I believe that the Kraken Society first appears in The Savage Frontier (1988) by Jennell Jaquays, where they are described as the Thieves’ Guild of the North and connected to the Kraken of the Purple Rocks. They came to a particular prominence with their appearances in two SSI AD&D computer games — Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Treasures of the Savage Frontier (which I haven’t played).
Much of the material from The Savage Frontier was incorporated and expanded into The North, a 1996 boxed set. This more or less forms the foundation of the Kraken Society, but it received its most expansive treatment in Cloak & Dagger (2000), one of the very last AD&D books ever written. (This book appears to draw on continuity developed by Elaine Cunningham in several tie-in novels, but I haven’t read those, either.)
The 3rd Edition supplement Lords of Darkness (2001) also had a full write-up of the Kraken Society, but it was basically just an abbreviation of the material from Cloak & Dagger.
The Kraken Society didn’t appear in 4th Edition, as far as I can tell.
Purple Rocks, but not the Kraken Society, next appear in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015).
Finally, I’ve drawn material from both Princes of the Apocalypse (2015) and Storm King’s Thunder (2016) to flesh out into the Society’s current activities in Yartar. Background details unrelated to the Kraken Society were drawn from Shawn Merwin’s “Backdrop: Moonshae Isles” article in Dungeon #196 (which, as far as I know, remains the only definitive treatment of Moonshae in the 15th century).
My goal with this project was to advance the Kraken Society into the 15th century and provide a definitive reference for it. This meant:
- Advancing the Society’s timeline. I didn’t want the organization to have simply been stuck in a form of stasis between the 1380’s and the 1490’s.
- Resolving the various continuity discrepancies between the official sources. Some of this could simply be swept under the rug (it happened a hundred years ago, so there’s no reason to worry about the details). The rest was primarily a matter of creating Slarkethrel’s myriad mystery cults and then diegetically seeding the contradictory continuity into the game world. There are many “truths” of Slarkethrel… and that’s just the way it likes it.
- Expanding and detailing the Society.
The final point took many forms. Too many to catalogue, frankly. (If you’re curious, however, you can compare the material here to that found in Cloak & Dagger and the 5E adventure books to easily identify it.) But, for example:
- Ascarlian satrapies did not previously exist.
- The Assassins of the Purple Veil are new.
- Society operations in Neverwinter, Thornhold, Caer Westphal, and Luskan had not been previously detailed.
- Concepts like low tide, high tide, and bucklings — along with other cultural aspects and slang of the tentacles of the deep — are original creations.
And so forth.
I’ve done textual histories of the Forgotten Realms in the past (Zariel, Elturel, Trade Way, Arveiturace) which only seek to provide a gestalt summary of existing Realms lore. But the primary goal of this piece was to creatively expand the Kraken Society (and Slarkethrel’s domain in general).
Thank you for this work! One of my Players just finished the SideTrek in Princes of the Apocalypse and got caught by Ghald and I was not finding any information on the society to assess if they would just kill him to get rid of loose ends (as the book only mentions them wanting the orb, but not to what end) or question or try and recruit him…maybe if he can hide being a Harper he might yet survive!