Anteprecedence stood in the Wonder.

Here he saw the dreams of those children of Summit and Sublime - the worlds of what could have been.

He saw them pale, and fade. From detailed plans to flimsy whimsy all began to ebb into oblivion; their sources severed.

And he wept.

Such potential, such beauty, so many lives.

All fading into nothing.

Squandered by the acts of another Elder Being.

Dragged into the darkness.

Here, the tears rolled from bright eyes.

Anteprecedence let them fall. His body wreathed in insubstance - his own past being unwritten by the laws of the Covenant.

He brought up a hand to wipe away the moisture from his face, and found the cold touch of marble-bone upon his skin. The water dripping red from his finger tips.

And with it, the Wonder swam, as the thousands of visions blurred, and swirled into a singular defined image.

The faces of his Kin formed, and distorted. Flickering from unborn child to stolen giant.

Anteprecedence's own desires manifest.

The Oracle of Opus saw this fate. She saw a great many fates and their collapse - the extinction of her people. She could see what would be: those deaths yet to come alone, afraid, and in the dark. She would see parents mourn their children, starved, and malnourished. She would see Covenant broken.

And it shook her to her core.

The Covenant, that divine alliance of her creators, of the Guardians and Custodians of all Time, would not, by the Oracles own hand, be allowed to be broken.

It could not: such things were unthinkable, even for a Covenanturge like herself.

She could not allow it.

The largest of journeys began with a single action, for her, a single instruction.

Those faces she recognised from amongst the pre-eminently deceased, were banished from the Covenantiants. Exiled like honoured firstborns they would begin their quests to survive. To graze and scrump amongst the forest woodlands. To hike and overrun those mountain lands. To discover and reveal the great surface ocean.

And so they ventured - for many generations the Oracles of Opus would direct Giant and Child alike to these southern lands. To stand isolated, but united before the inevitability of their death.

In the Forests the Giant Families would grow fat, and large. Dozens of children would be at hand to serve each parent, before being served to them - those exileborn not welcome to return to their plateau homeland. In their wake, the forests would bloom with soft-fruit, preferred treat of their new inhabitants.

On the vaunted slopes of the treacherous hills, it was the cold wind whipping, and endless gradients that would betray a cultural reminiscence for homeland unwelcoming to them. In sheltered crevice, and against hanging walls, the Giants would huddle in their families; for all the mountains perils and threat, it was home.

Amongst them all, the exiled plateauborn would find their kin accommodating. The lure of their increasingly foreign kin would jeopardise the return of at least one Prodigal Child whose new family is more than welcoming. That migration was not unidirectional. The familial bands of exileborn would find themselves pressed into installing their partners into their plateauborn domains.

[M: Command Species (Expand) - 8]

Map of the expanded Giant Presence.