In addition to the Three Cities attacks in Phase 2 of Storm King’s Thunder, the pointcrawl in Phase 3 of the campaign is filled with a plethora of giant attacks, raids, and other activity. The map above shows the locations of these encounters, color coded by the giant faction involved.
- Cloud Giants: Yellow
- Fire Giants: Red
- Frost Giants: Blue
- Hill Giants: Orange
- Stone Giants: Green
Unlike the other giant factions, the Storm Giants of Maelstrom do not have keyed encounters and, therefore, do not appear on this map. (However, see Part 4C of the remix for suggestions of how such raids and other activity could be added to the campaign.)
The map below uses the locations of the giant encounters to roughly map out spheres of influence for the various giant factions:
The areas indicated are, of course, just rough approximations, but they should prove useful when generating random giant encounters and the like. The intersection between the hill giants, fire giants, and cloud giants in the Evermoors and Dessarin Valley also immediately leaps out as potentially significant, suggesting a dynamic and unstable situation which could easily evolve over time in your campaign. (Or, perhaps, be taken advantage of by your PCs.)
A few more quick notes:
Shining White. The storm giants encountered here (SKT, p. 107) are not explicitly associated with Deadstone Cleft. I’ve included the encounter here for completeness, but (a) given how far Shining White is from any another stone giant activity and (b) the fact that there’s no coherent reason for Deadstone Cleft giants to be here, it’s probably safe to assume that these are unrelated stone giants.
You might actually consider swapping these stone giants out with cloud giants from Lyn Armaal (seeking the cache of dragon magic) or fire giants from Ironslag (who might believe a fragment of the Vonindrod is located here).
Fire Giants. Duke Zalto has sent out a number of farflung expeditions for various purposes, most notably seeking the pieces of the Vonindrod. For the purposes of mapping out their area of influence, I’ve chosen to not include their drow agents in Gauntlgrym, but you could just as easily conclude that the fire giants encountered in Triboar, Stone Bridge, and even those passing through Mornbryn’s Shield on the western side of the Evermoors are similarly small expeditions and not indicative of wider activity.
However, it’s probably more interesting for Duke Zalto to actually be pushing an expansion in this direction. (Particularly because, as noted, it brings him into conflict with Lyn Armaal and Grudd Haug.)
Cloud Giants. There are a large number of cloud giant encounters in Storm King’s Thunder which are NOT associated with Lyn Armaal. This includes the cloud giants who attack Nightstone at the beginning of the campaign (p. 20), as well as Zephyros (p. 32), Count Nimbolo’s cartographers in Waterdeep (p. 113), and the cloud giant youths in Secomber (p. 107). These encounters are not shown on the map.
In fact, unlike the other giant factions, there are no encounters associated with the cloud giants of Lyn Armaal or Sansuri’s schemes. Since Sansuri is not actively preying on the countryside, this might potentially make her a more natural ally for the endgame of the campaign (see Part 5 of the remix)… except for the whole “torturing good dragons” thing.
Remember that Lyn Armaal’s location above the Evermoors, although it’s “default” position (SKT, p. 187), can easily change. It is, after all, a flying fortress.
Additional versions and high-resolution copies of these maps, as well as a layered Photoshop file you can use to customize your own, are available to Patrons of the Alexandrian.
