The Tale of Jarek Champion of Giants
There are many who fear the giants and to seek to rid them from the Runiverse—Smasher, Dispatcher, Amputator, some of their epithets read. But there are also others, such as Jarek, who became a Champion of Giants, coming to their aid in times of danger.
He owed it to them.
When Jarek was just a baby, his village on the edge of the equatorial jungle was raided by a band of bugbears led by the Chieftain himself. Jarek, the only survivor, was carried away to safety by his companion, Ara the scarlet macaw. Soaring above the treetops, Ara carried Jarek higher and higher as they ascended up the sheer cliff face of an ancient plateau that was nestled within the jungle and overlooked the burning village below. With her last ounce of strength, Ara cleared the edge of the plateau. She gently dropped Jarek on the ground, which was thick with moss and mist. The boy and his bird found themselves before yet another jungle, suspended thousands of feet in the air. Out of energy and without food or water, Ara feared the worst. Then the jungle began to shake.
The trees parted and out walked a giant woman, who moved through the jungle as if it were a field of tall grass. Ara, too exhausted to fly, flapped her wings and screeched menacingly at the giant, who was headed right for them. The giant carefully squatted down and scooped up Jarek and Ara along with some mossy earth as they came to rest within in her palm. She covered them with her other hand as she headed back into the jungle, shielding them from the vines and limbs that whipped and swayed around her massive body as she ventured deeper.
Traversing several miles in just a matter of minutes, the giant came to a clearing and uncovered Jarek and Ara. Peering over the edges of the giant’s fingertips, they saw a massive stone staircase that cascaded down into the heart of the plateau. The giant reassuringly rumbled something to them in her foreign tongue before she began descending the stone stairs that were themselves as tall as houses.
Jarek and Ara bounced around within the giant’s cupped palm as she took each step, going lower and lower into the plateau. A bright fire at the bottom of the staircase cast a faint light that filtered up through the darkness. As they drew closer, the light revealed stone carvings on the walls of the stairwell that told stories from ages long forgotten in glyphs and runes never seen by any human. When they reached the base of the stairs, the fire blazed intensely, illuminating a cavernous chamber full of stone dwellings. They were widely spaced and arranged in circles, each with a raging red bonfire at their center. At the back of the chamber rose a colossal inverted pyramid, which stretched up into chamber’s heights and vanished in pitch black darkness.
It was in this place that Jarek grew into a man, and along with Ara, became a warrior and Champion of Giants. From the Giant Wizard Razogruk, who dwelt within the inverted pyramid, Jarek was gifted the Rune of Jupiter, which even as a baby allowed him to grow ten times in size. This made it much easier for his adopted mother, Gatuderu, to care for him as a child, until he was old enough to explore the jungle above and, eventually, brave the secret passageways that led into the jungle below. As the forces of the Bugbear Chieftain grew, the Giants of the Jungle Plateau knew that they would not be able to remain in hiding forever. They would need Jarek’s help if they were to survive the evils of this age, some of which were new and unknown, but others old and unforgotten.
Entered by: 0x5065…a7ad and preserved on chain (see transaction)
