Just like the other sections of the campaign described in Part 2 and Part 3, the Hekaton investigation is ultimately organized around a revelation list, although it may be useful to think of it in separate parts.
SETTING THE STAGE
Even before the PCs get directly involved with the Kraken Society, you’ll almost certainly want to set the stage with some key revelations:
- Storm Court is no longer in charge of the other giants
- King Hekaton is Missing / Queen Neri is Missing
- Serissa is acting as Regent of the Storm Court
- Optional: Storm Giant Raids (if these are happening)
- Optional: Mirran and Nym are opposed to Serissa’s regency
Basically, you want the PCs to know that the storm giants are in a state of crisis and confusion — and, importantly, who King Hekaton and Queen Neri are — so that when the PCs start encountering Hekaton-related revelations while investigating the Kraken Society they’ll immediately recognize the significance of what they’ve found.
Several of the clues we set up in Part 3D can serve double duty here, but you’ll want to make sure these revelation lists are fully stocked. It probably wouldn’t hurt for some/all of these to be seeded fairly early in the campaign.
STRUCTURAL REVELATIONS: THE KRAKEN SOCIETY
The core structural revelations are the ones we’ve already discussed — e.g., point-crawl accessible nodes → Involved nodes → Purple Rocks → the Morkoth. These are the leads that will take the PCs through the various Kraken Society nodes. The exact breakdown of this revelation list will depend on the options you’ve chosen.
In addition to the standard revelation list (i.e., the leads pointing to a node from other nodes), I would also make a list of pointcrawl-acccessible nodes for easy reference. “Encountered on Pointcrawl” is, of course, a legitimate vector pointing to a node and can also be included on the node’s revelation list, satisfying one of the three clues for the Three Clue Rule.
You’ll also want to include any leads from the Three City hooks or faction missions pointing to Kraken Society nodes. It can be useful to sketch these out ahead of time, but keep in mind that you don’t need to fully flesh out the faction missions until you know which (if any) of the factions your group is getting involved with. If you want to do this systematically, include a Kraken Society lead in each of the Three Cities and for each of the factions.
Friendly factions can, of course, give the PCs direct leads to Kraken Society nodes as missions, but missions can also point to the Kraken Society indirectly — i.e., the PCs are given a mission to do X, which is unrelated to the Kraken Society, but doing so will tangentially bring them into contact with the Society. (An easy example of this is, “go do X, which is coincidentally in the same location as a pointcrawl-accessible Society node, thus triggering the Kraken Society encounter.”)
Along similar lines, even enemy factions can deliver Kraken Society leads: The PCs target the faction, and discover that faction’s Kraken Society-related intelligence (e.g., “Why are the Zhentarim so interested in the activities of Lord Drylund of Yartar?”).
CORE CONCEPT REVELATIONS: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?
In addition to just moving from one Kraken Society node to another, there are several key concepts that the PCs should be learning so that they can figure out what’s really going on:
- The Kraken Society kidnapped Hekaton.
- Hekaton is on the Morkoth.
- How to locate the Morkoth.
You’ll likely want to make sure that the clues for “the Kraken Society kidnapped Hekaton” are seeded into the entry point nodes for the Kraken Society: Learning this will give the PCs a very specific goal for continuing their investigation of the Society. Without establishing a goal like this, the only thing motivating the PCs to continue investigating the Society will be simple curiosity. This can work, but it tends to be less reliable and less compelling. (Of course, it’s also quite possible that the PCs — or perhaps their factions — will end up providing their own anti-Kraken Society motivators.)
THE IYMRITH CONSPIRACY
Strictly speaking, the PCs can probably end up rescuing King Hekaton from the Kraken Society without ever figuring out the deeper conspiracy involving Iymrith, Mirran, and Nym. But ideally they’ll figure out this deeper truth, so we should set up a revelation list:
- The Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court.
- The Kraken Society’s collaborator is Iymrith.
- Mirran & Nym are conspiring with Iymrith.
- Iymrith is actually a blue dragon.
- Optional: The location of Iymrith’s lair.
It’s likely a lot of clues on this list will be pulling double duty (i.e., a clue that indicates that Iymrith is conspiring with the Kraken Society AND that the Kraken Society know she’s really dragon). The clues in Part 3D, once again, include several more clues that are pulling double duty for these revelations. Also remember that clues pointing to these revelations can also be seeded into the Storm Court itself.
One structural note here is that any clue pointing to “the Kraken Society’s collaborator is Iymrith” will almost certainly also reveal that “that Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court,” but the latter is listed as a separate revelation because — while it’s not strictly necessary — it’s probably more effective to establish the mystery of “Who is the collaborator?!” before providing the clues that resolve the mystery.
In other words, you want three distinct clues for “Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court” that don’t overlap with “their collaborator is Iymrith,” and you’ll want to seed those clues into “earlier” nodes. (For example, maybe “there’s a collaborator” clues can be found in the pointcrawl-accessible nodes, but “it’s Iymrith” clues can only be found in nodes that can only be reached by investigating the pointcrawl-accessible nodes.)
Since node-based scenarios are, obviously, nonlinear, it’s still quite possible that the PCs will learn Iymrith is the collaborator at the same time they learn there IS a collaborator. They might also learn, from other vectors, that Mirran, Nym, and Iymrith are all collaborating together before they learn that they’re working for the Kraken Society and/or are involved in Hekaton’s disappearance! That’s just fine. Our goal isn’t to lock things down. We’re just seeding our clues in the most effective way possible.
The final thing to consider here is designing a proactive node for Iymrith and/or the sisters. In other words, if/when Iymrith learns of the PCs’ efforts, what action might she take to oppose them? Some or all of them might choose intervene directly. Or, alternatively, send agents who can be tracked back to them. In addition to being a fun encounter, this is obviously also a perfect opportunity to include some Iymrith Conspiracy clues.
