HC History

Back to Heartstone Codex

Hatha and Sird

The first Giants, Sird and Hatha

In the beginning were the Giants. They were great workers of stone, and were driven by a great impulse. They strode across the world carving out the mountains and valleys we see today. They wrought things of great beauty, and they wrought sons to help in their labours and to people the world.

Two of the greatest Giants were Sird, wrought of obsidian, and Hatha, wrought of granite. These two brothers made mountain ranges together and wielded great iron clubs in fierce battles with other Giants. Sird was the more cunning of the pair and the better craftsman. He learned to pound his club into an edge, and to sharpen the edge on rocks. Hatha considered himself wiser and now stood apart from his brother, accusing him of folly. Naturally, this angered Sird, and the obsidian Giant struck his brother almighty blow which cut Hatha open.

Water and Ice

The two Giants had fought one another many times before, and had fought the other Giants. But this was new. Water spilled forth from Hatha's wound, so much water that it covered the lands and gave birth to the oceans and seas.

The two brothers never again understood one another, but from this act, much of the world as we know it began. Sird became the Chief of the Giants, cowing all the others with his new weapon. He moved up to the highest mountains to show his subjects how different he was fom his vanquished brother, Hatha creeping along the lowest grounds, with no substance. Still Sird loved his brother, so he took some of his essence wth him: he filled his helm with water and bore it up to his mountain fastness. Hatha, though, bore only cold indifference to Sird and the water froze, chilling the Chief of the Giant to his core.

The Sun

Sird had noticed, when he made his geat blade of iron and sharpened it on the rocks, that he also made great heat and sparks of light. So he took his sword and struck it against the rocks, wearing whole mountains down with his iron and gathring ther heat up into a great bright ball of fire and light. Thus was the Sun made.

But when he was done, the Chief of the Giants found he could not control his new creation. In truth, the Sun was the first being to see Sird, and it told its creator that he was an ugly gnarled old thing not fit to be in the Sun's radiant presence. The Sun told Sird that the only beautiful thing about him was his mantle of ice and snow and that, so as not to risk melting this thing of beauty, it would flee Sird's gloomy realm and take a place in the sky where it could gaze at things of beauty in the world. This it did.

Mud and Man

While Sird was up his icy fastness making his great ball of heat and light, the rest of the Giants were still driven to craft things out of rock. Now, though, they discovered they could mix water with their stone and they ban to craft new wonders. Sird himself never did this and is known as the hardest, least malleable of beings. But the other Giants, themselves sons of the first Giants, began to make more sons out of this mud. These were new, smaller, softer and suppler things and one of the Giants, Lorn, noticed that the smaller and softer he made his sons, the cleverer they were themsleves at working the mud. This was Man, although the first of the Men were great huge beings, larger even than our brothers we now call giants.

Water and Woman

Hatha, meanwhile, though a part of him remained up with Sird, high above, was mostly down in the lowest places of the world. He saw his brothers and cousins, the other Giants, making things of stone, and regretted that he no longer could. He would fly into great rages and beat upon the stone, but all he could do was pound it into pebbles, things of no form.