Many of the concept revelations in Storm King’s Thunder have been moved to the Hekaton is Missing! mystery (which will be handled in Part 4), but for the revelations which remain we’ll do the same thing we’ve done with the other revelations – flesh them out with additional clues to make them as robust as possible.
THE ORDNING HAS BEEN DISSOLVED
- Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Kayalithica is conspiring with Iymrith. (She does not know that Iymrith is a dragon.) Iymrith’s latest letter scolds Kayalithica, saying that she is “as impatient as the sisters. Serissa’s reign will end soon enough, but we must not move too quickly. Let her failures continue to mount and her support will continue to wither away. Then the legacy of Hekaton will be undone completely, and the storm lords will be lost in chaos while the fate of the new Ordning is decided.”
- Ironslag – Area 26: Ducal Quarters. Zalto has correspondence from Countess Sansuri, the Lady of Masks, suggesting/asserting that, with the Ordning broken and the dominion of the Storm Giants at an end, Zalto should swear fealty to her and they could rise together to the top of the new Ordning. (The suggestion has enraged Zalto.) There are also reports from Zalto’s spies, who report that Lyn Armaal seems to have taken up a semi-permanent station above the Evermoors while the cloud giants are searching for something. (Or possibly multiple things.)
- Svardborg – Area 1G: Throne Room. Jarl Storvald has correspondence from Kayalithica, in which she proposes, with the Ordning dissolved, an alliance between them — one in which her giants will “tear apart all that the little ones have built, restoring Ostoria to its glory” under her rule, while Storvald’s reavers will “rule the seas.” Her letter notes that she has traveled to consult the oracles of Deadstone Cleft in the Graypeak Mountains, and it has suggested that the All-Father and fortune alike would smile on such an alliance.
- Questioning Giants. Hypothetically, you could talk to almost any giant in the campaign and they’d be able to explain that the Ordning has been dissolved. (This includes Harshnag, p. 118.)
- Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. If the PCs ask why the giants are rattling sabers, the oracle will tell them the Ordning has been dissolved.
YOU NEED A CONCH TO REACH MAELSTROM
- Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. The oracle tells you.
- Ironslag – Brimskarda. In her bodice, Brimskarda has a letter sent to her by Serissa. It appears that Serissa and Brimskarda were once drinking buddies when they were younger; apparently conspiring as friends during various diplomatic summits that their fathers attended. Serissa calls upon these old bonds, hoping that Brimskarda will intercede with Duke Zalto and convince him to honor the fire giants’ contracts for supplying the storm giants with weapons. “Use the conch,” she urges, “And come visit us at Maelstrom. It shall be like old times again.” Brimskarda has not shown the letter to Zalto.
- Lyn Armaal – Area 14: Castellan’s Quarters. Among Cressaro’s papers is a request from the Lady of Masks to a prepare a plan for using the conch of teleportation to infiltrate Maelstrom. (Cressaro has not yet had time to work on this.)
- Svardborg – Nilraun. The jarl has had Nilraun using experimental techniques to use the conch of teleportation to cast scrying and clairvoyance spells into Maelstrom. He has discovered that Iymrith is a blue dragon, but has not revealed that information to the jarl.
- Conch Experimentation. It’s quite possible for the PCs to simply loot a conch, activate it, and end up in Maelstrom.
Note: Another set of “missing” concept revelations in Storm King’s Thunder would be those revealing what the various giant factions are actually trying to accomplish. Questioning various giants is, once again, one way to get this knowledge, but consider supplementing this with written reports, correspondence, and the like. (Both within the giant lairs, but also — and, in my opinion, more importantly — before the PCs get there.)
On the conch, one thing I did in my campaign was to make it so that each conch only teleported one giant sized creature, or a fewer number of medium sized creatures.
My thinking was that it might give an incentive to go after more than one conch, and therefore explore multiple giant lairs but also it was security measure to make sure a rival giant lord didn’t teleport an entire army into the Maelstrom.
@Brian W
That is brilliant. I’m definitely going to use that for my upcoming campaign. I’ve been trying to figure out how I might encourage the party to visit more than just one giant lair. My initial though was to remove the conches and instead have a macguffin that was broken into pieces (one piece at each lair) but then I couldn’t solve the problem of how the giant lords get to Maelstrom themselves.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience!
@Brian W, I had each conch have a trio of crystals embedded in it. When a small folk blows it, only 1 of the three light up. Need all three crystals lit to activate the teleport.
I simply modded the adventure that while the Storm King was required to provide the other Giant Lords a way of coming to him without his invite, he didn’t have to make it easy. So he made a magical horn, smashed it, and gave each shard to a different Giant faction. ‘You can appear on my doorstep when you all agree.”
So, the characters HAVE to seek out ALL of the fragments.
And I thought the Cloud Giant one was particularly ill-designed as a ‘dungeon crawl’ so Sansuri instead was almost amused by humans wanting to meddle in Giant politics, and agreed to simply give them the shard they wanted … as long as they would resolve a vexing, and potentially threatening (to Giantkind) puzzle about a growing human faction that seemed to have something to do with dragons and dragon worship. Would they be dears for her and figure out who was behind such a thing (and implicitly: ‘deal with’ them)? Cloud giants have trouble surreptitiously spying on human mobs. This basically compelled the players to complete Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat to ‘complete’ her request. 🙂
Oh, and I converted them all to Runequest and edited persons, factions, mobs, and setting all to better fit with Glorantha. 🙂 Much more fun.