SKT: Narrative

Existing Material

Important NPCs:

• Hekaton: the storm king. MIA.
• Neri: his wife. Murdured to lure him into a trap.
• Serrisa: their youngest daughter, acting regent and Hekaton's chosen heir.
• Mirran and Nym: Hekaton's two older daughers. Meanies who want the throne for themselves.
• Iymrith: the shapeshifting ancient blue dragon responsible for the death of Neri and the capture of Hekaton.
• Zephyros: the eccentric cloud giant who picks the PCs up in the first act.
• Harshnag: the ex-adventurer frost giant who guides the PCs to the oracle.
• Giant Lords: the most important of each type of giant, vying to obtain the gods' favour and become king of all giants in Hekaton's absence.

Important organisations:

• The Kraken Society: the group who, at Iymrith's behest, murdered Neri and captured Hekaton.
• No other organisations play a significant role in the story.

The existing plot of the book goes something like this:

• Giant attacks are threataning the sword coast, much more than usual.
• The PCs arrive at Nightstone (reason not given), which has been more or less invaded by goblins.
• They clear out the town, then the nearby cave.
• Zephyros appears and picks up the PCs with the intention of taking them to one of Triboar, Goldenfields or Bryn Shander.
• On the way, they are attacked by some random cultists.
• They arrive at the specified town and defend it from a giant attack.
• They wander around the sword coast until they bump into Harshnag
• Harshnag takes them to the oracle
• They visit the oracle and determine that the source of the giant attacks is [insert lore dump about the backstory] and that they must return with artefacts to uncover more precise information.
• They are gifted an airship by a bored ancient dragon and fly around to the various artefact sites.
• They return and are told the location of some of the giant lords.
• They raid the giant lord's strongholds for a conch to get them to maelstrom, the storm king's court.
• They go to maelstrom and parley with Serissa her two sisters. Iymrith is also there. They are given a golden goose chip as their clue and told to find Hekaton.
• They track down the chip to a boat casino and squeeze the owner (a member of the kraken cult who kidnapped Hekaton) for info.
• He reveals the location of the Morkoth, the ship carrying Hekaton.
• The PCs raid the Morkoth and rescue Hekaton.
• The PCs retun to Maelstrom, whereupon it is revealed that Iymrith is the real villain. She flees.
• The PCs go to Iymrith's lair and kill her.

Changes

The basic gist is that Serissa, the giant princess and sorta regent, takes a much more active role in the story as a patron of sorts to the player characters. She is the one who A. sends Zephyros to get them in the beginning and B. tells them about harshnag.

I also want to get rid of the Deus Ex Airship somehow, but I'm not sure how yet. Also todo: add Iymrith to the story as a villain beforehand.

List of changes, rougly in order of when they show up in the campaign:

• The seven snakes turn up explicitly looking for giant traces, and want to use the village as a base for thereof.
• Zephyros is working for Serissa. This is unknown to Serissa's sisters and Iymrith, but not hidden from the players.
  • Though, this does make the part of the story where they're looking for the conch make a lot less sense. In particular, what does the oracle tell them? Why do they need to go to maelstrom to figure out what's going on? Not for talking to serissa, at any rate.
  • If they still have to go through the whole ringmarole to get to maelstrom, that means that it takes ages before anything important happens, or rather that most of the stuff they do before hand is kinda meaningless.
  • Idea: they go to maelstrom a lot earlier, introducing serrisa and iymrith a lot earlier. Perhaps this could happen immediately after they save the town in chapter two, and then in chapter three they discover information about iymrith working with the kraken society?
  • How do the giant lords fit into this?
• Zephyros, on Serissa's advice, tells the players to look for Harshnag, who might be able to help them find Hekaton after rescuing whichever town they go to.
  • Update: Serissa now tells the PCs directly when they go to maelstrom early on
• The town is attacked by whichever giant lord is going to be the focus later.
• The PCs follow a breadcrumb trail of sorts around the sword coast looking for Harshnag.
  • Iymrith (as a villanous sorceror), the giant lord in question, and the Kraken Society should at minimum be referenced in this section.
    • Idea: Harshnag has been tracking down the Kraken society.
  • Idea: the PCs have to rescue Harshnag from attack by Iymrith (or perhaps the Society). She withdraws without breaking cover.
• Cut out the airship and running around for trinkets entirely, or have Harshnag know to collect them beforehand. Definitely no airship.

Final summary of changes:

• Chapter 1: The Seven snakes turn up looking for giant traces and want to set up a base in nightstone for that purpose.
• Chapter 2:
  • After defending the village, the PCs get taken to Maelstrom to talk to Serissa, having proven their worth or whatever. Zephyros goes with them.
  • They meet with the rest of the cast of Maelstrom - Mirrim, Nym, Iymrith and Uthor. All of them think this is a bad idea, but are placated by Serissa's explanation that they are a backup plan.
  • Serissa asks them to look for Harshnag, as he may have clues to her father's whereabouts. She gives them an initial lead.
• Chapter 3:
  • Whenever the PCs encounter a faction, that faction is explicitly preparing for conflict against giants. This also informs them of some of the giant lords' plans.
  • They must discover that Iymrith, or someone matching her description but human-sized, has been working with the Kraken Society. This may necessitate the Kraken Society being much more well-known than is implied in the base book.
  • Wherever Harshnag is, the PCs rescue him from attack either from Iymrith, or more likely, the Kraken Society, perhaps at her direction.
• Chapter 4:
  • The oracle demands that the PCs prove their worth (again) by stealing basically Mjolnir from the fire giants. Swap this out for something else if none of the PCs can use it.
  • No airship turns up to help out with this.
  • The oracle answers the PCs' questions, whatever they are. Harshnag asks what Iymrith's goals are, and it turns out that she's tricked every giant lord into doing something for her.
  • The PCs can go after whichever giant lord they choose, whichever they think is likely to have info on Iymrith, Hekaton or the Kraken Society.
• Chapters 5-9:
  • Precisely what happens here depends on the players' previous choices. They must learn that Hekaton is being held hostage by the Kraken Society, though where is unknown.
  • They acquire the golden goose token and a conch of teleportation.
• Chapter 10:
  • The players have already visited Maelstrom earlier; whether they choose to go back after defeating a giant lord is up to them. If not, nothing happens.
  • If they do, Mirrim, Nym, and Uthor do not believe them in the slightest. Iymrith pretends to not believe them.
  • With all of them against Serissa, the players will have to do an immense amount of persuasion to get Serissa to give them any help or take action against Iymrith.
  • If they fail, they are banished from Maelstrom and their conch is taken away.
  • If they succeed, Iymrith reveals herself and retreats. This is sufficient to convince Uthor and the PCs proceed to chapter 12.
• Chapter 11: As written.
• Chapter 12: As written (perhaps make the fight better).

Other new stuff:

• Have some NPCs be hunting other giant lords. Perhaps the enclave is after Guh, or the Lord's Alliance is after Kayalithica (the stone giantess). This introduces some rather interesting possibilities:
  • The seven snakes from the very beginning could be on Zhent orders to find traces of the cloud giants who (basically) bombed the village and nicked the eponymous nightstone.
  • The sword coast, or at least the major orgs, could be getting on serious war footing.
  • The existence of disparate groups of giants staging organised attacks is common knowledge, if not knowledge of the giant lords themselves.