Kromm Background

Krom, a Goliath raised by hill giants, recounts his life and the challenges he faced growing up. His younger brother, Fenfyr, and him were often picked on for being mutts. While Krom was protective of Fenfyr, their father believed they needed thick skin to survive. However, Fenfyr had a love for animals and was not made for hardness. After a celebration where they were forced to fight, Krom woke up to find his clan gone, marked as an exile. He searched tirelessly for them but found no trace. Angry and alone, he resorted to fighting for money. He still hopes to find his brother and the giant clan, but the silence is overwhelming. Life is short. Some lives are shorter than others. That's what I've learned. I'm Krom. I'm a Goliath that was raised by hill giants. My dad was a giant and I'm not sure about my mother. She died giving birth to Fenfyr, my brother. Life was always moving quickly with the giants in our clan. I always had to watch out for Fenfyr. He was the youngest in our clan and being a mutt like me, we were picked on a lot. As we grew up, Fenfyr finally grew even more than me, but I was always his big brother. I had to look out for him because no matter how big he got, we were always the little ones in our clan. My father thought the only way we would survive is to let the clan make our skin thick and hard, but Fenfyr was never made to have hard skin. He enjoyed animals. He would sometimes sneak into the trees next to where we were for hours just to try to get close to some deer. I remember one early morning he came back almost flying with excitement. A bird had landed on his shoulder. You would have thought he had gotten his first cue of all over again. It was a good morning. When our father heard him talking about it, he tried his best to put some sense into him in the only way he knew how, but I convinced my father that I had convinced Fenfyr to cover for me while I was in a town nearby. Fenfyr was mostly spared that day. After we raided a human village in the summer, the clan was celebrating. There were many drinks had that night. Too many. It was a celebration after all. I don't know when the circle started, but I remember being the first one pushed in. When I saw Fenfyr being pushed into the circle on the other side, I looked at my father, scorned. He nodded at me and Fenfyr. I shouted no as loud as I could. Scorn just smiled back at me and stepped forward. Me, then, was all he said before throwing his fist for the first time. I remember looking at his fist flowing towards me. It was so big, nearly as big as my head. I heard a crack, like a tree being struck down from the sky. I woke up with blood in my eyes, breathing in the dirt next to the fire. I tried to stand up quickly when I saw Fenfyr being pushed back into the circle with scorn. I don't really remember what happened next. I woke up with my head ringing like the bells in the churches of the human towns. The clan was gone. There were fresh cuts on my head, crusted with blood, just above my eyes. The mark of the exiled. I searched day and night for a week for the clan. I had to protect Fenfyr. On the last night of tracking them, I collapsed and thought, I'm dead. I woke up to what must have been just a few days later, but it was raining. All trace of the clan would be gone now. Fenfyr was gone now. I went to all the human villages and towns I could find nearby and tried to find word of the giant clan, but no one had heard anything or no one would tell me anything. These humans, small though they may have been, looked down on me. I don't know if they understood I was an exile or simply that, like the clan, I was different from them. After eight more weeks of wandering from village through the hills and forests and into the next village, I never heard anything about them. I was so angry at the clan, at Scorn, at myself. I started fighting in whatever matches I could to make money. Sometimes it was coppers, sometimes I got silver. Others wagered their wares against me. Two, three, even four humans at a time. That was months ago. Not much has changed. I still visit villages, trying to find word of the giant clans, but now I'm in the city looking for something else to do. Always hoping I will hear word of a half giant with red hair just playing with the animals in the forest, but the silence is deafening.