From:

Giant Tracking Research Team

Office 37b

Proc. of the Med. & Mag. Soc.

Dear Readership,

Due to the inordinate interest generated by the recent publication of two letters by a former society member who became a giant, the society executive board has requested that we, a group of librarians and researchers employed by the Proceedings, provide as much information regarding this story as we can.

Although we provide references for all the published sources we can, we also wish to thank the writers of the many letters we received over the course of this research which helped to guide us in our research. Because of the quantity of these letters we are not able to cite them; however, we do appreciate them and the insights they provided.

Sincerely,

  B.Brown

Bartholomew Brown, manager

The giant tracking research team

1 Background

Before presenting original research, we review the reasons we believe there is anything to research at all.

First, it has been demonstrated that the events discussed in [1] and [2] could occur. The incantation to become a giant really does exist; an existence proof is presented on page 71 of this issue. We do not, yet, know what the incantation is; however, pages 45-47 and 88 discuss permanency constraintsand provide repeatability analysis. We are unaware of any active research to recreate the incantation itself; the experimentation necessary for such research is rather dangerous.

Second, the occurrence of at least a portion of [2] is supported by numerous eyewitnesses. The Enchanter has stated they do have the report mentioned in [2] and will publish it in next month’s issue. The people of Gött (see section 2) have confirmed the arrival and departure of the giant and verified, insofar as they can, the details he provided of his time there, including his lack of a throat, continual wakefulness, and other physiological claims. The shoes prepared for him exist, as do the patterns and measures provided by his tailor; these confirm he was 9’7”×6’1”×4’3” and weighted upwards of two tons.

2 The town of Gött

The home base around which the tales revolve is a large town called Gött (pronounced gt). This town is situated in the middle of the Marzetti marshes, thirty-five miles northeast of the Birdrock highlands [3, 4]. Situated between three major kingdoms, it is frequently attacked in ongoing boarder wars; however, it has not been known to harbor a standing army for more than 200 years [5].

In the past thirty years there has only been one recorded conquest of Gött [6]; [2] implied there were two. To investigate this claim, one of our researchers visited the town of Gött in an attempt to discover more information. It appears that the second conquest occurred seven years ago at the precise same time the famous Koshtov siege was coming to a conclusion and that the siege took all the local spotlight; in any case, the locals all assure us both conquests did occur.

As to the supposed most recent attack, no published sources are available. We did observe the rubble of the detonated house and spoke with a number of ear-witnesses who all verified it detonated right before sunrise. It certainly had been stripped of all residual magic, and the ground around it showed the flash scoring typical of conquest prelude, the destabilizing enchantment spoken of in [2]. However, the rest of the town seemed unaffected.

The target house stood five blocks in from the southeast wall of the town. The main gate at the northeast corner of the town wall was fully enchanted and remained unharmed; our staff magilogist, Dr. Shrev, tested the enchantments with a new Braid^TM scope [7] and determined them older than 12 months with a p-value of 0.002. Other structures in the town showed sufficient magical residue to be candidates for detonation as well, but none showed any signs of an attack.

This investigative team is of the opinion that the detonation was not caused by conquest prelude, but rather a targeted sister spell. The possibility of such spells has been known for many years [8, 9], but generally not developed because of their blockability characteristics [9]. It is also possible the detonation was caused by a very weak localized conquest prelude, though the flash scoring pattern tends to go against this hypothesis. A random enchantment destabilization, such as those discussed in [10], is a possibility, but the similarity to conquest prelude in form, severity, and scoring lead us to support the targeted spell hypothesis instead.

3 Bullets and Mrs. Guggenheim

We had excessive difficulty in verifying the tale of the bullet tribe [1]. Bullets, though fairly intelligent [11], are not friendly to other races; our efforts to interview them met with disaster. They do not keep written records and most other races don’t interact with them, so we were unable to collect any first-hand information on the tribe itself.

One statement was easy to verify. Marsha Guggenheim became hugely famous 438 years ago when she proved that witches and humans are fundamentally different types of creatures. Her sentinel work, Which Ones are Human?, led to the creation of the field of humanoid zoology as well as spawning the great war [12]. She died of a fungal infection in her liver, but was never buried since her village was leveled by a hornback attack the day of her funeral [13]. We believe it likely that her body, or parts of it, did make it into the hands of bullets, as Guggenheim herself pointed out that bullets are closely related to hornbacks and that the two may interbreed [14].

Our investigation of the bullet tribes in the Birdrock highlands matched the general description given in [1]. However, we did not dicover a bullet hut with a hole bashed in its back; we did find several bullet clans living by the riverside and the remains of a few other deserted bullet villiages as well, but are not able to give any more specific information.

4 The Chase and the Chased

There is one aspect of [2] regarding which we can only guess. Mr. Samson Gourley has confirmed he suggested his friend go scout out the attacking force; beyond that, we actually know nothing. Rather than try to confirm or deny the tale of the chase, we assume that it is true based on the validity of the rest of [2] and analyze the implications of that assumption.

We begin our analysis with the one objective fact given: the chase led to a savanna, within a few days walk of a desert. A survey of [15], the most complete atlas available to our team, shows nothing even approaching these terrains on the entire continent. The plains are described as “the driest part of the continent, seeing only scattered rains in the summer, and often turning yellow or even brown in the fall”[16]. The chase, occurring in late spring, should have seen green over the entire continent. If then, the chase ended in a savanna, we must conclude it did not end on this continent at all, but actually crossed an ocean to another land.

If the chase ended on a different continent than that on which it started, we must conclude it included at least one magical portal. If this portal were naturally occurring, we would already know about it (see the proof in [17]); we may thus conclude it was a temporary portal placed by a fairly powerful enchanter. The fact that such a portal was not noticed is not all that surprising if we assume it was crossed at night after two full days of running.

As for the chased, it appears obvious to our team that it was not a natural creature. It may have been a golem or similar animated construct, but the fact it was apparently eaten by a crocodile makes this unlikely. It could also have been an illusion; if so we may presume it was maintained for seventy-two hours without a break, over a course of several hundred miles, during the same period the portal was created. This would tax the powers of a team of the most powerful enchanters known. More likely than either of these is that the quarry was an ordinary slave of a powerful enchanter and was given a number of powerful endurance charms before the chase began.

It is possible that the sender of the quarry did not intend it to be seen or chased; we have no way of knowing for certain. If the chase was unintended, however, it was very poorly executed; a more obvious portal when the quarry was some distance away from its chaser would have been easier and wiser than the seamless portal which captured both chaser and chased. We give it as our opinion that the quarry was intentionally sent for the purpose of leading its hunter through the portal.

If the chase was designed, it is almost certain the destruction of the bait was also intentional. No one with even a cursory familiarity of savannas would be foolish enough to run through a water hole instead of around it.

We thus give it as our opinion that a powerful enchanter expended a huge amount of effort and resources specifically to lead a giant into a savanna and then leave him there, unmolested. We are unable to pose any reasonable motive for such an action. Possibly the giant was not the intended victim; maybe the purpose was manifest in some unrecorded act which was either overlooked by or occurred after [2].

We should note that all of our references to an enchanter are just guesses. The mastermind behind this series of events could just as easily have been a mage, witch, illithid, or batezu. We do not believe elves and other pixie-kin were involved; although they have sufficient power, they generally lack the disposition for such elaborate schemes.

5 The Desert Outpost

We are able to say very little about exactly where the small desert outpost from which [2] was mailed to the Proceedings may be. There are several thousand miles of savanna-desert borderlands known in the world; almost none of these are well mapped or documented. A small desert outpost could exist nearly anywhere along any of these borders. Even desert cities tend to move and change too rapidly to be documented, and a weeks journey in the right direction would be almost guaranteed to find one.

We do know two facts about the village visited. First, its inhabitants read and wrote a language much like this one. Second, its inhabitants knew of and knew how to contact this journal. Unfortunately, this does not narrow things down much; while they are both surprising facts, we don’t even know how many such communities there may be, let alone where they are each located. However, we have reason to hope that someone with knowledge of this area is a member of the society or at least a subscriber to this journal; if so, we hope they will take the time to write to the above address with information.

This concludes the report of our current findings. We consider this an open, active area of research and welcome additional information from any source. In particular, any information regarding the chase and its destination would be most helpful.

References