Once a month we’ll do a Random Monster Mashup! This could take many forms – maybe see what happens when the monsters fight or team up, think about what kinds of circumstances might result in this situation, and even, if we’re feeling really creative, think about what happens if we stick these two monsters in a teleporter together and hit “SEND.”

This month the Randomizer gave us an interesting combination indeed: Stone Giants and Hippogriffs. It’s a combination that makes me think of high, craggy mountains, lonely skies and bare rocks that lie under a vast, blue sky.

And under this sky are two very different creatures. Stone Giants are contemplative, artistic mountain-dwellers who think in terms of centuries and look for beauty where little beauty can be found. Hippogriffs, on the other hand, are temperamental half-horse/half-eagle monsters with a brain the size of a beat-up tennis ball and a genetic resistance to being tied down. You have the vast weight of mountains and the soaring freedom of the skies, together in one setting.

This contrast could allow for some excellent world-building in your campaign.

On a high mountaintop, far away from civilization, a Stone Giant has done something remarkable. He has not tamed the Hippogriffs who live there, really – he wouldn’t be so crass as to claim that – but he has reached a kind of kinship with them, as a falconer may do with their birds. It’s a partnership that covers a vast range of land, and between the Giant and their Hippogriffs, they are able to keep watch over the land they love so dearly.

But now, of course, someone has violated that peace. A necromancer, looking to build his tower of skulls. Dwarven miners who think they can extract ore from the bones of the mountains. An arrogant general who thinks that peace and solitude are merely names for places to strategize. These people are disrupting the careful equilibrium of the land far beyond the ability of either the Giant or their Hippogriffs to fix.

Which is why, of course, they call on your Players to help deal with it.

You could make them competitors as well. The Giants are building these huge art projects in the mountains, making sure their boulders are placed just so in order to catch the mountain sunlight as it peaks in midsummer. But these… flying things keep dropping deer carcasses all over their work, messing up the balance and the aesthetics. The Giants want the Hippogriffs gone so they can do their work properly.

As we all know, however, ecosystems don’t work that way. Wiping out a Hippogriff nest or two might solve the problem in the short-term, but it might also reveal problems that the Giants never expected. Perhaps there are some Aarakocra nearby who were unable to expand their territory, held back because they didn’t want to deal with these insane horse-eagles. Or Pteranodons that couldn’t quite conquer the skies with those Hippogriffs everywhere. But now they’re gone, and the Stone Giants are about to get a quick lesson in unintended consequences.

Or maybe the Hippogriffs have always depended on the Giants. For as long as anyone can remember, the Giants have protected the nests of these creatures, allowing them the space and the safety to raise their young, prosper, and send them out into the world.

But something has happened to the Giants. Your Players come across distressed Hippogriffs, desperately trying to gain entrance to an abandoned Stone Giant dwelling, terrified in the way any wild animal might be when it realizes that it’s no longer safe. Maybe they’ve all been tagged by the Giants as well. That one Player who optimistically picked Giantish as a language can finally figure out what the scenario is, and then perhaps can make a case that the Party has to find a way to help these poor, confused creatures.

But it could be that none of these are the case. Perhaps the Giants and the Hippogriffs are really too different to live together. But, amongst the Stone Giants your Players are visiting, there is one who envies these strange creatures. She watches the Hippogriffs soar in a way that she never will. She can tell you everything about the mountain she lives on, but nothing about the world beyond the range. And every day, she watches these bizarre creatures vanish over the horizon and her heart wants nothing more than to go where they go.

So she hires your Party. Not to kill the Hippogriffs – that would be sacrilege.

This Giant wants to fly. And she needs your Party to make that happen. What kind of arcane engineering will they have to find in order to allow a Stone Giant to soar through the heavens unencumbered? It’s not exactly a boilerplate adventure setup, but it could be a beautiful one. As they go on their mission – perhaps consulting wise transmuters or ancient Dwarven engineers – every NPC they talk to listens to their request and says, “But… but why?”

I mean, it’s a mad proposition, putting this huge person, weighing several tons, up into the air. But maybe that’s the point. This is a desire for a something new and impossible, something which only your Players can make happen. And imagine what it will be like when they succeed, and that Stone Giant finally finds herself somewhere new, somewhere none of her people thought they would be.

Whatever direction you take this Mashup, remember that the best contrasts aren’t really about conflict. They’re about longing – the mountain that wants to fly, the sky-creature that needs solid ground to nest on. Everyone’s missing something the other one has.