This is the fist time I ever post any of my ideas for my campaign on anywhere, and I am sorry in advance if this is not the correct place. But the DM Only place on D&D Beyond seemed to me to be a fitting place. Before you read any further: This is what I did to connect HotDQ and RoT, explained in a short version and long version. I know I am happy to find things like this when I'm looking for ideas, so maybe some other will find it useful.
I took my group through HotDQ before summer, and was eager to start Rise of Tiamat. As many DMs before me I did not like the start of RoT. There just ain't no connection between the stories. So I made one. Based on the map taken from the appearently cut chapter that should have been the first chapter of RoT - http://theredepic.bigcartel.com/product/overland-map-dm-player-digital-download-versions. I've decided to post it here for some inspiration if someone else is running it and desperate for ideas. I do not take the whole credit for all the ideas in here, as I myself have stolen them from here and there. I wrote it in short version, just listing the ideas, and a long one with more details if you want a «finished» piece.
Background:
This whole episode plays out in the Spine of the World in the map mentioned above. Whatever reason your players have for entering I guess you could make most of this work.
The Giants are having a moot to discuss how to deal with the cult. Blagothkus secret mission which he never admits to the players is to gather the giants so they can take their (according to him) rightful place as rulers of the world. He and/or Harshnags befriend they players and pledge their loyalty because it serves the goals they have for themselves. They will not hesitate a second to stab the players in the back if they come in the way of their plans. This ofcourse, is something the players will never get to know. I played it so the players think they will be loyal, but they are not convinced it will last, and they are pretty sure the motives isn’t that they want to help save the world.
Base and goal:
I made Harsnags hall the players base, and their mission to win over the giants to their cause. As the players landed Harshnag are about to host a moot of Giants on Blagothkus... suggestion (orders). I made Harshnag Jarl, and an obedient, but not so very willing subordinate to Blagothkus, to keep the players questionening who was really in charge. I used the hiarchy amongst Giants a lot. All Giants except Storm Giants were present.
I kept track over the players progress towards winning the giants to their side by stealing the scorecard-framework from RoT. I made the point-system based around if the different giants would be impressed or not. i basically used their descriptions in Monster Manual to decide the scoring. In that way the players would score high with Fire Giants and Cloud Giants if they used good tacticts. If they attacked by strenght of force or number they would score hight with Fire Giants and Frost Giants who appreciate use of force. If they solved a mission stealthily the Cloud Giants would like it, but if they simply ran straight into a monster's jaws with their weapon drawn the Hill Giants would salute them. And so on.
SHORT VERSION
AREA 1: Orc Camp – the Dragon Cult has taken all the males prisoners and keep them in 3 different tents. The chieftain is being held in a fourth with the Cults leaders. The cult steal firewood from the giants under guise of Orcs, promting the Fire Giants to demand Harshnag to deal with the situation.
AREA 2: Dwarven Tomb – A creepy dungeon. The players got sent here by the stone giants to retreive some legendary tool to cut stone and were being told that it was a mine. It really was a tomb with a horrific secret. My dungeon is explained below under MISSION 3.
AREA 3: Harshnags Hall. As I told above, I madet his the players base.
AREA 4: The exit – this way leads them out of the mountains.
AREA 5: The way to the exit - I made it so they had to enter the mountain to decend to AREA 4. I put yetis inside the mountain.
AREA 6: The Search for the Hill Giants Chieftain – I made the Hill Giants loose their chieftain on their way here. They think he’s pissed so they not very eager to get him back. One of the other hill giants ask secretly the players to kill the chieftain instead so he can become chieftain. Tracking mission into the wilds. When they find the chieftain he’s locked in a deadly fight with an abominable yeti.
AREA 7: - skipped it.
AREA 8: Giant Remorhaz – Made this a prooving to get Harshnags sort-of acceptance.
AREA 9: The castle – where it lands or where it crash. Whatever suits your needs.
LONGER VERSION
So I gave them one mission daily, and weaved it all into a bigger story. They got the missions to proove themselves to the giants, who would join them if they succedded. Or possibly kill them if they didn’t. I also put something in between every mission, an interlude.
MISSION 1:
Harshnag is sceptical to the players and orders them to test their merit against a Giant Remorhaz (AREA 8). They are given minimal information and told that lack of info is a part of the test. (my players killed it and dragged the whole ting back to Harshnags hall leaving a huge and deep trench all the way. Our little gnome was hanging in the rope all the way and pretended to help)
INTERLUDE 1:
When the players come back 3 Fire Giants (I made them a bit silly-looking as they should not be particulary graceful and comfortable in the frozen mountains of The Spine of the World) complaints that the orcs (AREA 1) have stolen their firewood. My players volunteered to get the firewood back before Harshnag got the chance to ask them.
MISSION 2:
The orcs camps are somewhat strange. There are no male orcs, and the women and childen looks scared. The cult of the dragon has captured the men, keeping them in some of the tents, tied to poles. There are one cultist per orc, what kind of cultists depends on your party strength. The orc chief is held alone in his tent, guarded by 2 highranking cultists. I made this fight deadly. The cult is doing all this to create a rift between the Orcs and the Giants who have a peace-agreement. If they disrupt the piece, tricking the Giants into believing the Orcs has betrayed their agreement the cult can swoop in and help the Giants fix their Orc-problem in exchange for their loyalty in the coming war. I made them do all this in an ice-cold snowstorm where they were nearly blind and totally deaf. (My players used the shelter of the storm to kill off the cultist in the tents one by one, and they got the furious Orcs over on their side, making this mission a bloody and brutal, albeit easy one. They spoke with the orc-chief who agreed to come with them to the Giants to tell about the cultists. A success except they got a litle bit lost in the storm on their way back and almost froze to death).
INTERLUDE 2:
While they were gone all the giants have arrived to the moot. They invite the players and discuss them and their wish to gain the Giants loyalty. Or simply the players wish to survive all this, whatever suits your campaign. My players had a promise of their aid if they helped enough on one hand, but thay also had the threat of death if they did not comply with the Giants wishes on the other. I used this to introduce the Giants characteristics and give hints of what the different giants prefer. I also used this to introduce the next mission.
MISSION 3:
The Stone Giants have heard of mythical device used to cut stone that make even a stone giants work looks like it was made by a 2 year-old half asleep. They have tracked this device to an old dwarven mine (AREA 2) (which is really a cursed dwarven tomb). They want the players to retrieve it.
I made the road to the tomb be easy, but I hid the entrance under water. After they found it (which took suprisingly long) they entered a sort of floodgate (they swam down, opened an old rotten wooden door, swam in and up and could exit the water and they found themselves in a room with a small waterfall falling from where they stand down to a neatly cut trench and in the end of that trench they came to an old dwarven gate. it had the text "Take heed ye who enters, only the dead leave these doors" written over it. I wrote in in the dwarvish alphabet and gave them the door with the text as a handout. They could choose to ignore it, or spend time to translate it. Once they entered the door locked with a loud bang behind them, with an added arcane lock. The text "I damn myself and my brethren to stay forever vigilant to keep evil from the world. This door is locked" appear on the door in floating yellow dwarven runes (another handout).
The thing in this dungeon was to create a very creepy environment. I made the characters see something just out of the corner of their eye, but when they looked there was nothing there. Sometimes they felt as if someone brushed their shoulder. Sometimes it felt as if someone was bumping into them. But there are actually no enemies but one in the whole dungeon. My players loved this dungeon. It was stressful, thrilling and they did not for one second felt safe. And they even managed to avoid meeting the dungeons 1 (very evil) resident. So they basically was stressing out of their chairs without anything really happening.
The backstory is that it once where the hideout of the «twice-forgotten king», a dwarven king who once was a powerful dwarven wizard who became king and ruled by death and terror. He eventually got kicked out and erased from history as a dark and painful chapter of dwarven history. He ran away to this place with the aim of making himself more powerful so he could return and take back the kingdom he lost. His most loyal subjects did not think he was totally evil, and that he was the rightful king. The king however had a plan. He was going to turn himself into a lich and use his subjects as fuel. Long after (100 years ago), when the lich-king was starting to be very powerful and testing his strength on the outside his old dwarven kingdom sent some of their best soldiers to finish him off. They realised they were not powerful enough so they instead sealed him inside his crypt, turning themselves into eternal guardians whith the sole purpose of keeping the lich sealed inside his tomb. Eventually he turned into a demi-lich as he didn’t had any souls to feed his phylactery cause of the seal, and the demi-lich became dormant.
Room 1 had a table with 5 dwarven skeletons sitting. They were sitting as if they had died simultaniously while they ate. One of them had a crumpled up note clutched in his skeleton hand with the text "If anyone finds this: Know we were proud. Know we thought we knew what we did. And learn from our mistakes." Another dwarven-written handout. Other than that the room had 2 doors in addition to the entrance which is now shut behind them. 1 of them leading to ROOM 2, and the other to ROOM 3. The one to ROOM 3 had something written on it (see under ROOM 3). (one of my players insisted on playing football with one of the dwarves heads. I knocked him repeatedly uncounsious with no save-possibility. I know some DM’s don’t like to do that, but I was offended by this players behaviour and wanted to punish him. He ended up with one of the other players cutting «idiot» into his forehead with a knife when he was unconcious for the third or fourth time. Which he agreed he deserved).
Room 2 was full of skeletons, a lot of them appear to have been eaten by something from the inside. The room is full of whispers, but there is not possible to make out anything that's being said. With a 20 arcanacheck my players learned that the voices where whispers from the past, the painful voices of the people who once witnessed the extreme brutality of what once happened here. In the end of the room there is a rock not quite like all the others. It's boobytrapped with a very dangerous trap (of your choice, I used a fireball one). behind the trap there is a dirty, dusty diamond. It has markings from a device which is was once attached to. this led my players to believe they had half of the device they were sent for. (they really had a demi-lich forgotten phylactery).
Room 3 is empty. But before they manage to enter the door to the room they see in (dwarven) text «Beyond this door lies only death» (handout). The door is locked with an arcane lock. The room itself is full of old spider webs and the empty hull of one long dead giant spider is in the corner.
Room 4. Here lies the sarcophag of the twice-forgotten king. It has a plaque on it with the text «Here lies the Twice-Forgotten King» in dwarvish. They can open the sarcophag safely, but if they touch the bones of the twice-forgotten king the demi-lich will spring to life. It will try to scare off the players first (chances are your players are guaranteed death if they try to fight, so I decided to give them a chance to realise they don’t have a chance).
Also, if they enter this room after having visited room 5 and 6, the demi-lich will be awake. The players could get a supriseround depending on what they do.
The Demi-lich will not follow them out of the door with the seal. (the door between room 1 and 3.)
Room 5. There is a sarcophag in this room aswell. It has a plaque with the text (in dwarvis) «here lies Thork, one the biggest heroes of our time, who noone will ever hear of.» If they search the sarcophag they will also find something cut into the stone on the backside: «The answer is inside – and write it in common in a place out of sight» in common.
If they open the sarcophag they fill fint a lot of small rocks lying where the stomach of Thork is. It appears he ate the rocks. On the rocks there are plenty of hints written in common. BUT, one hint can be written out on several stones, and some words have became impossible to read. Making this a puzzle, where they have to guess which stone comes first, which one speaks of the same things, and they have to guess missing letters and words out of the context. The stones tell the story of the leader of the dwarves who arrived 100 years ago. They describe what he have learned. Among the things he have learned is this:
He knows the diamond is the lich’ phylactery. It was Thork who placed in where the players may find it. However, I made this hint very hard to read.
He know who the king were.
He knows the only way to destroy the diamond is with a hammer placed in Room 6. I made this hint a bit easier. Leaving my players to wonder why they should destroy the diamond (they didn’t understood that it was a phylactery).
He knows the demi-lich can only die if the phylactery is being destroyed.
He tries to tell that the demi-lich influence him and his fellow dwarves, but only manages to be cryptic.
He was among the last to die and turn into eternal (invisible) guardians, and it was a huge risk to be buried so close to the lich. The reason was that he felt that if adventurers would find his body and his stones all the way in here, they have a chance of destroying the phylactery and the lich.
I did not give them more than a couple hints which they didn’t had to work for. And alltogether I used 11 rocks. But do as you will. This was a handout thrown out of order on the table.
Room 6. This room has a big chest with loot befitting such a dungeon. And very important, an adamantite hammer stands up against the chest. If they use this hammer to destroy the diamond, the hammer will also be destroyed in the process. Also in here is a sort of machine. It has a fastening device which appear to fit exactly the marks on the diamond. It was used as an enhancer for the phylactery.
INTERLUDE 3:
This depends a bit if they return with the diamond or not. They Stone-Giants immidiatly recognize the diamond as what it is – a phylactery. And the machine.
Chances are big that only the Hill Giants are not convinced by now. They will yell out and demand that the players help them now.
And they tell the players that they don’t trust anyone they don’t know how taste. So they suggest to let them eat one of the players. Some of the giants are amused by this suggestion, while most are like rolling their eyes of the hill giants stupidity. Score appropiatly if the players actually sacrifice one of their teammates. If the players ask for other options they will come up with a suggestion after a lot of loud thinking that they maybe could help finding their chieftain which they lost on their way up here? One of the hill giants will approach the players just before they leave and ask them to kill the chieftain instead, in exchange for a handsome reward (he wants to be chieftain).
MISSION 4:
They point toward AREA 6 and said they lost their chieftain around there. The players og there and this is a search and find mission. It has snowed, and the obvius tracks are hidden under the snow. However, a hill giant aren’t the subtlest of beings. With a 15 survival check and 1 hour search they find the tracks. I then let them take 2 more checks – one by a frozen lake, and one where they players have to climb through som rocks. Let the hear a yeti along the way. Make them feel they are not alone in the mountains. But never see anything.
At the frozen lake they can see a big hole in the ice, and it appear to have been made by two giant fists smashing. Around the hole there is a lot of white fur and blood. The tracks they have followed meet another set of tracks where all the fur and blood is. The giants tracks keep going the same way the other tracks came from. The other tracks appear to have stopped and disappeared on the ice. If they really look they realise the giants tracks now are deeper than before the ice. (the giant killed a yeti and are now carrying the corpse as a snack).
At the rocks they walk down below a rocky natural bridge and the snow (and tracks) disappear. With a successful check they find small droplets of blood through the rocks. Once they have followed the bloody tracks a bit, they hear loud crashes and noises. If they continue, they will se an abominable yeti locked in deadly battle with the hill giant chieftain i clearing in the rocks. They players can do whatever they will. My players chose to save the chieftain, and used the rocks to gain a supriseround. But both the giant and the yeti are keenly observing the rocks for other enemies, so they have to be smart about it.
FINISH:
My players gained the «loyalty» of the Giants and they have also befriended Blagothkus, so they catched a ride with him on the flying castle to get home. If they use their legs, they need to walk down the mountain (AREA 5) which contains a lot of yetis to get to AREA 4 which is the exit from the mountains.
It is important to remember this in episode 9 of RoT. I plan on making the giants very visible on the battlefield, and make Harshnag and Blagothkus meet the players again.
This is the fist time I ever post any of my ideas for my campaign on anywhere, and I am sorry in advance if this is not the correct place. But the DM Only place on D&D Beyond seemed to me to be a fitting place. Before you read any further: This is what I did to connect HotDQ and RoT, explained in a short version and long version. I know I am happy to find things like this when I'm looking for ideas, so maybe some other will find it useful.
I took my group through HotDQ before summer, and was eager to start Rise of Tiamat. As many DMs before me I did not like the start of RoT. There just ain't no connection between the stories. So I made one. Based on the map taken from the appearently cut chapter that should have been the first chapter of RoT - http://theredepic.bigcartel.com/product/overland-map-dm-player-digital-download-versions. I've decided to post it here for some inspiration if someone else is running it and desperate for ideas. I do not take the whole credit for all the ideas in here, as I myself have stolen them from here and there. I wrote it in short version, just listing the ideas, and a long one with more details if you want a «finished» piece.
Background:
This whole episode plays out in the Spine of the World in the map mentioned above. Whatever reason your players have for entering I guess you could make most of this work.
The Giants are having a moot to discuss how to deal with the cult. Blagothkus secret mission which he never admits to the players is to gather the giants so they can take their (according to him) rightful place as rulers of the world. He and/or Harshnags befriend they players and pledge their loyalty because it serves the goals they have for themselves. They will not hesitate a second to stab the players in the back if they come in the way of their plans. This ofcourse, is something the players will never get to know. I played it so the players think they will be loyal, but they are not convinced it will last, and they are pretty sure the motives isn’t that they want to help save the world.
Base and goal:
I made Harsnags hall the players base, and their mission to win over the giants to their cause. As the players landed Harshnag are about to host a moot of Giants on Blagothkus... suggestion (orders). I made Harshnag Jarl, and an obedient, but not so very willing subordinate to Blagothkus, to keep the players questionening who was really in charge. I used the hiarchy amongst Giants a lot. All Giants except Storm Giants were present.
I kept track over the players progress towards winning the giants to their side by stealing the scorecard-framework from RoT. I made the point-system based around if the different giants would be impressed or not. i basically used their descriptions in Monster Manual to decide the scoring. In that way the players would score high with Fire Giants and Cloud Giants if they used good tacticts. If they attacked by strenght of force or number they would score hight with Fire Giants and Frost Giants who appreciate use of force. If they solved a mission stealthily the Cloud Giants would like it, but if they simply ran straight into a monster's jaws with their weapon drawn the Hill Giants would salute them. And so on.
SHORT VERSION
AREA 1: Orc Camp – the Dragon Cult has taken all the males prisoners and keep them in 3 different tents. The chieftain is being held in a fourth with the Cults leaders. The cult steal firewood from the giants under guise of Orcs, promting the Fire Giants to demand Harshnag to deal with the situation.
AREA 2: Dwarven Tomb – A creepy dungeon. The players got sent here by the stone giants to retreive some legendary tool to cut stone and were being told that it was a mine. It really was a tomb with a horrific secret. My dungeon is explained below under MISSION 3.
AREA 3: Harshnags Hall. As I told above, I madet his the players base.
AREA 4: The exit – this way leads them out of the mountains.
AREA 5: The way to the exit - I made it so they had to enter the mountain to decend to AREA 4. I put yetis inside the mountain.
AREA 6: The Search for the Hill Giants Chieftain – I made the Hill Giants loose their chieftain on their way here. They think he’s pissed so they not very eager to get him back. One of the other hill giants ask secretly the players to kill the chieftain instead so he can become chieftain. Tracking mission into the wilds. When they find the chieftain he’s locked in a deadly fight with an abominable yeti.
AREA 7: - skipped it.
AREA 8: Giant Remorhaz – Made this a prooving to get Harshnags sort-of acceptance.
AREA 9: The castle – where it lands or where it crash. Whatever suits your needs.
LONGER VERSION
So I gave them one mission daily, and weaved it all into a bigger story. They got the missions to proove themselves to the giants, who would join them if they succedded. Or possibly kill them if they didn’t. I also put something in between every mission, an interlude.
MISSION 1:
Harshnag is sceptical to the players and orders them to test their merit against a Giant Remorhaz (AREA 8). They are given minimal information and told that lack of info is a part of the test. (my players killed it and dragged the whole ting back to Harshnags hall leaving a huge and deep trench all the way. Our little gnome was hanging in the rope all the way and pretended to help)
INTERLUDE 1:
When the players come back 3 Fire Giants (I made them a bit silly-looking as they should not be particulary graceful and comfortable in the frozen mountains of The Spine of the World) complaints that the orcs (AREA 1) have stolen their firewood. My players volunteered to get the firewood back before Harshnag got the chance to ask them.
MISSION 2:
The orcs camps are somewhat strange. There are no male orcs, and the women and childen looks scared. The cult of the dragon has captured the men, keeping them in some of the tents, tied to poles. There are one cultist per orc, what kind of cultists depends on your party strength. The orc chief is held alone in his tent, guarded by 2 highranking cultists. I made this fight deadly. The cult is doing all this to create a rift between the Orcs and the Giants who have a peace-agreement. If they disrupt the piece, tricking the Giants into believing the Orcs has betrayed their agreement the cult can swoop in and help the Giants fix their Orc-problem in exchange for their loyalty in the coming war. I made them do all this in an ice-cold snowstorm where they were nearly blind and totally deaf. (My players used the shelter of the storm to kill off the cultist in the tents one by one, and they got the furious Orcs over on their side, making this mission a bloody and brutal, albeit easy one. They spoke with the orc-chief who agreed to come with them to the Giants to tell about the cultists. A success except they got a litle bit lost in the storm on their way back and almost froze to death).
INTERLUDE 2:
While they were gone all the giants have arrived to the moot. They invite the players and discuss them and their wish to gain the Giants loyalty. Or simply the players wish to survive all this, whatever suits your campaign. My players had a promise of their aid if they helped enough on one hand, but thay also had the threat of death if they did not comply with the Giants wishes on the other. I used this to introduce the Giants characteristics and give hints of what the different giants prefer. I also used this to introduce the next mission.
MISSION 3:
The Stone Giants have heard of mythical device used to cut stone that make even a stone giants work looks like it was made by a 2 year-old half asleep. They have tracked this device to an old dwarven mine (AREA 2) (which is really a cursed dwarven tomb). They want the players to retrieve it.
I made the road to the tomb be easy, but I hid the entrance under water. After they found it (which took suprisingly long) they entered a sort of floodgate (they swam down, opened an old rotten wooden door, swam in and up and could exit the water and they found themselves in a room with a small waterfall falling from where they stand down to a neatly cut trench and in the end of that trench they came to an old dwarven gate. it had the text "Take heed ye who enters, only the dead leave these doors" written over it. I wrote in in the dwarvish alphabet and gave them the door with the text as a handout. They could choose to ignore it, or spend time to translate it. Once they entered the door locked with a loud bang behind them, with an added arcane lock. The text "I damn myself and my brethren to stay forever vigilant to keep evil from the world. This door is locked" appear on the door in floating yellow dwarven runes (another handout).
The thing in this dungeon was to create a very creepy environment. I made the characters see something just out of the corner of their eye, but when they looked there was nothing there. Sometimes they felt as if someone brushed their shoulder. Sometimes it felt as if someone was bumping into them. But there are actually no enemies but one in the whole dungeon. My players loved this dungeon. It was stressful, thrilling and they did not for one second felt safe. And they even managed to avoid meeting the dungeons 1 (very evil) resident. So they basically was stressing out of their chairs without anything really happening.
The backstory is that it once where the hideout of the «twice-forgotten king», a dwarven king who once was a powerful dwarven wizard who became king and ruled by death and terror. He eventually got kicked out and erased from history as a dark and painful chapter of dwarven history. He ran away to this place with the aim of making himself more powerful so he could return and take back the kingdom he lost. His most loyal subjects did not think he was totally evil, and that he was the rightful king. The king however had a plan. He was going to turn himself into a lich and use his subjects as fuel. Long after (100 years ago), when the lich-king was starting to be very powerful and testing his strength on the outside his old dwarven kingdom sent some of their best soldiers to finish him off. They realised they were not powerful enough so they instead sealed him inside his crypt, turning themselves into eternal guardians whith the sole purpose of keeping the lich sealed inside his tomb. Eventually he turned into a demi-lich as he didn’t had any souls to feed his phylactery cause of the seal, and the demi-lich became dormant.
Room 1 had a table with 5 dwarven skeletons sitting. They were sitting as if they had died simultaniously while they ate. One of them had a crumpled up note clutched in his skeleton hand with the text "If anyone finds this: Know we were proud. Know we thought we knew what we did. And learn from our mistakes." Another dwarven-written handout. Other than that the room had 2 doors in addition to the entrance which is now shut behind them. 1 of them leading to ROOM 2, and the other to ROOM 3. The one to ROOM 3 had something written on it (see under ROOM 3). (one of my players insisted on playing football with one of the dwarves heads. I knocked him repeatedly uncounsious with no save-possibility. I know some DM’s don’t like to do that, but I was offended by this players behaviour and wanted to punish him. He ended up with one of the other players cutting «idiot» into his forehead with a knife when he was unconcious for the third or fourth time. Which he agreed he deserved).
Room 2 was full of skeletons, a lot of them appear to have been eaten by something from the inside. The room is full of whispers, but there is not possible to make out anything that's being said. With a 20 arcanacheck my players learned that the voices where whispers from the past, the painful voices of the people who once witnessed the extreme brutality of what once happened here. In the end of the room there is a rock not quite like all the others. It's boobytrapped with a very dangerous trap (of your choice, I used a fireball one). behind the trap there is a dirty, dusty diamond. It has markings from a device which is was once attached to. this led my players to believe they had half of the device they were sent for. (they really had a demi-lich forgotten phylactery).
Room 3 is empty. But before they manage to enter the door to the room they see in (dwarven) text «Beyond this door lies only death» (handout). The door is locked with an arcane lock. The room itself is full of old spider webs and the empty hull of one long dead giant spider is in the corner.
Room 4. Here lies the sarcophag of the twice-forgotten king. It has a plaque on it with the text «Here lies the Twice-Forgotten King» in dwarvish. They can open the sarcophag safely, but if they touch the bones of the twice-forgotten king the demi-lich will spring to life. It will try to scare off the players first (chances are your players are guaranteed death if they try to fight, so I decided to give them a chance to realise they don’t have a chance).
Also, if they enter this room after having visited room 5 and 6, the demi-lich will be awake. The players could get a supriseround depending on what they do.
The Demi-lich will not follow them out of the door with the seal. (the door between room 1 and 3.)
Room 5. There is a sarcophag in this room aswell. It has a plaque with the text (in dwarvis) «here lies Thork, one the biggest heroes of our time, who noone will ever hear of.» If they search the sarcophag they will also find something cut into the stone on the backside: «The answer is inside – and write it in common in a place out of sight» in common.
If they open the sarcophag they fill fint a lot of small rocks lying where the stomach of Thork is. It appears he ate the rocks. On the rocks there are plenty of hints written in common. BUT, one hint can be written out on several stones, and some words have became impossible to read. Making this a puzzle, where they have to guess which stone comes first, which one speaks of the same things, and they have to guess missing letters and words out of the context. The stones tell the story of the leader of the dwarves who arrived 100 years ago. They describe what he have learned. Among the things he have learned is this:
I did not give them more than a couple hints which they didn’t had to work for. And alltogether I used 11 rocks. But do as you will. This was a handout thrown out of order on the table.
Room 6. This room has a big chest with loot befitting such a dungeon. And very important, an adamantite hammer stands up against the chest. If they use this hammer to destroy the diamond, the hammer will also be destroyed in the process. Also in here is a sort of machine. It has a fastening device which appear to fit exactly the marks on the diamond. It was used as an enhancer for the phylactery.
INTERLUDE 3:
This depends a bit if they return with the diamond or not. They Stone-Giants immidiatly recognize the diamond as what it is – a phylactery. And the machine.
Chances are big that only the Hill Giants are not convinced by now. They will yell out and demand that the players help them now.
And they tell the players that they don’t trust anyone they don’t know how taste. So they suggest to let them eat one of the players. Some of the giants are amused by this suggestion, while most are like rolling their eyes of the hill giants stupidity. Score appropiatly if the players actually sacrifice one of their teammates. If the players ask for other options they will come up with a suggestion after a lot of loud thinking that they maybe could help finding their chieftain which they lost on their way up here? One of the hill giants will approach the players just before they leave and ask them to kill the chieftain instead, in exchange for a handsome reward (he wants to be chieftain).
MISSION 4:
They point toward AREA 6 and said they lost their chieftain around there. The players og there and this is a search and find mission. It has snowed, and the obvius tracks are hidden under the snow. However, a hill giant aren’t the subtlest of beings. With a 15 survival check and 1 hour search they find the tracks. I then let them take 2 more checks – one by a frozen lake, and one where they players have to climb through som rocks. Let the hear a yeti along the way. Make them feel they are not alone in the mountains. But never see anything.
At the frozen lake they can see a big hole in the ice, and it appear to have been made by two giant fists smashing. Around the hole there is a lot of white fur and blood. The tracks they have followed meet another set of tracks where all the fur and blood is. The giants tracks keep going the same way the other tracks came from. The other tracks appear to have stopped and disappeared on the ice. If they really look they realise the giants tracks now are deeper than before the ice. (the giant killed a yeti and are now carrying the corpse as a snack).
At the rocks they walk down below a rocky natural bridge and the snow (and tracks) disappear. With a successful check they find small droplets of blood through the rocks. Once they have followed the bloody tracks a bit, they hear loud crashes and noises. If they continue, they will se an abominable yeti locked in deadly battle with the hill giant chieftain i clearing in the rocks. They players can do whatever they will. My players chose to save the chieftain, and used the rocks to gain a supriseround. But both the giant and the yeti are keenly observing the rocks for other enemies, so they have to be smart about it.
FINISH:
My players gained the «loyalty» of the Giants and they have also befriended Blagothkus, so they catched a ride with him on the flying castle to get home. If they use their legs, they need to walk down the mountain (AREA 5) which contains a lot of yetis to get to AREA 4 which is the exit from the mountains.
It is important to remember this in episode 9 of RoT. I plan on making the giants very visible on the battlefield, and make Harshnag and Blagothkus meet the players again.