SPOILERS FOR STORM KING’S THUNDER

Personally, I’m a sucker for the core concept of Storm King’s Thunder. A War Against the Giants campaign has been on my bucket list for many a year now, so the premise of giants beating the war drums is basically custom made for me.

The basic premise here is that Annam the All-Father, god of the giants, is upset that the giants did jack-all to stop Tiamat’s machinations during the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. So he dissolves the Ordning — the divinely decreed feudal(?) order which keeps giant society in order. This is a little vague in the book, but here’s how I think of it: Imagine that the divine right of kings was actually real; the legitimacy and authority of political leadership ultimately derives from the fact that a god said, “That guy is in charge.” And then one day the god shows up and says, “Not any more. None of y’all need to pay taxes.”

Pandemonium.

With the storm giants no longer king of the hill (giants), it’s a toss-up who’ll become the new King of the Giants. Ironically, this allows a draconic faction led by the blue wyrm Iymrith to infiltrate and decapitate the storm giant court, further destabilizing the situation. So now every giant is planning how to stomp their competitors, profit from the chaos, and/or prove that they should be the new king, and the conflict is boiling out across the Sword Coast and Savage Frontier.

Enter the PCs.

Storm King’s Thunder can then be broadly broken down into six phases:

Phase 1: The PCs deal with the aftermath of a cloud giant attack in the small village of Nightstone.

Phase 2: They follow a lead from Nightstone to one of three cities (Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, or Triboar), which is then attacked by giants while they’re there.

Phase 3: In the wake of the giant attack, they receive a plethora of plot hooks that will pull them towards various locations across the Sword Coast and Savage Frontier. This section of the campaign basically functions as a pointcrawl, with the PCs navigating the Forgotten Realms and running into additional plot hooks and mini-scenarios (most of which are themed to the giant troubles) as they travel.

(If you’re not familiar with a pointcrawl, the basic structure is a map of points connected by routes and keyed with content. PCs travel along the routes to get where they want to go, passing through points along the way and triggering the content keyed to those points. The pointcrawl in Storm King’s Thunder, although not referred to as such, is a pretty pure example of the form: The points are generally settlements on the map and the routes are literally the roads and trails connecting them.)

Phase 4: The PCs learn of the Eye of the All-Father, a powerful giant oracle. In exchange for recovering artifacts stolen by the Uthgardt barbarians, the oracle will tell the PCs that they need to travel to Maelstrom, the court of the storm giants.

Phase 5: The PCs raid one of five giant strongholds to retrieve a magical artifact they can use to teleport to Maelstrom.

Phase 6: The PCs journey to Maelstrom, forge an alliance with the storm giants, investigate the disappearance of Hekaton, the storm giant king, and (hopefully) rescue him. He then leads them to attack Iymrith’s lair.

The general “only the PCs can discover a hidden evil fomenting a war between giants and small folk” is clearly taking a thematic note from the classic GDQ series, but this is much more a conceptual riff than a Ravenloft-style reboot. It’s an ambitious campaign with epic stakes and a worldwide scope.

FRAGILITY

What my summary of Storm King’s Thunder plot hides, unfortunately, is that the transitions between the different phases of the campaign are incredibly awkward at best.

For example, let’s take a look at Phase 3. The basic idea here, as described briefly above, is that you rescue one of the cities in Phase 2 and receive a bunch of plot hooks that drive you to travel across the map. Here are what the hook lines look like for Bryn Shander (red), Goldenfields (yellow), and Triboar (blue):

Although drawn in straight lines (rather than along likely routes of travel), it should still be clear how following these leads will send the PCs crisscrossing the landscape. And, as they travel, they’ll be having encounters — from either scripted random encounters or keyed locations throughout the North — which will give them more leads to pursue. Pursuing those leads, of course, will lead to more encounters, which will result in more leads, which will… Well, you get the idea.

Eventually, in the course of these adventures, the PCs will discover the existence of the Eye of the All-Father and transition to Phase 4 of the campaign.

Unfortunately, there are some significant problems with this.

First, too many of the scenario hooks that transition the campaign from Phase 2 to Phase 3 are, for lack of a better word, boring. In Goldenfields, for example, they include:

• Deliver a letter for me.
• Come with me to visit my friend.
• Deliver a message for me.
• Deliver a letter for me.

I think of these as mail carrier hooks. There’s nothing inherently wrong with mail carrier hooks, but the structure of a mail carrier hook is so utterly devoid of purpose that it becomes crucial for the message itself to be of great import.

A good example of this in Storm King’s Thunder is the quest Darathra Shendrel gives in Triboar: Giants are invading! The Harpers must be warned!

That’s clearly meaningful. It matters. The PCs will feel important being asked to do that.

Unfortunately, most of the hooks in Storm King’s Thunder look like the one given by Narth Tezrin. “Hello! Heroes who just rescued this entire town! Could you deliver some horse harnesses for me?” This is almost demeaning. It’s clearly meaningless and there’s absolutely no reason why the PCs or the players would care about this.

The lackluster quality of these hooks is then exacerbated by the fact so many of them just… dead end.

For example, Darathra Shandrel tells the PCs to bring urgent word to the Harpers of the threat of the Giants! When the PCs arrive, the Harpers… just don’t seem to care that much. So that which seemed meaningful suddenly isn’t.

Others just trail off without any explanation. In Bryn Shander, Duvessa Shane asks the PCs to carry a message to a ship called the Dancing Wave in Waterdeep. When they arrive, the PCs discover that the ship is missing! Storm King’s Thunder then spends several hundred words detailing how the PCs can hire a ship to go looking for the Dancing Wave and then… that’s it. No explanation of what they might find if they go looking. No explanation of what actually happened to the Dancing Wave.

This actually happens a lot in the book. In Goldenfields, for example, the PCs are sent to look for a missing druid. They’re sent to talk to someone who might have seen him. That person says, “Nope. Haven’t seen him in awhile.”

And, once again, that’s it. No clue what happened to him. No suspicion on the part of the writers that the PCs might want to keep investigating.

The problem perpetuates on a macro-scale at the other end of Phase 3: None of the PCs’ expeditions actually go anywhere.

They go to places in the North and they point to other places. Along the way they run into giants doing various things. And, logically, this should all be taking you some place: Your new faction alliances should give you anti-giant operations to pursue. You should slowly be piecing together clues and your investigation into the giants should ultimately lead you to the Eye of the All-Father and the next phase of the campaign.

But it doesn’t.

What happens instead is that, at some completely arbitrary point unrelated to anything to the PCs are doing, the DM is supposed to trigger an encounter with Harshnag, a friendly giant, who says, “Hello! The DM has sent me with the next phase of the campaign! Would you like to know more?”

We’ve looked at Phase 3 here (coming and going), but unfortunately this type of fragility is endemic to the whole campaign:

• Phase 1 ends with three mail carrier scenario hooks pointing to Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, and Triboar. But rather than giving the PCs the choice of which lead to pursue, the book instructs the GM to instead railroad them.
• The Phase 4 into Phase 5 transition is designed to loop so that the PCs can get multiple leads from the Eye of the All-Father in case something goes wrong and they can’t get the magical artifact they need from the first giant fortress they raid… except the adventure bizarrely slots in a cutscene where the Eye of the All-Father gets blown up so the PCs can’t go back there.
• Even starting the investigation in Phase 6 requires the PCs to get a clue from an NPC who is innately hostile to them. It then requires the PCs to reach several conclusions for which no clues are included at all, while the threadbare breadcrumb trail which does exist is peppered with gaping plot holes.

Perhaps strangest of all, the adventure doesn’t actually have an ending. The central goal of the campaign is “stop the giant attacks.” The rescue of Lord Hekaton and the death of Iymrith is presented — structurally, textually, and diegetically to the characters — as the way to achieve this.

But because Iymrith’s deception and Hekaton’s disappearance are not what broke the Ordning, there’s no logical reason to think that resolving either of those things will result in the Ordning being reformed and the crisis coming to an end. And, in fact, the book more or less concedes this in the “Adventure Conclusion” section on page 230.

CRASHING THE PARTY

Let’s back up and talk about Harshnag for a moment.

When he shows up and says, “Follow me to Phase 4!” this creates a giant-sized problem for Storm King’s Thunder.

Harshnag is a prototypical Realms NPC who is much, much cooler and much, much more powerful than the PCs and shows up to hog the spotlight.

Storm King’s Thunder at least briefly acknowledges the Harshnag Problem and attempts to solve possibly the least important part of it (combat balance) by having Harshnag literally patronize the PCs by pretending he’s not as powerful as he actually is (p. 120):

Harshnag tries not to dominate combat if it means making his smaller compatriots feel inferior. He doesn’t want to be seen as a showoff. He can reduce his combat effectiveness in the following ways:

• He makes one attack on his turn instead of two.

• He uses the Help action to aid a character’s next attack against a foe. […]

• He does nothing on his turn except taunt an enemy who might otherwise attack a character. Assume the effort is successful and the target switches it attention to Harshnag, unless the character insists on being the target of that threat.

I sure hope no one dies while you’re jerking off, Harshnag.

After that half-hearted effort, Storm King’s Thunder gets back down to the work of completely mishandling a powerful NPC ally. We can start with the railroad doors to the Eye of the All-Father that are needlessly designed so that only the NPC can effectively open them and then eventually culminate with an NPC-focused cutscene where the PCs are turned into mute bystanders while Harshnag solos Iymrith.

(The adventure is so insistent on this that it will literally KILL A PC rather than let them try to participate in the cutscene.)

For a detailed explanation of why this sort of thing is a terrible idea, check out How NOT to Frame a Scene. But the key thing is that, while having a much more powerful PC show up is not inherently bad, there are generally two maxims you want to follow:

1. Make sure the game remains focused on the PCs.
2. Use the NPC’s awesomeness as a way of establishing how awesome the PCs are.

Imagine Barack Obama shows up at your birthday party. In Scenario #1 he grabs a fistful of birthday cake, poses with people for selfies, and tells stories about the situation room when Osama Bin Laden was assassinated for the rest of the evening.

In Scenario #2, he comes over to you, throws an arm around your shoulder, and says, “This is a party I could not miss once I heard about <that cool thing you did last week>.”

Which Obama do you want at your birthday party?

Storm King’s Thunder struggles with this because Harshnag’s role in the campaign is not to hype the PCs up.

He’s here to tell them that everything they did in Phase 3 was a pointless dead end.

This is also a problem that the “ending” of the campaign has: After all of their epic adventures, the PCs are reduced to footsoldiers taking orders from an NPC.

DEUS EX AIRSHIP

With all that being said, I want to emphasize that the bones of Storm King’s Thunder are fundamentally really good, and there are quite a few clever things the designers do.

For example, at the end of Phase 1 as the PCs are leaving Nighstone, a cloud giant citadel that’s floating past spots them and flies down. It belongs to Zephyros, a cloud giant who is looking for the PCs because the DM… err, I mean STRANGE PLANAR ENTITIES have told him that he needs to give them a lift to the next part of the adventure.

This is a really cool moment.

Oddly, though, it’s not the only time this happens in the adventure. Later on, a random airship will swoop out of the air and declare that the DM… err, I mean A MYSTERIOUS DRAGON has sent it to give the PCs a lift.

So why does this happen?

The core of the campaign — Phase 3 — is spread across North Faerûn. Locations across this entire region are keyed so that the PCs can travel almost anywhere and (theoretically) encounter campaign relevant stuff. The trick, though, is that all of this material is:

• Keyed to the specific range of levels the PCs will be in Phase 3.
• Designed to funnel the PCs towards the Eye of the All-Father.

If they went overland from Nightstone to Bryn Shander at the end of Phase 1, for example, they’d encounter a bunch of stuff that (a) they’re not ready for and (b) assumes the continuity of the adventure is more advanced than it is.

So to avoid that problem, you have Zephyros show up to literally fly them over these locations. And later, after Phase 3, you give them an airship for the same reason.

If you were prepping a similar adventure for your home campaign, we could imagine keying material appropriate for Phase 2 for their journey and then, later, advancing or updating that key as their journeys continue. If the book had infinite space, we could similarly imagine stocking the entire pointcrawl multiple times with different material for each phase.

But since the book can’t be infinite in its size, this is a very clever structural trick to make it work.

GAZETTEER OF THE SAVAGE FRONTIER

Did you know that Storm King’s Thunder has a significantly more detailed write-up of Bryn Shander — the capital of Icewind Dale — than the one that appears in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden?

In fact, the hidden treasure of Storm King’s Thunder is that it contains an encyclopedic gazetteer of the Savage Frontier. Although there’s some overlap with the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, Storm King’s Thunder’s location guide is almost identical in length to Sword Coast Adventurers Guide’s treatment of the Sword Coast. This makes Storm King’s Thunder an invaluable resource for any North-ranging Forgotten Realms campaign, whether you’re interested in an adventure about giants or not.

What’s great about the adventure tie-in, though, is that the gazetteer ends up studded with play-ready material. This is high-value stuff.

You can also flip this around. Because of how it’s structured, a good chunk of Storm King’s Thunder can basically be boiled down to a list of “terrible things that giants are doing.”

So if you’re running any campaign in the Forgotten Realms, you can use Storm King’s Thunder to supply what I refer to as Background Events — a second timeline of future events running in parallel with your PCs’ adventures. These are events that don’t directly affect the PCs, but which are nevertheless taking place and moving the campaign world forward.

In other words, you can take most of Storm King’s Thunder and just have it “running” in the background of your campaign: The world is large and there’s all this giant stuff that’s happening up north or one town over or whatever.

This sort of thing can add incredible depth to your campaign world. And, of course, if the PCs decide to follow up on nay of this… well, hey! You’ve got a whole campaign book you can launch into!

On a related note, Storm King’s Thunder also does something similar in reverse, by dropping in little references to other published D&D campaigns: The crisis is triggered by Tyranny of Dragons. There are elemental lords from Princes of the Apocalypse actively seeking alliances. And so forth.

None of these require your group to have owned, read, or played the other adventures. But if you DO, then these are great little pay-offs and they make the world feel HUGE.

THREE CITIES, THREE FIGHTS

Something else that Storm King’s Thunder does very well are the three big giant fights in Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, and Triboar.

You may have gotten the impression that these fights are generic or interchangeable because of the campaign’s structure, but each location is well-developed and each encounter is crafted with very specific strategic goals and tactics. Each is full of unique interest, framed as large-scale strategic conflicts spread out across an entire community, in which the PCs will need to make tough choices about where and how to engage the enemy.

There is one caveat here, though.

The book doesn’t want the PCs fighting alongside NPC guards. This is most likely a deliberate choice to simplify the DM’s cognitive load and is mostly fine, except they accomplish it primarily by handing out idiot balls.

In Goldenfields, for example, they’re just explicitly incompetent:

There are no guards in the abbey, just a handful of acolytes. One of them, Zi Liang has scolded Father Darovik many times for putting the defense of Goldenfields in the hands of incompetent military leaders, which has made her somewhat unpopular.

With a little extra effort, however, some careful DMing can mostly work around these problems. In Goldenfields, for example, it’s not too difficult to set up the Chekhov’s Gun of The Guards Are Terrible Here.

Similarly, in Bryn Shander, all the guards at whatever location the PCs choose to fight are supposed to immediately run away (while all the other guards in town stay and fight). This is a problem because it flattens the strategic choices available to the players. (Instead of being able to choose how and where to reinforce the NPCs, and then dealing with the consequences of those choices, the PCs have no choice except to go all-in on the completely undefended location.) But about 90% of the solution is to just ignore the direction to have the NPCs run away and instead playing to find out.

CONCLUSION

I like Storm King’s Thunder.

It has weaknesses, but these are well-balanced by its ambition. If you can successfully pull the campaign off, it’s studded with amazing set pieces and gives ample opportunities to become one of the most memorable experiences you’ll have at the gaming table.

But that IF should not be casually ignored.

I’ve spoken to a large number of players and DMs about their experiences with Storm King’s Thunder, and a disconcerting number of them have reported campaigns which floundered, frustrated, meandered their way into boredom, or crashed spectacularly.

And these are problems directly connected to the shortcomings in Storm King’s Thunder’s design.

The one I would consider probably most significant is the campaign’s subtle-but-persistent deprotagonization of the PCs. Whether that’s all-powerful GMPCs, demeaning scenario hooks, or too-frequent “nothing you’re doing actually matters” dead ends, the result is demoralizing to the players and debilitating to the health of any long-term campaign. Why keep doing things if your actions keep getting characterized as meaningless?

The fragility of the adventure shouldn’t be ignored, either. There are far too many places where Storm King’s Thunder is (a) on rails and (b) can easily go hurtling off those rails with catastrophic results.

So, in many ways, Storm King’s Thunder is a needlessly frustrating and complicated campaign for the DM to run. But if you’re willing to tackle the challenge and can successfully thread the needle, I believe you will find it to be a highly rewarding one.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Authors: Jenna Helland, Adam Lee, Christopher Perkins, Richard Whitters
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 256

Buy Now!

FURTHER READING

Go to Part 1

The agents of the so-called Thieves’ Guild of the North, known as krakenar, identify themselves through the secret mark of a purple squid with an incredible number of tentacles. (The number and styling of the tentacles, perhaps encouraged by the decentralized structure of the Society, has actually shifted over time and in different places. This is not an intentional variation, but those who are deeply familiar with the krakenar may be able to identify the origin of a particular instance of their sign.) It would be a mistake, however, to think of the Kraken Society as purely a bunch of thieves. They are skilled spies and information brokers, with their services often being sought even by legitimate powers. The krakenar thus include highwaymen, merchants, adventurers, and more. Anyone with the right skills or in the right place may be welcomed in the tentacles’ embrace.

In fact, the Kraken Society can often abide in these legitimate, mutually beneficial relationships for years. The krakenar refer to this as the “low tide,” getting their foot in the door by selling valuable information, using their newly privileged position to gain access to more information, rinse, wash, repeat.

What the krakenar are looking for is the “crack in the seawall” (which they may refer to in slang simply as a “crack” or “buckling”); a weakness in the existing systems of power which can be exploited. When they find it, the tide comes in.

Operating at “high tide,” a krakenar cell will use all of its illicit knowledge, covert skills, and criminal resources to disrupt the targeted government or organization. They may attempt to destroy the entire institution, but it’s more common for them to target specific individuals. When the leadership has been crippled or wiped out, the krakenar agents who silently infiltrated the organization during low tide simply slip into the power vacuum. It’s not unusual for krakenar agents to enter power promising to end a threat that was created by the Society in the first place, ensuring acclaim as they rapidly “solve” the problem.

ORGANIZATION

The Kraken Society is cell-based. Each city or region is controlled by a Lieutenant, and although the various regional cells cooperate with each other when it’s beneficial, each is operated as an independent organization and has deliberately limited contact. The local structures of the cells are not proscribed, and can vary greatly (although they tend to value secrecy and usually reflect the Society’s general cell-based methodology).

The inner circle of the Society, which consists of the Lieutenants and a handful of other senior members (called Followers), refers to itself as the coterie. The coterie is privy to the inner mysteries of the cult, which feature a highly mythologized “truth” about the Kraken of the Purple Rocks: They believe themselves to be the servitors of the King of the Trackless Depths (Slarkethrel), who is destined to regain the lost hegemony of the kraken empire which once ruled the seas of Toril. Those who advance further into the mystery perform rites which forge a communion (or supposedly do) with the kraken psychopomps who escaped their empire’s destruction within the sanctuaries of the abyssal rifts.

Those becoming Lieutenants travel to the Purple Rocks, where the Heralds of the Deep indoctrinate them through a series of strange rites. Lieutenants who earn great honor may even be invited to Ascarle.

Most krakenar agents, however, are not part of the coterie and just think of themselves as being part of a criminal organization. Even further out on the periphery is the vast web of front organizations which serve the Society’s will without most of their members or employees ever knowing they are part of it.

CURRENT CELLS

Waterdeep/Skullport: The Skum Lord is an aboleth which lairs beneath Skullport. It has quietly spent centuries inexorably expanding its influence within the Port of Shadows, creating a network of telepathically linked agents strategically placed in the nexus of the underworld. Information flows through Skullport, and the Skum Lord skims his take.

Those long-enthralled to the Skum Lord can be noted by their pale, translucent skin. Known by some as the “pale servitors,” they can be seen moving throughout Skullport and, increasingly, the city above. (The Skum Lord used to have a surface counterpart who served as the lieutenant of Waterdeep, but this hasn’t been true in decades. Slarkethrel’s resurgence in recent years has prompted the Skum Lord to become more active in expanding the Society’s presence in Waterdeep. His agents had some success doing business with Lord Neverember’s administration, but have been disappointed by Laeral Silverhand. It’s uncertain whether the Skum Lord wants to expand his base of power, or if he would be happier finding a new Waterdhavian lieutenant.)

In Skullport, the Skum Lord is also rumored to own forty percent or more of the city’s buildings. Each month the pale servitors come to collect their rent: Sometimes they ask for money. Sometimes they ask questions.

Yartar: Yartar was once the primary center of power for the Kraken Society, but in the late 14^th century the Harpers and the Waterbaron systematically broke their power and drove them out of the city. The Society has only returned to Yartar within the last few years.

• Ghald (sahuagin) and Unferth (male Tethyrian human priest) are partners jointly in charge of Society business in the Dessarin Valley. Their approach has been to recruit powerful, ambitious individuals who already have existing power bases and simultaneously turn them towards myriad schemes. Their theory is that they can easily jettison the failures and consolidate the victors into a larger organization. The actual organization that Ghald and Unferth have reporting directly to them now can actually be described only generously as skeletal, but they’ve managed to project to most of the people they’re working with the illusion that the Society is a monolithic force. (Princes of the Apocalypse, p. 210)
• Lord Khaspere Drylund, one of Yartar’s nobles, is a member of the society and spearheading an effort to replace Ruthiol as the city’s Waterbaron. Drylund notably owns and operates the Grand Dame, a riverboat gambling casino. (Storm King’s Thunder, p. 216)

The Hand of Yartar is an all-female thieves’ guild in Yartar which was actually founded as a front organization for the Kraken Society. In the 14^th century it was led by Semmonemily, a doppelganger who assumed the identity of the Hand’s guildmistress, Emily Iramalac. When the Society was purged from Yartar, however, Semmonemily was killed. The remaining members of the Hand had no idea they’d been operating as part of the Kraken Society and no living connection to the organization. They’ve continued operating independently over the last century, and ironically are now one of the strongest opponents to the Kraken Society as the Society attempts to reassert its control of the underworld in Yartar.

Neverwinter: The Reefkin are a group of merfolk who have set up a commune under Neverwinter Harbor. The upper ranks of the Reefkin deliberately infect themselves with lycanthropy, allowing them to transform into wolves when they wish to pursue shoreside agendas.

The Reefkin have a familiar modus operandi among Slarkethrel’s cults: They rescue drowning sailors and, sometimes after showing them some underwater wonder or vision, deliver them to shore. They claim a life-debt from these sailors, however, and subtly coerce them into the Society.

(Do the Reefkin create their own supply of sailors-to-be-saved by covertly sinking ships with damage disguised to look as if they ran aground on the reefs? Of course they do.)

What happens next depends on circumstances: Some can be immediately forced to do terrible things. Others will be manipulated into countless small acts of treachery, each binding them closer to the Reefkin. The end goal is either recruitment, blackmail, or both.

The Reefkin are also known to have formed alliances with fey powers within Evernight, the dark reflection of Neverwinter which lies within the Shadowfell.

Thornhold: North of Waterdeep along the Sword Coast, Thornhold is an ancient fortress which was unwittingly built by the Margaster noble family directly below the caverns of Clan Stoneshaft in the Underdark below. Control of Thornhold has passed through numerous hands and its connections to the Stoneshaft dwarves have grown stronger (primarily due to a period in which Zhentarim slavers were oppressing and exploiting the dwarves).

Most recently, the Margasters have once again taken possession of Thornhold and forged a tentative alliance with the Stoneshaft dwarves: The Margasters protect the Stoneshaft interests, provide defense against surface threats, and facilitate trade relationships with the merchants of Waterdeep. The Stoneshaft dwarves benefit from having economic access to the wealth of the North; the Margasters reap a healthy profit from their role as middlemen.

There are those among the Stoneshaft dwarves, however, who resent the Margasters: They remember the past betrayals of other surface “allies” and they question what the humans are doing to justify “stealing” their wealth. That’s the sort of buckling that the Kraken Society looks for. A krakenar dwarf named Urnom Telrokak has been organizing disaffected Stoneshaft dwarves. What would be ideal is if the Kraken Society could place an agent within the Margasters, who could then be used to exacerbate the tensions between the two factions.

Caer Westphal: Caer Westphal is the capital of Snowdon, a small isle in the southeastern corner of the Moonshaes which was recently annexed by Amnian nobles. The Society has implanted itself among the native Ffolk of the island, characterizing themselves as a popular uprising.

They have an uneasy alliance with the Brothers of the Beast, another resistance group run by a druid named Heinrich Mucklepratt who can summon strange allies from the island’s moonwells. Their mutual efforts have forced Lady Erliza to openly reveal more and more of her dark powers, increasing tensions on the island.

Luskan: The City of Sails is worth mentioning here because, like Yartar, it was once a major center of power for the Kraken Society. The regional lieutenant here was actually a member of the High Captains who ruled the city, often turning Luskan’s extensive resources to the Society’s purposes. As in Yartar, however, the Society was purged in the late 14^th century. Recent efforts have attempted to find a toehold here, but so far Jarlaxle Baenre and the Bregan D’aerthe have been successful in stamping them out.

Addendum: A Brief Word on My Sources

Go to Part 1

Slarkethrel’s modus operandi has historically been to compartmentalize his structures of power. The innermost circles of these organizations have some degree of overlap, with their leaders all becoming indoctrinated in the multifaceted, cultic “truth” of Slarkethrel in different ways, allowing them to cooperate and support each other when necessary. But most members of these groups are largely or entirely unaware that they have any relationship with each other. In the case of the Kraken Society, most of the street-level operatives aren’t even aware that there’s a literal kraken at the top of the pyramid.

PURPLE ROCKS: HERALDS OF THE DEEP

The reavers of Purple Rocks are a recurrent nuisance along the coasts of the Trackless Sea, with small fleets that vary from one or a few ships to as many as two dozen at various points over the past couple hundred years. The Purple Rocks themselves are a small archipelago with a population of a few hundred people dominated by two major islands noted for their purple-and-red sea cliffs.

If a mainlander has heard of Purple Rocks, it’s most likely due to either the reavers acting up again or vilksmaarg cheese – a pungent, salty variety produced from the milk of the strange Purple Rocks goats that is quite popular in the taverns of Luskan. Someone visiting Purple Rocks will find a variety of small fishing villages nestled long the coasts and clefted highlands, filled with Northmen eking out a hardscrabble existence while worshiping familiar northern gods like Tempus, Umberlee, and Auril.

If one were to take a close look at the idols and icons of Tempus and the other gods, however, they might notice the subtle tentacles which have been worked into their design. So, too, is the mundanity of the islands as a whole merely camouflage for the Heralds of the Deep, the Slarkethrelian cult which has quietly dominated the domestic and political life of the Purple Rocks for centuries.

Those who spend time amongst the people here might begin to notice oddities: The curious lack of children, for example. A glassy, too-worn look around the eyes. The strange, fluting trumpets that sound from across the sea and to which many pay an almost uncanny heed. The strange lights that can sometimes be seen from the seacoasts at night and the lights in the highlands above that seem to answer them in kind.

The truth is that the Heralds of the Deep practice rites of human sacrifice, their victims being hurled as offerings into the sea. In return, the people of Purple Rocks receive the Purple Blessing, a strange purple crystal which is boiled down from an alchemical mixture that includes Slarkethrel’s blood and is delivered from the deeps. The crystals are smoked and convey an unnaturally long life. (Those who suffer most from the mutagenic side-effects withdraw from public life and eventually “return to the sea” to join their lord and master.) Most of the population of Purple Rocks is more than a century old. Mainlanders assume that the King Selger who rules here must be the son or grandson of the Selger who reigned before the Spellplague, but not so: It is the same man.

The most recent attempt to free Purple Rocks from the influence of the Heralds came in the mid-14^th century, when a popular rebellion on Utheraal – one of the two large islands of Purple Rocks – successfully rose up and crowned King Bromm. In 1368 DR, however, King Selger of Trisk (the other major island) landed his fleet of longships on Utheraal and retook the island. This was done with the full support of the Sword Coast city-states, who had long blamed King Bromm for the reavers who plagued their shipping.

(Oddly, however, it was Selger who had a fleet of longships… not Bromm. An example of how effective the efforts of the krakenar can be in silently shaping mainland opinion and politics.)

THE ASCARLIAN EMPIRE

The sunken city of Ascarle is the capital of an undersea empire. Once quite vast (spreading across an area larger than the Savage Frontier), its borders have been somewhat curtailed in the 15^th century. Politically it is a patchwork affair, consisting of various undersea peoples and nations who have been conquered or suborned by Slarkethrel and then usually left as distinct entities rather than being integrated into some larger whole.

Those who are annexed by the Ascarlian Empire are organized into satrapies. The satraps rule their demesnes with tyrannical authority, answering ultimately only to Slarkethrel and the Regent of Ascarle. The satraps may or may not be appointed from the same race and culture as those they govern, but they are always fiercely loyal to the divinity of the Kraken of Purple Rocks.

Slarkethrel has also attempted to infiltrate the satrapies of Ascarle with religious cults dedicated to his worship, efforts which have met with varying degrees of success. These cults often employ imagery and dogma which would be familiar to the Heralds of the Deep and the inner circles of the Kraken Society, but Slarkethrel prefers to keep them separate and distinct from each other.

Note: Although the Heralds of the Deep are kept separate from the imperium, King Selger is treated as a satrap and also answers to the Regent of Ascarle.

(This systemic division of power has undoubtedly contributed to a certain lack of stability in Ascarle’s dominion. On the other hand, it also insulates Slarkethrel’s power base from completely collapsing. Even if the kraken loses vast swaths of what he claims, whatever parts are left will remain whole and complete unto themselves, providing a foundation from which he can inevitably rebuild.)

THE REGENT OF ASCARLE: The Regent of Ascarle is a mind flayer named Vestress.

In 1278 DR, krakenar agents discovered the location of legendary Gauntlgrym, the one-time capital of the dwarven empire of Delzoun. An expedition plundered dwarven treasure and even more valuable lore, but ultimately came into conflict with the illithids who controlled the depths of the ancient city. A final operation within the city sought to pillage knowledge directly from the elder brain (and met with some mitigated success).

The operatives returned to Slarkethrel with vast caches of lore that would take decades to fully catalogue and riches which would fund the kraken’s ambitions to previously unimaginable heights. But it also triggered decades of illithid counterattacks, fueling a rivalry between the mind flayers and the tentacles of the deep that has only ebbed in recent years as a result of Gauntlgrym falling to a dwarven alliance (although it could easily flare up again at any time if something were to fan the flames of what is now centuries-old enmity).

In addition to lore and treasure, the krakenar also brought back a prisoner: Vestress.

Vestress was tortured and questioned by Slarkethrel, who opened her mind, peered into its depths, and then rebuilt it. After her brainwashing, Vestress believed herself to be a rogue illithid who had rebelled against her creche and been cast out for her “crime” of seeking freedom. Vestress believes that Slarkethrel found her and welcomed her into the embrace of its ever-giving tentacles.

At this time, Ascarle was still something of a haunted city. Vestress took it upon herself to assemble a force of “heroes” drawn from across Slarkethrel’s empire – merrow, sea elves, weresharks, kapoacinths, and water weirds – and led them in cleaning out the fell creatures and strange spirits. In the process, she transformed Ascarle into a proper capital city, and Slarkethrel named her the Protectress of the city. From that position, her influence and power simply grew, until she was named Regent of Ascarle in the Year of the Striking Falcon (1333 DR).

Vestress apparently remained in charge of Ascarle during whatever catastrophe separated the city from Slarkethrel and the empire. She is now quite aged, nearing the end of her natural lifespan. There is much speculation about who will become the next Regent of Ascarle, along with an increasing amount of jockeying as rivals seek to position themselves for the seemingly inevitable transition of power.

Go to Part 3: The Society

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