1 - Awakening

My mind is flooded with flashes of memories: the faces of the giants who created me. Standing with my fellow soldiers being assigned names by a battered old master sergeant. Months of training, then countless battles. Fighting across forests, marshes, mountains, killing the servants of dragons in their thousands while high above their masters do battle with ours. Then the memories become fragmented. Friends falling. Sand underfoot. A giant falling dead before me. The jaws of a dragon lunging for my face. An explosion. Then nothing. I awaken. 

I feel a great pressure pushing down on me, and when I open my eyes all I see is darkness. I begin to struggle, panic overwhelming me as I realise that I am buried, unable to move. I lose track of time, slowly moving my arms and legs to create room, then clawing at the hard, compacted sand above my head. Progress is painfully slow and I begin to lose hope, but then I finally break free. 

I look up and see the night sky, stars twinkling overhead. I recognise none of them. When I climb out and l look around I realise I am already lost. Where are my friends, my companions of so many years? Gods, how many years has it been? What happened? I look down at my scorched, battered body, and remember the explosion. Are they all dead? Where am I? 

I look around - I am in a desert, dunes stretching out endlessly all around me. I rack my brains trying to remember, but its no use. I pick a direction, and start jogging. 

-

The sun rises and sets, but the world around me stays the same. I am careful to avoid silhouetting myself against the sky, and I know that my body will gleam in the sunlight, so my pace is slower than normal. After some time, the sun high in the sky, beating down on my frame, I find tracks across the sand.  

As I bend down to study them, memories once again flash through my head - I have done this many times before, tracking all kinds of creatures, but these prints before me I do not recognise. They resemble the prints of a large cat, but they're bipedal, and there are also the tracks of carts and some hoofed animal that I once again don't recognise. I sigh, frustrated. I should know what these things are! I'm a tracker for Petros' sake! 

I look down at the tracks again, trying to calm myself and assess their numbers. It looks like 6 humanoids, but the ruts made by the carts are deep, so they're either transporting heavy goods or there are more of these creatures in the carts. 

I sit down and think. The wind is growing stronger, blowing gusts of sand across my vision - if I want to follow these tracks I had better make haste or they'll vanish, however I am nervous of meeting a race I've never heard of, in a place I know nothing of. 

I make my decision, rising and once more jogging across the dunes. The sun is nearing the horizon when I see wagons in the distance, and I drop straight down on the warm sand. I have no idea if they will be friendly, so I need to do this carefully. 

-

2 - The Meeting

I crawl to the top of a dune and peek over, they're setting up camp, strange furred figures wandering around a circle of caravans, pulled by... camels! The name jumps into my mind unbidden, the memory triggered by the sight of them. 

The camp has guards now, they look competent but lightly armed, still certainly enough of a threat to kill me should I screw this up. I take a moment, steeling myself, then stand up and walk down. 

The guards see me immediately, shouting to alert the rest of the group, and pace towards me, hands on weapons but not drawing them. Yet. 

I continue to approach with my hands held up, examining their faces. They don't cause any more memories to surface, but they seem in equal parts scared and amazed by me. 

I see that they have claws, though they have normal 5 digited hands, and the colour of their fur seems to be greatly varied. Some resemble tigers and others lions, and as I examine them I notice one playing with a ball of string. 

One of them barks a question at me, but I don't understand. I shrug and try to respond in the trader language that I remember, but as I speak my voice grates harshly, unused for Gods know how long, and they all take an instinctive step back. None of them seem to understand me, and they begin talking rapidly to each other. They reach some kind of agreement, and one runs off to knock on the door of a caravan. Out steps an older creature, his fur greying, wearing an expensive looking robe of red silk, with arcane symbols running along the edges in gold thread. 

He looks over to me and I see his eyes light up, his face changed from dour boredom to boundless excitement in an instant, and he rushes over to me, suddenly as spry as a man half his apparent age. He shoos away the guards with a distainful wave of his hand, and beckons me to follow him. 

He leads me to his caravan - much larger than the others in this group, I notice, before I step inside. 

It is dingy and poorly lit by some flickering candles, but as I look around I see that this creature is an avid collector of oddities. There are shelves full of curios - battered weaponry, preserved body parts of various creatures, various odd looking objects with some unknown purpose 

He leads me inside and sits me down on a stool while he starts scrabbling through his chests of belongings. I take a moment to look around this small but comfortable home - the floor and walls are made of a deep brown wood, and there is a complex pentagram carved into the floor. 

There is a finely stitched linen barrier separating out what I presume is the sleeping area, and I get a glimpse of a hammock slung from the two walls as my host plunges through. 

After some time he returns, triumphantly holding aloft several sheets of vellum and a book. 

The catman sits down next to me and starts reeling off phrases in a dozen different languages. I interrupt to ask if he speaks Giant and he nearly jumps out of his skin, "Yes!" He exclaims, and quickly the language barrier is breached. He talks in an odd dialect with an awful accent, but at least we can communicate. My growing suspicion is quickly confirmed - nobody has ever heard of my kind before. The catman - Five Camel his name - tells me that he is a Tabaxi, once proud lords of the desert, now scattered wandering tradesmen. "How is it that you know my language?" I ask, "It must be dead now, if there are no more native speakers?" 

He lets out a throaty chuckle, "I am a historian! 15 years spent studying ancient peoples. There are many myths about your kind - immortal warriors of steel, undefeated in battle. I never thought I would find even part of one, let alone a living warforged!" I open my mouth to respond, but suddenly he stops, raises a hand, and darts off behind the curtain again. 

When he re-emerges I nearly fall off my chair. He holds in his hands a longsword, gleaming in the candlelight. The blade is etched with Giant runes, and the sigil carved into the pommel I immediately recognise. "That- that's Strongarm's blade!" I exclaim 

"It was found just north of here" says Five Camel, handing me the sword. "I bought it off a dodgy trader several months ago, and it is what led me to come out here, to search for more artefacts." He sits back in his chair, looking at me intently, his yellow eyes bright against the dark grey fur of his face. 

I turn the longsword in my hands, "he was our captain, he'd been gifted the sword after our last campaign, for 'deeds of exceptional valour'. I guess this means he's dead then". The sword fits my hand perfectly, like it was made to fit. Strongarm was a Skirmisher-class warforged, same as me, so I suppose that makes sense. 

Reluctantly, I move to hand the sword back to Five Camel, but he shakes his head. "No, keep it. It belongs to you far more than 

The Tabaxi leans forward "If you would like, I can take you to the capital. There are scholars and collectors of ancient texts there of great renown, they may be able to provide some more information about what happened to the Giants and their armies." He sighs, looking down, his expression turning sour. "I myself have not been permitted access to such esteemed libraries, Tabaxi are allowed only into certain districts in the city... But!"  

His head snaps up to look me directly in the eyes, "With you at my side, everyone in the city will be begging us for an audience! They all ridiculed me, 'ooh, a tabaxi can't ever amount to anything, your attention span is too short, you'll change your mind after half an hour'", he says mockingly, leaping out of his chair, gesticulating wildly. "But you and me, we'll show them! You're the greatest archeological find in centuries, and - thank providence - you found ME!"  

He takes a deep breath, his hands trembling. "Ah, but it is getting late now, after all this excitement I am feeling tired. I'll speak to you in the morning." With that, he turns around and walks through the dividing curtains, and I hear a creak as he climbs into his hammock. 

Bemused, I slowly get up off the stool, reach over to pinch out the candles dotted around the small wagon, and step outside. 

The campfire has died down to an ember, the remains of meals scattered around on the floor. I look around the circle of wagons, their windows all dark, and I slip through a gap to my left, walking up the cooling sand to the top of a dune, to await the sunrise.