A brief flurry of confused alarm thrills through the streets of St. Loomis in the early hours of the day, after one of the Greyleigh huntsmen makes a most unusual sighting on his way back from scouting for game in the Westwood: a real live honest-to-god giantkin, out in the garden of Greywood Keep! The huntsman didn't wait for the creature to make a lunge for him or start shooting its spines, but ran the whole way back to Greyleigh Manor shouting the alarm at the top of his lungs. Giantkin! Giantkin invasion!
.. Luckily this doesn't have time to spark into a full-blown panic, in part because Yorkin the hunter has always been known for some very wild stories, to the point where only several months ago he managed to make a very ordinary fox out to be a savage werewolf bent on the complete ravaging of Sleithdale. But also, because Quartermaster Grandin is quick to come forth with the announcement that yes, there is one single actual giantkin in residence at the Keep... and somehow, bizarrely, against all odds and expectation, it has managed to return the long-missing Mistwarden to them. Alive.
Though alarm may lessen, confusion only grows. How, why, when did this happen, who is this giantkin, where did it find the Mistwarden to be able to bring him back, and what, in the name of God and Kalen and all the saints, is going on with the world these days??