Chapter 11: Caught in the Tentacles - Storm King's Thunder

Chapter 11: Caught in the Tentacles. Operatives of the Kraken Society have King Hekaton in their clutches. If the characters forge an alliance with Princess Serissa and agree to find her father, she gives them a wooden coin painted with the image of a golden goose that was found near the corpse of her slain mother, Queen Neri. Princess Serissa presumes (correctly) that the coin was accidentally dropped by one of her mother's assassins. The characters begin this part of their mission by tracking the gambling chip to its owner, Khaspere Drylund of Yartar. The nobleman is maneuvering to become the city's new Waterbaron. He runs a gambling hall aboard a riverboat named the Grand Dame. Lord Drylund's wealthy patrons are the movers and shakers of Yartar, and he wants to impress them and place them in his debt. They come to his riverboat day and night, exchanging coins for wooden gambling chips called "golden geese." They dine on the finest prepared food, dance to marvelous music, and gamble away their chips at Lord Drylund's tables, all under the watchful eye of his chief of security, the wizard Pow Ming. Tracking the wooden coin to its source requires some investigation and, perhaps, a little help from one or more factions. Once the coin is traced to a gambling hall aboard a resplendent riverboat in Yartar, the game is afoot! The characters must attack or infiltrate the riverboat to reach Lord Drylund, for only he knows where King Hekaton is kept. Drylund reveals under duress that the storm giant king is sequestered aboard a scry-proof vessel called the Morkoth that circles the islands of the Trackless Sea, far from prying eyes. Drylund's betrayal immediately precedes his doom, as Slarkrethel reaches out from the depths of the Trackless Sea and slays the corrupt nobleman with a telepathic thought. The chapter concludes with the characters' hunt for the Morkoth and the freeing of King Hekaton, and perhaps a terrifying encounter with the kraken itself. The Golden Goose...