These loosely bound pages describe Sagrathea’s efforts to unlock the secrets necessary for brewing potions more powerful than normally possible through magi-alchemical means. Sagrathea was able to get a few of the experimental concoctions reliably effective, but it seems the work was abandoned because he was unable to perfect them. The potency of the brew made it impossible to stabilize the potions, resulting in significant side effects.

Assassin’s Touch (Rare): This oil bestows upon the user the ability to poison all nonmagical creatures they touch with their bare skin. The specific poison inflicted by the assassin’s touch is dependent on the poison used when brewing it. The effect on the drinker normally lasts 1 hour, but each dose applied carries with it a 10% chance that the effect becomes permanent instead.

Draught of the Nightingale (Uncommon): This potion grants the imbiber the ability to sing the magically beguiling melody of the harpy as an action. Every humanoid and giant within 300 feet of the drinker must succeed on a DC 11 Wisdom saving throw or be charmed until the song ends. The singer must take a bonus action on subsequent turns to continue singing. The singer can stop singing at any time. The song ends if the singer is incapacitated.

While charmed by the singer, the target is incapacitated. If the charmed target is more than 5 feet away from the singer, the target must move on its turn towards the singer by the most direct route, trying to get within 5 feet. It doesn’t avoid opportunity attacks, but before moving into damaging terrain, such as lava or a pit, and whenever it takes damage from a source other than the singer, the target can repeat the saving throw. A charmed target can also repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns. If the saving throw is successful, the effect ends on the target ends and the target is immune to the singer’s song for the next 24 hours.

The potion lasts for 1 hour. With dose, the imbiber must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw (+2 DC per additional dose). Failure results in the drinker’s gradual but irreversible transformation into a depraved, harpy-like abomination over 1d6+3 days. (Only a wish spell or similarly powerful magic can reverse this curse.)

Eyes of the Medusa (Very Rare): Upon quaffing this poison, the imbiber’s eyes glow red for 1 hour and they gain a petrifying gaze as per a medusa.

Though a powerful elixir, the instability of the eyes of the medusa require the drinker to make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw (+2 DC per additional dose). On a failure, the imbiber is turned to stone (and will do so upon all subsequent attempts to take the potion).

Granite Hide (Uncommon): This grainy, chalk-tasting, orange liquid turns the imbiber’s skin into a pliable yet hard-as-granite substance. (Treat as a stoneskin spell.) The potion lasts 1 hour. After the potion wears off, the drinker suffers from a calcification of their joints, causing them to suffers disadvantage on all Dexterity checks and saving throws. This condition can be removed by a long rest or any effect which would remove a level of exhaustion.

Potion of Absolute Invisibility (Uncommon): The drinker of this potion benefits from a greater invisibility spell for 1 hour. However, they must also succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or suffer the effects of a confusion spell. A new saving throw may be attempted every 10 minutes while under the effects of the potion.

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

This text, written in Ancient Arathian, is difficult to translate even for one familiar with that dead language, as it contains lengthy, erudite passages featuring complex alchemical terminology using what appears to be a heavily modified version of the long-defunct Sarkasian nomenclature.

ELETRO-ALCHEMICAL DISTILLATION OF ARCANO-CEREBRALITE POTIONS

“The arcanists’ mind – both physical and ephemeral – is laced with the highly potent potential of the vast energies they harness and hook through their personal cerebral cortexes. Like all energies of life, these are not instantly dispelled upon death, but instead dissipate lingeringly over time. If the brain can be harvested in due course and before this final dissipation occurs, the occult energies can be salvaged.”

PRESERVATION: Part of this text describes how an arcanist’s brain can be surgically removed without disturbing the nascent arcane energies of their currently prepared spells (requiring a DC 18 Wisdom (Medicine) check) and then preserved through the use of an alchemical bath (25 gp in material costs, DC 12 + highest spell level to be preserved Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check).

PULPING: The rest of the text describes how the brain of a freshly dead arcanist (within 24 hours) or a preserved arcanist’s brain can be pulped using a three-dimensional mortar and pestle in order to create potions from the spells they had previously prepared.

This process is complex, requiring an Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check at DC 15 + spell level for each spell withdrawn from the brain. The alchemical supplies cost as much as it would normally cost to brew a Rare potion, but without the need to expend spell slots or meet other prerequisites. The process also only requires one day of effort.

There is no limit to the highest level of spell that can be turned into a potion using this method.

DETERMINING SPELLS: In order to determine exactly which spells were prepared by the arcanist, an alchemist can use a detect thoughts spell and make a separate Intelligence (alchemist’s supplies) check (DC 10 + spell level) for each spell. On a failure, there’s a 25% chance that the spell energies have been disrupted and lost. On a success, the alchemist identifies the spell (which will then allow them to know exactly what the pulped potion they prepare will do).

POTION EFFECT: Brain pulp potions are distinct from other potions due to their eponymous pulpy texture. Drinking a brain pulp potion will either immediately allow the drinker to benefit from the spell’s effect or allow them to immediately use the spell effect as if they had cast it.

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

Surface-dwellers know the Kraken Society as a cloak-and-dagger organization that brokers the information they glean through spying, theft, blackmail, and intimidation to gain influence. Once their agents – known as krakenar – have been covertly placed, they use the same methods (plus strategic assassination) to disrupt organizations and topple regimes. Their agents then slide into the power vacuum and “end the threat” that the Kraken Society created in the first place.

What few know is that the Kraken Society is only one slithering tentacle of a much larger – and far older – organization. This organization lacks any true name, but among those in the know it is often referred to as the Tentacles of the Deep.

These tentacles extend from Slarkethrel – the Kraken of the Purple Rocks, King of the Trackless Depths, Consort of the Bitch Queen, the Master of the Veil – and they include the:

• Kraken Society, the so-called “Thieves’ Guild of the North,” most of the members of which (except for those indoctrinated in its inner mysteries) do not realize their service to the kraken.
• Heralds of the Deep, an ancient cult in the Purple Rocks which worships the kraken.
• Forgotten Empire of Ascarle, a vast underwater demesne (once larger than the entire Savage Frontier) ruled by the kraken.
• Assassins of the Purple Veil, a highly trained order that was once part of the Kraken Society but which has since become independent (although its services may still be called upon by those within the Society’s inner circles).

A BRIEF HISTORY

According to the lore enshrined by the Heralds of the Deep, Slarkethrel is more than forty thousand years old, either pre-dating Toril or being born in the instant of its creation (depending on which version of the tale you’re looking at). This would make Slarkethrel one of the preternatural kraken – one of those legendary entities which served the gods before the birth of the mortal races and are said to have ascended to a higher plane of existence.

The inner mysteries of the Kraken Society describe a vast kraken empire which once ruled the seas before they were betrayed and driven into the sanctuaries of the abyssal rifts. In these tales, the King of the Trackless Depths is destined to regain its lost hegemony, and the Society’s members will be wrapped in the loving embrace of its tentacles when that day comes.

None of this is true, however (although the Kraken of the Purple Rocks does yearn for a divine ascension to follow in the footsteps of his “brethren”). The reality is that Slarkethrel was born, according to the Dale Reckoning, in the second century, in the Year of the Kraken (151 DR). It spent its youth exploring the deepest depths of the ocean, its wanderlust slowly transforming into an obsession with the shipwrecks and ruins it found from surface species. It craved the knowledge – and the power given by that knowledge – that it found there.

Slarkethrel eventually stumbled across the sunken city of Ascarle. This ancient elven city was sacked by dark elves and cast into the sea during an ancient ice age. For many long years the kraken studied the troves of lore which he found there and used what he learned to subjugate nearby underwater tribes. Ascarle became the capital of a cosmopolitan empire, with merrow, nereid, mermen, wereshark nobles, whale castes, kapoacinths, koalinths, malenti, morkoths, water weirds, and others.

When he had learned all that he could from Ascarle, he knew that the only way to expand his knowledge and power would be to extend his tentacles into the surface world.

Ascarle lay in the waters just north of an archipelago known as the Purple Rocks, and Slarkethrel began the next phase of his great work by infiltrating the small villages which dotted those desolate islands and creating a cult which would worship him as a dark god of the sea. (He began by rescuing shipwrecked sailors, indoctrinating them, and then returning them “miraculously” to their people.) This cult eventually grew until it completely dominated the Purple Rocks.

From this base of slavish devotion, Slarkethrel used similar techniques to establish the Kraken Society in small settlements along the northern Sword Coast. Harper investigations have concluded that the earliest such agents may have become active in the mid-12^th century (and may have contributed to fostering rivalries which prevented the isolated city-states of the Sword Coast from solidifying into a Northern Empire that might have interfered with Slarkethrel’s long-term plans), but the Society began rapidly expanding in the early 14^th century, pushing inland and establishing major presences in towns like Yartar and Triboar (the former of which became the Society’s center of operations) in addition to expanding their presence in the big coastal cities like Luskan, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and Baldur’s Gate.

The success of this expansion was likely due to Slarkethrel, under the influence of Vestress, the rogue mind flayer who served as his lieutenant and the Regent of Ascarle, embracing a decentralized structure for the Society. Rather than attempting to control everything himself, Slarkethrel empowered regional lieutenants to lead local operations. (This organization was mirrored under the waves through the appointment of Ascarlian satraps.)

These mortal servitors were limited to much more short-term thinking, but this had the advantage of swift growth.

In the mid-14^th century, Slarkethrel became allied with and later the consort of Umberlee, the Bitch Queen. With the rapid growth of the Kraken Society, the vast domain of the Ascarlian Empire, and the support of this new patroness, the kraken was making a major push towards becoming a true demigod and achieving his dream of divinity.

In the late 14^th century, however, the Kraken Society’s operations were massively disrupted by the Harpers after an attempt to expand Slarkethrel’s empire into the surface world through an invasion of Ruathym failed. The krakenar networks were completely wiped out in many places, including Yartar, and were forced into a much lower profile even in those places where they survived.

The Spellplague then wreaked havoc with Slarkethrel’s undersea empire. The exact nature of the catastrophe (or catastrophes) remains unclear to the Harpers and other surface-dwellers, but it appears the sunken city of Ascarle was temporarily “lost again” or somehow cut off from the rest of the Ascarlian Empire, thus robbing the kraken of its major center of power. (This may have had something to do with the mysterious krakengates — immense teleportation gates once used by ancient kraken, four of which, in Ascarle, the Whalebones, 60 miles south of Ice Peak, and 150 miles west of Leilon, had been reclaimed by Slarkethrel.) In the aftermath, significant undersea clans and peoples separated from the empire, either asserting their independence or becoming tributaries to other major powers under the waves.

Some believed that the King of the Trackless Depths had, in fact, been destroyed (or lost with its capital city). Slarkethrel, however, held onto a small demesne around the Purple Rocks and eventually reasserted its dominion over Ascarle. In the late 1470s, the dormant cells of the Kraken Society were abruptly reawakened, signaling that Slarkethrel’s tentacles were once again groping their way ashore. There have also been a number of minor wars beneath the waves, with Ascarlian troops bringing several of its wayward satrapies to heel.

Go to Part 2: Tentacles of the Deep

Go to Table of Contents

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.)

Go to Part 3E: Implementing the Revelations

Lesser bloodwights are either the pupa-like clone-spawn of true bloodwights or the first stage of recovery for a bloodwight who has been reduced to a desiccated state.

The Crimson Sheen. The signature of the bloodwights is the sheen of blood which they cause to erupt on the skin of the living. They are so inimical to life, that mortal flesh erupts in a hemorrhagic rejection of their presence. But the bloodwight itself thirsts for the warmth and energy of life, their limbs growing sleek and supple in its presence.

The sheen notably does not require line of sight, allowing bloodwights to lurk in sealed up attics or glide through city sewers. There are tyrants who have been known to wall up lesser bloodwights in oubliettes, into which can be thrown doomed prisoners.

Blood-Damned Nests. Bloodwights have a strong nesting influence, constructing mounds from whatever material may be at hand (furniture in mortal dwellings, detritus in ruins, leaves or fallen trees in forests, and so forth).

There may be a hunting component to this behavior, as the bloodwights can lay hidden within a nest while nevertheless feasting on any living creatures who pass by. In some cases, those excavating these nests have found them to be connected to other nests in the same area through shallow tunnels.

BLOODWIGHT, LESSER

Medium undead, neutral evil

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Armor Class 14

Hit Points 45 (6d8+18)

Speed 30 ft.

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STR 14 (+2), DEX 12 (+1), CON 16 (+3), INT 11 (+0), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 16 (+3)

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Skills Stealth +3, Perception +3

Damage Resistances cold, necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons

Damage Immunities poison

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13

Languages Any

Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +2

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Bloodsheen. A living creature within 30 feet of a lesser bloodwight must succeed at a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or begin sweating blood (covering their skin in a sheen of blood). Characters affected by bloodsheen suffer 1d4 points of damage, plus 1 point of damage for each bloodwight within 30 feet. A character is only affected by bloodsheen once per round, regardless of how many bloodwights are present.

Health Soak. A lesser bloodwight within 30 feet of a living creature gains 2 hit points per round. A lesser bloodwight benefiting from health soak will gain hit points even after their normal maximum number of hit points has been reached, up to a maximum of 66 (the maximum number of hit points possible per Hit Die).

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ACTIONS

Multiattack. Lesser bloodwights make two claw attacks.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) bludgeoning damage.

Blood Welt. When a creature is struck by a lesser bloodwight’s claw attack, they must succeed at a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or suffer a blood welt. A blood welt bleeds for 1 point of necrotic damage per round. The victim can repeat the saving throw at the beginning of each turn, ending the effect of all current blood welts on a successful save. Alternatively, the bleeding can be stopped with a DC 14 Wisdom (Medicine) check.