Giants on the Horrizon

[greasy golem gunk]

This post could also be titled "They Might Be Giants", but only if you want to.


I saw an article about an upcoming videogame called "Shadow of the Colossus"; a game where you struggle to find a giant, climb it and find it's weak point, and proceed to stab it to death.  I know I'm going to purchase this title when it ships, but I don't know when it comes out.  


But I also thought about how boring a Warstrider would make the same fight.  They supposedly exist to battle similarly large giants, right?


Thought about it, and concluded that perhaps a Long-range recon unit from Lookshy might have the same sort of problem, and perhaps even the task of Solving it on their own, since the Homeland is busy being a deterant to Mask of Winters.  


Perhaps the east is having an influx of Behemoths, of varying shapes, but all on a scale of HUGE!  (Consulting the DND phb, I'd go with a scale of Gargantuan to Colossal if that helps; something in the range of 50' to 100' long or about, and many tons heavy).  


The problem would be a set of 3-5 (depending on how many players I have, and how well they do with the 1st one) Fair Folk Nobles having a monster competition; Who can demolish the most, who's looks the best...  And they're doing it on a scale of months...  Something like Pokemon for powerful Fairie.  The players would face the responsibility of protecting a region until backup can arrive, they'd contend with goblins (in a support role rather than front lines), GIANTS and their Noble masters.  


I expect that each giant will be 2 sessions of play time, and thus they'll be well experienced by the end of story.  Not that it's much of a story...  But 12 points will probably do.  They'd be scored primarrily on success (up to 6 points), resource managment (how many soldiers they can keep alive, as well as how long they can keep their weapons working)(up to 4 points), and the final 2 would end up under their over-all roleplaying, on top of their weekly Xp totals that should already show their role-playing.  


Of course, seeing as how they're expirenced Giant killers, they'd be called home during an assault from the Mask of Winters...  But that's another game, something like the one described in the back of The Book of Bone and Ebony.  


Good Idea, Bad Idea?  


What would you change?


-g3

 

[Jakk Bey]

Fighting lots of giants?  In succession? Could be interesting, if the Fair Folk are involved, but what if they aren't just doing it as a simple competition with each other, but in order to get the attention of a real Behemoth?  Something that they know is sitting out there, and they are looking to get it up and running around causing enough havok to smash the Realm, and their blasted engines once and for all, to vanguard a new assault on the Creation?  Especially with the pesky Empress off galivanting with the Ebon Dragon...


You've got giants, doing their gigantic thing, but each is targeting a specific site, or rather, is leading our heroes away from the sites that are needed to be charged up--sacrifices, lots of Essence, or maybe even throwing a mystic switch to shortcut the bindings that keep the Behemoth trapped.  While our heroes are fighting the giants, the real plot is to keep them so busy watching one hand, that they can't deal with the real problem, which is a serious Behemoth.  One that has been locked down for so long, that most folks have forgotten it exists.  That they've built their homes on it, and have been digging holes into it, because they think that it's a mountain. And it is, now, but with its 'shackles' turned off, it will drain the Essence from all local nodes, and rise up, mostly buried, with the mountain range only dirt and rock that's formed during its imprisonment, and then only on a portion of the thing--most of it's buried, so only part of its face is exposed.


The giants are just some fabulous Fair Folk joke to get the heroes spinning around, while the real work is get the Behemoth up and running.


Bigger.  Mountain sized bigger.  Think in terms not of 100', but much larger.  Bigger than the WTC large. Think of the WTC--before it's collapse--as just the legs large. That's something that has to be scaled, explored.  Our heroes fight the giants, and defeat them, only to realize that they've been duped into allowing the Fair Folk to work their real plan.


You could have a group of Abyssals that are scouting, and either want to hijack the Behemoth to their own ends, or want to destroy the thing, so that they can get it into the Underworld for their own masters.  As a bit of more fun, you could then have an Akuma or two thrown into the mix, because they don't want the damn thing running around, messing up their plans to corrupt the Realm. If the Realm is destroyed, it plays into the hands of the Malfeans, not the Yozi, who eventually want the Creation back, and they'd like it good enough condition to play with.


This kind of scenario is larger than your original idea, but it might be an interesting spin.  The heroes defeat the giants, only to see the mountain range begin to tremble, and start to stir. By the time they get there, they've got to fight their way through hordes of Fair Folk, and their Deathlord rivals or allies depending on how you'd like to spin their involvement, and then they get a helping hand from Demons and Akuma who are none too pleased about the whole affair.


You then get our heroes into the Behemoth, dealing with its internal defences, be they clockwork affairs or fleshy beasties that call it home--and the Fair Folk boggies who are trying to help them, Abyssals and their creations fighting them for their own piece of the pie, and Akuma and Demons sniping them, and for once, looking to save the Creation from being smashed by the walking mountain as it begins to stand up, shake it's head free of the trees and dirt that have accumulated.  The target is to travel to either its heart, or its 'brain' and wreck the puppy, and then you've got the added fun of knowing that the damn thing will fall, which means disaster for anything in its path, so the timing of when to kill it becomes crucial, or somehow find a way to bind it again so that it falls back into dreamless slumber...

 

[Andrew02]

I'd probably change the maximum lifting weight for Warstriders from pounds to tons, because otherwise your warstriders probably aren't going to do so hot in the "disposing of the many tons body of a dead giant" department.

 

[greasy golem gunk]

It's becoming apparent that I should run all my ideas by you guys.  It's nice to have a staff of "EVEN BIGGER THINKERS!", but for free.


____


Ooo, FLCL is on TV...  later


-g3