Our play of Storm King’s Thunder saw the adventurers choose to take on the cloud giants, at least partly because they had a lot of fire spells which would be ineffective against the fire giants, and they wanted a challenge. So, taking the airship, they flew to the Cloud Giant castle to find the object they needed to reach King Hekaton’s court.

This is an episode that requires a lot from the DM and players; there’s not an obvious route to take.

My players decided, much to my relief, not to engage in a frontal assault, instead first attempting to bargain with the Cloud Giants. They were received on the Cloud Castle by the curious Countess Sansuri and gained a basic idea of its layout as the giants escorted them to the throne room. There, the adventurers utterly failed to convince the Countess to help them.

One of the most difficult interactions in an RPG is trying to negotiate with an NPC when you have nothing in common. The adventure says that the Countess won’t help the adventurers. The adventurers have nothing that the Countess needs. The most likely outcome is that the adventurers annoy the Countess and bad things happen. The adventurers irritated her, but not to the point of combat, and so the negotiation ended with the characters departing aboard their airship peacefully. However, they had noticed the large drains leading under the cloud castle and decided to infiltrate the castle through them once night fell.

At this point, it was up to me to decide how difficult the infiltration would be. It would be very easy to turn it into a mass combat with the adventurers fending off wave after wave of cloud giants until everything in the castle was dead – or the adventurers. One or the other! However, I felt that was the wrong choice. So, I’d allow the infiltration as much as possible.

The adventurers crept up a rope through the drain to the courtyard. From there, they made their way into the castle and began searching for a way to the Countess’s rooms. Eventually, they were discovered by a cloud giant guard, who they slew. The clock began ticking. How long until someone discovered his body? What would happen next?

They stumbled into another guard post – a dead end – and slew the guard there. An uproar outside revealed that the giants had found the first guard’s body, but they slipped back into the castle and managed to avoid the patrols. They were smart – listening at doors before opening them – and so avoided being trapped. Once they found the correct set of stairs up, the upper levels were less congested with giants.

I was using the table of giant movements as a guide to how the giants reacted, but I believe that table describe reactions when an attack comes from outside the castle rather than an infiltration, so it wasn’t quite applicable. However, as soldiers tend to perform the tactics they’re trained for rather than working on their own, I was happy to use it. I still felt that a mass combat was a poor choice – and possibly could end the campaign quickly.

What I did do was have the Countess and her castellan come upon the characters as they explored her quarters. This gave rise to a fascinating fight: it began with the Countess casting haste on the castellan; he then surprised the party with his speed as he reached them before they were ready. Martin’s Wizard cast polymorph on the castellan – and used his divination magic to make sure it worked. A very fast mouse started darting around the room, but it was grabbed and placed in a bag. That was it for the castellan.

Then the Countess appeared in the room – invisible. She dropped the invisibility to cast globe of invulnerability, and the real fun started. The characters’ spells did not affect her. Martin’s wizard hid on top of a wardrobe and stayed there for the remainder of the fight so he wouldn’t lose concentration on the polymorphed giant. The fighters of the group ran in to engage the countess in melee. One dropped; the other was seriously hurt. The cleric attempted to heal both – but both were within the globe, and neither could be healed from outside! The cleric had to run into melee range to heal them!

Eventually, they were successful. The Countess was knocked unconscious, not killed. It was just as well, as they discovered the conch they were searching for was inside a Leomund’s tiny chest that could only be recovered by the Countess. They woke her and negotiated: her freedom and that of the castellan for the conch. She agreed, and the party left for the Storm King’s court. The Countess swore vengeance on puny folk and went back to torturing her captive dragon.

Oh yes, the dragon. The adventurers had heard its tortured screams, but they never investigated. Possibly just as well, as that would have led to a premature battle with the Countess. There will be games for which rescuing the dragon will be a major part of this section. Not for this group. They’d found what they came for, and now they faced the intrigues of King Hekaton’s court!