Rexthen

Rexthen originally was a part of Zilcan to the south of The Endless Expanse on Zanfear but after The Awakening the new creatures now known as giants emerged from five of The Spires of Creation. These Giants were both physically strong, quick to violent outbursts and unable to be killed, at least for the first year so the demons of Zilcan were rather quickly cast out the area and pushed back to the edge of the hill country. They cared little about what was happening to the other species that emerged during the Awakening but enjoyed hunting down and killing demons for sport, with the support of the hill country they ambushed any demons in the area, but those that came down to planes didn't have the numbers to fight the demons who could maintain and coordinate defenses better over larger areas with the enhanced visibility and mobility.

To this day unless the Zilcan's come with a significant force they're likely to get attacked and hunted down especially if they get separated or end up fleeing to Rexthan from Cad'Lear. But the giants also enjoyed competing against one another in anything they can find to compare themselves but most often they simply compete in very dangerous games that risk injury or death even to creatures like giants, which keeps them all quite distracted and it has been possible for Zilcan's to operate inside Rexthen without being noticed.

These games are became an important part of the Rexthen culture and are a regular occurrence between giants of a single village or between competing villages but it has had an impact on the population growth.

The east side of Rexthen is largely just a wide mountain range with deep narrow valleys, but to the east the land flattens out and tall red wood trees cover much of the area not burned by the fire giants that live there.

### Leadership

Officially there is no leadership that rules over the whole nation of Rexthen but each tribe is led by its own tribal leader, often chosen by combat the strongest giant then becoming the new leader this makes for a volatile political system, with deals or alliances made between villages subject to sudden and dramatic change as a new leader comes to power, wanting to "further defeat" the previous ruler by undoing their works. The interplay between the giants villages is a little more stable but with the larger more powerful tribes exerting their will on the tribes around them depending on their relative strengths and how far that tribes leader is able to be pushed.

While each tribes leadership contest has many similarities, each one is unique to the tribe and in that tribes opinion always considered the most legitimate for choosing a rightful leader often with wildly inaccurate stories of how the tradition started and why specific parts are included. Most will have a set day or period of time between potential contests after/on which challengers can vie for leadership, but if a leader gives up their position or dies weather naturally and willingly, or though the direct malicious actions of their rivals a new contest begins. The challenges involve some sort of competition 85% of the time this is simply a fight and most of them it would be one on one between competing potentials but there are tribes that compete in a race, a test straight test of strength or an arcane test of power. There are only a few tribes that don't give some sort of advantage to the current leader to increase the likelihood of them maintaining their role, for most this advantage looks like the fact that the challengers must first compete against one another before going up against current leader in a knock out competition meaning that they're more drained and spent by the time they compete with current leader. The challenges will nearly always take place in a particular way or in a specific location, sometimes designed to make the combat more difficult, exciting or spiritual it maybe on a precarious bridge or within a dark sacred cave, they might require the use of special weapons or for the combatants to be tied together. Then after the challenges there is a time of celebration which sees the new or returning leader honored and the defeated challengers suffering some sort humiliating punishment which can vary between those tribes where the punishment is still kind of seen as an honor having fought well in the trials right up to those where the punishment is a permanent mark that shows them as a failure and deters all but the most determined from attempting the challenge lest the punishment falls on them.

Always appointing the strongest or most powerful tribe member isn’t the greatest way to pass leadership skills form one leader to the next or to ensure that the tribe will be taken care of well, this is mitigated by the fact that the giants have numerous traditions which act like rules on how to live a cohesive way that even the leaders are subject to, some of these rules are only held within a single tribe while others are universal through out the giant species and even a few that are followed by every giant.

### Demography and Population

Five species of giant emerged one from each of the Spires of Creation that are in Rexthen which were fire, stone, storm, hill and frost giants but unlike the Assimar of Cad'Lear they quickly dispersed away from the spires setting up tribes and villages where they felt most at home rather than based borders.

At first these giants mainly kept to their own species the formed tribal villages consisting of just one type of giant, frost giants moved to the high mountains with snow ice and glaciers, the Fire giants stuck to the forests of the plains and so on. But as time went on as an ultimate punishment villages and tribes would cast members out, doomed to roam the hills alone, without a tribe, without family and no longer able to ever again compete for leadership of a tribe. While it was true that no other village would take these giants in but they began to band together and created villages for themselves, these mongrel villages are not recognized by the other villages but they grew and flourished with new additions every time another giant was cast out of there own tribe.

### Foreign relations

Officially Rexthen has a on going treaty with Cad’Lear where they will respect each other’s sovereign boarders but the reality is that since individual giant villages act rather independently and even more so individual individual giants at times, especially with new leadership so frequently. This all means that it is quite common for groups from Rexthen to cause trouble for the settlements on the Cad’Lear boarder, raiding food, resources and livestock, breaking things and if confronted they tend to react violently. The northern coast of Rexthen sees a number of Carthorkian ships that make the journey down the west coast of Zanfear normally trading in slaves, the smaller humanoid races being easier for those in Rexthen to control and the giant races of course making highly prized slaves to the north, but they also trade in resources from the south and specially made magical items from the north. When it comes to Zilcan Rexthen has officially been at war with them since The Awakening but it has been rather cold since The Cad'Lear Rebellion, Zilcan still wants to rule over both the giants and the territory they consider theirs which is Rexthen, while the giants hunt any of those from the demonic races they find which is considered to be a highly enjoyable and rare opportunity for the local tribe to get together and partake in. But Rexthen doesn’t actively attack Zilcan with Cad’Lear in between them and Zilcan rarely makes a move into Rexthen which often only planed as a punishment for a demon that needs to be publicly humiliated by being asked to attack the giants which are considered inferior only to fail with limited resources.

### History

There is almost no record of the history of Rexthen beyond a smattering of over exaggerated stories of tribal victories, origin stories or reasons for local feuds. But the reality is that there is little of national importance that has happened since The Awakening and subsequent war. After Cad’Lear emancipated itself there was a life significantly change to the way of life in Rexten especially along the boarder which previously had been regularly attacked by Zilcan but in general life continued as it had before just with a gentle shift away from a focus in war within the tribes.

After Carthorka learned of the giants of Rexthan they began sending ships to try and capture giants as new powerful and valuable slaves but these creatures were also very hard to subdue. It became one of the most dangerous but also lucrative jobs that a Carthorkian could do, giant slavers were considered truly brave and truly stupid, this however changed after a rather charismatic boat captain managed to strike a deal with a tribe of fire giants offering them jewels, high quality large metal weapons and small humanoid slaves in exchange for their assistance to attack and enslave a few of the local hill giant tribes this then spread to become a thriving slave trade along northern coast. The Carthorkian slavers risk the chance that a tribe they have been trading with for years might suddenly turning around and deciding to just take what they brought for trade or even just enslave the slavers, they also risk one of these large slaves getting free and angry on the way back, sinking the ship as well as The Qasoinae who do their best to disrupt their business. None of the Qasionae are willing to trade with the Giant tribes that trade in slaves but many of them different tribes are willing to have differing levels of trade and alliance with those of Rexthen.

### Geography & Areas

Most of Rexthen is undulating hills and mountains with rocky steep sided valleys running throughout, a few glaciers carve out revives down to the southern coast and along the northern coast the valleys open out into the sea with small coves but few of these have the space to moor ships. The western peninsula area flattens out and gives way to a vast almost unbroken redwood forest all the way to where the land runs out.

The giants think of themselves as far more in tune with nature than the other races who build large cities and pave over parts of the landscape, though they are happy to rip up and throw parts of nature at one another but they believe this is all within the natural order of Ioz'om who is their version of Gozreh.

### Points of Interest

The singing grave, a small opening in the side of a hill side looks rather unremarkable but is surrounded by the bones of hundreds of giants in various states of decomposition as well as a number of large boulders that seem to have been thrown away from the entrance as well as those whose trajectory was towards the entrance. Many of the corpses show no indication of what killed them while the others have been smashed by falling lumps of rock those with keen eyes will see that this wasn’t what killed them just that a rock landed where the body already was. There is a quiet song emanating from the cave entrance, in high winds or storms it grows louder but even on a still day it can be heard from about 60ft away from the entrance. The song is deadly to those of the giant races and half giants, but no one know what causes the song nor how or why it kills those of the giant races or even why it seems to target just them. A group of Cad’Learian adventurers were once asked to venture into the cave attempting to find the cause of this music, but they were only able to follow the sound so far before the cavern became too narrow for them to continue. Their failure to stop the music was not handled well by the giants of Rexthen and after being forced to re-enter the cave a number of times with no further success, eventually the adventurers were killed and no future explorers have been sent from Cad’Lear, for fear that a history might repeat itself especially since the first teams notes weren't retrieved and so a new expedition would be starting from scratch.

The giants continue to try to beat this unseen foe and there have been a number of attempts to over come the song and conquer the cave but no matter what the giants tried to do they have never made it past the threshold, while they have been able to seal the entrance with boulders thrown at the cave from beyond its range, when a giant then ventures too close to the seal it bursts open with a loud crescendo instantly killing the giants, so currently it is left open. There have been various groups over the years that have tried to use the caves protection as a way to evade capture within Rexthen, from escaped slaves to nests of various demons but the normal solution from the giants is to simply starve them out pelting any thing that ventures beyond the cave entrance food with boulders from a safe distance, until their dead from either the boulders or starvation.