#wilderness winter

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.