#encounter mountain

Monster Hunt: The Doloron Colossi

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Enigmatic titans that stride endlessly through the snowy wastes, mummified by the cold, driven on by some unknown puprose, most think the colossi remnants of a forgotten age, and give them wide berth lest they be trampled underfoot.

There seems to be no aim to the Doloron's wandering, as they trek across the tundra and mountainsides alone or in groups of two or three like some mobile monument to hopeless exhaustion, occasionally collapsing to be buried by drifting snow only to be unburied decades later when some shift in weather or poor traveller unearths them.

Sightings of the Doloron are thought to be a bad omen, least in part because none are sure what draws their unthinking ire or what can dissuade it. Everyone has heard stories about the unlucky travler who somehow angered the colossi before escaping to warmer lands, only to have the giants arrive along with the winter winds and level the entire village. Some tales suggest their wandering is a millennia old hunt for some ancient foe they are sworn to slay before they can finally die.

Adventure Hooks:

It's well known that each Colossus is garbed in enough Adamantium to outfit a small legion, and while some scavengers spend years hunting for the smallest scrap offcast in the frozen wastes. Some of those prospectors found a Doloron trapped inside a ravine and half buried in ice, and now an impromptu mine has popped up excavating the undead and trying to strip its armour piece by piece. Only now the thing is whispering to them in an unknown language, a never ending, half heard litany in a language none of them can understand.

A cruel wizard has realized that the giants follow the worst of the winter storms, and has used weather magic to "steer" a Doloron into a frontier garrison, with aims of using it to bring a nearby kingdom to its knees.

Villain: Jysh'parun, Outergod of Unwelcoming Earth

As distant and ancient as a mountain, as scornful as an axebitten tree

Many philosophies debate and negotiate the relation of mortals to their environment. Some see nature as a thing to be tamed in the name of survival, domesticated, exploited. Others proffer a more symbiotic path, a holistic system to be protected and stewarded.

Beyond these there are the ravings of those claimed by Jysh'parun, who claim that mortals have no right to exist at all, and survive merely by the beneficence of the trees and stones. While all but the most foolish agree that heed must be paid to nature, none but those under the unwelcoming earths dominion would think that there is some geological-feudal hierarchy to which we must all submit.

This then is the paradox of the Unbowing Mountain: a god that claims the worship of things that do not traditionally think, but views nature through a distinctly mortal lens of domination and hierarchy. It's an absurdity bordering on being a joke, atleast until Jysh'parun's influence washes over the land and the forest marches off to war while the rivers start demanding tribute.

Adventure Hooks:

Having come into possession of a disused tract of land, a young farming couple were picking the stones from their new field in preparation for planting when they came across the petrified remains of some indescribable horror. Resembling nothing so much as a horse sized mandrake-root with teeth, they've reached out to neighbours, the sheriff, even the local wizard looking for advice about what to do... only to wake up one morning and find the thing gone. Theft or reanimation are both equally alarming possibilities, and the whole region has been on edge since.

Having been thought dead for years after being lost in a winter storm, a dwarven cartographer descends from the mountains claiming to be their mouthpiece and demanding sacrifices in their name. Her words at first go unheeded, at least until the glacial rivers begin to run with noxious acid, transforming back only when something living is thrown in. Farms and villages are drying out and grisly offerings of livestock now fail to meet her standards she claims the mountains will only be satisfied when the people of the realm throw their rulers in and swear fealty to the peaks on high.

The king's palace is in chaos after a coup took place in the royal gardens, specifically when the great tree that shaded his majesty's favourite thinking bench stabbed him in the back with one of it's branches and then skampered off to replant itself on the throne with the crown in tow. Before Anyone knew what was happening, greenery had overtaken the palace locking most outside while trapping certain vital hostages inside.