"The stars don’t lie. They just don’t explain themselves, either."
"If a stone falls, I lift it. If a wall breaks, I rebuild it. That’s how the world keeps going."
"You can tell what a creature feared by how its hide grew thick. I honor that."
A self-crowned “king” has taken over a cluster of farming villages. Bork, a grotesquely bloated hill giant with a crown made from a dented iron cauldron, now rules from a half-destroyed barn surrounded by shattered furniture, terrified peasants, and mountains of food-stained bones.
Deep within the half-collapsed mine shafts of Crestview Ridge, there waits a silent horror among the broken statues. Its breath smells of limestone dust, and its gullet grinds stone to meat. Locals call it Stonejaw—a basilisk so old its scales have begun to fossilize.
It feeds. Always. Slowly, inevitably. Even stone yields to the hunger. Gorthlax is no mindless blob—at least not anymore. A spawn of Juiblex touched by the demon lord’s will, it has grown vast and terrible, residing in the sunken heart of a ruined temple forgotten even by the gods.