Of the maybe 5 giants in the camp, one limped forward. Seth could roughly recognize him as the leader who had originally surrendered to the caravan back then. He was covered in amateurishly dressed wounds, blood stains covering his rough clothing.
"Benefactor....Please... have mercy on Urbock and his kin. Tribe tried to hold up oath... Tribe is..." he started choking and stopped talking. He only gave a meaningful glance at the empty camp. Even Seth was shocked for a moment.
Something had actually managed to decimate this tribe of giants? Well, looking at the remains, their levels were currently in the early 70s. Considering their size, they were comparable to a place in the 80s with equipment. With Urth's power creep there were probably quite a few things that could have done this. Still...
"What happened here, Urbock?" he asked, remembered the giant's name once he said it himself. The giants hesitated for a moment, but then started explaining in broken words. Apparently, it had not taken long for the changes Epsilon left behind to take an unfavorable turn.
At the time Epsilon arrived, Hope was governed by various factions, struggling for control over the city and its dwindling resources. The chimeras and many of the people they had left behind tried to honor their promise and keep the rampant injustice in check as well as they could.
When Epsilon arrived there was no faction that could compete with the fleet of advanced space ships that held the remaining population of a district. The fleet wiped out the worst of the factions and Joannia introduced the guild system to Hope as a form to bond together and govern.
However, when the wolf left its newly made den, it didn't take long for conflict to arise. Instead of the organizations and crime families that ruthlessly killed people but were too cowardly to leave the boundary of the city, they left behind several groups of players, who were now equipped with the skills and systematic knowledge to grow with the system.
The conflicts were not only far greater in magnitude and scale, the allies Seth had left behind no longer stood a chance to properly keep them in check. As the guilds started throwing away the rules Epsilon had set up and monopolizing the resources, Hope quickly regressed.
Apparently, the chimeras had also founded a guild, that tried to go against the flow. They had contacted the giants for an alliance; however, before they could form an opposition-
"... One moon ago, little people came at night. Attacked without warning. Took all sheep, and hurt many. Since then, only became worse. Tribe fought, but... no many left now. Not even bodies to bury. Urbock not heard of little weird people since then," he ended sadly.
Looking at the giant oaf, telling his story as tears streamed down his cheek, was truly touching. Quite a few among the entourage also had tears in their eyes. To think something like that happened while nobody was looking.
Once everyone regained their bearing a little it was time to sum up their situation The players of New Hope had attacked the giant, who acted as their protectors. The chance that the same happened to the allies they had left in the city was high.
The question was whether there was anybody left to save. But there was only one way to find out
"We will have to enter New Hope," Seth gave his verdict.
"Oh, yeah! Time for a brawl!" Fin exclaimed stoked. Whether there were still allies left or not, didn't change anything. Except maybe what they would do to the people who did something to them. None of them was afraid of picking a fight with a whole city, but Fin was looking forward to it.
Leaving some Oathguards with the giants, the rest of the delegation got back on the ship and slowly flew to New Hope, appearing at the city gates, that wouldn't even stop one of the giants, if they really meant to get inside the city. Stopping at their gates was pure courtesy.
"Who are you people?" a guard on the wall called, as Seth and the others disembarked right in front of the gate. The bard didn't answer the man, instead he bend over to the young woman beside him, Pip.
"What do you say? Are we playing nice, or are we establishing our position?" The guild council of New Hope taken control of the city. They had attacked their allies and potentially slaughtered anyone with a connection to Minas Mar still within the city.
Seth knew what he would do, but it this was Pip's business and it was up to her to make the decisions. She was the one that would have to deal with the consequences. The girl snorted derisively.
"These people only understand power," she said grimly, gripping her staff so hard her knuckles turned white. The answer was enough for Seth, so he gestured for their concierge to take action.
From the ship emerged a giant mix of bull and man. A minotaur walked through the rows of Oathguards, watching the show.
"Asterion, would you be so kind to open the door for us?"
"Hey, what is this!? What are you doing?" The guard leader exclaimed in hesitation, watching the massive humanoid slowly stomp toward the gate below. "Attack! Stop that thing!" he finally decided to take action and try to stop the monster from touching their gates.
Projectiles, Spells and skills started raining from the wall; however, Asterion was unharmed. Even without the buffs from the various priests and mages among the oathguards present, most of the spells were not even strong enough to break his defense.
"MOOOO!" the beast of calamity announced his arrival to the world, and slammed his head into the doors made of welded together scrap and steel beams. Seth had expected the doors to be blown back or fall off their hinges, but they were so shoddily made that they simply disintegrated! Steel beam and scrap metal were catapulted into the city, as the door turned into a storm of falling metal shards.
"What in the world are you doing this?!" the guard screeched in dismay from on top of the wall. Attacks peppered the party, but nobody listened to or cared for the guards on the walls. They were protected by Fin's shield as Minas Mar calmly walked through the, now open, gate way.
The street beyond was like an agitated beehive. The guards from the walls rushed down, while civilians fled the area, scampering into the dark alleyways. The people that stood on the walls were not worth his attention, but there was a man that ran out from the guard house.
He actually wore an armor made of hardened giant leather. This confirmed the reason why there were no giant corpses. They actually looted them for materials. Not like he didn't understand. In the past, he had even naively compared the hide to dragon scales.
Of course, he learned that it was wrong after getting his hands on proper dragon scales. Giant Hide didn't negate damage like the scales, but it held the same Impact Absorption effect as the Sky Dragon Bones.
Even though it had a 50% Impact Absorption and 10% Magic Resistance, the rare material was far below a Dragon Scale. The first only turned half the physical damage into a DOT effect, buying time. Unless one had a way to deal with that, by either healing to cancel the DOT, or negating the status effect, it was not that helpful.
The second lessened magic damage to the user a little, but the durability of the items would still suffer, same with Impact Absorption. Although Seth would admit that it was one of the best rare materials, it was only good in very special circumstances, or when one didn't have something better.
He ended up not really using it much in the past.
Although he understood that these people were desperate and he had killed and looted giants himself in the past for the same reasons, that didn't mean he endorsed it. These giants were his allies, so it was a completely different case.
The man in the giant hide armor took the lead among the guards and the hurriedly surrounded Minas Mar who was simply standing in the opened gateway, calmly watching their actions.
"Should I open the way, again?" Asterion asked with a growl.