tardigrade
Explorer
WARNING: Spoilers for Storm King's Thunder below (I'm afraid I haven't worked out yet how to format spoilers on this forum; advice on this appreciated).
Iymrith's plan in SKT, as presented, is to trigger a war between the giants and the 'small folk', particularly the Lord's Alliance, thereby weakening both and removing two threats to herself and by extension chromatic dragonkind. Stage 1 (before the campaign begins) has been to remove King Hekaton and frame the humans (although the 'framing' part seems a little light).
It's not clear what stage 2 is - Iymrith is hanging around in Maelstrom to try to steer things a bit, but this seems like a ridiculously risky strategy given that the giants and the dragons are ancient nemeses (nemesises?), and at least one of the giant lords' strategies - Duke Zalto - is to rebuild a titanic construct with the express function of killing dragons. I think it was clarified at some point that this plan is doomed to fail, but if the fire giants don't know that (being experts in the area) I suspect Iymrith doesn't either. So even if Iymrith succeeds in starting a war, as far as she can know a secondary outcome will leave North/Sword Coast significantly riskier for dragons in general, and potentially her in particular, in the future.
Also, given that we're talking about FR, it seems that there would be a real risk of a god turning up and explaining what actually happened to Hekaton, even assuming that Slarkrethel doesn't double-cross Iymrith, and in either case Iymrith would be utterly stuffed. It sounds like Stage 1 has only worked so far because Annam thinks the giants need to sort this one out by themselves; I can only assume that if things start going terribly for the giants he might rethink this.
Does she not care - is this some sort of suicidal act of revenge over something - or is there some part of this plan that I've missed that leaves the dragons better off rather than just letting the world burn, dragons and all?
(edit) It sounds like most people have taken it this way anyway, but as well as the canon explanation I'm interested to hear your own workarounds/improvements.
Iymrith's plan in SKT, as presented, is to trigger a war between the giants and the 'small folk', particularly the Lord's Alliance, thereby weakening both and removing two threats to herself and by extension chromatic dragonkind. Stage 1 (before the campaign begins) has been to remove King Hekaton and frame the humans (although the 'framing' part seems a little light).
It's not clear what stage 2 is - Iymrith is hanging around in Maelstrom to try to steer things a bit, but this seems like a ridiculously risky strategy given that the giants and the dragons are ancient nemeses (nemesises?), and at least one of the giant lords' strategies - Duke Zalto - is to rebuild a titanic construct with the express function of killing dragons. I think it was clarified at some point that this plan is doomed to fail, but if the fire giants don't know that (being experts in the area) I suspect Iymrith doesn't either. So even if Iymrith succeeds in starting a war, as far as she can know a secondary outcome will leave North/Sword Coast significantly riskier for dragons in general, and potentially her in particular, in the future.
Also, given that we're talking about FR, it seems that there would be a real risk of a god turning up and explaining what actually happened to Hekaton, even assuming that Slarkrethel doesn't double-cross Iymrith, and in either case Iymrith would be utterly stuffed. It sounds like Stage 1 has only worked so far because Annam thinks the giants need to sort this one out by themselves; I can only assume that if things start going terribly for the giants he might rethink this.
Does she not care - is this some sort of suicidal act of revenge over something - or is there some part of this plan that I've missed that leaves the dragons better off rather than just letting the world burn, dragons and all?
(edit) It sounds like most people have taken it this way anyway, but as well as the canon explanation I'm interested to hear your own workarounds/improvements.
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