Storm King's part 5 - We Love Side Quests

After the big battle at Bryn Shander, the SHERIFF is sending word into the town that the South gate needs repairing so everyone that can help with guarding or repairing should rally to the gate.
The Adventurers stay a little longer to guard the ruins and to be sure no giants are returning for the second wave… and of course to loot the dead bodies “FOR THE HORDE!!!”, I mean FOR THE LOOT!!!


There is much to loot when you fight against giants, usually non usable items because of their size, but this time something stands out in all the items we find, it is a red jewel maybe because of the liquid it holds inside or because it seems like a ruby but it’s red and the liquid seems to show us a direction, we discover this by moving the red stone that has “Blood” written on it in Giant language, luckily for us the smallest of us all, Groin, can read the biggest letters[1] :)

While we are busy looting the sheriff returns with the help needed to repair and guard the gate, so we are  free to go wherever the blood will take us. It seems the blood points towards the temple but it will remain still before we find our final destination (pun intended).

Clever minds, we go to the temple only to find that Artus Cimber is the father of our beloved, dead priest :(

We decide to gather our strength (meaning long rest) and try to find out more from the dead bodies the next day[2]. Until then we sell the loot to the local people, FOR THE GOLD!!! even if not all of the bargains are in our favor (sneaky DM)[3]. We also test out some Taverns in town to find the one that suits us, remember that we are no longer welcome to our first inn we visited.

The next morning we prepare ourselves to deceive a dead giant into explaining us more about the reason of the siege. Speak with dead it seems doesn’t care about the shadows we tried to reflect on the walls or our Thaumaturgy voices.[4]

Side Quest 1:

The beggar woman gives us a tip for our journey ahead, if we are ever to pass Hundlestone we should ask for a gnome Thwip Fund de Fier[5] (Thwip Ironbottom).

Side Quest 2:

The  sheriff's deputy calls for us from a hidden alley, she is ashamed for her behavior when the time called for her most and she could not rise up to the challenge. She wants to leave the city and never to come back but she doesn’t want her clan to be more dishonored as it already is from her behavior. So she asks us to go to Ironmaster and look for her clan, Coifurile Stralucitoare (The Brighthelms), maybe her clan will wash her shame and send another brave to take her place as deputy. She also warns us that her clan doesn’t let other races into town.[6]

Side Quest 3:

As we reach the City Hall, we are welcomed by the First Speaker and the Sheriff. The Sheriff is concerned that other villages may be attacked by the giants and sends us to check the well being of the Ten Towns nearby. He also gives us the title of Sheriff's deputy and the symbol, a star, to attest that we are indeed who we claim to be and not some tourists in this parts :)

Side Quest 4:

The First Speaker will also provide some help in our journey, if we are ever to pass Waterdeep we should ask about her aunt Inirva Coldwater, she is the captain of a boat The Dancing Wave, we should deliver a letter and in return she will provide free transport anywhere we want to go on water.

Side Quest 4:

As we return to Fire Beard tavern we receive free drinks as a token of his appreciation, saving the town and all. Here we meet again with the Knight that has a bounty to offer us if we catch Capusa (The Weevil), an outlaw that for the next 3 sessions will become our main quest for some strange and inexplicable reason. Stay tuned for the next episodes where we try to find Capusa…

Caring adventurers that we are, we first want to know that the Ten Towns are safe and sound so we begin visiting one town after another by foot, because the stubborn dwarf doesn’t want to ride a pig or anything else for that matter (if it doesn’t involve a sexy dwarf woman with a beard).

On the road we encounter a farmer who wants to sell us some pigs but we do not want to get killed by the pigs or be poisoned with pig meat so we don’t buy anything from the suspicious farmer. (For the record it was nothing suspicious about the farmer just the paranoia of some adventurers).

All seems well on the road, no giant activity was recently seen in the first villages we visit.

We found ourselves close to Ironmaster where we need to deliver the message in behalf of the sheriff's deputy. Her clan pays us for delivering the message and gives us another message to deliver if we ever encounter their beloved daughter, “she is welcome to return home, where she will be properly punished but she will be forgiven nevertheless for the shame that she brought to her clan”.

All was quiet in the country until surprisingly we find a battlefield, battle over by the time we reach it, some giants are dead and we gladly take the loot and the giants heads so we can return in glory back to the city.

We have many more villages to visit so our story doesn’t end here just yet.[7]

[1] I erred on the side of the adventurers here, as they shouldn't have been able to read "old" Giant. My mistake. It will never happen again.

[2] Speak with the Dead is really useful. Maybe, just maybe, the adventurers realize that not all spells are for combat?

[3] Why would any shopkeeper refuse an awesome deal?

[4] Be thankful that the spirit simply ignored your feeble attempts at deception.

[5] At this point I thought it funny to translate the colorful names of these NPCs.

[6] Female dwarves do not have beards in the Forgotten Realms, but I decided to please Groin. So in our Forgotten Realms, they do.

[7] There was also a small battle with wolves, where I was finally convinced that the encounters in the book are an imbalanced mess. The party easily dispatched double the maximum number of wolves recommended.