Mountaintops Of The Giants

The mountaintops is where Marika and Godfrey fought the Giants, and subsequently made the lands forbidden. As such, when the Tarnished arrives, the region is in an almost unchanged state and provides a great window to the past. There are two details that seem contradictory at first. We use the Grand Lift of Rold to reach the mountaintops - a mark of high levels of investment in order to make the journey more pragmatic. But, we must then cross a very dangerous, and seemingly improvised bridge to reach the main landmass. Now, perhaps the lift was only made to help Marika’s large armies, and they were then under attack when building the bridge and thus couldn’t manage anything more substantial. But, it may instead indicate a time in history that is hidden from our view. A time where those of the capital, and those of the mountaintops, were not officially enemies. A time, perhaps, where Marika would have been able to safely reach the trolls and persuade them to side with her. Indeed, this region again features some of the enormous skeletons.

So, like Caelid, could this imply some damage to the earth to uproot these long buried ancient beings? Perhaps the war against the Giants was so brutal, that the region itself suffered a large degree of damage, and the landscape was broken and stripped away. This would explain why there is no longer a well-established path to lead to the mountaintops, and thus, perhaps the Grand Lift instead hints to the time before the war. After all, we know that the Astrologers and Giants lived peacefully as neighbors at some point. Most of what we see in the region is the wake of war. Ramparts, forts, graveyards, and dead Giants. On first glance these Giants seem afflicted with death blight but in fact this appears to be weapons that utilize Briars of Sin, just like those outside the Guardians’ Garrison. But, if we look at the land itself, it may speak of the time that came before the war, such as with the frozen river and lake. We can see there must be a water source in the eastern side of the map that forms the lake. The river then runs westwards, falling down into the consecrated snowfields until it makes its way to the ocean. Running water can freeze, even a waterfall can freeze. Over long periods of time one should still see slight movement, so a waterfall would be present whether frozen or not. Given the power of the Giants' God was fire-based, and is represented as a Sun, it is likely that the time of the Fire Giants featured a much warmer climate, and that the lake and river was not originally frozen. The name, Freezing Lake, could be a use of the present continuous - it is still freezing and thus implies it only begun the process relatively recently. Though this is not necessarily what the name means.

The name Castle Sol, which likely functioned as a fort for Marika’s army during the war, implies it was warmer even then, or at least that the region featured a more prominent sun, and thus the new climate is most likely a consequence of the defeat of the Giants. Now, if this region was at some point warmer, it must have been a more plentiful location than we’d at first have thought, and there are the odd hints of this. Rimed Rowa are “thought to be the original strain of Rowa”, and are the most powerful of the Rowa subspecies for healing Torrent. The Giants were established enough to be able to make technological advancements, as, perhaps with the Forge, the “art of smithing is said to have originated among the Giants”. This is also the fourth location where we see the huge, arched stone architecture and there are more here than anywhere else, that may suggest a more built up area. Though it could just be that elsewhere has suffered more damage in the times since. And as if to draw comparison to the plentiful times of old, it is here that the only other broken Minor Erdtrees are found. This time in a region that has seen little activity since the War with the Giants, which certainly suggests the extremity of the Mountaintops, especially when compared to even Caelid, where the Minor Erdtrees stand tall.