D&D 5E Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"

[Daern]

Alright! We are back in the saddle. Two weeks in a row. Both roleplay heavy sessions. Players are leery of taking on more than they can handle. 10th level mostly. Closing in on 11. They got the Maelstrom Horn (its a dragon horn in my game) from Queen Guh. I had to have an attendant goblin chase them down and tell them where it was. But the players were not so ready to attend the Maelstrom Court. A while back they had stolen a flying ship from a gang of dragon cultists. This ship was stolen back by its rightful owner while the group explored the Temple of Annam. But the players can't let it go. For one thing, it contains a massive horde of treasure and I have been gouging them terribly to buy potions and such. Also, players hate it when things are stolen.

 

[Greg Benage]

Continuing from #350...

Our heroes defeated Boss Hark and his minions, but they had to explore the rest of the Dripping Caves as the villagers were filing out. Four of them went through the Blob's cave, and then split into two groups (thematically appropriate...). The Blob follows the two PCs who are heading down the tunnel to the pool. Fortunately, the trailing character notices the Blob oozing up behind her. Unfortunately, she's a wizard so the Blob one-shots her anyway. The druid throws a healing word at her, she disengages, and they both retreat into the pool. The druid is better at this, being a water genasi.

The barbarian and the monk, who were exploring down the east-west tunnel, hear the commotion and come running back. Only one of them can get at the Blob in the narrow tunnel. The barbarian dashes up...and the Blob crits. For 50 points of damage. He was the only character who wouldn't have been killed outright, I believe.

They explore the tunnel leading north across the fissure, but only for about ten minutes. It leads somewhere. We'll return to it in a later post...

Anyway, they get the villagers back to Nightstone, where the drawbridge is up and maybe half a dozen orc heads are mounted on spikes. Xolkin lets them in and reports that they killed off half the orcs before they withdrew. The guards from the keep fought valiantly, but sadly none of them survived. There are four fresh graves in the graveyard...

Xolkin tells the heroes that "reinforcements" are on route from Daggerford, and he installs Daphne Featherstone as the new Lady. Daphne is genuinely heartbroken about the death of Lady Nandar, but yeah, she goes along with it. Problem is, says Xolkin, they captured one of the orcs and it seems there's a lot more of them.

So this is my first big addition to the published material. I'm solving two (perceived) problems: The leveling pace from 3 to 5 is way too fast, and the orc attack has nothing to do with anything. So I look around and I see there are Iceshield orcs at Grudd Haug. Okay, so the Ear Seekers are a clan of Iceshield orcs. I grab Scourge of the Sword Coast, which I know has several adventure locations in and around Ardeep Forest, and here's the ruins of Harpshield Castle infested with three "tribes" of orcs: Jagged Scythe, Gory Maul, and Fanged Moon. So those are now "clans" of the Iceshield tribe, too, along with the Ear Seekers. The captive gives up the location and a bit of information, and Xolkin hires the heroes to deal with the orc threat to "his town." (Granted, he paid them with money looted from the town and the keep, which the heroes never got to loot themselves because they split when the Snakes showed up.)

So the heroes head through Ardeep Forest toward the ruins of Harpshield Castle. They discover a camp occupied by the remnants of the Ear Seekers, and lure them into an ambush which is nonetheless a tough fight. They try to grab a rest, and I roll a natural 20 for random encounters, so a roving band of Jagged Scythe orcs show up looking for trouble. The heroes give it to them, but now they're desperate for a rest. We'll see what the dice have to say on Saturday.

One cool thing about Scourge of the Sword Coast: We're playing on Roll20 and the adventure locations feature Mike Schley maps. I popped them in and did the dynamic lighting, and everything fits together with SKT pretty seamlessly.

Next time I check in, we'll see how they deal with Harpshield and "The Pale Chief." There's good intel to be had in there about the Iceshield orcs and their larger allies, which will also tie all the orc-killing into the main storyline.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

So, I've changed a bunch of stuff in order for SKT to make any lick of sense. I have to list a few of those things in order to ask a question about how to go about things.

I took over DM'ing from someone else who ran the group I was playing in through Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Our group sided with Blagothkus and he came with us and we killed the white dragon and then pretty much all of the major dangers left in the sky castle. So I fast-forwarded things by saying that Blagothkus was now free to message his cloud-giant bros and tell them of the location of the summoning. A whole bunch of sky castles dropping rock bombs on the cultists stopped the ritual and they all went back to Parnast for a beer. My character stayed with Blagothkus because he was an aarakocra monk who loved the idea of these sky castles and wanted to learn more. The others left for Waterdeep and got their new mission: something was happening in Nightstone.

Anyway, my character had a nest brother in the party and that player changed to a different character. So I had it that his aarakocra character left suddenly and then reappeared at Nighstone with Zaphyros. He said that my character had contacted him by Sending Stone to inform him that Blagothkus had betrayed him and he was in trouble so that's why he left. They met with the Zhentarim, Felgolos came along and helped them out a bit and then on finding out about the Nightstone and it's purpose (I made it an artefact of Ostoria that was lost during the dragon/giant wars and could prevent dragons from being able to fly in a large radius on activation), Felgolos flew off after it. Blagothkus was the one who took it with him and wrecked the town.

Now, fast forward to going to Lyn Armaal. My old character was the one that was turned into simulacra and stuffed and mounted. They've also gone to the Eye and gotten the vengeance mission from Eigeron. And they also heard Felgolos screaming. They made a "deal" with Sansuri that she would use the conch to teleport them but she needed at least a day to contact the storm giants and warn them of their coming. She never intended to do that but she needed a ruse to get the PC's to cooperate and go to a room to be locked in for torture/questioning later. They also found out the it was Felgolos screaming and negotiated for his release, finding that Sansuri didn't know the location of the Eye of the All Father and that was valuable to her. She agreed to it and had them taken to Felgolos. But they also let slip that Eigeron's ghost was there. Blagothkus is replacing Cressaro as Sansuri's consort in Lyn Armaal. He heard them mention the Eye and Eigeron and so escorted them to Felgolos. There as an exchange and he was intimidated into agreeing to help them out to keep his secret (that he knew the location of the Eye and didn't tell Sansuri).

Unfortunately for everyone, Sansuri was invisible and listening in the entire time. Once the PC's were in with Felgolos and her aarakocra had entered in behind them and closed off the exit, she told Blagothkus that his treachery will be dealt with, ordered the simulacra to imprison the PC's, and slammed/locked the door on them.

A brutal battle later (I made the aarakocra into simulacra of MY 8th-level character, a monk, and 20 of them against 5 11th-level PC's, so... stun, stun, stun, stun, etc.) and two close calls, they finally defeated the birds and freed Felgolos. I've beefed up Felgolos a little bit by giving him more spells than the variant would normally allow (his 3e stats are insanely OP so I didn't go that far) and magic resistance and a bit more hit points. Enough to bump him up to 16 CR. He can regenerate his own wounds to full health and use heal on one PC. But the PCs are severely depleted even with that, having used a lot of their resources for that one battle.

They've put an immovable rod against the door so that will hold it... for awhile, but not long enough for a short rest.

So now my question: what would the logical next action be of Sansuri and Blagothkus after say, ten minutes had elapsed and her aarakocra hadn't reported back?

 

[Blake Parris]

Cool set up, I'll prbly add in blagothkuss to my campaign too. What did you do with his cloud castle? (I'm not running hoarde just skt but will put him in as an ally of imutyth, from before the ordering broke. Will probably have going after him as a side quest and have the dragon cultists be imuryths and have the white dragon be a blue relative of imuryth instead). Sansuri could send a number of giants to bang on it or gaseous form under a crack in the door? Or a few in conjunction could telekinesis the door open the other way? Also if you wanted to be sneaky she has a level 7 slot you could replace it with teleport and bamf in with some reinforcements.

 

[Daern]

Chaos in the Maelstrom Court!
We had guests so they played the storm giant sisters Mirran and Nym. It was awesome. They were way more evil than I could have made them. Imryth was unmasked but escaped without the sceptor. Mirran snatched it from the elf wizard who had used a Time Stop (!) scroll to snatch it from Imryth. Mirran then claimed the throne and packed Serissa off to the dungeon. She then told the party to scram, though not before they found a certain wooden coin with a goose on it they recognized from 10 months(RL) ago! (A player even drew the goose during the session way back then, so I handed that drawing back to the group. Still took a while to remember.)
Now the group is on the trail of Hekaton, wants to return to depose the vile queen and still is hoping to fight Klauth for their flying ship... good times.

 

[Greg Benage]

Continuing from #352...

My players surprised me! They found the grick burrow and went in through the dungeons below Harpshield Castle instead of launching their usual frontal assault. They found the orcs' treasure room. In the original Scourge of the Sword Coast, one of the items discovered was a map, described as such:

"In Orcish using Dwarven runes, territory on the map is marked as a “new domain” (it’s land to be given to the orcs after the Red Wizards come to power). The area includes all the land between the Ardeep Forest and the Forlorn Hills, including the House of Stone as a fortress. Bloodgate Keep is noted much like Harpshield is: it seems to be an important but unnamed site for future orc holdings."

So...now it's a map of the same region, roughly, but marked with Orcish and Giant runes. I'm playing on Roll20 and I've had most of the big regional map concealed -- the players just know a relatively narrow strip of the Sword Coast from Waterdeep down to Daggerford. Now I reveal a larger rectangular chunk corresponding to this map. It's clear that the Iceshield orcs have been promised new lands to the west and south of their traditional lands along the western edge of the High Forest. They're trying to seize strongpoints: That's why they're at Harpshield Castle, and it's why they were reconnoitering Ardeep Forest and attacked Nightstone.

The map also reveals Grudd Haug, identifying it (in Giant) as a hill giant steading. So it's now a "live" location the PCs can go check out whenever they feel like it. Most importantly, I've woven the random orc encounter into the larger storyline early on, all while adding some much-needed low-level content.

 

[robus]

Question on Slarkrathel...

This Kraken has a bunch of spells at its disposal, one of which is Teleport. So why on earth when the Morkoth is under attack does it take an hour to arrive?! (I know... for plot reasons).

I'm going to have the Kraken arrive the round after Tholtz Daggerdark is engaged in combat, but I'm not going to have the Kraken immediately start to destroy the ship - that seems ridiculous.

The Kraken will aid the ship's crew and only if it seems that all is lost will the Kraken resort to trying to wreck the ship and take Hekaton.

 

[Blake Parris]

I have a couple ideas about the kraken, I agree with a few of the people on this thread that having the kraken society and imuryth both as bad guys is a little off, but the kraken appearing seems like a fun plot device. I'm thinking of trying to find a way for imuryth to actually control the kraken(I'm thinking an ancient dragon relic, a giant magical spike/spear that she drives in to the krakens head, have it always crackle with electricity), maybe giving her limited telepathic abilities. It'd also be a potentially cool visual. Then have there be gossip among the dragon cultists that the party run into(like the ones on the airship) that lots of members of the kraken society have been joining imuryths faction of cultists. I'm also thinking of instead of an earth elemental influencing the stone giant thane, have it be imuryth through the magic stalactite(have it be the remains of a dead elemental that she is tapping Into) using her new kraken powers. That way I can throw in more references to her, maybe have her scream at the party in the stone giant cave(or have it turn into a stone dragon weaker, young blue dragon variant or something, version of her for an extra layer to that fight after the thane is killed). At the final battle with her at her lair, I could have her threaten to send the kraken to wipe out the party members home village if they don't spare her(a few of my party are from an island village so it makes sense). What do you guys think?

 

[robus]

I have a couple ideas about the kraken, I agree with a few of the people on this thread that having the kraken society and imuryth both as bad guys is a little off, but the kraken appearing seems like a fun plot device.

I'm combining Storm King's Thunder with Tyranny of Dragons so there is no Kraken society for me. The Kraken is an ancient foe of the storm giants (in my FR at least ) and so is in league with the Dragon cult simply because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I'm thinking of trying to find a way for imuryth to actually control the kraken(I'm thinking an ancient dragon relic, a giant magical spike/spear that she drives in to the krakens head, have it always crackle with electricity), maybe giving her limited telepathic abilities. It'd also be a potentially cool visual.

That does sound cool!

Then have there be gossip among the dragon cultists that the party run into(like the ones on the airship) that lots of members of the kraken society have been joining imuryths faction of cultists. I'm also thinking of instead of an earth elemental influencing the stone giant thane, have it be imuryth through the magic stalactite(have it be the remains of a dead elemental that she is tapping Into) using her new kraken powers. That way I can throw in more references to her, maybe have her scream at the party in the stone giant cave(or have it turn into a stone dragon weaker, young blue dragon variant or something, version of her for an extra layer to that fight after the thane is killed). At the final battle with her at her lair, I could have her threaten to send the kraken to wipe out the party members home village if they don't spare her(a few of my party are from an island village so it makes sense). What do you guys think?

Not sure I totally followed this last bit - but sure, it sounds like it will give the players some tough decisions to make!

 

[Daern]

I'm gonna have Hekaton strapped to a dragon turtle, floating in the sea near the purple rocks.
The characters have the golden goose token clue which they know will bring them back to the sorcerer Yau Ping. They still want to steal his bag of holding. I think the bag will hold a letter from Imryth with instructions on how the barbarians should feed the dragon turtle to keep it near their islands.