Gilgarius the Titan was killed in battle against the Lutharc swarm that once inhabited the swampland wastes to the east of our mighty lands. It took hundreds of those cowardly wretches to ensnare him in their nets, and no less than ten days of hurling spears and firing barbed and poisoned arrows into that Hero's body before he succumbed. Even as he fell he crushed a dozen Lutharcs beneath his back. When the deed was done a thousand of the tribesmen lay dead in pieces in the blood-soaked marsh.
The leader of the Lutharc clan claimed Gilgarius' sword as plunder. To his warriors he left the rest of their enemy's weapons and great rings, each of which could serve as a circlet around their misshapen heads. Such a quantity of metal would make them rich among their kind. The tribeswomen used flint axes to hack apart the leather armor and boots to make tents for their kind, marveling at workmanship far beyond their primitive means.
The sword was dragged away behind a team of seven of the web-footed herd beasts that the Lutharc used as both steeds and cattle. The great blade carved a furrow through the foul earth, and it is said that the trees that sprouted up in its wake stood twice as tall and straighter than any of that land. It is told that the guard of the sword was formed from two elephant tusks shod with hammered steel. The pommel was a cluster of cow skulls embedded in amber that had been fired to crystalline strength. The handle was wrapped in stout hempen ropes that had been plundered from the Mengraal raiders' great warship Cuttleworm.
The blade itself had been forged in one piece twenty feet long, a hand-span thick at its middle and tapering to a keen edge on both sides, forked for the last four feet of its length. Runes had been etched in the blood-gutters that ran from ricasso to tip. The ancient blade had been pitted with the caustic bile of wyvern and wyrm, and those pits had been filled with human bone and scalp. Thousands upon thousands had been cut down by this weapon wielded by Gilgarius and his father before him.
And so it was a great loss to our kingdom that the Lutharc chieftain died of lung-fungus after having secreted his treasure deep in his darkened holdings. His tribe followed him into their shallow graves during the three-winter blight, and the whereabouts of the sword were forgotten. But now, when our southern shores are gnawed by Longsea serpents and their blond riders, when Calphax and Riddoban have fallen to their torches and the people of those fair cities to their axes, surely now it is time to find my father's sword.
And so I march east, the last of the Titans, though war lies to the south.
--Steve Kilian
Stephen Hawking Contemplates The Void
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