village, and in time (and with a great deal of effort) he managed to learn the basics of their speech. The 'Heen', as they called themselves, had many strange tools. Once they had grown used to his presence, many were more than willing to carry on with their lives as normal as he silently observed them use their tools, whilst a few friendlier ones even approached him to show him new things or offer food. Whenever they did such an act of kindness, the ogre grunted and mimicked their words of thanks as best as he could.

This continued for some time, but eventually Ommok's curiosity waned and he grew restless. He had learned all that he could from these Heen, so he committed the location of their village to memory and then embarked on his journey once more. With mixed feelings, the Hain saw him off.

Though it shouldn't have taken him by surprise, somehow he had not expected to find more Heen, and yet soon he had done just that. In these parts of the land the creatures seemed fairly numerous, and their villages were scattered about in a predictable pattern near bodies of fresh water and good hunting grounds. With his basic understanding of Heen-speak (and in some cases, with tales of his arrival and strange journey having preceded his arrival) he managed to receive a courteous welcome from the villages that he stumbled across and so they gave him shelter and food to offer him a short respite from his pilgrimage. Ommok gratefully accepted, but never stayed for long. In due time he left behind the land of the Heen and wandered on through wilderness once more, but then he came across a great river and upon its shores came across the various farming villages of the Vetruvians.

His interaction with them went down in much the same way as had his first encounter with the Heen. Though at first they had been fearful and hostile, he had managed to befriend one village and stay long enough to learn of their language and ways. He stayed with the humans for longer than he had the Hain, for there was something about this land that called to him: the great river, the great sand dunes in the desert beyond the river valley, even the strange presence that seemed to hang in the air above this entire land...it was all familiar. Ommok had seen and felt these things before, and after much thinking he finally recalled why: when the Maker-God had brought the first ogres to the Venomweald long ago, he had carried them across the world. Ommok had seen these lands from above as he was flown by a god; this was a good sign. It meant that his journey was taking him along the right path. The Goddess's Stone called to him clearly as any siren; he needed only to follow its voice.

With newfound motivation and reinvigorated strength, Ommok left the humans and began a harsh trek. The sands tore at his flesh. The scorching sun cracked and burned his skin by day, and the cool winds beneath the light of Galbar's moons left him shivering by night. His only company was the occasional bird or haunt flying high through the air, the distant howling of windjinn, and the endless dunes. At long last there came a time when he found his way to a most peculiar and large swampland oasis, and in that treasure trove of life he found some respite. From the mudpits where he rested unseen, he witnessed robed men walking in the distance. This was a long way from the lands of Vetros; perhaps those were exiles, brigands, nomads, or a peculiar combination of those things. He paid them little heed, and after a few days the Pilgrim King once more was on his way.

It was an endless and dusky path that he trod down, and only a metaphorical road at that. At long last he came to the end of the desert and found a land that made his flesh tingle; there was something strange about the sheer disarray of the place, as if the earth itself had twisted and contorted and tangled itself into a mess over a thousand millennia. Those Changing Plains were perhaps more hospitable than the Firewind, yet the aura was distinctly worse than even the desert's sweltering heat. He was glad to put such lands behind him.

He waded through a strange ocean that gleamed golden beneath the sun, though instead of water this was a sea of grass. In place of fish were lions and gazelle, and in place of lords and kings there were brush beasts so unimaginably huge that for a moment, Ommok wondered if they were gods. 

At long last, he came to the Deepwoods. The Stone was close now. He could feel it! The air itself oscillated and vibrated, or perhaps that was only his imagination. There were all manner of creatures within thee Deepwoods and some might not have been so intimidated even by the likes of an ogre, but Ommok had no time for such distractions. He willed that they all leave him in peace, and without even realizing it, his long-dormant Astartian magic drove off the animals and granted him just that protection.

The clearing where they had first been brought and cast upon that rock was now overgrown, and even the mighty trees that the Father-Wind-God had ravaged were now replaced by ones equally grandiose. Or perhaps they had not been replaced, but rather repaired? Surely such great trees had not grown from saplings in the mere centuries that he had been gone?

As in for the boulder, Ommok remembered the thing being an object of great size. When magic had surged through his every fabric of being and made him into its conduit, he had smashed the rock, and yet half its pieces had been as big as he. Before him, however, was only one shard of noteworthy size. It was large by human standards, but it fit nicely in the king's hand.

He snatched up the stone that was his birthright and felt its power spark through him, and he was at once relieved of a great burden that he had carried for so long that he had forgotten it weighed him down. Still, he could only wonder if something else had come for the rest of the boulder, or if his memory failed him. If those hazy recollections were to be cast in such doubt, were any of his oldest memories true? Always he had been different from the other ogres, but was he even what he thought he was?

He contemplated on his own existence for many days, clutching the stone and sitting still even as the occasional rain fell down upon him. When he finally stood once more, he began the long journey home and never looked back again.

[hider=Summary]
Ommok the Ogre King is pretty huge by now! And old too.

Our story begins with him using a sling to hunt a deer and then eat it for breakfast. Ommok has left the jungle where his people live to go on a great journey, and he's been making good progress. He follows a river until he eventually stumbles across a Hain village.

Curiosity draws him in, and he visits the village. At first the Hain are terrified of him and their is some hostility, but they soon warm up. He stays as a guest, learns a few words in the Hain tongue, and observes many of their tools and weapons. Eventually he leaves them, only to find more Hain villages. Word spreads quickly of him, so he goes from village to village on his journey as a sort of guest.

Eventually he leaves the Hain lands behind, and after traveling a very long time through the wilderness, he stumbles across villages of men upon the Mahd. He has a similar (albeit briefer) interaction with them, before crossing the Mahd and continuing on. He has faint memories of the Mahd and Firewind.

Crossing the vast Firewind Desert is a trial of strength even for the mighty Ommok. He camps at the Resort for some time before moving on, and eventually crosses the Changing Plains. He then crosses the Gilt and marvels at the existence of such mighty and huge beasts.

Finally, he goes to the Deepwood. The purpose of this journey has been to find the remnants of the magical stone that empowered him so long ago, and he feels its presence there still. All these hazy memories of the lands he passed were from a really, really long time ago when Zephyrion carried him and the other ogres over those places and to the Venomweald to be dropped off.

Much of the the pieces of Astarte's boulder are somehow vanished, but there was a sizeable chunk left behind. Ommok claims this for his own. A few seemingly odd discrepancies in his memories (a result of Vowzra's actions, most of them) bring into question his recollection of events and sense of identity, but after a long while of deep thought he finds no answer and moves on. He begins the journey home, carrying the stone with him.[/hider]