 The strange and the fantastical, sail one's mind many a night these days. These visions, these dreams of the impossible worlds that are the mortal realms, become more vivid with each nocturne, a bizarre uncanny riot of creation. The sheer variety alone makes them almost impossible to track, but for the sake of my sanity I must try. I must try to attempt to document the chaos of sights and sounds my dreams hurl at me. Often, islands of stability emerge from me to grasp a hold of contain surprising depth and for the sheer sake of academic rigor one is compelled to record as much as I possibly can, no matter how bizarre or unusual the subject matter may be. For it must be said, the subjects of this dream chronicle, they are strange indeed. Many a culture has held within them tales of such creatures, behemoths in human form that bestride the land with thunderous footsteps, but it appears that in the mortal realms they are a dreadful and terrifying reality indeed. No then, that herein is the further chronicle of the dreams of the Oculus, being a record of the mighty progeny of a god-beast itself, the sons of behemoth. To the bellicose races of destruction, the rule of life, land and god is simple, might makes right. The brutally simplistic creed is shared in greater or lesser complexity across the sundry tribes and nations of the oryx, the grots, the ogres, and the colossal kin in kind, the gargants. Indeed, many a sagely grot has perpest that when it comes to the gargants, mightier makes rightier, a pronouncement that often causes their fellows to nod enthusiastically even if many aren't exactly following so advanced a concept. There are indeed few beings within the impossibly vast span of the mortal realms that can match the sheer size and thus sheer might of a gargant. Though they will often tussle with the various monsters that inhabit the darker reaches of the realm spheres, a gargant has no natural predators within the ecosystems they inhabit. Everything from basilisks to jabber sleights to trogots to crackens usually opt for easier prey. As such, they have a mendicant and even hedonistic lifestyle. They need to not save sleep, fight, pillage, and destroy. Creatures of whims and simple desires, they rove the realms on paths of their own choosing, for few if any mortals can arrest their progress without substantial risk or cost. Indeed, the concerns of those smaller than them rarely to ever concern the dimwits of the gargants. So myopic are they that they do not generally even bother to differentiate elf from human, from Dwarden, from Oruk. What tends to actually matter are the simple things, such as how hard they can hit, or perhaps how big their hat is, or more reliably how much food, beer, or loot they are offering. The cleverer gargants have learned the benefits of mercenary work from ogours, and they can make for incredibly potent allies. But it is many a mortal general, or mayor, or burgomeister, or weave, that has ended up in their gullet after thinking their new hire can be outwitted, double-crossed, or simply treated improperly. By and large, mortals of the realms have long since decided to simply avoid the gargants. It is not hard to. They leave trails that are easily identifiable, more so than almost any other creature. The thunder of their footfalls echo for miles. Where this becomes an issue, of course, is if the gargant wants you in their path. Wars, campaigns, and battles hold a unique appeal to them. The best fights will of course happen there. There will be a bunch of shiny and unique trinkets to grab once it's all done, and all of that, of course, pales in comparison to the amount of food on offer, either in the provisions caravans of the armies, or in the corpses strewn upon the battlefield. The origins of the gargants, as with many species within the mortal realms, are a murky collection of myths and legends told either by they themselves in raucous moots, or about them around dwindling mortal fireplaces, and across smoky tavern dens. Most, however, revolve around a grand rivalry between the twin-headed god of all destruction, Gorka Morka, and the god-beast, Behemoth. The former had been freed by Sigmar from their imprisonment within the living avalanche, and charged with bringing to heel, or simply to their end, the monstrosities that threatened the fountaling cities of the Pantheon of order. Behemoth fell into the category of the former, pledging himself to a service of the twin-headed god, and in doing so, found himself a pretty decent life. As Gorka Morka rampaged across time and space, ending the existence of many a god-beast, Behemoth did as he pleased, wandering to and fro at his leisure, with his head, as the tales say, literally in the clouds, so prodigious was his height. Gorka Morka soon grew jealous, their twin halves beginning to feud amongst themselves, eventually dividing, so that each half could think clearer. Under the light of the bad moon, Mork would win at the paranoia of the god's cunning side, winning over the primal desire of Gork to simply bash things until they died. Reforming, and possessed of a new and wicked conviction, Gorka Morka adopted a new policy. Whenever their paths would cross, the twin-headed god would issue Behemoth with a challenge, and, being a creature of simple ego, Behemoth would not refuse. Either they would replicate the feats of Gorka Morka, or die within the attempt. It seemed fair. At least the stories would be good, Behemoth reasoned. The first of these tasks, ordered Gorka Morka, was to drown a city in a single flood, as they had done. After a monster hunt of extraordinary length, a parched Gorka Morka had drank so much of the ocean of Hish, that the sea itself had fled before him. When the thirsty god had moved on, the ocean rushed back, drowning in its passage the city of Omnitopia. Behemoth accepted the challenge, and completed it entirely accidentally, when he tripped over a fjord and belly flopped into the sea, causing a tidal wave that submerged the Alvan city of Araxia. Modern gargants leafily claim that the drowning of this priceless city is why so many elves ran away to live under the sea forever. Next, after Gorka Mora slew a herd of Gigadrots on the fiery plains of Akshi, Behemoth was challenged to halt the eruption of the volcano Volcatrix's lair, thus preventing the birth of yet more of the Blazen Drakes. Behemoth did just so, ripping the top half off a nearby mountain, and stopping the caldera of the volcano as one would Corka bottle. Unfortunately, the mountain in question had been home to a clan of red-headed and bearded Dwarden folk who threw themselves at the god-beast to seek revenge for their destroyed clan hold. Thinking nothing of his assailants, Behemoth gleefully stamped them flat. Modern gargants also claim, with yet greater mirth and with no little conviction, that this is why ever since that day, Dwarden have been short and squat in frame. The remainder of the tales are of a similar vein. With gargants swearing their progenitor beast is responsible for the fates and forms of all creatures across the realms. For example, Behemoth once stood on the highest peaks of Azir, realm of the heavens, hurling insults at Dracotheon, the great Star Drake and friend of Sigmar. These insults ranged from crude and petty to utterly insulting, and even the patience of the dragon of heaven wore so thin that he sent a barrage of meteors raining down upon the offending god-beast. Behemoth, a world titan that he is, took many of these upon the chin, but when one caused him significant hurt he decided he had had his fill and battered the following meteor back in Dracotheon's direction. The rock slammed into the Drake's flank, scattering the scales from his hide. These self-same scales fell upon the realms as a meteor shower, eventually to become the Seraphon, so the gargants claim. In yet another tale, Behemoth's unsatisfiable appetite during an eating contest caused him to rampage across all the lands of Shahish, realm of death, explaining why to this day those of that realm have no flesh upon their bones. The final challenge, as these mytho-forms build to, was to be Behemoth's most grandiose and his most legendary. When Sigmar had freed him, Gorka Morka had fought the God-King to a total standstill, with neither deity able to claim true victory. It had, of course, been the only reason the twin-headed god had joined Sigmar's pantheon. The God-King was an equal, after all, not some manling easily bested. Now, Gorka Morka, frustrated at Behemoth's consistent victories, declared that the God-beast must achieve what he had done, challenging Sigmar himself to combat. The challenge was no small matter, after all, it had been Sigmar who had been responsible for the death of Behemoth's own sire, Yimnog, at the dawn of the age of myth. Behemoth, however, was a scion of that zodiacal deity, and had proven himself Gorka Morka's equal in every feat he had been issued. Thus, he went into his final act with confidence and bravado. Armoring himself with the flanks of Gairan's Nevergreen Mountains, his challenge to the God-King was so loud it shook the trees a realm away. And Sigmar did not answer, Behemoth simply began laying waste to any Sigmarite city within reach, for there were many. The response was immediate. Brooking no threat to his civilization, Sigmar descended from his ear like a comet, smashing into the God-beast with the fury of heaven itself. The jewel split the surface of Gairan, the blood let by their blows pouring from the mountains in great waterfalls, reddening the green soil. Ultimately, Behemoth could not best the fury of Sigmar, who caught him upon his chin with a blow from Gal Maraz, that so stunned the God-beast he stumbled across half the realm in a dazed stupor, gorging himself upon flora and fauna with dull abandon, before crashing into the harmonious veldt so hard he embedded himself into the realm's crust. In one final act, he vomited forth an entire generation of gargant offspring from his roiling gullet, and, having sired the race that would forevermore walk the realms, fell into deepest unconsciousness. Such indeed were the depths of Behemoth's lumber, that not even the coming of the Age of Chaos and the hordes of the Dark Pantheon were enough to rouse him. As Gairan fell to the covetous and swollen grasp of Nergo, grandfather of plagues, all the response the surface got was the occasional shudder of the sleeping God-beast, reaching through the crust as earthquakes. It was not until the end of Chaos's dominion and the coming of the Age of Sigmar that Behemoth once again became a point of interest for parties diverse and sinister. Archeon, ever chosen, grand marshal of the Apocalypse, had long desired for the span of the Age of Chaos to sunder the gates of Sigmar's celestial realm, Azir, but had been unable to do so. Now, with the hosts of the Stormcast Eternals thundering across the mortal realms, he opted for measures both desperate and ambitious in equal measure. In the early days of the realm-gate wars, Archeon devised a plan to shackle Behemoth, and the gargant's fellow God-beast Ignax as well to his will, enslaving them to serve as a near-divine battering ram that he may assail the gates of Azir itself and break them open. Accomplished this, he intended to collar Behemoth with the corrupted Great Green Torque, a horseshoe-shaped floating meadowlith of continental proportions, a soaring country that represented all twelve seasons of the realm of life, now fallen to the putrefying plagues of Nurgle. The Torque would serve as a great vector for that god's maladies into Behemoth, and while Archeon knew that they would not entirely overcome a being of such resilience, the God-beast would nevertheless be rendered biddable enough to be pointed in the right direction and simply let loose. Enlisting the services of the Skaven of Clan Skaira, Archeon set about excavating the slumbering Behemoth, the rat men with their warpstone drills burrowing towards the God-beast's nerve centers. Devining the threat to Azir, Sigmar wasted little time in dispatching the stormcast Eternals of the hallowed knights under Garda's steel sole and the anvils of Heldenhammer under Thedion von Denst to cleanse the Great Green Torque itself, while in the Quagmire's below the hammers of Sigmar and the Knights Excelsior attempted to arrest the progress of the Skaven. It would, however, be too late. The rat men had succeeded in waking the now utterly mad Gargant thing from his slumber, his stony veins coursing with warpstone-infused energy, his mind rotting with Nurgle's plagues. Afarelmoe, the goddess Elariel, devined that Behemoth was now forever lost, that even her most potent healing magics would not halt the corruption of his God-beastly frame. Weeping for the loss of so mighty an aspect of the realms, she communed with the stormcast, urging them to attack, driving the hosts of Sigmar to set about the Gargant even as he attempted to extract his mighty form from the crust of Gairan, as the laughter of Archeon ever chosen rang triumphant. Ultimately, it would take the weapon that had failed him first to do so again, but this time the fate would be altogether more permanent. The Celestant Prime, mightiest and most mysterious of Sigmar's servants, bearer of the God-king's own hammer Gal Maraz called Skull Splitter, delivered the final blow, sundering Behemoth's forehead as the God-beast awakened, killing him stone dead and ending the threat to Azir. The stormcast retreated to the realm of the heavens, leaving a furious ever-chosen master of not but a titanic corpse. The death of their progenitor had a curious effect upon the Gargants of the realms since the realmgate wars, albeit one that would not be noticeable for many generations. They have been getting bigger. By the concluding days of the Soul Wars, Gargants had been encountered at well over a hundred feet tall, earning them the title Mega Gargants. Amongst the oldest and most venerable, tales are spread that soon a successor will rise to claim Behemoth's title of World Titan, and to fill the Zodiacal Gulf left by the God-beast's passing, cosmology so abhorres a vacuum. Whether or not this is true, it has certainly been confirmed and witnessed that Gargants ape the acts of their father, emulating his feats of old, causing avalanches, precipitating tidal waves and the like. Besides, the conflicts of the mortal realms in recent centuries have thus been a boon for the Gargants. During the long dark of the Age of Chaos, the Dark Pantheon ruled all the lands, and the God-King was sequestered within his heavenly realm. Simply surviving day to day was a challenge, even for Gargants. Demons made for poor eating, their immaterial magic stuff dissolving in bloodied and enraged gigantic hands, and the mortal thralls of the chaotic powers were often covered in armor so spiky it cut up their gums something fierce. Now, with all the realms perpetually consumed in one war or another, there is fighting aplenty and eating even more aplenty. Their culture has evolved, such as it is around these foundations, the love of battle, the crude veneration of their ancestor, and the mytho-memory behemoth seems to have embedded within them. While it is easy for mortals to dismiss Gargants as dull and dim-witted, for they so truly are, they do nevertheless maintain a semblance of social structures. Like many of the races of destruction, they are tribal by nature, forming into loose gatherings, both familial and otherwise, that band together for mutual profit in the areas of both food acquisition and general mayhem. From the mortals of the realms, the Gargants have heard their gatherings referred to as catastrophes, but as a forsyllable word, this is simply too challenging and too bothersome to use regularly. They prefer to refer to their tribes as stomps. Each stomp is formed around a core of Gargants who know each other well enough to not want to kill each other all the time. This may be because of familial association, but even that is no guarantor of peace. For many a Gargant has killed their father or brother for everything from stealing their food to looking at them funny, or simply because they misunderstood something and attributed it to one of the two former actions. Typically, a stomp will only number a dozen or two dozen members. Anymore tends to test the limits of how many Gargants a single one can be comrades with or remember the names of. Their hierarchy is, as you may suspect, quite straightforward. It is based around the size of their feet. Typically, the chief is a mega Gargant, the so-called Big Heel, the largest and most prodigiously violent member of the stomp, if not always the smartest. There may be yet more mega Gargants in the tribe, but all have lost fights to the chief, thus being, as the Gargants say, under the heel. They serve as lieutenants for the big heel, ensuring the rest fall in line, and are more than happy to dole out earth-shattering punishment should they feel disobeyed. Following them are the smaller Gargants, known across the realms as man-crushers, who form the who form the toes of the proverbial foot that is the stomp. These may be formed of the sons of the big heel, or be wandering Gargants attaching themselves to an impressive stomp, or even Gargants subsumed into the tribe from a defeated one. Whatever their origin, they are expected to... they are expected to toe the line under their mightier masters. It is common for a mega Gargant to count upwards of five man-crushers as its toes, or six in the case of the infamous clubfoot gorg, although the latter is a supremely rare case, as mega Gargants typically cannot count above three, losing concentration halfway across their own hand. This ramshackle structure is surprisingly robust. It is the instinct of a Gargant to look up at those larger than them, I guess both figuratively and literally. Challenges are always likely, and indeed many a smaller Gargant will try it on a bigger one, either chancing their luck or because they have become possessed by the conviction that they can actually accomplish something. But as they are not always, by any means, a cunning breed might will invariably make right. The same bellicosity that rules orcs or ogours is still present in Gargant culture, but it is curiously less likely to erupt in the same level of internecine conflict. Many a man-crusher Gargant will be more than happy to attach themselves to a big heel and spend centuries in their service, content of their place and the rewards of the various scraps the big heel brings to them. Toeing the line does not, it seems, have to be all that bad. Yes, there have been a lot of references to feet here because, yes, Gargant society is fundamentally based around that particular part of their body. I guess it is hard to blame them. The feet of the Gargant is the primary means by which such a huge creature will interact with the world. Gorka Morka is, to them, still worthy of worship, and the means by which they view him are quite direct. He's bigger than they are. The biggest, perhaps, certainly the fightiest. The image of Gork's great green foot, a particular archetypal spell often summoned by orc shamans, is further proof that their god has Gargants in their hearts. Indeed, many do not believe the twin-headed god even has heads, but rather takes the form of a pair of giant yellow-nailed crusty feet. The Gork foot, stompy but kicky, and the Mork foot, kicky but stompy. Gorka Morka is Behemats big heel, thus the big heel for all Gargants, since two layers of authority is about as far as their perceptions can accommodate. Their love of crushing things underfoot stems from all of this. The act is as natural to a Gargant as breathing, the simple fact of their sheer size and might, but is also a rough form of worship or veneration. That said, it can prove challenging, at least depending on who you are fighting. During the Age of Chaos, many Gargant tribes began to avoid the servants of chaos, for so festooned with spikes and sharp edges were their armor that battling the warriors of the Pantheon was for Gargants like a human jumping up and down upon a bed of nails. Against all odds, however, they learned that by the end of the Soul Wars, note that for Gargants the name of this conflict is spelled S-O-L-E. Many had taken to wearing crude footwear fashioned from the hides of mighty monsters to give their precious appendages the protection they required. Because of this means of fighting, Gargants tended to reserve punching for those that are of equal or greater height than they. This is everything from a mark of respect to the most efficient means of whatever target is within reach, because constantly bending down to punch things smaller than them is murder upon a Gargant's back. When not fighting, Gargant pastimes are as destructive as you may expect them to be, invariably focused around things they can do with their feet or things they can destroy. Horse-punting, for example, is as straightforward as the name sounds. The winner is the Gargant who has kicked the unfortunate creature the furthest, bonus points being awarded if the careening beast takes out some poor unfortunate souls as it crashes back to earth. Likewise, but usually reserved for the battlefield, is the game of manskittles, where a boulder or enemy war machine is picked off the earth and sent hurtling towards an enemy formation to scatter as many as possible. Proximity to civilization will usually alter these games simply by virtue of more options being provided. Many a bored Gargant has indulged in the game of wake belching, where they burp or break wind as loudly as possible while near a nominally friendly city, with the one who has elicited the most protests of angrily awakened sleepers being deemed the winner. Indeed, the recent invention of tank tipping, where the Gargants leafily attempt to overturn free-gilled steam tanks, led to unfortunate rumors being spread, as when a mega Gargant flung the war machine Last Argument of Kings into the sea, many onlookers were seized with the conviction Greywater Fastness now possesses flying steam tanks. Many Gargants will interact with the world of mortals through two weens, serving as unstoppable juggernauts in the hordes of an army of destruction, or as mercenaries with whoever can negotiate a deal with them. There are many appealing qualities to such work, a steady supply of food and beer, not to mention loot, as well as wider varieties of enemies to fight. Gargants are by nature easily bored, so there is attraction to attaching oneself to a storm-host, or free-gilled, or blumeneth expedition, for the sheer joy of scrapping with anyone and everyone who wants a piece. This is, of course, learned behavior, picked up from the Ogres. Legend has it that the original Gargant mercenaries were a particularly hairy trio, known as the Brothers Grug, originating from Ger, realm of beasts, who attached themselves to the Ogre Meat Fist Maw Tribe. This was not an easy thing for them to pick up, and one has to wonder how the man-eater Ogres of the tribe had the patience to teach them. There were so many challenging concepts for a Gargant mind to learn, doing what you said you'd do the day before, for instance, getting paid for services rendered, that was another, as was not immediately eating the tiny being that had paid you. Sundry battle plans were drawn up for the Brothers with a big stick in the dirt, and eventually it all began to sink in. It was, of course, a lot of seemingly unnecessary work, but the virtues of it did eventually impress. The Grug Brothers left the Maw Tribe at the end of a few years of campaigning. Their sacks stuffed with loot from across the realms, their minds now attuned to seeking out the same line of work if they so felt like it. Through them, the concept of mercenary service filtered out into dozens of Gargant stomps, and from them out to even more. It passed through realm gates and found its way through the generations into a permanent place within Gargant culture, known to the giants themselves as the Great Secret, although it is, of course, a pretty mundane concept. Since then, Gargants have ingratiated themselves into the service of every faction in the mortal realms, not merely amongst the destructive orcs or grots or ogours. Gargants that fight with the forces of order are similarly pressed into industrial efforts of the humans in Dwarden, with particular favor being paid to the latter as the walking beards, as they call them, often supply them with the best ales for services rendered. Gargants are highly prized by the servants of Nagash, too, for while there are now magical wards aplenty to stave off the shambling hordes of the undead or turn back the howling gales of night haunt geists, neither are much use against an angry Gargant. Those that end up finding themselves marching alongside the children of the Dark Gods, or curious ones indeed, often looked at as scants by their fellows, serve too long under the gaze of the Pantheon after all, and even a Gargant body starts to look pretty funny. Some, however, seem to revel in newfound appendages or warp to visages, although as their fellow Gargants often say, they were the odd ones to begin with. This, all then, is how the citizens of the mortal realms must now, as the dawn of the Age of Beasts rises, fear their Gargants. The destructive behemoths are everywhere, and they work for everyone, and they are, somehow, getting taller. My dreams have been odd. May have tomorrow night will bring more restful and less foot-centric nocturne. Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.