Chapter 3: The Savage Frontier - Storm King's Thunder

Chapter 3: The Savage Frontier. A vast frontier serves as the backdrop for this story. As it turns out, giants are everywhere and wreaking all sorts of havoc, from the Sword Coast to the desert of Anauroch. This chapter describes this setting, beginning with an overview of the Savage Frontier and some of its key inhabitants, then presenting descriptions of specific locations. The chapter concludes with three encounters that help propel the story forward: In the "Old Tower" section, adventurers meet a lonely hill giant with an axe to grind; The "Inner Circles" section describes a series of teleportation circles that the adventurers can use to expedite travel; The "Harshnag" section introduces adventurers to a frost giant who means to help them. Until the characters find a more expeditious means of transportation, they will be doing a lot of overland traveling. Chapter 5 of the Dungeon Master's Guide provides advice and tools to help make wilderness travel fun for you and the players, as well as rules for foraging and becoming lost. You can use the travel-montage approach or the hour-by-hour approach, or you can experiment with both to see which approach works best for you. That chapter also includes a table to randomly determine the weather and a table of random urban encounters (useful when the adventurers arrive at a city). Peoples of the North The Savage Frontier, or the North, is a harsh and untamed wilderness dotted with fortified settlements and the lairs of terrible monsters. In hundreds of bloodcurdling tales of danger and hardship, the North is portrayed as a vast, cold, and lawless domain that defies all attempts to civilize it. Grim dwarfholds, tribes of fierce barbarians, and half-legendary elf realms might stand for a short time, but none are destined to last. An orc horde or a flight of dragons could sweep them all away tomorrow, leaving nothing but mile upon unmapped mile of wilderness. The Savage Frontier lies between the Sword Coast and the desert...