Storm King’s Thunder: Episode 1
Auberon, Cygnus, Xavian, and Zedrick began the campaign by arriving at Nightstone. The encounter at Nightstone would be the first clue as to how the giants are causing trouble in the lands of Faerun, but still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, namely “why?”
Following the script from Power Score, I had the PCs encounter Kella Darkhope, the Zhentarim spy, in the middle of a struggle with four goblins. All the players got to try out their new character’s powers, the combat moved briskly and they carefully stepped into the abandoned town of Nightstone.
Noble Beginnings
The characters split up and began searching the town for clues of what happened. One particularly fun interaction was when Auberon and Xavian explored the busted out tavern and found a goblin picking up bits of food and stuffing it into her sack. They got the drop on her and briefly interrogated her, as she begged not to be killed. She told them she was sent here by some ogres, and offered copious amounts of partly eaten muffins as a sign of goodwill.
I strongly dislike it when players pigeonhole their characters into being “murder hobos.” You know the type — characters who just go around from place to place, indiscriminately solving each problem by killing their way out of it.
Since this was a new group, where some people were playing D&D for the first time, I was hoping they would not fall into this roleplaying trope. The goblin explained her situation and made it clear she meant no malice. I’d also recently heard on Dragon Talk about goblin religions, and how their version of hell is absolutely horrible. They seek to avoid it every chance they get, so that informed some of the goblin’s tactics as well.
And in the end, they didn’t kill her! Stabbing some rambunctious goblin with an affinity for moldy muffins did seem cruel, so they let her run off. I was very pleased with my players.
The rest of the Nightstone happenings seemed pretty standard. They searched the town, figured out where the inhabitants had probably escaped to, and soon some Zhentarim spies showed up. As Power Score suggested, I had Felgolos (the bronze dragon who they can potentially meet much later in the adventure) show up early, and make a connection with them. Bringing in dragons — the legendary foes of the giants — helped frame the giant activity as part of an overarching world conflict.
Afterwards, the orc attack was a little hectic, and I don’t think I provided a full context as to why it was happening in the greater scheme of things. It fell a little flat. Also, they literally just had a large-scale battle with the Zhentarim, so it didn’t provide anything new or interesting. I’d tweak it in the future. One suggested story hook said characters could mediate the conflict between the elves of the Ardeep Forest and the orcs in there. Perhaps before arriving I could have let the player try out their persuasion (with roleplaying and/or a roll) between an elf and orc emissary, and their success (or failure) would determine how this later encounter would go. It’s always beneficial to show direct player consequences, and this could be a quick pay-off to show that impact. Next time.
At this point, they had information about the townspeople potentially hiding in a cave. I didn’t want Felgolos to hog the spotlight, so I had him go off to investigate something nearby, while the players were free to save the town on their own. They looked for the cave and began to formulate a plan.
Into the Dripping Caves
This is where things got interesting — much of which was helped out by our first real taste of Roll20’s dynamic lighting features. The characters were able to peer into the caves and see two large ogres among the goblin denizens. They explored the surrounding area, and found an alternate way in, trying to use stealth to their advantage. Auberon, being a druid, used his shapeshifting ability to transform himself into a spider. He was able to innocuously search the caves, and found a number of goblins preparing to eat one of the trapped villagers. The players sprung to action, and began an assault on the enemies inside the cave. But being stuck in the narrow tunnels of the cave was not advantageous to their rescue plan. They quickly headed back to the main entrance, and lured the ogres outside to take them on.
I was enjoying this a lot as DM, because the players were getting a chance to be creative with their tactics. Their wasn’t one “obvious” way to handle the encounter. And they certainly got creative.
The ogres packed quite the punch, and in the early game, character health is quite low. A couple hits brought Xavian close to death, and the players began to panic. To prevent more goblins from joining the fight at the mouth of the cave, Auberon cast a Spike Growth, creating a hazardous barrier of shambles and thorns that would do damage to any goblin who attempted to traverse it.
And then they saw an opportunity. Instead of only using it as a barrier, they could use it as a weapon. Cygnus, the warlock, successfully cast Dissonant Whispers on an ogre, which had it lose its mind in fear, and use its reaction to run as far away from Cygnus as it could. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but it ran straight into the Spike Growth, accumulating more than enough damage to kill it before it could get away. Bye Thog.
They took out both ogres, but still had a cluster of goblins trying to shoot them with arrows from behind some stalactites inside the cave. And they still had only rescued one villager from the whole town. Auberon doubled back to the side entrance, and cast Spider Climb on himself. Now able to walk on walls, he sneaked along the top of the cave as the goblins pelted the party with arrows. He dropped right into the middle of them and cast a devastating Thunderwave spell that rocked all the goblins apart, finally defeating them.
The villagers were rescued, and the characters returned to the town as heroes. According to Storm King’s Thunder, next up was meant to be an encounter with Zephyros — a cloud giant on his flying castle who would escort the players wherever they needed to go. This was not very appealing to me. It didn’t have any connection to the players, and seemed very deus ex machina. “Oh, a friendly giant comes out of his flying castle and offers you a ride. Why? Because… the book says so?” Super lame.
I scrapped it, and had Felgolos return instead. This time he’d been poisoned, and urgently needed the characters to escort him to a nearby healer. I could do similar aerial combat encounters that would have happened with Zephyros, but now they made a little sense in the story — he was still being chased by the people who poisoned him.
Next up, I had a personal side-quest for Auberon set up. One of the town’s elders had also given the PCs the quest of travelling to Bryn Shander to inform the town sheriff of his sister’s demise in Nightstone. Felgolos could take them partway there, so it was a natural fit.
Of course, things never quite go according to plan in Dungeons and Dragons.
