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How quickly can you complete a run of the Dragon Heist remix?

This is a question I get asked fairly frequently.

Personally, I like this campaign a lot, and I don’t recommend rushing it. One of the things that makes it special is how the PCs can become entwined in the fabric of the city — invested in Trollskull and its community; linked to friendly factions; becoming the nemeses of other factions. Weaving a campaign like that, though, takes time. You have to give yourself (and your players) the space to explore all of those threads. If you rush it, those connections will never get formed and will never have a chance to grow and interact with each other.

But, of course, there’s all kinds of reasons why you might need to speed things up: Maybe you want to run it for a D&D summer camp and you only have a limited amount of time. Or you’re midway through the campaign, a player is moving away, and you’d like to wrap things up before they leave.

Whatever the case may be, how can you make sure you reach the finish line before you run out of time?

HOW LONG IS THE REMIX?

Let’s start by establishing some baselines.

When I ran Dragon Heist, the campaign lasted for twenty-two sessions. Several of these sessions, however, were 8-hour marathons. Looking at my recordings, it appears that it took us approximately 120 hours to complete the campaign (as described in Dragon Heist: The Final Session), which would translate to roughly thirty 4-hour sessions.

I’ve talked with a number of DMs running the remix campaign, however, and its length can vary quite a bit: The longest I know of ran a 300-hour version of the campaign (with a lot of extra material). Most seem to cluster between 80 and 150 hours.

One of the biggest variables seems to be Chapter 2: From the time they get Trollskull Manor from Volo to the point where the fireball goes off and the next phase of the campaign begins is a very sandbox-y period. The PCs are repairing their inn, interacting with the NPCs of Trollskull Alley, meeting faction reps, dealing with Emmet Frewn, and going on faction missions. The number and detail of the faction missions, in particular, can vary a lot depending on how much interest the PCs have in the factions and how much effort the DM puts into the missions. The PCs might also be following up on questions they have from Chapter 1 (possibly getting a jump start on the Grand Game), and it’s also not unusual for DMs to add brand new adventures (like The Lady of Trollskull Priory, Blue Alley, The Veiled Society, or something of their own creation) here.

As a result, groups can easily spend dozens of hours in Chapter 2. I know of one group who spent over a year of biweekly sessions on just this one section of the campaign. (Personally, my group spent 20 hours here.)

On the other hand, it’s also quite trivial to speed run Chapter 2: You can skim past or even completely cut a lot of stuff here without fundamentally sabotaging the rest of the campaign. (The players will likely feel less connected to the city and the PCs will have fewer resources to call upon during the Grand Game, but these aren’t crippling problems.) I know of several groups who have rescued Floon & Renaer in one session and then triggered the fireball just one or two sessions later.

The other major variable, of course, is the heists. Each heist itself generally takes less than four hours and can be wrapped up in a single session, but you also need to consider the set-up (i.e., as described in Part 7 of the Remix, tracking faction activity to faction outposts, following the leads from the faction outposts back to the faction lairs, and planning the heist).

In practice, it looks like each heist will take 10-15 hours of playing time (including the heist itself). This generally won’t be sequential, though — i.e., 15 hours on one heist and then 15 hours on the next heist. Instead, the investigations and interactions with the various factions will weave around each other.

Although slightly different in form, this timeline also seems to roughly apply to the Gralhund Raid (with the setup time being spent on the fireball investigation). In practice, this might be a little quicker, but it’s close enough for our purposes.

Wrapping things up, Chapter 1 took my group about 5 hours to complete and the finale of the campaign after the PCs have reassembled the Stone of Golorr — i.e., breaching the vault, getting the gold, and then dealing with whatever the aftermath of getting the gold is — seems to take another 5-10 hours.

To sum that up with a conservative estimate:

• Chapter 1: 5 hours
• Chapter 2: 20 hours
• Gralhund Raid: 15 hours
• Heists: 15 hours x 4 heists
• The Vault: 10 hours

To this, you’ll probably want to add another 10-20 hours of miscellaneous activities. (In my campaign, that included a romance subplot, setting up an orphanage, and running additional faction missions after Chapter 2, among other things.)

So our baseline running time for the Dragon Heist remix is roughly 120 hours, or 30 four-hour sessions.

DRAGON HEIST: THE FAST VERSION

Now, let’s speed things up. For this discussion I’m going to refer to 4-hour sessions, but the advice should hold regardless (e.g., if you have 2-hour sessions, then when I say something should take one session, it should take you two sessions).

Chapter 1: Set a tight pace here to make sure you wrap this chapter up in a single session. To make this happen, you probably want to be exiting the Yawning Portal no later than the 45-minute mark in your first session. (You may need to skip the troll fight to make this happen.)

In this version of the campaign, the PCs will only be aligned with a single friendly faction. Pre-select that faction and use them as the contact who hooks the group up with Volo.

Chapter 2: You’ll also want to wrap this chapter up in a single session. For me, that probably looks like this:

• Hello urchins! (In the scene where the PCs arrive at Trollskull for the first time, introduce the urchins.)
• This Old Tavern (Establish a budget for repairs, then have one or two roleplaying interactions with guilds and/or people they’re trying to borrow money from. This will create a personal investment in Trollskull Manor.)
• Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It. (Have the friendly faction reconnect with the PCs and give them a single simple faction mission. This mission should be resolved in one scene.)
• Opening night! (Establish some of the neighborhood personalities.)
• Fireball! (End the session on a cliffhanger.)

Miscellaneous Activities: Eliminate as much of this stuff as possible. After Chapter 2, I’d recommend bringing in just one additional faction mission. Keep the Trollskull-related roleplaying to a minimum. If the PCs are getting distracted by non-essential activities, try to frame hard, resolve it quickly/decisively, and redirect them away from it.

Heists: Try to keep the faction investigations as tight as possible. Frame aggressively and don’t let the players dither too much in their planning. If they’re in any way confused or suffering analysis paralysis, bring in a faction response team with a bunch of explicit clues in their pockets. You don’t need to pare things down to the bone here; just keep it tight.

Vault Keys: For the finale, eliminate the vault keys. Once the PCs know where the Vault is, they can just go there and enter.

Doing all of this should result in a campaign that looks more like this:

• Chapter 1: 4 hours
• Chapter 2: 4 hours
• Gralhund Raid: 12 hours
• Heists: 12.5 hours x 4 heists
• The Vault: 5 hours
• Miscellaneous: 5 hours (including post-Vault epilogue)

So we can run a fast version of the Dragon Heist remix in roughly 80 hours, or 20 four-hour sessions.

DRAGON HEIST: THE SPEED RUN

But that’s not good enough! Suzie just got a new job in a different country and we need to wrap things up ASAP!

This is the point where we’re going to make some very deep cuts and even fundamentally alter the dynamic of the campaign.

Fast Version: Start, of course, by implementing everything from the fast version of the campaign described above.

Goodbye Gralhunds: We’re going to get rid of the Gralhunds by replacing them with the Cassalanters.

• The nimblewright who triggers the fireball belongs to the Cassalanters. (Which means, of course, that the fireball investigation leads directly to the Cassalanters.)
• The Cassalanters have the Stone + an Eye.
• To keep things simple, I recommend just having the Cassalanters live in the Gralhund Villa and using the Gralhund Raid as described in the Remix.
• I recommend simplifying things even further: The Cassalanters are not Asmodean cultists. (Whether you use the Gralhund Villa or Cassalanter Villa maps, this lets you eliminate the Asmodean temple. Their faction outposts will also not come into play in this version of the campaign.)
• You can still have the Cassalanters try to sell the PCs a sob story about their kids as their reason for doing all this. If you’ve decided that they’re not cultists themselves, then this is even more straightforward: Their kids really WERE cursed by cultists (or maybe it’s a legacy from an ancestor) and this is the only way the Cassalanters can save them.

Fast Heists: To speed up the heists as much as possible, we’re going to run each heist in a single session. This means that we need to eliminate the faction investigations and most or all of the groundwork. We have a couple options for this.

First, we can give the Cassalanters have much more actionable and comprehensive intelligence about the Grand Game: They know that Xanathar has one Eye and Manshoon the other. They also have blueprints and locations for both lairs.

The PCs can now go directly from the Cassalanter Raid to performing the other two heists back-to-back.

If the PCs miss the Cassalanters’ Grand Game report (and, therefore, all this heist-related intelligence they need), you can backstop this by having a friendly faction — e.g., Force Grey — sweep the Cassalanter Villa after the raid, discover the intel, and then bring it to the PCs.

Alternatively, you can use the PCs’ friendly faction to frame up these heists as faction mission assignments. I prefer the Cassalanter intel solution because it keeps the players in the driver’s seat of the campaign, but if all else fails having someone show up and say, “We know you’re looking for the Eyes, and we think we’ve identified the location for one of them…” will certainly cut to the chase.

Option – Simultaneous Heist: You could speed things up even more by having an allied faction do one of the two final Eye heists at the same time the PCs are doing the other. This could be the Cassalanters, if the PCs have decided to help them, or it should be whatever friendly faction the PCs have allied with.

Option — The Final Eye: Eliminate the final Eye Heist entirely by having the faction holding the Eye come to the PCs with the Eye to negotiate. They can make whatever offer seems reasonable and makes sense given the circumstances.

Whatever the offer may be, either:

• The PCs cut a deal, the Stone is reunited, and everybody heads to the Vault.
• The PCs double-cross the enemy faction and take the Eye without a heist.
• The NPCs try to double-cross the PCs, and then the PCs take the Eye after righteously thrashing the double-crossing knaves.

Mix-and-Match: You do not, of course, have to use all of these options at the same time. Depending on just how breakneck you need the pace to be, you can mix-and-match whichever options make the most sense.

If you were to use all of these options, however, your campaign would likely look something like this:

• Chapter 1: 4 hours
• Chapter 2: 4 hours
• Gralhund/Cassalanter Raid: 10 hours
• Optional – Sea Maidens Heist: 4 hours
• Eye Heist: 4 hours (including simultaneous heist or Final Eye negotiation)
• The Vault: 4 hours
• Miscellaneous: 2 hours

This gives you a lightning-fast 32 hour version of the Dragon Heist remix, which can be played in 8 four-hour sessions.

TRANSITIONING MID-CAMPAIGN

If you’re midway through a run of the Dragon Heist remix, there are any number of reasons why you might need to transition to a high-speed wrap-up. The options above should give you the tools to figure out how best to tighten things up and focus on what’s essential for a satisfying conclusion, but a lot of the specifics will depend on exactly what’s going on in your campaign.

For example, if you’re in the middle of Chapter 2, then it’s probably best to trigger the fireball at the beginning of your next session and then chart a course from there.

On the other hand, if you’re in the middle of the Eye heists and now running out of time, you might be best served considering an option like having a friendly faction run one of the remaining heists for the PCs. Or put a twist on that idea by having whichever faction the PCs are targeting next carry out a successful heist on one of the OTHER factions, resulting in them having two Eyes onsite when the PCs arrive.

Whatever form your campaign takes, I hope it has an epic conclusion for you and your players!

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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.

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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.

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The War of the Giants has begun!

Whether that’s a war against the giants, the war the giants are fighting against each other, or some form of draconic crusade will depend on how your campaign goes. But the core concept is that the campaign has escalated beyond dungeons crawls and simple raids: The PCs are no longer a simple fellowship, but are part of an alliance — likely an alliance they have helped forged themselves! — capable of resolving an international conflict.

There are several ways you can handle this, possibly all at the same time.

TRUE WAR

Armies have been gathered and mass combat is the order of the day!

A full-scale military operation is a thrilling option to consider, but vastly exceeds the resources available to us in Storm King’s Thunder. Not only are the giants and other faction threats scaled to tactical combat with a group of five PCs (not armies marching across the Sword Coast), but we also don’t have the mechanical support or scenario structures for running a war campaign in D&D 5^th Edition.

If you want to go big, therefore, you’re going to have to start basically from scratch and it’ll take a lot of work to pull it off. I can suggest a couple of options you might want to consider, however.

Option #1: Handle the macro-strategic elements of the war — the size of the armies, their movements, etc. — in a more or less ad hoc fashion. For the individual battles, adapt the fray system from Shadow of the Dragon Queen to put the PCs on the battlefield and in the thick of things.

The major shortcoming of the fray system is that the PCs’ actions don’t truly have an impact on the outcome of the battle. The old D&D 3^rd Edition module Red Hand of Doom used a similar system, but also had the PCs’ actions matter more in the grand course of things. You may find it useful to draw some inspiration from that.

Option #2: Implement a full-fledged system for war. MCDM’s Kingdoms & Warfare might be a good place to start, although its primary focus may not make it a perfect fit for what your Storm King’s Thunder campaign needs. Another project with Matt Colville as one of the lead developers you may find useful here is Fields of Blood: The Book of War, another 3^rd Edition-era supplement.

ALLIED ASSAULTS

Instead of full-scale war, we can evoke a similar thematic scope of allies gathering to fight titanic struggles while still keeping within a typical D&D-style tactical scale (i.e., individual combatants on a manageable tabletop battlefield). They key escalator here — what will make these fights feel larger-than-life and bigger than a typical D&D combat encounter — is simply the allies themselves: It won’t just be the PCs vs. the bad guys; it will be the PCs + their allies vs. a much larger and/or more  dangerous force of bad guys.

Storm King’s Thunder already includes an example of what these allied assaults might look like: In Chapter 12, a combined strike force of PCs and storm giants head to Iymrith’s lair for a gigantic showdown with the blue wyrm!

Whether these allied assaults are targeting giant strongholds or draconic lairs (or both) in your campaign’s final act, they’ll follow a similar structure:

1. The PCs will hit up their allies.
2. Their allies will provide a strike force.
3. The players will run both their PCs and their other members of their strike force.

Giving each player one additional character to play during the assault is probably ideal, and in practice I’d suggest that two additional characters per player is probably the maximum you’d want them to be juggling simultaneously. Fortunately, this is more than enough for the scale of the confrontation to feel epic in scope.

On the other side of the battlefield, if the PCs line up a bunch of allied support and then siege the giant strongholds, the problem you’ll immediately run into is that these strongholds were balanced on the assumption that the PCs — and only the PCs! — would be attacking them. If the PCs attack with a much larger and more powerful force, they’ll likely just roll over the opposition.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the first allied assault: It will be like a reward for the hard work the PCs have put into bringing that allied force together. But if the end of the campaign turns into a series of trivial mop-up actions, that likely won’t feel very satisfying.

Fortunately, there are a few options you can use here.

Reinforcements: Simply add more giants to the strongholds. Whether they’re mustering for their own military actions or bolstering their defenses in response to the PCs’ assaults, the giant lords are simply calling more giants home to defend their strongholds.

Allies vs. Allies: Along similar lines, if the PCs are forging alliances to take down the giants, it will likely force the giants into new alliances with each other. For example, the fire giants of Ironslag and the cloud giants of Lyn Armaal might join forces in a defensive pact. (This will also reduce the number of stronghold assaults you need to play out, which may be useful if your group is finding “fight yet another giant stronghold monotonous”.)

Alternatively, you can use the concept of enemy alliances to evoke “offscreen” giant factions — e.g., the cloud giants of Lyn Armaal ally with the cloud giant wizard who stole the Nightstone. This allows you to simply increase the number of giants (or their small-folk allies) present, in a fashion similar to reinforcements, while simultaneously raising the stakes and making the scale of the giant crisis seem vast.

Split the Assault. If the players adopt — or can be encouraged to adopt — a battle plan in which the strike teams split up and each assault a stronghold from a different direction, you may not need to rebalance the encounters at all. The encounters will be split across multiple groups, but since each group will have roughly the same strength as the PCs, each encounter will remain a balanced and challenging fight.

These split assault plans may also make it easier for the players to juggle multiple characters, since the strike teams can be arranged in such a way that each player has one character in each team.

In terms of actually running these encounters, I recommend checking out Spectacular Sidekicks for techniques to use while running multiple characters simultaneously. Remember that the Three Cities Proxies will have also given your group some basic training in running these types of encounters.

On your side of the screen, these assaults will run best if you can run them dynamically, having the defenders actively respond and adapt to the actions of the PCs and their allies. Don’t be afraid of letting this collapse towards a dramatic final stand in which the various assault teams join up for one final, epic assault on the final defenders. (See “Dynamic Encounter Design” in So You Want To Be a Game Master, p. 186.)

Tip: On a wider scale, you might also want to consider how, why, and when the PCs enemies — whether giants, dragons, or other factions — might choose to counterattack, forcing the PCs into a defensive scenario for a change of pace.

SPECIAL OPS

Along similar lines, you can evoke a larger battle or military campaign, but rather than focusing the gameplay on that military campaign, you can instead put the focus on the PCs performing essential special ops missions:

• Disabling supply lines.
• Assassinating a giant leader.
• Sneaking into a besieged fortress to lower the gate.
• Breaking through enemy lines to deliver a vital message or object.

And so forth. Instead of Aragorn leading the Army of the Dead at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the PCs are taking the role of Frodo and Sam sneaking into Mordor with the Ring.

The exact nature of these special ops will depend a lot on exactly how your campaign’s endgame is playing out, but I would certainly look for opportunities that leverage the existing resources in Storm King’s Thunder — e.g., the giant stronghold maps and keys. You’ll likely also discover that it’s easiest to frame and hook these special ops missions if the PCs are taking orders from someone else (who can give the a mission brief). That may be less desirable, of course, then having the players feel like they’re in the driver’s seat.

MIXED METHODS

In practice, none of these techniques need to be all-or-nothing. PCs who have conceived, coordinated, and executed an allied assault may report back and get assigned to a special ops, only to receive a promotion and lead the troops during a full-fledged wargame finale.

Or, alternatively, the players might be running a full-scale war, only to conclude — like Aragorn parting ways with King Theoden to recruit the Army of the Dead — that there’s a special op that requires their attention.

Or perhaps while some are holding back the armies of the fire giants, the PCs will need to lead allied assaults on dragon lairs in order to complete a draconic crusade and seal the deal for a new Ordning.

CONCLUSION

The common theme here, of course, is that the true conclusion of Storm King’s Thunder is uncharted territory: Neither I nor you nor your players will truly know the fate of Faerun until that fate is forged at your table.

With the right tools and techniques in your pocket, though, you should be able to confidently follow your players’ lead, actively play the huge cast of characters and factions at your disposal, and discover that thrilling tale together.

ADDENDUMS
Addendum: Kraken Society
Addendum: Faction Reference
Addendum: Three Cities Proxies

This adventure was originally developed as part of my In the Shadow of the Spire campaign. When I posted the campaign journal describing what happened when my players encountered the crypt (which you can read here), several people asked where they could find a copy of the crypt for their own campaigns.

The False Tomb was originally designed for D&D 3^rd Edition. It has been updated to 5^th Edition here. (Members of my Patreon will receive a copy of my original 3^rd Edition adventure notes as special bonus content.)

The adventure uses the tomb spider, along with the associated broodswarms and web mummies, from Monster Manual IV. Tomb spiders also appeared in Monster Manual 2 for D&D 4^th Edition, but have not received an official 5^th Edition update. You can find fan conversions here and here.

The original adventure used copyrighted content from two different RPG publishers. Both publishers have fan content licenses, but for legal reasons I’m uncertain both can be used at the same time. I am using Wizards of the Coast’s Fan Content Policy and have, therefore, stripped the other IP from the adventure.

BACKGROUND

Sagrathea’s Sigil

The PCs are searching for the burial compound of an archmage named Sagrathea. At some point in the past, several of the stone sarsens above Sagrathea’s tomb were taken from the site and reused to build the walls of a small crypt. These sarsens were marked with Sagrathea’s sigil, which may result in the crypt being misidentified as her tomb.

IDENTIFYING THE FALSE TOMB:

• DC 15 Intelligence (Mason’s tools) or Intelligence (History): Recognizes that the walls were built using repurposed sarsens, suggesting that the presence of Sagrathea’s arcane sigil is coincidental.

Once the tomb has been identified as false, finding the actual tomb by searching the surrounding area is relatively easy.

THE FALSE TOMB

ENTRANCE

This crudely built crypt has thick walls formed from heavy stone slabs. Several of these slabs have the distinctive — yet heavily worn — sigil of Sagrathea worked into them. On one side of the crypt there is a badly rusted iron door.

DOOR: The door is rusted shut.

• Batter Down: DC 20 Strength check.
• Repair: DC 15 Dexterity (tool proficiency) check.

STAIRS: On the other side of the door there is a flight of gloom-shrouded stairs leading down about twenty feet into the crypt. At the top of the stairs — propped up against the walls — are the shattered stone remnants of the crypt’s original door.

AREA 1 – ENTRY HALL

The floor is strewn with rubbled stone from the broken walls and ceiling. Thick cobwebs are strung from the walls, although there is a more or less clear path to the door on the far side of the chamber. This heavy door of stone hangs half-open, its bottom half smashed apart.

Difficult Terrain: Due to the broken floor and webs.

AREA 2 – CORPSE HUSK

An upright sarcophagus stands against the far wall of this burial chamber. It has been smashed apart. The corpse of its former inhabitant lies on the floor in the middle of the chamber. Thick webs seem to manacle the dried husk to the walls. The chest of the corpses appears to have been ripped open.

BODY — DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) / Wisdom (Medicine): Something burst OUT of the corpse’s chest.

AREA 3 – LURKING BROODSWARM

The webs are much thicker in this chamber. They almost look like snowdrifts as they crawl their way up the walls. You can see what appears to be an upright sarcophagus standing against the far wall.

BROODSWARM: There is a broodswarm lurking in the webs in the corner of the room (Stealth +7). It will attack if anyone who gets caught in the webs

WEBS: Difficult terrain. DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the room. On failure, become restrained in webs and must make a DC 12 Strength check to escape. (AC 10; hp 5; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage.)

SARCOPHAGUS: A large hole has been punched in the front of the sarcophagus. Inside the sarcophagus is a corpse wearing a ruined mithril shirt — its chest has been ripped open.

• DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) / Wisdom (Medicine): Something burst OUT of the corpse’s chest.
• Mithril Shirt: Although useless, the raw mithril is still worth 1,000 gp.

AREA 4 – WEB-CHOKED ROOM

This burial chamber is choked with webs. They literally fill every inch of open space. The far side of the room is completely obscured by them.

WEB MUMMY: A web mummy lurks in the webs. If the PCs disturb the webs in this room or Area 5, it will attack. Otherwise, it will wait until the PCs are confronted by the tomb spider in Area 6, emerging from this room while dragging webs behind it.

WEBS: Difficult terrain. DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the room. On failure, become restrained in webs and must make a DC 12 Strength check to escape. (AC 10; hp 5; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage.)

SARCOPHAGUS: A sarcophagus stands against the back wall of the room. It has been broken open. (And is where the web mummy comes from.)

AREA 5 – WEB-CHOKED ROOM

This burial chamber is choked with webs. They literally fill every inch of open space. The far side of the room is completely obscured by them.

WEB MUMMY: A web mummy lurks in the webs. If the PCs disturb the webs in this room or Area 5, it will attack. Otherwise, it will wait until the PCs are confronted by the tomb spider in Area 6, emerging from this room while dragging webs behind it.

WEBS: Difficult terrain. DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the room. On failure, become restrained in webs and must make a DC 12 Strength check to escape. (AC 10; hp 5; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage.)

SARCOPHAGUS: A sarcophagus stands against the back wall of the room. It has been broken open. (And is where the web mummy comes from.)

• A +1 longsword lies inside the broken sarcophagus.

AREA 6 – THE TOMB SPIDER

ANTECHAMBER:

Through the broken door you can see an antechamber. A mosaic of glittering lapis lazuli has been worked into the floor, depicting a bursting star. Twin statues with red gemstones in their eyes flank a door leading into the tomb beyond. Each statue raises its right hand before it, as if to ward off trespassers.

THE BURIAL CHAMBER:

In the tomb itself lies an iron sarcophagus worked in the likeness of knight with a sword and shield laid upon his chest. Thick webs are draped from this sarcophagus, shrouding the far corners of the room in darkness.

TOMB SPIDER: The tomb spider is on the ceiling of the burial chamber. It will wait to attack until someone either stumbles into the entry web or enters the burial chamber. It cannot be seen until someone is standing in the doorway of the tomb chamber (Stealth +7, with advantage).

• Tactics: As soon as it gets a chance, the tomb spider will throw a web across the exit.

ENTRY WEB: There is a finely-woven web draped across the antechamber just inside the broken door. DC 18 Wisdom (Perception) check to notice it; otherwise the character entering the antechamber will automatically stumble into it.

WEBS – BURIAL CHAMBER: Difficult terrain. DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the room. On failure, become restrained in webs and must make a DC 12 Strength check to escape. (AC 10; hp 5; vulnerability to fire damage; immunity to bludgeoning, poison, and psychic damage.)

THE KNIGHT: The iron sarcophagus could not be broken by the tomb spider. The heraldry on the knight’s shield can be recognized as belonging to the Order of the Rosy Cross. The knight wears elven chain and a +1 longsword.

The False Tomb is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the material used are property of Wizards of the Coast. © Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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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.

Go to Part 5: The Final Act