The precise of details of the pact have long been lost, so gathering scholastic information about it is hard. The Giants have legends certainly, but parlaying with them to get an idea of what they believe is tricky, as enough of them consider men to be a tasty snack that would-be gatherers of their lore usually hire mercenaries for protection. Only one, Professor Griselda Angeladottir of the Jorvin Empire's Schweinestadt University, has managed to gather enough information to create a hypothesis.
Her theory is that in the days of the Dragon War the mountain peoples were particularly hard hit. The dragons claimed the mountains as their primary territory and the mining communities, vital to the development of weaponry, were ravaged by their attacks. In the face of this constant war and the terror it brought. the communities in the mountains saw their young men fall. Too many mothers buried their sons, too many sisters burned their brothers' bodies. A generation of warriors fell to teeth, claws and fire.
Angeladottir believes that eventually an inciting event occurred, an attack so terrible the towns united in the face of the dragons, but that even this failed. In desperation they turned to different methods, recruiting the men who had not been warriors to fight. This path would lead them to many different places, to the sorcerer Marius, to the spirit of Grandfather Stone Face. Whilst it is unclear how it happened, it is certain that the final ritual took place at the peak of the Red Veins' highest mountain. The bargain was struck and the remaining warriors took on the strength of the mountains, growing in size, though they did not achieve anything like the height they enjoy today. Their skins grew rougher, they became tougher, more able to shrug off the dragons' fire.
The dragons that dwelt in the Red Veins were dispatched, their names forgotten except as the names of Giant tribes (which were only ever the names they let humans know), their treasures scattered throughout the world, their lairs claimed. The new race suffered heavy losses during the battles but emerged, bloody and victorious. They were taller and stronger, and the gifts of the mountains grew with time.
Almost immediately new problems arose; the Professor points to a number of folk tales concerning clumsy and/or malicious Giants to show this. One area she has identified was that there were no women for the young warriors to take as brides. Women who had welcomed the idea of the Giants when their lives and homes were in danger had no wish to be married to one. The men were also unable to fit back in, struggling with the tools they had once been so adept with. They became seen as brutish and crude, and gossip began to spread about them. Perhaps it was inevitable that sooner or later this would take a turn for the worst.
Angeladottir's treatise points to a fire that occurred at an Autumn dance in one of the villages, Snegpik. Here, the Giants effectively declared war on their own people by setting fire to the hall where the villagers had gathered and letting it burn. In the following days this group of Giants razed the village and established their own camp, replacing too small buildings with tents of hide that could accommodate them. Word spread and other villages began to have similar problems. The Giants broke away. The most peaceful of the interactions is recorded in Ruda Gorod's lore, where they simply vanished over night.
For the most part the villagers say their ancestors breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see the back of the shambling creatures they had helped to create. The Giants speak of raids and battles as a new war shaped in the mountains for control of ore and mines, one that initially drove them back to the dragon lairs. They took the names of the dragons they had slain and began to fight back, determined to have women and animals, and secure their future. They built forges to their own size in the lairs, hunted the larger creatures to give themselves leather and made clubs out of dragon bones. One early leader is recorded as using a dragon skull as a shield, impaling foes upon its horns. The mountains descended into a long, bloody war. The villagers suffered from the power the Giants wielded and soon had to find new ways to fight them. They sent word to Marius for aid, but none came, their messengers never returned. The alliance that had been forged to fight the dragons splintered as chaos reigned. Whilst the Giants did not present the same threat the dragons did, they were still feared and because they had other motives, all too human motives, they struck fear into the hearts of men in a very different fashion. The dragons had simply been using their might to assert control of what they believed to be theirs; the Giants' grudges were personal.
Attempts to breed with human women proved fruitless, the Giants whilst not above rape, found that their seed took no hold in the women's wombs. If a pregnancy occurred it was short, there were no children and the miscarriage often killed the pregnant woman. In desperation they headed back to the mountain.
It is here that another figure enters the history, one that is reviled by one side and celebrated by the other. A woman, Alina, one of the prized daughters of the Mayor of Ruda Gorod, made her way into the mountains. She was looking for her sister, Dina, who had been stolen by the giants in the spring. According to the villagers she was captured and taken to Grandfather Stone Face, though the Giants insist she followed them up the mountain. Whichever version is true she introduced something that changed the situation fundamentally: she became the first woman to become a Giant. Whether she was forced or willingly took the burden is unknown and both humans and Giants would say that it does not matter. In becoming a Giant she saved the race, and it is said that all the Giants born since are descended from her.
The second pact also strengthened the Giants' links to the mountains. They became one with the stone, developing a sympathetic link to it. From Professor Griselda's notes there is an element that feels pain when mining is undertaken, which would explain why the Giants hate the mining so much. There are also suggestions here that the pact made the new race taller and stronger, compounding the process they had already gone through, but at the cost of their minds and their skills. The early forges they had built in the dragon lairs fell into disuse, apparently because the ways of forging became forgotten.
The pact had another downside; it bound the Giants to the mountains, making it difficult for them to leave unless they carried part of the mountains with them. Those that tried fell sick and eventually died, and as they grew older the process happened faster and faster, until the oldest of the Giants simply fell to pieces a mile from the Red Veins.
Alina became the first Queen of the Giants, forging a nation and claiming Grandfather Stone Face as her own. Owing to the longevity the Giants possessed she lived for over a century, taking lovers among the males she liked and controlling her children with an iron hand. Perhaps it was inevitable that when she died the nation would fall apart and rents soon appeared, as the Giants devolved back into camps and feuding tribes, albeit ones ruled by female because they are smarter than the males. The old lairs had never been abandoned and they became the focus for many of the tribes, just as particular mountains became the focus for others. The old names, the ones they had stolen from the dragons, came back into use. Attacks on human villages soon began anew, though now people were not carried off as potential mates but as food or as slaves to undertake 'small work', the kind of things that require skills the Giants have lost. The slaves made weapons and armour, jewellery and even clothing, as even with immense needles their captors could not understand the ways of sewing or weaving.
One tribe, the Black Fire tribe, even went so far as to enslave an entire village, surrounding it and starving the humans until they begged to serve them. The Black Fire leader went on to become the second leader of the Giant's nation, though on his death they again fell back to tribes and this proved to be last time that unification was possible. Subsequent efforts have either been defeated or short lived. In revenge the villagers eventually poisoned their overlords, sending them fleeing back to their stronghold.
For a long time the relationship between the Giants and humans continued in this pattern, and it was really only the arrival of the Six that changed it. As money for ore and stone flowed into the communities along with mercenaries and other soldiers, the situation began to change. In return for iron, the Six authorised Giant hunting expeditions, determined to drive them back enough to access mines and start to re-establish the mining industry in a proper way. This involved a number of new ideas, including the use of ropes strung with bells that Giants would trip as they approached mines and hidden pits that would slow them down. Blasting powder from the East has been used for this purpose, and as a distraction, on the advice of Professor Angeladottir. The centuries have seen a more equal balance of power emerge in the mountains, but it has taken time for this to have an effect and the gains the villagers make are constantly tested. The Giants hate the fact that they are being constrained, even if they struggle to understand how it is being done.
Within the last decade it is believed that a Giant chief, named Alina after her many times removed Grandmother, undertook a new pact at the peak of Grandfather Stone Face. She asked to be able to understand what the small folk were doing and this was granted, but a terrible price, one that left her unable to leave the mountain. She has tried to impart the knowledge to her followers but to no avail. They simply do not understand what she says. The only thing this new Alina has managed to impart is the need for unity; leading to a fresh round of tribal wars as each chief tries to stamp her authority over all the others.
For the moment it looks as if there is a stalemate in the Red Vein Mountains; mining will continue as will Giant attacks. Sharoban will continue to support the villages and towns, if only because they need stone and metal. For their part the Giants are incapable of doing anything to leave the mountains for any length of time and Sharoban seems to be the extent of their range. The city has been attacked in the past, usually by small groups of warriors who have followed caravans back to Sharoban's gates.
Next time: Step back into the dark as we consider the Red Veins and the dark gods.
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