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To clearly see how the PCs can rescue Hekaton, we need a few key insights.

First, finding Hekaton is not the end of the campaign. For the reasons we’ve previously discussed, and which we’ll take an in-depth look at in Part 5, Hekaton’s disappearance is not the reason the Ordning is broken, nor will returning him to power restore the Ordning. Therefore, saving Hekaton will not end the campaign.

Importantly, this also means that solving Hekaton’s disappearance doesn’t need to be positioned as the end of the campaign: We don’t need to stop the PCs from “prematurely” solving the mystery and ending the campaign early, which will conveniently make it much easier for us to design a robust scenario for solving it.

So if we shouldn’t think of this as the end of the campaign, how should we think about it? Basically, on par with the other giant factions. “Solving the problem of the storm giants” will likely require a different solution than “solving the problem of the hill giants,” but it slots into the same “there’s something wrong with the giants and it needs to be fixed” structure.

Second, the PCs are not assigned to find Hekaton. Or, at least, they don’t need to be. Maybe they journey to Maelstrom, find a way to befriend Serissa, and she asks of them a boon to prove that not all small-folk are treacherous. Or maybe they’ll end up working for a faction and you could have them order the PCs to rescue Hekaton.

It’s more likely, however, that the PCs will simply discover that Hekaton is missing and then decide to deal with that situation themselves. Or they’ll report it to someone and the response is for that person or faction to ask them to look into it further. Either way, the impetus of action is flowing from the players.

Third, it’s the investigation of the Kraken Society that reveals the plot to kidnap Hekaton, rather than an investigation into Hekaton’s disappearance that reveals the Society. This will probably make more sense as we dive into the specific structure of the remixed investigation, but the key insight is that if the storm giants had been able to find any good leads at the crime scene, then they would already be pursuing those leads, not sitting around for months until a random group of small-folk showed up at their doorstep.

Therefore, logically, if you start from, “Hekaton is missing! How do we find him?” there aren’t any good leads.

The reason the PCs can be the ones to solve this is because, structurally, they approach the problem from a completely different direction.

THE BASIC PLAN

The Kraken Society addendum of the Remix provides a full breakdown of the organization. We’re going to break that organization into separate nodes, and then we’re going to classify those nodes as being either Involved (in the Hekaton conspiracy), Uninvolved, or Distant (and, therefore, unlikely to be encountered by the PCs).

INVOLVED

• Waterdeep – Skum Lord
• Neverwinter – Reefkin
• Yartar – Lord Drylund

UNINVOLVED

• Luskan
• Thornhold
• Dessarin Valley – Ghald & Unferth

DISTANT

• Caer Westphal (in the Moonshae Isles)
• Purple Rocks
• Ascarle

For the moment, let’s discard the Distant nodes. The remaining nodes, whether Involved or Uninvolved, can all be encountered by the PCs during the Phase 3 pointcrawl. Any one of these, when encountered, therefore becomes the PCs’ entry point into the Kraken Society investigation.

In each Uninvolved node, include clues pointing to:

• One or more Involved nodes.
• One or more Uninvolved nodes.

In each Involved node, include clues pointing to:

• Optional: One or more Uninvolved nodes.
• The other two Involved nodes.
• The Morkoth and how the PCs can locate it. (See below.)

And we’re done. The PCs can encounter one or more Kraken Society nodes while traveling across the Sword Coast and/or Savage Frontier, then follow the clues they find until they reach Hekaton. (Potentially unraveling krakenar operations as they go.)

THE LUSKAN AGENDA

To include Luskan on the list of Kraken Society nodes above, we’re presuming that there’s some fresh operation afoot there to reestablish the Society’s presence in the City of Sails.

It’s possible that this operation was under the command of Tholtz Daggerdark (SKT, p. 221), who we might characterize as a member of the Arcane Brotherhood. Daggerdark is now the captain of the Morkoth… perhaps the ship was built in the shipyards of Luskan? And the Kraken Society’s current scheme might have something to do with those shipyards, too?

FINDING THE MORKOTH

The basic concept here is that the Morkoth is sailing aimlessly through the Trackless Sea in the vicinity of the Purple Rocks, loaded up with wards that will prevent divination spells from revealing its location or the location of anyone or anything onboard.

This scenario is fundamentally sound, but it obviously means that the PCs need to (a) learn that Hekaton is onboard the Morkoth and (b) figure how to actually locate the Morkoth.

In the book, there’s one method for doing this: Drylund tells the PCs that the Morkoth is in the Trackless Sea and then the PCs just sail around randomly hoping they bump into it.

This option is not particularly compelling, and since it feels pretty hopeless unless you know that The Plot™ is going to deliver you to the ship, you may end up in a situation where the players just won’t go to the Trackless Sea because they’ll be convinced they need more information before they can succeed.

With that being said, keeping “we know the ship is somewhere in the Trackless Sea, so let’s just sail around and see if we can spot it” as a backstop option isn’t a bad idea. Fortunately, there are also some other options we could use:

• The PCs discover navigational charts indicating where the Morkoth will be so that they can intercept it. The most logical reason for these charts existing is that someone in the Kraken Society has a reason for periodically intercepting the Morkoth; e.g., to deliver fresh supplies.
• Alternatively, the PCs discover a beacon designed specifically to pierce the wards around the Morkoth and allow a ship to find it. (Probably for similar reasons to the navigational charts. Or perhaps the ritual which wards the Morkoth even from divine eyes actually requires the creation of the item as a lynchpin for the spell.)
• The PCs access the kraken’s lighthouse. This powerful psionic artifact is attuned to kraken’s compasses, which are carried by ships and undersea agents loyal to Slarkethrel. The system allows for hyper-accurate navigation, but also allows those in control of the lighthouse to keep an eye on everyone using the system. The Morkoth is using a kraken’s compass to avoid other ships in the region, and it’s a key weakness in its wards.
• There’s a permanent teleportation circle onboard the Morkoth. If the PCs can learn the sigil sequence for this circle, they can teleport straight to the ship.

You can pick whichever one of these sounds most compelling to you, and have the clues in the Involved nodes point to it.

Alternatively, they could ALL be true, with each Involved node having one of them as an option. There is a point, though, where a superfluity of options will make the Kraken Society feel childishly incompetent in their efforts to secure the Morkoth, which will also cheapen the players’ sense of accomplishing in conquering it.

So what I would recommend is picking the one you like best, putting it at Purple Rocks (so that the PCs have to go into the heart of the creepy krakenar cult), and then putting clues in all of the Involved nodes pointing to Purple Rocks.

With this done, you’ll have woven all of the Kraken Society nodes together, collectively pointed them through the Three Clue Rule at the Morkoth, and created multiple entry points the PCs can use to enter this knot of nodes and begin exploring them.

You’re good to go.

Go to Part 4C: Expanding the Path

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36B: The Madness of Mahdoth

But this time their conversation returned to the strange, obsidian box that Ranthir had found in his rooms upon awaking for the first time at the Ghostly Minstrel.

“I really want to know what’s in there,” Tee said.

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

In Night of Dissolution, the published adventure mini-campaign by Monte Cook that I’m using for part of In the Shadow of the Spire, everything kicks off when the PCs fight a couple ogres and end up with a treasure chest they can’t open. Due to some strong warding, they’re meant to conclude that the only way to open the chest is by obtaining Neveran’s all-key, a powerful magical device that (a) can open any door and (b) was last seen in Pythoness House.

This hooks the PCs and send them to Pythoness House, where they eventually obtain the all-key and open the chest (which contains some miscellaneous magic items).

For a published scenario, this is a pretty good scenario hook. But published scenarios, of course, are extremely limited in the types of scenario hooks they can use: The writer doesn’t know who your PCs are and they don’t know what’s going on in your campaign, so they can obviously only present broad, generic hooks.

(I talk about this more in my video on Better Scenario Hooks.)

In the case of this specific hook, it means that:

• The ogres are basically just a random encounter.
• The hook to the all-key is a little weak. (The PCs are just supposed to make a Knowledge check to remember that the all-key exists and that it might help them.)
• The stuff inside the chest are just generic magic items.

The all-key itself is, notably, also just a McGuffin: Its function is to get the PCs to Pythoness House, where they’ll start getting wrapped up in the lore and machinations of the chaos cults that will drive the rest of Night of Dissolution, but it remains largely irrelevant to any of those events (except insofar as the PCs might make use of it, of course).

A generic hook like this in a published adventure isn’t really a flaw. (It’s not as if Monte Cook can magically divine what will be happening in your campaign.) But, as a GM, you should definitely view them as an opportunity.

And what makes the hook from Night of Dissolution pretty good, as I mentioned, is that Cook has seeded it with a bunch of juicy elements that you can easily leverage.

• The ogres carrying the chest: Where did they get it? Who are they delivering it to? Where do the PCs encounter them, exactly?
• Of course, the ogres aren’t required: A chest that cannot be opened. You could find that almost anywhere.
• And what’s in the chest? You can swap out the generic magic items for almost anything that the PCs might want or need.

Think about whatever campaign you’re running right now (whether it’s a D&D campaign or not): What could you put into a box the PCs can’t open that would be vitally important to them? Or, alternatively, who could the box belong to that would make finding it feel likely a completely natural and organic part of your game?

In my case, I knew that I was going to use Night of Dissolution as part of Act II in my campaign even before the campaign began. (We’ve previously discussed how the triggers for Act II were set up.) This meant that I could not only weave the box and all-key into the ongoing events of the campaign, I could also weave it into the PCs’ backgrounds during character creation.

In this case, this just meant that the PCs started the campaign with the box they couldn’t open, presenting an immediate enigma that was tied into the larger mystery of their amnesia.

The contents of the box were, of course, further keyed to that mystery and are, in fact, laying the groundwork for triggers much later in the campaign, too. (No spoilers here! You’ll just have to wait and find out like my players!)

The other thing I wanted to work on was the link from “box you can’t open” to the all-key: A simple skill check felt unsatisfying, and hoping that a player would spontaneously think, “Hey! Let’s do some research into magic items that could help us open this box!” wasn’t exactly reliable.

But I could make it reliable by just scripting it into their amnesia: During their period of lost time, they had done exactly that research, found the answer, and then hired Shim to locate the all-key, setting in motion the chain of events that would have Shim unexpectedly arrive and deliver the information to them.

(It was also possible, of course, that they actually could think to do research and ironically retrace the steps I had scripted for their former selves: That might have led to Pythoness House by a completely different path. Or it might have led them straight back to Shim again. Either way… mission accomplished!)

And that’s all it really took to take a generic McGuffin and integrate deeply into the fabric of the campaign.

Campaign Journal: Session 36C – Running the Campaign: Group Chemistry
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 36B: THE MADNESS OF MAHDOTH

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Leaving Castle Shard, they headed down into South Market. There they found Mahdoth’s Asylum – a small, rather nondescript building on Childseye Street.

They were greeted in the small, rather dingy offices of the asylum by a plain-faced, brown-haired man who introduced himself as Danneth Sonnell.

“Ah… I believe you sent me a letter, sir,” Ranthir said with a slight smile.

“And you are, sir?”

“Master Ranthir.”

“Ah, of course. Yes. I am glad that you have come.”

Danneth led them down a back stair into a basement of remarkable size. Not only its scope, but the stonework of its construction was quite out of keeping with the plain wooden construction above. (It had almost certainly been repurposed from some older structure.) They were taken through several rooms and then into a long hall lined with iron-doored cells.

Halfway down this hall a figure suddenly threw himself against the bars of the nearest door: “Please! Get them out of here! Get them out! They’re driving me mad!”

Danneth quickly crossed to the door and shut the outer shutter, but not before they had recognized the prisoner as the dwarf who had been summoning fell creatures during Tavan Zith’s escapade through Oldtown.

At the end of the hall they turned into another, similarly lined with cells. Danneth led them to one of the doors along this hall, removed a large ring of keys from his belt, and unlocked it.

“What exactly do you want us to do?” Tee asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” Danneth said. “When he is not asking for Master Ranthir he simply raves.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tabaen Farsong, an elf of House Erthuo.”

They exchanged glances and shrugs. None of them recognized the name.

Danneth opened the door. Crouched against the far side of the cell, feebly pawing at the wall and murmuring inarticulately under his breath, was a scrawny figure dressed in shabby clothes. As the inmate looked up they saw that it was another of Tavan Zith’s victims: The elf who had been driven mad during the ordeal.

Tabaen’s eyes seemed drawn to Ranthir’s, locking his gaze upon the mage. He said in a desperate, sibilant whisper: “A key. A noble key. You know the door. The key is the hand which will open the door. You have to get it. You have to get in to keep them out. A key which is a hand and a staff which is a knife. Many dangers. So many evils!”

The words poured out of his mouth, but as soon as they were done the elf’s eyes emptied of thought and he sank back against the wall.

Danneth rushed to his side and quickly examined him. “There’s no response.”

“He’s comatose?” Dominic asked.

Danneth nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Ranthir said, sincerely abashed.

Danneth shook his head. “I don’t know. This might be for the best. At least his mind is at rest.”

“They’re here master!”

The sudden cry had come from the far end of the hall. Looking that way they saw a dark-haired halfling peering around the corner.

There was a moment of puzzlement and then, floating into view from around the corner, came a beholder.

“What’s happening here?” The beholder’s voice was gruff and impatient. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“We were summoned,” Tee said brashly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Mahdoth. This is my asylum. You are not welcome here.”

Danneth emerged from the cell.

“Master, I—“

“I told you that there were to be no visitors here.”

Danneth fell silent.

Mahdoth turned to the rest of them. “Leave. Now.”

Tee walked up to him. “You’re being very rude. We were asked to be here.”

Mahdoth glowered down at her with his large eye. “Danneth should not have brought you here.”

“That’s between you and him.”

“Zairic, show them out.”

The obsequious halfling scuttled forward and escorted them out of the complex. As they walked down the street away from Mahdoth’s, they chatted briefly about the encounter.

“Do you think he was hiding something?” Ranthir asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Tee said. “On one of his eye-stalks he was wearing a bone ring.”

THE ALL-KEY AND THE CODEX

When they returned to the mansion on Nibeck Street, they found Elestra waiting for them. they ran through the now familiar checklist of unanswered questions and tasks left uncompleted. But this time their conversation returned to the strange, obsidian box that Ranthir had found in his rooms upon awaking for the first time at the Ghostly Minstrel.

“I really want to know what’s in there,” Tee said.

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

“Would that work?” Tee asked. “There were no moving parts in the lock.”

Ranthir shrugged. “I don’t know. It might.”

And so, quite unexpectedly, they turned towards the Hammersong Vaults. There Tee removed the golden key from her lockbox (immediately feeling the heavy weight of its soul-wearying effect) and Ranthir retrieved the obsidian box from his. They returned with both of them to the Banewarrens and rendezvoused with Elestra. They quickly explained their plan to her.

“That might be why we were looking for they key in the first place!” Elestra exclaimed.

“Here goes nothing,” Tee said. She slipped the key into the feature-less lock of the obsidian box.

It turned effortlessly.

Tee felt the strength of her soul pulled through the key and into the lock. In the same instant, a thin sliver of light spread along the box’s impenetrable seam. A moment later the lid popped open with a burst of stale air.

FLASHBACKS

In that moment, Tee found her vision turned inward: There was an echoing, thundering crash… and she found herself stepping through a wall of broken stone and shattered shards of adamantine. Beyond it, in a small vault of sorts, there stood only two columns of stone. And atop each column was a solid block of obsidian, gleaming with a faint iridescence. And a voice spoke: “At last! The secrets of the Stonemages!”

Ranthir found himself sitting in an inn’s common room, hunched over a table. A fire roared a few feet away. He was speaking to an older man, with white hair and a well-trimmed beard. “I’ve found it. It’s being carried by a northern barbarian and an elven girl.”

Dominic and Elestra once again found themselves standing before the door of shadows upon the cliff-wall of the Northern Pass.

And, Agnarr, too found his thoughts cast back to the interior of a black coach. Tee was sitting there, fingering her necklace thoughtfully while gazing out over the landscape of green hills rolling past the carriage window.

WITHIN THE BROKEN BOX

The visions – as vivid as they were – lasted for only a moment and then they found themselves once more huddled around the box.

Lying within the box there was a small codex with pages of thick vellum and covers of banded, blackened adamantine.

With an air of exhaustion, Tee pulled the key out of the box. Ranthir eagerly scooped up the book. As he flipped through the book (discovering it to be written entirely in dwarven), Agnarr was playing with the lid of the box – opening and closing it, only to find that it could not be resealed.

None among them were familiar with dwarven characters, but Ranthir was hardly going to let that stand in their way now: With a wave of his hand he began to translate the text…

CODEX OF THE SHARD

(written in Dwarven)

A study of the Great Crystal, recovered from the ruins of Ibbok Turren in the 943^rd Year of the Great Thane.

These are the first words in a small codex with pages of thick vellum and covers of banded, blackened adamantine. The rest of the book is dedicated to a meticulous study of a small crystalline jewel. It is written in several distinct hands.

The jewel registers with an overwhelming magical aura, thwarting more mundane efforts at identifying its properties… while simultaneously deepening the evident curiosity of the writers.

• Various efforts aimed at creating “elemental sympathies”, “energetic repercussions”, and “lesser effect echoes” meet with failure. But dozens of pages are dedicated to each experiment.
• The experimenters then turn their attentions to divination magicks. These meet with unexpected reactions. Weaker divination spells seem more powerful in the presence of the crystal, but reveal nothing of the crystal itself – the term “reflection” is often used to describe the failure, although even the writer seems hazy on what exactly that means.
• When more powerful divination spells are attempted, the casters are apparently driven mad. Despite this, the effort is attempted three times.
• The third caster is referred to by name: Sulaemesh. Like the others Sulaemesh is driven mad, but apparently his madness takes the form of scrawling or screaming the same phrases over and over again: “The Tower of the Dragon. The Lake of Silt and Ash. The City Fractured. The Stone Broken. The Net of Black Iron. The End of All Dreams.”
• At this point, it appears that the writers stop studying the crystal directly and focus their attention on trying to decipher the Vision of Sulaemesh. Many elaborate theories are concocted, but it is clear that they are mostly leading to frustration.

A period of several years appears to pass with little or no activity in the Codex. Then there is a new entry in a fresh hand, beginning with:

The crystal matches, in all respects, the properties of the dreaming shard.

The next several pages are a collation of research apparently drawn from several different sources. The dreaming shard is one small sliver of a much larger artifact known as the Dreaming Stone. The Dreaming Stone is described as “the source of all dreams” and “the resonance of the Dreaming”, among other descriptive titles.

The tone of the next several entries is one of excited discovery. But then things take a darker turn: There is a reference to “an area of great concern” and then several pages have been ripped out of the Codex. Other pages have been completely blotted out, leaving only vague references to a “Great Crypt” and “—if the shard were to awaken—“

The last few pages of the Codex are intact. They describe the design of an impenetrable box, which the writers hope will “seal both the shard and its dangerous knowledge from the waiting world”. Two boxes are created – one for the shard and one for the Codex.

Running the Campaign: Secrets of the All-Key – Campaign Journal: Session 36C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

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We’ve now reached the final chunk of Storm King’s Thunder as published, with the PCs investigating Lord Hekaton’s disappearance.

Before we dive in too deep here, though, I think we all need to acknowledge the giant squid monster in the room: This section of the adventure doesn’t make any sense.

• The PCs are given a gambling chip that was found near where Queen Neri’s body was found.
• From this chip, they’re supposed to conclude that the owner of the casino must be directly involved in Neri’s death and Hekaton’s disappearance. (This, of course, is a nonsensical conclusion.)
• Lord Drylund, the owner of the casino, is involved and knows where Hekaton is being held. But… involved how, exactly? Drylund is a krakenar agent operating out of the inland city of Yartar who’s attempting to take over the local government. How does he or his team get involved in murdering Queen Neri in the Sea of Swords?

It’s not just that the evidentiary trail is flimsy and fragile. (Although it is.) The more fundamental problem is that Storm King’s Thunder never actually explains what happened to Queen Neri or Lord Hekaton. We know very broad generalities (Queen Neri was “ambushed” and Lord Hekaton was “tricked” while investigating her death), but no specifics. And even these generalities are actually contradictory. (In one section, Lord Hekaton is said to have been kidnapped while going to a location where he had been falsely told the assassins were. In another, he was attending a meeting with fake representatives of the Lords’ Alliance and believes he was “betrayed” by them.)

This lack of specificity is one of the reasons why this mystery is dysfunctional: It’s all well and good for the detectives to be in the dark about what happened, but if the writer’s understanding of the murder is limited to “somebody killed them in one of the rooms in this mansion with some kind of weapon,” then it’s going to be pretty tough for them to lay down any meaningful clues.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Mirran, Nym, and Serissa are the daughters of King Hekaton and Queen Neri, who rule from the storm court in Maelstrom. King Hekaton was a strict and conservative ruler, seeking always to live within the light of Annam and to adhere to the Ordning. Queen Neri, on the other hand, sought to temper her husband’s wraths and was also something of a reformist; she believed that the giants could not only make peace with the “small folk” — the humans and elves and dwarves and halflings — but that such an alliance could mean prosperity for small- and giant-folk alike.

Five years ago, Serissa ascended above her elder sisters in the Ordning. King Hekaton responded by officially recognizing her as the heir apparent.

Mirran and Nym did not like this, but there was nothing they could do: The Ordning is the Ordning.

Nevertheless, their bitterness and resentment grew, and they began to leave Maelstrom on sojourns together. These journeys eventually took them north to the Spine of the World, where they searched for the lost Eye of the All-Father in the hopes that they would be able to commune with Annam, discover why he had chosen Serissa over them, and perhaps even right the great wrong which had been done to them.

What they found instead was the wyrm Iymrith. Long ago, her daughter Chezzaran (SKT, p. 73) had been scarred by a storm giant raiding party and she had never forgiven the storm giants. She approached Mirran and Nym in disguise as a storm giant, intending to lull them into a sense of false confidence and then murder them. When she learned who they were, however, and heard their tale, she conceived an even greater revenge. She befriended the sisters and used them to infiltrate the Storm King’s court.

And then the Ordning was broken.

Suddenly Mirran and Nym weren’t helpless any more: If the Ordning no longer existed, then their sister no longer had divine favor elevating her above them.

Their father, however, persisted. He wanted to hold faith with Annam, even if Annam had forsaken them. He refused to reverse his decision and Serissa remained heir apparent. At this point, they likely didn’t require Iyrmith’s counsel for their resentment to blossom into rage, but it certainly helped.

Iymrith convinced them that “working with the small folk” was the reason that the Ordning had been broken: If they could break their mother’s friendship with the small folk, they might repair the Ordning… and, if so, they would almost certainly find themselves raised once more above their sister! Then their father would have no choice but to acknowledge them!

NERI’S PEACE

Queen Neri had formed friendships with the Order of the Blue Moon, a Selunite knighthood who operated out of the House of the Moon temple in Waterdeep. Each month, on the night of the full moon, the knights would gather at a secret chapterhouse hidden in the Red Rocks islands known as the Hall of Reflected Moonlight, and there Queen Neri would meet with them. She was particularly close with High Moonknight Xale, an elderly aasimar who was the leader of the order.

With the breaking of the Ordning, Neri was more convinced than ever that an alliance with the small-folk was essential. With Xale acting as a go-between, a meeting was arranged with Laeral Silverhand, another devotee of Selune who had recently become Open Lord of Waterdeep.

Queen Neri even convinced her husband to attend the meeting, bringing with them only a small force of four honor guards in “the spirit of trust and peace.” In the name of security, only their three daughters and Imperator Uthor, King Hekaton’s brother and commander of the king’s garrison, were privy to the details of Neri’s Peace, as it was known.

THE BETRAYAL

Iymrith, of course, learned of the meeting from Mirran and Nym. It was the perfect opportunity.

Iymrith formed an alliance with the Kraken Society because she needed both muscle and agents to carry out her schemes. It was an easy sell to Slarkethrel, as breaking Maelstrom’s power would remove a major impediment to the kraken’s imperial designs beneath the waves of the Sea of Swords.

• The Skum Lord, based out of Skullport beneath Waterdeep, created forged correspondence from High Moonknight Xale to Laeral Silverhand, purportedly delaying the meeting by a fortnight. The Skum Lord’s agents also intercepted Laeral Silverhand’s replies.
• Ascalian merrow warlocks provided a siren’s cage, a powerful artifact which was smuggled into the Hall of Reflected Moonlight and, when activated, dropped all the knights into a deep magical sleep.
• Lord Drylund of Yartar provided a company of mercenaries, who disguised themselves as Knights of the Blue Moon, rode to the coast to meet Lord Hekaton and Queen Neri, and then ambushed them.
• The were-shark Reefkin of Neverwinter simultaneously cut-off the storm giants’ escape to the sea.

The plan worked perfectly: Queen Neri was killed. King Hekaton was captured and loaded onto a specially prepared vessel called the Morkoth (SKT, p. 221).

Design Note: In the published campaign, Queen Neri is killed in one vague encounter and then King Hekaton is kidnapped during an even vaguer encounter. By collapsing both outcomes into a single event, we vastly simplify things for ourselves. (We also sidestep awkward questions like, “If your wife has just been killed, why would you wander off into an ambush all by yourself instead of bringing like a bajillion guards with you?”)

AFTERMATH

The siren’s cage was retrieved and, a few hours later, the Knights of the Blue Moon awoke. The unnatural slumber baffled them and Xale was confused why neither Queen Neri nor Laeral Silverhand had appeared for their meeting. He attempted to contact Neri via a sending spell, but received no response.

When Hekaton and Neri failed to return to Maelstrom, Imperator Uthor journeyed to Red Rocks. There he discovered his sister-in-law’s body, surrounded by ample evidence that she had been murdered by the very small-folk she had sought to make peace with. With his elite guard, Uthor followed the trail back to the Hall of Reflected Moonlight, slew the small garrison there (most of the knights had returned to Waterdeep with the passing of the full moon), and ransacked the place looking for evidence of what they had done with Lord Hekaton. (He found nothing, of course.)

Back in Maelstrom, Mirran and Nym were shocked. This wasn’t what they had wanted… but they also weren’t exactly upset about it, either. Whatever second thoughts they might have had were quickly quashed by a more pressing realization: Their implication in regicide gave Iymrith the ultimate blackmail to use against them.

“Don’t worry, though,” Iymrith told them. “We’ll still make you the Queens of Maelstrom!”

… they just need to deal with their sister first.

Design Note: Why not cast raise dead on Queen Neri? This is a question that D&D adventure writers frequently just ignore. The go-to answer is simply that the soul of the victim isn’t willing to return, and you can just kind of handwave why Queen Neri wouldn’t want to come back.

Option #2: The merrow warlocks crafted some sort of soul-binding poison and her soul is trapped in the Abyss. Or, alternatively, a soul-binding crystal and now her soul is held captive in the sunken city of Ascarle.

Option #3: The breaking of the Ordning and the withdrawal of Annam’s light from the giants also means that giants can’t be raised from the dead at the moment. (Their souls can depart this world, but the road back from Annam’s kingdom is shut.)

Also: Why not just kill King Hekaton, too? That’s because Iymrith has a clever scheme. If Hekaton was dead, Serissa would simply ascend to the throne. With Hekaton alive-but-missing she’s only acting as regent, and the situation in Maelstrom is more unstable. (The Kraken Society thinks this is a crackin’ idea — pun intended — because this sort of destabilize-and-exploit is their modus operandi.)

Go to Part 4B: Seeking Hekaton

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36A: The Knighting of Tor

And in this way, Tor did service upon the Eight Stations and swore the Eight Oaths. The gathered knights lowered their blades and Sir Gemmell laid his own blade upon Tor’s shoulders.

“Rise, Sir Torland.”

A procession was then formed, led by the priests and followed by Sir Gemmell and Sir Tor. They passed through the gates of the Godskeep and then into the inner passages. Tor was guided by a secret way into the basement of the keep itself, and there taken to a chamber where the Statue of Vehthyl stood.

Here the last of the water from the cups of mithril were washed across the feet of Vehthyl and into a final cup of taurum. And from this Tor drank deep.

I’ve previously discussed how I design fictional rituals for my game worlds.

But why would you want to do this? Why not just say something like, “You go to the Godskeep in the morning and, in a formal ceremony in front of all the other knights, Sir Lagenn begins the ritual of officially knighting you… but then Rehobath shows up.” Isn’t that enough detail to play through the scene? Is it really worth your time to invent an entire religious ceremony?

The truth is that it often will be more than enough, and there’ll be no reason to recite an entire liturgy or script a full sermon just because the PCs happen to be walking through a church.

Conversely, though, there are also a lot of situations in which I think it’s absolutely worth the extra effort.

It can emphasize a moment or, alternatively, reflect and respect the emphasis which is already being given to a moment. In this session, for example, Tor is achieving — through perhaps the unlikeliest series of events — major goal that his player had set for the character when she created him. That’s huge! We don’t want to just toss that moment away; we should revel in it and make it feel like a real payoff.

Along similar lines, you can also use rituals like these as a reward. In some cases, just the experience of the ritual itself will be rewarding in its own right, but it’s also quite possibly to build literal mechanical or material rewards into the ritual. For example, perhaps joining an organization gives you access to unique character abilities. Or perhaps every knight receives the magic sword with which they were knighted as a gift.

Rituals can also serve as exposition. Having the players actually roleplay through a call-and-response ritual, for example, is a great way to get them to actually focus on and care about that content. Rituals in the real world have a wide reach and can touch every aspects of our lives, so whether you want to establish facts about religion, history, politics, or even just daily life, it’s pretty easy to find a way to inject that stuff into a ritual.

Similarly, rituals can also set up or emphasize the themes of your campaign. If you’re playing in a campaign that emphasizes oathbreaking, for example, then getting your players to literally swear oaths is a pretty literal invocation of theme. Or you might build a ritual around a legendary tale in which the Trickster God deceived his mother.

For an example of this from another medium, consider the final montage in The Godfather, in which Michael Corleone is show baptizing his child at the same time that he’s having the rival mob bosses assassinated.

This example from The Godfather also shows us how rituals can be a great way of structuring a scene: The cuts between baptism and murder provide a staccato rhythm and regularity to the sequence. (I’ve also talked about this scene in Scenario Structure Challenge: The RPG Montage, if you’d like a more detailed look at how you can pull off similar effects at the gaming table.)

Of course, a montage is not the only way you can use the ritual as a structure. For example, I once ran an exorcism scenario in which the PCs had to (a) research the ritual required for exorcism and then (b) actually perform the ritual during the final scene. The trick was that at least one PC (and player) had to be chanting at all times or the ritual would fail, but there were, of course, a bunch of things that would be interfering with their ability to do that. So, in practice, the scene became structured around the players swapping in and out of the ritual, while also trying to deal with all the demonic incursions and other interference that was happening throughout the ritual.

Campaign Journal: Session 36B – Running the Campaign: Secrets of the All-Key
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index