A cart trundled along an uneven path, trepidatiously, towards a lonely hill. As it neared the former Knight Ser Graves peered out from underneath the hood of his cloak. The day is pleasant, he mused, a fitting time and an even more fitting place. Even with what might be the last rays of sunshine ever to caress his face, his eyes remained dull and he coughed hard enough to suck the breath out of him. The cells had not been kind and he shook with a fever, not that it mattered much now.
The Orc that was to be his executioner remained silent, although it was unlike the Orcs that Ser Graves had met for *it* to be quiet and pensive, let alone reverence for the soon to be dead.
In the town of Halfway-Goldmark a spectacle rode through the streets with a body large enough to be a Minotaur dragged behind him, wrapped in cheap linen, patches of dark red showed every now and then as the body rolled. "Hearken and watch fellows, gentle-sers, gentle-dames!" A man in a beaten leather duster and cloak shouted as he approached the market. "I have here the notorious Giant of Cradlerock! Brought to you by myself, Prior Edgar Valt"
The people of Halfway-Goldmark knew the man as a fake, a liar and a cheat. However even the mention of the potential capture of this giant had gathered a crowd large enough to fill the tavern....Which had just emptied to bear witness.
"Follow me good people of the mark, see the giant unveiled!" The grey mare trudged onwards, painfully aware of the cargo she was unwittingly transporting but as always she knew that there would be respite at the end of the town, by the Abbey.
As Edgar neared the Abbey, the Abbot in full ceremonial chain mail, mitre and mace stepped from the heavy wooden double doors, arms outstretched in greeting to this unwelcome member of the clergy. "Ah Edgar, what have you here today? Holy tears of the first Merfolk? Perhaps the Bishop-Generals undergarments?"
"Wry as ever, Ser Abbot. I claim the bounty of one Giant of Cradlerock." And with that he dismounted and tore off the hood from the body still on the floor. The gasps within the crowd were audible as was one mad cackle coming from somewhere belly-height. The general perception from the crowd was of disbelief, not in a hundred years was Prior Edgar Valt capable of defeating the local fool, let alone a giant.
Each of you feel there is something strange about this day. Something will change, you are sure of it, but what are you going to do?