Appearance: Seoriol is just below average height for his time, and has a lean build from living an ascetic lifestyle, made all the more rugged since coming to the colonies. his once dark hair has begun to turn grey, but his eyes are the same deep brown they ever were.
Biography: Seoriol was born to a family packed full of children, where they tended a farm not far from Abberffraw in northwestern Wales. He was well-fed enough, but didn't receive much in the way of attention from his parents. He sought a way to fill the void this left in his heart, and was very quickly taken with the church. When he turned 15, the farm burned down, fortunately not taking any of his family. This did, however, bring about the question of how everyone was going to eat. both of his sisters were already married, and his older brother already worked for his own meal, but he and his two younger siblings (one sister and one brother) were still with his parents. His father decided, that, like other children at the time, he and his brother were old enough to get a job. His father's experience got him a job as a farm hand, and his brother's small size made him ideal for factory work, but Seoriol could not find employment. Then their local priest suggested that the devout young man take up a position with the clergy. After much training and long hours of studying in the candlelight, he was ordained as a priest. He served in Abberffraw for many years before being appointed a vicar—a representative of the bishop—and shipped off to the colonies, to Salem, to serve those living there. He has been in Salem for just over a decade, and in that time has become a respected member of the community.
This is… a most interesting situation we have found ourselves in. What the Mountain does can be described only as a boon, and almost certainly of divine origin, yet I am perturbed by the zeal with which so many have taken to worshipping the mountain itself. Of course, as far as I know, it may very well be warranted. So I have made a decision: I, Goreu, god-chosen leader of the surviving Cewri shall make a pilgrimage. On my own strength, I shall ascend the mountain, Y Mynydd Niwlog, and find what lies at the summit. If it be the will of the gods that we have this boon, we must know who deserves our praise. Could it be the Sky-Lord Amaethon, rewarding us for persevering in our repentance? Or Pwyll, the Frozen-Lord, who rules over the dead in his Ice Palace, giving us succor from the frozen peaks for surviving so long? Perhaps it is some other god, long forgotten by our people. It may even be one native to this new land. I must know for sure.
With the results of our attempts at fishing still inconclusive, we must take other ventures to prepare for winter. The island is populated, it would seem, by numerous sheep. One of the Elders tells us that wool was renowned for its warmth in the Drowned Kingdom. Thus, while I am on my pilgrimage, a group of us shall begin taming the sheep. We shall take them out to graze, protect them, and we shall shear them. Furthermore, in my absence, I have rested shared authority over the Cewri in the Elders.
As it turned out, somebody had stocked the cabin with a tankard large enough for one of Cewri’s hands, and so he began to drink. Being so large, it took significantly more of anything to actually get him drunk. All the better, then, that they had enough to quench the thirst of an army. He was in the middle of his fourth when he saw Oryx pour out a libation. Cewri set his tankard down on the table, propped his elbows up beside it, and crossed all of his fingers so that his bottom knuckles were touching.
After a few moments of sitting in silence, he began to sing quietly. It wasn’t something that the others would understand the words of, but they would understand it from the tone—it was funeral dirge he had learned from the Giants. It began speaking generally of those great souls who were now long past. His deep voice began to crescendo as it moved into pieces that he had devised himself, detailing the feats and virtues of all of his lost friends—and of Athklotep, his fallen mentor. It closed on an exclamation of grief, and bidding rest to those long missed. A few seconds after finishing, Cewri grabbed his tankard and, knocking his head back, emptied it. Slowly, he placed it back down on the table.
Ah, to be in the company of humor again. Cewri shook the hands offered to him. “No, mt friends, I haven’t done much stomping or conquering lately. A lot of finding, though.” Cryptic statement done, he removed his scabbard from where it rested on his back and laid it against the wall. His pack, with rations, maps, armor, and the assorted supplies a person needs to make camp, fell next to it with a loud *thud.*
“As for my own lateness, I’m glad to have made it here today all. The bridge across the Kagrimarr Gorge was out, so I had to take the long route out of Kallagrim.” As he spoke, Cewri swung his travelling cloak around and hung it on his sword. Of all the times for Dwarven engineering to actually fail… “And if you ever see him again, Oryx, tell him not to bother. Unless he was a Half-Giant himself, there’s no way my skin will fit him. Now what’s this I hear about drink?”
For the past ten years, Cewri had been a wanderer. He was able to catch his own food—it would have been embarrassing to have gone against the Necromancer and not been able to bring down a few beasts. He wasn’t exactly a hunter, but being able to more-or-less skin a hide made him able to supplement his diet with whatever he bought in villages or cities he happened to be travelling through.
Said locales were also where he got most of his person-to-person interaction for the past decade—he met people on the road as often as could be expected, but they were rarely travelling to the same place. And of course whenever he entered a city, the legends about The Mountain invariably followed him. It wasn’t particularly surprising; his enormous height made him one of the most visually distinct members of the old part, Oryx being the only one to actually surpass him in that regard, and he knew from personal experience that minding the fields gave you a lot of time to think, if you chose to. Nevertheless, it got annoying. For every person who correctly guessed he was part Giant, ten thought he was the child of an actual mountain. And some even called him a fraud—an imposter—when he tried to disabuse them of that notion.
He sighed, and craning his neck to stretch it, saw smoke rising on the horizon. Checking his map again—the one where he had marked the locations of the Giant settlements he had found—and his compass. Well, Cewri thought, it looks like someone beat me there. Means I won’t have to wait that much longer to see one off them again. Cewri let loose a deep, rumbling chuckle, Come to think of it, I was probably the furthest afield out near Kallagrim, they probably all beat me there. Motivated by the presence of his comrades, Cewri picked up his pace. The sun had all but sunk below the horizon when he saw the cabin; the smoke that showed led him on the last leg of his journey dutifully rising from the chimney. Cewri smiled, Hope they have a bed big enough for me. Been too damn long since I slept on a proper bed.
The stars were out and the moon had risen by the time he reached the door. It was a wonderful sight, and he recognized the constellations—both human and Giant—in the skies above. He could hear several voices within, so he quickly rapped twice on the door and pulled it open. He didn’t have to duck down quite as low as he usually did to enter, and the roof was tall enough that he didn’t have to stoop at all once inside.
Cewri threw back the hood of his travelling cloak, his eyes sparkled as they travelled across Desalith, Oryx and Martox, and he smiled widely. “At long last. It’s good to see all of you again.”
I am wondering... The werewolf that did attack the group, is he / she able to be played by someone?
There is actually some information on what Nallore planned to be the attacker's ultimate fate on the Chat/Discussion Titanpad linked to on the first page of the OOC. I'll just say that it doesn't involve a player taking control.
Race/People: Half-Giant, which is (as one would imagine) a half-breed. Specifically, of a full-blooded Giant and a Human.
Appearance: The most immediately noticeable thing about Cewri is his size. Being Half-Giant, he towers over most anyone he meets at an imposing seven-and-a-quarter feet. His skin is the peach that one might expect from humans from some parts of the world, but his eyes are the color of burning embers. Unclothed, he is covered in scars both large and small, both pale and grotesque which might have been cleared away with magic were it possible to do so (read on to see the reason why it is not). His wardrobe is either simple garb or his armor, always overlaid with a faded green traveling cloak. Atop his head is his short, dark hair, almost always concealed by a hood or a helmet.
Traits: Skills -An innate resistance to magic. -Training in the use of a broadsword. -Years of experience in using his size to his advantage in a fight. -Fluency in Giant, and passable skill in most major languages. -Cartography and Geography
Flaws -His resistance to magic makes it all but impossible for him to receive magical healing or other aid. -An inability to use, or even learn to use magic. -Because of his size and bulk, his agility is sorely lacking.
Personality When he isn’t entrenched in a thoughtful silence, Cewri is a warm person, universally. While he would not name someone a “friend” quickly, that is borne more from valuing the term highly than it is from excessive caution. His deep, bellowing laughter is frequent, and can be heard from clear across a dwarven feasting hall. Since final fight with the Necromancer, he has been given to occasional bouts of deep melancholy.
Background:
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.
Items: -A Broadsword longer than a human is tall, regularly cleaned and sharpened. -An ancient set of armor engraved with swirling runes that, as of the present, protect against only rust. -A faded green traveling cloak.
