Kir, Alliah, and Phnee, look away now.

Long story short, last session my party was listening around to the local chatter in a tavern and the overheard an offhand comment about there having been stone giants coming down out of the mountain and wandering the countryside around the next town they were headed to. They decided they wanted to investigate this odd occurrence, since they are going to be headed up the mountains anyway, but I am not coming up with any ideas I am happy with as to why the giants have been coming down.

For context, the party is going to be headed up the mountains in search of a sage they had been told was somewhere in the mountain range. My original plan was for the giants to be a minor obstacle on the way to the sage, but not a story based encounter until after they met with the sage, as one of the antagonists is going to start killing the roaming giants and raising them as undead to use as guards.

I've had one person suggest a dragon setting up shop in the giant's home territory and the giants getting driven out, but dragons are incredibly rare in this world and there are dragon arcs planned for the relatively near future already, so I'm on the fence about using one now as well.